Well, it's Friday and high time to spill the beans on the new expansion for Crusader Kings II; the Sword of Islam. Judging by the forum, playable Muslims is the most requested feature for CKII, and who are we to disagree? We always wanted to do it, provided we could do the Muslim world justice. That time is now (or, well, soon ). As with the Ruler Designer DLC, the Sword of Islam will be released together with a major content patch. What you get with the Sword of Islam is simply the ability to play as the Muslim rulers, but all the new mechanics will be there and running for the AI (or other players in multiplayer) even if you don't have the expansion.

I'll be doing three dev diaries on the Sword of Islam, each one dealing with some unique features for the Muslims as well as some free features that everyone will have access to simply by patching to 1.06.

THE SWORD OF ISLAM

One of the major hassles with making Muslims playable was the prevalence of text with obviously Christian or Western terminology. Therefore, we had to go through all text to make it fit the setting if you are playing a Muslim. Often, this required writing whole new events and decisions. For example, Muslims don't hold tournaments, they have the Furusiyya instead, which is an exhibition of martial arts and horsemanship. They don't hold Grand Feasts, they observe the Ramadan, etc. We also added some completely new decisions, like going on the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), which will initiate a cool little event driven story of what happens on the way to and from the holy city. Of course, there is also a whole slew of events dealing with various new gameplay features (more on that in later dev diaries.)

Another issue we needed to solve was the Gothic looking graphical interface of Crusader Kings II, which we felt did not really work when playing as a Muslim ruler. So we did a complete reskin with sand tones and green symbols and patterns instead of the church window graphics of Christian rulers. Yet another problem was that many event pictures looked distinctly Western/Christian, so we've added about 25 new ones to serve as Muslim equivalents. Then there are all the little things, like trait icons with crosses, the Crusade banner, etc. All of that has been changed to provide the right atmosphere. We've even changed the five councillor models for Muslims when they're out in the provinces performing jobs. It's all been a lot of work, but I think it turned out really well.

Muslims get a slightly different set of character traits; they don't get the Kinslayer, Crusader, Celibate and Chaste Traits. Instead, they get the Mujahid, Hajjaj, Faqih (Islamic law expert), Hafiz (has memorized the Koran), Sayyid (agnatic descendent of Fatima or one of Muhammad's uncles) and Mirza (child of a Sayyida mother) traits.

Lastly, Muslims get another set of honorary titles to hand out to their vassals. They all get a few special flavour events - especially the Chief Qadi - a position requiring an ecclesiastical education.



That's it for the Sword of Islam in this dev diary; next time I will go into the core dynamics of playing as a Muslim ruler.

THE 1.06 PATCH

Now then, here's some of the free stuff we're giving ya'll in the 1.06 patch...

First off, we thought the southwest corner of the map looked a bit dull, so we added a bunch of new provinces down there, representing the flourishing civilizations of the Manden people; Ghana, Mali and Songhay. The area comes with historical rulers (of course) and a new West African culture group. The region is rich but hard to reach.



For flavour, we have also made it so that duchy tier and above titles held by rulers of Iranian, Arabic and Turkish cultures are named after the ruling dynasty. For example, the Kingdom of Egypt automatically becomes the Fatimid Sultanate while the Fatimids are in power (though the original name is also used where appropriate.) In case the same dynasty holds several high rank titles, only the highest is named after the dynasty. Thus, we can have both a Seljuk Sultanate and a Sultanate of Rum, both ruled by the Seljuk dynasty. Randomly generated characters of these cultures automatically get a dynasty name suitable to name states after (ending with -id or -n, etc).



Lastly (for this dev diary), there are seven new creatable empires (the Arabian Empire, the Empire of Persia, Britannia, Scandinavia, Francia, Spain and Russia) and a whole slew of new de jure kingdoms, mostly to break up the old kingdom of Khazaria. Now, I know the addition of the new empires is controversial, but the creation conditions are designed to be fairly difficult to achieve, so the AI will very rarely do it. We want players to have the imperial option to strive for if they so desire - the Unions turned out to be a popular feature in Europa Universalis III.



Oh, and before anyone asks, patch 1.06 will be semi-compatible with old save games: you will be able to keep playing, but we're making no guarantees that the balance will not be completely upset, or that any added new provinces will be active and working.

That's it for now. Next week I'll talk about polygamy, decadence, and strong and weak claims!

 

[LarryLeica]

Obviously you can also have your heir convert to a Muslim religion, or even a Pagan, and then continue to play the game. The additions just coming with the patch will make this smoother than it is right now.

Question, and apologies if this has already been asked, what price point is this coming in at? Is it the same as the Beard Designer DLC, or is it going to be at a higher point?

 

[Captain Gars]

Not true. The switch to enable Muslims is in the game right now. It's just like having an .ini file with various game settings that you don't want to build a GUI specifically for. You may not want to provide technical support for people who enable that function (which is fair enough) but you can't pretend that it isn't a feature of the game that everyone has *right now*.

When you are doing is developing the precedent that you're are willing to take away existing content in order to sell it back to the customer in the form of DLC, which, from a consumer's prospective, reduces the value of any base game because they can expect that features will be actively *removed* for reasons besides them being "broken" or causing technical glitches.

As I see it, you had three ways to handle this properly.

1. Never release the ability to play as other factions, so you would not be taking away existing content in order to sell it a second time to the player. (The cat's out of the bag on this, and you can't do that now)

2. Release a full-fledged expansion for all of the other religions so that you can continue supporting one line of code, while still not removing the ability to enable the other religions for play, even though they have somewhat less content than Christians. (Could still do this, but you'd need to expand this DLC into a full-fledged expansion which covers a great deal more, and it's probably too soon for an expansion for the game.)

3. Treat content expansions for various religions like "mods" where they merely plug in to enable additional content, without affecting the ability to play as any religion if the player ticks that flag. This creates the issue of needing to support multiple code lines however, and may be more prone to piracy given how you don't have a special notch for your dlc to plug in as a mod using encryption keys only you have access to.

The way you are handling it, however, is arguably deceptive as a business practice and certainly harmful to the value of your product.

Edit: Jonan posted after I wrote this. His response alleviates my issues. I would like to remind, Gars, however, that just because a function is in a text file doesn't mean it's not game content, and you shouldn't pretend as such.

It doesn't matter how many times you write that playable Muslims is a feature in vanilla CKII - it's still not true. Neither is playing it as Game of Thrones - both are just side effects of us trying to keep the game as modable as possible. But we reserve the right to change those things if they happen to conflict with the development of the actual game.

 

[Ephafn]

Of course. Its just any religion actually named muslim needs to have the dlc.

I am left to wonder about this whole method of giving the content of the DLC to everyone in the patch (maybe without the graphical elements), then have the DLC acts as a hardcoded key to unlock the ability to play the content. What would then prevent a player (who haven't baught the DLC) to do a simply search and replace "muslim -> other_name" and then get access to all the content?

 

[unmerged(1823)]

I am left to wonder about this whole method of giving the content of the DLC to everyone in the patch (maybe without the graphical elements), then have the DLC acts as a hardcoded key to unlock the ability to play the content. What would then prevent a player (who haven't baught the DLC) to do a simply search and replace "muslim -> other_name" and then get access to all the content?

The content is in the executable...

 

[NewbieOne]

Because we hope that more people buy the game, not just current players. Thus we conitnue to develope with on eye on these people.

If you try to please everybody, you may end up pleasing nobody, or if you try to attract an undefined group of potential buyers without really knowing if they would buy the game as a result of your changes (and sorry for being a bit blunt but I don't really see how an Empire of Francia is going to get you more sales for CK2), you may end up both failing to attract the new buyers and alienating some of the old players (unless you believe that the old players will buy your future releases regardless of how you treat them because they're already hooked). For example the method you're going about the empires (a radical change in the direction of the game, going against a core part of the perceived value/unique selling proposition of the EU and CK franchises etc.) and about the discussion in this thread (angry replies, indignant tones, noticeable condescension, even telling players they can leave if they don't like your new decisions) is already beginning to alienate me, a faithful fan so far. I would appreciate if you guys could be a little less authoritative and a bit more polite, regardless of the fact you're the final decision-makers (or actually because of it).

 

[Captain Gars]

If you try to please everybody, you may end up pleasing nobody, or if you try to attract an undefined group of potential buyers without really knowing if they would buy the game as a result of your changes (and sorry for being a bit blunt but I don't really see how an Empire of Francia is going to get you more sales for CK2), you may end up both failing to attract the new buyers and alienating some of the old players (unless you believe that the old players will buy your future releases regardless of how you treat them because they're already hooked). For example the method you're going about the empires (a radical change in the direction of the game, going against a core part of the perceived value/unique selling proposition of the EU and CK franchises etc.) and about the discussion in this thread (angry replies, indignant tones, noticeable condescension, even telling players they can leave if they don't like your new decisions) is already beginning to alienate me, a faithful fan so far. I would appreciate if you guys could be a little less authoritative and a bit more polite, regardless of the fact you're the final decision-makers (or actually because of it).

Empires in CKII work much like nations you can form in EUIII (like Prussia, Scandinavia etc.) and a lot of players find it a lot of fun to have that visual progression. Teutonic Order for instance is a country many EUIII players like to play, but it's seldom because they want to play the TO but because they want to form Prussia and then Germany. Personally I'm not a big fan of it so I never form Scandinavia even if I can, but I understand why some players like it. Same thing here. And since the AI most likely won't do it, I honestly don't see the problem with including them.

 

[Beelz]

Is there any chance of a formable Caliphate as an Imperial title?

 

[Beelz]

Stop putting words in my mouth. I said I have no problem with them doing religion centered DLC to flesh out various factions. What I DO have a problem with is them removing the ability to play as those factions to resell to us piecemeal as a means to push their DLC. There's nothing broken about playing as muslims, it just isn't fleshed out. The only reason to remove that flag is remove game content to push their DLC, not to improve playability, stability, or whatever.

Why is it every time there is a new DLC for any game people like you have to throw a tantrum? Yes, some companies release DLC just to squeeze as much cash out of a game as possible. And no, this is not one of those cases. This DLC is correcting the messily-modded Muslims and replacing them with a more refined and polished version. If you don't like it then don't buy it.

 

[unmerged(101730)]

The content is in the executable...

I assume you guys know of the concept of "dynamically linked libraries" as well as the LoadLibrary()+GetProcAddress() (Windows) / dlopen()+dlsym() (Linux/MacOS) mechanism to load them after the program is already running. Why not use that to put a good portion of the Muslim DLC mechanics into the game?

 

[Jia Xu]

Empires in CKII work much like nations you can form in EUIII (like Prussia, Scandinavia etc.) and a lot of players find it a lot of fun to have that visual progression. Teutonic Order for instance is a country many EUIII players like to play, but it's seldom because they want to play the TO but because they want to form Prussia and then Germany. Personally I'm not a big fan of it so I never form Scandinavia even if I can, but I understand why some players like it. Same thing here. And since the AI most likely won't do it, I honestly don't see the problem with including them.

I don't see a problem with including them either. With that said, is there still time to change it so they're created as titular titles, and earn their de jure territory through regular de jure assimilation? I think this would silence 90% of the complaints, tbqh. You'll never please everyone though.

 

[Melange_Thief]

Personally, I'm really excited for everything in the DLC and the patch, and my first game with the DLC will be to try to form the Arabian empire with a ruler in Arabia, assuming Muslims are allowed to form it (and I don't see why they wouldn't be).

To Paradox: Will you make Zoroastrians playable with this DLC, as well? I won't be disappointed if the answer's no, I'm just really curious.

 

[Jia Xu]

To Paradox: Will you make Zoroastrians playable with this DLC, as well? I won't be disappointed if the answer's no, I'm just really curious.

Who would you play as? Are there even any Zoroastrian counts in the game?

 

[Sleight of Hand]

Who would you play as? Are there even any Zoroastrian counts in the game?

No, there are no Zoroastrian characters in the game -- you can have a few barons and mayors in Zoroastrian provinces but no one playable.

We are getting an icon though.

 

[NewbieOne]

Empires in CKII work much like nations you can form in EUIII (like Prussia, Scandinavia etc.) and a lot of players find it a lot of fun to have that visual progression. Teutonic Order for instance is a country many EUIII players like to play, but it's seldom because they want to play the TO but because they want to form Prussia and then Germany. Personally I'm not a big fan of it so I never form Scandinavia even if I can, but I understand why some players like it. Same thing here. And since the AI most likely won't do it, I honestly don't see the problem with including them.

Okay, since you're willing to talk, please allow me to try to explain: I have no problem with those empires being formable, ok (even formable as full de iure empires from day 1, as in okay, I might not hugely like that but can live with it)? That's fine by me. But 'de iure' means 'according to law'. In the case of a de iure state,however, it means that the state exists according to law, it just doesn't have a current ruler perhaps. And there's no way to say in 1066 that an Empire of Francia or Scandinavia or Brittania exists 'according to law' or 'of right' or 'according to custom'. This 'according to law', which is the crux of my concerns and the sole point of contention, is the principle which allows e.g. the Byzantine Empire to claim that the Kingdom of Syria is theirs by law because they held it before for a long time (in real life, this came into question with the crusader states, of which the Eastern Emperor claimed to be the de iure liege and his claims were taken seriously, to the point of actual vassalage by some crusader rulers, including at least one King of Jerusalem walking on foot beside a mounted emperor, which was a sign of vassalage back then). Or which allows the Kingdom of Burgundy or Lotharingia to be on the map despite not actually having a current ruler, not really existing separately right now (but there were kings before, before it fell apart). You can't say the same about the Empire of Francia or Scandinavia.

So when I open the map in 1066 (or any starting date, I like to play with non-standard dates) and I see 'de iure empire of Scandinavia', then from my perspective it's like you're telling me that such an empire used to exist and could be said, legally, to still exist. Or at least be dormant.

By contrast, EU3 doesn't have the concept of a pre-existing de iure state (other than when you release vassals maybe). You are specifically creating a new entity, not reviving an old dormant empire.

 

[Melange_Thief]

No, there are no Zoroastrian characters in the game -- you can have a few barons and mayors in Zoroastrian provinces but no one playable.

We are getting an icon though.

Correction: There are no playable Zoroastrian characters YET. I can guarantee that I will rectify this issue in a future game by making at least one Zoroastrian count, even if Zoroastrians are unplayable.

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

Correction: There are no playable Zoroastrian characters YET. I can guarantee that I will rectify this issue in a future game by making at least one Zoroastrian count, even if Zoroastrians are unplayable.

So, if the issue is about modding (e.g. 3rd to 5th century scenarios, which would all be very interesting as long as well thought and designed) I guess we can find reasonable ways to get around it.

 

[Melange_Thief]

So, if the issue is about modding (e.g. 3rd to 5th century scenarios, which would all be very interesting as long as well thought and designed) I guess we can find reasonable ways to get around it.

It's not about modding, I'm just curious about whether they're going to add this feature, seeing as they're already dealing with the area quite a bit. If they add it I will most certainly take advantage of it, and if they don't I will be perfectly content playing as one of the many Muslim characters that will be newly playable.

 

[asix79]

Obviously you can also have your heir convert to a Muslim religion, or even a Pagan, and then continue to play the game. The additions just coming with the patch will make this smoother than it is right now.

Question, and apologies if this has already been asked, what price point is this coming in at? Is it the same as the Beard Designer DLC, or is it going to be at a higher point?

$9.99.

 

[dragoon9105]

Probably a stupid question but are Pagans going to be locked into unplayable along with the muslims or will we have them completely available to us until a respective Pagan DLC comes out?.

Also if we don't buy the DLC and we marry into and inherit into a muslim dynasty the game wont freak out if your heir somehow becomes the caliph right?

 

[Meneth]

Probably a stupid question but are Pagans going to be locked into unplayable along with the muslims or will we have them completely available to us until a respective Pagan DLC comes out?.

Johan/Balor confirmed on the previous page that they can still be made playable:

Of course. Its just any religion actually named muslim needs to have the dlc.

(In response to my question: "Will it still be possible to make pagans playable (until the inevitable pagan DLC)?")