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!

 

[s1234567890m]

Like I've said several times before. I have no problem with them fleshing out various factions. If they did something like you suggest there I'd be perfectly fine with it, but as of now, they've indicated that:
1. You won't be able to play as Muslims (or any other religion) unless you have the appropriate DLC
2. You won't be able to convert to a religion you don't have the DLC for.

Which are things that already exist in the game and only need to be turned on via a flag, the same as any option in the options menu of any game. The fact that it's in a .txt file is irrelevant. Whether something is in an .ini, .txt file, or has part of a GUI made to make engaging it easy is not relevant to whether particular content is i the game, accessible to the player.

3.Usermods have to be changed to another format if they want playable muslims and not support the DLC.

 

[Meneth]

3.Usermods have to be changed to another format if they want playable muslims and not support the DLC.

What that actually entails needs to be elaborated on, I think.
Until we know what that actually means, much of this discussion is pointless.

 

[s1234567890m]

What that actually entails needs to be elaborated on, I think.
Until we know what that actually means, much of this discussion is pointless.

i agree.... now to find a dev to abduct

 

[Tapscott]

What that actually entails needs to be elaborated on, I think.
Until we know what that actually means, much of this discussion is pointless.

Out of curiousity, your concern is over what will happen to mods isnt it? If so I can understand that you'd be worried about this new patch and DLC screwing up all your hardwork.

 

[Nitrousoxide]

Listen, I think things like day 1 dlc are scummy too, but don't you think you're going a bit overboard. They are adding in significant content that makes the experience of playing muslims equal to that of playing christian lords. How can they sell this content, if after the patch you can simply flip the switch and have the content? And if they can't charge for the new content, why should they make it?

That's their problem to solve. They don't, however, solve it be simply removing existing content and then reselling it to the users. If they can't do it without removing existing content, then they shouldn't have included the ability to set any religion as playable. But the cat's out of the bag now. You can't remove existing content to just make your new super amazing DLC more appealing.

 

[Sian]

guys ... the devs have stated that it'll be moved to somewhere else so your still able to mod to your hearts content ... you might just have to use a few minutes redoing certain parts ... its not the end of the world that you have to redo small parts of a mod, to call a different routine

 

[Meneth]

Out of curiousity, your concern is over what will happen to mods isnt it? If so I can understand that you'd be worried about this new patch and DLC screwing up all your hardwork.

It wouldn't be much of an issue to my mod, as I simply make all religions playable in case anyone feels like playing them; I haven't added anything to make it enjoyable. Losing that feature would be rather minor.
However, I am concerned to the problems it might cause for other modders.

 

[Nitrousoxide]

3.Usermods have to be changed to another format if they want playable muslims and not support the DLC.

That is extraordinarily vague, unhelpful, and still doesn't address being able to convert between religions.

 

[Tapscott]

It wouldn't be much of an issue to my mod, as I simply make all religions playable in case anyone feels like playing them; I haven't added anything to make it enjoyable. Losing that feature would be rather minor.
However, I am concerned to the problems it might cause for other modders.

Fair enough, thats a valid concern. My guess would be that the Devs have an idea how to make the mods compatible with the patch, without the DLC, due to the sheer scale and importance of modding in Paradox games.

 

[s1234567890m]

That is extraordinarily vague, unhelpful, and still doesn't address being able to convert between religions.

1. You won't be able to play as Muslims (or any other religion) unless you have the appropriate DLC

Is vague too, what about religions that dont have a DLC?

 

[Keanon]

In the religions file where you enable them now they could just put "Is muslim = yes" and if that is on it uses the new mechanics but can't be played without the DLC.

 

[Andrzej I]

I think the Imperium should rather be a unique trait (or rather a pair of them, occidental and oriental) with special game mechanics to gain, lose and fight for it in addition to having empire-level titles.

This actually seems like a pretty decent idea.

 

[Alerias]

Bullshit. There's a flag already in the game that lets you choose which faction you want to be playable. Playing as Muslims already exists in the game RIGHT NOW, all you have to do is flip one switch (albeit in a .txt file).

It's like as if they had a check box in the options of the game for whether you wanted to play as other religions, and then they TOOK THAT OUT and tried to charge you for it A SECOND TIME as DLC.

It's literally the SCUMMIEST thing you can do for DLC. Even deliberately chopping out content before launch isn't as bad because the user never actually gets the content. Paradox is LITERALLY trying to charge everyone twice for content they had AT LAUNCH.

The problem is that they wont want multiple code bases or systems existing in parrallel. The new Muslim mechanics will likely exist for the AI whether you buy the DLC or not... and in these conditions, well, if Muslim play wasnt restricted to DLC buyers, there would be no reason at all to buy it.

 

[Captain Gars]

Nitrousoxide: get your facts straight. Playing Muslims were never part of the game that you paid for - hence no one is removing anything you paid for. The switch in a txt file was added later on to help out modders. Now that no longer work as it causes a conflict with the DLC system. Ideal? No. But the option would have been to never add it for mods to use at all.

 

[Clownmite]

Which are things that already exist in the game and only need to be turned on via a flag, the same as any option in the options menu of any game. The fact that it's in a .txt file is irrelevant. Whether something is in an .ini, .txt file, or has part of a GUI made to make engaging it easy is not relevant to whether particular content is i the game, accessible to the player.

So you wouldn't be mad if Paradox had hardcoded Muslims to be unplayable, and released them as playable in this DLC? They were being generous by letting us mod it. If they were meant to be playable, it would be an ingame that would default to on. Just because you can open the text file and change the game does not mean it was meant to be a part of the game. It means it was not meant to be part of the game, but the developers were kind enough to let us go outside the game and change it if we wanted to.

Think of this DLC another way. Paradox could do 3 things:

1) Current situation. You get the entire content of the DLC for free with a patch, but need to pay to unlock playable Muslims. This means they are essentially giving away the DLC content for free and keep only 1 version of the game kicking around, meaning everyone can play multiplayer regardless of who has DLC and who doesn't. In order to actually enforce this rule, they are forced to hardcode Muslims as unplayable. Paradox ends up with only one game version to maintain and patch.

2) People get the patch, which changes normal patch things, but makes no changes to Muslims and keeps them playable by modding. There is a separate game version for extra Muslim content, which adds all the extra Muslim content and defaults them as playable. People with this DLC cannot play multiplayer with those without the DLC, and Paradox has to worry about maintaining separate game versions. They have to release separate patches for the base game, and those with DLC. What happens when a new DLC comes out? Does Paradox include the previous DCL "for free" in the new DLC, so that they only have to worry about 2 game versions to maintain? Or will they now have 4 game versions kicking around - base game, DLC1, DLC2, and DLC1+DLC2? The modding community is fractured as modders generally only make mods for the version that they own, incompatible with any other game version.

3) No DLC at all, meaning no funding for content-driven patches in the future.

 

[Varam]

Nitrousoxide: get your facts straight. Playing Muslims were never part of the game that you paid for - hence no one is removing anything you paid for. The switch in a txt file was added later on to help out modders. Now that no longer work as it causes a conflict with the DLC system. Ideal? No. But the option would have been to never add it for mods to use at all.

You're not accounting for those who bought the game only after it was patched to allow for playable Muslims and Pagans. The option to do so was a feature of the game they paid for.

ETA: That said, it was probably only ever an important or even notable feature for a tiny handful of people, so... I don't think it's a huge loss if it's truly gone entirely sans the DLC, but it is still unfortunate.

 

[NewbieOne]

Thats always an option..

in response to:

I think almost everyone will be happy if you keep the empires, but name them High Kingdoms or similar instead.
That pleases the historically minded who care about the specific meaning of empire, while still giving all the gameplay benefits.

I'm glad to see a different tone of reply from the Paradox side. The other replies so far have sounded surprsingly defensive about a choice that was admitted to be controversial from the get go. So far it has sounded like the de iure empires of Scandinavia, Francia etc. are non-negotiable and if we don't like it, we can mod it or stop playing the game.

This is a far shot but I'm gonna ask: is there a chance to convince you guys to make those empires titular instead of de iure? There's actually plenty of people here saying that they don't mind those empires being in the game and being creatable per se but just the de iure part. Which is probably not a very central issue from the point of view of someone who merely wants the ability to create those empires to be in the game?

Especially as the titular option seems to be more logical for something which has so stringent prerequisites to form. IMHO the draconian requirements are a sign that something isn't quite de iure here.

In fact, I wouldn't mind those empires actually being de iure from day 1 after they are formed (without the 100 year period) – I think this is even somewhat plausible if you meet some very hard requirements. I would only ask that those empires don't exist de iure from day 0, day -1, whatever. As in before someone was actually able to put the idea in flesh for the first time ever. In short, without the ahistorical implication of pre-existence of those empires.

You guys must admit I'm not being unreasonable here.

 

[King]

Mods are primarily devices for bringing in additional features, additional tasks/objectives/quests/storylines/maps, maybe tweak the rules, as strictly unofficial modifications. It's not the same as what is there actually in the 'official', vanilla game. I do get your point that I can always cut out the unhistorical de iure empires (and once again, I completely don't mind their formability, I mind only their implied pre-existence looking back from a historical 1066 or whatever other date). Please understand my point about the fact that you can achieve pretty much everything you want with those empires by making them creatable titular empires. In fact, due to the nature of their prerequisites, I actually believe titular titles would be better mechanically and, in fact, the best place for that kind of decision is the Plots/Intrigues/Decisions panel, the same where you can also e.g. plot to take a kingdom away from your liege.

The way I see it, the difficult prerequisites are a matter of compromise... but that'd be a procedural compromise (like when politicians can't agree on a right or obligation, they play with procedure to make it harder or easier to enforce). How about a more subsantive compromise, e.g. that the empires remain but they are titular? I would be happy to see an Empire of Brittania or Scandinavia if I knew the conditions were legitimate (as in not just 600 gold/600 piety from a three-king). Same for Hispania, Brittannia, maybe even France, although IMHO France should simply be wresting the HRE from Germany. But 'de iure' on the map, when it doesn't de facto exist, this is the sour apple for me. And since those empires, according to your own words, guys, should be almost never formed by the AI, perhaps it wouldn't harm you to make them titular instead of de iure? Please note that quite a number of players here said they would welcome titular creatable empires but are concerned about (or even opposed to) those empires being de iure. And please note that those empires will become de iure with time, the usual 100 years, which is fair. So may I ask, if you disagree with my suggestion to make them titular, why do you guys insist on making those empires specifically de iure empires? If even a good number of actual, historical empires are titular titles in the game?

Quite specifically we dislike creatable titular titles. Our dynamic system requires it so that if for example I remove the last duchy for a starting de Jure Kingdom then the titular creation mechanics mean that the title can be recreated. In the case of a pure titular title you do not know you are able to create it until you reach the conditions and receive the alert. Unless of course you have had a look through the game files.

This is bad for learning curve and for game play. If you look at from a learning curve perspective we denying players knowledge of cool game play elements unless you have played the game before or poked around the files. If we want to bring more players to the strategy genre (and I do) we need to move away from that mentality. People should know about really cool things they can do (like creating an empire) from the get go. The game play perspective the de jure titles are very powerful means for players to determine what the hell to do in the game. The completion of existing dejure titles and the acquisition of new ones is a key part of game play. The de Jure mapmode is integral to the game play expierence.

 

[Sleight of Hand]

Don't forget the actual game-play elements behind empires though -- for example if you have a de jure empire of Scandinavia then all Norse dukes and kings will be able to vote for elected emperors and have their say on crown laws, etc. This is a fundamental aspect of de jure realms, so something to take into account. The same would apply in the British Isles for the empire of Britannia. Whilst I like titular realms and feel they have their uses (and indeed I've added plenty of my own in my mod) you have to remember that it's easier to exploit crown law issues in them (but I'm guessing this may have been tweaked in 1.06).

EDIT: Ahh it seems King has expanded on what I was trying to say.

 

[Captain Gars]

You're not accounting for those who bought the game only after it was patched to allow for playable Muslims and Pagans. The option to do so was a feature of the game they paid for.

You can twist and turn it anyway you want but Paradox has never in any way advertised that the game has playable Muslims as a feature. Plus if you don't like this change than simply do not apply the upcoming patch. It's not like you paid for any of the new content in it anyway, as it's being paid for by those who buy the new DLC.