• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Veldmaarschalk

Cool Cat
151 Badges
Apr 20, 2003
30.150
1.987
  • 200k Club
  • 500k Club
crusaderkings_draft1_cospy.jpg


Crusader Kings II Announced!
Paradox Has Begun on the Anticipated Sequel to Fan Favorite



COLOGNE - August 19, 2010 Paradox Interactive today announced that it has started development on Crusader Kings II. The follow-up to the highly-acclaimed grand-strategy title Crusader Kings, CK2 promises to take the franchise to the next level.


"The community's outspoken demand for CK2 has been nothing short of incredible,” said Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. “Since the game was released in 2004, every single time we've announced a new title we've been barraged with questions as to when we'd finally do a Crusader Kings sequel. So it's with great enthusiasm that we are formally announcing that we've started development on the game."

In Crusader Kings 2, players will get to control one of the great Christian Dynasties of the West, attempt to conquer all of Europe and liberate the Holy Land.


“Crusader Kings character system is what made it stand apart from any other game released on the market. With this sequel, we are committed to offering even more depth to the characters, making them feel truly alive with agendas and plots of their own” said Johan Andersson, Head of Development at Paradox Interactive.


Crusader Kings 2 is scheduled for release in Q1 2012, so be patient!

Cheers,
The Paradox Team

Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Crusaderkings
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.facebook.com/ParadoxInteractive
Join the forum: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=551


image003.jpg
 
Last edited:
First Info

Doomdark is the project lead for CK2.

I've talked to alot of press today about it, will be some info trickling out over the next few weeks..

Think we aim for a q1 2012 release or so.

Some info about Doomdark

Thanks for the encouraging words everyone! I just came back from the GDC in Cologne with some new ideas and inspirations (and an interesting cold), and this sure was a nice welcome back. ;)

To those who wonder who the frak I am, I was the lead designer of the original HoI, and co-designer of Victoria, CK and HoI2. After I rejoined Paradox in late 2007, I was the project manager, lead programmer and lead designer for In Nomine, HttT, Vae Victis and Semper Fi. I've also done most of the military AI for our games since HoI and the diplomatic AI for the EU3 and Rome expansions.

For CK2, Johan will of course be the producer, I will be the project lead, programmer and co-designer (with Chris King.) BrotherBean and SolSara will likely both contribute with scripts and events. Additional programmers have yet to be determined. Jonas and Fredrik will do the graphics as usual. The gameplay design is mostly done, and I intend to post an initial dev diary in the near future with some our general design goals. However, I can tell you right now that the characters; their personalities and ambitions, will be at the heart of the CK2...


Who will I 'play' ?
In CK2, you will play a succession of characters. At any given point in the game, you, the player, should identify with your current character/ruler.

so basically the same as in CK1, where the son/nephew/grandnephew of your current guy, takes over?

Essentially the same, yes. But we want to make this connection even clearer.

Could you give us any details about how you plan to do this?

Hmm, not at this time... I think it will be good dev diary material. :)

Will we choose characters at the beginning, or hasn't this been decided yet?

You will choose to play one of the landed nobles that existed at the start date you pick, and go from there.

Startingdates/scenarios

So there will be more than 1 startdate to choose from?
Yes.

The (earliest) start date will be mid September 1066, setting the stage for the interesting three-way struggle between Harold Godwinson, Harald Hårdråde and William of Normandy. Both invading armies will have already landed (for game play reasons) and it's basically going to be an all or nothing affair. In the east, Alp Arslan is gearing for war with the Byzantines, with five years to go before the fateful battle of Manzikert.

1066 was not just a turning point for England, it is an important year in Scandinavian history as well. Here, it has traditionally been viewed as the end of the "Viking era". Neither was it without repercussions for France of course; no William, no Hundred Years war down the road. Besides, I look forward to getting the epic three-way struggle right. :)

About Polygamy/Muslim Word


Yes, playable Muslim countries would require some form of polygamy and harem mechanics. (Production of heirs was not usually an issue...) This is one reason (the other being the religious gameplay) that Muslim countries will not initially be playable in CK2. It will take an expansion to do the Muslim world justice.

How far is the design of the game already done ?

Interesting strategy Paradox's got. They open the forums at let us suggest all kinds of things, then they could just pick the popular/good ones and implement them in the game.

Well, I would not say that's our purpose with opening up forums early (the CK2 design is done and we are happy with it.) We just want the community to thrive. However, it is very interesting to see if your ideas are similar to ours, which might indicate whether a feature will be popular or not. Of course, sometimes someone comes up with a new idea that is both brilliant and fits our own design philosophy, in which case we might add it in. We've picked one such from this forum so far. :)

As for the idea of a dungeon... well, I did design that feature for Vae Victis. I think it is a reasonable assumption that certain features from EU:Rome might make it into CK2...

Will Barons be real characters ?

Barons will be represented as characters in the game.

How visible and long term will 'Opinion' modifiers (see development diary 1) be ?

They will be quite visible, but they will not decay or increase gradually. Some opinion modifiers are dependent on a state, such as being allies, or at war. Others, like the broken alliance one, last for a fixed amount of time and then go away.


Does Finland exist as a kingdom in CK2 ?

Finland exists as a de jure Kingdom in CK2. :)

How will relations/opinions work ?


Characters will not have a saved relations value. They only have "opinions", which can either be:

a) Static. I.e. treaties and stuff like being of the same dynasty.
b) Temporary adjustments for specific reasons, such as a dishonored alliance.

These are summed up and treated as a single value, capped at -100 and 100.

Will characters of the same family look-a-like ?

If you want to breed a dynasty of redheaded Harkonnen look-alikes, go ahead (with my blessing).

So I take it that characters will look like a combination of their parents, grand-parents?

If so may I point that I was the first one to mention that idea :p

yes, the look of a character is of course based off his parents, and it can also be based off a child if it has been scripted in the history files (eg it will search upwards in the family tree when a historical scripted look is found and make sure the way parents & grand parents etc make sense).

I hope you will like the new portrait system. its a lot more flexible and moddable than in it was in Rome.

I like it a lot actually! Of course, I was an advocate of the front face portrait to begin with. I remember mentioning a while back the idea of using a transparent png/gif overlay to show aging (ie, shades of gray for hair, etc), is that what you guys did?

nah it replaces a few face layers completely. this lets you have better control over which hair color/eye color variations are available

On cultures

As with all features, it comes down to "bang for the buck". Yes, we could implement a more complex, less abstract, cultural system, but would it really be worth it? Our view is that it is not. Of course, culture is still in there in CK2, because regardless of what some would argue, I do not buy the assertion that people had little notion of nationality or cultural identity before the birth of the modern nation state. While "culture" is a complex term and subject to change, it has always mattered a great deal to people, from the earliest hunter-gatherer tribes right up until today. There are countless examples, but some favorites of mine include Liutprand of Cremona (10th century) and his... interesting take on Greeks and Romans in comparison to various Germanic peoples. Then we have the various provincial laws here i Sweden from the 12th century, where the fee for killing a Swede is higher than slaying a Dane or Norwegian, and Englishmen and Germans are a real bargain.

Now, yes, cultures do change, but from 1066 right up until today, the names of many cultures/peoples do remain unchanged. Others would not be appropriate for the period, so we would use other names, but I cannot go into specifics right now. However, what really matters is the gameplay effects of culture, not, IMO a realistic "systema culturae".

Can you appoint your own heir ?

There is a succession law in CK2 called "Feudal Elective" (i.e. Elective Monarchy.) The current ruler gets to throw his weight behind a candidate, but this only counts as one "vote". If he is a king, each duke also gets to nominate a candidate (from among the dukes and the children of the king.) Mind you, this is still somewhat tentative, but expect something very similar to be in the game.

How will bastards be named ?

There will be three choices for how to react to alleged bastards, one of which will result in a new dynasty being created.

Will there be twins ?

Of course there will be twins. :)


On Gavelkind
We are not reusing any code from CK1. In CK2, whenever titles change hands, they will be transferred to their "natural", or de jure, liege title, if it is held by the same person. I.e, if I am King of Sweden and Duke of Uppland, and then gain the title Count of Uppland, it will actually be in vassalage to the Duchy of Uppland.

Thankyou Doomdark for this tidbit of info. Our forum is becoming "peppered" with these.

Pushing my luck here but, what would happen if you "gifted" the Duke of Uppland title? Would you then be the new Duke's vassal even though he is your vassal or does it just mean that if I were to after granting Duke of Uppland,grant Count of Uppland would that new count become a vassal of the Duke of Uppland?

I apologize, I'm just a little unclear on exactly what you described. Maybe I'm just stupid.

Ok, say you hold the titles King of Sweden, Duke of Uppland and Count of Uppland. You then gift the title Duke of Uppland to someone else. What would happen to the County of Uppland? It would remain in your hands, its vassalage transferred directly to the Kingdom of Sweden. But if you then also gifted the County to the new Duke, it would be in vassalage to the Duchy of Uppland again, no matter what other titles he might hold. If you instead chose to give the County to someone else, he would be your direct vassal.

However, there will be a new diplomatic action that allows you transfer vassalage, so that a King can make a vassal count the vassal of some duke instead. Indeed, we want events where resentful Dukes would ask for their "de jure" vassals to be restored to them. (This was a mechanic that was sorely lacking in CK1.)

So, the feudal contract is actually between titles, not characters. However, to keep things simple, this is not very noticeable since the vassalage is always automatically transferred in the most appropriate way. We do not allow things like the Duchy of Normandy to be a de facto vassal of the Kingdom of France even if held by the King of England. (Though do not despair, because we have something else planned for situations like that, which will be the subject of a developer diary somewhere down the line.)


Will Crusader Kings II have Eth? Ðð

SolSara said:
As Swedes, we like having ÅåÄäÖö in our games There is some problems with adding special characters, not code wise but with userfriendliness (if that's a real word). I had real trouble finding Ösel when playing Crusader Kings so we decided to change that. If you need to find Münster or Ösel or any other province with those pesky characters, you can now just write "munster" or "osel" and the game will find it for you.

As for adding Æ, æ and so on, you can mod it in yourself if you like. I have changed Aethelwine, Aethelraed and other characters to Æthelwine and Æthelræd but am not sure which characters should have Ðð and we have A LOT of characters in CK2 Give me a list and I'll see if I have time to implement them.

Doomdark said:
I find it unprofesional to use language specfic letters if you work on a produt for the international market, PI should only use english in their games are my opinion. I used to work as a marine engineer in the merchant fleet and despite we used swedish as working language everything we wrote in our profesional position was in english even to the owners back home in sweden simply because we work in a inernational market and english is the language used in shipping.

But ofcourse you should leave the option open for mods.
Our policy is to use the local, native names for provinces in our games where possible. This has nothing to do with Swedish in particular - it's a stylistic choice. Of course, this requires that non-English letters, when used, do not cause any problems.


Doomdark said:
Your policy doesn't extend to Finland's province names at least in Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings (partly) games so far. There they are always called by their Swedish names. This was then explained with the excuse that its the historical name of the province. Even if the finnish names were in use by the common folk even during those times. In Victoria II you guys finally used the finnish names. I will hold you up on that promise and wait to see the finnish names in the game.

In the case of Finland, we made the judgment call that Swedish names were more appropriate in the CK and EU eras. These issues will of course always be sensitive and murky. We do not claim to make a perfect job of it, but you can easily change the names yourself, even within the game.
 
Last edited:
Dev Diary 2 - Barons and Settlements

So with no farming settlement peasants power is effectively gone?

While I agree on that move where will the peasant revolts come from? We can't have a medieval game without peasant revolts.
Peasant "power" is gone, but there will still be peasant revolts. In fact, they are the only "rebel" type, as such. All other rebellions will be led by characters, for specific reasons.


Will the number of settlements change during the game?
Can settlements change to another type?
The number of settlements can change; players can build new ones and potentially existing ones can be razed (except for the county capital).

The type cannot change however.

What about Viscounts and Marquis(s?)es?
Not going to happen. Sorry.

Looks Nice, will every western soldier have their CoA in theit Coat, and change dynamically, it would be very nice

Wouldn't it though?


So actual character in a court cannot hold any baron title?

Well, if you appoint some Baron to also be your Chancellor, he will be a member of your court. Otherwise, he will stay at his castle and mind his own business.
Looks good. Have these settlements replaced the province improvements (roads, mills, etc) or just the class composition of the province?

If its only the latter then I'd be wary of the increased micromanagement (the class balance in CKI could be easily ignored) but its good that you're aware of this

Settlements can be improved with various buildings, provinces cannot. Your demesne size is counted by Settlement, not province, etc.

What about kings with a considerable demesne (thinking about CK1 mechanics where a king could sometimes have a big demesne)? What kind of micro will those kings have to do?

Pretty much the same as in CK. If a king could have, say, 16 provinces in CK, that would be 16 settlements in CKII.

If you are a duke or a king, will your counts be able to form new settlements as they please on their provinces?
Yes, if they can afford it.

1) Characters who hold higher than baron level titles can also hold baron level titles. The demense limit restricts the amount of baron level titles that can be directly controlled. Eg. a king could hold extremely large demense geographically by choosing to hold only one baronal title per province.

2) Only barons directly control baronies and they must always be granted to them. The demense limit restricts the amount of barons you can have directly under you, without having to grant the province and associated baronies to count or duke. Eg. a king can with demense limit of 20 can hold 10 provinces with 2 baronies each or 4 provinces with 5 baronies each, but none of the baronies can be held by him personally.

No... All counts are also the baron of the province capital settlement. There is nothing preventing a character from holding several barony level titles himself: this is his demesne

Will there be either a hardcoded or softcoded maximum number of settlements per province? Of course I'm assuming that founding new ones will be sufficently expensive that in most situations it won't matter. Perhaps in the style of EU3 manufacturies getting more expensive per how many you have?

Yes, many province will have a scripted upper limit below eight.

Will this work on levels above Count? For example, as a Duke, would I be able to appoint a Count as my Chancellor, as well as Baron (from my demesne) my Marshal?

Of course.

Will AI character's traits influence the type of settlements and upgrades it prefers to choose?

I'll talk about traits and their impact somewhere down the road

For all intents and purposes, the Settlement is the new Province. Baronies work almost exactly the same as Counties in CK. There is only one hard limitation; the Count title is directly tied to the capital Settlement in a province. You cannot be the count of a province without also being the Baron of its capital.

Will these settlements be represented on the map? You say you can have from 1 to 8 so how are you going to fit all these in if thats the case? And if it is the case will the map show actual churches/catherdrals, castles and cities?

Most likely only the capital settlement will be represented on the map. This is still not 100% decided though.

I would also like to know about this.
Is the limit of 8 hard coded?

Well, you can't go above 8, but you can script in any number below 8 as the maximum, per province.
Would the number of settlements have an impact on the possibility of claiming/usurping a title?

For example, if Count A of X holds only the capital, but Count B of Y holds the rest of the settlements, would he be able to claim or usurp the title of "Count of X" because his troops are all over the county and it makes it his de facto?

Yes.

For instance, what if France owns half of Normandy and England the other half... could two characters be "Duke of Normandy", one in France and the other in England, each with his own capital settlement?

No, each title can only be held by one person. There are claims like in CK though.


Finally, can barons fight each other inside a county, as it routinely happened before in private feudings? Can they marry? Can they switch allegance if disloyal?

Yes. Lower level vassals are allowed to squabble without calling in their liege, or the liege of their liege, etc.

Question: Do cities, castles, etc. stand for one attribute (e.g. cities for revenue by trade) or can they contain a set of attributes (e.g. revenue, defense)?

They can have many, though the main ones are Tax, Defense and Levy Size

One question that lingers for me in regards to non-barony settlements. Who owns them? As in, who is the bishop, or burgomaster, or whatever subservient to. Presumably they must not be completely independent, or there would be no point to them (unless they acted as a form of opposition or obstacle to the player). I'd assume that at the very least cities provide some tax and levies to some noble.

The obvious answer is the Count, and perhaps I look silly for even asking this question. But that means that the most efficient use of your demesne is to hold just capital baronies so as to maximise the number of cities, churches, and baronies under your control. Though I guess that is counterbalanced by decreasing your power/hold over the province. Perhaps that leads to another layer of strategy?

They are titles just like castle/feudal baronies. They just have a different form of succession (which I will not go into now, as I mentioned in the DD.)

1) Will Barons have their own Coats of Arms?

2) Will Barons be able to marry? If so who will propose the marriages, the Baron himself or his Count?

3) We know that it will be possible to be a Count in two Countries. Will it be possible to be a Baron in two countries?

Nick
1) Yes
2) Yes, other characters can offer them marriage, but they might also marry a local girl after a few years.
3) Define country

I think he meant to ask if it's possible to be a BAron in County A and B.

For instance being a Baron in province of Holland and Gerle
In that case, yes, it is quite possible.


How about:
a) can a baron hold a barony in two counties under the same liege?
b) can a baron hold a barony in two counties with different lieges?
c) if yes to b, does he swear aligiance to both, or just one?
a) yes
b) yes
c) Just one. A character only ever has one liege.

In what group will croatia be in?eastern or western.Will there be a ban title(Croatian title similar to duke,bans of slavonia,bosnia etc.)
There are no technology groups like in EU3, if that is what you mean. As for the Ban title, perhaps that is what Croatian dukes will be called.


Are you really going to use some regional equivalent titles (e.g. ban, voivode, kniaz, mormaer, earl, jarl, etc.)? Because I would really, really love that.

Yes.

Doomdark, will settlements have their own cultures? To show colonisation or assimilation efforts?

No.

This begs a followup question: if counts (and dukes) can be appointed as officers of the court to higher ranks of noble, does this mean that the mechanics exist for player counts might find themselves offered positions as Marshal or Chancellor to their liege lords? Might the Duke of Argyll have the opportunity to serve as Marshal of Scotland, for example, or are these positions for AI characters only?

Player characters can also be appointed to liege offices.

So, neither the settlements nor the provinces* could ever be secularised (prince-bishopric (church) -> lay principality (castle)/free city (city)), be offered to the spiritual power (lay principality (castle) -> prince-bishopric (church)) or granted autonomy by charter (lay principality (castle) -> imperial city (city)).

*as capital settlement also determinate who control the county,

Am I wrong ?

The capital settlement can change, thus changing the government type of the province/county

If a great character is already appointed to an office of one of your Duke's, can you as the King override the Duke and take that great character for your own offices

No, you cannot appoint vassals of vassals to your council.
 
Last edited:
Dev Diary 3 - Laws

Very interesting. Are the succession laws moddable? (I know from all the discussion there are many, many more possbilities).
I like the division of demesne laws versus kingdom laws. The fixed duchies and kingdoms make sense I guess, but I wonder about the exact implications of that.

Also, is the child's portrait a place holder? It's more or less the CK version.

The succession laws are only partially moddable. You can change the requirements, but not how they actually work. The child portrait is a placeholder, yes.

Is one of the icons in the top bar "Tyranny"?
The topbar icons are all placeholders, and represent Piety, Prestige, Gold and... something else.

In CKII, does primogeniture mean "salic primogeniture" thereby excluding semi-salic primogeniture?

If yes, that means the end of marrying a powerful heiress (like Eleanor of Aquitaine) to secure a higher title for your son. In my opinion, that would be a loss to the dynastic game dynamics. It will also dimish the diplomatic value of having daughters, and may put a lid on the discussion of whether engagements (if included in CKII) will be of any value beyond cementing a friendship through family ties.
Semi-Salic = Cognatic

Are the CKII succession laws divided into sub-laws?
No

Sweet, this looks like a massive improvement over the first game.

How easy will it be to change succession laws ? Will there be consequences ? or will it be more like CK1 where you could change them at will with little impact ?
It will be relatively easy to change the succession laws, though the exact requirements are not yet decided. However, you risk alienating the heir under the current law (it might even give them a reason to declare war.) The central choice, though, is between the pros and cons of the various laws.



I like the flexibility in this system. Yet the possibility of female inheiritance does raise the family question. In CK1 children always belong their fathers dynasty. That pretty much mean the end of every dynasty ruled by a woman.

I suggest that children of female rulers belong to their mothers dynasty instead of their fathers. At least in the cases where the fathers title is lower than the mothers.
That is the way it works in CKII.

Ohh and as far as I know cognatic and semi-salic isn't the same. Cognatic succession implies that females can inheirit. While semi-salic means that they can only do so, if there are no male heirs. So semi-salic law is cognatic, but cognatic law could be gender neutral as well.
Yes, but cognatic as it is used in CKII is not "absolute cognatic", but semi-salic. The word "Salic" is not appropriate to other areas of the world.

As for elective law could this be limited to people within the same dynasty as the previous ruler? As far as I know that restriction is far from uncommon. It would also allow a player to choose an elective law without risking a random game over.
Well, no... I think the risk makes it more interesting. It's not necessarily game over, however; you will still keep your other titles. (I.e, your other titles will default to Primogeniture if another dynasty wins the election.)


Question, as I've had this problem in DV:

If the Primogeniture-heir of a County/Duchy/Kingdom is already a Magistrate/Doge in a Republic, will the County/Duchy/Kingdom become part of the Republic?

It depends on the relative levels of his titles. If a "duke" level Doge inherits a kingdom, he will become a King and the republic will end. Otherwise, the FoG will remain republican

Since Doomdark seems to be answering questions, I'll ask directly... if a liege lord overrides the Pope's choice, will this affect relations with the Curia, potentially leading to the offending lord being placed under interdict or excommunicated? If the offending lord is the Holy Roman Emperor, could we potentially see an escalating conflict between him and the Pope? Most importantly of all: would a powerful lay lord be able to appoint an influential clerical character as Antipope if such a struggle with the reigning Pope were to break out?

It is not yet time to talk about this, but we have ambitions along those lines

Does "Turkish" means the most powerful son would seize the throne?

Yes, but all brothers will get a claim on his titles and might declare war in the succession crisis.

And about "children of female rulers belong to their mothers dynasty instead of their fathers", what if the father is a 4th or 5th son of a duke and is landless and the mother is a count? Which family would those childrens be in?

If they belong to their mother's dynasty, what would hapen if their uncles(heirs to the duchy) all died without an heir and leaving their father as the heir? Would one kid "switch" to father's dynasty, be disqualified to inherit the duchy or they can while being in mother's dynasty(which leads to game over even with a bunch of male heirs)?
The game would not end in that case, but the dynasty would indeed change. Kind of a special case though.

So I take it there will be no place for the Scandinavian rota system? I.e. when there are kingdoms a, b, c and d in one kingroup, king of a dies, his oldest brother the king of b becomes king, c becomes b, d becomes c, and the next guy (another brother or son) d. This is the way succession happened in Rus, and in the Norse cities of Ireland.
Yes, but not in Scandinavia proper. To be honest, it is just a nightmare for everyone involved. So, no, that system will not be supported.

So in an elective monarchy, what determines the potential successors that the king and the dukes will nominate? I imagine the king will usually choose one of his own sons. But is there any rule about who the dukes can nominate? Will they ever nominate themselves? What makes a potential candidate for the throne "king-worthy?"
The dukes and the sons of the king are the valid candidates.

Thanks for the response!

So, speaking hypothetically, say King Harold of England is married to the sister of Earls Edwin and Morcar (ducal tier nobles)-- when he dies will they be more likely to vote for his son by their sister than his sons from a previous marriage? Or are they just as likely to put themselves forward as candidates?
Well, if they were players you would have to ask them. The AI will mostly consider its personal opinion of the candidates, but of course also potential political gains.
I like the sound of this very much. What sort of political gains are we talking about?
It gives prestige to have a large and powerful dynasty, but in this case that would not happen if they voted for his sons. So they would probably be better of voting for themselves. However, the nominee would of course like those who vote for him, etc.


Say I'm the count of Bergen (in Norway), and I've sworn aliegiance to the king of sweden. Who are the electors?
How about for an independant duke?
And how is the elective process? Automatic (support the strongest?), or select an candidate?
Each vassal duke gets a vote, as does the current king. You nominate a candidate beforehand.

I am sorry, but I'm not sure to understand and I would like to have some precisions.

In the medieval times there where 3 considerations for succession law :

1. A male preference succession law where females should inherit when there is no more males. This is the most common succession law in the medieval era but wasn't implemented in CK1. This succession law is commonly named cognatic.
2. What CK1 named "semi-salic" which is the Plantagenêt interpretation of the salic law : only males can inherits, but female could grant to their sons rights to inherits. You say that the cognatic law of CK2 is "semi-salic".
3. What CK1 named salic which is the Valois interpretation of the salic law : only males can inherits, only males can grant to their sons rights to inherits.

Does the "cognatic law of CK2" si for the 1st or the 2nd case ?
Thanks in advance.

Cognatic as implemented means that females may inherit in the absence of eligible males. I suppose it should actually be called Agnatic-Cognatic Succession.

As a count I'd rather expect not to have any vassal dukes at all. So does this relate to my non-existant vassals? My king (my liege the king of Sweden), or the local king (of Norway).

Basically I'm trying to understand how this works for the lesser ranks
.
A count has vassal barons. It works exactly the same.

Will this mean game over, as in CK1? I hated that. I want to be able to continue as my daughter! (however weird that sounds )
Unless you have a Cognatic Succession Law (or you're playing something other than a feudal realm) it is game over, yes. End of the line.


I had a question/idea regarding titles under elective law; will the current title holder be able to get his son or other (male?) relative elected as his successor during his lifetime?
Most elected royals and nobles tried this (if it was allowed), but they weren't always successful, so I suggest some kind of event chain.
Furthermore this should also include an event were the estates (parliament etc.) offer to make the title hereditary in exchange for privileges.
Not "elected" as such. You nominate a successor and can always see who currently has the most votes. This person will succeed unless something changes.
 
Last edited:
Development diary 4. Regnal numbers

Originally Posted by Romtos
Wheee, map screens. The angled view of the last one is fascinating. Is that only for development purposes?

The map can be rotated freely, much as in Rome (though better.)

I would also guess that the Baronies in the provinces will be represented by 2d artwork rather than 3d renders, judging by that last screenshot. I like that, the 3d town renders were never very interesting in EU3 and just took up space.
I'm guessing Uppland contains three towns, one church and one castle, with one unused barony "slot"?
Just be careful with drawing conclusions, this is still a pre-alpha



Also, a question: What is the CoA displayed below Edward's portrait in the first screenshot? Is that his demesne's CoA?

That is the (currently randomly generated) Dynasty CoA. Important dynasties like the Plantagenets will get proper pre-scripted ones eventually.


I'm impressed, but.. the province borders.. they're temporary, right? Please?
Yes

Oh i just loved the fact that the new Pope will have a regnal name and a number!!! Does papal controller get anything to say about the name or is it random picked by AI?
It's randomly picked.

Nice update! They shouldn't all be allowed to be on the same plane.


I think it would be really cool if the faces were designed so that a certain facial setup looked like Johan, one looked like Doomdark, one like Kallocain and so on...

we werent. devteam was split over 2 planes :p the pictures you see of characters are really really pre-alpha though. I think yonaz has only done 2 base portraits and not a lot of variation bits yet so there will be a ton more. also about the devteam faces... look carefully around when you see the final game, there might potentially be some stuff like that :p
Originally Posted by brifbates
Which brings up one of the things I found annoying, especially in the later days of DV: any ruler that lived a long time (30+ years as ruler say) would end up with a huge number of traits. There needs to be some sort of throttle to keep it interesting without getting ridiculous. Something like 4-6 green traits with no limit on the red and blue ones should be the norm not the 8-10 or more I regularly see.

We have a lot of traits in CK2 and most of them will be added to the characters through events. I have tried to balance the traits by scripting the events so the character can have, say, no more than four personality traits. This will of course be tested and we will try to make sure it will create interesting characters.

Originally Posted by Annibal
They should diversify character portaits. The all dukes and earls look like brothers of Edward III.
Pre-alpha.

Originally Posted by Davisx3m
Btw Norse religion! Awesome! Will the mongols be buddhist? xD
Eh, no. Crusader Kings had pagan as one of the religions and we wanted to do something more with that so we added a culture group named pagan and then several new kinds of pagan religions, for example Norse.

Originally Posted by Nick B II
It looks like they haven't brought many graphic artists in yet because they haven't done much work on the faces.
The artist responsible for the character portraits are currently working on the GUI, which has a higher priority.

Originally Posted by Hallsten
Nice update! They shouldn't all be allowed to be on the same plane.

I think it would be really cool if the faces were designed so that a certain facial setup looked like Johan, one looked like Doomdark, one like Kallocain and so on...
Nice idea! I'll talk to Yonaz about that...

Originally Posted by RedRooster81
Related to the topic of regnal numbers, what about patronymics, for those cultures (Iberian, Scandinavian, Slavic, Celtic) that historically named individuals after their fathers: e.g., Sancho II, king of Castilla at the 1066 start, would have been named Sancho Fernandez, not Sancho Jimenez (his dynasty name in-game, after his distant ancestor Jimeno). I.e., Sancho, son of Fernando. For this reason, I think that surname should be differentiated from dynasty name, although I will not begrudge the devs for not complicating the naming system they have already adopted (e.g., Edward III Plantagenet).

We do have patronymics. If your character is named Jonas Karlsson and he has a son named Oscar then the son's last name will be Jonasson

Redrooster said:
No, it seems it would be distinct from a dynastic name, but attached to anyone who is the son of someone named Jonas.
What RedRooster81 wrote is true. We have removed a lot of old dynasty names from CK1 who had some sort of patronymics in them, except if the dynasty is named after a grandfather or so. But you may end up with a "Nilsson" or "MacDonald" if your character is a son of Nils or Donald.

This may be a detail, but will the end of these names always be -son, or will they be country specific? Like Swedish names having -sson and Danish -sen, or? As i.e. the Scandinavian languages began to differ from one another, and from Anglo-Saxon, in the CK period, will there be differences in the name endings? Or is that too much work?

EDIT: To put it more clearly; Would the Swedish name be Nilsson, and the Danish one Nilsen (in Danish it's actually Nielsen)?

EDIT 2: And will this also include female surnames like -dottir (and -datter and so on)?

To answer EDIT and EDIT 2: Yes.

Originally Posted by CatalanNation
OK, some things I've noticed in the screenies:

So among the titles the former King did no have... there's no Earldom on it, so maybe Dukes and Kings will no longer have to be "Counts" of a province. Nice addition if so.
The tooltip currently only lists the three most prominent titles.

Thanks for the diary.
Ordinal numbers might not be exactly from the period, but nowadays we use them to describe it and it has this nice royal feel to it. So it fits in the atmosphere of the game and it helps with organization and quick overview, for which epithets -however much I'd like them in the game as well- are less suited.
Thanks. Regnal numbers were used in the period, especially the later period (remember, the game ends in 1452.) There are some early examples even from places like Scandinavia, though the use was inconsistent. In any case, regnal numbers were usually assigned to previous kings down the road.

If it were any other developer I would agree, but these guys somehow managed to make clouds/fog of war in DW lag even monster PCs. Paradox never fails to disappoint me with their technical incompetence.
That early and completely unfounded speculation has been denied by us from day one, and confirmed to be false numerous times by players. The lag was caused by the new achievement system (admittedly our fault, but fixed in a patch.)

Whether accurate for the earliest date or not, I think ordinal numbers will be good to have. In my CK1 Iberian games, I have like five Sanchos per generation and three Alfonsos

A question I have is, say my old king is named Alfonso VI, he marries a certain heiress from Aquitaine and their heir is Alphonse. Will he be known as Alphonse I or Alfonso VII when he takes the throne? Ah, the challenges of a multi-cultural family.
He would be Alphonse I, though we might have time to tweak this eventually.

Good question... it's 'O' for a guy and 'Ni' for a girl, BTW.

Irish patronymics are in, but it's not 'O', it's 'Mac'. O'Hara actually means grandson of Hara.

I hope this 'random coat of arms to lesser dynasties' will be moddable.
somehow I fear that apart from english and french, not many will fit the 'important' criteria...
They are fully moddable.


Solsara said:
Overall there might be more than in CK-I, but province density in the heart of feudal Europe (the Kingdoms of France and Germans) has been reduced. That despite the fact that the CK-I map already had some serious realism issues in those areas as it was lacking not just some random duchies and counties, but actually some quite important ones. And baronies from the look of these videos won't make up for those problems in CK-II (as towns and bishoprics seem to be much too common (particularly towns and that on a 1066 map, that is before the rebirth of cities in Europe), therefore making it impossible to model missing counties as baronies)...

Anyhow, for me the expansion of the map in the Middle East and Africa is okay as some players obviously wanted to see that. But the reduction, even if slight, of provinces in Europe is very problematic to me...

I was the one who made the map with all the provinces or counties as we call them now. NONE of the old provinces have been removed.


A great part was already done in CK1.
And for the few holes, the game could always auto-generate characters (like it did in ck1 with courtiers).

It doesn't need that much of work if they found a way to convert ck1 data files in the ck2 format.

There are more than a few holes, and yes, it is a lot of work. However, we aim to get at least Kings and Dukes in. The rest can indeed be auto-generated if missing.
Originally Posted by Romtos
So, you basically confirm start-at-any-date?

Yep (though the main bookmarks will receive more attention.)


Jewish courtiers/religion ?

I like both these ideas very much. The jewish courteirs dont need to be part of any long lived dynasties, they live and die, and during that time they can help you enhance your realm. After some time, when the last jew in the court is dead, another fleeing jews event will pop up thus generating a new set of jewish courteirs.

So let me get this straight are you suggesting that Jews are a renewable resource, as opposed to Buddhists in DW?
On a more serious vain this is a rather silly thread. Courtiers are courtiers are the game will generate more as required. We are not going to go to the trouble to add an additional religion just for courtiers.

Well, would it be an additional religion? If you're going to recycle the starting province setup of CK1, there will be two Khazar-Jewish provinces on the north coast of the Caspian Sea.

There isn't

Well, they're already in CK1 in the form of the Moneylenders building, so they'll be in implicitly in CK2 as long as that building stays. Well, it wasn't said outright that the moneylenders are Jews, but:

-Jews were the only ones allowed to do banking for a great deal of the Middle Ages.
-The moneylender is the only building which actually gives a looter a boost (rather than penalty) to piety.
-CK is a game where you get piety for killing and generally being nasty towards other religions

Draw what conclusions you want from that

There is no Money lender building in CK2 either

Kingdom set-up

Will the awesome kingdom setup from ck1 deus vult improvement pack be the standard setup in ck2?
No, there will be only France
How hard will it be to mod that, the way many of us have decided to in CK1?
Easy as cake.
Besides half the game's potential market is women. And women really, really, really do not enjoy discriminating against themselves because some Swedish dude told them to. And that's how they'd see it if Doomdark made it impossible for them to make their 20-Diplo Crown Princess daughters Chancellor.

Nick
Not to worry, women will play a much bigger role in CKII.
 
Last edited:
Questions regarding female succession

I and a few others I know are wondering a couple of things. Firstly, is it absolutely confirmed that females may inherit? I've seen and heard so many conflicting answers on this and I didn't find an answer in the sticky topics. According to the devs initially, it seems that female inheritance was out of the question. Now however, given recent interviews and comments made by King and co it seems that it actually IS in.

We have never stated that female inheritance was out of the question. Quite the opposite, as I've talked at some length about Cognatic succession. In the current model, there is a basic succession law (e.g. Primogeniture, Seniority or Elective) which can be freely combined with one of three gender options; Agnatic, Agnatic-Cognatic or Absolute Cognatic. Naturally, there will be some requirements for passing these various laws however...

Secondly, and this is more of an acquaintances question, will the “challenges” that Doomdark speaks about occur each and every time a women inherits under that law, or if… over time… the likelihood of junior brothers rebelling is lessened as that type of succession law (absolute cognatic primogeniture) becomes the norm?

The characters that are number two and three in the line of succession will get a claim on the title when the previous ruler dies. The chance that they act on this claim will be slightly higher if they are male and the new ruler is female.

Thirdly, If you change succession laws will the former claimants under the prior laws still try and assert their claim under the old laws? My guess on this is yes given ambition knows no bounds, especially if they feel the law is invalid

Changing the succession law will anger characters depending on how their position in the line of succession changes. Characters who are not affected will still get slightly upset, being conservative bastards.

Lastly, may the player might expect his vassals to change their succession laws to match their own? In CK I, vassals do not change their succession laws to match their liege, and all ai rulers default to semi-salic primogeniture.

The AI will act in its own interests as well as it can. There is no remnant of the CK AI in CKII. That's all I can say at this time.

This is a bit risky
I hope it will be balanced enough so we do not end up afetr 20 years that hundreds of characters have hundreds of claims...
Otherwise I could really imagine the WW1+2 happens in 1080


The other infos are just great and thank you.
Claims must be pressed or they will not get inherited.

What exactly does "pressing" a claim mean here? Would fighting a war but losing count as having pressed it for the purpose of passing it down to your heir?

Yes
 
Last edited:
A religious counterweight to the Pope....

True... In CKII East will need a Patriarch as a spiritual leader for the Orthodoxs too...

He's in and he is classed as a King. Naturally he begins life as a vassal of the Byzantine Emperor. In fact one of our researchers scriped characters for all the bishops, arch-bishops and patriachs of Constantinople up untill 1066. I fixed the problem where Saint Andrew (the first bishop of Constinople) was not of Scottish culture as he should be. I hope you are all pleased about this news.

If you are the King of England and you appoint a priest as Diocese Bishop, will his title just be Diocese Bishop or Archbishop of Canterbury?

There are no Diocese Bishops anymore. There are church settlements who the ruler will be a bishop. Every province has at least one of them. To make a Bishop into an arch bishop you need to give him a ducal title just like in CK.

Wait what, a king level title as a vassal? Does this mean that emperors will be a new tier? Is this just for the Byzantines?
There will be emprerors and there will be 4 in total.



king with no territory? Or are you going to place his kingdom at Mt. Athos or something.
A King with no territrory, since they aren't playable I don't actually have to bother giving him land.

The position of the pope is also interesting, they claimed to be equal in rank to the Holy Roman Emperor (at least religious counterpart) and the papacy could have kingdoms as vassals. So I also wonder how the papacy will be represented.
Kingdom



Although I'm curious if Paradox will even bother to attempt to model the other patriarchs and Church heads? While many of them were under Muslim control the Catholicos of Georgia and Armenia were not (I can't remember how far the map goes). Nor was the Archbishop of Cyprus (who despite his title was/is the leader of an autocephalous church).
You are on pretty safe ground assuming that we are not going to bother. This is after all a feudal family game, not ultimate church simulator. Thus we will not be going spend too much time on the religious aspects of the game.


Of course, but if you're going to put time and effort into the eyecandy that is the EP, why wouldn't you for the other Church heads.

because we really actually want to spend some time making a game believe it or not.

Im wondering if the Pope will have the Papal Tiara?
He will.

When the holy roman emperor dies, will his successor inherit the title right away or will he only be king of the romans until he gets the pope(or a pope) to crown him?
Straight away, there must always be someone holding a title. Just because you are not officially emperor until the Pope corinates you doesn't mean you are emperor in fact.
 
Last edited:
Development diary 5. The map

Excellent! Beautiful indeed.
How about Civilization-style borders?
We're toying with the idea, we'll see what we'll end up with

Is the 3D terrain created via bump maps? Will it be hard to mod our own maps?
The height is determined by a grayscale bitmap, but everything else can pretty much be modded exactly like our other games(i.e. provinces.bmp and terrain.bmp are there as usual). Modding will probably be faster even, since we have removed large part of the map cache(it's now calculated at the start of the game instead)

May I ask if this really still is Clausewitz?
It is.

Certainly a technical "leap forward" compared to other Clausewitz games, but hopefully the map will receive the necessary polish before release to make it superior to previous games. I actually like the 3D (some still swear to the "neatness" of 2D), but borders (a tad too wide imo, especially sea borders which should be extra thin to not appear jagged and pixelated (at least without transparency)), cities (models are placeholders I presume?), a few of the textures (woodlands and hills are tiny bit blurry) need additional "love". BIG pluses imo are the new dynamic unit models, the water and the topography.

Also, about the 360 degree view, will it be possible to bookmark positions and possibly lock a position using a shortcut?
I think that all of the things you mention will change before we release the game, such as cities, borders and terrain texture

If we have time and feel that the game needs bookmarks, we will add them, but as of now there is no plan to implement that feature.

Suggestion, as the cloths are from the heraldic flag of the unit leader (which is nice). The Shields blue and white are boring.

Why not having the Coat of Arms of their Liege on their shield?

That in a war between France and England. All the french forces having fleures-de-lis and the English ones use the Three Lions.
We will most likely change the shields. I'm not sure we'll use CoAs, but all shields will definitely not be blue/white when the game ships

Looking nice. What resolution is the province.bmp file? I'd love to be able to get a head start on a map mod and knowing the resolution should make it easier to ensure that it will work once the game hits the streets.
2048 x 2048

How many provinces in the map?
910, if I remember it correctly. 1013 with the sea provinces.

What is the status of province drawing on the map? Is this far advanced now, and if so how has it been researched? Will you be requesting accuracy feedback on the province set-up?
It is pretty much done, don't think we'll change anything now. It's mostly the old provinces from CK1 with a couple more added. The betas will and have commented on the accuracy of the map.

That's kinda disappointing to hear, I gotta be honest. The province set-up in CK1 was pretty problematic, as far as historical accuracy goes. Pretty much the whole life of CK1 we were told it was impossible to fix the map, and a lot of research from various people on the boards went into improving it recently for map mods. Now you seem to be saying "well, we ignored it and you'll be stuck with the same map for the sequel".
Changing province borders is trivial, and I expect further corrections will be made once the Alpha phase kicks off.

Like many players, I spend about 90% of my time in political mode. So while I like the new topographical map a lot, I'm really curious/anxious/excited to see some more screenies of the political map, since that's what I'll likely be staring at for hours on end. Please?
Yes, most players (including me) tend to use the political map mode all the time. That is a shame and not really the way forward, IMO. The ambition is to make the terrain mode more useful, with enough political information that a separate map mode is not really needed.

Does this mean that there will be no political map mode?
We'll see. Just like we add mapmodes for different gameplay mechanics when needed, political mapmode will be there if we feel a need for it. If we however manage to improve terrain mode so much that you don't want/need to play in political mapmode, it might be removed. Time will tell

Concerning the tabbards/surcoats, you will have to flip the coats of arms horizontally.
I keep telling our artist to fix the texturing as well, but he seems to ignore me...


I'm not a programmer, but I once talked with a programmer on this. He said that it is possible to do these things, but it needs additional computational resources. So, take everything I say with a big grain of salt.

Think about your example of Moscow again: you tilt and scroll the map that you have Moscow at your back, and view Berlin in front. Now, the view goes farther, Netherlands, UK, over to the US, etc until you're back at Moscow, where it starts again. Even if you put a "horizon" somewhere, the actual computation of this horizon (if you want to do it correctly and not cut off at some arbitrary value) takes a lot of computing power, as you basically need to step-by-step find out where to "fade out" the view.

Again, I really don't know what I am talking about, and given the fact that my friend is doing his PhD in mathematics/computer sciences, he might only look at the theoretical problems. There might be an easy workaround, but the fact that the only two Paradox games that have a tilting map are the only ones that do not have a full, continuous globe map leads me to believe he was right.
Not really. I already know how I would solve this problem without even have tried to program it. I'd go as far as saying it would be trivial given the tech we've already have now in CK2. The trick is simply to use a horizon (as you mention) and fade the terrain with some distance fog. Why your friend said this would be computationally expensive, I don't know. It's easy and lightweight.

I suppose they could shrink the soldier graphics down to about 1/6 the size or so, and have each group of 5,000 soldiers act as 1 soldier icon. So if you have 15,000 soldiers you'll see 3 soldiers grouped, if you have 30,000 you'll see 6 soldiers grouped, and so on. You wouldn't even need to hover over their army to see the size, you could have a solid guess that way, at least within 5k or so.
For Victoria 2 we looked at having multiple soldiers. The reason we decided not have them was partly aesthetic, the soldiers became to small and that looked bad. But the main reason was performance. one soldier has about 25 bones for animation. with 6 soldiers you have 150. For each unit on the map! This is a lot of vertex calculation calculations to make! And at times there will be very many units on the map at once and it would be unsustainable.

you might say, but Victoria 1 had groups, and so dose Civ 5.

- Well, in Victoria 1 they were a single pre-rendered 2d sprite, which is just not viable option anymore.
- And in Civ 5, there are no where near the amount of units on the map, compared to a Paradox game.

But for every game we re-review things like this, and see if we can be done. We have dreams too, but we can't do the impossible.

Do the devs have any plans to make the sky blue???
We'll see what kind of background we'll end up with, but it won't be solid black in the final version at least.

Which arguably is not a whole lot since they've based the graphical part of the game on EU:Rome which also had the feature, as stated in the diary.
Exactly. The exact amount of development time spent on the camera system is actually 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds, since we already had that in Rome.

Tegus, do you plan on having the map names in this game, i.e. England written across England, and so on?
Yes, hopefully we'll even have some time to improve them as well. I really like the map names and since we have them in all our other games I think it would feel empty without them

No more English England then?
That is one thing I'd like to get rid of. The problem is that we look at cores to determine which "territory" you are in. The root of that problem(using EU3 as an example) is that we have the continents defined for all provinces, but not much more than that. If we have time to add sub-regions(which don't have a gameplay effect) we could add Iberia, Anatolia etc, and then you could spawn names from that.
Cool... hopefully they can be more tied to regions and less to cores os we get less 'Polish Golden horde' etc... I was very skeptical about the whole concept when it first came about but actually it's really cool. Maybe you could use the dynasty name instead of the country's? So 'Habpsburg Bohemia' instead of 'Austrian Bohemia'...

EDIT: Lying on the floor covered in Emu feathers
The country name algorithm is fairly fast, so we could probably do some nifty things depending on what mode you're in. So if you view entire realms, we print country names. But if you view your demesne, maybe we could print dynasty names or the actual holder's name. I think it would be fun to play around with it and see what we can come up with.
 
Last edited:
How will wars work ?

Can't really comment the combat system much at this point, but we do aim to make battles more decisive.


Is there going to be country-forming in CK2?

In the CK sense, yes. I.e, when you hold enough counties that make up a de jure title, you can create (or usurp) it.

Cool... so you can become "King of Ireland" etc? Feel like telling us a few of the countries that can be formed?
Not at this stage, since those kinds of details have yet to be ironed out.

The only limit you had, was the fixed amount of ducal tags. This fixed amount often became a limited amount, when you wanted to keep a certain amount of duchies in each kingdoms. At a certain point adding a extra duke in one region ment that you had to take away a tag from another region (which resulted in some rearranging).

BTW I hope that in CK2 there will be royal but also ducal tags like the royal tags U000-U019 in CK1.
CKII is much more moddable, everything concerning titles is completely dynamic.

Question regarding provincial incorporation into Duchies and Kingdoms

All provinces are assigned to duchies and kingdoms in CKII. However, they do not have to be and it's trivial to mod.
 
Tax base for new Baronies

Doomdark said:
Hi all. As dev diaries have said that you will be able to create new baronies in your counties I was staring to wonder how the tax base (which I assume will be the basic measure of prosperity) of new baronies will be generated.

I can think of four possible ways.

1. It is decided upon a base tax for the entire county. All baronies in the same county have the same base, but is modified by type (city, castle, church).

2. The tax base for every potential barony is defined in the file that defines all baronies.

3. All baronies of the same type have the same tax base, what separates as wealthy Mediterranean county form a poor Scandinavian one is the amount of baronies it has and the scripted maximum number of baronies.

4. All new baronies start at a set tax base (1?) and can increase by buildings and events. Having wealthy baronies nearby could for example trigger events related to trade or lack of arable land by the neighbors leading to immigration leading to tax base increasing.

What do you think is the most probable one? Which one would you prefer to see?

All baronies of the same type have the same base tax. However, this is modified by buildings that improve the barony.
 
Effect of culture in the game ?

Originally Posted by Tambourmajor
I'd rather they removed culture altogether as a game mechanical concept .
Culture serves four main roles in CKII:

1) Source of distinct names and naming conventions
2) Character opinions towards "foreigners"
3) Unit composition variations
4) Graphical flavour

And what about title tier names, we've seen English earls and Swedish greves in the screenies, or maybe this will be scripted individually at each title file, regardless of the culture of the province? This last way an Earl of x province in England will always be an Earl even if the culture turns French/any other for whatever gameplay reason.
Yeah, title names can be affected by culture as well
 
On portraits

Good question. The portraits seem to have taken a great leap forward!

I wonder how easy will it be to mod it, though...

It looks like flat 2D, with same 'layers' system like that from CK1 (but much improved of course). You can`t see any distorted textures (by shading/angle), or sharp edges of 3d models' polygons. 3D portraits would make sense if they were animated - with still images there`s no point to use 3d.

The portraits are 2D layers, much like CK1 and EU:Rome. That means that it can all be modded, only to a much higher degree than those games.

Looks beautiful. I love the new portraits, although they do look a bit baby-ish as someone mentioned. Maybe we could have them look a little rougher around the edges. This is the middle ages after all.

The images in the diary screenshots are all of young faces, and those do look smoother than the others. The characters become more rugged and wrinkly as they get older. Also, beards grow longer, hair gets thinner, ears and noses grow (as they do in real life) and so on. Also, those screnshots do not have all the layers that the final game will have, scars, spots, and things like that. It's alpha shots after all, and a few alpha screenshots don't do the whole portrait part of the final game justice. Keep an open mind. :)
 
Will the AI cheat with money like in CK1?

Our ambition is to have an AI that does not cheat at normal difficulty. Now, we have never quite reached this goal, but most people seem to assume it cheats a lot more than it actually does. For example, I cannot think of any economic cheats in our current crop of games. Discounting "lucky" nations in EU3, neither are there any odds or manpower type cheats. The only types of cheats I can think of at current patch levels are:

1) Naval attrition
2) Air redeployment range in HoI3 (there were bugs with naval range checks, but not intentional cheats)
3) Limited FoW (though this is rarely exploited)
4) A few cases of special rules vs human players, usually more careful behavior

Crusader Kings In-Game Timeline
You will be able to start at any time between 1066 and 1337, and play until 1453.1.1. Some counts in between the main bookmarks might be randomly generated, or might default to their Duke or King, but certainly not all.

if you go one day after the book mark will it keep the bookmarks counts? like will counts remain until their history file death date or are they set to a single date?
Of course the counts will be kept. Every character has an individual death date, etc.

Succession in Kievan Rus'?

My main concerns when adding succession laws (or any other feature, really) are:

1) Does it make for interesting gameplay (with clear pros and cons)?
2) How historically relevant is it, i.e. how widespread was its use?
3) Does the complexity of implementation outweigh the above benefits?

The Rota system, like Tanistry - unfortunately, I should add - fails on all three points (though with enough thought and effort it might make for interesting gameplay.

Doomdark, you might add "4) How does this feature improve the game to feel "individual" playing other dynasties."
That's where the feature made a point and what could make it interesting. If the King of France feels the same
as the Tsar of Russia there might be a lack of replayability.

However, I wouldn't give it high priority.
The main thing is the usual western european feudal system but the
wild east deserves some love, too
I might indeed add that point, but it is not a main concern.
 
Dev diary 8 - Religion

Will religions be moddable?

And I read that names of the Pope and the Antipope are "Alexander", "Paschal"... I guess it is likely that the english Antipope, such as the other bishops in the Realm, has a Anglo-Saxon christening name. So shall we assume that regnal name are implemented ? And if that's the case, is it just for the Papacy or for Kingdoms too ?

Religions are fully moddable.

Popes and Antipopes get a regnal name, but they are unique that way.

Great diary, the game shows so much promise.

I was wondering, though, with so much income coming the Popes way, what will effectively stop him from conquering many small and weak states in all of Europe?

Well, he's not playable and his AI won't be belligerent.

Also, if prestige is gained in any way similarly as in CKI, isn't a 500 prestige cost for your own Anti-Pope a tad too low? And is it possible to give a sneak peak of what the results have been (if any) from testing the clergy<>secular princes balance?

The actual numbers should be taken with a grain of salt at this point.

This is the best addition to the game mentioned so far. It sounds really great and reasonably thought out.

Will it be possible for single characters to convert to a different religion by a decision or something similiar (A Pagan getting baptised etc)?

Something similar, yes. :)

Sweet! Very nice with the antipope idea! I am assuming the antipope could become the pope if the pope is forced to concede?

Yes. An antipapacy is actually just a claim on the title to the real papacy.

I don't like the *once again* bare representation of the orthodox religion. Being the Patriarch of the religion should give significant bonuses while orthodox nations who HAVE to bow down to that Patriarch are affected negatively. It's no coincidence many nations fought to have their own Patriarchate recognized by the Byzantines. I'm quoting here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Orthodox_Church#Autocephaly_.28Patriarchate.29

If you continue to read on you will see it was a huge deal to have your own Patriarchate and that should be a possibility in the game when u are negotiating with the current Patriarch. It's a vital part of a stronger claim i.e the Russians calling themselves the third Rome and taking the role of successors of the Byzantine Empire.

Orthodox heretics can have their own patriarchs.

Really like what I am seeing here but i was wondering how you balance out the antipope thing. When you say characters in the kingdom cannot be excommunicated does the king count?

He does.

Are you saying that for example if France supports an Antipope France may declare war on the Pope and try to force him to abdicate? Will other countries (for instances, the Holy Roman Emperor) be able to help the current Pope continue being Pope?

Yes.

Also, does the figure of Papal controller continue to exist? Do they get special benefits from the Pope like an higher likelihood of having their requests granted?

No, there is no Papal Controller.

What about Judaism? I don't think that Judaism can be ignored as the jews are very important in Spain at the time and even have independent territories near the Caspian sea. - until that nasty horde arrives...

Of course the Jewish nations should be playable - nothing like a recreation of Israel 900 years premature ;)

There is no Jewish religion in the game.

I wonder if I have a anti-pope and later conquer the whole papacy, will something happen?

If it's a war over your antipope's claim to the Papacy, you can end the schism, yes.

If it is a claim, how and who can press it?

May I assume that there will be a way to press some other character's claim ? Like, our king can be press his Antipope (or his nighbour ?)' claim ?
Or there will be a sort of "elective" system involving bishops (for example, when a majority of bishops recognize the antipope, this one become the legitimate Pope) ?

And can rulers recognize a "foreign" Antipope as legitimate ?

Claims work mostly like in CK, except that they are rarer. You will more often want to press the claims of your courtiers and vassals.

The Pope, since he is not playable, can use his money for all kinds of things, through events, etc.

Better than my wildest dream. Please hybernate me and wake me up when the game is out. I cannot wait anymore !

PS For the Judaism, can we mod it in or there is no way to see Judaism in?

You can easily mod it in.

I must say I'm excited about that. But:

I don't like the coats of arms. They look too XVIIth Century, so flashy and so baroque. What about taking a look at some XIV-XVth Century armorials? There's plenty of books of arms out there.

Also, please, tell me you will remake heraldry. CK1 heraldry was awful and inaccurate. I will help, if needed. Many people here made submods with the right heraldry for the provinces (I'm thinking about that magnificent mod that gave Sweden the right heraldry for the main families, instead of nowadays regional coats of arms).

Dynasties have their own Coats of Arms in CKII, separate from titles.

I meant if you conquer the land, if you conquer Rome and you have a anti-pope what will happen. And what will happen of you "just" conquer Rome?

The Pope will still exist. Nothing in particular will happen if you conquer Rome as a Catholic (though you won't garner any favor with the Pope, obviously.)

I like what I'm seeing. Will there be ways to up Moral Authority to balance out having an anti-pope? Will other secular kingdoms have options or AI tending to stamp out anti-popes?

Religions gain Moral Authority from things like succeeding with crusades, and also the skills of its chief pontiff.

Hello, there will be another Developer Diary for heresies, ok. Will it be other differents mechanisms for the other religions ?

There might be something more for religions with no official head.

Really interesting question.

And I'm imagining another scenario : Heresy --> State adopting heresy as State Religion --> Schism !

I insist asking : may our ruler recognize an Antipope as legitimate ? And at what cost ?
That would be interesting if our ruler hasn't a great relationship with the current Pope but has a good one with someone else's Antipope.

Currently that is not possible, but it's something we've thought about.
 
Last edited:
On testing and bugs

Ok. Here comes the plan how to make all future paradox games as bug free as possible (I thought you might want to know the details):

1. I will be checking all games that are being produced once in a while. During this testing I will try to write down different areas in the game that needs to be tested.
2. During the same time I will read through current bug reports and write down which testers write great bug reports.
3. I will be picking betas. Testers mentioned above will be picked first.
4. When gameplay is ready all testers will be able to choose special areas of intrest (such as playing a pagan country or a small country close to an emirate). Testers we had so far in different projects were doing GREAT job, but the attempts were sometimes unfocused: Several might have tested England a lot but nobody tested the golden horde (This is just an example of how it might have looked like, not exactly how it was). By writing down specific tasks I will be able to jump in where I am needed the most.
5. I will try to have contact with as many testers as possible (not all the time but during critical periods), just to make sure that they are not lacking any info, or if I can help them with testing.
6. At the final stage of the testing, we will contact an outside studio. By knowing our week spots, I will be able to give them some remaining tasks that were not tested as much as other. They will also be able to focus on tasks that are hard to check for me (such as OOS issues).
7. I will be checking the user bug reports after the game is released, writing down the most critical issues.

Now. This will not guarantee that all of our games will be completely bug free, but it will severily reduce the risk of releasing any showstoppers/ crashes/ and other gamebreaking bugs. Balance issues will probably be handled as well.
 
Dev diary 8 -- Religion

can there be more than one anti-pope? Like one for England and one for HRE? (at the same time )
Yes, there can be several.


Would'nt that defeat the point of having an Antipope ? Or would he keep the pork flowing in your direction ?
Making him official would be very prestigious and would restore Moral Authority to Catholicism.


tnx for reply

how about regal names and anti-popes? will they follow the same path as popes?

for instance pope Alexander II and there is an anti-pope who's name is also Alexander. Will he be Alexander I or III?
let's say that anti-pope never become the real pope. and than 30 years later another real pope choose the name Alexander. Will he be Alexander III or IV?
He would be Alexander III, but his name would not be recognized by the real Popes.


So there is only one "regular" Orthodox patriarch in the game? No possibility to create a regional/autocephalous Orthodox church without being a heretic?
No.


Can the Pope be moved from Rome without the existence of an Antipope (as happened with the Avignon Papacy up to 1378)?
If Rome is lost to the Papacy, yes.


In the screenshot, they show the nomination of an antipope, but since I saw some grewed button, which values grant you (or not) to appoint an anti-pope.
That button is to nominate the successor to the Bishop under Crown Investiture, not antipopes.

Also, will you balance AI so that there is no a ridiculous quantity of anti-pope (all the catholic countries)?
Of course.


Finally, will it be possible to begin a civil war because you (as a powerful duke, for example) don't want to recognized the new anti-pope?
Not planned, but would be cool.

Beginning of the article: There will be unique features for each religion! Yeah!!!

Middle of the article: Orthodoxy will be much like Catholicism but without some benefits and penalties.

End of the article: Muslims are much like Orthodoxy. Yeah, both sects will be the same. Oh, and by the way, pagans will have no special features at all. Actually, all religions are the same except that some don't have access to all options and they hate each other in varying degrees.

I hope devs will put more work into this rather than wait for the modders to do their job.
Sadly, the game we (or anyone else) are making can never be exactly the game you want us to make. In fact, it is not our job to try. Our job is to decide on the scope and limitations of the game, what is feasible and what is not. You, as a customer, do not have to worry about that of course. It's ok to wish for a detailed simulation of China too, but you are likely to be disappointed. Since we are such nice folks though, we keep the game format as open and sciptable as we can, so that each and everyone can make the game more like what they personally would have wanted.


Very well said. Completely agree. But I also expect to see future addons with adjusted scopes and limitations.
So do we. :)


anybody besides me getting bit "horny" over this upcoming title ? <3

Also would be nice if you kept small parts of the old religion of old norse religion to maybe bring small parts of viking history alive again ;=)?
The Norse faith is still clinging on in 1066. The Temple of Uppsala still stands, and Erik the Heathen is ready to fight for the old ways...


Which was a really bad move, since no one likes hardcoding something that could only benefit the playerbase by not being so (the ones who don't care won't be affected at all, it only really, really annoys people who do want to). Got anything to say about it, Paradox? I know it's been said it's going to be "very modifiable" in the past, so certainly that must include something of the sort?
Have some faith people. :)
 
Last edited:
Historical Portraits


Would it really be worth it to mod the entire dynamic portrait system against a wood caved picture of a ruler? I think it would be better if they just gave the rulers some of the "DNA" that was similar to the rulers, I think this would add a great amount of flavor and keep the historical flavor.
that is how you'd do it. set up the dna so it picks the portrait parts that you want. the system adapts around it so children of scripted characters will take on some of the look as well etc.
 
Traits you'd like to see in the game!

Traits should not restrict the player's choices.
Then this is not the game for you ;) Seriously though, why not? Wouldn't it be fun to see that a kind or charitable person get an extra option that might remove some gold but add some prestige whilst a greedy person would get some gold but lose some prestige?

The game is a long way from finished... there's always that slim chance that the objection is read, and will spark the thought of "we didn't think of it that way".

I'm against anything that takes control of the character away from the player in absolute / binary terms -- especially when that limit can originate from a no-win choice inflicted by a random event.
Your objection has been read and comprehensively rejected. The whole purpose of the game is to restrict player choices. This is the core of the game design. Suggesting that we should have a game that does not restrict player choices would require a fundamental redesign of the game.


(Emphasis added.)

This means that I will not be buying the game.

Your design assumption is absolutely guaranteed to result in frustrating play and the eventual necessity to edit savegame files repeatedly in order to counter-act this fundamental design flaw.

When Random Event A can give the player a choice between the ruler gaining Restricting Trait A and Restricting Trait B (or a significant chance of gaining one or the other) as often happened in CK1, and those choices then restrict the choices of the player for the remainder of that ruler's reign, then the game is fundamentally broken.
Perfect

The last thing we want on release is our forum jammed up with people complaining about 'bugs' in the game which do not exist because they disagreed with our design decisions.


If the player decides whether the king become "Cowardly", then that's the result of the player's choices.

If the game is set up to at one point randomly assign that trait, or give the player the choice between "Cowardly" and "Reckless" as a false dichotomy, and then later events / decisions are set up to be limited by either choice, then you have a serious design flaw.
If you'd let the player chose which traits his character would get, he would obviously choose good ones. Now, that would be a design flaw.


On the other hand, KristopherWG, if the character trait of "Unic" is added to the next game should that character still get the choices in events that lead to bastards?
Do you mean "Eunuch", a castrated man? This is interesting... *gets a couple of ideas for events...*