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Hello again folks!

It's a new month and high time for another development diary. This time, let's talk about barons. In the original Crusader Kings, characters could only hold titles of three ranks; count, duke and king (though these could be called different things in different cultures). Barons existed indirectly in the form of provincial nobility, which, together with the clergy, peasants and burghers, had different power, loyalty and tax values. The player could fiddle around with the power values of the four classes, which would affect the tax rate and the composition of the provincial levy. As it turned out, this was one of the least successful features in the game, because the micromanagement was tedious and did not have enough impact to make it worthwhile. Therefore, in Crusader Kings II, the whole thing has been cut. Instead, each province will have between one and eight named settlements. A settlement is either a castle, city or church, and characters can hold the title to a settlement just like they can to counties and duchies.

Castles are regular feudal holdings, whose barons are normally in fief to the provincial count. Cities are commercial hubs governed by a mayor. Finally, church settlements are run by a Bishop (or Mufti, or similiar.) Like the four classes of Crusader Kings, the three types of settlement provide different types of troop levies and have different tax rates depending on laws. Unlike the class power of Crusader Kings, the rights of churches and cities - and the investiture of their leaders - should be interesting to play around with. (More on this in a later dev diary.)

Barony tier characters are not playable, mainly for performance reasons. (We do not want barons to have courts of their own, with the explosion of characters this would require.) They have a more rudimentary form of AI than playable characters, but will respond to diplomacy and might raise their army in revolt. Another measure to keep the character count down in Crusader Kings II is that you can have your vassals double as councillors (so there is less need for minor nobles to be created by the game).

What about the level of micromanagement - won't all these baronies require more player attention? Well, the whole point of the feudal system is delegation, so the short answer is that for dukes and above; not much. Granted, the dynamic around cities and churches will require more attention, but of the right kind and infrequently. The existence of baronies will also make playing counts a lot more interesting.

I don't have any baronial graphics in particular to show you, but here's a little something that Aerie is working on...

CK2_Diary002_01.png


That's all for now. Don't miss the next dev diary on December 2!


Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead
 
Yes, please! That would be incredibly helpful. Even if it's just for the player's dynasty. Sorely needed, imho.

I would love Doomdark long time if we got family trees..
 
6) Will a character maintain a "history of titles" file or will all titles be erased from a character upon their death like in CK1? (This is very frustrating when you want to look into the family genealogy say 70 years ago when your great-great-grandfather was a measly baron who happened to marry the daughter of his liege, and their daugther was married to the Duke of X etc.)

Good idea...which also brings to mind: a history of titles, as in a chronological list of office holders.

It's not too difficult to string together your own dynasty's rulers, and calculate their lifetime and reign. But it would be a royal pain to keep track of AI kingdoms... either in-game, or for a post-game AAR wrap-up.
 
4) Will there be family trees in the game, making it easier to hold an overview of hte dynasty?

This! Pretty, pretty, pretty please!
That would be seriously awesome...
 
I hope this isn't too stupid a question but here goes :

can a baron of a settlement in a given province owned by Count A pledge his allegiance to Count B... or is he entitled to keep his allegiance to the owner of the province he's in ?

I'd like to know this too, if settlements are the smallest constituent units of territory.

It would be awesome if a baron could defect from one count to another, but the amateur game developer in me has the gut-feeling that letting borders between counties be fluid like that would open a Pandora's box of additional complexity.


Another thing I'd like to know is, will there be special actions available for you if you are an officeholder of your liege? For example, getting to control his army as his marshal?
 
It would be awesome if a baron could defect from one count to another, but the amateur game developer in me has the gut-feeling that letting borders between counties be fluid like that would open a Pandora's box of additional complexity.
This could be done by percentage and then there would be this fluid process of a province possibly gradually change its dependence.
 
Unlike with last month's, this month's Dev Diary didn't provide a clue about the topic of December's diary, which will be our Christmas gift from Doomdark.

:(
 
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Did anyone ever answer the question about what would happen if a peasant rebellion was successful, since there was no power structure that represented their interests? Does it simply become a province/settlement "in rebellion"? I suppose it makes sense in historical context.
 
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Did anyone ever answer the question about what would happen if a peasant rebellion was successful, since there was no power structure that represented their interests? Does it simply become a province/settlement "in rebellion"? I suppose it makes sense in historical context.

This. Will they form Peaseant Republics? Will the pronvinces just revolt? Will some other nobleman take the reins? Will they try to enforce their interests?
 
Can a baron be independient (no liege) ?
 
How will a Baron's CoA be determined?

In CK1 the Counties were static so it was easy to just assign all of them a bmp. In CK2 entirely new Baronies will be created during the game. Will there by dynastic arms (ie: all Capet Barons use Azure a semy of fleur de lis or), will all possible Baronies be named and given a CoA in the game-files, or will they be determined algorithmically?

That's a good question, IMHO, and, since no-one answered, I try to bring it again to the surface.


1) <<Will there by dynastic arms (ie: all Capet Barons use Azure a semy of fleur de lis or), will all possible Baronies be named and given a CoA in the game-files, or will they be determined algorithmically? >>


Given the fact that that new CKII seems to be more dinasty-oriented than State-oriented, I think that dynastic arms would be more appropriate ; hopefully, dynastic CoA should evolve following the ruler's titles and claims. Also, the idea of combining dynastic arms with the "flag" of a territory by a layer system could give an immediate, graphical, idea of what dynasty is in charge in a given territory.


2) In this case could a new ruler chose "his own" CoA (like, choose between three or four, algorithmically-created, possible CoA?)


This question leads me to others, related to the player's choice and the gameplay at large :


3) Will it be possible to choose the "capital city" of his realm (or at least the city where the ruler resides)?
In CKII the "capital city" was determined by proximity with the supposed "historical capital" (not always accurate) of the "main realm". This sounds quite unreal in some case. During a game, my faithful wife and (un)faithful Duchess of Barcelona was repelled out of Spain by a villain moorish counter-offensive. She held the island of Menorca though, and the rich and prosperous county of Trapani in Sicily (of which she was countess in the first place). The "capital" of the Duchy, where the CoA of my dear beloved was, was automatically set in Menorca ; personnally, I have some problems figuring my aging, cultivated, adorable German Catholic wife choosing to live in a minuscule, ill-protected, island of muslim misbeleivers, instead of going back to her "civilized", rich and well-guarded county of Trapani.


4) Can we chose our "main title", the one who will be displayed on our CoA (in case this one won't be dynastic) and who will determine the colour of our armies'flags?
This time again, I will report a gaming experience to clarify the problem. The founder of my dinasty was a humble Count of Corsica, and, in three generations'space I had conquered Sardinia (and hence Duchy of Sardinia), Sicily and a huge part of Southern Italy (and inherited of a county in England too - can't remember which one) - so that I could eventually create the title of King of Sicily.
Helping an ally at war, without almost wanting it, I found myself King of - if I remember correctly - Burgundy, but controlling just a single territory in that kingdom.
At any rate, the increased prestige of being a King allowed me to finally create the title of King of Sicily.
Unfortunately, my capital city, my CoA, the reddish color of all my armies, continued telling me that I was in the first place "King of Burgundy" - quite silly, for a ruler who was of Italian culture, and who had just a territory in Burgundy while holding the tile of Duke of Sicily and Count of Palermo and Messina, and having the Duke of Apulia, of Calabria and of Salerno between my vassals.



5) Will you be given the possibility to choose your children's name (between a list of names, or - less likely - typing a new one), or will it be chosen automatically like in CKI ?


6) Will you be allowed to change the county's, province's or settlement's name during the game?
That may be useful, for example, when conquering Muslim territories with distinctive Arab names - il would be nice to have the option to "rechristen" them giving more Christian names to them.


7) Will languages be implemented?
I know that it will maybe be a mere "duplicate" of the "culture", but still, in a more role-play oriented game it would be nice to see, for example, if the Norman ruler of Puglia speaks just his Norman dialect, or Latin and his dialect, or if he abandoned Norman in order to adopt the language of the territory he controls.


And two, more personal, specific and less gameplay-related questions :


8) Will "Kingdom of Sicily" be emended, with the capital city moved to Palermo and not Naples (Naples will become capital only after 1372 - after a short-lived separation of the Kingdom of Sicily into two kingdoms - of Naples and of Sicily)?


9) Will there be a proper editor, or mods should be applied the old way, by fiddling with database files?

Ok, that's a lot of questions, but if Doomdark will answer even to , say, one or two, I'll be satisfied !
 
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Any idea (IE any comment from a dev I have not read) on how provinces and -above all- settlements will be named?

Will be cities, churches and castles historically-named, fantasy-named or simply unnamed?

If historically-named, this means each province will need a set of historical settlements defined in the DB: but, if we take into account, say, Kufa in Iraq, will this province require some fancy names for its baronies?

Or, if fantasy-named, a settlement will take its designation from a culture-tied list?

Or they will be just unnamed, or vaguely named?

...and all of this leads me to a more important question: will provinces be the same size they were in CK? Or provinces will represent entire regions, maybe entire duchies, as settlements now are the basic point of any demesne limit?
 
The settlements will have names, that is stated in the first post.

Doomdark said:
Instead, each province will have between one and eight named settlements. A settlement is either a castle, city or church, and characters can hold the title to a settlement just like they can to counties and duchies.

How they will be named we don't know.
 
Hopefully a mixture of historical names where possible, and random names drawn from cultural or geographic lists when not. It doesn't particularly matter if names get doubled up on, as long as the eight within a county are different and as long as there's some variety.
 
Clearly I hope Wales will be drawn simularly to that of the DVIP Wales map. *please please* And If Doomdark would allow, I'd like to suggest the eight settlements in each of the 11 provinces :) I just want to be sure it gets a fair deal.
 
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