How much Clausewitz Kings is CK2?

[Infocalypse]

Okay, I have read the Developer's Diary Entries and some of the forum entries. For what I have learned CK2 will still be based on the Clausewitz engine, and the map will be totally rewritten. The dumbass I am now wants to know, having read about all the plans on how to improve CK to CK2, what remains of EU3 Clausewitz in CK2? Or in other words: What does "CK2 is based upon the Clausewitz engine" boil down to? Does it still mean, that armies have to chase one another over the whole kingdom, before one of them is finally dissolved?

[Orinsul]

its the same engine, but doesnt mean anything from EU3 will carry over. Oblivion and CivIV are on the same engine if im getting my half remembered antidotes right, EU3s military work completely differently.
but as CK armies worked the way youre describing i suspect it will, and ill be glad of it, look at the english rebellion after the harrowing, what you describe is exactly how historians describe that and as its the war the game opens with theres the proof. who cares anyway, war isnt the focus of the game anyway, just a small part of it.

[DreadLindwyrm]

From what I have read, it means that we are looking at the combat working along the lines of EU III or HOI 3 rather than CK1, so although there may well be the need to chase armies to wipe them out, it should be less of an issue than in CK1. It also means that we should have much less deterministic gameplay, as there is a lot more scope to use plausible, rather than historic, scripting.

[Orinsul]

CK had historical scripting?

[Buladelu]

Right, engine means mostly graphics, sound and other unseen things like time counting (I don't know how you western programmers call it). Reusing engine means you are saved from many bugs, have known compatibility, modability and know system requirements. So engine reusing is actually good till time calls for new tech (new directX, shaders, multithreading, systems etc). And some of those things can be modified in existing engine. F.e. now P-x wants to make multithreading in HoI3 AGAIN.

[Zoston]

What it means is that you'll have a commons, events, gfx, history and maps folder amongst other. Game data will be largely exported to .txt's and map data will be a combination of .txt's and .bmp files. It means the map will be divided into provinces, and armies will be abstracted into a single entity that can only move from one province to another province [if this last bit is confusing, contrast eu3/vicky/etc with the Total War series]. You cannot infer -any- gameplay details like "Does it still mean, that armies have to chase one another over the whole kingdom, before one of them is finally dissolved?" If paradox wanted to they could easily program CK2 to have every battle end with the annihalation of the defeated army. If you want to have a general sense of the breath of the clausewitz engine, I suggest playing EU: Rome, EU3 and Vic2. The main thing that being on the clausewitz engine tells you is, imo, that modding the map, events, nations, etc. will be really easy especially to anyone who already has modding experience with the other clausewitz games. Other then that Paradox, as the people who made the clausewitz engine in the first place, are fully capable of changing it to fit in whatever gameplay mechanic they want.

[Inner Circle]

Oblivion and CivIV are on the same engine if im getting my half remembered antidotes right

oO

Any source of this?

[kentonio]

oO

Any source of this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebryo

[Amallric]

that modding the map, events, nations, etc. will be really easy especially to anyone who already has modding experience with the other clausewitz games

Actually its much easier to mod with the old engine. CLausewitz is supposed to offer more possibilities but since you're anyways limited by arbitrary restrictions such as event triggers etc it does not serve that much.

[DarthJF]

CK had historical scripting?

No. The only historical scripting were the arrival of Mongols and the black death.

[eleinvisible]

oO

Any source of this?

Yes, they do as linked above... but Gamebyro is a much more general purpose engine, compared to the Clausewitz engine (as I understand it). Generally, game engines are capable of producing radically different games, look at what was produced with the Unreal Engine, it ain't just shooters. So, I'd imagine Crusader Kings has to have a lot of new things added to add all the character systems (events and what not).

[Heradite]

No. The only historical scripting were the arrival of Mongols and the black death.

So that's actually a yes, but extremely little historical scripting.

[Nick B II]

Okay, I have read the Developer's Diary Entries and some of the forum entries. For what I have learned CK2 will still be based on the Clausewitz engine, and the map will be totally rewritten. The dumbass I am now wants to know, having read about all the plans on how to improve CK to CK2, what remains of EU3 Clausewitz in CK2? Or in other words: What does "CK2 is based upon the Clausewitz engine" boil down to? Does it still mean, that armies have to chase one another over the whole kingdom, before one of them is finally dissolved?

You misundersand what they mean by "game engine."

One of the biggest pains in programming is you have to tell the computer hardware, which does not think like a person, every little thing. At some point your code has to tell the computer that on pixel 15/27 should bring up a menu exactly 78 pixels wide...

For most programs a programming language or shared libraries take care of that crap, but games are so specialized that most of the time those libraries are inadequete. There are litterally millions of programmers who need Left-Click to work right, there aren't millions who need provinces to work right. Thus when a game developer writes a game he has to write a lot of libraries, routines, etc. himself. As a whole these are called a "Game Engine" because without them the game just doesn't go.

So just saying this game is based on the Clausewitz Engine basically means they stole a bunch of code from EU3. It lets you know the game will be province-based, that modding will involve editing text files and bitmaps, and that (unlike games based on the previous engine) tags will be unlimited. That's very useful to modders. In CK1 DVIP ran out of several tags, which meant they couldn;t include all the cultures they wanted.

Nick

[Infocalypse]

Thanks for many good answers.

[Veldmaarschalk]

Actually its much easier to mod with the old engine. CLausewitz is supposed to offer more possibilities but since you're anyways limited by arbitrary restrictions such as event triggers etc it does not serve that much.

No, actually the new games (EUIII, HoI3, Rome and V2) are much easier to mod and offer much more modding possibilites then the games with the old-engine. The new engine has almost everything in txt.files and they have hardcoded as little as possible. The new engine also gives us an unlimited amount of tags for countries, cultures, religions etc.. It also has much more possible event-commands, scopes and triggers. Where f.e. in the old engine there was no way of preventing an event to fire over and over again if the conditions were met, with the new engine you can 'flag' things (like provinces, countries or characters), so that once an specific event has fired it will not fire again.

Then there are also besides the events, the 'decisions', which weren't possible with the old engine. So where in CK1 you had f.e. to wait, a rather random amount of time, till a Crusade begins or ends, I imagine that in CK2 crusade will be done by decisions, who you can take once the conditions to start or end it are met.

The map is also much easier to edit, where it took years for people to come up with map-mod for the older games, the new games had map-mods within a year. Another easier to mod thing are the flags/shields, where with the old-engine people had to request new shields from a couple of people who were able to make them. With the new engine, adding a new/flag can be done by anyone.

[Buladelu]

Veldmaarschalk, you are mostly right but decisions are bad example. They were added to engine later (In Nomine, I think) and I don't think something would prevent adding them to old engine. This is relatively small modification; refactoring everything from hardcode to txt files is big modification. VERY big. So that's what we should thank paradox for: making games with open logic which don't need computers from future to play.

[Captain Frakas]

I agree with you Veldmaarschalk.
I don't think that someone who had effectively moded in Europa Games then Clausewitz game could say that it was easier to mod the old engine.
Clausewitz is vastly superior. It's incomparable.

but:

Where f.e. in the old engine there was no way of preventing an event to fire over and over again if the conditions were met, with the new engine you can 'flag' things (like provinces, countries or characters), so that once an specific event has fired it will not fire again.

There were flags in the old engine. There was also a "sleep event" command. (not in CK1, but in other games like EU2)

[siis]

some common things in clauswitz games:
- no auto pause when an event happen (only after you choose an option) - why? i would really like auto pause when an event happen
- when an event happens you can save and reload to avoid the event (yea... meteor sighted... again... and again)

[SchwarzKatze]

Is it possible to bring the "Offset = 30" thing back? Some events with MTTH of 4000 months shouldn't be checked everyday, that only slows the game down, and a new seed is generated upon reload so the same event wouldn't appear on every reload. Also I would like
mean_time_to_happen = {
days = 1
}
to be used in CK2, maybe for succession crisis and campaign setup

[Captain Frakas]

- when an event happens you can save and reload to avoid the event (yea... meteor sighted... again... and again)

It depend of the kind of event and it was also the case with the europa engine.