The Sword of Islam - Dev Diary 1

[Jia Xu]

What is wrong with you people.

Emperor means "Can have kings as vassals".
Emperor of Britannia means "You can put some dude on the throne of scotland and ireland to rule in your stead, and give the title king of wales to your heir.".

This is kind of why I don't like so many empires. It doesn't feel right to me to have the sovereign of Britain having vassal kings existing within his realm next to his dukes. If PI wanted to do unifications (which are indeed fun), then they should have used decisions, in my opinion. Like give a King of England and Scotland a decision which grants a titular Kingdom of Britain title and destroys the English and Scottish titles (and make not having the British title a requirement to create the two of them, for obvious reasons). If you can hold the new kingdom together for a century, then they naturally assimilate to the new British title and become de jure British.

The Scandinavian empire is the weirdest though. So if you go the Kalmar union route, you end up with a Scandinavian empire and a sovereign who has other kings as his vassals? Eh...

[Ciccillo Rre]

This is kind of why I don't like so many empires. It doesn't feel right to me to have the sovereign of Britain having vassal kings existing within his realm next to his dukes. If PI wanted to do unifications (which are indeed fun), then they should have used decisions, in my opinion. Like give a King of England and Scotland a decision which grants a titular Kingdom of Britain title and destroys the English and Scottish titles (and make not having the British title a requirement to create the two of them, for obvious reasons). If you can hold the new kingdom together for a century, then they naturally assimilate to the new British title and become de jure British.

The Scandinavian empire is the weirdest though. So if you go the Kalmar union route, you end up with a Scandinavian empire and a sovereign who has other kings as his vassals? Eh...

Nah, decisions look innatural, this game is based on characters and titles, not countries like EU3 or V2.

[Seluko]

Oh yay! A CK2+ Dev Diary... wait. What? You say this is from Paradox itself? But it looks exactly like CK2+ and its assorted Mods! Why, it looks like an exact ripof..*shot dead*

--

Just hire Wiz already and be done with it. He does the "patches" well before you do.

[Jia Xu]

Nah, decisions look innatural, this game is based on characters and titles, not countries like EU3 or V2.

I agree that the game isn't focused on the state, like in EU3. But that's essentially the theme of unifications though. Merging many political entities into a single political entity. If you want to strictly enforce that, then they shouldn't be in at all, right? Also, decisions don't look unnatural. If you don't meet the prerequisites, then they don't look like anything, because you don't see them.

[Ciccillo Rre]

Personally, I think I would have called "Greece" Hellas or Rumelia or something. "Greece" is very anachronistic.

I'd go for Rumelia or Romania (the latter sounds better), Hellas is as ahistorical as Greece - actually Hellas was a single theme that is what in vanilla is called, more or less, "Duchy of Athens" (a post-fourth Crusade entity). But the issue is that Rumelia or Romania should include even Anatolia, that is even more "core Roman, core Byzantine" than Greece (it was never lost to foreigners before 1066 unlike the interior of the Balkans and Greece). For my mod, I also thought about "west Romania" and "east Romania" but that sounds innatural for de jure Despotates.

They had to split Byzantium to help the Seljuks out, I guess, and those were the most reasonable names, although I think that some work can be made on redrawing the de jure borders in the area in general - Armenia and Syria for instance are quite ugly.


P.S. There were "East Francia" (Germany) and "West Francia" (France) so, why not having "West Romania" (Greece) and "East Romania" (Anatolia)?

[Secret Master]

What gets lost in this discussion is a simple issue of game mechanics.

The current CK2 engine does not differentiate between "I call myself an emperor and my mom laughed at me" and "I call myself an emperor and my vassals agree" and "I call myself an emperor, and other realms agree" and "I call myself an emperor and the head of my religion legitimized my claim" and "I am descended from a long line of guys who were called emperor and had vassals and foreign realms who agreed with them."

Under current mechanics, there are only two choices: "I am an emperor" or "I am not an emperor." This is an important difference because, historically, every title had shades of gray attached to its legitimacy, not just empires. Anyone could call themselves just about anything they wanted (although claiming to be the rightful holder of a title held by someone else was a recipe for conflict). But, at the end of the day in the historical period, your legitimacy as the holder of that title was never decided by Darkrenown and the CK2 engine. It was decided by the other politically powerful people in your world. But a computer game has to have a bit more sanity and certainty than that, so we have a more binary solution: yes or no. Emperor or not emperor. King or not king. Pope or anti-Pope or not a Pope.

This is where things like the guys in Spain calling themselves emperors gets complicated when portrayed in a game. Imagine the insanity of a CK game where every title in the game had a legitimacy value attached to it and applied separately to all titled characters in the game. You think traits are complicated? If every title had legitimacy values applied to all other titled characters in the game, it take hours to run a few days of the game.

Before I can decide whether the additional empires are worth including, I'll have to see them in operation. How these empires interact with de jure kingdoms will be important to examine. The last thing I want is for the new empires to be too attractive because they reduce the chance of things falling apart.

[Ciccillo Rre]

I agree that the game isn't focused on the state, like in EU3. But that's essentially the theme of unifications though. Merging many political entities into a single political entity. If you want to strictly enforce that, then they shouldn't be in at all, right? Also, decisions don't look unnatural. If you don't meet the prerequisites, then they don't look like anything, because you don't see them.

I'm not sure, if you think about it decisions in CK2 are about characters, but still...

[Garak]

I'd go for Rumelia or Romania (the latter sounds better), Hellas is as ahistorical as Greece - actually Hellas was a single theme that is what in vanilla is called, more or less, "Duchy of Athens" (a post-fourth Crusade entity). But the issue is that Rumelia or Romania should include even Anatolia, that is even more "core Roman, core Byzantine" than Greece (it was never lost to foreigners before 1066 unlike the interior of the Balkans and Greece). For my mod, I also thought about "west Romania" and "east Romania" but that sounds innatural for de jure Despotates.

They had to split Byzantium to help the Seljuks out, I guess, and those were the most reasonable names, although I think that some work can be made on redrawing the de jure borders in the area in general - Armenia and Syria for instance are quite ugly.


P.S. There were "East Francia" (Germany) and "West Francia" (France) so, why not having "West Romania" (Greece) and "East Romania" (Anatolia)?

Personally, I dislike using Romania, because it immediately brings to mind the modern country. Rumelia would be my first choice, then.

[HMAS-Nameless]

Wow that's so cool how titles and changed to your Dynasty name if your Muslim. Definite buy just from that feature :P

[Ciccillo Rre]

Personally, I dislike using Romania, because it immediately brings to mind the modern country. Rumelia would be my first choice, then.

Yes, it's weird if you thing about it initially (it can definitely not go in vanilla) but if you do think about it a little bit more, it is so much more Latin than the corrupted word Rumelia and overall it sounds much better, phonetically. Matter of tastes.

[Jia Xu]

What gets lost in this discussion is a simple issue of game mechanics. The current CK2 engine does not differentiate between "I call myself an emperor and my mom laughed at me" and "I call myself an emperor and my vassals agree" and "I call myself an emperor, and other realms agree" and "I call myself an emperor and the head of my religion legitimized my claim" and "I am descended from a long line of guys who were called emperor and had vassals and foreign realms who agreed with them." Under current mechanics, there are only two choices: "I am an emperor" or "I am not an emperor." This is an important difference because, historically, every title had shades of gray attached to its legitimacy, not just empires. Anyone could call themselves just about anything they wanted (although claiming to be the rightful holder of a title held by someone else was a recipe for conflict). But, at the end of the day in the historical period, your legitimacy as the holder of that title was never decided by Darkrenown and the CK2 engine. It was decided by the other politically powerful people in your world. But a computer game has to have a bit more sanity and certainty than that, so we have a more binary solution: yes or no. Emperor or not emperor. King or not king. Pope or anti-Pope or not a Pope.

This is where things like the guys in Spain calling themselves emperors gets complicated when portrayed in a game. Imagine the insanity of a CK game where every title in the game had a legitimacy value attached to it and applied separately to all titled characters in the game. You think traits are complicated? If every title had legitimacy values applied to all other titled characters in the game, it take hours to run a few days of the game. Before I can decide whether the additional empires are worth including, I'll have to see them in operation. How these empires interact with de jure kingdoms will be important to examine. The last thing I want is for the new empires to be too attractive because they reduce the chance of things falling apart.

Well, Mr. Secret Master, sir, if you want to talk about mechanics, that's fine. Let's talk about mechanics. Mechanically, within the game, there's no difference between a King and an Emperor other than the ability for Emperors to have Kings as vassals, correct? If that's the case, then having an Empire titles serves no utility when you're already a King unless you plan to create a network of king-level vassals. The only other possible utility I can see from this is the extra little prestige you get each month from having an imperial title. If having that network of royal vassals isn't the intent, then the imperial level title is rather redundant, no? If Kings and Emperors are supposed to have the same gameplay experience, then the developers may as well have left the system the way it was in CK1 with Emperors being King-tier. So what we're left with is all of those strange political entities not really changing at all except they now have the ability to vassalize kings. The Emperor of Scandinavia can give the Kingdom of Poland to a relative, and the King of Poland will be a vassal of the Scandinavian Emperor from that point onward. After a century, the Kingdom of Poland de jure becomes part of Scandinavia and stays that way for the entire game unless another empire conquers it. This seems a little too weird for me, but whatever, it'll be easy enough to disable through modding. I can just go into the landed_titles file and make the empires I don't like never able to be created.

[xking]

will the mali characters be black people

[Jia Xu]

will the mali characters be black people

The screenshots say no. Maybe if we ask enough, we'll get a DLC addition similar to the Mongolian one.

[Secret Master]

If Kings and Emperors are supposed to have the same gameplay experience, then the developers may as well have left the system the way it was in CK1 with Emperors being King-tier. So what we're left with is all of those strange political entities not really changing at all except they now have the ability to vassalize kings.

Well, I never said that was the intent. That has nothing to do with what I said at all. My only point is that any discussion of empires being plausible or implausible in this thread assumes some sort of binary "Emperor or not emperor" mechanic that is somehow applied to the historical period. That's simply not the case. The game's mechanics regarding all titles are already a simplification of very complex interpersonal and political interactions.

It's not just an issue with empires.

[Kanin_Usagi]

Well, Mr. Secret Master, sir, if you want to talk about mechanics, that's fine. Let's talk about mechanics. Mechanically, within the game, there's no difference between a King and an Emperor other than the ability for Emperors to have Kings as vassals, correct? If that's the case, then having an Empire titles serves no utility when you're already a King unless you plan to create a network of king-level vassals. The only other possible utility I can see from this is the extra little prestige you get each month from having an imperial title. If having that network of royal vassals isn't the intent, then the imperial level title is rather redundant, no? If Kings and Emperors are supposed to have the same gameplay experience, then the developers may as well have left the system the way it was in CK1 with Emperors being King-tier. So what we're left with is all of those strange political entities not really changing at all except they now have the ability to vassalize kings. The Emperor of Scandinavia can give the Kingdom of Poland to a relative, and the King of Poland will be a vassal of the Scandinavian Emperor from that point onward. After a century, the Kingdom of Poland de jure becomes part of Scandinavia and stays that way for the entire game unless another empire conquers it. This seems a little too weird for me, but whatever, it'll be easy enough to disable through modding. I can just go into the landed_titles file and make the empires I don't like never able to be created.

Well it also means you won't have to deal with however many dukes. What's easier? Dealing with three Kings and a couple of dukes, or dealing with fifty dukes and counts? It will help clean up any mega-kingdoms people create by the end of the game.

[Comrade Chaos]

Oh yay! A CK2+ Dev Diary... wait. What? You say this is from Paradox itself? But it looks exactly like CK2+ and its assorted Mods! Why, it looks like an exact ripof..*shot dead*

--

Just hire Wiz already and be done with it. He does the "patches" well before you do.

Paradox loves you too.

[Jia Xu]

Well, I never said that was the intent. That has nothing to do with what I said at all. My only point is that any discussion of empires being plausible or implausible in this thread assumes some sort of binary "Emperor or not emperor" mechanic that is somehow applied to the historical period. That's simply not the case. The game's mechanics regarding all titles are already a simplification of very complex interpersonal and political interactions. It's not just an issue with empires.

I know you didn't say that. I was trying to look at it from both possible points of view because you didn't offer a view point on that. My point is that if we're talking about mechanics, then we're talking about the game play differences being an emperor brings to the table. I too grow weary of people whining about historical semantics, so I like I talk about gameplay mechanics when I can.

So tell me what you think. Does making Scandinavia an empire introduce any game play related utility? Does the addition of an extra title to the King of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway really change the gameplay experience for him? If not, then what purpose does it serve? Going back to your point, the mechanics aren't even really "I am an emperor" or "I am not an emperor." The mechanics are more to the tune of "I can have kings as my vassals" and "I can not have kings as my vassals." The concept of an "emperor" in context isn't something the game recognizes, because it's a mindless AI. "Emperor" in this context is just something we see through the localization. The game only knows "this tier can vassalize kings and these tiers cannot."

[Graspiloot]

No one outside of a handful of people in the Church were aware that the Donations of Constantine were forgeries (nor could many outside of it probably even read the documents). The HRE was founded on what it thought was legitimate grounds. Comments on the Pretender-Empires section if they are to spend resources on them?

Sure. But there could also be claims made for an empire of Francia as the continuation for the roman empire, so that could also secure their legitimacy. Again though, legitimacy is only important if you have the power to back up your claim. And yes I would agree empire level titles would see each other as pretender and should get a (fairly huge) negative modifier. Maybe only between catholics and not interreligion (but still a rus empire would be hated by ERE).

But that would only work once major nations start declaring war to each other, something which now I barely ever see happen.

The expansion is due out in a few weeks and it seems like a reasonable assumption to make (and, again, isn't relevant at all to our point).

Yes the post after you by Darkrenown means it is de jure. That is too bad, but for me it doesn't hinder my gameplay that much (For one, I NEVER use the empire de jure mapmode). I usually roleplay my characters though and I could see situations arise where I can become so powerful in iberia (my favourite region, at least until the muslim DLC) that a Hispania empire does not seem that implausible.

[Mel_E]

My, my... 300+ replies in about half a day? Well, at least we might just break a record or something.

[Saulot]

Personally, I don't really like having extra empires in the game; the original empire setup was closer to how I wanted it. But as long as, as was said in the DD, they are difficult enough to make that the AI won't be making them (often), it doesn't bug me too much.

On the other hand, I'm glad that Kingdom of Byzantium was split into fantasy kingdoms. To me, the point of those is essentially, if the Empire breaks up, what kingdoms could form in its lands.