The Sword of Islam - Dev Diary 1

[Graspiloot]

This is something I'd like to know, too. We really could use one already, for the Ethiopians, but now that they're adding Mali, it's doubly relevant. I'm kind of hoping that this will be included, and the new portraits just weren't ready for the screenshots and video, but they haven't said anything. If not, I hope they come out with such a thing soon. (For that matter, I'd like more variation in the existing portrait sets. Should Iranians really be as dark-skinned as Arabs? And why aren't there any blond or red-headed Europeans?)

I think the paradox developers said they would, before the thread got snowed under by the empire discussion. But sorry I am too tired to go look for it myself, but yeah if you want you can browse the thread for it.

Edit: Actually I just did:

Here

[duinnin]

Since they will be adding in Mali and Songhai, I would hope African portraits would be included.

[Garak]

Russias an Empire? Holy bejubus! This is all I wanted. I was planning on starting something up to get it added in. This gives me something to fight the Mongols with As an edited question. What will be Russia's Shield? The Nice looking one from EU3 or the crappy looking Russian Empire one from Vicky 2?

Lol, I actually prefer the Victoria 2 one. EU3's is so bland and generic. :/

I think the paradox developers said they would, before the thread got snowed under by the empire discussion. But sorry I am too tired to go look for it myself, but yeah if you want you can browse the thread for it.

Said they would release a DLC at some point, or have new portraits included in this DLC?

[Graspiloot]

Said they would release a DLC at some point, or have new portraits included in this DLC?

Hmm the post I linked to you answered yes to "music, sprites and such". Which is kinda vague, so not sure now.

Here

[Garak]

Hmm the post I linked to you answered yes to "music, sprites and such". Which is kinda vague, so not sure now.

Here

Hmm, yes. I would assume he's saying yes there to African unit graphics, rather than portraits, but who knows.

[Orinsul]

With Arabs being the focus of this mod, will Arab christian priests finally be clothed?

[tapewormlondon]

I never get involved in stuff like this, but I feel compelled to after seeing the last 24hrs worth of posts.

Firstly, Muslims were never playable at launch. They added it in for modders - for the good of the community. So for people to be moaning and whinging now that the new patch will take that away is not only laughable, but also down right god damn rude.

It wont take it away, you just wont get all the flavour and shiny things that people (such as me) will get when buying the dlc.

Secondly. All this balls about empires........why the hate?? it confounds me, seriously it does. WHO CARES IF IT IS NOT HISTORICAL??? it makes the game more fun for the rest of the player base mind the 10% that want this to be a historical simulator. In which case you are playing the wrong god damn game.

Seriously, I think those that are kicking up a fuss seriously need to play other games so you can see what a mean DLC policy really is. Paradox are the only....AND I MEAN ONLY.... company that have a buy trivial DLC get free patch content system, whereby the patch is substabtantial, game chaging/ enhancing content, Alot of the community here are older than 20 at the very least. Maybe you should all stop acting like spoilt teenagers and get a god damn grip.

[RedRooster81]

With Arabs being the focus of this mod, will Arab christian priests finally be clothed?

I asked Shaytana to fix that with his Better Looking Characters mod, and now my Andalusian Catholic Prince-Archbishop of Seville does not hold high mass nude. Or at least bare-chested. I think it would be something nice to have in vanilla CK2 though.

[Ryasyr]

Lol, I actually prefer the Victoria 2 one. EU3's is so bland and generic. :/

Well it does have that Bad ass Soviet Flag in Vicky 2. But I think Communism is a little far off from CK2?

[Garak]

Well it does have that Bad ass Soviet Flag in Vicky 2. But I think Communism is a little far off from CK2?

Um... wasn't talking about the Soviet flag...

[King]

Probably leaked by beta testers.

No they are from a game I played to get screen shots.

[Calbrenar]

Is there any tuning planned for the vassals? Right now it's absolutely pointless to use Dukes/Counts over Mayors/Doges unless you want to keep your game semi balanced. We make house rules to forbid it in multiplayer. I know there are arguments that doges should be strong since they have some penalties but the penalties are far too easy to mitigate and the insane amount of gold you get smooths over any problems elsewhere. I'd really like to see some incentive for using Dukes/Priests. (Yes I'm aware of issues with culture and slightly reduced levees etc etc. Doges are still many times stronger then Dukes).

[Federalist girl]

I don't want to pile on (I just got to this thread), but add me to the people saying that they're not wholly opposed to new creatable empires as long as they're titular at first rather than de jure. I'm going to mod it anyway (and hope CK2+ does the same, as it now currently does) but in general...

I'm glad to see Paradox listened to people who wanted the de jure (non-existant) kingdom of byzantium broken up into smaller kingdoms. That was nice.

And I am liking the flavor stuff for the Muslim factions. I will definitely buy the DLC. I hope the Byzantines get similar treatment in the future.

[Bishop Arundel]

People complaining about empires should remember, that there were attempts to create a British empire by various English kings notably Edward I, in the middle ages, that the union of Kalmar was a very near attempt at creating a scandanavian empire and that Spain reunited 39 years after the CKII timeline ends.

[riknap]

Uhh, there was no difficulty of maintaining separate game versions. The newest expansion was the only version supported. That's an unfortunate choice in some ways, but it seems far less complicated than the inclusive DLC model they've chosen for CK2.

which is exactly the point of modular DLC's according to the devs (though I'm lazy to actually scrounge for the exact posts)
basically, instead of requiring players to buy features they're not interested in just to be able to stay "up-to-date" (since each expansion changes the game version), modular expansions/DLC is basically one single constantly updating version and with add-ons that one player can have without affecting gameplay with another player

it still brings up the question of balance (for example, does the decadence feature give the muslim-state player an advantage/disadvantage vis-a-vis christian feudal players?

[nOxr]

I like the inclusion of more empires, but I also find the whole "there can be only one western empire" quite intriguing and it would be fun if we could have empire vs. empire wars over which empire is the only true. One simple solution could be to give emperors hefty negative attitues towards each other and a True Empire CB. This could also work for a Russian Empire vs. Byzantium.

[Lemont Elwood]

How about this; for those of you who believe the empires should be limited to the Medieval sense of "empire", when you create a Spain/France/Britain you are simply declaring yourself as the Roman Emperor in that area. And because you own as much land as the HRE or Byzantines, you have the evidence to back it up.

[Alerias]

How about this; for those of you who believe the empires should be limited to the Medieval sense of "empire", when you create a Spain/France/Britain you are simply declaring yourself as the Roman Emperor in that area. And because you own as much land as the HRE or Byzantines, you have the evidence to back it up.

Er, no. That doesnt cut it. Personally I'm OK with loosening the definition of Empires for gameplay purposes, but your solution wouldnt have flied IRL; you needed legalistic grounds of succession, simply having alot of formerly-Roman land didn't count for squat in that sense. The Emperor was also meant to have universal jurisdiction and therefore the title couldn't be 'split off' regionally all that easily, the Imperial split between East and West was a very big deal around which European politics revolved to the extent of being a major cause of the Schism.

Personally I think the best compromise would be to call the fictional Empires High-Kingdoms rather than Empires (though make them mechanically-similar Tier 4 titles). I'd also prefer them to start as purely titular, but a dev gave a pretty good explanation of why it wasn't so in this thread (user friendlyness / UI issues).

[Tapscott]

Couldn't the different empires have a special casus belli for legitimacy wars, so that the victor gets prestige, piety, religious relations boost and vassal relations boost; and the loser gets the oppposite of those things. Just my thought.

[americanu197]

wallachia yes thank you