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Well, it's Friday and high time to spill the beans on the new expansion for Crusader Kings II; the Sword of Islam. Judging by the forum, playable Muslims is the most requested feature for CKII, and who are we to disagree? We always wanted to do it, provided we could do the Muslim world justice. That time is now (or, well, soon :) ). As with the Ruler Designer DLC, the Sword of Islam will be released together with a major content patch. What you get with the Sword of Islam is simply the ability to play as the Muslim rulers, but all the new mechanics will be there and running for the AI (or other players in multiplayer) even if you don't have the expansion.

I'll be doing three dev diaries on the Sword of Islam, each one dealing with some unique features for the Muslims as well as some free features that everyone will have access to simply by patching to 1.06.

THE SWORD OF ISLAM

One of the major hassles with making Muslims playable was the prevalence of text with obviously Christian or Western terminology. Therefore, we had to go through all text to make it fit the setting if you are playing a Muslim. Often, this required writing whole new events and decisions. For example, Muslims don't hold tournaments, they have the Furusiyya instead, which is an exhibition of martial arts and horsemanship. They don't hold Grand Feasts, they observe the Ramadan, etc. We also added some completely new decisions, like going on the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), which will initiate a cool little event driven story of what happens on the way to and from the holy city. Of course, there is also a whole slew of events dealing with various new gameplay features (more on that in later dev diaries.)

Another issue we needed to solve was the Gothic looking graphical interface of Crusader Kings II, which we felt did not really work when playing as a Muslim ruler. So we did a complete reskin with sand tones and green symbols and patterns instead of the church window graphics of Christian rulers. Yet another problem was that many event pictures looked distinctly Western/Christian, so we've added about 25 new ones to serve as Muslim equivalents. Then there are all the little things, like trait icons with crosses, the Crusade banner, etc. All of that has been changed to provide the right atmosphere. We've even changed the five councillor models for Muslims when they're out in the provinces performing jobs. It's all been a lot of work, but I think it turned out really well.

Muslims get a slightly different set of character traits; they don't get the Kinslayer, Crusader, Celibate and Chaste Traits. Instead, they get the Mujahid, Hajjaj, Faqih (Islamic law expert), Hafiz (has memorized the Koran), Sayyid (agnatic descendent of Fatima or one of Muhammad's uncles) and Mirza (child of a Sayyida mother) traits.

Lastly, Muslims get another set of honorary titles to hand out to their vassals. They all get a few special flavour events - especially the Chief Qadi - a position requiring an ecclesiastical education.

SoI_04.jpg

That's it for the Sword of Islam in this dev diary; next time I will go into the core dynamics of playing as a Muslim ruler.

THE 1.06 PATCH

Now then, here's some of the free stuff we're giving ya'll in the 1.06 patch...

First off, we thought the southwest corner of the map looked a bit dull, so we added a bunch of new provinces down there, representing the flourishing civilizations of the Manden people; Ghana, Mali and Songhay. The area comes with historical rulers (of course) and a new West African culture group. The region is rich but hard to reach.

SoI_05.jpg

For flavour, we have also made it so that duchy tier and above titles held by rulers of Iranian, Arabic and Turkish cultures are named after the ruling dynasty. For example, the Kingdom of Egypt automatically becomes the Fatimid Sultanate while the Fatimids are in power (though the original name is also used where appropriate.) In case the same dynasty holds several high rank titles, only the highest is named after the dynasty. Thus, we can have both a Seljuk Sultanate and a Sultanate of Rum, both ruled by the Seljuk dynasty. Randomly generated characters of these cultures automatically get a dynasty name suitable to name states after (ending with -id or -n, etc).

SoI_01.jpg

Lastly (for this dev diary), there are seven new creatable empires (the Arabian Empire, the Empire of Persia, Britannia, Scandinavia, Francia, Spain and Russia) and a whole slew of new de jure kingdoms, mostly to break up the old kingdom of Khazaria. Now, I know the addition of the new empires is controversial, but the creation conditions are designed to be fairly difficult to achieve, so the AI will very rarely do it. We want players to have the imperial option to strive for if they so desire - the Unions turned out to be a popular feature in Europa Universalis III.

SoI_02.jpg

Oh, and before anyone asks, patch 1.06 will be semi-compatible with old save games: you will be able to keep playing, but we're making no guarantees that the balance will not be completely upset, or that any added new provinces will be active and working.

That's it for now. Next week I'll talk about polygamy, decadence, and strong and weak claims!
 
I'd like to be able to go duchy of Flanders --> kingdom of Flanders --> Empire of Flanders
That's my idea of fun alternate history, it should be possible for every duchy to do this

As an option for a dynmanically named empire, as the moslem ones change their name with dynasty if it could be made so there were a couple Empire titles that can only be made by decision and are named off the primary title of the person making it, then thatd be pretty cool. but having titles for each duchy would be excessive and probably create more problems/annoyances then it could possibly solve and not something i would want to see in the game.
 
King = Sultan, while Caliph = Emperor.

If you want to RP the house of Osman on its historical path, then it actually makes sense that these two are separate. First you become a powerful lord by raising yourself to the Sultan level, which just requires you to beat up on the Byzantines. But then to really become a supreme leader of the faithful, you also need to usurp or otherwise grab a Caliph title. Just like in real history (although a little after the game's time frame) when they seized Egypt and made Al-Muttawakil surrender the claim, as well as the sword and the mantle of the Prophet, to the Sultan Mehmet.

At some point the Ottoman rulers started using the title of Padishah, which was of the imperial rank. They were referred to as emperors in Europe too. In the beginning, though, they weren't in that league. I suppose they weren't there in 1453 yet either, more like after taking over the Caliphate (which, if they did in CK2, they'd be emperors too).
 
Excited about Mali and west Africa.
I was until I saw them in the E3 stream -- the kingdom of Songhay is about three provinces. I'm not really sure what the reason behind adding West Africa was given how poorly it seems to be implemented, and I'm guessing they haven't added any more provinces there since that particular game (at E3) was played.

We'll have to see how it plays (maybe it was a balance decision) but I can't imagine playing in West Africa will be much fun. :(
 
Excited about Mali and west Africa. Now, there is an island South East of Somalia that would become a pretty important trading hub just about thist time ...

I was skeptical of such an addition when people floated it beofre, but based on what I've seen, I'm interested. It'll be nice having a new region to play in, and by not rendering the coast as a controllable area (as it looks in the screenshots and whatnot), that should help to slow down any European attempt to invade the area, which is good. Now I just hope they add an African portrait pack for this area and for Ethiopia.
 
Maybe instead of many empires you could use a more 'neutral' title like high-king? 'Emperor' is a very Roman title at this point, and yet the original idea of 'emperor' was a king of kings. For me, it would make more sense to have a high-king of the British Isles than an emperor - emperor just sounds hollow and pretentious, while high-king [or something similar] sounds like you're the undisputed liege of that land.

A high-king would be a step-up from king, and an equal of an emperor, but it's a title that comes from a different culture and time to the Byzantine and HRE titles.

Yeah, yeah, I know, 'role-play' - and I agree with that, but it's historical role-play, and if you're uniting Scandinavia in the 1100's, they'd use a title like high-king, not emperor!
 
I would associate a high king with pre-Norman Britain--Edward the Confessor had some sense of overlordship over the Welsh princes, and over Scotland to a degree. I think that would be an idea foreign to William the Conqueror, but less so than I am probably imagining. What we are missing I think is a kind of overlordship dynamic that is not vassalage per se but a recognition that a nearby ruler is first among equals of the princes in a region. By Edward I, England had this role in the British Isles, while Leon dominated the Iberian realms (Christian and Muslim), and under St. Louis France became a strong diplomatic and military power over much of Latin Europe. I am overstating the case probably, but that would be superior to the empire dynamic where law is extended to the entire de jure area of the 'empire'.
 
Right, and your argument is that not including new content unless it has localised names is a good argument?

@tommassi; Yes, they have localised translations, but not localised names. For example King = Koenig, which is apt, but they don't have Markgraf for the historical margraves (instead they're lumped in with Count/Graf), which is closer to what your issue is. Thus german cultured emperors of Scandinavia will be Kaiser, and not Emperor.

Would this perhaps be because the rank of margrave isn't in game, and thus there won't be a title for it?

I'm not 100% certain, but wouldn't a (culturally) German emperor be called Kaiser whereever they were found, since this is the form of "Caesar" that they favoured, using this in the vernacular, rather than variations of "Imperator" or "Autokrator" (latin and greek respectively)? Surely any name can be applied to the tier 5 titles, just depending on what the culture would have been likely to use for an "emperor" or "king over kings" title. Since Emperor is taken from the Latin, the "common" language of Western Europe, it makes a good starting point.
Besides, do German cultured dukes and counts in Scandinavia use the german forms or the scandinavian ones for their titles? What title do our scandinavian brothers use for emperors?
 
And, having just had a chat to a few scandinavians, the titles there for emperor derives from caesar as well, possibly via German Kaiser...
I don't see an issue with a german emperor of Scandinavia using the spelling he is used to. Especially since he probably isn't using the spelling - it'd be his court scribe writing it all out.
 
Besides, do German cultured dukes and counts in Scandinavia use the german forms or the scandinavian ones for their titles? What title do our scandinavian brothers use for emperors?

Title is taken from culture of liege, so English counts in france/spain/wherever are Earls.

Would assume almost everyone is just Emperor by default.
 
well the practice was kinda "civilised" afterwards where the princes were locked up in so called "kafes"(cage) in the palace to stop them doing something stupid. some developed mental diseases, others too pussy to be a sultan. during the later stages of the empire the conditions got better i guess, as the lucky bastards had access to the harem hehe :D