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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!
 
Yes. I think Spain and Persia are the only realistic empires in this. Russia only if it can't coexist with ERE. I really don't like Scandinavia or Brittania. I will delete them in my game.

I'll have to second this. I'll probably going to mod it out as well. Other than that the changes so far seem really nice.
 
Sure, he just means he'll have to do it again because thats too awesome not to try.

Personally Ive modded in my own Empires a few times. I did a Scandinavian game where I created a custom Empire 'The North', 'in the North'. A GoT reference obviously :D And yes, it was fun, especially slowly integrating my kingdoms to this Titular title and seeing it becoming De Jure much later.
Hah. So have I. I love that it is finally in the game, gives something to strive for!
 
Sounds great. Looking forward to playing it.

Could you give a bit more detail on how you would create an Empire?

So say Britannia, I guess I would need to be King of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales but then what? Just lots of money/piety or something else?
 
Food Taster: a perfect title to get rid of someone who irritates you :D

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.

Slavic Empire would also be nice IMO (for Polish, Croats, Bulgarians, Serbs, etc.)
 
Sounds great. Looking forward to playing it.

Could you give a bit more detail on how you would create an Empire?

So say Britannia, I guess I would need to be King of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales but then what? Just lots of money/piety or something else?

I think they will give more detail in future Dev Diaries.
 
so why don't the muslims get the kinslayer trait?
Probably because of certain Muslim rulers' tendency to kill off most of their siblings.
Now that might not be the case for the majority of Muslim rulers in the Middle Ages, but then there's "flavour".
 
I love the the new de jure kingdoms but I'm not so sure about the empires. I think I will just mod out of Christian ones, except Russia (rename it Rus and make it only creatable if there is no Byzantine Empire and the other way around) and Spain (rename it to Andalusia and make it only creatable by Muslims).
 
Looking good, CK2 dev team!

Add me to the list of people that would like an African character portrait DLC.

Since you're planning a pilgrimage to Mecca decision, why not add Christian pilgrimages to Canterbury, Santiago de Campostela, and Jerusalem? :)

While I like that you're refining kingdoms, I have a stupid question. Why is it that every province on the board must be part of a de jure duchy and kingdom? Why have artificial kingdoms like Greece, Anatolia, etc in the first place? It's fine to make them formable under the right conditions, but are they necessary at the game's start?
 
Sounds great. Looking forward to playing it.

Could you give a bit more detail on how you would create an Empire?

So say Britannia, I guess I would need to be King of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales but then what? Just lots of money/piety or something else?

The base condition is a lot of Piety and holding 80% of the de jure counties. Then there are often extra conditions, like being of the right culture, or, in the case of Francia, also being a king of a title outside the de jure realm of Francia.
 
While I like that you're refining kingdoms, I have a stupid question. Why is it that every province on the board must be part of a de jure duchy and kingdom? Why have artificial kingdoms like Greece, Anatolia, etc in the first place? It's fine to make them formable under the right conditions, but are they necessary at the game's start?

They don't strictly speaking have to be, but by now it's quite possible that there will be glitches and bugs if they are not. As for why we want them to be, there are many reasons: it enables a nice feudal de facto hierarchy, it is required for the crown law system, it looks nice in all map modes, it makes more titles available for creation (flexibility) and it helps the AI.
 
What about the "celibate" and "chaste" traits?

Well, celibacy in the form it works in the game atm (giving piety) would not be appropriate for an Islamic context. A celibate Muslim would simply be regarded as a silly sod, and a very bad spouse.

Chastity, however, is an entirely appropriate trait for an Islamic character, so I second the question of why it was left out.
 
The base condition is a lot of Piety and holding 80% of the de jure counties. Then there are often extra conditions, like being of the right culture, or, in the case of Francia, also being a king of a title outside the de jure realm of Francia.
So to form Francia you'd need to be king of France and Lotharingia? (as an example)
 
Frankly the New de jure Empires thing is almost as good news as the playable Muslims. Holding multiple crowns without an Emperor title is very untidy at the moment, yet (at least in my games) very common if I start as a King-level ruler.

They'll be applicable to both my long campaigns, so hopefully the old saves won't mess things up.

Oh, question about the Scandinavian Empire - does its de jure territory include Finland and the various North Sea Islands, or does it consist solely of actual Scandinavia (ie. Norway, Sweden, Denmark)?
 
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