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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 frankly hope that the mod makers will support the company and not add playable muslims in their mods in any other way than through the dlc. Selling this expansion will make sure that there will be more of them in the future.

You hope that modders will go out their way to spite Paradox Interactive (likely illegally because the Muslim lock will probably be hardcoded somewhere) because if this expansion sells well, they might make even more new content which we want? Oh, alright then.
 
You hope that modders will go out their way to spite Paradox Interactive (likely illegally because the Muslim lock will probably be hardcoded somewhere) because if this expansion sells well, they might make even more new content which we want? Oh, alright then.

He said he hoped that would "Not" happen, Jia Xu.
 
You hope that modders will go out their way to spite Paradox Interactive (likely illegally because the Muslim lock will probably be hardcoded somewhere) because if this expansion sells well, they might make even more new content which we want? Oh, alright then.

I'm not sure if you understood me correctly at all. They are not going out of their way anyway. They can add as much content they want for muslims but enabling them to play as muslims without the dlc would only hurt the game not help it. I rather support the game than try to find ways to play stuff that you would need a dlc to play. This game is my favorite game as was the original CKI and I waited a long time to get a sequel to that great game so it can finally be what it could have been. I don't like that some people think that its their right to avoid paying for something because they think they have some right to use it without paying for it.
 
I frankly hope that the mod makers will support the company and not add playable muslims in their mods in any other way than through the dlc. Selling this expansion will make sure that there will be more of them in the future.
The only thing modders can do (except for hacking the .exe, which would probably be illegal in most countries, and would certainly get you a perma ban from the Paradox forums) is change the tags. This would make the muslims once more playable, but they'd lose out on many of the neat features, like polygamy and decadence, plus probably some other stuff. With the exception of more events, they'd mostly be like the muslims currently in the game.
 
The only thing modders can do (except for hacking the .exe, which would probably be illegal in most countries, and would certainly get you a perma ban from the Paradox forums) is change the tags. This would make the muslims once more playable, but they'd lose out on many of the neat features, like polygamy and decadence, plus probably some other stuff. With the exception of more events, they'd mostly be like the muslims currently in the game.

"Hacking the EXE" (via custom loader of simply distributing changes to it) is actually not illegal anywhere I know of. See also the various "Script Extender" mods for Bethesda's Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

However, Paradox games are moddable to hell and back as it is, so I don't really see any need to create such.
 
Devs have already confirmed that it would be possible to create a Sunni2 and Shiite2 religion, mod them as playable, then mod all the characters/provinces to be those religions. Which would let you play them as they are now without any of the incoming 1.6 improvements. You would have to be pretty cheap to do that though...
 
Devs have already confirmed that it would be possible to create a Sunni2 and Shiite2 religion, mod them as playable, then mod all the characters/provinces to be those religions. Which would let you play them as they are now without any of the incoming 1.6 improvements. You would have to be pretty cheap to do that though...

Will you be able to mod in a new religion which uses the DLC improvements? a moslemDLC=yes line or something?
Or will it be going back to the CK only changing the names of existing religions thing?
 
The only thing modders can do (except for hacking the .exe, which would probably be illegal in most countries, and would certainly get you a perma ban from the Paradox forums) is change the tags. This would make the muslims once more playable, but they'd lose out on many of the neat features, like polygamy and decadence, plus probably some other stuff. With the exception of more events, they'd mostly be like the muslims currently in the game.

The patch includes all changes afaik, so the AI can use it (like polygamy). The only thing the DLC does is setting the muslims to playable. So if you (or a mod) would set playable=yes (or what the command line is) you would have all features, or am I missing something?
 
The patch includes all changes afaik, so the AI can use it (like polygamy). The only thing the DLC does is setting the muslims to playable. So if you (or a mod) would set playable=yes (or what the command line is) you would have all features, or am I missing something?

They're making it impossible to do that with the patch. You can play "Muslims" if you make a new religion called "Muslim2" or something, but it would be like playing a Muslim now. Bare bones and just a copy of the Christian mechanics. You can't access the new mechanics yourself without buying the DLC.
 
Will you be able to mod in a new religion which uses the DLC improvements? a moslemDLC=yes line or something?
Or will it be going back to the CK only changing the names of existing religions thing?

From what they've suggested no. And I would hope so too to protect their IP and get you to put your hand in your pocket!

You could probably do it for the events, to be fair. But the interface, and presumably polygamy/decandence will be kept in the exe/hardcoded.