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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!
 
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
 
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?
 
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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).
 
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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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).
 
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.