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CK2 Dev Diary #105 - Clergy Interactions Revamp

Hello, everyone.

Today we will be talking of a nice quality of life update to the interface, AI behavior and some new additional flavor regarding the Papacy (as well as any similar religious head that has access to these interactions, such as a Reformed Pagan High Priest with Hierocratic Leadership).

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The patch coming with Holy Fury will place all Papal Actions in a more easily accessible list of icons, right under the portrait of your religious head in the Religion screen.

Furthermore, the behavior for all these actions has been un-hardcoded and fully scripted, so the Pope is now much more sensible when deciding who he wants to Excommunicate, and less restrictive when considering the possibility of granting an Invasion casus belli to an ambitious ruler. More importantly, players are now able to see exactly why their religious head is denying them a request.

The AI logic itself has been considerably expanded and tailored to the various actions.

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Having a vassal Pope no longer ensures that all your demands will be automatically accepted, and having an independent Pope will not make it near-impossible to get a favor from him. The Pope will take into consideration Opinion, Piety, traits, the specific circumstances (such as divorcing an infertile wife), and the amount of controlled Cardinal seats when deciding whether to accept a ruler’s request or not. Piety costs for these interactions have also been rebalanced and tied to the ruler’s tier, making them more accessible to low ranking rulers and costlier to Kings and Emperors.

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The Request Claim interaction has been given a special new interface as well to make it more intuitive and accessible to players. Rather than having to search directly for the title that you wish to gain a claim on, you can use the new button in the religious view to get a list of potential Catholic rulers owning titles for which the Pope is willing to grant you a claim on. By clicking on any of them, you will be shown a second window showing the list of all titles owned by the target ruler and from there you can select the one that you are interested in.

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Finally, if you are Excommunicated, the Issue Declaration of Repentance decision has been revamped so that it is no longer simply a cash payment.

Much like when requesting a coronation, the Pope will now pick one out of several possible demands for the player to fulfill in exchange for the lifting of his excommunication. Requests can range from a show of contrition causing Prestige loss, to changing your realm laws, to give one of your sons to the Church.


Also, bonus Cardinal clothes, pre and post 1245:

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It seems that this thread is deviating from its original topic. Is there anybody who still remembers that this is a Dev Dairy and is not for pagan leader names?

I have posted a new thread, and maybe it would better to continue the discussion here.
 
I might have missed this in previous dev diaries, but will the autocephalous religious heads' titles become moddable?
 
I can't agree more about divorce being changed to annulment, but continent? I never even heard the term before today. I'm not disagreeing, but I'd like to see some indications of how they were used differently.
@BeyondExpectation
Chastity maybe in some cases?


Although chastity would be only having sex with your legal partner.
Celibacy kind of works if the Pope is also forbiding you contact with your spouse, although it isn't the ideal term - but continence (in sexual terms) is used for trying to have sex without reaching full climax as well, so it doesn't quite make sense as a term either.
 
I can't agree more about divorce being changed to annulment, but continent? I never even heard the term before today. I'm not disagreeing, but I'd like to see some indications of how they were used differently.

@BeyondExpectation
Chastity maybe in some cases?


Although chastity would be only having sex with your legal partner.
Celibacy kind of works if the Pope is also forbiding you contact with your spouse, although it isn't the ideal term - but continence (in sexual terms) is used for trying to have sex without reaching full climax as well, so it doesn't quite make sense as a term either.

Celibacy is a special vow, means never marrying.
Continence is a special vow, means abstaining from sex forever (whether married or not).
Chastity is obligatory on everyone, means no sex except in marriage.

Celibacy is and was a more common term than continence, but celibacy very explicitly means no marriage, so it's bizarre to have people "vowing to be celibate" in CK2 while still being married. There's a lot of references to this online, but for example from wiki,
In this context, "celibacy" retains its original meaning of "unmarried". Though even the married may observe continence, abstaining from sexual intercourse, the obligation to be celibate is seen as a consequence of the obligation to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven.
 
Великий means Great and it's not something I, as a Russian speaker, would use for a head of something, as it in most cases doesn't have a connotation that it's the only greatest something, can be just one of great somethings. Верховный on the other hand means high(est) as in supreme, so that would be a more fitting choice.

Eh,,, You as Russian wouldn't use Veliky Knyaz? That's how historically Grand Dukes were called in Russia.,
 
Eh,,, You as Russian wouldn't use Veliky Knyaz? That's how historically Grand Dukes were called in Russia.,
Ah, it was the fact that there were several of them at some point that made me confused about the nature of the title. Looking it up again, seems like a Veliky Knyaz would indeed stand above other Knyazes hierarchically at least from the point where mongols came and made it a title to collect tribute from other Knyazes, and originally they appointed only one Veliky Knyaz. In which case, I guess, Veliky Volhv/Zhrets would work too.
 
The +50 vassal Pope modifier for favor requests seems like it will rarely overcome the base reluctance and free investiture maluses, making the vassal pope little more than a troublesome vassal (still affected by all the normal vassal opinion maluses) that provides very few levies and tax income.

Does the free investiture malus go away when making requests to anti-popes (given that they normally do not care about free investiture)? If so, then there would be little reason to ever vassalize the pope.

Will some of the pagan reformations allow for a secular ruler that can excommunicate like the secular Yazidi Sheik?

Seems like the Orthodox, Nestorian, and Miaphysite religions are getting hit real hard when their only saving grace was having a vassal religious head.
 
Oof
You mean half of all the money catholic bishops have isn't good enough?

Often times the pope will not even pay you taxes. When he does, it never seems to be half of all the tax income of all pope-paying-bishops and even if it were, it would still be very meager compared to what a normal-sized king vassal would pay you.

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Often times the pope will not even pay you taxes. When he does, it never seems to be half of all the tax income of all pope-paying-bishops and even if it were, it would still be very meager compared to what a normal-sized king vassal would pay you.

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Don't forget take your taxation laws into account
Max out the money taxes for your theocratic vassals and you're good

And
it would still be very meager compared to what a normal-sized king vassal would pay you.
Citation needed
 
Citation needed

You are right about the pope making a little more than other king-tier vassals. I incorrectly gleaned information from the wrong screen which seemed to indicate that kings paid more in taxes (sorry). Regardless, when you have a +180 gold/month income, +10 from the pope a month is a bit underwhelming, and that +10 is from Catholicism covering the entirety of Europe, Anatolia, and a little beyond. Going from 40% to 70% tax will result in an increase, to be sure, but it will not be that significant considering your bishops may pay you directly rather than the pope.

Assuming you are some super-emperor, all of Catholicism may very well be under your domain and an anti-pope may serve just as well, which is partially why I asked about whether anti-popes care about free investiture, as one of the images in this dev diary showed that it was the deciding factor in not getting a divorce. I assume they have the same malus, but I was unsure.

I agree that this change was needed from a historical point of view as well as balance reasons. Regardless, this is getting to be a little off-topic.
 
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As it seems we are going to be in CK2 forever (which I guess I don't mind), can we get a multiplayer upgrade to move it closer to at least EU4 level with hotjoin and better recovery from desyncs? Or go full on HOI4/Stellaris level of MP engine?
 
When did this become the norm btw? Cos I swear when I used to play catholics regularly years ago I dident notice. Now that i've started playing them again this year every run it sticks out like a sore thumb how many kings are excomunicated.