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CK2 Dev Diary #29: Illumination

By the grace of God, I am finally back and able to pen another development diary, though my hands are still unsteady from the shocking things I saw while in hiding. I think it best to simply recount my harrowing experiences of the last few weeks. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there is much to be learned from my travails.

For many months, I had felt that something strange was going on at the office. In hindsight, the signs were all there; colleagues naming their daughters “Sophia”, hushed talk of “secret knowledge” and Dan “podcat” Lind suddenly breaking off his presentation of the next Hearts of Iron IV expansion in order to explain how the Creator is just an “evil emanation of the original Monad”. But it wasn’t until Björn “Metal King” Iversen took me aside to listen to the subliminal messages in various Judas Priest tracks that I finally realized the truth: the company had been infiltrated by Sethian Gnostics! I recognized some of the messages from the Second Treatise of the Great Seth and the Gospel of Judas...

I suddenly did not want to help Björn record any more death sounds. Who knows how many souls he has helped “liberate” from this earthly prison in his infernal studio? He eyed me with suspicion when I assured him that I had already achieved Gnosis. Beating a hasty retreat, I was forced to skulk in various unused meeting rooms for a full week until I could finally make my escape. While in hiding, I witnessed many disturbing sights; people wearing inverted pentagrams and muttering to themselves, a secret follower of Mahomet performing an odd prayer ritual, various outlandish and no doubt fraternal handshakes, and worst of all; a vile heathen festival in the lunchroom involving spiderwebs, skulls and a bloody brew spewing smoke.

The rot runs deep. There are worse things afoot than mere Gnostic heretics... I fear there are several other corrupt sects burrowing like ticks within our ranks. How could this happen? What malign stars have aligned in the skies above our afflicted nation? Dark heresiarchs are at work in the Realm, pulling strings from the shadows and inducting naïve game developers into their subversive cabals. Who can feel safe in these dark times?

I have written the Holy See with a plea for aid. My sole hope lies in the Holy Father, Pope Francis, though I wonder if he is made of stern enough stuff to unleash the Hounds of God, for I fear only the Dominicans can save us now, as they did in the times of Cardinal Torquemada, bless his soul...

May God send us a light, for the darkness surrounds us!

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What?
 
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A religion and heresies DLC? Seems cool.

Since you specifically mention Gnostics, Are we going to get another TL expansion?
 
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So expanded Cathars and Bogomilists? Yay!
 
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Not sure what you'd even add to CK2 at this point. I'm always interested and very glad to add more features, but I think I'm approaching the point where I'd like to see CK3 instead, with a fresh start. It's so hard to recommend this game anymore because of the sheer amount of expansions, feels like we need a new baseline.
 
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Not sure what you'd even add to CK2 at this point. I'm always interested and very glad to add more features, but I think I'm approaching the point where I'd like to see CK3 instead, with a fresh start. It's so hard to recommend this game anymore because of the sheer amount of expansions, feels like we need a new baseline.

If I remember well there will be only a couple DLCs after this one, possibly only one.

Edit - from DD14 :
We’ll soon be announcing the upcoming expansion, which is slated for release in late August. It’s not a huge one this time around, but there is plenty of good stuff in there as you've probably gleaned from Darkrenown's diaries. After that, we have two more expansions teed up. The first will be somewhat similar to Way of Life in scope and theme, and the second one will likely be huge. After that, it might really be time to let go, but it’s also possible we’ll wind down with another small expansion (nr 15).

Which makes me wonder how this could be similar to Way of Life. New events of course, but also possibly more control on the way you follow your religion ?
 
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While I do like gnosticism, I was hoping something more relevant to the 15th century.. Like War of the Roses :oops:

War of the Roses is something inherent to the concept of Crusader Kings II, a struggle about dynasties with powerful characters, and still in the (late) Middle Ages. And those pesky reasonings that this would conflict with EUIV timeline is just abusurd, CK2 should end at least in 1492, and all the 1300's and 1400's should be implemented. A special DLC for late game is highly needed.
 
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I just have a couple questions regarding potential future updates, specially since this diary is focused on interface:

1. Any chance we will see a bigger court limit than 50 before pruning starts? I thought itd be cool if we could have it scale with rank. Maybe Emperors having 60-70?

2. Also it would make keeping track of characters easier if we could organize the characters of interest into lists. Example: characters of interest list 1: for tracking good congenital courtier, List 2: for tracking children being tutored, List 3: people with good claims you are waiting to invite to your court etc

3. lastly something simple for the interface i saw mentioned by a poster in the last devdiary: Clicking the intrigue symbol next to ambition and focus in the character screen linking you to the person the plot is against. Saves you time having to look up who the character is.Specially when you have discovered plots in your court and are trying to trim on unimportant ones while retaining some that are beneficial.
 
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I predict a lot of people will have a lot of Warhammer 40K memes to get off their chest in the near future...

As to me, I was among the voices calling for heresies, the weirder the better, to get fleshed out. So if this is what's up, awesome.
 
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Intriguing. Gnostics, heretics, forbidden knowledge -- can it be religion finally gets the attention it should?

Sons of Abraham added some good things to the game, but much more could have been done with religion, a driving factor of every day life in the game's timeperiod. If this DLC is about that -- excellent.
 
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Not sure what you'd even add to CK2 at this point.

-Cadet branches
-Autocratic government
-Dynamic melting pots
-Base value system
-Gunpowder units
-Something to portray Renaissance
-Name weighting
-Anything to portray naval battles
-More dynamic historical events
 
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Dominicans... does that suggest that we'll have playable thocracies or that monastic orders will filnally play a greater role? :D

Stoked for more fleshed out heresies! Especially if they'll flesh out the Shi'a heterodoxies!!

EDIT: The Caduceus... that was a symbol of Mithraic mysteries, but that's too far off the deep end of the starting date, what else could it represent (aside from medicine of course)?
 
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