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CK2 Dev Diary #42: The Ever Changing Changelog

Greetings fellow crusaders!

This dev diary will be rather short, as I won’t be talking about anything new and exciting. With us getting ever closer to a release (and before you ask: no, I will not tell you when it might be just yet), I thought it might be a good time to start highlighting some of the stuff we have in our changelog.

First off, some balance changes:
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# Balance
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- Minor clan revolt troops are no longer inherited, and the leader of the uprising now has more money, prestige, population and manpower as well as two sons to succeed him
- If you grant a title and all titles below it to a child while following a religion that uses bishops, the temples will now have bishops generated rather than not get handed to the recipient
- "Cultural Bonds" no longer causes an alliance, but instead allows other independent characters of the conqueror's culture to join them in defensive wars. The AI is likely to do this if their opinion of the defender is positive and they're not busy with wars of their own
- Allowed vassals to press de jure claims against their fellow vassals again (though the AI won't)
- You'll now lose some Threat if dying causes you to lose land
- When the holder of a viceroyalty dies, they'll now be replaced in wars by their regular heir, not their liege
- The "Ask to Leave Court" diplomatic interaction will now cause the character's spouses to leave as well, and has the same requirements of the spouses as the character being asked to leave
- Increased the duration of the "War Taxes" modifier to five years (up from three), for completing the "Build a War Chest" Ambition
- Overthrow Ruler will now give the ruler a claim on the title if they accept the demands
- No longer possible to usurp titles from the vassals of a revolting vassal
- Capitals can now be moved every 50 years rather than once per lifetime. Nomads still get to move it every 10 years
- Merchant Republics with too few patricians will no longer draft people who are heir to a title to become patricians, since this risks disinheriting them
- No longer possible to ask to join a war against someone you have a non-aggression pact with
- The "make my court/vassals speak English" events can now trigger if one's a vassal of Britannia rather than England, and can trigger for the king/emperor as well, not just their vassals
- The prestige you get from being a consort now scales with the tier of your spouse. Reduced the prestige to half. Now it ranges from 0.5/month from a baron to 2.5/month from an emperor
- The capital duchy of a title, if held by the title holder, will under elective/tanistry law now always follow that title's succession, even if your heir is not playable for you. Counties, baronies, and other duchies will still revert to primogeniture in that case
- Now possible to give temple holdings to children if that does not risk disinheriting them
- No longer possible to appoint someone to your council when they're part of a faction that's sent you an ultimatum; this could be exploited to have them leave the faction, giving you an easy win in the faction war, or invalidating it entirely
- When non-primary war participants die, their primary heir will now stay in the war if the inherited title ends up as their primary title, and it'd be possible for them to ask to join the war, or be called in by the war leader
- When eating your prisoners, you can now attract a non-serious disease
- No longer possible to join or start factions while you have a truce with your liege
- Landed characters now pick a plot if they have none considerably more often; on average after 12 months

Not too much to add. Most of them should speak for themselves. Overall some nice changes and fixes.

To go along all of the quality of life additions we’ve made for 2.7, there are a bunch of smaller changes for the interface as well. Most of these should make the game slightly more user-friendly and easier to use:

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# Interface
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- The levy tooltip now shows all modifiers to levy size rather than just the influence of martial and the location of the holding compared to one's capital
- The council job actions now say their name at the top of the tooltip even if the councilor is currently performing the action
- "Favorite map mode" buttons will now be highlighted if the associated map mode is selected via the regular button rather than the custom button
- The game will no longer occasionally change the selected tab for no apparent reason on the character screen if you have a non-ruler selected
- When part of a faction revolt, the faction leader's units will look allied rather than neutral
- Updated the "Grant Viceroyalty" interaction to include the "Include Vassal Titles" checkbox
- Added support for accented ASCII characters and similar (E.G., é, å, ü) in the Character Finder's search field
- The holding view will now show the influence of stewardship on the holding's tax income, and the income summary in the province view will acount for the stewardship bonus
- Updated the Focus window to avoid some cases were it wouldn't explain why you are unable to select a given focus
- Reaper's Due: The Hospital icon in the province view will now open the hospital buildings screen if the province has a hospital. If it does not, it will toggle the Extended Province View
- The main menu music will now start playing if you unmute it using the main menu settings, even if you started the game with music muted
- Fixed game rule titles sometimes going across two lines on the game rule screen for some languages
- Updated the dynasty view for the Indian religions, as they would use the Christian dynasty ornament
- Clicking the Nomad Agitation alert will now select the relevant province, not just pan to it
- Made the list of titles in the character view slightly wider
- The event where you ask your court physician to save your sickly child will now show the child's portrait
- Known/backed plots now show their plot power in the UI entry itself, not just the tooltip
- Clicking a council job action again will now cancel the job assignment
- Recalling someone from their council action while having a job selected for assignment will now cancel job assignment
- The border highlighting of selected CBs now takes precedence over selected provinces or titles
- Updated the condition tooltips for the decisions "Mend the Great Schism" and "Restore the Roman Empire" to shorten the tooltip and make them easier to read
- Now only possible to hit "Ready" in multiplayer when the save has finished loading
- Fixed the character UI not fully updating if the character died while you were looking at them. Before this would result in the plot button still being available, as well as a number of other issues
- The realm peace tooltip will now tell you how long it has been since you used realm peace if it is on cooldown
- Build Time and Build Cost modifiers now show as percentages (E.G., -10.0% instead of -0.1)
- Added a unique skin for the Republic view when playing as Indian
- Added a sound for gaining a new trait
- Event options will now list both trait icons and affected character portraits
- Fixed the "Call to Arms" text sometimes not fitting the letter window
- Changed the color of the mosaic at the top of the Muslim Clan/Nomad interface, to make it different from the Council interface
- The tooltip for religion in the province window now provides the same info as the religion tooltip in the character religion
- The title shields on the law page now no longer change order when you click any of them, instead making the selected one bigger
- Interface shortcuts that require the SHIFT key to be used now more clearly indicate that's the case. In the past a capital letter shortcut meant SHIFT was used, but now it'll say for example "SHIFT+A" rather than just "A"
- Removed "Show Commanders" choice in the Minor Titles View and changed the "Show Honorary Titles" to "Show Commanders Only" to only display commanders
- Added new option to the Minor Titles View "Auto-assign Commanders", which will replace a commander automatically with the best available candidate whenever a commander dies
- You no longer have to resign a commander first in order to replace them in the minor titles view
- Switched the placement of the title shield and the voter stance for the council in the My/Liege Council tab, to keep consistency with other portraits
- Fixed clicking on someone's primary title sometimes not taking you to their capital
- Clicking on a character's plot on the character screen will now take you to the target of the plot
- Fixed the decision to donate to the Knights of the Sun not having an icon
- The religion screen will no longer show the title of the religious head if there is no religious head
- The "Mod" and "Version" checkboxes in the multiplayer browser have been clarified to "Same Mods" and "Same Version"
- Moved the scrollbar slightly in the different law tabs, to make them somewhat easier to see
- Removed the "double" click sound you would get when clicking a province if the Extended Province View was opened already
- Added a sound effect when turning the pages in the Chronicle
- Added indicators for good and bad childhood traits in the Education Focus picker
- Removed the additional important minor title portraits at top of the Council View
- Made so the prisoner icon is now clickable and takes you to the imprisoner
- Improved the tooltip for the "Revoke Vassal Title" plot
- Updated character tooltip so it mentions whether you have educator/guardian (with name and location) and removed redundant tooltip that gave the same information
- Educate character interaction tooltip now use Conclave description if Conclave is enabled

This is not the full changelog, mind you. There are still plenty of bug fixes and other things in the changelog that isn't listed here. Should any entry be unclear, I’ll try to answer any question you might have about them.
 
Really cool changes. The wait is killing me, it has been more than two months already!
 
That doesn't stop us guessing the release date.
 
- "Cultural Bonds" no longer causes an alliance, but instead allows other independent characters of the conqueror's culture to join them in defensive wars. The AI is likely to do this if their opinion of the defender is positive and they're not busy with wars of their own
What? OK, I totally n00bed out and missed this element of the game: could someone explain Cultural Bonds alliences/war joining to me? When does it happen, or has the chance to happen?
- Made so the prisoner icon is now clickable and takes you to the imprisoner
Ooooh, nice!
 
"- If you grant a title and all titles below it to a child while following a religion that uses bishops, the temples will now have bishops generated rather than not get handed to the recipient"

Confused. Didn't it used to hand the title to the child and then they dealt with it themselves?

"- Allowed vassals to press de jure claims against their fellow vassals again (though the AI won't)"

Wut?
 
- When non-primary war participants die, their primary heir will now stay in the war if the inherited title ends up as their primary title, and it'd be possible for them to ask to join the war, or be called in by the war leader

Could this be an end to the frustrating scenario of having a crusade victory ripped away from you at the last minute because your character dies just before crusade completion and your heir loses the entire war contribution? If so, bravo!
 
"- If you grant a title and all titles below it to a child while following a religion that uses bishops, the temples will now have bishops generated rather than not get handed to the recipient"

Confused. Didn't it used to hand the title to the child and then they dealt with it themselves?
There would be some circumstances were the temple just wouldn't be handed out at all, since the child cannot hold the actual title.

"- Allowed vassals to press de jure claims against their fellow vassals again (though the AI won't)"

Wut?
There was a change to the de jure claim in 2.6 I think, that would prevent you from using the CB against the last county of a fellow vassal. That has been changed back to how it used to be, except for the AI.
 
I'll just assume that you decided not to put raiding as an Irish cultural trait in the changelog :)
Irish tribals can raid though.
 
Landed characters now pick a plot if they have none considerably more often; on average after 12 months

Does this mean that if per se I have 10 counts under me, that they will all have a plot most of the time?
 
- Updated the dynasty view for the Indian religions, as they would use the Christian dynasty ornament
I think this is an issue for Zoroastrians as well. You should only have the ornaments show for christian style shields, rather than checking for religion. Otherwise it's still shown for pagan dynasties that convert to some form of Christianity.
- Landed characters now pick a plot if they have none considerably more often; on average after 12 months
I hope you've added more plots to support this and that you're not just making them murder people willy-nilly.
- The capital duchy of a title, if held by the title holder, will under elective/tanistry law now always follow that title's succession, even if your heir is not playable for you. Counties, baronies, and other duchies will still revert to primogeniture in that case
Interesting, but would you care to elaborate? For exampe, if I hold k_ireland, d_meath as well as c_dublin and c_kildare and lose k_ireland upon death, will I lose all lesser titles or only d_meath? I know you wrote duchy only, but what's the point of losing the duchy and not the counties under it?

Will vassals under the duchy go with the new title holder, in the case of Ireland an OPM holding c_kildare? Are we better off not holding (or at least not creating) the capital duchy if we're running an elective monarchy?

And finally, does this affect all king and above titles or only the loss of a primary title and how does it handle conflicts between the two? Say you hold e_britannia and k_england as well as d_bedford and the counties beneath it. What will happen if you lose only e_britannia or only k_england since Middlesex is the capital of both?