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CK2 Dev Diary #98 - Catholicism what? Constantinople where? Charlemagne who?

Greetings!

Today I’d like to cover one of the largest features of Holy Fury - a feature we’ve internally dubbed the ‘Alternate Start’ system!

This system consists of two separate sub-features, the Shattered World system and the Random World system. Each of these two systems are aimed towards different players - Shattered World is perfect for those who want a level playing field, while Random World will appeal to those of you that wish to explore an unfamiliar, yet fleshed out world complete with its own history and quirks.

These two features are accessed from either the Era Picker directly, or when choosing bookmarks through Custom Setup. You are free to choose any date to start, and the date you choose can even affect how a setup might look like. Choosing the 867 start date while using the default settings of Random World will tend to produce many more pagans and tribal realms, for example.

EraButtons.png

CustomSelectors.png


The Shattered World system allows you to break the world up into its constituent parts, be it Counties, Duchies or a mix of the two. It provides a balanced start, and allows for a sprawling new world to rise from the tiny disparate realms that start out within it.

ShatteredWorldSettings.png


To provide exactly the type of challenge that you seek, there are numerous parameters that control anything from Holding Slots to Technology.
For those seeking to recreate the world as it was, the Historical settings (which are selected by default) are what you want.
If you desire an entirely level playing field, you can set all provinces to have exactly 3 holding slots, for everyone to be Feudal, for technology to be the same everywhere, for Primogeniture to be the default succession law, and for each character to be exactly 30 years old with three children, OR…
If you just want a crazy game full of surprises, you could set all the parameters to Random or even Full Random. Who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself inhabiting an Iceland that has four 7-slot provinces, as a 65 year old matriarch following a religion based entirely around human sacrifice!
Naturally you’re free to mix and match these settings to your liking, perhaps you’d like a modicum of craziness in your otherwise balanced game? Hopefully you’ll find the settings to you liking!

Some players believe that there’s not enough challenge when starting out in a Shattered World (cough, @Meneth ) so for those of you that desire an opposition that is more than your match, we’ve got a setting for you! The ‘Great Conquerors’ setting allow you to spawn up to twelve special characters evenly across the map. These characters will wield special weapons, carry legendary blood in their veins and use especially powerful CB’s to rapidly conquer land much in the same way you would expect a player to. Naturally you can also choose to not have any Great Conquerors in your game, though I recommend starting with at least four of them!
GreatConqueror.png


Another setting that we have available for those who don’t want to wait around for too long until they can go to war is the ‘Consolidation Casus Belli’ setting. This setting unlocks a generic county conquest CB for everyone, without any particular cost. You can choose to have this CB active for 25 years, 100 years or indefinitely - and you can naturally choose to not have it active at all if you so wish. To avoid confusion, while this CB is active, the Border Dispute CB from Jade Dragon will be temporarily disabled (but return as the Consolidation CB becomes unavailable).

Now, on to the feature of the two which I find the most interesting - Random World!

This feature is truly a treasure trove for those of us who love exploring new and exciting worlds, while still preserving the familiarity of a game which we know and enjoy. With the parameters at hand you can tailor a world that tries to closely mimic the world we know, or you can choose to let it deviate fully!

In Random World you can choose to randomize almost everything; placements, names, functions and graphics of religions, cultures, titles, characters, governments and much more! While Shattered World and Random World do share a subset of settings, Random World undeniably has access to a more granular setup. If you want your game to be analogous to history you can choose to enable features such as ‘Holy Roman Empire’ or ‘Byzantine Empire’, for example - these settings will ensure that, somewhere in the world, something akin to those elements will exist. It won’t necessarily be too familiar though, there might indeed exist a large Elective Empire similar to the HRE - but they might just be located in Africa, adhering to a religion that promotes indiscriminate human sacrifice...

Random World Settings.png


As I mentioned before, at the core of a Random World lies a few main things; a dynamic religion, culture, de jure and ruler setup. Let's start with religion!

Religion is a very central aspect of the game, and thus it wouldn’t be overly exciting to generate a random world where the existing default religions are randomly placed (even though you can choose to do that, and having a Bön pagan Scandinavia or a Catholic India is undeniably fun - no question about that). Depending on the settings you choose, religions will be more or less altered - you can randomize the spread, features, naming and icon of religions. There’s even a way for you to preview religions before starting the game, and if you wish you can even customize their features right there and then!
Random World Religious Customization.png


The culture system is a bit more simplistic simply by the fact that cultures don’t generally have many gameplay features to speak of - in this system it’s mainly about the naming and spread of cultures.
Example Culture Spread.png


The De Jure setup randomization is a fairly sophisticated system. We’ve put a lot of thought and effort in making the resulting borders be as sensible as possible. We’ve for example taken extra care to ensure that the De Jure doesn’t jump wildly between islands, or seem generally disconnected or ‘snakey’. It generally provides an appropriate challenge when you wish to form a Kingdom or Empire!
Random World De Jure Kingdoms.png


The spread and placement of Governments can also be randomized. After all, why should nomads be limited to the steppe, and what’s saying that Europe should be high-tech and fully feudalized? I can tell you that it’s quite an experience playing a Nomad in Italy!
Random World Governments.png


Technology will naturally be randomized as well. The ‘baseline’ will depend on the year you choose to create your Random World in, the earlier, the less technology overall.

Now, here’s a few examples of Random Worlds, using an assortment of different settings!

This random World is generated with a generous amount of Dukes and Kings - this means that there are going to exist many more unified realms upon generation. A plethora of smaller kingdoms surround the centerpiece - an HRE inspired realm following a religion focused wholly on self-fulfilment without any formal leadership.
Random World Example 1.png


This world keeps most everything ‘historical’, except for the government and De Jure setup. The French nomads are of particular interest.
Random World Example 2 - Historical Cultures and Religions.png


This Random World I had to share for one very specific reason. At its core, it’s a nice and interesting world with several scattered kingdoms, and a major empire in North Africa keeping the peace. If you haven’t figured it out by your own yet - the random names are by-and-large based upon names from cultural namelists and dynasties, which in certain cases result in very fun names.
Example3.png


Persia has a very distinct religion, with very fitting features to boot.
memelard.png


And here’s one final Random World - a large Sacrosanct Empire looms in northern Russia and the polar circle, blocking the western tribes off from reaching the civilized east. In Europe many different faiths vie for dominance, from the unyielding and adventurous Dulanites in the Spanish region to the warmongering but syncretic Cult of Jahaira in the German region and beyond.
Example4.png


Worth noting is that I’ve not been able to cover all of the various settings that these features will have. There’s plenty of granularity, and you’ll be able to control most things in minute detail should you wish to do so. I encourage you to experiment with the settings! You never know what you might find...

We hope that these features will provide you with hours of entertainment, and that you get to generate the world that you wish to play in the most!
 

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Was hoping for more specifics on this

"Sway or Antagonize Your Neighbors: Try to win a reluctant vassal through charm and persuasion, or provoke someone you want to push into conflict."

Any info on what exactly that entails, or is that a topic for another DD?
 
Not so intresting. Could you tease the theme of the next DD?
 
Interesting. My only regret is lack of fully randomised map like EU4s RNW.

"Extra" features like this that aren't core expansion mechanic are usually placed in latest dev diaries.
Is there any DD missing other than saints mechanic?
 
You probably won't add this but I'd like the ability to generate a random world, literally the world is random, ie not europe and africa and western asia, but a new crazy looking landmass like the new world generator of EUIV.
 
Sounds cool!
One question regarding SHATTERED WORLD: Let's say everybody starts as a count. Do all the "overlaying" de-jure structures still exist? For example does Rome still belong to Latium --> Italy --> Italia?
If so, starting in county belonging to a 2-province-duchy would be way easier, as it's easier to form a duchy, and as such easier to vassalize other OPMs

EDIT: or even "worse": start as Isle of Man, a 1-province duchy :)
 
Two questions:
Will we be able to save the starting maps so we can use the same one multiple times?
Do the new religions use the pagan reformation system to create them, and if so does that mean no heresies in this world?

This is really exiting as a feature I've always wanted a game without the huge empires like the HRE and ERE, allowing smaller realms to fight.
 
Can we have generated clusters of independent count & dukes like e.g. historical Ireland? Because I see a lot of big kingdoms bordering big kingdoms.
 
Was hoping for more specifics on this

"Sway or Antagonize Your Neighbors: Try to win a reluctant vassal through charm and persuasion, or provoke someone you want to push into conflict."

Any info on what exactly that entails, or is that a topic for another DD?

Own DD. Let us keep this DD on topic, please.

Sounds cool!
One question regarding SHATTERED WORLD: Let's say everybody starts as a count. Do all the "overlaying" de-jure structures still exist? For example does Rome still belong to Latium --> Italy --> Italia?
If so, starting in county belonging to a 2-province-duchy would be way easier, as it's easier to form a duchy, and as such easier to vassalize other OPMs

Duchies will always be there, potentially renamed if you so choose. You can choose yourself if you want De Jure Kingdoms / De Jure Empires.

Two questions:
Will we be able to save the starting maps so we can use the same one multiple times?
Do the new religions use the pagan reformation system to create them, and if so does that mean no heresies in this world?

This is really exiting as a feature I've always wanted a game without the huge empires like the HRE and ERE, allowing smaller realms to fight.

The starting map will save when you generate it, so yes.
There will still be heresies.

Your mum is a memelard.

Yes, and I am proud of her for being one.
 
I might try a game where the world's actual religions are spread randomly across the map.

I don't think I'll try one with totally random religions. I doesn't provide me enough of a handhold. I might care about the conflicts between Christians, Muslims, Pagans, and Hindus because I'm already kinda sorta familiar with them, but I don't care quite so much about the differences between Armagons, Peraetics, and OIhegans.

That said, if it's possible to create a random map with all the regular religions, but give the realm where the player character starts out in its own custom religion, that might be fun. Wanting to create my own personal religion and then spread it across the rest of the world is a perfectly normal desire, right?