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CK3 - Dev Diary #22 - A Medieval Tapestry

Hello everyone! Today Virvatuli and I are bringing you a Development Diary about how we’re catering to different player fantasies in CK3. We will also showcase some of the content and gameplay you’ll encounter!

We are huge believers in allowing players as much freedom as possible to shape the game world in their image, which is reflected in the Paradox slogan “We make the games, you create the stories.” Of course, when trying to model history reasonably accurately as we do in CK3, your starting environment might be a far cry from the just and equal Realm you wish to rule, but determined players should be able to change the mores of their society over time - if that is their fantasy.

As you might suspect, the CK3 team consists of some very nerdy, passionate and compassionate people. Some of the things we’re outlining in this Dev Diary were part of the regular development process, and some have been passion projects. It has been very important for us to represent our players, the team behind the game, and the people who don’t feature heavily in most history books and media. We want everyone to feel welcome and to empower you to play your fantasy.

CK3 truly is a diverse game; it spans a map of nearly half the world and almost six centuries of history. This world is inhabited by a myriad of titles, cultures, faiths, and characters. It’s been our goal to represent all of these things with a great level of detail and accuracy to give you all a deeply immersive experience with more dynamic elements and player choice than ever before. Will you recreate history, build a brand new world, or something in between? It is all in your hands.

But we haven’t just added more diversity; that variety is also much more readily available than it was in CK2. For example, all Faiths and Cultures on the map are playable on release, and the dynamic Faith system will give you much greater power to change the world. We’ve also added many different Game Rules which allow you to tailor your CK3 experience. If you would rather play as a Queen than a King from day one, the Game Rules let you do that, without having to create a custom Faith during your campaign. There are other challenges out there to conquer and stories to explore!

We are incredibly proud of all the stuff we’ve made for you, so without any further ado, let’s jump into the juicy, juicy details!


Gender Options

All gender-related restrictions in CK3 are controlled by the Faiths, either directly or indirectly. As we have an awesome dynamic Faith system, all such restrictions can be changed during a playthrough. Our design philosophy for Faith Tenets related to gender has been to have the exact same options available for men and women. For example, the “View on Gender” Tenet has the settings “Male Dominated”, “Equal” and “Female Dominated”. All the restrictions for women in Male Dominated Faiths are applied to men instead in Female Dominated Faiths.

genderviewtenet.png


Even when men historically held the highest titles and womens’ rights were limited, women still had a vital impact on the world around them. In many parts of the medieval world, it was not uncommon for women to rule in their husbands’ absence, they were often advisors and took care of estates. We have chosen to represent this with the Spouse Council Position. Your Spouse’s skills have a direct impact on your realm and you will see events about your Spouse handling all sorts of duties, from negotiating with factions to raising additional troops.

the_guard_1.png


Like in CK2, we have a Gender Equality Game Rule, but with some improvements and added variation. The “Equal” setting (corresponding to “All” in CK2) covers more areas and has fewer exceptions than it did in CK2, largely thanks to our dynamic Faith system and the design philosophy mentioned above. It also comes with an “Inverted” setting where the historical gender statuses are turned on their head and women become the dominant gender in most religions.

Diversity_female_rules.png


Women are also more visually present in Crusader Kings than ever before. We have some awesome loading screens with a diverse bunch of characters, for example, but the biggest impact comes from the new event window. In CK2 we had lovely event illustrations, but the drawback was the lack of variation when it came to characters. In CK3 we use our gorgeous character models to bring the events to life, which will showcase the rich diversity of the cast of your playthrough in the event windows.

far_from_home_1.png



Sexuality

Sexuality provides added spice to character behavior and motivations, both in real life and in CK3, and it will also affect what is considered sinful or even criminal in a Faith in the game. It’s great for drama and intrigue, and in CK3 we’ve given sexualities more granularity. In addition to heterosexuality and homosexuality from CK2, characters can also be bisexual and asexual. Sexuality is no longer defined by a trait, but has its own system, which makes it easier to handle for us and more visible in the interface for you. It also means that we do not frame heterosexuality as the default in CK3, which was also important for us.

Children develop their sexualities around the age of 10 and once set, it will not change. It’s worth noting that we don’t model sexual and romantic attraction separately in the game, so a character’s sexuality sets both their sexual and romantic preferences.

budding_attraction.png


We do however differentiate between sexual preference and sexual behavior in-game. A character’s sexuality in and of itself can never be criminal, but certain sexual acts can be. For example, if a Faith’s “View on Same-Sex Relations” is not set to “Accepted”, two men who have sex will get the “Sodomite” Secret (no matter their sexuality). While the AI doesn’t pursue romance or sex with someone they’re not attracted to, the player can sometimes choose to act against their sexual preference (albeit with a penalty, and it can never lead to a lover relationship). This means a player’s heterosexual male character could get the “Sodomite” Secret if they seduce a homosexual or bisexual man.

We have two Game Rules related to sexuality: “View on Same-Sex Relations” and “Sexuality Distribution”. The former is very similar to the “View on Gender” rule I mentioned above; it can change all Faith’s “View on Same-Sex Relations” from their historical defaults to “Accepted”. The latter can change how common each sexuality is. The settings are “Default” which means Heterosexuality is the most common sexuality, “Equal” which makes all four sexualities equally common, and one setting each for Homosexuality, Bisexuality, and Asexuality which makes them the most common sexuality instead of Heterosexuality.

accepted_same_sex_relationships.png



Faiths

As the dev diaries of the last couple of weeks have shown we have given Faiths a lot of attention, and as you might already know, all Faiths will be unlocked at game start. The dynamic Faith system has allowed us to add plenty of variation at release; we hope you’ll find that each Faith has its own flavor and quirks.

Even better, we now have more distinctions between different non-Christian Faiths, especially in Africa and India! African Paganism from CK2 has been replaced with at least six new Faiths; Roog, Bori, Siguism, Akom, Waaqism, and Kushitism, all with their own Tenets and flavor. For example, the Bori have a long history of matriarchs and worship the spirits. As they believe in spirit possession and that spirits can be either feminine or masculine, they are accepting of same-sex relations. The Siguics, on the other hand, worship their ancestors and believe that twins are blessed.

religion.png


Hinduism has been split into seven different Faiths. In addition to expanding upon and fleshing out the four main traditions of Hinduism (Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism and Smartism), CK3 also sees the addition of less well-known Hindu traditions such as Krishnaism and Advaitism. Buddhism has five Faiths, Jainism three, and many Religions across the map have received similar diversification. We have also added a Dualism Religion with seven different Faiths, for example Manicheanism, Mandeanism, and Sabianism.

india.png


And as you can create your own Faiths, you will be able to create the kind of society you want to play in. As I have mentioned, some things can be preset through Game Rules, but the challenge of changing the world to your liking can be a really satisfying experience.

For example, we have the Game Rules “Faith Acceptance” which makes religious wars and disagreements a thing of the past, and “Randomized Faiths” which gives everyone in the world a random Faith. For those of you who are sensitive to border gore, please proceed with caution as the following screenshot contains graphic imagery. For the rest, how many Faiths can you spot in the screenshot?

how_many_faiths.png



Ethnicities and Cultures

We have expanded the amount of portrait asset sets from the two in the CK2 base game to a grand total of seven in CK3! On release, there will be a visual distinction between Western Europe, Northern Pagans, the Middle East/North Africa, Byzantium, the Steppe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and India. We will also have an even greater number of ethnicities, so you will see variations within these seven groups.

Thanks to the new portrait system, ethnicities now blend seamlessly. When two characters of different ethnicities have a child, the children will look a bit like both parents. More on this in a later Development Diary!


The End

That’s all for this week, friends! Unfortunately, Virvatuli will not be around to answer your questions this time, as she has set out on a new adventure after four years at Paradox. But the rest of the team will be around, of course, so ask away!

Take care of yourselves and each other <3
 
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Probably Polish culture with Russian father.

EDIT: Actually, probably just a pre-defined character name since she's the same in the CK2 files.

She's russian and orthodox (below traits), and her name should follow same latinisation rules as other russian names. If her father is Sviatoslav, she is Vyšeslava and CK2 is also wrong
 
That is most often how dynasties ended up with unfavorable circumstances in real life, so it sounds fine to me. Securing your succession 100% should mean needing to micromanage your family members.
The issue I was pointing out was that we still don't know if all characters default to matrilineal marriages in female preferred realms and use both marriage types equally in equal realms.
 
The thing about matrilieal marriages is that if every dynasty would only accept regular marriages for men and matrilineal marriages for women, then there wouldn't be many marriages anymore. It makes sense from the perspective of wanting to spread your dynasty, but in every marriage between two different dynasties, one of them always has to lose out. And yes, in CK2 you could exploit the marriage AI in order to make sure that is was always the *other* dynasty who was losing out, which meant you could spread your own dynasty over the entire map pretty fast... And there is nothing wrong with that in principle, but I personally would prefer it if the AI was a little more suspicious of marrying into a dynasty who always seems to get the better marriage type for them.
 
It all looks fantasic
except for that spooky spouse ghost

Yeah, I think that should be left out. If a character is unmarried, instead of a ghost spouse it should just not display anything there, kinda like the screenshot of Aamira next to her.
 
Yeah, I think that should be left out. If a character is unmarried, instead of a ghost spouse it should just not display anything there, kinda like the screenshot of Aamira next to her.
I think the ghost is a button to get married, since that's a player character. The unmarried one isn't a player character, thus no shadow.
 
I've written down the concerns regarding the use of "Marrano", Poganstwo, and the gender status in the Basques and will make sure that this is discussed in the team!

What about the Catholic Basque whose society was more egalitarian than the rest of Christendom?

It's, or at least in the case of groups like the Basques, being discussed/
Please, don't misrepresent the Basques. The whole basque matriarchal society is more of a hipothesis than a historical fact, and probably it doesn't represent the Medieval basques. Historical records prove otherwise: the Kingdom of Navarra and the Lordship of Vizcaya, the two main political entities of the region, follow a male preference succession (what in CK2 would be Agnatic-Cognatic), even in their earliest centuries. Even a supposed matriarchy at a popular level has to contend with the fact that the custom for Basques was to reference to the father in surnames (Garcés, son of García; Sanchez, son of Sancho, Iñiguez, son of Iñigo. Or their latin counterparts: Garceanis, Enneconis...) and that the Navarrese Libro de fuegos, a 1366 census of the whole Navarrese Kingdom, lists men as the head of the households, unless the household was that of a widow.
 
Please, don't misrepresent the Basques. The whole basque matriarchal society is more of a hipothesis than a historical fact, and probably it doesn't represent the Medieval basques. Historical records prove otherwise: the Kingdom of Navarra and the Lordship of Vizcaya, the two main political entities of the region, follow a male preference succession (what in CK2 would be Agnatic-Cognatic), even in their earliest centuries. Even a supposed matriarchy at a popular level has to contend with the fact that the custom for Basques was to reference to the father in surnames (Garcés, son of García; Sanchez, son of Sancho, Iñiguez, son of Iñigo. Or their latin counterparts: Garceanis, Enneconis...) and that the Navarrese Libro de fuegos, a 1366 census of the whole Navarrese Kingdom, lists men as the head of the households, unless the household was that of a widow.
Nobody was saying they were matriarchial? I didn't even say they were egalitarian, I said they were more egalitarian than their surroundings.
 
I have a problem with the India religious map. India was never divided on religious lines in this way among the Dharmic religions. There was no time when a province was entirely Buddhist or entirely Hindu or entirely Jain. These three religions co-existed at a local level. Religious homogeneity in this way was alien to India for this time period.

This map goes even further and establishes provinces at a sect level as Vaishnavism and Shavaism and so forth. This is just unfathomable. It looks like a porting of Catholic/Orthodox or Shia/Sunni, but the differences between these sects are in no way comparable to differences between similar sects in Christianity or Islam. Its not as if a Vaishavite king was going to persecute a Shaivaite subject (which would have led to religious homogeniety in the end)
 
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I have a problem with the India religious map. India was never divided on religious lines in this way among the Dharmic religions. There was no time when a province was entirely Buddhist or entirely Hindu or entirely Jain. These three religions co-existed at a local level. Religious homogeneity in this way was alien to India for this time period.

That would have to be modeled by easier converting, the current system does not allow for minority religions, so there really is no way to implement it.
 
That would have to be modeled by easier converting, the current system does not allow for minority religions, so there really is no way to implement it.

One way to implement it is to not implement it. Have all the provinces simply categorized as Dharmic (or Indian or eastern or whatever name they are going with) without further segmentation into particular religions.
 
One way to implement it is to not implement it. Have all the provinces simply categorized as Dharmic (or Indian or eastern or whatever name they are going with) without further segmentation into particular religions.

It would make no sense to not have Jains, Buddhists, and Hindus as separate, since that did definately have huge impacts on policies and the like in Medieval India. I agree that having the sects in the game for these religions makes no sense, but to ignore the defining thing that happened in India in this time - the decline of Buddhism and Jainism, would be silly.
 
One way to implement it is to not implement it. Have all the provinces simply categorized as Dharmic (or Indian or eastern or whatever name they are going with) without further segmentation into particular religions.

That'd create issues even before you get to custom Dharmic faiths that might not play nice together with the others. If a realm outside the already Dharmic part of the map converts to a a Dharmic religion, chances are any provinces they convert that aren't in the already Dharmic regions of the map wouldn't have sizeable minorities following other Dharmic faiths in the short term (or at least not minorities larger than whatever was present before the province converted), meaning that e.g. "Theravada [with a Catholic minority]" is going to be more accurate than "Dharmic [with a Theravada majority]".
 
Dharmic religions should just offer the options to convert to each others very easily even if they've disappeared from the map, and have relatively good relations with each others. It's unfortunate the game is going to do a poor job at showing the coexistence of multiple religious schools on the same territory since each country can only have one religion, but as long as the Dharmic elites are able to keep converting to each others and keep the different religious schools alive that might alleviate the problem.
 
I have a problem with the India religious map. India was never divided on religious lines in this way among the Dharmic religions. There was no time when a province was entirely Buddhist or entirely Hindu or entirely Jain. These three religions co-existed at a local level. Religious homogeneity in this way was alien to India for this time period.

This map goes even further and establishes provinces at a sect level as Vaishnavism and Shavaism and so forth. This is just unfathomable. It looks like a porting of Catholic/Orthodox or Shia/Sunni, but the differences between these sects are in no way comparable to differences between similar sects in Christianity or Islam. Its not as if a Vaishavite king was going to persecute a Shaivaite subject (which would have led to religious homogeniety in the end)
With the new religious relationship system I assume that opinion maluses between the Dharmic Faiths will be negligible at best.
 
I have a problem with the India religious map. India was never divided on religious lines in this way among the Dharmic religions. There was no time when a province was entirely Buddhist or entirely Hindu or entirely Jain. These three religions co-existed at a local level. Religious homogeneity in this way was alien to India for this time period.

This map goes even further and establishes provinces at a sect level as Vaishnavism and Shavaism and so forth. This is just unfathomable. It looks like a porting of Catholic/Orthodox or Shia/Sunni, but the differences between these sects are in no way comparable to differences between similar sects in Christianity or Islam. Its not as if a Vaishavite king was going to persecute a Shaivaite subject (which would have led to religious homogeniety in the end)

As always the province religion isn't indicating a province to be "entirely* a particular faith.
It's the majority in the province.
 
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There was no time when a province was entirely Buddhist or entirely Hindu or entirely Jain.

Religions and cultures in PDS games mapmodes do not represent the absolute entirety of a culture in a province on the map mode, they just represent majority culture.

That means that even when a county is Hindu, there are still Jains and Buddhists living there, just not as the majority population and the game represents majority on the map. Even when entire Persia becomes Shia on map, there are still a small minority of Zoroastrians living there, just not numbers large enough to be politically relevant. Even when Turkish becomes majority culture of Anatolia in late game, there is still small pockets of Greek population there, just not the majority.

It is abstracted in CK and EU games, and there is no issue with that. Which is why the map in the dev diary is correct.

The only exception to this rule is games like Imperator or Victoria, which have proper population system and represent exactly who lives where.
 
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Religions and cultures in PDS games mapmodes do not represent the absolute entirety of a culture in a province on the map mode, they just represent majority culture.

That means that even when a county is Hindu, there are still Jains and Buddhists living there, just not as the majority population and the game represents majority on the map. Even when entire Persia becomes Shia on map, there are still a small minority of Zoroastrians living there, just not numbers large enough to be politically relevant. Even when Turkish becomes majority culture of Anatolia in late game, there is still small pockets of Greek population there, just not the majority.

It is abstracted in CK and EU games, and there is no issue with that. Which is why the map in the dev diary is correct.

The only exception to this rule is games like Imperator or Victoria, which have proper population system and represent exactly who lives where.
Flavour-wise I guess this can be true but practically these implied minorities exist only in the mind of the player, they can have no effect on the game and effectively might as well not exist.
 
How will the different Hindu and Buddist faiths be treated? Will they be something like heresies, the divide between Catholicism/Orthodoxy, the branches of Hinduism in CK2, or something else entirely?