CK3 Dev Diary #67 - A View to a Map

[Servancour]

CK3 Dev Diary #67 - A View to a Map​

Greetings!

The team is slowly coming back together after a well deserved summer vacation. Today, let’s have a look at what we’ve been doing to the culture setup and some small scale map tweaks. Most of the work we’ve spent on cultures has naturally gone into the cultural overhaul itself, but we have made some general improvements as well, most notably over in India.

Starting with a small culture addition in southern Europe, and that some of you keen eyed readers noticed back in a previous dev diary, we’ve added back a fan favorite from CK2; Carantanian. The culture is quite extensive on game start and covers most of south-eastern Bavaria. From a historical point of view, the culture is of a west slavic origin, but as they got cut off from their ancestral brethren in the Carpathian Basin, they became gradually closer to the south slavic peoples. We represent this by Carantanian having a West Slavic Heritage, but speaking a South Slavic Language.

[Image of Carantanian culture]​

Next, I’ll hand it over to our local India expert, @Trin Tragula, to talk about (you guessed it) India!

Indian Culture Changes
The culture rework has been a good opportunity to rework the cultures in India a bit. The current setup here is one we inherited from Crusader Kings 2 and it was in some ways not entirely appropriate for our era. To better reflect the diversity of the subcontinent we have added two new cultures, changed the old ones a bit and also added a great number of potential culture names for when the large starting cultures diverge.

First of all we have gotten rid of Hindustani culture, and two new cultures have been broken away from what it used to cover in the south. The core part of the culture covers the Gangetic plain, and is now known as Kannauji after the Imperial city of Kannauj (Kanyakubja) which was the main prize of the region and often gave its name to it.

Hindustani itself is still around in a way, as a possible name for a cultural hybrid between an Iranian or Turkic culture with one of the north indian cultures.

[Image of the cultures in northern India]​

Starting in the central parts of India the newly added Gond culture has been carved out of areas that were previously Hindustani, Marathi or Oriya. In 1066 most Gond counties are under the control of the Cedi kingdom and many of these counties are now also tribal at start. This culture covers a region that was in an odd place in the old setup, at the border of several cultures but not quite belonging to either of them.

[Image of the Gond culture]​

Covering the Malwa plateau as well as some of the adjacent regions that were previously considered Hindustani. This new culture shares a language with the Rajasthani and Gujarati cultures, Gurjar Apabhramsa. The existing Rajput culture has been renamed to Rajasthani (since Rajput as a cultural distinction does not really fit our start date) and Assamese is now known as Kamrupi.

[Image of the Malvi culture]​

Indian History and Title Improvements
While looking over the subcontinent it was also clear that in some areas the title setup was also better suited for the early modern era, rather than the medieval era around Crusader Kings III start dates. A number of baronies have been renamed and reorganized into new counties, and a number of new vassals have been scripted in, especially for the 1066 start.
The starting presumptions about who controlled what in 1066 have also been revisited to bring things better in line with history and create a more interesting start. There are now more starting characters, both independent and vassals, and most kings will no longer start above their domain limit.

Some things like the crisis of the Chola empire should also be a bit better represented in the initial setup, with strong and somewhat unruly Pandya vassals, a much stronger Lankan revolt and the Chera Raja now independent (with his historical vassals to support him). You can now also play as the future king, Kulottunga.
There are also other, minor changes, such as revisiting the extent of cultures like Kashmiri, and Telugu, and assigning a number of tribal counties in the eastern-central part of the subcontinent.

[Image of the Sinhalese rebellion in 1066]​

That concludes today’s dev diary. Until next time!

 

[Servancour]

Great improvements!
One question: when we will know something more detailed about the Royal Court itself?

You mean as in the actual throne room? We aren't quite ready to show it off just yet, at least not in more detail than the early preview picture we posted in DD#61. You'll have to be a tad bit more patient I'm afraid, but it shouldn't be too long.

The release date of the release date, when?

Soon.™

Joking aside. The moment we are ready to share it with you, you'll be the first to know.

 

[Servancour]

4.) I noticed you did not show southern india's culture map. Is the area of Kerala still Tamil or does Malayalam now exist there?

That was just me taking the screenshot to highlight the actual changes. The culture setup in southern India remains the same as before if I recall correctly.
As for your other questions, I'll leave those for the expert to answer.

Will there be pre-Arabic Christian ME cultures?

We haven't added any new cultures other than the ones already mentioned in the DD.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Ooh cool. I am really happy to see the replacement of Hindustani as a Hybrid culture, and the inclusion of the Gond and Malvi cultures.

Some questions about the Indian Setup:
1.) Do the Three Tamil Dynasties now follow Shaivism as they historically did?
2.) Like wise do the Pratiharas follow Vaishnavism?
3.) I am curious why is the Bihari culture not included as being seperate from Bengali? Pala Empire came out of Bihar after all, and bengali culture was never that far west.
4.) I noticed you did not show southern india's culture map. Is the area of Kerala still Tamil or does Malayalam now exist there?
5.) Why is the Gond language Telugu and not Gondi(which itself is just the largest of the god languages)?
6.) Likewise why is the Malvi culture speaking Gujarati and not Malvi?
7.) Can you tell us what all the new traditions do?

I am looking forward to Royal Court.

1 & 2: Have been updating various things for the characters in the game as I come across them. This includes religion (and it includes geographic spread of religions as well - though this update won't be the one to revisit the somewhat overemphasized influence of Jainism in many counties).

3. It is certainly possible to keep dividing many of the cultures further. What we tend to go by is both if it makes sense to do so at our start date(s) and if a culture is big enough to warrant its own culture. The threshold here is relatively high and a lot goes into considering if a culture qualifies to be split or not. I often find it helps to ask oneself how the cultures would differ (the traditions give good indication there) and how different people of culture x would consider someone from culture y to be. With many of these things this is a case by case consideration and it would likely be quite hard to arrive at a setup that everyone agrees with. On top of that there can also be gameplay considerations

For Bihari: Currently Bihari might appear as a divergence from Bengali. It is true that the Pala Empire was based in both Bengal and Bihar, and I would say if anything to me that indicates that it makes sense for the cultures not to be split at our start - most of the power centers of the empire were in Bengal, as was its capital. Magadhi Prakrit and later their Apabhramsa would also be current in both cultures (but we do separate language from culture in this update so this is not in itself the reason to combine them).

That said I would also not consider the above setup necessarily final as is, as long as we keep working on the update there might be further changes. That's also what these diaries are for

4. As of now Malayali is not a starting culture, it can be created as a divergence from Tamil however. Again the difference between the two grew during the era so I think a divergence that happens at some point during a campaign is a better fit than having them separate at start (but it is certainly possible to argue otherwise as well).

5. Languages in the game tend to represent whole groups of languages (as you can see in the screenshot for Carantanian) and Telugu is something most of the Gond dynasties would have been able to understand. That said it might well be Gond needs to be its own language, this is not set in stone

6. Malvi and Rajasthani are both speaking Old Gujarati / Gurjari, this is because at this point in time this language was current in all three regions. India more than many other regions in the game is a place where languages underwent quite a few changes in the timeline covered by the game.

7. I believe a few of these traditions have been shown in previous dev posts by @Servancour , for other ones you will have to wait a bit longer

 

[Trin Tragula]

Thank god, it was about time the India setup was revisited. I've always been disappointed with the Vengi area and so glad something was done about it. I truly hope the Reddy chiefs are there and that we get ourselves some historical queens currently missing all other India in 1066.

Worth noting that India is not the full focus of this update, so any larger overhaul would have to come later. Since coming unto the project I have gone after some of the very visible problems in the subcontinent however Both because it deserves to be better portrayed and because I could identify a few areas that could be readily improved.

The Vengi Chalukyas should at least now have a full title history going back to the founding of the dynasty, as well as some more queens and princesses (mainly the ones that had intermarried with the Cholas, since those are the ones that are the most important in the 1066 start - they are what ties Kulottunga to the Cholas).

With that said, I haven't yet come across a specific landed Reddy lineage at our 1066 start date. If you could point me to one then I'd love to do something about this. The Vengi Chalukyas could do with holding less land directly, and the the Kakatiyas are by far the Chalukya vassal that holds the most land right now and really need some vassals under them.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Great DD but since we are talking about more accurate cultures. Are the "Russians" still one big blob? Or they split to others cultures as game progress (to for example Belorussians Ruthenians Muscovite ect) Like Norse dose ?

There is no guarantee that it will happen but we have added a number of possible divergence names for Russian culture for if a divergence happens in the game (Red Ruthenian, etc).

 

[Trin Tragula]

Hey, I've been a bit disheartened by some responses to my reply here. I understand and at least appreciate your point, but it felt a bit condescending. I like to read longer form stuff. Books are really fun for me to read and stuff like reading on Wikipedia is just a bit too short form, and often too dry.

Just remember it's another person on the end who's a bit sad about how some people take umbridge with his joy of books.

As someone who also likes books I can sympathize Approaching Indian history can certainly be a bit daunting, and much of what one finds online can be contradictory, wrong or outdated. It also doesn’t help that many of the dynasties (like the Cedi/Kalachuri/Haihaia/more names dynasty which is in the game) go by multiple names, which aren’t easily guessed to be referring to the same thing.

I have been told the book mentioned earlier in this thread by Romila Thapar is a good introduction though I have not read it myself.
A long time ago when I was first approaching the subject of Indian history in general I found “A history of India” by Herman Kulke and Deiter Rothermund useful - but it’s very much an overview and does not dwell very long on any given period. Thapars book might be more what you are after.

Coming from having read a fair number of books on early modern Indian history before I got a fair bit of mileage out of “Rethinking Early Medieval India: A reader” by Upinder Singh et al when I first approached the “CK” era, but if you are after an overview of the political history then you want another type of book - it helps more with understanding what one finds elsewhere

The most recent thing Ive read is “Politics kingship and poetry in medieval south India” by Whitney Cox and it was certainly something that inspired me to want a better Chola setup in India but I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to the era (or even to the Cholas).

Last of all I want to say that geography itself can be confusing, the schwartzberg atlas of South Indian history is available online and is by far the best historical atlas for India (possibly one of the best historical atlases in general). It’s detailed, it has tons of information, and it was made by a larger number of experts working together for 14 years whichever book you get I recommend referring to the atlas to get your bearings.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Richard m eaton, india in the persinate age, its ghaznavids on

Have not read this yet (it's in my bookshelf though) but I want to add that just about anything by Eaton is generally a good and very informative read

 

[Trin Tragula]

On that note I truly want tribal communities like the Hunas, etc. to make an appearance even if just as one vassal chieftain.

On the topic of missing queens, can we expect (everyone's favourite Cedi kingdom ruler) Karna's Huna wife Avalla-Devi for 1066? I've always enjoyed playing as that kingdom and it would be even more fun now that they're getting their own culture. EDIT: Also make Karna's in-game brother his son.

Turns out I forgot to reply to this. As it happened we did have some Huna characters scripted since CK2, I used them (and added a few more descendants) to to populate a county in an appropriate location for the (presumably tiny) Huna Mandala that is referred to in the 10th and 11th century around Malwa.
Avalladevi will make an appearance too