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!

 

[Gandalf_The_Black]

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).

On the topic of "Russian culture", will it be renamed to Rus'?

 

[Maberknogg]

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.

View attachment 745274
[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.

View attachment 745275
[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.

View attachment 745276
[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.

View attachment 745277
[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.

View attachment 745278
[Image of the Sinhalese rebellion in 1066]​

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

What about Albania? They need to exist.

 

[Vernichtere]

On the topic of "Russian culture", will it be renamed to Rus'?

Yes, "Rus" would be much more appropriate, also from a historical point of view. The formation of principalities was called "Rus", not Russia. This would also underline that one does not mean the Russians of today, but the predecessors: such as Norse.

 

[pengoyo]

Great job! Glad to see some new cultures added and especially like what you did with the Carantanians. Also map and title improvements are always welcome, especially glad to see Sri Lanka now has more non coastal counties.

I'd be really interested to hear how you broke up the Northern India dialect continuum. Especially what language the new Kannauji culture speaks. I know in my previous suggestions it has been a bit of a headache, though I'd imagine being able to separate culture from language now makes things a bit easier.

 

[Hospodar]

Actually I've just found out that Vlachs have a south slavic heritage (why ?)

Because medieval Romanian high culture is derivative of Bulgarian imperial culture - the court and church language, the form of institutionalized Orthodox Christianity, the type of governance and social stratification (e.g. the autocratic form of governance and the usage of Io as a princely title on the model of the Bulgarian Tsars, the institution of the 'princely council' (sfat domnesc) which was derivative of the Bolyar Council of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom, the Romanian Boyar class itself with its division into greater and lesser boyars and with the autocrat's role in appointing them to administrative and/or military offices (dregătorii) and so on). Not to mention that, at the 'grassroots' level, the Romanian type of social organization (obște) mirrored its South Slavic counterparts (zadruga), various folk traditions were shared with the South Slavs (such as the Martenitsa, the Perperuna and the kukeri) and the Romanian language itself had its basic lexis influenced by South Slavic languages (which indicates continued contact with the South Slavs, if not outright co-habitation - something which is reinforced by modern genetic tests which put Romanians in a common cluster with Bulgarians and Macedonians; a Romanian being more related to a Bulgarian than to a Balkan Vlach or some other Latin-speaking population, a Bulgarian being more related to a Romanian than to a Serb.)

 

[pengoyo]

many of the most lacking areas, like Nubia, will likely never get a DLC.

I'd be very surprised if any culture didn't eventually get a DLC in which it is one of the focal cultures. Though I also wouldn't be surprised if Nubian was part of a more general East Africa flavour pack.

Not that this will be much consolation to you as I'm guessing it'll probably be quite a while before we see any kind of East African DLC. Though maybe something like a trade DLC will see some map improvements around the map sooner.

 

[Tiax]

I'd be very surprised if any culture didn't eventually get a DLC in which it is one of the focal cultures. Though I also wouldn't be surprised if Nubian was part of a more general East Africa flavour pack.

Not that this will be much consolation to you as I'm guessing it'll probably be quite a while before we see any kind of East African DLC. Though maybe something like a trade DLC will see some map improvements around the map sooner.

I guess we'll have to see, but I'm skeptical. There's nearly 40 culture groups (soon to be heritages), and while I'm sure some will be combined, that's still a *lot* of DLCs. And even then, problem areas that are very close to the targeted cultures are often not addressed - the Norse DLC didn't touch the history issues in 867 England (no one has any vassals). The issue even broke new mechanics in 1.4 and they didn't fix it.

 

[SoftlyGyrating]

Great to see Carantanian, was hoping for the addition of Frisian as well Any plans on further new cultures in Europe?

Same here! They were already hard done by in CK2 with them all becoming Dutch, they somehow got an even worse deal in CK3.

 

[Melian Erios]

I was actually wondering about India specifically with dev diary 65 (one culture is not enough), and it's good to see some information about it, but I have a few questions if you're willing to give some sort of answer on them.

We see two cultural heritages on the Indian Subcontinent in this dev diary, do they all fall into these two heritages, or are there more (most likely I imagine would be a 3rd in Northeast India)?

The reason I had the above question, is because, upon hearing about this expansion and the various features, one of my plans for a Royal Court game was a united India game, and although a "single cultural identity" isn't really possible, I liked the idea of having all the cultures of India accepted, and thus was wondering if this was feasible. Would this be the case if you created a hybrid between dravidian & indo-aryan? Will the "Become Chakravarti" (India empire title) decision be altered to accomodate this in some way potentially? Thanks in advance for any response!

 

[pengoyo]

I guess we'll have to see, but I'm skeptical. There's nearly 40 culture groups (soon to be heritages), and while I'm sure some will be combined, that's still a *lot* of DLCs. And even then, problem areas that are very close to the targeted cultures are often not addressed - the Norse DLC didn't touch the history issues in 867 England (no one has any vassals). The issue even broke new mechanics in 1.4 and they didn't fix it.

I'm guessing many of the packs will be by region instead of culture group thus many will be lumped together. Even northern lords seems to be Scandinavia region in it's focus as they reworked the sampi holding despite them not being Norse. Though admitted I'm assuming Northern lords was more narrow in it's focus than future flavour packs will be. I'm guessing as most cultures aren't as popular with the fan base as the vikings, they adjust by making the flavour packs affect a larger number of cultures.

But yeah even with that it'll probably be many many years until they get around to every part of the map.

 

[Ksiendzu]

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).

Are these divergence names tied to places or we can see Red Ruthenian culture spawn in Bjarmia?

 

[pengoyo]

Also might I suggest renaming the South Slavic Language to the Slavonic Language, as I think the current name would sound very technical and thus jarring if used in event.

I suggest Slavonic as Old Church Slavonic was a South Slavic Language that was widely used during the period. Though as Old Church Slavonic wouldn't make sense as a name either because it's a technical name, I'd shorten it to Slavonic.

So while the name Slavonic isn't perfect, I think it will fit more naturally into events and be more flavourful than South Slavic.



Note Old Church Slavonic eventually gave rise to Bulgarian, thus it is sometimes referred to as Old Bulgarian. So alternatively the South Slavic Language could be renamed to the Bulgarian Language, but I'd imagine that would be more contentious than calling it Slavonic.

Edit: Also calling it Slavonic adds the possibility of having a Russian Orthodox event where they learn Slovanic as a liturgical language.

Edit2: I'd also be fine with solving this by having all Slavs speak Slavic.

 

[DmUa]

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).

- that doesnt make much sense. East Slavic culture should not be represented as unified at both available start dates. Especially not in 867.

With regard to the division of the Russians, it should be noted that the division into Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians took place much later. But theoretically one cannot speak of the split in that sense. Theoretically, the area around Novgorod was culturally relatively independent, as were other parts. So please do not orient yourself so much to today's result.

- this is true for a lot of CK3 cultures. For example neighboring Polish culture shouldnt be unified either. In general this expansion is a perfect opportunity to finally split up remaining cultural blobs in order produce more historic and realistic picture and to simulate later assimilation processes that happened after those territories were unified in to a larger realms.

Yes, "Rus" would be much more appropriate, also from a historical point of view. The formation of principalities was called "Rus", not Russia. This would also underline that one does not mean the Russians of today, but the predecessors: such as Norse.

- not really. If you go for a slavic Rus than it should be called - Rous. Otherwise Rus is as appropriate as greek Rossia from which Russia was later derived. Rus is exonym which was brought by norse invaders. Calling a derivative east slavic culture Rus is exactly as historic as calling it Russian.

 

[Viridianus]

I am going to join the many voices who mentioned that at your current level of language division, it is a total nonsence to have three separate Slavic languages, while their mutual intelligibility was far higher than, say, Vlach and Italian (or, I'd bet, Indian languages). Having Carantanian have West Slavic heritage but South Slavic language is an ingenious trick, sure, but ultimately it isn't worth it.

 

[Viridianus]

If you go for a slavic Rus than it should be called - Rous

You... do understand that Cyrillic оу was a digraph and is reflected as u in every other place in the game, right?

In general this expansion is a perfect opportunity to finally split up remaining cultural blobs in order produce more historic and realistic picture and to simulate later assimilation processes that happened after those territories were unified in to a larger realms.

On the contrary. This expansion focuses on splitting rather than on assimilation and gives a chance to dial some cultures back (anachronistic Bosnian, anachronistic Buryat-and-so-on in Mongol group, maybe even the results of Norse split - though the last one is probably less appropriate for 1066).

For example neighboring Polish culture shouldnt be unified either.

Given that Pomeranian and Kashubian are already split off, you are more-or-less wrong about the remainder. You should take into account the overall density of cultures - which is roughly one-culture-per-kingdom and shouldn't become one-culture-per-duchy. Sure, one can divide almost ad infinitum, but at some point divisions stop being meaningful, it would be like asking a Picard culture in France (which shouldn't happen either).

 

[StoutAlarm837]

this is really cool, anyone like the idea of a culture for the isle of man, they were called manx or something on those lines if i remember

 

[Lebagir]

Oh, Dalmatia, home of Diocletian and last bastion of western Rome, we shall meet again... maybe not now, but someday.

 

[DmUa]

You... do understand that Cyrillic оу was a digraph and is reflected as u in every other place in the game, right?

- i understand what he meant by making proposition like that thou.

On the contrary. This expansion focuses on splitting rather than on assimilation and gives a chance to dial some cultures back (anachronistic Bosnian, anachronistic Buryat-and-so-on in Mongol group, maybe even the results of Norse split - though the last one is probably less appropriate for 1066).

- did you read previous dev diaries in which devs explained in detail mechanics of new cultural unification/emergencies? The fact that cultures now are able to split doesnt eliminate fact that now you can effectively assimilate multitudes of different cultures in to one large one as much as you want and that either tolerate or convert remaining ones.

Given that Pomeranian and Kashubian are already split off, you are more-or-less wrong about the remainder. You should take into account the overall density of cultures - which is roughly one-culture-per-kingdom and shouldn't become one-culture-per-duchy. Sure, one can divide almost ad infinitum, but at some point divisions stop being meaningful, it would be like asking a Picard culture in France (which shouldn't happen either).

- i could forget that kashubian existed in CK3. I havent played game since release, as i decided to postpone my playthrough till game has a bit more meat on its bones.

 

[Lebagir]

it is a total nonsence to have three separate Slavic languages, while their mutual intelligibility was far higher than, say, Vlach and Italian

I agree. However, given how incredibly organic is the evolution of languages in real life, and how the the way they are currently portrayed in game doesn't really reflect that, I guess the choice concerning linguistic groups must be that between making them more specific and personalized for each region and cultural group - reflecting how they came to drift as the centuries went by -, or making wide-spreading, more generic groups (i.e.: big and unified "romance" and "slavic" languages). That said, and also considering there are no degrees of mutual intelligibility (full, partial, etc) between different languages in the game, I'd prefer the later alternative. I'd guess even vlachs and italians back then, given some effort, might make themselves more or less understandable to each other.

 

[Maberknogg]

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.

View attachment 745274
[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.

View attachment 745275
[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.

View attachment 745276
[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.

View attachment 745277
[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.

View attachment 745278
[Image of the Sinhalese rebellion in 1066]​

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

Will there be cultural tech sharing? Maybe cultures of the same language will be able to share technologies more easily?