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Greetings everyone!

Don’t stand out there in the cold. Come on in and warm yourself by the fire!

Have you made yourself comfortable? Excellent. Before we get to it, first things first. I know that all of you are eagerly awaiting more news regarding upcoming DLC content, but we’re not ready to start talking about those quite yet. Don’t fret, you will not have to wait that long. They say that patience is a virtue, but knowing better, I’ll leave this right here.

For the next few weeks and the coming dev diaries we’ll talk a bit about what we have in store for the next major update, 1.3. In usual fashion, you can expect 1.3 to land alongside the upcoming DLC. Without further ado, let’s get to it shall we?

Winter is Coming
Winter is being introduced to CK3, making the already unforgiving world of the Middle Ages a much harsher place! As winter approaches, the map will gradually get covered in snow, clearly showing the extent of the freezing cold. The system itself is fairly flexible and allows for a great degree of control, as we can set which provinces should experience winter, and which shouldn’t. Winter won’t be limited to just the northernmost parts of the map, so expect snow to appear in places such as the Persian Mountains, or on the heights of the Tibetan plateau.

winter_dd_01_tibet.png


With the introduction of winter comes new gameplay considerations. It wouldn’t be any point in adding this cool system if it didn’t do anything interesting. Winter comes in three different variants; mild, normal, and harsh. Mild and normal winters will be fairly common throughout central Europe and parts of southern Europe, while harsh winters are rarer but can still occur. If you find yourself lost in the frozen landscape of places such as Sápmi, Mongolia, or Himalaya, expect harsh winters to be the norm and plan accordingly!

We wanted to make sure that it’s easy to see what level of winter is present in any given barony at a glance. The amount of snow increases with higher levels. Mild winters should generally be fairly easy to spot, with patches of green still clearly visible. In contrast, harsh winters mostly cover an entire province with snow. Certain areas might even have clouds with steady snowfall appearing for that extra level of detail!

Depending on the severity of winter, your armies will start to lose supply over time. Harsh winter means you’ll lose more supply each month, making it a risky business to go above the supply limit for an extended period during the winter season. Harsh winters will also have armies suffer more fatal casualties during battles.

Winter will also have an effect on your Men-at-Arms. Most noticeably, cavalry units will perform worse in normal and harsh winters. Heavy cavalry, in particular, will suffer some hefty penalties. I would advise against the use of heavy cavalry if you know you’ll be fighting battles in mountainous terrain during the winter season. On the other hand, some Men-at-Arms will get (sometimes quite significant) bonuses while fighting in winter. One such unit is the Tibetan culture unit, Mountaineers. Accustomed to the cold and the snow in the mountains, they can utilize it to their advantage in the form of a damage bonus whenever they participate in battles when winter is present.

winter_dd_02_maa.png


The system for setting winter bonuses (or penalties if you will) on Men-at-Arms works just like setting terrain bonuses, making it very friendly for any modders out there.

While winter and snow might look and play nice, it wouldn’t be complete without a fitting soundscape. I’ll hand over to our sound designer Gustav to talk a bit about what he did to bring winter to life!

A Sound Plan
Winter for a Swede is like butter on toast, we love it! (brr… please be spring soon!) There are two areas where we have updated audio on the map.

Holdings:
Audio gets reflected with real-time updates to holdings. When winter spreads over your lands; or any lands for that matter, folks now go inside their homes, birds have migrated to more southern regions, and the animals are now in their stables or inside by the hearths, cozy!


The way we achieve this is to link the shader that covers the region with snow and Ice to a real-time float parameter, that then talks to our Audio Middleware Engine Fmod.

Awesome, but what does it actually do?
It attenuates sound layers, controls effects such as equalizers and reverb, and reshapes the original sound that was there during summertime, and morphs it into wintertime.


VFX:
We also have snow storms appearing, for both mild and harsh winters.
If you hear the sounds, be wary, your troops will most likely suffer some penalties in these areas.
Tread carefully!


The snowstorms are spawned on the map with the particle system, which allows us to be able to spatialize the sound effects ( position them in a 3D location X-Y-Z ) as the mild snowstorm morphs into the harsh storm, so do the sound effects. I’ll leave you with this; a snippet of what goes on under the hood inside Fmod during winter.


Obligatory Map Update
Anyone who has followed the history of CK2 or the DDs for CK3 will know that I do enjoy my maps, and I’ll try to get in smaller map updates or improvements whenever I can. Since release, we’ve identified a few general areas that we think can be improved upon. Some of these will be updated in 1.3. First up, Ireland.

The baronies in Ireland were a bit too large, making the emerald island have a significantly less holding density than its neighbors, England and Scotland. The western half of Ireland in particular suffered from a few quite large baronies. To solve this issue, we’ve added a number of new baronies, along with a couple of new counties, that should improve the overall experience of playing in Ireland.

winter_dd_03_ireland.png


While Italy hasn't suffered from larger baronies in the same vein as Ireland, the area didn’t quite feel up to par with many other regions within Europe. Especially in terms of overall holding count. Italy generally had a bit too few holdings per county, so we’ve added new baronies in various places throughout the peninsula, from the slopes of the Alps all the way down to Reggio Calabria. The southern half in particular got some much needed attention. In the new setup, you’ll find significantly less counties with only two baronies. To mention a few examples, you’ll find that the county of Veneto has Malamacco as a new barony, Agnone can be found in the county of Lanciano, and Lecce is now an actual holding in the county with the same name. Overall, this should make Italy more representative of its historical impact and more fun to play in.

winter_dd_04_italy.png


winter_dd_05_sicily.png


That’ll be it for today! I do have a few more map improvements in store for you, but those will have to wait.
Until next time!
 
I'm on the fence with this. Graphically pretty, and will add some immersion but concerned the AI will flounder. Surely, the programmers should be trying to add inventive solutions to aid the AI, not the other way round. They should take some advice from the EUIV camp. Winter attrition killed the AI.
 
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Would modders be able to use this same kind of framework to add other seasonal effects such as the monsoons? What about a more experimental kind of set up with universally very small MTTHs to simulate natural disasters like heat waves, flooding, hurricanes or large dust storms?
 
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Winter won't have an impact on gameplay outside of warfare
sad! very sad.
i think CK3 need futures from ROMe . where provinces have a food capacity and with winter food will be generated 50% less
if you down below zero you harm from penalty development Like a -XX% per month so that it can go into the negative

otherwise winter is just graphic and stress for AI cuz it cant handle supples
 
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I think it would be neat if as well as damage buffs/debuffs that you also got buffs or debuffs based for speed based on your culture.

I think it would be make for much more interesting winter battles if you had two nations fighting who could handle different levels of mobility during the snow.
 
With wars spanning years and the AI not really altering their plans because of winter. Whilst this is a nice feature I dont see how it will alter many aspects of how you will wage war. Nice roleplay addition though. If there were trade goods like fur etc. then I could see how this could play a part i.e. making sure your troops had relevant equipment for fighting in colder climes etc.
 
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I'm wondering how this will change war. Sometimes movement of armies can take half a year. I'm really excited for this and was just thinking how interesting this could be gameplay wise, but now that it's a thing... I'm just currious how it will all work!
 
I really love it! Great work!

My personal opinion: I wish thr battle modifiers were harsher. Worde attrition overall, better bonus to for example Tibetan mountainers etc.

But thats just me.
Anyway, great work cant wait! :)
 
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I really enjoyed the Dev Diary, lots to look forward to it seems!! :D

@Servancour

With your Irish map update it would be great if you could also finally split Strathclyde off from Galloway, rather than using the same duchy to represent both entities. They were totally separate, and represented different culture groups. It's like using the same title to represent Normandy and Brittany, which would - quite rightly - look absurd. I just find it very irritating because it's a very simple thing to fix - Galloway should be de jure Galloway and Carrick, and the rest can be Strathclyde. Both should exist in 867, and only Galloway should exist in 1066. Strathclyde collapsed in 1054.

It should look something like this:

View attachment 685372

Galloway should be ruled by the Cumbric kings of Galwyddel in 867 and the Gaelic lords of Galloway in 1066.

Strathclyde should be ruled by the Cumbric kings of Alt Clut in 867 and not exist in 1066. Both should exist as de jure duchies however.

This really isn't much work to do, but would make Scotland much better. Looking forward to the patch and DLC. :)
Further to these point above, one very small thing in Scotland really bugs me and that is the fact that the Barony of Arran isn't located on Arran on the map, tiny detail but extremely annoying o_O
 
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I'm wondering how this will change war. Sometimes movement of armies can take half a year. I'm really excited for this and was just thinking how interesting this could be gameplay wise, but now that it's a thing... I'm just currious how it will all work!
I'd be prepared for some AI dancing around harsh winter regions, just in case.
 
I really enjoyed the Dev Diary, lots to look forward to it seems!! :D


Further to these point above, one very small thing in Scotland really bugs me and that is the fact that the Barony of Arran isn't located on Arran on the map, tiny detail but extremely annoying o_O
If we're getting into non-existent medieval baronies:

Mar, in Angus (Scotland) and Cornouailles, in Cornouaille (Brittany) are not actual places. They're just baronies which have been given the name of a county. I'm not sure about Mar, but Cornouaille could be replaced with Carhaix (known as Karaez in Breton). This is an actual medieval town in the same barony as Cornouailles currently is.

Currently it's like having a barony called 'Yorkshire' - it's obviously a place, but it isn't an actual settlement.
 
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If we're getting into non-existent medieval baronies:

Mar, in Angus (Scotland) and Cornouailles, in Cornouaille (Brittany) are not actual places. They're just baronies which have been given the name of a county. I'm not sure about Mar, but Cornouaille could be replaced with Carhaix (known as Karaez in Breton). This is an actual medieval town in the same barony as Cornouailles currently is.

Currently it's like having a barony called 'Yorkshire' - it's obviously a place, but it isn't an actual settlement.
I agree however if we are going to have non-existent medieval Baronies named after islands at least put it on the island its named after :D
 
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Oh no, supply management again :( Would we have game rule when we can set only mild winters or set harsh winters to super rare?

Thanks for the map update especially Italy. <3
 
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sad! very sad.
i think CK3 need futures from ROMe . where provinces have a food capacity and with winter food will be generated 50% less
if you down below zero you harm from penalty development Like a -XX% per month so that it can go into the negative

otherwise winter is just graphic and stress for AI cuz it cant handle supples
They said this game isnt about the war only, but mostly it is. If you don't do wars, it becomes boring. I hope they will focus the game more on economy, culture, more rpg elements, more events, buildings, court etc...
 
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Oh no, supply management again :( Would we have game rule when we can set only mild winters or set harsh winters to super rare?

Thanks for the map update especially Italy. <3
Hmm maybe an option is good as you want less and I want more.

Maybe a mild, normal and harsh modifier rule at game setup?
 
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Hmm maybe an option is good as you want less and I want more.

Maybe a mild, normal and harsh modifier rule at game setup?
Sounds good.
 
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That would be cool, except half the time the AI ends up in multi year wars even though it only has enough gold to support it's army for 18 months. Temporary truces might solve that though, either that or... encouraging the AI to finish wars quickly and not get into ones that are going to last years unless it has the resources to do so.

They said this game isnt about the war only, but mostly it is. If you don't do wars, it becomes boring. I hope they will focus the game more on economy, culture, more rpg elements, more events, buildings, court etc...
I don't really go to war all that often, and I'm not bored...
 
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I don't really go to war all that often, and I'm not bored...
My Islamic Hispania game has hit a consolidation phase, and it's not boring. It *is* suffering from pre-emptively handling revolts, and trying to build up the (now stabilised) core domain, but boring it is not.

I'm also adjusting my vassal structure everytime someone does something stupid, so that's got some interest in it, and I've still got a *big* religious adjustment to do after my last large war.


They said this game isnt about the war only, but mostly it is. If you don't do wars, it becomes boring. I hope they will focus the game more on economy, culture, more rpg elements, more events, buildings, court etc...
More RPG elements and more events doesn't necessarily help, because you learn what to do with them, and they essentially become less interesting.
More building isn't interesting at all, because it's not actually that interactive in most cases - you click on the province, build the thing, and that's it. Maybe you click on the next province over and also build the thing.
 
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