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Hi.

I'm Johan, the Manager of the Internal Studio here at Paradox. I'm here to give you a little bonus development diary on a monday afternoon.

We've added in a few new betas in the last weeks, and I thought I'd share some of their posts here with you, and giving you a little screenshot.

There is a thread in the beta forum, called "Nice Little Details", and here are some of the comments from it..

  • In the battle results, it also shows which land holders lost their lives in the battle.
  • Love how game labels characters in relation to you. Like 'son-in-law' or 'rival'.
  • Escheat is also pretty cool, and is an essential part of feudalism.
  • When your gold runs out while you have mercenaries, they will/might switch over to the enemy side
  • When you receive diplomatic offers or correspondence/messages, the wax seal at the bottom is stamped with the COA of whomever sent it.
  • I love how historical the game feels, the atmosphere, the dynamics... Love it.
  • I love everything so far, though I do love the ability to name children.
  • The 'detail' I'm most excited about is the fact that this game is practically in release-shape already and is going to be by a million miles the most polished release PI has ever done. I don't want to sound condescending but Paradox really learnt their lesson from HoI3.


We also asked the betas to give us some feedback from their playthoughs, and here are a few...

Kingdom of England
"Was rather interesting getting Harold Godwinson to survive - he lived to a very ripe old age and passed England along to his son and then to his great-great-grandson (Godwin I and Godwin II respectively). William the Bastard died in a French prison, although his descendants did hold onto the county of Rouen. Didn't play very aggressively, mostly just tried to manage my dynasty and watch plots. This made the game kind of peaceful although there were a few moments of excitement. I had to throw a couple of nobles into prison for plotting against the throne, and in one case that led to a short war between England and the Duke of Lancaster, who at that time was the most powerful vassal in the realm. Another noble agreed to refrain from assassinating my heir once I asked her politely. "

Duchy of Apulia
"Right after the start my wife tried to poison me - from the three options i choose to kill her and married the Duchess of Toscana (Matilda). I offered Capua to become my vassal and they accepted, short after that i declared war on Messina and Syracuse and won. I created the Kingdom of Sicily and fought back several Muslim attacks.

My first ruler died and through elective law the only son with his second wife (Matilda) become the new King and also the heir of Duchy of Toscana. After that I felt strong enough i claimed the County of Palermo and attacked the Sheikh, and I got his whole Sheikhdom including Salerno, Napoli, Palermo and Trapani as vassals. This was a very bad move, because all the cities and so were still reigned by muslim which hated me of course...

I tried to revoke their titles and fought some wars with them to get the titles and through that my other vassals began to hate me too.

To cap it all, Matilda died and i got the very huge land of her, including Firenze, Spoleto, Brescia, Sardinia, Corsica, Rome, and several other counties...

Matilda was a vassal of the HRE and the Emperor was very upset about the loss, in 1115 he declared war on me and in 1118 several of my vassals declared their independence.

I fought very hard but could not win against them all... "




Here is a screenshot from a game King is currently playing..

oops.PNG
 
That sounds awesome :D

But what do the character pictures on the event choices mean??

Same as in Rome.. it shows who is affected by that option.
 
Kingdom of England
"Was rather interesting getting Harold Godwinson to survive - he lived to a very ripe old age and passed England along to his son and then to his great-great-grandson (Godwin I and Godwin II respectively). William the Bastard died in a French prison, although his descendants did hold onto the county of Rouen. "

I had a very funny game as William a while back, was soundly defeating Harold's army when William goes and gets himself killed during the battle...
 
Oh that's nice! So the leftmost is the mother of little Aymer, the center one is the legit son of Raymond, and the rightmost is little Aymer himself?

The middle one is Aymer's mother's husband. He is less than pleased at me, but what can he do, I'm a Duke and he's a nobody. The same cannot said for my brother who has offered me the choice of giving up one of my duchies or war with him and a fair number of other people.

oh brother.PNG
 
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Very cool info; thanks for posting this. The game certainly looks "finished," which is making me wish I could play it now all the more. :p
 
Ability to name your children, character labels - absolutely love how this game is shaping up. If only it covered the entire world...

No, fantastic job. How about doing a very early beta-AAR as it looks like the game is finished and in a polished state already, the beta-testers may have some free time on their hands..:p