Things are getting busy at the office with the upcoming release of Europa Universalis IV, but as has been said before, we're still very much committed to the continued support and further expansion of Crusader Kings II. With Doomdark currently Down Under, Johan asked me to put together a short dev diary highlighting some of the current stuff we've been working on.

Patch 1.11:
1.11 will be deployed next week, and the new patch will include a few features that should make dealing with plots a bit easier. After hatching a plot, you can now tell the game to automatically invite all plotters who are willing to join your scheme. No more having to browse through the Potential Plotters list and individually sending requests to every single character who wants to join!

Also, you can now set the game to always demand that characters end their plots as soon as they come to your attention. Another handy addition is that you can now see at a glance which potential plotters can be won over to your side if they are bribed.

Among the other things added is a new Siege Leader trait (finally), a favorite IP table for the multiplayer menu and some additional support for modders.

Crusader Kings II to Europa Universalis IV Converter:
Johan already posted a dev diary about the Converter last week in the Europa Universalis IV forum, and there is an interview with Groogy here that goes into some more detail. I don't have much to add except that we're pretty pleased with the result and it actually works better than we had anticipated when development began.

Customizer:
This is a smaller DLC on the scale of the Ruler Designer, but it's something that many have asked for. It will give players an easy way to customize several items in their games when they are already well underway.

You can have your character pay a visit to the barber, where their hairstyle or facial hair can be altered... within reason (no bearded women, sorry). Below you can see the new look I gave King Charles II the Not-So-Bald:

View attachment CKII_111_DD_The_Bald.jpg

You can rename any title held by you or your vassals:

View attachment CKII_111_DD_Northwest_Francia.jpg

Finally, if you feel the need to shake things up a bit, you can alter the name and shield of your dynasty:

View attachment CKII_111_DD_de_Poher.jpg

Hopefully this will tide you over for a while, until we're ready to tell you more about what the future will bring to Crusader Kings II.


Here are the highlights from the Crusader Kings II to Europa Universalis IV Converter livestream with Johan & Doomdark!
[video=youtube;FWqQgp1Vh9U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWqQgp1Vh9U[/video]

You can find the full live-stream for the CK2 to EU4 converter here:
http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/b/438261345

ps. And you can pre-order Europa Universalis IV here:
http://www.europauniversalis4.com/buy

 

[unmerged(751237)]

Interesting.

So, this is one of the two announced DLCs. Is the second one the save converter? Because I thought that technically that's a DLC for EU IV.

No, it's a DLC for CK2 that exports a mod that you can add to EUIV. It was the first August DLC.

 

[Kljunas]

There's still the question regarding Muslim / Zoroastrian title names: Will we be able to rename our states so that instead of our family name, we will see our custom name (e.g. Persia instead of Karen, or Egypt instead of Fatimid)?

I doubt it, the dynastic name and the actual name are still separate in-game (e.g. "Fatimid Sultanate [Sultanate of Egypt]" when you look at the title).

 

[Uesugi Kenshin]

>paradox
>free dlc

pick one.

Going to pick Paradox and leave here with sadness.

 

[Danasher]

Personally, I think it would be cool if instead of the barber button they make it a decision (like going on a grand hunt) to 'visit the barbers' or 'hire a barber' for like 5 gold. That way it wouldn't break the immersion of the game either Good idea, if I don't say so myself

 

[Tuskin38]

Hm, so I can now rename not only Byzantium to Rhomaion or whatnot, I can also load up the Golden Horde in 1337, rename it to Ogravistan and export it to EU4

I would assume so. We know from the stream West Frankia will become West Frankia, not France, in EU4 after conversion, and we know muslim states will keep the dynasty name (Abbasids, etc). So I would be very surprised if this wasn't possible. And it's not really a custom title, it's a renamed, custimized title

I'm assuming countries that have their own TAG in EU4 will probably take the EU4 name, so reaming the HRE and exporting it, it will probably just become HRE on EU4.

 

[OrdepNM]

I doubt it, the dynastic name and the actual name are still separate in-game (e.g. "Fatimid Sultanate [Sultanate of Egypt]" when you look at the title).

Tbh they could probably add a button to toggle dynastic naming on and off for a specific title, as the code already allows this (so the kingdom/sultanate of Rum is always named that, regardless of the dynasty), but I think they didnt spend that much time on this so they only got the basics down, since they didnt put a color customization option in.

 

[nOxr]

Patch 1.11 looks like a solid patch, can't wait to read the patch notes! Remind me, how much will it cost me to get my hands on this piece of patch you obviously put good time and effort into?

 

[Kljunas]

I'm assuming countries that have their own TAG in EU4 will probably take the EU4 name, so reaming the HRE and exporting it, it will probably just become HRE on EU4.

Well, in the stream, West Francia remained West Francia in EU although the EU name is France.

 

[Mudcrab]

Patch 1.11 looks like a solid patch, can't wait to read the patch notes!

Likewise.

*thumbsup*

 

[Lord Flash]

Looking forward to the patch, but the DLC is disappointing.

Pay, patch and pay?

 

[Phenruss]

Patch sounds great.

Ability to customize title names is something I've wanted for a long time, so that's great news.

If they added the ability to choose which Coat of Arms, out of those that you have control over, is displayed for your top tier primary title I would no longer need to make micro-mods every single time I played. Like, if I start as Gotland and become King of Sweden over time, I want to be the King of Gotland and use the CoA of Gotland to represent MY kingdom. Being able to rename my kingdom is step one. Being able to pick the CoA used for that title is the missing link for me. Make the Empire of Britannia with Scotland, you can now call it the Empire of Scotland, but you need to be able to use the Scotland CoA for your 'new' empire. Really, your choices should be the CoA of any of your held titles or your dynasty CoA. Without that I'll still have to mod each game I play. Simple mods to create at least.

 

[cybrxkhan]

To some extent. One thing I'm abit excited about is the possibility to change the name of titles without screwing with the game files. As it is you can change the localization names but thats gonna affect the entire game, so if I want to call Francia the Carolingian Empire, I can, but that'll affect the entire game and any other saves I may have where I may not want that change. Now it'll be possible to keep things separated.

Changing characters portraits and COAs, yeah, it's preety easy as it is, tough this will certainly make it quicker. If youre abit OCD like me, when you give a county to some new guy in your court of a random generated "of something" dynasty, you can actually go and change its dynasty to the title it now carries. Thats way too much trouble by save edit.

All and all, the character creator had more to it, but this has its uses, even if its in the form of not having to alt-tab every now and then because youre tired of all your rulers having the same damn beard model...

Edit: I do wonder if PDS thought about the moderation aspects of the multiplayer tough. Im sure as soon as this customizer goes live, a bunch of immature players will use it to start flaming eachother and possibly being offensive, and I dont just mean Remove Kebab and Steppe Wolfe jokes for Serbia and Bulgaria..

To further explain to those who don't know modding, concerning customizing beards and such, the roundabout methods about having a mod that allows you to customize beards I was talking about would amount to such:

1. Each portrait set has a series of beards in a certain sequence (there is beard #1, beard #2, beard #3, etc.). Technically it's not exactly like this, but this will suffice for our purposes. You'll have to know what this sequence is first if you want to mod customizing beards.
2. Make a decision that triggers a series of events that allow you to choose a beard, via character flags - each option will assign a "flag" to your character. Since events can only have 4 options, and there are about 12 types of beards per portriat set, this means you'll need around 5-6 events to give the option of every possible flag. Unfortunately, since every portrait set has different beard types, and not all of them match up (i.e. beard #1 for one portrait set might be a tiny goatee, while in another portrait set beard #1 would be a gigantic honking Orthodox beard), you'll have to also make further series of events for different portrait sets, meaning potentially at least 10 times more events to code, test, and debug.
3. Go to the part in the code where the beard code is, and code it so that every time a character has a certain "flag" (as done above), they will automatically get that beard no matter what. Like above, however, because of the different portrait sets even without DLCs, this means you'll have to account for the different flags for each portrait set. You'll also have to change the existing vanilla code for beard chances as well.
4. Test what you've modded. It's probably going to be bugged, though, because that's what happens with the first draft of a code, whether it's for a mod or for a game. or a program or anything.
5. Try to figure out what the bugs are, and spend hours to days to weeks trying to find what it is. This is not to mention the time you took in steps (2) and (3) to code all that, which while my explaination above sounds relatively simple and quick to do, isn't. Coding takes a long time. And it's not something you want to do 24-7.


So that's how you'd do it. I know one modder started doing something like that a while ago, but he stopped for whatever reason.

Since most of us modders have other things we like to work on, things that we feel are much more important, we don't bother with the above. Of course, I'm not saying it shouldn't be done or whoever wants to have it done is acting unreasonable, but I do want to say a lot of these things are not a matter of easy instant-modding-magic-and-it's-done and that the DLC will be a great convenience to everyone overall.

 

[ImperatorLJ]

CK2 is fun, so I don't care much about the DLC model.

Also, to the people who are upset about the customizer potentially costing five dollars, not the appropriateness of it being DLC, just the cost, you should really stop playing video games if spending five dollars is a major financial decision for you.

 

[unmerged(46341)]

Outstanding stuff.

 

[Rozmarzony]

CK2 is fun, so I don't care much about the DLC model.

Also, to the people who are upset about the customizer potentially costing five dollars, not the appropriateness of it being DLC, just the cost, you should really stop playing video games if spending five dollars is a major financial decision for you.

Yeah, accept 5$, then 10, 25, 100...

 

[ConstantineXII]

I'm totally stoked about this!!!!

 

[Saranis]

Love the patch hate the DLC.

Personally I think it should just be a patch to their previous ruler designer DLC and not a whole new one. Anymore than $2.50 and I wont get it until a sale.

 

[Thure]

Yeah, accept 5$, then 10, 25, 100...

Can you stop...? It's annoying. We know you don't like DLCs. But without DLCs (or expansions like in EU3) CK2 wouldn't get 3 years of service.

Love the patch hate the DLC.

Personally I think it should just be a patch to their previous ruler designer DLC and not a whole new one. Anymore than $2.50 and I wont get it until a sale.

But t's not the ruler designer... The ruler designer is just to creat a start character. This is to customise your game ingame. Totaly different. Because it's circa as big as the Ruler Designer (Why did everyone like them so much? I think in this DLC is more content then there). So I think it will be 5 Euro/Dollar too.

 

[Sian]

while frankly it doesn't seem like it got anything but convenience its still a nice patch ... as long as its not part of a "dumbing down" scheme, making stuff less tedious is always a good thing.

 

[Emre Yigit]

Some useful stuff for players, thanks! And I like the simmish makeover ability too.