It's finally time to announce the next expansion for Crusader Kings II! You might already know the name: "Sons of Abraham". Some of you were very close in your guesses on what it might be. No, it's not a Zombie DLC! Sons of Abraham focuses on the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The idea was to go back to the roots after all the attention given to the heathens, and to flesh out the religious side of the game for the monotheists; Christians in particular.

First and foremost, we wanted to do more with the Pope; how he gets elected, what powers he has and how you can gain his favor. Thus, we added the Cardinal title and the College of Cardinals. For simplicity's sake, there are only nine cardinals, and the Pope is always elected from among their number. Cardinals, however, are not elected; they are picked by the Pope from among his courtiers and the bishops of Europe. The selection is based on many factors; age, piety, opinion, culture (the Pope really likes Italians!), etc.



So, how exactly do you get your man onto the chair of Saint Peter? Well, the Holy See is not a democracy, so this is not a direct process. First, you need at least one of your bishops to get appointed Cardinal by the Holy Father. Fortunately, you do not have to rely entirely on the character of the bishop himself, you can grease the machinery with a bit of lucre by putting money in the campaign fund (similar to how Doges are elected in Merchant Republics). Of course, it is also possible to carefully groom a candidate for a career in the Catholic church before you even make him a bishop.

When the Pope dies, the cardinals in turn elect his successor. This process cannot be directly influenced by the player, but the cardinals will reason much like the Pope does when he picks new cardinals, so it's better to have old, pious men made cardinals than incompetent wastrels whose election you paid for.



Ok, so let us say one of your bishops is eventually made Pope. How does that serve you? Well, Popes that come from your realm will like you - a lot. Of course, that means they will be likely to grant your requests. Want to get divorced? No problem. Want to invade someone? Ok. To make this even more useful, we've given the Pope some new powers as well: he can give you money, plain and simple. He can also approve your candidate for a bishopric under Papal Investiture, or even declare a Crusade on the infidel of your choice. However, each time he does you a favor, he will like you less, so your influence will not last forever. Incidentally, having your antipope installed in Rome will have a similar effect. Oh, and if the Pope should happen to be of your very own dynasty, that will give you a lot of monthly Piety and Prestige.



There are some direct benefits to controlling cardinals as well. You cannot ask to have someone excommunicated or invaded if they control more cardinals than you do.

That's that about the College of Cardinals. Next week I'll talk about holy orders, heresies, and other things...

ps.

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham (official product page)
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/crusader-kings-ii-sons-of-abraham

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham announced (News article at PC gamer)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/22/crusader-kings-ii-the-something-something-announced/[URL="http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/22/crusader-kings-ii-the-something-something-announced/"][/URL]

 

[Talq]

will there be option/event for jew persecution?

silence means assent?

The hell? By the by, outside of Groogy's modding comments, the devs have made no comments in the thread whatsoever, so the lack of response to your comment isn't special.

 

[Teutonic_Thrash]

There's been a lot of questions about mod-friendliness of the College of Cardinals. Yes the whole new feature will be exposed to the scripts. The College of Cardinals isn't in particular tied to the Catholic faith or hard coded in any way but it is a new kind of title added into the game called Religious Title which works pretty much like Minor title, but instead of being a liege who hands it out to his courtiers it is the religious head with the power to hand it to whoever fulfills the Allow trigger in the script. So if you want you could let kings and emperors receive a religious title called Defender of the Faith if you so desire. The whole election system is enabled by a little flag in the title called can_elect_head so it isn't required to have that in the title but without it, it is more or less just a minor title with little effect. Also only one religious title per religion can have the election system.

Hope that should be enough for the ones that has been asking about scripting and the new DLC

So, could we potentially mod this into a Roman senate?

 

[fanoI]

Maybe to note that they should elect a guy, what would be their function otherwise?
It seems consequential that they "elect" the Emperor but in this way they would create not a ruler, but a Religious head, well the Emperor of Pagan Rome was the head of the Roman Religion! But if you're Christian? You become a (anti) Pope and probably get a Game Over!

But it could model other religions that have something similar to the college of Cardinals or more fantasy one (for example the High Septon of TOG!), the Valinar or the Lord of the Rings and so on... but not to "elect" a secular ruler.

Me, too, want to know what happens to the College of Cardinals if the Pope is my vassal, the more logical thing is that it is disbanded and I could appoint the Pope!

Pretty much historical, too, as it happened when the Pope was vassal of The Roman Empire and for some time of The Holy Roman Empire...

 

[TankRush]

Remember Paradox, if your system can't result in a pope as cool as this one, then you have utterly failed!



But seriously though, I'm sure it'll be awesome, and can hardly wait... but I still want to see the occasional crusading duelist Pope. Or better yet, play one.

 

[DominusNovus]

So, could we potentially mod this into a Roman senate?

Ohhh, now that has my interest.

 

[Norman250]

Maybe to note that they should elect a guy, what would be their function otherwise?
It seems consequential that they "elect" the Emperor but in this way they would create not a ruler, but a Religious head, well the Emperor of Pagan Rome was the head of the Roman Religion! But if you're Christian? You become a (anti) Pope and probably get a Game Over!

But it could model other religions that have something similar to the college of Cardinals or more fantasy one (for example the High Septon of TOG!), the Valinar or the Lord of the Rings and so on... but not to "elect" a secular ruler.

Me, too, want to know what happens to the College of Cardinals if the Pope is my vassal, the more logical thing is that it is disbanded and I could appoint the Pope!

Pretty much historical, too, as it happened when the Pope was vassal of The Roman Empire and for some time of The Holy Roman Empire...

Yeah, most of my games end up with me making the Pope a vassal sooner or later, and I really hope that PI includes something if this occurs, even if it's just the cardinals will be X more likely to choose the Candidate of your preference, or, under Free Investiture, you get to appoint the Pope's successor directly.

 

[Mathrim]

I've been waiting for this DLC for ages! Finally I can mess around with the Papacy!

Go, sexy Pope Henry

 

[Shade2]

Using the HRE as an example, could you set up an Electoral system for certain regions, as in history, and have the HRE control a fake placeholder religion that only exists in name? That way the Electors choose the feudal head of the 'Holy Roman Empire Throne' faith, but nothing comes of it, religion wise?

 

[Thure]

Using the HRE as an example, could you set up an Electoral system for certain regions, as in history, and have the HRE control a fake placeholder religion that only exists in name? That way the Electors choose the feudal head of the 'Holy Roman Empire Throne' faith, but nothing comes of it, religion wise?

They said it's fully moddable and not limited to religions I think.

 

[illathid]

They said it's fully moddable and not limited to religions I think.

Well Groogy said:

The electors(cardinals) don't need to be religious rulers, bishops, pope, etc. But the elected head will always become the religious head.

So I think Shade is wondering about setting up a dummy religion and making the HRE title the religious head of it. There just would be no actual followers of that religion.

 

[aitaituo]

Well Groogy said:



So I think Shade is wondering about setting up a dummy religion and making the HRE title the religious head of it. There just would be no actual followers of that religion.

Surely characters must be part of a religion to participate in its elections.

 

[illathid]

Surely characters must be part of a religion to participate in its elections.

Well it depends on how the religious titles Groogy mentioned work. I could see it going either way, but from what Groogy described it seems like it could be possible. I guess we'll find out when we look at the cardinal title and see if one of the Allow triggers is catholic=yes.

 

[MN121MN]

So... we're going to be able to play as theocracies?

 

[sreckom92]

I wonder if those sons that you send to join Holy Orders will get special traits that show that they are members.

 

[soturi]

So... we're going to be able to play as theocracies?

already answered couple pages ago... NO

 

[Matty2e]

Would it be possible to, in areas where there was traditionally a large Jewish minority present, have a synagogue present at the baronial level with a Jewish community leader? There would then be the opportunity for him to have a small number of Jewish characters in his court, and give a bit more depth to any 'massacre the Jews' event, in that actual characters would be affected, giving a 'human face' to those kind of decisions which would normally just be 'gain 10 piety' etc.

 

[Groogy]

So, could we potentially mod this into a Roman senate?

It seems consequential that they "elect" the Emperor but in this way they would create not a ruler, but a Religious head, well the Emperor of Pagan Rome was the head of the Roman Religion!

Well yes this would indeed be possible if you would have a separate religion for the roman state, for instance Hellenic. You could have the senate elect the Emperor by making the title similar to how Fylkir works. Also the electors don't need to be of the same religion(so a dummy religion would work I guess if you really want to exploit this for HRE, but then the emperor wouldn't be catholic himself), that a cardinal needs to be catholic is scripted in the allow trigger. We could have hard-coded in that they needed but I felt this would give you guys some more freedom

 

[samyham]

The capacity at Paradox to come up with brilliant expansion ideas is amazing, keep up the good work!

 

[GRFenrir]

While new DLC is always good news, I was hoping for a Charlemagne-timeline... Maybe an idea for next DLC?

 

[Thure]

Well yes this would indeed be possible if you would have a separate religion for the roman state, for instance Hellenic. You could have the senate elect the Emperor by making the title similar to how Fylkir works. Also the electors don't need to be of the same religion(so a dummy religion would work I guess if you really want to exploit this for HRE, but then the emperor wouldn't be catholic himself), that a cardinal needs to be catholic is scripted in the allow trigger. We could have hard-coded in that they needed but I felt this would give you guys some more freedom

No possibility to make the system free moddable without a head of religion in future? Hm...

It should work to make this for the appointed Patriarch of Constaninople, right? With the Emperor of Byzanz as only elector.