Well, it's Friday and high time to spill the beans on the new expansion for Crusader Kings II; the Sword of Islam. Judging by the forum, playable Muslims is the most requested feature for CKII, and who are we to disagree? We always wanted to do it, provided we could do the Muslim world justice. That time is now (or, well, soon ). As with the Ruler Designer DLC, the Sword of Islam will be released together with a major content patch. What you get with the Sword of Islam is simply the ability to play as the Muslim rulers, but all the new mechanics will be there and running for the AI (or other players in multiplayer) even if you don't have the expansion.

I'll be doing three dev diaries on the Sword of Islam, each one dealing with some unique features for the Muslims as well as some free features that everyone will have access to simply by patching to 1.06.

THE SWORD OF ISLAM

One of the major hassles with making Muslims playable was the prevalence of text with obviously Christian or Western terminology. Therefore, we had to go through all text to make it fit the setting if you are playing a Muslim. Often, this required writing whole new events and decisions. For example, Muslims don't hold tournaments, they have the Furusiyya instead, which is an exhibition of martial arts and horsemanship. They don't hold Grand Feasts, they observe the Ramadan, etc. We also added some completely new decisions, like going on the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), which will initiate a cool little event driven story of what happens on the way to and from the holy city. Of course, there is also a whole slew of events dealing with various new gameplay features (more on that in later dev diaries.)

Another issue we needed to solve was the Gothic looking graphical interface of Crusader Kings II, which we felt did not really work when playing as a Muslim ruler. So we did a complete reskin with sand tones and green symbols and patterns instead of the church window graphics of Christian rulers. Yet another problem was that many event pictures looked distinctly Western/Christian, so we've added about 25 new ones to serve as Muslim equivalents. Then there are all the little things, like trait icons with crosses, the Crusade banner, etc. All of that has been changed to provide the right atmosphere. We've even changed the five councillor models for Muslims when they're out in the provinces performing jobs. It's all been a lot of work, but I think it turned out really well.

Muslims get a slightly different set of character traits; they don't get the Kinslayer, Crusader, Celibate and Chaste Traits. Instead, they get the Mujahid, Hajjaj, Faqih (Islamic law expert), Hafiz (has memorized the Koran), Sayyid (agnatic descendent of Fatima or one of Muhammad's uncles) and Mirza (child of a Sayyida mother) traits.

Lastly, Muslims get another set of honorary titles to hand out to their vassals. They all get a few special flavour events - especially the Chief Qadi - a position requiring an ecclesiastical education.



That's it for the Sword of Islam in this dev diary; next time I will go into the core dynamics of playing as a Muslim ruler.

THE 1.06 PATCH

Now then, here's some of the free stuff we're giving ya'll in the 1.06 patch...

First off, we thought the southwest corner of the map looked a bit dull, so we added a bunch of new provinces down there, representing the flourishing civilizations of the Manden people; Ghana, Mali and Songhay. The area comes with historical rulers (of course) and a new West African culture group. The region is rich but hard to reach.



For flavour, we have also made it so that duchy tier and above titles held by rulers of Iranian, Arabic and Turkish cultures are named after the ruling dynasty. For example, the Kingdom of Egypt automatically becomes the Fatimid Sultanate while the Fatimids are in power (though the original name is also used where appropriate.) In case the same dynasty holds several high rank titles, only the highest is named after the dynasty. Thus, we can have both a Seljuk Sultanate and a Sultanate of Rum, both ruled by the Seljuk dynasty. Randomly generated characters of these cultures automatically get a dynasty name suitable to name states after (ending with -id or -n, etc).



Lastly (for this dev diary), there are seven new creatable empires (the Arabian Empire, the Empire of Persia, Britannia, Scandinavia, Francia, Spain and Russia) and a whole slew of new de jure kingdoms, mostly to break up the old kingdom of Khazaria. Now, I know the addition of the new empires is controversial, but the creation conditions are designed to be fairly difficult to achieve, so the AI will very rarely do it. We want players to have the imperial option to strive for if they so desire - the Unions turned out to be a popular feature in Europa Universalis III.



Oh, and before anyone asks, patch 1.06 will be semi-compatible with old save games: you will be able to keep playing, but we're making no guarantees that the balance will not be completely upset, or that any added new provinces will be active and working.

That's it for now. Next week I'll talk about polygamy, decadence, and strong and weak claims!

 

[DominusNovus]

He means that HRE was formed 104 years before start of the game.

By a guy who's realm stretched from modern Spain to modern Poland (if we're being generous, Germany if we're not) and pretty much everything in between. With that scope, and with the fact that the Pope and Charlemagne could make some claim that the Imperial crown was vacant, I'd say the circumstances are very different.

 

[unmerged(101730)]

The main problem here seems to be with Paradox calling the game mechanics "empire" instead of ... say, "tier5" or so.

So we'll soon be able to create tier5 titles of "Spain", "Scandinavia", "Russia" and a few others, which will be able to rule over tier4 titles of Navarra, Castille, Denmark, Norway, Novgorod, Kiev and so on, same as the tier5 title of "Roman Empire" rules over tier4 titles of "Bulgaria", for example. What those titles are called in game is a matter of localisation, not game mechanics - some will be "Emperors", some "King of Kings", some "Vyeliy Knyaz", some "Shahanshah", whatever.

 

[Keanon]

Someone let a Swedish lion on the loose in here :b But +1 for Nuril, I am of the same opinion.

Well made empires claiming roman legacy replacing the HRE or ERE? Yes please.

Empire of Scandinavia(A 18th century word for The North)? Please god no.

 

[Cerzka]

A Scandinavian Empire is not to unlikly, beacuse one Swedish king is tought to have (this is just a historical theory) tried to become emporor, but i should point out he fought in the 30 years wars so it is a couple of centuries later.:unsure:

 

[apg]

the decadence modifier (i.e. the grapes) increases your demesnes income and your demesnes troop morale - dependent on its percentage - 94% would give you +9.4% demesne income & +18.8% demesne troop morale.

 

[Almighty1]

Sounds very nice I think might need to pick up this dlc now. Also I would like to add that being able to create new empires(as ahistorical as that might be) is a huge plus in my book.

 

[Tiuz]

The main problem here seems to be with Paradox calling the game mechanics "empire" instead of ... say, "tier5" or so.

So we'll soon be able to create tier5 titles of ...

I won't. At least not if there is another 'tier 5' of a particular religious/cultural context in existence - it's not only about me being able to refrain from creating it, i don't want the AI to 'accidentally' create it and destroy immersion. If that kills gameplay I'll finally have time to play A House Divided.

+1 to Nuril's line of argument even though little is known about the exact requirements and it might be PDox chose a sensible implementation. If not i'll wonder why this had to be introduced and could not have been left to the mods (now in turn possibly forcing me into modding it to my taste/finding a suitable mod).

 

[NewbieOne]

A Scandinavian Empire is not to unlikly, beacuse one Swedish king is tought to have (this is just a historical theory) tried to become emporor, but i should point out he fought in the 30 years wars so it is a couple of centuries later.:unsure:

I'm all for seeing Scandinavian kings elected as HRE emperors. In fact, it's sad that right now it's impossible to see anybody else than immediate vassals and family of the previous emperor getting elected. I'd love to see mediate counts (i.e. under a duke) getting elected if they're good enough (e.g. a True Christian Knight) or outsiders. On the other hand, I can't really see a Scandinavian Empire there. I can imagine some kind of High King of the North. I can imagine an Emperor (Roman) of the North being appointed as a somewhat junior colleague of the HRE (same abstract rank but less seniority)... but I think that's it.

The base condition is a lot of Piety and holding 80% of the de jure counties. Then there are often extra conditions, like being of the right culture, or, in the case of Francia, also being a king of a title outside the de jure realm of Francia.

Would be good for titular IMHO but it shouldn't exist de iure as a de facto dormant empire at the start. But the truth is also that nobody said those empires were de iure... maybe I'm reading too much into it. What are they actually? By the way, if they're titular, then please ignore my rambling about new de iure empires being so bad and accept an apology. (But still don't put in de iure empires like Scandinavia, ever. Please.)

For the record, the following British monarchs all claimed the imperial title Basileus to describe themselves; usually in the formula "Emperor of the English and of the whole of Britain" (basileus Anglorum et totius Britanniae). Cnut called himself "Emperor of All Britannia" (Basileus omnis Britanniae); he also used the title Imperator interchangeably with Basileus.

Aethelstan
Eadmund
Eadred
Eadwig
Eadgar
Aethelraed
Cnut
Eadweard

After the Norman Conquest, the new rulers contented themselves with the title of 'King' only, and didn't claim imperial honours (with one known exception, William the Conqueror described himself in one royal document from 1069 as victoriosus anglorum basileus "Victorious Emperor of the English"). Even so, the long list of examples I gave proves that there's ample historical precedent for a British monarch claiming the title of Emperor in-game -especially if the Normans lose in 1066.

Edit: the Great Seal of Edward the Confessor. Look at his title:

'Seal of Edward + Emperor of the English'

Like others said, basileus is Greek for king. It was used with regard to ancient kings of the poleis in Greece, who were definitely not emperors. Only later did the Greeks start to refer to western monarchs as rigas (from Latin rex) to deny them the highest qualification. Which is not to say that kings didn't try to adopt the imperial title or claim equality or at the very least exemption from imperial rule (the last one generally succeeded). Finally the 'rex imperator in regno suo' (the king is the emperor in his kingdom) ideology gained ground in 15th century, helping the rise of absolutism (I believe the emperor was believed to have a larger scope of legitimate interference with his subjects), and at the beginning of the 16th the 'Roman Empire' was reduced to the German Nation. Nothing really precluded a Roman Empire of the French Nation from being formed.

I understand that this apparently what the majority wants, but I certainly wasn't asking for these fantasy de jure empires. So I agree that this will enhance the gameplay for many, but not mine; however I can understand it (won't say like though) if this is what the majority wants. Furthermore I too have my worries about the taken direction.
I do agree on the suggested 'translatio Imperii' dynamics.

I may have created some premature, unnecessary mess by presuming those were de iure empires, while they may be titular, in which case I wouldn't mind, although I'd prefer a title upgrade mechanism instead. For historical Europe, it makes sense to expect France or Italy (suppose Arduin of Ivrea had won, he was an early 11th century native king, while there had been short-lived Italian emperors descended from Charlemagne in the maternal line before) as a contender, Spain or Britain as the home of separatist 'emperors' or Russia just because it's so big (but I think Russia is premature, there was only one king and that's mostly because he was Catholic, let alone emperor before they started imagining themselves as a third Rome due to a dynastic marriage with a Palaiologina after Byzantium had already collapsed). However, in an alternative historical adventure, anybody could create in his own kingdom such circumstances as those which justified Britain or Scandinavia as an empire.

You are making it seem like everything has to be tied to the old Roman Empire. This time period and game emphasis the fall of both schisms of the original Roman Empire and rise of more Absolute Christian Kings. Between the Fall of Byzantium and the Rise of Austria/Prussia against the HRE, the old idea of a Roman Empire, and even divine Empire in general, could be be argued to be nonexistent throughout the course of this game. As I stated again, the goal of this game is to simulate the diplomatic and power struggle between lords of land throughout Europe and their methods and means to acquire power, both through creation and/or usurpation.

Personally I would not consider the HRE to be a true Empire in terms of a Roman-style Empire and after the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, the next true empire is not until France under Napoleon. However, given the simulation of possible historic events that may or may not have occurred during this time period that this game attempts to recreate, I have no problem with seeing it be plausible for someone to self proclaim themselves an Emperor of a region. Is that not how the original Roman Empire and any Empire in general was formed initially? Either a man or group of men decided, either immediately or through the course of time, that they are now a higher tier of power that can control those who used to be of equal status of power as they. If others did not agree, they either did not swear fealty to them or they met of the battlefield.

The matter at hand here is basically not imperial power but the imperial rank. It's not about creating a strong or even unified political organism or military presence. It's about the rank, the literally one tier above the normal king. At least in mediaeval thinking, where the emperor was a monarchic dignity above kings. The way old Roman Emperors came to exist (and previously the word 'imperator' meant 'the guy who gives orders' and was a title given to victorious generals during the Republic) was literally as if some guy in America became the hereditary head of a dominant religious denomination and received a collection of semi-random mid to high ranking positions like postmaster general & secnav, with liberal powers in the army and perhaps diplomacy, some ombudsmanship and the power to appoint the president instead of popular vote... waitasec, he could just become the one and only elector. The president would still be the nominal boss but the new power would hold the reins, partly behind the stage, in an obviously unconstitutional way (which the Supreme Court somehow didn't feel like doing anything about... if it could at all). This would become hereditary and with time, people would get so used to the position that they would elect a replacement when the dynasty died out (even though in theory they still had the old system in place, on paper). You could imagine Joseph Smith pulling the thing off in Utah (e.g. by additionally becoming senator for life, comptroller general, civilian commander of the National Guard and the guy responsible for the census, finally with the power to appoint the state governor, later passing it all to the son... sounds strangely feasible for 19th century Wild West). In fact, Rome stopped pretending to be a republic only well after Western Roman Empire died. In think it wasn't until Heraclius or later that they accepted the fact they were a normal monarchy, along with phasing out Latin and totally switching to Greek and adopting Persian court customs.

 

[Garak]

I like all the Muslim stuff. I do NOT like the new creatable empires, or the new de jure kingdoms splitting up Byzantium. I will probably be deleting most of these (especially "Greece", which is even more immersion breaking than Pommerania, in my opinion). I don't even understand why people think a Spanish empire is slightly reasonable. Some idiots running one of the Spanish kingdoms called themselves emperors for a while. If that's the criterion for being reasonable, then I want my own emperor title, because I have declared myself emperor of my bedroom. Wasn't de jure drift introduced basically to solve the problem of holding multiple kingdoms, anyway? Why have both? I like the suggestion someone made of having the Spanish Empire be Al Andalus and making it Muslim only. I think I'll mod that, too.

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

I should stress it again, I'm 100% for Nuril in this conversation, and I remember a very similar, hot debate in the CK2+ thread. The optimal compromise there, not sure if finally implemented, was to make these empires titular, hard to form and acquiring de jure land on creation, which is what made everybody happy in the end. If Paradox does a similar thing (they are not still 100% committed on their current plans as they haven't shown and empires de jure map so far in screenshots to my knowledge) they would achieve the very best result. Even given that, so far, they still cannot cover the full map with de jure empires (Italy is still a big issue there, for instance) and in addition to that, titular empires are sooo much more flexible.

This said, a mechanism to claim Roman Legitimacy ('Translatio Imperii') would be, in my opinion, a huuuuuuuge plus which is not immediately necessary though in order to achieve such a compromise.


P.S. I don't think that it's a localization issue, that is 'King of Kings', 'Rey de los Reyes' as opposed to 'Imperator' or 'Basileus', supposedly the latter being a level higher. This would be against medieval beliefs on what the actual feudal pyramid was and was thought to be, at least in the West (carolingian Europe, not the periphery of the times where various oddities and weird things happened, like the mentioned saxon and spanish episodes). This system is very well modeled in CK2 and achieves a pretty good gameplay balance, and I think that we should give the proper names to things according to that system. Only the Imperator could be above the Reges (Kings), which was considered an extension of the late Roman Empire experience of germanic peoples' kings being nominal vassals (foederati) of the Roman Emperor.

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

Would be good for titular IMHO but it shouldn't exist de iure as a de facto dormant empire at the start. But the truth is also that nobody said those empires were de iure... maybe I'm reading too much into it. What are they actually? By the way, if they're titular, then please ignore my rambling about new de iure empires being so bad and accept an apology. (But still don't put in de iure empires like Scandinavia, ever. Please.)

NewbieOne: they are de jure empires, please check the initial post (Doomdark's diary).

 

[Darkrenown]

Pandering to people who don't care at all about plausibility nor how the historical era actually worked in favour of cheap gimmicks with no real meaning in the game sure is great. Now let's carve up your home-Kingdoms some more into implausible pseudo-Kingdoms for the sake of "Gameplay" that should really be the realm of modding then tell anyone who doesn't like it to just shut up and have them mod their own games back to the way they should be if they don't like it! Yeah! Let's put in some Amazon factions in Anatolia and Persian Ninjas because they'd be "cool"! Anyone who actually cares about history just doesn't "need to use them", even though it impacts everyone's games, right?

Because it's a bad direction for these games to be going in. They're supposed to be "Historically accurate until the game starts ticking, where Alt-History begins", but things like this throw that out the window and make the setup absurd from the start. I share the very real concerns of others in this thread about the several recent pushes in favour of the completely undefined term "Gameplay" at the expense of actual historical gameplay. Go back to Mount&Blade if you want completely made-up nations with a slight historical flavour.

Yes, adding some higher tier titles in areas that either were or plausibly could have been united into realms encompassing multiple kingdoms is basically the same as adding amazons and ninjas. If any slight detail is off we might as well throw out this whole "history" business and have lasers and zombies, right?

Clearly you have strong feelings on what you think an "empire" should mean in CK2, but sadly it does not agree with what we want to do with them, and ultimately your choice is accept it, change it yourself, or just not play the game. Certainly you can give feedback, but it's only likely to be listened to if you don't insult people and make absurd hyperbolic arguments. You seem to have appointed yourself the sole guardian of "people who care about history", but you need to understand that you are not, and that people can still care about history without setting it above every other concern.

 

[NewbieOne]

I should stress it again, I'm 100% for Nuril in this conversation, and I remember a very similar, hot debate in the CK2+ thread. The optimal compromise there, not sure if finally implemented, was to make these empires titular, hard to form and acquiring de jure land on creation, which is what made everybody happy in the end. If Paradox does a similar thing (they are not still 100% committed on their current plans as they haven't shown and empires de jure map so far in screenshots to my knowledge) they would achieve the very best result. Even given that, so far, they still cannot cover the full map with de jure empires (Italy is still a big issue there, for instance) and in addition to that, titular empires are sooo much more flexible.

This said, a mechanism to claim Roman Legitimacy ('Translatio Imperii') would be, in my opinion, a huuuuuuuge plus which is not immediately necessary though in order to achieve such a compromise.


P.S. I don't think that it's a localization issue, that is 'King of Kings', 'Rey de los Reyes' as opposed to 'Imperator' or 'Basileus', supposedly the latter being a level higher. This would be against medieval beliefs on what the actual feudal pyramid was and was thought to be, at least in the West (carolingian Europe, not the periphery of the times where various oddities and weird things happened, like the mentioned saxon and spanish episodes). This system is very well modeled in CK2 and achieves a pretty good gameplay balance, and I think that we should give the proper names to things according to that system. Only the Imperator could be above the Reges (Kings), which was considered an extension of the late Roman Empire experience of germanic peoples' kings being nominal vassals (foederati) of the Roman Emperor.

Actually, the foederati were 'allies'. It was just that the Romans didn't really evolve the concept of equal partnership in an alliance. ;P

'King of kings', if not referred to God, would probably be deemed abusive... if at all, it would probably only fly in the east. High king basically goes back to the old Celtic tribal structure, with many rulers called ri (like rex). For the record, the eastern 'knyaz' and especially Lithuanian 'kunigaitis' go back to the obvious root (i.e. similar to könig). I suppose we owe a lot of the current historical/feudal terminology to Latin translations that were not consistent in their approach.

 

[unmerged(101730)]

I don't think that it's a localization issue, that is 'King of Kings', 'Rey de los Reyes' as opposed to 'Imperator' or 'Basileus', supposedly the latter being a level higher. This would be against medieval beliefs on what the actual feudal pyramid was and was thought to be, at least in the West (carolingian Europe, not the periphery of the times where various oddities and weird things happened, like the mentioned saxon and spanish episodes). This system is very well modeled in CK2 and achieves a pretty good gameplay balance, and I think that we should give the proper names to things according to that system. Only the Imperator could be above the Reges (Kings), which was considered an extension of the late Roman Empire experience of germanic peoples' kings being nominal vassals (foederati) of the Roman Emperor.

Funny. I'm pretty sure the Shahanshah was above other kings (shahs) ...

The thing is, tier5 is not limited to Christian Western Europe. Other places, other religions, other cultures, other rules, more possible tier5 guys.

 

[StephenT]

Like others said, basileus is Greek for king. It was used with regard to ancient kings of the poleis in Greece, who were definitely not emperors. Only later did the Greeks start to refer to western monarchs as rigas (from Latin rex) to deny them the highest qualification.

Thank you for proving my point.

When the Romans started using the Greek word 'basileus' to mean 'Emperor' rather than 'King' - which can be dated to the year 610 when Heraclius adopted it as his title - they had to invent a new word - ρήξ - to use instead when they actually meant 'king'.


I'l say one thing in favour of the argument you and people like Nuril are making, that only Emperors in direct lineage from the Roman Empire were legitimate - it's something that some people back in the Middle Ages would have also argued. The trouble is that you're claiming to be objectively correct, rather than just expressing an opinion that other people back then also held. There were plenty of people who thought that only the Basileus kai Autokratōr tōn Rōmaiōn and/or the Romanorum Imperator Augustus had the right to the imperial dignity... but the Emperors of All Britain, the Emperors of Spain, the Emperors of the Bulgars and the Emperors of Serbia would have disagreed.

And ultimately, whether they forced other people to recognise their titles in the long term would have depended on military strength and political manoeuvring - which is exactly how the game depicts it too.

 

[Nuril]

Yes, adding some higher tier titles in areas that either were or plausibly could have been united into realms encompassing multiple kingdoms is basically the same as adding amazons and ninjas. If any slight detail is off we might as well throw out this whole "history" business and have lasers and zombies, right?

Clearly you have strong feelings on what you think an "empire" should mean in CK2, but sadly it does not agree with what we want to do with them, and ultimately your choice is accept it, change it yourself, or just not play the game.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that these Empires have as much historical credibility as the Amazons. My bad. But yes, obviously those are my "options" if you aren't open minded with regards to what these things actually were for this time period. Like I said, the response is "Shut up, do the work yourself or go away".

Certainly you can give feedback, but it's only likely to be listened to if you don't insult people and make absurd hyperbolic arguments.

Except they obviously aren't Hyperbolic because these Empires ARE just fanfiction nonsense with no historical plausibility, because that's not what European Empires were in the Middle Ages.

You seem to have appointed yourself the sole guardian of "people who care about history", but you need to understand that you are not, and that people can still care about history without setting it above every other concern.

Well someone needs to friggin' care about it if Developers themselves say that they aren't putting it as a priority here. You basically just admitted that it is nonsense but you're putting it in anyway.

 

[Graspiloot]

Except they obviously aren't Hyperbolic because these Empires ARE just fanfiction nonsense with no historical plausibility, because that's not what European Empires were in the Middle Ages.

You only see Empire as a title, but see it as a tier, and it would very much be possible for a king to place himself above other kings. As long as he can defend his claims, always in history this has proven more important than actually having a legit claim.

Well someone needs to friggin' care about it if Developers themselves say that they aren't putting it as a priority here. You basically just admitted that it is nonsense but you're putting it in anyway.

No they said gameplay over history, that is a difference. And yes you pretend you are the speaker for all who love history, but I'm going to make a guess and I would say that at least 80% who would take the time to post here on the forums probably care about history (not all in the same degree of course). And many of us don't mind these empires. Although I would have rather seen the kingdom of Greece be named something else and Anatolia split up in 2, but that's pretty minor.

Also why is everyone assuming they will be de jure empires? I don't think it has been mentioned by paradox anywhere and it was just someone's guess on this thread that people just seemed to have taken over.

 

[NewbieOne]

Yes, adding some higher tier titles in areas that either were or plausibly could have been united into realms encompassing multiple kingdoms is basically the same as adding amazons and ninjas. If any slight detail is off we might as well throw out this whole "history" business and have lasers and zombies, right?

Clearly you have strong feelings on what you think an "empire" should mean in CK2, but sadly it does not agree with what we want to do with them, and ultimately your choice is accept it, change it yourself, or just not play the game. Certainly you can give feedback, but it's only likely to be listened to if you don't insult people and make absurd hyperbolic arguments. You seem to have appointed yourself the sole guardian of "people who care about history", but you need to understand that you are not, and that people can still care about history without setting it above every other concern.

As much as you're actually right about the bolded part, you're essentially saying, 'if you don't like it, don't buy it,' and if you've already bought it then stop using it. Imagine a writer telling his readers, 'clearly you have strong feelings about where I should take character X but sadly, it's I who make the decision and you don't have to buy my next book or re-read the one you already have.'

Also, your reply rather clearly reveals that you have as strong feelings about the decisions you're making or about your right to make them as those of the poster to whom you were replying. Which is not of itself a bad thing but please see it in a perspective.

Finally, I don't believe you're doing justice to Nuril by saying he has appointe himself the sole guardian of people who care about history. Please don't make it look like Nuril is the only person with the same concerns. It is very clear that while not everybody agrees on everything, at least a number of people agree on certain essential issues. The way you talk to Nuril it makes it look like you want to make his opinion appear isolated. And I don't think he actually aspired to be some kind of spokesman or leader of a group of posters, so I don't think it's fair to imply that he did. In fact, he said she shared the concerns of others, already expressed, and that hardly makes it look like he's appointing himself the sole guardian of the same concerns.

Mind you, I'm not saying that you're doing some big injustice to Nuril, let alone deliberately, but I clearly see emotions on both sides. Maybe it would be better for everybody to calm down a little.

 

[Nuril]

You only see Empire as a title, but see it as a tier, and it would very much be possible for a king to place himself above other kings. As long as he can defend his claims, always in history this has proven more important than actually having a legit claim.

Doesn't make any difference what-so-ever since they're not adding a mid-tier between Kingdom and Empire (Like, say, High-Kings with slightly fewer privileges than Emperors). Because "Might makes right" is not what defines an Empire in the Middle Ages, the only effect that has is the ability to cling onto it. I repeat: I'd be fine if there was a "Pretender Empire" mechanic that would lead to massive violent confrontations over long periods with the legitimate Empire of the day and, if you emerge completely triumphant in every way, the Pope could crown your Pretender Empire as "The True Successor of Rome" in your half of Europe. That would be difficult, fun, historic and unique. Rather than some "Lol ur so awesome!" gimmick that means France has to conquer one Duchy in its south-west or what-have-you.

No they said gameplay over history, that is a difference.

They are actively going against the historicity of the matter for subjective "Fun!" that a lot of people in this very thread say would lessen the game for them. There is no difference in what you're saying to what I'm saying. They are choosing to not prioritize something that is more important to many people than the thing they're putting in its place (and we understand fully what "Gameplay" is, this makes it worse for us on that subject too).

And yes you pretend you are the speaker for all who love history

And yes, Darkrenown just made that up so feel free to pretend that it's true if it makes you feel superior to me as a matter of fiat rather than argument.

Also why is everyone assuming they will be de jure empires? I don't think it has been mentioned by paradox anywhere and it was just someone's guess on this thread that people just seemed to have taken over.

Because Paradox 1) Didn't refute it, 2) Went on to talk about how certain regions of the map are included in specific Empires which common sense would tell us that those are marked as De Jure regions, since Titular titles do not have "regions". Even if it's just specific provinces coded into the decision it doesn't matter much to this discussion though, as the effects on historicity would be identical.

 

[Keioel]

I'm excited to see the changes and especially excited to see the new Empire being added. It's frankly about time they were added, I am saddened there's no resurgent Roman Empire but I guess you can't have everything. Poor Italy being forgotten again, first Piedmont's given to Burgundy...

Also, while I have no intention of playing Muslims I will be getting the DLC just in case!