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!

 

[Garak]

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!

There's no resurgent Roman Empire because the Roman Empire is already in the game, from the beginning.

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

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

'Foederati' means literally 'linked through a pact'; the nature of this pact was depending on the circumstances and it was for sure not equal as it wasn't in the times of the Republic when Roma was well above the other Italian 'foederati'.

'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.

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.

Yeah I agree for the Shahanshah being tier5. My point was mostly about Christian Europe, where it's important to stress the difference between what is an 'Emperor' and what is not - any kind of 'king of kings' anywhere in Europe. For cases like the ones you guys point out we can do some localization work, in fact some mods do that for instance in the case of Ireland, including the small one I'm using.

I understand that mine is a kind of double logic/criterion, but implicitely the game is already going to use a double approach for, say, christians and muslims as they have intrinsic differences which must be reflected into the gameplay, so I don't see why this should be conceptually a problem.

 

[Keioel]

I disagree.

There's no resurgent Roman Empire because the Roman Empire is already in the game, from the beginning.

 

[Garak]

I disagree.

...Um... I'm not sure what to say to that. :blink: It's not a matter of disagreement. It's historical fact. The so-called "Byzantine Empire" is the Roman Empire. It's just being referred to in-game by a commonly used name applied by a historian centuries after the fact. Now, I suppose we could have a decision for the Byzantines to restore the Western Empire or something, if they knocked out the HRE, but that would just be a bonus. The Romans are there, in 1066, no matter what we call them now.

 

[Darkrenown]

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".

Well, the other choice is "Converse about it in a reasonable manner while recognising the final call is with the people that are actually making the game", but since you don't seem capable of that, sure.

Since I see this going nowhere good, I'll request that you drop the subject.

 

[Jia Xu]

I don't like the giant swarm of empires, but it doesn't bother me too much. As long as de jure assimilation is still around on the imperial level, Rome can always reassert that it's the only true empire the hard way. World conquest in CK2 is laughably easy to boot. What I absolutely love however is the splitting up of the Kingdom of Byzantium into Greece and Anatolia. Superb, PI. Absolutely grand!

 

[Keioel]

Ah I thought you were making the often made argument that the HRE was the Roman Empire. I agree with you that the ERE is a part of the Roman Empire. I was more referring to Italy getting it's act together and retaking it's place.

...Um... I'm not sure what to say to that. :blink: It's not a matter of disagreement. It's historical fact. The so-called "Byzantine Empire" is the Roman Empire. It's just being referred to in-game by a commonly used name applied by a historian centuries after the fact. Now, I suppose we could have a decision for the Byzantines to restore the Western Empire or something, if they knocked out the HRE, but that would just be a bonus. The Romans are there, in 1066, no matter what we call them now.

 

[Nuril]

Well, the other choice is "Converse about it in a reasonable manner while recognising the final call is with the people that are actually making the game", but since you don't seem capable of that, sure.

Since I see this going nowhere good, I'll request that you drop the subject.

Seriously, Darkrenown? You're telling me to shut up under the implied threat of infractions against my account instead of offering ANY point as to why it's correct and we're wrong about what an Empire was in the Middle Ages and that these are based in history? Not a single word? I'm just "incapable of conversing in a reasonable manner"?

I presume you're aware that conversations, by definition, require input from a second party.

 

[Garak]

Ah I thought you were making the often made argument that the HRE was the Roman Empire. I agree with you that the ERE is a part of the Roman Empire. I was more referring to Italy getting it's act together and retaking it's place.

Ah, yes, lol. I wasn't even thinking of the HRE at first. I think anything centered on Italy would likely come from the East, though. I don't know if any local Italian powers would be interested in declaring themselves a revived western Roman Empire. Seems more likely to me they would just try to get control of the HRE (since the Pope and the Emperor were saying it was a continuation of the empire in the west, as "tenuous" as that claim was). No, I think the more logical approach would be if the ERE got Italy and openly challenged the legitimacy of the HRE, saying it had restored the western empire.

Seriously, Darkrenown? You're telling me to shut up under the implied threat of infractions against my account instead of offering ANY point as to why it's correct and we're wrong about what an Empire was in the Middle Ages and that these are based in history? Not a single word? I'm just "incapable of conversing in a reasonable manner"?

I presume you're aware that conversations, by definition, require input from a second party.

Dude, chill out. I agree with your general point about Empires, but there's no need to be this hostile to the devs over it. It's just not that important, and it's true that they made the game so they have the right to take it in whatever direction they choose. Just mod the empires out of your game. I think the ahistorical kingdoms added in patch 1.05 are mostly stupid, too, but it's not worth getting upset over.

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

I don't like the giant swarm of empires, but it doesn't bother me too much. As long as de jure assimilation is still around on the imperial level, Rome can always reassert that it's the only true empire the hard way. World conquest in CK2 is laughably easy to boot. What I absolutely love however is the splitting up of the Kingdom of Byzantium into Greece and Anatolia. Superb, PI. Absolutely grand!

Yes, I notice that they chose for them non-obvious de jure borders, they look similar to the de facto borders for the 1187 start, I guess it has something to do with what they want to do for the Byzantine/Seljuk confrontation and the Rum Sultanate.

(Although I would have chosen different names, but Thessalonica and Acahia or Nikaea or things like these don't feel right before a "Fourth Crusade" kind of expansion, so in the end Greece and Anatolia are the most plausible even if ahistorical if you want to split the "core Byzantium" or "Romania".)

 

[Graspiloot]

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).

Also they did not say fun. I believe when they said gameplay over historicity was when discussing the kingdoms of byzantium. They clearly split up the kingdom to make jyhad more likely and a formable kingdom more possible should the empire ever collapse. This makes sense even though there is no historical basis for these 2 kingdoms.

Secondly they cannot focus on all aspects of medieval life, the complex political, economical and dynastic systems would be too difficult (or resource-wasting) to incorporate fully. So they have to make choices. And then you look at what part of their game would people be most interested in getting expanded on. They chose more empires. It makes sense in a way that the most important reason in my opinion that those empires weren't formed (they wouldn't have been emperors, but king of the north or something similar, but the tier difference to really state that this king is something more than other) is that none of these empires have been stable or powerful enough to defend their claims over generations.

Power would be most important. Legitimacy can be faked as we saw in the HRE.

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.

I do not feel superior over you nor do I have the need to. I just don't like your tone...

Because Paradox 1) Didn't refute it, 2) Went on to talk about how certain regions of the map are included in specific Empires with 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.

Let's just wait until there is more information about them. I would agree with you it shouldn't be de jure, but I wouldn't have a problem with being titular. Having specific regions does make sense. How can you call yourself King of the North if you aren't in control of scandinavia?

 

[Garak]

Yes, I notice that they chose for them non-obvious de jure borders, they look similar to the de facto borders for the 1187 start, I guess it has something to do with what they wan to do for the Byzantine/Seljuk confrontation and the Rum Sultanate.

(Although I would have chosen different names, but Thessalonica and Acahia or Nikaea or things like these don't feel right before a "Fourth Crusade" kind of expansion, so in the end Greece and Anatolia are the most plausible even if ahistorical if you want to split the "core Byzantium" or "Romania".)

Personally, I think I would have called "Greece" Hellas or Rumelia or something. "Greece" is very anachronistic.

 

[unmerged(5822)]

Or Graecia, if you want to stick with the Latin name theme.

 

[Richard Dolder]

What is wrong with you people.

Emperor means "Can have kings as vassals".
Emperor of Britannia means "You can put some dude on the throne of scotland and ireland to rule in your stead, and give the title king of wales to your heir.".

 

[Graspiloot]

Personally, I think I would have called "Greece" Hellas or Rumelia or something. "Greece" is very anachronistic.

I personally find greece less of an eyesore than "byzantine empire". At least greece still refers to a region. Byzantine empire is just... no....

 

[Keioel]

I can see that, and in fact at the direct request of the Holy Father have in fact done that myself. However, I have no doubt that if someone in Italy had managed to unify it and had the Pope on his side you'd see the head of the HRE losing that legitimacy.
The second scenario would be epic

Ah, yes, lol. I wasn't even thinking of the HRE at first. I think anything centered on Italy would likely come from the East, though. I don't know if any local Italian powers would be interested in declaring themselves a revived western Roman Empire. Seems more likely to me they would just try to get control of the HRE (since the Pope and the Emperor were saying it was a continuation of the empire in the west, as "tenuous" as that claim was). No, I think the more logical approach would be if the ERE got Italy and openly challenged the legitimacy of the HRE, saying it had restored the western empire.




Dude, chill out. I agree with your general point about Empires, but there's no need to be this hostile to the devs over it. It's just not that important, and it's true that they made the game so they have the right to take it in whatever direction they choose. Just mod the empires out of your game. I think the ahistorical kingdoms added in patch 1.05 are mostly stupid, too, but it's not worth getting upset over.

 

[Nuril]

Secondly they cannot focus on all aspects of medieval life, the complex political, economical and dynastic systems would be too difficult (or resource-wasting) to incorporate fully. So they have to make choices. And then you look at what part of their game would people be most interested in getting expanded on. They chose more empires.

Then they simply chose the wrong thing, since that still doesn't make any sense.

Power would be most important. Legitimacy can be faked as we saw in the HRE.

No one outside of a handful of people in the Church were aware that the Donations of Constantine were forgeries (nor could many outside of it probably even read the documents). The HRE was founded on what it thought was legitimate grounds. Comments on the Pretender-Empires section if they are to spend resources on them?

I do not feel superior over you nor do I have the need to. I just don't like your tone...

Well the feeling's mutual and it doesn't help that impression when you two feel the need to make declarations about how I'm "pretending to be a Sole Guardian of X".

Let's just wait until there is more information about them. I would agree with you it shouldn't be de jure, but I wouldn't have a problem with being titular. Having specific regions does make sense. How can you call yourself King of the North if you aren't in control of scandinavia?

The expansion is due out in a few weeks and it seems like a reasonable assumption to make (and, again, isn't relevant at all to our point).

 

[Darkrenown]

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.'

Surely writers do take all the decisions about how a character turns out and by the time the reader sees this it's already written and published? But let's not get lost in analogies: If you don't like the new empires, how exactly does their presence affect your gameplay? I suppose you see them on the de jure empire mapmode, but that's about it. If you dislike them you obviously won't form them, and it's pretty unlikely you'll see the AI make them, so they have pretty much no effect on you at all. On the offchance the AI does manage to make one in a game you're playing, does their being called "Empire of <place>" rather than "King of X, Y, Z" make any practical difference to you? And finally, if you hate them to the point of modding them out, it's not hard to do.

 

[Arcvalons]

I think the concept of Translatio Imperii could work. Say you are the most powerful king in Britain, and you sucessfully challenge and defeat the HRE with a special "Translatio Imperii" casus belli; the HRE is dissolved, and you create a new Britannian Empire title in it's place. Though I expect we'd have to mod it for now

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

Well, the other choice is "Converse about it in a reasonable manner while recognising the final call is with the people that are actually making the game", but since you don't seem capable of that, sure.

Since I see this going nowhere good, I'll request that you drop the subject.

Why, Darkrenown? Really? I have spent words of high praise towards Paradox on these boards and with my real life friends for your customer care, your business model, your forum policy and overall your beatiful games but honestly, this approach seems to me somewhat unfair towards Nuril - and, let me say, also to some extent authoritative. I understand that you are promoting the new DLC also on this channel (I believe that 99% of the people would buy it anyways on these boards) but we should not be afraid of some inevitable a little bit 'warm' debate on single issues. I personaly do not think that Nuril's approach was offensive, his hyperbole was aimed at sterotyping an extreme view of a totally hypothetical gameplay-historicity tradeoff as interpreted from another player's post, a tradeoff which I guess does not exist, and not the new additions that have been announced.

Anyways, you guys expected from the first post the issue to be controversial. From the opening post it's apparent that you have looked for a compromise in the development stage when designing those new empires. Why don't we all take a more constructive approach to find the actual best compromise? The beauty of CK2, among the other things, is that it's an evolving game with high potential, and it can be made better and better in the years to come, like EU3, HoI3 and others. One thing is clear from this thread: that everybody would like to see a gameplay solution to the issue of holding multiple kingdoms outside HRE and ERE, and having more potential empires is a first step towards that. Another thing that's clear is that everybody in the "Roman faction" - the one that includes for instance Nuril and me - would be content with some mechanic claiming Roman or whatever Imperial legitimacy for new empires at least in Christendom. Clearly this is too late to be introduced now in 1.06, but why don't we discuss potential extension (I'm not saying developers should be involved in the discussion actively, or that this should happen in this thread) to make good suggestions for the future extensions and expansions? How the gameplay-enhancing possibility cannot be seen in this (to 'replace' an emperor from the otside would be even more satisfying for players, probably more than new countries decisions in EU3 and V2)?

Paradox has been making great games also for its ability to 'listen fans'; it would be weird if such an opportunity would be lost now.

Paolo