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!

 

[Hardin4188]

I like the idea of adding a high king title in the game, but I do not think a King of Kings title would be appropriate in Europe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only King of Kings were outside of Europe. It is generally a title only for Jesus Christ.

 

[StephenT]

To me, the existence of a de jure realm doesn't have to mean that the realm used to exist once. It could equally mean that there's a perception among the people of several neighbouring kingdoms that somehow they "belong together"; that they have a common interest rooted in geography or history or culture. The kingdoms of Castille and Léon and Aragón and so forth were all proudly independent... but there was also a sense that they were all part of Hispania. A Spanish king who conquered the other Spanish kings could exploit that sentiment to legitimise his rule the way a French or German king conquering Iberia and annexing it to his foreign realm might not have been able to.

And there was certainly classical precedent for setting up an Empire independent of THE Empire. After all, even the basileus in Constantinople himself derived his legitimacy from a decision by the Emperor of Rome to split his realm in two and raise another sovereign to equal rank with himself. (Of course technically the original Emperor took the Eastern half for himself.) But that wasn't the only division of the Empire: it was called the Tetrarchy, remember? If an alternate-history Henry II Plantagenet had chosen to take the title of Caesar of Britain and Gaul, he could point to solid historical precedents for that title.

 

[NewbieOne]

@NewbieOne
Until this little known guy. (Although that was the formation of the HRE, but hey, I already have the Frankish Empire modded into my game so I'm not too bothered about it's inclusion ).

He was an Emperor of Rome (Western), not an Emperor of the Franks. The Franks were never an empire.

To me, the existence of a de jure realm doesn't have to mean that the realm used to exist once. It could equally mean that there's a perception among the people of several neighbouring kingdoms that somehow they "belong together"; that they have a common interest rooted in geography or history or culture. The kingdoms of Castille and Léon and Aragón and so forth were all proudly independent... but there was also a sense that they were all part of Hispania.

And Hispania was a kingdom. It was first a part of Rome, then significant part of the kingdom of Visigoths. Definitely kingdom (and under the Roman Empire if only nominally), not an Empire.

One can't make Empires of kingdoms that first split apart and later reunited. That would be a false premise and also unfair to kingdoms like Hungary, which were large and did not split into separate kingdoms (barring the aftermath of Mohacs in 1526). And yet Hungary is not the Emperor.

And there was certainly classical precedent for setting up an Empire independent of THE Empire. After all, even the basileus in Constantinople himself derived his legitimacy from a decision by the Emperor of Rome to split his realm in two and raise another sovereign to equal rank with himself. (Of course technically the original Emperor took the Eastern half for himself.) But that wasn't the only division of the Empire: it was called the Tetrarchy, remember? If an alternate-history Henry II Plantagenet had chosen to take the title of Caesar of Britain and Gaul, he could point to solid historical precedents for that title.

There were crusaders and mercenaries with the Byzantine-given title of Caesars (Konrad of Monferrato, Roger de Flor). They were technically Emperors of Rome but nobody from the West saw them as more than a mid-ranking aristocrat (until a later stage when they got more land to rule). Just an oddity.

Anyway, Tetrarchy required consent from the top emperor to form the lower emperors. The HRE already originated in violation of this but the Pope's power was believed to be supplanting this. Also, Old Rome had a tradition of popular acclamation or acclamation by the army. Whatever population and army Rome had around the year 800 were hardcore fans of Charlemagne and perfectly ready to hail him emperor. In Old Roman tradition, this would now be up to recognition or lack thereof by the other emperor(s) and perhaps a war to settle the matter. I suppose another Roman Emperor could originate in this manner in Europe: surely France (Gaul), maybe Spain (Hispania), maybe Britain (Brittannia). You could pull it off. But this doesn't make a de iure Empire of Brittannia or Hispania to exist. This would rely on the populace being 'Romans' (especially with some claims on Roman citizenship, as looong persisted in the remnants of Celtic Britain). And so it wouldn't work for the King of Poland or Denmark. Those would need some ties to an imperial dynasty with a strong claim to oppose the current holder, or simply imperial recognition by the existing emperor. Or perhaps the Pope.

As for Henry Plantagenet, Gaul wouldn't work. The King of France was still a bigger fish than Henry II and ruled the same kingdom that was the home kingdom of Charlemagne (and the Capets weren't unrelated to the Carolingians either). No chance to assert suzerainty over the king of France, even a lip service thing. Better focus on the humiliating situation with the Duchy of Normandy instead, really.

People complaining about empires should remember, that there were attempts to create a British empire by various English kings notably Edward I, in the middle ages, that the union of Kalmar was a very near attempt at creating a scandanavian empire and that Spain reunited 39 years after the CKII timeline ends.

Please remember that uniting a kingdom or two that first of all originated from the fracturing of an original, united kingdom (Spain was united under the Visigoths, it split later with gavelkind and usurpations), is not yet an empire. At best a large kingdom, not much different from Hungary really. And Scandinavian unions were personal unions, they weren't empires.

Besides, the equivalent of an EU3 person union is the fact of holding multiple titles of one's highest tier in CK2. The primary title is the senior partner, the other titles are junior partners (have no separate council, don't benefit from conquests of entirely new land, which integrates de iure into the senior) and so on. In EU3 you actually didn't have control of your junior partner, only alliance and the partner's inability to act separately. You actually have more control in CK2. To equate formable empires to unions of kingdoms (especially as known from EU3) would be false.

 

[rashtrakut]

People complaining about empires should remember, that there were attempts to create a British empire by various English kings notably Edward I, in the middle ages, that the union of Kalmar was a very near attempt at creating a scandanavian empire and that Spain reunited 39 years after the CKII timeline ends.

Spain like Kalmar was a personal union of Kingdoms that retained their local traditions (not to mention had Ferdinand II succeded in his attempt to spawn a son on wife no 2 the Iberian union would have fallen apart. Spain did not become one entity until Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia etc. backed the wrong horse in the war of the Spanish succession and had their rights stripped as a result.

Personally I find this whole uproar about empires silly. If it offends you, go to landedtitles.txt and delete them. None of them will be in existence at the game start points in any case.

 

[Poddster]

I posted this a few pages back, but cant you just load up the game..open the cheats console and type

play charid

for whatever non-playable ruler you want to play. Unless you choose a republic, theocracy or the non-ruler the game should let you keep on playing

I imagine the game won't let you If they did it's be pretty stupid of them! (or an oversight)

 

[rashtrakut]

He was an Emperor of Rome (Western), not an Emperor of the Franks. The Franks were never an empire.


.................

Anyway, Tetrarchy required consent from the top emperor to form the lower emperors. The HRE already originated in violation of this but the Pope's power was believed to be supplanting this.

I believe the Byzantines when they gave recognition to the imperial title referred to it as the Emperor of the franks...just as the HRE used to refer to the Byzantines as Emperor of the Greeks.

The legal justification of the proclamation of Charlemagne as Emperor in 800 was that the imperial title was technically vacant - there was no Emperor since the eastern throne was at the time occupied by an Empress - Irene

 

[Mightypeon]

I would belive that Mali also called itself Empire in the timeline.
In General, there should be a tier that is allowed to vasallize other kings (I am not talking about irish minikings), in places that arent Thrace/HRE, and this tier may or may not be named Emperor.
However, if you ask someone "who is above a king", Emperor (and god I guess) will be the most likely response both today and in the timeline.

 

[NewbieOne]

I believe the Byzantines when they gave recognition to the imperial title referred to it as the Emperor of the franks...just as the HRE used to refer to the Byzantines as Emperor of the Greeks.

Yes, the Byzantines used various qualifications when recognising the imperial title for eager barbarians, who didn't or couldn't bicker about not getting 100% the same the real Emperor had. From a Byzantine perspective, Charlemagne may've been the Emperor of the Franks, at least until some point they recognised him fully. Again, the 'Frankish Emperor' was probably the equivalent of the 'Greek Emperor', at least when the Byzantines weren't using words equivalent to, 'son of a mangy dog.'

The legal justification of the proclamation of Charlemagne as Emperor in 800 was that the imperial title was technically vacant - there was no Emperor since the eastern throne was at the time occupied by an Empress - Irene

One of the justifications. And not really a bad one, actually. Rome was still the capital and actually belonged to the 'Byzantine' empire, at least in theory. And this despite no separate Western Emperor since the death of Iulius Nepos in 480 (yeah, 4 years after the usurper Romulus Augustulus was deposed). The people of Rome could actually claim to have the right to elect Charlemagne as emperor. But what does this show? It shows the justification was thoroughly Roman. It wasn't Frankish in nature, as in the Franks being big and cool. 'Emperor of the Franks' would have been a Byzantine consolation prize for a failed Basileus ton Romaion/Emperor of the Romans claimant, whom it wasn't in their best interests to fight a war against. But as far as the west went, this was an entirely Roman, not Frankish thing. Certainly no de iure 'Empire of Francia' existed as a result. The huge (multi-)kingdom of the Franks was the vassal of the higher title of Emperor of Rome that Charlemagne also used. In the West this didn't settle into 'Frankish Empire' or 'Emperor of the Franks' dignity.

I would belive that Mali also called itself Empire in the timeline.
In General, there should be a tier that is allowed to vasallize other kings (I am not talking about irish minikings), in places that arent Thrace/HRE, and this tier may or may not be named Emperor.
However, if you ask someone "who is above a king", Emperor (and god I guess) will be the most likely response both today and in the timeline.

Kings historically had other kings as vassals in limited circumstances, mostly including the leadership of a confedaracy or being the senior member of the dynasty. One way to distinguish such a king would be to call him a high king but that was not an emperor (especially as he used the same title as the other kings did, not a different word). It was similar with dukes/princes in Slavic lands, where there could be multiple tiers of prince-dukes, mostly on the basis of answering to a senior dynast.

I'd suggest the ability to retain your heir as a vassal (if you want to) if you give him a kingdom. Perhaps a cousin or a claimant who was your courtier before you made him king somewhere. Or a guy you have a claim on but decide to leave there as your vassal (similar to the Scotland-England situation). This would basically mean that if you are granting a title (and perhaps wresting it by the force of your armies, so it's in your power to a large extent), then you could limit the grant so that the king is not fully sovereign but has to provide levies, maybe taxes, DoWing you is difficult etc.

 

[rashtrakut]

I imagine the game won't let you If they did it's be pretty stupid of them! (or an oversight)

Not sure of that. Even in CK1 your game did not end if your successor was a Muslim...you just could not load the save game. The game should not crash/end unless you play republics, theocracies or non-rulers/barons.

 

[Sleight of Hand]

StephenT, your rationale is much too level-headed for this forum -- away with you! :laugh:

 

[Marcion]

The word "Empire" has no connotations with Rome in the modern English language. We call the monarchs of China "Emperors", and they certainly had nothing to do with Rome. It just denotes a feudal title higher than a kingdom.

This whole argument is completely moot, especially considering that Paradox is ardent in their calling the ERE "Byzantium" when that term didn't even exist in the middle ages.

 

[Sleight of Hand]

The word "Empire" has no connotations with Rome in the modern English language.

I simply don't agree with that. I think most people with even a passing knowledge of classic or linguistic history would know that Emperor derives from Imperator, as do pretty much all of the equivalent imperial titles throughout European history.

 

[John Forseti]

The Kingdom of Portugal does not and has never existed at game start in 1066, but it exists on the de jure map mode and I haven't seen anyone complaining about that fact. Is this implying that the Kingdom legally existed a hundred years before the local count even thought of independance? Or is it implying that this is an area where, given the correct circumstances a properly recognised and legal realm of such a tier can be formed, though is not currently existant, and be seen with more legitimacy than might otherwise be the case?

I think the latter.

 

[Marcion]

I simply don't agree with that. I think most people with even a passing knowledge of classic or linguistic history would know that Emperor derives from Imperator, as do pretty much all of the equivalent imperial titles throughout European history.

Sure, it derives from the Latin language, as do a whole lot of English words, but most people aren't going to mistake the Ming dynasty for successors to Rome. Just look at all the instances where "empire" is used nowadays. Its original meaning as a ceremonial title for victorious generals is obscure. CK2 uses modern terminology rather than that of the time, so you can't really expect "empire" to have the same meaning that it did then.

 

[Meneth]

Sure, it derives from the Latin language, as do a whole lot of English words, but most people aren't going to mistake the Ming dynasty for successors to Rome. Just look at all the instances where "empire" is used nowadays. Its original meaning as a ceremonial title for victorious generals is obscure. CK2 uses modern terminology rather than that of the time, so you can't really expect "empire" to have the same meaning that it did then.

Do note that pretty much everyone having an issue with them being called "empires" are talking about Christian empires. What the Ming dynasty was called is irrelevant.

 

[Marcion]

Do note that pretty much everyone having an issue with them being called "empires" are talking about Christian empires. What the Ming dynasty was called is irrelevant.

...What would religion have to do with it? Imperator is a title originating in pagan Rome, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity.

 

[Meneth]

...What would religion have to do with it? Imperator is a title originating in pagan Rome, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity.

The point is that an empire in the Medieval Christian world is a successor to Rome. A non-Christian empire obviously isn't.

 

[Velociturtle]

So I looked over about half the thread and didn't find any mention of this, so I'm assuming I either missed it or no one's asked.

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.

Did I misunderstand, or is that literally stating that we'll pay ten dollars to add a line of text in religion.txt under "muslim" saying "playable = yes", and otherwise all these new features are just the 1.06 patch?

 

[Sleight of Hand]

Did I misunderstand, or is that literally stating that we'll pay ten dollars to add a line of text in religion.txt under "muslim" saying "playable = yes", and otherwise all these new features are just the 1.06 patch?

That's it, yes. The content is included in the 1.06 patch for the AI and other players who have purchased the DLC to use in multi-player (so you can still play with them, but not as a Muslim).

 

[Thure]

Did I misunderstand, or is that literally stating that we'll pay ten dollars to add a line of text in religion.txt under "muslim" saying "playable = yes", and otherwise all these new features are just the 1.06 patch?

Eh... No. The line in the religion.txt doesn't work anymore for the muslims. Without the DLC you can't play as Muslim anymore. (Or you change the name in the files to muslim2 or so)