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Hi all! I am Karolus Magnus, programmer at Crusader Kings II. Now is finally the time for my first dev diary! Today I will be talking about the Silk Road and Raiding Adventurers.

With Horse Lords we are adding in an addition to the trade system which is the major trade route of the Silk Road that stretched all the way from Cathay to the Italian States. It does not require you to be a Patrician or Republic however to utilize this system. As long as you own the provinces yourself you are allowed to build Trade Posts along the trade route no matter what government form you are. You can upgrade these trade posts to make the Silk Road worth even more.

dd_trade_post.jpg

However the Silk Road is much more dangerous to deal with than normal coastal trade posts as it relies on safe passage through land. If a war breaks out and a part of the trade route is caught in the conflict, the trade will be cut from that province and onwards for that branch. The trade will instead go through any other branch and result in them receiving more of the trade than they normally would. The Silk route can be viewed from the Economic mapmode but also in more detail from the Trade zone mapmode.

dd_trade_route.jpg

Next feature is Raiding Adventurers. This system was made to better represent the Normans in Northern France and Sicily in how they settled in foreign land. It is also used for nomads who lose their home. The Germanic raiding adventurers spawn with ships, but even nomads who do not get ships can travel far, as these raiders unlike others can raid in any province (except the provinces of the one who conquered your home lands).

Raiding adventurers will use the money they gain from raiding to recruit more troops, and when they have grown to a certain level, they will try to become landed. A ruler can offer to settle these raiding adventurers, giving them coastal or border provinces. They might however refuse to be settled if they do not like the lands that you are offering. Ambitious raiding adventurers will usually not be settled unless they are given a duchy. If no such offer is made however, they will eventually start a war on one of the rulers they have raided, targeting a duchy.

dd_settle.jpg


The same Settle Adventurer interaction can be used to settle the dynamic mercenaries we already covered, if you have managed to make them your friend. Settled raiding adventurers will become Feudal or Iqta depending on their religion, and also be disinherited from the nomad realm from which they came from.

One of the benefits of settling a raiding adventurer is that the provinces that are given away will be blocked from raided again in the near future.

dd_settled.jpg

Raiding adventurers that do not spawn from being conquered as well as dynamic mercenaries will get the Adventurer trait that makes the character much more ambitious and military capable. So even if they give you several benefits to settle, they can become dangerous for your future generations.

dd_adventurer.jpg


That's all for this week! Next week we are going to go through map and culture revisions and new events!
 
I would very much like to see players being able to become raiding adventurers. They don't seem to explicitly say one way or another (but the wording seems to suggest that the route won't be available to players).

The reason I'd like too see it is simple: I don't want to be bound to the land when I play as a nomad. Players should be just as mobile as their computer counterparts where nomad play is concerned.
 
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Does this mean that people like Rollo of Normandy who is in some random Viking court could just pop up and raid France and then end up landed there?

Also, what are certain conditions that will make the AI land them?
 
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Im confused on the adventures.

So if an Adventure decides to attack me I can give him lands and make him my vassal??

Germanic and nomadic adventurers go around raiding building up money and army size until a certain point when they "try to become landed", which means invade someone. I assume you can offer him land before that happens.
 
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I really hope that the Silk road is not another buff for the Abbasids... If it is, I hope its countered by some other measure...
 
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Germanic and nomadic adventurers go around raiding building up money and army size until a certain point when they "try to become landed", which means invade someone. I assume you can offer him land before that happens.
Or at least accept being vassalized.
 
Does this mean that people like Rollo of Normandy who is in some random Viking court could just pop up and raid France and then end up landed there?

Also, what are certain conditions that will make the AI land them?
Probably.
A last, the Normans will actually be able to appear in Normandy in early start dates, including Rollo.
 
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Things are getting more interesting now.
 
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I'm a little disappointed that the Silk Road system isn't accompanied with some overhaul of how trade is being handled. It seems like it is just the current poor system extended to an inland route. Well i'm still hoping for improvements to the trade system in a later DLC
 
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Is it just me or does the Basileus have a purple ribbon rather than the blue of feudal rulers? The purple gems are for the rank, but the ribbon is different, I think.
 
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I think the trade system is good enough. This isn't EU4 where the empires were built off of global trade. In this era it was relatively local and long distance trading was done by regional merchants on land.
 
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Are the locations of the Silk Road moddable? Just wondering if full conversion mods could make use of it.
 
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Why isn't this stickied, and last week's dev diary unstickied yet?
 
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I hope that with raiding adventurers there's an overhaul to the Norman melting pot event...currently you have to be independent Norse on French or Breton lands to become Norman, but with this mechanic it would make more sense to allow it to happen with a Norse vassal to a Frankish/French king too, since that's what happened in real life anyway.
 
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Keep them coming! Looking great so far.
 
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These mechanics could be used for a dynamically spawned Ottoman tribe :eek:
 
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If I'm reading right, then "Anxi" is a county along the Great Wall - perhaps this map extension ends at the Great Wall of China? Seems a good place for it, for now!

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