Hello everyone!

Today is Tuesday and that means it’s time for another fascinating Developer Diary. My name is Divine and I’ve been part of the Crusader Kings team since last autumn as a scripter and now I’m going to tell you about some of the events that we’ve been working on for the soon-to-be-released expansion, Horse Lords!

If you control a part of the Silk Road you can now build trade posts to make sure to get some of the riches that is traveling along the route. However, there might be more people who want a share of the wealth, so you’ll probably have to guard your treasure chests. There’s also a possibility to gain the help of a trade governor who might attract more traders and riches to your land... or his mishaps might prove to be more of a headache for you to cope with.

As mentioned in a previous dev diary, rulers on the Steppe can send out their sons and brothers to take up arms and become mercenaries. The life of a mercenary, though, is a harsh one and a lot of things can happen when you’re out adventuring in a foreign court; so we’ve added some events about various things that can occur for the captain of such a created mercenary band.

For instance, the Mercenary Captain, being on the field fighting for a living, has a chance to improve his military education trait to one of the stronger ones. These mercenaries also get a few events to interact with their employer or the ruler of the province they are hanging out in. One of these events is for instance eloping with a person of the employer’s court. It can be a daughter, son or a skilled courtier.

Since the Mercenary Captain is earning his keep from being hired he also gets some choices on what to spend it on. For example, improving his Band of Mercenaries or spend it all on women and vice.

A ruler of the Steppe was not much of a ruler unless his clan had a thriving herd of livestock to support them. Thus, it is only natural that we needed to have some events about horses! If you’re living on the Steppes as a nomad, you can now adopt a favorite war horse. There are some events associated with having a horse and what you do together with it - both ordinary and unusual happenings.

So that’s a little sneak peek of the things that can happen on the wide Steppes and everything I had to say for today. I hope you are all hyped for the upcoming expansion that is now just a week away!

Oh! And I might actually have heard legends about certain altaic families behaving in odd ways lately… with hideous faces and beast-like behavior.

 

[MartinSWE]

While I agree it works better in 867 you still usually see sweden formed and norrland conquered before the year 1000, that's 100 yeara early for forming the kingdom and several centuries early for conquering norrland (finnland is actually conquered before norrland). Subjugation force kingdom conquests to happen in accordance to kingdoms and borders that are anachronistic.

Early creation of Sweden and strange deJure is most likely about game balance. Without making Sweden ahistorically strong early on they will ALWAYS be crushed by Denmark and/or Norway and since this game is more about characters then nations it makes sense to go for game balance before exact historical accuracy.

 

[TheDungen]

Early creation of Sweden and strange deJure is most likely about game balance. Without making Sweden ahistorically strong early on they will ALWAYS be crushed by Denmark and/or Norway and since this game is more about characters then nations it makes sense to go for game balance before exact historical accuracy.

The problem is that the vikings in the game seems oddly fascinated with holding land, which they in reality wasn't. The later feudal nobles were also les sintrested in holding land than the game makes out. All in all holding land is way to important in this game, it should be as much a vulnerability as a advantage. Sure you earn taxes faster and have larger leavies to call but you have more vassals plotting against you, more provinces that can rebel, more enemies eyeing your land for those taxes. The game doesn't accuratly portray that, biggger is simply better. Which is why the HRE always end up much more powerful than it really was. Also why the byzantine empire never goes into regression.

 

[HREmperor]

In SWMH the north of Finland is wasteland so it's harder for the Vikings to get there. It delays their conquest of Finland by a bit. Maybe Paradox should do something like that?

 

[barretta]

I love my horse, I will name him Enumclaw!

 

[PlotVitalNPC]

Is the 'name your horse' event disabled for actual Mongols?
Traditionally, they never name horses individually...instead having hundreds of words specifically to describe horses with to distinguish them from one-another.

 

[Kojema]

i really hope they open up the tibetan plateau. wanna play as the chinese

 

[gorillacakes]

In SWMH the north of Finland is wasteland so it's harder for the Vikings to get there. It delays their conquest of Finland by a bit. Maybe Paradox should do something like that?

I often wondered what the logic behind that was. The more you know...

 

[elpibeuruguayo]

I delete the land bridge between Aland and Finland and the result was that the vikings didnt conquer Finland, that land bridge didnt exist, so paradox could delete it.

 

[LordPeter]

I delete the land bridge between Aland and Finland and the result was that the vikings didnt conquer Finland, that land bridge didnt exist, so paradox could delete it.

Yep. That change is in the CK2Plus mod, too, and it works great.

 

[Zhranzagul]

@gorillacakes My fat fingers apparently misclicked on my phone. Now that I'm on a keyboard I can correct that. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[TheDungen]

I delete the land bridge between Aland and Finland and the result was that the vikings didnt conquer Finland, that land bridge didnt exist, so paradox could delete it.

Except that would result in finland not being conquered and norrland being conquered even faster which is exactly the opposite of solving the problem. Finnland was conquered centuries before norrland. In fact inland Norrland isn't conquered in the HYW start date, while Finnland is conquered way earlier.

Sure a land bridge shouldn't be needed because really seas should unite rather than separate. The seas were the highways of the ck2 era. While land travel was slow, dangerous and inefficient.
Which is why denmark held skåneland, why sweden conquered finnland and norway iceland and the isles.

 

[HREmperor]

Except that would result in finland not being conquered and norrland being conquered even faster which is exactly the opposite of solving the problem. Finnland was conquered centuries before norrland. In fact inland Norrland isn't conquered in the HYW start date, while Finnland is conquered way earlier.

Sure a land bridge shouldn't be needed because really seas should unite rather than separate. The seas were the highways of the ck2 era. While land travel was slow, dangerous and inefficient.

Why did it take Sweden so long to conquer Norrland historically?

 

[TheDungen]

Why did it take Sweden so long to conquer Norrland historically?

Because it was worthless, very few people there to tax no trade and no abundance of natural resources that were exploitable by the technologies of the times, at least none that sweden didn't already have in far to great an abundance that it already lacked the manpower to exploit. Sweden needed people and wealth to exploit the resources it had not even more resources in the woods and hills. Also holding on to large inland territories are way more difficult than coastlands, remember up until the invention of the train boat was the most efficient way to get anywhere.

 

[elpibeuruguayo]

Except that would result in finland not being conquered and norrland being conquered even faster which is exactly the opposite of solving the problem. Finnland was conquered centuries before norrland. In fact inland Norrland isn't conquered in the HYW start date, while Finnland is conquered way earlier.

Sure a land bridge shouldn't be needed because really seas should unite rather than separate. The seas were the highways of the ck2 era. While land travel was slow, dangerous and inefficient.
Which is why denmark held skåneland, why sweden conquered finnland and norway iceland and the isles.

So the only 100% solution is make Norrland a wastelan? Like in various mods.

 

[HREmperor]

So the only 100% solution is make Norrland a wastelan? Like in various mods.

Or just make it so AI is way less likely to go after poor lands.

 

[elpibeuruguayo]

Or just make it so AI is way less likely to go after poor lands.

Yeah, I wish if ai could be modded like in HOL3

 

[TheDungen]

Like I have been saying the drawbacks to holding land that isn't profitable needs to be more obvious. I don't like the idea of wastelands I prefer more organic solutions. Land doesn't make the world go around money does and wealth has always been a better way of telling how powerful someone was in history than how much land they held.

But since there is a very harsh hard cap to how useful money can be in ck2 it's not really well reflected. Also money needs to be more dynamic, while a zero sum game isn't true it is to some extent (if observed in ashort enough timespan). Having money means that other people have less. The game doesn't need more money (in fact it could do with less) what it needs is more monetary ways of screwing with your neighbours.

 

[HREmperor]

One thing that could be done to fix it is split Sweden's de jure. If Norrland isn't de jure Sweden, they won't be as eager to take it.

 

[PlotVitalNPC]

One thing that could be done to fix it is split Sweden's de jure. If Norrland isn't de jure Sweden, they won't be as eager to take it.

Ooh, if we're making Norrland de jure Finland, can we make Finnmark part of the duchy of Kola?
I'm frustrated by the lack of any way for Finland to have de jure Finnmark without also taking a chunk of Norway.

 

[yourworstnightm]

i really hope they open up the tibetan plateau. wanna play as the chinese

There were no Chinese in Tibet in this age though. In the earliest start date (Charlie) you'd have the Tibetan Empire still being around. In later starts: first warlords, then Mongols and then a mix of native and Mongol warlords (but with some funky dynasties thrown in the mix such as the Phagmodrupas that should be around in the 1356 scenario, who were both kings and lamas).

However Tibet doesn't seem to be coming with this expansion.