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CK2 Dev Diary #98 - Catholicism what? Constantinople where? Charlemagne who?

Greetings!

Today I’d like to cover one of the largest features of Holy Fury - a feature we’ve internally dubbed the ‘Alternate Start’ system!

This system consists of two separate sub-features, the Shattered World system and the Random World system. Each of these two systems are aimed towards different players - Shattered World is perfect for those who want a level playing field, while Random World will appeal to those of you that wish to explore an unfamiliar, yet fleshed out world complete with its own history and quirks.

These two features are accessed from either the Era Picker directly, or when choosing bookmarks through Custom Setup. You are free to choose any date to start, and the date you choose can even affect how a setup might look like. Choosing the 867 start date while using the default settings of Random World will tend to produce many more pagans and tribal realms, for example.

EraButtons.png

CustomSelectors.png


The Shattered World system allows you to break the world up into its constituent parts, be it Counties, Duchies or a mix of the two. It provides a balanced start, and allows for a sprawling new world to rise from the tiny disparate realms that start out within it.

ShatteredWorldSettings.png


To provide exactly the type of challenge that you seek, there are numerous parameters that control anything from Holding Slots to Technology.
For those seeking to recreate the world as it was, the Historical settings (which are selected by default) are what you want.
If you desire an entirely level playing field, you can set all provinces to have exactly 3 holding slots, for everyone to be Feudal, for technology to be the same everywhere, for Primogeniture to be the default succession law, and for each character to be exactly 30 years old with three children, OR…
If you just want a crazy game full of surprises, you could set all the parameters to Random or even Full Random. Who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself inhabiting an Iceland that has four 7-slot provinces, as a 65 year old matriarch following a religion based entirely around human sacrifice!
Naturally you’re free to mix and match these settings to your liking, perhaps you’d like a modicum of craziness in your otherwise balanced game? Hopefully you’ll find the settings to you liking!

Some players believe that there’s not enough challenge when starting out in a Shattered World (cough, @Meneth ) so for those of you that desire an opposition that is more than your match, we’ve got a setting for you! The ‘Great Conquerors’ setting allow you to spawn up to twelve special characters evenly across the map. These characters will wield special weapons, carry legendary blood in their veins and use especially powerful CB’s to rapidly conquer land much in the same way you would expect a player to. Naturally you can also choose to not have any Great Conquerors in your game, though I recommend starting with at least four of them!
GreatConqueror.png


Another setting that we have available for those who don’t want to wait around for too long until they can go to war is the ‘Consolidation Casus Belli’ setting. This setting unlocks a generic county conquest CB for everyone, without any particular cost. You can choose to have this CB active for 25 years, 100 years or indefinitely - and you can naturally choose to not have it active at all if you so wish. To avoid confusion, while this CB is active, the Border Dispute CB from Jade Dragon will be temporarily disabled (but return as the Consolidation CB becomes unavailable).

Now, on to the feature of the two which I find the most interesting - Random World!

This feature is truly a treasure trove for those of us who love exploring new and exciting worlds, while still preserving the familiarity of a game which we know and enjoy. With the parameters at hand you can tailor a world that tries to closely mimic the world we know, or you can choose to let it deviate fully!

In Random World you can choose to randomize almost everything; placements, names, functions and graphics of religions, cultures, titles, characters, governments and much more! While Shattered World and Random World do share a subset of settings, Random World undeniably has access to a more granular setup. If you want your game to be analogous to history you can choose to enable features such as ‘Holy Roman Empire’ or ‘Byzantine Empire’, for example - these settings will ensure that, somewhere in the world, something akin to those elements will exist. It won’t necessarily be too familiar though, there might indeed exist a large Elective Empire similar to the HRE - but they might just be located in Africa, adhering to a religion that promotes indiscriminate human sacrifice...

Random World Settings.png


As I mentioned before, at the core of a Random World lies a few main things; a dynamic religion, culture, de jure and ruler setup. Let's start with religion!

Religion is a very central aspect of the game, and thus it wouldn’t be overly exciting to generate a random world where the existing default religions are randomly placed (even though you can choose to do that, and having a Bön pagan Scandinavia or a Catholic India is undeniably fun - no question about that). Depending on the settings you choose, religions will be more or less altered - you can randomize the spread, features, naming and icon of religions. There’s even a way for you to preview religions before starting the game, and if you wish you can even customize their features right there and then!
Random World Religious Customization.png


The culture system is a bit more simplistic simply by the fact that cultures don’t generally have many gameplay features to speak of - in this system it’s mainly about the naming and spread of cultures.
Example Culture Spread.png


The De Jure setup randomization is a fairly sophisticated system. We’ve put a lot of thought and effort in making the resulting borders be as sensible as possible. We’ve for example taken extra care to ensure that the De Jure doesn’t jump wildly between islands, or seem generally disconnected or ‘snakey’. It generally provides an appropriate challenge when you wish to form a Kingdom or Empire!
Random World De Jure Kingdoms.png


The spread and placement of Governments can also be randomized. After all, why should nomads be limited to the steppe, and what’s saying that Europe should be high-tech and fully feudalized? I can tell you that it’s quite an experience playing a Nomad in Italy!
Random World Governments.png


Technology will naturally be randomized as well. The ‘baseline’ will depend on the year you choose to create your Random World in, the earlier, the less technology overall.

Now, here’s a few examples of Random Worlds, using an assortment of different settings!

This random World is generated with a generous amount of Dukes and Kings - this means that there are going to exist many more unified realms upon generation. A plethora of smaller kingdoms surround the centerpiece - an HRE inspired realm following a religion focused wholly on self-fulfilment without any formal leadership.
Random World Example 1.png


This world keeps most everything ‘historical’, except for the government and De Jure setup. The French nomads are of particular interest.
Random World Example 2 - Historical Cultures and Religions.png


This Random World I had to share for one very specific reason. At its core, it’s a nice and interesting world with several scattered kingdoms, and a major empire in North Africa keeping the peace. If you haven’t figured it out by your own yet - the random names are by-and-large based upon names from cultural namelists and dynasties, which in certain cases result in very fun names.
Example3.png


Persia has a very distinct religion, with very fitting features to boot.
memelard.png


And here’s one final Random World - a large Sacrosanct Empire looms in northern Russia and the polar circle, blocking the western tribes off from reaching the civilized east. In Europe many different faiths vie for dominance, from the unyielding and adventurous Dulanites in the Spanish region to the warmongering but syncretic Cult of Jahaira in the German region and beyond.
Example4.png


Worth noting is that I’ve not been able to cover all of the various settings that these features will have. There’s plenty of granularity, and you’ll be able to control most things in minute detail should you wish to do so. I encourage you to experiment with the settings! You never know what you might find...

We hope that these features will provide you with hours of entertainment, and that you get to generate the world that you wish to play in the most!
 

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Amazing...though I really hope that some "real" religions and cultures that aren't on the map for some reason ( Japanese and Shinto, for example) can spawn, but these features you have shown are still quite awesome!
By the way, does the map above shows that iqta is no longer tied to a religion in HF?
 
There’s even a way for you to preview religions before starting the game, and if you wish you can even customize their features right there and then!
Can we also change religion name and symbol here? If i want, for example, a specific alternative universe where cult of Mithra defeated Christianity in Roman Empire or egyptian pagans survived and reformed. Would be cool to be able create religions in the starting screen.
 
This is amazing, probably one of my favourite features, alongside new religion reformation.

Speaking of which, these random religions have really nice icons, any chance we could get a glimpse of the religion icons made for random world?
 
Looks amazing, I can definitely see myself playing with this alot. My only question is if we still get Aztec/Mongolian/Turkish invasions the same way?
The game rule for those types of invasions will default to off. Alternate starts will have a different default game rule setup, and some rules will not disable achievements in alternate start.

Can we have generated clusters of independent count & dukes like e.g. historical Ireland? Because I see a lot of big kingdoms bordering big kingdoms.
You can control the frequency of kingdoms and duchies in detail if you want to - you can definitely adjust the settings so that you end up with clusters of Counts.

Will there be any achievements specifically for the random world similar to custom nation achievements in eu4?
Yes, alternate starts will have a few achievements of their own. All vanilla achievements will be unobtainable though, only the ones we've made for these starts will be possible to get.
 
Would love an equivalent to Random New World of EU4 for the CK2 map, would add loads of replayability - is this in the works? There was a mod that generated new maps/ religions/ cultures/ government types so I assume it wouldnt be too hard?
 
I like the Shattered World idea, and I might try it out - but I honestly have no interest in the Random World. If the World map was changed as well, I would might consider it, but is there any real difference if the Kingdom is named one thing or another? It is still placed in the same location, and I know that I will think "Spain" if I play in the Iberian Peninsula, no matter if the culture or provinces are called something differently.
 

What is unchanged leadership?

*scratches chest*

Cmon man lemme get one or two more reformation doctrine details.

Is there gonna be anymore reformation doctrine information shared? Or is that on the "we want you to discover it for yourself" shelf?

Some of us were hoping to plan stuff out.
 
This is amazing, probably one of my favourite features, alongside new religion reformation.

Speaking of which, these random religions have really nice icons, any chance we could get a glimpse of the religion icons made for random world?

They are all great. The guy who made them did a great job.

alternate_start_religion_icons.png
 
Since the game allows renaming religions, is it possible to rename pagan religions upon reformation in the regular game?
Having an organised religion that's just called 'germanic' is kind of weird.
 
To any and all Devs . . . what's the most crazy and fun experience you've had using this system? You guys must already have some great stories of your own.
 
What happens to the Pope in a shattered world? Does he keep his king title?
Yes, it takes a little more than a complete rewriting of history to separate the Pope from his hat.

What is unchanged leadership?
Leadership in Random World cannot be changed when customizing religions, it remains the same that that religion would have had in a regular start (so, for example, if the religion is Buddhism, no head).