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Greetings!

In this Dev Diary we’ll show off some of the other things we’ve been working on for the 1.2 patch! While the Ruler Designer is extremely cool, it’s not the only thing you’ll be getting - there’s plenty of exciting new things coming up! What follows below is a showcase of some of the things we’ve done, presented by someone who’s worked on it!

Oh, and because we know you’re wondering - yes, saves made in 1.1 will be compatible in 1.2!


Kill List
A very fun feature from CK2 that we wanted to bring back is the Kill List, you might have noticed the new UI button in some of our Ruler Designer teasers before.
This skull icon will appear on any character who has killed people you know about and when clicked opens a list of everyone they killed and how they met their grisly fate. So you can get a sense of just how much of a true beast some of your strong knights are and how many of your foes they have vanquished on the battlefield in your name.
But of course it only shows the kills you know about, so some people that look innocent to you may in fact be hiding numerous skeletons in their closet…
KillList.png

[Picture of kill list button location]

YourKills.png

[Picture of the open kill list]


Attach to Army
Another helpful utility we wanted to add was being able to attach your armies to follow ally armies to their destinations. This is especially useful during bigger wars like Crusades where you are not the primary participant; you can attach to any friendly unit of an ally in the same province as your unit and of course then detach when you decide to go your own way. If there are multiple armies in a province you can attach to then a pop up window will open for you to decide which one you would like to follow.
Attach.png

[Picture of the attach to army button]


Force Realm Priest Endorsement
Your realm priest will endorse you normally if they have a good opinion of you, and we’ve now extended that so if you have a strong hook on them then they will passively be forced to endorse you regardless of their personal opinion of you.
That way you can still get all of those sweet taxes and levies from their church holdings even if they might personally think you are a blasphemous fool!
HookEndorsement.png

[Picture of realm priest being forced to endorse you via a strong hook]


Tribal Walls / Tribal Holding variants
Tribes in different parts of the world will now look different! From longhouses in the north to yurts in the steppes, there’s now a visual difference between the major tribal regions on the map. We’ve also added one more visual tier of walls, symbolising the very lowest possible fort level a holding can have.
TribalHoldings.png

[Picture of new Tribal Holding variants]


Reworked Dynasty UI
The Dynasty view has gotten some more love! The window now has two dynamic info boxes explaining how dynasty and house head is chosen, especially how Max military strength determines who's dynasty head. Military strength can now also be seen and compared between house heads in the house list. The legacy area has gotten a new look to easier show which legacy tracks you have unlocked, how many steps are unlocked, and which ones you've finished.
NewDynastyView.png

[Picture of updated Dynasty UI]


Improved Battle UI
Battles have also gotten some more love, with the UI having received an overhaul. It now both looks nicer and places important information in a better layout!
NewBattle.png

[Picture of the improved Battle UI]


Player Coat of Arms Graphics
Your Coat Of Arms is now decorated with mantling! It adds a sense of flair and you can also spot other players easier on the map during multiplayer.
Mantling.png

[Picture of Mantling on a player CoA]


Rally Point Improvements
We’ve done some work on the troop system in 1.2. As part of this we hope to have eliminated some bugs like levies failing to reinforce when they should.
More visibly, we’ve made one change to how troops get raised at rally points. Now if you exceed the supply limit the game will automatically split the army up to obey the supply limit, spreading it out over adjacent provinces.
RallyPointRaise.png

[Picture of a rally point where armies are spread out]

Pictured is what now happens when trying to raise a bit over 10k men in an area with supply limits of 2.5k.


Siberian Paganism
Suomenusko has long been in a bit of an awkward spot. It stretches over large territories where the people in reality worshiped many different deities. To improve the situation, we've made two changes. The first is a simple name change, as we've renamed Suomenusko to Ukonusko (after the main deity). It gives the faith a name that isn't specifically Finnish, since we have several other cultures that share the same faith.

NewSetup.png

[Picture of new Faith Setup in the north]

Secondly, we've split it into two separate faiths by adding a new faith for the Siberian region. We felt that adding a new faith would be a significant improvement as to better reflect the varied beliefs of the Ugrian peoples. Named Turumic, after their main patron deity Numi-Turum, it is in some ways similar to Ukonusko in that it's a faith closely linked to nature, but is different by their veneration of hunting. The tenets are the following: Ancestor Worship, Ritual Celebrations, and Sanctity of Nature. It uniquely has the Hunter lifestyle traits as virtues. The other virtues being Brave, Generous, and Temperate. Meanwhile, being Greedy, Craven, or Vengeful, is considered a sin.


Improved Ugliness System
In CK3, the “ugly” trait is a lot more interesting than it was in CK2, having a noticeable effect on portraits, and coming in three levels of severity. However, beyond the first level of the trait we didn’t quite achieve the levels of ugliness we wanted at release. So in 1.2 we’ve improved the system we use to distort the portraits of ugly people to make them uglier while still not feeling too out of place within the art style. Before 1.2 ugliness worked by changing skin texture and making all facial features more extreme. This is still the case, but in 1.2 we also pick a single or a small set of features to make especially extreme. This can result in a character for instance having a particularly messed up nose, a face that’s too small for their head, or the tiniest mouth. Focusing on small feature sets like this helps ensure that ugly people are varied in their ugliness, and more readily identifiable as “ugly”.
Below are a couple examples of how ugly characters will look in 1.2 vs. 1.1.
UglyComparison.png

[Picture of a comparison between the same level of ugliness in 1.1 vs 1.2]

As you can see the difference isn’t massive, but helps make them a bit more interesting. There’s still room for improvement and especially so for the “Hideous” trait, but this was a relatively simple and safe change to make for 1.2.


Matrilineal Game Rules
We’ve added a new game rule that controls the behaviour of the AI when choosing which type of marriage to pursue. There’s plenty of options to choose from, so regardless what your preference is, it should hopefully be represented! All options are achievement compatible.

MatriRules.png

[Picture of Matrilineal Marriages Game Rule settings]

Naming Dynasty Members in Court
You now get to name all Dynasty members that are born in your court, not just your own children. This means that you can make sure that the correct names are passed down as you prefer!


New Event Content
You can now grow old, sick, tired, and depressed more efficiently, with new events that dole out the “Infirm” trait.

For those seeking even swifter departures from this mortal coil, we have expanded the Murder scheme with additional events and deadly outcomes! But take care — the mastermind behind a scheme can now be unmasked, in addition to the existence of the scheme itself. To even things out a bit, a Court Physician you recruit as an agent has a chance to purposely mess up treatments of your target — and they can now also properly treat their own wounds and conditions.

Other schemes and mechanics have gotten numerous content tweaks, additions, and updates.


That’s it for this time! Don't forget to tune in to tomorrows CK3 stream, where we'll show off the 1.2 patch! Who knows, maybe you'll even get to know the release date?
Details:
Link
Live at 16:30 CET, tomorrow!
 
Great QoL improvements, particularly the dynasty screen looks very nice. Have to ask - with the kill list making its debut is there any chance of allowing a vassal player to be a knight for their liege? I loved having a long list of battle kills in CK2 and it’d be fun to see it here.
 
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Wow, those are a lot of much welcomed changes. Good work.

I have a question. Has this been adressed?
 
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Woo! I'm really glad you added the ability to name all dynasts born in your court! This is when the fun begins. All the other stuff is nice, but I'm over the moon, just with that re-added feature.
 
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Thanks! I'm getting really excited by the dev diaries, this upcoming update/patch is sounding really great! :) I'm especially excited about:
Kill List

Attach to Army

Force Realm Priest Endorsement





A question: is there any chance that...
Rally Point Improvements
We’ve done some work on the troop system in 1.2. As part of this we hope to have eliminated some bugs like levies failing to reinforce when they should.
More visibly, we’ve made one change to how troops get raised at rally points. Now if you exceed the supply limit the game will automatically split the army up to obey the supply limit, spreading it out over adjacent provinces.

Pictured is what now happens when trying to raise a bit over 10k men in an area with supply limits of 2.5k.
...could be made optional? Sometimes when time is of the essence I really want to gather all my armies together in one spot, supply be damned. :)





Also, my personal favorite from this dev diary:
Matrilineal Game Rules
We’ve added a new game rule that controls the behaviour of the AI when choosing which type of marriage to pursue. There’s plenty of options to choose from, so regardless what your preference is, it should hopefully be represented! All options are achievement compatible.
I don't think I could even express how I feel about this... but Pavarotti could. :)




Thanks for keeping us updated and letting us see the various features you are including here. This level of communication is really helpful to us players, and helps us get more and more excited about the game! :)
 
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Thanks for this. Can I ask one more thing?

Will the AI “recognise” when a player has used the button to attach a player army to their AI one? i.e. If I attach my 10k player army to their 5k AI army, will the AI now realise that that ‘stack’ can now take on another - say - 8k army? Or will the AI move their 5k as if it’s still 5k?

AI will treat the attached army kind of as if it was it's own - so they will split their own army to avoid racking up attrition in supply starved locations as best as they can.

I've got some questions though. Given how some of the new UI features are ones returning from CKII (like the kill list), is there any chance for an individual character's family tree? It shows different stuff and serves a different purpose than the dynasty tree, so I don't think it'd be out of place. Though, given the more streamlined UI of CKIII, perhaps it should use the vertical rather than horizontal orientation of the family tree, so it'd have the same layout as the dynastic one.

You can actually just fold other branches of the tree that are not interesting to only inspect your direct line. Currently there is no separate version of Dynasty tree in plans.

Also, when you get an inbreeding warning on marriage proposal, could the warning show the common ancestor that triggers it? If there are multiple ones, just the most recent would do.

And while I'm on the topic of trees, the dynasty tree is lacking the filters the CKII one had (if family tree does make a return, it also should have them). Likewise, the find character menu is still lacking some filter options from the previous game.

For any suggestions or bugs, please do visit our Bug Report forum! We try our best to stay on top of most pressing matters and, of course, the better you word it and provide samples, the higher the chance of our QA department having it investigated, so keep that feedback coming so it's not lost in the depths of the internet!

Finally, the mantling piqued my interest. How moddable will it be? Will it be possible to unlock it for AI? Will we be able to give it conditions, like showing only for titles ruled by someone from a dynasty with high Level of Splendor? Will it be possible to make mantling change depending on conditions like the aforementioned Level of Splendor of the ruler's dynasty or the government type?

I believe it to be as moddable as anything else in the game. I've personally seen some... unholy... creations over on Steam Forums and Paradox Mods. So have at it!

Has multiplayer gotten any updates in 1.2 or not yet? Like OOS fixes, MP chat etc..

We've done a number of improvements over MP stability and did our best to make it stable! That said, I would really be thankful if you ever run into teeth-grinding, soul-wrenching Multiplayer bug in your playthroughs to report it in Bug Report forum so we can take a look at it! Bonus points if it has all the important logs and saves so we can get it reproduced on our side - it increases our chances of catching it and fixing it asap!

any plans to tweak religion/crusades? IMO this stuff is the biggest problem in the game currently (aside from blobbing of AI in random places)

Kinda sounding like a broken record, but what do you have in mind, specifically? If you find something that is similar to your issues on Bug Report, feel free to comment it to bump with new information or make a new post so we can investigate.

Can we have number of soldiers slain in battles too? Just one line added to the kill list

Levies killed by knights do not get a mention, but knights killed rightly by other knights will show up in kill lists!
 
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Good updates, but I can't parse the text on the matrilineal marriage updates at all. Having read the different options several times, I can't figure out what the implications are in practice.
 
Good news, everyone! Yes, indeed knights killed rightly will show up in kill lists!
Does that mean that players can now be knights?
 
I can't parse the text on the matrilineal marriage updates at all. Having read the different options several times, I can't figure out what the implications are in practice.
Which part is difficult for you to understand? They all seem pretty clear to me, so perhaps I can help explain. :)
 
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Kinda sounding like a broken record, but what do you have in mind, specifically?
Crusades are enough of a source of complaint that they've been given a megathread :)

Key points:

Cooldown much too short.

Heretics (unlike europagans or muslims) can't dissolve the papacy by conquering Italy and de-landing the Pope, so they can't stop crusades from happening even if they paint the whole of Christendom their colour.

The pope's mercs outnumber the actual crusader lords' MaA+levies.

Crusades by a tiny broken Catholicism seem to be immune to failing due to lack of support.
 
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You announced some very amazing improvements there- I like most of them a lot and i´m looking forward to the update.

However, i´m "missing "something in regards to matrilineal marriages, something which sadly isn´t addressed by the changes shown, and which is something i, and maybe other players too, would like to see added.

Basically, i´m missing a "Play the marriage game like the player does"-option; by which i mean a setting which makes the a.i. consider how likely a marriage will result in offspring of another dynasty inheriting titles.

Apparently you added options for "always seek matrilineal marriages", "never" and "sometimes". But none for "I have a son, and a daughter. My son could die of illness or some accident and that´s why i should seek a matrilineal marriage for my daughter. On the other hand, if i´d have three sons and one daughter i´d marry her of in a normal marriage."

Basically i´d like a setting which, say, makes the a.i. check and consider who the first, second and maybe third in line to inherit are and then chooses an appropiate marriage depending on how risky it seems.
 
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AI will treat the attached army kind of as if it was it's own - so they will split their own army to avoid racking up attrition in supply starved locations as best as they can.



You can actually just fold other branches of the tree that are not interesting to only inspect your direct line. Currently there is no separate version of Dynasty tree in plans.



For any suggestions or bugs, please do visit our Bug Report forum! We try our best to stay on top of most pressing matters and, of course, the better you word it and provide samples, the higher the chance of our QA department having it investigated, so keep that feedback coming so it's not lost in the depths of the internet!



I believe it to be as moddable as anything else in the game. I've personally seen some... unholy... creations over on Steam Forums and Paradox Mods. So have at it!



We've done a number of improvements over MP stability and did our best to make it stable! That said, I would really be thankful if you ever run into teeth-grinding, soul-wrenching Multiplayer bug in your playthroughs to report it in Bug Report forum so we can take a look at it! Bonus points if it has all the important logs and saves so we can get it reproduced on our side - it increases our chances of catching it and fixing it asap!



Kinda sounding like a broken record, but what do you have in mind, specifically? If you find something that is similar to your issues on Bug Report, feel free to comment it to bump with new information or make a new post so we can investigate.



Levies killed by knights do not get a mention, but knights killed rightly by other knights will show up in kill lists!

Is there any plan to expand on the prowess system? For feudal catholics its a bit underwhelming at the moment, as you rarely have duels and you can't fight as a knight in your own armies.
 
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Nice DD! But if the AI doesn't use the "attach army" feature (at least that's what I understood), I sincerely hope they judge better when to help in battles. A lot of people complain about the AI not helping then in battles they would've won if the AI helped, but the opposite also happened to me: I easily won a war because the two different enemy AI's haven't joined forces in battles they could defeat me if they had. This kind of made the game even easier than it already is for me, and not in a good way.

Other than that, it looks a great update. I'm really happy that the saves will be compatible too. Fantastic job by the devs.
 
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Lots of these changes look excellent, but I'm very disappointed in the matrilineal marriage "fix". This is just a punt. Yes, there are a lot of options, but none of them address the core problem of the matrilineal marriage system. Anything short of "marry every female dynasty member matrilineally" is sub-optimal and risky, but that's also clearly a nonsense way to play. Just giving us the option to have the AI also play that way is backwards - the fix we needed was to revise the system to incentivize a more reasonable strategy. If your design creates a tension and conflict between playing the game well and seeing realistic history play out, the design is likely flawed. In other words, the problem was never that my AI-controlled son didn't get a matrilineal marriage for his daughter. The problem was always that not having a matrilineal marriage for my granddaughter was the biggest disaster my realm could face. Being deposed and reduced to a count is a recoverable disaster. My granddaughter being patrilineally married is a game over, only avertable by coming up with elaborate ways to kill off my own children.
 
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Crusades are enough of a source of complaint that they've been given a megathread :)
We've fixed a bunch of things with Crusades for the upcoming patch, such as increasing the cooldown and, most importantly, fixed an issue where they would launch despite having not enough support. You'll be able to peruse the full list of changes we've done when the changelog is posted, which you won't have to wait too long for :)
 
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