CK3 Dev Diary #103: Summer Break

[Vegetalss4]

Woah 2 months of vacation. That is amazing. I've been with my company for 21 years and I'm a Sr. IT director and I get 4 weeks a year total. LOL.

For a bit of context, the everyone on the Paradox team probably* don't have two months vacation right now.
That's just the vacation-period for the team as a whole, where they can't keep doing all the normal workflow due to a lot of people being on holiday.

The individual people on the team will likely have a good chunk of that off, but not all of it, and probably offset a bit from each other so that the company can keep doing those things that really can't wait (like paying their bills and so on).
Plus a few low intensity things that can be done without needing the entire team, but still fewer of those than they can normally do when everybody is in.
For instance those video's they are going to be uploading during the summer won't make themselves.

Now don't get me wrong they'll still likely have significantly more vacation time both during the summer and during the year, just probably not 2 full months in a row for the entire team.
(under Swedish law the absolute minim people are entitled too is 5 weeks vacation a year + holidays and a right to have 4 weeks in a row during the summer months if they want it. AIUI it's more common than not for people's employment contracts to give them a bit more than the legal minimum. Benefit of having a bunch of strong unions in society who influence what's considered "normal" for a job to offer.)

*I don't actually know the specific situation at Paradox, I just have a decent understanding of the general situation in Sweden.

 

[Hermerico]

May the non-andalusian realms of Hispania expect to get reflavoured in some later DLC down the line? (maybe lumped together with other left over regions)
This DLC is clearly and completely focused in, and only in, Al-Andalus (not even debatable in the slightest at this point) every single one of the non-andalusian realms of Hispania (except, maybe, Aragon) was actively made worse and its better off without the DLC altogether.

 

[MachopPower69]

Immgine legislating for Christmas holiday. As a brit I remember working retail for six years, you were lucky to get a day off at Xmas/New Years if you were real lucky. Thankfully am now in jobs where you atleast get bank holidays off.

Must be Northern Hemisphere things

 

[johnnybgood89]

What will be the next patch? Some balance changes and fixes?

 

[Zhetone]

May the non-andalusian realms of Hispania expect to get reflavoured in some later DLC down the line? (maybe lumped together with other left over regions)
This DLC is clearly and completely focused in, and only in, Al-Andalus (not even debatable in the slightest at this point) every single one of the non-andalusian realms of Hispania (except, maybe, Aragon) was actively made worse and its better off without the DLC altogether.

what do you mean by being made worse?

 

[Hermerico]

what do you mean by being made worse?

They were all given MENA holding graphics, map models, background images, soundtracks and UI.
Playing as Al-Andalus now feels exactly the same as playing in Asturias, at least before this DLC there was some distinction between the two sides, now all of Iberia feels like North Africa regardless of who holds it.

 

[SeraphAscending]

I did not bother write a bug report because there is already dozen of reports like me.

That's what the upvote in the bug report forum is for.
Upvote an existing report, if you encounter the same bug.

 

[DaPacemDomine]

Enjoy your vacation. Just unfortunate that for 1/6 of the year nothing is going to be done to advance and fix the game further.

 

[druez]

Enjoy your vacation. Just unfortunate that for 1/6 of the year nothing is going to be done to advance and fix the game further.

LOL, I think they get around a month off for Christmas as well. So more like 1/4 of the year lol. It isn't hate, just stating a fact. Just a different culture. Lots of more time off in Sweden then here in the USA.

 

[Luka031]

Shame there aren't more christian event characters

 

[OnlyTheWeakFearWords]

I still think you guys take ridiculously excessive holidays, but at least you leave your game in a mostly stable state before you take your break. Enjoy.

 

[grommile]

I still think you guys take ridiculously excessive holidays

They take the holidays their society has decided everyone should be entitled to.

If you lived there, you'd get that much holiday too

 

[vandevere]

They take the holidays their society has decided everyone should be entitled to.

If you lived there, you'd get that much holiday too

In short, it's not a fault that their country gives them that much vacay time. It's a fault that our country doesn't give us that much vacay time.

 

[m0xxY]

I still think you guys take ridiculously excessive holidays, but at least you leave your game in a mostly stable state before you take your break. Enjoy.

If the Swedes weren't so stupid and loathing of freedom, they'd arm themselves and fight for the right to work longer hours for less money and fewer benefits.

 

[Drinko]

I think one of the main reasons Americans react so badly to your Summer Break Announcements is that we're insanely jealous. Two months of Leave? Is it also Paid Leave?

Sometimes getting even unpaid Leave feels a lot like extracting teeth without anesthesia in the US. So glad you guys have it better...

Just paid leave? Do you truely think we would stoop so low? In Sweden we get paid more when we are on vacation.

 

[MirrorMonkey2]

They were all given MENA holding graphics, map models, background images, soundtracks and UI.
Playing as Al-Andalus now feels exactly the same as playing in Asturias, at least before this DLC there was some distinction between the two sides, now all of Iberia feels like North Africa regardless of who holds it.

Since you have posted this criticism in multiple threads already it seems that this is very dear to your heart. So I‘ll give you my in-depth opinion on this.

The representation of histroy in video games, like in other artforms, is always somewhat somewhat subjective and limited. It‘s a question of what kind of story you want you tell, how many ressources you have to tell those stories and how you want to allocate those ressources.
Unlike Northern Lords, which focused on a set of cultures which are largely very similar in their visual expression, Fate of Iberia involves cultures whose visual expressions are more varied.
Paradox chose to give the christian and muslim cultures of Iberia two different sets of clothing and armor (the latter both in character models and unit graphics) while giving them the same architecture graphics.
I believe this descision of ressource allocation had multiple reasons:
A) CK3s stories are first and foremost told through its characters, meaning that the differenciation of clothing is a more important story telling tool than the differenciation of architecture.
B) The Story PDX chose to tell through Fate of Iberia isn‘t only a story of struggle, but also a story of shared heritage. The architecture of christian states was strongly influenced by mid-eastern architecture not only in Iberia but through all of Europe. But this influence was stronger in Iberia than anywhere else during the depicted time.
C) During the course of the timeframe CK3 takes place in, the christian states of Iberia would go on to conquer and convert almost all of Iberia. When they conquered Al-Andalus, they didn‘t tear down the existing architecture and replace it with north iberian architecture. They largely left it intact. The grand mosque of Cordoba is a church today, but it looks largely unchanged. This is why it wouldn‘t be more accurate to give north iberian cultures their own seperate holding graphics. It would be about equally unrealistic while requiring additional work.
The only system I can think of would be hardcoding the south iberian holdings to remain andalusian looking despite being culture converted while making the north look northern iberian. Such a system has no precedent in CK3 and imo it‘s not worth making such an exception for a comparatively minor inaccuracy.
D) Your complaints are a bit one-sided. The graphic for the hostility ending of the struggle (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...t-illustration-showcase-and-workflow.1524206/) shows a pretty christian looking army winning out. (Probably because that‘s what happened IRL) If you played as a ash‘ari mashriqi character and got the dominance ending, that might also feel strange.

In the end, representing histroy in a video game always involves making compromises. And I think you‘re overstating the graveness of the compromise PDX made by not giving North Iberian cultures their own holding graphics.

 

[Hermerico]

Since you have posted this criticism in multiple threads already it seems that this is very dear to your heart. So I‘ll give you my in-depth opinion on this.

The representation of histroy in video games, like in other artforms, is always somewhat somewhat subjective and limited. It‘s a question of what kind of story you want you tell, how many ressources you have to tell those stories and how you want to allocate those ressources.
Unlike Northern Lords, which focused on a set of cultures which are largely very similar in their visual expression, Fate of Iberia involves cultures whose visual expressions are more varied.
Paradox chose to give the christian and muslim cultures of Iberia two different sets of clothing and armor (the latter both in character models and unit graphics) while giving them the same architecture graphics.
I believe this descision of ressource allocation had multiple reasons:
A) CK3s stories are first and foremost told through its characters, meaning that the differenciation of clothing is a more important story telling tool than the differenciation of architecture.
B) The Story PDX chose to tell through Fate of Iberia isn‘t only a story of struggle, but also a story of shared heritage. The architecture of christian states was strongly influenced by mid-eastern architecture not only in Iberia but through all of Europe. But this influence was stronger in Iberia than anywhere else during the depicted time.
C) During the course of the timeframe CK3 takes place in, the christian states of Iberia would go on to conquer and convert almost all of Iberia. When they conquered Al-Andalus, they didn‘t tear down the existing architecture and replace it with north iberian architecture. They largely left it intact. The grand mosque of Cordoba is a church today, but it looks largely unchanged. This is why it wouldn‘t be more accurate to give north iberian cultures their own seperate holding graphics. It would be about equally unrealistic while requiring additional work.
The only system I can think of would be hardcoding the south iberian holdings to remain andalusian looking despite being culture converted while making the north look northern iberian. Such a system has no precedent in CK3 and imo it‘s not worth making such an exception for a comparatively minor inaccuracy.
D) Your complaints are a bit one-sided. The graphic for the hostility ending of the struggle (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...t-illustration-showcase-and-workflow.1524206/) shows a pretty christian looking army winning out. (Probably because that‘s what happened IRL) If you played as a ash‘ari mashriqi character and got the dominance ending, that might also feel strange.

In the end, representing histroy in a video game always involves making compromises. And I think you‘re overstating the graveness of the compromise PDX made by not giving North Iberian cultures their own holding graphics.

A-There was already a reasonable differentiation in clothing (i honestly notice no difference, and i doubt anyone that's not a connoisseur in 12 century fashion did), just like there was already a reasonable differentiation in architecture that was now eliminated.
As for the armor, both units and models, it were also exclusively based on Aragon (which got the lion's share of the limited content the christian realms got, including all province additions, despite being the densest in the first place), as the unit models for the Western Kingdoms also got worsened and were unironically better off represented by the vanilla one.
Now, I understand that they couldn't give every kingdom it's own armor, they had to pick one and they picked Aragon. Fine, i can have peace with that, that's no what i am against, I wasn't expecting every realm to get it's own content, i was only expecting them not to actively make everything Northwest of the Tagus
(Which is 50% of the Pensisular area) outright worse off than before.

B-Shared heritage already existed and would still exist by the mere fact that through the course of the struggle, you would occupy land of the culture and religion of the other and thus get their architecture in your realm, yes you could convert it, but you didn't have to, and the struggle mechanic made this much harder than it was before anyway, so that alone would be enough for a largely distinct Iberia with Christian and Muslim Architecture alike even if under the same faith (with the added bonus of it actually having a difference between the north and the south) Thus you would have a realistic and organic shared architecture by the merits of actually sharing the cultures.

C-The current shared architecture argument you put forward of Christians taking the Muslim buildings for their own doesn't even apply to North Iberia at all since it never even had Islamic architecture there in the first place!
You can't destroy what didn't even exist.
And you didn't need to hardcode anything to any land, you could just add new emergent cultures for christian realms in former muslim lands that have muslim architecture, Valencian for Catalan and Aragonese, Andalusian for Castilian and Basque, Estremaduran for Asturleonese and Algarvian for Galician and Portuguese. This would require 0 effort on the development part.

D-I would gladly take the compromise on a single image i see once(if at all) in a playthrough and accounts to 0% of your immersion than in everything else that is omnipresent in the entire playthrough, such as the backgrounds of your characters, which are the absolute central piece of the game.

It is what it is. They deliberately chose only to represent one, identical and homogeneous Iberia, and they chose to create a Islamic-themed one, there is no two ways about it, "don't like it, don't buy it."
I've simply grown to accept this.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

And you didn't need to hardcode anything to any land, you could just add new emergent cultures for christian realms in former muslim lands that have muslim architecture, Valencian for Catalan and Aragonese, Andalusian for Castilian and Basque, Estremaduran for Asturleonese and Algarvian for Galician and Portuguese. This would require 0 effort on the development part.

And what if a Castillian invades and culture converts southern lands, without culture converting or creating a new culture there? You'd still have the problem of the graphics flipping.

And of course Andalusian is already a culture on the map in 867, so it wouldn't be a possible new emergent culture.

 

[Hermerico]

And what if a Castillian invades and culture converts southern lands, without culture converting or creating a new culture there? You'd still have the problem of the graphics flipping.

And of course Andalusian is already a culture on the map in 867, so it wouldn't be a possible new emergent culture.

Then that would be the natural flow of the game and no different from anywhere else in the game. (But also, borderline impossible, as I am yet to see AI Christians to reconquer Iberia in my dozens of playthroughs much less actually convert it).

And why should Iberia be the sole exception where the Northern realms are not only unable to switch the southern architecture, but HAVE to stick with the southern architecture themselves even if they never had it in the first place?

As for point 2, just rename the current Andalusian to Muladí, which was their actual endonym, or Andalusi (the Arabic dialect spoken by the ruling class) so there is a difference between an actual Andalusian (Which is a Castilian dialect/ regional shoot-off of the Castilian culture) and an Arab of the Andalusi dialect, which is what the culture is trying to represent.

 

[alxgvr]

Hope you will add complex economy in future. Production, consumption, trade. Trade was major thing in middleages.