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CK3 Dev Diary #103: Summer Break

Greetings!

Summer is upon us, and with Fate of Iberia and the 1.6.1 update(s) (note: another small fix update will be released this week), we feel confident that the game is in a good place where it can be enjoyed over the break! (As always, keep those reports up if you find an issue) Soon we’ll all be out enjoying the beautiful Swedish summer, taking some well-deserved rest, and recharging for the time ahead!

As mentioned in Dev Diary 100, we have big and small plans, some of which will be revealed later this year. We’re very excited to see what you think, but we can’t say anything yet!

From this point onwards we will not have any regularly scheduled Dev Diaries until we’re all back! There may be a small dev diary here and there, but no promises. We’ll be back before the end of August.

If you want to keep discussing the game over the break, head over to our Discord. Also, note that we’ll have videos every Wednesday and Friday throughout the summer, mostly of the DevClash that wrapped up recently.

Before we leave you for the summer, did you know that we added several historical figures that can appear under the right circumstances? Here’s an overview written by Ola, known as @Vaniljkaka here on the forums!

Abbas ibn Firnas (~810-887), known in Latin as Armen Firman, was an Andalusian polymath. Sources claim that he made an attempt at flight by jumping from a tower in Córdoba clad in a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. For this, he got immortalized, and now has a statue outside Baghdad’s airport. Though Ibn Firnas would be alive in our 867 bookmark, you’ll only encounter him if the right event fires.

al-Zahrawi (936–1013), known as Albucasis in Latin, was one of the greatest surgeons of the Middle Ages, and court physician to the caliph in Córdoba. If you manage to encounter him in the game (you’ll need some luck for this, and an event about medicine…), he’ll even tell you an anecdote from his career.

Ibn al-Wafid (997 – 1074), known as Abenguefith in Latin, was a pharmacist and agronomist in Toledo in the middle of the 11th century. Historical sources claim that he was a pupil of al-Zahrawi, but this seems improbable, as al-Zahrawi died before 1013. Ibn al-Wafid is a great court physician if you play emir Yahya in the Rags to Riches bookmark.

Al-Zarkali (1029-1100), known in Latin as Arzachel, was a craftsman and astronomer based in Toledo. He fled the city when Castille conquered it in 1085. His work formed part of the basis for the Toledan Tables, a set of astronomical tables that were later translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona. He is in the court of Toledo in the 1066 start.

Joseph ibn Nagrela (1035-1066), also known as Joseph ha-Nagid, was vizier to the incompetent, alcoholic emir Badis of Granada. Ibn Nagrela belonged to a prominent lineage of Sephardic Jews; his father Samuel was a famous scholar, warrior, and poet. Ibn Nagrela was the chief victim of the Granada Massacre in December 1066, crucified by an angry mob for supposedly trying to usurp the throne. However, our game begins in January 1066, so perhaps he will fare better in this history…

Ibn Zuhr (1094-1162), known in Latin as Avenzoar, was a physician and poet, who seems to have had a dramatic fallout with one of his employers, the Almoravid ruler. This fallout was very much the inspiration for one of the events in Struggle for Iberia…

Ibn Tufail (1105 – 1185), known in Latin as Abubacer Aben Tofail, was a physician, novelist, and astronomer, among other things. He was quite keen on autopsies, as you’ll notice if you encounter him, which will require the right event at the right time.

Gerard of Cremona (~1114-1187) was an Italian translator of scientific books from Arabic into Latin, active in the kingdom of Castille. After the fall of Toledo, his work was instrumental in making Arabic knowledge available to the Western European intellectual sphere, ushering in the “Renaissance of the Twelfth Century”. Gerard can be encountered if you get an appropriate event during the years when he was active - make sure that conciliation is the prevailing mood in Iberia!

Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), known in Latin as Averroes, was a polymath and jurist and one of the most influential intellectuals of the Middle Ages, with a whole school of thought, averroism, that bears his name. In his youth, he seems to have been a pupil of both Ibn Zuhr and Ibn Tufail. There seem to be claims that he experimented with flight, just like ibn Firnas. Though he is very famous, he lived after our game’s current bookmark dates, and you’ll only encounter him with a bit of luck through an event in the right time period…

Qasmuna (11th-12th century) was a female Sephardi poet. Some of her poems are preserved, but little is known of her life. However, there is a theory that she was the sister of Joseph ibn Nagrela. I chose to go with this, since it made their family tree more interesting and allowed us to include her in the game. You’ll likely find her with her brother in the court of Granada.
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We are excited to come back refreshed and relaxed after vacation, and resume working on the game that we all know and love! Until August, goodbye!
 
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mustard11 said:
You guys should be working.
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Paradox's GSG teams take a summer break because Swedish law not only says "every full-time employee gets a minimum of five weeks paid annual leave plus public holidays" but also "you must allow your employees to take four weeks of their annual leave as a single solid block in the summer if they want to".

And while Cities: Skylines is great, it didn't really have to compete with SimCity 2013. All it had to do was step over the smouldering remains of one of the biggest video game marketing disasters of the 2010s.

SC2013, remember, turned into such a charlie foxtrot that it not only killed the franchise and got the studio dissolved, but also precipitated significant changes in EA's corporate policy around the "always online" design concept.
 
How far back does Norwegian law allow you to claim a passport as a descendent of one of their emigrants? My ancestors came from Mosjøen to Wisconsin around 1895. Might as well take advantage of the nationally guaranteed vacation+healthcare situation if it's not gonna change on my whim :). I don't really care if Paradox succeeds or fails. I just really like the experience that CK delivers no matter who does it best, and I'm gettin impatient with PDX!!
 
Hermerico said:
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.
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Don't most of the artworks have shared elements from both culture groups? That's certainly how it comes across to me. The Andalusian side is perhaps a bit more prevelant in the images as they do control the majority of Iberia in both starting dates.
 
krissuyx said:
Don't most of the artworks have shared elements from both culture groups? That's certainly how it comes across to me. The Andalusian side is perhaps a bit more prevelant in the images as they do control the majority of Iberia in both starting dates.
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That's the equivalent of giving English or French cultures an old-Norse hybrid architecture, because of the Danelaw or Normandy.

There is no excuse for having the kingdom of Asturias feature literal mosques in their monastery holding graphics, moorish architecture was completely absent from literally half of the peninsula. Name a single mosque or general moorish building reported to have ever existed in this general area:
1659453790061.png
I'll wait.
This area now looks and feels nothing like it ever did in real life.

It would be far more accurate to have the Andalucian culture have the current Christian/Moorish architecture hybrid that all Iberians got (since even Al-Andalus featured a mostly pre-Arab Roman and Visigothic architecture), while the Galician/Asturian/Castilian/Basque/Catalan cultures should have their own Hispanic architecture.


Even if the Christians are able to conquer all of Hispania (never seen this happen btw), muslim architecture would very likely still persist due to how dificult it is to culture convert the whole peninsula, (since the new casus beli don't auto-revoke land from different faith ruler like they did before, and conciliation period blocks culture conversion).

Also, Hybrid-cultures/Cultural divergence could fix this by having south Iberian cultures spawn, such as Castilian->Andalusian, Portuguese->Algarvian, Catalan->Valencian keeping the moorish-hybrid architecture in the south, even after a successfull reconquest.
 
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Hermerico said:
That's the equivalent of giving English or French cultures an old-Norse hybrid architecture, because of the Danelaw or Normandy.

There is no excuse for having the kingdom of Asturias feature literal mosques in their monastery holding graphics, moorish architecture was completely absent from literally half of the peninsula. Name a single mosque or general moorish building reported to have ever existed in this general area:View attachment 865405 I'll wait.
This area now looks and feels nothing like it ever did in real life.

It would be far more accurate to have the Andalucian culture have the current Christian/Moorish architecture hybrid that all Iberians got (since even Al-Andalus featured a mostly pre-Arab Roman and Visigothic architecture), while the Galician/Asturian/Castilian/Basque/Catalan cultures should have their own Hispanic architecture.


Even if the Christians are able to conquer all of Hispania (never seen this happen btw), muslim architecture would very likely still persist due to how dificult it is to culture convert the whole peninsula, (since the new casus beli don't auto-revoke land from different faith ruler like they did before, and conciliation period blocks culture conversion).

Also, Hybrid-cultures/Cultural divergence could fix this by having south Iberian cultures spawn, such as Castilian->Andalusian, Portuguese->Algarvian, Catalan->Valencian keeping the moorish-hybrid architecture in the south, even after a successfull reconquest.
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Oh, I agree that it would've been better to have both. I just personally don't have that big of an issue with them combining the two to reflect their shared history, influence and so on over the area. I'm not even really trying to argue against your points and you obviously know more about it than I do.

I did check the mighty interwebs though and found out that the Umayyads covered almost the entirety of iberia at one point.
1659458471931.png
This map from Wikipedia is of the year 719. Did they really leave no moorish architecture in their wake? (genuine question, I don't know much about it)
 
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krissuyx said:
Oh, I agree that it would've been better to have both. I just personally don't have that big of an issue with them combining the two to reflect their shared history, influence and so on over the area. I'm not even really trying to argue against your points and you obviously know more about it than I do.

I did check the mighty interwebs though and found out that the Umayyads covered almost the entirety of iberia at one point. View attachment 865409 This map from Wikipedia is of the year 719. Did they really leave no moorish architecture in their wake? (genuine question, I don't know much about it)
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That map is the single most misleading piece of information i have ever seen on the Reconquista ever.
Skip to the end for the answer to your question, read the rest if you are interested in the rant on why this map sucks.

The first couple of years of the invasion were an incredibly contrived and hectic period.
There were only about 3-4 Umayyad invasion forces, which took control of no more than 10 main cities, effectively collapsing the very fragile control the Visigothic King had over his civil-war thorned kingdom.
To from that, extrapolate such a clear and definite map with such complete Umayyad control is a gross simplification and severe overestimation of the effective Ummayad control of the area. It would simply be impossible for the logistical standards of time to achieve such a complete domination is such a short period.
In practice what happened was an immediate colapse of the Visigothic control of Hispania, with most of the local nobility becoming de-facto autonomous and maybe swearing fealty or paying tribute to avoid punitive campaigns. For example there was not a single military campaign in Lusitania outside of the capture of Merida, the local nobility just submitted without a need for an invasion at all. A map like this is akin to a map showing full French occupation of the Sahara in 1885, a nominal claim at best.
A realistic map of 719 would only show 10 occupied cities at most.

With that said, even if we take this nominal control as granted it is still innacurate in the North, because there was in fact Muslim occupation of Vizcaya and they wouldn't be expelled up to the 9th century when the Franks established the Hispanic March.
Galicia on the other had, didn't have a single of its cities occupied. There is literally no authentic source of any city in Galicia being occupied by these Umayyad invasion forces ever, i have no idea why these maps always include it under Umayyad control since there is no evidence of them even setting foot in that land in the first place.
Umayyad_conquest_of_Hispania.jpg


There were two invasions of Gallaecia, one in 713 that marched from Amaya, the capital of Cantabria, west into Gallaecia and occupied Astorga (which is just East of the Cantabrian mountains) and then retreated back to Toledo (the logical implication being that it did not cross west into Galicia proper)
The second invasion a year later in 714 from Zaragoza pushed only as far west as Gijon again without any specific occupation of any land in Galicia proper.

Notice that I did mention Gijon and Amaya, the implication being that Cantabria and Asturias were, indeed occupied by the Umayyads, and we know this to be a fact because we know the Umayyads even assigned a governor for Asturias in Gijon: Uthman ibn Naissa, and we know Pelayu rebeled against him and Covadonga was a battle against a tax-colection force, not an invasion force.

To be fair, the map is from 1 year after Covadonga, so i understand why they made Asturias and Cantabria not controlled by the Umayyads, but keeping Galicia as if it was is just being very disingenuous. Expecially since in the chronicle of 754 it is specified that Pelayu was recognised King by the Asturian, Cantabrian AND Galician nobility alike.
I believe they do this because Galicia proper was only incorporated into the Kingdom of Asturias in 739, and the implication is that everything that was not Asturias must have belonged to the Umayyads, this is fallacious view of feudal history through a modern lense of clear borders and nation-states.

The only contemporary records on this period is the aforementioned chronicle of 754, and there it only states that king Alfonso I incorporated the Galician lands into his domain. There is absolutely no mention of any battles, or muslim presence at all. It is simply impossible to claim for certain that there was any sort of Umayyad occupation of that area whatsoever.
So this map is very misleading, as it implies that Galicia was conquered and Asturias/Cantabria/Viscaya were not, while in reality we know for certain that Asturias, Cantabria and Viscaya were conquered by the Moors, while Galicia remains the only part of Hispania that with no evidence of ever being occupied.

In the following 20 years, the Ummayads were too busy actually securing control over this large territory, which was by no means fully subjected, with mutinies and revolts being widespread everywhere, especially in the North.
In the 740, during the Berber revolts, the Umayyads retreated every garrison they had north of the Douro river, effectively creating a no-mans-land autonomous territory between the Douro and the Cantabrian mountains the "Desert of the Duero", where there were no permanent garrisons of Asturias nor Cordoba. This territory would be subsequently be incorporated into Asturias with minimal to no resistance, in a process called "Repoblacion".
Again maps usually fail to portray this reality and give all of it to Cordoba just because.
If you ever wondered how could the tiny kingdom of Asturias push back the massive Caliphate of Cordoba, well, this is why, it didn't push it back, it merely took over lands that simply were not occupied at all.

So to answer your question: No, they did not leave any trace of Moorish architecture in their wake. There was barely any effective military control North of the Douro, much less time to leave any sort of architectonic artifact behind.
 
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Hermerico said:
That map is the single most misleading piece of information i have ever seen on the Reconquista ever.
Skip to the end for the answer to your question, read the rest if you are interested in the rant on why this map sucks.

The first couple of years of the invasion were an incredibly contrived and hectic period.
There were only about 3-4 Umayyad invasion forces, which took control of no more than 10 main cities, effectively collapsing the very fragile control the Visigothic King had over his civil-war thorned kingdom.
To from that, extrapolate such a clear and definite map with such complete Umayyad control is a gross simplification and severe overestimation of the effective Ummayad control of the area. It would simply be impossible for the logistical standards of time to achieve such a complete domination is such a short period.
In practice what happened was an immediate colapse of the Visigothic control of Hispania, with most of the local nobility becoming de-facto autonomous and maybe swearing fealty or paying tribute to avoid punitive campaigns. For example there was not a single military campaign in Lusitania outside of the capture of Merida, the local nobility just submitted without a need for an invasion at all. A map like this is akin to a map showing full French occupation of the Sahara in 1885, a nominal claim at best.
A realistic map of 719 would only show 10 occupied cities at most.

With that said, even if we take this nominal control as granted it is still innacurate in the North, because there was in fact Muslim occupation of Vizcaya and they wouldn't be expelled up to the 9th century when the Franks established the Hispanic March.
Galicia on the other had, didn't have a single of its cities occupied. There is literally no authentic source of any city in Galicia being occupied by these Umayyad invasion forces ever, i have no idea why these maps always include it under Umayyad control since there is no evidence of them even setting foot in that land in the first place.View attachment 865462

There were two invasions of Gallaecia, one in 713 that marched from Amaya, the capital of Cantabria, west into Gallaecia and occupied Astorga (which is just East of the Cantabrian mountains) and then retreated back to Toledo (the logical implication being that it did not cross west into Galicia proper)
The second invasion a year later in 714 from Zaragoza pushed only as far west as Gijon again without any specific occupation of any land in Galicia proper.

Notice that I did mention Gijon and Amaya, the implication being that Cantabria and Asturias were, indeed occupied by the Umayyads, and we know this to be a fact because we know the Umayyads even assigned a governor for Asturias in Gijon: Uthman ibn Naissa, and we know Pelayu rebeled against him and Covadonga was a battle against a tax-colection force, not an invasion force.

To be fair, the map is from 1 year after Covadonga, so i understand why they made Asturias and Cantabria not controlled by the Umayyads, but keeping Galicia as if it was is just being very disingenuous. Expecially since in the chronicle of 754 it is specified that Pelayu was recognised King by the Asturian, Cantabrian AND Galician nobility alike.
I believe they do this because Galicia proper was only incorporated into the Kingdom of Asturias in 739, and the implication is that everything that was not Asturias must have belonged to the Umayyads, this is fallacious view of feudal history through a modern lense of clear borders and nation-states.

The only contemporary records on this period is the aforementioned the chronicle of 754, and there it only states that king Alfonso I incorporated the Galician lands into his domain. There is absolutely no mention of any battles, or muslim presence at all. It is simply impossible to claim for certain that there was any sort of Umayyad occupation of that area whatsoever.
So this map is very misleading, as it implies that Galicia was conquered and Asturias/Cantabria/Viscaya were not, while in reality we know for certain that Asturias, Cantabria and Viscaya were conquered by the Moors, while Galicia remains the only part of Hispania that with no evidence of ever being occupied.

In the following 20 years, the Ummayads were too busy actually securing control over this large territory, which was by no means fully subjected, with mutinies and revolts being widespread everywhere, especially in the North.
In the 740, during the Berber revolts, the Umayyads retreated every garrison they had north of the Douro river, effectively creating a no-mans-land autonomous territory between the Douro and the Cantabrian mountains, where there were no permanent garrisons of Asturias nor Cordoba. This territory would be subsequently be incorporated into Asturias with minimal to no resistance.
Again maps usually fail to portray this reality and give all of it to Cordoba just because.
If you ever wondered how could the tiny kingdom of Asturias push back the massive Caliphate of Cordoba, well, this is why, it didn't push it back, it merely took over lands that simply were not occupied at all.

So to answer your question: No, they did not leave any trace of Moorish architecture in their wake. There was barely any effective military control North of the Douro, much less time to leave any sort of architectonic artifact behind. And that map is not representative of the 719 reality at all.
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Ah, thank you. Very informative.
 
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People keep going on about Swedish holidays, which are way more that the summer break is for kids, but what I don't understand is why all the other games are back to having diaries, or have had them awhile, whilst this game they are still all away.
 
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zorkman said:
People keep going on about Swedish holidays, which are way more that the summer break is for kids, but what I don't understand is why all the other games are back to having diaries, or have had them awhile, whilst this game they are still all away.
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This game is in a weird point in the patch cycle where a DD date or two are sometimes skipped even sans the break really. Still odd they've said nothing even with HoI4 team saying the break ended a week ago.
 
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zorkman said:
People keep going on about Swedish holidays, which are way more that the summer break is for kids, but what I don't understand is why all the other games are back to having diaries, or have had them awhile, whilst this game they are still all away.
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Tinto is only just going on holiday so eu4 devs will stop sooj
 
IndigoRage said:
This game is in a weird point in the patch cycle where a DD date or two are sometimes skipped even sans the break really. Still odd they've said nothing even with HoI4 team saying the break ended a week ago.
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The thread last week from Servancour stated they would be starting up their diaries in the next few weeks or so, which seems rather strange compared to the other games.
 
zorkman said:
The thread last week from Servancour stated they would be starting up their diaries in the next few weeks or so, which seems rather strange compared to the other games.
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In that case I think it's to do with CK3 having been left behind at the weird end-of-patch part of the cycle.
 
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I really hope that we get a small Dev Diary this week or next week. It doesn't have to be something groundbreaking, it just can be: Heyo we are back and working on bugs again. The next bigger news and updates will be at PDX-Con and after that so strap your seatbelts for it.

It is just, yeah, currently a bit of a void. CK3 is one of my favourite games and I kinda miss the frequent updates.
 
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MastL said:
I need HARD difficulty,the game is too easy for me now.

And i also hope hard difficulty is not only buffing the ai,but also make ai more clever.
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Honestly at this point I would settle for ANY hard difficulty, I still cant believe we don't have even an easy stat flip hard mode in the same vain as the easy difficulties.
 
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I’m really disappointed by the lack of communication. Even a small “hey no Dev Diary this week, but we’re hard at work” message would have been greatly appreciated.
 
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