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Crusader Kings 3 Dev Diary #111 - 1.8.0 “Robe” Feature Highlight

This image depicts an in-game notification with the title “1.8.0 Feature Highlight”, to the right is the vanity character of Hugo Cortell, while to the left is the Paradox Interactive logo. The text within the notification body says “The Paradox Community gained 20 opinion of you (Received Dev diary).
Hello crusaders! I’m @Hugo Cortell, game designer and horchata drinking aficionado at Paradox Thalassic, and today I am here to present everything new and exciting with the upcoming 1.8.0 “Robe” free update.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that this update is a wonderful blend of bug fixes, refinements, and brand-new features. Since this is a “Feature Highlight”, I’ll be keeping it short and sweet and focusing on the latter two. But worry not, I'll still be showing off two of our more interesting changes from the upcoming changelog diary.
Without further ado, let’s begin.

New Bookmark Screen​

The biggest thing you’ll notice when starting a new game with 1.8.0 will certainly be the new and shiny bookmark screen, which has been redesigned to more cleanly fit new scenarios.

This image is animated, showing a before and after comparison of the bookmark screen User Interface. The new one is much more stylish.

Click (here) and (here) for high-quality still images.

Screenshot showing the 867 'The Struggle for Iberia' bookmark.
Screenshot showing the 867 'The Carolingians' bookmark.
Screenshot showing the 1066 'The Fate of England' bookmark.
Screenshot showing the 1066 'From Rags to Riches' bookmark. Emir Yahya is selected on this screenshot.
Everyone loves a good image collage, right?

The new bookmark screen not only looks better but it is also more streamlined: for example, the scenario information box and the character information tab become a single togglable tab once you select a bookmark character, avoiding unnecessary clutter on the screen.

This image is a side-by-side comparison of the new togglable information menu, the left side shows scenario information, while the right has information about the character itself.


To top it off, alongside the new bookmark screen we have also updated the main menu to conveniently display all the downloadable content you own and easily access any that you may be missing out on. You’ll be able to find it on the bottom left corner of the main menu screen.

This image shows the DLC icons on the main menu. One of the DLCs, Fate of Iberia, is being highlighted by the cursor, prompting it to display information about itself. It is also informing the user in the picture that the DLC is enabled and that clicking will open the store page for that DLC.


Custom Ruler Saving​

To complement the new bookmark screen, we’ve also added the ability to save and load custom characters! At long last, you can finally use for multiple playthroughs that one character that you’ve spent so much time detailing to perfection.

Saving and loading is done through buttons that you’ll find at the bottom left of the ruler designer.
Selecting load will bring up a list of all saved characters and allow you to conveniently preview your selected creation before loading them into the designer itself.

This image shows the Ruler Designer window. In the center of the screen lies an overwhelmingly handsome man named Theodore Thalassic, canonically the son of John Paradox. On the bottom left there are two new buttons, one of them (titled 'save') saves the character on screen, while the other (titled 'load'), opens a menu to load a character.
This image shows the menu used to load saved characters into the Ruler Designer. The window is divided into two parts. The left side contains a list of saved characters, containing their name, a headshot, and the amount of points utilized by that character. The right side has a compact breakdown of the character’s details, their Age, Faith, Family, Skills, and Traits are all displayed in this menu.

Additionally, saved rulers are stored as individual files in ..\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\ruler, meaning that you will be able to easily share your magnificent creations & abominations with the rest of the CK3 community. I look forward to seeing a mix of gorgeous and cursed creatures in the forums once this release comes to be.

Unique Illustrations For Every Tenet​

Yes, you heard right. Get ready for art galore because our artists have been hard at work making new illustrations for every single tenet in the game that was previously missing one.

This image is a collage of various new tenet illustrations, all of them have clearly been lovingly and expertly crafted to maximize both readability and beauty. There are a total of ten illustrations in this image. An idol of an ancestor, standing between ritualistic candles. An axe hitting a shield. A mouth, opening in a threatening manner while blood and saliva drip from its fangs. Hands holding prayer beads decorated with an islamic symbol. A robed skeleton carrying a child within. A lotus flower in a pond, sheltered by lush leaves. A mother cradling a young child. A pagan-style statue hidden inside a christian-styled one (in the fashion of a Matryoshka doll). A lone, robed individual walking across a sun-lit arched hall. And a stone shelter built on a mound at the foot of the mountains. These illustrations are highly interpretative and may hold greater meaning and detail than can be described by the likes of the writer of this post.

PSA: if you are visually impaired, hover over the image to get a written description!

We don’t want to spoil all of them here, so look forward to seeing them in-game for yourself when the update releases. The art team did a great job making these, especially considering how tenets can have very abstract concepts, which I am sure must have taken a lot of back-and-forths to get just right.

Changelog Highlights​

We’ve worked very hard to fix as many bugs as possible for this release. I hope our commitment to making a high-quality product will be made apparent when you see the size of the final changelog in an upcoming changelog dev diary. As mentioned at the start of the post, I’ll be sharing two highlights.
Please note that the current titles may not match their name on the final changelog.

Mozarabs can now use a strong hook to coerce the Pope into binding with Rome​

If you have a strong hook on the pope, you can now use it to skip the requirements for binding with Rome. Though the pope will not like that.

This image shows the 'Bind the Faith to Rome' decision side-by-side. The left side shows the requirements, which state that you must either fulfill all the regular requirements or have a strong hook before being able to make the decision. The right side shows the effects of the decision when you use a strong hook to bypass the regular requirements, which includes the pope disliking you and your hook being consumed.

It goes without saying that if you fulfill all requirements, but also have a hook, it will pick the regular outcome before the coercion one.

Zandaqa can now have their pledge of submission rejected by the Caliph​

Pledging submission to a caliph will send out an actual in-game letter rather than instantly consulting the AI upon selecting the option. If you enjoy playing as a Caliph in multiplayer mode, look forward to deciding the fate of the Zandaqa players for yourself.

Image of the 'Heirs of the Prophet: Zandaqa' event, where the Zandaqa gets to pick who their head of faith may be. The first option is to elect their own leaders, while the second lets them 'Realign with the Sunni orthodoxy'. The player in this screenshot has their mouse over the second option, which has made a tooltip showing the possible outcomes appear. The first outcome is that the Caliph rejects your pledge, forcing you to select your own head of faith. The second one is that the Caliph accepts your pledge, getting a weak hook on you in the process.
Image of the follow-up event that the Caliph receives. It comes in the form of a letter from the Zandaqa player. There are options to accept or decline the pledge, but accepting comes with greater benefits. Both options come with the nice detail of having icons, a designer somewhere in Paradox Interactive probably spent too much time on that.


Alright, that is everything I’ve got to show for now. I hope that we’ve managed to excite you for what’s coming in the immediate future for Crusader Kings. Let us know your thoughts below!
 

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johnty5 said:
I don't understand what this means.

What's not possible in CK3?
Click to expand...
here's the CK2 Saves
607ABB03919186DFBE631F6420F7BC714396D4FA



Here's CK3's Saves



F0589644E9DE3B4821B6634219DFC93BEF30FF56


As you can see one's easier to use than the other...

CK2's Saves are each packed into it's own folder, Ck3 aren't...
 
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DaBombXXX said:
Hopefully there's a bunch of balance changes that are not listed with this dev diary.
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The full changelog will arrive in an upcoming dev diary. Just about every player-facing change should be listed there.
 
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Danir said:
Could a new start date be in the works ? The game could really use it. It makes 100% sense that they removed the ability to play any date from 1066 to 1337 in the transition from Ck2. But a bit of variety especially in the high middle ages with a few specific interesting start dates would be nice.
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I really hope for Iron Century
 
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Very lovely; glad you are back with DD!

I understand that you focus on role-playing game elements, which is excellent. However, I want to ask if the existing DLC will be refined. It could potentially fix overall mixed/negative reviews and attract more customers for the product, let alone general pleasant comments in forum towards your hard work.
 
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Is -30 opinion for only 10 years really the proper magnitude for blackmailing the Pope into making a major doctrinal decision? How were those numbers chosen, exactly?
 
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vandevere said:
here's the CK2 Saves
607ABB03919186DFBE631F6420F7BC714396D4FA



Here's CK3's Saves



F0589644E9DE3B4821B6634219DFC93BEF30FF56


As you can see one's easier to use than the other...

CK2's Saves are each packed into it's own folder, Ck3 aren't...
Click to expand...

Fair enough. The save UI is certainly cleaner in CK2.

I'm still not sure what "it might be because the Save Game System on CK2 allows you to move back and forth between Games. As you can see in the image below, in CK2 you can hope back and forth as you please. That's simply not possible in CK3" means though. It absolutely is possible to hop/move back and forth between saves/games.
 
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Yes bug fixes ! hope I'll reduce be able to reduce the fixpack size :)
 
johnty5 said:
Fair enough. The save UI is certainly cleaner in CK2.

I'm still not sure what "it might be because the Save Game System on CK2 allows you to move back and forth between Games. As you can see in the image below, in CK2 you can hope back and forth as you please. That's simply not possible in CK3" means though. It absolutely is possible to hop/move back and forth between saves/games.
Click to expand...
Maybe I overstated out of pure frustration. But it's pretty clear CK2's Saves are far easier to hop in and out of than CK3's Saves, and this brings me back to my earlier point; which is that one possible reason why people quit Games is due to "Dynasty Burnout". You play the Karlings from 867, and then, around 1000, or 1200, you need to take a break from the Karlings...

It's far easier in CK2 to exit the Karlings, start a Wessex Start, play that to 1000 or 1200, and go back to the Karlings for another while. In CK3, you'd have to do a whole lot of scrolling to do that. In CK2, all you need to do is go to Load Game, and choose your Game...
 
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Hugo Cortell said:
Hello crusaders! I’m @Hugo Cortell, game designer and horchata drinking aficionado at Paradox Thalassic, and today I am here to present everything new and exciting with the upcoming 1.8.0 “Robe” free update.
Click to expand...

A fellow person of culture! Y’all are the reason I learned there were different types of horchata. I just knew about the agua fresca kind. The world is a wild place.

The tenet art looks lovely. My eye keeps getting drawn to the pink lotus. What a pleasurable bit of beautification.

And the custom character saver looks super useful, but I don’t see no pretty flowers on that :p

I posted it before, but the toxoplasmosis puppet master in my brain tells me that I did promise to post it on a DD…

Reposted below, my cat’s “Alexander Oltner at PDX Con” cosplay.

3BED417A-6373-46BE-9D33-6F40FEACC845.jpeg


vandevere said:
I think part of the reason why people may quit play throughs and go to new play throughs is because we get burned out playing the same dynasty. I've finished more complete play throughs on CK2, and it might be because the Save Game System on CK2 allows you to move back and forth between Games. As you can see in the image below, in CK2 you can hope back and forth as you please. That's simply not possible in CK3. Please, guys, do something like what you did in CK2 for CK3...
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If you’re struggling with save game organization, PDX Unlimiter sorts games by play through with a pretty snazzy ui. Even better, you can load up a save without having to go through the launcher.
 
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kawamuratc said:
If you’re struggling with save game organization, PDX Unlimiter sorts games by play through with a pretty snazzy ui. Even better, you can load up a save without having to go through the launcher.
Click to expand...
I appreciate the thought, but this is something the Devs should've done. And they still can, I hope...
 
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Now I know why it took so long for the new DD.
They needed to add this popup inside the game

dev_diary_asset_header.png



Jokes aside, I really look forward to see the new menu.
This also means I need to restart a new game when 1.8.0 is released.
 
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vandevere said:
I appreciate the thought, but this is something the Devs should've done. And they still can, I hope...
Click to expand...
I can’t make a comment about should’ve; I don’t know what it “costs” in dev time to implement UI changes.

I do consider this somewhat of an accessibility feature, though not one of the most pressing.

But since it’s come up…

BlindGuyNW said:
Hi ALl,

I wanted to write as it looks like CK3 is out, and there's at least the potential for me to enjoy the game as a totally blind player. I've done similar things before with other Paradox titles, but CK always eluded me, partially because of the peculiar choice of font, which made OCR a little difficult, even with mods.

The new game appears to have remedied that problem at least somewhat. I wanted to create this thread as a place to chat about the practical mechanics of making this game playable for me, or at least enjoyable.

I know from my previous forays into Paradox titles that i'll need to create bookmarks for parts of the screen. I also have read that the new "tooltips within tooltips," feature is designed to make things a little more straight-forward in terms of discoverability, though I can't tell the color of the text on screen due to some annoying software limitations.

Has anyone compiled a full hotkey list yet? I got a lot of mileage out of the ones for Stellaris and EU4, and hope that one will be forthcoming soonest if it doesn't already exist.

I'd love to engage with the development team if at all possible, since it is still early days, and there's more potential for accessibility changes than there would be in older titles. I believe that the stats-heavy nature of the Paradox games in general makes them ideal for blind players to enjoy, and in fact have proof of this being the case with Stellaris, at least, which I've introduced successfully to friends. I've always wanted to enjoy the emergent stories in CK, however, and thus why I keep coming back in hopes of being able to do so.

At the moment I'm still trying to get used to the way the interface works, and the fonts are giving me some trouble, though I hope a mod might be forthcoming to fix this. If not, I'll have to try making one myself.

Thus far, I've been adding bookmarks for the resource bar, and generally trying to get familiar with the screen layout as much as I can. A lot of he information I need is available, the OCR and font choice just makes it hard to access on occasion.

I wonder if the expanded modding capabilities of CK3 might make things a little easier to implement. I realize this is kind of overlapping the general and modding subforms, but I want to get as much potential help as I might, and so thought I would post here.

Any help the folks can provide would be very much appreciated. I feel like this is a potentially very accessible game, I just need to figure out how to get over the hump.
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I’m not sure how much the situation has changed since 2020. I’m not well versed in screen readers. But I do know that making games more accessible to disabled folks generally improves UI/UX for everyone.
 
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Neither of the women the game encourages you to play are "random".
 
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Nawjak said:
Could we also get new icons to choose from when creating a new religion? The selection feels quite limited, especially in contrast with the vast amount of pictograms available for the CoA designer.
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Or could we get icons made into something that doesn't break checksums when you add new ones via mod?
That'd be a move forward.
 
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Hugo Cortell said:
To top it off, alongside the new bookmark screen we have also updated the main menu to conveniently display all the downloadable content you own and easily access any that you may be missing out on. You’ll be able to find it on the bottom left corner of the main menu screen.
Click to expand...
What about a similar UI section for loaded mods ?
Sometimes the launcher fails at lauching a mod and the only way to check it is to run a multiplayer lobby and verify the mod list.
 
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DreadLindwyrm said:
Or could we get icons made into something that doesn't break checksums when you add new ones via mod?
That'd be a move forward.
Click to expand...
I think, unfortunately, that a lot of the UI elements involve some level of coding. That’s why even many simple changes, like adding icons, will alter the checksum.

I don’t know if that will change or if it is feasible to change.
 
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