[Mod] A.D. 633: Rise of Islam

[fireandplague]

A.D. 633: Rise of Islam version 3.2
Created on CK2 Version: 3.2

The mod has been up on ModDB and Steam for a while now, hence the version 3.0. I'd neglected to put on the forum until now, but I thought better late than never.

The main goal of A.D. 633: Rise of Islam is to extend the timeline. Thus, the bulk of my effort went into ensuring historicity as much as possible, and I think I did a bang up job of that (with the material available; unfortunately there's a dearth of sources out there for the 7th century). So although there are several neat little features added in, it's a lot closer to the base game in most ways; I didn't do a whole lot of new event chains etc. If you're looking for a radical gameplay-altering mod, this is probably not it.

MOD SUMMARY:
The Rise of Islam mod expands the timeline of Crusader Kings II by 136 years, back to A.D. 633, just after the death of Muhammad. In the British Isles, many of the Anglo-Saxon invaders have yet to convert to Christianity, and Briton peoples still hold sway over a narrow swath of territory extending from Pictland to Wales. In Western Europe, the Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms vie for dominance, with the still heretic Arian Lombards to the south. Much of the Mediterranean, including Egypt, Africa, and Syria, remains under the control of the Byzantines, whose main rivals are the powerful Sassanids, who control all of Persia and Mesopotamia. The fall of the Guptas in India a century earlier left the subcontinent fractured, but the Chalukya and Pushyabuti kingdoms have begun to consolidate power once again. Arabia rumbles with the threat of thousands of Bedouins with a newly-united purpose.

Features:

• New Cultures, including Syriac, Numidian, Amazigh, and Ostrogothic
• New Religions: Cushitic, East African pagans in Ethiopia and Somalia; and Arian and Donatist, early Christian heresies
• New de jure system for some tribal areas: no unrealistic de jure kingdoms and empires. Instead, easier to create custom kingdoms in these areas
• New Succession Laws: Witenagemot, unique elective succession for Anglo-Saxon rulers; and Caliphal Elective, enabled only for Muslim heads of religion
• New Bloodlines: Arsacid, Gupta, Syagrius, and more
• Mayor of the Palace laws and features for Merovingian and Frankish characters
• Reassigned names and de jure areas for some titles, including Illyria, Dacia, Cantabria, Neustria, Austrasia, and more
• Scripted events for the development of early Islam

FEATURE VIDEO (created for version 2.0, some things are a little out-dated)

ModDB: A.D. 633: Rise of Islam
Steam Workshop: A.D. 633: Rise of Islam

Latest version download *.zip file attached.

 

[IlikeTrains]

Do you have plans to introduce Chalcedonian Christianity in the 633 bookmark?

 

[tribnia]

Thank you for your great work! I 've been a fan of this mod since I found it on moddb!
BTW, will there be a special doctorine for the Cushitic pagan? What will its name be and what effect will it have?

 

[fireandplague]

Chalcedonian may be coming in a later version; in fact, I started on it for v3.0 but decided to get the mod out first since it wasn't Holy Fury compatible first. Basically to be meaningful it needs to have a lot of flavor/events that I need to have a plan for before I put it in willy-nilly.

Cushitic is honestly a relatively light religion gameplay-wise. I hate to delete it, but now that "African" religion is more generic it may not really be needed. Unless somebody has good ideas for how to make it unique?

 

[IlikeTrains]

Chalcedonian may be coming in a later version; in fact, I started on it for v3.0 but decided to get the mod out first since it wasn't Holy Fury compatible first. Basically to be meaningful it needs to have a lot of flavor/events that I need to have a plan for before I put it in willy-nilly.

Cushitic is honestly a relatively light religion gameplay-wise. I hate to delete it, but now that "African" religion is more generic it may not really be needed. Unless somebody has good ideas for how to make it unique?

Thanks for answer

I've fixed your .mod file, there was an annecessary closing bracket. I'm uploading the fixed file in .txt format because the forum doesn't support .mod.

 

[fireandplague]

Thanks. Although that *.mod file bracket has no effect whatsoever on the playability of the mod (including checksum) ...

 

[IlikeTrains]

Thanks. Although that *.mod file bracket has no effect whatsoever on the playability of the mod (including checksum) ...

Yes, the mod should be working fine with that bracket. The Validator didn't want to validate your mod with the error, though.

 

[fireandplague]

Ah I see, that makes sense. Never had much luck with The Validator -- it always flags 100s of "errors" that aren't really errors -- so I don't bother to use it anymore.

 

[JGBeagle]

I loaded it up last night and noticed that three provinces are missing history files at the start; one in Neuestria, another in Baveria and one near Venice.

 

[tribnia]

Chalcedonian may be coming in a later version; in fact, I started on it for v3.0 but decided to get the mod out first since it wasn't Holy Fury compatible first. Basically to be meaningful it needs to have a lot of flavor/events that I need to have a plan for before I put it in willy-nilly.

Cushitic is honestly a relatively light religion gameplay-wise. I hate to delete it, but now that "African" religion is more generic it may not really be needed. Unless somebody has good ideas for how to make it unique?

Well, I just read about the famous Kingdom of Kush, who believes in Kemetic religion. And according to wikipedia, the word "Cushi" is used to refer to Aethiops. So maybe, I mean maybe, make it with divine marrage, like the Egyptions do, religious tax like muslims, and animistic for its African origin. They could have Autocephalous, as Christians do. That may show how they may be influenced by neighboring countries.
Also, I may suggest a Memnon bloodline for a pagan in Aethiopia area. It 's cool.
I know the ideas hear ridiculous, none above are the same as Oromos we are referring to now in this very mod. But since the religion was never reformed, it's free to dream.

 

[fireandplague]

Thanks for the heads up JGBeagle; looks like I saved those three in my base game directory by mistake. Hotfix in the main post now. Also here:

EDIT: The attached file was deleted due to a newer hotfix being uploaded.

 

[fireandplague]

Based on a bug report on Steam workshop I've got another fix attached (also updated OP). There was a possible CTD on load/resign/continue caused by error(s) in the character history.

 

[Shamilboroda75]

Can I play as Venice?

 

[fireandplague]

Can I play as Venice?

If you mean as a trade republic in Venice, not at the 633 game start unfortunately. Historically the first Doge of Venice was elected in A.D. 697.

 

[Elliot12]

Do you plan on adding Arabic paganism to the mod? IRL Arabic paganism did not fully die out in the Arabian peninsula until the 11th century and that is JUST what we got from scholars who studied cities and rural towns, desert tribes likely kept the religion alive until the 14th century at least.

 

[fireandplague]

Do you plan on adding Arabic paganism to the mod? IRL Arabic paganism did not fully die out in the Arabian peninsula until the 11th century and that is JUST what we got from scholars who studied cities and rural towns, desert tribes likely kept the religion alive until the 14th century at least.

No doubt paganism survived in Arabia for hundreds of years after the birth of Islam in isolated minorities. However, it seems to have survived more in a syncretic, traditional, or secretive way, and all of its centers of worship were abolished by early Islam. I've not read of any openly pagan rulers in the Islamic era, nor even of any majority Arabic pagan areas that gave their Islamic rulers trouble. Certainly I don't think that any of the vast CK2 Arabian provinces can be classified as majority pagan.

There's also the problem of in-game characterization. It seems to me that the pagan beliefs of pre-Islamic Arabia were not homogeneous. It's poorly attested but it seems that the religion of the tribes was a lot different from the religion of the towns, and each town had pretty much its own religion. There was a lot of Judaism and Christianity as well, which were already heavily influencing the old religions long before Islam came on the scene. In fact lots of scholars point to similarities between it and Islam, although that could just be back-projecting, since Islamic authors tell us pretty much everything we know about Arabic paganism. Part of why Islam was such a powerful force is that it united this hugely fractured religious landscape in Arabia.

Of course Arabic paganism would be cool to have, and could sort of be justified too. But it might end up mostly flavorless just like some of the other CK2 paganisms. I mean, what would I even call it? Arabian? I'm not sure it's worth it to have a province or two of a religion that's just going to be eradicated in 10 years by CK2's somewhat broken conversion mechanics.

 

[IlikeTrains]

I mean, what would I even call it? Arabian?

In WtWSMS it's called 'Semitic'.
But yeah, even in our mod it doesn't have a lot of flavour.

 

[UrsusAtlanticus]

In CK2Plus Arab paganism is a Sunni heresy called "Al-Asnam", but I'm not sure about the meaning, something related to idols? From what I can see they get a pagan hajj with related events, but that's pretty much all of it.

 

[Semigall]

Don't you think it would be better to port this bookmark to CK2+ so it could have some actual Schism mechanic ?

 

[fireandplague]

In CK2Plus Arab paganism is a Sunni heresy called "Al-Asnam", but I'm not sure about the meaning, something related to idols? From what I can see they get a pagan hajj with related events, but that's pretty much all of it.

Sounds like it's referring to the Book of Idols (Kitāb al-ʾAṣnām), written in the 8th century by a Muslim author (al-Asnam means "idols" if Google Translate is to be believed). Having it be a Muslim heresy is an interesting idea; that's one viable way of doing it IMO.

Don't you think it would be better to port this bookmark to CK2+ so it could have some actual Schism mechanic ?

I do not. CK2+ has some great changes and features, but also some that I don't agree with. 633:ROI was meant to be close to the vanilla game anyway (think DLC rather than total conversion). Also, putting a mod on top of another mod is just asking for trouble in terms of compatibility, bugs, etc.