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CK3 - Dev Diary #0 - The Vision

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Greetings friends!

It’s my pleasure to finally be able to talk about what I’ve been working on ever since Stellaris came out (and before) - Crusader Kings III, of course! CK3 draws on the wisdom gained over CK2’s seven long years of expansions and patches - all the things we simply could not do in that game - and represents the natural evolution of Crusader Kings. Yes, CK3 is an evolution, not a revolution; it’s better across the board and does not alter the core CK experience. That said, we did not carry over everything from every expansion and update to CK2. Rather than trying to do full justice to the less appreciated systems, we decided to go deep rather than wide.

The main design goals with Crusader Kings III were:
  • Character Focus: Crusader Kings is clearly and unequivocally about individual characters, unlike our other games. This makes CK most suited for memorable emergent stories, and we wanted to bring characters into all important gameplay mechanics (where possible.)
  • Player Freedom and Progression: We want to cater to all player fantasies we can reasonably accommodate, allowing players to shape their ruler, heirs, dynasty and even religion to their liking - though there should of course be appropriate challenges to overcome.
  • Player Stories: All events and scripted content should feel relevant, impactful and immersive in relation to the underlying simulation. That way, players will perceive and remember stories - their own stories, not the developers’ stories.
  • Approachability: Crusader Kings III should be user friendly without compromising its general level of complexity and historical flavor. It’s nice if it’s easier to get into, but more than that, it should be clear what everything in the game is, what you might want to be doing, and how to go about it.
Now, you might say: “Cool, but I took the time to master CK2, bought all the expansions, and now it provides me an enormous breadth of options. Why should I buy CK3?”

That’s a fair question! As I mentioned earlier, we decided not to carry over all features from CK2, so if you play CK2 primarily for, say, the nomads or the merchant republics (the only faction types that were playable in CK2 but not in CK3), you might be disappointed. There are likely other features and content that will be missed by some players, but, in return, we believe that everyone will find the core gameplay far more fun and rewarding! To be clear, CK3 is a vastly bigger game than CK2 was on release.

I know this dev diary was short on details, but don’t despair - they will be revealed over the coming months!
 
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Probably a bit simplified game.
 
Awesome news!! Really curious how CK3 will shape up to be. And also...



Will this mean that land combat with finally be understandable? After 7 years of CK2 experience I still have no clue how it works exactly, and I've really tried to understand it... :)
CK2 Land Battles are base on Radom tactics from 3 different phases Skirmish, Melee , Charge . There are some other but they are part of one of those 3. What can affect those random Tactics is Commander's, Strength of Units. Bounces applied from the random tactics or their Commanders. Terrain doesn't play that big of deal. To Overcome randomness is always have more troops than the other guy and never a cavern commander. Pretty simple and bland. Tactics are assigned to each phase. The only other Component is morle.


Terrian should play way more of an issue.
Culture units should vary from faction to faction.
Able to set up units in formation (Example Calvary or Light Infantry(You might not be cavalry Culture) in the Flanks . Pike or spears in the Center, Heavy infantry in the rear. And Range units either in the center or flanks depending on terrain . Or how ever you personally want to set it up. There would still be 3 phases. But depending on Formation some units would fight in either 1 phase or all 3. Instead of Tactics would use Formations. Tactics would still be used but depending on terrain, Or Preset Tactic like example a Pike Circle (schiltron )or Horse Archers doing a Cantabrian circle or Pathan shot. Or even Spanish Tercio or, phalanx, Shield wall but in order to do that they must be in formation 1st. Rather than a Radom tactic (Current). Forest and mountain Defensive And offensive formations in Forest for archers. The User would have more control. Before the battle starts. The Battles still be simulated but you would have control of your units before the battle.
 
Yup, Paradox has a great opportunity to improve battles. This is important part of this game, and its not much interesting right now.
 
I just want to see governments expanded alongside eastern europe. The game map being larger kind of scares me into thinking that eastern europe is going to be even more neglected. I might be wrong, but I'll admit I:R made me a bit cynical.


Lol, do you have doubts about it? In 7 years of developpement of ck2 we are stuck with the same unhistorical map, clearly based on nowadays politic and demography, absolutely no region mechanics, the most boring religion mechanics for three local pagan religions, and barely no unique portraits and unit models. Oh, and totally broken steppe nomads that take over the region in a century, so why should we care about.

The simple fact that paradox didn't even asked someone to make a basic search on wikipedia to check which cities were important in middle ages, and which raised way after the game time frame says a lot about the importance of the region in their eyes. Probably not enough buyers here to have them spend their precious time on it.
 
Well Russia et al are much poorer than Western Europe during this time. I believe Western Europe, Byzantines and Arabs should be given priority over Eastern Europe.
 
Approachability: Crusader Kings III should be user friendly without compromising its general level of complexity and historical flavor. It’s nice if it’s easier to get into, but more than that, it should be clear what everything in the game is, what you might want to be doing, and how to go about it.
Why does this need to be stated so prominently? Big.. eh, yellow flag for me.
 
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Why does this need to be stated so prominently? Big.. eh, yellow flag for me.
Ah the good old time when stuff was hidden for you and there hardly existed internet to look up how the mechanics worked. And if you think it will be simple we have the obvious counter-example of chess which is approachable but that don't make it simple;)
 
Found this announcement whilst considering a CK2 (or IR) purchase over Christmas so went in on Stellaris instead and looking forward to following along the development here in the meantime.

I was very reluctant to get involved with CK2 due to the amount of DLC available for it (whereas Stellaris seemed more manageable to me!) so can’t wait to get started with this when it comes out.

Initial dev diaries look very promising and can’t wait to find out more detail. As someone who prefers playing tall where possible, it’s a small shame not to see merchant republics at launch but I’m all for quality over quantity development for the initial release.

As someone new to PDX titles, I’ve found Stellaris’ in game tips for new players to be preferable to HOI4’s actual tutorial (where I follow but don’t learn for myself) and very helpful so something similar will be greatly appreciated when I choose which Welsh region to start with...
 
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You get duchy capital buildings to play tall with in CK3, also now we have stuff like development, public opinion and such to play around with that was not things in CK2:)
 
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This DD is criminally underrated/underappreaciated for what it establishes. By all means, read it so that you know about the developers' focuses when building this sequel to - hands down - one of the greatest Grand Strategy experiences of all time!

This goes out to everyone complaining about something on these forums, that does not take into account the existence of this DD.

Spread the good word!
 
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This DD is criminally underrated/underappreaciated for what it establishes. By all means, read it so that you know about the developers' focuses when building this sequel to - hands down - one of the greatest Grand Strategy experiences of all time!

This goes out to everyone complaining about something on these forums, that does not take into account the existence of this DD.

Spread the good word!
Yeah, unfortunately not enough people actually read the official information provided by the Devs.
 
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titus_gamevision.png


Greetings friends!

It’s my pleasure to finally be able to talk about what I’ve been working on ever since Stellaris came out (and before) - Crusader Kings III, of course! CK3 draws on the wisdom gained over CK2’s seven long years of expansions and patches - all the things we simply could not do in that game - and represents the natural evolution of Crusader Kings. Yes, CK3 is an evolution, not a revolution; it’s better across the board and does not alter the core CK experience. That said, we did not carry over everything from every expansion and update to CK2. Rather than trying to do full justice to the less appreciated systems, we decided to go deep rather than wide.

The main design goals with Crusader Kings III were:

  • Player Freedom and Progression: We want to cater to all player fantasies we can reasonably accommodate, allowing players to shape their ruler, heirs, dynasty and even religion to their liking - though there should of course be appropriate challenges to overcome.
Butyou forgot to add customization of characters , selection of startinc county and coat of arms?
When will you add it?

Otherwise we can't shape our rulersto our fantasies.
 
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Butyou forgot to add customization of characters , selection of startinc county and coat of arms?
When will you add it?

Otherwise we can't shape our rulersto our fantasies.

They released it with no ability to choose a starting country? I didn't get it because I am satisfied with CK2, but it sounds like putting off the purchase until it is actually complete might be a better decision than I thought.
 
They released it with no ability to choose a starting country? I didn't get it because I am satisfied with CK2, but it sounds like putting off the purchase until it is actually complete might be a better decision than I thought.
No you can absolutely still choose your starting country. No character or CoA customization so far though. Apparently that will come in free patch down the road.
 
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