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CK3 Dev Diary #04 - Development & Buildings

Greetings!

This week's Dev Diary is all about your holdings on the map - Baronies and counties, what they do for you, and what you can do with them! As seen in the map DD, Baronies are now physically present on the map. A group of Baronies makes up a greater unit, called a County.

DD4CountyView.jpg


While certain things are still on a per-Barony level, such as buildings, two of the most important values you have to deal with are on a per-County basis - Development and Control!

Development is the measurement of technological advancement and general infrastructure in a County. Development directly increases taxes and levies you get out of the holdings, and it also unlocks some other special options. Development increases very slowly across the duration of the game, and radiates outwards from high-development Counties to those nearby. For example, Constantinople (aka the City of the World’s Desire), starts with a very high Development level. This will slowly spread outwards, reaching the most remote areas much slower than their Greek heartland. Naturally, there are other ways to increase your development, such as through the Steward’s ‘Increase Development’ task, although this is a fairly slow process, and usually only worth doing in certain Counties. Having terrain such as Farmland or Floodplains in your Counties make them ideal candidates for development, and when they have gotten some levels of development you can just sit back and enjoy, as it slowly spreads throughout the rest of your realm!

Control, on the other hand, directly represents the power you have over the County. This naturally decreases during sieges and by forcefully seizing territory, taking the place of the ‘new Administration’ modifiers from CK2. If you don’t pace yourself, and use your Marshal to increase Control in newly conquered territories, you might find yourself with a slew of useless land. This also increases the importance of keeping peasant rabble and similar nuisances out of your lands…

Each County also has an opinion of their holder, referred to as the ‘Popular Opinion’. This represents the sentiment of the local peasants, and tends to decrease if you’re not of their culture or faith, promoting the use of ‘local lords’, vassals of the local culture/faith, to handle such territory for you - as converting it will take quite some time. Unhappy Counties tend to cause problems down the line… more on this in another DD.

Now, on to the Holdings themselves! Each County will have a certain amount of slots available for Baronies, with some being constructed at the start, and others not. The three core types of holdings remain unchanged - Castles, Cities and Temples make up the majority of holdings on the map, each with their own main purpose. Castles provide levies and fortifications, cities provide taxes with a secondary focus on Development, and temples provide an even mix of taxes and levies with a secondary focus on increasing Control. This means that if you want a County to develop really fast, building many Cities might be the thing for you. If you want a resilient domain perhaps you’d prefer Castles, etc.

DD4Holding.jpg


Based on the terrain of the province, each Holding has access to a number of buildings. Regular buildings primarily focus on increasing taxes and levies, with some secondary effects such as increasing fortifications or increasing supply. These are usually straight upgrades, and are long-term investments that you should always consider, much like in our other games.

DD4Buildings.jpg


To spice things up, we've also introduced the concept of Duchy Capital Buildings. These buildings can only be built in the capital Barony of any De Jure Duchy, limiting their availability across the map. To build them and have them be active, you need to hold their associated Duchy title personally - this way you can’t simply hoard Counties in which you can build these special buildings, as just like in CK2 you will get severe penalties for holding too many Duchies personally. The buildings themselves are very expensive, but come in many flavors - allowing you to tailor your experience. The Military Academies track of buildings increases the effectiveness of your Knights and allows you to have more of them, establishing marches will make the entire Duchy more defensible, the Siege Workshops will increase the effectiveness of your trebuchets, and so on!

DD4DuchyCapitalBuildings.jpg


We also have the concepts of special buildings. These aim to represent historical buildings, both ancient and those built during the time period. Placed in predetermined baronies on the map, you have the usual suspects such as the Pyramids or Colosseum, along with more fringe or lesser-known constructions such as Offa’s Dyke or the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Some of these will be possible to construct during the course of the game, such as the Tower of London or the Alhambra. All of these constructions provide unique and interesting bonuses, with some of them being represented with 3D models on the map.

That’s it for this time! Stay tuned for the next DD, where we will tell you about the new scheme mechanics!
 
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Oh interesting, so Great Works now essentially exist as these special buildings?
 
promoting the use of ‘local lords’, vassals of the local culture/faith, to handle such territory for you

I can't believe the ability to recruit nobles of minority cultures wasn't in CK2 before tbh, it made some games with cultures like Vlach a total pain to get up and running, and often ended up in cultures going entirely extinct way too frequently.

It's interesting that the number of building slots is limited, is it only terrain, or will development also have an impact on this.
 
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"The three core types of holdings remain unchanged - Castles, Cities and Temples make up the majority of holdings on the map, each with their own main purpose."

So what makes up the minority of holdings?
 
Kind of confused on one point: do we no longer own counties like in CK 2 but instead a barony in that county?
 
Imperator may not be a perfect game, but CK3 could really benefit from importing some its provincial mechanics like pops, trade goods, etc.

CK3 may be about human relationships, but it would help the immersion a lot to have a living breathing world of peasants and commerce beyond the walls holding the nobility and their scheming.
 
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Will monastaries and other religous buildings be available as buildings for certain cultures (Like Coptics) in Temples? Or will can Temples become Monastaries if they are in a desert province? Or will their be no monastaries:(

Are their going to be any cultural buildings at all?
 
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Nicely done with the Temple holdings providing their own specific advantage. In CK2 I always found they were less useful than castles and cities because they did not specialize in either troops or money. Now there will be situations where they would be the best fit for a barony.
 
Like the new construct buildings view... really clear on what it enhances and I love that the terrain plays a part in the buildings that can be constructed.

1. Will buildings appear on the map depending on what you build?
2. Will each building have its own set of events for example to enhance immersion?
3. How will the 3D events work with buildings, will each building have its own indoors/outdoors location?
 
This sounds very promising, and I especially like the idea of unique buildings in de jure duchy capitals. Hopefully we'll be able to have unique holdings in de jure kingdom/empire capitals as well.
 
The control and popular support mechanics will make the life of Crusader Kingdoms, I hope we got some Jihad rework and an overhaul of diplomacy in the Middle East to compensate this.
 
I like the Development addition, that should help in balancing demesne strength if you start putting a lot of money into buildings. In CK2 it's far too easy to get a ridiculous amount of troops from your demesne (compared to what the average AI realm or vassal has access to) simply because you're developing too quickly.
 
Something I didn't catch onto in the previous dev diary that seems to be present here:
light infantry, heavy infantry, archers, light cav, heavy cav, all seem to have been consolidated into one unit type: levies.
Meanwhile, knights are going to act as a special type of units?

EDIT: Thank you for correcting me, at least 4 different posters, that didn't bother to read all of the posts before correcting me and respectfully disagreeing with me. Yes, I forgot the whole man-at-arms thing from the last dev diary. I will not edit the original part of my post, but I'll let this serve as a reminder to myself to never forget previous dev diaries' contents.
 
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Imperator may not be a perfect game, but CK3 could really benefit from importing some its provincial mechanics like pops, trade goods, etc.

CK3 may be about human relationships, but it would help the immersion a lot to have a living breathing world of peasants and commerce beyond the walls holding the nobility and their scheming.

Well, after some free Patches, I:R is now a great game.
But I can agree, that a Pop System in a World like CK2 would be awesome. Especially because of events like the black death.
I wouldn't mind, if they add more things from other paradox games. But with a bit luck, we can easily mod it. Probably my first target, when it gets out.


I can't believe the ability to recruit nobles of minority cultures wasn't in CK2 before tbh, it made some games with cultures like Vlach a total pain to get up and running, and often ended up in cultures going entirely extinct way too frequently.

It's interesting that the number of building slots is limited, is it only terrain, or will development also have an impact on this.

Wasn't this in the base game? You could pay piety or gold to get characters with the same religion and culture, with decisions.
 
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