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CK3 Dev Diary #17 - Governments, Vassal Management, Laws, and Raiding

Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran. You might know me from the CK2 dev diaries or the Paradox Wikis, but for the last couple of years I’ve been working on CK3 as a programmer. Today we’re going to cover a number of topics closely related to government types: governments themselves, vassal management, laws, and raiding.

Let's start off with a familiar concept from CK2: governments. For the player, we have three playable governments: Feudal, Tribal, and Clan, which each have some significant differences in how they play.

The Feudal government type is based on European feudalism, and is heavily based around the idea of obligations: you owe service to your liege, and your liege owes you protection in return. It is the most common government form in the game. Feudal realms play pretty similarly to CK2, focusing on claims and inheritance more so than the other government forms.

A new addition in CK3 is Feudal Contracts. Every feudal vassal (except barons) has an individual contract with you, rather than obligations being set realm-wide. These contracts have three levels; Low, Medium, and High, with Medium being the default. High will provide more levies and tax at the cost of an opinion hit, while Low provides less but improves opinion. Higher levels are usually better (though perhaps not if you’re at risk of your vassals revolting), but cannot be imposed unilaterally.

You’ll need to have a hook on your vassal in order to increase their obligations unless you’re fine with all your vassals considering you a tyrant, but you can always lower them. As a result this means you can significantly increase your power if you’re able to obtain hooks on your vassals; perhaps a bit of judicious blackmail might be in order?

Feudal Contract.png

[Modifying a Feudal Contract]

Furthermore we have the Clan government form. This government is the rough equivalent of the Iqta government in CK2, though in CK3 it does have a more Feudal bent than it did previously.

The Clan government type is used by most Muslim realms. This government puts more emphasis on the family rather than the realm, with most vassals being members of your dynasty. Obligations are heavily based on opinion rather than being contractual, with happy vassals providing significantly more taxes and levies than unhappy ones. A happy family is a powerful family.

Clan governments also have access to the Clan Invasion casus belli, which can be used once in a lifetime at the highest level of Fame to invade a kingdom, providing a powerful boon for a well-established clan ruler.

Finally we have Tribal realms. Much like in CK2 these have their own Tribal holding type, providing more troops but less tax. Additionally, most tribals are able to go on raids, which you can read more about below. Tribal realms are unaffected by development, and cause non-tribal realms to have lower supply limits in their lands, making them a tougher nut to crack, but reducing their influence as the years drag on. Tribal realms also pay for men at arms using prestige rather than gold, allowing smaller realms to punch above their weight.

Tribal rulers base their obligations on levels of Fame rather than on contracts or opinion; the more famous your ruler is, the more troops and money your vassals will be willing to provide for your pursuits.

Finally, Tribal rulers have a once-in-a-lifetime Subjugation casus belli, allowing them to forcibly vassalize an entire realm.

As the game goes on, you can eventually reform out of Tribalism, becoming a Clan or Feudal realm instead.

Vassal Overview.png

[The vassal management tab]

To get an easy overview of your realm, we in CK3 have the Realm screen. Let’s start with the Vassals tab of this screen where all your vassals are shown. This gives you a clear overview of where your levies and taxes come from, who might be a threat to you, and allows you to renegotiate feudal contracts.

This is also where you change your crown authority (or tribal authority), which I’ll talk more about later in this dev diary.

Lastly, the screen shows your Powerful Vassals. Much like in CK2’s Conclave DLC, your realm will have some powerful vassals; these expect to be seated on the council, and will make their displeasure known if that is not the case.

Domain overview.png

[The Domain Tab]

Then we have the Domain tab. This lets you easily inspect your domain, showing where you’re earning money and levies, and where you can build more buildings. It also shows the level of development and control in the counties you personally hold, letting you easily tell where you can make improvements.

Finally we have the Succession tab. Due to being a bit of a work in progress, I’m afraid I can’t show you a picture of it right now. Here you can change your succession laws, see your heir(s), and check what titles, if any, you will lose when you die. If you hold any elective titles, you’ll be able to easily get to the election screen from here.

Now with all these mentions of laws, let's go through what laws exist. We’ve trimmed down the number of laws from CK2 as much of what used to be law is handled on a more individual level now, but some still remains.

Like in CK2, we have crown authority for Feudal and Clan realms, and tribal authority for Tribal realms. Higher levels of authority unlock mechanics like imprisonment (for tribals, the others start with it), title revocation, restrictions on internal wars, and heir designation. However, increasing these levels will make your vassals unhappy. Tribal authority is significantly less powerful than crown authority, representing how Tribal governments over time gradually got supplanted by Feudal and Clan governments.

Succession Laws.png

[Changing succession law]

Then there’s succession laws. To no one’s surprise, Gavelkind is making a return, though we’ve renamed it to Partition to make it more obvious what it actually means. This is the default succession form of most realms in both 867 and 1066.

For added fun, there’s now three variants of Partition. We’ve got regular Partition, which functions like Gavelkind in CK2; your realm gets split roughly equally between your heirs, and any heirs that end up a lower tier than your primary heir becomes a vassal.

However, many realms start with a worse form, especially in 867. This is Confederate Partition, which will also create titles of your primary title’s tier if possible. So if you as Norway have conquered all of Sweden but destroyed the kingdom itself, it will get recreated on your death so that your second heir becomes an independent ruler. Tribals are typically locked to this succession type, with some exceptions.

Finally we have an improved version of Partition: High Partition. Under High Partition your primary heir will always get at least half your titles, so it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 2 or 10 kids; your primary heir will get the same amount of land.

We’ve also done a lot of tweaks to the internal logic of who gets what titles, which tends to lead to far nicer splits than in CK2; border gore will of course still happen, but to a lesser degree than before.

Then we have the other succession forms. There’s Oldest Child Succession (replacing Primogeniture), Youngest Child Succession (replacing Ultimogeniture), and House Seniority. A notable difference from CK2’s Seniority Succession is that under House Seniority, the oldest eligible member of your house inherits, not of your entire dynasty.

We also have a number of variants on elective succession, ranging from Feudal Elective, to Princely Elective (HRE succession), and a handful of cultural variants. Each of these have different restrictions on who can vote, who can be elected, and how the AI will select who to vote for.

Additionally, we’ve got a full suite of gender laws, corresponding to the gender laws in CK2. These are: Male Only, Male Preference, Equal, Female Preference, and Female Only.

Finally, we have raiding. If you’re a Norwegian like me, sometimes you feel your Viking blood coursing through your veins, the noise of it drowning out everything else. Times like this, there’s only one solution: go on a raid.

Fans of Pagan gameplay in CK2 will be glad to hear that not only have we implemented raiding in CK3 as well, we’ve made some improvements to it to make it more fun to play with, and less unfun to be on the receiving end of.

The core system is very similar to CK2. If you’re a Pagan or Tribal ruler, you have the ability to raid other rulers’ lands. To do so you raise a raid army, and march or sail over to your target. Only the Norse can raid across sea; other raid armies will simply be unable to embark.

Rally Point.png

[Raising a raid army]

Once at your target your army will start looting the barony they’re in. This is a pretty quick process, but during it your army will be unable to move, preventing you from running away from any counter-raiding force. This change makes it a lot simpler to deal with raiders if you’ve got enough men and can raise them quickly enough, as the AI won’t just immediately run away.

Raid Lindisfarne.png

[A raid in progress]

While in CK2 raiding was done on a county level, in CK3 it is on a barony level. Another difference is that in CK3 raiding no longer uses the siege mechanics directly, but rather a similar system where things like siege engines do not have an impact since you’re raiding the countryside, not a heavily fortified castle.

Another significant change is that if you beat a raid army, you receive all the gold they’re carrying. This means that even if you cannot respond instantly to a raid, it is still very much worth it to beat up the raiders. Like in CK2, you also become immune to raiding by that enemy for several years.

Just like in CK2, a raid army is limited in how much loot it can carry based on the army size. Loot is deposited once the army is back in friendly lands, after which you might either disband or go raiding once more.

On the quality of life side, we now show on the map what provinces have already been raided when you have a raid army selected. This makes it easy to see what places to avoid. Hovering over a province will also tell you how much loot raiding it would provide.

Raid.png

[Northern England in its natural state]

That’s all for today, folks. Tune in next week to learn more about how war functions in Crusader Kings 3.
 
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They still have where birth order will determine who is the primary heir, but they no longer have single recipient inheritance as even high partition will lose you 50% of your titles if you have more than one child of the inheriting gender.

That's not how I understood it, but it was ambiguous. Some dev clarity here would be appreciated how that was meant to be understood!
 
They still have where birth order will determine who is the primary heir, but they no longer have single recipient inheritance as even high partition will lose you 50% of your titles if you have more than one child of the inheriting gender.



High Partition is basically still Gavelkind, but the primary heir gets to keep a larger chunk, and gets this regardless of how many children.
We still have single recipient inheritance, its in the bit quoted you responded to, the Oldest Child Succession where it all goes to the single heir, its even listed in the screenshot as one of the single heir succession types.
 
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I agree. It is very unfortunate that the system looks to be very "flat" and every basic - as in only have 3 basic tiers of soldiers/tax. As you said, it would've been very exciting to see an in-depth system where different vassals could have special contracts. It would largely depend on various aspects - like are your dukedom bordering the king - maybe you might not have much autonomy then. Or maybe you are far away and the king might have a hard time actually doing anything about you disobeying the contract. Maybe you offer your realm as a vassal if you get a really good vassal contract.

Not to mention, vassals often relied on good relationships with the ruler. If I get a really good contract then I'm much more inclined to help my ruler out when other nobles try to depose him. Why? Because if a new ruler ascends then he might want to remove my nice contract. In this way I have some vested interests in the preserving the ruling monarch. Alas, it seems we'll be stuck with a really basic and shallow system.

Yes I agree - the geography of where you are should feature of course (which would also help blobbing - even if it was a large Empire, there would be limited central authority)!

My biggest issue here, besides the general lack of imagination, is I don't want this to be a box you tick and now I give more money/men. The contract should encourage the vassal to behave in a certain way, motivated by vested interests as you say, but not railroad them into a way of playing. This is the only way to make playing as a vassal fun.

If my contract says I should do this (give X amount in tax for example), but I have to actively decide to do so. If I refuse to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do, either through open rebellion, or just through non-compliance, it weakens the liege, and could give you some influence if you are powerful. Likewise, if you have a good deal already, you would be loyal and play ball. I want CK3 to have the strange medieval concept of 'lord shows up to join his liege in battle but doesn't join in until he thinks he'll be on the winning side'.

contracts should tell you what you can or cannot do, and you have to decide is it strategic if i comply. Would make vassals more fun to play, and lieges harder - unless you don't want to enforce compliance!
 
Wanted to throw my two cents in, even though I'm late:

Every feudal vassal (except barons) has an individual contract with you,

A fantastic change! Definitely increases the feel of being a feudal lord with personal fealty being paramount. And I love that a small, centralized realm with high obligation will be able to punch well above its weight against a larger federated opponent.

These contracts have three levels; Low, Medium, and High, with Medium being the default.

I am going to echo some of the other sentiments on this thread to say this seems a little overly simplistic. In an ideal world would love to see a full suite of rights and privileges you could negotiate with your vassals (imprisonment, revocation, even things like trading lowering the obligations of a powerful but incompetent vassal to make them content without a council seat), but I think even something just slightly more complex than a three-tier system would be fine.

You could simply split taxes and levies to make each individually negotiable, but I think an even better system is to keep the three-tier obligation but have a slider of how much of their obligation is paid in levies vs. gold. So a vassal with middle-level obligation would owe, say, 10% of his income or levies. You can choose to have him pay 5% in gold and 5% in levies, or 7% in gold 3% in levies, etc. So you might be making more money during peacetime, but if an unexpected war crops up - you're going to need to start asking for more troops and less gold from your vassals with high- and middle-level obligations. Maybe there's a limit on how often you can change the percentage of each to limit min/maxing.

Obligations are heavily based on opinion rather than being contractual, with happy vassals providing significantly more taxes and levies than unhappy ones. A happy family is a powerful family.

I really like the feel of this - how much can you play your family off against each other while keeping them happy with you?

Tribal rulers base their obligations on levels of Fame rather than on contracts or opinion; the more famous your ruler is, the more troops and money your vassals will be willing to provide for your pursuits.

I don't use tribal much in CK2, but this seems like it will create a fun and realistic dynamic where if you lead a successful raid, more people will show up to go on your next one, and so on.

To get an easy overview of your realm, we in CK3 have the Realm screen. Let’s start with the Vassals tab of this screen where all your vassals are shown. This gives you a clear overview of where your levies and taxes come from, who might be a threat to you, and allows you to renegotiate feudal contracts.

Then we have the Domain tab. This lets you easily inspect your domain, showing where you’re earning money and levies, and where you can build more buildings. It also shows the level of development and control in the counties you personally hold, letting you easily tell where you can make improvements.

Here you can change your succession laws, see your heir(s), and check what titles, if any, you will lose when you die. If you hold any elective titles, you’ll be able to easily get to the election screen from here.

The UI improvements are huge. I see some people complaining about it being "dumbed down" and I could not disagree more - everything is so much clearer and more aesthetic. The information on these three tabs is spread across probably five different places in CK2 and is much harder to parse at a glance than what's being shown here.

I do have to say, I'm not a huge fan of the portraits here, they all look very similar and also like their eyes are closed. I'm guessing these aren't fully rendered, but I do have to say I hope the overall portrait color scheme is a little more vibrant.

Gavelkind is making a return, though we’ve renamed it to Partition to make it more obvious what it actually means.

Oldest Child Succession (replacing Primogeniture), Youngest Child Succession (replacing Ultimogeniture)

My take on the great renaming controversy: all of the simplifications are good (including demense to domain and getting rid of agnatic/cognatic) except primogeniture. Primogeniture is the normal, standard word for first-born succession, and if anyone really is confused a simple tooltip can explain.

For added fun, there’s now three variants of Partition.

This is really, really good. I think the stratification of Partition succession will create a really fun dynamic of trying to move higher up the chain, as I'm assuming it will be harder to implement high partition vs. standard partition, with primogeniture usually being the final goal.

We’ve also done a lot of tweaks to the internal logic of who gets what titles, which tends to lead to far nicer splits than in CK2

While I'm glad to see this, what I really want is a system where you get to choose who gets what titles, within the bounds of your succession system. For example, let's say you are a king with four heirs, two ducal titles and six counties in your domain, and High Partition succession. You pick which of your heirs is your primary one, they gets the royal title, as well as a ducal title and three counties that you choose. The other ducal title and one county goes to another son, and your two other sons get one county each.

Imagine the drama that creates (and did create in real life) as you are literally telling how much you think each of your heirs is "worth" in a medieval sense. This would really play into the roleplaying element you're going for in CK3 - and it could create long-lasting ramifications for your primary heir (aka you in three hours of playtime) as your embittered first-born son plots revenge against the younger, more talented heir he was passed over in favor of.

We also have a number of variants on elective succession, ranging from Feudal Elective, to Princely Elective (HRE succession), and a handful of cultural variants.

Going to echo some of the disappointment that others are expressing around not having a specific system for the ERE at launch. I'm happy to see you're planning to get to it at some point (and my vote is, the sooner the better!) though I hope that one of those "cultural variants" of elective is for them to start with at least. I know that they played by wildly different rules with regards to land rights and fealty than most of Europe, so I get why it had to be pushed down on the priority list, but they were massively important in the titular Crusades and had an incredible amount of personal drama being played out on a national or international scale, which basically means they are perfect for CK if the mechanics can be done correctly. They could be an incredibly popular and fun playground for players looking for a change from French-style feudalism while keeping the roleplaying and political machinations that make CK so great. You've said that you'll get it right when you get there - I'm taking you at your word on that.

Once at your target your army will start looting the barony they’re in. This is a pretty quick process, but during it your army will be unable to move, preventing you from running away from any counter-raiding force.

Another significant change is that if you beat a raid army, you receive all the gold they’re carrying.

As someone who doesn't do a lot of raiding myself but loves playing in the British Isles, these are both enhancements I absolutely love.
 
You know, I don't think it was ever answered, but I'm curious about this: what form of government will (the majority of) India have on release? Feudal? Clan? I'd be a bit surprised to see most of it as Tribal, but maybe?
 
We still have single recipient inheritance, its in the bit quoted you responded to, the Oldest Child Succession where it all goes to the single heir, its even listed in the screenshot as one of the single heir succession types.

Thanks for the clarification. I mistakenly thought you would have to pick one from each row (one for who is primary heir, the other for how land is divided). So you could end up with primogeniture gavelkind or ultimogeniture gavelkind for instance. Glad to have the confusion cleared up though.
 
Will you guys consider introducing a better more accurate representation of complex feudal relations? For example English holdings in France still being vassals of the French crown?
No (won't be in).
 
@Meneth As a fellow norseman I feel you should be aware that "Oslosyslar" in the age of pagan Norway is highly anachronistic. Firstly Oslo is thought to be (re)founded by Hardrada in the late 1060s, before that it was merely a village. Secondly the unit "Oslosyslar" didn't appear before the late 1100s and didn't have that name, but Oslóarsýsla.

I know this is probably a bit nit-picky, but it will bother people like me and historical accuracy is usually a good thing.
 
Are feudal and clan governments inherently tied to religion like in ck2? Like, can a Catholic tribal Ireland, for instance, turn into a clan-based governmant upon government reformation?

I didn't see any mod poata about this and I'm really hoping I can get an answer!
 
Are feudal and clan governments inherently tied to religion like in ck2? Like, can a Catholic tribal Ireland, for instance, turn into a clan-based governmant upon government reformation?

I didn't see any mod poata about this and I'm really hoping I can get an answer!

I think they are not, considering that Scotland was mentioned as an example of a European nation that will use the clan government.
 
Please do not add mana into this game. It already ruined imperator on release. A mana system does not equal fun. Monarchy points, mana, whatever. This system doesn't look like it's going to work well with the ERE succession system either. I do not suppose they will be available on release either.
Mana is an excuse for bad game design.
 
There really is no reason to give only pagans and tribals the ability to raid their neighbors.
Not only is there no reason to blanketly give pagans(which is an incredibly broad term to start with) the ability to raid but Jews, Muslims, and Christians have raided their neighbors for loot in history.
 
I also don't like dumbing down the succession law names. Renaming gavelkind to partition is fine, as CK2 used it somewhat ahistorically for everyone. But getting rid of "primogeniture" is bad. That's a well established word that's also used in the real world. Simple language describing what the laws do can be used in tooltips.

Agreed, I really dislike all the succession law naming changes.
 
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Screen Shot 2020-05-17 at 10.36.47 AM.png


You guys really took the feedback about feudal contracts! These look amazing, there are so many specific options and variables. I'm honestly more excited to be a vassal now to make my ruler grant me eternal council power and my own coinage.
 
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You guys really took the feedback about feudal contracts! These look amazing, there are so many specific options and variables. I'm honestly more excited to be a vassal now to make my ruler grant me eternal council power and my own coinage.
Simply being able to say "This direct vassal of mine can do this, but my other direct vassal can't" is a great upgrade from CK2's all-or-nothing (or rather, everybody-or-nobody) implementation.
 
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A little late with this dev diary but a major gripe I had about the succession laws in CK2 was the inability to handle the Rota System of the Ruthenian principalities of the old Kievan Rus'.

Worse, since succession laws were hard-coded in CK2, they were unable to be modified by modders.

Ideally, this type of succession is included in the game on-launch, but I wouldn't mind seeing it implemented in a future Kievan Rus' themed DLC package. Ultimately, I just want the game designers to ensure that something like this is not hard-coded this time around! @Meneth
 
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