The arduous duty great privilege of writing this week's Dev Diary has fallen to me, and in a desperate but vain attempt to fill Doomdark's shoes, I am here to talk a bit about the various options that are open to pagans when waging war.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_Prepared_Invasion.jpg

Prepared Invasions
Norse Pagans, or Vikings as they are known to the common man, have the unique ability to launch Prepared Invasions against non-pagans. This undertaking can only be done by small to middling Viking realms, and the target of your invasion can't be too small or too big (it needs to have between 9 and 40 holdings).

The way this works is that you declare your intention to invade a particular realm. This will cost you a lot of prestige (which can be gained through looting, as explained in the previous Dev Diary), and you'll have two years to prepare before going to war. During this time warriors from across the Norse lands will flock to your banner, hungry for loot and plunder. Needless to say, if you fail to declare war before these two years are up, you will lose face.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_King_Ambition.jpg

Subjugation
Pagans won't shy away from fighting each other, and all pagan rulers may make use of the new Subjugation casus belli. This lets them attack other pagans within a specified target kingdom, but it can only be used every ten years unless your ruler has the new ”Become King” ambition. If you are the victor of a Subjugation war, you will vassalize all lords within the target kingdom.

Pagan Conquest
Pagans can always declare war for control over a single neighboring county, and in addition to this, Norse Pagans may also go to war for any coastal county.

Tribal Invasion
This casus belli can only be used by independent Altaic (Turkish and Mongol) and Magyar pagan rulers, and it targets entire kingdoms in what amounts to massive horde invasions. You may have been on the receiving end of these before, but now you'll finally get a chance to unleash them yourself as you ride in from the steppes to carve out an empire.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_Peace_Too_Long.jpg


And finally, a few more items that have a significant impact on pagans and how they wage war:
Non-pagans suffer from a significantly smaller supply limit when in pagan territory, which limits their ability to march massive armies towards the heathen homelands at the start of the game. This penalty will eventually be removed as you progress through the Military Organization technologies.

As was touched upon in the last Dev Diary, Norse and Tengri pagans lose prestige if they have been at peace for too long. The Suomenusko, Romuva and Slavic pagans are less focused on offensive warfare and do not have this penalty. In addition, their warriors enjoy several defensive bonuses, especially when fighting in provinces with their own religion.

That's all for now!

 

[Elfryc]

Thanks a lot for this DD and these screeshots, Goose!

The arduous duty great privilege of writing this week's Dev Diary has fallen to me.

Well, because we all know you kindly answer questions, this is a set from me!

Prepared Invasions
During this time warriors from across the Norse lands will flock to your banner, hungry for loot and plunder. Needless to say, if you fail to declare war before these two years are up, you will lose face.

Does this means that, when Norse pagans will progressively convert to Christianism (yeah dudes, I don't fear anything! Just look at my dreadfull Frankish face: ) there will be less and less adventurers coming to the European coasts, so leading the Norse leaders to progressively abandon their raids?

Pagan Conquest
Norse Pagans may also go to war for any coastal county.

Doesn't that present a risk equivalent to what happened with the republics, this time all along Brittish, Irish, Frankish and German/East pagan coasts?

That's all for now!

Which name should I put here next time for my dear nomads?
They're only very briefly tackled here, and would like so much to have informations about them...


P.S.: Huge work, it seems, for Norse landed titles names!

 

[Beowulf1066]

There has been one thing that has irked me since the addition of the dynasty shields DLCs- is the lack of a specific (non-random) shield for the House of Wessex. I know that the Wessex family used different banners but I think that the community as a whole would be pleased if they got either the Golden Wyvern or the Azure & Cross shield of Edward the Confessor.

Would something like that be doable?

 

[riadach]

There will be no held Irish duchy titles in 867 then?

 

[ChildeR]

Non-pagans suffer from a significantly smaller supply limit when in pagan territory, which limits their ability to march massive armies towards the heathen homelands at the start of the game. This penalty will eventually be removed as you progress through the Military Organization technologies.

Good: more variable attrition rates and control over it for modders. Potentially bad: MO is already the most important military tech. But I guess you've maybe fixed that with your tech overhaul.

 

[Goosecreature]

Does this means that, when Norse pagans will progressively convert to Christianism (yeah dudes, I don't fear anything! Just look at my dreadfull Frankish face: ) there will be less and less adventurers coming to the European coasts, so leading the Norse leaders to progressively abandon their raids?

As Norse rulers convert, they will stop raiding, yes. If you are a Christian lord, it will certainly be to your benefit if you can make them abandon their heathen ways.

Doesn't that present a risk equivalent to what happened with the republics, this time all along Brittish, Irish, Frankish and German/East pagan coasts?

We want the Vikings to strike at the coasts and sometimes, if they are able, to actually settle down and take the coastal provinces for themselves, as they historically did in Normandy and elsewhere. But they aren't nearly powerful enough to take and hold all the coasts you mentioned, at least not for any significant length of time...

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

There has been one thing that has irked me since the addition of the dynasty shields DLCs- is the lack of a specific (non-random) shield for the House of Wessex. I know that the Wessex family used different banners but I think that the community as a whole would be pleased if they got either the Golden Wyvern or the Azure & Cross shield of Edward the Confessor.

Would something like that be doable?

Possibly in a future coa DLC?
Assuming of course it isn't present in one of the existing ones.

 

[Elfryc]

One last question, related to my current work on ACN².

In 867, there was two important ports named Quentovic and Dorestad, destroyed by Vikings and nature before 1066.
In the same date, the city of Laval (k_France/d_Anjou/c_Maine) had not been founded, and I suppose that was also the case for lot of other counties.

As for Hungary the names for the counties, theorically, shouldn't be Hungarian; the situation is the same for Normandy, which was still not colonized by Normans, and should become 'Lower Neustria' in a new 867 map.

Because we heard a lot about the difficulties to find sources to recreate historical characters, does this means The Old Gods could have a very new map, or will it just take the 1066 map?


P.S.: thanks for your answers, just checked before to post this (last, promized!) one. This promizes lot of turmoils on European coasts!

 

[OrdepNM]

Before anything, whoever did that facepack should be responsible for every single facepack from this point foward. Those are the best yet.

Second, I really like the new changes, specially the defence bonus for the more vulnerable pagan regions. Its good youre not trying to reinvent the wheel and keeping it simple but fun with the pagan CBs. Too bad the DD was quite short for something that only comes up every 2 weeks, but still, good read

 

[Halajda]

Will be the target of a preparing invasion made aware of it as well, so it can prepare to defend?

 

[ChildeR]

Will be the target of a preparing invasion made aware of it as well, so it can prepare to defend?

I think it was said that that's the case in the stream?

 

[Chyll]

This promizes lot of turmoils on European coasts!

That it does.

Which historically is quite valid - looks at Ireland/Scotland/England... but in the game it will matter significantly. If you are a minor Irish Count that gets invaded and lose your only holding, that historical accuracy isn't going to make the 'game over' message any less fun.

I wonder if that is part of why the Scotland 'issue' hasn't progressed in the screenshots we've seen (unlike with proto-HRE), as they try to balance the survivability and tension in that region.



I, for one, remain eager to get my hands on TOG and can't wait for my first 867-1453 complete play through.

 

[Boogeyman]

Is there something to notify that your 2 year prep time for the invasion is coming to an end?

 

[Bad_Haggis]

Sooooo, any possibility to have a more imperial crown laws system? As in the Byzantines being able to revoke kingdom level titles or a new succession system where a ruler can appoint rulers after the death of a vassal?

Mostly I'm just asking because it would help with the roman mod I'm working on.

 

[Tapscott]

Ah, glad to get a new DD. I dunno about the facepacks, feels iffy, but eh. I'm liking the sound of the new measures to stop the pagans disappearing off the map within 30 years of game start. Hopefully it works well.

 

[Sarius1997]

First: This looks epic. I´m really looking forward too it, CKII becomes more great every time an expansion is released.
Second: Those facepacks will be the first i´ll actually buy. they are great.

 

[Assalander]

Waiting for the rest with impatience!

There's one thing that baffles me though... I recall having seen West Francia as being a de jure title (the title appeared in a province screen instead of France), while I was expecting it to be titular. If the de jure map is not the same in 867, what will happen then? Will it change to what we know as we approach 1060, or just evolve "naturally"? Will France be creatable in some way?

 

[b_raven]

Rurik has previously unseen trait on that pic: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=78614&d=1366198033
Any thoughts, what is that?

 

[Talq]

Rurik has previously unseen trait on that pic: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=78614&d=1366198033
Any thoughts, what is that?

I was about to post the same thing. He also has rather remarkable stats. Something to make genius look second-rate?

 

[Voy]

The new faces looks a lot better than the previous (if a bit less worked on than the vanilla which is understandable considering the time limit), but it's the new clothing that really takes the price just look at the Rurik's heir's helmet and the veil on the spouses. Brilliant.

 

[bigseb31213]

I noticed in the livestream it was very easy for the player to subjugate the lords in his de jure kingdom, and the AI was equally successful. Does this mean that within 10ish years all the scandinavian kingdoms will be formed, or is there a mechanic that makes pagan kingdoms especially unstable? Although having kingdoms is certainly not a bad thing, I'd rather see a bunch of independent viking lords rampaging through Europe. Does the subjugation CB work for all kingdoms a viking ruler has land in (England for the realm of Jorvik, France for Rollo, the various Russian kingdoms, Finland, the black sea coast), or is it limited to just Norway, Sweden, and Denmark? When you say that only middle sized realms can prepare an invasion, what do you mean? Can a king title, for example, prepare an invasion?