Crusader Kings III: You Can Steal the Pope's Hat

Zavian

I like to turtle and go tall by building up one or two counties I hold along with a few baronies within them. You can build up a good levy and retinue by going tall that way. I usually don't do any expansion wars in the early game; once you get Majesty to level four you can do "Force Vassalization" casus belli on whole kingdoms. Your best bet is to wait until they're weakened and fractured, usually results in a quick war. Here's a screenshot from just a few hours ago right after I won one of those pretty quickly as Byzantium against a broken Rutheni kingdom (all the Russian lands I won):

But that war wasn't what was fun for me playing CK2 tonight. The fun part was going down the questlines, "delve into the classics", letting me convert secretly to Hellenic Paganism, then forming my own secret pagan cult and spending time recruiting and expanding. I was SUPER hyped when I converted my first cult member:

The fun of CK2 for me is all the RPG and flavor text that builds your own story. It's hard to describe other games like CK2; Total War is a favorite game series of mine, but if you go into CK2 with a TW mindset you're not going to have fun. It isn't really about expanding and conquering the whole map unless you want to

Sir Carcass

Zavian wrote: »

The fun of CK2 for me is all the RPG and flavor text that builds your own story. It's hard to describe other games like CK2; Total War is a favorite game series of mine, but if you go into CK2 with a TW mindset you're not going to have fun. It isn't really about expanding and conquering the whole map unless you want to

I still remember the first time I played CK1. I had played a decent amount of Medieval:TW, and that was my main strategy game mindset going into it. I started in England, York I think, and thought "Okay, time to conquer my neighbor and expand". Then the entire kingdom went to war against me. Whoops.

Jephery

I should do a France game and build Notre Dame in Paris.

WotanAnubis

Playing a Tribal and switched to Feudal a little too early, as I always do. Fortunately, I still have a large tribal retinue that I'm very careful with, and those sheer numbers keep my vassals in check.

Also murder. Murder is also keeping my vassals in check. Every time some inconvenient faction looks like it might be getting too troublesome, its founder suddenly and unexpectedly passes away from this cruel, cruel Earth.

Axen

Been playing Imperator: Rome and love it.

It is the combo of Victoria and CK that deep down I knew I always wanted.

Amused to see it has mixed reviews on Steam, though from what I've seen it is mostly from people who've only played EU and never played Victoria or CK. The game doesn't play like EU it plays like Victoria+CK. If you go in to this thinking it is like EU but Rome you're gonna have a bad time. Trading for specific resources is important. Keeping your family, assorted nobles and your generals happy is important. POPs (cultures, religions, social status) are important. Manpower is important. People are constantly scheming and plotting each others' downfall.

Take armies for example. They need Commanders. These Commanders come from the various Families in your realm. If you choose the best Commanders you may be putting people not of the ruling Family in charge. Over time the armies will become more and more loyal to their Commander. If the Commander is not placated they can become disloyal and rebel, taking whatever Province their army was in for themselves.

However, say you want to be sly and only put people of the Ruling Family in charge of armies. Well, that Family may not be the Ruling Family forever and if they lose their leadership status (which depending on the Govt type can range from hard to do to every couple years) they have a bunch of armies loyal to them and BAM Civil War. Hell, Commanders with low loyalty may not outright rebel, but they won't follow your orders.

But you still need armies, those armies need Commanders and you just have to try to balance it all out.

Sir Carcass

Axen wrote: »

Been playing Imperator: Rome and love it.

It is the combo of Victoria and CK that deep down I knew I always wanted.

Amused to see it has mixed reviews on Steam, though from what I've seen it is mostly from people who've only played EU and never played Victoria or CK. The game doesn't play like EU it plays like Victoria+CK. If you go in to this thinking it is like EU but Rome you're gonna have a bad time. Trading for specific resources is important. Keeping your family, assorted nobles and your generals happy is important. POPs (cultures, religions, social status) are important. Manpower is important. People are constantly scheming and plotting each others' downfall.

Take armies for example. They need Commanders. These Commanders come from the various Families in your realm. If you choose the best Commanders you may be putting people not of the ruling Family in charge. Over time the armies will become more and more loyal to their Commander. If the Commander is not placated they can become disloyal and rebel, taking whatever Province their army was in for themselves.

However, say you want to be sly and only put people of the Ruling Family in charge of armies. Well, that Family may not be the Ruling Family forever and if they lose their leadership status (which depending on the Govt type can range from hard to do to every couple years) they have a bunch of armies loyal to them and BAM Civil War. Hell, Commanders with low loyalty may not outright rebel, but they won't follow your orders.

But you still need armies, those armies need Commanders and you just have to try to balance it all out.

Thanks for writing that. I've been very curious about the game because I've really wanted a Rome-themed CK for a while now. It sounds like it's pretty much what I wanted, so I'll be getting it. I think I"ll wait just a bit since Paradox games typically need a little ironing out, but I'll most likely get it in the near future.

Axen

Oh yeah the game is still a new Paradox title so it certainly has its rough edges.

But man, a lot of the complaints on Steam are very much in the “Missing the Point” category.

Like, two common complaints I am seeing is that small nations can beat big nations and that the AI “cheats” and can just spawn armies.

Both of those things are connected.

First off, no the AI doesn’t just spawn armies. If they have no Manpower they are fucked.

Which leads nicely in to the fact that small nations can beat big nations. This is true, it has happened to me. The reason for it is that I spent my time warring and burned through my Manpower. My small neighbor had been enjoying peace and biding their time. So when I was in a moment of weakness they attacked.

My army size was 30k and their’s was 10k. I had no Manpower they had 50k. Every death on my end was irreplaceable. The enemy could repeatedly lose fights until I simply didn’t have an army left. Though if you lose too much you run the risk of your armies going rogue. Which is what happened to the enemy.

Their armies didn’t appreciate the Zapp Brannigan war tactics and went rogue taking a chunk of the enemy land and my land with them.

Lady Luck was on my side and I was able to get out of that war with only the cost of a couple cities.

Now granted if I had been smart I probably could’ve dealt with the situation far more tactically, but hey I’m new to the game! Cut me some slack!

Platy

It isn't really a Rome-themed CK2, it doesn't have the same kind of depth for characters and you don't have the same agency in the game world

The "feel" is a lot like Vicky 2 and earlier titles in the Europa Universalis series, including pre-DLC EU4

Gaddez

So I've given a few tries at building the kingdom of whales and unfortunately I've stumbled into what is quite the bug; I go to form the kingdom, I get informed that I need a proper coronation for my vassals to accept it, and then no matter who I have do it or how much I spend I get informed that I need to be corronated or my vassals will be pissed.

I like the idea of this, and I can see how corronations are interesting for RP reasons, but the system seems to be straight up broken.

Anyone else getting this or should I just give up on catholic aspirations?

Platy

Coronations always worked fine for me, do you have any mods?

Gaddez

The only one I'm running is ruler designer unlocked but that only effects character generation, not anything past that point.

Axen

Platy wrote: »

It isn't really a Rome-themed CK2, it doesn't have the same kind of depth for characters and you don't have the same agency in the game world

The "feel" is a lot like Vicky 2 and earlier titles in the Europa Universalis series, including pre-DLC EU4

Yeah I’d say it isn’t as Vicky as Victoria and not as CK-y as Crusader Kings.

On the CK side of things your nation is made up of, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them Courtiers.

They all have their own families, relationships, traits, and desires. They are constantly scheming to increase their power so you gotta stay on top of that.

Unlike CK though you are not playing as a Dynasty, but as a Nation. So a ruling Family losing or maintaining power isn’t that big of a deal in the same way it is in CK. Though depending on how they lose power it can certainly bring Big Trouble your way.

How “CK” your game feels depends on the Govt type. Monarchies totally feel more like CK then say a Republic or Tribe. You have claimants and pretenders to the throne. People jockey for power. People will flee to other lands only to cause your Monarch trouble later on. Oh, and you’ll likely be instituting a eugenics program. :razz:

For other Govt types you have different concerns. Clans in a tribal Govt will raise their own armies that are loyal to the Clan Chief. Which can be a pretty big problem depending on the circumstances. For example.

Sir Carcass

Axen wrote: »

Platy wrote: »

It isn't really a Rome-themed CK2, it doesn't have the same kind of depth for characters and you don't have the same agency in the game world

The "feel" is a lot like Vicky 2 and earlier titles in the Europa Universalis series, including pre-DLC EU4

Yeah I’d say it isn’t as Vicky as Victoria and not as CK-y as Crusader Kings.

On the CK side of things your nation is made up of, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them Courtiers.

They all have their own families, relationships, traits, and desires. They are constantly scheming to increase their power so you gotta stay on top of that.

Unlike CK though you are not playing as a Dynasty, but as a Nation. So a ruling Family losing or maintaining power isn’t that big of a deal in the same way it is in CK. Though depending on how they lose power it can certainly bring Big Trouble your way.

How “CK” your game feels depends on the Govt type. Monarchies totally feel more like CK then say a Republic or Tribe. You have claimants and pretenders to the throne. People jockey for power. People will flee to other lands only to cause your Monarch trouble later on. Oh, and you’ll likely be instituting a eugenics program. :razz:

For other Govt types you have different concerns. Clans in a tribal Govt will raise their own armies that are loyal to the Clan Chief. Which can be a pretty big problem depending on the circumstances. For example.

Instead of "Rome-themed CK" I should have said "Rome-themed Paradox grand strategy game". I love Roman history, with the politics, wars, colorful characters, and power-grabs, and have wanted the ability to do that in a Paradox game, so I was looking forward to this.

Axen

One last Imperator post and I promise I won't clutter the CK thread with it anymore.


So I played one complete game and in the year 727 AUC Albion was declared the Greatest Empire in History. Which was neat.

I had a dozen failed starts before I got the hang of things. Once I did I chose the Brigantian tribe in northern England as my start.

The British Isles in the early game is a Goddamn Thunderdome with nearly two dozen contestants. Being an island outside interference from the mainline was very unlikely since it was all barbaric tribes all the way to Rome.

So this made the early years kind of hard and tricky. Usually in a Paradox game if I am starting as a smaller nation surrounded by smaller nations I am super aggressive and try to take as much as I can before Blobs/Alliances start to make it too difficult. In Imperator though I had to do the exact opposite. Instead of being aggressive I bided my time, worked on my economy and slowly built up my military. Being extra careful to balance Manpower and my economy. The reasoning behind this strategy was to let my neighbors war among themselves letting them bleed their Manpower for awhile. Even if a nation blob'd up a bit if they did so through sheer military force they likely burned through their Manpower reserves. So even if their army was bigger than mine, my reserve of Manpower would likely carry the day and this strategy worked.

Later game however it was pretty easy. Once you've more or less taken care of any credible threats to your nation you are largely on easy street since invasion from the mainline is very, very unlikely. You're effectively an Island Fortress. However, if you start moving in to Europe proper things ramp right back up. There are countless nations, alliances, defensive leagues and probably a few equally powerful nations to watch out for.


On to my thoughts on the game.

I still like it a lot. It has problems though so let's go through them.

First off there are three common complaints I see about the game that appear to be the reason for its mixed score on Steam.

1. The game doesn't play like EU. This is true and it's not supposed to. So I'm not sure what to say.
2. The game doesn't have as much content as EUIV or CK2. This is also true, but CK2 and EUIV have been out for 6-7 years and have received nearly twice yearly expansions during that time and numerous smaller updates. This complaint is absurd.
3. There is an option when you start a new game to allow your nation to enact Gender Equality. People bitch about this. I don't care to dignify this complaint with a response.

With that out of the way on to actual, real problems with the game (in no particular order).

Names! The game needs more names. Character names and city/nation names. It isn't uncommon to have more than one character in your nation with the exact same name. This is especially noticeable in Greece where, like, half the dudes are named Alexander. Which, sure, that probably would've been true but you'll have like 3-4 Alexanders with the same last name. Trying to differentiate and keep track of people is a chore when this happens. As to Nations having the same name it is also an issue. Like, in the British Isles alone I had two pairs of nations with the same names. That is ridiculous! Compounding the issue is when there is a Revolt and the Rebels win, they will just take the name of the province they hailed from, which would be fine if Nations weren't also named after their main province. In this case it often results in two or even three Nations with the same name bordering each other. This isn't a common problem, like half of Europe won't be sharing the same name with the other half, but you will absolutely encounter a few Nations with the same name.

Tooltips! Now most of them are your standard Paradox fare, which means unless you memorized what all the symbols mean you're not gonna to know what anything does. While this certainly can be a complaint it isn't my main complaint. My main complaint is that some Tooltips are flat out incorrect or wildly misleading and sometimes you just won't have anything to tell you what is going to happen, it'll just be a fluff blurb. One example was an event that pop'd up that gave me two options one of which said something like "Freeman output +10%". Now red is always bad, but + to output is good. So is the Tooltip supposed to say "-10%" or is it supposed to be green? You won't know until you click it! Another good example is the Marian Reforms. Depending on your Govt and Civ level any nation can get it they'll just call it something else. In my case it was the Caractii Reforms. Now I know my history and I know that the Reforms where SUPER important to Rome and effectively changed their military from your standard levied band of peasants to a professional fighting force. The Tooltip for this was just a blurb about how you will adopt the reforms (or not). It didn't actually tell me what the heck it would do. Turns out all it did was increase Manpower recovery in your army. Which isn't awful exactly, but one of the the other Law choices you have decreases army and navy maintenance costs which is just too good to pass up. Which segues in to my next complaint.

Laws! You can enact numerous different Laws that will come with Pros/Cons. All well and good except that there isn't a good balance between them. Some Laws are just straight up better than their counterparts. Some Laws are just awful, like there was one where all it did was increase the cost of Powers. Powers are anything you can activate (Omens, Military Ideas, Laws etc etc). This Law doesn't do anything else except make things harder. It is ridiculous!

Typos! There are a lot of typos. Like I'm not typically the type to care and or notice typos so when I say there are a lot of typos I mean there are a lot of typos.

Camera! The camera is oddly jittery when scrolling around the map, but when you click a flag and zoom to the location it is smooth. So like, what?


Now for two more complaints that I don't necessarily share, but wouldn't mind if changed.

Converting/Assimilating PoPs at the push of a button! Now some people like to bring this up as making things stupidly easy. IMHO this is a bit of an exaggeration. You can convert a PoP to your culture or religion at the push of a button, true. However you have to do this to every single PoP in every single social class within a single city. Converting a PoP costs Oratory power. Oratory power is used in Diplomacy, Events, enacting Laws, supporting political parties, bribing Generals/Governors/Family Heads, setting up Trades and probably more I'm forgetting. Point is while you can instantly convert a single PoP there are a ton of other far more pressing things to be spending Oratory power on and you'll never have enough to do everything.

Colonizing! Colonizing, like in pretty much all Paradox games with colonizing, is a slog. This complaint I do agree with, but I honestly have no idea how you could change it. It just is what it is.

With that all said, the big June update looks like it will be fixing all the problems I have and also fixing the last two problems that I don't have much of an opinion on along with added more stuff. There will also be a smaller update this week that will fix some of the more immediate performance issues.


So all in all I enjoy the game. The core game play of carefully balancing Manpower, Loyalty and expansion is compelling to me. Expand too much, too fast and you'll be dealing with a lot of unhappy assholes. You need armies for war, but they need Generals. These Generals need to stay loyal. However the Cohorts in the army will become loyal to the General over time. You need Governors to manage your territories. They need to stay loyal. However the PoPs in the region will become loyal to the Governor over time. The Families need to have Govt positions or they will become disloyal. If you don't bring in Important Families from conquered lands you will soon run out of people to lead armies/navies or manage Govt positions (and probably have a lot of wildly unqualified people in Govt posts). Every Family needs to be getting paid at least 2% of your Nation's economy or they will become Scorned (and thus Disloyal). However you probably won't have enough positions for all of them, but you're still going to need them. Even if a Family isn't in charge of a region or an army it doesn't mean they still can't cause serious trouble. They still have a lot of money and can just buy an army. Or the Family may be friends with an otherwise loyal General or Governor who might side with them. From what I can tell the hierarchy of loyalty is Family > Friends > Nation.

Oh! One thing to watch out for. Alliances are very WW1-y. That is to say they can be a tangled web and one war can bring in a lot of different Nations. You may look at a Nation and see they are allied with A and B. No problem you say to yourself you have C and D as your allies. You declare war and suddenly you are at war with A, B, E, F, G and H, I, J have joined your side. This is because your target Nation may be allied with A and B, but A is also allied with E and B is also allied with F and G. Your allies likely have similar alliances. So they drag each other in to war like falling dominoes.


tl;dr

If you are interested in this game and don't mind typical Paradox rough edges with a fun core then check it out. If you want a more polished experience I'd wait for the June update.

Fairchild

I have now dove (dived ?) into the deep, deep waters of CRUSADER KINGS 2.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/19

KetBra

Remember to ABM: Always Be Murderin'

Platy

Never murder and get all the good traits and keep your realm in good order so everyone loves you!

Also kiss and bang the five most important nobles in your realm

And the pope

Zavian

New patch! Major overhaul to the court system with limits, expenses, courtier modifiers and events, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Notre Dame in Paris. Some other highlights:

- You will no longer humiliate and release yourself from prison.
- Cured a French disease which caused the women to lose their ears.
- You should no longer perform a sacrificial ritual on yourself as a satanist.
- Removed Torture Chamber from the Library and Garden Great Works.
- Removed Spikes upgrade from some Great Works, including the Library, the University, the Konark Sun Temple, and the Buddhist Temple.
- The pope will no longer refer to your pregnant wife's womb as "barren".
- You can no longer ask yourself nicely to stop your own plot.

(spoilered for length)

###################
# Free Features
###################
- Court Improvements
- Added a limit and expenses tied to court size.
- Added court size modifiers and court maintenance cost reduction to the Majesty Tech.
- Added court size modifiers and court maintenance cost reduction to the Great Fortress and the Royal Palace Great Works.
- Added court size modifier to some Great Work features: Tavern; Royal Apartments; Hidden Passageways; Travel Tunnels; and Royal Bedchamber.
- Added court maintenance cost reduction to the Great Work feature Trap Door.
- Added court size modifiers to Castle Town and Market Town buildings.
- Updated how courtiers are selected for involvement in a multitude of old events.
- Added a chance for courtiers to live it up with character modifiers.
- Added a chance for courtiers to have a livelier social life.
- Added a chance for courtiers to get more interesting skills.
- Added a new decision, "Ask Courtiers to Leave Court", to help quickly reduce court-size.
- Added an event where you are able to give a courtier a nickname.
- Added an event for large courts, where courtiers praise your hospitality.
- Added historical Great Work Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, including conversion events.
- Added historical Great Work Notre Dame in Paris.
- Added a new random event on sacking of a besieged barony, with corresponding character modifiers.
- Updated Game Rules:
- Added separate Historical Great Work game rule.
- Added game rule for the Court Size Limit (On/Off).

###################
# Balance
###################
- Narrow flank command modifier now has a stronger and more intuitive impact on the chance of generating or avoiding a narrow flank in battle.
- Narrow flanks now also apply their engagement limit of the flank during the skirmish phase of battles.
- When a combat tactic changes the phase for a flank then the opposing side now automatically gets forced to choose a new tactic even if their ongoing tactic still isn't due to expire yet.
- Inactive Great Works are no longer counted towards the Great Work stacking cost penalty.
- Tech levels at start were rebalanced to take into account historically more advanced regions.
- Trigger chances for Councilor job events were rebalanced to take into account attribute scores up to 22, instead of the previous 13.
- City and Temple Infrastructure Technologies were merged into one with a slightly lower tax bonus modifier (max 40%).
- Shipbuilding technology has been moved from the Military Advances to the Economy Advances.
- New Infantry and Cavalry Technologies increase morale (up to 40%) and defense (up to 60%) of Infantry and Cavalry units, respectively.
- New Skirmish and Melee Techniques affect the Attack value of troops (up to 60%) and decrease the probability of having generic bad tactics.
- Military Organization gives now only a low overall bonus to morale (up to 20%), but keeps its importance for Retinue Size and now also Reorganization speed (morale recovery) of armies.
- Defender bonus for infantry in Mountain was increased to the range of 50%-100% for defense, and 50%-100% for the attack of archers and light infantry.
- Defender bonuses were also slightly increased in Hills and created for Forest and Desert.
- Heavy Cavalry defensive values were slightly increased in the Skirmish and Melee phases, and lowered in the pursuit phase.
- Camel Calvary melee attack value was slightly decreased and pursuit value increased.
- Mongol sacking events now destroy two random building levels instead of one.
- The outcomes of trying to seduce someone using the Private Conversation decision, are now more carefully calculated.

###################
# Interface
###################
- Added a tooltip for explaining that the cost displayed in the Great Work outliner items are yearly costs.
- Removed the Great Work history entry for when a feature construction is started, as it was bloating the history view without providing much value.
- Made sure "string_coast" actually reads "coast" in the descriptions of coastal Great Works.
- Fixed a localization issue in the Infidel tax tooltip.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the low resolution version of the province view Great Work image from showing when switching from a province that did not have a Great Work to one that did have one.
- Fixed the low resolution version of the Great Works display in the province view getting misplaced if "The Reaper's Due" DLC wasn't active.
- Fixed the Great Works view text disappearing when GUI scaling was used.
- Fixed the hospital button in province view not working.
- Fixed Great Work ticking cost text in the outliner sometimes overlapping the stage numeral icon.
- Fixed active conditions not being displayed when hovering the image of a completed but inactive feature.
- Fixed the realm tree and dynasty tree sometimes going outside of their dedicated UI space when UI scaling was active.
- Fixed certain defensive upgrades printing an unlocalized string in the description of the Great Work it's attached to.
- Fixed Great Work feature names sometimes getting cut off before the UI ran out of space.
- Fixed the chat log sometimes overlapping the description text for shattered or random world in multiplayer setup.
- Fixed the outliner Great Work items only showing the cost of either stage or feature construction. The sum of these are now displayed instead.
- Added a tooltip for explaining that the cost displayed in the Great Work outliner items are yearly costs.
- Fixed an issue that made it look like the player would lose prestige from enforcing demands when in fact, the losing side lost the piety. - Fixed an issue that made it look like the player would lose prestige from enforcing demands when in fact, the losing side lost the piety.

###################
# User modding
###################
- Added scrolling support for InstantTextBoxes.
- Added support for custom text in Great Works province history via add_custom_history.
- Added has_full_court trigger.
- Added num_of_courtiers trigger.
- Added free_court_slots trigger.
- Added set_wonder_damaged effect.
- Added court_size_modifier and court_size_maintenance_cost_modifier modifiers.
- Added the following new defines; BASE_COURT_LIMIT_COUNT, BASE_COURT_LIMIT_DUKE, BASE_COURT_LIMIT_KING, BASE_COURT_LIMIT_EMPEROR, OVERSIZED_COURT_UPKEEP_COST.
- Added add_wonder effect.
- Added is_important_character_to trigger to check if a character is marked for special interest of another character.
- Added on_post_birth_stillbirth on action.
- Exposed hard coded UI variables for the wonder, score, chronicle, realm tree and dynasty tree views.
- The wonder view modifier summary now functions without the right hand text box.
- Fixed wonder and wonder upgrade localization only having access to the Root(character) scope instead of the usual four scopes.
- Fixed dynamic localization not getting parsed for minor title custom localization.
- Fixed the game falsely claiming that you cannot play as a theocracy in a tooltip on the character selection screen when the selected character was controlling a religion with investiture.

###################
# Database
###################
- Added Santarem as a city to Lisboa.
- Added some details to historical characters to better represent The Anarchy (English Succession War 1135-1153).
- Changed Kurs, Tukumns, Marienburg, Sambia, Scalovia, Poznanskie, Lower Silesia, Czersk terrain to Forest.
- Changed Cebta, Amorion, Devon, Adana, Tripoli, Acre, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Hebron, Kerak, Monreal, Beersheb, El-Arish, Porto, Lisboa, Braganza terrain to Hills.
- Changed Marrakech terrain to Plains.
- Changed Friesach terrain to Marsh.
- Changed Beirut terrain to Mountain.
- Corrected capital of the Duchy of Mudar to Rahbah.
- Corrected spouse or marriage dates for several historical characters.
- Corrected Duchy of Chur starting tech levels to be similar to those of the rest of Austria.
- Corrected the date range of the Capricorn zodiac sign so that it no longer overlaps with Aquarius.

###################
# Bug Fixes
###################
- The events about declaring war in the tutorial should now trigger in the right order.
- Zoroastrians can now hunt.
- You no longer congratulate yourself on a job well done with Great Works.
- You can no longer accuse yourself of committing zina.
- The Player no longer gets the offer to imprison a lover or spouse who has contracted syphilis but is already in prison.
- Your spouse will no longer complain about a lack of conversation, due to your hermetic pursuits, if they are in prison.
- You should no longer perform a sacrificial ritual on yourself as a satanist.
- The barber no longer tries to change women's headgear instead of giving them a haircut.
- Your Patriarch will no longer be referred to as your Matriarch.
- A Hindu taking a vow of celibacy will now speak of an appropriate god.
- HRE can now change held kingdoms to gavelkind or elective gavelkind.
- Assassin-events now takes random world into consideration.
- Characters will now stop antagonizing their target after entering Seclusion.
- Pope no longer gives bonus to claims against a holy order title because they are uncrowned.
- The trap upgrade will no longer kill off your whole court.
- Zoroastrians can no longer take decisions that are not valid in random world.
- The pope should now be more low-key with the torture and drinking features to Great Works.
- The dynamic_crusader_state title decision should now check for coast in the right scope.
- Retinue modifiers of the Royal Palace are now being applied properly.
- Hermetic members can no longer spam the Perform Scrying decision, causing them to end up with a multitude of visions (modifiers).
- When finishing a mission to build a temple you will now only get one notification no matter how many buildings you finish.
- Changed the effect of the Quabba Great Work feature.
- Event about an irritating courtier now takes the courtier's gender into account.
- You can no longer do penance while doing penance.
- You can now secretly convert to faith as Christian religion.
- Added script for Zoroastrian check in ROOTs_secret_religion_is_playable_trigger, a trigger that's used to check if the player's secret religion is enabled by a DLC.
- You can now secretly convert faith as a Christian.
- Forcefully taking an imprisoned character as concubine will now break their existing betrothal.
- A Town is Born (event where you get a new holding slot) can no longer trigger if you already have 7 slots in the province.
- Pyramids can now be built or held by characters with Coptic culture.
- Removed Heating Pipes and Hypocausts features from the Garden Great Work.
- Removed Torture Chamber from the Library and Garden Great Works.
- Removed Spikes upgrade from some Great Works, including the Library, the University, the Konark Sun Temple, and the Buddhist Temple.
- The pope will no longer refer to your pregnant wife's womb as "barren".
- The Great Work upgrade Hidden Burial will no longer be described as drawing a lot of attention.
- Imprisoned vassals will no longer ask for council positions.
- You will no longer get multiple "Blessed has Passed" events.
- Robin hood event that removes the modifier "highway_robber_band" should now remove the correct modifier.
- A friend is no longer referred to as your lover when you try to antagonize them.
- Clarified what conditions need to be met in order to build the Grand University Great Work.
- The State of a God upgrade will no longer change which god it is depicting each month.
- Viking bloodlines will now make sure that viking traits are retained after loading a savegame.
- Debutantes will no longer be referred to as being "ready for employment".
- Aztec Pyramids now have a description.
- Added information text to Great Work features that allow private conversations or artifact storing.
- Cured a French disease which caused the women to lose their ears.
- You can no longer ask yourself nicely to stop your own plot.
- Characters possessed using demonic power will no longer be so reluctant to then join your demon worshiping cult.
- Added localization for the the Bön Faithful cult title.
- Made sure the Eternal Flame Great Work feature actually increases Zunist/Reformed Zunist opinion.
- The pope will no longer consider you a selfish crusader no matter your stance if you are the top-contributer to a crusade.
- Orthodox baptism now has fitting text and tooltip.
- When a stillbirth happens, the mother is now the one that has a chance to get sick instead of it being the grandmother.
- If a character kills your spymaster you now have a reason to imprison them.
- The achievement "I shed blood of Saxon men" now looks at the correct counties.
- Muslim characters can now create claimant factions.
- Your influence over cardinals will no longer influence the pope's decisions regarding excommunication if you're Orthodox.
- Catholics will now be appropriately interested in a crusade targeting Egypt.
- Fixed it being possible to build Features on Great Works not owned by the player character.
- Fixed Great Work construction being paused on succession.
- Fixed crash that occured if a province's history contained an invalid Great Work or feature.
- Fixed a duel so that it looks at personal combat skill instead of martial.
- Fixed issue with the Assassins Society sometimes giving you a mission to murder yourself.
- Fixed a bug where percentage checks against nomad population would always fail if the population was too high.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when crusades were completed on save games created before version 3.0.
- Fixed issue with the Great Harbor work having an inverted build cost modifier at its last stage.
- Fixed an issue with the meritocracy religious doctrine for reformed pagan religions.
- Fixed an OOS that could occur when the AI unpaused a Great Work construction.
- Fixed a bug that was stopping tribal settlements from getting replaced when the player should be able to replace them.
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes make it impossible to pause construction of a Great Work feature.
- Fixed the private conversation event not triggering.
- Fixed the history of the Chalkidike province so that it once again has a proper owner.
- Fixed the "Construct a Great Work" ambition getting fulfilled as soon as a Great Work construction started.
- Fixed Great Work feature construction not pausing when the feature conditions for it being active was no longer met.
- Fixed the Konark Sun Temple and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus not processing their history setups correctly.
- Fixed not being allowed to build Great Work plating features if there already is a plating feature on any Great Work.
- Fixed building the Hypocausts feature on a Great Work enabling the Heating Pipes feature to be built on any Great Work.
- Fixed Great Works not removing feature slots when looted.
- Fixed issue with double pregnancy reports being sent if your lover is also your concubine.
- Fixed an issue with Ashoka Bloodline not being able to use the invasion casus belli.
- Fixed multiple issues with Bells looted from the Grand Cathedral.
- Fixed several issues with "Store a Relic" decision and Relic Tomb.
- Fixed the firing of two city sacking events for Mongol Players.
- Fixed marriage issues with Suomenusko religion.
- Fixed a formating issue in one "Lost Book" event.
- Fixed a faulty trigger in the artifact setup, ensuring that the Gjallarhorn is more likely to start out in the Treasury of a character with Germanic religion (rather than any landed one).
- Fixed issue that was causing the old "Friend of a friend" event to never fire.
- Fixed issue where an unlanded feudal character would sometimes change their government to theocracy when granted a county.
- Fixed some missing localization entries in the Private Conversation events.
- Fixed decision importance setting not always persisting when the game was restarted.
- Fixed some Great Work features with dynamic names using the wrong Great Work type in localization.
- Fixed university Great Work description using "great work" instead of "university" as type.
- Fixed some Great Work features not having their effects applied/removed when their active state changed.
- Fixed the game unpausing when pressing "continue" on the "player lost connection" dialog while the pause menu was also open.
- Fixed Cathedral Great Works description localization failing to find the name of the owner's religion.
- You will no longer be stuck on a never ending hajj.
- A child will no longer end up with a lover.
- The immortality events will not trigger if the mystic dies.
- Allied crusader states no longer secedes from player's empire.
- Fixed some court events firing when the character is in the field commanding armies.
- Aleppo now becomes de jure part of the Principality of Antioch when it's formed.
- Fixed scopes used used in modifiers to decide probability of joining secret cult.
- You can no longer exploit the smith chain to earn lots of money through the refund.
- Fixed an interface crash related to imprisonment if the player character died at the same time.
- The Hashashins will no longer randomly kill their member's courtiers.
- You can no longer assign councillor as your Advisor without having unlocked that position.
- Fixed text overlap on option in event about your smith talking away their work time.
- Your new vassal will no longer try to pay homage to you when you're in seclusion.
- You will no longer humiliate and release yourself from prison.
- The pope will no longer admonish you for not joining a crusade even he hasn't made it to yet.

Monwyn

Next patch announced!

Hello!

As you probably know by now we released our 3.1.1 patch yesterday. Hopefully those of you who have managed to try it are enjoying it, and those of you who haven’t will jump in this weekend. Let us know what you think about the court and tech changes, and as always if you run into any issues, please report them in the bug forum!

Now onto something new, there have been a few hints here and there about what we have been working on. However now we can officially announce that we will be releasing a new historical bookmark called: The Iron Century. The bookmark will start on the 7th of August 936, a previously unplayable date and our first in the 10th century.

(spoiled for big image)

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?attachments/ck2_ironcentury_1920x1080-jpg.481127/

In Europe Otto marches on the path to an Empire, Rival Caliphs battle for control of the Muslim world and the last remnants of the vikings stir to the north. Hundreds of other characters have their own stories to tell. A thousand possibilities await in the Iron Century.

Next week we will do something special and have a new dev diary about the 936 bookmark every day from Monday to Friday to cover the setting of the medieval world in the 10th century. Also I want to make it clear that ‘The Iron Century’ update will be completely free.

A correction from last weeks dev diary is that the correct weekday of our Crusader Kings stream is Wednesdays 16:00 CEST and not the previously mentioned Thursdays.

Thanks for reading everyone!

CK2 Team

WotanAnubis

I've always picked the earliest dates available and never a picked a date later than 1066, but from what I read 936 was an interesting time for Europe and the Middle East, so I'll give it a look.

Sir Carcass

Hah, it starts on my birthday. I have to play it now.

Fairchild

I've been playing the Vikings Invade England scenario (starts at 867 AD) and it's been relatively smooth sailing thus far, mostly because the minor English kings are all so militarily feeble. 871 is when Alfred the Great arrived historically as King of Wessex, so I'm driving to knock out Wessex before that happens.

Fairchild

I also keep bumping into armies of Ivar the Boneless, the historical commander of the combined Viking army, called simply The Army or The Great Heathen Army. Named "Boneless" as a reference to his apparent impotence, since Ivar died in either 870 or 873 without children.

I do think that videogames tend to over-rate the Viking armies. Altho obviously quite skilled as explorers and raiders, the Vikings did not do well in large, stand-up engagements. Perhaps as a culture of Alpha Male lone wolves they had trouble cooperating in war ?

Jephery

No vikings were well known to use the shield wall in mass engagements. They were perfectly capable of engaging in combat with the fyrd militias of the Anglo-Saxon, who also fought in shield wall.

The shield wall was the standard mass infantry tactic of the Germanic world at the time. Notably in England it would fall to William the Bastard's Norman heavy cavalry.

Zavian

Also, the Varangians were Vikings and fought in tons of major battles for the Byzantines. They were probably the most elite units of the time. That is, as long as they got paid. The Byzantines learned that the hard way during the crusader siege of Constantinople.

Fairchild

At Hastings, the Saxon shield wall held against everything the Normans could (literally) throw at it. The famous Norman fake retreats weakened it but did not break it; that seems to have occurred as a combination of fatigue from fighting an all-day battle and the death of King Harold.

KetBra

The 936 date should be cool.

Been playing some of this again. Started off as the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the 3rd crusade bookmark, looking to wrap of the medieval period as Emperor of Hispania, after switching over to the Queen of Portugal when I led a successful crusade there.

The new crusade mechanics are pretty fun as a Catholic player.

Foefaller

Fairchild wrote: »

I also keep bumping into armies of Ivar the Boneless, the historical commander of the combined Viking army, called simply The Army or The Great Heathen Army. Named "Boneless" as a reference to his apparent impotence, since Ivar died in either 870 or 873 without children.

I do think that videogames tend to over-rate the Viking armies. Altho obviously quite skilled as explorers and raiders, the Vikings did not do well in large, stand-up engagements. Perhaps as a culture of Alpha Male lone wolves they had trouble cooperating in war ?

It's a bit borked atm with Holy Fury and Tribal Retinues, but basically tribal realms will eventually need to reform to Feudalism in order to keep up, because their Christian/Muslim Feudal/Iqta neighbors will start being able to field advanced armies large enough to make up for the numerical advantage of tribes with their Light Infantry, and get the tech to overcome pagan attrition (if any.) Germanic pagans will also stop being able to travel up rivers once the locals there upgrade their fortifications, leaving only coastal provinces open for raiding.

And for tribal pagans, unless they started out as feudal that typical means converting to Christianity, or reforming the religion, the later of which typically involves conquering an entire empire's worth of provinces while being stuck with Elective Gavelkind, literally the worst form of succession for maintaining large realms.

That said, 867 is considered to be the most snowball-friendly start date for anyone not already a blob (cough Abbasids cough) because Europe is constantly getting fought over by the Karlings and Northern Europe is a patchwork of counts and duchies just waiting to be gobbled up one at a time.

Fairchild wrote: »

I've been playing the Vikings Invade England scenario (starts at 867 AD) and it's been relatively smooth sailing thus far, mostly because the minor English kings are all so militarily feeble. 871 is when Alfred the Great arrived historically as King of Wessex, so I'm driving to knock out Wessex before that happens.

Game stops following History (outside of a handful of beats) the moment you first unpause. Alfred might become King of Wessex, or he might die from smallpox. Or get burned at the stake by his brother for being a Satanist. Or sacrificed by his Satanist brother. Or be deposed by a Cathar rebel more than five hundred years before the heresy even existed in a region it was never widespread in, or simply get skipped over by the five sons his older brother never actually had, and still become king anyway when he successfully murders them all... and then somehow contracts syphilis from the pope before anyone has had any contact from the New World, goes insane and gets murdered by his wife, and is succeeded by his son. Specifically, the son that was raised by Alfred's Jewish retainer and converted to Judaism and that means that Wessex is now a technically a Jewish realm that is about to be holy war'd out of existence by his Christian neighbors.

Happens more often than you would think!

If historical accuracy is super important to you, this game leave you apoplectic for years, but if you can live with the rare occasional sometimes semi-frequent crazy things that happen, you can have a lot of fun.

KetBra

I'm sorry but glitterhoof, holy roman emperor, is extremely historically accurate

WotanAnubis

KetBra wrote: »

The 936 date should be cool.

Been playing some of this again. Started off as the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the 3rd crusade bookmark, looking to wrap of the medieval period as Emperor of Hispania, after switching over to the Queen of Portugal when I led a successful crusade there.

The new crusade mechanics are pretty fun as a Catholic player.

The new Crusades basically have the Pope going "You want some money? Here, have all the money." And since the AI isn't actually all that good at Crusading, it's still pretty easy for a player with only a minor realm to grab a significant chunk of the loot.

Monwyn

Foefaller wrote: »

Fairchild wrote: »

I also keep bumping into armies of Ivar the Boneless, the historical commander of the combined Viking army, called simply The Army or The Great Heathen Army. Named "Boneless" as a reference to his apparent impotence, since Ivar died in either 870 or 873 without children.

I do think that videogames tend to over-rate the Viking armies. Altho obviously quite skilled as explorers and raiders, the Vikings did not do well in large, stand-up engagements. Perhaps as a culture of Alpha Male lone wolves they had trouble cooperating in war ?

It's a bit borked atm with Holy Fury and Tribal Retinues, but basically tribal realms will eventually need to reform to Feudalism in order to keep up, because their Christian/Muslim Feudal/Iqta neighbors will start being able to field advanced armies large enough to make up for the numerical advantage of tribes with their Light Infantry, and get the tech to overcome pagan attrition (if any.) Germanic pagans will also stop being able to travel up rivers once the locals there upgrade their fortifications, leaving only coastal provinces open for raiding.

And for tribal pagans, unless they started out as feudal that typical means converting to Christianity, or reforming the religion, the later of which typically involves conquering an entire empire's worth of provinces while being stuck with Elective Gavelkind, literally the worst form of succession for maintaining large realms.

In practice reforming the Germanic faith with your starting ruler is pretty easy as long as your initial invasion eats a big enough realm without taking hilarious casualties, though it does involve some rather silly abuses of game mechanics and requires Sweden, Ostlandet, or one of the Danish realms to have blobbed enough that subjugating them will get you two of the five holy sites.

(Fabricate on Naumdal from game start, roll your invasion into a germanic conquest of Zeeland, subjugate either Sjaelland or Uppland if you don't have a claim, burn down all the temples in Ireland to get your MA high enough, click button)

ED!

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

Steel Angel

ED! wrote: »

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

Well you know one of the reasons he doesn't like you now!

WotanAnubis

ED! wrote: »

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

Yeah, one of the nice points of Crusader Kings 2 is that the developers at least try to fill the different starting bookmarks with the actual people who were actually in charge with the religions and cultures they actually had.

Unfortunately, since our records of those times aren't exactly comprehensive, a whole lot of (minor) rulers are just, like, made up. And they also made Yazidi a Sunni heresy. So, like, sometimes historical accuracy just gets sacrificed for gameplay purposes.

Also, historical accuracy gets sacrificed the moment the player unpauses the game.

Shadowhope

It may not be historical, but my current run has an Empress of Britannica ruling from her Kingdom of Essex, and she’s an unstoppable death machine on the battlefield, just like her mother, grandmother, great aunt, great grandmother, great great aunt, great great grandmother, and great great great grandmother before her.

ED!

WotanAnubis wrote: »

ED! wrote: »

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

Yeah, one of the nice points of Crusader Kings 2 is that the developers at least try to fill the different starting bookmarks with the actual people who were actually in charge with the religions and cultures they actually had.

Unfortunately, since our records of those times aren't exactly comprehensive, a whole lot of (minor) rulers are just, like, made up. And they also made Yazidi a Sunni heresy. So, like, sometimes historical accuracy just gets sacrificed for gameplay purposes.

Also, historical accuracy gets sacrificed the moment the player unpauses the game.

It definitely adds flavor, though it can be a bit much, especially if you know nothing about European history (my head is swimming in all these titles and who owns what). I'm spending half my time Googling terms that I've only ever heard in movies and such.

. . .however I did learn the origin of "counties" so this will likely be an educational and fun playthrough.

Zavian

ED! wrote: »

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

You can hover over a characters portrait and it will list everything affecting their opinion of you; brothers usually are ornery because after all why shouldn't they be in charge?

I never knew a lot about medieval history, even though I'm a Roman history fanboy, but CK2 has really opened the doors for me; it got me to read The Alexiad by Anna Comnena, a Byzantine princess who was writing about her father's reign. Needless to say, it made my Alexiad bookmark start as Byzantium way more interesting knowing the 'lore'. Then again, I've also had great fun playing as a Hellenic Pagan Werewolf Grandmother Pope Empress, so playing the game ahistorically is IMO good times as well.

Also, this is very much a sandbox game, so even if you fail and bring shameful ruin upon your dynasty, or turn into a werewolf and eat your only heir, that's part of the fun!

Axen

ED! wrote: »

WotanAnubis wrote: »

ED! wrote: »

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

Yeah, one of the nice points of Crusader Kings 2 is that the developers at least try to fill the different starting bookmarks with the actual people who were actually in charge with the religions and cultures they actually had.

Unfortunately, since our records of those times aren't exactly comprehensive, a whole lot of (minor) rulers are just, like, made up. And they also made Yazidi a Sunni heresy. So, like, sometimes historical accuracy just gets sacrificed for gameplay purposes.

Also, historical accuracy gets sacrificed the moment the player unpauses the game.

It definitely adds flavor, though it can be a bit much, especially if you know nothing about European history (my head is swimming in all these titles and who owns what). I'm spending half my time Googling terms that I've only ever heard in movies and such.

. . .however I did learn the origin of "counties" so this will likely be an educational and fun playthrough.

Man you know how long it took me to figure out that “Demesne” was literally just pronounced like “domain”? A long time. A very, very long time. It certainly didn’t help that I heard the great Ian McShane pronounce it all crazy like.

Okay technically it is pronounced “de-main”, but my dialect is such that there really isn’t any difference between “de-main” and “do-main”.

Sir Carcass

Axen wrote: »

ED! wrote: »

WotanAnubis wrote: »

ED! wrote: »

Picked this game up today on a lark, and it seems exactly what I've been looking for since days of playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms on SNES.

I was tickled pink when I clicked on the in-game Wikipedia and it actually took me to Wikipedia (dunno what I expected) and was like "Wait. . .these are actual people?!"

I will say the UI is a tiny bit overwhelming, and it's not immediately obvious what to do (I'm still in the Learning Scenario) but clicking around I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one (I accidentally clicked on an assassination plot for my brother when I meant to just try and get more information about why we didn't like each other).

Yeah, one of the nice points of Crusader Kings 2 is that the developers at least try to fill the different starting bookmarks with the actual people who were actually in charge with the religions and cultures they actually had.

Unfortunately, since our records of those times aren't exactly comprehensive, a whole lot of (minor) rulers are just, like, made up. And they also made Yazidi a Sunni heresy. So, like, sometimes historical accuracy just gets sacrificed for gameplay purposes.

Also, historical accuracy gets sacrificed the moment the player unpauses the game.

It definitely adds flavor, though it can be a bit much, especially if you know nothing about European history (my head is swimming in all these titles and who owns what). I'm spending half my time Googling terms that I've only ever heard in movies and such.

. . .however I did learn the origin of "counties" so this will likely be an educational and fun playthrough.

Man you know how long it took me to figure out that “Demesne” was literally just pronounced like “domain”? A long time. A very, very long time. It certainly didn’t help that I heard the great Ian McShane pronounce it all crazy like.

Okay technically it is pronounced “de-main”, but my dialect is such that there really isn’t any difference between “de-main” and “do-main”.

I said "deh-minse" for the longest time.

Fairchild

Rule Number 1: Always mis-pronounce French words as badly as possible.

Thus, 'Demesne' should be pronounced deh-mezz-nee.