Crusader Kings 2

And thats also why i didnt buy sunset invasion. Because it didnt add substantial gameplay. I mentioned legacy of Rome as a dlc that did that (res publica for the dutch is another example, american dream for USA is another), only you chose to ignore that.....


If one of the main features of the dlc is just more people you have the -15 foreigner penalty with, yes, that is quite underwhelming
 
And thats also why i didnt buy sunset invasion. Because it didnt add substantial gameplay. I mentioned legacy of Rome as a dlc that did that (res publica for the dutch is another example, american dream for USA is another), only you chose to ignore that.....

Wait... additional elements are a force requirement for you? Playing colonial in EU4 was unable before Conquest of Paradise? Legacy of Rome does add lot more content for Rome, just as the Sons of Abraham did for religions and the Old Gods for relative with pagan powers but in the end you can choose even with the DLCs bought whether you want to activate them for your CK2 sessions. What happens if one has no interest in having the Legacy of Rome activated? They could either not buy it or if they had it turn it off in the start off screen. Really these options are options; it was a project from upwards. These are akin expansions, adding to the game but players can choose not to adopt them.

If one of the main features of the dlc is just more people you have the -15 foreigner penalty with, yes, that is quite underwhelming

Big CK2 DLCs or expansions tend to go beyond that. Any rate for the upcoming expansion we are still going to need more information before evaluation can be more fuller.
 
Guys, just ignore him. It's clear that trying to reason with him isn't going to work.

Now, back on topic, if said post is true (which I have doubts about), then this expansion just became 200% cooler. Especially nomadic realms. This might actually have elements of the steppe DLC that everyone's wanted in it.
 
The fellow who posted about the tribal holdings or whatever seems to have started a new thread for everyone's convenience where he summarizes what he got out of developers. Part of it is educated guessing, but I think we can get an idea of what's possible and likely.

glaivemaster said:
Tribal Holdings

Tribal holdings (though I don't know if that will be their actual in game names) sound like they will be much like castles, bishoprics and cities, although Doomdark also put trade posts in that list, which leads me to believe they might be an over-holding of some sort (to prevent the awkwardness of having one holding change to another later in the game). Essentially tribal holdings will represent lands that aren't properly fortified yet, more owned by virtue of people living there than by people actually building towns etc.

An interesting aspect of tribal holdings, is that vassals who are 'tribal' (presumably a new title equivalent to count, based on your holding type) don't provide levies in the way that a feudal vassal does. Instead, a tribal vassal must be called to arms, like an ally. In this way, your vassal management becomes much more important, and vassal ties are much looser. A king can only gain power if he is respected enough by his vassals, even more so than currently, and a vassal maintains full control of his own armies, making war much more scattered.

Elective Gavelkind

Another interesting new feature, designed for the breaking up of blobs: elective gavelkind. Empires being too blobby has always been a big concern, and even more so with the introduction of a start date that may very well include the entirety of Francia as one huge empire. At least one response to this, which also adds to the susceptibility of tribal civilisations falling apart without a leader, is elective gavelkind.

From what I can tell, elective gavelkind is much like what it sounds: it's a cross between tanistry and gavelkind. The new ruler must be selected from your dynasty, but I believe that other dynasty members will also get titles, as gavelkind suggests. In addition, upon succession, some vassals may be given the option to become independent, no war involved, much like the decadence mechanics are supposed to work.

The exact nature of this hasn't been settled on yet, since they're still testing it out, but it may be based on the power of the vassal relative to liege, the opinion of the vassal, or perhaps even a choice that everyone is given regardless, and then acted on appropriately. In any case, this serves to make early empires more likely to break apart, and perhaps constantly try and put themselves back together, in a way that current succession laws don't.
My only hesitation with this is that it will probably still be too easy to get a big mid-late game empire going. Once elective gavelkind is gone, I'm not sure what will be used to try and break apart large empires that have formed under primogeniture, or even normal elective. So, while this should solve the early Karling problem, I don't think it will do anything for the HRE, or for later game blobs. We shall see however: blobbing is clearly something in the forefront of the minds at Paradox, so hopefully this will also be settled. One possible solution is:

Vassal Limit

A new limit, much like the current demesne limit, will be imposed upon rulers with the introduction of the Charlemagne DLC. This limit does exactly what it suggests: it imposes a soft-cap on the number of independent vassals you can have in your realm before you start taking penalties. To offset this, you will be encouraged to hand out more duchy titles, and perhaps even kingdoms, as your empire becomes too large for you to manage each vassal yourself.

This is a great idea, and as unfortunate as it may be to have to impose rules like this, rather than providing encouragement for playing the game in a certain way, I think it fits in very well with the current demesne limit. It makes sense that if you can only manage so many holdings yourself, you can logically only manage so many vassals as well before you become stretched thin. This is why vassals exist in the first place.

In addition, this adds a new balancing factor to crown law. As crown law gets higher, and the monarch begins to exercise more direct control over his vassals, the vassal limit will decrease, so that more titles need to be handed out. This means that going up to absolute crown law will not only make your vassals like you less, but also encourage you to give those vassals more power as well, to help maintain the laws you impose.

As said before, I very much hope this will be the way to make empires crumble. With low crown laws, empires can be sprawling, but somewhat weak, with fewer levies to help defend against outside threats and even factions, and less control over their vassals. As crown law increases, larger vassals will come into play, curbing the power of monarchs who they don't like, making factions more likely to spawn. Ultimately, this may see more independence factions firing and being successful. Fingers crossed.

Seasons

Finally, seasonal changes, similar to EU4. I think everyone has been expecting something like this for a while, and I guess that Paradox decided to just throw it in there now. Seasons should have an effect upon attrition in provinces, making war in winter a more dangerous affair, and there was a hint that weather might effect combat, perhaps by changing terrain. Whether this will just affect military educations (fights better in snowy conditions) or whether there will be a weather effect on combat I'm not sure, but in either case this is a change I don't have much to say on other than it's there.

Overall, I think that might be all the information I got out of developers. I didn't have my journalism hat on at the time, so I didn't chase up nearly as many questions as I should have done, but hopefully that puts some fears to rest that people may have had. I know that I started off very disappointed in the idea of a further timeline extension, but having discussed with the devs, this sounds much more thought out than I gave them credit for. Here's hoping that everything goes as well as it does in my imagination.
 
Tribal holdings sound interesting, it sounds like those will be useful for modders extending the timeline further back, for less settled parts of Scandinavia and the northeastern part of the map in early starts, and for the Mongols.

I like the idea of elective gavelkind although I will never use it. :)



Unrelated: I'm also quitting my Egypt game, I can't handle decadence as a game mechanic.
 
Someone I know who's involved with the beta (to what extent, I don't know) has confirmed that the above stuff about the tribal holdings and what not are more or less correct. He couldn't tell me specifics, of course, but eh. He did mention that there are probably some tribal holdings at even the 1066 start date, so there's that.

Unrelated: I'm also quitting my Egypt game, I can't handle decadence as a game mechanic.

RIP Antilogic's Egypt game. :salute:
 
Is there any chance of somehow simulating the Great Schism? The current setup doesn't really reflect the way the united Chalcedonian Church functioned at all, but I also get that something more historical would be difficult to implement in terms of game mechanics, and we should have gotten it with Old Gods if we got it at all. I'm still gonna hold onto hope though, because the politics behind it all are pretty interesting and I want to create a world where the idea of Universal Jurisdiction never developed.
 
I wouldn't want Chalcedonian shenanigans not necessarily because I don't want it per se, but rather because I don't have confidence that PI would be able to do it justice, and in a way that is reasonably complex while still fun and making sense. I'm reminded of their attempt to portray the Hungarian invasion being a rather clumsy, bland, inaccurate, and, dare I say, not very fun, horde invasion at the 867 start.

If they want to do it properly then they'd have to develop some sort of mechanics that will allow it to proceed without being clunky or clumsy (I.e. don't just rely on a couple of big events that basically just say "lol u Catholics and Orthodox hate each other now"). Unfortunately, given that such mechanics might only be relevant to the 769 or the 867 start date, I don't think they'd bother developing such mechanics whether they do end up portraying a united Chalcedonian church or not.
 
So we got the live stream today for Charlemagne, I missed half of it but some folks I know filled me in on the other details, as well as some of the PI forum posts. Here's one of the summaries of the new features:

*Release date TBA.
*Nothing new about custom kingdoms and empires.
*New UI for starting a game, in order to remind people that things exist outside 769/867/1066.
*Zunbils
*No Crimean Goths (just as I predicted, more or less for the reasons I predicted), no Hellenic or Germanic pagans (which is more or less for the best IMO), no Schism or Celtic Christianity (again, for the best, although they're considering the latter, which wouldn't make sense as a separate religion or even a heresy), no Karantanci either.
*Centralization laws.
*The long overdue dichotomy between Frankish and French. Also new cultures; Somali, Pictish, Saxon, Visigoth and Lombard.
*A look into the prototypical chronicle, and pretty bad prototypical snow.
*Legalism "nerfed".
*Turns out the regency overhaul we've heard about is mainly just more regency-related events.
*Tribal holdings that can only be upgraded with prestige - and when they're upgraded far enough, they can become either a city or a castle.
*Elective gavelkind, which I don't think works quite how anyone expected it to (i.e. it's literally elective + gavelkind, rather than the three-way-tanistry type of thing I think everyone was expecting), and is only available to tribes.
*A few events for Charlemagne - events for other people conspicuously absent.
*No more assassination button
*No cadet branches this time around.
*Frisian and Proto-Russian cultures may be included.
*Various other tidbits revealed in-between the devs' inane prattling (which is why I would've preferred a dev diary, because there's more focus, less time wasted and less filler when they make those).


To be honest the most interesting thing was the addition of th Zunbils and the religion of ZZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN (even though it's something they probably coded in less than an hour, given the religion is featureless, but hey) given PIs depiction of Central Asia is kinda atrocious.


EDIT: here's a reddit thread with some screenshots from the stream: http://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaz...ew_charlemagne_stream_highlights_i_made_with/
 
I say this as someone who has generally supported Paradox's decisions in the past; I'm becoming increasingly dubious as to the direction this expansion is going. I'll withhold final judgement until later, especially since there are quite a few good things there, but still.
 
I say this as someone who has generally supported Paradox's decisions in the past; I'm becoming increasingly dubious as to the direction this expansion is going. I'll withhold final judgement until later, especially since there are quite a few good things there, but still.

I'm getting the feeling after the more ambitious projects like TOG and ROI, the devs are, in a way, finally biting more than they can chew with Charlemagne. Originally there was mention that this expansion would be worth $20, the biggest ever, but in the stream they mentioned Charlemagne is somewhat equal to TOG in size and scope, and they haven't decided the price yet.

At best, I think they decided to announce this too early.
 
I say this as someone who has generally supported Paradox's decisions in the past; I'm becoming increasingly dubious as to the direction this expansion is going. I'll withhold final judgement until later, especially since there are quite a few good things there, but still.

I like actually of every update. Vassal limit was something that had to be set because can can have only county-level vassals limitless in your huge empire. I had Roman Empire with only county level vassals and elective, since there were no dukes I could vote anybody on the throne and vassals were too weak and there were too many of them to form any plots against me. Downside was that technology did not spread but who cares about it.
 
I'm pretty sure tech not spreading is also to your advantage because your demesne was probably the most advanced place anywhere.
 
New CKII dev diary up, first for the Charlemagne expansion. Other than the Ibadi being it's own branch of Islam, and there being special decisions/events/something to simulate the Iconclast controversy, nothing much new that wasn't already known previously from the stream and dev comments. Still, I guess it does summarize much of what's known for those who aren't up to date.

Link: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...rlemagne-Dev-Diary-1-Let-s-get-Early-Medieval


The Witch-King said:
Welcome to the Charlemagne dev diaries - and above all, welcome to the 8th century!

I'm Tobias Bodlund, scripter on the Crusader Kings II team, and in this first installment of the dev diaries for CKII: Charlemagne I will be talking about the new 769 start date and how we've chosen to represent that historical period in the game.

We've added a bunch of new cultures to the game. A few of these could arguably have been present in The Old Gods already, but going back to 769 we felt we really needed to shake up the map to properly represent the changing cultural landscape of the Early Middle Ages.

View attachment 115217

In Spain we have the Visigoths, and they are in the Iberian rather than the Germanic group, since the Gothic migrations are long since over and they have been living in the peninsula since the early 6th century. With time, Visigothic provinces are likely to eventually become Castilian, Catalan or Andalusian depending on location and which other religious and cultural influences they are subjected to. In northwestern Iberia we also still have the Suebi, an old Germanic people. They have their own culture shift events which may see the rise of Portuguese culture.

Looking north, we have the Franks. They are still Germanic but becoming more and more latinized. You will see them slowly turning into something we call "French"...

Other new cultures you will find are Saxons, Lombards, Picts and Somali. Also, there are no Russians yet, but instead various East Slavic peoples such as the Ilmenians, Severians and Volhynians.

We've revisited cultural dynamics in some other places as well. For example, the emergence of Norman culture is now somewhat more likely than before.

Regarding religion, the old Norse religion in the game is now referred to as Germanic. We decided to do this because with the earlier start date this religion exists well beyond Norse lands (specifically, the Saxons), and the old name also sometimes caused players to confuse it with Norse culture.

Moving further south, the Ibadi faith is now its own religion and no longer a Sunni heresy.

We've also added a new pagan religion, available only in the Charlemagne start. They are the followers of the sun-god Zun, which was historically the Zunbil dynasty in Afghanistan. They start out surrounded by Muslims and Buddhists, and this should provide an interesting and possibly quite difficult start, comparable to the Jewish starts.

And where are the Jews in 769, you ask now - you will find them in Semien in Ethiopia (sometimes referred to as Beta Israel).

View attachment 115218

Oh, speaking of the Norse, yes... with the new start date the Viking Age hasn't begun yet. This means that the Norse will initially not be able to launch Viking expeditions overseas. This will change the early game for them as they'll need to focus more on local affairs initially. Don't worry, though, a few decades in things will start happening for them and the continent will properly learn to fear the wrath of the Northmen.

Finally, let's look at some of the large empires in the 8th century:

In 769, the Byzantine Empire is embroiled in what historians call the "First Iconoclasm". This basically means that the emperor and patriarch (and most of the elite) follow the Iconoclast faith, where religious icons are condemned as idolatry much like in Islam. There is a choice for the emperor to either stick with Iconoclasm or renounce it (via a special decision).

Meanwhile, the Abbasids are the great blob of the 8th century. During this time, they historically ruled an area from the Indus in the east to the Maghreb in the west. Though "rule" is perhaps a misleading word in some cases. To reflect the fact that in reality they had limited control over many of their nominal vassals, we have made some of these areas independent in the game. But the Caliph still has plenty of de jure CBs and claims on those areas, so beware...

In Spain, Umayyad rule is fairly recently established, so you have an Arab Muslim dynasty ruling over mainly Visigothic Christian subjects.

View attachment 115219

Then there is the Frankish Empire. After Pepin died, his sons Charlemagne and Carloman inherited a kind of joint kingship over the Franks, with each of them ruling directly over a portion of the kingdom. In the game, this means the two brothers each have a king title but also a claim on the other's title. With powerful neighbors such as the Lombards, the Umayyads and the pagan Saxons, things may get very interesting here.

As you can see, the world in 769 is quite different from later starts, with many period-defining events still to unfold. Things such as the Holy Roman Empire (yes, you can found it), Vikings, Normans and Russians are still unheard of. There aren't even that many Karlings yet (!).

The 8th century is a strange and wonderful place. We hope that you'll enjoy it.
 
I just got caught up with the first dev diary. Does anyone else think they are going to go all the way back to the Fall of Rome and try to model everything from the Dark Ages onward?

The culture shifting idea is nice, but I have only seen that work really well for England. I rarely see Norman culture evolve in 867 starts, and I'd imagine it's going to be difficult to balance the rates of culture spread and ruler conversion. Especially since they need to pay more attention to christianization and hopefully the Great Schism.
 
The culture shifting idea is nice, but I have only seen that work really well for England. I rarely see Norman culture evolve in 867 starts, and I'd imagine it's going to be difficult to balance the rates of culture spread and ruler conversion. Especially since they need to pay more attention to christianization and hopefully the Great Schism.

Didn't they already say they weren't going to model the Great Schism?
 
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