Crusader Kings 2

[Arakhor]

*shoots GAGA with extreme prejudice*

 

[GAGA Extrem]

*shoots GAGA with extreme prejudice*

EVTTITLE: A shot in the dark
EVTDESC: It seems like your words have made you some powerful enemies at court. As you stroll through a remote corner of the palace, you notice a strange noice. You turn around, only to look into the frenzied eyes of [From.GetBestName], pointing a gun at you! Before you can even react you hear a loud bang and feel as if you are kicked by a horse. Your fall to the ground seems like an eternity and after you finally collapse, your vision turns blurry...
EVTOPTA: But... It was... Only a joke!
EVTTOOLTIPA: [Root.GetBestName] is maimed by the attack.
EVTOPTB: Totally... worth... the pain...
EVTTOOLTIPB: [Root.GetBestName] dies!

 

[Arakhor]

From my (quite possibly faulty) reading of that event, it seems that your would-be assassin is the one who will end up maimed or dead.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

From my (quite possibly faulty) reading of that event, it seems that your would-be assassin is the one who will end up maimed or dead.

Nah, the event chain was triggered by ROOT. It then triggered the assassination event for FROM, which in return triggered this event for ROOT.

 

[Sonereal]

For those interested.

That massive map increase will be free to everyone with a copy of CK2, for example. You won't be able to play as the new leaders and factions, but you will be able to meet, barter with and assassinate them. The free update also expands Africa with additions to Abyssinia and Nubia - the remnants of a planned future mini-expack that the designers decided to release as a bonus. That's in addition to Steam Workshop support, Steam multiplayer support, and smaller fixes that the CK2 community have been asking for, like a borderless windowed mode.

Source

 

[cybrxkhan]

So overall I feel kind of ambiguous about Rajas of India. On one hand it's nice they're adding all these things, on the other hand I fear we'll just get bland new groups to play with that use more or less the same mechanics as everyone else with a thin layer of flavor disguise. But more importantly even though the devs have promised extensive optimization and performance improvements, I'm not sure it'll be enough.

Though regardless the fact that most of Central Asia is in is awesome. And the east Africa improvements. Those are more interesting and awesome to me than the Indian stuff.

 

[Synobun]

So overall I feel kind of ambiguous about Rajas of India. On one hand it's nice they're adding all these things, on the other hand I fear we'll just get bland new groups to play with that use more or less the same mechanics as everyone else with a thin layer of flavor disguise. But more importantly even though the devs have promised extensive optimization and performance improvements, I'm not sure it'll be enough.

Though regardless the fact that most of Central Asia is in is awesome. And the east Africa improvements. Those are more interesting and awesome to me than the Indian stuff.

If they're optimizing it to be more like EU4 then we should be alright. EU4 runs better on my crappy laptop than CK2 does. One thing to take away from this is that Paradox had the opportunity to split Rajas into 4-5 separate DLCs and is instead opting to release it all within a singular pack that has been in development for what, 2-3 months now?

I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

[PhilBowles]

If they're optimizing it to be more like EU4 then we should be alright. EU4 runs better on my crappy laptop than CK2 does. One thing to take away from this is that Paradox had the opportunity to split Rajas into 4-5 separate DLCs and is instead opting to release it all within a singular pack that has been in development for what, 2-3 months now?

I doubt it's compaable to EU4 because the reason for lag in CKII is the characters - EUIV only ever has to worry about 200-odd 'players' (nations) and I don't think it saves past game states. CKII keeps all characters in its memory, including long-dead ones, which becomes unwieldy after a couple of centuries.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I doubt it's compaable to EU4 because the reason for lag in CKII is the characters - EUIV only ever has to worry about 200-odd 'players' (nations) and I don't think it saves past game states. CKII keeps all characters in its memory, including long-dead ones, which becomes unwieldy after a couple of centuries.

A very good point. The game slowed slightly for me after TOG came out at the 1066 start due to the new characters. The devs better have optimized things well.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Also, new ROI dev diary up: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...II-Rajas-of-India-Dev-Diary-2-Indian-Religion

For those who can't access it or are too lazy to click the link:

Crusader Kings II: Rajas of India - Dev Diary 2 - Indian Religion
New week, new dev diary! This time, I am going to talk of the new religions and their intricacies. As I mentioned last week, there is now a new Indian religion group with three religions; Hindu, Buddhist and Jain. What you get when you buy Rajas of India is the ability to play as a ruler of one of these religions, with all the associated mechanics.



The general idea with all three Indian religions is that they are pluralistic and tolerant, especially toward each other. Thus, none of them have any heresies to worry about. Instead, low religion authority will cause various negative events to fire, much in the same way that having negative money does. This tolerance is also reflected in province revolt risk and vassals' opinions of their lieges. Instead of heresies, characters may belong to an accepted branch of their religion. Thus, for example, a Hindu can be a Shaivist, Shaktist or one of several other denominations. This is a character trait. It is also possible to pick a specific patron god for various bonuses.

Characters of all three religions can take one wife only, but are allowed concubines, like pagans and Zoroastrians. Another great thing about the Indian religions is that they allow the designation of a favorite child as heir, regardless of the specific succession law (though abiding by the gender preference law, of course.) Lastly, and quite importantly, it's possible for players to switch between the three Indian religions (tentatively, once per lifetime at a steep Piety cost) in order to take advantage of their special mechanics when needed. Right, so those are most of the major commonalities. Of course, there are also some similarities in the kinds of events that characters of all three religions tend to get (but I'm saving that for a later dev diary!)



Hinduism is the most warlike of the three; Hindu rulers have access to the normal Holy War casus belli. In addition, they are allowed to raid neighboring provinces of non-Indian religions. Hindus, however, also need to deal with the caste system. All Hindus can be born into one of the three castes that we represent in the game; Brahmin, Kshatriya, or Vaishya. This is represented as a character trait. Priests are expected to be Brahmins, feudal rulers Kshatriyas and burghers Vaishyas. Marrying into the wrong caste - or worse - being the wrong caste, gives serious opinion penalties with other Hindus. Children born to mixed caste parents will get the lower of the two. Characters with no caste at all are the lowest of all - the untouchables. This system limits your marriage options and tends to cause strife in your realm. It is possible to get a higher caste trait through a special decision, but it is hard and costly.

Buddhists are represented as the most philosophically minded of the Indian religions. (While perhaps not entirely fair, they were historically known for their huge universities and libraries.) They don't have to worry about caste, but rulers who ever plan to switch to Hinduism might still want to take heed of it. Buddhists cannot raid and their Holy War CB is less powerful (currently, counties instead of duchies), but they do get a great bonus to Learning, meaning that they will have unmatched long-term technological progress - if they can survive...

Finally, we have Jainism, which is probably the most peaceful religion on the planet. For Jains, the concept of Ahimsa - non-violence - is the cornerstone of their faith. Thus, Jains do not have any kind of Holy War CB, and violent acts have more serious repercussions on Piety (called Karma for the Indian religions) and opinions. Too limiting? Perhaps, but there are some serious benefits as well; Jains can have much bigger demesnes, get a flat opinion bonus from their vassals, and basically don't have to worry about provincial revolts (though the effect is less on characters and provinces of non-Indian faiths.)

That's a brief summary of the new mechanics, but I should mention that although the information I've outlined above is true in the current build, it might change quite a lot for balance reasons. For example, it's rather tricky to make the three Indian religions equally beneficial, only suitable for different circumstances and play styles.



That's all for now. Until next week, folks!

(Regrettably, I have no relevant screenshots for you this time since a lot of the graphics is still missing. The ones I do have are of the de jure map modes in India, as promised.)

The devs also mentioned Nestorianism is now its own branch of Christianity in the thread - long overdue!

Anyhow while I'm still worried about performance, overall this is looking good and exciting, the three religions do look like they'll have nice play styles. There were also nice de jure map pics in the post.

 

[Arakhor]

That does look interesting. FWIW, I rather missed your posting the DDs here, Cybrx!

 

[cybrxkhan]

That does look interesting. FWIW, I rather missed your posting the DDs here, Cybrx!

Haha, I was the only one posting the dds after a while, wasn't I?

 

[SouthernKing]

That makes me wonder - where is the CK2 MLP mod?

Still in development I think

 

[Arakhor]

Haha, I was the only one posting the dds after a while, wasn't I?

I thought it was your job!

 

[SouthernKing]

I doubt it's compaable to EU4 because the reason for lag in CKII is the characters - EUIV only ever has to worry about 200-odd 'players' (nations) and I don't think it saves past game states. CKII keeps all characters in its memory, including long-dead ones, which becomes unwieldy after a couple of centuries.

Honestly though, for me, CK2 at top speed has always run about 2.5x faster than EU4 at top speed - so much so that CK2 is the only Paradox game (aside from Darkest Hour) where I don't play regularly on top speed. Which seems kind of odd. I've never had performance issues with unmodded CK2, even as late as the 13th/14th centuries from the 867 start.

 

[Robert Can't]

Got this in a card yesterday:

A Courtier hands you a pink letter sent from an admirer. Do you..?

Squeal In delight! (Available because you possess the squeaky trait)
Work out it was sent by your doting boyfriend (Available because you have the Genius trait)
Burn it and find a new boyfriend (Available because you have the attractive trait)

 

[Arakhor]

That's awesome, Robert!

 

[cybrxkhan]

That's pretty cool

 

[Antilogic]

Talk about knowing a person's tastes. You aren't picking 3, right?

 

[Robert Can't]

Being the squeaky person I am I inadvertently picked the first option.