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CK2 Dev Diary #103 - Long live the King!

Greetings.

Today we will put Pagans aside, go back to good old Catholics, and explore one of the new features coming for them with Holy Fury: Coronation Ceremonies.

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With this expansion, succeeding to the throne of a Catholic Kingdom or Empire will not be a simple matter of gaining the title itself. The new ruler will need to organize a Coronation Ceremony (via new intrigue decision) and be recognized as legitimate by a notable member of the Catholic Church.
If a Catholic ruler fails to be officially crowned, he will see his popularity slowly fade away each year, as his vassals grow more and more restless under what they perceive as an illegitimate King.

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Coronation is divided into two phases: preparation and ceremony.
During the preparation, the ruler will decide whom he wishes to be crowned by, he will meet the Church’s demands, and invest money to organize the ceremony. In the second phase, the ruler will host the ceremony itself, interacting with guests and ultimately receiving his crown.

When organizing a ceremony, a Catholic King can choose between three possible options when it comes to officiant priests: he can be crowned by a low-status theocratic vassal within his realm, by a powerful theocratic vassal within his realm (such as a Cardinal, Antipope or Prince-Bishop), or by the Pope himself. Catholic Emperors who fail to enact the Free Investiture succession on the other hand will be limited in their selection only to the Pope.
While being crowned by a local Bishop is a lot less prestigious, it is also much cheaper, as higher-ranking members of the Church will be prone to make outlandish requests, especially if they dislike the ruler requesting them to officiate his coronation.

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Requests may vary a lot, especially when it comes to the Pope: the Holy Father might ask you to change your realm’s Investiture laws, wage war against an Excommunicated ruler on behalf of the Papacy, or to restore some of the Central Italian provinces to the Holy See.
Be sure to be in good relations with the Pope before asking for a coronation if you wish to receive a more tolerable offer.

Once the demands of your chosen priest have been met, you will be able to select a budget for your ceremony which will determine the kind of coronation you will receive, the kind of flavor events tied to it and the number of guests participating in it.
An extravagant coronation is a prestigious event to which all your vassals, courtiers and even neighboring Christian rulers are invited, a secluded coronation is a private feast to which only your Council will have access to.

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Once the ceremony has been concluded, your character will receive a specific trait tied to the priest that crowned him, as well as retain any additional perks granted by the flavor events experienced during the feast leading up to the coronation.

You might have noticed from the screenshots that this new mechanic affects character portraits as well: Catholic Kings and Emperors that have not been crowned will no longer wear the high-tier headgear in Holy Fury, defaulting to the Ducal band instead until their rank has been officially recognized by the Church (naturally, if you do not own Holy Fury, Catholic Kings and Emperors will wear the appropriate gear by default as before).

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This is not the only portrait-related addition though: Holy Fury will bring to the game a series of special crown artifacts that will be visible on portraits whenever the characters are wearing them. Most of these artifacts can only be used when the character meets certain requirements and they are often tied to a specific title rather than a character’s dynasty.

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And this should be about it for this week.
 
1. become lunatic
2. get glitterhoof and make him bishop
3. get coronated by glitterhoof
4. profit

that reminds me of something, can glitterhoof become a saint?
 
The Irish crown was supposed to be made of peacock (or capercallie) feathers. Rumour had it that the son of Brian Ború, Donnchadh, deposited it with the pope when he died in Rome c 1065. Would make for an interesting event if an Irish king/emperor succeeds in getting crowned by the pope that he'd have the crown returned.
 
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Personally, I think Paradox should provide some sort of compensation to modders which good ideas were taken. Nothing huge, free copies of Holy Fury perhaps and/or direct acknowledgement for their contribution to CK2. We all know that mods make or break a game's longevity, Skyrim survived for much longer because it has so many good mods that people always recommend
I disagree. Paradox should not do this, it would be a bad idea.
they do not have to, and I do not wish for this. Modding is free, and the whole point of modding is (imo) to expand on areas that the vanilla game is lacking in, so that at best these presumably lacking features get added to the vanilla game.
So basically, I am not bashing against Holy Fury, even though it might sound like this if you don't read closely. I am actually gonna buy it (like I have bought all other CK2 DLCs), and I recommend people to do so!
All I would wish for is some sort of vague acknowledgment. Like "yeah, maybe some mods inspired this feature, but we did it it our way". Would be enough imo.


No they don't. What do mod fans expect a ticker tape parade extolling all that was borrowed?

A lack of acknowledgment does not equal a denial.
I agree. However, they do have actively denied it, which is the irritating part (for me).
I realize not everyone might be in a similar position and I probably am biased, and I might be missing something. But all that I have seen to this point are outright denials.
If anyone can disprove me, I would gladly correct myself.
 
The first picture just shows a flat -4 opinion. So does this mean you lose some opinion each year and then this modifier disappears on coronation?
It is a stacking ticking modifier of -2 per each year of rule while being uncrowned, for a total of 60 (it stops after 30 years).
 
Plus historically it makes no sense for pagan tribes to prove their rule as heaven sent when the entire tribal society is based around prestige to build and summon and

Pagan tribes (and non-pagan ones) were all about sacral kingship. They had to prove they were divinely ordained too.
 
Will there be any changes to the college of cardinals? I'm asking because the Pope asking for Italian provinces would likely result in an even more competitive college, given all the vasal priests.
 
Holy Fury will be a good DLC but damn I gotta say this was one lazy way to adapt coronations. Don't get me wrong. I like the flavor events for the Catholics and so on. But you should have added the same for all Christians, especially the Orthodox. It would have been cool for the Coptic Christians and Nestorians as well, but not mandatory. The orthodox however? Please stop neglecting them all the time. You could just have copied this entire event, excluded the Pope, and voila the event would have been done. Option 1 a normal bishop and Option 2 a Prince-Bishop with Orthodox terms. If you then wanted to add some specific mechanics, you could have made the 3rd option be a Patriarch. And why not even the Patriarch of Rome with the price of recognizing the superiority of the Pope? You could have done a lot, or you could have done a little. But you chose to do nothing. I'm satisfied with your work and the DLC overall, but I'm deeply dissatisfied about what could be but which isn't. I hope this will get corrected in the future.
 
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This is awesome!
Though I wonder how this affects pretender revolts? For instance if I am not officially seen as King and hated by my vassals, shurly someone will try to steal my throne. Will my strongest illoyal vassal then raise his arms? Or will we see our family members being suported by those? How would non family members justify their claim if they rebel?
And will their be the possebility to crown your self?
What About antipopes? And will it be less prestigious if the pope is your vassal?
 
Since a lot of people say that coronation is a mechanic from CK2+:

I didn't play CK2+ much (I prefer Historical Immersion, which also has a coronation event), so I don't remember how it works in that mod. Let's put the name aside. What are the effects of a coronation in CK2+, and how much can it vary?
Because here, it impacts:
- Legitimacy for the Church
- Legitimacy among vassals
- There's a ceremony that will apparently have events regarding relations with vassals and neighbours or just your council
- Coroners may make requests in exchange of the coronation. Seems to be various types of requests.
- you get a trait and a crown artifact, and fancy graphics too

Knowing the events in HI I really doubt that there's much more in CK2+. Knowing CK2 modders I'm convinced that it's what they may have tried to do through opinion modifiers and sets of events, but let's be honest: what's presented in this dev diary is a full-fledged and thouroughly thought feature that, even limited to Catholics, will adapt to a variety of situation in a very organic way. Crown events in HI (and probably CK2+) are flavourful events that can somewhat change the internal politics of a realm, but will never have a big impact. Being uncrowned was never more than an opinion modifier. Here it seems to be tied with certain events, and much more modular too. Even if mechanic-wise it seems similar to you, you have to admit that there's much more content there.
 
Another quick question, when someone like the Pope asks you to "wage war against X" in exchange for being coronated, will the tool tips when you hover your options clearly tell you if the war will give the land to the pope or simply put a catholic back on the throne?
 
Another quick question, when someone like the Pope asks you to "wage war against X" in exchange for being coronated, will the tool tips when you hover your options clearly tell you if the war will give the land to the pope or simply put a catholic back on the throne?
The Pope's request text should make it clear who you are attacking and what would be the end result of the war in case of victory.
 
Am I right to assume that the malus for not being coronated applies to both your first ruler that takes the crown, as well as his successors?

Said another way, if my dad was coronated by the Pope, died a year later, and I inherit the crown, I would also need to be coronated (eventually) to avoid the opinion malus- correct?

What about your intial ruler, if you start the game as a King? Is it assumed you were coronated before you pressed "play", or will becoming properly coronated be a high priority action to take as soon as possibly can?
 
Also, I'd like to suggest to make this 4-tiers instead of 3-tiers.

Tier 1: Normal Bishop
Tier 2: Count Bishop
Tier 3: Duke Bishop
Tier 4: King Bishop / Pope

And furthermore i'd like some other flavor events to be included. E.g you mentioned -2 opinion penalty for each year, stacking to a total of -60 if uncrowned (30 years).
Why not make it so that Cynical characters get -0 opinion of you while Zealous characters get -4? Having character traits affect this would be nice. Because I highly doubt everybody would be dissatisfied with you being uncoronated. The same also with people of another religion. They shouldn't really mind.
 
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Pagan tribes (and non-pagan ones) were all about sacral kingship. They had to prove they were divinely ordained too.
But not in the Christian way which is what this mechanic is. I would be really upset if pagans got something similar to coronations before Orthodox do.

And although Orthodox should have coronations, they shudn't have "this" coronation. From what i gather from other posts, it should be a special event for the Byzantine emperor alone... Would that be right?
 
It is a very cool feature, but do you plan to implement some kind of crowning ceremony for other religions? It seems that this mechanic will go immersively with all castle-based playthroughs (excluding tribal kings/ emperors of course), at least from my experience playing CK2+, where all playable non-tribal/nomad kings were able to be coronated.
 
I did all my Dev Diaries long ago, so features that were added after them (such as the map changes) do not appear in their screenshots.
Does that mean that, unlike other PDX games, these DDs are not subject to the normal disclaimer of non-final numbers/art is not final?
 
Thanks for all those straight to the point answers, @Silfae, very appreciated! Almost as good as Holy Fury. ;)
 
I disagree. Paradox should not do this, it would be a bad idea.
they do not have to, and I do not wish for this. Modding is free, and the whole point of modding is (imo) to expand on areas that the vanilla game is lacking in, so that at best these presumably lacking features get added to the vanilla game.
Companies pay a lot of money to get a vague understanding of what their customers want. Paradox gets a lot of very valuable economic info (that is, customers' wants) from the information they gathered, thanking active members of modding community is not a bad idea I think.

Although I guess if a mod has plenty of contributors, it can be a headache to solve
 
Does that mean that, unlike other PDX games, these DDs are not subject to the normal disclaimer of non-final numbers/art is not final?
They are, that is the point.
 
Since a lot of people say that coronation is a mechanic from CK2+:

I didn't play CK2+ much (I prefer Historical Immersion, which also has a coronation event), so I don't remember how it works in that mod. Let's put the name aside. What are the effects of a coronation in CK2+, and how much can it vary?
Because here, it impacts:
- Legitimacy for the Church
- Legitimacy among vassals
- There's a ceremony that will apparently have events regarding relations with vassals and neighbours or just your council
- Coroners may make requests in exchange of the coronation. Seems to be various types of requests.
- you get a trait and a crown artifact, and fancy graphics too

Knowing the events in HI I really doubt that there's much more in CK2+. Knowing CK2 modders I'm convinced that it's what they may have tried to do through opinion modifiers and sets of events, but let's be honest: what's presented in this dev diary is a full-fledged and thouroughly thought feature that, even limited to Catholics, will adapt to a variety of situation in a very organic way. Crown events in HI (and probably CK2+) are flavourful events that can somewhat change the internal politics of a realm, but will never have a big impact. Being uncrowned was never more than an opinion modifier. Here it seems to be tied with certain events, and much more modular too. Even if mechanic-wise it seems similar to you, you have to admit that there's much more content there.
Correct, in so many ways.
HIP and CK2+ mostly share that mechanic, so you should have been seeing it. While I wouldn't call the CK2+ version "barebones", indeed the Holy Fury version seems much more fleshed out and naturally integrates deeper into the game than any mod ever could. That's inevitable given that Paradox devs coded this game, and have direct access to the game engine. A DLC should be more fleshed out then a mod, and Holy Fury seems to be doing a good job in that regard. Paradox devs seem to have invested a lot of time and effort into making their features stand out in quality and dept, and I applaud that. Holy Fury is going to be a great DLC, and you should buy it regardless of whether you play with mods or not.

This might be one of my last posts because I feel like the discussion about CK2+ vs Holy Fury is actually not fruitful, and this thread should be about the vanilla DLC.

However, let me make one thing clear because it can't be stated enough times: Any accusations of Holy Fury "stealing" features from CK2+ or any other mods are baseless.
Holy Fury does not have "stolen" any mechanics from mods whatsoever. Everything that has been shown to this point has hinted that all holy Fury code is 100% new and unique, and nothing "fishy" is going on.
Period.

The entire (reasonable) discussion of mods vs DLC resolves about inspiration and ideas, which are abstract concepts that can not be (dis)proven either way.
If at all, Paradox is - in my personal opinion - at a "moral" fault for not declaring their sources of inspiration. That's it. And that might be a personal feeling, so I'm not going to shout anymore about it and derail this thread.
Let's just agree that Holy Fury will be a great DLC, the feature presented in this dev diary contributing to that, and that's the most important thing.