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CK2 - Dev Diary #128 - The Iron Century Finale

Good evening, or morning, or potentially afternoon. First off, I am happy to announce that if everything goes as planned we will release Patch 3.2 with the Iron Century bookmark on Tuesday. Yes, this Tuesday. The 28th of May. So for today's DD we will take a look at some of the remaining things we've added, starting with 5 new decisions.

Brother’s Legacy: For those who want to take up the legacy of Mardavij, we have added a special decision for his brother Vushmgir. This will give you a claim on Mardavij’s old regions as well as convert Vushmgir and any of his family to Zoroastrianism. In addition, you will receive Mardavij’s new bloodline, if you choose to pick up Zoroastrianism.

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Local Traditions of Rus: For the Norse Germanic rulers of Kievan Rus, it might be a good idea to turn to the local traditions (see Russian culture and Slavic faith) if you want better relations with your vassals. If Yngvar isn't played by a player, the AI will choose to use this decision at game start.

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Bulgarian Empire: This is not actually for the 936 bookmark itself, as… Well… There already is a Bulgarian Empire there, but rather for the fans of Bulgaria who want to recreate history in the earlier bookmarks.

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Establish Cairo: As you might know, Cairo wasn’t actually an important city at the start of our bookmark. Or the two earlier bookmark start dates (see 769 and 867) either. It was not until the Fatimids invaded the Ikhshidids and took control of the region that they established Cairo as the capital of their Caliphate, and quickly built it up over a couple of years. Similarly, if you play as the Fatimids and invade Egypt, you get to make Cairo a special city as well! Congratulations! Woo!

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Establish Castle Habsburg: For those of you who are particularly interested in weirdly shaped jawlines, we have added a decision to form Castle Habsburg. If you play as anyone of the Etichonen dynasty and hold the province of Basel, you will have the decision to establish the Habsburg castle. All close (living) relatives of the founder in question will become a part of the new von Habsburg dynasty.

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Now then, onward to the new bloodlines we are adding. One of the goals when adding these was to try and keep them pretty insular for the 936 Bookmark, so you'd rarely see them outside of it. We've added 6 new ones, and we'll start with the three pretty generic ones:
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Now onwards to the two special Muslim ones. Both the Shia and Qarmatian Leadership makes it easier to create the religious head titles, skipping several requirements for the holder.
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And finally, the Otto the Great bloodline. Princely Elective Boon makes any holder of the bloodline more likely to be picked by vassals as the new Emperor in a Princely Elective system. You receive this bloodline if you manage to form the HRE as Otto.
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And finally, the changelog for the new patch:

Code:
###################
# Free Features
###################
- New Bookmark
    - 'The Iron Century', set in 936
- New Cultures
    - Sardinian
    - Slovieni
- New Shiite Heresy
    - Qarmatian
- Map Reworks
    - Portugal and south-western Spain
        - 2 New Navigable rivers
        - 1 New Duchy
        - 3 New Provinces
    - Egypt
        - The Nile has been made navigable
        - 7 New Provinces
        - 3 New Duchies
- Added 3D models for Hagia Sophia.

###################
# Interface
###################
- Changed the previous Great Work shortcut in the great Works view to B from P in order to be more consistent with other views.
- Fixed the Great Works ledger page being present even if the Game Rules were set to not include Great Works.

###################
# User modding
###################
- Added NUDGE_WONDER_MODEL_LAND and NUDGE_WONDER_MODEL_COAST Lua defines.
- Added destroy_wonder effect.
- Added set_wonder_model effect.
- Fixed the wonder view modifier text lacking a newline when used in single column mode.
- Resuming wonder no longer checks is_active triggers.

###################
# Database
###################
- Corrected the position of the docks in Ceredigion so that it is now connected to a body of water.

###################
# Bug Fixes
###################
- Non bastard children now correctly uses their biological father's base attributes, instead of the default value, when calculating their yearly chance to increase their base attributes when growing up.
- Corrected the positioning of the Notre Dame Great Work model.
- Adjusted the brightness of the Cathedral Great Work texture.
- Reduced the size of the Cathedral Great Work model by 20%.
- Fixed clicking on the minimap to move the camera not working properly with GUI scaling.
- Fixed assassination plot event description incorrectly using the word poisonous instead of venomous.
- Fixed the highway robber band event not targeting Great Works in the character's demesne before Great Works in neighboring provinces.
- Fixed a faulty trigger in the decision for converting to tribal holdings to castles.
- Fixed an issue with the event to convert Hagia Sophia, which would cause the Great Work to not be active for Muslim rulers.
- Fixed an issue that stopped the Golden Crown Feature from showing up in the list of available Features for a stage 4 Statue Great Work.
- Fixed building the Moat Pit Feature on a Great Fortress enabling the other moat Features to be built on any Great Fortress.
- Fixed building the Bells Feature on a Great Cathedral enabling the Golden Bells Feature to be built on any Great Cathedral.
- Fixed Great Works Features that require a stored relic to be active, being active just from any relic being stored in any Feature owned by the same owner.
- Fixed moat Features for the Great Fortress not being visible in the available Features tab until the Pit Moat Feature was built.
- Fixed a crash caused by corrupted Great Works in save games.
- Fixed court size modifiers on buildings in the capital province not being applied.
- Fixed tooltips on buildings outside of the capital province claiming that they should provice a court size modifier.
- Fixed the Hagia Sophia conversion event triggering even though its culture already matches your religion.
- Rename messages should no longer be listed in the message settings.
- Retinue size is now also calculated from character modifiers.
- Moved retinue size modifier in Palace Great Work to owner scope.
- Slightly reworked order of operations for calculating max retinue cap.
- Homosexual female lovers are no longer referred to as male.
- Made sure event about mystic dying has the right border decoration.
- Newly built Great Work features no longer always get statue descriptions.

I am excited to see what people will say about the new bookmark on Tuesday. Have fun!

And a great thanks to WJS for helping me out by writing an AAR about Thankmar. Here's a link to the final chapter: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...century-mini-aar.1179523/page-3#post-25488768
 
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I would not be too worried about the future of CK2. Holy Fury sold well from what i understand and their whole business strategy is more DLC sales = more DLC.

If you want more reassurance look at their language in the Iron Century announcement post last week, here is an interesting line used by Tuscany 'and our first in the 10th century'. Firstly i don't think this means they are planing another 10th Century start any time soon but the open language does not sound like the language of a game planning to stop development any time soon.

While I also originally thought that more DLC sales = more DLC with the release of the new free patches I have noticed something. The retention time of players increases dramatically when free DLC is released. Player wise every DLC except for Holy Fury only gives a boost of players for about a month. Holy Fury only lasted 2-4 months but the small DLC worthy content that they have continously added in small amounts every month keeps the retention time up meaning that the overall playerbase is increasing. While this does give a small temporary malus to sales it gears them up for the long term which Ebba Ljungerud has stated in many of the quarterly reports is the goal of Paradox at the moment. I also believe more DLC is coming because there is no reason to try and up retention time without something coming, even if a new player (or returning player who hasn't played in a while) buys a few DLC it won't equal itself out unless they buy at least 3-4 (on sale) and that is not a given. However if a large DLC is coming that they want a larger player base to help spike it (If they create another equivalent of Holy Fury they could keep >20k people daily for a while).
 
Work on it started around Christmas last year.
...and now we have proof that the CK2 team is dusting off all of the cool stuff that has been shelved over the years and/or partially finished and adding it to the game because they can and because it's cool.

I know in my heart this is the "end game" for CK2, but I mean, if you're going to wind down a game, this is the way to do it.
 
Bulgarian Empire: This is not actually for the 936 bookmark itself, as… Well… There already is a Bulgarian Empire there, but rather for the fans of Bulgaria who want to recreate history in the earlier bookmarks.
BTW - any cultural split Bolghar into Bulgarian?
 
Establish Castle Habsburg: For those of you who are particularly interested in weirdly shaped jawlines, we have added a decision to form Castle Habsburg. If you play as anyone of the Etichonen dynasty and hold the province of Basel, you will have the decision to establish the Habsburg castle. All close (living) relatives of the founder in question will become a part of the new von Habsburg dynasty.
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While I'm glad over the introduction of cadet branches, this decision seems rather poorly implemented. Close relatives are parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, siblings, aunts and uncles (piblings?), nieces & nephews (niblings?) but not cousins for some reason. Some of these might very well be dead. What happens if your grandfather is dead but you have a living uncle? He'll get dislodged from the family tree. What happens if everyone are alive but your uncle has three children? They too, will be dislodged. Etc, etc.

You might have thought of all this already, but going from the description provided (and various examples of dislodged family members already present in the game) it seems that you haven't.
Bulgarian Empire: This is not actually for the 936 bookmark itself, as… Well… There already is a Bulgarian Empire there, but rather for the fans of Bulgaria who want to recreate history in the earlier bookmarks.
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I'm curious of the "Kingdom of Wallachia is forfeit" bit. Does that mean that the title is disabled? If so, what's the reasoning? Is Wallachia disabled in the 936 start date?
And speaking of landed titles, one thing that's been bugging me for a while now is that k_hungary can only be created by Hungarians and Avars, even when it's called Panonia. Meanwhile players of any culture can create k_magyar. My suggestion is that you add ai = no as a third possible condition that allows creating k_hungary.
Agreed, I'm wondering why k_magyar needs to be formable at all. Without Horse Lords it's held by the tribal Hungarians and destroyed by the decision to Form Hungary. With Horse Lords its just used to decide the name of the Nomad realm; it's immediately destroyed afterwards. The title k_pechenegs serves the exact same purpose as k_magyar (albeit for Pechenegs not Hungarians) but has the Creation Condition "Never". Why the inconstancy?
 
Big fan of these new & interesting historical decisions - would it be possible for future updates to add more such optional decisions to add more historical flavour without railroading too much?
 
Actually I'm disappointed for not getting anything new for Armenia. Maybe add something for building city of 1001 churches (Ani)?
Also, I'd like to know why the county of Syunik is not part of Bagratid Armenia?
 
Will Zoroastrians finally get a religious great work?
 
Given that bloodlines are supposed to be the legacy of the great and legendary wouldn't it make more sense to have Æthelstan's bloodline actually be the bloodline of Alfred the Great? It would also be nice if Alfred actually had a bloodline, or the ability to gain one via event in the Old Gods start date. I know Æthelstan was the first real King of England and accomplished many great things himself, but it's Alfred that has the epithet 'the Great' and is remembered a lot more in history and legend than Æthelstan is.

Aside from that minor nag I'm really impressed with this update (and how it's free!) and am really looking forward to trying it out come Tuesday. Thanks for all the great work.
 
Given that bloodlines are supposed to be the legacy of the great and legendary wouldn't it make more sense to have Æthelstan's bloodline actually be the bloodline of Alfred the Great? It would also be nice if Alfred actually had a bloodline, or the ability to gain one via event in the Old Gods start date. I know Æthelstan was the first real King of England and accomplished many great things himself, but it's Alfred that has the epithet 'the Great' and is remembered a lot more in history and legend than Æthelstan is.

Aside from that minor nag I'm really impressed with this update (and how it's free!) and am really looking forward to trying it out come Tuesday. Thanks for all the great work.

I 100% agree with this--Alfred is the one much more famous for saving England from that particular wave of Norse invaders, and for more or less saving literacy from extinction in English lands as well. As Æthelstan is of his line, it wouldn't require adding a new bloodline or taking it from him, just transferring who began it.