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CK2 Dev Diary #61: The Dragon Throne

Hello folks!

The Swedish summer vacations are drawing to a close and I’m back and eager to talk some more Crusader Kings! What better way to kick off the end of summer than by revealing the theme of the next expansion? Yes my friends, it’s China! Now, before you get all emotional one way or the other, we’re not actually going to expand the map farther east. We considered doing that, long and hard, but eventually decided on a different approach that would not strain performance and stability beyond reason. As I mentioned in Dev Diary #51, it bothers me that the eastern edge of the map just cuts off in such an unnatural way. Playing in the Orient, you should always feel like you’re in the shadow of the Dragon. It should be an interesting and dynamic region right in the center of the Old World. So, we came up with the idea of adding China as a political entity even though you cannot actually see most of its territory.

The Dragon Throne.png


There is a new screen you can open up, which, if you’re within range of China, allows you to interact with the Emperor in various interesting ways. China can grant many wonderful boons if you’re in the emperor’s good graces, but, depending on the current status and policy of the Dragon Throne, the emperor can also decide you’d better show some respect and become a tributary state. When there is turmoil in China, displaced or fleeing armies can arrive on the map and cause all kinds of trouble. China can even seize and rule actual provinces, but the emperor leaves the governing of such areas to the Governor of the Western Protectorate (or, to be a stickler, the “Protectorate General to Pacify the West”.) Potentially, this on-map part of China can grow enormously powerful, but you should not have to worry too much as long as you enjoy the emperor’s grace…

That’s going to be all for now. I’m sure you have a million questions, but you’ll have to wait for the upcoming dev diaries. :)

Meanwhile, remember to tune in to our CK2 livestreams between 16 to 18:00 CET!
 
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So, does the upper part of the interface say how the Silk Road is open, and that there is an ongoing rebellion in China?
 
China was not united for most of CK2's time period. I wonder how this will be portrayed if at all.
They are talking about turmoil in the dev diary, so they will probably be some events. Though I doubt we will have the tripartite Song-(Liao)Jin-Xia situation represented.
 
What I want to know is how much we'll be able to mess with China.

China messing with us without us being able to mess with them back is not particularly interesting.
 
Well we can already see a new portrait for the Chinese emperor, and two new portrait borders, so there's your cultures and government types right there. We also know that Chinese emperors can dislike Buddhism, which means they aren't Buddhist, so there's at least one new religion introduced for China (along with Bon for Tibet, confirmed in previous DDs).

There was really just one emperor who didn't like Buddhism, Wuzong, and it probably because monasteries were getting too rich and the government needed money so they just used Buddhism as an excuse to confiscate their property.
 
Well we can already see a new portrait for the Chinese emperor, and two new portrait borders, so there's your cultures and government types right there. We also know that Chinese emperors can dislike Buddhism, which means they aren't Buddhist, so there's at least one new religion introduced for China (along with Bon for Tibet, confirmed in previous DDs).

I don't know that the Emperor needs to have a religion (especially one that might only occur off-map) to dislike Buddhism. The interaction mechanism doesn't necessarily require the Emperor to be a normal CK2 character - I could even see it causing problems if he was.

Edit: Tributary mechanics and maybe more holdings per province for the eastern nomads might solve most of the issues with being stomped on by the silk road realms. Possibly with a change to Nomads' starting population/manpower/troops too.
 
That's never going to happen because sweden looks awful in that projection.
there's nothing stopping anybody from distorting the map. *gasp*

i just chose one projection which presented every area of interest without too much of a useless margin, but this should be properly tinkered with.

the way i see it, Europe should be much closer to equirectangular, and of course taller, with Africa squished up along the vertical axis to make room, everything south of the Horn especially so. America on the other hand should remain twisted to have Newfoundland and Baffin Island line up close with Greenland. this projection does additionally impart a nice feeling that it is indeed the edge of the known world.

Far East meanwhile could be spread out radially a little bit, pushing parts of Australia and Siberia out of frame to better accomodate Japan, China and the Malay Archipelago (hopefully improving clickability of the islands).

the Middle East, India and Central Asia would need a slight distortion to align with the neighboring regions, but other than that they seem fine.
 
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So, does the upper part of the interface say how the Silk Road is open, and that there is an ongoing rebellion in China?

That's a nice catch. It seems very likely that those two things mean precisely what you say.
 
That would be awesome as a long-term project. Though it would likely require some naval restrictions, to prevent players sailing from Scandinavia to the Congo basin in 900 AD. Maybe a naval range mechanic that works similar to diplomatic range (i.e. you can only enter this seazone if it is within X distance of the closest port in your realm or subrealm). A hard limit like this would probably be easier for the AI to understand than something like naval attrition, too.
yup, it definitely needs a fleet range.

another desirable restriction i can think of is the cost of improving a holding, which should scale with distance for overseas provinces (to prevent Newfoundland, the Congo and the Philippines from being developed into another Venice).
 
yup, it definitely needs a fleet range.

another desirable restriction i can think of is the cost of improving a holding, which should scale with distance for overseas provinces (to prevent Newfoundland, the Congo and the
Philippines from being developed into another Venice).

And now that I see this, I'd say tie the improvements more strongly to tech level, and impede the spread of tech. It's never really going to make it across the ocean/Sahara.
 
That's real nice. How did you make that?
i used G.Projector. it's a freeware tool provided by NASA's Goddard Institute. the exact projection is Hill Eucyclic, centered around 70 degrees of longitude east.

there are also a few fun online tools for playing around with projections, most of them are easily googlable. i wish i could find one which would let you select an area of the globe (not necessarily a rectangular one) and make a rectangular map out of it, but i haven't had much luck finding it so far.
 
It's not really a nursery rhyme as much as a phrase that is said at the beginning of every round of the game, the phrase is.
"Kejsaren av kina tycker inte om te, men han tycker om...?"
"The emperor of china does not like tea (actually the letter t) but he likes...?"
And then the person is supposed to guess nouns that the emperor likes. And if the word does not contain the letter in question (t is first round other rounds it kept secret) the person who asks says "The emperor likes [noun]" or if it contains the letter then he said "the emperor dislikes [noun]".
I have a hard time thinking that it's a coincidence. Generally the guessers win if they can get an entire round without anyone saying something the emperor dislikes then the next person is the asker.
I know the game you mean (although not by any reference to China I was always taught it as a generic "he likes" but that might just be a cultural thing) and the mechanic was not made with that game in mind.
 
there are also a few fun online tools for playing around with projections, most of them are easily googlable. i wish i could find one which would let you select an area of the globe (not necessarily a rectangular one) and make a rectangular map out of it, but i haven't had much luck finding it so far.

G.Projector is nice if you don't have access to a UI-based GIS tool like ArcGIS or GlobalMapper. For doing simple rotations and cropping to a preferred size you can also use Hugin, which can lead to results like this, showing the entire target area of the "Old World" if there ever is a movement to accurate projections.

QDrucO3.jpg
 
The mechanic to adding China seems interesting, so can we also expect SE Asia and Japan alongside China.

In mods, maybe.

As DLC, I highly doubt it. They had nowhere near the same impact on the worldmap as China did at that time, not to mention, they're considerably further away.
 
The mechanic to adding China seems interesting, so can we also expect SE Asia and Japan alongside China.

a trade route with sri vajaya would be nice at the least snaking along the Indian coast to Ethiopia then to Alexandria then finally ending in Constantinople