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CK2 Dev Diary #95: Amending Africa

Greetings!

We’ve shown you plenty of map changes already, including updates to Russia, Scandinavia, and most recently Italy and the Alps. But surely, we couldn’t do all of these wonderful updates without looking at the continent that deserves it the most, right?

So let’s have a look at Africa.

You read that right. Africa is finally getting the love and attention it deserves! Northern Africa and Mali have long needed an update. Where counties resembled squares and rectangles more than anything else. But no more!

Let’s start with the northern kingdoms. The kingdoms themselves remain the same. Only Mauretania has been renamed to Maghreb, and has along with the kingdom of Africa been placed in the Empire of Maghreb. Mainly to break down the very large Arabian Empire slightly. On the county level, every single county has been repainted in order to place them where they should be and give the borders a much more natural feeling.

01_updated_maghreb.png


02_updated_k_africa.png


All in all, the new provinces and additional holding slots will make North Africa stronger than before. But to offer additional protection against aggressive Holy Wars from the major powers of Europe, we’ve increased the number of sea zones slightly in the mediterranean. The stronger realms of central Europe will now have to first conquer their way down to the coast of Iberia, Southern Italy, or go through Mallorca or Sardinia, before they will be able to reach the shores of Africa. This should give the realms in Africa some time before the Europeans attempt to make their way onto the continent.

As for Mali. The area has about twice the number of provinces compared to what they had before. This in turn allows for more than just the lonely kingdom of Mali to exist, which has been split into the three kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhay. One kingdom for each of the major powers that inhabited the area during the timeframe of the game. They’ll all still be part of the empire of Mali, which is finally no longer the only empire with a single De Jure kingdom.

03_updated_mali.png


Here is an overview of the De Jure kingdoms:

04_west_african_kingdoms.png


Updating the existing parts of the map is not the only thing we’ve done for Africa however. Kanem-Bornu and the region around lake Chad is now on the map as well! The area consists of the two kingdoms Hausaland and Kanem. These consist of three and four duchies respectively and together form the empire of Kanem-Bornu. So not only do we get new rulers and titles to play with, but it allows both east and west to move across the continent without always having to expand north and, usually, through a Muslim blob that more often than not forms in Northern Africa and Arabia. Instead, you’ll be able to cross Africa through Ghana/Mali in the west, through the Sahara and the Fezzan corridor in the center, and finally through Wadai and Abyssinia in the east.

05_kanem_bornu.png


Let’s not stop there though.

To make Africa more distinct from other regions, a second trade route has been added to the game; the Trans-Saharan Trade Route.

06_trade_route.png


It requires either Horse Lords or Jade Dragon to be unlocked and functions very much like the updated Silk Road from 2.8. There is however, a certain twist to it. The base value of the trade route is very low. Granting next to no bonuses to the counties it passes through. What you need to do in order to benefit from it, is to control certain locations along the trade route and construct unique production buildings in established trade posts. To be clear though, these are merely special buildings within the trade posts just like you would upgrade a trade post on the Silk Road. These buildings represent some of the trade goods that historically had a large impact on the trade in the region. The most important of these will be the Gold Mines.

08_gold_mine.png


There are two Gold Mines located on the map, both of them in the kingdom of Mali. The Gold Mines will allow Mali to amass great wealth. Just like they did historically. If you would prefer to do it differently and take the mines from them, conquering Africa will very much be worth the effort. Not only will Gold Mines greatly increase the value of the Trans-Saharan trade, it will also grant the owner a large bonus to the county’s income. There will also be some flavour events that can trigger for anyone owning them.

Remember that what I’ve shown here is still a work in progress and things may be subject to change. Now, let’s wrap up the dev diary with some smaller additions.

We’ve renamed the West African religion to simply “African”, as to not exclude the newly added region around lake Chad, and updated the Patron Deities accordingly. The religion will also get a new set of shields for displaying the CoAs on the map.

african_shields.jpg


I hope that you look forward to these changes and the overall improvements for Africa!
 
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I mean that's nice and all but even with that I doubt it'll be anywhere near as fast as the 1.0 version of the game

I believe the game currently runs faster than 1.0 did (though with there being no Steam branch for that version it isn't possible for me to check), and even if it doesn't there are other things than the amount of provinces (and characters) that will factor into the performance cost, such as the fact that we've gotten lots of new events over the years (though smarter scripting (and new scripting commands) means the cost for them now is less than it once would have been). I don't have an exact count for all DLCs, but WoL contained about 567 events around the time of MNM's release, and MNM had about 616 events at that time (and has gotten some more), so a conservative estimate would be 2000 events added post-release.
 
"But I don't care about this region, so it's totally worthless and should be removed from the game!"

- A frightening number of people on these forums

It really is quite a limiting worldview. If you don't like it, you don't have to play in it. But a lot of people do enjoy playing in it. So why would you make the game less enjoyable for them? And even if you don't play in a certain region, just having that region makes the map feel more full, and adds more possibilities to the areas you do play in.
 
It really is quite a limiting worldview. If you don't like it, you don't have to play in it. But a lot of people do enjoy playing in it. So why would you make the game less enjoyable for them? And even if you don't play in a certain region, just having that region makes the map feel more full, and adds more possibilities to the areas you do play in.
A lot of them justify it on the grounds of slowing the rest of the game down. India was a big issue for that when it was first added and talk of China potentially being to the map as well probably upset a lot of people who had lower level PCs.
 
How is it more important than Tibet? Importance is relative; for the Moroccans Tibet is unimportant, but when you keep in mind that Tibet had a sprawling empire in the 8th century, then you can understand why Tibet is important in, say, the history of India at the time.
Indeed, the importance is relative and without performance issues India once caused we can have both.
The issue with Africa was that it is a way closer region to Europe and it was always badly represented, it's paganism being ignored and with little love from devs before. It needed some fix because Mali was as good as not being there at all. In any case, cheers for the DLC and patch! Hurray for both Tibet, Africa and all other regions getting love from devs lately! :)
 
A lot of them justify it on the grounds of slowing the rest of the game down. India was a big issue for that when it was first added and talk of China potentially being to the map as well probably upset a lot of people who had lower level PCs.
I think there was a time when this made some sense..and quite frankly during those serious performance issues I thought Africa would be better if not on the map at all, than wit the way it was represented.

It actually made me never play vanilla Africa... and it only allowed that circular argument of many people, including some devs, that there is no point in developing that part of map, because nobody plays there. Of course nobody played there and people were actually complaining about Africa being included at all. For those who like the region, like I, its terrible underrepresation dicouraged me from playing there. Those who tried were usually bored to death. Except graphical stuff, the region had no flavour... and because nobody played there, the devs, naturally, thought it makes no sense to develop a region which nobody plays and many complain about being there at all. Only few restless nerds kept asking for its complete and deep rework, but what for?

Well, I hope this thread with unprecedented number of positive reactions (200+ agrees more than actual announcement of Holy Fury!, 70+ more than the the other most popular DD ever, except the one with crusades) and up to yesterday not a single disagree, could change the way the devs view Africa.

Indeed, the importance is relative and without performance issues India once caused we can have both.
The issue with Africa was that it is a way closer region to Europe and it was always badly represented, it's paganism being ignored and with little love from devs before. It needed some fix because Mali was as good as not being there at all. In any case, cheers for the DLC and patch! Hurray for both Tibet, Africa and all other regions getting love from devs lately! :)
I can't but agree with this.

I'm only little disappointed that it took 6 years to realize this. Well, at least it is happening now.

EDIT:
@Zayd
You're right that the desert people like the Veiled Sanhaja played crucial role in the Trans-Saharan trade. The nitpicker inside me would argue that they were not Touaregs, as this name wasn't ever mentioned up to 15th century. None of those travellers mentioned in the Wiki article about Touaregs have actually mentioned Touaregs. They spoke about the Lamtuna, Massufa or other Veiled Sanhaja tribes, who are Touareg ancestors, from whom the Touaregs inherited their customs etc.
All that said, it doesn't change the fact that you're right about those people being essential for Trans-Saharan trade and that it would be awesome, if there were some events reflecting it :)
PS: that said I don't know who was it, but I can't disagree with that your post, just to make things clear ;)
 
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Africa really needed an update more than any other area, this is just excellent! It looks much more interesting place to play now, and thanks to new Saharan counties great green blob should be less irritating, for players at least.



About changes made to Northern Europe:

Formation of Volga-Ural (which in itself was a fine decision) and giving kingdom of Estonia to Wendish Empire will divide Suomenusko holy sites between 4 empires. It used to be that Scandinavian empire held 2 Suomenusko holy sites and the third one bordered the empire, when in turn Russian empire held 3 Suomenusko holy sites. AI prioritizes de jure territories when expanding, so doesn't this make reformation of Suomenusko quite unlikely to happen without player intervention? AI reformations shouldn't be common, but they should still happen occasionally when strong ruler rises.


Estonia as a part of Wendish Empire... that may not be ideal. Geographically it makes sense, especially now that Finland and Estonia don't border each other, but that's the only good argument supporting this order. Right now, the whole empire has different culture group and (pre-Christian) religion than Estonia. Given that it's been theorized that Finnish and Estonian languages were mutually intelligible at least during early middle ages, the design choice to put their speakers into different empires seems really weird.

Seriously, I bet that there aren't many other places on the map where ahistorical empire contains single kingdom-level representative of different religion and culture, when that representative has others of its kind in close proximity.


Finnics shoud all be in the same De Jure area. It is extremely odd to see 2 Finnic/Suomenusko areas in different empires. By the way, in the CK2 time frame your geography argument makes zero sense. Back then, travelling over the sea was a lot of faster and common than travelling over the land, that's why already during the Nordic Bronze age (2000BC), 4000 years ago, all of the Estonian coastline and coastline of SW-Finland were in the same culture/archaeological zone with Scandinavia, while the inland areas were a bit different. Heck, even 4000 years ago, most likely people on both shores of the Baltic sea were bilingual because of the contacts. Meaning that both population spoke a Finnic and a (Proto) Germanic language. So in the CK2 timeframe. the Northern coast of Estonia and the Southern coast of Finland would have more ties than Northern Estonia and central Estonia, that was truly the case when looking at ancient Estonian counties in Northern Estonia. As the distance between the 2 coasts is extremely small. Also, the Oeselians (living on Saaremaa) had more ties to the Livonians than to other Estonian tribes, purely because the Livonians lived on the coastline right south of them, over the sea. TL;DR Sea travel was an important thing in the ck2 time frame and you cannot talk about the time period while thinking about 8 lane motorways and thinking how travel over land is a lot easier. The Sea was the "8-lane motorway" of the pre industrial era. So it doesn't "geographically make sense", as the Estonians had more contacts through history with even Sweden, than with the Balto-Slavs who were not seafarers + the Livonians separated the Estonians from the Balto-Slavic tribes for a long time.

I mean, I call the "Wendish empire" the "Balto-Slavic empire". As it includes heartland of the original proto Balto-Slavic area and everyone in it are Romuva Balts of Slavic Slavs. Putting in Suomenusko Finnics into the empire is just extremely illogical. Just because Estonia is called Baltic in 2018 (20th century geopolitics), doesn't mean that 6000 years of their history magically changed. In the CK2 time frame, Estonia should not be in the Balto-Slavic empire.

I posted a very detailed post in the beautifying the Baltics thread about this, but it seems that the Devs didn't care (not even an answer) while many people agreed with me. I'm Swedish myself and studied history in uni (focusing on Northern-Europe), thus I'm quite interested in the Finnic areas.
 
hello could somebody among moderator/developer could respond to my question (page 29) thank you please (and if there is too many question i could remove the less important one) and sorry if i bother you
 
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Since Reaper's Due this has become a meme tbh. I had a potato PC which absolutely couldn't handle >10 fps during RoJ but then RD made it playable by at least doubling the fps.

I really wonder what kind of PC specs you have, I can only think of it being a fringe combo that's poorly compatible with CK2.

Actually the game works fine on my computer. I just enjoy efficiency and would prefer the tiny boost of speed given at the expense of parts of the map that don't affect my game or my neighbor's game or my neighbor's neighbor's neighbor's game. Also if you don't have Reaper's Due it can be an issue. Also for file-size, because those saves take up a TON of space.
 
hello could somebody among moderator/developer could respond to my question (page 29) thank you please (and if there is too many question i could remove the less important one) and sorry if i bother you
I think they can't answer everything...
You already got some answers, I know it was and not from the devs, but if there is something what you don't find satisfactory, you could have reacted. In fact, I haven't answered some 3-4 of your many questions....
if something was not satisfactory enough and you demand dev statement, you could have said it... but frankly, what do you think is better: if they spend their time on answering everybody who gives them list of cca 20 questions, or if they spend their time on developing the game?

It's not like that every question necessarily needs to be answered. There were thousands of them and reminding them every 2 or three days won't make things better for you.
 
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I think they can't answer everything...
You already got some answers, I know it was from me and not from the devs, but if there is something what you don't find satisfactory, you could have reacted. In fact, I haven't answered some 3-4 of your many questions....
if something was not satisfactory enough and you demand dev statement, you could have said it... but frankly, what do you think is better: if they spend their time on answering everybody who gives them list of cca 20 questions, or if they spend their time on developing the game?

It's not like that every question necessarily needs to be answered. There were thousands of them and reminding them every 2 or three days won't make things better for you.

your response where fine thank you and i just hopped to have a response from them :(

( :confused::oops: maybe i should not have put too many question and stick to my two original question...)

and sorry for my english
 
And here I was expecting my Mali game in the new DLC to be relatively bland! So excited to play now!
 
Wow cool!
Can you please add China, Korea and Japan in the next update? That would be very cool, here you can still see so many things. Or maybe West Africa to the Gulf of Guinea. You could also possibly add Greenland and Vinland (Viking America). More religions and ideologies would be cool (Atheism, Shintoism, African Paganism). And maybe new forms of government. For example a federal republic (republic with nomad power sharing)
 
Wow cool!
Can you please add China, Korea and Japan in the next update? That would be very cool, here you can still see so many things. Or maybe West Africa to the Gulf of Guinea. You could also possibly add Greenland and Vinland (Viking America). More religions and ideologies would be cool (Atheism, Shintoism, African Paganism). And maybe new forms of government. For example a federal republic (republic with nomad power sharing)

I believe they didn't add China due to a character limit, and with JD out now I doubt they ever will add it in CK2, we most likely have to wait for CK3 . Also why would Atheism make sense in a game set in the middle ages? I know there were some people in the Islamic world who maybe weren't all that religious, but I wouldn't call them Atheist