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CK2 Dev Diary #98 - Catholicism what? Constantinople where? Charlemagne who?

Greetings!

Today I’d like to cover one of the largest features of Holy Fury - a feature we’ve internally dubbed the ‘Alternate Start’ system!

This system consists of two separate sub-features, the Shattered World system and the Random World system. Each of these two systems are aimed towards different players - Shattered World is perfect for those who want a level playing field, while Random World will appeal to those of you that wish to explore an unfamiliar, yet fleshed out world complete with its own history and quirks.

These two features are accessed from either the Era Picker directly, or when choosing bookmarks through Custom Setup. You are free to choose any date to start, and the date you choose can even affect how a setup might look like. Choosing the 867 start date while using the default settings of Random World will tend to produce many more pagans and tribal realms, for example.

EraButtons.png

CustomSelectors.png


The Shattered World system allows you to break the world up into its constituent parts, be it Counties, Duchies or a mix of the two. It provides a balanced start, and allows for a sprawling new world to rise from the tiny disparate realms that start out within it.

ShatteredWorldSettings.png


To provide exactly the type of challenge that you seek, there are numerous parameters that control anything from Holding Slots to Technology.
For those seeking to recreate the world as it was, the Historical settings (which are selected by default) are what you want.
If you desire an entirely level playing field, you can set all provinces to have exactly 3 holding slots, for everyone to be Feudal, for technology to be the same everywhere, for Primogeniture to be the default succession law, and for each character to be exactly 30 years old with three children, OR…
If you just want a crazy game full of surprises, you could set all the parameters to Random or even Full Random. Who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself inhabiting an Iceland that has four 7-slot provinces, as a 65 year old matriarch following a religion based entirely around human sacrifice!
Naturally you’re free to mix and match these settings to your liking, perhaps you’d like a modicum of craziness in your otherwise balanced game? Hopefully you’ll find the settings to you liking!

Some players believe that there’s not enough challenge when starting out in a Shattered World (cough, @Meneth ) so for those of you that desire an opposition that is more than your match, we’ve got a setting for you! The ‘Great Conquerors’ setting allow you to spawn up to twelve special characters evenly across the map. These characters will wield special weapons, carry legendary blood in their veins and use especially powerful CB’s to rapidly conquer land much in the same way you would expect a player to. Naturally you can also choose to not have any Great Conquerors in your game, though I recommend starting with at least four of them!
GreatConqueror.png


Another setting that we have available for those who don’t want to wait around for too long until they can go to war is the ‘Consolidation Casus Belli’ setting. This setting unlocks a generic county conquest CB for everyone, without any particular cost. You can choose to have this CB active for 25 years, 100 years or indefinitely - and you can naturally choose to not have it active at all if you so wish. To avoid confusion, while this CB is active, the Border Dispute CB from Jade Dragon will be temporarily disabled (but return as the Consolidation CB becomes unavailable).

Now, on to the feature of the two which I find the most interesting - Random World!

This feature is truly a treasure trove for those of us who love exploring new and exciting worlds, while still preserving the familiarity of a game which we know and enjoy. With the parameters at hand you can tailor a world that tries to closely mimic the world we know, or you can choose to let it deviate fully!

In Random World you can choose to randomize almost everything; placements, names, functions and graphics of religions, cultures, titles, characters, governments and much more! While Shattered World and Random World do share a subset of settings, Random World undeniably has access to a more granular setup. If you want your game to be analogous to history you can choose to enable features such as ‘Holy Roman Empire’ or ‘Byzantine Empire’, for example - these settings will ensure that, somewhere in the world, something akin to those elements will exist. It won’t necessarily be too familiar though, there might indeed exist a large Elective Empire similar to the HRE - but they might just be located in Africa, adhering to a religion that promotes indiscriminate human sacrifice...

Random World Settings.png


As I mentioned before, at the core of a Random World lies a few main things; a dynamic religion, culture, de jure and ruler setup. Let's start with religion!

Religion is a very central aspect of the game, and thus it wouldn’t be overly exciting to generate a random world where the existing default religions are randomly placed (even though you can choose to do that, and having a Bön pagan Scandinavia or a Catholic India is undeniably fun - no question about that). Depending on the settings you choose, religions will be more or less altered - you can randomize the spread, features, naming and icon of religions. There’s even a way for you to preview religions before starting the game, and if you wish you can even customize their features right there and then!
Random World Religious Customization.png


The culture system is a bit more simplistic simply by the fact that cultures don’t generally have many gameplay features to speak of - in this system it’s mainly about the naming and spread of cultures.
Example Culture Spread.png


The De Jure setup randomization is a fairly sophisticated system. We’ve put a lot of thought and effort in making the resulting borders be as sensible as possible. We’ve for example taken extra care to ensure that the De Jure doesn’t jump wildly between islands, or seem generally disconnected or ‘snakey’. It generally provides an appropriate challenge when you wish to form a Kingdom or Empire!
Random World De Jure Kingdoms.png


The spread and placement of Governments can also be randomized. After all, why should nomads be limited to the steppe, and what’s saying that Europe should be high-tech and fully feudalized? I can tell you that it’s quite an experience playing a Nomad in Italy!
Random World Governments.png


Technology will naturally be randomized as well. The ‘baseline’ will depend on the year you choose to create your Random World in, the earlier, the less technology overall.

Now, here’s a few examples of Random Worlds, using an assortment of different settings!

This random World is generated with a generous amount of Dukes and Kings - this means that there are going to exist many more unified realms upon generation. A plethora of smaller kingdoms surround the centerpiece - an HRE inspired realm following a religion focused wholly on self-fulfilment without any formal leadership.
Random World Example 1.png


This world keeps most everything ‘historical’, except for the government and De Jure setup. The French nomads are of particular interest.
Random World Example 2 - Historical Cultures and Religions.png


This Random World I had to share for one very specific reason. At its core, it’s a nice and interesting world with several scattered kingdoms, and a major empire in North Africa keeping the peace. If you haven’t figured it out by your own yet - the random names are by-and-large based upon names from cultural namelists and dynasties, which in certain cases result in very fun names.
Example3.png


Persia has a very distinct religion, with very fitting features to boot.
memelard.png


And here’s one final Random World - a large Sacrosanct Empire looms in northern Russia and the polar circle, blocking the western tribes off from reaching the civilized east. In Europe many different faiths vie for dominance, from the unyielding and adventurous Dulanites in the Spanish region to the warmongering but syncretic Cult of Jahaira in the German region and beyond.
Example4.png


Worth noting is that I’ve not been able to cover all of the various settings that these features will have. There’s plenty of granularity, and you’ll be able to control most things in minute detail should you wish to do so. I encourage you to experiment with the settings! You never know what you might find...

We hope that these features will provide you with hours of entertainment, and that you get to generate the world that you wish to play in the most!
 

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Random World is just crying out for two things:

1) Everyone's frequently commented random map (akin to EUIV New World)

2) Terra Incognita

Even if we can't get random maps, I would love to start a random world as some fictional count only familiar with his neighbors and has to learn about his surroundings. All I know is that I have many trees around me and winters get cold. Maybe I'm in Germany, or Sweden, or Ireland. Who knows??? Getting to discover the random world, even with an analog Europe, sounds like loads of fun.
 
The culture system is a bit more simplistic simply by the fact that cultures don’t generally have many gameplay features to speak of

Actually they do. such as:

dukes_called_kings = yes
allow_looting = yes
seafarer = yes
disinherit_from_blinding = yes
dynasty_title_names = yes
founder_named_dynasties = yes
horde = yes
dynasty_name_first = yes
castes = yes
 
When you randomize a world does that effect what culture and religion that the Chinese emperor has or off map invaders like the Aztecs or Mongols?
 
I love the religion icons! particularly the duck.

Can someone clarify if we'll finally be able to have women rulers in merchant republics? It's already possible to have matrilineal marriages in them with the appropriate gender law setting when starting a new game, so there seems to be no point in restricting rulership to men only now.
 
I have a question, will the random world generation work on a non-default map ? So let's say if we use a Ck2 fantasy map can we get a random CK2 world on it ?
Would be really cool to have a random Ck2 game completely detached from real history and geography which is still using unaltered Ck2 mechanics.
Also: Can we generate reformed pagans to create a typical fantasy-like world where most religions are actually polytheistic yet organized ?

EDIT: I overused the term CK2 a little bit, I am sorry, hope I expressed what I wanted in a reasonably understandable way though
 
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Finally, I was waiting for more information on this feature.

I have to say, when you guys announced random worlds, I was expecting a EU4 random new world style feature, where a random map is generated, instead of random kingdoms on the European map.

Still very cool, I will definitely give it a go.
 
I second this it would allow for more interesting games. Personally I think a game where everyone starts tribal could be fun.

I have no idea what would happen if everyone started out as a 1 county Nomad, but now I kind of want to find out.

My guess is that the first guy to get to 2 counties is going to overrun the entire map.
 
I once started a mod called "Fused World", the opposite of "Shattered World" where every title was formed and held within the dejure hierarchy at the game start. I never got far, but I figure it would be easier to do programmatically than by hand! I wonder whether cranking the Empire and Kingdom sliders all the way to max would have a similar effect?