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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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Are you even capable of understanding context? What's wrong with wanting Hellenic eventually available for a game mode that consists of alternate history starts? Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with wanting the option to revive a dead religion.

Are you?

9 people disagreed with you, you think that's because we just hate hellenic stuff? We don't.

There is nothing wrong with wanting it. And yes this is a game of alternate history.

But are you even able to understand context?

How about we flesh out or fix the Druze which probably conceivably shouldn't even be Muslims?

Or how about we we separate Manichean and Zoroastrian, because just because Mani preached during Zoroastrian times that doesn't mean it should be a Zoroastrian heresy?

Or how about we give the Mazdaki their own religious group because they might deserve it?

Or how about we flesh out and give mechanics, flavor and events to the NUMEROUS other Christian, Jewish and Muslim heresies in the game that actually have followers in this time period.

BUT NO you are right let's not flesh out the religions that people, and entire realms actually follow during this time period let's instead flesh out a dead religion at best followed by a few Greeks, just so a minority of players can relive their restore Rome as a real pagan fantasy.

/endsarcasm
 
How about you all take your Hellenic rants to another thread that it is relevant to it and not this dev diary where it is not really relevant :D
 
So you want the devs to take time to include Ancient Egyptian?

I think between the three options for religion in random worlds (as normal, shuffled, random religions), it seems that shuffled religions is the most likely to get dead hellenic paganism back. That said, I suspect that they did not bring it back.

Question: What about holy orders? Catholics get 5 and everyone else gets 1. If we randomize all the religions, will one of them still get 5 holy orders, or will distribution of holy orders between the religions be randomized somehow?

this just made me realize, we probably can't edit the religion name and god names, so if a religion randomly showed up i can;t edit it into hellenic. eh, i don't think i care that much actually.
 
@Snow Crystal
Hi, i'm gathering all the Icon for the doctrine we have seen without their full description to put in the second post, but i've run in a bit of a problem, there's two art for Unyielding, could you tell me which one is the right one? (or if art is non definitive yada yada, which one you are using in your internal build) so i don't put 2 Image and provoke unnecessary confusion

Unyielding1.png

Unyielding2.png
 
Interesting, though I probably won't use it much.
 
I guess what Castorem refers to is the fact that genetics depends on the climate condition one is born in and has evolved in through generations.

Except, for real-world examples, the Boers in South Africa and the descendants of Englishman in Arizona (or the descendants of Africans in Michigan) have no ancestral connexions to the climate in the regions that they have settled/migrated to.


Other real-world examples include the ethnic Russians in Siberia and the ethnic Yakut tribes in Siberia who all look nothing like each other, despite inhabiting the same climatic region together for several hundred years.


If you were to go back in time 20,000 years and lead one tribe in a different direction than they wandered in our world, the ethnic makeup of an entire continent could be radically different.
 
Saw the title and for some reason thought it was something related to Orthodoxy. Disappointed but not surprised. About Alternate Start...it's fine...I guess. Not going to use it at all though.
 
The guys from Paradox are playing a lot of HIP lately as it seems. :cool::rolleyes:
 
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.

View attachment 400910
View attachment 400911

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.

View attachment 400913

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!
View attachment 400915

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...

View attachment 400909

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!
View attachment 400917

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.
View attachment 400912

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!
View attachment 400918

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!
View attachment 400920

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.
View attachment 400921

This world keeps most everything ‘historical’, except for the government and De Jure setup. The French nomads are of particular interest.
View attachment 400919

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.
View attachment 400914

Persia has a very distinct religion, with very fitting features to boot.
View attachment 400924

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.
View attachment 400923

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!

I'd like to ask that to what extent can we control the borders and religion spread? For example if I'd like there to be a reformed religion that spans the entire coast of Mediterranean and another one in Persia and the rest of the world would have only unreformed pagan tribals or nomads whilst Persia is a unified region with their faith using Iqta system and Mediterranean region would be feudal with multiple kingdoms and duchies.
Is such amount of control for random world possible?
And is it also possible that none of the faiths in a random world are reformed? Because that would certainly be interesting.
EDIT: Almost forgot one question about random cultures. Will there be culture shifts with the random cultures in early starts like there are with historical cultures? Like when the suebi become portuguese and norse splits into danish, swedish and norwegian, that kinda stuff.
I'm 90% sure that the answer is no but I still wanted to ask, after all, I was proven wrong about a new northern empire with Volga-Ural before :p

And I'll end with a quick, small question: is the elder in ancestor veneration icon showing us the middle finger? :p
 
Last edited:
Are you?

9 people disagreed with you, you think that's because we just hate hellenic stuff? We don't.

There is nothing wrong with wanting it. And yes this is a game of alternate history.

But are you even able to understand context?

How about we flesh out or fix the Druze which probably conceivably shouldn't even be Muslims?

Or how about we we separate Manichean and Zoroastrian, because just because Mani preached during Zoroastrian times that doesn't mean it should be a Zoroastrian heresy?

Or how about we give the Mazdaki their own religious group because they might deserve it?

Or how about we flesh out and give mechanics, flavor and events to the NUMEROUS other Christian, Jewish and Muslim heresies in the game that actually have followers in this time period.

BUT NO you are right let's not flesh out the religions that people, and entire realms actually follow during this time period let's instead flesh out a dead religion at best followed by a few Greeks, just so a minority of players can relive their restore Rome as a real pagan fantasy.

/endsarcasm
You presume this has to be an either or thing when it doesn't have to be. The Devs can and should do all or most of the above in addition to adding Hellenic at some point down the line. They're going to keep making DLC as long as people keep buying it after all.
 
Question (and apologies if I missed it in the diary/comments) - Can you generate a random world, and then use it in a subsequent campaign, or is it a one-shot thing? I can't help feeling if I roll one of these, I'm gonna want to try playing as different people in it.

Edit: Saw the answer, so yay!