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CK3 Dev Diary #04 - Development & Buildings

Greetings!

This week's Dev Diary is all about your holdings on the map - Baronies and counties, what they do for you, and what you can do with them! As seen in the map DD, Baronies are now physically present on the map. A group of Baronies makes up a greater unit, called a County.

DD4CountyView.jpg


While certain things are still on a per-Barony level, such as buildings, two of the most important values you have to deal with are on a per-County basis - Development and Control!

Development is the measurement of technological advancement and general infrastructure in a County. Development directly increases taxes and levies you get out of the holdings, and it also unlocks some other special options. Development increases very slowly across the duration of the game, and radiates outwards from high-development Counties to those nearby. For example, Constantinople (aka the City of the World’s Desire), starts with a very high Development level. This will slowly spread outwards, reaching the most remote areas much slower than their Greek heartland. Naturally, there are other ways to increase your development, such as through the Steward’s ‘Increase Development’ task, although this is a fairly slow process, and usually only worth doing in certain Counties. Having terrain such as Farmland or Floodplains in your Counties make them ideal candidates for development, and when they have gotten some levels of development you can just sit back and enjoy, as it slowly spreads throughout the rest of your realm!

Control, on the other hand, directly represents the power you have over the County. This naturally decreases during sieges and by forcefully seizing territory, taking the place of the ‘new Administration’ modifiers from CK2. If you don’t pace yourself, and use your Marshal to increase Control in newly conquered territories, you might find yourself with a slew of useless land. This also increases the importance of keeping peasant rabble and similar nuisances out of your lands…

Each County also has an opinion of their holder, referred to as the ‘Popular Opinion’. This represents the sentiment of the local peasants, and tends to decrease if you’re not of their culture or faith, promoting the use of ‘local lords’, vassals of the local culture/faith, to handle such territory for you - as converting it will take quite some time. Unhappy Counties tend to cause problems down the line… more on this in another DD.

Now, on to the Holdings themselves! Each County will have a certain amount of slots available for Baronies, with some being constructed at the start, and others not. The three core types of holdings remain unchanged - Castles, Cities and Temples make up the majority of holdings on the map, each with their own main purpose. Castles provide levies and fortifications, cities provide taxes with a secondary focus on Development, and temples provide an even mix of taxes and levies with a secondary focus on increasing Control. This means that if you want a County to develop really fast, building many Cities might be the thing for you. If you want a resilient domain perhaps you’d prefer Castles, etc.

DD4Holding.jpg


Based on the terrain of the province, each Holding has access to a number of buildings. Regular buildings primarily focus on increasing taxes and levies, with some secondary effects such as increasing fortifications or increasing supply. These are usually straight upgrades, and are long-term investments that you should always consider, much like in our other games.

DD4Buildings.jpg


To spice things up, we've also introduced the concept of Duchy Capital Buildings. These buildings can only be built in the capital Barony of any De Jure Duchy, limiting their availability across the map. To build them and have them be active, you need to hold their associated Duchy title personally - this way you can’t simply hoard Counties in which you can build these special buildings, as just like in CK2 you will get severe penalties for holding too many Duchies personally. The buildings themselves are very expensive, but come in many flavors - allowing you to tailor your experience. The Military Academies track of buildings increases the effectiveness of your Knights and allows you to have more of them, establishing marches will make the entire Duchy more defensible, the Siege Workshops will increase the effectiveness of your trebuchets, and so on!

DD4DuchyCapitalBuildings.jpg


We also have the concepts of special buildings. These aim to represent historical buildings, both ancient and those built during the time period. Placed in predetermined baronies on the map, you have the usual suspects such as the Pyramids or Colosseum, along with more fringe or lesser-known constructions such as Offa’s Dyke or the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Some of these will be possible to construct during the course of the game, such as the Tower of London or the Alhambra. All of these constructions provide unique and interesting bonuses, with some of them being represented with 3D models on the map.

That’s it for this time! Stay tuned for the next DD, where we will tell you about the new scheme mechanics!
 
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Something I didn't catch onto in the previous dev diary that seems to be present here:
light infantry, heavy infantry, archers, light cav, heavy cav, all seem to have been consolidated into one unit type: levies.
Meanwhile, knights are going to act as a special type of units?
No, LEVIES ARE NOT the consolidation of other unit types
levies are the troops you get from you desmense
when you need other unit types you get your man-at-arms
Knights are a special unit on top of that
 
The duchy buildings will all be constructed in a specific barony. For example, the buildings for the duchy of Essex will have to be constructed in London.
Would this imply that we cannot choose anymore which holding is the county capital?
 
Something I didn't catch onto in the previous dev diary that seems to be present here:
light infantry, heavy infantry, archers, light cav, heavy cav, all seem to have been consolidated into one unit type: levies.
Meanwhile, knights are going to act as a special type of units?

They explained in previous diaries that we now have 3 "levels" of units. 'Levies' from our holdings are just untrained peasants. The advanced units we know from CK2 (pikemen, cavalry, etc.) are now called 'men-at-arms' and are not provided by holdings, but are bought extraordinarily basically like retinues in CK2. Knights are a new special kind of elite unit that is much stronger than both men-at-arms and levies and, most importantly, are actual characters drawn from your vassals or court. How strong an individual knight unit is, depends depends on the Combat Skill (now called Prowess) of the character.
 
While I think the development system is, in my opinion, both too abstract and too linear/simple (I can foresee it been the target of an 'economic' DLC later down the line), the dual control/opinion system looks very interesting. Hopefully there will be a similar system for relations between rulers and vassals rather than just relying on opinion. Also, while I understand there is still a long time till release, I just want to express my dissatisfaction with the UI, it's really much too flat, colourless, and soullessly modern for my liking.
 
Uhhhhhhh.... As I recall, in EU4 razing provinces is a thing hordes are bound to do, and they did have a dlc that allowed you exploit development

Yes, that is not my point at all.

What I want to know is if a 20 development barony is sieged and conquered 20 time in 10 years and it is struck by the Black Plague (there is no epidemics, but I assume they put the black plague in it somehow) there is a chance it will go to 19 development? or it will have some malus from some (long) time and then it will be back as good as new?
 
I like the concept of development and control. Popular opinion also sounds good, especially the mention of hiring 'local nobles' and other actions a player can take. I hope that the different interactions around these concepts are layered and meshed well with other mechanics so that it doesn't become too clickey, monotonous, and boring.

I love the artwork. It is beautiful, but I wish it wasn't so dull. Maybe make the art brighter or more saturated?

But the UI is honestly godawful! I hope this is just placeholder UI during development, and we get a tighter and more interesting UI in the final product. Take a look at the list of buildings. It makes no sense to make the player scroll through the list. CK2 showed the entire set of buildings in a tighter interface that the player did not have to scroll through. The icons for the buildings also look terrible. Please create new artwork for it so that it looks good.
 
We have discussed that point earlier, let me know if this doesn't answer exactly your question :)
"Armies now carry an amount of Supply with them. Supply is drained whenever armies are in Baronies with a lower Supply Limit than their size. You can therefore safely march through a few Baronies with a low Supply Limit without troops dying. If you army runs out of Supply however, it will start to take attrition and lose troops over time. Supply is increased as long as you are below the Supply Limit in territory you control. Beware though, your army might not take attrition on low Supply, but it will suffer an Advantage Penalty in battles!"

Sieged does count as 'control'?
 
They won't be as involved as in the CK2 Great Works system, and we'll only represent historical special buildings.


Tribes and empty holdings.


They are pretty much the same, if I understand you correctly. You get more levies out of your capital, and the territory within your capital duchy.
So will we be able to build Great Works in later versions?
 
To build them and have them be active, you need to hold their associated Duchy title personally

Does this mean that a capital building will become inactive if the Duchy title is ever granted to a vassal? Or only if the title is destroyed? I feel like especially something like a March, is a capital building you'd specifically want a vassal to hold. That's basically the purpose of a March after all.
 
Please tell me not everything/everyone who controls a large enough territory is going to be called a "duke". I understand it simplifies the system but I really don't understand the stubborn upholding of the static hierarchy of count=>duke=>king. It's not and never was "the duchy and duke of Flanders" for example. For the love of God use the historically accurate titles like "het graafschap Vlaanderen" (the county of Flanders for those who don't understand Flemish). Or put a "viscount' beneath a "count" and a "marques or margrave" above a "count" but below a "duke". At least give me some more flavor in regards to medieval titulature and historical accuracy. I love Crusader Kings and I'm always looking forward to DD's but this just one of the couple of things I really need to get of my chest. I was and am reticent to post on this forum because everything is still under development, but I'm just hoping that you guys will deliver the spectaculair game I know you guys can make with Crusader Kings 3.

I'm just really hoping that you will give us an entire medieval world with (regional) trade, urban growth, ...... and that you won't just paint a picture of the middle ages as a world in which only feudal lords, knights and castles existed.

Edit: It probably would be best to call the duchy of flanders the "march or margraviate of Flanders" since it's a borderterritory and the region orriginates from the Carolingian period when military governors were appointed to regions and out of this the hereditary feudal system kind of grew. And another smaller title would be "burggraaf" of "burgrave" which could be placed under the control of a "count" who controls a large territory/supposed "duchy".
 
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All considered, I'm disappointed.

Of four DDs the only one I found interesting is the dynasties one, because it was something different. The other things are all so much like CK2 that I don't see the point of not just keep playing CK2.

Of course it still too soon for a final judgement, I have some good hopes for the next DD. For the little they have told the new schemes and 'hooks' system seems intriguing.
 
All considered, I'm disappointed.

Of four DDs the only one I found interesting is the dynasties one, because it was something different. The other things are all so much like CK2 that I don't see the point of not just keep playing CK2.

Of course it still too soon for a final judgement, I have some good hopes for the next DD. For the little they have told the new schemes and 'hooks' system seems intriguing.

Meh, debatable. I’m pretty sure the new barony on maps was pretty new, and personally the new war mechanics are a way different from Ck2 with knights and supply and all that.
 
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That is simply not true. In many areas, particularly on the peripheries, the monasteries were the first institutions, binding previously badly connected communities, being centres of social and economic activity of a region, centres of innovation and distribution of technical as well as social inventions.
So basically, it is a very small temple holding?
 
Something I didn't catch onto in the previous dev diary that seems to be present here:
light infantry, heavy infantry, archers, light cav, heavy cav, all seem to have been consolidated into one unit type: levies.
Meanwhile, knights are going to act as a special type of units?
The special unit types will still exist as Men-at-Arms, essentially the new retinue system.
Knights are specific characters
 
The duchy buildings will all be constructed in a specific barony. For example, the buildings for the duchy of Essex will have to be constructed in London.

Shouldn't London not be the capital in the Middle Age or are you adding a City of London barony next to the London barony to the Middlesex county? The City of London still been a thing to this day is in great part because they are one of the few place that successfully resisted William, thus were given special right.
 
Imperator may not be a perfect game, but CK3 could really benefit from importing some its provincial mechanics like pops, trade goods, etc.

CK3 may be about human relationships, but it would help the immersion a lot to have a living breathing world of peasants and commerce beyond the walls holding the nobility and their scheming.
Kind of baffles me. They are very aware we enjoy a pop system, but they chose not to include one in CK3.
 
They explained in previous diaries that we now have 3 "levels" of units. 'Levies' from our holdings are just untrained peasants.

Not untrained, it just that warfare is not their profession, thus have limited time for training and campaign, but training was usually part of duties they had to their liege.
 
While I think the development system is, in my opinion, both too abstract and too linear/simple (I can foresee it been the target of an 'economic' DLC later down the line), the dual control/opinion system looks very interesting. Hopefully there will be a similar system for relations between rulers and vassals rather than just relying on opinion. Also, while I understand there is still a long time till release, I just want to express my dissatisfaction with the UI, it's really much too flat, colourless, and soullessly modern for my liking.

I know it's under development but I'd echo this. There's something with the dulling of colors and it feeling a bit too modern that really stand out to me with the GUI.

As for development. I'm skeptical but isn't it just a kind of number that goes together with the other buildings? I personally don't like it because say "development 2" and "development 4" doesn't give me a sense of what's going on. I'd love it if we could get a sense of what it means more specifically. I get the idea of boiling it down to just a number and that might be perfectly fine but I'd love it if it could be more practical to understand and feel what it means. Maybe just a tooltip would be fine to me and buffs related to it.