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CK3 Dev Diary #17 - Governments, Vassal Management, Laws, and Raiding

Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran. You might know me from the CK2 dev diaries or the Paradox Wikis, but for the last couple of years I’ve been working on CK3 as a programmer. Today we’re going to cover a number of topics closely related to government types: governments themselves, vassal management, laws, and raiding.

Let's start off with a familiar concept from CK2: governments. For the player, we have three playable governments: Feudal, Tribal, and Clan, which each have some significant differences in how they play.

The Feudal government type is based on European feudalism, and is heavily based around the idea of obligations: you owe service to your liege, and your liege owes you protection in return. It is the most common government form in the game. Feudal realms play pretty similarly to CK2, focusing on claims and inheritance more so than the other government forms.

A new addition in CK3 is Feudal Contracts. Every feudal vassal (except barons) has an individual contract with you, rather than obligations being set realm-wide. These contracts have three levels; Low, Medium, and High, with Medium being the default. High will provide more levies and tax at the cost of an opinion hit, while Low provides less but improves opinion. Higher levels are usually better (though perhaps not if you’re at risk of your vassals revolting), but cannot be imposed unilaterally.

You’ll need to have a hook on your vassal in order to increase their obligations unless you’re fine with all your vassals considering you a tyrant, but you can always lower them. As a result this means you can significantly increase your power if you’re able to obtain hooks on your vassals; perhaps a bit of judicious blackmail might be in order?

Feudal Contract.png

[Modifying a Feudal Contract]

Furthermore we have the Clan government form. This government is the rough equivalent of the Iqta government in CK2, though in CK3 it does have a more Feudal bent than it did previously.

The Clan government type is used by most Muslim realms. This government puts more emphasis on the family rather than the realm, with most vassals being members of your dynasty. Obligations are heavily based on opinion rather than being contractual, with happy vassals providing significantly more taxes and levies than unhappy ones. A happy family is a powerful family.

Clan governments also have access to the Clan Invasion casus belli, which can be used once in a lifetime at the highest level of Fame to invade a kingdom, providing a powerful boon for a well-established clan ruler.

Finally we have Tribal realms. Much like in CK2 these have their own Tribal holding type, providing more troops but less tax. Additionally, most tribals are able to go on raids, which you can read more about below. Tribal realms are unaffected by development, and cause non-tribal realms to have lower supply limits in their lands, making them a tougher nut to crack, but reducing their influence as the years drag on. Tribal realms also pay for men at arms using prestige rather than gold, allowing smaller realms to punch above their weight.

Tribal rulers base their obligations on levels of Fame rather than on contracts or opinion; the more famous your ruler is, the more troops and money your vassals will be willing to provide for your pursuits.

Finally, Tribal rulers have a once-in-a-lifetime Subjugation casus belli, allowing them to forcibly vassalize an entire realm.

As the game goes on, you can eventually reform out of Tribalism, becoming a Clan or Feudal realm instead.

Vassal Overview.png

[The vassal management tab]

To get an easy overview of your realm, we in CK3 have the Realm screen. Let’s start with the Vassals tab of this screen where all your vassals are shown. This gives you a clear overview of where your levies and taxes come from, who might be a threat to you, and allows you to renegotiate feudal contracts.

This is also where you change your crown authority (or tribal authority), which I’ll talk more about later in this dev diary.

Lastly, the screen shows your Powerful Vassals. Much like in CK2’s Conclave DLC, your realm will have some powerful vassals; these expect to be seated on the council, and will make their displeasure known if that is not the case.

Domain overview.png

[The Domain Tab]

Then we have the Domain tab. This lets you easily inspect your domain, showing where you’re earning money and levies, and where you can build more buildings. It also shows the level of development and control in the counties you personally hold, letting you easily tell where you can make improvements.

Finally we have the Succession tab. Due to being a bit of a work in progress, I’m afraid I can’t show you a picture of it right now. Here you can change your succession laws, see your heir(s), and check what titles, if any, you will lose when you die. If you hold any elective titles, you’ll be able to easily get to the election screen from here.

Now with all these mentions of laws, let's go through what laws exist. We’ve trimmed down the number of laws from CK2 as much of what used to be law is handled on a more individual level now, but some still remains.

Like in CK2, we have crown authority for Feudal and Clan realms, and tribal authority for Tribal realms. Higher levels of authority unlock mechanics like imprisonment (for tribals, the others start with it), title revocation, restrictions on internal wars, and heir designation. However, increasing these levels will make your vassals unhappy. Tribal authority is significantly less powerful than crown authority, representing how Tribal governments over time gradually got supplanted by Feudal and Clan governments.

Succession Laws.png

[Changing succession law]

Then there’s succession laws. To no one’s surprise, Gavelkind is making a return, though we’ve renamed it to Partition to make it more obvious what it actually means. This is the default succession form of most realms in both 867 and 1066.

For added fun, there’s now three variants of Partition. We’ve got regular Partition, which functions like Gavelkind in CK2; your realm gets split roughly equally between your heirs, and any heirs that end up a lower tier than your primary heir becomes a vassal.

However, many realms start with a worse form, especially in 867. This is Confederate Partition, which will also create titles of your primary title’s tier if possible. So if you as Norway have conquered all of Sweden but destroyed the kingdom itself, it will get recreated on your death so that your second heir becomes an independent ruler. Tribals are typically locked to this succession type, with some exceptions.

Finally we have an improved version of Partition: High Partition. Under High Partition your primary heir will always get at least half your titles, so it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 2 or 10 kids; your primary heir will get the same amount of land.

We’ve also done a lot of tweaks to the internal logic of who gets what titles, which tends to lead to far nicer splits than in CK2; border gore will of course still happen, but to a lesser degree than before.

Then we have the other succession forms. There’s Oldest Child Succession (replacing Primogeniture), Youngest Child Succession (replacing Ultimogeniture), and House Seniority. A notable difference from CK2’s Seniority Succession is that under House Seniority, the oldest eligible member of your house inherits, not of your entire dynasty.

We also have a number of variants on elective succession, ranging from Feudal Elective, to Princely Elective (HRE succession), and a handful of cultural variants. Each of these have different restrictions on who can vote, who can be elected, and how the AI will select who to vote for.

Additionally, we’ve got a full suite of gender laws, corresponding to the gender laws in CK2. These are: Male Only, Male Preference, Equal, Female Preference, and Female Only.

Finally, we have raiding. If you’re a Norwegian like me, sometimes you feel your Viking blood coursing through your veins, the noise of it drowning out everything else. Times like this, there’s only one solution: go on a raid.

Fans of Pagan gameplay in CK2 will be glad to hear that not only have we implemented raiding in CK3 as well, we’ve made some improvements to it to make it more fun to play with, and less unfun to be on the receiving end of.

The core system is very similar to CK2. If you’re a Pagan or Tribal ruler, you have the ability to raid other rulers’ lands. To do so you raise a raid army, and march or sail over to your target. Only the Norse can raid across sea; other raid armies will simply be unable to embark.

Rally Point.png

[Raising a raid army]

Once at your target your army will start looting the barony they’re in. This is a pretty quick process, but during it your army will be unable to move, preventing you from running away from any counter-raiding force. This change makes it a lot simpler to deal with raiders if you’ve got enough men and can raise them quickly enough, as the AI won’t just immediately run away.

Raid Lindisfarne.png

[A raid in progress]

While in CK2 raiding was done on a county level, in CK3 it is on a barony level. Another difference is that in CK3 raiding no longer uses the siege mechanics directly, but rather a similar system where things like siege engines do not have an impact since you’re raiding the countryside, not a heavily fortified castle.

Another significant change is that if you beat a raid army, you receive all the gold they’re carrying. This means that even if you cannot respond instantly to a raid, it is still very much worth it to beat up the raiders. Like in CK2, you also become immune to raiding by that enemy for several years.

Just like in CK2, a raid army is limited in how much loot it can carry based on the army size. Loot is deposited once the army is back in friendly lands, after which you might either disband or go raiding once more.

On the quality of life side, we now show on the map what provinces have already been raided when you have a raid army selected. This makes it easy to see what places to avoid. Hovering over a province will also tell you how much loot raiding it would provide.

Raid.png

[Northern England in its natural state]

That’s all for today, folks. Tune in next week to learn more about how war functions in Crusader Kings 3.
 
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It is a sign of the sad times we live in today, that "primogeniture" has to be renamed "oldest child inheritance" so that people can find it easier to understand. Same as to the other renamings.
 
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It is a sign of the sad times we live in today, that "primogeniture" has to be renamed "oldest child inheritance" so that people can find it easier to understand. Same as to the other renamings.
Still think players should be able to choose which terminology they prefer...
 
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How much does Imperator: Rome reflect medieval world really?

Are you sure that pre-Islamic North Africans were the same as the Berbers of the Islamic period?

After years of studying Berber history, I have learned that they were very different and that medieval Berbers did not do naval raids.
The Arabs of the early caliphate did, yes (that's part of my original answer/question).
Even Berber medieval dynasties did build navies. The Almohads did build an impressive navy in the mid 12th century and used it to fight Banu Ghaniya, who conquered the Balearic islands and used it as a base for their attacks against Almohad coastal dominions.
But they didn't do large-scale and long-term raids like the Norse.


Berbers?
Aghabids were Arabs, not Berbers.
As I wrote, yes there were numerous "Moorish" (meaning mainly Arab) naval raids against Christian Mediterranean coast in the period of expansion of the Caliphate and slightly after that. But once the Muslim power was established in the late 8th century, the raids have virtually stopped - by the mid 9th century. Well, there were a few exceptions, but they don't really make it reasonable to give the Berbers such a tool... especially when it wasn't the Berbers, but Arabs, who did the raids.
View attachment 552809
Even the Muslim raiders of Fraixnet who frustrated the Alpine regions well into the 10th century didn't do naval, but land-based raids.

Anyway, if someone is to get the raiding possibility, it should be the Arabs, not Berbers

I mean looking at Wikipedia for the Barbary Pirates I get this in the first section:
In 1198 the problem of Berber piracy and slave-taking was so great that the Trinitarians, a religious order, were founded to collect ransoms and even to exchange themselves as ransom for those captured and pressed into slavery in North Africa. In the 14th century, Tunisian corsairs became enough of a threat to provoke a Franco-Genoese attack on Mahdia in 1390, also known as the "Barbary Crusade". Morisco exiles of the Reconquista and Maghreb pirates added to the numbers, but it was not until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of the privateer and admiral Kemal Reis in 1487 that the Barbary corsairs became a true menace to shipping from European Christian nations.[6]
 
Additional vassal contract clause - Vassal participation in wars:

[War Participation]
None
Defend Own - Vassal will raise its own levies in a defensive war targeting itself and fully participate
Defend Own/Press Own Claims - As above, and If the claim is for vassal's (or an heir's) claim, vassal will also participate
Defend Realm - Vassal will be very displeased if levies are not Low
Offensive?


Defend Own should be the default
 
I mean looking at Wikipedia for the Barbary Pirates I get this in the first section:
Apparently I didn't learn enough by checking sources about Berbers themselves, but not about this side of the context.
I stand corrected. Thanks for enlightening me and my apology for mystifying others.

Edited the quoted post to correct myself.
 
It is a sign of the sad times we live in today, that "primogeniture" has to be renamed "oldest child inheritance" so that people can find it easier to understand. Same as to the other renamings.

Uh, yeah, these "sad times" where the seats of power are no longer inherited? I'm not a fan of the renaming either but outside of reading deep dives into the history books, people have very few reasons to encounter the terms like gavelkind, primogeniture, salic law or agnatic/cognatic inheritance.

Still think players should be able to choose which terminology they prefer...

Yeah, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would come up much outside of the inheritance UI. Perhaps the same as building names? There used to be reasonably flavorful names for buildings in CK2 and one of the early patches replaced them with <x> III or <y> VI.
 
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Thos forum has gone from a lovefest to a rantfest in just 2-3 dev diaries.
Do it matter? Anyway the developers have said they want discussion.

I don't care about the direction of the game. And they said it would be character focused in the vision DD anyway so it is maybe to be expected that other stuff would be somewhat lacking.
 
Just interesting to see. Ultimately we'll have to see how it all comes together when it comes out. Probably it will be fine. CK1 and 2 were both great.
 
Then there’s succession laws. To no one’s surprise, Gavelkind is making a return, though we’ve renamed it to Partition to make it more obvious what it actually means. This is the default succession form of most realms in both 867 and 1066.
I think you can find a better Word than partition for such succession laws, high partition is particular bad because it don't sound fitting to the time period and it is not clear what it actually mean.

High is simply not a good Word as it can mean alot of things. High partition if anything could be renamed to something like hierarchical partition but I think there is an even better Word to describe it.

Also this is also not completely correct because to gain renown you need to spread out your dynasty and they need to be independent from other dynasty members.
However, many realms start with a worse form, especially in 867. This is Confederate Partition, which will also create titles of your primary title’s tier if possible. So if you as Norway have conquered all of Sweden but destroyed the kingdom itself, it will get recreated on your death so that your second heir becomes an independent ruler. Tribals are typically locked to this succession type, with some exceptions.

So what is Renown?
Renown is a resource accumulated by a Dynasty, and is used for several things. Firstly, all renown earned by a Dynasty counts towards its Level of Splendor. The Level of Splendor is the outward perception of the Dynasty, how well it is perceived in the eyes of the world, and affects the prestige you get on birth, the prestige when marrying into it, and the maximum long reign opinion you can get. Having a high level also makes it much easier to arrange marriages, especially with Dynasties below your level. Regardless of if Renown is spent or not, the Level of Splendor won’t decrease. The higher your Dynasty’s Level of Splendor, the more impressive its Coat of Arms frame will look. Peasant Dynasties will start at a negative Splendor level, which means that you’ll actually lose prestige for marrying them.

Renown itself is a spendable currency, representing the clout your Dynasty holds over itself. Its use is twofold; firstly it can be used for the most powerful Dynast interactions (getting claims, disinheriting, etc.) and secondly for unlocking Dynasty Legacies (more on this below).

The way you get Renown encourages you to mimic a ‘playstyle’ that was common in reality, but that wasn’t very practical in CK2 - spreading your Dynasty far and wide! You will gain renown for every ruler of your Dynasty that isn’t a subject under another member of your Dynasty. This is based on tier, which means that a King will give more Renown than a Duke, and so on. Marrying in such a way that your Dynasty ends up on the throne of a foreign realm is therefore useful for other reasons than to just murder them until you inherit their lands. Having your Dynasty spread out will give you more Renown, and thus a more powerful Dynasty overall. For example, if you’re playing as the King of England you will NOT gain renown from your landed vassal brother, but you WILL gain renown from your Dynastic cousin ruling a Duchy in the Holy Roman Empire. You will also gain renown from marrying away your dynasty to be spouses of powerful rulers, symbolizing your newfound influence in their realms. This gives you a reason to carefully plan the marriages of your kinsmen, even if you are not in need of an alliance!
 
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Still think players should be able to choose which terminology they prefer...

Suggestion: why not just have two localizations, one of which is normal (with all the era-appropriate terminology) and one of which is 'simple English' (perhaps called something else). Simple English can be used in the tutorial, while the normal localization would be the default for a normal play through.
 
Suggestion: why not just have two localizations, one of which is normal (with all the era-appropriate terminology) and one of which is 'simple English' (perhaps called something else). Simple English can be used in the tutorial, while the normal localization would be the default for a normal play through.
Well first they have to find the correct term for stuff like elective and partition which are 6 out of 9 succession laws.
 
Was anyone asking for the terminology to be changed? Not once in the 8 years CK2 has been out have I seen people confused by Primogeniture or whatever other terms. People instantly knew what gavelkind was since it was the default succession for most titles/governments in the game. It just seems unnecessary and pointless, and if more people care to defend the old terms than care to defend the change, it seems an obvious choice to roll it back, which should take all of ten minutes to accomplish, assuming localization works the same as in CK2.
 
The Partition Succession description has a bit of ambiguous wording because you flip between "Eligible Children" with intentional capitalization and "children" without.
"Other Eligible Children will be given secondary Titles starting with those of the same Rank as the Primary Title, if none are available they will instead be given lower-ranking Titles. To preserve this balance, children can not be preemptively granted Titles they do not stand to inherit."

Is it referring to children in the sense of minors? Or is it actually Eligible Children, referred to in a slightly different manner? I assume the latter, but it would be easy for someone who doesn't understand gavelkind succession to assume the former.
If you take a closer look at the picture you mention, all the capitalized terms are also blue colored, which if you hover over, open a tooltip and can also be checked in the CK3 encyclopedia (or EnCKlopedia, not my coinage but I like it), as per the previous DD
One of the new features in CK3 is Tooltips in Tooltips, the aim of this is that relevant information can just be a mouse move away whenever you see blue highlighted text in game. Instead of making you need to dig through a wiki to find out what a Game Concept means you can just mouse over it and get an explanation!
index.php
Now last, but in my opinion not least, is the new in game Encyclopedia. It acts as a central place where information on many different parts of the game can be found. From the highlightable Game Concepts mentioned before, to recaps of the guided tutorial and reactive advice, to the various types of terrains and traits present in the game and their effects.
 
Historically the Byzantines did over time become more feudal in structure as their empire waned into the 13 and 14 centuries.
Conversely, western states became more bureaucratic in the late period and of course you had eg Sicily, which was its own kettle of fish (Italy really was a bit of a mess, you had "feudal" systems like the southern lombard duchies but also the Byzantines, Arabs, Norman's, Pope, Venice, Milan, etc.)
 
If you take a closer look at the picture you mention, all the capitalized terms are also blue colored, which if you hover over, open a tooltip and can also be checked in the CK3 encyclopedia (or EnCKlopedia, not my coinage but I like it), as per the previous DD

Err, I'm aware? I'm saying that in the text description, it swaps between the defined and linked term "Eligible Children" and "children."