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CK3 Dev Diary #93 - Turmoil in the Peninsula

Greetings!

Winter is slowly fading behind us (at least in the northern hemisphere), and spring is starting to take over. A new season calls for an announcement. I’m happy to present you with our next Flavor Pack: Fate of Iberia, due to be released on the 31st of May! We are obviously talking about Mediterranean Iberia, not the former Kingdom in Georgia.

In addition to being one of the most played regions, the Iberian peninsula is interesting because of the complexity of the geopolitical situation, and the richness of the events occurring during the time period of Crusader Kings 3. It gives us a good opportunity to bring more flavor for both the Christians and Muslims living there.

With this new flavor pack, we want to offer you the opportunity to truly decide the fate of the whole peninsula, either by reenacting history or creating an alternative that pleases you more. In order to model the complexity of the situation, we are introducing a new system, the Struggle. It will be changing the rules and increasing the challenge for the rulers within the Iberian peninsula. You can have an idea of how the game will be affected in the screenshot below. The effects will vary a lot depending on the stage of the struggle, but we will go into details in the next dev diary :)

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The Struggle will both create new opportunities and add constraints for the rulers within Iberia.

A new 867 bookmark features a revamped Iberian cast of characters, giving players the perfect place to jump in and deflect history as they see fit. The Struggle will persist into the 1066 start date as well. The bookmark lets you choose between different vassals, either from the Christian Kingdoms, or Al-Andalus. Each of them offers different starting challenges and choices.. For instance, in the south, Emir Adanis and Ibn Marwan are both Dukes under the Sultanate of Al-Andalus. But they also are neighbors and rivals. Starting with one of them will certainly imply crossing swords and scheming against the other.

Screenshot of the new Iberian bookmark
The new 867 bookmark will be available for everyone, while being more interesting to experience if you own Fate of Iberia


We also seized the opportunity to update the map, refining the county and duchy divisions, as well as the cultures and faiths. This means the stage is more accurately set for the start of our game.

Screenshot of the new county division in Iberia

We mostly focused on the Northern part of the region.

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The new culture set up for the year 867


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The new faith set up for the year 867


You might have noticed the addition of the Mozarabic faith, but again, we will detail that in a future dev diary, along with the rest of the content you can expect from a Flavor Pack!

We are excited to go into the details and share all of this with you in the coming weeks! Until then, I wish you a lovely day and enjoy the trailer!


Cheers,

P.S.: While we do not expect the save versions to be incompatible, please make sure you wrap up your previous playthrough to ensure a seamless transition. If you encounter issues, you can of course roll these saves back to a previous version UNLESS you are playing in Ironman.
 
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This sounds cool. I don't play in the region much, but that is ok. So far I've been impressed by what is contained in a flavor pack. Looks like its going to be 2 for 2 with flavor packs.
 
I‘m exited! I personally rarely play in Iberia but this will certainly change that!
The most important question to me is undoubtedly wether or not the Struggle system will be dynamic and applicable to all areas. Because while greater flavour in a certain region is welcome, a modular and dynamic system would imo fit the overall design philosophy of the game the best.

After skimming through all the screenshots I‘ve found an exiting clue which might hint on this system being dynamic.
Note that in this screenshot, the words „Struggle Region“ are blue and lead to a encyclopedia entry. This to me hints that there may be many struggle regions.
The text also says that the players capital is in the struggle region. Why not just say in Iberia if Iberia is the only struggle region?
If a feature is region specific normally the game tells you that „your capital needs to be in x region“ or that „your culture needs to have so and so many counties in y region“.
FINGERS CROSSED THAT THIS IS A GENERALIZED FEATURE!!!

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Yeah, it would be cool if after winning the Iberian struggle as Al Andalus, for example, you seize a duchy in France or Italy, and it leads to a new Struggle. Though what if you do both? Could you have two struggles at the same time?
 
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Oh I called it! Iberia is a safe bet!

What a weird system though. Never expected to see that. I guess it solves the issue of Iberia being decided through a handful of muslim holy wars. Kind of a strange tack on system though. I wonder if we'll see these elsewhere in the future. I can see something similar for the norse invasions of britain, the indian subcontinent, and islam in general, not to mention what the byzantines will have some day.

It is a flavour pack so I understand its scope is limited but I'm still not seeing some of the fundamental issues with the game being tackled. I really hope you guys will look back over the royal courts wonky events too!
 
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But why are you adding the Mozarabic "faith"? It is simply another Liturgical Rite of the Latin (!) church, meaning it's not even a uniate rite, like the Greek-Catholic rite today is.
It is virtually on the same basis as, let's say, the Dominican Rite yet it would be certainly unfitting to make all characters who were Dominicans in CK2 be of a different religion, wouldn't it.

If you went by that than practically all of Catholicism would need to be split up because liturgical rites within the Latin church were far less standardized before the Council of Trent. And while the church in Iberia was in the beginning more independent than other churches, be it from Rome or the King, it still does not warrant in my opinion an entirely new religion.

Though i will wait and see how it's handled when we get more information.
 
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Kudos to Paradox for coming up with this awesome new system. It's not at all what I expected, but I'm more excited than ever about the game and future possibilities. Happy about the intermarriage between religions, focus on unique conflicts, and political intrigue. A lot of people are saying this would be great for other regions in the game. I assume Paradox feels the same, but want to see how this one goes and learn from it before going forward with more of these. Iberia is a great place to start.

Some fun places would be: Karlings in Europe, Byzantine vs. Greeks reasserting dominance like Athens and Sparta, Norse vs English (Ragnar's sons), William the Conqueror power struggle, Seljuks hold of the Middle East, Middle East 867 with Caliphate vs. Persian reemergence vs. other historic cultures vs. making the caliph your puppet (Sorry I'm Persian so I made this part super long), Holy Roman Empire shenanigans, Italian peninsula (play with republics), Genghis Khan uniting Mongolia, Genghis Khan's grandsons fighting over the empire (really need the rest of Asia for that though),
 
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FINGERS CROSSED THAT THIS IS A GENERALIZED FEATURE!!!
It would make for an interesting alternative to the Danelaw mechanic we have at the moment which is *one* decision to create it, and another to annex duchies from the other (singular) competitor.
It could be useful as a post-crusade mechanic as well, if only part of a relevant region has been taken over.

But it might require a lot of work to make it general enough to apply everywhere, but still able to be specific enough to make sense everywhere. That said, it being moddable is a useful thing, depending on how much work has to be put into it to adapt it.
 
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What do people think : "adding the Heads of Faith faction type that can challenge the player." refers to? What do they think this faction will do?
 
Well i am happy that thay add something new so soon. I love how all Iberian expansion look! But a am still waiting more content on England and France. I am sick of the when normans who had "Ganson de gaust" cultural trait loose it and be given some useless archers who even cost more to one nations who can use it. I need 2 more cultural trait to compinsate that loss, and they not cheap. Why just dont make simular cultural trait for English culture with same perks? And that France need to become empire so country didnt colapse in two. i think for 3H years dejure title K.Aquitaine became part of title France. Or how kings manage to hold that land so long? Anyway glad to see any new content in game))))
 
Ok ok ok ok ok......wont say no. I do quite enjoy playing as Aragon with diplo range limited and culture and faith conversion to very slow. This could be interesting. If my eyes dont decieve me you've split the starting county of Aragon into three very small counties? I'm interested. Means I can stay a small little kingdom longer and keep it hard.
I HOPE you've implemented some sort of system to semi railroad the Almoravid/Almohad invasion and f***ery so us 1066 Iberia players get ourn own version of the Mongol invasion as a mid game challenge once the Taifas start to fall apart? (having been playing a lot of Stellaris more recently I wish Crusader kings had its own brand of mid and late game crisis. The mongols arent really a thing at present and we dont even have Turkic adventurers and random incursions from exiled steppe nomads yet, so hopeful you make spain explode to berbers quite often somehow)

Already though very curious about the granuality of interfaith marriage, hopefully means the lines are even more blurred and confused (liked how aragonn's brother starts as a republican baron in neighbouring Saragossa, hope to see more confusedness)
 
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"Struggles" could be a massively modular mechanic and is hugely exciting to see how it will be implemented and what it can do. From the Danelaw in England to the Outremer in the Near East to the struggle of the Khans to unite their clans, this mechanic could be the start of the next big thing for CK3. However, if its just mission-trees-by-any-other-name or something easily broken, then this could also be a big disappointment.

Edit: There is a LOT more information available about this system over on the steam page, especially in the screenshots. Seems like my fears of it being mission trees are allayed (for now).
There is quite a lot on the Steam page, good eye! I'm very curious about the two new Dynasty legacy trees being added.
 
What do people think : "adding the Heads of Faith faction type that can challenge the player." refers to? What do they think this faction will do?
I suspect it's the Antiking faction from CK2. If you're on the wrong side of the Pope, this faction, consisting of the Pope's supporters, can depose you. It would be a good addition and give more gravity to the religious head.
 
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Will it be possible for the Ummayads to collapse and Muslim Spain to enter the Taifa period? That possibility is always kinda missing whenever one is playing the 867 start.
 
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Very cool!! However I don't know how I feel about the "Mozarabic" Faith. Mozarabs were Catholics and having to convert as a Catholic a Mozarabic county would seem odd, even more so Catholics and Mozarabs considering each other Heretics or Mozarabs not recoginizing the Pope as head of faith. True the Liturgy was of a different rite than say France but that rite was also practiced in the kingdoms of the North. I hope they are not another "Insular" Faith but even more ahistorical.

Religion needs an overall tweak to allow for regional variation (like Mozarabic) within a given formal religion. A year or so ago, I suggested including rites to distinguish such variation.

Edit: Here we go! Wow, first month of the game’s release. Actually, my idea had a little bit in common with how the new culture and language system works. I’d say incorporating liturgical language could help.

 
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I am not really happy about more "content" focus, I was hoping for more "gameplay" focus and improvements. Ultra shallow economy, warfare etc.

Based on what we've seen so far, I think the idea is that Flavor Packs like this focus on the content side of things, while bigger expansions like Royal Court are reserved for more significant, across-the-board improvements. I do think we will see more of what you'd prefer, just probably outside the scope of what the Flavor Pack is intended to address.
 
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