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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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OK, so you're suggesting that William not being allowed to invade sets England back by around 600 years to Romano-British?

That's a bit of a stretch.

And this is getting ridiculous overall.
No I didn't say anything remotely close to that...

I said that the change to the Portucale situation in 867 would be the equivalent of starting the game 1 year before the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain, and thus eliminating any chance of having England in the game, and instead Britain would remain a mish-mash of Romano-Celtic holdings.

I said that it is NOT equivalent to start before the Norman invasions, because if the Norman invasions fail or don't happen, England remains existing.

Could you please try to read my posts a bit more thoroughly? I don't want to clutter this thread repeating myself.


We're both agreed that, broadly, he should start in a war for the area, and be in a position to win it.
Good! :)
 
Galician culture be Porto-Galician
I'm pretty sure "Galician-Portuguese" is a modern (politically loaded) term, back in the 800s-1200s they would just consider themselves Galician and speak Galician, as that basically meant "from Gallaecia" which included Portucale.
"Galician" in 800-1200 isn't the same language or culture as modern Galician. It's the ancestor language to both modern Galician and Portuguese.

Galician and Portuguese cultures if the Kingdom of Portugal forms
This is already the case no? If Portugal forms, Galician provinces in Portugal insta-convert to Portuguese.
Which is already a stretch, since the linguistic divergence between Galician and Portuguese didn't magically happen when Portugal became a kingdom, Galicia and Portugal in 1200 had pretty much exactly the same language and culture.
It was more of a gradual divergence as Portuguese developed independently of Castilian influence, while Galician approached Castilian due to being subjugated for the next thousand years.
 
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I can't wait to dive in Iberia.
 
Lots of people are hoping that the Struggle mechanic could be a dynamic thing... I'm sure the devs agree with you, but they likely want to test and tune it first only in the Iberian peninsula. There are three paths:
1 - Struggle is a nice mechanic for Iberia, but is impossible to translate easily to other regions because it had to be tuned with the very specific situation in Iberia, and it cannot work with other faiths.
2 - Struggle isn't that great, not necessarily bad, but anecdotal, easy to ignore. It's just not worth the time adapting it to other regions, which will rather have their own unique mechanics.
3 - Struggle is an excellent and dynamic mechanic that will progressively be added to other regions with similar situations.

But let's stay reasonable for now. Personally I love the current dynamic Paradox games to impliment game mechanics that recognize interesting opportunities/situations in game, with Victoria 3, Stellaris and Crusader Kings 3. I certainly hope we'll get more of that (especially when it come to warfare).
 
I don't see the problem. Scripted means lots of scope for adding unique content. A dynamic struggle system would have to be generic and flavor-free, so that it can apply everywhere. It's not like one is inherently superior to the other. But since lack of flavor is ck3's main complaint, I'm glad they went with scripted.

I meant it looks like fun mechanic but also nothing especially specific so it could be as well procedurally generated and dynamic in regions across all map - Britannia or Asia Minor in 867 literally begs for it for example (not to mention tons of other regions in both starting dates too).

Problem is, CK3 so far have the greatly approved by me trend to make frameworks rather than highly specific mechanics. And suddenly we got big purely regional mechanic, and while i have hope it will be adapted to universal one, PDX don't have great records in this once the actual thing is implemented.
 
I meant it looks like fun mechanic but also nothing especially specific so it could be as well procedurally generated and dynamic in regions across all map - Britannia or Asia Minor in 867 literally begs for it for example (not to mention tons of other regions in both starting dates too).

Problem is, CK3 so far have the greatly approved by me trend to make frameworks rather than highly specific mechanics. And suddenly we got big purely regional mechanic, and while i have hope it will be adapted to universal one, PDX don't have great records in this once the actual thing is implemented.
We're always complaining that everywhere plays the same and yet after both RC and now with FoI, people want it implemented everywhere. It's puzzling, isn't it?

I like the novelty of some regions being unique.

The art alone is worth the expansion.
 
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We're always complaining that everywhere plays the same and yet after both RC and now with FoI, people want it implemented everywhere. It's puzzling, isn't it?

I like the novelty of some regions being unique.

The art alone is worth the expansion.

The best solution would be general systems that work everywhere in the map but create emergent gameplay to make it so every region with its own characteristics takes advantage of the general systems in different ways.
 
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We're always complaining that everywhere plays the same and yet after both RC and now with FoI, people want it implemented everywhere. It's puzzling, isn't it?

I like the novelty of some regions being unique.

In an ideal world, the Struggle mechanic could be implemented in a way that enhances the uniqueness of each major region. If it's flexible enough to allow for different forms of "Struggles" that are customized to the cultures/religions of those regions, it could enhance the degree to which gameplay differs region-by-region. That would likely necessitate scripted struggles, though. A dynamic system would just be "oh, group A is being played by the so-and-sos, now", which wouldn't create a lot of variation.

In the worst case scenario, Struggle is just another tacked-on mechanic that integrates poorly with other systems like events and wars, leading to more incongruous happenings like my best friend chilling with me and relieving some stress while I besiege his castle and hold his children prisoner. Paradox is already struggling to code events with a view to what's happening on the map; having to also account for what's happening with Struggles may make future coding even more challenging.

I'm hoping for the former, while preparing myself for the latter.
 
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Any chance we can tweak the Portugal formation decision?

The Kingdom of Badajoz is biggest loser in the decision becoming a single duchy kingdom, but that kingdom itself didn't really exist in 867 anyway. On top of that, it didn't exist for long, 1009 AD-1150 AD. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifa_of_Badajoz)

After taking the decision, you become Portuguese (can we make that optional?) and leaves a rump Badajoz kingdom title. It would probably make sense to completely replace Badajoz by giving its remaining territory to a different title.
 
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Any chance we can tweak the Portugal formation decision?

The Kingdom of Badajoz is biggest loser in the decision becoming a single duchy kingdom, but that kingdom itself didn't really exist in 867 anyway. On top of that, it didn't exist for long, 1009 AD-1150 AD. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifa_of_Badajoz)

After taking the decision, you become Portuguese (can we make that optional?) and leaves a that rump Badajoz kingdom title. It would probably make sense to completely replace Badajoz by giving its remaining territory to a different title.
Do you want to have a decision that can potentially demote a neighbouring player from King to Duke (or even Count!), even if they're a King who holds a lot of territory?

Say the King of Badajoz holds a lot of land outside of Badajoz, gets attacked for the land needed to form Portugal, and is unlucky enough to get captured. The war ends at 100% WS to his opponent, and the opponent takes the decision, stripping the King of Badajoz of his kingdom, and automatically freeing any of his vassal dukes as they're now equal rank to him.

A better tweak might be to have the Portugal decision only require the northern territories, but to integrate the southern ones (and possibly other held Iberian land) if held, that way you don't have a potentially major player reduced to Duke whilst still holding land in his de jure kingdom, with all his gains given to another king.
For example, the king of Badajoz holds most of Andalusia and across into Valencia, but those king titles are held by other rulers that he has been unable to usurp for whatever reason. The Portugal decision is fired, and he loses Badajoz, with all his other territory given to Andalusia (the logical Muslim alternative) - but this takes Andalusia from owning half of its dejure to now owning all its dejure, Badajoz, and most of Valencia, and the former king of Badajoz is bumped down to Duke - or possibly Count if he didn't hold Badajoz directly.
 
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Because this is a Flavour Pack for the whole region of Iberia, Portugal and Galicia are important parts of the region too and the de jure borders of Portugal and Galicia are a tad weird as is the requirement of forming Portugal. On the culture, Portuguese and Galician are very close, so having a Porto-Galician culture that divides to Portuguese and Galician in the right conditions would be interesting.
no no, why do you still have faith that PDX will give Portugal love?
 
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I'm pretty sure "Galician-Portuguese" is a modern (politically loaded) term, back in the 800s-1200s they would just consider themselves Galician and speak Galician, as that basically meant "from Gallaecia" which included Portucale.
"Galician" in 800-1200 isn't the same language or culture as modern Galician. It's the ancestor language to both modern Galician and Portuguese.


This is already the case no? If Portugal forms, Galician provinces in Portugal insta-convert to Portuguese.
Which is already a stretch, since the linguistic divergence between Galician and Portuguese didn't magically happen when Portugal became a kingdom, Galicia and Portugal in 1200 had pretty much exactly the same language and culture.
It was more of a gradual divergence as Portuguese developed independently of Castilian influence, while Galician approached Castilian due to being subjugated for the next thousand years.
Yes, that's the case. Portuguese and Modern Galician developed separatelly because Portugal became independent and Galicia had a lot of Leon Spanish influence, but the culture magically becoming Portuguese was my "problem", and tbf it's not really a problem, but a thing that could be represented better imo with having both of them in this Galician-Portuguese culture, since it could represent those cultural groups better in a alternative scenario where Portugal never formed and the historical conditions where those distinct cultures rose didn't happen. I don't think this would be as much of a stretch or a anacronistic choice, but one that could be interesting and maybe represent the formation of two distinct cultures or the preservation of an earlier form of both.
 
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An unexpected surprise on my train to Córdoba, and very exciting! I’m hoping for increased representation of Moorish and Mudejar art styles to accompany this flavour pack.

In other news, Paradox seems to be basing its flavour packs on my holidays. This is good news, because I’m off to Greece next! ;)
 
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Hey there! Thanks for all your comments!

As you can expect, I won't give any answer around the Struggle as it will be our next focus. I'll beg you to be patient and wait until the next DD. We will then happily discuss our plan with you, once you have all the details!

Nobody expects the Spanish flavor pack!
Who would have?

This looks nice!

I must ask, though, what is the reasoning behind announcing new DLCs only a few weeks away from when they'll be released? Six weeks seems very short compared to all of the DDs you could release about Fate of Iberia.
We prefer to have a shorter and focused communication period for the Flavor Pack. Hopefully, each of them should bring you exciting details about what's to come!

Looks great! Question, does the new culture set up for 867 means visigothic as a culture will be gone?
The Visigothic culture still exists but is not assigned to counties, hence it disappeared from the map

Looking good!

I still want tributaries, though. :(
We can only focus on certain elements for a given flavor pack :)

So, can I join the struggles as an outsider invader? Let's say I start as my boy hasteinn. If conquer de balleares do I join up in the struggle?

Do I have to be christian or muslim to participate?
Ok, I said I would not give any answer regarding the Struggle, but I'll do an exception. There is a way of becoming involved, even if you are not part of the Struggle from the start.

While I'm excited about the new flavor pack, I'm disappointed that we didn't get a new patch, there's a lot of bugs still that need fixing. Is it safe to assume there won't be another patch until the release of the flavor pack?
We do not plan a patch before the release of the flavor pack. However, you can expect a free update being released along the Flavor Pack as usual

Will the AI understand the significance of taking actions like "reveal a secret" to advance the struggle meter, or is that just for players to do?
Yes, the AI is aware of actions affecting the progress of the Struggle. (It's an AI question, not a Struggle question, right?)

I wonder how this will affect overall game balance? I know that when Northern Lords first came out a lot of people complained that it inadvertently made vikings OP and caused balance problems in earlier start dates.
This Flavor Pack is more contained within the Iberian peninsula. The Flavor Pack will change the balance and the dynamic within the region and for their neighbours but it should not change the overall balance of power. As usual, we will count on your feedback though to help us improve the experience!

What are the features of the Mozarabic faith?
We will cover it in a future DD!

Could you please also add a toggle that makes it so you can choose to use your dynasty name or title name as realm name as a muslim clan leader? would help with roleplay.
I'll add this suggestion to our backlog!

I always liked to play with al-Andalus, so I'm really excited about the new Flavour Pack. One question though. If my eyes don't deceive me, I recognize new 3D modells on the Steam pictures. All iberian cultures'll share the same, new holding graphics, or the andalusians'll get their own graphics too?
For the holding specifically, we did a common set for the peninsula, with a variant for the Temple (1 Christian and 1 Muslim).

is there new content for Morocco?who invaded whole south Iberia in history.
We did not focus on Morocco with this Flavor Pack.

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.
Who knows?.... I might have something for you... soon...

any chance that we get more than one religion in a county? Like a percentage, 80% muslim with 15% christian, 5% jew or something (add some modifiers) i think that would be good for the whole map and espacially in this scenario!
It's not in our plan for now.

Hope that jewish will also get some love in this flavor pack. Jewish Culture was a big part of iberian culture at that times and it would be a shame if it wouldn't get any love.
We might have something for you in a future DD!

Any chance we can tweak the Portugal formation decision?
We adjusted the existing Decision a bit :)

Cheers,
 
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