Hello again folks!

This diary will be a bit on the short side due to the frenzy at the office this week, but since it recently came up on the forum, I thought I'd say a little bit about regnal numbers. One of the nice little touches in Europa Universalis III (and its predecessors) is that kings have proper regnal numbers. This feature was missing from the original Crusader Kings, but I am pleased to announce that it will be fully implemented in Crusader Kings II. The way it works is that the first names of actual scripted holders in the character database are counted for each landed title at game start. Regnal numbers are only displayed for Dukes and above, which includes the Pope (a kingdom tier title.) The Holy Father, however, is a bit special in that he changes name on accession. So, a character named, say, Étienne Aubert could get the name Innocent VI if he became Pope.



Somewhat related to regnal numbers is the state of a character at the time of death. In Crusader Kings II, you can browse back through dead characters and see exactly which titles they held and what regnal number they had. I'll leave you with some extra screenshots while you're waiting for the next dev diary, which will be about our beautiful new map. Failing unexpected delays, it should be posted on february 4.




Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead

 

[Vidalaac]

Looks great... a question though: how will you deal with kings that are also dukes... say, the King of France that is also the Duke of Orleans... will the regnal numbers apply differently to both his tittles? Could he be King Louis XI of France and Duke Louis IX of Orleans?

 

[Jade]

Minor nitpick:

The dead characters look too much "alive". The skull icon does not do it for me.

I agree. What about "de-colorizing" the portraits? Then they'd sort of have the statue feel.

 

[Woody Man]

Love the Regnal numbers, the dynasty COAs, and do I spot the Norse religion?

 

[Wetew]

Great update! Bit worried though about Edwards taste in women. His wife looks exactly like his mother and sister! That doesn't feel right for me

 

[LaIsHeR]

Wow really great little flavor...
But it seems you aren't going to add family tree feature in the game... or did I just misunderstand?

Edit: And thanks for putting "border" norther, now I can finally become King of The Finns

 

[Cromelex]

Oh, this is looking very good indeed!

Can't wait for the next dev-diary.

 

[Freodin]

I love the feature that you can view the titles of deceased characters. It will make it so much easier to trace the inheritance of titles.

As for the regnal numbers... I guess you will get all the little problems with losing and regaining titles correctly.

But I wonder... do you think you could get the program to understand equal names in different languages? It wouldn´t be quite right if Count Peter I was succeeded by Count Pierre I and Count Pjotr I and Count Pietro I.

 

[Caranorn]

I'll first resume my reaction to this DevDiary as "worried"...

I'm not at all happy with the notion of regnal numbers, particularly that it's limited to kingdoms and duchies (why?) (note english earls is positive news). Also it doesn't seem to be clear whether those regnal numbers will be per person or per title...

The screenshots, I assume all counties are visible here. If so, the continental counties visible have only very limited ressemblance to the historic counties and certainly a number of important fiefs will be ignored...

Dynastic coats of arms are rather good news. But seing the unlucky example for the Plantagentes I once again am rather worried. Why am I saying unlucky example? In heraldic terms those arms would be "or 3 bends azure, 3 towers (2,1) the same overall". Simply put, having towers of the same colour over those bends makes the arms difficult to read, the towers should be another colour (just looking at a few historic arms and lacking immediately accessible statistic data for variations and cadency marks I'd say the towers should be either red (gules) or black (sable). Another issue is that the older a family, the simpler it’s arms should be. So in this case the cadency mark of 3 towers would make little sense for the House of Anjou (aka Plantagenet). Note that in many places the very colours can have political and/or rank/prestige meanings (the same for ordinaries and charges (note: I’m more used to French language heraldry and blazoning than English language). For instance the blue/yellow combination (often loyalty to France) vs. yellow/black (loyalty to the Emperor) are often political. Likewise lilies tend to point to “French” loyalty, eagles to “German” loyalty. Yellow tends to be preferred to white in more prestigious houses depending on region. Though of course those are just statistical issues and exceptions existed. But my point really should be that there was no randomness in historic arms. There almost always were good reasons why one design was chosen over another even though today we cannot be certain of those reasons. In the end I am of the opinion that laymen cannot reasonably do this job. So I would strongly recommend that Paradox not rely solely on graphic artists for these tasks and instead look for experienced heraldists (I believe we have a few on these forums). Also I really see little purpouse for random dynasty arms (or fixed province/title arms), instead there should be random (for cadency) personal arms based on pre-determined dynastic/title arms (some would have to be extrapolated or even invented for pre-heraldic families (Godwinsons as an example)…

 

[enderbr]

But I wonder... do you think you could get the program to understand equal names in different languages? It wouldn´t be quite right if Count Peter I was succeeded by Count Pierre I and Count Pjotr I and Count Pietro I.

That would be cool.
I'm also very curious to know what will be represented on the map and what won't. I guess it would be nice to actually see the different baronnies dotting the landscape (little churches and castles and huddles of houses for towns), but I wouldn't trade performance for this.

By the way, just let me buy the game already! I'm all in for a pre-pre-sale.

 

[TempestDK]

This is so awesome I almost peed my pants

 

[vadermath]

@Caranorn: Most of the stuff you seem to be unhappy about are placeholders, as Doomdark has said.

 

[Kaleidoscope]

Great update! Bit worried though about Edwards taste in women. His wife looks exactly like his mother and sister! That doesn't feel right for me

Freud was right!

 

[vertinox]

The faces are a bit bland, though, but I'm sure you're still working on that.

Everyone seems to have a case of beady eyes and duck lips

But yeah map looks nice.

BTW it looks like the English vassals below Duke have Earl titiles. I'm going to assume this is because of culture? How is this figured? Culture of the main liege or culture of the province or culture of the person ruling the province.

 

[Trovador]

Fantastic update, as usual. I love de general appearence the game is taking, and even if the counties can be non-historical for now, the borders are smoothier than in EU3 or Vicky2, IMO, which is great.

The regnal numbers are also very good, and I'm specially happy that you posted a DevDiary exactly about the questions that were being asked in the forums - thanks, Paradox!

I agree with most people that the portraits are quite 'poor' or too simillar right now, but bigger and more contrastant features would do the trick.
My biggest 'request', though, is about names in different languages: could you use something like the 'localisation' files to create and keep the translations of a same name to different languages? That way, the game would correctly identify Peter as the same name of Pedro etc, for both numering and flavour purposes. Maybe the titles could have cultures associated with them, or at least Kingdoms would have pre-definied cultures and Duchies (and maybe Counties) would be based in the culture of said province, or in the liege of the Duke/Count. That way, even if an englishman named Peter suceeds to the throne of Portugal, he would be displayed as Pedro.
Obviously, there aren't translation for every single name, but the most usual to kings, at least, are translatable from one language to other one (for example, here). The untranslated names would be kept, obviously.

I love the fact we have coat-of-arms to the dinasties now, but I would actually prefer to see evolving coats-of-arms to kings and kingdoms, like Castille and Leon had their shields merged - it did not happen to the HRE, though, as it had only the German eagle IRL. But I, as a player, would love to see my conquests displayed in the shield of my kingdom or king.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I agree with most people that the portraits are quite 'poor' or too simillar right now, but bigger and more contrastant features would do the trick.

As Doomdark has already said, the game is still in 'alpha' and a lot of things are still only 'placeholders'.

 

[RedRooster81]

Still about a year to go, and I can already feel a great deal of anticipation. Everyone seems to have his or her idea of what the game should look like, but I'm fascinated by what I'm seeing so far.

The basic face models that have been worked up so far are a good place to start, even for placeholders. I think that the crown overlay looks good. Are the ermine robes on the king and his vassals an overlay for titleholders? Just an idea, as well as maybe overlays for different councilors. Given the interest in orders like the Golden Fleece on the forum, maybe additional overlays could be possible. Okay, maybe that's getting too complicated.

At this point, in pre-alpha, the basic parameters seem to have been worked out. I look forward to seeing the next revelation next month.

 

[I Killed Kenny]

The map really doesn't work for me... C'mon compare it with Vicky or EUIII divine wind... you can do *much* better...

 

[Jayavarman]

The map really doesn't work for me... C'mon compare it with Vicky or EUIII divine wind... you can do *much* better...

It's pre-alpha.

 

[SaberHRE]

Looks good. I only hope that characters will have more traits than what is presented. I don't want CK2 to follow a Rome model of traits.

 

[RedRooster81]

Looks good. I only hope that characters will have more traits than what is presented. I don't want CK2 to follow a Rome model of traits.

More important to me, are traits moddable or will they be restricted in number like in CK1? It would be nice to add in honorary titles that would add prestige, etc.