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

 

[Golwar]

I know, it's pre-alpha. Nevertheless I need to say that a decent looking map is far more important than the ability to rotate. So please don't get the priorities wrong.

 

[TempestDK]

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.

I would be surprised if they limited the amout of traits to the number in CK1 .. sine this engine has none of the limitations of the old one ... I think there will be room to mod existing traits and add new ones to your heart's content.

 

[RedRooster81]

I would be surprised if they limited the amout of traits to the number in CK1 .. sine this engine has none of the limitations of the old one ... I think there will be room to mod existing traits and add new ones to your heart's content.

Oh, yeah! I feel like a kid who gets a massive gift the day after Christmas, then one blessed day a month is allowed to peel back the paper about an inch. I'm playing CK1 through again once more in the meantime.

The map looks fine, if you look at it carefully and do your own mental gamma adjustment. I imagine that the final product will look more like Vicky2's maps. But my favorite part of CK1 has always been (secretly) that I can get the game up and running in 30 seconds flat, so super high-quality graphics is not so much of a draw for me.

 

[alicuza]

Seems nice. Love the UI.

 

[unmerged(157596)]

So, there will be ordinals... what about epithets?

 

[RedRooster81]

So, there will be ordinals... what about epithets?

No mention so far. It would be nice if you could just edit your characters' names, like regimental and provincial capital names in EU3 and EU Rome.

 

[Woody Man]

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.

I'm guessing they will be moddable, the clauswitz engine is far far more modder friendly.

 

[RedRooster81]

I'm guessing they will be moddable, the clauswitz engine is far far more modder friendly.

Good. Then I can make poor Edward, Duke of Cornwall, feel better about not having any vassals by making him a knight of the Garter or some such. ;-)

 

[Ben Music]

I know, it's pre-alpha. Nevertheless I need to say that a decent looking map is far more important than the ability to rotate. So please don't get the priorities wrong.

I want my map to look like, well, a map, possibly even a map that would appear to come from the era. Not a weird pseudo 3D representation of map. But that's just my opinion. I wonder why the decision was map to go away from the authentic map representation.

 

[Timor]

Dont care much about horizontal / want_to_be_first_person_view.

And i kinda miss good old sideways portraits. Legendary count/courtier ugliness really spiced up the atmosphere.
Ah well, im sure they are going to make perfectly handsome kings with just perfect little wrinkles we can laugh at...no...dont really see it.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

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...

Why aren't you happy about regnal numbers? It'll make it a lot easier to distinguish between various kings/dukes of the same area.
I also don't get what you mean by "per person or per title" - the numbers will follow down the line of the duchy so that you'll get "Dave I" followed by perhaps "Fred V", and then your next Dave would be "Dave II".
What I'd be interested in with this one is if the duchy goes extinct, do the numbers restart? What if it is conquered and a new duchy formed by the conqueror?

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...

I'd say they largely look like they've roughly grabbed the EU III borders and they're using them as placeholders whilst they build the game.

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)…

As was said these are placeholders. I'm guessing that what has happened is that they haven't added the historical arms, so the game has found a dynasty that doesn't have arms, so it has generated some.

As an (amateur) who has studied heraldry, I feel I should point out that the field might actually be the difference mark - not necessarily a cadency mark, as they could be assumed so as to have similar, but different arms from an overlord. However, yes the random programme could do with a limiter to stop a charge using either colour from a divided field. Of course random arms would only be likely to be used where a new family came into being, (bastards mostly) or a non-noble family was raised to noble status (if the game has a way to do this). As for the colour combinations and regional arms, this could be programmed into the random generator as well. Possibly by having a list of elements for different regions - classically important HRE areas might tend towards Eagles (although that would be an imperial claim, so care might need to be taken...), but would avoid Lions; only royal bastards of France, or French royal cadets would use Lillies; Royal bastards of England might use the Lions with various marks or borders. I don't really know enough to go beyond that. Scandinavian royal bastards could use colour shifted or debruised versions of the royal arms (mostly lions as well IIRC) as well.

My final point for this post is that we appear to be getting both personal arms (In this case "Bendy or and azure, three towers placed 2 and 1 of the second") and national/title arms ("Gules, three leopards passant guardant or placed in pale") Technically they should be armed and langued azure (blue claws and tongue) but I can let that off.

 

[TempestDK]

Dont care much about horizontal / want_to_be_first_person_view.

And i kinda miss good old sideways portraits. Legendary count/courtier ugliness really spiced up the atmosphere.
Ah well, im sure they are going to make perfectly handsome kings with just perfect little wrinkles we can laugh at...no...dont really see it.

If one doesn't like the sideways view, there is no one forcing you to use it ... just look at it like any of the other Paradox maps.

As for the portraits ... I liked the old ones, but it is far too early to judge them, as there really is only one place holder face for males and females. There might be as much variaty as in the old game by the time it is done ... be patient.

 

[Timor]

I know i know.

its just...hard...to...be...patient...

And maybe the horizontal view turns out to be the biggest carrot of them all. But that wont stop me from bickering, no it wont. It's what i do best after all.

/phase out having had nothing constructive to add

 

[RedRooster81]

If one doesn't like the sideways view, there is no one forcing you to use it ... just look at it like any of the other Paradox maps.

As for the portraits ... I liked the old ones, but it is far too early to judge them, as there really is only one place holder face for males and females. There might be as much variaty as in the old game by the time it is done ... be patient.

Yeah, and I'm sure there'll be a dozen face mods within a month of first release this time next year. And I remember when I first discovered map rotation on EU Rome, like my third real try at conquering the Mediterranean. "Hey, what was that? The map moved! Boy, that was freaky." So just like fast travel on RPG games (something that gets complained about a lot by purists), map rotation is entirely OPTIONAL.

 

[Duckett]

I'm disappointed with the variety of faces seen so far, they all look the same.
Everything else looks cool though, the new interface looks interesting. I hope you can have the character screen take up the entire screen rather than a little portion, just for when you're cycling through characters.
The new map is huge! All the way down from Somalia up to Iceland.

 

[TempestDK]

I'm disappointed with the variety of faces seen so far, they all look the same.

That is probably becasue there is only one male face and one female face so far ... so obviously they are going to look alike ... more will come, don't worry. They are just placeholders.

 

[Golwar]

If one doesn't like the sideways view, there is no one forcing you to use it ... just look at it like any of the other Paradox maps.

As for the portraits ... I liked the old ones, but it is far too early to judge them, as there really is only one place holder face for males and females. There might be as much variety as in the old game by the time it is done ... be patient.

As he quoted me, he probably fears that the option to rotate the map comes with the cost of a less favourable looking map. And in that case it doesn't help you if you simply don't rotate, the map would look all the same quality wise. And its better to tell the developer your priorities now, than to be sorry later.

 

[ThalesMM]

Why are you use this projection (The projection that used all paradox games except Victoria 2)? CKII's map doesn't contain whole world. So you can use Europe-based projection. Centennia Atlas has this kind of projection;



Full resolution: http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6662/centenniamapof1337.png

I drew a line between Crete and Tunusia. It easily shows the distortion of projection of paradox games' maps, except Victoria II.

 

[Annibal]

I agree with CanOmer.

 

[Boris ze Spider]

I love the zoomed in map.