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

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Norse religion? In the year leet?
Surely they were catholics by then (unless ofc the Northern counties have risen and taken over the rest of Sweden).
Or we should just ignore details like that when seeing screens of pre-alpha builds

In CK1, that province in 1066 is also still Pagan, though ruled by a Christian.

 

[unmerged(157596)]

In CK1, that province in 1066 is also still Pagan, though ruled by a Christian.

Yeah, but screenie is from 1337. Even with abysmal convertion rates, it should have changed religion by then.
But, then again, I have had a save where I battled the Sultanate of Telemark and it's Norwegian Muslim population, so it's no telling what might happen ingame.

 

[Kolonel]

Very promising DD.
Consider me excited.

As if I wasn't already...

 

[Danevang]

Norse religion? In the year leet?
Surely they were catholics by then (unless ofc the Northern counties have risen and taken over the rest of Sweden).
Or we should just ignore details like that when seeing screens of pre-alpha builds

All in all you could ask if the people of the North were rever eally Roman-catholic. The over all mentality was, and is, different from i.e. southern Eurpoe. Perhaps ther term Norse-Christian should be invented.

"White Christ" as the victorious warrior like king God, overpowering death, is a little different than the Christ of the main stream Roman catholicism (and of the missionaries who came to the North). The Northern christianity has always, and I'd say is still, different from the mainland European one (like the Iro-Celtic one is also very different than the Roman-Catholic church). Also, the Danish bishop Absalon went on crusade! (I believe this actually had to be made ilegal by papal order)

Long story short, the North was only begining to be christened from (approximately) about the year 900, and the people were definately not fully christian ontil many hundreds of years later (peasants in isolated areas still worshipped the old pre-christian faith until the 19th century).

EDIT: Oh, and the game looks to be coming along nicely.

 

[htilden42]

This has been asked already, but are the regnal numerals tied to titles, or to characters themselves?

Real-life example of what I'm talking about is James VI and I of Scotland and England; he was the sixth James to be king of Scotland, but the first English James.
So, for example, if my guy is King of England, France, and Germany, will he be Henry VI of England, France, and Germany, or will he be Henry VI of England, Henri XII of France, and Heinrich I of Germany?

And for dead characters, how about their portrait show their mouldering corpse in varying states of putrefaction?

 

[Danevang]

(...) And for dead characters, how about their portrait show their mouldering corpse in varying states of putrefaction?

With such a level of detail, I would say that "less is more". If it was included, I'd insist on also having the character portrait indicate the bad trait "irritated bowel" very graphically. Haha.

 

[unmerged(157596)]

Long story short, the North was only begining to be christened from (approximately) about the year 900, and the people were definately not fully christian ontil many hundreds of years later (peasants in isolated areas still worshipped the old pre-christian faith until the 19th century).

But in those cases the pre-christian faith was Sami shamanism, not Norse paganism. Odin was by the end of the 18th century long since reduced to the leader of the Wild Hunt in folklore.
Anyways, yet another discussion for a different thread.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I think this is also due to the fact that the game is still only in alpha.

 

[Danevang]

But in those cases the pre-christian faith was Sami shamanism, not Norse paganism. Odin was by the end of the 18th century long since reduced to the leader of the Wild Hunt in folklore.
Anyways, yet another discussion for a different thread.

I think you're wrong about that, but yes, different thread for such a discussion.

Short reply though, the old faith was to a high degree integrated into the norse christianity. So on the over all look it was christianity, but in fact remained much the same. Take the just finished old norse pagan fest "jul", which was transformed into christmas (like the English term "yule"), where one now sets food out to Santa Claus, instead of to Thor. And elfs, nisser (which has no direct non-norse name (pixies perhaps)) and so on, all pagan remains. Also, in Denmark the old fertility rites and decentralised cult has kept it's strength on local farms, up to our days. And the Danes were never into sami shamanism. There, I'll keep to the subject of the DD, though this subject did spring from that. It's an interesting subject though.

What should be in the game though, should be various Catholic branches/factions, to simulate the major problems these gave birth to (struggles for missions in pagan lands, church dogma and so on). For instance the Holy Roman Empire wanted badly to get Denmark under their archbishop in Hamburg-Bremen, and fought Iro-Celtic (British) missionaries for this. It all ended with Denmark getting their own archbishopry in Lund, by going directly to the pope, and effectively starting a norse/northern church branch. All this would be really cool in game, as church and politics were very much one and the same then.

 

[johho888]

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

That sounds like a great idea to display portraits of dead characters!

And it doesn't feel all that difficult to do (but sometimes what takes time when programming is not the things that sounds complicated so who knows?).

 

[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.

What do Devs think about this issue?

 

[Nick B II]

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)…

It looks like they haven't brought many graphic artists in yet because they haven't done much work on the faces.

Since they have programmers, randomly generating a blazon is simple to program, and a blazon is easy to turn into a CoA on computer, that's probably what they've done.

Whether the House CoAs get more sophisticated as the game goes on probably depends on how many resources they have to spare. Ideally they'd have historians and heralds find out historical CoAs for as many houses as possible, and then make the rest up. This could be quite complicated because most Houses used the CoA of a major fief as their CoA. It would be a bit odd for an illegitimate branch of the Capets to use Azure a Semy of Fleur de Lis Or if the main line lost the Hundred Years War.

If they don't have the resources to do that it would be sensible for them to hire a heraldist to do as much as he could manage. But, this being software development, it's entirely possible they'll get to crunch time over-budget and under-manned, and we'll be stuck with random CoAs for the Houses. Which would be worse then the alternatives I've mentioned, but a whole lot better then CK1's system.

Nick

 

[Nick B II]

Wouldn't be too weird, I think I remember hearing Kings referred to as "Edward the First of that Name" or something like that in chronicles.

Was that a chronicle from his lifetime?

I was under the impression that Edward I would have simply been called Edward until another Edward arrived and it became necessary to differentiate the two.

BTW, as for Maud's "De Jure Liege" in the second screenshot, it is possible she's taking this loyalty hit because Ulster is part of the Kingdom of Ireland, and not that some Ulster Counts are direct vassals of the King. It doesn't look like Edward III has the Irish King-title, so technically she isn't a de Jure vassal of his. She's just a vassal.

Nick

 

[Caranorn]

This could be quite complicated because most Houses used the CoA of a major fief as their CoA. It would be a bit odd for an illegitimate branch of the Capets to use Azure a Semy of Fleur de Lis Or if the main line lost the Hundred Years War.

Nick

I think this notion of coats of arms for titles or fiefs is a misaprehension. Yes, at times one specific coat of arms would survive through suceeding rulers of different dynasties. But most times a new dynasty would impose its arms on the fief. In the end, arms are personal, that is they identify one person. And yes, obviously relatives will bear similar arms (most of the time), in some cases identical (but that already shows a breakdown of the heraldic system) ones, but that's what cadency and other systems of differentiation are for. I guess the game's notion of dynastic arms is what's referred to in German as 'Stammwappen' (though even these could change over time). I'd much rather see every single landed noble (king, duke, count and baron tiers) with an individual coat of arms based on his descent. That would mean neither dynastic, nor title/fief arms...

And if the oldest legitimate descendant of the House of Capet had died it would not be unlogical to have someone of illegitimate descent adopt the original arms (technically if a house became defunct anyone could adopt its most primitive arms, though today that would be frowned upon and back then it would probably have had serious consequences). While on the very lowest level of CK-II (at best) I have an example, after the main lines of the House of Luxembourg-Limbourg died out, the Lords of Houffalize (at best barons in CK-II terms) descended from a bastard son of Henry V of Luxembourg (note an example of regnal numbers on the count tier in modern historiography) adopted the full arms "barry argent and azure, a lion rampant gules armed, langued and crowned or". Of course that adoption of arms was outrageous, neverless it happened and prevailed until the extinction of the Lords of Houffalize. Many other, less outrageous examples exist (Walram I of Luxembourg-Ligny temporarily adopting the full arms of the dukes of Limbourg after the extinction of that senior line, abandonning those arms again upon a temporary peace settlement with his a cousin (count of Berg iirc) and the only reason he (and his descent) did not re-adopt the Limbourg arms a short while later was his death in battle settling the sucession of the duchy)...

P.S.: Sorry for the repeated examples from my local area. It's just closest to home and therfore easiest for me usually also quite representative of other regions (obviously I did not only delve into heraldry history sources relevant to this region (Lotharingia, Ardennes, Luxembourg++) (for instance, right now I'm reading Verbruggen's "Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.")...

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

In general: it looks great! But a small remark abot this post.



I agree with you the regnal numbers, but not with your comment on lions in the Holy Roman Empire. Have you ever seen coat of arms from the Low Countries region, a lot of them show a Lion Rampant, like Brabant, Holland, Limburg, Gelre etc. examples from other parts of the Holy Roman Empire are the Palatinate and Bohemia.

Hmm... I hadn't thought about those ones. You're right though, there seem to be a lot of lions now I think about it. Still, the idea of regionalised variations in the random list could still stand, either by colour or by symbol. Of course, the territorial arms would probably be fixed, and only the personal arms would be randomised. They might need to create some for non-real life, but possible duchies or kingdoms, and they might need to do some work to allow for displaying multiple titles of the same tier (e.g. King of England and France, or Duke of Normandy and Navarre) by quartering or even allowing for arms of pretence where a man is married to an heiress, and he is displaying both sets of arms. Assuming that their son was heir to both, he would then quarter them.

A stricter version could also be applied to personal arms, possibly displaying marriages (and bishops' arms) by impalement or dimidiation, - in the case of the bishop it would be his arms, and that of his see.

 

[Gaute65]

What do Devs think about this issue?

The devs is on a plane to New York atm.

 

[Kaleidoscope]

What do Devs think about this issue?

The devs are all on a team-building exercise, so don't expect any more comments from them for a few days.

 

[evilon]

LEET
Looking good so far.
Wtb tabbed browsing of titles

Please put a comment in the first post, at the beginning, before and after each picture, and at the end of the post, that there's a lot of filler stuff in there ... Please ...

 

[Palfouri]

The devs are all on a team-building exercise, so don't expect any more comments from them for a few days.

So they've gone to raid and pillage?

That's a Swedish teambuilding exercise, right?

 

[Wetew]

So they've gone to raid and pillage?

That's a Swedish teambuilding exercise, right?

Don't forget the national sport, drinking. That's one of the best teambuilding exercises we got to offer