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Once more Tuesday is upon us and it is time to unleash some more facts about Rajas of India upon your unsuspecting minds. This time, I thought I'd go through some of the major features we're adding in the free part of the expansion, i.e. patch 2.1.

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First up, I think you might be interested in the parts of the new map that are actually outside India; the regions of Afghanistan, Transoxiana and Siberia. Part of my reason for wanting to extend the map to the east was to get these areas into the game. If you consider the old edge of the map, you might have noticed that many counties are truncated, or in the wrong place. Places like Balkh and Samarkand were deemed important enough to be on the old map even though they are in reality located off the eastern edge. This is perhaps most obvious around the Urals, where we even have an "Omsk" province. With the new map, these provinces could finally be put in the right place. Of course, we still needed to add a lot of new counties as well, which meant we also needed some more cultures. Thus, we now have this situation:
  • The Cumans are intrinsically more powerful
  • There is a Kirghiz state to their east, with its own culture
  • There is Karluk (new culture) state south of Lake Balkhash
  • There is a Khanty (new culture) realm north of the Cumans
  • The whole region of Afghanistan, with new Afghan and Baluch cultures
  • More counties in Khorasan / Greater Persia
Tibet, the Tarim basin and the Altai mountains are visible on the map, but we decided not to add any provinces to those regions.

ck2_RoI_dd_05_Oxus_River.png

There are changes to the old parts of the map as well. We had to trim the western edge slightly to get the map dimensions right, and there are many changes to province borders and positions in the Middle East, the steppes and the far North East. We have even added some new counties, like Lori in Armenia. The most dramatic change is, however, in East Africa. We decided to take this opportunity to make East Africa more interesting, so we added Nubian culture and completely revised all the provinces south of Egypt and added about a dozen more. This allowed us to add the fascinating Jewish state of Semien (a.k.a. Beta Israel) to Abyssinia.

ck2_RoI_dd_05_East Africa.png

Right, that's enough about the map I think, I'll just let the screenies speak for themselves. A related thing we've done is to allow ports and ship movement in completely separate oceans; a feature that has been much requested. The AI now understands how to handle this, which was always the biggest hurdle. So you can now have a Buddhist merchant republic in the Maldives and build trade posts all the way to the Suez, etc.

As usual, we've also spent a lot of effort improving the base game. I'll cover a couple of the changes today, and the rest next Tuesday. Now, one of the most drastic improvements we have made is to faction revolts. No more will the revolters be mere allies in a war against their liege; they will now be temporary vassals of the faction leader in a proper civil war. In other words, you will be fighting these wars against a more unified and powerful enemy (or fight as them, of course.) Naturally, these rebel lieges will be very limited in their diplomacy and plotting until the war is over.

ck2_RoI_dd_05_East_Frankian_Revolt.png

The AI has received another round of improvements, most notably in how it moves, raises and dismisses armies, but also when and why it revokes titles off vassals (it tended to create a lot of unnecessary internal strife while still failing to maintain reasonable internal de jure borders.)

One little thing that's always annoyed me is that you can't easily go to a dead character's killer, so we now show a red skull on characters who have a known killer. You can simply click the skull to go to the killer.

Lastly for today, we decided to add a new tab to the character view, called "Relations". The main reason was to add Rivals and Friends (a very underused concept in the game), but it also allows us to show Lovers, etc.

ck2_RoI_dd_05_Relations_Tab.png

That's all for today! If you can't wait for the upcoming dev diaries, tune in to my livestream at 20:00 CET. :)

ck2_RoI_dd_05_Truncated_West.png



PS. Crusader Kings II; Rajas of India livestream info:
The Crusader Kings 2 team has been working hard the past months on our next expansion, Rajas of India.
As before with The Old Gods and Sons of Abraham we'll be doing a showcase to show you the grandiose sub-continent of India.

When?
Today, Tuesday, at 20:00CET

Where?
On our official channel on Twitch;
http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

I can't make that time :<
No worries, we'll be posting the presentation as well as the highlights onto our YouTube channel;
https://www.youtube.com/user/ParadoxExtra
 
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I hope what you will make visual distinction of portrait border between dukes, kings and rebel leaders. Like distinction between feudal and merchant titles.
For example additional red ribbon on the border or something like this.
 
Does the Aral Sea even exist anymore? I heard somewhere that it's pretty much dried up because of Soviet-era agricultural policies
There's a tiny and very sad rest called North and South Aral Sea.
 
I wonder if Timur's religion will depend on the dominant religion in the area. Even if he's coded to be Muslim he might convert to his liege's religion before starting to rampage... That could be really interesting. Imagine a Buddhist Timurid horde taking over the world :p
 
I wonder if Timur's religion will depend on the dominant religion in the area. Even if he's coded to be Muslim he might convert to his liege's religion before starting to rampage... That could be really interesting. Imagine a Buddhist Timurid horde taking over the world :p

Or Jain!
Jaingis Khan? :D
 
Okay then. Do keep in mind that if he just shows up in a normal court, using normal assassins will be somewhat cheap. And 10 years can be a long time to hoard assassination attempts. Possibly enough to kill him, even if he spawns with a intrigue? No idea.

At any rate, I will deffo try a zorostrian game again in RoI, now that my most dangerous foe can be dealt with...too bad my 2nd most dangerous foe just got a lot more land XD

You can already assassinate Seljuk as a Zoroastrian when he spawns with the initial warning before the invasion- problem is, if you have already conquered the province of 'Esfahan' and converted it to Zoroastrian (which is likely), the new Seljuk Sultan will actually spawn as a Zoroastrian himself, as will any further successors if you try to assassinate him. It's a weird bug I encountered in my recent Karen game, and you can find the issue in more detail in the bug report forum. I really hope this issue is fixed, because currently now that I eliminated his horse archers and de jure warred away his last county, the current Seljuk Sultan became a landless vassal of mine (since it was a de jure war). It was also pretty weird seeing Seljuk join in my defense during a Shia Jihad for Persia too.
 
There isn't any dynasty named Yabguid, Oghuz or Zhetysu in history. Yabgu is a title smilar to Duke, Oghuz is a branch of Turkic peoples and Zhetysu is the name of a geographic area surrounded by lakes, its means Seven Lakes.

Is it a difficult task to add two more "dynasty_title_names = no" line?
Actually, there was a Yabgu state.

Epic map changes by the way.
 
I know, its name is Oğuz Yabguluğu something like Yabgudom of Oghuz. In the game there are two placeholder dynasties Yagbuid and Oghuz. Ex Yagbuid now Yabguid is placeholder for Old Gods d_turkmens, Oghuz is placeholder for vanilla d_turkmens. Both poorly represents the rulers of Oghuz Yabgu State.
Yeah, I see what you mean now.
 
The faction leader controls your liege levy, but you can help with your own troops, just like vassals can in regular wars.

Except they never do. ;) Won't it make rebel forces actually smaller in number – in some setups – compared to the old systems in which the rebels were merely allies?

One little thing that's always annoyed me is that you can't easily go to a dead character's killer, so we now show a red skull on characters who have a known killer. You can simply click the skull to go to the killer.

What we really need is Just Imprisonment when someone kills the king's spymaster-wife or some such character. The absence of this is far more annoying than the absence of an easy way to go to the killer's character sheet.

No more will the revolters be mere allies in a war against their liege; they will now be temporary vassals of the faction leader in a proper civil war. In other words, you will be fighting these wars against a more unified and powerful enemy (or fight as them, of course.) Naturally, these rebel lieges will be very limited in their diplomacy and plotting until the war is over.

That's a nice concept, but aren't you guys sort of testing it and seeing where it takes you because the temp kingdom mechanic is interesting? I understand claimant and antiking factions functioning like realm kingdoms, just as the Carlistas did or the Jacobites at their best times, but a temporary kingdom for the leader of a Lower Crown Authority faction is not an improvement over how it was before but rather the opposite. Such factions should have councils rather than a single war leader. The same goes for independence factions. They fight together for the independence of all of them, but they don't go independent by acting like a centralised kingdom.

Rather, the AI should use more co-ordination and co-ordinate more smartly with an active role for the primary attacker to play (or primary defender), with the rest of the belligerents on his side somewhat deferring to him by default. The same is true for normal alliances, e.g. the Karlings, Jimena kings or the occasional in-laws on both sides of the Channel. Why should a bunch of LCA fans or separatists be more organised than, say, two post-gavelkind royal brothers fighting a joint campaign against a common foe?

Plus, you've got another problem with rank: a rebel count or duke should still be able to marry or arrange marriages for his relatives. His temp rank complicates matters here by getting him up a tier or two, which shouldn't be the case. In real life you don't get to marry higher just because you're the leader of an LCA or independence faction. Nor should a duke – when you're a count – have 'TempKing is my liege' modifier when you want his daughter and heir for your son.

Also what about Offer Vassalisation and 'too low rank'? Won't jumping from duke to tempking allow you to vassalise a neighbouring count more easily? What about keeping or not keeping such newly gained vassals when your tempking title dissolves?

Then there's the problem of temp kings creating duchies and handing them out... unless you prefer to prevent them from being able to grant titles. In fact, they could also create kingdoms if the faction holds the land if you don't prevent them. A count elevated to tempking could create some ducal titles while being tempking and keep them after the war, even if he lost.

Also what if a tempking goes to war against someone else and e.g. conquers a duchy in a holy war (using the faction forces), creates the ducal title and keeps it after losing the war?

And what with honorary titles and council positions? I can easily see that you might include some code to make sure that the Cupbearer remains the Cupbearer of whatever he used to be before (your permanent primary title) rather than of the faction rebellion, but what about the council? It would make sense to make fellow rebels your spymasters, chancellors, chaplains perhaps, even marshals or stewards, I suppose.

Finally, retinues. A tempking could dump his cash into retinue recruitment with all his new retinue base and actually keep the retinue after losing the war, just like in a republic you can inherit republic-sized retinues as a mere patrician.

(Nothing wrong with all of a faction's forces spawning in the same county, though, even without a temp liege, i.e. when they are all merely allied to each other, just as long as they have the element of surprise working for them.)
 
Except they never do. ;) Won't it make rebel forces actually smaller in number – in some setups – compared to the old systems in which the rebels were merely allies?

This is my concern - I posted this question in the last dev diary and it was skipped over when it came to answering posts. Unless there is some new system actively encouraging vassals to support their liege in a war, winning revolts just became a hell of a lot easier.
 
In terms of the relations tab would it possible for us to make to where female rulers whose religion allows their male counter parts to take concubines, to freely pursue male lovers? because right now getting a lover is really random.
 
Are you guys going to post the youtube stream latter? I'm having trouble viewing the stream on twitch. I got to 30:00 then was sad when I couldn't watch any more :(
 
The trait and religion icons look kind of poorly-made... :(