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Dev Diary #101 - Saints and Ancestors

Hello there! Another week, another Dev Diary!


This week we are going to take a look at the Saints, their potential Pagan counterparts, and how they will work in Holy Fury.


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After the death of a pious Christian character, there is a chance for the Pope/Patriarch/local bishop to decide to beatify them. This is how they’re shown to be truly pious Christians. There will be an announcement sent out to the dynasty as well as the ones in the realm of the character. A beatified character gets a special trait, and a chance to later on be canonized.


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If they do indeed go on to become Saints, another announcement message will be sent out to all Christians of the same faith, as well as their dynasty members. The character in question will be given a special nickname, a miracle will be associated with him/her (this is mostly for flavour) and they will be given a special bloodline. Note, any Christian with a religious head can become canonized, not only Catholics.


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The Saint will have their burial site made public, usually in their capital or another nearby province in the form of a Province Modifier. This gives a permanent benefit for whoever holds the Burial Site, as well as some new flavor events that might happen. Any church holdings in the province will be able to create a small shrine to the local Saint. As well, if any raiders were to drop by the province, they might loot and ruin the burial site for some extra gold and prestige.


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A new icon and menu have been added to the religion screen for Christians, where they can check all the Saints that have been created for their faith throughout the game. We figured it would be a handy way of keeping track of everything.


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For those enjoying pilgrimages and traveling, we have added a new option and event chain to travel to a Saint’s burial site. It will find 4 relevant burial sites of Saints created throughout the game. If there isn’t 4 existing in the game yet, there will be up to 3 placeholders filling those spots. Hopefully it will be an interesting change of pace from the regular pilgrimages.


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If the Catholics are led by a particularly terrible Pope, you might even see the cases of “Impious Saints” as we call them. In the worst case scenarios, this can end up with all of Catholicism embroiled in a massive war, fighting for the piety of the Holy See. The impious Saint in question will get a Bloodline as well, but it doesn’t quite bring as many benefits as most other bloodlines do.


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For those of you who don’t care particularly much about Catholics, or Christians in general, we have added a new Reformation doctrine where one can take on the benefits of Saints into your pagan faith. Instead of caring about such silly things as “Piety”, “Humbleness” or other supposed positive traits, the Venerated Ancestors will be based on things your religion cares about. So if you reform your religion to be a warlike one, one is more likely to become a Venerated Ancestor if you do things that are warlike.


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For those of you preferring to lead religions yourself, you will occasionally be given the choice of people the religion will venerate as a worthy ancestor. The dynasty of the character in question will, of course, be very appreciative of their family member being venerated as an Ancestor.

Saints & Ancestors 16.png



For the characters receiving that honor, there is a whole slew of new special bloodlines attached to them, as well some special nicknames.


Hopefully you enjoyed this little peek into the upcoming feature for CK2, and we are excited to hear your thoughts on it. Until next time!
 
Will there be Sufi or Buddhist saints?

Will the Mender of the Great Schism become a saint?
I would like to see both of these - Shia in particular should have sainthood. It would also be good to see Jewish Tzaddikim (with the possibility of raising their status further if there's a High Priest). This would do something to flesh out some currently rather bland religions.

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you cant have sinful traits to be beautified but you can with cannibal?
As I understand it you can't have sinful traits to be beatified, unless the pope decides to go rogue and do it anyway, but then you get bloodline effects that aren't altogether positive (the example bloodline gives negative prestige and opinion, although you do still get positive prestige) as well as the possibility of a big war.
 
Also, I'm sorry, but at this point, I think only 2 doctrines will simply NOT DO in case of a pagan reformation. Someone please show me how to mod it so that I can pick at least 4 doctrines, because again, 2 is simply not going to be enough.

No they shouldn't, lest the historically least attractive religious group becomes even more OP. Besides, each faith has one unique doctrine that has effects of two generic doctrines so unless you decide to betray your own faith, you basically get three Doctrines.

you cant have sinful traits to be beautified but you can with cannibal?

I presume only regular proper Saints can't be beatified with sinful traits. Impious Saints are their own thing.

A "lowborn" bloodline would not fit very well, would it? :)

This is one of those situations where a new dynasty should be formed if the descendant is a Lowborn, with a dynasty named after the Saint.
 
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I really like what you are doing in this DLC, this will be really a nice experience.

However, with each new DD, there is this usage of the bloodline (which is great) but it seems to me that there will be TONS of bloodlines and there is no stopping of those (meaning that a bloodline created in 800, will still be alive (in term of bonuses) in 1300. While some may have been that important, I really believe that after so many years, the bloodline effect should fade away for some.
I was wondering if there could be (maybe handle by rules) a way to have a limit to how many generation can get the bloodline : like after 10 generations, the bloodline has not effects/is removed. Or even better that the further you are from the bloodline creation, the lower the bonuses.
 
This event about War for the Holy See and possibility to choose sides remembered me about how we need similar thing when it comes to Antipopes.

In the Catholic Church window we should not only be able to create Antipopes but also click which of the existing ones we recognize as a true Pope, with all mechanical consequences coming with that decision (taxes, excomunications etc). In case of antipapal war - supporters of each pretender for the papacy would get an event whether they want to support their pope in the military conflict or not.

Some time ago I had such situation in multiplayer where two allied kings, from the same reasons, decided to oppose Pope in Rome. Sadly both of them had to set up their own antipopes which was kind of immersion breaking.
 
Will pentarchy/autocephalous rel.head titles be moddable?
Also, HF looks like it's going to be the best update to the game to date.
 
If a pagan ruler decides to convert and successfully finishes a "mass conversion" events will he become a Saint?
Not necessarily - polish prince Mieszko I made "mass conversion" by negotiation with czech ruler Boleslav and next marriage with daughter of Boleslav, Dobrava. Neither Mieszko nor Boleslav became saint.
 
Can sainthood be revoked by a later pope?
 
If a pagan ruler decides to convert and successfully finishes a "mass conversion" events will he become a Saint?

IMO, they should have a higher chance but it should still depend on the number of virtues and sins (they could have one or two sinful traits forgiven). For instance, Vladimir of Kiev became a Saint, but Clovis and Harald Bluetooth didn't.
 
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