• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.


Saints & Ancestors 01.png



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.


Saints & Ancestors 02.png


Saints & Ancestors 03.png


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.


Saints & Ancestors 04.png



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.


Saints & Ancestors 05.png


Saints & Ancestors 06.png


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.


Saints & Ancestors 07.png
Saints & Ancestors 08.png



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.


Saints & Ancestors 09.png
Saints & Ancestors 10.png


Saints & Ancestors 12.png


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.


Saints & Ancestors 13.png
Saints & Ancestors 14.png


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.


Saints & Ancestors 15.png



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!
 
Large AI lords rarely join the monastic orders even if it would have greatly benefited them to do so.



after 500-600 years I think you should expect 70% count and above to have a bloodline. If memory serves me, bloodlines are agnatic so might be hard to stack them. So how it goes to Matilde in dev diary if she had only female heirs I don't know! :D

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.

I have to agree with this. Even if they are rare, bloodlines will have an exponential growth and it's only a matter of time until every characther has 3 or 4 bloodines, making them meaningless. I like the countdown idea but it might be too much to keep track of all the bloodlines in every characther, so a simple "after X years the effects are halved" and "after Y years the effects disappear" would be ideal. Maybe you could keep the bloodline as flavour, but not the bonus.

Bloodlines are all either agnatic or enatic. Cognatic bloodlines were cut after, as Snow Crystal put it, everyone and their dog got the cognatic bloodlines. Bloodlines are also passed from both parents in a Matrilineal marriage.

How it is transmitted depends on the bloodlines, some will be agnatic, some will be all, some might be not bastard (?)

If I compare the legendary one, I can see : male indicator, a female one with a ring behind (? - married women ? ), and a blood drop (of the dynasty ?)
index.php

On the fighter one, I see the same
index.php

One in this DD has a child with a red "x" that I would expect to mean "no bastard" (?)
I have yet to see one that is passed through women, but wouldn't be surprised if there were some. I would love to have some shield-maiden bloodlines
Eleanor De Poitou (a.k.a. Eleanor of Aquitaine) has a enatic bloodline. The ring behind the female sign means that the bloodlines are passed on in matrilineal marriages.

Why not saints for other Christians?
All Christians with religious heads have saints. So Catholic, Fraticelli, Orthodox, Iconoclast, Monophysite, Miaphysite, and Nestorian have saints. Earlier in the thread it was stated that all Christians except Waldensians practice beatification.
 
Will there be a filter or search option for the saints. I feel like by end game there will be a lot of them and will be quite tedious to try and search for the one person that I want to look for.
 
That would be an extreme heresy. Sainthood has a specific meaning that excludes every living person.
In Christianity maybe. Other religions (Islam and Indic religions included) have living saints.
 
Where did the "impious saint" idea come from? It's interesting to have sinful popes with actual effects, but shouldn't these be like famous sinners/heretics, and not called saints (the word saint, from Latin sanctus, means holy, so it's a misnomer)? I don't think this ever happened, either, since the pope doesn't unilaterally create saints.
 
Last edited:
St patrick, St augustine, St christopher... so, we will be able to visit their burial sites too, that mean that they will have a Province Modifier too? I understand why they can't be in new menu of the religion screen (too many portraits) but pre-established province modifiers for each one of them shouldn't be too complicated... also, any chance of famous saints appearing many years later if you choose a very early date? like St Francis of Assisi for example.

Talking about burials... would be great if we could create burial sites for our dynasty, although without many modifiers...
 
Can we steal the bodies of saints and rebury them in our provinces?
that was a thing

Also turning a minor saint into a major pilgrimage centre by building a massive cathedral

Also is there a difference between major and minor saints?
itd be nice if there were saints who didnt give bloodlines and their province modifier was only a temporary one?
maybe even most are temporary but you can make them permanent and bloodline having by building a cathedral or something there?
 
The pope during this era had nothing to say about saints. The regulation that he is the only one who make saints was just created during the 13th/14th century. Ingame it's represented by bishops making saints
I didn't know that, thanks, but the basis of my question remains which is pretty much, will other catholics accept saints made by antipopes even after antipopes are deposed/destroyed.
 
Where did the "impious saint" idea come from? It's interesting to have sinful popes with actual effects, but shouldn't these be like famous sinners/heretics, and not called saints (the word saint, from Latin sanctus, means holy, so it's a misnomer)? I don't think this ever happened, either, since the pope doesn't unilaterally create saints.
Rather than the "saints" themselves, it's probably more around the corrupt clergy that gives them that status. And that was a thing for quite the long time.
 
I have to agree with this. Even if they are rare, bloodlines will have an exponential growth and it's only a matter of time until every character has 3 or 4 bloodlines, making them meaningless. I like the countdown idea but it might be too much to keep track of all the bloodlines in every character, so a simple "after X years the effects are halved" and "after Y years the effects disappear" would be ideal. Maybe you could keep the bloodline as flavor, but not the bonus.

I guarantee you that the devs will be running a zillion scenarios to check this for balance - all they have to do is tweak the MTTH for the event that beatifies characters and then do the same for the event that makes the Pope canonize them, they can thus make sure that "on average" they get the number of saintly bloodlines that they want. Of course some games may see more saints than others, that's just the luck of the random draw.

The only issue that I can see is that as each game progresses there are simply more and more characters on the map, which means more deaths and thus more beatifications/canonizations. My readings are that it was actually the opposite - until the process became more rigorous in the 12th century every village would nominate to have their local bishop beatified, after that the process* became a lot more formal and thus fewer saints were elevated.

Maybe the devs could see fit to tweak the chances so that there would be lots of beatifications in the earliest bookmarks (credulous peasants), a lot of canonizations in the 10th-12th centuries (Crusades, holy fervor) and a lot fewer ones after that (stricter qualification for sainthood).


*EDIT - I misspelled this word and spellchecker fixed it to "prices", maybe it knows something I don't ? :D
 
If bloodlines can only be agnatic or cognatic that's pretty disappointing. Especially with things like Saoshyant if that's converted to a bloodline. All their descendants got the descendant trait and benefits but now they won't? :(