Hello everyone!

In this dev diary it is time for us to have a look at some of the artifacts that you may come across, steal or create yourself for your Royal Court. With the introduction of the new throne room scenes we are for the first time in Crusader Kings taking a step into the interiors of our courts. This has given us an opportunity to move artifacts from only being seen as 2D icons in an inventory screen like in CKII, to being visual 3D objects you can show off to increase the grandeur of your court, or give it your own flair.

Also, as always, the pictures in this dev diary are of work in progress.
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Artifacts presented in your court​

Within your court you will be able to show off the artifacts in your possession, from the smaller artifacts on pedestals and reliquaries holding the venerated remains of saints, to fine martial weapons forged or taken, to grand statues or fine furniture. These artifacts can be equipped in a number of slots around your court rooms for viewing of the ruler and his guests. Below is a small selection of the smaller artifacts, usually presented on different pedestals befitting your court.​

A Pratiharan volume about revelry.

A reliquary containing a piece of the crown of thorns, you think.

A fine urn taken from the Abbasid court.

A chest of valuables made in the finest of ivory
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Designing artifacts of the middle ages​

The artifacts we’ve added to the game cover a variety of different categories, small and large, and even to adorn your walls. The creation of these artifacts have gone through a few stages of development before making it into the Royal Court.

Research
As in all our games we go through a stage of historical reference hunting to find artifacts relevant to the time period and within the cultures we are depicting. This can be both easy at times and complicated at others depending on the amount of material that has survived the decay or been documented since the middle ages.​

Carved and painted Ivory chests.​

During this stage we both look at the aesthetics and historical references we can find and verify. When references are sparse, we still try to extrapolate good looking and aesthetically plausible designs. However in some cases like in the Middle East and other areas there is for example close to no and at best sparse levels of statues or paintings of people. Depending on where this can be for religious or cultural reasons and in those cases where other cultures would show human statues, we’ve instead shifted to area appropriate symbolisms, patterns and art.
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A marble statue from southern Europe, and an islamic golden falcon.
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Creation
While using reference images is an easy task to do, we must also consider the original state of the artifact, since a reference from today could be of a possibly 800 years or more old object. So grime, damage and aging needs to be reconsidered and balanced, while still keeping the object in a used looking state. An artifact could still be owned by a ruling family for long enough to become an antique in its own time.

An icon clad cabinet, don't tell the iconoclasts!
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Dynamic objects​

Banners and some other items in the court have shader support to show the ruler's own flair, since they would be made to the ruler's specifications. The banners below for example read in the primary title held by the ruler to show off your heraldry.​

What is a lord without his banner to display his Coat of Arms?
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There are also tapestries, where we use a similar system to the clothing shaders to generate interesting patterns and designs to adorn those stone walls in your great halls.​

Bringing some color to the hard stone walls in your halls.
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And that brings this dev diary to an end, we will be showing off more of the courts in the future!

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[Svennie 135]

I am sorry, but this doesn't really feel like a major expansion

Especially if you know that it will cost €30

 

[adca85]

^ So far the paid DLC seems to include allowance for hybridization of culture, crafting "artefacts" and some holding court mechanics that aren't really elaborated upon yet. Unless those aforementioned mechanics are very deep (and I'm worried they'll just be the equivalent of the events we have now but with a zoomed-in camera angle basically), the expansion does seem a little light for that price. I paid less than half of that for the whole season pass, so I can't rightly complain, but it might be a harder sell for Royal Court alone.

 

[Serenity84]

All PDX expansions are pretty light on content when you consider the price. Some are better than others, but I've never felt that they were really worth the full price. It's always better to wait for a discount.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

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View attachment 748804View attachment 748803
A marble statue from southern Europe, and an islamic golden falcon.​

The stuff that dreams are made of.

 

[AndroidEmperor]

All PDX expansions are pretty light on content when you consider the price. Some are better than others, but I've never felt that they were really worth the full price. It's always better to wait for a discount.

That may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that we've waited a long time for this 'major expansion' while CK2 had a lot of medium-sized DLCs by this point. Of course, we can't forget factors like the pandemic but it's a little disappointing because CK3 might be the best launch any Paradox game has had in a while. It has a ton of potential and if it gets developed as much as CK2 did, I can see it becoming the best Paradox game by a long shot. With a year later and an expansion costing almost as much as the base game, I was really expecting—if not merely hoping for—a real bombshell like China or at least new government types or something. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel that a lot of this DLC so far is window dressing.

Still, I like what I've seen so far and I think it's a good direction to go in. "Give me more!" is far from the worst complaint I can have about a game

 

[Heddie]

As others have said, I will definitely be keeping an eye on future dev diaries since this doesn't seem like that big of an expansion for now.

What I'm most looking forward to is the changes to culture, easily the highlight for me so far. Would also love to finally have a coat of arms editor!

 

[Orinsul]

That is exactly what I thought would be the case, and why I thought that the marble statue was weird in this dev diary. I hope that the devs take that on board and go back and paint all of their marbles in-game but I suspect that that ship has already sailed.

@Carlberg have the dev's/art team discussed painted/unpainted statues?
Thank you.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

I do agree that this still does seem a bit light. I think part of the reason might be cautiousness on the part of the devs. No one wants another Leviathan incident, so they may have decided that the best way of avoiding one is to simply pare-down DLC/expansion content.

 

[PDXOxycoon]

I'm going to try to answer some questions that have been asked, but note that I'm a coder and I haven't worked on the artifacts myself, so take my answers with a grain of salt. I also apologize if some of my answers are a bit vague, as I don't want to make any CD angry with me for saying something too early.

Is there an artifact limit per ruler?

Do these artifacts have any bonus/mechanic while in the inventory or they only affect grandeur while they are in the throne room?

Are artifacts unlimited, like in CK2, or we have have limited slots to fill, like in IE?

These ask pretty much the same question, so I'm going to answer them together. There is to my knowledge no limit to how many artifacts you can have in your inventory, however there is a limit to how many you can use at the same time, both on your person and in your Royal Court. Artifacts will only give bonuses if you have them equipped.

Looks awesome, very much looking forward to this expansion! Will there be some historical artifacts that are known to have been in possession of certain rulers/dynasties or just randomly generated one?

There are some historical and ahistorical artefacts in the history files that I have seen, but I'm not going to say which.

Will there be some unique artifacts that only one person can hold?

To my knowledge no, but I believe there are some artifacts that will have reduced efficiency if you don't meet certain criteria.

Can you tell us how many artifacts are in the game?

I frankly cannot, there are a bunch in the history files and more are generated from the game's start.

Could you start to give us teasers for the next dev diary, like HoI4 and Vicki 3 do it?

I would love to, but doing so is dependent on how busy everyone is and how nailed down the next DD is by the time we release the prior one. We have a plan on our diaries, but some times we change them up because the ones responsible for writing them have priorities that shuffle the Dev Diaries down in their stack of workflow, and we want the diary to be as up to date as possible with what we are showing in them.

Will we be able to capture artifacts in the same way we capture people, and will we have the option to keep/destroy them for bonuses?

I believe they can be captured from sieges and raids, but someone will have to correct me on that.

 

[Breton_Lord]

But, the AI dudes going to be different then artifact/graphics 3d team etc...

That's not how game development works , everything is linked together , and I wasn't talking about the arts and 3d designs , I was talking about this whole upcoming DLC and cultures , all of those things are under the game director , and making them as a priority instead of fixing the AI , and making the game a little bit more challenging to keep old and veteran players from abandoning it is I think the most important thing to do right now , and all this nonesense of arts and designs and DLCs can come later as it just waste the devs time and keeps them away from important stuff , and I would be surprised if they fix the AI or border gore or making the game harder in the upcoming update , as they seem to not care at all about older players , but focus on new fresh players instead.

 

[Salazard260]

to keep old and veteran players from abandoning it

I'm down for it if this reduces the amount of agressive "back in my day things were great now it's shit and the devs sucks" kind of people on the forums.

Many "veterans" are cool with CKIII, sure it can and will be improved (same for Every. Single. Paradox. Game. Ever at launch btw) and I can see why some people prefer playing CKII (I still like to play it as well), but even if CKIII was as shit as some people here say, I just fail to see why it would justify being needlessly agressive all the time.

I love PDX games, and have been playing them for most of my life (and not planning to stop anytime soon), but damn there's other stuff to do in life if you feel disappointed by the direction a game developper is taking, seriously.

Old PDX games still exist, other video game companies exist in the world, and other forms of entertainment as well.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

That's not how game development works , everything is linked together , and I wasn't talking about the arts and 3d designs , I was talking about this whole upcoming DLC and cultures , all of those things are under the game director , and making them as a priority instead of fixing the AI , and making the game a little bit more challenging to keep old and veteran players from abandoning it is I think the most important thing to do right now , and all this nonesense of arts and designs and DLCs can come later as it just waste the devs time and keeps them away from important stuff , and I would be surprised if they fix the AI or border gore or making the game harder in the upcoming update , as they seem to not care at all about older players , but focus on new fresh players instead.

Say the game director has 10 AI coders and 5 artists assigned to him.

No matter what he does about making fixing the AI a priority, he still only has 10 AI coders available to do it. His artists are essentially no help on that, and so need to be given other tasks. So their art and design work can continue in parallel to any AI improvements.

The AI improvements don't have to be separate from the DLC either. They can (potentially) have AI fixes in the areas touched on by the DLC in particular, and any other areas that they've worked on at the same time. The DLC release (and accompanying major patch) is a good time to release AI improvements.

And of course "keeping veteran players from abandoning it" requires (for some of them at least) DLC releases to keep the game fresh. Just sitting and reworking AI won't hold their interest, and doesn't bring in as much money, used to pay people to make the AI changes you talk of.

 

[leedude92]

these models look incredible

 

[Breton_Lord]

Say the game director has 10 AI coders and 5 artists assigned to him.

No matter what he does about making fixing the AI a priority, he still only has 10 AI coders available to do it. His artists are essentially no help on that, and so need to be given other tasks. So their art and design work can continue in parallel to any AI improvem

You're talking about artists as if they just draw up some designs and dump them in game which is funny , but even the most basic of art requires coders and game designers to implement them in game , and yes making a new DLC can go in parallel with fixing things up , but I don't think waiting for months for the new DLC is a good idea when it comes to fixing serious issues in the game , fixing things up should not be linked to any DLC or delayed by any new features....it should be the priority.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

You're talking about artists as if they just draw up some designs and dump them in game which is funny , but even the most basic of art requires coders and game designers to implement them in game , and yes making a new DLC can go in parallel with fixing things up , but I don't think waiting for months for the new DLC is a good idea when it comes to fixing serious issues in the game , fixing things up should not be linked to any DLC or delayed by any new features....it should be the priority.

No?

You're the one calling the art team's contributions "nonsense", and saying this "wastes" dev time.

And yes, of course the art needs to be implemented by coders. I never said it wasn't. But even there the graphics implementation team aren't necessarily the same as the ones working on AI improvements. They can implement new art *and* improve the AI at the same time, as it's (at least potentially) different pools of talent.

 

[KingofBreizh]

I think the artwork looks absolutely beautiful.

Will any of these artifacts be jewelry? Can they be? With famous jewels?

I want to start a war with England to steal St. Edward's Sapphire, put it in a necklace for my queen, then fight another war over it should she divorce me or wander to another court. Gotta have life goals, you know?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

omg those tapestries!!!!

i have to change my pants now...

 

[prismaticmarcus]

this looks amazing!

can the artifacts be destroyed as well as pillaged during sieges or raids?

can a court guest knock down my precious vase and break it?

what on earth do you mean?

I'm Dame Judi Dench!

 

[banderolas]

Will there be a coat of arms designer, even a simple one like the one for ck2? Also, it was mentioned in some past diary that the new cultures created by AI would be limited by game rules, would it be possible to allow the player to rename, or confirm the name when a new culture appears, to remove the worry that names with 5 dashes will appear? For example a popup like when a child is born:

A new culture is born in ... by ..., with a name ..., would you like to rename it from Hindustani-Turkic-Persian-Afghan-Norse to (here a player could input his idea like Ghaznavi-Norse).

 

[klopkr]

In the medieval period, everything was colourful. These statues would be painted in bright and contrasting colours.
Even castles were brightly painted.
They only look bare stone now because of centuries of weathering.

edit:

Nothing in the middle ages should be sepia or monochrome. That didn't start until he renaissance, it should all be bright colours, even cartoon-y to modern eyes.

This is so annoying. They try so hard to be historically accurate on so much of the other art but not the statues!

The same issue with Imperator.