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Dev Diary #92 - Orders of Magnitude

Hello there!

We are already more than halfway through July, and we are already at the third of the five rogue Dev Diaries we will have. For this week’s Dev Diary, we are going to talk about Holy Orders, and the small changes being made to them.

I am going to start off with clarifying that Holy Orders are NOT going to be made playable. The changes are made so you can interact with them in new ways, not for you to play as them. The game is still focused on dynasties, and that has not changed with Holy Fury. Another thing I want to note, is that all these changes to Holy Order are part of the patch to Holy Fury, and not part of the expansion. In other words, you will not have to pay for them.

And as always, certain things might change before the release of Holy Fury.

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With their own government form rather than being Feudal, it is easier for us to treat them as their own entities, and not having the player awkwardly inherit one of them, with all their own quirks and special focuses. They should be easier to distinguish from a normal Feudal character as well, now that they have their own frames rather than the Feudal blue.

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Some of the other Christian Holy Orders have received decisions for forming and vassalizing them as well, in addition to the old decisions for the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar. In the example above, you can see the decision to vassalize the Knights of Calatrava, and we have added similar ones for the Knights of Santiago, the Teutonic Order and the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre.

A new limitation we have added, is that you can only vassalize 1 Holy Order at a time with these decisions. This was to make sure we didn’t have one player changing religions and trying to capture all of them. This is Crusader Kings 2, after all, not Pokémon.

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If you have vassalized a Holy Order and they don’t find you fit to rule anymore, they will leave your service. They will return any land they hold that you are the De Jure Lord of, so with that in mind you usually shouldn’t lose large swathes of land if a Holy Order leaves your service. Though I would recommend staying on friendly terms with them.

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For the Knights Hospitaller, they can now ask a ruler conquering an island in the mediterranean to donate it to the order. We have added a similar event for the Teutonics in the north, replacing the old event where they asked for a single county.

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... So that is all for today!

Hopefully the Holy Orders will be a tad more interesting with some of these changes. Next week we will take a look at… Let me take a look at my notes here… “Shepherds, zealous kids and Venetians burning down Byzantium”? Surely that’ll be exciting news!
 
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Catholic Holy Orders are simply too powerful relative to other religions. Most egalitarian way is to cut their manpower to 1/5 their current strength, so that their 5 holy orders are the same as the sole holy order of other religions. That way Catholics still have the advantage in versatility (more countries able to access holy orders) but not the staggering manpower advantage.

That said, having them leave if I switch religions strikes at the heart of my pokemon ambitions......now I can only content myself with trying to find ways to vassalize mercs.

The issue then would be when there are multiple holy wars going on and I have access to only one HO its gimped for me. I understand your point if I use all of them but sometimes they are in different wars and your fix cripples them.
 
A pope cant have sons because cant marrie ,and if you have bastard, you are a bad pope :/

Medieval Papal States were basically like Duckburg: no one had sons or daughters, only "nephews" and "nieces" and no one wore pants.
 
The issue then would be when there are multiple holy wars going on and I have access to only one HO its gimped for me. I understand your point if I use all of them but sometimes they are in different wars and your fix cripples them.

When there are multiple holy wars going on just call on any of the 5. It's still a hell of a lot better than [name any other religion here] where they get no options once their sole holy order is off fighting in one of many holy wars.

Even one holy order at 1/5 strength is miles better than 0 strength, which is what happens when that sole non Catholic holy order is off doing it's own thing.

Versatility is a big enough advantage as it is. There is zero justification to give Catholics basically 40k troops over any other religion.
 
The game is called Crusader Kings, so I assume the increased number of holy orders for Catholics is to encourage crusading. If you give the Abbasids 5 holy orders, they will jihad their way to world dominance in short order. For Catholics, holy orders make holy wars / crusades a reliable way to beat up on equal size realms, since they can count on a good amount of holy order firepower being available. If they did not have this, holy wars would only happen when a blob beats up on its much smaller neighbors (since they can call all same-faith in defense). This is what you see with smaller religions where holy warring eg. a Sunni count will bring half the middle east into the fight without giving you any more firepower than fabricating a claim would.

It is like complaining that Europeans in EU4 are overpowered - they sort of need to be to reliably produce the sequence of events the game is based around.
 
That is not a valid excuse. Catholics already have a huge base of troops to draw upon for Holy Wars. They have preference when Pagans convert, so nearly the entirety of the Balkans, Scandinavia, Baltics, and Eastern Europe turn into their base on due time. There is no Crusade they don't have an advantage in already, partly because most Catholic rulers are not preoccupied with other wars.

You can maybe justify it for marginal religions like Miaphysites or Zorastrians, who would appreciate some firepower just to stay alive.

Catholics are strong enough as is to not need an additional 40k troops over everyone else. It only serves to make playing say, Eric the Heathen in 1066 start absolutely obnoxious. This is why it is best to cut their strength to 1/5. It will give them the same strength as other Holy Orders combined, but they can be contracted out to more people. That versatility is advantage enough as it is over other religions.
 
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Even if there was only 1 catholic holy order, the way the pope is selected make it very hard to keep catholic MA down.
And the holy order numbers are based on MA.
Last time I almost removed catholicism from the game, with lombardy and the papacy in rome they had 80+ MA
 
How about the minority Holy Orders? E.g Zealots [Judaism] or Immortals [Zoroastrians]? Most of these events seem to be tied to Christian Holy Orders, and while I understand the expansion is focusing on them, could some events be added to these as well? E.g territory focuses where they would like to hold land.
 
Livonians!!!
 
yes, the cristians are more and powerful than the muslims, but in the crusades or jihads, never in my games i see a france, england or the holy empire participate, only if is a jihad is next, but ever i see the bigs muslims partipate, and remember that they are 2 jihads, chii and suni, and ibadi if they can will be strong
 
WHY the ortodoxy and miafisite cant do crusades when all religions cand do normally or reformated can( idont remember if miafhisites can)

yes historically the ortodoxy dindt do crusade, but the zoroastrianisme(when you are the persian empire complete) and the nordics(if they are reformated)

i think that paradox will do a something whit this, like if you have all the sacred sites of the ortodoxy/miafiasite
(sorry for mi inglish)
 
yes, the cristians are more and powerful than the muslims, but in the crusades or jihads, never in my games i see a france, england or the holy empire participate, only if is a jihad is next, but ever i see the bigs muslims partipate, and remember that they are 2 jihads, chii and suni, and ibadi if they can will be strong

Never? That's a stretch. They join often enough to tip the scales. Catholics often have little warfare with one another, and are more free to join than other religions. As for Muslim participation in GHW, the fatimid leader is the Caliph himself so of course he joins. But he is practically the sole representative for Shia (or any Shia rising event.)

For Sunnis the Seljuks and Ghaznavids have about the same chance to join as HRE and France. Less so, even, as Muslim realms tend to be busy with warfare or revolts more often (free revokation of duchies and vassalize upon holy war definitely contribute to that.)

As for earlier maps Charlemagne Abbasids are practically impotent from said revolts and the travel distance from one end to the other. I have seen the Byz expand into them even when Abbas are fully intact. For whatever reason the Caliph is adverse to declaring normal holy war for Byz lands.

The Umayyads often offer no support in Jihads being at the other end of the map. AI for some reason likes to walk armies if there is a land connection regardless of how maritime the empire is or how far the target is, meaning a very long walk to Anatolia or Jerusalem, the usual Jihad areas. Worse they often get no support from the Abbasids when defending and no counter Jihads for when they inevitably lose Aquitane (inevitably a crusade into Barcelona.)

That's plenty enough reason not to make great holy wars lopsided for one religion. And that's not including Pagans or Zorastrians, who have a miniscule base to draw from as it is.

Having said that, this is more easily resolved when you conceded that Catholics are stronger. As it is so, there really is no reason to supercharge them further with a ~40k manpower advantage. Having 5 Catholic Holy Orders at 2k max each is still better than one Holy Order of [insert non Indian religion here] at 10k max. The versatility is advantage enough as is.
 
Having 5 holy orders show up makes the start of the Crusades a real "oh crap" moment for heathens, which I think it should be in a game called Crusader Kings. If the holy orders collectively are no stronger than a moderately powerful kingdom, it loses a lot of its impact. They need to be powerful enough to save the Christian world when their triggers are met (eg. France/Rome/Constantinoble falls to Islam). 10k troops don't accomplish this when half the Christian world has already fallen. Likewise, the Reconquista will be much more unlikely if you have to save up 5x the piety in order to make a dent in the Ummayads.

You can also argue that it is unfair for Norse to suddenly get free shipyards, but if the event only gives them the tech to start constructing them, it loses a lot of its dramatic impact. It is not supposed to be fair - it is supposed to provide a significant shock to the system to set the kind of events in motion that the game is built to simulate.
 
remem
Never? That's a stretch. They join often enough to tip the scales. Catholics often have little warfare with one another, and are more free to join than other religions. As for Muslim participation in GHW, the fatimid leader is the Caliph himself so of course he joins. But he is practically the sole representative for Shia (or any Shia rising event.)

For Sunnis the Seljuks and Ghaznavids have about the same chance to join as HRE and France. Less so, even, as Muslim realms tend to be busy with warfare or revolts more often (free revokation of duchies and vassalize upon holy war definitely contribute to that.)

As for earlier maps Charlemagne Abbasids are practically impotent from said revolts and the travel distance from one end to the other. I have seen the Byz expand into them even when Abbas are fully intact. For whatever reason the Caliph is adverse to declaring normal holy war for Byz lands.

The Umayyads often offer no support in Jihads being at the other end of the map. AI for some reason likes to walk armies if there is a land connection regardless of how maritime the empire is or how far the target is, meaning a very long walk to Anatolia or Jerusalem, the usual Jihad areas. Worse they often get no support from the Abbasids when defending and no counter Jihads for when they inevitably lose Aquitane (inevitably a crusade into Barcelona.)

That's plenty enough reason not to make great holy wars lopsided for one religion. And that's not including Pagans or Zorastrians, who have a miniscule base to draw from as it is.

Having said that, this is more easily resolved when you conceded that Catholics are stronger. As it is so, there really is no reason to supercharge them further with a ~40k manpower advantage. Having 5 Catholic Holy Orders at 2k max each is still better than one Holy Order of [insert non Indian religion here] at 10k max. The versatility is advantage enough as is.
remember that seljuk and fatimi too have a big mercenarys like the varega guard

And i say in my games-

The Catholics have few wars between them? Thats in yours game, i ever seen wars in frace england scotland hre and more-

And Remember that Muslims do not have revolts to inherit in elections this means less wars.

The Catholics very seldom gain the crusades alone without your help, even with the religious orders.
 
[QUOTE = "Naughtius Maximus, post: 24512810, member: 1086564"]

Dicho esto, esto se resuelve más fácilmente cuando admitió que los católicos son más fuertes. Como es así, realmente no hay razón para sobrecargarlos aún más con una ventaja de mano de obra de ~ 40k. Tener 5 órdenes sagradas católicas con un máximo de 2k cada una es mejor que una orden sagrada de [insertar religión no india aquí] con un máximo de 10k. La versatilidad es una ventaja tal como es. [/ QUOTE]

segundout remember you need a lot of piety for call a 1 religious order
 
Holy Orders are already op in the present state of the game. The will probably will be op at DLC's launch.

I will be happy if they don't spam 40K troops out of thin air, and have to march from their land to the country that requested aid.
I will be even happier if their numbers are tied to the land and money they have.