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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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Atalvyr said:
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.
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Having a Crusade declared on a Pagan is practically an I win button as it is even without a Holy Order. In earlier starts they are usually fractured and in later starts even more so. Moreover they don't even have a Holy Order of their own to call on barring the rare AI Pagan reformation. Even In those rare cases of Pagan reformation, their lands are generally poorer and less developed than lands Catholics can draw from. No offense to Balkans, Baltics, Scandinavia, or Russia.

I am here saying they aready are strong enough, even without the extra 40k troops. Umayyad is basically just Hispania. The rest of the Muslim world, I'll call them Abbasids, usually does not arrive in numbers enough (or at all, really) to participate in any Crusade against the Umayyads. Hispania is not particularly powerful de jure empire (I would say medium?,) and Half of Francia, Germania, Britannia, and Italia are more than enough manpower to push that group back usually.

Considering how often Muslims are at war, it's even unlikely Umayyads can call upon the Bektashi Order for defense.

Also consider how infrequent (if not downright rare) a reciprocal Jihad is called on Aquitane. Usually these Jihads will bring the hammer down on Anatolia, depriving Umayyads of a united Muslim attempt to regain lands inevitably lost by Crusades.

The Norse are quite unfair with their movement advantage, but it is not the level to which an AI can reliably subjugate entire kingdoms worth of hostile religions.

Conde de Almeria said:
remem

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.
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Fatimids, Seljuks, and Byz each have vassalized mercs to bolster their position. They are the trinity keeping the power balance in the east in check. They provide practically zero threat to Catholics unless you are playing a game where the Byz has collapsed spectacularly (rare but happens.) Retaking Greece is muuuuch easier than Jerusalem, AI doesn't need to wade through low supply deserts and mountains of Jerusalem while in the heart of Fatimid lands.

These three provide the lone anchor for their respective religions and along with HRE vs France are the primary reason why 1066 is the best balanced of the three starts. Unlike other games you can be almost guaranteed 5 of the 6 survive to the end of the game. Except Seljuk, because Mongols.

You need to play in a Pagan or Muslim realm to know. Barring maybe Indians (who can still subjugate one another) Christian's have the least CBs available to war with one another.

Muslims have massive wars with each other all the time regarding succession. Unlike Christian realms every son of the previous title holder gets a strong claim to the title, whereas other feudal succession methods only gives strong claims up to the third in line.

Hell, ever since the Elective faction nerf back when Monks and Mystics came out it's almost 50/50 Hispania even forms these days. Reason being the Sultan of Andalusia needs to create a second kingdom (usually Asturias,) and then he rolls the dice to see if a successful claimant faction fires before he sets up the empire. If he loses he loses Andalusia and is stuck with old Asturias and other non de jure vassals (Leon, Galicia, Navarra, Barcelona.) That's not remotely strong enough to retake the kingdom, while the new sultan in Andalusia has no claim on Asturias and cannot quickly unite the peninsula. It results in a fractured Muslim Spain that usually makes zero headway out of the Pyrenees.

Conde de Almeria said:
segundout remember you need a lot of piety for call a 1 religious order
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Would be fair to cut piety costs to 1/5 of original cost, naturally.
 
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One question that comes to mind: will Holy Orders be hard-coded to be male only? Obviously, there weren't holy orders of fighting women in actual medieval history. But some mods might add new religions, or put the whole game in another world, which doesn't necessarily map to ours. If a modder wants to add a revived Hellenic religion with an Order of the Amazons, or After the End wants to put an equal-opportunity order in for the Libertarians, would it be possible? Or would there be stuff going on under the hood that would make it difficult or impossible?
 
Snow Crystal said:
(...) 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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Hm... it is a nice feeling, but for a holy order of warriors, the swath of grey silk and the jewelry circling the frame does still look like "why?" to me. lol
Would it be too complicated to make one of bare metal to make it even more distinguishable?
 
I don't know. Why don't you make DLC that let's you play as a holy order and let the market decide. There are tons of mods that are very popular that don't do dynastic situations.
 
Any chance about having an option to send relatives to join a Holy Order? And on the off chance the AI makes them Grand Master later on, it give a one off small prestige boost?
 
aylo1 said:
Any chance about having an option to send relatives to join a Holy Order? And on the off chance the AI makes them Grand Master later on, it give a one off small prestige boost?
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If you have Sons of Abraham, unlanded male dynasty members in your court occasionally ask to join a holy order. You can let them go, which gives you piety and maybe prestige, or you can tell them no, which loses you piety (and maybe prestige). If they become Grand Master, you get bonus prestige.

As far as I know there is no way to force your idiot brother to go join the Teutonic Knights.
 
aylo1 said:
Any chance about having an option to send relatives to join a Holy Order? ...
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Giving a anyone the order to take the vows (SonsofAbrahm feature) disinherits* the character and
allegedly increases the likelyhood (though that's not in the event file) for them to join an order.

* the WIki says the character must currently not be an heir for the order to be selectable, admittedly..

Not sure how historic an option to force someone into an order would be.
Probably not much. They rather went (voluntarily or not) into church service, as far as i know.
 
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Rockphed said:
...
As far as I know there is no way to force your idiot brother to go join the Teutonic Knights.
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A shame, I was hoping for something where you can influence a relative's career with a Holy Order, a little like 'purchase' a cardinal's hat.

Aardvark Bellay said:
...
Not sure how historic an option to force someone into an order would be.
Probably not much. They rather went (voluntarily or not) into church service, as far as i know.
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I seem to recall some crusader lords joining Holy Orders shortly before their deaths so there is justification.
 
aylo1 said:
I seem to recall some crusader lords joining Holy Orders shortly before their deaths so there is justification.
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Err no. I would also question your statement.
Even if, that's not the same as forcing your son, nephew or whoever to do so.
 
If the character has a martial education and they "take the vows", there is a pretty high likelihood they will join a holy order. They seem to prefer holy orders of a similar culture, but sometimes you see germans joining the Knights of Santiago, so there is some randomness to it.

Non-martial characters are unlikely to join holy orders and will just hang around living the monk life. It makes sense I guess, but even a holy order needs good councilors, so some amount of other skills would be valuable to them.
 
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