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Dev Diary #93 - Venetian Guile

Dev Diary #93 - Venetian Guile


Hello there!

We’re closing in on the end of July, and we are on to the fourth of the five Dev Diaries we are doing over summer. For this week, we are going to take a look at three of the five Special Crusades we are doing for Holy Fury. First of we are going to take a look at the reworked Shepherds’ Crusade, then on to the Children’s Crusade some of you might have seen in the PDXCon stream, and then finally to the Fourth Crusade events.

As always, keep in mind that things might be changed before the release of Holy Fury. For the Shepherds’ Crusade to be enabled you will have to own Sons of Abraham, and for the two other you will need the Holy Fury DLC.

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The Shepherds’ Crusade has been broken for quite a while, so we have ripped out the old events entirely, and rewritten the whole chain. With Holy Fury, a Shepherds’ Crusade has a chance to start a couple of years after a failed normal Crusade. It will start somewhere in Catholic Europe, and will usually target either a Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, or Jerusalem.

As the Shepherds’ Crusade army moves across the map towards its location, it will start picking up soldiers along the way, potentially getting into conflict with the local lords, trying to kick out the Jews, or ask local Lords for aid in their Crusade.

Who knows, once in a blue moon they might actually manage to win!

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The Children’s Crusade is a special one-time event chain that can happen at any point after the Pope has announced the need to reclaim the Holy Land.

If Jerusalem is held by infidels, a landless child in Europe might decide to pick up arms and start his own little Crusade, gathering fellow Catholics and traveling all the way to the Holy Land.

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The Children’s Crusade will move from court to court, demanding troops and resources from local rulers, and gathering zealous commanders and disgruntled underage courtiers along the way.

As a ruler hosting the Children’s Crusade, you will be able to support or hinder their efforts, increasing the amount of troops and morale that they will receive once they reach Jerusalem, forcing their travel to a premature end, or, if you are feeling particularly virtuous, deciding to become their sponsor.

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Becoming a sponsor allows a ruler to follow this special Crusade more closely, to invest in it on multiple occasions during its travel, and actively join the Children as allies in the war against the infidels if they manage to reach the Holy Land.

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Once the Children reach their target, they will spawn an army whose strength, size and composition will change depending on how their travel went and declare war to the current holder of Jerusalem. In the unlikely chance that they succeed, the leader of the Crusade will take over, and convert and vassalize all the rulers in the area.

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As some of you saw, one of our pictures for the Steam page for Holy Fury, was the Crusade for Orthodox Thrace. In other words, a set of Fourth Crusade events. These events have a chance to happen at every Crusade, if the Byzantine Empire is alive and doing well, holding the core lands of Constantinople.

A set of narrative events will happen, where a claimant for the Byzantine Throne will leave the court of the Emperor, and find a Catholic Merchant Lord to support their claims. With enough gold and the potential for plunder ahead, the Catholics will be swayed to change the course for Constantinople.

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If the Catholics could come around, and actually win the Crusade against the Byzantines, there will not be a normal distribution of titles, but rather a special Fourth Crusade one.

First of, the Byzantine Empire will be no more. The old Emperor will relocate to any land outside of Thrace, if they had any, and get a temporary titular Empire title. The winner of the Crusade will receive the Latin Empire, taking the lands of Thrace, and a special bloodline.

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The old direct vassals of the Byzantine Empire will be freed. Any ruler of Trebizond might be given the Kingdom of Trebizond title, and there might also be another ruler taking up the King tier title, to simulate the Despotate of Epirus.

After the fall of the old Empire, a new decision will open up for Christians of the Byzantine Culture group, to restore the old Byzantine Empire. If you hold all of the core lands around Constantinople, and have a lot of prestige, you can restore the Empire and start recreating the Byzantium of old. Well… At least if you can remove those pesky Latins from the rightful Greek lands of Thrace.

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And of course, rules has been added for all the different kind of Crusades, so people are free to enable or disable them as they want.

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That was all for this week! I hope you enjoyed reading about the rise and fall of- Wait… That’s wrong. The fall and rise of Byzantium, there we go!

Next week we will be talking about the Northern Crusade, and the Reconquista of Iberia. So I hope I’ll see of you for the final rogue Dev Diary of the summer!
 
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Sounds fair to me. I'll see if I have time to add a decision for it.
Nooooooooooo Snow Crystal only he asked for it. Serbia and Bulgaria both who tried to claim the Byzantine empire and were thoroughly byzantineized should be able to form it over the Latin empire. Bulgaria is as much of a successor state to the komnenos byzantine empire as Trebizond and Nicaea. Also I feel a lot of us are in agreement that Venice should be dejure byzantine but a tributary state till 1082 historically or till the byzantines are weak.

Edit, ok overacted a little but if the Latin empire gets the decision Bulgaria and really any orthodox power should to. Though I don’t really see the reasoning for an empire to easily get another empire title.
 
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Please do include a method of transferring troops in a normal crusade towards the Holy Land... I think the AI needs to be educated to divide troops, have some event to hire boats at the Italian City States to travel to the Holy Land...
 
See everybody? Derailing threads works!:p
Except I didn't. I never sought to discuss what the Byzantine empire was really called. I wanted to discuss the latin empire getting this decision but then others derailed the thread.
so are you in agreement with Venice dejure byzantine or no? I guess Latin empire forming Byzantium is ok as long as Bulgaria and Serbia get it to.
I am opposed to there being an empire of Italia at all. The reason for it is that the dejure claim cb is to strong so I say what I have always said that that cb should just be nerfed. It should only be usable against peoemon your own tier or higher. You have vassalisation cbs for lower tier enemies.
As for Bulgaria and Serbia, I really with have a problem with it though cant they just form it the old fashioned way?
 
PARTLY true. They didn't used it in this form but they referenced to themself often as Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

And if you use THAT argument... the Holy Roman Empire wasn't called this until the 13th century. From Charlemagne to the 13th century the Holy Roman Empire was just called 'Roman Empire'. Do we really need two Roman Empires on the map?

No , there is a big diffeerence, First of all the term Holy Roman Empire was adopted by 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa when he intended to represent his dominion over Church and states, then its a terminology conied and used by the same people inhabiting it.

The Byzantine Empire terminology instead never exhisted, is totally unhistorical and was "invented after its fall by Hieronymus Wolf in his Corpus Historiae Byzantinae (1562)
The Eartern Romans called their empire as Basileia tôn Rhōmaiōn; Latin: Imperium Romanum), or Romania (Ῥωμανία), and referred to themselves as "Romans.
 
No , there is a big diffeerence, First of all the term Holy Roman Empire was adopted by 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa when he intended to represent his dominion over Church and states, then its a terminology conied and used by the same people inhabiting it.

The Byzantine Empire terminology instead never exhisted, is totally unhistorical and was "invented after its fall by Hieronymus Wolf in his Corpus Historiae Byzantinae (1562)
The Eartern Romans called their empire as Basileia tôn Rhōmaiōn; Latin: Imperium Romanum), or Romania (Ῥωμανία), and referred to themselves as "Romans.
What part of:
Let us bring back the discussion to the topic at hand. I know a lot of you feel strongly about the Roman Empire, but the name isn't really what the DD is about, so if people want to continue the discussion, I suggest opening another topic for it.
Did you fail to understand?

People please get the talk back onto the topic of the DD or we'll just get the moderators to make people do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Which would be a shame to have to do.
 
Well I for once am really interested how it will play out if a character obtains the Latin Empire but also has some big chunks of land nearby or inhetits them like imagine Archduke of Austria and Emperor of the Latin Empire would make for an insane Power.

In addition I am really looking forward to the dynamic crusader states.
 
Well I for once am really interested how it will play out if a character obtains the Latin Empire but also has some big chunks of land nearby or inhetits them like imagine Archduke of Austria and Emperor of the Latin Empire would make for an insane Power.

In addition I am really looking forward to the dynamic crusader states.
Would it really? Becoming latin emperor would make you independent of the hre give them the the dejure claim cb against you and at best give you a single duchy more than you had before inheriting it. If foresee death by a thousand cuts as you get picked apart by the hre.
 
The Children's Crusade weren't literal children. They were called that because poor people were called "children of God".
It was like the Shepards' Crusade. The crusaders didn't walk all the way to Anatolia with cute lambs.
 
The Children's Crusade weren't literal children. They were called that because poor people were called "children of God".
It was like the Shepards' Crusade. The crusaders didn't walk all the way to Anatolia with cute lambs.

Actually that's up to debatte. And it was not because 'children of God'. The reason is that the Latin term can mean different things. The Latin term used for the children crusades were 'puer' which could mean 'child' or 'boy' but also 'male servant/page'
 
So, I haven't read all 11 pages, but will the 4th crusade be in as a bookmark somewhere? Such as, will there be a date around 1200 where we can start playing when the crusade has already began? Like, the Pope and Venice are already at war with the ERE, and as a Catholic ruler you can request to join it as soon as you start playing? Maybe give the Pope some event troops (or some other rulers who have already joined the crusade?

Or do we have to just play as normal and wait for the MTTH gods to show up?
 
There has been some more provinces added in Georgia, as part of the Steppe map update. Hopefully we will have time to add some more in Greece and Anatolia as well, but not making any promises here.

If you guys are reworking the Steppe, could you see about adding more provinces in the Lake Baikal area + adding the missing rivers to Mongolia? That area is kind of boring and barren at the moment - which is a shame, because the Tarim Basin to its south is a lot of fun now.
 
So, I haven't read all 11 pages, but will the 4th crusade be in as a bookmark somewhere? Such as, will there be a date around 1200 where we can start playing when the crusade has already began? Like, the Pope and Venice are already at war with the ERE, and as a Catholic ruler you can request to join it as soon as you start playing? Maybe give the Pope some event troops (or some other rulers who have already joined the crusade?

Or do we have to just play as normal and wait for the MTTH gods to show up?
Just use these buttons in menu. You can start in any day in years 1066-1366.

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Just use these buttons in menu. You can start in any day in years 1066-1366.

hC9WCKH.jpg
He's asking if there will be something in the history files that, essentially, sets the 4th crusade events as having started if you start play between 2 events, like there is for the Byzantine/Seljuk war or the Norman Conquest in 1066.