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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.

Clipboard01.png


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!

Clipboard02.png


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.

image3.jpg


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.

image1.jpg


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.

image2.jpg


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.

Clipboard02.png


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.

Clipboard01.png


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.

Clipboard03.png


Clipboard04.png


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.

Clipboard05.png


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.

Clipboard01.png


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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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.

Just yesterday I started a game as Basileus Alexios V Doukas-Mourtzouphlos (the general who kicked out the pro-Crusader emperor and caused the crusaders to actually start the siege of Constantinople) from the day he started his reign but I didn't encounter any Fourth Crusade event nor even the massive army that was supposedly camping just outside the city walls at that time.
 
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's already a Latin Empire bookmark in the game. It's dated just after the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the Latin Empire. If you're referring to a new bookmark with a scripted war and event troops the devs haven't said anything; I'm inclined to go with 'no'.
 
What are the other possible settings for the "Crusader States" rule? Can we allow the AI to also form crusader states? Can we disallow them entirely (so only the Crusader Kingdom is formed)?
 
In reguards to the 4th crusade, will you know in advance what you will fight for or can you happen to plead to partake in the crusade just to find out that you're at war with Bizzies?
 
Are there going to be any new cultures added in the next expansion/update? The Dev Diary about Italy showed the possibility to splitting up the Italian culture to regional ones. With the new Crusader mechanics, I feel like an "Outremer" culture would be a great add on to simulate the mix of Latin European and Middle Eastern cultures. This way you don't see Jerusalem or Syria become French or German completely.

Great Dev Diary. Now playing as a Catholic will be even more fun!

Just a few other suggestions/questions:

- Give the Children's Crusade title a unique CoA. The Shepherds have one, and the kids deserve it too!

- What titular title will the deposed Byz Emperor have? I know Nicea would be one but that might be awkward if the deposed Emperor doesn't control Nicea.

- Could you showcase the new portraits as well in the next Dev Diary? We've seen snippets and I'm eager to see them fully revealed!
 
In CK2 Terms, wouldn't Albingensian Crusade be just some vassals of French king converting to Catharism, and then get holywar-ed to death by his other vassals?

A current leading theory on Catharism (a theory I happen to support) is that it was a problem created by Catholic Priests who misidentified ocal customs and beliving that similar customs in a region were a theologically coordinated heresy rather than just a standard deviation. Only at the end of the period did you have actual Cathars saying they were Cathar
 
A current leading theory on Catharism (a theory I happen to support) is that it was a problem created by Catholic Priests who misidentified ocal customs and beliving that similar customs in a region were a theologically coordinated heresy rather than just a standard deviation. Only at the end of the period did you have actual Cathars saying they were Cathar

It's not a theory that I support considering that *women* could become a perfecti in Cathar society which flies in face of Catholic doctrine excluding women from the priesthood.
 
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It's not a theory that I support considering that *women* could become a perfecti in Cathar society which flies in face of Catholic doctrine excluding women from the priesthood.

I'm not an expert on this particular theory or period in history, but there are two potential counter arguments I can think up off the top of my head:

1) we only have contemporary evidence of women holding positions of Priestly importance later in the Cathar period (after the people called Cathars began actually self identifying as Cathar)

2) Catholic doctrine in this period was not well understood by most, up to an including priests. Even hundreds of years later, in a village just south of Rome, peasants greeted Catholic priests sent to contain heresy by saying 'Praise God the Father, Jesus, and his holy sister Mary!', effectively replacing the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. It is possible that in a very small amount of regions good Catholics set up women in positions of power that only men were technically supposed to have.
 
Has there been anything said about possible changes to non-Catholic Christianity?
 
With the game options will there be a way to make the crusades historical? It’d be fun to fight off the fourth crusade or be part of it and know it'd happen.
 
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.

View attachment 391979

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!

View attachment 391980

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.

View attachment 391976

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.

View attachment 391974

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.

View attachment 391975

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.

View attachment 391986

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.

View attachment 391985

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.

View attachment 391987

View attachment 391988

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.

View attachment 391989

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.

View attachment 391990

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!

I see Thrace is now it's own Kingdom, which is a big improvement, but it includes Nikaea in Asia which doesn't reflect any actual Byzantine or Late-Roman administrative division, and it means it will be seized by the Latin Emperor, which didn't happen historically.

Wouldn't it be better if Nikaea was part of Anatolia and Pathlagonia be shunted to Trebizond?

As it stand the Despot of Trebizond holds the Duchy of Paphlagonia in the Latin Empire start - he wouldn't need it if the Duchy was his de jure anyway.
 
Why only Christians? Shouldn't any Greek regardless of religion be able to form a new Byzantine Empire? You are giving us all these fun new reformed pagan mechanics, but excluding them from various new decision.
By the reforms of Theodosius I built atop the example example of Constantine I, the Roman Empire officially abandoned their state cult, and by Theodosius' caesaropapist propaganda the Roman Empire hence embraced it's destiny as the fulfilled New Jerusalem as prophesied in the Book of Revelation. To retain the godly power they held in centuries past, the Roman Emperors were to be the Divine Regents to rule Creation in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ and him ruling this realized New Jerusalem (the very state that executed him) and conquer the world. All of Christianity was to be under the rule of the Emperor, the words Roman and Christian then being one of the same (this is why during his rule, the Sassanians went from being indifferent to Christians to heavily persecuting them under suspicion of being spies or possible insurgents; as well as the Donation of Constantine, this may also explain some of the reasons for Charlemagne being crowned as Emperor of the Romans, but beneath the Patriarch of Rome/Pope rather than vice-versa).

You can thank Constantine I for calling himself the Equal-to-the-Apostles and forcing himself to be present at church meetings, and leading the first Christian-on-Christian persecution with the Donatists of Carthage. But you can thank none more-so than famous Julian, who in an effort to prevent pagans to converting to Christianity, instead of violent persecution he reforms the temples of the state cult to mirror the institutions of the Churches, but he unknowingly actually removed a sizeable barrier between the two faiths and so people converted to what they saw as the more ideologically appetizing persuasion, soon leading to Theodosius to be able to enact his religious reforms.

By the time of CKII, the propaganda of Theodosius I is already well cemented in what you call the Byzantine Empire, but is starting to fade what with the rise in influence of the Pope. Keep the two sides from splitting, and you keep a sizeable portion of Christendom under the authority of the Divine Regent in the City of World's Desire.
 
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