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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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Cause their is no byzantine empire without Christianity, the orthodox faith was core to the Byzantine belief system, however Serbians and Bulgarians who both tried to the restore empire and were heavily romanized should be able to reform the empire in game.

It's just an empire title, it should be possible to be formed by anyone.
 
Yes. Use the search function. Or google.

You also can assume, that after 6 years every topic you come up with already was discussed and every suggestion you think about was already made.

Including this post and mine. Which means they are not helpful.
 
It's just an empire title, it should be possible to be formed by anyone.
It’s still formable the traditional way without imitations, this is a unique decision about reforming the empire before the fourth crusade. Orthodox should be the only requirement but point is this doesn’t change how the empire is already formed normally.
 
The Latin empire should be able to form the byzantine empire too. They didn't call themselves the Latin empire after all. They should have a decision after they have conquered all other Byzantine successors to become the Byzantine empire.

Nobody called themselves "Byzantines."
 
I don't like that the Children's Crusade leader is a nobleman's child. They ought to be a Lowborn randomly-generated.
 
Crusader States? I might be forgetting something from a past DD, but whats up with that?

Occupied provinces outside of the targeted dejure kingdom can become independet crusader states
 
What happens if the leader of the Shepard's Crusade dies? Will another random person just become the leader, or will it be more like an Adventurer situation, where the crusade ends with the death of its leader?
 
In regards to the Children's Crusade will there be outcomes where you can (if you're helping out the crusade or sponsoring it) have the children sold into slavery like what may have happened in real life for a lot of money?
 
Regarding the Fourth Crusade event:
Who are eligible claimants? I'm guessing unlanded, for a start, but to what degree of relations? Should I, as the Basileus, have to be worried about one of my sons running off to join the Fourth only to be event-killed? What happens to the Byzantine claimant if the crusade fails?
You say there's a chance of it firing with every crusade: what % chance are we talking here?
Is it still possible for the Fourth Crusade event to happen if the Byzantines are Catholic and/or Venice is a Byzantine vassal?
Is the game rule for the Fourth Crusade binary (on/off) or a scale? Will turning it off or lowering it's chances negate achievements like some rules do?