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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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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.

I’d like an option where the Byzantines just give in and crown one of the Crusaders on their own. This was something they intended to do to Boniface, who they could accept as an Emperor, due to his ties to the Imperial Court.
 
Good changes. I love it.
But also I'm afraid. No more byzantine province, no buff orthodox religion. Seljuk is still a big blob, Sunni and Shia caliph declare jihad for anatolia, and now 4th crusade.
AI byzantine could endure?

The last big update to CK II made the AI much better at gaining and holding large kingdoms. Never before have I seen such solid and stable kingdoms. Usually even by 1300's it was completely fractured, unstable, and every changing with non stop civil wars, titles breaking off, and just a mess of borders. That changed completely. Used to be 2 years ago byzantines toppled over almost immediately all the time. Then they got stronger, and now its not rare to see them flourish along with Italy, France, dominating everything and holding massive empires.

So I think this new update won't be too much of a problem. If anything it'll make playing Byzantines even more interesting.
 
Given the role Venice will play in the 4th Crusade, is there any chance Venice becomes de jure part of the Byzantine Empire, instead of the Italia Empire, like they are today?

I have been having playing Venice in 769 a lot lately, and a tough part of the initial start is to acquire lands adjacent to the Byzantine Empire, so I can swear fealty to the Emperor and expand my fledgling trade empire under his protection. The 4 times I have tried to expand as an independent Venice, I keep getting my trade posts embargoed and destroyed by Lombardy or Byzantium, who have 10x the troops I do in the early game.

It make sense that Venice would be affiliated de jure with Constantinople, given the shared history between the two cultures in real history. If Venice was under the Byz Empire de jure, I could swear fealty without even un-pausing the game, and it would make MR gameplay a lot more fun in the early going. :)

Haven’t you asked the same thing in another DD already? Pretty much with the same answer you got today?
 
Why, oh why, do we only now get such an awesome expansion.
 
Good changes. I love it.
But also I'm afraid. No more byzantine province, no buff orthodox religion. Seljuk is still a big blob, Sunni and Shia caliph declare jihad for anatolia, and now 4th crusade.
AI byzantine could endure?
This is historical tho.
 
I wish there would be a way to make
e the Ottomans come to existence.

A turkish count or duke in Anatolia has a chance to get an event to rename the dynasty, new CoA, get the Kingdom title and a few event troops or something lime that.
 
The Byzantine empire was never called as such in middle ages , especially by its citizens.
they called themselves Romans and they called their empire Roman Empire, so can that proper title be used in stead of the wrong Byzantine one that is only a later western nomenclature used by some historians to claim a difference between the Old Roman empire and the eastern part?
 
Love the new Crusades. But how about the People Crusade in the First crusade led by Peter the Hermit? It's happened before any noble came to crusade and involved mostly peasants. They demanded food and sacked cities along the way to the holy land and even actually fought with infidels.
And in the First Crusade, the Byzantine gained back land in anatolia from the crusaders. Wish the Byzantine could involve in the Crusade to help and take back land like in history.
 
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I'm exited about all those new Crusades. I don't like playing Catholic so i won't see them much, unless they decide to target me, but it's still good to see the CHildren's Crusade.
And heh, yeah it would need a Habsburg to be stupid enough to actually go on a literal Children's Crusade, even before they started the advanced-level inbreeding.
 
Given the role Venice will play in the 4th Crusade, is there any chance Venice becomes de jure part of the Byzantine Empire, instead of the Italia Empire, like they are today?

I have been having playing Venice in 769 a lot lately, and a tough part of the initial start is to acquire lands adjacent to the Byzantine Empire, so I can swear fealty to the Emperor and expand my fledgling trade empire under his protection. The 4 times I have tried to expand as an independent Venice, I keep getting my trade posts embargoed and destroyed by Lombardy or Byzantium, who have 10x the troops I do in the early game.

It make sense that Venice would be affiliated de jure with Constantinople, given the shared history between the two cultures in real history. If Venice was under the Byz Empire de jure, I could swear fealty without even un-pausing the game, and it would make MR gameplay a lot more fun in the early going. :)
I agree Venice should be dejure byzantine, they were officially part of the empire till 1082. Then they were allies till manuel. Venice getting eaten can easily be solved by making Venice a tributary state of Byzantium in 769.867,1066 and then in 1081 once Byzantium is weak break it simulating the treaty of 1082.
 
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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Everytime a big update for a PDS game other than CKii comes out I always shake my head in disbelief as they anger that games player base by not having the wonderful customization options CKii has. Wake up other PDS teams and adopt the CKii customization system before you all have your very own Conclaves Forced Retreat disaster (stellaris is having thiers atm with the FTL change. reviews all negative...). Allow all players to toggle on/off & tweak the rulesets/options of DLCs & not just us spoiled CKii players!
 
can we sales the girls of byz as the slave?
uknow it's for the historical accuracy, venice trader and arbic rich sultan love young foreign girls.
I think we should have the prisoner sales system, like the slave market and liverpool.
and not only for the liverpool, but also venice republic, nomad government.
it's a really important income for them in the history.
the prisoner of army will become the slave, venice trader like to sale them to the arbic.
there are many serf and villein and slave at that days, that's the missing part in the game.
not all the ppl are civil and free.
so what's bothering you guys?

If you are interested in slavery and the slave trade, I strongly reccomend the "Game of Thrones" Mod.
 
YES YES YES!

With the train wreck that the EU4 EP has become (punishing people for playing wide and making religious conversion tedious and not fun), I am STOKED to see that "Holy Fury" continues to go beyond any expectation I could have ever had. This may very well be the best CK2 expansion EVER.

I cann't contain my enthusiasm. I AM SO STOKED FOR "HOLY FURY".
 
"Do not worry, I know just who to call..." sounds ominous.
 
I agree Venice should be dejure byzantine, they were officially part of the empire till 1082
Even before that they were sort of independent. They had a pretty unique relationship. Venice was definitely closely allied and connected to Byzantium, but it wasn't a full part of the empire either. Then the amount of independence gradually increased. So even earlier, there are arguments to be made for it be some sort of client state.