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Dev Diary #94 - Conquest and Reconquest

Hello there!

For this week, we are going to take a look at the Iberian Reconquista and the Northern Crusades. Keep in mind that things aren’t finalized yet, so there might be small errors etc.

NorthernCrusade01.png


Late 12th century or afterwards, the Teutonic Order can decide to start converting the north (Scandinavia/Baltics/Russia), if they aren’t already holding lands in the south or fighting for any lord at the moment. After the original announcement event, any King or Emperor living in the north will be able to ask the Teutons to target a specific ruler to conquer.

NorthernCrusade02.png


After asking the Teutons to target a specific character, the Teutons will send a response letter with their demands, be it land, money or that they will do it for free. After the Teutons have received a target, they will focus their efforts from now on, to convert that specific DeJure Kingdom to Christianity, fighting wars for one Duchy at a time. In other words, other rulers won’t be able to ask them to target any character outside of the DeJure kingdom later on.

NorthernCrusade03.png


After the Northern Crusades start, the Teutons will potentially ask a local ruler for help, receive event troops and start marching upon the Duchy they fight for. Should they win that war, they will become the Teutonic State and start actively pacifying the region. If they lose, they will wait for some more years, before re-launching the Northern Crusades once more. If they keep losing their wars, they will eventually give up their Northern Crusade, and leave the north.

NorthernCrusade04.png


For those helping the Teutons in pacifying the north, there is rewards in the form of gold, piety, artifacts and potentially a bloodline if you are truly pious.

NorthernCrusade05.png


Turning down south, we also have the new Reconquista. For any Iberian Christian ruler (of Duke or higher tier) with lands in the Iberian Peninsula, they can start fighting to reconquer the peninsula for Christendom. A new decision has been added, to start preparing for a Reconquista. This will cost a ruler a substantial amount of prestige, piety and gold. One thing I want to point out, is that the Reconquista wars can be started at any point throughout the game, and it is not attached to the start of the normal Crusades.

Reconquista01.png


Reconquista02.png


After the Reconquista has started, the ruler will start gathering troops and resources the following year. Every month or two, special events will fire for the ruler, to ask the Pope for gold, finding ships, troops etc.

Reconquista03.png


After a year has passed, the preparation events will finally stop, and the ruler will have one more year to find a fitting target to attack. They can of course start attacking someone prior to the preparation year has passed as well, but then at the cost of the special events attached to that period. The new Reconquista Casus Belli will let you attack special regions in Iberia, each one of them consisting of two Duchies (with the exception of Navarra and the Balearic Islands, which is 1).

As a Reconquista is ongoing, a Muslim in the Iberian Peninsula will be able to sell their services to the Christian Reconquistador and vice versa for Christians. This is to simulate the chaotic type of warfare that often happened at the Iberian Peninsula. For those who want to simulate El Cid, there is a special bloodline for someone winning several Reconquista wars from both sides (helping both the Christian attackers, and the Muslim defenders).

Reconquista04.png


The Reconquistador will also be able to set up a beneficiary, akin to normal Crusades, but it isn’t necessary nor pushed as heavily. After all, spreading the faith locally at the Iberian Peninsula is quite the pious task!

If you have a Beneficiary to gain the land, they will have some extra benefits akin to how the Crusaders usually do, with no penalties to the area when the war is won, etc.

Reconquista05.png


A Reconquista will be considered a success when all the lands of Iberia has been taken, or a Christian Emperor of Hispania is crowned. Similarly, if a Muslim gets the Empire of Hispania, they will stop the Reconquista as well.

The title has been changed slightly to reflect this, and you can no longer create the Empire, unless there are no rulers of another faith holding any DeJure Kingdoms. E.g, the Sultan of Andalusia cannot create the Empire of Hispania while there is a Christian King of Asturias.

Of course, there is a bloodline for those who stay loyal to the faith, and fight for Christianity as well. None of that wishy-washy both sides nonsense!

Reconquista06.png


Finally, if Christendom is desperately trying to survive in the region, Reconquista adventurers can start spawning for the Christian rulers of Iberia. They have a shortened preparation time of 1 month, before they declare war on the closest Muslim. If they win the war, they will settle down as a Beneficiary would, with some of those benefits.

Reconquista07.png


And like last week, there is of course two new game rules attached to the two new Crusades.
  • Northern Crusade:
    • Enabled
    • Disabled
  • Reconquista:
    • Enabled
    • Limited (No Adventurers)
    • Disabled
Reconquista09.png


That was all for the Baltics and the Iberian Peninsula! Hopefully you guys are as stoked for the two new Crusades as we are. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed these extra summer Dev Diaries, and we are back to the usual from next week on!

(Ps. Yes, there isn't really a huge change from the summer Dev Diaries to the usual ones, just that these weren't originally planned)
 
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Yup. When last Baltic pagans were defeated, everyone assumed Teutons would either go find new heathens to fight, or just settle down as any other contemporary state.
Except... normal feudal states are were run by warriors, who were married, with children, and therefore somewhat tamed by family life. Other states, like Papal States or semi-independent German archbishoprics, were run by old priests, not warriors, and therefore had lesser natural inclination to violence.
Whereas Teutonic State was run by unmarried warrior men with nothing to do. So they behaved like modern unmarried violent men in good shape with nothing useful to do: frat boys.

My unbiversity professor Jürgen Sarnowsky would like to take a word with you. He is focused on the Teutonic Order. Actually the Teutonic Order was one of the states with a very well functional state system with a lot of bureaucracy.
In terms of war, they just did what everyone else did too.
 
Maybe you could add the "seafarer" trait to the Estonian culture and make sure that they have boats already in the 867 bookmark (it is weird that they don't). And maybe add some trigger that if they have looted in total 1000 gold, then the Northern crusade would trigger and target the kingdom of Estonia. It seems like the easiest way to simulate the fact that the increased activity of the Estonian vikings triggered Danish, Swedish and German "crusaders" invading Estonia. The Danish and Swedish coastline suffered under constant raids and German trade with Russia was strongly disrupted over the Baltic sea. Back then that "crusade" had a very pragmatic reason behind it and it would be cool if the targeting of the crusade would take that into account.
 
I am quite interested in this too. Historically, the Teutonic Order went - in modern terms - full-on "rogue state", and paid for it with a considerable reduction in donations from most of the Catholic world; said weakening ended up spelling its end in the closing years of CK2. It should be possible for a Holy Order to become... well, pretty much unholy, and suffer from it.
The sack of Danzig was a bad idea and it cost them a lot of sympathy. Especially since it hurt the hanseatic league who had up until then worked with the order hand in glove each doing things the other could not. The hansa could not command large armies because commoners leading large armies would have made the nobles of the holy Roman empire concerned while the Teutonic order as a holy order could not engage in commerce.
Aside from that the Teutonic order were no more violent than any other state in the era and actually helped it's neighbours fight heathen threats like the golden horde. I seem to recall they took part in the fight against the ottoman too but I could be wrong about that.
Hey, don't forget the Livonian Order too. :)
It seems unlikely we'll see them. Though otnwould be cool if they spawned as a teuton vassal holy order if the teutons manage to get a foothold in the Baltic. To give them some staying power whole not adding yet another Catholic holy order to the game.
Or attack catholic as they also did...

When you think about it, they fought christians more than pagans.
Because they can out of pagans and they did help in the war to scatter the golden horde as I recall. Didnt they join at Varna too?
My unbiversity professor Jürgen Sarnowsky would like to take a word with you. He is focused on the Teutonic Order. Actually the Teutonic Order was one of the states with a very well functional state system with a lot of bureaucracy.
In terms of war, they just did what everyone else did too.
Well because they were a centralized state not a feudal system. So much less infighting. In fact the heavy Prussian belief in duty to the state probably comes back to ideas passed down from the Teutonic order.
It should also be noted that from the teutons to the destruction of Prussia, Prussia never had a church separated from it's state.
Is it possible to reconquest other areas that go as far as roman time? Such as a reconquest of north Africa or Syria.
That's what crusades are for.
Maybe you could add the "seafarer" trait to the Estonian culture and make sure that they have boats already in the 867 bookmark (it is weird that they don't). And maybe add some trigger that if they have looted in total 1000 gold, then the Northern crusade would trigger and target the kingdom of Estonia. It seems like the easiest way to simulate the fact that the increased activity of the Estonian vikings triggered Danish, Swedish and German "crusaders" invading Estonia. The Danish and Swedish coastline suffered under constant raids and German trade with Russia was strongly disrupted over the Baltic sea. Back then that "crusade" had a very pragmatic reason behind it and it would be cool if the targeting of the crusade would take that into account.
Nice idea. Do the berber's in north Africa have seafarer? If so it could perhaps be linked to crusade weights too.
 
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I secretly have a love/hate relationship with the CKii game customization screen (and you remind me every time you post about it!).

In that I freakin love that players can fine tune everything (including new DLC rulesets/features) under the hood to their liking but as the same time I hate it because it highlights the huge lack of rule/setting customization from all the other PDS titles (esp. looking at you Ho4 that tried to tote in the latest DLC new customization options but was just a stupid simple slider bar with predefined developer rulesets instead of total upfront under the hood player customization as in CKii).
 
I secretly have a love/hate relationship with the CKii game customization screen (and you remind me every time you post about it!).

In that I freakin love that players can fine tune everything (including new DLC rulesets/features) under the hood to their liking but as the same time I hate it because it highlights the huge lack of rule/setting customization from all the other PDS titles (esp. looking at you Ho4 that tried to tote in the latest DLC new customization options but was just a stupid simple slider bar with predefined developer under the hood tweaks instead of total upfront player customization).
Well HoI works reasonably well. Eu4 is way more in need of one of those screens. It suffers terribly under it's mechanics bloat it'd be great to turn some off.
 
I secretly have a love/hate relationship with the CKii game customization screen (and you remind me every time you post about it!).

In that I freakin love that players can fine tune everything (including new DLC rulesets/features) under the hood to their liking but as the same time I hate it because it highlights the huge lack of rule/setting customization from all the other PDS titles (esp. looking at you Ho4 that tried to tote in the latest DLC new customization options but was just a stupid simple slider bar with predefined developer rulesets instead of total upfront under the hood player customization as in CKii).

HoI4 will add a customization screen in the next update as far as I know.
 
Because they can out of pagans and they did help in the war to scatter the golden horde as I recall. Didnt they join at Varna too?

Define "help". As far as I remember in both Battle of Legnica and Battle of Varna they had less than 100 soldiers.. and they run away from both battles.

Lets see how else Teutonic order "helped". Massacre of christian city of Danzig, supporting pagan rulers in Lithuanian civil wars, attacking Novgorod after it was forced to pay tribute to Golden Horde and treating locals so badly that even already converted rulers/citizens joined all the uprisings against TO.
 
Is there any chance for Caucasus region to be reviewed? It needs some changes.

There was some kind of "reconquista" by christians of Caucasus as well. for example many Armenian nakharars joined Georgian army to fight muslim invaders. Georgians and Armenians together liberated whole region and even threatened muslims. georgian raids in iran

also I think there must be mechanic for eastern european kingdoms to invite nomadic tribes into their country. so it would increase their manpower. Kipchaks in Georgia
 
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As much as the Reconquista looks like a buff for the Iberian Christians in the early start dates, I think that it will be a fascinating addition in the later starts. The ability to fight on either side could make the politics on the Iberian peninsula fascinating. If a rival Christian state declares for provinces that you want, you could jump in and help your enemies against your rivals in the hope of conquering them later. And then your rivals can return the favor... Sounds like a blast.
 
Would it be possible to use the reconquests in France? Maybe after an event fires after enough territorry has been losr, like when the umayyads push into a fractured Europe in earlier start dates?