Second week and a second dev diary! We will continue for this week as well to discuss new patch features and changes.

I'll start with some more quality of life changes we've done with the right-click menu to make interactions with various entities in the game even more smooth. For starters we've finally removed the capital letters in the tooltip to hint about how to now interact with characters, but that's not really a big deal. We have also extended the menu to now include actions such as plot to kill in this menu to make life a little bit easier.

But we didn't end there because we also felt that you should be able to interact more with holdings and titles so we added it to them as well, including a decision to switch what you want as your capital holding. Obviously the bishopric of Uppsala should be the capital of Sweden now that the capital holding type doesn't matter for government anymore.

There's also a thing that has been very difficult to do in Crusader Kings 2 is to get a visual overview of your realm and its hierarchy which is why we have merged the Independent Realms mapmode and Direct Vassals mapmode into one superior mapmode which combine the both plus some more. Let's have a look at the Holy Roman Empire and his realm.

To now see the breakdown of this realm you Ctrl+Left Click on a province on the map belonging to the Empire and it will break up in-front of you to show you what hides within. Showing you the various duchies and counts beneath the Emperor. Pretty standard to how the Direct Vassal mapmode works but you can isolate it to one realm at a time.

But let's say you want to look deeper into the hierarchy and break up the Kingdom of Bohemia to view what duchies and counties that it contains? You just click it again and this sub realm will also be broken apart to reveal the King's own direct vassals letting you examine your vassals vassals.

And like Doomdark did last week I'll finish up with some random snippets from our huge Changelog

Spoiler

- Several Lovers events now checks that ruler/spouse/lover isn't incapable/imprisoned
- Rügen, Öland and Djerba are no longer considered to be ocean terrain provinces.
- You'll no longer try to talk to your dead children when you have the family focus.
- It is now possible to gain the Crusader/Mujahid trait as a character of any religion participating in a Crusade/Jihad.
- To become a cardinal you have to be within the pope's diplomatic range
- Can no longer enforce plot to take vassal land if he is in revolt.
- Go tiger hunting no longer disappears after creating a custom Empire in India.
- Fixed get married ambition for homosexuals.
- Now we have visual indicator when settlement slots are being used by tribals
- Paranoid parents should no longer worry about potential plots against dead children.
- Lovers in prison can no longer get impregnated normally
- Anglo-Saxons are now also allowed to create the Kingdom of Saxony

 

[Zarathustra_the]

To be honest it is Catholic teaching to be chaste and that if you find you cannot control your sexual appetite you should only unleash it in the marital bed. So if all Catholics were truly zealous they would not even be married, they would be celibate and chaste as Paul called for in his letters

 

[SirRitter]

To be honest it is Catholic teaching to be chaste and that if you find you cannot control your sexual appetite you should only unleash it in the marital bed. So if all Catholics were truly zealous they would not even be married, they would be celibate and chaste as Paul called for in his letters

Puritanism was not a thing in the middle-ages. In fact the Church fathers were favorable to the legalization of prostitution. Augustine for instance claimed that "the removal of the institution would bring lust into all aspects of our world". It was their view that if you couldn't hold your johnny in your pants it was good to have a "letout". Prostitution was commonplace and completely legal in most of medieval europe.

As for the Cathars, they were fanatics. They did not have mild and uncompromised believers among them(such as the Catholics often did). That is the very reason why they attracted so many followers so quickly. They practiced what they preached and led by example. Their tolerance of sexual practices which don't produce pregnancy existed precisely for that reason as well: they were consistent in their insanity.

And yes, those of them who were not celibate were either homossexual or had sexual practices which were considered immoral for the time(masturbation, oral and anal sex).

Also, they did not accept marriage. This was to such an extent that inquisitors would let go suspects of being cathar heretics as soon as they proved they were living in marriage.

 

[Emren]

So guys can we at least agree that:

1. Female rulers were rare (comparatively [to men] speaking).
2. Female rulers who personally led their troops were yet more rare (comparatively [to female rulers who did NOT lead troops] speaking).

We can probably conclude that 99% of battles in game should be led by men, because this is the undisputed historical fact. Which is why, considering that this is a broad strokes game, women should altogether be unable to command flanks in game. Leading an army is not the same as leading a flank in the game, and leading flanks is, actually, what the game simulates. Female rulers already contribute their martial stats (even unlanded wives do this) to their realms, which also affects your military strength in subtle ways. I think Paradox is making a completely ahistorical mistake here - which ultimately has absolutely no impact on my desire to keep playing this game or supporting Paradox.

 

[Emren]

Most likely, yes. But it's debatable.
"she was one of the few medieval women to be remembered for her military accomplishments, thanks to which she was able to dominate all the territories north of the Church States"
"The extent of Matilda's education in military matters is debated. It has been asserted that she was taught strategy, tactics, riding and wielding weapons, but recent scholarship finds these claims contentious."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_of_Tuscany

And somewhere in Italy her armor is part of a museum if I remember correctly... I have to search it

But did you even read something in the article? Many of the fomen on that list did exactly that. They lead there armies into battles.

Which flank did Mathilda of Tuscany lead?

 

[Zarathustra_the]

Emren, there are better ways to achieve what you are talking about. For instance do not let a woman have a military education unless her father has some kind of odd trait. By doing so you restrict the opportunities for a woman to ever be a viable leader. This is a better way to prevent women from leading armies as even the AI makes its choices based on the ability scores. If a person wants to have their military score 0 countess lead their army what actual harm does it do to you? Combat the problem not by making it impossible for women to lead armies but instead by mimicking the conditions which would ensure that a woman would not lead an army, ie tweak education.

 

[Emren]

Emren, there are better ways to achieve what you are talking about. For instance do not let a woman have a military education unless her father has some kind of odd trait. By doing so you restrict the opportunities for a woman to ever be a viable leader. This is a better way to prevent women from leading armies as even the AI makes its choices based on the ability scores. If a person wants to have their military score 0 countess lead their army what actual harm does it do to you? Combat the problem not by making it impossible for women to lead armies but instead by mimicking the conditions which would ensure that a woman would not lead an army, ie tweak education.

Yeah, I know. But I think there are more productive ways for the devs to spend their time, rather than fiddling with something that is not broken. But this seems a moot point, looks like the damage is already done. I will just mod the game, if I think the amount of Amazon rulers becomes unbearable. Hey - we should totally give female flank commanders an 'Amazon' trait, which gives +10 to other characters with the same trait. 'Cause Independent Women and all... \sarcasm

 

[stilgarpl]

I think Paradox is making a completely ahistorical mistake here - which ultimately has absolutely no impact on my desire to keep playing this game or supporting Paradox.

What are you people talking about? Most realms in the game are Agnatic. Some are Agnatic-Cognatic. It means that it's very, very rare for women to rule anything more than a county.
For Absolute Cognatic you either have to be basque or have feminist religion - and even then women have 50% chance of ruling.

Female rulers will be rare in the game. Female commanders will be even more rare - unless the player chooses that path (by becoming Cathar or A-C Elective and electing women on purpose).

Player's actions are ahistorical already. This is just giving them a choice. What's wrong with having an option? If I wanted my game to follow history exactly every time I play it, I would rather watch historical movie or document.

If a player wants to establish gender equality in Middle Ages... why the hell not? It's their game. If they want to play as Agnatic Kingdom, where women can make babies and not much else, sure, why not. Your game, your choice.

Paradox is not forcing us to play as females. It just gives us an option. You can choose what your game of CK2 will be.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

To be honest, I find there to be less issue with a female general than with a female ruler to be honest. Based on my own work, it often appears as if women as strategic leaders was not uncommon, if only based on the textual responses to their actions.

Furthermore, combat in CKII is highly Ahistorical already. More often than not, A general commanding an army would not be leading from the front. Yes it is romanticised but the idea of the gallant commander charging the enemy is ludicrous to say the least, and foolhardy at best. In organised fedual regimes it was typically not the nobility who were fighting up close and personal. Now of course we have to have the general driven combat we do have, but do not try and claim it was common for a lord of a great land to be leading a small party from the front. Most times a general was killed was not from the front line, but was instead from being completely over run. Not everyone was a Viking.

 

[Emren]

It means that it's very, very rare for women to rule anything more than a county.

Female rulers will be rare in the game.

I am only going to quote these choice parts of your posts, because these are the only parts I disagree with. I actually see plenty of title holding women in my games. Duchesses and Queens, not only Countesses. So I don't think it is acurate to say that it is 'very, very rare'. Whenever I search the attractive marriage thingy for my male heir, there is almost always an unmarried duchess in the list. Which tells me that even female, unmarried rulers are not uncommon in the game. Is it 50/50? Of course not, it's probably not even 10%, but I'd not label it as very, very rare. As in very, very rare female military flank leaders.

 

[chrnno]

He did not mention it would be rare. He said every female ruler would now be able to lead troops.

And how often you see female rulers? Maybe it is due me lacking the expansions but besides the ones I caused and excluding counties I saw maybe half a dozen total in hundreds of hours played. Counties are more common but then there are lots of them.

 

[Emren]

I am sorry for the double quote:

If a player wants to establish gender equality in Middle Ages... why the hell not? It's their game. If they want to play as Agnatic Kingdom, where women can make babies and not much else, sure, why not. Your game, your choice.

Paradox is not forcing us to play as females. It just gives us an option. You can choose what your game of CK2 will be.

Would you advocate the same way for female rulers for Muslim lands? Because why not?

 

[SirRitter]

And how often you see female rulers? Maybe it is due me lacking the expansions but besides the ones I caused and excluding counties I saw maybe half a dozen total in hundreds of hours played. Counties are more common but then there are lots of them.

Quite often. At every point in my games there is nearly always a duchess and a few countesses. Occasionally there are also queens and I once saw a byzantine empress.

Ritter when the hell was the last time you studied fundamental moral theology at a seminary? It is catholic moral theology which cleanly says from the letters of Paul that we are called in life to be chaste and forswear all sex. It is only in a later letter that Paul the apostle suggests that sex inside marriage is a lesser evil than sex outside. This is the fundamental theological argument for priestly celibacy, which to be sure is a prohibition against marriage not sex. It is a mortal sin however to have sex outside of marriage, hence why priests are not supposed to engage in intercourse at all. Furthermore, when you have the creation of widespread religious orders one of the vows many tend to take is a vow of Chastity, which is to be without sex even within marriage. So, what does this ultimately express about Catholic theology, that for the last 2,000 years the doctrine of Paul for all Christians to be chaste has been at war with the real needs of the society and the religion itself to reproduce. I mentioned nothing about the reformation, (though as a historian that is my specialty) I instead was directing you to Catholic moral theology, which is a subject you have clearly never engaged with.

You are putting the cart before the horse here. Medieval Christians preached and admired perfection, but they did not demand it. Many of the great heretical movements of the late middle ages were about that: being completely strict. That is one thing many criticize about the reformation: since they thought only a few could reach the perfection that was being preached, they thought it was better to just give up on perfection.

And the Church only ever preached clerical celibacy. It was never demanded from laymen that they abstain from sex(in the context of marriage off course). If you really study history I don't know where you got that idea from.

And yes, many of the Church fathers explicitly stated that prostitution should be around.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

I am sorry for the double quote:



Would you advocate the same way for female rulers for Muslim lands? Because why not?

I do not see why not. Surely, a seductress who knows well the limits of her land would be capable of forcing an aberrant rule upon her lands should she be able to. This game already put too many limitations mechanically onto things which do not need them. We need to change the focus of the design towards soft limitations rather than hard limitations.

 

[Grell74]

I do not see why not. Surely, a seductress who knows well the limits of her land would be capable of forcing an aberrant rule upon her lands should she be able to. This game already put too many limitations mechanically onto things which do not need them. We need to change the focus of the design towards soft limitations rather than hard limitations.

No "we" don't, at least not until the AI is even remotely capeable of competently and plausibly handling these soft limitations. Which is not now and will most likely be never.

You advocate Muslim female army commanders too? You can't be using logic based on historical reality, so I assume is this coming from the same spurious reasoning you used earlier and I see alot of other posters write "Well CK2 is poor at representing history so it's fine to make it more ahistorical"... bizzare logic.

Furthermore, combat in CKII is highly Ahistorical already.

so its fine to make it more ahistorical, just so long as it suits your anachronistic agenda... Emren made a good distinction, that a CK2 character actually being involved in melee combat as a flanking commander (which is something a female ruler would not be doing really at all ever) as opposed to contributing their martial score to the realm as more of an abstracted figurehead, as the game does now, which is a fairly adequate gameplay mechanic of simulating women's minimal at most contribution to medieval warfare.

 

[stilgarpl]

I actually see plenty of title holding women in my games. Duchesses and Queens, not only Countesses.

Isn't that because there are lots of characters in the game? If you have few thousand counties and few hundreds duchies, even with a small chance there have to be some women occupying those positions.

Would you advocate the same way for female rulers for Muslim lands? Because why not?

Exactly, why not? If player want to reform Islam, why do we have to create artificial limits? We can already reform Pagan faiths...
My wish for future DLC is the ability to create custom heresies. For example, Slavic already has female temple holders. I can imagine it could evolve into something that allows Absolute Cognatic, and I wouldn't have to jump to Catharism for few days just to change the law...
If you are a strong, islamic ruler of half of the known world, you should have enough power to change some rules in the church. It was possible in Rome after all.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

No "we" don't, at least not until the AI is even remotely capeable of competently and plausibly handling these soft limitations. Which is not now and will most likely be never.

You advocate Mulslim female army commanders too? You can't be using logic based on historical reality, so is this coming from the same spurious reasoning you used earlier and I see alot of other posters write "Well CK2 is poor at representing history so it's fine to make it more ahistorical"... bizzre logic.

But the AI does. Through the use of weighting and other variable evaluations it is possible to get the AI to base it's decisions on traits and stat values. This is where I suggest limitations be imposed.

 

[Emren]

Isn't that because there are lots of characters in the game? If you have few thousand counties and few hundreds duchies, even with a small chance there have to be some women occupying those positions.

Exactly, why not? If player want to reform Islam, why do we have to create artificial limits? We can already reform Pagan faiths...
My wish for future DLC is the ability to create custom heresies. For example, Slavic already has female temple holders. I can imagine it could evolve into something that allows Absolute Cognatic, and I wouldn't have to jump to Catharism for few days just to change the law...
If you are a strong, islamic ruler of half of the known world, you should have enough power to change some rules in the church. It was possible in Rome after all.

The philosophical reply would be that no limits, or no rules, is the same as removing characteristics. If you can do anything with any religion in the game, they lose identity, and there's then little point to choosing one over the other. This is not very good game design.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

But this game is supposed to be a sandbox not simulation. If we can form an empire spanning from the British Isles to the end of India surely being able to affect a radical social revolution is not impermissible.


I am not by any means suggesting it should be easy or even particularly viable, but it should still be possible and the restrictions should be a consequence rather than an impossibility.

 

[Thure]

You advocate Mulslim female army commanders too? You can't be using logic based on historical reality, so is this coming from the same spurious reasoning you used earlier and I see alot of other posters write "Well CK2 is poor at representing history so it's fine to make it more ahistorical"... bizzre logic.

Actually the game should allow Muslim females to get titles someway...

"Like some other Muslim princesses of the time, she was trained to lead armies and administer kingdoms if necessary.[1]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razia_Sultana

And because I'm not sure how good the source on wikipedia is another source:
https://books.google.de/books?id=-W...6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Razia Sultana army&f=false

 

[Grell74]

But this game is supposed to be a sandbox not simulation. If we can form an empire spanning from the British Isles to the end of India surely being able to affect a radical social revolution is not impermissible.


I am not by any means suggesting it should be easy or even particularly viable, but it should still be possible and the restrictions should be a consequence rather than an impossibility.

Still keeping on with the same argument "its currently pretty crappy and implausible so lets just make it more crappy and implausible"

The AI is completely incompetent in the most crucial and vital aspects of CK2, such that the golden rule of every player is NEVER under any circumstance let the AI any where near you heirs upbrining, not to mention warfare, marriage etc etc giving broader scope for wacky social revolutions and development focus towards soft limitations as you are suggesting would seriously ruin this game.