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

 

[Emren]

I disagree. More controll means that it feels more like you're commanding a nation limited by your vassals and enemies and the consequences of your actions. And less like playing a game and being limited by hardcoded arbitrary rules.

Just out of pure curiosity - where would you draw the line on more control? I actually LIKE less control, this is exactly why I love CK2, because it is one of those rare, maybe even unique games, where you have very little control. And not unimportantly, you are not "commanding a nation". They barely existed in the timeframe of the game. You are, supposedly, playing a dynastic simulator. The focus should be, and is, on the characters, and not so much the realms they inhabit. Since we can't play as the pope - why should we be able to have even more control over the churches and religions in the game?

 

[Zarathustra_the]

I want a game that has potentiality to spiral beyond the history, for a dynasty to be able to by virtue of their concentrated hold on power be able to achieve something truly revolutionary. Yes there is no certainty in life and yes control over things is largely impossible, however, if you take for instance the revolution of Simon de Monteforte, this is an event that is truly impossible within the limitations of the succession laws the game enables us to have. I would like to see that change. In 1648 the Archbishop of Paris rebelled against the King of France and arguably sought to establish a monarchy. When Cromwell and the Commonwealth slipped from government to government trying to make a permanent settlement in the aftermath of the Civil Wars, these are the situations you need to have no mechanical limits for. Yes these kind of situations are historically atypical, but it indicates that history is not something that can be directly predicted or controlled. By removing restrictions on where you can govern form, by removing mechanical limitations of women leading armies, it enables the game to represent the essence of history, the possibility of the extraordinary.

Spend time developing the AI and optimizing the game, and use these elements to limit occurrences but do not hard code them.

 

[dave489571]

I'm generally for soft limitations instead of hard limitations too. But I can't say I agree with those saying any religion should be able to become any religion. Religion should be this kind of big qualitative difference between civilizations. If you make religion more malleable, then it will just become another min/max thing, whereas the interesting thing about religion, in history and in game, is that it isn't totally rational or completely subordinated to the self interest of rulers, that it has its own often crazy logic to it that can be good or bad for the rulers and can't be easily changed.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

Religions organically reform over time though. If there is one thing I learned in my theological studies is that while the Catholic Church has endured two thousand years it has not endured unscathed. There needs to be an element of natural evolutionary change for a religion, a simple reform button does not cut it.

 

[Bhangbhangduc]

A decision for Emperors of a reformed or non-pagan faith with no head to make themselves head of the religion, and then a system like the laws system that lets the religious head change traits, like what gender and succession laws are allowed, and whether or not great holy wars/crusades are allowed.

For pagans, this system might make reformation more like westernization in Vicky.

 

[Emren]

Religions organically reform over time though. If there is one thing I learned in my theological studies is that while the Catholic Church has endured two thousand years it has not endured unscathed. There needs to be an element of natural evolutionary change for a religion, a simple reform button does not cut it.

This would be interesting. I am not exactly a proponent of static religions, but I would prefer a system where the player doesn't control directly any change. More like defining what conditions should be in place for change to happen, and then event drive those changes. Moral authority is a great system in that regard, and it could be built upon.

 

[Xain]

What about backward compatibility ?

 

[loup99]

What about backward compatibility ?

So far it seems to be OK, but do keep in mind that the dev diaries have only touched light patch stuff. However, Groogy mentionned in another thread though that it should be savegame compatible.

 

[Voy]

So far it seems to be OK, but do keep in mind that the dev diaries have only touched light patch stuff. However, Groogy mentionned in another thread though that it should be savegame compatible.

Personally I think it would be strange if a 600+ entries changelog would be completely save game compatible. Gotta be something that breaks something.

 

[Thure]

Personally I think it would be strange if a 600+ entries changelog would be completely save game compatible. Gotta be something that breaks something.

Groogy said it should work. But because of a bug ironman wouldn't work.

 

[loup99]

Personally I think it would be strange if a 600+ entries changelog would be completely save game compatible. Gotta be something that breaks something.

If all those lines are tweaks, changes, quality of life, crash fixes and bug fixing it should be save game compatible, the save can adapt itself. The DLC in itself should be relatively light too as always (like Son of Abraham and Way of Life) in terms of save-game breaking.

 

[chrnno]

And to use EU4 as example 1.8 was a huge patch(biggest before the upcoming one) yet it didn't break saves. Sure there was some weirdness but saves worked. Other far smaller patches that didn't change anything as widespread or fundamental broke saves.

 

[Ihavenobrain]

Give us a name! For the love of god,what will this dlc be called!?!

 

[LordDamien]

- To become a cardinal you have to be within the pope's diplomatic range

this sounds bad in my opinion So if you spread Catholics to India.. None of them can become Cardinals because they are too far from the pope ?. and if the pope loses rome and gets some random place as his new home.. Only people around him can become Cardinals ?.So if he moved to some place in say Denmark ( a example ) nobody in Spain can become a Cardinal because they are out of range. sorry but that sounds weird.. unless of course its normal for Popes to only choose people around them to become Cardinals.. And it was only recently did they choose people out of their Diplomatic range...

 

[Zarathustra_the]

Damian you got it Untill about the 14th century it was typical for Cardinal's to be the priests of Rome itself, rather than being anything else. In fact our whole college system is decidedly more akin to the 12-16th centuries. Anti-popes sure, but the whole cardinal thing were originally priests in Rome

 

[Thure]

Damian you got it Untill about the 14th century it was typical for Cardinal's to be the priests of Rome itself, rather than being anything else. In fact our whole college system is decidedly more akin to the 12-16th centuries. Anti-popes sure, but the whole cardinal thing were originally priests in Rome

Yep. The Suburbicarian bishops are still the highest ranked cardinals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburbicarian_diocese

 

[The Great Bear]

Just a day and a half till the next dev diary!

 

[Talq]

- To become a cardinal you have to be within the pope's diplomatic range

this sounds bad in my opinion So if you spread Catholics to India.. None of them can become Cardinals because they are too far from the pope ?. and if the pope loses rome and gets some random place as his new home.. Only people around him can become Cardinals ?.So if he moved to some place in say Denmark ( a example ) nobody in Spain can become a Cardinal because they are out of range. sorry but that sounds weird.. unless of course its normal for Popes to only choose people around them to become Cardinals.. And it was only recently did they choose people out of their Diplomatic range...

In the era, it doesn't make sense. How is a cardinal in India meant to *get* to Rome to fulfill any functions in a timely manner? In any event, as I explained above, it fixes a bug - before bishops in India could be nominated as cardinals but couldn't be invited due to diplomatic range, which broke the college (because no more cardinals could be made until the one out of diplo range died)

 

[LFA]

Yeah it makes sense to me too.

 

[Jorlem]

- To become a cardinal you have to be within the pope's diplomatic range

this sounds bad in my opinion So if you spread Catholics to India.. None of them can become Cardinals because they are too far from the pope ?. and if the pope loses rome and gets some random place as his new home.. Only people around him can become Cardinals ?.So if he moved to some place in say Denmark ( a example ) nobody in Spain can become a Cardinal because they are out of range. sorry but that sounds weird.. unless of course its normal for Popes to only choose people around them to become Cardinals.. And it was only recently did they choose people out of their Diplomatic range...

Maybe those outside the diplo range will be more willing to make anti-popes?