So that time of the week again and its time for me to make something up to write about. Today I decided to talk about regions and forts, two new concepts in Crusader Kings II.

First, regions isn't something that is going to affect you directly but it works somewhat like how it have done in the Europa Universalis Games. It's an area on the map that denotes a region with a name and it's mostly used to improve on our localization of things, such as hunting for tigers in India or hunting a deer in western Europe. So no longer will you find Tigers in the woods of Poland if you manage to move your capital of your Indian Empire out of the subcontinent. You can see these regions by opening up a province and click on the new region icon to get an outline of the region. It's also possible to search for regions in the old title finder.

Next is a gameplay feature you will actually interact a bit more actively in. It's called forts which is an additional type of holding you can build in provinces next to the normal ones and trade posts. Because of this we had to extend the province view with a window you can open and close which will show "extra holding slots" which will contain the trade post and fort slots. The fort can be built anywhere from your own territory even enemy provinces that you have under your control. Their biggest advantage is that they are fortifications that you can build up really fast and very cheaply. The main point of them being to let you build up a region as your march towards a big neighbor which will let you slow down their advance but at the same time let you set up forward positions in the enemy territory.

They do have some added bonuses though beyond that, for instance in Tribal land where you have the homeland attrition bonus, that bonus will be removed from the province as long as you have a fort there to supply your troops with. There is also a feature for the forts that is too related to the expansion so I can't delve into that any deeper.


And again here's some more random changelogs

Spoiler

- Fixed crash when a war is invalidated because of no defender
- Fixed the "hostile against everyone" bug
- Fixed bug where the AI would keep their units attached to characters they no longer participate in a war with.
- Added alert for having high prio minor titles available to grant.
- Fixed various provinces in India that had no rulers scripted for some start dates.
- Monks and other people living in celibacy will no longer try to arrange stealth marriages if ruled by a patrician.
- Defensive religions now properly also give defensive modifiers for Camel Cavalry and Elephants.

 

[superkamiguru]

Not sure if I'm seeing this correctly, it looks like forts have their own levy. Is the levy only defensive or could it be raised? I could see strange situations where you would be rewarded significantly for perpetual wars. I'm also wondering if rebels are able to build forts, if so this could be more annoying than fun. I liked the direction that the charlemagne DLC had with tribal holdings, getting a bonus for each empty holding space appears to be good for CPU issues and helps you focus on building the capital, this made building more meaningful and prestige being used as a resource is a great idea. This may be wishful thinking, but is including these regions a groundwork for having a more meaningful holding development DLC? If that's the case, crusader kings will be amazing. Especially if this patch works hard to fix the repetition of developing the holdings.

 

[Djaevlenselv]

I sense sibling rivalry at work. EU4 gets forts, so CK2 wants forts as well. Regions same thing.

Speaking of sibling rivalry, it would be really nice if we also got some of that up and coming 'committed movement' over here in ck-land. Few things are more annoying than trying to catch an enemy army where they're going and having them cancel movement on the last day before arriving.

 

[Will Steel]

This game seems to get better and better with every DD! Thank you Paradox and the awesome devs, I really appreciate this.

Also, the 'hostile against everyone' bug fixed? WOOT! No more save-reloading to prevent the games from breaking.

 

[sxeron10]

I wish you can play people who don't have hold or Lowborns so that you can it has more immersion.

 

[Finnway]

Between Forts, Commanders, and Regions I am getting a very strong Crusades/Holy Orders DLC vibe from these DDs. They even emphasize that Mercenaries (and presumably Holy Orders as well) come with their own elite commanders. The Region system would be useful for adding flavor events to Crusades/Jihads depending on where they take place.

 

[Djaevlenselv]

This was my thought as well when I read about forts. You need Holy Orders to depict the Crusades accurately. But PD said there will never make playable Holy Orders in CK2. I'm hoping they find a middle-ground where you don't play as Holy Orders, but there are more ways to interact with them. A Holy Order/Holy War DLC that makes Great Holy Wars actually work properly would be sweet!

From what Groogy has said so far, I don't believe at all that the fort system will replace or even affect Holy Orders asking for holding slots. Forts do not in any way seem to fill a holding role, rather they seem to merely add another garrison to a province that needs to be sieged before the actual holdings can be engaged. Building forts in foreign territory seems to only be available in occupied provinces and serve only the role of making countersieging a bit more difficult.

We already know that a fort built in an enemy province is destroyed at the war's conclusion unless you take the province in the war and that all forts are destroyed when sieged down, meaning that you can never have a fort in a province you are not currently controlling.

I don't know what the expansion-specific use of forts will be, but I strongly doubt it will go so much against the grain of what we've been told so far, which all indicates that forts serve the purpose of being temporary boosts to defence with no real permanency to them.

 

[Finnway]

@Djaevlenselv Those are all good points. But you sniped me before my edit

As I say in my edit, I'm still getting a Crusades/Holy War vibe from these DDs, though it's more from wishful thinking than anything else (and yes, I know playable Holy Orders are out of the question.)

Between Commanders and Forts they're obviously doing something war related. The reason why I think it's Crusades is because the Region system would be great for adding in region-specific flavor events during Great Holy Wars.

 

[TheDungen]

Are you talking Gavelkind title distribution in particular, or just control in general? I mean, it would be cool to be able to actually write your will in this game, for giving out titles. But more control in general I am not a fan of.

And I disagree, in reality the actions of a monarch would only be limited by the conseqences of them. He could name his horse chanselor for all he wanted. Now a game being a game needs to have some limitations beyond the players immagination, but as much as possible those should limitations should be hidden away giving the illusion of freedom.

Things like getting to decide who gets what (with any sucession, except elective) and taking the consequences thereof, and being able to switch which character we play (once per lifetime, and within the dynasty only) means we can make the harsh realities of being a ruler in these times more real (without forcing a game over). We can have higher death by childbirth, child mortality, death by disease, conspiring vassals. because the player will always feel he has some control over his situation. Forcing a player to play a character he'd rather not isn't the good king of difficulty.

 

[Steel_atlas]

Speaking of sibling rivalry, it would be really nice if we also got some of that up and coming 'committed movement' over here in ck-land. Few things are more annoying than trying to catch an enemy army where they're going and having them cancel movement on the last day before arriving.

But who doesnt love chasing 500 peasants in a circle, I personally hear the benny hill song when that happens.

 

[Djaevlenselv]

@Djaevlenselv Those are all good points. But you sniped me before my edit

As I say in my edit, I'm still getting a Crusades/Holy War vibe from these DDs, though it's more from wishful thinking than anything else (and yes, I know playable Holy Orders are out of the question.)

Between Commanders and Forts they're obviously doing something war related. The reason why I think it's Crusades is because the Region system would be great for adding in region-specific flavor events during Great Holy Wars.

You make very good points and honestly, thinking back, my post should probably have been in response to the guy you quoted, rather than you, since he was the one who made the initial point I disagreed with.
I definitely wouldn't mind seeing some more attention to Crusades, and you are probably right about the DLC being war-related.

 

[Djaevlenselv]

But who doesnt love chasing 500 peasants in a circle, I personally hear the benny hill song when that happens.

There should be a way to rate comments as funny

 

[Gwayne]

Does it say in the patch notes that Groogy is going for the USA presidency on a pro hedgehog agenda ?

 

[theKing1988]

And I disagree, in reality the actions of a monarch would only be limited by the conseqences of them. He could name his horse chanselor for all he wanted. Now a game being a game needs to have some limitations beyond the players immagination, but as much as possible those should limitations should be hidden away giving the illusion of freedom.

Things like getting to decide who gets what (with any sucession, except elective) and taking the consequences thereof, and being able to switch which character we play (once per lifetime, and within the dynasty only) means we can make the harsh realities of being a ruler in these times more real (without forcing a game over). We can have higher death by childbirth, child mortality, death by disease, conspiring vassals. because the player will always feel he has some control over his situation. Forcing a player to play a character he'd rather not isn't the good king of difficulty.

Some of what you are proposing is pretty good. The idea to be able to switch characters once per lifetime does sort of contradict everything else you are proposing though. You are not taking the consequences of anything if you just use your ability to switch characters when you get stuck with a crap ruler. It should never be implemented imo

Higher child birth mortality and infant mortality have been abstracted away by lowering fertility to not overload the engine with loads of dead children. Whether you prefer a faster game or accurate mortality for child birth and childhood is a matter of individual preferences i guess

 

[TheDungen]

Some of what you are proposing is pretty good. The idea to be able to switch characters once per lifetime does sort of contradict everything else you are proposing though. You are not taking the consequences of anything if you just use your ability to switch characters when you get stuck with a crap ruler. It should never be implemented imo

Higher child birth mortality and infant mortality have been abstracted away by lowering fertility to not overload the engine with loads of dead children. Whether you prefer a faster game or accurate mortality for child birth and childhood is a matter of individual preferences i guess

Well you're not playing a character you're playing a dynasty and it makes sense for the player to be able to chose to play the key person of that dynasty at any given time. And since a player can evaluate which one is the key person better than a computer I thing the changing mechanic is the way to go.

And no you won't be able to switch out of crap rulers because then you leave the computer to manage that character whch may hold an important title. In fact you likely will leave the AI to manage genius rulers because those have high AI rationality and do decently well without player direction.

I don't want the game to get harder, in fact I'd love to remove game overs alltogether, with the exception if your dynasty dies out. A player can judge when he's screwed enough that he can't continue why should the computer do that in a sandbox game? If there are no victory conditions then there need be no lose conditions either.

And history was rather more harsh on the dynasties than the game is. The Karlings for an example tend to survive most of the game (if only as counts and barons) while they in reality died out in less than two centuries.
I donät want lots of dead kids clogging up the engine I want the exponential dynasty growth limited.

 

[TheDungen]

Or possible other solution, the "change player character" option only becomes available when you lose your primary title (again for the lifetime of the character you are currently playing).

 

[Groogy]

Does it say in the patch notes that Groogy is going for the USA presidency on a pro hedgehog agenda ?

Yes, its the patch log entry #389

 

[branimir1999]

I'm not sure if this has been fixed yet, but in my game, a lot of vassal kings just don't give out their extra duchies, resulting in them having -70 for "having too much duchies" with their vassals.

Also, I feature I'd like to have, is when searching for a bride/groom for a courtier by clicking that marry button in their character screen, the character finder search bar should let me search traits. To clarify, here is an example: I have an unmarried son who just turned 16. I want to find him a strong,genius,lustful wife (because reasons) and this game being massive as it is, I have to manually look at every possible bride to find the certain trait. What would help me if I could just type in "strong genius lustful" into the search bar of the character finder (like in the normal one) and it would list for me the brides that have those traits.

 

[TheDungen]

The character search function could be better. For an example being able to exclude a trait from search (Ambitious).

 

[VampireBoot]

Yes, its the patch log entry #389

I don't think I can vote for you without seeing a birth certificate. What if you turn out to be Kenyan or something?!

 

[Es57]

Yes, its the patch log entry #389

Secret Hedgehogs DLC confirmed !