Hi again folks! It's a big day today with the release of the Common Sense expansion for EUIV! Naturally, we are releasing a patch for CKII in tandem, in order to keep the save game converter up-to-date.

Patch Notes here:

Spoiler

- Updated government calculation to be up to date with EU4 1.12
- Fixed the localisation issues on Mac and Linux with country names
- Ibadi is now its own main religion like it should be

NOTE: We are aware of an issue on Mac and Linux caused by EU4's recent engine upgrade, which broke EU4's ability to find the exported games from CK2. For now, you have to manually copy the exported save from eu4_export/mod to EU4's mod folder but this will be fixed ASAP by the EU4 team.

Now then, this time I thought I'd talk about the internal dynamics of the nomadic hordes. As I mentioned last time, Nomads use population and manpower rather than relying on levies and taxes from Holdings, so they tend to have a lot fewer normal vassals than other realms. To compensate for this, Nomad hordes rely on a variable number of member Clans instead. The Clans are similar to regular vassals in some respects, except that they also employ Manpower and Population (oh, and you are allowed to play as a vassal Clan too, of course), and each Clan has a special opinion called Clan Sentiment of the other Clans, separate from that of its chief. As a horde grows, it will be encouraged to increase the number of member Clans. Likewise, you can have too many Clans for the amount of available land.

Effective management of the Clans takes some effort due to their infighting and Sentiments. We have added a new screen to give you a proper overview of the situation. Red lines between the Clans indicate an ongoing "Blood Feud" and green lines a "Blood Oath". A Clan can only have one "blood brother" Clan, but many feuds. Feuds are started either by simple declaration, or by raiding one of the other Clans in the realm... Yes, even though you might all be serving same Khan, nothing stops you from raiding a fellow Clan's land! Blood Oaths are similar to marriage alliances; they last as long as both of the Clan Chiefs are alive, but they are only type of alliance that allows you to call another Clan to war in internal wars (and that includes the Khan!) Blood Feuds are much more persistent and can only be settled with a payment of blood money... or by the other Clan's extinction.

Another twist to the Oath and Feud status is that actions taken against one Clan will affect the Sentiment of its enemy or blood brother, as appropriate. For example, an oath-bound Clan will also become hostile to whomever is raiding you, and will dislike any clans you are in Feud with for as long as the Oath lasts. Feuding parties are allowed to freely declare outright wars against each other, fighting over the grazing lands in a single county.

Clans can be a bit tricky to manage, not just because of their own infighting but also because they don't follow any system of laws like the Feudal realms do; they are more about frankly expecting and demanding things from their Khan. If they view the Khan as weak and pathetic they are quite prone to attempt to have him replaced with another Clan chief (usually through membership in a special Faction.)

Apart from proposing Blood Oaths and declaring Feuds, the Khan also has access to a number of special actions against the other Clans. He can demand that they split in order to maintain balance within the tribe, or even absorb them; unless they refuse, of course! Clans are also free to adopt the religion of another Clan, should they like it better for some reason (steppe nomads are fairly open-minded about religious matters.)

I am sure there is more I should mention about Clan management, but since I really need to get back to work, I'll leave you with this. Next time; Tributaries, Nomad succession and dynamic mercenaries!

 

[Will Steel]

Looks amazing. If only rest of the world could get some similar treatment with these new mechanics. Blobs are becoming stable these days.

 

[Zohtun]

Well put, the mechanics for Manichaeans as is are very lacking compared to some of the minor faiths and it makes it rather dull to play as them when gameplay could and should be far more dynamic.

The mechanics for a lot of the heresies and pagans (Not-Germanic-or-Zunist) are quite boring to be honest. I'd love to see some love for ANY of these forgotten-about groups.

 

[victimizer]

Looks amazing. If only rest of the world could get some similar treatment with these new mechanics. Blobs are becoming stable these days.

I'm hopeful that the new steppe tribes will destabilize larger empires like they did historically.

 

[riadach]

I'm hopeful that the new steppe tribes will destabilize larger empires like they did historically.

I think dynamic mercenaries may do that. Hopefully it will create hundreds of minor mercenary groups even weaker vassals can use to upset the balance of power.

 

[Tengri]

I want to know about what happens with a landless clan.. do they set off to find empty land or do then begin raiding weak cities nearby?

 

[log1cBG]

 

[Thrake]

If you look at the screenshot you can see that if you reward one member, you get a malus with a party feuding with them. That's a challenging line to walk.

If clans are as weak as patricians (whom are very easy to milk for trade posts), it won't change much if they are unhappy. I mostly said that as a way to give feedback on what I did not like on previous products though, in hope they do better with this one; we'll have to give it a try to know how it goes and how challenging it is actually.

 

[ernst_earnest]

Has there been anything about new bookmarks maybe even for lategame for example tamerlane??

 

[Jorlem]

If clans are as weak as patricians (whom are very easy to milk for trade posts), it won't change much if they are unhappy. I mostly said that as a way to give feedback on what I did not like on previous products though, in hope they do better with this one; we'll have to give it a try to know how it goes and how challenging it is actually.

I recall some posts from the devs talking about wanting to make vassal management challenging again, so here's hoping.

Has there been anything about new bookmarks maybe even for lategame for example tamerlane??

There was an interview (or maybe a post, I can't recall) around the time of the last PdxCon, where it was mentioned that they had metrics showing that around 90-something percent of players only use the earliest bookmark in both CK2 and EU4, so they were only planning on making a grand campaign bookmark in future games, as the time spent on making those later bookmarks could instead be spent on things that most of the player base would actually use. Based on that, I rather doubt that we will see more late game bookmarks added to existing games as well. But who knows?

 

[riadach]

I wonder will the Avars and Bulgars be nomads in the 769 start?

 

[gorillacakes]

Have they said how clans will be created? Can we designate a courtier to be a new clan leader?

 

[Thure]

I recall some posts from the devs talking about wanting to make vassal management challenging again, so here's hoping.

There was an interview (or maybe a post, I can't recall) around the time of the last PdxCon, where it was mentioned that they had metrics showing that around 90-something percent of players only use the earliest bookmark in both CK2 and EU4, so they were only planning on making a grand campaign bookmark in future games, as the time spent on making those later bookmarks could instead be spent on things that most of the player base would actually use. Based on that, I rather doubt that we will see more late game bookmarks added to existing games as well. But who knows?

I think it's different with CK2 than with other paradox games were you only play states. In CK2 you player chracters and the later start dates have some very interesting chracaters. In other Paradox games you just play Prussia for exemple and the ruler is unimportant. But CK2 lives alot from different start dates with famous characters.

 

[Jorlem]

I think it's different with CK2 than with other paradox games were you only play states. In CK2 you player chracters and the later start dates have some very interesting chracaters. In other Paradox games you just play Prussia for exemple and the ruler is unimportant. But CK2 lives alot from different start dates with famous characters.

Agreed, but that also means that CK2 bookmarks take that much more time to research and code, as they need to have far more detailed histories. And if I am remembering the interview correctly, and those bookmarks are almost never used, well, that's time that could be spent on coding more mechanics and whatnot.

 

[YouMust99]

"Beware the Kara Khitai, they are without honor." One of my favorite campaigns in aoe2.

 

[Grafvitnir]

I wonder will the Avars and Bulgars be nomads in the 769 start?

They mention that nomads can control holdings (though it sounds like there are 'wrong government' penalties), meaning it should be effective to have a city (like Bolghar or Itil) in your capital province to supplement your income (and hopefully tie into trade), or vassalize feudal rulers of other cultures for reliable supplementary foot troops (like the Avars did).
This does prevent you from moving as freely, though (especially if you want to keep the capital bonus to city income), so it is the first step on the road to sedentarization.

 

[SBolshevik]

The Bulgars and Avars should be nomadic but should really have tribal vassals when it comes to other, sedentary peoples (specifically Slavs). Also, the Slavs in Serbia and Croatia should be made tribal, at least in 769.

 

[Strager]

What about the Picts? They should have similar mechanics too....

 

[Mad King James]

This looks really cool, will this nomadic system be extended to non-central Asian nomadic people? There are a lot of peoples where this system would work really well, in East Africa (Somali, Afar, Beja, Ababda) West Africa / Sahara (Toubou, Tuareg/Berbers, Fulani), Iran/India (Balochs) and Arabia (Bedouin Arabs)

 

[Tabris01]

I wonder will the Avars and Bulgars be nomads in the 769 start?

The Avars shouldn't be nomadic in CM-start, they actually had long settled down by then

 

[Bj0rn]

This reminded me a lot of scottish clans. Could it be possible to mod the clan sistem into scotland vvithout them having to be nomads? Or is there any thought on making territorialy based clan systems as vvell in another DLC?