Hello again folks!

It's a new month and high time for another development diary. This time, let's talk about barons. In the original Crusader Kings, characters could only hold titles of three ranks; count, duke and king (though these could be called different things in different cultures). Barons existed indirectly in the form of provincial nobility, which, together with the clergy, peasants and burghers, had different power, loyalty and tax values. The player could fiddle around with the power values of the four classes, which would affect the tax rate and the composition of the provincial levy. As it turned out, this was one of the least successful features in the game, because the micromanagement was tedious and did not have enough impact to make it worthwhile. Therefore, in Crusader Kings II, the whole thing has been cut. Instead, each province will have between one and eight named settlements. A settlement is either a castle, city or church, and characters can hold the title to a settlement just like they can to counties and duchies.

Castles are regular feudal holdings, whose barons are normally in fief to the provincial count. Cities are commercial hubs governed by a mayor. Finally, church settlements are run by a Bishop (or Mufti, or similiar.) Like the four classes of Crusader Kings, the three types of settlement provide different types of troop levies and have different tax rates depending on laws. Unlike the class power of Crusader Kings, the rights of churches and cities - and the investiture of their leaders - should be interesting to play around with. (More on this in a later dev diary.)

Barony tier characters are not playable, mainly for performance reasons. (We do not want barons to have courts of their own, with the explosion of characters this would require.) They have a more rudimentary form of AI than playable characters, but will respond to diplomacy and might raise their army in revolt. Another measure to keep the character count down in Crusader Kings II is that you can have your vassals double as councillors (so there is less need for minor nobles to be created by the game).

What about the level of micromanagement - won't all these baronies require more player attention? Well, the whole point of the feudal system is delegation, so the short answer is that for dukes and above; not much. Granted, the dynamic around cities and churches will require more attention, but of the right kind and infrequently. The existence of baronies will also make playing counts a lot more interesting.

I don't have any baronial graphics in particular to show you, but here's a little something that Aerie is working on...




That's all for now. Don't miss the next dev diary on December 2!


Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead

 

[Nick B II]

Sorry if this has been mentioned before (how do i search individual threads?) but I'm interested if there will be "free cities" in some provinces. Like the "reichsunmittelbare Städte" in the HRE? And if there are, will you have to manage relations with such cities as a player?

I don't believe you can search individual threads.

As for Free Cities, there almost certainly won't be any. Cities in CK are a type of Barony, so they'll always be direct vassal of the local Count. The only way to have a truly Free City, in the sense that it's a vassal of the King, is for the King to retain that Count-title.

Nick

 

[vwclaymore]

As for Free Cities, there almost certainly won't be any. Cities in CK are a type of Barony, so they'll always be direct vassal of the local Count. The only way to have a truly Free City, in the sense that it's a vassal of the King, is for the King to retain that Count-title.

Nick

I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm sure barons will be able to rebel against counts like everyone else. If a baron-level city rebels against its count and successfully gains independence it would be a free city. I get the impression this is quite possible.

 

[vadermath]

I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm sure barons will be able to rebel against counts like everyone else. If a baron-level city rebels against its count and successfully gains independence it would be a free city. I get the impression this is quite possible.

Hm, that got me thinking as to how Baronies rebelling will be represented on the map?

 

[vwclaymore]

Hm, that got me thinking as to how Baronies rebelling will be represented on the map?

My initial assumption is that it will show the color of the kingdom of whatever count controls the county and you'd have to personally open up the county screen to see if there were any holdings outside that kingdom's control within. Maybe there could be the baron's coat of arms displayed within the region (much smaller than normal) to show it is split.

 

[RedRooster81]

I don't believe you can search individual threads.

As for Free Cities, there almost certainly won't be any. Cities in CK are a type of Barony, so they'll always be direct vassal of the local Count. The only way to have a truly Free City, in the sense that it's a vassal of the King, is for the King to retain that Count-title.

Nick

That's my understanding, too. A city could be the direct vassal of the king or emperor or pope, which is as free as it gets: so Frankfort could be the HRE's vassal, just like at the end of the time period Seville became a royal city within the Crown of Castille. To become a merchant republic like Venice would require a city to have a county or ducal-level title, which might be possible I guess, just like an archbishop could hold a ducal or maybe even royal title, but on this I'm not so sure. But for the sake of game mechanics, it seems that all baronies will be the vassals of someone: but there might be a way to have a barony in rebellion (controlled by rebels), though I don't see how it would be represented on the map.

 

[Arko]

I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm sure barons will be able to rebel against counts like everyone else. If a baron-level city rebels against its count and successfully gains independence it would be a free city. I get the impression this is quite possible.

If the barons wins the rebellions he replaces the count (assuming is goal/ambition is to replace the count).
Baronnies cannot gain independancy as they are not represented on map

 

[CatalanNation]

Judging by some comments of the devs, I guess the province will depend on the capital barony; if it is a castle (the most), the "count" of the province will be a noble; a church will make the province a bishopric and a city will make a republic/free city a la italian city states. Maybe imperial cities will also work this way.

 

[RedRooster81]

Judging by some comments of the devs, I guess the province will depend on the capital barony; if it is a castle (the most), the "count" of the province will be a noble; a church will make the province a bishopric and a city will make a republic/free city a la italian city states. Maybe imperial cities will also work this way.

That pretty closely matches my understanding. I think that the problem for free cities is turning over an entire province to a city, whether this is realistic in terms of the land area controlled by many cities.

 

[3inar]

Ok so I just re read this as I am e reading all of the diaries becous I got nothing better to do

So I read about the new title "Baron" exept of the old "Count, Duke & King" now my thught is if the player only own a Barony will his game continue or will it be game over(probably shold ask, can you be a baron or is this only for AI lords?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nick B II]

Game over because Barons aren't playable.

Nick

 

[Jia Xu]

Ok so I just re read this as I am e reading all of the diaries becous I got nothing better to do

So I read about the new title "Baron" exept of the old "Count, Duke & King" now my thught is if the player only own a Barony will his game continue or will it be game over(probably shold ask, can you be a baron or is this only for AI lords?

Thanks in advance!

Like Nick said, Barons are not playable. The point of introducing Barons into the gameplay was to make the game less dull for people playing a Count. Now even if you only have a country or two, you'll still have things to keep you interested and busy, because you can interact with your Barons.

 

[3inar]

Cool guys thanks for the info, It seemes I just missed this info

 

[Dark3lf]

Anyone ever see picture how barony or settlement will be manage? If yes, any link? I see alot picture in this forum but never how barony/settlement will be manage or how someone can improve their barony or build another barony.

 

[Galleblære]

Didn't read this before, but I really like the concept of creating new settlements. I suppose it awakens the dormant Sim City player in me. Yes yes, not the same, but hear me out. Within the time-frame of the game, a lot of the land in the Scandinavian peninsula had little population and development. As a result, the provinces in Scandinavia tend to be rather poor when compared to the more heavily populated regions in central Europe (At least they are in CK1) Can say, a rich Norwegian King, that has plundered his way through a few crusades then opt to invest heavily in developing the local provinces, creating several new settlements and induce a population boom and thus create a country that has a much richer base tax/defense/levy numbers compared to before? Or are settlements mostly there to give minor boosts and most of the income and levy numbers come from province definitions?

I guess what I am trying to ask is how much of an impact new settlements can have in a sparsely populated region, like say, Northern Norway, or East Norway.

 

[tajerio]

Or are settlements mostly there to give minor boosts and most of the income and levy numbers come from province definitions?

The devs have said that provinces won't have income definitions; what will be defined is the number of settlements per province. So you can found new settlements and improve them and make your province more valuable in that manner, but a province in northern Norway will have a lower settlement limit than a province in the Po River valley.

 

[Galleblære]

The devs have said that provinces won't have income definitions; what will be defined is the number of settlements per province. So you can found new settlements and improve them and make your province more valuable in that manner, but a province in northern Norway will have a lower settlement limit than a province in the Po River valley.

Thanks for clearing that up. However, unless there are specific geographic reasons why a region can't hold 10 settlements (Ie, a large mountain occupying most of the area) I see no reason why such a limit should be implemented in say, Northern Norway. Plenty of places along the coast for towns to pop up Ice free harbors during winters, so fish, reindeer, fur trade, etc etc.

 

[Järnblomma]

Thanks for clearing that up. However, unless there are specific geographic reasons why a region can't hold 10 settlements (Ie, a large mountain occupying most of the area) I see no reason why such a limit should be implemented in say, Northern Norway. Plenty of places along the coast for towns to pop up Ice free harbors during winters, so fish, reindeer, fur trade, etc etc.

As I understood it the amount of cities that can be founded is limited in the low-population regions. This makes sense to me. I doubt that the cold, cold, cold, cold winters of the north were able to sustain a population of that size, as well as being severely crippled in the trade and population department to start with. The north simply COULD NOT be as populated as the Netherlands and northern Italy.

 

[Galleblære]

As I understood it the amount of cities that can be founded is limited in the low-population regions. This makes sense to me. I doubt that the cold, cold, cold, cold winters of the north were able to sustain a population of that size, as well as being severely crippled in the trade and population department to start with. The north simply COULD NOT be as populated as the Netherlands and northern Italy.

Again, Northern Scandinavia is not a barren wasteland, but you city folks never seem to understand this Historically Norways coasts were always the most heavily populated because of the abundance of bounty from the sea. Norway derives its very name from the trade routes that went to the north. I think you will find that very few settlements at the time (anywhere in Europe) were able to maintain a very large population without relying on trade. But a settlement is not a city. Places that were historically more populated in the time period will no doubt have a higher population when the game ends, just as is the case in EU2, where population size also had a direct impact on tax income and manpower levels.

Anyway, I think this part of the game would be a nice little sandbox aspect, where you can help develop your frontiers, even more so than what was practical historically. So much else in the game is sandbox, where you can go on crazy ahistorical conquest sprees and do whatever you want. I mean, if you have the money, and are not interested in expanding your realm, but develop it, why not? "Sorry mate, ya see, historically, inner Finland was pretty much just a bunch of trees, lakes and savages, ya wont get any more than 2 settlements here. kk thanks lol"

 

[Järnblomma]

Again, Northern Scandinavia is not a barren wasteland, but you city folks never seem to understand this Historically Norways coasts were always the most heavily populated because of the abundance of bounty from the sea. Norway derives its very name from the trade routes that went to the north. I think you will find that very few settlements at the time (anywhere in Europe) were able to maintain a very large population without relying on trade. But a settlement is not a city. Places that were historically more populated in the time period will no doubt have a higher population when the game ends, just as is the case in EU2, where population size also had a direct impact on tax income and manpower levels.

Anyway, I think this part of the game would be a nice little sandbox aspect, where you can help develop your frontiers, even more so than what was practical historically. So much else in the game is sandbox, where you can go on crazy ahistorical conquest sprees and do whatever you want. I mean, if you have the money, and are not interested in expanding your realm, but develop it, why not? "Sorry mate, ya see, historically, inner Finland was pretty much just a bunch of trees, lakes and savages, ya wont get any more than 2 settlements here. kk thanks lol"

Thing is, when we're dealing with sums of 8 for the most developed regions in Europe, like the north Italian city-states, even with a very kind way of measuring the population and development of Scandinavia/the nordic countries, those sums are rather correct. I am not arguing for a completly undevelopable north (because that would be both incorrect and boring) but the north had no way to reach the population of earlier mentioned Netherlands and Italy. There just couldn't be taht amount of babies.

 

[Nuril]

Thing is, when we're dealing with sums of 8 for the most developed regions in Europe, like the north Italian city-states, even with a very kind way of measuring the population and development of Scandinavia/the nordic countries, those sums are rather correct. I am not arguing for a completly undevelopable north (because that would be both incorrect and boring) but the north had no way to reach the population of earlier mentioned Netherlands and Italy. There just couldn't be taht amount of babies.

Sure there could be.....it's just that if they stayed at home people would start starving. Enter Lindisfarne.