Hello again folks! Stay a while, and listen. The highlights of today's third and last Sword of Islam developer diary are Muslim Casus Bellis, revised combat mechanics and cultural buildings. You know the drill by now; I'll talk about both some unique Sword of Islam features and some free stuff that comes with patch 1.06.

THE SWORD OF ISLAM

Our direction with the Sword of Islam expansion is that Muslims should have an easier time expanding, but have an additional layer of internal strife in the form of the Open Succession Law and the Decadence system.

Muslim Casus Bellis

Muslim rulers have three new options for conquest:

• They can declare Holy Wars on anyone not of their own exact brand of Islam
• They can use a form of the Invasion CB for the cost of 500 Piety
• They can conquer any province bordering one of their own for 50 Piety (vassalizing the current count if possible)

Pious Muslim rulers can thus easily expand, although they lose 2 Piety per month while attacking a brother of the faith (same exact religion.) The councillor job to fabricate a claim is thus less useful for Muslims, but can still be handy versus islands or juicy coastal counties.



Revokation of Duchies

Duchies (emirates) are not considered to be intrinsically hereditary, so Muslims are allowed to revoke duchy titles at no opinion penalty from other vassals. This is also a good way of properly landing your sons to avoid gaining Decadence. (Incidentally, the Byzantine Empire is now allowed to do the same thing, though it does not have the Decadence mechanics.)

Dynastic Imprisonment and Execution

Another Muslim exception to the normal rules is that they are allowed to freely imprison and execute men of their own dynasty, except for their own sons. Brothers and uncles are the usual targets for these Decadence reducing purges...

Temple Holdings

In the Muslim world, there is no proper equivalent to Bishoprics, so Temple Holdings are treated exactly like Castles, except for their different set of buildings. You gain Piety for having a Temple Holding in your demesne, but they are slightly poorer and provide smaller levies than their Catholic equivalents (in order to balance them against the investiture mechanics.)

Passing Laws

Muslims do not need to bother with a voting process when passing laws; they just spend an amount of Piety. However, there is still a cooldown and Crown Laws can only be changed once per ruler. The vassals will also still get upset in the same way as Christians.

Jizya Tax

To represent the Jizya tax (a special tax that should, according to Sharia law, be levied on infidels), Muslims gain a 25% tax bonus from infidel counties and a 10% tax penalty in Muslim counties. This creates an interesting dynamic where it's not always obvious that you would want to convert an infidel province to Islam. However, there is a special event where this happens anyway, even if you don't send in your Court Imam to convert the populace.



That's pretty much it for the Sword of Islam expansion, although I'm sure to have forgotten about many minor little changes and tweaks.

THE 1.06 PATCH

Alright, so here are a few more freebies coming your way soon with the 1.06 patch...

Expanded Combat Tactics

We have added a bunch of more (and more decisive) combat tactics, to make combat less predictable and to tie in with the new Commander traits...

Commander Traits

We have added a special type of trait called Commander traits. These are only available to characters with a Martial education, and give more specific bonuses to the character's ability to lead various troop types, and the choice of combat tactics. Characters gain one or two Commander traits when they finish their education. The effects of the Commander traits directly scale with the Martial skill of the character.



More Culture Specific Buildings

One thing that many people have requested is a broader range of culture specific buildings, and who are we to argue? We have added loads of these to give more variety and flavor.

Destruction of Titles

You are now allowed to destroy ducal tier titles and above, at a hefty Prestige cost. This will greatly upset (-50 opinion) all vassals who are de jure part of the destroyed title. You cannot destroy your current primary title.



AI Improvements

Apart from some minor improvements, the AI is now better at jumping on rulers who are already embroiled in dangerous wars (though it's still not excessively aggressive about this.) I've also spent a bit of time on attrition avoidance for AI armies, and the AI will now assault besieged holdings when appropriate.

That's it for dev diaries for now. Next week, we'll post a short AAR by a member of the dev team!

 

[.Hobbes]

They have fewer Holdings. Mainly the Seljuks are more powerful, though, and the Caliphs are likely to call Jihad on the ERE. However, the ERE is still too powerful and we are looking into additional ways of nerfing them.

I think, that you should try to implement dangerous coups for the ERE. It should lead to some instability...

 

[iamdanthemansta]

With revoking duchies wouldn't a realm where you had over time revoked all the duchies be really powerful and easy to manage since each count would be really weak but they would give you a higher percent of troops then if you have to go through a duke?

 

[Doomdark]

Are Muslim rulers as likely to join Jihads as Christians would be to join Crusades?

Might just be me but from my own experience only very few Muslim rulers would join in when Jihads were called whilst everyone would jump right in and join the Crusade.

You are not wrong. There are a few bugs with Jihad joining in 1.05g. This has been fixed for 1.06 though.

 

[Faeelin]

Why don't Muslim rulers convert? Anatolia became Islamic during this period, no?

 

[Gedierond]

You should hold the title to destroy it then.

I assumed it would be like this, but Doom can surely confirm it.

 

[Doomdark]

With revoking duchies wouldn't a realm where you had over time revoked all the duchies be really powerful and easy to manage since each count would be really weak but they would give you a higher percent of troops then if you have to go through a duke?

You don't have to create the duchies in the first place either. If you only have counts under you, you will get spammed with events and be forced to micromanage to an unacceptable degree (at least for me.)

 

[Doomdark]

Yes, of course you need to hold the title to destroy it.

 

[Doomdark]

Why don't Muslim rulers convert? Anatolia became Islamic during this period, no?

If you read the OP again, you will find the answer.

 

[iamdanthemansta]

Yes, of course you need to hold the title to destroy it.

Oh, sorry, I didn't understand that point. I guess you would also get 10,000 plot messages a day.

On a side note is the sultanate being named after the dynasty a new thing, or did I just not notice it in the game so far?

 

[Doomdark]

Oh, sorry, I didn't understand that point. I guess you would also get 10,000 plot messages a day.

On a side note is the sultanate being named after the dynasty a new thing, or did I just not notice it in the game so far?

It's a new thing.

 

[Rozmarzony]

Question. Can you add an option to give the vassal independence?
Now it's a little mad.

 

[DLFebin]

Will "play ###" cheat will result in Game Over, if you insert muslim id?

I will buy SoI on first day of course, I'm just wondering.

 

[Doomdark]

Will "play ###" cheat will result in Game Over, if you insert muslim id?

I will buy SoI on first day of course, I'm just wondering.

Yes it will, as will becoming a Muslim during the game.

 

[Loderingo]

Thanks Doomdark for another interesting update.

One question, do you generally find there is a lot more back and forth between Christians and Muslims now?

e.g. strong Muslim dynasty goes on the rampage and conquers lots of Christian land. Muslims then weaken due to decadence and Christians then conquer a lot of it back.

I think that could make the game quite exciting.

 

[Sian]

Commander traits sounds like a interesting thing

are there semilar things on the horizon for the other educations (most specificly the Learning path)

 

[grumphie]

Yes it will, as will becoming a Muslim during the game.

will it also if you own SoI? if yes, that would suck. i find it a great way to get my culture on a isolated island by becoming muslim for a generation

 

[Rakenshi1243]

This is s awesome. Can I have a bit more information on the battle traits?

1. Are all battle traits positive traits?
2. Are the battle traits randomly chosen? Or does being a brilliant strategist unlock a higher tier list, or increase the amount of traits received?
3. Can the traits be switched around as easily as non-battle traits are through the save game? I'm assuming they can be given to my Midas touched characters in that way.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nuril]

Yes it will, as will becoming a Muslim during the game.

That's only true if you don't have SoI, I presume? Obviously we ought to be able to switch religious groups without Game Overs?

Liking the sound of this Diary, though. Especially the whole "Not immediately converting everything everywhere" since it's already too fast. Hopefully there'll be some remedy of that in the future. I've seen Scandinavia eradicate 5+ Norse provinces in the course of a few years..

 

[Johan]

That's only true if you don't have SoI, I presume? Obviously we ought to be able to switch religious groups without Game Overs?

yeah...

 

[Fawr]

All these look wonderful, and I think all the replies in this thread are too!

I'm not as worried as some of the other posters about the ability of muslims to revoke titles more easily, as revoking titles takes piety which a Muslim seems to always need more of). Similarly there is another nice tradeoff as converting provinces would grant piety, but cost gold...

The only small niggle is that I feel that by letting people destroy titles you are really just fixing the symptom of a different problem. Most people want to destroy titles as vassals desire created duchies and kingdoms, but for some reason don't desire titles which you could create but just haven't. I though that to fix the underlying problem by making people still want uncreated titles, and/or else reduce/remove the penalty altogether.

My suggestion for nerfing the Byzantines a bit would be to set their initial crown laws to be lower on troops but higher on cash than the feudal western kingdoms. That would make them more dependant on mercenaries. Less troops weakens the central authority overall (particually v outside enemies), and more cash moves power from the vassals to the emperor, without overall strenghening the Empire. High taxes on nobles also has some stability consequences.