The arduous duty great privilege of writing this week's Dev Diary has fallen to me, and in a desperate but vain attempt to fill Doomdark's shoes, I am here to talk a bit about the various options that are open to pagans when waging war.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_Prepared_Invasion.jpg

Prepared Invasions
Norse Pagans, or Vikings as they are known to the common man, have the unique ability to launch Prepared Invasions against non-pagans. This undertaking can only be done by small to middling Viking realms, and the target of your invasion can't be too small or too big (it needs to have between 9 and 40 holdings).

The way this works is that you declare your intention to invade a particular realm. This will cost you a lot of prestige (which can be gained through looting, as explained in the previous Dev Diary), and you'll have two years to prepare before going to war. During this time warriors from across the Norse lands will flock to your banner, hungry for loot and plunder. Needless to say, if you fail to declare war before these two years are up, you will lose face.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_King_Ambition.jpg

Subjugation
Pagans won't shy away from fighting each other, and all pagan rulers may make use of the new Subjugation casus belli. This lets them attack other pagans within a specified target kingdom, but it can only be used every ten years unless your ruler has the new ”Become King” ambition. If you are the victor of a Subjugation war, you will vassalize all lords within the target kingdom.

Pagan Conquest
Pagans can always declare war for control over a single neighboring county, and in addition to this, Norse Pagans may also go to war for any coastal county.

Tribal Invasion
This casus belli can only be used by independent Altaic (Turkish and Mongol) and Magyar pagan rulers, and it targets entire kingdoms in what amounts to massive horde invasions. You may have been on the receiving end of these before, but now you'll finally get a chance to unleash them yourself as you ride in from the steppes to carve out an empire.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_Peace_Too_Long.jpg


And finally, a few more items that have a significant impact on pagans and how they wage war:
Non-pagans suffer from a significantly smaller supply limit when in pagan territory, which limits their ability to march massive armies towards the heathen homelands at the start of the game. This penalty will eventually be removed as you progress through the Military Organization technologies.

As was touched upon in the last Dev Diary, Norse and Tengri pagans lose prestige if they have been at peace for too long. The Suomenusko, Romuva and Slavic pagans are less focused on offensive warfare and do not have this penalty. In addition, their warriors enjoy several defensive bonuses, especially when fighting in provinces with their own religion.

That's all for now!

 

[tokle]

Love it!

Not sure about the penalty for remaining in peace for too long, though. Being a Viking was a profession some Norsemen took up, and only some Vikings were conquerors. While generally an excellent warrior-people, most were in fact traders. So I think that penalty should disappear after a certain point.

But you're not playing as traders here, though. You're playing as a king, and they would have been expected to be warriors.

 

[jakgeri]

I feel stupid highlighting, but Magyars did pretty much the same as Norsemen in the 10th century (in terms of looting and attacking all over Europe) pls see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_invasions_of_Europe

Why are we limiting this to neighbors and conquest only?
(I understand why we don't want coastal raids )

 

[ChildeR]

But you're not playing as traders here, though. You're playing as a king, and they would have been expected to be warriors.

Unless you are... Maybe Norse republics should avoid it?

 

[Guilu]

Or at least the preparation phase. That way after the Pope announces the Crusade rulers and knights would have time to declare their participation - this wold increase the coordination and chance of success of crusades, since most often we now see, that even if a force capable of beating the Fatimids and Mamluks gathers, they each arrive at their own leisure and are so dispersed that the stacks of the caliph have no problem with that. I know bickering among the crusaders and fighting for their own glory was "a thing" but they were more coordinated than what is observable in-game now, weren't they?

They did group up to pay the boats, yes. This being the reason for the Genoese and Venetian fleets, which go unused as landlocked Hungary prefers to walk through the Byzantine Empire. Historically, this caused some problems, in-game you can just walk on by, ignore whatever civil war is going on and head straight for Jerusalem.
In fact the whole way crusades and holy wars are handled is very odd. Landed nobles were mostly satisfied with what they had; the ones who were more motivated to go out and put on a cross (and lead the expeditions) were these cadets and minor knights who had nothing to their name and saw an opportunity to change that. I'm actually really hoping adventurers replace christian holy wars almost entirely.

The mechanics that are being presented right now seem more and more convoluted. So many religious limitations it's horrible. What if I am a civilized person (because that is what this crap is coming down to now) and want to raid my neighbour with a proper CB ? it happened, it's fun, why do I need to be a horned-helmet viking or steppe rider to do it ?

Unless you are... Maybe Norse republics should avoid it?

There was the whole problem of being a peacetime warrior.. which is what the leadership was supposed to be, for pretty much everybody. They didn't solve the problem until they implemented feudalism, ie giving the warriors land to live off of.

 

[dezuman]

They did group up to pay the boats, yes. This being the reason for the Genoese and Venetian fleets, which go unused as landlocked Hungary prefers to walk through the Byzantine Empire. Historically, this caused some problems, in-game you can just walk on by, ignore whatever civil war is going on and head straight for Jerusalem.
In fact the whole way crusades and holy wars are handled is very odd. Landed nobles were mostly satisfied with what they had; the ones who were more motivated to go out and put on a cross (and lead the expeditions) were these cadets and minor knights who had nothing to their name and saw an opportunity to change that. I'm actually really hoping adventurers replace christian holy wars almost entirely.

To be fair I've heard that the crusades being about landless nobles wanting land is mostly a leftist rewrite of history as early European imperialism. A large part of the crusading force were simple peasants and townpeople who took the individual choice to join, and many kings contributed greatly.

I do agree about the marching thing though, moving across the world is far too easy. As most armies of those days were maintained by "foraging", aka pillaging, rulers would most likely strongly object to anyone simply marching trough their territory.

 

[Gottskalk]

OH YES!

Thank you paradox for changing the starting tags of the kingdoms of francia. I was so annoyed by the first screenshots that it was getting in the way of enjoying the dev diaries for this exciting expansion. Now I think I will indeed Preorder!

 

[darthfanta]

Or at least the preparation phase. That way after the Pope announces the Crusade rulers and knights would have time to declare their participation - this wold increase the coordination and chance of success of crusades, since most often we now see, that even if a force capable of beating the Fatimids and Mamluks gathers, they each arrive at their own leisure and are so dispersed that the stacks of the caliph have no problem with that. I know bickering among the crusaders and fighting for their own glory was "a thing" but they were more coordinated than what is observable in-game now, weren't they?

THAT. Apart from that, there needs to be some sort of mechanism that ensures that the crusader states can properly defend themselves for any immediate counter-attack while the culture,religion and recently conquered penalties wear off.

 

[Rewjeo]

He's talking about the Khazar Jews. And about them, Paradox has already said no to it. For one, it's too much content to add in a new religion, for two, it's controversial.

And I was talking about the Paradox universe

 

[Ares Enyalios]

I my eyes the new facepack looks to artistic and peacefull. Specially the eyes. I don't say Vikings could be that, but when i compare it to the new History Show Vikings, than i see in the show man, which i don't want to meet at the street in the night

 

[billt568]

Events will occur continuously where you are granted troops and ships for the invasion as warriors trickle in.

Does this mean you get a growing stack in your capital province with a nice skull next to it? Are pagans immune from attrition like Mongols are?

 

[nalivayko]

Poor Rurik, what happened to his parents?

 

[Darsara]

Look closer (and at the discussion down the page). It's not attractive - its looks like a light bulb, not a diamond.

Look really close, and you can see a gap in the bottom, a groves along the edge. It's the Paradox Logo, possibly mirrored.

I.e. Rurik is a superman because he in an ancestor of someone at Paradox Interactive.

 

[WeissRaben]

Look really close, and you can see a gap in the bottom, a groves along the edge. It's the Paradox Logo, possibly mirrored.

I.e. Rurik is a superman because he in an ancestor of someone at Paradox Interactive.

As fun as that would be, that is indeed a lightbulb. You can see the screw, under the main body, and the so called "groves" simply form the filament.

 

[Darsara]

Oh probably right, given the somewhat blurred images. But we can have hope!

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

To be fair I've heard that the crusades being about landless nobles wanting land is mostly a leftist rewrite of history as early European imperialism. A large part of the crusading force were simple peasants and townpeople who took the individual choice to join, and many kings contributed greatly.

I do agree about the marching thing though, moving across the world is far too easy. As most armies of those days were maintained by "foraging", aka pillaging, rulers would most likely strongly object to anyone simply marching trough their territory.

What ??? Read about it instead of listening to some weird fellows. Leftist rewrite. OmG. What BS.
edit: Your friend was probably thinking about the first crusade, though it seems he didnt read enough about it.

 

[dmstann]

The arduous duty great privilege of writing this week's Dev Diary has fallen to me, and in a desperate but vain attempt to fill Doomdark's shoes, I am here to talk a bit about the various options that are open to pagans when waging war.

Thank you Goose! I was getting desperate for some CKII:Old Gods news!

 

[Lord Xia]

I am really hoping that the Khazars are represented, if not in the Old Gods, in a future DLC. At this start date, the rulers were very much Jewish and it was a very influential and important nation. I just think it would be a very interesting nation to play as, and I don't really understand what would be controversial about it. I understand that adding an entire new religion to the game is too much for this DLC, but I have hopes for a future one.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

+1 request for letting us know what the Take Concubine button does! Pretty please with sugar on top?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Errr..i'm kind of confused.
The "Prepared Invasion" is a regular Conquest CB right ? It's not only for plundering as there is no CB for pure plundering activities or am i wrong ?
:huh:

 

[rashtrakut]

+1 request for letting us know what the Take Concubine button does! Pretty please with sugar on top?

+2 :rofl:

Also how much will this feature be moddable to other religions