It's finally time to announce the next expansion for Crusader Kings II! You might already know the name: "Sons of Abraham". Some of you were very close in your guesses on what it might be. No, it's not a Zombie DLC! Sons of Abraham focuses on the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The idea was to go back to the roots after all the attention given to the heathens, and to flesh out the religious side of the game for the monotheists; Christians in particular.

First and foremost, we wanted to do more with the Pope; how he gets elected, what powers he has and how you can gain his favor. Thus, we added the Cardinal title and the College of Cardinals. For simplicity's sake, there are only nine cardinals, and the Pope is always elected from among their number. Cardinals, however, are not elected; they are picked by the Pope from among his courtiers and the bishops of Europe. The selection is based on many factors; age, piety, opinion, culture (the Pope really likes Italians!), etc.



So, how exactly do you get your man onto the chair of Saint Peter? Well, the Holy See is not a democracy, so this is not a direct process. First, you need at least one of your bishops to get appointed Cardinal by the Holy Father. Fortunately, you do not have to rely entirely on the character of the bishop himself, you can grease the machinery with a bit of lucre by putting money in the campaign fund (similar to how Doges are elected in Merchant Republics). Of course, it is also possible to carefully groom a candidate for a career in the Catholic church before you even make him a bishop.

When the Pope dies, the cardinals in turn elect his successor. This process cannot be directly influenced by the player, but the cardinals will reason much like the Pope does when he picks new cardinals, so it's better to have old, pious men made cardinals than incompetent wastrels whose election you paid for.



Ok, so let us say one of your bishops is eventually made Pope. How does that serve you? Well, Popes that come from your realm will like you - a lot. Of course, that means they will be likely to grant your requests. Want to get divorced? No problem. Want to invade someone? Ok. To make this even more useful, we've given the Pope some new powers as well: he can give you money, plain and simple. He can also approve your candidate for a bishopric under Papal Investiture, or even declare a Crusade on the infidel of your choice. However, each time he does you a favor, he will like you less, so your influence will not last forever. Incidentally, having your antipope installed in Rome will have a similar effect. Oh, and if the Pope should happen to be of your very own dynasty, that will give you a lot of monthly Piety and Prestige.



There are some direct benefits to controlling cardinals as well. You cannot ask to have someone excommunicated or invaded if they control more cardinals than you do.

That's that about the College of Cardinals. Next week I'll talk about holy orders, heresies, and other things...

ps.

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham (official product page)
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/crusader-kings-ii-sons-of-abraham

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham announced (News article at PC gamer)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/22/crusader-kings-ii-the-something-something-announced/[URL="http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/22/crusader-kings-ii-the-something-something-announced/"][/URL]

 

[CzokletMuss]

Wait a second - can't it be used by modders to model the Byzantium internal factions? With a special ByzantineOrthodox religion and emperor elected from the most powerful douxes and people with Born in Purple trait?

 

[theKing1988]

No possibility to make the system free moddable without a head of religion in future? Hm...

It should work to make this for the appointed Patriarch of Constaninople, right? With the Emperor of Byzanz as only elector.

I'd love for some similar mechanic to be added for the Ecumenical Patriarch. But is it really as simple as just having the Emperor be the only elector?

 

[Don_giorgio]

I'd love for some similar mechanic to be added for the Ecumenical Patriarch. But is it really as simple as just having the Emperor be the only elector?

Well in the case of a Patriarchal election we could have a message pop up with the following options... All options are historically valid... Well maybe option C seems a little weird but in a few cases Emperor opted to do that but in almost all cases it ended with disastrous results.

A) Appoint the Patriarch directly (if some requirements are met and the Emperor is allowed to appoint only close family members or courtiers who have at least +80 relationship with him)
B) Let the Synod elect the new Patriarch (implement a special election mechanism)
C) Let "the Holy Spirit" elect the new Patriarch (AI picks a random courtier or generates a new character)

I am just throwing an idea here dont jump on me... Feel free to elaborate...

 

[theKing1988]

Well in the case of a Patriarchal election we could have a message pop up with the following options... All options are historically valid... Well maybe option C seems a little weird but in a few cases Emperor opted to do that but in almost all cases it ended with disastrous results.

A) Appoint the Patriarch directly (if some requirements are met and the Emperor is allowed to appoint only close family members or courtiers who have at least +80 relationship with him)
B) Let the Synod elect the new Patriarch (implement a special election mechanism)
C) Let "the Holy Spirit" elect the new Patriarch (AI picks a random courtier or generates a new character)

I am just throwing an idea here dont jump on me... Feel free to elaborate...

Should any of those require that the character own a temple holding, i.e. be a Bishop?

 

[fanoI]

Well yes this would indeed be possible if you would have a separate religion for the roman state, for instance Hellenic. You could have the senate elect the Emperor by making the title similar to how Fylkir works.

So we could mod the Ancient Roman Empire... fantastic!

Also the electors don't need to be of the same religion(so a dummy religion would work I guess if you really want to exploit this for HRE, but then the emperor wouldn't be catholic himself), that a cardinal needs to be catholic is scripted in the allow trigger.

OK, so this could NOT model REALLY the Electors of HRE as they would elect an Heresiarch not an Emperor... it is a pity you were so close!
But I suspect that this not all of this DLC, maybe there's something for HRE, too ?
HRE in the middle ages was a big part of the Christian History!
In the end this is the 1st Dev. Diary...

We could have hard-coded in that they needed but I felt this would give you guys some more freedom

And we appreciate a lot this, Groogy, really! There not some much the developers that hear their costumers so much!

However could you delete the "if" that force the elected guy to be a Priest? Could you give him the title in another way? While developing the feature have you not thought of the Roman Senate? Do you know that The College of Cardinals and The Holy Synod are all imitations of the Senate?

By the way my fantasy mod in which I want to create a sort of Monarchic Theocracy could benefit for this system: any ruler of Europe of this particular religion (special type of Secular King Bishops for now I call them Deacons... I accept suggestions) would elect the Ecclesiarch of The Holy Roman Ecclesarchia[1]... it works for me, fantastic!

Another question as in EU3/EU4 I cannot have more that one, I could have the College of Cardinals, The Holy Synod, The High Council of Deacons and add strange electoral system of Religious Head of a heresy here...?

Thanks for your patience and keep the good work

[1]Divergence point from OTL: The Swabian Emperors won the Investiture Conflict and obtained to Vassalize the Pope (a lot of Anti Popes of your OTL would be REAL Popes!), Frederick conquers Jerusalem and NOT die in a f*cking river (ohh well he'll die in the same way but AFTER)... slowly the Pope become a figurehead until a new Heresy arises in which the Bishops saw the Emperor as the Head of The Catholic Religion and so the Unitarian Catholic Church was born and the Emperor become the Ecclesiarch!

 

[Groogy]

However could you delete the "if" that force the elected guy to be a Priest?

There is no such if, the only thing is that he becomes the religious head of the religion when elected and the electorate title(Cardinal) is handed out by the Religious Head(Pope). Those are the only limitations. The rest is in the scripts.

 

[Don_giorgio]

Should any of those require that the character own a temple holding, i.e. be a Bishop?

Well i dont think so... Being a Bishop should give a bust to someone candidacy though...

 

[Ols]

There have even been Monks elected as Pope, so there's nothing wrong with making it possible but unlikely for a massive outsider to become Pope.

How could Hellenism be modded to elect an Emperor though? A seperate Pontifex Maximus title that determines who holds the Empire, or by literally setting the Roman Empire itself as a the religious head title? Would that not cause difficulty when the Byzantine Empire exists and coverts to the Roman one, because the religious head would have to change?

 

[DominusNovus]

Well yes this would indeed be possible if you would have a separate religion for the roman state, for instance Hellenic. You could have the senate elect the Emperor by making the title similar to how Fylkir works. Also the electors don't need to be of the same religion(so a dummy religion would work I guess if you really want to exploit this for HRE, but then the emperor wouldn't be catholic himself), that a cardinal needs to be catholic is scripted in the allow trigger. We could have hard-coded in that they needed but I felt this would give you guys some more freedom

Now, here's the question: Could we tweak this so that elections happen more frequently than just at the death of the previous head of faith?

 

[Emren]

So can we finally send all our problems to the church?

 

[Chevaresqye]

There is no such if, the only thing is that he becomes the religious head of the religion when elected and the electorate title(Cardinal) is handed out by the Religious Head(Pope). Those are the only limitations. The rest is in the scripts.

Hey Groogy, instead of tying the electorate title with the Religion Head, can you make them associate with a specific title? I know doing such a conversion is kind of difficult, and you also have to move the Electorate Tab from Religion widow to Title window.

In other word, you make the "College of Cardinal" a new succession law, this would give the mechanic more flexibility. The electorate minor titles can be handed-out by event to different type of character without worry about their religions. A religion can have different succession law to represent the gradual change in its structure.

 

[Teutonic_Thrash]

Hey Groogy, instead of tying the electorate title with the Religion Head, can you make them associate with a specific title? I know doing such a conversion is kind of difficult, and you also have to move the Electorate Tab from Religion widow to Title window.

In other word, you make the "College of Cardinal" a new succession law, this would give the mechanic more flexibility. The electorate minor titles can be handed-out by event to different type of character without worry about their religions. A religion can have different succession law to represent the gradual change in its structure.

I would support this.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Hey Groogy, instead of tying the electorate title with the Religion Head, can you make them associate with a specific title? I know doing such a conversion is kind of difficult, and you also have to move the Electorate Tab from Religion widow to Title window.

In other word, you make the "College of Cardinal" a new succession law, this would give the mechanic more flexibility. The electorate minor titles can be handed-out by event to different type of character without worry about their religions. A religion can have different succession law to represent the gradual change in its structure.

I'm guessing it's too late in SoA's development to have that coded, but I would love to have something like that in the future nevertheless.

 

[Nelfe]

Looking for something into the defines.lua file, find this :

RETIRE_TO_MONASTERY_INTERACTION_MONEY = 0,
RETIRE_TO_MONASTERY_INTERACTION_PIETY = 0,
RETIRE_TO_MONASTERY_INTERACTION_PRESTIGE = 0,
RETIRE_TO_MONASTERY_INTERACTION_THRESHOLD_FOR_NO = 0,
RETIRE_TO_MONASTERY_INTERACTION_THRESHOLD_FOR_YES = 0,

It seems that they planned this feature since some times.

 

[classicist]

Looking for something into the defines.lua file, find this :

It seems that they planned this feature since some times.

Ha! Excellent!

 

[fanoI]

There is no such if, the only thing is that he becomes the religious head of the religion when elected and the electorate title(Cardinal) is handed out by the Religious Head(Pope). Those are the only limitations. The rest is in the scripts.

I know nothing of Gaming Engine but code is code, right?

When the "Pope" dies some function / callback / whatever should be called to select the new Pope, right? And are you that decoded that he should be the Head of the Religion, you would have had the same effect making the guy the Head of The Papal State, right?

By the way one could do this for HRE:

1. Create a fake "Religion": Imperial Catholicism for example
2. Make the Emperor the Head this religion
3. A new flavor title "Electors" that is at disposition of the Emperor himself to give to who likes, there are only 9 Electors of HRE...
4. On Emperor death the Electors choose the new Emperor
5. The Emperor takes the Crown and convert to Catholicism via event...

For a Pagan Roman Empire is more easy and not so "forced" as the HRE example as you need to create a new Religion but we want to use it!

1. The Emperor of Rome (to decide if Byzantium could take this decision) could take the decision to convert to the Old Gods, he gets the nickname "The Apostate"
2. A new Titular Title "Pontefix Maximus" is active
3. The Emperor creates the title and become the Head of the Roman Religion
4. He selects 9 Senators that follow the Roman Religion (or 8 as the Emperor was a Senator, too "The Prince of the Senate")
5. This Senators elect the successor, the Emperor could bought the Election as he could do for the Pope. But his successor should follow the Old Gods, too.
6. He Reconquers the Trajan's Empire in name of the Old Gods :laugh:
7. He dies in battle against the Turks and the guy selected by the Senators (that is the Emperor's favorite) become the next "Pontefix Maximus" and consequently he gets an Event that make him the Roman Emperor.

What do you think?

 

[Cliges]

This isn't really the DLC I would have preferred, but it's interesting looking enough. Of course, I'd probably get any expansion regardless, but I guess I'll look forward to the release.

 

[TankRush]

So... we're going to be able to play as theocracies?

already answered couple pages ago... NO

Damn... not even Holy Orders?

Cause this isn't quite on the same level as adding an Aztec invasion and making them unplayable (until ToG came along).

 

[newtlord]

There is no such if, the only thing is that he becomes the religious head of the religion when elected and the electorate title(Cardinal) is handed out by the Religious Head(Pope). Those are the only limitations. The rest is in the scripts.

Is there a requirement that the religious head actually have said religion? If not, we could handle elections and so forth by making the ruler "pope" and the electors "cardinal" of a religion that no one in game has.

 

[Jorlem]

Is there a requirement that the religious head actually have said religion? If not, we could handle elections and so forth by making the ruler "pope" and the electors "cardinal" of a religion that no one in game has.

I've seen reformations of pagan religions appoint characters of different religions as their religious heads (there are pics somewhere in the strange screenshot thread). It is a bug in that case, but the game doesn't seem to mind the oddity of having a Catholic as the head of the Slavic faith, for example.