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]

 

[systemlvl]

Say, is Paradox into science-fiction games now? Neither historically, nor today, nor ever in the future, will the Popes *ever* grant divorce to anyone. They have no such power. All they can do is grant a marriage annulment - which is not at all the same thing.

A divorce is the termination of a recognised and existing marriage. A marriage annulment means declaring that the marriage had never in fact taken place - either because of too close a familial relationship (which required a dispensation in the first place, and this in turn made annulment an outright impossibility - see Henry VIII), because one party had misled the other, or because of non-consummation, et cetera. This is an important difference, not just in wording, but also in gameplay terms - for pagans, Muslims, Jews, or Christian heretics, divorce is an option and an easy one to obtain, while for Catholic rulers, divorce is outright impossible while annulment is almost impossible.

Historically, papal marriage annulments were very, very rare, because while occasionally a corrupt pope could indeed make such a proclamation based on false premises (and a boatload of money), common sense limited such antics. You couldn't very well claim non-consummation when you had children, marriage under false premises was usually easy to disprove, and so on. It was so difficult, in fact, that Henry VIII decided it'll be easier to divorce the Church than keep trying to "divorce" his wife. It was actually more frequent for kings to commit bigamy by shoving their lawful wife off to some secluded keep and forcing a priest to officiate a new marriage, than for kings to get a marriage annulment. This is not to say that such marriage annulments didn't take place - but come on, if you're just going to have a "get a divorce" option that works simply based on how much the pope likes you, you completely destroy what makes the Catholic Church distinct in this regard from other religious groups in the game.

I guess it's called divorce since that may be easier to understand than annulment? Don't know, but it's been like that since the game was released. Should be easy to fix yourself: Go to localization and the file text1.csv. Find the line ASK_FOR_DIVORCE_INTERACTION_TITLE and change it. Of course there are still many other references to "divorce" in the files, but they may have to be rewritten altogether.

 

[DominusNovus]

Say, is Paradox into science-fiction games now? Neither historically, nor today, nor ever in the future, will the Popes *ever* grant divorce to anyone. They have no such power. All they can do is grant a marriage annulment - which is not at all the same thing.

A divorce is the termination of a recognised and existing marriage. A marriage annulment means declaring that the marriage had never in fact taken place - either because of too close a familial relationship (which required a dispensation in the first place, and this in turn made annulment an outright impossibility - see Henry VIII), because one party had misled the other, or because of non-consummation, et cetera. This is an important difference, not just in wording, but also in gameplay terms - for pagans, Muslims, Jews, or Christian heretics, divorce is an option and an easy one to obtain, while for Catholic rulers, divorce is outright impossible while annulment is almost impossible.

Historically, papal marriage annulments were very, very rare, because while occasionally a corrupt pope could indeed make such a proclamation based on false premises (and a boatload of money), common sense limited such antics. You couldn't very well claim non-consummation when you had children, marriage under false premises was usually easy to disprove, and so on. It was so difficult, in fact, that Henry VIII decided it'll be easier to divorce the Church than keep trying to "divorce" his wife. It was actually more frequent for kings to commit bigamy by shoving their lawful wife off to some secluded keep and forcing a priest to officiate a new marriage, than for kings to get a marriage annulment. This is not to say that such marriage annulments didn't take place - but come on, if you're just going to have a "get a divorce" option that works simply based on how much the pope likes you, you completely destroy what makes the Catholic Church distinct in this regard from other religious groups in the game.

None of this is new to this DLC.

 

[bilbo2810]

Yet, it is still something which could very well be fixed in a religion-centered DLC (assuming it is broken - which I, being catholic myself and all, tend to agree with - in the first place)

 

[theKing1988]

Yet, it is still something which could very well be fixed in a religion-centered DLC (assuming it is broken - which I, being catholic myself and all, tend to agree with - in the first place)

Even though it might be ahistorical, i seriously doubt that you could find support amongst your fellow gamers to make divorce border-line impossible for Catholics

 

[DerOstkonig]

will there be seasons and graphical winters added? after playing EUIV its just immersion breaking not to have these things.

 

[Cliges]

Then please, do tell of how to make a dynastic Theocracy system which actually makes sense.

Perhaps it would simply not be dynastic in the usual sense.

While it would be dissimilar to other holdings, it would be interesting to more or less play the "country" rather than the dynasty. I could deal with it.

 

[outlawing2]

Finally ! Borgia Story incoming ! Looking forward to play it !

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Then please, do tell of how to make a dynastic Theocracy system which actually makes sense.

You play as a member of a religious order or school of thought, and you adopt (by decision) religiously trained characters, thus changing their dynasty to (for example) Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican, or whatever. It's not perfect, but it's a way to enable dynastic politics for theocracies.

It'd also give us an adoption mechanic for elsewhere in the game.

 

[nota999]

You play as a member of a religious order or school of thought, and you adopt (by decision) religiously trained characters, thus changing their dynasty to (for example) Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican, or whatever. It's not perfect, but it's a way to enable dynastic politics for theocracies.

It'd also give us an adoption mechanic for elsewhere in the game.

This is similar to my thoughts about this. You would play as the head of a religious order, like the Abbot Primate of the Order of St. Benedict (the head of the Benedictines), and you'd work to both build your order and get it on the seats of bishoprics and possibly even the papacy. You'd pick your successor (or have the title be elective).

 

[Chevaresqye]

You play as a member of a religious order or school of thought, and you adopt (by decision) religiously trained characters, thus changing their dynasty to (for example) Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican, or whatever. It's not perfect, but it's a way to enable dynastic politics for theocracies.

It'd also give us an adoption mechanic for elsewhere in the game.

I agree with this approach. There are many interesting can happen inside a non-blood-related family. The members of the order will struggle for power, fortune and leadership just like it happen to dynasty. Most interesting features of a dynasty still retain in a faction system.

 

[Zimbureta]

I agree with this approach. There are many interesting can happen inside a non-blood-related family. The members of the order will struggle for power, fortune and leadership just like it happen to dynasty. Most interesting features of a dynasty still retain in a faction system.

I am sure that paradox will hear us!

 

[Faarenough]

You play as a member of a religious order or school of thought, and you adopt (by decision) religiously trained characters, thus changing their dynasty to (for example) Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican, or whatever. It's not perfect, but it's a way to enable dynastic politics for theocracies.

Agreed you could even have the laity as one of the orders to represent the struggle that went on (Aristocrates vs the Church). You could have a bunch of reforms for the Papacy that relied on certain orders having a majority of the cardinals. The laity would obviously want marraige for priests, nepotism and even the porncracy! Overly simplified yes but it could be fun.

 

[Cliges]

You play as a member of a religious order or school of thought, and you adopt (by decision) religiously trained characters, thus changing their dynasty to (for example) Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican, or whatever. It's not perfect, but it's a way to enable dynastic politics for theocracies.

It'd also give us an adoption mechanic for elsewhere in the game.

That's more or less what I thought would be the case if it were to happen. One would have to choose a successor, but within certain parameters.

 

[Emre Yigit]

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

Indeed. If only all game developers were so attentive to their tailors...

 

[Me_]

Perhaps it would simply not be dynastic in the usual sense.

While it would be dissimilar to other holdings, it would be interesting to more or less play the "country" rather than the dynasty. I could deal with it.

I believe that Paradox has a game just for you - it's called Europa Universalis 4 and it's all about playing nation-states. I heard it's pretty good, although of course the forums are full of people complaining about this or that as is the case with any Paradox game.

I am sure that paradox will hear us!

Thankfully, the current stance is no theocracies. And for good reasons. Pseudo-dynasty will never be able to offer a better gameplay than what we already have with real ones. There would be no point in playing them over proper dynasties.

 

[Chevaresqye]

Pseudo-dynasty will never be able to offer a better gameplay than what we already have with real ones. There would be no point in playing them over proper dynasties.

Without any good example, such statements pollute the forum with misleading myths. Those kinds of comment should be added to the knowledge deficit topic.

As, you see the endless topic request a DLC to improve Dynasty, you should realize how boring is the current dynastic system.

Let me give you a comparison between true dynastic and pseudo-dynastic:

Breeding vs Recruiting: In dynasty breeding you just need to look for a wife with best stat and genetic trait. In a faction recruiting, there can be more active factors that would decide the quality of the new recruit such as the leader's traits, remunerations, faction's philosophy, recent actions, etc...

Marriage alliance vs Diplomatic alliance: They are pretty much similar. Diplomatic alliance may bear little more uncertainties, which actually can benefit gameplay in certain ways, although gamey player may miss their exploit with assassinate button to push their dynasty member to the throne.

Member organization: The vanilla dynasty system seriously need improvement on this aspect. There are not enough dynastic interactions.

Succession, inheritance: There never lack of drama whenever there is a transition of power, no matter dynastic or non-dynastic. You can look at the succession of Holy See or religious order for example. You will have more kind of succession law to experience and more internal struggle between non-blood related comrades.

So far, I see no aspect of a pseudo-dynastic system would be less fun than the vanilla one. Can you name any really irreplaceable feature of the tradition dynastic system that would totally overshadow a pseudo-dynastic system?

 

[takedown47]

will there be seasons and graphical winters added? after playing EUIV its just immersion breaking not to have these things.

you mean like in EU4?

 

[Quarto]

None of this is new to this DLC.

Hehe, wow. Shows how much I've been playing this game .

(in all honesty - I'm a big fan of the series, and I've been following CK2 very closely, but I keep putting off actually buying it, because I know I'd wind up playing it way too much, and I just can't afford the time expenditure at this point. I did manage to squeeze some twenty hours out of the demo, though...)

I guess it's called divorce since that may be easier to understand than annulment? Don't know, but it's been like that since the game was released. Should be easy to fix yourself: Go to localization and the file text1.csv. Find the line ASK_FOR_DIVORCE_INTERACTION_TITLE and change it. Of course there are still many other references to "divorce" in the files, but they may have to be rewritten altogether.

Yes, well, certainly the fans can fix the wording - but not the mechanics. As I said, annulment is something completely different to divorce, not because it's called something different, but because it is different in its nature. The Catholic Church sets out specific conditions for the validity of marriage, and marriage annulment simply means that an inquiry has found that one or more of these conditions were not fulfilled. If the marriage was valid, then there's no way it can be annuled (though, needless to say, it did happen - sometimes a corrupt Church official would accept spurious arguments to declare a marriage invalid)

Is divorce easier to understand than annulment? Hey, definitely - look at how much I had to write just to be sure people would understand what I'm talking about. But... is Crusader Kings a historical game? Yeah, it is. In terms of difficult to understand concepts, Crusader Kings has plenty - and this one is well worth implementing properly, because it *adds* a lot to the gameplay. Which leads to the third point...

Even though it might be ahistorical, i seriously doubt that you could find support amongst your fellow gamers to make divorce border-line impossible for Catholics

Why not? CK1 never had this option at all, and it bothered no one. But still, even if this were the case - I'm sure a lot of gamers don't like a lot of inconvenient game features, but it's precisely when a game gets inconvenient that it gets interesting.

Good gameplay comes from limitations and well-differentiated options. Consider, for example, that this exact thing was one of the reasons some pagan princes, having converted to the Church, ended up reverting to paganism - not being able to marry multiple wives, or to reject your current wife was, politically speaking, a great inconvenience. And amongst Catholic rulers - well, it's no coincidence that virtually every heresy included some "improvement" for marriage - usually not outright divorce, but even the simple usurpation of prerogatives was enough. When marriage could be annuled by a separate hierarchy that depends on the ruler for support, things suddenly became much easier. Plus, this was also one of the reasons why spousal assassination was not unheard of in this period (and, ironically, is also grounds for marriage annulment - if a woman would discover that her husband killed his previous wife in order to marry her, that invalidated the marriage...).

 

[Quarto]

I only awoke from my lurker-sleep to comment about divorce, but while I'm awake, let me throw in a word about the theocracy thing as well...

As, you see the endless topic request a DLC to improve Dynasty, you should realize how boring is the current dynastic system.

I understand correctly that, apart from discussions about improvements to actual dynastic mechanics, we're mainly talking about the addition of theocracies, right? After all, republics are taken care of already.

Well, consider this - even republics are family-oriented in CK2. Like it or not, it is ultimatelyl a people-centric game. Faction-centric mechanics would undoubtedly be interesting to many players, but they are simply beyond the scope of the game. I mean, CK2 could easily be extended backwards in time to the fall of the Roman Empire - how great would that be? How many people would love it? Yes, but that's not within the scope of the game. You have to have limits, if only because a developer cannot spend infinite time on one game.

The question then is, could theocracies be made to work in a similar way to republics? Where you seek to strengthen your family within the context of the republic/theocracy? Yes, they could. *But* - there's a core difference. A family struggling for power within a republic is struggling for power within the republican system - they do not need to destroy the system to gain power, and indeed they can have high-minded ambitions to serve their republic. In a theocracy, this is different. The aims of a monastic order or a bishopric are utterly different, concentrated on spirituality. Yes, time and time again, corruption sets in and bishops became obsessed with worldly power, including nepotistic practices even to the point of elevating their own bastard children to high ranks or making them succcessors. In some periods, this was indeed rampant.

*But* - this was always seen as corruption. Even the popes who had mistresses and made their bastard sons cardinals did not ever try to *legalise* their standing, they never tried to change the rules to allow for married clergy, because this was in opposition to the goals of the institution. It's like the boss of a corporation who steals corporate funds for himself - he'll do it, if he's corrupt, but he won't ever have corporate support to change the actual rules and objectives of the corporation to justify his actions.

What this means is that running a theocracy would involve a fundamental opposition between the standard CK2 goals of the individual (power for my family) and the goals of the institution. Unlike in the monarchy, where the ruler's and the state's interests are one and the same, and unlike in the republic, where the ruler's and the state's interests can go in the same direction even though they're not identical, in a theocracy (at least of the Christian kind), the goals of the ruler would be in fundamental opposition to the goals of the state.

This could be bypassed by simply cutting out all the family-oriented stuff for theocracies, forcing the players to perceive the spiritual goals as top priority instead of looking for ways to strengthen their dynasty. But this is a bad solution as well - it results in an artificially clean picture of theocracies where, even if (through scripted events) a bishop might have a mistress and even a bastard son, this is the inconvenient exception, a situation that the player is motivated to avoid. It would be an unnaturally schizophrenic situation, where the bishop's goal is power for his son, while the player (who is supposed to be role-playing said bishop) wants to prevent such nepotistic practices. The bishop would be making decisions to prevent himself from doing what he wants to do?

 

[Carbon]

This is similar to my thoughts about this. You would play as the head of a religious order, like the Abbot Primate of the Order of St. Benedict (the head of the Benedictines), and you'd work to both build your order and get it on the seats of bishoprics and possibly even the papacy. You'd pick your successor (or have the title be elective).

That's a terrible idea.

Nah, I'm joking. It's brilliant. However I wouldn't like if the religious orders were to be exclusive to a determined set like the Benedictines, Dominicans, etc. only. It should be somewhat dynamic.

Piety would play a larger role than prestige for these theocratic dynasty/orders the same way prestige plays a larger role than piety for noble dynasties.

It'd be cool to see how blood relatives of a bishop would strive for dominance within the order and the ensuing corruption that would take place (oops, my bastard son is now the leader )

Thankfully, the current stance is no theocracies. And for good reasons. Pseudo-dynasty will never be able to offer a better gameplay than what we already have with real ones. There would be no point in playing them over proper dynasties.

That's a juvenile statement because it's just your opinion that there's no point in playing theocracies; same logic could be said for republics. I'd love to play theocracies and so do many, many other CKII players and there are many suggestions for how it could be implemented. If you don't want to play as 'em, then don't. Why marginalize what other players would like?