So that time of the week again and its time for me to make something up to write about. Today I decided to talk about regions and forts, two new concepts in Crusader Kings II.

First, regions isn't something that is going to affect you directly but it works somewhat like how it have done in the Europa Universalis Games. It's an area on the map that denotes a region with a name and it's mostly used to improve on our localization of things, such as hunting for tigers in India or hunting a deer in western Europe. So no longer will you find Tigers in the woods of Poland if you manage to move your capital of your Indian Empire out of the subcontinent. You can see these regions by opening up a province and click on the new region icon to get an outline of the region. It's also possible to search for regions in the old title finder.

Next is a gameplay feature you will actually interact a bit more actively in. It's called forts which is an additional type of holding you can build in provinces next to the normal ones and trade posts. Because of this we had to extend the province view with a window you can open and close which will show "extra holding slots" which will contain the trade post and fort slots. The fort can be built anywhere from your own territory even enemy provinces that you have under your control. Their biggest advantage is that they are fortifications that you can build up really fast and very cheaply. The main point of them being to let you build up a region as your march towards a big neighbor which will let you slow down their advance but at the same time let you set up forward positions in the enemy territory.

They do have some added bonuses though beyond that, for instance in Tribal land where you have the homeland attrition bonus, that bonus will be removed from the province as long as you have a fort there to supply your troops with. There is also a feature for the forts that is too related to the expansion so I can't delve into that any deeper.


And again here's some more random changelogs

Spoiler

- Fixed crash when a war is invalidated because of no defender
- Fixed the "hostile against everyone" bug
- Fixed bug where the AI would keep their units attached to characters they no longer participate in a war with.
- Added alert for having high prio minor titles available to grant.
- Fixed various provinces in India that had no rulers scripted for some start dates.
- Monks and other people living in celibacy will no longer try to arrange stealth marriages if ruled by a patrician.
- Defensive religions now properly also give defensive modifiers for Camel Cavalry and Elephants.

 

[zbyrne]

Do forts count against your demesne limit or can you just build as many as you like? Or is there some other limit similar to the trade post limit for republics? Also, how exactly does the fort slow down enemy occupation of your lands - does it act as the 'first' holding in a slot when sieging, or do you not get the full warscore for seiging a province if there is still a fort there or is it something else I've missed entirely? Also is the destruction thing a risk/reward deal where you can spend money on upgrades to get a more powerful fort in a useful border province or whatever, at the risk of losing it all, or is it simply that forts are meant to be a cheap and cheerful method of defense?

I obviously cannot answer your question regarding the limit, however you do raise a good question. Is there going to be a different between a fort thrown up in enemy territory during a campaign (so like an ancient roman fort), that will then be lost post campaign, and serves as a mobile base sort of thing for supply, vs. a permanent fortification of your border. So if I'm England, and I want to fortify my Borders with Scotland or Wales (because at least historically there were alot of raids over the Scottish borders, and the the Welsh Marches were heavily fortified, well I'm not throwing these forts up in the short term. I want them there forever, and to eventually become proper fortresses - maybe even converting into full castles one day.

So basically are forts a temp thing, or can they be used in a permanent way; is it one or the other, or can you do both?

 

[Isinfier]

One would hope they have the potential to be permanent (possibly via x number of upgrades?). It would be handy to establish a fort/series of forts in a neighboring county/duchy/kingdom/empire, with some sort of modifier decreasing the chance of them attacking you.

 

[TheDungen]

If they are completely controlled by another Kingdom.

That's not what he meant.

 

[sreckom92]

I can do that no problem. Have a sneak picture of next dev diary.

This little guy is trying to tell us something. Look at the position of his legs.
This is the map of the Tang dynasty:

Spoiler

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

 

[TheDungen]

Hedgehog Invasion DLC confirmed. Bow before your spiky overlords.

I for one welcome our new spikey overlords.

 

[Dhekelian]

Is there any sort of time scale for the DLC?

 

[DesNibelungen]

In my opinion, this is the best thing we will release

You monster.

 

[apg]

would they be able to define the ranges of various animals as wolf region, deer region, bear region and so on

can already do this using continent.txt

 

[Carmilla]

And those forts (or well the concept) evolved to the feudal castles. The word count comes from comitatenses. The soldiers stationed in the roman forts. When the roman left the new lords of those forts began to refer to their elite men as their comitatenses, and when their power grew so did the power of their comitatenses. Until they eventually became counts.

Doesn't surprise me. Always interesting to learn more about the romans. Be it their forts or more obscure things like the frumentarii.

 

[illapa]

Please fix the AI's retarded policy where they will not raise more troops until every single little soldier is dead. Make it so that if they can raise way more troops they should just lower existing troops and raise an entire new army. I'm tired of seeing Charlemagne with a theoretical 9k but instead he's fighting with 1k. then 3k. then 1k. then 4k. then he loses instead of lowering everything and raising 9k.

 

[ngppgn]

So, only the holder of a county can own the fort in that province... So if a county changes holder (say, by revocation), the fort goes with it, right?

 

[Steel_atlas]

In my opinion, this is the best thing we will release, and I loved Rajas Of India and The Old Gods a lot.

Will the new regions help with things like the Seljuks and Mongols?

 

[NapoleonI]

In space everyone can tigers

 

[TheDungen]

So, only the holder of a county can own the fort in that province... So if a county changes holder (say, by revocation), the fort goes with it, right?

From what I've seen it seems more like the person who builds the fort owns it.

 

[Voy]

I think you're missing the part where they're running out of things to tell us about the free patch. NEXT WEEK WE GET DLC NEWS!... or everyone's favorite troll Groogy will post a whole devlog with Hedgehogs

Running out of things to post in free patch? The changelog is 600+ goddamnit. They could have posted more.

 

[TheDungen]

Will the new regions help with things like the Seljuks and Mongols?

Seljuk mostly only needs help with his priorities. Either he launches his initial conquest against someone waay to powerful. Or if he manages to do that he turns around and conquers the steppes instead of going after the calpih.


Honestly the AI needs to stop trying to conquer the steppes. Everyone does it.

 

[Steel_atlas]

Seljuk mostly only needs help with his priorities. Either he launches his initial conquest against someone waay to powerful. Or if he manages to do that he turns around and conquers the steppes instead of going after the calpih.


Honestly the AI needs to stop trying to conquer the steppes. Everyone does it.

That's my point, tying the Hordes invasion tracks to regions that can never dejure drift/bordergore would make the Hordes behave more consistently even at the earlier start dates.

They attack the steppes because they are weak and don't have magic pagan attrition defenses like most pagans.

 

[DominusNovus]

Does anyone think that there could be some way that the new implementation of regions will help with optimization in any fashion? I could see it helping to manage events a bit more, perhaps, and given how many events there can be, what with the gradual increase of courtiers in the game...

Also, now that we know that Groogy thinks this will be their best DLC, does anyone remember where he stands on the matter of any potential China DLC? That'll give us a nice data point regarding whether or not its possibly this DLC (I think he's opposed to the idea overall, so its unlikely he'd consider a China DLC to be their best work yet). Of course, until announcement, every DLC is a China DLC.

I'm also glad that we have small-scale forts, as thats something I've been suggesting for awhile. Now, just small holy sites/monasteries, and every type of holding will have its own sub-scale version.
If you were in charge of designing CK3...
Monastaries, Abbeys, Monks and Nuns

 

[The Great Bear]

In my opinion, this is the best thing we will release, and I loved Rajas Of India and The Old Gods a lot.

Awesome.
I have three questions, I would be pleased if you could only answer one of them right now, but I would be oh so overjoyed if you could answer all three.

1. Can a hostile nation walk past a territory that has an enemy fort built in it.
2. How does one hold a hedgehog while not getting pricked?
3. Are there different levels of forts?

 

[Roguedemon]

can already do this using continent.txt

Is that actually usable right now though? I sort of assumed its general emptiness meant it was one of those files that was just a leftover from earlier builds/games, I wasn't aware you could actually use it for anything. If so can you have regions overlap in it?