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Dev Diary #91 - Altering the Alps and Idealizing Italy

Hello there! I hope everyone’s summer is going well, and that you are as excited for this week’s Dev Diary as I am to write it!


As I mentioned last time, this week we are going to take a look at the area around the Alps, as well as take a look at Italy. For our first preview, we will take a look at the western Alps, around the Kingdom of Burgundy, southern Germany and northern Italy.


Keep in mind that not all the changes are finalized, so there might be more updates before everything goes live. All the pictures will be taken from 1066 and with De Jure map modes, so things might look somewhat different in other bookmarks.

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So the first change we will be talking about is the changes to the County of Burgundy. We have cut it up, and made it into its own Duchy (of Franche Comté). The old Duchy of Upper Burgundy has lost its headway into the Swiss heartlands as well, moving the county of Schwyz (old Grisons), Zurichgau (old Schwyz) and Thurgau (old St. Gallen) into the new Duchy of Upper Swabia. In the later starting date, they will be part of the Duchy of Switzerland instead of Upper Swabia, a change that can happen throughout a game as well.

The county of Vaud has been added to the game, to the old Duchy of Upper Burgundy, cut out of certain parts of Geneva and Neuchatel. The final noticeable change on this side of the Alps, is that we have added Aosta to the mountains between Savoy and Italy.

For that part of the Alps, we wanted to make smaller changes, cut up some of the larger provinces and fix a lot of the barony errors and some of the county errors (see Schwyz further up the text). It was important for us to try and fix a lot of these minor issues, as it felt weird seeing some areas so misplaced on the map.

On the other side of the Alps, we have cut up some of the larger provinces. Monferrato has been cut up to make room for Ivrea, Lombardy has been cut up to make room for Milano, Como and Leventina, and Genoa has been cut up to make room for Noli.

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We can start out in Italy, where we left off from the previous picture. Trent has been turned into its own minor Duchy, opening up Brenner Pass between Bozen and Innsbruck. Innsbruck and Tirol has moved a bit westwards, to make room for Pongau as part of the new Duchy of Salzburg. In Bavaria, we have added the county of Regensburg, as it was the capital of the Duchy for quite a while, and we wanted to see that reflected in the game. Passau has also been moved into the Duchy.

To the east, Austria has gotten quite the rework. We have added Traungau, Steyr Freistadt, Krems and Melk as Counties, moved Znojmo into Bohemia and Passau, as previously mentioned, into Bavaria, and Styria has been moved south into its own Duchy. The Duchy of Carinthia has been cut up into Carinthia and Carniola, and the Duchy of Friuli has been added around Aquileia.

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So for our last location, we have central Italy. I figure I will talk about the mountains first, as we have added parts of the Apennines throughout Italy. We’ve felt this has increased the tactical value of Italy somewhat, as the choices you make for movement and county conquering feels a bit more valuable, and we also felt it cut up the county more nicely, particularly considering the new Kingdom we added in central Italy (this will be discussed further down).

We have added Perugia into the Duchy of Spoleto, moving the whole Duchy a bit further north. Rimini has been added to the Duchy of Ancona, turned the two county Duchy into a three county one, to lessen the amount of chokepoints post-mountainfication.For the old county of Aprutium, we have turned it into the Duchy of Abruzzo and moved it into the Kingdom of Sicily. And we have taken parts of the old County of Firenze, and added the county of Arezzo, to make sure Firenze doesn’t stick its fingers into everyone else, as it has had a tendency to do.

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So for what I assume will be the most controversial change to the region, the two new Kingdoms added.

For Carinthia, it felt weird giving even more land to a Kingdom that is meant to reflect the historical Stem-Duchy of Bavaria, when we have the Principality of Carantania, the March of Carinthia and later on the Duchy of Carinthia as inspiration that could take the same role. We have made sure, as this is quite the small Kingdom with a lot of land held by the same person in some bookmarked starts, that the AI won’t create the Kingdom right away, so it should be more of a player goal than an AI goal.

And… For Romagna, we wanted to cut Italy into its more historical pieces, without adding a Kingdom called “the Papal States” that was only for an unplayable Theocracy. This was done for several reason: having the Pope try to seek out central Italy as he did throughout history, having the old East Roman areas be more difficult to hold onto for the Kingdom of Italy in the first bookmarks, and to lessen the massive size of the Kingdom of Italy.

So I hope the Dev Diary didn’t get too wordy this time around, and that people can learn to love the changes made to the region! Next time around, we will have a (probably smaller) Dev Diary about the changes made to Holy Orders in Holy Fury!

PS. For those of you with an interest in the Habsburg jaw and the Archduchy of Austria, we have something special for you as well! (A special decision to create the Archduchy.)

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It is very nice and I know the map is super huge but I wonder if you get Bohemian lands right this time. For example the Vltava/Moldau river (the one going through D. of Bohemia from south to north) originates in the mountains north of Danube on the Czech side (not on the German/Austrian one) and there are many other inconsistencies in the Czech lands in the game right now.

Edit: the borders of the Czech Republic are more or less the same as they were in the middle ages.
 
Single large kingdoms are a lot more stable then some small ones - vassals in the de-jure kingdom which isn't your primary title have -20 opinion by "Desire title".
Stable big realms are bad.

I don't see big kingdoms as inherently stable. And you are a correct in that vassals in other de-jure kingdoms suffere opinion hits. That doesn't make big kingdoms more stable that situational at best.
 
With the changes to the Kingdoms that make up the dejue Empire of Italia, will Venice be affected at all?

I have been playing a lot of Venice in 769 starts lately, and I much prefer being part of the Byzantine Empire than Italia. I believe that Venice used to be de jure part of the Byzantine a while back. Are the Venetians moving empires?

I think that there are a lot of considerations to be had with Venice.

Before it was correct that it was de-jure the Byzantine empire because it was as in history.

But I also feel like they were correct to move it out of the Byzantine's de-jure territory because it did eat up Venice more often than not, often turning it feudal.

Technically I really think the argument could be made that Venice was a direct vassal of the Byzantine Empire. But if they were to make it a vassal you would then also have no independant republics in 769.
 
Gotland has indeed been turned into a DeJure Duchy

I'll just quote myself from Reddit, in case other people on the forums wonder as well:

It's a Switzerland related decision. We usually avoid drifting things in and out of duchies, as it can cause some issues with geographical regions etc, so it isn't a new mechanic, but rather an exception to the normal rule.

Will you make similar exceptions to Amalfi and Powys and any other titular duchies that are simply "in the way" at the moment?
 
That doesn't make big kingdoms more stable that situational at best.
-20 opinion is nearly equal with having Ambitious vassal (-25), and stacks with it. Within title transgression it really means something, until you have a big stable united realm. Also there is an issue with inheritance. And pagans would have a problem with elective gavelkind splitting realms. Don't also forget that taxes and levies are scaled by vassal opinion, and if you have one big kingdom, you'll have more levies - used to count for factions forces equilibrium. Not to mention that -20 quite often is the threshold for decision to join faction.
So, in my experience big united kingdoms ARE more stable. And having big kingdoms means you can easily expand through de-jure wars (without money cost or prestige hit), so big kingdoms tends to be united.
 
Is this really a good reason? Because it felt weird?

So this text was actually longer when I originally wrote it, but I cut out parts and pieces to not make it too wordy, with among other things a small snippet of text on this change. But I guess I could expand a little bit on why I did what I did, at least for the sake of clarity, if not agreement.

The Carinthia/Bavaria issue really is an issue on the tier system in the game in general. There are certainly places where there are no "logical Kingdoms" to take its place. There are times when it makes sense to have a County the size of a Duchy, or a Duchy the size of a County, and it just goes to show how much more random things happened in real life, than what we can make happen in a game that needs structured rules.

Bavaria wasn't a Kingdom (though you could make an exception for its time under Louis the German), but a Stem-Duchy. It never expanded down to the Adriatic Sea and there were more logical historical fits as the Duchy of Carinthia, the Principality of Carantania and the March of Carinthia. To have the Kingdom of Bavaria stretch across the whole area doesn't fit historically as far as I can see, and was most likely an early adjustment because they felt any other Kingdom in the area would have had too few provinces to make fit.

With the addition of more provinces around the Gulf of Venice, I think it makes more sense to move the region out of the Stem-Duchy of Bavaria, and into its own Kingdom, for the sake of balance, keeping to history as well as we can with our structural limitations and for the sake of gameplay.
 
...and, truth to be said, "it felt weird" is a good reason until you're writing scientific paper.
 
Three two province duchies right next to three six province duchies, my eyes, my poor eyes. I have to go and instill some acid drops. Sorry but these changes are as bad for balance as good were the one for Scandinavia.

Except for Central Italy, this looks fine.
 
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+ yep. Croats in Ljubljana and the Germans in Celovec (Klagenfurt) make me cry.
It would be interesting, I think anyway, for there to be a proto-language there like Norse in Scandinavia, and have it gradually split over the course of the game. But the way cultures spread in CKII has always been a little... lacking, so not sure what can be done about it.
 
Will you finally split up the Italian culture? At this point it makes as much sense as a unified German or Spanish culture.
 
I actually hope you can rework the merchant republic system , so far its not representing well their power and wealth of the time, other trade routes are missing, and the embargo wars clean all time all possessions in the levant , which wasn't the case for the merchant republic, the defencesand garrisosns are mostly worthless and there is not a good reflection of wealth and power from theose houses in the rest of europe as nobody wants to marry or get the patricans families .
Also important I think is to bea ble to convert the churches castles and towns into the other and viceversa, as when you conquer an all church territory like Rome it makes no sense ... even couse there were lots of castles and not lots of churches.
It woul dalso be nice to have new trade routes and trade embassies like Historically happened with Merchant republics over China or more distant land and not beeing limited on the neightbouring trade zones. This too should be changed.
There are some changes that would need Italy as well geographically but I will overfly those.

And thanks for finally fixing Roma name.
 
All these great additions almost feel like CK3. I wasn’t really interested in the DLCs in the East but now I’m very happy to see PDX revisiting lacking mechanics and renewing the western map.