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Dev Diary #93 - Venetian Guile

Dev Diary #93 - Venetian Guile


Hello there!

We’re closing in on the end of July, and we are on to the fourth of the five Dev Diaries we are doing over summer. For this week, we are going to take a look at three of the five Special Crusades we are doing for Holy Fury. First of we are going to take a look at the reworked Shepherds’ Crusade, then on to the Children’s Crusade some of you might have seen in the PDXCon stream, and then finally to the Fourth Crusade events.

As always, keep in mind that things might be changed before the release of Holy Fury. For the Shepherds’ Crusade to be enabled you will have to own Sons of Abraham, and for the two other you will need the Holy Fury DLC.

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The Shepherds’ Crusade has been broken for quite a while, so we have ripped out the old events entirely, and rewritten the whole chain. With Holy Fury, a Shepherds’ Crusade has a chance to start a couple of years after a failed normal Crusade. It will start somewhere in Catholic Europe, and will usually target either a Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, or Jerusalem.

As the Shepherds’ Crusade army moves across the map towards its location, it will start picking up soldiers along the way, potentially getting into conflict with the local lords, trying to kick out the Jews, or ask local Lords for aid in their Crusade.

Who knows, once in a blue moon they might actually manage to win!

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The Children’s Crusade is a special one-time event chain that can happen at any point after the Pope has announced the need to reclaim the Holy Land.

If Jerusalem is held by infidels, a landless child in Europe might decide to pick up arms and start his own little Crusade, gathering fellow Catholics and traveling all the way to the Holy Land.

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The Children’s Crusade will move from court to court, demanding troops and resources from local rulers, and gathering zealous commanders and disgruntled underage courtiers along the way.

As a ruler hosting the Children’s Crusade, you will be able to support or hinder their efforts, increasing the amount of troops and morale that they will receive once they reach Jerusalem, forcing their travel to a premature end, or, if you are feeling particularly virtuous, deciding to become their sponsor.

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Becoming a sponsor allows a ruler to follow this special Crusade more closely, to invest in it on multiple occasions during its travel, and actively join the Children as allies in the war against the infidels if they manage to reach the Holy Land.

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Once the Children reach their target, they will spawn an army whose strength, size and composition will change depending on how their travel went and declare war to the current holder of Jerusalem. In the unlikely chance that they succeed, the leader of the Crusade will take over, and convert and vassalize all the rulers in the area.

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As some of you saw, one of our pictures for the Steam page for Holy Fury, was the Crusade for Orthodox Thrace. In other words, a set of Fourth Crusade events. These events have a chance to happen at every Crusade, if the Byzantine Empire is alive and doing well, holding the core lands of Constantinople.

A set of narrative events will happen, where a claimant for the Byzantine Throne will leave the court of the Emperor, and find a Catholic Merchant Lord to support their claims. With enough gold and the potential for plunder ahead, the Catholics will be swayed to change the course for Constantinople.

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If the Catholics could come around, and actually win the Crusade against the Byzantines, there will not be a normal distribution of titles, but rather a special Fourth Crusade one.

First of, the Byzantine Empire will be no more. The old Emperor will relocate to any land outside of Thrace, if they had any, and get a temporary titular Empire title. The winner of the Crusade will receive the Latin Empire, taking the lands of Thrace, and a special bloodline.

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The old direct vassals of the Byzantine Empire will be freed. Any ruler of Trebizond might be given the Kingdom of Trebizond title, and there might also be another ruler taking up the King tier title, to simulate the Despotate of Epirus.

After the fall of the old Empire, a new decision will open up for Christians of the Byzantine Culture group, to restore the old Byzantine Empire. If you hold all of the core lands around Constantinople, and have a lot of prestige, you can restore the Empire and start recreating the Byzantium of old. Well… At least if you can remove those pesky Latins from the rightful Greek lands of Thrace.

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And of course, rules has been added for all the different kind of Crusades, so people are free to enable or disable them as they want.

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That was all for this week! I hope you enjoyed reading about the rise and fall of- Wait… That’s wrong. The fall and rise of Byzantium, there we go!

Next week we will be talking about the Northern Crusade, and the Reconquista of Iberia. So I hope I’ll see of you for the final rogue Dev Diary of the summer!
 
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I'm here to admire the new portrait packs.

Now I can't wait for next week's DD and the other crusades. BTW, is there going to be an Albigensian crusade?
 
This DLC is getting more interesting.
 
In CK2 Terms, wouldn't Albingensian Crusade be just some vassals of French king converting to Catharism, and then get holywar-ed to death by his other vassals?
 
Next week we will be talking about the Northern Crusade, and the Reconquista of Iberia. So I hope I’ll see of you for the final rogue Dev Diary of the summer!

This Dev Diary got me hyped, but this last part is the cherry on top of the cake. The Reconquista always felt so vanilla and bland, but I now have great hopes for this!
 
Where's the pun? Like Venal Venice or something. Looks good but sounds bad, I'm disapointed!
 
We do not have any plans for the Albigensian Crusade, sadly.
-heretics control an entire Duchy within a Kingdom, with Duke himself being a heretic
-Pope demands from the King to deal with the heretic, prompting him to revoke his title
or:
-King on his own attempts to revoke the title
-In both cases, the Duke refuses, and war breaks out
-heretic gets an event or two, plus some free troops
-King gets a boon from the Pope, and some events where he gets to asks for troops or gold from other Catholic rulers
-King wins the war, and gets an event with options how to deal with heretic populace, including: -burn them all!
or:
-heretic Duke wins, and becomes independant

It's just a few flavour events, some of which you already have (asking for support), and some province modifiers.

Would be pretty awesome.
 
I always get rid of the ahistorical 'Byzantine Empire' title anyway. This is gonna look weird:

The Emperors of the Roman empire have for a long time looked down upon the rest of us, pretending to be the descendants of the Romans.

Yet...hurry up, HF. Can't wait to see you!
 
-heretics control an entire Duchy within a Kingdom, with Duke himself being a heretic
-Pope demands from the King to deal with the heretic, prompting him to revoke his title
or:
-King on his own attempts to revoke the title
-In both cases, the Duke refuses, and war breaks out
-heretic gets an event or two, plus some free troops
-King gets a boon from the Pope, and some events where he gets to asks for troops or gold from other Catholic rulers
-King wins the war, and gets an event with options how to deal with heretic populace, including: -burn them all!
or:
-heretic Duke wins, and becomes independant

It's just a few flavour events, some of which you already have (asking for support), and some province modifiers.

Would be pretty awesome.

Feel like it's too late into the development stage for thay sadly
 
Glad to see that there are separates game rules available since the Fourth Crusade sounds far too railroady for my liking while the others sound like things I wouldn't particularly mind.
 
I would really like a Fith Crusade bookmark starting scenario.
Starting in ca. 1221. Where you could play as the crusader Count of Damietta, independent county.
Starting in a war between the County of Damietta / Crusaders vs the Ayyubid Sultanate.

A scenario war, like the 1066 war for England.
Depending on how the war turns out, it would have three possible outcomes.
- 1: (Most likely) Historical outcome:
The crusaders are defeated, the Sultan capture the county of Damietta, the Ayyubid Sultanate remains as before.
- 2: (Second most likely) Crusaders win, capturing Cairo - which they marched for; then later all of Egypt. Creating a new Crusader Kingdom of Egypt. Ally with the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Count of Damietta becomes King, player can become King if starting as the Count. Make it William I, Count of Holland?
- 3: (Very rare) Special event:
Saint Francis meets with Sultan "Meledin" Al-Kamil (as he allegedly did historically) and manages to convert him to Catholicism (which historically did not happen!). Creating the first Catholic Sultanate.

Add in the Albigensian Crusade, with both playable Cathars (New fleshed out game mechanics for Cathars) + New game mechanics for Manicheanism, and you almost got enough stuff for the beginning of small expansion.

Holy Fury seems really popular with the fans so far. Why not make a sequel? :)

Edit:

Why not make a Heresy themed expansion next.

There is so much you could do with this.
Really flesh out Heresies, with unique mechanics.

Ideas for Cathars for example:
- Feminist laws, vegetarian trait + mechanics (also for Jain), Heretic religious cults that can be founded by being too Heterodox (new stat maybe?), if Cathar ruler have aversion to executions, high piety cost for sentencing prisoners to death.
- Gnostic secret society that can make you become Paulician, Bogomilist (if Orthodox) or Cathar (if Catholic) etc.
- Perfectus society for Cathars (ranks being Bonhomme, Credentes and Parfait)
- Consolamentum event for Cathars, costs piety and removes Sins, risk of: Shunning food (-1 to health), Shunning alcohol (risk of being stressed), performing "the Endura" (exposing yourself to extreme cold).

Take inspiration from new Custom Reformed Paganisms.
Introduce "Custom Heresies".
- If being too Heterodox (a new mechanic) you can create (by new event) a new religious Sect. Sect societies (a new type) named after a Clergyman, fx "Williamites" after a William etc.
- Add new Sect mechanics. Not really a heresy yet, walking the narrow path between heterodox ideas and loyalty to the old orthodoxy. If Sect stays strong it can develop into a full Heresy over time.

Option to create a new Custom Heresy by a holding a heretic Synod, heresy named after county the Synod was held. Fx "Cordoban" heresy if held by Catholic heretics in county of Cordoba.
Ability to create the content of the new "Cordoban" Custom Heresy by a system of Doctrines.
All religions have a specific set of doctrines, creating a custom heresy allows you to change ONE doctrine (maybe even two) for the new faith.

- Military Doctrine:
"Holy War" Catholics and Sunnis start with this.
"Raiding" for Norse etc. Even give it to a new Arianist heresy (Add Chalcedonian christianity, with Catholic trait for rulers that will become Catholics in Great Schism of 1054 and Orthodox trait for the Orthodox.
"Pacifist" For Jain and Cathar, no religious warfare, but few internal revolts.

- Marriage Doctine: "Monogamy", "Polygamy" or "Concubinage"
- Hierarchy Doctrine: Papal-like? Autocephaly or Fylkir/Caliph-like
- Punishment Doctrine: "Excommunication" or "Decadence"
- Clergy Laws Doctrine: "Males only", "Males and females" or "Females only (rare)"
- Clergy Marriage Doctrine: Priests can marry, Priests can't marry
etc etc

Thus you could make Monogamous Muslims, Polygamous Catholics, Pacifist Shias, and Raiding Jains by making your own custom heresies. And of course: make Custom Heresies a Game Option for historical purists to opt-out of the feature.

Add in an awesome 1031 bookmark, and you got yourself an expansion.
Creating a great mix between the 867 bookmark and the 1066 bookmark.
(Pre-Schism of 1054, preventable schism mechanics? Game Options on/off.)
- North Sea empire of Canute (England, Denmark and Norway)
- Both new Kingdom of France + HRE
- and the Umayyad Sultanate, pre-Taifa collapse.
(Add a new realm collapse mechanic - where the highest title level is destroyed and all fx duchies become independent. Happened in Al-Andalus and later to the Golden Horde. Have it happen at succession crisis or a 10 year more long civil war.)
- Semi-Pagan realms of Scandinavia, Poland, Russia and Hungary. (Crypto-Pagans as well - or maybe a Syncretic religion mechanic).
- Semi-Pagan young turks of the Seljuks
(Add new Turkic and Turkish cultures. Turkic is what Turkish is now. Turkish is arabized Turks, after their conquest of Iraq etc. Turkish culture gets Middle Eastern feudal holding models rather than the steppe ones, Turkish king is named Sultan, Turkic king is named Khan, maybe even give Turkish the Arabic clothes set.)
- Battle of Stikklestad: St. Olaf (new saint) and Hardrade vs pagan Trønders. (1030 rather than 1031 as start?)
- Big Fatimid state with Tunisia.
- Abbasid state, sultanate of iraq? (New Abbasid and Umayyad traits giving negative relations between them) vendetta etc
- Kd. of Ireland? Brian Boru legacy
- Imperator totus hispania
- Almoravid invasion of Ghana?
- Rump state of Saffarids (probably too late)

Too conclude:
Holy Fury is awesome, more stuff for Christian, Muslims and Heretics is great.
More like this, please :)
 
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