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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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The Byzantine empire was never called as such in middle ages , especially by its citizens.
they called themselves Romans and they called their empire Roman Empire, so can that proper title be used in stead of the wrong Byzantine one that is only a later western nomenclature used by some historians to claim a difference between the Old Roman empire and the eastern part?

And for who doesn't know and disagreed...

Throughout their history, the Byzantines self-identified as Romans Ῥωμαῖοι, Rhōmaîoi.
Their empire was called Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων
Basileía Rhōmaíōna and Imperium Romanum!

Every other nation referred to them as Romans apart western latin church people who tried to steal the true Roman heritage by the eastern empire heirs. So a naming based on Byzantine is a medieval western biased naming that I think should be fixed.

Even the Arabs, continued to refer to the Byzantines as "Romans".
 
Even before that they were sort of independent. They had a pretty unique relationship. Venice was definitely closely allied and connected to Byzantium, but it wasn't a full part of the empire either. Then the amount of independence gradually increased. So even earlier, there are arguments to be made for it be some sort of client state.

They paid taxes, received titles and provide levy ships til the Norman conquest of Sicily that is the definition of a vassal merchant republic, but to compromise for gameplay balence I suggest they stay independent even in 769 but be a tributary state. Venice being practically independent is a myth byzantine control was in fact stronger in the 900s then the 800s.
 
I wonder what this means for the kingdom of thessalonica. which couldn't be formed until a later starting date. it would be kind of cool if the fourth crusade implement it in some way
 
I feared that the Children's Crusade would be annoying, but I actually like what we have here: merge both theories on what Crusade meant so that you have a child leading a bunch of peasants. I can buy that!

The Fourth Crusade though... it should not be triggered by some strange claimant, but by the "Massacre of the Latins" event chain, with possibility of it being triggered by some other major event that makes Byzantine and Catholic relationship strained.
In other words, it would go like this:
1. A Catholic Merchant Republic established a major Trade Port in Constantinople. Since it is the City of World's Desire, it is especially strong. The Republic has options to spread corruption, which increases the chance of the following even to trigger
2. During a turbulent period in Byzantine Empire (during a Civil War that the Emperor does not fight well in) or if the corruption got too high, an event chain occurs where a Byzantine mob wants to attack the rich Catholic merchants. The Emperor can either ignore them (historical choice), support them (you get a lot of money and the happy populace), or stop them. First two strain the relationship with the Merchants and Catholics (one more than the other), and the later can improve them but brings a short era of internal conflicts in Constantinople
3. If relations are strained and the Emperor ignored the massacre, zealous Catholics get Punitive CB that allows them to pillage any region in the Byzantine Empire for a while. If the Emperor supported the Massacre, Catholic rulers get Holy War CB against the Orthodox for a while
4. If the Emperor ignored the Massacre, the Fourth Crusade can occur as a punitive action by the Merchant Republic. If he supported them, it will definitely occur, maybe without need for the Merchants

Additionally, if the Emperor supported the lynching, he can support the mobs in other cities under influence of the Catholic MR's, gaining a lot of money. In the end of the chain, it could result in formation of a buffed vassal republic.
Though to make it not that blatantly beneficial, there should be a chance that this instead results in mobs getting over themselves and attacking the Emperor for "not being good enough". Maye the burghers could event entertain the idea of return to the good old days before Ceasar.

In any case, I'm very hyped about this! Crusades were all I wanted for so long!

Reread the history of the forth crusade. You're missing the part that the crusaders only attacked Constaninople because a Byzantine claimant asked them to do so.
 
What is meant by "Dynamic Crusader States" ? I mean I have seen all the dev diaries.. but I seem to not remember what this is... is it the possibility to decide whether you want the title for yourself or if you want it for your kinsman ?
 
What is meant by "Dynamic Crusader States" ? I mean I have seen all the dev diaries.. but I seem to not remember what this is... is it the possibility to decide whether you want the title for yourself or if you want it for your kinsman ?
Terriority occupied outside the dejure territory of the crusade target will be given to beneficiaries of the crusaders as independent crusader states, think like eddessa and Antioch.
 
And for who doesn't know and disagreed...

Throughout their history, the Byzantines self-identified as Romans Ῥωμαῖοι, Rhōmaîoi.
Their empire was called Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων
Basileía Rhōmaíōna and Imperium Romanum!

Every other nation referred to them as Romans apart western latin church people who tried to steal the true Roman heritage by the eastern empire heirs. So a naming based on Byzantine is a medieval western biased naming that I think should be fixed.

Even the Arabs, continued to refer to the Byzantines as "Romans".

This discussion is old. That’s it.

Of course yuy are right, but nobody cares anymore. It’s like the 50th iteration of the china thread.

Edit: typo
 
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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.
Will there be similar map-wandering mechanics for merc bands, so they don't just teleport to your capital with a ton of troops?
 
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.

Why only Christians? Shouldn't any Greek regardless of religion be able to form a new Byzantine Empire? You are giving us all these fun new reformed pagan mechanics, but excluding them from various new decision.
 
Why only Christians? Shouldn't any Greek regardless of religion be able to form a new Byzantine Empire? You are giving us all these fun new reformed pagan mechanics, but excluding them from various new decision.
Cause their is no byzantine empire without Christianity, the orthodox faith was core to the Byzantine belief system, however Serbians and Bulgarians who both tried to the restore empire and were heavily romanized should be able to reform the empire in game.
 
Why is there no option to sell the children's crusade into slavery like what historically happened?