[DD][ALPHA] Expansion - Crusader Kings II: Imperator

[Aerotinge]

With the Crusade King III succeeded the throne, the Crusade King II is dead.
But our old withered King is still good at many point, comparing to its immature, currently incompetent successor.
Thanks to CK2 plus team for their Cleanslate work, now I'm possible to continue this project. Thus I reboot it last week, welcome back to the end-game time!

Nationhood's end:

No matter how sacred it was, it ends. The Holy Roman Empire is now a de facto confederation based on feudal princes and free cities.
The emperor so-called no longer hold sovereignty of his de jure territory. Just like what you seen in the Europe Universalis.
It's unlikely for an emperor to escape from such a misery situation, but it's still worthy a try.
The actual condition for this "beginning of a new era" is yet determined. But what can be confirmed is elective succession plays a role here.

Government & Laws:

In patch 3.0, the HRE using princely election since 962, coronation year of Otto I, which is a lazycheap setup for the Holy Roman Empire.
Historically, normal feudal elective succession law suits HRE better in all start dates, while post-1356 HRE requires some special mechanism.
As many medieval kingdom, the difficulties in electing the emperor eventually led to the civil war and Interregnum.
That's why Golden Bull of 1356 is enacted in OTL. The official establishment of fixed college of prince-electors.

To achieve this, Cleanslate do helps me a lot. The messy-shitty scripts in vanilla game are hardly readable and cost me many time for debugging.

Princes:

Life in the empire is....complex. You are a prince of Holy Roman Empire while you pay no fealty to emperor in most of time. And a foreigner ruler war against you directly instead of your "official liege".
In name of emperor, the Holy Roman Empire seems to be a nice shelter for a young house as no worry of title revocation or tyranny imprisonment.
But you still take some protection from the empire, in the status of Imperial Authority.

The Kingdom of Italy and the Empire:

You might be familiar with this eventchain if you played Europa Universalis IV: Emperor. I port a few event for CK2 and this is how it looks like.

Good story flavour event is never enough, and I'm looking for good idea for more flavor.

Interface:

There's no major difference with the first post. Graphic update will be in next 2 or 3 DD, coming with Imperial authority and Imperial reformation mechanism.


That's all for now. It might be awhile before the next one since it'll be a while before some core mechanism is done.
Despite it's merely playable, it's just a epic nerf for HRE right now.

 

[Aerotinge]

While the main theme of Crusader Kings II: Imperator is focused on the Holy Roman Empire, there's also many new things for rest of the world.
In this DD, let's have a look at the East, to be exact, Anatolia.

Anatolian Beyliks:

Anatolia, or Rum have been the Turks' new homeland for decades. Many turkish emirates emerged from the decline and fall of the Rum Seljuk Sultanate in middle 1300s.
In CK2, all these turkish emirs hold a king tier title for these small petty kingdoms, which is uncouth and untimely.
I'm aware of a king title is a measure to keep their regnal name in a good order.
But many many other rulers are not having a correct regnal name. More, a regnal name is merely a flavor thing. Having a reasonable title setup is much more important for me.
Therefore these beys now using proper title tier to better represent their status in this period. And a decision is created to help them forming a real sultanate.

Government & Laws:

Like title setup, another inappropriate setup in CK2 since release date is that all Muslim use Turkish Open as their only* and default succession.
The Primogeniture or Seniority succession is much closer in practice, for Muslims, while Turkish Open should leave prominently for anatolian turkish sultans.
So I made Primogeniture as default succession for all Muslim Iqta ruler, instead of Turkish Open.
Meantime, a special government is created for the anatolian turkish sultan - Timar, which could be the ultimate government type in player's hands.

Timar:

Before talking Timar system, two government system you should know are Pronoia(Byzantium) and Iqta(Arabs). Both of them are system of granting dedicated fiscal rights to an individual or institution and differed in significant ways from medieval european feudalism of the same period.
In-depth discussion of the Iqta system, the Iqta holders generally did not technically own the lands, which is not inheritable. But actual implementation of Iqta systems varied considerably by power and centralization of a government.
So I designed two inheritance models for a dead Iqta baron, returning holdings if his liege is highly centralized(or above). Otherwise his heir could just keep all holdings.
Now what's new in Timar system? Timar system inherits all pros in the vanilla Iqta system(duchy free revoke, free retract vassal, free levies...etc) plus locks vassal barons inheritance to always return titles back.
And Timar ruler can always revoke any baron title freely if they want(as holy order did in vanilla); they use Turkish Open succession mentioned above; Vassals with normal feudal or iqta government will give max taxes and max liege levies regardless of opinion.
This government is exclusive for one and only anatolian turkish sultan, so fight hard for the opportunity.

Sword of Osman...or Karaman...maybe Turkoman:

As a flavor events, the one and only anatolian turkish sultan now access to their counterpart of catholic coronation - The girding of the Sword of Islam.
A unique ceremony sword is used during the enthronement ceremony, like Reichskrone in the Holy Roman Empire.

 

[Aerotinge]

(Diplomatic map of HRE)
In this dev diary, I'm going to demostrate the core mechanism of this expansion.
As the HRE decentralized, it's a bit hard for players to find out what's the border of the empire. Thankfully there's still a map mode to display prince states of HRE.
If you are playing as the emperor, you might often use it to check who holding de jure parts of HRE, but not a de facto prince of the empire.

HRE interface:
Time to meet the HRE interface! It is the main UI of this expansion, it helps player knowing the status of the HRE.
As the elected Emperor, King of the Romans are used as title name of uncrowned emperor. The rulers who were crowned as Roman emperors could use official title like Kaiser or Tsar.
At the right hand, a set of icons shows how many Imperial reforms enacted. Below are the Princes and Free imperial city of the HRE.
And the bar at bottom indicated the Mana Imperial Authority, from empty(0) to full(100).

Imperial Reforms:
With enough Imperial Authority, the emperor could bring up some decrees in the Imperial Diet. The more higher the Imperial Authority, the likely possible to dominate the diet agenda.
And the cost of issuing an act is progressive and could cost you thousands of golds and prestige in late game, if one of them are not affordable for the emperor, the act option will not show up.

Princely Elective:
Much similar to vanilla HRE succession. The princely elective is exclusive for the HRE emperor, but requires candidates to be landed (being a ruler) now.
To nominate a landless son as your heir of the empire, you might need to grant him a title first, or try to pass an Imperial reform decree - Proclaim Erbkaisertum, which enforced primogeniture for HRE.

Revoke The Privilegia:
The ultimate reform. It's famous and familiar to EU4 players as it is the BFG gun to players.
In this expansion, I decide not to make it so boring(and silly). Instead it works as Renovatio Imperii, which re-united all princes under one and true emperor.
But be aware, not all princes are fond of this decree, and they might be rebellious or even declaring independence while you revoking their privilegia.
It also gives the emperor some buff modifiers. After privilegia revoked, the HRE interface will be disabled and so the HRE mechanics, permanently.
(The graphic resources from EU4 will not include when releasing, you have to own a copy of EU4 and manually copy them from EU4 gfx folder to mod folder to display.)
(Or it will use placeholder graphics instead.)

I'm considering providing French/German/Spanish language support if someone would like to help me doing so. Please PM me if you're willing.
Though the beta release might not be so soon.