Dev Diary #150 - New Start Date, Message Settings, and More

Good day, everyone!

I'm Cordelion: we’ve not had the pleasure of meeting before, and that’s because since I joined Paradox last year I’ve been working almost exclusively on the new start date and its two bookmarks that will be releasing as part of the free update alongside Roads to Power. I’ve been closely following what you have to say about it and I cannot overstate just how happy I am to see people excited by it, and so today it will be my pleasure and honor to give you a closer look at all it has to offer.

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The Who, What, When, Where, and Why

Let’s start with the obvious question that I know some of you have been asking: why choose 1178 specifically? That’s a great and very natural question; unlike our preexisting start dates of 1066 or 867, 1178 isn’t well known for any major, paradigm-altering historical events, but there are a few key factors that weighed the scales in its favor.

One of the first things we look at when adding something like a new start date is who would be alive and interesting and playable at the time; we want to give you as many options for worthy historical figures as possible. This part of the process involves a little bit of back-and-forth at first; every time you move the year forward or backward you gain some figures and lose others, so we have to decide whom we can’t live without and who we’re willing to consider an acceptable – though unfortunate – sacrifice.

We knew, for example, that we wanted to have the Crusader states and particularly Jerusalem under Baudouin IV – which gives you a preliminary range of 1174 to 1185 for his reign. Then we thought it could also be good to have Heinrich the Lion as Duke of Saxony and a rival and counterweight to the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, which would require a year before 1180/1181, when Heinrich was deposed. Just imagine doing this with a few more names and you should have a reasonably solid picture of the calculus involved.

However, that’s not to say that this was our sole consideration, although it certainly accounted for a healthy amount of the discussion. Another factor that heavily influenced our choice was that we wanted to make sure that any new start date would be in a good position to integrate not only the new mechanics being introduced in Roads to Power, but also a wide range of components of potential future expansions going forwards – whatever they may be.

No matter whether it’s the allied city-states of Lombard League asserting their independence from imperial suzerainty in northern Italy, or the iron men marching eastward to wage holy war at the urging of the men of the cloth, or a young man of as-yet untapped potential named Temüjin beginning to make a name for himself on the steppes, we will relentlessly and enthusiastically take advantage of everything 1178 brings to the table whenever and wherever the opportunity occurs.

And please don’t take the above as indication of any specific plans for future expansions or the order in which they may or may not appear – I’ve merely highlighted a few relevant aspects that I personally find compelling – and take it instead as a declaration of our intent to make sure that 1178 remains a vital, thriving, fully integrated, and fun part of your Crusader Kings gameplay experience from here on out.

Hopefully