Update log
Full Crusader Kings III update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Repeated intro
Hello everybody! I’m PDX-Trinexx, the Community Manager for Crusader Kings. This week’s dev diary will be slightly different, as we’re going to cover several topics from several different authors. Key subjects are Roman Restoration, the 4th Crusade, and the addition of dynamically spawned Historical Characters once the game has actually started.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- Maps
- Events
We’ll start off with the new Roman Restoration content coming with Roads to Power, so I’ll hand it over to our resident Byzantine scholar now.
► Discuss Dev Diary #155 on our forums!
Restoring Rome
Salvete! You might remember me from the previous dev diary about Byzantium. I’m Chad, a Game Designer (now turned Programmer) working on CKIII. Today I’ll be discussing one of the smaller updates we’re making to the classic Restore Rome decision in Roads to Power.
Even though they knew themselves as Romans, Byzantium was not the same as the Roman Empire that you can “restore” in game. And thoughts of “restoring” this idealized version of ancient Rome were not common during our period. If you’d like to play a grand strategy game as the Roman Empire, may I point you towards a great one called Imperator: Rome? I think you’d love it. It even recently received an update!
With that aside, however, I’d like to show off some of the content we’ve updated for reconquering pieces of Rome’s past.
[Event showing the reconquering of Tunis which is fired from the new “important locations” system]
In Roads to Power, you’ll get updated event content for conquering pieces of the historical Roman Empire. This is part of a great new feature from my colleague we’re calling “important locations” that modders will likely be interested in. You can now script a relationship between a landed title and another higher tier title and fire content when they enter and exit the realm. These can be scripted on the fly as well, allowing for dynamic content about titles changing hands.
[Script example of setting the county of Rome as an important location for the Byzantine Empire]
[Full documentation of the set_important_location script effect showing information about parameters and scopes]
We’ve updated how you can “restore” “Rome” as Byzantium with an eye towards how the Byzantines may have thought about such a thing, primarily through the lens of Justinian. With this comes gorgeous new art as well as a new decision to make.
[Event that occurs when you’ve taken the decision to restore the Roman Empire]
[First option when restoring Rome, which provides access to unique bonuses and converts your realm to Hellenism, but turns on hard mode]
[Second option for restoring Rome, which keeps the original functionality]
We wanted to create an interesting choice here. There were concerns that this increase in difficulty might be perceived as “too gamey” but we ultimately decided that restoring the ancient Roman Empire in the Middle Ages is already a “gamey” notion.
Managing a massive empire like the de jure territory of Rome should be hard and create a new challenge for players. Of course, if it’s too difficult to keep the whole enterprise together and functioning, you can opt for the historical decision to split it into East and West. Many historical emperors tried their best to maintain control over such a vast territory and failed–ultimately deciding on some variation of dividing power. Perhaps you will be the one to succeed in keeping the realm united–but as I said, it won’t be a walk in the park.
[Decision to “Cleave the Empire” which splits the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western parts and ends hard mode]
This also means that there is now a legitimate way to convert to Hellenism in-game. Upon reforming Hellenism, players have access to a new Faith Tenet called Household Gods.
[New art for the Household Gods tenet for Hellenism]
[Household Gods tenet for Hellenism which gives bonuses to conversion speed among other things]
That’s all from me today! I’ll leave you with a heartfelt parting quote from Catullus: Frater ave, atque vale. “Goodbye, brother, and fare well.”
The 4th (more or less) Crusade (sort of)
[CM’s Note: This section contains a lot of spoilers for the 4th Crusade mechanics. If you’re bothered by that, then please skip ahead to the next section! (ctrl+f -> "rageair")]
Who Thought Doing This Was a Good Idea?
Uh… the 4th Crusade?
Source