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Rulers!
Great tidings to all from PDX ModCon!
We are a fan-organised three-day showcase and celebration event for Paradox mods; specifically those of Crusader Kings III, Victoria 3, and this year, Europa Universalis V. We will be presenting no less than 60 mods over the coming weekend. Besides trailers and presentations, we will have the developers of some of the biggest mods - including After the End and MEIOU and Taxes - answering your questions! But not Morgenröte, they will be asking the questions instead as all viewers compete in a live quiz.
Throughout the event we will be raising money for the Video Game History Foundation, a group that preserves our digital heritage by collecting and archiving video game materials, everything from source code to magazines, open to access for all.
Join us, starting this Friday the 24th and running until Sunday! For more information, visit the official ModCon website; and join the Discord server.
Please note: ModCon is a player-run event and is not organized or overseen by Paradox Interactive.
In the latest episode of our ongoing documentary series, medieval historian Eleanor Janega explores the real history at the heart of our upcoming Core Expansion for Crusader Kings III: By God Alone.
Filmed inside one of London’s oldest medieval churches, this video enters a world where the Church did more than shape belief: it helped decide who held power, who could be challenged, and what counted as a rightful claim. For medieval rulers in Christendom, faith and politics were two sides of the same coin.
Rule kingdoms. Wear the trauma.
The medieval era wasn't pretty, and neither are you. Crusader Kings III has teamed up with Dogecore to bring you a collection that captures every glorious, cursed corner of the game you know and love.
From hoodies and tees to tote bags and posters, this drop is for the player who's lost an heir to smallpox, tortured a vassal into submission, and somehow still calls it a good Tuesday.
The collection features four original apparel designs:
Sorry, Princess — I Only Date War Machines. Because love is a siege engine.
Maslow's Hierarchy (CK3 Edition). Self-actualization is the Pope liking you. Physiological needs? Gold surplus. We don't make the rules.
I Did Not Ask To Be Born. Blind. Bastard. Imbecile. Hideous. At least you have the genes for it.
I Love Medieval Torture. The UI pop-up said it loses stress. You clicked the button. No further questions.
And for those who want to truly commit, the CK3 Woven Map Blanket brings the central europe part of the map to life in woven form, from France to the Holy Roman Empire to the edges of Poland. Wrap yourself in your empire. You've earned it. Probably through medieval shenanigans, but still.
Shop the collection at
(By clicking this link you will be redirected to Dogecore's website. Dogecore is an independent retailer selling officially licensed Crusader Kings merchandise. Paradox Interactive is not responsible for Dogecore's website, its content, or its data practices.)
All negative traits. Zero regrets.
Greetings! You may remember me from the days of Khans of the Steppe, but today I am here to welcome you to another By God Alone dev diary.
When we set out to rework how Christianity feels in Crusader Kings III, we kept returning to the same question: how do you make a thousand years of Church history feel alive in a sandbox, without turning every playthrough into the same timeline? Our answer is The Christian Church; a new Situation that tracks the spiritual health of Christendom across seven different Chapters.
Today we will walk you through how the Situation works: who participates, how Chapters change, what Catalysts push the Church forward, and what each era means for your ruler, both as a ecclesiastical government or not.
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The Situation's sub-region is Christendom: the sum of every independent Christian realm whose lands fall within an archdiocese. The Church may become bigger or smaller as archdioceses are created, expanded, or split.
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Not every Christian ruler experiences a Chapter (Situation Phase) the same way. Six participant groups split Christendom along three axes:
Clerical vs. Secular: are you an ecclesiastical or lay ruler?
Main Power vs. Secondary Powers: do you follow the Christian faith that currently holds the most counties in the world?
Ecumenical vs. Heretic: does your faith carry the ecumenical Christian doctrine, or are you a heretic?
The Main Power faith is dynamic. It is recalculated whenever county faith changes across Christendom, stored as a Situation variable and refreshed automatically. When the Main Power changes (say, if Catholic counties are overtaken by Orthodox ones) that shift can itself become a Catalyst, and it can instantly push the Church into the Reform Phase.
Orthodox, in this case, would become the Main Power in the Christian Church, and obtain all the benefits that rulers in that group have.
We call the Church's phases Chapters. There are seven in total, each named after a recognizable era of Church history. Every Chapter belongs to one of four Chapter Types, which tell you the broad tone of the era:
Instability. Rulers are easier to sway to rites, excommunications fly, and gold has a way of leaving the treasury.
Crisis. The Church at its most scorched. Indulgences are cheaper, Ecumenical Councils more frequent, taxes suffer and (depending on the phase) even clergy may be able to marry.
Zeal. Mass conversion, cheaper bulls (more on that later), holy wars, and easier faith conversion.
Stability. Grand Cathedrals rise faster, characters take vows more readily, and emperors may even try to mend the Great Schism.
The 867 opening Chapter. Secular rulers sway more easily between rites; Main Power secular rulers gain a free Humiliation casus belli and easier claim requests from their Head of Faith.
Clergy siphon treasury more effectively, and secular rulers of both Main and Secondary groups may Levy the Tithes through a dedicated decision to extract wealth from their ecclesiastical vassals (at risk of annoying the archbishop of your diocese).
Crisis deepens. Ecumenical councils and indulgences are cheaper.
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Unless players have already resolved the schism through dedicated decisions, the Great Schism is created automatically at this Chapter's close, cementing the east–west fracture that will define later centuries.
The Main Power faith converts counties 50% faster and finds character conversion easier; everyone else converts 25% slower.
Clergy gain an extra personal and hostile scheme slot; bulls are also half price.
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Excommunications are cheaper. Main Power secular rulers gain cultural head fascination.
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As in Saeculum Obscurum, secular rulers may appoint Court Chaplains without papal approval, but they're not the only ones willing to abuse their power…
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Clerical appointment interactions are cheaper, secular rulers suffer accelerating county control decline and clerical rulers see reduced feudal tax contributions.
When this Chapter begins, every Christian faith's great holy war cooldown is cleared. Holy site pilgrimages grant learning experience. Hiring Holy Orders is cheaper, and so are bulls; secular rulers gain access to cheaper religious wars and cheaper men-at-arms recruitment.
And…
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Grand Cathedral construction is faster, characters accept taking vows more readily. Church and domicile building costs fall across the board.
Christian kings or emperors may try to mend the Great Schism, heretics may seek communion. Theocratic heir candidacy is boosted; heads of faith lift excommunications more willingly.
From any current Chapter, only a limited set of future Chapters is available, which are shown as clickable books in the Situation window. Each future Chapter accumulates progress through Catalysts. When a Chapter reaches 1,000 points, it takes over.
Catalysts can be triggered by any eligible Christian ruler, with no limit on how many times each one fires. They are wired into the everyday fabric of CK3: marriages, murders, wars, county conversions, ecumenical councils, pilgrimages, great project contributions, heresy outbreaks, and more.
Some specially important events can also accelerate the pace dramatically.
If the Catholic head of faith does not control the de jure capital of the Papal States while Christendom is in Fragile Unity, Saeculum Obscurum triggers immediately.
Likewise, a change in Main Power faith during Saeculum Obscurum can snap the Church straight into the Reform Phase.
Examples of Catalysts by theme:
Clerical scandal: simony, embezzlement, clergy marrying or having children, head of faith murdered or marrying.
Secular interference: imprisoning a head of faith, ecclesiastical grant claims, replacing realm priests, lay investiture disputes.
Religious changes in the land: county conversions to or from Christianity, new or divergent rites, heresy outbreaks, clerical regions created or split.
War and holy sites: Jerusalem lost or reclaimed, great holy wars won or declared against Christians, humiliation wars, excommunication wars.
Shows of devotion: pilgrimages completed, cathedrals built, ecumenical councils hosted, mass rite conversion great projects.
Deliberate steering: the Guide the Christian Church decision is available to pious, learned, or powerful rulers every ten years at major piety cost. Choose which future Chapter you wish to push toward, and fire a massive Catalyst (+75 points) in that direction.
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Bulls are the formal instrument by which the Bishop of Rome reshapes the faith without waiting for a council, a war, or a century of drift. They are one of the most direct ways a Catholic head of faith can steer the Church.
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Only the Catholic head of faith may take the Enact a Bull decision. You must hold your head-of-faith title and have at least Limited Church Authority (or higher) as a realm law. The decision costs a major amount of piety and carries a five-year cooldown, so each bull should feel deliberate.
When you enact a bull, you first choose its purpose from four options. Each leads into a follow-up step: picking a crusade target on the map, selecting a rite to condemn, or choosing a tenet to permit or forbid.
Every ruler of the faith then receives a letter notification, so the realm knows what Rome has decreed.
The most dramatic bull. The Pope selects a hostile kingdom on the map as the target of a Great Holy War, then proclaims the crusade. The faith must already allow great holy wars, have a spiritual head, hold at least 60 fervor, and have no GHW already in progress. Of course, there must also be a valid hostile kingdom to target.
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Normally, calling a crusade by bull requires High Church Authority or better. During the Crusade Phase of the Christian Church Situation, that requirement is waived: when Christendom is already ablaze with crusading fervor, the Pope may call the cross even under looser church authority.
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When a rite within Catholicism has diverged far enough from the main rite, the Pope may issue a bull condemning it. The condemned rite becomes a new heretical faith, its head is branded a Heresiarch, and ecumenical status is stripped.
Catholic fervor rises; rulers of the condemned rite receive a letter and may choose to convert to the Pope’s rite rather than remain under anathema.
The Pope may elevate a known tenet from obscurity to permitted status within the rite, opening new doctrinal room for the faithful. The faith pays for flexibility with a significant fervor loss.
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The reverse: a tenet is declared prohibited, tightening doctrine and granting a notable fervor gain as the Church reaffirms its boundaries.
We hope you enjoy steering (or surviving) the Chapters of Christendom.
As always, we look forward to your feedback (and do keep in mind that extra effects and/or catalysts may still get added)
Navigate through a medieval era with a rich religious life in Crusader Kings III: By God Alone, our latest Core Expansion releasing on September 30th! Wrestle with sin as your rulers try to live up to the tenets of their faith and tangle with church authorities who have power on earth, as well as heaven. Instigate or settle religious debates, negotiate the limits of crown and Papal authority, and ponder the afterlife.
Playable Theocracies
Take control of landed realms headed by an archbishop or even the Pope himself. As the Papacy, new resources of power and wealth will be at your disposal.
The Christian “Situation”
A new persistent Situation for Christian realms, allowing actions and decisions connected to the development and progress of the Faith.You can participate in Ecumenical Councils to decide on religious tenets and beliefs.
Rites & Heresies
Religious rites that diverge too much from the standard Faith steal power and wealth from the Church and may be declared heretical, forcing you to either conform or rebel.
The Great Schism
In the 867 game start, the Christian church will eventually reach a crossroads for the faith. This can result in the Great Schism, separating Western Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy.
Monastic Holy Orders
Centers of both research and theological power, Monastic Holy Orders offer potent bonuses to those who host their headquarters. Chief among their offerings is spiritual fulfilment, for their prayers protect secular rulers from eternal damnation.
Changes to Religious Tenets
Revisions to the tenet system in Crusader Kings III now center characters’ relationships to their faith and what is appropriate behavior within that faith. Follow heretical beliefs that push the boundary of what is accepted or have your personal preferences adopted and accepted through internal church politics.
Spiritual Fulfilment system
Traits, actions and religious tenets work together to paint portraits of characters’ inner spirit and spiritual life. Sinful or virtuous actions are not merely a concern for stress, but can also affect relationships with God and concerns about the afterlife.
Archdioceses
New clerical titles that have religious authority over a geographical region independent of the secular rulers' lands.
College of Cardinals
The Pope can appoint cardinals across Christendom. But, the struggle between secular and religious authority never ends - secular rulers can use their power to influence the appointment of Cardinals and the direction of the Church.
Dynamic Holy Sites
Faiths can now dynamically change their holy sites as they grow and change over time.
Cathedrals
Cathedrals can become the focal point for reverence of specific saints or other holy figures, leading to them becoming Holy Sites.
Puppets
In order to interact with the political machinery of the church, secular rulers will be able to puppet clerical characters so they can act on their behalf.
And more!
You can pre-purchase now as part of Crusader Kings III: Chapter V and receive By God Alone instantly when it releases, or pick up the core expansion on its own on September 30th.
Greetings! Alexander Oltner here, Game Director for Crusader Kings III. Today's diary is a little different from our recent ones, in that it's not about a new mechanic we're building for an expansion, but about something we've already made.
So, let's talk about Landless Adventurers!
When we first designed Landless Adventurers, we envisioned them as a transition state, something you'd hop into for a bit and then hop back out of. A deposed ruler licking their wounds, a dynasty member off making their name before claiming a title, a brief interlude between two different, landed lives. We included them as a tertiary feature in Roads to Power with exactly that in mind.
Well, we underestimated how powerful the player fantasy of working your way up from nothing ultimately was. The Adventurer playstyle has resonated with players far beyond what we expected, and we've been very pleasantly surprised by it: a custom 867-start Landless Adventurer is now the single most popular campaign starting point, by a significant margin.
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That success does present a problem however, and to explain why, it helps to share how we think about DLC.
A healthy base game is the foundation everything else rests on. It should be complete and satisfying in its own right, the version of Crusader Kings III we'd be perfectly happy for a brand-new player to pick up cold. Expansions, in turn, are for going deeper on the aspects of the game you already enjoy, never something you feel you have to buy just to have a whole game. That distinction matters a great deal to us.
It's a balance we keep an eye on, and we weigh it case by case. Every so often a piece of content stops feeling like an enhancement and starts feeling like a prerequisite, and when that happens we ask ourselves whether something needs to change.
In the specific case of Landless Adventurers, we think it does. They've become popular enough that many new players buy the game expecting them to be there, and truth be told: we’d like that too!
So we're addressing it head-on: with the release of Silk & Silver later this year, the Landless Adventurer character type is moving into the base game, free for everyone. This rectifies the situation and puts a feature that players consider a core part of the experience where it belongs: in the core.
There's a second benefit, and it's just as important to us. By decoupling Adventurers from Roads to Power, we remove the rigidity that comes from them being packaged alongside a specific, thematic DLC. Today, anything we build for them has to be thematically tied to Roads to Power. Once they live in the base game, that constraint goes away, and we allow ourselves to dedicate far more time and resources to Adventurers as a concept; building more content for it and developing the playstyle on its own terms, wherever our ideas (and yours) take it.
We want to be upfront that the precise dividing line is still being decided as we work through the details. Here is where we currently stand:
The Landless Adventurer character type will be unlocked for everyone with the free update accompanying Silk & Silver.
We are looking at retaining certain camp purposes and contract types as part of Roads to Power where thematically appropriate.
In other words, the foundation of landless play, being a character without land, roaming the world with your camp and followers, becomes something every player can do. Some of the more specialized purposes and contracts may remain as Roads to Power content. As we lock down exactly what sits on either side of that line, we'll communicate it clearly so there are no surprises.
And to be clear for our Roads to Power owners: you keep everything that shipped with that expansion. Administrative government, Byzantine flavor, and every other Roads to Power feature remain yours. This change is about lifting the baseline for everyone, not taking anything away from the people who supported the DLC.
To better set expectations: for now, this is purely about moving the Landless Adventurer character type into the base game. We are not using this diary to announce a rework or new content for Adventurers. That kind of work becomes more feasible once Landless Adventurers are part of the base game, and it's something we're now actively exploring for the future; just not something we're shipping with this change.
In other words, expect new Adventurer content at some point, but not just yet.
And that's it for today's dev diary. It's admittedly shorter than the ones we usually put out, but we think it's a meaningful one for the long-term health of the game. Making Landless Adventurers free is both an acknowledgement of how our players embraced them and an investment in where we want to take the playstyle next.
We also have other important news coming this week regarding Chapter V, so keep an eye out: you won't want to miss it.
As always, leave your comments and questions below, and we'll do our best to answer what we can.
A Genius would have claimed this weeks ago. A Lunatic would have forgotten entirely. Either way, your last chance is here.
We partnered with Makeship to bring two of CK3's most iconic traits to life as a dual pin set. Whether you're the calculated ruler who schemes three wars ahead, or the unpredictable wildcard your council fears, there's a pin for you.
The Genius & Lunatic Pin Pack limited campaign closes on Thursday. No extensions. No second claims.
Secure your legacy:
Hello there!
Today, we are going to take a look at republics. We talked a little bit about them in both the announcement video and the original Silk & Silver vision dev diary, but today we will go a bit more into the weeds. Without further ado, let’s get started.
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To start us off, what are republics? Republics in Silk & Silver are effectively small city-states, with all the “relevant” people who live there. That means whoever is the current ruler, and all patricians of the city. The patricians are landless nobility and burghers who are part of the assembly of the city, who can vote on matters, and who are (possibly) aiming to become the next head of the republic themselves. In other words, the patricians aren’t landed, but they are all rooted to the city and the politics of the realm.
These city-states are inspired by many historical city-states of the Middle Ages, including republics such as Venice, Florence, the Swiss Republics, and the free cities of the Holy Roman Empire. There are different types of republics, but all of them will have patricians who trade in some fashion to fund their political endeavors. As a fun little side note, we also split the Vatican from the city of Rome, so if you want to play as a little manipulative controlling Roman Republic under the Pope, that is now a neat little opportunity in Silk & Silver.
In real life, many of our more well-known republics had a tendency to start off as communal city-states, eventually turning into signorias, semi-tyrannical city-states led by a single family. That was our starting point as we went into this, and we wanted to depict this in the game. These smaller entities often punched above their weight in very specific, limited ways.
We wanted families in the city-state to matter, and to both quabble and plot together. It was supposed to be a playstyle for people who didn’t want to go wide and build a huge realm, but rather focus on internal politicking, scheming, changing laws, and trade. The idea being that all patricians would have access to trade to fund their political schemes and careers. You would have the opportunity to start out in a small commune and, over time, turn it into your personal city-state, one you control entirely in all but name.
We’re adding house ambitions, a type of house attribute (think like the Mandala Aspects or the House Aspiration in Japan) that defines the kind of idea your house has for the republic. It was one of the things we wanted early on, so we could get that immediate feel for what different houses care about. The idea being that as you set out on your republic journey, you’d have several “actors” in the republic (irrelevant of the characters themselves), so over time you’d start knowing specific families for their values and stances: “Ah, the Zorzi family, they always foil my plans!”
We wanted Popular Opinion to play an important and special role in republics, serving as a way for the public to interact with the republic's ruler, which we felt was more important for republics than for most other landed forms of government in the game. As we are reworking the mechanic anyway, it seemed like a prime opportunity to do something extra.
As you might imagine, being a very unpopular ruler in a republic might have some consequences for your health.
As you are intrinsically linked to the city-state, so is progression in some ways. A smaller count-tier city-state can only sustain one family and have a limited amount of laws (more on them soon), and they don’t really become proper republics until they become duke-tier. Unlike regular rulers, republics don’t really use DeJure per se; they build their own titles as they grow in importance, but these are locked behind the prestige of their rulers, the size of their settlements (see vision dev diary for more about settlement size), and other factors.
As they become a duke tier, more families will join the republic, and squabbling will begin in earnest to form the republic in whatever way the patricians want. And as they continue to grow, they will be able to spread their roots and become smaller merchant empires akin to Venice in real life.
Now, before we move on to anything else, we should discuss the politics of the republic a little bit, and the Assembly mechanic we are adding in Silk & Silver. The Assembly is where the republic votes on public matters and the mechanics of the republic itself. Any assembly member can step up and propose law changes at any given time, and the whole assembly will then proceed to vote on said matter for the next 6 months.
Before we move on, we should also mention that in the republic, we usually have elections as the succession law. Meaning that, similar to e.g. the Holy-Roman Empire, the title passes based on votes. If you are somewhat tyrannical, you can change it to a despot succession down the line, if you feel like your family is the only one fit to rule.
Now, most parts of this assembly are in themselves put together by laws. So who is actually a part of the Assembly? Well, that’s a law. Currently, these are the alternatives:
Patrician Assembly: All patrician house heads
Governing Council: The ruler’s council members
General Assembly: All patrician house heads and republican vassals
Parliament: All patrician house heads and vassals (in general)
Now, how many votes do you need for something to pass? You guessed it, that’s a law. So it can be either a simple majority, a two-thirds majority, or a unanimous vote. That means that as you pass, you can, in theory, make a law setup that you are happy with, and then try to pass a unanimous vote to ensure that it sticks around in perpetuity.
Another part is, of course, what the Assembly can actually vote for. Yet again, that is another law. At most, they can vote on Laws, Decrees (more on that later), and Election Laws. At the very least, they can always vote for Election Laws.
Some other laws we have at the moment, though I don’t expect it to be final by the time we release Silk & Silver, as we are still looking into things to hook it into.
Term Length - How long the current ruler is going to sit (Minimum 5 years, maximum for life)
War Declaration - Whether the ruler has to have assembly approval for it or not
Title Revocation - If you can revoke titles from vassals
Vassal Retraction - If you can retract vassals from vassals
Vassal Refusal - If declining a revocation or retraction is considered criminal for the vassal
We mentioned decrees a bit earlier, but let’s go into what they actually are. Decrees are effectively government-specific decisions for republics that depend on the Assembly, usually detailing the use of the government treasury. For republics, treasuries will be used only by the head of the republic, and they will be used for buildings, decrees, and title men-at-arms, and gained by buildings and decrees.
For a decree, as shown in the picture, you will usually be able to use the government treasury with the Assembly's approval. Of course, it comes down, yet again, to the laws of your republic, how many votes you need, who can vote, etc. But if you get approval, the decree is effectively like enacting a decision in the game, with a cost, an effect, and some requirements for it to be chosen.
In the vision Dev Diary, we talked a little bit about the new district & building system, and as part of that, we have also added a new district specific to Republics: the Trade Post. These are inspired by the Hanseatic Kontors and the Italian Fondachi, and they are effectively districts you hold in someone else’s lands. Every Patrician has a limit to how many trade posts they can hold at any given time, and every county in the world can have one trade post. Some areas, usually those far away from any republic character, will not see any, whereas other areas will have several characters flock and scheme to take trade posts from one another.
As republics are quite limited in how much land they can hold, this is another avenue where they can effectively expand to gain some more power, and it also gives them some neat benefits in other people’s lands, which can help them in different ways.
Within this district, we have some regular buildings that will just increase sell prices and decrease buy prices, for those who want to synergize with their ongoing trade routes or just increase their money-making in different ways. Besides those more simplistic ones, we also have buildings that let you negotiate an alliance with a local ruler, recruit culturally locked local men-at-arms, or increase your mercenary limit. Say, speaking of mercenary limits…
With Silk & Silver, we are introducing a new mercenary limit that caps the number of mercenaries that can be employed at any given time. It was always curious that people who had a lot of money could, in theory, just “money” away wars, by tossing enough of it at the problem. We have added a mercenary limit, so people who are actually good at war will be able to use and organize mercenaries more effectively than their richer counterparts, if they can afford them.
Like most modifiers, this can be adjusted by most places we hand out modifiers in the game, such as government types, cultural traditions, and lifestyles. For republics, they will start with a somewhat higher mercenary limit than regular rulers do, as they are otherwise a bit weaker militarily.
One of the republic fantasies of our time period is, of course, to be able to become the Hanseatic League. It was a powerful trade league that controlled trade through the Baltic Sea and had a significant impact on all its neighbors and trade partners.
Trade Leagues are confederations of republics that come together to pool their resources and monopolies, and ensure wealth for all participants. They are the ones who out-compete the regular merchants and the smaller republics in the area. As the league continues to grow more powerful and cohesive, it will eventually become more competitive and make a singular title through a new decision.
The idea is that forming large trade leagues should be a goal for players to achieve, which, in some ways, puts them at the very top of the food chain among merchants and republics.
Thanks for taking the time to read the dev diary about republics. There’s still a lot of work remaining. Of course, we will come back with more details later. One thing of note is that this is our last Silk & Silver dev diary planned before summer, so we will be back with more dev diaries in early August after our summer break. I hope you have all enjoyed our latest dev diaries on the work we are putting into the expansions this year, and that you are as stoked to play them as we are to release them!
Hi all! I’m PinkAxelotl. Today, we’re taking a look at our vision for Merchants in Silk and Silver. Who are they, what is the experience they provide, which are the relationships that matters to them the most, and what specific systems are used to support their gameplay?
For the purposes of this Development Diary, the term “Merchant” only includes the new landless Merchant government. We won’t delve into details about their administrative-focused counterparts, i.e. Patricians or Republics. That’s a topic for another time.
Let’s get an important disclaimer out of the way: We’re right in the thick of development and all of this is subject to change.
By introducing Merchants we have an unique opportunity to provide a new playstyle that covers a previously untapped historical fantasy around trade and wealth-based power dynamics. Fight other Merchant families over important Trade Goods, win the favor of your Patron, and most importantly – keep caravans moving.
The focus of the Merchant experience is that of the family Company. This means that we’re not creating a peddler fantasy. You have family members and Associates (Courtiers) working the caravans on behalf of the Company.
Merchant gameplay is a constant trade-off between Gold and Prestige. As a Merchant, you are highly capable at Trade, but constantly hindered by not being a noble. Throughout this document, you will see that this interplay between Prestige and Gold pervades all mechanics we introduce for this playstyle.
So who exactly can be a Merchant? We’ve added the option to “Create your own Merchant” on game start, which can be done anywhere in the world. You will also be able to become a Merchant via a Decision when playing as a Duke or Count, as long as your Culture allows it. Patricians and Adventurers will also be able to take this Decision.
As you progress your Company, you might eventually want to settle down somewhere. The problem of getting to the very top is that everyone wants a piece of the pie. Being the biggest Merchant should not mean that no one challenges you. Rather the opposite. Acquiring land and “settling down” in the traditional sense should be an appealing way to mitigate risks and “tie down” assets. You can accomplish this by either purchasing land from your Patron, or choosing to either join or form a Republic.
Building Trade Expertise in a Primary Good of your choosing and acquiring Monopolies are integral to a Merchant’s Company progression (i.e. becoming the wine salesman of Italy). These have been covered extensively in the latest Silk & Silver Dev Diary on Trade, so for brevity’s sake we will move right along.
Your Monopolies and Trade Expertise tells the world what you are, while your Company Size is all about who you are as a Company.
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Your Acumen represents the amount of gold your company has accumulated through Trade. For progression, it is used to gate the different Company Sizes, which you can spend Prestige to unlock (the first being an “Aspiring Business” and the last being “Trade Empire”).
For all intents and purposes, you can view these as your Company status. If you have a Trade Empire, most interactions will be easier for you to accomplish successfully, especially if you are looking to acquire a Trade Monopoly.
The different Size tiers boost a Company’s Competitiveness, which helps handle trade competition. They also unlock Merchant Charters from increasingly higher-tiered characters (i.e. dukes at tier 2, kings at tier 3, and so on). We will cover these Charters later in the document.
We can’t talk about Merchant fantasies without covering Company Purposes. Right from the get-go, we knew we wanted to put a lot of emphasis on the role-playing possibilities of playing as a Merchant, to fill the day-to-day activities of being the head of a Company, so that you’re not simply sitting around waiting for gold to trickle in. This is especially important for balancing against the number-heavy Trade feature.
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Company Purposes are different paths to pursue. Will you become a skilled craftsperson, lend gold at exuberant rates, trade in weapons, or reach for distant riches?
The different Purposes are:
Reputable: Default starting Purpose, increasing family and Patron opinion.
Artisan: Focus on Artifacts and Inspiration.
Creditor: Lend gold and get strong hooks.
War Profiteer: Sponsor wars with either Men at Arms or Mercenaries.
Caravaneer: Get strong cultural bonuses and unlock Luxury Contracts.
You can pursue many of these actions regardless of what Purpose you have. We’re not limiting the amount of tools you have to engage with while playing as a Merchant character. The goal of these Purposes is to allow you to be significantly better at a particular playstyle, not limiting you to one.
As you will have noticed, all Purposes reference Opportunities and Contracts, and so let’s get into those next.
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Similar to landless Adventurers, Merchants have access to a variety of contracts. The purpose of Merchant Contracts is primarily to either gain Prestige or Trade bonuses.
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When taking on a Contract, you will be required to do a bit of legwork to improve the markets along your Trade Route, travelling far abroad to secure luxury goods, and build your Prestige to eventually be able to compete with the big traders.
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Our current list of Merchant Contract Types are:
Trade Opportunities:
Used to maintain existing Trade Routes. When going on a Trade Opportunity, you travel to a market for a variety of purposes, such as increasing the sell price of specific trade goods, and promoting your business so as to make the market more attractive.
Trade Opportunities are also an avenue into fighting competing Merchant Families in your markets.
Unity Contracts:
These are urgent situations that require your immediate attention. You must address irregularities in your business dealings, or run the risk of losing face. Most often one of your family members has been accused of misconduct. Can you assuage every party involved?
Luxury Contracts
Undertake expeditions abroad and bring home wealth that significantly bolster your reputation. But the higher reward, the higher the risk. Will you be able to capture and reliably move live exotic animals back home?
Luxury Contracts unlock Domicile Artifacts and are the only way of acquiring them.
Trade Opportunities trigger schemes that you have to complete. To make these more active and engaging, we’re adding a button that allows you to gain Advantages at an increased risk.
On top of that, we are adding an option for you to chain Trade Opportunities, so that you don’t need to go home in-between. Or, you can choose to send a dedicated Associate to handle the situation in your place.
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As a Merchant, your Company Palace (Domicile) is your base of operations. All your Trade Routes start here. A bigger and better Palace increases the max number of Trade Routes you can set up as well, which makes upgrading your Palace integral to progressing your Company.
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One noteworthy characteristic of the Palace is that this Domicile type is fully integrated into the city where you are located. This means that if you upgrade a domicile building, you are investing in the holding at large. The main and external buildings cost Prestige in addition to Gold, since you are technically constructing in a landed ruler’s realm.
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With very few steady Prestige incomes, your Palace is also a place you can show off the exotic artifacts you’ve obtained through Luxury Contracts. These can be assigned to your Palace’s own artifact inventory.
A Merchant’s family members are key to components in managing Trade successfully. Family members will be responsible for managing specific trade routes, and have abilities that directly improve the market abilities of that route. As the House Head, you decide how far to push your family, and whether or not the individual interests must be sacrificed for the sake of the Company, which is where House Unity comes in.
You can assign either Family or Associates to oversee and manage Trade Routes. These characters will handle the menial tasks associated with the buying and selling of goods, so that you can focus on the bigger picture for the Company.
The Trader tasks are:
Manage Competition: Raises Competitiveness
Negotiate Deals: Improves Acumen gain
Oversee Caravans: Gives Trade Capacity
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As the Merchant government is heavily family-oriented, we also made the decision to implement House Unity for it. This offers a lot of opportunities for the tension and cohesion of family members.
Merchant House Unity has a distinct trade off: High House Unity is all about blood ties and presenting like a Noble Family (i.e. high focus on Prestige, at the cost of a competitive trade edge). Meanwhile, low House Unity centers around profit and getting skilled characters involved in the Trade, no matter the blood ties (i.e. high focus on Competitiveness, at the cost of Prestige).
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To manage your business, you are wholly dependent on your Patron, who is the holder of the County where your Palace is located. This character allows you to conduct trade in their land, with the expectation that you will supply the needs of their holding. The relationship between you is a new tributary type, where you become their Beneficiary.
You have a special interaction that targets your Patron, from which you can ask for a range of favors, including marrying into low nobility. Engaging with your Patron is the primary way to spend gold to get Prestige. And Prestige, as we’ve learnt, is how to improve your Trade.
If you schmooze your Patron well enough, you can also request a Charter from them. This opens up a whole new level of Decisions for you, where you can either use the Charter in defiance of your Patron to vastly boost your Prestige, or reinvest some of your gold into your Patron’s lands to develop buildings and increase Prosperity. The latter of which will boost the trade output of your local market. Win win.
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Any Patron can only have one active Charter at a time, while having a number of Beneficiaries vying for it at the same time.
Working with or against your Patron has its own risks/rewards. Use the Charter to support them, and you might eventually be rewarded. Use the Charter against them, and you might eventually be punished, at the risk of imprisonment and the destruction of the artifact.
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House Relations play an important part in keeping track of a Merchant’s main competition. As soon as you start creating Trade Routes, your relationship with merchants in those markets will start to deteriorate. Obtaining a Monopoly that another merchant is vying for also deteriorates the relationship. Basically, if you are competing over the same resources, the relationship between your Houses will become increasingly fraught.
You can use the Charter and Trade Opportunities to put a real dent in the Competitiveness of your competitors, along with all the regular scheming and plotting of the regular Crusader Kings 3 experience.
Here you have the Merchant experience: one where familial duty is posed against company profit, where a lowborn character might hope to rise above their station by building a lasting trade empire.
Hello everyone! We have a small update today to address some issues reported to us by the community. Check the changelog below for more information.
Fixed an issue preventing players from manually inviting agents to schemes
Fixed an issue causing epidemics and natural disasters to be less lethal than intended
Happy Tuesday! Mikael here with another By God Alone update. Last time we walked through Ecclesiastical Titles and Rites and while we shone a light on clerical gameplay and faith mechanics, we did not really touch on how a secular character - who you as the player, most often control - can harness said clerical mechanics.
So let's go there!
The year is 1075. You are the King of West Francia, and one of your grouchiest dukes - the one you've stubbornly refused a council seat for decades - has become too big for his britches. He has virtually stopped pretending he isn't preparing a revolt, and you would like him stripped of his vassal oaths before it gets there. The Papacy, however, has made it clear that complaints from secular kings about which of their unruly dukes is or isn't in good standing with God are not, presently, one of Rome's priorities.
Mercifully, you do have a Court Chaplain. Who happens to be the Archbishop! Who, by the strength of a Hook your spymaster fabricated last spring, owes you a favor large enough to impose an Excommunication order all on his own, which would in turn permit you to revoke his title without causing an upset with your other vassals. The duke, after all, falls under the Archbishop's spiritual jurisdiction as well. A brief letter to Rome (on your behalf), and your uppity duke has learned what can happen if he goes against his King's will.
This week is about Puppets - the system by which you, the secular ruler, get clerical levers to move on your behalf - and Playable Theocracies, the answer to the question "what if I just played the clergyman myself?".
Standard caveat: all of this is work in progress, nothing you see here is final, and we'd love your feedback.
A Puppet is a real character, who behaves in accordance with how NPCs typically act in Crusader Kings III. However, by virtue of your hold over them you can also make them act according to your ideas of what they should do. In By God Alone, we are introducing two puppet types which relate specifically to organized religions. The system itself is open both to future expansion and to modders, and is not fundamentally tied to religious matters as such.
When puppets take action at their master's command, the game reads this action as originating from the puppet. Costs and consequences are levied on them, not on you. For the modders out there, this does involve some minimal setup per action (e.g. Character interaction, Decision, Great Project) to ensure the initiator is distinguished from the one actually executing it, but the system is designed to be as designer- and modder-friendly as possible.
In By God Alone, your Court Chaplain is your persistent puppet candidate. To make them Compliant requires meeting some condition, the most obvious one being having a Hook on them, but a variety of other conditions can also be leveraged to ensure compliance: having a very high Level of Devotion yourself, having them as your friend (or… lover), if they sufficiently fear you, or if you are family. Having your dynasty deeply embroiled with the church machinery can be a powerful move.
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Currently, you can work through your puppeted Court Chaplain to do the following:
Found a Rite - the secular ruler's only legal route into the Rite system you saw last time. Now you know who's holding the pen.
Plan and Construct a Grand Cathedral as a Great Project, funded out of the Church Treasury rather than your purse.
Mass-convert neighboring pagans through a Great Project.
Excommunicate a character in the same Archdiocese, with the request lodged under his name rather than yours.
Request a new Ecclesiastical Title, splitting their current region in two
Request an Elevation to the See for your Puppet, i.e. make them an Archbishop or Patriarch.
Turn him into the Head of Faith of a Faith that doesn't currently have one (such as 867+ Chalcedonian Christianity).
Virtually every new action we're making available to theocratic characters, we're also making available through the puppet system. We're not looking to duplicate actions you can normally do yourself, though - the actions you can take through your Puppet is typically limited to that which you do not have direct control over.
The other Puppet type we're adding is the Pope. If you somehow manage to elevate your Puppet to this position, or declare your Puppet the true (anti)pope and depose the pretender, you will have the Pope himself under your thumb via the same system. More on this (and Antipopes) later!
There is, of course, a more elegant solution to the problem of an uncooperative Court Chaplain (if his Superior won't accede to your demands of replacing him). Which is to be your own clergyman.
Theocratic characters - Prince-Bishops; landed Archbishops, Patriarchs, and Cardinals; and even the Pope himself - are now playable. Theocratic government has been in the codebase since launch, but the title-holders have always been NPCs whose succession went into a black box. With By God Alone you can play them, inherit through them in the limited sense theocrats inherit, or continue your dynasty's story through them rather than around them.
There's been a lot of speculation over the years around how theocracies could be made playable, and even if they should be made playable, given they don't follow dynastic inheritance. Well, Crusader Kings III has evolved a lot over the years, with landless play, administrative realms, and Choose Your Destiny type features already transforming what the core play experience looks like. So it's time to rip off the band-aid and give you a new type of player succession, along organizational rather than dynastic lines.
Simply, when playing a theocracy, if you die without a member of your dynasty set to inherit your title, you will instead resume playing the next clergyman in line for your title.
However, while clerical dynasty building was certainly something both the Christian Church and secular rulers tried to crack down on throughout history, it was not unheard of. With the faith's evolution over centuries of tumult modelled in By God Alone, particularly in the early start date both getting your cake and eating it too is far from impossible, as I'll outline below.
But before we go too far, let's talk about what you can actually do as a theocratic ruler. Within Christianity this is done within the confines of a new government type, Ecclesiastical Government - similar to but not identical to Theocratic Government. Succession is appointment-based: when a theocrat dies, the next holder is selected from local clergy, with weights based on how good of a Christian they are (or appear to be) and how well they have served the faith.
A theocratic ruler:
Has a Treasury (which belongs to the Church, and works similarly to Treasury in admin realms), as distinct from their Gold
Has a personal clerical domicile, they can build up to better see to the needs of their flock
Appoints subordinates (bishops) within their own ecclesiastical hierarchy
Often serves as the Court Chaplain of local secular rulers
Cannot start wars against Christian rulers, but can gain land from Christian rulers by exploiting their inheritance laws
Maintains their own Church Authority law-group, the theocratic parallel to a feudal lord's Crown Authority. Raising it costs Piety but unlocks abilities, most notably the legal precondition for establishing a theocratic dynasty. Letting it slip exposes you to a new Humiliation CB that Christian neighbors with higher authority or Piety can declare (at considerable consequences, of course)
They remain a political actor. They can still rise, fall, and be schemed against
What you don't get is automatic direct dynastic continuity through children, the way a feudal duke does. Most theocrats are ostensibly sworn to celibacy, and the canonical succession model is appointment to a related-or-promising clergy character rather than to your bloodline. We've leaned into this rather than around it: the dynasty-building loop for a theocrat is about ensuring the next holder of your See is also of your house, by mentoring and elevating eligible nephews and protégés in time for them to be on the appointment shortlist when you die.
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The extreme case is the Holy Father himself.
As Pope, you sit on top of the central Church Treasury, funded by tithes from every Catholic church in Christendom, and quite possibly the largest single pot of gold in the game - at least when the Church is healthy. You hold the levers a secular player can only influence through their Puppets:
You appoint (and pay) Cardinals, and give them Orders
You call Ecumenical Councils and decide what they are about
You Excommunicate rulers who displease you, with all the secondary consequences that cascade through the political map
You approve Holy Sites for Catholicism
You issue Papal Bulls, powerful edicts underwritten by Rome. These include the ability to launch a targeted crusade, declaring a Rite heretical, or declaring a certain Tenet permitted or forbidden.
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Of course, every secular Christian ruler is, at some level, trying to influence you. Christian Kings and Emperors will line up at the Apostolic Palace to request some favor or another. It's up to you to decide who to hear, and whose wishes align with the will of God. Note that we will no longer direct every request for divine grace through the Pope - many concerns can be handled by the Church's local representatives (e.g. Archbishops), to avoid spamming a player whenever some local count thinks their half-brother is an affront to God
Speaking of the Apostolic Palace, this will be a new Throne Room which you will see (and have to maintain) both when playing as the Pope, and when visiting Rome to ask the Papacy to grace you in various ways. Visuals will be coming later, I promise!
With the ability to play as the Pope, it also makes the question of who becomes the next Pope that much more relevant.
While there were certainly times in the history of Catholicism when it took quite a long time for a Pope to get elected (the record held by the election of Pope Gregory X in 1271, after over 1000 days of divisive debates resulting in the locals locking the cardinals up and restricting their access to food and shelter until they came to an agreement, thus establishing the conclave tradition we know today), CK3 isn't really paced for tactical plotting over a short period of days or weeks. As such, the College is always considered to be deliberating over who will take the seat next, and cardinals can be influenced at any time.
There are always three candidates for the seat, selected based on the following criteria:
The obvious choice (Cardinal most entrenched in the Church power structure)
The pious choice (Cardinal with the highest level of Devotion)
The powerful choice (Rite Head with the largest flock)
Of these selected candidates, cardinals will select their preferred option based on typical parameters like opinion, but also how their teachings align with the cardinal's traits. Every papal candidate has the opportunity to switch one Core Tenet as they rise to the seat, and if this change sits well with a particular cardinal, they're more likely to align with that candidate. Spiritual Fulfillment thereby becomes the driving force of the evolution of the Christian faith.
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Oh, and should you manage to get elected, you may of course select what Christendom will henceforth know you as.
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The Puppet system is faith-agnostic at the framework level. The same compliance check would carry over to any organized religion with a realm priest. However, a lot of the new actions we're making for By God Alone are specifically geared towards Christianity - manipulating the Archdiocese titles, asking for a Cardinalate, building Cathedrals. As such, the applicability of non-Christian realm priest puppets will be a bit lower.
Playable Theocracies are the more broadly applicable half. The pre-existing Theocracy government type covers clergy-as-ruler arrangements outside Christianity. What does not generalize is the centralized Christian institutional spine: the Curia, the College of Cardinals, the Papal Bull, the Ecclesiastical Title hierarchy. Those remain Christian-only because that's primarily what the expansion is modelling.
See you next time!
Greetings!
I’ll be following up on the overall vision dev diary with a deeper dive into our design for the Trade System. We’re starting our feature-specific dev diaries with Trade because, as you’ll see, it is connected to nearly every other feature we’re developing for Silk & Silver. But before we get into it, remember that all screenshots are work-in-progress and we are in the middle of development. Everything is subject to change.
Trade is a new layer that not only provides a new mechanic primarily used by Mercantile Governments, but more importantly, makes economic play more strategic for all characters and connects buildings on the map to actual gameplay. It’s where the other features in Silk & Silver meet and clash, where mercantile empires and trade leagues are born.
When you start your first Trade Route in Silk & Silver, the economic engines of the medieval world will already be turning. Your job is to muscle your way in and carve out your niche.
Before we get into how Trade plays out moment-to-moment, let's lay out all the levers we will have at our disposal. The Trade system is built from a handful of core concepts: Markets, Goods, Categories, Routes, and Monopolies. Each has a clear function, but they interact constantly. We'll take each in turn.
The world is filled with over 900 Trade Markets, one for each de jure duchy on the map. Each Market is located in the capital barony of its de jure duchy and serves all of its constituent holdings inside that duchy area. These are defined on game start and do not move.
Trade Markets track the overall Trade Good Productions and Needs of their constituent holdings. They are the mercantile hub of the area. Holding the de jure duchy capital where the Market is located provides you with some bonuses like being able to hand out Monopolies (discussed below).
At time of writing, there are over 40 types of Trade Goods scripted in the game. These are entirely defined by script, so yes, modders, you can go wild.
Trade Goods are primarily produced in Resource Production Districts and their associated Buildings. We track Production via modifiers on provinces. The system is designed to be quite flexible to allow for content and other systems to affect production, buy/sell price, and other factors.
When a building needs grain to feed its workers, it doesn't really care whether it gets grain, millet, or rice. What it really wants is cereals. Cue Trade Categories.
Trade Categories group related goods together so the system can express needs at the right level of abstraction. Some categories are simple: Salt is a single-good category. Others, like Cereals or Meats, can be filled by any of several substitutable goods. This becomes important in two places: when buildings broadcast what they want, and when monopolies claim an entire slice of the market, but more on those below.
Max Routes — how many routes you can run simultaneously.
Max Markets per Route — how many stops a single route can string together.
Range — how far from your home market a route can reach.
Capacity — how much a single route can carry in terms of Trade Good quantity.
Competitiveness — how aggressively the route claims its share when contested. (Big enough topic that we'll come back to it below.)
Most of these grow as you invest in the trader assigned to the Route, your Domicile buildings, and your route history. Specialization and commitment compound.
Every Trade Route designates one of its goods as the route's Primary Good. This is the route's specialty, the thing it gets better at over time. Trading a Primary Good earns Trade Expertise in that good's category, and as a category levels up, the merchant gains stacking bonuses to how well they trade goods in that category.
A merchant who's mongered cheese for forty years isn't just a simple cheese trader. They're the Cheesemonger of Europe, and the system is built to reward exactly that kind of patience. Pick a good, stick with it, and let the years compound.
Trade Expertise lives on the merchant's title rather than directly on the character, so progression survives succession. Your heir inherits the family's hard-won reputation and resumes the work.
Acumen represents a Merchant's business savvy. It grows month by month based on the profit they actually pull in, not the volume they move or how many routes they run. At higher levels, Acumen unlocks personal bonuses that lift every Trade Route the Merchant owns. The intent is a subtle pressure to stay profitable and reward sharp deals.
The quotidian tasks of a Trade Route are managed by a Trader. Traders are characters you assign from your Associates or family members. A Trader's skills shape what their route is good at, affecting things like Competitiveness, for example. A well-rounded Merchant Company means you can maximize the effectiveness of all your Trade Routes
When more than one merchant tries to sell salt in the same market, who wins? Cue Competitiveness. Each route's share of a market's trade is determined by its Competitiveness relative to the Competitiveness of other Trade Routes trading that same good.
You don't get exclusivity without a Monopoly (discussed below). Instead, you get a slice proportional to your Competitiveness score. That makes Competitiveness the single most contested stat in the system. Investing in your Competitiveness is a key way to garner success as a Merchant and ensure that you are able to buy and sell up to your maximum potential.
A Monopoly is the ultimate version of Competitiveness. Where Competitiveness lets you compete for a share, a Monopoly locks the market down entirely. Other traders simply cannot move that category of goods through a market you have monopolized.
Monopolies are granted by the holder of the market's capital, and they can be granted to a specific merchant, to a republic, or to an entire Trade League whose members all share the privilege. Two types exist:
Normal monopolies respect local needs and claim the entire surplus.
Exploitative monopolies pull goods from local demand too, enriching the monopoly holder at the expense of the markets.
Both of these types can be on a single Category, or extended over an entire Market, making it a complete market monopoly.
Trade connects Trade Markets and balances their surplus productions with needed goods. Once a month, every market in the world calculates what it produces and what its buildings need. Routes then look at those balances and propose trades: buy up some surplus from one market, sell it for a tidy profit (if you have a Mercantile government) in a market with a deficit. The system resolves all of these proposals, adjusts balances across all the markets, settles the profit accumulated, and marks which Buildings' Needs are fulfilled.
Needs come from buildings. Many buildings require certain trade good types or categories: grain, leather, iron, dyes, etc. That demand is rolled into its market's monthly Needs.
Production comes from Resource Production Districts and their associated Buildings.
When Production exceeds Need, the market has a Surplus available to export. When Need exceeds Production, the market has a Deficit waiting to be filled. Buildings sit at the heart of the new economy and your decisions about which buildings to construct directly shape how markets behave and, consequently, what the trade landscape looks like from game to game.
If you're playing a settled ruler with land to manage, Trade is mostly something that happens to you. You don't profit from trade routes, and you can't really go toe-to-toe with merchants for market share. What you can do is run what we're currently calling Acquisition Routes (the name is still in flux): routes that exist purely to move goods into your lands so your buildings get what they need.
These are incredibly limited, though, and you'll rely on Merchants to fulfill the vast majority of your Needs. They're the ones who'll actually fill your markets at scale. So you build relationships: invite merchants to your court, grant them concessions, contract them to fulfill a certain Need, etc. How you interact with them is entirely up to you, but remember that the carrot usually works better than the stick.
If you're a Merchant or a Republic, Trade is your whole world. You run Profit Routes with the goal of buying low in surplus markets, selling high in deficit markets, and most importantly, profiting. You compete with market rivals, lobby for Monopolies, level up Trader skills, build Acumen, and stitch together a network of Markets that compounds over generations.
Setting up a route is the central action of mercantile gameplay. You pick a chain of markets you want to connect, choose which goods you'll move, designate one as your Primary Good (the route's specialty, and the category for which you'll earn experience in), and assign a Trader to run it. The route then becomes a persistent thing in the world, visible on the map, generating gold (only for mercantile characters), aging, leveling, and over time perhaps even paving roads as it goes.
Routes require a certain level of commitment. You can edit them, sure, but you can't shuffle them around entirely or replace a route so completely that it becomes the Route of Theseus. A route's defining characteristics matter.
Once a route is running, it's largely self-driving. Each month, every active route ticks: it buys from its source markets, sells in its destination markets, settles the books, and credits your treasury. You don't need to micromanage, though you very well can and should if you want to squeeze every last piece of gold out of the economy.
Wars, plagues, building changes, and competitor pressure all shift the numbers month-to-month. A perspicacious merchant will notice when a profitable route starts slipping and intervene before it breaks; one who doesn't may simply wonder why their income is quietly eroding as the months pass by.
Trade Posts are the long arm of a Republic. A Republic ruler can establish Trade Posts in county capitals across the world. Trade Posts host their own buildings (which benefit the Republic owner, not the local ruler) and let a Republic project economic power into territories it doesn't actually control. You'll hear more about these in a future dev diary.
Trade leaves marks on the map. Where routes run consistently between two Markets year after year, roads emerge: first as worn paths, then proper roads, climbing through tiers as the routes hold their course. Each tier moves armies a bit faster, makes travel a bit safer, and adds a variety of modifiers along the way. Stop trading, and the road decays. We'll dig into roads further in a future dev diary.
One question we know we'll get is: How will the AI handle all this? This, along with economy balancing, is something we are seriously iterating on as we develop the expansion. Merchant and Republic AI characters create routes, pick goods, assign Traders, lobby for monopolies, and compete with you for market share. Currently, the new system feels populated: markets aren't empty until you show up to trade in them; they're already busy, and your job is to muscle in.
We're still tuning, and will continue to do so until release. The AI doesn't yet do everything we want it to, and we'll keep iterating through the rest of the production cycle. But the foundation, i.e. AI characters being real participants in the economic world instead of background scenery, is in.
Other areas we have a keen eye on are ensuring the AI has competitive strategies for determining building chains to construct and, on the flip side, that AI Merchants make smart trades without min/maxing like some players might.
That's the vision. Trade in Silk & Silver is the layer where buildings, characters, geography, and politics all push against each other. It's a system that wants you to build empires of cheese, medicaments, salami, and silk; one that rewards specialization and patience; and one that makes the world feel populated with economic competitors and allies.
We've left out some detail here on purpose. A more technical dev diary will follow closer to release where we'll dig into the mechanics, modifiers, script, etc. For now, we wanted to give you the shape of the system and a sense of how it'll feel to play. See you in the comments.
Hello everyone! We’re releasing a small bugfix update today to address some outstanding issues since the release of 1.19 “Scribe.” Check the changelog below for more information!
Fixed an issue where the Legendary Hunt Story Cycle would not start despite starting a legendary hunt.
The Iberian Dominance ending can no longer be repeated infinitely for unlimited renown.
purchase_land_interaction now only allows duchy targets when the seller completely controls that duchy.
Custom title names are no longer reset to default in Title History after a ruler’s death.
AI characters can now upgrade their knight accolades.
Rites of Passage no longer refunds gold or prestige when cancelled.
Fixed an issue preventing “The Song of El Cid” Story Cycle from being finished.
Administrative rulers from the Renewed Caliphate ending now correctly get the Subjugation CB.
Characters at their concubine limit can now offer concubines to other characters.
Fixed an issue where the side buttons in the Character Panel wouldn't display correctly after loading a multiplayer save.
Japan now shows the correct title and government type when selecting a starting character.
Characters in a travel entourage now reset to their original location if their travel plan is cancelled.
Your infidelity will no longer be broadcasted to everyone as it happens. It’s the Middle Ages, not a Coldplay concert.
Note: Pregnancies that began in 1.19.0.4 will still trigger this!
Fixed bug where using the "Purchase Land" interaction as Landless would not distribute the land properly to the purchaser
Happy Tuesday! Mikael here again with another update on the development of By God Alone. Last week we talked a lot about Rites, and this week we're going to talk about their finer details - how they start, how they spread, how they go wrong, where the line is between local devotion and outright heresy. We're going to keep that promise, but we're also going to come at it sideways, because Rites in CK3 are not free-floating ideas. They are things specific characters do in specific places, and the places matter as much as the theology.
To illustrate this, let's see how the mission of Cyril and Methodius plays out in the expansion, since many of you are likely familiar with this story.
The year is 869. King Rastislav of Moravia - your current character, possibly - has spent the last couple of years in a peculiar kind of correspondence. A pair of brothers, Cyril and Methodius, arrived in his court at the end of the previous decade and taught the Holy Scriptures in his language, which was a novelty. They translated scripture into Church Slavonic, which had also not particularly been done. The work was good. The local clergy noticed. The clergy in Salzburg, several days' ride west, also noticed, and were not pleased.
Cyril and Methodius travelled to Rome to settle the matter. Cyril died there, but Methodius came home with the Pope's blessing and a tightly defined parcel of permission: a Slavic liturgy, in the local tongue, recognized but contained. It is a real thing. It is also, structurally, a divergent variant of Christianity.
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That story plays out, more or less in that shape, in any 867 campaign in our current build. At the end of it (if you played your cards right) Methodius creates a new Rite, which enters the religious geography of Europe. The Slavic Rite is Christian, but carries Anachoresis, Dulia, and Adaptive as its starting Core Tenets. Scandalously, the Rite also permits priests to get married (which, while not unheard-of within mainline Chalcedonian Christianity, was at least frowned upon at this time).
The Slavic Rite may be a pre-scripted storyline, but it leverages a more generalized system, which is what we'll talk about today.
As mentioned above, Rites are not random ideas floating about in the air; they live on the map, on counties and provinces, and are informed by a new title layer we've added called Ecclesiastical Titles (the generic term, for the modders out there, is "clerical_region_titles" which can be leveraged to create analogous mechanics for your total conversion mod or whatever). In the West they're known as Archdioceses, in the East as Patriarchates. They sit underneath the secular map — your Kingdom of West Francia contains several Archdioceses, the Archbishop of Reims holds one of them, his counties overlap parts of your domain and parts of Lotharingia, and his ecclesiastical authority does not particularly respect either of your realm borders.
These titles broadly follow the ancient Roman administrative borders the medieval Church inherited and then proceeded to argue about for centuries. However, they are shaped differently in each of the 867, 1066, and 1178 start dates to reflect the evolution of the church's reach over these eras. Where a Christian Kingdom emerges that doesn't host one - which might happen more than you might think, especially over a long campaign - a new Ecclesiastical Title can be created by the Head of Faith. Up-and-coming local clergy, especially ones backed by powerful secular rulers and perhaps a Cathedral of the latest architectural fashion, can also petition the Papacy for his own See, or request the merger of their See and a neighboring one if its Archbishop is sufficiently hapless.
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The Archbishop or Patriarch holding one of these is an actual person with an actual job. He has subordinate Bishops to oversee. He sees to the faithfulness and souls of local Christian rulers. He starts and administers Church-related Great Projects in his region. He ensures everyone in the region follows the right teachings. When his See vacates, the next holder is selected from local clergy by a Clerical Appointment score - we're still tuning the factors, so I'm not going to walk you through the formula, but the principle is that the next Archbishop of Reims is somebody you can scout before he gets there and have some influence over. The Head of Faith can also override the local process, parachuting in a preferred Cardinal over the heads of an aggrieved local clergy. That happens sometimes. God works in mysterious ways.
An important aspect of tending to your flock is to make sure they have an impressive house to worship in. Currently in CK3, some important cathedrals exist in fixed locations on the map as Great Buildings. In By God Alone, most Grand Cathedrals will be constructed - and reconstructed, when a new, more impressive, architectural style emerges - dynamically via Great Projects. As such they can be placed anywhere, but most commonly, they will appear in the designated Seats of Archdioceses.
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Construction is roughly thirty in-game years at the default rate - a lifetime in CK3 terms, or even potentially a multi-generational endeavour - and is funded by the holding Archbishop and contributed to by anyone in the region who feels strongly enough about it: local lieges, the top liege, vassals, allies, the Head of Faith if he likes you. Once a Grand Cathedral is built, it is a piece of geography you cannot ignore. It also serves as a Domicile for the clergy holding it, and as such can be expanded upon over time.
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Cathedrals, and other Great Buildings designated as religious sites, can be turned into Holy Sites. This requires the Head of Faith to bless the site as such, and also demands it contain a holy relic of some kind.
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I'll save the proper Holy Sites diary for another week since it's still being iterated on, but the point I want to land today is that a Cathedral elevates the Archbishop who holds it. The occupant of a wealthy, well-built metropolitan See is someone the Pope listens to. The administrator of a poor See run out of an unconsecrated chapel with no relics is not. Most of the political weight that you, the player, eventually want an Archbishop of yours to throw around in council comes from making him the kind of man whose Cathedral is famous enough, leading to a larger flock of followers and pilgrims.
Cathedrals are costly to construct, and while patronage was a major source of that wealth, much of it falls on the Church to fund. So how does the Archbishop get his funding?
As we have mentioned previously, the new Ecclesiastical government type has access to a Treasury fueled by taxes (tithes) collected by local Bishops, which flows up through the Church hierarchy to be used to promote the faith. This is driven by the Ecclesiastical Lease, which is the contract under which Christian temple holdings are leased to clergy. In addition to gold being funneled up through the vassal-realm priest structure as usual, we now also get a slice of money that flows through the organization through the treasury system; Bishops to Archbishops, Archbishops to Pope, typically.
Of course, a character can be both an Archbishop and the Court Chaplain of a King or Emperor. This gives them two sources of income, one gold-based and one treasury-based. It also gives the King in question a good reason to ensure their Court Chaplain is on their side and owes them lots of favors.
The Ecclesiastical Treasury can be used for a lot of things: title creation, holding construction, mercenary contracts, Holy Order endowments, calling Ecumenical Councils, contributing to a Cathedral somewhere far from Rome. It can also be squirreled away by a less-than-scrupulous metropolitan who needs a little cash infusion for throwing a grand feast. None of us are truly free from sin.
A powerful secular ruler with theocratic vassals can also violate the contract relationship. The Levy the Tithes Decision makes every clerical vassal in your realm pay you a one-shot tribute, at the cost of a large amount of Piety. We expect some kings to do this occasionally. We expect the Pope to react when they do.
So: wealthy Archbishops on a map that doesn't match anyone's realm, sending the Pope a monthly check on top of running their own buildings. What does any of that have to do with what they teach?
A Rite is the answer. Cyril and Methodius founded one. Any clergy character in the right circumstances can found one - a Patriarch, an Archbishop, the Head of a Holy Order (and, as we hinted last time and will detail next time, you have Puppets you can work through to do this as a secular Christian ruler.) The flow is similar to the old Create Faith UI: the founder picks Tenets to elevate or demote and Doctrines to swap. Each individual change carries its own Piety cost, modulated by the parent Faith's Fervor - a modest Rite that nudges one or two Permitted Tenets up to Core is cheap, an aggressive Rite that promotes an anathema teaching is not. The UI shows you a predicted Divergence number alongside each candidate change before you confirm. You (or your Puppet) should never be doing this blindly.
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The Tenets and Doctrines you get to pick from are the ones known to you (or your clergy puppet, as the case may be). You can't just make up a new theological idea you've never been exposed to before, after all. As per our last dev diary, this means Studying other faiths or learning about them in some other way, like travelling far and wide, inviting foreign guests, etcetera. A well-travelled Merchant family for example might well prove a wealth of foreign knowledge and might originate some very strange ideas if they are put in a position where they can found their own Rite. If you truly want to be a religious innovator, you can also aim to become a Herald through becoming a renowned theologian, which gives you access to Tenets nobody has even heard of before.
What the Slavic Rite actually did, when Methodius founded it, is concrete and embedded into the game. It promoted Anachoresis - the Eastern, contemplative, Desert-Fathers ideal - where the Roman Rite has Apostolic Succession, the institutional and hierarchical posture of top-down clergy authority. It kept Dulia alongside, because the Slavs were not theologically distant from Rome on the topic of saints. Yet it permits clerical marriage where the Roman Rite does not. This makes their clergy married men, embedded in their villages, whose moral and political incentives are different from those of a celibate Roman priest.
Counties follow Rites, not just Faiths. This makes them "convertible", at faster rates if the Rites are of the same Faith, and metropolitans (Archbishops, Patriarchs) will always do this within their Ecclesiastical Regions. A powerful Archbishop who founds a new Rite will quite rapidly ensure his followers adhere to the right liturgy.
Characters can also try to convince one another to switch to their Rite. This means neighboring metropolitans might try to convince one another to unify their teachings, which could make a divergent rite quite a power center over time. This increases the pressure on secular rulers to ensure their local metropolitan teaches what they prefer, and gives you a lever to try to promote your own rite across Christendom.
Every Tenet has a status in any given Rite - Core, Permitted, Known, or Prohibited - and each status carries a weight in the calculation of Divergence. Two Rites that both treat Apostolic Succession as Core agree. Two Rites where one has it Core and the other Prohibited disagree, sharply. Add up the per-Tenet contributions across the whole list of Tenets and Doctrines and you have a Divergence score from one Rite to its Faith's mainline.
At 50 points of Divergence and above, the Rite crosses into what the game flags as potentially heretical territory: a different bucket in the Church's politics, a distinct ragged border on the religious map, and - if a Pope is in a position and a mood to do something about it - the prospect of a Papal Bull naming the Rite a Heresy outright. The Rite's Head is then offered a chance to submit and rejoin the mainline. If they choose not to, they will become their own Faith, with the consequence of being labeled a heresy of its parent. While this means the total Divergence across the parent faith has decreased, which is good for the Pope, having a heretical faith to contend with is not typically good for a stable status quo.
Should you try to create a Rite with an immediate Divergence score above 100 - for example by suggesting all these teachings of the Roman Rite are fine and all, but we should have Lay Clergy and a Temporal Head of Faith, because that's what God's word truly intended - there's not a pressing need for a lead-up period, you'll just be declared a heretical faith outright. Good luck!
Most of what you've learned about today works the same regardless of if you're Christian or not. Most faiths have been split up by Rite, and some faiths have become Rites where we think it better reflects history. For example, Islam has been reshaped around the major historical branches and schools of law: Sunni, Shia, Kharijite, and the early community of Sadr al-Islam are now subdivided into Rites such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Ismaili, Imami, Zayidi, Ibadi, and others. This lets characters and provinces better reflect regional and historical differences, from North African Malikis to Persian Hanafis and the varied Shia communities of the medieval world. Some groups, such as Druze and Quranism, remain distinct faiths where that better fits their historical role.
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Obviously, Grand Cathedrals don't exist outside Christianity, but the ability to request your local Great Building be designated a Holy Site, and in general the new dynamic nature of Holy Sites, is universal.
Rites can be created, divergences punished, and heresies formed in other Faiths as well.
The key distinction between Christianity and other religions in By God Alone with respect to the above is the administrative institution of the Church, split up into regions based on ancient Roman provinces. Everything else that's Christian-only flows from this: the special titles and interactions of these characters, the way they automatically spread the influence of their Rite, the way the money flows through the organization, etcetera.
In the next dev diary for By God Alone, we're going to be talking about Puppets and Playable Theocracies, where we'll start to understand how you as a secular ruler can act through clergy without necessarily playing them (but also what to expect if you choose to do so). We will also get into the different types of clergy you could play: Prince-Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, and the Big Man himself.
In the meantime: may your Archbishop be loyal, your Cathedral construction not get stuck in development hell, and your Divergence be precisely high enough to be interesting without being embarrassing.
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to our first official dev diary for our upcoming expansion By God Alone! In our sneak preview, we gave you the grand tour from the mountaintop. This week, we're going to zoom in on one particular slice of the new expansion features, where your character starts having an actual relationship with their faith. This is the foundation upon which many of the features we'll discuss in later dev diaries are built.
We will look over our revisions to Tenets, Spiritual Fulfillment, Personal Tenets, and the new Study Faith scheme. Along the way, I'll walk you through the reworked Faith UI, which is where most of this comes together. As always, everything here is under active development and subject to change, and we'll be reading your feedback carefully. Let's dig in!
The one-liner in our last diary was that the right to rule flows from God, which is true for the expansion overall. This week's catchphrase is more personal: your faith is something you practice, not something you have.
In live CK3, religion is essentially a label with a handful of modifiers and restrictions hanging off it. You inherit your religious doctrines and core tenets at birth, and unless you convert or found a new Faith outright, your spiritual life is a static block of stats that never changes. What we want to replace that with is something that behaves a lot more like the real thing - a daily practice with personal convictions, moral tension, and plenty of room to drift over the course of a lifetime.
Imagine a newly-minted archbishop who adopts Scholasticism and starts nudging the Tenets of his Rite, year by year, until the theology of an entire region has quietly drifted toward something his grandfather would not have recognized. Or a Lustful, Greedy duke who nevertheless drags himself through decades of fasting and self-denial because he knows, on some level, that his predilections are going to earn him nothing but eternal anguish in the end. Or a count who quietly practices a forbidden teaching and lives in daily terror of his local Archbishop. These are the kinds of stories we want the religion system to naturally produce.
To make any of this work, we have to start with Tenets, the building blocks of every faith's identity. We're doing a comprehensive pass on them, with over two dozen new ones coming with By God Alone, targeting primarily the various Christian traditions. We're talking about things like Peace of God, Apostolic Succession, Transubstantiation, Hesychasm, Scholasticism, Simony, and Mortification of the Flesh.
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Every Tenet now has two distinct effects: a faith-wide effect applied to followers of the Faith (actually Rite, but more on that next time) when the Tenet is being actively promoted (this is the old behavior, mostly preserved), and a personal effect applied only to characters who adopt the Tenet as a personal conviction.
As a concrete example, picking Peace of God as a personal tenet lowers your knight limit (you're not supposed to be keeping a huge martial retinue if you're really serious about this) but gives you cheaper ally calls and sturdier alliances - the politics of the reluctant warrior. Adopting Transubstantiation unlocks extra social benefits from feasts. Dulia lets you select a patron saint of your own. Ora et Labora gives you the Gardener trait. Each personal tenet is a small vow with an impact both on how you play and your Spiritual Fulfillment.
Tenets also now have a status within a faith: Core, Permitted, Prohibited, or just Known. If a Tenet is not known the faith is genuinely unaware that a Tenet exists, and therefore can neither teach it nor forbid it. This status also exists on characters, so you can "know" something (and even adopt it as a personal tenet!) even if your faith doesn't. Tenets become Known to the faith via characters and their actions; for example, by an Archbishop founding a new divergent Rite and actively preaching a tenet, or someone bringing up a foreign practice they learned about in an Ecumenical Council. Once a Tenet is Known, they can be promoted to Permitted, Prohibited, or Core through Ecumenical Councils or by the Head of Faith declaring them such (in Catholicism, via a Papal Bull).
Adopting Permitted and Core Tenets as your character's core conviction is safe. Adopting one Known to you but not to your Faith is trickier, since it could be declared anathema at any time if the Church finds out. Prohibited tenets must be practiced in secret - and anyone who catches you at it walks away with a very juicy blackmail Hook.
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While the new Tenets are limited to Christians, we are also going over old Tenets to ensure they all have personal effects and are appropriately balanced. Adopting personal tenets is not limited to Christians after all, and neither is…
Spiritual Fulfillment is a new character metric, running from -100 to +100, that tracks how closely the life you actually live matches the life your faith asks you to lead, and how this impacts your spiritual well-being. It is entirely internal: other characters cannot intrinsically intuit how you're faring on your spiritual journey - unless you tell them of course.
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Here I want to take a second to correct something I wrote last time: "Think of it as the spiritual counterpart to Stress, except instead of measuring how close you are to a mental breakdown, it measures how close you are to either sainthood or damnation." That is not entirely accurate, so to be extra precise: it measures how close you feel you are to being blessed in the Lord versus being slated for eternal damnation - or, in another belief system, your karmic balance, or how in tune you are to the Great Spirit. Naturally, this inner spiritual turmoil rubs off on how you behave towards people around you as well to some degree, but it is not something others judge you for - any penance necessary is all yours to administer upon yourself. This in turn has an effect on Stress, as well as other conditions, described below.
This is in contrast to Piety, which measures how much the rest of your faith respects you as a figure of religious standing. You could very well choose an event option that yields Piety for your external display while dropping your Spiritual Fulfillment because it doesn't correspond with what your Faith (or, more precisely, your chosen Rite) believes to be right living. More commonly, an option that adds Stress because it conflicts with your Traits, but also adds Spiritual Fulfillment because it's the virtuous thing to do.
For Christian characters, Fulfillment steps through seven named tiers, each with its own unlocks. At the very bottom is Doomed (-95 and below), where stress gain is cranked up substantially but the gloves are also off: murder schemes do not generate stress, hostile schemes against clergy are similarly worry-free, and you can fabricate hooks on your own Court Chaplain. The worst place to be spiritually, but in some ways the most liberating place politically. Above that sits Forsaken (-65), which still gives you free rein to plot against your clergy, but eases off the stress-gain multiplier. Troubled (-30) retains only the Chaplain-hook permission - you're still sinning, but now you're noticing. Penitent (0) is the neutral midpoint, with nothing unlocked and nothing penalized; you're at peace with yourself, if not with God. Absolved (+30) starts charging you extra Fulfillment for hostile schemes against clergy and lets you run Befriend on your Chaplain. Settled (+65) boosts your stress drain, extends Befriend to your Head of Rite, and opens up the new Act of Devotion decision. And finally, at In Grace (+95), you get the full kit: further improved stress reduction, and access to the Mentor in Spiritual Fulfillment decision which lets you guide other characters through their own spiritual journeys.
What we're hoping this produces is exactly the kind of dilemma we've been talking about. A Generous, Pious ruler who climbs to In Grace feels great and has tools other characters don't, but has also made it costlier to scheme against the Church. A Doomed or Forsaken ruler has more levers to pull and stronger nerves for pulling them, but suffer more for going against their nature. Low Fulfillment isn't a failure state - it's just a different playstyle, and depending on your character's personality it might even be the more coherent one.
Non-Christian faiths use a simpler three-tier fallback that swings Stress gain one way or the other but doesn't unlock bespoke content.
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So how does Fulfillment actually move? Three ways: your Personal Faith (the specific set of Tenets you've chosen to champion), certain religious actions like going on Pilgrimages and taking Confessions, and the choices you make in events.
Each personal adoption pushes your Fulfillment up or down depending on how well it aligns with your personality traits, and Tenets that reward a Virtue you actually have are weighted twice as heavily. A Generous character adopting Philanthropia gets a big positive swing. A Lustful character adopting Mortification of the Flesh is choosing the virtuous path in spite of their sinful nature, and the system is sympathetic to that - the Stress is real, but so is the Fulfillment. Event options that match the Virtues or Sins of a relevant Tenet of your Rite come with their own small Fulfillment swings, up or down, depending on whether you lived up to the vow in the moment. In addition to all the new interactions with the Church, this is what permits you to actually practice your faith throughout each character's lifetime.
The cost of revoking one of these vows you've made depends on what you're overriding. Dropping a Permitted Tenet for another one comes with a cost, because your Church is fine with both and you're just making a legitimate choice. Dropping a Core or Prohibited Tenet costs Stress instead, because you're going against the grain of either the institution or your own conscience.
Your personal convictions also have a quiet way of leaking out into the world. A Tenet you practice openly - what isn't Prohibited in your Faith - becomes available to close family automatically, and may also spread to members of your court and other relations you have. If they like what they see they may even adopt it themselves. AI characters are also more likely to start new Rites (again with these Rites - next time, I promise) incorporating convictions they hold dear. The personal and the institutional are never fully walled off from each other, which is the whole point.
The other big way to change your personal faith is, of course, to learn someone else's. Study Faith is a new Learning-based scheme, targeted at another character whose Faith isn't yours. Each phase takes some amount of time, with success chance driven by your Learning skill, Piety, and the usual roster of traits and perks you'd expect (Theologian, Erudite, Mystic, Scholar, Open-Minded, plus the Intellect trio).
While the scheme is running, a stream of events colors the experience. For example, a young heir picks up the material unreasonably fast; a court tutor spots what you're up to and offers to help; a priest of your own faith challenges you to a public disputation (you can duel him instead if you'd rather not argue); a rival sabotages your notes; the target turns out to be a closet non-believer, or worse, a practitioner of some ancient rite hiding in plain sight. Each of these nudges your progress one way or the other and, more importantly, gives the study phase its own narrative texture.
On completion of a phase, Study Faith does one of three things depending on how you finish and what's available. You might learn Tenets, such that those practiced by the target's Rite (sigh) becomes Known to you personally. You might also learn Doctrines, typically a prerequisite for the more structural changes you might want to make later on. Or you might choose to convert spontaneously, an option offered at the end of a successful study. There is no up-front Piety cost to convert - instead how smooth the transition feels depends on how much of the target's faith you've already absorbed. The more of its Core and Permitted Tenets you know, and the more of its Doctrines you already practice, the gentler the landing in terms of Piety and Levels of Devotion lost in the process. It's easier to convert to a Faith that's similar-enough to your previous one, after all.
Study Faith replaces the previous conversion path. You can still be subject to demands to convert by your liege, demand others convert, or convert in response to being Holy Warred, but if they choose to do so, they will go through the new system and suffer consequences for it depending on how well they can pick up the new teachings. You may even counter-offer with a demand to learn more about it first.
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Hello! This is Ellie. It’s been a while. Last time we spoke, I want to recall updating you all on my recent sojourn into the Lost Realms. While I don’t have any further updates to share on the matter, I will still caution you all against entering into any bargains with any fae creatures, no matter how honeyed their words may be. This is especially true during the approaching time of the summer solstice, during which, as we all know, the gauntlet separating this world from the ones beyond grows weaker.
For those of you who are unacquainted with me and my work, I ply my trade in the mysterious and often dangerous realm of User Experience. I’m a UX Designer on CK3, and I’ve been hard at work making sure that we’re delivering the ~experience~ that we all want to play. One thing we’re doing, as you might have guessed, is redesigning the Faith View. We’ll probably show more of this later, but for now I wanted to highlight Personal Faith specifically!
Your Personal Faith consists of a couple of elements. First and foremost, we have the Spiritual Fulfillment bar! This tracks how, well... spiritually fulfilled you are. We just talked about it. Internally, we called this the sin-o-meter for a really long time. I think that name still has a certain charm to it. Anyway, there’s also some more stuff in here, like the personal tenets you subscribe to, as well as which Tenets and Doctrines you’ve learned about.
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The above is a screenshot of a mockup of how we want it to look! Here’s what it actually looks like in-game right now.
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As you can see, we still have some ways to go, but all the bones are there! The little numbers indicate how much Spiritual Fulfillment you’d gain by adopting that specific Tenet as a Personal Tenet. Your Faith might also have opinions about which Tenets you’re allowed to practice, and which ones might be considered heretical...
That’s it from me! I know you might be curious to see the redesigned Faith View, but it’s still cooking. We’re really excited about how it’s shaping up, and we hope you’ll like it. Anyway, see you later, gamers!
Hail and well met pilgrims, this is TheFrankeleyn. I know you all, but you’re yet to make my acquaintance. I am a designer on CK3 and would like to tell you about our work on Last Rites. Last Rites is a Decision you can take to put your soul in order while on death’s door. This was a high-stakes affair in our period, and many a monarch worked hard to ‘die well’. Just think, much of the stakes of Hamlet are in relation to when and how people die, have they ‘had their shriving time’ or were they ‘Cut off, even in the blossoms of their sin, Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled, No reck’ning made, but sent to their account with all their imperfections on their head.’
This decision, and its ensuing event chain, will allow you to confess your sins, be anointed by a priest, take the eucharist, and then provide the opportunity to donate funds or lease lands to a Holy Order or the Church. This will aid in your being remembered well, standing your heir in good stead. Mechanically this translates to your heir getting delicious modifiers, based on the institution you supported, for the early years of their reign.
The event chain will also reflect the likely cause of your imminent death, your believed proximity to salvation or damnation based on your level of spiritual fulfillment, and who sees fit to be at your bedside to send you across the threshold. Are you surrounded by loved ones and ministering angels, or has your life of sin conjured up visions of demons there to claim your soul for a bath in hellfire?
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Next week we'll dig into Rites proper (yes!) - how they spread along Ecclesiastical Title borders, how Divergence accumulates, and what it takes to turn a Rite into a full-blown heresy. If today's diary was about the view from inside one character's head, next week's is about the view from orbit.
As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Until then!
Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.
Hello everyone! We're pushing a small hotfix update today to tackle some outstanding issues with the 1.19 "Scribe" Update that was released on Monday. Check the changelog below for more information.
Fixed an issue causing out-of-sync errors in cross-platform multiplayer.
Fixed an issue causing certain trait-related events (such as Lunatic and Depressed) to fire too frequently.
Resolved an issue with some High Medieval Attire clothing not displaying correctly when using the color picker.
Fixed a typo in the Sword of Japan Steam achievement description.
Fixed an issue where UI elements could go out of bounds in the Story Cycle panel.
The Court Visuals UI panel is now fixed in place and can no longer be moved.
Minor French localization fixes.
Hello there,
Today I have the honor of telling you a little bit about what is coming in this year’s major expansion, Silk & Silver. I talked a little bit about it in the announcement video, but this is the moment to put it all out here in a bit more detail for your enjoyment. Strap in, because we have a whole lot of different things to go through!
Unlike this beautiful illustration we got from one of our artists, there will be a number of unfinished things pictured in this thread, as the expansion is still in the middle of its development. Keep that in mind as you read through the dev diary.
In the High Middle Ages, Flanders imported high-quality wool from England and transformed it into fine clothing sought after across Europe. Silk came from the Far East through the Silk Roads. You saw the rise of numerous republics and free cities, signaling the emergence of a new class. The burghers, the merchants, not people who had the right background or dynastic blood, but the ones who knew how to make money and use it well.
For Silk & Silver, we wanted to really showcase the period's growth, as it was, in many ways, a very transformative time in history. Small villages and hamlets would become flourishing cities, and already notable cities would grow into historical metropolises. From the 11th to the 14th centuries, Paris grew from 20,000 to 30,000 people to over 200,000, and we want this to be something one could experience in the game in some capacity.
So what were our goals going into this expansion?
Rework the economy of the entire game
Make trade, merchants, and republics an integral part of the economic simulation of the game
Distinguish between different cities and areas of the map, e.g., Paris is not the same as any other French city
Make the map visualize the growth and change of the world over time
These are the main pillars of this DLC and the accompanying patch:
Merchants
Republics
Trade
Economy Rework
Before we look at anything else, we will start by taking a look at trade. As an entirely new feature that connects everything else in the expansion, it’s good to get everyone on the same page with what it is and what it isn’t, before we move on to the other features.
Trade is a new feature that allows merchants and republics to move trade goods around the world to meet demand in different markets. At its core, it is about finding areas that produce a trade good and supplying it to areas that need it. It will primarily be done by mercantile governments (merchants & republics), but landed rulers may be able to move goods within their lands to a lesser extent.
Every duchy in the world counts as its own separate market, and every province will have a new set of buildings (this will be discussed later) that will produce or require trade goods for its market, meaning we have just over 900 separate markets in the world of CK3 come Silk & Silver. For trade goods produced within a market, they will be available for local consumption before they are available for purchase by foreign traders.
As for trade goods, they are special goods created in provinces across the whole world. You will build farms, mines, or workshops that will create, grow, or mine different types of trade goods that can, in turn, be used or repurposed in other buildings. Every county now has a new type of slot focused on crafting/making these trade goods, which we call the “resource district” (more about districts later).
I won’t give you a full list of all our new trade goods right now, but you can see a selection below (we have just short of 50 trade goods in total).
These trade goods will then, in turn, be consumed by new “building needs”. A need is effectively an optional modifier on a building that will only be active if it is regularly supplied with the trade good (or goods) it needs. For example, a fishing hut may produce more fish if it is regularly supplied with salt, and a port may produce more taxes if it is supplied with wood for its ships. For landed rulers, this means trade goods will be necessary to make the most of their lands, whereas for mercantile rulers, it means an opportunity to profit from bringing goods over.
When establishing a trade route, you have a fair number of limitations that decide what you can do with a trade route:
Number of trade goods on the route
Number of markets on the route
Length of the route
How many goods can be moved on the route in total
How competitive the route is
As a newly minted merchant setting up your first trade route, you are fairly limited in both scope and potential for what you can do with your trade route. You will find some key goods you can work with in your vicinity, and then trade relatively close by (think up to a couple of markets away at most).
At first, it will be a small trickle of gold that comes in regularly as you are still finding your footing, before your trade company and family become better known for your mercantile endeavors. As you continue trading a specific trade good, your family will slowly become better at handling it and will gain some boons for that trade route, as well as gain experience with that good in general (improving the sell price for that good and other small boons).
As your company and family continue to grow their power and prestige, they will slowly be able to dominate the trade of specific trade goods and specific areas, gaining monopolies and squeezing out the competition.
In the expansion, we have two new playable government forms, the republics and the merchants. The two of them share some similarities, as both are based on the trade system in some ways, but they also have distinct differences. To make it simple, the merchants are landless, whereas the republic and its patricians are focused on the competition for a landed title (the republic city).
They both focus on building their family-owned company and share a domicile. For the domicile this time around, it is a big focus of ours to make it really feel like you are settled in a city and part of it, rather than creating your own little villa area like the administrative government types do. It is a key component in the progression of the mercantile governments, as they can improve their trade capabilities with many of their domicile buildings.
The new merchant government form is inspired by the many important mercantile families that existed throughout the medieval world, and these were not necessarily tied to a specific piece of land or state. Think of the Jewish families in Cairo that traded goods far and wide, or the trade guilds of southern India.
While as a merchant, you do not own land, unlike your republic peers, you are still situated in and around a city. You are a landless character with a domicile in your home city and the local ruler as your patron. It will be possible to change the location of your domicile, but it is not supposed to be a regular occurrence, as it is going to be the heart of your little budding trade empire. All trade routes you establish as a merchant will use the domicile location as their starting point.
One thing to mention is that merchants are essential for the new trade system to work. In many ways, they are the roots of the new system that connects everything in the world. They are the main caretakers and providers who fulfill needs across all markets. In other words, they are important enough for landed rulers to engage with at times to ensure that their provinces are actually getting the goods they need, and they give merchants some power in relation to their landed patrons.
Merchants have a gameplay loop focused on making gold, which can be turned into prestige. Prestige, in turn, will open up opportunities for improving how much gold you can make. As merchants, similar to their landless adventure peers, aren’t blue-blooded, they have a bit of a harder time making prestige than regular landed rulers, and they need it to be taken seriously if they are to engage with the nobility for trade deals and the like.
In their day-to-day, the merchants have a couple of things to focus on. They have new “trade opportunity” contracts they can engage with, which will allow them to oversee their trade routes, temporarily improve their trade capability, and gain luxury artifacts to add to their domicile.
The merchant starts off as a small-time trader in their local area, and as they improve their trade capabilities, they will have the opportunity to increase their Company Size, a set of laws that reflect how well-known your trade company is worldwide. You go from being an unknown to becoming a prominent merchant family, something akin to the famous banking families of Italy and the HRE of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
In addition, the merchant companies offer several purposes to choose from, so you can decide which kind of interactions you excel at and what kind of focus you want. You can be a creditor, a war profiteer, or perhaps a caravaneer who has an easier time engaging in longer trade routes. These exist for the company as a whole, but also as a trait for merchant characters to improve over time, if they so wish.
And I am not here to tell you how to spend your mercantile wealth, be that investing it into domicile artifacts, controlling the markets, bending the local rulers to your will, or investing it in the land you live in and becoming a republic. Say, speaking of republics…
The republics of Silk & Silver are inspired by their namesakes from the Middle Ages, but unlike Crusader Kings 2, we are not limiting ourselves only to the maritime republics of Genoa, Venice, Amalfi, and Pisa. We are going for the whole spectrum, from the many republics of Italy to the free cities of the Holy Roman Empire to the Hanseatic League in the Baltic Sea. The goal is to serve you no matter where you are: in Florence, Venice, or even in the Commune of Rome.
The people of the republic are all focused on holding the city in which they are settled, and they have regular elections to determine just that. We have the doges and podestas who hold temporary leadership titles, and the patricians who vie for power and authority beneath them.
Whereas merchants are fulfilling needs across all markets, republics tend to create a small nucleus of trade focused around their capital, which stretches outwards. And as the republic grows stronger, this trade power becomes larger and larger. In addition, since republican rulers also have land, they can create synergies between what they want to trade and what is happening in the republic at any given time.
For the republics, we have added a new system we call “assembly”, which is a law-focused voting mechanic. Basically, it allows anyone in the republic to propose laws for a vote, and then gives every member of the assembly time to vote. And this includes laws on who is even allowed to vote in the assembly in the first place, be that all the patricians, patricians and city vassals, or perhaps just your council.
For us, the goal was to simulate a real-life situation in which many of these republics originally started as quite communal and often ended up as signorias, effectively ruled by a single lord. So you will see the republics start out with many laws that favor all the patricians, but you will have opportunities to limit your opponents over time.
Unlike their landless peers, the people of the republic have access to trade leagues and trade posts. Trade posts will be small districts that can be built in other people’s lands, where you can effectively impact your ability to trade in that province, and you can nudge things you are interested in. They are inspired by the factories and the kontors of the late Middle Ages, basically.
Trade leagues, on the other hand, are effectively confederations of republics that come together to form a stronger trade group and protect one another. Think the Hanseatic League or the Swiss Confederation. They protect one another and improve the trade capabilities of all league members. Think of the Hanseatic cities coming together to form a strong trade bloc that can effectively bully all of Scandinavia into submission.
This part of the dev diary will most likely be the most immediately visible thing for anyone who opens the game after we release this DLC and its accompanying patch. All of the changes discussed in this section of the dev diary will be coming free with the patch, as they are essential for the rebalancing of the game’s economy.
Before anything else, we should discuss buildings and districts. I have already mentioned districts a couple of times throughout the dev diary, so it is time for a clarification. We often found it weird that, as a ruler, you would build a brewery or a windmill. It always felt a bit underwhelming, and with few building slots, it was hard to dig deeper into the system, as there wasn’t a lot of room to add anything.
As part of our rework, we have removed every single regular building in the game (note, we have mostly kept all the special buildings that existed, but they will all see tweaks to their effects). Instead of having building slots, we will now have district slots instead, with districts in them. A district is effectively a thematic folder for buildings, where you will build a district (which will have some effects by itself), and then you will be able to build buildings within the district afterward. Instead of building an e.g., a smithy, you will be able to build a district for artisans that you can then fill with different buildings like a smithy.
The goal is that a district is an investment, whereas the buildings are more easily switched and cheaper to replace if need be, and they will be flavorful and thematic. So you will see districts focused on the military, markets, urban life, or even on keeping the city small so it can remain an effective rural location. Speaking of size…
Development was always meant to symbolize both how wealthy an area is and how many people live there. It could lead to some weird results, where one would be conflated with the other, and vice versa. So, for Silk & Silver, we are splitting development into two: “Settlement Size” and “Prosperity”.
Prosperity is a measure of how rich and prosperous a county is, and it will affect how likely traders are to drop by (as they will make more money there), as well as multiplying the amount of tax obtained from the county.
Settlement Size is a measure of how many people live in the city in the barony (a county capital will differ from other holdings, for example). We will use a 1-10 scale to track size in a somewhat abstract way. Size will directly affect how many district slots are available in the province, so you will, for example, see a whole lot more districts in Constantinople than you would in, e.g., the capital of Sweden. But in turn, we have added new rural districts that will benefit from smaller sizes, while counties with larger settlements face challenges to both county control and popular opinion within the county.
County control will no longer always max out at 100, as it used to before. We will now have a new baseline system, where different things will add to the baseline control you can have, to showcase that different counties and districts work differently.
Your capital will always have relatively high control, as this is where you are situated and live, but your other titles will need a bit of… encouragement to actually pay taxes and the like. You will be able to gain control from stationing Men-at-Arms, building castles and fortifications in the area, from different eras, and most likely, some more districts will give bonuses to control as well. Since this system works a bit like, e.g., Court Grandeur, you can gain effects that temporarily increase it beyond the baseline. For example, let us say your current baseline is 40; that is now the number control will always trickle towards. Then you can gain effects that could bump up your current control to 60 or 80, but it would then trickle down towards 40 again, as that is only a temporary boon to the area.
The goal is that it will take a bit more investment to ensure that a county is worthwhile conquering, and that holding more land in itself is not useful if the people who live there aren’t incentivized to give you any taxes.
For Popular Opinion, we are using the same baseline changes we have for control, but instead, it is now a bar from -100 to 100. Similarly to control, it means you can now gain a temporary popular opinion that will bump the current opinion up or down, but it will trickle back towards what the popular opinion is at any given time.
Unlike before, there will now also be positive effects from having a positive level of popular support. Higher levels of popular opinion will have a direct effect on control in an area, which means that you will, in turn, gain more from the county as a whole.
Below is an early mock-up of how we plan to make the county view going forward.
All of the things mentioned above will, of course, have a large impact on the economy. In addition to these sweeping changes, we will also take a look at every single part of the game where we interact with the economy in the game. Meaning that we will go over all the costs and all gold gains in the game.
The goal is to significantly slow the snowballing economy in the game and make the player and AI economies more in line, so it is not as easy to overpower all your neighbors. As part of this rebalancing effort, we are exploring splitting modifiers. Instead of getting a general income bonus, you may gain “maritime income” bonuses instead. Instead of gaining a bonus to building speed in general, you would get a bonus to military district building speed instead, etc. Our goal is to minimize the places where we have been very liberal in handing out modifiers to players before, and to flavorize them into smaller boons instead.
The goal and hope are that, with more interesting levers to pull, we can do more interesting things with less, and in turn affect the snowball effect across the game with plenty of tweaks all over.
As a fun little side note, here’s a picture from one of our whiteboard sessions, trying to make a good visual map of what affects what. I am sorry for our terrible handwriting. But not sorry enough not to share the picture. Note that these are, of course, not the only things interacting with these different values, but it is rather about how these specific values interact with each other.
While it is not the main focus of the DLC, we also want to take the opportunity to add some flavor to the Italian region. It is home to many historical republics and at the heart of the mercantile transformation I described earlier in the diary.
The Guelphs & Ghibellines conflict was a conflict between the Kaiser and his supporters on one side, and the Pope and his supporters on the other. It is related to the investiture crisis, but it also spun into a bit of a local conflict in Italy on its own about how much power the Kaiser should have over the area. This latter bit is what we are focused on for Silk & Silver.
We are representing the conflict through one (kinda two) new situations situated around Northern Italy. At the 1066 start date, it hasn’t properly started yet, so you have a prelude situation that will slowly grow into the proper one, whereas in 1178, it is already in full swing.
I am not going to go too deep into how it works just yet, so here’s a picture for now.
Just so they are mentioned, we are also looking into some other pieces of content for Italy in this DLC.
A new Carnival activity
Redrawing the Italian map (welcome back, Amalfi)
Looking into Italian cultures cultural traditions, and historical setup
A work-in-progress picture for the carnival.
Now, I want to be clear that Italy is one of the things we are looking at in the DLC, but unlike All Under Heaven, which focused solely on fleshing out regional flavor and mechanics, it is not a main focus here.
This update will be focused quite a bit on mechanics, on trade, and in doing so will also touch Italy, but this is not for Italy what All Under Heaven was for East Asia, and it is also not what Roads to Power was for Byzantium (where the main government mechanics were all centered on one empire).
Since this will be a topic both asked about and discussed, if we do not bring it up ourselves, I will rip off this band-aid sooner rather than later. There will be no naval warfare or naval battles in this DLC. We know this is a topic people care about and relate to the republics strongly, but between a whole lot of balancing and a whole lot of new systems that we are adding to the game, we chose not to spend time and energy on trying to pack in another large feature that we would not be able to give it enough love and time to do well.
To put it lightly, even the most minimal of minimum viable product implementations of naval warfare would blow our schedule out of water, and there are a lot of other changes in the expansion that carry a fair amount of risk, which we want to make sure can do as well as possible.
There will be trading across the water, but we will not engage in naval warfare.
Thank you for taking the time to read everything. I know we have covered a fair amount of topics, and not necessarily in great detail. Moving forward, we will alternate dev diaries for By God Alone and Silk & Silver, so you’ll hear more from us in the Silk & Silver team in a couple of weeks. We hope you are as excited about this expansion as we are about bringing it to life. Please leave comments and questions below, and I will do my best to answer them. Though I want to stress that we won’t go into detail on everything quite yet, even in the responses, as there’s still a lot of work left to do.
Hello everyone! Today we're releasing our 1.19 "Scribe" Update. This update includes support for Chapter V content, as well as a litany of bug fixes and new features for all Crusader Kings III owners.
Check the changelog below for more details!
Added the Chapter V unlock bonus: Symbols of Authority.
Added new Byzantine and Western cosmetics to the Barbershop as part of the Chapter V preorder bonus, including:
Crown of The Baptist for Western Rulers
The Palatine Crown for Western Rulers Early Crispinette for Western Rulers
Crown of Catherine (of Bulgaria) for Byzantine Rulers
Crown of Constantine for Byzantine Rulers
Hairstyle & beard based on a sculpture of John the Baptist for Western and Byzantine Rulers
The ‘Situations’ tab now shows personal character-bound Stories, such as having a Pet Dog or being a Conqueror, with a name, icon, and modular elements ‘Stories’ is a new concept to make existing special event chains and similar content more visible
Most existing special event chains (story cycles) have been updated to use this new system, including but not limited to: All kinds of pets (dogs, cats, horses, eagles), unique event chains (doppelganger, imaginary friend, etc.), special character stories (Hasan-i-Sabah, Wallada, El Cid), and decision-triggered chains (Book Translations, Commissioning Epics).
Decisions associated with a Story are now shown directly in the Story interface, for example ‘Pet Dog’. Associated character modifiers are also shown there.
Stories can have a variety of modular elements, for example tracked characters, titles, and various kinds of progress bars
Older characters can now get new age-related ailments depending on factors such as lifestyle or genetics. These traits gradually get worse over time, with active mitigations the player can take.
Added new tiered Elder Traits: "Faltering Heart", "Fragile Bones", "Clouded Eyes", and "Withering Mind"
Reworked "Infirm" into a tiered Elder Trait
Added new aging-related events tied to Elder Traits and aging characters
Added a new Infirm-style animation which will appear in the character view if a character has a sufficient level of Infirm, Fragile Bones, or Faltering Heart
Added a game rule to choose between the new Elder Traits system and the older Infirm-only aging model
Added a setting to disable the map table for better rendering performance
Added a much requested color picker for clothes to the Barbershop
Added up to 16 customizable colors for clothes
Fixed an issue where you could accidentally paint your horses pink
Improved the color picker so it won't just make the color more saturated because it felt like it
Improved travel planning with quick-edit support
Added travel-planner quick-edit mode while holding shift, so you can add/remove waypoints quickly by clicking the left/right mouse button on the map
Made Points of Interest map icons clickable in the travel planner for adding waypoints
Added Event Nameplates, inspired by a popular mod by FUN (with contribution from Starving)
Event Nameplates show the name of the character, relationship and opinion to help you quickly see who they are
Moved character tooltips to Nameplates, when they are shown, to not cover portraits
Added a setting to hide Event Nameplates
Added Knight Permissions to manage who can serve as you knight, inspired by another popular mod created by Lrds (with contributions from Serp and Lord DGP)
Added controls to set minimum prowess limit for knights
Added filters to forbid certain characters from serving as knights, such as your heir or councillors
Made it so Acclaimed knights or those you forced to serve ignore the permissions, so you won't forbid them by accident
Added clearer explanations for knight eligibility and relevant cultural modifiers
Added the ability for players to customize their court visuals through a dedicated “Court Visuals”-tab in the Royal Court
Added a new Royal Court type to the game for Chinese culture
"Dragon's Mandate" is available only when selected manually and does not appear naturally in the world
You can now spot an adventuring Henry in our 867, 1066 and 1178 start dates
Added a new unique special building, model and illustration representing Trosky Castle (Situated in Bezdez)
Added 19 music tracks from Kingdom Come: Deliverance II to the in-game music player
Battle 2
Field 2
Field 3
Jost Army
Kuttenberg 3
Kuttenberg Poor 1
Kuttenberg Surroundings
Kuttenberg Wealthy 1
Cannon Fired
Honor High
Enemy Army
Saint Barbara Theme
Semin Village 1
Skirmish 1
Suchdol Surroundings
Troskovice
Village 1
Village 2
Village 3
Added a new Ledger window for browsing key realm, character and world information
Added 9 Ledger pages: “Ongoing Wars”, “Artifacts”, “Characters”, “Houses and Dynasties”, “Holdings”, “Counties”, “Titles”, “Faiths and Religions” and “Cultures”
Added three tabs for the “Characters” page: richest, strongest and most famed characters
Added four tabs for the “Titles” page: duchies, kingdoms, empires and hegemonies
Added the ability to favorite items in the Ledger, so you can keep track of artifacts to steal or places to conquer
Added podiums for top items in the Ledger, to show off your achievement in climbing the ranks
Added many sorting options for all Ledger pages, for example: most pious characters, biggest houses, most renowned dynasties, most developed counties and cultures with most characters.
Added filters for most Ledger pages, including filtering by players, so it can be used as a leaderboard in multiplayer
Added war losses to the Ledger (and to war overview too, see below)
Added artifact interactions to the Ledger
Added building and holding interactions to the “Holdings” page. Yes, you can build from the Ledger!
Added many (many) existing values to items in the Ledger, to easily compare things
Added more information to the Ledger that wasn't displayed before, like artifact age or knights and prisoners of other characters
Added more total values, like soldiers of all rulers of a house, faith or culture
Added total taxes, levies and loot for titles
Added dominant culture and faith for titles and average values, like development across all their counties
Added new faith and religion metrics, like sinful and virtuous rulers, growth or decline due to conversions, total holy wars and holy sites
Added cultural metrics: growth due to promotion, total development and innovation progress
Added shortcuts to open and navigate the Ledger
Reworked Accolades into a more streamlined system, with a focus on removing tedium and adding more interesting choices
Removed the old primary and secondary Accolade Attribute structure, replaced with 1 starting Attribute and additional Attributes being unlockable
Reworked Accolade attributes to not only unlock based on the knight, but also on what the ruler has achieved
Added Accolade Attribute unlocking effects to battle events, activities, schemes, etc
Added a new Accolade Attribute selection flow with clearer UI and better invalid-choice handling
Restricted accolades to Dukes+ to make them more special
Removed manual Accolade Successor assignment with a guaranteed automatic successor based on the Accolade’s Squires property (either a suitable courtier, or generated successor if none can be found)
Added a Squires property on Accolades which modifies the traits and skills of new Acclaimed Knights upon succession
Squires property modifies stats of created character when succession fails to grab existing character as new knight
Added feed messages that improve the Accolade-related skills of Acclaimed Knights
Added feed messages that improve the Accolade-related skills of young courtiers, triggered by the Accolade having high Squires aptitude
Simplified Acclaimed Knight restrictions, especially when inheriting rather than founding an accolade - successors to Accolades do not actually need to satisfy all its original Attribute triggers
Removed Accolade deactivation as a separate state; Accolades now either exist or are retired
Improved how the UI communicates future Accolade ranks
Improved how the UI communicates available Accolade options
Prevented duplicate Accolade attributes from being stacked across your Acclaimed Knights
Added a confirmation window when retiring an Accolade
Improved Accolade inheritance rules across succession, preventing your accolades being replaced by inherited accolades
Improved Accolade ownership rules for governments
You can no longer have more Accolades than you have available knight capacity
Disabled Glory loss on succession in cases where your Acclaimed Knight died “honorably”, ex in battle or during a duel
Rebalanced Attribute bonuses
Removed era-based bonuses to Accolade MaA and removed unit size restrictions
Updated Accolade reminders, removing “you have no successor” and adding “you have an Attribute unlock you haven’t spent”
Made Acclaimed Knights less likely to die in battle and significantly less likely to be captured (because it makes Accolade succession weird)
Added new Accolade art and icons
Updated the "Relocate De Jure Capital" decision to support Hegemony-tier titles
Added the Korean cultural tradition "Fortress Mastery", available to Korean cultures and granted to Goryeo, Silla, and Goguryeo when All Under Heaven is active
Updated the "Form Portugal" decision to require control of its target duchies rather than directly holding all four titles
Added "Create Cossack Kingdom" decisions for nomads and ex-adventurer nomads
Added a new "Overrun Duchy" casus belli for duke-tier nomads
Weak AI nomads can now collapse into herders, helping repopulate the steppe
"Humiliation" can now break off non-capital border counties as independent herders
Updated AI use of "Overrun Kingdom" to favor more appropriate neighboring and historical migration targets
Limited culture and faith replacement when nomads move into conquered lands
Confederation members can use "Overrun Duchy" and leave their confederation on success
Expanded the former "Maim Co-Emperor" interaction into the broader "Remove Co-Ruler" interaction, with additional valid outcomes and stricter eligibility checks
Added a dedicated invasion Casus-Belli for the Son of Heaven to seize kingdoms within China
Chinese dynasties that take the throne peacefully or through civil war now generate more appropriate dynasty elements and colors, while restored dynasties keep their established identity
Ministers, their titles, and their domiciles now remain tied to the realm capital
Celestial rulers who rise from kingship now keep their former capital instead of being forced to move to the previous dynasty's de jure capital
Grand Campaigns now complete automatically if the entire target kingdom is already subject to the Huangdi
Added the ability to remain a landless adventurer after helping peasants win independence through the Fight Corruption contract
Reworked lethal Tournament events so characters have a chance to avoid death at the cost of wounds or disfigurement
Reforming a faith away from your old state faith as an independent ruler now updates the state faith automatically
Wanua rulers can now pay barter goods instead of gold for adventurer task contracts, this makes it easier to play as an adventurer in the area as more contract types are valid
Added Saxon Elective to relevant titles
Added a nickname line to the death screen
Added an informative toast when inheriting a Holy Order loan
Added a game concept explaining the Seize Peripheral Duchy Casus-Belli
Added title and title-holder flavorization for the new Phoenician Heritage unlocked by restoring the Carthaginian Empire
Added support for wards sent to university to gain a visible modifier and clearer interaction text
Added new flavorization for Han culture
Fixed Coronation courtesans so they now use the local faith and culture
Corrected character infection chance values
Dog-related events now only trigger when your character is available
Limited an intrigue event so it now only triggers for Murder and Abduct schemes
Fixed an event that could poach family members from the targeted ruler
Disabled an adopted-ward event that could trigger incorrectly
Corrected spouse council-task bonus values
"Too Much of a Good Thing" now correctly removes soulmate relationships as well
"A Servant of the Horned God" now properly reveals the secret and ends the witch conversion scheme
Changed the Albanian cultural tradition from "Hill Dwellers" to "Mountain Homes"
Rebalanced the chance of disease outbreak events
Made the "Random Black Death" game rule actually random
Corrected the names of “Rottenburg” and “der Laaber”
Fixed an incorrect event name in the “Passage of Arms” contract
"Seize the Moment" no longer grants claims to barons
The Pope will no longer refer to himself in the third person while granting himself a claim
Swapped the map positions of Hartlepool and Darlington
Renamed Pockington to Pocklington
"The Last Lesson" now correctly sets the elder relationship
"Addressing the Corruption" now properly assigns the new steward
Improved a bishop letter event so false accusations of incest are more clearly framed as fabricated
Removed a duplicate Nasir Khusraw
"A Journey to Adventure" now correctly plays when the player becomes landless
Updated Denise de Deols' 1178 setup and added her historical betrothal to Baldwin de Redvers
Fixed a bug where some combinations of Tenets would result in higher hostility than expected
Landless Diarchs now properly evaluate interactions using the AI frequency of the tier they are temporarily replacing
Granting titles to local nobles now respects the culture's gender laws
Fixed a bug where succession could leave you as your own tax collector
Children of parents from the same dynasty in male-dominated faiths now correctly use patronyms instead of matronyms
Improved the "Fort Level" concept wording to better explain which bonuses are applied
Factions at war are no longer invalidated when their first leader is imprisoned and now select a new leader from among the participants instead
If a faction is dissolved before its war ends, the defender now wins if their warscore is above the required threshold
Requesting or granting a court position via an interaction now always shows the correct aptitude in the list
Standardized aptitude bonus for Court Positions
Fixed decaying and growing opinions so they now update correctly when they only have a timed duration
Custom names can now be up to 40 characters long instead of 40 bytes, improving support for non-English languages using bigger UTF-8 characters
Notification and alert sounds no longer play when the GUI element is not visible
Fixed ambient audio from activity windows continuing to play forever after closing the window without selecting an option
Specialized court position names now resolve consistently from the employer side instead of sometimes using the employee perspective
War reparation payments now correctly enforce a positive minimum value for rulers and armies with no regular income
Fixed various issues with landless gameplay, UI clarity, historical setup, tooltips, travel logic, and nomad or Mandala interactions
Fixed an issue where Longboats could wrongly block the Plunder intent and cause heavy Prestige loss
Fixed several issues with adventurer contracts, imperial event duplication, acclamation scoring, missing UI text, scheme rewards, and House retirement rules
Fixed exploitable strategy of picking a travel option that adds a character only for the duration of one travel and employing them as any court position
Decisions that depend on a Head of Faith now properly check that the Head of Faith exists before they can be shown or used
Landless adventurers no longer lose Prestige for marrying characters below duchy rank
Fixed issues with adventurer contracts, duplicate Roman Empire events, acclamation scoring, missing text perspective, court-position exploits, Siphon Treasury rewards, and House retirement rules
Fixed Grand Tour AI so the "many vassals" logic now only counts relevant landed vassals
Court Tutors now send notifications to the correct character and no longer try to improve traits that are already maxed out
Added the correct cue track to fullscreen transitions when becoming landless
Characters can no longer become their own Tax Collector
Dynasty patronyms now apply correctly in male-dominated faiths
Improved phrasing for the concepts of Fort Level to clarify which bonuses are applied
Invalid faction wars now resolve correctly in the defender’s favor
Heisting a treasury now correctly removes the stolen gold from the target
Added a cooldown to the Claim Mandate of Heaven decision to prevent it from being taken repeatedly for duplicate rewards
Updated Faith and Religion GUI windows to a more modern standard
The Character Finder no longer closes when you choose a character interaction on a character
Extended the Marital Status Character Finder filter to show eligible, betrothed, and concubines
Added Rabbinism and Karaism as involved faiths in the Iberian Struggle
Fixed pronoun and animation issues in “A Poetic Life: An Exchange of Verses”
Any territory in the West Slavia Geographic Region that doesn't belong to a West-Slavic kingdom upon forming West Slavia will now be assigned to one (most commonly German duchies will be assigned to Polabia)
With the Extra Nomadic Region: Sahel rule on, players will no longer become nomadic if selecting a Daju-culture ruler
Fixed not being able to assign vassal directives if you have MORE than rank 5 legitimacy
Education lvl 4 and 5 will now properly add quality to created book artifacts
Corrected the spelling of 'Mandaeism’
"A Moment Alone" now only triggers for family members who are not your spouse
The events child_personality.7020 and child_personality.7010 now properly check if the child fulfills the 'is_available_child_allow_travel' trigger
Mandaeism now prohibits the drinking of alcohol
Fixed lvl 3 Iberian and Turkish mosques showing up as a fire temple
Bosnia is now also de jure shifted if uniting all slavs into Slavia
The AI will no longer be as inclined to host tours if they only have a lot of Baron-tier vassals
The first Activities Dynasty Legacy now only gives marriage acceptance for Grand Weddings, as advertised by the legacy
Fixed the Break with the Old Ways decision for Kuzarites to conform with the faith now having Chosen People by default
Female Spouses valid for the Abbasid clothes will no longer wear no headgear
When submitting to the Great Khan as a Confederation member, you will now leave the confederation
Fixed the tgp_portrait_liege_or_ceremonial_liege triggers making dead emperors wear the wrong clothing and headgear
Fixed an issue where dead holders of the Crysanthemum Throne wouldn't use the correct headgear
Restore the Pope in Rome and Hindustan decisions now do not have errors if the Head of Faith does not exist
Renamed 'Economical Archetype' to 'Economic Archetype'
Hegemonies now have a higher Grandeur expectation than Empires
The Chancellor option of stewardship_duty_special.2015 now requires you to have a chancellor employed
Removed the 30 development requirement from the Foster Enlightenment Oath, as it wasn't explained when taking it (and prevented early Universities from being founded)
Improved the Court Gardener aptitude bonus for the Garden building in Estates. The bonus now caps out at +30, increased from +15
Varangian Veterans have been limited to a max of 1 stack, similar to how House Guards work
Added a new game rule for natural disasters
Domain limit is no longer granted directly from Stewardship
Education traits now grant domain limit based on trait tier
Reduced the Architect tree's domain-limit bonus to 1
Redistributed domain-limit bonuses into the Patriarch, Theologian, Torturer, and Overseer trees
Reviewed various areas of the game where Events would spawn too frequently and/or liberally, with the intent of reducing the overall amount of events and make them more often be about characters you care about
Tightened up who counts as being of 'major interest': powerful vassals, councillors (except the realm priest), and concubines now count as minor interest
Added Betrothed, Soulmates, Best Friends, Blood Brothers, and Nemesis’ to major interest
Lowered the frequency of Travel events from 1/5 to 1/20
Fixed yearly event groups being set up incorrectly, resulting in most rulers getting specifically the ‘Reflections for the Future’ event as soon as it was off cooldown
Retired several event groups that fired independently of the random yearly events, they are now part of the same pool of events, reducing overall frequency and commonality of certain types of events (notably hostage/child/ward events, but also other types)
Adventurers can now pause further mercenary requests for five years through the negotiation event
AI letters for newly learned languages are now limited to characters who matter more to the player
The ‘A Snake at Court’ event will now only show an event if either of the characters becoming lovers is of major interest to you (the effects are applied regardless)
For the purposes of 'A Secret Exposed'-events, you will no longer be informed just because you happen to be the secret-havers liege, or an heir to one of their titles. You will be informed if you are their friend, lover, rival, or blood brother
Only activities that have a mechanical effect in their 'Travel Started' events will now show an event, the rest will be toasts (only Pilgrimages, Tours, Wandering Nobles activities, Debates, and Examinations will now have start travel events) Other activities, and any instance of generic travel, will instead show a toast with the destination barony listed
The child 'Coming of Age' events will now only trigger events when the child is your heir, your favorite child, or one of your three oldest living children (The rest will get a Feed Message)
When a vassal pays homage, you will now only get an extra event with the option to turn them away if they are a rival or potential rival, to reduce the amount of events overall. There was no real reason to turn them away anyway. When turning away a rival, the rival will now also gain stress.
Slightly reduced the amount of flavor events for Adventurers (from ~3/year to ~2/year)
Changed some of the events for natural disasters to be feed messages
Shortened the end phase for Coronations. Now the feast does not need to last 6 whole weeks.
Reduced the maximum waiting time for several activities, from 8 months to 5 months
Added scaled AI reluctance to invite Houses with many landed members into House Blocs
Removed the gold cost and prestige scaling from the "Rites of Passage" decision
Cancer is now more likely for characters with family history or elderly health traits
The Wet Nurse's "Instill Virtue" task now picks a single eligible courtier, better considers age and sexuality, and has slightly improved success odds
Relaxed triggers for ending the Iberian Struggle.It no longer requires you to be involved as long as you fulfill all other requirements of an ending to enact it.
Relaxed the requirements for ending the Iberian Struggle once all other ending conditions are met
Changed how the AI picks court languages.They now ignore evaluating rulers who do not speak their own court language, and half the score gained from rulers who do not speak their own culture’s Court Language.
Added a game rule to unlock all dynasty legacies for players or for everyone
Grudges are now created when a potential rival is 3-or-more ranks below you
Emperors and Kings now judge Tribute Missions more carefully based on religious and cultural distance
Hegemonies now have higher Grandeur expectations than Empires
Improved nomad targeting when using Overrun Kingdom casus belli, should be done only against realistic-feeling targets
Seljuk Alp Arslan now starts with additional Prestige in 1066, preventing him from starting with negative Prestige.
AI Mandala rulers are now less willing to convert Nomad and Herder tributaries to Mandala government.
Nomad and Herder tributaries are now less willing to use the decision to Assimilate to Mandala Rule.
Reduced the cooldown on tribute decisions.
Added War Losses
Added losses to the War Overview and War Results, tracking battle losses, attrition and character deaths that happened in battles or sieges
Added breakdown of battle losses by participants
Added breakdown of character deaths by killed knights, commanders and rulers and their close family
Updated the Outliner
Added the option to pin any titles and holdings to the Outliner
Improved pinned character layout
Made army entries smaller
Improved holding information
Added realm flags
Updated the Character window
Added a button to expand the full trait list in the character window
Moved most character-portrait buttons to hover states to reduce portrait clutter
Added a compact list of subjects with their soldiers
Added a compact list of subjects to the Realm window
Grouped compact subjects by powerful vassals, regular vassals, and tributaries
Added soldiers to the compact list
Added directives for the compact list, to easier find and manage eligible vassals
Added many many shortcuts and new buttons:
Hotkeyed all tabs in the game: Ctrl+number or Alt+number for sub-tabs
Hotkeyed armies in the outliner: Alt+number. Next army can also be selected with N.
Added Halt button for armies to easily stop their movement (hotkey H)
Added Next button (N) to cycle through your personal holdings
Hotkeyed holdings in the county view to Ctrl+number and buildings to Alt+number
Added Alt+S to open capital (can also right-click the Go To Capital button)
Added = to increase game speed, so you can use -= next to Backspace
Added Q to toggle Outliner and Alt+Q for pin buttons
Added shortcuts for the Barbershop: numbers for tabs, Z and X to change zoom, A/D or C/V to rotate the portrait, H to hide UI, Escape to close
Added number hotkeys to settings tabs, pause-menu buttons, and bookmark-screen navigation
Added Ctrl+Shift+F to dismiss all feed notifications
Added more hotkeys for hud elements, activity planning, lifestyles and various other places
Added event hotkeys:
Event options can be selected with Shift+number (except dangerous red options, so you don't select them by accident)
Added option previews with Alt+number, so you can first read the tooltip and then select it with the same hotkey. All without moving the mouse!
Added Alt+E to preview all event option tooltips at once
Added a setting to add numbers to options, like in your classic RPGs
Added a setting to hide shortcuts from tooltips, if you don't wish to see them
Improved handling for ongoing travel plans
Renamed "Current Situation" to "Tips", to avoid confusing it with Situations
Added a "mark all as read" button to "Tips"
Made the settings window taller to reduce scrolling
The Barbershop now only asks to discard changes when you have actually changed something
Added two more backgrounds for the Barbershop: Crossroads Inn and Wine Cellar
Fixed the screenshot button in the Barbershop screenshotting itself
Fixed overlap of Coats of Arms and the label in the Barbershop and the misaligned close buttons
Updated the Ruler Designer:
Made it possible to zoom into portraits and drag them around. You can see every wrinkle
Added extra camera angles so you can turn the portrait or even tilt it up and down
Added the option to hide the profile portrait
Added different lighting options, so you'll know how your chin will look in the light of the Mediterranean throneroom
Made it possible to click on sliders to instantly change the value instead of dragging the little button
Added exact gene values next to sliders
Added an option to open a big slider for each gene, which can be adjusted with mouse wheel for finer control
Reduced the width of the left panel and added an option to auto-hide it
Added an option to hide the full UI in the Ruler Designer
Made ethnicity selection optional, rather than a required step before customizing the portrait
Made some buttons wider where space allowed, so long names will fit better
Added the weight slider and sex toggle to portrait customization
Added more descriptive names for several appearance options, for example, “Skin Complexion” is now: “Pale”, “Healthy”, “Freckles”, etc.
Fixed some text that could get too long in other languages and resize the window
Improved the Struggle window so it opens faster and uses the full screen height
Improved various interfaces by adding iconography to tabs
Made mass prison actions always visible and hotkeyed them to Alt+number
Added portrait icons for Acclaimed Knights
Changed Accolade attributes to a clearer vertical layout
Adjusted the hierarchy of several character interactions to shorten long interaction lists
Added missing footer text for certain map modes
Fixed long governor relation strings in the province window from pushing interaction buttons off-screen
Added a proper HUD alert icon for rulers who have not yet held a coronation
The Character Finder now stays open after using character interactions, and its marital-status filter now includes more relationship states
The Ritsuryo window now lists county-level titles under active candidacies
Added potential task information to court-position tooltips in court events
Made more building requirements visible and improved several cost and eligibility tooltips
Added strength of a potential alliance to the marriage interaction window, greyed out if it's an alliance with your vassal instead of a foreign ruler
Made armies on the map smaller when zoomed out by hiding the quality icon, amount of separate armies and the "well-supplied" icon. Normal view when zoomed-in.
For map armies, disabled right-click interaction menu on Coats of Arms when you have an army selected, to prevent misclicks
Updated shortcuts for armies, so buttons don't use the same ones
Fixed some tooltips for army buttons not showing shortcuts
Added compact view for the message log, only showing headers of messages, with the text in the tooltip
Added a scrollbar for the bottom-right notification feed if it gets too many messages, so they don't go off-screen
Made the feed shrink when a right side window is opened, to show more of the map
Made messages in the feed slightly smaller and reduced their spacing in the list
Fixed that traits in interactions could push claims or the checkmark outside the window
Added scrollable tooltips for army composition and laws, so they won't go off-screen
Moved law tooltips slightly left, so they won't block the buttons
Fixed an empty gap that could appear between subjects in the Realm window
Fixed portraits in duels sticking out of the window
Fixed misaligned backgrounds for Coats of Arms and icons in events
Fixed icons in events checking for the wrong portrait
Fixed that warnings for saves could go outside the window
Fixed an icon in Council window overlapping interactions, if you were assigned as a minister
Fixed issue where Alert buttons could display over the View Succession window
Fixed issue where “Show All Armies” window did not close after selecting a single army
Fixed bug where opening the “Plagues” window through the 'P' hotkey when another tab is opened, kept the other tab highlighted as if opened
Fixed issue where interaction menu header would stick out of the window for characters outside diplomatic range
Fixed issue where language-icon would shift slightly when on-hover character buttons appear
Fixed issue where Faith name in the county view could shift left
Repositioned tooltip of 'More' button so it doesn't obscure the first item of the list
Fixed bug where Fanatic Accolade Attribute were not visible on the available attributes list unless the Character was a Courtier
Moved children in “birth.1003” event to the right to better fit the mother's nameplate
Fixed bug where Battle Summary-window would not display tabs for seeing Knights statistics
Fixed bug where hovering over certain bookmark elements would cause the bookmark character to shake uncontrollably
Dynasty Legacies are now scrollable in House View.
Improved visual consistency between the 2-tab and 3-tab Council views.
Royal Court and other portrait-side interactions can no longer be accessed from the lobby before the game has started.
Adjusted leveled trait markers so the final level is easier to inspect.
Added treasury tax income to the Subjects tab in Realm View for relevant vassals.
The alert for upgrading a Japanese Aspiration no longer appears when the option is unavailable.
Added an old-age crutch animation
Fixed the low camera angle for charioteers
Removed an incorrect prop from "minister_works_oversee_reconstruction"
Fixed a recurring texture error when opening the Barbershop
Lowered main-menu portrait render size to improve performance
Moved Vietnam to the East Asian graphical region
Added missing DLC clothing options to the Barbershop
Castle holdings and 3D city visuals now follow local culture more consistently, with steppe cultures still using regionally appropriate variants
Made Chinese legwear trigger correctly on characters
Fixed Level 3 Iberian and Turkish mosques showing up as a Fire Temple
Added back missing Illustration of Handgunners
Fixed Kings/Emperors rarely wearing ducal headgear
Removed straw cloak from being used by dead characters
Made un-coronated rulers use high nobility headgear instead of no headgear at all
Fixed late medieval hooded cloaks clipping a lot with various headgear
Changed so that the Late Medieval Hooded Cloak is not used by Royalty
Fixed a bug which gave early medieval veils to some high/late medieval female Royalty
Fixed cases of spouses of Emperors wearing incorrect clothing and Kings or Emperors appearing in ducal headgear
Fixed naked characters incorrectly wearing helmets or other headgear
Reweighted specific Korean and Chinese portrait modifiers
Fixed issue where textures displaying Coat of Arms would render as black
Fixed cloth pattern error related to attire from “High Medieval Warfare” Creator Pack
Fixed missing Celestial Court Attire headgears
Fixed an issue causing some women of Turkic cultures to appear unintentionally bald.
Implemented missing cost breakdown tooltip for coronation
Added Potential Tasks to tooltips for Court Positions in court events
Added tooltips for a number of scheme modifiers that previously appeared unlocalized
Localized several previously unlocalized interactions
Fixed specialized court position names being Employer-relative instead of sometimes Employee-relative
Fixed some tooltips referring to the Prefect's Office instead of the Commanders office
Skald Court Position description added
The word ‘Quraysh’ is no longer misspelled across events and modifiers as ‘Quarysh’
Fixed unlocalized string in Fujiwara Morofusa's bookmark description
Fixed missing string for Nicknames of characters in the House Family Tree-view
Fixed missing string for “Public Execution” tooltip
Added a question mark to the relations custom localizations so unlanded characters with no liege won't call each other fellow vassals or the like
Fixed the wrong name of one background in the Barbershop: Tavern Exterior (which is, in fact, interior)
Fixed issue where the legends creation window would crash if you open it in any other language than English
Fixed bug where the “A Place At Court” event would show broken text and use the wrong effect to appoint the character
Adjusted the text for “tgp_japan_general.9551” (event from winning the eradicate cb) to find the de_jure_empire of the eradicated person and mention it dynamically
Fixed bug where hovering over certain bookmark elements would cause the bookmark character to shake uncontrollably
Fixed a typo that prevented an Accolade invalidity text from displaying correctly.
Fixed several missing or incorrect game concepts in localization.
Corrected several additional localization formatting issues.
Fixed multiple cases of Out-of-Syncs in Multiplayer
Fixed being able to legitimize yourself if you are a bastard house or dynasty head
Expanded the use of “allow_accolade” for East-Asian Governments
Fixed errors from events when Holding Court
Disabled event previews for the oath event
Made event previews scrollable in big events
Fixed issue where Ledger soldier count would only take personal army size into account and not include all the vassal contributions
Increased size of PatternColorOverrides to 64 instead of 16 to match the size of SCourtSceneCharacterConstants::_PatternColorOverrides
Fixed a wrong scope in barony_is_valid_for_holy_order_lease_cancellation_trigger pointing towards a character instead of the barony
Fixed Chinese Consolidation War sometimes invalidating immediately after declaring it
Restored the max_regiments limit on all MaA types unlocked from Accolades back to 1
Fixed several self-targeting edge cases that could cause characters to gain opinion of themselves or interact with themselves
Buildings that have already been built in other slots can no longer be built
Fixed edgecase where faiths could not be reformed properly
Fixed several missing tenets on certain faiths
Added an else_if block for equal gender faiths when the game rules are not allowing same-sex marriage
All Monastery levels are now available in valid holding types for faiths with the Preservation tenet
Immortals are now immune to aging traits
Dynamic hybrid cultures now respect relevant game rules
Fixed Angkor not starting with Capital Temple Complex at level 3 in 1178
Fixed so certain historical characters should no longer have their educational traits randomized
Fixed History setup for Hasan and Ghurid
Fixed Fujiwara Hidehira so they are no longer being marked as Count while being a Duke
Fixed the houses Braganza, Asturias, Rogerios Dalassenos, Clare, Rocaberti and Chalon not being in the correct dynasties and having broken family trees
Fixed Warning Message about completing Examinations being displayed even after reaching highest Merit Rank in non-Celestial Meritocracies
In the "Last Lesson" debate event, the elder now correctly gains opinion of you
Debates now correctly trigger pro-movements situation catalysts
Grand Campaign requirements rewritten to be less confusing anymore and correctly outline requirements for Paddy Fields
Switching Intents will now remove you from taking the exam properly
Confirmation as a Governor will now deduct stress when you take the decision instead of when the travel plan starts (this means you can no longer farm it for repeated stress reductions you cheaters!)
Independent rulers are no longer punished for previously cheating in exams
Exposing your own cheat secret will now revoke your exam result and governor titles properly
Grand Campaign now can be inherited properly
Grand Campaign will now add all rulers who lost title as defender for initial contribution
Switching your Primary Title will no longer block you from completing your oath
Debate will now select a proper target if the previous one died (No more debating with a ghost!)
Nerge now counts as a successful hunt for your Oath
Foster Enlightenment now tracks if your oath is a new University
Learn Language effects in the exams activity has been added
Added a cooldown for getting sent to an exam
Fixed duplicated events and wrong scope for Grand Campaign
Fixed various cases that would cause Grand Wedding and its promise invalid or inaccessible
Improved reliability for Grand Wedding promises; after your character dies or abdicates, you should hopefully no longer get stuck with betrothed who think they've been promised one while your new heir has forgotten all about it
Legendary Sighting events will now allow Landless Adventurers to move the camp to the sighting
Landless Adventurers will no longer retain characters created from travel options
Temporary travel characters can no longer be invited to court or exploited for court positions
Adventure Inspirations, Treasure Hunts, and travel cancellation prompts now use valid regions and only appear when appropriate
Romance and Seduce schemes now pause properly while traveling
Children and guests now use more appropriate logic in several childhood, wedding, funeral, and house-feud events
Having a target duchy title in your realm will no longer block Grand Campaign if any counties are not conquered yet
Uncreated ministry titles can now be created and granted correctly
Admin Summon to War interaction no longer allows you to attack a far away duchy
Seize Peripheral Duchy Casus-Belli now only targets neighboring lands
You will no longer be able to use Chinese Consolidation Casus-Belli to cross whole continents without neighboring China
Changing between Governors with different Domicile titles should now always change your Noble Family titles
Landless Noble Families should now always be direct vassal during succession
Updated the “Withdraw from Governorship”-decision for Ministers to correctly remove them from the Council
Populist factions will no longer take foreign duchy titles
Fixed bug where Ceremonial Claimant factions would disband immediately after being formed
Fixed a bug related to escalated Peasant Factions sometimes not being able to be pressed successfully
Fixed Ceremonial Claimant faction wars invalidating if the Claimant was landless
Confederate Partition now only creates extra top-tier titles to provide one to each secondary heir
Fixed incorrect tooltip for meritocratic appointment succession law
Fixed Meritocratic governor's succession laws not changing when modifying province administration type
Fixed Ritsuryō military governors not using the military appointment succession law
Imperial Censor now actually use treasury to do their job
Added missing Secretary Director aptitude calculations for Imperial Censor and rebalanced the values
Improved aptitude breakdown tooltip and all Mandates related tooltips
Fixed a bug where heads of noble families were being paid salaries as though they were governors in Byzantium
East Asian Estate progression, accomplishment checks, and appointment investment caps now work and display correctly
Fixed a bug where unit map icons would show incorrect data when multiple armies were moving in different directions but standing in the same province
Fixed bug where unit map icons would be visible from different zoom levels depending on if the unit was moving or not
Fixed Claim wars declared by Adventurers transferring all titles in target realm and the starting attacker will receive Ennobled Adventurer modifier
Fixed demanding Influence in a Ransom costing the Ransomer Influence, it now pays Influence to the Ransomer
Fixed loans from Holy Orders not being properly inherited by your heir, with the decision stating the loan is to be repaid to yourself
Fixed Adventurer Mercenaries only receiving payment for the first war to end rather than payment being given after the last war the Adventurer joined ends
Fixed Adventurers being created under circumstances they otherwise wouldn't when losing land which is part of a larger Realm whose Ruler would become an Adventurer
Non-Struggle rulers can now declare religious wars on Struggle rulers
Fixed some instances of Betrothal not being cleared when the betrothed dies
Fixed edge case where a House-Bloc could have Member Houses in different Realms
Fixed custom localization related to relations so Unlanded characters with no liege won't call each other “fellow vassals”
Fixed GetRelation loc functions returning Courtier instead of Follower for Followers of Landless Adventurers
Landless Adventurers that “Demand Pastureland” from a Herder now changes their capital into a Nomad holding properly upon becoming a Nomad
Reasserting a Tributary without using leveraging options now actually rewards Renown
You can no longer petition to change your Province's purpose if you're a landless ruler
Herd ransom value should now be a bit more dynamic depending on your title or if the ransomed character is someone important to the receiving character
Clarified when you become a vassal if you “Purchase Land” as a landless adventurer
Fixed AI sending the “Bargain Fealty”-interaction when it was not valid
Fixed issue in great project contribution description where the name of the project would be printed as great_project_type__ERROR_FLAG_INDEX
Fixed and tested the new triggers for music and the proper mixing routing to make them respond to control volume
Fixed counties that become feudalized via the “Demand Administrative”-Government interaction not losing the Siberian Permafrost modifier
The Siberian Permafrost Modifier is now removed if you convert to Mandala
Fixed the “Adopt _ Ways”-decisions not clearing Siberian Permafrost modifiers
Fixed bug where “Tribalizing” a Nomadic or Herder-holding did not clear Siberian Permafrost modifiers
Added parameter to Cultivation Culture Tradition that reduces the chances of getting new elder traits by 50%
Modifier is applied before genetics and lifestyle modifiers affecting the chance
Fixed the default CK3 soundtrack not playing if you owned All Under Heaven
Fixed an issue where some Accolade modifiers were not being applied to the army they belonged to.
Added back the accolade army modifier to the combat cache.
Offer Courtier now uses the correct opinion modifier.
Fixed an issue where landed heirs of Celestial rulers could incorrectly change their de jure capital on succession.
Ceremonial Lieges and Regents can no longer access Coronation laws or the Coronation activity unless they are the same character.
Fixed an incorrect candidate score modifier name from the Commander’s Study Manor upgrade.
Fixed an issue where the option to appoint a Vizier could appear for invalid characters when playing Clan government.
Elderly characters no longer gain new traits when the game rule is set to Infirm Only.
Fixed an incorrect scope link in faith reforming.
Akan Herders can no longer access the Humiliation War CB.
Fixed overlapping Story Cycles.
Fixed an issue where an artifact’s quality indicator could shift incorrectly during story presentation.
Improved consistency for culture-based Accolade triggers.
Fixed an issue where nomadic characters were not developing domiciles.
Fixed Evict Adventurer so adventurers in your domain can now be expelled correctly.
Added a cooldown to tribute mission decisions to prevent exploits.
Corrected a trigger issue for ep3_laamp_flavour_ewan.2041.
The Secret Tunnels event no longer grants incorrect Influence.
Fixed DLC-locking issues for Emishi army visuals.
Fixed DLC-locked innovations appearing in history without the required DLC.
Fixed a major interest trigger so it now properly checks your liege.
You can once again select the Expansion phase when founding a new Dynasty.
Guests can now be recruited directly as Knights in administrative realms, and non-administrative vassals under administrative realms can also serve as Knights.
Fixed an issue where invalidated schemes could remain visible in the Intrigue window.
Releasing a tributary now refreshes the truce correctly.
The requirement for monastic_schools_02 is now visible.
In infirm events is_immortal is now used, so immortal traits from mods are taken into account.
Fixed an incorrect icon name for Heavy Horse Archers that could cause errors.
Fixed startup errors caused by DLC-locked content when playing without DLCs.
The Accolades interface is now properly disabled if you do not own the required DLC.
Locked Accolade Men-at-Arms from Title Men-at-Arms where appropriate.
Fixed an issue where Struggle Ending decisions could be taken multiple times.
Fixed the Sexuality Distribution game rule overriding a Custom Ruler’s selected sexuality.
Regencies no longer increase Domain Limit.
Cleaned up unused custom modifier support for virtues and sins
Split nested "DoctrineType" and "DoctrineGroupType" into separate databases
Updated faith and religion info files
Replaced holy site flags with a parameter array
Updated faith and religion script paths
Modernized faith and religion GUI windows
Added script access to "Culture.GetCreationDate"
Added "grandparent" and "great_grandparent" character lists
Restored UI support for mastery perks without requiring a trait
Added "religious_studies_location" building support for the "is_religious_studies_location" trigger
Updated trait-faith scripted triggers to expect a trait scope in the "TRAIT" argument
Added quick filters to "(any_)ruler" script lists for better performance
"(any_)dynasty" now only lists active dynasties by default, with "include_inactive = yes" available when needed
Restructured DLC gene templates to use fewer indices
Added support for setting regnal names and checking name equivalence with "set_regnal_name", "has_first_name", "has_regnal_name", and "has_original_first_name"
Added "IntToString"
Added "PdxGuiWidget.GetName"
Added about 800 shortcuts to the shortcuts file, so almost all keys and their combinations are available for modders to use
Added skill multiplication modifiers such as "diplomacy_mult", applied after additive skill modifiers
Buildings can now override modifiers based on DLC feature flags
Added the "RelationToShort" data function for shorter relation text
Added "has_ethnicity" and "has_same_ethnicity_as" triggers and "set_same_ethnicity_as" effect
"change_government" can now accept a saved government type scope as well as a hardcoded government name
... and more than 2000 other individual changes, tweaks, and bugfixes throughout development!
There are currently stability issues with cross-platform multiplayer.
We hope this update improves your experience in Crusader Kings III. If you encounter any issues after today's update, then please try starting a new campaign and disabling any mods you have. If the issue persists, then please submit a report via the bug report board on our official forums.
Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special dev diary! Today we finally get to pull back the curtain on what we're cooking up next for Crusader Kings III. As some of you may have already guessed, it's all about the very thing that made medieval Europe tick: the Christian Church.
We're deep in development on this one and have a lot of ground still to cover, so this will be a broad overview of what we're building. Future dev diaries will go much deeper into individual systems, and we will be paying close attention to your feedback throughout.
Before I get into all the juicy details, let me say a few words about what this expansion is and what it isn't, because I know the speculation machine has been running at full tilt. This is a systemic expansion focused on Christianity - with an emphasis on Catholicism - and the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical power. If you play anywhere in Christian Europe, the Byzantine Empire, or indeed anywhere Christianity has a presence, this expansion will transform the way you engage with your faith and the institutions which claim to speak for God. If you play outside of these regions you will still notice aspects of the revisions we're making to Faiths, but our aim is to add depth and immersive detail to Christian Europe first and foremost.
With that out of the way, let's dig in.
If there is one sentence that captures what we're going for, it's this: the right to rule flows directly from God.
In the medieval world, kings and emperors didn't just need armies and gold - they required the blessing of the Church. Your legitimacy as a ruler was inseparable from your standing as a Christian. The Pope could make or break dynasties. Bishops accumulated enormous wealth and wielded it as political leverage. Holy men preached ideas that could ignite revolutions. And through all of this, the Church itself was evolving - splitting, reforming, debating, and occasionally tearing itself apart over questions of theology that had very real consequences for the people caught up in them.
We want you to feel all of that in the game.
Whether you're a French king trying to get a favorable Pope elected, a minor count whose Archbishop is agitating for your excommunication, an ambitious duke trying to get yourself a Cardinal's hat, or the Pope himself trying to hold Christendom together while half your clergy are preaching things that would make Augustine weep, faith should be something you are constantly, meaningfully engaging with. Not a passive stat on your character sheet, but a living, breathing force that shapes your realm and your dynasty's future.
Let's start with the most fundamental change: how your character relates to their faith.
Currently in CK3, your faith evokes a certain flavor, influences many game mechanics, and imposes certain modifiers. If you start as a Catholic, you have some doctrines and core tenets, certain traits are sinful or virtuous, and that's that until you convert or start your own faith. You don't really practice your faith in any meaningful way, nor does it evolve with the centuries. This is what we are looking to change.
Spiritual Fulfillment is a new character metric that tracks how internally fulfilled your character is in their religious practice. Think of it as the spiritual counterpart to Stress, except instead of measuring how close you are to a mental breakdown, it measures how close you are to either sainthood or damnation.
Your Spiritual Fulfillment is influenced by which religious practices (Tenets) you personally adopt as convictions, how well those align with your personality traits and lifestyle, the choices you make in events, and generally how closely your actions correspond with the beliefs of right practice in your faith. A Generous character who practices Asceticism and goes on regular pilgrimages will find deep spiritual peace. A Lustful character targeted by unceasing Seduction schemes will... have a harder time of it. Choosing the virtuous path despite your sinful nature is itself rewarded, even as it causes you Stress. Creating room for personal dilemmas to naturally emerge that players have a genuinely difficult time resolving is the kind of stuff us sadistic game designers live for.
Tiers of Fulfillment - both positive and negative - unlock special decisions, modifiers, and events. High Fulfillment characters will be given temptations to overcome but have the ability to help others deal with spiritual conflicts, while those with low Fulfillment can try to repent. But even low Fulfillment comes with benefits, such as the ability to interfere with the Church more readily.
To make Spiritual Fulfillment work - and to make the whole religious system more dynamic - we're also doing a comprehensive revision of Tenets. We are making many new ones, and also reimagining existing ones, as active observances - things your character can choose to practice, champion, or secretly indulge in. Every Tenet will have both a faith-wide effect and a personal effect when a character adopts it into their daily practice, and Tenets can have different statuses within a faith — from Core teachings that define it, through approved and tolerated practices, all the way to outright forbidden ones. Adopting a forbidden Tenet means practicing it in secret, which of course means anyone who discovers your little theological indiscretion could get a juicy Secret Hook on you.
This changes the entire dynamic of how faiths evolve. Instead of static labels, you get a living ecosystem of religious practice where ideas spread from person to person, where your Court Chaplain's own convictions actually matter, and where a new Pope's choice of which Tenets to elevate as Core teachings sends ripples across all of Christendom. Your character's spiritual journey could be as strategically important as their martial prowess or diplomatic cunning, and the theological preferences of the next Pope could make your carefully cultivated piety suddenly look a lot like heresy.
One of the biggest mechanical additions is Rites, subdivisions of a faith by both character and geography that represent local variations in religious practice.
In 1066, not every Catholic in Europe practiced their faith identically. In fact, the entire premise of Catholic (=universal) Christianity was to permit local variations of liturgy, as long as some basic theological premises were adhered to. The insular Irish emphasized different aspects of their faith than Mozarabic practitioners, neither of which perfectly adhered to Roman liturgy. These weren't heresies, but natural variations within a single faith, led by local archbishops who had their own theological priorities.
Clergy characters can start new Rites in which they can make changes to which Tenets are emphasized. An archbishop might elevate one Approved Tenet to Core status while de-emphasizing another. As long as these changes are modest, Rome won't bat an eye. But if a Rite starts teaching practices the Pope considers forbidden, or accumulates too much Divergence from the mainline rite... well, that's how you get Cathars. And nobody wants Cathars. (Or do you? More on that later.)
Rites spread along Ecclesiastical Title borders - a new geographic layer representing the ancient archdiocese regions - and characters within a Rite's domain can choose to adopt it. Over time, neighboring archdioceses may adopt the same Rite, creating regional blocs of distinct religious practice within Catholicism. This naturally soft-contains Rites within realm borders while still permitting the kind of organic drift and cross-pollination that made medieval Christianity so fascinatingly messy.
The intended dynamic is that Rites evolve slowly, gradually drifting closer to or further from the mainline. Most of the time this is perfectly fine. Sometimes it's not.
So what happens when a Rite's Divergence drifts too far? When that eccentric archbishop in Cologne starts teaching things that make Rome deeply uncomfortable?
The Head of Faith can declare a Divergent Rite a Heresy through a Papal Bull decision or an Ecumenical Council. The Rite Head then faces a choice: disband and return to the fold, or double down and become a new Faith entirely. If they choose the latter, congratulations - you now have a full-blown heretical offshoot Faith on your hands, complete with its own Head of Faith, its own teachings, and its own followers who are no longer part of the Church.
Particularly powerful Rites can also turn Schismatic. These cannot be declared heretical outright and instead triggers a theological crisis within the faith, which must either be laboriously healed or permitted to lead to an actual schism, where the unified faith turns into two distinct ones.
We'll cover the full mechanics of heresies and schisms in a dedicated dev diary. For now, the key takeaway is that these emerge organically from the interplay of characters, their Traits, Tenets, and Rites rather than being solely scripted events - which means your game's religious landscape will be genuinely unpredictable.
Of course, none of this matters much if you can't influence who decides what is right and wrong - i.e., who sits on the Papal Throne.
Cardinals are appointed by the Pope, and in the College of Cardinals electoral system their most important task is to vote for his successor. But it's not as simple as "highest score wins" - there are three candidate tracks, representing the most politically connected candidate, the most personally devout, and the most radical or reformist. Cardinals sort themselves by theological alignment, and unaligned Cardinals are the swing votes that determine the outcome.
As a ruler, you will be able to work through specific Cardinals to influence the vote and sway support toward your preferred candidate. You can see who the projected candidates are and what Core teachings they would impose on all of Catholicism if elected - letting you assess, before the vote, how the next Pope might affect your character's Spiritual Fulfillment and the direction of the faith.
Naturally, putting a member of your own dynasty on the papal throne is the ultimate prize. A friendly Pope can smooth over your sins, crush your enemies with excommunication, and redirect the wealth of the Church toward your ambitions. An unfriendly Pope could do all of those things to you.
How Papal elections work also changes with the start date. In 867, only clergy in Rome and Italy may vote, with strong influence from the Italian political situation. By 1066, the College of Cardinals is fully established and much more susceptible to the machinations of ambitious rulers across Europe. We'll get into the full details of this system in a later diary.
To make all of this work, we're adding Ecclesiastical Titles, a new geographic layer representing the archdiocese and patriarchate regions that form the administrative backbone of the Church.
Each Ecclesiastical Title has a capital seat corresponding to a metropolitan city, and an archbishop (or patriarch, depending on your tradition) who holds it. These characters collect a share of all bishopric taxes within their region, giving them real economic power.
The capital seat of an Ecclesiastical Title can be the site of a Cathedral. Cathedral construction is a Great Project that takes a long time and, in typical Great Project fashion, can be contributed to by rulers in the same region. Once complete, the cathedral is represented by a Domicile (and, of course, a model on the map!), which the holder of the Ecclesiastical Title can upgrade to serve a variety of functions. All this wealth poured into cathedral construction and development translates directly into determining the importance and ecclesiastical power of the metropolitan's seat. Raise a promising young theologian, and perhaps one day you will see him in charge of all the faithful at Reims.
Ecclesiastical Title holders have more leeway than other characters in practicing and teaching Rites that diverge from the mainline, particularly if their importance starts to challenge that of Rome's. Due to this, archbishops have a greater tendency to be in charge of their own Rite or follow divergent Rites. This is something you can leverage as a ruler, if you find a way to hold sway over your archbishop.
The Pope and other organized faith leaders will have a Church Treasury, separate from their personal wealth, which is filled by taxes and tithes from bishoprics across their faith. The Church Treasury can only be spent on Church business: funding temple construction, Great Projects, holy war funding and mercenaries, commissioning religious Artifacts, siphoned into the priest's pockets, and so on. This means the Catholic Church can be relatively wealthy or relatively poor depending on how large it is, how many heresies are siphoning off tax income, and how wisely (or corruptly) its various representatives spend what they collect.
The Religious map mode has been updated to let you drill down from the faith level to the Rite level, so you can see at a glance how the religious landscape is fracturing (or consolidating) across the map. Combined with the new Ecclesiastical Titles, our aim is to make the Church feel like a living institution with geographic presence, internal politics, and real power.
With all these new systems for how faiths evolve organically, you might be wondering what happens to the old "stockpile Piety, click button, design custom faith from scratch" flow. The short answer is: it's been replaced by something we think will be much more interesting.
Creating a new Faith now means working through the Rite system. You start by shaping the beliefs and practices within your current faith - elevating Tenets, nurturing a divergent Rite, building enough theological credibility and political power to either schism on your own terms or force the Head of Faith's hand. Your heresy has a causal history, it didn't spring fully formed from the mind of one eccentric king. Instead it grew, spread, and eventually became too big to ignore. We feel that's a much better story, and it also means the AI will produce more believable religious landscapes over the course of a campaign.
Conversion has gotten a similar treatment. Through the new Study Faith scheme, you can learn the Doctrines and Tenets of another religious practice over time - whether from a foreign spouse, a court guest, or a neighboring realm. As you study, you can work newly learned ideas into your personal practice or even have them adopted officially through your Rite. At the conclusion of the scheme you also have the option to convert outright, with the transition being smoother (or rougher) depending on how much theological common ground actually exists between where you started and where you're going.
You can still convert to any faith in the game, and we're not hard-locking any player fantasies behind this change. While this will undoubtedly make creating a new Faith more challenging, we think you'll find that faiths which evolve through play - through characters making choices, Rites drifting, and theological ideas spreading from person to person - feel considerably more alive than ones assembled from a menu.
Holy Orders are also getting some love, with Monastic Orders distinguished from Military Orders.
Monastic Orders lease temples rather than castles, and serve as centers of learning and theological development. Rulers can found them just like Military Orders, with some control over how they are shaped, though they become independent entities after that. Both Monastic and Military Orders can now expand across the map by establishing new abbeys, and will gain and lose power over the course of the game.
All Holy Orders now have their own unique Rite, informed by the choices made during their founding. This means they can become centers of divergent practice - potential allies for reformist rulers, or targets for an orthodox Church cracking down on heterodoxy. Monastic Holy Orders serve as an alternate means of creating and nurturing divergent Rites and are meant as a counterforce to the Vatican's influence.
Players can become Patrons of Holy Orders and can interact with Holy Order leaders in new ways, including sending family members to specific Orders and inviting Orders into their realm by offering them land.
What would Catholicism be without its Saints? (Okay, yeah, well, Protestantism, probably.)
While the Saint Trait and Living Saint Legends already exist in the game, we're now adding several dozen historical Saints for you to adore, plus a path to become canonized after death for your pious deeds. What exactly this means we'll get further into in another dev diary, but for the moment let me tease that it has a lot to do with Spiritual Fulfillment, Personal Tenets, and Artifacts.
Having a Saint in your family tree is, of course, very beneficial to you and your dynasty - especially when dealing with the Church.
Yes, you will be able to play as the Pope.
Theocratic characters with landed titles become playable, including the Pope. This means wielding the Church Treasury (funded by taxation across Christendom), appointing Cardinals, declaring heresies, calling Ecumenical Councils, excommunicating rulers who displease you, and generally being the most influential person in medieval Europe. It also means navigating the expectations of every Catholic ruler simultaneously. Good luck!
It's worth noting that despite making this previously unplayable class of characters available, the expansion is emphatically not about playing as clergy trying to seize control of the Church. It is about establishing the Church as machinery which the player, typically in the role of a secular ruler, can strategically interact with and get pushback from. Our goal is to ensure that if you find yourself in the role of a landed character with real influence in church matters, you can still continue playing your dynasty - now with access to more levers to pull - rather than Game Over. Make the most of it!
As a secular ruler, you typically don't have a whole lot of say in Church matters. Sure, you can get your Court Chaplain to convert a county for you, or sponsor a Cathedral, or petition the Pope to lift an excommunication. But control over who teaches what, how Ecclesiastical Titles should be organized, whether an Ecumenical Council is called and what it should be about, or who should be the next Pope, these are matters only clergy have a say in.
All of these new systems create a richly dynamic religious landscape, but as a secular ruler, you'll want to do more than watch from the sidelines while the expansion plays itself. It would be strange and ahistorical to give secular rulers direct ways of imposing change in most cases though, so what we're doing instead is giving you Puppets to toy with.
The Puppet system is a new mechanic that lets you act through another character for specific actions in a specific context. Think of it as "your guy on the inside" who can get things done for you, assuming you have enough leverage on them. In the expansion this guy is your Court Chaplain. If you can get and maintain a Hook on them, there are certain things they can do on your behalf: for example, if they are a Rite Head they could start teaching a new Tenet, or even start a new Rite; construct a Cathedral with Church Treasury according to your specifications; and much more. If your Court Chaplain is also an Archbishop or Cardinal, they get access to more ways to reshape the Church and its practices.
The Puppet system is not specific to Church matters but is also extensible to other domains that we will explore in future expansions, and will even be accessible to modders to create their own ways of manipulating other characters directly.
As you might have intuited from a lot of the things I've discussed above, we are also addressing the biggest crime against the historical representation of the Christian Church currently in the game: the lack of a unified Christian church in 867, and the artificial distinction between Orthodoxy and Catholicism across start dates in lieu of an organic schism.
In the 867 bookmark, most of Christianity (with notable exceptions of the Coptic and Apostolic Faiths) will be unified under one Faith called Chalcedonian Christianity, with multiple Rites such as the aforementioned Insular and Mozarabic Rites, Carolingian Christianity which directly threatens the Vatican's dominance, and the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria. It's unclear whether Christianity's most important seat is in Rome or Constantinople, so the Faith won't have a proper Head yet. Other Rites will emerge as the game goes on, and a Christian Church Situation will track the tensions both within the faith and with its neighbors. As the Situation moves into new phases due to the natural actions of the various central characters or the outcomes of Ecumenical Councils, the fracture between east and west may become untenable.
It's a bit of a novel approach for CK3, but we hope this way of telling the centuries-long dynamic story of the medieval church will be fun and exciting to follow in your campaigns!
We have a lot of dev diaries ahead of us to explore each of these systems in detail, and more features, additions, and tweaks relating to Christianity and Faiths overall which I have not mentioned here. Keep in mind that everything you've read today is under active development, is subject to change, and your feedback - as always - will directly influence the final product. We cannot wait to hear what you think!
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Hello everyone! We're pushing a quick update to the open beta branch of our upcoming 1.19 "Scribe" Update. This update focuses primarily on addressing issues reported to us by the community since the open beta began on Friday.
If you'd like to opt into the beta and see what's coming in 1.19 yourself, you can do so via the open_beta branch on Steam.
As always, this is a beta, so some features and values may still be adjusted before release.
Cheers!
Interface
Fixed issue where Alert buttons could display over the View Succession window
Fixed issue where “Show All Armies” window did not close after selecting a single army
Fixed bug where opening the “Plagues” window through the 'P' hotkey when another tab is opened, kept the other tab highlighted as if opened
Fixed issue where interaction menu header would stick out of the window for characters outside diplomatic range
Fixed issue where language-icon would shift slightly when on-hover character buttons appear
Fixed issue where Faith name in the county view could shift left
Repositioned tooltip of 'More' button so it doesn't obscure the first item of the list
Fixed bugs related to sorting of characters in the ledger
Fixed bug where Fanatic Accolade Attribute were not visible on the available attributes list unless the Character was a Courtier
Moved children in “birth.1003” event to the right to better fit the mother's nameplate
Fixed bug where Battle Summary-window would not display tabs for seeing Knights statistics
Fixed bug where hovering over certain bookmark elements would cause the bookmark character to shake uncontrollably
Multiplayer
Fixed a Multiplayer Out of Sync related to SNotableCasualty::_Name not being CUnsyncedString
Art
Reweighted specific Korean and Chinese portrait modifiers
Fixed issue where textures displaying Coat of Arms would render as black
Fixed cloth pattern error related to attire from “High Medieval Warfare” Creator Pack
Fixed missing Celestial Court Attire headgears
Audio
Fixed the default CK3 soundtrack not playing if you owned All Under Heaven
Balance
Added parameter to Cultivation Culture Tradition that reduces the chances of getting new elder traits by 50%
Modifier is applied before genetics and lifestyle modifiers affecting the chance
Localization
Fixed issue where the legends creation window would crash if you open it in any other language than English
Fixed bug where the “A Place At Court” event would show broken text and use the wrong effect to appoint the character
Adjusted the text for “tgp_japan_general.9551” (event from winning the eradicate cb) to find the de_jure_empire of the eradicated person and mention it dynamically
Fixed bug where hovering over certain bookmark elements would cause the bookmark character to shake uncontrollably
Updated Localization in non-english languages
Bugfixes
Fixed being able to legitimize yourself if you are a bastard house or dynasty head
Expanded the use of “allow_accolade” for East-Asian Governments
Fixed errors from events when Holding Court
Disabled event previews for the oath event
Made event previews scrollable in big events
Fixed issue where Ledger soldier count would only take personal army size into account and not include all the vassal contributions
Increased size of PatternColorOverrides to 64 instead of 16 to match the size of SCourtSceneCharacterConstants::_PatternColorOverrides
Fixed a wrong scope in barony_is_valid_for_holy_order_lease_cancellation_trigger pointing towards a character instead of the barony
Fixed Chinese Consolidation War sometimes invalidating immediately after declaring it
Restored the max_regiments limit on all MaA types unlocked from Accolades back to 1
Hello everyone! The open beta for our upcoming Realm Maintenance update, 1.19 "Scribe," is now live. This update focuses on addressing long-standing issues, adding a range of quality-of-life improvements, and strengthening the overall health of the base game. For more details on what’s included, please see our Realm Maintenance dev diaries (Part 1 / Part 2).
We had originally planned to release this beta on Monday, March 30, but decided to open it earlier to gather more feedback over the weekend. As a result, localization for non-English languages is still incomplete in some areas. Updated localization files will be released on Monday as originally planned.
Your feedback during this open beta will help us make sure the final release of 1.19 "Scribe" is as stable and enjoyable as possible. If you run into issues or have general thoughts on the update, please share them with us in the Open Beta subforum on our forums.
Below is a quick guide on how to opt into the beta, followed by a preliminary changelog.
You can enable the beta branch by right-clicking on Crusader Kings III in your library, selecting Properties, then opening the Game Versions & Betas tab and selecting the open_beta branch.
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The ‘Situations’ tab now shows personal character-bound Stories, such as having a Pet Dog or being a Conqueror, with a name, icon, and modular elements ‘Stories’ is a new concept to make existing special event chains and similar content more visible
Most existing special event chains (story cycles) have been updated to use this new system, including but not limited to: All kinds of pets (dogs, cats, horses, eagles), unique event chains (doppelganger, imaginary friend, etc.), special character stories (Hasan-i-Sabah, Wallada, El Cid), and decision-triggered chains (Book Translations, Commissioning Epics).
Decisions associated with a Story are now shown directly in the Story interface, for example ‘Pet Dog’. Associated character modifiers are also shown there.
Stories can have a variety of modular elements, for example tracked characters, titles, and various kinds of progress bars
Older characters can now get new age-related ailments depending on factors such as lifestyle or genetics. These traits gradually get worse over time, with active mitigations the player can take.
Added new tiered Elder Traits: "Faltering Heart", "Fragile Bones", "Clouded Eyes", and "Withering Mind"
Reworked "Infirm" into a tiered Elder Trait
Added new aging-related events tied to Elder Traits and aging characters
Added a new Infirm-style animation which will appear in the character view if a character has a sufficient level of Infirm, Fragile Bones, or Faltering Heart
Added a game rule to choose between the new Elder Traits system and the older Infirm-only aging model
Added a setting to disable the map table for better rendering performance
Added a much requested color picker for clothes to the Barbershop
Added up to 16 customizable colors for clothes
Fixed an issue where you could accidentally paint your horses pink
Improved the color picker so it won't just make the color more saturated because it felt like it
Improved travel planning with quick-edit support
Added travel-planner quick-edit mode while holding shift, so you can add/remove waypoints quickly by clicking the left/right mouse button on the map
Made Points of Interest map icons clickable in the travel planner for adding waypoints
Added Event Nameplates, inspired by a popular mod by FUN (with contribution from Starving)
Event Nameplates show the name of the character, relationship and opinion to help you quickly see who they are
Moved character tooltips to Nameplates, when they are shown, to not cover portraits
Added a setting to hide Event Nameplates
Added Knight Permissions to manage who can serve as you knight, inspired by another popular mod created by Lrds (with contributions from Serp and Lord DGP)
Added controls to set minimum prowess limit for knights
Added filters to forbid certain characters from serving as knights, such as your heir or councillors
Made it so Acclaimed knights or those you forced to serve ignore the permissions, so you won't forbid them by accident
Added clearer explanations for knight eligibility and relevant cultural modifiers
Added the ability for players to customize their court visuals through a dedicated “Court Visuals”-tab in the Royal Court
Added a new Royal Court type to the game for Chinese culture
"Dragon's Mandate" is available only when selected manually and does not appear naturally in the world
Added a new Ledger window for browsing key realm, character and world information
Added 9 Ledger pages: “Ongoing Wars”, “Artifacts”, “Characters”, “Houses and Dynasties”, “Holdings”, “Counties”, “Titles”, “Faiths and Religions” and “Cultures”
Added three tabs for the “Characters” page: richest, strongest and most famed characters
Added four tabs for the “Titles” page: duchies, kingdoms, empires and hegemonies
Added the ability to favorite items in the Ledger, so you can keep track of artifacts to steal or places to conquer
Added podiums for top items in the Ledger, to show off your achievement in climbing the ranks
Added many sorting options for all Ledger pages, for example: most pious characters, biggest houses, most renowned dynasties, most developed counties and cultures with most characters.
Added filters for most Ledger pages, including filtering by players, so it can be used as a leaderboard in multiplayer
Added war losses to the Ledger (and to war overview too, see below)
Added artifact interactions to the Ledger
Added building and holding interactions to the “Holdings” page. Yes, you can build in your vassals from the Ledger!
Added many (many) existing values to items in the Ledger, to easily compare things
Added more information to the Ledger that wasn't displayed before, like artifact age or knights and prisoners of other characters
Added more total values, like soldiers of all rulers of a house, faith or culture
Added total taxes, levies and loot for titles
Added dominant culture and faith for titles and average values, like development across all their counties
Added new faith and religion metrics, like sinful and virtuous rulers, growth or decline due to conversions, total holy wars and holy sites
Added cultural metrics: growth due to promotion, total development and innovation progress
Added shortcuts to open and navigate the Ledger
Reworked Accolades into a more streamlined system, with a focus on removing tedium and adding more interesting choices
Removed the old primary and secondary Accolade Attribute structure, replaced with 1 starting Attribute and additional Attributes being unlockable
Reworked Accolade attributes to not only unlock based on the knight, but also on what the ruler has achieved
Added Accolade Attribute unlocking effects to battle events, activities, schemes, etc
Added a new Accolade Attribute selection flow with clearer UI and better invalid-choice handling
Restricted accolades to Dukes+ to make them more special
Removed manual Accolade Successor assignment with a guaranteed automatic successor based on the Accolade’s Squires property (either a suitable courtier, or generated successor if none can be found)
Added a Squires property on Accolades which modifies the traits and skills of new Acclaimed Knights upon succession
Squires property modifies stats of created character when succession fails to grab existing character as new knight
Added feed messages that improve the Accolade-related skills of Acclaimed Knights
Added feed messages that improve the Accolade-related skills of young courtiers, triggered by the Accolade having high Squires aptitude
Simplified Acclaimed Knight restrictions, especially when inheriting rather than founding an accolade - successors to Accolades do not actually need to satisfy all its original Attribute triggers
Removed Accolade deactivation as a separate state; Accolades now either exist or are retired
Improved how the UI communicates future Accolade ranks
Improved how the UI communicates available Accolade options
Prevented duplicate Accolade attributes from being stacked across your Acclaimed Knights
Added a confirmation window when retiring an Accolade
Improved Accolade inheritance rules across succession, preventing your accolades being replaced by inherited accolades
Improved Accolade ownership rules for governments
You can no longer have more Accolades than you have available knight capacity
Disabled Glory loss on succession in cases where your Acclaimed Knight died “honorably”, ex in battle or during a duel
Rebalanced Attribute bonuses
Removed era-based bonuses to Accolade MaA and removed unit size restrictions
Updated Accolade reminders, removing “you have no successor” and adding “you have an Attribute unlock you haven’t spent”
Made Acclaimed Knights less likely to die in battle and significantly less likely to be captured (because it makes Accolade succession weird)
Added new Accolade art and icons
Updated the "Relocate De Jure Capital" decision to support Hegemony-tier titles
Added the Korean cultural tradition "Fortress Mastery", available to Korean cultures and granted to Goryeo, Silla, and Goguryeo when All Under Heaven is active
Updated the "Form Portugal" decision to require control of its target duchies rather than directly holding all four titles
Added "Create Cossack Kingdom" decisions for nomads and ex-adventurer nomads
Added a new "Overrun Duchy" casus belli for duke-tier nomads
Weak AI nomads can now collapse into herders, helping repopulate the steppe
"Humiliation" can now break off non-capital border counties as independent herders
Updated AI use of "Overrun Kingdom" to favor more appropriate neighboring and historical migration targets
Limited culture and faith replacement when nomads move into conquered lands
Confederation members can use "Overrun Duchy" and leave their confederation on success
Expanded the former "Maim Co-Emperor" interaction into the broader "Remove Co-Ruler" interaction, with additional valid outcomes and stricter eligibility checks
Added a dedicated invasion Casus-Belli for the Son of Heaven to seize kingdoms within China
Chinese dynasties that take the throne peacefully or through civil war now generate more appropriate dynasty elements and colors, while restored dynasties keep their established identity
Ministers, their titles, and their domiciles now remain tied to the realm capital
Celestial rulers who rise from kingship now keep their former capital instead of being forced to move to the previous dynasty's de jure capital
Grand Campaigns now complete automatically if the entire target kingdom is already subject to the Huangdi
Added the ability to remain a landless adventurer after helping peasants win independence through the Fight Corruption contract
Reworked lethal Tournament events so characters have a chance to avoid death at the cost of wounds or disfigurement
Reforming a faith away from your old state faith as an independent ruler now updates the state faith automatically
Wanua rulers can now pay barter goods instead of gold for adventurer task contracts, this makes it easier to play as an adventurer in the area as more contract types are valid
Added Saxon Elective to relevant titles
Added a nickname line to the death screen
Added an informative toast when inheriting a Holy Order loan
Added a game concept explaining the Seize Peripheral Duchy Casus-Belli
Added title and title-holder flavorization for the new Phoenician Heritage unlocked by restoring the Carthaginian Empire
Added support for wards sent to university to gain a visible modifier and clearer interaction text
Added new flavorization for Han culture
Fixed Coronation courtesans so they now use the local faith and culture
Corrected character infection chance values
Dog-related events now only trigger when your character is available
Limited an intrigue event so it now only triggers for Murder and Abduct schemes
Fixed an event that could poach family members from the targeted ruler
Disabled an adopted-ward event that could trigger incorrectly
Corrected spouse council-task bonus values
"Too Much of a Good Thing" now correctly removes soulmate relationships as well
"A Servant of the Horned God" now properly reveals the secret and ends the witch conversion scheme
Changed the Albanian cultural tradition from "Hill Dwellers" to "Mountain Homes"
Rebalanced the chance of disease outbreak events
Made the "Random Black Death" game rule actually random
Corrected the names of “Rottenburg” and “der Laaber”
Fixed an incorrect event name in the “Passage of Arms” contract
"Seize the Moment" no longer grants claims to barons
The Pope will no longer refer to himself in the third person while granting himself a claim
Swapped the map positions of Hartlepool and Darlington
Renamed Pockington to Pocklington
"The Last Lesson" now correctly sets the elder relationship
"Addressing the Corruption" now properly assigns the new steward
Improved a bishop letter event so false accusations of incest are more clearly framed as fabricated
Removed a duplicate Nasir Khusraw
"A Journey to Adventure" now correctly plays when the player becomes landless
Updated Denise de Deols' 1178 setup and added her historical betrothal to Baldwin de Redvers
Fixed a bug where some combinations of Tenets would result in higher hostility than expected
Landless Diarchs now properly evaluate interactions using the AI frequency of the tier they are temporarily replacing
Granting titles to local nobles now respects the culture's gender laws
Fixed a bug where succession could leave you as your own tax collector
Children of parents from the same dynasty in male-dominated faiths now correctly use patronyms instead of matronyms
Improved the "Fort Level" concept wording to better explain which bonuses are applied
Factions at war are no longer invalidated when their first leader is imprisoned and now select a new leader from among the participants instead
If a faction is dissolved before its war ends, the defender now wins if their warscore is above the required threshold
Requesting or granting a court position via an interaction now always shows the correct aptitude in the list
Standardized aptitude bonus for Court Positions
Fixed decaying and growing opinions so they now update correctly when they only have a timed duration
Custom names can now be up to 40 characters long instead of 40 bytes, improving support for non-English languages using bigger UTF-8 characters
Notification and alert sounds no longer play when the GUI element is not visible
Fixed ambient audio from activity windows continuing to play forever after closing the window without selecting an option
Specialized court position names now resolve consistently from the employer side instead of sometimes using the employee perspective
War reparation payments now correctly enforce a positive minimum value for rulers and armies with no regular income
Fixed various issues with landless gameplay, UI clarity, historical setup, tooltips, travel logic, and nomad or Mandala interactions
Fixed an issue where Longboats could wrongly block the Plunder intent and cause heavy Prestige loss
Fixed several issues with adventurer contracts, imperial event duplication, acclamation scoring, missing UI text, scheme rewards, and House retirement rules
Fixed exploitable strategy of picking a travel option that adds a character only for the duration of one travel and employing them as any court position
Decisions that depend on a Head of Faith now properly check that the Head of Faith exists before they can be shown or used
Landless adventurers no longer lose Prestige for marrying characters below duchy rank
Fixed issues with adventurer contracts, duplicate Roman Empire events, acclamation scoring, missing text perspective, court-position exploits, Siphon Treasury rewards, and House retirement rules
Fixed Grand Tour AI so the "many vassals" logic now only counts relevant landed vassals
Court Tutors now send notifications to the correct character and no longer try to improve traits that are already maxed out
Added the correct cue track to fullscreen transitions when becoming landless
Characters can no longer become their own Tax Collector
Dynasty patronyms now apply correctly in male-dominated faiths
Improved phrasing for the concepts of Fort Level to clarify which bonuses are applied
Invalid faction wars now resolve correctly in the defender’s favor
Heisting a treasury now correctly removes the stolen gold from the target
Added a cooldown to the Claim Mandate of Heaven decision to prevent it from being taken repeatedly for duplicate rewards
Updated Faith and Religion GUI windows to a more modern standard
The Character Finder no longer closes when you choose a character interaction on a character
Extended the Marital Status Character Finder filter to show eligible, betrothed, and concubines
Added Rabbinism and Karaism as involved faiths in the Iberian Struggle
Fixed pronoun and animation issues in “A Poetic Life: An Exchange of Verses”
Any territory in the West Slavia Geographic Region that doesn't belong to a West-Slavic kingdom upon forming West Slavia will now be assigned to one (most commonly German duchies will be assigned to Polabia)
With the Extra Nomadic Region: Sahel rule on, players will no longer become nomadic if selecting a Daju-culture ruler
Fixed not being able to assign vassal directives if you have MORE than rank 5 legitimacy
Education lvl 4 and 5 will now properly add quality to created book artifacts
Corrected the spelling of 'Mandaeism’
"A Moment Alone" now only triggers for family members who are not your spouse
The events child_personality.7020 and child_personality.7010 now properly check if the child fulfills the 'is_available_child_allow_travel' trigger
Mandaeism now prohibits the drinking of alcohol
Fixed lvl 3 Iberian and Turkish mosques showing up as a fire temple
Bosnia is now also de jure shifted if uniting all slavs into Slavia
The AI will no longer be as inclined to host tours if they only have a lot of Baron-tier vassals
The first Activities Dynasty Legacy now only gives marriage acceptance for Grand Weddings, as advertised by the legacy
Fixed the Break with the Old Ways decision for Kuzarites to conform with the faith now having Chosen People by default
Female Spouses valid for the Abbasid clothes will no longer wear no headgear
When submitting to the Great Khan as a Confederation member, you will now leave the confederation
Fixed the tgp_portrait_liege_or_ceremonial_liege triggers making dead emperors wear the wrong clothing and headgear
Fixed an issue where dead holders of the Crysanthemum Throne wouldn't use the correct headgear
Restore the Pope in Rome and Hindustan decisions now do not have errors if the Head of Faith does not exist
Renamed 'Economical Archetype' to 'Economic Archetype'
Hegemonies now have a higher Grandeur expectation than Empires
The Chancellor option of stewardship_duty_special.2015 now requires you to have a chancellor employed
Removed the 30 development requirement from the Foster Enlightenment Oath, as it wasn't explained when taking it (and prevented early Universities from being founded)
Improved the Court Gardener aptitude bonus for the Garden building in Estates. The bonus now caps out at +30, increased from +15
Varangian Veterans have been limited to a max of 1 stack, similar to how House Guards work
Added a new game rule for natural disasters
Domain limit is no longer granted directly from Stewardship
Education traits now grant domain limit based on trait tier
Reduced the Architect tree's domain-limit bonus to 1
Redistributed domain-limit bonuses into the Patriarch, Theologian, Torturer, and Overseer trees
Reviewed various areas of the game where Events would spawn too frequently and/or liberally, with the intent of reducing the overall amount of events and make them more often be about characters you care about
Tightened up who counts as being of 'major interest': powerful vassals, councillors (except the realm priest), and concubines now count as minor interest
Added Betrothed, Soulmates, Best Friends, Blood Brothers, and Nemesis’ to major interest
Lowered the frequency of Travel events from 1/5 to 1/20
Fixed yearly event groups being set up incorrectly, resulting in most rulers getting specifically the ‘Reflections for the Future’ event as soon as it was off cooldown
Retired several event groups that fired independently of the random yearly events, they are now part of the same pool of events, reducing overall frequency and commonality of certain types of events (notably hostage/child/ward events, but also other types)
Adventurers can now pause further mercenary requests for five years through the negotiation event
AI letters for newly learned languages are now limited to characters who matter more to the player
The ‘A Snake at Court’ event will now only show an event if either of the characters becoming lovers is of major interest to you (the effects are applied regardless)
For the purposes of 'A Secret Exposed'-events, you will no longer be informed just because you happen to be the secret-havers liege, or an heir to one of their titles. You will be informed if you are their friend, lover, rival, or blood brother
Only activities that have a mechanical effect in their 'Travel Started' events will now show an event, the rest will be toasts (only Pilgrimages, Tours, Wandering Nobles activities, Debates, and Examinations will now have start travel events) Other activities, and any instance of generic travel, will instead show a toast with the destination barony listed
The child 'Coming of Age' events will now only trigger events when the child is your heir, your favorite child, or one of your three oldest living children (The rest will get a Feed Message)
When a vassal pays homage, you will now only get an extra event with the option to turn them away if they are a rival or potential rival, to reduce the amount of events overall. There was no real reason to turn them away anyway. When turning away a rival, the rival will now also gain stress.
Slightly reduced the amount of flavor events for Adventurers (from ~3/year to ~2/year)
Changed some of the events for natural disasters to be feed messages
Shortened the end phase for Coronations. Now the feast does not need to last 6 whole weeks.
Reduced the maximum waiting time for several activities, from 8 months to 5 months
Added scaled AI reluctance to invite Houses with many landed members into House Blocs
Removed the gold cost and prestige scaling from the "Rites of Passage" decision
Cancer is now more likely for characters with family history or elderly health traits
The Wet Nurse's "Instill Virtue" task now picks a single eligible courtier, better considers age and sexuality, and has slightly improved success odds
Relaxed triggers for ending the Iberian Struggle.It no longer requires you to be involved as long as you fulfill all other requirements of an ending to enact it.
Relaxed the requirements for ending the Iberian Struggle once all other ending conditions are met
Changed how the AI picks court languages.They now ignore evaluating rulers who do not speak their own court language, and half the score gained from rulers who do not speak their own culture’s Court Language.
Added a game rule to unlock all dynasty legacies for players or for everyone
Grudges are now created when a potential rival is 3-or-more ranks below you
Emperors and Kings now judge Tribute Missions more carefully based on religious and cultural distance
Hegemonies now have higher Grandeur expectations than Empires
Improved nomad targeting when using Overrun Kingdom casus belli, should be done only against realistic-feeling targets
Added War Losses
Added losses to the War Overview and War Results, tracking battle losses, attrition and character deaths that happened in battles or sieges
Added breakdown of battle losses by participants
Added breakdown of character deaths by killed knights, commanders and rulers and their close family
Updated the Outliner
Added the option to pin any titles and holdings to the Outliner
Improved pinned character layout
Made army entries smaller
Improved holding information
Added realm flags
Updated the Character window
Added a button to expand the full trait list in the character window
Moved most character-portrait buttons to hover states to reduce portrait clutter
Added a compact list of subjects with their soldiers
Added a compact list of subjects to the Realm window
Grouped compact subjects by powerful vassals, regular vassals, and tributaries
Added soldiers to the compact list
Added directives for the compact list, to easier find and manage eligible vassals
Added many many shortcuts and new buttons:
Hotkeyed all tabs in the game: Ctrl+number or Alt+number for sub-tabs
Hotkeyed armies in the outliner: Alt+number. Next army can also be selected with N.
Added Halt button for armies to easily stop their movement (hotkey H)
Added Next button (N) to cycle through your personal holdings
Hotkeyed holdings in the county view to Ctrl+number and buildings to Alt+number
Added Alt+S to open capital (can also right-click the Go To Capital button)
Added = to increase game speed, so you can use -= next to Backspace
Added Q to toggle Outliner and Alt+Q for pin buttons
Added shortcuts for the Barbershop: numbers for tabs, Z and X to change zoom, A/D or C/V to rotate the portrait, H to hide UI, Escape to close
Added number hotkeys to settings tabs, pause-menu buttons, and bookmark-screen navigation
Added Ctrl+Shift+F to dismiss all feed notifications
Added more hotkeys for hud elements, activity planning, lifestyles and various other places
Added event hotkeys:
Event options can be selected with Shift+number (except dangerous red options, so you don't select them by accident)
Added option previews with Alt+number, so you can first read the tooltip and then select it with the same hotkey. All without moving the mouse!
Added Alt+E to preview all event option tooltips at once
Added a setting to add numbers to options, like in your classic RPGs
Added a setting to hide shortcuts from tooltips, if you don't wish to see them
Improved handling for ongoing travel plans
Renamed "Current Situation" to "Tips", to avoid confusing it with Situations
Added a "mark all as read" button to "Tips"
Made the settings window taller to reduce scrolling
The Barbershop now only asks to discard changes when you have actually changed something
Added two more backgrounds for the Barbershop: Crossroads Inn and Wine Cellar
Fixed the screenshot button in the Barbershop screenshotting itself
Fixed overlap of Coats of Arms and the label in the Barbershop and the misaligned close buttons
Updated the Ruler Designer:
Made it possible to zoom into portraits and drag them around. You can see every wrinkle
Added extra camera angles so you can turn the portrait or even tilt it up and down
Added the option to hide the profile portrait
Added different lighting options, so you'll know how your chin will look in the light of the Mediterranean throneroom
Made it possible to click on sliders to instantly change the value instead of dragging the little button
Added exact gene values next to sliders
Added an option to open a big slider for each gene, which can be adjusted with mouse wheel for finer control
Reduced the width of the left panel and added an option to auto-hide it
Added an option to hide the full UI in the Ruler Designer
Made ethnicity selection optional, rather than a required step before customizing the portrait
Made some buttons wider where space allowed, so long names will fit better
Added the weight slider and sex toggle to portrait customization
Added more descriptive names for several appearance options, for example, “Skin Complexion” is now: “Pale”, “Healthy”, “Freckles”, etc.
Fixed some text that could get too long in other languages and resize the window
Improved the Struggle window so it opens faster and uses the full screen height
Improved various interfaces by adding iconography to tabs
Made mass prison actions always visible and hotkeyed them to Alt+number
Added portrait icons for Acclaimed Knights
Changed Accolade attributes to a clearer vertical layout
Adjusted the hierarchy of several character interactions to shorten long interaction lists
Added missing footer text for certain map modes
Fixed long governor relation strings in the province window from pushing interaction buttons off-screen
Added a proper HUD alert icon for rulers who have not yet held a coronation
The Character Finder now stays open after using character interactions, and its marital-status filter now includes more relationship states
The Ritsuryo window now lists county-level titles under active candidacies
Added potential task information to court-position tooltips in court events
Made more building requirements visible and improved several cost and eligibility tooltips
Added strength of a potential alliance to the marriage interaction window, greyed out if it's an alliance with your vassal instead of a foreign ruler
Made armies on the map smaller when zoomed out by hiding the quality icon, amount of separate armies and the "well-supplied" icon. Normal view when zoomed-in.
For map armies, disabled right-click interaction menu on Coats of Arms when you have an army selected, to prevent misclicks
Updated shortcuts for armies, so buttons don't use the same ones
Fixed some tooltips for army buttons not showing shortcuts
Added compact view for the message log, only showing headers of messages, with the text in the tooltip
Added a scrollbar for the bottom-right notification feed if it gets too many messages, so they don't go off-screen
Made the feed shrink when a right side window is opened, to show more of the map
Made messages in the feed slightly smaller and reduced their spacing in the list
Fixed that traits in interactions could push claims or the checkmark outside the window
Added scrollable tooltips for army composition and laws, so they won't go off-screen
Moved law tooltips slightly left, so they won't block the buttons
Fixed an empty gap that could appear between subjects in the Realm window
Fixed portraits in duels sticking out of the window
Fixed misaligned backgrounds for Coats of Arms and icons in events
Fixed icons in events checking for the wrong portrait
Fixed that warnings for saves could go outside the window
Fixed an icon in Council window overlapping interactions, if you were assigned as a minister
Added an old-age crutch animation
Fixed the low camera angle for charioteers
Removed an incorrect prop from "minister_works_oversee_reconstruction"
Fixed a recurring texture error when opening the Barbershop
Lowered main-menu portrait render size to improve performance
Moved Vietnam to the East Asian graphical region
Added missing DLC clothing options to the Barbershop
Castle holdings and 3D city visuals now follow local culture more consistently, with steppe cultures still using regionally appropriate variants
Made Chinese legwear trigger correctly on characters
Fixed Level 3 Iberian and Turkish mosques showing up as a Fire Temple
Added back missing Illustration of Handgunners
Fixed Kings/Emperors rarely wearing ducal headgear
Removed straw cloak from being used by dead characters
Made un-coronated rulers use high nobility headgear instead of no headgear at all
Fixed late medieval hooded cloaks clipping a lot with various headgear
Changed so that the Late Medieval Hooded Cloak is not used by Royalty
Fixed a bug which gave early medieval veils to some high/late medieval female Royalty
Fixed cases of spouses of Emperors wearing incorrect clothing and Kings or Emperors appearing in ducal headgear
Fixed naked characters incorrectly wearing helmets or other headgear
Implemented missing cost breakdown tooltip for coronation
Added Potential Tasks to tooltips for Court Positions in court events
Added tooltips for a number of scheme modifiers that previously appeared unlocalized
Localized several previously unlocalized interactions
Fixed specialized court position names being Employer-relative instead of sometimes Employee-relative
Fixed some tooltips referring to the Prefect's Office instead of the Commanders office
Skald Court Position description added
The word ‘Quraysh’ is no longer misspelled across events and modifiers as ‘Quarysh’
Fixed unlocalized string in Fujiwara Morofusa's bookmark description
Fixed missing string for Nicknames of characters in the House Family Tree-view
Fixed missing string for “Public Execution” tooltip
Added a question mark to the relations custom localizations so unlanded characters with no liege won't call each other fellow vassals or the like
Fixed the wrong name of one background in the Barbershop: Tavern Exterior (which is, in fact, interior)
Fixed multiple cases of Out-of-Syncs in Multiplayer
Fixed several self-targeting edge cases that could cause characters to gain opinion of themselves or interact with themselves
Buildings that have already been built in other slots can no longer be built
Fixed edgecase where faiths could not be reformed properly
Fixed several missing tenets on certain faiths
Added an else_if block for equal gender faiths when the game rules are not allowing same-sex marriage
All Monastery levels are now available in valid holding types for faiths with the Preservation tenet
Immortals are now immune to aging traits
Dynamic hybrid cultures now respect relevant game rules
Fixed Angkor not starting with Capital Temple Complex at level 3 in 1178
Fixed so certain historical characters should no longer have their educational traits randomized
Fixed History setup for Hasan and Ghurid
Fixed Fujiwara Hidehira so they are no longer being marked as Count while being a Duke
Fixed the houses Braganza, Asturias, Rogerios Dalassenos, Clare, Rocaberti and Chalon not being in the correct dynasties and having broken family trees
Fixed Warning Message about completing Examinations being displayed even after reaching highest Merit Rank in non-Celestial Meritocracies
In the "Last Lesson" debate event, the elder now correctly gains opinion of you
Debates now correctly trigger pro-movements situation catalysts
Grand Campaign requirements rewritten to be less confusing anymore and correctly outline requirements for Paddy Fields
Switching Intents will now remove you from taking the exam properly
Confirmation as a Governor will now deduct stress when you take the decision instead of when the travel plan starts (this means you can no longer farm it for repeated stress reductions you cheaters!)
Independent rulers are no longer punished for previously cheating in exams
Exposing your own cheat secret will now revoke your exam result and governor titles properly
Grand Campaign now can be inherited properly
Grand Campaign will now add all rulers who lost title as defender for initial contribution
Switching your Primary Title will no longer block you from completing your oath
Debate will now select a proper target if the previous one died (No more debating with a ghost!)
Nerge now counts as a successful hunt for your Oath
Foster Enlightenment now tracks if your oath is a new University
Learn Language effects in the exams activity has been added
Added a cooldown for getting sent to an exam
Fixed duplicated events and wrong scope for Grand Campaign
Fixed various cases that would cause Grand Wedding and its promise invalid or inaccessible
Improved reliability for Grand Wedding promises; after your character dies or abdicates, you should hopefully no longer get stuck with betrothed who think they've been promised one while your new heir has forgotten all about it
Legendary Sighting events will now allow Landless Adventurers to move the camp to the sighting
Landless Adventurers will no longer retain characters created from travel options
Temporary travel characters can no longer be invited to court or exploited for court positions
Adventure Inspirations, Treasure Hunts, and travel cancellation prompts now use valid regions and only appear when appropriate
Romance and Seduce schemes now pause properly while traveling
Children and guests now use more appropriate logic in several childhood, wedding, funeral, and house-feud events
Having a target duchy title in your realm will no longer block Grand Campaign if any counties are not conquered yet
Uncreated ministry titles can now be created and granted correctly
Admin Summon to War interaction no longer allows you to attack a far away duchy
Seize Peripheral Duchy Casus-Belli now only targets neighboring lands
You will no longer be able to use Chinese Consolidation Casus-Belli to cross whole continents without neighboring China
Changing between Governors with different Domicile titles should now always change your Noble Family titles
Landless Noble Families should now always be direct vassal during succession
Updated the “Withdraw from Governorship”-decision for Ministers to correctly remove them from the Council
Populist factions will no longer take foreign duchy titles
Fixed bug where Ceremonial Claimant factions would disband immediately after being formed
Fixed a bug related to escalated Peasant Factions sometimes not being able to be pressed successfully
Fixed Ceremonial Claimant faction wars invalidating if the Claimant was landless
Confederate Partition now only creates extra top-tier titles to provide one to each secondary heir
Fixed incorrect tooltip for meritocratic appointment succession law
Fixed Meritocratic governor's succession laws not changing when modifying province administration type
Fixed Ritsuryō military governors not using the military appointment succession law
Imperial Censor now actually use treasury to do their job
Added missing Secretary Director aptitude calculations for Imperial Censor and rebalanced the values
Improved aptitude breakdown tooltip and all Mandates related tooltips
Fixed a bug where heads of noble families were being paid salaries as though they were governors in Byzantium
East Asian Estate progression, accomplishment checks, and appointment investment caps now work and display correctly
Fixed a bug where unit map icons would show incorrect data when multiple armies were moving in different directions but standing in the same province
Fixed bug where unit map icons would be visible from different zoom levels depending on if the unit was moving or not
Fixed Claim wars declared by Adventurers transferring all titles in target realm and the starting attacker will receive Ennobled Adventurer modifier
Fixed demanding Influence in a Ransom costing the Ransomer Influence, it now pays Influence to the Ransomer
Fixed loans from Holy Orders not being properly inherited by your heir, with the decision stating the loan is to be repaid to yourself
Fixed Adventurer Mercenaries only receiving payment for the first war to end rather than payment being given after the last war the Adventurer joined ends
Fixed Adventurers being created under circumstances they otherwise wouldn't when losing land which is part of a larger Realm whose Ruler would become an Adventurer
Non-Struggle rulers can now declare religious wars on Struggle rulers
Fixed some instances of Betrothal not being cleared when the betrothed dies
Fixed edge case where a House-Bloc could have Member Houses in different Realms
Fixed custom localization related to relations so Unlanded characters with no liege won't call each other “fellow vassals”
Fixed GetRelation loc functions returning Courtier instead of Follower for Followers of Landless Adventurers
Landless Adventurers that “Demand Pastureland” from a Herder now changes their capital into a Nomad holding properly upon becoming a Nomad
Reasserting a Tributary without using leveraging options now actually rewards Renown
You can no longer petition to change your Province's purpose if you're a landless ruler
Herd ransom value should now be a bit more dynamic depending on your title or if the ransomed character is someone important to the receiving character
Clarified when you become a vassal if you “Purchase Land” as a landless adventurer
Fixed AI sending the “Bargain Fealty”-interaction when it was not valid
Fixed issue in great project contribution description where the name of the project would be printed as great_project_type__ERROR_FLAG_INDEX
Fixed duchies not appearing as purchase options for merchants
Fixed and tested the new triggers for music and the proper mixing routing to make them respond to control volume
Fixed counties that become feudalized via the “Demand Administrative”-Government interaction not losing the Siberian Permafrost modifier
The Siberian Permafrost Modifier is now removed if you convert to Mandala
Fixed the “Adopt _ Ways”-decisions not clearing Siberian Permafrost modifiers
Fixed bug where “Tribalizing” a Nomadic or Herder-holding did not clear Siberian Permafrost modifiers
Cleaned up unused custom modifier support for virtues and sins
Split nested "DoctrineType" and "DoctrineGroupType" into separate databases
Updated faith and religion info files
Replaced holy site flags with a parameter array
Updated faith and religion script paths
Modernized faith and religion GUI windows
Added script access to "Culture.GetCreationDate"
Added "grandparent" and "great_grandparent" character lists
Restored UI support for mastery perks without requiring a trait
Added "religious_studies_location" building support for the "is_religious_studies_location" trigger
Updated trait-faith scripted triggers to expect a trait scope in the "TRAIT" argument
Added quick filters to "(any_)ruler" script lists for better performance
"(any_)dynasty" now only lists active dynasties by default, with "include_inactive = yes" available when needed
Restructured DLC gene templates to use fewer indices
Added support for setting regnal names and checking name equivalence with "set_regnal_name", "has_first_name", "has_regnal_name", and "has_original_first_name"
Added "IntToString"
Added "PdxGuiWidget.GetName"
Added about 800 shortcuts to the shortcuts file, so almost all keys and their combinations are available for modders to use
Added skill multiplication modifiers such as "diplomacy_mult", applied after additive skill modifiers
Buildings can now override modifiers based on DLC feature flags
Added the "RelationToShort" data function for shorter relation text
Added "has_ethnicity" and "has_same_ethnicity_as" triggers and "set_same_ethnicity_as" effect
"change_government" can now accept a saved government type scope as well as a hardcoded government name
And more than 2000 other individual changes, tweaks, and bugfixes throughout development!
Hi everyone! Welcome to the second part of the Realm Maintenance Dev-Diary. Last week, we unveiled a whole host of features that we’ve been working on together @Agamidaex. We are super excited to see your positive reaction to all of the things we’ve unveiled so far, and can’t wait for you to get your hands on it soon.
We deeply believe that our community is our lifeblood, that is why we are constantly trying to find ways of giving back to the community and lift up talented creators through our different programs such as the Creator Packs or this update. Working with Agami has been super fun, and we are hopeful about continuing doing things like this in the future.
After all, we still have a ton of other stuff he wanted to work on that were at least equally as exciting as the things we showed off last week, so I think we almost have to at this point! :D
On top of the more than 1,500 individual bug-fixes, tweaks, and changes we’ve done to the game with this update, we want to also highlight a couple of more projects we’ve been working on to improve existing features in different ways. Also, before we start, we won’t be talking more about the Accolade rework, since we believe we went into enough detail in a previous dev diary. If you’re interested to read more about it, please check it out here! We have however been incorporating some of your feedback that we’ve received since revealing the rework, so thank you for that!
Alright, to kick it off, I want to introduce @pdx-windy, one of our producers on CK3, who will be showcasing one of his babies that he has been working hard on, and I believe you will all greatly appreciate it.
Hello everyone, I am Windy and I’ve been producing Crusader Kings 3 for five years now. Thanks to Black Forge Jam I have an opportunity to actually contribute to the game beyond my capacity as a producer, and whatever random script things I do every now and then (to anyone who enjoys the fishing decision for adventurers in Roads to Power, that was me!).
This year, for the game jam, I wanted to show how cool story cycle content actually is. We have quite a lot of story cycles in the game actually, some of them just drive AI behavior but a lot of it is fun gameplay. The studio agreed, it is something I think everyone has wanted at one point, it’s a shame they are so hidden away. To achieve this I got a star-studded team to help me develop the “Story Tracker”.
I was joined by our Game Director @rageair, 2 (TWO!) whole coders, a game designer, a lot of help from the UI artists, and even our studio manager helped out!
First thing is first, how do you go from nothing to something? Well, here my experience as a producer came in handy hehe…
First up, what do we even want to show? What questions do we need to answer? What questions do WE have as CK3 players?? After an initial brainstorming session I set out to make some mockups and prototypes on paper and by kitbashing our UIs together to show something.
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It ended up being very bad and very ugly, but it was a first step towards something. Now we could actually start quantifying what is useful, what is not, how we should display different things… All story cycles are very different, they have different things to keep track of, different characters, etc. etc.
What even is there to keep track of? Well, to know that we need to list all our story cycles, and what suits us better than a nice spreadsheet…
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Now that we had an idea of what we needed to show, we ended up with a modular system (thanks @rageair!) and UI elements to be able to build on all these different game mechanics found in the story cycles.
The very talented code team set to work to expose these things in the UI, and from Game Design’s side it was time to implement a maximum version of a story cycle for debugging. One that would make full use of all the planned elements so that we could layout it properly and see what we needed to do in order to display all the information we wanted to show in a neat and structured way.
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For each story cycle I designed mockups with elements that are needed for implementation
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For each element, code wrote GUI script that I could play around with, moving elements around, making sure everything is aligned, using the same amount of vertical and horizontal space…
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\whale stag]
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We had Monday to Friday to complete this, and with good prep work and laying the foundation early we managed to have the feature complete by Wednesday, allowing us to bugfix and polish until the end of the week. Highly recommended!!
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Anyway that’s the long and short of it – it looks like we have a lot of new content but actually we are just showing off what we’ve made throughout the years.
Now we can make new, cooler stories that use this interface to its full potential! Stay tuned for those!
Super cool stuff, indeed we can’t wait to see how we can further use this new interface to deliver you all great and exciting content!
Even our Game Director, Oltner, has been working on a pet project for this update. Up next, he will tell you a bit more about what happens when you grow old, both in real life and now the game!
There are two problems with growing old in CK3 that I’ve wanted to change for a long time; there are very few complications of aging, and the ones that exist are immediately debilitating. For example, one day your character is a spry, capable warrior - and the next day, they’re infirm and basically good for nothing but waiting for death to claim them. Also, that’s basically the only consequence - infirmity - which represents both the deterioration of mind and body at once. Not very fun, and feels unfair from a challenge perspective.
Since some time, we’ve had the tool to make this situation into something better - tiered traits. There’s now a selection of elderly traits, all medievally-flavored versions of real-life afflictions, that start out very mild but grow in severity over time. This includes the previously mentioned Infirm trait, which is now also tiered. Worth noting is that I didn’t want a repeat of the ‘Harm Events’ feature (which threw random events at the player which they couldn’t do anything about), so a crucial element of Elder Traits is offering methods for players to mitigate both: 1. Getting the traits in the first place, and 2. How fast they progress.
Your lifestyle has a large impact on whether you get Elder Traits - but there’s also a genetic component, and a certain degree of luck involved. Generally doing what you most often already do, like keeping your character healthy and free of stress, will reduce the chances of getting the traits. Note that the game concept will not list all factors, only the most major ones. Some of the more ‘niche’ playstyles and lifestyles are more socially-oriented, and thus counter mind-related afflictions: so now you have new reasons to pursue the diplomat/seducer trees!
Let's take a look at the traits and their mitigations!
The most stress-linked Elder Trait is Faltering Heart, which progresses in severity the more stress breaks your character suffers. The trait itself increases stress gain and reduces stress loss, but for a careful player this is the easiest trait to avoid worsening. If you reach its rank 4, you will die.
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Fragile Bones is unique in that it doesn’t convey any direct health penalties - it just makes everything surrounding health worse for your character. The trait lowers your life expectancy (which means aging will cause you to lose health slightly faster than usual), makes your frail mortal form easier to murder, and makes any wounds you suffer worse. Yes, that’s right! Whenever you would become Wounded, your Fragile Bones trait will instead cause you to become Severely Injured, or Brutally Mauled if the trait rank is high.
Fragile Bones slowly increase its rank over time, but this is very slow unless you’re traveling or commanding armies.
If you have Fragile Bones or Withering Heart with an advanced trait rank, your character will show a new animation in the character window:
The mildest Elder Trait is Clouded Eyes, which disperses the penalties of the Blind trait over several levels, with the final one replacing the trait with Blind outright.
This trait progresses very randomly, with a vast majority of characters only ending up around level 1-2. It can be mitigated by avoiding areas with a lot of sun and glare.
As an added detail, characters with this trait will actually have clouded eyes visible on their portrait.
While Withering Mind does not give any penalties to health, it will - if left unchecked - decimate your skills. This is by far the most debilitating of the Elder Traits, yet also the one with the most possible mitigations. Keep yourself as healthy as you can by surrounding yourself with friends, lovers, wards, etc. Think twice before stacking all your typical health modifiers; sometimes it's better to die than to spend your life in purgatory.
This trait is the reason we’ve added multiplicative skill modifiers in this Update - for each advancement on the track, you’ll lose 25% of your skills. No matter how high those skills are. You can have a learning skill of 5 or 50 - you’ll slowly slide down the slope of oblivion regardless…
Some of the mitigations for Withering Mind are things that actually worsen the state of other Elder Traits. For instance, traveling is bad for those with Fragile Bones, but good for those with Withering Mind.
Characters with a sufficiently high level of Withering Mind will have the ‘Delirium’ animation in the character view.
The Infirm trait is now tiered, just like the other traits, and no longer reduces intrigue or learning - it now represents a general physical degradation of the body. As this trait is still one of the most impactful traits in the Elder Trait category, it’s now much more rare. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll get infirm without already having gained one or more of the other Elder Traits first.
Infirmity increases by a full level every time you contract an illness of any severity. Stay healthy, and stay far away from any epidemics.
We’ve made some content to make the traits feel present, such as events while traveling, etc. This includes not only events which highlight the Elder Traits you’ve gained, but also events exhibiting the impact of your close family or loved ones having these nasty traits.
Examples:
Surround yourself with the right people to avoid the worst consequences.
Some traits, like athletic, make little sense the more infirm you get.
If you prefer the ‘old’ way of representing Elder Traits with only the Infirm trait, we have added a game rule where you can customize that to your preference. The only option that disables Achievements is the one disabling aging consequences altogether.
Now up next is Nomads and the work that has gone into rebalancing them. I will let Jason explain that in more detail. He’s really enthusiastic about this so please entertain him.
ALL LANDS UNDER THE SUN BELONG TO THE GREAT KHAN.
With this truth established between us, I will tell you of the nomad adjustments that have set up camp in this fine update. The chief steppe issue we addressed was Herders. Specifically, the lack of them. After game start, Herders tend to mostly disappear from the world. This leaves the steppe barren of Fertility, and Nomads with few good targets for migration. It’s a recipe for stagnation.
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So what measures did we take to welcome Herders back into the world?
First — a “culling” effect of very weak AI nomads.
If an AI nomad has no Herd, but a single barre n pasture or two, and no fame to their name… they are made a pathetic (but Fertility-generating) Herder. And they deserve it.
Secondly — Humiliation Casus Belli Realm-Breakup
The Humiliation Casus Belli will now not only demote nomads in Dominance level, but will break off their non-capital border counties as independent herders.
Thirdly — Tweaking of the Overrun Kingdom Casus Belli.
Because this CB moves nomads out of the steppe and leaves Herders in their wake, it being used more by king-tier khans (specifically, those who have little or no reason to believe they may become Gurkhan) creates fertile openings in the steppe, and contribute to the region being more dynamic.
So the AI will indeed use the Overrun Casus Belli more often, but only against much more appropriate-feeling targets: either their neighbors or regions historically moved into by nomads (Persia, the Middle East, Asia Minor, Eastern Europe, Northeast Asia). Indeed, issues with the related targeting script have been fixed, and there should be no more random Cuman Frances appearing.
Oh, also, the culture/faith replacement effect that happens when the victorious nomads move into their conquests is now somewhat more limited and less capable of making local cultures/faiths disappear.
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We cooked up a smaller version of the CB discussed above. This one is available to duke-tier nomads and targets only a duchy. It does not swap the local culture and faith with the invader’s culture and faith. Thus, it has a less disruptive impact on the game world, and can be used more frequently as part of the regular permeability between the world of the steppe and the soft settled peoples.
As with the Overrun Kingdom Casus Belli , a nomad invader achieving victory with Overrun Duchy moves into the non-nomadic lands they targeted and assumes non-nomadic government. Their old territory goes to herders.
In addition, this Casus Belli, unlike the Kingdom-level one, is potentially available to Confederation members. By using this CB successfully, they leave the ranks of their Confederation. So this is another vector for steppe dynamism: a decrease in the long-term stability of nomadic confederations.
So… Herders?
After testing, I’m happy to say that there are not only GREAT MIGHTY KHANS on the steppe after game start - there are herders too! The cycle of steppe life (and steppe-victim life) seems rather more vivaciously unpredictable. Praise Chinggis Khan.
Thank you Jason!
We hope that this and last week's showcase has left you excited for this update. Like I mentioned in the beginning, we have a whole slew of fixes on top of the work here that has been done.
I want to raise a special thanks to everyone who participated in the Community Fix Day Event we launched a few weeks ago. In our eyes, it was a massive success and we were super happy about the participation we got from you, the community. We will be evaluating the event, and look into how we could incorporate this into perhaps a more regular format. For those interested in the changelog of all the things that were fixed, I am happy to announce that we will be revealing the preliminary changelog very soon as we go into Open Beta. Lastly, before ending this development Diary, there are two more additions I want to show off.
We’ve had fantastic work from one of our programmers to finally separate each accessory type so that it has its own set of 16(!) color channels that you can modify for your character. What does this mean in plain language?
It means that in the future, you will be able to finally color the clothes of your character without accidentally painting your horse.
Now, I want to be clear that this has not yet gone through QA. While we are hopeful that it will make it into this update, we also want to be careful not to introduce any new issues, so please make sure to thoroughly try out this feature during the Open Beta.
We’ve also done a pretty significant change to the domain limit so it is not as easily obtained by Stewardship anymore. @Snow Crystal has been working on overhauling the system, so you now no longer get domain limit from stewardship. A small thanks to @MummyMonk for the idea in the first place.
In addition, we moved some of these lost domain limit bonuses into education traits instead, so you now get domain limit based on education trait:
Tier 1 → -1
Tier 2 → 0
Tier 3 → 1
Tier 4 → 2
Tier 5 → 3
We also reduced the amount of domain limit from the Architect tree to 1, and put it into one tree of each type:
Patriarch tree (trait)
Theologian tree (trait)
Torturer tree (fear tax)
Overseer (absolute control)
We want to ensure that this update lives up to both our quality standards and your expectations. While we cannot share a release date just yet, we can say that you will not have to wait much longer, as we hope to share more updates soon.
For those interested in joining the Open Beta and helping us ensure the release is the best it can be, please keep an eye out for more information very soon. We are planning to launch the branch on March 30th, assuming everything goes according to plan.
We are extremely grateful for all your support during this time, and I hope you are just as excited as we are to play this update. The next time I make a post, it will be the final changelog and a go through of the mod support we’ve managed to get in as well for this update. Please look forward to it!
Thank you, and see you soon!
Hi everyone!
Back in February, we gave you a sneak peek at what we have in store for our major update. We saw how eager many of you were to learn more, so we wanted to take the time to expand on the update and show off more of the changes coming soon.
For this diary, we are joined by a special guest, who will introduce themselves next.
Hello everyone, I'm Agami or @Agamidae here. The mystery modder behind part of this update.
I'm a UX designer, I've spent 2000 hours modding CK3, and you already know my work. I made the Fullscreen Barbershop, back when it wasn't fullscreen, and I made that Big Battle View you see in Koifish's videos.
Years ago I had a dream. I wanted to finally put an actual functional ledger into the game.
One weekend later, I had it :)
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Imperator was the game that hooked me on Paradox modding and UX design. I wouldn't be here without it. So, a couple years later I started on the CK3 ledger:
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Then I got sidetracked a little for a… few years. Spent them making a mod for blind people, so they can play CK3 now, gathered more ideas for the ledger. I Learned a lot in the process.
Then, last summer I got a call from the Big Platypus. Alexander Oltner asked: what would you do if we hired you?
I pulled up my ledger, which by then had lists of characters, artifacts, wars, provinces, houses… And got hired on the spot (Well, okay, I got hired 6 months later, because Swedish bureaucracy is no joke).
They said, we'll give you a programmer, you'll have 2 months, do for us what took you 5 years… And anything else you can think of. The months flew by, and here we are! The ledger is only one part of the update, but it required mountains of code, so I need to shout out my partner in crime, Petter Hansson. The update wouldn't exist without his code, so please everyone, say thank you, Petter.
Now, let us begin. With one man's tragedies and statistics.
You open the ledger from the hud, next to the date.
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And yes, you're going to see a lot more new shortcuts.
The Ledger has 9 pages in total, you switch with bookmarks on the side, and the first page is all “Ongoing Wars”.
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Wait a few years and you'll see a hundred wars.
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Or we can sort them by losses. Yes, we are tracking losses now! That's what the skulls are. You can open any war from the ledger, of course. You can open any of its items, in fact.
So, let's take a closer look at wars and return to Ledger in a second.
The War View now shows how many Soldiers or Characters (!) were lost by each side in the war.
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Going more in depth, the War View now shows battle losses first, including which side suffered the most. The Battle Score tooltip also lists how many soldiers fought and died in each battle, which makes it especially satisfying to spot stackwipes.
Next, we show attrition losses. These are approximate, since things can become complicated when multiple wars overlap. And, of course, in a game about characters, we also count any characters lost during the war.
The game will try to save any notable characters who died in the conflict, such as rulers and their close family members, and display them in this tooltip. We also make sure to show these losses in the War Results screen, so you will not miss them.
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I cannot tell you how much I wanted this feature. Petter made my dreams come true with this one. With it, we can better feel the impact of wars, and for us it has simply been fun to see just how many things are happening across the world. We look forward to seeing your highest tallies.
We have also added a button to the Ledger that allows you to favorite wars, so you can keep track of any conflicts you find particularly interesting.
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And that’s not just limited to wars, as you can favorite all of the items in the ledger, on every page! So, if you find something valuable, like for example…
You'll be surprised how many of them there are, even without the Royal Court DLC, you'll have hundreds of available artifacts, and with it enabled, thousands!
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We can sort artifacts by rarity and filter them by type, so if you only want to see crowns, for example, that is easy to do. You can also view the artifacts that exist within your realm. Almost all pages now include filters, which can be opened by clicking the magnifying glass. The top three items in each sorting order are displayed in the podium area at the top of the page. This section can be collapsed by clicking to the right of the filters, giving you more space to scroll through the lists.
We can also sort artifacts by the number of kills they have, although those tend to be very rare. Claims are shown as well, including both claimants and house claims, and can be sorted by the total number. We have also added the age of an artifact here, when that information exists. Some of them are truly ancient, as this example from a 1125 save demonstrates.
You will also find a few easter eggs among the artifacts, but we will not spoil them here. Have fun discovering them on your own.
This is of course, far more than any ruler would know at the time. But all that information is already in the game, you could manually go through all the rulers and look at their artifacts.
The Ledger doesn't reveal any secrets, only gives you better access to what's already there.
It would be neat to have Terra Incognita, but currently the game is very transparent. Which does, on the plus side, let us discover many interesting things.
Discovery is one big function of the ledger. The other one is measuring contests.
While we already have the Character Finder, this character ledger is intended more as a leaderboard, letting us compare ourselves to others and climb the ranks.
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We can also filter characters by player, which makes the Ledger a useful tool for a bit of unfriendly competition in multiplayer.
We have split the Characters page into three tabs, and the first tab shows all the economic leaders. Here, we can sort by either total gold or income. It is worth noting that the income sorting is based on total income before expenses, so there is a tooltip that provides more detail on the actual balance.
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You can check who has the biggest realm, the most buildings, highest average development and most treasury.
The next tab highlights the military giants. Here, we can sort by total soldiers or by men-at-arms alone. We also show the total number of knights, along with a tooltip that lists them individually and displays their knight effectiveness.
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This tab also lets us see who the most dreaded ruler is, as well as who is holding the most prisoners. And for our horse boys, we have included herd as a sorting category too, so they also get a chance to stand on the podium.
The third tab is all about reputation. We can sort by fame and devotion, legitimacy, influence, merit, mandala radiance, and even dominance.
It is also worth noting that every page includes a dropdown with even more sorting options. Here, for example, we can sort by the underlying values themselves, and it is impressive to see just how much some characters manage to accumulate.
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There's plenty of interesting characters to discover here. And when you do, feel free to favorite them in the ledger. It's a nice way to keep track of them without filling up your outliner.
Speaking of which…
Let's do another quick detour. You can now pin holdings and titles to the outliner!
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If you want to quickly navigate around the map or check up on a title you plan to create, it'll be there in your outliner. The outliner is hotkeyed to Q and pin buttons to Alt+Q for easy access. Same for character pins.
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There are, in fact, quite a few new hotkeys.
You can quickly toggle sections of the outliner and select armies in it with Alt+number.
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Each army now has a button that lets us cycle through them with N. Our holdings have one as well.
We have also added a halt button for armies, bound to H, which lets us quickly stop the movement of any selected army instead of zooming in and trying to click exactly where the army is standing.
All tabs in the game are now assigned to Ctrl plus number hotkeys. Some features use Alt plus numbers instead, such as buildings and lifestyle focuses, and setting up activities can now be done more quickly as well.
We have also added a new hotkey, Alt+X, to advance to the next day. This makes it easier to time things precisely without having to unpause and pause again.
You can open your capital with Alt+S, your domicile with Alt+D, a war with Alt+W, and an activity with Alt+A. You can also confirm actions with Alt+C, in addition to Enter rather than as a replacement for it.
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You will notice that activities now appear on the right side of the screen. This was an effort by the team to declutter the left side, which could often become quite busy.
The team has also added an incredible new feature. You can now edit your travel route simply by holding Shift and clicking on the map, and it feels fantastic to use.
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Regarding shortcuts, we also have some good news for modders. While the shortcuts file is not moddable yet, you may not even need to mod it, because it now contains all keys and key combinations, roughly 800 in total.
So if you ever need something truly cursed like Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12, you can use it. If you want to use WASD for your Tetris mod, by all means, go ahead. Have fun with it.
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We will return to hotkeys again in a moment, but for now let us move on to the next Ledger page: Houses and Dynasties, which is on Ctrl+4, by the way.
Do you want to know which house is the largest, and which dynasty is the most renowned? Now we can find that out much more easily.
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You can also check house unity and house attributes, and we show the total number of counties controlled by a house along with all of its soldiers.
We also show the dynasty itself, how many legacies it has unlocked, and its current renown. The second tab contains a list of all dynasties, with similar information, along with the number of houses each dynasty contains.
It is also fun to read the mottos here. As a small fun fact, developers have their own houses in the game, often with amusing mottos, so see if you can find them on your own.
Next comes my favorite page.
We have all the holdings in the world, with their buildings!
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And yes, we have made it so you can build right from here.
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I was over the moon when they got this working! In a mod, it was only possible to show static icons, but now everything is fully interactable. If we want to build in our vassals’ holdings, we can switch to our realm, sort by tax or empty slots, and start clicking.
If we are curious whether our vassals are constructing anything, there is also a filter for ongoing buildings. And if we want to know the best place to raid, we can sort by loot. We can also filter by unlooted locations, or by looted ones if we want to see just how much raiding and pillaging is going on.
In any case, we have plenty of sorting options here, ranging from levies to county development and control, along with filters for special buildings and their slots.
Hopefully, this will help you manage your realm more effectively, or at least help you find the next place to conquer.
Of course, counties and other titles have their own pages too.
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Here, we count the total number of holdings, along with the taxes, loot, and levies they provide. We can also sort by the number of baronies, including empty ones, from the dropdown menu. (At the moment, the largest county in the game is Madurai, with seven baronies.)
You can sort them by development and also by its growth. It's interesting to see which parts of the world are developing or declining.
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The same applies to control and popular opinion, which makes it easy to find the counties that truly love or hate their rulers.
A note on total tax, loot, and levies: These are all taxes and levies produced in each holding. Some of that income and those levies will be kept by mayors or bishops, so we would not receive the full amount ourselves, but it is still a useful way to compare how productive different counties are. We apply the same logic to higher-tier titles as well.
Here are all the titles, grouped by tiers, with total counties and holdings, and total taxes, loot and levies, from all their holdings.
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If you ever wonder where to expand, or which kingdom would be more valuable to take over, this can provide some useful guidance.
For titles in this list that have not yet been created, we show information based on their de jure counties. For titles that do exist, we instead show their de facto counties, meaning the counties they actually control.
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For titles, we show the average values of development, control, and popular opinion across all their counties. And of course, we also list their claimants.
We have also added the dominant culture and faith for each title. The tooltip shows what percentage of counties follow them, which makes it very neat to see at a glance.
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Speaking of…
You ever wondered what's the most populous faith in the game? Well, we can easily compare them now.
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We also show how many rulers each faith has. And, like Saint Nicholas, we keep track of who is naughty and who is nice by displaying the number of sinful and virtuous rulers.
If a ruler has a sin, we count them as a sinner. If they have no sins and at least one virtue, they are considered virtuous, and we welcome them to the club. Also, are these icons not great? A shout-out goes to Celine, who created them, and to Lucas, who added a number of new icons for the Ledger in general.
Do these numbers have any gameplay impact? No, but they are an interesting way to see how pious the members of a faith truly are. Do they actually follow their ideals? And perhaps this might inspire a playthrough where we try to make our faith the purest of them all.
As a reminder, we can search for traits in the Character Finder if we want to track down sinners.
Before moving on, it is worth mentioning the first two values on the page. We show the total number of counties that follow the faith, along with the change caused by recent conversions.
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This allows us to see how different faiths are growing or declining, and which ones might be on the brink of disappearing.
The page also shows whether a faith is currently involved in any holy wars and how many of its own holy sites it controls. In addition, we display its fervor and the total number of soldiers belonging to all rulers who follow that faith.
There is also a similar tab for religions, which presents the combined totals for all of their respective faiths.
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Naturally, we can also compare cultures. And while you can probably guess which culture has the most people, the top ten may still contain a few surprises.
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We also track county changes here, showing culture promotions over time. In this example, the data comes from a save in 1125.
In addition, we display the total number of characters and rulers belonging to each culture, along with the total development across all their counties, which is relevant for innovation progress. A progress bar also shows how many innovations each culture has discovered.
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We can also see how much acceptance other cultures have toward ours, which makes it easy to find out who actually likes us. Finally, if a culture has a creation date, we display it here as well, making it simple to keep track of newly formed cultures.
And that brings us to the end of the Ledger. I hope you will find it useful. The team here and the beta testers have been very happy using it, and with their help it ended up far better than I could have done on my own. In fact, I never even managed to finish it alone, so this was a very welcome push. But we are not quite done yet. The Ledger is one realm management tool, but we have a couple more in store.
You know how large the list of subjects in “Your Realm” becomes? Wouldn't it be nice to have a more compact overview?
Now we have it.
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It would show soldiers of each character and group them by type: powerful vassals, regular ones and tributaries.
You can also toggle the directives button and quickly issue them to your vassals (if they are willing to listen to you).
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Remember, directives are available for any rulers, not only administrative. So now we’ve made it easier to find who can take them through icons.
The same compact list is now in the character window, which doesn't have a lot of space for subjects.
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This version is ungrouped, but we can sort and filter it as needed. The idea for this view actually came from another UX designer I worked with. During the process we had quite a few discoveries like this, and we are very happy with the results.
And if you have spotted a new icon in the character view, rejoice. When a character has many traits, we can press the traits button to expand the list, just like we can with modifiers.
Tada!
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This was implemented by the CK3 team, even before I got started. The portrait is also less crowded with buttons now, since most of them only appear when we hover over the character.
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We do keep the kills button visible, so we can immediately see whether a character has any.
And with that, we move on to my second tool, which is focused on knights and is based on another popular mod.
Have you ever lost your heir in a random battle because you forgot they were serving as a knight? Now we can prevent that. Simply uncheck a setting in Permissions, and your heir will never serve as a knight again.
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We can do the same for our councillors, so we never lose our best Marshal in battle again. We can also set a minimum prowess requirement, ensuring that only the best of the best are allowed to serve as our knights.
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Manage it as you wish.
However, your permissions will be ignored by knights you have forced to serve, or by your Acclaimed Knights. If you choose to ignore this window entirely, it will not affect your game in any way. Everything will continue to work exactly as before.
This feature was first created by Lrds, and then the mod was adopted by Serp and later by Lord DGP, and I also contributed a little to it along the way. Kudos to everyone who helped keep it alive, and to Lrds for the original idea.
Now, however, it is part of the game itself. We have also added more information explaining what determines who can serve as a knight in the first place. If we have a relevant cultural tradition, the interface will tell us that it has an effect here.
Now, I promised to return to hotkeys, and I'm happy to say, like in the classic RPGs we now have:
I had already added something similar in a mod before, but this is a far more robust version. Event options now use Shift plus their number, which helps prevent us from selecting them accidentally while changing the game speed.
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Of course, this works best for events we are already familiar with. For events we do not yet know, we can press Alt plus the corresponding number to preview the tooltip of an option before selecting it.
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And then press the same hotkey again to select it… Or press Alt+E to show all tooltips at once. So you can easily compare the choices!
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It feels great to use. We can quickly navigate through events without needing to move the mouse.
The suggestion to add previews actually came from a game designer, and I am very happy that we managed to make it work. Hotkeys are also available across all event windows, including letter events, which allows us to quickly confirm actions when they appear.
The numbers on event options are hidden by default, you can enable them in settings. You can also hide the shortcuts from tooltips, if you want a cleaner look.
There is another feature for events that's been in high demand.
We can now display the names of characters appearing in events, along with their relationship to us, which makes it much easier to understand who everyone is at a glance. Here we also want to give a big shoutout to another modder, FUN, for the original idea (and a small one to Starving as well for adding opinions). Good design.
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To be clear, however, none of the mod’s code is included in the game. Everything has been rewritten from scratch, and we have taken a slightly different approach. For landed characters, nameplates are aligned with their Coats of Arms, while for unlanded characters they are centered, similar to how the mod presents them.
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Character tooltips, much like in the mod, appear directly on the nameplates themselves. This prevents them from covering the portraits if we want to select a character, which is another very good design decision.
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Nameplates are optional and are disabled by default. We can enable them in the settings menu, where we also have the option to display shortcut numbers directly on event options.
The settings window has also received a small facelift. It is now taller, which means we need to scroll less, and its tabs are now accessible through number hotkeys.
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The pause menu has also been updated with hotkeys for its most common options. Pressing 1 saves the game, 2 loads, 3 allows us to change characters, and 4 opens the settings.
Similar improvements have been made in the main menu as well. On the bookmark screen, we can now use Ctrl, Alt, and number hotkeys to switch between dates, bookmarks, and rulers.
And once you load into the game and decide to create a custom ruler, we have some good news there as well.
I have made a big update to the Ruler Designer, building on ideas similar to my own mod but with several new additions.
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We can now zoom into the portrait using the mouse wheel and drag it around to inspect details more closely. We can also hide the left panel to gain more space, or hide the interface entirely if we want to take a clean screenshot.
In addition, we can rotate the portrait to a few different angles and adjust the lighting, which makes it easier to see the shape of the face more clearly.
The sliders now behave like proper sliders. We can click anywhere along them and they will immediately jump to that value, and the exact value is displayed so we can see precisely how much it has changed.
A big thanks goes to another UX designer who pointed out that this was possible. I had no idea at the time and had to dig through the Victoria 3 files to figure out how to implement it.
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You will also notice that we can now change ethnicity directly from this screen, rather than having to go through that separate menu every time we enter or exit portrait customization.
Many of the buttons are also larger now, allowing their text to fit more comfortably. We have also brought the weight slider and the sex toggle into this view, so we can quickly make those adjustments without navigating elsewhere.
In addition, Nils is planning to improve the localization for several options. Instead of labels such as “Skin Complexion 4,” you will see clearer descriptions like “Pale” or “Moles.”
And for our German players, we have fixed a bug where trait text could cause the interface to resize too much. We got you.
I also made a small update to the Struggle window so that it opens faster and uses the full height of the screen instead of leaving an empty gap at the bottom.
Along the way, I helped the team fix a few bugs and reported several others (and of course created a couple of my own >.> ).
Petter also added two small gifts for modders: IntToString and PdxGuiWidget.GetName. I am sure modders will quickly discover what they are useful for.
The Barbershop has also been improved so that it no longer asks whether we want to discard changes every time we exit. It will now only ask if we have actually changed something.
Finally, the last change I made was renaming “Current Situation” to simply “Tips.”
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We now have other Situations in the game, so the name had become a bit confusing. I also wanted something shorter, which is why it is now simply called Tips.
I have also added a button that allows us to mark all of its messages as read.
And with that, you can now mark my part of the Dev Diary as read.
I hope you'll enjoy everything I've worked on. The ledger, all the shortcuts, event improvements, war losses and the updated Ruler Designer. Again, kudos to Petter for making so much of it work.
It was a fun time and we've found much better designs together than If I had worked by myself.
No promises, but if you like the ledger, it's possible it will be expanded in the future. There were a few more pages I wanted to add, but this is what we had time for in this update.
I could always return for another one, if you ask Paradox loud enough ;)
But now it is time to pass the torch to the rest of the team.
Now this is where we would be presenting the rest of the dev diary where we show all of the cool inhouse stuff we’ve been working on. Unfortunately, Agami here wrote too damn much so we ran out of time!
Jokes aside, we decided that we wanted to dedicate this Dev Diary fully to Agami, so that he gets the space to get feedback on the work (he’s done fantastic work!)
We are still hard at work on the update itself. In addition to what we have already shown, we are also preparing for the Open Beta mentioned in one of our previous dev diaries, with more than 1,500 individual bug-fixes, tweaks, and changes made to the game as of this post.
These changes range from smaller tweaks to reworks of entire systems, many of which have had balance implications that required extensive testing. We hope to show off more of them in next week’s Dev Diary!
Lastly, before ending this Dev Diary, we want to share one more small little pet project that Riad has been working on together with our Tech Lead.
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We’ve seen increasing requests from people asking to be able to switch to specific court designs in the game. So, we added this small little feature for all of you to enjoy. In addition to this, we’ve also added in one extra court design that was previously unavailable.
For those of you who read the All Under Heaven Dev Diaries, you might have noticed we showed off an earlier version of the Chinese Royal Court that we ended up scrapping. Well, I am happy to announce that the work of our talented 3D artists will not go to waste as you will be able to pick this as your court if you so wish.
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I want to make it clear, this court will not spawn naturally in the game, as we do not believe it is historically accurate enough to be represented as “canon”. You will only see this court if you actively choose to pick it yourself.
All of this will be part of the Free Update coming soon. We hope to share more information with you at a later time. Please look forward to it!
Until then, have a great week!
Hello everyone! Today, we're releasing three new Creator Packs for Crusader Kings III: North Pacific Attire by Adrian "Aj" Kamil, East Asian Wonders by Pietro "PiGu" Cavalli, and Celestial Court Attire by TAMA. North Pacific Attire, East Asian Wonders, and Celestial Court Attire are available now!
10 Ainu and Emishi-inspired clothes with 18 unique variants
3 East-Arctic and Nivkh clothes with 8 unique variants
1 armor set (headgear & armor)
2 legwear models for both common and noble characters
1 straw cape
8 hats with 11 unique variants
9 new buildings, including temples, tribal settlements and walls
1 unit set consisting of 3 models
New structures and landmarks:
Great Buddha of Kamakura
Kizuki Taisha
Stone Pagoda of Mireuksa
Tomb of a Goguryeo King
Iron Lion of Cangzhou
Temple of Confucius
Gaocheng Observatory
Maijishan Grottoes
Yuelu Academy
Imperial Citadel of Lin'an
Fanfang of Guangzhou
My Son Sanctuary
Ha Long Bay
Three Pagodas of Dali
Thuriang Kilns
Lingapura Pyramid
Candi of Muara Takus
Wilwatikta Palace
Gunung Api
Slopes of Russet
Sulawesi Megaliths
Angkor Wat
Two clothing designs and one headdress from the Ming Dynasty:
Ming Nobility Clothing
1 Ming Noble's Dress
1 Hairpin Crown of Ming Dynasty
Four clothing designs, two headdresses, and one hairstyle from Uyghur culture:
2 Uyghur Royal Robes, available in both high and low grades
2 Women's Crown of Uyghur, available in gold and silver
1 Men's Crown of Uyghur
1 Noble Hat of Uyghur
1 Uyghur Braided Hair
Two clothing designs, one headdress, and one waist Ornament from Tangut culture:
2 Tangut High Nobility Clothing: Includes two styles, high and low.
1 Noblewoman's Hats of Tangut: Includes two styles, high and low.
1 Western Xia male waist ornament (tied on a round-necked robe)
Two clothing designs and four headdresses from Khitan culture:
1 Male Liao Nobility Clothing
1 Female Liao Nobility Clothing
1 Khitan Crown with High Wings
1 Liao Golden Crown
2 Liao Noble's Hats: Includes two styles, high and low.
One clothing design and two headdresses from Dali:
1 Dali Nobility Clothing
1 Dali High Noble Crown
1 Dali Low Noble's Hat
Two headdresses from Jurchen culture:
1 Noblewoman's Hat of Jin Dynasty
1 Noble Hat of Jin Dynasty
Two headdresses from Silla:
2 Crowns of Silla
The Son of Heaven surveys his vast dominion.
Robed in splendor and seated in quiet authority, he is the unquestioned master of all he sees. Every glance carries weight. Every pose suggests absolute command. Fearsome. Regal. Unyielding.
However, behind the imperial grandeur, beneath the stern expression and all the majesty, there is another side to the Emperor Platypus. A softer one. A gentler one. One that, every now and then, does not crave power or ceremony at all.
Sometimes, all he truly wants is a hug.
Inspired by the All Under Heaven expansion for Crusader Kings III and made in partnership with Makeship, this Emperor Platypus plushie embodies a true ruler of old, steeped in tradition and dynastic grandeur. With a legendary companion by your side, you can now take command in game in imperial style.
Bring the Emperor Platypus home: https://pdxint.at/3OPTgHh
Coming March 11, 2026.
Three new Creator Packs for Crusader Kings III bring grand monuments of Asia to your map, historical flair to your court, and the highest fashions of the grandest hegemon.
Add more historical fashion and flair to your Crusader Kings III characters with the North Pacific Attire Creator Pack, a new cosmetic addition to the game from community modder Adrian "Aj" Kamil, who also created the Arctic Attire Creator Pack.
The North Pacific Attire Pack includes new clothing and buildings themed around the people of northern Japan, the Sakhalin islands and coastal Siberia.
This pack includes:
10 Ainu and Emishi-inspired clothes with 18 unique variants
3 East-Arctic and Nivkh clothes with 8 unique variants
1 armor set (headgear & armor)
2 legwear models for both common and noble characters
1 straw cape
8 hats with 11 unique variants
9 new buildings, including temples, tribal settlements and walls
1 unit set consisting of 3 models
See the grand monuments of Asia on your Crusader Kings III map with the East Asian Wonders Creator Pack, a new community creation from modder Pietro "PiGu" Cavalli. This cosmetic pack adds on-map representations of 22 iconic sites and locations, bringing new flavor and majesty to your game.
The following Asian structures and landmarks are included:
Great Buddha of Kamakura
Kizuki Taisha
Stone Pagoda of Mireuksa
Tomb of a Goguryeo King
Iron Lion of Cangzhou
Temple of Confucius
Gaocheng Observatory
Maijishan Grottoes
Yuelu Academy
Imperial Citadel of Lin'an
Fanfang of Guangzhou
My Son Sanctuary
Ha Long Bay
Three Pagodas of Dali
Thuriang Kilns
Lingapura Pyramid
Candi of Muara Takus
Wilwatikta Palace
Gunung Api
Slopes of Russet
Sulawesi Megaliths
This pack also includes a representation of the temple city of Angkor, with the celebrated Angkor Wat complex.
Clothe your court in the highest fashions of the grandest hegemon with the Celestial Court Attire Creator Pack for Crusader Kings III. Created by modder TAMA, this pack includes new clothing for medieval China and many of the cultures that circled it, including clothing from Central Asia, Korea, the southwestern borderlands of Dali and more.
The Celestial Court Attie Creator Pack includes:
Two clothing designs and one headdress from the Ming Dynasty
Ming Nobility Clothing
1 Ming Noble's Dress
1 Hairpin Crown of Ming Dynasty
Four clothing designs, two headdresses, and one hairstyle from Uyghur culture:
2 Uyghur Royal Robes, available in both high and low grades
2 Women's Crown of Uyghur, available in gold and silver
1 Men's Crown of Uyghur
1 Noble Hat of Uyghur
1 Uyghur Braided Hair
Two clothing designs, one headdress, and one waist Ornament from Tangut culture:
2 Tangut High Nobility Clothing: Includes two styles, high and low.
1 Noblewoman's Hats of Tangut: Includes two styles, high and low.
1 Western Xia male waist ornament (tied on a round-necked robe)
Two clothing designs and four headdresses from Khitan culture:
1 Male Liao Nobility Clothing
1 Female Liao Nobility Clothing
1 Khitan Crown with High Wings
1 Liao Golden Crown
2 Liao Noble's Hats: Includes two styles, high and low.
One clothing design and two headdresses from Dali:
1 Dali Nobility Clothing
1 Dali High Noble Crown
1 Dali Low Noble's Hat
Two headdresses from Jurchen culture:
1 Noblewoman's Hat of Jin Dynasty
1 Noble Hat of Jin Dynasty
Two headdresses from Silla:
2 Crowns of Silla
North Pacific Attire, East Asian Wonders and Celestial Court Attire will all be available March 11th!
Heya y’all! My name is Riad. You may know me as the QA guy who sometimes posts on Reddit, or the guy who showed off the Black Forge Jam projects last year… or, more recently, the guy who wrote that apology. Yeah.
Since then, a lot has happened for us at Studio Black. We released our biggest expansion ever, All Under Heaven, which added many long-missing parts of the world to Crusader Kings III and, at last, completed what we consider to be the full map of the game.
We were genuinely blown away by the response from the community after release, both in terms of enthusiasm and the sheer volume of feedback we received. Even more importantly, we were able to act on a lot of that feedback during the post-release period. Once the dust settled, we immediately started spinning up our next projects. While we’re not quite ready to talk about those just yet, I promise you we’ll have more news in the near future.
If you’re interested in a more in-depth summary of 2025, I highly recommend reading Alexander Oltner’s, our Game Director’s, end-of-year address to the community.
Today, however, I’m not here to talk about anything that’s part of the next chapter. Instead, I want to talk about something else. Something that, in my opinion, is even more important—
Game Health.
As we entered the new year, we took the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment: ensuring that Crusader Kings III remains not only fun, but also a stable experience. That means continuing to address long-standing issues, delivering frequently requested quality-of-life improvements, and making sure the game respects your time.
A bold concept, I know.
In my view, there’s a clear opportunity for us to share more about how we work and how our development process unfolds. That’s something I’m actively exploring so we can open up more going forward. We may be able to draw inspiration from how our colleagues in sunny Spain approached Tinto Talks in the lead-up to the release of Europa Universalis 5.
Now again, they have the benefit of not suffering from Vitamin-D deficiency due to the cold dark nights of Sweden – I am not joking, as I am writing this, I received a letter from my doctor with the test results… Donde esta la biblioteca — I’ll be booking my flight to Barcelona soon!
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Another major focus for us is better support for modders, both current and future. One concrete area I am exploring together with our Art Director @plundh (he’s weirdly into this stuff), is improving the documentation for many of our script systems, making it easier for people to play and mod the game the way they want to.
We remain committed to also bringing some meaningful changes that you, the player, will notice. Game wise, I wanted to start out the year with a bang, tackling the community’s requests head-on with some much needed changes.
One of the player-facing efforts I’m leading this year is our next major update, currently planned for release at the beginning of Q2. This update is focused on two main things: tackling bugs that have been haunting our backlog, and introducing a set of changes and smaller features that we believe will meaningfully enhance the CK3 experience.
I don’t have a cool name for it yet. I promise I’ll come up with something suitably dramatic by the time we release the changelog. Until then, I’ll refer to it the same way we do internally: the Q2 update. Inspiring, I know.
Today’s diary won’t cover every detail — the full specifics will come closer to release. The team is still deep in development, and I’d rather keep the focus on quality than on polishing slides.
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Instead, I want to outline the vision behind the update and highlight two features where your feedback will be especially valuable.
Let’s kick it off!
One of the revamps I’m particularly excited to talk about is the work being done on the Accolades system. We originally released Accolades as part of Tours and Tournaments back in May 2023. Since then, we’ve received a… lot… of feedback, both from all of you (and internally).
We saw a lot of potential with this system, and we’ve always wanted to revisit it in the future to do it justice. Now, we never expected that revisit to happen almost three years later. But here we are. Better late than never!
One of the primary changes to Accolades is an overhaul of Succession. Previously, when an Acclaimed Knight left for any reason (see: death), the ruler had to have a designated successor in place, or manually set about securing one. This created a lot of maintenance overhead for the player and could quickly become frustrating, especially if you were managing multiple Acclaimed Knights.
This Succession system has been replaced by our new, hands-free Squires system.
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Each Accolade now has a Squires stat that informs you about the potential of its future successor. This stat directly influences the traits and Prowess of the next Acclaimed Knight when they take over. Positively… or perhaps slightly less positively.
Squires have five aptitude levels:
Accomplished
Capable
Inexperienced
Feckless
Pathetic
The obvious question: how do you improve Squires aptitude? Simple. Have your Acclaimed Knight actually do their job.
Glory, the “experience” a knight gains over time, is the primary driver of Squire aptitude. Other influences include the Acclaimed Knight’s own skills, particularly Prowess and Martial, your relevant skills as their liege, and experience in leveled traits such as Hastiluder and Aspiring Blademaster.
Succession now works as follows:
First, your current knight dies. Tragic.
A new appropriate Acclaimed Knight is either selected from your court or generated and added to your knight roster. This new knight is then buffed or debuffed based on the Squires aptitude level. Once installed, the Squires stat resets, and the new knight’s glorious career begins.
You are, of course, informed via messages. But beyond that, absolutely zero human micromanagement is required.
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Another major focus of the rework was increasing your agency over Accolade Attributes. Upon creation, Accolades now begin with only one Attribute, retaining the existing three ranks of tiered bonuses.
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When your Accolade gains enough Glory to level up, you, as the Liege, can choose to either rank up an existing Attribute or add a new one. Accolades can now have up to three Attributes in total.
With Men-at-Arms unlocks moved to second-tier rewards, you have far more flexibility in how you mix and match Attributes. This change reinforces the feeling that your Accolade is evolving over time, gathering more prestige and potency.
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We’ve also added new unlock requirements to most of the 29 or so Attributes. The goal here is to make Attributes something you actively pursue, rather than passively hope for.
Attribute requirements are now visible in the Accolade window. Instead of opaque triggers like “the knight must have the Besieger trait”, you’ll now see gameplay-driven goals such as: “The knight must participate in 8+ sieges.”
This means you can deliberately shape your knight’s career to unlock the Attributes you want. Less mystery. More intentional development.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “This sounds cool, but why would I ever take my Acclaimed Knight into battle? They’ll just get pounded on, die, and I’ll lose all my hard work.”
Good news. Acclaimed Knights are now significantly less likely to be captured or killed in battle. You no longer have to protect them like priceless porcelain figurines.
And if they do die in battle, in a duel, or in any other suitably dramatic warrior’s death, the Accolade loses no Glory upon Succession.
Also as a side note: Naming Accolades is as fun as ever. I regret none of my choices.
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On top of all that, the UI has received a proper art pass and now looks significantly better. Especially the icons, which are finally nice and crispy instead of the low-resolution exports we somehow lived with for far too long.
To clarify, I didn’t work on this system directly myself. Instead, the effort was carried out by a group of very dedicated developers, led by Jason: a designer on my team I am super proud of. The team has worked incredibly hard on this revamp, and we genuinely hope you’ll enjoy these changes.
It should come as no surprise that we at Paradox believe our modding community is the lifeblood of our games. Whenever we build systems for Crusader Kings III, we try to ensure they’re scalable and accessible so modders can create tailored experiences for players.
Over the years, we’ve seen incredible mods ranging from great quality-of-life improvements (many of which inspired our work!), to community bug-fixing efforts, to massive total conversions that recreate entire worlds inside our game.
During the development of All Under Heaven, we worked very closely with the community. Through that process, it became even clearer to me just how important early involvement is. For this update in particular, I wanted to involve the community more directly, because frankly, no one knows better what you want, than you do.
Over the years, we’ve found ways to collaborate with modders as a way of giving back. This led to our Content Creator Pack program, including recent releases like High Medieval Warfare Attire and Holy Buildings.
But that got me thinking: what if, instead of just content, we involved creators directly in improving the game itself?
That led me to reach out to our mysterious benefactor, a modder you may know as the creator of ████████████ and ████████. Much of their work had already inspired us internally and influenced changes we’d made to the game.
When I reached out, instead of assigning a predefined task, I asked a simple question: what would you like to work on?
They came back with a list so large it genuinely shocked the team. Some of it overlapped with things already in our pipeline, but a lot of it made us collectively ask, “How did we not think of this?”
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After a lot of discussion and some very realistic scoping, we landed on a handful of features that felt like a good place to start this collaboration.
While I’ll let them properly introduce their work in a future dev diary, there’s one feature I couldn’t wait to show off.
Introducing: the Ledger.
Now, to be clear, this is still very much work in progress. The final version may behave differently after testing, and it will definitely look different once it’s gone through a proper art pass. But even in its current state, I’m extremely excited about what it brings to the table.
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Now you can fool your boss into thinking you’re reading columns of \, while you’re actually playing Crusader Kings III during work time. It’s a win-win.
At a high level, the Ledger provides a set of tabs that let players explore and overview different aspects of the world. Like our other systems, we are excited to see what additional tabs players might come up with! Hell, who knows, we might even add more ourselves post-release.
Each tab also comes with a bunch of filters that allow you to get the exact data you want.
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Some of the confirmed initial tabs include:
Artifacts
Characters
Ongoing Wars
Houses
No longer will you have to click through thousands of characters just to find out what artifacts exist in the world. Everything is right there, one click away. And you can favorite them, to keep interesting things in the ledger. Modern technology is truly incredible.
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We’re also exploring additional tabs, though some may arrive in a future update if time doesn’t allow:
Counties
Titles
Holdings
Faith / Religion
Cultures
Let us know in the comments which of these you’re most excited about, so we can focus our efforts where they matter most.
This is just one of several things █████ will be working on with us. In a future dev diary, I’ll let them introduce themselves properly and walk you through their work in more detail. Please look forward to it.
Lastly, one of the areas that we are focusing on, as previously mentioned, is to tackle our bug backlog. With the help of our community team, we have been scouring our platforms for issues in order to create a clearer picture of what common issues people are having that we still haven’t addressed.
We are hard at work tackling this list, and we hope that the update will relieve some of the issues you’ve experienced in your game. If there are any bugs you want to make sure we don’t miss, don’t worry, there is an opportunity to let us know directly.
So, what are you expected to pay for all the things we’re working on in this update?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It’s completely free. As in money.
This update is part of our commitment to improving the long-term health of Crusader Kings III. We play the game too. We run into the same bugs, the same frustrations, the same “why does it do that?” moments. We want the game to be the best version of itself just as much as you do.
At the same time, it’s worth saying this clearly: the reason we’re able to continue supporting Crusader Kings III six years after release is because you continue to support it. Whether that’s through Chapters, Content Creator Packs, or other individual DLC, that support is what allows us to keep investing in major free updates like this one.
So this update will be available to all owners of Crusader Kings III on release day. No extra purchase required.
What I’ve shown here is only a slice of what we have planned for the Q2 update. As mentioned earlier, a significant part of this update is focused on bug fixes and tweaks that we hope will lead to a better overall experience for everyone.
We hope this update will stave off your hunger until we’re ready to reveal all the exciting things planned for our future chapter. We promise more information is coming!
I want you to see this dev diary not just as another attempt to market upcoming features (I mean, it partly is), but also as a commitment from us at Studio Black. Since being appointed to helm the design team, @lachek and I are incredibly excited to work with the rest of the development team to ensure Crusader Kings III lives up to its name and your expectations.
As part of this effort, we’re also going to try something we very rarely do: run an Open Beta for the update.
This is not something we’ve historically relied on for Crusader Kings III, but we see it as an interesting tool that could help us refine the experience before full release. It gives us the opportunity to gather broader feedback, identify edge cases, and stress-test changes in ways that simply aren’t possible internally.
We’ll share more details about how this will work at a later date. It’s a fairly involved process on our side, so we want to make sure everything is properly set up before we open the gates.
Who knows. If it works out and you like it, maybe we’ll do more of them in the future.
Farewell for now, until next time~
Please look forward to it!
Hello everyone!
Today, we are releasing two new Creator Packs for Crusader Kings III: High Medieval Warfare Attire, created by JedNick and Holy Buildings, created by Kefir úr.
On top of that, we're releasing Update 1.18.3 containing bug fixes from the public beta branch we shared before the holidays. A big thank you goes out to everyone who helped out with testing and providing feedback.
Check the changelog below for more information!
Fixed a crash related to generating portrait DNA
Fixed a crash related to invalid situations in the situation-window
Updated the liberty faction creation trigger for all administrative governments
Fixed liberty faction war to always reduce the appropriate law
Fixed converting to feudalism as an independent tribal Japanese character sometimes turning you into an Administrative realm
Fixed incorrectly displayed requirements for the Found the Empire of Brunei decision
Fixed requirements for Farm Estates not allowing construction of level 1 through 4 for cultures with Pastoralists tradition
Fixed watermills not unlocking correctly in city holdings for cultures with City Keepers tradition
Chinese nobility will no longer use Western trousers
Chariots are no longer always stuck in the mud
Updated the Withdraw from Governorship decision for Ministers to correctly remove them from the Council
Fixed missing treasury payouts for Fertility Effort and Natural Disaster Insurance from Conduct Census Great Project
Prevented Ministers from becoming bankrupt from Great Project optional contribution payouts
Ensured that the Grand Campaign will complete after a Grand Campaign war is won and there is no title left to conquer
English Knights Surcoat with three variants (Standard, Late English and Late French)
French Gambeson Armor designed for commoners
German Coat of Plate
18 new helmet designs
France
3 French Kettle Helmets, each with or without chainmail
1 Commoner Cervelliere helmet, with or without chainmail
2 Early French Great Helms
1 Late French Great Helm
England
3 Early English Great Helms
1 Late English Great Helm
German Lands
1 Early German Great Helm
2 Late German Great Helms
2 Late Swabian Great Helms
1 Banded Chainmail coif
1 Bishop Helmet Crest (for warrior Bishops with Unrelenting)
New models for ten regional houses of worships
New designs for African, Indian, Persian, Southeast Asian and Turkish mosques
New designs for Caucasian and Eastern Slavic Orthodox Christian churches
New design for Italian Catholic churches
New design for Tibetan stupas
New model for Catholic Grand Cathedrals
New models for seven significant historical religious sites
The University of Sankore in Timbuktu
St Peter’s Basilica in Rome
Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy
Grand Mosque of Yazd in Central Iran
Qutb Minar in Delhi
Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh
Boudhanath Stupa in Kathmandu
If you encounter any issues after today's update, then please start a fresh save with no mods enabled and then submit a bug report here if the issue persists. We hope this update improves your experience in the medieval world!
High Medieval Warfare Attire & Holy Buildings are available as standalone DLC or as part of our Community Creations bundle.
Gird yourself for battle in fancy new gear with this Creator Pack for Crusader Kings III: High Medieval Warfare Attire. Developed by renowned clothing modder JedNick, High Medieval Warfare Attire includes a range of helmets, headgear and armor from the High Medieval Period (roughly 13th and 14th centuries), adding greater variety to the fearsome appearances of your more warlike characters. Crusader Kings III Creator Pack: High Medieval Warfare Attire includes
3 new amor designs
English Knights Surcoat with three variants (Standard, Late English and Late French)
French Gambeson Armor designed for commoners
German Coat of Plate
18 new helmet designs
France
3 French Kettle Helmets, each with or without chainmail
1 Commoner Cervelliere helmet, with or without chainmail
2 Early French Great Helms
1 Late French Great Helm
England
3 Early English Great Helms
1 Late English Great Helm
German Lands
1 Early German Great Helm
2 Late German Great Helms
2 Late Swabian Great Helms
1 Banded Chainmail coif
1 Bishop Helmet Crest (for warrior Bishops with the Unrelenting trait)
Add greater variety and more historical detail to your Crusader Kings III map with the Holy Buildings Creator Pack, a new cosmetic add-on for the game from Crusader Kings III modder Kefir úr with updated imagery for over a dozen religious buildings in the game. From humble churches to magnificent monuments, Holy Buildings brings even more regional and religious flavor to your game experience. Crusader Kings III Creator Pack: Holy Buildings includes
New models for ten regional house of worships, each with two levels
New designs for African, Indian, Persian, Southeast Asian and Turkish mosques
New designs for Caucasian and Eastern Slavic Orthodox Christian churches
New design for Italian Catholic churches
New design for Tibetan stupas
New model for Catholic Grand Cathedrals
New models for six significant historical religious sites
The University of Sankore in Timbuktu
St Peter’s Basilica in Rome
Mont-Saint-Michel (4 levels) in Normandy
Grand Mosque of Yazd in Central Iran
Qutb Minar (4 levels) in Delhi
Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh
Boudhanath Stupa in Kathmandu
High Medieval Warfare Attire and Holy Buildings will both be available January 27th!
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Crusader Kings III, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Crusader Kings III statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.