Hi folks!

We interrupt the regular program for this short broadcast from the Game Director. That is, me. I was planning to talk about something completely different (and admittedly of more substance), but we decided to hold on off on that for a bit. Instead, bear with me as I wax slightly philosophical and delve into the twin personalities of Crusader Kings. Now, that might sound like a diagnosis of mental illness, but it’s actually a beautiful thing that makes the game unique. I often think of Crusader Kings as a potted plant. The pot is the strategy game and the plant is the role-playing aspects, and every time you play the game, the plant grows differently, pruned by player actions… like a Bonsai Tree.



The pot and the soil cannot be neglected, for the roots of the plant - the “story engine” - need to be contained and nurtured by sound rules and balanced mechanics. Strategy games provide fertile soil indeed for captivating drama through their most defining features; freedom of action and conflict. Engaging conflict among a multitude of players and AI actors is really the key to the success of Crusader Kings II, for it causes such amusing stories to emerge and grow.

It should come as no surprise, though, that hybrid games like this tend to attract two rather different kinds of players; those who seek domination through mental acuity and those who are mostly in it for the ride (and everything in between, of course.) This poses an interesting challenge for us, the developers, because we have to expand on the game in ways that will suit both types. As you know, we have wavered back and forth between almost pure RPG expansions like Way of Life and strategic expansions, like Conclave, but we can never seem to please everyone (which is, of course, why we love mods and modders so much!)

Is there a point to all this? Not really, but perhaps you can guess what kind the next expansion will be…

That’s all for now! There should be some actual revelations next time, so stay tuned. :)

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hi folks!

We interrupt the regular program for this short broadcast from the Game Director. That is, me. I was planning to talk about something completely different (and admittedly of more substance), but we decided to hold on off on that for a bit. Instead, bear with me as I wax slightly philosophical and delve into the twin personalities of Crusader Kings. Now, that might sound like a diagnosis of mental illness, but it’s actually a beautiful thing that makes the game unique. I often think of Crusader Kings as a potted plant. The pot is the strategy game and the plant is the role-playing aspects, and every time you play the game, the plant grows differently, pruned by player actions… like a Bonsai Tree.



The pot and the soil cannot be neglected, for the roots of the plant - the “story engine” - need to be contained and nurtured by sound rules and balanced mechanics. Strategy games provide fertile soil indeed for captivating drama through their most defining features; freedom of action and conflict. Engaging conflict among a multitude of players and AI actors is really the key to the success of Crusader Kings II, for it causes such amusing stories to emerge and grow.

It should come as no surprise, though, that hybrid games like this tend to attract two rather different kinds of players; those who seek domination through mental acuity and those who are mostly in it for the ride (and everything in between, of course.) This poses an interesting challenge for us, the developers, because we have to expand on the game in ways that will suit both types. As you know, we have wavered back and forth between almost pure RPG expansions like Way of Life and strategic expansions, like Conclave, but we can never seem to please everyone (which is, of course, why we love mods and modders so much!)

Is there a point to all this? Not really, but perhaps you can guess what kind the next expansion will be…

That’s all for now! There should be some actual revelations next time, so stay tuned. :)

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello all. I decided that my thoughts on phones last week didn’t really count as a DD, so we are still on #2.This week I’m going to talk about a new set of features we’ve made for the upcoming but as of yet unannounced DLC: Symptoms, diseases, and doctors.

Firstly, doctors, or more accurately, Court Physicians. Court Physician is a new minor title which you can give out to a well-learned person which makes them responsible for diagnosing and treating illnesses in your court.

Now, symptoms! No longer will you simply become “Ill” through an event, instead you will receive one of a variety of symptoms and over time you could become sicker, either you will gain more symptoms or they will evolve into a full blown disease, or perhaps you simply just had a cough and it will pass in time. When you first get a symptom if you have a Court Physician they will first attempt to diagnose what the cause is, and then administer a treatment - if their diagnosis was correct it’s more likely the treatment will be successful.

Here we can see the unfortunate Doge Orso becoming unwell:



The full list of symptoms is: Cough, Fever, Diarrhea, Vomiting, Headache, Chest Pain, Rash, Cramps, Abdominal pain, Fatigue, Malaise.

Depending on a number of factors your symptoms may well manifest into a disease. We’ve added some more diseases too: Flu, Dysentery, Gout, Food Poisoning (not a disease exactly), Rabies, and Cancer.


As we can see, Cassio was right, Orso did have Food Poisoning! I skipped over a few more symptoms appearing, and here they are removed and replaced with the Food Poisoning trait.

At this point your Court Physician will call on you again to offer further treatment. This part is a bit more involved, and depending on the skill and traits of your Court Physician they can offer you up to 4 choices of treatment method: Experimental, Mystic, Proven, or Cautious:

• Experimental treatments tend to involve radical methods and/or surgery and very much depend on the skill of your Court Physician. Results will likely be very good or very bad depending on how it goes.
  
  
  
• Mystical treatments are offered by Court Physicians with the Mystic trait and often involves an appeal to a higher power. Because of the capricious nature of spirits, or possibly due to the mind-altering substances used to contact them, Mystical treatments may result in strange outcomes, and can even result in a change of personality in the patient. The power of faith is strong though, and when Mystical treatment goes well it can go very well indeed.
  
  
  
• Proven treatments represent the tried and true methods which are well-known to work (at least for a given value of “work”). They rarely go too badly wrong, but equally they do not have a huge effect when they go right.
  
  
  
• Cautious treatments are very safe, but often do little more than make you more comfortable. They will almost always be successful, but have a fairly minor effect.

Here Orso has the choice of Experimental or Proven treatments, or of doing nothing. Since Food Poisoning isn't terribly serious, it would make sense to take the Proven treatment rather than risk the Experimental method, but Cassio is a pretty good Court Physician, so he might well succeed. So, which should I pick? [S]If anyone would like to vote on the matter, start your post with "Experimental", or "Proven" and in a short while I will count the votes and post what happens.[/s]
Well Experimental has won by a landslide, let's see how it goes:

Oh dear. Cassio's experimental surgery seems to have been a total success, but the anesthesia didn't fully take hold...

And that’s basically it, we hope that people with <secret DLC> will enjoy the process of getting sick and horribly dying. Next week Doomdark will talk about some interesting details of the 2.6 patch.

Hello all. I decided that my thoughts on phones last week didn’t really count as a DD, so we are still on #2.This week I’m going to talk about a new set of features we’ve made for the upcoming but as of yet unannounced DLC: Symptoms, diseases, and doctors.

Firstly, doctors, or more accurately, Court Physicians. Court Physician is a new minor title which you can give out to a well-learned person which makes them responsible for diagnosing and treating illnesses in your court.

Now, symptoms! No longer will you simply become “Ill” through an event, instead you will receive one of a variety of symptoms and over time you could become sicker, either you will gain more symptoms or they will evolve into a full blown disease, or perhaps you simply just had a cough and it will pass in time. When you first get a symptom if you have a Court Physician they will first attempt to diagnose what the cause is, and then administer a treatment - if their diagnosis was correct it’s more likely the treatment will be successful.

Here we can see the unfortunate Doge Orso becoming unwell:



The full list of symptoms is: Cough, Fever, Diarrhea, Vomiting, Headache, Chest Pain, Rash, Cramps, Abdominal pain, Fatigue, Malaise.

Depending on a number of factors your symptoms may well manifest into a disease. We’ve added some more diseases too: Flu, Dysentery, Gout, Food Poisoning (not a disease exactly), Rabies, and Cancer.


As we can see, Cassio was right, Orso did have Food Poisoning! I skipped over a few more symptoms appearing, and here they are removed and replaced with the Food Poisoning trait.

At this point your Court Physician will call on you again to offer further treatment. This part is a bit more involved, and depending on the skill and traits of your Court Physician they can offer you up to 4 choices of treatment method: Experimental, Mystic, Proven, or Cautious:

• Experimental treatments tend to involve radical methods and/or surgery and very much depend on the skill of your Court Physician. Results will likely be very good or very bad depending on how it goes.
  
  
  
• Mystical treatments are offered by Court Physicians with the Mystic trait and often involves an appeal to a higher power. Because of the capricious nature of spirits, or possibly due to the mind-altering substances used to contact them, Mystical treatments may result in strange outcomes, and can even result in a change of personality in the patient. The power of faith is strong though, and when Mystical treatment goes well it can go very well indeed.
  
  
  
• Proven treatments represent the tried and true methods which are well-known to work (at least for a given value of “work”). They rarely go too badly wrong, but equally they do not have a huge effect when they go right.
  
  
  
• Cautious treatments are very safe, but often do little more than make you more comfortable. They will almost always be successful, but have a fairly minor effect.

Here Orso has the choice of Experimental or Proven treatments, or of doing nothing. Since Food Poisoning isn't terribly serious, it would make sense to take the Proven treatment rather than risk the Experimental method, but Cassio is a pretty good Court Physician, so he might well succeed. So, which should I pick? [S]If anyone would like to vote on the matter, start your post with "Experimental", or "Proven" and in a short while I will count the votes and post what happens.[/s]
Well Experimental has won by a landslide, let's see how it goes:

Oh dear. Cassio's experimental surgery seems to have been a total success, but the anesthesia didn't fully take hold...

And that’s basically it, we hope that people with <secret DLC> will enjoy the process of getting sick and horribly dying. Next week Doomdark will talk about some interesting details of the 2.6 patch.

Hi all!

I want to present our new team for the upcoming CK2 expansion. It changed quite a lot since the last expansion so it might be interesting for you to hear a bit about who are currently working on the project. You might recognize some people while others are completely new.

• Anona: I am the project lead, which means I prioritize bugs, tasks, and other requests to us while keeping track of deadlines, following up budget and listening to various stakeholders in the project. I’m very excited for the upcoming expansion! If you want to hear me die, listen here (thanks to our audio guy!).
  
  
• Moah: I’m Tech Lead on CK2, and I joined the team as a programmer for the Conclave expansion. I’m in charge of adding new features, both directly to the game, and for Content Designers to use, and to make sure we don’t get crashes or other code-related bugs. Before joining Paradox, I’d been playing CK2 and EU4 for a while, so I’m really excited to be here.
  
  
• Markuso: I am a Content Designer, I mainly create as many new events as possible when not busy fixing bugs or implementing some quality of life improvements through script.
  
  
• IsakMiller: I’m one of the recent additions to the team, along with Virvatuli. I am a Content Designer, very happy to have joined the team, and eager to see our events in the expansion.
  
  
• Virvatuli: I started working at Paradox last Tuesday as a Content Designer alongside IsakMiller. During our first week on the job we’ve done plenty of obscure research, written some witty events and tried to not get lost in the office.
  
  
• Rageair, I work as embedded QA on the CK2 project and have done so since Horse Lords. I'm very passionate about the game and played it a lot even before I started at Paradox, though now I play it even more than I used to! My primary concern is to find, categorize and judge the severity of bugs, though I also help out with other things on the side. For example, I helped design the layout of the new Law Screen in Conclave.
  
  
• Grimjotun: I’m the artist, responsible for the visual parts. I’m fairly new at Paradox but I’ve been in the game industry for a long time.
  
  
• Servancour: I’m working as embedded QA on CK2. I’ve been working at Paradox for over two years and mainly been working on CK2 for that time. Which also happens to be my favorite game, so I know pretty much everything there is to know about all obscure mechanics in the game.
  
  
• Darkrenown: I’m a Content Designer, and people may know me from HoI3 and V2 expansions, HoI4, or the wondrous creations of the Mothland and Secret bears. Now I’m working on CK2 for the first time (besides a very brief stint pre-release!) and am charged with making sure new stuff fits together well and is fun. You can also hear me die. While I’m here I’m also going to repeat the changes 2.5.2 made to Defensive Pacts, because not everyone seems to have noticed how they have changed:

Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, and at first other Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and will only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat (50%+), however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces with infidels against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. At low levels of Threat only small and close neighbours will be worried enough to form a Pact, but as it rises larger and more distant realms will join. AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than, though.

As the new name should suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target. If you find yourself the target of a Pact, it is not the end of the world. Non-Aggression Pacts will stop a realm from joining a Defensive pact against you, or cause them to drop out if they have already joined, and favors can be used to gain even cross-religion marriages (to form NAPs ). And remember, so long as you are below 50% Threat you only need to deal with a single religion group’s Pact, and below 75% your own religion group’s pact will not join with infidels’, so wise target selection will avoid fighting too many opponents unless you are at the highest levels of Threat.

/The CK2-team

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hi all!

I want to present our new team for the upcoming CK2 expansion. It changed quite a lot since the last expansion so it might be interesting for you to hear a bit about who are currently working on the project. You might recognize some people while others are completely new.

• Anona: I am the project lead, which means I prioritize bugs, tasks, and other requests to us while keeping track of deadlines, following up budget and listening to various stakeholders in the project. I’m very excited for the upcoming expansion! If you want to hear me die, listen here (thanks to our audio guy!).
  
  
• Moah: I’m Tech Lead on CK2, and I joined the team as a programmer for the Conclave expansion. I’m in charge of adding new features, both directly to the game, and for Content Designers to use, and to make sure we don’t get crashes or other code-related bugs. Before joining Paradox, I’d been playing CK2 and EU4 for a while, so I’m really excited to be here.
  
  
• Markuso: I am a Content Designer, I mainly create as many new events as possible when not busy fixing bugs or implementing some quality of life improvements through script.
  
  
• IsakMiller: I’m one of the recent additions to the team, along with Virvatuli. I am a Content Designer, very happy to have joined the team, and eager to see our events in the expansion.
  
  
• Virvatuli: I started working at Paradox last Tuesday as a Content Designer alongside IsakMiller. During our first week on the job we’ve done plenty of obscure research, written some witty events and tried to not get lost in the office.
  
  
• Rageair, I work as embedded QA on the CK2 project and have done so since Horse Lords. I'm very passionate about the game and played it a lot even before I started at Paradox, though now I play it even more than I used to! My primary concern is to find, categorize and judge the severity of bugs, though I also help out with other things on the side. For example, I helped design the layout of the new Law Screen in Conclave.
  
  
• Grimjotun: I’m the artist, responsible for the visual parts. I’m fairly new at Paradox but I’ve been in the game industry for a long time.
  
  
• Servancour: I’m working as embedded QA on CK2. I’ve been working at Paradox for over two years and mainly been working on CK2 for that time. Which also happens to be my favorite game, so I know pretty much everything there is to know about all obscure mechanics in the game.
  
  
• Darkrenown: I’m a Content Designer, and people may know me from HoI3 and V2 expansions, HoI4, or the wondrous creations of the Mothland and Secret bears. Now I’m working on CK2 for the first time (besides a very brief stint pre-release!) and am charged with making sure new stuff fits together well and is fun. You can also hear me die. While I’m here I’m also going to repeat the changes 2.5.2 made to Defensive Pacts, because not everyone seems to have noticed how they have changed:

Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, and at first other Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and will only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat (50%+), however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces with infidels against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. At low levels of Threat only small and close neighbours will be worried enough to form a Pact, but as it rises larger and more distant realms will join. AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than, though.

As the new name should suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target. If you find yourself the target of a Pact, it is not the end of the world. Non-Aggression Pacts will stop a realm from joining a Defensive pact against you, or cause them to drop out if they have already joined, and favors can be used to gain even cross-religion marriages (to form NAPs ). And remember, so long as you are below 50% Threat you only need to deal with a single religion group’s Pact, and below 75% your own religion group’s pact will not join with infidels’, so wise target selection will avoid fighting too many opponents unless you are at the highest levels of Threat.

/The CK2-team

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

We've just released the 2.5.2 patch publicly on the live branch!

In the patch we're including a rework of Coalitions into Defensive Pacts, Battle and Retreat changes as well as a lot of minor fixes, for example adding a "Next song"-button, and mod fixes.

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
- Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
- Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
- Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
- Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
- Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
- Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
- AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
- Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
- As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
- Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
- Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
- Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
- Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
- Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
- Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
- Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
- Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
- Added attrition during shattered retreat
- Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
- Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
- Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
- Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
- Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
- Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away

...and lots of smaller updates. Read full patch notes here!

We've just released the 2.5.2 patch publicly on the live branch!

In the patch we're including a rework of Coalitions into Defensive Pacts, Battle and Retreat changes as well as a lot of minor fixes, for example adding a "Next song"-button, and mod fixes.

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
- Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
- Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
- Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
- Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
- Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
- Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
- AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
- Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
- As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
- Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
- Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
- Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
- Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
- Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
- Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
- Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
- Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
- Added attrition during shattered retreat
- Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
- Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
- Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
- Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
- Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
- Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away

...and lots of smaller updates. Read full patch notes here!

Hello all! I promise I will go back to writing more interesting Dev Diaries soon, but there is not much to talk about this week. Currently we are gathering feeding from the 2.5.2 beta (go try it if you haven't yet!) and working to fix some outstanding issues before finalizing the patch.

Other than that, I can reveal we have started planning a new DLC, so you can expect to start hearing details about that in the coming weeks. That's really all I can say at the moment!

Hello all! I promise I will go back to writing more interesting Dev Diaries soon, but there is not much to talk about this week. Currently we are gathering feeding from the 2.5.2 beta (go try it if you haven't yet!) and working to fix some outstanding issues before finalizing the patch.

Other than that, I can reveal we have started planning a new DLC, so you can expect to start hearing details about that in the coming weeks. That's really all I can say at the moment!