Hello everyone! Everyone at Studio Black is busy putting the finishing touches on Khans of the Steppe ahead of its release next week, so this week’s dev diary is going to be a relatively short one. Without any further chatter, here are the achievements coming with Khans of the Steppe, and the changelog for the associated 1.16 “Chamfron” Update.

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Reminder: This update is not live yet!

• Added the new Nomadic Government Type, heavily inspired by the nomads of the Eurasian Steppe, introducing a new playstyle around Herd and Migration.
  
  • Migration allows nomadic rulers to move around the Great Steppe in search of better pasture lands. Negotiate with the locals or subjugate them by force.
    
  • Herd is a new currency only available for Nomads that can be converted into Horde Riders and upgraded into better Men-at-Arms.
    
  • Nomadic Vassal Contracts: focused on Herd instead of Levies.
    
  • The Nomadic Capital Domicile – It represents the collection of yurts nomads have during migration. They include 8 new domicile buildings with 80+ new internal upgrades and a Domicile Culture/Faith mechanic with unique Decisions and Character Interactions.
    
  • 5 Dominance levels for Nomads that govern their Domain and Vassal limit, which Decisions they can take and what titles they can target during migration.
    
  • Nomads have a new Dread cap: 150.
    
  • Nomadic Subjects and Courtiers have Obedience towards their overlord, measuring how likely they are to form factions, perform hostile plots and respect their decision of heir during succession.
    
    • Gain someone's Obedience by demanding it, negotiating it or just impressing them through new Character Interactions and Activity Intents.
  • Added new Schemes for Nomads, such as Steal Herd.
    
  • Added 4 Vassal Directives just for nomadic vassals.
    
  • New Council Positions for Nomads – the Kurultai Members.
    
    • Kurultai Members may perform some familiar tasks like Increase County Control and Domestic Affairs, but they will also have 6 new tasks focused on Herd gain, Fertility management, Piety, Raiding, Culture Hybridization and Reformation and even Exploiting their own lands to gain some extra income but reduce the Fertility.
  • A new Succession Type for nomads: the Kurultai Succession with different outcomes based on how Stable or Chaotic it is. Chaotic successions have effects such as herd loss, realm splits, or even realm dissolution (depending on realm size and number of disobedient kurultai members)
    
  • Settlement Issues: new contracts available for nomadic rulers after migration, focusing on increasing the county control of their new area.
    
  • The Way of the Nomad trait ensures that the nomadic lifestyle stays with their children for one generation after leaving the steppe, focusing on Cultural and Religious tolerance and opening up the possibility of becoming an adventurer.
• Added the Great Steppe Situation: a new regional mechanic for the Eurasian Steppe, divided in three geographical regions.
  
  • Every county within the Great Steppe has County Fertility, regulating the Herd gained by the nomads holding them. With appropriate alerts for when the fertility is low, or when its time to migrate.
    
  • The Steppe Seasons affect the County Fertility of their region, as well as the behavior of the nomadic rulers within, including Vassalization and Tributarization acceptance, bonuses to raiding and even free CBs. The seasons are visualized on the map.
    
  • Gather the largest Herd of the steppe and become the Gurkhan, a formidable warrior marked for greatness, en route to become the Greatest of Khans.
• Added another new, unplayable government Type: Herders, which inhabit the Steppe and replenish Fertility, but lack any military strength.
  
• A new 1178 bookmark for Nomads: The Endless Sky.
  
• A new 1066 bookmark for Nomads: At the Gates.
  
• New game rules to make other areas Nomadic: Sápmi and Karelia, Arabia, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
  
• Changed the map table to be adjusted based on situation, e.g. the Byzantine map table is only for Byzantines, and the plague one only happens during significant plagues
  
• Added a ‘Bring under Tribute’ CB for non-nomads to force an independent ruler into becoming your tributary
  
• Added a "become tributary" interaction, that lets you pledge yourself as tributary to an independent ruler of a government type that can have tributaries
  
• Added a "demand tributary" interaction, that lets nomad rulers demand tribute from independent neighbors
  
• Added two new non-nomadic tributary types and their obligation levels
  
• New Nomadic Court Positions: Stargazer, General, Chief Law Overseer, Siege Engineer, Quartermaster, Keeper of Horses and Chief Bodyguard, with new tasks that heavily interact with the Nomadic government and the Great Steppe.
  
• Added new Men-at-Arms for Nomads and Nomadic cultures
  
  • Steppe Raiders
    
  • Nomad Lancers
    
  • Heavy Horse-Archers
    
  • Torch-Bearers
    
  • Mangudai
    
  • Cataphract Archers
    
  • Maturkan Warriors
• Added new Cultural Traditions to Cultures in the Great Steppe
  
  • Iron Cavalry
    
  • Wolves of the Deep Steppe
    
  • Tribes of the North
    
  • Devoted Horsemanship
• Added Siberian Permafrost county modifier to lands on the northeastern border of the map that highly synergizes with the Tribes of the North Cultural Tradition
  
• Added a new Blood Brother relationship type, hooked in as a variant of the friend relation
  
  • Only available through the Swear Blood Brotherhood interaction
    
  • Provides positive modifiers for useful blood brothers, and alliances between ruler blood brothers
• Added the new Tsaagaan Tsar Feast type, only available in the winter months, to celebrate the coming of a new year and obtain gifts from your guests.
  
• Added the new Nerge Hunt type – an activity focused on obtaining Martial and Prowess skillpoints, Commander Traits and trait experience.
  
• Added more than 70 new flavour events for nomads, including events related to the seasons, blood brotherhood and migration.
  
• Added severed head content to the execution interaction, allowing you to keep the heads of those you behead, or send the head to their successor
  
• Adds flavor events for Temujin and Jamukha, as well as a conqueror event to propel player Temujin to becoming Greatest of Khans
  
• Created a Greatest of Khans storyline, beginning with the Become Greatest of Khans decision
  
  • A Great War of Defiance CB that neighbors launch to prevent the Gurkhan from becoming Greatest of Khans
    
  • Revamped effects for the Greatest of Khans trait, and other bonuses
    
  • The Offer Submission or Ruin interaction for the Greatest of Khans, and the related GoK Onslaught CB
    
  • New Turkic, Mongolic and Iranian cultural nicknames for the Greatest of Khans
    
  • Reform the Great Khaganate Decision, a capstone to the GoK’s success, allowing them to establish a huge de jure empire and choose a government type of their choice (gaining significant bonuses towards that form of rule)
• Added 25 new special Decisions for Nomads, including
  
  • Decisions to switch government types
    
  • Decisions to expand your realm
    
  • Expand the Steppe region
    
  • Introduce your heir to potential friends and blood brothers
    
  • Manage fertility in your domain
    
  • Hire courtiers and candidates for new court positions
• Added new Casus Bellis for nomad rulers, including Overrun Kingdom, Expand Dominance, Sovereignty, Humiliation, Retaliation, and Nomadic County/Duchy Quarrels
  
• Added a Paiza system with unique decisions and character interactions:
  
  • Establish Paiza System
    
  • Summon Wealthy Visitors: Paiza
    
  • Abuse Gurkhan’s Authority
    
  • Leverage Khan’s Authority
• Added a new Nomadic Dynasty Legacy focusing on Herd management, Fertility, Raiding and military might
  
• Revamped the old Mongol Invasion event chain, integrating new features and elements of the Greatest of Khans story
  
• Added the Burkhan Khaldun special building in Khentii.
  
• Added new ambience sounds and music tracks for nomads.

• Added 5 new Raid Intents, available for Nomadic and Tribal armies
  
  • Pillage
    
  • Terrorize
    
  • Capture
    
  • Plunder
    
  • Adventure
• Added Confederations: an agreement between tribal or nomadic rulers that commits them to joining one another's defensive wars
  
  • Decision to Call for a Confederation
    
  • The Offer Confederation interaction, which adds rulers to the confederation
    
  • An Abandon Confederation decision for leaving your confederation
    
  • A decision which allows you to turn your confederation into a kingdom-tier realm, with you as its monarch, and Confederation Elective succession for the created title
    
  • Added new icon for Confederations
• Added a "Bring Under Tribute" CB for non-nomadic rulers
  
• Added potential friends, potential lovers, tributaries, and suzerains to the default activity guest invite rules
  
• Made it possible for domicile buildings to trigger specific map graphics for holdings
  
• Added character interaction for guardians to teach a commander trait to a ward
  
• Added memory for all participants of a successful hunt
  
• Added mercenary_hire_time_mult modifier affecting how long mercenary contracts last
  
• Added capital_fort_level and capital_additional_fort_level modifiers
  
• Updated councilor related events to include kurultai if they fit the context
  
• Subject contracts can now have prestige transfers as obligations
  
• Added new interaction category "tribute"
  
• Added a new Vassal Stance, Belligerent

• Renamed the kingdom of Mongolia to the kingdom of Ötuken
  
• Rearranged the starting Cultural Traditions for cultures in the Steppe
  
• St Wenceslaus Cathedral changes: the building now has 3 upgradable levels, renamed to Archcollegiate Church of St. Mary and St. Alexius, and moved to Łęczyca barony. The University special building has been returned to Kraków.

• Removed duplicate raid icon in diplomatic_icons texture
  
• Fix to subject directive icons not being aligned properly
  
• The ai will actually check if they can feudalize holdings now–they’ve never done so.
  
• Fix to maximum amount of horizontal slots for terrain effects
  
• Fix to men at arms illustrations being stretched and cut too much at the top
  
• Fixed crash when calculating tax collector aptitude due to recursive call of script value
  
• Fixed sometimes misleading tooltips for rewards and wounds in hunts
  
• Fixed message when liege grants you a pardon
  
• Fixed reversed reason when rival gained from losing realm
  
• Fixed erroneous liege converting county notifications
  
• Fixed fellow vassal faction join event referring to you as the liege
  
• Fixed visuals for the soldier of the cross crusader trait event
  
• Fixed dangerous beast slain modifier sometimes being applied after hunting non-dangerous animals
  
• Characters will now use more correct cultural weapons in animations
  
• Improved readability of messages from tutor educate child task
  
• Non-Christian characters will no longer use the crucifix scepter prop in admin realms
  
• Made effect tooltip for pleasure dome more generic in case you don't have a barony selected
  
• Fixed missing councilor tooltip erroneously referencing councilor instead of kurultai member when playing as a nomad
  
• Revealed the actual gold cost behind Pay Homage
  
• Changed court position tooltip concept to be player contextual, and display officer instead, or in addition to, court position when appropriate
  
• Removed old holder of court position being oddly grateful that you replaced them
  
• Added missing capitalization to county titles
  
• Fixed appearance of monk in the necromancer event
  
• Players will now only be informed of faith creation when nearby or otherwise relevant to them
  
• Made it impossible to relocate your capital to a province with a disabled holding
  
• Fixed ai adventurers sometimes getting a hook on you because they completed a contract for your councilor
  
• Fixed bloody weddings and grand wedding events having incorrect scopes when disbursing rewards
  
• Fixed peasant faction war being not inherited on death of the primary defender
  
• When your charioteer loses, the corresponding team color illustration will show up
  
• The event treacherous slopes will now tell you of the outcome of the stewardship options
  
• The adventurer landed message will now only be shown for rulers within the same realm
  
• The event night attack will no longer wound the same poor follower multiple times
  
• Event “Nursing a Suspicion” can no longer make spouses suspicious about themselves
  
• 1178 start date: Sancho of Teruel, Tello Pedrez of Calatrava, Pedro II Manriquez of Molina, Fernando Rodrigez of Merida, now have feudal government
  
• Fixed a faulty trigger for managing courtiers
  
• Fixed a crash when removing a character from a great holy war
  
• Fixed the inverted descriptions of mozarabic_break_with_rome_decision of righteous and fundamentalist
  
• Fixed a few instances of incorrect usage of title tier as honorific
  
• Fixed a typo having an additional comma in the description of grand wedding in the wedding ceremony
  
• Fixed a bug where empire-tier title holders did not get the offer fealty malus for king-tier (or higher) titles
  
• Blocked armless people from doing actions which require using two hands
  
• Fixed an issue where newly landed Muslim rulers would get Male Preference instead of Male Only succession

• Dissolution factions now also destroy any kingdoms an emperor might hold, avoiding border gore/impotent dissolution faction outcomes where everyone's still in one realm
  
• Increased and standardized speed of adventurer contracts
  
• Added a decaying opinion malus for your former suzerain if you break the tributary relationship by pledging fealty to someone else
  
• Flat MaA bonuses from cultural traditions have been converted to percentage bonuses.

• Turkic cultures of the west steppes now use The Legacy of Persia clothing assets as they are a better fit historically
  
• Added nomadic UI skin, inspired by Mongolian patterns, architecture and relief art. You can see elements from their yurts like the interior, fabrics with different patterns and symbols like the falcon.
  
• New Interfaces
  
  • Migration
    
  • Great Steppe Situation
• Added new event themes with associated icons
  
  • Raid
    
  • Migration
    
  • Settlement
• Added Coat-of-Arms Shapes and Headers
  
  • Confederation Header
    
  • Nomad and Herder CoA Shapes
• Added situation modifier icons
  
• Some improvements to the bp3 portrait environments
  
• Added icons and illustrations for new nomadic Men-At-Arms unit types
  
  • Mangudai
    
  • Nomad Lancers
    
  • Steppe Raiders
    
  • Torch-Bearers
    
  • Maturkan
    
  • Keshig
    
  • Heavy Cavalry Archers
    
  • Cataphract Archers
• Added new icons for Levies and Nomadic Riders which are the nomadic counterparts of feudal levies.
  
• Succession
  
  • Added new icons for Peaceful and Chaotic succession, both in a rendered and flat style.
    
  • Added new headers and patterns for Peaceful & Chaotic Succession shown in the Succession tab in the Realm view
• New icons added for nomadic dominance levels with a frame for the active level and a special frame for the highest level, both active and inactive.
  
• Added new Kurultai task icons and adjusted frame shape to fit the nomadic theme better
  
  • Support Herders
    
  • Domestic Affairs
    
  • Manage Fertility
    
  • Exploit Lands
    
  • Increase Control
    
  • Organize Raiders
    
  • Aid Stargazer
    
  • Explore Cultures
• Added siberian permafrost modifier icon
  
• Added new court position icons
  
  • Yurtchi
    
  • Yeke Jarguchi
    
  • Foreign Emissary
    
  • Boyan
    
  • Cherbi
    
  • Court Astrologer
• Added a new icon for the Gurkhan
  
• Added Ovoo as temple mesh and illustration for settled Tengri rulers
  
• Added new Casus Belli icons
  
• Make Tributary
  
• Migration
  
• Retaliation
  
• Humiliations
  
• Added new icons for the new Tributary interactions
  
  • Become Tributary
    
  • Release Tributary
    
  • Demand Tributary
    
  • Cease Paying Tributary
• Fixed levitating cross-legged characters mena and indian thrones
  
• Added “Confederation” decision image.
  
• Adjusted decision illustrations so that they do not stretch when made into a button or when non-decision images are used as decisions
  
• Added northern tribes, wolves of the deep steppe and iron cavalry cultural tradition images
  
• Added new assets to the Event window:
  
• Added new orange Event Window header background for nomadic related events
  
• Added new Event type icons for nomadic and migration related events
  
• Burkhan Khaldun mesh and icon positioned in the map with the necessary terrain adjustments
  
• Added steppe royal court in 3 grandeur variants
  
• Added steppe royal court props : table, chests, panels, tugs, fireplaces, carpets, tapestry, banners, lectern, pedestals, main throne, spouse throne
  
• Added Nomadic Lifestyle trait icon.
  
• Added a new icon for the the Situations Map Mode
  
• New nomadic and herder settlement building icon added
  
• Added 6 steppe season illustrations
  
• Added Activity Type Illustrations
  
  • Nerge
    
  • Tsagaan Sar
• Added Holding Type Illustrations
  
  • Herder Camp
    
  • Nomad Camp
• Added Story Event Illustrations
  
  • Great Khan
    
  • The Great Steppe
• New loading screen
  
• Added new Raid Loot icon
  
• Added a new Artifact Icon for nomadic Paizas
  
• Added a new icon for Paiza Character Interactions
  
• Added mongol level 1 to 5 holding models
  
• Added herder holding model
  
• Added level 1 to 4 mongol wall models
  
• New illustration for nomadic horde added
  
• Added new ethnicities for the Steppe: Tibetan, Turkic, West Turkic and Mongol
  
• Nomadic Domicile
  
  • Added new icons in both a rendered and flat style for the Nomadic Domicile depicting a yurt to better fit the nomadic theme.
    
  • Added new Domicile map pin background texture that fits better with the nomadic theme
    
  • Added new Domicile window assets
    
    • Frame
      
    • Header
      
    • Paper texture
  • Added new Domicile background that fits the steppe and nomadic Domicile layout
    
  • Added new Nomadic Domicile buildings
    
    • Main Yurt tier 1, 2 & 3
      
    • Millet Storage
      
    • Khan’s Champions Yurt
      
    • Square of the Tumen
      
    • Court Yurt
      
    • Family Yurt
      
    • Ovoo
      
    • Barter Stalls
      
    • Empty slots
• Added new smaller versions of the Nomadic Authority level icons to better fit in texts and use cases outside the Realm tab or nomadic HuD widget.
  
• Added nomad Legacy Track illustration and icon
  
• Added new icons for the Nomadic and Herder Government Types
  
• Added 10 clothes for steppe cultures
  
  • Male commoner - Nomad's Deel
    
  • Male low nobility - Cross-Over Coat with Fur Lining
    
  • Male high nobility - Fine Cross-Over Coat with Fur Lining
    
  • Male royalty - Khan's Embroidered Robe
    
  • Male imperial - Khagan's Deel with Fur Coat
    
  • Female commoner - Steppe Woman's Deel
    
  • Female low nobility - Nomad Woman's Robe
    
  • Female high nobility - Nomad Woman's Fine Robe
    
  • Female royalty - Khanum's Coat with Embroidery
    
  • Female imperial - Khatun's Splendid Robes
• Added 8 Headgear for steppe cultures
  
  • Male/Female commoner - Fur-Brimmed Shepherd Hat
    
  • Male nobility - Feathered Hat of the Steppe
    
  • Male royalty - Golden Flower Crown
    
  • Male imperial - Decorated Jonon Hat
    
  • Female nobility 01 - Nomadic Pearl Headband
    
  • Female nobility 02 - Khalkha Headdress with Pearl Bands
    
  • Female royalty - Khanum's Embellished Gugu Hat
• Added 6 Hairstyles for steppe cultures
  
  • Male hair 01 - Khitan Warrior Style
    
  • Male hair 02 - Behind the Ear Braids
    
  • Male hair 03 - Steppe Rider's Fine Braids
    
  • Female hair 01 - Turkic Kirk Belik Braids
    
  • Female hair 02 - Steppe Style with Cloth Covers
    
  • Female hair 03 - Center-Parted with Decorated Covers
• Added 6 Beards for steppe cultures
  
  • Mongol Style Mustache and Soul Patch
    
  • Nomadic Warrior's Beard
    
  • Nomad's Goatee
    
  • Mongol Style Mustache
    
  • Nomadic Warrior's Mustache
    
  • Nomad's Mustache
• New event background illustrations
  
  • Steppe Temple
    
  • Steppe Evening
    
  • Steppe Hunt
    
  • Steppe City (Karakorum)
    
  • Nomad Throne Room (and main menu version)
    
  • Steppe camp day
    
  • Steppe camp night
    
  • Steppe Tent Interior
    
  • Asian Rural Village
    
  • Asian Rural Village Raid
• Added military horse units for nomads
  
• Added traveling horse units for nomads
  
• Added grazing sheep to the map
  
• Added horses to the map
  
• New character animations
  
  • Standing next to horse
    
  • Shepherd (with sheep!)
    
  • Galloping with sword and shield
    
  • Conversing while mounted
    
  • Exhausted on horse animation
    
  • Surveying while mounted
    
  • Aggressive horse archer
    
  • Idle horse archer
• New props
  
  • 6 bows that can be drawn, both with and without arrows
    
  • Characters will now drink from culturally relevant cups
    
  • Sheep with variants representing ewes and rams, single color and spotted breeds

• Vassal contracts lists on governments have been replaced with separate “subject contract groups” that can be reused between governments and used to start tributaries.
  
• Most things “vassal contract” has been renamed “subject contract”.
  
• Triggers related to vassals now often have tributary counterparts.
  
• Triggers related to lieges now often have suzerain counterparts. Also overlord counterparts exist which acts on either liege or suzerain, depending on what the scoped character has.
  
• Add debug info in portrait tooltip for played animation
  
• Created a new raze_county script effect
  
• Added new graphical 'defeated' unit state for units that have just lost a combat
  
• Add holder_council_members and holder_tributaries as new elective succession candidate set types
  
• Added deny_powerful_vassal government rule, which disallows a ruler from becoming a powerful vassal if they have a government with this rule (no uppity Herders allowed)
  
• set_definitive_form now sets a default definite article for a title if the title does not already have a definite article set
  
• Added support for setting the definite article of a dynamically generated title
  
• Added on_actions for when a mercenary company is hired and dismissed
  
• Added an on_action for when a character changes government type
  
• Neighboring/_and_across_water_top_liege_realm/_owner script list variants now have suzerain variants as well
  
• Adds modifiers character_opinion_from_high_prowess_add and character_opinion_from_low_prowess_add, altering the character's opinion based on their prowess delta from define average_prowess_value
  
• Military_power compare trigger changes the ai_military_threat_modifier to use military_power instead of current/max_military_strength
  
• Adds land_neighboring_realm_with_tributaries and land_neighboring_realm_with_tributaries_owner script lists
  
• Added is_tributary_of_suzerain_or_above character trigger
  
• Added an ai.interaction_values console command to determine an ai character's willingness to take an interaction on available targets
  
• Localization used in the GUI for passing realm laws can now be customized per law
  
• Added new character interaction target list, neighboring_rulers_including_tributary_borders
  
• Added an ai_military_threat_modifier to be used in interactions that relate to the military threat value between two characters
  
• Added a parameter for government types to allow tributaries
  
• Added a parameter for government types for setting a scripted character template to be used when automatically generating characters for that type
  
• Amended the vassal_contract_set_obligation_level effect with a version for tributaries called tributary_contract_set_obligation_level
  
• Added a "hidden" animation in the default A-pose for testing purposes called bind_pose. It can be accessed in the portrait editor and is useful for checking clothing and body changes.
  
• Domiciles are now owned by special landless titles instead of characters. The Domicile owner will be the special title holder.
  
• Made it possible to set a scripted camera per triggered animation everywhere animations are used. This makes it possible to have horse and non-horse related triggered animations for one character position in the same event, for example.
  
• The hard-coded limit of the amount of Legitimacy types that can exist has been removed
  
• Each Legitimacy type can now have their own icon instead of sharing one
  
• Added 'on_combat_start' and 'on_combat_unit_join_side' on actions
  
• Added new script effects which allow more control over combat outcomes: ‘set_winner’, ‘force_win’, ‘set_disallowed_retreat’, ‘set_allow_early_retreat’, ‘set_skip_pursuit’
  
• New ‘Situation’ system added to which can be used to create dynamic region-based gameplay systems. (see Modding dev diary #168 for more details)

• Reworked the Realm window interface. Being one of our oldest panels, it was getting harder to work with and append new functionality to. While rewriting the code we also took the opportunity to improve its presentation coming on par with other modern windows while balancing the information load in each tab.
  
• Added an expanded interface of the Kurultai tasks since all members have access to eight tasks each, which caused the portraits to be covered by icons.
  
• Made paper styled UI skinnable, for example on contracts or letters. For now, mongolic cultures will have a more Eastern styled look to their paper interfaces.
  
• Court position type tooltip now show requirements instead of showing a courtier's fulfillment of the requirements
  
• Added contextual map icons for when raiders are raised and selected. Will show province loot within a range of selected raider armies owned by the player.
  
• Added new ‘Diplomatic Relations’ map mode which shows what current diplomatic relations the selected ruler has
  
• Exposed ‘File Transfer Speed’ setting to also be configurable in the multiplayer lobby settings

• Improved default transfer speed for MP save games, which should reduce time to start MP games significantly. The default (High) is now about four times faster than before. New file transfer setting options ‘Very high’ and ‘Ultra’ added, for very fast connections. The previous default transfer speed configuration is still available as the ‘Medium’ setting.

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And that’s all we have for today! There will be a short break in our dev diary schedule as we focus on the release and aftermath of Khans of the Steppe, but we’ll be back in a couple weeks to discuss how the release went, the feedback we’ve received from it, and how we’re responding to said feedback.



We hope you're as excited for Khans of the Steppe as we are!

Hello everyone! Today's dev diary is written by two separate authors, and covers the art and music of Khans of the Steppe. There's a good bit to cover, so let's dive right into it.

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Salve,

Lucas Ribeiro here, 2D Art Lead at CKIII. I’m here to share with you our efforts to bring to life the beautiful open splendor of the steppes and the blood-stained battlefields of the east through our humble artwork.



To start off, let’s talk about our new loading screen. We began by sketching out some ideas and running them through the team to get impressions. There was not much debate on what the theme was here, mostly how to represent it.



From these 4, we picked the one with the charging band of warriors against the stormy sky. We felt that this composition had a lot of dynamism and looked unique compared to the other loading screens we’ve created so far. The juxtaposition of the riding band of warriors against the stormy skies suggests the strong connection between nature and the lifestyle of the steppe nomads.



As a second step, we created a few different color sketches. We opted for the one where we could see a stormy sky against a calmer golden haze. This served two purposes: To correlate the riders with the encroaching tempest and to show the gameplay feature of the changing seasons.



For our nomad dynastic legacy we thought we could use the opportunity of a horizontal layout to display a big migrating wave, stretching towards the horizon.





While we had a few steppe themed event backgrounds, we made sure to cover every sort of event theme with new and appropriate steppe backgrounds. Amongst these are Oovos, A camp at night and day, the inside of a nomadic tent, Karakorum, Hunt, Throne Room, An eastern village (and their burning version), different versions of a steppe background and many more.









We also have new holding illustrations for nomadic and herder governments:






We have added 2 unique activity types for Mongols. A new type of feast, the Tsagaan Sar. And a new type of hunt, the Nerge.

For the Tsagaan Sar, we wanted to show the participants wearing white, as is customary. The plentifulness of food is represented by the bowls and baskets of treats. And the tradition of bringing the Khan gifts is also present in the image.

In the Nerge hunt, riders would work together to round up animals from all across the region for their ultimate slaughter once surrounded by a veritable army of hunters. We tried to represent this encirclement by how the characters occupy the composition. The animals are seen in desperate flight, while the men are positioned on both sides of them.





The nomad experience is closely associated with warfare, as such, we knew we had to give them a significant variety of men-at-arms. We also have many different steppe cultures and the men-at-arms gave us the opportunity to make them a bit more unique.





While we fortunately had some Mongol culture clothes and headgear in the game, the variety was quite small. With Khans of the Steppe we had the chance to greatly expand this repertoire.



As with every expansion, we dedicated a significant amount of time to collect references, preferably accounts or representations closer to our time period. When references are a bit fuzzy on the details or a bit too abstract, we take to the drawing board and come up with some concepts that help solidify these ideas. Here are a few examples:

[Mongol imperial Clothes]


[Steppe Feathered Hat]


[Yuan Style Mongol Armor]






Our original animations for travelling characters and marching armies felt quite insufficient when depicting peoples that spent so much of their time on the saddle. To remedy this we have given nomadic travelling characters and military units a horse and animations to go with it. Your armies will now siege enemy holdings while still astride their steeds.


[Chasing enemies]


[Celebrating victory]


[Rearing up]


[Galloping]

We also have a unique model for when you migrate your nomadic camp. Your people are represented by a wheeled yurt being pulled by oxen.





As might’ve been touched on in previous development diaries, the steppe regions include seasons, a mechanic with significant gameplay implications. We felt that it was necessary to clearly reflect these changes on the map, so that the player could tell something has changed. So, whenever a White Zud hits, you will see the landscape covered in thick white snow. When a season has an Everlasting Summer, vivid green patches will creep even amongst formerly dry terrain.

Steppe nomads now have their own holding graphics. Yurts with colorful roofs surround the magnificent tent of the Khan. On Tengri temple holdings, ovoos are decorated with colorful flags. We came to a dilemma, though, regarding holding walls. While it would make sense to not display any walls, specially beyond the level of palisades, on most nomad holdings, this would conflict with the necessity to show the player that they still need to siege a nomad holding (even though, they’re normally easier to siege than a fortified castle). To try and thread this ludonarrative dissonance, we have opted to have yurts both inside and outside the protective walls, this way, it shows the player that a siege must happen, but the nomadic holding doesn’t have a appear as constrained as other holdings types.



On the easternmost part of the map, we have added the Burkhan Khaldun, a magnificent mountain group that carries much significance to the local steppe people.





The grandiose yurt of a leader of the steppe people is also present in Khans of the Steppe. With the diligent and precise work of El Tyranos, we have constructed a throne room worthy of Genghis Khan. The throne has different versions depending on your grandeur level. Uniquely, your Coat-of-Arms is present as a huge banner draped over yourself and behind your throne.





When you play the game as a nomadic character, your HUD will adopt a style inspired by Mongol patterns, carvings and art. Nomadic government characters also have a unique widget that concentrates all the most important functions that their unique playstyle requires.



We have also, for the first time, created a skinned version of the paper-like interfaces in the game (for example, contracts or letters). The wax seal is substituted for an ink stamp, and instead of the western ornament on the edges of the letter, a delicate eastern style of plant arrangement decorates the character portrait. We are hoping to introduce more and more thematic UI elements as we move towards All Under Heaven.



As it is done for other government types, nomad and herder governments also get a unique coat-of-arms banner shape. We found a striking design amongst those that the steppe people have flown, with a triangular layout and organic dents along the edges.



We have created a new pattern variation for COA’s that work better with this new layout, giving the dented edges a different color from the rest of the COA.



As for the Herders, their COA shape is somewhat inspired by the Nomad one, as it is triangular as well. But, it is a bit smaller, frayed, and doesn’t have the dented design or the secondary color on the edge.



For our new bookmarks, we have decided to utilize a new paper map style, the eastern Asian one. This already reflects the new map theme you can switch between that will be arriving with the All Under Heaven expansion.





Much like the adventurer camps and administrative estates in Roads to Power, nomads have their own domiciles. With the prospect of All Under Heaven coming up, we decided that it’d be better to take this opportunity and make this domicile art in a somewhat new style. Instead of using western artwork as inspiration, we went for an asian inspired style, with more fluid and loose ink strokes.



I will now hand the Dev Diary over to Ernesto Lopez, our Audio Director to tell us more on the audio work for Khans of the Steppe.

---

In Khans of the Steppe, our goal was to authentically capture the vastness and spirit of the Mongol Empire through sound. To achieve this, we collaborated with esteemed composer Philip Wareborn, known for his work on Stellaris and Crusader Kings III, and the talented Tuvergen Band, a Chicago-based folk-fusion trio specializing in Mongolian and Tuvan musical traditions.

Central to Tuvergen Band’s unique sound is Tamir Hargana, an award-winning throat singer from Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia. Tamir brings mastery of the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle) and traditional throat singing techniques, enriching the game’s musical landscape.

This collaboration has resulted in six evocative tracks that immerse players in the Mongolian steppes. Compositions such as Call of Gobi, Nomad’s Journey, and The Khan’s Glory not only accompany your conquests but also embody the essence of Mongol culture and landscapes.





Beyond music, we’ve enhanced the game’s ambient audio to reflect life on the steppe. Mongol-themed events now feature unique atmospheric sounds, and units are accompanied by realistic horse animations and animal noises, bringing the environment to life. Whether it’s the distant call of an eagle or the rhythmic gallop of hooves, these details ensure that the Mongol experience is both seen and heard.

Through these auditory enhancements, Khans of the Steppe offers a deeply immersive journey into the heart of the Mongol Empire.

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That's all we have for this week! Join us next Tuesday for the final dev diary for Khans of the Steppe: The changelog itself.

Hi! This expansion is adding quite a few new systems, and today we’re here to talk about the modability and underlying tech of some of them.

One of the more impactful features we’re adding is tributaries. So we’re on the same page when it comes to terminology: a suzerain is to a tributary what a liege is to a vassal.

Previously, a vassal had a collection of individual contracts defined on their government type which made up their complete “vassal contract”. This included things such as “feudal_government_taxes” added on the “feudal_government”, which determined how much a vassal with the feudal government would pay to their liege.

However, with the addition of tributaries this has changed slightly. Firstly, pretty much everything related to “vassal contracts” have been renamed to “subject contracts”. To enable re-use of these contract lists and usage outside of governments, we’ve added a new database called “subject contract groups” which includes the typical list of individual contracts, but can also include extra parameters such as how they should be inherited on succession and how they should appear on the map. These are documented in the info file for subject contracts groups.


[An example of a subject contract group for a type of tributary]

Tributaries basically work the same way as vassals, with the same system for contracts. But instead of being applied automatically based on your government when you become someone’s vassal, tributaries need to be started manually through script.


[Starting new tributary contracts is easy!]

This effect will only work if both the tributary and the suzerain are independent rulers, and that the resulting tributary relation won’t result in a circular loop of people being tributaries to each other. This can easily be checked with the “can_be_tributary_of” trigger. They can also be broken with “scope:some_tributary_character = { end_tributary = yes }”

Tributary contract groups are also marked with “is_tributary = yes” so that we can differentiate them from regular vassal relationships, as characters with tributary contracts are still considered “independent rulers”.

To get a character’s suzerain you can use the new “character.suzerain” link, or “character.overlord” which will get either the liege if the character’s a vassal, or the suzerain if they’re a tributary. “top_suzerain” and “top_overlord” also exist. The latter will first find your top liege and then keep going to your top liege’s top suzerain, if they have one.

The AI has a chance to break free from their suzerain each year based on the “ai_will_do” in the “cease_paying_tribute_interaction”, which is what’s displayed here:



Any character who has a government type that uses the “obedience” government rule, or has a liege/suzerain/employer who does, will use obedience. The threshold needed to become obedient and the obedience value are both calculated in script:



Put simply, if the calculated Obedience value is greater than the threshold, that character will be Obedient. The Obedience target is set in Code with the following priority:

• De Facto Liege
  
• Suzerain
  
• Employer
  
• De Jure Liege
  
• None

Obedience is checked in many places using the “is_obedient” and “is_obedient_to” triggers.

Confederations are a group of smaller independent rulers coming together, acting as allies in defense against greater threats. Creating one is simple using the “create_confederation” effect.



Confederations invalidate on a daily tick if they have fewer than two members, so after a confederation has been created another member must be added using “add_confederation_member”



Members of the confederation will skew their map color towards the color of the confederation creator based on the define “CONFEDERATION_REALM_COLOR_FACTOR”.

We have implemented a new general system for supporting dynamic region-based gameplay, which we call the Situation system. Its purpose is to provide a fundamental building block for various types of systems, from Struggle-like socio-political systems, to environment systems like the Great Steppe, or smaller temporary effects like a Natural Disaster. (All Under Heaven mentioned!)

In this sense you can consider Situations to be an evolution of the Struggle system, where we took the learnings of that system, and made it more dynamic and flexible. Extendable in our C++ code base (example: Migrations), but also flexible in our GUI system, and more moddable.

To note: we have not converted existing Struggles to be Situations, because Struggles contain specific functionality and bespoke interfaces that we do not have in exactly the same way as in the new Situation system.



As you can see from the documentation file above, we’re using this system in both Khans of the Steppe, as well as All Under Heaven. It is part of the base game, and thus available for all modders regardless of DLC ownership.

Now how is this system structured? I will try to explain in a succinct manner. The terms might be a bit dry, but that is because it is a core system - each implementation can rename things in the interface as they like!

Sub-regions - A Situation type consists of one or more geographical sub-regions. These subregions are fixed in number, but each can grow and contract their geographical area while the game is running. Example: the three sub-regions of the Great Steppe - west, central, and east.

Phases - Each Situation type has a set of phases which can transition from one to another via various mechanics. We grabbed some functionality from the Struggle system and extended it.

An active phase can transition to another phase in these ways:

• Max Duration Reached - If a maximum phase duration is defined, and it is reached, a new phase is picked from the possible future phases, according to a rule, either a weighted pick of the future phases based on the points they have accumulated, or entirely random.
  
  • Example: The Great Steppe seasons progress in this manner.
• Points Takeover - One of the future phases has accumulated enough points to reach its “takeover” target. Similar to Struggles, you can use catalysts to add points to specific future phases. It will stop the current phase, and put itself as the active phase.
  
  • Example: Some of the special seasons of The Great Steppe work this way
• Duration Takeover - One of the future phases has reached a specific duration. It will stop the current phase, and put itself as the active phase. This can be used to provide a more predictable version of the points takeover phase.
  
• Changed via Script - Our script system is powerful - and we can switch phases directly, skipping the automatic systems. It can also change to a phase that isn’t an official ‘future phase’ of the active phase.

Each sub-region has its own active phase, and its own phase progression, but the possible phases are defined on a situation level. Nothing would prevent us (or a modder) from implementing multiple phase ‘cycles’ within a situation though!

Of course a situation phase definition also contains modifiers and parameters that will apply to the region (county_modifiers), or the characters participating in the situation (character_modifiers), filtered by their Participant Group, which segues nicely into…

Participant Groups - Who is impacted by the situation? Well we can define a set of participant groups within the situation. Similarly to sub-regions, the groups themselves are pre-defined in the situation type, but are dynamic while the game is running - characters can join and leave groups.

Each sub-region has their own set of these pre-defines participant groups, and within each sub-region a character can only belong to one participant group (or none).

So what determines which group you would belong to? This is determined by potential candidates, and settings on the groups. By default the candidates are all the rulers within the geographical area of the relevant sub-region. But you can also add and remove candidates manually via script. (for example you could add the Pope to the Great Steppe even though they are nowhere near)

For each sub-region, we go through all the candidates, and the first group that is valid for them is where they are added. It is possible to not be valid for any group! Then they’re not part of the Situation.



Dynamic Sub-region Creation - When you have defined a situation type, it can be added to the world via a history definition, or via a script effect. But you can also define a new set of sub-regions while starting a situation! This allows us to instantiate the same situation type in multiple locations.



Ending - A Situation ends automatically when a phase (in any sub-region) ends without a new phase starting. Additionally, they can be ended in script via an ‘end_situation’ effect.

Graphical Features - Bundled with the Situation system we also have some additional graphical features. Simple ones include the ability to define the map-color of specific sub-regions or participant groups. But more notably we have also added Map Province Effects - a way to apply an effect on the map based on the current Situation phase of a sub-region.

These effects can be applied with a specific effect type and intensity (0.0 - 1.0), we bundle some effects out of the box in Khans of the Steppe: Drought, Summer, Snow - but mods could add more of course!


[Regular terrain north of the Aral sea]


[Summer province effect at full intensity]


[Snow province effect at full intensity - this effect is hooked into our existing winter shader, so it will fade in/out neatly]


[Drought province at full intensity]

All-in-all the Situation system is a building block which allows a game-play feature to use what they need, and tweak what they want, often without requiring new C++ code.

Nomadic migration is an extension of the situations system - situation type can set that it supports migrations. This will enable additional mechanics for the player and the AI in the map area covered by the specific situation. Migration process and AI decision-making in regards to migration is a complex task, largely controlled by code. We do that every time when there’s high overall complexity and performance risks. Here are the customization points that can be used to tweak how and what happens during migration.

Migration always happens within some situations. A game rule allows you to enable additional situations in different parts of the world, and migrations will happen independently inside those areas. When you mod your own situations that support migration, please do note that such situations shouldn’t overlap.

Both player and AI start migration via special interaction called “migration_interaction” in script. Initiation of migration travel or war is handled in code, but the rest can be adjusted. For example, actual transfer of land after migration is up to script. The property of the interaction “ai_accept” controls if the recipient allows you to migrate into their lands peacefully, or will it lead to war. “ai_will_do” on the other hand is used to score the best migration target when AI makes its decision where to migrate. Unlike other interactions, this one gets lots of additional data provided by code to script, so scoring can be more nuanced. Additional scopes are migration target, all potential enemies in case of hostile migration, target land fertility, total military power of all defenders and their allies - all this allows you to prioritise for different targets, balancing risks and benefits.

When migration is hostile, it uses a special casus belli - “migration_cb”.

Migration range is limited by migration distance (MAX_MIGRATION_SQUARED_DISTANCE), and there are modifiers (max_migration_distance_mult) that extend or shrink it. It allows you to control different AI behaviors, setting some rulers to be more free-roaming, and putting harsher restrictions on others.

It is our second expansion that uses domiciles, and it introduces a new domicile type - nomadic camp. With more hand-on experience with this system some previous technical decisions proved to be error-prone and hard to work with. So we decided to change how domiciles are connected to playable landless rulers. Domiciles are now owned not by a person, but by a special landless title. Adventurers always have their camp title, landless noble families have noble family title, and nomads have a nomadic camp title. This solves several problems at once - domicile inheritance is now completely controlled by inheritance of special titles. No more cases when code has to decide for a ruler which of the 2 domiciles they should keep - their own or the one they inherited from someone else. Title can have no holder for some time, and when it gets a new holder at some point, domicile is returned back into the game - no risk of accidentally destroying a rich and build-up domicile due to an unfortunate succession. Nothing changes in script or UI - there’s still a direct connection between a ruler and active domicile they have. When a ruler holds several special titles with domiciles, only one of those domiciles will be active - the one that matches the ruler's government type. This shouldn’t normally happen in the base game though.

Fertility is a value calculated at the County level. Every County that is in Situation with Migration or whose Holder has a Government Type with the Government Rule uses_county_fertility has County Fertility calculated and shown in the UI.


[Government Rules for Nomadic Government]

If you want to mod in a Situation that uses Fertility without Migration, just add migration = yes to the Situation setup, but disable the migration interaction (migration_interaction) and make sure you add the uses_county_fertility government rule where necessary.

Herders are a bit special in that they also replenish County Fertility, which is another Government Rule called replensishes_county_fertility. They contribute a base monthly Fertility gain per county, governed by the define BASE_HERDER_GAIN_PER_COUNTY.

Monthly Fertility change is a bit more complex than our usual systems. We adjust both Growth and Decline to better simulate how nomadic herds would reduce local pastureland, with the overall change often settling at some lower number (though this depends on your domain size and some other factors).

County Fertility Growth is changed according to this function:



[County Fertility Growth Equation and Graph]

County Fertility Decline is changed according to this function:



[County Fertility Decline Equation and Graph]

Where these two curves intersect is theoretically the Equilibrium point of a given County in the game. A County’s Fertility will always trend toward the Equilibrium point. There is, however, a “pusher” which determines how sensitive Equilibrium is to the difference between Growth and Decline.


[County Fertility Pusher Equation]

Given the complexity of these equations, we opted for a simpler way to calculate the Equilibrium point to display in the UI, using the small angle approximation sin(x) ≈ x :


[County Fertility Equilibrium Approximation Equation]

Put together with Character, Holding, and County modifiers, these functions contribute what you see in the game as Monthly County Fertility Change.

It is important to note that the math behind all this is largely contained in what we’ve called “Current County Fertility Modifier” in the monthly change breakdown. This number is the result of these calculations and what directs the Fertility in a County to trend toward its Equilibrium point.


[Example of a Fertility Monthly Change breakdown]

For anyone that hasn’t taken a math class recently, this may all seem like gobbledygook, so here’s the main takeaway for modders: The central way to affect how County Fertility grows and declines, and where it will hit Equilibrium, is by adjusting the following defines which hook into the functions above:


[Defines for affecting how County Fertility Change behaves]


Herd is a new currency stored by a Character’s Domicile.


[Yurt Domicile script showing the herd parameter]

Every Domicile has Current Herd and Max Herd values, accessible by the following triggers:


[herd and max_herd triggers available for domiciles]

A Domicile’s Herd Limit (Max Herd) is determined by their tier plus any relevant modifiers. There is a new define listing base Herd Limit values by tier


[Defines affecting Herd Capacity, Herd Conversion, and Monthly Gold Income from Herd]

Along with that comes a Base Herd Conversion rate, which determines how many of your Herd get turned into Horde Riders when you raise your armies. And additionally a define to control how much Gold income a Character gets based on their Herd.

Every month, your Herd will increase based on the Herd Gain from your domain as well as contributions from Vassals and Tributaries. The Herd you gain from your Domain is equal to the current County Fertility of that County multiplied by the define HERD_GAIN_FROM_COUNTY_MULTIPLIER


[Herd Gain from County Fertility Multiplier Define]

With raid intents we’re adding some customizability to raiding. It can change what you receive when you return with loot, and modify the raiding army in some way.



Here we see the raze intent which will add prestige and dread when your raiding army returns with loot, but gives a -60% modifier to raiding speed.

We also use the “on_raid_action_completion” on-action to have different effects happen after each successful raid on a holding depending on the active raid intent of the raiding army. You can check a scoped army’s raid intent using “raid_intent = NAME_OF_INTENT” trigger.

It is now possible to specify a scripted character template per Government Type. This template will be used when a new character is automatically generated for that government type in code, for example, when granting a title to an automatically generated character.


[Script syntax for specifying a generated character template]


[Scripted character template for a Herder]

We use this pretty frequently in the Steppe when you start Migration and leave behind your lands to Herders. So whenever you begin migrating, the Herders that appear to oversee your previous Domain are generated according to the template above.

The aim here is to give script and modders more control over the characters that are created for titles that already have government types specified.

With this release comes an updated skeleton for the characters. We’ve added new sleeve, skirt, and cloak joints, to help increase the animation fidelity for clothing. The adding of joints to the male_body.mesh and female_body.mesh also means that any item modders may have created that uses these skeletons will have to have those joints added, or the item will look very weird (sort of “exploding”), as the joint count array now places joints in a different order and has a larger amount of them. To help modders out, we’ve decided to publish our skeleton files, both our own Maya files as well as in the more universal FBX format. You can find these files over here.

To expedite fixing old clothes, cloaks, and legwear, modders can use these files to copy over the skinning from the various types of clothes in the files to their own items. Some manual reskinning is generally necessary, but hopefully this should make it much faster than doing it all manually. In general, legwear (pants) get the skinweights copied from the regular body (skinned to the legs), cloaks have a specific cloak item in the files to copy from (skinned to the cloak joints as well as the upper arms/neck/upper back), and regular clothes can copy from a “body and skirt” item (skinning the upper body to the body's joints, and the lower body to the skirt joints). Pick whatever item seems to suit the one needing reskinning.

Our previously made clothing should look and act pretty much the same as before, while new animations and clothes will be able to have more movement independent of the body. This will allow us to simulate better movement based on weird poses or fast movement.

For the combat-loving modders out there, we have added some commonly requested on-actions you can use to apply effects when combat starts, or when an army joins a combat.



Additionally we have added some new script effects which will allow more control over combat outcomes:

• set_winner = yes - effect you can apply to a combat side to force a winner in combat without reducing soldiers to 0. (on the next tick, more clean)
  
• force_win = yes - effect you can apply to a combat side to force a winner in combat without reducing soldiers to 0. (instantly)
  
• set_disallowed_retreat = yes - effect to disallow retreat on a combat side (they will wipe on defeat)
  
• set_allow_early_retreat = yes - effect to allow retreat when battle just started (prevents wipes)
  
• set_skip_pursuit = yes - effect to skip the pursuit phase after a combat win (so soft casualties are not converted to hard casualties)

We have also added a new ‘defeated’ map military unit animation state, which is set when a unit is defeated after combat, allowing for some cool extra animations.

---

That's all for now! We'll be back next week to talk about some of the art and music coming in Khans of the Steppe, so be sure to check that out next Tuesday.

We've now resolved the issue with yesterday's 1.15.0.1 update, so we're deploying Update 1.15.0.2 as planned. The changelog is effectively the same as 1.15.0.1, so you'll be familiar with the changes if you read yesterday's changelog.

---

• Reduced the frequency of the 'Instill Virtue' Court Position task.
  
• The ‘Instill Virtue’ Court Position task can only affect children 6 years or older now.

• Fixed an issue that caused congenital traits to not show up in the character list of the Arrange Marriage window
  
• Fixed an issue with a toast message saying "DESCRIPTION" instead of the actual description.
  
• Fixed an issue with the ‘Instill Virtue’ Court Position task where it would affect the Wet Nurse herself, if her employer was a child ruler, rather than the child in question.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Wet Nurse was using the children’s aptitude as a Wet Nurse rather than her own for the ‘Instill Virtue’ task. Creative, if nothing else.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could try to make a county the capital of a Duchy/Kingdom/Empire without it being a part of the De Jure of said title.
  
• Fixed an issue where an excessive amount of traits could push interface elements out of their respective windows.

• Added quick interact buttons for Ransom, Execute and Release in the Prison View
  
• Added descriptions for how to gain experience in Commander Traits
  
• Changed wording of the message when warscore gets capped

Hello everyone. Earlier today we released Update 1.15.0.1, which introduced a user interface issue that wasn't caught during certification and approval of the update. Considering the severity of this issue, we have decided to rollback the public version of Crusader Kings III to 1.15.0 until this issue is resolved.

• Immediate Rollback. Effective immediately, we are reverting to the previous version of the game to maintain playability for as many players as possible
  
• Ongoing Investigation and Resolution. Our Release and QA teams are actively working to resolve this issue, and working on an express pipeline to ensure an update is ready as soon as humanly possible.
  
• Deployment of 1.15.0.2. Once we have certified a new update, we will deploy it immediately to Steam.
  
• Preventative Measures. Afterward, we'll be looking into our testing procedures to prevent issues like this from occurring in the future.

We understand this is frustrating and inconvenient to many of you, and we sincerely apologize for the trouble. Your feedback and support help us continually improve as a developer, and we will do our best to keep the community updated throughout this process.

Thank you for your patience, and for your continued support.

Өглөөний мэнд!

Today we will be covering most of the nomadic flavor that we've introduced with this update, so without further ado…


Great are the plump princes in their southern fortresses, great are the chieftains of the grass sea… but great-EST? Only one is greatest. CHINGGIS KHAAN, Universal Ruler, Khan of Khans, biggest and baddest boi… well, actually, Genghis is only the greatest and the baddest baddie sometimes. In some other playthroughs, the Greatest of Khans will arise organically. Heck, the Greatest one could even be you.


[It’s quite the trait.]

The key point is that there is only one GREATEST. Once someone has become Greatest of Khans, no ruler ever can again. It’s the highest point of nomadic achievement, and an absolute game-changer! So yeah, should you or an AI ruler achieve this highest of titles in time… the Mongol Invasion won’t happen. That perilous time of nomadic conquest under a single, mighty ruler has basically just come early. Conversely, if Temujin becomes Genghis in your game session… it’s over for other aspiring GoKs. He is the Greatest of Khans, and there will be no other. So be mindful of your Mongol Invasion game rule.

Now, it seems prudent to outline the path to becoming Greatest of Khans, as well as the opportunity you’re afforded to prevent others beating you to the finish line.

All nomads can view the Become the Greatest of All Khans decision, but you must be Dominance level 5 - and therefore, must also be the Gurkhan (owner of the biggest herd on the steppe) - to take it.


[The triggers you must fulfil to begin the path to world conquest.]

Above, you can see some additional requirements. Not only must you be the first to achieve Greatest Khanship in your playthrough, but you need an empire of substantial size and to command the Obedience of a range of powerful nomads.

Be warned! Taking this big step will immediately provoke quite a war against all those who’d like to stop you. There is much to be gained by winning the Great War of Defiance against those arrayed against you… and much to be lost by failure.



[The decision’s warning and victory effects]


[The decision’s failure effects]

When you’re ready to face an uncertain number of foes in order to achieve your grand destiny… click the button. The Great War of Defiance begins, and every nearby ruler in the steppe joins against you. At least one powerful non-nomad will join as well, since - like historical Byzantium and China - they certainly have no interest in a great steppe conqueror arising.


[The Attackers’ true strength is always at least double what’s immediately shown here.]

Though your Obedient vassals will join on your side, this should be a stiff fight! The coalition of rulers attack from all sides. If you’re a player trying to stop an AI Gurkhan who’s taken this decision: you’ll be given the chance to join the cause, and keep the Greatest of Khans available for yourself.

It can end poorly for the Greatest of Khans…



Or… in absolute triumph.



And there it is. You - or your fearsome foe - get the Greatest of Khans trait, a slew of big ol’ nomadic armies, and the mission to conquer a big chunk of the world and establish your lasting reign within 75 years. This is done through the Reform the Great Khanate decision.

But, first, what tools do you have as GoK for expanding your empire? One is the Offer Submission or Ruin interaction, quite similar to Offer Vassalization but with some more intense effects.


[The Greatest of Khans can demand armies of special troops, if they’re not feeling particularly lenient]

If your offer of Submission is rudely refused, a particularly devastating war is instantly declared on the recipient. This war slaughters courtiers, destroys buildings, reduces development, and even erases holdings. And, helpfully, makes other rulers more willing to simply submit to you peacefully.



[It is soooo on.]

The casus belli used by Offer Submission or Ruin is also available to the Great Khan independent of the interaction, to be freely used for seizing whole realms. However, it only has its devastating refusal effects when incurred as a result of, well, being refused.

The Greatest of Khans will lose these special capacities if they do not take the Reform the Great in time. It’s a possible end goal for them, and is it ever an endgame one, my dudes. It will afford you with new de jure lands and a major choice: establish an admin/feudal/clan empire OR RAZE CIVILIZATION TO THE GROUND AND LET NOMADISM REIGN.

I’ll leave the specifics of that madness to your imagination, but it really shouldn’t disappoint.



The Nomadic Domicile lands somewhere between the Landless Adventurer’s Camp and the Administrative Estate in many aspects. While mobile like the Camp (as you can gather from the wheels attached to the central yurt), it serves as the focal point for the whole realm, rather than just a small group of adventurers. We tried to reflect that with the domicile buildings, referred to hitherto as yurts. We hope they give Nomads numerous ways to deal with the harshness of the steppe.

As always, please be mindful that the numbers are not final and are prone to change.


[Example of the fully upgraded yurts]

Each of the yurts provides various bonuses centered around particular aspects of Nomadic life. There is one more yurt not visible in the screenshot above, the Barter Stalls, upgradable into Grand Bazaar. It can be constructed if your realm borders the settled people outside the Steppe and connects to Summon Wealthy Visitors and Establish Paiza System decisions shown in the previous dev diary.

Let us take a closer look at the central yurt first.


[First level yurt that county-level Nomads start with]

As you can see, it is a start but not much. Resources, cunning, and higher Dominance will be needed to expand your Domicile.


[Third-level yurt upgrade preview]

Without higher dominance levels, you cannot upgrade your central yurt. And without higher levels of the central yurt, you cannot construct and upgrade additional yurts. And without yurts… no yurts. Thus your Nomadic Capital grows with your power and hopefully serves as a record of the road that got you there.

As you can see, each yurt has internal slots for upgrades that allow for further customization of your domicile. I will be referring to them as yurts as well. It’s all yurts now.


[Example of main yurt upgrade. Those seats are very comfy, we swear!]

Yurts cost gold, prestige, and herd. While the costs are fairly low at the start, they get much higher with each upgrade. The steepest difference is in the gold cost. As gold income for the Nomads is much smaller than for the settled people, fully upgraded yurts require a lot of gold redistribution via raiding. So what can you get for your hard-earned wealth?


[Fully upgraded Square of the Tumen yurt]

This yurt focuses heavily on warfare and raiding. If you're curious about the Heavy Horse Archers men at arms, please keep on reading or quickly scroll down to the Men-at-Arms section at the bottom.


[Square of the Tumen internal yurt example]

If you wish to rely on sellswords, this yurt has you covered. The modifier gives you martial, prowess, and stewardship skills and is available only on the 6th level of this yurt.


[Another Square of the Tumen internal yurt example]

If your tributaries provided you with archers and skirmishers, this yurt will allow you to squeeze extra value from them.


[Fully upgraded Court Yurt]

As one of the most trusted Temujin advisors allegedly once said, conquering the world on horseback is easy; it is dismounting and governing that is hard. For when your glorious horde has swept the steppe, the Court Yurt will provide you with more tools to deal with your trusted subordinates and newfound subjects.


[Example of Court yurt upgrade]

If ruling the steppe is a family business for you, since only blood guarantees loyalty, this yurt will allow you to reap additional bonuses from having your step-aunts and step-brothers in your Kurultai. If your curious about Kurultai, please continue reading, more about them below.


[Millet Storage yurt upgrade]

This is an upgrade to the fertility and herd-centered Millet Storage yurt. For others, the deserts are inhospitable and provide little fertility and herd, with a little bit of investment your Nomads can thrive where others perish. There are similar yurts that cover other types of terrain as well. To further specialize, some cultural traditions have received Nomadic bonuses as well, once again, more about it down below.

We have already talked about Obedience in our first Nomadic Dev Diary, but as a refresher Obedience is a binary state for subjects and courtiers of Nomadic rulers.

Obedience increases the chances of a peaceful migration and vassalization, and it reduces the chance of a tributary breaking free or joining their allies in a war against their suzerain, as well as reducing the chances of a character using a Murder scheme against their overlord, or joining a faction against them. Most importantly, Obedience is the only way to guarantee a peaceful succession, explained in our previous Dev Diary.

Several factors impact Obedience, like opinion, having a good relationship, being a Kurultai member or being employed in a Court Position. Your spouse and family also have higher spouses, but only your preferred heir will – all other children of martial gender will look at your favourite with disdain, and their obedience may not be guaranteed.

Traits also impact how likely a character is to be obedient, and underage characters and herders will always be obedient.

However, there are some tools that you can use to convince someone to become obedient to you:

Negotiate Obedience is a character interaction that can be used to bribe someone with Herd or Gold.



Demand Obedience costs prestige, but only those with 45 Dread or more will be able to intimidate their targets.



Impose Obedience is a new intent available for all types of Hunts. With it, events are more likely to give out obedience as a reward, especially if the hunt is successful.




Besides the Stargazer, already covered in the previous Dev Diary, we needed to add some other Court Positions to make the Nomads feel unique from the Feudal rulers. In some cases, we have simply renamed the positions, whereas for others we have chosen to replace one position with another.



The first is the chief law overseer, who, in many ways, takes the role of the Seneschal for a Feudal ruler. They ensure capital control, legitimacy, and obedience. They have access to the Seneschal tasks, ‘Organize Court’ (Aptitude) and ‘Manage Domain’ (Control), but also have access to a new task called ‘Blend Cultures,’ which will increase culture acceptance with cultures in the realm.



The second is the Boyan, one of your leading generals. It improves your military and gives you access to two new tasks: 'Cow Vassals’ (Increased Vassal Contribution) and ‘Prepare Raids’ (Increased Raid Speed and Movement).



The third is the Yurtchi, a position similar to a quartermaster that oversees both your camp and your troops. It has access to two tasks, either decreasing everyone’s opinion of you and costing a lot of prestige but gaining more gold, or spending gold to increase everyone’s opinions of you and popular opinion.



The Keeper of the Horses ensures your steeds are well-equipped for war and travel. They also have access to the two tasks that Master of the Horses usually have access to.



The siege engineer is instrumental if you want to start sieging areas outside the Steppes. It has access to the task to increase fort level in your lands, but also a new task that gives a chance to get access to Siege Weapon MAAs (which is usually harder for Nomads to get access to). This position can only be held by someone with the Military Engineer trait, so you will likely have to look outside the Steppes to find a fitting candidate.



As the chief of the bodyguards, the Cherbi will improve other bodyguards, give access to more knights, and increase some of your Men-at-Arms. They can access the regular bodyguard task and a new task that improves your scheme defenses.



Finally, we have a position for those with many tributaries. It has access to the task ‘Entertain Courtiers’ from the Court Jester and a new task to increase culture acceptance and gain opinion with your tributary cultures.

Nomadic rulers no longer have access to the regular Council but instead have a unique Kurultai setup for its council. They keep the Spymaster, but the rest of the positions have been replaced with a new Kurultai position.



Each of the four Kurultai members has access to the same eight tasks:

• Two for Diplomacy
  
• Two for Stewardship
  
• Two for Martial
  
• Two for Learning

To start, two tasks have been moved from regular councillors to the Kurultai:

• Increase Control (from the Marshal)
  
• Domestic Affairs (from the Chancellor)

As for their other tasks, let us start with their new default task.



It is a simple Diplomacy task that they can always fall back on to improve Herd Gain and Capacity for their liege.



For the Nomads who are growing larger and more settled down, they should consider utilizing the Manage Fertility task to ensure that their lands are as well taken care of as possible.



Whereas for a smaller Nomad planning to migrate more often, maybe you just want to squeeze the land before moving on. Then, it might be good to see if you can get as much out of it as possible before moving on.



If you are interested in… being a tourist in foreign lands, let’s say, this will enable you to maximize the number of souvenirs you can bring home again.



If you want to maximize the potential of your Stargazer and their predictions, having a well-taught Kurultai member who can help them out will be key to improving their Aptitude.



If you are more interested in hybridizing your culture or changing something around, you should look to the final new task for the Kurultai. This will mesh well with the two new Court Position Tasks we have added to improve cultural acceptance in your or tributary lands.

Three of these tasks can only be done by one Kurultai Member at once:

• Organize Raiders
  
• Aid Stargazer
  
• Explore Cultures

Because otherwise, they would most likely be too effective or work funkily (Explore Cultures).

Two tasks cannot be done in the same province at once:

• Manage Fertility
  
• Exploit Lands

Because they are pretty much doing the opposite of one another. Exploit Lands can only be done inside your Domain instead of in the Realm at large. We found it was way too good if you could simply squeeze your vassals dry by exploiting their land.

As you might have noticed in the first picture, we have a small UI change to how their tasks look.



Since it was pretty noisy to have eight tasks shown for all 4 Kurultai members at all times, we added a new little window you can open and close to choose the tasks you want.

Nomads on the Steppe hunted all the time - it was a way of life for them. To represent this we couldn’t leave hunts exactly as they were, costing gold which is a resource that nomads generally do not have. Instead they cost herd, and have a host of additional benefits for nomads in particular. Nomads pay a nominal amount of Herd to start their Hunt Activities, and upon finishing a hunt they gain a Stocked Meat modifier which reduces the cost of their next Feast - a perfect way to get the gold required for hosting Tsagaan Sars!


[Nomad-specific host Hunt effects]

Nomads tend to find a lot more Animal Sightings through their flavor content, which boosts success chances for any Hunts hosted in those provinces.



[Two simple hunt sighting events]



[Some seasons have special hunt events, like Everlasting Summer]

They’ll get sightings for regular game, birds, and dangerous beasts - the latter of which has additional benefits to hunt: taking down dangerous beasts, such as wolves, will give you both dread (a currency very useful for nomads) and prowess, both for you and all of your hunters.


[Dread and Prowess gain from hunting a wolf]

Expect to be invited to many hunts on the steppe, as AI Nomads are always on the hunt for more Prestige, and will now, in addition to who they previously invited, invite their tributaries, suzerains, and potential friends/lovers to their hunts.



Moving onto a more flavorful (literally) topic, the nomad feast – the Tsagaan Sar! Observed in the coldest months of the year (December to March), the Tsagaan Sar ensured the new year started with a bout of revelry, and many would exchange gifts.


[Choosing a preferred gift for the Feast]

As the host, you can choose which gift you’d prefer to receive, and as a guest, send a gift to the host.

The Tsagaan Sar brings encounters not seen in a regular feast. Race against your peers, gamble against your local yurt’s drunkard, or even demand gifts from your guests. And of course, you cannot forget a staple of steppe culture – throat singing! During your feast you can learn a throat singing style, which can benefit you in tournaments!


[A Throatsinger at the Tsagaan Sar]

For followers of Tengri, the feast concludes with a declaration honoring the animal according to the lunar calendar. There are 12 different animals associated with the lunisolar calendar, each offering a different boon!



[Receiving a boon for the Year of the Pig]



Building on the Hunt changes mentioned before, Nomads have access to a new hunt type - the Nerge. Known as the Great Hunt, dozens of hunters would gather in the steppe to slay hundreds of animals. Along with being an opportunity to gain prestige, this new hunt type offers a unique Intent - Dreadful. The Nerge was not only an opportunity to slaughter beasts for the next feast, but is a great way to flex on your tributaries and vassals.


[Showcasing the Dreadful Intent]

Contrary to a traditional hunt, the Nerge was used to practice military tactics that led to Mongol victories.


[You’ll get to decide the best tactic as the Nerge host.]

If your Nerge is successful, along with gaining prestige, gold, and legitimacy, you’ll bring the strategies used into battle - via commander traits and experience.


[Nerge outcome event]


[Devise Pleasure Dome Decision]

What better way to immortalize your legacy as a mighty Khan than to construct a leisure palace fit for a conqueror? This decision becomes available to you once you have a Kingdom title. Based on a vision in a dream, the Kubla Khan poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A favorite here among the development staff.


[Pleasure Dome Special Building]

This decision allows you to construct the ‘Pleasure Dome’ building, offering a substantial bonus to your Feasts, Taxes, Prestige, Schemes, and Court Grandeur. It is said that different kinds of wine flowed from its silver tree fountain! Sign me up please.


[Summon Fair Courtiers Decision]

On top of that, you can now invite Courtiers with congenial beauty traits. It is time to secure your dynasty’s lineage!



The Burkhan Khaldun is one of the Khentii Mountains in northeastern Mongolia. This mountain had a special religious significance to the peoples of the steppe, as it was the mythical birthplace of the historical Genghis Khan.

To reflect that, we've added a special building to the map, giving out Piety and Renown rewards, as well as some military advantages to having control over such an imposing natural feature.



"Oh bother!" you might say in your most emphatic Winnie the Khan voice, "The steppes are too small, and my realm has overflowed into a neighboring region full of icky settled peoples and not enough pasturage for my herds!" Worry not, O Horse Lord of the Thousand-Acre Steppe! You can Expand the Steppe if your grip on these new lands is firm enough.



Completely control, through vassals or tributaries, specific regions that neighbor the existing Steppes, and with enough prestige and pizzazz you can add your conquered region to the Steppe, giving these lands some much-needed fertility and making it much easier to migrate around in as a good nomadic leader. Even more regions can be added as the Steppe grows — the only limit is the endurance of your horde, and how far they're willing to ride.

If your character is an adventurer there's a chance that the nomadic life will appeal to them. For this, we have added a special Decision to Adopt the Nomadic Ways.



If you move your camp to a county held by a Herder you'll be able to take over their lands and hybridize with the local culture, becoming a proper Nomad. A Percentage of your Provisions will be transformed into Herd, and you will join the Great Steppe situation.

However, if that Herd was a Tributary or Vassal to a previous nomadic ruler you will be asked to become a tributary yourself or make an awful first impression.



Besides the Migration, Invasion, Tributarization and Nomadic Quarrels we have added two extra new types of Casus Belli, only available to Nomads.

The Humiliation CB is available to target a ruler of higher Dominance than you, or the Gurkhan (the character with the highest Herd in all the Great Steppe). This is a great tool to try and stop someone on their way to become the Greatest of Khans.

If you win a Humiliation war, the loser is forced to go down one Dominance level (putting the regular 5 year cooldown on them to prevent them from changing it back immediately), and to pay part of their Herd and Prestige to you, as well as some of their obedient vassals deciding that they should not obey a defeated liege.



The Retaliation CB becomes available when a character migrates into one of your tributaries' lands and decides to not pay tribute to you.



If you win a Retaliation War you will force the character to become your Tributary regardless, and make them pay some Herd and Prestige to you in addition to that.

Now, you’re the leader of a nomadic people - it feels wrong to not have skilled hunters and other characters ready at your will. Because of this we’ve added a ‘Recruit from nomadic Capital’ decision where you can choose to spend a nominal amount of herd (symbolizing that the ones you recruit can no longer manage their flocks) in exchange for three courtiers of the desired type.


[Recruitment decision]

These characters will be of the Culture and Faith of your people - and will generally be quite skilled. Not all types are available from the start though, some require you to construct specific Yurt Buildings. A perfect way to get skilled hunters for your Hunt Activities (where the Hunting skill of the guests affects success chance!). You can also get good knights, commanders, shepherds (good as vassals!), brides, and husbands.

With Herd being the bread and butter of a nomadic ruler, and the main currency, there must be multiple ways to obtain it at will. Landed rulers can increase their taxes, ask their head of faith for gold, and others can trade hooks for gold. But as a ruler of the steppe, you have no such options. So how will you obtain herd outside of normal means? Well, since you cannot embezzle or launder large flocks of animals, the next best thing is to steal!


[Steal herd scheme window]

You’ll be able to choose how much herd to steal, and bigger amounts make the task more difficult. The scheme uses agents, ensuring your thievery is a success.


[Steal herd scheme sidebar]

If you manage to succeed in stealing another ruler’s Herd, there is a small chance of gaining additional outcomes. You can go for more herd, some of the ruler’s gold, his wife, or even a headstart at a murder plot against them! (evil character playthroughs only)


[Steal herd scheme giga outcome]


Before we started working on this expansion, the cultural tradition selection for Nomads was a bit bland. The big three of Horse Lords, Malleable Invaders, and Steppe Tolerance were present for almost all the cultures, meaning there was little difference between Kimeks and Mongols. And since all three were required to have access to Nomad-like flavor and mechanics, further customization was heavily limited. Now, with all the shiny bright new features and content this DLC brings to you, this is no longer the case. The starting cultural traditions have been rearranged, some existing traditions have received new effects and modifiers. And we have new ones as well!


[Wolves of the Deep Steppe cultural tradition]

The strength of the inner steppe. The Mongols start with this tradition, and while all Nomads cultures can get it as well, it is much more expensive for cultures with heritage other than Mongolic. For details on Mangudai men at arms, please keep reading!


[Iron Cavalry cultural tradition]

Where the Steppe warriors meet the ironworking wonders of the settled people. Turkmen and Oghuz cultures have this tradition at the game start.


[Tribes of the North cultural tradition]

This one is a bit different. It is present for the cultures that border the northern end of the ck3 map, the Buryats, Kirghiz, Ostyaks, Oirats, and Permians. Some of those have the Nomadic government like the Buryats, while Ostyaks and Permians are still tribal. Those tribes had a history of defiance while faced with adversaries: heirs of Temujin, ruling over the vast lands, still needed to endeavor a punitive expedition every decade or so to bring the northerners to heel, if only for prestige's sake.

This tradition can be obtained via hybridization; it is heavily connected to the Siberian Permafrost county modifier. This modifier is placed on the game start to counties up north, and it offers some powerful bonuses while preventing development growth and the creation of a feudal state with stone castles.


[Siberian Permafrost modifier breakdown. Its effects change if the owner does not have the Tribes of the North modifier]

Additionally, we have added new Nomadic effects to some of the existing cultural traditions, to make them a more viable and interesting choice when riding across the Great Steppe. Below you have just a couple of examples.


[Stalwart Defenders Cultural Tradition unlocks a special Yurt and gives a Toughness bonus to your Nomadic Horde]


[Pastoralist Cultural Tradition provides a fertility boost in certain terrains and increases the fertility growth of Herders]



Do you ever pop open CK to play as your favorite steppe people (the Kimeks, obviously), flip open your Army tab, and… see that you have pikemen, siege weapons, and some other units that don’t exactly represent the riders of your tribe?!? It was clear what had to be done for nomads’ MaA in this expansion: they needed to be limited from units that are much more emblematic of sedentary armies, and they needed some cool new units of their own.

So, there you go. If you’re playing a nomad (with no unique MaA through Traditions), your main way to get heavy/light infantry, pikemen, archers and proper siege weapons is through your non-nomadic Tributaries. How exactly this works was outlined in Dev Diary #165.

But forget about those dorks plodding around in the dust in their soft lil civilized shoes. You don’t need their MaA. As a mighty nomad, you need only - and are supremely skilled as - CAVALRY.


[The MaA units available to the Khan of Great Liao in 1066.]

The main mass of nomadic armies aren’t levies: these are replaced by the less-pathetic Horde Riders, which are converted over from Herd size when armies are raised. Even though they’re, of course, themed after horse archers, they don’t have the Archer Cavalry type, in order to limit the effects of bonuses and counters. Otherwise, these could really get out of hand, given Horde Riders will make up the vast majority of every nomadic army.



All nomads have access to classic, basic Horse Archers. They’re largely unchanged.



Steppe Raiders are nomadic light cavalry which are better-suited to dry and rough terrain than other nomadic cavalry units, receiving only mild penalties in hills, mountains and wetlands. They’re also available to all nomads.



Nomadic rulers won’t have direct access to real, substantially effective siege weapons. Until they can get a sweet tributary connection to hook them up, they make do with Torch-Bearers. Even worse than onagers, at least this standard nomad siege unit gets a siege bonus against nomadic holdings.



Only unlocked by building the Square of the Tumen domicile building, Heavy Horse Archers are a more costly alternative with more fighting punch, and a very handy counter against light cavalry (also, elephants). To counterbalance this, they suffer more penalties in harsh terrains.



The second level of Dominance allows Nomad Lancers to be recruited. What this means is nomadic rulers of means have access to heavy cavalry, even right at the 867 game start.



The Mongol tradition ‘Wolves of the Deep Steppe’ gives them access to the Mangudai. These vainglorious warriors have very high attack and pursuit, but low defence, meaning that they devastate defeated armies and leave few survivors. Their reckless attack and repeated retreats excel at breaking up formations, allowing armies with Mangudai to counter heavy infantry and spearmen.



Inspired by the Tangut Iron Harriers and the Mamelukes, this unit is available to a spread of cultures that were known for their employment of heavily armored horse archers. Note, however, that the unit's type is Heavy Cavalry and not Archer Cavalry: this allows Cataphract Archers to counter Archer Cavalry, and be one of the best ways to fight back against steppe conquerors.



That’s not a panini press on his chest. That’s armor. The Maturkan Warriors represent foot archers from all along the northern Siberian frontier, drawing particular inspiration from the noble Khanty warriors which lent the unit its name.



The glorious guard of Genghis himself can be yours, should you make it far enough down the new nomadic Dynasty Legacy. You’re limited to hiring just one regiment of this special unlock, but increase that regiment in size and you’ll see it packs quite the punch.

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And with that we reach almost the end of our Development Diaries dedicated to Khans of the Steppe! We will go over the modding support, art and music in the future, but this is our last feature spotlight. Thank you for reading – go forth, and conquer!

Өглөөний мэнд!

Today we'll be covering some of the extra mechanics that Nomads use. We’ve already talked about the main features in our first Khans of the Steppe Development Diary, so make sure you take a look at that one first – and apologies if I repeat myself.

We shall now get into the details.

---

As we have mentioned in previous Development Diaries, Nomads have their own mechanics and, when it comes to how they rule, one of the most important is their Dominance level.

Before I dive into the specifics of each level, it's important to note that Nomads have a fixed Minimum and Maximum Domain and Vassal Limit per Dominance level. These numbers can be increased only through Dominance and Yurt Buildings, and no skills or lifestyle perks affect it. We have also changed the Lifestyle Trees to better work with Nomadic mechanics, but more on that later.

Dominance represents a Nomadic ruler's perceived power. It can be increased by a prestige cost once the character reaches the necessary Herd to unlock the next level.

Rulers of Dominance 1 are typically Counts. They migrate frequently and have a maximum of 1 Vassal and a Domain limit of 2. At this point, moving to the area with the best fertility or taking over Herders’ lands is very common. Some may even offer themselves as tributaries to bigger realms, to ensure their safety during this critical time. Only the strongest are able to survive.

Rulers of Dominance 2 are usually Dukes. At this point, their Fertility Equilibrium is a bit higher, and they can stay in their lands for longer periods of time; they’ll simply likely need enough tributaries to continue growing their herd. This is also the moment when a ruler can, if they own a non-Nomadic holding, decide to Forsake the Nomadic Ways and become settled. This is one of the three ways to stop being a nomad. More on that later.



Rulers of Dominance 3 are typically Kings. This is the level that the khans of Cumania, for instance, have on game start. Vassal and Domain limits have grown significantly and now migration can target entire de jure kingdoms.

If you target a kingdom or empire during your migration, however, you must choose which duchy within that title is the one you're aiming for. If you win, you will take over the duchy and all lands the previous king held within that de jure title. If your foe held additional outside titles, they would retreat to there.

After successfully migrating thusly, you will get access to the Expand Dominance CB, which lets you de jure shift additional lands.



Rulers of Dominance 4 are akin to emperors. At this level, migration can target empires. However, rulers of this high Dominance level don't tend to migrate at all. They get most of their Herd through Tributaries, and their Fertility has reached a comfortable level where their herd can steadily grow through holding their vast territory. It is at this point that a Paiza System can be established, and access to the ‘Overrun Kingdom’ Casus Belli is granted.

Paizas were the mark of trust of a great khan. They were given to their loyal merchants and used to ensure safe travel through the Great Steppe. Granting paizas is a great way to make characters Obedient, and allows for the Summon Wealthy Visitors decision, where you can invest some gold to get special artifacts, even more gold, improvements for your Nomadic Horde, or random Innovation progress.

However, characters in possession of a paiza can use the Leverage the Khan's Authority interaction to make a different character obedient to them, or Abuse the Gurkhan's Authority through a decision that extracts fertility from someone's lands to increase their own prestige and gold. But the khan may hear of these infractions and take matters into their own hands, gaining an imprisonment, execution and banishment reason on their previously favored character.

The effects of paiza investments can be increased through the yurt buildings of the capital.



The Overrun Kingdom Casus Belli is the second path that nomads can follow to stop being nomadic. This CB can target any settled kingdom title and, if the war is won, will grant the target title to the attacker, who also converts to Feudalism, Clan or Tribal.



But coming back to Dominance. Dominance 5 is the highest level of them all and can only be obtained by the Gurkhan – that is, the ruler who possesses the largest Herd of the entire Great Steppe.

At this point, the Gurkhan can take the decision to Become the Greatest of Khans (should they fill that decision’s steep requirements). In a later Development Diary, we’ll explore this further! For now, we’ll let you know that the Greatest of Khans is well set up to both conquer the world and switch their government type, without having to leave the Great Steppe.



Dominance also affects migration range, with higher Dominance rulers being able to travel further while migrating.

Migration is not the only way to increase your tier. Nomads can also use the Dominate Title decision to create the de jure title of their very own territory… they just need to fight everyone in the desired area.



Dominating a title replaces regular title creation for nomads. In the steppe, no amount of document fabrication will prove that a title belongs to you: only fighting everyone in the area will.

We have already talked about County Fertility in our first dev diary, but we have not yet explained Fertility Equilibrium.

Equilibrium is the prediction of how fertile a county will become over time. It is where the Fertility Growth and Consumption meet, and it can be affected by terrain types, seasons, kurultai tasks and the holder's learning skill.

Equilibrium is higher the bigger your Domain is, representing your herd travelling through different counties to graze, rather than being confined to just one county. This means that higher Dominance rulers are able to live a more settled life within the Steppe, without having to abandon their nomadic ways.

A County will always tend towards its Equilibrium, which means that it will grow until it reaches it, or decrease if the current value is higher.


[The "Current County Fertility Modifier" represents the tendency of the county towards reaching Equilibrium.]

County Control slows down the rate at which Fertility grows by a percentage equal to the current control. So the Fertility growth will only be optimal when Control is at 100%. To address Control, we have introduced Settlement Issues.



After migrating, either peacefully or not, nomads will be greeted with some contracts regarding the problems presented by moving to a new area. These contracts will usually help increase the County Control, which allows for a better Fertility extraction and a much calmer life.



These contracts have 3 possible tiers, as usual, and some extra rewards.



Nomads live in the Great Steppe, divided in three regions: Western, Central and Eastern. Each of these regions has its own active Season, which may or may not differ from one another's.

Seasons affect the Fertility of the region, but they also offer modifiers to how people (and even animals) behave, with additional effects on subjects, warfare, herd and characters.

There are 2 good seasons, 3 bad, 1 especially good and 1 quite bad, all of which are also reflected on the map visuals. Let's go over them.



Abundant Grazing offers 25% fertility growth to any county in the region. It's a calm time, and rulers are generally happier, with increased Vassal Opinion and more Herd given out using the Demand Herd character interaction. Men-at-Arms are also 20% cheaper to maintain, as food supplies are well stocked, and Hunts are 50% cheaper to host.

Everlasting Summer represents the perfect climate for the land. It's a time of leisure and abundance that brings 75% fertility growth. Supply limit in the Great Steppe is also 50% larger, and Vassal and Tributaries have both an increased opinion and increased herd contribution, based on their contracts.

The Severe Drought is the first of the bad seasons. Fertility Consumption is increased by 20%. However, this means that people are more willing to migrate, and every courtier will increase their opinion of you after a peaceful migration. Rulers are also more likely to accept a peaceful migration request during this time, and the Conquer Casus Belli give out Prestige in the Steppe, which they normally don't. Herd gain is slower, and so is their conversion into Horde Riders, as more resources are needed for the same result.


[A Drought reflected on the map.]

During Zud seasons, the weather is especially adverse, which pushes character to seek protection from stronger and more resourceful nomads. During these seasons, the Demand Obedience and Demand as Tributary Character Interactions have a higher acceptance chance.



Characters are also slightly more likely to gain the Ill trait.

A Cold Zud brings strong winds and blizzards. The extremely low temperatures force the livestock to use most of their energy to keep warm.

A White Zud occurs when the snow settles over the grazing lands, making it impossible for the livestock to reach the grass. This is reflected by a 40% increase in the Fertility Consumption. The Retaliation Casus Belli (given when someone moves into your Tributary's lands but refuses to pay you tribute) is free, and upgrading your Horde Riders into better Men-at-Arms 25% cheaper. However, the supply limit is 20% smaller.

A Havsarsan Zud is the combination of two or more types of natural disasters. It's a time of great adversity, with grazing land impossible to find, and hardships in every possible direction. The County Fertility is completely gone, but that doesn't mean that you're out of options.

Demanding Tributaries still has a higher acceptance chance, and the Desperate Times Decision becomes available. In it, you can pay some Prestige and make all of your people Obedient, as well as unlocking the Invasion Casus Belli to try to get you out of the Steppe, no matter your situation.

The Retaliation and Humiliation Casus Bellis (used against a Nomadic ruler of higher Dominance than you) are free, and characters have a 30% increased Stress gain.



The other special season is the Blessing of the Blue Sky, which is much nicer to everyone involved. During a Blessing, Fertility grows with a 300% increase. The Supply Limit within the Great Steppe is also 100% higher, Tributaries and Vassals have a better opinion of their overlords, and characters have 25% less Stress gain.



We have nudged these seasons so they're more likely to happen after the Mongol invasion of China, and the Mongol invasion of Europe, as climate change was one of the factors that drove them out of the steppe. They can only happen once in the entire game, and their chances also grow each 100 years after each game start date.

It matters not if the 10 years of the previous season haven’t concluded: these seasons will take over whenever they reach their turnover point, and propagate to all regions. If you are blessed, you can grow an enormous herd that will help you take over the world; if you encounter the Havsarsan Zud, you will soon discover that the only possible way is out.

Rulers will also try to migrate to other regions if the local season is much better than theirs, and they have the necessary resources.

The Stargazer is one of the main tools that Nomadic rulers have when it comes to predicting upcoming seasons. This Court Position also acts as a substitute to the Court Chaplain, as they have been replaced by the Kurultai, and can help guess what the next season is based on their aptitude.



However, if the Stargazer’s aptitude is poor, there's a chance that they will predict two entirely wrong seasons, or one right and one wrong. Their reasoning is unpredictable.

They come with two Court Position Tasks: Oversee Preparations and Guide Shepherds.

Oversee Preparations is a bit of a special one, and its effects change based on seasons, as they're trying to ensure the best possible outcome. Therefore, they may help manage fertility during a Cold Zud, or increase piety gain during a Blessing.



The Guide Shepherds task helps Herder subjects gain the Seasoned Pastoralist trait, which increases the rate at which they replenish fertility of their held counties.



All nomads have a unique and new succession law: the Kurultai Succession.

During a Kurultai Succession, your two oldest children of eligible gender and the four members of your Kurultai will either approve or disapprove of your choice of heir. Their approval depends on whether they are Obedient or not, so ensuring an obedient kurultai should be among your highest priorities if you are aiming for a smooth succession.

During a Stable Succession, all of your titles go to your preferred heir, with no partition or harsh consequences.



If one or more members of your Kurultai are not obedient, you will be facing a Chaotic Succession instead. The consequences are unpredictable, but they go from losing some Legitimacy or Prestige, to one of your vassals stealing part of your herd, to even facing a realm fractioning disaster like the splitting of the great Mongol Empire.



The consequences are not completely arbitrary, though, and they scale with your title tier, realm size and the number of your disobedient Kurultai members. So if you are a Duke with only one disobedient member, you will not be punished as severely as a hated Emperor.



If the season is a Havsarsan Zud, the realm stability is shaken and the succession will always be chaotic!


[Example of some medium consequences.]


[Example of some harsher consequences.]

Some changes were done to the Lifestyle Trees to make sure the perks would be adapted to the Nomadic government and its needs. I apologise in advance for the ugly changelog, but this is easier and more to the point than me writing complicated explanations for all.

Diplomacy:

• Added Fellow Tributary Opinion and Fellow Confederation Member opinion to Defensive Negotiations
  
• Added increased aptitude to Boyan/Cherbi Court Positions in Praetorian Guard
  
• Added Renown if you have a Blood Brother to Inspiring Rule
  
• Added increased acceptance to Demand as Tributary and Offer Confederation to True Ruler
  
• Added Monthly Prestige per Blood Brother to Bound by Blood
  
• If you have a Blood Brother you get one extra random skill point from Friendly Counsel

Martial:

• Added Horde Riders bonuses for Organized Retreat for Nomads
  
• Added Horde Riders bonuses for Hit and Run for Nomads
  
• Made Nomads able to duel rivals from the get-go
  
• Changed Stalwart Leader so it allows nomads to duel any non close family member martial gender character
  
• Made Loyalty and Respect increase Obedience of Spouse and Vizier
  
• Added a discount to converting Horde Riders into MAAs for Prepared Conscription

Stewardship:

• Added Tributary taxes to Heregeld
  
• Added Domicile herd gain to Detailed Ledgers
  
• Changed Cutting Cornerstones to Cutting Wood and added extra 10% discount for Domicile Buildings for Nomads
  
• Added Domicile building speed bonus to Professional Workforce
  
• Added Herd gain to Centralization
  
• Added Herd to Horde conversion to Organized Muster Rolls
  
• Changed Large Levies to Planned Herd and added income from Herd and Herd from vassals
  
• Added Tributary Opinion to Likable
  
• Added happy powerful vassal Herd contribution to Honored to Serve
  
• Added higher Obedience from Councilors from Honored to Serve
  
• Added Tributary Opinion to the Administrator trait

Intrigue:

• Added bonus to the Capture raid intent for Kidnapper
  
• Added Herd gain from Intimidated/Cowed vassals to Fear Tax

Learning:

• Made Religious Icon make obedient characters converted via the Inspire Conversion interaction
  
• Zealous Proselytizer increases the acceptance for the Inspire Conversion interaction
  
• It also increases the piety gain from the Aid Stargazer task by 10%
  
• Planned Cultivation increases Fertility Growth

Wandering:

• Changed Development for County Fertility gain when hosting activities in No Stone Unturned
  
• Changed Souvenirs Aplenty for Changing of the Seasons and added Fertility and Control bonuses whenever the seasons change
  
• The Of the People perk increases the speed of the Explore Cultures Kurultai task

Nomads have a new Legitimacy type, which differs in some ways from the settled one.

The first big difference is that, while settled Legitimacy is much nicer to lower tiers (allowing Count and Dukes to get bonuses in the first levels), Nomadic Legitimacy is the same for all tiers, representing the harsher judgments of the steppe.



However, we have made the way of obtaining and losing it be also in accordance with the nomadic way of life. Nomadic rulers gain double Legitimacy from winning wars, but they also lose double on defeat. They will also gain Legitimacy from Duels and marrying noble-born Courtiers of someone of equal or Higher Dominance.

Nomadic Legitimacy also affects Tributary and Confederation acceptance, as well as Herd gain and Tributary opinion. The effects on Casus Belli costs and creating new Titles have been removed, as Nomads get CB discounts from Seasons, and they do not create higher tier titles the usual way, but through the Dominate Title decision.



Peasant and Populist factions do not make much sense within the steppe, instead there will be Nomadic factions.

These factions can happen for any type of ruler, settled or nomad, but are more likely for settled rulers. They are very powerful, comparable to Populist armies, composed of nomadic riders, horse archers, and other nomadic Men-at-Arms. Similarly to Peasant factions their discontent will always rise, and it'll rise fast. The goal is to make it unattractive for settled rulers to hold nomad lands, as they will be attacked by revolting nomads on a semi-regular interval - feudalizing the holdings will be crucial to stop this. Of course, defeating them will pacify their lands for a while.

If a Nomadic faction is successful, they will rip any duchy that had a county part of the faction out from your realm, and each of them will get a new nomadic ruler generated.

We decided that most vassal stances made little sense for nomadic people, so we have added a new one called Belligerent, more commonly found within the steppe.

Belligerent vassals want to see their liege as a powerful and strong leader, and enjoy shows of both physical and military might.

---

Thanks for reading and getting into the depths of the steppe with us! Next DD will go over the flavour and warfare of the Great Steppe.

Hello there!

Welcome back to the first official dev diary for our Core Expansion this year, Khans of the Steppe. For those who did not see it, we first talked about the DLC back last month with Dev Diary #162 - Steppe by Steppe, so I recommend reading that first.

Today we will discuss Tributaries, Confederations, and Raid Intents. All three topics were mentioned in the previous Dev Diary, but we will discuss them at length in this one, so let’s settle in like a migrating nomad and get started.

The team has gone through an intense iteration period based on both feedback collected internally and the comments received from our previous Dev Diary. Many changes have been thus made, and we are sure we are not done with it yet. However, here's a small list of some of the most significant tweaks done based on your feedback:

• A new, "base" Tributary type has been made available for non-Nomads.
  
• Concerns about the Nomadic economy have been addressed by adding a monthly income for nomads based on their Herd size (symbolizing the trade of meat, hides, etc.)
  
• A game rule has been added to include Nomadic governments in the Sahel, Arabia, the horn of Africa, Sami and Karelia regions
  
• Tweaked the borders of the Steppe and characters who should be nomadic in all bookmarks (more than I can list here, screenshots will be shared in following Diaries)
  
• We've added a Culture and Faith specific to your Nomadic Capital, different than your own
  
• Adventurers can now become Nomads if they move into a Herder holding
  
• We have expanded what we originally scoped for razing
  
• We've extended and altered the effects of some Seasons
  
• We have made it possible to grow your herd if you hold lands outside of the Steppe, giving those counties Fertility if held by a nomad

One of the new features we’re introducing with Khans of the Steppe, and the free update that goes along with it, are Tributaries. Vast nomadic realms like the Cumans, Khitans, and Khazars were not kept together by a tiered system of formal vassalage and pledges of fealty, nor were they delineated by culture or religion. Instead, the harsh realpolitik of the steppe applied - whoever could muster the greatest capacity for destruction on their neighbors proved themselves worthy of tribute, in exchange for the privilege of not being trampled underhoof. Modeling this type of subject relationship properly was the impetus for the Tributary feature.

Let's back up a bit and discuss some fundamentals first though, because tributaries aren't just a nomad thing. While Tributaries are similar to vassals in some respects, they represent a whole new type of unequal diplomatic relationship in the game. As a result, many game elements that formerly referred to "vassals" now refer to "subjects" instead. Subjects can be either vassals or tributaries, and these sub-types adhere to different rules. As with vassal contracts, there can be different types of tributary contracts with varying degrees of obligations. In most cases, these terms can be renegotiated.

Tributaries can be seen as a more independent subject type compared to vassals. While in most cases they share the map color and realm name with their suzerain, they can act and be interacted with independently, even when it comes to warfare. Most tributary types can also be created through peaceful means, by a sovereign ruler pledging tribute to a nomadic realm in exchange for a guarantee to not be attacked by them, or through a nomadic ruler demanding tribute from a neighboring realm. Agreements of tribute are (usually) perpetuated across generations, but may change in nature over time or be more easily broken when the contract changes hands.


[Marzoban Tokku and his weak backbone stands little chance against the persuasive might of the Cumanian horde]


[If some scary nomadic realm is on your border and you'd like to remain as independent as possible, you can proactively choose to pay them tribute to avoid outright conquest]


[Existing vassals can be released as tributaries, and in some cases you can even vassalize an existing tributary]

Nomadic Tributaries are what you will encounter most frequently in Khans of the Steppe. These consist of nomadic realms (or spineless herders) who have pledged tribute to a stronger nomadic ruler on their border. They will pay a part of their herd in tribute on a regular basis, and some of the prestige they gain will also be conferred upon their suzerain. In exchange for tribute, they enjoy a great deal of independence from their suzerain and will not be outright attacked or raided by them. They can even have tributaries of their own!

Settled Tributaries are non-nomadic realms (such as feudal princes, tribes, or clans) who have yielded to a bordering nomadic ruler. Like their nomadic tributary counterparts, they will pay tribute on a regular basis, but instead of herd they will provide gold and levies.

Both these types of tributary contracts are inherited across generations, but they also have quite a bit of leeway in simply ceasing payments (if they are ready to face the consequences of insulting their suzerain, that is). This is most likely to happen if a nomadic suzerain prove themselves weak in some way (and therefore unworthy of tribute, by the laws of the steppe), like losing a war or suffering a chaotic Kurultai succession. Once tributaries opt to stop sending gifts to their suzerain the suzerain can choose to attack them to recover control, or let them go try to make their own destiny without their protection. To try to keep this from happening, nomadic suzerains can either be lenient with their contract conditions, or leverage their Dread to demand Obedience of their tributaries.


[Your subject view will display if any of your tributaries are likely to stop paying you and why. Obedience plays a strong role in keeping your subjects in line, but even disobedient ones will be reluctant to stop paying off much stronger suzerains. More factors will be added before launch, such as losing a war or having chaotic Kurultai successions.]

A third type of subjugated tributary has also been added, which has no direct relation to nomads. This is a tributary type obliged to pay a lot of gold and a small amount of prestige to their suzerain in exchange for their suzerain's protection from outside invasion. If attacked, a subjugated tributary can call their suzerain in to defend them, and if they refuse their tributary obligations are annulled. Any non-nomadic realm can create this type of tributary through the Bring Under Tribute casus belli, enabling the extortion of neighboring protectorates through sheer military might.

This contract does not get inherited by the suzerain's heir upon their death, but also cannot be voluntarily broken. If the tributary wishes to break free of their obligations prior to their suzerain's death, they will have to fight them for independence.


[Even feudal realms can subjugate neighboring kingdoms to make them pay tribute, if their Crown Authority is high enough]

It's important to note that it's possible to modify the terms of a tributary contract, just like a vassal contract. For example, nomads can negotiate for protection by their suzerains in exchange for higher tribute payments. If you and your tributary are Blood Brothers, you can even negotiate a guarantee that they will follow you on all military adventures, offensive as well as defensive.


[Even the tributary can try to renegotiate the terms, but without a good relationship with (or a hook on) your suzerain this might be met with limited success]

Another aspect of tributaries of nomadic realms is that they can provide new Men-at-Arms types to their suzerain. In keeping with the flexible and heterogenous nature of steppe warfare, nomad rulers are able to recruit Men-at-Arms from both tributaries and vassals as if they were their own. Since the Men-at-Arms are recruited from other realms, rather than an additional cost of herd (to represent the development of more advanced mounted units) this costs a premium in gold to entice the foreigners to join up with the Khan's formidable horde.


[If you don’t have any subjects with access to some of the basic Men-at-Arms types, you get a little hint suggesting who might give you access to them…]

Visually, tributary realms will typically adopt the map color and name of their suzerain to clarify the relationship between them. Modders might be interested to know that this behavior can be changed in script depending on the subject contract: you can make tributary types that do not inherit the suzerain's color or name, or just one of them, as well!


[In 867, the Khazars dominate the Western Steppe while the Kirghiz control the Eastern parts. The Karluks and Ohguz are powerful nomadic realms in the central steppe region and have a lot of opportunity to compete for the smaller nomadic and tribal realms towards the northern parts.]


[In 1066 the western and central steppe regions are dominated by the Cumans in the south, with a considerable tributary network maintaining their control of the center and maintaining their power against the Karluks and Khitans. The Pechenegs have migrated west and act as a buffer zone between the steppe and the Byzantine Empire - will they manage to become their own nomadic powerhouse, or fall to either of their titanic neighbors?]


[In 1178, the Cumans remain the most powerful nomadic realm on the steppe, but for how long? The Khitans are migrating south into East Asia, leaving their old lands to the fractured Mongols to thrive.]

Since tributaries inherit all of the functionality of the vassal contract system, with a few extensions, they are very flexible and capable of modeling a great deal of unequal relationships between realms and rulers. There's a fair chance you will see more tributary types and dynamics added to the game in the future, and the system is fully available to modders to play with as well!

But how would you deal with these massive, aggressive nomadic realms as a smaller nomad who just wants to live a laid-back, peaceful nomadic lifestyle? One avenue to that is what we'll discuss next.

Brothers and sisters, do you ever tire of lusting after power? When you jump into a game as a meek little Count, do you wish friends and neighbors would stand together with you against the masters of the world? Do you want something new to do as a tribal? Say no more, my brothers and sisters - but the sacred words, the oath of confederation!

In short, Confederations are a new way for nomads and tribals to feel safe while initially building their power, playing tall, etc. It’s also a bit of an extra challenge for those looking to easily gobble up areas of the map that lack a mighty King or Emperor.


[12th c. Estonia mightn’t have looked quite like this, but hopefully this captures some of its spirit]

The inspiration for Confederations came from a visit to beautiful Tallinn, Estonia (which I very highly recommend), a fascinating conversation with a very learned scholar in medieval Baltic history, and a visit to the Great Guild Hall Museum. Therein, an exhibit asked the question — “Why did Estonia not become a Kingdom?”

It’s an interesting question, with at least a few answers. In a sense, the Estonian tribes did actually have kings, but these were temporary war-leaders or spiritual figures, and they did not serve to unite all the tribes together into one lasting polity. They are mentioned, as stubborn figures of resistance, in the Christian chronicles of conquest. This kind of defensive decentralization seemed new for CK3; I immediately wanted to represent it in our game. And, of course, there are the steppe confederations of history — the Khamag Mongol, the Kimek-Kipchaks, the Mogyërs, and so on — to consider and draw from as well. I’m also a Canadian btw, and Confederation has been a force of history around the Great Lakes for quite a while.

Let’s go through the confederating process, and discuss.


[The Decision that lays the path to Confederation]

The first step is a Decision that enables you to offer Confederation to other rulers. Its warnings are to be taken seriously — you will likely have to leave your Confederation if you want to increase your station in the world (through means like title creation, migration, Dominance) or enrich yourself by raiding/attacking your fellow weaklings.


[The requirements for starting a Confederation; you have to be something of a small fish]

Who can make a Confederation? Well, you have to be standing on your own, and you can’t be standing very tall. These same restrictions apply to all prospective Confederates.


[Additional Confederation triggers. Most of the time, you’ll need a big, scary common foe]

Confederations in Crusader Kings III will be fleeting, ephemeral things, and focused largely on deterring the depredations of powerful neighbors. Thus, they will almost always be created in response to major powers being at their borders. It’s been really cool to watch Conquerors and great kings arise and, as they do, Confederations spring up all along their underbellies like nests of rats or colonies of fire ants. There is now a third, sometimes-viable alternative to “submit or die.”

The possible faith hostility trigger also works really nicely along the borderlands between pagan tribals and reformed faiths: it means the former can often be seen making the Confederation defensive arrangement to resist the brutal tide of history.


[You’re ready for Confederation… you just need a buddy to join you]

Given Confederations are available across the map, to both nomads and tribals, related content is laced with conditional loc and effects to keep things from feeling too inappropriate. That said, this isn’t a content-heavy feature; development on Confederations instead focused on making it an effective new mechanic.


[The interaction used to create a Confederation, and also to add new members]

The character interaction Offer Confederation (unlocked by the Call for Confederation decision or by Confederation membership) is how this brothers-in-arms, last stand-style shit comes to pass. Notice that, because migration removes members from the Confederation, there are incentives to stay put for a bit longer (a positive County Fertility modifier and an immediate County Fertility boost). AI should also be more reluctant to migrate than usual, at least for a few years.


[Weights are pretty comprehensive and pretty make-or-break]

Your level of investment in your confederation can make a big difference in its strength: herd, prestige and hooks can be sacrificed to make valid members more willing to join.


[Well isn’t that nice - he accepts!]


[Note the Confederation icon and breakdown]

Confederations aren’t a title. Their closest equivalent is an alliance or truce, thus they live in the Diplomacy space of the Character view. Here, you can see all members of the Confederation.

The Kimek Confederation is a culture-based name, which happens when both the first members are of the same culture. When they aren’t, the Confederation will be named after the founder’s de jure duchy (ex. the Semey Confederation, the Kargassia Confederation).


[A handful of Kimeks have joined the Confederation (squint, it’s on the left)]

On the map, Confederations will look similar to the new Tributaries: their individual realm names are replaced by the overall Confederation and their map colors are blended towards the main Confederation color (which is based on the founder’s capital).

You may notice that the members remain rather unevenly-sized. That’s because only independent top rulers are members of the Confederation, and their vassals (if they have any) are not.


[The Confederation is attacked!]

When a Confederation member is attacked is when the organization really comes into its own. All members are automatically added as Defenders. This can result in a pretty potent nest of bees that the aggressor has just poked. Accordingly, the combined strength of a Confederation is shown when opening the Declare War screen on one of its members, and AI should be appropriately hesitant to attack strong Confederations.

Note that this applies only to members’ defensive wars. They cannot call on the Confederation when they themselves declare offensive wars.


[The Decision for when a Confederate decides it’s time to go…]

While AI will usually give the Confederation at least a few years of their time, players are quite free to strike off on their own whenever. Albeit… for a higher Prestige cost during the first couple years.

The AI weighting for this Decision is heavily dependent on circumstances. Chief among these is the presence of big nearby threats that necessitate confederation. The result is that, where confederations are needed, they should prove much more lasting and resilient. And when they are no longer needed, they should often quickly disband.


[BROTRAYAL]

And there it is, Confederations! I hope this run-through has cleared up the feature. And remember — the CK player who stands alone, dies alone. Call up a friend right now and ask if they’d FUCKING DIE for you. Post results in the comments.

We discussed raid intents in the previous dev diary, with a small WIP screenshot. It’s time to expand on what we said then.

First of all, we should talk about loot. As you all know, we’ve had loot in the game for quite a while. Gold you can take from a settlement as you raid them as a tribal ruler or a pagan, which you then bring back home to turn into gold and prestige. We haven’t changed the core mechanic of loot, but we have disconnected it slightly from purely being gold, now that you have more ways of using it. With Raid Intents, we now have ways of turning that loot into other things, to symbolize your aims as you are raiding foreign lands.



Here is the new raid intent screen (for nomads), after a small art pass and after we added some proper names. Now, let’s look at the default raid intent for nomadic rulers, Pillage.


[Note that none of the numbers are final, so they might change before the release]

It’s a fairly straightforward calculation. If you bring home 100 loot, you will get 100 gold and 150 herd out of it when you return to your borders.

Most of the other raid intents have some kind of separate side effects in addition to their base calculation, so let’s look at some of them.



Nomads were known for raiding far and wide, with the Hungarian raiders, for example, bringing home loot from all across Europe. With the Adventure raid intent, it will take a bit longer to raid each settlement, but you can carry a significantly larger amount of loot with you, and you will take no hostile county attrition.

It should be noted that within the steppe, nomad raiders will not take any hostile county attrition, regardless of raid intent, but they will regularly take attrition outside of it.



Plunder symbolizes that you aren’t necessarily just taking anything but trying to find the most valuable things to take. It will take significantly longer to raid every single settlement. Still, the loot conversion as you get home is considerably better, and you have a chance to learn innovations of a culture as you raid a settlement if they know about something you do not (though the chances are quite low).



For those less interested in the loot itself but rather other side effects, you might want to take the capture raid intent to significantly increase the chance of capturing someone as you raid a settlement. It’s great if you are looking to ransom someone.



And last but not least, you have the opportunity to destroy. It’s an opportunity for nomads to increase their prestige (as they don’t get any prestige from other raid intents) and their dread (which is more important for nomads). It also destroys buildings and development in settlements they raid.

Now, one thing to mention is that we don’t only have raid intents for nomads but for other raiders as well. Regular raiders also have access to the Terrorize raid intent, so feel free to bring destruction to your enemies no matter which flavor of uncivilized you are. They also have access to Pillage, but in a slightly different form:



Like current functionality, you simply change your loot to gold and prestige. And for Vikings, they have access to a slightly modified version of the Adventure intent.



If you want to raid your way down to Constantinople and then home again, feel free to take this to bring all that loot back home.

Now for the other side, you can destroy the raiders as they enter your lands, but we have also made one small adjustment so you can protect yourself a bit against any incoming threat.



We have increased the hostile raid time reduction in the building, so you have more time to respond to incoming threats. It now also reduces the chances of special raid intents. In other words, it reduces the improvements from the Capture raid intent, minimizes the chance of Terrorize ruining your lands, and for Plunder to find any innovation.

Upgrading the building will improve the effect and block raid intent special effects from happening outright. In other words, something to keep in mind if you experience a lot of raids in your lands.

That’s it for this week. Next week, we plan to revisit migrations and the nomadic government, so we hope to see you again then. Go forth and conquer, my blood brothers.

Hello everyone! I'm the Community Manager with Paradox Studio Black, and today we're excited to present to you the next stage in Crusader Kings III's development: Chapter IV. Today, we'll go over the themes of each piece of content that make up the Chapter, as well as give a brief peek at their features. Without further ado, let's get into it.

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The first release in Chapter IV, Khans of the Steppe, focuses on the brand-new Nomadic Government and the systems we've created to support it. Inspired by the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian Steppe, these mechanics will challenge you to adapt to a lifestyle dominated by the ebb and flow of the land's vitality, maintain your herds, and establish your dominance over the region by any means necessary.

Nomads don't live in a single static location; historically they travelled across the steppe as climate and fertility demanded, and we've strived to recreate that experience in Khans of the Steppe. You'll guide your people and herds across the region, tapping into the fertility of the land for as long as it lasts. Once resources run dry, you must migrate anew. Chieftains can roam peacefully by negotiating with neighboring shepherds, or seize new pastures by force.

Representing your horses, cattle, and overall strength within the steppe, the new Herd system becomes a cornerstone of diplomatic, martial, and economic actions. Use it to fuel your warbands, or as currency in your negotiations.

Prove your might on the steppe through Dominance, increasing it alongside your power and territory. At its highest level, you might even claim the mantle of Genghis Khan; the Universal Ruler.

Life in the steppe is harsh, affected by the changing climate and weather patterns. A White Zud could blanket the land in snow, decimating fertility and putting pressure on you to find greener pastures. Meanwhile, milder conditions can bring bountiful growth to your herds, ushering in a period of prosperity.

Khans of the Steppe releases on April 28, with dev diaries scheduled for every Tuesday until then. Be sure to mark your calendars if you're eager to try your hand at this new style of governance and rulership.

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Beyond the steppe of Eurasia, Chapter IV introduces a new event pack simply titled: Coronations. In the medieval world, a coronation was more than just a gathering, it represented the moment where earthly and divine legitimacy converged.

Coronations function as a new activity type, letting you experience the event first hand. Coordinate with religious authorities and conduct the perfect ceremony to establish your right to rule in the eyes of your vassals and subjects. Plan it wisely, because the consequences of this activity can echo throughout your entire reign and beyond.

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Chapter IV's flagship Major Expansion, All Under Heaven, is set to be the largest and most ambitious expansion in Crusader Kings history. We're completing our map of the medieval world by extending its scope across all of Asia. This massive expansion brings new gameplay, unique governments, and entirely different perspectives on life in the medieval era.

From the celestial might of Imperial China and the unique governments of Japan and Korea, to the god-kings of the Indonesian archipelago, each new area in All Under Heaven features new cultures, faiths, and flavor.

To properly represent the power and influence of China in this period, we're introducing a new tier of title above an empire: the Hegemony. This new title tier allows for further granular representation of the division of power within large-scale realms.

The fate of the imperial dynasties follows a cyclical pattern, reflecting historical eras of stability and eras of chaos. Players will struggle to maintain the Mandate of Heaven and prove that they are the right choice to navigate the empire through treacherous waters.

A new centralized treasury system for the Chinese Emperor represents the flow of wealth upward and into the empire's coffers, letting you decide how to spend (or squander) resources that could make or break the stability of the realm.

While no release date is being announced at this time, you can expect our normal in-depth developer diaries to start for this expansion shortly after the release of Khans of the Steppe, with our first dev diary tentatively scheduled for May.

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To properly prepare for our upcoming content in Chapter IV, we're releasing a broad set of changes to the game's existing content with our 1.15 "Crown" Update, available to all owners of Crusader Kings III right now, free of charge. This update overhauls multiple systems and fixes numerous issues to ensure your experience in the medieval world is more enjoyable.

The full changelog is too large to share here, but you can find it on our official forums at the bottom of this dev diary.

A more intuitive interface for appointing and managing your court's less essential roles. New court positions are introduced, while existing ones are given tasks that their holders can be directed to perform for various benefits. Additionally, you can now choose to replace vacancies manually, or set specific positions to be refilled automatically.

Focus on what's important to you while you let the AI handle martial affairs. There's also new interface elements to clarify what allied armies (or your own, if automation is enabled) are actually doing, making it easier than ever to coordinate your war efforts.

The AI will now gather its armies before striking at its enemies as a properly coordinated force. Expect more unified Great Holy War offensives, and fiercer opposition as a defender.

From quality-of-life changes to bug squashing, the 1.15 "Crown" update refines the overall experience of the game. It's also available right now, so give it a try and let us know what you think!

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For those eager to dive into Chapter IV content as soon as possible, anyone who purchases the Chapter IV pass will immediately receive the Crowns of the World cosmetic pack, unlocking various culture-specific crowns and turbans. Whether you play in Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa, you're sure to find new stylish ways to represent your royal persona.

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We want to ensure that the content in Chapter IV is the best it can be, and a huge part of that is building strong communications and relationships between us and our layers. Your feedback on existing content as well as upcoming features is vital to this effort. To facilitate this, we're collecting questions from all of you until March 19, and will publish a video responding to as many of these as we can on March 26th. Submit your questions below in the comments, or on any of our social media channels.

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Chapter IV is the most ambitious content cycle in Crusader Kings history, offering everything from the struggles of maintaining your herd as a nomadic ruler in Khans of the Steppe, to the weight of ceremony and duty in Coronations, culminating in the completion of our map of the medieval world in All Under Heaven. Whether you choose to play in the new areas being introduced to the game or your existing favorites, Chapter IV will redefine the stories you make in Crusader Kings III.

The 1.15 "Crown" Update and the Chapter IV pass are both available right now. The Crown update is available for free to all owners of Crusader Kings III, while those who purchase the Chapter IV pass will immediately receive Crowns of the World as well as all the content mentioned above as soon as it is released.

Greetings!

This Dev Diary is about the upcoming free update, which we’ve dubbed 1.15.0 ‘Crown’! Similarly to free updates of the past, the Crown update will be pretty big - it has reworked systems, new features, and a myriad of bugfixes and balance changes.

All of the changes that I’ll go over stem from the fact that we spend a lot of time updating, tweaking, and bugfixing existing systems and features as part of our parallel development track setup - depending on the status of an individual track, people from that track are assigned to what we call ‘Realm Maintenance’, where we focus on improving areas of the game that we either feel aren’t good enough, or that you in the community are asking for us to change. Usually a lot of Realm Maintenance time happens at the start of a new development track, as there are few bugs in newly developed content during, for example, the concepting or pre-production phases. During Realm Maintenance we have Improvement Days where we add as many smaller improvements and quality of life changes as we can, and some time is also used to polish promising projects from the Black Forge Jam (an internal sort-of game jam where we experiment with new CK3 features). The Crown update contains over 4 months worth of Realm Maintenance, including 200+ bugfixes.

I won’t have time to go over everything in detail, so I’ll focus on a few highlights!

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Last year we teased a Court Position rework, and since then we’ve refined it and added even more improvements. In short; the rework aims to make Court Positions more interesting and engaging, adding tools, adjusting costs, improving quality-of-life, and making the UI less of a hassle to use. The intent is for Court Positions to be more widely used by giving them new effects and tasks that allow you to deal with many different situations.


[Image - The new layout]

The new layout allows you to see more positions at once, and presents them in a more immersive way. All of the information is still there, of course: most of what you don’t need to see at all times has just moved into the tooltip. What you need to know at a glance is still visible.


[Image - Unavailable Court Positions]

At the bottom of the list we’ve added a new foldable category that reveals all positions that you could potentially have. It’ll exclude anything you cannot possibly get, such as Adventurer Officers for landed characters and vice-versa. The tooltips will tell you what you can do in order to get them.


[Image - Court Position automation]

Now when it’s more important than ever to keep certain positions filled, we’ve added the option of choosing to fill the position automatically. This comes in three flavors, depending on your preference: an event giving you the option to choose between a few good candidates in your court, auto-assign the highest aptitude courtier, or auto-assign with an event notifying you if there are no candidates. This can be toggled per Court Position, and different positions can have different settings.


[Image - Seneschal Tooltip]

A lot of court positions were never used because it was hard to justify spending gold on their salaries, so we decided to transfer part of the costs into prestige, and we also lowered salaries across the board (the salary pictured in the screenshot is from the late medieval era, roughly 150 years in from 1066). Prestige is a resource most players are more willing to part with, but as there up until now has existed very few ‘prestige income sinks’ you need to be careful so you don’t spend it all…

All of the new tasks have costs; some of them prestige, some gold, and some even cost piety. It's these tasks where the brunt of the cost will come from, but they are naturally opt-in, and you can use them to handle tricky situations, toggling them on/off as you see fit.

Most positions now also come with an interesting effect for the holder of the position, such as the 20% stewardship experience pictured above. This also means that we’ve opened up a lot more positions to be held by vassals, which is interesting because:


[Image - Request Court Position]

You can now request Court Positions from your liege, allowing you to reap some of the benefits that they convey, such as Royal Architect now reducing your build time/build cost, or the Court Poet now reducing your stress gain, general opinion, and diplomacy lifestyle xp.


[Image - Grant Court Position]

You can also grant court positions directly via a character interaction now, making it easier to, for example, appease angry vassals with ceremonial positions.


[Image - A handful of the new tasks]

There are way too many new Court Position Tasks for me to go through them in detail, but above is a small sample of what you’re going to see. Most Court Positions now have three tasks to choose from, with a few having one or two - these tasks cover a wide variety of things you might want, from Wet Nurses instilling virtues into your children, to your Antiquarian searching for rumors about locations of rare Artifacts, to your High Almoner promoting the opinion of Zealous Vassals, among many, many more things.

Many of the things you can now do didn't have any tools before; such as reducing the stress of characters other than yourself (which can be achieved via the Entertain Courtiers task for the Jester). You can also use various positions and tasks to slowly increase your Legitimacy; the Seneschal gives a small passive trickle, the Court Poet can give you Legitimacy % Gain Modifiers as part of the Write Poetry Task, and the Court Musicians Bolster Legitimacy Task (the Court Musician is now available to Duke-tier characters and no longer requires Royal Court to have!). It’s worth noting that all tasks that increase stat points, such as ‘Exercise with Ruler’, are balanced in such a way that you cannot gain skills unless the holder of the position is better at the skill than you are.

We’ve also taken this opportunity to move the entire Hunt Sighting system into these tasks. If you want hunt sightings to improve the success chance of your hunts, you now choose what your Master of the Hunt should focus on finding - this makes the system less random and gives you more agency.

There’s more that I’ve not talked about, to see the full extent of changes I refer to the full changelog here on our official forums!

Another feature we teased last year was the addition of Automated Armies, an opt-in feature where the AI takes control of your armies and fights wars for you. The intent behind this feature is to allow you to focus on other things while engaged in trivial wars, and to allow players unfamiliar or uninterested in warfare to enjoy the game more. If you are an experienced player we still recommend that you control your armies yourself, but give it a spin if you’re just cleaning up those three counts bordering your empire!


[Image - Automated Armies Settings]

Now, there are two crucial parts to this feature working well: seeing what the AI is thinking, and for the AI to play well. There’s nothing that differentiates Automated Armies from how the AI normally plays, so improving one improves the other. Both of these areas will be covered in the two sections below:

Sometimes you have an ally in a war that you have no idea what they are thinking - perhaps they’re just standing there, moving erratically, or being generally unhelpful. Quite often this is because of something that you’re not aware of; perhaps they are resupplying their armies, perhaps they are guarding a siege, etc. To make it more transparent what an army is doing, we’ve added icons with descriptions that explicitly tell you what the AI is up to.


[Image - Exposed Ally Thinking]

This is also applied to your own armies if they’re automated, giving you an overview of what they’re doing.


[Image - Exposed automation thinking]

In the above screenshot, the right army is actively besieging while the left one is guarding the siege while standing in a province with enough supply limit to support it.

There are a multitude of different states for the AI to show; moving, attacking, moving to siege, supporting the player, etc. Hopefully this’ll clear up most uncertainties regarding why they’re doing things that might otherwise appear inexplicable.

We’ve been working a lot with warfare AI in an effort to make it better. We’re not promising miracles, but we have spent over two months of programmer time in an effort to nail down bugs, improve sub-par behavior, and change behavior that, while intended, didn’t feel ‘right’.

This includes a lot of cases where the AI would be indecisive, passive, or ‘dance’ between provinces, which was often caused by various competing systems trying to avoid attrition, match supply limits to stack sizes, and edge-case bugs. These fixes in combination with the exposed AI ally logic above results in much more clear warfare where it’s easier to understand what the AI is up to.

We’ve also taught the AI about War Score, making them pursue what would give them score, rather than arbitrarily choosing actions based on a set of circumstances that were always fixed. For example; when you’re fighting a war as a player, you’re less likely to pursue battles if you know that the siege you’re currently about to finish would win you the war, and you’re also less likely to pursue battles if you’re already capped on battle warscore (usually war score for battles is capped at +50% for most CB’s). They’re now also much more likely to siege using stacks with Siege Weapons, and will try to shuffle their siege stacks around in such a way that their ongoing sieges aren’t broken.

Now, there are going to be edge cases where unwanted behavior still happens, and we’ll keep fixing bugs as we find them. Hopefully you won't notice as much strange AI behavior any more.

An area of the game where the ‘normal’ war AI does not perform as well is during Crusades, so we decided to take a suggestion from the community and give these Great Holy Wars some special treatment. The ‘one size fits all’ philosophy out the window, the AI now has a set of special procedures they follow during these grand-scale wars in particular.

Firstly there’s a set of smaller tweaks; the AI cares less about attrition and supply until they’ve made some headway, and they will try to ‘boat hop’ less often (take short sea paths). When you’re going from well-supplied Europe by boat disembarking into low-supply drylands with an army of potentially hundreds of thousands of men there’s no way you can find enough supply for all of them - the AI now knows this, and when they start assaulting the war target they will temporarily ignore attrition until they’ve gotten enough of a beachhead that they can support the size of their units, this makes the initial phase of a crusade more likely to succeed as the attacking AI won’t desperately shuffle their troops around to find supply. By ‘boat hopping’ less they will prefer land routes to their targets, avoiding the -30 advantage penalty.

Now for the meat of the changes; the attacker in a GHW will first find a ‘Gathering Area’, and then move their armies to a ‘Staging Area’.


[Image - AI armies gathering in Roma before sailing to Jerusalem]

For the first stage of a Great Holy War the attacking AI will find a good-supply area where they can gather their forces. As stacks of units are raised across a large part of the world they need some time to gather, and should do so in a safe place. In this example we have a crusade against Jerusalem, so Roma with its surrounding counties is deemed both safe and close enough to the target to be designated the Gathering Area. You will see an icon on allied AI units with a text that says where they intend to gather, so that you can follow them there. They will gather for several months before setting off to the next step of the journey: the Staging Area.


[Image - AI armies staging in Issus after having gathered in Roma]

The Staging Area is the closest friendly or neutral area to the war target, in this example it’s in Byzantium. The attacking forces will make their way there before starting their assault, which means that they will arrive as a much more unified force. This also means that they won’t immediately attack from the water, avoiding disembarkment penalties and ensuring that their stacks have an acceptable degree of supply. Instead they will most likely march in via land, taking a modicum of attrition along the way, but ultimately mustering a more successful assault.

Now, the testing that we’ve done reveals that the attackers are usually more successful, but can still lose. Though now when they lose it’s less because they frustratingly trickle in across several years with disembarkment penalties and no supply, and more because the defenders have a homeland advantage - as it should be.

The character interaction menu has received a facelift, with the intent of cleaning it up and making interactions more intuitive.


[Image - Cleaned-up interaction menu]

Several categories have been removed and merged into other categories to keep the overall number down. We’ve added colors to these categories so it’s easier to glance at the one you need.

You can now easily see if a scheme is personal, hostile, or political - with the predicted scheme difficulty shown next to it, making it easier to see what you could be pursuing without having to delve into each interaction.


[Image - Favorite button]

As we’ve moved several interactions to no longer be common and only shown in sub-menus, we’ve added a way for you to select ‘favorite’ interactions. Favorite interactions will be shown in their own category at the top of the interaction menu, allowing you to see what you think is important first.


[Image - Favorites in action]

Wherever it makes sense we’ve now added a quick-interaction button that contains a collection of relevant interactions for that context. These buttons have been added in various places, such as for your head of faith, on your Administrative liege, or on administrative governors in the theme view. If you’re a modder you can easily make more custom contexts.


[Image - Head of Faith custom interaction category]


[Image - UI for raising armies anywhere]

You can now right-click to raise your armies in a specific area, so you no longer have to move a rally point there first. This simplifies the act of raising armies and prevents the mistake where you can accidentally raise your armies on the wrong side of your empire just because you moved your rally point there during your last war… It’s not impossible that we’ll remove and replace the rally point system entirely in the future.


[image - Tooltip for Raise Armies]


[Image - Eparch]

Going hand-in-hand with the Court Position rework, a new Court Position has been added for independent rulers of Administrative realms: the Eparch. The Eparch focuses on improving your capital in various ways; the tasks are expensive, but the effects are significant! Being the Eparch is also very attractive for vassals, as they get a significant influence boost…


[Image - Eparch Tasks]

Going hand-in-hand with the Eparch is the new Capital Magistracy building, which improves the aptitude of the Eparch among other things. It can only be built in the capital of an Administrative realm.


[Image - A tier 1 Capital Magistracy building]

Not everything will be easier for Administrative realms - we also thought that it was way too easy for them to hold on to their lands, even when engaged in civil wars or otherwise weakened. We’ve added a new CB that can only be used on Administrative realms, ‘Seize Peripheral Duchy’, that allows you to take any duchy that is outside of the empire's De Jure for a very low prestige cost. This CB has 3x the Siege and battle warscore for the attacker, and a significantly faster ticking warscore, making it the perfect way to reclaim lands from an otherwise preoccupied empire.


[Image - The Seize Peripheral Duchy CB]

Alongside this we’ve also reworked the "Order Mass Arrests" decision to be a character interaction. You can now use this on all noble families, and not just powerful families, as long as their estate is located in the capital. We’ve also tweaked the options for when you restore the Roman Empire, such as offering a path to become Hellenic without activating Roman Hard More, as well as making said mode more enjoyable by tweaking event frequencies and removing parts of it that made little sense (such as increased diseases).

The Clan government is one that is both fairly underplayed (according to telemetry) and that the AI struggles in playing well (often underperforming significantly). This prompted us to look into doing something to make them more interesting and less frustrating to play - when managing Tax Jurisdictions it’s a constant battle to find competent Tax Collectors. All you have at your disposal are your unlanded courtiers and a decision with a fairly long cooldown, which leads to a frustrating time as you often end up in a combination of not having anyone to assign, and if you do have someone, they’re more often than not terrible. The various tax decrees also felt underwhelming with the vast majority of players simply opting for the Zakat (luxury tax) one as it increased your gold income.

All of this has prompted a host of changes to the feature.


[Image - Updated Tax Jurisdiction UI]

Alongside a general facelift of the UI, we’ve opened up the possibility for Vassals to be Tax Collectors - this makes it significantly easier to find tax collectors, and to find good ones. Similarly to how we handle Court Positions, landed tax collectors get a penalty to their aptitude, but on average it’s much easier to find good tax collectors because of this change.

Clan rulers now also don’t have to worry about being allied to ALL their vassals, as only powerful vassals will expect to be allied to their liege. This makes you able to focus on pleasing a select few characters in the realm without having to suffer a permanent -20 opinion with every vassal. You also no longer gain a legitimacy penalty for marrying lowborn characters as secondary wives (and to pre-empt exploits we’ve also made it so that switching to a lowborn spouse as your primary spouse triggers the lowborn marriage penalties). This means that as long as your main spouse is highborn, the remaining ones can be lowborn. The AI has been updated to always try to set the spouse with the best stats as their primary one, as long as that doesn’t trigger the lowborn spouse marriage penalties.


[Image - Updated tax decrees]

All Tax Decrees have been updated to have more interesting and modern effects, including systems that have been added since Tax Decrees were added, like Legitimacy, Danger, and Plague Resistance, and enabling systems that are logically connected to the decree, like raiding for Ghazi.

These changes match the Clan realm's more volatile nature, providing bonuses that are more relevant and interesting to choose between. They should now more closely be able to match the power that Feudal realms can muster with their Vassal Contracts.

All commander traits are now tiered traits that are leveled up by taking actions related to the trait.


[Image - A levelled Logistician trait]

Commander traits now start out less impactful, with effects weaker than they currently are. Through war, battles, and siege, you can now level them up - potentially reaching heights that were not previously possible. A fully levelled Military Engineer reduces siege phase times by 40%, a fully levelled Flexible Leader reduces enemy defensive bonuses by 80%, and so on.

To level the traits you need to do whatever makes sense: to level up Aggressive Attacker you win offensive battles, to level up Military Engineer you complete sieges, and so on. The higher the commander's Martial skill, the faster they will level up their traits. This also means that a commander with a high-level commander trait can be extremely valuable, as replacing their accumulated knowledge of warfare is not a trivial task.

The Barbershop has been updated with several new categories, and items have been re-shuffled to allow for a greater degree of customization. Many items previously not accessible has been added, such as some Byzantine and Jain clothing, and you are now allowed to freely change eye items, face items, crests, veils, and special crowns.


[Image - New barbershop categories]

We’ve made extra care to address pain points such as not being able to remove glasses or veils, while simultaneously allowing you to create combinations you weren’t able to before. More customization is better customization!


[Image - New Crests, Veils, & Special Crowns category]

Use responsibly!


[Image - a distinctly cursed barbershop creation]

Late-game culture maps are often quite boring, with the culture map gradually becoming more and more populated by small divergences. This is fine in the case where these divergences lead to interesting new cultures expanding their presence on the map, but often it is not so. We’ve tweaked the AI to be more inclined to promote their cultures under certain circumstances.

Central Germanic heritage cultures within the HRE will now want to promote culture in Sorbian-culture counties, very small cultures will want to grow (if they are below 10 counties), 'Imperious' cultures (cultures with a powerful culture head, realm of 30+ counties and King+ tier) will want to grow to a decent size (35 counties, about the size of French at 1066 start), smaller (<5 counties) divergent/hybrid cultures with no existing culture head are more likely to be promoted by other cultures (with the intent of reducing the amount of small and orphaned cultures by the end of the game). This makes the culture map more dynamic and existing, with interesting results every game.


[Image - Saxon slowly being promoted in Polabian lands]

We’ve added several new options to the Realm Stability Game Rule, based on community feedback - and a few extra for good measure! You can now set stability to only affect AI’s, and there’s an additional setting that avoids changing the frequency of peasant and populist factions as those could become too frequent or infrequent depending on your setting.


[Image - New Realm Stability settings]

For those that enjoy the occasional Scourge of the Gods Conqueror but think that 5% is too much we’ve added an additional rule; Low Random, with a 0.5% chance of it happening.


[Image - Conqueror Low Random setting]

The message settings window now has a history log of all feed messages, so you can browse through them at a later time.


[Image - Message Settings log]

We’ve also added two community-requested message settings: scheme advantages and non-dynastic courtiers coming of age.


[Image - Scheme Advantage message setting]


[Image - Non-dynastic courtier coming of age]

There are now new indicator texts and filter options for finding children without guardians in your court. This is present both in the right-hand-side Court window and in the character view.


[Image - Guardian indicators]

Two new major decisions have also made their way into this update, both focusing on forming new empires - Beth Narain for rulers of Syriac heritage, and the Empire of Hindustan.


[Image - Beth Narain creation decision]

When adding new decisions for creating new empire titles in Crusader Kings there are two different things we look for. One could be an interesting alternative history empire for a historical group or region, like Beth Nahrain, another is to look for what great empires existed during the historical timeline but which currently cannot be formed in the game.


[Image - Hindustan creation decision]

The Islamic Conquest of India is not something that happens in every game, but when it happens we rarely ever get something like the actual Delhi Sultanate. The new decision lets a muslim ruler who controls a fair chunk of the north, move his capital to Delhi or Lahore, while creating a new empire title that incorporates any held line in the 3 Indian Empires. If you have Roads to Power it will also give you the Administrative government, though one with a hereditary succession instead of acclamation.


[Image - ‘Commander by Ruler’ banner]

You can now see if the enemy war leader is in an army, as they’ll be marked with a crown banner stating ‘Commanded by Ruler’.

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That’s it for this Dev Diary! The 1.15.0 ‘Crown’ update will soon be in your hands, and we hope that it’ll be to your liking! You can find the full changelog here on our official forums!