Hey everyone,

Last week we have released an Open Beta branch on Steam, marked as "open_beta - 1.3.2 Multiplayer Improvements".
Many of you participated in the initiative, and we have collected a great amount of insights coupled with your very valuable feedback.

Thanks to these data, we are now exploring an option to improve the Networking.
This change applied only to this open beta branch on Steam will increase Save Game Transfer Speed for all players participating in a multiplayer game.
This improvement is now available. We are eager to read what you think of this change and hear your thoughts.
If you are timed out from the server when trying to join a multiplayer game, please let us know.

Note that we are still working on tweaking the Multiplayer experience for CK3 in this given branch, and so players could encountered a known issue preventing players from seeing any game in the MP lobby or kicking them back to the main menu from the loading screen.

We wanted to thank you for taking the time to raise your report to our teams, and for participating in the open beta! :)

You can access it by right-clicking Crusader Kings III in your Steam library, selecting Properties, entering the 'Betas' tab and selecting "open_beta - 1.3.2 multiplayer improvements" from the list.



We do ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING - provided they reoccur for you on this build, of course - as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so.

Today we will cover two improvements planned for the upcoming patch: additional content for Traits & AI warfare improvements!

► Read our Dev Diary #58 - Stre(ss)tching the traits



💡 To see the images, please visit our forums or website.

Hello everyone!

Nice to meet you all! I recently joined the Crusader Kings III game design team and am honored to inaugurate my PDX account with this Dev Diary. Today we will cover two improvements planned for the upcoming patch: additional content and AI warfare improvements.


Trait changes

One of the many pleasures of Crusader Kings is to personify a plethora of characters. Every one of them offers a good opportunity to roleplay, thanks to the various combinations of traits they offer. The Azure patch will expand upon existing content by updating and adding some trait-specific interactions and consequences. With this update, we want to connect the stress system even closer to personality traits.

One of the notable changes is for Shy: it will no longer generate Stress when launching a Personal Scheme. Shy characters can still receive Stress via some of the scheme event options however, and they will be less efficient at performing personal schemes (it will take them longer), but they will be able to do it without ending up having a mental breakdown.

We also added a few new interactions and decisions. For instance, Forgiving characters can abandon one of their hooks to lose Stress. You can either decide to be a truly forgiving character, abandoning a hook you obtained unwittingly, or you can actively look for hooks and then choose to be merciful. We have also added new options for Diligent characters; they can dedicate themselves to improving the Development of their Capital, but doing so will generate a lot of Stress. Finally, if Impatient characters are Stressed, they can speed up the progress of their current Personal Scheme, without affecting their current Stress levels.

[Image of the Develop Capital decision available for Diligent characters]

Some traits have also gained access to interactions that are not related to the stress system but still improve upon the expression of their personality. For instance, Arbitrary characters can now dismiss a Hook a vassal holds on them by spending a lot of Prestige and gaining Tyranny.

[Image of the Dismiss Hook interaction available for Arbitrary characters]

We would love to hear your feedback, and also suggestions for improving other traits!


AI and Warfare

There is also a number of AI improvements, mostly about how the AI moves its units while at war. Pathfinding has been revised, and AI armies should now take more optimal routes to reach their targets, whether they be close but surrounded by treacherous terrain, or far away across the sea (which was most visible during Crusades; there will be no more island hopping for Christian armies, and Vikings should also be more swift and direct in their raids). The new pathfinding logic now factors in time, attrition and threat when selecting and routing to a destination.

Getting close to the enemy is only the first step in warfare though, and the AI should behave more sensibly in other areas too; AI armies will more aggressively pursue suitable opponents and try to avoid unfair fights. After winning crucial battles, AI armies should use their full might to more efficiently besiege enemy fortresses - you should see less mangonels and bombards chasing peasants while there is a perfectly good castle waiting to be ruined. We also adjusted the AI behaviors depending on their Casus Bellis, making sure that they not only prioritize territorial conquest but also capturing hostages when relevant.


All of the changes were fine-combed by our dev team, and we feel confident that the AI will bring you a surprise or two in the Azure patch. Lastly, an important organizational change: the version number of the patch will be 1.4 instead of 1.3.X as announced previously. This is to make the scope of the patch a bit clearer. While it is still a relatively small patch, it is also larger than a hotfix or a pure bugfix patch we've released in the past. Some mods will need to be updated. And while we always strive to keep save games compatible, with the nature of the game you might still run into edge cases with your old saves that we did not catch.

And that’s it for today! Thanks again for your precious feedback, and please keep providing more! I hope you enjoyed it, and see you next week for more information about the Azure patch!

Greetings Queens & Kings!

We are now opening a BETA Branch available to all Steam users, to enhance Multiplayer Stability.
After the success we saw with previous Steam branches, we are hopeful that this one will help us to address issues with our Multiplayer system. This branch will stay open for a few months to help diagnose as many issues as possible.

With that in mind, we ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time.
This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so.

As always, we appreciate & value your input.

A message from our QA Team:
Our mission is always to deliver the most quality product as possible to the player. QA acts as the player representative within the development team, and works towards providing the team with as much information as they need to create a product that is as fun as possible to play.

We are aware of numerous issues, including the Out-of-Synchs, empty lobbies, incorrect version issues and with this open Steam beta we aim to improve the multiplayer situation.

As always, please report anything you find on the bug report forums and we will check it out as soon as we can. We really appreciate uploading the randomlogs which include multiplayer logs to the bug forum reports as well because this helps us immensely. Logs are available in the folder under C:\Users\<name>\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\oos.

We hope you help us in reporting any and all issues that are still pain points for you, as well as any issues that are still occurring on the open beta branch. It is important that older issues are reported again so that we know if they are still occurring on the beta branch.

Read the News on our official forums.

We are expanding two areas in the upcoming Free Patch 'Azure': childhood and lifestyle events!

► Read our Dev Diary #57 - An Eventful Summer



To see the images, please visit our forums or website.

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re enjoying the warmer days, and that you are looking forward to hearing a bit more about the free patch, Azure, that we’re releasing this summer.

Before we get into the meat of today's Dev Diary I want to clarify something regarding the Azure patch; it's being made by a smaller group of CK3 devs in a Strike Team setup, which means that not everyone on the CK3 Dev team is working on the patch. We hope that we'll still be able to address quite a few of your concerns, but we won't have time to address everything. Still, keep sending us feedback, as it helps us prioritize!

This dev diary will focus on one area of the patch and as a Content Designer I am – unsurprisingly – here to talk about events and such. More specifically I am here to talk about some new content that we’re including in Azure, and joining me in this dev diary is one of our new Content Designers: Isabella! As developers we all have areas of the game that we would like to expand upon and flesh out a bit, and two areas are now getting some love: childhood and lifestyle events.


Childhood​
Children always want to grow up fast, and no child feels this more actually than the one that just inherited the entire realm at the mature age of six. Oh woe, what can a young king do to pass the long days ahead until he can scheme and murder to his heart’s content? Play with other young rulers, of course! Azure includes a new activity for children called Meet Peers that will make childhood more interesting and full of experiences.

gathering.png

[Image of the start event for the Meet Peers activity]

Meet Peers is an activity available for children where they can gather all young rulers and courtiers in the realm to just play and forget about the dreariness of life as a child in medieval times. All participants will lose stress and increase their opinion of the host, and the children attending the playdate can find themselves in fun and educational situations!

brave.png

[Image of an event that can appear when you Meet Peers]

Of course, there may also be any number of less… wholesome consequences from bringing that many children together.

playing_rough.png

[Image of an event that can appear when you Meet Peers]

And if socializing just isn’t your thing and friends are easiest made (and killed) through schemes we’ve also reduced the age restrictions for Sway and Murder slightly. All to enable you to live out your scheming rule from as young an age as possible!


Lifestyle events​
Or, if your children just can’t wait to grow up, you could let them try their fate fighting against grown soldiers in a tournament. In this patch, we have a couple of new lifestyle events coming your way, including the Tantrum Tourney event chain for Martial Authority characters.


tantrumtourneyhighres.PNG

[Image of the starting event from the Tantrum Tourney event chain]

‘Hym repented that he came there!’ - 14th Century Romance Richard Coer de Lyon on grown dukes and lords regretting each moment as they get impaled by a lance manned by an adolescent child.

A trope of romances detailing the life of Richard the Lionheart likes to exaggerate the dates of his reign to present him as a King who was a child monarch. This seems to be done almost exclusively so he can be presented as perhaps the greatest demon of a child who ever lived. Child Richard is shown ordering all of his noblemen to fight him in a tournament - on pain of death, and beating everyone who turns up to a pulp.

Will you allow your baby’s first bloodlust to be unleashed upon your knights, who certainly did not sign up for this?

Keep your eyes peeled while your character is studying their Lifestyle! You might see a few new moments cropping up. Especially if you have war elephants… but what are you doing if you don’t already have war elephants?

The journey to PDXCON starts today with the Grand Campaign!
Enjoy the adventure from the Tribal Era to a distant future, across four Paradox Interactive games.

Join the Grand Campaign with Crusader Kings III on Twitch, starting as the Danes: Jarl Halfdan of Jórvík, 867AD!

► Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST, on Twitch



Join the teams of Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris for the largest event this side of PDXCON Remixed. In a tale that takes us from 867A.D to the distant future, you, the Paradox Community, will have a deciding say on events that unfold!

Acting as our ‘Senate’, you can influence how each campaign unfolds. Want to see a more military focused nation, or one that values the power of diplomacy or trade? By debating and voting inside the Senate, you can shape the course of our nation through all four grand strategy games.

You can take your seat in the senate by heading over to the discord here: Discord PDXCon

Each leg of the journey will also have a knock on effect on the next, crafting a completely unique gamestate by the time we reach our Stellaris endgame. You have the power to not only shape history, but the universe!

The Event will be broadcast live on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel at the times below:

The Dates:
► Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST
► Europa Universalis IV: 28th April 12:00-22:00 CEST
► Hearts of Iron IV: 7th May 12:00 - 22:00 CEST
► Stellaris: 15th-16th May 12:00 - 20:00 CEST

We’re looking forward to bringing hours of grand strategy gameplay to you as we forge our own story, together!

This week we have a few announcements to make: Azure Free Patch, Multiplayer stability, First Expansion & PDXCon!

► Read our Dev Diary #56 - An Azure Summer​



Greetings!

This week we have a few announcements to make! Firstly, as you saw in the last diary, we mentioned the number 1.3.X - this is the version number for an upcoming patch that we’re aiming to release around this summer (of course, the ‘X’ part will be an actual digit when it’s released, but for now we’ll just have to wait to see what it’ll be in the end!).

As you already know, we tend to name our patches using heraldic terms. The Northern Lords release had the name ‘Corvus’ for example. As we’re hoping for clear blue skies this summer, we’ve dubbed this patch ‘Azure’!

The Azure patch is a free patch, and there will not be any paid content coming out at the same time. It’ll focus on improving the stability of the game, fixing bugs, adding Quality of Life, balancing various systems, and adding some small features requested by the community. We’ll not go into many details in this diary, instead you can look forward to more info in some of the upcoming Dev Diaries!

Until then, here is a first teaser of some of the improvements that you will find in the patch:

• War Declaration Window: The war declaration UI flow will be revisited in order to better highlight your opponent’s strength and the different objectives available for a given Casus Belli
  
• Starting Men at Arms: Rulers will now start with a contingent of Men at Arms, depending on their income and culture. Default Men at Arms will also be generated when a Character is landed for the first time.

[Image of Duchess Matilda's starting MaA]

We hope to release Azure this summer, before the vacation season (the summer vacation usually starts late June and ends by the end of July) - but depending on how our plans work out, it might release during late summer.

***

Another thing we’re actively working with is improving Multiplayer stability, although this is separate from the upcoming Azure patch. We’re currently collecting as much data as we can, and it’s a process that’ll take time - at this point we’d not want to release the improvements as a patch.

Instead we’re aiming to release an Open Beta on Steam where you can get access to some of the Multiplayer stability improvements early. We highly recommend using this Open Beta when playing with your friends. This version of the game will have extra Multiplayer logging enabled, so that any remaining issues can be found more easily. As a side effect of these additional logs, the game will run a bit slower both in multiplayer and in singleplayer. If you notice the slowdown, you might want to switch back from the Open Beta for your singleplayer sessions. More specific info will be posted as the Open Beta is released.

This Open Beta will be available sometime in the near future for Steam users.

***

Now, as most of you have already figured out, the first big Expansion will be revealed during PDXCon in May! We’re looking forward to then, and to be able to share more details with you!

During the week of PDXCon we’ll have a DevDiary where we go into some detail about parts of the Expansion (we know that you’ll be hungry for more info after seeing the show!). After that diary, there will be some more Azure patch diaries before we start writing further Expansion diaries - just a heads up, so you know what to expect!

This week, all about Field recording, Sound design of the Event Images, some 1.3 patch updates, and of course, the music from Andreas Waldetoft!
► Read our Dev Diary #55 - A Sound Plan



Good afternoon, all

I’m here today with a short dev diary on some upcoming improvements to moddability. We’re not quite ready yet to make any announcements about upcoming features and so on, but we thought you might be interested in hearing about some modding improvements we've been working on.

In an upcoming patch which I will from now on call 1.3.X (due to the exact version number being unknown at this time), we’ve spent a bit of time on making the game more moddable based on requests we’ve had from the modding community. In particular we would like to thank the Modding Co-op for coming up with a curated list of requested functionality. The curation of this list made it easy for us to get a good overview of what functionality the community would like, and limited to those requests that’d benefit a lot of modders rather than just a handful. As the amount of time we could spend on modding improvements this time around was rather limited, having an already curated list to pick from was great.
From that list we picked some of the simpler requests; things that’d require relatively minimal code and would only affect mods. We will likely implement more from this list in the future, though our list for 1.3.X is unlikely to expand.

In addition to implementing some functionality based on these requests, we’ve also had some conversations with modders, and looked at some common pain points. We can’t address most of them right now, but one we noticed is that a number of mods use the DummyMale and DummyFemale characters for a lot of things they weren’t meant for. This was a result of lacking functionality, which we have now introduced in 1.3.X.
With the need for this dummy-character removed, we will be deprecating it. That means that it’ll continue to work 1.3.X which introduces the replacement functionality, but that they will be largely removed in 1.4 to ensure that script and code are more maintainable in the long-term.

Another bit of functionality that we think modders will be interested in is that of same-sex concubinage. Proper support for
it will come alongside other modding improvements in 1.3.X. Before 1.3 the gender restrictions for concubinage were possible to work around (but could cause bugs), which is no longer possible in 1.3. In 1.3.X we support it more fully, eliminating odd edge-case bugs and the like.
Further, we plan to support same-sex marriage for mods in 1.4. Due to larger technical risks surrounding it, it was not feasible to include that in 1.3.X; we need more time to test it to ensure that this support does not introduce bugs in the vanilla game. We're really looking forward to being able to support more diverse experiences with this mod support.

Mods add so much to the experience of our games, and moddability has been something we’ve considered throughout CK3’s development. As a former CK2 modder myself, it’s great to see all the things the modding community is producing.

Finally, here’s all the modding improvements we plan to release in 1.3.X:

• User Modding: Add CloseGameView data function so mods can close specific in game views.
  
• User Modding: Add GetTraitFromGroup and GetTraitGroupLevel data functions on Character.
  
• User modding: make_concubine now supports same-sex concubinage
  
• User Modding: Add GetTraitGroup( 'tag' ) and Trait.GetGroup data functions to get trait groups.
  
• User Modding: Add HasTrait and HasTraitFromGroup data functions to Character.
  
• User modding: Added data functions GetTraitsWithFlag and GetTraitsWithoutFlag
  
• User modding: Added datamodel GetTraits on TraitGroup
  
• User modding: Added effect deactivate_holy_site
  
• User modding: Added effect remove_dynasty_perk
  
• User modding: Added effect remove_innovation = innovation_key
  
• User modding: Added effect set_army_location
  
• User modding: Added effects clear_traits and copy_traits
  
• User modding: Added effects set_age and change_age
  
• User modding: Added list builder x_culture_global
  
• User modding: Added trigger has_innovation_flag
  
• User modding: Added trigger perks_in_<lifestyle>, to query how many perks exist in a given lifestyle (rather than how many a specific character has)
  
• User modding: spawn_army will now only spawn levies if scripted to do so
  
• User modding: Add GetGlobalVariable and GetGlobalList data functions for getting data saved from script.
  
• User modding: Add MakeScopeValue, MakescopeFlag, and MakeScopeBool to create scope objects out of primitive types directly since they are not automatically creatable via the MakeScope member on complex types like Character.MakeScope.
  
• User modding: Add ScriptValue data function to scope objects which will evaluate a script value just with that scope object as root.
  
• User modding: Made the Localize data function allow the key it references to also call other data functions in it like SelectLocalization does.
  
• User modding: Add AddList data function for GuiScope, it is to add_to_list what AddScope is to save_scope_as.

That’s all for today!
I’m excited to see what the modding community will do with these added pieces of functionality.

The journey to PDXCON begins: Introducing the Grand Campaign!
4 games, 4 weeks and 5 days of play!

Join the teams of Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris for the largest event this side of PDXCON Remixed. In a tale that takes us from 867A.D to the distant future, you, the Paradox Community, will have a deciding say on events that unfold!

Acting as our ‘Senate’, you can influence how each campaign unfolds. Want to see a more military focused nation, or one that values the power of diplomacy or trade? By debating and voting inside the Senate, you can shape the course of our nation through all four grand strategy games.

You can take your seat in the senate by heading over to the discord here: Discord PDXCon

Each leg of the journey will also have a knock on effect on the next, crafting a completely unique gamestate by the time we reach our Stellaris endgame. You have the power to not only shape history, but the universe!

The Event will be broadcast live on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel at the times below:

The Dates:
► Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST
► Europa Universalis IV: 28th April 12:00-22:00 CEST
► Hearts of Iron IV: 7th May 12:00 - 22:00 CEST
► Stellaris: 15th-16th May 12:00 - 20:00 CEST

We’re looking forward to bringing hours of grand strategy gameplay to you as we forge our own story, together!

This week, all about Field recording, Sound design of the Event Images, some 1.3 patch updates, and of course, the music from Andreas Waldetoft!
► Read our Dev Diary #54 - A Sound Plan

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1303183/Crusader_Kings_III_Northern_Lords/

Hello adventurers!

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at what new scripted content we’ve added for CK3: the Northern Lords, and, since it’s been out and playable for a week, I thought it’d be fun to go a little bit into some of the design rationales we had and my personal perspective on some of the feedback so far.

► Read our Dev Diary #53 - Northern Lords Content Rundown

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1303183/Crusader_Kings_III_Northern_Lords/