Hello there, and welcome to the 78th CK3 Dev Diary!

I am Mrop, one of the User Experience Designers on CK3. Last dev diary, we had a look at languages your Character can learn on their own.
Today, we are having a look at how language relates to your Royal Court: Your Court Language.

► Read our Dev Diary #78 - Taking Language to Court

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




Court Language in History​
Historically, it was not always so that nobles spoke the same language as the commoners. Rather, it was seen as more prestigious to speak another country’s language to show that you were cultivated enough to suck up to your superiors.

One of the most well known examples of this is how French was spoken across many courts across Europe around the reign of Louis XIV. This is outside the timeframe of Crusader Kings, but there are earlier examples; Norman nobles who invaded England together with William the Conqueror continued to speak French, influencing the development of the English language as we know it today.


Court Language and Grandeur​
Each Ruler with a Royal Court has a language chosen as their Court Language. At the start of the game this is determined by what historically was used. If you get a Royal Court later, its Court Language will simply be your native language. You can, of course, choose to change it!

Each language you can pick as your Court Language changes the Court Grandeur Baseline. You may recall that Grandeur and this Baseline was explained in Dev Diary 61. As a refresher, your Court Grandeur measures how impressive your Royal Court is. Each month, it moves slowly towards the Baseline value. Changing your Court Language will therefore take time to actually have an effect on your court’s Grandeur.


So how much Grandeur can you get from a certain Court Language?

The largest share of Court Grandeur comes from the pecking order of all Royal Courts who speak that language.

The Royal Court with the highest Court Grandeur is considered the “leader” of that language, and gains Court Grandeur based on how many Royal Courts speak that language. So if you are the leader of a language, you want as many Courts as possible to adopt it! Naturally, you only gain this Grandeur if you can actually speak the language!

On the other hand, if you are not the grandest Court of the language, you gain Court Grandeur based on the difference of your Grandeur, and the Grandeur of the leading Court. Speaking the Language is not required for this bonus, so even if your neighbors have a language you cannot speak you can attempt to impress them by following their lead.

In addition to this pecking order, you also gain Grandeur for each County in your Realm that speaks your Court Language, but only if you know the language personally. Finally, if your Court Language is also your native Language, you gain an extra 25% bonus to all the impacts your Court Language has on your Court Grandeur.

Here is an example of a calculation for having your native Language as Court Language (actual values are very much temporary):



Since you gain extra Grandeur for matching your Court Language with your native Language, you may want to create a new Hybrid or Divergent Culture (as described in Dev Diary 65) to adapt to the language your Realm or Court prefers.

All in all, this means that weaker and less grand Royal Courts will tend to choose the Court Language of a local, more grand Royal Court. The AI is also more restricted than players, such as taking the Faith of the speakers of the Court Language into account.

Eventually, once your Royal Court becomes grand enough, it is usually time to choose a language of your own as the Court Language, and start attracting lesser Courts to adopt it.


Finding Court Language in the Game​
You can, as shown above, select your Court Language inside your Royal Court, which takes you to a special map mode of all Court Languages in the world.



You can also directly adopt the language of a certain Culture by clicking on the button next to the language in that Cultures own View.



Beware however, not everyone may speak your Court Language that well (including yourself), so the threat of embarrassment is ever present. Just like in real life.


An embarrassing situation occurs when one of your Vassals cannot speak your Court Language


Court Language Spread​
Seeing your Court Language spread is one major way to understand how influential your court becomes over the years.

To see Court Languages spread, let us have a look at the game! Here, each Royal Court that speaks the same Court Language is shown on the map.

Here is the map at game start in 867 AD. You can see languages such as Arabic being used in the Habbari Sultanate (roughly in modern day Pakistan), and how the king of Bulgaria has chosen Greek due to the influence of nearby Byzantium.


Court Languages Map in 867

100 years later, Magadhan is slowly becoming more popular in India, and the Kingdom of Italy have adopted French as their Court Language.


Court Languages Map in 967

In 1067, a century later, Greek is spreading to the newly formed Kingdoms in the Empire of Khazaria. Some new languages like Berber also pop up.


Court Languages Map in 1067

Finally, in 1167, we see four languages dominate the courts of the world. Greek has spread through the now shattered Empire of Khazaria, and is also making its way down to Africa. At the same time, there is still room for smaller Court Languages like Shaz Turkic to thrive.


Court Languages Map in 1167


That is all for now; thank you for reading!

Greetings!

As you all know, one of the new Cultural Pillars each Culture has is their native Language. Now, what effect does language have? At its very core, Languages affect the Baseline acceptance between cultures - if two Cultures share the same Language Pillar, they’ll like each other better.
But that’s not all, characters can also learn additional languages!

► Read our Dev Diary #77 - In the Event of Court Events

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




So, why do you want to learn a language? Knowing a language cuts the (rather hefty) opinion penalties for Different Culture in half, both for Characters and Counties. Planning on conquering a foreign kingdom? Start your conquest by mastering their language, making subsequent control of your new subjects just that much easier! The less accepted your culture is, the more impact learning a language will have.

Now for the more pertinent question, how do you learn another language? You learn new languages through scheming!


[Image showing the Learn Language interaction]


[Image showing the Start Scheme window]

‘Learn Language’ is a Learning-based scheme, where progress and chance of success are primarily derived from how scholarly your character is. This scheme is available to everyone, even young children (who have a vastly increased chance of success/progress, by virtue of being young, less tired, and having working brains). It targets someone who natively speaks the language, having you try to emulate them. While the exact target you choose is less important than in other types of schemes, you might still get opportunities to interact with them.

Now, learning languages takes quite some time. Though it’s possible to significantly speed up the process by employing a Court Tutor!


[Image of a Court Tutor]

You will also find that bonuses for this scheme have been added throughout the existing Lifestyle trees. Some examples:

Adaptive Traditions - Unlocks an additional Learn Language Scheme
Embassies - Increases Scheme Power
Chains of Loyalty - Increases Scheme Power
Pedagogy - Increases Scheme Success Chance
Open-Minded - Increases the Language Limit
Smooth Operator - Increases the Language Limit


If the scheme is invalidated by, for example, the target dying, your progress is retained and you get the opportunity to choose a new target.


[Image of Invalidation Event]

When we first talked about languages, we had some people (rightfully) point out that decreasing the chance of success the more languages you know isn’t very logical. We still needed a way to prevent characters from knowing all the languages in the world, and thus we introduced the concept of a Foreign Language Limit. This represents how many languages a character can comfortably remember.


[Image of Language Limit]

If a character exceeds their Foreign Language Limit, they will start getting events about feeling overwhelmed, giving you the choice between forgetting a language or gaining stress. In a sense, this system is very similar to how we handle characters having too many lovers.

Of course, a character can never forget the language that is native to their culture, and that language isn’t included in the limit (as you can see in the above screenshot, Telugu isn’t included in the limit as it is his native language).

The Foreign Language Limit is affected by many things, but primarily by a character’s Learning score, where every 5 attribute points increases the limit by one.

With this change, we’ve made it so that the more languages you know, the higher your success chance is for learning additional languages. You have the basics down already, after all.


[Image of a success chance breakdown]

Now, the process of learning a language can be quite entertaining. There are many events that can happen along the way; being helped by friends or family, opposed by rivals, and so on. Here are a handful of examples of what can happen during the course of learning a language:


[Image of your Court Tutor helping you]

If you have a particularly good Court Tutor, they can guide your efforts along very speedily.


[Image of a rival ruining your notes]

Beware your rivals, lest they release ink-soaked birds in your study...


[Image of a very amorous misunderstanding]

Sometimes learning a language doesn’t result in what you’d expect...


[Image of the Byzantine Emperor with a “It’s just a prank, bro”-smile]

Sometimes your target might find your efforts laughable, and try to make fun of you.


[Image of a merchant offering you a book]

Of course, there is an opportunity to gain a trinket-slot item that’ll help your efforts along.


[Image of someone offering to help]

As learning a language isn’t secret, sometimes you’ll get offers from other rulers to help you… for a price.

When the scheme completes, you have a chance of success and failure. If you’re brave, you might even choose to test your new abilities right away by penning a letter to your target!


[Image of a successful scheme]


[Image of a failed scheme]

Of course, you might find that others are emulating you in their efforts to learn your language. This gives you the opportunity to praise their efforts, or perhaps you’d rather ridicule them?


[Image of someone learning your language]

That’s it for this week! Now, this isn’t the only way languages are used in the game… next week we will dive into another use for them, something which ties directly into the mechanics of the Royal Court!

Hello!

Welcome to another Dev Diary! This time I’m back to tell and show you a little behind the scenes of what we have been doing with Audio & Music for Royal Court


► Read our Dev Diary #76 - The Royal Audio

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




The room matters!

The introduction of Court View made us really excited in the Audio Dept and also a new challenge! After working so long with games that mainly use paper maps, and finally having a 3D space there was some extra room to play around with Sound Design and also getting a bit creative.

Of course, we want to add sound effects onto certain different objects like fireplaces and chandeliers and also including room ambiences for each type. But we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to give more “life” to the court rooms by adding something we call “walla”. Or perhaps known more for the common tongue as a “crowd recording”.

Since restrictions did start to loosen up more in Stockholm, and also it’s a fun activity, we thought about recording some of our team members from the CK team (also more colleagues from other projects)

Now you might be wondering how you even do something like this? Of course, it requires a bit of patience and having a couple of microphones!




So this is me and the Sound Designer working on Royal Court, sitting down in one of the Sound Studios and doing pre-work before the big recording session. So we’re testing out all the equipment, making sure all the cable works as intended and it all sounds great!

After all that we did manage to book the biggest room we have in the office, which is called the Library. Not only was it to ensure that we would be able to have distance between all people while recording all their voices, but also it had the best acoustics to match the size of the Court Rooms.




The next question would be what kind of script we were using for this recording. It’s rather difficult to record “walla” in all languages, so instead, we did use a script made of Latin. Not because that we all are fluent in Latin (would have been cool though!) but from my experience that has been some of the best languages to use when you need some “gibberish” talk in the background. Especially since we had a big mix of people with different accents.




It was a fun big session we had and everyone was happy to be part of such a big team event again after not seeing each other for such a long time in person!



So we did go a bit extra to make these new fancy rooms in CK3 soundsounding more alive and enhance the experience for you players. :)

How will all this sound in the end? It will change depending on your Court Grandeur level! The higher, the more of the crowd will you hear in the room, and this will also work the other way around, so less Grandeur the fewer people.


Royal Tunes

Hi everyone, it’s Yannick and Robin from Audinity. After having written music for several Paradox games and expansions, we’re happy to be on board again for CK3: Royal Court and share some insights into the new music for this expansion!

The soundtrack for this Expansion will consist of some new ambient Mood Tracks, Cue Tracks and even a new Main Theme.
The main direction for these new tracks was trying to make them sound a bit different compared to the existing music from the base game. Medieval music can have many different sounds, but since we are at the Royal Court this time, the keyword for the music for this Expansion was “Royal”. So you can hear some powerful fanfares, noble strings, and a medieval guitar ensemble that make you feel like standing right in the King’s hall.
While the Mood Tracks will add some noble flavours to the general ambient music, the Cue Tracks will play when you are Holding Court in your Kingdom. And when starting the game, the new Main Theme will welcome you to this Expansion and to the Royal Court!
We did not only record several fantastic solo musicians playing some fancy historical instruments for this soundtrack, we also wanted to go a bit extra on the orchestral side, so we actually went to Prague and recorded the music live with the FILMharmonic Orchestra at Smecky Music Studios!
This was the studio before the recording session...



...and this is what it looked like during the session with over 60 great musicians at work!



Two happy composers :)



We could keep writing about the music, but we think you get the best insight into the soundtrack for CK3: Royal Court when listening to some of the music itself!
So we are happy to share with you the “Holding Court” Cue Track for Western Europe as a preview!



So back to Metal King, I hope you enjoyed this week’s Dev Diary, understand it might not tell you so much about the features but at least we got to show you a little behind the scenes when we do work with Sound Design & Music.

In today’s dev diary, we’ll be going over the new court-type event. New stories & drama to be lived!

► Read our Dev Diary #75 - In the Event of Court Events

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




many of you will likely have seen them a bit already in a few preceding dev diaries, but for the rest, allow me to formally introduce court-type events:



This new event type is seen exclusively within the court view, where they replace standard character-type events.

We added these because one of the major design limitations with character-type events is that they’re uhh… they’re small. Really, really, really small, and having comparatively little space to work with means they impose a lot of restrictions on their use.

Those of you who mod, or have dabbled at modding, will likely know what I’m talking about: generally, a character event can only fit about three paragraphs of copy and 3-4 options before it starts to look a little naff. Less if there are characters or titles involved with very long names, or if you have to do a lot of paragraphing.

There are good reasons for them to be this small - they get in the way less when popping up, it encourages concise delivery of information, and it frames the portrait characters in each event nicely.

For the court scene, these considerations are (generally) moot, so we wanted to play around with a more liberal event format. We don’t need to worry about framing characters in the traditional sense since we show them in the scene, the player always opts into a court-type event and thus can’t have one pop-up unexpectedly, and though information (and options) still need to be reasonably concise, it’s nice to have a little room to flex the meaning of “concise” somewhat.




From a player’s perspective, you’ll mostly interact with court-type events through the not-at-all-confusingly-named court events pool. Similar to random yearlies, court events reflect the life of your court just existing, with all the petty drama and courtly intrigue you’d expect from a medieval monarch’s household. They primarily involve characters consistently within your court (rather than far-flung vassals or guests), and often tie into court grandeur and your different levels of amenities.




Other than their tone, size, and occasional number of options, the biggest differences that players will notice are their usage of different camera shots instead of backgrounds and portraits…





… and their optional nature. Unlike yearly events, court events are opt-in, meaning that you don’t have to take them if you don’t want to, in which case their default (neutral-ish) option will be selected after a long-ish time-out period.

To open a court event, you simply click on a button that’ll appear floating over one of your court’s relevant characters. Whenever you’ve got court events you could be checking, you’ll be notified via the Royal Court button in the right-hand panel.




From a scripting perspective, court-type events share a fair amount of DNA with character-type events, but differ mostly in the form of their court_scene block.

Usually, I’d go on to explain everything in a bit more depth inside the dev diary itself, but since court-type events can be tricksy to script till you get the hang of ‘em, we’ve included an example court-type event inside one of the event files that breaks down their make-up:



^^ Hopefully, this should be a solid annotated example, but just in case, here’s a few pre-emptive clarifications:
1) Every court-type event must have a button character, even if that character is just your character, so that must always be set up.
2) The group parameter defines which spot in the scene that character stands in. These groups themselves are scriptable (with a bit of work) elsewhere, so you can arrange characters inside the court however you like. The groups shown in the example actually contain multiple different preset positions within the court scene, one of which is selected randomly for each event when it tries to fire.
3) For animations, we can access all the standard ones, plus a slew of new animations created specifically for the court scene.

Finally, just for fun, let’s have some more court events:




Oh, right, yes, I titled the dev diary “and friend” too, didn’t I? Welp, the new court-type isn’t the only event type we’re adding with this expansion (just the most exciting). We also have the new duel event type!

Duels were added as part of our first flavour pack, but I’m sure you’ve all noticed that the space for ‘em is pretty limited, and the animations don’t work so well for this context. Welp, we’ve revamped both of those with this new type, giving duels a face-lift:



… Naturally, the weapon held by either character does correspond to their signature weapon type, or whatever weapon artefact they have equipped (if they’ve got one).

And that’s all from me, folks. As ever, I’ll be around in the comments for an hour or so to answer questions, but otherwise, see y’all next diary!

Greetings counts and dukes!
Today we will be looking at The Royal Court from a different perspective: your perspective!

While being a queen or emperor is great and all, sometimes it can be a bit of a drag to manage all those vying subjects. Sometimes, you just want to rule a small corner of a mightier realm, and enjoy the benefits of the Emperor’s protection in exchange for your service. While a duchess doesn’t have their own Royal Court, they can interact with their Liege’s via two new decisions.

► Read our Dev Diary #74 - Please Kaiser, Can I Have Some More?

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




Petition Liege
Player vassals can approach their King-or-above ranked Liege with a Petition at any time through a new decision, providing they have enough Prestige, there is something they can ask for, and they haven’t done so in the last 5 years.



The possibilities include asking for a position on your Liege’s Council, asking for a Title you hold a claim on, or dismantling an unruly Faction in your own realm. There are currently 14 different options, each having some equivalent in the Hold Court events brought to Lieges by AI vassals, ranging from helping you convert your lands to paying off your debts.

This will allow you to ask for things directly without resorting immediately to war, which will remain a last resort when you need to topple a king whose tolerance of border-gore clearly proves their illegitimacy.



It is up to the Liege whether to receive a Petitioner, though outright refusing will damage relations and be seen as slightly tyrannical. The request itself may also be rejected once heard, and the odds of acceptance by the AI will be tipped more in your favor if you make reasonable requests and maintain good relations; after all, your boss doesn’t want to be seen as unreasonable.



If they are astute, your Liege may also ask for something in return for granting your Petition, such as a Favor Hook or a bit of Gold—a counter you can of course reject, leaving you both empty-handed.

If a Liege is not being very forthcoming, you can also attempt to convince or outsmart a trusted advisor as a last resort, at the cost of some Prestige. You will need to pass a skill check in a relevant area, usually against one of your Liege’s councillors, or have an ally near to the throne—the King’s wife perhaps—whose assent will force your Liege’s hand.



If you are a Liege, you will currently only interact with this content if you happen to have another player as your vassal and they make their own—no doubt outrageous—requests.

The second decision is available to both players and the AI.


Pay Homage
Homage represents the formal pledge of loyalty by a feudal lord to their Liege, and provides Opinion, Renown, and Prestige to both parties, providing the occasion goes smoothly.



This decision costs some Prestige to initiate, is only available to Feudal and Clan vassals, and can only be undertaken once per Liege. If the ruler changes or dies, you can make a new pledge of allegiance to their replacement.

As with Petition Liege, this decision can be rejected outright, and is not totally without risk even if they let you through the door. There is a great deal of pressure for such an important event to go well, and not all lords and ladies are made for public speaking.

Things can go awry in a variety of ways, depending on the Petitioner’s skills and other factors: Have you put in the hours to learn Norman, or merely practised a few key lines the night before on the road to Windsor? Will your Shah empathise with your stammer, or imitate it in front of the entire Persian court? Will you forever more be called ‘the Clumsy’ by your vindictive Sultan, simply because you lost your balance once?



If something does go wrong, it is up to the Liege to decide if they will let it go—giving your rival the opportunity to publicly mock your clumsiness might not be the best idea. If they do decide to embarrass you, you will lose some Prestige and Opinion with your Liege, instead of gaining them.

Regardless of the outcome, both your Dynasties will gain a small amount of Renown, and the rewards are increased by offering gifts in addition to your pledge, such as a Contract change in favor of your Liege.

That broadly covers these two new decisions, so I’ll leave it there for now!

The Paradox Grand Strategy Sale is here! 👑
Up to 20% discount on Crusader Kings III & Flavour Pack "Northern Lords"!
Bring your friends in CK3, make them your vassals and then in the darkness bind them
► Buy for you or a friend here: Crusader Kings III

Greetings!

In the update that will launch alongside the Royal Court expansion, we will introduce Court Positions - which can be seen as an evolution of CK2’s Minor Titles with a number of new improvements.

While the old feature from CK2 had all sorts of various honorary titles, we wanted to focus on the most important positions at your court. Jobs that are relevant directly to you as a ruler, or that of your court.

► Read our Dev Diary #73 - Serving On Her Majesty's Court

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion







Court Positions include a number of different positions, such as a Court Tutor, or Seneschal. Most positions imply that the appointed character has an actual job at your court and provides you with their services. That doesn’t mean we haven’t added any of the classical honorary positions though. Expect to also be able to appoint a Master of the Hunt, Master of the Horse, or (if you are playing as England) a Keeper of the Swans.

Each position will provide you with a set of bonuses, mostly in the form of various modifiers, but certain positions have more interesting benefits as well. For example, a Court Tutor increases the chances for children at your court to receive a better education trait.

Not all characters are equally fit to serve in any given position. Their skills and traits have a significant impact on how good they are at their job. This is reflected in their Aptitude. A position uses one or several skills, such as Learning for a Court Physician, which is the main factor for what Aptitude a character will have. Each position also has a number of traits that may increase (or even decrease!) their Aptitude further. Aptitude is measured on a scale in five steps, ranging from ‘terrible’ to ‘excellent’. The higher the Aptitude is, the greater the benefit. Let’s look at the Seneschal as an example. A character with the lowest Aptitude will only grant you a Control Growth bonus of +0.1, while a character with the highest possible Aptitude will give you +0.5.


[Image showing the Aptitude for a court position]​

Unlike CK2, hiring a character for a position is actually going to cost you, as each Court Position has an associated salary that you will be paying for out of your own pocket. While the salary for any given position won’t be very expensive, they will stack up. You’ll have to make a decision on how much gold you are willing to spend on all of your appointed positions, and if the characters you have available are skilled enough to warrant the salary.

As you may remember from Summer Teaser #3, we’ve gone through several old events to make sure that if you have someone appointed in a relevant position, they can appear to provide extra options or affect an outcome to be more favourable. Additionally, some positions may appear in events related to schemes. We’ve also added Cultural Traditions that increase the Aptitude of specific positions for characters of that culture, or even unlock a position you normally wouldn’t have access to! The goal is to make sure that Court Positions feel like an integral part of the game, and to have them feel as immersive as possible.

Before we wrap up, let’s take a look at a few examples of what some of the different Court Positions can do for you.

The Court Physician has been updated to be a fully fledged Court Position and make use of the new system. As you’d expect, the appointed character will take care of the sick people within your court. Court Physicians have a lower salary than most, so you should in practice always be able to afford one. If you have the Royal Court expansion, having a Court Physician also provides you with a small bonus to your grandeur. A skilled physician was often seen as very prestigious after all.


[Image of the Court Physician Court Position]​

Next is the Bodyguard. You can hire up to two Bodyguards at the same time. Bodyguards don’t provide any passive modifiers like most other positions, but do have two fairly powerful bonuses. They have a chance to prevent assassination attempts on you, and they reduce the risks of participating in battles, as long as both of you partake in the same battle. So make sure that your Bodyguards have been appointed as your knights to make the most use of them. But beware! Bodyguards are very powerful agents should they join a scheme against you. Keep an eye on their opinion to avoid any backstabbing shenanigans!


[Image of the Bodyguard Court Position]​

Another interesting position is the Food Taster. Any self-respecting (and perhaps paranoid) ruler should have one. A Food Taster not only gives you some protection against hostile schemes, they may even prevent a poison-related murder attempt against you! By, of course, eating your food and dying in your place… Just like a Bodyguard, a Food Taster is also a powerful agent should they join in on a scheme against you.


[Image of the Food Taster Court Position]​

Let’s take a look at the Court Gardener. This court position is unlocked by a cultural tradition - Garden Architects. Gardeners provide a passive opinion bonus for your courtiers and guests (who doesn’t appreciate a well tended garden?), and depending on their skill, a significant bonus to the Development Growth in your realm capital.


[Image of the Court Gardener Court Position]​

And for reference, this is what the tradition looks like:


[Image of the Garden Architects tradition]​

Finally, we couldn’t show off Court Positions without showing the Court Jester, complete with a jester’s outfit!


[Image of the Court Jester Court Positions]


[Image of the Court Jester's clothing]​

That’s it for today!

Welcome comrades!

In today’s dev diary, we’ll be taking a gander at a neat part of the upcoming expansion: Holding Court.

Per the usual, I’ll preface this by saying that the court scene is a work in progress, the UI of the court scene is a work in progress, and the art generally is work in progress; we also have some missing animations and camera perspectives, so take all the images here with a grain of salt.

► Read our Dev Diary #72 - Holding Court

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion






As with any medieval ruler, monarchs in The Royal Court are vain creatures. It’s not enough to control the largest or best-developed realm, you have to have the largest palace, the fanciest food, the most renowned courtiers, and so on: after all, what’s the point of taxing the masses if you have to live like a peasant anyway?

Sometimes, though, you can’t quite afford the fanciest feast, the latest fashion, or even just the shiniest artefact to spruce up your court.

When times are that hard, and you really need just _immediate_ distraction from the flaws in your life, it’s important to spend some time indulging those with lives even harder than yours. Like nearly everyone else. For times when you feel like slumming it amongst the weird and wonderful characters of your realm, you can Hold Court.




This repeatable decision lets you hear a number of requests from various characters, listening to petitioners seeking your aid and legal ruling on many subjects. They might be guests, courtiers, neighbouring rulers, vassals, spies, the odd bumbling peasant…



At present, you’ll receive three such petitioners each time, with all events delivered in the new courtly event style (though follow-up may be character events or similar).



Some choices are easy…



… some choices are hard…



… and some are just weird.



After you’ve made your ruling in each case, in addition to the effects of each turn, you’ll gain some court grandeur to bolster your overall supply. We’ve got just shy of a hundred or so of these events alone, so there should be a goodly amount of variety for most playstyles.

This system is something pretty dear to our hearts, as it models a task that would’ve been a pretty big part of the day-to-day for many rulers, and we’ve put a lot of effort into getting plenty of alternate events to keep it as varied as possible for as long as possible. We hope you find it a fun & proactive way to explore some of the smaller (and uhh, not so small) issues developing in your realm.

Small dev diary, but that’s all from me for the mo. As ever, I’ll be around in the comments for an hour or so to answer questions, but otherwise, see y’all next diary!

… Y’know what, let’s have a few more events to show off before we finish for the day.

Hello everyone and welcome to the 71st CK3 Dev Diary!

I’m Matthew, one of the Programmers on the CK3 team, and today I am going to talk to you about one of the free features in the upcoming 1.5 patch: the much requested Coat of Arms Designer!

I don’t think the idea needs much explanation, this feature lets you edit the coat of arms used for your titles, dynasty, and house in game and from within the ruler designer to create your own stunning medieval crest.

I think it's easiest if I just show you, should go without saying by now but everything here is still under development and the interface is a work in progress and stands to be tweaked, shuffled around the layout and sizes changed by art.

► Read our Dev Diary #71 - A Coat of Arms of Your Own

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion



Right now here is what you will be greeted by now if you enter the customization window for the Holy Roman Empire:


In the center you get the preview screen of the coat of arms as you edit it and to the right some options of what to do.

I’ll start with the bottom right options:

• Randomise within the rule sets we use to generate coat of arms normally, great if you want to reenact this pain.
  
• As with the Ruler Designer’s DNA we let you copy and paste your coat of arms to share.
  
• Discard any changes you’ve made to your work in progress masterpiece.
  
• If you have previously edited and saved your new coat of arms then the discard button will be joined by a button to reset to the historical coat of arms if available.

The meat of the system comes in the form of customizing your coat of arms from scratch or adjusting the existing one, both share their core components but adjusted mode is more limited if you want to take a pre-existing coat of arms and just tweak it a bit.
The reason adjusted mode is separate is that some historical coat of arms are made up of a lot of emblems in an order that whilst looks pretty in game is rather cursed if you were to try and see the full layout and background usage.

So for the bulk of this I will be using custom as the example to see how you can make your own heraldry from scratch and call out differences in adjusted mode where applicable.
The coat of arms designer has three main panels: background, layout, and emblems.

Starting with the background panel you can pick from any of the background patterns as well as pick what colours should be used. For all the colouring options in the coat of arms designer we provided a palette with some pre-selected colours that are used in heraldry generally and are what we use in randomization of coat of arms but we also give you a colour picker to let you pick whatever horrifying neon colour you want.
In the adjusted mode you cannot pick a background pattern but you can change the colours.


Next up we have the layouts panel, they dictate the overall amount and positioning of the emblems in your coat of arms. This panel is disabled entirely in the adjusted mode.

To preempt this question, yes there are only a few layouts in the picture (some even duplicates) and that is because the other preset layouts are currently being worked on so there will be more than this in the released version.
Though if you have any ideas for some cool layouts do let us know! Now is the perfect time to give us some ideas whilst the presets layouts are being implemented.


The bulk of time you will spend is likely to be in the final emblems panel, this lets you pick which of the over a thousand emblem textures that you want to use as well as how you colour them.

You can select which emblem instance you want to edit or select multiple of them by shift clicking, there is also a button to select all of them or reset your selection too so you can edit in bulk easier.



Since some historical coat of arms can have a lotttt of emblems we show them in a paged setup of 10 at a time for easier editing.
I used france a lot in my testing since it has so many to make sure things always worked on a large amount of them which has now ingrained into my brain that our france coat of arms has 33 fleur de lis on it.

To try and help the contrast of the emblems we set it so that the previews have a background that is either white/black to help things stand out better.

We also have a detailed edit mode which lets you go deeper and modify the exact positions, scale, and rotation of all your emblems as well as modify what layer they are on and even add and remove them to your heart’s content! So you can really end up with a custom coat of arms to represent the majesty of your dynasty, or as I’m sure some of you will do, try and find a way to make it look phallic as quickly as you possibly can.



All of these edits also support an undo/redo system to make incremental changes easier.
Cadet Houses also get an additional option for if they want the quartering of their coat of arms enabled or not, in case you want to show your dad who’s boss.

That is a lot of words to explain this but let's be honest you all just want to see it in action so here we go:


Mini-shout out/commiserations to user “Lajos Tueur” who on Saturday released a mod to try and implement a coat of arms designer and had to fight against doing all of this very manually in the script with a hacky UI only for me to come in a few days later and release this dev diary.

That’s all for this week folks, thanks for tuning in and I hope you’re excited to make some majestic (or cursed) coat of arms for your rulers in 1.5!

Hello everyone!

We're back to talk about what is genuinely my favorite feature of The Royal Court — Artifact generation!
One of the goals we had for Artifacts in CK3 was to ensure that the artifacts your rulers acquire will feel truly distinct from another. No longer will you have a royal treasury filled with identical swords — now you will have a royal treasury filled with an assorted variety of different swords!

► Read our Dev Diary #70 - The Facts about Artifacts

💡 To experience the full threads and comments, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion



Artifact Features​
All Artifacts in the game can have a set of Features that determine both how they were created as well as what they were made from. For example, ‘Oak’, ‘Ash’, and ‘Pine’ are all features of the ‘Wood’ type, which is used to make wooden furniture, spear shafts, book covers, etc., while ‘Engraved’, ‘Filigreed’, and ‘Painted’ are ‘Decoration’-type features which skilled craftspeople can use to decorate artifacts to make them more suitable for royalty.

The main use of Features is to create immersive descriptions for the artifact. Whenever a new artifact is created (such as from an Inspiration), it will gain a set of appropriate Features based on various factors including culture, geography, craftsmanship quality, wealth of the capital city, and event decisions made during the creation process. These Features are then used by the artifact’s description to emphasize any distinctive characteristics that it has! Note that that these Features will not be represented in the 2D and 3D art of the Artifact, as we have far more varieties of Feature than we could reasonably produce art for.


A screenshot containing 6 example Artifacts.
NOTE:Under active development. Values and content subject to change.​

The thing I love about this system is not just that it will generate and display differences between two different axes your ruler commissions from a blacksmith — it is that those differences will be even more pronounced between Artifacts created in the different regions of the world. This means Artifacts that you loot from your defeated foes while on crusade or during overseas raids will be far more distinct from other Artifacts in your treasury, serving as a memento of the great distances you or your ancestors traveled on their journeys.

Of course, we have many types of Artifacts apart from weapons, and some of the material and craftsmanship differences become truly pronounced when you start looking at the type of Artifacts that are created explicitly for rulers to show off with! For example, a crown crafted in Afghanistan might feature pieces of its legendary lapis lazuli, while one made in the Baltic region could instead feature an impressive chunk of amber as a centerpiece. Different varieties of gemstones, cloth, lumber, shells, and animal horns… the range of possible combinations is truly vast!


A screenshot containing 6 example Artifacts.
NOTE:Under active development. Values and content subject to change.​

Artifact Modifiers​
As you probably noticed in the above screenshots, every Artifact has a set of character modifiers which are applied to their owner while they have them equipped. Unlike in CK2, there are no ‘slotless’ Artifacts, so in order to gain any benefit from owning an Artifact at all you must have it equipped in one of your personal slots (Weapon, Armor, Regalia, Crown, Trinket) or court slots (Lectern, Throne, Wall Hanging, etc.). By ensuring you can only have a set number of artifacts benefiting a character at once, it becomes much easier for us to balance Artifacts and avoid the massive bonuses characters could gain in CK2 by accumulating vast libraries of forgotten lore, new inventions, and piles of statues.

One guiding principle we used while designing these Artifact Modifiers is the “no overtly supernatural effects” rule that guided us during the base game’s development. For example, a masterfully-forged weapon granting Prowess is straightforward and sensible, as characters fight better with a good weapon in hand. That same weapon boosting Advantage or Army Gold Maintenance is maybe less obvious, but can still be explained by serving as a symbol of hope and inspiration for the soldiers in an army and boosting their morale. Something like No Penalty For Crossing Rivers is nonsensical for an Artifact weapon though — we are not giving rulers access to the equivalent of a fully-functional Staff of Moses! Modders, of course, can add whatever modifiers they wish to an Artifact.


Historical Artifacts and Trinkets​
Of course, not all Artifacts will be artisanal masterpieces! The important thing for Artifacts is that they are meaningful to their owner in some way — this meaning doesn’t need to be purely economic or functional!

Instead, some Artifacts may have great historical value despite a plain appearance, such as Charlemage’s Throne. Other Artifacts might only hold sentimental value, such as a good-luck charm or a locket given to you by a lover which reduces Stress. Finally, some Artifacts may instead be relics of a rather… dubious provenance, yet still useful for those who believe in their power (or at least claim to).




Growing Pains​
Work on the Royal Court expansion is progressing, and it's looking better each day that passes. Now, we want to be upfront and say that it's going to take longer than many of us expect for the expansion to be released. There are many reasons for this; the expansion is very technically challenging and we're doing things we've never done before from the ground up. We want a Royal Court that looks as grand as the mechanics that support it.

We've also had the recent organizational changes that affect how we work, as many of you know we've split into three studios - and with change comes a period of adaptation. The team has grown significantly in recent times. A lot of time has been spent onboarding new members to the team, and we've onboarded more people than we ever have before. While it may have a negative short-term impact, it's definitely going to be a solid investment for the future of CK3, not only for the release of Royal Court, but also our future expansions, and beyond. Of course the extended period of working from home makes things take longer than expected. This is something we have touched on before due to how the working conditions have been recently.

Rest assured that we're still working as hard as we can and things are progressing nicely, and are aiming for a release later this year. We will of course have more exciting details to share in upcoming dev diaries.

For now we’ll leave you with this little extra teaser: