Greetings!

By this point most of the team is on vacation (including me, this is a scheduled post!). However, we still want to tease something that we think you’ll like!

With the Cultural Rework we’re making it more viable to rule a large and culturally diverse empire, as you all surely know. To enhance this playstyle we’ve devised a new Dynasty Legacy that focuses on strengthening multicultural realms! If you own the Royal Court expansion, you’ll get access to the new ‘Customs’ Dynasty Legacy!

💡 To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.

► Read our Winter Teaser #2 - Dynasty Legacy

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion


[Image of the Legacy Track Art]


Let's take a look at the Legacies themselves:

[Image of the first legacy]


The first legacy reinforces the link between learning languages and acceptance by adding a Cultural Acceptance bonus on completion for members of your dynasty. Quite a powerful opener, as it gives you a tool for improving acceptance with cultures outside your own realm (albeit a small one, though depending on how spread out your dynasty is it can be more or less powerful!)


[Image of the second legacy]


The second legacy improves the effectiveness of the Council Job, simple but effective. Having an extra slot for Learn Language schemes means that you can always have one running, while keeping your ‘normal’ personal scheme slot open for Swaying vassals or Seducing siblings.


[Image of third legacy]


When you land a ruler of a culture in the lands of their culture, you already get a Cultural Acceptance bonus. This legacy makes it an even more viable strategy to do this, as you also get a hook that you can use for all kinds of things. This pairs well with the new grant options that you’ll find at the end of this DD.


[Image of fourth legacy]


The fourth legacy unlocks a special Court Position, the Cultural Emissary. This isn’t a cheap position to fill, but it brings great benefit to realms with a diverse cast of vassals as it increases Different Culture opinion by up to 20! It also grants a lot of prestige, as an additional bonus.


[Image of the Cultural Emissary Court Position]


Here are some details on how the position itself looks.


[Image of fifth legacy]


The last legacy focuses less on building acceptance, and more on reaping its benefits! It gives you access to a decision that, while expensive to take, improves the lands of all your realm; presuming the culture has 75%+ acceptance with yours. This can be a truly massive bonus for a large realm. Not pictured here is that it also gives you prestige.


[Image of the main modifier from the Side-by-Side decision]


The main modifier of the above decision, in its current incarnation.


[Image of the new Grant To buttons]


Now, one of the hardest things to do if you want to have self-rule in your lands is actually finding someone of the correct culture. To remedy this problem, we’ve added two new buttons to the ‘Grant to…’ window. When giving away a County or Barony, you can now choose to grant it to a noble of your culture, or a noble of the local culture (faith, for now, always follows your own). If you choose either of these options, the game will firstly look for an appropriate wanderer, and if it can’t find anyone, generate a new character.

If you grant land to a local noble, you will clearly see just how much acceptance you’ll get for the act.

Salutations, I am Carlberg, the 3D environment art lead on CK3 and today we have a small teaser for that button you may have spotted down in the right corner on a lot of dev diaries. It is the button that will bring up the Photomode of the court, to make it easier to take memorable pictures of the events and happenings of your court! Along with this preview we also thought we’d show off some more artifacts in their natural habitat.​

💡 Due to the nature of this diary, many of the images are much too large to have on Steam. To fully experience our Teaser on the forums and share your thoughts, you can click the link below.

► Read our Winter Teaser #1 - Photo Mode

💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion



The camera might not have been invented in the dark ages, but don’t we all want clean screenshots?.

We’ve been confident for quite some time that our players would want to take some pictures of what happens in their court, the interesting courtiers interacting or from finally seeing your rival and vassal arrive to bend the knee. So for that purpose the Photo mode will give everyone the ability to pick what camera is currently active out of a curated selection. Some of these are camera angles that you’ve seen depending on different interfaces and some camera angles only available in the photo mode.

In the photo mode you can select cameras from a dropdown, turn off courtiers for decoration focused shots, or the UI to get a clean picture with no interface.​

And following, here are a few more court shots taken with the photo mode.​
[Please see forum post [b]here[/b]]
​
Trivia:
Did you know that the natural camera, camera obscura, is an optical effect that can occur in a dark room with a small hole for the entry of light. This light causes a projection of the outside to occur within the dark room and has been observed and mentioned in Chinese written texts as early as 400 bce.

We'll be back again next week with another teaser!

Hello and welcome to Dev Diary #84, I’m Carlberg , the 3D environment lead artist and today we will be having a closer look at the development of the Royal Court rooms.

This is a feature that we’ve been working hard on and it represents a great new step in bringing this historical era to life. Big thanks to Alien-47 (code), Stella (3D environment art) and Linus (tech art) who's perspectives they've written down for this Dev diary, drawn from their experiences from both code and art in the making of this feature.

💡 Note that there are way too many images to add them here, so please visit our forums this time to see all the pictures from this Dev Diary.

► Read our Dev Diary #84 - Building a 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




Heads up! - A lot of the pictures in this post will be of old prototypes and iterations intermixed later with more recent images towards the end. So no need to worry about issues you may spot in the older images.​


With the new 3D character systems implemented in CK3 we wanted to show the characters of the middle ages in a whole new dynamic way. So as we started laying down the foundations of the Royal Court we also wanted to bring the very courts to life and find continued use for these 3D characters. This new feature was a major step in that direction.

The inspiration for the feature was partly scenes that hearken back to throne rooms seen in games of old where we wish they had been livelier, with more interaction and chances for us to impact the people and objects in them. We drew upon these concepts and ideas of our own to weave together a visualization of the courts hosted by the most prominent royal titles.​


At the beginning of the court development we knew that we were in for a challenge to stake out a new visual workflow within the engine that previously had not had any instances of contained 3D scenes and shared lighting systems within it. So we decided that to start off we needed a working prototype - laying a foundation and gradually adding more and more graphical features and complexity. Moving forward only when we’re sure the previous step succeeded.

A natural starting point of exploration were the characters. We could already show beautiful animated portraits and the courtroom had to be able to show the same people so players could easily recognize their appearance. Could we reuse the same system that assembles characters - show appropriate body, apply transformation to show age, height, weight, apply the same clothing, hair, set the same animation? First step - success. The people in the courtroom look exactly the same as in portraits.

Next step, is it possible to show many people at the same time in the same scene? This is quite different from portraits in the interface and events - those always have 1 person per image, even if the UI tries to combine them nicely together. With some optimization the room could now handle about 20 random characters, and even some objects. So the scene finally resembles a courtroom. Although a bit dark.​


The scene could now show several people and items in the prototype​

But what can we do with lights? The ambition for the court scene and requirement for lighting is much higher and more advanced than for regular portraits. We needed more simultaneous light sources. At the same time shadows naturally become much more complicated as well. People and objects can interfere with lights and it needs to be visible. Another issue was making sure characters and objects apply the lighting and shadows in the same way, so it’s easier for artists to manipulate the scene and develop the assets. After a bit of time and several iterations we had upgraded and made many improvements to the lighting system.​

Lights and shadows in a shared scene — Proof that multiple lights work and blend as intended, if a bit rough still.​

It was roughly at this time we felt we had confidence that the goal was within reach, and all technology was working as we intended. It was also clear that we could afford the desired complexity of the scene from a performance point of view. After all, players should have an enjoyable experience both on the map and in the court. We had built an understanding of how many people the scene could handle efficiently, how many light sources, and how many shadows we could allow (this is one of the most expensive parts).

And so the prototype has been integrated as a proper feature of the game.

Scene with better lighting, assets, materials, people positions​

From this point on work on the court room continued with multiple people from different disciplines working very closely together. More and more features waited to be implemented, so you can now see the beautiful results of all this effort.


Concept art and vision​
Being worked alongside the prototype was the vision we had for the Royal Court-rooms. We began by looking at the four main cultural areas we would be covering in the expansion. The west European, Mediterranean, Middle-eastern and Indian courts. We wanted each of these areas to be distinct, having their own visual style through architecture and lighting so to give their own unique feeling.

Concepts of the different walls aesthetics of the courts, Mediterranean, Western, Middle-East/North Africa and India. ​

The west European court draws much of its inspiration from courtly interiors of England, Germany, France and neighboring areas. Darker rooms lit by fiery hearths, candles and chandeliers. In the Mediterranean more inspiration comes from the Byzantine courts and those found in Italy and other heirs of Rome. The rooms hint back at this grander past with larger roofs, domes and columns supporting the walls and arches.

In the Middle-eastern courts we have a wider spread geographically, as these courts draw inspiration and cues from the courts all the way from Arabia to the architecture of Andalusia. In India we encountered an interesting split, as influences in architecture were pushing in from the west while there were still distinctly Indian courts. This was one of the reasons behind adding more court variants so that we could cover more of these visual flairs.

Style variation exploration, more on those further down in the Dev Diary.​

Each scene was broken down into components like walls, roofs, floors and key assets like thrones, chandeliers and fireplaces. While these were being designed from a plethora of references gathered from each culture we also created variants in the concepts. This was done both as exploration but also to add variance to the courts so that they don't all look the same all the time. You will most likely have seen some variants of these when we’ve shared screenshots in past dev-diaries.
​
Different courts, different architectural styles, different lighting setups.​

But the concept art phase did not end after the initial stages however, because once the scenes were being put together we returned to the concepts to try out the different lighting setups to help in the lighting of the rooms, giving our artists more ideas of where to focus the light and accentuate the scene further. Since the lighting system was being built alongside this in the prototype, the concept art took inspiration from contemporary game engines to help guide the prototyping, and not just the visual development.


When starting the modeling of the actual assets for the throne rooms there were several constraints to keep in mind. We had decided to go with a modular workflow so we could easily swap out wall-types and materials, so the dimensions would have to be consistent and work with the plans and concepts we had decided to pursue. We were also making several visual variants for each culture, which meant that we had to try and keep the details of the walls and materials equally interesting for each different type.

Another big limitation was the fact that we had never before made a scene within our engine like this, so that meant that there were a lot of uncertainties when it came to how much we could push the graphics and where the limits were. Since we were also going to have the artifact system we had to make sure we left enough room for the artifacts and banners without having the environment taking too much attention. This became a trial and error phase to find a good baseline for each throne room.

Early blocking out of the different artifact and furniture slots to be able to see where in the environments we had to make space.​

To create variation we made sure to have the materials contrast with each other while still fitting together aesthetically so no culture would have throne rooms that all felt exactly the same. This along with changing some architectonic aspects helped the scenes be more distinct. We also worked on adding variation to the the grandeur levels, here we wanted the difference to show in the cleanliness and brightness of the environment textures, as well as in the richness of detail in the geometry and amount of decorative props. (Visual examples of this are shown in the final chapter)

Making sure the different materials work together to create a cohesive feeling for each culture, but still looking different from each other. Example images taken from the MENA culture throne rooms.​


A lot of our visual tech usually involves considerations for a top-down map, and since we didn’t have much need for full scale 3D room rendering & lighting in the past, we had to do a lot of rethinking to get this to work - we went from previously having 4 lights, moving up to 20 total light sources and expanding the light types available with new ones like area lights - adding sphere & disc area lights. This helps illuminate areas such as room filling bouncing light (seen to great effect in Mediterranean courts) and helps us with light coming in from the windows and other openings.

A cozily lit interior.​

Another technique we used was animated lights. They move a little, flicker in intensity - very useful for making the fireplace feel like it’s actually on fire and heating up the room a bit. To sell the atmospheric feeling in the room, we added some transparent particles with a little light fade on the sides of the windows and other select places. Even though it isn’t adding to the “real” light of the room, it helps give it that last piece of convincing magic touch. We also used particle systems for effects like the fireplace, candles and torches.

The concept art helped us find the vision of what we wanted to do. Starting with just the room geometries, we used the color hues and general light level from the concepts to create a lit space that felt cohesive, which we then could tweak and modify until they felt comfortable to look at.


One of the hurdles throughout the development of the court scene were tools - a means for developers to manipulate the scene contents more efficiently - edit objects, characters, lights, change their positions, add or remove to have a toolset that allows more quick iteration and direct interaction. It took time to develop a solution that made this part of work less tiresome. One of the downsides of not having readily available tools - you have to do those yourself, and sometimes reinvent a wheel multiple times. But we’re lucky to have an internal tools team that came to rescue us, and it improved the processes immensely.

We had plenty of funny bugs over the court of development, resolved by now of course.

It's not a cult! — Sometimes visual bugs can be quite fun

Baby Bighead bug.

They say you shouldn't lose your head in court, but this is ridiculous​


With a working feature, concepts drawn and all the parts built we got to compositing together the scenes. There were a lot of iterative steps working on the textures, lighting and positioning to get all pieces to look their best. The environment team has made a set of three different variations of each cultural court type that each has their own architectural and/or decorative flair and visuals, the scenes differ more in geometry and configuration or the construction materials used. So there may be more windows and ample light, or a fireplace castings its warm light into your court.

The western European inspired courts, with stone and plastered walls.

The Mediterranean courts, drawing inspiration from the Roman past as well as the melding of surrounding cultures.

The Middle Eastern courts, drawn on from architecture found in Arabia to Al-Andalus.

The courts of India, greatly varying interiors.​

Grandeur variants was a further change we added later in the development cycle, which helps give a little extra flavor to the progress of your court's grandeur. Lower court grandeur has less fancy details and furniture extras in the court than the higher level which sports more of them. The surfaces of the room have also been made to look more worn and less taken care of at a lower grandeur level, compared to the high grandeur which look their grandest.


The Pomeranian kings court has seen better days, its painted plastered walls worn and peeling, the floor tiling tired, scraped and just slightly dirty.
Little decorations or extra furniture have been afforded the kings halls.


After much investment in upping the level of grandeur, the court's floors are fresh and polished, extra candles and seats added to the court, and a long finely woven rug lines the path up to the throne.​


And with that we’ve come the full way from inception all the way to the finished scenes. We’ve been continuously tweaking and polishing stuff like camera angles, lighting and textures, and we do hope this is a great foundation for a feature that we can grow over time. So a big thanks from the court and environment team for checking into this Dev Diary, which will be the last one of the year, but fret not! We will still be bringing you weekly teasers all the way through December to the start of next year. These teasers will be smaller in scale and focus on some minor features and things we still want to show off, so keep your eyes out for it next week.

The Steam Autumn Sale is here! 🍂
Up to -20% on #CK3, your chance to gift your rival a nice mushroom 🍄😏
► Buy Crusader Kings III

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158310/Crusader_Kings_III/

Hello and welcome to another development diary for Crusader Kings 3: Royal Court!

Today I am here to talk a bit more about one of the more special inspiration types, the Adventurer.
... and also something you might be interested in, at the bottom of the Dev Diary 👀

► Read our Dev Diary #83 - Adventurers & Royal Court News

💡 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 mentioned in an earlier development diary inspiration will strike characters at various times and will mean that they have an artifact or a type of artifact that they want to make for someone who is willing to fund their work.



The adventurer is a somewhat unique type of inspiration in that it is much less clear what this person will present to you in the end. Instead this is a character who knows that they want to undertake a journey to explore and look for an interesting thing for you and your court.


[Screenshot of an inspired person being hired by the player]

How far away a region that an adventurer will want to target with their expedition is mainly dependent on their skill and generally the adventurer already knows where they want to head when they appear to seek your patronage. A highly skilled adventurer might leave the choice of destination up to you.

Regardless of what destination an adventurer will aspire to travel to they will ask you what type of thing they should be looking for. You can let them decide for themselves as their adventure unfolds or you can ask them for a general category of object from the get go (see below).
Depending on the adventurer skill you may even be able to ask them to look for something unique, which will make them actively search for one of the unique historical artifacts that exist in the game. Nothing is entirely certain though, and even an adventurer of low skill might run into something interesting if you tell them to keep an eye open for anything interesting, it is just less likely than asking someone with higher skill to do so.


[Screenshot of an inspired person headed for Asia Minor, asking what type of artifact to look out for]

The above are the most common choices, animal trophies, artwork or trinkets are all potential court artifacts that the adventurer can go looking for.
When given free reins you may also end up with a piece of armor, or a weapon from that region (with a visual appearance and local technique to match). There is also a small chance that an adventurer who is told to trust their own instincts could return with something more rare and unique.


[Screenshot of an adventurer who has run into a crocodile in a county along the Nile]

As an adventurer sets out on a hunt for an artifact to please his employer he or she will send occasional updates to you. Apart from letting you know what happened in the various places the adventurer visited, these events will let you guide them further, potentially impacting the quality of what they bring you home in the end or the length of their journey.


[Screenshot of an adventurer complaining about an Irish marsh]

The adventurer character will move around in the region their expedition has targeted, and events as well as their in-game location will reflect what barony they are currently in.


[Screenshot of an adventurer who has gotten lost]

Sometimes things don’t go as expected. Getting lost is not all bad though, as it might mean reaching a region that was otherwise too far away from where they started.


[Screenshot of an adventurer who has run into bandits]

Travelling abroad is always a risk, even for a seasoned adventurer.


[Screenshot of an adventurer who is discovered as never having left the home town of his employer, instead wasting the money on food and alcohol]

Even the most promising explorers can sometimes turn out to be charlatans (or just be plagued by the stress of the expectations placed upon them).


[Screenshot of a letter from an adventurer in Asia Minor]

Some updates are just short letters and the odd trinket.


[Screenshot of an adventurer returning from the Netherlands with the hide of a defeated Bear]

Eventually the adventurer will return and present you with their find. Depending on the goal you gave them this might be anything from a trophy made from a rare animal to a unique artifact.




[Screenshot of the ark of the Covenant, resting in an Indian court]

Unique artifacts are rarer things that don’t correspond to any of the existing non-adventurer inspirations. They can be relics like one of the swords of Mohammed (a court artifact to be displayed rather than something to fight your enemies with), they can also be great diamonds, or a weapon or crown once wielded by a known king of the past.

As we mentioned in a previous diary, a unique or historical artifact is not always necessarily what it is claimed to be. As these artifacts are accepted as genuine by your contemporaries they do however make a certain impression on them, reflected in the artifact effects. In terms of rarity a much larger number of these unique artifacts will be rated higher than other artifacts you would run into in the game.

Around 50 such artifacts can come to be found in the game, some of which might also exist in a court at start depending on the start date. Should these be lost at any point adventurers will be eligible to discover them again in their travels. What artifact is found during an adventurer depends on their skill as well as their destination, you won’t find Quernbiter on a journey in India (and also not unless you’ve played past a certain year).


[Screenshot of an adventurer returning with an enormous diamond]

Since adventurer inspirations are relatively more rare than other inspired characters we have also tried to balance the effects of unique artifacts in a way as to make them worthwhile even if they are meant to clearly not be supernatural.



This year has not been without news of ALL sorts and we do our best to be the first to give you all your Crusader Kings news!

This time is no exception and we are glad to announce without any further ado, that Royal Court will be released February 8th, 2022!

This means your throne room will be the center of your kingdom - like it should be.
Become a master of languages, founder of cultures, collector of relics, and more on your own path to become the greatest ruler of all time!
Witness the features you have been expecting and even some you didn’t know you wanted.

Feel free to check out our trailer

Hello and welcome to another Dev Diary!

We talked about the Court Types system last week, and continuing on that, this week we’ll showcase the different types of content you might experience depending on your chosen court type!

► Read our Dev Diary #82 - Court Type Content

💡 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




This week we’ll showcase the different types of content you might experience depending on your chosen court type.


[image showing a petition court event about an offensive monument; more common in diplomatic or administrative courts]


[image showing a petition court event about funding a cadastre; more common in administrative courts]

If your court is known as a place of learning, then you can expect events concerning scholarly matters to be more common. If it’s a place famed for its administrative nature, then events related to that will be more frequent.

These “court event weighings” don’t eliminate events from the pool, they just alter their “weights.” It’s not just petition events that are affected either, but the court events too.


[image showing court event about reselling a neighbouring country’s fashion; more common in diplomatic courts]

And if you think that the events are limited to the court room alone, nay nay. We’ve added court type weighted events outside of court as well. Nothing is sacred, nowhere is safe.


[image of event where an academic disagreement is happening; more common in scholarly courts]

Likewise, some new content is based off of your grandeur level and even your amenities. For instance, if your lodgings are low enough that you’re struggling to house everyone, that does give a _rather_ convenient excuse to evict guests and other scroungers from a cramped castle.


[order mass eviction decision]


[order mass eviction event]

On the inverse side of things, having so many rooms that you don’t know what to do with them gives a bit of uhhh… space for experimentation.


[exoticise a grand hall decision]

Redecorating in the style of a glamorous court is a bit on the nose, but not a bad way to crank up your own court’s grandeur.


[exoticise a grand hall event]

Of course, for the _rustic_ look, you could redecorate after a less-than-fashionable court...


[exoticise a grand hall event, less grand court tooltip]

And, to round off, rulers whose courts lack grandeur that are willing to hold their nose a little can even burn some of their remaining dignity in exchange for skilled staff, rounding out their courts with experience even without pedigree.


[scraping the barrel event]

Hello there, and welcome to the eighty-first CK3 Dev Diary!

Today we are going to look at the experience of admiring your Royal Court, one of the paid features of the Expansion with the same name.

Most of the actual mechanics of the expansion should already be familiar to you if you have read previous Dev Diaries. I will refer back to these Dev Diaries where appropriate, so you can see this as a bit of a summary of what it means to preside over your own Royal Court.

That being said, we are going to talk a bit about Court Types, a minor feature for your Royal Court.

► Read our Dev Diary #81 - A tour of your Royal Court (Interface)

💡 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




When you reach the rank of King or Emperor as a Feudal or Clan Ruler, you have laid the foundation for your Royal Court. You can now go to it via a button in the main interface.

This button highlights if there is something interesting to do in your Royal Court at this moment, such as if you have new Court Artifacts.


Button to open your Royal Court, with a notification


You can also view anyone else’s Royal Court via a button next to their Character.


Button to open someone else's Royal Court


Your Royal Court is split into three segments: Throne Room, Court Grandeur, and Court Artifacts

When you enter your Royal Court, you end up in your Throne Room.


Throne Room view of Royal Court


Here you can see various petitioners or other goings-on in your Court, and you can choose to interact with them. These types of events are described in Dev Diary 75. If any Inspired Characters are present or have projects in progress, they are also shown here, on the left side of the screen.


Interacting with a Court Event


If there is not enough going on here, you can also choose to Hold Court, inviting Courtiers and Vassals across the Realm to grovel before you (which was shown in Dev Diary 72).


First step of Holding Court


A petitioner approaches while holding Court


If this is your Liege’s Court, you can even approach them to hear your reasonable requests, as seen in Dev Diary 74.


Button to Petition your Liege in your Liege's Court


Moving on to the second part of your Royal Court, which is an overview of your Court Grandeur. How much you have, various factors affecting it, and so on.

Grandeur was explained a while ago, in Dev Diary 61. Basically, it is a measure of how well known your Court is, and each Level gives you further benefits.

Your current Grandeur, Grandeur Baseline, and unlocked Grandeur Levels are shown on the large bar in the center.

In the image below, we can see we are gaining Grandeur every month due to being below our Baseline.



Our current Level is 4: while we do not have enough Grandeur to maintain this Level, we had unlocked it before, and it will thus stay unlocked for 6 months, regardless how much Grandeur we have.


Grandeur Level staying unlocked for 6 months


We can also see that our expected Grandeur Level is 7, which we are nowhere near fulfilling.


Expected Grandeur Level is Level 7


Grandeur is also reflected in other ways. If you have high Grandeur, the UI looks more luxurious, and new (non-Artifact) furniture appears in your court.


Your Royal Court at Level 0


Your Royal Court at Level 10


A large source of Grandeur is which Amenities are available to your Courtiers and visitors to your court. Providing excellent Amenities is sure to make your name well known across the world.


An overview of your Amenities


Popup graphic when you change your Amenities


There are two other factors affecting Grandeur, Court Language and Court Types. Court Language was already explained in Dev Diary 78, so let’s talk about Court Types.

With Court Types, you can choose which kind of Royal Court you want to foster. Perhaps one where martial prowess is admired, or where there is a whisper around every corner and a lover behind every curtain.

You always have the choice between two Court Types, based on the Ethos of your Culture, and changing it costs Prestige. If your Culture changes, you can still keep your old Court Type.

The type of Royal Court affects two things: what you get from your Grandeur Level, and what your Courtiers get from being part of the Court.

While some Grandeur Levels you reach are always the same regardless of your Court Type, some change somewhat. So, in a Diplomatic Court, Grandeur Level 4 may see you gaining less Tyranny, while in a Warlike Court, you may gain more Levies.


Changing your Court Type

As for Courtiers, each Courtier who stays at an especially Grand Royal Court for a certain period of time (5 years) will gain a special Courtier Trait based on the Court Type


Court Trait Icons


Each Trait of this type has two different levels. If your Court is at Grandeur Level 5, Courtiers get the first level, while the second level will appear at Grandeur Level 8. The second level comes with extra bonuses and can be especially useful for those you plan to be your Vassals.


Effects of the two levels of the Warlike Courtier Trait


Last but certainly not least, are the Court Artifacts. We showed a few of them off in Dev Diary 69.

In short, Court Artifacts are a special type of Artifacts. These are large furniture and other decorative items you display inside your Royal Court. This makes them distinct from your Inventory Artifacts described in last week's Dev Diary as you are not hauling them around everywhere.

When entering this part of the Royal Court, you can see all spots where you can place Court Artifacts


A view of all slots for Court Artifacts


Just like Inventory Artifacts, they give you a bonus if they are actively on display in your Royal Court. The primary purpose of Court Artifacts is to increase your Court Grandeur, but some have additional effects.


Zygmunt's Goblet in your Royal Court, and its tooltip


For most Court Artifacts, there is more than one slot to place them. Perhaps that tapestry would look better on that other wall?

Animated gif of considering different placements for your Banner in your Royal Court


That is all for this week, thank you for reading!

Greetings!

Let’s talk about artifacts and the systems surrounding it.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy some neat new features from the team and we can't wait to hear your thoughts and feedback!

► Read our Dev Diary #80 - Is That a Dagger in Your Pocket…?

💡 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




Artifacts can be divided into two categories, inventory and court, which is also where the items are stored. This dev diary will focus on the former one, so the inventory.

Feast thine eyes on the inventory screen! Instead of putting all of the goodies into a big pile, we’ve made an inventory window showing what’s currently equipped and how many of each category you can “wear”.


[image of inventory screen]

Equipable artifacts fall into the following categories; crown, regalia, weapon, armor, and lastly, trinkets. Most of these categories speak for themselves but trinkets, so what are they you may ask? The answer is a myriad of things; they can be brooches, dried flowers, even a worm on a string.

You can also sort after these categories, making it easy to find what you’re looking for when you want to equip, repair, or just browse your inventory.


[image of inventory screen: artifact section]


In the Artifact Details, you can read the artifact’s history, as well as see what people are claimants. Watch out - some of these people may be looking to steal the artifact away from you…


[image showing artifact details: history tab]

Of course, it goes both ways! Did your stupid brother inherit the family heirloom? You can duel, declare war, or steal it — as long as you have a claim.



[image showing artifact details: claimants tab]

Artifacts wear down when on your person versus when they are on display in the court. So keep that in mind as it can be costly in the long run to equip everything for the bonuses if you're not making full use of them.

Since the Antiquarian is such a vital figure in maintaining and making full use of your artifacts, there’s a shortcut to recruiting or just looking at who has that position in your court.


[image showing the Antiquarian court position info]

As shown in the image, the Antiquarian unlocks the ability to Reforge and Repair, as well as Commissioning Artifacts.


[image showing the Reforge Artifact interaction]

Inspirations are fickle like creativity, so if you have the gold and you want something commissioned, you can get in touch with local artisans through the Commission Artifact decision.

An additional benefit of commissioning an artifact is that you get to decide what’s being made.


[image showing the commission artifact decision; artifact selection]

Now you might wonder, “why would I ever subject myself to the whims and possible long time for a person to become inspired if I can just go to the local artisans and get what I want?”
You see, even if inspirations appear as fickle as love during springtime, it’s that little extra spice — a creator’s passion — that permeates through the final product. It’s that warm feeling of love for the craft that the beholder can feel just by looking at it, it’s something that’s not always present in a commissioned piece.

Ah, my apologies, I appeared to have been carried away there for a brief moment by my muse.

What I meant to say is that in gameplay terms, that means that inspired people can create artifacts of higher quality while the commission artisans will do the bare minimum and therefore be of the lowest quality.


[image showing the inspiration progress]

Whether a passion project or not, creating something takes time. We ask for your understanding and hope that you continue to enjoy Crusader Kings 3!

This Dev Diary was ghostwritten by the mysterious CC.

Hello everyone,

This year has been a long and interesting one, to be certain, but we are here all together to make sure that our community gets the product that we have all been waiting for and deserve. Earlier this year, we informed you all that we were working hard to make sure that Royal Court was up to our standards.

Royal Court is not only the first expansion for CK3, but it will also propose a set of features entirely new to the CK series, including cultural evolution and language. It is very much breaking new ground, and as such, we are experimenting at every turn.

With that in mind we are not, at the moment, entirely satisfied with Royal Court's progress, especially regarding its stability. There are a number of bugs we really need to iron out, and are taking more time to make sure it is in line with the standards you would expect from us.
We also understand the frustration that delays cause, but we would like to make sure we are always as forthcoming as possible and that you hear the news directly from us. It’s a tricky balance between sentiments like “It will release whenever we finish making sure it is ready” and things like giving exact timelines only to make necessary but upsetting changes to that timeline when we do actually need time to review and make those changes.

That being said, you can look forward to news about the 2022 release date Soon™!

In the meantime, you can catch up on all the previous points in our Royal Court FAQ!

All of our team is working hard to follow their projects through to completion and making sure that all the tasks that they started are fully realized and supported. This means they are going to keep up their great work to make sure that Royal Court is the success that both their efforts and your expectations deserve.

We are super grateful for all the dedication and passion you have shown for Crusader Kings III leading up to this point. Your thoughts and feedback on the systems, features, and integration of Royal Court have led to some interesting changes and alterations that we may or may not have otherwise considered!

So thank you everyone for your time and constructive feedback.
We appreciate your understanding and patience.

Cheers,

[Official Thread on the forums]

Greetings!

We’ve talked plenty about cultures already at this point, but I wanted to give you a brief update on what we’ve done since the initial reveal of the culture rework.
Since then, we’ve taken some time to add additional functionality based on your feedback!

► Read our Dev Diary #79 - An Update on Cultures

💡 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




Greetings!

We’ve talked plenty about cultures already at this point, but I wanted to give you a brief update on what we’ve done since the initial reveal of the culture rework. Since then, we’ve taken some time to add additional functionality based on your feedback!

Previously, you could only add new traditions to a culture to fill out any empty tradition slots you may have. If you wanted to change anything regarding your culture, you would have to create a new one. Which begs the question. What if I want to keep the culture I already have? Or why can I not replace that one tradition to make my culture perfect? Fret not. The cultural head has gained the ability to change, or ‘reform’ if you will, their culture in order to change it without the need to create a new culture. The cultural head cannot replace everything mind you, but may change the ethos, the martial custom, and any tradition. If you want to change any of the remaining pillars you’ll have to create a new culture, either by diverging or forming a hybrid. Do note that you need to own the Royal Court expansion to reform your culture, similar to creating a culture. Even without the DLC, you can always add new traditions to fill out any empty slots.

Reasoning for what you are able to change this way is twofold. First, changing heritage or language for an existing culture felt a bit off. While a language in reality does evolve over time, that is something we don’t really represent in the game, which makes it weird to simply “replace” a language. And you can’t really change your heritage in the same vein as, say, a tradition. Secondly, we wanted to make sure that you still have a valid reason to create a divergent culture. The two approaches are slightly similar in functionality, but it is important that both reforming and diverging a culture serves different purposes and that the distinction between the two is clear.


[Image showing the options to reform or diverge a culture]​

The major difference is, as mentioned above, that reforming only allows you to change certain aspects about a culture, while diverging allows for additional possibilities. A second significant difference is the cost. Replacing a pillar will cost you prestige. The ethos in particular includes a rather hefty prestige cost that should make it rather difficult to repeatedly change it over the course of a campaign. You are, however, free to pick any ethos, regardless of circumstances.


[Image of the ethos replacement window]​

Traditions will also be more expensive to replace. Instead of just a flat increase, replacing a tradition increases the prestige cost by 50%. The cost penalty will therefore be relative to how well your culture matches any given tradition, making the additional cost more harsh for already expensive (and less compatible) traditions.


[Image showing the prestige cost for the Agrarian tradition when replacing a tradition]​

These additional costs will make reforming or diverging your culture easier or more difficult depending on your situation. Attempting to diverge from a large and unified culture, such as Greek when playing as the Byzantine emperor, will be rather expensive and the less viable option. Especially if you only want to change a tradition or two. Reforming your culture will be cheaper, allowing you to more easily tweak your culture over time.

If you are playing as the cultural head of a widely spread culture, such as Andalusian, diverging might instead be your preferred solution. Diverging from a culture that is spread out across multiple realms is significantly cheaper, allowing you to instead spend the prestige on replacing additional traditions or save it for something else entirely. Changing pillars is, for example, free when diverging, since you are forced to change at least one pillar in order to be able to create your new culture.

Finally, you might have noticed the hourglass in the above screenshots. This is the establishment rate. Whenever you add or replace a tradition, or change a pillar, it will take some time before the change is applied. The time required for a change to be fully adopted mainly depends on your culture’s size. Larger cultures will logically gravitate towards a slower establishment rate. The duration is also increased whenever you replace an existing tradition. As such, adding a completely new tradition to your culture is not only cheaper, but it will go faster as well. This is important because you may only have one cultural change pending at any given time. If you replace a tradition with something else, you will have to wait until that tradition has been fully adopted before you can change your culture again. Diverging, on the other hand, still allows you to do sweeping changes and they take effect immediately as you create a new culture.


[Image of the establishment rate tooltip]​

That about sums up all of the additional changes we’ve done. In short, the ambition here is to allow you to shape your culture more freely in the way you want, without having to always resort to doing something that might feel a bit heavy handed. On a final note, I’d like to thank you for providing us with feedback and voicing your opinions! Giving valid and constructive criticism does, at times, pay off.