Greetings!

We’re all back, gathered from the holidays, and ready to set sail for 2023! Actually, most of us have been back for a few weeks by this point, working away on this year's big release, but we're not going to be talking about that just yet. That's not to say we're not going to in the future, but until we are ready to, we want to give you something to dig your teeth into as a community. This is the first of a small series of Dev Diaries about some more minor things, teasers, and today, about a brand-new community initiative!

But first, here’s a small teaser of something coming in the expansion:




► Read more about Dev Diary #113 on our forums!



Later this year, after we’ve released the next big expansion and before we start working on the next large project, we’ll have a period where we have the time and opportunity to work on an event pack. For the last event pack we chose ‘friends and foes’ as the core theme, as it was something practically everyone in the team felt strongly about, and something that needed more content in the game. Since then, we’ve had so many ideas for future event packs, both from within the team and outside, and this time it’s harder to choose…

Therefore we’d like to invite all of you to help us decide which theme to pick! We have three themes that we’ve curated, which means a few things; each theme has designers on the team that are passionate about them, and we know roughly what free feature we’d like to add to the update that will accompany the event pack: generally we'll be aiming for something with a similar size and impact as Friends & Foes' Memories system, which heavily ties into the events we're making but is relevant across the game as a whole.

We don’t have final names for the event packs yet, but as we enjoy alliteration here’s what we’re calling them and a very brief description of each:

Wards & Wardens - Anything childhood-related, with themes such as: playing as a child, being a guardian, handling children in court, and so on. A deep dive into what being a child in the Middle Ages was actually like, and what guardianship meant in practical terms.

Love & Lust - An exploration of more intimate relationships, with themes such as: expanded seduction, romance, married life, and so on. This would be a great time to allow lovers and spouses to take on a larger role in the game.

Villains & Vagabonds - Events and content around Dread and Tyranny, exploring what it means to be dreaded, leveraging your fearsome reputation, making dread more visible, and the consequences and opportunities of being a tyrant. It’d also be interesting to explore the other side of the coin from Dread - fairness, and honor.

Even though this event pack is something we’ll work on later this year, it’s good to get your input now - this way we can start working on it without delay as soon as the next big expansion is out! As we have a lot of talented event-crafters on the design team, we feel quite confident that we can adapt to whatever theme you, as a community, choose.

If this turns out to be a popular activity, it is possible that we will do it again in the future! The themes that do not get chosen this time will likely make a comeback, alongside some new challengers.

The poll to vote is located in a separate forum thread here. Voting will begin today and you will have until January 27, 8am CET to discuss the different themes and cast your vote. We’re looking forward to seeing which theme you like the most!

A minor Update, 1.8.1, is now live.

The main improvements are:
✔️Tooltips close as expected
✔️Height maps render correctly
✔️Heresies no longer forced on player's character
✔️Truth is Relative perk works as intended
✔️Localization in order

See the full Changelog on the forums.

Greetings!

The wintery season is upon us, and soon most of us will be joining our friends & family (or friends & foes?) for the holidays - this is an excellent time to reflect on the year that has gone by, and look at all that we’ve done. I also wish to leave you with a small teaser of things to come (nothing major though, as mentioned before that communication will begin sometime in Q1 next year!)

► Read more about Dev Diary #112 on our forums!



Early in the year, we released Royal Court, the first major expansion for CK3. With kings squabbling over who has the grandest court, impressive artifacts being crafted and displayed, court position holders scheming, and cultures diverging, hybridizing, and shifting - to name only a few things that were in the update - it’s safe to say that the game got a shakeup with lots of new things to do. We also drew a lot of good learnings from it, both from the process (which was undoubtedly troubled, seeing the state of the world at the time) and the reception. Good lessons that we’ll bring with us in the future.

The Fate of Iberia followed and breathed new life into the Iberian peninsula. With content such as bonds of friendship stronger than iron, titles changing hands over a game of chess, and the revival of lost faiths (if you’re observant enough…) The Struggle, a central mechanical core surrounded by flavor, struck a balance that was enjoyed by many - a winning formula that we’re more than likely to follow in the future.

Friends & Foes was an experiment that played to the strengths of the game - by adding dramatic content, and proved how it’s always a nice thing to have more of it! Not only did it seem to be an appreciated format, but it was very motivating for us to make. For more news on this, stay tuned early next year…

And to round the year off we released the Robe update, which focused on adding graphical variety and fixing issues. It revamped the bookmark screen, added a full set of art for tenets, and made custom rulers saveable, in addition to balance and AI fixes. We will always strive to make sure the game is in a good, healthy state.

---

Now, some of you know the above already, and want to see something new! As we won’t be back with Dev Diaries for a while (they’ll start back up sometime in January) I want to leave you with something that can be discussed for a while. We’ve seen a lot of discussions regarding Nicknames, or rather the lack of them, and have taken your feedback to heart!

In an upcoming update, we’ll be adding in a new system for gaining nicknames passively, not too unlike the system in CK2, but vastly improved (in CK2, it was just a highly obfuscated system with little-to-no fanfare at all). These nicknames can be earned at any point during the game, and will reflect your character’s status as well as they can. They can be bad or good, with most (if not all) being overwritable by more prestigious nicknames should you do something extraordinary (such as uniting the Spanish Thrones, or Uniting Africa, etc). Gaining a nickname comes with a small boon or penalty to prestige and opinion, just enough to make it matter.


A positive nickname, celebrated by a good friend.


A negative nickname, gained while in prison, with the news delivered by someone who’s not exactly a fan of yours.

This system focuses on nicknames that aren’t particularly active, it won’t give you ‘the Conqueror’ for example. It will, however, pick one of 200+ appropriate passive nicknames. These are in part existing nicknames in the database that didn’t exist outside of historical characters (‘the Fat’, ‘the Poet’, ‘the Brave’, ‘the Tyrant’, etc.), nicknames adopted from CK2 (‘the Zealot’, ‘the Lucky’, ‘the Resilient’, ‘the Strange’, etc.), historical nicknames that were never used before (‘the Desired’, ‘the Idle’, ‘the Wrathful’, ‘Longsword’, etc.), and community suggestions (‘the Navigator’, ‘the Berserker’, etc.). All of these nicknames have triggers so that they only appear where logical, for example; you can only gain ‘the Tyrant’ if you have a certain amount of tyranny opinion, and you can only gain ‘the Fat’ if your character is of the heavier persuasion. A lot of these also take your prestige or piety levels into account, so having a high prestige level can ‘protect’ you from gaining poor nicknames. There’s also a game rule that controls the frequency.


Some examples of nicknames you can get through this system.

We aspire to keep most nicknames in line with history, or what would be plausible. That said, feel free to suggest more nicknames! Who knows, perhaps you’ll suggest something that’ll make it in… just remember that they shouldn’t be too ‘active’, so no ‘the Conqueror’ or ‘the Destroyer’.

To make nicknames a bit more… spicy than they are, we’ve also added a small new feature that allows you to see what a nickname actually means! Charles the Bald, for example, wasn’t without hair but rather without a suitable crown for most of his life. By hovering over nicknames, you can now see an explanation.


Charles wasn’t so bald after all, and now you know why.


Quite self-explanatory, but still informative.

Finally, a word from our community manager Pariah about a QnA session we will be having with some of the devs on our Discord server:

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

As the holiday season approaches, we will also be holding a QnA session where you can feel free to ask any burning questions or just anything on your mind about the game. While we can’t give away any company secrets or tell you exactly what we are working on next, it will be a chance to sit down and discuss things with members from most if not all disciplines of the game!

The QnA session will be taking place on our Discord server on Tuesday December 13 from 16:00 - 18:00 CET, which is a terrific place to help supplement these Forums. The Discord is filled with tons of your fellow Crusader Kings community and always a good place to find knowledge and conversation. If you are not already part of our terrific Discord family and would like to get in ahead of the QnA, you can find a link HERE!

That’s it for this year - we’ll see you in 2023! Have a God Jul and a Gott Nytt År as we say here in the frigid north!

Hello everyone!

I’m Henrik – nice to e-meet you – I’m a crazy plant person and producer at Paradox Interactive. I'm here to let you know that we have a release coming up for you today:

1.8.0 “ROBE” FREE UPDATE

The update should be rolled out to a store near you some time during the day. I promise to keep this short because I understand you’re here for the changelog. As my dear colleague, and ambassador of horchata, Hugo presented last week, we’ve taken some time to put together an update that, apart from a couple of new features, focuses a fair bit on improved stability and bug fixes. We hope you are as excited as we are to continue the endeavours as rulers of lands and kingdoms (hopefully) both beautiful and prosperous.

But enough me chit-chatting – to the details!

► Read more about this update on our forums!

• You can now save and load Custom Rulers! Create templates you can easily re-use everywhere on the world map. All the attributes besides the Dynasty and the Coat of Arms are saved.
  
• Completely reworked the Bookmark Screen; its now reorganized to allow more room for bookmarks, and they are now sorted by the year they belong to (867 and 1066). This comes with new and improved art for elements and buttons, as well as showing which DLC you have active.
  
• Added new and unique illustrations for every Tenet currently in the game!
  
• Added 17 new Custom Faith icons for use when creating new faiths, ranging from Ankhs and Boromian Circles to Doves and Chi Rhos!

• Added support for Vulkan rendering on Macintosh hardware

• Disinheriting is now free for children with a disputed heritage or known bastard. There is however a global opinion penalty which is always applied when taking the interaction
  
• Mozarabs can now use a strong hook to force/coerce the pope into binding with rome
  
• Updated the consequences for revoking hostile Holy order, it now adds Fervor to their Faith, and potentially a negative county modifier
  
• Literalism is legal for all faiths to adopt
  
• If the game rule "strict regional heresy" is activated, the Mozarab faith will only appear in Iberia and North Africa
  
• Added additional reward to forming the Kingdom of Aragon
  
• Rulers will no longer be deposed if they happen to inherit a tyranny war from a lower tier ruler
  
• Added gold cost to the "truly special board" in the board game event “A Stroke of Luck”
  
• Breaking away from Rome now requires you to be in poor standing with your HoF
  
• Properly set low obligations on Custom Rulers who are vassals of the HRE
  
• ‘A Beautiful Specimen’ will be only triggered for lovers and soulmates now; not powerful vassals
  
• Iberian Conciliation achievement is now classified as "Hard" instead of "Medium"
  
• Auto-fire the Court Chaplain if they are excommunicated, except if you are also excommunicated yourself
  
• Contracting Assistance is now scaled by army size.

• Fixed a case where a raiding unit could not find a path to go home in case when the capital was moved. In that case the unit will be disbanded
  
• The AI will not try convert children of a vassal with religious protection anymore
  
• The AI will marry young men to old women less often: the weight of alliances and the impact of age has been rebalanced
  
• The AI will now send fewer requests for chess challenges
  
• Blocked the AI from sending two interactions simultaneously, which could cause UI issues
  
• AI characters are a lot less likely to accept a war assistance contract against you if they are allied with you

• Fixed issue with change/revert buttons in interaction lists only being responsive on a small part of it
  
• Fixed so the Army Reorganization scroll area no longer scroll to the top when unit is moved
  
• The bookmark lands of Emir Yahya now match the actual in-game shape
  
  
• Holy orders no longer cause "Grant to..." button to disappear in the county capital
  
• Offer Guardianship notification and window now use the ‘Offer Guardianship’ title instead of ‘Send Proposal’
  
• Unselectable beneficiaries will now be shown in the list with a tooltip explaining why they cannot be selected
  
• Adultery events (adultery.2001 & adultery.2002) now have improved texts for duels
  
  
• You can now always open the list of potential agents, even if none will accept to join the scheme. This can be used to, for example, plan who to seduce or fabricate hooks against to further your interests.
  
• Vassal contract modification window now warns when current liege is not the rightful liege
  
• Activated Regnal numbers for Count-tier characters to avoid non immersive lineages
  
• The "Is imprisoned = no" condition for all court positions is now hidden
  
• Court positions no longer display requirements that are the opposite of what they seek
  
• Added a section for showing the DLCs that are installed and active. It can be found in the main menu and the bookmark area

• Fixed issue where players couldn't accept/decline artifact gifts
  
• Fixed issue with event learning_theology_special.1001 where doctrines from the same group wouldn't be removed before applying the new one
  
• Fixed German court grandeur tooltip for being above expected level
  
• Fixed issue where achievements would still be enabled after creating a custom ruler and not starting the game as them
  
• You no longer get "the Thief Slayer" nickname if you already have a positive nickname.
  
• Fixed issue where artifact repair cost would show wrong value in the repair window, now shows same value as in the repair button tooltip
  
• Fixed issue where ironman would reset when going into select any ruler
  
• Fixed issue where overwriting same ruler multiple times would block achievements to be enabled
  
• Bestow Royal Favor chancellor task is now canceled if the target vassal declares war on you
  
• Fixed an issues that would cause some hedonistic sins to be incorrectly categorized as virtues or vice versa
  
• Created missing localization for threatened_by_buildup_opinion
  
• Petitioning liege in Russian now uses correct localization macro
  
• Struggle messages will now only be shown for interlopers and involved characters
  
• Fixed chinese localization doing infinite recursion on localization macro
  
• Moved the locators for special buildings in Tenerife to spawn buildings on landmass rather than in the water
  
• We now properly communicate in advance that the Subjugation war is only available once per lifetime
  
• Notifications for struggle endings are no longer sent to every single player in the lobby, instead selecting those either involved in the struggle or within a certain proximity of the region.
  
• fp2_struggle.2021.a.a is no longer blatantly misleading
  
• The tooltip of Invite to Activity displays a proper explanation when none of them is available
  
• "Desires of the Flesh" now checks what world region you are in before selecting a faith for you to follow
  
• Properly handle Duchy and Kingdom Holy Wars within the Struggle
  
• Removed duplicated check that were done for characters joining some factions
  
• Holy Wars properly deactivated after the Detente ending for the relevant cultures
  
• Fixed namespace issues with fp2_Struggle.2024 (now martial_chivalry.4001)
  
• Explicitly say that a Faith or Culture needs to control 80% of the counties to get involved within the Iberian Struggle
  
• Fixed issue where FP2 3D assets were being overwritten by their generic counterparts.
  
• We now display the right cost for the "Invite to Activity interaction"; it used to be swapped
  
• Head of Faith titles can no longer be granted to vassals
  
• Prevent players from cloning their mercenary armies
  
• Fixed localization in invitation to lieges council letter for Spanish
  
• Character info is now hidden for the thief in fp2_struggle.2009
  
• Player now receives heresiarch trait when converting to Adoptionism
  
• The Found an Empire is now blocked for Involved and Interloper of the Iberian Struggle. The new condition is however only displayed for characters with an involved Faith or Culture, and living nearby
  
• Fixed parsing issues with fund_inspiration.2080
  
• Fixed an issue where multiplayer got out of sync when a player hot joined the session
  
• Offering Relief events no longer gives you an improved opinion towards yourself. With that fixed, it's still important to remember to love thy self, you're doing good, keep it up!
  
• Expanded acceptance criteria for christian bones, christian syncretists can now display christian bones in their court. Finally allowing Basque pagans to equip and enjoy christian bones.
  
• Added the word “been” to “I have riding” to result in “I have been riding” in fund_inspiration.6001

• Updated name of "Reconquista" cultural innovation to something more historically accurate
  
• Added the Sayyid trait to some characters from the Hammudid house who were missing it
  
• Added new outcomes to boardgames
  
• Fixed line breaks in select Chinese localization keys
  
• Aragonese now speak the Oc´Romance language
  
• Set Wanda as a daughter of Krak I as it should be in 867
  
• Tabletop Warriors now has a more natural reading description
  
• Fixed the dynasty reference for the Chinese Xue Dynasty
  
• Clarified the consequences of Dissolution faction
  
• Added new localization for creating a new faith that keeps the former pope as the new pope
  
• Refresh factions against liege after player character change
  
• Fate of Iberia: the Struggle Ending Achievements now have greater clarity as to what ending they refer to
  
• Zandaqa can now be rejected when pledging submission to a caliph

-HR (Not Human Resources)

Hello crusaders! I’m Hugo Cortell, game designer and horchata drinking aficionado at Paradox Thalassic, and today I am here to present everything new and exciting with the upcoming 1.8.0 “Robe” free update.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that this update is a wonderful blend of bug fixes, refinements, and brand-new features. Since this is a “Feature Highlight”, I’ll be keeping it short and sweet and focusing on the latter two, but worry not, there will still be highlights with commentary for notable changelog entries.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

► Read more about Dev Diary #111 on our forums!



The biggest thing you’ll notice when starting a new game with 1.8.0 will certainly be the new and shiny bookmark screen, which has been redesigned to more cleanly fit new scenarios.





Everyone loves a good image collage, right?

The new bookmark screen not only looks better but it is also more streamlined: for example, the scenario information box and the character information tab become a single togglable tab once you select a bookmark character, avoiding unnecessary clutter on the screen.



To top it off, alongside the new bookmark screen we have also updated the main menu to conveniently display all the downloadable content you own and easily access any that you may be missing out on. You’ll be able to find it on the bottom left corner of the main menu screen.




To complement the new bookmark screen, we’ve also added the ability to save and load custom characters! At long last, you can finally use for multiple playthroughs that one character that you’ve spent so much time detailing to perfection.

Saving and loading is done through buttons that you’ll find at the bottom left of the ruler designer.
Selecting load will bring up a list of all saved characters and allow you to conveniently preview your selected creation before loading them into the designer itself.




Additionally, saved rulers are stored as individual files in meaning that you will be able to easily share your magnificent creations & abominations with the rest of the CK3 community. I look forward to seeing a mix of gorgeous and cursed creatures in the forums once this release comes to be.

Yes, you heard right. Get ready for art galore because our artists have been hard at work making new illustrations for every single tenet in the game that was previously missing one.



We don’t want to spoil all of them here, so look forward to seeing them in-game for yourself when the update releases. The art team did a great job making these, especially considering how tenets can have very abstract concepts, which I am sure must have taken a lot of back-and-forths to get just right.

We’ve worked very hard to fix as many bugs as possible for this release. I hope our commitment to making a high-quality product will be made apparent when you see the size of the final changelog in an upcoming dev diary. As mentioned at the start of the post, I’ll be sharing some highlights with commentary on some of the more interesting entries.
Please note that the current titles may not match their name on the final changelog.

If you have a strong hook on the pope, you can now use it to skip the requirements for binding with Rome. Though the pope will not like that.


It goes without saying that if you fulfill all requirements, but also have a hook, it will pick the regular outcome before the coercion one.

Pledging submission to a caliph will send out an actual in-game letter rather than instantly consulting the AI upon selecting the option. If you enjoy playing as a Caliph in multiplayer mode, look forward to deciding the fate of the Zandaqa players for yourself.





Alright, that is everything I’ve got to show for now. I hope that we’ve managed to excite you for what’s coming in the immediate future for Crusader Kings. Let us know your thoughts below!

Greetings!

A few weeks ago we shared our floor plan for the future, and this week I’d like to give you some tidbits from the studio itself. I will tell you a bit about the history of our studio and what we are about - interlaced with random quotes from the team collected throughout the year (courtesy of Wokeg - I think they paint a pretty accurate picture of the minds in our midst).
So if you are eagerly awaiting updates on what’s coming for the actual game, I’m afraid you will have to wait a little longer.

► Read more about Dev Diary #110 on our forums!



Firstly though, a brief introduction might be in order since I am very much a ‘behind the scenes’ kind of character (and you will rarely catch me writing diaries):
I was the Lead Producer on Crusader Kings III (until after its release in 2020). Having then spent some time with the space faring folks over in the Stellaris studio, I rejoined the CK3 team at the start of this year to create Studio Black - home of Crusader Kings - as the Studio Manager. And here we are.


Random quotes, part 1


The story of Paradox Development Studio goes back more than a quarter of a century - a pretty incredible feat in itself and a testament to the sheer talent, passion and motivation of the people working here. As we’ve added more games and grown the studio over the years, there came a point where we wanted to get the studio closer to to our games again, and at the end of 2020 PDS was divided into three sub-studios: Green (Stellaris), Gold (Hearts of Iron) and Red (Crusader Kings & Victoria). At this point, our friends at Europa Universalis had already set sail to warmer latitudes and set up Tinto in Spain.

As Victoria III was ramping up their efforts (and a big shout-out and CONGRATULATIONS is in order - the release is happening TODAY ːsteamhappyː), it was time to build a castle of our own, hence studio Black was born on February 14th (I’m sure you can figure out why I chose this date).


Random quotes, part 2


Having the right people in the right place is of course paramount to any kind of development - in our case, that means we rely on our Programmers, Designers, Artists, QA Testers and Producers to bring our game to life, with the help of central support from Audio, Engine Team, User Research, Marketing and many other departments.
Building a studio around an existing development team is quite a luxury - most often, you would start from scratch; with limited funding, resources and just a great dream (and hopefully a team) to carry you forward. In our case, it was rather the other way around (great game & team = check!), which means we can focus more on filling skill gaps and making sure we have a good support structure in place.


Random quotes, part 3


You might think that with the roots firmly planted in the dynasty of PDS, we all share the same culture DNA? You’d be wrong. Something I discovered back in the day (moving from the EU4 team to the CK2 team at the time), was how some subtle, yet noticeable, parts of the team culture seemed to stem from a very central core. This theory was confirmed as I stepped away to the realm of Stellaris for a while; the essence of the project team culture was as firmly rooted around Jeff and other shared moments as CK ever was around… keeping it in the family.
However quirky and meme-friendly each game teams culture might be, there are also some very noticeable similarities that confirms what Paradox is very much about, when it boils down to it: Helpful, Curious & Nerdy (in that ‘Hey, I’m really into cross-stitching medieval tapestry, want to know more?’ kind of way).


Random quotes, part 4


So where are we headed as a studio, you might ask? Well, we are all here to keep the legacy of Crusader Kings alive and well. We have an amazing game at the earlier stage of its lifespan, and a team of highly creative and skilled people to help realize the incredible potential of CK3. I won’t pretend that 2 years of pandemic haven’t had an impact on our work, but we are truly committed to keep making releases for CK3 that we are proud of - and that we hope you will find hundreds (maybe thousands?) of hours of enjoyment from, for many years to come!


That’s it for today folks, next time we’ll have some more game specific updates for you all!


A part of our team, having a royal blast at this year's PDXCON!

Greetings!

A long time in the making, this diary is dedicated to plans, and what we have in store for CK3. From more present matters to musings and thoughts ranging into the far future. Crusader Kings is a unique game series, and one that has been close to my heart for a long time - the focus on characters as the driving force, emergent narratives, and player freedom make it truly stand out.

► Read our Dev Diary #109 - Floor Plan for the Future!



Ever since I took the reins of the project I’ve continued to follow the original vision, which some of you might remember from the very first Dev Diary: Character Focus, Player Freedom and Progression, Player Stories, and Approachability. As you can see, the points correspond fairly well with my initial sentiment, and I do not intend to deviate too far from these points - that said there are always things we can do better or differently within them, and I think that we could do even more to, for example, improve the cohesion of player stories or the sense of progression. I am a firm believer in that everything in the game should help you in making stories (while not necessarily being explicitly connected).

Internally we’ve always worked with the premise “Live the life of a Medieval Ruler”, which means that we want the game to be uniquely true to how life was during the period. We want to attribute more than just ‘death, suffering, and war’ to the era we portray. Highlighting things that you might not see elsewhere, such as family, or the challenges of rulership, is important to us. Going forward this will remain a priority, though it is important to note that we do exaggerate and romanticize a lot - it is a game after all!



As a project, we aspire to have a cadence of roughly four releases per year, not including post-release support in the form of patches or hotfixes. During this year we’ve released Royal Court, Fate of Iberia, Friends & Foes, and as mentioned previously we’re aiming to have a free update out before the year is over. We want to have a steady stream of new content, while also maintaining the game by acting on feedback. For next year, our ambition is to have somewhere around four updates (barring unforeseen circumstances).

Going even further (long-term) we have the ambition to shorten our cycles, so we can get more content and updates out. The project is (by Paradox Development Studio standards) still young, and has a long future ahead of it. There’s so much to do, and so many ideas still to explore. Though as I mentioned this is an ambition and not a promise - it might be complicated to get everything in place, but rest assured that we’re always evaluating what we can do to achieve this.

Of course, we’re also watching initiatives that other studios are driving, such as the Stellaris Custodian Initiative, with interest. While we’re not organized in a way where we could adopt a similar structure today, it’s something that’s worth investigating - again, this is a long-term thing, and it’s very possible that we would find another setup that works better for Crusader Kings.

For next year we want to do something similar to Royal Edition again, an Expansion Pass with a bundle of intriguing content. One drawback of the Royal Edition was the fact that the main beat, the Major Expansion, came later in the cycle. For the next one, we want to either start off the cycle with the Major Expansion, or make it obvious what the theme is going to be from the start. This should make it much clearer what you’re actually getting in the package as a whole. We’re also exploring what formats and formulas of expansions could make up a future Expansion Pass, as the ‘1 Expansion, 2 Flavor Pack’ formula is not set in stone.

In addition to this, we also aim to do experiments now and then. For this year, the experiment was Friends & Foes; a smaller content format that was born out of the minds of the team. We’re looking into a few different experiments for the future, which I can unfortunately not share right now. Though something we can share is that we’re looking into more community involvement.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s too early to reveal the theme. However, the next Expansion is leaning towards the roleplaying side of the game. Without revealing too much we’re focusing in large parts on reinforcing the connection between map and character. The theme is not one that has been the subject of an expansion in previous iterations of CK - to make things extra clear; we’re not doing trade, imperial/byzantine mechanics, nomads, or similar this time.

That said, I know that many of you are also hungry for more systemic expansions, and that’s understandable! Of course, the next Expansion isn’t devoid of systemic changes or mechanics just because it’s leaning heavily towards roleplaying. CK, like all GSGs, requires systemic content to remain true to what they are. There will be plenty of systems, both as part of the Expansion and the free update that comes along with it. For Flavor Packs we’re also going to aim to have systemic content as part of the formula - Fate of Iberia proved that a combination of flavor (events, clothes, illustrations, etc.) and a central systemic feature (the struggle) served to elevate the experience as a whole.

As of now, we have a team of designers that is unlike anything we’ve had before - it’s not only a large team, but they’re also highly skilled and competent. This, in part, is why we’ve chosen to do an Expansion focusing on the roleplaying side of things, and it’s also the reason why we had the capacity to do the Friends & Foes experiment.

My aspiration is to shift focus towards more systems-heavy expansions after the next one, and we’re gearing up the team to be able to do just that. I’m of the opinion that there must be balance, and as we’ll have had two roleplay-focused expansions in a row, by then it’ll be time for the scales to shift towards the systemic side. We’ve expanded our team of programmers significantly, so the future looks bright for those of you that crave new and exciting systemic content…

Now, there are a lot of areas that I want to explore in the future! Please note that anything I write or list here is not in any way chronological, and they’re not explicit promises. Great ideas come along at any moment, from any direction, and we want to stay flexible with our plans.

The current formats of Major Expansions, Flavor Packs, and Event Packs I believe let us cover every style of content we want to do, and we intend to keep these formats (while maybe tweaking the formulas a little bit here and there!).

Starting off with Flavor Packs; the regional focus is great and allows us to deep-dive into the history of a particular area - but as fun as it is to hit the books on a specific region, it’s possible that we’ll also be looking into non-regional Flavor Pack variants. Anything can be possible as long as there’s a central system where flavor can be woven in. That said, at least the next Flavor pack is likely to remain regional in nature.

A long-term goal is to revitalize and create diverse and varied gameplay throughout the map. Something we want to do is to explore regions outside of Europe, as both of our Flavor Packs so far have been within the region. We want to show how much fascinating history and intriguing gameplay can be found around the world. Examples with a lot of surprisingly deep history include regions such as Tibet, Persia, the Caucasus, and North Africa, to name only a few.

Of course, in due time we also want to explore regions within Europe that are very popular for players, some examples including Britain, France, and the West/East Slavic lands. It’s likely that we’ll alternate a bit, especially if someone on the team is extra passionate about a theme. Also one final thing; a lot of you are asking for a Byzantine Flavor Pack, but I know for a fact that the scope of a Flavor Pack wouldn’t sate your ravenous hunger for East Roman content… when we eventually get to them, it’d more than likely be as the part of a Major Expansion!

As for non-regional, there are some ideas floating around; further exploring governments such as the Tribal Government, or building flavorful systems around for example Epidemics (which is a system that would, foundationally, be free if/when we make it), etc. A benefit that this format would have is that we’d be able to make systems that don’t fit the larger theme of a Major Expansion, but that we still feel would be great for the game.

Just to reiterate; don’t take anything I say here as a statement that we’re doing one of these themes right now!

There are already years worth of ideas for what we could do for Expansions. I’ll go through a handful of the areas I’d like to explore in the future, focusing on some of the topics commonly seen around the community. Note that these are not necessarily standalone Expansion themes, some might be combined, others divided. While there are some themes that I think are more important than others, there’s really no saying what we’ll look at first or in what order.



Trade & Merchant Republics is something I hear a lot about - and it’s something that I really want to get to in time. However, I found the CK2 implementation in The Republic to be incredibly lackluster; in a game with thousands of interesting starts, it added only a handful more, and it didn’t actually have that much to do with trade. For CK3 my vision would be different - medieval rulers didn’t trade, per se, and noble rulers didn’t regularly barter resources with each other, so while that’s not a thing I’d want, there are a lot of interactions that could be added around trade and the people who did the trading. A system for CK3 would be character-driven, and there’s definitely an opportunity for new playstyles that aren’t as limited as the ones in CK2…

Imperial Mechanics, especially in relation to the Byzantine Empire, is another common topic. Empires are generally not very exciting, essentially having the same mechanics as a king does. I believe that there’s an opportunity not only for emperors, but to be part of an empire. In many cases, such as in Byzantium, the Abbasids, or even the HRE, being a part of the empire should be as interesting as ruling it. There are many ways of going about this, but ideally, I’d want to get a lot of differences in there - no two empires were ever really the same, after all.

Laws were another system that was lackluster at best in CK2. While they allowed a degree of customization and mechanical impact, the implementation was static and fairly uninspired. Conceptually laws were a huge part of being a ruler and being part of a realm, and while we do have vassal contracts (which I’d like to revise at some point, too) there’s room for more. For CK3, a law system would be deeply driven by characters, rather than confined to a static setup. Dynamism and evolution would be two keywords for the vision here.

Religion in CK3 took a great step up from previous iterations, but there’s always more we can do. There are a plethora of ideas floating around, and as religion was such a common part of everyone’s lives by this point in history, it’s hardly surprising. It’s hard to nail down exactly what I’d like to do here as there’s just so much, but CK3 is uniquely suited to simulate all the drama that happened between everyone involved within the sphere of faith, be they Pope, Grandmaster, or simply an influential ruler. There’s also a lot of potential around crusades, and all the happenings before, during, and after them. I’d also really like to get faith to play a larger part in the everyday lives of rulers, as it’s much too easy to ignore as it stands.

Nomads are just one part of the whole; the Steppe. This region is unique, and we’ve never done it real justice. In CK2 every ruler on the Steppe was a Genghis-in-the-making, with little focus beyond war. In reality, the Steppe was like an ocean - and the nomads were the only ones who had mastered it. I’d like to make the Steppe as a region stand out with mechanics of its own, and I’d like a large part of nomadic life to be about moving, focusing on the dynamism of the place and the people within.

The Late Game is another area that I’m very interested in expanding, as the game currently plays very similar across the entire timeline. Sure, there are some differences, primarily in how easy it is to rule, and how much you’re able to claim in wars, but the differences could be more fundamental. This is one of those topics where there are a million things we could do, but an ambition I have is that the game should stay interesting for longer than is currently the average play session (around 200 years or so). Looking at Eras and their effects on the game is one venue, so is taking a look at holdings, economy, and other fundamental components of the game.

I think it’s quite obvious that I eventually want to Expand the Map, to include the rest of the Old World. If we’d do it all at once or in segments is still up in the air, but regardless of what approach we take, it’s imperative that the area feels different to play in from the western half. While it’s obvious that the area would require a lot of unique art, I’d also want it to work differently from a mechanical standpoint - governments, faiths, etc. It’s an ambitious goal, but one I wish to tackle eventually.


An incredibly rough floor plan for the future.

Of course, there are also areas of the game that I want to revisit, rework, rebalance, or expand in general - it’s not all about expansions or flavor, existing systems, and core loops must be revisited now and then to keep the game in a good state. Of course, this would be done in free updates, either free-standing or as part of a bigger release. Here are some of the things that I’d like to get to within a reasonable timeline, some more important than others. This is not an exhaustive list.

Alliances are too binary as they stand, while it’s true that it’s easy to understand how they work, it also results in a lot of unwanted busywork when you have to fight in wars you’ve no interest in (or you have to take a big prestige hit…) - at the same time, it’s much too easy to get a lot of allies that, at a moments notice, are ready to drop everything in order to help in your wars. I’d like to see a pact-based system where you have to negotiate more, without making it annoying to find and get the alliances you need. You should, for example, never be fooled into a marriage hoping to get an offensive alliance, where it turns out you simply can’t. Exactly how/what we’d do is still in the works, but it’s high up on my list.

Clans do not feel unique enough, while they have some mechanics that simulate the sphere’s tendency for spectacular rises & falls, there’s more we can do to show the differences from Feudal. I’d like to explore what made Clan realms so different historically and draw upon that for a more flavorful set of differing mechanics. I definitely also want to make the Clan, as in the group of people, matter more in the government bearing its namesake.

Warfare is not and never will be a primary focus for CK3, that said it’s not as character-driven as it could be, outside of commander advantage and the occasional great knight. There’s also a real problem with delivering content (usually in the form of events) during times of war, as the player more often than not gets interrupted by something appearing in the middle of the screen while maneuvering units. I’d eventually like for us to be able to deliver content in a way that doesn’t interrupt warfare, and use that system to highlight characters and heroic acts (Battle of Agincourt, anyone?). I’d also like to rework the major annoyances of warfare, such as supply.

Modifier Stacking is becoming an issue in some places, especially for Men-at-Arms modifiers (primarily from buildings) and Building Cost Reduction modifiers. While some issues can be solved by tweaking numbers (we’ve for example reduced prestige sources in the past) others require a redesign/revisit of the underlying problem. For example, I’d like to take a long, hard look at MaA modifiers, seeing as the player can very easily destroy AI armies with little work. I’d like to not only rebalance the sources of MaA boons but potentially also create new options for fun management.

AI is an enigmatic beast, with aspects that are incredibly diverse. One of them is warfare AI, where Crusades stand out as an area in need of improvement - on one hand, historical crusades were incredibly disorganized, but on the other, we don’t want the player to feel like they’re hopeless endeavors. No matter what we decide to do, we’ll have to strike a balance - if the AI played perfectly optimally, crusades would steamroll everything, and I don’t want that. There are of course other aspects of the AI where I want to see improvements, such as the marriage AI, but we’ve at least made some good strides with the economical AI over the last few updates, so that’s not a priority. We eventually want personalities to shine through every aspect of the AI, and we have some plans for that, which will likely come in steps.

As I touched upon earlier, we’d like to invite you in the community to take part in some of the things we’re doing in the not-too-distant future - my guess would be within Q1 of next year (though still TBD). Without spoiling too much it’d have something to do with the content we’ll be making…

While not directly related to the game, an (at least if you ask me) incredibly cool initiative that we’ll be driving is to have more collaborations with historical media - this goes hand-in-hand with what I mentioned early on in this diary, regarding us wanting to show how medieval life actually was! This means that you’ll be seeing even more podcasts, videos, etc., about themes close to the game. Who knows, we might even get historians or professors to be guests or consult for our upcoming content.

For those of you playing on console there will be a post later this week, answering some of the questions you have.

That’s it for now! I invite you all to discuss what you see here - share your thoughts about the themes, ideas for what you’d like to see, suggestions on how things could be done, and so on!

Howdy all!

Today we are releasing a Minor Update to the game to help with stability and performance. While this is not a major Update and should not affect saved games, we always recommend that you make sure you have a fresh game ready to go with a new version.

► Discuss this update on our forums!



As stated, this is a relatively small Update, but also full of highly impactful changes reported by you in the Community! Here is the Changelog:

• Fix offer vassalization being slow if you had too many neighbors and vassals due to evaluating opinion too many times too slowly.
  
• Fix Out-Of-Sync issue
  
• Fix AI feud seduction targeting wrong spouse

As always, keep those reports coming and if you see anything unusual, please let us know HERE!

-SP

Greetings!

It’s been (almost) two weeks since the release of Friends & Foes, and the sheer amount of reactions and feedback to it and the accompanying Bastion Update has been fantastic to see! From the many emergent stories that have been posted around the Internet (one about a peasant crush ascending to the position of councilor and subsequently being murdered by a noble out of spite comes to mind) to the impressive screenshots of vast Mongol Empires and powerful AI realms - it’s great to see how many of you returned to the game and think that it got a breath of new life. In fact, despite the smaller size of this update, more of you came back to the game and ran a longer campaign than ever before!

► Read more about Dev Diary #108 on our forums!



Of course, if you’re experiencing any issues, pop over to the Bug Forums and report them: Link
As of the newly released 1.7.1, we’ve concluded the planned updates for this release, though if something significant appears, we’ll look into fixing it before the next update.

As for the future, we’re hard at work on upcoming content, and we’ve been for quite some time. Previously we’ve explained that we run our projects in parallel - what we’re working on in the Stockholm studio has been in the works since before Friends & Foes (but it’s bound to take some time yet, do not expect anything too soon). Our sister studio in Thalassic is also hard at work heading up the work on upcoming content and updates, this too in parallel with work in Stockholm. While we can say that Friends & Foes was the last paid content of the year, we’re hoping to have another smaller free update out before the year is over (no ETA for now). Additional clues about what we’re working on might appear over the next few months…

A change we want to make going forward is to be more transparent with our Dev Diary schedule. We don’t want to post so-called ‘filler’ Dev Diaries, and with the cycles being longer between updates we instead want to use this time for other kinds of activities with the community. For the sake of full transparency, for smaller updates (such as free patches or event packs) we’ll have at most two Dev Diaries. For larger updates (such as Flavor Packs) we’ll have around four, while Expansions will have roughly 2-4 months' worth of Dev Diaries.

So what will we do instead? A variety of things - we might have Discord AMA’s, hangout streams with Devs, or sometimes we might post a Dev Diary about something not related to an update - for example, about how we work or plans we have for the future.


Discord: Chat with your fellow Community members, staff members, Modders, and other Content Creators. Also a perfect place if you want tips or a game to join!

Twitch: We stream weekly and go through all the latest and greatest content that we have. This is also a great place to chat with others and ask questions of our team.

YouTube: If you haven’t happened to catch our Streams or just want to see a collection of all our videos, this is your one stop shop for all Crusader Kings III official videos.

Twitter: Our latest and greatest spot for news and interaction with our Community. We are always online, as they always say. Feel free to follow us and see what we have going on from day to day.

Facebook: Just a nice relaxed place to hang out and socialize with our Community and see what everyone is up to.

Reddit: If Facebook isn’t your speed, we also have a great resource in Reddit for conversations and more detailed threads regarding the game and any questions you might possibly have.

Steam Workshop: While we do not control the content of Steam Workshop, it does contain a great number of highly interesting and resourceful Mods from our Community and has a ton of troubleshooting and technical information.

Today we have released Update 1.7.1 which includes a lot of changes to issues that you have been reporting and a few that we found on our own!

► Discuss this update on our forums!

• AI can no longer hire and fire court position in the same decision cycle, this should fix the issue where AIs could end up in massive prestige deficits

• Slightly relaxed requirements for Reviving Taltoism to make it not entirely impossible in 1066
  
• Crusade Targeting - Fixed so that Crusades check for current military strength when excluding target kingdoms instead of max military strength
  
• Crusade Targeting - Completely rebalanced Crusade Kingdom Selection; while Jerusalem will still be the most attractive target (for Christians), there will now be much more variation in targets and a faith will tend to defend what is assigned to be their Heartlands to a much greater degree
  
• Crusade Targeting - Distance is now a much greater factor when determining a crusade target
  
• Crusade Targeting - Catholic Crusades are now much less likely to select a kingdom in the African interior, and slightly less likely to pick a north African kingdom (if the Holy Land is taken, we want the crusades to focus on going deeper into the middle east rather than to die from attrition in the Sahara)

• Crusade Targeting - Fixed so that Crusades cannot target an area below 5 counties in size
  
• AI House members in Feuds will now be much more likely to start schemes against their enemies
  
• Characters will now be more reluctant to allow Feud enemies to raise their children
  
• Characters will now be more likely to join schemes against Feud house members
  
• Added explanation of score tooltip when ending a Feud
  
• Feuds can now only be started against Houses with at least 5 adult members and with Heads within one title tier of your own
  
• Added 25 year cooldown between Feuds
  
• Reduced frequency of Feud start events
  
• Added explanation of Feud reward modifiers to encyclopedia entry
  
• Fixed Feuds starting from murders where the murderer is still a secret
  
• Fixed an issue where Unpredictable Economical AI's didn't build enough new holdings
  
• Handle dead/alive for memories more consistently
  
• Fixed an issue where Cautious Economical AI's weren't cautious enough in the early stages of the game
  
• Fixed yearly.9110 missing an equals sign, also adjusted down dynasty prestige
  
• Fixed a missing equals sign in the Loyalty trait definition
  
• Fixed bp1_yearly.5704 missing an is_adult check
  
• Fixed pilgrimage.6007 so it does not fire for blind characters
  
• Fixed issue where Feud scale tip tooltips would be repeated
  
• Added additional missing checks for the A Man in Our Bed event
  
• Fixed missing adult and other checks in the A Man in Our Bed event
  
• Fixed Guanche Vaulter Infantry leaping across the world as mercenaries
  
• Fixed rivals not being less likely to accept alliance proposals
  
• Fixed Vengeance event firing alongside At My Mercy for Norse characters who captured a rival in battle
  
• Fixed incorrectly displayed/repeating Coat of Arms during longer sessions

• Fixed MAX_RECURSIVE_DEPTH error in Chinese localization
  
• Fixed grammar of Ibn Marwan of Badajoz's bookmark character

With that out of the way, keep up the reports, keep checking out our socials for further info, and we will keep working hard on our next updates and news for the future!