Mar 14, 2023

Crusader Kings III - PDX-Trinexx

Hello! My name is Chad and this is my premiere here on the forums. We’re really excited to kick off a series of dev diaries showing off all the work we have put into Tours and Tournaments. To briefly reiterate a bit of what was covered in our last dev diary, the Tours & Tournaments Expansion will provide a comprehensive rework of the Activity system. Not only have we reworked Feasts, Hunts, and Pilgrimages, but we have added brand spanking new Grand Activities: Tours (also in this dev diary), Tournaments, and Grand Weddings! Along with this rework comes the new Travel System (which I’ll be talking about in more detail today) and the long-awaited Regencies feature–both free additions. You can expect to hear more about all these additions in subsequent dev diaries!

► Read more about Dev Diary #119 on our forums!

Please note the standard disclaimer that all images are of things currently in development and are subject to change before release.

Travel

As we said in last week’s dev diary, we want to reinforce the connection between the character and the map. And what’s the best way to do that? Travel.

Every character in the game now has a bonafide Location. With the new Travel Mechanic in place, every character travels to activities that aren’t held in their current location (including the AI). Whenever you plan a Grand Tournament or accept an invitation to your vassal’s Feast, you now also have decisions to make about how you get there. Will you be daring and choose a dangerous route or play it safe? Who will you hire as your Caravan Master to ensure the journey goes smoothly?

The Basics: Speed, Safety, Danger

Every Travel Plan has two basic stats: Speed and Safety. Speed is represented by a percentage, where 100% is standard (roughly similar to army movement speed). To no one’s surprise, this affects how fast a character moves from province to province. Safety is a value ranging from 1 to 100 and counteracts Danger.

You can expect to encounter a dazzling array of situations as you travel across the map. Perhaps you will encounter a hermit living among the wilderness…

[Image: Event where you encounter a hermit]

Or perhaps you’ll meet someone from a different culture who can speak your native tongue…

[Image: Event where you encounter someone from faraway who can speak your native language]

Or maybe you will even chance upon a knight-errant and convince them to join your entourage?

[Image: Event where you encounter a knight-errant]

Danger lurks in every corner of the map. Every province has a Danger score based on a variety of factors like terrain, county control, owner, et cetera. Traveling through the mountains might expose you to treacherous cliffs, while sailing the seas presents its own, unique hazards, for example.

[Image: Event where one of your entourage members falls from a cliff in mountainous terrain]

[Image: Event where you encounter a squall destroys your sails while traveling at sea]

There are also several dynamic factors that affect how dangerous provinces are. For example, Holdings decrease Danger while any army activity (sieges, battle, raiding) greatly increase danger. While there is always a possibility of encountering Danger, a well-prepared traveler who invests in their Safety will encounter dangerous events far less frequently.

So how do I prepare to set out on the open road? Glad you asked, let’s take a look at the brand new Travel Planner.

[Image: Example of planning to travel for a Pilgrimage]

Caravan Master

Along with the Travel System, we introduce the Caravan Master as a new Court Position. The Caravan Master is the face of your journey and handles all the banal, practical aspects to traveling. Hiring a skilled character will increase both your Speed and Safety while providing some passive bonuses to Army Movement Speed, Supply Limit, and Court Grandeur.

[Image: Selection window for choosing a Caravan Master court position]

Travel Options

Every time you set out on a journey, you have the chance to pick 2 Travel Options. These additional features provide a range of possible bonuses when added to your travel.

[Image: Selection screen for choosing Travel Options]

Most Travel Options have an associated cost for the benefits they provide. Hiring Experienced Sea Captains will add a salty sea dog to your Entourage, thus making your journey across open water safer. Some are unlocked by Buildings in your domain or your character’s Traits. To illustrate, if you have built Stables or Camelries up to level 4 or higher, you can unlock the Superior Mounts Travel Option and get a nice boost to Speed. It costs nothing, of course, since you own the Stables already.

[Image: Superior Mounts Travel Option]

Another example is the Train Knights Travel Option, which is unlocked by having Military Academies built in your domain. When selected, 3 of your least-skilled Knights are added to your Entourage. It increases your Safety and there is a chance for each Knight to increase their skills along the journey.

[Image: Train Knights Travel Option]

While it’s not required to select Travel Options (especially for short journeys), they can prove quite useful when setting out on a longer journey, such as a Pilgrimage. This is also a way to affect which characters join your Entourage, the group of characters who travel at your side. Some characters, such as your Court Physician and Bodyguard, will automatically join your Entourage if you employ those Court Positions. Otherwise, your Entourage is primarily composed of characters relevant to the Activity to which you are traveling. Your Knights will join you for Tournaments, for example.

Custom Route Editor

When planning a journey, you will always be presented with the shortest path towards your destination. But perhaps you really don’t want to travel through your Rival’s lands or maybe you’ve always wanted to see the splendor of Rome? Well fear not, for we have included a Custom Route Editor!

[Image: Example of adding waypoints to a journey via the Custom Route Editor]

We allow you to customize your route by adding waypoints along your path. If employed cunningly, you may be able to avoid assassins hired by your Nemesis or gaze up at Caesar’s Needle from the hallowed streets of Rome.

Additional Notes

Since Travel inevitably touches nearly every aspect of the game, I figured I’d spend some time here at the end attempting to answer a few questions that are sure to arise.

The focus for this expansion has been to create a Travel System that will specifically work for getting characters to and from Activities. With that said, we’ve endeavored to make this system as flexible as possible for future work and iterations–which is why it’s a free feature. The Travel Mechanic has also been integrated into smaller activities such as Meet Peers, Grand Blot, and Grand Rite. We are currently working on integrating the mechanic into more game systems.

Some Schemes are still completable while you or your Target is traveling. For example, you can still sway a character or attempt to learn their language while either of you are traveling. You cannot, however, attempt to seduce someone who is not in your location. (The power of letters only goes so far…) These Schemes will be frozen until both characters are no longer traveling.

I know you’re all eager for things like trade routes–so are we! That won’t be coming in this expansion, but it is something we have our eye on for the future.

Tours

Hello hello hello, I am Meka66 and it has been a while since I was last able to write a dev diary, way back in my Hearts of Iron days. Today I'm here to talk to you about Grand Tours!

What is a tour? Well, more broadly a Grand Tour is your opportunity to use the travel system to hold royal visits across your realm; bringing you closer to your direct vassals and giving you the opportunity to get closer to sub-realms usually in your periphery, yielding powerful rewards to help you manage your unruly subjects; both noble and lowborn.

[The art in this screen is placeholder until we get our more complete gorgeous art.]

Primarily, you will be visiting vassals, choosing from one of three things to do on your visit: Tour the Grounds, Attend a Dinner, or Attend a Cultural Festival. Each of these will yield different rewards both for the realm you're visiting and for yourself personally. Let's start with Tour the Grounds.

Here you can plan your route around your kingdom

Stops

Tour the Grounds

Arrival at a Tour of the Grounds, the layout of this window is still being worked on.

When Touring the Grounds of your vassal's holding, you're having a look around at daily life in your vassal's capital; visiting the village, hanging around their holding, and exploring their hunting grounds. Overall this results in a boost in Control in counties within your vassal's realm, since it is difficult to ignore the authority of the King when he's right on your doorstep.

One of many opportunities to raise control in your vassal's holdings

You'll also have opportunities to boost your prestige and renown, by flexing your hunting skills on your dear vassals.

An opportunity here to show off your hunting skills

Hosted Dinner

Arriving at a dinner

Next up we have the Hosted Dinner. The dinner is much like a feast, but far more intimate. The dinner will give you opportunities to not only share some time with your vassal and form friendships and gain hooks, but it is also an opportunity to interfere with their court; offering their courtiers a better life in the capital, becoming the guardian for your vassal's heir, and discovering secrets at your vassal's court.

One of many opportunities you have to make friends, learn secrets, and gain hooks.

Cultural Festival

Arriving at a Cultural Festival in Sweden. A true oxymoron if ever there was one.

Lastly we have my personal favorite, the Cultural Festival. A realm is typically made up of all sorts of people belonging to different faiths and cultures, and what better way to demonstrate the magnanimousness of your rule than to experience the strange traditions of your subjects? If you're a highly diverse realm like Khazaria or a stranger in a strange land like a Norman invader, this is an excellent opportunity to get some powerful bonuses to cultural acceptance.

Spreading cultural acceptance around your realm by showing your subjects you embrace their traditions. Here we have the Emperor visiting a Bulgarian nativity play.

But no culture is a monolith of course, and Cultural Festivals can still yield powerful rewards even if you're visiting a county of your own culture. Showing your respect for the customs of folks outside of the capital will result in potent popular opinion gains, allowing you to bring your unruly subjects in line.

Same-culture festivals still yield powerful rewards.

The Tour Planner

Your tour consists of several stops across your realm, with one of the above activities taking place at each location. Here we have our beloved Byzantine Emperor planning a tour of his realm; having dinners with his powerful vassals, touring the grounds of his distant subjects, and observing the local culture of his Armenian and Bulgarian subjects.

A roundabout route of the Byzantine Empire

A Travelling Court

But visiting nobles isn't the only thing you're doing on your tour, of course. You are traveling with your court! On your journey, you'll get a chance to meet with your lowliest of subjects, and what you do with them exactly is up to you! You may encounter drunkards muttering of rebellion in a tavern, or be accosted by highwaymen on the road. While most travel events are just about things that happen on your journey, a tour travel event is an opportunity to remind the commoners that their liege is ever present.

To this effect, we have several Intents. Intents in Tours determine what exactly it is you hope to do with commoners while on the road; do you want to show charity, assert your authority, or just drink and visit brothels on your merry way across your realm?

Here we have the intent selection screen, which can be changed at any time before or during your tour!

We'll start with the more stone-faced intents: Altruism and Justice.

The Altruism intent is inspired much by the concept of both charity and the Royal Touch; the belief that Kings had the power to heal the sick just with their touch. On an Altruistic route across your realm, you will show your piousness and generosity to your realm; giving piety, popular opinion, and stress loss with the right traits (compassionate, zealous, etc).

An altruistic opportunity to show you are not disgusted by your subjects… or not

Justice is your chance to remind commoners that the crown is ever-present, and you can show justice, whatever it may mean to you. This can include judging local trials, meeting with peasant leaders, and sending in your men to clear out bandits. Justice results in stress loss for the appropriate traits, and some chances to fill your dungeon and increase control along your route.

A chance to bring the Crown's justice to the countryside

Lustful characters can also benefit from the Lechery intent, giving them the opportunity to seek out new paramours on the road and pay visits to local brothels to reduce their stress and find new lovers. If you're a player who enjoys lustful content, this intent is for you; otherwise, the lechery intent is entirely opt-in. What you want to get out of your tour is up to you!

This intent can be particularly useful if your spouse is unable to give you an heir

Lastly we have the Relax intent, which is the default. In this intent, you just want to use your time on the road to visit taverns and take it easy on your tour, giving you large gains in stress reduction.

There are all manner of ways to reduce stress on your Tour.

Tour Type

But there is more! What primarily motivates your tour is determined by your Tour Type, of which we have three: Majesty, Taxation, and Intimidation. These options will determine what exactly it is you demand from your vassals when you stop by for a visit, is it just to show how much of a great ruler you are? Or is it to extract taxes? To strike fear into your unruly subjects?

A Majesty Tour is all about vassal opinion and prestige. During your visits, you will show your grace and magnificence to all.

A Taxation Tour is all about finding those little loopholes and oversights your vassals have been taking advantage of and tying them up, and taking what is rightfully yours. You may cause some upset, but it's all worth it to fill the treasury, right?

Intimidation Tours are all about showing how much your vassals should fear you. You'll get chances to do all manner of things to unsettle your subject. Direct confrontation can be a powerful tool, and can even motivate some vassals to leave their hostile factions against you.

Which Tour type are you most interested in trying first? We would love to hear your thoughts!

Each time you perform an action which corresponds with your selected tour type, it will increase this tour success bar here. The rewards you get at the end of your tour will scale and change depending on just how successful you've been in achieving your goals, and if done right, it can be a powerful tool for strengthening and stabilizing your realm.

Here we have the Majesty success bar

Tours are a big investment in both time and money, but they also yield powerful and long lasting rewards; everything from cultural acceptance to control to dread to prestige, a tour is an all-encompassing realm management tool, taking your court on the road and bringing the presence of the crown wherever it is needed.

That's all for now, we'll be around to answer questions as always. See you next week where we'll talk about some of the smaller-but-broader systemic changes we've made to vassals, buildings, men-at-arms, and more!

Mar 6, 2023

Tours and Tournaments - The Vision

Crusader Kings III - PDX-Trinexx

Greetings!

Come one, come all! The grand tournament awaits your attendance - your steeds have been readied and your entourage assembled for the journey ahead! It’s time to show the world your graciousness as host and worth in the arena… but to get there, we’re better off routing our journey around the treacherous mountain passes of Stipon, as I hear they’ve been crawling with highwaymen since your, ahem, dalliance with Duke Andronikos’ wife during his son's wedding. Then there’s the matter of your unruly vassals: perhaps it’s time for a royal tour?

► Read more about Dev Diary #118 on our forums!

The life of a ruler was always active - there were many things to attend to, and most courts at the time were itinerant, roaming from place to place constantly. Tours and Tournaments aims to give rulers plenty of things to do, especially during times of peace, by introducing new systems of Travel and Grand Activities!

As mentioned in the Floorplan Dev Diary, we want to reinforce the connection between character and map - after all, the game is played on a beautiful medieval map, and no longer will the only time your ruler leaves the safety of their capital be when you’re at war. There’s an entire world out there to explore, filled with both great opportunities and adventurous obstacles.

By assembling an entourage, selecting options for your travel, and hiring a caravan master, you are ready to set out on the road and travel to activities across the world. The Travel system is an integral part of activities, with both the host and guests traveling to reach them - creating a stronger feeling of place as you see your route being plotted and your character moving directly on the map.

[Image: The Duke of Bohemia setting out on a Tour]

So what are these activities you can travel to, you ask? There’s plenty - firstly we’ve updated and revamped Feasts, Hunts, and Pilgrimages completely - the bread-and-butter of activities. There’s now a reason to hunt in a specific forest within your domain, as a ferocious wolf or legendary stag might have been spotted there - or a reason to hold a feast in a holding with leisure palaces, as you might need to impress a particularly unruly vassal. Pilgrimages will now be epic journeys, potentially taking years if you’re going far - making it necessary for a regent to rule in your stead. All activities have dedicated interfaces with easily-accessible information and beautiful art to set the scene.

Of course, there are Grand activities that are even more impactful - each of them different in their own magnificent way! They have Options and Intents which affect rewards and what type of content you might encounter. Our aim is to make each activity have a clear purpose and be interesting in its own right, therefore we chose to make Grand Tournaments, Grand Tours, and Grand Weddings - three vastly different activities with vastly different executions and purposes!

[Image: Example of Activity Types, initial step]

Grand Tournaments are where you go to test your mettle: spectacles to be announced far and wide, with rewards ranging from precious trinkets to fabulous prizes! Grand Tournaments aren’t only for martially-inclined characters - while there are contests such as melees and jousts, there are also more cerebral ones such as recitals or erudite board games. You can join your knights in slippery wrestling, eagle-eyed archery, dangerous horse racing, and vicious team melees - all clad in gleaming armor brandishing your coat of arms for the masses to see! Participating and winning in these contests will see your characters and knights grow in skill and receive prizes; living the life of a frequent tournament-goer is a valid path to take. Exploring the tournament Locale and choosing the right Intents might help you out in other ways as well, be it finding friends or dispatching rivals. If you’re in need of renown, hosting tournaments yourself will grow your standing significantly, as rulers from foreign realms come flocking to the fateful grounds, eager to compete!

[Image: Snapshot of part of the Tournament UI. Tournaments, unlike other Grand Activities, have an extra special interface - more on that in the Tournaments Dev Diary]

Grand Tours see you assemble your entire court and set out to visit vassals in your realm - an activity commonly undertaken by medieval rulers. This is a way to assert your overlordship, while also enjoying the hospitality your vassals have to offer. There are various paths to take: Intimidation, Majesty, or Taxation, all affecting the rewards and opinions of your vassals. At its core, Tours are a tool for realm stability - and something a newly-ascended ruler should undertake quite early to avoid factions and revolts. You also get to choose between ways of approaching your vassals individually; you might want to tour the grounds, observe a cultural festival, or simply have a private dinner hosted for you.

Grand Weddings allow you to marry above your station… if you’re willing to pay the cost! They also provide ample opportunity for diplomatic shenanigans, such as impressing neighboring rulers into becoming vassals, forming hard-to-get alliances, or creating favorable matches for your children. Of course, these spectacles come with everything you’d expect out of a medieval ceremony - revelries, drama, and even a bedding ritual at the end. Or you can invite a group of mercenaries to color the halls crimson with the blood of the other House, should you desire it.

[Image: Planning a Grand Wedding]

As some of you managed to cleverly figure out, there’s also a brand-new regency system where we’ve made sure that it’s both interesting to have and to be a regent. Loyal regents help you by dutifully fulfilling their Mandates, and being the regent of your liege gives you opportunities to (with varying degrees of bloodshed) seize the throne for yourself, should you be doing a “good” job.

There’s also a myriad of other changes which we’ll go into in future dev diaries - smaller systemic updates to buildings, knights, vassal opinions, and so on - all to support a more interesting and living map, where your choices matter more.

So take to the road, ruler - great opportunities await!

Tours and Tournaments will be released in late spring, and until the release we will have weekly Dev Diaries.

Don’t forget to wishlist:
Wishlist on Steam

Feb 28, 2023

Dev Diary #117: Shave and a Map Mode

Crusader Kings III - PDX-Trinexx

Hello everyone!

My name is Jens and this is my first appearance on this forum. I’ve got the opportunity to share some details with you on my probation project for CK3, which is making it all the way into the upcoming release (because that’s where I pushed my changes, lol)!

I’m happy at least one of you caught on to the subtle hint in the previous DD. I was like “Wokeg, did you use my new thing to set up the screenshots?” Well yes, because all of a sudden most assets and characters have become way more accessible. So what is it I’m talking about? At this point, most of you have probably guessed it - but yes, we have upgraded our old friend the Barbershop.

► Read more about Dev Diary #117 on our forums!

I’ve scrambled through the webs looking for feedback and wishes of what you would like and expect from such a tool. Heck, no mediocre fix would do: I want only the best for you! I distilled the info down, looking for the essence of how you’d want to use the tool, set up the tasks, prioritized them, and spent the last few weeks going through them all. Well, I’ll spare you the fluff. Let’s get into some details.

First off, we have expanded the Barbershop into two tabs. The first is focused on changing the appearance of your character. Additionally, I’ve added a fuzzy search box next to the drop downs, in case you already know the name of what you’re looking for.

[Image: Barbershop, tab for changing appearance]

In the second tab, we’ve added drag and drop support for the portraits, so you may click, drag and place them wherever you want. You can also rotate them 360 degrees and we’ve also got 4 different zoom levels for you to play around with. Every character has their own dropdown of poses and animations and we’ve also added a wide variety of backgrounds. The only limit now is your own imagination.

[Image: Barbershop, tab for placing characters in the scene]

One of the big reasons we play is to create stories and make memories. I took a deep dive into the forum history and found out some of you want to use the Barbershop to relive past events between characters, dress up a serious ruler in a funny outfit or take family photos. To support this I’ve added presets. The “Custom” preset lets you import characters simply by pinning them. Another preset I really wanted in (based on a comment) was an easy way to view your entire Council, so for that end I present to you:

[Image: Barbershop, easily view your council]

Also, note the council preset supports modding if that’s your thing.

[Image: Barbershop script]

With only a few polish tasks left, people have already begun discovering this tool in-house and started trolling and meme-ing each other. I hope you guys will enjoy the new Barbershop as much as we do. Let me know if you have any last minute requests and I will see what I can do. Now, our Game Director also has something in store for you.

---

Greetings! In addition to the above we also want to show some additions to our collection of Map Modes - namely the introduction of the Control and Economy map modes! These two new tools are very useful in managing your realm… and planning your conquests.

[Image - New Map Mode Buttons]

The Control map mode is very straightforward, showing you exactly what you’d expect. It spans from a dark purple (denoting very low control) to a light yellow (showing just a slight lack of control), and a bright white shows where there’s Absolute Control.

[Image: Control Map mode Example]

The Economy map mode is a little bit less straightforward - but we aspired to make it as useful as possible. The nebulous concept of ‘economy’ is a bit harder to represent, but we decided to include what most of us thought were key factors in making informed decisions.

[Image: Economy Map mode Example, Southern France]

Similar to the Development Map mode, the color spans from dark purple to bright yellow; bright yellow indicates an area is quite rich. The area colors are based on Counties, including income from Cities, Bishoprics, and so on - for an overall approximation of the County’s use to the player (of course, Counties with more Castles might be better in the eyes of some, but we had to make a call and thought that this was the most useful overall). This coloring is relative to the state of the world, meaning that the most brilliant yellow County is the richest one in the world at that moment. This map mode doesn’t care about the current Control Level of the County, which makes it useful for planning conquest targets.

[Image: Economy map mode, showing India]

Something else that you no-doubt notice is that Special Buildings are shown on this map mode! They’ve been hidden away for much too long, and we decided that this was an excellent time to reveal them… and maybe add a handful of new ones. Getting Special Buildings in your domain was always a fun goal for the player to achieve, and now it’s not only possible to see where they are - but also whether you can use them, if they are already built, what they provide, and so on!

As an added bonus, we’ve added an absolute ton of new mines strewn around the map, and we’ve also revised the system for founding Universities - now it’s no longer a decision, but rather the institutions are constructed as normal special buildings (and in many more places than before!), with the same rewards on offer.

This means that there are many, many more great capital locations strewn across the world, and it’s now easier than ever to find them!

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That’s it for this time! But stay tuned… our spymaster sends word that what’s next for Crusader Kings III will soon be announced! Make sure to mark Monday next week, March 6th, in your calendars and visit this link!

Feb 7, 2023

Dev Diary #115: Monumental Foundations

Crusader Kings III - PDX-Trinexx

Hello and welcome to this dev diary where we will be looking into some new map visuals that’ll be added in the future. As the team grows, we’ve had the opportunity for our new artists to warm up by sprucing up the map a little. Among the things we’ll show off today, chief is the Canterbury Cathedral and its evolution over time: made by our new Environment artist Joel, who’s written about his process and the research involved.

► Read more about Dev Diary #115 on our forums!

Building a Monument – Canterbury Cathedral

The Original Church - Tier 1

When creating the first tier of the Canterbury Cathedral, which references the Anglo-Saxon church extant in the 867 & 1066 start dates, it was important to acknowledge the lack of available visual reference material. Historically speaking, the Anglo-Saxon church was burnt down in 1067, but we do have some conceptual renditions and blueprints of the estimated building layout to work from, courtesy of the archeologists (our heroes).

Sometimes luck strikes and blueprints or estimated ones can be found.

From this, I created a fairly basic interpretation of the church that serves well as the first/starting stage for the Canterbury Cathedral. Additional geometry, like pillars and an external house, was added to the building to create a more compelling in-game silhouette.

The original Anglo-Saxon church - Tier 1

The Norman Cathedral - Tier 2

After the first fire, a second church was built in its place, distinctively making use of the Romanesque style. As we move forward in history, more references become available, and fortunately the church foundations are described as rather similar to the church of today. The more significant differences to modern Canterbury Cathedral are, for example, the front and main towers: they are still Romanesque.

Canterbury Cathedral - Tier 2

Romanesque and Gothic

If this happens to be your first time coming across these terms, some explaining might be in order. Romanesque and Gothic are two styles of architecture which defined buildings and churches throughout the Medieval era. Romanesque, the older of the two, emerged sometime around the year 1000 and lasted until around 1150. It’s a style arising from and defined by Germanic, Byzantine and old Roman influences, favoring circular Roman arches and a more solid-looking facade compared to later churches.

Romanesque Abbaye de Lessay

From the Romanesque emerged the Gothic in the 12th-13th centuries. In Gothic architecture, Roman arches find themselves replaced by Gothic ones; we also see elaborate ribbed vaults, towering flying buttresses, and church interiors brightened by large stained glass windows.

Chartres Gothic Cathedral

Modeling

I technically started with the third tier of the structure of the Canterbury Cathedral, rather than the second tier. Because we work with modular pieces and texture atlases, I find it easier to work from the complete cathedral, then remove any additional geometry. It also meant that the last tier would have most of the same layout as the modern cathedral, minus some of the later additions.

Modular pieces used for building the Cathedral

With the modular pieces ready, it was then just a question of assembling the cathedral.

The Gothic Cathedral - Tier 3

We could see in the final version of the Cathedral that a lot of areas had been raised since the time of the second, so I simply made minor tweaks to the height of some walls and roofs, while preserving the original UV. The back of the cathedral had also been extended and rebuilt, with the addition of two new structures. The south-west tower was rebuilt, but not the north-west tower as of yet: that happened later historically.

The cathedral with the towers in the front. The main tower however was a new construction past CK3’s timeline.

Canterbury Cathedral - Tier 3

The third tier takes on a Gothic style, with flying buttresses along the length of the cathedral, and it also puts a golden angel on the pinnacle of the main tower.

Basing and Decal

In order for us to be certain that our holdings will be placed correctly on the map, we extend the ‘basement’ of the mesh into the ground to accommodate for the map’s height differences.
This ensures we have no areas free flying in the air. Usually this is a bigger issue for holdings than monuments, as monuments have a single specific place on the map where they exist.

Decal texture in Substance Painter

We also create decals that show a more interesting ground variation around the structure. In my case, I painted out some roads to give life to the area. Some color variation to the grass to better blend in with the rest of the map, and darker areas where the cathedral would be located. The decal plane is on average twice the size of our building.

Anglo-Saxon church , Romanesque Cathedral, Gothic Cathedral T1 - T2 - T3

After all the buildings were done and I was happy with the progression from tier 1 to tier 2 and tier 3, I could finalize the UV’s. We use two UV maps to layout the textures: one is for the ambient occlusion that we bake in, and the other for the texture atlas. The texture atlas lets us reuse textures to save on performance. I did the baking in marmoset with a low poly to low poly set up. Normally you have a high poly to bake down to the low poly mesh, but I was only after the ambient occlusion.

Bonus Bridge Update

A new set of cultural stone bridges will be added over the world, replacing some of the old wooden bridges and overall making it a bit clearer where the safer river crossings are. We will be adding a total of four standard bridge types, for Western Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Indian regions.

These bridges have been based on historical examples sampled from these regions. The Western and Mediterranean bridges are based on arched bridges from Europe, with the appropriate local flairs. The Middle Eastern bridge is based upon Sassanid designs like the Marnan and Kohneh bridge, among others, and are mostly found in the regions around modern Iran and Iraq. The Indian bridges take their inspiration from the Athernala bridge in eastern India.