Hello everyone! We hope you're all enjoying Tours & Tournaments and the accompanying 1.9 feature update.

Today we're releasing a small hotfix to address an issue that could prevent characters from hosting more than one Grand Wedding. Thank you to everyone for submitting your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports!

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• Fixed an issue that prevented characters from hosting more than one Grand Wedding.

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Good afternoon, and welcome to your first class of the semester! My name is Dr. Areysak, and I’ll be your “CKIII University 101” lecturer.

I already see some raised hands. You, in the first row, ask away.

“Why a University Activity? What does it have to do with Wards and Wardens?”

► Discuss Dev Diary #131 on our forums!



This is a very interesting question. During the early development of Wards and Wardens, talks of hostages’ education led us to a realization: everything that could influence a character’s education trait happens during childhood. Once a character reaches 16 years of age, they are locked out of any further improvement! And if the player character isn’t directly responsible for the education of their heir, a player can find themselves inheriting an already adult heir character with an education trait they have had no way to influence.

The University Visit activity is the solution we have chosen to open up new possibilities to the player to influence their character’s personal growth. Therefore, as a first aim, it fulfills a gameplay need; secondly, it allows us to expand upon one of the Middle Ages’ many successful inventions, Universities; thirdly, we got to add a new activity!

When we talk of Medieval Universities, we are immediately led to think of the famous names of Western Europe, such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Bologna. The name “University”, in fact, comes from Latin and was born to describe specifically the communities (= universitates) of Latin-speaking teachers and students that congregated in these European cities. However, similar institutions existed all over the Old World. Particularly famous are the Indian “universities”, such as Takshashila and Nalanda; the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was one of the most renowned centers of studies of its age, and Madrasas schools were widespread throughout the Islamic world. In this period, it’s also often difficult to separate, as we would do today, between lay and religious centers of studies, since Christian cathedrals, Muslim mosques and, in particular, Buddhist temples were themselves libraries, scriptoria (i.e., where manuscripts were copied), and educational institutions, or had these institutions develop in their immediate vicinity.


Let’s now have a look at the activity itself, though!

The University Visit is a minor activity that adult landed rulers can always initiate, as long as they have the gold! To keep it in line with the pre-existing decision to Go to University, it is quite expensive. To keep the challenge balanced, the final cost is dynamic (like with all activities) and changes with your tier and era.


(Activity selection interface showing the University Visit)

The activity takes 6 months, and can only be started once every 20 years, and only once per location.

In order to Visit a University, you have to select a valid location in your diplomatic range and travel there.


(Activity destination selection interface)

You might have noticed, however, that not all valid locations are University seats. As discussed above, large religious centers were often centers of study too, and have been included as potential destinations.


(The tooltip of a large religious center)

Being a minor activity, the choice of intents and options is limited but flavorful.
There are only two intents available, but they represent two contrasting approaches to your university experience, and will significantly change both your approach to your studies and the results you can achieve. In fact, every activity event will have at least one special option unlocked by each intent!
“Study Hard” is quite self-explanatory: you went there to study, and study hard you will, no matter the stress cost you’ll have to pay! You try to make the most of your time at University, in order to maximize your chances of success at the end of the activity and increase your rewards.
In fact, the results (and rewards) you obtain at the end of your studies are measured by a value called “Studiousness”, which is a “success” chance similar, e.g., to a Pilgrimage’s Piousness. The activity can’t fail per se, but the entity of your rewards will depend on this value.

“Goliardic Lifestyle” is a completely different approach, inspired by the European Goliards, wandering students and clerics famous for their satirical poetry (for instance the Carmina Burana) exalting the art of drinking and carnal pleasures. With this intent, your aim is to gain as much first-hand experience of life, both inside and outside the walls of the University, indulging in so-called “Goliardic Shenanigans”. I’ll leave you the pleasure of discovering exactly what your character can get up to; the general idea of the intent, however, is to gain less success chance (and therefore less rewards at the conclusion of the activity), but more immediate bonuses such as lifestyle traits, lifestyle xp, and skill points.


(Intents view)

On the other hand, we only have one option with 3 levels, which represent how much money you plan to invest in study materials. The option chosen will influence your success chance and final rewards, including an Illustrious artifact! (cost values are still wip)


(Options view)


(Arrival event)

As you can see, your level of Studiousness is easily traceable from the activity view. To make the interactions more impactful, we have limited the number of guests, which are only a handful of students and teachers, which will be among the wisest minds on the map!


(Activity view and teacher’s character view)


(Event with Study Hard option)


(Event with Goliardic Lifestyle options)

Be ready to gain a whole bunch of stress! Nobody said that getting a degree was easy…

I did mention that your teachers will be among the most brilliant minds around, and I’d like to stress it again because if you manage to make a very good impression on them…


(Conclusion event)

You will be able to invite one of them to move back to your court with you!

But hold on, there is something weird with this teacher… What is that?!


(Teacher’s character view with education trait tooltip)

Is that… A fifth level of the Education Trait?!

YES!

Concurrently with the University Visit activity, we have added a new level to all education traits. This final level will be super rare, and mostly reserved for University teachers and University graduates who already started with the fourth-tier trait.


As you might have guessed from what has been discussed so far, the main reward for the activity is increasing your education trait one level up. However, there is only a chance to succeed in this endeavor! This chance is higher the lower you current level is (i.e., it’s easier to get from tier 1 to 2 than it is from 2 to 3) and the higher your Studiousness level is.


(Tooltip of Tier 4 of Studiousness with the rewards)

However, even if you were to fail at improving your education, you are ensured to gain a number of Perk points that increases with your achieved Studiousness, an assortment of xp and skill points depending on your event choices, and even an Illustrious book if you chose the most expensive option during the activity setup (and therefore went splurging on rare manuscripts)!


(A randomly generated Illustrious book)

This concludes today’s lecture. I hear some buzzing from the end rows, are there any questions?

“But that’s not how Universities worked! No ruler would go to University like a commoner!!”

You are, of course, correct. We are perfectly aware of it. However, we believe that the combined bonuses offered by new gameplay possibilities (i.e., improving your character’s education and skills) and the historical flavor of showing a slice of the life at Medieval Universities more than warranted the exception!

I hope you are excited to Visit a University soon!

This is the last Dev Diary before the July break, so it seems fitting to just say:

School’s out! Have a nice summer! And see you all back in August!

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2313541/Crusader_Kings_III_Wards__Wardens/

Hello all!

It's been a few weeks since we spoke but it feels like longer, what with all of you having been busy traveling, touring, tournamenting and the rest! It is time for us, nonetheless, to leave behind that world for now and take a look ahead at what we have coming up next.



Our first Event Pack, Friends & Foes, gave us something of a chance to experiment. Since then, we’ve had the chance to take a look at exactly what direction we want to start moving in with these packs, and build on what worked.

One area that we hit upon was diversity of content and how the player experienced the game. Events are the ink that we daub on to the fabric of the narrative, but it’s how, what and why these events happen that govern their efficacy. Introducing new avenues for that content to reach the player is a great thing, provided it’s done in an unobtrusive way.

With that in mind, we’re going to outline a few of the new features that you’ll find in Wards & Wardens (the event-pack that you voted for last January) and its accompanying patch - both available on August 22nd. Some of them we’ll talk about more in the future, so don’t expect anything too exhaustive here, but let’s start off with…



Hostages aren’t quite what you’d think of when you hear the term. Rather than forced holding of a person to ransom, hostageship in the Middle Ages was a political and legal status that was absolutely widespread.

Put simply, hostages were generally given, not taken. They were, essentially, transactional guarantees. In this case, we’ve zeroed in on the most common reason for hostages to be exchanged: as a means to guarantee a peace treaty.

In Wards & Wardens, hostages are a new type of relation somewhere between a prisoner and a foreign court guest. They reside at your court as a guest would, but cannot leave of their own accord, nor can they become knights. They are generally - though not always - children, and have found themselves in such a predicament due to their liege exchanging them away as a guarantee of non-hostility following a war, or exchanged via interaction during peacetime. Such an arrangement not only eases the mediation process, but also gives both sides some peace of mind.



Hostages are essentially living non-aggression pacts. Harming a hostage is a significant diplomatic incident, but it’s also a way to deter your former enemies from getting any more bright ideas about exactly to whom that border county belongs. Any ruler that you have a hostage from will suffer significant debuffs and penalties should they try and attack you - and any wardens attacking home courts also suffer similar debuffs - so hostages present one of the strongest forms of deterrent possible.

The hostages themselves are kept in line via something else new and shiny:



We have two types of Hook extant in the game already: Strong and Weak. The latter are the type of hooks you’d get if you were to, for example, manipulate a person in some way. They are single-use, and can be refused at cost. Strong hooks, on the other hand, can be used multiple times and in a range of scenarios, but are also much rarer.

Perpetual Hooks are a new sort of hook, which wardens can get on hostages who they treat well, and represent something of a middle ground. They are refuseable like Weak hooks, but also permanent like a Strong hook. At the moment hostages (and those that have previously been hostages) are the only characters you’d expect to see with a Perpetual hook, but just as Memories were built with expansion in mind for Friends & Foes, so too should you not be surprised if in the future you find more and wider examples of Perpetual hook usage.



One of the spots that we’ve been somewhat hamstrung by in CKIII is in mediating the existence of characters that don’t quite… fit the mould, as it were.



In CKII, you’d have insane and possessed characters who did all kinds of wacky things - immortal horse chancellors and such; you know how it goes. CKIII’s takes a more grounded approach to how traits are represented: Lunatic, for example, was used increasingly loosely in CKII, ending up as an umbrella for anything ranging from slightly kooky to genuine mental illness, but CKIII sticks much more rigidly to the latter.

This is where the Eccentric trait comes in, as a trait dedicated to the slightly odd. This allows us to group some of the more unusual situations you’d find under this new personality trait, giving them both more reason to happen for a certain character but, critically, also barring those characters who wouldn’t engage in such strange distractions from doing so. We’ll talk about this more in the coming weeks!



As you might expect given how hostageship skews very much towards the young, a fair percentage of what we’ve been working on has been filling out the experience of non-adult existence in Crusader Kings III. We’ve come some way in this regard since release, with Friends & Foes adding a swathe of new events and a revamp of childhood personality traits, as well as of course the Regency mechanic giving a whole new layer of intrigue to a child navigating the dangerous Medieval world.

In Wards & Wardens, we’ve added to this with another fresh layer of childhood content - in no small part focused on hostages and their experiences - but also the addition of a Wet Nurse court position. Wet nurses held an interesting status amongst the medieval court, and adding this court position adds another layer of intricacy to the trials and tribulations of raising a child.




We have been delighted to read just how much you all have been enjoying all the new - and the old! - activities in CKIII since the release of Tours & Tournaments. With this in mind, we’ve attempted to utilize it to approach something that’s previously been static in Crusader Kings: education as an adult.



Previously, once you had come of age, an education type and rank was assigned to you and that was that. You, aged 16, were as educated as you’d ever become! Now, whilst properly reflecting the rate at which humans grow as people as they age is something of an impossible task for a game, the current system felt a little too rigid for our liking. As such, the Adult Education activity now gives players a chance to tickle their brains at a center of learning, in hope that they can actually upgrade their education trait to a higher level!

But what of those of us who enter adulthood with the finest education life has to offer? What steps can those people take to better themselves in adulthood?

Worry not. We have a plan for that, too, but it will have to wait!



Thankfully, however, you won’t have to wait all too long. Whilst we’re saying bye for now, next week we'll cover the Adult Education Activity in CKIII from top to bottom. Hope to see you all then!

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Hello everyone! Today we're releasing Update 1.9.2 for Crusader Kings III. This update primarily resolves a number of issues reported by the community, as well as adjusting the Accolades interface based on player feedback. A full list of changes in this update can be found below.

We hope you're all enjoying Tours & Tournaments and the 1.9 'Lance' Update!

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• Reduced aggressiveness of House Feud AI family members starting schemes against rival house

• Accolade Attribute tooltip now shows first & last rank for better insight
  
• Accolade Rank progress bar now splits out modifiers by attribute name
  
• Accolade attributes now shows which Men-at-Arms type it will (eventually) unlock
  
• Accolade creation now shows which un-knighted court members, or visiting guests are available, and allows you to hire them on the spot
  
• Added Accolade Attribute list when hiring for an accolade
  
• Characters with long names will no longer push the Accolade 'Reinstate' or 'Destroy' buttons away. No Jimmy Drop Tables-ing.
  
• Activity Intent selection now offers a standard selection of search / sorting filters
  
• Fixed a bug where the current situation button would disappear after closing the barbershop
  
• The interface now jumps to the newly created Accolade after creation
  
• Warning added for using Men-At-Arms Accolade attribute as a secondary attribute
  
• You can now swap Accolade attributes in-place when creating an accolade
  
• Added tournament backgrounds to character view of characters attending tournaments

• You can now choose to ignore interaction recipient cooldowns for players.

• AI marriage suggestions no longer block players from matchmaking between their own courtiers.
  
• Changed Coat of Arms will now properly get their new texture applied
  
• Characters will no longer inherit the cooldown for designating diarchs
  
• Display achievement availability correctly in the ruler designer.
  
• Empire sub-kingdom capital point of interest tooltip now shows the appropriate kingdom name in the tooltip
  
• Fix OOS where macOS (and possibly Linux) clients AI were missing the white peace interaction.
  
• Fix crash that sometimes occurs when viewing activity intent success GUI
  
• Fixed Harm event target rules not applying as expected
  
• Fixed Hunt event A Beautiful Specimen not creating a hare artifact if you don't have the Royal Court DLC
  
• Fixed a crash that can happen when expanding the dynasty tree
  
• Fixed an issue that could break certain interfaces after the player dies
  
• Fixed being blocked from starting activities forever if you joined a war while meditating
  
• Fixed crash when characters with no current valid location try to travel out of their locational limbo.
  
• Fixed droves of occult botanists using Playdates as recruitment centers for witches
  
• Fixed event pools for Swell Armies and Promote Authority regent mandates being swapped
  
• Fixed events which added Contest score even if you weren't competing, and removed general health requirements for Contests in favor of explicit trait checks based on type
  
• Fixed hunt murder event firing when you don't have the murder intent
  
• Fixed loc and portrait issues in Premature Death hunt invalidation event
  
• Fixed option for withdrawing from contests in For Family event not actually withdrawing you from the contests
  
• Fixed options for not competing allowing you to still compete in tournaments
  
• Fixed rare crash when loading into title screen if a particularly large coat of arms exists in one or more save games
  
• Fixed the name of the PLAYER_ACTIVITY_INVITE_GRACE_TIME define so that the game properly utilizes it
  
• Fixed your gamekeepers refusing to let you set out to hunt the Legendary animals you have heard rumours of
  
• Imprisoned, landed characters who get their last title revoked will no longer change their location away from their place of imprisonment
  
• Made Accolade bonuses from Marshal council tasks much less rare
  
• Mass ransom button will no longer generously not demand Hooks if prisoners have no money
  
• Physicians brought forward by the Search decision should now generally have more Aptitude
  
• You can no longer assign any guest as a special guest when going through the Other Guests button when planning an activitiy
  
• Fixed "Tent Camp: Stealing a Moment" event that could not trigger during a tournament
  
• Fixed African Swords being used for african sword in the court but not in duels
  
• Fixed Court Physician not being able to help you in "Travel Danger: Under the weather" even though they were travelling with you
  
• Fixed cannibal feast being possible without any cannibal guests
  
• Fixed missing descriptions of effects in activity log entries for French, German, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish versions of the game
  
• The Body Guard court position selection will no longer display safety and speed since it affects neither
  
• The activity pulse action for donating gold at a pilgrimage site will no longer give you more gold instead of taking it away
  
• Travel Danger event "Flawed Fare" will now correctly account for if you have good traits for surviving in the terrain you are trying to forage food from. These checks existed but did not modify the actual outcome prior
  
• Tweaked Travel Danger event "Flawed Fare" to have a lower risk for a catastrophic outcome and to use the highest learning character in the entourage for the learning challenge. The overall danger in this event is now also more dependent on what terrain you are in
  
• Befriending people during a hunt event makes them friends not lovers
  
• Fixed opinion gains in A Foreign Treat
  
• Fixed broken loc in A Memorable Performance
  
• The Feral Child won't be hanging around instead of going back to nature anymore
  
• Fixed the bug that prevented custom faiths from getting a Head of Faith
  
• Fixed a pilgrimage event potentially giving adult wards
  
• Only Muslims can now make use of the Mosque of Imam Ali
  
• Catharism can now be reformed to keep Reincarnation
  
• Characters who joined your travel through Travel Options now leave your court when the travel is done
  
• Fully localized Sorcerous Metallurgy
  
• Coastal Warriors are finally safer in Coastal Sea travel
  
• Suspicion Opinion now stacks
  
• No more double dread for A Chance to Start Over
  
• Fixed certain millennials refusing to wear anything but filthy rags

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Hello everyone! Today we're releasing Update 1.9.1 for Crusader Kings III. A non-exhaustive list of changes introduced in this Update are listed below; please visit our forum for a complete list of changes, as the full changelog is too large to share via Steam.

► Discuss Update 1.9.1 on our forums!

• Tours and Tournaments: Added a new set of clothing for Western High Nobility (male & female)

• Added "Points of Interest" to the travel system, which rewards you for going out of your way to visit interesting places around the world. Examples include Special Buildings, Kingdom/Empire Capitals, and Natural Wonders.
  
• Added foreboding events, which make characters eligible to receive awful harm or death down the line
  
• Added incapability harm events, which risk characters being forcibly made incapable after receiving a suitable foreboding event
  
• Added death harm events, which risk characters dying before their time after receiving a suitable foreboding event
  
• Added commander harm events, which puts characters commanding armies at risk of dying for reasons outside of combat (especially if they don't have a suitable commander trait for the terrain they're in, or are unhealthy
• with how much health they need to be "healthy" going up as they age)
  
• Added game rule for controlling the frequency of harm events: turn them down, turn them off, turn them up, turn them up but specifically at interesting characters, or turn them up and turn them up extra specifically at interesting characters
  
• Added game rule for controlling targeting of harm events: just the AI, just the player, or both
  
• Added a decision for Jewish cultural heads to adopt Hebrew as their culture's language
  
• Converted the Kuzarite random event for faith reformation into a full "Break with the Old Ways" decision
  
• Jewish faiths now have a Halakha authority main doctrine with 4 types: Rabbinic, Toraic, Kohenimic, Samaritan

• Contemplative Pilgrimages now give 25% bonus Piety instead of 50%
  
• Dynamic Gold Values used in Events, Decisions, and other content now have Max Caps based on Era. This means that, for example, the 'major gold value' will not cap out at 500 gold in the mid-late game where such a sum of gold could be trivial. This makes rulers with very high incomes both pay and receive relevant sums of gold in the mid-late game. The new values are: 25% less in Tribal era, unchanged in Early Medieval, 50% higher in High Medieval, and 300% in Late Medieval.
  
• Grand Wedding Activity Option Prestige Rewards have been reduced by 25%
  
• If a vassal acceptance of Tour demands now consider more factors, such as loyal/disloyal traits, opinion, honor, greed, etc.
  
• Characters involved in the Iberian Struggle are now allowed to take the Hostility Ending if they completely control Iberia, and their primary title is at least a Kingdom they held for 5 years or more. This can be done regardless of the current phase.
  
• Increased tyranny incurred from refusing Pay Homage by 1 to 2, and thus Vassal Opinion lost to 1
  
• It's now valid to petition your liege for a fellow vassals capital title
  
• Lowered Reward Prestige from Tours by 50%
  
• Taxation Tours now give 50% less Reward Prestige, on top of the new 50% reduction
  
• Lowered average Renown gain from Tours
  
• Lowered the chance of becoming a drunkard in ep2_wedding.3400 significantly
  
• Lowered the frequency of the 'Feral Child' event and made the cooldown on getting it again much higher
  
• Made certain events where you get to recruit knights appear in more Locales during Tournaments
  
• Players with the trusting trait will no longer give out hooks via feast APA's, as there is no way of avoiding them
  
• Rebalanced the modifiers gained in tour_travel.3010 so that you don't get fooled by the green/red colors
  
• Reduced the Vassal opinion gain from Number of Courses in Feasts (roughly -5 on each level)
  
• Reduced the frequency of the 'A-pope-riate Clothing' Event and made the cooldown longer
  
• Slashed Siege % Modifiers from Buildings in half, to reduce the speed of late-game sieges somewhat
  
• Slightly reduced the Prestige gain from Dish complexity in Feasts (25%)
  
• The Era cost increase for activity costs is now much sharper; unchanged in Tribal & Early Feudal, 50% higher in High Medieval, and 300% higher in Late Medieval
  
• The Pilgrimage Piety bonus from the Humble or Ceremonial Options is now 100 instead of 250
  
• The Pilgrimage Piety bonus from the Throng Option is now 250 instead of 500
  
• There are now five Tournament Prize options; simple, decent, fine, good, and splendid, which control the rarity of artifacts given out by the tournament. The higher settings now cost a significant amount of gold, and Illustrious artifacts can only be gotten if one of the latter two options are chosen.
  
• Tour Stop costs are now scaled in cost per era, as all other Activity costs
  
• Tribal rulers can no longer go on Taxation Tours (other Tour Types are fine)
  
• Windmills, Watermills, and Caravanserai Buildings can now only be constructed in County Capitals to avoid insane Development growth stacking
  
• Windmills, Watermills, and Carvanserai can now be built in Counties where any County Province matches their terrain requirements
  
• Workshops now give slightly less Siege Speed %
  
• You can now petition your liege for claims held by subvassals
  
• Reduced the general opinion thresholds required for characters to consider cheating to low positives or early negatives for somewhat honorable characters, added a second tier of honor checks for dishonorable characters so that they'll consider cheating at close to (but still a little reduced from) the old higher opinion thresholds, drastically lowered the threshold for any character to cheat regardless of honor in the high minuses
  
• Reduced the health penalty on the incapable trait so that we can all spend a little longer enjoying the care of our regents :)

• The AI will no longer send children to university unless they're very rich
  
• The AI will now very often revoke titles from traitorous vassals with less than 0 opinion of them that they have in their prison, unless they are very compassionate, non-greedy, and honorable
  
• Vengeful rulers now more often revoke titles from vassal prisoners

• The Activity Log will now properly display effects and modifiers associated with the entry
  
• Activity Intent Target Selection Window will no longer show targets that will not accept the activity invitation, and will warn if they don't think they will get there in time.
  
• Activity invitation confirmation has gotten updated visuals.
  
• Add a setting to turn off realms being named after dynasties.
  
• Added more appropriate memory icons for Tournament, Grand Wedding, and Tour memories
  
• Added more portraits to culture conversion notifications to make them more informative
  
• Besieging accolades will now properly show the source name in the tooltip
  
• Caravan Master speed/safety contributions now show a breakdown when hiring
  
• Court positions interface has been updated.
  
• Current Caravan Master speed/safety contributions shown when hiring
  
• Fate of Iberia Struggle Events now correctly send toasts instead of Feed messages
  
• Fixed grand wedding activity backgrounds/animations resetting to use the travel graphics under certain circumstances
  
• Fixed the Agent entry in Invite Agent not being clickable everywhere
  
• Fixed tooltip inside the End Regency button
  
• Hide and expand button in contestant leader board doesn't disappear when clicked in a contest anymore.
  
• Holdings will no longer claim that there are a Tribal holding when trying to construct a new holding while not having enough Gold (it was only a UI bug)
  
• If the activity invite details view tries to open an invalid activity, it will no longer display the estimated travel time as an arbitrarily large number.
  
• Improved activity and danger map icon stacking and re-use to prevent flickering
  
• Interface improvements to activity log.
  
• Layout of acceptance has been updated.
  
• Locale Activity Window Conclusion now looks more like the regular activity window conclusion screen.
  
• Locale Activity Window now uses the same Activity Log Window as the regular Activity Window
  
• Marriage proposal interface has been updated.
  
• More traits gained through childhood will now be shown in the education finished event (such as Organizer or Forest Fighter)
  
• Moved the Activity Log Window into the top layer
  
• Names have been added below small character portraits in activity events.
  
• The Appoint Court Position UI now shows personality, so it's easier to choose for example a loyal Bodyguard
  
• The Host in Grand Weddings now use the Admiration default animation, rather than the Idle animation
  
• The Locale Window now explicitly sets the background based on locale_background instead of background.
  
• The War ended popup will no longer use white text on a light background, and not show a sigil when there’s no signature
  
• Tournament invites will now state, in flavorful terms, what kind of prizes you can come to expect if you win
  
• Travel Safety and Travel Danger aptitude for the Caravan Master no longer displays negative numbers. This had no effect on the gameplay.
  
• We now show your designated diarch as the diarch-to-be in the interface
  
• When planning a Tour, we now show vassal opinion and portraits on the map for easier decision-making
  
• You can now hover the Aptitude value in the Appoint window
  
• Fixed some cases where Glory would show up with a lot of decimals

• Added eyes to many animals on coat of arms
  
• Added simpler variants of early era clothing for commoners and unlanded characters.
  
• Made it possible to combine crowns with certain other headgear. For now only veils for female western characters. This will now happen dynamically in the game as well so that duchesses and queens will wear a veil combined with their crown
  
• Made the Iberian helmets a bit more common, also made the HRE armor show up a bit earlier and the chainmail coif should now show up as well
  
• Updated all bookmark characters to match better between the bookmark screen and the game. Improved the appearance of some of them and added DNA for most of the secondary characters, so that their appearance will not change between game versions.
  
• Updated Boleslaw II the Bold with historically accurate beard with mustache.
  
• Major update to Bookmark characters to use a bigger selection of accessories.
  
• Multiple clothing, headgear, hairstyle, and cloak improvements to alleviate clipping issues.
  
• Improved Zealous animation pose to alleviate clipping issues.
  
• Added late era western war nobility legwear to Barbershop.
  
• Added a new version of Female Western Era 3 clothes

• Corrected two broken keys in african godname localization
  
• Fixed a few broken death reason texts
  
• Fixed loc issue in fp1_other_decisions.0022

• Added contest pivotal moment outcome tooltips, as these were not telegraphed before
  
• Added “The Heroes of Our Time”, a feast event about acclaimed knights

• Activity Types now define triggered backgrounds explicitly for locale backgrounds as locale_background.
  
• Added 'special_building_province' effect for faster special building lookups
  
• Added activity 'special_guest' script list
  
• All trait triggers and effects can now use a trait scope as well as a database key.
  
• Allow portrait 'scripted_animation' being used in most places where 'animation' is allowed, including within scripted animations themselves
  
• Fix all scope types reporting they can store variables.
  
• Fix attending_character not obeying the specified activity state.
  
• Fix toggle-all-AI console button & command
  
• Prop genes are now specified for handedness: props_right, props_left, and animated_props.

• Assigned Huesca, Sobrarbe, and Pallas to the Old Vasconia region
  
• Correctly made Beatrice di Canossa a woman
  
• Made Sancha Baiúo into Galician culture as Portuguese doesn't exist when she lives
  
• Made several of the Zirid dynasty members Sayiids
  
• Updated the Tournament Background image
  
• Israelite cultures have had their languages updated: Ashkenazi
• High German, Sephardi
• Iberian Vulgar, Radhanite
• Shaz Turkic, Kochinim
• Tamil
  
• Added the Bavlim culture to represent Israelite people in the Middle East
  
• Kuzarite now begins the game as an Unreformed faith, and can become organized via the "Break with the Old Ways" decision
  
• The Communal Identity doctrine is now given the unique "Chosen People" name and description when used by a Jewish faith
  
• Esotericism is now named "Kabbalah" when used by a Jewish faith
  
• All Jewish faiths except Samaritanism now begin the game with the Prophecy of Malichi special doctrine which prevents the Head of Faith title from being created through any means other than the Restore Head of Faith decision
  
• All Jewish faiths now begin in 867 with Polygamy, with an event in the year 1000 to make Rabbinic faiths become Monogamous. Rabbinic faiths begin in 1066 with Monogamy
  
• Removed the holy site in Ethiopia for all Jewish faiths except Haymanot
  
• Rabbinic Judaism now has a holy site in Al-Hila to represent Babylon
  
• Karaite Judaism now has a holy site in Hamadan to represent what is believed to be the tomb of Esther and Modechai
  
• Samaritanism now has a holy site in Al-Hila
  
• Added the new Merkabah faith to the Judaism religion
  
• The Samaritan High Priesthood now exists in both start dates as a vassal of whoever owns Jerusalem
  
• The Samaritan High Priesthood will become a vassal of anyone who conquers Jerusalem of above Duke rank, unless the Priesthood is a vassal of a Samaritan character or independent

• Many, MANY fixes for reported issues. Check the forum link here for a comprehensive list.

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This Dev Diary will talk about some of the extra content coming with our next post-release update, 1.9.1! The update will of course also include a ton of fixes and tweaks, as we’ve been monitoring all the ways you’ve been playing with the big 1.9.0 update and the Tours and Tournaments DLC.

► Discuss Dev Diary #129 on our forums!



Hi everyone! I am Daan, also known as Joror, and I am a programmer on the CK3 team.

First off a little background info about me so we’re no longer strangers: I have worked at Paradox for over five years, and in a couple of different roles. First in our online department (DevOps) as a software engineer and Developer Relations specialist, then as a Clausewitz Engine programmer and tech lead, and finally I have been working in the CK3 team as a programmer!

Before joining Paradox I also dabbled in making mods and modding tools for Paradox games - which has helped me a lot in understanding how the games work from the outside, before moving to the inside.
I am Dutch, like cats, fancy beers, the occasional Goth party, game-jamming, and in general games of all varieties!

Making games is hard - it is a space where ideas are easy, but time is short, and success is measured by a graspable but fickle thing called ‘fun’.
So when developing, we design, build, evaluate, and cut. Many ideas fall by the wayside during each of those steps, including some personal darlings. Often not because the ideas are bad, but because there is not enough time, or they would be too risky, or… one of many other reasons.

Luckily, we also bake various ways into our process that give us space for personal agency and creativity! And one such way is PDT - Personal Development Time.
This is dedicated time in our busy schedule where every developer can work on improving their skills in an area of their choice. And (after checking with leads) we can also work towards adding ‘darling’ features or ‘pet peeve’ fixes that can make it into the game.

The “Points of Interest” travel system is such a feature! It’s also the reason why it is in a post-release update. Of course, it is not just a one person effort. Lovely icons and GUI elements were added by a crafty Artist, code was reviewed by discerning Programmers, the user experience checked for consistency and purpose by a UX Designer, its rewards evaluated for balance by a Game Designer, the end product tested by perceptive QA, while being supported by a whole range of other disciplines that make the work environment organized and smooth.

While working on Tours and Tournaments, one of the main systems I was involved in was the Travel system. For a little dev-insight, this is what route planning looked like early on in the process:

A screenshot of an early state of development of travel route planning, with different colors and icons.

We added Danger as one of the main ‘friction’ mechanics of travel, where players get to make planning decisions and have reasons to change their route. But Danger is mostly a ‘Stick’ - a punishment if you will - and it would be nice to have a ‘Carrot’ as well - a positive reason to change your route!

Enter: Points of Interest - a small system that rewards you for visiting interesting places.
These points of interest will give a reward the first time you visit them during your lifetime. The same also applies to your entourage, so bringing people along will also help them improve.

An adjusted travel plan which travels through Pisa, a province that contains a Point of Interest.

These Points of Interest are not static locations - but grabbed from the living world of CK3.

All Special Buildings (if they are built) give a Point of Interest based on their type, and give different rewards depending on the Special Building type:

Visiting the Pyramids is something to boast about.

Special building type rewards:

• Walls and Forts: +100 Martial Lifestyle Experience
  
• A part of a multi-province defensive structure (Hadrian’s Wall, etc): +25 Martial Lifestyle Experience
  
• Universities & Places of Learning: +100 Lifestyle Experience in your currently selected Lifestyle
  
• Religious Sites & Buildings: +100 Learning Lifestyle Experience, and +100 Piety if they are of your Faith
  
• Palaces and Political Buildings: +100 Diplomacy Lifestyle Experience
  
• Ancient Wonders & Natural Wonders: +100 Stewardship Lifestyle Experience, and +150 Prestige
  
• Economic Buildings (mines, ports): +100 Stewardship Lifestyle Experience

Visiting Capitals of independent Kingdoms and Empires also gives Lifestyle experience, based on their Court Type (if you have the Royal Court DLC) or Diplomacy Lifestyle experience when they do not have a Court Type. Empire Capitals are more rare, and give +300 lifestyle experience points, where Kingdom rank Capitals give +100 points. The capital Points of Interest are updated monthly, so sometimes your information might be slightly out of date.

The Byzantine Empire has an Intrigue Court - and will give Intrigue Lifestyle Experience when visited

Giving out these Lifestyle rewards is very narratively fitting for expanding the horizons of your character, but also substitutes nicely for the normal Lifestyle events you are not getting while traveling.

Some locations can also trigger a “Great City” sight-seeing event chain, which is actually hooking in a PDT project of another CK3 developer, TrinTragula!


When you visit, you get a message and the Point of Interest is marked as visited. To seek similar rewards, you will have to visit different places in the future!

A point of interest has been visited, and the rewards given.

Once you have picked up the Traveler Trait, you also start getting a bit of experience towards the different tracks within that Trait. (Martial and Economic building Points of Interest give Seasoned track experience, where the rest give Wanderer track experience.)

Getting ‘Seasoned’ travel track experience.

To conclude, here is a snapshot of the Points of Interest that exist in 1066:

A zoomed out map showing Points of Interest in 1066

To note, this system is part of the Free Update - so no specific DLC required.
Happy sight-seeing in Update 1.9.1.0~!

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Welcome comrades, to the Wokeg section of the DD! I’m afraid I don’t have anything quite as meaty for you as Joror. Instead of lovely new player carrots, we’ll be talking about the oldest and wackiest of all sticks with which to whack the player: death.

Something we’ve generally been a bit reluctant to do in CK3 is to just kill you. Luck plays a decent roll in the events you get and guiding your own luck is an element of many core mechanics, but we’ve been really reticent to have you just… die unexpectedly.

This was a stylistic design choice. It doesn’t really feel great when a random event pops and just kills you mid-run with no set-up or warning — it can be impactful every now and then, especially if it happens at a narratively dramatic time, but it’s just such a quit moment for so many people, and in wanting to provide an experience that felt fair, we over-corrected somewhat and scrubbed a vital element of friction from much of the title.

Whether you’re building your realm, planning marriage alliances, or carefully organizing your succession, these little shake-ups are needed to keep you course-correcting. They’re the firm, unexpected kick to the back of the knee that keeps you guessing and makes you react on the fly.

Not just that, of course, because random death and dismemberment were absolutely staple features of the medieval world too: you might be struck down by a virulent camp disease whilst marching, you might fall from the window of a tall tower, you might die in a house fire, you might be thrown from your horse whilst riding, you might be playing too roughly with another child, you might be old and just fall down the stairs, the list goes on. Paupers, kings, and clergy alike all have to walk the danse macabre eventually, and not everyone gets to go from the traditional big three of honorable combat, succumbing to wasting disease, or expiring from the ravages of age. Sometimes you just die.

The challenge we set ourselves, then, was adding in more ways for death to happen unpredictably without making for an irritatingly frustrating experience. Enter, the harm event.


Harm events are out to do one of two things: if you’re unlucky, they want to kill you, and if you’re lucky, they want to render you incapable. There generally isn’t a direct gameplay benefit to surviving them, and there’s always a stress cost. Their odds are generally pretty harshly against you, though depending on the event, high skill levels might give you a much better chance of success, and some traits will let you trade stress for negating a specific harm event entirely.

With these, there’s a whole variety of new ways to unexpectedly expire or be reduced to a bed-ridden shell! Fun stuff, y’love to see it. I did also say, though, that we were trying to avoid frustrating rocks-fall-PC-dies situations, and that’s still true. To avoid that, almost all harm events are partnered with a foreboding event — something that fires first and alerts you that hey, you are now eligible to… [spins tombola] … unexpectedly choke to death!

Rather than spring immediate death/incapability on you out of the blue, we alert you that you are now at risk of it. It can now just happen, at any time. In fact, just _getting_ a foreboding event gives you a 50% chance of getting the follow-up harm event within the next 4-8 years, though you’re also eligible to fire it forever after.

For example, here’s a foreboding event:


And its follow-up harm event:


The goal is to warn you that a new type of random harm is on the table, so that the notion is playing around at the back of your mind. Maybe it’ll come to nothing, maybe you’ll forget about it, maybe you’ve got just a few short years left to live. Do you want to make rapid preparations for succession? What if it never happens at all? What if you just pushed to do things a little bit faster so the realm’ll be ready for your heir? What if it happens sooner than expected? Lots of little questions to ask yourself. Or, if you’re one of the coworkers testing or playing on internal builds since we added these, lots of questions to menacingly direct to me when I’m making tea, demanding to know when they can stop being worried about impending doom. WAD, I whisper back to them, WAD.

There’s sixteen new harm-foreboding pairs for becoming incapable (well, fifteen pairs and one triplet: becoming incapable due to the march of time vs. your declining health sees your mind weaken, your body start to fade a little, then you risk becoming incapable), twelve new harm-foreboding pairs for dying unexpectedly, and six new events for dying/becoming incapable whilst on campaign.





Those last six aren’t paired with a foreboding event. Like I said, almost all harm events are, and the exceptions to this are the ones that fire for army commanders. Warfare could kill you quickly and unexpectedly without you ever donning your armor, and history is replete with examples of even fairly hale and hearty warriors succumbing to sudden unexpected disease, poor luck, or taxing environmental conditions, from John Lackland to Richard the Lionheart to Frederick Barbarossa.

Instead, opting to put yourself in charge of an army is your warning that you’re in a dangerous, taxing position, where poor luck might cost you dearly at any moment. High health will protect you from many of the potential ravages of campaigning (with the amount needed going up more the more you age), but the best way to stave off the risk of death outside of battle is to campaign in terrain you have the correct commander trait for.





Maybe you’re not too big a fan of this change - perhaps you prefer a more predictable world, or you want to have the occasional sudden death but mostly skate on by just fine. For you, we have the Safe & Illusion of Safety settings for the new Random Harm game rule, so you don’t have to deal with this stuff if you don’t want to.

Maybe, though, you’ve been waiting for something like this. Maybe you want more uncertainty in the world, or for life to be just that little bit more mean-spirited than most. For you, we’ve got the Tragic setting, making harm events much more likely generally. If you’d prefer that the tallest blade of grass be the first under the scythe, then we’ve also got the Spiteful setting, which specifically weights up the likelihood for harm events to target proportionally better or more interesting characters. And if you want both, welp, Tragically Spiteful, the single edgiest game rule we’ve added to date, has got you covered.

As long as you’ve got harm events set to anything but Safe, they do run on a cooldown. Players can’t be subject to a harm event more than once every fifty years, and the AI not more than once every thirty per house. These cooldowns help to reduce frustration whilst keeping the threat present, and mean that even playing on Tragically Spiteful, you can still thrive and survive. Just, with the occasional setback.





… and that’s it from me! Hope you like the harm events, I tried to cover a variety of types from historic references and common causes of death or severe injury either still present in the modern day or mitigated only in the last few centuries, and I’m very happy to be able to resurrect this particular darling for 1.9.1. Have fun with the update!

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Hello everyone!

In lieu of a dev diary today, we're releasing Update 1.9.0.4 to resolve some issues reported to us by the community.

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• Fixed some crashing issues
  
• Fixed an issue that allowed a regent to accompany a ruler on their travels
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from planning activities after they canceled travel plans for "Petition Liege" and "Pay Homage" decisions
  
• Fixed an issue that got tournaments stuck in the "Waiting for Tournament to start" phase
  
• Fixed alliances gained through the Diplomacy Intent in Grand Weddings invalidating on the next day
  
• Fixed the AI inviting players to Playdates, Witch Rituals, and Blots, no matter where in the world they are
  
• Grand Wedding promises are now inherited by the player heir
  
• Fixed an issue that caused players to be blocked permanently from planning activities due to them waiting for the Tour of their Liege
  
• Fixed buildings increasing activity costs rather than reducing them

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Our team is continuing to work on addressing your reports, so keep the feedback coming! We hope you've been enjoying Tours & Tournaments and the 1.9 'Lance' Update!

Attention Rulers,

To celebrate the release of our latest expansion, Tours & Tournaments, Crusader Kings III will be free to play until Monday, May 15th at 10:00 PST!

We're also discounting the base game and previous DLCs until Thursday, May 18th at 10:00 PST, so if you've been waiting to pick up some of our older content, now's the time!

• Crusader Kings III -50%
  
• Fate of Iberia -20%
  
• Royal Court -20%
  
• Northern Lords -20%

Additionally, we're happy to announce that you can now adorn your Steam profile with some regal flair through our new points shop. Animated avatars, profile backgrounds, and a full CK3 themed profile bundle can be yours right now; check it out here!



Thanks to all of you for your continued support; it means the world to us to have such a passionate and dedicated community.

We're releasing hotfix 1.9.0.3 today to address an issue that could be caused by failing a hunt.

Thank you to all of you for sharing your feedback and reports—our team is working to address all reported issues. For updates, please check our Known Issues post.

• Players will no longer get soft-locked from progressing further into the game after failing to hunt the animal in the "Hunt: Softly, softly" event

We hope you've been enjoying Tours & Tournaments and the 1.9 'Lance' Update!

Tours & Tournaments is now available! Check out the full list of changes introduced with our latest expansion and the accompanying free 1.9 'Lance' Update here.




Let wanderlust overtake your ruler’s desires during a monumental Tour, and seek out your subjects in a realm that can be both dangerous and richly entertaining. Prove yourself in one of the many forms of gallant Tournaments, either abroad or at home, or use the festivities to murder a quarrelsome rival. Be the host of new Grand Activities, be it grand weddings or stirring falconry hunts. But beware! Many celebrations are the perfect cover for the dastardly scheme against foes… or family.

• Handpick your Entourage and customize your Route carefully. The road ahead might be long, but is filled with colorful characters, exotic cultures, and life-changing events.
  
• Pay your vassals a visit and interact with them closely. Inspect their holdings, and get to know how your subjects live their lives in the most distant corners of your realm.
  
• Manifest your benevolence and bestow gifts and rewards. Or, bring a horde of tax collectors and finally get your due from those conveniently hard-to-reach vassals.
  
• Join Contests to win extraordinary Prizes and gain valuable experience in new skills.
  
• Host a magnificent Tournament with all its splendor and festivities. Prepare yourself well by paying a visit to the blacksmith or gain some liquid courage in the local tavern.
  
• Beguile your opponent with setting Intents, then bash their heads in or win the heart of your quarries with your excellent jousting skills.
  
• Gain an edge in backroom diplomacy by organizing a Grand Wedding. Negotiate beneficial prenuptial Pacts, please your Courtly vassals, and gain favors at these new intricate ceremonies.
  
• Bestow your knights with honors, allowing your warrior nobles to specialize, whether in politics or on the battlefield. Train them up, sending them to tournaments or war for even more experience.
  
• Admire the new museum-worthy character art, showcasing in detail the evolution of armor and dazzling changes in western medieval clothing, from the early to late Middle Ages.

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