Greetings! This Dev Diary will be a mixed bag of various things - there’s a lot going on, and therefore a lot to talk about. I want to take this opportunity to address feedback, talk design philosophy, shine some light on how we’re working, set some expectations for Roads to Power, tease some things coming in the future, and show off the 1.12.5 changelog for a free update happening on May 8th. In other words, this will be a big and a little bit all-over-the-place diary, but bear with me.

► Discuss Dev Diary #147 on our forums!



To start off, let's talk about Community Feedback!

There’s a lot of feedback coming in for the features of Legends of the Dead, and we’re doing our best to collect it. We try to find as much feedback as we can from as many different sources (forums, Reddit, videos, reviews, etc, etc.) as we can - even if you feel like we’re not there, I promise that we read everything - or we try to - and have it in the back of our minds. That said, let's start off with Plagues.

Plagues is the feature that has been the easiest to collect and action feedback for - even if various types of feedback are sometimes conflated and need to be untangled for us to know what we should change. Your sentiment is somewhat split between plagues either being too easy or too hard, but uniformly they are perceived as annoying by the sheer amount of events they can summon (especially in larger realms).

For Plagues, we’re looking into having balance changes go out together with an update on the 8th of May. The full changelog can be found at the end of this post.

The vast majority of the ‘event spam’ was due to one seemingly-innocent bug in the Alms event; it didn’t have a cooldown set. This means that regardless of our intentions, it’d always be valid to fire, which is of course not as intended. In fact, a lot of the events were set up to simulate negative consequences of unchecked plagues - but as many of you have rightfully pointed out, the general negative modifiers to development and other things are more than enough to represent this. That said, increasing the cooldowns significantly for most of the events that either have easy-to-happen triggers or major negative effects should go a long way in making this feel better.

The second part of making sure the events you get are relevant for you was to make it so they only happen if they’re near an area you care about: if you’re the emperor of a world-spanning empire, you don’t care about the goings-on of a distant backwater, or even if you’re just the King of France you don’t necessarily care what’s going on in the very southernmost parts of Aquitaine - after all, the risk of the plague reaching your lands from there isn’t that great. It seemed that the most common feedback here was to limit the events by distance, so that’s exactly what we did - they can now only happen if the plague is in your domain or within a certain distance from your capital (roughly one Ireland, it’s less than you might think).

Alongside this, we’ve reduced the overall frequency of plague events and shifted the ratio between minor/major/apocalyptic plagues away from minor and towards major/apocalyptic in an effort to make the content you receive more impactful - this should mean that you get fewer plagues overall, but the ones that happen are more significant. We’ve also removed the block on achievements when you lower the frequency, and added an additional option where you can choose to disable plagues (minus the black death) entirely should you wish.

Another recurring point of feedback is difficulty, or rather the lack of challenge - it is felt like the AI is much worse at handling plagues than the player, and this I agree with. While the AI will never be as responsive as the player when it comes to isolating or secluding, they should all treat it as a threat to be countered - choosing to defend themselves shouldn’t be dependent on minor quirks of personality; only truly major ones.

Currently, larger Counties (with more Baronies) are better at defending against plagues - and that was never our intention, as this is literally the opposite of what happened historically - therefore we’ve shifted the plague resistance granted by buildings from County-wide to Barony-wide. This should encourage an alternative playstyle of having fewer-barony Counties in your domain in order to protect development. This is also much more of a challenge for players than it will be for the AI, evening the playing field a bit.

The full changelog for the 1.12.5 update can be found at the very end of this Dev Diary.

Legends are a completely different beast altogether, and are much harder to collect feedback for - opinions on what to do or change differ wildly at this point in time. Of course we’re aware of the general sentiment surrounding the feature, which is why we’re still looking at as much feedback as we can. The update we deployed close to the release targeted some of the widely agreed-upon points of feedback, such as adding a Legend Library where you can see completed legends forever, and more reactive variations in chapter texts to things your character does (such as winning battles, having children, etc.), among other things. For this update, we’ve mainly improved the Legends mapmode as we found it uninspiring and not pleasant to look at due to its limited color palette (and similar colors tended to blend together).


[Image - New legend colors]

The feedback we’re collecting now is hard to act upon. As I mentioned, opinions vary greatly - from thinking that they are underpowered and useless, too overpowered and way too good, or that they should be something else altogether. Some of you are bringing up the example of CK2 Bloodlines (which is interesting to me, seeing as I designed them back in the day.) The Bloodlines of CK2 were designed to be more of a ‘fantasy’ feature, where great, lasting reputations were built by people *actually doing* the great and/or implausible deeds the reputations spoke of - this would then be literally transferred in their blood to either a patrilineal or matrilineal lineage (with some convoluted breeding necessary to ‘stack’ multiple lines on the same character). On the contrary, Legends in CK3 were designed to mimic what medieval rulers actually did; embellish otherwise mundane stories into epics of great renown - all in order to bolster their legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects or the renown of their dynasty. Which of the two approaches is the best can be debated, and I think there’s merit to both. We wanted to go for the more true-to-history one for CK3 - if nothing else - because it’s something we hadn’t done before.

Truth be told though, I think the problem with Legends lies less in the feature itself and more in how we communicated them in Dev Diaries and similar - we weren’t clear enough what they were going to be. This is something we can act upon. Going forward, any Dev Diary we’re making on a feature will aim to be less open for interpretation. As with diaries of old, we’ll try to describe features in as much detail as possible. We don’t want any misconceptions about what the features are or how they work. You can expect the diaries for Roads to Power to be detail-filled behemoths when they start.

Next up, I’d like to share some details on how we work to make the game better over time. No matter if we’re working on an expansion, free update, or other type of release, we always try to improve the game by doing various initiatives and looking at feedback.

There are different ways we’re doing this, such as through the dedicated Balance Days we have every three weeks - for which we keep a big sheet of ‘game balance areas’ that we review and add to.

Currently, these days are focused on improving some of the older content we’ve released, as well as doing balance passes on resources such as Prestige and game components such as Cultural Traditions. The main philosophy we’re following when reviewing old content is to balance it for fun. If a piece of content isn’t already engaging, flavorful, interesting, or fulfilling a specific purpose, then it needs to at least be made entertaining or useful. Right now, we’re working on updating Court Events from Royal Court - a set of events that are regarded to be fairly poor and inconsequential by many of you, and we do agree with that assessment in hindsight. We’re ripping out and replacing much of the content within that pool, hopefully for the better. As for Prestige, we’ve also taken a look at what causes the AI to go into Prestige debt and thus be unable to declare war - all in order to make it more challenging and not feel as inert. Many Cultural Traditions presented very small or narrow trade-offs that players would rarely choose, so we decided to change our philosophy to work with larger buffs and more significant/interesting tradeoffs. Updating older content or doing large balance passes is always on our radar, and will often arrive together with larger updates - all of what I mentioned here, Court Events, AI Prestige debt, and Cultural Tradition balance, will arrive alongside Roads to Power.


[Image - One of the revised court events]

We also work with Community Reports - our community team scours the various platforms where you have discussions, looking for trends and issues, and then they compile reports. These reports are very useful and show us if an issue or topic keeps being brought up. A lot of the changes we’re making to the plagues were measured using these reports.

In addition to this, we also have Fix Weeks (every three weeks, we focus exclusively on fixing bugs), Improvement Days (where we look at a backlog of improvements we’ve gathered, including your wishes!), and more. Much of our time is spent on making the game better, and we’re constantly evaluating how we’re working to see how we can best improve the game as much as we can.

A common topic that I see discussed in many places is the frequency of events, that they can feel ‘spammy’ - not necessarily because there’s always too many of them at once (although that certainly happens every now and then), but because you often see the same events often. The more insignificant or punishing a (random) event is, the less often you want to see it happen. Having a flavorful situation appear now-and-then is fine, but being blocked by a challenger on the road or hearing a duck quack several times per character feels off.

Now, the method we have when creating ‘pools’ of content is to have a generous amount of events that have easy-to-happen triggers and can happen in many situations. This we do in order to make sure you’re always valid to see something. While making an event that triggers for a niche situation feels really good, the likelihood of it being seen at all drastically decreases the more complex the situation is, making it less and less valuable to spend time making - to the point where it might be half a percent or less of the playerbase who sees them. This means that we aim for way more ‘general’ events as a rule of thumb, a ratio between general and niche (which varies depending on the pool we’re filling). Of course, a consequence of this is that you’re going to see the events with easy-to-happen triggers way more often - sometimes with every character you play, and sometimes multiple times per character (depending on the event cooldown).

Reading your feedback I’m inclined to make some changes to our philosophy, and I’d appreciate further feedback on this before we make any decisions.

What we are looking at is a combination of more significant cooldowns and a new system to restrict certain events for some characters you play could have the following effects:

• Pro: You would see the same events way less often
  
• Pro: You would have more varied ‘general’ event content between characters
  
• Pro: ‘Rare’ events would become somewhat more visible, due to fewer ‘general’ events being valid
  
• Con: Some event pools might give you less event content over time (which might be a Pro for some of you)

I’d like to go into a bit more detail on how this would work. Generally, we use 5 or 10 years as the most common cooldown for events; they are the default go-to values. For events with easy-to-happen triggers, what we could do is simply increase this cooldown - this would make it so that there’s a significantly lower chance of seeing the same event multiple times with the same character. This wouldn’t hinder each of your successive rulers from seeing the events at least once though, which would limit its impact as a stand-alone measure. If we introduced a system where we could randomly make events valid or invalid for your character, say that an event would be valid for 50% of characters, then we’d be able to ensure that not all characters see the same events. For some we could have lower values, for others higher - it could be a judgment call based on what the event is, and its purpose.

Of course, these two measures would only be interesting to enable for certain types of events, and wouldn’t work to introduce for all events (for example, you need all lifestyle events to be valid so that you have ways of gaining XP). That said, I believe that this could help drastically reduce the issue of excessively frequent events. Let me know what you think.

Another type of spam that is often (rightfully) brought up is that of messages, notifications (the bottom-right ones) and toasts (the top center ones that fade after a few seconds) have been accumulating for some time, and sometimes reach critical mass when playing - especially if you’re further into a session. The solution to this has been clear for a while, and we’ve finally found the time to realize it. With the update releasing together with Roads to Power you will have access to Message Settings. This means that you can disable or change any feed or toast message stemming from a ‘systemic’ source (in other words, anything that isn’t the result of an event outcome such as a skill duel, etc.) This should allow you to tailor what you see and are notified with based on personal preference.


[Image - CK3 message settings, modified by me to fit my playstyle]

As a bonus, this also allows you to automatically pause the game if something specific happens, and you can even set messages to be delivered in the form of a pop-up should you really want to not miss something! For example - I know that a lot of you who used to play CK2 set hostile sieges to pause the game so you wouldn’t miss them, now you can do the same in CK3.


[Image - Popup and pause on enemy sieges]

When developing expansions you have to make many calls of what should be paid and what should be free. Back in the day (I’ve worked at Paradox for 10 years now, time truly flies), we were not very good at determining what could be paid and what should be free. This had several unfortunate side effects; players who didn’t have certain expansions would be alienated, us developers would have to spend extra time supporting multiple parallel systems within the same game (including all manner of permutations between different expansion combinations…), and it sometimes made it harder to further develop popular systems. As a company we develop games that can live for a very, very long time - this implies a lot of work keeping the game healthy by updating features, fixing issues, doing balance work, and other things that aren’t just about making new expansions.

Over the years, we’ve started to make more and more base systems free at their core, which is something that came from listening to you in the community. The reason why we’re doing this is because we want your experience to be better - for the game to be healthy, for systems to be more accessible to modders, and so that we can update areas of the game that we feel would simply make the experience better. This alleviates the unfortunate side effects I mentioned above.

Speaking of modders; we love them, and we love the fact that so many people want to mod our game. This is why we spend extra time making new systems as flexible as possible, and why we take some of our time to do things that are pure support for mods (one of the latest examples here.) We appreciate the work they do and their creativity, but we don't want to rely on them to make the game for us - we only rely on them to share their passions about the game! It's important that the game is feature complete and enjoyable without mods.

Now, we don’t aim for a fixed ratio between free or paid - we aim to make the game better in as many different ways as we can. We don’t want to lock systems away if they’d make more sense being free. Sometimes this means that we’ll be making more free features than paid ones in an update, and sometimes more paid ones than free - it depends on what the update is about. It is important to note that we have limited time; the time to make free and paid features come out of the same pool. By choosing to make more paid features we’d be making fewer free ones, and that could ultimately hurt the game.

Which is why I want to reinforce that I don’t want to change how we work. I believe that it’s important for the game and community that certain things are free, to avoid divides and splits, and keep the game in good shape. We, like you, are fans of the game, and we want to make it as good as it can be - paid features exist in order to fund continued development, they are not goals in and of themselves. It’s together with you in the community that we decided to have this philosophy, and I strongly believe in it.

That said, while Roads to Power is going to have plenty of free systems (more than this Dev Diary will cover), it will definitely lean more towards having paid features than Legends of the Dead did.

The difficulty of the game is a topic that is often brought up. The truth is that CK3 is not a particularly hard game when you’ve mastered it - and that’s something we’ve always been fine with, seeing as, unlike other GSGs, we’re focusing more on stories and dynamically evolving narratives. That said, if the game is too easy, or systems are too trivial to overcome, then that impacts the quality of the stories. Therefore I’d like to explain my philosophy regarding what difficulty in CK3 should be.

I am not a fan of traditional ‘Hard’ difficulties, where all AI’s are simply given extra resources and bonuses the player cannot get - or alternatively the player is hit with a series of nerfs and inefficiencies that feel artificial and forced. I like when difficulty is immersive and opt-in. It shouldn’t get in the way of you telling your stories (up to a certain degree…) by the AI only doing objectively good things, such as stacking wars, spamming murder schemes, etc - it should help you create stories of triumph, or stories of overcoming hardship. The AI is there to immerse you in the game, and to provide an enjoyable challenge. Unlike the player, the AI cannot ‘game over’, and should therefore focus on immersion over pure survival (although it should obviously not feel suicidal - that’s not immersive!).

As we want the AI to play in an immersive way where they don’t always take optimal decisions, we try to be wary of changing the overarching difficulty - making the game harder overall will always hit the AI harder than the player, as the player can more easily adapt. There are systems that are easier to change than others to introduce more challenges to the player without inadvertently making the game harder for the AI. For example, the AI will almost always marry for Alliances or Prestige - never for Genetics. This means that if we were to make it more of a challenge to reinforce good genetic traits (which is on our radar, but perhaps not for Roads to Power) it would barely harm the AI at all. Of course this isn’t true for most systems, which is why we need to always be careful. When we change things, we try to think of what implications it’ll have for the AI so that we don’t inadvertently make the game less challenging. Many things that relate to adding more challenges are present on the balance sheet I mentioned earlier in this diary (the ‘How We Work’ section).

Now, difficulty comes in different flavors; one of these flavors is to optimize your resources to overcome challenges. This is when you use your gold, prestige, lands, vassals, etc. to outcompete your rivals and neighbors - very common in all GSGs.

The lack of mid-to-late game AI challengers makes this difficulty peter out quickly after you’ve formed a decently-sized realm.
Another flavor of difficulty is to overcome specific challenges where the rules you play by are different and not controlled by you. This is when you guide a blind 4-year-old through a viper's nest of rivals in order to reach adulthood and subsequently thrive - this is a more uniquely CK3 thing.

The fact that you have a lot of control over education, inheritance, and that you’re restricted to a direct line of inheritance makes it so you’re challenged less often.
Both of these are connected to player fantasies that are very common to have when playing CK3 - and both are difficulties we want to improve.

We work continually with general difficulty balance in our systems, but sometimes we decide to do things that are a lot larger in scope, such as these:

While I don’t enjoy having all AI’s cheat, I enjoy when certain characters stand out from the rest. When certain rulers, either because of historical reasons, or in-game suitability, are granted special bonuses and a new way of interacting with the world. The middle ages are full of these conquerors who forged large empires (which often later fell) like the Ghaznavids, Ayyubids, etc. I wanted something like this for CK - dynamic challengers, controlled in detail by game rules, who can rival players in efficiency while being immersive and appropriately flavorful.


[Image - Game Rules for Conquerors]

Conquerors switch over to a hyper-aggressive version of the AI, which is much faster to declare wars, can declare multiple wars at once, and invests all of their resources into warfare, MaA, and means in which to declare more and better wars (such as hunt activities if they’re low on prestige and you’ve disabled their special bonuses via game rules, or taxation tours if they’re low on gold, etc.). They switch to the objectively best lifestyle focuses, use schemes in a very realpolitik way, etc.


[Image - Conqueror economical Archetype]

By default, they get the ‘Conqueror’ trait which provides a host of powerful boons, making them have an easier time fielding a large army and keeping their realms stable. If you prefer to not give the AI any handicap, you can turn this off in the game rules. I avoided certain types of bonuses, such as making their troops fight better, or them having an artificially high advantage in combat, because such bonuses can feel unfair - instead opting for areas in which the player often has an advantage (economy, realm stability, etc.).


[Image - Conqueror trait bonuses]

Of course, if you fancy a truly unfair challenge you can set the game rule to ‘extreme’, where they’ll get an additional ‘scourge of god’ modifier. This is masochistic and not really recommended!


[Image - Scourge of God bonuses]

With default game rules, rulers around the world have a very, very small chance to become Conquerors. The likelihood goes up the more suitable they are based on traits, government, available CB’s, etc. A global pacing mechanic makes sure that there aren’t too many of these characters worldwide, and that they mostly appear in areas where you’d expect large upheavals in the regional power structure (but there are never any guarantees - they could appear anywhere!). You can also control via game rules if you only want already-powerful rulers to have the chance.

Everything good has to come to an end - if they are defeated repeatedly in wars, lose all of their prestige, or similar, they will stop being conquerors and lose all bonuses. On succession, being a conqueror is inherited by default - but if an AI is Cautious (in other words; a craven coward) they will also stop being a conqueror. This creates a dynamic ebb and flow of challenge.


[Image - Two conquerors, the Ghaznavids and the Somavamsi, splitting India between them]

This feature will help the mid-to-late game feel less stale when you’ve forged a grand realm, and will be coming in the update alongside Roads To Power.

Those of you who followed what we did for the Black Forge Jam know about this feature; when you die, you now have the opportunity to switch to one of three carefully-selected dynasty members. These picks are chosen based on an ‘interest score’, where various subjective things are chosen to make a character more or less interesting. Feel free to suggest things that you consider interesting, such as various combinations of traits and/or skills. Having rare traits or being in peculiar situations (such as being the only one in your dynasty of a certain faith) will score a character higher, while being awfully rich will weigh them down (as that isn’t as much fun as just trivializing the challenge.)


[Image - Updated death screen with the new Choose a New Destiny button]

The point of this feature is to give you opportunities to take on challenges - perhaps you have an awfully interesting one-eyed albino uncle who’s a count of a foreign faith within a distant realm? Now you will have the opportunity to change the course of your game and experience these much rarer situations. Situations that don’t exist when you start the game within the bookmarks. When you feel accomplished and ‘finished’ with what you’re currently doing, you can treat it as a ‘New Game+’ within the same session.


[Image - example characters in a Choose a New Destiny]

Currently there’s no inherent bonus associated with making this switch - and I’m in two minds if there should be any. I’ve been considering adding a small renown boon for choosing to switch, perhaps based on their difficulty. I welcome feedback on this point.

As I’ve seen a lot of discussions about how Adventurers will play, I thought I would give a brief overview of how we’re designing them. This will not be exhaustive (that will come in later Dev Diaries), but I think it’s interesting to share how we see the experience.

Playing as an average Adventurer will be a zero-to-hero experience, a completely separate experience from how you play a landed character, where you work your way up in the world. You will travel a lot, and accumulate resources to improve your standing. It won’t be easy to gain land depending on the goals you set for yourself - gaining a small plot of land will naturally not be as difficult as doing something epic like invading a kingdom (except if you’re an Adventurer with the special Legitimists purpose, in which case it’s intended that you can amass a big army and lots of support quickly! This will be rare though). It will also definitely be possible to play as a multi-generational adventurer, should you want.

Before ending this Dev Diary, I’d like to leave you with some screenshots of upcoming features of Roads to Power and its accompanying update. Firstly, we’ve already hinted at this, but the free update coming alongside the expansion will introduce a new 1178 start date, alongside two bookmarks - one focusing on the Byzantine Empire and its surroundings, the Call of the Empire. 1178 provides a more built-up starting situation than the 867 or 1066 starts do, and also gives you access to a whole host of new historical characters and dynasties to play, such as Saladin of Egypt or the Plantagenets in England - not to mention that the centerpiece realm of Roads to Power, Byzantium, is in a challenging situation with the Sultanate of Rum on its doorstep.


[Image - Call of the Empire bookmark in 1178]

Secondly, I’d like to show off a screenshot of the ‘Estate’ feature that Noble families inside of Byzantium (or other administrative empires) will have access to. As you can see, the estate has a location on the map from where it can be accessed (in this case Athens) and a whole host of building upgrade options - ranging from the mansion itself, external buildings (the Watchtower, Storehouse, and Hay Barracks in the picture), and internal upgrades (like the Granaries shown to the right), there’s even branching upgrades where you have to choose what you want the most. The Estate is managed by the House Head, and there’s one per family.


[Image - An estate in 1178, map location visible, with an ‘external building slot’ upgrade tree shown]

As I mentioned earlier in this diary, we’re committing to having more detailed Dev Diaries for Roads to Power. While there are some more teaser-like sections in this Dev Diary, that will not be the norm going forward - there should be no room for misinterpreting what we’re making, or how it will work!

(Community Manager note: Including the changelog would push us over the character limit for a Steam announcement! Check our forum thread for the list of changes.)

Hello, everyone!

We have an important update to share today for people looking to get into Crusader Kings III for the first time: we're retiring the old Royal Edition and replacing it with a new Starter Edition for our game. This new edition is designed to offer a comprehensive and value-packed entry point for new players, ensuring access to the best of what Crusader Kings III has to offer from the get-go.

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• Whether you start as a lowly count or a mighty emperor, no throne is safe as you compete for power against thousands of other nobles for prestige and dominance. Write your own histories, with a wide range of personality types, ambitions, and cultural preferences. Play as a haughty duke, a pious prince, or a cunning queen, and then play as their heir as the wheel of time grinds on.

• Host thrilling tournaments, grand feasts and splendid weddings to bolster your prestige or win new honors for your dynasty. Travel to distant lands on pilgrimage or inspect your vassals on a grand tour of your realm - whether to extort taxes or bolster loyalty.

• Deepen your relationships with those around you, forming lasting friendships with childhood companions, bitter rivalries with distant foes or eternal love with a beauty of your choosing.

• Immerse yourself in the Holy Roman Empire with a collection of outfits for both commoners, warriors and rulers of Central Europe.

• Based on the garments and regalia of Emperor Henry II and the Empress Cunigunde, this pack includes not only new robes and dresses, but historically appropriate crowns and other items.

• Give your court a dashing new look with a set of outfits and cosmetic clothing options for the Middle East and North Africa.

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Crusader Kings III: Starter Edition is available now!

Thank you for your support, and we look forward to welcoming new players into our community!

Are you stepping into the vast and intricate world of Crusader Kings III for the first time? We understand that beginning your journey into the Middle Ages can be daunting; That's why we're excited to introduce Legends of Crusader Kings III, a specially crafted initiative to ease new players into the game's rich historical tapestry and complex gameplay mechanics.

We've selected five legendary characters from the game's extensive roster, each offering a unique perspective on the medieval world and showcasing different aspects of gameplay. Whether it's military conquest, deft diplomacy, or intricate plotting, these legends serve as both a tutorial and a teaser of the possibilities that lie ahead.

There's news for existing players as well: these characters are set to receive comprehensive overhauls as part of a free update in May, enhancing their stories and gameplay even further.

The journey doesn't end with these legends, though. Crusader Kings III is about carving your own path through history, and with Legends of Crusader Kings III, we encourage you to start forging your own legacy. Create a character, build your dynasty, and make decisions that will echo through the ages. Will you be a benevolent ruler, or a tyrant feared by all? The choice is yours.

Getting started with Legends of Crusader Kings III is simple. Visit the official website for guides on each legendary character and tips for creating your own. You'll also find links to our social media pages and various community platforms, where you can ask questions, share your journey, and connect with other players.

Hello everyone! Today we're releasing Update 1.12.4 to address some outstanding issues, as well as implement several changes to Legends and the Legends UI. Most of these changes are the direct result of community feedback we've received here on Steam and elsewhere over the past weeks; your feedback remains an invaluable tool for helping us improve Crusader Kings III, so thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts and suggestions with us since the release of Legends of the Dead!

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• Legend chapters will now change in response to the player's actions: winning a battle, a siege, being released from prison, taking the vows, a deceased spouse, a newborn child, etc.
  
• Added more variations to legend titles.
  
• You are now alerted when a new legend enters your realm.
  
• Winning a Great Holy War now offers a chance to get a Holy Warrior legend seed.
  
• Added a Legitimacy modifier to the "Writing History" perk.
  
• "Shy" and "Reclusive" characters now have a higher Plague Resistance.
  
• The capitals of rulers with high level Legends will now become Points of Interest to visit during travel.
  
• Added a player Legend Library, which contains completed legends.
  
  • Legends in player Libraries will never fade, even if their bonus-giving reach has decayed to zero provinces.
    
  • Legends you own or were actively promoting are automatically added.
    
  • Completed legends that reached your domain are automatically added.
    
  • You can remove legends from your Library at will (beware that you might not be able to get them back!)
    
  • You can add distant completed Legends to your library if you are traveling in lands that the legend has reached.
    
  • Your Legend Library persists on inheritance / character switching.

• Improved legend window interface - completed legends now take up less space.
  
• Legend headers are directly clickable.
  
• Legend list items now contain more information, such as the protagonist name, and start/completion date.
  
• Legend chronicle window has a clearer scrollbar, and a nameplate for the protagonist.
  
• Legend chronicle portrait animation is now based on chronicle type, and they are also animated - to remember them as they were in life.
  
• Added ‘pan to legend’ button and right-click action for legend list items.
  
• In the Legend List, promotion costs for legends you cannot promote are no longer shown.

• Fixed broken invalid obligations notification.
  
• The "Royal Touch" event doesn't give out permanent Measles anymore.
  
• Clarified the "Isolationist" cultural tradition to reflect its plague resistance.
  
• Legend protagonist portraits no longer show characters in their nightgown, if they had the misfortune of dying while ill (dead protagonists from old savegames might still be in their nighties)
  
• Fixed certain UI sounds to match levels from previous versions.
  
• Observers get a nicer legend listing.

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Write glorious new sagas of military conquest and romantic adventures with Chapter III.
This Chapter includes two expansions, one event pack, and one cosmetic enhancement. Enjoy new mechanics, new events, and new historical flavor to add greater depth to Crusader Kings III!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38036

Hello everyone! Today we're releasing Update 1.12.3 to address some issues reported to us by the community as well as deploy a couple of balance tweaks. Notably for our MacOS and Linux users, this update merges in the previously experimental fix for crashes related to tooltips and mousing over portraits. A huge thank you goes out to the community for providing their crash reports and insights on this issue!

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• Rebalanced the AI logic for asking characters to promote their legend.
  
• If you have taken gold in exchange to promote someone's legend and stop, then you're asked to give the gold back.

• User Modding: Added on_legend_start_promote to legend types.
  
• User Modding: Added on_legend_stop_promote to legend types.

• Clearing the Grounds for a Legendary Hunting Lodge now correctly states the additional requirements.
  
• Reworded the description of the "Upward Mobility" achievement.
  
• Advanced Research icon has been updated to be more historically accurate.
  
• Clarified the description for Extol Domestic Legend.
  
• Changed the title of 4 similar legends.
  
• Added Cremation funerary tradition to Zunbil.
  
• Added happy reaction for when disliked spouse dies in death_management.1200
  
• Added 25% cultural fascination bonus for fifth level of learning trait.
  
• Fixed Horse Hastiluder XP not disbursing upon winning the horse racing event at tournaments.
  
• Fixed Sar-i Sang mine not scaling modifiers correctly into fourth level.
  
• Fixed Palace of Aachen not correctly displaying feast cost reduction.
  
• Ensured Your Highness event (host_dinner_events.1009) targets the correct characters.
  
• Ensured you can’t save yourself in travel_events.2105
  
• Fixed multiple localisation typos.
  
• The Sons of Scota legend now lets you diverge your culture to Ancient Egyptian at Mythical level.
  
• The Sons of David legend now lets you diverge your culture to Hebrew at Mythical level.
  
• Fixed a bug where regional portrait accessories, for example cultural swords, would not properly display.
  
• Fixed rare crash to desktop when a character has an invalid instance of their character modifier.
  
• Fixed wrong header for cost breakdown when you are a legend promoter, rather than the legend owner.
  
• Reduced crashes related to tooltips and portrait clicking on Mac and Linux. Note: We might not have found all instances of this issue. Special thanks to all assistance from the Paradox Forums for helping us with this issue.
  
  • If you're using the experimental beta branch with this fix, then you will need to opt out of it to receive today's update.

• Added explicit game concepts for owned legends and promoted legends.

---

Write glorious new sagas of military conquest and romantic adventures with Chapter III.
This Chapter includes two expansions, one event pack, and one cosmetic enhancement. Enjoy new mechanics, new events, and new historical flavor to add greater depth to Crusader Kings III!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38036

Hello everyone!

Back in December of 2023, halls of Studio Black buzzed with an exciting flurry of activity for the team’s inaugural Black Forge Jam: a three-day extravaganza of creativity and innovation, with just a dash of chaos. This wasn't your average development sprint. We threw the rulebook out the window (figuratively speaking, of course) to dive into the realms of "What if?" and "Why not?" for Crusader Kings III.




Imagine a space where time, budget, and the usual game plan constraints are sidelined, allowing for pure, unadulterated creativity. That's what the Black Forge Jam was all about. With 11 different projects on the table, different groups from the CK3 Dev team embarked on a journey to explore the unexplored and build the unbuilt, all fueled by a passion for innovation and perhaps a copious amount of caffeine.

Take a look behind the scenes of the Black Forge Jam:




While the team experimented with 11 different projects during the event, these 5 ideas stood out after the work was done.

Medieval Menagerie: Envision a court where your royal advisors are joined by loyal pets, each bringing a unique flair and emotional depth to your reign. This project focused on incorporating pets into the game, understanding the emotional impact they have on players, and exploring how to enhance that aspect of gameplay.

Immersive Barks: Picture interacting with your subjects and hearing their whispered allegiances and concerns, enriching the tapestry of your kingdom's story without a single voice actor. Inspired by real-time strategy games, this project aimed to add small textual feedback from characters when players interact with them, enhancing the immersion and interaction.

Death and Succession Dynamics: Delve into the complexities of royal lineage where death and succession are more than mere formalities but pivotal moments that can shape the destiny of your dynasty. This project aimed at making the death and succession process more interesting and giving players more choice in who they continue as, addressing scenarios where a player’s favorite character is not their heir.

Karnöffel: Discover the joy and strategy of integrating Europe’s oldest known trick-taking card game, offering a new layer of historical immersion and leisure within your court.

Intrigue Warfare: Imagine a realm where the dark art of intrigue directly influences the battlefield, allowing for more nuanced and strategic warfare decisions. This project aimed to better integrate the Intrigue system with warfare by creating new ways to use hooks on opposing commanders or knights and to interact with mercenaries.

The above projects represent the broad spectrum of creativity and innovation that our team poured their hearts into. But it didn’t stop there; ideas flowed, code was written, and the foundations for potential future expansions to Crusader Kings III were laid, so we’re just as excited as you to see what the future brings!


What truly stood out wasn't just the projects themselves but the incredible energy and dedication of the CK3 team. There was laughter, challenges, and yes, the occasional cry of despair over a stubborn piece of code. But above all, there was an undeniable sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. The jam wasn't about delivering polished, finished products but about embracing the beauty of imperfection and the thrill of exploration.

This jam was a testament to our commitment not just to Crusader Kings III but to you, our amazing community. Your enthusiasm, feedback, and support fuel our creative fires and guide our ventures into new territories. So, we're turning the spotlight over to you now. We've shared a glimpse into our world of creation and innovation—now tell us, what captured your imagination? Which of these projects would you love to see come to life in the game?

Your insights, dreams, and wishes are what help shape the future of Crusader Kings III, so drop your thoughts on the projects worked on during the Black Forge Jam in the comments here on Steam or on any of our other social platforms!

---

Hello everyone! Today we’re releasing Update 1.12.2.1 to address some issues reported by the community after Monday’s release of Legends of the Dead and the 1.12.1 “Scythe” Update.

Most notably, this update resolves an issue that resulted in Legends disappearing too quickly after being completed.

Please check the changelog below for more information!

---

• Raising a Runestone now increases your Legitimacy.
  
• Hooked in Legitimacy loss to some plague flavor events.

• Added easter egg disease names.
  
• Added Hildegard von Blingin’ song to the game.

• Fixed a bug that made Legends disappear too quickly upon completion.
  
• Roaming, Raving event - Zealous option now uses the correct form of Faith name.
  
• Yearly Cultural Acceptance increase now happens yearly over time instead of bi-monthly.
  
• Death Management events for Spouses now reflect your opinion of them.
  
• Very Rare epidemics game rule now influences the spread of epidemics.
  
• Grand Rite activity now correctly states the reason for why you can't host the activity.
  
• The Mourn intent now has the correct animation.
  
• Tooltip for penalty information due to exceeding domain limit now has correct localization.
  
• Fixed bookmark characters clipping issues.
  
• Clearer toast for marrying a lowborn.
  
• Great Expectations Event can now trigger again.
  
• Can now hold funeral for recently dead spouse.
  
• Enter Seclusion and Isolate Capital Decisions now have more consistent localization for ending seclusion/isolation.
  
• There is now information about Initial Legitimacy change in Virtuous and Sinful traits.
  
• From Dust can no longer target your own capital.
  
• Pope no longer hosts tournaments.
  
• Some legend chapter update now properly gets pronouns and no longer ends abruptly.
  
• A Sinful Ancestor event can no longer trigger when you do not have any ancestors.
  
• Custom map table style and HUD style settings are now remembered.
  
• Legendary Building "Hunting Lodge" is now available to build when completing the appropriate legend.
  
• Conquering land as an Interloper now triggers the 'Lose a Title within the Struggle Region to an Interloper or Uninvolved Ruler' catalyst.
  
• Accolade Attribute "Reeve" now correctly gives control boost for Martial councilor task.
  
• Fixed a crash on going back during the Court Grandeur tutorial.
  
• Fixed a crash on Activity Intents.
  
• Increased the requirements for "The Most Pious Life" legend.

---

• "Sons of David" Legend does not let the player diverge their culture to any of the Israelite cultures.
  
• "Sons of Scota" Legend does not let the player diverge their culture to ancient Egyptian.
  
• Leisure palace modifier for feasts lacks localization.
  
• Player is not informed about the legitimacy loss from one of the options when faced with a Peasant Uprising.
  
• Iranian army lacks models of siege weapons while siege is in progress; all siege weapons are shown as trebuchets.
  
• "Form Portugal" decision incorrectly has Bengali culture.

Due to an issue with how Steam treats filename capitalization, you may need to completely uninstall and reinstall Crusader Kings III to avoid stability issues.

We are aware of an unrelated crashing issue on these platforms. If you experience crashing, please try the fix above and submit a bug report if the issue persists afterward.

---

Write glorious new sagas of military conquest and romantic adventures with Chapter III.
This Chapter includes two expansions, one event pack, and one cosmetic enhancement. Enjoy new mechanics, new events, and new historical flavor to add greater depth to Crusader Kings III!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38036

Hello everybody! Today we're releasing our first Core Expansion for Crusader Kings III: Legends of the Dead and an accompanying free 1.12.1 "Scythe" Update.

Check out the release trailer below, and then the changelog itself under that.

• Added Legends: a new system that allows you to create stories based on Legend Seeds (with events, decisions, court position tasks, and other ways to obtain them), a Legend Chronicler to visualize them, and special rewards.
  
  • 3 Legend Types: Heroic, Legitimizing, and Holy, with bespoke flavor, effects, and rewards, including special Legendary Buildings and decisions.
    
  • 3 Legend Quality Types: increasing the rewards upon completion and during its spread.
    
  • Legend Promoters: sponsor someone else's legend for a much smaller cost.
    
  • Added Historical Legends to characters in both start dates that would have a Legend Seed in history.
    
  • Added many events, decisions and interactions to spread Legends, affect the rewards, and change the Chronicle.
    
  • Added Legendary Buildings, with powerful rewards, unlocked after completing high quality legends and investing in the new Heroic Dynasty Legacy - all of them with special 3D models on the map, changing depending on the culture.
    
  • Added Legend Seeds to the old Major Decisions, allowing you to start legends based on previous content.
    
  • Added Legend Chronicler visual variations based on culture.
    
  • Added a new Dynasty Legacy: Heroic, focused on Legends and unlocking new rewards for completing one.
• Added a special Black Death event chain for when the Black Death spawns, with special art, music, content and effects.
  
• Added new Diseases: Holy Fire, Bloody Flux and Measles, all of them available as potential plagues.
  
• 28 new character assets to immerse you into the late medieval era and give ailing patients and skilled physicians a distinct look:
  
  • 3 variants of male late style western nobility clothes
    
  • 1 variant of male bedchamber clothes
    
  • 1 physician male clothes
    
  • 2 variants of male late style western nobility cloaks
    
  • 4 variants of male late style western nobility headgear
    
  • 2 variants late style western commoner headgear
    
  • 1 variant western royalty headgear
    
  • 1 hooded male headgear
    
  • 2 variants of female late style nobility clothes
    
  • 2 variants of female bedchamber clothes
    
  • 1 physician female clothes
    
  • 2 variants of female late style western nobility cloaks
    
  • 3 variants of female late style western nobility headgear
    
  • 2 variants of female late style western commoner headgear
    
  • 1 hooded female headgear
• Added a new Funeral activity: bury a close relative in a whole new activity, with new events, options, intents and rewards.
  
• Added a new Legendary Feast option to the Feast Activity focused on getting new promoters for your legend and increasing its spread.
  
• Added new Activity Intents: Extort Legitimacy and Spread Legend.
  
• Added a new building line to temple holdings: Scriptoria, which increases legend spread and county control.
  
• Added a new building line of Duchy buildings: Burial Sites. Build up your family mausoleum and obtain legend bonuses, plague resistance, piety, court grandeur, county control and popular opinion.
  
• Added a new Court Chronicler court position, focused on finding new legends and helping you spread yours both inside and outside of your realm using new Court Position Tasks.
  
• Added an exclusive Map Table, with unique assets that reflect both Plagues and Legends.
  
• Added map graphics VFX for the spread of legends.
  
• Added new legendary and fateful music tracks as well as new both Legend and Plague Mood Tracks.

• Added Plagues: some diseases will now be treated as epidemics and spread through the map, causing Fatalities and infecting characters in that location.
  
  • Added many new plague events, both for when a plague is in your realm and when it's approaching, and decisions to protect yourself, your family, or your entire capital.
    
  • Added new events for the Court Physician, focused on plagues.
    
  • Reworked old health events, adding new flavor, animations and art.
    
  • Added new court position tasks for Court Physician - focused on helping with plagues, increasing piety and lifestyle experience - and for the Court Musician and Poet, focused on the spread of legends.
    
  • Added a new Hospice building line, available in all sorts of holdings, and providing Plague Resistance and Piety.
• Added Elderly and Child Health, affecting younger and older characters more with certain diseases.
  
• New Disease Game Rules and special Black Death rules, affecting its frequency, year and place of spawn, including historical settings.
  
• Added Legitimacy: a new system to measure the perception of your right to rule, including the Legitimacy Expectations from both Powerful and Regular Vassals.
  
  • Added Legitimacy rewards to old decisions, traits, and activities.
    
  • Added a new Dynasty Legacy: Legitimacy, focused on increasing Legitimacy, unlocking new intents and improving your dynasty's education.
    
  • Added Legitimacy penalties to some character interactions: Disinheriting a child, asking them to Take the Vows, or marrying a Lowborn.
    
  • Added Legitimacy modifiers to title creation: allowing you to create a title from less de jure counties if you have a high Legitimacy level.
• Added a new Faith Doctrine: Funerary Tradition, that affects the main event and rewards from Funerals.
  
• Added a new Cultural Tradition: Water Rituals, that helps with plague resistance.
  
• Added new disease graphics on the character models.
  
• Added new epidemic travel danger type for locations with plagues present
  
• Added map graphics VFX for the spread of disease
  
• Added option to hide the disease map graphics
  
• Added a default Map Table, with new assets and art, that improves immersion and offers a physical place for the map.
  
• Restructured and polished Event Window so that it can accommodate VFX.
  
• New Event VFX: Flies, Fog, Legend Glow, Rain, Smoke and Snow.
  
• New animations and instruments: hurdy-gurdy, flute, lute, qanun, and shawn.
  
• Remastered music and effects, bringing the map to life.
  
• Monthly county control is now split into two separate 'Growth' and 'Decline' figures, each with their own modifiers.
  
• Added new birds flying over the map, with seagulls in coastal provinces and crows flying over infected holdings.
  
• Added a coughing animation to armies passing through infected provinces.
  
• Added new map models like Healers' Camps, Burial Grounds, and Funeral Pyres spawning naturally in infected provinces.
  
• The Scarred Trait is now tiered, with gradually more drastic visuals and effects according to the level of the trait.
  
• Added balding hairstyles and a system for male pattern baldness. Characters have a baldness value in their DNA which affects the age at which (male) characters start losing their hair.

• All Plague Diseases are now more deadly, especially the Black Death.
  
• Rebalanced other Diseases to account for Elderly and Child Health.
  
• Made Brythonic heritage less likely to destroy the title of England.
  
• Removing a guardian will now only reduce unity once every three months rather than every time.
  
• The Ill trait is now more deadly to adult characters.
  
• Slightly reduced the legend spread rate from buildings, shared languages, and culture heritages.
  
• Inbred trait now reduces initial Legitimacy.
  
• AI now considers epidemics quite an important factor while thinking about hosting and joining activities.
  
• Completing Roman Heritage legend now gives claims in Italy, North Africa, Greece, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.
  
• Increased development gain from coastal provinces.

• Fixed AI being unintentionally less aggressive immediately after save-game load.
  
• AI should now be able to choose the "Dominate the Caliph" struggle ending option successfully.
  
• Make the AI remember when it last finished an offensive war between save games.
  
• Fix issue where activity intents were not being set correctly for AI activity attendees (would take default intent).
  
• Fix AI rulers waiting very long to convert their betrothal into marriage, if they gained their first title while being betrothed.
  
• Characters from savegames that were players before, and are no longer, will now get an AI strategy (and not sit brainless in their castle until death takes them).
  
• Fixed issue where ‘add_{budget}_gold’ triggers would not give extra gold, but only make the AI think they had more gold to spend, getting them to try and spend gold they do not have. Gold now actually gets created.

• Reworked interface for court positions:
  
  • Entries are smaller so as to show more court positions at the same time.
    
  • Court Positions can now have actions, similarly to Council Positions.
    
  • Each Court Position has their own icon.
    
  • Court Positions are color coded by their most important skill category.
    
  • Courtier aptitude is color coded and has an icon to be more distinguishable.
• Added monthly change descriptions of control and development to holding view so players can take action on it directly.
  
• Added max_height property to widgets. Works just like max_width.
  
• Added min_height property to widgets. Works just like min_width.
  
• Consistently use our tooltip-style throughout the game (fixes breakdown tooltips in county view, HUD budget list, tax slots, ruler designer, and more).
  
• Explain county absolute control in tooltips where possible.
  
• Fix text alignment of long texts in breakdown tooltips, and apply better bottom margins.
  
• Fixed various icon and text alignment issues in the tax jurisdictions interfaces.
  
• Highlight development loss or stagnation in holding view.
  
• Removes expiration information from timed character modifiers that do not have a set expiration.
  
• Fix Regent portrait to no longer push Lovers portraits out of the UI window.
  
• Court position UI now allows filtering by if they have tasks or not.
  
• Marriage UI now shows the specific chance of inbreeding happening.

• Chaplains now use Fate of Iberia temple art in the council view when relevant.
  
• Character view for Theocratic rulers, Chaplains, and Physicians now uses temple and study backgrounds.
  
• Concubine interaction now uses the faith temple background instead of a generic corridor.
  
• New loading screen illustration for "Legends of the Dead" expansion.
  
• 4 new Trait icons: Measles, Dysentery, Ergotism, Legendary.
  
• 2 new Memory icons: Plague and Legend.
  
• Travel Danger icon for Epidemics.
  
• 2 new Map Mode icons: Plague and Legends.
  
• 6 new Decision images:
  
  • Archers
    
  • Legitimacy
    
  • Legend
    
  • Family Tree
    
  • Black Plague
    
  • Tale
• 4 new Artifact icons: Animal Figurine, Chronicle, Jar, Northern Mace.
  
• 5 new Story Event images:
  
  • Apocalyptic Disease
    
  • Black Death
    
  • Heroic Legend
    
  • Holy Legend
    
  • Legitimizing Legend.
• 2 new Legacy Track illustrations: Legitimacy and Heroic.
  
• 2 new Activity Intent icons: Legitimacy, Legends.
  
• 11 new achievement icons.
  
• Polished Council and Courtier Task icons.
  
• 7 new Courtier Task icons:
  
  • Neutral
    
  • Espouse Legend
    
  • Generate Seed
    
  • Promote Legend
    
  • Attend Poor
    
  • Guard Family
    
  • Treat Epidemic
• Polished all circular progress bars.
  
• 7 new Event Backgrounds:
  
  • Catacombs
    
  • Oasis
    
  • Pyre
    
  • MENA Physician’s Study
    
  • Tribal Physician’s Study
    
  • Indian Physician’s Study
• Condemned Village
  
• 3 new full body disease decals
  
• 16 new Legendary Building models:
  
  • Christian Shrine
    
  • Norse Mead Hall
    
  • Norse Shrine
    
  • Desert Hunting Lodge
    
  • Dharmic Shrine
    
  • Indian Heroes PIllar
    
  • Hunting Lodge
    
  • Indian Palace
    
  • Islamic Palace
    
  • Islamic Shrine
    
  • Mediterranean Monument
    
  • Norse Runestone
    
  • Steppe Shrine
    
  • Western Hero Statue
    
  • Western Palace
    
  • Western Watchtower
• 7 new Building icons:
  
  • Graveyard
    
  • Hospice
    
  • Legendary Shrine
    
  • Legendary Hunting Lodge
    
  • Legendary Watchtower
    
  • Legendary Palace
    
  • Hero Statue
• 9 new props:
  
  • Alto Flute
    
  • Bronze Mortar
    
  • Bronze Pestle
    
  • Chifonie
    
  • Lute
    
  • Northern Mace
    
  • Book
    
  • Qanun
    
  • Shawn
• Ritual Washing Culture Tradition icon
  
• New Character Portrait shader. Gives characters a painterly look to them.

• Fixed a typo in the Find a new Faith for Persia decision.
  
• Fixed missing type when localizing HOSTAGE_OATH_OF_FRIENDSHIP.
  
• Fixed untranslated weapon type name in Exotic Arms event.
  
• Fixed a typo in City Walls of Toledo description.
  
• Fixed missing loc in Demand Conversion.
  
• Fixed AI acceptance tooltip to Request Incursion.
  
• Fixes trigger tooltips for options in Embellish Capital Decision.
  
• Fixes invalid tooltip for Take the Vows option in the Negotiate Release character interaction.
  
• Shortens event text in Travel: A Feast for Falcons to avoid a scrollbar.
  
• Fixed broken text in the House Feud rivalry reciprocation event.
  
• The tooltip in the event option for ending a house feud is now fully localized.
  
• Removed incorrect “cannot march here” text in tooltips for army units.
  
• Adds missing localization for modifier affecting faction join chance regarding Detractor trait.
  
• Fixed Wetlanders cultural tradition description.
  
• Propose Alliance interaction tooltip now correctly informs about existing hook on target character.
  
• Fixed a tooltip info about losing house unity when refusing the independence faction demands.
  
• The tooltip for the Wootz Steel innovation now lists the terrain requirement for the Wind Furnace building.

• Added Situation Log entry if a Vassal is waging a war which would make them independent or change Liege upon victory.
  
• Removed regency option from Challenge House Head interaction.
  
• Vassals now receive a message if their liege or above starts or succeeds in converting a county in their sub-realm.
  
• Child rulers under 12 are now allowed to sponsor inspirations. (Kid: "Goo goo pretty", Inspired Courtier: "Sire has Spoken! Thy will be done.")

• Add complex trigger support to morph_gene_value.
  
• Added NCamera::START_ZOOM_STEP define for more control over starting map view when selecting a character.
  
• Added new county triggers:
  
  • monthly_county_control_growth
    
  • monthly_county_control_decline
    
  • monthly_county_control_growth_factor
    
  • monthly_county_control_decline_factor
• Allow changing trait XP on dead characters
  
• County trigger 'county_control_rate' is now called 'monthly_county_control_change'.
  
• County trigger 'county_control_rate_modifier' gone, it is split into 'monthly_county_control_growth_factor' and 'monthly_county_control_decline_factor'.
  
• Tags set on portrait accessories can now influence decals and texture_overrides (Example: a hairstyle can trigger a head decal to be on/off now).
  
• Feed messages of the same type can now be auto-combined into one by using ‘combine_into_one = yes’.
  
• Text icons can be colorized by specifying a color definition in their configuration, such as `color = "color:red"`.
  
• Color of text icons can be overridden in localization strings by doing `@icon_name:color_name!` or inherit from the current formatting by doing `@icon_name:inherit_color!`.
  
• Deprecated ‘is_widget_open’ trigger, preferred trigger for this functionality is new faster ‘is_widgetid_open’ trigger, which works on widgetids instead of widget names.
  
• Added possibility to store script variables on dead characters.
  
• Added ‘on_yearly’ effect to court positions.
  
• Renamed ‘tooltip_enabled’ to ‘tooltip_visible’ in gui script.

• Cleaned up naming for some Houses and Dynasties in India to be more consistent with how other house and dynasty names are represented.
  
• Marzoban Zahhak of Upper Ghur is now the uncle of Ghurshah Sūri of Ghur in the 867 bookmark
  
• The Badami, Kalyani and Vengi Chalukyas are now considered branches of the same dynasty.
  
• Shazhou's culture is now Han rather than Sogdian in 867.

• Celibate trait no longer modifies opinion about characters with Eager Reveler trait.
  
• Event chain Great Expectations no longer can result in a potential game over due to heir gender.
  
• The Umayyad Strikes Back achievement now correctly requires Sunni Caliphate title.
  
• Non-clan rulers now get notifications about tax jurisdictions if they have Clan vassals.
  
• Raj'a tenet now is available for custom Zoroastrian faiths.
  
• Manage Royal Guards Martial Task decreases success chance for Enemy Hostile Scheme instead of increasing it.
  
• Skill bonuses from Confidants are now named correctly.
  
• The Tomb of Batsheba now increases close relative opinion of holder instead of increasing holder opinion of female rulers.
  
• Seljuks will no longer try to become your vassal if you are duke or below.
  
• House Feud ending event has now fully localized and truthful tooltips.
  
• Exaltation of Pain tenet no longer has a pink description. Sad.
  
• Fixed notification about a wrong artifact being stolen from you.
  
• Knight training from Mentor accolade now tells you the truth about the hastiluder track your knight is being trained on.
  
• Prevent the player from being able to deselect all radio buttons in the interaction window.
  
• Fixed Canterbury Cathedral not being a Point of Interest when upgraded to lvl 2 and 3.
  
• Fixed Castles not showing a 2D icon when upgrading them.
  
• Fixed OOS issue related to timed modifiers on travel plans.
  
• Fixed a bug in the Request Contract Assistance interaction so that it's finally usable.
  
• Fixed a multiplayer bug where players could generate different names for an accolade, leading to an OOS error.
  
• Fixed incorrect lighting setup in one of the Zoroastrian temple event backgrounds.
  
• Fixed issue where dead characters might both have both a 'former' and 'current' spouse that is the same.
  
• Fixed travel modifiers stacking when they should not (stacking quarreling entourage modifiers could escalate into a shouting match of epic proportions).
  
• Fixed you referring to yourself as your liege when changing stance during the Iranian Intermezzo.
  
• Fixed a graphical issue in the inventory with historical artifacts when their culture isn't set.
  
• Fixed House head succession if both the house head and heir die on the same day (house no longer cursed with a dead house head for eternity).
  
• Iranian rulers will now use Iranian clothes much more often.
  
• Off to play event will no longer trigger if the host of the event has died.
  
• Partially shaved hairstyles now have a proper 'clean' dome.
  
• Player will get correct notification & better GUI when "Abbasid Humiliation" struggle ending with "Dominate the Caliph" option is available.
  
• Positive county control change % modifiers now no longer make negative control changes bigger (they do not affect those anymore).
  
• Prevent you from becoming your own tax collector after succession.
  
• Raised armies now start with full supply instead of a fixed 100 (relevant if their supply capacity was increased by modifiers such as the ‘Living off the Land’ perk).
  
• Reduced time on disrespected elders modifier.
  
• Replaced all instances of script values for aptitude expecting incorrectly a level distribution with the correct distribution of.
  
• The Denounced, Disinherited, Extolled by House, and Accused of Decadence traits will now be removed if a character becomes Dynasty Head/House Head respectively.
  
• When marrying a wandering character via a grand wedding, they will no longer run back to their previous location after the wedding.
  
• When title is revoked from a ruler they can steal counties from vassals if the ruler has any other non-titular non-head of faith title and has any vassals to steal from.
  
• You can now revoke all titles of a vassal that hold a HoF-title, causing the HoF-title to be destroyed.
  
• You can now revoke vassal-of-vassal Holy orders where appropriate (via decision or button-interaction on barony).
  
• Fixed an edge case where viziers would, under certain circumstances, reduce your tax gain from vassals rather than increase it.
  
• Fixed bug where part of the ‘Tutorial’ button was unclickable.
  
• Yearly cultural acceptance changes will actually trigger roughly yearly instead of sort-of bi-monthly.
  
• Fixed that potential knights come knights immediately, instead of waiting a day (or longer for AI).
  
• Added safety check to travel_completion_event.1000 so it does not trigger if the current travel plan was aborted.
  
• Control Growth multiplier modifier no longer applies its modifier if the growth is negative.
  
• Court Scholar court position now correctly only requires Legacy of Persia DLC, and not Royal Court as well.
  
• Ethos is now correctly listed in the Cultural Pillar encyclopedia entry.
  
• Fixed Dismantle Byzantine/Holy Roman Pretenders decision being available more than once per lifetime, which broke the war declaration.
  
• Fixed a bug where a Hostage could remain a hostage after the Warden inherits the Home Court from a family member.
  
• Fixed a bug where the attacker's max troop count was always used as the losing side's max troop count when calculating war score from battles.
  
• Fixed a bug where winning a battle as the attacker would use the defender's scaling for calculating the war score.
  
• Fixed an issue where an aborted travel plan could progress travel days.
  
• Fixed an issue where an aborted travel plan could skip to the next destination.
  
• Fixed an out of sync where host and client disagree on who won a battle.
  
• Fixed bug where a recently landed, former court position employee could sometimes get the salary twice in a month.
  
• Fixed characters sometimes not being correctly added to entourage and court in travel events.
  
• Fixed issue where accepting demands when negotiating to Challenge House Head would not make you the House Head.
  
• Fixed issues with the Challenge House Head events when playing as House Head.
  
• Fixed OOS error on hotjoin where an unlanded court position employee becomes landed, loses their position and gets their salary later in the month due to changed rank.
  
• Fixed the Execute a Detractor/Supporter Iranian Intermezzo catalyst never firing.
  
• Fixed the Homeward Bound travel event breaking if your entourage was empty.
  
• Fixed war victory against same or higher tier ruler Iranian Intermezzo catalysts not firing.
  
• Fixed wiping the Seljuk's invasion not allowing you to end the war, added war target title to its name and disabled hostage peace options.
  
• Fixes issues with sexuality, tooltips, and pregnancy in the Adventurer Inspiration event Lady/Lord X's Lover.
  
• Holding Court will now always grant a small amount of Court Grandeur at a minimum.
  
• It is now only possible to share a Spouse with a family member in Polygamous faiths if all parties believe in Unrestricted Marriage.
  
• Prevented negative AI acceptance modifier being added to Offer Vassalization acceptance after having purchased a truce.
  
• Religious heads are no longer given the option to embrace Jesus in the Wanton Desires stress event.
  
• add_courtier and set_employer effects can no longer be used to return a hostage to their home court.
  
• Viziers (and Stewards) without titles now correctly receive a monthly gold income too, based on their liege. It shouldn't require a title to mooch off some funds.
  
• You should not be able to grant lessee temple holdings to other characters when your court chaplain position is empty
  
• The Dome of Soltaniyeh is now correctly considered to be a ‘Wonder’ travel point of interest.
  
• Fixed "weight_multiplier" for events - multiplied value was used to filter out "0-weight" events, but not for actual weight picking.
  
• Fixed Coat-of-Arms graphics to update immediately when the new or old holder is a clan and overrides the default CoA.
  
• Fixed re-activating a dynasty house when a new member wondrously appears again (usually happens when the last member dies while their wife is pregnant - the baby being born will revive the house).
  
• Fixed crash that could happen when opening up the barbershop while playing an unplayable character (through observer mode for example).
  
• Couture of the Capets character assets are now properly available in the barbershop.
  
• Allow lieges to build in holdings they lease out.
  
• Fix court amenity expenses costing piety or prestige to actually use those resources and not gold.
  
• Character tooltips in Activity Window and Event Window have been adjusted to not block characters in certain resolutions.
  
• Added missing Faction triggers.
  
• Fixed broken Iranian Resurgence check.
  
• Disallowed courtiers being taken hostage by their own liege.
  
• Fixed a very unperformant Seljuk effect.
  
• Fixed event with two childhood Traits.
  
• Fixed Seljuk Invasion target.
  
• Fixed Zakat Tax Decree.
  
• Fixed an edge case where you were able to start planning a Grand Rite without a witch trait or witch secret.
  
• Fixed bug where the vizier position was invalidated due to us checking if our liege could have one, not us.
  
• Fixed Iqta description and effects are not at odds with each other anymore.
  
• Made it harder to steal parents from their children's court, and impossible to steal unlanded guardians, court position holders, and councilors.
  
• Fixed max limit on scaling House Unity modifiers.
  
• Fixed scrollbar in friendship letter.
  
• Fixed an error when a dog seller leaves your court.
  
• Fixed error log showing errors for decision items in observer mode.
  
• Fixed double notification when someone else "Renewed the Caliphate".
  
• Fixed removed stray modifiers if a Grand Wedding invalidates.
  
• Fixed the history of artifacts stolen during a siege.
  
• Fixed accusing servants of being the real father of someone else's heir when they are younger than the heir in question.
  
• Fixed Mozarabism appearing as a regional heresy outside of Iberia.

We hope you enjoy Legends of the Dead and the free 1.12.1 "Scythe" update as much as we enjoyed making them!

---

Write glorious new sagas of military conquest and romantic adventures with Chapter III.
This Chapter includes two expansions, one event pack, and one cosmetic enhancement. Enjoy new mechanics, new events, and new historical flavor to add greater depth to Crusader Kings III!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38036

Hello and welcome to the 146th Dev Diary for Crusader Kings III! I’m Matthew, the Code Owner on Legends of the Dead. From the highly anticipated Epidemics feature to the Black Death itself—and what happens after your land is ravaged and your family taken to the grave—today we’re going to be covering all things Death!

► Discuss Dev Diary #146 on our forums!



As stated in the Vision Dev Diary, we’ve wanted to include Epidemics for a long time now—doing them bigger and better than CK2 ever did.

Plagues should be an impactful part of the game, ranging from a mild illness in a localized area to the sweeping spread of diseases across continents. Not only should they cause death in their wake, but those who survive should have their trust in your rulership tested.

Every barony with a holding is susceptible to an outbreak of disease, and many factors can influence the chance of an outbreak:

• The development of the county
  
• Terrain of the province
  
• Number of buildings
  
• Specific buildings such as trade posts and markets
  
• Cultural era
  
• If there is a nearby epidemic already
  
• Game rules

When an outbreak occurs, it will be one of three intensities: Minor, Major, and Apocalyptic.
The intensity impacts how much the disease can spread, how likely it is to spread to an uninfected province, and how long an infection in a province lasts.



Each disease will leave the infected with a specific associated trait, and any character located in an infected province is at risk of getting sick.

All outbreaks will get a dynamic name. Some will be named after the culture of the area, while others will claim the name of the region’s ruler…since if they were truly a legitimate ruler, the Gods would not punish them with such disease, right?

Every ongoing epidemic can be seen on the map too, both as an effect in normal map modes or in its own dedicated map mode.





If you zoom in closer, then we hide the epidemic pulsing blood and instead show the desolate gray land now haunted by death…



When there is an epidemic nearby or in your realm, you will be notified by the new HUD widget, which if you open (or switch to the map mode manually) will show you more info about ongoing epidemics.



If you click an epidemic on the map, or from the list, then you’ll be able to see an overview of the epidemic for every province in your domain it has infected, as well as the vassals in your realm and other independent rulers.

This also shows you which provinces are at risk of being infected by the epidemic and what the chance of it spreading is.



The chance of spreading to a neighboring province, as well as across two sea provinces, is influenced by many factors, such as how developed the provinces are, their buildings, cultural traditions, if they have immunity from prior infection, and more!

Speaking of province infection, you can see here that every province tracks how infected it is as a percentage. Different infection thresholds will cause different modifiers to be applied to the province and its holder.





The maximum infection rate is reduced by Plague Resistance, which can be increased through various means.

You can preemptively increase it by constructing buildings that raise it, such as the new Hospices building chain or the Burial Site duchy building.



You can also increase it by having your Court Physician work to Control Plagues using the new Court Position Tasks, or by taking the decisions to isolate in your capital or close the gates.



Legends of the Dead also features three new illnesses that can take the form of Plagues. Measles, the Bloody Flux (Dysentery), and Holy Fire (Ergotism).

As mentioned before, Measles is especially deadly to children, lowering their health even more than everyone else’s. This uses two new modifiers we’ve added for child and elderly health respectively, most diseases are more deadly to the elderly by default.



Of course, it wouldn’t be one of my dev diaries if I didn’t also point out that all of these things are very moddable: you can create custom epidemics, change how they spread, outbreak, infect characters, even how their blood splatter looks on the map!

Both Plagues and Legends come with a handful of game rules for controlling how they play, as well as specific rules for the Black Death.



Speaking of which, the Black Death holds a special place amongst the rest of the pantheon of epidemics, and as such, has some extra bells and whistles to go along with it.

---

Hello all, Noodle here to ask the old question: “ʟᴏʀᴅ, ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴄᴀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴀʀᴠᴇsᴛ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ꜰᴏʀ, ɪꜰ ɴᴏᴛ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴘᴇʀ ᴍᴀɴ?”



No history of the medieval world is complete without reference to the Black Death.

Killing up to half of Europe’s population over the course of seven years, the Bubonic Plague that swept across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East in the 14th century altered the very fabric of society. Everyone - man, woman, adult, child, noble, pauper - found themselves at the mercy of the merciless pestilence. From the outset of development, we knew the Black Death had to be done proper justice.

This naturally involves a bit of a balancing act. On one hand, the Black Death should behave within the confines of the mechanics we’ve built, so that reaction to it is natural and swift. Presenting you, the player, with an unfamiliar new set of ways to deal with this unique event would be complicating matters for no real gain. After all, the plague itself is simply the scariest amongst a whole host of potential pandemics that could occur. On the other hand… It's the Black Death. Anyone should feel the fear of God and be reaching for their rosaries when they see that seeping dark mass wend its way on to their screen.



As such, the tack we took involved a deeper look at how the plague rolled out across the land. Like any good movie monster, half the fear is in the anticipation of the reveal rather than the monster itself, after all. It’s one thing to be dealing with the plague, but consider instead the stormy horizon: first come the missives of death and devastation, then the bedraggled and petrified refugees staggering to your borders, and then all of a sudden your armpit begins to swell…

That is the frame of mind we want the player to be in when the plague erupts. When the scythe starts swinging there’s not a whole lot anyone can do, but the precious moments before that wicked blade reaps its harvest are the ones worth investigating.



To move on from setting such an overly-elaborate scene, then, the actual mechanics of the Black Death follow the pattern laid out by other very large epidemics in-game. The notable difference is that - unless you’re incredibly unlucky (or have a truly massive empire, in which case I allow you no sympathy) and happen to have it take hold within your own realm - you’ll be getting fair warning of the coming storm.

As the panic mounts, you’ll be able to at very least begin to make provisions for protecting your realm, aided or hindered by a set of unique Black Death events that will give you opportunities to stock up some counties beforehand. These vary from calming panicking crowds right through to instructing your physician to dissect infected bodies to try and glean some meager information.

I won’t spoil those events any further here, but between them and the advanced warning a player can get, the Black Death becomes less strictly about waiting for the inevitable and more about a race against time. You will have to utilize all your options to the fullest to even withstand it, let alone escape relatively unscathed.

As with any Apocalyptic-level disease, the damage wrought by the plague can be mighty. More developed areas of your realm will suffer harder in comparison, and the sickness can wipe out entire branches of families. The issue with the Black Death in that case is its violent effects. Its modifiers are brutal, and its cocktail of lethality and infectiousness makes for the single greatest consistent threat to a realm in the entire game.

This is already getting rather lengthy, so I’ll leave it there. Hopefully you all have as much fun battling the Black Death as I did making it!

---

Of course, with Plague comes Death, and with that comes a time to mourn your lost friends and family:

And with all this desolation there also comes the opportunity to remember the dead. With Legends of the Dead, we're introducing a new type of Activity: Funerals.


[Image: Decision to host a Funeral]

You can hold a Funeral for any deceased member of your family in the past 5 years, and a new specific intent "Mourn" is available as default, allowing you to lose some stress after going through the process of grief.


[Image: Funeral planning]

The Activity Planner will suggest the best place in your realm to host a Funeral, prioritizing baronies with a temple, and high-level temples within that; if you choose one of them you will get extra Piety as a reward.


[Image: Selecting a place for your Funeral]

The different levels of the "Ceremonials" Activity Option also offer better final rewards for a higher gold cost, focused on Piety, Legitimacy and Stress loss.

The first phase of the Funeral is the Wake, the wait until the Burial, and it features all guests reminiscing about the life of the deceased, their memories together and their more characteristic traits. They may also interact with each other and even in these distressed times there will be someone waiting patiently just to get a hook… or increase the funeral numbers.



The "Burial" phase has different descriptions and general flavor depending on your faith's tenets, and will reflect your religious traditions, not always being a burial per se.

All throughout the celebration, Active Pulse Actions (or APAs) will also inform you of what the other guests are doing meanwhile, bringing the activity to life (pun not intended).



Funerals mainly reward your Piety and Legitimacy, as a moment to reflect on both the brevity of life and the legacy that we leave behind.

---

As part of this Core Expansion, we’ve also decided to implement more ways of showing the declining health of your ruler & their kin. Now, most of you might know the plague was already grotesquely displayed in the game prior to Legends of the Dead - and hopefully you’ll be excited to welcome two new diseases to the visual roster: Smallpox and Measles.


[Image: Now might be a good time to remind the good player that this box can be un-ticked in the settings]



And while we’ll mostly leave it up to you to figure out what to do with those diseases, as far as prevention and treatment is concerned, I think it’s safe to say you’ll definitely want to employ a court-physician. Fortunately, us from the character art team have been hard at work making that option as lucrative as possible - by adding some new sick physician clothes (along with a bunch of other new garments as well of course).

---

And last but not least we have the new achievements! As always, they are listed in order of difficulty.


Legendary! - Complete a Legend


You'll Never Take Me Alive! - Travel to a safe holding while your Capital is infected by an Epidemic


Pay Respects - Host a Funeral for your Legend Protagonist


Neverending Story - Complete your ancestor's Legend after their death


Divine Right - Reach the maximum level of Legitimacy


Canonized - Manage to make your Legend Protagonist a Saint


Upward Mobility - Successfully claim your Liege's title while having a higher Legitimacy Level than them


Local Legend - As a Count, complete a Mythical Legend


Not Today - Contract, and recover from, the Bubonic Plague


The Pharaoh Islands - As a Scottish character, complete a Legend claiming your descent from Ancient Egypt


Can't Touch This - Have an infected Barony at the maximum Epidemic Resistance



Thank you all for reading! We hope you’re as excited as we are for the release of Legends of the Dead next Monday to kick off Chapter 3!

---

Write glorious new sagas of military conquest and romantic adventures with Chapter III.
This Chapter includes two expansions, one event pack, and one cosmetic enhancement. Enjoy new mechanics, new events, and new historical flavor to add greater depth to Crusader Kings III!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38036

Hello and welcome to the first of our feature breakdown Development Diaries! I'm a game designer on Crusader Kings 3 and I surely hope that you have a nice cup of coffee next to you and the will to read for a while, as today's entry is on the chonkier side! Today we will talk about Legends, Legitimacy, and the Art behind Legends of the Dead.

So, let's get right into it! Legends!

► Discuss Dev Diary #145 on our forums!






We've already covered the original reasoning behind legends in our previous Vision Dev Diary, but to go over it quickly (and in a very oversimplified manner) again: medieval people really loved legends, and above all of them, rulers really loved legends. One of the first times we ever hear of King Arthur is in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, which is, as the name says, a list of the kings of Britain.

The Plantagenet kings of England quickly latched onto the figure of Arthur as a legitimizing tool. This was partly a reaction to the German and French (specially the Capetians), that exalted their connection to Charlemagne in this "race for historic-mythical sponsorship" as the medieval historian Jacques Le Goff writes. All across Europe, medieval monarchs scrambled to find an older, more heroic figure, that would secure the throne for their dynasty.

And now, so can you!

Legends have a Type and Quality level. Because no legend can be entirely mundane, they start at Famed, then Illustrious and finally Mythical, each of them giving out progressively more powerful rewards; you can increase the quality of the legend when it has spread far enough, including having to extend outside of your realm.


[Image: Rewards for completing a Famed Legitimizing legend]


[Image: Rewards for completing a Mythical Legitimizing legend]


As for the Types, Legends can be Heroic, Holy or Legitimizing.

Heroic legends give additional Prestige modifiers and other thematic rewards that reflect your heroism, like the decision of launching a Legendary Adventure, or Demand Local Submission.


[Image showing one of the special Heroic Legend rewards]


Holy legends are focused around Piety and are greatly inspired by medieval hagiographies, specifically the Golden Legend, allowing the Protagonist to even gain the Saint at the highest levels, if the appropriate Dynasty Perk has been unlocked.


[Image showing one of the Dynasty Perks for the new Heroic Bloodline Dynasty Legacy, focused on Legends]


Lastly, Legitimizing legends will give you double the amount of Legitimacy and allow you to get new, powerful claims to expand your realm, as shown in the rewards above.

You also can, of course, choose the Legend Protagonist, the author of these heroic deeds. Among the possible options are your relatives (even if dead) and choosing someone other than yourself will also grant you extra Legitimacy, so you can dedicate your legend to your dragon-hunting grandpa.

But how can you start a legend? Well, every legend is born from a Legend Seed. Some characters start with historical seeds on game start, like the Capetians Heirs of Charlegmane, or the Hunnic Heritage, available for Nomadic cultures that claim to be descended from Attila himself.


[Image: The Heirs of Charlemagne legend seed]


[Image: Hunnic Heritage legend seed]


However, this is not the only way to get legend seeds, as winning important wars, hunting a legendary animal, and taking major decisions are also some of the most common ways of getting one.

Even hiring a capable Court Chronicler and paying them enough gold can manage to… make an ancient document appear mentioning your long-lasting dynasty.


[Image: Mending the Great Schism will grant you a Holy Legend seed]


But supporting a legend is not only beneficial for its owner, as becoming a promoter (a much cheaper alternative) will also grant you special bonuses, as well as helping the legend spread on your lands - the higher quality the legend, the bigger the rewards for you too.


[Image: Promoter bonuses]


While you spread your legend, you'll get flavor events of both people reacting to your legend in different manners along with your Chronicler and courtiers fervently asking you to recount the story just once more, my liege, making it possible to introduce… ehem… minor alterations to the text.

Use the new Court Position Tasks to make your Musicians and Poets sing your legend to make it easier to spread inside your realm, or get them to try and convince supporters abroad!


[Image: Court Musician performing the new Extol Domestic Legend task]


Turn your legend into an artifact, celebrate a feast in its honor, or simply enjoy the control boosts from having it spread over people that now believe you a hero. Legends were a core part of the medieval world, a powerful tool to root your power in something greater than you.

"Lineage and geste are synonymous, as the epic cycle constitutes itself according to a pattern of affiliation between families of heroes and families of poems." (R. Howard Bloch, 1983: 94).


[And here it was written, Paradox Forum, 20th of February, 2024 AD.]

For Legitimacy, our aim was to put together a measurement of different systems that already existed in the game, but were not directly connected to each other: Short Reign penalties, Popular Opinion, Vassalization and Marriage acceptance, etc. The game was already trying to reflect how legitimate of a ruler you were, but was trying to do so with Prestige and Renown in non-consistent ways. Prestige is a reflection of the social influence of the character, not an indication of them being the "right" person to the throne - you can be a highly prestigious king of the Capetian dynasty, but should you be the emperor of Byzantium?

Legitimacy and its effects scale with title tier. It's not the same being a level 5 Emperor - where everyone expects you to be the right person for the job - than a level 5 Duke, where everyone is impressed with your overachieving.



[Images: Count with Legitimacy level 0 and 5]



[Images: Emperor with Legitimacy level 0 and 5]


It's also easier to go up and down levels the lower your tier, as it's harder to convince people once they've formed an idea of who their king is.

Legitimacy also scales with the in the game era, and the levels are smaller in the Tribal and Early Medieval eras.

Legitimacy is calculated through a series of factors, mainly attached to who you are in relation to your title: the level of splendor of your dynasty, how long you've been on the throne, who your parents were (are you the child of kings or just random lowborns?), your traits, being a bastard, etc. When you die, a part of your legitimacy will be passed down to your heir, but they will get a calculation of their own based on who they are - it's not the same to have your firstborn inherit than a third cousin.


[Image: The Sayyid traits increases your Legitimacy]



Legitimacy can be gained through various means that will reassure the public opinion that you have the right to be in the throne: legends, for one, are one of the main ways to gain it. Holding activities, holding court, and doing what's expected of a ruler will also help increase it, as well as winning wars - but this will also be relative, as it's not the same to win a war against a Duke as an Emperor than be the Duke beating up the Emperor.

Legitimacy can also be lost. Losing battles, especially to factions (and especially to Claimant factions) will make you look pretty bad, or even managing to have a Peasant Rebellion appear will signify that you're not taking good care of your subjects. Rulers were also blamed for plagues, as the representatives of God on earth, so allowing them to hit your capital will also make you appear less legitimate in the eyes of your vassals. Disinheriting or forcing kids to take the vows also exposes a ruler that doesn't take good care of their dynasty and will also make you lose Legitimacy.


[Image: Disinheriting your heir will cost you more Legitimacy]


Your vassals, of course, have Expectations of you. This is calculated based on your tier, era, and how long your family has ruled over theirs, besides their opinion and relationship to you. Not meeting your vassal expectations will make them discontent and more likely to join factions against you.


[Image: King with Legitimacy level 3]


As we've already seen in the tooltips, Legitimacy levels affect all sorts of things in the game: Casus Belli cost, Marriage and Alliance acceptance, Faction formation and even the counties necessary to create a title.


[Image: The art for the new Legitimacy Dynasty Legacy]

---

Hello! My name is Pavel Golovii and I am a senior illustrator at Paradox. I have been working on a number of illustrations for this expansion and today I am going to talk about processes behind the scenes of illustration work. As an example, I will take arguably the most challenging kind of illustrations we have in game - the loading screen. This illustration is the player's first introduction to the expansion and bears the responsibility of giving them a feeling of anticipation.

Every picture starts with an idea. With the introduction of epidemics in “Legends of the Dead” I regarded the opportunity to feature a physician, a healer as very fresh and appealing. It would be a positive, reassuring subject matter when compared to the intrigue, war and power struggles that dominate the themes of our other illustrations. Truth be told, a lot of inspiration was coming from “The Physician” movie and some orientalist’s paintings.


[Image: A couple of the initial ideas featuring an eastern theme with a physician.]


Another idea that was suggested and actively supported by game designers is the legend of The Lady of Shalott. This medieval themed story is a beautiful blend of tropes for both “legend” and “death” and provides a very suitable metaphor for the new expansion. At the same time this theme was depicted in many paintings by a number of renowned artists. It was especially popular in the Pre-Raphaelite era with a series of paintings by John Waterhouse featuring the legend. This potentially added to the challenge of making it relatively unique and unwittingly could bring up an unfavorable comparison with a master’s work. Somewhat reluctantly I took a stab at it and did some sketches.


[Image: Composition sketches for The Lady of Shalott theme.]


After discussing all of the above ideas with the team and the art director we decided to further develop the last (bottom one) variant as the most original and also well-fitting to present the Legends of the Dead DLC. Yet the physician theme was not trashed and made its way to become one of the story event illustrations. The composition of the chosen variant underwent a few changes afterwards following art-director’s feedback. We decided to get rid of the straight top-down view in favor of a more traditional perspective and closer look at the character yet retaining dynamic shapes of the water weeds and flowing dress.


[Image: Final composition that was approved.]


In many ways decisions made at this early stage affect the overall success of the final image. A good outcome is not guaranteed of course, but if properly made it creates a firm foundation for further work. On the contrary, skipping crucial steps assuming these can be tackled at a later stage can turn the painting process into a struggle, even though digital medium allows to change things easily at any moment.

I rarely do color explorations before final shapes and values for the composition are established. But this time I started experimenting with colors a bit earlier using AI which gave me an extra bit of flexibility and an abundance of variations. A locally installed Stable Diffusion with Control Net was used for generating rough color thumbnails based on my composition sketches. Black & white composition images were used to restrict image generation to shapes defined in them. Another color image that just contained the color palette of my preference was fed to Control net to roughly define color to be applied. Text prompt was of little importance, and I kept it very simple and basic. The results are pretty far from highly detailed crisp digital pictures that are usually expected from AI generated images. They are quite inconsistent and rough and have a great deal of randomness. But this is actually what I appreciate in these. I like that level of abstraction. Accidental interpretations of my composition ideas by AI provided me with extra inspiration. Not only the colors, but also values, shapes, edges and textures that start to loom in these thumbnails can give a new hint regarding a certain aspect of the artwork.


[Image: There was a sheer number of AI interpretations of my composition sketches.]


The major caveat with these AI generations is that you can do so many of them in a relatively short amount of time that you need to be quite decisive to stop that dopamine trap and move on. Otherwise they just pile up as photos on a mobile phone that you never return to.

Now the chosen AI generated color samples need to be applied to composition with proper distribution of size, shapes and accent placement (here AI is not of much help, not yet at least).


[Image: AI generated color “blobs” and sketches painted after them.]


[Video: Creation of a color sketch based on an AI generated thumbnail.]


The animation above shows the process of turning a generated color thumbnail into a color sketch that is submitted for the art team review. The greenish-violet palette was acknowledged as the most appropriate for the theme, with a flavor of mystery and slight surreal feel of goldish light reflections in the water.

After major decisions have been made it is time to make that final leap to the finished painting. Here the biggest challenge for me is to keep the overall image balance while adding details. Even when painting over a well-defined sketch, the image inevitably changes during the process. Defining a hand gesture or dress design may change the flow of the shapes and force readjustments in other places. It is very easy to get carried away by a certain area of the picture and then realize that the detail you have just painted does not work when viewed from a distance or pops out too much and breaks the general balance of tonal values. Some elements of the image require more attention than the others. Character face is obviously a detail number one in that specific image’s hierarchy, and it took me a while to paint it and find the proper expression. At the same time a number of secondary parts of the image I may have left untouched since the color sketch creation.

A crucial role in that process of image balancing plays feedback from the art director and the team. Over time while working on an illustration I get less perceptive of it. And during the regular art reviews I can get a fresh view from my team that helps to notice mistakes and flaws or even to recognize the moment when it is time to stop and call the image done.





[Image: Art director’s feedback suggesting perspective and tonal corrections.]
[CM’s Note: Tastefully censored.]


Here at Paradox, we have regular drawing sessions where our artists can draw either live models or from references. While the primary purpose of this is to train general drawing skills (a kind of an art gym), this can also be used for more specific tasks. I can ask a model to take a specific pose or gesture that I am working on in my current assignment. This can be quite helpful to make characters in an illustration look more convincing, find a better gesture or just simply avoid crude drawing mistakes.


[Image: A few examples of sketches and studies done with ongoing illustration assignments in mind.]
[CM’s Note: Also censored.]


On a final note, I have to confess that romanticized stories like the one about the Lady of Shalott are not that inspiring for me in general. The drama of these stories often seems too quixotic and naive to me. Yet one can find in their symbols and metaphors some true inspiring moments. For me in the case of the Lady of Shalott it was the contrast of young and flourishing life and premature death it was doomed for. I hope I managed to convey a bit of my sensations in the illustration.

Hello! My name is Joacim Carlberg and I’m the 3D Environment Lead on CKIII.

I’m going to introduce our new visual map tables, a feature we’ve wanted to add for a long time. With the new chapter a table scene will now appear as you lift your gaze higher from the map for an overview of the world. With the release of Legends of the Dead we have added two new map tables, the tables are chosen dynamically or if you have a preference you can also change the active one in the settings menu.


[Image: The map table as it appears in Legends of the Dead.]


If you do not have Legends of the Dead a base table will still be included with the accompanying patch, which can be seen below.


[Image: The map table as it appears without Legends of the Dead enabled.]


We think this will give a more immersive experience when overlooking the extent of your kingdom, the tendrils of plagues spreading the lands, and your legends spreading across the realms.

For those that love visual mods or total conversion mods for the game will find that this framing is also quite moddable.

As you finish your legends you will find opportunities to add a new site in your kingdom that commemorates or relates to the legend you’ve sown and grown. These legendary locations provide bonuses, but also show up in the landscape of your realm.


[Image: Legendary Statue, MENA Legendary Palace, India Legendary Palace, Legendary Runestone]


There’s more of these, but we’ll let you discover them in your own playthrough.



[Image: Lute, Flute, Shawm, Hurdy Gurdy, Qanun in back]


While working with El Tyranos with the recent content creator pack the environment team also collaborated with him to bring a set of new instruments into the game for courtiers and rulers to bring some music and levity, and for minstrels to spread legends and great deeds.

A ubiquitous instrument in many musical traditions, the flute has been a part of human history for millennia. While many of us first encounter music through the recorder, a flute variant, the broader family of flutes offers a diverse range of sounds. The flute's origins can be traced globally, with evidence of similar instruments found across various cultures. Its simple yet elegant design and versatility make it a staple in both classical and contemporary music.

The hurdy-gurdy, popular until the 19th century and experiencing a resurgence, is recognized for its distinctive drone. Its mechanism involves a rotating wheel running along the strings, making it a precursor to modern violins and influencing the design of the nyckelharpa.

A stringed instrument associated with minstrel songs of the Middle Ages, evolved from the medieval Islamic oud. It has a versatile range, transcending time and leaving a mark on musical history. The lute is synonymous with troubadours and courtly melodies.

A woodwind instrument and precursor to the modern oboe, gained popularity from the later Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Its distinctive double reed and conical bore contributed to the development of subsequent woodwind instruments. The shawm's vibrant tones were integral to courtly festivities and religious ceremonies during its heyday.

The qanun is an Arabic harp-like instrument with origins dating back to antiquity. It holds a significant place in the musical traditions of the middle east and has influenced a diverse array of musical instruments globally. The qanun's intricate design and delicate strings produce a sound that echoes with the rich history of ancient musical craftsmanship.

All of these instruments will also be found as animation options in the barber shop.


[...Anyway, here’s wonderwall]

And with that it's time for us to wrap up today’s Dev Diary, more interesting things will be coming next week when we’ll be talking more about Plagues, the Black Death, Funerals, Mod support and showcasing new Character Art (that’d make Papa Nurgle proud).

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This Chapter includes two expansions, one event pack, and one cosmetic enhancement. Enjoy new mechanics, new events, and new historical flavor to add greater depth to Crusader Kings III!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38036