Hello everyone! We're releasing a hotfix today to tackle a couple of issues reported since Update 1.13.1's release on Tuesday. Please check the changelog below.

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• Fixed an issue where certain religions couldn't properly appoint a Court Chaplain.
  
• Repairing artifacts as an adventurer should now work properly.

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While we don't anticipate this update will break compatibility with existing saves or mods, we encourage you to disable all mods and start a new save if you encounter any issues after today's update. If the issue persists, then please post a thread on our bug report board.

Hello Governors and Gallivanters!

We are happy to announce that our Crusader Kings 3 merch is finally being replenished! Now you can show your love for map painting, vassal arresting, and child banishing to all. Who among us wouldn't want to be readily identified as an ardent fan of the most vaunted of Grand Strategy RPGs?

T-shirt? Hoodie? Both? Whatever weather the map brings, you will be ready.

Visit our shop here, and let all of the realm know that you are a member of the Crusader Kings family*.

May your realms prosper and your garments be the most fashionable across all of the land.

*Warning, being part of our family might come with schemes, stabbings, and occasional poisonings.

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Hello everyone! We're releasing a sizeable update today to tackle some balance and interface issues affecting Roads to Power and the associated 1.13x "Basileus" Update.

Notable changes include reducing the maintenance cost of Akritai men-at-arms, ensuring that factions have at least one member who actually wants to be there, and a myriad of bug fixes. See the changelog below for a full list of changes.

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• Significantly reduced the maintenance cost of Akritai. Due to a math error, the cost was way higher than intended. Math is hard.
  
• Increased the AI weights for estate buildings slightly. The AI should hopefully construct new buildings more evenly between holdings and estate compared to before.
  
• Landless administrative characters can no longer use the “Request governorship” interaction on titles held by non-admin rulers.
  
• Changed the AI slightly for how likely it is to use the “Adopt state faith” decision.
  
  • Reduced the base chance and made zealous characters never wanting to do it, but added a few additional modifiers which increases the overall chance.
• Updated the “Adopt state faith” decision to be available to all vassals, regardless of government type, when the top liege has a state faith.
  
• Adjusted the AI acceptance for requesting a council position in exchange for influence to make it a bit more difficult to become a councilor.
  
  • The AI is now more reluctant to accept if your skill is significantly lower than the target councilor's, but is in return more likely to accept if you belong to a powerful family while the councilor does not.
• Instead of making it more likely for the AI to adopt administrative government if they have the hereditary hierarchy cultural tradition, the tradition will instead slightly reduce the AI's willingness to become administrative.
  
• Updated several cases of when administrative rulers are forced to change government in order to better transition into a government type you would expect. The government a character gets should be more consistent across the board as a result.
  
• Updated the cost logic in the Depose Governor interaction and how it uses Governor Efficiency to influence the cost.

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• Fixed the AI not upgrading more than one internal slot in their Domiciles.
  
• Fixed game lobby so you can create landless adventurers in theocratic or republic realms.
  
• Made sure that not every single member of a faction could have been forced to be there. You figure at some point someone would ask the awkward question if everybody actually wants to start a rebellion.
  
• Fix locked domicile building slot tooltip.
  
• Clarified “The X path — ascension” tooltip to inform the player that the holy site used must also worship your faith.
  
• We now display how many marriageable characters a ruler has when using “Make a request,” including filtering out anyone they'd be unlikely to offer in marriage.
  
• “Become an adventurer” decision will now list all cultural traditions and faith tenets that unlock the decision, and not just the really cool ones.
  
• Fixed an issue where a diarch could become independent and be called co-co-co-co-co... and so on. This should hopefully no longer happen.
  
• Fixed the selected amount of influence in the request imperial expedition interaction not matching the threshold at which you can force your liege to accept. Now, if the liege doesn't have enough influence compared to how much you are spending, the liege will always say yes.
  
• The imperial expedition cb is now only visible in the list of cbs when you are the co-emperor.
  
• Corrected a niche issue where the increase county control contract could get into an infinite rewards loop if only one county was valid.
  
• Made sure the right ship models were used while traveling, instead of always falling back to the default ship model.
  
• The governance issue "Public Land" should no longer target dead characters. They've earned their final rest.
  
• Added a tooltip for the mandatory admittance fee to the chariot races.
  
• The “Confirm governor” decision now tells you what you'll get if your audience is accepted.
  
• Added a missing loc key label to the tooltip for offering a eunuch to someone you have a hook on.
  
• Corrected an issue where historically defined adventurers would sometimes be treated slightly differently in inheritance logic than dynamically created adventurers.
  
• “For a bit of gold” event will no longer offer you discounted upgrades only to fail to deliver them if your domicile could not build them.
  
• Corrected a minor temporal anomaly in the event loc for “A bit of gold” event.
  
• Corrected some minor issues in the populist faction copy for administrative realms.
  
• Added missing event option reasons for the head groom, kenneler, and chief engineer camp officers.
  
• Corrected an issue where the faith ascension events could refer to your own faith as flawed (which, naturally, it definitely, definitely couldn't be).
  
• Fixed a minor typo in the “Abundant initiative” eunuch event.
  
• Ransom cages now correctly unlock the abduct scheme for adventurers regardless of whether they have the appropriate perk or not.
  
• In administrative realms the most powerful noble family heads are now considered as ‘powerful vassals’
  
• Landed guardians will no longer travel to wards that are landless administrative rulers.
  
• Added reduce stress as a valid intent for attending chariot races, so that everyone can attend medieval nascar for something other than politics.
  
• Adjusted clan succession. Friendly and harmonious gave the player heir a smaller portion of your titles than intended (33% and 66% respectively). Values have been increased to 50% and 75%.
  
• Made the grant title blocker loc for giving governors a second title of their highest held tier a little more precise.
  
• The marriage window now informs you if you have vassals that would be upset by you marrying that attractive genius lowborn.
  
• Adventurers can no longer attempt to earn influence whilst attending chariot races.
  
• Added legitimacy-specific loc to whispers in the wind.
  
• Using adopt faith on your spouse/liege will now, if appropriate, open the cheaper & more beneficial adopt state faith decision window instead.
  
• Moved Hasan story cycle decision triggers to be visible at all times and grouped them into a new category.
  
• Enabled event on caliph death in the hasan story cycle to be able to progress the story on the assassins path even if the caliphate had no heir.
  
• Put in some extra exception logic to help stop co-emperors from occasionally silently invalidating out of their positions.
  
• Appointing someone your co-ruler now moves them to your court/retracts their sub-vassal status, if appropriate.
  
• Fixed an edge case where great conquerors who had either not killed anyone or killed someone not on the battlefield would have an inaccurate recollection of their first kill.
  
• Court positions that cost no upkeep for adventurers now correctly tooltip the reason they're free in their salary breakdown.
  
• Made it possible for bookmakers to be terrible by lowering their base aptitude slightly.
  
• Forced the bookmaker to stop tricking their employer. The chariot race cost reduction provided by said court position now correctly scales with their level of aptitude, as stated by the description.
  
• Now prevents war leaders from disbanding their armies, instantly losing the war. Secondary war participants are always allowed to disband their armies in their domicile location.
  
• The “Adopt State Faith” decision will now correctly tell you that the decision is unavailable when you are involved in an activity.
  
• Fixed a case of AI reasoning related to being a powerful vassal not showing the value of how much it affected the acceptance.
  
• Fixed the administrative "request council position" interaction to not refund any of the spent influence. It will now refund half the cost if the liege declines. Updated the description in the interaction to reflect it.
  
• Succeeding at impersonating as a tax collector as part of a landless adventurer contract will now properly grant the critical success reward.
  
• Fixed the explanatory loc string in the rustle animals contract to correctly refer to the actual event chain challenge it creates, rather than saying it'd offer a prowess scheme.
  
• Fixed a case of dead people being selected as heirs, which could cause various glitches on ruler death.
  
• Added the icon for governor efficiency to a number of places that were missing it, such as a number of character modifiers.
  
• Added a missing description for the "restored theme" character modifier.
  
• Fixed a grammar issue when attempting to change the administration of a theme when you don't have one.
  
• Added new text for the influence gained of being a co-emperor.
  
• When a scheme target is ambitious, the text will now specify that it is, in fact, the target that has the trait.
  
• Target's learning impact in the challenge status scheme now clearly indicates that it's the target's learning skill we are looking at.
  
• Fixed the cost of archery and duel tournaments if you have the militia camps or blacksmiths building, so it properly provides a 50% cost reduction rather than 10%.
  
• The encyclopedia entry about accolade attributes is now clearer and has no duplicate entries.
  
• Changed the amount of buildings at startup for estates, so they no longer grab locked slots in certain bookmarks.
  
• The barony window will no longer open for water tiles.
  
• Knight regiments will no longer be counted incorrectly in some tooltips.
  
• The expose secret window will now show the correct view.
  
• Displayed decision description in the first step of the recruit for a court position decision.
  
• Ensured that you can choose your own chaplain, instead of it being auto-filled, if you have ruler clerical appointment.
  
• Ensured you can use the "retire from governorship" decision in admin kingdoms.
  
• Fixed primogeniture succession for byzantium, if played by someone who does not have the roads to power dlc.
  
• Fixed a loc issue with a house feud event, when the last remaining member of the feuding house dies in your prison.
  
• Implicit claims from admin rulers have been disabled.
  
• Long reign opinion bonus now correctly scales on the ruler's dynasty's splendor instead of the vassal's.
  
• Made it more likely to show other loading screens besides the latest one.
  
• Tweaked medi study event scene illustration.
  
• Blocked characters from requesting a character to support themselves for an appointment.
  
• Baronies now have zero loot after a siege and will get the appropriate modifier applied.
  
• Included liege's noble family title in noble_family script lists if they have one.
  
• Fixed travel option tooltip data when they're shown outside of the travel planning UI.
  
• Fixed tooltip names for MaA belonging to mercenaries and holy orders.
  
• Clarified effect localization for adding and removing house modifiers.
  
• Barred the AI from marriage for the defined time period only if their liege or top liege is the player.
  
• On_end effects for court position tasks are now run if the court position is revoked or the holder dies.
  
• Added clarifying text to travel speed and safety game concepts explaining that a character's contribution can never be below 0.
  
• Fixed empty state text for imperial armies tab.
  
• Added error logging when trying to check prowess with highest_skill trigger which isn't supported.
  
• Fixed guardian being referred to as parent in smuggling sweets event.
  
• Fixed wrong legacy requirement in legendary watchtower build condition.
  
• Fixed broken text if your dog saves you in a murder scheme.
  
• Fixed potential for ludicrously large county list tooltip in a romantic revenant event.
  
• Trampled baker in maunds of wheat now added to kill list.
  
• Improved current situation log entry for debt when landless.
  
• Jizya status feudal vassal contract can now be used by lieges with the jizya or tax non-believer tenets once again.
  
• Fixed missing text in mentor in governance events if target was not a governor.
  
• Fixed capitalization in rites of passage: hair-shaving event.
  
• Added missing tooltip for cooldown for chief eunuch recruitment.
  
• Fixed empty random outcomes in “I could do better!” event.
  
• Fixed broken text in “Admires Legitimacy” message.
  
• Fixed broken text in the event “Prisoner Escaped!”.
  
• Fixed overflowing description in event to belong somewhere.
  
• Fixed a devoted follower camp temperament event option not adding agent to scheme.
  
• Fixed close-zoom map icon offsets.
  
• Fixed Message Settings correctly saving or discarding changes.
  
• Fixed message settings shortcut obscuring 2nd character.
  
• Expanded trigger to make sure the AI only stops supporting a character's candidacy for the top title when they don't want it, instead of doing it for all titles.
  
• The Governor trait is now called Governess for women.
  
• Raiding armies will no longer count as defenders when being attacked in settlements without forts by the owner of the settlement.
  
• Fixed issue where some agent slots would show up as empty in schemes for rulers.
  
• Fixed issue where landless adventurers wouldn’t be able to raise armies in provinces they had occupied.
  
• You can no longer ask a candidate to support themself when using the Request Appointment Support interaction.
  
• Loyalty or Fear Event no longer assumes landless rulers have vassals.
  
• Fixed the issue of the AI literally ALWAYS auto accepting wars. They have been convinced that they have something worth fighting for after all.
  
• Fixed the tournament cooldown loc for Make a Request.
  
• Fixed the issue of eyelashes brightening by decreasing specular light.
  
• Added audio stinger when creating a legend.
  
• Added cultural context to the message when losing Culture Head title.
  
• Fixed knight regiments count in the top-right counter.
  
• Prowess is no longer included in the "Sum of skills" used for sorting.
  
• Fixed court position appointment tooltip for camp officers.
  
• Clarified that only personal artifact claims are lost on losing a duel.
  
• Fixed text issues in murder event "En Route" referring to terrain, which wouldn't refer to the terrain of the target's capital as expected, and instead use the target's location.
  
• Updated the description of a couple of triggers for Grant Appointment to improve clarity.
  
• Fixed an OOS where domicile buildings could get mixed up.
  
• Fixed some edge cases where Commanders could be raised as Knights and still keep commanding their armies, potentially making them appear in two different locations at once.
  
• Improved several game concepts and messages related to the Harrying.
  
• Fixed crash to desktop from travels when stars aligned with the moon while the moon is in a waxing phase. That is to say: fixed CTD when a travel plan is created from the on_action of an ending travel plan during the daily update while the list of active travel plans is at its exact capacity.
  
• Fixed a crash when holding trying to calculate the number of free building slots.
  
• Fixed rare crash from vassal contracts when attempting to load older save games.
  
• Fixed various issues related to the usurpation of admin titles.
  
• Petition liege no longer always results in gold and renown for feudal characters.
  
• Non-Temujin Genghis Khans no longer get a secondary education trait upon becoming Great Khan, which could happen if they had a non-martial education trait.
  
• You will now actually return the reclaimed artifact to the contract giver in the Reclaim Artifact contract.
  
• Reduced frequency of spectacles for Scholar camp characters by 75%.
  
• Byzantium should now give in to same-culture populist demands to change the state faith much less often, and never at all if the populists demand a change to another religion (such as from Orthodox -> Ashari).
  
• Fixed an issue where you could get stuck if you tried to travel whilst doing a contract.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could get stuck if you were imprisoned while petitioning your liege.
  
• Fixed an issue where same-sex characters could end up married in specific circumstances, despite the game rules saying otherwise.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not get prisoners from sieges in wars.
  
• Fixed some issues with the history files around Byzantine lands for those who don't own Roads to Power.
  
• Added rain VFX to the event 'Shelter from the Storm'
  
• The 'A Worthy Chief Eunuch' event is now more likely to have one alternative of your culture and faith.
  
• Fixed Byzantine Throne Room being lost when forming Rome
  
• Fixed Roman capital being in Rome even if you formed Rome as Byzantium
  
• Nobles holding only their Family Title will no longer join factions due to the Byzantine Emperor not being their De Jure Liege.
  
• Filters in the Courtiers window now correctly affect both hired positions and empty positions.
  
• Fixed a ‘Modifiers’ OOS on hotjoin
  
• We will now return your gold and prestige if you choose to postpone the "Travels of " decision when you get the follow-up event.
  
• Fixed an issue where the contract "Eager Explorers" could get stuck if the contract employer died while you were doing it.
  
• Removed duplicate script for scaling modifiers using influence levels. These modifiers should be using nothing but influence levels now.
  
• Fixed numerous issues with the Duchy Expansion CB. Rather than always attempting to take the title, it will primarily vassalize the target if possible, and only usurp the title when applicable. This fixes issues where you would not always get all of the targeted land. The duchy title will also be created if it isn't already, and you take enough land to have more than 50% of its de jure.
  
• The Naval Duchy Expansion CB didn't match one-to-one in functionality with its land based equivalent. This has been fixed and the Naval variant now behaves as intended.
  
• Solved a "Secrets" hotjoin OOS.
  
• Leaving or switching sides in a war that you'd contracted yourself to assist in no longer blocks you from contracting again
  
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes add a helmet crest without a helmet to court physicians who are also knights.
  
• Fixed OOS where domicile buildings would be mixed up.
  
• Fixed inappropriate artifacts sometimes being made for aniconic faiths.

• When traveling with a Domicile (such as a Camp) a 3D model of cart and horses are shown on the map
  
• We now show if a character has been forced to take part in a faction in the faction commitment screen, so it is clearer who wants to be there versus those who have been forced to be there.
  
• Added tooltips to a couple of buttons that didn't have any in the imperial armies ui.
  
• Fix collapsible groups for the domicile buildings overview.
  
• Added an option to write a custom message to yourself.
  
• Added a shortcut from messages to their settings.
  
• Add foldable groups to message setting filters
  
• Added an accepted task contract HUD icon.
  
• Revamped Duel Event window.
  
• Fixed bug with background in Activity Event Window shifting in size and not scaling properly.
  
• Added improvements to window header art textures and various general improvements.
  
• Added a dead icon next to jousting portraits if the character died.
  
• Added Domicile information to the outliner, allowing you to see ongoing constructions, income, etc. at a glance.
  
• Updated the name of the overview tab in the domicile window to include the name of the domicile type.
  
• Added a max width to the Diarchy label in the Relationships tab, in order to keep it from colliding with the Lovers label.
  
• Added a sorting option for Candidate Score, available as a sorting for characters in applicable interactions and list when playing as administrative.
  
• Fixed text issues in event health.3103 referring to chambers and not tents for adventurers.
  
• History, Claimants, and other windows anchored to the Title Window will now open further to the right as to not overlap their parent window
  
• Fixed the Grant Title to Vassal list entries being misaligned and having information outside the screen
  
• The landless mapmode now only shows the CoA instead of the full portrait when zoomed out.

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• Added some extra landless adventurers in 1066 & 867.
  
• The universities of Bologna and Oxford are now constructed if you start a game in 1178.

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• Added a new map cart model for when you are moving your camp.
  
• Added a new game concept for provincial/thematic armies, to better explain some of their mechanics. for example when they are returned. Added links to it where appropriate.
  
• Added new events when you as an administrative ruler change government, to better explain why and when your government changes.
  
• Added a new effect to the mortal adoration perk in the intrigue lifestyle for admin, allowing rulers to request provincial troops from lovers.
  
• Added a new effect to the friendly counsel perk in the diplomacy lifestyle for admin, allowing rulers to request provincial troops from friends.
  
• Added a new decision for administrative government, allowing characters to renounce any and all efforts to gain the throne, preventing the ai from supporting you and significantly reducing your candidate score. this should make it vastly easier to avoid becoming the emperor when you don't want to, yet be valid to compete for governorships.
  
• Setting a new culture for a character now looks for a culturally appropriate name equivalent from the name equivalency scripted lists.
  
• Made it possible to override the background on interactions via script.
  
• Added rival relation to realm conquered adventurers.
  
• Updated the county trigger in the Adopt Centralized Administrative decision to show how many counties you currently have, to make it easier to know how close, or far away, you are from completing the requirement.

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• Added two new flavourization rules.
  
• Adds ability to define custom character sorting options per interaction in script.
  
• Add has_domicile_construction trigger to domiciles.
  
• Updated the info file for character interactions to include additional information.
  
• Removed old save game optimization in regiment chunks where if a regiment's current soldier count and max soldier count were the same, it would instead write it as size. Normally this would not be in change logs, but we know some mods rely on this information, so here you go.
  
• Added add_supply effect to army scope.
  
• Added subtract_supply effect to army scope.
  
• Added clear_supply effect to army scope.
  
• Added refill_supply effect to army scope.
  
• Added army_supply trigger to army scopes.
  
• Changed gui structure in the court positions window by combining the empty and filled court positions into the same list.
  
• Added defines for default fallback sounds for messages with one for each type

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While today's update should be fully compatible with existing save files, we encourage you to disable any mods and start a new campaign if you encounter any issue. If the issue persists afterward, then please submit a report via the bug report board on our official forums!

Hello everyone! We're releasing a small update today to address some issues reported to us by the community. Notably, this update improves performance when rendering character portraits, as well as adding an easier way to check the status of your current contracts as an Adventurer.

If you encounter any issues after today’s update, please check our Known Issues list and submit a bug report if your issue isn’t already listed there.

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• The game will now run expensive portrait script every few frames instead of every frame, to improve FPS.
  
• Fixed several triggers erroneously including Adventurers in the ending decisions for the Iberian Struggle, making them near impossible to succeed.
  
• Fixed recreating Byzantium via the Decision not setting the correct State Faith
  
• Fixed not being able to use interactions on Wanderers as an Adventurer.
  
• Removed unnecessary blockers for owning expansions on achievements that didn't warrant them.
  
• Fixed 'A Legacy to Last the Ages' Achievement not unlocking with newer legacy tracks.

• Adventurers can no longer use a hook to force faith conversion of landed rulers (that option was supposed to be restricted to lieges)

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• Added a task contract icon to the bottom-right of the HUD, next to Schemes. It should be easier now to find and access your currently active contracts, to check their status or to abandon them.

Hello everybody! We’re releasing a small hotfix today to address some of the issues reported to us by the community since the release of Roads to Power and the 1.13.0 “Basileus” Update on Tuesday. Most notably, Adventurers have received a few balance adjustments to their military strength and income.

If you encounter any issues after today’s update, please check our Known Issues list and submit a bug report if your issue isn’t already listed there. We hope this hotfix improves your enjoyment of new content!

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• Fixed an issue that would frequently cause adventurers using the Refill Men-at-Arms interaction to be told they were going to be charged significantly more gold or provisions than they were; this has meant removing scaling provision costs based on maximum army size, so the overall cost of refilling with provisions has been boosted by about 25% to compensate
  
• Rebalanced buffs to Adventurer MaA from officers and Buildings; they should now be much more consistent between unit types (moved additive bonuses to be multiplicative by-and-large) and on average lower. Adventurers will still be very powerful (esp. early on) but should not crush enemy armies into a fine powder with just a handful of upgrades.
  
• General contract gold rewards decreased by about ~30%
  
• Travel contract gold rewards decreased by about ~25%
  
• Crime contract gold rewards decreased by about ~16%
  
• The “Settle Boundary Dispute” contract had its gold rewards significantly decreased (~50%), due to it being so much easier than most other contracts
  
• Provision contract rewards decreased by approximately 1 tier:
  
  • 500 -> 250
    
  • 750 -> 500
    
  • 1250 -> 1000
    
  • 2000 -> 1500
• "Free Provisions" in the Visit Settlement decision has been nerfed
  
  • Halved the amount you would gain from trying to charm the salesmen
    
  • Halved the amount you would gain from trying to steal provisions
• The refund for aborting your Rite of Passage now matches the initial cost. Changing your mind should not conjure up gold and prestige from thin air.
  
• Nerfed the "Reinstated the Theodosian Borders" modifier gained from the decision to re-establish said borders. The Renown gain has been removed. It was, frankly, quite insane to give everyone in your dynasty a 10% boost. You'll gain a flat amount of Renown by taking the decision instead.
  
• Significantly reduced the amount of AI's willing to leave their realms behind to become adventurers, as it became almost impossible to manage a realm under some scenarios because your vassals kept packing their stuff up and leaving

• Fixed an issue where loading an old save into 1.13 would cause armies to number in the billions
  
• Fixed an instance where the player’s Adventurer camp could get ‘cleaned up’ because their heir wasn’t cool enough, this should no longer happen and the player should be able to continue on their merry way!
  
• Fixed an issue where Bookmark adventurers wouldn’t inherit from landed rulers properly (they would break free from realms rather than stay subjects as intended)
  
• Fixed an issue where your vassals would gain Strong Blackmail Hooks on you without you having a say in it
  
• Fixed some Administrative-specific events firing for non-Administrative rulers
  
• Fixed the issue with the lingering Eunuch story cycle, even after the Eunuch left court.
  
• Made sure you couldn't inherit any titles with the Gallivanter trait.
  
• Adventurers who win Crusades should now adopt a more logical government (more often Feudal instead of Clan)
  
• Fixed the 'Not Content to Serve' achievement not triggering when playing as Alexios (if you’ve already started a game as him before the update you need to restart unfortunately)
  
• Fixed a crash that occurs when loading old saves with mismatching provinces.
  
• Fixed guests showing up as blank agent spaces in the Agent selection window for Hostile Schemes.
  
• The estate/domicile window will now close rather than crash when the estate ceases to exist due to the character dying.
  
• Fixed the issue where you would occasionally try to settle down peacefully as the Champion of a Culture, and fail to receive any land.
  
• Ensured that you aren't petitioning your liege repeatedly in an infinite loop.
  
• You can no longer recruit a hooded figure infinitely from the tavern.
  
• You can no longer create Custom Rulers as Landless Administrative Vassals, as that would cause the game to crash.
  
• Fixed the issue where you could be asked if you wanted land in an Administrative realm, but not receive anything besides a Duchy title (and not transferring Counties), leaving you as a non-ruler
  
• Ensured that there is only one estate per Noble Family. This should also fix the issue where Estates could reset on inheritance.
  
• Fixed a crash when trying to calculate the number of free building slots in holdings.
  
• Fixed a crash in vassal contracts that could occur when loading an older save
  
• Fixed an OOS that could occur when Hotjoining
  
• Fixed the LotD soundtrack not showing in the Music Player

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• The decision menu will now close itself when taking certain decisions; Visit Settlement, Gather Provisions, etc. This should make the flow smoother.
  
• The Relationship Reason icons will now be visible for other characters again in the relationships tab, so you can see the reason why two characters are friends, rivals, etc

Hello everybody! Today we're releasing our Major Expansion for the year and the centerpiece of Chapter 3: Roads to Power. We're also releasing Update 1.13.0 "Basileus" alongside this expansion.

Check out the release trailer below, and then a partial changelog under that. The full changelog is well beyond the limits of what we can fit into a Steam announcement, so check out our forums for a more comprehensive list of changes coming in today's update!



► Read the full 1.13.0 changelog on our forums!

• Added Administrative Government: A new government heavily inspired by the Byzantine Empire which introduces a completely new playstyle focused around the bureaucracy of a large realm.
  
  • Noble Families: Families are ranked and put into three categories depending on their overarching rating; Noble Families, Powerful Families, and Dominant Families, unlocking actions and various benefits as your family increases in importance.
    
  • Family Attribute: Set an attribute for your Noble Family, giving you a small bonus to all members of your house.
    
  • Influence: A new resource representing your political capital.
    
    • Earn it by scheming, landing your family members, being a successful governor, and, most importantly, constructing buildings in your estate.
      
    • Spend it on making your family members governors, or asking the emperor for various favors.
  • New Succession Law: Appointment - Spend your influence to put yourself and the members of your family first in the line of succession of the many provinces throughout the realm.
    
  • New Succession Law: Acclamation - Vie for control of the throne and become emperor. While skills, suitability, and family status is important, influence is the deciding factor in whether you will succeed in putting yourself, or someone else, on the throne.
    
  • Has access to Estates: A domicile type owned and controlled by the head of a noble family.
    
    • Upgrades and buildings provide valuable gold and influence income, and can be tailored to suit your own needs and playstyle.
  • Governors: Administrative vassals act as governors, making use of several new features:
    
    • Governor Efficiency: Based on a governor’s skill, they may increase or decrease the amount of taxes holdings provide, and the effectiveness of their Imperial Armies.
      
    • Governance Issues: On-map interactive pieces on content, issues appear for governors to solve or somehow address, gaining valuable resources and Governor Trait experience.
      
    • Governor Trait: A trait that represents a governor’s overall skill at governing. Experience is primarily gained by successfully solving Governance Issues, but older content has also been updated to provide experience whenever it makes sense, such as successfully reducing the impact of Plague outbreaks.
  • 14 Political Schemes: A new category of schemes custom tailored to Administrative gameplay - Such as teaching others to become better governors, or raiding the Estate of another family.
    
  • Imperial Armies: Recruit and maintain Men-at-Arms for titles.
    
    • All governors can maintain a provincial army by recruiting any available Men-at-Arms for their provincial title.
      
    • The liege has a unique access to armies, and can freely seize control of any available provincial army by spending influence.
      
    • Other governors may request provincial armies from their fellow vassals, assuming they have a valid reason and enough influence.
      
    • The efficiency of Men-at-Arms is affected by the respective governors Governor Efficiency.
  • New obligation types: Have your vassals govern their provinces in the way you want with six new obligation types, Balanced, Civilian, Military, Frontier, Navy, and Imperial.
    
  • Imperial Bureaucracy: A new law that replaces crown authority - Instead of individual levels of crown authority, the top liege of an Administrative realm sets the law level and all Administrative vassals will follow suit.
    
  • State Faith: Decoupled from the ruler, a state faith is the primary faith of a given realm, making it easier to convert vassals to the state faith, but more difficult to convert them away from it.
    
  • Reactive event content to the current state of the empire, the status of the emperor, and the nature of your governorate.
    
  • Confirm Governorship: An Administrative version of Pay Homage sees the Emperor bestow his grace upon Appointments.
    
  • Petition Emperor: Administrative vassals have new options for Petitions, including Gold, Family Governorship Appointments, and a bonus to House succession score.
• New Byzantine Throne Room - A spectacular throne room is made available for the Byzantine Empire (or any would-be conquerors of Constantinople!), including:
  
  • Marble floors and walls.
    
  • Stunning mosaics.
    
  • Mechanical roaring lions with slamming tails.
• Added historical artifacts for Byzantium: hydraulic organ, (half of the) statue of the four tetrarchs, and statue of a Roman woman.
  
• New Dynasty Legacy: Bureaucracy - A new legacy with a focus on Administrative gameplay, unlocking new buildings for the Estate, improving Governor Efficiency, improving political schemes, and more.
  
• Added new Chariot Race activity.
  
  • Host a Chariot Race to gain Legitimacy and Popular Opinion.
    
  • Place bets on your favorite team, and favored charioteer, in an attempt to win large amounts of wealth.
    
  • Interact with other nobles and governors, gaining influence, opinion, and more.
    
  • Make skilled individuals compete for you by appointing them to the Champion Charioteer Court Position, providing you with influence.
• Added an exclusive Map Table, that reflects the marbled luxury of Byzantium.
  
• New Men-at-Arms:
  
  • Ayrudzi - Light cavalry unit available to Armenians.
    
  • Conrois - Heavy cavalry unit available to Normans.
    
  • Akritai - Skirmisher unit available to Greeks.
    
  • Ballistrai - Archer unit available to Greeks.
    
  • Skoutatoi - Spearmen unit available to Greeks.
    
  • Varangian Guards - Heavy infantry uniquely available as special Men-at-Arms recruitable only as title troops for the Byzantine Empire.
• New Greek Cultural Traditions: These have a heavy focus on Greek flavor, adding new Men-at-Arms, decisions, Court Positions, and more, as well as having several tie-ins with the new Administrative government type.
  
  • Imperial Tagmata
    
  • Roman Ceremonies
    
  • Palace Politics
    
  • Cultivated Sophistication
• New Norman Cultural Tradition: Audacious Cadets.
  
• New Armenian Cultural Tradition: Indomitable Azatani.
  
• Flavor Content: a stable of misc events, mainly for Greeks but some available also for neighboring cultures. Traits like Beardless Eunuch (with genuine hairlessness!) and Despoiler of Byzantium. New interactions and decisions such as:
  
  • Castrate Kin
    
  • Offer Eunuch
    
  • Prepare Greek Fire
    
  • Found the Varangian Guard
    
  • Re-Establish the Theodosian Borders
    
  • Refound the Pandidakterion
    
  • Hold a Triumph
    
  • Reinstate the Grain Dole
    
  • Restore Greece
    
  • Ask for Support - seek military aid from the Catholics of Western Europe.
    
  • Evangelize the Pagans
    
  • Restore the Byzantine Empire
    
  • Establish Silk Production
    
  • Commission Icon
    
  • Commission Silk Regalia
• Splintered Crusade/Frankokratia: Catholic rulers can break their Crusade in two and redirect attackers in an assault against Byzantium. This unique war can destroy the Byzantine Empire, and begin a turbulent era as the new Latin Empire fights with Byzantine successor kingdoms.
  
  • Crusader and Byzantine flavor events.
    
  • Dynamic story cycle has multiple semi-historical outcomes and provides choices for both Byzantine vassals and victorious Crusaders.
    
  • New decisions for Latins and Greeks to switch de jure kingdom ownership back and forth.
    
  • Seize Imperial Duchy casus belli available to all rulers in former Byzantine lands: it provides special troops on attacker victory.
• Many new character assets to give the Byzantine Empire a distinct look:
  
  • 26 unique new variants of byzantine clothing for both male and female characters
    
  • 8 unique new variants of byzantine cloaks for both male and female characters
    
  • 22 unique new variants of byzantine headgears for both male and female characters
    
  • 12 unique new hairstyles for both male and female characters
    
  • 4 new beards for male characters
• Added 7 New Artifacts:
  
  • Statue of the Four Tetrarchs
    
  • Statue of Constantine
    
  • Statue of A Roman Woman
    
  • Tree Automata
    
  • Hydraulic Organ
    
  • Byzantine Icons
    
  • Throne of Solomon (Byzantine)
• Added 11 new music tracks
  
  • 01 – Roads to Power - Main Theme
    
  • 02 – Easter Prayers
    
  • 03 – Knowledge from the Past
    
  • 04 – Divine Mercy
    
  • 05 – Greek Fire
    
  • 06 – Ectenia
    
  • 07 – Constantinople at Sunrise
    
  • 08 – In the Name of the Lord
    
  • 09 – A Journey to Adventure
    
  • 10 – Awaiting Nightfall
    
  • 11 – The Winds of Fortune
• Added Co-Emperors
  
  • Sufficiently powerful entrenched regents can, if their liege's title or culture would allow a co-emperor, forcibly appoint themselves as co-emperor.
    
  • Co-emperors and their senior emperors can now publicly scapegoat each other to the rest of the realm, sacrificing their relationship for influence.
    
  • Co-emperors may request (or coerce) a private despotate out of their senior emperor at a certain scales of power level.
    
  • Co-emperors may be blinded, castrated, disfigured, maimed, or killed to remove them from office — they may likewise do this to their senior emperor to steal control of the empire.
    
  • Rulers able to have co-emperors can now (generally) dissolve powerful factions against them by appointing the faction leader as their co-emperor.
    
  • Administrative emperors with Roman Ceremonies may now raise one of their children as a nominal co-emperor, graduating to a full co-emperor on their majority.
    
  • Added Request Imperial Expedition interaction for co-emperors, allowing them access to a powerful cb to expand the realm's borders (_if_ their senior emperor is willing to risk it).
• Added Landless Adventurers, a new government focused on informal groups of characters (from small bands of scholars to large mercenary companies), allowing players to traverse the map and use the medieval world as a backdrop for smaller, character-focused roleplay.
  
  • Contracts: adventurers cannot easily obtain significant fixed incomes, so they have to earn their gold and prestige from serving landed rulers via contracts. These can consist of mercenary work, decisions, event chains, and one-off events.
    
    • Added 26 basic contracts.
      
    • Added 4 dedicated warfare contracts for starting different types of wars + the mechanics for getting hired as a mercenary in an on-going war.
      
    • Added 8 types of transport contracts.
      
    • Added 11 misc/reactive contracts.
  • Provisions: a new resource that adventurers require to travel across the map. As they travel, they deplete provisions (with the amount going up for some terrain types, as well as with the amount of Men-at-Arms they have).
    
  • Has access to Camps: a domicile type owned by the leader of each adventuring party. Buildings and upgrades focus on the culture and specialities of the group you’ve gathered, providing powerful bonuses representing your position as a powerful (yet scorned) outsider.
    
  • Several bespoke buildings are made available by your Camp Purpose
    
  • Switch between six Camp Purposes representing different types of adventurers, each with different unlocks and a little added flavor:
    
    • Travel the world as a Wanderer
      
    • Kill for money as a Sword-for-Hire
      
    • Teach as a Scholar
      
    • Sojourn to far-off lands as an Explorer
      
    • Commit many crimes as a Freebooter
      
    • Regain a lost throne as a Legitimist
  • Gallowsbait: adventurers that indulge in criminal acts will find that society no longer affords them the same respect a landed ruler would get. Petty crimes level up their gallowsbait trait, slowly making the world hate them.
    
  • All landed-specific lifestyle perks have been redesigned for adventurers, effectively giving them a (mostly) entirely new set of lifestyle perks to choose from.
    
    • The functionality for changing perk bonuses according to government is available for future vanilla use cases, as well as modding.
  • Many ways to become an adventurer:
    
    • A selection of historical adventurers can be picked from the ruler selection screen.
      
    • Adventurers can be custom made in the ruler designer.
      
    • Rulers that would otherwise game over due to losing all their land may become adventurers.
      
    • Various ways for minor rulers or unlanded characters to spontaneously become adventurers during gameplay.
  • Historical characters may appear in gameplay and become adventurers that players can switch to.
    
  • Many new interactions for adventurers to interact with the world around them, from requesting support to buying land to leaving wars.
    
  • Unlocked Iberian Struggle ‘Offer Contract Assistance’ interaction for landless adventurers.
    
  • Added adventurer-specific Casus Bellis, unlocked by reaching higher Prestige Levels.
    
  • Added the Seize Realm scheme unlocked when reaching a very high level of Prestige, allowing you to seize an entire realm (while significantly destabilizing it).
    
  • A new micro-activity, the camp revel, that replaces feasting for adventurers.
    
  • Added special Men-at-Arms refill mechanics for adventurers.
    
    • They pay no maintenance on their armies, but do not refill them naturally. Instead, they have a brace of interactions that they can take to refill them in exchange for currency costs.
      
    • Successfully sieging holdings also returns a small amount of troops, enough for their armies to recoup most siege losses (and maybe a little extra) most of the time.
  • Added 28 camp officers, the adventurer equivalent of court positions (which they generally replace), most of which are unlocked by different domicile upgrades.
    
  • Added Visit Settlement decision, allowing adventurers to explore the holdings they pass through.
    
  • Added 7 new major decisions for landless adventurers:
    
    • Become a Great Conqueror
      
    • The [Your Faith Here] Path
      
    • The Travels of [Your Name]
      
    • Found a Holding
      
    • The Knight of the Swan
      
    • Champion Your Culture
      
    • Levy the Outcasts
  • Added various minor decisions alongside, including a small one for going fishing.
    
  • Added story content for:
    
    • Hereward the Wake
      
    • Hassan Sabbah
      
    • Wallada bint al-Mustakfi
      
    • El Cid
  • Added an interaction for expelling adventurers from your realm.

• Added new game rules
  
  • Name of Byzantium - Don’t like the name of the Byzantine Empire? Pick the name you like the most with several options available!
    
  • Added game rule for giving the historic ruler of Munster, Toirdelbach Mac Tadg, his rightful fiefdom (including becoming the player character if Murchad was selected; with credit to maniacal inc's thorough video on the subject for the switcharoo).
    
  • Added a game rule allowing manual determination of the Conquest of England's victor in 1066. If left to default, this will be overridden if Hereward is a player and no one else is playing a key belligerent.
    
  • Added a small slew of game rules for turning various arguably-administrative historical empires (plus the Carolingians, who only recently transitioned out of being administrative) into administrative empires, even if these realms aren't best suited to the mechanics of the government or already have their own distinct government flavors.
    
  • Added game rules to turn off the Iberian Struggle and/or Iranian Intermezzo mechanics, should you wish to play without them.
    
  • Added an optional game rule for restricting the creation of new empire titles neighboring/sharing a de jure with existing empires unless you have a stronger military, are married to their close family, or have a strong hook on them.
• Added a new start date, 1178, featuring two bookmarks: Call of the Empire and Swords of Faith.
  
• Added a grand city style event for visiting Constantinople while traveling.
  
• Added the ‘Conqueror’ feature - rulers across the world can now be designated as a great conqueror, giving them special bonuses, content, and altering their AI behavior.
  
  • 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, Men at Arms, and means with 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.
    
  • Frequency, inheritance, and extra bonuses are fully customizable via Game Rules.
• Added Message Settings: customize notifications to your own liking to have them appear in the message feed, as toasts, or pop-ups.
  
• Added the Vassal Directives feature - You will now be able to give Directives to your vassals, presuming that they respect you!
  
  • Directives are either given from the character interaction menu, or via the ‘Vassals’ tab in My Realm, the latter having the benefit of showing you the current directive. All government types can issue directives to their vassals - if you fulfill the triggers!
    
  • Administrative realms can give directives without the Vassal being able to refuse.
• Historical Characters can now appear across the map!
  
  • Historical Characters such as Hildegard von Bingen or Ibn Battuta will appear in their historical birthplaces and seek employment with the local ruler. Recruit them, or set them on their own path throughout the world!
    
  • Customize how you’re notified of their appearance via a new Game Rule.
    
  • If you own Roads to Power, you can set out as an Adventurer as one of these characters should they spawn in your realm.
• Choose a New Destiny
  
  • When you die, you now get the opportunity to switch to another character of your Dynasty that is not necessarily your direct Heir. Our game is a dynastic simulator, and we want to unlock playing through more branches of your Dynasty!
    
  • Players will be offered up to three categories of Destiny characters: An Interesting Destiny, a Challenging Destiny, and an Adventurous Destiny. Each category aims to offer a different flavor. The last category specifically will allow you to go Adventuring, if you own Roads to Power!
    
  • You can also select a Favorite Child (direct child or grand-child), who will then always appear as a New Destiny character. They will not get any extra titles or gold - in fact their siblings might get a bit jealous of their ‘favorite’ status.
    
  • For those who like to roll the Die of Fate - we have a special “Random Destiny” option with several random variants, to continue as any Dynasty character. It might still be your Heir, if that is what Fate determines.
    
  • You only get to Choose a New Destiny if you have a valid heir when you die. Securing your succession is an important part of CK3, and we want everyone to keep respecting that goal.
• Character of the Week: Each week a new character will be highlighted when you start the game, giving you information about them and a suggestion for goals to achieve!
  
• Music Player: Pick the track you want to listen to and customize which tracks to play
  
• Reworked the Scheme System
  
  • Schemes have been reworked to include several new parameters, affecting the overall success and progression of any given scheme
    
  • Success Chance: The current success chance of a scheme
    
  • Potential: The maximum potential success chance a scheme may get
    
  • Phases: Schemes have phases, where the length can vary between different types, which increases success chance and provides advantages with each completed phase
    
  • Secrecy: How likely it is a scheme is discovered over time and when the scheme is executed
    
  • Breaches: The number of time a scheme is discovered - Gain enough breaches and the scheme will fail
    
  • Advantages: Spend these to recruit agents and increase the success chance when the scheme is executed
    
  • Schemes utilizing agents now have dedicated agent slots - Each agent boosts the scheme in different ways
    
  • Basic schemes only have a success chance and a single phase - Usually with a longer duration - Sway is an example of a basic scheme
    
  • Updated character’s portrait animations in older scheme events
• Added 19 new Special Buildings
  
  • Etchmiadzin Cathedral
    
  • Cattolica di Stilo
    
  • Cilician Gates
    
  • Church of Saint Lazarus
    
  • Church of Saint Sophia
    
  • Despot’s Palace
    
  • Hagios Demetrios
    
  • Hosios Loukas
    
  • Jvari Monastery
    
  • Kassiopi Castle
    
  • Maiden’s Tower
    
  • Meteora
    
  • Mount Athos
    
  • Patras Castle
    
  • Saint Catherine's Monastery
    
  • Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
    
  • Sumela Monastery
    
  • Temple of the Theotokos
    
  • Troglodytic Settlement
• Added co-monarchies for king+ feudal rulers, a permanent diarchy type that allows early access to designate heir in exchange for opting into one
  
• Added new Achievements:
  
  • The Old Man of the Mountain
    
  • Band of Brothers
    
  • Mio Cid
    
  • Birthright
    
  • Historically Inaccurate
    
  • Quantum Leap
    
  • Regnum Dei
    
  • New Management, same as the Old Management
    
  • Rags to Riches to Rags to Riches
    
  • Tamar Mepe
    
  • Despoiler of Byzantium
    
  • Chaos is a Ladder
    
  • Epic Paperwork
    
  • Against the Odds
    
  • In Good Estate
    
  • It's OK, I Got a Permit
    
  • Despotic
    
  • Byzywork
    
  • Not Content to Serve
    
  • Started from the Bottom now we're ERE
  Plus much, much, MUCH more. Check our official forums for the full changelog!
  
  

  ---

  
  
  Roads to Power is the culmination of more than a year of development, and we sincerely hope you enjoy playing it. If you encounter any issues after today’s update, please disable all mods and ensure you’re playing on a fresh save file. If the issue persists, then please submit a bug report either via our Community Support board here on Steam or via the Bug Report board on our official forums.
  

Welcome comrades! I’m Wokeg, and today we’ll be going over some of the upcoming changes to the scheme system, as well as some of the story content we’re adding for a few lucky landless adventurers this DLC.

My word count is going to be restricted in this Dev Diary because Community says that if I can’t edit myself down, they’ll edit it for me. Please send help.

[CM’s note: Woe, word-count limit be upon ye.]

► Discuss Dev Diary #157 on our forums!



Alright, those of you who are paying attention will have likely seen the reworked schemes interface in several previous dev diaries — what have we done here, and why have we done it?


[The new intrigue window, with a murder scheme spinning up]

Put simply, we felt the old scheme system was a bit too random. It’s difficult to conduct political machinations when the machinery by which you politic is more of a catapult than a crossbow. It’d rarely be practical to have a foe murdered on a strict timer (say, for war or a timely inheritance), but more than that, it was very… binary.

You could either almost definitely pull a scheme off, or it wasn’t even worth attempting, with a very small middle ground for maybe-worthwhile schemes. This wasn’t helped by most positive aspects of a scheme being strongly positively correlated, so if your chance of doing it at all isn’t high, then you’ll likely also be slow and lacking in secrecy.

Likewise, when on the receiving end of a scheme, you were generally either completely safe or utterly screwed, with no real room for manoeuvre or concern due to changing circumstances and enemies. If I’ve got good intrigue and my spymaster likes me, you ain’t murdering me.

What we wanted to do was to significantly widen the gap in the middle between “scheme’s done the second I start it” and “scheme isn’t even worth attempting”, making it easier to both murder and be murdered by allowing characters to invest resources other than intrigue and gold in their schemes, as well as making agents more individually meaningful. The idea has been to give you more precise tools and interactivity within schemes, without notably increasing the micro required to conduct a basic one.


[An adventurer contract scheme]

Early on in development, we had actually intended for most of what adventurers do to be different varieties of schemes that would require vastly different characters as agents. This didn’t turn out quite how we’d hoped, so we iterated, and eventually pivoted away from it to the current contract model — a few scheme contracts are still scattered through adventurers, though, they’re just not the only thing they do.

We wanted to get away from agents as faceless masses of people who hate a scheme’s target and little else. Most of the time, you don’t even know who’s in your scheme unless they’re a victim’s spymaster.

Instead, we wanted agents to be — generally — just a few people who you pick carefully, fitting the right characters to the right job. What we’ve done to accomplish this is reduce the number of agents you get down to a general max of around 5, and give them each a specific role in the scheme, their agent type.


[The tooltip for an agent type, the Footpad, which makes schemes faster]

These roles all boost some aspect of the plot, so one might help it go faster, another helps keep it secret, and a third helps increase success chance. Different agent types have different requirements, so not every character is a good fit for every role, and different schemes have different agent types available.


[The tooltip for an agent type, the Assassin, which increases a scheme’s maximum success chance]

At the start of a scheme, you choose which broad type of agents you want to focus on from a set of several packages, generally selecting between focusing on success chance, focusing on speed, focusing on secrecy, or going for a balanced mix. We initially trialled adding agents randomly over time from event options, letting the player select between two choices, but this proved frustrating and micro-intensive, so we moved away from it and towards the current system of pre-defined groups.


[The new murder interaction window]

What we hoped to create here was a situation where you might have different specialities within your scheme based on who you could get to join it, as well as be able to configure the same scheme type in different ways for different purposes — “here’s my speed-focused murder scheme, we’re gonna get the job done and fast but it won’t be quiet”, that type of thing.

In order to humanise them a bit more, we’ve also added a smattering of agent-specific (rather than scheme-specific) events. These let them have interpersonal conflicts, learn on the job, or bond over common hatreds, as well as dole out rewards for selecting agents that work well together and punishments for doing things like putting two nemeses in the same plot and asking them to work closely together.


[An agent event]

Lastly, we do still have an auto-invite agents button, so you don’t have to micro-manage agent adding if you don’t want to. The button won’t always grab the best person, and it won’t help you with bribes or anything, but if someone would be easy enough to murder, it’ll do the job.

Agents can now come from a broader pool, too; this changes a bit per scheme, but notably you can often bring in your own courtiers and vassals to help you conduct illicit business abroad, making intrigue-focused realms better able to wage war from the shadows without depending entirely on their targets’ weaknesses.


[Inviting an agent to a scheme, with many new bribes pictured — though not all]

In order to lure in better possible characters, we’ve added many new types of bribes besides hooks and gold: if you really, really, _really_ need someone dead, well, you can empty your treasury, expend your good word, maybe proffer land or use your scheme’s progress to sway them.

Other than agents, the other big change we’ve made is to scheme progression.

Under the old system, a scheme had a random chance to progress every X months. This could be very slow and ponderous, and meant that (barring event content interference) you could not murder someone in less than ten months, regardless of your own skill or how much people hated them. Your chance to succeed was also largely fixed outside of adding more agents. You plod through the progress bar chunks, then you execute the scheme.

Under the new system, your success chance starts out low (sometimes below 0%, especially for higher tier targets), and grows over time up to a maximum. Instead of having a progress bar with discrete chunks, your speed determines the interval of time it takes to gain a boost of success chance. Every time you complete one of these phases, you gain an advantage point: you can use these to help you recruit agents and a certain amount are required to execute a scheme.


This means that you:

Start with a low chance to succeed (exactly how low mostly depending on the target).

1. Grow your actual success chance by a certain amount every phase (exactly how much is mostly determined by your intrigue skill).
   
2. Can increase your speed, giving you faster phases, by adding the right agents.
   
3. Increase your maximum success, your scheme’s potential, by adding the right agents.
   
4. The general idea is that high intrigue will very much aid you in speedy, stealthy kills, but strong agent composition is needed to get to the finish line reliably. Scheme potential is tied extremely heavily to agents, having a base of only 30%, so you can’t do schemes by yourself reliably.

[The tooltip for a scheme’s current success chance, showing how much has been gained over time]

TL;DR = there’s a bar for success chance that grows over time, you affect how the bar grows over time and to what level, and you decide when you want to risk an ending.

Since the new system makes schemes, on average, much shorter, we’ve also increased the frequency with which they’re detected. There’s a grace period of about six months, and then after that, a low chance to be detected monthly.

To help you make an informed choice about whether it’s worthwhile executing a scheme early, we’ve formalised the old system of segmented scheme discovery into a simple number that you can see in the interface, your scheme’s breaches. Every time your target gets a notification about your scheme, whether it be rumours of someone plotting to kill them or an agent rooted out or the actual scheme being exposed, that constitutes a breach.

When you hit the maximum number of breaches, your scheme is automatically destroyed.

Once you’re ready, you execute (most) schemes manually. If you’ve accrued excess advantages, you can use them to boost your scheme success even further here. After you execute, the scheme proceeds just like it used to.


[Schemes may now be executed manually, as pictured]

This lets you make a meaningful choice on when to finalise your plans: is 60% success good enough if this dude is bearing down on me with an army? Can I simply murder a rival commander or troublesome spouse? How many breaches can we afford before discovery?

Likewise, we’ve done some magic behind the scenes to make the blocking of different types of murder a bit more consistent. The mechanics of this are a bit specific, but in short, rather than the prior system of determining which murder method was being used then looking to see if the victim had anything that might block it (which made balancing murder blocks virtually impossible), we roll two flat checks. One to see if they’ve got a one-use murder blocker (e.g., a dog throwing itself in front of the knife) — and then pick the highest from that list — and one vs. repeatable murder blockers (e.g., bodyguards), which takes a sum of all repeatable chances to a max of 75%.

Another thing about schemes as-is is that… you can’t really do much about them. You can replace your spymaster (if you didn’t hire the best one you could before unpausing on day 1), and you can set them to Disrupt Schemes (if you weren’t already just defaulting to that).

To complement a more varied scheme system with more tools to interact with it from the schemer’s side, we’ve added scheme countermeasures. These provide ways to proactively oppose hostile schemes, acting a little bit like council tasks. Their benefits are varied and excellent for buying time, but each also comes with severe drawbacks that mean you don’t want to have one toggled on for long without good reason.


[The various countermeasure focuses]

If you suspect someone is plotting to murder you or seduce someone you don’t want seduced, countermeasures can give you a solid way to oppose them in the short to medium term at the cost of potential eventual instability.

All countermeasures come with different tiers, generally unlocked by religious tenets or cultural traditions, though sometimes traits help too. These generally lower the penalties and increase the effects, meaning that some cultures, faiths, and just people are better able to resist scheming than others.


[A specific countermeasure, reducing opposing secrecy drastically for a significant cost]

Odds replace the old scheme chance prediction — they don’t give an exact value, because that’s very difficult to successfully build with the new mechanics, but they give a general idea of how likely a scheme is to succeed.


[Sway, a basic scheme, still uses simple mechanics]

Basic schemes are what we’ve done with schemes that don’t have agents: they have a simple success chance prediction ala the old system, and one long phase after which they execute automatically. We actually did experiment with adding agents to all schemes initially (even sway and seduction), but this proved very unfit for purpose during play-testing, so we created basic schemes as a way to allow plotting without all the extra clicks of the new agents system.

---

Coming up this DLC, we’ve got some pre-scripted historical story content for four of our new landless adventurer characters. Unless I’m very much mistaken, this is CK’s first venture into this type of thing since Charlemagne aaaaallll the way back in CK2, and I’m sure some of you are curious as to why.

As people came over from the Legends of the Dead team to Roads to Power, we had a bit of a grey zone whilst they were onboarding to working on a different DLC.

We took a bit of a risk, and asked some of them to try making story content for our more famous landless adventurers — we had some really cool people lined up, and couldn’t easily represent why without giving them some bespoke mechanics (is it really Hassan Sabbah if you don’t found the assassins? Can you call Hereward Hereward if he never murders a Norman?). That just sorta ballooned into this experiment into narrative content.

As a result, we ended up with narrative content for four characters:

• El Cid
  
• Wallada bint al-Mustakfi
  
• Hasan Sabbah
  
• Hereward the Wake

The size of this content is unevenly distributed, because the people making it had drastically different amounts of time given. We initially assumed everyone would get a very small amount of time to make just a little bit, which is what happened for El Cid, but then we found a bit more time for the person covering Hasan Sabbah, two designers collaborated (one from a different game team offering some spare time) on Wallada, and Hereward just… absolutely swelled in scope, because the designer allocated was able to spend much more time on him than expected.

We didn’t prioritise who got the most story content based on anything at all, it just worked out that El Cid got a light touch whereas Hereward got a whole sub-system.


[The new adventurer bookmark]

All story content is optional, so if you don’t want to engage in it, you don’t have to.

As El Cid, you’ll go through a small chain representing his travails through Iberia after being exiled by his foolishly-misled lord, King Sancho the Strong of Castille. As you progress, you will get opportunities to demonstrate your loyalty or assert your independence.

If you remain steadfast and resolute even in exile, King Sancho will doubtless eventually welcome you back to the fold (assuming he lives…), though a more ambitious Rodrigo may set his eyes on the prize of Valencia in the south.

El Cid also starts with many of his historical friends and family, like Alvar Fanez & Martin Antolinez, as well as his uncle, nephew, and mother. Alas, in 1066, he is not yet married, though his future wife Jimena de Oviedo is yet available to romance and elope with from her brother’s court.

He begins as a Sword-for-Hire, and has plenty of work for him amidst the Iberian Struggle.

Wallada is the last of the Umayyads in 1066, daughter of Caliph Muhammad of Andalusia, and inheritor of a great legacy and great wealth. Historically, she spent her life writing poetry, tutoring women at a school she founded, and generally causing consternation in her home city of Cordoba. She never married, nor did she have children, though she did take a broad variety of lovers, making her something of an eccentric by the standards of her time.

As an adventurer, her story content revolves around securing an adopted child, tactical use of seduction and romance, and writing and selling poetry in order to level up both her unique Violet Poet trait and the Double-Moon Tome (an artefact collating her works). She can also found a literary salon for the ages in a county of her choosing, once she has acquired suitably talented courtiers.

Wallada begins as a Scholar with ample starting gold and a decent prestige level. As she is quite old in 1066, her story may be inherited by her chosen successor and played for an additional generation.

Hasan Sabbah is not a particularly religious teenager in 1066. He is, however, about to become one — after a chance encounter with an Ismaili preacher, he finds himself radicalised and set on a path to found the deadly Hashashins, eventually becoming the legendary Old Man of the Mountain.

As an adventurer, his story content lets him fast-track the religious conversion of counties. By doing so, he will eventually be summoned to Egypt, convert once more to Nizarism, and then take on the fierce might of Seljuk Persia. With the people of the land behind him (or not, depending on how conversion goes), Hasan tries to lead a revolution against the Sunni Turks.

Eventually, he may found the Assassins, leaving them in a mountain fastness to defend all good Nizaris going forwards.

Hasan starts play as a Scholar, though given the nature of the work set out before him, he may not stay one for long.

Hereward begins exiled to the continent, but unless there’s a player involved in the Conquest, he won’t stay that way for long.

The decisive win of William of Normandy puts a Norman yoke on English necks, and begins the elaborate mechanics of the Harrying of the North, where Hereward, William, Norman invaders, and Anglo-Saxon lords compete to pacify or incite the country’s populace to revolt against the new status quo. As he kills Normans and rallies the locals against their attacker, Hereward levels his unique trait, becoming a better and better guerrilla fighter in his native fenlands in the east of England.

Hereward begins play as a Freebooter, and history could hardly describe him as anything else.

We’ve also got a smattering of smaller pieces of story content available — Prince Suleyman Qutalmishoglu, another bookmark character, has a small introductory event where he chooses how to react to his exile in the mountains of Cilicia…



… Basileus Basileos has an introductory event featuring the (early) murder of his predecessor and a tie-in to the Many Roads to Power comic…



… and Siward Barn has a small chain forking off of Hereward’s content where you can go on to found the colony of New England in its natural, rightful, obvious place — the shores of the Black Sea.



Right, and that about does it for our final dev diary before release. Next week will be the release of Roads to Power itself!

---

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 there! We’ve got some new stuff available for you to tinker with and I’m happy to have the honor of presenting it for you! I’m Jens, the programmer behind the Barbershop upgrade and Message Settings. But first I want to talk about Domiciles, the system behind Estates & Camps.

► Discuss Dev Diary #156 on our forums!



When building the feature, I made it in close collaboration with artists, designers and UX. Nobody wanted to work with another activity locale window again. So gathering the learnings and feedback, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for anyone to set the amount of building slots, their positioning or size and appearance based on triggers, all while having it updated by hot reloading in real time.


To get some terminology out of the way, we decided on 3 different domicile building slot types:

• Main: The building slot of your home building. It differs from the external slot in that its building is auto-constructed at start for free and is indestructible. Otherwise it’s handled just like any other external building slot. We decided on one main slot per domicile type, but there is no cap so technically you can add as many as you want.
  
• External: The visual building slot you see as you open the window. It has 4 states: locked, unlocked, under construction and constructed. Clicking an unlocked slot opens the building panel where you select what building you want to construct in the slot. There’s a new character modifier domicile_external_slots_capacity_add which sum determines how many extra slots are unlocked.
  
• Internal: For Estates we added internal building slots for its main building and for Camps we put them in the external buildings, but it's not enforced so any external building can host internal slots. They share the same 4 states as external slots even though it's visually presented in another way.

[Highlighted external building slot states of the Camp]



[Highlighted internal building slots of the Estate]


With Roads to Power we add Camps and Estates as two new domicile types. What domicile type to use is set per government type. Each domicile has base_external_slots which sets how many slots always are unlocked before the domicile_external_slots_capacity_add modifier is applied.

In the domicile_building_slots array you define the amount of external building slots the domicile type has. Because it’s an array you’re free to add as many or as few building slots as you like. Camps have fewer building slots than Estates so we made its artwork slightly bigger to get the zoomed in feeling. For each slot you can define if its main or external, its position and size and what image to select for the empty and under construction slot states (meaning each slot can look unique if you so wish).


[Database of domicile type displaying how the array of domicile building slots is defined]

The order of definition is only relevant when drawing the slots on the screen as the first items will appear behind the last items of the array. In the above example you can see we have several empty_slot_asset defined where slot appearance is selected by a trigger depending on current location. Make sure to have at least one empty_slot_asset and one construction_slot_asset per slot to cover the states.

The background of the window is selected in the same manner by defining domicile_asset that will pick the first triggered match starting from the top.


[Database of domicile type showing how window background is selected using triggered domicile assets]

If a domicile type uses provisions or not while moving is determined by a bool. Whether the domicile type will have a followers window and handle follower temperament will automatically be enabled if you start adding domicile_temperament_low_modifier or domicile_temperament_high_modifier.




[Example building of the domicile building database]

Some things in the above example are self explanatory but other parts are not that straightforward.

• allowed_domicile_types: This is an array defining what domicile types this building will be available for. If not specified this building won’t show up anywhere.
  
• previous_building: Is arguably the most complex as setting what building comes before this is what the upgrade tree structure will be based on. It is fully dynamic so you can make the tree as simple or as complex as you wish regardless what slot type the building is.
  
• slot_type: This determines in what slot you may construct the building. Note that setting the previous building of an internal building requires its predecessor to either also be an internal building or being the base building of an external or main building track. Internal buildings cannot be base buildings so all internal buildings require a previous_building.
  
• internal_slots: Defines how many internal slots this building hosts regardless if it’s an external or main building. (Please don’t add internal slots to internal buildings as that would start getting silly).
  
• asset: Works just like assets for the domicile types and may be selected by triggers as well.

Not shown above we also have can_construct trigger and on_start/on_cancelled/on_complete effects.


[Picture of a more complex tree structure. Note you won’t find this particular building in the game]


As you might have noticed in some screenshots we have structured the decisions window into collapsible groups. What decision belongs to which collapsible group and in what sort order is fully moddable.


[Displaying decisions sorted into collapsible groups]

The only thing you have to do is to set decision_group_type = <key> on the decision to have it show up within a specific collapsible group. The keys are defined in the decision group types database.


[Displaying decisions sorted into collapsible groups]

We use gui_tags as an arbitrary string to check for within gui files changing how they should be presented and you can easily append with your own in the same manner if you want a unique look.

To talk about this I also have to reveal some updates to Message Settings we will ship later with the patch.


[Picture of the Message Setting window in the patch version]

Each message can define its own message_filter_type to be handled as. These filters are defined in a separate database.

In the filters database you can set the default behavior of messages of the filter. You can set its display type, always_show if it never can be hidden, auto_pause by default and finally the collapsible group it will belong to. All but the always_show would get overridden as a player’s starts changing their own settings.


[Example of the Message Setting Filter database]

Works exactly like decision groups mentioned above, but without the gui_tag functionality.

Added shortcut on each message, quickly locating their respective filter.


[Image of shortcut icon on a toast message to its message settings filter]

This one is from Joror: Added text field to search through your message filter list.


[Text search field for message filters]


And as a parting gift requested by Mindel in a previous dev diary I present to you: Custom Messages! Giving you the ability to write messages to your future self reminding you about things of importance.


[Screenshot displaying the Custom Message feature]

---

Hiya, this is Joror - programmer on CK3 - I have been a modder myself before my Paradox days, and was also part of our central GSG Tools team before I joined CK3. So you can say that I have experienced our dev-tools from many different angles!

Developing or modding any grand strategy game can be an overwhelming task, given the sheer amount of systems and visualization layers that work together to create a believable world.

But we can help ourselves by improving the weapons that we have to wrangle this beast - our development tools. The modding community knows this all too well. (And often it has created better tools than the dev teams themselves. You do outdo us often, but you do outnumber us as well.)

We have improved a number of the in-game dev-tools during the development of this expansion. And as a modding-friendly game, you get to use them too! Here is a probably-not-complete overview.

A tool often used to check out what is going on in the simulated world while it is running; we tweaked its UX a bit. To access this tool you can run ‘explorer’ console command. You can also open the ‘Inspector’ part of it by ctrl-alt mouse clicking any portrait.

Improvements:

• Made the edit input box bigger
  
• Added provider name to title of dockable
  
• 'Save as Default' also remembers size and position of the object browser window
  
• Object Browsers 'stack' when opened on top of eachother
  
• Object Inspector will now always open to the right of the Browser window instead of on top of it
  
• Hitting ctrl-enter while typing in the text box will auto-apply it
  
• Bugfix - Alt-Tab no longer kills half your typed text in the text box

[The Object Browser with more information and bigger input fields]


[Picture of several stacked Object Browser window, also demonstrating it remembers a Default size and position]

That honker of a text file called `errors.log` - it is usually filled with messages of shame from a strict and mysterious machine overlord. We have cautiously convinced it to perhaps tell us a bit more than “Error on line 0”.

Improvements:

• Scripted effects/triggers state their actual line-number instead of the 'relative' line-number
  
• Scripted effects/triggers state their full file name
  
• Multi-line script errors go "last-to-first" instead of "last, first-to-last" (they're now in an order like most stack traces)
  
• Script file lines mention extra context in (...) behind them - the name of the object they were in, with potentially their sub-part
  
• Mean-time-to-happen script calls now actually put their script location in the logs too
  
• A bit of extra indenting for visual clarity

[The same error reported in the old log style and the new]

We also now follow script-execution-chains through more layers. More verbose, but ultimately easier to track down where things went wrong. For example with events triggering other events:


[A long chain of script calls, from a ‘hold_court_decision’ initial call, all the way through a series of triggered events]


Almost all of the text of our game lives in a large amount of .yml (sort-of YAML) text files. We call these files and their entries “loc” - after “localization” - but they’re also responsible for our text-formatting, and they can call Data script functions as well. A complex database, where it is easy to make a small mistake that goes unseen. Until spotted by our talented translators, or our very observant player base.

Improvements:

• Added a high-level localization syntax checker at game startup on all localization keys of the current language (when in debug mode)
  
• Checks for extra / unterminated loc symbols `[...] (...) $...$ '...'`
  
• Checks for invalid usage of Text replacement within Data functions
  
• Other loc-key replacements via `$...$` can now also apply formatters via `$...|u$`
  
• Escaping single quotes in `$...$` can be done via a new formatter `q` : `$...|q$` - you’ll see a bunch of our localization has been tweaked to add this.

• The map debug menu buttons work again in our release version (they still worked in our internal development builds, but modders brought this to our attention)

[Map debug menu - all these button now again do things, nice for streamers and modder that want to enable/disable visuals]

• The Script Profiler (originally from Victoria 3 ) has been ported to CK3!

[The script profiler at work, showing us how much time was spent on various script statements]


One of the tools at our, and modder’s, disposal is the Watch Windows. Some of these are receiving some minor improvements.

First improvement to speak of is the AIWatch window, which contains various information regarding some of the AI logic and how the AI considers things like marriage, activities and relevant to this entry: available casus belli. One of the improvements we’ve made to the AI is that they will now consider a ruler’s military power rather than their military strength. Allow me to clarify the distinction: strength is the raw numbers a ruler has, no matter what troops they are. All military calculations up until now have been based on this. Power is a more accurate representation, in that it combines a regiment’s combined damage and toughness and multiplies that with the strength of the regiment. The short of it is: the AI now knows that levies are much weaker than MAAs and Knights when both declaring wars and picking battles.

To make it easier for ourselves when investigating how the AI picks available casus belli, we are exposing the AI’s power calculation, and the power they estimate other rulers to have. It is important to note that this calculation is affected by the ruler’s personality when targeting administrative realms, such that a craven ruler will overestimate a target’s power, while a bold ruler will underestimate a target’s power; a craven ruler will assume all governors operate at peak efficiency, while a bold ruler will assume them all to be useless administrators barely fit for office. These calculations can now be seen in the AIWatch Window in the Casus Belli section.


[AIWatch Window with military power in the CB tab]

Furthermore, while in debug mode, the military strength tooltip in the character window will also show an entry for the ruler’s military power.

Next is an improvement to the AI War Coordinator Watch Window. While this is not a window that helps modders too much, as the items shown within are more relevant to us who have access to the source code, it can be of worth for those who modify the strength of levies and knights.


[AI War Coordinator Watch Window]

While rarely relevant for modders, the ai war coordinator watch window can be of value when modders change the calculus of war by modifying the strength of levies, men at arms and knights, to see if their tweaks have the desired effect on strength on the sides of war.

The military power information is also available in the character window when in debug mode.


[Character Window showing “Our Military Strength” tooltip with debug mode enabled]


New modders often ask the question: can I mod armies and regiments? For the longest time we have not allowed any sort of warfare modding to the point where our modding community has had this little command on their Discord server, first proposed in 2022.


[CK3 Mod Co-op !warfaremodding command proposal and first use]

Now we retire some of these points. We are adding a whole suite of effects and triggers that affects regiments. Yes, we are making regiments a scope and various ways to access them. You’ll now be able to create, destroy, change size of, and add troops to regiments from script.

Let’s look at the refill_maa_with_provisions_effect as an example where one of them is used.


[Warfare modding example with change_maa_troops_count]

Another thing we’re adding with Roads to Power is dynamically changing commanders in battles. While not directly moddable, this does mean that one can add temporary modifiers to commanders to swap them around.

The ‘start_war’ script effect has some downsides because you have to specify exactly which war you want to start, and you might not know which Casus Belli and targets might be available to a character. Troublesome. You will have to wait for the general AI war background process to kick off a war you want to start.

So to give our script a bit more power, we have added a new ‘complex’ effect called ‘ai_start_best_war’, which can be used only for AI characters. It will go through all the valid wars a character can start at this moment, and gives you the opportunity to ‘select’ them via the ‘is_valid’ trigger.

Out of all the wars selected this way, the effect will start the one with the highest AI score. (as determined by the regular AI scoring mechanism for wars, which is a combination of a code-based score and script-based ‘ai_score’ calculation on Casus Belli)

The outcome of the effect can be further acted on by its two sub-effects: ‘on_success’ and ‘on_failure’.

It is a key component of how we made characters with our new Conqueror trait extra aggressive!



The contents of the music player are moddable. For those who're already modding music into the game, there's just a few more steps you have to do in order to have the songs show in the music player.

We add the Music tracks we wish to put into the Music Player into categories. To do this they must be implemented with the following files structure:


[Music Player Modding directories]

The music.txt files contain information on the tracks themselves, and in order to have them localized they all must have a name = loc_key field. Example:


[music.txt entry example for music player modding]

The music_category.txt files will then contain information on the categories and tracks contained within:


[music_category.txt example for music player modding]

It is important to note that the id field in these categories must be unique. Finally, here’s where you can add illustrations for the music player. Using the above category as an example:


[Directory structure to add illustration for music player]

Of course all the audio banks and all that must also be added into it.

Some changes are coming to the Flavourization system. For the uninitiated, this is what separates the Petty-King from the Duke, the Emperor from Basileus, and the Divine Empress from Empress-Bishop. The big thing of note from before is that we’re encapsulating previous true/false flags in a container to collect them all. This is to improve legibility when new rules are added. Let’s look at the full structure of supported members.


[Complete structure of the flavourization, minus the detailing documentation]

This entire structure was undocumented previously, so all modders had to go on was how we had previously used it. An up to date .info file on the structures will be coming with Roads to Power so you can make your own, flavourful modifications to titles, names and the like. As of Roads to Power, naming conventions of characters with their titles (Emperor Chad to Holy Emperor Chad), title tier names (duchy to petty-kingdom) and domicile names (Estate to Family Holding) are supported.

As an example:


[Example flavourization entry for Badass Queen]

An interesting thing we discovered while adding features to the Flavourization system was: we already supported looking for character flags. It was just never documented. Our designers were enthusiastic about this revelation. Our programmers were… not so enthusiastic about the designer’s enthusiasm:


[Slack thread on Flavourization changes and discoveries]

Fair warning to our modders: the Flavourization system can get very expensive to do in terms of execution, so as much as I know better than to say this but – use it responsibly.

---

Hello! Rageair here with a preview of the Achievements coming with Roads to Power! I’ll start off with the easy ones, getting harder as we go down the list…


As mentioned in a previous Dev Diary we have Historical Characters such as Dante or Fibonacci spawning across the map. If you get one of them to appear in your realm while owning Roads to Power, you will have the option to set out on an adventure as them!


Take care of the people in your camp and this one should come rather easily! It’s not entirely trivial to get people to join your camp in the first place, though…


A callback to an old way to play the game, harkening back to the CK2 days (there were several YouTube series with this gimmick!) - switching which character you played every time you died. Now this is supported by the game, making it easier than ever!


Now we’re getting into the intermediate difficulty achievements. This one can happen naturally, but a fun thing to try is by playing Harold in the 1066 invasion of England, and then returning to reclaim the crown from William!


Quite straightforward - create a large realm, then adopt the new government form!


Deceptively hard seeing as there are a lot of buildings to construct in your Estate!


Buddy up with the emperor and then smite your enemies with his permission! You will probably find a lot of enemies while playing in Byzantium, so you should be motivated to pursue this.


If you’re really chummy with the emperor you might be named co-emperor, and as a co-emperor you can demand a larger share of the realm to rule as your own…


This achievement is based on history; the Palaiologos dynasty became the longest-ruling dynasty in Byzantine history after having served faithfully for a long time.


A fun challenge! Save up a lot of gold in order to weasel your way into becoming a noble family (hint: this is easier to do if you adopt Byzantium's State Faith), and then use your influence to claim the throne, good luck!


Time for the harder achievements - if you follow the story of the historical founder of the assassins it will culminate with the dissolution of an empire (historically the seljuks, but you can take him anywhere!)


Playing as El Cid you will have plenty of choice; this achievement is unlocked by following his historical path.


Saladin starts out as a Conqueror, so this is a tall feat to pull off. You have a few years to prepare for his invasion as he tends to go for central arabia before holy warring Jerusalem.


If it’s not broken, don’t fix it! Having a turkic-dominated islamic administrative empire is a fun challenge to pursue, especially seeing how Byzantium still can pack quite a punch despite having lost a lot of territories to you in the 1178 bookmark.


A natural continuation of the venerable ‘Rags to Riches’ achievement from the base game!


Georgia had plans on holy warring for these territories, but in history this plan didn’t come to fruition - an interesting and plausible alternative history scenario to pursue!


You have to work hard in climbing the political ladder to achieve the position of dominant family! Try putting as many family members on important positions as you can!


In 1178 Byzantium is at a low point, making it a fun challenge to not only survive, but thrive!


Perfect achievement to pursue in combination with Chaos is a Ladder.


If you wish to pursue this I recommend the 1178 bookmark, as it’s very likely for this to happen around that time.

---

That's all we have for this week; come back next Tuesday as we dive into the details behind the new Scheme rework coming in Roads to Power!

---

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! I’m PDX-Trinexx, the Community Manager for Crusader Kings. This week’s dev diary will be slightly different, as we’re going to cover several topics from several different authors. Key subjects are Roman Restoration, the 4th Crusade, and the addition of dynamically spawned Historical Characters once the game has actually started.

We’ll start off with the new Roman Restoration content coming with Roads to Power, so I’ll hand it over to our resident Byzantine scholar now.

► Discuss Dev Diary #155 on our forums!




Salvete! You might remember me from the previous dev diary about Byzantium. I’m Chad, a Game Designer (now turned Programmer) working on CKIII. Today I’ll be discussing one of the smaller updates we’re making to the classic Restore Rome decision in Roads to Power.

Even though they knew themselves as Romans, Byzantium was not the same as the Roman Empire that you can “restore” in game. And thoughts of “restoring” this idealized version of ancient Rome were not common during our period. If you’d like to play a grand strategy game as the Roman Empire, may I point you towards a great one called Imperator: Rome? I think you’d love it. It even recently received an update!

With that aside, however, I’d like to show off some of the content we’ve updated for reconquering pieces of Rome’s past.


[Event showing the reconquering of Tunis which is fired from the new “important locations” system]

In Roads to Power, you’ll get updated event content for conquering pieces of the historical Roman Empire. This is part of a great new feature from my colleague we’re calling “important locations” that modders will likely be interested in. You can now script a relationship between a landed title and another higher tier title and fire content when they enter and exit the realm. These can be scripted on the fly as well, allowing for dynamic content about titles changing hands.


[Script example of setting the county of Rome as an important location for the Byzantine Empire]


[Full documentation of the set_important_location script effect showing information about parameters and scopes]

We’ve updated how you can “restore” “Rome” as Byzantium with an eye towards how the Byzantines may have thought about such a thing, primarily through the lens of Justinian. With this comes gorgeous new art as well as a new decision to make.


[Event that occurs when you’ve taken the decision to restore the Roman Empire]


[First option when restoring Rome, which provides access to unique bonuses and converts your realm to Hellenism, but turns on hard mode]


[Second option for restoring Rome, which keeps the original functionality]

We wanted to create an interesting choice here. There were concerns that this increase in difficulty might be perceived as “too gamey” but we ultimately decided that restoring the ancient Roman Empire in the Middle Ages is already a “gamey” notion.

Managing a massive empire like the de jure territory of Rome should be hard and create a new challenge for players. Of course, if it’s too difficult to keep the whole enterprise together and functioning, you can opt for the historical decision to split it into East and West. Many historical emperors tried their best to maintain control over such a vast territory and failed–ultimately deciding on some variation of dividing power. Perhaps you will be the one to succeed in keeping the realm united–but as I said, it won’t be a walk in the park.


[Decision to “Cleave the Empire” which splits the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western parts and ends hard mode]

This also means that there is now a legitimate way to convert to Hellenism in-game. Upon reforming Hellenism, players have access to a new Faith Tenet called Household Gods.


[New art for the Household Gods tenet for Hellenism]


[Household Gods tenet for Hellenism which gives bonuses to conversion speed among other things]

That’s all from me today! I’ll leave you with a heartfelt parting quote from Catullus: Frater ave, atque vale. “Goodbye, brother, and fare well.”

---

[CM’s Note: This section contains a lot of spoilers for the 4th Crusade mechanics. If you’re bothered by that, then please skip ahead to the next section! (ctrl+f -> "rageair")]

Uh… the 4th Crusade? God. God willed it, duh. God was so into it. And besides Him, there was the Marquis de Montferrat, Mathieu de Montmorency, Pierre de Bracieux, and many others. Maybe the Doge of Venice masterminded the whole debacle (if CK2 is to be believed)?

As far as CK3 content is concerned… I guess I’m the Doge, the architect of our lurid misadventure. My name’s Jason and I’m the most hydrated designer on CK3.

I started work on the Fourth(ish) Crusade as something small and simple. But — and no one could have seen this coming — the subject matter proved a little complex. And a little dramatic. It seemed to merit a whole hullabaloo.

So the Fourth Crusade in CK will happen regularly and it absolutely will prove a great and terrible threat to the Byzantine Empire. The Mongols are an apocalypse for all the world; the Latins are an apocalypse to the Greeks. Their empire stands tall, crumbles or is succeeded by some hideous aberration based on whether this strange fight is won or lost.


[Later artwork of the siege of Constantinople.]

In 1202, Catholic lords and knights began gathering to retake Jerusalem in a new Crusade. A number of these western crusaders chose Venice as their setting-off point. This involved a good bit of sitting and waiting for their fellow lords to show, and it soon became apparent few others were coming. But the Venetians still had to be paid in full.

The first repayment effort involved sacking the Dalmation port of Zara, and staining their righteous swords in Christian blood. There, the Crusaders were joined by the Marquis of Montferrat and, with him, a claimant to the Byzantine throne, Alexios IV Angelos.

Still low on funds, the Crusaders accepted an offer from this claimant: he promised them lavish support, money and troops for the holy cause, if the Crusaders could install him on his rightful throne. Though some dissenters instead departed directly for Jerusalem, the rest of the knights got onboard for Constantinople.

Emperor Alexios III Angelos (who has the same name as the other Greek, yup) failed to fight these foreigners off. He was forced to abdicate in favor of the pilgrims’ claimant. The new Emperor Alexios, however, seeing the impossibility of making good on his promises to the Crusaders, reneged on their deal. The capital was stormed and he, overthrown.


[Now this is one salty mosaic.]

Yet another Emperor Alexios would soon meet the same fate and, after that, Constantinople was truly and historically ravaged by the Latin crusaders. When the pillaging and slaughter was over, so too was the Byzantine Empire. At least, for a time.

The sort-of Crusaders named their own Latin Emperor, divided newly-won Byzantine territories amongst themselves, and set about the business of establishing their rule.

I really recommend Geoffroi de Villehardouin’s description of these events. His is a rare medieval firsthand account, as he was one of the Crusader leaders. It offers such a fresh, direct, farm-to-table kind of bias.

Well… this is one of those cases where gamefying history means sort-of choosing a narrative; it, too, means truncating events somewhat. And — adding a bit of dynamism, as suits the sandbox of CK3.

Jason, you ask — will the Fourth Crusade happen around 1202?

No. It is most likely to happen from the 1178 start date (and, fair warning, can happen very promptly), but it’s possible from other start dates, though only once the Catholics are onto their second (or later) Crusade.

Well, it’s the Fourth Crusade though…

Not necessarily, not in-game. We’re not adding a counter that permits this story only once the # of Crusades = 4. No. In game, this is referred to as the “Crusader War for Imperial Claim” or the “Splintered Crusade.” It was hard to come up with a nice-sounding term that actually fit, I’ll be honest.

The dynamism of when this thing will strike is matched by it having relatively open ownership. You don’t have to play the Marquis de Montferrat to introduce a wannabe-Byzantine Emperor to some Crusaders; you can be pretty much any European Catholic ruler who has a relation to one such claimant at the right moment.

This has kinda tipped our hand: the “leader” of the Splintered Crusade will be the above-named champion of the Byzantine aspirant. Putting this character at the helm centralizes authority over the Latin Crusaders more than is historical, yes, but it’s a big plus for playability and agency.

Oh, and the Splintered Crusade? It isn’t actually a Crusade. This thing is a big, fat, ugly limpet sucking off the underbelly of a proper Catholic Crusade.

Let’s get into that.

It begins with a Catholic Crusade against lands east of the Mediterranean. Sure, there’s a Christian Byzantine Emperor, but he’s not involved in this Catholic initiative. Everything seems normal… and then some paltry little Catholic lord is hit with this:


[A sudden flash of purple: the opening event for the Splintered Crusade]

YOU OPT IN AND SHIT IS GONNA GO DOWN.

JUST NOT RIGHT AWAY. As you wait for the Crusade (that you will, at least temporarily, bail from) to launch, you’re waiting to see who in Christendom is down to say “You son of a Byz! I’m in.”

The Pope is first to weigh in.


[The Pope’s letter to his most misguided crusader.]

This story would be incomplete without an avaricious financier, and Venice — or the most Venice-y ruler available — fills that role.


[Your financier goes all in.]

As the months pass, other Catholics pledged to the Crusade will instead pledge to join you. And t hen the Crusade is launched, robbed of your confederates! Y’all set off on a war of your own.


[The Crusader War for Imperial Claim begins.]

The Byzantine Emperor will be fairly outnumbered, but all he needs to do is repel his attackers and this will be ended.

If he fails, though…


[The victorious crusaders must deal with their new emperor.]

Your claimant may choose to bankrupt the empire in order to properly pay off every Crusader. More often than not, though, he’ll simply offer you a bribe to leave in peace. You can accept, of course, and may then even perhaps join the proper Crusade with your well-earned reinforcements (if it isn’t too late).

Is anyone really going to leave in peace, though…?


[It’s Latin Empire time, baby. And it isn’t pretty.]

Unlike in a normal Crusade, you can choose to leave your old realm behind and gain the newly-made Latin Empire title yourself. Or you can give it to a relative. Or maybe you’ll reward that kind old selflessly helpful Venice fella, just as the historical crusaders almost did.

Below the Latin Empire title, are Greek duchies and counties distributed among the most powerful crusaders. These rulers choose new holders for their assigned title much as the Latin Emperor is chosen.


[Bye bye, Byzantium.]


[Whoomp! (There It Is)]

The Latin Empire is born; Byzantium dies. Though not cleanly, and not all at once. The collapse is scripted to prefer historicity, but it happens dynamically. The capital kingdom of the (now destroyed) Byzantine empire will go to the Latins. The Venetian Stato da Màr claims some Byzantine maritime holdings. Yet most of the Greeks do not bow to Latin dominion: some mighty governors become Administrative kings, while lesser magistrates claim feudal independence.

A Crusader trait for these first Latin lords wouldn’t be quite right. They get a new one called Despoiler of Byzantium instead, and it also makes their AI personality aggressive as hell.


[The new, rare and shiny Despoiler of Byzantium trait.]

But how does this all look to an unsuspecting Greek…?

SWEET GOD IN HEAVEN, THE FUCKING LATINS ARE-

I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Byzantine Emperor is the first to learn of the threat to come, and is given over a year to adequately gird his loins. For the rest of the empire, the cult of Rome strikes rather more suddenly.


[The Byzantine flavor on this war declaration does read just a bit different.]

Then, if the foreign invaders aren’t repelled…


[The news from Constantinople isn’t exactly good.]

This is right as everything in Byzantium is falling apart. If you’re powerful enough, you can now seize the title of Despot (king), and remain administrative. Otherwise, keeping your estate will mean pledging to another soon-to-be Despot. Your alternative is goin’ back to feudal. And landless house heads? They should find themselves under one of the new Greek Despots.

In sum: their empire is a wreck, but this isn’t game over for the Greeks. The world marches on.

The brief, tumultuous age of Latin rule in Greek lands was referred to as such.

The Latin Emperor faces some interesting choices in the early days of rule.


[The Venetians offer a quid pro quo.]


[The Greeks suggest the Latin Emperor become… Administrative?!?]

In order to achieve maximum CK3 turmoil, the fall of Byzantium unlocks a new CB everywhere in the empire: Seize Imperial Duchy. For, in this age of uncertain aftermath, any who possess Byzantine de jure land can lay claim to other such titles.


[The Latin Emperor uses Seize Imperial Duchy to expand his realm.]

And, in a broken realm haunted by armed hosts, earning victory attracts armies to your banner! This should help stronger Latins, Turks and Greeks in the region push their way to dominance.

But what is de facto dominance without de jure righteousness?


[Legitimize Latin Dominion Decision.]

Latin Emperors of sufficient legitimacy have a unique decision that lets them claim the kingdoms of Byzantium and the hearts of the Greeks, one by one.


[Expunge Latin Dominion Decision.]

And the Byzantines, when/if they manage a comeback, can claw their kingdom titles back. Should they retake Constantinople and establish themselves well enough — the Restore the Byzantine Empire Decision gives the Greeks a pretty easy means to scrub all this nonsense out.

But y’know, probably just in time for the Ayyubids or the Mongols or the Ottomans or someone else to wipe them out for good.

Kýrie, eléison :(

---

Greetings! Rageair here with a small feature coming in the free update.

Something I’ve felt the absence of for a long time are certain historical figures appearing as the game progresses. I’m not talking about the likes of Frederick Barbarossa or Mansa Musa - rulers and their kin are simulated with vast branching dynastic trees, divergences here are core to the game! No, I’m talking about the great poets, scientists, scholars, commanders, and tricksters of history - those without a lineage of nobility to back them up.

In the update following Roads to Power you will see certain well-known historical figures appear across the map, which you can employ - or in case you own RtP - set out on an adventure as!


[Hildegard von Bingen - everyone’s favorite eccentric nun!]

Characters will appear in their historical place of birth (or our best approximation), Hildegard will appear in the barony of Worms, for example. By default you will only be notified if they appear in your Domain or if they are extremely well known (and you are the liege of any vassal holding the barony) - this can be altered via game rules, should you wish.


[Game Rule controlling how Historical Characters spawn]

Now, it’s no fun if these historical characters are too static! After all, no two games of CK are the same, and in one game the barony of Worms might be… of the Ibadi faith and Baranis culture, for example, who knows! In any case, for most characters (who don’t fall into the category of a specific religious minority or proponent) they will adapt to the faith/culture of their place of birth. As an example, here’s Hildegard again, but with the setup mentioned above.


[Hildegard, in case the barony of Worms was Ibadi and Baranis]

All historical characters spawned this way (not historical landed rulers, I’m afraid) have a snippet of information attached to them, explaining who they were in real-life. This snippet can be accessed from a widget near their opinion, and from their ‘Historical Character’-trait. Of course, the destiny that they’ll have in your game is almost always going to differ from their historical one, but it’s fun to compare with nonetheless!


[Thomas Aquinas also spawns with a Book inspiration - unfortunately we didn’t have time to hook in historical book titles, so they remain random, alas]

The trait helps you find them via the character finder, should you desire to see who’s around, and what they’re up to! I like to use it in order to invite them and land them as my vassals…


[The trait allows for easy searching]

If you’re lucky enough to have one of these characters spawn in your realm, you have three options:


[William Wallace - Illustrating the options]

You can choose to ignore them, should you not be in need of their services - or you can employ them and get an obligation hook. As mentioned, you can also abandon your dynasty and set out on an adventure as them - the only time in CK3 where I think it’s fair to do so, because it’s just too cool to be able to go on an adventure as someone like William Wallace or Ibn Battuta, and it would be a crime not to offer you that opportunity!


[Ibn Battuta will set out on adventure if dismissed, as he did historically!]

As the Expansion focuses on Byzantium, I took extra care to add every interesting character that I could for Byzantium and their surroundings, which does mean that an extraordinary amount of characters will appear in constantinople. At the start of 1066, no less than two well-known figures will make their appearance within a year or so…


[Michael the Stammerer was technically already at court in 1066, so his text mentions that he ‘made a name for himself at court’, rather than ‘wandering my realm’!]


[Joseph is very useful in fighting the Seljuks, indeed]

We tried to add as many interesting historical characters as we could to this new system, and we ended up with exactly(!) 100 of them, spanning most of the map! There are many very well-known figures, and some that are more obscure but that I’m sure will pique your interest when you see them. Here’s a sample of some of them:


[Omar Khayyam will also appear close to the 1066 start date]


[Perhaps you’d like to set out on a real journey as the famous Dante Alighieri?]


[Or maybe you’d like to literally take Ockham’s razor to the throat of your enemies?]


[This somewhat controversial pair will appear as lovers, and if you set out on an adventure as Heloise, Peter will join you!]


[You didn’t think we’d forget about the Norse, did you? Snorri here is the author of most of what we know about norse mythology today.]


[Many famous Jewish personalities, such as Rashi here, will appear across the map]


[And we’re not forgetting about India! Here’s Vidyapati, one of the most famous poets and scholars of the area.]


[Rumi hails from a non-Persian area in Anatolia, and instead of appearing Greek or Turkish will take his faith and culture from Balkh, as a compromise! Several historical characters hail from one place but take their faith/culture from another.]


[Alright alright, not all of the characters are 100% historically verifiable like Jangar here, but if they could have existed and are interesting enough - why not!]


[And some most certainly existed, but their stories were embellished over the centuries. Anyone from Turkey here who recognizes this funny fellow?]


[You might be familiar with a character named Varys who is a very influential eunuch from a certain popular franchise - John here is the real-life inspiration for that character!]

As mentioned above we’ve added a hundred characters (technically 101 but Héloïse d'Argenteuil & Peter Abelard is a package deal!), and here’s the full list (not in chronological order!)

Karunakara Tondaiman
Sekkilhar
Omar Khayyam
Bhaskaracharya
Joseph Rabban
Atisha
Hemachandra
Kshemendra
Akka Mahadevi
Namdev
Madhvacharya
Vidyapati
Abhinavagupta
Basava
Hildegard von Bingen
Thomas Aquinas
Dante Alighieri
Thomas Becket
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon)
Chrétien de Troyes
Egil Skallagrímsson
Gunnlaug Ormstunga
Þorbjörg the Seeress
Erik Röde
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)
Ibn Battuta
William of Ockham
Geoffrey Chaucer
Roger Bacon
Aaron of Lincoln
John Wycliffe
Héloïse d'Argenteuil & Peter Abelard
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)
Giotto di Bondone
Leonardo Fibonacci
Giovanni Boccaccio
Christine de Pizan
Snorri Sturluson
Hrotsvitha
Ramanuja
Arnaldus de Villa Nova
Ibn Khaldun
Jalaluddin Rumi
Avicenna
Averroes
Al-Biruni
Rashi (Shlomo Yitzchaki)
Yehuda Halevi
Hasdai ibn Shaprut
Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides)
Abraham ibn Ezra
Solomon ibn Gabirol
Nachmanides (Moses ben Nahman)
Hasdai Crescas
Saadia Gaon
Yusuf ibn 'Awkal
Benjamin of Tudela
Marco Polo
Bridget of Sweden
Johannes Eckhart (Meister Eckhart)
Jangar
Zawisza Czarny
Theophanes the Greek
Nicetas Choniates
Michael Psellos
John Tzetzes
Theophylact of Ohrid
Eustathius of Thessalonica
Nicephorus Blemmydes
Georgius Pachymeres
Manuel Moschopoulos
Theodore Metochites
Michael Choniates
Joseph Tarchaneiotes
Gemistus Pletho
Arethas of Caesarea
Basil Lekapenos
John the Orphanotrophos AKA totally who Varys is based on
Samonas
Peter the Eunuch
Constantine the Paphlagonian
Peter the Stratopedarches
Basilios Bessarion
Demetrios Kydones
Manuel Holobolos
John Axuch
Mkhitar Gosh
Shota Rustaveli
Grigor Tatevatsi
Sargis Pitsak
Averardo de' Medici
Alfonso de Borgia
William Wallace
La Hire (Étienne de Vignolles)
Rabban Bar Sauma
Nasreddin Hodja
Widukind of Corvey
Roger de Flor
Regino of Prüm
Geoffrey of Monmouth

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That’s all we have for this week! As always, thanks for your time and attention.

We’ll be back next week to discuss the details of the new Scheme system coming in the Free Update releasing alongside Roads to Power. Until then, if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave them in the replies and we’ll do our best to address them.

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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!

Lucas Ribeiro here, 2D Art Lead at CKIII. I’m here to share with you the results of our art struggles to represent both the awesome splendor of the Byzantine Empire and the mud-splattered travels of medieval adventurers.

► Discuss Dev Diary #154 on our forums!




Let’s start off with the first thing that will greet the player in Roads to Power, the Loading Screen. Before picking a definitive subject matter for our loading screen, we created many composition studies. We went for themes such as nautical, imperial, religious and triumphal.



1. The Emperor stands on a galley armed with a flamethrower and inspects the fleet.
2. An Imperial comitive struts through the Boukoleon palace waterfront.
3. An imperial comitive receives foreign dignitaries standing under the Boukoleon.
4. The emperor returns from his victorious campaign and receives a triumph. A one-eyed man guides an army of blinded soldiers of the defeated army.
5. The emperor is crowned
6. A religious debate between Orthodox and Catholic priests.
7. The emperor is crowned in the Hagia Sophia
8. Another religious debate.

The coronation in the Hagia Sophia and the imperial comitive striding by the docks were picked as the best ones. As a next step we created color sketches based on those chosen compositions. You can see the results here:




(Color sketches of the two favorite ideas)

After some debate, we decided that the coronation had the most unique and striking composition out of the two. But, since the team liked the imperial comitive color sketch so much, we decided to save it and use it for the bureaucratic dynasty legacy.


[Our selected loading screen.]


[Dynasty legacy based on the rejected color sketch.]

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To mark great events that happen to the world or player characters we had originally introduced Story Event illustrations for Fate of Iberia. These dramatic splash screens would pop-up anytime something happened during the Iberian and Iranian struggles. On Legends of the Dead this format of illustration came back to represent major disease outbreaks and the black death. For EP3 we decided that these evocative images would be fitting for memorable events such as Triumphs, the Restoration of Rome and in the story of Hereward the Wake, the Harrying of the North.

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While we had generic Mediterranean background images, it felt like they were insufficient to represent the particularities of Byzantine culture. The team thus made new versions for the feast, market, throne room, study, temple and relaxing room. This allowed us to represent some Greek particularities, such as the use of lavish recliners on their ostentatious feasts.



1. A view of the Chrysotriklinos, also used as the main menu background for greek characters.
2. A Byzantine study. Governors will be pondering administrative dilemmas in this office.
3. A Greek market, full of color and exotic goods. Your traveler will probably stumble on this during their travels.
4. An orthodox church or holy site. The striped walls really give it away.
5. A Greek relaxation room. It is impossible to relax without some marble and mosaics under your feet.
6. A Byzantine feast. The reclining chairs allow for maximum decadence, albeit the back pain.

The hippodrome deserved special attention, as we have a background looking down from the stands into the track and one close down by the track directly.





We wanted to make sure you would feel in the middle of the action when the chariots were neck and neck, racing to the finish line.

Hagia Sophia could not go without receiving their own unique background as well. At first we considered having the “camera” on the walkway. Our hope was to show the scale of the edifice this way, but our designers informed us that these were normally reserved for female visitors only, so we opted for a different composition.


[The abandoned sketch]



Constantinople is the focus of many new events, both of doom and glory. Accordingly we have made the appropriate backgrounds.





We put a lot of effort into trying to get everything in the right position in the city by following reconstructions and historical references.

Our adventurers also demanded new backgrounds. Their camp life is represented by a variety of views of their encampment. By day or night, inside or outside.

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In Roads to Power, our environment team and animation team worked together to give our characters even more life, with new animations and assets for them to wield or ride on. Here are some of the highlights:




[Charioteers will ride on appropriately colored chariots, according to their team.]


[The emperor flaunts his shiny stick to remind everyone who’s the boss.]

We have added around thirty new animations or variations of older animations. Some of these will be applied in place of the regular idle animation the character usually has to present their newfound situation, such as when they are incapable or imprisoned. Some councilors will also change their animation depending on what task they are assigned to at the moment. Hopefully this will make characters feel more alive than ever in Roads to Power.

We also expanded on event visual effects. Instead of using bink videos like we did for Legends of the Dead, we have opted for shaders that are a lot lighter. The new event effects include: Earthquake, heavy smoke, sand storm, rainy fog and lightning storm.

---

[Initial experiments for the estate screen.]


[Initial Experiments for the camp screen.]

Settling on a style for the domicile screen was quite a struggle for the team. At first, we meant to have them be very similar to locales (as in, the Tournament Screen). While this would make for more internal consistency in art style, for four reasons we decided to deviate from this initial plan:

First, we wanted this NOT to be full-screen, as unlike the tournament screen, we do not mean to take the player away from their plots and immerse them in the event. The domiciles (estates and camps) communicate directly with your actions in the game world, and should be convenient to navigate. This made for a smaller screen and thus, a more symbolic representation of buildings and their purpose would work better in this medium.

Second, we felt that our 3D environment team efforts were better used elsewhere, it was unlikely we could’ve created cultural variations of buildings while depending on them. Keeping the work exclusively on the 2D artists expanded our capacity to create more buildings and have cultural variety on top of it.

Third, The domiciles operate in a totally different way from tournaments, visual similarities would incorrectly communicate to the player that they should function the same way.

Fourth, the team fell in love with the mockups we presented in the medieval art style. The non-descript isometric buildings ended up paling in comparison to the charming illustrations we had come up with.



Estate buildings have different visuals according to culture. For now, we have Western, Byzantine and MENA themes.

Camp buildings are the same regardless of culture, except for the main tent, which has western, steppe, tribal and mena themes.

Besides variation of buildings by culture, we also wanted to reinforce the sense of place in the world of the domiciles by creating different backgrounds that change according to the position of the estate or the camp.

Estate Background can be:
Dry, Green, Jungle, Rough and Urban.

While Camp Backgrounds can be:
Dry, Green, Jungle, Rough, Snow and Snowy Mountains.

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While the Greeks showed less propensity to utilize coat-of-arms in the fashion we observe in western Europe, they did attach to the identity of their families certain symbols on their coins, murals and reliefs.

It makes for an interesting variety that they would claim not only secular imagery, inspired on greco-roman myths, but also christian religious symbols. Their connection to the sea would also inspire many aquatic motifs.

Thus, we can see mermaids, ophiotaurus and manticores side-by-side with Jesus, Mary, Archangel Gabriel and Saint George. These might be adorned with crosses, stars or shells.


[Randomly generated Greek coat of arms.]

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With Roads to Power we had the chance to greatly expand the Byzantine wardrobe, which was historically quite distinct and interesting looking, and very notably different from surrounding cultures.

As usual our work began with collecting references, preferably from first-hand contemporaneous sources, but we also looked for modern books and other material that focus on this subject matter (a special shout-out to a book called “By the Emperor’s hand” by Timothy Dawson - which contains a lot of amazing research and conclusions!).


[A snapshot of (a small part of!) the Miro board put together by Nils and the character art team to collect references for everything related to Byzantine clothing.]

There are quite a lot of both first and second hand sources that survive from the Byzantine Empire (perhaps not too surprising considering how vast it was and for how long it survived). Of particular value to note here are the “Coptic” garments that have survived in fantastic condition through the centuries in graves from Byzantine Egypt. Actual extant examples like these provide the best type of source we can wish for, and there are dozens of them! Most of them do pre-date the game by some margin, but we can see from 9th and 10th century manuscripts and mosaics that clothing in the same style was clearly still in use by our early start date.


[Some examples of “Coptic tunics” that have been excavated from Byzantine era Egypt.]


[Here we see very similar looking tunics depicted in the “Paris Gregory” from c. 880 and the “Paris Psalter” from the mid 10th century.]

Following what we started with Western European clothes for Tours and Tournaments, we decided quite early on that Roads to Power should also include different clothes for early and late eras. This fits especially well with the new 1178 start date; Byzantine characters by that time will look quite different from those of three hundred years prior.

Since there are very few preserved items of clothing from the later time period, we based those designs primarily on depictions in manuscripts and mosaics.


[From the Menologion of Basil II, 11th century (which - as a side note - is filled to the brim with these beautiful and disturbing paintings of saints being brutally tortured and murdered, people being burned alive, babies being skewered, with everyone looking slightly bored) and the Madrid Skylitzes, from around 1150.]

Since we are depicting a lot of the Creme de la Creme of people of the time, we are always looking for suitable Bling to add as accessories to these outfits. This expansion was no exception. Again, we turn to primary sources of jewelry that have survived to the present day.


[Some spectacular Byzantine jewelry from museums around the world that we recreated for Roads to Power.]

We then created concept-art to synthesize these disparate sources and fuzzy imagery into a more concrete form the 3D character artists could base their work on.


[Examples of concept art based on our collected references.]


[And some finished clothing assets showing a comparison between the “early” and “late” eras. ]


[This might look a bit funky, but we have to create many blendshapes so that the clothes can morph along with the character as they age and get thinner, fatter or muscular.]



We were grateful for the opportunity to bring to life many memorable headgear and accessories of the Byzantine world, such as the Propolôma hat or the Imperial Delmatikion with Diadêma. Most of them have their proper (Medieval Greek) names in the Barbershop.

Overall, we’ve added 8 new hairstyles, 4 beards, 18 clothing sets, 2 armors, 3 sets of legwear, 4 cloaks and 24 different headgear. This great variety, layered on top of the original assets from the base game will make each character in the cast of your personal Greek drama be unique and memorable.



[Early and late era Byzantine courtiers dressed in some of the new clothes added with Roads to Power. ]

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Thanks to the fortunate survival of many textiles from the Byzantine times, we had our pick of the litter when it came to which trims and brocades to represent. It was more a matter of choosing the most characteristic, unique and interesting ones.

Unlike other patterns, we have used a new type of texture map setup, where the bottom part of the medium trims is used for roundels. This permitted us to have specific bits of the pattern transform from a trim to a framed rounded-ish composition.

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The Byzantine throne room was a daunting task undertaken by our 3D environment Team. Our objective was to represent the Chrysotriklinos, the main ceremonial hall of the Great Palace of Constantinople. Unfortunately, the palace has been destroyed and there are no contemporaneous representations of the place. We had then to follow descriptions made at the time and observe other structures that take inspiration from the palace in some capacity (such as the Church of Ravena and the Palace of Aachen).


[Concept of the throne room.]

The overall shape of our interpretation is quite similar to the Palace of Aachen, but we opted to optimize the shape so that it could better be captured by our throne room camera setup, so the dome is probably a bit lower than it would’ve been at the time.

We also knew we wanted to decorate the room with many mosaics, as was the fashion at the time.



Instead of copying existent mosaics, we opted to create our own version, inspired by surviving examples. We wanted to have bigger individual mosaic bits. If we had made the individual tiles as small as they were in real-life, they’d become unreadable from a distance as being a mosaic.


[Here we can see the constituting texture maps to make up a mosaic, created by hand by our 2D Artists.]

For the trims and patterns that frame the architecture and make up the more geometric parts of the mosaic, we created a variety of trimsheets and materials.



For subject matter, we knew from contemporaneous descriptions, the apse was dominated by christ on a lyre throne. We also knew emperors, saints and angels were represented. As well as verdant fields and flowers.

When it came to deciding which figures to display, we wanted to do a nod to the fact that these mosaics were removed during the time of aniconism and then restored before our game starting date. We went with some staunch defenders of icons such as Irene of Athens and Theophanes the Confessor. We also included some classic characters such as Justinian, Constantine, St. Helen and Demetrius of Thessalonica.





From the writings of an emissary to the Byzantine court, we got reports of chirping mechanical birds and roaring metal lions.

We have done our part in emulating these marvels, as the golden lions flanking the Throne of Solomon will intermittently bang their tails on the ground and “roar”. We also added the mechanical birds and the Water Organ as a court artifact.




[Some of the new statue assets that can be found in the Byzantine court.]

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Besides the terrain rework mentioned on previous dev diaries, our 3D environment team has populated Anatolia and Greece with a variety of special buildings. We had great inspirations to draw from such as monasteries built against sheer cliffs or ancient temples repurposed as orthodox churches.



Greek-culture holdings now have unique graphics, distinguished from the generic Mediterranean ones.



You can now see the characteristic warm colors, red striped walls and rounded roofs.

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Our environment team created a Byzantine version of the map table to make for an even more immersive experience for our players. The lamps and silverware are inspired by surviving pieces of Byzantine craft. The sword and the bag of gold on the rightmost area of the table are a nod to the adventurer aspect of the expansion.

While playing as a Greek character, players will also enjoy a mosaic inspired HUD skin. Nature motifs are depicted by bits of colorful tiles. Some of the HUD elements have also been reworked to be modular, so it’s easier to add new buttons on the side panels and currencies on the top. Hopefully modders can make good use of that.

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The UI team also dedicated some time to making the game look and feel better by improving on some older features.

Toasts have been reworked, they are now more clearly color coded so the player can tell if they failed or succeeded on an event quite more clearly. Toasts are also built in a way that they vary in size according to the amount of information to be displayed, which means you will get less hidden results marked by a nondescript “...”.



Alerts are now color coded as well, so players will have a clearer distinction of when they are being offered an opportunity (purple), if it’s something that needs their immediate attention (red) or if they have a boon they can click to collect (green).



We have also reworked all of the event headers. Icons were made crisper, their design improved. The mosaic header itself is now colored differently depending on which type of event the player is engaged with.



I will now hand the Dev Diary over to Ernesto Lopez, our Audio Director to tell us more on the audio work for Roads to Power.

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Hey everyone,

We're thrilled to share some exciting news about the latest expansion for Crusader Kings III, and today we're focusing on something truly special: the music. As you dive into the new content, we want to give you a peek behind the curtain at the fascinating process that brought this soundtrack to life.

One of the standout elements of this expansion is the incorporation of Orthodox Chants, a unique and evocative addition that adds a profound layer to the game's atmosphere. We had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with Prof. Dr. Konstantin Nikolakopoulos, a renowned expert in orthodox music. Together with our talented composers from Audinity, Yannick Süß and Robin Birner, we embarked on a journey to capture the essence of these ancient chants.

The recording process was something truly extraordinary. The team, alongside Prof. Dr. Nikolakopoulos, ventured to the Salvatorkirche in Munich, Germany, where they recorded these chants live. This wasn't your typical studio session—it was raw, unstructured, and entirely authentic. With no predefined tempo or strict direction, the music was allowed to evolve organically from the live performance. What emerged was a soundtrack that not only captures the emotional depth of orthodox chants but also seamlessly integrates the signature Crusader Kings III vibe—a blend of medieval authenticity with a modern twist.

Audinity deserves huge credit for how they approached this. They managed to maintain the integrity of the chants while infusing them with what we like to call a "modern-medieval" sound. It's a unique blend that feels both timeless and fresh, perfectly encapsulating the spirit of Crusader Kings III. The new Main Theme is a testament to this, showcasing the power and presence of Prof. Dr. Nikolakopoulos' performance in a way that is both majestic and haunting.

But that's not all—we're also introducing a brand-new music player for Crusader Kings III. This has been a highly requested feature, and we're excited to finally bring it to you. The initial release will offer basic functionality, allowing you to have greater control over your in-game music. Whether you want to cue up specific tracks or mix and match songs from the base game with those from the Byzantium Empire expansion, the music player gives you that agency. You can enable or disable tracks at your discretion, allowing you to tailor your auditory experience to your exact preferences.



We believe the music player is a fantastic addition, and we're committed to continuing its development based on your feedback. It's a significant step forward in giving you more control over how you experience the rich musical landscape of Crusader Kings III.

So, dive into the new expansion, enjoy the incredible new music, and explore the music player to make your game soundtrack truly your own. We can't wait to hear what you think and to continue refining these features with your input.

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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