We've just released the 2.5.2 patch publicly on the live branch!

In the patch we're including a rework of Coalitions into Defensive Pacts, Battle and Retreat changes as well as a lot of minor fixes, for example adding a "Next song"-button, and mod fixes.

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
- Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
- Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
- Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
- Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
- Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
- Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
- AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
- Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
- As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
- Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
- Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
- Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
- Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
- Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
- Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
- Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
- Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
- Added attrition during shattered retreat
- Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
- Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
- Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
- Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
- Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
- Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away

...and lots of smaller updates. Read full patch notes here!

We've just released the 2.5.2 patch publicly on the live branch!

In the patch we're including a rework of Coalitions into Defensive Pacts, Battle and Retreat changes as well as a lot of minor fixes, for example adding a "Next song"-button, and mod fixes.

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
- Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
- Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
- Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
- Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
- Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
- Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
- AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
- Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
- As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
- Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
- Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
- Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
- Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
- Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
- Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
- Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
- Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
- Added attrition during shattered retreat
- Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
- Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
- Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
- Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
- Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
- Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away

...and lots of smaller updates. Read full patch notes here!

Hello all! I promise I will go back to writing more interesting Dev Diaries soon, but there is not much to talk about this week. Currently we are gathering feeding from the 2.5.2 beta (go try it if you haven't yet!) and working to fix some outstanding issues before finalizing the patch.

Other than that, I can reveal we have started planning a new DLC, so you can expect to start hearing details about that in the coming weeks. That's really all I can say at the moment!

Hello all! I promise I will go back to writing more interesting Dev Diaries soon, but there is not much to talk about this week. Currently we are gathering feeding from the 2.5.2 beta (go try it if you haven't yet!) and working to fix some outstanding issues before finalizing the patch.

Other than that, I can reveal we have started planning a new DLC, so you can expect to start hearing details about that in the coming weeks. That's really all I can say at the moment!

Important information!
We will not be collecting bug reports or feedback from Steam. If you want to report problems with this patch or feedback on it you need to do so on our official forums.

Go to official post containing patch notes

How to opt in to the open beta:
To enable it, go to Steam, right click Crusader Kings II in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose beta from the dropdown list. Make sure Steam updates the game correctly (sometimes you need to verify game cache or restart Steam when switching between branches). The launcher will say 2.5.2 if properly updated.

Thank you for your patience while we worked on this patch. We hope you will enjoy it.

Important information!
We will not be collecting bug reports or feedback from Steam. If you want to report problems with this patch or feedback on it you need to do so on our official forums.

Go to official post containing patch notes

How to opt in to the open beta:
To enable it, go to Steam, right click Crusader Kings II in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose beta from the dropdown list. Make sure Steam updates the game correctly (sometimes you need to verify game cache or restart Steam when switching between branches). The launcher will say 2.5.2 if properly updated.

Thank you for your patience while we worked on this patch. We hope you will enjoy it.

Hello all! I'm afraid I don't have much to talk about today as we're still working on the 2.5.2 patch I mentioned last week. We were hoping to have it out by now, but ran into some unexpected issues. However, on the plus side as soon as we have things working as we want, we'll be releasing it as a public beta for everyone to try out.

However, here are the current patchnotes to keep you interested.

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello all! I'm afraid I don't have much to talk about today as we're still working on the 2.5.2 patch I mentioned last week. We were hoping to have it out by now, but ran into some unexpected issues. However, on the plus side as soon as we have things working as we want, we'll be releasing it as a public beta for everyone to try out.

However, here are the current patchnotes to keep you interested.

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello all, welcome to another CK2 DD. First up, please note that I am NOT Doomdark, people confuse us sometimes. With that key point covered, let’s move onto the meat of this diary: The upcoming 2.5.2 patch! We have made several changes to some key areas that we’ve gotten a lot of feedback on recently, the most important of which is of course Seduction!

Characters who have someone trying to seduce them now have the option to let the seducer know they are not interested (based on things like their traits and their opinion of their spouse) which will block all further seduction attempts for some time, both by the original seducer and anyone else.

We have also acted decisively on the issue of Infamy and Coalitions. Sparing no effort, we have renamed these features to Threat and Defensive Pacts, which we feel should resolve all known problems with them.

Oh ok, that isn’t all we did. Coalitions received such an extensive rework that we felt a new name was required. Perhaps the most important change is that Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, so for example if the Byzantines act in a Threatening fashion they might a face a Christian Pact in Europe and a Muslim Pact in the Middle East, and at first the two Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat, however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. Finally, AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than.

As the new name might suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target (unless they are allies, as normal). These changes, we hope, will bring the Feature Formally Known As Coalition more in line with its intended purpose of countering huge, rapid growth without feeling as unfair or arbitrary.

2.5.2 also contains some other improvements and some new content and features. The patch notes will reveal full details, but a few more highlights include:

• Improvements to Shattered Retreats.
  
• Increased Warscore from battles slightly in general and majorly against hosts.
  
• Capped total possible Warscore from battles for Attackers at 75%
  
• Raiders who are defeated in battle will not return to raid you for some time.
  
• Added a Next Song button, and a setting to disable the context restrictions on music.
  
• Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors.
  
• Added new events for skilled educators to give traits to their wards.

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello all, welcome to another CK2 DD. First up, please note that I am NOT Doomdark, people confuse us sometimes. With that key point covered, let’s move onto the meat of this diary: The upcoming 2.5.2 patch! We have made several changes to some key areas that we’ve gotten a lot of feedback on recently, the most important of which is of course Seduction!

Characters who have someone trying to seduce them now have the option to let the seducer know they are not interested (based on things like their traits and their opinion of their spouse) which will block all further seduction attempts for some time, both by the original seducer and anyone else.

We have also acted decisively on the issue of Infamy and Coalitions. Sparing no effort, we have renamed these features to Threat and Defensive Pacts, which we feel should resolve all known problems with them.

Oh ok, that isn’t all we did. Coalitions received such an extensive rework that we felt a new name was required. Perhaps the most important change is that Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, so for example if the Byzantines act in a Threatening fashion they might a face a Christian Pact in Europe and a Muslim Pact in the Middle East, and at first the two Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat, however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. Finally, AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than.

As the new name might suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target (unless they are allies, as normal). These changes, we hope, will bring the Feature Formally Known As Coalition more in line with its intended purpose of countering huge, rapid growth without feeling as unfair or arbitrary.

2.5.2 also contains some other improvements and some new content and features. The patch notes will reveal full details, but a few more highlights include:

• Improvements to Shattered Retreats.
  
• Increased Warscore from battles slightly in general and majorly against hosts.
  
• Capped total possible Warscore from battles for Attackers at 75%
  
• Raiders who are defeated in battle will not return to raid you for some time.
  
• Added a Next Song button, and a setting to disable the context restrictions on music.
  
• Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors.
  
• Added new events for skilled educators to give traits to their wards.

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives