In the last update we improved upon the Hungarian region. Now, as our expansion focuses on the Eastern parts of the map, we'll update the Middle East a bit.



Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from Servancour

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive

In the last update we improved upon the Hungarian region. Now, as our expansion focuses on the Eastern parts of the map, we'll update the Middle East a bit.



Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from Servancour

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive

The piety mechanic for Muslim nations has remained pretty much the same since the release of Europa Universalis IV. Let's change that up a bit shall we?



Read the latest Development Diary from DDRJake

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

The piety mechanic for Muslim nations has remained pretty much the same since the release of Europa Universalis IV. Let's change that up a bit shall we?



Read the latest Development Diary from DDRJake

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

Good afternoon. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, programmer on CK2, and I’ve once more been let out of my cage to write a dev diary for you guys. In the past I’ve written diaries about modding, optimization, quality of life, and some filler diaries over the summer, and today I’m returning to one of those topics: quality of life.

Back in 2.7, we added a number of quality of life improvements, which I had the honor of writing the dev diaries about. These changes proved hugely popular, so we thought we’d try to repeat it for 2.8. Our first step towards this was the Rally Points feature that will be included in Jade Dragon, but we decided to also add a bunch of free functionality.
So without further ado, let’s get started.

If you’ve ever had multiple artifacts of the same type, you have almost certainly felt the tedium involved in replacing an equipped artifact. First you had to unequip it, and only then could you equip something else into the slot.
We’ve simplified this by making “Equip” available even if a slot is filled; it’ll simply unequip whatever is in the slot first to make room. For mods that have slots that can take more items than one, it’ll unequip the first item it finds that uses that slot.

Another common frustration with artifacts is that the amazing weapon you just spent a fortune on can simply randomly disappear during succession. We’ve now eliminated destruction on succession for all equipped artifacts. Only artifacts that aren’t equipped now have a chance of being destroyed. Note that this does not apply when artifacts are inherited by a character’s liege as a last resort; then even equipped artifacts can perish.

One last frustration with regards to artifact is that upon succession, your heir just ignores what you had equipped, and instead what they already had equipped takes precedence. We’ve now changed this so that your heir will attempt to equip anything you had equipped, unequipping their own equipment if necessary to make room.

Now let’s move onto a different topic: the character screen.
I’m afraid it still looks the same, but we’ve made it slightly nicer to work with.
First of all, when you select a landed character, their realm will get glowing borders on the map, making it much easier to tell where that quarrelsome duke is actually located.

Further, we’ve long had a variety of status icons. Back in 2.7, we made the “prison” icon take you to whoever is keeping the character captive. We’ve now applied the same idea to a few other status icons:

• Job action: This will now pan to where the councillor is performing the action
  
• Guardian: This will now take you to the guardian’s character screen
  
• Leading troops: This will now pan to the army in question, and select it if it is one of yours
  
• The character portrait itself: If you click the character you’ve selected once more, you’ll now pan to their location

One brand-new addition to the character screen is the “Restrict Marriage” checkbox. Some of you may have already seen this on last week’s stream.
For your children and grandchildren, you can now choose to disable the marriage AI so that they don’t get into marriages you don’t want. However, note that they may still marry by event, so you better not wait too long to arrange a proper marriage.
To help you do that, you can now also arrange marriages on their behalf as long as “Restrict Marriage” can be enabled.
Since this is an incredibly powerful tool, it does come with some restrictions. First of all, it can only be used on your children and grandchildren.
Second, they have to be your vassals or below, or courtiers in your court or that of a vassal or below.
Third, they cannot have been landed for more than 10 years. After being landed for such a long time they no longer accept their parent or grandparent interfering with their marriage.

Overall, this removes one of the big reasons why players often refrain from landing their children, and provides the control you need to ensure the continued greatness of your dynasty.

We’ve also added the line of succession to every title screen, showing you who stands to inherit, instead of having to search for the characters based on the title’s tooltip.

Note that this art is not final; it’s simply an example of my amazing programmer art.

Finally, we have one last change: The Proselytize council action has been made easier to use. It now highlights provinces of the wrong religion in blue, and puts what religion it is in the tooltip if you hover over it. Foreign rulers that you can convert are now also highlighted in red.
This system can also be used by modders to define any color scheme they want based on the target province and the ruler ordering the job action.

That’s all for today. If you have other ideas for quality of life improvements we would be happy to hear them, but we cannot promise that we will have the time to implement any of them in 2.8.

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive

Good afternoon. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, programmer on CK2, and I’ve once more been let out of my cage to write a dev diary for you guys. In the past I’ve written diaries about modding, optimization, quality of life, and some filler diaries over the summer, and today I’m returning to one of those topics: quality of life.

Back in 2.7, we added a number of quality of life improvements, which I had the honor of writing the dev diaries about. These changes proved hugely popular, so we thought we’d try to repeat it for 2.8. Our first step towards this was the Rally Points feature that will be included in Jade Dragon, but we decided to also add a bunch of free functionality.
So without further ado, let’s get started.

If you’ve ever had multiple artifacts of the same type, you have almost certainly felt the tedium involved in replacing an equipped artifact. First you had to unequip it, and only then could you equip something else into the slot.
We’ve simplified this by making “Equip” available even if a slot is filled; it’ll simply unequip whatever is in the slot first to make room. For mods that have slots that can take more items than one, it’ll unequip the first item it finds that uses that slot.

Another common frustration with artifacts is that the amazing weapon you just spent a fortune on can simply randomly disappear during succession. We’ve now eliminated destruction on succession for all equipped artifacts. Only artifacts that aren’t equipped now have a chance of being destroyed. Note that this does not apply when artifacts are inherited by a character’s liege as a last resort; then even equipped artifacts can perish.

One last frustration with regards to artifact is that upon succession, your heir just ignores what you had equipped, and instead what they already had equipped takes precedence. We’ve now changed this so that your heir will attempt to equip anything you had equipped, unequipping their own equipment if necessary to make room.

Now let’s move onto a different topic: the character screen.
I’m afraid it still looks the same, but we’ve made it slightly nicer to work with.
First of all, when you select a landed character, their realm will get glowing borders on the map, making it much easier to tell where that quarrelsome duke is actually located.

Further, we’ve long had a variety of status icons. Back in 2.7, we made the “prison” icon take you to whoever is keeping the character captive. We’ve now applied the same idea to a few other status icons:

• Job action: This will now pan to where the councillor is performing the action
  
• Guardian: This will now take you to the guardian’s character screen
  
• Leading troops: This will now pan to the army in question, and select it if it is one of yours
  
• The character portrait itself: If you click the character you’ve selected once more, you’ll now pan to their location

One brand-new addition to the character screen is the “Restrict Marriage” checkbox. Some of you may have already seen this on last week’s stream.
For your children and grandchildren, you can now choose to disable the marriage AI so that they don’t get into marriages you don’t want. However, note that they may still marry by event, so you better not wait too long to arrange a proper marriage.
To help you do that, you can now also arrange marriages on their behalf as long as “Restrict Marriage” can be enabled.
Since this is an incredibly powerful tool, it does come with some restrictions. First of all, it can only be used on your children and grandchildren.
Second, they have to be your vassals or below, or courtiers in your court or that of a vassal or below.
Third, they cannot have been landed for more than 10 years. After being landed for such a long time they no longer accept their parent or grandparent interfering with their marriage.

Overall, this removes one of the big reasons why players often refrain from landing their children, and provides the control you need to ensure the continued greatness of your dynasty.

We’ve also added the line of succession to every title screen, showing you who stands to inherit, instead of having to search for the characters based on the title’s tooltip.

Note that this art is not final; it’s simply an example of my amazing programmer art.

Finally, we have one last change: The Proselytize council action has been made easier to use. It now highlights provinces of the wrong religion in blue, and puts what religion it is in the tooltip if you hover over it. Foreign rulers that you can convert are now also highlighted in red.
This system can also be used by modders to define any color scheme they want based on the target province and the ruler ordering the job action.

That’s all for today. If you have other ideas for quality of life improvements we would be happy to hear them, but we cannot promise that we will have the time to implement any of them in 2.8.

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Crusader Kings II Development Diary Archive

Good morning world! Tuesday rolls around and while I must spend many hours stirring up the dev multiplayer contestants to start a word war, it is also time for another Developer Diary. As mentioned in last week's diary on Army Professionalism, today we're giving attention to a part of the game which hasn't seen much development in EU4's life with Trade Policies
For owners of the upcoming expansion accompanying Update 1.23, you will be able to set a trade policy in any node where your nation has a merchant present. There is no cost to setting your policy, and they can be changed with a 12 month cooldown. Policies available to all nations are:

• Maximize Profits: +5% trade power

• Hostile Trading: +25% Spy network speed in nations with present merchant or home node.
  
  
  
• Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.

• Improve Inland Routes: +1 combat terrain bonus in trade node provinces. Only possible with 33% of Trade Power in a node

The default policy selected for any merchant is Maximize Profits. For unknown reasons, the Inland Routes policy has proven very popular in the office.



I said these were the policies available for everyone, but as some may have gathered from screenshots and dev diaries, we are taking quite the shining to the Islamic world in 1.23. As such, there is a specific Trade Policy available to Muslims: Propagate Religion.
When a Muslim nation controls more than 33% of the Trade Power in a Trade Region's node, they are able to activate the Propagate Religion Trade Policy, which will establish a Religious Centre in the node, spreading this religion within the node, as can be seen in my totally legit Omani screenshot



There are events associated with the Trade Policies, including specific flavour events should Religion be propagated through Indonesia.

While we're talking about the South East, let's take a look at the trade goods setup here.



A few changes to be seen here, particularly with gems and incense in the region, which should be noted are both added to the possible goods that colonies here can produce.

Cheers for checking out today's Dev diary, but I must now go around the office antagonizing our Dev Clash players. Next week we'll continue on the theme of Islam and look directly at the changes coming to the Muslim World.

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

Good morning world! Tuesday rolls around and while I must spend many hours stirring up the dev multiplayer contestants to start a word war, it is also time for another Developer Diary. As mentioned in last week's diary on Army Professionalism, today we're giving attention to a part of the game which hasn't seen much development in EU4's life with Trade Policies
For owners of the upcoming expansion accompanying Update 1.23, you will be able to set a trade policy in any node where your nation has a merchant present. There is no cost to setting your policy, and they can be changed with a 12 month cooldown. Policies available to all nations are:

• Maximize Profits: +5% trade power

• Hostile Trading: +25% Spy network speed in nations with present merchant or home node.
  
  
  
• Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.

• Improve Inland Routes: +1 combat terrain bonus in trade node provinces. Only possible with 33% of Trade Power in a node

The default policy selected for any merchant is Maximize Profits. For unknown reasons, the Inland Routes policy has proven very popular in the office.



I said these were the policies available for everyone, but as some may have gathered from screenshots and dev diaries, we are taking quite the shining to the Islamic world in 1.23. As such, there is a specific Trade Policy available to Muslims: Propagate Religion.
When a Muslim nation controls more than 33% of the Trade Power in a Trade Region's node, they are able to activate the Propagate Religion Trade Policy, which will establish a Religious Centre in the node, spreading this religion within the node, as can be seen in my totally legit Omani screenshot



There are events associated with the Trade Policies, including specific flavour events should Religion be propagated through Indonesia.

While we're talking about the South East, let's take a look at the trade goods setup here.



A few changes to be seen here, particularly with gems and incense in the region, which should be noted are both added to the possible goods that colonies here can produce.

Cheers for checking out today's Dev diary, but I must now go around the office antagonizing our Dev Clash players. Next week we'll continue on the theme of Islam and look directly at the changes coming to the Muslim World.

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

“Jade Dragon” Pushes Borders Eastward with New Features Spanning India and Transoxiana

STOCKHOLM — Aug. 24, 2017 — Paradox Interactive, a stately pleasure palace devoted to ambitious rulers from all corners of the globe, announces a new expansion coming soon to Crusader Kings II. In “Jade Dragon,” the richest empire on earth looks to the west, seeking subjects and adventure.

In Crusader Kings II: Jade Dragon, Paradox Development Studio introduces the Empire of China as an off-map influence that can give great rewards or great dangers to those whose realms lie in the shadow of the Dragon. Flatter the Emperor with gifts of gold or concubines. Ask favors from the mighty prince. Stay on the good side of his appointed marshals on your borders.

What’s the old saying about crisis being both “danger” and “opportunity”?

Paradox hopes you are not too Jaded to enjoy a new trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHGKl7Ggctk

Features coming in Crusader Kings II: Jade Dragon include:

• The Imperial Majesty Request: A new “China Screen” lays out the status and desires of the Emperor of China, letting you keep tabs on what he wants and how to earn his grace
  
• Kow-tow For Now: Submit to the Empire as a tributary, always keeping an eye on the waning power of the Emperor, so you can time your escape to freedom
  
• Adventure in the Great Wide Somewhere: Disgruntled princes or curious adventurers may leave China to seek their own fortune to the west.
  
• Booty and the East: Collect wondrous new Chinese artifacts for your characters, and explore a new Silk Road system that adjusts returns based on China’s stability.
  
• Rally Points: Instruct your levies to automatically gather up exactly where you want them.
  
• Dictionary of Chinese Characters: New Chinese and Tibetan portraits and Chinese units bring the empire to life
  
• Eight New Casus Bellis: You can never have enough

Release date and price will be revealed at a later date

“Jade Dragon” Pushes Borders Eastward with New Features Spanning India and Transoxiana

STOCKHOLM — Aug. 24, 2017 — Paradox Interactive, a stately pleasure palace devoted to ambitious rulers from all corners of the globe, announces a new expansion coming soon to Crusader Kings II. In “Jade Dragon,” the richest empire on earth looks to the west, seeking subjects and adventure.

In Crusader Kings II: Jade Dragon, Paradox Development Studio introduces the Empire of China as an off-map influence that can give great rewards or great dangers to those whose realms lie in the shadow of the Dragon. Flatter the Emperor with gifts of gold or concubines. Ask favors from the mighty prince. Stay on the good side of his appointed marshals on your borders.

What’s the old saying about crisis being both “danger” and “opportunity”?

Paradox hopes you are not too Jaded to enjoy a new trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHGKl7Ggctk

Features coming in Crusader Kings II: Jade Dragon include:

• The Imperial Majesty Request: A new “China Screen” lays out the status and desires of the Emperor of China, letting you keep tabs on what he wants and how to earn his grace
  
• Kow-tow For Now: Submit to the Empire as a tributary, always keeping an eye on the waning power of the Emperor, so you can time your escape to freedom
  
• Adventure in the Great Wide Somewhere: Disgruntled princes or curious adventurers may leave China to seek their own fortune to the west.
  
• Booty and the East: Collect wondrous new Chinese artifacts for your characters, and explore a new Silk Road system that adjusts returns based on China’s stability.
  
• Rally Points: Instruct your levies to automatically gather up exactly where you want them.
  
• Dictionary of Chinese Characters: New Chinese and Tibetan portraits and Chinese units bring the empire to life
  
• Eight New Casus Bellis: You can never have enough

Release date and price will be revealed at a later date