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

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

“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

###################
# Balance
###################
- When a Secret Religious Cult reveals itself, all members will join in the conversion instead of just the ones in the same realm
- The AI is now more often unsuccessful in recruiting new members to Secret Religious Cults
- Priests, Zealous characters and Paranoid characters are now much less likely to join a secret cult
- Characters accused of Apostasy (with the modifier) can no longer Induce Sympathy, Induct or Invite characters to Secret Cults
- The cooldown between inviting/inducting characters into Secret Cults increased to 10 years from 5
- The AI is now less likely to recruit/induct characters into cults if they are in a realm without a player
- Lowered the maximum amount of members the AI can recruit into Secret Religious Cults to a more modest number (from 370 to 91)
- Characters in Secret Religious Cults can now only use Prepare Grounds in counties they or their vassals own
- The AI is now much less inclined to create a secret religious cult just because their liege is a player
- Diplomatic immunity now also prevents release from prison, banishment, and execution

###################
# AI Improvements
###################
- When one AI tells another "get your ass over here" the other AI is now willing to cancel a siege it only just started to actually get "over here"
- The AI will no longer think that just because going back to Rome with its army briefly seemed like a good idea, it should continue going there even if it becomes apparent going to Rome is a terrible idea
- The AI will no longer decide that gathering up to join its allies is a terrible idea just because there's nothing to siege in that friendly province

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed an issue where targets of Tainted Touch would get the effects of Soul Corruption rather than the caster
- Fixed giving someone multiple gifts on the same day causing the opinion bonus to stack, then disappear entirely on the next day
- Fixed one way government type could switch away from Tribal on succession for no apparent reason
- Fixed epidemics in some cases never ending due to being stuck on islands
- Fixed the Black Death in some cases never ending due to the end date not working
- If a Secret Religious Cult ends up without a Grandmaster, they will now disband
- Characters not in a society can low lose suspicion level
- When revealing your Secret Cults your suspicion level is reset
- No longer possible to sacrifice the same person to Satan multiple times
- Fixed councillor modifiers not being applied on the very first day of a campaign

###################
# Balance
###################
- When a Secret Religious Cult reveals itself, all members will join in the conversion instead of just the ones in the same realm
- The AI is now more often unsuccessful in recruiting new members to Secret Religious Cults
- Priests, Zealous characters and Paranoid characters are now much less likely to join a secret cult
- Characters accused of Apostasy (with the modifier) can no longer Induce Sympathy, Induct or Invite characters to Secret Cults
- The cooldown between inviting/inducting characters into Secret Cults increased to 10 years from 5
- The AI is now less likely to recruit/induct characters into cults if they are in a realm without a player
- Lowered the maximum amount of members the AI can recruit into Secret Religious Cults to a more modest number (from 370 to 91)
- Characters in Secret Religious Cults can now only use Prepare Grounds in counties they or their vassals own
- The AI is now much less inclined to create a secret religious cult just because their liege is a player
- Diplomatic immunity now also prevents release from prison, banishment, and execution

###################
# AI Improvements
###################
- When one AI tells another "get your ass over here" the other AI is now willing to cancel a siege it only just started to actually get "over here"
- The AI will no longer think that just because going back to Rome with its army briefly seemed like a good idea, it should continue going there even if it becomes apparent going to Rome is a terrible idea
- The AI will no longer decide that gathering up to join its allies is a terrible idea just because there's nothing to siege in that friendly province

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed an issue where targets of Tainted Touch would get the effects of Soul Corruption rather than the caster
- Fixed giving someone multiple gifts on the same day causing the opinion bonus to stack, then disappear entirely on the next day
- Fixed one way government type could switch away from Tribal on succession for no apparent reason
- Fixed epidemics in some cases never ending due to being stuck on islands
- Fixed the Black Death in some cases never ending due to the end date not working
- If a Secret Religious Cult ends up without a Grandmaster, they will now disband
- Characters not in a society can low lose suspicion level
- When revealing your Secret Cults your suspicion level is reset
- No longer possible to sacrifice the same person to Satan multiple times
- Fixed councillor modifiers not being applied on the very first day of a campaign

Hello folks!

The Swedish summer vacations are drawing to a close and I’m back and eager to talk some more Crusader Kings! What better way to kick off the end of summer than by revealing the theme of the next expansion? Yes my friends, it’s China! Now, before you get all emotional one way or the other, we’re not actually going to expand the map farther east. We considered doing that, long and hard, but eventually decided on a different approach that would not strain performance and stability beyond reason. As I mentioned in Dev Diary #51, it bothers me that the eastern edge of the map just cuts off in such an unnatural way. Playing in the Orient, you should always feel like you’re in the shadow of the Dragon. It should be an interesting and dynamic region right in the center of the Old World. So, we came up with the idea of adding China as a political entity even though you cannot actually see most of its territory.



There is a new screen you can open up, which, if you’re within range of China, allows you to interact with the Emperor in various interesting ways. China can grant many wonderful boons if you’re in the emperor’s good graces, but, depending on the current status and policy of the Dragon Throne, the emperor can also decide you’d better show some respect and become a tributary state. When there is turmoil in China, displaced or fleeing armies can arrive on the map and cause all kinds of trouble. China can even seize and rule actual provinces, but the emperor leaves the governing of such areas to the Governor of the Western Protectorate (or, to be a stickler, the “Protectorate General to Pacify the West”.) Potentially, this on-map part of China can grow enormously powerful, but you should not have to worry too much as long as you enjoy the emperor’s grace…

That’s going to be all for now. I’m sure you have a million questions, but you’ll have to wait for the upcoming dev diaries. :)

Meanwhile, remember to tune in to our CK2 livestreams between 16 to 18:00 CET!

Read the original post

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

Hello folks!

The Swedish summer vacations are drawing to a close and I’m back and eager to talk some more Crusader Kings! What better way to kick off the end of summer than by revealing the theme of the next expansion? Yes my friends, it’s China! Now, before you get all emotional one way or the other, we’re not actually going to expand the map farther east. We considered doing that, long and hard, but eventually decided on a different approach that would not strain performance and stability beyond reason. As I mentioned in Dev Diary #51, it bothers me that the eastern edge of the map just cuts off in such an unnatural way. Playing in the Orient, you should always feel like you’re in the shadow of the Dragon. It should be an interesting and dynamic region right in the center of the Old World. So, we came up with the idea of adding China as a political entity even though you cannot actually see most of its territory.



There is a new screen you can open up, which, if you’re within range of China, allows you to interact with the Emperor in various interesting ways. China can grant many wonderful boons if you’re in the emperor’s good graces, but, depending on the current status and policy of the Dragon Throne, the emperor can also decide you’d better show some respect and become a tributary state. When there is turmoil in China, displaced or fleeing armies can arrive on the map and cause all kinds of trouble. China can even seize and rule actual provinces, but the emperor leaves the governing of such areas to the Governor of the Western Protectorate (or, to be a stickler, the “Protectorate General to Pacify the West”.) Potentially, this on-map part of China can grow enormously powerful, but you should not have to worry too much as long as you enjoy the emperor’s grace…

That’s going to be all for now. I’m sure you have a million questions, but you’ll have to wait for the upcoming dev diaries. :)

Meanwhile, remember to tune in to our CK2 livestreams between 16 to 18:00 CET!

Read the original post

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