Good day, everyone!

I'm Cordelion: we’ve not had the pleasure of meeting before, and that’s because since I joined Paradox last year I’ve been working almost exclusively on the new start date and its two bookmarks that will be releasing as part of the free update alongside Roads to Power. I’ve been closely following what you have to say about it and I cannot overstate just how happy I am to see people excited by it, and so today it will be my pleasure and honor to give you a closer look at all it has to offer.

► Discuss Dev Diary #150 on our forums![pdxint.at]

Let’s start with the obvious question that I know some of you have been asking: why choose 1178 specifically? That’s a great and very natural question; unlike our preexisting start dates of 1066 or 867, 1178 isn’t well known for any major, paradigm-altering historical events, but there are a few key factors that weighed the scales in its favor.

One of the first things we look at when adding something like a new start date is who would be alive and interesting and playable at the time; we want to give you as many options for worthy historical figures as possible. This part of the process involves a little bit of back-and-forth at first; every time you move the year forward or backward you gain some figures and lose others, so we have to decide whom we can’t live without and who we’re willing to consider an acceptable – though unfortunate – sacrifice.

We knew, for example, that we wanted to have the Crusader states and particularly Jerusalem under Baudouin IV – which gives you a preliminary range of 1174 to 1185 for his reign. Then we thought it could also be good to have Heinrich the Lion as Duke of Saxony and a rival and counterweight to the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, which would require a year before 1180/1181, when Heinrich was deposed. Just imagine doing this with a few more names and you should have a reasonably solid picture of the calculus involved.

However, that’s not to say that this was our sole consideration, although it certainly accounted for a healthy amount of the discussion. Another factor that heavily influenced our choice was that we wanted to make sure that any new start date would be in a good position to integrate not only the new mechanics being introduced in Roads to Power, but also a wide range of components of potential future expansions going forwards – whatever they may be.

No matter whether it’s the allied city-states of Lombard League asserting their independence from imperial suzerainty in northern Italy, or the iron men marching eastward to wage holy war at the urging of the men of the cloth, or a young man of as-yet untapped potential named Temüjin beginning to make a name for himself on the steppes, we will relentlessly and enthusiastically take advantage of everything 1178 brings to the table whenever and wherever the opportunity occurs.

And please don’t take the above as indication of any specific plans for future expansions or the order in which they may or may not appear – I’ve merely highlighted a few relevant aspects that I personally find compelling – and take it instead as a declaration of our intent to make sure that 1178 remains a vital, thriving, fully integrated, and fun part of your Crusader Kings gameplay experience from here on out.

Hopefully this has given you a bit more insight into the logic behind our choice of 1178. It’s perfectly alright if you still have more questions – in fact, I hope you do – because next we’re going to delve much deeper into the bookmarks themselves.


[Overview of the “Call of the Empire” bookmark]

Now, since Roads to Power is the expansion introducing Administrative government, let’s take a look at Call of the Empire first. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the particulars of this era, the Byzantine Empire is presently enjoying a resurgence under the adroit rule of the aging Basileus Manuel Komnenos, but the specter of his cousin Andronikos (an ambitious and reckless adventurer of preternatural charm) looms forebodingly over the prospects of Manuel’s underage son and heir, young Alexios.

Furthermore, the Byzantines have suffered a recent blow to their aspirations of reclaiming the Anatolian interior – defeat at the Battle of Myriokephalon at the hands of the Seljuk Sultan of Rum, Kilij Arslan II (whose name means “Sword Lion”, for the etymologically curious). The great-grandson of Suleiman ibn Qutalmish (the sultanate’s founder), Kilij Arslan has reigned ably in both war and peace thus far, but an abundance of potential successors (no less than eleven sons!) may bode poorly for the sultanate’s future stability.

A more auspicious future may be in store for princess Tamar Bagratuni, the eldest daughter of King Giorgi III of Georgia, and another one of those historical figures who was an influencing factor on the start date; 1178 was the year her father officially confirmed her as his successor after he’d put down the rebellion of the Orbeli family. Historically, her subsequent rule over Georgia marked her as one of its greatest rulers – to quote a chronicle of her reign (The Life of Tamar, the Great Queen of Queens), “the entire world was full of her praise, and every language in which her name was pronounced, exalted her.”

Governing along the Wallachian frontier of the Byzantine Empire you’ll find Ioannes Kantakouzenos – according to Niketas Choniates’ Historia, a man “huge in size and most courageous of heart, and with a booming voice.” However, the historian goes on to add that despite Kantakouzenos’ extensive military experience, his arrogance and impetuosity resulted in failure more often than success. As a bit of interesting genealogical trivia, the 14th century Byzantine emperor of the same name descended from a cousin of Ioannes’.

The early genealogy of the Palaiologoi is more than a little Byzantine – pardon the pun – and so I’ll clarify that our Alexios Palaiologos, governor of Bulgaria, is the Alexios Palaiologos who was the grandfather of the (future) emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, and not his younger cousin of the same name (the Byzantines were not renowned for their innovative choice in names), who is historically best known for his association with the emperor Alexios III Angelos.

And, lastly, we have Andronikos Angelos governing in Epirus (where his illegitimate nephew Michael will one day establish an independent despotate), cousin to Basileus Manuel and grandson of Alexios Komnenos himself, and among whose sons are the future emperors Alexios III (mentioned above) and Isaakios II Angelos. Although exhibiting an authentically Byzantine inconsistency in what surname they prefer to use, the Angeloi are a sizable family by contemporary standards and well placed to stack the empire’s offices with their kindred.

[Overview of the “Swords of Faith” bookmark]

Before we get into detail on Swords of Faith, I do want to be transparent up front that an overhaul for crusades themselves is not a component of this expansion. Something of that magnitude and significance would need – and deserve – more than would be possible as second billing in an expansion with a very different mechanical focus. We know it’s important to you, so it’s important to us that we make sure what we deliver meets or exceeds your expectations.

Now, to many of you, I expect some of the names in this bookmark will seem a good deal more familiar, in large part due to Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (and, of course, the CK3 mod of the same name). Though set a few years earlier than the events adapted by the film, here too the leprous Baudouin IV rules the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem with immense dignity and dedication despite his dreadful affliction – although our historical Balian d’Ibelin is a baron from the beginning, not a blacksmith.

Given the nature of his malady, particular attention must be paid to his heir, his elder sister Sibylla, who is historically (and conveniently for us) between husbands in this particular year. Although historically Baudouin would be succeeded by Sibylla’s son, also named Baudouin, before Sibylla herself, at this point she was still being treated as the presumptive successor over the newborn infant. In addition, while bouncing baby Baudouin takes after his father’s dynasty at the start of the game, worry not – as Sibylla, you’ll get an event shortly to let you determine which side of his parentage he ought to take after.

Rounding out the Jerusalemite cast is Raimon de Toulouse, son of a murdered father (Nizari assassins happened) and brother to a spurned sister (Basileus Manuel happened), a regent of the kingdom during Baudouin IV’s minority who had previously endured nearly a decade of captivity in a Zengid prison. The ruler of the county of Tripoli, the future of his lands is inextricably intertwined with that of the kingdom of Jerusalem itself.

And, of course, what mention of Jerusalem could be made without acknowledging the exceptional character of Salāh ad-Dīn Yusuf, the last vizier to the Fatimid caliphs and the first Ayyubid sultan of Egypt? Of all our bookmark characters in this start date, he perhaps requires the least introduction – his victory over the crusaders at the Battle of Hattin and the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187 would soon lead to the launch of the famous Third Crusade in response.

As an additional point of interest, I’d like to mention that we’ve made some slight adjustments to how names are structured, in that Salāh ad-Dīn, his famous honorific (meaning “Righteousness of the Faith”), is now a prefixed nickname. Previously, many such honorifics were treated as components of given names and could be inherited as such, and so in the interests of accuracy and better representation we’ve gone through and reassigned a great many of them as historical nicknames instead.

Segueing into our next bookmark character, Muzaffar ad-Dīn Gökböri is one of the preeminent military commanders in service to the Zengids, as was his father before him. Deposed and exiled from his fief of Erbil in favor of his younger brother, Gökböri presently rules in Harran but historically would go on to betray the Zengids and joined forces with Salāh ad-Dīn (even playing a key role at the Battle of Hattin) to reclaim his patrimony, which he ruled prosperously until his death on the eve of the Mongol invasions. Truly, a man with an excellent sense of timing.

Last, but certainly not least, is Levon, younger brother to Roupen III, ruler of Armenian Cilicia. Historically, Roupen III is remembered as a kind and humane ruler, but one of retiring character who abdicated in Levon’s favor – perhaps his noblest deed of all, for Levon would be crowned the first true king of Armenian Cilicia and thoroughly earn the appellation Metsagorts, which is commonly translated as “the Magnificent'' or “the Great”, but can also be read as “the Thaumaturge,” in the sense of one who performs marvels.

It’s been an immense personal pleasure to play a part in bringing 1178 to fruition, and I truly hope you’ve enjoyed today’s look at our new start date – because we’re not done just yet. You see, my mandate is to tell you all about the new start date, and that just means I have no alternative but to tell you all about all the other interesting parts of it, too, doesn’t it?

[Overview of England and France in 1178]

King Henry II of England has imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, for inciting his sons against him in a significantly more literal form of teenage rebellion than is typically meant by the term. Among said sons is the athletic 12th century tournament celebrity Henry (called the Young King for having been crowned during his father’s reign), leonine Richard, smooth-tongued Geoffrey, and young John, who would go on to enjoy such harmonious relations with his vassals during his reign that they enthusiastically invited the future king of France to replace him.

In this period, the French are ruled by king Louis VII, the former husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and perhaps better known as the Younger than the Young at this particular stage in his life. Louis’ eldest daughter is married to one of his preeminent vassals, Henri the Liberal, ruler of Champagne, who contributed greatly to the expansion of the famous and prosperous Champagne fairs. Meanwhile, in the south, the heretical Cathar creed has taken hold in the lands of Raimon of Toulouse, which would soon lead to the Albigensian Crusade.

[Overview of the Holy Roman Empire in 1178]

The formidable Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa (“Redbeard”, after the color of his…well, you get the idea) is rivaled within his realm only by Heinrich the Lion, duke over both Saxony and Bavaria – the feud between their families gave rise to the enduring labels Guelph (after Heinrich’s house of Welf) and Ghibelline (after the Hohenstaufen castle of Waiblingen). Within the empire, I’d like to draw your particular attention to Berthold von Andechs, patriarch of an interesting and mildly obscure family that rose high in both the empire and Hungary and then burned out and went extinct within only a few generations.

Some fifty years past, a young Afonso the Conqueror knighted himself on Pentecost in the Cathedral of Zamora, assembled a host beneath the banner of rebellion, and proceeded to emancipate himself from his mother and her Galician lover in near-legendary fashion, triumphing over them in the battle of Battle of São Mamede. For anyone else, this might have been enough adventure for a lifetime, but for Afonso this was only the prologue; he would soon become the first and founding king of Portugal. Now in his twilight years, Afonso has largely handed over management of the kingdom’s affairs to his favorite daughter Teresa – named, curiously, after his mother.

[Overview of Iberia in 1178]

Sharing the name of the Portuguese monarch are Alfons the Troubadour, king of Aragon, and Alfonso VIII, king of Castile. Of the two, the former has managed to expand his realm to encompass territories well beyond the Pyrenees, possessing lands of his own in the south of France as well as having seated his brother in Provence – although said brother would soon be murdered after embroiling himself in a war with the lords of Languedoc. It is the latter Alfonso, however, who will earn enduring fame as the future victor over the Almohad army at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.

Jumping now to another corner of the map, the historically last of the Seljuk sultans of Persia, Togrul, is still a child, with true power in the realm resting in the hands of Jahan Pahlavan Mohammed, the Ildeguzid atabeg of Azerbaijan, subjugator of rebellious princes and emirs, and one of my personal favorites among the cast of this start date – his honorific, incidentally, can be translated variously as “Hero of the World” or “World Champion.”

[Overview of Ciscaucasia in 1178]

Immediately east of the dwindling Seljuk state is the realm of the Ghurids, where power is presently split between Muhammad of Ghor and his older brother, who is technically also Muhammad of Ghor – they share a given name. Of the two, the younger is the more famous, and his exploits into India would ultimately give rise to the Delhi Sultanate only a few decades later. Standing in opposition to the Ghurids is Prithviraja III Chauhan, whose resistance against the foreign invaders earned him a legendary reputation, and has perhaps had more films made about him than anyone else in this list.

[Overview of Mongolia in 1178]

Lastly, even further to the east, as mentioned earlier, you’ll find a young man named Temüjin Borjigin, who will soon earn himself another appellation, one to make all the world tremble – Genghis Khan. Need I say more?


This time, truly, we’ve reached the end – the list of those I’ve named is by no means exhaustive (I could easily name a good dozen more, and don’t even get me started on Montferrat, but if I start thinking of more names we really will be here all day), and I fully expect you’ll turn up countless more interesting figures to play as… or against!

However, there’s still one more thing the team would like to share with you today – and it’s something I’m pretty happy about, too.

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Before we go, also coming with the free update is a small but oft requested quality of life improvement, Message Settings! You will now be able to customize the appearance of a variety of common interface messages to your heart’s desire.

[Location of the Message Settings options]

Messages are now sorted into Filter Groups. How each Group should appear is now up to you, as either a tried-and-true Toast message (banner messages that display near the top of the screen), a familiar Feed message (messages that appear in the notification feed at the bottom-right side of the screen), a Popup window (a new addition!), or simply be disabled entirely.

[Examples of Message Filter customization]

As you might have noticed, it is also possible per Filter Group to set whether the game should automatically be paused as it appears, regardless of its display type.

Note: Certain Filter Groups, integral to giving the player information about the game state or the outcomes of their actions, cannot be disabled.

[The new ‘Popup’ message window]

This is possible thanks to a new and fully moddable database of message_filter_types that may be freely edited or expanded upon, adding new types for more granularity or mod-specific needs.

[An example of how Filter Groups can be manipulated via modding]

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In the last two Dev Diaries we picked up on the idea that some of you would be interested in giving your vassals orders, and after thinking about it we came to the conclusion that it’s not only a sound suggestion, but one that can help reinforce the difference that Administrative realms has over other government forms.

[Overview of the Vassal Directives menu]

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, in the picture it’s the Holy Roman Emperor doing it.

[Requirements to give a directive to a Feudal vassal]

As you can tell from the requirements, it’s not too easy to make them follow your orders. You have to work your way to a high level of crown authority, pursue specific lifestyles, or gain significant opinion with them. If you no longer fulfill this trigger, they will not follow your directive until you regain their trust. Directives are inherited, so you do not have to worry about setting them again as your vassals die.

[Differences in Vassal Directives for Administrative vassals]

Of course, if you’re Administrative, then following the directives you set is simply your vassal’s job! They will only ever refuse your directives if they are your rival, but otherwise you’re free to set any directive you wish. They’re fully baked into the Administrative UI’s to maximize visibility. Oh, and Administrative also has access to three more directives; Improve Development, Boost Men-at-Arms, and Recruit Men-at-Arms - all significantly more powerful than the default set.

In previous Dev Diaries we gathered some feedback regarding the upcoming Choose a New Destiny feature, where it seemed as if a popular addition would be to add a ‘random’ mode. If you’re not interested in any of the three options, you can now choose to let the die of fate determine your destiny for you!

[Overview of the new Random Descendant options in the Choose a New Destiny screen]

We based the choices on what we could gather were popular fantasies, and added some extra for good measure!

[Several different options are available when selecting a random character]

Some restrictions still apply - such as being of your Dynasty, and keeping the difficulty reasonable (anything above Extremely Hard is, essentially, a game-over situation.)

It’s still possible to add further categories, so if you feel like you think we’ve missed something feel free to give feedback!

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And that's everything for today! I sincerely thank you all for your time and attention; I hope you’ve found today's dev diary interesting, and that you’re looking forward to Roads to Power as much as I am (and especially 1178, I say with a deep and profound personal and professional bias).

We still have a few dev diaries to go ahead of the release of Roads to Power, but it'll be a bit longer until the next one - it’s now the start of the Swedish summer break, and so we'll be temporarily parting ways until the team returns in early August.

We intend to make it well worth the wait, though! When we come back, we'll be showing off another major feature that I think you'll find very intriguing: Landless Adventurers. Until then, if you have any questions about today’s topics, I’ll be here and do my best to answer.

Thanks again, and have a great summer!

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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

Salutations! Welcome back as we take another look at all things Byzantium and how our new government, Administrative, works. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you first go and read up on our previous Dev Diary and Part 1, posted last week.

As with last week, please keep in mind the following:

• All of the included screenshots show a work in progress and do not necessarily represent the final product, as we are still heavily at work on the expansion itself.
  
• This is especially true when it comes to several aspects of the UI, such as layouts and visuals. We believe that showing what we have right now, even if not final, gives you a much better idea of what you can expect.
  
• All values and numbers in these screenshots are subject to balancing and will likely change before release.

► Discuss Dev Diary #149 on our forums![pdxint.at]

---

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

Greetings Crusaders!

My name is Emil, resident game designer here on Crusader Kings III. Today I’m joined by Chad, my fellow game designer and comrade in arms when it concerns all things Byzantium, to invite all of you, from the most distant governors of our great empire to the esteemed nobles residing here in the capital, to our first in-depth dev diary for our upcoming Major Expansion Roads to Power.

► Discuss Dev Diary #148 on our forums![pdxint.at]

More specifically, we’ll be going over a brand-new government type: the Administrative Government. All of you who enjoy playing in Byzantium might wanna pay extra attention. I’ll be going into a fair amount of detail in an attempt to give you a clear picture of what to expect, how the new government plays, and what it is not.

Please keep in mind the following:

• All of the included screenshots show a work in progress and do not necessarily represent the final product, as we are still heavily at work on the expansion itself.
  
• This is especially true when it comes to several aspects of the UI, such as layouts and visuals. But that won’t stop us from including screenshots anyway, since we believe that showing what we have right now, even if not final, gives you a much better idea of what you can expect.
  
• All values and numbers in these screenshots are subject to balancing and will likely change before release.
  
• This is only part 1 (of 2) for the dev diaries on Administrative Government. Some of the things you might be dying to learn about (e.g. how Appointment Succession works) will be covered in part 2!

With that out of the way, let’s get to it!


First things first. Administrative (or Admin for short) is a new government type that draws a lot of inspiration specifically from the Byzantine Empire. While Byzantium isn’t the only inspiration, it is by far the most significant. Just like the historical inspiration, an Administrative realm is all about the empire itself. You have the emperor situated neatly at the top, with the many governors and noble families serving underneath. They are all small cogs, part of one big machine. They need each other, just as much as they are competing against one another. Regardless of their motives or actions, they serve the empire first and foremost. For a prosperous realm is much more worthwhile to be in.

[The Byzantine Empire and its internal structure of Themes (or governorships).]

The emperor is the ultimate authority of the realm. It is the emperor who creates new governorships and appoints the governor of a Theme. The pool of available candidates can be vast, and the emperor will have to consider if they want to appoint that troublesome nephew to keep as much power as possible within his own family, or if a member of another noble family would be a better choice. Having a more competent but docile governor might just be more useful, at least as far as the realm is concerned. Just as the emperor manages the overall structure of the empire, so too does he support and supervise his governors. He can lend them troops if needed, have them go to war on his behalf, and reward them when they are performing well to be in their good graces.

The power of an Administrative realm is very much intended to ebb and flow. When the empire is well managed, it runs smoothly like a well-oiled machine, able to beat down its opponents with ease. When mismanaged, however, it becomes significantly weaker, unable to defend itself against opportunistic conquerors looming on its doorstep.

Expect a playstyle where wars give way to schemes, intrigue, and good old-fashioned politics. Internal wars between vassals are practically non-existent, as your primary way of expanding within the realm will be to make efficient use of schemes and leverage your influence as you jockey for governorships and other influential positions. Governors are unable to create or join independence and dissolution factions, making Administrative realms excel as large and sprawling empires. While they are significantly less likely to collapse or break apart, succession is a much riskier business. Claimants won’t sit idly by while the empire’s fate lies in the hands of an inept emperor.

The Byzantine Empire will play significantly differently from how you are used to playing the game. You would normally gain titles through proven means, such as wars or marriage, but to gain lands and extend your own power in an Administrative realm, you will have to engage in politics. You’ll scheme against your rivals, leverage hooks against your peers, and make use of your influence to sway the emperor to your side.

To reinforce this new playstyle, schemes have been updated to be more engaging, and we have a new scheme type available only within Administrative realms – Political schemes. There are several new schemes of this type, as well as a swath of new interactions, that will help you manage the realm, interact with your liege, your vassals, and your peers. Ultimately, these are all tools with which you can leverage your influence to shape the realm to your will. We’ll go more in depth into these throughout this dev diary.

Byzantium is the main focus of the expansion and will be the only realm that will have Administrative on game start, trading a lot of conventional gameplay in exchange for new and powerful tools, at the cost of increased micromanagement and a less secure succession. Any feudal or clan ruler can strive to surpass Byzantium and attempt to adopt this new government type if they so choose, but more on that later.

Administrative Governments are unique in that they allow for the existence of Noble Families. Every House in an admin realm is a player in the vast political game, whether they hold land at a certain moment or not. All these families are jockeying for power, titles, and even control of the empire itself. As the head of a Noble Family, it is your prerogative to garner power in the form of securing appointments and positions for your house members, improving the family Estate, and undercutting any political rivals that would challenge your name.

Directly owning landed titles on the map is not a requirement for rulers within Administrative realms. If you are appointed to a title and any corresponding counties, you are there to do a job. This is not your personal fiefdom to do as you please. Admin realms should feel like a sort of proto-nation state, as Byzantium can be described during our period. As an admin governor are meant to manage the land and act publicly on behalf of the realm and your liege. That’s not to say you can’t set something aside for yourself, however… It's a tough job managing the realm, after all.

This means that you can quite easily also lose any land you hold, should you be forced to resign, unable to secure the succession, or you may even give it up willingly if you so choose (you might want to put yourself in line for a better Theme, for example). Owning land can, in other words, be seen as temporary. You can expect your House members to hold some land most of the time, but there will be times when you won’t. If that happens, you can keep playing as a landless noble within the realm. Should the empire fall, however, you shall fall with it.

While not holding land, you are still a powerful political force and can take a lot of actions to claw your way to power. Unlike the more mobile Adventurers you are still very much a part of your realm, as you cannot simply pick up your things and leave, and you will always retain access to your Estate (more on that later).

Landless nobles are made playable with a new type of title, the Noble Family title. This new title is a duchy-tier title, typically held by the House Head. You can draw comparisons to how Mercenaries or Holy Orders are set up. They exist with a duchy-tier title held by their respective leaders. There is an important caveat to mention here. This means that if you don’t have a Noble Family title, you will be unable to play as a landless noble. You will almost always be playing as the House Head. However, if you find yourself in the extremely rare case that you aren’t, we’ve made the decision to create a cadet-branch much easier for Admin. As the player, you can take this at essentially any time if you aren’t the House Head. Doing so will give you a new Noble Family title, allowing you to keep playing even if you lose your land.

[Each Administrative House Head has a new title associated with their position.]

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Noble Families are sorted into Normal, Powerful, and Dominant families. These designations are based on something called Powerful Family Rating (discussed below) and indicate each family’s level of power within an Admin realm. Think of Powerful Families as a who’s who of the realm. If a Powerful Family manages to become Dominant, they have by-and-large subdued the political milieu of the realm to their will. Should you so desire, you can manipulate and control an admin realm as the head of a Dominant or Powerful Family without ever becoming the Top Liege.

Rather than having individual vassals playing a big role within the realm, it is the different Houses; the most influential of which have a greater impact on the realm at large. Powerful Families remain so regardless of the position of the House Head, who may go from being a governor to landless and back again. With this, we aim to create a sense of stability among the many and frequent vicissitudes of Administrative realms.

Becoming a Powerful Family entitles your House members to several benefits and tools. For example, only members of Powerful Families can use the new Depose and Subsume Governorship Schemes. They get a flat discount to Promoting candidates in the new Succession type (discussed in our next dev diary) and are generally better at Political Schemes. It is also easier for them to be made Co-Emperor, which we’ll discuss in a later dev diary.

Any Powerful Family that is able to also control a significant part of the realm will become a Dominant Family. This happens when they control enough governorships to cover 25% of the realm’s total realm size, so your family must control a fair amount of land in order to become Dominant.

A Dominant Family enjoys all the benefits accorded a Powerful Family, but to a greater degree. They are much more of a problem, or nuisance, for the liege. Once reaching such a position of influence and power, they are difficult to dislodge. They have a much easier time becoming governors for one thing, by significantly reducing the cost of investing in candidates (covered in detail next week) and have a much easier time requesting support from lesser families. Additionally, all members of a dominant family are even better at political schemes than other powerful families.

Every family’s rating also affects how likely the members of a House are to inherit the top liege’s title. E.g. becoming emperor of Byzantium, as a portion of the rating is added to a candidate’s score (discussed below). It will be much easier to compete for the title with a high rating, or to keep it within your family if you are already emperor.

It’s important to note that Administrative realms don't have the concept of powerful vassals like other governments do. You can still have powerful vassals, should you have vassals of other government types, as those will be able to become powerful vassals as per usual. Administrative vassals, however, cannot. This is only relevant in the case where a Feudal or Clan vassal becomes part of an Admin realm.

​
There can only be a handful of Powerful Families at any given time – 5 to be exact. The top liege’s House is always considered Powerful, and does not take up one of these 5 spots. Houses are then sorted and ranked according to their rating.

In order to become a Powerful Family, a House needs to have a rating above a certain threshold. This prevents small and seemingly insignificant Houses from becoming Powerful, as they need a certain amount of sway within the realm before they can gain the benefits of being a Powerful Family. When above the minimum threshold, it is the 5 Houses with the highest rating that are considered Powerful.

[An example of what the rating of a powerful family may look like.]

There are several factors that have an impact on a family’s rating. We have smaller factors, such as the current number of living House Members, which exists as potential tie breakers if families have a similar rating. Your Estate and the buildings you construct in it also play a central role in your rating. If the Estate is located in the realm capital, you gain yet another small bonus.

Other factors you can actively pursue is being a part of your liege’s council, where every position counts. If you can get other family members onto the council, the rating increases for each councilor. Or you can pick up the Heart of the Family diplomacy perk, which grants a small, but not insignificant bonus. The most important factor, however, is the number of governorships your family holds. Each held governorship adds to a multiplier, increasing the value of all other factors. Which means that for each governorship your family controls, the family rating will increase quite significantly.

​
To give each family some additional flavor, they have access to what we call a Family Attribute. It’s a small set of bonuses that apply directly to all House Members, as well as a separate bonus that only applies to their liege.

A family’s attribute is only active if and when they are considered a powerful family. Since there is a limited number of powerful families, the liege won’t be able to stack these modifiers indefinitely. Instead, we hope they serve as an incentive to keep certain families around, making sure they remain a powerful family so that you don’t lose out on the bonus they provide. Dominant families are a bit special. Their House Members get to benefit from their attribute, but the liege will not.

There’s a number of bonuses available, pertaining to different scheme types, improving troops, generating more Influence, and more.

[The window in which you can set your Family Attribute, showing the benefits of the Confident Schemers attribute.]

The attributes exist to give the different families some added flavor, to give them some additional identity and character. Not all families are alike, and the attribute symbolizes what they are good at, or perhaps their origin. The AI won’t change these on the fly, so when you are playing as the emperor, you know what bonuses each family provides at all times. As a House Head yourself, you are free to change the attribute at any time. There’s no cost attached. You’ll activate a short cooldown before you can change it again, but that’s it.

All in all, Noble Families are at the heart of Administrative realms. Their members make up the body of ruling characters and they are constantly positioning themselves to grasp more power, station, and influence within the empire at large.

---

​
Influence is a brand-new resource, which represents your political capital and the sway you hold within an Administrative realm such as Byzantium. It's about your ability to manipulate others and leverage your political standing in order to achieve a favorable outcome. In many ways, Influence is the tool that will make you successful, and gaining Influence will be key to achieving your goals. Unlike other resources, Influence is hard to come by in great quantities, and it has many varied uses.

It is the lifeblood of an Administrative realm; while a powerful Emperor or high-ranking Governor might be allowed to do what he wishes in theory, the reality is much more complex than that. This resource symbolizes how gracefully someone navigates the politics of the realm, and a truly powerful Emperor will secure their rule and might through clever use of influence - for example, by securing army support or ousting troublesome governors.

[The new Influence resource as shown in the top bar.][Influence has Levels of Influence, just like Prestige and Piety.]Some Levels of Influence directly affect how well you perform Schemes within the new Political category, making a truly influential character assume the form of a masterful political manipulator.

Your monthly Influence gain very much depends on your position within the realm, your skills at manipulation, and your success with schemes. Here are a few examples of what you can gain influence from:

To track just how much skill characters have after becoming a governor, we’ve implemented a new Governor trait (flavored Strategos here for Byzantium). This trait offers tiered bonuses to monthly influence gain, among other things.

Having a seat on the emperor’s council is an easy way to secure some additional influence. Alongside some other bonuses pertaining specifically to the playstyle of an Administrative realm.

[Being on your liege’s council grants some significant influence gain each month.]

Governors in particular have some additional ways of acquiring influence. You are an administrator; first and foremost meant to oversee and manage the land you are appointed to. If you perform your duties well, you’ll be rewarded for it, primarily with influence, but more on this below.
​
Alliances are important for every realm and government type and Administrative is no different. If you manage to secure an alliance with the head of another noble family within the realm, you’ll get influence every month. These stack, so the more alliances you have, the more influence you’ll get.

[You gain monthly influence from having alliances with your liege and the heads of other noble families. Do note that the values are currently not formatted correctly.]

The primary building of your Estate offers compounding influence bonuses as it gets upgraded. There are additional internal and external buildings you can construct on your Estate to gain even more influence, like Guest Chambers, for example.

[The Mansion provides a flat +2 influence per month.]

[Guest Chambers provide a +4% bonus to monthly influence at level 2.]

Constructing or holding certain buildings within your holdings also provides influence gains. For example, we have added a new Murex Fisheries building type which can be built around the Mediterranean. It provides additional monthly influence, which increases as you upgrade the building.

[Murex Fisheries Building.]

Now that we know how to get Influence, the next question naturally becomes: what can we do with it? Plenty, in fact! First and foremost, Influence is a key factor in securing governorships both for yourself and your family members by investing in succession candidates (I'll come back to how this works later), but you will generally use it to climb the political ladder in different ways. For example:

Administrative vassals have the option to request a council position by spending influence. It’ll cost you a fair bit of influence, but there are ways to reduce this amount. You also have the option to demand a council position with the use of a hook, which is significantly more cost effective since you will gain some influence once you are on the council.

[The interaction to request a council position costs influence and may be refused by your liege.]

Not having to rely solely on hooks, you can force other vassals to join your factions by spending influence. A handy tool when you just need a tiny bit of additional support for your claimant faction, so that you can push your claim for the throne.

[Force to Join Faction allows influence to be spent instead of a hook.]

When proposing an alliance, you can spend your influence to make the target character more likely to accept.

[Propose Alliance allows you to spend influence as a means of increasing acceptance.]

For characters in an Administrative government, the decision to petition your liege costs influence instead of the usual prestige.

[The Petition Liege decision from the perspective of a governor.]

You can put your influence to good use by aiding and improving your governors, while also granting you some opinion in the process.

[The Bolster Governance interaction costs influence to use and improves your governors.]

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We’ve shown you a preview of Estates in a previous dev diary, so you may already know what they look like. If you haven’t seen them though, here is an Estate, located in Constantinople no less, in all of its glory.

[An Estate with several buildings constructed and upgraded.]

It took us a while until we settled on the final art style. We went over a few options before we decided upon what you see above, a style inspired by medieval manuscripts. Not only does it look great, but it has a lot of quirkiness to it. Perspectives are slightly off, or people may have odd postures, etc. More or less what you’d expect from actual medieval illustrations.We opted for this art style over reusing the previous style found in the Tournament interface as it feels more flavorful and authentic to the time period, as well as being far more flexible for other locations. The buildings you construct all look different from each other, and there are different backgrounds that are dependent on the local terrain of where your Estate is located. The backgrounds provide a lot of visual variety, but we really wanted to give a better sense of location. If your Estate is placed in mountains, we want the game to reflect that. It gives a much stronger feeling of belonging and immersion. A shout out to the art team for a job well done!

In an Administrative realm, it’s the families of the nobles that really matter, i.e. their Houses. Each House Head will have access to an Estate, which is a representation of the family’s overall wealth and any small tracts of land they may own. While a noble family might not hold any governorships, they are still influential nobles that own a significant amount of real estate. The purpose of the Estate is twofold: It gives you a powerbase you can rely on at all times, acting as your home and the place where your character resides when you don’t have any other titles. Secondly, it exists as a means of progression; one that you can tailor to suit your own needs and playstyle. Estates grants you access to a whole bunch of buildings and upgrades, providing you with various bonuses, unlocking new interactions or decisions, and improving your existing toolbox in various ways. It is, without a doubt, one of the primary sources of increasing your Influence.

[The Guard Lodging building and its tooltip, showing the effects.]

Estates can become quite powerful on their own. So they are restricted to one per family, owned and controlled by the House Head. It’s only the House Head that may construct new buildings and upgrade existing ones, similar to how only the Dynasty Head can pick and unlock Dynasty legacies.

One of our primary goals is to provide you with plenty of options as to what you can build, but buildings should also have a certain degree of synergy with each other. As you consider your options and what to build, we want you to be on the lookout for how buildings and upgrades complement each other.

​
There are two distinct types of improvements you can build within your Estate. The first is buildings. You have one building slot dedicated to your villa, or mansion, which is a bit special, as you will always start with this building on at least level one, and you can never demolish it. Aside from your mansion, you have six slots in total in which you can construct whichever available buildings you want. Two of these slots are available from the get go. Then you’ll unlock an additional slot with every level of your mansion. You’ll have two slots on level one, three slots on level two, and so on until you reach the maximum of six slots at level five.

There are plenty of more buildings available than you have slots, so you’ll be forced to choose what you want to build. Buildings can be easily replaced whenever you want though, so you won’t be stuck with anything if you ever change your mind. It won’t cost you anything to replace a building other than the gold it requires to construct the new building.

Your choices won’t end there, however. Some buildings (but not all) have multiple branches where you can choose to specialize your buildings further. Branches often share some effects from the base levels before it splits into separate branches, but will then go on to provide slightly different bonuses revolving around a similar theme.

[The Shrine building and its different branches and levels.]

[The Storehouse building and its different branches and levels.]

​
The second type of improvements for Estates are building upgrades. Unlike buildings themselves, these are built inside of existing buildings. For Estates, upgrades are available in the mansion. The mansion has a limited number of upgrade slots available: You’ll have access to two slots from the get go, and you will gain more slots as you upgrade your mansion. When your mansion is brought up to level five, you’ll have no less than ten upgrade slots to fill as you please.

Upgrades can also have branching building paths, but most of the upgrades do not. They also tend to have fewer levels in total compared to buildings. Buildings typically have six levels, but may have less in some cases, while upgrades tend to be closer to four levels.

All of this variation should give you plenty of options throughout the many hundreds of years the game spans.

[The upgrades and upgrade slots for your mansion.]

​
Let’s look at another few examples of what you can build, and what type of effects you can expect.

Your mansion can be upgraded with a library, in which the primary focus is on Learning Lifestyle experience. This particular upgrade has two distinct branches available. One of which ties in nicely is dedicated to education, improving your Tutor Court Position and allowing your children to get a rank five education.

[The Education Hall upgrade provides a number of useful bonuses.]

The mansion can also be upgraded with a Wine Room, which in turn is upgraded into a Wine Cellar. The upgrade unlocks a new activity option for feasts, allowing you to spend some gold to gain Influence for every guest attending your feast. Each level unlocks a corresponding level for the activity, allowing you to spend more gold for a larger amount of Influence gained. Feasts are no longer just a means of gaining prestige and opinion, but become a much more central tool as you attempt to gain more and more Influence.

[The Wine Room upgrade for the Estate serves as a potential source of generating Influence.]

The Vineyard is another great example. The building provides you with a steady income of gold, which is quite useful already, but the true value comes from also having the Wine Room mentioned above, as it increases the amount of Influence gained when you use the unlocked activity option for feasts.

[The Vineyard building, an excellent choice for when you need both gold and additional Influence.]

As per usual, you can expect Estates to be highly moddable. Changing, removing, or adding buildings is easy to do directly in script. You can add as many levels or branching options as you want. Icon and graphics can easily be adjusted as well, as you set these per building. You can, for example, see how we use unique icons for each building branch in the screenshots above.

Any character modifier works out of the box, and these are applied to the owner of the Estate. For anything more complicated, we’ve enabled the use of parameters, much like those we already have for cultures or faiths.

You can even set up new types, completely separate from the Administrative Estate, to be used however you’d like. We can’t wait to see what all of you can come up with!

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That’s it for today! We are not nearly done just yet though, so we’ll be back with Part II next week; we’ll be going more into depth regarding governors, how they work and what they do on a daily basis, how an administrative realm manages its troops, and more!

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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

See the World, Seize the Purple! The glory and might of the Byzantine Empire take center stage in the latest Major Expansion for Crusader Kings III.

Rule from Constantinople through the new Administrative Government type and experience a variety of new Byzantine-themed events and flavor, or be truly daring and live a life where your noble reputation is not tied to the land, roaming the map as an Adventurer for hire.

Roads to Power releases on September 24th, but you can purchase Chapter III right now to get the free Instant Unlock Couture of the Capets and receive all of the Chapter content within it as it releases throughout the year.

Want to know more about the artwork shown here? Check out the art featurette for Roads to Power on our official forums.[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Be sure to check back next Tuesday, June 11th, for our first Dev Diary detailing the new Administrative Government!

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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

Experience the medieval era in Crusader Kings III for FREE this weekend on Steam!
If you’ve been thinking about trying Crusader Kings III (or trying to talk your friends into it), now’s the perfect time with our 1.12.5 Update. Take command of your house and grow your dynasty across nearly 600 years of history at no cost until Monday, May 13.

Additionally, select Crusader Kings III content is on sale this weekend, so you can continue your journey with 60% off of the base game, or expand your collection further with discounts on additional content for the game.

[pdxint.at]Discover which Legend of Crusader Kings III you are with our quiz, and until May 31st be entered for a chance to win a custom CK3-themed G502 X mouse and desk mat from Logitech!


Want to try Crusader Kings III but don’t know where to start? Update 1.12.5 brings an additional “express” tutorial to the game, introducing new mechanics and interface elements one-at-a-time to help you ease into the Middle Ages.

For more detailed explanations of mechanics, check out these tutorial videos from content creators like Party Elite, HeyCara, and others covering each of the five major lifestyles in Crusader Kings III, or learn how to create your own dynasty from scratch with our custom Ruler Designer system.

Find out which lifestyle path suits you best and embark on a journey through the perils of medieval court with our Choose Your Own Adventure video series! Will you be a mighty warrior, a shrewd diplomat, or something else? Can you even survive long enough to find out?

[pdxint.at]Roads to Power, our third major expansion, is coming later this year and with it comes a massive free update! Get a sneak peek at an overhauled succession system, new start date, message settings, and more in our latest dev diary straight from our Game Director himself.

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Hello everybody! Today we're releasing Update 1.12.5 for PC. This update brings adjustments to plagues, event frequency (are there no sick houses?), and various balance changes. This update also includes new historic event chains for our Legends of Crusader Kings III characters, as well as an additional "express" version of the tutorial. Check the changelog below for precise update information!

We hope this helps alleviate some of the pain points you've reported to us since the release of Legends of the Dead. As always, if you encounter any issues after today's update then please ensure you're running a fresh save with no mods enabled, and then report the problem to us if it persists!

• Added a few historically-inspired events for Matilda di Canossa, Robert the Fox, Yahya Dhunnunid, and Vratislav of Bohemia. Events include themes such as Matilda's marriage to Geoffrey the Hunchback, Vratislav's rivalry with his brother, and Robert's usage of Raiktor the Byzantine pretender-monk.
  
• Added a new, shorter, version of the Tutorial. The old longer tutorial is still available.

• Added missing cooldown to physician_epidemic_events.1040 (Alms), set it to 20 years
  
• During the first 15 years after an epidemic has left a province, further outbreak chances now properly follow the harsher, 50-year epidemic specific, cooldown instead of lesser, 15 year epidemic type agnostic one.
  
• An empty Legitimacy Gain toast will no longer appear when winning wars against targets you shouldn't get legitimacy for defeating
  
• Fixed travel completion event so it fires normally, this will allow Traveler Trait XP to be gained again

• Plague events now only happen if they are present in your Domain, or within a certain distance of your Capital (roughly the length of one Ireland). This should drastically reduce the amount of insignificant plague events in large realms.
  
• Lowered the general occurrence of plague events by roughly ~30-50%
  
• The AI is now significantly more likely to enter seclusion when a plague appears in their domain, or in a county bordering their capital (unless brave or deeply irrational)
  
• The AI will now exit seclusion within 6 months of every plague having left their domain (though they will still not leave before 1 year has passed since they secluded)
  
• The Secluded modifier penalties have been changed, instead of reducing all stats, it reduces diplomacy, prestige gain, opinion with courtly/glory hound vassals, and increases legitimacy loss
  
• The Isolate Capital decision now comes with a small legitimacy loss
  
• The AI is now significantly more willing to isolate their capital, unless brave, greedy, or deeply irrational
  
• The AI will now unisolate their capital within 6 months of every plague having left their domain
  
• Reduced frequency of Minor plagues by roughly 20%
  
• Increased frequency of Major and Apocalyptic plagues by roughly 5%
  
• Added a new option the the Plague Frequency Game Rule: Disabled, which removes the spawn chance for all plagues (except the Black Death)
  
• The lower Plague Frequency Game Rule options no longer disable Achievements
  
• When a disease becomes endemic in a province, it will no longer fully override the recent epidemics cooldown for outbreaks
  
• Lowered the chance of epidemic outbreaks in provinces that have recently recovered from the specific epidemic on the 'often' and very often' game rule frequency
  
• The AI will now refrain from hosting hunts, feasts, and pilgrimages for the first three years of any new game (to give them more time to purchase buildings, maa, etc)
  
• Cut the amount of hunts hosted worldwide by roughly 2/3rds, as it was vastly more common than any other type of activity by far
  
• Activity guests will now refuse to come if there's an epidemic in your domain or their capital county, rather than if one exists anywhere in your realm
  
• The AI will now generally avoid hosting activities if there's a plague in their domain, rather than their sub-realm
  
• Reduced the Prestige rewards from Majesty Tours, both from the demand (medium -> minor demand) and the general prestige rewards (200/600/800/1000/1200 -> 100/300/500/700/1000)
  
• Reduced gold gained from taxation tours by reducing the gold gained from the various Activity Pulse Actions (Local Tax instituted, Rich Local Taxed, etc)
  
• Increased Intimidation Tour rewards, added dread on successful demands, and increased faction block from 5 -> 10 and 15 -> 20 years
  
• Pilgrimage Piety reward values have been lowered, but the Piousness mult has been increased to 10%/25%/75%/150%, this means that it'll be much harder to gain a lot of piety from pilgrimages unless you take a lot of pious options
  
• Pilgrimage events have had their piety rewards lowered by one step (medium piety -> minor piety, etc)
  
• Pilgrimage Event Pulse Action piety rewards have been significantly lowered (they now give 10-25 piety)
  
• Hospices, Monasteries, and Watchtowers now provide Plague Resistance to the Barony instead of the County, this makes it harder to stack Plague Resistance to the point of immunity
  
• Boosted the tax gained from Pastures from poor to normal
  
• The 'Pressed my Claim' modifier is now 100 opinion (up from 50) and lasts for 50 years (up from 20)
  
• Reduced the frequency of the 'Pharmaceutical book' event (physician_epidemic_events.1030)
  
• Increased the cooldown of epidemic_events.2001 (The Plague of War) to 30 years (from 10)
  
• Increased the cooldown of epidemic_events.1030 (Leeches!) to 15 years (from 5)
  
• Increased the cooldown of epidemic_events.1040 (Flagellants at Court) to 15 years (from 5)
  
• Increased the cooldown of epidemic_events.1040 (Doomsday) to 6 years (from 2)

• Each Legend now gets a unique map color to make sure different legends do not blend into each other

• Shortened the text of the 'A Shadow Over X'-event to focus more on what's important

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

► Discuss Dev Diary #147 on our forums![pdxint.at]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Image - New legend colors]

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

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

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

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

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

[Image - One of the revised court events]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Image - Popup and pause on enemy sieges]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Image - Game Rules for Conquerors]

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

[Image - Conqueror economical Archetype]

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

[Image - Conqueror trait bonuses]

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

[Image - Scourge of God bonuses]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Image - Call of the Empire bookmark in 1178]

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

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

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

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

Hello, everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Crusader Kings III: Starter Edition is available now!

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

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

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

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

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

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