China.

[Mad_House]

Ok. Let's face it. We're going into the Tarim Basin and Mongolia now. Crusader Kings II is expanding into the far East like never before. I think China would be a great Expansion Pack that I would happily pay $20.00 for.

[EM-10]

Originally posted by Akim:

The hisorical China was a HUGE blob in the era of CK2. Any larger division (like the famous 3 Kingdoms Era), was long before CK2. China was bogged down by ideology. However, a player would of course have no such restrictions.

EU4 solves the problem by a special rule system of factions, which bog down China. I am not sure a dynasty based game like CK2 could make similar restrictions. They would either have to divide China (thus going away from the actual history of the CK2 era), or make declaring war and raising armies MUCH more difficult.

I am really a fan of Chinese history, but I just don't see how it fits into the CK2 idea of dynastic gameplay. The Emperor of China never marries outside of his country, and China would just have to raise it's army one time, and 10 years later they control the world. Or so. ;) Would be a bit boring, eh?

No it wasn't. From 907 to 960 China was split into 10 different Kingdoms.

After that you had the Liao, the Western Xia, and the Song.

Then the Liao got conquered and you had the Jin, Western Xia, and Song.

Then the Jin conquered and you had Jin, Wester Xia, and Southern Song.

Then Genghis Khan conquered and you had Mongols and Southern Song.

China had an intricate internal politic system that can be modeled in the game using the current viceroyalty system. The Emperor handed out land to administrators who ruled in that position until they died, resigned, or were fired. However, some of these positions became quasi-dynastic even though the system was intended to loosen the Emperor's reliance on Nobility. Instead you tended to see instances where similar posts were kept in the family as they influenced the Emperor.


Likewise, Eunuchs were often favored in China for positions of power because they could sire no lineage.

China, likewise, in the form of the Tang Dynasty interacted with the Abbasids routinely and even came into conflict with them. Likewise, the Tang Dynasty was even briefly usurped by the first Empress Wu Zetian from 690 to 705 in the brief resurgence of the Zhou Dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty was also plagued with rebellions, and eventually collapsed in 907 AD into 10 different Kingdoms.

Tha Tang Dynasty in the 9th Century also saw the rise of Jiedushi, which were regional military commanders. They were originally created to protect China from outside threats, but for all intents and purposes they became military governors. They were allowed to maintain standing armies, collect taxes, and were even allowed to pass their titles on to their children.

Exceptionally powerful Jiedushi would become fanzhen, who were de-facto warlords. The fanzhen had power that eclipsed the Central Authority of the Empire. A famous example is of An Lushan who was appointed Jiedushi of three different provinces. An Lushan was later responsible for a massive rebellion that brought an abrupt end to the Tang Dynasty's Golden Age. An Lushan went so far as to proclaim himself Emperor in his own right and started the short-lived Yan Dynasty. Jiedushi in the outer edges of the Tang Empire used the An Lushan Rebellion to consolidate their own power and became increasingly autonomous from the Tang Emperor.

An Lushan's revolt was crushed, but the Jiedushi system remained in place until they ultimately disintegrated the Tang Dynasty into the 10 Kingdoms Period, which saw near constant in-fighting between kingdoms, dynasties, and rival Jiedushi.

[Mash]

I think India should be there, but not necessarily China. South Asians were the middleman of the Silk Road trade on the sea, just like the Sogdians(Iranians), Arabs, Turks and others on land. The CK2 should be a game illustrating how the Medieval Europe directly contatced and interacted with the rest of their known world. The known world include Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and India (Alexander the Great did cross Indus River). They served as middlemen for trade and diffusion of knowledge between Europe and China, but these two entities had little to none direct contact whatsoever.

Whether Marco Polo or any other Medieval Europeans ever went to China or the other way around is still debatable, because most of the merchants just moved stuff from their place to the next, then the merchants there picked up the stuff and moved on to the next, most of them probably never ventured far because it was costly dangerous, bandits, pirates, weather, you name it. Marco Polo manuscripts might as well were just second hand stories he heard from Persian merchants he met in a Black Sea port.

I'm not against adding China, adding China is nice, I like playing as China, but I can defintely see the other side of the argument, aside from impact on game performance.

[Uber]

Originally posted by Warlordnipple:

There are far more characters with far greater depth, in EU4 they are basically names with 3 numbers attached. In CK2 each character has genetics that will help to determine if the kid is a genius or inbred, along with hundreds of personality modifier for possibly every single holding in the game. CK2 has probably about the same number of provinces that EU4 does right now, without even counting the 3+ other holdings below the province. There are also probably 2,000-4,000 unlanded courtiers with their own stats not to mention the wives/daughter/mothers of everyone holding land.

Armies in CK2 only have 3 different types of units and only comes in 1 set of integers (1,000) CK2 has like 10 different types of troops plus the special ones, plus they can come in many different amounts besides 1,000. the mercenaries in CK2 are actually better than the levies are but there is no distinction in EU4 and even if there was it would apply to basically 1 unit at a time. In CK2 you may have 4,327 mercenaries with 3,176 levies fighting against 9,312 levies. each of thse would be different unit types that would be calculated differently in 3 different phases. That would be 3 phases x 10 unit types = 30 different amount of damage and defense that each unit would have, not to mention in CK2 the tactics all have different effects on the battle along with commanders different bonuses and maluses. To contrast in EU4 each commander has 4 attributes that can range from like 0-6 and there are only 2 phases of battle and 3 different units so that is 3 unit types x 2 stages of battle = 6 different calculations.

The map is already way to large and China during this time period would of been insanely powerful and did not have feudalism, they did not even use castles because their population was so massive that attacking a city was an enourmous feat. It took the Mongols 100 years to subdue all of China and they conquered everyone else in like 5 years. They even left Western Europe because it was not worth their time to conquer, even though they had defeated the best that Europe had to offer.

Adding China would be insane economically, how strong they are at the start of EU4 is when they are as backwards as they possibly could be. During CK2's time frame they would be exploring Africa and Indonesia, while each of their cities 8-10 major cities could make roughly half of what all of Europe was bring into their coffers each year.

If you think France or Ottomans are OP in EU4, China during CK2 timeframe would be like combining those two and giving them the Prussian military.

This guy said it perfectly. In essence, China will be far too heavy on the CPU and CK2 will need to access 2 cores instead of 1 of your CPU to operate smoothly. I just don't see it happening at all. 1 person just carries too much information to them and to have literaly thousands and to have a family tree, will just cause too much lag and the game will just be unplayable.

I'd love to see medieval China, but for rational people, this is just unaccomplishable. MAYBE they could do it in CK3 with a new engine which makes it more efficient, but they just can't do it in CK2 because the core game wasn't built to access multiple thousands of individuals.

[EM-10]

My favorite part of these discussions is when people who know nothing about medieval Chinese history, speak of Medieval Chinese history.

#1) The Chinese did have Castles and Fortresses.
#2) It took the Mongols 100 years to subdue the Southern Song because of how fortified the most important cities were.

The Song Dynasty was driven out of Northern China by the Jin and into Southern China, where they became known as the Southern Song Dynasty.

Xiangyang dominated the Han River which protected the bulk of the Southern Song dynasty from the Mongols. Xiangyang had massive walls and was a fortified city. The Mongols brought 100 Trebuchets to siege Xiangyang. Likewise, during the Mongol battle against the Jin Dynasty the Mongols employed upwards of 5,000 trebuchets to tear down Jin Fortresses.

The Song expected a trebuchet siege and reacted accordingly. They widended the river, reinforced their wall, and added netting on the wall. Yuan trebuchets had a hard time hitting the fortress, and the few lucky shots that did hit the wall bounced off harmlessly.

It wasn't until the Mongols were able to make mangonels that they were able to breach Xiangyang.

The cities had fortresses.

[BoboMaximus]

They need to Fix the Navies befor they add China. The Boat system in Ck2 is Barbaric and needs to be changed badly. Adding Abritration to the Ships system and Block Trade Ports needs to be added. EMbargo wars would acually mean somthing

[Warlordnipple]

Originally posted by Kuro:

My favorite part of these discussions is when people who know nothing about medieval Chinese history, speak of Medieval Chinese history.

#1) The Chinese did have Castles and Fortresses.
#2) It took the Mongols 100 years to subdue the Southern Song because of how fortified the most important cities were.

The Song Dynasty was driven out of Northern China by the Jin and into Southern China, where they became known as the Southern Song Dynasty.

Xiangyang dominated the Han River which protected the bulk of the Southern Song dynasty from the Mongols. Xiangyang had massive walls and was a fortified city. The Mongols brought 100 Trebuchets to siege Xiangyang. Likewise, during the Mongol battle against the Jin Dynasty the Mongols employed upwards of 5,000 trebuchets to tear down Jin Fortresses.

The Song expected a trebuchet siege and reacted accordingly. They widended the river, reinforced their wall, and added netting on the wall. Yuan trebuchets had a hard time hitting the fortress, and the few lucky shots that did hit the wall bounced off harmlessly.

It wasn't until the Mongols were able to make mangonels that they were able to breach Xiangyang.

The cities had fortresses.

You are confusing walled cities with castles. Obviously they had walls, walls do not equal castles. Rome was not a castle, Athens was not a castle. Castles are basically permanent forts, that people can be loaded up into indefinitely until pillagers leave the area. That is not what a walled city is.

The Mongols took 23 years to conquer the Jin, to contrast this with Europe it took around 3 years for the Mongols to expand to hold the area that the Jochid Dynasty would end up in control of and crush all major resistance in Rus. It took about 20 years for the Mongols to take the land later held by Hülegü dynasty which is the Persian Empire in game.

Everyone has had forts the Chinese probably had them the earliest, duh, I am not ethnocentric look at my profile pic. The power structure of China was not based around those forts though as it was in Europe.

[BoboMaximus]

And dont forget pray-mantis Kung-Fu

And
Four Great Inventions Of China
The Four Great Inventions are:
Compass
Gunpowder
Papermaking
Printing

[PJ]

Originally posted by Deep Hurting:

Originally posted by Jolin:

At least China did historically interact a lot with the steppe Nomads and them with the Europeans. And there's the silk road and all that. India is basically nothing but a strain on the memory

Load up the 867 bookmark. You'll notice that almost all of India is ruled by Indian dynasties (save for a tiny bit of the Punjab ruled by the Afghans).

Load up the 1066 bookmark. Notice the turkish Ghaznavid dynasty now rules northwestern India.

Load up the 1337 bookmark. Notice that most of India is now ruled by turks, under the Tugluq dynasty.

Fill in the blanks. The idea that China historically interacted with Asia minor and Europe more than India is just weird.

There is also substantial conflict in game. India tends to be fragmented in all but the earliest starting dates, and thus a range out outcomes is possible. In 1066, the Ghaznavids can very easily expand into India.. or they can be caught between the turks and seljuks. In 867, the Shahi or the Pratihara can end up Hinduizing half of Persia.

I agree that India could happily have been left out, but it is at least fragmented enough to be interesting and makes sense within the game's depiction of feudalism. China wouldn't.

Yes I know that historically India was invaded by eastern and western powers. What I'm saying is that Indians themselves never really played a role in the geopolitics of Asia minor. They've always been minding their own buiseness on their own subcontinent. Getting invaded now and then.

And like I said, China interacted with the steppe people and some himalyan people (like Tibet) which in turn interacted with Asia minor, which in turn interacted with Europe. It's the silk road. Now India also traded and exchanged ideas with the west but, let's just say they were much less impactful on the geopolitics than some Asian people (such as the mongols) were. Which is why I critisize the idea of having India in the game before Mongolia proper.

[PJ]

Originally posted by Kuro:

The Mongols took 23 years to conquer the Jin, to contrast this with Europe it took around 3 years for the Mongols to expand to hold the area that the Jochid Dynasty would end up in control of and crush all major resistance in Rus.

Yeah but Russia isn't Europe mate. Especially not back then. I doubt the Khans could have conquered a real European power like the HRE in like 3 years... Especially if we were to take the black plague out of the equation.

[EM-10]

Originally posted by Warlordnipple:

Originally posted by Kuro:

My favorite part of these discussions is when people who know nothing about medieval Chinese history, speak of Medieval Chinese history.

#1) The Chinese did have Castles and Fortresses.
#2) It took the Mongols 100 years to subdue the Southern Song because of how fortified the most important cities were.

The Song Dynasty was driven out of Northern China by the Jin and into Southern China, where they became known as the Southern Song Dynasty.

Xiangyang dominated the Han River which protected the bulk of the Southern Song dynasty from the Mongols. Xiangyang had massive walls and was a fortified city. The Mongols brought 100 Trebuchets to siege Xiangyang. Likewise, during the Mongol battle against the Jin Dynasty the Mongols employed upwards of 5,000 trebuchets to tear down Jin Fortresses.

The Song expected a trebuchet siege and reacted accordingly. They widended the river, reinforced their wall, and added netting on the wall. Yuan trebuchets had a hard time hitting the fortress, and the few lucky shots that did hit the wall bounced off harmlessly.

It wasn't until the Mongols were able to make mangonels that they were able to breach Xiangyang.

The cities had fortresses.

You are confusing walled cities with castles. Obviously they had walls, walls do not equal castles. Rome was not a castle, Athens was not a castle. Castles are basically permanent forts, that people can be loaded up into indefinitely until pillagers leave the area. That is not what a walled city is.

The Mongols took 23 years to conquer the Jin, to contrast this with Europe it took around 3 years for the Mongols to expand to hold the area that the Jochid Dynasty would end up in control of and crush all major resistance in Rus. It took about 20 years for the Mongols to take the land later held by Hülegü dynasty which is the Persian Empire in game.

Everyone has had forts the Chinese probably had them the earliest, duh, I am not ethnocentric look at my profile pic. The power structure of China was not based around those forts though as it was in Europe.

No, I'm not. The Song Dynasty had a bunch of castles, and forts. Xiangyang itself was a heavily fortified city.

Rome is not a castle, no, but the Castel San'Angelo is a Castle and it's located within the city of Rome.

Carthage was a city in reality, in the game it is represented as a Castle in Tunisia.

Tusculum in Roma is represented as a Castle when in reality it was an old Roman city and Gregory I, Count of Tusculum rebuilt the Fortress atop Tuscolo hill. The town was destroyed on 17 April 1191.

Likewise, Constantinople is represented in the game as a Castle despite the fact that it was a city. Likewise, Galata which was a neighborhood of Constantinople was represented as a city in the game. This shows a willingness on the part of the devs to list Walled Cities as castles.

The argument that China didn't have castles (when it did) is just pointless. They had castles. They had forts. They had fortified cities...and the game doesn't seem to really mind fudging the difference between 'city' and 'castle' as noted above.

"Hailongtun was built in 1275 during the Southern Song Dynasty and served as the seat of the Tusi. The castle occupies a total area of 1.59 square kilometers, with 6 eastern and 3 western passes and nearly 6-kilometer long walls. It is surrounded by cliffs on all four sides with only one entrance from the mountain road. The pass on the mountain side was known as the Feihu Pass. The one to the east was called Feilong Pass. At the foot of the right hill is a copper column pass, whereas at the base of the left hill is the iron column pass. Hailongtun was also a city, but is considered a castle."

Diaoyu Fortress, likewise also a city, was a massively important part of the Song Dynasty and resisted the Mongols for years. Most famously, Möngke Khan died fighting at Daioyu. Diaoyu experienced more than two hundred military confrontations.

Almost every ancient walled city in China essentially had a castle inside of it.

Having Genghis Khan as a profile icon doesn't magically make you an expert in Chinese history.

[Black_Rat]

Didnt paradox already say there were not going to add china because of limitations of the engine (adding india already pushed the limits) and because of how stable china was durring this time period?

[Travis]

to many dlc i still dont have way of life yet they need to put more into base game to make it more worth the money to buy

[WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER]

hell i love the blobs in CK2 i mean when you have The Karlings, Abbasids and the Aztecs and The Mongol event ♥♥♥♥ goes down and in the midst of the huge wars awesome oppertunites

[Wenzel]

I for one would absolutely love to see China in Crusader Kings II. Not because it is needed, but because it would be a very nice addition. Indeed I think that the Taklamakan and the great mountain ridges offer a nice natural and therefore also political border so that China is not missed too dearly right now.

The only strong argument against adding China has already been mentioned by Warlordnipple: performance issues/technical limits. Especially as we also have to consider how much of China we actually need? Do we also need southern China and Indochina in order to end up with a plausible result? I guess so.

As Kuro has made clear, nothing speaks against adding China from a gameplay- and balance-perspective. Notions of China being one super-blob totally misjudge the capacities of government, bureaucracy and communication in the premodern age. As someone who is interested in the very basic lines of development of China, I found this book very enlightening, as it shows exactly that China has never been one giant "blob": F.W. Motte, Imperial China 900-1800 (1999).

[pschwit]

I with 950 hours, the game is not finished yet and already they cry to China?????

Sorry for my English.