1. Crusader Kings III
  2. News

Crusader Kings III News

Dev Diary #67 - A View to a Map 🗺️

Greetings!

The team is slowly coming back together after a well deserved summer vacation.

Today, let’s have a look at what we’ve been doing to the culture setup and some small scale map tweaks. Most of the work we’ve spent on cultures has naturally gone into the cultural overhaul itself, but we have made some general improvements as well, most notably over in India and southern Europe.

► Read our Dev Diary #67 - A View to a Map​

💡 To see the images, please visit our forums or website.
💡 Enjoy the FAQ Royal Court and read all there is to learn about our upcoming Expansion




Starting with a small culture addition in southern Europe, and that some of you keen eyed readers noticed back in a previous dev diary, we’ve added back a fan favorite from CK2; Carantanian. The culture is quite extensive on game start and covers most of south-eastern Bavaria. From a historical point of view, the culture is of a west slavic origin, but as they got cut off from their ancestral brethren in the Carpathian Basin, they became gradually closer to the south slavic peoples. We represent this by Carantanian having a West Slavic Heritage, but speaking a South Slavic Language.

[Image of Carantanian culture]​

Next, I’ll hand it over to our local India expert, @Trin Tragula, to talk about (you guessed it) India!

Indian Culture Changes
The culture rework has been a good opportunity to rework the cultures in India a bit. The current setup here is one we inherited from Crusader Kings 2 and it was in some ways not entirely appropriate for our era. To better reflect the diversity of the subcontinent we have added two new cultures, changed the old ones a bit and also added a great number of potential culture names for when the large starting cultures diverge.

First of all we have gotten rid of Hindustani culture, and two new cultures have been broken away from what it used to cover in the south. The core part of the culture covers the Gangetic plain, and is now known as Kannauji after the Imperial city of Kannauj (Kanyakubja) which was the main prize of the region and often gave its name to it.

Hindustani itself is still around in a way, as a possible name for a cultural hybrid between an Iranian or Turkic culture with one of the north indian cultures.

[Image of the cultures in northern India]​

Starting in the central parts of India the newly added Gond culture has been carved out of areas that were previously Hindustani, Marathi or Oriya. In 1066 most Gond counties are under the control of the Cedi kingdom and many of these counties are now also tribal at start. This culture covers a region that was in an odd place in the old setup, at the border of several cultures but not quite belonging to either of them.

[Image of the Gond culture]​

Covering the Malwa plateau as well as some of the adjacent regions that were previously considered Hindustani. This new culture shares a language with the Rajasthani and Gujarati cultures, Gurjar Apabhramsa. The existing Rajput culture has been renamed to Rajasthani (since Rajput as a cultural distinction does not really fit our start date) and Assamese is now known as Kamrupi.

[Image of the Malvi culture]​

Indian History and Title Improvements
While looking over the subcontinent it was also clear that in some areas the title setup was also better suited for the early modern era, rather than the medieval era around Crusader Kings III start dates. A number of baronies have been renamed and reorganized into new counties, and a number of new vassals have been scripted in, especially for the 1066 start.
The starting presumptions about who controlled what in 1066 have also been revisited to bring things better in line with history and create a more interesting start. There are now more starting characters, both independent and vassals, and most kings will no longer start above their domain limit.

Some things like the crisis of the Chola empire should also be a bit better represented in the initial setup, with strong and somewhat unruly Pandya vassals, a much stronger Lankan revolt and the Chera Raja now independent (with his historical vassals to support him). You can now also play as the future king, Kulottunga.
There are also other, minor changes, such as revisiting the extent of cultures like Kashmiri, and Telugu, and assigning a number of tribal counties in the eastern-central part of the subcontinent.

[Image of the Sinhalese rebellion in 1066]​

That concludes today’s dev diary. Until next time!


This Crusader Kings 3 player will stop at nothing to secure the perfect heir

Succession in grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3 is a tricky beast. For most cultures, the initial partition laws mean that any character's hard-won gains can be split between children, but even if you eventually manage to secure a better form of succession, there's no saving your Kingdom from the fact that your eldest child is an idiot.


Unless you're Reddit user Bartosio, of course, who decided to go on a Red Wedding-worthy murder spree through their character's extended family to ensure that the correct person ended up on the throne when the active character passed away. 26 family members later, they'd secured an heir with some of the best stats in the game.


You can read the full saga on the Crusader Kings subreddit, but perhaps more impressive than the fact they killed so many family members, was the fact they accomplished the deed(s) within the space of a few in-game months. According to Bartosio, there was a need to get this dirty work done quickly due to a notification that predicted the active character's death within the space of a year, something you get when you complete one of the health-related perk trees.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court expansion will take longer than originally planned

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court will let you pack your throne room with stolen treasure

Crusader Kings 3 cheats - a guide to console commands

Here are all of Crusader Kings 3's upcoming culture options revealed so far

Medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings III will be getting a major rework to its culture mechanics in the a free patch that will accompany the upcoming Royal Court expansion. While the new Crusader Kings III DLC pack will allow you to form new hybrid cultures, or split off from your starting culture, the update is overhauling how the mechanics work in a general sense.


This will bring the feature more in-line with other mechanics, such as religion, for consistency, but also to allow the developers to unite a bunch of disparate culture-related content under a single banner. As part of this, cultures will now be reformed to include five key pillars, two of which are ethos and cultural traditions. These two pillars have been teased out across various development diaries, but user Svarthert from the Crusader Kings subreddit has compiled an image that draws together all of the teasers released so far.


As of the most recent diary, all seven of the cultural ethos options have now been revealed, and we've also had teasers for 17 cultural traditions. Now fans can start brainstorming what combinations they'd like when trying to customise their new or hybrid cultures in-game.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court expansion will take longer than originally planned

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court will let you pack your throne room with stolen treasure

Crusader Kings 3 cheats - a guide to console commands

Anatomy of a Game: Simulation Optimization 💡

Anatomy of a Game, episode 3! We are sharing more details about some optimisations we have done for 1.5 "Royal Court" 💡
Read more on our forums

The Elder Scrolls mod for Crusader Kings 3 will add character-specific storylines

We were already impressed with the scale of The Elder Kings II, the Crusader Kings 3 mod that expands on one of the most popular mods for Crusader Kings 2. The mod will transform Paradox's medieval grand strategy game into an Elder Scrolls history sandbox, but a new dev diary explains that it's going to have detailed story paths for specific personalities, packed with Elder Scrolls lore.


The Elder Kings II is adding a new, earlier start date to provide some lead-up to the tumultuous Interregnum period that began in the 450th year of the Second Era. Starting in 2E 440, The Elder Kings will allow you to follow the stories of several key players in the power struggle that would shape Cyrodiil.


One of the 2E 440 starts is called Warlord Rising, and you'll play as Attrebus Sosildor, a young but highly ambitious general of the Colovian Estates. With the backing of the Elder Council, Attrebus leads an army against the Akaviri Potentate, which is led by Aixnieras Chorak - who traces his lineage back to the Savirien-Chorak, the last true Akaviri Potentate.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court expansion will take longer than originally planned

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court will let you pack your throne room with stolen treasure

Crusader Kings 3 cheats - a guide to console commands