Crusader Kings III News

Hello everyone,

This year has been a long and interesting one, to be certain, but we are here all together to make sure that our community gets the product that we have all been waiting for and deserve. Earlier this year, we informed you all that we were working hard to make sure that Royal Court was up to our standards.

Royal Court is not only the first expansion for CK3, but it will also propose a set of features entirely new to the CK series, including cultural evolution and language. It is very much breaking new ground, and as such, we are experimenting at every turn.

With that in mind we are not, at the moment, entirely satisfied with Royal Court's progress, especially regarding its stability. There are a number of bugs we really need to iron out, and are taking more time to make sure it is in line with the standards you would expect from us.
We also understand the frustration that delays cause, but we would like to make sure we are always as forthcoming as possible and that you hear the news directly from us. It’s a tricky balance between sentiments like “It will release whenever we finish making sure it is ready” and things like giving exact timelines only to make necessary but upsetting changes to that timeline when we do actually need time to review and make those changes.

That being said, you can look forward to news about the 2022 release date Soon™!

In the meantime, you can catch up on all the previous points in our Royal Court FAQ!

All of our team is working hard to follow their projects through to completion and making sure that all the tasks that they started are fully realized and supported. This means they are going to keep up their great work to make sure that Royal Court is the success that both their efforts and your expectations deserve.

We are super grateful for all the dedication and passion you have shown for Crusader Kings III leading up to this point. Your thoughts and feedback on the systems, features, and integration of Royal Court have led to some interesting changes and alterations that we may or may not have otherwise considered!

So thank you everyone for your time and constructive feedback.
We appreciate your understanding and patience.

Cheers,

[Official Thread on the forums]

Greetings!

We’ve talked plenty about cultures already at this point, but I wanted to give you a brief update on what we’ve done since the initial reveal of the culture rework.
Since then, we’ve taken some time to add additional functionality based on your feedback!

► Read our Dev Diary #79 - An Update on Cultures

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




Greetings!

We’ve talked plenty about cultures already at this point, but I wanted to give you a brief update on what we’ve done since the initial reveal of the culture rework. Since then, we’ve taken some time to add additional functionality based on your feedback!

Previously, you could only add new traditions to a culture to fill out any empty tradition slots you may have. If you wanted to change anything regarding your culture, you would have to create a new one. Which begs the question. What if I want to keep the culture I already have? Or why can I not replace that one tradition to make my culture perfect? Fret not. The cultural head has gained the ability to change, or ‘reform’ if you will, their culture in order to change it without the need to create a new culture. The cultural head cannot replace everything mind you, but may change the ethos, the martial custom, and any tradition. If you want to change any of the remaining pillars you’ll have to create a new culture, either by diverging or forming a hybrid. Do note that you need to own the Royal Court expansion to reform your culture, similar to creating a culture. Even without the DLC, you can always add new traditions to fill out any empty slots.

Reasoning for what you are able to change this way is twofold. First, changing heritage or language for an existing culture felt a bit off. While a language in reality does evolve over time, that is something we don’t really represent in the game, which makes it weird to simply “replace” a language. And you can’t really change your heritage in the same vein as, say, a tradition. Secondly, we wanted to make sure that you still have a valid reason to create a divergent culture. The two approaches are slightly similar in functionality, but it is important that both reforming and diverging a culture serves different purposes and that the distinction between the two is clear.


[Image showing the options to reform or diverge a culture]​

The major difference is, as mentioned above, that reforming only allows you to change certain aspects about a culture, while diverging allows for additional possibilities. A second significant difference is the cost. Replacing a pillar will cost you prestige. The ethos in particular includes a rather hefty prestige cost that should make it rather difficult to repeatedly change it over the course of a campaign. You are, however, free to pick any ethos, regardless of circumstances.


[Image of the ethos replacement window]​

Traditions will also be more expensive to replace. Instead of just a flat increase, replacing a tradition increases the prestige cost by 50%. The cost penalty will therefore be relative to how well your culture matches any given tradition, making the additional cost more harsh for already expensive (and less compatible) traditions.


[Image showing the prestige cost for the Agrarian tradition when replacing a tradition]​

These additional costs will make reforming or diverging your culture easier or more difficult depending on your situation. Attempting to diverge from a large and unified culture, such as Greek when playing as the Byzantine emperor, will be rather expensive and the less viable option. Especially if you only want to change a tradition or two. Reforming your culture will be cheaper, allowing you to more easily tweak your culture over time.

If you are playing as the cultural head of a widely spread culture, such as Andalusian, diverging might instead be your preferred solution. Diverging from a culture that is spread out across multiple realms is significantly cheaper, allowing you to instead spend the prestige on replacing additional traditions or save it for something else entirely. Changing pillars is, for example, free when diverging, since you are forced to change at least one pillar in order to be able to create your new culture.

Finally, you might have noticed the hourglass in the above screenshots. This is the establishment rate. Whenever you add or replace a tradition, or change a pillar, it will take some time before the change is applied. The time required for a change to be fully adopted mainly depends on your culture’s size. Larger cultures will logically gravitate towards a slower establishment rate. The duration is also increased whenever you replace an existing tradition. As such, adding a completely new tradition to your culture is not only cheaper, but it will go faster as well. This is important because you may only have one cultural change pending at any given time. If you replace a tradition with something else, you will have to wait until that tradition has been fully adopted before you can change your culture again. Diverging, on the other hand, still allows you to do sweeping changes and they take effect immediately as you create a new culture.


[Image of the establishment rate tooltip]​

That about sums up all of the additional changes we’ve done. In short, the ambition here is to allow you to shape your culture more freely in the way you want, without having to always resort to doing something that might feel a bit heavy handed. On a final note, I’d like to thank you for providing us with feedback and voicing your opinions! Giving valid and constructive criticism does, at times, pay off.

Hello there, and welcome to the 78th CK3 Dev Diary!

I am Mrop, one of the User Experience Designers on CK3. Last dev diary, we had a look at languages your Character can learn on their own.
Today, we are having a look at how language relates to your Royal Court: Your Court Language.

► Read our Dev Diary #78 - Taking Language to Court

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




Court Language in History​
Historically, it was not always so that nobles spoke the same language as the commoners. Rather, it was seen as more prestigious to speak another country’s language to show that you were cultivated enough to suck up to your superiors.

One of the most well known examples of this is how French was spoken across many courts across Europe around the reign of Louis XIV. This is outside the timeframe of Crusader Kings, but there are earlier examples; Norman nobles who invaded England together with William the Conqueror continued to speak French, influencing the development of the English language as we know it today.


Court Language and Grandeur​
Each Ruler with a Royal Court has a language chosen as their Court Language. At the start of the game this is determined by what historically was used. If you get a Royal Court later, its Court Language will simply be your native language. You can, of course, choose to change it!

Each language you can pick as your Court Language changes the Court Grandeur Baseline. You may recall that Grandeur and this Baseline was explained in Dev Diary 61. As a refresher, your Court Grandeur measures how impressive your Royal Court is. Each month, it moves slowly towards the Baseline value. Changing your Court Language will therefore take time to actually have an effect on your court’s Grandeur.


So how much Grandeur can you get from a certain Court Language?

The largest share of Court Grandeur comes from the pecking order of all Royal Courts who speak that language.

The Royal Court with the highest Court Grandeur is considered the “leader” of that language, and gains Court Grandeur based on how many Royal Courts speak that language. So if you are the leader of a language, you want as many Courts as possible to adopt it! Naturally, you only gain this Grandeur if you can actually speak the language!

On the other hand, if you are not the grandest Court of the language, you gain Court Grandeur based on the difference of your Grandeur, and the Grandeur of the leading Court. Speaking the Language is not required for this bonus, so even if your neighbors have a language you cannot speak you can attempt to impress them by following their lead.

In addition to this pecking order, you also gain Grandeur for each County in your Realm that speaks your Court Language, but only if you know the language personally. Finally, if your Court Language is also your native Language, you gain an extra 25% bonus to all the impacts your Court Language has on your Court Grandeur.

Here is an example of a calculation for having your native Language as Court Language (actual values are very much temporary):



Since you gain extra Grandeur for matching your Court Language with your native Language, you may want to create a new Hybrid or Divergent Culture (as described in Dev Diary 65) to adapt to the language your Realm or Court prefers.

All in all, this means that weaker and less grand Royal Courts will tend to choose the Court Language of a local, more grand Royal Court. The AI is also more restricted than players, such as taking the Faith of the speakers of the Court Language into account.

Eventually, once your Royal Court becomes grand enough, it is usually time to choose a language of your own as the Court Language, and start attracting lesser Courts to adopt it.


Finding Court Language in the Game​
You can, as shown above, select your Court Language inside your Royal Court, which takes you to a special map mode of all Court Languages in the world.



You can also directly adopt the language of a certain Culture by clicking on the button next to the language in that Cultures own View.



Beware however, not everyone may speak your Court Language that well (including yourself), so the threat of embarrassment is ever present. Just like in real life.


An embarrassing situation occurs when one of your Vassals cannot speak your Court Language


Court Language Spread​
Seeing your Court Language spread is one major way to understand how influential your court becomes over the years.

To see Court Languages spread, let us have a look at the game! Here, each Royal Court that speaks the same Court Language is shown on the map.

Here is the map at game start in 867 AD. You can see languages such as Arabic being used in the Habbari Sultanate (roughly in modern day Pakistan), and how the king of Bulgaria has chosen Greek due to the influence of nearby Byzantium.


Court Languages Map in 867

100 years later, Magadhan is slowly becoming more popular in India, and the Kingdom of Italy have adopted French as their Court Language.


Court Languages Map in 967

In 1067, a century later, Greek is spreading to the newly formed Kingdoms in the Empire of Khazaria. Some new languages like Berber also pop up.


Court Languages Map in 1067

Finally, in 1167, we see four languages dominate the courts of the world. Greek has spread through the now shattered Empire of Khazaria, and is also making its way down to Africa. At the same time, there is still room for smaller Court Languages like Shaz Turkic to thrive.


Court Languages Map in 1167


That is all for now; thank you for reading!

Greetings!

As you all know, one of the new Cultural Pillars each Culture has is their native Language. Now, what effect does language have? At its very core, Languages affect the Baseline acceptance between cultures - if two Cultures share the same Language Pillar, they’ll like each other better.
But that’s not all, characters can also learn additional languages!

► Read our Dev Diary #77 - In the Event of Court Events

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




So, why do you want to learn a language? Knowing a language cuts the (rather hefty) opinion penalties for Different Culture in half, both for Characters and Counties. Planning on conquering a foreign kingdom? Start your conquest by mastering their language, making subsequent control of your new subjects just that much easier! The less accepted your culture is, the more impact learning a language will have.

Now for the more pertinent question, how do you learn another language? You learn new languages through scheming!


[Image showing the Learn Language interaction]


[Image showing the Start Scheme window]

‘Learn Language’ is a Learning-based scheme, where progress and chance of success are primarily derived from how scholarly your character is. This scheme is available to everyone, even young children (who have a vastly increased chance of success/progress, by virtue of being young, less tired, and having working brains). It targets someone who natively speaks the language, having you try to emulate them. While the exact target you choose is less important than in other types of schemes, you might still get opportunities to interact with them.

Now, learning languages takes quite some time. Though it’s possible to significantly speed up the process by employing a Court Tutor!


[Image of a Court Tutor]

You will also find that bonuses for this scheme have been added throughout the existing Lifestyle trees. Some examples:

Adaptive Traditions - Unlocks an additional Learn Language Scheme
Embassies - Increases Scheme Power
Chains of Loyalty - Increases Scheme Power
Pedagogy - Increases Scheme Success Chance
Open-Minded - Increases the Language Limit
Smooth Operator - Increases the Language Limit


If the scheme is invalidated by, for example, the target dying, your progress is retained and you get the opportunity to choose a new target.


[Image of Invalidation Event]

When we first talked about languages, we had some people (rightfully) point out that decreasing the chance of success the more languages you know isn’t very logical. We still needed a way to prevent characters from knowing all the languages in the world, and thus we introduced the concept of a Foreign Language Limit. This represents how many languages a character can comfortably remember.


[Image of Language Limit]

If a character exceeds their Foreign Language Limit, they will start getting events about feeling overwhelmed, giving you the choice between forgetting a language or gaining stress. In a sense, this system is very similar to how we handle characters having too many lovers.

Of course, a character can never forget the language that is native to their culture, and that language isn’t included in the limit (as you can see in the above screenshot, Telugu isn’t included in the limit as it is his native language).

The Foreign Language Limit is affected by many things, but primarily by a character’s Learning score, where every 5 attribute points increases the limit by one.

With this change, we’ve made it so that the more languages you know, the higher your success chance is for learning additional languages. You have the basics down already, after all.


[Image of a success chance breakdown]

Now, the process of learning a language can be quite entertaining. There are many events that can happen along the way; being helped by friends or family, opposed by rivals, and so on. Here are a handful of examples of what can happen during the course of learning a language:


[Image of your Court Tutor helping you]

If you have a particularly good Court Tutor, they can guide your efforts along very speedily.


[Image of a rival ruining your notes]

Beware your rivals, lest they release ink-soaked birds in your study...


[Image of a very amorous misunderstanding]

Sometimes learning a language doesn’t result in what you’d expect...


[Image of the Byzantine Emperor with a “It’s just a prank, bro”-smile]

Sometimes your target might find your efforts laughable, and try to make fun of you.


[Image of a merchant offering you a book]

Of course, there is an opportunity to gain a trinket-slot item that’ll help your efforts along.


[Image of someone offering to help]

As learning a language isn’t secret, sometimes you’ll get offers from other rulers to help you… for a price.

When the scheme completes, you have a chance of success and failure. If you’re brave, you might even choose to test your new abilities right away by penning a letter to your target!


[Image of a successful scheme]


[Image of a failed scheme]

Of course, you might find that others are emulating you in their efforts to learn your language. This gives you the opportunity to praise their efforts, or perhaps you’d rather ridicule them?


[Image of someone learning your language]

That’s it for this week! Now, this isn’t the only way languages are used in the game… next week we will dive into another use for them, something which ties directly into the mechanics of the Royal Court!