1. Crusader Kings III
  2. News

Crusader Kings III News

Dev Diary #72 - Holding Court 👑

Welcome comrades!

In today’s dev diary, we’ll be taking a gander at a neat part of the upcoming expansion: Holding Court.

Per the usual, I’ll preface this by saying that the court scene is a work in progress, the UI of the court scene is a work in progress, and the art generally is work in progress; we also have some missing animations and camera perspectives, so take all the images here with a grain of salt.

► Read our Dev Diary #72 - Holding 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






As with any medieval ruler, monarchs in The Royal Court are vain creatures. It’s not enough to control the largest or best-developed realm, you have to have the largest palace, the fanciest food, the most renowned courtiers, and so on: after all, what’s the point of taxing the masses if you have to live like a peasant anyway?

Sometimes, though, you can’t quite afford the fanciest feast, the latest fashion, or even just the shiniest artefact to spruce up your court.

When times are that hard, and you really need just _immediate_ distraction from the flaws in your life, it’s important to spend some time indulging those with lives even harder than yours. Like nearly everyone else. For times when you feel like slumming it amongst the weird and wonderful characters of your realm, you can Hold Court.




This repeatable decision lets you hear a number of requests from various characters, listening to petitioners seeking your aid and legal ruling on many subjects. They might be guests, courtiers, neighbouring rulers, vassals, spies, the odd bumbling peasant…



At present, you’ll receive three such petitioners each time, with all events delivered in the new courtly event style (though follow-up may be character events or similar).



Some choices are easy…



… some choices are hard…



… and some are just weird.



After you’ve made your ruling in each case, in addition to the effects of each turn, you’ll gain some court grandeur to bolster your overall supply. We’ve got just shy of a hundred or so of these events alone, so there should be a goodly amount of variety for most playstyles.

This system is something pretty dear to our hearts, as it models a task that would’ve been a pretty big part of the day-to-day for many rulers, and we’ve put a lot of effort into getting plenty of alternate events to keep it as varied as possible for as long as possible. We hope you find it a fun & proactive way to explore some of the smaller (and uhh, not so small) issues developing in your realm.

Small dev diary, but that’s all from me for the mo. As ever, I’ll be around in the comments for an hour or so to answer questions, but otherwise, see y’all next diary!

… Y’know what, let’s have a few more events to show off before we finish for the day.




Дискриминация по-шведски: Сотрудники Paradox Interactive пожаловались на "культуру молчания"

Шведское издательство Paradox Interactive оказалось в центре громкого скандала. Поводом стал проведенный в августе 2021 года опрос 133 сотрудников компании, организованный профсоюзами Unionen и Sveriges Ingenjörer. 

Over two thirds of women at Paradox report gender mistreatment in staff survey

More than two thirds of women employed by Swedish game developer and publisher Paradox Interactive have reportedly said they faced gender discrimination or other mistreatment at the company, according to a new survey conducted by two labour groups in Sweden in August. The report says 44% of survey respondents complained of "mistreatment" in the workplace, and concludes that Paradox has fostered a "culture of silence" where perpetrators of abuse are protected from any serious consequences for their behaviour.


Swedish language publication Breakit, which obtained the leaked survey, reports that women make up about 26% of Paradox's workforce, but that 69% of women who responded to the survey said they had experienced abusive treatment on the job. For men, that figure was 33%.


Breakit reports that the survey was presented to Paradox leadership August 30, with news going out to employees on September 1 - hours before the announcement that Paradox CEO Ebba Ljungerud had elected to step down from her position. However, Breakit says Ljungerud herself, incoming interim CEO Fredrik Wester, and Paradox's communications department have all denied any connection between Ljungerud's departure and the results of the survey.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

The best grand strategy games on PC

Next Crusader Kings 3 DLC adds petty drama and better duels

Crusader Kings 3 DLC guide

Paradox CEO steps down over "differing views" about company strategy

The CEO of grand strategy game developer and publisher Paradox Interactive has stepped down from her position, effective immediately. Ebba Ljungerud had worked in the position since August 2018, and has left the post over "differing views on the company's strategy going forwad," according to a press release from the company.


"Ebba has done a fantastic job as CEO of Paradox Interactive," Paradox board chairman Håkan Sjunnesson says in the release. "During her leadership the organisation, player base and our game projects have been strengthened and grown which give the company a strong base for future growth. We regret that she has decided to resign but wish her all the best in future endeavours."


During Ljungerud's tenure as CEO, Paradox opened a new studio in Barcelona, Paradox Tinto, and most lately has undergone a major reorganisation of its development studios after troubled launches for Imperator: Rome and multiple expansions for Europa Universalis IV. However, the studio also launched the universally acclaimed Crusader Kings III last year, and recently announced the development of the long-requested Victoria III.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Crusader Kings 3 DLC guide

Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court has new ways to interact with your liege

New Paradox CEO regrets "inappropriate behaviour" during 2018 company meeting

Dev Diary #71 - A Coat of Arms of Your Own 🛡️

Hello everyone and welcome to the 71st CK3 Dev Diary!

I’m Matthew, one of the Programmers on the CK3 team, and today I am going to talk to you about one of the free features in the upcoming 1.5 patch: the much requested Coat of Arms Designer!

I don’t think the idea needs much explanation, this feature lets you edit the coat of arms used for your titles, dynasty, and house in game and from within the ruler designer to create your own stunning medieval crest.

I think it's easiest if I just show you, should go without saying by now but everything here is still under development and the interface is a work in progress and stands to be tweaked, shuffled around the layout and sizes changed by art.

► Read our Dev Diary #71 - A Coat of Arms of Your Own

💡 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



Right now here is what you will be greeted by now if you enter the customization window for the Holy Roman Empire:


In the center you get the preview screen of the coat of arms as you edit it and to the right some options of what to do.

I’ll start with the bottom right options:
  • Randomise within the rule sets we use to generate coat of arms normally, great if you want to reenact this pain.
  • As with the Ruler Designer’s DNA we let you copy and paste your coat of arms to share.
  • Discard any changes you’ve made to your work in progress masterpiece.
  • If you have previously edited and saved your new coat of arms then the discard button will be joined by a button to reset to the historical coat of arms if available.


The meat of the system comes in the form of customizing your coat of arms from scratch or adjusting the existing one, both share their core components but adjusted mode is more limited if you want to take a pre-existing coat of arms and just tweak it a bit.
The reason adjusted mode is separate is that some historical coat of arms are made up of a lot of emblems in an order that whilst looks pretty in game is rather cursed if you were to try and see the full layout and background usage.

So for the bulk of this I will be using custom as the example to see how you can make your own heraldry from scratch and call out differences in adjusted mode where applicable.
The coat of arms designer has three main panels: background, layout, and emblems.

Starting with the background panel you can pick from any of the background patterns as well as pick what colours should be used. For all the colouring options in the coat of arms designer we provided a palette with some pre-selected colours that are used in heraldry generally and are what we use in randomization of coat of arms but we also give you a colour picker to let you pick whatever horrifying neon colour you want.
In the adjusted mode you cannot pick a background pattern but you can change the colours.


Next up we have the layouts panel, they dictate the overall amount and positioning of the emblems in your coat of arms. This panel is disabled entirely in the adjusted mode.

To preempt this question, yes there are only a few layouts in the picture (some even duplicates) and that is because the other preset layouts are currently being worked on so there will be more than this in the released version.
Though if you have any ideas for some cool layouts do let us know! Now is the perfect time to give us some ideas whilst the presets layouts are being implemented.


The bulk of time you will spend is likely to be in the final emblems panel, this lets you pick which of the over a thousand emblem textures that you want to use as well as how you colour them.

You can select which emblem instance you want to edit or select multiple of them by shift clicking, there is also a button to select all of them or reset your selection too so you can edit in bulk easier.


Since some historical coat of arms can have a lotttt of emblems we show them in a paged setup of 10 at a time for easier editing.
I used france a lot in my testing since it has so many to make sure things always worked on a large amount of them which has now ingrained into my brain that our france coat of arms has 33 fleur de lis on it.

To try and help the contrast of the emblems we set it so that the previews have a background that is either white/black to help things stand out better.

We also have a detailed edit mode which lets you go deeper and modify the exact positions, scale, and rotation of all your emblems as well as modify what layer they are on and even add and remove them to your heart’s content! So you can really end up with a custom coat of arms to represent the majesty of your dynasty, or as I’m sure some of you will do, try and find a way to make it look phallic as quickly as you possibly can.


All of these edits also support an undo/redo system to make incremental changes easier.
Cadet Houses also get an additional option for if they want the quartering of their coat of arms enabled or not, in case you want to show your dad who’s boss.

That is a lot of words to explain this but let's be honest you all just want to see it in action so here we go:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Mini-shout out/commiserations to user “Lajos Tueur” who on Saturday released a mod to try and implement a coat of arms designer and had to fight against doing all of this very manually in the script with a hacky UI only for me to come in a few days later and release this dev diary.

That’s all for this week folks, thanks for tuning in and I hope you’re excited to make some majestic (or cursed) coat of arms for your rulers in 1.5!