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Dev Diary #59 - Fantastic presets and where to save them đź’ˇ

Some of the Quality of Life improvements coming with the Azure free patch: Raise only Men-at-Arms, Game Rules Presets, and Character Search Presets!

â–ş Read our Dev Diary #59 - Fantastic presets and where to save them



đź’ˇ To see the images, please visit our forums or website.

Hello friends,

Isn't it satisfying when things just work smoothly? If you agree then this Dev Diary will be right down your alley. I’m one of the jolly UX designers working on CK3 and today I’m very excited to give you a sneak peek of some of the quality of life improvements we have in store for the Azure free patch.

We wanted to focus on some of the requests you've brought up, so we’ve worked to find organic ways to implement these in the game. While we can’t address all at once in a single patch, we still wanted to make some meaningful adjustments that will improve your time spent as medieval rulers, master strategists, and efficient trackers. Keep on reading to understand this last one.

Today I’ll be covering Raise Men-at-Arms, Game Rules Presets, and Character Search Presets.


Raise only Men-at-Arms
We had already mentioned that now you will be able to start your games with contingent Men-at-Arms regiments, but these troops have another nifty trick under their sleeves. Now you will be able to raise only Men-at-Arms, allowing you to subdue your enemies without having to bother your levies. Quite a power move, right?

We know it’s dangerous to go adventuring alone, so raising Men-at-Arms will also raise your knights along with them. This ensures that you have a perfectly capable army to take on different challenges.

This is how it works; you will find a button that allows you to raise only Men at Arms in your Military menu, clearly labeled “Raise all Men-at-Arms”. This button will also be present when selecting Rally Points. Hopefully, this will give you more freedom when planning the perfect military strategy.


[Image of the Raise all Men-at-Arms action]
​
Game Rules presets
We all have different playstyles and sometimes it’s nice to spice things up by changing up the rules a bit. Sometimes we want to ask the Mongols to hold their horses and stay at home by turning off the Mongol Invasions, or maybe you want to see if you can withstand yearly visits from your friendly neighbors, the Norse invaders. To allow you to quickly change the rules, now you can save rules presets.

To create your Game Rules presets, all you need to do is set the specific combination of rules that you want, and then click the save button at the top of the window. Doing this will open up a secondary window that lets you name, and save your presets. Loading the presets is very straightforward, all you need to do is to select the desired preset from the dropdown menu at the top of the window.

[Image of the Game Rules Presets being saved] ​

Character Search presets
I said that the Azure patch will improve your tracking skills, and this is thanks to the introduction of Character Search Presets. Much like Game Rules Presets, the idea is to allow you to save different combinations of search filters into presets you can easily select.

You can save and load presets by using the 2 new buttons you’ll find at the top of the search filters window. That means that if you find yourself constantly searching for a specific mix of traits or any other search criteria, then keeping tabs on them will be much easier.

[Image of the new Character Search Preset buttons]
​
While this feature is very useful to streamline the process of recurrent searches with the same criteria, it still comes with some limitations, we are not able to save the dynamic objects in the filter (Dynasty, House and Custom Faith).

That’s all for today, I sincerely hope these quality of life improvements help you try other gameplay styles and that character search presets will make it easier for you to find that special someone somewhere in this fantastic medieval world.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for future updates on the Azure patch. Until next time!

🛠️ Open Beta Branch: Multiplayer Stability Phase II - Now available!

Hey everyone,

Last week we have released an Open Beta branch on Steam, marked as "open_beta - 1.3.2 Multiplayer Improvements".
Many of you participated in the initiative, and we have collected a great amount of insights coupled with your very valuable feedback.

Thanks to these data, we are now exploring an option to improve the Networking.
This change applied only to this open beta branch on Steam will increase Save Game Transfer Speed for all players participating in a multiplayer game.
This improvement is now available. We are eager to read what you think of this change and hear your thoughts.
If you are timed out from the server when trying to join a multiplayer game, please let us know.

Note that we are still working on tweaking the Multiplayer experience for CK3 in this given branch, and so players could encountered a known issue preventing players from seeing any game in the MP lobby or kicking them back to the main menu from the loading screen.

We wanted to thank you for taking the time to raise your report to our teams, and for participating in the open beta! :)

You can access it by right-clicking Crusader Kings III in your Steam library, selecting Properties, entering the 'Betas' tab and selecting "open_beta - 1.3.2 multiplayer improvements" from the list.



We do ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING - provided they reoccur for you on this build, of course - as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so.

This Crusader Kings 3 player just got into an axe fight with the pope and won

We don't know why it happened - surely there were decades' worth of bad blood between the two men - but a Crusader Kings III player recently fought the pope in single combat and emerged victorious. We've seen some strange things in the latest version of Paradox's medieval grand strategy game, but we have to admit this is the first time we've witnessed the pontiff personally get into an axe fight.


"I just fought the Pope in single combat," writes redditor -Slackz- in the Crusader Kings subreddit. As proof, -Slackz- supplied a screenshot. Sure enough, an event window has popped up showing his ruler, a young and scrawny Norse leader named Fylkir Hakon, squaring off against the wiry-framed Pope Stephanus. Both men scowl at each other in a wooded scene, bared to the waist because if you're going to fight a guy, you take off your shirt.


While it seems pretty clear -Slackz- is running a mod or two, complex duels are now a permanent fixture in Crusader Kings III, thanks to a new system added in the 1.3 'Corvus' update that makes battles of honour much more interesting.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Crusader Kings 3 console commands and cheats

Crusader Kings 3's game director teases more 3D environments in future updates

Crusader Kings 3 DLC guide

The next CK3 patch gets an upgrade and also stresses you out more

Another week, another Crusader Kings 3 dev diary. We're expecting news of the next CK3 expansion to drop during PDXCon Remixed later this month, but in the meantime the development team is focused on the upcoming free patch, which is codenamed 'Azure'.


Originally, this was going to be patch 1.3.x (with the 'x' undefined at the time this news was announced) but given the scope of the update is bigger than a hotfix or a simple bugfix pass, the development team has upgraded it to a new version patch instead. Say hello to patch 1.4 'Azure'!


As well as the reported changes around same-sex relationships, Azure will also be looking at improving trait interaction with the stress mechanic, along with improvements to AI behaviour in warfare. For example, characters with the 'shy' trait will no longer generate stress when launching a personal scheme, and 'diligent' characters will get a new decision where they can give their capital a development buff, but it will cost them additional stress. There are some non-stress related trait improvements as well, such as 'arbitrary' characters being able to dismiss hooks others have on them for a prestige hit and some tyranny.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Crusader Kings 3 console commands and cheats

Crusader Kings 3's game director teases more 3D environments in future updates

Crusader Kings 3 DLC guide

Dev Diary #58 - Stre(ss)tching the traits ⚖️

Today we will cover two improvements planned for the upcoming patch: additional content for Traits & AI warfare improvements!

â–ş Read our Dev Diary #58 - Stre(ss)tching the traits



đź’ˇ To see the images, please visit our forums or website.

Hello everyone!

Nice to meet you all! I recently joined the Crusader Kings III game design team and am honored to inaugurate my PDX account with this Dev Diary. Today we will cover two improvements planned for the upcoming patch: additional content and AI warfare improvements.


Trait changes

One of the many pleasures of Crusader Kings is to personify a plethora of characters. Every one of them offers a good opportunity to roleplay, thanks to the various combinations of traits they offer. The Azure patch will expand upon existing content by updating and adding some trait-specific interactions and consequences. With this update, we want to connect the stress system even closer to personality traits.

One of the notable changes is for Shy: it will no longer generate Stress when launching a Personal Scheme. Shy characters can still receive Stress via some of the scheme event options however, and they will be less efficient at performing personal schemes (it will take them longer), but they will be able to do it without ending up having a mental breakdown.

We also added a few new interactions and decisions. For instance, Forgiving characters can abandon one of their hooks to lose Stress. You can either decide to be a truly forgiving character, abandoning a hook you obtained unwittingly, or you can actively look for hooks and then choose to be merciful. We have also added new options for Diligent characters; they can dedicate themselves to improving the Development of their Capital, but doing so will generate a lot of Stress. Finally, if Impatient characters are Stressed, they can speed up the progress of their current Personal Scheme, without affecting their current Stress levels.

[Image of the Develop Capital decision available for Diligent characters]

Some traits have also gained access to interactions that are not related to the stress system but still improve upon the expression of their personality. For instance, Arbitrary characters can now dismiss a Hook a vassal holds on them by spending a lot of Prestige and gaining Tyranny.

[Image of the Dismiss Hook interaction available for Arbitrary characters]

We would love to hear your feedback, and also suggestions for improving other traits!


AI and Warfare

There is also a number of AI improvements, mostly about how the AI moves its units while at war. Pathfinding has been revised, and AI armies should now take more optimal routes to reach their targets, whether they be close but surrounded by treacherous terrain, or far away across the sea (which was most visible during Crusades; there will be no more island hopping for Christian armies, and Vikings should also be more swift and direct in their raids). The new pathfinding logic now factors in time, attrition and threat when selecting and routing to a destination.

Getting close to the enemy is only the first step in warfare though, and the AI should behave more sensibly in other areas too; AI armies will more aggressively pursue suitable opponents and try to avoid unfair fights. After winning crucial battles, AI armies should use their full might to more efficiently besiege enemy fortresses - you should see less mangonels and bombards chasing peasants while there is a perfectly good castle waiting to be ruined. We also adjusted the AI behaviors depending on their Casus Bellis, making sure that they not only prioritize territorial conquest but also capturing hostages when relevant.


All of the changes were fine-combed by our dev team, and we feel confident that the AI will bring you a surprise or two in the Azure patch. Lastly, an important organizational change: the version number of the patch will be 1.4 instead of 1.3.X as announced previously. This is to make the scope of the patch a bit clearer. While it is still a relatively small patch, it is also larger than a hotfix or a pure bugfix patch we've released in the past. Some mods will need to be updated. And while we always strive to keep save games compatible, with the nature of the game you might still run into edge cases with your old saves that we did not catch.

And that’s it for today! Thanks again for your precious feedback, and please keep providing more! I hope you enjoyed it, and see you next week for more information about the Azure patch!