Crusader Kings III News

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

► Read our Dev Diary #58 - Stre(ss)tching the traits



💡 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!

Greetings Queens & Kings!

We are now opening a BETA Branch available to all Steam users, to enhance Multiplayer Stability.
After the success we saw with previous Steam branches, we are hopeful that this one will help us to address issues with our Multiplayer system. This branch will stay open for a few months to help diagnose as many issues as possible.

With that in mind, we ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING 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.

As always, we appreciate & value your input.

A message from our QA Team: Our mission is always to deliver the most quality product as possible to the player. QA acts as the player representative within the development team, and works towards providing the team with as much information as they need to create a product that is as fun as possible to play.

We are aware of numerous issues, including the Out-of-Synchs, empty lobbies, incorrect version issues and with this open Steam beta we aim to improve the multiplayer situation.

As always, please report anything you find on the bug report forums and we will check it out as soon as we can. We really appreciate uploading the randomlogs which include multiplayer logs to the bug forum reports as well because this helps us immensely. Logs are available in the folder under C:\Users\\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\oos.

We hope you help us in reporting any and all issues that are still pain points for you, as well as any issues that are still occurring on the open beta branch. It is important that older issues are reported again so that we know if they are still occurring on the beta branch.

Read the News on our official forums.

We are expanding two areas in the upcoming Free Patch 'Azure': childhood and lifestyle events!

► Read our Dev Diary #57 - An Eventful Summer



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

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re enjoying the warmer days, and that you are looking forward to hearing a bit more about the free patch, Azure, that we’re releasing this summer.

Before we get into the meat of today's Dev Diary I want to clarify something regarding the Azure patch; it's being made by a smaller group of CK3 devs in a Strike Team setup, which means that not everyone on the CK3 Dev team is working on the patch. We hope that we'll still be able to address quite a few of your concerns, but we won't have time to address everything. Still, keep sending us feedback, as it helps us prioritize!

This dev diary will focus on one area of the patch and as a Content Designer I am – unsurprisingly – here to talk about events and such. More specifically I am here to talk about some new content that we’re including in Azure, and joining me in this dev diary is one of our new Content Designers: Isabella! As developers we all have areas of the game that we would like to expand upon and flesh out a bit, and two areas are now getting some love: childhood and lifestyle events.


Childhood​
Children always want to grow up fast, and no child feels this more actually than the one that just inherited the entire realm at the mature age of six. Oh woe, what can a young king do to pass the long days ahead until he can scheme and murder to his heart’s content? Play with other young rulers, of course! Azure includes a new activity for children called Meet Peers that will make childhood more interesting and full of experiences.

gathering.png

[Image of the start event for the Meet Peers activity]

Meet Peers is an activity available for children where they can gather all young rulers and courtiers in the realm to just play and forget about the dreariness of life as a child in medieval times. All participants will lose stress and increase their opinion of the host, and the children attending the playdate can find themselves in fun and educational situations!

brave.png

[Image of an event that can appear when you Meet Peers]

Of course, there may also be any number of less… wholesome consequences from bringing that many children together.

playing_rough.png

[Image of an event that can appear when you Meet Peers]

And if socializing just isn’t your thing and friends are easiest made (and killed) through schemes we’ve also reduced the age restrictions for Sway and Murder slightly. All to enable you to live out your scheming rule from as young an age as possible!


Lifestyle events​
Or, if your children just can’t wait to grow up, you could let them try their fate fighting against grown soldiers in a tournament. In this patch, we have a couple of new lifestyle events coming your way, including the Tantrum Tourney event chain for Martial Authority characters.


tantrumtourneyhighres.PNG

[Image of the starting event from the Tantrum Tourney event chain]

‘Hym repented that he came there!’ - 14th Century Romance Richard Coer de Lyon on grown dukes and lords regretting each moment as they get impaled by a lance manned by an adolescent child.

A trope of romances detailing the life of Richard the Lionheart likes to exaggerate the dates of his reign to present him as a King who was a child monarch. This seems to be done almost exclusively so he can be presented as perhaps the greatest demon of a child who ever lived. Child Richard is shown ordering all of his noblemen to fight him in a tournament - on pain of death, and beating everyone who turns up to a pulp.

Will you allow your baby’s first bloodlust to be unleashed upon your knights, who certainly did not sign up for this?

Keep your eyes peeled while your character is studying their Lifestyle! You might see a few new moments cropping up. Especially if you have war elephants… but what are you doing if you don’t already have war elephants?