Dev Diary #161 - 2024 in Review

Greetings!

2024 is coming to a close, and with it the conclusion of Chapter III and everything we’ve done this year - we’ve hit some big-ticket milestones, including one I’ve been dreaming of since I started working on Crusader Kings way back in 2015! In fact, back in 2017-2018, when we were planning the features for the CK2 expansion Holy Fury, I had a design for a rudimentary ‘Adventurer’ mechanic that we ultimately decided not to go with because ‘it’d fit CK3 much better’! Interestingly enough, some elements of that design survived to this day, such as the concept of officers, mercenary work, and contracts on the map.

► Discuss Dev Diary #161 on our forums![pdxint.at]



Some of the heavy-hitting features we’ve managed to tackle this year include having the Black Death (and other plagues) ravage the world, a bespoke and truly unique Administrative government for Byzantium, and, of course, the aforementioned Adventurers roaming the map in search of fame and glory. For Chapter III we’ve focused a lot on making the map more interesting; with disease and legends spreading bloody tendrils and beams of light over the world, estates and camps representing the seat of power of powerful families or ambitious travelers, contracts and issues denoting local opportunities and disruptions, and more reasons than ever to travel with new activities ranging from chariot races to local inspections. This focus on tying features to the map is something that we’ll definitely be bringing with us in the future!

We’ve also changed and improved how we gather and work with feedback from you in the community, making sure that we’re working on the right things in the right way going forward. We moved from small and aspirational Dev Diaries (LotD) to chunky and very ‘matter-of-fact’ and ‘this-is-what-the-feature-is’ diaries (RtP, WN) over the course of the year - this allowed us to collect as much useful feedback as we could from your discussions during a time where there was still time to make changes.

But the most important thing we’ve done this year is to lay the foundation for the future, as we’re not slowing down any time soon! We’re already working on what's to come next year, and while we won’t go into what it is yet, it’s going to be big.

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Chapter III​ Let's take a look at Chapter III, what it was, and which learnings we’re taking with us!

Legends of the Dead ​
Legends of the Dead and the accompanying update introduced a new system for spreading things on the map - deadly plagues that ravage development and family trees alike, and glorious legends to bolster your legitimacy and make sure your name is known across the world. We knew that you in the community had been asking for plagues for a long time, therefore we wanted to introduce them sooner rather than later - and it’d also introduce some very CK-appropriate challenge, as the perfect heir suddenly dying from an illness and leaving everything to the less talented younger brother makes for a good story. At large, we’ve hit the goal of making plagues feel immersive and dynamic, with names taken from the state of the map (Kaiser Heinrich’s Plague, French Boils, etc.) and varying levels of intensity - of course, it took a while to get the balancing right, but we now feel like they’re in a good spot (and of course, we’re always open for further feedback on this).

From the start, we knew that we wanted the plague feature to be free. We generally avoid having such features as part of feature sets of expansions to avoid a general feeling of pay-to-lose. That’s why we sat down and thought about what else could spread across the map. That's where we came up with legends—stories about an individual embellished throughout the ages, ultimately ending up as founding myths or even folklore.

During this development cycle, we had really inefficient communication. Dev Diaries presented the features in a much too embellished and flowery way, making them appear as something they weren’t. This meant that the feedback we got wasn’t really for the features that we were making, which made it difficult to apply. Most of the significant changes to the system came after the release, as the stage of development we were in during the Dev Diary phase didn’t allow for major pivots at the time.

Now, we know that Legends as a system is a divisive one, with most of you wanting to see changes to it for the legends to feel truly legendary. Without promising too much, the team who worked on the Legends feature has been gathering feedback and has proposed some improvements to enhance the immersion and player agency of the system. We’re currently looking into when we would be able to commit to doing it. For those of you who don’t already know, we develop several expansions in parallel, which means that our timelines are somewhat strict. So finding the right time to add something can take time, especially if that something needs to be done by very specific people (in this case, members of the LotD team). That said, the improvements will surely happen sometime next year!
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Roads to Power​ Contrary to LotD, our communication strategy for Roads to Power was to have the Dev Diaries earlier (allowing for harder pivots, if needed) and as I mentioned earlier make them more matter-of-fact, leaving no room for misunderstandings. This paid off in a major way - we were able to gauge what you thought about the features well ahead of them being fully finished, and were able to integrate a LOT of feedback immediately. Of course, you have to strike a fine balance as showing something too early also carries risk - you might get reactions such as ‘is this it?’ which in the worst case can deflate someone's excitement - you have to show things not too early, and not too late. This is the undoubted strategy we’ll be working with going forward!

Now, this expansion is by far the most well-received one we’ve made so far, and it can be explained in a simple way; we chose features that you had been asking for for a long time, going back way before CKIII was even released! We also chose complimentary features, so no matter who you are or what your preferred playstyle is, there was something for you - whether you enjoy creating stories of adventure on the open road or want to partake in the complex bureaucracy of Byzantium!

For the first time in the CK series we’re able to represent the administration of Byzantium, a landmark realm in any of our start dates, and the Middle Ages in general. The constant intrigue, political machinations, and jockeying for prestigious positions differentiate the Administrative government from all others in a way that hadn’t been explored until now. While we’ve done attempts to represent this form of governance in previous iterations of the game, they’ve come nowhere close to what we’ve achieved with RtP - and it feels great to finally be able to represent such an important and pivotal realm in an appropriate way. After all, the fall of Constantinople is the symbolic end of the Middle Ages, and Constantinople is the beating heart of the Empire itself…

Another first is having Adventurers roam the map in search of fame, gold, or revenge! Synergizing fantastically with the Travel system introduced last year, these characters, unburdened by land-holding, are free to go where they please, presuming they have the resources to do so… Whether you’re playing a displaced noble, a historical adventurer like El Cid, or an adventurer of your own making, you are sure to make a name for yourself in one way or another, be it by conquest, mercenary work, or kingmaking! One of my favorite aspects of this feature is that you can now create your own ruler-designed character without having to displace a real-life historical character, something that never sat right with me personally.

The advent of landless play, as an adventurer or noble family, opened up the game like never before - we were able to get rid of the most traditional of game-overs, losing your last title, and replace it with stories of vengeance and comeback. We were able to truly represent the governance of a state as complex as Byzantium, where most of the power didn’t come from enforcing a hereditary succession of land, but from political influence held by powerful families located in the Jewel of Cities herself. Not to say that this opens limitless possibilities for the future.
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Wandering Nobles​ Wandering Nobles also synergised heavily with the Travel system, giving (primarily) landed rulers many new reasons to leave their capitals and set out on the road! This is the first time we’ve released a new Lifestyle, but it’ll hopefully not be the last. It’s also a highly interactive Lifestyle, with each tree unlocking a new Activity for you to undertake - be it active de-stressing via Hikes, bolstering your Domain with Inspections, or increasing your skills by Exploring distant monuments.

An interesting tidbit from the development of this one is that, because of our parallel development setup that I mentioned earlier, we realised mid-development as the Roads to Power Adventurer feature started taking form that we also wanted the Lifestyle to work for Adventurers, despite originally planning it only for landed rulers. This resulted in using the system for dynamically switching out Perk bonuses from RtP to make sure that we had interesting tie-ins that affected adventurer-specific mechanics also.

This had some fun emergent effects, the Monument Expeditions primary ‘gating mechanic’ is the fact that monuments become more and more distant (and thus you might not want to leave your realm for literally 10 years just go gain a skill point), but for adventurers it enabled a true ‘tourist’ playstyle, as they wander the world all the time anyway!

A learning from Wandering Nobles is that it’s generally better to focus on something visible and more instantly available rather than just collections of events - it’s both easier to see what you get, and enables new styles of play. It's very likely that future Event Packs will follow a similar setup.
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Concluding and Retiring Chapter III​ With the end of the year also comes the end of Chapter III, after which the contents will be folded into the collection bundle, and of course, the individual expansions will still be available standalone. If you still want to buy the chapter with its current discount, you should consider doing so soon!

The last date for purchasing Chapter III is January 9th!

But that’s not all, we’re also increasing the discount on the Collection Bundle from 10% to 20% on December 19th!

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Content Creator Packs​ This year, we’ve started a new program where we collaborate with modders to release Content Creator Packs, and for this year, we’ve had the opportunity to work with El Tyranos, the lead for the excellent Community Flavor Pack, in releasing two of them! Both North Africa and the Western Slavs have new looks and attires, both well-researched and beautiful. The latter we even decided to pair with a brand new Polish localization of the game (and a big thank you to you in the community for helping us find & fix issues with it, it’s never easy to localize into a new language!).

From our perspective these collaborations have gone fantastically, we get to work with talented modders - acknowledging their skills and the value they bring to the community, and the game gets more variety of content. It’s a win-win.

We will continue to collaborate with our excellent modding community to create even more content for the game, and we have some modders that we’re excited to be working with lined up for 2025 already! While we’re currently focusing on graphical assets, we are looking into if we could expand the scope to include other things in the future, too.

Legends of CKIII​ One of the initiatives we launched during 2024 was the Legends of CKIII, where we highlighted a collection of characters both outside and inside of the game, making the game more approachable for new players while at the same time giving something new and interesting to existing players! We even found time to make some bespoke content for most of the characters, such as events pertaining to the marital dilemma that Matilda of Tuscany was in at the start of the game, or Vratislav of Bohemia’s conflict with his brother Jaromir.

We actually have a couple of new highlighted characters launching alongside this Dev Diary, though they will only be highlighted outside the game for now! It’s possible that we’ll make some bespoke content for the ones that don’t have any in the future, though…

See the characters HERE![pdxint.at]

We're also giving away a ton of stuff left over from this year. Signed Displates, extra physical copies of the Many Roads to Power comic, and the Legends of CKIII mousepads. If you take the quiz here[www.paradoxinteractive.com] you have a chance to get one of these!

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Coming in 2025​ We’re currently hard at work on Chapter IV, and have been for quite some time. While it’s too early to give any specifics on the content, it’s safe to say that it’s likely going to be our biggest year yet! While the themes are already decided, we’re of course still interested in what you’d like to see in the game as anything you mention now can be accounted for in our future plans.

All of the expansions and features we’ve made in 2024 will allow us to do so much more going forward into 2025 and beyond. Our current philosophy is that we want to create expansions that build upon and synergise with what we’ve created previously, we want to have a logical progression of features that both make sense from a development standpoint, and match with what you are asking for!

We've seen a lot of discussions about merchants lately, now, we won't be implementing them next year, but we hear you - we have some things that we want to do first, things that will make the merchant experience stronger when it eventually comes out. In the most likely scenario a mercantile expansion will be planned for the following chapter, and this is because we're seeing the many engaging posts and conversations that you are having about this topic - as I mentioned earlier we're working in a parallel development setup which requires us to decide expansion themes very, very early. What will be in Chapter IV are all things that have been requested in the past! So keep discussing what you want to see for the future, it will help us form the content of upcoming chapters.


[Image - Automated Warfare feature coming next year, WIP screenshot]

Next year, we will also aim to have a free update sometime in the first quarter of the year (probably towards the end), which we’re stuffing with improvements, fixes, and quality-of-life features. We are, for example, looking into improving the Warfare AI in multiple ways (work on this is ongoing: we’ll see what the extent of the changes will be, so far they’re promising)! We’re also looking into improving interfaces like the Court Positions, and bringing over and improving the automated warfare feature that the console version of the game has - among many other things.


[Image - Court Position overhaul - More compact, immersive, and useful with all positions having Tasks. Numbers are WIP and from a massive late-game empire so keep that in mind]

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Outro ​
This year has been a fantastic one, and we couldn’t have done it without you in the community. We’ve released landmark features such as Plagues, the Administrative government, and Landless Adventurers - and we’re paving the way for a future that is unbelievably exciting! Truly, I see CKIII as a game with endless potential, and next year and the years beyond will see it grow to new heights, that I say with utmost confidence.

Once again I’ll invite you all to share your thoughts about the year and what you hope 2025 and beyond brings to the game. And do not worry, for even if what you wish for isn’t what we’re doing next, it might just be what we’re working on after that - you expressing your desires is what makes us able to plan for the future!

Now that’s it for this year! We’ll see you again in 2025 where we’ll be talking more about what the free update will bring. Until then, have a wonderful winter, fantastic holidays, and a very God Jul!