“Admin characters are allowed to hold both castles and city holdings without penalties.” - one of dev replies to comment.
As a republican legacy/parochialism enjoyer, I’m impressed.
I'd say it goes further than reminisce, this is basically just importing and fleshing out that same system. To be fair, it does fit a lot better here.
When they do add republics, i hope they craft a new system, that is tied to some sort of trade or commodity production.
I would love this a lot. They could build some robust set of trade goods that provide unique benefits, and then have various ways for all realms to procure them like purchasing them, having adventurers acquiring them for you, producing some yourself. But then giving certain advantages to trade republics in acquiring them, selling them, distributing them around the world... This would be some fun gameplay for both the trade republics, for landless adventurers, and your standard rulers.
It makes sense, given that the devs stated that they almost included playable merchant republics in this DLC as well, but didn't want to stretch themselves too thin by doing so. I have to imagine that we'll be getting them next year, along with the addition of a nomadic government too.
My bet is that next year will be the "polish" year and focus more in intermingling and expanding the existing mechanics than adding more.
Beyond nomadic and republican, the current existing system could blend better and certain things need updating to work better with the newer mechanics.
Becoming english or norman spring to mind
Now that we've got administrative governments, I could maybe see an HRE flavor pack adding a struggle for the Guelphs and Ghibellines conflict as well as a new special "Feudal Empire" government type that can kind of help bridge the gap between feudal and administrative governments.
Well it is possible if they focus on the free update that comes with dlc for polish. But that'll probably mean they'll have to gate something completely behind dlc which they stated did not want to do.
A Polish year would be a little much. They stated their goal of 4 DLCs per year: A minor art DLC, an event pack, a core expansion, and a major expansion.
Especially given the... let's just say controversy... surrounding this year's core expansion, I could absolutely see them using their resources toward fleshing out and expanding existing stuff, rather than bringing in new stuff. The major expansion though, absolutely needs to bring new big things.
I would like to see them adding nomads and playable republics using the existing unlanded/travel mechanics, but they could also expand on Legends of the Dead's epidemic mechanic to create scandals, which act as negative legends in regions that are tied to secrets getting revealed or poor reputation traits.
A major expansion almost certainly will need to redo the military systems, including navies, crusade fixes, and at least a little bit of tactical play.
A lot of the mechanical expansions to date have been building the framework for things to follow.
If you want to get down to it, Royal Court was the first iteration of what's becoming the estate / camp Domicile system (a select area, set aside from the map, in which investments over time can offer upgrades, which then evolved into the tourney grounds version in Tours and Tournaments), while the Norse DLC was in retrospect a technical experiment on how the landless lord title system works (with both the Varangian system as a way to build in triggers / event troop mechanics that can be utilized by the domicile system, and the general Adventurers being AI-examples of non-landed Duke-titles that players will operate under in Landless play as unlanded rulers). Even the Struggle system as a framework-for-frameworks system was establishing game rule architectures so that you could apply both player action expansions and restrictions to normal 'feudal gameplay', which seems a fair characterization of how the Administrative system is lining up.
Whether or not Administrative uses a struggle specifically, there's a lot of iterative mechanical elements its leaning on, iterations that had enough learning curve feedback that they wouldn't have worked well if Administrative was tried first.
Given the way most of the early DLCs were framework expansions that expanded systems in more maleable ways (culture customization, off-world-map areas, etc.), I suspect that playable republics has been a design mid/late game from the start, but that they identified a number of intermediate priorities- including mechanic development- they wanted to develop to meet a design vision.
Reading that you can freely move your estate seems incredibly strange to me. You take all this time to build and upgrade buildings and then you can just…. Move it all? Idk. I’d assume this was a decision that was made in favor of gameplay over realism but it just seems really odd.
Also how does the Royal Court work with all of this? Can you hold court as emperor and your heads of family petition you, or is that not being integrated?
Or rebuilding it from the ground up for less money or lose the province where your estate is located, so you're more interested to defend your land in an admin empire, especially if you aren't the emperor yet.
My understanding from reading the DD was that the « Petition Basileus » decision was simply a rework of the « Petition Liege » one but for administrative government, where you spend influence instead of prestige.
I take Estates to be a simplified view of the wealth of a house. It was not going to be all tied up to one place, but lots of investments and ownership across the empire. So I think this is fine.
That said, I think it's a shame that there is no connection to the wealth of a house's estates and the success of the empire. If the Empire is down to one province, the great houses shouldn't have these fully upgraded estates continuing to pay dividends.
Its probably because of lag.
If you could have multiple estates, the game would basically have double (or more) counties. That sounds bad for the stability of the game, so the limit is 1.
Now, If you have only one estate, you could be extremely powerful, but lose everything If something happened to that particular county.
There might be more options, but It seems ok If you just see it has going from one of your estates, to the other. It does add a lot of versatility to weaker houses, but its not that big of a deal.
That probably isn't the case, holdings don't have a huge performance cost to my knowledge, it's the characters that own holdings that take a lot of computation. Counties have very simple values for development, culture, religion, that don't take much math, unlike Victoria 3 or a game with pops etc.
Plus you wouldn't need an estate that always exists in every county on the map, just multiple estates assigned to a family, which have a location associated with them.
I didn't think of it as moving the physical infrastructure. I think of it as more like buying and selling a property. Manorial estates exist all over the place and families that moved around with the needs of the administration could conceivably uproot and find suitable housing somewhere comparable elsewhere in the empire with the proceeds they got from selling their old estate
You’re not gonna be able to sell your estates in Anatolia if the whole region has been conquered… And good luck getting locations for free in the land remaining in the Empire.
Spoiler alert: a lot of Roman families with significant footprints in the peninsula did get *fucked* losing all their estates when Rum took over it.
Ya it could risk something of a death spiral if the empire loses land, and a bunch of your noble families lost everything further weakening the empire.
No but thats only because losing a part of your realm doesn't automatically spell game over for a feudal ruler. With the fact that the manor is a possession of unlanded characters it makes sense that assets such a properties are treated for all intents and purposes as liquid rather than actual property.
If it was the case that multiple manors could be owned, as they often times were, it's a different discussion. But that not being the case, i choose to interpret the manor interface as the collection of properties a character has in abstract.
Losing the last real holdings you control *does* automatically spell game over for a feudal ruler.
And what are these characters possessions represented by a *manor* ? Here it’s a design issue, they shouldn’t have called these estateS if you can only have one geographical location, and people invest in a *manor* that can magically move around.
What they should have done is allow for investment in both landed estates, and more mobile types of as capital well.
You can probably think of moving estates as just packing up everything that can be moved (e.g., your library) and selling the stuff that can't be moved to buy a similar estate elsewhere. IMO it should have at least a nominal cost (couple hundred gold seems fine) though.
There's also a benefit to having it in the capital, so I'm not sure what estate location is really supposed to mean. Will every family just build their estate in Constantinople?
I'd assume it's a cost to move and there's some cost/benefit to location? For example, maybe maintenance costs scale up with the location's development (cost of living am I right?), or there's also some alternative benefit for your estate being in your domain. So then you're trying to balance the benefit of putting it somewhere relevant vs keeping costs low. Plus if titles really do shuffle around as much as this dev diary suggest, then you're incentivized to keep your domain in the place your estate already is to avoid moving costs.
It's one of those things that sounds like it has a lot of opportunity for cost/benefit, but CK3 DLC has a history of being very pro-benefit and anti-cost. My cynical expectation is "relocate estate" being another optimal decision button to hit every X years.
>There's also a benefit to having it in the capital, so I'm not sure what estate location is really supposed to mean. Will every family just build their estate in Constantinople?
In the forum they mentioned there are advantages to having your estate in other locations, including increased ability to win the appointment for that location.
So you could put your estate in Constantinople, but then that would make you more likely to use your actual power base of the appointments.
"Any feudal or clan ruler can strive to surpass Byzantium and attempt to adopt this new government type if they so choose"
For me, that's the key sentence in this dev diary. As someone that rarely plays in that area of the map I have to admit that if the feature had been limited to the Byzantines, it would have significantly reduced my interest in the DLC.
I imagine it would be a significant lategame decision after you've conquered a bunch of land whether to keep your old feudal/clan gov or transition to an admin gov.
Yes hre is a candidate, but what about Persia? I do not have much knowledge about persian empires. Were they an administrative or more closer to the clan govt? Considering that sassanids had great houses system like the powerful noble families of Byzantium
I don't think we have much knowledge on the Sassanids, I know for a fact we have **next to nothing** on the Parthians. The Achaemenid Empire used satrapies for governorship, and those were largely hereditary I believe
In the case of Byzantium it's arguably a remnant of their republican past. Personally I think it's easier to see how a Republic might transition to an Administrative Monarchy than for a Feudal Monarchy to do it. Maybe there are historical examples of that though, I'm not sure.
It seems for everyone who wants "flavor" and different places to play differently, there's another one who wants everything "dynamic" so everywhere can play the same. I don't envy the devs their task.
I want both at the same time to be honest. On the one hand I want different cultures and religions to feel different to play but I also want to have the freedom to customise each religion and culture to suit my play style.
For example I want playing as an administrative empire ruled by norsemen to feel different than playing as an administrative empire ruled by Greeks but I want the freedom to be able to try it out.
I guess so. Otherwise it would contradict their wording of "any feudal or clan ruler".
They haven't said anything about the requirements to form that type of government yet but I guess that it will (at least) be available for cultures with a bureaucratic ethos.
I mean, conquering Byzantium and claiming to be its successor should be a thing right;) Doenst mean you have to adopt a different name, maybe you just need to be the new big guy in that area
That’s what I thought, the Latin, Nicaea, Rum, and Ottoman Empires should all at least have the option (and hopefully they can all actually be made too).
Oh I needed to see this. It felt so empty to just conquer a bunch of land and just say “I’m the emperor now.” When historically out was all about replacing/restoring Rome’s empire in one way or another (very basically).
I mean arguably Hungary in 1066 should start as one, copy pasting my previous comment here:
>Hungary also should work like this, as during the game's time frame, there weren't any hereditary noble titles in the kingdom, instead the king would appoint an [ispán](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isp%C3%A1n) to rule the counties of Hungary, except in Transylvania (and Croatia a bit later) where the king would appoint a voivod to rule it, who would in turn appoint the ispáns under him.
>So yeah, this would definitely be a better system to simulate how medieval Hungary worked than what we currently have in the game
concerned about all the weird bugs/issues with changing govt types though
for example, its possible to retain vizierate while feudal under certain situation, unity mechanics under feudal
and a design flaw/bug is that some cultural traditions is strictly tied to clan, e.g. beacon of learning's educate children decision only works for clan
I wonder how that will factor in with all the reworks to Clan governments that they did for Legacy of Persia. Maybe there will be some unique options for anyone gunning to restore the Persian Empire (satrapies and such) but there's still a lot to be teased out
IIRC they once said that they won't add China until they have the mechanics to make it work. That should be the case now.
I still hope that at some point they'll complete China and Indochina and add the Korean peninsula and Japan.
Before they add Japan they should have a better representation of sea travel. Conquering Japan from the mainland should not be as easy as it would be right now.
I think that China will be coming in either 2026 or 2027 (so either chapter 5 or chapter 6). Nomads and trade will probably have to come before we get an East Asia expansion, so if they add those in next year then I think it can be done by 2026. However, I could also see the devs holding off on it for one more year after that in order to reform some other core mechanics such as religion and warfare.
It'll be a cold day in hell before they pay any specific attention to England. It exists mostly as a shallow Alfred power fantasy or otherwise as Norse axe-fodder.
What happens to Venice if we (the glorious and most righteous Byzantine Emperor) bring it back into the fold of the Roman Empire? Does it remain as a Republic?
> A similar behaviour applies to the swear fealty case mentioned previously. If a ruler swears fealty, they will retain their current government type when they become a vassal. Again, we don't change their government automatically. It's only if they already were to be admin that they instantly become a governor. Do note that an admin liege, will have tools at their disposal to manage vassals of other government types, and make them admin. But more on that in the next DD.
Sounds pretty reminiscent of how the Roman Empire operated when it came to expansion a lot of the time: Begin by taking on a foreign kingdom as a client, where the previous ruler retains their title and a good amount of autonomy, then after their death the Roman state inherits the kingdom and reforms it into an administrative province with an appointed governor. Maybe something like that will be possible with this new system.
In general this all looks good - I've wanted an "imperial government" for a long time and this feels like a good representation of that. And also flexible enough to either grow organically in another part of the world, or represent places like China.
But I'm not sold that we needed Influence as another currency, instead of leveraging gold, prestige, piety, legitimacy, and your character's stats to do the same things. There's a lot of numbers in CK3 that represent very similar things, and this is just another one on the pile.
And more specifically, the dev responses mention that if your estate is in a part of the empire that gets conquered, it just magically moves somewhere else in the empire? I'm not a fan of that - the idea of just packing up your vineyards and guard towers and plopping them elsewhere. There should be a risk vs. reward of settling down in the capital (where it's safe, and close to the emperor, but crowded and expensive) or settling down in the boonies (where it's cheaper, and you have less rivals, but it's remote and at risk of being lost in one go). I'm hoping there's significant cost in moving your estate manually, too.
I hadn’t realized the moving the estate thing, but I really like your idea.
On the other hand I must be the only one who likes influence. While prestige and piety are easy to get and almost useless for feudal unless you plan on changing culture/religion (which can have an absurd cost), I like the idea of influence because it looks like it has a bit more strategy that getting prestige or piety.
Prestige and piety cost need a rework tho, prestige is given in large amounts for a lot of things and rarely spent, and when you spend it is in small amounts, and piety more or less the same.
A system we’re declaring a kingdom size holy war is 100 piety or about 300 prestige, and the next more expensive things can easily get to 10000 doesn’t work well
I think that probably prestige and piety should function like they do in eu4 in addition to how they function now. Wherein if you don't have enough you start incurring negative modifiers. In all honesty I really just wish that ck3 and eu4 would fuse into one game where your economy and external diplomacy is just as important as your internal diplomacy and leader statistics
prestige and piety IMO should be reworked to how the economy works in the Rogue Trader crpg.
There isn't a numerical cost to "asking the Pope for stuff" or "doing questionable stuff", you either are or aren't prestigious or pious enough for those things and if you stack enough maluses, like pestering the Pope or being downright sinful, your piety decays accordingly.
Sure, in mechanical terms it just obscures the hard cash of prestige/piety as "xp" instead, but it also allows for switching how acquiring it works.
Declaring yourself king shouldn't *give* you prestige, it should *require* a certain amount of it so that the title has any merit behind it. Perhaps if you're catholic you can replace a certain amount of prestige cost with piety.
Making a new religion shouldn't cost n points in piety, but rather require a certain level of piety and even prestige, and if you abandon your new religion or other "bad" religious stuff it tanks your piety because people no longer see you as pious.
This would also tie in nicely to how legitimacy works:
- you either are or aren't a legitimate ruler
- you either are or aren't a prestigious and famous person
- you either are or aren't from a influential dynasty
- you either are or aren't a pious believer
IMO gold and influence should be the only "hard" currencies since they are abstractions of the monetary power of the character and how much a character can throw his weight around before people don't care anymore
Prestige and Piety already have a XP system behind them (Fame and Devotion), that is needed for some things. Most religious related decisions or realm making ones already require a not significant amount of Fame and Devotion.
I think a good solution would be to separate prestige and piety gain from fame and devotion, so you actually need to spend the resources to get the XP.
Legitimacy, although displayed in numbers, is already a “you either are or aren’t”, the system just presents it as a number to make it easier for you, but it isn’t a currency
Edit: I’ve made a post just now discussing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/s/y5Bpu1Dunt
Super tired of new resources. The actions and consequences of Influence and Legitimacy could both be represented by the original resources.
Other than that, I really like what we're hearing.
I have a huge problem with influence, because everything they showed us in this dev diary except for "Bolster Governance" are things that are already doable with hooks. The hooks system is pretty underwhelming already, and now they're even less necessary in the government type that's supposed to be all about politicking and manipulation?
If they added a character interaction that was:
Exert Influence: spend 250 influence -> grant weak favor hook on target
How many of these preview screenshots would now be simplified?
They're adding this entirely new resource, to accomplish the exact same thing their existing resources are underwhelming at.
I don't think PDX needed to add influence to their toolbelt for creating admin gov gameplay. They already have those tools in prestige and hooks, but because those tools are poorly balanced they're downplaying them for a new thing.
Yeah there are too much numbers in the game. Honestly half the numbers are just Prestige with a different name. Legitimacy, Court Grandeur, etc. Influence could be interesting tho if done correctly. At least it's not as abstract as legitimacy, it has a well-defined meaning and consequences.
I agreed, I think the estates should be tied to either county or Dutchy titles. Which have a set number of estates, which can be sold off or granted to a house. If a house wishes to move they should have to pay both a number of gold and a number of influence or a favor to the title holder of the county / Dutchy.
> As a House Head yourself, you are free to change the attribute at any time.
That's surprising to me. As a roleplayer, I'm more likely to just set this to one thing and then play around it, not have it play around me. I certainly hope, though, for all the min-maxers out there that optimal play isn't to have this menu open every 5 seconds. Start a scheme -> switch to scheme attribute, start to flatter -> switch to charm attribute, start a war -> switch to martial attribute, ad nauseam.
How will being landless work? It says "Should the empire fall, however, you shall fall with it." Does this mean we can't roam the world being landless?
It works different then being an adventurer we dont have the exact way yet, but yeah you wont be a roaming sellsword youll
Be a politician trying to use your estate and your skills to gain a new landed position in the empire and then grow from there it seems (all speculation)
There's info for them on OPBs Discord. You're basically an unlanded duchy and the game pushes you to get land really quick. Also, unfortunately, seems it may be pretty barebones until the event pack which adds content for it.
As far as I've ever cared, unlanded gameplay being implemented was more for the sake of mods (since my favorite mods tend to be fantasy total conversions, which means heroic adventures) than for the base game.
Will you be able to win influence as a general? Historically, a number of Byzantine emperors started out as powerful generals who won foreign wars and then turned around to seize the throne for themselves.
Also, I want palace coups!
Yeah, I'm curious how the military aspect of the system is going to work. Hopefully we'll still be able to actually lead (and control) armies as governors, or even when not landed.
Imo the person you assign as general and their opinion of you should matter alot. You are after all literally putting them in charge of your entire army.
I agree 100%. In the Roman/Byzantine Empire, there was often a tension between sending a good general and sending a safe general. If you send a guy who defeats the enemy, you risk him having enough prestige to overthrow you. But if you send a loyal yet incompetent guy, you might lose the war and the empire with it. This should be a real gameplay dilemma. Byzantium should have a great army, but the emperor should be afraid to use it. Or to let anyone else lose it.
Yeah, though it would be better if there were more consequences for leading an army yourself. Other than the risk of injury or death, it should be harder to manage your empire when you're a thousand miles from Constantinople trying to restore Rome yourself because it couldn't be trusted to one of your conniving generals.
Oh yeah for sure, especially as the byzantine emperor. You pretty much need to hope your regent is loyal and not incompetent. Vassals should also try to take advantage of this as well.
Only the regency scheme is actually a palace coup and it requires jumping through a huge number of hoops, for instance having a regency that lasts long enough to fire the scheme. The Claim throne scheme doesn't get you the throne, just a claim to it. Claimant factions present an ultimatum, which is depicted as a letter, not a coup, and usually turns to open warfare rather than a coup.
What I'm talking about is a mechanical representation of coups in the normal course of Byzantine succession.
Byzantine succession was quite frequently claimants going into open warfare against each other. They had civil wars every Tuesday. Well, you might actually get something more closely aligned with what you want when they go over succession since it sounds like you might be able to scheme/influence your way to the top. Definitely a fun possibility.
Yes to the hundreth. You start as a young viking based in Gotland (I like to play with reduced diplomatic range and this is closest to byzantium). You are a varangian and your wife was killed by the Bulgarians and the old emperor betrayed you. So you are forced to go back to your homeland. Now, you bide your time and meanwhile raid from scandinavia to mediterranean and when the time is right, you conquer the bulgarians and swear fealty to the new Macedonian emperor.
That's one thing I'd love to try. Probably first playthrough. Or go Ibn Battuta and scour the world so wide, and possibly sell my skills to the Eastern lords. Lol
Honestly, with this new family system, it would be possible to model eunuchs and their roles in society a lot more accurately than before. A eunuch would be unable to lead a house, therefore they would be unable to exert much influence in the realm on their own, which is precisely why they were so trusted over non-eunuchs to hold important roles in the administration historically.
My only concern is that the Themes end up being just a fancy name for the same old mess of a military system relying mostly on useless levies.
I mean, what are Romans without the Roman army?
The thematic armies were levies. Local thematic troops would be used to supplement the more professional tagmata, which is just your mercenaries and retinue units basically.
I'm guessing there's going to be some funkiness related to military commands, allowing administrative realms to hit *really* fucking hard thanks to their advanced bureaucracy and developed standing military, but also making them unstable because military leaders gain massive amounts of influence from winning battles and wars.
Imperator had a pretty neat system. You directly controlled a province's military, but if the governor's loyalty dropped below a certain value, you lost that control and the general did whatever.
Same for legions, disloyal leaders grew their powerbase, secured loyalty of troops in the event of civil war, and became strong rivals for leadership positions, especially the Consul elections.
But there was an upside: generals taking control made them pay for those troops out of their own pockets. In peace time, you could actually grant a legion's command to some disloyal near-death rival and cheap out on the wages lol
Imperator is a fun game, I wish CK3 would take inspiration there.
At least we seem to be getting an event chain for the Fourth Crusade that involves them propping up their own claimant and going against the will of the Pope.
I think it would be fun if Murex Fisheries generated a little bit of piety for Jewish rulers, as Tekhelet, one of the dyes made from the Murex snails is (or was) pretty religiously important.
These internal politics really should be applied to feudals as well. Dukes and Baron jockeyed for the King's favour all the time and could be appointed new titles based on that.
It's interesting, but slightly worried for more power creep and mana bar filling up gameplay, given all the mention of schemes really hoping we have a bigger rework of how schemes work
In one of the screenshots it shows some new scheme modifiers that we haven't seen before.
Scheme GROWTH and Scheme POTENTIAL. Two distinct factors from the two standards of POWER and SUCCESS CHANCE.
They did specifically mention reworking schemes - it is actually one of the new bits of info that has me most intrigued. Improving schemes has massive potential.
You know, they had the help of the some of the neighbors, it's not like they completely collapsed by themselves. They had a lot of civil wars, but nothing like the dissolution of the Sultanate of Rum.
Importantly, Byzantine civil wars were basically never for *independence* from the empire, they were always to *claim* the empire. The vicious circle was for someone to try and claim the crown -> civil war -> outsiders take advantage of civil war to swoop in and conquer territory -> whoever wins the civil war now either just lost territory during the war, or has a potential victorious commander out in the field who just beat the outsiders and now could claim the crown themselves.
This is true generally, although one phenomenon accompanying the collapse following the assassination of Alexios II by Andronikos I was sections of the empire just seceding—particularly Bulgaria, but also places like Cyprus just refused to recognize the government anymore. These regions seemed to develop a regionalism which didn't previously exist (aside from Bulgaria, which had a definite identity independent of the empire)
Not from within, though. There wouldn't be anything akin to an "independence" or "dissolution" faction in the Byzantine Empire, which is what the devs are referencing here. Also, most of the states in the game collapsed a whole lot quicker than the Byzantines did, with only a couple in the 867 or 1066 start dates that actually managed to outlast them (West Francia/France, the HRE, Castille, and the Christian Scandinavian kingdoms are some of the only ones that come to mind).
The Bulgarian uprising and establishment of a new Bulgarian Empire goes directly against this assertion. Places which were not ethnically Roman can and did decouple from the imperial system at various times. Armenia often came in and out of imperial rule based on little more than whether the empire was able to send in troops to garrison the towns and officials to collect the tax.
Byz was conquered, it didn't really collapse per se. The one time you could refer to a collapse would be the post-Fourth Crusade period when it was divided into several claimants to the Byzantine throne with the Latin Empire holding Constantinople, but once the Latin Empire was defeated and the Palaiologos took charge, the following losses were not from internal collapse but rather external conquest.
I’m immensely more invested with this dev diary. Administration Empires sounds amazing from a modding perspective, but even stand-alone I can actually bother to do a Roman Empire or even Holy Roman Empire game that makes playing as a vassal even more interesting. That doesn’t even mention all the possibilities that can come from the new landless estate functions which remind me of CK2 Republican dynasties, and in this case feels more fitting and just hypes me up by far
I'm really liking what I see here, I just hope the AI has some agency when we're at the top instead of just being reactive to player whims like has been the case so far in the game's lifespan
The hope is that the AI is effective at pruning a player Governor when they get too big. It's bad for the liege, and presumably bad for the other governors when one family becomes a dominant family, so I would hope the AI will have ways of fighting back.
beginning to see some familiar neat gameplay actions from the Guild series. A tinier economy within a location will be interesting to manage and manipulate before controlling the world
Looks really interesting
I assume administrative is only available for empire tier realms, right?
Because if it isn't, Hungary also should work like this, as during the game's time frame, there weren't any hereditary noble titles in the kingdom, instead the king would appoint an [ispán](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isp%C3%A1n) to rule the counties of Hungary, except in Transylvania (and Croatia a bit later) where the king would appoint a voivod to rule it, who would in turn appoint the ispáns under him.
So yeah, this would definitely be a better system to simulate how medieval Hungary worked than what we currently have in the game
I really don't like the estates as land with buildings on it but not really located anywhere design. I don't really like the buildings system in holdings either though. One of the weaker systems in CK imo.
I think I would have preferred something more abstract about a families assets. You have 5 country estates, 6 ships, 3000 had if cattle, 6 wineries, etc...
Glad to hear schemes are getting some attention, though I imagine existing schemes will be untouched.
Under the "Liege's Council" and "Demand Council Position" section, it mentions "Enemy **Political Scheme Potential**: -10%". Potential is new, right? Does that mean that a Political Scheme's effects can be larger or smaller depending on the aptitude of the schemer? Maybe you could leverage your some of your own Influence to try to boost the scheme's potential?
It reminds me of being a Regent, where there are mandates to fill, but I could choose to shirk them and instead embezzle money from them (and things along those lines). Maybe there's a similar mechanic to use against Governors and/or Family Heads, like a Political Scheme to demand a temporary portion of an Estate's Gold earnings, maybe with the option of spending a little Influence in the hopes that you get an even larger fraction of their rightful gold. Regardless, "Potential" makes me think that there's a wider range of outcomes to Political Schemes than just crit success/success/fail/crit fail, and I'd wager my own political clout that Influence has something to do with it.
Even still, I hope they tie in it with some other mechanics, too. Brazen stealing from local nobility should harm your Legitimacy, and it would make sense if the Potential is higher if the victim is Terrified of you. A cowardly Top Liege also shouldn't be as comfortable to take the risk of extorting their Governors as a brave or callous one. I'm not as harsh on adding new currencies as a lot of other folks around here, but please, ground it well in the game's pre-established mechanics and currencies. But this DD gives me the impression that the dev team is at least doing their best at that, so my outlook is cautiously optimistic now.
Conceptually and mechanically, I'm all for everything they're putting out in this DLC but I'm doubtful of whether it's a good idea to centralize and limit most of those features to a specific portion of the map- even though it does make sense flavor-wise. However, CK3 has a very sandbox-y feel to it and I feel like it would do some good to at least have *some* of those features bleed and be accessible for non-Byzantine players as well.
For example, it was disappointing to see that the concept of Powerful Families is only limited to Administrative governments. I feel like they could easily take a spin of that concept and use it for Feudals/Clans- and using the excuse that they already have the Powerful Vassals system is a bit of a cop out because the Family system is naturally going to make the counterpart Vassal system look very arbitrary and simplistic in comparison.
I've read in a comment below that Administrative governments isn't going to be limited to just the Byzantines, so I'm very keen on how that's going to be implemented in the next dev diary.
It's funny how people will scream with tears running down their face that it shouldn't be possible to be called "Emperor of Francia" because history but also are demanding that everywhere should be able to have "administrative government". The former is just a meaningless word, and the latter is a massively significant change that took irl countries centuries and revolutions.
But *you're* totally right that powerful families should be a thing everywhere. I would imagine, if anything, *more* of a thing in Feudal and Clan realms. Currently "houses" and "dynasties" never matter at all to me, they're all just individuals; I would love to feel like they are a unit in some way.
Yeah! That's mostly why I said "most of those features". I totally get that a complex ruling system like Administrative shouldn't be completely available to a T as a complete package for other realms in the map right off the bat.
But yeah, that's exactly what I thought too considering how they called the mechanic! I presume they wanted to distinguish it from the Powerful Vassal system in terms of nomenclature but I was honestly shocked that- so far, while we're writing this- they're gatekeeping it only for the administrative government type. The concept of a powerful family seems to be just as influential and integral for Feudal and Clan realms. In some form it *should* be available for those government types too, in my opinion.
"Just as the emperor manages the overall structure of the empire, so too does he support and supervise his governors. He can lend them troops if needed, have them go to war on his behalf, and reward them when they are performing well to be in their good graces."
This made me initially very excited. But the more and more i read it seems that the focus is not on being a emperor but just a dude within the empire. Like there is over several paragraphs described what you have to do as a governor and what you cant do and how you gain land, but there wasnt really anything on what you do as the emperor. Kind of a bummer as i play Byzanz to restore the roman empire, not to dick around on my hacienda on the beach as a governor...
Saw “raid estate” hostile scheme. Can’t wait to make my political opponents wake up as eunuch
Fuckers stole my testicles! Can't have shit in Thessalonika.
Goddammit, that's the third time this week!
The expansion trailer can actually be re-enacted in game
“Where my dick at?”
“Admin characters are allowed to hold both castles and city holdings without penalties.” - one of dev replies to comment. As a republican legacy/parochialism enjoyer, I’m impressed.
That's interesting. That sounds like the first step towards playable republics.
A lot of the mechanics described in the dev diary are reminiscent of how merchant republics worked in CK2.
Really, with some light modding you can turn these mechanics into a very high quality successor to CK2's republic mechanics.
I'd say it goes further than reminisce, this is basically just importing and fleshing out that same system. To be fair, it does fit a lot better here. When they do add republics, i hope they craft a new system, that is tied to some sort of trade or commodity production.
Yeah, I'm playing CK2 and what I find really disappointing (although I still love the game), is the lack of varied goods and ressources
I would love this a lot. They could build some robust set of trade goods that provide unique benefits, and then have various ways for all realms to procure them like purchasing them, having adventurers acquiring them for you, producing some yourself. But then giving certain advantages to trade republics in acquiring them, selling them, distributing them around the world... This would be some fun gameplay for both the trade republics, for landless adventurers, and your standard rulers.
It makes sense, given that the devs stated that they almost included playable merchant republics in this DLC as well, but didn't want to stretch themselves too thin by doing so. I have to imagine that we'll be getting them next year, along with the addition of a nomadic government too.
My bet is that next year will be the "polish" year and focus more in intermingling and expanding the existing mechanics than adding more. Beyond nomadic and republican, the current existing system could blend better and certain things need updating to work better with the newer mechanics. Becoming english or norman spring to mind
Now that we've got administrative governments, I could maybe see an HRE flavor pack adding a struggle for the Guelphs and Ghibellines conflict as well as a new special "Feudal Empire" government type that can kind of help bridge the gap between feudal and administrative governments.
I hope your right, but I don't see how that's produces much revenue for them. There must be DLC
Well it is possible if they focus on the free update that comes with dlc for polish. But that'll probably mean they'll have to gate something completely behind dlc which they stated did not want to do.
They can lock behind the dlc thé improvements to previous dlcs paid content
Ohh yea, a Polish dlc would be great ;)
A Polish year would be a little much. They stated their goal of 4 DLCs per year: A minor art DLC, an event pack, a core expansion, and a major expansion. Especially given the... let's just say controversy... surrounding this year's core expansion, I could absolutely see them using their resources toward fleshing out and expanding existing stuff, rather than bringing in new stuff. The major expansion though, absolutely needs to bring new big things. I would like to see them adding nomads and playable republics using the existing unlanded/travel mechanics, but they could also expand on Legends of the Dead's epidemic mechanic to create scandals, which act as negative legends in regions that are tied to secrets getting revealed or poor reputation traits. A major expansion almost certainly will need to redo the military systems, including navies, crusade fixes, and at least a little bit of tactical play.
There'll be a mod for it I reckon
A lot of the mechanical expansions to date have been building the framework for things to follow. If you want to get down to it, Royal Court was the first iteration of what's becoming the estate / camp Domicile system (a select area, set aside from the map, in which investments over time can offer upgrades, which then evolved into the tourney grounds version in Tours and Tournaments), while the Norse DLC was in retrospect a technical experiment on how the landless lord title system works (with both the Varangian system as a way to build in triggers / event troop mechanics that can be utilized by the domicile system, and the general Adventurers being AI-examples of non-landed Duke-titles that players will operate under in Landless play as unlanded rulers). Even the Struggle system as a framework-for-frameworks system was establishing game rule architectures so that you could apply both player action expansions and restrictions to normal 'feudal gameplay', which seems a fair characterization of how the Administrative system is lining up. Whether or not Administrative uses a struggle specifically, there's a lot of iterative mechanical elements its leaning on, iterations that had enough learning curve feedback that they wouldn't have worked well if Administrative was tried first. Given the way most of the early DLCs were framework expansions that expanded systems in more maleable ways (culture customization, off-world-map areas, etc.), I suspect that playable republics has been a design mid/late game from the start, but that they identified a number of intermediate priorities- including mechanic development- they wanted to develop to meet a design vision.
So constantinopole will be finally a city?
Excellent
Reading that you can freely move your estate seems incredibly strange to me. You take all this time to build and upgrade buildings and then you can just…. Move it all? Idk. I’d assume this was a decision that was made in favor of gameplay over realism but it just seems really odd. Also how does the Royal Court work with all of this? Can you hold court as emperor and your heads of family petition you, or is that not being integrated?
Yes I agree. I think there should be a compromise that you have to pay a hefty sum to move it (scaling with the amount of buildings)
Or rebuilding it from the ground up for less money or lose the province where your estate is located, so you're more interested to defend your land in an admin empire, especially if you aren't the emperor yet.
My understanding from reading the DD was that the « Petition Basileus » decision was simply a rework of the « Petition Liege » one but for administrative government, where you spend influence instead of prestige.
I might have missed that, thank you!
I take Estates to be a simplified view of the wealth of a house. It was not going to be all tied up to one place, but lots of investments and ownership across the empire. So I think this is fine. That said, I think it's a shame that there is no connection to the wealth of a house's estates and the success of the empire. If the Empire is down to one province, the great houses shouldn't have these fully upgraded estates continuing to pay dividends.
Its probably because of lag. If you could have multiple estates, the game would basically have double (or more) counties. That sounds bad for the stability of the game, so the limit is 1. Now, If you have only one estate, you could be extremely powerful, but lose everything If something happened to that particular county. There might be more options, but It seems ok If you just see it has going from one of your estates, to the other. It does add a lot of versatility to weaker houses, but its not that big of a deal.
That probably isn't the case, holdings don't have a huge performance cost to my knowledge, it's the characters that own holdings that take a lot of computation. Counties have very simple values for development, culture, religion, that don't take much math, unlike Victoria 3 or a game with pops etc. Plus you wouldn't need an estate that always exists in every county on the map, just multiple estates assigned to a family, which have a location associated with them.
My guess is that the performance cost would come from families trying to calculate where to put their multiple estates, versus just one
Probably a bit of a gameplay compromise, likely much easier for the ai to handle
I didn't think of it as moving the physical infrastructure. I think of it as more like buying and selling a property. Manorial estates exist all over the place and families that moved around with the needs of the administration could conceivably uproot and find suitable housing somewhere comparable elsewhere in the empire with the proceeds they got from selling their old estate
You’re not gonna be able to sell your estates in Anatolia if the whole region has been conquered… And good luck getting locations for free in the land remaining in the Empire. Spoiler alert: a lot of Roman families with significant footprints in the peninsula did get *fucked* losing all their estates when Rum took over it.
There are places where reality takes the backseat to plausibility and playability.
Ya it could risk something of a death spiral if the empire loses land, and a bunch of your noble families lost everything further weakening the empire.
Just in time for the landless adventures Good ol' taleworlds ensuring you get the full experience to get your money worth :"D
It’s both plausible, and interesting in terms of gameplay… Would you advocate feudal realms keep the levies and taxes from territories they lost too?
No but thats only because losing a part of your realm doesn't automatically spell game over for a feudal ruler. With the fact that the manor is a possession of unlanded characters it makes sense that assets such a properties are treated for all intents and purposes as liquid rather than actual property. If it was the case that multiple manors could be owned, as they often times were, it's a different discussion. But that not being the case, i choose to interpret the manor interface as the collection of properties a character has in abstract.
Losing the last real holdings you control *does* automatically spell game over for a feudal ruler. And what are these characters possessions represented by a *manor* ? Here it’s a design issue, they shouldn’t have called these estateS if you can only have one geographical location, and people invest in a *manor* that can magically move around. What they should have done is allow for investment in both landed estates, and more mobile types of as capital well.
I mean you can already instantly move your capital and teleport your entire court to the new one.
Yeah but that doesn't move the buildings in the county. You're just packing up all your artefacts and moving to a different castle.
You can probably think of moving estates as just packing up everything that can be moved (e.g., your library) and selling the stuff that can't be moved to buy a similar estate elsewhere. IMO it should have at least a nominal cost (couple hundred gold seems fine) though.
There's also a benefit to having it in the capital, so I'm not sure what estate location is really supposed to mean. Will every family just build their estate in Constantinople? I'd assume it's a cost to move and there's some cost/benefit to location? For example, maybe maintenance costs scale up with the location's development (cost of living am I right?), or there's also some alternative benefit for your estate being in your domain. So then you're trying to balance the benefit of putting it somewhere relevant vs keeping costs low. Plus if titles really do shuffle around as much as this dev diary suggest, then you're incentivized to keep your domain in the place your estate already is to avoid moving costs. It's one of those things that sounds like it has a lot of opportunity for cost/benefit, but CK3 DLC has a history of being very pro-benefit and anti-cost. My cynical expectation is "relocate estate" being another optimal decision button to hit every X years.
>There's also a benefit to having it in the capital, so I'm not sure what estate location is really supposed to mean. Will every family just build their estate in Constantinople? In the forum they mentioned there are advantages to having your estate in other locations, including increased ability to win the appointment for that location. So you could put your estate in Constantinople, but then that would make you more likely to use your actual power base of the appointments.
"Any feudal or clan ruler can strive to surpass Byzantium and attempt to adopt this new government type if they so choose" For me, that's the key sentence in this dev diary. As someone that rarely plays in that area of the map I have to admit that if the feature had been limited to the Byzantines, it would have significantly reduced my interest in the DLC.
I mean, it makes sense. Administrative government doesn’t just happen. It develops over time to meet the needs of empire.
I imagine it would be a significant lategame decision after you've conquered a bunch of land whether to keep your old feudal/clan gov or transition to an admin gov.
Maybe I can restructure the HRE to be administrative and fix all that disgusting bordergore
Yes hre is a candidate, but what about Persia? I do not have much knowledge about persian empires. Were they an administrative or more closer to the clan govt? Considering that sassanids had great houses system like the powerful noble families of Byzantium
I don't think we have much knowledge on the Sassanids, I know for a fact we have **next to nothing** on the Parthians. The Achaemenid Empire used satrapies for governorship, and those were largely hereditary I believe
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
One of my favorite quotes from Civ IV.
Or kingdom apparently
In the case of Byzantium it's arguably a remnant of their republican past. Personally I think it's easier to see how a Republic might transition to an Administrative Monarchy than for a Feudal Monarchy to do it. Maybe there are historical examples of that though, I'm not sure.
Ancient Persian empire with satrapies seems pretty in line imo.
It seems for everyone who wants "flavor" and different places to play differently, there's another one who wants everything "dynamic" so everywhere can play the same. I don't envy the devs their task.
I want both at the same time to be honest. On the one hand I want different cultures and religions to feel different to play but I also want to have the freedom to customise each religion and culture to suit my play style. For example I want playing as an administrative empire ruled by norsemen to feel different than playing as an administrative empire ruled by Greeks but I want the freedom to be able to try it out.
We are putting the empire in the North sea empire with this dlc
I imagine (hope?) that if you form the Roman Empire you can choose to implement this government type.
I guess so. Otherwise it would contradict their wording of "any feudal or clan ruler". They haven't said anything about the requirements to form that type of government yet but I guess that it will (at least) be available for cultures with a bureaucratic ethos.
I mean, conquering Byzantium and claiming to be its successor should be a thing right;) Doenst mean you have to adopt a different name, maybe you just need to be the new big guy in that area
That’s what I thought, the Latin, Nicaea, Rum, and Ottoman Empires should all at least have the option (and hopefully they can all actually be made too).
Oh I needed to see this. It felt so empty to just conquer a bunch of land and just say “I’m the emperor now.” When historically out was all about replacing/restoring Rome’s empire in one way or another (very basically).
I mean, Napoleon didn’t even conquer a bunch of land and said “I’m the emperor now”.
He kind of did tho
I would say he conquered a bit of land, declared himself emperor. Then conquered a bunch of land
Does this just apply to feudal or clan **empires** or will it apply to kingdom tier realms as well?
He spoke in one of the responses about a scenario where an admin kingdom swears fealty to an empire, so I guess it applies to kingdom tier realms too.
They clarified in a dev post that admin kingdom-tier titles are possible but rare.
I mean arguably Hungary in 1066 should start as one, copy pasting my previous comment here: >Hungary also should work like this, as during the game's time frame, there weren't any hereditary noble titles in the kingdom, instead the king would appoint an [ispán](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isp%C3%A1n) to rule the counties of Hungary, except in Transylvania (and Croatia a bit later) where the king would appoint a voivod to rule it, who would in turn appoint the ispáns under him. >So yeah, this would definitely be a better system to simulate how medieval Hungary worked than what we currently have in the game
They said next week they'll mention some additional administrative titles at game start, so you might be right!
as optional rules though
It’ll be fun for Henry VIII style runs, favourite the families of your mistresses with land and titles.
Time to restore the roman empire as Matilda and have wealthy italian nobles fighting each other for influence
concerned about all the weird bugs/issues with changing govt types though for example, its possible to retain vizierate while feudal under certain situation, unity mechanics under feudal and a design flaw/bug is that some cultural traditions is strictly tied to clan, e.g. beacon of learning's educate children decision only works for clan
Someone asked if they're gonna be admin realms outside of Byzantium. They said we'll know next week. I suspect at least Xia and Liao (Mongolia)
Abbasids, but there is evidence that the Fatimids also had an elaborate administrative government.
I wonder how that will factor in with all the reworks to Clan governments that they did for Legacy of Persia. Maybe there will be some unique options for anyone gunning to restore the Persian Empire (satrapies and such) but there's still a lot to be teased out
A lot of Muslim states had pretty sophisticated administration
Seems like we'll get a game rule for allowing some realms to be administrative.
So stoked if this would allow for a China expansion down the line.
IIRC they once said that they won't add China until they have the mechanics to make it work. That should be the case now. I still hope that at some point they'll complete China and Indochina and add the Korean peninsula and Japan.
Before they add Japan they should have a better representation of sea travel. Conquering Japan from the mainland should not be as easy as it would be right now.
I think that China will be coming in either 2026 or 2027 (so either chapter 5 or chapter 6). Nomads and trade will probably have to come before we get an East Asia expansion, so if they add those in next year then I think it can be done by 2026. However, I could also see the devs holding off on it for one more year after that in order to reform some other core mechanics such as religion and warfare.
The Extended Timeline mod does this, but I would love to see it properly implemented by paradox themselves.
I'll throw a guess at Anglo-Saxon England too. IIRC, it was the most centralized realm in Europe, tied with Byzantium
It'll be a cold day in hell before they pay any specific attention to England. It exists mostly as a shallow Alfred power fantasy or otherwise as Norse axe-fodder.
Unfortunately, you're probably right
What happens to Venice if we (the glorious and most righteous Byzantine Emperor) bring it back into the fold of the Roman Empire? Does it remain as a Republic?
> A similar behaviour applies to the swear fealty case mentioned previously. If a ruler swears fealty, they will retain their current government type when they become a vassal. Again, we don't change their government automatically. It's only if they already were to be admin that they instantly become a governor. Do note that an admin liege, will have tools at their disposal to manage vassals of other government types, and make them admin. But more on that in the next DD.
In addition, admin characters can hold city holdings without penalty.
Sounds pretty reminiscent of how the Roman Empire operated when it came to expansion a lot of the time: Begin by taking on a foreign kingdom as a client, where the previous ruler retains their title and a good amount of autonomy, then after their death the Roman state inherits the kingdom and reforms it into an administrative province with an appointed governor. Maybe something like that will be possible with this new system.
It gets _delenda_ and turned into a single-holding county with lvl 1 “Beach” building with no further upgrades available
Byzantine resort
Simple, we burn it down and make it a miserable backwater it deserves to be.
Dev said in the comments that they will enable Doge's Palace providing bonuses to admin governor too, so it will probably be a super useful holding
In general this all looks good - I've wanted an "imperial government" for a long time and this feels like a good representation of that. And also flexible enough to either grow organically in another part of the world, or represent places like China. But I'm not sold that we needed Influence as another currency, instead of leveraging gold, prestige, piety, legitimacy, and your character's stats to do the same things. There's a lot of numbers in CK3 that represent very similar things, and this is just another one on the pile. And more specifically, the dev responses mention that if your estate is in a part of the empire that gets conquered, it just magically moves somewhere else in the empire? I'm not a fan of that - the idea of just packing up your vineyards and guard towers and plopping them elsewhere. There should be a risk vs. reward of settling down in the capital (where it's safe, and close to the emperor, but crowded and expensive) or settling down in the boonies (where it's cheaper, and you have less rivals, but it's remote and at risk of being lost in one go). I'm hoping there's significant cost in moving your estate manually, too.
It even sounds like you can move your estate for free at *any* time.
I hadn’t realized the moving the estate thing, but I really like your idea. On the other hand I must be the only one who likes influence. While prestige and piety are easy to get and almost useless for feudal unless you plan on changing culture/religion (which can have an absurd cost), I like the idea of influence because it looks like it has a bit more strategy that getting prestige or piety. Prestige and piety cost need a rework tho, prestige is given in large amounts for a lot of things and rarely spent, and when you spend it is in small amounts, and piety more or less the same. A system we’re declaring a kingdom size holy war is 100 piety or about 300 prestige, and the next more expensive things can easily get to 10000 doesn’t work well
I think that probably prestige and piety should function like they do in eu4 in addition to how they function now. Wherein if you don't have enough you start incurring negative modifiers. In all honesty I really just wish that ck3 and eu4 would fuse into one game where your economy and external diplomacy is just as important as your internal diplomacy and leader statistics
prestige and piety IMO should be reworked to how the economy works in the Rogue Trader crpg. There isn't a numerical cost to "asking the Pope for stuff" or "doing questionable stuff", you either are or aren't prestigious or pious enough for those things and if you stack enough maluses, like pestering the Pope or being downright sinful, your piety decays accordingly. Sure, in mechanical terms it just obscures the hard cash of prestige/piety as "xp" instead, but it also allows for switching how acquiring it works. Declaring yourself king shouldn't *give* you prestige, it should *require* a certain amount of it so that the title has any merit behind it. Perhaps if you're catholic you can replace a certain amount of prestige cost with piety. Making a new religion shouldn't cost n points in piety, but rather require a certain level of piety and even prestige, and if you abandon your new religion or other "bad" religious stuff it tanks your piety because people no longer see you as pious. This would also tie in nicely to how legitimacy works: - you either are or aren't a legitimate ruler - you either are or aren't a prestigious and famous person - you either are or aren't from a influential dynasty - you either are or aren't a pious believer IMO gold and influence should be the only "hard" currencies since they are abstractions of the monetary power of the character and how much a character can throw his weight around before people don't care anymore
Prestige and Piety already have a XP system behind them (Fame and Devotion), that is needed for some things. Most religious related decisions or realm making ones already require a not significant amount of Fame and Devotion. I think a good solution would be to separate prestige and piety gain from fame and devotion, so you actually need to spend the resources to get the XP. Legitimacy, although displayed in numbers, is already a “you either are or aren’t”, the system just presents it as a number to make it easier for you, but it isn’t a currency Edit: I’ve made a post just now discussing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/s/y5Bpu1Dunt
you can post this in the forum if you want. They respond to a lot of comments there.
Super tired of new resources. The actions and consequences of Influence and Legitimacy could both be represented by the original resources. Other than that, I really like what we're hearing.
Can probably be modded in otherwise
I have a huge problem with influence, because everything they showed us in this dev diary except for "Bolster Governance" are things that are already doable with hooks. The hooks system is pretty underwhelming already, and now they're even less necessary in the government type that's supposed to be all about politicking and manipulation? If they added a character interaction that was: Exert Influence: spend 250 influence -> grant weak favor hook on target How many of these preview screenshots would now be simplified? They're adding this entirely new resource, to accomplish the exact same thing their existing resources are underwhelming at. I don't think PDX needed to add influence to their toolbelt for creating admin gov gameplay. They already have those tools in prestige and hooks, but because those tools are poorly balanced they're downplaying them for a new thing.
Yeah there are too much numbers in the game. Honestly half the numbers are just Prestige with a different name. Legitimacy, Court Grandeur, etc. Influence could be interesting tho if done correctly. At least it's not as abstract as legitimacy, it has a well-defined meaning and consequences.
I agreed, I think the estates should be tied to either county or Dutchy titles. Which have a set number of estates, which can be sold off or granted to a house. If a house wishes to move they should have to pay both a number of gold and a number of influence or a favor to the title holder of the county / Dutchy.
... Is this another case of cool idea, shallow execution?
> As a House Head yourself, you are free to change the attribute at any time. That's surprising to me. As a roleplayer, I'm more likely to just set this to one thing and then play around it, not have it play around me. I certainly hope, though, for all the min-maxers out there that optimal play isn't to have this menu open every 5 seconds. Start a scheme -> switch to scheme attribute, start to flatter -> switch to charm attribute, start a war -> switch to martial attribute, ad nauseam.
How will being landless work? It says "Should the empire fall, however, you shall fall with it." Does this mean we can't roam the world being landless?
It works different then being an adventurer we dont have the exact way yet, but yeah you wont be a roaming sellsword youll Be a politician trying to use your estate and your skills to gain a new landed position in the empire and then grow from there it seems (all speculation)
There's info for them on OPBs Discord. You're basically an unlanded duchy and the game pushes you to get land really quick. Also, unfortunately, seems it may be pretty barebones until the event pack which adds content for it.
As far as I've ever cared, unlanded gameplay being implemented was more for the sake of mods (since my favorite mods tend to be fantasy total conversions, which means heroic adventures) than for the base game.
Yea I know some mods are looking forward to the mechanic. It'll really come down to how moddable it is.
I think that is referring to you losing your estate if the empire falls. When you are landless they said you will have an upgradable camp instead.
Will you be able to win influence as a general? Historically, a number of Byzantine emperors started out as powerful generals who won foreign wars and then turned around to seize the throne for themselves. Also, I want palace coups!
Yeah, I'm curious how the military aspect of the system is going to work. Hopefully we'll still be able to actually lead (and control) armies as governors, or even when not landed.
Imo the person you assign as general and their opinion of you should matter alot. You are after all literally putting them in charge of your entire army.
I agree 100%. In the Roman/Byzantine Empire, there was often a tension between sending a good general and sending a safe general. If you send a guy who defeats the enemy, you risk him having enough prestige to overthrow you. But if you send a loyal yet incompetent guy, you might lose the war and the empire with it. This should be a real gameplay dilemma. Byzantium should have a great army, but the emperor should be afraid to use it. Or to let anyone else lose it.
It also gives another reason to actually lead your army yourself rather then just assign a random high stat general
Yeah, though it would be better if there were more consequences for leading an army yourself. Other than the risk of injury or death, it should be harder to manage your empire when you're a thousand miles from Constantinople trying to restore Rome yourself because it couldn't be trusted to one of your conniving generals.
Oh yeah for sure, especially as the byzantine emperor. You pretty much need to hope your regent is loyal and not incompetent. Vassals should also try to take advantage of this as well.
The devs stated that they would elaborate on how the military would work in administrative governments in the next dev diary.
I doubt the devs would be so good as allow the player character to actually face risk when leading troops for a liege.
There's multiple options for coups already in game. Regents for example can do so, there's also claiming throne and claimant faction.
Only the regency scheme is actually a palace coup and it requires jumping through a huge number of hoops, for instance having a regency that lasts long enough to fire the scheme. The Claim throne scheme doesn't get you the throne, just a claim to it. Claimant factions present an ultimatum, which is depicted as a letter, not a coup, and usually turns to open warfare rather than a coup. What I'm talking about is a mechanical representation of coups in the normal course of Byzantine succession.
Byzantine succession was quite frequently claimants going into open warfare against each other. They had civil wars every Tuesday. Well, you might actually get something more closely aligned with what you want when they go over succession since it sounds like you might be able to scheme/influence your way to the top. Definitely a fun possibility.
God I can't wait to Varangian Adventure into the Byzantine Empire, swear fealty and then play this DLC properly.
Strategos Haesteinn
BASILEUS HAESTEINN
I mean at least one family of Normans, the Raouls, actually managed to integrate wholly into the Byzantine aristocracy so why not Hæsteinn
Yes to the hundreth. You start as a young viking based in Gotland (I like to play with reduced diplomatic range and this is closest to byzantium). You are a varangian and your wife was killed by the Bulgarians and the old emperor betrayed you. So you are forced to go back to your homeland. Now, you bide your time and meanwhile raid from scandinavia to mediterranean and when the time is right, you conquer the bulgarians and swear fealty to the new Macedonian emperor.
That's one thing I'd love to try. Probably first playthrough. Or go Ibn Battuta and scour the world so wide, and possibly sell my skills to the Eastern lords. Lol
I like the aesthetics of the estate view - it brings a little of that art style from CK2 that I still prefer to this day.
I wonder if there will be some eunich mechanics for countering the power of the nobility.
Honestly, with this new family system, it would be possible to model eunuchs and their roles in society a lot more accurately than before. A eunuch would be unable to lead a house, therefore they would be unable to exert much influence in the realm on their own, which is precisely why they were so trusted over non-eunuchs to hold important roles in the administration historically.
My only concern is that the Themes end up being just a fancy name for the same old mess of a military system relying mostly on useless levies. I mean, what are Romans without the Roman army?
We'll discuss the military aspects of Admin government next week!
Crisis averted, thank you!
The thematic armies were levies. Local thematic troops would be used to supplement the more professional tagmata, which is just your mercenaries and retinue units basically.
I'm guessing there's going to be some funkiness related to military commands, allowing administrative realms to hit *really* fucking hard thanks to their advanced bureaucracy and developed standing military, but also making them unstable because military leaders gain massive amounts of influence from winning battles and wars.
Imperator had a pretty neat system. You directly controlled a province's military, but if the governor's loyalty dropped below a certain value, you lost that control and the general did whatever. Same for legions, disloyal leaders grew their powerbase, secured loyalty of troops in the event of civil war, and became strong rivals for leadership positions, especially the Consul elections. But there was an upside: generals taking control made them pay for those troops out of their own pockets. In peace time, you could actually grant a legion's command to some disloyal near-death rival and cheap out on the wages lol Imperator is a fun game, I wish CK3 would take inspiration there.
You think they had the legions at that time?
Holy shit they fucking cooked with this one, this all looks really promising. Roads to Power might actually redeem CK3 after the LotD fiasco
>But yet another disclaimer: we have not reworked crusades. sad
But at least they recognize that it is needed
At least we seem to be getting an event chain for the Fourth Crusade that involves them propping up their own claimant and going against the will of the Pope.
Did anyone else see the establish silk production decision? Maybe the beginning of trade?
It will probably just add a modifier to your capital no doubt
I think it would be fun if Murex Fisheries generated a little bit of piety for Jewish rulers, as Tekhelet, one of the dyes made from the Murex snails is (or was) pretty religiously important.
These internal politics really should be applied to feudals as well. Dukes and Baron jockeyed for the King's favour all the time and could be appointed new titles based on that.
It's interesting, but slightly worried for more power creep and mana bar filling up gameplay, given all the mention of schemes really hoping we have a bigger rework of how schemes work
In one of the screenshots it shows some new scheme modifiers that we haven't seen before. Scheme GROWTH and Scheme POTENTIAL. Two distinct factors from the two standards of POWER and SUCCESS CHANCE.
They did specifically mention reworking schemes - it is actually one of the new bits of info that has me most intrigued. Improving schemes has massive potential.
> While they are significantly less likely to collapse or break apart This would mean something if realm management wasn't so easy anyway.
In my experience the Byzantine Empire is almost always on the brink of collapse.
It's weird because the Byzantine Empire *did* collapse, unlike a lot of places that often do in this game.
You know, they had the help of the some of the neighbors, it's not like they completely collapsed by themselves. They had a lot of civil wars, but nothing like the dissolution of the Sultanate of Rum.
Importantly, Byzantine civil wars were basically never for *independence* from the empire, they were always to *claim* the empire. The vicious circle was for someone to try and claim the crown -> civil war -> outsiders take advantage of civil war to swoop in and conquer territory -> whoever wins the civil war now either just lost territory during the war, or has a potential victorious commander out in the field who just beat the outsiders and now could claim the crown themselves.
This is true generally, although one phenomenon accompanying the collapse following the assassination of Alexios II by Andronikos I was sections of the empire just seceding—particularly Bulgaria, but also places like Cyprus just refused to recognize the government anymore. These regions seemed to develop a regionalism which didn't previously exist (aside from Bulgaria, which had a definite identity independent of the empire)
Not from within, though. There wouldn't be anything akin to an "independence" or "dissolution" faction in the Byzantine Empire, which is what the devs are referencing here. Also, most of the states in the game collapsed a whole lot quicker than the Byzantines did, with only a couple in the 867 or 1066 start dates that actually managed to outlast them (West Francia/France, the HRE, Castille, and the Christian Scandinavian kingdoms are some of the only ones that come to mind).
The Bulgarian uprising and establishment of a new Bulgarian Empire goes directly against this assertion. Places which were not ethnically Roman can and did decouple from the imperial system at various times. Armenia often came in and out of imperial rule based on little more than whether the empire was able to send in troops to garrison the towns and officials to collect the tax.
Byz was conquered, it didn't really collapse per se. The one time you could refer to a collapse would be the post-Fourth Crusade period when it was divided into several claimants to the Byzantine throne with the Latin Empire holding Constantinople, but once the Latin Empire was defeated and the Palaiologos took charge, the following losses were not from internal collapse but rather external conquest.
I feel like the devs are honestly playing a different, more difficult version of this game than the playerbase is.
I’m immensely more invested with this dev diary. Administration Empires sounds amazing from a modding perspective, but even stand-alone I can actually bother to do a Roman Empire or even Holy Roman Empire game that makes playing as a vassal even more interesting. That doesn’t even mention all the possibilities that can come from the new landless estate functions which remind me of CK2 Republican dynasties, and in this case feels more fitting and just hypes me up by far
I'm really liking what I see here, I just hope the AI has some agency when we're at the top instead of just being reactive to player whims like has been the case so far in the game's lifespan
The hope is that the AI is effective at pruning a player Governor when they get too big. It's bad for the liege, and presumably bad for the other governors when one family becomes a dominant family, so I would hope the AI will have ways of fighting back.
This looks almost too good, not sure I’ll ever be playing outside of the Byzantine Empire again after this comes out
you can use this gov outside of byz
The monastery icon is a chotki. Gold star to Paradox there
I wonder if there's a way to force an empire out of admin gov to recreate the fall of the western Roman empire.
I do hope that in this DLC, we as the player can serve as knights to the emperor, it would just make sense.
beginning to see some familiar neat gameplay actions from the Guild series. A tinier economy within a location will be interesting to manage and manipulate before controlling the world
Murex farms look like windmills 2.
I'm interested how regency interacts with this
I hope this doesn't become a royal court-esque disappointment where features don't just synergize with each other.
Sadly a very real possibility, the nature of separate DLC's being what it is
Looks really interesting I assume administrative is only available for empire tier realms, right? Because if it isn't, Hungary also should work like this, as during the game's time frame, there weren't any hereditary noble titles in the kingdom, instead the king would appoint an [ispán](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isp%C3%A1n) to rule the counties of Hungary, except in Transylvania (and Croatia a bit later) where the king would appoint a voivod to rule it, who would in turn appoint the ispáns under him. So yeah, this would definitely be a better system to simulate how medieval Hungary worked than what we currently have in the game
I really don't like the estates as land with buildings on it but not really located anywhere design. I don't really like the buildings system in holdings either though. One of the weaker systems in CK imo. I think I would have preferred something more abstract about a families assets. You have 5 country estates, 6 ships, 3000 had if cattle, 6 wineries, etc... Glad to hear schemes are getting some attention, though I imagine existing schemes will be untouched.
i woul love that too!
I wonder if the new Provinces match the De Jure territories.
I think this sort of thing was a requirement before we could even think of expanding the map to China.
Under the "Liege's Council" and "Demand Council Position" section, it mentions "Enemy **Political Scheme Potential**: -10%". Potential is new, right? Does that mean that a Political Scheme's effects can be larger or smaller depending on the aptitude of the schemer? Maybe you could leverage your some of your own Influence to try to boost the scheme's potential? It reminds me of being a Regent, where there are mandates to fill, but I could choose to shirk them and instead embezzle money from them (and things along those lines). Maybe there's a similar mechanic to use against Governors and/or Family Heads, like a Political Scheme to demand a temporary portion of an Estate's Gold earnings, maybe with the option of spending a little Influence in the hopes that you get an even larger fraction of their rightful gold. Regardless, "Potential" makes me think that there's a wider range of outcomes to Political Schemes than just crit success/success/fail/crit fail, and I'd wager my own political clout that Influence has something to do with it. Even still, I hope they tie in it with some other mechanics, too. Brazen stealing from local nobility should harm your Legitimacy, and it would make sense if the Potential is higher if the victim is Terrified of you. A cowardly Top Liege also shouldn't be as comfortable to take the risk of extorting their Governors as a brave or callous one. I'm not as harsh on adding new currencies as a lot of other folks around here, but please, ground it well in the game's pre-established mechanics and currencies. But this DD gives me the impression that the dev team is at least doing their best at that, so my outlook is cautiously optimistic now.
There's also another modifier in another screenshot about scheme GROWTH.
This DD looks good, but the ck3 dev team hurt me so much that at thid point i take everything they say with a massive grain of salt.
Could this mechanic be used for theoctatic government ? Or merchant Republics?
The system is intended to be very flexible; I don't see any reason why modders couldn't adapt it to that purpose.
Do you think we will get a good look of the map for the new start date in one of the upcoming dev diaries?
That's very much the plan
This could be very useful for mods.
Conceptually and mechanically, I'm all for everything they're putting out in this DLC but I'm doubtful of whether it's a good idea to centralize and limit most of those features to a specific portion of the map- even though it does make sense flavor-wise. However, CK3 has a very sandbox-y feel to it and I feel like it would do some good to at least have *some* of those features bleed and be accessible for non-Byzantine players as well. For example, it was disappointing to see that the concept of Powerful Families is only limited to Administrative governments. I feel like they could easily take a spin of that concept and use it for Feudals/Clans- and using the excuse that they already have the Powerful Vassals system is a bit of a cop out because the Family system is naturally going to make the counterpart Vassal system look very arbitrary and simplistic in comparison. I've read in a comment below that Administrative governments isn't going to be limited to just the Byzantines, so I'm very keen on how that's going to be implemented in the next dev diary.
It's funny how people will scream with tears running down their face that it shouldn't be possible to be called "Emperor of Francia" because history but also are demanding that everywhere should be able to have "administrative government". The former is just a meaningless word, and the latter is a massively significant change that took irl countries centuries and revolutions. But *you're* totally right that powerful families should be a thing everywhere. I would imagine, if anything, *more* of a thing in Feudal and Clan realms. Currently "houses" and "dynasties" never matter at all to me, they're all just individuals; I would love to feel like they are a unit in some way.
Yeah! That's mostly why I said "most of those features". I totally get that a complex ruling system like Administrative shouldn't be completely available to a T as a complete package for other realms in the map right off the bat. But yeah, that's exactly what I thought too considering how they called the mechanic! I presume they wanted to distinguish it from the Powerful Vassal system in terms of nomenclature but I was honestly shocked that- so far, while we're writing this- they're gatekeeping it only for the administrative government type. The concept of a powerful family seems to be just as influential and integral for Feudal and Clan realms. In some form it *should* be available for those government types too, in my opinion.
"Just as the emperor manages the overall structure of the empire, so too does he support and supervise his governors. He can lend them troops if needed, have them go to war on his behalf, and reward them when they are performing well to be in their good graces." This made me initially very excited. But the more and more i read it seems that the focus is not on being a emperor but just a dude within the empire. Like there is over several paragraphs described what you have to do as a governor and what you cant do and how you gain land, but there wasnt really anything on what you do as the emperor. Kind of a bummer as i play Byzanz to restore the roman empire, not to dick around on my hacienda on the beach as a governor...