Crusader Kings 2 was received as one of the most involving medieval Europe simulators released in the past year (an accolade many strive for and often fall short of) and since its release has been enjoying a steady stream of patches. Well, so long as you went to the game’s website and updated your install yourself. Not, though, Paradox have pushed all the patches to Steam bringing the game up to date and adding a huge amount of new content.
I’ve copied the entire thing in below, lifting it all from the Steam News feed, but cast your eyes over just the major updates if none of the others:
– Added Nahua culture and Aztec religion
– Faction System
– Characters can have both a Plot and an Ambition
– Retinue System support for the Legacy of Rome DLC
– Orthodox and related religions have Autocephalous Patriarchs and the Pentarchy
– Rebalanced Combat, with more focus on leaders and their traits. More leader traits.
– Liege levies. You only raise levies from your direct vassals, and they are not directly connected to Holdings.
– A number of self improvement Ambitions for characters
– New religions: Miaphysite, Nestorian, Monothelite
– Two new Bookmarks: The Alexiad and The Latin Empire
– AI: Improved military AI
– Major speed optimizations
– Greatly reduced graphics memory load
– Plugged some memory leaks
– New events for characters with the lunatic trait
– Spymaster’s Discover Plots job has been renamed to Scheme, and now also affects faction membership
– New icons added to all decisions
Neat-o, right?
Here are the rest of the patch’s changes for your perusal:
MAJOR:
– Added Nahua culture and Aztec religion
MINOR:
– Retinues no longer get free leaders
– Liege levies raised via the province view are now raised in the selected province
– You can now forbid your council from leading armies
– Optimized succession calculation, which could cause massive slowdowns in big dynasties with many landed members
– Intrigue plots vs barons or their courtiers can now include their liege’s courtiers and other vassals
– Fixed Scottish Schiltron building giving 10x defensive bonus to pikes
– Fixed Dutch cultural retinue lacking pikes
– Fixed an issue with AI strength calculations the first month after loading a game
– A bit more randomness in the size of the rebel reinforcements in civil wars
– The Pope now receives even less war contribution score in Crusades
– Fixed a crash with a null war list in Province View and Diplomacy View
– Mercenary regiments and Holy Orders will now automatically get a new leader when the old one dies
– Less likely that the captain of a merc regiment gets reassigned to lead something else
– Kingdoms no longer assimilate out of de jure empires that have no holder
– Fixed a bug with not being able to move capital back to your title’s preferred capital
– The Imperial Reconquest CB now only works for the restored Roman Empire
– The Imperial Reconquest CB no longer clears out all rulers under the title
– Disbanding multiple selected units will never disband retinues if there are non-retinues in any selected unit
– Liege levies will now disband if their owner is at war with the owner of the unit
– Retinues no longer reinforce if their owner has no money
– Diplo AI: Imprisoned vassals or below will always accept a demand for religious conversion, and go free from prison
– AI: Much better at assigning flank commanders for important armies
– AI: Less likely to go overboard with Crown Authority
– AI: Not interested in Lower CA plots in irrelevant kingdoms/empires
– AI: Fixed a bug with it not dismissing liege levies when done with them
– Army AI: Fixed a bug with invasions not happening when they should
– Ledger page with independent rulers now shows troops including retinues
– Shift or Ctrl clicking buttons in Ruler Designer coat of arms designer now multiplies the frame change by 5 or 10
– Fixed bug where byzantine unit pack was replacing all eastern europeans
– Raising troops via raise all or raise on province will now merge units
– Now allowed to ask to join tribal invasion wars
– Fixed bugged altaic culture building modifier
– Fixed the history of c_sodermanland
– Fixed consistency issue with German characters name Philipp
– Fixed faulty employment date for Robrecht van Gent
– Fixed broken Ua Conchobair dynasty
– Province of Bira no longer stays Orthodox for the entire game
– Fixed bug where imprisoned underage rulers could kill their regents
– Gave The Two Saltuks from Erzurum their correct names
– Corrections to Phillip IV of France and many related characters
– Sigrid Ylving no longer has the wrong mother
– Fixed the deathdate of King Charles IV of France
– Added missing Ecumenical Patriarchs
– Fixed a bug where courtiers of landless characters would be listed in a weird location
– Fixes and additions to various Frankish and Occitan dynasties
– Fixes and additions to the Hunfirding dynasty
– Missing marriages, mothers, children of Valdemar II and Erik V of Denmark added
– Fixed a rare crash in ‘on_siege_over’
– AI: The independence faction does not present an ultimatum until it has at least 33% of the liege’s strength
– AI: De jure vassals of your culture and religion, except kings, will not start or join independence factions
– Reduced the chance of massive rebel reinforcements for the Independence faction
– Diplo AI: Mongols and Aztecs will no longer revoke titles off human players just for having the wrong religion or culture
– Armenian, Georgian and Alan cultures updated with new names, name linkings and patronymics
– Fixes to the County of Melgueil
– Ingeborg Magnusdotter now has the correct gender
– Sartag Khan now converts to Nestorianism instead of Orthodoxy
– Corrections to the religion of several Zirid characters
– A few Catalan name fixes
– Changes and additions to the Godwin dynasty
– Fixed a bug with Primogeniture when tracing back through the current holder’s mother
– Fixed a very rare crash with Holdings with no holder
– Fixed an issue with inheritance by landless characters when there was no de jure vassal title they could take off the previous holder
– Diplo AI: Much more careful about imprisonments
– Imprisoning characters no longer affects their position in the line of succession
– Fixed a bug with the event pictures on Mac and Linux
– Added blinded trait to historically blind characters in the database
– Added missing space to Armenian dynasty prefix and Irish male patronym
– Byzantine, Armenian and Georgian character fixes and additions
– Fixed wrong liege for Duchy of Champagne and County of Gevaudan at certain dates
– Welsh/Hiberno-Norse Dublin character fixes and additions
– New dynasty for the Kurdish Shaddadids, extended Mirdasid pedigree
– On player agreement, the game now sends information to the Paradox backend when you start a game, containing the names of the DLCs and Mods you run (can be toggled with “dont_track_data = [yes/no]” in settings.txt)
– AI: The leader of a claimant faction will no longer leave the faction in an elective realm where the claimant is currently the heir
– AI: Fixed a slight bug where current heirs would not back claimant factions for themselves
– Spymaster Scheme job has been overhauled and simplified
– AI: Fixed an issue with the number of available galleys check
– Fixed an issue with part of the de jure drift mechanic not being cleared on resign
FOR MODDERS:
– The criterion for determining who can lead troops is now determined by the allow trigger for ‘job_marshal’ (so women can now be modded to lead armies)
– Added trigger ‘is_adult’
– Added trigger ‘is_marriage_adult’
2012-10-22: v1.07b
———————–
– Fixed an issue with broken portraits and other graphics on certain older graphics cards
– Fixed a bug with Claimant Faction wars becoming invalid in Elective Realms
– Fixed a bug where various Dynasty variables would not be correctly reset on resign, which could even cause crashes
– Fixed the initial tech levels in the Nestorian and Miaphysite provinces
– Fixed a crash bug in the religion view that could happen when your ruler’s religion changed
– Fixed a bug with Gavelkind succession in Empires where the holder also had many kingdoms
– Fixed an issue where you could become independent by joining an independence faction war in another realm
– Kurds now have access to the Persian cultural building
– William the Conquerer no longer set as mother of three Breton characters
– Fixed the history for c_aprutium
– Fixed deathdate of character 161537
– Fixes/additions to the Strathearn dynasty
– Fixes to the counts of Malta
– Fixed broken de Mello dynasty
– Various additions/fixes to several English dynasties
– Various additions/fixes to several German dynasties
– Renamed duplicate Onega province
– Added rulers to various Eastern pagan provinces
– Spymaster can now use Scheme in provinces belonging to your liege’s other vassals
– Fixed hunting event to correctly apply to barons
– Fixed an ugly “invalidated war” message showing messy trigger conditions
– No longer possible to start or join Factions while in revolt against your current liege
– Fixed an issue where a vassal revolt war could sometimes invalidate on mostly unrelated other revolts in the same realm
– Fixed a glitch with the tooltip on the “Start a Faction” button
– No longer allowed to start claimant factions for female claimants against Agnatic law titles
– Fixed an issue with Protected Inheritance
– Reduced size of all event pictures by 25% at no loss of quality
– Muslim Jihads no longer possible before 1187
– The title is now displayed correctly for Russian Grand Princesses
– Some changes to the religious setup in the Levant
2012-10-16: v1.07
———————–
MAJOR:
– Faction System
– Characters can have both a Plot and an Ambition
– Retinue System support for the Legacy of Rome DLC
– Orthodox and related religions have Autocephalous Patriarchs and the Pentarchy
– Rebalanced Combat, with more focus on leaders and their traits. More leader traits.
– Liege levies. You only raise levies from your direct vassals, and they are not directly connected to Holdings.
– A number of self improvement Ambitions for characters
– New religions: Miaphysite, Nestorian, Monothelite
– Two new Bookmarks: The Alexiad and The Latin Empire
– AI: Improved military AI
– Major speed optimizations
– Greatly reduced graphics memory load
– Plugged some memory leaks
– New events for characters with the lunatic trait
– Spymaster’s Discover Plots job has been renamed to Scheme, and now also affects faction membership
– New icons added to all decisions
MINOR:
– Launcher now remembers DLC and Mod settings
– Very large savegames can now be sent to clients in multiplayer
– Now always allowed to move capital back to the traditional capital of your primary title (even if you’ve moved capital once already)
– You now always need at least two kingdom titles to create an Empire
– Fixed several bugs with Gavelkind and Primogeniture succession
– Fixed some issues with the Supply Limit and attrition rules
– It’s no longer possible to place councillors in grayed out provinces
– Many, many changes and fixes to the history database
– Character View: Selecting an ambition now auto-updates the window
– Added ticking war score to Claim All wars
– Made the Seljuks pre-mobilized in 1066, like the English contenders
– Added portrait tooltip about a character’s religious head
– Added code for locking Constantinople to the Emperor better
– Adjusted the colors of some duchies and kingdoms, mainly in Eastern Anatolia
– Fixed the ship unit position in Lake Mälaren
– Added “Foreign Conqueror” opinion modifier
– Ormond is no longer a republic
– Improved some trigger and event target tooltips
– Fixed some issues with the “change succession law” CBs against secondary kingdoms
– No longer allowed to press Muslim women’s claims against anyone
– No longer allowed to press other women’s claims on _any_ titles against a ruler with Agnatic succession
– Fixed a problem with law triggers in decisions
– All casus belli event effects are now also initialized properly, so they can refer to laws
– Characters in feudal realms will not flee to republics or theocracies when exiled
– In republics, courtiers who are heirs to foreign titles can no longer be elected
– Gave William the Conqueror three more castles at game start and adjusted the initial armies of all three contenders
– The liege is now imprisoned when losing his or her primary title in a claimant war
– When creating a new higher tier title in the game, your current laws will be copied (if it’s not Duke-to-King)
– When creating a new higher tier title that has never had a holder before, its holder history will be copied from your current title
– Plot View: Fixed an issue where Vassal Decisions could be listed twice
– Plot View: Fixed a bug with the tooltip on the Start Plot button
– Fixed the tooltip for effects ‘remove_title’
– Fixed the tooltip for effects ‘give_job_title’
– Fixed some bugs with the ‘spawn_unit’ tooltip
– Portraits: All characters are now bald if they wear the chain mail hood
– 1066: Adjusted the traits of the main Saxon lords to like Eadgar the Aetheling a lot
– The end game screen now shows the correct Komnenos dynasty shield
– Added proper claims and ruler history for Tostig Godwinson
– The loser in an invasion CB is now imprisoned by the winner if he becomes a vassal of the winner
– Made the Varangian Guard better
– Added tooltips to the Flank Leader selection view
– Fixed a bug where children of Western ethnicity would not look it if of another culture
– Fixed some bugs with graphical culture type of characters not correctly falling back to Western
– The Golden Horde now receives slightly fewer reinforcements in the second event
– Fixed a bug with the opinion penalty for destroying a title
– Combat events no longer happens the first few days anymore
– The Ambitions to have a son or daughter now increases fertility
– Tweaked fertility effect on impregnation
– Religious wars and Jihads/Crusades now reduce the Decadence for all successful participating Muslims
– Tweaked some default message priorities
– You now only get a Weak Claim on titles that have been revoked
– You are no longer allowed to usurp titles from others in the same realm unless you have a Strong Claim
– Fixed a bug where you could ask to join the wars of your liege’s enemies
– Muslim Invasion CB outcomes now also affect Decadence
– Fixed a bug with the “Weaken Fellow Vassal” Plot, where the target could go independent when losing his last Duchy
– Fixed an assymmetric hostility issue vs revolters of an ally of someone you’re attacking
– The “No Ambition” alert should no longer appear if there are no valid ambitions to pick
– Fixed a bug with white text showing in some event windows
– Fixed a bug where the AI could ask to educate children of vassals who were actually ’employed’ by the vassal’s Spouse
– Fixed a bug in the portrait tooltip, where it did not always list the highest title a character was heir to
– Fixed some issues with the wrong event frame being shown for some Knights of St John events- A liege no longers retains any imprison or revoke title reasons against rebel vassals when losing a civil war
– Decadence revolts now only disband the earmarked regiments when they end- Fixed a bug making Holy Orders theocracies
– Added missing clergy clothes for other graphical cultures
– Fixed a bug with dead character portraits not looking correct when loading save games
– Many new CoAs, courtesy of Txini
– Fixed some glitches with the inheritance of Councillors
– Fixed a rare bug with wars ending “inconclusively” just before they ended normally
– Added more war invalidation explanations to the message
– Slightly toned down the size of Decadence revolters
– Pressing the claim of a dynasty member will now always vassalize him or her if possible
– Fixed a bug with the tooltip for normal AND triggers
– Titles are now also considered contested if a title de facto above them is contested
– Tweaked Title Creation and Usurpation tooltips
– Fixed a bug where revolters could remain in an ongoing uprising even after no longer being part of the realm
– Crushing a major revolt now gives all direct vassal rulers a +25 opinion modifier of you for 10 years
– When you White Peace revolters, they now get a ‘Spared after Rebellion’ opinion modifier of you, +25 for 10 years
– Fixed a bug where a legitimized bastard would hate the parent for doing it
– The Mongol reinforcements no longer arrive if the Horde has already been completely defeated
– Fixed some issues with characters getting opinion modifiers of themselves
– Added beard portrait scripts
– Added missing string about not being able to revoke the last Temple Holding off your own religious head
– Fixed two bugs with landless Mongols not declaring war
– Claimant Wars: if the claimant is a bishop or mayor, those titles are now lost on success
– Wars over titles are now more likely to give the title capital to the claimant
– No longer possible to declare depose liege, or claimant wars on liege while the liege or above is himself in revolt
– Fixed a bug where vassals could nominate successors for secondary duchies or below
– Made the basic “Recently Conquered” tax penalty more severe, so it cannot be offset by tech, etc
– A ward who is at war with his or her guardian now automatically returns home
– Fixed an issue with the automatic removal of inappropriate scripted traits from underage historical characters
– Independent kingdoms with a king that controls their entire de jure area can now break out of de jure empires
– No longer possible to employ Holy Orders while excommunicated
– Fixed a bug with the tooltips for triggers ‘lower_tier_than’ and ‘higher_tier_than’
– You no longer pay maintenance for Holy Orders if you’re in a justified war, even if you’re also in another type of war
– Fixed an issue where you could not grant titles to vassals which you could not formally create
– Gave most mercs and holy orders a base culture
– Ensured that merc and holy order leaders are always of the right culture and religion
– Slowed down event ‘39500’ which automatically converts counties to Islam
– Fixed a bug where you could move your capital again after a reload
– Fixed a bug where a landed spouse who is the councillor of another ruler would not give you that attribute bonus
– The Excommunicate diplo action is no longer shown for excommunicated characters
– Fixed an issue with granting titles including lower not fully working if the target becomes independent from you through the action
– Blocked Agnatic-Cognatic succession for Hordes
– Horde type culture rulers cannot have Cognatic or True Cognatic succession laws
– Improved kingdom division on inheritance kingdom split
– Fixed a bug with characters not knowing of their own plots
– Fixed a bug with the de facto liege of titles after revocation
– Fixed a bug with the succession bethrothal icon not showing
– Fixed a bug allowing you to assign too many wards to a guardian
– Boosted the effect of the Chancellor’s Improve Diplomatic Relations job
– Corrected many spelling mistakes
– Added a notification event when a character is killed in battle
– Both sides in a siege now see the effects of triggered siege events
– The event where a vassal offers guardianship now shows which child will become the vassal’s ward
– Fixes to the Christian and Muslim tournaments
– Famous Muslims who join your court now have dynasties and improved stats
– Scottish names are now English instead of Gaelic, whereas before they were a mixture of both
– Russian duchies are now called grand principalities, and their rulers are referred to as grand princes
– Fixed the event where the Hashshashin go after the Mongol leader
– Revised Combat tooltips
– Muslim Heavy cavalry now use CoA colors on their flags rather than the christian flag
– Revised cultural building modifiers
– Added a global supply limit modifier that increases with tech
– Ruler Designer now handles culture different from ethnicity
– Loading screens and flags now look a bit better
– Fixed issue with special characters in find title box
– Flanks will now pick tactics even if they have no leader
– You are no longer allowed to build in settlements held by someout outside your realm or by someone you are at war with
– Fixed some trigger tooltips that looked bad
– Added the winners of the AAR contest as characters in the game
– AI: Smarter about heir nomination when having multiple kingdoms (to keep them together)
– AI: Fixed bug with silly Muslim handing out of titles
– AI: Baron tier and landless characters now get a complete AI when they have raised units on the map
– AI: Fixed an issue where it could spam a player asking to become a vassal
– AI: Holy Orders should no longer run off to help others if they are already “hired”
– AI: Will always accept guardians for childen offered by the Regent (and won’t have them replaced on its own)
– AI: Improved passing of demesne laws
– AI: Should now want to revoke a Castle Holding when the primary holding in a County is NOT a Castle
– AI: Prevented some stupid placing of the Chancellor to fabricate claims
– AI: Vassals will no longer spontaneously declare war on their liege to depose him or take a title off him (these things are now faction based.) The only time they might declare war on their own is to create a succession crisis.
– AI: Improved handing out of counties if it’s over the demesne limit
– AI: Will now execute “vassal decisions” (like blinding and castrating prisoners)
– AI: Will now switch Guardian for children if appropriate (wrong religion or culture)
– AI: Will not disband free galleys (from event effects)
– AI: Fixed some bugs with turning betrothals into marriages
– AI: More careful with title usurpation and the cost in gold
– Diplo AI: Fixed a bug with “divine blood” marriage calculation
– Diplo AI: Does not care about Matrilineal marriage factors if both parties are from the same dynasty
– Diplo AI: Children in other realms will now still accept education offers from their own parents
– Diplo AI: Fixed a bug with borked marriage proposals and spamming
– Diplo AI: Less aggressive about revoking titles (requires a worse opinion or religious enmity)
– Diplo AI: Will now break betrothals that won’t be accepted anymore
– Diplo AI: will not revoke titles while under a regency
– Diplo AI: Early surrender now possible with Muslim invasion CBs. Defender more stubborn.
FOR MODDERS:
– IMPORTANT: Added ‘inherit_chance’ to traits, replacing ‘congenital’
– The ‘replace_path’ bug is now fixed for real
– Added ‘effect’ character history command. It’s like an event option that’s run for the character at game start.
– Fixed a bug with ‘immortal’ traits and sex appeal
– Added trigger ‘leads_faction’
– Added trigger ‘faction_power’
– Added trigger and effect ‘any_faction_backer’
– Added trigger ‘completely_controls = [title]’ (I or my vassals hold everything in it)
– Added trigger ‘revolt_distance’
– The ‘ai_will_do’ clause in Decisions is no longer binary (the value determines the MTTH)
– Fixed an issue with law triggers in the ‘ai_will_do’ field of decisions
– Added trigger ‘in_faction’
– Added trigger ‘war_title’
– Added trigger ‘defending_against_claimant’
– Added event targets ‘supported_claimant’ and ‘supported_claimant_title’
– Added ‘set_parent_religion’ effect
– Can now create Lowborn characters with the ‘create_character’ effect
– Fixed a bug with scripted attributes in the ‘create_character’ effect
– Fixed a bug in the ‘conquest_culture’ trigger
– Added ‘is_conquered’ trigger
– Added event targets ‘heir_under_seniority_law’ and ‘heir_under_primogeniture_law’
– Added trigger ‘any_claimant’
– Added ‘from_potential’ trigger to decisions (vassal and dynasty decisions only)
– Added event effect ‘add_spouse_matrilineal’
– Added ‘opinion_diff’ trigger
– The event targets ‘owner’ and ‘holder_scope’ are now the same and work on both titles and provinces
– Added event effect ‘copy_title_history’
– Added event effect ‘copy_title_laws’
– Fixed a bug with trigger ‘is_landed = no’
– Fixed a bug in the effect ‘spawn_unit’ with the ‘match’ argument
– Can now set a specific leader in the effect ‘spawn_unit’
– Fixed a bug in trigger ‘de_jure_liege_or_above’
– Fixed a bug in trigger ‘de_jure_vassal_or_below’
– Fixed some bugs with the ‘set_name’ effect
– The ‘set_name’ effect can now change the name of titles
– Added ‘capital’ effect
– Added ‘province_capital’ effect
– Added effect ‘participation_scaled_decadence’
– Added trigger ‘num_of_faction_backers’
– Added trigger ‘race’
– Added trigger ‘graphical_culture’
– Fixed a bug with event name spaces not working in ‘events’ fields in On Actions
– Fixed a bug with event name spaces not working in ‘events’ fields in Job Actions
– Added ‘divine_blood’ marriage opinion modifiers
– Added more gradual Attrition Defines
– Added ‘secondary_graphical_culture’ to cultures and culture groups (a fallback option, when not having certain DLCs)
– Added trigger ‘has_earmarked_regiments’
– Added ‘earmark’ argument to the ‘spawn_unit’ event effect
– The ‘disband_event_forces’ effect now takes an earmark argument
– Added trigger ‘diplomatic_immunity’
– Added effect ‘diplomatic_immunity’
– Exported PORTRAIT_MID_AGE_THRESHOLD, PORTRAIT_OLD_AGE_THRESHOLD, PORTRAIT_ADULT_MALE_AGE_THRESHOLD and PORTRAIT_ADULT_FEMALE_AGE_THRESHOLD to defines
– Exported AGE_OF_MARRIAGE to defines
– Ported the last old defines to lua
– Added SeaZone province text promotion
– Added PrevPrev text promotion
– Added trigger ‘is_tribal_type_title’
– Added trigger ‘has_horde_culture