Hello there! My name is Rodrigue Delrue Community Developer on Crusader Kings 3. Welcome to
our August Video Update during which we discuss the development of the game. This one will
be the last video before we push Crusader Kings 3 out in the open and we've discussed
still quite a lot of topics. With Magne we have chatted about performance and AI . With
Matthew we've discussed modding and how to transform the game as you see fit. With Alexander
we have discussed Legacies and why they are useful to you in the game. Finally with Ewan
we have taken a look at achievements. And stick around to the end because I want to
introduce you to someone very special. With Magne, Programmer here at Paradox we have
chatted about performance and AI and how to make the game run smoothly on your computer.
Throughout CK3's development performance has been a major priority. We've considered it
from an early date onwards and especially as the release got closer and closer. We spent
more and more time on it to ensure that it's up to the level we're happy with. The two
systems we've reworked the most that affect performance are: threading and rendering and
they're heavily tied together since the rendering system is also heavily threaded. For these
two systems we reworked them from the ground up. The threading system is now based on systems
rather than individual characters or other objects, this allows us to get a better balance
between threads so more work can be done at the same time. It also significantly simplifies
the restrictions on what we can do while we're threaded. It's easier to program and thus
fewer mistakes will be introduced such as crashes, out of syncs or other strange behaviors.
For rendering what we did is we made it threaded rather than done on the main thread. What
this effectively means is that rendering can happen while we're updating the game state.
So as the game state is changing we're still rendering frames instead of having to periodically
wait to render a frame. Overall these changes mean that if you have multiple cores especially
if you have a lot of them you get better performance than before. It also makes it easier for us
to further develop these systems in a performant manner meaning that we should have good gains
after release as well and since they've been reworked in a way where it's harder to make
mistakes as a programmer it should mean fewer bugs too. With ai we've had three main goals:
the first goal is actually provide some level of challenge because you don't want to just
steamroll from the beginning that's not very fun for most players. Secondly it shouldn't
do things that are frustrating to the player even if they might technically be a smart
thing to do. And third it should feel like it's a plausible actor in the medieval world
We've taken a different approach in some ways from ck2 when it comes to the AI but the core
of it is still pretty similar. I think the biggest changes are in the military AI. We've
reworked it from the ground up to be more based on allowing multiple participants to
do well together rather than acting individually. On the non-military side on the other hand
it's pretty similar to before and like the basic design philosophy. It's rebuilt of course
and it's generally better but the basic idea is still to be a plausible actor and we've
managed that by checking for possible actions at specific intervals and then taking actions
that make sense and by having some randomization here and good rules for when the different
actions make sense. We ended up constructing a narrative where they look like they are
an actual medieval ruler. There are parts of the AI and CK3 that are a lot more moddable
than they were in CK2 there are still parts that you can't especially mods in the military
AI but things like interactions are far more moddable than they were before as most of
the interaction AI goes through script instead of code. The goal of the non-military AI is
to make the world feel alive. It's not just there to be a challenge to you but the main
priority is instead that the world feels like it could be an actual medieval world. Sometimes
that means that the AI will act against you, other times it means they'll help you and
other times you'll just do things that don't affect you in any way. It will help ensure
that this world feels like it is actually alive. Sometimes we have to have some restrictions
on the AI for how it interacts with the player just so that it doesn't get overwhelming or
frustrating. The prime example here is seduction where at various stages in the game we've
needed to tweak the rules there so that if the player is playing a woman rather than
a man they don't get just a hundred seduction attempts constantly. While that might be sadly
quite realistic in some ways it's not an experience you want in the game or in reality. The military
AI in CK3 has been restructured to be more focused on working together when there's multiple
participants on one side in the war instead of each individual character having their
own AI and sending their own troops based on a variety of factors they're all pulled
together and one coordinator on each side of the war will handle all of the AI participants.
This means that the AI works much better together with other AIs which is very nice in cases
like the great holy wars where there are a lot of AIs on the same side of war. It stops
them from running around like headless chickens quite as much. If the AI realizes that the
war is clearly lost it will be willing to stand and fight rather than keep running for
its life. It'll pick a nice defensible location and wait for you to come and deal with it.
thus inflecting the maximum possible of casualties but bringing the war to a quicker end. We've
taken AI into account and design more than we have in previous games. It's always been
a consideration early on just to see if the design makes sense for the AI and whether
it will be able to interact with it well. Sometimes this has meant that we've had to
do minor tweaks to make the AI work better and sometimes where systems have had larger
changes or we've see in that of a few possible tweaks all of which would be good for the
player one would be clearly better for the AI unless we go with that one because the
player experience overall will be better. A prime example of that is the old fort system.
In CK3 you you can move past forts still but if you do so you will incur attrition and
the AI will almost never do this because it's usually a really bad idea to do so. That means
that we restrict the possible options for the AI significantly and it's just easier
to find a good path to pursue. And similarly for the player it also restricts their options
some and makes it simpler for the player to figure out what to do and removes the temptation
to try to chase down the enemy army past their forts for instance. I've talked a lot about
how the enemy will work and how AIs will work together but you might be wondering how does
the AI work when it's on your side and the major thing there is that it tries to largely
help you rather than pursue its own goals. Most of the time it will stick very close
to your armies and offer support in sieges and in battles even if that is a losing proposition
and it will lose its army, it will follow you into battle because it's your ally and
that's what it's supposed to be doing. This mainly kicks in if you're the primary participant.
Conversly if you're called into a war it'll do its own thing rather than help you because
it's trying to win the war. If it's your war that it's trying to win then it'll do almost
everything in its power to help you out. With Matthew, also Programmer, we have chatted
about modding and how modders are going to be able to transform the game completely,
from small UI (User Interface) changes to complete overhauls of the games! Have a look!
The team and I wanted to focus a lot on mods as it's very close to our hearts. A lot of
us got started at Paradox due to working with mods. I, for example, started working on modding
on Crusader Kings 2 and that's got me initially started at Paradox as a Content Designer before
I then moved into being a Programmer. It's a great opportunity for us to be able to give
back to the community and help drive forward the modding of our games. We wanted to improve
our Character Interaction System for CK3 by unifying it with one overall system. There
isn't a difference between how a important interaction that was previously hard coded
in CK2 would work versus how any interaction that we wanted people to be able to make could
work. It all goes through the same system so it's open to be changed by mods as well
as our in-house content designers. The biggest benefit of this new system is that mods can
change any of the targets of interactions any of the AI waiting how often they're checked
and be able to engage with the system a lot more and change any custom behaviors they
need for their own mods. Combining multiple mods has always been difficult in games even
in CK2. For CK3 we wanted to improve the ability for small mods to combine with each other
and for submods to combine. You can override individual entries such as overriding just
one trait just by using the same key instead of needing to overwrite the entire file of
hundreds of traits. It means if you want to just have one small mod you can just override
what the Lunatic Trait does so it will be in one file and more easily compatible with
mods that other people make instead of needing to have to manually do compatibility patches
for very small changes. All of the new interface utilities we have such as alerts issues and
notifications are fully moddable you can create your own new ones to explain how you can use
your own mod mechanics instead of having to rely on harder to read explanations in events
instead of more easy to understand interfaces designed specifically to communicate such
information. The interface is incredibly moddable we have links between the main scripting language
for events and the GUI scripting language which albeit different is still quite easy
to pick up in comparison to a full programming language and these things can be linked together
so you can make your own custom interfaces for your mod specific features. For example
in a fantasy mod you can have interfaces designated for your magic features instead of having
to go through normal basic interactions and pop-ups. For CK3, we wanted one unified system
for all interactions instead of just being a split between the hard-coded ones and the
ones we can mod. Things like arranging a marriage which in CK2 was very unmoddable is now goes
through the same system so that it can be changed by modders as well as our in-house
designers without needing any changes in the code. To make modding the UI easier we have
a GUI debug mode which allows you to view the hierarchy of all the GUI elements and
allow you to open to the file and line that that element is defined in so it's easier
to debug and change things when you're trying to make your mods. With Alexander Oltner,
Lead Game Designer on the project we have taken a look at Legacies and how they affect
your gameplay. Legacies are unlocked by having a grand dynasty and spreading them out over
the world. The more spread out they are the more renown you get and you spend this renown
on dynasty Legacies which are not as powerful as lifestyles perks that apply to everyone
in your dynasty. Legacies have various effects that apply to everyone in your dynasty and
they are sources of for example piety, prestige, better guests. Depending on which dynasty
legacy track you decide to go down you get different bonuses that are tailored to your
specific playstyle. Depending on where you are in the world you will want to unlock different
legacies. There are several really awesome legacy tracks to choose from. Personally,
it depends on where I'm playing if for example: I am located in the crossroads between India
and the Middle East I like Warfare because it's really good when you are being attacked,
you get bonuses such as more effective knights and ultimately you can even recruit a regiment
of House Guards or use a Men-at-Arm slot to purchase additional Men-at-Arms. You also
get Lifestyle experience boosts somewhere in the middle of the track but you always
want to progress through an entire track when you're playing because the bonuses at the
end are very powerful. Another one I like is erudition. Erudition is great when you're
playing in the middle of a large realm like the Holy Roman Empire for example. It starts
up by giving you bonuses to attracting guests and guests are vital to expanding within such
a big realm. You then proceed to get more piety and ultimately you get a bonus that
makes all of your councillors more effective, which is a fantastic bonus. And finally, with
Ewan, Content Designer here at Paradox we have chatted about achievements and the grand
challenges you're going to face when playing CK3. The process for coming up with achievements
on CK3 is an extremely simple process. It's a collaborative effort by most of the team.
We have a large document that people can file suggestions into and then the Game Director
picks from amongst those. The biggest challenge when designing achievements for CK3 is unquestionably
the puns. CK3 is a large team, they're a very punny team and they have a lot of jokes that
they want to make. I am not a very punny person and implementing “Almost There” for Almos
Arpad nearly killed me. Other than that it can be a little tricky to convert the more
esoteric suggestions into workable script. Usually if something's going to take an age
to get right we'd prefer to adjust the achievement a little bit rather than try and cram the
specific wording into the game in a workable format. If it's too weird to describe in scripts
then it's going to be too weird for players to understand in play and we'd prefer achievements
to be fun and clear, not necessarily easy mind you, but they should always be understandable
you should always know what you need to do. Inarguably my favorite achievement would be
"Give a Dog a Bone". This is a reference to the House di Canossa’s historical motto
which is a thousand-year-old pun which the entire Content Design team was pranked by
during development it is a bit embarrassing but I'm very glad that it got memorialized.
My second favorite achievement would have to be "An Unfortunate Accident" which is the
achievement you get when you inherit a title from someone you murder. The image for it
is just two hands doing air quotes and it's such a simple joke but I kind of love it.
And finally my third favorite achievement definitely worth an honorable mention would
have to be "A Perfect Circle" this is the achievement for getting the maximum amount
of feasible inbreeding on a single character. We do have a former biologist working at the
company uh we checked it through her we had to get code to extend some functionality a
little bit it's a whole thing or it was a whole thing. It's absolutely abhorrent but
it's a very CK achievement. That was it for the month of August on behalf of the Crusader
Kings 3 team we sincerely hope that you will enjoy the game and we are looking forward
to your feedback. If you want to know more about Crusader Kings 3 just click on the links
below to check our Dev Diaries and if you want to pre-order Crusader Kings 3 just go
on crusaderkings.com. And finally I want to say goodbye to you because I am transitioning
roles within Paradox and I will leave my position to Troy who will now introduce himself. Troy
take it away. Howdy y'all my name is Troy Pruitt and I'm
the current Community Manager for Imperator and I will be the future Community Manager
for Crusader Kings 3 once Rod transitions to his new role here at Paradox. I look forward
to seeing you all and hope y'all come back now, ya hear?