Crusader Kings 3’s update 1.7.0 goes live today, its patch notes revealing the addition of character Memories, new childhood personality events, alongside a suite of balance and interface changes, but also bug fixes.
Update 1.7.0 accompanies CK3’s Friends & Foes DLC, which introduces more than 100 new events, adding some extra variety to the lives of rulers across its map.
Crusared Kings III’s update 1.7.0 also reworks populist factions, focusing especially on their interactions with player vassals. The Offer Vassalization action also receives multiple tweaks. Here is a partial list of changes introduced today, as detailed in the full patch notes over on the game’s forums.
Expansion Features
- Over one hundred new events and event chains which expand upon the relationships you have with your family, friends, rivals, best friends, and nemeses. Experience a much more varied pool of random events every year, as well as specific heart-wrenching (or heart-stabbing!) reactive content for when you, as an example, lie dying, or when someone close to you takes part in a foreign battle.
- New events for finding and living with spouses: spoil your partners and suffer the consequences, deal with multiple rival spouses pushing their children to be first in the line of succession, rein in (or allow) an overly-zealous spouse from burning books to ensure your children remain pure, and seek out a potential partner who must first be defeated in combat before they will allow you to take their hand in marriage!
- Manage life as a parent: deal with squabbles between children vying for their line in succession, correspond with a married-off offspring, and assuage the doubts and jealousy of the child of a concubine who wishes to be treated equally to their siblings.
- Navigate the pitfalls of life as a Medieval child: make a friend at a bonfire, fend off would-be fratricide or sororicide from envious siblings, and swear eternal vengeance on bullies after they break your favorite toy.
- Explore the joys of friendship: share war stories with an old friend and make a new one at the bathhouse. Resist the temptations of a dead friend’s spouse throwing amorous glances your way, forgive your gluttonous best mate for eating you out of house and home, stage an intervention for a companion when they are far too fond of a drink, attempt to matchmake for a lonely confidant, and attempt to ease the suffering of a friend as they pass on from this life.
- Discover the depths of rivalry with your rivals: get into brawls on the wharf and in the pub, arm-wrestle to prove a point, burn their artifacts in front of them, wait until a bitter nemesis dies and then dig them up and defile their body to get back at them even after death. Sleep with your rivals’ offspring, or even sleep with them! Be careful of the consequences…
- From small storylets to larger event chains, this content will weave new dramatic narratives about friendships, vengeance, feuds between houses, memories of the past, and much, much more.
- New mood music focusing on the Middle East, the Western sphere, and some that fit regardless of where you play
Free Features
- Added an additional set of 12 new Childhood Personality Events, this will make certain personality trait combinations much more likely to appear, and also makes certain combinations possible that previously weren’t. The trait combinations are balanced in such a way that the choice for you as a guardian should be more interesting:
- diligent, gregarious, temperate
- zealous, ambitious, sadistic
- shy, paranoid, craven
- lazy, gluttonous, compassionate
- lustful, chaste
- just, greedy, callous
- humble, cynical, content
- vengeful, deceitful, calm
- generous, fickle, arrogant
- forgiving, trusting, patient
- honest, arbitrary, impatient
- brave, stubborn, wrathful
- When a Friend, Best Friend, Rival, Nemesis, Lover, or Soulmate relation is formed, a reason will now be stated. For example: “Kaiser Heinrich and King Philippe shared an excellent feast in Aachen” or “Basileus Andreas swore to avenge the death of Aristarchos, who was slain in battle by Ulf Munk”. These reasons can be viewed for any character in the Relationships tab in the Character Window, presuming the relation is public.
- Added relationship icons on character portraits so you can see who is your friend/rival/lover at a glance, along with an informative tooltip
- Characters now have Memories of things happening in their lives (children born, battles won, rivals killed, etc etc.). These memories are used in events and other content. For example, if you are murdered your assassin might cite a grievance that your killer had against you. These memories might fade with time, and are usually lost on death. For certain characters memories are preserved longer or even forever (such as rulers the player has controlled, and high tier rulers).
- Memories can be viewed by opening the Memory Viewer from the character window, via a button in the same place as the Kill List, Inventory, and Lifestyle.
- Memories are listed chronologically alongside the date they were added (you can flip direction with a toggle).
- Private memories will not be visible unless it’s your own character, or you are in Observer mode. (private memories such as gaining a lover or murdering someone).
- You can view the public memories of any character in the world.
- Memory lists can be copied to the clipboard via a button and shared outside the game.
- For convenience you can pin the Memory Viewer to one character, or browse through different characters while keeping the Memory Viewer open.
- Memories are collected up during game play time, but some characters may start with some already in place.
- Added the Loyal/Disloyal Traits, which affect how likely a character is to join factions, cheat on their spouse, etc. These traits are integrated as Sins/Virtues, hooked into Cultural Traditions, and can be gained through new events.
- Reworked Populist Factions in order to improve their functionality, especially in regards to how they interact with player vassals:
- Vassals directly affected by a Populist Revolt now get a letter from the revolt leader, asking the vassal how they will respond to their demand. The vassal may:
- Join the war and help their liege
- Convert to the faction's culture and/or faith and join the war on the side of the rebels
- Stay out of the war and do nothing (though still risk losing land if the liege loses the war)
- AI vassals are most likely to join the war on the side of their liege, but can in rare cases pick either of the other two options
- Made it so that AI lieges will never accept the faction demand if a player vassal is targeted by the faction (this will finally allow player vassals to intervene and help protect their own realm)
- Greatly increased the military strength of Populist Factions, to compensate for the fact that vassals can join the war:
- Populist armies now spawn a few basic Men-at-Arms in addition to levies
- Populist armies spawn Siege Weapons depending on their culture's innovations, allowing them to better scale into the late game
- Populist factions now generate a few commanders to lead their troops
- The populist leader will now get some extra gold upon victory, to ensure that they can afford creating titles and Men-at-Arms
- Reduced the rate at which factions gain discontent for being over the military power threshold. In practice, this will give rulers a longer time to react before factions press their ultimatum (especially when the faction is only slightly stronger than their target)
- A successful Populist Faction will no longer usurp or create an existing title if they don't control at least 50% of its De Jure (this is to prevent titles from being usurped too easily)
- Increased the restrictions for a successful Populist Faction to create custom kingdoms and duchies. They will primarily attempt to create a title without a holder or usurp an existing title
- Rulers participating in a Populist Faction will now become independent if they have too high a rank to be vassalized by the populist leader, instead of remaining a vassal to their old liege
- The leader of a successful Populist Faction should no longer steal counties from rulers joining the revolt
- Added 14 new event illustrations
- Food Cellar
- Crossroads with Inn
- Hills
- Plains
- Bonfire
- Kitchen (Western)
- Jungle
- Desert/Drylands
- Docks (Tribal)
- Castle Corridor Day/Night (Indian)
- Courtyard (Indian)
- Courtyard (MENA)
- Relaxing Room
- Wetlands
- 7 new character animations for events
- Assassination pose with raised knife
- Eavesdropping
- Eye Rolling
- Laughing
- Drinking from Goblet
- Holding Lantern
- Toast Using Tankard
Balance
- 'Domestic Affairs' now also increases the rate in which you lose tyranny
- A lot of interactions that used to consider max military strength will now consider current military strength
- AI Muslim rulers with Jizya active no longer indiscriminately convert Apostolics if they aren't zealous
- AI counts will no longer complain that their capital county is under their De Jure when you're revoking their titles
- AI rulers will now elect to end their offensive wars should the defender end up being inherited by the Mongol Empire
- AI rulers with Religious Taxation active no longer convert faiths within their own religious group without being somewhat zealous first
- Added AI weights and a longer cooldown to the Latrine Disaster event
- Baltic Pagans are now much more unlikely to spontaneously convert to an organized faith
- Caliphal Subjugation is now based on adherence to Head of Faith, rather than same faith (which means that the Sunni caliph can subjugate Ashari, Maturidi, and Mutazili, for example)
- Changed yearly.8200 to be based on your gold values rather than the priests
- Clans can now offer religious exemption when vassalizing
- You can now ask for religious exemption when swearing fealty to a clan
- Common rarity artifacts are now more likely to get damaged in sieges than stolen
- Craven, Content and Trusting AI's are now more likely to say yes to title revocation and vassal retraction
- Generous characters now lose stress by giving away titles
- Harold Godwinson will no longer get alliances within the first 5 years of the game, to let the battle for England play out first
- If you have your temporal Head of Faith vassalized, you can now direct GHW's if they're enabled
- Isolationist Cultures are now harder to vassalize
- Norse characters will now tend to convert to their divergent scandinavian cultures if appropriate
- Offer Vassalization - Added 20 acceptance for having an alliance
- Offer Vassalization - Added 20 acceptance for offering to a realm encircled by yours, without access to the coast
- Offer Vassalization - Added a penalty for Feudals trying to vassalize Tribals, and vice versa
- Offer Vassalization - Added a penalty for being a year or more in debt
- Offer Vassalization - Added an acceptance modifier based on how well-liked you are by your Powerful Vassals, ranging between -20 to +20
- Offer Vassalization - Base acceptance changed to -50 from -45
- Offer Vassalization - Being the Rightful Liege/Unrighful Liege is now +20/-20, changed from +10/-25
- Offer Vassalization - Increased the claimant modifier to -20
- Offer Vassalization - Increased the rivalry modifier to -100
- Offer Vassalization - Lover/Soulmate now gives +10/+20 acceptance
- Offer Vassalization - The 'I am a King', 'We just fought against each other', and 'I fought an independence war against you' negative reasons have been increased, to offset the new positive reasons (you shouldn't be able to vassalize kings easily!)
- Offer Vassalization - The 'Wide difference in rank' modifier is now 10, up from 5
- Offer Vassalization - The Ambitions, Arrogant, Paranoid, Fickle, and Stubborn traits now reduce acceptance by -10/-20
- Offer Vassalization - The Opinion Modifier now matter twice as much for clans (up to a potential +70 from +35), to make up for the fact that they can't offer better vassal contracts
- Offer Vassalization - The Trusting and Content traits increase acceptance by 5
- Reduced the vassalization acceptance bonus from the Diplomatic Court Type
- Lowered the effect of True Ruler from 25 to 20
- Significantly lowered the chances of artifacts getting damaged during feasts
- Slightly loosened the requirements of pagan conversions for the AI so that less scattered pagan realms persist into the very late game
- Steppe rulers will no longer automatically feudalize when converting to a non-pagan religion, to preserve the steppe tribal for longer
- Rulers of Successor Khanates (Golden Horde, Chagatai, etc) are now much less likely to be sick, infirm, underage, of an ill-fitting culture, etc, while also now favoring highly skilled characters.
- Significantly revised how the Successor Khanates spawn, patching many holes where they would fail to form, and ensuring that their borders are more logical and contiguous
- Successor Khanate heirs will now switch to a majority faith of their new realm if they are Pagan upon succession
- Successor Khanates now start with 100 dread to help them survive the first few years
- Successor Khanates now start with High Partition
- Successor Khanates will now be given a De Jure area depending on what they hold, within reason (the Ilkhanate will not shift all of persia, don't worry)
- The 'guardian of my relative' opinion modifier now stacks
- The AI is now slightly more willing to give up land or vassals that belong to their liege's primary title's capital duchy (i.e. Valois for the Kingdom of France)
- The AI will now tend to not attempt imprisonments of landed vassals when chances are exceedingly low, unless they're lunatics
- Patched an exploit where you could give the same artifact to multiple people, now only one will get it
- The Gift Artifact interaction is now instant
- The Gift Artifact interaction no longer shares opinion modifier with Send Gift, so you can do both to the same character
- The Greatest of Khans trait and Modifiers now give Horse Archer and Light Cavalry siege speed bonuses
- The Mongol Empire now starts with High Tribal Authority
- The Mongol Empire will now always spawn as Tribal
- The Mongol successor states (Chagatai, golden Horde, ilkhanate, etc.) now get some event troops and a little bit of gold to prevent them from instantly collapsing
- The Mongols are now much less likely to gallop their horses into the mountains of Tibet
- The Mongols now do not get Peasant Factions while a Great Khan is ruling them
- The Mongols now get more dread from devastating provinces
- The Mongols now have a chance to devastate counties when subjugating rulers in war, even if they do not siege them directly
- The Royal Armory Duchy Building now also gives an army maintenance % reduction
- The Seneschal position now provides slightly less control growth
- The rivalry set by stress_threshold_prison.1031 is now applied when let out of prison for the AI, to avoid having a steady source of rivals to execute for stress loss for the player
- The stress impact from revoking titles with the Generous trait has been lowered
- There's now a chance to steal artifacts from barons in sieges, should they have any
- Tyranny Reducing effects from Artifacts are now less powerful
- When embracing the English culture, all children and all vassal's children will now also convert to the English culture
- When vassalizing someone, they'll now gain an opinion modifier that prevents them from joining Independence and Dissolution factions
- You as the liege no longer lose a piety level for choosing not to imprison the guilty party in secret reveal events
- You can no longer seize the gold from realm priests through banishment, and any gold that former realm priests hold will be transferred to the new realm priest if possible
- You now get more opinion when gifting greedy characters artifacts
- You now only need 1 Holy Site to create or recreate a Head of Faith title
- AI vassals are now more likely to offer a gift when paying homage
- Boosted the control gain from requesting Bailiffs from your Liege in a Petition
- Children that are 10+ years old at game start will now always be assigned a sexuality
- Non-landed children will now more often get bullies, victims, friends, and crushes
- k_naples is now a valid title for the Wily as the Fox achievement </ul>
Crusader Kings III is available now on PC and consoles. If you're looking to spice up your playthroughs, check out our list of the best CK3 mods.
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