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[Teneb]

Umayyads will probably be all kinds of huge too, so it could end with two scary blobs, one blue one green.

[Chosrau]

Don't forget that in the 769 start date Charlemagnes brother Carloman is still alive, so the blob will not be as big as you fear, as the frankish kingdom was split between the two. And blobing eastwards won't be that easy due to the pagan homeland attrition.

[scriver]

"Carloman", huh.

That is probably the most stupidest fantasy name I ever seen in real life.

[Chosrau]

It's just the english translation of his name, so it's actually not a "real name".

[kaian-a-coel]

Actual name was "Karlmann" in german or "Carlomannus" in latin. Not exactly much better.
Means "virile man", like "charlemagne" means "great man".

[Chosrau]

Karlmann means virile man, but Charlemagne (Karl the great) means great man ? Seems strange.

[a1s]

"Carloman", huh.

Sound like an off-brand Charlemagne to go with your Mike sneakers and Appeal  ePod.

That being said, Charlemagne's name was just Charles. "Magnus" was a nickname (like we have in the game), and I prefer "pater Europae" anyway.

[BFEL]

Now I am imagining Europe as Mexico with everyone going "Our king is Charles, magne"

[scriver]

Official Announcement stuffs

...such as a new in-game “Chronicle” that highlights a dynasty’s conquests, marriages, and labors for the faith

So it looks like CK2 will get the same kind of endslide thing Europa Universalis has. At long last!

[umiman]

FUCKING FINALLY!!!!!

[Culise]

Ummmm...yay?

I suppose the custom kingdom/empire work will be helpful for Shattered mods, since they won't need to start with as many tags.  Seasons feels like it could be nice, as does the Regency overhaul, but that depends on what they actually entail - I'm betting things like season-dependent campaigns, having the levied troops back by the harvest, and other such things (like anything economy) won't be in for obvious reasons.  Otherwise, I'm not really feeling it, especially for the higher price; the "annual chronicle" feels like pointless fluff to me, as do the special story events. 

[EnigmaticHat]

Thirty years from now the entire map will be playable, the game will start at 500 BC, they'll finally solve the issue of larger realms never breaking apart, and yet they'll still be releasing expansions.

Oh who am I kidding, they'll never make it so larger realms break apart.

[Frank2368]

So these will be some of the planned features for the expansion, seems like something to prevent blobbing.

Hi All,

As I've mentioned in a couple of threads, I was at the Koln fan gathering, and had the chance to speak to the wonderful Doomdark and JohanLerstrom about the new Crusader Kings 2 DLC: Charlemagne. I've given some brief summaries of what I found out, but here's something slightly more in depth, cross posted from my blog (to read the whole thing, visit the link in my signature EDIT: My sig doesn't seem to have updated yet. Link is here: http://kingofathousandworlds.com/).

Tribal Holdings

Tribal holdings (though I don't know if that will be their actual in game names) sound like they will be much like castles, bishoprics and cities, although Doomdark also put trade posts in that list, which leads me to believe they might be an over-holding of some sort (to prevent the awkwardness of having one holding change to another later in the game). Essentially tribal holdings will represent lands that aren't properly fortified yet, more owned by virtue of people living there than by people actually building towns etc.

An interesting aspect of tribal holdings, is that vassals who are 'tribal' (presumably a new title equivalent to count, based on your holding type) don't provide levies in the way that a feudal vassal does. Instead, a tribal vassal must be called to arms, like an ally. In this way, your vassal management becomes much more important, and vassal ties are much looser. A king can only gain power if he is respected enough by his vassals, even more so than currently, and a vassal maintains full control of his own armies, making war much more scattered.

Elective Gavelkind

Another interesting new feature, designed for the breaking up of blobs: elective gavelkind. Empires being too blobby has always been a big concern, and even more so with the introduction of a start date that may very well include the entirety of Francia as one huge empire. At least one response to this, which also adds to the susceptibility of tribal civilisations falling apart without a leader, is elective gavelkind.

From what I can tell, elective gavelkind is much like what it sounds: it's a cross between tanistry and gavelkind. The new ruler must be selected from your dynasty, but I believe that other dynasty members will also get titles, as gavelkind suggests. In addition, upon succession, some vassals may be given the option to become independent, no war involved, much like the decadence mechanics are supposed to work.

The exact nature of this hasn't been settled on yet, since they're still testing it out, but it may be based on the power of the vassal relative to liege, the opinion of the vassal, or perhaps even a choice that everyone is given regardless, and then acted on appropriately. In any case, this serves to make early empires more likely to break apart, and perhaps constantly try and put themselves back together, in a way that current succession laws don't.
My only hesitation with this is that it will probably still be too easy to get a big mid-late game empire going. Once elective gavelkind is gone, I'm not sure what will be used to try and break apart large empires that have formed under primogeniture, or even normal elective. So, while this should solve the early Karling problem, I don't think it will do anything for the HRE, or for later game blobs. We shall see however: blobbing is clearly something in the forefront of the minds at Paradox, so hopefully this will also be settled. One possible solution is:

Vassal Limit

A new limit, much like the current demesne limit, will be imposed upon rulers with the introduction of the Charlemagne DLC. This limit does exactly what it suggests: it imposes a soft-cap on the number of independent vassals you can have in your realm before you start taking penalties. To offset this, you will be encouraged to hand out more duchy titles, and perhaps even kingdoms, as your empire becomes too large for you to manage each vassal yourself.

This is a great idea, and as unfortunate as it may be to have to impose rules like this, rather than providing encouragement for playing the game in a certain way, I think it fits in very well with the current demesne limit. It makes sense that if you can only manage so many holdings yourself, you can logically only manage so many vassals as well before you become stretched thin. This is why vassals exist in the first place.

In addition, this adds a new balancing factor to crown law. As crown law gets higher, and the monarch begins to exercise more direct control over his vassals, the vassal limit will decrease, so that more titles need to be handed out. This means that going up to absolute crown law will not only make your vassals like you less, but also encourage you to give those vassals more power as well, to help maintain the laws you impose.

As said before, I very much hope this will be the way to make empires crumble. With low crown laws, empires can be sprawling, but somewhat weak, with fewer levies to help defend against outside threats and even factions, and less control over their vassals. As crown law increases, larger vassals will come into play, curbing the power of monarchs who they don't like, making factions more likely to spawn. Ultimately, this may see more independence factions firing and being successful. Fingers crossed.

Seasons

Finally, seasonal changes, similar to EU4. I think everyone has been expecting something like this for a while, and I guess that Paradox decided to just throw it in there now. Seasons should have an effect upon attrition in provinces, making war in winter a more dangerous affair, and there was a hint that weather might effect combat, perhaps by changing terrain. Whether this will just affect military educations (fights better in snowy conditions) or whether there will be a weather effect on combat I'm not sure, but in either case this is a change I don't have much to say on other than it's there.

Overall, I think that might be all the information I got out of developers. I didn't have my journalism hat on at the time, so I didn't chase up nearly as many questions as I should have done, but hopefully that puts some fears to rest that people may have had. I know that I started off very disappointed in the idea of a further timeline extension, but having discussed with the devs, this sounds much more thought out than I gave them credit for. Here's hoping that everything goes as well as it does in my imagination.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?795779-Thoughts-on-Charlemagne-from-the-Fan-Gathering

[Glloyd]

Hopefully there's a way to mod out that vassal limit, that seems like it would take out a lot of the fun.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Actually the vassal limit would seem at first to be very FUN, I can see Factions being much more powerful now, for better or for worst a suppose.