[/p][p]Throughout the steppes - in the verdant reaches of China - across the insular lands of Japan and South-East Asia: we now have more of you playing than ever before. Yes, even more people are playing than when the game was first released, which is mind-boggling. To see so many of you playing and enjoying the game this many years after it was first released is extremely humbling! And it’s not only new players, but also returning players - those of you who might not have played for a while. For one day, we even surpassed Hearts of Iron IV in how many active players we have! ????
[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/16fecc0ecfd94b4d78bb74a50f24203cb9e68185.gif"][/img][/p][p]\[Celebratory image courtesy of @JonZone][/p][p][/p][p]And it’s not stopping; more and more of you are playing each day that passes. We hope that what we’ve made will continue to bring you joy throughout the winter and the holidays, all while we’re working on what’s coming next.
[/p][p]Now, let’s recap the year in more detail![/p][p][/p]
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Chapter 4
[p]Let’s go through the content in the order it was released![/p][p][/p]Realm Maintenance 2025
[p]We started off the year with a big Realm Maintenance update, containing improved Combat AI, Automated armies, info on allied armies, an updated Interaction UI, a large update to Court Positions including Tasks and a new UI, as well as many, many other things. Essentially a mix of issues reported by you in the community, and projects from the Black Forge Jam. The Realm Maintenance team knocked it out of the park with this one, and on a surprising note we saw a very large number of players trying it out, causing a significant spike in player numbers! This is not very common, as free updates tend to receive much less attention than expansions (we have a lot of data from across all our games on this) - but this one broke the pattern, proving that it’s a valuable format, and one we should continue with! Thank you for this, as I myself always was a big proponent of having free updates, and this helps a lot.[/p][p][/p][p]Next year we’ll put the Realm Maintenance team to work on another update (it’ll probably land sometime in the second quarter of the year this time), and without saying too much we’re looking into working together with a certain someone that many of you in the community know well…[/p][p][/p]Khans of the Steppe
[p]The first project I worked on when joining Paradox back in 2015 was, interestingly enough, Horse Lords for Crusader Kings 2, a very fun expansion that allowed you to burn the world to the ground, but that didn’t really represent life on the steppe that well. I knew from the start that in CK3 we needed a grander focus on movement - through migrations, invasions, and sweeping seasonal changes. At the same time, not all nomads migrated all the time (most had summer/winter pastures, but few of the larger hordes abandoned their lands outright). Nomads were one of my favorite governments in CK2, so I really wanted to nail the feeling this time around![/p][p]With that, we designed a system where smaller nomads tend to migrate around, finding the best spot to graze their herd and increase their strength to challenge larger nomads, eventually finding a place for their people to thrive… until the Havsarsan Zud comes along. Then the settled lands to the west and south might look more tempting than before.
[/p][p]Instead of having their power tied to lands, Nomads have great Herds, which is both their livelihood and their military - meaning that any loss in combat is felt much harder than it would ever feel for one of those rich and content settled rulers. Nomads also use Herd to upgrade their Nomadic Capital, recruit Men-at-Arms, find good Courtiers, and enforce Obedience - basically every facet of nomadic life is tied to the size of their Herd. And if the Herd of one particular nomad grows large enough, they can claim the mantle of the Greatest of Khans, unless the world bands together to stop them, of course.
[/p][p]We got a lot of great feedback for Khans of the Steppe ahead of its release, and that is because we decided to decouple our dev diaries from the marketing schedule - essentially skipping ahead and revealing what we were working on much earlier than planned. There are risks to this, as talking about something too early might have excitement for the project die down earlier than you want, but such was not the case here - instead we got a ton of feedback that we could comfortably fit into the development schedule, with the funny side effect of not being able to explicitly say what we were working on (But we still did it in a ‘wink wink nudge nudge’-kind of way of course! There was no one that didn’t know that we were working on a Nomad expansion after the first dev diary, hehe.) We’re going to keep having dev diaries as early as possible for our expansions going forward.[/p][p][/p]
Coronations
[p]This year's smaller update was Coronations, which added the Activity with the same name - a new, somewhat costly ordeal to cement the rule of a new ruler ascending to the throne, with the longer they put it off, the less legitimate they become. When the activity is held, there’s a lot of intents to choose from depending on how you want to start off your rule, and as a vassal or foreign guest you have the opportunity to support or disrupt the coronation, giving you reason to travel far to forge alliances or weaken your enemies… The Coronation activity is one of the most content-filled activities we’ve done, with about as much content as an Event Pack stuffed into one activity.[/p][p][/p][p]Now, the launch didn’t go well, with a game-breaking bug and some severe balance issues hampering it. The issues boiled down to two things: we were changing things too recklessly late in development, and we didn’t play enough longer sessions towards the end of the cycle. We had assigned almost everyone on the team to All Under Heaven, which left Coronations with few people to ‘tie the bag together’, so to speak.[/p][p]This was unfair and unacceptable both to the team working on the project, and to you - but we’re taking learnings from what happened and applying them to everything we’re doing from now on out. For example, we’re having several developers constantly play longer sessions up until release, this way we minimize the risk of obvious gamebreaking bugs or balance issues slipping through. We started doing this already with All Under Heaven, where we had a constant stream of playlogs (essentially After Action Reports focusing on fun & stability) delivered every week, usually 3-5 of them or more, with dedicated meetings to process the feedback. We’re also likely to focus on our larger expansions in 2026, putting Event Packs on hold for next year.[/p][p][/p]
All Under Heaven
[p]The highlight of the year was All Under Heaven, which is the biggest expansion we’ve ever done, expanding the map more than ever before by including all of Asia! This expansion was a gargantuan effort by the team, and we knew we wanted to do each of the new areas justice from the very beginning. We divided the expansion into three main areas of focus, and the same with the team; China, Japan, and South-East Asia. There was also overlap with Khans of the Steppe, and several members of the team worked on features we knew that both expansions needed, such as Tributaries and Situations. We did a lot of research, consulted experts, and brought in a large group of new Beta program participants with a variety of backgrounds - all to make sure that the features we chose were accurate, fun, and interesting![/p][p]For China we decided to model the Dynastic Cycle (a historical concept where dynasties rise and fall), for Japan we modeled the rise of the Soryo and fall of the Ritsuryo, and for South-East Asia we modeled the worship of God-kings and construction of great temple cities. Three very different ways to play the game, and three unique ways to represent these incredibly diverse areas! Still, it all fits together, and the world is interconnected, with things happening on one side of the map having ripple effects on the other, and vice versa.
[/p][p]One fun tidbit from the development of All Under Heaven was that we wanted to ‘complete’ the map once and for all by adding all of the old world that was connected during the medieval era… but the map dimensions still couldn’t make room for Zanzibar! (which was an important trade hub during the middle ages). This led to endless jokes about Zanzibar within the team, until someone took it upon themselves to make sure that Zanzibar actually made it onto the map - yes, we had to quite severely distort the coast of east Africa to get it in, but now it’s there, and we have pretty much all of the important medieval lands on the map![/p][p][/p][p]Before we end this section, I have to give thanks to the many fantastic Beta program participants, new and old, who helped us out with insight, research, and feedback throughout the development cycle! A special thank you goes out to our participants from the region itself; without your insight and knowledge this would have been an impossible task!
[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/e18ac54651159ea85c7da0677ac1fe4ddd7d4f15.png"][/img][/p][p]\[The Baoquan Li - "covering the fist" greeting - a gesture of respect, humility, and balance] [/p][p][/p]
Concluding and Retiring Chapter IV
[p]We will soon be retiring Chapter IV, after which the contents will be folded into the collection bundle, as per usual. The individual expansions will, also as per usual, still be available standalone. We’re also looking into adding a subscription, similar to how other Paradox games do it; more on that later. If you want to buy the chapter with its current discount, you should consider doing so soon![/p][p][/p][p]The last date for purchasing Chapter IV is January 14th![/p][p][/p][p][/p]
Coming in 2026
[p]Let's have a peek at the plans for next year![/p][p][/p]Chapter V
[p]As has now become tradition, we will be doing another chapter; this time we’re shifting our focus slightly - if 2025 was the year of going wide (Nomads, all of Asia) then 2026 will be a year of depth. We’re going to go back and revisit some parts of the game that’ll deepen the overall game experience. Just like how Roads to Power set the stage for All Under Heaven, the All Under Heaven expansion is setting the stage for this future content. There are some central areas of the game that we’ve been itching to improve for a long, long time now - and I’m sure that those of you who have been around for a while will be able to figure out what the theme for the next major expansion is most likely going to be…[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/c8b83f15a82d32e44ae23beb8549b424c1e36e0e.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]Here’s a teaser for next year’s content. It’s more of a hint for one of the expansions than the other; but I’m sure you can figure them both out if you put your minds to it…[/p][p][/p]
Creator Packs
[p]In 2026, we’re going to continue working with talented modders to develop new content for the game! It’s always great to work directly with the community like this, and personally I really like that we get to expand areas that would otherwise be unlikely for us in the studio to focus on. Getting pitches and suggestions from modders is a genuinely great experience, as you never really know what’ll be suggested! Having a community that is this creative, and willing to work with us, truly is a blessing. My thanks go out to all the modders out there for putting so much love and effort into creating new experiences for the game![/p][p][/p]Realm Maintenance 2026
[p]We started off 2025 with a ‘Realm Maintenance’ update, and because it was so successful we want to do the same next year! This time the update will likely come out early in the second quarter of the year, and we’ll have people from the team assigned to work on fixes and improvements until then. We’ll focus on three main areas for the update: fixing bugs (focusing on what you in the community want to see fixed the most), working together with the aforementioned ‘mystery guest’ to make improvements to the game, and refining some of the projects from this year’s Black Forge Jam![/p][p]One of the Jam projects from this year relates to one of the most requested improvements in the community: Accolades! We want to remove the tedium of selecting accolade successors, and make having accolades a more rewarding experience. Accolade knights will now always automatically be succeeded by a squire - the quality of which is determined by how well the knight performed during their life. We also want to improve clarity around attributes, make them more interactive, and add more agency around gaining the one/s you want. Glory will get a bit of a revamp, so it is no longer lost when the knights die in battle (it’s their job after all, and dying in battle can be quite glorious in these times…). This is one of the projects that we’re committing to finishing up in 2026. [/p][p][/p][p]We’re still working on the UI and presentation of the feature, so keep in mind that it’s going to look different when it’s finished.[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/758e888e20551945666fc59ed37718671f03c8a6.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]We also made some new accolade-related illustrations that fit different cultures, which you can see below:[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/ec9d8ce19b1d0c09cf7813a8600ca1e6a2916618.png"][/img][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/142a5035427d7237a20543ab74d44c1b2501e679.png"][/img][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/fcdeb751f3a3adeab247b873ed04895b141ca3b9.png"][/img][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/eb271c139924f2074a0b1781904421a545c31b55.png"][/img][/p][p]Another system that we’ve improved during the jam is one that modders are probably familiar with, as it’s an excellent way to control and contain various types of content: Story Cycles. Story Cycles, or as they will be known in-game, ‘Stories’, can now be visualized! To access them, you go to the new ‘Situations’ tab, introduced in All Under Heaven. We thought this made sense because a Story is a personal situation of sorts.[/p][p][/p][p]Most of you have probably had a pet cat or a pet dog. They’re invisible in-game apart from some sparse events and a single modifier in the character view, but there is actually a lot of information about them. Fur color, age, etc. It’s all there, but not shown - until now![/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/ac9a0f11d555dafe27254a426ffe075b514a0236.png"][/img][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/590fe5eb3f4375126f2e4ae04233ba303dd0ccb5.png"][/img][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/8b0578e6f9ba9e78af635d878d54817dc008bb25.png"][/img][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/afe8faf5c8bfea7f17415d375e7e632de1976a98.png"][/img][/p][p]\[This particular cat is named after one of our producer’s cats.]
[/p][p]The story cycle visualization is very flexible; you can connect decisions, modifiers, characters, titles, artifacts, show variables as progress bars, etc. This means that each Story shows what is the most important to it, and that most Story Cycles will look completely different from each other. Here are a few more examples:
[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/9e0f60298eedb5552022390a9c325610a44378d5.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]Here’s an example of a more sparse-looking Story. The Conqueror story now shows information that couldn’t really be shown anywhere else: how it can end. Before this would come as an unpleasant surprise, but now it’s written clearly.[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/27470e8487d32100a8abdcb3262bfa4207e50f4b.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]For other stories, it allows us to remind the player of what they’re doing, how they’re doing, and who they’re doing it for. For example, here’s the Song of El Cid, which tracks your loyalty to your informal liege, Sancho II.
[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36033026/5b7d3ef1ed3f1859254165a7eabb78ef68f4d65d.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]There are also a lot of cycles in the game that you’re never really aware of; maybe you clicked the event away quickly, or it looked innocent enough to not rouse suspicion… but now these are visualized, and you can track the important pieces. In the example above, you won’t lose track of your doppelganger as their portrait will be connected to the story, alongside some ominous information.[/p][p][/p]
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Outro
[p]This year has been yet another fantastic one; we’ve expanded the game more than ever before (in a very literal sense!) with the addition of Asia, and multiple new playstyles! Again, I want to extend my most sincere thanks to all of you in the community who keep discussing what you want to see from the game, especially since All Under Heaven wouldn’t have become what it is without your feedback![/p][p][/p][p]We’re now going into 2026 working on new expansions inspired by your feedback and discussions - please, continue sharing your thoughts and wishes, so we can take them into account for the future![/p][p][/p][p]And that concludes this year! Soon enough we’ll meet again, with dev diaries about the Realm Maintenance update coming sometime before its release next year. For now I wish you a beautiful winter, happy holidays, and a very God Jul![/p][p][/p]
