Dev Diary #98 came out. And it's a bit nuts... But in a good way.
They are introducing an "Alternate Start" mechanic. Which basically means they're introducing two mainly gamey features that seem to have been inspired by very popular mods.
First off, there is the Shattered World option. Mod users will recognize this name as one rather popular mod that breaks up the various realms so that everyone starts as count-level. This alternate start possibility is basically doing that, but since it's made by the game creators it's also improved as there are several parameters you can control such as the way you want the world to be split (between Counties and/or Duchies), the number of holding slots, the tech level, the governments available, the available succession laws and have a certain control on character generation.
This alternate start is basically interesting if you want to play on a levelling field... Or just go nuts and start a "build your empire from scratch" game.
The real fun comes with the second alternate start though: Random Wolrd.
Remember the Random Wolrd Generator mod created by a guy named Yenmlie and that was floating around? This is basically the same idea... though improved since the game creators have created this feature. Think it's boring to be stuck with a Historical setting? With this option, you can now generate your own playground to play into! The only thing that remains the same is essentially the map. But that could be arranged by mods...
Anyway, with this you can choose to randomize almost everything: placements, names, functions and graphics of religions, cultures, titles, governments... nearly everything! You can even control if you want an HRE-analogue or a Byzantine-analogue at the start if you want... Only they wont necessarilly be in places you expect them. It's basically shifting the map with a dynamic religion, culture, de-jure and ruler set up. You can basically keep the vanilla settings just having OTL Cultures and Religions thrown around randomly (such as having Nomadic Bön-Worshipping French people in Egypt) or set it so that you have completely different cultures, religions and even a different de-jure setting. In regards to the randomized religions, you can even modify the ones that are going to be generated.
In the end, it's definitely not a features that cares about historicity, so people are probably going to say Paradox's losing a bit of focus here.
On the other hand, it doesn't remove historical play (it's called alternate start after all) and provides a fun way to play the game in a compleste non-historical manner. And that's awesome!
And if this is moddable... SO MANY POSSIBILITIES!!
