Paradox Interactive has released the ninth developer diary for Crusader Kings III: Silk & Silver. This major expansion will overhaul systems such as trade, holdings, city growth, roads, and mod support. The focus is not merely on adding clothing and animations, but on changing the underlying structures of the economy and settlements.
Trade routes will be visualized on the map using caravans, pack animals, and vehicles. City buildings will expand gradually based on culture, settlement size, and terrain, with streets adopting more natural or regular layouts and displaying facilities related to local resources. Venice will feature the Doge's Palace, St. Mark's Basilica, the Arsenal, the Campanile, and dynamic gondolas; Paris will use a unified model covering its entire historical period, with the original site of the early Saint-Étienne Cathedral available for constructing Notre-Dame de Paris.
Holdings will now consist of multiple districts, each with a main building and available building slots. This change expands possibilities for mod creation, though some older building mods may require updates. Roads will progress from level 0 to level 5 based on usage intensity, improving trade income, travel speed, and army movement efficiency; if a route remains unused for a long time, the road will degrade accordingly.
Modders can define goods, production regions, prices, building requirements, and land and sea networks. The expansion also includes 88 cosmetic items, over 25 new animations, approximately 20 ambient tracks, and 8 musical pieces, while some script and map variable tools will be released in a concurrent free update.