EDIT: Todays livestreams are cancelled due to attrition from PDXCON.

Hi folks!PDXCON 2017 is over and it was fantastic to meet so many of you! I got a lot of interesting suggestions and feedback on our games, including, of course, CK2. So, a special thank you goes out to those of you who were there!Now then, let’s talk a bit about those ugly gray areas on the map; the wastelands. Aesthetically, I’ve never liked the gray color of wasteland provinces in the non-Terrain map modes, so I took some time to change it so that wasteland is now always shown as Terrain, regardless of map mode (we might add options for this in the settings. Let me know what you think!)Northern Siberia and the Sahara deserve to be wasteland; it’s difficult to do anything more about that (we’ve already twisted and manipulated the map projection, etc.) However, the Himalayas and the vast Tibetan plateau are a different story… Though mountainous, the region contains many important population centers and religious sites and has a rich history of interaction with China, India and Central Asia. In essence, the only reason it’s a “wasteland” in CK2 is that we haven’t prioritized doing it justice.I’ve never been happy with the way the eastern edge of the map feels like the edge of the world when, in fact, it should be a dynamic hub connecting at least four major civilizations (China, India, the Steppe Nomads and the Islamic world.) Well, the time to do something about that is now! In our working build, we have added the necessary provinces, new cultures (Bodpa, Tangut and Nepalese), new religions (Bön and Khurmazta), and title history for the entire region.The Bön religion is a pagan faith which functionally has many similarities with the Romuvan and Buddhist religions: It is very hard to convert, has access to Gavelkind, and unlike other pagan faiths it can not be reformed (though this might change in the future.) Instead, it starts off with the ability to designate heirs, just like Buddhists. It has also got a Patron Deity system like that of the Hindus and the “defensive” Pagans.In addition, we are looking over the great Muslim conquerors (Sabuktigin, Seljuq and Timur) to make sure they usually rise, toning down the Indian Holy Orders and making them creatable (rather than existing from the start.) We also plan to add or expand on adventurers for more generic conquests into and out of the subcontinent especially.There is more, but that would be revealing too much too soon.Stay tuned for the next dev diary!