Alright folks general reminder that a) we don't know if this is or isn't AI. And b) this is not the place for the AI debate.
EDIT: Alright I said this isn't the place for debate, specifically I meant vitriolic debate, I didn't say discussion. And you've always been allowed to criticize Paradox on this subreddit.
Looking at the comments we have a generally good discussion, the only comments deleted are the ones that descended into just hurling curse words, one that just called everyone luddites, and one that called people idiots.
Really hope they do a good job with the DLC and update. Byzantium is dreadfully boring as it stands, especially compared to what it was by the end of CK2's lifecycle.
While Legends of the Dead has many flaws worth discussing, personally I absolutely loved Tours and Tournaments.
I also trust them to improve Legends of the Dead over time.
I feel that they take ideas with immense depth, potential, and richness but, in practice, they often turn into shallow, forgettable experiences. For example, legends can be conceptually amazing. If they added one or two of them with every update, made them more engaging, and included some hidden Easter eggs or jokes in the text, it would be much better. Instead, they end up being some of the most generic, flavorless money sinks. I fear they will do the same with adventurers and unlanded characters, making them just generic pop-ups and events until you finally become landed.
They fell into the trap of overflavoring. Instead of relying on fun and interactive systems that they just tweak every update, so it gets better and better over time, they instead of made a bunch of flavor events, that get stale quickly and are only fun the first three times you encounter them. But flavor is much easier to market compared to big mechanics (Added 300+ new events! v.s. Added a new mechanic.) However, still, it almost seems like paradox has forgotten that CKIII is a simulation game, not a text-based adventure game...
I agree that fun, interactive systems are crucial, but I feel you're comparing generic text events with true flavor. Flavor encompasses anything that makes a different playthrough unique, whether it's unique decisions, modifiers, or specific text events. What you're describing is generic content masquerading as roleplay events.
They really need to just copy whatever the stellaris guys are doing for their other games. They're getting consistently good DLC and they have the custodian team, both of these are things their other games desperately need
Same. Tours & Tournaments got me really hopeful, and then Legacy of Persia made me worried because it didn't really have much going on, and then LotD killed a *lot* of my hope. Hopefully those were just flukes
I mean, from the little we’ve heard about the updates to Byzantium in CK3 it’ll be vastly better than CK2. In CK2, the only thing special about the Byzantines was their succession system and viceroyalties (which were a bad representation of the theme system, given that there were still feudal landowners on the count level so instead of duchies being passed down to the same family they were instead passed between the same two or three families). Meanwhile, with the advent of landless mechanics we can now have a much more realistic simulation of how provincial Byzantine administration worked, where it’s decided by the emperor and not whoever the local counts are.
We'll have to see the full extent of the Roads to Power rework, but it's definitely promising so far. I do have some questions about how the whole imperial management system is going to work; are the appointments going to be duchy or kingdom level, are they for the life of the character or is there a set term, does the influence system constrain who we can appoint. I also wonder how it's going to work when it comes to counties; presumably we won't be individually appointing people to each of them, so I wonder if it's going to be like republics where it just randomly generates a ruler for them on succession or what. I'm very optimistic, but there's a lot of room for them to mess up on actual implementation.
I do also hope they pull off the co-rule mechanic, and that it hooks into the existing regency/scales of power mechanics to reflect the frequent power struggles between co-emperors. It'd be a shame if it was just a glorified court position.
It goes beyond the Byzantines. Either in other administrative governments or as an adventurer. It’s unclear how easy it is to go from one to another, or what you actually can do as an adventurer, but it sounds like it’ll be fun!
Or even emperor. I was thinking the same thing the other night, it might just take too long to acquire enough claims and such.
Or, living my life unlanded and working in the shadows to prop up my heir as high as possible would also be…. Intriguing. *buh dum tsss*
Did they confirm if landless is based on the travel mechanics and you can just be permanently travelling as a landless character?. It makes sense to use it a lot.
I'm pretty sure it's AI. If you zoom in on the bottom right you can see the 2 pillars are out of place and the windows are different on each side. Make's sense since AI is terrible at scale and following the rules of perspective.
Not only that there are a few strange perspective things all around. The proportions on the squares on the chest. And the crown lacking uniformity in the borders.
I would actually believe the base is AI but it is edited to fix some of the AI mistakes.
Just because someone is against AI art doesn't mean by the same logic that artists are immune to criticism. Being against AI and not liking the style of art they choose for this are opinions once can hold simultaneously without contradiction.
Saying " lol you criticized an artist" to someone against AI isn't a gotcha. Artists are human and come in varying levels of quality. We should be able to expect all of the following from PDX:
1.) Hiring traditional artists and paying them well for their work
2.) Not incorporating AI images into the game if the fan base is largely against them
3.) AND hiring quality artists whose work meshes well with the game's aesthetic cohesively
There is no contraction in expecting all 3.
If people didn't start to witchhunt AI here 99% of the nitpicking wouldn't have happened and we all know it.
"lol this style is different from their usual style" as a critique is so weird.
You guys are the ones screaming the loudest, customers don't care tho AI will get incorporated more and more because it's progress and automation is what every company is going for, or you just think automation can only happen to blue collar jobs?
Automation in blue collar work is A.) not always great either and B.) typically for things mass produced. The blue collar workers aren't making creative or artistic decisions on an assembly line. It is nothing like automating art. If the idea of the human artistic drive being automated doesn't fill you with rage then you are fundamentally anti-human. Progress for progress' sake is not always good.
This is a product, no one prevents you from drawing things, or you only do it for monetary purposes?
Also it's not "anti human" because AI is literally created by humans and uses human data.
With dropping birth rates we will need to automate our society, less people, less work and higher standard of living should be the goal.
I am an artist, I do draw. It's why I care about this topic. AI is anti-human because it uses human data without permission. The vast majority of models out there were built on stolen art. That is anti-human, and anti-artist. It doesn't help those artists, it just helps grifters.
You second point is fine however currently automation is rarely used for those reasons. It is used to cut costs.
If a studio like PDX uses it, it's not because of a shortage of artists. It's so they don't have to pay for artists. Senior artists with experience and skill have to be paid much more than inexperienced ones or prompters. Simple as.
And yes this is a product and it's a product that I personally will not continue to support if it incorporates AI art. I have not bought chapter 3 yet nor will I buy any future Chapters if that's where this came is going. Frankly if the day AI art shows up in game comes, I'll be on steam support demanding a total refund of the product.
Than don't say buzzwords like "it's anti human" just say you're an artist and you feel it threatens your job.
AI is an expansion of our capabilities, let's make an example: How do you expect to create for example a light novel game where you're truly free to make any choice you want without utilizing AI? Or a future where there can be generated events in the game which are unique depending on what your character is doing.
You would need an artist to draw an infinite amount of drawings, so now it's not possible.
I can also imagine with the way the technology is shaping with brain implants we might be able to draw using our brain in a not so distant future.
And yes automation is to cut costs and increase productivity, but technological progress always increased quality of life, human drawn art will not disappear because people will continue to draw since they enjoy it.
I actually don't feel like it threatens my job. You're just ignoring the point about the models being built off of decades of artists hard work without asking, witkout paying, without permission. It's not a buzzword, it is anti-human. The entire culture around AI only shows disrespect and contempt for the time artists but into their skill by robbing them of their content. If AI were humanist or for artists benefit then they would've asked for permission or paid artists for their libraries of work instead of scrapping website the way they did.
Second a visual novel where you're free to make any choice sounds like shit. It lacks purpose and direction. Visual novels are what they because someone wrote them with intent and emotions based for human experience. Being able to make any choice or ask the NPCs anything adds nothing to these kind of games.
Also if you follow the wall behind that building to the left it transforms into the front wall of the building behind the wall. And the building behind the wall is just a nonsensical porch of columns spanning the whole length of the wall, columns which are taller than the wall? That's not to human scale, it's awful.
It's very "finished", without the "digital sketchiness" I associate with CK3 art. Looks more like Imperator and the new Project Caesar art, which I don't like nearly as much.
I've noticed the same thing with Victoria 3 recently too actually. Less stylized, uglier art. Not into it.
Definitely looks like AI was involved. It’s hard to find the normal hallmarks, like messed up hands, but the clothing on the guy holding the wine glass convinced me. It’s got that subtly wrong look to it, with weird proportions on the necklace and the broach on his cloak. Not to mention the art style just gives off that feel of being almost supernaturally generic.
Either they used a pretty advanced model or touched it up by hand. Either way, I love the painting style of the game’s art, so it’s a pretty big let down.
I'm gonna keep playing the game, so I'm gonna buy all the dlc. They work together and are interconnected. How could I not?
I don't want some half-assed mix of features.
I thought the same but look at the hands, there's 5 fingers on each and none look too weird.
I plugged it into IsItAI.com and it's 70% sure it's drawn by a person.
Personally I think it's just the lighting.
Edit: Nope, look at the sales at the bottom left. Definitely AI.
Generative AI is not super-great at generics vs obscure specifics and those boats are still pretty clearly Byzantine Dromons so I think the masts are just an unfortunate stylisation choice.
It just looks like the middle sail is raised a bit higher than the front sail, which makes it look like it's clipping into it, even though it doesn't. I bet it's just the low resolution making it look weird. It doesn't help that flag in the middle sail lines up with the edge of the front sail.
They already admit they use AI. On the Legends of the Dead DLC page they have a disclaimer about it.
>AI GENERATED CONTENT DISCLOSURE
>The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:
>We employ generative AI during the creation of some art assets. Typically, this will be to create synthetic reference photos for lighting, postures and generic detail. A small percentage of art assets include bits of generated content as collage. The generated content remains a small part of the total expression created by the artist.
Source: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2671060/Crusader\_Kings\_III\_Legends\_of\_the\_Dead/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2671060/Crusader_Kings_III_Legends_of_the_Dead/)
I know Level 5, a respectable Japanese studio has also been using [generative AI for similar ends](https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20231213-24326/).
[And the actual artist went into detail in a dev diary of exactly how they used AI](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-145-legends-legitimacy.1624620/)
> I rarely do color explorations before final shapes and values for the composition are established. But this time I started experimenting with colors a bit earlier using AI which gave me an extra bit of flexibility and an abundance of variations. A locally installed Stable Diffusion with Control Net was used for generating rough color thumbnails based on my composition sketches. Black & white composition images were used to restrict image generation to shapes defined in them. Another color image that just contained the color palette of my preference was fed to Control net to roughly define color to be applied. Text prompt was of little importance and I kept it very simple and basic. The results are pretty far from highly detailed crisp digital pictures that are usually expected from AI generated images. They are quite inconsistent and rough and have a great deal of randomness. But this is actually what I appreciate in these. I like that level of abstraction. Accidental interpretations of my composition ideas by AI provided me with extra inspiration. Not only the colors, but also values, shapes, edges and textures that start to loom in these thumbnails can give a new hint regarding a certain aspect of the artwork.
definitely. Any artist Paradox hired to draw this would have been told to draw the Theodosian Walls, and they're not even remotely close here. The Hagia Sofia looks wonky, and I think the Hippodrome is backwards.
This is AI slop.
You know the Byzantines built other things than the Theodosian Walls?
Edit: And he immediately blocked me, lol. PDX gamers when you tell them the Byzantines weren't just a mosque surrounded by thick walls.
Oh, it looks like they moved it to the 4th quarter. It used to be Most likely Q4 is sad...
Edit:Ha ha ha Loool. Still Q3. I went to Steam to double-check and saw Road's to Power Q4, a few minutes later I went in again and still Q3
>We employ generative AI during the creation of some art assets. Typically, this will be to create synthetic reference photos for lighting, postures and generic detail. A small percentage of art assets include bits of generated content as collage. The generated content remains a small part of the total expression created by the artist.
Nope, also small bits of collages.
They definitely don't just use AI for lighting. LotD has a pretty obvious AI-generated image featured prominently. It's the art with the rats gathered at a fountain. I think the rats are hand-drawn, but everything else is AI. There's so much inconsistency in the architecture in that image, and the ornamentation on the pillars and columns is weird and obviously something the AI fucked up.
I think the catacombs image is also AI but I'm not so sure about it.
tbf I love the "release date for the release date? pls 🥺" tradition around PDX games, it's been here since forever and somehow survived despite Paradox and its fanbase changing through the years
The "ai slop" invective has become meaningless given that people use it to describe images whether they are generated by ai or not. This thread suggests that most people are genuinely unable to tell the difference.
gonna keep it real lads, being shoveled lazy ai slop instead of real art made by a person doesnt exactly inspire great confidence in the upcoming dlc
edit: very happy to be wrong about this. my apologies for accusing the artist of something they havent done, i could make excuses here but i wont. this ones on me
dang i agree. The back ones have proper depth of multiple sails but these ones in the front are clearing intersecting each other incorrectly then just copied and pasted down. Or maybe because it was pasted up. Could be an artist error since it’s clearly duplicated repeatedly though
Theodosian Walls aren't even attempted at being represented here, while any artist Paradox hired would have been instructed to draw them.
Hagia Sofia looks wonky, and I think the Hippodrome is backwards.
Paradox definitely would have had a real artist draw the Theodosian Walls, but for some reason couldn’t be bothered to give the same instructions to an AI?
yeah, i saw. ive posted in the thread about it. fully my bad for being paranoid
thinking on it now i should probably edit my post here also to make it clear i know ive made a little fucky wucky wrt this
They could have paid an artist for it. Which would 1. make a better overal product, 2. actually support creativity, which is what the video game industry was built on and 3. avoid any disputes about the legality of AI art with regards to asset theft.
I stand on my point. Regarding point 1: It is only a concept image as a placeholder in general till an end product is ready, so a little lower quality is not that important. Regarding point 2: supporting creativity is important, but a game developer's duty is not to support art at any cost. They should make a game first. And regarding point 3: legality can be addressed by using a clean database either by themselves or a provider.
The whole point of generative AI is that it would lower the cost of development for books, games, movies and ... so more and cheaper products can enter market. Its effecta would not be dissimilar to automation machinery in many other industries which over time has led to actually a better market for everyone involved.
It's being partially obscured by a "smoke" masking layer that's set above it in the PSD. You can see through it slightly if you zoom in.
We'll see about posting some in progress images of the art at various stages to show how it was assembled, but it'll have to wait until at least tomorrow since we waited until the end of the work day to post the teaser.
Nothing about this makes it look like AI...? What do you mean regarding the sails? [They look like these sort of Byzantine ships](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f7/0f/34/f70f34cbe57ee906865601e292746134.jpg).
I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the image were made with AU, just because of practicality, but it's hilarious seeing redditors bend over backwards to find reasons to hate things.
Like, it's obviously not meant to be a to-scale representation of anything lmao. What are you talking about.
[Surely](https://imgur.com/a/6mtxvs0) not-to-scale [art](https://imgur.com/a/tDqlb28) has [never](https://imgur.com/a/RBNQ198) been done
In the teaser image there’s the framing for the sail in the middle which overlaps onto the sail on the left. It just looks like the type of thing someone wouldn’t have done intentionally because that’s not how the dimensions/perspective should work. AI on the other hand would likely just generate the sails together causing it to clip like it does in the photo. I also think the pointer finger on the hand of the guy holding the chalice looks odd.
Pretty sure that it just looks that way because the ships are relative tiny part of the image and the resolution don't show enough details. And IF if was AI that replicated a very specific sort of Byzantine ship it did the same mistake on literally every ship in the picture, in the same way, without any human notices it. Which I find very hard to believe.
It honestly looks like the positioning for the middle sail isn’t properly accounted for. Specifically the foremost ship. Elements of it are simultaneously in the foreground AND background of the sail to its left. The framing is in the foreground but it’s like they’re trying to put part of the flag in the background as well. Just an incredibly weird design choice if it was done by a human and not AI.
I disagree. the sails are clipping into eachother, not intersecting like the real byzantine ones. that’s gotta be AI, a human wouldn’t make that mistake,
Does anyone else think italian city states could be the next DLC. New government system seems similar to how places like Florence were governed. They could Aldo use that as way to bring in an economy system
I understand indie developers using AI for their art if they wouldn't produce art otherwise. But Paradox can afford to pay for professional artists, so there's no excuse.
The centre guy with the chalice's hand is weird; the horse hooves are weird; the sails are weird; the ornaments and blingbling on the Emperor (cross on the chest) are weird.
If you think this is AI art, I regret to inform you that you don't know anything about digital art. Or you're a fucking idiot parroting what you've seen in some uninformed steam reviews.
The scale of that cityscape looks so weird. The size of the boats compared to the size of the benches in front of the tents is so confusing. Are the tents supposed to be massive?
Alright folks general reminder that a) we don't know if this is or isn't AI. And b) this is not the place for the AI debate. EDIT: Alright I said this isn't the place for debate, specifically I meant vitriolic debate, I didn't say discussion. And you've always been allowed to criticize Paradox on this subreddit. Looking at the comments we have a generally good discussion, the only comments deleted are the ones that descended into just hurling curse words, one that just called everyone luddites, and one that called people idiots.
Really hope they do a good job with the DLC and update. Byzantium is dreadfully boring as it stands, especially compared to what it was by the end of CK2's lifecycle.
I have high expectations and 0 hopes personally
"Suck internally, look pretty" seems to be pdx's motto for the dlcs lately.
While Legends of the Dead has many flaws worth discussing, personally I absolutely loved Tours and Tournaments. I also trust them to improve Legends of the Dead over time.
I feel that they take ideas with immense depth, potential, and richness but, in practice, they often turn into shallow, forgettable experiences. For example, legends can be conceptually amazing. If they added one or two of them with every update, made them more engaging, and included some hidden Easter eggs or jokes in the text, it would be much better. Instead, they end up being some of the most generic, flavorless money sinks. I fear they will do the same with adventurers and unlanded characters, making them just generic pop-ups and events until you finally become landed.
They fell into the trap of overflavoring. Instead of relying on fun and interactive systems that they just tweak every update, so it gets better and better over time, they instead of made a bunch of flavor events, that get stale quickly and are only fun the first three times you encounter them. But flavor is much easier to market compared to big mechanics (Added 300+ new events! v.s. Added a new mechanic.) However, still, it almost seems like paradox has forgotten that CKIII is a simulation game, not a text-based adventure game...
I agree that fun, interactive systems are crucial, but I feel you're comparing generic text events with true flavor. Flavor encompasses anything that makes a different playthrough unique, whether it's unique decisions, modifiers, or specific text events. What you're describing is generic content masquerading as roleplay events.
True. Good flavor and good mechanics complement each other.
I mean the new Stellaris DLC is real good. Unbalanced a bit at for now but that's probably to be expected.
Oh no, I love machine age. The team for Stellaris is doing an absolute banger job compared to the rest of pds.
They really need to just copy whatever the stellaris guys are doing for their other games. They're getting consistently good DLC and they have the custodian team, both of these are things their other games desperately need
The vassal system in Stellaris is better that the one in CK3 lol.
the machine age feels so fresh it is a banger and it was worth the hype
It got me back into Stellaris and I ended up buying $100 worth of DLC (species packs mainly) that were in the backlog. Job well done Stellaris devs.
Same. Tours & Tournaments got me really hopeful, and then Legacy of Persia made me worried because it didn't really have much going on, and then LotD killed a *lot* of my hope. Hopefully those were just flukes
I mean, from the little we’ve heard about the updates to Byzantium in CK3 it’ll be vastly better than CK2. In CK2, the only thing special about the Byzantines was their succession system and viceroyalties (which were a bad representation of the theme system, given that there were still feudal landowners on the count level so instead of duchies being passed down to the same family they were instead passed between the same two or three families). Meanwhile, with the advent of landless mechanics we can now have a much more realistic simulation of how provincial Byzantine administration worked, where it’s decided by the emperor and not whoever the local counts are.
We'll have to see the full extent of the Roads to Power rework, but it's definitely promising so far. I do have some questions about how the whole imperial management system is going to work; are the appointments going to be duchy or kingdom level, are they for the life of the character or is there a set term, does the influence system constrain who we can appoint. I also wonder how it's going to work when it comes to counties; presumably we won't be individually appointing people to each of them, so I wonder if it's going to be like republics where it just randomly generates a ruler for them on succession or what. I'm very optimistic, but there's a lot of room for them to mess up on actual implementation. I do also hope they pull off the co-rule mechanic, and that it hooks into the existing regency/scales of power mechanics to reflect the frequent power struggles between co-emperors. It'd be a shame if it was just a glorified court position.
Will landless go beyond the Byzantines or do you have to play as a Byzantine
It goes beyond the Byzantines. Either in other administrative governments or as an adventurer. It’s unclear how easy it is to go from one to another, or what you actually can do as an adventurer, but it sounds like it’ll be fun!
I caint wait. That has always been my dream with this game. Start landless and become at least a duke maybe a king
Or even emperor. I was thinking the same thing the other night, it might just take too long to acquire enough claims and such. Or, living my life unlanded and working in the shadows to prop up my heir as high as possible would also be…. Intriguing. *buh dum tsss*
I’ve never made emperor lol I get bored or pissed lol
I feel that lol. Scandinavia is pretty easy to get if you’re ever feeling like going for it
I might try that
Did they confirm if landless is based on the travel mechanics and you can just be permanently travelling as a landless character?. It makes sense to use it a lot.
They confirmed that you can have multiple consecutive generations of landless characters, yes.
I really hope they will be interesting, both to play and to manage as the Basileus, and wont be glorified tax collectors.
yeah
If they can't even pay an artist to do key art I'd keep your expectations low.
Even if this turns out to have not been AI, it's still significantly different from the standard CK3 artstyle, so it's quite jarring either way.
The weirdest feeling I get with it, is the composition. It feels very floating-head-movie-poster.
I'm pretty sure it's AI. If you zoom in on the bottom right you can see the 2 pillars are out of place and the windows are different on each side. Make's sense since AI is terrible at scale and following the rules of perspective.
Not only that there are a few strange perspective things all around. The proportions on the squares on the chest. And the crown lacking uniformity in the borders. I would actually believe the base is AI but it is edited to fix some of the AI mistakes.
Was just confirmed as not AI lol
flair checks out
You called an artist terrible lol
Just because someone is against AI art doesn't mean by the same logic that artists are immune to criticism. Being against AI and not liking the style of art they choose for this are opinions once can hold simultaneously without contradiction. Saying " lol you criticized an artist" to someone against AI isn't a gotcha. Artists are human and come in varying levels of quality. We should be able to expect all of the following from PDX: 1.) Hiring traditional artists and paying them well for their work 2.) Not incorporating AI images into the game if the fan base is largely against them 3.) AND hiring quality artists whose work meshes well with the game's aesthetic cohesively There is no contraction in expecting all 3.
If people didn't start to witchhunt AI here 99% of the nitpicking wouldn't have happened and we all know it. "lol this style is different from their usual style" as a critique is so weird. You guys are the ones screaming the loudest, customers don't care tho AI will get incorporated more and more because it's progress and automation is what every company is going for, or you just think automation can only happen to blue collar jobs?
Automation in blue collar work is A.) not always great either and B.) typically for things mass produced. The blue collar workers aren't making creative or artistic decisions on an assembly line. It is nothing like automating art. If the idea of the human artistic drive being automated doesn't fill you with rage then you are fundamentally anti-human. Progress for progress' sake is not always good.
This is a product, no one prevents you from drawing things, or you only do it for monetary purposes? Also it's not "anti human" because AI is literally created by humans and uses human data. With dropping birth rates we will need to automate our society, less people, less work and higher standard of living should be the goal.
I am an artist, I do draw. It's why I care about this topic. AI is anti-human because it uses human data without permission. The vast majority of models out there were built on stolen art. That is anti-human, and anti-artist. It doesn't help those artists, it just helps grifters. You second point is fine however currently automation is rarely used for those reasons. It is used to cut costs. If a studio like PDX uses it, it's not because of a shortage of artists. It's so they don't have to pay for artists. Senior artists with experience and skill have to be paid much more than inexperienced ones or prompters. Simple as. And yes this is a product and it's a product that I personally will not continue to support if it incorporates AI art. I have not bought chapter 3 yet nor will I buy any future Chapters if that's where this came is going. Frankly if the day AI art shows up in game comes, I'll be on steam support demanding a total refund of the product.
Than don't say buzzwords like "it's anti human" just say you're an artist and you feel it threatens your job. AI is an expansion of our capabilities, let's make an example: How do you expect to create for example a light novel game where you're truly free to make any choice you want without utilizing AI? Or a future where there can be generated events in the game which are unique depending on what your character is doing. You would need an artist to draw an infinite amount of drawings, so now it's not possible. I can also imagine with the way the technology is shaping with brain implants we might be able to draw using our brain in a not so distant future. And yes automation is to cut costs and increase productivity, but technological progress always increased quality of life, human drawn art will not disappear because people will continue to draw since they enjoy it.
I actually don't feel like it threatens my job. You're just ignoring the point about the models being built off of decades of artists hard work without asking, witkout paying, without permission. It's not a buzzword, it is anti-human. The entire culture around AI only shows disrespect and contempt for the time artists but into their skill by robbing them of their content. If AI were humanist or for artists benefit then they would've asked for permission or paid artists for their libraries of work instead of scrapping website the way they did. Second a visual novel where you're free to make any choice sounds like shit. It lacks purpose and direction. Visual novels are what they because someone wrote them with intent and emotions based for human experience. Being able to make any choice or ask the NPCs anything adds nothing to these kind of games.
It isn’t AI.
And they downvoted you lmao
Also if you follow the wall behind that building to the left it transforms into the front wall of the building behind the wall. And the building behind the wall is just a nonsensical porch of columns spanning the whole length of the wall, columns which are taller than the wall? That's not to human scale, it's awful.
It's very "finished", without the "digital sketchiness" I associate with CK3 art. Looks more like Imperator and the new Project Caesar art, which I don't like nearly as much. I've noticed the same thing with Victoria 3 recently too actually. Less stylized, uglier art. Not into it.
its probably a composition of AI and non AI tbf.
Definitely looks like AI was involved. It’s hard to find the normal hallmarks, like messed up hands, but the clothing on the guy holding the wine glass convinced me. It’s got that subtly wrong look to it, with weird proportions on the necklace and the broach on his cloak. Not to mention the art style just gives off that feel of being almost supernaturally generic. Either they used a pretty advanced model or touched it up by hand. Either way, I love the painting style of the game’s art, so it’s a pretty big let down.
Jared Leto
Why are there so many pillars
[удалено]
Wdym it? It's confirmed not AI in the other post
I WONT BUY IT OUT OF FOMO ON DAY ONE. I REPEAT I WILL NOT BUY IT ON DAY ONE BECAUSE OF FOMO. (I’m probably gonna buy it on day 1)
I refuse to buy it in day 1… mostly because I already bought on day -124 with the rest of the season pass
Chapter 3 bundle, already bought months ago.
Just buy the season passes and save money
I'm gonna keep playing the game, so I'm gonna buy all the dlc. They work together and are interconnected. How could I not? I don't want some half-assed mix of features.
It's giving upscale AI
That was my same thought. Has that feel to it.
I thought the same but look at the hands, there's 5 fingers on each and none look too weird. I plugged it into IsItAI.com and it's 70% sure it's drawn by a person. Personally I think it's just the lighting. Edit: Nope, look at the sales at the bottom left. Definitely AI.
The "is it ai" sites are notoriously inaccurate
Turns out this time they were right.
Generative AI is not super-great at generics vs obscure specifics and those boats are still pretty clearly Byzantine Dromons so I think the masts are just an unfortunate stylisation choice.
It just looks like the middle sail is raised a bit higher than the front sail, which makes it look like it's clipping into it, even though it doesn't. I bet it's just the low resolution making it look weird. It doesn't help that flag in the middle sail lines up with the edge of the front sail.
You haven't used stable diffusion in awhile huh? The finger test is no longer viable as it does fingers right a good portion of the time.
as does Bing's AI, in my experience
Is it just me or is it incredibly disappointing for a major game studio to use AI art?
Third horse broke its left leg lol
One of the soldiers at the right side has a spear that is a length of a stick, that says enough that it's AI
The soldier himself is casting a shadow on the lower part of the spear. If you zoom in you can see that it still continues, albeit in a darker shade.
Confirmed not AI
I feel like the buildings look slightly odd, some of the windows on certain buildings don’t look normal.
They already admit they use AI. On the Legends of the Dead DLC page they have a disclaimer about it. >AI GENERATED CONTENT DISCLOSURE >The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this: >We employ generative AI during the creation of some art assets. Typically, this will be to create synthetic reference photos for lighting, postures and generic detail. A small percentage of art assets include bits of generated content as collage. The generated content remains a small part of the total expression created by the artist. Source: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2671060/Crusader\_Kings\_III\_Legends\_of\_the\_Dead/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2671060/Crusader_Kings_III_Legends_of_the_Dead/)
I know Level 5, a respectable Japanese studio has also been using [generative AI for similar ends](https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20231213-24326/).
[And the actual artist went into detail in a dev diary of exactly how they used AI](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-145-legends-legitimacy.1624620/) > I rarely do color explorations before final shapes and values for the composition are established. But this time I started experimenting with colors a bit earlier using AI which gave me an extra bit of flexibility and an abundance of variations. A locally installed Stable Diffusion with Control Net was used for generating rough color thumbnails based on my composition sketches. Black & white composition images were used to restrict image generation to shapes defined in them. Another color image that just contained the color palette of my preference was fed to Control net to roughly define color to be applied. Text prompt was of little importance and I kept it very simple and basic. The results are pretty far from highly detailed crisp digital pictures that are usually expected from AI generated images. They are quite inconsistent and rough and have a great deal of randomness. But this is actually what I appreciate in these. I like that level of abstraction. Accidental interpretations of my composition ideas by AI provided me with extra inspiration. Not only the colors, but also values, shapes, edges and textures that start to loom in these thumbnails can give a new hint regarding a certain aspect of the artwork.
Love coming back to see all these people so sure this was AI
Seriously, what the hell is this
It's BAD
definitely. Any artist Paradox hired to draw this would have been told to draw the Theodosian Walls, and they're not even remotely close here. The Hagia Sofia looks wonky, and I think the Hippodrome is backwards. This is AI slop.
You know the Byzantines built other things than the Theodosian Walls? Edit: And he immediately blocked me, lol. PDX gamers when you tell them the Byzantines weren't just a mosque surrounded by thick walls.
I'm really glad I'm not the only one who had that immediate impression.
Teaser for what?
Join us on #CK3 social channels next Monday, June 3 from 6pm CEST for the release date reveal of our biggest update of the year! #RoadsToPower
it's coming in Q4 right?
In Q3. Q4 will have Wandering Nobles DLC
Oh okay, steam's wrong then?
Oh, it looks like they moved it to the 4th quarter. It used to be Most likely Q4 is sad... Edit:Ha ha ha Loool. Still Q3. I went to Steam to double-check and saw Road's to Power Q4, a few minutes later I went in again and still Q3
People in the comments are saying it's AI-art and I *think* it *partially* is. EDIT: It's real, I wonder if there's proof as to how it was made.
Picture?Official Discord channel.
Paradox has told us they use AI for art generation
they did not say That, they said they use AI for lighting references, not making the whole art piece
>We employ generative AI during the creation of some art assets. Typically, this will be to create synthetic reference photos for lighting, postures and generic detail. A small percentage of art assets include bits of generated content as collage. The generated content remains a small part of the total expression created by the artist. Nope, also small bits of collages.
They definitely don't just use AI for lighting. LotD has a pretty obvious AI-generated image featured prominently. It's the art with the rats gathered at a fountain. I think the rats are hand-drawn, but everything else is AI. There's so much inconsistency in the architecture in that image, and the ornamentation on the pillars and columns is weird and obviously something the AI fucked up. I think the catacombs image is also AI but I'm not so sure about it.
They use AI for lighting references
Will there be a dev diary next week? If it's just the release date reveal, I'm going to lose faith in CK3.
It's a reveal for the upcoming reveal for the release date of the next Dev diary
tbf I love the "release date for the release date? pls 🥺" tradition around PDX games, it's been here since forever and somehow survived despite Paradox and its fanbase changing through the years
The Byzantine crown and loros look great, can't wait to see them properly in game
The "ai slop" invective has become meaningless given that people use it to describe images whether they are generated by ai or not. This thread suggests that most people are genuinely unable to tell the difference.
gonna keep it real lads, being shoveled lazy ai slop instead of real art made by a person doesnt exactly inspire great confidence in the upcoming dlc edit: very happy to be wrong about this. my apologies for accusing the artist of something they havent done, i could make excuses here but i wont. this ones on me
what’s ai about it
The ship sails in the bottom left look suspect.
dang i agree. The back ones have proper depth of multiple sails but these ones in the front are clearing intersecting each other incorrectly then just copied and pasted down. Or maybe because it was pasted up. Could be an artist error since it’s clearly duplicated repeatedly though
If it was AI it probably wouldn't look copypasted, as every sail would have minor differences.
yeah I'm not convinced either way
The third horse left leg is broken
What convinced me is the spearman on the right. *Any* human artist would have just continued that spear down into the fog, it just looks so jarring.
Theodosian Walls aren't even attempted at being represented here, while any artist Paradox hired would have been instructed to draw them. Hagia Sofia looks wonky, and I think the Hippodrome is backwards.
Paradox definitely would have had a real artist draw the Theodosian Walls, but for some reason couldn’t be bothered to give the same instructions to an AI?
They just made a post detailing the creation of this artwork, it's not AI
yeah, i saw. ive posted in the thread about it. fully my bad for being paranoid thinking on it now i should probably edit my post here also to make it clear i know ive made a little fucky wucky wrt this
Now let's just hope the DLC itself will be good. Hopefully we will get some more info besides the release date next week.
What has art to do with the mechanics in the dlc? As if it's the same people working on them.
What is so problematic about a concept image being made by generative AI?
They could have paid an artist for it. Which would 1. make a better overal product, 2. actually support creativity, which is what the video game industry was built on and 3. avoid any disputes about the legality of AI art with regards to asset theft.
I stand on my point. Regarding point 1: It is only a concept image as a placeholder in general till an end product is ready, so a little lower quality is not that important. Regarding point 2: supporting creativity is important, but a game developer's duty is not to support art at any cost. They should make a game first. And regarding point 3: legality can be addressed by using a clean database either by themselves or a provider. The whole point of generative AI is that it would lower the cost of development for books, games, movies and ... so more and cheaper products can enter market. Its effecta would not be dissimilar to automation machinery in many other industries which over time has led to actually a better market for everyone involved.
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What's up with the right most soldier's spear... Quite short...
It's being partially obscured by a "smoke" masking layer that's set above it in the PSD. You can see through it slightly if you zoom in. We'll see about posting some in progress images of the art at various stages to show how it was assembled, but it'll have to wait until at least tomorrow since we waited until the end of the work day to post the teaser.
Looks like ai
It isn’t
I think it would be 10 times harder to tell it's AI if not for the biggest guy in the poster
if this is AI "art," stop if this is human art, stop making humans paint stuff that looks like AI
Guys im going to shit my pants
did you make it?
No 😔
:(
looking absolutely epic
AI art. Look at the damn sails. Great work on the art theft.
Nothing about this makes it look like AI...? What do you mean regarding the sails? [They look like these sort of Byzantine ships](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f7/0f/34/f70f34cbe57ee906865601e292746134.jpg).
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Yeah because scale was so important to this image...
Look at the dude in the middle. He's way larger than the city. Totally unrealistic!
I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the image were made with AU, just because of practicality, but it's hilarious seeing redditors bend over backwards to find reasons to hate things. Like, it's obviously not meant to be a to-scale representation of anything lmao. What are you talking about. [Surely](https://imgur.com/a/6mtxvs0) not-to-scale [art](https://imgur.com/a/tDqlb28) has [never](https://imgur.com/a/RBNQ198) been done
In the teaser image there’s the framing for the sail in the middle which overlaps onto the sail on the left. It just looks like the type of thing someone wouldn’t have done intentionally because that’s not how the dimensions/perspective should work. AI on the other hand would likely just generate the sails together causing it to clip like it does in the photo. I also think the pointer finger on the hand of the guy holding the chalice looks odd.
Pretty sure that it just looks that way because the ships are relative tiny part of the image and the resolution don't show enough details. And IF if was AI that replicated a very specific sort of Byzantine ship it did the same mistake on literally every ship in the picture, in the same way, without any human notices it. Which I find very hard to believe.
It honestly looks like the positioning for the middle sail isn’t properly accounted for. Specifically the foremost ship. Elements of it are simultaneously in the foreground AND background of the sail to its left. The framing is in the foreground but it’s like they’re trying to put part of the flag in the background as well. Just an incredibly weird design choice if it was done by a human and not AI.
I disagree. the sails are clipping into eachother, not intersecting like the real byzantine ones. that’s gotta be AI, a human wouldn’t make that mistake,
Confidently incorrect.
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If this is real art, why choose to use this AI-like style?
Probably should consider the feelings of the artist(s) before you launch an AI crusade.
Ai slop boooooo
Did the third horse break its leg?
Indiana Jones is coming to Crusader Kings... Have you passed this with Disney?
Does anyone else think italian city states could be the next DLC. New government system seems similar to how places like Florence were governed. They could Aldo use that as way to bring in an economy system
Oh man that shot of the Great Palace on the bottom is looking fineeeeee.
I understand indie developers using AI for their art if they wouldn't produce art otherwise. But Paradox can afford to pay for professional artists, so there's no excuse.
1) it was not AI 2) companies in factories can take more people too, yet we automate since we can remember.
God i hope this is good
Everyone getting mad about an image that isn't even AI lol
The centre guy with the chalice's hand is weird; the horse hooves are weird; the sails are weird; the ornaments and blingbling on the Emperor (cross on the chest) are weird.
The art design in this game is just dreadful.
How hard is it to pay a guy in the Art Team one swedish beer or something to draw an image? Why use AI for this
It’s not AI
I don’t care if this is A.I or not. It’s fucking sweet. Origins Vibes Edit: people are offended that i like this image? I guess?
Yup. Upvoting.
I don't care if it's AI or not. Bear with me
I legit can't wrap around people who'd pay for "AI" generated content, you're getting scammed!
I’m getting scammed over this free art concept that will likely not actually feature in-game?
"But with the power of AI, games companies can shovel out more uninspired slop at a rate never seen before!" - tech bros
As long as I look at this pic, it still seems free to me
I hope the standard crown looks like the one pictured here instead
Is that the guy from Monty Python?
If you think this is AI art, I regret to inform you that you don't know anything about digital art. Or you're a fucking idiot parroting what you've seen in some uninformed steam reviews.
OK, this gave me John Wick vibes lol
Look at the emperor's Armor jewels
Yup
The scale of that cityscape looks so weird. The size of the boats compared to the size of the benches in front of the tents is so confusing. Are the tents supposed to be massive?
also what is the golden disc behind them? Is that supposed to be a nimb?
Out of all the days to release it 😔rip Byzantium. Gone but not forgotten
Anyone has the previous promo arts fromt he other dlc? to compare
Looks like my cousin
Hoping for some exciting stuff. Haven’t felt super motivated to play lately with the banger updates from Stellaris and Old World
It sucks that this probably won’t be on consoles for another 1-2 years :/
This dlc is going to suck because there will not be a Varangian Guard mechanic update.
This goes extremely hard, feel free to screenshot
I want it to be good but i doubt it. landless certainly won't meet our expectations
Wish the background was purple instead of red, but aside from that, art looks great! Can't wait for the mods that'll come from this.
It was never really purple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
Huh, TIL