Crusader Kings II

[Copper8642]

I picked this up a few days ago, and I have to say, Paradox has really outdone themselves. I say that specifically with Paradox in mind: This game is not full of bugs or lacking polish. They made a really good game.

I've had a number of interesting things happen so far. I'll post more as I remember them, but the biggest thing to happen yet is that my firstborn child is dead, leaving my banished second-born to be my heir to the Kingdom of Sicily. My banished second son who went off, married into a Muslim family family, and converted. If I don't have him killed, after my current king dies I could suddenly being playing a Muslim state ruled by a man nobody much likes. This could be rough.

[Storm Bringer]

Hotel Sierra, this is out? damm, i hate being stuck out here without news on new games.



I've been thinking about maybe pciking this up ever since i found out about it.

how does it compare to some of paradoxs other games, namly HOI3 and EUIII?

[Arcanoi]

Hot damn the sky is falling nooooooooooo I HAD THINGS TO DO AND ACCOMPLISH WHY NEW PARADOX GAME

[Copper8642]

I could never get into Hearts of Iron, but I'd rank it with EUIII. For now, I like it more, but that could be the "new game" euphoria. Even then, it's definitely at least EUIII's equal.

[Mistral]

I'm absolutely loving this game. My Askanien dynasty is doing wonderfully, having already secured the ducal titles of Meissen (enforced electoral succession), Thuringia (usurp), and Brandenberg (usurp) from its start as the lowly counts of Plauen, and is presently angling on ducal Saxony. The Holy Roman Emperor has demonstrated absolutist tendencies, but that's only been to my benefit, as the other dukes and kings tend to regularly break away in an attempt to usurp the crown. The Salians have already been reduced to Franconia, while the title of Emperor is passed less by the nominal laws of primogeniture and more often by force of arms. I've quietly been marshaling my forces and, while maintaining my loyalty to the crown (whoever holds it), I've used the chaos to not only maintain my holdings, but also expand, even in spite of a brief excommunication by the Wettins who I ousted to take Meissen, which had led to me fighting my own mother (and a desperate plea to the Pope which, thankfully, was answered before more neighbors could join in). After a nice marriage turned out, I'm also looking at Poland, where I'm likely to inherit a small barony, and I've arranged for a brother to become Duke of Gelre by marriage, which will secure that for my family as well. England is a total mess, with an expanding Wales and fragmentation between Danish, Norway, and independent Saxon lords, while Finland and the Baltic are divided between Poland, Holy Rome, and Novgorod. The Ilkhan has just arrived leading a mighty host through Persia, and the Eastern Roman Empire (...Byzantium *sigh*) has secured the Holy Land, though is hard-pressed by the Caliphs in Aegypt.

All in all, I'm really loving it, and even things like how easy it is for kings/emperors to gain crown authority, pushover pagans, and French Iberia haven't stopped that for me. I've run into two crashes after succession, but a simple restart and reload from autosave was easy enough. The new patch, I'm hoping, will help with some of these as well.

[Copper8642]

Have you noticed a tendency for Byzantium to not fall. It doesn't want to fracture in most of my games. That, or it temporarily falls apart and then solidifies.

[Mistral]

Yep. To be fair, it did survive through essentially the entire game period, and the only thing that made it fracture into squabbling statelets in OTL was aiming an entire Crusade right at Constantinople, which still didn't keep it permanently divided. It wasn't until the Turks, with centuries of eating bits and pieces of it from Anatolia to Bulgaria to finally Greece and Thrace, that it really fell right at the end of the time frame. I do think that the unusual ease and vassal relations at present from crown authority does need to be tweaked, though, especially at the higher levels, and also how it deals with peace. Even when my game's Holy Roman Empire hit its worst point (all of Italy, Bavaria, Bohemia, Franconia, Thuringen, all of Lower Saxony and most of Upper Saxony, the Dutch Lowlands, and the Baltic territories in four separate wars of deposition and various of independence), it still pulled back together, albeit under new ownership, and managed to squish the various independence movements. I wonder how long it's going to survive having to deal with that every time its ruler dies, but I wonder also why it hasn't finally shattered yet. It's a lot smarter, but somehow...I'm not sure.

[Om]

Ordered CKII today. I really don't have time but I figured that I was going to buy it anyway so why not now

I picked this up a few days ago, and I have to say, Paradox has really outdone themselves. I say that specifically with Paradox in mind: This game is not full of bugs or lacking polish. They made a really good game

In fairness, and with the very obvious exception of HoI3, Paradox's releases since EUIII have been of a high quality in terms of bugs/polish. Balance tweaks are of course inevitable but generally the games are stable out of the box. Which is huge progress from the original CK era (I literally couldn't play CK until version 1.03)

[Martok]

Man, I am having to excercise some major self-restraint in not picking up this game. (A medieval-era grand-strategy title with heavy RPG elements? Yes please! ) Have only played the demo a little bit so far, but I'm already halfway-enthralled.

In fairness, and with the very obvious exception of HoI3, Paradox's releases since EUIII have been of a high quality in terms of bugs/polish.

That's not what I've heard about Vicky 2 (not that it was as bad as HoI3, of course). I'd read lots of complaints about bugs and serious game imbalances in that one before it was patched a couple times.

On the other hand, Sengoku is supposed to have played very smoothly right out of the box, so perhaps they are finally doing better with that again.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

This is a game that I want oh so very badly.
However, if I get it before my studies are over, I WILL FAIL EVERYTHING FOREVER.

This is the same reason why I don't have the For The Motherland expansion for HOI, or the A House Divided expansion for V2.

[Opperhapsen]

Have you noticed a tendency for Byzantium to not fall. It doesn't want to fracture in most of my games. That, or it temporarily falls apart and then solidifies.

Why would Byzantium fall?

I'm having quite a bit of fun myself, my main issue being the constant and nagging rebellions.

[Om]

That's not what I've heard about Vicky 2 (not that it was as bad as HoI3, of course). I'd read lots of complaints about bugs and serious game imbalances in that one before it was patched a couple times

V2 was fine. Aside from gameplay imbalances, which are inevitable in a release that complex, the only major issue was late-game slowdown. Otherwise it was as solid as a rock; I don't think I had a single CTD

[Murska]

France has taken over both England and Iberia in one of my first games... can't wait to be able to transfer saves to EU.

[Driderman]

This is my first real experience with Grand Strategy, other than a few failed attempts at EU III and it's great fun!

Playing as Aragon, I've managed to conquer 2 additional provinces through holy reclamation during the 19 years or so King Sancho I the wise has ruled and I just recently stopped a conspiracy to murder the king, orchestrated by none other than his very own wife ( I guess she really didn't approve of that legitimized bastard) and backed by his 2 daughters and a heretic Bishop. It's pure George RR Martin, this is

Currently, all 4 are in the dungeons, awaiting my "mercy". :)

[Copper8642]

Heh, though the constant rebellions did end up having me quit my last game and try again, but this time with a focus on keeping my family's diplomatic relations high, I must say it was fun financing my nation with the ransom money from failed usurpers.

[Hajutze]

I started my 2nd campaing with county of Dorostotum (the only bulgarian ruler in .. the de jure Kingdom of Bulgaria).

First thing I learned (from the 1st campaing) was that making independence wars every 5-10 years is useless. F***ing Byzantine Empire is probably the hardest thing to beat at the start of the game. I couldn't get free even when 90% of their vassals were rebeling ... They just started making white peaces left and right and at the end I was left alone.

The second thing I learned was that diplomacy can bring you a lot more land than war ... if you manage to find female heirs to the douchies . You wont get them fast, but if you have high intrigue and good timing (killing them bastards replacing the female heir) you can become quite big in 20-30y span of time. The only problem I found was that I had no idea (when I started) if the child will be from my dynasty.

Third thing - Them nomad waves. I found them quite strange - they give you 5k gold 80-120k army in a god forsaken land (the eastern end of the map) and you can't declare wars when you have raised levies, right ? Turns out - they don't count. So you can drag their asses to the balkan position them at the important points (like byzantium and the land on the left of it, so no one can pass) and beat the **** out of Byzantine Empire. The best part is - they dont cost you money, the vassals wont get cranky when you dont disbard them and they have NO attrition, so you can walk around with 100k army and bash the s**t out of everything.

Forth thing - Being a muslim/Bogomil/Mono...w/e herecy - best thing in game. At some point I was hit with an event which converted me to muslim, needless to say that was like a message from the game - here take these 100k army and have a casus belli on every f***ing european country, heck even most asian countries. Hilarity ensued.


In general I found out that having few vassals (4-5 with equal power) is a lot more easier to handle than having 30 (for example). Simply because if you usorp/make a kingdom, every single one of them with lands in it will want it .. and that's instant -20 opinion. At the end of my game I had 5 kingdoms with equalish power under my control (I had the Byzantine Empire by then) and 3 kingdoms that I kept for the moral bonus.

Another thing that I think is equally important - the Laws. I find the higher laws useless. I just kept 1 county and gave away everything. I moved the sliders to the minimum (the autority I kept at the 2nd one, heck if they want to beat the s**t out of eachother - be my guests; heck they even conquered most of the north-eastern europe while I was bussy conquering the small countries that formed at the HRE border). The thing is - you can have +10% army at the cost of -10 opinion and when your ruler dies ... good luck having your vassals at -godknowshowmuch simply because they dont like the laws. Having the laws at minimum guaranteed me happy vassals which guaranteed me a lot of army more than 200k at the end. The only problem is that you wont get money from the high taxation laws. BUT money is useful for few things:
- Maintaining army/mercs - having 100 opinioned vassals fixes that .. because you'll have a huge army.
- Building s**t - if you give away the land they will build themselves.
- Assassination - this one ... you can't fix

The only thing that frustrated me is that I had few kings that survived up to 75-80 years (81 being my record I think). Which is kind of frustrating if your son/grandson will inherit douchy which you need (early in the game).

[Cikomyr]

I can't wait to see someone do a Game of Thrones mod for this game...

What I often dreamt was to mix the overall gameplay of Crusader Kings and the battlefield/troop movement mechanics with Mounts and Blades.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I can't wait to see someone do a Game of Thrones mod for this game...

Last I saw, before release they were workin' out the plan for the map in detail. So, I'd say expect an alpha playable version in the next few months?

[Martok]

I've been reading that assassinations are too cheap and/or too easy/frequent. Does the new patch address this at all?

V2 was fine. Aside from gameplay imbalances, which are inevitable in a release that complex, the only major issue was late-game slowdown. Otherwise it was as solid as a rock; I don't think I had a single CTD

I think we have different definitions of "polish".

I was referring more to the near-ubiquitous complaints regarding the near-constant rebellions (especially the Jacobite ones), and the broken late-game economy (which sounds like it still hasn't really been fixed).

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

The late-game economy isn't broken, I think. Yes, it goes into deep recessions.
Guess what.
So did the RL economy in 'lategame'.

Before, it was doing things like recessions so deep that it was causing world-wide de-industrialization, to before the state it was in at the start of the game.

Immigration is still being near-impossible to balance. The PDM team had managed to fix it only a few months before AHD, but now AHD is out they have to rebalance again, I think. Seeing Toronto already half-Bengali in 1850 is a little weird. 2050, yes, 1850, not so much.
I hope somebody seriously modifies Railroads to make them historically difficult. I mean, seeing both the Trans-Canada AND the Trans-Siberian by 1948 is a little weird, considering that the Trans-Canada was finished in 1885, and the Trans-Siberian in 1891, roundabouts...
And when the railroads were built in-game, they would be built everywhere regardless, not just in select few places, like historically. iirc, the US North had 10x as many miles of rail as the US South. This isn't represented in-game.

That's my personal pet-peeve, of course

[Copper8642]

Begin: Duke of Lancaster. Use my INCREDIBLY talented council to make money, make troops, and most importantly, fabricate claims on those independent counts and dukes on the western edge of England.

My King keeps using my claims to declare war on them, but because they were my claims, the land keeps going to me. By the end, I'm the king's most powerful vassal.

Also of note, is that in my starting generation, I married my daughter off to the Holy Roman Emperor's son. 2 generations later, this meant that my character's grandfather was a Holy Roman Emperor. I had a claim to be Emperor. Given the HRE was falling apart, my king decided to use my claim. He won, and suddenly I was Emperor. Things immediately went way, way downhill.

I inherited a bunch of wars. No biggie, I can win them. A bunch of my vassals in my territory in Lancaster rebel... I'll crush them too. But wait, someone who actually controls land in Germany just usurped the title of Emperor from me. So now I'm back in Lancaster, but I'm a vassal of the HRE instead of the King of England, and half of my vassals are independent. Thing is, when I defeat them... the Emperor installed new Counts.

So I had gone from most powerful English vassal to controlling only half of my land and a vassal of the emperor, England and the HRE still being fractured to pieces.. Well, the Empire just screwed me over, time to fight back. I declare independence. I manage to crush the HRE's English territory and get peace before they send their legions. However, in this time, England had re-solidified, and they wanted Lancaster back. Only by spending hundreds of gold on mercenaries did I manage a white peace. Then I went to sleep.

Finally, of note, somewhere in that mess I had a Duke who's only son died, so my oldest daughter inherited. Then, I had 5 children and two grandchildren from her first marriage who had her husband's last name, and her youngest daughter who took the name of my house. If any of those first 7 inherited... I lose. 7 assassinations later....

[Cikomyr]

I sure hope you get the title of Kinslayer. That's what you'd deserve, nothing less

[Driderman]

Maybe it's just coincidence, but I find it very interesting that there apparently has been no mayor plotting in the kingdom of Aragon ever since the former king, king Sancho I "the wise", let his wife and oldest daughter die in prison. I suppose people might expect that King Sancho II will follow the same hardline protocol in case of conspiracy :)

[Om]

I was referring more to the near-ubiquitous complaints regarding the near-constant rebellions (especially the Jacobite ones), and the broken late-game economy (which sounds like it still hasn't really been fixed).

*Shrugs* And I think that V2 was fundamentally flawed in that it was far more complex than it needed to be and, as a result, near impossible to balance correctly. That's completely different from being broken or non-functional however

And if you want a comparison, look back to the original Vicky or other games of its era. They were literally unplayable - in that they would crash every five minutes - for weeks after release. V2 is a very stable game

[Hajutze]

No idea if this happened to anyone else ...

I was happily starting a new campaign with Turnovo (on 1.03b since you know ... it's suposed to be harder). After 50-60y everything went crazy. The Byzantine Emperor started revoking titles left and right and ... started giving them to me o.O. Everyone started rebeling and I was sitting and watching Byzantine Empire fighting 9 wars and giving 12 douchies and god knows how much counties to me for no reason what so ever.

Turns out the reason is because he became bogomil ... and I am the only bogomil in the whole empire (I was scared he would take my bulgarian kingdom title so I spent 500 piety to change my religion).

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Yo, you need to try and keep him Bogomil! The Bogomil Empire would be legit!

[Hajutze]

Yo, you need to try and keep him Bogomil! The Bogomil Empire would be legit!

Nah after he gave me pretty much all of the douchies he could and he started like 9 wars ... I started a liberation war. You can guess the result.

Since I was bored I assassinated 4-5 emperors during the war ... you know, for the sport (and for the chance the army will drop a bit, it happens sometimes - kill an emperor -> 10% of their army goes away).

[Driderman]

I have to say, worrying about succession isn't particularily necessary when my last two kings had nine children each.
I'm also pretty certain the only reason they didn't keep spawning children is because there's only room for nine portraits in the "children" tab, since I had one of them, ironically named Sancho "the just", perpetrate a conspiracy wherein he murdered his wife through twenty years and the mother of his nine children just to replace her with a younger model. It's good to be king

Now, to keep things interesting in the kingdom of Aragon, King Sancho III just switched the law of succession to gavelkind, meaning that once he dies Aragon will be split a million ways due to his sons and brothers having all sorts of fiefs and claims.

[Cikomyr]

Ok. Bought it. Downloaded it. Started a game.

Had to choose a damn starting location. So bloody hard, so I decided to go back to my roots: the origin province of my family's clan, the Maloney. So I am the Duke of Harren.. Something... The one already having a vassal :)

With no Kings currently present, it shall be an interesting opportunity to seize. We shall unite, stop drinking, and resist England's invasion!!!

United (and sober), we shall remain a free people!!!!

[Hajutze]

Rule of thumb - the smaller you start the more fun you'll get from a campaign. Sure the start is slow but at least you'll have more stuff to do later. For example 120 years after the start of my new campaign I'm this* big (look at the picture/link below, I'm with Bulgaria). I started with the douchy of Turnovo (the thingy in blue). Now the only thing that stops me from pummeling
a) Byzantine Empire - the 1.03b patch 10 years of peace. Sure I can attack them over and over again (which I did few times when they were kicked down) but eventually this will lead to -100 from all other western countries .. which .. I don't believe is a good thing.
b) Rus - 1-2 months ago a vassal of mine just kicked the **** out of Crimea ... so I decided to leave the northern Europe for my vassals in order to keep them busy (you know - beating the **** out of something else than me :D)
c) HRE - no casus belli, which shall be fixed in ... well when I die ... my sun is a Sunni and as a Sunni I will have a casus belli on everything that breathes around me.

The thing is - the game is not that hard at "very hard" compared to normal. Sure the opponents have x2 the morale but this means you need x2 the army ... and when you have ****load of army (both me and HRE have 50k army, the 3rd country has 25k, Byzantine has 7.5) this doesnt change a lot.

Not to mention the best thing of playing a Balkan country - at 1200, 1300 and 1350 you get 3 waves of nomads each giving 5k gold nad ~100k army which DOESNT count as your levies. In other words you can declare wars on other countries WHILE having 5x20k already possitioned on their lands. Another thing about those 100,000 dusky mother f***ers - they dont have attrition - you can just march around with 100k army beating the s**t out of everything while not having -10% every month.



* http://oi44.tinypic.com/1zm32om.jpg