Crusader Kings II

[Hajutze]

I prefer a different type of breeding. At the momment I am having as vassals a Seljuc, a Fatmid, an Almoravid and a Doukas ...

Mauritania is stopping my expanding but at least I am ruling the most powerful houses

=================================

The Seljucs are ruling over Ghana
Almoravids have 1/2 Marrakech
Doukas are in charge of Songhay
Fatmids have Timbuktu

I tried to breed Ynglings but the one I used had only 1 kid - a girl; and the said girl didnt have any kids.

[Flickerdart]

Oh god...the Mongols are here.

The Khagan of the Ilkhanate has declared war against my Kingdom of Rus. My king is infirm and 70-odd years, so he's going to die soon, my dukes are all predatory bastards vying for the kingdoms my realm is composed of, and there are rebellions everywhere, so the moment my king dies and my heir ascends to the throne (bringing Denmark into the fold, my other son blew it in Poland somehow and got sidelined so I brought him back and married him to my most powerful duchess who is probably going to rebel too) there's probably going to be a huge civil war. Now, I can muster about 24,000 men, and have 4k gold in the bank for mercenaries, but the Ilkhanate has effortlessly cut about half of the Ibrahimid territory away, and those guys are insanely huge. My allies are probably not going to be much help, since they have massive distance penalties - the only competent people that border the Ilkhanate are me and the Byzantines (who are absolutely prospering, by the way, with no sign of collapse) and since I'm Catholic they probably won't help me.

I was hoping to establish the Russian Empire before the Mongols got here, because there's no way they could stand up to that, but while previous kings made great strides in expanding the realm through holy wars, snapping up single counties (from allies, no less - stupid Rurikoviches everywhere) takes forever. I need 7 more counties before I can form the Empire, marrying in hasn't worked yet and my Chancellor hasn't been able to fabricate a claim. What good is having 5 daughters, anyway? The rulers of Ryazan, Volhynia and so forth are now my grandchildren, but it doesn't seem to give me much of a claim on their thrones.

Also the Teutonic Order showed up, I let them set up next to the Cuman Khanate and they promptly got themselves destroyed. So much for them.

[Crow]

I can't tell if I am doing very well in this game at all. But from the sounds of it, I am doing much worse than everyone else who plays this.

I started with the duchy of Iceland as a custom ruler using the ruler designer, pagan by the way, and stayed independent.

The year is now about 1340ish, and I've gotten hold of the Kingdom of Wales and two duchies that make it up, also the Duchies of Brittany, Norfolk, and the Orkneys. After getting Wales, I had a hard time of getting everyone to convert to paganism, which was giving me troubles with vassals, but now they are mostly all norse so I don't have too many problems. Scotland has swelled and swallowed up all of Ireland and Northern Britain, and has Agnatic succession which bugs me. England is horribly fractured most of the time, but my son is in place to father the next heir to the crown. I don't know if this is good or not, as they seem to have massive internal issues. My main issues are as follows:

1. Even with maximum crown authority, my vassals are fighting eachother, trying to become independent of their dukes, or trying to depose them. It's really annoying in that it keeps them weak, which isn't bad, but cuts down on the levies I can raise which really sucks. I thought they couldn't squabble like that under max crown authority.

2. Is there any way I can help to stabilize the English crown until my breeding plan comes to fruition and my grandson (who I will hopefully play as) takes the crown? I don't want to inherit a fractured mess if I can avoid it, especially as Scotland is so strong, and seems fairly stable.

3. Scotland has Agnatic succession, which is making my efforts to hijack it difficult. It seems I will at some point be forced to try a military solution. Any tips in the meantime, because they will absolutely crush me if I go to war with them right now. I have been using my chancellor to improve relations and feeding the king bribes to stay on his good side so far.

4. I have elective succession. What the hell do I do with all my aunts and nieces, and cousins that are in my court. They all have good educations, but I have trouble getting matrilineal marriages with even courtiers because they say the bride is 'unimportant'.

5. Based on my progress, am I doing Ok for an Icland start, or am I pretty behind the curve compared to most players? Bear in mind playing as pagan, which has been difficult at times.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I can't tell if I am doing very well in this game at all. But from the sounds of it, I am doing much worse than everyone else who plays this.

I started with the duchy of Iceland as a custom ruler using the ruler designer, pagan by the way, and stayed independent.

The year is now about 1340ish, and I've gotten hold of the Kingdom of Wales and two duchies that make it up, also the Duchies of Brittany, Norfolk, and the Orkneys. After getting Wales, I had a hard time of getting everyone to convert to paganism, which was giving me troubles with vassals, but now they are mostly all norse so I don't have too many problems. Scotland has swelled and swallowed up all of Ireland and Northern Britain, and has Agnatic succession which bugs me. England is horribly fractured most of the time, but my son is in place to father the next heir to the crown. I don't know if this is good or not, as they seem to have massive internal issues. My main issues are as follows:

1. Even with maximum crown authority, my vassals are fighting eachother, trying to become independent of their dukes, or trying to depose them. It's really annoying in that it keeps them weak, which isn't bad, but cuts down on the levies I can raise which really sucks. I thought they couldn't squabble like that under max crown authority.

2. Is there any way I can help to stabilize the English crown until my breeding plan comes to fruition and my grandson (who I will hopefully play as) takes the crown? I don't want to inherit a fractured mess if I can avoid it, especially as Scotland is so strong, and seems fairly stable.

3. Scotland has Agnatic succession, which is making my efforts to hijack it difficult. It seems I will at some point be forced to try a military solution. Any tips in the meantime, because they will absolutely crush me if I go to war with them right now. I have been using my chancellor to improve relations and feeding the king bribes to stay on his good side so far.

4. I have elective succession. What the hell do I do with all my aunts and nieces, and cousins that are in my court. They all have good educations, but I have trouble getting matrilineal marriages with even courtiers because they say the bride is 'unimportant'.

5. Based on my progress, am I doing Ok for an Icland start, or am I pretty behind the curve compared to most players? Bear in mind playing as pagan, which has been difficult at times.

You seem fairly good for a pagan iceland start. As for the crown authority, that won't stop rebellions against the tier above you, it'll stop YOUR vassals from fighting your OTHER vassals, not from THEIR vassals from making war on their liege. You can never stop that.

[Closet_Skeleton]

4. I have elective succession. What the hell do I do with all my aunts and nieces, and cousins that are in my court. They all have good educations, but I have trouble getting matrilineal marriages with even courtiers because they say the bride is 'unimportant'.

Just marry them to random cumans. There's no point in matrilineal marriages unless you're scared of running out of dynasty members.

[Flickerdart]

Well, the Mongols easily destroyed my men, because the supply limits in my lands are apparently way higher than in theirs, or they just don't suffer from attrition. Then my king died, then in two years once I finished bribing everyone to stop rebelling, my king died again, the new king was Orthodox again somehow (and still failed to inherit Denmark) and every single one of my dukes rebelled. Lesson learned: next time, don't give vassals any power at all.

Started a new game as Norway though, and laid low both parties of the Norman Conquest through using my tons of money to hire mercs for decisive battles and then chancing to capture the enemy leader. A couple of rebellions later, things seem to be stable.

One thing I'm confused about, though. Even though one of my sons was going to be elected the successor, the other one was marked as heir to England. Are crown laws different in different kingdoms?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Well, the Mongols easily destroyed my men, because the supply limits in my lands are apparently way higher than in theirs, or they just don't suffer from attrition. Then my king died, then in two years once I finished bribing everyone to stop rebelling, my king died again, the new king was Orthodox again somehow (and still failed to inherit Denmark) and every single one of my dukes rebelled. Lesson learned: next time, don't give vassals any power at all.

Started a new game as Norway though, and laid low both parties of the Norman Conquest through using my tons of money to hire mercs for decisive battles and then chancing to capture the enemy leader. A couple of rebellions later, things seem to be stable.

One thing I'm confused about, though. Even though one of my sons was going to be elected the successor, the other one was marked as heir to England. Are crown laws different in different kingdoms?

Yyyyup! Each kingdom has their own laws! On your law screen, you can see a bunch of different CoA's in the top left corner, and you can switch between them. Generally it's not enough time to change your laws to match before the realms split, and the then England and Norway will be at each others throats for the next little while, no matter who you pick to continue as.

[Flickerdart]

Well, the solution was to start backing my eldest son as heir, and since I had the most votes, it worked out ok.

Then I started a great tournament. Unlike tournaments in Rus or Ireland, in this one a ton of people got maimed, and also my sons both got killed (along with the ex-king of England). Possibly because of a glitch, or possibly because everyone thought it was Valhalla, the tournament never stopped until the king's death several years later, days after I dissolved the kingdom of England to avoid losing its lands due to not having a male heir.

So that was kind of weird.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Huh, that sounds like a pretty terrible glitch.

[Nightson]

I've run into it before with great amusement. It can be fixed by just exiting and reentering the game.

[Kurgan]

So, finally got my hands on this game a week back, and have to say: this is my favorite paradox game yet!

Used ruler creator, starting as the Count of Bourgouine, through falsified documents and the like became Duke of Upper Burgandy. I married my sons to princesses and got some nice claims, though figured I'd never get to use them with my pitifully small powerbase.

Fast forward 50 years, I am playing my son, and working on taking the Duchy of Savoy piece by piece, made all the more difficult by the Holy Roman Emperor raising his authority to Medium. The HRE goes to war with France, while I manage to attack Savoy due to the duke rebelling. I get my land, then finally notice what the war with France was all about: to put me on the throne.

Anyways, I am now the king of France, but have a minor problem: my eldest son, while pretty decent, is nowheres near as good as my third son, who at age 5 had no stat lower than a 9 [genius, patient, and so on]. My question: should I take a big risk and try to assassinate my eldest son so that the new King has superhuman powers? Or would my time and money be better spent taking southern France from the its Muslim overlords?

[Rising Phoenix]

So, finally got my hands on this game a week back, and have to say: this is my favorite paradox game yet!

Used ruler creator, starting as the Count of Bourgouine, through falsified documents and the like became Duke of Upper Burgandy. I married my sons to princesses and got some nice claims, though figured I'd never get to use them with my pitifully small powerbase.

Fast forward 50 years, I am playing my son, and working on taking the Duchy of Savoy piece by piece, made all the more difficult by the Holy Roman Emperor raising his authority to Medium. The HRE goes to war with France, while I manage to attack Savoy due to the duke rebelling. I get my land, then finally notice what the war with France was all about: to put me on the throne.

Anyways, I am now the king of France, but have a minor problem: my eldest son, while pretty decent, is nowheres near as good as my third son, who at age 5 had no stat lower than a 9 [genius, patient, and so on]. My question: should I take a big risk and try to assassinate my eldest son so that the new King has superhuman powers? Or would my time and money be better spent taking southern France from the its Muslim overlords?

In my experience having a lot of sons is very, very, very bad... Once papa's dead they'll start squabling for power...

Also yes, it's cheating, but you can quicksave and reload if your assassination attempt does not work :P.

[Archonic Energy]

i'll admit i'm struggling to get to grips with this game, which is a shame because it looks like it could be very in-depth.

ok, so as king Alto Aragon (decided to stay far away fom the battle of Stanford Bridge) of has a de jure claim on Zaragoza which is a single provence with a muslim leader i go to war with the claim and not a holy war, beat them in battle then retake the cities... but zaragosa leader type person doesn't give up.
i've conquered his only lands why can i not declare victory and end the war?

[Saithis Bladewing]

i'll admit i'm struggling to get to grips with this game, which is a shame because it looks like it could be very in-depth.

ok, so as king Alto Aragon (decided to stay far away fom the battle of Stanford Bridge) of has a de jure claim on Zaragoza which is a single provence with a muslim leader i go to war with the claim and not a holy war, beat them in battle then retake the cities... but zaragosa leader type person doesn't give up.
i've conquered his only lands why can i not declare victory and end the war?

You need 100% war score to definitively take a ruler's last province, they'll fight to the death most of the time. If their army is still alive, that may be one thing, or it may be that other muslims have joined the war in the meantime and thus he still thinks he can win. If your war score isn't 100%, you've completely destroyed his army and taken all cities and he's the only one in the war, then you have a bug.

[Elemental]

In my experience having a lot of sons is very, very, very bad... Once papa's dead they'll start squabling for power...

Also yes, it's cheating, but you can quicksave and reload if your assassination attempt does not work :P.

That's not cheating!* It's a perfectly viable strategy in any game.

*Pending legal review.

Also: I finally got my new computer together such that I thought I would have able to play this game (thus justifying the expenditure of purchasing it), but that shall have to be delayed until I can get Windows working again.
Oh Windows... Why must you be evil?

[Hajutze]

BTW I tried CK+ and The Prince and the Thane ... and ... if you haven't tried the mods install The Prince and the Thane (a little bit better than CK+) and try it as soon as you finish your current game.

Scratch that, stop your current game and install it ASAP!

[Flickerdart]

Damn, my stupid queen didn't have any kids ever and the royal line died out. She wasn't even infertile or anything (and neither was her husband).

[Weezer]

Damn, my stupid queen didn't have any kids ever and the royal line died out. She wasn't even infertile or anything (and neither was her husband).

That's the worst, I hate when you're doing really well, expanding all over the place and winning wars left and right, then bam no heir and you lose. But that's how real dynasties work, so I'm not really concerned.

To avoid that I like having seniority succession, it's far easier to ensure a living dynasty member than one in your direct line.

BTW I tried CK+ and The Prince and the Thane ... and ... if you haven't tried the mods install The Prince and the Thane (a little bit better than CK+) and try it as soon as you finish your current game.

Scratch that, stop your current game and install it ASAP!

I've been playing my last couple gmaes with CK+ installed and really liked it, in what way is Prince and Thane better, haven't tried it yet?

[Closet_Skeleton]

I can't really stand any of the major mods because they change way too much stuff and I just get confused.

[Hajutze]

I've been playing my last couple gmaes with CK+ installed and really liked it, in what way is Prince and Thane better, haven't tried it yet?

What TPATT doesn have from CK+
- The prestige requirement for the autority and succession laws
- Normal Mali and african kingdoms
- No old trait

What it has
- ****load of stuff, the list is just TOO long

[Kurgan]

Well, two assassinations and the kinslayer trait later, and I manage to clear the way for my super son to take the throne. He does, and immediately things start going from "good" to "awesome" for me:

A crusade was called against Muslim Acquitaine, which I managed to take for myself through liberal use of mercenaries and allowing other crusaders to throw themselves onto the enemies' swords. Then, to top it all off, I get elected as the Holy Roman Emperor. To top things off, I marry a Greek princess, who immediately rebels against the empress, meaning my son by her inherits the Eastern Roman Empire.

The only problems: I want to see how much I can put under a single ruler, so I need to assassinate my first son from my first wife, who inherited a tiny county in Scotland and left me at the age of 6. With him gone, my second son, the heir to Byzantium, will get both that and France.

The other big issue is turning the HRE's laws from elective to primogeniture, so that once again my son gains everything. My one big roadblock is that I have a small war in southern France right now between two vassals who cannot hope to defeat each other. Between them, they can field about 150 troops, and they are basically just standing there staring at each other, waiting for the other to blink. The warscore for this war has been at 8% for years, as one of them managed to lose their only holding early on and is just refusing to stand down.

Long story short, is there any way to stop these two from fighting long enough so that I can make my reforms? As far as I can tell, that is the only war going on in the empire right now.

[Flickerdart]

Try usurping one of their titles or assassinating one of them.

[Kurgan]

Try usurping one of their titles or assassinating one of them.

Tried assassinating the instigator of the war, his successor just continued it though. Was hoping to avoid the publicity hit of usurping the lands, but I guess I'll have to go with that. Thanks!

[toasty]

I've logged 55 hours in this game and I still feel like I'm learning new things.

My Irish Kingdom kinda went to hell after I began expanding into to England. Gave up and moved on. Messed around with some minor Dukes, and then tried my hand at Norway and Normandy. Finally settled on Normandy and I BELIEVE I've stablized the Kingdom of England. I'm currently preparing to form the Kingdom of Wales, and have fought a few small wars with Scotland and France over a few provinces.

But damn, keeping control of England is hard. Too many people tend to rebel. >_>

[Flickerdart]

So far I've found only one (pretty gamy) way of keeping English lords from rebelling, which is (as a foreign power) to destroy England and all its Duchies so that the various Counts don't have the -20 relations penalty for aspiring above their station. Furthermore, make sure that individual Counts never control enough Counties to form a Duchy or harm you by mobilizing troops. If they still rebel they'll have only a couple hundred troops each at best, and then you can trample them with armies raised from neighbouring counties.

[Crow]

I've been using bribes to keep England stabilized, and it that doesn't work, I go to Mr assassin. Having a 6 year old take over control of a duchy is good for about 10 years of quiet time.

[hayabusa]

Well, two assassinations and the kinslayer trait later, and I manage to clear the way for my super son to take the throne. He does, and immediately things start going from "good" to "awesome" for me:

A crusade was called against Muslim Acquitaine, which I managed to take for myself through liberal use of mercenaries and allowing other crusaders to throw themselves onto the enemies' swords. Then, to top it all off, I get elected as the Holy Roman Emperor. To top things off, I marry a Greek princess, who immediately rebels against the empress, meaning my son by her inherits the Eastern Roman Empire.

The only problems: I want to see how much I can put under a single ruler, so I need to assassinate my first son from my first wife, who inherited a tiny county in Scotland and left me at the age of 6. With him gone, my second son, the heir to Byzantium, will get both that and France.

The other big issue is turning the HRE's laws from elective to primogeniture, so that once again my son gains everything. My one big roadblock is that I have a small war in southern France right now between two vassals who cannot hope to defeat each other. Between them, they can field about 150 troops, and they are basically just standing there staring at each other, waiting for the other to blink. The warscore for this war has been at 8% for years, as one of them managed to lose their only holding early on and is just refusing to stand down.

Long story short, is there any way to stop these two from fighting long enough so that I can make my reforms? As far as I can tell, that is the only war going on in the empire right now.

That is beautiful. So, soon the old Roman Empire will be reborn, then?

[Kurgan]

That is beautiful. So, soon the old Roman Empire will be reborn, then?

It is possible, my mother still reigns in the Eastern Empire though...

On that note, my bastard of a father decided to kick the bucket a bit early, forcing a regent on me and almost 12 years of civil war before order was restored. I am STILL getting the occasional duke rebelling against my "tyrannical" rule. "The Cruel" they call me, for what, stripping rebels of their titles?

Still haven't been able to get rid of that elective garbage with the Empire, which is rather unfortunate, as one of those said rebels stands to inherit the the Empire should I die in the near future...

[Flickerdart]

When discovering plots, my spymasters constantly address me with the negative remark (your vileness is known from Ireland to Cathay, your character is the subject of Greek plays, may wisdom ever elude you, etc) even though they have a 50-100 opinion of me. What gives?

[Kurgan]

Huh, just learned a little while ago that you need to be Frankish to create the Empire of the Franks. While it makes sense, I was hoping ruling the entire territory would let me form it. After all, ruling the HRE and being heir to the ERE is nice, but come now, three imperial titles? That is much nicer.

Anybody know some workaround that could make this so short of spending 3 generations on a culture shift [which would suck considering about 90% of my vassals are german]?