Crusader Kings II

[Driderman]

Realistically speaking I doubt dashing swashbuckler recues were as common in the middle ages as popular fiction would have us believe :)

Anyone notice how you can pay the pope a massive amount of gold to rescind his excommunication og he'll just re-excommunicate you one or two days afterwards? Bug or feature?

[Jamin]

Any ideas on how to stop all your vassals form revolting after you die. I have played about 5 games so far and get in a good spot than my guy dies and all my vassals rebel . Still very fun game I am having a blast playing.

[Hajutze]

When you conquer new counties/douchies give them to your heir so when you die he will have something to give out to make them happy.

Try to have vassals with your culture only.

Try to have as fewer vassals as possible (but at least 4). It's easier to make happy 4 people than 40.

Pass a high/max law before you die so your heir can pass a lower law and make them happy. In general try to keep your laws to the minimum possible - happy vassals are more useful than maxed laws.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Any ideas on how to stop all your vassals form revolting after you die. I have played about 5 games so far and get in a good spot than my guy dies and all my vassals rebel . Still very fun game I am having a blast playing.

Educate their heirs yourself and try to get them the content trait?

Never create 'branch lines' of your own family by giving a second son a duchy.

Hold a grand tournament and feasts.

Send out gifts and honary titles the moment you ascend to the throne.

Mary your sisters to their dukes. There's no going to war if you're married to a close relative.

[Sprinter]

Anyone notice how you can pay the pope a massive amount of gold to rescind his excommunication og he'll just re-excommunicate you one or two days afterwards? Bug or feature?

Rescinding for my sins worked for me without re-excommunication but i was excommunicated on behalf of my rebelious vassal. Maybe it doesnt work when you piss off pope himself in first place.

[Cikomyr]

Someone knows how to increase your antipope's popularity among Europe's bishops?

[Driderman]

Rescinding for my sins worked for me without re-excommunication but i was excommunicated on behalf of my rebelious vassal. Maybe it doesnt work when you piss off pope himself in first place.

Actually this was my exact situation as well.

Jamin: Concerning keeping your vassals happy when an heir takes over, my current tactic consists of keeping a few key vassals happy (those with the biggest armies) through honorary titles og diplomacy while I have a revolving door policy in my dungeon for the rest of the petty lords of Aragon. Everytime one of them tries an uprising we crush it hard and I get to revoke 1 title from said aspiring revolutionary as he is jailed.
Soon after he is either ransomed or I release him, depending on whether I want the cash or the goodwill, unless of course he has no heirs in which case his titles fall to me when he dies in prison.
Gradually, more and more titles are being moved away from the petty lords of Aragon and into the hands of the crown and its select few trustees. So far its working wonders since I have a stable enough economy to permanently field a couple of mercenary companies and still come out ahead.

I'm wondering though, I have the claim to both the kingdom of Aragon and the kingdom of Castille. If I grant anyone a kingship, will they become an independent realm or will they become a vassalstate, making me an emperor?

[Mistral]

I'm wondering though, I have the claim to both the kingdom of Aragon and the kingdom of Castille. If I grant anyone a kingship, will they become an independent realm or will they become a vassalstate, making me an emperor?

Nope. Tiers are tied to tags, and there are four Empire-tier tags in vanilla, linked to the major religious groups: the Holy Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, Sunni Caliphate, and Shi'a Caliphate. If you grant a title of equivalent rank to your own (a King granting a Kingdom, a Duke granting a Duchy, a Count granting a County), the fortunate recipient becomes completely independent. Tiers do not dynamically change in the game, which historically annoyed the last two independent Dukes of Burgundy to no end.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Nope. Tiers are tied to tags, and there are four Empire-tier tags in vanilla, linked to the major religious groups: the Holy Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, Sunni Caliphate, and Shi'a Caliphate.

Those are the ones in 1066 but there are actually quite a few more.

Byzantine and Holy Roman Emperor are the only de dure emperor titles, therefore the only ones that can be usurped or recreated from scratch.

Latin Emperor turns up as a title if you start after 1204, where the Byzantine Emperor title annoyingly belongs to the guys who historically retook constantinople rather than being reclaimable by any of the three successor states.

Khagan is an Emperor tier title possessed by the mongol leaders of the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde who will probably turn up no matter what the start date. I have seen screenshots of someone starting out in europe swearing fealty to the hoard, ascending up the ranks and becoming a christian Khagan.

Tiers do not dynamically change in the game, which historically annoyed the last two independent Dukes of Burgundy to no end.

Instead there are ducal titles with identical names to kingly titles.

In the game Charles the Bold's problem would be that only two of his provinces are part of the de jure burgundian kingdom.

[Driderman]

I figured it would be something like that. Guess I'd better avoid dividing the Iberian peninsula into three, inevitably warring, christian kingdoms. And you say I can't Usurp the Caliphates? Dammit, no Empire for me it seems

[Comet]

Trying to run this game in a window. Any tips?

edit: Solved. I was missing the settings.txt file, but I managed to copy the one that came with the demo and use that to achieve the same effect. Weird, but I'm happy now.

[Cikomyr]

Oh well..

I cheated. I loaded a game as King of England, offered to ransom the Prince of Ireland back to the King, and then loaded as myself.

I think the computer noticed my cheating, because it declared war on me within the year.

edit: I find it sad that if the other party declares war on YOU, you can't push your own claims in an eventual peace settlement in the event you win.

[thorgrim29]

So.... I downloaded the demo, started playing as the king of poland, and while I'm amazed at the quantity of stuff going on in the game, I have no idea what to do. Is there a tutorial, a guide or whatever I could consult?

[Hajutze]

So.... I downloaded the demo, started playing as the king of poland, and while I'm amazed at the quantity of stuff going on in the game, I have no idea what to do. Is there a tutorial, a guide or whatever I could consult?

There is a tutorial option on the main page of the game (but I'm not sure if it's present in the demo). At the start just try to browse the political options and dont start wars.

[Comet]

Starting my first game, I checked the religions tab on the starting screen to see which religions were in effect where...

The northern pagan lands that aren't Norse are all put under the name of... "Suomenusko". The Finnish faith? I'm pretty sure the spirits and magic-men of the pagan Finns differ quite enough from those in the east. Sure, there are similarities, but the actual region of Finnish faith extends only as far east as Karelia or so, yet here I see it stretching all the way from Finland to the eastern edge of the map. Am I reading this map wrong?

[Murska]

That was pretty funny to see, yeah. I wish I could play as a Pagan and spread Suomenusko to the entire Europe.

[Driderman]

So.... I downloaded the demo, started playing as the king of poland, and while I'm amazed at the quantity of stuff going on in the game, I have no idea what to do. Is there a tutorial, a guide or whatever I could consult?

Go through the tutorial and then pick some small-to-medium sized kingdom or duchy to screw around with. You should get the hang of it before too long.

[Hajutze]

That was pretty funny to see, yeah. I wish I could play as a Pagan and spread Suomenusko to the entire Europe.

Just a friendly tip - a kid's religion is heavily influenced on the ward's religion. A second friendly tip - it's fairly boring to play as a Pagan/Sunni/Tengri and so on.

[aberratio ictus]

If you grant a title of equivalent rank to your own (a King granting a Kingdom, a Duke granting a Duchy, a Count granting a County), the fortunate recipient becomes completely independent.

This I found out the hard way, playing als the Duke of Burgundy. I had taken the Duchy (former Republic) of Genua and given it to my heir, in hopes he would get the hang of ruling.
Sadly, it didn't only make him an independant Duke of France, somehow Genua transformed back to a Republic and when I died, the game ended.

My son became Duke of Burgundy, I could see that, but somehow the game didn't accept him belonging to my house.

[Comet]

Evidently I did something wrong as the Holy Roman Empire. War and rebellion all over the place! It's a fun way to get to know the warfare mechanics but I do feel sorry for my Kaiser dude.

[Thorcrest]

So, I got the download for this game and now I really want to buy it... if only I could have more time with steady access to a good computer, not to mention the money...

Played once as the Countess of Tuscany and by the end of the game I had expanded my territory to include all of Lombardy and Genoa and became the wife of the heir to the Holy Roman Empire and Married my Daughter to the next in line, so I was planning on a few timely deaths, and have my own son be the heir to the Kaiser...

I also did a bit more of a silly game as Poland where I played a "mad" king. I essentially constantly declared War on various smaller Pagan kingdoms and took over a respectable piece of land (Marienburg Area, East Prussia, Some of Lithuania, etc.) Over the course, I married the Contessa from my first game and then had many children, got brained and became an imbecile and assassinated my wife. Then, my King did not awake from a sleep just a year after his brothers death (both were assassinated by people other than me, brother due to former plotting to become the heir (Seniority), and my killing my wife, both likely by my son). My Son then became the Heir in the 19th year of the game and inherited the Kingdom of Poland and the Land my King had taken as well as his mother's inheritence in Italy. Thus, Poland ruled a territory by Poland that was nearly twice it's starting size, and a fair portion of Northern Italy including Genoa!

It would have been fun to continue that game.

Now I need to get it!

[Hajutze]

Quite honestly the game feels a lot more better if you try to play it without assassinations, claims and changing faith ... 1157 and I still have only .. like 1/2 of Spain (started with Aragon).

For comparison if you are a Sunni and assassinate the s**t out of the HRE and ERE emperors you can have half of Europe before 1300y. (I had it at 1300 but I found the assassination-erase-peace-trick at 1250)

[Closet_Skeleton]

Spoiler

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Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha

[Hajutze]

Spoiler

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Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha

OBJECTION!

Spoiler

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You haven't dealth with the empires yet

[RPharazon]

That was pretty funny to see, yeah. I wish I could play as a Pagan and spread Suomenusko to the entire Europe.

Protip: There's a bug in the current version of CK2 (1.03b? 1.04b?) that allows you to play as anyone. First, go to a playable anything near to the person you want to play. If you want to play as a Scandinavian pagan, select a northern Swedish duchy or county. If you want to play as a Muslim in the middle east, choose the nearest playable duchy or county or king or what have you.

Select play.

In between the time you click play and the loading screen occurs, that is to say, when the map is moving between perspectives, quickly click on the duchy, county, or kingdom you want to play. If you did it right, you are now playing as the person/place where you clicked. If you didn't, then try try again until you do. It worked for me, at least.

[Closet_Skeleton]

OBJECTION!

Spoiler

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You haven't dealth with the empires yet

To be honest I was planning on dividing my kingdoms up between my sons, but there are some annoying multi-duchy vassals that ruin the borders.

[Jamin]

I have united all of spain under the banner of leon. However one of my vassals is very big like more than 80% of the nation big . They fought all my other vassals and got all their land and I have to keep giving land to make them happy because they have more manpower than me. Is there a way a could force them to become gravelkind?

[Closet_Skeleton]

In that situation it might actually be best to send your martial to supress revolts on his place of residence, then wrongfully imprison and exile him. You'll cause horrible civil wars for the rest of your kings existance but his heir will be in a much better position.

[Driderman]

I have united all of spain under the banner of leon. However one of my vassals is very big like more than 80% of the nation big . They fought all my other vassals and got all their land and I have to keep giving land to make them happy because they have more manpower than me. Is there a way a could force them to become gravelkind?

That's quite a hole you've dug yourself into. Banishment might be the only option as you'll get ALL the titles of said vassal and can then dole them out to your other subjects to keep them happy despite the hit to your popularity. Although the hit might be rather extreme if he has 80% of the Iberian peninsula as his fiefs so you'll probably have to deal with a lot of revolts regardless.

[Silfir]

I love this game. In my mind, I always find myself imagining the way these people ticked, and the stories that happen along the way. I'm in the middle of a game I started in 1066; it's past 1200 now, and just now I tried to summarize it - and realized that each of the characters I played has his own partially epic story.

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Countess Urraca of Zamora had reason to be fairly content with her lot in life. It was rare for women to hold land, after all, yet here she was, fairly safely within the reach of Catholic Spain. Still she must have felt, sometimes, that life could be unfair. She had three brothers, and as fate would have it, they all were kings. Sancho, the oldest, ruled over Castille in the east; Garcia ruled over Galicia to the Northwest, and Alfredo, six years younger than Urraca, ruled as King of Leon, and therefore her liege. All titles used to be united in Urraca's father Sancho, and her Grandfather also used to rule over Navarre and Aragon, representing all of Spain under one banner. House Jimenez was as great as they came.

It had only been nine months since her father died. Her brothers had all become kings, including Alfredo. The two had never exactly warmed up to each other. Alfredo was deceitful, but so was Urraca; Alfredo was also a coward, and constantly afraid. Urraca was more level-headed; temperate, smarter, perhaps; she never developed vices, unfortunate habits, or the paranoia that would plague her brother for his entire life. Yet, on that day, Urraca heard a traveler tell of the happenings far to the North: William, Duke of Normandy, had set his plans in motion to become the King of England. Something in that story might have stoked Urraca's ambition, or maybe it had been there all along, ever since her brother had first started treating her as his lesser. She decided that, by God, she would be the one to preserve her father's legacy.

Of course, being unmarried and childless, her brother stood to earn her title upon her death, and she didn't think particularly fondly of that - and so she set out to fix it. Being the daughter of a king, the sister of several kings, and placed in the lines of succession due to her brothers being of yet childless, she had enough importance that a matrilinear marriage could be seen as appropriate. She found Mael Muire, the Scottish Earl of Atholl, who agreed to the proposal. Perhaps he saw the glimmer in her eyes, and realized that his children would benefit far more from the splendor of being members of the Spanish Royal family than his own fairly quaint rural nobility. His House Athfotla ended up dying out with his daughter from his first marriage, who herself married into a distant branch of House Jimenez. At just over thirty, Urraca had finally married. It was fortunate that her only vice in the eyes of the church happened to be lustfulness! 1069, her only son, Fernando, was born, raised in Scotland at his father's court, far away from the Muslims, and the intrigues and warring that would wrack Spain for years to come.

Surprisingly though, her brother had acted even faster and more decisively than she expected: In 1067, about when Urraca's plot had started to form, he had already ousted their oldest brother Sancho from the throne of Castille, and now bore two crowns. It must have been upsetting, knowing that her whiny, fearful little brother had succeeded where she had barely even gotten the chance to shine. It did not deter her plans, however. She was his better, and it was time to prove it.

In 1970, having obtained the backing of the Duke of Leon and another Count, Urraca sent a letter threatening civil war unless Alfonso yielded the throne to her. And her cowardly brother complied: Less than five years after her father's death, she had become his successor, Queen Urraca of Leon. Her brother still remained in charge of his lands, and remained King of Castille, but Urraca thought little of it. Her time at the top surely was just beginning.

And so the reign of Queen Urraca found its start. Two daughters followed, who under Mael's guidance later married into various Scottish houses. They never ended up mattering the way Sancho the Great's daughter Urraca did, but a life of power is not for everyone.

The muslims had done a number on Spanish catholicism. In 1072, the county of Braganca was lost to one of them in a holy war for Portocales, which meant Urraca's home demesne Zamora now bordered the threat directly. To her though, the infidels barely mustered as a threat; surely the Kingdom of Leon, with its allies along them, would stand against them.

For a long time she ruled, and took care to expand and improve her holdings. From all corners of the world, she looked for skill to lure to her court; her chancellor, spymaster and steward usually were women of extreme skill, married to her courtiers. Creed or culture mattered little; to Urraca, it was talent that mattered, and she respected whoever it possessed greatly. Few courts, even Royal ones, were better governed. Zamora grew, and prospered. The Kingdom of Leon was at peace.

That is, for just over a decade. Urraca had once beaten her brother at the very thing he was best at - intrigue - by ousting him from the throne through blackmail. Even that deceitful cowardly man realized, however, that sometimes, the answer lay in cold hard steel. Alfonso VI of Castille declared war.

Perhaps Urraca had not expected it. Her brother was a craven and paranoid to the point of madness. If she had expected it, she had underestimated or belittled the threat. When her brother's levies came closing in, she had enough money to recruit a band of mercenaries, and the first few battles went in her favor - but then it simply ran out, and with her companies gone, she had nothing to oppose his forces. Worse yet, her brother had started the war on a claim not only for her title as Queen of Leon, but her title of Countess of Zamora, and those were her only holdings. She stood to lose everything. She could not let that happen, so she held on as her brother's forces besieged the holdings of the Kingdom, starting with the Duke that had once backed her plot to obtain the kingdom and been her most powerful vassal. She refused several "offers of peace" that amounted to her unconditional surrender. Did she realize, or consider the fate of her subjects, who suffered under the occupation and warring, as she refused to back down until the very end? Perhaps she did, but if so, it did nothing to weaken her resolve.

And as if that was not enough, the muslims came, besieging the Kingdom of Leon from the south - equally unopposed. Soon enough, there was no holding left in the Kingdom of Leon that was unoccupied. The fact that there were two different forces doing it might have been the reason that Urraca had not yet been accosted and forced to give up by the swordpoint. A sort of standoff, if you will, as either side waited to find out just who stood to obtain what within the Kingdom.

In what must have been somewhere in 1083, the peasants of Braganca, angered and riled up at their muslim oppressors, revolted. Busy perhaps with other prospects, like the ongoing war on the Kingdom of Leon, no one interfered as the rebel army took all of the holdings, and finally obtained complete control of the county. But they would not, on their own, be able to resist muslim incursion forever. They needed a new protector, a liege. And the rebel leadership - perhaps inspired, or perhaps otherwise influenced, the world will never know - decided on Queen Urraca of Leon. Perhaps they were not aware that Urraca was not really in the position to rule over anyone - news traveled slowly in those days, and so the complete occupation of her holdings might simply not have been known to the hopeful rebels. Perhaps all they knew were the stories of her rise to Queen, or tales of how she spent money dutifully improving her holdings, giving it back to the people rather than spend it on frivolities or hoarding it. But through this stroke of fortune, in January 29 1984, Urraca became Countess of Braganca. And Alfonso VI, her brother determined to eradicate her from history, did not have a claim on that title; nor had he, naturally, started the war with the casus belli of obtaining it.

Urraca was forced to relinquish not only her kingship, but also the county of Zamorra, on July 25 1985. She had ruled as Queen for fifteen and a half years (in as much as "rule" was the correct term when all of her holdings were under occupation for the last two and a half), and she had lost the very county she had invested so much in. Instead she found herself ruling over a land that had been unter Muslim occupation for twelve years. Still, Braganca housed a proud people that had kept their culture and religion intact. In a sense, Urraca was now no worse than off than she was almost twenty years ago, when she also only had been Countess. She had been Queen for only a third of her life; perhaps it was best to accept that anything more was not to be.

But history teaches us a great deal about humans and the way they deal with loss, and Urraca was a great example how the pain of losing something, especially power, and the desire to get it back, can lead them to unwise haste and poor decisions. She might have been almost fifty years old, but she still had the drive to become queen. So almost immediately, she went back to plotting. When her brother died in 1087, aged 47 and suffering from depression and prolonged illness, his son Esteban became king instead. He did not suffer from the personal failings of his father, and was both a kind, outgoing and honest and a proud man. A better ruler than his father, to be sure; a better ruler than Urraca could ever be, perhaps.

Her plot to oust him from the throne of Castille - Urraca opting for claims still existant from the death of her father - found sufficient backing among the displeased vassals, including once more the Duke who had backed her twenty years before, and so, Urraca went ahead and repated her plan from back then, sending a letter threatening Esteban with civil war unless he yielded the crown of Castille to her.

He refused.

"Like father, like son", Urraca must have thought when she had made the decision to send the letter as soon as she had what she believed to be enough backers. Surely, like his father, he would back down, and perhaps bide his time and strike back later. Perhaps she had planned to avoid her mistake of the first time around, and spent her kingship preparing for just that; hoarding gold and power to hold on to her title rather than spending it to improve infrastructure for her people. She would have become a different kind of ruler, certainly, in her second reign as Queen of Castille.

With her plot in shambles by the refusing letter, daring her to back up the threats expressed in her blackmail, she could either quietly back down or call her backers to war. No less ambitious since the first day, and not nearly the coward her brother used to be, she decided to do the latter. She had now ended up repeating the very mistake she was trying to get a second chance to avoid: She had not been prepared for war. Perhaps, if she had prepared her plot a couple more years, had collected more money to fight the war with, she might have prevailed, and Queen Urraca of Castille would have ruled into her old age. But with no money, and her nephew's forces far outnumbering hers, it was over before it started. It was thanks to the fact that Esteban, like his father, had no claim on Brasanca, and not the clout to revoke her last title risking displeasure among his vassals, that she remained Countess. She was, however, imprisoned.

Few people would have been able to meet her in those times - prisons in medieval times were no place to vacation in. Did her son, who had spent all that time in Atholl, way to the North, in Scotland, meet her before her death? No one knows. What is known by those who witnessed her in prison is that Urraca never lost her ambitious nature, or developed mental afflictions of any kind. Surely she was planning her escape and eventual return to the court (which was governed by one of her many talented courtiers during her absence), when she would once more spin great plans.

Maybe this was the motivation when she spoke up to Esteban to demand accomodation somewhat suitable to a woman of her state - it would be much easier to arrange for an escape from house arrest than from the prison. Esteban, however, having none of it, threw her into the oubliette in return. Whether it was in a fit of rage, or with the realization that Urraca was the kind of woman who would never stop being dangerous to those in her way, no one knows. She did not survive the conditions of her worsened imprisonment for long.

On January 2nd, 1092, Countess Urraca of Braganca of House Jimenez, died in a hole in the ground somewhere in Castille. From 1065 to 1070, she had ruled as Countess of Zamora; from 1070 to 1085, she had been Queen of Leon, and from 1085 until her death, she had been Countess of Braganca, much of it in prison.

She was succeeded by her 23-year-old son, Fernando, who finally returned from Scotland to assume the county. His story is one for another day.