Crusader Kings 2 Thread II: Sparkly Vampire Invasion

[Sange]

Francia's internal problems are, I think, less of a problem than railroading. When Charlemagne wins he has so many story events pointing him at East Francia/Saxony/Lombardy/etc that he never seems to need to go into Iberia. Karloman seems to handle the big empire much better.

If you want to talk internal problems, 769 ERE is a good place to start. Hooooooo boy.

I actually found it pretty easy to get everyone to become Iconoclast.

[OrcusMcP]

Has anyone been trying the open-beta-patch? Is it any good?

I'm liking the possibilities of what we will see in Way of Life, mostly because I think it will force people to shake their standard plays up a bit.

[Wardog]

I got the complete CKII bundle in a Steam sale a couple of weeks ago.

I played through the training scenario until a little after the auto-death of your first king, but nothing particularly worth recounting happened.

For my second game, I decided to go for a bit of a challenge, and selected the Kirgiz, with the intention of carving out my own Mongol-style steppe empire before the actual Mongols turned up. Instead, I just ended up fighting a series of petty wars against Kimak, which mostly involved us repeatedly stealing each other's women and vassalizing each other. (It didn't help that I didn't understand the raiding mechanics at first: I'd get my marshal to organise a raiding party, launch a war against a neighbouring province, and then have them quit in disgust at my pacifist ways, because I hadn't realised I needed to turn on the "looter" flag). That game ended in bankruptcy, disgrace, and my wife and chancellor dead in prison.

***

After that, I decided to change tack and try an iron-man game as Harold of England (who seemed to have done pretty well when I was doing the training scenario).

Spoiler: Harold game 1

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I sent my big army north to fight Hardrada, and beat him, but then spent quite a long time chasing the remnants of his army (and periodic reinforcements) around the north of England, during which time William landed and occupied quite a few southern counties. Unfortunately I had lots too many men fighting Hardrada to take him on.

But then William split his army, and I realised I might be able to destroy the smaller part of it. So I split off a small squad to hunt down the last Norwegians, while I sent my main army after William's smaller army. But I somehow got ambushed or intercepted by a Norwegian army before I got there, which (despite being smaller than mine, and seemingly losing for most of the fight) managed to destroy my army and take my King prisoner.

So Hardrada became king of England, Harold ended up his vassal, and William gave up and went back to Normandy. I was demoted to duke, and now had a massively over-sized demesne, so decided to give most of it away to my vassals (which probably wasn't a good idea, as later events showed). I tried a bit of underhanded scheming to try and improve my fortunes. but nothing came of it.

Then, to my surprise, Hardrada died, and William inherited the English throne. And most of my vassals went over to him, leaving me as nothing more than the Count of Bedford (and one other county I forget the name of). I tried more scheming, but still nothing came of it. I did start getting a lot of "your military skills have improved" messages, which I didn't know why I was getting, until I noticed that William had gone to war with France and had called all his vassels (myself included) over there to fight.

Eventually William died, and the Throne of England was inherited by some other English noble. Two rebellions broke out: a small one by William's son, which I was happy to put down, and a larger one by my own brother, who wanted to put me on the throne. (Which naturally I wanted to help, but couldn't work out how to do so other than by not fighting him).

Unfortunately, when I saved and quit the game, and then reloaded the day after, the save got messed up, and I couldn't continue that game.

I then tried again as Harold (unsuccessfully), and then again. The third time worked much better.

Spoiler: Harold game 3

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This time, I ignored Hardrada, and sent my forces south to fight William. I had hoped to get there before he landed, but he beat me to it - which may actually have helped, as by the time I engaged him, he had already occupied a couple of cities (losing troops to casualties and garrison duty). I managed to beat him quite soundly, and then chased the remnants of his army (and a few very small allied armies he called in) around southern England until I forced him to surrender and renounce his claim to England.

In all this time, Hardrada still hadn't managed to end the siege of York, so I raised a few more troops, went north, and beat him (eventually capturing him), and won the war. (Although I didn't managed to vassalise him as he had done to me in the previous game).

The game then continued nicely, with me stacking up more and more prestige, with only minor irritants to deal with such as the occasional raid by Swedish Vikings, or having to tell my daughter to stop plotting to kill her own son.

The only downer was deciding to go to war with Scotland in order to press the Duke of York's claim to Cumberland, and despite winning, getting
the "Ill Rule" title because my vassals were upset how long I had their levies for. (Which I think was probably the reason a faction emerged that eventually forced me to lower crown authority).

[Avilan the Grey]

Finally getting back to this after a long gap of play. Let's see if I can still survive the political game of an elected monarchy and grumpy swedish nobles...

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Awesome stories

This is why I love this game. As much as it is still a game, the politics in it are deep enough that it feels so realistic!

[Avilan the Grey]

This is why I love this game. As much as it is still a game, the politics in it are deep enough that it feels so realistic!

My current playthrough started so awesomely when I ended up with the crown prince in my dungeon. As a noble. Theoretically loyal to his father. That's actually how I became king. NOT planned, at all.

[Hydranova]

I recently started a game as the Doux of Trebizond. Figured it would be interesting, though now we're fighting off the Abbasid Invasion of Anatolia. Though I did manage to capture the Caliph, I castrated him instead of holding him captive until the Warscore went up. Dunno why.

[Sange]

I recently started a game as the Doux of Trebizond. Figured it would be interesting, though now we're fighting off the Abbasid Invasion of Anatolia. Though I did manage to capture the Caliph, I castrated him instead of holding him captive until the Warscore went up. Dunno why.

LOL
I've recently started a Sigurd game (latest beta patch) and was amazed at how much gold I earned from raiding. I always had something like 2k+ gold.
On another matter, who's excited about WoL?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

LOL
I've recently started a Sigurd game (latest beta patch) and was amazed at how much gold I earned from raiding. I always had something like 2k+ gold.
On another matter, who's excited about WoL?

I'm excited, except I'll end up 2 expansions behind now, and I just can't play when I'm behind in expansions... only game I can play now is Victoria II, only one I'm up to date on...

[Hydranova]

I just gotta get Charlemagne when it's on sale, and hopefully WoL won't be that expensive.


So in this game, I've managed to form the Kingdom of Trebizond (with the titular titles mod). There's been quite a lot of castration/blinding, seeing as 3/3 of my liege emperors have had the cruel trait. And quite some rebellions.

[Sange]

I just gotta get Charlemagne when it's on sale, and hopefully WoL won't be that expensive.


So in this game, I've managed to form the Kingdom of Trebizond (with the titular titles mod). There's been quite a lot of castration/blinding, seeing as 3/3 of my liege emperors have had the cruel trait. And quite some rebellions.

It's 8$ AFAIK.
Also, about the beta patch- yeah, it's good. Seeing the armies on character pages is a godsend and the improved diplo menu is nice. They've also divided the money the Pope gets from bishops by four.

[Avilan the Grey]

So when is WoL coming out? Any date yet?

Edit:
dammit, I need to kill a guy but I can't get enough plot power.
I guess I wait until he starts a war and let my allies take care of him instead. It pays being married into the HRO AND Hungary AND Poland AND Denmark.

[IthilanorStPete]

So when is WoL coming out? Any date yet?

Comes out tomorrow.

[Avilan the Grey]

Comes out tomorrow.

Why did I miss this? Oh well, marry xmas to me!

[Avilan the Grey]

So... I noticed the wife of one of my closest friends kept backing all plots and factions against me.
Unfortunately I couldn't touch her so I had to assassinate my friend to remove her power base.

Oh well.

His death came too late to stop the civil war to lower throne authority, but I curbstomped them anyway. He died mid war, she ended up a defeated widow in my dungeon...

...and then I drank poisoned wine and died.

...My bet is that my father was murdered by the widow he talks about above. No matter, I finished his war and will make sure she stays in the dungeon! Like my father, his father and so on the Galta policy has always been: once you enter you never leave. Once a prisoner you die a prisoner.

[Flickerdart]

Like my father, his father and so on the Galta policy has always been: once you enter you never leave. Once a prisoner you die a prisoner.

But ransoming prisoners can get you tons of cash! Obviously you want to keep everyone who's a claimant on your titles or the family member of a nearby enemy, but everyone else is basically free money you can use to buy mercenaries and curbstomp people you don't like.

[Hydranova]

Speaking of Prisoners; if your liege is in a war, and you capture the guy he's warring against, does that do anything for his warscore?

[Flickerdart]

Speaking of Prisoners; if your liege is in a war, and you capture the guy he's warring against, does that do anything for his warscore?

I'm pretty sure that if a guy becomes imprisoned, he loses the wars he's in, but that might just be when the guy he's warring against captures him. I don't like playing as vassals so I've never tried this.

[Avilan the Grey]

But ransoming prisoners can get you tons of cash! Obviously you want to keep everyone who's a claimant on your titles or the family member of a nearby enemy, but everyone else is basically free money you can use to buy mercenaries and curbstomp people you don't like.

Most of them are enemies, though... And I have enough cash.

[Pokonic]

A question; on the Charlemagne start, Lombardy is usually full of, well, Lombards, and while I haven't played a really game through that start the Lombard culture never seems to go the way of the dinosaur, usually leaving only the papal states and Sicily as the only Italian-culture parts of Italy, which is a little iffy for me. Is there supposed to be a culture-converter event that kicks in at some point and turns most of the counties Italian again, or is there shenagens involved, like creating the Russian culture?

EDIT: Nevermind; after two hundred years, a two year-old Basque half-wit just now inherited the throne, and now it's the Kingdom of Italy. Pffft.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Speaking of Prisoners; if your liege is in a war, and you capture the guy he's warring against, does that do anything for his warscore?

Depends. If you are called in as a tribal ally, it gives 100% war score. The same 100% if any ally were to capture the war leader. If you are his normal vassal and not officially part of the war, nothing.

[Guancyto]

Way of Life is out!

Family focus is overpowered as hell, +2 diplomacy, +1 health, +25% fertility, absolutely ideal for spawning the massive dynasties I tend toward.

Seducing focus gets you a lot of rivals and creates a lot of drama. People who particularly hate mee try to murder their wives upon finding out that I'm boinking them.

It seems like the best way is to start out focusing on war or hunting when your character is young, and then shift to taking care of your family when you get a bit older. Makes a lot of sense. Seducing focus is good for shaking up your game a lot but is pretty suboptimal otherwise, except that I expect you can do some positively nasty intrigue via picking out your lovers and then doing the anchor-wife trick, and if you happen to be the right sex (that is, female), there's a +50 opposite sex opinion in it for you if you do it enough to get the lifestyle trait (plus +10 for the Focus).

I like it, though. Adds to the personal aspect to diplomacy which was something Crusader Kings did pretty well to begin with. I found a Strong lady who wouldn't join my court whose liege hated me, so instead of bribery (I was out of money) I got her to concubine up with love poetry. The aforementioned liege, the Jarl of Vestergotland, would be my staunchest ally, except that I keep sneaking in to visit his wife. Maybe I should fight him in a duel...

Edit: Cursory testing reveals that homosexual characters can indeed attempt to seduce other homosexual characters of the same sex, and get special event text in doing so. Good show, Paradox.

[Sange]

But with Seduction comes wincest!

[Leecros]

I've found Rulership focus useful for people who like Stewardship focused characters. It's a flat +3 stewardship and gives you other events to improve stewardship.

also the Hunting focus probably saved My maimed Viking King's life by increasing his health by 1 while making sure his kids didn't get too out of control for gavelkind. I also believe that there was another event that triggered for it that gave me a free +1.00 health which coupled with Hunting meant that my maimed king lived into his 70's.

Of course i could be wrong about the free 1 health. i don't actually even remember the name of the event.

[Squark]

So, Crusader Kings 2 is on sale on Steam. Assuming the demo works, I'm probably going to pick it up. Does anyone have any links to starting out guides, since I've heard the game can get rather complicated?

Also, while I don't have the money for it at the moment, if I like the game, I might pick up a few of the DLC expansions when they're on sale during the holidays. Does anyone have any reccomendations as to the best DLCs?

[mythmonster2]

Legacy of Rome lets you get retinues, which are sort of like a standing army and the best way to get directly involved with your military. The Old Gods lets you have an 867 start, adding 200 more years to do as you will, even if you don't play as a Pagan. Charlemange does let you go even further back, but the start's not really to my liking. Sons of Abraham is also nice for Christians, adding pilgrimages and a few other features which are useful in general. Beyond those, Sword of Islam, the Republic, and the Rajas of India just let you play as those people, with some different mechanics. Way of Life looks good, from all I've heard of it, but it just came out, so it doesn't benefit from the sale.

Oh, and if you're going to get face packs, I recommend the African and Mongol ones as a first pick, since without it both of those groups will just look like Arabs, which is extremely silly.

[OrcusMcP]

So, Crusader Kings 2 is on sale on Steam. Assuming the demo works, I'm probably going to pick it up. Does anyone have any links to starting out guides, since I've heard the game can get rather complicated?

Also, while I don't have the money for it at the moment, if I like the game, I might pick up a few of the DLC expansions when they're on sale during the holidays. Does anyone have any reccomendations as to the best DLCs?

I mentioned in the other thread, but I'd definitely say get Sons of Abraham at a minimum. Maybe Old Gods as well, but start playing in 1066 rather than 867. Get the other DLCs as you get an itch to try a new region, rather than all at once.

While I am told the demo is still pretty terrible at teaching someone how to play, the full game does have a much better tutorial than it used to. Ireland is the general consensus of a good tutorial zone in 1066, and Scotland is good for that too.

Some general tips for your first game: Just focus on keeping your family going. Focus on getting married, having kids and keeping them alive and happy. Once you've got a decent amount of grand kids, then you can start looking to expand.

Oh, and if you're going to get face packs, I recommend the African and Mongol ones as a first pick, since without it both of those groups will just look like Arabs, which is extremely silly.

Yes. Very much yes. The African face pack is especially good.

[Flickerdart]

So, Crusader Kings 2 is on sale on Steam. Assuming the demo works, I'm probably going to pick it up. Does anyone have any links to starting out guides, since I've heard the game can get rather complicated?

There's now a starting scenario. However, the best way to learn is probably still to play as 1066 Ireland.

Also, while I don't have the money for it at the moment, if I like the game, I might pick up a few of the DLC expansions when they're on sale during the holidays. Does anyone have any reccomendations as to the best DLCs?

Sword of Islam lets you play Muslims, Rajas of India lets you play as Indian religions, Old Gods lets you play pagans, and The Republic lets you play merchant republics. If you're into any of these, buy 'em. IMO Muslims are really boring, pagans are too hard for a newbie, Republics are a very different kind of game entirely, and India doesn't have much in the way of cool geography so it's not mandatory to play.

If you're not satisfied with the length of the game, Old Gods turns the clock back to 867 and Charlemagne to 769, but 400 years is more than enough.

[Pokonic]

My latest game uses the CK+ mod, and things are getting interesting.

I started as a ruler-designer leader of Saxony; the primary differences between that start between vanilla and CK+ is that the Saxons are the last practitioners of the Germanic religion (with the Norse having Norse religion, which makes trying to ally with them far harder). The character was a very marshal one, with low diplomacy.

I prepared for a long, drawn-out struggle with the two Karling lords, as Saxony was usually the first kingdom to get gobbled up when Charlie killed his brother.

Problem is, Charlemagne got sick and died five years into the game, and his hunchback of a son was made a priest in that time, so Carloman inherited all the kingdoms. Lombardy was still independent.

Around this time, the sultan of the Umayyad dynasty decided to become a Christian. He married a relatively insignificant daughter of his to Carloman; she bore four sons.

She was also still Sunni, and around ten years after marrying him, a snake in Carloman's bed bit him.

Europe is a bloody mess now, and the Umayyads went through three more Muslim sultans before the Christian branch of the family overtook the Muslim one in entirely, causing the Iberian peninsula to shatter into because of the inevitable revolts and make the possibility for any Reconquista a joke. There is a Occitan on the throne of Italy who I literally have no idea as to how he ended up as king; the French are beginning to assert there independence from the Franks, with a minor count of Paris having become the new spearhead of a large independent French duchy. The four sons of Carloman rule scattered realms with indistinct, messy borders, and the rise of the Viking Age has caused some amount of concern, as a great norse lord, Ragnar Lodbrok, could call half of Scandinavia to his banner, and some whispers that he is not only the greatest threat to Christians in the world, but is also the lover of the guy who controls the other half of Scandinavia.

Catholicism is also suffering from a new wave of heresies, and the shattered borders of the six kingdoms that claim dominance over Europe will make it hard to undo Cathar Bavaria and Lollard Mercia. The king of the Saxons has only invaded a single province dominated by Christians; Cologne, which was the only county that was on his side of the Rine that did not belong to him. The loss of the main holy site of mainland Europe has caused a great rift in those that follow the church of rome, and the lack of any unification in the mortal realm will make the fate of the spiritual one harder to predict.

Basically, I screwed up Europe because I wanted a nice border.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

In a little more detail about the expansions and what exactly they allow you to do that you can't do without them... See, even without the expansions, the AI can use the new features. All the expansion does is UNLOCK them for YOU. Everything else was added in new patches.

So Sword of Islam only unlocks Muslim rulers.
Legacy of Rome differs in that if you don't have it, AI won't use other things either. It adds the Retinue standing army (definitely suggest you buy it for this feature, if only because later patches are balanced on the assumption you have these extra armies), new Advisor models for the Byzantines, the ability to reform the Roman Empire, and general flavour events and decisions for the Byzantines.
The Republic allows you to play as duchy-level republics along the coast. County-level republics and inland republics are still unplayable, and don't use duchy-level republic mechanics.
The Old Gods allows you to play the 867 start date (but it isn't scrollable, unlike hte normal 1066-to-whenever that you can scroll through in the base game), as well as playing as all pagans and zoroastrians. In addition, it makes revolts more dangerous, by uniting them all under one special "revolt" country led by a single person. So basically, everyone temporarily becomes vassals of their temporary rebellion leader.
Sons of Abraham allows you to play as Jews, and adds a mechanic to elect a pope in your pocket through the College of Cardinals, and generally makes the Papacy a lot more deep, you can ask him for things, and there are a lot more religious events.
Rajas of India allows you to play as Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist characters, or their heresies, and also enables the use of Indian portraits where relevant.

Those are all the ones I have. The next two are the ones I don't have, but I really need to get.
Charlemagne gives you the 769 start date (which I'm not to excited about because it's a bit far back for the engine to handle, and is mostly filled with made-up characters, but the rest of it makes up for it), gives special events to the Zunist religion, adds a "viceroy" temporary title mechanic you can hand out, adds a "chronicle" which tells the story of your dynasty, adds the ability to make custom kingdoms and empires if you get powerful enough (want the Empire of Bavaria? you got it!).
Way of Life allows all ruling characters to choose a "focus" out of 10 possible focuses that are basically the "way of life" that the character is focusing on right now, examples like hunting, war, seduction, carousing, theology.

Edit: if there's any mechanic or anything you want a better explanation of, just ask here or shoot me a PM and I can tell you anything you need ot know (unless it's about Charlemagne or Way of Life because I don't have those yet. Or any of the clothing or unitpacks that came with them).