Crusader Kings 2 Thread II: Sparkly Vampire Invasion

[Cristo Meyers]

Sons of Abraham can't go on sale soon enough for me. I just finished reading about someones...escapades...with one of the event trees.

Meet Sebdann, child of Satan

I have to admit, I'm amused

It's tomorrow somewhere in the world....

I blame the Sudafed. Any drug that claims "causes drowsiness" and yet causes me to wake up every 3 hours is shifty in my book.

[Leecros]

Meet Sebdann, child of Satan

Well, that would explain why one of my Crusader Kings II videos titled Demon Child shot up to my most viewed video shortly after the release of the Sons of Abraham expansion.

Sadly, there's likely a lot of disappointed people out there. Since all that happened was that i was talking about how creepy the Celtic Portrait for female children looks with her bright green eyes and stiff look compared to the more traditional portraits.

[JeminiZero]

Sons of Abraham can't go on sale soon enough for me. I just finished reading about someones...escapades...with one of the event trees.

Meet Sebdann, child of Satan

I have to admit, I'm amused

It does make me wonder though, could this event fire for the AI? It would be amusing to see the entire Karling Blob mysteriously die off when the Spawn of Satan appears in their midst, while you laugh at them from the relative safety of the British Isles.

A few years down the road though, the 3 witches are gonna come knocking on your front door.

[Cristo Meyers]

It does make me wonder though, could this event fire for the AI? It would be amusing to see the entire Karling Blob mysteriously die off when the Spawn of Satan appears in their midst, while you laugh at them from the relative safety of the British Isles.

A few years down the road though, the 3 witches are gonna come knocking on your front door.

I don't see why it wouldn't also fire for the AI. One of the flags, if I remember what I read (I kinda got caught up in a Jon Snow GoT AAR) checks for other cursed children in the world, not just your family.

God help you if it fires alongside the Jeanne D'arc event. That one also fired in the events just prior to the hellspawn I linked to. I don't know how it works exactly...all I know is at the end there was an Irish woman with somewhere around 121 Martial.

[Grif]

Man. That thread just got me excited again for CK2.

[Talderas]

So he's listed as your son, but inherits as your grandson? That seems like it would be confusing to someone who doesn't know he's a secret bastard.

First of all, we're talking about a cuckold. That's a situation where the husband of a wife does not realize that the child she bore is not his. The husband of this situation believes the child to be his own and until other evidence surfaces the child is legally his.

In order to support this, there's three values that are required among three characters [your ruler (A), your son (cuckolded, B), your bastard (C)]. There's also the daughter-in-law (D) and your wife (E). Every character should have a value that is set with their parents. So B should have A and E set for parents while C has A and D set as parents.

Each character should have a list of values of children and whether such a child is legitimate. So A would have a list of B (legitimate) and C (illegitimate) while B would have a list of C (legitimate) for children. Basically, a child should be set as legitimate whenever a character's wife gives birth to a child. However the child would need to be flagged as illegitimate in order to legitimize the bastard.

[JeminiZero]

God help you if it fires alongside the Jeanne D'arc event. That one also fired in the events just prior to the hellspawn I linked to. I don't know how it works exactly...all I know is at the end there was an Irish woman with somewhere around 121 Martial.

Actually, I imagine having the Spawn of Satan rise up in a neighbouring territory, who proceeds to invade you, and you getting Jeanne D'arc in response would make an interesting story (since they are separate event chains). The Three Witches vs the Maid of Oriel.

[Artanis]

121 Martial

That...how...what...

[Cristo Meyers]

That...how...what...

That was pretty much my reaction too. Near as I can tell your personal Jeanne D'arc starts of with a high martial and the ability to lead armies and her martial only increases as she gets older. The one in the story I linked I think started at 30-something, next I saw it at 99, and was at around 121 when she died.

[JeminiZero]

Spoiler: What were we fighting over again?

Show

So here is a random story from my Kingdom of Wales paint-the-map-your-dynasty game. I married my designated heir (who was a genius) to the daughter of some Swedish Duke. They has a bunch of children, but only the first one inherited genius... but he was also inbred as well. (I have no idea WHY, I make it a point to practice outbreeding, that was the first time I was marrying in folk from Sweden. Its not like this particular pairing had bad genetics or anything since ONLY the first child was inbred... AND genius).

Anyway, it came to pass that I found out this inbred genius kid was next in line for the Duchy of Östergötland, Västergötland and Novogrod, should the current King of Sweden die without any children... Shortly thereafter, the King of Sweden died in a suspicious accident, and my inbred genius grandkid went off to assume control of his duchies.

However, just as the boy hit 16, he "died an inbred freak", which is to say, presumably from natural causes. Surprisingly enough, the duchies passed on to my designated heir who joined the Kingdom of Sweden... taking two of my counties along with him.

Anyway, I decide to leave things be for now, since the Kingdom of Wales would pass to him when my current character died, and I would take control of him and regain my counties. So I kept playing until King Deiniol passed on. He died as he had lived: in the middle of yet ANOTHER war bailing out a family dynasty Kingdom, this time the Kingdom of Castile from an Almoravid invasion.

Anyway, when I assumed control of my heir, I found he was waging de jure wars to claim one of the counties (Torzhok) in Novogrod which was not yet his vassal. This particular county was owned by the Teutonic Order, so it wasn't exactly a pushover. But strangely enough, we were ALSO hostile with the Kingdom of Sweden, apparently because the King has ALSO launched a war to claim that same county.

Thinking nothing much of it at the time, I fought it out with both the Teutonic Order and the Kingdom of Sweden, until I had crushed the order underfoot, and usurped the county of Torzhok. But after that was concluded, the war with the Kingdom of Sweden was still ongoing. I decided to check what exactly was going on.

I digged a little more and apparently the King of Sweden had launched his war, in order to claim Torzhok FOR my heir. They were presumably allies until my previous King of Wales died, and my heir suddenly became independent. If I won, the county would of course remain mine. But checking terms for peace, if I surrendered, since the King originally launched his war to gain the county for my current character, I would keep the county ANYWAY.

Since further conflict made no sense, I promptly surrendered to save both of us any further trouble.

[Grif]

Aha. Just read the latest patch.

Looks like they rebalanced the event troops. Sweet. Will look to getting the Sons of Abraham this Christmas and restart a new CK2 campaign. Probably one of the minor German counts under the Karlings (or 1066 start).

[Castaras]

Ohai guys!

I'm busy in a game with my boyfriend. He's the King of England, I'm the King of Wales. However, we're wanting to consolidate our kingdoms together so we can rule britannia.

I'm pretty sure, if we can get the majority of the isles under our rule, we can make an Emperor title and have the other be a vassal. Can any of you confirm this to be the case? Also, is there a way of doing a similar such thing sooner?

[Narkis]

Ohai guys!

I'm busy in a game with my boyfriend. He's the King of England, I'm the King of Wales. However, we're wanting to consolidate our kingdoms together so we can rule britannia.

I'm pretty sure, if we can get the majority of the isles under our rule, we can make an Emperor title and have the other be a vassal. Can any of you confirm this to be the case? Also, is there a way of doing a similar such thing sooner?

That's right. If you click on "find title" below the minimap and search for Britannia, it'll show you what exactly the requirements are. The only other potentially faster way is to usurp an already existing Emperor title, but that approach has issues of its own.

[OrcusMcP]

Ohai guys!

I'm busy in a game with my boyfriend. He's the King of England, I'm the King of Wales. However, we're wanting to consolidate our kingdoms together so we can rule britannia.

I'm pretty sure, if we can get the majority of the isles under our rule, we can make an Emperor title and have the other be a vassal. Can any of you confirm this to be the case? Also, is there a way of doing a similar such thing sooner?

Well, are you and he both kings and married to each other? If so, then your kid/heir should have territory to create the title.

Or is it that one of you can create and the other can't? The simpler solution may be that one of you (likely your boyfriend with England) create the empire of Brittania (likely by conquering Scotland and some of Ireland) and then offering vassalization to the lesser one.

[Flickerdart]

Ohai guys!

I'm busy in a game with my boyfriend. He's the King of England, I'm the King of Wales. However, we're wanting to consolidate our kingdoms together so we can rule britannia.

I'm pretty sure, if we can get the majority of the isles under our rule, we can make an Emperor title and have the other be a vassal. Can any of you confirm this to be the case? Also, is there a way of doing a similar such thing sooner?

A king cannot vassalize another king. You also need two or more kingdoms to create an empire. The easiest way would be to intermarry your families until an heir would inherit either the country or a claim on it, and then the rest of pretty straightforward.

[JeminiZero]

Can any of you confirm this to be the case? Also, is there a way of doing a similar such thing sooner?

I'm not sure if console works in multiplayer games. If it does, you can cheat to give one of you the Empire title, then the other can swear fealty to him. That would be the quickest way IF console worked.

[HamHam]

So I decided I wanted to try playing CKII -> EUIV game, and thus wanted to do one of the countries you can only get by converting. Israel was tempting but I ended up having to go with Rome because a real Roman Empire running around into the modern day is just too awesome.

So I'm playing Byzantium, using the Old Gods 800s start and I was making alliances with my neighbors by marriage as usual but then something crazy happened. My first heir had been betrothed to a Princes from Italy at the very start of the game, and now he was Emperor (my first having died early in the starting war with the Muslims) after a Regency that started when he was 0 years old, and suddenly my infant son has a duchy in Italy. And dragged me into a war of independence against Italy. But then the King of Italy died, and through some chain of events I still don't get my son (who was seriously still only like 5 at this point) became King of Italy.

And then he died.

Meaning I inherited Italy (and a big chunk of Germany). Only problem was that I now had literally no heir to my dynasty, and if I died it all went to some nephew in Bulgaria.

Luckily I have managed to get an heir since, but I'm gonna need to get busy so there are some backups.

[Flickerdart]

Meaning I inherited Italy (and a big chunk of Germany). Only problem was that I now had literally no heir to my dynasty, and if I died it all went to some nephew in Bulgaria.

Luckily I have managed to get an heir since, but I'm gonna need to get busy so there are some backups.

Watch out for Karlings. They're gonna want that land back.

[IthilanorStPete]

So I decided I wanted to try playing CKII -> EUIV game, and thus wanted to do one of the countries you can only get by converting. Israel was tempting but I ended up having to go with Rome because a real Roman Empire running around into the modern day is just too awesome.

I'm going to do that for my first big 867-1821 game once I get Sons of Abraham, though I'm thinking of starting as a low-level Catholic nobleman.

[Leecros]

I wish they set up some way to add some more powerful enemies into a CKII -> EUIV game. By the time you go from the 800's all the way to the 1400's you're probably the most powerful family in Europe + The Middle East + N. Africa. Then it's usually just a task of running around and kicking enemies that get in your way and while there's a chance of being crushed by coalitions, it probably won't happen.

In my opinion, that's one of the few actual advantages to the Sunset Invasion. With the Sunset Invasion you'll have a couple of powerful enemies over in the Americas with the potential to become very powerful in certain situations...The drawback though...It's across the ocean.

There isn't really a viable solution outside of simulating the whole Old World or taking some considerations into account to keep the EUIV game challenging. Such as large empires rising in India and Asia with better tech and that just sounds like a way to get more flak about aehistoricality, like they got with Sunset Invasion. Sadly, it's just a thing one has to live with unless you feel like doing a lot of modding(something i'm too lazy to do )

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I wish they set up some way to add some more powerful enemies into a CKII -> EUIV game. By the time you go from the 800's all the way to the 1400's you're probably the most powerful family in Europe + The Middle East + N. Africa.

Only if you play to become powerful. My style of play works perfectly, only expanding when my character would want to expand. All roleplay-y. By the time I get to the endgame, any EEU IV nation will be a proper challenge, and I play the same way in all my PI games so it works out.

[Leecros]

Only if you play to become powerful. My style of play works perfectly, only expanding when my character would want to expand. All roleplay-y. By the time I get to the endgame, any EEU IV nation will be a proper challenge, and I play the same way in all my PI games so it works out.

Well, part of it is really a flaw with the game itself as well. It's typically quite easy to gain power in Crusader Kings II as long as you start with an established religion. It's very easy to inherit a kingdom as even a count. Simply marry your son to a daughter of the king(they usually won't have a problem with it unless they're the heir or within 1 or 2 steps of it. Especially if it's the kingdom you're in). Then assassinate away until she's the rightful heir. If you're dealing with the Karling Blob, then marry your daughter matrilineally and do the same thing. Since the Karlings have Agnatic. In all reality intrigue shouldn't be THAT easy to pull off. One shouldn't be able to easily murder entire families if you have the gold, intrigue, and/or diplomacy. On top of that, a King would never...unless heavily pressed...marry their son or daughter into a count's family. There's a reason incest was so prevalent amongst royal families and it was for this very reason; to keep titles and claims within the family. However, the AI doesn't do interfamily marriages too well and is too stupid to take advantage of the players' gung-ho marriage strategies. The game tries, it really does... With it's "---- Would prefer to marry Xlinealy" and "----Desires Better Alliance", but the AI doesn't always handle that where it should. Personally i think a base "--Prince/Princess or Child of a ruler" would be a good start to preventing players from taking advantage of the AI. That and make intrigue a bit more complicated. Perhaps some sort of malus if you assassinate from a specific family line too much. For example: Assassinate Prince A will make assassinating Prince B harder and so on and so forth until the family is effectively on high-alert for 10 or 20 years due to so many deaths.

Woah...where did that rage/rant come from? I am the same guy who has over 700 hours in Crusader Kings II and think it's an awesome game...right? ....Yes?
Oh wait, it's because of that silly Hellenic game that's making me rage against every flaw i see in the game...


Playing the Hellenics is harrd everybody...Especially when the game or your own ignorance or simply forgetting certain mechanics work against you...

[Flickerdart]

Making assassinations harder would be more realistic, but not anywhere near as fun.

[Talderas]

Making assassinations harder would be more realistic, but not anywhere near as fun.

For fun... do an Old Gods start.

Next, enable character IDs on mouseover of portrait.

Then open the Karling dynasty window.

Issue the command kill ###### for every living member in the dynasty.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Again, that is only applicable if you DO those. My Count is a kind virtuous man who is loyal to his liege. So I play him like that. A few generations of loyal pacifists make an interesting game. You CAN go from count to emperor in 3 generations, but that's only if you play the game, rather than play the character. Had a character who's liege was replaced by a stronger family, but he LIKED the old king, and tried to reinstate the old dynasty. Would have made more game sense to take it for myself when I had the chance, but it made more character sense to stay loyal to the old king. More interesting story too.

[Flickerdart]

That's not nearly as satisfying as building your own empire to dwarf theirs, systematically absorbing every Karling kingdom by pressing random claims, usurping the titles, and then stamping the family out of existence.

[Castaras]

That's not nearly as satisfying as building your own empire to dwarf theirs, systematically absorbing every Karling kingdom by pressing random claims, usurping the titles, and then stamping the family out of existence.

Depends on the style of play. I'm bored already of trying to just take everything. After I get to the stage where I'm just marching on everyone it gets boring. Most fun parts are succession when I get claimants getting angry.

I need to try Gwyn's suggestion, sounds like lots of fun.

[OrcusMcP]

It is a MASSIVE exercise in restraint to try playing a loyal vassal, but as with everything in CK2 it is just as fun.

[Leecros]

That's not nearly as satisfying as building your own empire to dwarf theirs, systematically absorbing every Karling kingdom by pressing random claims, usurping the titles, and then stamping the family out of existence.

There's certainly various styles to play and i, myself do attempt to roleplay...a little bit... It makes things interesting from time to time. For example i got the Gate of Hell event chain and actually sacrificed my firstborn son Daughter, because that was at least in my mind, what a pagan would do.

Unfortunately it's quite a difficult thing to do it constantly when every character, vassal, and lowborn is trying to do everything they can to take your land away. They're constantly trying to fabricate claims, plotting murders, organizing factions, and all such things in an attempt for themselves to become more powerful.

[HamHam]

So things were going great, I was steadily making my way toward the Holy Land when the Emperor dies, causing half the subservient kingdoms to go to one son, and the other half to the other. So the new Emperor ends up with Greece and the eastern provinces, and his brother gets Italy. And some dude who I think was an uncle or something got Lotharingia (because it was Seniority). It was fine at first, he was able to complete the conquest of Jerusalem (only Alexandria left to go before the Schism can be repaired). But during the Crusade certain parties had begun to plot to put the brother on the throne instead. And as soon as it ended, the Count of Beirut (seriously, what?) made their demand that the King of Italy be made Byzantine Emperor.

The King of Lotharingia remained loyal, but various Dukes and Counts throughout the Holy Land, Anatolia, Greece, and other places joined the rebellion (in addition to most of Italy). With the Imperial Army still in Jerusalem, the Emperor had to call on the Varangian Guard (who are stupid broken by the way, costing half as much as mercenary companies half their size) and his home levies to start attacking the rebels in Greece. The aforementioned Army meanwhile went to work putting down the belligerents in the Holy Land.

A force was raised in Lotharingia as well, but was soon routed by the more numerous Italian forces.

But then a bunch of Franks and others demanded independence, which the Emperor was forced to grant as the war of succession required his full focus.

Then the King of Lotharingia died, and the title passed to the King of Italy, uniting them in rebellion.

And then the Emperor died, mysteriously, and his son was forced to take over the war against his uncle.

Loyalist forces had managed to lock down the Holy Land, and were on their way to doing the same in Anatolia. The rebels meanwhile were slowly taking provinces in Savoy and central Italy. This war would more than likely last a long time. But the damn heavens had sensed weakness and after rolling over many of the rebellious vassals who now lacked the protection of the Empire, they straight up declared a Jihad to retake Armenia. The land would almost certainly end up being sacrificed to the infidel horde as no troops could be spared.

Then the King of Italy died from some conveniently poisonous wine, ending the war so that all the soldiers of the Empire can be turned toward repelling the invasion.

I am left with a nephew on the throne of Italy though who may need to meet the same fate as his father sooner rather than later.