Crusader Kings 2 Thread III: Keeping Up With The Karlings

[Avilan the Grey]

What's everyone's fixation with Independance?

I was lucky and got independend within the first five years, managed to create the kingdom of Toscana... And then had to struggle for two generations constantly looking over my shoulder at the Emperor of the HRE. Having 5000 men myself against 30 000 men (and de jure claims on everything you own) makes you do that.
I finally gave in and just re-pledged myself to him and I am now by far the most powerful player in the HRE.

[OrcusMcP]

Everyone wants to be king of their own little hill, I suppose. It's easier to get alliances that actually have meaning when you're independent, and you're not at risk of your king deciding "Man, I'm not paying back money to the Jews!" right before you needed to borrow money.

[Flickerdart]

I find vassal play extremely boring - you're much more limited in expansion, laws, and generally doing stuff.

[Leecros]

There can be times when not being independent can be fine. As long as the Crown Authority is Limited or Low, then you can pretty much operate as if you were your own independent nation anyways, or if you're just so much powerful than anyone else in the realm(even your liege) that they pretty much have to do anything you say. However, at that point there's an argument to be had that you might as well be independent. The only reason i can think of not to gain independence at that point would be if...say you also held the Kingdom of Jerusalem and wanted protection from Jihads or Crusades(depending on your religion). Since if you had an Emperor Overlord, they would have to declare on him and thus bring in all of that emperor's vassals as well as your own armies.

[Anxe]

Once you're at the Empire level, I don't see a reason to not become independent. Although, I thought it might be fun to play a game where you purposefully put Elective Monarchy in place and just run the Empire as a sort of Republic for a very long time. I'm always trying to remove that stuff when I'm playing though. I don't care if my son is a half-wit! He shall rule!

[Flickerdart]

Honestly, the "manage your vassal multi-king" minigame is a lot more fun than "dogpile on your liege with the obligatory 50 dissatisfied dukes" for me. Especially since it's so easy to quickly build your empire's fortunes on the back of a single man's claims. I still need to go back to my Britannia game where I picked up Navarra, Brittany, and Aquitaine off the claims of one single guy, whose Ambitious son lost the "pushed my claim" opinion bonus that kept his daddy in check.

[Avilan the Grey]

Well I think the plan now is to not create Italia, but to take over HRE and make it culturally Italian

[OrcusMcP]

Well I think the plan now is to not create Italia, but to take over HRE and make it culturally Italian

Put the "Roman" back in Holy Roman Empire!

[IthilanorStPete]

Playing as a vassal can be interesting if the realm is fairly decentralized and/or unstable. Once you get to Medium/High CA and a stable ruling dynasty, there's just not enough options to keep things interesting.

[OrcusMcP]

Well, if you're playing a vassal and you're LETTING authority get high and the dynasty get stable, then what are you doing?

[J-H]

I'm still trying to take over Ireland. I have 5 counties but none of the others seem to be interested in any decent-strength marriage alliances that could lead to unification. There aren't many foreign opportunities either, so it's hard to marry off daughters without taking a 100-point prestige hit for marrying below their station.

Every single assassination plot the entire game has failed, usually spoiled by some idiot getting drunk. I'm about ready to give up on intrigue.

One of my vassals rebelled, and I was able to take his title away; currently, it's part of my king's demense, but he's stuck in a war (Scottish rebellion #8) and can't change the inheritance laws to primogeniture; if the war is still going when the king dies, it goes to one of the kinsman. Annoying.

[Artanis]

I'm still trying to take over Ireland. I have 5 counties but none of the others seem to be interested in any decent-strength marriage alliances that could lead to unification. There aren't many foreign opportunities either, so it's hard to marry off daughters without taking a 100-point prestige hit for marrying below their station.

Every single assassination plot the entire game has failed, usually spoiled by some idiot getting drunk. I'm about ready to give up on intrigue.

One of my vassals rebelled, and I was able to take his title away; currently, it's part of my king's demense, but he's stuck in a war (Scottish rebellion #8) and can't change the inheritance laws to primogeniture; if the war is still going when the king dies, it goes to one of the kinsman. Annoying.

Fabricate a couple county claims?

[Flickerdart]

I started a new game as the Zunbils. How do I judge someone by the sun? I think it used to be an option in Intrigue, but all I can do is the sun festival.

Also, it's surprising how you can go from a ~4000 troop army under your first ruler with 7 martial skill to ~800 troops under a new one with 16 Martial because Gavelkind steals away all but one of your counties, god freakin' dammit! At least I was able to create Afghanistan, and the Arabian Empire suffered an unfortunate revolt so they can't get up in my business with holy wars until they finish it.

[Leecros]

Hooray Gavelkind!

[IthilanorStPete]

Well, if you're playing a vassal and you're LETTING authority get high and the dynasty get stable, then what are you doing?

Some starts begin that way, like 867 ERE or 1066 HRE.

[J-H]

I built an extra city in my home province (yay, more $) and things are looking up... but I've replayed the same year 4 or 5 times because the game has started crashing on the 1128 autosave.

Any suggestions?

[Flickerdart]

Change auto-save frequency?

[Avilan the Grey]

HRE in my game is very stable AND very decentralized.

In fact it is the most stable HRE I have ever seen, with the same family running it for almost 200 years. ZERO large civil wars after the year 1070. Yet it runs on low throne authority.
This means I have slowly been able to expand both inwards (by getting claims on other dukes) AND more quickly attacking outwards (eating up Sicily and Spain mainly).

At the moment I fluctuate between having 35% and 40% of the HRE's entire forces and am I now on the verge of being able to become the next emperor.

[J-H]

Ok, I'm starting to get this game figured out. Despite losing 3/4 of my dynasty to disease and early death, it's 110x and my 20 year old Genius (married to a Strong princess from Bretogne or somesuch) with super stewardship (15-20 range) is King of Ireland. Once he bought the title, everyone agreed to vassalization quickly.

High Stewardship OP.

Now, I can either stop where I'm at, or try to take over Scotland. Fabricating claims buys direct rule only, and I'm already at 7/8 on my demense. I believe that what I'm supposed to do is fabricate claims province-by-province, and then turn spare provinces over to blood-relation vassals. Is that correct? At a 1-by-1 rate with truces in between, it's going to take a long, long time to take over Britannia.

Also - where's the menu option to turn on notifications for children who need educating?

[Artanis]

Ok, I'm starting to get this game figured out. Despite losing 3/4 of my dynasty to disease and early death, it's 110x and my 20 year old Genius (married to a Strong princess from Bretogne or somesuch) with super stewardship (15-20 range) is King of Ireland. Once he bought the title, everyone agreed to vassalization quickly.

High Stewardship OP.

Now, I can either stop where I'm at, or try to take over Scotland. Fabricating claims buys direct rule only, and I'm already at 7/8 on my demense. I believe that what I'm supposed to do is fabricate claims province-by-province, and then turn spare provinces over to blood-relation vassals. Is that correct? At a 1-by-1 rate with truces in between, it's going to take a long, long time to take over Britannia.

Also - where's the menu option to turn on notifications for children who need educating?

You can fabricate a claim on a county, and then give it to somebody with a claim on a duchy. When you press that claim in the next war, you'll snap up the entire duchy due to him already being your landed vassal.

[tyckspoon]

Ok, I'm starting to get this game figured out. Despite losing 3/4 of my dynasty to disease and early death, it's 110x and my 20 year old Genius (married to a Strong princess from Bretogne or somesuch) with super stewardship (15-20 range) is King of Ireland. Once he bought the title, everyone agreed to vassalization quickly.

High Stewardship OP.

Now, I can either stop where I'm at, or try to take over Scotland. Fabricating claims buys direct rule only, and I'm already at 7/8 on my demense. I believe that what I'm supposed to do is fabricate claims province-by-province, and then turn spare provinces over to blood-relation vassals. Is that correct? At a 1-by-1 rate with truces in between, it's going to take a long, long time to take over Britannia.

If there are still independent counts/dukes, you can forge/press claims on them separately from Scotland (also, if Scotland breaks due to a civil war or similar, you can try to press any claims you have on the temporarily-separate provinces. But move quick, 'cause your war ends when the civil war does.. you may want to throw in in support of one side or the other to make sure neither has an upper hand until you get what you want.) You can also forge a claim on an entire duchy if your Chancellor is skilled enough (16+ preferred), although it's really expensive; the most reliable way to do it is to park your chancellor on the duchy capital you want. Wait until he develops a county claim and pay for it. Now leave him there. Eventually the claim event will fire again, and this time he should offer a claim on the entire duchy. Costs something silly like 4x your yearly income.

The traditional way is to find some disgruntled claimants to the titles you want, invite them to your court, land them, and then press their claims. Or you can try the game of thrones and try to marry your bloodline into being in line for the throne. Takes a while to pay off and can require some annoying management of the bloodline you're trying to usurp, but it works.

(If you're really good at intrigue, don't forget that truces only last for the lives of the two individuals that signed them.. so you can end the truce by murdering the other guy. If you manage to do this a few times, the rapid changeovers of rulers is likely to destabilize the realm as well, so you might be able to capitalize on a few civil wars too.)

[J-H]

Thanks.
Every assassination plot I've ever tried has been exposed by drunken idiots, or has never gone anywhere. I'm sure it works, but even with a 15 spymaster it just doesn't work reliably.

[Artanis]

Thanks.
Every assassination plot I've ever tried has been exposed by drunken idiots, or has never gone anywhere. I'm sure it works, but even with a 15 spymaster it just doesn't work reliably.

This is one of my biggest peeves with CKII. Despite all the hype about the usefulness of assassination, it's so d*** random that I never find it remotely worth it. What's that? Double-digit Intrigue on you and a 20-Intrigue Spymaster doing the power-boosting mission? 250% plot power against a target with a crap Intrigue stat? Have fun with all the opinion penalties from an assassination plot revealing your involvement twice!

At this point, I've long since given up and just treat the game as though assassination doesn't exist

[Avilan the Grey]

If you really want to play the assassination game, choose the Intrigue focus. Then you can have two plots against the same character going at once. One regular, one that you personally spy on the character... where you get random events like kidnapping or assassinate the character.

[Artanis]

If you really want to play the assassination game, choose the Intrigue focus. Then you can have two plots against the same character going at once. One regular, one that you personally spy on the character... where you get random events like kidnapping or assassinate the character.

I didn't know that, so I'll keep it in mind

I'm still not using the normal assassination plots though. As far as I'm concerned, the Intrigue focus thing merely brings the number of assassination options worth considering up from zero to one.

[Guancyto]

You're not helpless where plots are concerned, whether it's marrying high-intrigue amoral women into your enemy's court, or taking advantage of the fact that a spymaster is generally less beloved than a ruler, or sowing dissent if the spymaster is landed.

The spymaster is the lynchpin here, if he's on your side you'll barely ever get discovered. Sometimes, though, even if you have five thousand plot power (which I've had before; that man was very unpopular) Plot system needed a rework before they removed the assassination button, sadly didn't get one.

[Artanis]

You're not helpless where plots are concerned, whether it's marrying high-intrigue amoral women into your enemy's court, or taking advantage of the fact that a spymaster is generally less beloved than a ruler, or sowing dissent if the spymaster is landed.

The spymaster is the lynchpin here, if he's on your side you'll barely ever get discovered. Sometimes, though, even if you have five thousand plot power (which I've had before; that man was very unpopular) Plot system needed a rework before they removed the assassination button, sadly didn't get one.

I know all the things that I can do to boost my chances of success. I also know how useful a well-timed assassination can be (which, incidentally, is the main reason why the system annoys me so much). My problem with it is that you have no idea whatsoever of what the odds are. There is virtually no way to determine your chances of success - and your odds of being revealed - beyond at best "maybe" or "probably" or "probably not". I have had the RNG give me the finger one too many times for me to even consider it any longer. When I play CKII, I am far happier not dealing with that annoyance and frustration than I am with getting the occasional useful result.

[Thragka]

I view having an assassination plot active as a long-term plan. You have no idea how much moving and shaking is going on in the foreign court as the people you've paid off try to manipulate the conditions to be just right - I like to imagine that there are a few hardcore plotters biding their time, year after year, as they liaise with the local cattle farmers to buy up dung in bulk, and argue for a special Royal License for the nearby tavern to gradually encourage their liege to patronise it ... whereas it's the johnny-come-lately spider wannabes that get drunk and blab insufferably to their peers that they know a friend of a friend who's trying to arrange a hit.

[Leecros]

problem is that something like assassination is a hard thing to balance in CKII. On one hand, if you make things too easy, then it pretty much becomes an easy way to victory. This was how it was in CKII before the removal of the assassinate button. You got a bunch of money together...Money which didn't really take too long to pull together(even the cost to assassinate an emperor could be easily acquired by a powerful duke), stationed your spymaster and pushed the button. Usually after 2-3 tries you killed him/her.

On the other hand, if they make it too hard, then assassination becomes one of those very rare luxuries and doesn't end up having an influence in the game whatsoever.

right now, i think they're pretty nicely in the middle of those two extremes. I'd be concerned about any more changes making it too easy/hard to do. Plus assassinations should be relatively rare. It's not like it was an everyday occurrence back then.

[SilverLeaf167]

Hello, shameless plug here! In case anyone still has some faith in me, I'm planning to start a new AAR in CK2, theoretically evolving into a mega-campaign. My earlier EU4 games were well-received if ultimately... unlucky. Check out the thread if you're interested.


On topic though, I think the Intrigue focus has taken things a little too far too. It's far too easy to, say, kidnap Charlemagne as a minor count - with no real penalties - and let him rot in your cells while the realm descends into chaos. I'm not so sure about the technical sides of CK2, but it really needs to account for the target's power and position. Or maybe I just tend to get really lucky, I don't know. From what I hear, Seduction is pretty silly too, or at least was - have these been patched recently?