Crusader Kings II Thread IV: Time to Create a New Title

[Grytorm]

Things progress interestingly. I am now Magus, Grandmagus? of the Hermetic Society which doesn't seem to do much. But I am amongst the most learned characters in the world. My first son died which was scary but the Queen of England was willing to marry my second son. So hopefully they will successfully make babies without being assassinated. My wife died so my son is now King of Scotland. I accidently married a 16 year old, I forgot to check her age when I was looking for a new wife. And a pagan religion, Suomenusko has reformed, I wish them well.

[Rockphed]

Things progress interestingly. I am now Magus, Grandmagus? of the Hermetic Society which doesn't seem to do much. But I am amongst the most learned characters in the world. My first son died which was scary but the Queen of England was willing to marry my second son. So hopefully they will successfully make babies without being assassinated. My wife died so my son is now King of Scotland. I accidently married a 16 year old, I forgot to check her age when I was looking for a new wife. And a pagan religion, Suomenusko has reformed, I wish them well.

What is so wrong with marrying a 16 year old (aside from the creep factor in a game where we regularly try to kill off our spouses, children, and parents)?

And of all the pagans to reform, Suomenusko is the one I expected the least. I have seen Germanic and Tengri a couple times. I don't think I have ever seen the Suoms reform.

[Grytorm]

Eh nothing really. I could actually benefit from a second son in case my second son dies. But usually when my character is in his autumn years if succession seems stable I prefer to not introduce new sons to make things complicated.

[Rockphed]

In my ongoing Venice saga, I am now 3 counties away from reforming the Roman Empire. I just pressed somebody's claim on Egypt and then his claim on Syria and somehow it brought the Emirate of Jerusalem along for the ride. The Timurids are currently gobbling up parts of the middle east, but I have more personal (retinue + demense + vassal mercenaries) troops than Tamarlane currently has total. Plus I can generally convince my vassals to give me another 30K. I'm not sure if it is optimal, but I have been hiring only Italian Pikes for my retinues. I currently have 3 legions of 12,000 troops that I sometimes split in half when trying to siege desert provinces. On the other hand, the mongols are seeing a resurgence. The Mongolian Empire seems to have disappeared, so the resurgence is that Khotan formed the kingdom of Mongolia and is now listed as Mongolia.

I am currently sitting at 99% threat. Once I figure out how to get those last 3 counties, I will probably sit on my empire for a generation to let my threat go down.

[Artanis]

I'm not sure if it is optimal, but I have been hiring only Italian Pikes for my retinues. I currently have 3 legions of 12,000 troops that I sometimes split in half when trying to siege desert provinces.

It's been a while since I looked into it in depth, but last I checked, Pikemen are one of the best retinues, and perfectly viable to spam. They are amazing at winning fights, and they're quite good at assaulting holdings. The main downside to an all-Pike army is that their Pursuit damage is hilariously bad, so after they win that first big fight, they're going to need somebody else to go chase down the fleeing survivors if you don't want to spend the next million years playing ping-pong.

[tyckspoon]

It's been a while since I looked into it in depth, but last I checked, Pikemen are one of the best retinues, and perfectly viable to spam. They are amazing at winning fights, and they're quite good at assaulting holdings. The main downside to an all-Pike army is that their Pursuit damage is hilariously bad, so after they win that first big fight, they're going to need somebody else to go chase down the fleeing survivors if you don't want to spend the next million years playing ping-pong.

A cavalry-heavy mercenary company or two is handy for running down enemies once your retinues have broken them in combat, especially if you've turned off Shattered Retreat and split them off to hammer the enemy in the next province over before they've had a chance to recover morale.

[Rockphed]

A cavalry-heavy mercenary company or two is handy for running down enemies once your retinues have broken them in combat, especially if you've turned off Shattered Retreat and split them off to hammer the enemy in the next province over before they've had a chance to recover morale.

I actually like shattered retreat. Getting them to retreat through not-their territory generally does enough damage to make up for the weak pursuit value of pikes. I'm glad that my "use my cultural retinues to death" strategy works well. I just had the french drop 20k troops on 12k retinues and the varangian guard who had just finished beating up the entire Castilian army. (Fun note, Castile is ruled by Andalusian Catholics) The 20k included 6000 light infantry and 2000 light cavalry, but they nonetheless got trashed. I killed 8000 French and only lost 1500 soldiers. I'm still not sure why the Castilian revolt hasn't won yet since they have been at 100% for a couple months now.

[Wardog]

Started a new game recently. Viking Age start, Novgorod.
Decided to avoid the gavelkind problem by using the ruler designer to give myself loads of daughters, marring them off matriliniarly, then never marrying.

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(Also decided to try to create a matriarchy, so went for a female Basque, with the intention of eventually switching to agnatic succession).

My spymaster got blinded by the Byzantines. Then I lost her pet. Now I feel bad.

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After my first ruler died and one of her grandsons inherited, I completely forgot about my "no sex until I form an empire" strategy, and had an affair with one of my courtiers (producing a couple of bastards along the way). Later I decided to marry someone else for political expediency. Another bastard later, I decided to formalise our relationship by making my lover my concubine.

Years later, I get this:

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Rather amusingly, it seems my wife doesn't know I'm having an afair with my concubine. Also, there's (apparently) a 10% chance my 59yo concubine will get pregnant.

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"Ok." Yeah, that's pretty much all you can say to that.

Take that, elective gavelkind!

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With a bit of manipulation, and a lot of luck, I managed to ensure I kept almost all of my realm after succession. My leading heir (a cousin, I think) was ruler of almost all of Perm (duke of Bjarmia and Ugra, plus several counties). So I created the Kingdom of Perm and gave it to one of my sons, and then got almost all of it back on succession. I avoided the Kingdom of Finland forming and succeeding by granting one county independence. I also created Volga Bulgaria, but wasn't sure how to stop it succeeding. But then all the territories that made up de jure Volga Bulgaria went into revolt, so I gave the kingdom (which de facto was now just a few counties in central Europe) to one of my other sons, then crushed the revolt and got the rest of it back.

After succession, I then subjegated another big kingdom (Cumania, I think) to create the massive realm in the pic. Unfotunately, I don't think I can realistically create an empire (most of Ruthenia is under Magyar control, who are way too powerful to beat, so Russia won't be possible, and I'mstill a long way from conquoring enough of Tartaria).

I think my only hope is to either:
a) arrange accidents for my remaining sons
b) (assuming I correctly understand how de jure drift works) live another 40+ years, after which enough Finnish territories become Russian, and enough Ruthenian territories become Magyar that I might have enough of Russia to make Russia.

[Flickerdart]

Wait until Arpad dies. The Magyars are a paper tiger without him - their next chief won't have cheap pre-set stats, and his high Short Reign penalty means that nobody will follow him into battle. This was my strategy for beating them as Bulgaria, so Rus should have no trouble.

[Rockphed]

So I managed to conquer all the required provinces to reform the roman republic, and now control the mediteranean coast from the Pyrenees to algeria. I also control all of Ireland and Scotland (though not all of Wales or England). Now I am trying to decide what to do next. I could keep beating up other merchant republics for their trade-outposts (there are currently 3 I like to beat up: soccotra, Berbera (vassal of Abyssinia), and Isle of Mann), with Saxony being a viable forth option. Soccotra is even far enough away that they never seem to join the defensive pact against me. I'm trying to decide what to do next. Tamarlane showed up, took a couple kingdoms in the Persian Empire, and promptly stalled, so I am fairly certain that I'm not going to see any more invaders trying to paint Europe in horses. Should I try to reclaim all the lands of the Roman empire? Should I try to keep killing off other families and stealing trade outposts from other places until I have a single trade zone taking in everything from the British Isles to India? It is about 1275 and I want to take this all the way to the end but I am running out of ideas.

[Grytorm]

I just ragequit my latest attempt. Succesfully made a male heir to the kingdom before the last king died securing, eventually, a united England/Scotland/Ireland. Immediately died. Fought off one major rebellion in the interim while waiting for the king to grow up. And a short time later he died of natural causes leaving Ireland to his older sister and Scotland to her non-dynastic heir because her mother, the queen of England, just does not care about matrilineal marriages. I am just not dealing with that. Someday I will play a game to the end and when I do I will finally try something other than Ireland.

[Rockphed]

At some point the fun of the game is in soldiering on after all your plans for global domination go sideways. Not to say I haven't rage-quit a couple times because I lost all the holdings I had spent a dozen characters building up, just that sometimes the fun comes when you decide to keep playing anyway. Other times the fun comes because you hold 3 empire titles and just smacked down the mongol invasion single-handedly.

Speaking of fun, I discovered something interesting: if you build a trade outpost on a major trade route location without the silk road being active (i.e. I don't own either horse lords or jade dragon), you can still build the silk road buildings.

[Corvus]

Returned to the game after a short break away from it, to try out the new DLC and am playing in my favourite region again - Makuria/Nubia. I've even started an AAR for it over on the CK2 AAR forums.

CK2 always results in interesting things happening out in the world, but this has been one of the more interesting ones I've seen. Some of the highlights;
Khazaria went crazy, taking all of Poland and Hungry and were pushing into Germany when it imploded to such a spectacular fashion that it completely ceased to exist.

The Western Protectorate has gone even crazier. They have forced tribute all the way to Lithuania and now border Svithjod and the ERE. That is going to be interesting.

Despite not having secret religious societies on, both Africa and Hispania have flipped to Catholic. No idea how Africa happened, but I think I know what happened to the Ummayyads. The Kingdom of Brittany formed (a first in any of my games) and they launched a successful holy war into Hispania. No idea how they pulled that off. They were succeeding at a second one when the boy emperor flipped Catholic to stop it. I didn't give much for his survival. I was right but it wasn't one of his powerful Muslim vassals that was responsible - it was the Catholic wife of a minor Muslim count that had him murdered. A new Sunni emperor took over, only to be overthrown by faction demand which installed a Catholic Ummayyad in power. Its solidly Catholic now with almost no chance that the Sunnis canget back in power.

The Caliphate is failing as well, and I had almost no part in that. They were going strong until a decadence revolt hit them, which saw Egypt and parts of the north and east break away. Somehow the Abbasids clawed their way back to power, only for a Shia uprising and a independence uprising to hit simultaneously, both of which succeeded, further weakening them. The Shia are the new power now, going from strength to strength, taking Armenia from the ERE and now holding land from Armenia down to the Sinai.

There was a successful Miaphysite uprising in Egypt (never seen that before) which went on to win two more holy wars against Egypt and take most of the country.

The Zunnist still exist and have formed a decent sized kingdom, but they are stuck between the Hindus and the Sunni, so no idea how long they will be around.

One of the nomadic khans has settled down in central asia and has formed a large empire that is one of the Zoroastrian heresies.

There was even a Nestorian kingdom for a while after the break up of the Caliphate but it sadly has been conquered.

And that is just the start of the weirdness going on.

[Rockphed]

CK2 always results in interesting things happening out in the world, but this has been one of the more interesting ones I've seen.

I often wish that there was an option to have the game go through and show all the things that happened, at least on the level of "such and such kingdom changed religions in response to a holy war. 2 years later it swapped back to muslim. 2 years after that a faction installed a catholic ruler." I think you can pull some of that out of the chronicle, but not all.

Interestingly, I just won a crusade for Khazaria, so my roman empire stretches from the British isles to Hispania to the far reaches of the Steppe. I currently have 24000 pikes that I am just leaving in the wasteland to deal with revolts out there. So far I have had to put down 1.

[Leecros]

Even before Monks&Mystics secret societies. The Umayyads going Catholic was pretty rare, but not exactly unsurprising for me. I've seen it happen three or four times and while I don't always manage to trace back how it has happened. When I have, it's because the current line doesn't have any valid heirs and it jumps to someone a bit more distant. Usually someone living under a catholic count or something where he was converted. Often this happened when their current ruler gets super old and outlives all of his kids rather than some kind of political discourse, because let's be honest. I have never seen a Muslim dynasty from Kingdom-level or higher be short on sons.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Returned to the game after a short break away from it, to try out the new DLC and am playing in my favourite region again - Makuria/Nubia. I've even started an AAR for it over on the CK2 AAR forums.

CK2 always results in interesting things happening out in the world, but this has been one of the more interesting ones I've seen. Some of the highlights;
Khazaria went crazy, taking all of Poland and Hungry and were pushing into Germany when it imploded to such a spectacular fashion that it completely ceased to exist.

The Western Protectorate has gone even crazier. They have forced tribute all the way to Lithuania and now border Svithjod and the ERE. That is going to be interesting.

Despite not having secret religious societies on, both Africa and Hispania have flipped to Catholic. No idea how Africa happened, but I think I know what happened to the Ummayyads. The Kingdom of Brittany formed (a first in any of my games) and they launched a successful holy war into Hispania. No idea how they pulled that off. They were succeeding at a second one when the boy emperor flipped Catholic to stop it. I didn't give much for his survival. I was right but it wasn't one of his powerful Muslim vassals that was responsible - it was the Catholic wife of a minor Muslim count that had him murdered. A new Sunni emperor took over, only to be overthrown by faction demand which installed a Catholic Ummayyad in power. Its solidly Catholic now with almost no chance that the Sunnis canget back in power.

The Caliphate is failing as well, and I had almost no part in that. They were going strong until a decadence revolt hit them, which saw Egypt and parts of the north and east break away. Somehow the Abbasids clawed their way back to power, only for a Shia uprising and a independence uprising to hit simultaneously, both of which succeeded, further weakening them. The Shia are the new power now, going from strength to strength, taking Armenia from the ERE and now holding land from Armenia down to the Sinai.

There was a successful Miaphysite uprising in Egypt (never seen that before) which went on to win two more holy wars against Egypt and take most of the country.

The Zunnist still exist and have formed a decent sized kingdom, but they are stuck between the Hindus and the Sunni, so no idea how long they will be around.

One of the nomadic khans has settled down in central asia and has formed a large empire that is one of the Zoroastrian heresies.

There was even a Nestorian kingdom for a while after the break up of the Caliphate but it sadly has been conquered.

And that is just the start of the weirdness going on.

Ah, that'll be the one with the very biblical feel, isn't it? Very nice, very unique. Would like to see a 'state of the world' for it, since evidently lots of interesting stuff has been happening.

[Grytorm]

At some point the fun of the game is in soldiering on after all your plans for global domination go sideways. Not to say I haven't rage-quit a couple times because I lost all the holdings I had spent a dozen characters building up, just that sometimes the fun comes when you decide to keep playing anyway. Other times the fun comes because you hold 3 empire titles and just smacked down the mongol invasion single-handedly.

Speaking of fun, I discovered something interesting: if you build a trade outpost on a major trade route location without the silk road being active (i.e. I don't own either horse lords or jade dragon), you can still build the silk road buildings.

Mhmm. Especially because of the cool religious reformation. I checked things, and the Ironman save was still available, saddly the King was still dead. I guess I will start playing again at some point and switch Ireland from Gavelking to Seniority to make certain I have a dynastic heir.

[Recherché]

Mhmm. Especially because of the cool religious reformation. I checked things, and the Ironman save was still available, saddly the King was still dead. I guess I will start playing again at some point and switch Ireland from Gavelking to Seniority to make certain I have a dynastic heir.

I've had such bad luck getting out of seniority and so many horrible kings that I almost never even look at it. On the other hand it's not like Gavelkind doesn't tend to create headaches as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, I finally another stab on with my Rome run. And - finally! - the other shoe dropped and the Aztecs invasion triggered in 1271, just after Emperor Rapacious' bicentennial year!

200K groups landed, one in Ireland and one in Mauretania.

Forunately, at the very first whisper, all ten 12k strong roman armies had been moved to the east of the Empire. And never had I been so glad for border gore, because it allowed me to raise SEVERAL large armies from my vassals and fight nearly one to one. (Bearing in mind that pretty much all of Europe bar three provinces of Scotland, North Africa and most of the Middle East and western Russia are under Roman control.) It was a tense, raging battle. The Roman Empire started off well (we could have forced a peace early on, but those event stacks don't go away). Eventually, the Aztecs pushed the warscore down towards 50% as they took land in Ireland, but the cost was tremendous, as my armies simply ran down theirs time after time, slaughtering them (and THEIR troops don't come back). We were slowly wiping them out; until, by chance, we captured their leader and forced the victory. We lost no territory, but the Aztecs are still hanging around. Then there was the concern of the money drain on my retinues as it nosedoved towards the red... (In fact, that was my big concern, whether we could wipe them out before I went broke...!) But, again, having forseen the issue, I'd been banking money and cutting the reinforcement rate in half just worked, and Rome is now in profit again, and the major threat to the western empire is now defeated, so Rapacious can turn his gaze to the east...

[tyckspoon]

Congratulations on defeating the Aztec menace The one game I've played long enough to trigger Sunset Invasion was an Ireland run, in which I had more or less established Britain (I think I was a bit off from actually completing the Empire - couldn't find the CBs to capture the last few parts, and fake-claiming duchies worth of land takes foooorrreevver. These days I probably would have just become a heretic and declared holy wars.) The first wave of Aztecs landed on my shores, and I thought 'well, ok, this'll be rough, but if I round up all my resources I think I can do it.' The *second* wave of Aztecs landed on the same friggin' county.

[Aotrs Commander]

Congratulations on defeating the Aztec menace The one game I've played long enough to trigger Sunset Invasion was an Ireland run, in which I had more or less established Britain (I think I was a bit off from actually completing the Empire - couldn't find the CBs to capture the last few parts, and fake-claiming duchies worth of land takes foooorrreevver. These days I probably would have just become a heretic and declared holy wars.) The first wave of Aztecs landed on my shores, and I thought 'well, ok, this'll be rough, but if I round up all my resources I think I can do it.' The *second* wave of Aztecs landed on the same friggin' county.

OUCH.

I'm not sure even my forces could have handled 200k on top of each other (for one thing, I'd have lost a good chunk of my vassal levy armies being miles and and miles from the action!)

I think that they have changed the AI as well, since the Aztecs spread out a lot more than I'd heard some people talk about, so that I was actually able to hit them in smaller checks, rather than a single 100k doomstack.

[Leecros]

I really want to try to run an Aztec/Nahuatl character using the ruler designer in the earliest start date.

The problem that I've run into doing that every single time is the fact that the Aztec holy sites are really really spread out and Aztec starts unreformed which means spending most of the game in Gavalkind hell

[Corvus]

As mentioned, I have been doing an AAR for my Makuria run over at the CK2 AAR forums. For those interested it is The Lords of the Land of the Bow. I could post it here as well if anyone likes.

I do have to credit credit to the Abbasids in the game - not normally something I say. Thats like giving credit to the Karlings. But after loosing the Caliphate, they clawed their way back into power and are hanging on, despite being surrounded by larger hostile powers. Not just that but they also managed to take over the Shia Caliphate. Yeah, thats right. Both the Shia and Sunni Caliphs are Abbasids.

[Rockphed]

I do have to credit credit to the Abbasids in the game - not normally something I say. Thats like giving credit to the Karlings. But after loosing the Caliphate, they clawed their way back into power and are hanging on, despite being surrounded by larger hostile powers. Not just that but they also managed to take over the Shia Caliphate. Yeah, thats right. Both the Shia and Sunni Caliphs are Abbasids.

At some point I want to get a run going where both Caliphs, the Pope, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Jewish religious head are all from my family. I'm not sure if that last one is doable since I haven't tried a Jewish run yet. If I were truly over-achieving, I would get those 5 and the heads of the reformed Germanic, Tengri, and Slavic faiths to all be members of my family. I'm pretty sure that all the eastern religions are of the organized, but no religious head, variety, so I cannot reform them. I wonder, however, if I could also get the head of the Aztec religion to be from my family.

In my current game, the Karlings are reduced to the rump kingdom of Austrasia and the Abbassids currently control 2 baronies. Interestingly, one baron is hindu while the other is Sunni. Furthermore, I am pretty sure that the Caliph just got toasted as I just formed the Arabian and Persian Empires. I also have the Empire of Brittania, Empire of Italia, and the Roman empire under my control. I would form E_francia, but my vassals are not doing a good job of stealing territory from either Acquitaine or France. Obviously I need to find a claimant to those thrones to annex the next time I use the "imperial reconquest" CB.

One final question: do the actions of my vassals add threat to me? When I last checked my threat, it listed "Ruler of Greece: 0.5" as contributing to my threat.

[Flickerdart]

I'm not sure even my forces could have handled 200k on top of each other (for one thing, I'd have lost a good chunk of my vassal levy armies being miles and and miles from the action!)

Sounds like the 400k stack would immediately kill itself with attrition.

[Artanis]

One final question: do the actions of my vassals add threat to me? When I last checked my threat, it listed "Ruler of Greece: 0.5" as contributing to my threat.

AFAIK, yes, they do, though possibly at a reduced rate. It can get REALLY annoying

Sounds like the 400k stack would immediately kill itself with attrition.

Most event hordes like that have reduced (or outright removed) attrition. I can't recall with 100% certainty if the Aztecs are that way, but they probably are.

[Rockphed]

AFAIK, yes, they do, though possibly at a reduced rate. It can get REALLY annoying

So my plan to sit back and govern for 40 years to get rid of my ~95% threat rating is a bad plan. Good to know.

[Grytorm]

I've had such bad luck getting out of seniority and so many horrible kings that I almost never even look at it. On the other hand it's not like Gavelkind doesn't tend to create headaches as well.

Well mostly I was thinking of seniority because of the whole non dynastic heir issue. Its just, the previous king-who-didn't-die-right-after-turning-sixteen's wife had apparently never heard of matrillineal marriages so my current character's firstborn son and King of Scotland is not of my dynasty, and neither are the children of the future queen of England.

Or I could take up demon worship to pursue my nefarious ends.

[Malimar]

Or I could take up demon worship to pursue my nefarious ends.

This is almost as universally applicable a plan in CK2 as "pump magma on it" is in Dwarf Fortress.

[Nerd-o-rama]

So my plan to sit back and govern for 40 years to get rid of my ~95% threat rating is a bad plan. Good to know.

Threat is just a number when you have that much territory.