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

[Nerd-o-rama]

Skirmish units (Light Infantry, Archers, Light Cav, Horse Archers) get nerfed in general a while back, specifically because all-Light-Infantry was way too good for how cheap and accessible it was and Horse Archers were far and away the best kind of retinue. Combine that with Horse Archer tactics just not being that great (as Skirmish type units they don't have good Melee tactics, and their Skirmish phase tactics aren't anything special compared to the ones you get for just using Archers) and their high cost/low quantity as a retinue and Horse Archers fell way, wayyyyy down. Archers and Light Cavalry are still ok, you just don't want to mix too many of them into a predominantly heavy infantry army. And the English/Welsh Longbow Retinue is still capable of obliterating fights in the Skirmish phase, but that's a super high risk/high reward choice, since they fall apart near instantly if something survives to get into Melee with them.

I think when I read a recommendation for Horse Archers it was due to the Altaic culture group's Retreat and Ambush tactic. Is that still an overpowered thing?

[Corvus]

After a certain point I almost never use levies except to deal with minor matters like raids or uprisings.

One very large advantage retinues have is that you can pre-positions them and have max morale already before you declare war. Levies you have to declare war before you can round them up from all across your empire, spend months marching them in to position before you can invade, if the enemy hasn't already counter invaded in the meantime.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Late-game, I find levies are mainly for intimidation, occupation, and making-sure-my-retinues-don't-get-flanked purposes. Useful to have, but not the main force they are early in the game.

[Rockphed]

Late-game, I find levies are mainly for intimidation, occupation, and making-sure-my-retinues-don't-get-flanked purposes. Useful to have, but not the main force they are early in the game.

This is really only my first game to get to the late game with levies, so I don't have a lot of experience. I just got my Retinues up to 4500 Heavy Cav and 3000 Horse Archers (so Retinue limit is almost 40,000), while my personal levy is 10 - 15K city and castle stuff. (In hind sight, Italian culture might be better than Greek for a merchant republic: cities provide pikes, light infantry, and archers, not heavy cavalry. Things to do in a mod, add cultural buildings for cities.) Anyway, I use my retinue for attacking relatively easy targets, especially when they are already rebounding from a battle. I use my full levy, both personal and realm, when I am in a war with one of the big boys (ERE, Hispania, England, or Arabic Empire) or when I need to win a war quickly (say I am taking land from Scotland, or the Mongol Empire, or one of the smaller Islamic States). My current monthly income is about 150 (40+ trade posts for the win), so I am still (barely) positive when my retinue is reinforcing.

Speaking of trade posts, I am kinda miffed that income boosts from large trade zones max out before 100% for trade posts and 50% for cities. I get why, but it is slightly annoying to have a massive trade empire that takes up most of the central mediteranean and not get broken amounts of money from it.

[tyckspoon]

Speaking of trade posts, I am kinda miffed that income boosts from large trade zones max out before 100% for trade posts and 50% for cities. I get why, but it is slightly annoying to have a massive trade empire that takes up most of the central mediteranean and not get broken amounts of money from it.

You have broken amounts of money (well, for anything that isn't scaled against your yearly income, anyway.) You could keep two or three of the largest mercenary bands on permanent hire as a standing army and still run a notable surplus. (Bonus: if you already have the two best merc companies in your area hired, your opponents can't use them against you.) My wars usually go retinue and mercs as a beachhead attack, because having them pre gathered and with full morale lets them smash disorganized opponents. Second wave is demesne levies, which have to wait for after war declaration to be raised and march. Once they get there i either have two significa t armies, so i can have one group concentrate on sieges while the other makes sure the enemy doesn't get enough space to reorganize his armies, or I dismiss the battered mercs and let the retinue go home to recover while the levies finish up. Third wave usually doesn't happen because I concentrate on raising my demesne much more than trying to wring troops out of vassals; if the hired troops and personal levies can't do it, the drab my vassals deign to give up don't often make a difference.

[Rockphed]

Case in point: I have 33K troops, the ERE has 33K troops. I was, for stupid reasons, tengri so I declared holy war for Sardinia. Then the Pope decide that Italy should be Catholic, so he called a crusade. Now, I didn't really want to fight all of christendom (the only Orthodox place is Mali), so I wanted to convert to Catholic in the face of the crusade. On the other hand, I wanted to form an empire, and I needed the Kingdom of Sardinia to form the Italian Empire as a Republic, and I needed the Duchy of Sardinia to form the kingdome thereof. So I hired the 2 largest mercenary companies I had access to (for a total of 20K troops) and sent them to hunt down ERE stacks. I was still positive even with my whole levy, and 100 gold per month in mercenaries and my retinue reinforcing. Apparently the first stack they hit was enough to put me over the edge to 100%, so I peaced out and converted to Catholic. Now I am spreading catholicism to upper Lombardy (where the Mongols still have a foothold from when the Karlings were all good mongol vassals). Then I will go try to Return Christendom to Greece (the ERE just had a Tengri society fire).

I hate the secret religion societies and not having any sort of defense against them. Unless I get Monks and Mystics, I am playing with them off from now on. Especially because the Tengris seems so much more on the ball than the Catholics. It probably doesn't help that the Muslims control from Morroco to Mongolia.

Probably my hardest job right now is keeping my family from dying off. For a bit I was down to 3 heirs, all of whom were unacceptable for one reason or another. Things seem to have fixed themselves somewhat. Now I can go back to killing off rival families until I have the capital trade post again.

[Leecros]

This is my life now...(warning to headphone users around the 4:50 mark)

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Some context: This is a montage from a Crusader Kings II series that I'm recording. I don't actually know if I'll end up posting the series or not as I prefer to have a pretty large backlog of episodes before I start posting in order to conform the series to a regular schedule. That's why the video is set to unlisted so as to not confuse people. Still, this experience of trying to assassinate someone over 10 times in the course of two in-game years was traumatizing enough that I wanted to share.Especially because It was all for nothing.

I have never had so many assassination attempts over the course of such a short period of time. It was literally like the span of 10 minutes.

[Flickerdart]

trying to assassinate someone over 10 times

[Leecros]

I swear, Elective Monarchy always ruins my fun. My plans were to assassinate the current Basilius, then my wife(who was a sunni princess of the Byzantine Empire) and then when his daughter took the throne force my son's claim.

What ended up happening was two years of failed assassinations against a paranoid guy and after it finally succeeded some random guy took over(and i swear I checked beforehand and his daughter was the heir), but two years of assassination attempts apparently changed some minds. This is far from the first time it has happened. It's just that the other times haven't been recorded and preceded by so much effort.

(on another note: Didn't they reduce the attractiveness of Elective Monarchy in a recent patch?)

Anyway, ultimately I ended up achieving my goal. The guy who became Basilius ended up dying of some sort of illness I think. After a short war, I ended up putting my son on the throne of the Byzantine Empire. Finally, my current character ended up dying from complications that arouse from phantom pains that plagued him for his whole life from his disfigurement, but not before his court physician decided commit suicide in front of him in an attempt to shock him back to health.

So now I'm the Egyptian Shia Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

[druid91]

Huh. I went full north Korea mode at one point and didn't get that many assassin's after my Viking pope.

[russdm]

There was a sale or something on amazon, so I bought some material for Crusader Kings 2. Got a few DLCs and Unit Packs/Portaits, plus dynasty shields: Have now The Old Gods, Charlemagne, Rajas of India, Sword of Islam, Sons of Abraham, Horselords, the Republic. I think I am still need to get Conclave and a few other DLC left.

Going to try to get some of my planned Paradox campaigns going and saved. Paradox campaigns: Germania (Germany, Hohenzollern); Danubia (Austria, Habsburgs); Sword and Cross (Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem); Brittainia (sp?) (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland); after finishing CK 2, was going to transfer them so EU3 Chronicles, then Vic 2. Am trying to get a Hearts of Iron, and maybe move it to Stellaris (If I can get computer to run it) or Galactic Civilizations.

Is there a good starting point to go for each campaign using the DLCs I have now? That would allow me to make things work the best by the game's end date?

[Flickerdart]

Does content downloaded from Amazon behave well with the Steam version of the game?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

It SHOULD just give you a Steam activation code. Paradox stopped doing non-Steam versions a few years ago. If it doesn't play nice with Steam, then it's an illegal pirated copy, which doesn't seem like Amazon's mode d'emploi.

[tonberrian]

Yeah, I got most of my ck2 stuff off Amazon a few years ago. All steam keys. I doubt they changed since.

[russdm]

Haven't had a problem with buying from Amazon and using in steam.

[Corvus]

My current ironman game seems to have developed a bug.

In my first game with Sunset Invasion turned on, the Aztecs have turned up, landing 2 92K doomstacks in Ireland and Morocco and then proceed to do....nothing. They've been idling there for a couple of years just twiddling their thumbs. And because they have no land I can't declare war on them. Which means I can't get the two achievements I had the DLC turned on for - the one to fight them and the mongols at the same time and the one to throw them back in the sea.

[tyckspoon]

My current ironman game seems to have developed a bug.

In my first game with Sunset Invasion turned on, the Aztecs have turned up, landing 2 92K doomstacks in Ireland and Morocco and then proceed to do....nothing. They've been idling there for a couple of years just twiddling their thumbs. And because they have no land I can't declare war on them. Which means I can't get the two achievements I had the DLC turned on for - the one to fight them and the mongols at the same time and the one to throw them back in the sea.

Don't know if you're still trying to play this game, but you might be able to offer to join the war on behalf of whoever they did land on and get in on it that way as a defender.

Tales of Pagans: Loaded a game as Fairhair, the Old Gods-era high chief of not-yet-Norway. He's ludicrously overpowered, because Paradox and Scandinavian characters. Get challenged to holmgang duel by my 30+ years older uncle. I accept, figure I'm young, I have like a 24 martial score and good congenital traits. Lose the fight. Die about 1 year into the game.

Tried again with the High Chief of Greater Poland. Not as personally overpowered as the other dude, but as the personal holder of 3 counties he starts off in a really easy position to become King of Poland with pagan border Conquests and the I wanna be King! ambition subjugations. I've got that going, holding off on actually creating the title and fulfilling the ambition so I can finish Subjugating all the pagans that hold pieces of land in my future kingdom. And then I notice I've pushed my borders out next to Hungary. And I've got enough Prestige for a couple of tribal armies. And Arpad has his troops raised and off trying to fight somewhere else, so there are drained holdings laying around in his capital duchy. So.. I subjugate Arpad (he died halfway through the war leaving behind a much less impressive heir). Not an easy fight, but in the end the ability of Tribal rulers to just throw nigh-endless bodies at a fight carries the day.

And now I'm King of Hungary and have pretty much all the land of de jure Poland. Kind of wish I had the Charlemagne DLC, because this is pretty much the perfect situation for a custom Empire.. as it is in the game's standard empires, I'm either going to have to slowly eat Bulgaria to finish Hungary/Wallachia empire, or work my way through the more expansive Wendish Empire counties. Or I could just wait for this guy to die and let Gavelkind do its thing and explode his nice unified lands.

[Aotrs Commander]

In my first game with Sunset Invasion turned on, the Aztecs have turned up, landing 2 92K doomstacks in Ireland and Morocco

*gulp*

That's a lot of troops. Especially, as I understand it, since they don't suffer from attrition. And, having so very carefully captured almost all of the coast line of the western half of the map, suddenly, my Roman Legions still don't feel quite adequate enough. I don't think my entire Imperial retinue is over 100K...

[Rockphed]

*gulp*

That's a lot of troops. Especially, as I understand it, since they don't suffer from attrition. And, having so very carefully captured almost all of the coast line of the western half of the map, suddenly, my Roman Legions still don't feel quite adequate enough. I don't think my entire Imperial retinue is over 100K...

It takes a lot to resist the first attack of a horde. Wisely choosing battles helps (If they cross a strait or river onto mountains, they are going to have a hard time). But, no matter what, you are probably going to lose your first war against them.

[Corvus]

Don't know if you're still trying to play this game, but you might be able to offer to join the war on behalf of whoever they did land on and get in on it that way as a defender.

Unfortunately they haven't declared war on anybody. They've just been sitting there for years. Oddly I'm still getting the colour events (ie the arrival of potatos, etc) but no war declarations.

I did invite the heir tot eh faction to my court with the plan of landing him so that when he inherited I could release him and then declare war on him. Sadly he promptly went and died before I could even give him land and no other Aztec in the line of succession wants to join my court.

[Rockphed]

I think I am about to accidentally inherit the Byzantine Empire. I started as Boleslaw the Bold, king of Poland in 1066. I have been slowly eating at the neighboring realms. I took Pomerania (or is it Pomeralia), and made it a merchant republic. I also took 2 counties from Prussia. Then I got notice that I could press a weak claim on the Rurikids, so I did. A couple years later I pressed another. Then things snowballed. Now I have enough of Ruthenia to form the kingdom (which I will as soon as I get high crown authority and primogeniture succession). Unfortunately, I married a princess of the Byzantine Empire. When I married her, she was unlanded in some random duke's court and a completely different house was on the throne. Then, apparently, either that dufus got offed or a faction pushed her claim and, next thing I know, I am married to the Basillisa. Now I have a son and a daughter, both born in the purple, and I am trying to decide what to do. I had considered pressing her claim when I noticed it immediately after marriage, but I had 7000 troops to the emperor's 14000. Any suggestions?

[Rockphed]

So, I didn't inherit the empire. But I did win the latest crusade for Jerusalem. And I formed an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire and with France. We had about 100K troops stomping around greece and anatolia to the Basilius's 15K. So now I am Emperor of the Byzantine Empire and I am not sure what to do next. Obviously I need to put down a few revolts. Hopefully the HRE helps. Should I switch to Greek culture, or stay polish? I'm thinking of changing to Orthodox, reconciling the faith, and then switching back to Catholic. Then I would get all the christian holy orders, even the Orthodox one, right?

One more question: if I am king of Jerusalem and become orthodox, do I lose the vassalage of the Knights Templar and Hospitalar?

[TheTeaMustFlow]

So, I didn't inherit the empire. But I did win the latest crusade for Jerusalem. And I formed an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire and with France. We had about 100K troops stomping around greece and anatolia to the Basilius's 15K. So now I am Emperor of the Byzantine Empire and I am not sure what to do next. Obviously I need to put down a few revolts. Hopefully the HRE helps. Should I switch to Greek culture, or stay polish? I'm thinking of changing to Orthodox, reconciling the faith, and then switching back to Catholic. Then I would get all the christian holy orders, even the Orthodox one, right?

You would (assuming the Orthodox Holy Order had formed), but bear in mind that ending the schism deactivates crusades.

One more question: if I am king of Jerusalem and become orthodox, do I lose the vassalage of the Knights Templar and Hospitalar?

IIRC, You will retain their vassalage but be unable to raise them as holy orders.

[Rockphed]

You would (assuming the Orthodox Holy Order had formed), but bear in mind that ending the schism deactivates crusades.

I know that Orthodox cannot call crusades, but it deactivates crusades for Catholic (and all catholic heresies that can call them)? Lame! I wanted to pull off a mending the schism from the other direction. (i.e. Catholic eats Orthodox). Now I might just settle for exterminating Orthodox.

[Malimar]

The things I'm currently thinking about adding to my mod:

• If you own a holy site, and have a religious head, a decision that gives the holy site to the religious head. (Not sure if I'd have it do the entire county like the decision Catholics have to give Rome to the Pope, or just the barony like Orthodoxes have to give Constantinople to the Ecumenical Patriarch.)
• If you have a religious head and neither you nor they own a holy site, a casus belli to take a holy site (and its county, probably) and give it to your religious head.

The latter is probably the harder of the two; I've never successfully modded casus belli.

The former is insanely complicated and there's no way I did it correctly, and probably no way I can do it correctly with my feeble skills. (The goal is to give you an option: give just the barony (favored by the Cynical), give the county if you control it, or give the whole duchy if you control it (favored by the Zealous).)

EDIT: Yeah, the simple part (the decision) doesn't even work. It doesn't even let me get to the complicated part (the event).

I don't think I'm even going to try the latter, casus belli are the worst.

[Valley]

After over 400 years of game play, wars, and intermarriage, I have realized something. I have killed racism in my game.

Due to the need to strengthen ties with other Orthodox Leaders and my focus on weddings and power politics, with little focus on combat, much of the faces of Europe is mixed. I have children who look Norwegian and relatives in Northern Europe who have Nubian wives. I have far off family members under the banner of Islam. And that is just my family bloodline. Western Europe is a mix of Christian and Muslim leaders of every skin color in the DLCs. I have Franks, French, Germans, Nubians, Middle-Eastern and Asian faces in my Empire - along with the Greeks. Add how culture affects people and I have honey-skinned Abyssinian women and coal-skinned Greek men and so on and so forth.

Skin no longer matters to Europe as long as the wife or husband or ally is the right religion, culture, and bloodline.

I mean, we still have reasons to kill each other but not the same reasons. Also, makes for some interesting portraits.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I noticed the same general idea happened in my favorite LP, where a Byzantine reconquest of Anatolia required the amalgamation of Greek, Turkish, and Levantine ethnicity/culture, in addition to all the Normans and Russians who married into the Komnenos line for alliance purposes. Which when you think about it, is kind of just the same thing in reverse of "Ottomanism" that happened in real life. I think it'll happen to any empire that grows faster than cultural and religious conversion can keep up, and any bloodline that spreads out a lot geographically.

And really, historically, "race" or "ethnicity" was viewed very differently in the Middle Ages, being more associated with specific geographic location and without the sweepingly large "national culture" ideas that were invented in the 19th century and anachronistically reproduced in the CK games. But I might be verging on a breach of board rules here. The point is, people identified themselves less by what CK2 calls culture and more by religion and loyalty to their local communities and rulers.

[Valley]

Just tried a few days of After The End.

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Is it just me or does this mod remind people of the Pelbar Cycle by Paul O. Williams?

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[Valley]

Hey folks!

Don't want to toot my own horn but if anyone is interested I have started a Let's Play of Crusader Kings 2 - Based in India. Just in case anybody is interested. Just check the Sig.

[SZbNAhL]

I think I just had the most frustrating thirty years in the history of the game.

Spoiler: Spoilered for length

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Playing with Monks and Mystics, I've thus far had every character join the Hermetics (letting the artefacts accumulate over the generations leads to some hilariously OP character stats). This included my latest character, the 17-year-old Duchess Anna. Her first mission? Go and wreck up some random guy's lab. I don't have any ingredients yet (because I keep forgetting that I have to set it as an important task again with every new character), so I try the distraction route and get caught by the guards.

This leaves me as the prisoner of the 73-year-old Bishop Theodolphus. He also automatically becomes my rival, so even with a gifts of cash and an artefact, he hates me too much to accept my ransom request. I can't send my chaplain to make nice because we're different religions (he's Orthodox, I'm Catholic), and my chancellor just gives me opinion boosts with Theo's liege, the Countess of Nikaea. I can't assassinate him because I'm in prison, he's not getting invaded any time soon because he's in the ERE, so I just have to wait for him to die. Shouldn't take too long, he's already an old man, right? Refer to introductory sentence.

That's right, he lived to 106. I was genuinely worried that he'd become immortal (can NPCs do that?) until he finally had the decency to catch smallpox.

Oh, and of course I couldn't replace my husband (died within months of my imprisonment) while I was inside either, so I lose my opportunity to pass on my attractive and quick traits (assuming characters even can breed from in prison, it's not like distance is usually a factor).

At least he was kind enough to let my court physician visit me to cut off my leg, hand and eye in a series of attempts to cure my syphilis.