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

[Nerd-o-rama]

I know I'm a noob here, but has anyone else ever seen the Duchy of Gwynned form the Kingdom of Jerusalem? That was a fun time for like six months before the counter-Jihad completely obliterated them, and also England ate their homeland while they were distracted.

That's what I get for marrying my sister to a Welsh Crusader I guess.

[IthilanorStPete]

I know I'm a noob here, but has anyone else ever seen the Duchy of Gwynned form the Kingdom of Jerusalem? That was a fun time for like six months before the counter-Jihad completely obliterated them, and also England ate their homeland while they were distracted.

That's what I get for marrying my sister to a Welsh Crusader I guess.

Haven't seen that, though in my current game Venice was able to form it. They're still hanging in there 50 years afterward.

[tyckspoon]

I know I'm a noob here, but has anyone else ever seen the Duchy of Gwynned form the Kingdom of Jerusalem? That was a fun time for like six months before the counter-Jihad completely obliterated them, and also England ate their homeland while they were distracted.

That's what I get for marrying my sister to a Welsh Crusader I guess.

Haven't seen that particular event, but the computer's general incompetence at waging war means pretty much anybody can get selected as 'biggest contributor' and be awarded the Crusade target if the player isn't taking a direct hand in it. 'course, that also means they'll usually get smashed by the counter Jihad, since All of Christendom shows up for the Crusade but doesn't especially care what happens to the land after that.

[Rockphed]

State of the World:

I have lost 2 provinces to the Mongols. They currently have 70,000 event troops. I had a couple stacks of 10K running around taking back provinces. I think they sieged all of Cumania and most of Perm before running out the clock. They took an entire kingdom from Persia, but all of their wars with me have been for a single province. Once I convert all the provinces in my empire again, I think I will send my chaplain at them.

I control almost all of the De Jure Byzantine Empire. I am still missing a couple provinces in Armenia. I also control enough of Africa to form the kingdom thereof, but am waiting on that one. The kingdom of Greece is giving me grief. Maybe next time I revoke it I will destroy it and replace it with Armenia and Anatolia. Syria is about half way to being De Jure Byzantine. Hungary is about 70 years in, though I could have sworn it was higher. Must have gone backwards during the last civil war. Poland and Hungary no longer have my family at their thrones. Sicily didn't either, but I gave it to my more successful cousin in Africa. I keep nibbling chunks off the Persians (who are now Afghanistan for whatever reason), but none of my vassals has the power to take on the Seljuk Blob.

My current heir is my illegitimate offspring by the last wife of the last emperor, my current character's grandfather. He is italian and Catholic. How do I make sure that he culture converts? Alternatively, how do I up my chances of siring an heir by my wife?

The Seljuk Blob keeps refusing to crumble. They control Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, and at least 1 more kingdom. Every once in a while they have a civil war or decadence uprising, but they have yet to be dethroned by either. They also sit right at the vassal number limit, but have yet to lose any vassals during inheritance. Jerusalem is currently in the hands of England. For the 3rd or 4th time. I just took the duchy right north of it and control all the rest of Syria except the duchy of Damascus (which is De Jure Persia anyway). I wonder what the next crusade target will be.

The muslims in Africa are gone. The Holy Roman Emperor has his capital in Mauritania. I control everything east of Tripoli to Alexandria. I think Pisa controls Tripolitania. I have a relative in France who inherited Thesalanike, but I took it back from the French in short order.

[OrcusMcP]

"Crusader Kings 2, what is best in life?"

"To send overwhelming force to claim a single county, castrate an entire family, and marry your cousins for their traits!"

"Yes, that is good!"

[Flickerdart]

"Crusader Kings 2, what is best in life?"

"To send overwhelming force to claim a single county, castrate an entire family, and marry your cousins for their traits!"

"Yes, that is good!"

From the wonderful Hark! A Vagrant:

[tigerusthegreat]

I am running vanilla ck2 and as the Duke of Portucale in a fairly new game. Usually I play as an independent count or break free quickly, so I am at a loss what to do atm.

Leon took over Galacia, and I have all four of the counties in my Duchy (which sucks atm bc I have a max demense of 2 until i succeed at offing my wife and raising my centralization). However the King of Leon is quit powerful (5k troops). Besides solidifying my duchy I don't know how to proceed. Any recommendations?

[Flickerdart]

Play the marriage game! Getting your children and cousins onto the thrones of Europe is a great way to wield power disproportionate to the lands you personally control.

[OrcusMcP]

Playing the marriage game is indeed always a good idea, but playing a vassal is also a great time to futz about with some of the things you usually wouldn't do when you're running a huge empire. Play council politics for fun and profit (assuming you have Conclave, anyway) to mess with your King. Pick some of the wackier options that lifestyle focuses give you. Seduce EVERYONE. Possibilities abound!

[tigerusthegreat]

Playing the marriage game is indeed always a good idea, but playing a vassal is also a great time to futz about with some of the things you usually wouldn't do when you're running a huge empire. Play council politics for fun and profit (assuming you have Conclave, anyway) to mess with your King. Pick some of the wackier options that lifestyle focuses give you. Seduce EVERYONE. Possibilities abound!

Unf. I don't have conclave. I need to start buying xpacs but i don't want to spend the $100 to get them all

[Flickerdart]

Unf. I don't have conclave. I need to start buying xpacs but i don't want to spend the $100 to get them all

Wait for a sale. The expansions get slashed very generously, usually 50% and up to 80% for the older ones.

[tyckspoon]

My current heir is my illegitimate offspring by the last wife of the last emperor, my current character's grandfather. He is italian and Catholic. How do I make sure that he culture converts? Alternatively, how do I up my chances of siring an heir by my wife?

Well, first things first, make sure she's still of fertile age. If she's too old, you're going to have to divorce and/or kill her and get a better wife. Then do whatever you can to increase your Fertility score; off the top of my head, the Family and Seduction lifestyle focuses and the Sire an Heir ambitions give fairly easily accessible bonuses to that. Family will probably get you in the least trouble, overall, and also helps improve relationships with the rest of your dynasty. Could be useful if you have relatives who are Kings or powerful vassals in other places. IIRC your relationship with your wife factors into it somehow too, as does being in love/Lovers with her, both of which are things the Family focus can do for you. Seduction focus can make you Lustful/remove Chaste, which will also increase your odds of fathering a kid.

You used to be able to go into Seduction and attempt to Seduce your own wife. I don't remember if that still works, or if the game still considers it to be cheating on her when you do.. but if you can still do it, that's a good way to force the game to trigger attempts to make her pregnant beyond the usual MTTH checks.

Leon took over Galacia, and I have all four of the counties in my Duchy (which sucks atm bc I have a max demense of 2 until i succeed at offing my wife and raising my centralization). However the King of Leon is quit powerful (5k troops). Besides solidifying my duchy I don't know how to proceed. Any recommendations?

Been so long since I dealt with actual vanilla CK2 that I'm honestly not sure what your options are, but I'd say your next goal (aside from getting your stats up so you can have a better demesne limit) should probably be becoming a Grand Duke - that is, hold two Duchy titles. You can take them from other vassals inside the kingdom or from outside, wherever you think you can grab a claim. Inside is probably better, since it weakens your King for when you want to make an independence bid or try to take over the Kingdom for yourself. The 'easy', if not especially fast way is to just send your Chancellor around to fake claims. It's not amazingly fast, but it'll happen reasonably quickly if you have a decent Chancellor. Most duchies are relatively small, so you should only have to fake your way into two or three counties before you can usurp the title and then de jure claim or vassalize the remainder at your leisure. As a Duke you can have Count level vassals, so you can also start working the invite claimant - push claim angle. You do need an open title to give them so they remain a vassal of yours, however - might have to revoke minor barony level titles so you have a few to hand out.

[tigerusthegreat]

Well, I managed to go from being a fairly minor Duke in Leon to being an independent Queen of Galacia in about 20 years.

Duke Numo II got his centralization and stewardship improvements to get a safe 4 county demense. Through the course of three or four wars with the Islamic countries on the southern half of Spain, the King was in a bad shape. I created a faction and immediately forced decisions on Feudal Elective in Leon (somehow thinking I would be part of that, but I am De Jure Galacia) and the King's mother as Queen of Galacia (which put a very weak, bankrupt, 65 year old woman on the throne).

I immediately tried for independence, and about 2 months in, Duke Numo II died, leaving his second daughter (the first died in the dungeons for plotting to kill me and having bad traits) in command (she literally had 11 military at age 16, and has led every army even WHILE PREGNANT TWICE).

Duchess <name I don't recall atm, let's say Jenny> created a faction to force feudal elective in Galacia, and succeeded....only to realize that the current Duke of Galacia was the Queen of Galacia's son, and naturally won nomination. So....War for Independence part 2 was won quickly with no problems. The Queen of Galacia also quickly lost a war against castille for her sole County, dying in the process. Her son lost her county (formerly part of Leon) to Castille, and was left deep in debt and with little in the way of military. Since I had claims on both of his counties (from a pretty succesful bout of Fabrication that left me with severly negative prestige), I pressed the issue, and through a 2 year war won, uniting the Kingdom.

Because of my bad stewardship skills, I had to give away a couple of my counties to my "heir" half-brother. Literally after I finished giving them up, I got a stewardship improving trait that boosted me to 5 counties, and became pregnant, eventually giving birth to a son (previously had a daughter). I worked pretty hard to consolidate my vassals, get my skills up a little and reorder some of my council problems (I had a rival as my steward, who was doing nothing but failing to collect taxes). Then I decided to revoke my brother's titles (by then my stewardship was high enough for 6 counties) and solo rule all of galacia.

My brother raised two consecutive rebellions, the second of which was a pain because the Islamic states decided to try to claim the territory at the same time. I managed to get both counties under my thumb pretty quickly (and exiled him for 300 gold, where he went to a county whose ruler already had a claim on the counties he had held).

My next move is to build a castle (with medium city taxes and 6 provinces, I am raking in a lot of money), give it to a title claimant of the only county the guy who has claims on me has, and then nuke him from orbit. I currently out troop the rest of Christian Spain, but am debating if I should unite Christian Spain, or go for my usual expansion and mercenary-murder one of the Islamic countries, hoping the others join in when things start going well for me. I will probably unite the clans first, and try to get back in France's good graces (an alliance turned sour when Numo died, as the sister that was the alliance-keystone became a rival trying to kill Queen Jenny.

[Rockphed]

I have now added Africa, Rus, and Ruthenia to my vassal list. Rus was a case of "hmmm, I need 1 more county in Volga Bulgaria, and there is a strong claimant to Rus wandering around...For Profit!". The mongols took Persia from Afghanistan. I would be taking the nile delta from them, but they turned catholic. Oh what I would give for Legacy of Rome and Mending the Schism. I took a couple duchies in Turkestan from the Mongols before they converted, but they have been defending against a heathens for the last 10 years, so I haven't taken the 2 Cumanian provinces they stole from me.

Syria and Alania are now Dejure Byzantine. Hungary is still about 10 years away. All my other kingdoms are much further than that. I have a legitimate, born-in-the-purple, son as my heir and another daughter. Maybe I should marry my daughter to the Khagan and help him beat up Afghanistan.

[tigerusthegreat]

Does ck2 allow you to have newer dlc exoansions without all the older ones? Or does it cause issues? E.g. if Conclave goes on sale but i dont have any of the other xpacs, can i install it without problems?

[Malimar]

Does ck2 allow you to have newer dlc exoansions without all the older ones? Or does it cause issues? E.g. if Conclave goes on sale but i dont have any of the other xpacs, can i install it without problems?

I believe all DLCs are self-contained and you don't need any particular one to gain the features of any particular other one. At least in theory, but I'm pretty sure that theory matches up to reality in this case.

[Rockphed]

Finally! The Mongols have broken. Well, their armies have broken. I helped it along during my war to take a county off the revolt against them, but they had already been shrunk before that point. What are the odds that one of the other hoards actually shows up and starts taking names?

[Flickerdart]

Finally! The Mongols have broken. Well, their armies have broken. I helped it along during my war to take a county off the revolt against them, but they had already been shrunk before that point. What are the odds that one of the other hoards actually shows up and starts taking names?

Tamerlane is guaranteed to spawn, but whether or not he gets the ball rolling depends on the local conditions.

[Leecros]

I believe i wrote up a rant in one of the earlier threads about how I haven't encountered hordes that do well since before Raja's of India...soooooo the likelihood of one showing up and actually kicking butt is low.

The only one that does consistently well for my gameplay is The Aztecs.

[Malimar]

Sometimes I get hordes just sittin' there with their doomstacks doin' nothing. In those cases, sometimes, to make things interesting, I'll console over to them, declare a bunch of invasion wars, then console back. You've got doomstacks, you can conquer the world, don't be so timid!

[tigerusthegreat]

Sometimes I get hordes just sittin' there with their doomstacks doin' nothing. In those cases, sometimes, to make things interesting, I'll console over to them, declare a bunch of invasion wars, then console back. You've got doomstacks, you can conquer the world, don't be so timid!

Next time declare only on emgland and france

[Malimar]

Speaking of hordes: I had one game where a random Khazar horselord khaganate (not even one with doomstacks) conquered the Byzantine Empire (then immediately settled as them), and the same khaganate conquered the Arabian Empire (then immediately settled as them), and then later in the same game the same khaganate conquered the Byzantine Empire again (then immediately settled as them). That was some weird stuff.

My main criticism of nomads remains how easily they waffle on religion. They hardly ever stay one religion for more than a couple generations.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I'm leaning a lot on Noob Island. Today's lesson was a very important one:

A Papal Invasion is an incredible tool for taking over a whole independent realm at once. It is not meant to be used as a tool for doing that quickly, and you should always siege down every county if not every holding in the target realm so you can redistribute it to your friends and family.

At the very least, this is true of Kingdoms, or at the very very least, this is true of England. I'd rather spend a century taking every castle in the damn country with my mighty 20k Irish army (and some French knights because the Capets produce and marry off daughters like they're their most profitable export) than usurp a kingdom made up entirely of double-dukes who hate me because I prefer whiskey to warm beer and are running Elective Monarchy, which I can't change because they hate me and I can't get my son nominated for because they also hate me. And then, of course, that problem just starts spiraling out of control when I handle it like a mature monarch just start murdering everyone who gets nominated and revoking everyone who looks at me funny. Hell, maybe I just should have revoked every duchy and intentionally died in the resulting revolt. That could have been hilariously effective actually.

[tyckspoon]

I'm leaning a lot on Noob Island. Today's lesson was a very important one:

A Papal Invasion is an incredible tool for taking over a whole independent realm at once. It is not meant to be used as a tool for doing that quickly, and you should always siege down every county if not every holding in the target realm so you can redistribute it to your friends and family.

At the very least, this is true of Kingdoms, or at the very very least, this is true of England. I'd rather spend a century taking every castle in the damn country with my mighty 20k Irish army (and some French knights because the Capets produce and marry off daughters like they're their most profitable export) than usurp a kingdom made up entirely of double-dukes who hate me because I prefer whiskey to warm beer and are running Elective Monarchy, which I can't change because they hate me and I can't get my son nominated for because they also hate me. And then, of course, that problem just starts spiraling out of control when I handle it like a mature monarch just start murdering everyone who gets nominated and revoking everyone who looks at me funny. Hell, maybe I just should have revoked every duchy and intentionally died in the resulting revolt. That could have been hilariously effective actually.

I've never actually pulled off a Pope-sanctioned Invasion, mostly for this reason.. that and the restrictions on having it granted (you have to have a smaller realm than your hoped for target, the Pope has to dislike the targeted title holder for whatever reason, and he won't grant it if they hold more Cardinal seats than you.) All of which basically end up meaning that by the time I am confident I can effectively take on a target to Invade, the Pope won't grant it. Ah well.

Yeah, the fact that there is next to no family reputation modifier between rulers means doing a bunch of horrible things with a ruler who is soon to die is potentially incredibly powerful. It's mostly held in check by the inability to purposefully abdicate or otherwise guarantee getting rid of a ruler without console-killing them; you never know when your aged, ill ruler will earn like -200 Tyranny modifier and then cling to life for another 5 years despite personally leading every single battle in the ensuing rebel civil wars.

[Nerd-o-rama]

And unfortunately, you can't buy an indulgence from the Church of RNGesus. Not knowing when your ruler is going to snuff it is basically the main point of tension in this game, I've noticed.

Basically yeah I had a few false starts (helpful hint: Papal Investiture), but I came to realize that the strength is in eating up a large realm that just got done losing a war to someone else and hasn't rebuilt its levies yet, hopefully with a new ruler who doesn't have any useful alliances.

Also I'm playing completely vanilla, so I didn't have to worry about Cardinals, just gluing my Chaplain's lips to the Papal derrière. And hoping the other guy lit a Christian prisoner on fire or something.

[The Great Wyrm]

There is the Suicide decision, but it requires that your character be Depressed first (and also costs 100 Prestige).

[Corvus]

The new DLC is out March 7.

[Leecros]

The new DLC is out March 7.

My poor wallet

[Nerd-o-rama]

Hey, on my latest restart, I managed to win the First Crusade!

I've now identified a flaw with this plan that would apply equally well to my brilliant "Papal invade England" strategem: now I have to assign every bloody holding in the country. I'm thinking I'm just going to split it up into vassal duchies, give those and their vassal holdings to some of my unlanded commanders, and call it a day. I don't need to bother holding things directly if I'm only going to use the levies there for defense, right? Although that would mean I don't get any money, hm. I guess there's also a chance for rebellion if I do that if they decide they want to elect their own king. Maybe skip the duchies entirely and just. Find some counts. A lot of counts. I'm only medium centralized I think I can handle that.

Actually let's just make this a general strategy question: In general, it's a good idea to not have vassal duchies as a king, right? As long as you can afford the vassal count? In an elective monarchy it means you have the only vote, and in anything else it helps keep vassal power divided into the smallest possible chunks. I've actually been playing where if I have a duchy beyond two of them in my starting kingdom (say, the two you need to form a different kingdom, or ones you grabbed for the convenience of de jure claims), I try to hang onto them if possible, then wait until my dude's in his 60s and start revoking them (if applicable) and then destroying them.

[Flickerdart]

Hey, on my latest restart, I managed to win the First Crusade!

I've now identified a flaw with this plan that would apply equally well to my brilliant "Papal invade England" strategem: now I have to assign every bloody holding in the country. I'm thinking I'm just going to split it up into vassal duchies, give those and their vassal holdings to some of my unlanded commanders, and call it a day. I don't need to bother holding things directly if I'm only going to use the levies there for defense, right? Although that would mean I don't get any money, hm. I guess there's also a chance for rebellion if I do that if they decide they want to elect their own king. Maybe skip the duchies entirely and just. Find some counts. A lot of counts. I'm only medium centralized I think I can handle that.

Create a ton of counts, then create the least likable counts as Dukes. They will be too busy dealing with their underlings to rebel against you.