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

[IthilanorStPete]

Yeah one of my main goals in this game is forming historical empires as entities those empires have, in more recent history, tended to kick around in the name of imperialism. Forming Britannia as Ireland, or Russia as Kiev (or I guess Novgorod since at least it's not Moscow) would be two major examples that I will not explain at all since that's against board rules and I'm pushing it even talking about my motivations.

And yeah I'm familiar with at least the legends around Rurik. Is there anything Vikings can't do?

The sons of Ragnar in the British Isles have a strong start - lots of event troops, weak opposition - but they have trouble going back to Scandinavia for the holy sites in order to reform.

[Corvus]

I've had a little play with M&M so far, only enough to try out a couple of things. Went with William the Conqueror to get the achievement. After the conquest I found out that one of my anglo-saxon dukes was a satanist. And I couldn't do anything about it. Not even get him ex-communicated which seems odd. (So for that I set up an anti-pope to get the 3 popes achievement given the HRE had set one up as well.)

From all accounts Lucifer's Own is a little overpowered. As is in there is a lot of power to be had and not much of a downside. Even if you do get found out (and it is fairly easy not to) no one seems to care enough to do much about it.

I think you can go satanist as a germanic as well (though with a different name)

So I'm thinking of trying a reformed pagan merchant republic dark one worshiper. An immortal patrician popping out scores of babies to fuel my immortality and centuries of raiding and pillaging and plundering? Sounds fun.

[Tentreto]

I've mostly been trying the hermetics and their stuff, as I had a very high learning character going in.
In fact, he lived to over 200, without any Satanism.
I personally find them ok if you are rich, and don't have too large realm, and it can be fun to mess around with scrying and horoscopes. They tend to be scarily accurate...
The magnum opus' are pretty nice though, give you some learning for basically free if you stay hermetic. I haven't actually seen anything to do with alchemy though, so I have ingredients gumming up my stash.

Has anyone else seen the cold ones? I saw them as my 200 year old as a closed society, and I imagine they are Cthulhuist, but cant see them anymore.

But yeah, if ther eare really no downside to Satanism, that's pretty bad.

[Aedilred]

Has anyone tried Monks and Mystics? Any good?

I have all the older DLC apart from Conclave, which looks like everything I hate about "order maintenance" mechanics in strategy games, and I rarely play with Sunset Invasion turned on as I've been on a bit of a bent of playing through events which if you squint hard enough could be historically accurate.

Of course, just because I stick to the script doesn't mean anyone else does. It took a lot of console fudging to get the Vikings to attack Britain at all in my current game, let alone do so with any real muscle. On the bright side, the Carolingians have for once not blobbed all together and indeed there are somehow currently four Karling kingdoms awkwardly coexisting: France, Germany, Austrasia and Burgundy, as well as independent Saxony, Bavaria and Brittany. Italy though has taken Spain in crusade and formed the HRE by itself. But that doesn't concern me overly since they're well out of my way and I'm not really planning on painting the whole map red this time round.

[Tentreto]

So far, its pretty good. The societies are not necessary to join, but do offer benefits and drawbacks. The monastics generally make your character more virtuous, while the hermetics can really improve your long term learning. I'm pretty close to maxing out the techs from just staying with them. Societies also balance doing missions and events for the society to improve your standing in them, against what your realm may need or like. For instance, hermetics may ask you to observe they sky for a while, which can get your nobles, wife, and children annoyed (I got a loss of opinion for 'bad parent')
A few drawbacks so far is that alchemy isn't in yet, which means the hermetics have hall bladders gumming up their stash for centuries. Also, at least for the more 'realistic' Christian societies, there is not much benefit to being the leader. I don't know too much yet about the others though. I know if you have a secret sympathy to a religion, you can form a secret cult of it, but it seems hard to do.

Stashes are pretty fun however. If you are I think at least a duke, you can get a goldsmith offer to make you a set of regalia cheap, medium or expensive, which will more or less persist from then on as part of the heirs...heirlooms. They give benefits like +1/+2/+3 to vassal opinion each, depending on quality. A weapon smith can also appear, and give some very cool and actually useful weapons. They are honestly the best investment if you can afford it. A few unique items are in as well, like the iron crown of Lombardy, which has its own bonuses. Even more, there are all sorts of holy relics you can find/steal, which come mostly from monastic orders I think. My emperor managed to steal the seamless robe of Jesus somehow, which is honestly awesome.

And yeah, there's all sorts of other bits that I don't know yet, like the assassins and things, and who knows about India. As I said earlier, I want to see if I can find the cold ones again, as they seemed fun. This does expand the religious aspect definitely, and if you like the role-play aspect, it is brilliant. If you want historic, turn off demon worship in the options. It can get a little samey in events if you overplay a single society, as some events seem a lot commoner than others, especially hermetics I feel (I don't want to look at the sky!)
I would say wait until the next patch though, just so they can in fact get everything in, and the people who know lot more about this than me can see whats happening.

[tigerusthegreat]

One thing that bugs me about paradox is they alwaus release things that don't seem quite finished. I get that they are setting it up for dlc but I just don't like the feel

[Rockphed]

So I put my game back to 2.6.3 so I could complete my Alexiad game without having to deal with quartered vassal limits. Next game I start, I need to make sure I am very careful about which rules are in play. Also, I think I prefer having threat to not having threat. Any other game rule suggestions?

At any rate, I declared something like 8 wars at once (on The Mongols, Abyssinia, English Jerusalem, the HRE, Pisa, Pomerania, The Knights Templar, and (I think) the last 2 Romuva rulers in the game.) Having 27K personal levies and 130K vassal levies means that I can do what I want.

Then an Indian kingdom won a holy war for Baluchistan (which my vassal was also trying to take), so I holy-warred them for it. There is currently a crusade for one of the Indian kingdoms, but the catholics are getting trashed. If the Mongols joined in, they might be able to make it work, but the Mongols are a shadow of their former selves. I now have 2 holy wars for Indian duchies going. I think I am going to make one of them a merchant republic. Then I am going to blitz my way around the coast.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

So I finally got tired of how weak Dyre the Stranger is in HIP, and modded him to be stronger. Surprisingly little work. I moved the Krivichi east, giving them Roslavl, Vyazma, and Smolensk. I read a source saying Smolensk was their largest settlement, and that they settled the head of the Volga as well as the Dvina and Dniepr. The remaining Radimichi lands became Kiev vassals. I expanded their Dregovichi vassal to include Druck and Minsk, and gave them a Severiane vassal in Chernigov. In what used to be the western Krivichi lands, I made a new Polochiane tribe based around Polotsk. Hopefully that means he'll survive a decade or two.

[Aotrs Commander]

So I put my game back to 2.6.3 so I could complete my Alexiad game without having to deal with quartered vassal limits. Next game I start, I need to make sure I am very careful about which rules are in play. Also, I think I prefer having threat to not having threat.

You know it's pretty easy to modify your save game (assuming you're not doing ironman) to set the game rules? All you need to do is save youe game uncompressed, start a new game with the game rules you want (save compressed) open the saves in a text editor and copy-paste from one t'other and job done.

[tigerusthegreat]

I have conquered a good chunk of north africa, except for Mali (which is so far away from my Demense and my holdings in Africa have Low Crown Authority so it isn't even worth fighting for those pieces just yet).

Downside is that the HRE is still a 77k troop monster, nobody wants to ally with me or even marry my family due to "political concerns." My good King died, leaving behind his 8 year old bastard son (3 wives and I had to take a lover to get a son....only to have a second son shortly after he was born). Pisa is hugely powerful with it's merchant-empire-ness and massive amounts of cash. The pope had 9k gold before I went to war and took the papcy for my anti-pope (now the regent of my king with a +100 relationship for making him pope and pressing his claims). I have around 30k troops, and am making 45-50 gold a month.

HRE seems unbeatable at this point. He has decent gold reserves (500 atm and his max troops result in -5 gold/month), high vassal troops and his vassals like him. I have no shortage of CBs for him (anti-pope, a few claims in Iberia, a few nobles who can press claims for duchies or counties, etc) I just have no clue how to beat the monster. I would have to wait a looooong time fighting a losing war to do so, and, unfortunately, unless I am defending against him, I will lose due to "HRE occupies <target>" long before I wear his gold reserves down or his vassals get angry.

Anytime he fights a war nowadays it is over almost immediately. He has fought with England every 10 years for the last century, wars lasting a few months. Hungary and other Eastern powers are nowhere near powerful enough to hurt him, and the Mongols are nowhere near that part of Europe. Other hordes haven't popped up yet.

But, hey, Scotland owns Jerusalem and there was a successful crusade for Mesopotamia so we've got that going for us.

[Rockphed]

You know it's pretty easy to modify your save game (assuming you're not doing ironman) to set the game rules? All you need to do is save youe game uncompressed, start a new game with the game rules you want (save compressed) open the saves in a text editor and copy-paste from one t'other and job done.

I am playing ironman. Otherwise I would try to change that game rule and play with the new expansion.

I have conquered a good chunk of north africa, except for Mali (which is so far away from my Demense and my holdings in Africa have Low Crown Authority so it isn't even worth fighting for those pieces just yet).

Downside is that the HRE is still a 77k troop monster, nobody wants to ally with me or even marry my family due to "political concerns." My good King died, leaving behind his 8 year old bastard son (3 wives and I had to take a lover to get a son....only to have a second son shortly after he was born). Pisa is hugely powerful with it's merchant-empire-ness and massive amounts of cash. The pope had 9k gold before I went to war and took the papcy for my anti-pope (now the regent of my king with a +100 relationship for making him pope and pressing his claims). I have around 30k troops, and am making 45-50 gold a month.

HRE seems unbeatable at this point. He has decent gold reserves (500 atm and his max troops result in -5 gold/month), high vassal troops and his vassals like him. I have no shortage of CBs for him (anti-pope, a few claims in Iberia, a few nobles who can press claims for duchies or counties, etc) I just have no clue how to beat the monster. I would have to wait a looooong time fighting a losing war to do so, and, unfortunately, unless I am defending against him, I will lose due to "HRE occupies <target>" long before I wear his gold reserves down or his vassals get angry.

Anytime he fights a war nowadays it is over almost immediately. He has fought with England every 10 years for the last century, wars lasting a few months. Hungary and other Eastern powers are nowhere near powerful enough to hurt him, and the Mongols are nowhere near that part of Europe. Other hordes haven't popped up yet.

But, hey, Scotland owns Jerusalem and there was a successful crusade for Mesopotamia so we've got that going for us.

If you can get the HRE to waste troops seiging a province with high fortification and harsh winters, you can get them to waste their troops. I'm certain you could win a defensive war with some good strategy. Winning an offensive war, however, might be a bridge too far.

What you could do is to get heirs to HRE duchies to come to your court and then land them. When they inherit, they will stay in your realm.

[Aotrs Commander]

I am playing ironman. Otherwise I would try to change that game rule and play with the new expansion.

Well... Given that there are one or two fairly serious bugs (direct vassal map-mode is out, though apparently the they knew but the fix wasn't ready for the release, which s kind of a bugger for a large empire and a few CTDs are being reported; I had one myself in the couple of hours I played) and some balance issues (the satanists are currently cited as being much stronger than the other societies and the Hermatic society is apparently sort of not-quite finished, since you can collect all the ingredients, but there's nothing to do with them (again because of time-constraints*) yet); so as per PDX usual, you'e probably not missing out on much by waiting for them to release the fist hotfix/patch.



*I'd ask why they didn't delay until it was more polished for release, but I suspect it's a budget issue; they have to get a mostly-functional something out the door so they can continue to eat...

[Tentreto]

I will say Satanists can be quite overpowered, as they have various powers against enemies/rivals/vassals

For instance, do you have an adventurer trying to get your land? Simply abduct them through the Satanists, and that's one adventurer gone! That alone makes the Satanists useful.
They do have very definite downsides, a few of which you can recover from, but mostly, if you get found out, you will be pretty screwed, but it is hard to be actually found out in my opinion.

Also, spawn of Satan event, was...interesting for me:

Spoiler

Show

In that absolutely nothing happened! The child was born, had some bad traits. I waited for her to become an adult, and... nothing! She was a pretty regular person. She didn't even want to join the Satanists! I think you may have screwed up a little there, Lucifer...

She did marry the Holy Roman Emperor though, so I get some satisfaction from that.

Meanwhile, my Empire of Wales is surviving, mostly by playing vassals off and warring them individually. I currently own Jerusalem, and managed to convert it all in about a year, so its surprisingly stable, but with a new adventurer now popping up every other month who had no claims on my territory, its becoming a bit annoying. I mean, one, ok. Two, I can manage, but around five? All of which I have to either fight, without knowing where they actually want territory, or assassinate, which is now impossible as the latest one is too good.

That is why the Satanists are overpowered at the moment..

Oh, and it turns out The Cold Ones, who I thought were some Cthulhu cult, are actually Pagan Satanists, which is slightly disappointing. Knowing paradox, there probably is a mythos cult somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.

[Nerd-o-rama]

One thing that bugs me about paradox is they alwaus release things that don't seem quite finished. I get that they are setting it up for dlc but I just don't like the feel

They've got the same business model as many tabletop RPG publishers (oh hey so THAT'S why they bought the World of Darkness brands): create a basic game that's okay and then sell a million "supplements" for it that add new content and features, and keep a steady revenue stream from the same game for years. At least I can tell you having played vanilla CK2 for a month straight that the base game is both fun and functional without any DLC at all. There's just incredibly obvious spaces for DLC to fill in.

Unless you're talking about the "release buggy code and patch it later" policy, but that's every video game company since always-on internet became the norm in their big markets. All of them. Except maybe Nintendo.

[Leecros]

At least I can tell you having played vanilla CK2 for a month straight that the base game is both fun and functional without any DLC at all. There's just incredibly obvious spaces for DLC to fill in.

I've gotta say, both CKII and EUIV both felt like pretty complete games upon release. EUIV especially considering it was essentially just a port of EUIII with a new engine and trade system and a few extra bells and whistles.

With that said, their release of HoI IV and Stellaris didn't go nearly as smoothly and it's pretty clear that you're meant to get the DLC, because the base games aren't quite so...Stellar

[tigerusthegreat]

I was refering to both the obvious things that will be coming soon (if you pay) like in ck 2 all the non feudal or non christian rulers and the tendency to release buggy code that breaks the game until they patch.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

CK2 was always simply "Feudal Catholic lords", they stated that the only reason they had Orthodox rulers playable at release was because they were playable in CK1, and they made do with using the same mechanics for both. I mean, it's asking a LOT for them to have unique mechanics to model every type of ruler in the game. And their modelling of any non-feudal christians is still limited by the base of the game being feudal christians, and the game mechanic assumptions from that.

[Rockphed]

CK2 was always simply "Feudal Catholic lords", they stated that the only reason they had Orthodox rulers playable at release was because they were playable in CK1, and they made do with using the same mechanics for both. I mean, it's asking a LOT for them to have unique mechanics to model every type of ruler in the game. And their modelling of any non-feudal christians is still limited by the base of the game being feudal christians, and the game mechanic assumptions from that.

I think they also allowed orthodox rulers because there is not good reason to forbid orthodox and catholic marriages and it would be really annoying to lose because all your relatives converted to orthodox.

Hearing that M&M is a bit buggy means that I can stand to wait until my next campaign to upgrade to the new version. There might even be a hot-fix out by then. I am probably going to wait until the summer to buy any expansions (though I wish I had retinues in my current game. It takes me 6 months to get troops to India to continue my holy-invasion.

[Malimar]

Is there any easy way to select all your troops on the map? When my empire gets real big, I start getting reluctant to declare wars because the hassle of selecting all my troops is just too annoying.

[Rockphed]

Is there any easy way to select all your troops on the map? When my empire gets real big, I start getting reluctant to declare wars because the hassle of selecting all my troops is just too annoying.

This is where having moderately powerful king-level vassals who like you is useful. I can typically call up 6000 troops from a king-vassal who only tolerates me. From one who is very happy with me (say because I just gave him a kingdom) and powerful (say greece), I can call up almost 20,000 from one vassal..

[Artanis]

Is there any easy way to select all your troops on the map? When my empire gets real big, I start getting reluctant to declare wars because the hassle of selecting all my troops is just too annoying.

Zoom way out and drag-select.

[mythmonster2]

So, me and some friends are experiencing a strange AI bug. In war, the AI will often stop what they're doing and move their troops back to their empire, but when they reach their destination, they then move back to the front line of the war. There's no revolts or raiders happening. Example: Crusade between the HRE and the Seljuks; the HRE will finish sieging a province and, instead of moving on, will retreat all the way back to Germany, only to immediately turn around and head back to the province which they've probably lost by this point because of how long it takes to move there. Except that the Seljuks are also doing this, and moving their troops back to Persia after finishing their sieges. It's extremely annoying and making wars involving AI allies basically a coin toss about whether my allies will be there or screwing around in their own kingdom. Anyone else seen anything like this?

[Malimar]

Zoom way out and drag-select.

But if I zoom too far out, it doesn't select everything when I drag-select.

[tonberrian]

But if I zoom too far out, it doesn't select everything when I drag-select.

First world problems...

[Leecros]

I was refering to both the obvious things that will be coming soon (if you pay) like in ck 2 all the non feudal or non christian rulers and the tendency to release buggy code that breaks the game until they patch.

If I recall correctly, originally they had never really planned on CKII doing as well as it did. It was really their breakaway title that really brought these types of games into the forefront. I think they had plans on doing the Sword of Islam DLC, but that was about it.

In fact, I believe in an AMA one of the devs did for reddit, they said that in retrospect they regretted using the Crusader Kings title, because after it exploded in popularity and they saw how well their DLC policy was actually working. There was so much more that they wanted to do that doesn't really fall under "Crusader Kings".

And indeed, whenever you hear someone complain about Raja's of India, or Map expansions(still wanting China ), or fantasy content, or anything like that. One of the main complaints is that the name of the game is "Crusader Kings" not "<insert thing they're complaining about here>"

So I sort of disagree with the idea that they had planned on "coming soon" content, because they didn't really plan on CKII getting popular. Certainly they had no reason to believe it off the success of CKI which was a mediocre game at best...Nor did they know how well their new DLC policy would work out.

I do think however, that Crusader Kings II had some obvious places of expansion that they ultimately took advantage of.

and they still have some obvious places of expansion. Come On China

[tigerusthegreat]

But if I zoom too far out, it doesn't select everything when I drag-select.

You can use the context window on the right to show armies. Click on one, grab everyone nearby and merge them. Rinse and repeat (don't recall offhand if this window shows armies that are moving or not, vic 2, hoi 3 and eu 3/4 do have an arrow icon that shows they are moving).

If you have an island or other pain in the butt area that gives you levies, give it to a duke or king level vassal. Their troops raise from whatever county you select (or their main one if you raise all levies).

Best advice for simplicity of management is have your demense all close together and have your far away holdings owned by indirect vassals.

[Malimar]

If you have an island or other pain in the butt area that gives you levies, give it to a duke or king level vassal. Their troops raise from whatever county you select (or their main one if you raise all levies).

Yeah, when I conquer all the Mediterranean islands, I usually hand them all off to a merchant republic, because merchant republics can't change their capitol (except to the kingdom's default capitol, which is usually not an island so long as they don't form Cyprus or Venice).

[Leecros]

Hmm....so i do not have Monks&Mystics yet. I got distracted by another game that was on sale and decided to buy it instead.

However, I decided to start a new game anyway and aim for the Legacy of Rome and S.P.Q.R achievements.

anyway....anyone want to explain how my court physician cured my pneumonia by turning me into an eunuch? Because that's a new one for me...

[tigerusthegreat]

Hmm....so i do not have Monks&Mystics yet. I got distracted by another game that was on sale and decided to buy it instead.

However, I decided to start a new game anyway and aim for the Legacy of Rome and S.P.Q.R achievements.

anyway....anyone want to explain how my court physician cured my pneumonia by turning me into an eunuch? Because that's a new one for me...

I imagine you screamed so much that all the bacteria flew out of your lungs.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

More likely you happened to shake off pneumonia shortly afterwards. Coincidence.