Crusader Kings II

[Death From Above]

I'm probably going to start playing this again soon and I don't want to continue to spam the general thread, and there seems to be a few other players who enjoy going over stuff they do in this game, so here's a thread.

 

Looks like a new big patch today, to go with yet another DLC: http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Patch_2.2

 

I'm probably going to start over because I just feel like after putting this down for about a month, the rhythm of my game was just too broken and I'd rather just start fresh. Haven't decided what to do yet exactly. Now that I have at least a half decent grasp of how the game works I might look to dive in somewhere on mainland Europe instead of an island this time. We'll see.

[MarcosLoura]

Started a new 867 game today with some Norse/Germanic pagan to check out the new tribal mechanics and of course as usual with new DLC/Patches some shit is still buggy.

 

Pagans were usually pretty OP before this patch but now I don't think I will see big pagans blobs rolling around in 1100. Catholics and Muslims seem pretty set for dominance.

[Death From Above]

I don't understand the new tribal thing at all. What's been added? Is it a new holding?

 

Other thing I don't understand that's unrelated to the patch. What exactly is the point of pushing anyone else's claim if you know they aren't going to become your vassal later? Like, I marred some relative to the prince of Norway and he has some claim where he could become king of Denmark. But if I do that, he just leaves, takes his kids with him, becomes independent. Screw that. You will be my steward until you die.

[MarcosLoura]

It's all-in-one holding for tribal societies, you'll have to upgrade it + get technology + get laws so you can turn into a feudal lord or a merchant republic.

 

For those claims this is what you have to know:

 

- Only press it if it's a lower rank than yours (aka if you're a King only press Ducal/County claims etc).

 

- The claimant has to be your vassal or from your family, which means if you have a random dude in your court with a claim to some county you gotta land that dude first and then press the claim. He'll end up with 2 counties after you win the war.

[Death From Above]

Oh one other question in the game of endless questions. Is there any way to trick/change another ruler's mind if he refuses a marriage for "political concerns"?

 

I assume the answer is no because having an easy workaround for that would basically be the CK II God Mode button.

 

Loading my Ireland file again, I've sort of run into what I assume is a fairly common place. I have part of Scotland conquered, but I have no "real" claims against any other Scottish counties or duchies, never mind the Scottish crown itself. So you can go fabricate claims one county at a time, which comes with a 10 year peace every war. Since we're the same religion there's also no Holy War shortcut to take the whole thing. So now it becomes a real long distance slog since Scottish lords are in no hurry to give me any kind of marriage that ends with kids holding Scottish titles.

[muhammedboehm]

Oh one other question in the game of endless questions. Is there any way to trick/change another ruler's mind if he refuses a marriage for "political concerns"?

I assume the answer is no because having an easy workaround for that would basically be the CK II God Mode button.

Loading my Ireland file again, I've sort of run into what I assume is a fairly common place. I have part of Scotland conquered, but I have no "real" claims against any other Scottish counties or duchies, never mind the Scottish crown itself. So you can go fabricate claims one county at a time, which comes with a 10 year peace every war. Since we're the same religion there's also no Holy War shortcut to take the whole thing. So now it becomes a real long distance slog since Scottish lords are in no hurry to give me any kind of marriage that ends with kids holding Scottish titles.

Look for people with claims to the places you want...invite them to court if they have kids marry them to your kids or just press it for them.

[Death From Above]

I just discovered that I, along with many others, can now insta-crash the game by clicking the religion tab on any loaded save post-2.2 patch.

 

So hey, I'll be back when they start testing patches before releasing them.

[MarcosLoura]

So hey, I'll be back when they start testing patches before releasing them.

 

You funny.

 

That will never happen.

 

BTW, don't believe the hype of "start in Ireland, it's fun they said.". Use the recommended characters on the main screen there's a reason they're highlighted.

[Death From Above]

I think Ireland was a good noob start because you start small but also without a boss so you can sort of experience working up the ladder without some of the complexity. I can see why for a veteran player it might be a little tame for their tastes.

[MarcosLoura]

The thing is, starting as a single county count and kickstarting the snowball effect is hard if you're a total noob; and since I believe that the worst thing about CK2 is that there's not much to do during peace time, playing such a slow start can get really boring.

 

I believe that the new tutorial/starter scenario is pretty cool, you're one of the Spanish Kings in 1066, it's a really nice start since you are powerful enough but skill can expand a lot with all the muslims in the Iberian Peninsula south of you.

[Death From Above]

Been playing some more with my patch rolled back to pre-Charlemagne so the game isn't terrible and broken.

 

A lot's been going on. Had another king die of natural causes at 51, his son is... good enough, but has low intrigue and diplomacy scores which isn't great. But, now in the early 1200's I've finally been able to take advantage of Scotland's constant weakness. Got really lucky and have a killer Steward with a 23 rating (named Macbeth... well, this will end well), and he generated a fabricated claim for me on a whole duchy instead of one county for a change. Took that from the Scots and I then had more than half their country and managed to usurp the Scottish crown. So now I'm king of Ireland and Scotland.

 

So, that's good. But it also brought a lot of bad. Like, all the Scots hating my foreign Irish ass (mitigated by my steward being great, and being able to talk people into liking me). That I can deal with because a bunch of Scottish counties have ended up in Irish hands anyway. I had a Heretic Revolt back in Ireland that took a few years to calm down. Then a faction in Ireland tried to rebel to steal the crown and I was a bit worn down, had to blow some money on hiring a mercenary army, but I got through that. Had to imprison about a half dozen folks. I let my relatives bail their way out of jail. The others can go to hell.

 

Plus, on the bad side, and forgive the medieval sexism as its just how this game works, but I had five daughters and no sons. I would be willing to eat the "female ruler" penalty down the line (Agnatic-Cognatic Primogenatore) if either of my two firstborn daughters had good stats... but they really don't, and the oldest is sort of a lying, cowardly asshole too. So... I sort of went out and had a bastard son and legitimized him to mess up the whole line. Only problem... he got the "slow" trait. So he's going to be pretty useless. And now since I legitimized him without realizing that, he's the heir to the whole thing.

 

That's bad.

 

So now I'm stuck in a very lovely political mess of trying to hold two countries together, and (once I get my intrigue score up I guess, because I can't currently do it), possibly plotting against at least two of my own kids.

 

This game is a really wonderful, confounding mess.

[Guest The Magnificent 7]

Plus, on the bad side, and forgive the medieval sexism as its just how this game works, but I had five daughters and no sons. I would be willing to eat the "female ruler" penalty down the line (Agnatic-Cognatic Primogenatore) if either of my two firstborn daughters had good stats... but they really don't, and the oldest is sort of a lying, cowardly asshole too. So... I sort of went out and had a bastard son and legitimized him to mess up the whole line. Only problem... he got the "slow" trait. So he's going to be pretty useless. And now since I legitimized him without realizing that, he's the heir to the whole thing.

 

That's bad.

 

So now I'm stuck in a very lovely political mess of trying to hold two countries together, and (once I get my intrigue score up I guess, because I can't currently do it), possibly plotting against at least two of my own kids.

 

This game is a really wonderful, confounding mess.

 

That's great.  Looks like you had plans of siring the next Charles "The Hammer" Martel but ended up with a medieval version of the basement dweller with perpetual Cheetos crumbs on his shirt.  Ha.

[MarcosLoura]

The beta patches are not horribly broken, I highly recommend them.

[Death From Above]

So my son with the "Slow" trait. To kick it up another notch once he became a teen the God of Luck decided to also make him a homosexual. This is another really bad thing in the CK II medieval universe.

 

I just assassinated my own son.

 

I feel dirty. At least I am already playing as a king nicknamed "The Cruel" so it's in character if nothing else. But it still felt wrong!

[Zimbra]

Crusader Kings 2 forum topics are awesomely nuts out of context

 

[Death From Above]

That top one is the best bug.

 

My current game seems kind of bogged down. I have control of an empire of Ireland/Scotland/Wales/England/Brittany, but I spend most of my time now just dealing with infighting and penalties for being a dirty Irish foreigner. I plot to kill a lot of English people that have title claims. Any foreign invasions I make (I have some claims I could press in Spain) tend to draw a declaration of war from France trying to land grab off me when I'm vulnerable. So for now I seem to be in a holding pattern of ~fighting against beurocracy~. I got England in the first place by plotting to kill two different English kings, which ended up triggering a very nasty 4-way English civil war for the crown. Even when that settled down they were very weakened and I was able to come in and get control through a Pope-sponsored invasion. That was a pretty satisfying moment, must be said.

 

Stupid Sweden went and named an antipope and I'd like to get rid of him because it's screwing with Catholic moral authority and I'm tired of beating down the Waldenstein(sp?) hearsay. As far as I can tell lower moral authority = more hearsay springing up. I'm hoping the Holy Roman Empire will do it for me... they are massive in this particular playthrough. They have all of the traditional HRE land, plus all of Italy, Croatia, and they conquered the Byzantine Empire too. They can squash whomever they choose.

 

The Mongol Horde hasn't made any progress into mainland Europe at all. They seem contained to the east of the map as far as I can tell.

[Shylock]

I've got a question.  My demesne was one over the limit, so I wanted to hand away a title to someone.  I gave it away to some guy that wasn't on my council, and I wound up losing my steward and chaplain.. Is there any way to tell who I'm going to lose when I hand away a title?

 

Also.  The Council actions:  If I don't recall them, do they still go about doing whatever it is that I wanted?  Say I wanted my Chancellor to Fabricate a Claim somewhere so I can go after some other land.. do I just leave him there and not recall him and wait?

 

Other than some things I'm still off about, I'm really enjoying learning how this game is played.  Right now my main game is Sicily.  I started with (I think.. I don't remember his name right now) King William of Sicily..?  It's the late 1100's that he was available.  I love some of the random things that happened with him.  He kept kicking my Chancellor off the council for a horse (he acquired the Lunatic quality)... and one event happened where he saw the moon and just howled at it.  Yet he still managed to get his Queen's brother's wife into bed with him.  It seems like the "there's this much chance to gain the 'Lustful' attribute and this much chance to get your mistress pregnant." is more of a ".. or possibly both!", cause both times I went through with it, the lover got pregnant.

[MarcosLoura]

You lost those 2 councilors because they were probably the mayor and the bishop of the county you gave away, so now they're the direct vassals of the new guy.

 

Councillors will do their task until they're recalled, but I usually reset the Fabricate Claims about once a year if I don't get the claim.

 

Lunatic rulers are the best rulers.

[Death From Above]

I haven't played in a while but I have found fabricating claims takes a lot longer than a year normally unless you get very lucky. Sometimes it took me 3 years plus. It is only super important early in the game when you are small though (basically pre-king) because you can never pick up huge swaths of land through it. Later on, marriage was my weapon, though it still can be useful to pick off small parts here and there. Also if you ever get to the point of having an Empire you can start endorsing kings as vassals in other countries and start big ass wars which is both dangerous but fun; that's how I added France to my empire. I backed an ambitious third son to become the new king of France, then since he was an unruly vassal I had him killed afterwards (and that sent me down a long, painful, fun line of Game of Thrones shit against his entire family). "Ambitious" is both the best and worst trait to see for this path because they are hungry enough for power to accept your help but also by far the most dangerous for potential rebellion.

 

The other action that I found can take a long time is converting an area's religion, but mostly if it was from Muslim to Christian. Little Christian sects that pop up tend to be fairly easy to get rid of and return to Catholicism (assuming you are playing Catholic) but in the Crusades I wound up controlling more or less Morocco and Algeria at one point in northwest Africa and the conversion was painfully slow. That can take generations.

 

God, this game makes you do terrible things. I got a little bored with how relatively simple the combat is after a while, but the political end is pretty amazing if you have a good imagination.

 

Also, fuck Gavelkind. I wouldn't blame anyone for cheating to eliminate it from important title succession laws if they had to.

[Shylock]

Also, fuck Gavelkind. I wouldn't blame anyone for cheating to eliminate it from important title succession laws if they had to.

Which one do you feel is the best succession law of the bunch?

I went with Elective earliest I could, because my first born (the one that I'd take over as) had shitty stats.

That's another thing that confuses me with educating a child.  I've sent most of my daughters to people with large intrigue stats, but they wind up stronger in other areas.

[Death From Above]

On my one giant game I used Agnatic-Cognatic Primogenatore the whole way through on all my main titles so basically my oldest son kept inheriting the works, though I had a couple queens too (women can only inherit in that law if all the male heirs are dead). I guess theoretically the game could end if you have no living relatives but once I was through the early stages of the game I never saw how that could be a serious threat personally. I've never tried elective, though at least in the giant game I played the Holy Roman Empire used it the whole way through. I will say the drawback to Primogenatore is if you do get an oldest son that is really terrible, you do get into the situation I talked about before in this thread where it might be in your own best interests to assassinate your own kid. Which video game or not is just weird. Also, ambitious younger kids can result in all sorts of fun.

 

Basically I found Primogenatore to be really simple to handle because you know who is up next and you know they are getting the works, but it will lead to internal fighting. I honestly didn't mind this because it kept the game pretty interesting.

 

One of the other reasons I finally went with vassal kings as an empire is that actually getting approval to change an entire kingdom's succession law when you are a conqueror is basically impossible. A lot of the kingdoms seem to default to gavelkind (which is total nonsense for a historical sim but I guess Paradox Games' way of making it harder). Like, I was actually thrilled France had a gavelkind law because every time the king of France would build up but die (when he tripped and fell down a flight of sword wounds) it messed up his successor's power and made him less threatening for a rebellion. In hindsight I discovered this was one of the benefits of starting very small because I had authority at the beginning to set my own succession laws however I wanted to, and later on... boy, that is not the case when you start needing 27 lords and ladies to vote on approval of stuff.

 

Usually kids come out with some of their guardian's skills but I am sure that certain behavioral traits influence it too. Like, if you send your kid to someone shy it seems to raise the random factor, and to someone gregarious it seems to reduce it. It's not a totally set thing, though more often than not they pick up something from their guardian. Also, this won't come into play until later but when you deal with big kingdoms across multiple countries you have to watch the guardian's country of origin. I once sent an Irish prince to be tutored by a Scottish lord and the other Irish lords were freaking the fuck out because a guardian can convert a child's culture (I guess "culture" is based of "stuff people learn as a kid", which makes sense). If you get deep enough into the game it's almost inevitable that someday one of your kid's kids that you can't assign the guardian for will wind up having this happen and you won't be able to figure out why at first if I hadn't saved you the trouble.

[Death From Above]

Boy, that blew up into a giant wall of text when I didn't mean it to.

 

That happens a lot when I talked about this game. It does that.

[MarcosLoura]

Questions about game mechanics? Look here for in-depth explanations.

 

Doubts about Education? Click here.

 

The ck2 wiki will be your best friend forever.

[Zheroen]

Anyone get the Way of Life DLC?  If so, is it worth it?  I've read a lot of mixed reviews.

[muhammedboehm]

Crusader Kings 2 is 7.99 till noon tomorrow (cst) DLC is also cheap.