Crusader Kings II

[Greyblades]

Meh, just call it "the workshop" or "the Laboratory" and be done.

[Kekvit Irae]

I would tend to agree with Kekvit if it weren't for the fact that the section has a caption under it that says "Discussion of non-TW mods and modding" which explains its purpose immediately.

I wouldn't have known what a Hypogeum was if Tiaexz had not explained it.

So as it is, I think the name's about as adequate as anything else we could come up with. I do like clever names and this fits with a "Roman" theme, but "Arena" is no longer an exclusively Latin word, either.

Above all, I'm not sure it makes a difference what our subfora are called as long as we explain what they're for right underneath them. So Hypogeum's a cool name, but if we come up with something cooler I say go for it. I always get the feeling we worry about cosmetic things like this too much.

Actually, the first place a new member is going to look is the front page, of which there is no description of the Hypogeum. A name needs to be descriptive without needing a description, thus solving the problem of looking confused at the front page without needing to enter the Arena first.

[Double A]

Go with Doomy Room of Modding.

[Kekvit Irae]

Just to keep the subject of this thread back where it belongs, my kingdom broke down. Hard. My old ruler was the paragon of virtue, until he went crusading in Iberia. Random event popped up that got him Infirm before I could even get onto the shores, removing any chance I had of giving him the Crusader trait. His heir was his grandson, and not old enough to go into battle, so he missed out on the trait too. While I did successfully claim the entirety of southern Iberia, my king died shortly afterward. And then it all went to hell. The new king, now an adult, had some REALLY bad traits, which resulted in a realm-wide revolt. The only provinces that I could keep were my demesne in Denmark (I gave away Scotland since it was the most rebellious). And so my dynasty came to an end when I decided "Nope, GG" and hit Retire. Over 60000 score, which isn't too bad considering I started as a lowly Countess in Leinster, Ireland.

Started a new game, again in Leinster (gotta love that flag). Converted to Lollard (more like LOLlard, amirite?) for fun. Found out that I count skip trying to fabricate claims and just go on a Holy War rampage, and almost got smacked down by every neighboring Catholic if it wasn't for those beautiful mercenaries and setting City Taxes to Harsh. Should be a Fun game, especially since now my enemies can use Holy Orders against me.

[Monk]

Started a new game, again in Leinster (gotta love that flag). Converted to Lollard (more like LOLlard, amirite?) for fun. Found out that I count skip trying to fabricate claims and just go on a Holy War rampage, and almost got smacked down by every neighboring Catholic if it wasn't for those beautiful mercenaries and setting City Taxes to Harsh. Should be a Fun game, especially since now my enemies can use Holy Orders against me.

Oh lord that's terrible.

Yeah Heresies are insanely fun and serve as a double edged sword. While everyone hates you and can throw some serious firepower down onto you (holy orders). If you're powerful enough you can ignite a world war with a single holy war, that's when the campaign just turns into lunacy, and a blast!

I think I will make a dedicated "CK2 mod general" in the modding forum so us modders can talk without further derailing the gameplay discussion.

[Double A]

Still Ulstering. I conquered Outerjordan for like no reason awhile ago. I have a duke and a prince-archbishop in the area now. The PA likes getting antsy so I only recruit his troops when I actually need them now. Same with the Duke of Tripoliantia. Outerjordan guy had two counties and was getting antsy, so I ended up just creating a title for him. Right now, France and I are going all Reconquista on Iberia. They have pretty much the entire east coast, starting in Granada. I have Navarra and the Kingdom to the west of it from earlier, now I'm fighting 3 Muslims for Leon, Portucale, and Beja. I won the Beja war and the other two are up to 90% warscore. Then the Pope decided to call a crusade on Leon and the Shia decided to respond by Jihading Jerusalem. Fortunately everyone and their mom wanted to help me out in the Holy Lands, so now I have about 800 of my own troops backed up by 40000 crusaders. Having a bit of trouble in Iberia now, because I only have a few thousand troops out of the 12-18k I sent there, and since there are now 11k guys fighting my enemies but neutral to me, it's considerably harder to get the last 6% score I need. I've had the Teutonic Knights for like 20 years (at one point they only had a few thousand and they also lost their commander), and my genius Marty Stu of a marshal is maimed.

And for some reason, my uncle (who is 10 years younger than me ), the Prince Consort of Lotharingia and Duke of Meath, inherited Galloway, Gowrie, and the monastery and city in Lothian, and later, Iceland, Finnmark, and Kola. I myself have a barony in Brabant, the entire duchy of which belongs to my only son. So now I have a bunch of random colonies in areas where the most common activity is freezing your butt off.

edit: Won my holy wars. The Pope was kind enough to send his deathstack to a province I was besieging so I just attacked. Shortly before this, I noticed I had 1.2k, so hired some mercs and sent them to Portugal to help finish off the other country. A few days later, the crusade is won by the Duke of Provence, who promptly becomes the King of Leon and its one glorious province. Gonna try to usurp his title and then make him my vassal.

[Chaotix]

Been playing Ireland myself to see what all the hype is about; gave myself a somewhat easy start with the Duke of Munster (mostly because I wanted to play the O'Brian/Ua Briain's).

The second Duke made himself King Brian I of Ireland, and since then my demesne has been about half of the emerald isle. By 1160 I've made my way to holding all of de Jure Wales and Britanny, plus the Duchies of Galloway and the Isles. My fourth king's been on the throne for 50 years since he was a baby (and still has the epithet "the Young"), and my heir stands to inherit the Duchy of Orkney through his mother. Meanwhile the kingdom has become a military powerhouse for the moment, outmatched only by the HRE, ERE, and Caliphate, and sometimes England or France when they have a powerful king.

Picked up a couple of nuggets of wisdom from my England campaign - don't create extra kingdoms unless they're titular, or all your vassals will want them. That last game I had 12 kingdoms under one ruler. Sure, I was getting so much prestige the second half of the game that literally every ruler became "the Great", but every succession took half the king's lifetime to put everybody back in their place. I could create the Kingdoms of Wales and Britanny now if I want, but I'm going to wait until all the territory becomes de Jure Ireland first.

[Monk]

Picked up a couple of nuggets of wisdom from my England campaign - don't create extra kingdoms unless they're titular, or all your vassals will want them. That last game I had 12 kingdoms under one ruler. Sure, I was getting so much prestige the second half of the game that literally every ruler became "the Great", but every succession took half the king's lifetime to put everybody back in their place. I could create the Kingdoms of Wales and Britanny now if I want, but I'm going to wait until all the territory becomes de Jure Ireland first.

Another thing to keep in mind is creating extra de jure kingdoms causes law confusion. Say you are the King of Ireland and have Low Crown Authority and you create a second kingdom. If you want to move to medium authority, not only will you have to pass a vote in the de jure of Ireland, but you will also have to in the second kingdom. It makes it especially annoying when you're trying to keep vassals from fighting one another but end up with multiple de jure areas that essentially become the wild west of vassal relations.

I had that problem when i played as the Rus and created the Lithuanian kingdom. Not only did I have every character with the lithuanian culture plotting for it, but when i moved up to Medium in the Rus, Lithuania stayed at low.

In my opinion it's better to keep one de jure King title and let your de jure drift take care of the rest.

[Chaotix]

Another thing to keep in mind is creating extra de jure kingdoms causes law confusion. Say you are the King of Ireland and have Low Crown Authority and you create a second kingdom. If you want to move to medium authority, not only will you have to pass a vote in the de jure of Ireland, but you will also have to in the second kingdom. It makes it especially annoying when you're trying to keep vassals from fighting one another but end up with multiple de jure areas that essentially become the wild west of vassal relations.

I had that problem when i played as the Rus and created the Lithuanian kingdom. Not only did I have every character with the lithuanian culture plotting for it, but when i moved up to Medium in the Rus, Lithuania stayed at low.

In my opinion it's better to keep one de jure King title and let your de jure drift take care of the rest.

Yes, I had trouble with that, too.

The most came from a scramble when England had Agnatic succession but my four kingdoms in Spain all had Agnatic-Cognatic, and I had a king with daughters but no sons. Later the problem was solved by getting myself a new queen anyway, but I still appeased like crazy to get my vassals to accept Agnatic-Cognatic everywhere.

Another time there was a plot to lower CA in Lithuania (yep, I had that too) that went unnoticed by my spymaster until the guy brought it to me in a letter with like five of my most powerful vassals. There was no way I could fight it at the moment (was fighting a war with France) so I just decided to accept it because hey, it's only four provinces in Lithuania.

All of a sudden, game glitch. Instead of Lithuania, CA was lowered down to autonomous vassals in England. That one took a while to recover from.

[Kekvit Irae]

All of a sudden, game glitch. Instead of Lithuania, CA was lowered down to autonomous vassals in England. That one took a while to recover from.

May have been a successful plot by one of your vassals in England you didn't catch in time. They do that from time to time.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Quick question - as a sneaky Duke bent on eating the Kingdom of country from the inside through inheritance, does it make sense to implement elective secession? I'm currently the independent duke of Transylvania and Moldau, and I have two sons. I can give one dukedom to my heir so he inherits both, but that's risky (and I'll still lose a county to gavelkind). I guess my questions is how hard is it to get your son to be elected your successor? And are there separate elections for each duchy?

[Kekvit Irae]

Quick question - as a sneaky Duke bent on eating the Kingdom of country from the inside through inheritance, does it make sense to implement elective secession? I'm currently the independent duke of Transylvania and Moldau, and I have two sons. I can give one dukedom to my heir so he inherits both, but that's risky (and I'll still lose a county to gavelkind). I guess my questions is how hard is it to get your son to be elected your successor? And are there separate elections for each duchy?

Elective works if you are small and your vassals really like you and your chosen heir. The biggest advantage to Elective is that you can choose your own heir. Your son (or daughter) have crap for stats? Elect someone else who is better. The other advantage is that vassals really like this method of succession.
The problem comes with the fact that your heir will hate it, and also the fact that someone may sponsor someone else you don't want as an heir just days before you keel over.

As for your question, you can support anyone as your heir provided they are one step below you (Counts to Dukes, Dukes to Kings) or if they are legitimate children. They have to be direct vassals to vote, so other duchies wont screw things up for you.

http://crusaderkings-two.wikia.com/wiki/Succession_Laws

[rickinator9]

New dev diary: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...am-Dev-Diary-2

[Double A]

I had to switch from Ireland to Portugal, create about 3 titles, and switch a few vassals around to prevent 21 rebellions. Only had 3. Yay?

Anyway, main problem is that culture is German. I got my son to be Irish, but on the other hand, once he becomes king, I've figured out that I'll lose all my wonderful (and expensive) jousting lists. If I add "culture = irish" to all the lists in the text file, will I be able to retain my fancypants German buildings instead of having them magically go poof, do I need to add more somewhere, or will my changes be savegame incompatible and I'm just wasting my time?

And regarding Germans... how do I convince everyone to vote for me as the Holy Roman Emperor? I have a duchy in it, and apparently have a vote. Everyone seems to like me.

Also, why do vassals rebelling for independence always demand that I lower crown authority to 0 every time they rebel? If they didn't, I might even let one slip through my fingers.

[Chaotix]

And regarding Germans... how do I convince everyone to vote for me as the Holy Roman Emperor? I have a duchy in it, and apparently have a vote. Everyone seems to like me.

Also, why do vassals rebelling for independence always demand that I lower crown authority to 0 every time they rebel? If they didn't, I might even let one slip through my fingers.

In my experience, to win an elective succession you either have to have the best traits period (i.e. be at the top of the nomination list), or you need to be the best in the royal family. And people have to like you.

As for rebelling vassals, it's more of a matter-of-fact thing than anything. If a vassal can successfully rebel against you, then you obviously don't have much authority over your vassals..

[Double A]

Eh, makes sense, but I think it would be nice if the ones who like you more would just ask for stuff once in awhile, like some vassals do when you have a county that is de jure in their duchy. It would also be nice if there was a way to exchange fiefs with a vassal, essentially shuffle them around. There would probably be bribery involved if the fief you wanted to give them was worse than the one they had.

[frogbeastegg]

Strong and Weak Claims

There is a problem with the old claim system, in that some very remote relative can just declare war to supplant not just a perfectly legitimate ruler, but also the next five people in line to the throne. Therefore, we've reworked the system to differentiate between strong and weak claims. Strong claims work like before, but are only given to the second and third person in line to the throne when a ruler dies. Weak claims are given to children who are further down the line of succession. When a strong claimant dies (and the claim is "pressed"), it is inherited as a weak claim. Weak claims can only be pressed against women (if the claimant is male), regencies, titles currently in a succession crisis and titles that the claimant is second or third in line to inherit.

Sounds good. Can't wait to see it in action.

I picked up the three music DLCs. The tracks are set to play under specific circumstances only, e.g. if you play as an English dynasty. I'd prefer them to play for everyone on a random selection, same as the original music. Does anyone know how to do that? Weeks ago I saw a simple .txt file edit to achieve this and now I can't find the post ...

[Kekvit Irae]

Sounds good. Can't wait to see it in action.

I picked up the three music DLCs. The tracks are set to play under specific circumstances only, e.g. if you play as an English dynasty. I'd prefer them to play for everyone on a random selection, same as the original music. Does anyone know how to do that? Weeks ago I saw a simple .txt file edit to achieve this and now I can't find the post ...

Try this: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...don-t-run-away

It doesn't help that the url truncates itself to "don't run away" :P

[frogbeastegg]

Try this: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...don-t-run-away

It doesn't help that the url truncates itself to "don't run away" :P

Thanks. It doesn't quite cover the DLC situation, but I think it's given me enough of an idea to botch together a plan. The DLC music ends up in dedicated folders with separate play instructions. If I change the code there to slightly altered versions of the basic triggers used in the link's example it may work. If not, I can try relocating the DLC tracks into the main music folder and editing the .txt there.

[Kekvit Irae]

Thanks. It doesn't quite cover the DLC situation, but I think it's given me enough of an idea to botch together a plan. The DLC music ends up in dedicated folders with separate play instructions. If I change the code there to slightly altered versions of the basic triggers used in the link's example it may work. If not, I can try relocating the DLC tracks into the main music folder and editing the .txt there.

Yeah, just unzip the music files from the DLC folder and work from there.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Bought the game and played my first game as Abbesynia(?)... and I failed miserably. In two years I managed to loose two wars(one that I started and another one where I was attacked). So, I thought I will quit it.

How do you play the game? Constantly pausing the game and checking if something new has happened to your characters or some other characters abroad?

Also, the easiest way to learn how to play the game? I can see many of you playing some Irish count. Is this a good way to start the game(learn it)?

[Kekvit Irae]

Bought the game and played my first game as Abbesynia(?)... and I failed miserably. In two years I managed to loose two wars(one that I started and another one where I was attacked). So, I thought I will quit it.

How do you play the game? Constantly pausing the game and checking if something new has happened to your characters or some other characters abroad?

Also, the easiest way to learn how to play the game? I can see many of you playing some Irish count. Is this a good way to start the game(learn it)?

Ireland is NOT a good choice to start out as, since you cant expand very much (no Casus Belli against neighbors) and you're limited to only one county unless you play the leader that has two. I suggest a game where you have plenty of territory (meaning plenty of troops), and nowhere near Muslims (who love going to war with Catholics), like France. Scotland is also good as it's out of the way, a full kingdom, and has a solid position.
If you really want to learn how to play, I suggest looking through some Let's Play videos and picking up tips and tricks on the proper way to do things. Remember that the goal of the game is NOT to conquer the world, but rather to build up your dynasty.
Here's a good playlist for you to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...710A27BF49E193 He explains things clearly and allowed me to start my own first game with some knowledge. You don't need to watch the entire thing, just the first few videos if you want to jump in a game.

[johnhughthom]

Remember that the goal of the game is NOT to conquer the world, but rather to build up your dynasty.

Which is why Ireland is a good choice to start out, as you can concentrate on learning how the game works from a county level when you start without having to worry too much what your neighbours are up to, and pick up the rest as you expand.

[rickinator9]

I would say, start as a vassal of the byzantine empire. The emperor has you under his protection, other vassals can't attack you and you start in a rich area.

[The Stranger]

Ireland is NOT a good choice to start out as, since you cant expand very much (no Casus Belli against neighbors) and you're limited to only one county unless you play the leader that has two. I suggest a game where you have plenty of territory (meaning plenty of troops), and nowhere near Muslims (who love going to war with Catholics), like France. Scotland is also good as it's out of the way, a full kingdom, and has a solid position.
If you really want to learn how to play, I suggest looking through some Let's Play videos and picking up tips and tricks on the proper way to do things. Remember that the goal of the game is NOT to conquer the world, but rather to build up your dynasty.
Here's a good playlist for you to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...710A27BF49E193 He explains things clearly and allowed me to start my own first game with some knowledge. You don't need to watch the entire thing, just the first few videos if you want to jump in a game.

ck2 is actually quite simple and a very casual game. i enjoy that. start it up once in a while and play a few minutes. sometimes i really sit for it and play a few hours.

ireland was where i started out, and i do think its a good position because your potential enemies arent very strong, the chance that you will be wiped out due to mistakes is minimal and even though it might take a bit longer to get to every aspect of the game you will definitly have the chance to conquer if you want to. things just are slower paced in ireland which is why it is a good place to start your first game.

i became king of ireland within 3 generations, conquered france in the 4th and the HRE in the 5th. if you want action you can always find it ;)

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Ireland isn't a great place to start, it's just very easy once you know the basics.

Side note: elective inheritance is awful. I didn't realize it would change who you play next in succession - I figured it would just decide who got the elective titles. I'd rather game over than play my skeevy brother-in-law the stupid electors choose over my son.

[Chaotix]

Personally, I started my first game with William the Conqueror with no prior experience, and by the end of it my family had the highest score out of anyone (over 100000).

So England may seem very "vanilla" and perhaps boring if you're looking for a more exotic country, but playing as a king of a sizable but not over-large country seemed to teach me the ropes just fine.

In particular Abyssinia is known for being the most difficult Christian Kingdom, since you start right below the Caliphate and they can jihad you to death as soon as they feel like it.

[Double A]

john told me to start in Ireland. Now I have everything in Spain except two counties, which belong to Brittany and Provence, and Andalusia and Aragon, which belong to France (incidentally, the children of the heir of France will be of my dynasty). I also have Jerusalem, Morocco, and various assorted duchies and counties.

Based on my experience, you should start as Ulster. Also, never colonize the Holy Lands if your capital is in Northwestern Europe.

[Kekvit Irae]

ck2 is actually quite simple and a very casual game.

In comparison to EU3, yes. In comparison to non-Paradox games (Civilization, Total War, etc), no.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I actually think EU3 is much simpler than CK2.