Crusader Kings II

Originally Posted by Greyblades:
Maybe it should be modded that bastards and women do have a claim but in the average "first born male" preffered succession laws they should be automatically set to be behind all other male immediate family members. Or am I remembering it wrong and that's what they had before?

women do have a claim but you can only press it if the laws allow it (eg you can press it when they have cognatic laws and not if its pure agnatic)

dont know about bastards but i think if they are male you can still press them.

women however do not pass on their claims i think. unless it has been pressed in war (which has to end in white peace)

Originally Posted by Monk:
Absolutely, it's a simple switch in defines.lua. I found it while i as looking for someone else, but haven't changed it for my current games. I want to experiment with other changes before then. Navigate to your CK2 main folder(or your mod folder if applicable) and open up "common", then open defines.lua with notepad and just look for the two lines:

WOMEN_INHERIT_PRESSED_CLAIMS = 0,

and

BASTARDS_INHERIT_PRESSED_CLAIMS = 0

Change both values to 1 and now both your daughters and your bastards will inherit pressed claims.

Thank you! Nice, easy fix too. :bow:

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
Oh, you mean like having your ruler marry a Princess, pressing the claim, killing her off, gaining a new kingdom, and repeating 100x to rule the world in a single lifetime? :P

Similar, but on a much smaller scale since I don't go for the whole MURDERISATION!!1! route to expansion. My preferred style of play is to remain quite small-scale and get most of my claims via historically plausible means like inheritance, marriage, and good old fashioned war. I like to have my heir press his mother's claims when he comes to power - if he's strong enough. Shades of Henry II of England, the 100 Years War, etc.

CK2 is pretty good about keeping cheese optional. The 'war->white peace->inheritable claim' cheese cycle is the only one I'm not quite able to avoid.

Originally Posted by The Stranger:
women however do not pass on their claims i think. unless it has been pressed in war (which has to end in white peace)

Yes, that's the change I don't like. Prior to 1.5 women passed the claim on in the same way as male characters. Where inheritance laws allowed it, of course. If women could not legally inherit they did not receive a claim and nor did their children.

Originally Posted by Tiaexz:
Britain has formed a very interesting situation, it started with William the conqueror dying then his heir pressing the claim on England and winning. This led to no Norman holding upon the mainland. After a few decades a child ruler came about and all the duchies of England broke free and "Kingdom of England" remained sololy in Normandy. Around this time, Ireland was united and began their push for England, followed behind them was Scotland who lost Northumberland and came back with a vengeance.

Around 1130~
https://i.imgur.com/e9WPV.jpg

At 1171, it looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/9iTqc.jpg

Looks like there is a real powerstruggle on the isles.

The British isles are probably one of my favorite sandboxes due to their isolated status from the rest of the map. While France and the HRE can (and will) attack you should you ruffle their feathers, they will by and large leave the islands be. After all they have much more pressing concerns. Iberia had a similiar status, but ever since the balance shifted in favor of early muslim factions the poor Jimena brothers don't stand a chance without player intervention. :no: Which leads to crusades being called and tons of outside interference from the HRE in particular.

I always try to keep an eye on the isles in my games because some hilarious stuff is almost sure to happen. My favorite came from my Rus game where Harold the Saxon became Harold the Great when he killed both William and Harald in their attempted invasions. His heirs would wax and wane in their power over three centuries before finally reasserting their total dominance of both England and Ireland - however Scotland always remained out of their reach. When i stopped playing in the Rus after total defeat in 1280, I think they were fighting their fifth war against the Scots and were doing terribly as well. I do love the stories this game can inspire :yes:

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg:
Thank you! Nice, easy fix too.

You're welcome. Aside from a number of hard-coded things like the number of succession laws and opinion modifiers, CK2 is surprisingly modable and is easy to do once you figure it out. It's still a pain to assign localization to new entries, and breaking your game is always hilarious, but it's really fun to mess around with. It also helps that Paradox has included a number of notes within their game files that says "DO NOT CHANGE THIS OR IT WILL BREAK." That's always a plus :laugh4:

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
Oh, you mean like having your ruler marry a Princess, pressing the claim, killing her off, gaining a new kingdom, and repeating 100x to rule the world in a single lifetime? :P

I definitely prefer the 1.05 way, from a gameplay standpoint. It means the Chancellor is actually not useless. But it's good that you can mod that out if you want to play a game like that.

Indeed. Personally I don't care much for either way the game implements the claim system currently and am waiting with baited breath for 1.06. While I do feel that the 1.05 system is the best solution available to us now, it's great that if I wanted to switch back to <1.05 all I have to do is flip two values and i'm done.

Originally Posted by Tiaexz:
Britain has formed a very interesting situation, it started with William the conqueror dying then his heir pressing the claim on England and winning. This led to no Norman holding upon the mainland. After a few decades a child ruler came about and all the duchies of England broke free and "Kingdom of England" remained sololy in Normandy. Around this time, Ireland was united and began their push for England, followed behind them was Scotland who lost Northumberland and came back with a vengeance.

Around 1130~
https://i.imgur.com/e9WPV.jpg

At 1171, it looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/9iTqc.jpg

Looks like there is a real powerstruggle on the isles.

Jeez. I don't DARE go to war with England in my game. The fact that I own Ireland, Denmark, and Estonia (with a bit of Sicily) means that I cant muster and transport the troops quick enough to deal with their 15k army before they start rampaging all over the place. At least the Muslims keep to themselves most of the time and are pretty fractured. England is a unified nation with fully upgraded castles. I think it's time to marry and/or murder some English kids.

Well, I tried the duchy strategy of turning everyone into Doge's, and now they all hate me because I'm of the wrong government type. Joy.

EDIT: AWW SNAP, SON!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/57...569924585F7EC/

yes but thats the price for riches and more easily controlled vassals.

Originally Posted by The Stranger:
yes but thats the price for riches and more easily controlled vassals.

Define "more easily controlled," because I'm seeing more ambitious gits who love to revolt than when I made Dukes, especially with the -30 opinion.

no more superdukes and you can plot kill them to get a successor which likes you more :) because they dont marry really you also dont have to worry about their allies. and because you are so rich due to their taxes you can easily afford to gift them money to get + relations

and if they do happen to revolt they have slightly less army because they are more eco orientated. and cities are supposed to be easier to take (allthough i dont find this to be always true sadly :S)

Hello guys,

I have created one kingdom and an empire. Their colors at map are a default color. How can I change it? Do we have that information? For example Britain is Red, French light Blue, Golden Horde Gold, Byzantium morello... etc etc etc

Regards, George

It's my first game. I started as Ulster. My guy reined for 10 years, nothing really happened. Then my second guy formed the Kingdom of Ireland after quite a bit of struggle. His firstborn kind of died, but fortunately, he had a bastard. That was when he was around 55-65. I got him married just to see if I could get one more kid, just to be on the safe side. I thought he would die soon, as his father and son both died from being incapable and in comas.

It turns out that he would live to be 81, and had several more children. Now I'm his bastard, who went on to fight a duke who conquered two other freakin vassals and then to form the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Third Crusade, which I finished about 10 minutes ago. I love this game.

Also, in my 2 days of straight gaming, I've noticed that smart people tend to die around 35 and if you form a matrilineal between a courtier and one of your relatives, there are never any freakin kids.

Originally Posted by Catalyst:
Hello guys,

I have created one kingdom and an empire. Their colors at map are a shitty default color. How can I change it? Do we have that information? For example Britain is Red, French light Blue, Golden Horde Gold, Byzantium morello... etc etc etc

Regards, George

There is no way to do it in-game, you'll have to mod it. For that... I don't really have a lot of experience. With any luck, Monk will drop by soon to the rescue.

There is one thing you can do if you have more than one kingdom - you can change your primary title by clicking on the kingdom title you want to change it to. This will change both the color and the name of your country to the selected kingdom. You can't customize the color in-game, though.

Originally Posted by Double A:
It's my first game. I started as Ulster. My guy reined for 10 years, nothing really happened. Then my second guy formed the Kingdom of Ireland after quite a bit of struggle. His firstborn kind of died, but fortunately, he had a bastard. That was when he was around 55-65. I got him married just to see if I could get one more kid, just to be on the safe side. I thought he would die soon, as his father and son both died from being incapable and in comas.

It turns out that he would live to be 81, and had several more children. Now I'm his bastard, who went on to fight a duke who conquered two other freakin vassals and then to form the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Third Crusade, which I finished about 10 minutes ago. I love this game.

Also, in my 2 days of straight gaming, I've noticed that smart people tend to die around 35 and if you form a matrilineal between a courtier and one of your relatives, there are never any freakin kids.

I haven't experienced the whole "smart people dying young" thing.

But there is a reason for your princesses and courtiers dying without kids. Members of your court who do not own land have a two-children limit (this includes unlanded children) and reduced fertility. Additionally, if your court has more than 30 members, nobody can have children. Best strategy for this is to marry off all your unwanted courtiers to foreign courts, and release/ransom any prisoners you don't need to hold on to.

I find it's trickier for your heir. If you give him a piece of land, you lose all control over what he does with his kids, so you better hope your king dies soon. If you keep him in the court, you can control him but he only has two kids max, and if your king lives a long time than chances are that's all he'll ever get. But killing off your king usually just gets you rebellious vassals. So it's a tricky situation that I haven't really found a good solution for yet.

You can edit the colours underneath the Folder: /history/titles then open up the title you want to edit the colour of then change the hex value. Though personally I do like how England is red, France is blue, Netherlands is orange, etc.

Originally Posted by Catalyst:
Hello guys,

I have created one kingdom and an empire. Their colors at map are a default color. How can I change it? Do we have that information? For example Britain is Red, French light Blue, Golden Horde Gold, Byzantium morello... etc etc etc

Regards, George

Sure. Go to your common/landed_titles.txt and search out the title's color you want to change. You'll see two entries labeled 'color' for each title, color1 and color2. You'll want to change color1 as it is the main factor in determining what color represents your faction on the map. It goes on a RGB scale of 0-255 for each of the three value. If you want, you can copy colors from other factions or just experiment to find the mix you desire.

color2 is almost useless, so much so that some factions do not have an entry and those that do are all 255 255 255. I'm not entirely sure what it does to be honest with you.

edit: Here's an example -

I changed the color entry for the Kingdom of England to this:

k_england = {
color={ 0 26 26 }
color2={ 255 255 255 }

Which on a RGB scale would be near black, and sure enough:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i.imgur.com/geQXY.jpg

Happy modding!

Originally Posted by Double A:
It's my first game. I started as Ulster. My guy reined for 10 years, nothing really happened. Then my second guy formed the Kingdom of Ireland after quite a bit of struggle. His firstborn kind of died, but fortunately, he had a bastard. That was when he was around 55-65. I got him married just to see if I could get one more kid, just to be on the safe side. I thought he would die soon, as his father and son both died from being incapable and in comas.

It turns out that he would live to be 81, and had several more children. Now I'm his bastard, who went on to fight a duke who conquered two other freakin vassals and then to form the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Third Crusade, which I finished about 10 minutes ago. I love this game.

Also, in my 2 days of straight gaming, I've noticed that smart people tend to die around 35 and if you form a matrilineal between a courtier and one of your relatives, there are never any freakin kids.

there is an average for how many kids there can be in your court. its like 2 per couple or something like that. so basically make sure there are not too many ppl in your court (like 20/25 max) and if you want those ppl to get children send them away to somewhere else. like give them a barony or something

ah Chaotix explained it better :P read his post

Originally Posted by Chaotix:
There is no way to do it in-game, you'll have to mod it. For that... I don't really have a lot of experience. With any luck, Monk will drop by soon to the rescue.

There is one thing you can do if you have more than one kingdom - you can change your primary title by clicking on the kingdom title you want to change it to. This will change both the color and the name of your country to the selected kingdom. You can't customize the color in-game, though.



I haven't experienced the whole "smart people dying young" thing.

But there is a reason for your princesses and courtiers dying without kids. Members of your court who do not own land have a two-children limit (this includes unlanded children) and reduced fertility. Additionally, if your court has more than 30 members, nobody can have children. Best strategy for this is to marry off all your unwanted courtiers to foreign courts, and release/ransom any prisoners you don't need to hold on to.

I find it's trickier for your heir. If you give him a piece of land, you lose all control over what he does with his kids, so you better hope your king dies soon. If you keep him in the court, you can control him but he only has two kids max, and if your king lives a long time than chances are that's all he'll ever get. But killing off your king usually just gets you rebellious vassals. So it's a tricky situation that I haven't really found a good solution for yet.

Oh, I was over 30 for awhile. That should have been something in the tutorial.

Oh, and the Knights Hospitaller just had their chancellor forge a claim on the county I gave them a barony in. Really, Paradox?

Originally Posted by Catalyst:
Hello guys,

I have created one kingdom and an empire. Their colors at map are a PONY default color. How can I change it? Do we have that information? For example Britain is Red, French light Blue, Golden Horde Gold, Byzantium morello... etc etc etc

Regards, George

Welcome to the forums. Profanity is not allowed. Please edit this, or die a horrible death in your sleep.

She's not kidding, make sure you never ask her about a member that used to be called WARMAN.

We still haven't cleaned up the watchtower.

Originally Posted by Double A:
Oh, I was over 30 for awhile. That should have been something in the tutorial.

Oh, and the Knights Hospitaller just had their chancellor forge a claim on the county I gave them a barony in. Really, Paradox?

It's not a hard lockout to fertility, just a nerf to overall child births. On average every couple gets one less child when you're over 30 characters in a court, and if for whatever reason you're having bad luck rolls that can end up meaning only one or two kids for your Queen/King. Which can be very dangerous!

And as for the Knights.. :laugh4: At least they will never actually press the claim. Holy Orders will not fight brothers/sisters of the faith.

I am learning how to make new traits and make new events. I have made four for the elder scrolls mod and, wait for it... they are about werewolves!

Introducing the Equality Mod, for players who just want women to do anything.

Download

Changes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1.0 - Release

common/job_titles.txt
# Women can now have any councilor title that were previously men-only, even Court Bishop.

common/minor_titles.txt
# Women can now have any Awarded Title that were previously men-only.

common/objectives.txt
# Women can now have councilor-related ambitions.

common/opinion_modifier.txt
# Vassal opinion for female rulers removed.
# Vassal opinion for female heirs removed.
# Vassal opinion for granting fiefs to females removed.

decisions/employment_decisions.txt
# Priests and Stewards you hire can now be female.

decisions/succession_laws.txt
# Removed Basque from the Absolute Cognatic requirements.
# Removed male vassal opinion for Absolute Cognatic.

events/dynasty_events.txt
# Women can now claim a title via event.

events/family_events.txt
# Ambitious daughters can now claim inheritance

events/job_chancellor.txt
events/job_lord_spiritual.txt
events/job_marshal.txt
events/job_steward.txt
# Women can now do the same jobs as male councilors.

I didn't change the 1.05 succession laws, as there are people (like myself) who don't want to play a cheesy game, but tweaking it to pre-1.05 is easily doable.

Big thanks to Monk for his tweak mod, which was the inspiration for this.

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
Introducing the Equality Mod, for players who just want women to do anything.

Download

Changes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1.0 - Release

common/job_titles.txt
# Women can now have any councilor title that were previously men-only, even Court Bishop.

common/minor_titles.txt
# Women can now have any Awarded Title that were previously men-only.

common/objectives.txt
# Women can now have councilor-related ambitions.

common/opinion_modifier.txt
# Vassal opinion for female rulers removed.
# Vassal opinion for female heirs removed.
# Vassal opinion for granting fiefs to females removed.

decisions/employment_decisions.txt
# Priests and Stewards you hire can now be female.

decisions/succession_laws.txt
# Removed Basque from the Absolute Cognatic requirements.
# Removed male vassal opinion for Absolute Cognatic.

events/dynasty_events.txt
# Women can now claim a title via event.

events/family_events.txt
# Ambitious daughters can now claim inheritance

events/job_chancellor.txt
events/job_lord_spiritual.txt
events/job_marshal.txt
events/job_steward.txt
# Women can now do the same jobs as male councilors.

I didn't change the 1.05 succession laws, as there are people (like myself) who don't want to play a cheesy game, but tweaking it to pre-1.05 is easily doable.

Big thanks to Monk for his tweak mod, which was the inspiration for this.

Very nice work Kekvit. :bow: I'll update the OP with a link to both your download and your post here, as is the typical format.

Originally Posted by :
events/dynasty_events.txt
# Women can now claim a title via event.

events/family_events.txt
# Ambitious daughters can now claim inheritance

Sounds especially appealing to me. I may incorporate that into my own personal tweaks. Be very careful however, now that you've been bitten by the mod bug it might not let go. I've found myself tinkering more with files and experimenting than actually playing the game lately. :grin2:

Originally Posted by rickinator9:
I am learning how to make new traits and make new events. I have made four for the elder scrolls mod and, wait for it... they are about werewolves!

Sounds like a lot of fun rick! Care to share a little of what goes into making new traits? Never done it myself.

Edit:

Took the opportunity to clean up some of the OP formatting and even added in a link to the last contest, in case anyone wanted to read some of the exploits of our past players.

Is it possible to create brand new events, or is it hardcoded? I cant seem to find the file containing the event descriptions.

Originally Posted by Monk:
Care to share a little of what goes into making new traits?

I haven't really done any advanced stuff, but here's something:

Code:

---

male_redguard = {
        congenital = yes
        birth = yes

        martial = 3
        stewardship = 1
        intrigue = 1
        diplomacy = -1
        learning = -2

        opposites = {
                male_altmer
                female_altmer
                male_dunmer
                female_dunmer
                male_orsimer
                female_orsimer
        }
        opposite_opinion = -5
        same_opinion = 5
}

---

Opposites can be used to change relations with a particular trait. There's some stuff you can put in it, you can get far by just looking at paradox's traits. Every trait has an event attached to it, otherwise you just couldn't be able to get it.

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
Is it possible to create brand new events, or is it hardcoded? I cant seem to find the file containing the event descriptions.

It's very possible. The descriptions are in localisation/textX files. This is also a helpful resource

It was pretty odd to see there's a robin hood themed event line. I never had that.

Originally Posted by rickinator9:
I haven't really done any advanced stuff, but here's something:

Code:

---

male_redguard = {
        congenital = yes
        birth = yes

        martial = 3
        stewardship = 1
        intrigue = 1
        diplomacy = -1
        learning = -2

        opposites = {
                male_altmer
                female_altmer
                male_dunmer
                female_dunmer
                male_orsimer
                female_orsimer
        }
        opposite_opinion = -5
        same_opinion = 5
}

---

The more I think about it, the more I simply ADORE the idea of a Daggerfall mod for CK2.

Originally Posted by :
It's very possible. The descriptions are in localisation/textX files. This is also a helpful resource

It was pretty odd to see there's a robin hood themed event line. I never had that.

Thanks. Now to tackle the hardships of brainstorming new event ideas.


--------

And in other news, my new King has become a legend in his own time. 11818 prestige, 3078 piety, TWO successful Crusades (this time against Castille which was sadly overrun by the Muslims), Realm Size of 299, 79 years old and still ticking, and is a great-grandfather. I'm preparing for the eventual succession wars by murdering the crap out of my children and grandchildren. Anyone who has a claim that isn't my heir or a child of my heir will fall down the stairs.

Taking a break from studying for my last final before graduation. Will be very happy to be done with these terrible quarter schedules. Ugh. Two years of technical courses on 10-week crash courses. My mind is like sillyputty... and yet this is how I unwind a bit in between study sessions:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i.imgur.com/VTTlh.jpg

Dear god. What have I become. Oh well. I didn't need that hour of free time anyway. This is more of a flavor mod than anything else, but one that might help the Turks a bit in their wars. I've changed the Seljuks from a tier 4 title (kingdom) to a tier 5 (empire) as they should have been from the start, imho. They are a titular empire just like they were a titular sultanate and given them a bit of a name change to coincide. This was my first forray into adding a completely new title entry, and it was much easier than I thought. After i figured out what I was doing wrong of course.

No idea if this will help them in their wars against the Roman Empire. Heh.. Yeah. Roman Empire. Loving the look of that one too.. :thumbsup:

@rickinator9 thanks, favorited the link and will look at it when i have had much more sleep than I have had now..

Originally Posted by Monk:
Sure. Go to your common/landed_titles.txt and search out the title's color you want to change. You'll see two entries labeled 'color' for each title, color1 and color2. You'll want to change color1 as it is the main factor in determining what color represents your faction on the map. It goes on a RGB scale of 0-255 for each of the three value. If you want, you can copy colors from other factions or just experiment to find the mix you desire.

color2 is almost useless, so much so that some factions do not have an entry and those that do are all 255 255 255. I'm not entirely sure what it does to be honest with you.

edit: Here's an example -

I changed the color entry for the Kingdom of England to this:

k_england = {
color={ 0 26 26 }
color2={ 255 255 255 }

Which on a RGB scale would be near black, and sure enough:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i.imgur.com/geQXY.jpg

Happy modding!

Right, thank you. I've created the Kingdom of Greece and a new empire called Hellenic Empire. I used the colors of epirus for both k_greece and e_hellas (that's how i wrote em at landedtitles) cause their flag is blue but the color map is that color that's where I lost. I made em blue now. Thank you. I attach you the pictures. I'll gladly share with you anything you want about creating or modding kingdoms, empires counts even city names but I'm sure you know "how to do" already! :D

Kingdom of Greece

https://img220.imageshack.us/img220/...domsgreece.jpg

Hellenic Empire

https://img35.imageshack.us/img35/43...ellenicemp.jpg

Very nicely done catalyst, oh and welcome to the forum! :bow:

Been wanting to do Kingdom of Greece myself, nice to you that you did it! You should post a link to your files and we could add it to the list of mods and tweaks.

Also, I highly recommend the Super-doge tactic that The Stranger suggested. I heard it said before, but I thought it was a waste of space, but seriously, far easier to manage as there is a lot less claims/internal strife and you make tons of income from it.

Last night I was-

DAGGERFALL MOD.

Hello, you said mods, I like mods:

Fake big brand watches. Fake adidas clothes. Fake ferrari cars. Fake women. Brand new modding discussion forum.

Greetings, Husar

Originally Posted by Tiaexz:
Been wanting to do Kingdom of Greece myself, nice to you that you did it! You should post a link to your files and we could add it to the list of mods and tweaks.

Also, I highly recommend the Super-doge tactic that The Stranger suggested. I heard it said before, but I thought it was a waste of space, but seriously, far easier to manage as there is a lot less claims/internal strife and you make tons of income from it.

I had a look at some of the screenshots for the 1.06 patch, and it looks like they split up de Jure Byzantium into the kingdoms of Greece and Anatolia.

So you might not have to worry about modding that at all if this patch is out soon...

Originally Posted by Husar:
Hello, you said mods, I like mods:

Fake big brand watches. Fake adidas clothes. Fake ferrari cars. Fake women. Brand new modding discussion forum.

Greetings, Husar

I've created a new thread for my mod there.

I'll still post the results of various experiments here but that thread will serve me much better in announcing releases and general information in relation to further improvements. Thanks Husar :bow:

Originally Posted by Monk:
I've created a new thread for my mod there.

Ditto, and added a new mod too.

My first successful event. I'm :daisy: proud of this one. Learned a lot trying to get this to work and it's going in my mod asap.

https://i.imgur.com/6xOpA.jpg

It's a modified mongol event except for the Turks, and not nearly as powerful. When the game starts at 1066 this event will fire within the first week every time. The two options are basically a yes or a no. "Call them to service!" will award you with a very good martial to lead your campaigns, as well as 8000 men to fight for you. "We do not need them." is exactly what it sounds like, where nothing negative happens and the Sultan is simply confident without the reinforcements. The event fires once, and after 1071 is unobtainable - effectively one time only. Here's the code for all interested.

Code:

---

# Seljuk Reinforcements
character_event = {
        id = 1900000
        desc = "EVTDESC1900000"

       
        picture = "GFX_evt_large_army"
       
        is_ruler = yes
       
        trigger = {
                has_landed_title = e_seljuk_turks
                NOT = { year = 1071 }
                primary_title = { title = e_seljuk_turks holder_scope = { religion = sunni } }
                NOT = { has_character_flag = seljuk_turk_reinf }
        }

        mean_time_to_happen = {
                days = 1 
        }
                       
        option = {
                name = "EVTTA1900000"
                ai_chance = { factor = 100 }
                       

                set_character_flag = seljuk_turk_reinf
               
               
                create_character = {
                        random_traits = yes
                        dynasty = random
                        religion = sunni
                        culture = turkish
                        female = no
                        age = 30
                        attributes = {
                                martial = 12
                        }
                        trait = brilliant_strategist
                }
                new_character = {
                        spawn_unit = {
                                province = 687 # Kirkuk
                                troops =
                                {
                                        horse_archers = { 2000 2000 }
                                        light_cavalry = { 3000 3000 }
                                        light_infantry = { 2222 2222 }
                                        heavy_infantry = { 1112 1112 }
                                        knights = { 200 200 }
                                }
                        }
                }
        }

        option = {
                name = "EVTTB1900000"
               
                }
        }
}

---

looks nice :P what about how the ai deals with it?

Originally Posted by The Stranger:
looks nice :P what about how the ai deals with it?

The AI always chooses to raise the troops. You can edit the chance the Ai will take a specific option by messing with the "factor" modifier. I'm trying to make the Seljuks a bit more of a threat in the early years but so far I've not figured out the right combination, though the event certainly helps in their fight against the byz.

I got the Jewish religion added to the game, the biggest issue is, I need to now add Jews into the game. My gut instinct is to attempt a event which will pop for everyone which will randomly create a Jewish character in your court.

As for the tweak I posted earlier, remove it. I simply made it so turkish succession can be done by anyone and changed the limits on it, so it isn't too powerful for early Christians and renamed it via the .csv file.

Originally Posted by Tiaexz:
I got the Jewish religion added to the game, the biggest issue is, I need to now add Jews into the game. My gut instinct is to attempt a event which will pop for everyone which will randomly create a Jewish character in your court.

As for the tweak I posted earlier, remove it. I simply made it so turkish succession can be done by anyone and changed the limits on it, so it isn't too powerful for early Christians and renamed it via the .csv file.

decisions/employment_decisions.txt

Code:

---

        employ_melbrooks = {
                potential = {
                }
                allow = {
                        piety = 5
                }
                effect = {
                        piety = -5
                        create_random_priest = {
                                random_traits = yes
                                dynasty = random
                                female = no
                                religion = jewish
                        }
                }
                revoke_allowed = {
                        always = no
                }
                ai_will_do = {
                        factor = 0
                }
        }

---

localization/melbrooks.csv

Code:

---

employ_melbrooks;Invite Jew to Court;Inviter un saint homme à la cour;Heiligen Mann an den Hof einladen;;Invitar a un santo a la corte;;;;;;;;;x
employ_melbrooks_desc;Scour the land for a Jew to join my court and advise me on religious matters.;Trouvez et demandez à un saint homme de rejoindre ma cour pour me conseiller sur des questions religieuses.;Durchsucht das Land nach einem heiligen Mann, der sich meinem Hofstaat anschließt und mich in religiösen Dingen berät.;;Recorre la tierra buscando un santo que se una a mi corte y me aconseje temas religiosos.;;;;;;;;;x

---

(ignore the non-English translations, ripped directly from the file)

Haven't tried it myself, but it should work.

Alternatively you could tie it into an on action event with a long meantime, say 3600 days, with a very low chance. So once every ten years on average a chracter will be asked if they'd like to have a jewish character in their court. The event thread rick linked earlier has a ton of information on how to get events to fire in the second or third post, and has a link to another thread that explains on actions.

Haha just be careful not to make it fire too often! I should show you some of the screenshots of me messing up the Turkish reinforcement event. At one point, every character in the game was getting turkish troops EVERY DAY. What a crazy game that was. It's fixed now, don't worry. :|

Haha, I love the name of it.

I added the empires into the game. I took some inspiration from your mod (the template format), Kekvit, but I made the Empires titular and not dejure. I also enabled the Latin Empire to be creatable and Ottoman kingdom (if Turkish)

Here are some pictures of the (new) Empires on the game map:
Britannia - https://i.imgur.com/TQJ0N.jpg
Iberia - https://i.imgur.com/l2UAc.jpg
Russia - https://i.imgur.com/kkTN6.jpg
Scandinavia - https://i.imgur.com/jBmAT.jpg
Map containing all - https://i.imgur.com/DdRDt.jpg

Originally Posted by Monk:
My first successful event. I'm :daisy: proud of this one. Learned a lot trying to get this to work and it's going in my mod asap.

https://i.imgur.com/6xOpA.jpg

It's a modified mongol event except for the Turks, and not nearly as powerful. When the game starts at 1066 this event will fire within the first week every time. The two options are basically a yes or a no. "Call them to service!" will award you with a very good martial to lead your campaigns, as well as 8000 men to fight for you. "We do not need them." is exactly what it sounds like, where nothing negative happens and the Sultan is simply confident without the reinforcements. The event fires once, and after 1071 is unobtainable - effectively one time only. Here's the code for all interested.

How do the 8k function? How bad is the upkeep, are they one army or several units, if they're disbanded can they be reraised, do they count as levies for purposes of declaring war, etc?

Originally Posted by Double A:
How do the 8k function? How bad is the upkeep, are they one army or several units, if they're disbanded can they be reraised, do they count as levies for purposes of declaring war, etc?

They work the very same way that the mongol reinforcements do in that they are upkeep and attrition free. They appear on the map as a single army and cannot be subdivided. Their composition is relatively even, with around 1-2k of each type of unit,(knights being the exception with only 200) making them a fairly balanced army. They can be disbanded but cannot be reraised - they do not count as levies, however their presence will stop you from declaring an offensive war.

This means that they can be used against the Byzantines, and only against the Byzantines as the 1066 start date begins with the Seljuk-Byz war. They can also be used in any defensive war. When you disband them, 0 of the extra men go to the levy pool. In roleplay terms that means they return to the east, in game mechanics they simply dissapear. However I do believe you keep the commander who comes with them regardless. :yes:

Their performace in battle viewed over multiple tests puts the Seljuks on even footing with the Byzantines, if not ahead of them. However due to how massively stubborn the Byzantine AI is, the Seljuks have only won the initial war once in the 6 30 year games i've run.

edit:

Interesting. The AI seems to be able to get around the "I cant declare war if i have levies raised," and are able to declare war with their free units alive. The player however cannot. I never realized that before. This demands some further balancing I think.

Originally Posted by Tiaexz:
Been wanting to do Kingdom of Greece myself, nice to you that you did it! You should post a link to your files and we could add it to the list of mods and tweaks.

I'll do that but first I have to make some more changes. :-)

We should really use the Hypogimdaubfuwkb (or whatever the hell its retarded name is) for modding discussion. Just make a CK2 general thread :P

Hello lads,

So for those who are interested, here is the Kingdom of Greece and optionally a Greek empire.


Installation:

1. Extract the .rar file into your ".../Crusader Kings II/" directory.
2. Overwrite when needed.
3. Enjoy

Rar password: catalyst

Regards,
Catalyst

Kingdom of Greece [Click here!]

https://img220.imageshack.us/img220/...domsgreece.jpg

Imperial Greece [Optionally]

https://img85.imageshack.us/img85/1914/92234879.jpg

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
We should really use the Hypogimdaubfuwkb (or whatever the hell its retarded name is) for modding discussion. Just make a CK2 general thread :P

Hypogeum.

Feel free to make a different suggestion, I just named it Hypogeum because Modena didn't come to mind at the time. I don't think Hypogeum is that bad though, maybe for Americans it is. ~:)

Originally Posted by Husar:
Hypogeum.

Feel free to make a different suggestion, I just named it Hypogeum because Modena didn't come to mind at the time.

Construction Yard
Scaffolding
Foreman's Shop

All of them have more of a construction/invention theme than an underground tunnel. Since the Arena encompasses all non-TW games, it doesn't really make much sense to use a Roman-only name, and the above names suit a Roman or non-Roman theme both.

http://www.roman-colosseum.info/colo...y-of-terms.htm

1. Not everything has to be in Latin. In fact, a quick glance at the front page shows only 4 forums/subforums (not including the Arena's subforum) have Latin or Roman-based names, all of which are in the Rome: Total War section. If we're going by section themes, then Hypogeum is out of place among Soft- and Hardware.

2. How many people post here who know what a Hypogeum is, versus how many people post here in total? Let's not forget that new forum members looking for gaming mods will be hampered by the fact that they wont know the first place to look. Hypogeum is not a good name for a modding subforum.

3. Hypogeum is an underground tunnel, which is misleading for a subforum dedicated to modding (construction, invention, etc).

Those are my reasons why I don't like the name.

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.

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

Originally Posted by Chaotix:
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.

Go with Doomy Room of Modding.

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.

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
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. :laugh4:

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! :yes:

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.

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. :tongue: 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 :laugh4:), 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. :tongue: 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.

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.

Originally Posted by Chaotix:
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. :yes:

Originally Posted by Monk:
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:

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.

Originally Posted by Chaotix:
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.

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?

Originally Posted by 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?

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

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

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.

Originally Posted by Double A:
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..

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.

Originally Posted by 1.6 dev diary:
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 ...

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg:
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

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
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.

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg:
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.

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)?

Originally Posted by The King:
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.

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
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.

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.

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae:
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 ;)

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by The Stranger:
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.

I actually think EU3 is much simpler than CK2.