Crusader Kings II

**rickinator9** · 08-04-2012, 21:11

Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

My brother-in-law, the Emperor of Byzantium, keeps calling me to arms. I answer the call, but don't actually send any troops because I'm too busy plotting my eventual invasion of Sweden.

Just refuse it, he won't ask you again if you refuse.

**Arjos** · 08-09-2012, 05:41

Supporting (ie: just accepting the call, it's not necessary to send troops) will boost your relations and will make them more likely to help you yes :)
Although byzantine assistance in Scandinavia, will come after quite some time, especially if they decide to go via land, coupled with all the attrition their army will face XD

Also refusing costs prestige, but I don't know if you are in need of it or not :P

**Fisherking** · 08-09-2012, 07:01

Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Will that hurt my relations with them? The Byzantines are doing pretty good against the infidel hordes, I wanna make sure they're on my side if/when I make a move in eastern europe.

Refusing costs between -25 and -100 prestige. It will also cost you a -25 on how they see you, so it makes it unlikely they will come and help.

Accepting means you are at war as long as they are. Being at war cuts out some of your options, like giving titles to those outside your kingdom, doing most of the feasts or tourneys and so on.

That said, they usually tell you that they can’t come and help most of the time. Also marrying off daughters to the big factions usually works to your disadvantage. They are always at war, this makes them less likely to help you and much more likely to call you. On top of that your daughter is likely to die just as soon as a male heir is born. Offspring are not your allies either. They also have a weak claim on your lands or kingdom.

Not that that will matter so much. Sweden is going to get stomped by one of the hoards when they come on the map anyway. It is just about as bad as trying to play in Spain.

**Chaotix** · 08-12-2012, 05:04

Behold! The Roman Empire is reborn!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

This is that Rum Sultanate game I had been talking about earlier in the thread. It's finally reached the point where I can consider it finished and stop worrying about ending 30 plots per minute from my endless list of subjects.

All in all, I guess this shows how much fun I had with Sword of Islam. The map itself is pretty interesting - I can answer any questions you have about it but for now I'll post the most interesting things.

-I can field roughly 600 thousand troops, and 25k just from my demesne. When a decadence uprising came along late-game, it nearly broke the game!
-I am also the (Titular) Sultan of Georgia and Bulgaria. I could form Croatia, Serbia, Sicily, Syria, and Egypt, but they haven't de jure converted yet.
-I killed off every single member of the Seljuk family except for my immediate family, including the whole Persian line. Even now, the only lands held by Seljuks are the Sultan's royal demesne.
-England has been the subject of quite a few Jihads, and keeps going back and forth between Muslim and Christian powers. It went from English to Egyptian (almost fully Shia converted) to Danish and now it's Mauretanian.
-At one point France was the seat of the last vestiges of Egyptian power (the Fatimids were overthrown by the Italian Reggio Sultanate, and that's what they were called. Now France has taken it back.
-The Mongols were so afraid of me they never even dared to declare war on me. The results are amusing; they never got very far. They basically took all the Cumans' and Khivans' land and called it a day. The Ilkhanate converted and is friendly; the Golden Horde is basically nonexistant.
-The Russian Empire formed on its own. All that ugly extra territory above Crimea and Alania (which I intended to take) that I have up there is the result of my Beylerbeys declaring war on their own for pieces of territory. Each of them is basically as powerful as a king in his own right.
-I Holy War'd the Pope for Rome so I could really call myself the Empire reborn. He launched a Crusade to take it back from his holding in Ireland, and I beat the crap out of all of Europe in response. I have also renamed Constantinople to Istanbul and Rome to Rum, and I hold them both in my personal demesne.
-The Seljuks have married into all the ruling dynasties of Europe, and as a result most of the monarchs are now dark-skinned. In contrast, my Sultans tended to be light-skinned because I married European brides. Just a funny culture-reversal.

**frogbeastegg** · 08-12-2012, 15:56

So ... could somebody please tell me what Sword of Islam offers for players who do not want to kill the world? I'm hoping I'm missing something. Paradox don't offer a good enough war simulation for me to find wide-scale conquering interesting, and all those dynastic, political and social aspects I like in the standard Christian game are sorely lacking from the Muslim one. Hajj is a short, repetitive chain of events which played out near-identically for each character I sent on it. Ramadan likewise. The multiple wives thing translates to an annoying penalty you can't afford when small but which you can easily ignore when large, and which ensures there will be plenty of dull imprisoning action come succession time.

Please. Help! Somebody save this from being a huge disappointment for me.

**Chaotix** · 08-12-2012, 18:09

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

So ... could somebody please tell me what Sword of Islam offers for players who do not want to kill the world? I'm hoping I'm missing something. Paradox don't offer a good enough war simulation for me to find wide-scale conquering interesting, and all those dynastic, political and social aspects I like in the standard Christian game are sorely lacking from the Muslim one. Hajj is a short, repetitive chain of events which played out near-identically for each character I sent on it. Ramadan likewise. The multiple wives thing translates to an annoying penalty you can't afford when small but which you can easily ignore when large, and which ensures there will be plenty of dull imprisoning action come succession time.

Please. Help! Somebody save this from being a huge disappointment for me.

Unfortunately, I think you probably hit the nail on the head with that post.

Playing as a Muslim makes conquering much easier, but it makes remaining stationary much more difficult. Historically the Muslim hierarchy did not operate on a purely hereditary basis, and as you said there is much less emphasis on dynastic ties because women have no political options.

So what I would say you have to do to really get an immersive experience is to refrain from some of the gamier tactics. Sort of the same way you might decide not to invite courtiers, land them, and press their claims for quick land grabs as a christian. Or to marry into the throne of France and keep assassinating until you inherit.

Maybe you might want to not deliberately imprison all of your brothers after you inherit, unless they rebel or plot against you. Then you would get some real serious succession wars to survive. And it would drive your decadence up faster as well, making it a challenge to manage, maybe even have to put down an uprising if you're lucky. Because that is what the Muslim game is all about - decadence. If you pick a small family and know how to curb decadence right from the start, you'll never run into problems with it, but a big family like the Seljuks or Fatimids has decadence problems whether you're careful or not, just because they start out with so many family members. I literally had to assassinate all the Persian Seljuks while playing as Rum just to make the game manageable. Allowing your family to grow a little bit might simulate that with a smaller dynasty.