Charlemagne DLC

[Sp4]

Yeah, as my generals get stars I'm using some of them to put in some points into how far they can travel on strategic map, that's helping. I think somehow despite the fact that it's slower that it feels still kind of right, and I enjoy seeing all the activity on the map, makes the place feel more alive, exactly the reason I prefer DLCs because they're smaller and more focused.

I'm not totally in sync yet on the politics, I've had some guys nearly go rogue on me and I'm not sure exactly how to handle the balance on power or how to increase it, have to sort that, rather like that it's in play here once again though, something else to handle that increases immersion, had my best general show up on a pop up warning me he was about to rebel when he hit one, had to fix that but quick.

I don't like the way the skill trees work but I haven't liked them since they came up with them :p It all feels kind of forced and the gathering of good and bad traits is kind of arbitrary.

[easytarget]

Agree on the traits, the skill tree I'm fine with.

[Slaists]

I don't like the way the skill trees work but I haven't liked them since they came up with them :p It all feels kind of forced and the gathering of good and bad traits is kind of arbitrary.

Which traits you speaking of as arbitrary? They seem rather consistent to me now. Not that I like them or that they'd make intuitive sense.

As a general principle: entering a settlement with an army while the settlement has negative PO is a bad idea as it has a high chance of giving your general the "unfavored trait" (which has 2 more levels with progressively worsening effects). Entering a settlement with +100% PO is a great idea (in the game terms though) as it is likely (about 1 in 10 chance) to give your general the "favored" trait which has nice effects. Go figure...

Governing a province what has 100% PO is considered a bad style (even if it is the richest province of your with loads of construction going on) as your governor is likely to become a "procrastinator" and getting worse from there. If you managed to pull the governor out the turn he gets the "procrastinator" trait and send him into a battle the next turn, he is very likely to lose the negative trait though.

As to the leader: never use hostages as replenishment or kill hostages (with any of your armies). Always ransom them. This ensures that the leader does not become "harsh".

[easytarget]

I just finished a short campaign as Charlemagne, interestingly I suppose I could still continue on for additional victories off the last save given that it's now a question primarily of imperium (although I suppose there is also a province count on the next two).

Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely. Just love the time frame and the region, thinking about going in again as Westphalia or Kingdom of Mercia perhaps once I knock out some other indie games awaiting my attention (Renowned Explorers being the one I started today someone gifted me, quite a smart little game).

So, the recent tradition at least for my tastes of enjoying the DLCs more than the GC continues, and I'm just fine with that.

[Cazbol]

I'm curious, what came out of that papal mission against the Lombards?

[easytarget]

It was fairly early in the campaign when that one landed in my lap and I was tied up in the north with only 30 turns to complete it, I can't recall if the mission was just to engage them in war or wipe them out, but either way it didn't matter as they were a long ways off with at least one or two Kingdoms/Duchies/what have you between me and them.

As a result of not abiding by it I got a serious diplomacy hit from the Pope, but since it didn't result in excommunication I didn't much care. If however it had been excommunication I would probably have taken far more notice of it because at the time I was playing nice with my brother anticipating he would eventually drop dead, at which point we'd start things up in earnest with uniting the kingdom, if I'd been excommunicated I'm pretty sure we'd of ended up immediately at war.

[Cazbol]

I asked about the papal mission because when I accepted it, all hell broke loose. I immediately found myself at war with the Lombards, who ploughed through my brother's kingdom to get to me. The Lombards were joined by minor allies, who also met with immediate success against Carloman. My brother's kingdom is on the verge of a collapse and I'm stretched to my limits trying to turn the tide. The excellence of this campaign continues.

[easytarget]

Oh, that's interesting, I sort of rather like that scripted event even more then. I actually was ok if I'd been excommunicated, I would have considered it harsh since it was merely a request to go after the Lombards, but then I could see the case being made a request from the Pope at this time was not really a request so much as an order that had to be obeyed. That's kind of cool they plowed through the brother's kingdom because it saves you the trouble of waiting for him to die (well, don't suppose you actually have to wait, but I did because I was busy up north). I'm glad I waited on him dying too, it gave me like four options, I forget them all, but I took the pay off those who wanted to unite the Kingdom under me and for 8k i was given 2/3's of his Kingdom and the rest stayed military alliance. No muss, no fuss. Pretty cool.

I like what you've got going on though as well, because it's probably fairly tense, what you've got going on is why I sort of just sat tight at the outset and fought minor wars folks in the North and North-East. I still had some in the south and southwest who were taking provinces from me as well, made for an interesting two front war, not something I tend to want happen in a TW campaign, but here it was more or less inevitable.

I've liked this one quite a lot. Btw, on several occasions, no doubt due to my own incompetence, I nearly had generals and/or governors rebel on me, and my power was so low I often looked to be about to have the whole thing go off a cliff and I took serious penalties for it pretty much the entire campaign. Fortunately I fixed up the provinces well enough that they generated more than enough money for me to grease the wheels whenever needed. I still don't think I've got the hang of this family tree business, but I do love it's there to fiddle with, gives me something else that pulls me into the campaign.

[Sp4]

Which traits you speaking of as arbitrary? They seem rather consistent to me now. Not that I like them or that they'd make intuitive sense.

As a general principle: entering a settlement with an army while the settlement has negative PO is a bad idea as it has a high chance of giving your general the "unfavored trait" (which has 2 more levels with progressively worsening effects). Entering a settlement with +100% PO is a great idea (in the game terms though) as it is likely (about 1 in 10 chance) to give your general the "favored" trait which has nice effects. Go figure...

Governing a province what has 100% PO is considered a bad style (even if it is the richest province of your with loads of construction going on) as your governor is likely to become a "procrastinator" and getting worse from there. If you managed to pull the governor out the turn he gets the "procrastinator" trait and send him into a battle the next turn, he is very likely to lose the negative trait though.

As to the leader: never use hostages as replenishment or kill hostages (with any of your armies). Always ransom them. This ensures that the leader does not become "harsh".

Whaa, so all the things I am doing automatically are terrible! :D

There comes a point when you have so many generals and people to worry about and cities and armies that you just stop caring, especially because you don't really need that many good generals. As long as the governors don't end up with traits that reduce the money making potential of a province, I don't care.
As soon as they do, they earn themselves a first class, air delivery to 'somewhere on the frontline' :D

On that note, has anyone seen the family tree break yet?

Invisible family members, family members that are treated as 'other nobles' (which I can even understand if they're totally unrelated bastards, though wasn't the idea of a family tree to give you all the related characters at a glance?) and perhaps the most annoying thing: Duplicate family members.
Every now and then, a family member will show up twice in the family tree and this seems to happen if you somehow manage to marry a woman and a man from your family. You then get two branches, one for the woman and one for the man (although this does not happen all the time).

Also: In my current Kingdom of Mercia campaign, I managed to wed my king with one of his sisters (she was an awesome wife and gave him so many influence bonuses that everything that said 'wrong' in me was silenced ;P)
I did this (unintentionally at first) by marrying the sister off to a king of a different faction and then asking for her back after that king died somehow (open diplomacy, arrange marriage, choose wife, click accept ^^)
Suddenly, my king was married to his sister and nobody cared :D

Also, Frankish kings seem to be growing really old. This is the third one this campaign who has been over 100 years old: http://images.akamai.steamuserconten...7C96964013F9E/

[ReluctantSamurai]

Also, Frankish kings seem to be growing really old. This is the third one this campaign who has been over 100 years old

Doesn't look to be a day over 45 For gods sake, at least give the man a grey beard Details...details...details...

[easytarget]

and perhaps the most annoying thing: Duplicate family members.
Every now and then, a family member will show up twice in the family tree and this seems to happen if you somehow manage to marry a woman and a man from your family. You then get two branches, one for the woman and one for the man (although this does not happen all the time).

You know I've seen the same name show up in other nobles and/or my family and was wondering why that was, I just thought it was CA being lazy in how many names they allocated so once the size of both was large enough names repeated.

[Sp4]

You know I've seen the same name show up in other nobles and/or my family and was wondering why that was, I just thought it was CA being lazy in how many names they allocated so once the size of both was large enough names repeated.

Not the same name (this happens a lot as well but meh) but literally the same character, where if you select one portrait, it selects two at the same time. I'll get a screenshot later. Also merry christmas ^^

Here it is, the 8 characters in the center are the same characaters, twice and I think the reason why this is is because of my previously described case of incest, where the portrait of the son is generated twice, once for the mother, who is originally from my family and the father, who is too.

http://images.akamai.steamuserconten...3365F84D264EE/

[easytarget]

Oh, that is odd. Guess I've not had that specific instance come up, I thought it was odd enough I've got guys using the same name, which struck me as sloppy and/or lazy.

And Merry Christmas to you too, and the whole gang here at the Org!

Think I might fire up a new AoC campaign myself, I could press on in the current campaign for additional victories, but think it would be more interesting to play a new one as some one else.

[Sp4]

I finished a Mercian campaign now. It is probably the simplest of them all, kind of like England in M2, with an easy starting location from which you can pretty much launch conquests anywhere and be relatively safe, even if everything goes south.

My biggest enemy in this campaign was the massive corruption that sets in, once you have a certain number of settlements. I didn't win the campaign by conquest either but just bought military allies, until I "controlled" 110 settlements.
I had about 60 or so myself and the rest came from 5 different allies and client kingdoms.

I want to do a Danish campaign or maybe a CoC one next or maybe I will just dive in an see if I can do a Carolingian one, although this whole rescuing empires that are about to collapse has never been my thing.