Crusader Kings II

[Ishmael]

i got impaler and the epiteth "The Dragon" :P

I am jealous. I'll have to see if I can get my son Demandred that title, for some lovely irony (yes, I name my children after the Forsaken. I nearly got a full set in my most recent game ).

[rickinator9]

Word from the official forums is that 1.05f is currently going through QA, so we should expect it in a week or so. If you guys want to preserve the integrity and/or balance of your current campaign, you may want to switch steam over to tell it to ignore updates until you are finished. Just a heads up.

Have you ever gotten the event where a neighboring baron complains about your demense size so you can either: send him roses (piety) or nail his emissaries' hats to their heads (prestige)? Choose the prestige option, this will start you down the Impaler path. Then when the follow up event happens, choose "I wonder what will happen if I do this..." You will get numerous chances to atone for your behavior, but each time one comes up just choose the one that sounds more cruel/has you continuing your new gruesome hobby. Eventually you will be rewarded with the Impaler trait. Alternatively, if you turn away from your "evil" path, you can get the gardener trait as you character has found other ways to work out their problems.

The event id for this path is 5020, if you want to trigger it in campaign for a certain character, open the console and type in "event 5020" and it will start you down the gardener/impaler path. Have fun!

Ah so that's why. I always choose the gardener path because I value piety higher than prestige. 1.05f better fix most of the bugs. They have (relatively) taken long on this one. I still get the champion at own tournament glitch.

Also, I have started that mod about the roman times, around the time of the Pyrrhic wars. I am currently working on the map(most provinces need to be newly made).

[Monk]

Word from the official forums is that 1.05f is currently going through QA, so we should expect it in a week or so.

Nevermind that here comes 1.05f! New checksum: XIDX

Here's the patch notes reposted from http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...-Checksum-XIDX

- The invasion cb can now be granted correctly again
- The Pope now gets a significantly lower contribution score in Crusades
- AI: The Pope/Caliph will now be more reluctant to accept a White Peace when Crusading/Jihading
- The Metaserver should now work again
- Fixed a rare crash with sieges
- Changed the speed settings so they are all faster, except for max speed (level 2 is now level 1, etc)
- Added missing message text for calls of allies
- Added missing message text for offers to join wars
- No longer possible to usurp religious head titles, even if they have de jure vassals
- Tied together a few more cultural names
- Fixed more typos and database errors
- Fixed a bug where you could have duplicate laws due to the history scripts
- Fixed a bug with the event effects 'prestige' and 'health'
- Fixed a rare crash bug with very long war names (could also cause corrupt saves)
- Fixed a rare de jure assimilation issue when one character holds multiple kingdoms/empires
- Fixed an issue with de jure assimilation status not always being saved
- When events in multiplayer time out, the first VALID event option is now automatically chosen (rather than just the first option)
- Added some missing characters in Novgorod
- Fixed numerous relatively rare bugs causing unintentional independences at the end of wars
- No longer possible to declare wars while in revolt against your liege
- No longer possible to revoke titles off or imprison lower vassals in revolt against their liege
- No longer possible to ask for invasion against a liege or above
- Fixed some bugs with Crusade outcomes
- No longer possible to attach units to those owned by someone of a lower rank
- Fixed an asymmetrical hostility issue between revolting vassals of revolting vassals and the top liege
- No longer allowed to ask to join wars while in revolt
- Can no longer ask to join a war against a liege above your liege
- Fixed a bunch of event bugs
- Broken savegames no longer crash the game when you open the savegame browser, they are now marked as broken and cannot be loaded by clicking on them.



Interesting to note this is also the mac compatability patch so... awesome? Good news for mac users.

[rickinator9]

The meta-server is fixed? We might even retry the CKII multiplayer thingy in the throne room!

[rickinator9]

I have been playing with a interesting little mod. I present to you:

Dawn of Kingdoms


Dawn of Kingdoms is a mod where everyone starts off as a lowly count and the best of those counts will conquer and form kingdoms.

Here's a list of features:

Current Features
-Every county is occupied by one Count and three holdings: Castle (Capital), Temple, and City.
-All de jure Kingdoms and Empires removed. A Titular Kingdom is available for every Duchy. After a few centuries de jure Kingdoms will start forming.
-Invasion CB is granted to everyone for the first few centuries to encourage tribal expansion.
-All tech levels start at 0.

Planned Features
-A culture for every duchy to simulate cultural migration, as well as faster culture conversion at the beginning. Titular kingdoms can only be created by the specific culture it belongs to. An extra Roman culture will be made for Rome for all of you Rome lovers.
-Everyone starts as Pagans, more "organized" religions will sprout and spread eventually. This should also eliminate the invasion CB.
-All counties start with only one holding.

[Monk]

I have been playing with a interesting little mod. I present to you:

Dawn of Kingdoms


Dawn of Kingdoms is a mod where everyone starts off as a lowly count and the best of those counts will conquer and form kingdoms.

Here's a list of features:

Oh wow that's amazing. Creating a completely new history: here i come.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Are there any good ways to forms plots to weaken crown authorities? I started a game as the Duke of Lannister Lancaster and as a loyal vassal my levies and a well-time merc unit beat the snot out of the invading Norwegians and kept Harold Godwinson in the game long enough for the French to attack Normandy (felt like Christmas that did). Harold goes on to be known as the Great. He institutes high crown authority (I go along with it so I can enact primogeniture, suck it gavelkind!) but now I can't enforce my claims within England by force. Then he institutes Absolute crown authority (I vote "ignore" but apparently he has more suck-ups in the realm). Then the greedy bastard declares war on one of the Welsh dukes I was fighting and steals the dukedom away from me! I didn't have the troops to win fast enough. :(

He's also made one of my angrier vassals a duke which stole away their county from me. What should I do?

And what happens if the king dies with no un-assasinated heirs?

[rickinator9]

When the kings dies with no heirs, the closest family member will succeed( i.e brother).

[rickinator9]

I added a link to the mod

Edit: I'm extending the map a bit to the east for my mod and I don't really know if I got the coast right

[Monk]

I did some observe runs on that mod rick, i gotta say while it's clearly new and in need of tweaking it's got incredible potential. There's a possible oversight in that Venice is still a serene republic and has quite a powerful starting postion. They have the ability to gather up a good blob quickly before anyone can really say anything about it. There's also a large area of the map that has characters flagged as "noreligion" for some reason.

The AI also seems to focus on forming titles before it goes conquering. This means that with all those counts, you'll go 20 years with hardly any wars. On the other hand.. you start in year one. So twenty years is literally nothing. Wars will eventually start to kick off and when they do it's pretty cool. By the 40th year mark some really interesting power blocs were forming, and thats when i pulled the plug.

I am definitely gonna give this mod a shot when I get some free time.

[rickinator9]

I did some observe runs on that mod rick, i gotta say while it's clearly new and in need of tweaking it's got incredible potential. There's a possible oversight in that Venice is still a serene republic and has quite a powerful starting postion. They have the ability to gather up a good blob quickly before anyone can really say anything about it. There's also a large area of the map that has characters flagged as "noreligion" for some reason.

The AI also seems to focus on forming titles before it goes conquering. This means that with all those counts, you'll go 20 years with hardly any wars. On the other hand.. you start in year one. So twenty years is literally nothing. Wars will eventually start to kick off and when they do it's pretty cool. By the 40th year mark some really interesting power blocs were forming, and thats when i pulled the plug.

I am definitely gonna give this mod a shot when I get some free time.

The religious leaders also seem to expand first, probably because they already got their titles. I also notice the guys on the russian steppes seem to get big first( not counting in venice). In my game, any power blocks beside myself don't really get off the ground. The newly found lord of Smolensk found himself being ganged up by several dukes invading him.

The modding forum is interesting enough to look at. People are discussing an Elder scrolls mod, which should be interesting.

[Monk]

My biggest concern with the mod is the fact that the Sunni religion doesn't have any characters tied to it for some reason. If i knew how, i'd fix that myself. Anyone happen to know the location of characters and religions in the files?

Other than that? This is a really cool mod.

The religious leaders also seem to expand first, probably because they already got their titles. I also notice the guys on the russian steppes seem to get big first( not counting in venice). In my game, any power blocks beside myself don't really get off the ground. The newly found lord of Smolensk found himself being ganged up by several dukes invading him.

The AI takes a lot longer than usual to gather it's power. The first kingdoms usually start forming around year 20 on the steppes and year 40 everywhere else. But yeah its a very slow game. I'm watching stuff unfold in a long term observer mode currently, i'll post the results tomorrow. Right now a number of Khans have risen on the steppes while the first kingdom, Carinthia, has formed in the west. Here's hoping many more powers rise.

[Monk]

Update:

I ran a 100 year observer game using the mod me and Rick have been talking about. At year 60 some real power blocs started to form, primarily in Germany and Spain. Others formed up as well but none as successful as those. Here's a screenshot:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I've been tweaking this mod to be more to my liking. I managed to fix the lack of a Sunni religion (not sure what was up there, but its all good now) and have nerfed Venice to the ground. I removed Venezia's starting 7 holdings and gave them three instead, about to run a 100 year observer game to see if that balances them out. If it does I'll do the same to the religious leaders and provide a truly even playing field.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Venezia holdings nerfed:


Sunni religion back in action:

I still haven't found the right setting to remove the republic title from the starting doge but if I can that would be even better.

EDIT: found it! Removed Venice from starting as a kingdom level entity but kept them as a republic on the county level. This game is actually pretty easy to mod once you figure out the basics and orient yourself.

[rickinator9]

You seem to be doing good for yourself with the modding. Maybe you could contact the mods author with the enhancements?

[Monk]

You seem to be doing good for yourself with the modding. Maybe you could contact the mods author with the enhancements?

I've never been good at waiting and this concept is so cool I couldn't help myself, really. I've never modded before but once I got into it, it was surprisingly easy and now I just can't stop. Still a lot of things I don't quite grasp and I'm learning as I go, but it's getting easier and easier. I've decided to mess around with this concept and teach myself how to mod in the process. For example:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Wanted to see if I could get the patriarchy off the main map and back onto a single barony like he is in vanilla. And there you go! I created a new dynasty and character and linked the two entities together, then assigned the county of Byzantion to that new character. After that, it was a simple matter of creating a a history file for whatever barony I wanted the Patriarchy to occupy and assign it to him. I cross checked from the province file to make sure I had the temple name right and assigned it to the patriarch.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Well, 110 years after the Dukes of Lancaster bled and died for house Godwinson against the Norman invader, we are now...

The Saxon Kingdom of Portugal.

Starting maybe 40 years back the Godwinson King of England croaked and all the other vassal Dukes rebelled to gain independence. I also revolted, and along with two Counties and a one-county Duchy we won our freedom. The big names, York, Kent, Cornwall were all flattened, despite my assistance.

I end up fighting and winning three more wars against Godwinsons, mostly with a liberal use of mercenaries to supplement my levies. The best thing about mercs is they pay for themselves through ransomed counts. :D Anyway, one war was to help lower crown authority (I was married into one of the rebels at the time), the next to end the English claims to my duchies (Oxford, Hereford, Gloucester, and of course Lancaster), and the last was to pick up the lower half of Gloucester to complete the set.

After whipping them, the Pope calls a crusade for Portugal. Thinking I've got time with the truce, I join in. I do the only real work with a few sieges, then my levies get whipped by a much larger army. I burn some piety and drop the Templars (or Hospitallers? I don't remember) on them. The Pope negotiates a win, and I get the two-county Duchy of Algrave and a shiny new crown. So far I've only seen rebels there and the Muslims haven't threatened. I'm concerned that the Godwinsons or the Muslims will attack me while I'm busy with the other. But that's what mercs are for, right?

State of play and some commentary in the spoilers.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#0
England. The Dukes of Gwynned (sp?) and Kent are revolting for crown authority but they're doomed. I have claims on Northhampton to my East, Shrewsbury (a real prize) to my West, and Westmoreland up north. I've married into (I think) Cornwall so something may come of that. I think I'm also married to Leiceister but not that I could inherit, at least not yet. I'm happy to keep them independent though.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#1
Spain. That's my in the Southwest corner. Barcelona became an HRE vassal early on and the Emperor has been pushing westward. Hopefully the Muslims focus on them and I can pick up the de jure bits of Portugal. I'm hoping to ignore them, at least for now.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#2
The Mediterranean. Sicily is big, but that's about it. I wonder how long before the HRE makes a play for it.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#3
Scotland won the second crusade for Jerusalem but has since splintered there. I think they fended off a Jihad though.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#4
The east. Russia and Poland look like they should slow the Horde down so I don't have to worry about them, right? :D

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#5
Norway. I think both they and Denmark are sometimes allied with England, which is frustrating. Hopefully Sweden and Seisvig keep at least one of them busy.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#6
Eadwin, King of Portugal and Duke of Lancaster, first of his name (but third Eadwin to warm the Lancaster seat). His grandson is the heir and is currently Duke of Hereford and Gloucester. For whatever reason the Hwice family is pretty fecund and prone to longevity. I'm not complaining.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#7
The grandson and heir. Hoping he'll start pumping out sons soon.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#8
My levies and my insurance against Muslim aggression.

https://imgur.com/a/2cs5j#9
Map of the world.

[Monk]

The east. Russia and Poland look like they should slow the Horde down so I don't have to worry about them, right? :D

if only that were the case... Russia looks like a paper tiger. She looks scary but i doubt there's much bite in those fangs. Usually if Byzantium is alive they stop the horde in their tracks because they can match their numbers. The Rus normally don't have those numbers unless they pour hundreds of thousands into the steppes like I did. And I still lost!

If i had to lay odds I'd say the HRE would stop the horde - but even then it's gonna be rough.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Wow, you weren't kidding.

I wasn't really paying attention in the East, apparently Hungary got huge, but they've been pushed back by the Golden Horde. The Ilkhanate hasn't really done much, they've been contained by the Turks (and maybe the GH).

I've carved out a two more chunks of territory in Spain, and I now hold both de jure duchies of Portugal proper. All 4 counties are Catholic, and two are Saxon. Since I personally hold Lisboa and one of the other ones, I can muster a huge amount of troops - ~8k total (also thanks to retaking Shrewsbury).

The English king was deposed in a war I assisted with, and now the Kingdom is officially ruled by a Prince-Bishop. The former king is still around as a prince with substantial holdings - he's actually consolidating some de jure duchies right now, I believe. He may be more dangerous as a Duke then a King.

My near term goals are to take the rest of the Portuguese claims (ideally in a holy war, though Mauretania makes me nervous) and to survive my grandson's reign. Eadwin the Unready (a bit unfair of a name, we didn't lose a war under him, though we had some close calls) didn't have any sons, and his daughter was actually great stat-wise, but she died soon after giving birth to Wulfnoth, the current heir. Wulfnoth is... slow. I'm raising him and he'll have decent diplomacy skills, but that's about it. I'm worried about going over the demense limits. He's betrothed to a countess in Wales so his son can inherit and we can start securing our western flank.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Map of England. I need to reclaim Westmoreland up top, and I'd like to add Northhampton so I don't have to keep usurping the Duchy of Oxford. I'd like to vassalize Kent but they are "too far away" - hopefully fixed by taking Northampton. Not sure what's got the Welsh duke to revolt, probably something silly. Since the King-Bishop of England only has one barony he can't really do anything about it.


Eadwin the Unready, second greatest Hwice (so far). No sons though. >:|


My heir. :X


Portugal. I need the HRE to attack Mauretania so I can holy war what's left of Beja uninterrupted.


The Golden Horde. Currently at peace with the civil-war-wracked Hungary. I guess they inherited Poland and didn't stop expanding, but they're paying the price for that now.


Scotland has been kicked out of the Holy Lands, but the Scottish kingdom of Jerusalem clings to life.


The Ilkhanate has sputtered out. The Byz are still in business though.


Map.

[Ishmael]

I just saw that the first version of the Game of Thrones mod has now been released (note: you need to be a registered member on the Paradox forums to access it). Has anybody tried it yet? I'll certainly be checking it out over the weekend.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...ame-of-Thrones

[Chaotix]

I just saw that the first version of the Game of Thrones mod has now been released (note: you need to be a registered member on the Paradox forums to access it). Has anybody tried it yet? I'll certainly be checking it out over the weekend.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...ame-of-Thrones

It's pretty good, but still clearly a beta. Some missing coats of arms and stuff like that. The map looks amazing, though, and they clearly put a lot of effort into it. I had no ships when I tried to play the Starks, though. Makes me wonder if they're in it at all in this version; it would certainly make the Greyjoys rather boring.

[rickinator9]

Anyway, if there are guys who want to do an AAR, they are holding a contest. How does the map run in comparison to the vanilla one?

[Arjos]

I had no ships when I tried to play the Starks, though.

That's correct for the story: Brandon the Burner, burnt the whole fleet after his father never came back, when he set sail into the Sunset Sea :)

[Chaotix]

Anyway, if there are guys who want to do an AAR, they are holding a contest. How does the map run in comparison to the vanilla one?

I didn't notice any difference. If anything the map is smaller, so it would be a little faster. Come to think of it I don't remember the yearly autosaves taking nearly as long.

That's correct for the story: Brandon the Burner, burnt the whole fleet after his father never came back, when he set sail into the Sunset Sea :)

I suppose you're right. I'll have to check out the other houses soon to see if they have ships, then.

[Arjos]

I started a campaign as the Ironborn and they have ships...
BTW educating children is just crippling my economy! XD

[johnhughthom]

The Ironborn educate their children? I thought they just gave them an axe, pointed them at the nearest orphanage and said "go solve our overpopulation problem, son (or daughter)."

10 years later...

"So, did you pay the Iron price for your University education?"

"Damn it."

Heads off to murder tutors family...

[rickinator9]

News

The 1.06 update is now nearing completion, and it is now in QA. We aim to release it in mid to late june, with an exact date to be confirmed soon, and at the same time release our first expansion, the Sword of Islam, with a suggested price of 9.99€.

The patch will include lots of new features for free, including expansion of the map into Mali-Songhay, differentiation on strong and weak claims, new plot, expanded combat, and other features to be announced later.

Sword of Islam will enable playable Muslims, with lots of specific new mechanics for the muslims, creating a whole new experience for the player, where laws, marriage, holdings, traits, titles and more work entirely different.

Every Friday until release, we’ll have a detailed development diary, where Doomdark will be talking both about what will be in the patch and what will be in the expansion.

Here's a quick screenshot...

Swords of Islam is going to be the next expansion. I don't really know yet if I'm interested in it, but my interests may increase when they show some more of it.

This to see here are:
- Ruler has a fewer than 4 wives penalty, which suggests polygamy is in the game!
- New UI for muslims
- Grapes near the dynasty symbol with percentage(don't know what this means yet).

[Monk]

News



Swords of Islam is going to be the next expansion. I don't really know yet if I'm interested in it, but my interests may increase when they show some more of it.

This to see here are:
- Ruler has a fewer than 4 wives penalty, which suggests polygamy is in the game!
- New UI for muslims
- Grapes near the dynasty symbol with percentage(don't know what this means yet).

The grapes may be legitimacy or a similiar mechanic. If they are introducing strong/weak levels of claims, it may be how strong or legitimate your claim to that title is. Pure speculation on my part though, could be radically different. (why grapes, for intance?)

[Kekvit Irae]

After watching quill18's playthrough of CK2 using Castille 1066, I finally decided to buy it. The ruler designer is one of the most worthless things I've seen, next to Oblivion's horse armor. Made a female? Everyone hates you. No children to start out with? Good luck getting children in the game (even on Very Easy, Lustful, Hedonist). Female heir? Everyone hates you. Want to play a young character? You need to take gimpy traits. Want to be powerful? You are going to be old enough to not enjoy the designed ruler. High intrigue? Good luck trying to get money needed to utilize said intrigue.
I spent 5 bucks to play how I wanted to play, and now the game is telling me that I cant play how I wanted to play. Paradox games in a nutshell, I tell ya.

Now retrying the game using a historical figure. Hopefully that will be more fun.

[Beskar]

the easy way is simply to modify the ruler designer dlc so it doesn't increase the age, etc. Or simply load up on the gimpy traits, then once the game begins, save it, open the save file, go to "player=yes" to get your character, then under traits you see a bunch of numbers. You will notice they increase till a point they seem to "semi-rest", delete these numbers, save changes, reload game. Now you got no gimpy traits.

[Ishmael]

I think I'm a rarity in that I actually quite like the ruler designer as is. Having a lunatic, possessed, drunken hedonist found my dynasty (and then educate my heirs ) is very amusing to my mind. Plus, you're highly likely to get the nickname 'The Accursed,' which is rather cool.

That said, the ruler designer did lead to my only outright loss so far. I spent half an hour designing my first character with it, making sure everything was just right, and then he died at age 16 before a year had passed (and before I had saved the game).