Crusader Kings II

[Kekvit Irae]

Started a new game as a male designed ruler of Castille 1066. Let's see...

Got married to a Princess of Navarra. She popped out babies the way Bioware pops out excuses.
One of my vassals revolted and I had to put him down. Imprisoned him, revoked his title, and now my insurrection and money problems are cured. Added quite a lot to my personal levy too.
Pressed my wife's claim on Navarra and won the war easily.
Plotted to murder my wife since she was now Queen of an independent nation with my son as heir. With a bit of luck, the wife had a bad fall down the stairs and broke her neck, leaving my (not yet of-age) son in command of the independent nation. He's not my heir, and the kingdom will go to me if he dies, so I'll need to arrange another "accident" soon.
The Kingdom of Leon eliminated Galacia and is now in a war with the Moors. Seeing a good distraction, I pressed all claims, and won the war. The majority of northern Iberia is now mine.

Definitely more fun now that I'm not playing as a female ruler of Ireland.

[Monk]

The female penalties are indeed far too over the top. -20 overall for having a female ruler AND a female heir? Come on. I think, now that I am thinking about it, i'll make a simple mod and change that later for my own preference.

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.

I quite enjoy it myself but it's clear it had multiplayer in mind when it was designed. Most of the traits have a sense of "balance" to them, so making a ruler you want can be pretty difficult.

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.

As far as I know difficulty does not at all affect fertility, but female rulers are by their nature a lot harder to get children than if you were playing a male. Once a female character hits 45 her fertility drops like a ROCK. It's still possible to get pregnant after that but your odds are so small its negligible. Not only that but if your personal court has over 30 characters in it already, base fertility rates also suffer a penalty. If you are a female ruler and are suffering a number of bad luck rolls most of your reign, you can easily hit age 45 with very few or no children. It can cause some really troublesome succession situations.

Still, if you were a young character you should have been getting pregnant like crazy. +40% to fertility from lustful/hedonist is insane. Maybe your husband was shooting blanks, or you were just having some terrible luck in the probability.

[Ishmael]

That reminds me, has anybody seen a mod that gets rid of the fertility penalty with a large court? If not, would there be any way to mod it myself?

[Kekvit Irae]

As far as I know difficulty does not at all affect fertility

Go to options, choose Very Easy, then mouse over the option. You'll get a bonus to fertility. Only happens on VE, not Easy. It's why I decided to try out my first playthrough in Ireland with a female ruler on VE.

[Monk]

Go to options, choose Very Easy, then mouse over the option. You'll get a bonus to fertility. Only happens on VE, not Easy. It's why I decided to try out my first playthrough in Ireland with a female ruler on VE.

Ah this explains why i missed it. Thanks for the clarification

[Kekvit Irae]

Aaaaaaand... it all went to hell now.

Son of my ruler inherited the kingdom, and it all went fine until he died suddenly in battle, leaving behind no male heirs. Biggest problem? The closest heir he had was a daughter who I was training up to be a spymaster. She came to power with not a single point of Stewardship to her name. And then came the kingdom-wide revolts. These were easy enough to put down... until the Moors came knocking with 12k troops.

[rickinator9]

Aaaaaaand... it all went to hell now.

Son of my ruler inherited the kingdom, and it all went fine until he died suddenly in battle, leaving behind no male heirs. Biggest problem? The closest heir he had was a daughter who I was training up to be a spymaster. She came to power with not a single point of Stewardship to her name. And then came the kingdom-wide revolts. These were easy enough to put down... until the Moors came knocking with 12k troops.

Yeah, a rule in CKII is that when you have women on the throne, the throne gets destroyed. Although I do seem some 'Catherine the Great' types once in a while, it doesn't happen that much.

I checked out game of thrones mod and I'm impressed. I took the Lannisters and Tywin died within a year or two. The imp became king... with Cersei as his regent. Of course, that naturally meant trouble.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Be nice, eh Cersei?

And then Tyrion went to war against the Targaryens and was imprisoned.

There is however something I don't like about this mod. The members of your dynasty will often ask for titles, which you often can't give. If you don't give them, you'll get a tyranny effect. This pretty much makes playing Freys impossible

[Beskar]

Anyone interested in possibly doing an Org compilation of user tweaks and what not? It seems many of us has ideas and tweaks we would like to do, so perhaps throwing some of these together might produce something nice.

[Monk]

Anyone interested in possibly doing an Org compilation of user tweaks and what not? It seems many of us has ideas and tweaks we would like to do, so perhaps throwing some of these together might produce something nice.

Yeah that sounds like fun. So far the things i have changed are relatively minor but imo go a long way to helping the feel of the game. Those include the change to the female dynastic penalty, making all religions playable, and the ability to have absolute-cognatic no matter your culture.

I've also been experimenting with time locking crown authority. It was an idea I got from the Dawn of Kingdoms mod and really seemed to stop the AI spamming its authority in its tracks, simply add a year requirement - sounds simple enough right? I haven't had the chance to do extensive observer games to see how this affects overall balance but in the mod in question it slows down the military build up quite effectively.

[Monk]

Bump for content.

As i compiled most of the tweaks i've made to my CKII experience i realized most are in line of allowing female characters to simply do more. I understand that medieval life wasn't exactly about equality, but i've goten sick of all my genius daughters and sisters sitting around court rolling their eyes at me. So here's a mod archive of my gameplay tweaks. See if they strike your fancy:

1. Expanded Council -

Women are now able to serve as Steward, Chancellor and Spymaster regardless of their relation to the player character. Original idea from the minimod CK1 Council by the Chancellor, all I've done is maintain it through the various patches.

Under these changes not only can female characters be those three jobs but all events seem to fire normally, and they can have ambitions to get those jobs.



- Modded files include :
Events/job_steward.txt
events/job_chancellor.txt
common/job_titles
common/objectives.txt

2. Nerfed penalties for female rulers -

It's something i've been meaning to do for weeks now and hearing Kekvit's story inspired me to finally make the change. I haven't removed the penalty completely due to all of the entries in opinion_modifiers being hard coded. I did however nerf them down to inconsequential values. You now suffer a -2 penalty with all your male vassals (down from -10) for being a female ruler. Another -2 for having a female heir, which gives a total of a -4 penalty (down from -20), which relates to minor grumbles from your vassals instead of full on angsty rage.



I didn't touch the short reign penalty so watch out for that if you use the Ruler designer!

Modified files:
common/opinion_modifiers.txt

3. All religions playable -

The most common and widespread change of them all. The muslim DLC will likely make this change a lot harder to do but from now until patch 1.06 this one works grand. A simple 'playable = yes' to all religions has been added, letting you play Tengri, Pagan, Zoroastrian and Muslim factions.

modified files:
common/religion.txt

4. Absolute-cognatic for everybody!

The first change I ever made, a simple edit to the succession_laws file to ensure that anyone who follows the western faiths can use absolute-cognatic, letting women inherit on the same grounds as men do. The -10 to male dynasty members penalty was left intact because i felt it made sense to have at least a small negative, seeing as the other gender extreme carries with it one as well (-10 female dynasty opinion).

modified files:
decisions/succession_laws.txt




Full list of changed files:
Events/job_steward.txt
events/job_chancellor.txt
common/job_titles
common/objectives.txt
common/religion.txt
common/opinion_modifiers.txt
decisions/succession_laws.txt

Left out the changes to crown laws due to me not liking the results of attempting to time lock CA - it doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. While new kings who have no CA established must abide by the year rules - those who already have CA above low can ignore it. IT gives a HUGE headstart to the Byz/Seljuks/Shia and I think those three powers have a big enough lead at the start of 1066

Installation is unzipping the archive and dropping it in your /mod directory, then just check it in the launcher.

EDIT: left out the .mod file. Added it in.

[rickinator9]

Left out the changes to crown laws due to me not liking the results of attempting to time lock CA - it doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. While new kings who have no CA established must abide by the year rules - those who already have CA above low can ignore it. IT gives a HUGE headstart to the Byz/Seljuks/Shia and I think those three powers have a big enough lead at the start of 1066

You could always try to make it a little bit different. Scale up the time requirement for each level of CA. Like 10 years to institute minimal, 20 year to institute medium, 35 to institute high and 50 to institute absolute.

As for messing with files, I am making a mod set in the time of Rome. I am also helping a Tamriel mod.

[Monk]

You could always try to make it a little bit different. Scale up the time requirement for each level of CA. Like 10 years to institute minimal, 20 year to institute medium, 35 to institute high and 50 to institute absolute.

As for messing with files, I am making a mod set in the time of Rome. I am also helping a Tamriel mod.

Sort of like a "crown law has not changed in x years"? Hm, didnt think of that, I wonder if I can.

What i was attempting to do was lock the levels based on what year it currently is, but other modifiers will overrule that if you already have a crown law above low. I haven't quite figured out how to make that work in the way that I'd like. Maybe you can't, or maybe someone who is better at modding than I could figure it out.

[Beskar]

I like! I will add those to my current mod file, because I like them.

Here are the tweaks I am working on.

Jewish religion (Judaism, Minim, Epicursim) and cultures ( Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim), titular Kingdom of Israel.
titular empires (Latin, Shiite, Sunni) New:(Albion, Iberia, Nordland, Russia)
"Smoother Borders", a few of the duchies will be edited so they have clean borders, such as Savoie, which sort of spreads ugly across west-italy and eastern france.

The ones I already got (such as religion) you already put in yours. There is one difference I got in which you haven't got, Consanguinity (The successors are chosen based on their strength). The text needs to be added to the .csv file, but I included it into your tweak file.

[Kekvit Irae]

Just a suggestion... How about updating the first page with the tweaks and mods? This way one can easily find them without having to go through several mouse clicks to search the thread.

[Monk]

I like! I will add those to my current mod file, because I like them.

Here are the tweaks I am working on.

Jewish religion (Judaism, Minim, Epicursim) and cultures ( Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim), titular Kingdom of Israel.
titular empires (Latin, Shiite, Sunni) New:(Albion, Iberia, Nordland, Russia)

This might be relevant to your efforts: it's a step by step on adding new kingdoms to your game. For titular kingdoms it's just a matter of ignoring the part where you assign duchies as apart of its de jure, and putting the title in the appropriate category in the landed_titles.txt file.

[Monk]

Just a suggestion... How about updating the first page with the tweaks and mods? This way one can easily find them without having to go through several mouse clicks to search the thread.

Done. OP is updated with an edited section that reflects the change in the thread and will be updated as people share their work.

[Kekvit Irae]

Playing my own mod which eliminates female penalties altogether (will post once I refine it to my liking). Started in Leinster, Ireland, 1066 as a female Countess. Married a Prince of Denmark and then had a son. My father-in-law died and made my new husband King, and named my son as his heir. An ornery Spymaster with a 61% plot power insured that he tripped on some stairs. My son is now King of Denmark.
Oh lawdy, this game is hilarious if played right.

[Monk]

That reminds me, has anybody seen a mod that gets rid of the fertility penalty with a large court? If not, would there be any way to mod it myself?

Yup, its in defines.txt in your common folder. (remember, .txt not .lua! Thats a different defines file altogether!) I got curious so i started looking around and found it. The base is 30 characters per court and at that size the file explains every couple will on average have one less child. Experiment to your hearts desire!

Playing my own mod which eliminates female penalties altogether (will post once I refine it to my liking). Started in Leinster, Ireland, 1066 as a female Countess. Married a Prince of Denmark and then had a son. My father-in-law died and made my new husband King, and named my son as his heir. An ornery Spymaster with a 61% plot power insured that he tripped on some stairs. My son is now King of Denmark.
Oh lawdy, this game is hilarious if played right.

Now that's how you play CK2!

[Greyblades]

Not bad, but I've assassinated an entire family tree in one day to inherit scotland.[/smug]
:P

[Ishmael]

Thanks Monk! I've added a '0' to the end of that 30 and increased the base number of children to 3; lets see how this plays.

[rickinator9]

Dev diary!
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...am-Dev-Diary-1

[johnhughthom]

Not bad, but I've assassinated an entire family tree in one day to inherit scotland.[/smug]
:P

Gamey lameness is a reason to be smug?

[Greyblades]

It wasnt gamey, I spent years getting enough gold for multiple assassins! It's a valid tactic.

[Monk]

Dev diary!
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...am-Dev-Diary-1

For flavour, we have also made it so that duchy tier and above titles held by rulers of Iranian, Arabic and Turkish cultures are named after the ruling dynasty. For example, the Kingdom of Egypt automatically becomes the Fatimid Sultanate while the Fatimids are in power (though the original name is also used where appropriate.) In case the same dynasty holds several high rank titles, only the highest is named after the dynasty. Thus, we can have both a Seljuk Sultanate and a Sultanate of Rum, both ruled by the Seljuk dynasty. Randomly generated characters of these cultures automatically get a dynasty name suitable to name states after (ending with -id or -n, etc).

Lastly (for this dev diary), there are seven new creatable empires (the Arabian Empire, the Empire of Persia, Britannia, Scandinavia, Francia, Spain and Russia) and a whole slew of new de jure kingdoms, mostly to break up the old kingdom of Khazaria. Now, I know the addition of the new empires is controversial, but the creation conditions are designed to be fairly difficult to achieve, so the AI will very rarely do it. We want players to have the imperial option to strive for if they so desire - the Unions turned out to be a popular feature in Europa Universalis III.

Oh my god this is amazing.

[Monk]

Apologies once again for double post but here's another mod for you guys: A quick tweak to the defines.lua file to ensure that everything in the ruler designer is free. Want to create a super king who is equal parts dashing, daring, strong and intelligent? Want to make him a 16 year old prodigy without a single flaw? Well now you can! Here is an edited defines.lua which will allow every trait to be free in the designer.







Files modified:
common/defines.lua - http://www.mediafire.com/?0cl7ya2kr3rpkpy

Be warned that making incredibly overpowered rulers and breaking your regional balance may result from this. Use it wisely: or don't! Either way. This mod is also compatible with my other tweaks, just drop it into your mod's (or the base game's if you dont have a mod) common folder and you're good to go.

edit: had a scare and thought the defines I edited affected more than just the ruler designer. Turns out they do not and all is well. Link re-added.

[rickinator9]

Oh my god this is amazing.

Certainly. My only concern is that Persia is a kingdom and an empire.

[The Stranger]

we need a new contest/challenge! i want to win this dlc

[Greyblades]

First person to turn HRE and byzantium into one empire wins!

[Beskar]

Oh my god this is amazing.

I think I will stop doing my edits then, it seems the DLC will make what I wanted (Britannia, Scandinavia, Spain and Russia empires) a reality and it comes out during the month.

[rickinator9]

I think I will stop doing my edits then, it seems the DLC will make what I wanted (Britannia, Scandinavia, Spain and Russia empires) a reality and it comes out during the month.

I hope they will fix byzantine de jure. It's very inaccurate.