Crusader Kings II

[Monk]

It looks like Raiding is restricted solely to pagan faiths, with bonuses given to Tengri and Norse rulers in particular. That's a solid restriction, otherwise any time a crusader state would pop up, they'd get endlessly raided by their good Muslim neighbors. Not exactly fair when those provinces have to eat 15-20 years of significant recruitment penalties anyway.

Looks like title level will be really up and down through a Pagan dynasty's lifetime. A count of an obscure province (who's smart and picks his time right) can amass a fortune raiding and use it to advance their rank. Definitely sounds fun

[Beskar]

I have to be honest, I was never looking forward to a Pagan expansion, it was a shrugged off moment, going "Bleh..", but they really made it appealing by adding tons of new mechanics and best of all, the new start date. One problem I find with CK2 and EU3 is after a while, you simply look and know exactly how the game will play out. With the new start date, even the old areas are worth re-exploring through their new environments. Best of all, England is not united in any sense, which is a refreshing change.

[Monk]

I have to be honest, I was never looking forward to a Pagan expansion, it was a shrugged off moment, going "Bleh..", but they really made it appealing by adding tons of new mechanics and best of all, the new start date. One problem I find with CK2 and EU3 is after a while, you simply look and know exactly how the game will play out. With the new start date, even the old areas are worth re-exploring through their new environments. Best of all, England is not united in any sense, which is a refreshing change.

I think a lot of players feel the same way. I mean think about the eastern side of the map and how many times you've actually played over there since the game came out. What usually happens is any power who grows in the east is challenged by the mongols just as they are starting to consolidate. Unless you're a speed freak and can unite a strong state way before they arrive, you're in deep trouble no matter what. I can personally count the number of times I've started as eastern factions on a single hand.

The extra start date and the benefit of an extra 200 years makes many areas of play that were previously unwise choices very interesting. What's got my interest currently is building a Zoroastrian Persian Empire over those 400 years and then fighting off the Mongols at my apex . I think it'd make for a hell of a game.

[Monk]

This thread is incredible.

[xploring]

Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods - Dev Diary 3 - The Heathens Are Coming!

This one is about pagan's options for waging war. There are 3 screenshots too.

Prepared Invasions

Norse Pagans, or Vikings as they are known to the common man, have the unique ability to launch Prepared Invasions against non-pagans. This undertaking can only be done by small to middling Viking realms, and the target of your invasion can't be too small or too big (it needs to have between 9 and 40 holdings).

The way this works is that you declare your intention to invade a particular realm. This will cost you a lot of prestige (which can be gained through looting, as explained in the previous Dev Diary), and you'll have two years to prepare before going to war. During this time warriors from across the Norse lands will flock to your banner, hungry for loot and plunder. Needless to say, if you fail to declare war before these two years are up, you will lose face. ("Events will occur continuously where you are granted troops and ships for the invasion as warriors trickle in." from reply in comment)



Subjugation

Pagans won't shy away from fighting each other, and all pagan rulers may make use of the new Subjugation casus belli. This lets them attack other pagans within a specified target kingdom, but it can only be used every ten years unless your ruler has the new ”Become King” ambition. If you are the victor of a Subjugation war, you will vassalize all lords within the target kingdom.

Pagan Conquest

Pagans can always declare war for control over a single neighboring county, and in addition to this, Norse Pagans may also go to war for any coastal county.

Tribal Invasion

This casus belli can only be used by independent Altaic (Turkish and Mongol) and Magyar pagan rulers, and it targets entire kingdoms in what amounts to massive horde invasions. You may have been on the receiving end of these before, but now you'll finally get a chance to unleash them yourself as you ride in from the steppes to carve out an empire.




And finally, a few more items that have a significant impact on pagans and how they wage war:

Non-pagans suffer from a significantly smaller supply limit when in pagan territory, which limits their ability to march massive armies towards the heathen homelands at the start of the game. This penalty will eventually be removed as you progress through the Military Organization technologies.

As was touched upon in the last Dev Diary, Norse and Tengri pagans lose prestige if they have been at peace for too long. The Suomenusko, Romuva and Slavic pagans are less focused on offensive warfare and do not have this penalty. In addition, their warriors enjoy several defensive bonuses, especially when fighting in provinces with their own religion.

[Monk]

Screenshot 3 confirms (or very likely does) a new face pack DLC. I see a norse helm design i've not seen before Also, dat beard on Rurik.

The restrictions on the pagan subjugation are interesting to say the least. With the "Become King" ambition we'll be seeing realms uniting fairly quickly beneath strong pagan overlords, but will become significantly weaker upon the warlords death with the lock in to Gavelkind.

Remember that unless you specifically start with Primogeniture it takes you until High CA to get it, and since Pagans are locked to gavelkind from the start, we'll likely see a quick consolidation of a number of realms and then massive internal problems for them until they can get strong leaders again. (And since the AI is typically not smart enough to swap to Senority or Elective unless by faction revolt, this could go on for centuries in some kingdoms..) I think that's going to be really interesting to watch from both a balance and player perspective.

I do not like Norse getting free CBs on all coastals. That's what raiding is for! Without some restrictions we can likely expect a repeat of what Republics used to do and just DoW random minors from halfway across the map. Will have to see how it plays out, but it's a potential concern.

Love the idea that once you get too powerful you can no longer prepare invasions. Looks like that feature was made for the little guy. In the live stream the dev was still able to call invasions after having formed Norway, so you probably won't run into the limitation until you've formed two kingdoms.

Great list. Some great stuff in there, some balance concerns but nothing a bit of modding won't fix. thanks for the share xploring.

[xploring]

Live stream about the Old Gods on the 22nd of Monday at 20CET. It will be on Technologies.

Funny thread on common misspelling in CK2

[Beskar]

Looks like title level will be really up and down through a Pagan dynasty's lifetime. A count of an obscure province (who's smart and picks his time right) can amass a fortune raiding and use it to advance their rank. Definitely sounds fun

With Gravelkind too, I can imagine a lot of creation and dispersing.

One thing I have to admit, is I find gravelkind far too messy in the way it is implemented in CK2. Shame you cannot assign which estates go to which sons.