Crusader Kings 2 Thread III: Keeping Up With The Karlings

[Flickerdart]

Water, rivers, and fog are off. There's a mod that reduces terrain textures, but it's not up-to-date with the current patch.

Retinues are the only explanation I can come up with for rebelling vassals always being able to pop up with more armies than an entire nation (demense = in size to vassal, plus levies). An extra 400-800 troops is a big deal in the first 50 years.

A retinue is not 400-800 soldiers big in the first 50 years. Rebelling vassals may have numerous advantages over you - mercenaries, event-granted troops, a better relationship with their vassals, a higher Martial score, more castles inside their counties, etc.

[OrcusMcP]

Also, early kingdoms are very decentralized. What you can raise from your own demesne and your vassals can very easily be less than what a strong vassal can raise personally. If you don't keep much money on hand while your vassals do (and they often do) then they can easily get a mercenary advantage.

[Artanis]

There's also the fact that you don't get levies from vassals of vassals. So a rebel will not only have his personal levies, but will have his own liege-levies that you could never use before. Depending on crown laws and the number and power of the sub-vassals in question, a rebel could field a hell of a lot more troops than expected.

[Ionbound]

So I just bought the base game and messed around in Ireland for a bit. What expansions should I get that are the best/most enhancing/most fun? I can probably only pick up a couple at this point as most of my money is going to the Battle For Zendikar prerelease this weekend.

[Cristo Meyers]

So I just bought the base game and messed around in Ireland for a bit. What expansions should I get that are the best/most enhancing/most fun? I can probably only pick up a couple at this point as most of my money is going to the Battle For Zendikar prerelease this weekend.

Way of life is a good one. It opens up the character focuses. Legacy of Rome opens up retinues. Those are the first two that come to mind. You only need The Old Gods or Sword of Islam if you want to play a pagan or Muslim.

I'd also wait anyway. CK2 goes on sale pretty regularly. Odds are good you'll be able to pick your dlc on the cheap

[IthilanorStPete]

So I just bought the base game and messed around in Ireland for a bit. What expansions should I get that are the best/most enhancing/most fun? I can probably only pick up a couple at this point as most of my money is going to the Battle For Zendikar prerelease this weekend.

Seconding Way of Life and Legacy of Rome, especially Way of Life. Sons of Abraham doesn't add that much, but it's applicable to any Christian game. Sword of Islam, The Republic, and Rajas of India are only needed if you want to play as a Muslim/republic/South Asian. The Old Gods adds paganism and the 867 start date; it's a lot of content, but it can wait. Charlemagne only really adds the 769 start date. And the there's Sunset Invasion; while hilarious, it's definitely a little superfluous.

[Artanis]

So I just bought the base game and messed around in Ireland for a bit. What expansions should I get that are the best/most enhancing/most fun? I can probably only pick up a couple at this point as most of my money is going to the Battle For Zendikar prerelease this weekend.

To second and expand on what Cristo Meyers (edit: and that filthy ninja, IthilanorStPete) said:

The big ones are Legacy of Rome and Way of Life, which open up stuff for everybody to use. Retinues and Focuses are kind of a big deal.

I'm also a HUGE fan of the Ruler Designer.

While pretty much all the expansions open up at least a bit of general stuff, most of them are pretty specific in what they enable. Sword of Islam, The Republic, The Old Gods, Rajas of India, and Horse Lords don't do much more than enable Muslims, Republics, Pagans, Indians, and Nomads (respectively), so only pick up the ones corresponding to what you want to play. At the bottom of the list, I'd put Sons of Abraham (enables Jews and gives a few Christian/Muslim doodads) and Charlemagne (gives you an even earlier start date and a couple realm-management thingies).

[OrcusMcP]

Yeah, gonna mostly echo everyone else. Way of Life is a definite must get, but I'm cooler on Legacy of Rome. I will also go against everyone else and say Sons of Abraham is a must get. It doesn't look like much on the surface, but the Papal Curia, expanded heresies and many, many events that come with it are awesome.

But yes, sales are common. If you're having a decent enough time with the base game, then just get Way of Life for now and pick up other ones on sales.

[Guancyto]

If you do get Way of Life, you also want to get one of the mods that tones down AI lords and Seduction focus, otherwise the game quickly becomes a bit silly. (Medieval lords screwing around isn't silly - but screwing around with the King's wife is treason!)

[Leecros]

And the there's Sunset Invasion; while hilarious, it's definitely a little superfluous.

Sunset Invasion might be...more than a little superfluous. However, i do enjoy it for what it's meant to be...a major threat for Western Europe to deal with. Western Europe was almost always pretty safe from the Hordes that invade to the east and tend to stop....at their most distant....just short of Germany and Scandinavia.

If you do get Way of Life, you also want to get one of the mods that tones down AI lords and Seduction focus, otherwise the game quickly becomes a bit silly. (Medieval lords screwing around isn't silly - but screwing around with the King's wife is treason!)

To be fair, the AI have toned down their seduction quite a bit. No longer are 3/4 of my children with my wife not actually mine. Whereas before when seduction was really, really bad. You would marry someone and almost like clockwork a few months later you would get the "My wife is pregnant...but i was a way, wasn't i?" event.







Also, speaking of my personal game.

That day when all the female vassals in the realm rise up against you just because you're an ugly hunchback.... i mean, who wouldn't want Quasimodo as King?

[Flickerdart]

That day when all the female vassals in the realm rise up against you just because you're an ugly hunchback.... i mean, who wouldn't want Quasimodo as King?

Did you intentionally set up such a realm?

[Artanis]

Did you intentionally set up such a realm?

It sounded to me more like he was saying that some of his vassals were female, and said subset of vassals rose up against him.

[Flickerdart]

It sounded to me more like he was saying that some of his vassals were female, and said subset of vassals rose up against him.

Oh. I was hoping there was some kind of way to make sure your vassals are all female, for hilarious shenanigans where all their children are your bastards and have claims on the throne in addition to their own realms.

[Corvus]

If you do get Way of Life, you also want to get one of the mods that tones down AI lords and Seduction focus, otherwise the game quickly becomes a bit silly. (Medieval lords screwing around isn't silly - but screwing around with the King's wife is treason!)

Intrigue can also get a little iffy - I had a case were a mere count kidnapped and imprisoned the man who was not just his king but also the Emperor's son and heir. And there was nothing I as the Emperor could do about it. In reality if someone did that they would be reduced to a smear, but it wasn't even counted a treasonous act.

[Leecros]

Oh. I was hoping there was some kind of way to make sure your vassals are all female, for hilarious shenanigans where all their children are your bastards and have claims on the throne in addition to their own realms.

That would be...uh...Interesting. However, Artanis had it right. Literally every female direct vassal of mine joined an independence war against my ugly, hunchback king when he took the throne and the biggest negative modifier was from him being Ugly and Hunchback(a total of -50 for the opposite sex...equivalent to ambitious).

That said, I didn't know I had that many female vassals until that moment.

[mythmonster2]

We currently seem to have an abundance of CKII games in this subforum for now, so I figured I'd ask, what do people think about a potential After the End AAR? I've ended up with quite a unique situation. I started as a one-province pirate in Canada, intending to do a pseudo-observe game with some raiding here and there. However, my lovely wife ended up doing a prepared invasion of Nova Scotia and won, suddenly leaving me with a considerable amount of power. I think that there are many places I could go with it. If people are interested, I'd probably end up putting it on the Paradox forums, and just copy-pasting it here, too.

[OrcusMcP]

We currently seem to have an abundance of CKII games in this subforum for now, so I figured I'd ask, what do people think about a potential After the End AAR? I've ended up with quite a unique situation. I started as a one-province pirate in Canada, intending to do a pseudo-observe game with some raiding here and there. However, my lovely wife ended up doing a prepared invasion of Nova Scotia and won, suddenly leaving me with a considerable amount of power. I think that there are many places I could go with it. If people are interested, I'd probably end up putting it on the Paradox forums, and just copy-pasting it here, too.

Yes, please! I am very in favour of learning about Barret's Privateers.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Omg is the title actually Barrett's Privateers? You can play as Sid Barrett? Is one of his courtiers 17 Quebecois? Or perhaps 23 with the Crippled trait?

That song is legitimately one of my favourites

[mythmonster2]

Sadly, no, I was just a randomly-generated Mi'kmaq count of Anticosti Island. But at least you guys gave me an idea for the thread title.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

BAH humbug.

Well I know what my next After The End playthrough will be though.

[Artanis]

Sadly, no, I was just a randomly-generated Mi'kmaq count of Anticosti Island. But at least you guys gave me an idea for the thread title.

And here I thought we'd already picked one

[Leecros]

I really wish there were mechanics to make disconnected provinces independent, or inspiring the AI to connect their land, or something. Here i am in the year 1400 after starting a 1066 game and the world map is just a mess.


The Holy Roman Empire have their De Jure land and a couple of duchies in Anatolia and Aquitaine, plus a single county in Ireland and Spain. The Byzantine Empire has been reduced to The Balkans and Georgia. The Mongol Empire has provinces in Ruthenia, Cumania, and of course Mongolia...all disconnected. And we don't talk about the Seljuk, but we will because it adds to the point. The Seljuks held land from Anatollia all the way to India and north to Turkestan before collapsing into roughly a dozen independent states and rendering the Seljuk in 5 or 6 different pieces.

The map is just absolutely hideous. Plus games that start even earlier tend to have even more border gore. i don't really know how to fix it though... Way back when the game first came out there was a distance to capital mechanic which made it so that the farther a vassal's capital was from yours, the more rebellious they were. It was eventually taken out, because it was a bit too extreme...England would win crusades and then immediately all of the Holy Land vassals he appointed would have like 20-30% rebellion chance...and 80-90% after the euphoria of getting land went away. So it made overseas vassals constantly rebel.

The only thing i can think of is to tie it to Kingdoms somehow. Like if you can get to that piece of land from a Kingdom title held within your realm, it'll be safe. Otherwise...it does something? constant rebellion? Immediate independence because they don't recognize such a distant realm? who knows?

So here's some examples. Say there was a crusade and the King of England won, got the Kingdom of Jerusalem. That should be fine and any conquests that The King of England does off of that piece of land should be fine too. However...if the King of England somehow gets control of one or two counties in Egypt... then there's a problem, because he doesn't have any Kingdom-Level titles bordering it.

Obviously there would be some issues to work out...for example Say...Brittany wouldn't be able conquer Ireland or Wales(a typical early move to avoid wars with france). Scandinavia would have a much harder time conquering Britain, etc... Also it doesn't really make much sense that a vassal you just gave a title says "Whelp, we're too far away to be loyal to you, bye!". However, at the same time it doesn't really make much sense that a duke in Ireland would swear loyalty to someone half-way across the (Known) world. The other issue is that it would make inheriting land a bit difficult...say you inherited a duchy in Italy as Galicia. That would certainly cause issues under this idea.

Perhaps make it something like 'if the count/duke isn't connected to at least a Kingdom-level title in like 75 years or something, then it'll drift out of the realm'. This would also have the secondary effect of making it so that De Jure Drift didn't do silly stuff. In my current game, Syria has their starting de jure land...and then they have random duchies out of Arabia that are completely disconnected from their starting de jure land.

[Rockphed]

I really wish there were mechanics to make disconnected provinces independent, or inspiring the AI to connect their land, or something. Here i am in the year 1400 after starting a 1066 game and the world map is just a mess.


The Holy Roman Empire have their De Jure land and a couple of duchies in Anatolia and Aquitaine, plus a single county in Ireland and Spain. The Byzantine Empire has been reduced to The Balkans and Georgia. The Mongol Empire has provinces in Ruthenia, Cumania, and of course Mongolia...all disconnected. And we don't talk about the Seljuk, but we will because it adds to the point. The Seljuks held land from Anatollia all the way to India and north to Turkestan before collapsing into roughly a dozen independent states and rendering the Seljuk in 5 or 6 different pieces.

The map is just absolutely hideous. Plus games that start even earlier tend to have even more border gore. i don't really know how to fix it though... Way back when the game first came out there was a distance to capital mechanic which made it so that the farther a vassal's capital was from yours, the more rebellious they were. It was eventually taken out, because it was a bit too extreme...England would win crusades and then immediately all of the Holy Land vassals he appointed would have like 20-30% rebellion chance...and 80-90% after the euphoria of getting land went away. So it made overseas vassals constantly rebel.

The only thing i can think of is to tie it to Kingdoms somehow. Like if you can get to that piece of land from a Kingdom title held within your realm, it'll be safe. Otherwise...it does something? constant rebellion? Immediate independence because they don't recognize such a distant realm? who knows?

So here's some examples. Say there was a crusade and the King of England won, got the Kingdom of Jerusalem. That should be fine and any conquests that The King of England does off of that piece of land should be fine too. However...if the King of England somehow gets control of one or two counties in Egypt... then there's a problem, because he doesn't have any Kingdom-Level titles bordering it.

Obviously there would be some issues to work out...for example Say...Brittany wouldn't be able conquer Ireland or Wales(a typical early move to avoid wars with france). Scandinavia would have a much harder time conquering Britain, etc... Also it doesn't really make much sense that a vassal you just gave a title says "Whelp, we're too far away to be loyal to you, bye!". However, at the same time it doesn't really make much sense that a duke in Ireland would swear loyalty to someone half-way across the (Known) world. The other issue is that it would make inheriting land a bit difficult...say you inherited a duchy in Italy as Galicia. That would certainly cause issues under this idea.

Perhaps make it something like 'if the count/duke isn't connected to at least a Kingdom-level title in like 75 years or something, then it'll drift out of the realm'. This would also have the secondary effect of making it so that De Jure Drift didn't do silly stuff. In my current game, Syria has their starting de jure land...and then they have random duchies out of Arabia that are completely disconnected from their starting de jure land.

I could have sworn the Vassal limit mechanics were supposed to help with all that. Obviously you need to knife rulers with border problems so their distant vassals leave them.

[Leecros]

I could have sworn the Vassal limit mechanics were supposed to help with all that. Obviously you need to knife rulers with border problems so their distant vassals leave them.

Vassal Limit only really comes into play when the top-tier ruler, The King or The Emperor takes land and then gives that land to people who weren't vassals before.


The problem comes in when the ruler isn't even close to their vassal limit like The Mongols and Seljuks in my game who are just crippled and a mess all over the place, but nobody around them is really powerful enough to profit; it's a vassal, or a vassal of a vassal that takes the land(probably through external inheritance); Or the top liege gives the land to somebody who is already a vassal of theirs. All of which results in a null increase to the number of direct vassals that ruler has.

[Artanis]

So I finally decided to try a couple mods, Shattered World and Better Gender Law.

Shattered World is kinda fun, though the AI is even more terrible at it than usual. Other realms rarely get to three counties before either Gavelkind-sploding or being dogpiled by eighty bajillion neighbors using the mod-specific "War of Aggression" CB. It's ameliorated somewhat by using the console to "help" large-enough realms be wealthy enough to actually make the higher-level titles they earn (thereby preventing Gavelkind-splosions), but some tweaks are still needed.

Better Gender Law is a godsend. I can be an actual Catholic and still use that 27 Martial woman as a Commander? Yes please!

I also downloaded CK2+, but haven't gotten around to trying it yet.


Edit: Whoops, wrong mod name


Edit 2 (so as not to double-post):

Something seriously weird happened in my current game: the King of Ireland somehow wound up Occitan, and now most of Ireland has been converted. I actually had to launch an invasion to save Irish as a culture before the last two Irish counts fell victim to De Jure wars. I plan to somehow get an Irishman back on the throne there, but still have yet to figure out exactly how to go about doing so. It'll probably wind up being the usual, "just conquer the place and put Irish people on the thrones" method, but I'm hoping for something a little more...elegant.

[Leecros]

Something seriously weird happened in my current game: the King of Ireland somehow wound up Occitan, and now most of Ireland has been converted. I actually had to launch an invasion to save Irish as a culture before the last two Irish counts fell victim to De Jure wars. I plan to somehow get an Irishman back on the throne there, but still have yet to figure out exactly how to go about doing so. It'll probably wind up being the usual, "just conquer the place and put Irish people on the thrones" method, but I'm hoping for something a little more...elegant.

This is my favorite part of the game...when a random culture/religion guy manages to get on the throne of some nation that you really shouldn't think is possible. I recall the exact opposite thing happening in one of my games. An Irishman managed to become King of France. The only reason i noticed was because it was right after the Celtic Portraits were released and i saw that creepy Celtic female child portrait and had to take a closer look.

I still think that female child portrait in the Celtic Pack is creepy. Her eyes are much wider open compared to the other female child portraits and her iris is very very green. Something about it just weirds me out.

[mythmonster2]

My After the End AAR is now up! Go give it a look if you're interested.

[mythmonster2]

Sorry for the double post, but there's a great sale going on Steam right now. Everything except Horse Lords-related stuff is 75% off, meaning DLC's are only $3.75 or $2.50. Great time to pick up missing DLCs or portrait packs.

[Artanis]

I have discovered something even more terrifying than 70,000 Seljuk event troops:

70,000 Seljuk event troops in a Shattered World game.

For reference, there are only two or three other militaries in the entire world with even 10K troops, and one of those is mine

[Leecros]

I can't help but feel as if Horse Lords still needs quite a bit of work. It seems like not more than a couple of decades pass before a khan decides to settle down, becomes independent from the khagan and either goes on to be conquered, or just becomes this weird empire-tier title.


I feel like in order to settle down and become feudal, they shouldn't immediately gain independence. There's enough penalty between nomads and feudals that It's fairly likely that a feudal vassal will be rebellious towards their overlord at some point.

I also feel as if they should settle down into Kingdom-level titles instead of Emperor-level titles(see: Magyars into Hungary). It's weird enough, although understandable considering the mechanics involved that i've seen up to six to eight Khagan's at any given time on the map. It can make the de jure look ridiculous and the emperor tier titles lose value if any jerk can come along and name themselves emperor of this little plot of land. There's currently 8 Emperor-tier titles on the eastern half of my current game's map. Two have settled nomads have become de-jure, one is still titular, Arabia, Byzantium, and then the rest are Khagans.

Also the ability for the Khans and Khagan's to send their kids off to become mercenaries is fun, but them coming back as a different religion happens way too often. Currently in my game, of the three Khagan's: There's a Jewish one, a Catholic one, and a Hindu one and none of the remaining Khans are Tengri or Manichean. Rendering those religions basically extinct.

I love the changes that Horse Lords add, i love how the nomad government type actually feels different compared to the rest(barring Republic which is also different). However, it really needs a bit of fixing. I like to avoid the term "Broken", because that tends to imply that things aren't working right. I think it's working right, it just needs balanced a bit.