Crusader Kings 2 Thread III: Keeping Up With The Karlings

[Artanis]

To add to what the others have said, a couple of comments about the Ruler Designer:

First, there's a mod or two that changes the Ruler Designer around a bit. One in particular makes all traits cost 0 points. So as long as you trust yourself not to go overboard, that might be worth considering.


Now, on to traits:


Honestly, I've found that one of the most powerful things in the Ruler Designer is to get "sex appeal" bonuses on a female ruler. IMO, they are VERY undercosted when put on a female, especially Attractive. Female rulers get -10 vassal opinion, but Attractive will give you a +30 bonus to the 98% of all vassals ever who are attracted to females. Start with the Seduction focus and seduce a few people (doing so while pregnant will prevent bastards), and within five years or so you'll have a +70 (80 sex appeal - 10 cooties) opinion boost with virtually all your vassals. By the time you lose that bonus (females stop getting attraction bonuses at age 45), you'll have had a lot of time to build up relations in various other ways.

On a related note, you have to avoid traits with attraction penalties for the exact same reason, but there's plenty of ways to get points back that don't involve being unattractive anyways. Taking Arbitrary instead of Just, for example, turns that +70 into +50, but gets you 26 points back to spend on restoring the stat difference and getting other stuff. Craven is similarly pretty effective. As the cherry on top, you're likely to lose traits as time goes on, and losing Arbitrary is better than losing Just

Another good trait is Wounded because it tends to go away quickly. You get extra points - which you can put into health to offset the health penalty for Wounded if you like - to use and only a short-term penalty. Hell, it even gets replaced with Scarred when it goes away, getting you a bit of free Prestige!

Next, consider what you're really getting out of a trait. Genius is utterly amazing, giving you +5 to all stats and +5 vassal opinion...but costs 30 points. Quick + Ambitious costs 23 points and gets you +5 to all stats. So by taking Genius over Quick+Ambitious, you're paying 7 points to get +5 vassal opinion and having a Quick child or two replaced by a Genius (which can be offset by marrying a Genius). Note that Shrewd is similar to Ambitious in giving +2 to all stats, but I can't remember its cost off the top of my head.

tl;dr: My typical Ruler Designer setup involves a female ruler with Attractive, Quick, Wounded, Craven, a bit of +health, and some other stuff to taste; then starting with Groom An Heir + Seduction focus, matri-marrying a Genius, and then seducing the highest-Intrigue Lustful courtiers available during pregnancies until the character has the Master Seductress trait*. Great stats, ridiculously high vassal opinions, plenty of Quick/Genius kids to choose from, and zero bastards.

*Always pick "Veni, Vidi, Vici" when successful.

[yawndareray]

To add to what the others have said, a couple of comments about the Ruler Designer:

First, there's a mod or two that changes the Ruler Designer around a bit. One in particular makes all traits cost 0 points. So as long as you trust yourself not to go overboard, that might be worth considering.


Now, on to traits:


Honestly, I've found that one of the most powerful things in the Ruler Designer is to get "sex appeal" bonuses on a female ruler. IMO, they are VERY undercosted when put on a female, especially Attractive. Female rulers get -10 vassal opinion, but Attractive will give you a +30 bonus to the 98% of all vassals ever who are attracted to females. Start with the Seduction focus and seduce a few people (doing so while pregnant will prevent bastards), and within five years or so you'll have a +70 (80 sex appeal - 10 cooties) opinion boost with virtually all your vassals. By the time you lose that bonus (females stop getting attraction bonuses at age 45), you'll have had a lot of time to build up relations in various other ways.

On a related note, you have to avoid traits with attraction penalties for the exact same reason, but there's plenty of ways to get points back that don't involve being unattractive anyways. Taking Arbitrary instead of Just, for example, turns that +70 into +50, but gets you 26 points back to spend on restoring the stat difference and getting other stuff. Craven is similarly pretty effective. As the cherry on top, you're likely to lose traits as time goes on, and losing Arbitrary is better than losing Just

Another good trait is Wounded because it tends to go away quickly. You get extra points - which you can put into health to offset the health penalty for Wounded if you like - to use and only a short-term penalty. Hell, it even gets replaced with Scarred when it goes away, getting you a bit of free Prestige!

Next, consider what you're really getting out of a trait. Genius is utterly amazing, giving you +5 to all stats and +5 vassal opinion...but costs 30 points. Quick + Ambitious costs 23 points and gets you +5 to all stats. So by taking Genius over Quick+Ambitious, you're paying 7 points to get +5 vassal opinion and having a Quick child or two replaced by a Genius (which can be offset by marrying a Genius). Note that Shrewd is similar to Ambitious in giving +2 to all stats, but I can't remember its cost off the top of my head.

tl;dr: My typical Ruler Designer setup involves a female ruler with Attractive, Quick, Wounded, Craven, a bit of +health, and some other stuff to taste; then starting with Groom An Heir + Seduction focus, matri-marrying a Genius, and then seducing the highest-Intrigue Lustful courtiers available during pregnancies until the character has the Master Seductress trait*. Great stats, ridiculously high vassal opinions, plenty of Quick/Genius kids to choose from, and zero bastards.

*Always pick "Veni, Vidi, Vici" when successful.

My go-to setup is quite similar, though I tend to shy away from Wounded because I've had bad luck with the RNG killing off my newly made character within the first month or two of gameplay. I've also had a lot of terrible luck with characters' spouses discovering their infidelity, making it hard to get the Master Seducer/Seductress trait, but I think that was fixed in a recent patch.

Also,

and zero bastards

Zero living bastards

[Aotrs Commander]

So. Things were finally going okay until twenty years in, when we had a king-over.

(I seem to have appaling luck with my breeding stock, never find a good candiate among anyone...)

After a futile attempt to fight the massive revolts which triggered, I gave up, and went back. King will have to live a lot longer, I'm afriad, long enough to build up hude cash reserve (get closer to my domain max is castle and build castle towns ASAP), so I can afford mercs for the inevitable revolts.

Plus side, I knobble the hunchback son of my heir, and in 793-ish, got the Varangian Guard finally.



Down side.

My heir is now a nutcase. As well as having, at some point, picked up the greatpox. Super. Just... Super. Onlt dude with any decent stats and he's a plauged filled baskets case.

(Except for the girls, of course. They're all high martial Brilliant Stratagists, NATURALLY.)

Alarmingly, Bulgaria and Hungary just became Pannonia all of a sudden. That's not good at all, since we share the bulk of a border...

Still... one more county for Antioch to nick, I've started on the slow process of pulling bits out of Italy; Croatia is at least in hand, so work is progress on the restoration... As it happens, though I may need some time out to let the threat go down.

[Artanis]

(Except for the girls, of course. They're all high martial Brilliant Stratagists, NATURALLY.)

This is why I can't wait for the patch that will come with the next DLC: it will include an option to have gender equality. I just can't seem to be able to play without the ability to choose heirs/councilors/commanders based on merit instead of gender, but playing as Cathar every time gets monotonous after a while

[tonberrian]

Tribes suck. I think we can all agree on that.

I've started a new game as a custom Italian count in 769. So far so good, aside from some mild scumming to guarantee a genius Midas Touched heir and prevent a death before I could conquer Venice, everything is working out fine.

[Leecros]

Tribes suck. I think we can all agree on that.

It is unfortunate that there is no real reason to stick as a Tribal. It's pretty much just a worse version of Feudalism in every way.

Meanwhile Nomads can settle into feudalism, but they are incredibly awesome and there's pretty much no reason to do so.(at least in my opinion)

[Artanis]

Tribes suck. I think we can all agree on that.

I've started a new game as a custom Italian count in 769. So far so good, aside from some mild scumming to guarantee a genius Midas Touched heir and prevent a death before I could conquer Venice, everything is working out fine.

I find that the worst part about tribes is trying to figure out how many troops they actually have before picking a fight.

"Hmm, it says he has 1200 troops. So he's nice and wea...oh wait, tribes, that's right. Let's see, vassal 1 has this many, vassal 2 has this many..."

Six hours with a calculator later...

"Ah, fifteen thousand troops! Probably shouldn't mess with him just yet. Unless his vassals hate him enough to dishonor his call to arms. Or if they're scattered enough to pick off most of them before they group up. I should check on where each vassal's capi...actually, f*** it, I'll just declare war and see how many troops show up, then reload if there's too many orders of magnitude more than what the ledger says he has."



Edit: Addendum

Meanwhile Nomads can settle into feudalism, but they are incredibly awesome and there's pretty much no reason to do so.(at least in my opinion)

Nomads have a massive, game-breakingly awful problem with them though: they require you to turn on Horse Lords. I despise the random roving doomstacks of raiders large enough to be on the front page of the ledger too much to enjoy any other features of that DLC.

[tyckspoon]

It is unfortunate that there is no real reason to stick as a Tribal. It's pretty much just a worse version of Feudalism in every way.

Meanwhile Nomads can settle into feudalism, but they are incredibly awesome and there's pretty much no reason to do so.(at least in my opinion)

Tribal prestige armies are pretty cool, although being made entirely of light infantry they lose a bit of shine once feudal enemies start having armies with higher proportions of heavy troops. Still good for getting outnumbering bonuses and bodycount in sieges. That's..about it, tho. Once you start losing hundreds or thousands of them every time you engage a feudal opponent it's probably time to look at feudalizing yourself.

[Leecros]

Nomads have a massive, game-breakingly awful problem with them though: they require you to turn on Horse Lords. I despise the random roving doomstacks of raiders large enough to be on the front page of the ledger too much to enjoy any other features of that DLC.

That is an unfortunate opinion although I can sympathize. In my Mongol Empire game, I have to station 3k stacks of my horde on all of my trade stations to prevent them from being burned to the ground every year by said raider doomstacks.

I just feel like the Nomad Government type is one of the more fun ones to play. They definitely put more into making it different from Feudal than they did Tribal and on a personal note...I would prefer to play them over Tribals and probably even the muslim Iqta government(because managing Decadence is a nightmare).

[ufo]

Hey, does anyone know if turning off Sunset Invasion before the actual invasion comes around will screw with my save? Noticed 100 years into a marathon game that it's been on the whole time, and I'm not really up for that

[Mabn]

I feel as if the only reasons to be tribal are 1: so that you can create a merchant republic and be awesome or 2 you just started the game and want a "consolidate huge tracts of land with flimsy excuses and hope you only have 1 heir who also doesn't suck" minigame before settling down as an empire. At least the really annoying bits only apply to unreformed pagans, who get to have cool bonuses and tons of heirs if they can survive it. You could also get that in India, but I don't like to sleep in front of a computer.

[Leecros]

Hey, does anyone know if turning off Sunset Invasion before the actual invasion comes around will screw with my save? Noticed 100 years into a marathon game that it's been on the whole time, and I'm not really up for that

Disable Sunset Invasion and go into the game like you're going to load up the game, but before you press play check the Ironman button. If it's anything other than a green check mark, then you'll have to play with it on.

[Eldan]

I'm trying my own game as Byzantium in the Charlemagne start now (I've done it before) and it's going uncharacteristically well.

I haven't done much conquering in the Balkans, as I usually do, since Bulgaria conquered Serbia and Croatia and then converted to catholicism, so I can't holy war them. That was a bit of a setback. However, I conquered extensively around the Crimean. In Armeania and Georgia, rebellions overthrew the Muslims and reinstated Christians (I see those rebellions sometimes, but I've never seen them succeed.) That was my first ruler.

His son died really quickly, leaving a 2 year old in charge. Astoundingly, no rebellions or murderous regent. Instead, I got a claim on Rome and conquered it, while the exarch of Anatolia managed to get his hands on Antioch. That's 3/5 for the Pentarchy, now just waiting for rebellions against the Abbassids in Jerusalem and Egypt.
Through some policitical marriages and assassinations, I've managed to make Armenia and Georgia first allies, then vassals, as it just turned out their heirs were converted to iconoclasm before ascending to the throne. How lucky.
The 2 year old is a 30 year old midas touched now, married to the genius Queen of Abyssinia. They have a six year old genius born in the purple son, who will inherit both. His mother is busy conquering the Southern half of the Arabian penninsula, too.

In other funny news, the King of Bavaria inherited Francia and renamed it Bavaria, then his son went on to call it Germania instead. So instead of a blue blob, there's a grey blob.

[Aotrs Commander]

I'm trying my own game as Byzantium in the Charlemagne start now (I've done it before) and it's going uncharacteristically well.

I haven't done much conquering in the Balkans, as I usually do, since Bulgaria conquered Serbia and Croatia and then converted to catholicism, so I can't holy war them. That was a bit of a setback. However, I conquered extensively around the Crimean. In Armeania and Georgia, rebellions overthrew the Muslims and reinstated Christians (I see those rebellions sometimes, but I've never seen them succeed.) That was my first ruler.

His son died really quickly, leaving a 2 year old in charge. Astoundingly, no rebellions or murderous regent. Instead, I got a claim on Rome and conquered it, while the exarch of Anatolia managed to get his hands on Antioch. That's 3/5 for the Pentarchy, now just waiting for rebellions against the Abbassids in Jerusalem and Egypt.
Through some policitical marriages and assassinations, I've managed to make Armenia and Georgia first allies, then vassals, as it just turned out their heirs were converted to iconoclasm before ascending to the throne. How lucky.
The 2 year old is a 30 year old midas touched now, married to the genius Queen of Abyssinia. They have a six year old genius born in the purple son, who will inherit both. His mother is busy conquering the Southern half of the Arabian penninsula, too.

In other funny news, the King of Bavaria inherited Francia and renamed it Bavaria, then his son went on to call it Germania instead. So instead of a blue blob, there's a grey blob.

I think you might be doign better than me, though admittedly, that's probably not difficult...

[Malimar]

wheres the native americans?

If you have Sunset Invasion, the Aztecs show up in the... early 1300s, I want to say?

[Artanis]

Well, in my new After The End playthrough, I was finally on the defending end of a coalition for once.

And by "a coalition", I mean ALL the coalitions. Everywhere. Ever.

Spoiler

Show

Yeah, the head of the Reformed Rust Cult done f***ed up but good.

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, in my new AtE playthrough, I was finally on the defending end of a coalition for once.

And by "a coalition", I mean ALL the coalitions. Everywhere. Ever.

Spoiler

Show

Yeah, the head of the Reformed Rust Cult done f***ed up but good.

I... presume from the map that's a mod...?

[tonberrian]

I... presume from the map that's a mod...?

After the End is a ck2 mod that takes place in a post-apocalyptic North America.

[Artanis]

I... presume from the map that's a mod...?

Like tonberrian said, it is indeed a mod.

I've edited the post to use the full name, rather than the acronym

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

It's a great mod, for those of us living on the wrong continent to see our home in CK2.

[Eldan]

I think you might be doign better than me, though admittedly, that's probably not difficult...

Well, the guy is sixty now. Since he got over 80% threat from integrating Armenia and Georgia, he hasn't gone on a single large war in all that time, but he got the Egyptian Coast and a tiny part of Southern Spain from Rebellions.

He outlived his only useful son. For a while, one of his uncles was heir, but I managed to convince my electors to make one of my grandsons the heir instead, a 20 year old genius. He should do well. If not, well, there's plenty of other grandsons, now, with eight kids per person per generation.

[SZbNAhL]

It's a great mod, for those of us living on the wrong continent to see our home in CK2.

Or in my case, those of us who don't want to see their homes ransacked by Vikings and decimated by plague. Seriously, it's depressing.

[Artanis]

Or in my case, those of us who don't want to see their homes ransacked by Vikings and decimated by plague. Seriously, it's depressing.

*sees the "location" line under the avatar*

FWIW, there is a London in Canada, and it's just a short boat ride away from a bunch of Vikings


Personally, I find it hilarious that Knox - where I went to college - is an Atomicist holy site. In fact, that was one of the first things I checked, making sure that the nuke-worshipers considered Oak Ridge to be sacred

[Eldan]

Or in my case, those of us who don't want to see their homes ransacked by Vikings and decimated by plague. Seriously, it's depressing.

Huh. You know, I've never actually tried to play as anyone local in CKII. Alemannia or Burgundy or whatever else they would be at the time.

[Eldan]

I hate the threat mechanic. I can work around AE in EUIV, but threat is just annoying. It goes up way too quickly, and then takes ages to go down. I haven't had a major war in about 50 years, just to wait for it to go down to under 50% and the wait time is so boring.

[Aotrs Commander]

I hate the threat mechanic. I can work around AE in EUIV, but threat is just annoying. It goes up way too quickly, and then takes ages to go down. I haven't had a major war in about 50 years, just to wait for it to go down to under 50% and the wait time is so boring.

I hear ya. Gonna be iffy trying to grab Jerusalem and Alexandria sharpish (let alone the last province of Antioch) because of that, but time is moving on and I want to get Rome up prefereanble before the turn of the century...

[Eldan]

One good reason to not increase Crown Authority too much, as the Basileus. If your vassals can wage war, they can grab provinces for you
And someone like the Exarch of Anatolia, or Bulgaria or Greece can easily muster some 5000 to 10'000 soldiers. Usually, Anatolia grabs Antioch for me and since it wasn't you ordering it, you don't get threat.

[Artanis]

Huh. You know, I've never actually tried to play as anyone local in CKII. Alemannia or Burgundy or whatever else they would be at the time.

*checks the wiki*

It appears that Switzerland is most closely related to the Duchy of Upper Burgundy.

One good reason to not increase Crown Authority too much, as the Basileus. If your vassals can wage war, they can grab provinces for you
And someone like the Exarch of Anatolia, or Bulgaria or Greece can easily muster some 5000 to 10'000 soldiers. Usually, Anatolia grabs Antioch for me and since it wasn't you ordering it, you don't get threat.

This. You do have to make sure they don't blob too much to keep under your thumb, of course, but the reduced threat you get from vassals' conquests* is a major benefit.

*You do get a little bit, but it's only a fraction of what you would've gained if you did it yourself, and might be capped anyways.

[Eldan]

I hear ya. Gonna be iffy trying to grab Jerusalem and Alexandria sharpish (let alone the last province of Antioch) because of that, but time is moving on and I want to get Rome up prefereanble before the turn of the century...

Well, historically, we're doing pretty well just keeping the Empire in one piece and preparing for the mongols.

The vikings are just out to annoy me now. THere was a tasty Ummayad civil war and I wanted to grab some Hispania and then those damn Swedes get their first. Now there's a Jarldom of Grannada.

[Aotrs Commander]

So... I just accidently the Kingdom of Lombardy.

Not... quite sure how that happened; I just reloaded for something and BANG Lombardy.

on the one hand, bonus, saved me several wars.

Downside, I now have a lot of dukes I need to get shot of (to get the titles back to viceroyalty) and more pertinently, there is the question of what to do with the title of Kingdom of Lombardy. Emperor is like, 75, so to some extent if a lot of vassal upsetting goes off, it may not be a prtoblem for long.

I don't want to hand out the Kingdom of Lombardy, since it has Rome in it and about half my demesne (so if I excluded that, I'd be getting negatives for withholidng Latium from whoever I viceroyalty-kinged it to, yes)?

On the other hand, if I leave the title alone it says it's likely to be inherited by someone else (bad) on my death and if I destroy it, it will upset everyone who would be in the Kingdom.

What's the best solution in this instance?