Crusader Kings II: When all else fails, I open my heart and put my faith in Satan

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FutonForensic: Nov 11, 2012

Tendai posted:

Is there any system for which this is not the case? Maybe it's just how I do things in the game but I've found starting small in feudalism to be the best way too. Every time I've started out as a king (or, god help me, an emperor) the infighting just gets insane off the bat.

I found the Byzantine Empire - Old Gods start to be pretty manageable. Civil wars and rebellions still happen, but they're nothing you can't crush with your personal levies and Varangian Guard.

Edit: I have Legacy of Rome

FutonForensic fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Sep 8, 2015

# ? Sep 8, 2015 21:07

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# ? May 28, 2024 02:54

Kilonum: Sep 30, 2002; You know where you are? You're in the suburbs, baby. You're gonna drive.

from my most recent game:

quote:

- 1402 -
Baron William, the heir of Emperor William of Britannia, was murdered on the orders of Stephen Harvey on 31 January, 1402.
Baron Stephen of Staines was imprisoned in a dungeon in Middlesex by Emperor William of Britannia.
Baron Stephen, the heir of Emperor William of Britannia, was executed by Emperor William of Britannia on 20 April, 1402.

WHEN I SAY NO FRATRICIDE I MEAN NO KILLING YOUR BROTHER TO BECOME MY HEIR

EDIT: later excerpts:

quote:

- 1425 -
Emperor Henry of Britannia won the war against Kaiser Hartmann of the Holy Roman Empire.
Henry Harvey usurped the Holy Roman Empire from Hartmann von Hohenstaufen.

- 1435 -
Emperor Henry V of the Holy Roman Empire won the war against Basileus Pavlos of the Byzantine Empire.
Henry Harvey usurped the Byzantine Empire from Pavlos Angelos.

- 1445 -
Henry Harvey usurped the County of Constantinople from Pavlos Angelos.
Emperor Henry of the Roman Empire, through deeds and character, came to be known as Emperor Henry 'the Glorious'.

converted to EU4 to continue on

Independent realms:

Religion map:

Kilonum fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Sep 8, 2015

# ? Sep 8, 2015 21:10

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Haha. Oh, lord. If you start early on as that one tiny Mongol realm, you'll have this nice tempting decision in your intrigue screen, 'Become Greatest of Khans.' If you can get 35 counties in your realm and 1500 prestige, you can take it to be granted the Mongol Empire, the special title Genghis Khan, 1000 more prestige, and the awesome 'Greatest of Khans' character modifier, which itself gives 10 general opinion, -5% revolt risk, and +25% land morale.

One little problem - they forgot to specify a duration for the character modifier, so it disappears the very next day.

edit: Man, I was going to say that it might help the whole seduction madness if they made seducers quit once they get to five lovers. But based on the code, it looks like it would take them, on average and assuming no relevant traits (kind, cruel, arbitrary), 1115 successful seductions before they actually picked up those five lovers, based on how the AI picks between the "let our love grow" and "vidi, vici, veni."

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Sep 9, 2015

# ? Sep 9, 2015 00:31

Ghetto Prince: Sep 11, 2010; got to be mellow, y'all

That's almost as good as the time they botched Byzantine decisions so that 90% of processing power was being taken up by Byzantines constantly checking to see if they could blind / castrate someone.

Kilonum posted:

converted to EU4 to continue on

I thought the converter was broken?

Anyway, I came here to ask if anyone knows if there's a playable character from House Dracul / Drăculești? I want to pick up some more achievements and I figured playing as Dracula's family would be fun, but iron man doesn't let you use the character creator and I can't find a Dracul anywhere.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 05:38

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Ghetto Prince posted:

Anyway, I came here to ask if anyone knows if there's a playable character from House Dracul / Drăculești? I want to pick up some more achievements and I figured playing as Dracula's family would be fun, but iron man doesn't let you use the character creator and I can't find a Dracul anywhere.

Doesn't look like it, based on a quick search through dynasties and character histories.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 05:46

Funky Valentine: Feb 26, 2014; Dojyaa~an

Ghetto Prince posted:

Anyway, I came here to ask if anyone knows if there's a playable character from House Dracul / Drăculești? I want to pick up some more achievements and I figured playing as Dracula's family would be fun, but iron man doesn't let you use the character creator and I can't find a Dracul anywhere.

House Dracul is too late in CK2's timeline to be added.

However, in the latest bookmark you can play as their scions, House Basarab.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 05:59

Kilonum: Sep 30, 2002; You know where you are? You're in the suburbs, baby. You're gonna drive.

Ghetto Prince posted:

That's almost as good as the time they botched Byzantine decisions so that 90% of processing power was being taken up by Byzantines constantly checking to see if they could blind / castrate someone.

I thought the converter was broken?

worked for me with the latest patches. Though it took two tries (protip: quit the game entirely at gameover screen, restart and load the Jan 1 1453 autosave and it won't lock up on conversion) and I had a hell of a time finding the file.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 14:27

TheCIASentMe: Jul 11, 2003; I'll get you! Just you wait and see!

SlothfulCobra posted:

Basically, tl;dr how do you stand up to either of the empires?

Since I didn't see anyone actually answering your question...

It depends. If you're able to, marry off daughters to the rulers of whatever empire you happen to share a religion with. This should prevent them from attacking you without sufficient cause. This also should help if one of the other empires attack you as you can call them into your war.

The ever expanding HRE might actually be a good thing if you can ally with them. Try and see if you can pull them into the fight with the Byzantines especially if they're muslim Byzantines doing a holy war against you. If you're lucky this will cause the two to get into back and forth wars that you can profit from.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 15:28

Someday: Mar 20, 2007; Somewhere

How does building new holdings in vassals' counties pay off? Is the tax income worth the investment?

# ? Sep 9, 2015 16:33

Tendai: Mar 16, 2007; "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."; Grimey Drawer

Buhhhh, dying young and then having to wait out 15 years of a regency is the most boring loving thing

# ? Sep 9, 2015 17:26

lurksion: Mar 21, 2013

Having recently picked up Horse Funtimes in the recent sale, is the apparent optimal way to play to basically keep only barony level vassals (can't revolt), your capital county, and everything else to grassland? Oh, and maybe keeping some extra stuff to pillage for extra funtimes. Also, what counts as a non-nomad vassal? My single duke-tier chief isn't getting upset that I'm pillaging some of the extra holdings I started with. Is that because he's of Mongol culture?

Someday posted:

How does building new holdings in vassals' counties pay off? Is the tax income worth the investment?

No. Let them spend their own money. Maybe help them with the first level of income buildings.

lurksion fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Sep 9, 2015

# ? Sep 9, 2015 18:24

Elias_Maluco: Aug 23, 2007; I need to sleep

lurksion posted:

Also, what counts as a non-nomad vassal? My single duke-tier chief isn't getting upset that I'm pillaging some of the extra holdings I started with. Is that because he's of Mongol culture?

AS I understand, vassals with "Nomad" government type. Basically the guys you see at the clan tab.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 20:58

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

lurksion posted:

Having recently picked up Horse Funtimes in the recent sale, is the apparent optimal way to play to basically keep only barony level vassals (can't revolt), your capital county, and everything else to grassland? Oh, and maybe keeping some extra stuff to pillage for extra funtimes. Also, what counts as a non-nomad vassal? My single duke-tier chief isn't getting upset that I'm pillaging some of the extra holdings I started with. Is that because he's of Mongol culture?

The optimal way is to keep exactly two baronies in each province, and burn the rest - as long as there's two or more, it doesn't count as a nomadic county, and you don't have to share with the other clans.

Your duke-tier chief isn't getting mad because it doesn't upset anyone to pillage your own land, except the peasants in that county. What ticks off non-nomad vassals is retracting from non-nomad vassals.

# ? Sep 9, 2015 21:25

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

TheCIASentMe posted:

Since I didn't see anyone actually answering your question...

Thanks, although after I played onward, your advice became kind of irrelevant. Sicily passed to my wife, and after she died, onto my son, but before my ruler died, there wasn't much left. My son was left dangling on Mallorca with nothing but a bunch of claims.

The good news:

I had one last hurrah between holy wars to take what should have been de Jure Castille, even if Galicia did hold it. I'm thinking of swapping around primary titles again, so that I have a Castillian yellow that's easy to pick out amongst these browns, although I'm not sure what the other effects of swapping around primary titles are; is it all just cosmetic?

The bad news:

The HRE just kept marching down the peninsula, and they, along with the jihads squeezed my son off of the continent. There was a crusade for Nicea that made Greece (seems really dumb that it's the same color as the Byzantines), and probably weakened the empire, but I've got a long way to go before I can really start a reconquista there. It's trouble enough to manage shuffling everything around now that I have a new king who all my vassals hate for being new. It probably doesn't help that I just couldn't resist subjugating the one little independent county in Sicily.

This little guy being all muslim and angry at me about the war is probably going to make it impossible for me to get primogeniture passed, which is really going to hinder me trying to grow huge in the long run.

The ugly news:

France is in total disarray, and I didn't really know how alliances worked, so I somehow ended up being allied to France, Aquitane, the French rebels, that weird bit that should be Brittany, and some of the rebels against that. :psyduck:

Still a little worried about the HRE spreading down here like a horrible German amoeba eventually, but I...probably have a while before that.

# ? Sep 10, 2015 03:07

The Cheshire Cat: Jun 10, 2008; Fun Shoe

SlothfulCobra posted:

The ugly news:

France is in total disarray, and I didn't really know how alliances worked, so I somehow ended up being allied to France, Aquitane, the French rebels, that weird bit that should be Brittany, and some of the rebels against that.

Still a little worried about the HRE spreading down here like a horrible German amoeba eventually, but I...probably have a while before that.

Being allied with a bunch of people at war with each other is fine - you don't lose prestige for declining to help an ally in a war against another ally, and if you DO decide to join in, you won't lose the alliance with the person you're going to war against (I think they won't even get an opinion penalty against you). More allies is always better since the AI factors in your alliances when deciding whether you'd be worth invading (sometimes - the more "irrational" traits they have like lunatic, wroth, etc, the less they pay attention to the details).

# ? Sep 10, 2015 04:19

lurksion: Mar 21, 2013

Strudel Man posted:

The optimal way is to keep exactly two baronies in each province, and burn the rest - as long as there's two or more, it doesn't count as a nomadic county, and you don't have to share with the other clans.

Oh wow. This is incredibly abusive and broken. You basically have zero maluses from holding all those counties, and the baron vassals don't do anything ever or count for anything and pay you taxes. It's basically North Korea mode but better since you don't have to eat the over demesne penalty (not that that matters for nomads anyway, since your strength isn't from your demesne).

lurksion fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Sep 10, 2015

# ? Sep 10, 2015 06:02

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

lurksion posted:

Oh wow. This is incredibly abusive and broken. You basically have zero maluses from holding all those counties, and the baron vassals don't do anything ever or count for anything and pay you taxes. It's basically North Korea mode but better since you don't have to eat the over demesne penalty (not that that matters for nomads anyway, since your strength isn't from your demesne).

Yyyep.

You'll also get ludicrous amounts of piety from your vassal churches.

edit: You probably won't actually get any taxes most of the time, though, as holding more than one or two baronies yourself (which you have to if you're burning them down) seems to drop your vassal taxes to zero.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Sep 10, 2015

# ? Sep 10, 2015 20:25

Tendai: Mar 16, 2007; "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."; Grimey Drawer

SlothfulCobra posted:

I have yet to play a game over 100+ years where France doesn't just lose its poo poo, territorially speaking. I've been slowly working through the earliest start date to the end as Scotland just to get the achievement for it when I'm bored and it's now around ~1000 AD and I don't even know what the gently caress they're doing down on the continent.

# ? Sep 10, 2015 20:54

Elias_Maluco: Aug 23, 2007; I need to sleep

Strudel Man posted:

The optimal way is to keep exactly two baronies in each province, and burn the rest - as long as there's two or more, it doesn't count as a nomadic county, and you don't have to share with the other clans.

How do I burn holdings?

So far I been keeping only my capital, I just give everything else away.

# ? Sep 10, 2015 21:02

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Huh. I finally found a (rather simple, in the end) way to qualify for the culture change event as a horde. You just have to get a revolt against your tyranny by repeatedly imprisoning a baron when your only heir is a minor son, then surrender so that the son inherits. This actually breaks apart your realm, interestingly, and you (the son, now) become the head of a new nomadic realm named after your dynasty. But at that point, you can give a barony to your now-unlanded father, making him non-nomadic, and qualifying you to pick up the culture of your tutor.

Unfortunately, it seems that horde leaders are actually hard-coded not to change culture by event. Even when the event fires, and the tooltip says that my culture will change, it doesn't happen. Pity.

edit: Jesus, you can't even change a horde leader's culture with the console.

Elias_Maluco posted:

How do I burn holdings?

So far I been keeping only my capital, I just give everything else away.

Right-click on a holding that you own, and one of your options will be to pillage it. This destroys two buildings, and gives you some gold and tech points. When less than two buildings are left, it instead destroys the holding entirely.

# ? Sep 10, 2015 21:10

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

But you can get non-Altaic hordes by pressing claims, it seems. This was arranged with a lot of console manipulation - in a real game, it would be a lot harder to press a weak claim against a horde since children and women will essentially never inherit, but it would still be possible if you luck out a bit.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Sep 10, 2015 21:35

DarkCrawler: Apr 6, 2009; by vyelkin

"So Ivar, how was Miklagar�r?"

# ? Sep 10, 2015 22:25

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

I've been playing about with a mod from the workshop called De-Jure Adjudication.
It adds title decisions that let you move around De-Jure lands by paying gold, piety, prestige, opinion and requires your religious head to like you.

It's fun to make the De-Jure borders pretty, but I've used it as a starting point for some more weird custom title modding.
I took a couple of screenshots of my latest game.
Odd De-Jure Kingdoms

Odd De-Jure Duchies

EDIT:
I've got a title decision that converts an Empire title into a Kingdom title, and one that turns Kingdoms under an Empire that was converted into Duchies.

I might have to abandon that though, as I'm told that if you change the De-Jure liege of a county, it is not saved.
That said, I've got decisions that let you turn those Duchies back into Kingdoms, and back into Duchies, so you could just toggle it with the decision.

Edison was a dick fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Sep 10, 2015

# ? Sep 10, 2015 22:54

Eric the Mauve: May 8, 2012; Making you happy for a buck since 199X

You know, I never really thought it through all that much before, but it is pretty loving stupid that vassals are able to wage war on each other based on the crown laws of the de jure kingdom their lands happen to be in, instead of, y'know, the crown laws of the kingdom they're actually sworn to.

"Yes Your Majesty, I know waging war on fellow vassals is outlawed in your realm. But the land I'm stealing from this other guy technically belongs in Italy based on this map from a hundred years ago, and Italy has no crown authority at all since a kid's been on the throne the past six years, so gently caress you."

# ? Sep 10, 2015 23:43

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

A lot of the de jure stuff seems like it's hardcoding things into ending up more historical. It makes sense that these things would change over time, just as the religion or culture of a province can change.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 00:29

jerman999: Apr 26, 2006; This is a lex imperfecta

DarkCrawler posted:

"So Ivar, how was Miklagar�r?"

I haven't played with horse lords yet (I mostly play the GOT mod), but is that new character screen from the DLC or is it a mod?

# ? Sep 11, 2015 01:50

Dallan Invictus: Oct 11, 2007; The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

jerman999 posted:

I haven't played with horse lords yet (I mostly play the GOT mod), but is that new character screen from the DLC or is it a mod?

It's a mod, it's the ARKOpack UI from HIP (but it is also available standalone).

# ? Sep 11, 2015 02:08

Eric the Mauve: May 8, 2012; Making you happy for a buck since 199X

That UI is rear end ugly. Sorry if whoever designed it is reading this thread, but, uh, it's rear end ugly.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 02:36

Funky Valentine: Feb 26, 2014; Dojyaa~an

So much empty space, what's the point?

# ? Sep 11, 2015 02:39

Morzhovyye: Mar 2, 2013

Yeah the first time someone posted that they loved the UI on that mod i scrolled back up to the picture and threw up a little in my mouth.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 05:51

Moridin920: Nov 15, 2007; by FactsAreUseless

After the End is pretty fun

Socal supremacy

Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Sep 11, 2015

# ? Sep 11, 2015 06:39

Angry Salami: Jul 27, 2013; Don't trust the skull.

Eric the Mauve posted:

You know, I never really thought it through all that much before, but it is pretty loving stupid that vassals are able to wage war on each other based on the crown laws of the de jure kingdom their lands happen to be in, instead of, y'know, the crown laws of the kingdom they're actually sworn to.

"Yes Your Majesty, I know waging war on fellow vassals is outlawed in your realm. But the land I'm stealing from this other guy technically belongs in Italy based on this map from a hundred years ago, and Italy has no crown authority at all since a kid's been on the throne the past six years, so gently caress you."

Honestly, I can easily imagine feudal rulers making that argument. It's not that different from the dukes of Normandy remaining, technically, vassals of the French king after 1066, but the French king having no authority over the English kingdom, even if, coincidentally, the duke and the king of England were the same person.

Crusader Kings really simplifies the total legal mess that was medieval Europe by only allowing vassals to have a single overlord.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 06:44

reignonyourparade: Nov 15, 2012

The one thing i REALLY miss from the original Crusader Kings was attacking a county under a duke under a king only calling in the duke, because your vassal's vassal isn't necessarily YOUR vassal, dontcha know?

# ? Sep 11, 2015 06:51

GenderSelectScreen: Mar 7, 2010; I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME; College Slice

Eric the Mauve posted:

That UI is rear end ugly. Sorry if whoever designed it is reading this thread, but, uh, it's rear end ugly.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who hates that UI.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 07:08

Midnight Voyager: Jul 2, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who hates that UI.

When it's not too empty, it's full of really unnecessary decoration. I tried it once because I heard people liked it, but it was awful.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 08:26

KOGAHAZAN!!: Apr 29, 2013; a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

The Pdox devs have been bitching for ages about not having enough room on the UI for all the poo poo they want to cram into it. A UI mod that's "too empty" and finds room for pointless decoration? They need to be looking at that.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 10:55

reignonyourparade: Nov 15, 2012

I'm not too sold on the whatevr you call the information tab to the right but personally the vanilla character UI isnreally cluttered, so conveying the same information and leaving a bunch of empty space sounds great to me.

# ? Sep 11, 2015 11:01