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What is there to do in peacetime? I've been playing as Apulia, and having a great ol' time becoming the kingdom of Sicily, but now that I've taken the island and all the minor provinces around me, I can't find an angle on any other expansion areas. My chancellor isn't turning up any options in Sardinia or Dubrovnik, and while I do have a casus beli for fighting the pope, I'm not nearly powerful enough to stand up to him. Am I just stuck accumulating money and buying province upgrades and bribing vassals?
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Sep 5, 2015 16:11
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 00:39 |
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Good news! I finally got my kingdom moving again, out from under that peace, and I even managed to snag half of Sardinia! Bad news is that half my kingdom revolted and during the scuffle the rebels got aced by the Byzantines and Arabs. I could live with that, but then a holy war got declared and I now have the entirety of Islam coming at me. I tried hiring some mercenaries, but they immediately quit. I still don't understand combat in this game. Is there any good way of dealing with armies that outnumber yours?
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Sep 5, 2015 20:44
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Trying to save Sicily and southern Italy is just giving me so much trouble. I lost everything to a Jihad. The Seljuks took it all, and I got shunted out into the half of Sardinia that I fought so hard for, and my ruler died, leaving nothing but a regency for his daughter, I figured that was pretty much game over, and I married the princess off to the prince of Castille, figuring that I could just ride out the regency and then jump into his head, that would work for roleplay purposes. The game wouldn't even let me have that, some loser from an obscure branch of the lineage pulled some weird takeover, kicking my last heir off the throne before she even had the chance to properly sit on it. So I loaded up the next save after that, and I jumped into Castille, and that was okay, I guess, I managed to make some decent headway on conquering muslims here and there, even though Galicia kept poaching my vassals somehow. I figured I could reconquer that pointless northern half of Sardinia to reclaim some kind of contiguity with my last royal line, when I notice that the jerk who deposed my heir died, and he left his daughter in a regency, and since she wasn't old enough to have kids, her heir was...my wife, the one true heir to the de Hauteville family. That's a straightforward assassination opportunity if I've ever seen one. So I start a plot to kill her, and of course it took forever for it to finally land, and in that time the Pope launched a reconquista of Sicily, which gave the usurper all the land that I lost to the jihad, making it an even more attractive target for inheritance. But of course, the plot took forever to take affect, even with over 200% power, and during that time I had to watch from afar as my old kingdom of Sicily steadily lost land to the HRE. When my wife finally did inherit the kingdom back, the Byzantines declared holy war upon her (somehow they had flopped over into Islam when I wasn't looking), and there was nothing I could do to help her fend off their attack, especially with the holy orders busy somewhere else. Now half the Kingdom of Sicily has been taken by the HRE and the Byzantines, and when eventually Sicily and Castille are united in their single heir, there'll still be nothing I can do to stand up against the two empires.  Even if I go back to plan B and bugger off to Spain, the HRE's going to come get me eventually. It's a monster, it's gobbled up half of Europe now, and France is too falling apart to provide any real buffer.Basically, tl;dr how do you stand up to either of the empires?
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Sep 7, 2015 14:53
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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.  Still a little worried about the HRE spreading down here like a horrible German amoeba eventually, but I...probably have a while before that.
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Sep 10, 2015 03:07
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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.
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Sep 11, 2015 00:29
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Man, I would like this game ten times as much if poo poo just loaded faster. It takes 5 minutes to get into things every time I start the game up, and it takes even longer if I'm not certain which save I want to play, it takes so long even to check a save. Things I have questions on now: -Somehow my son got disinherited when he married his betrothed, and I'm wondering how that happened? Nearest as I can work out, it was because his wife was the duchess of Sardinia, which is the vassal of the HRE, which is currently ruled by my wife. 'it seems to pretty cleanly bypass my big problem of not wanting to deal with my next heir becoming Holy Roman Emperor, but it is a shame seeing my best son lost from my realm. Will changing succession to primogeniture turn him back into my heir? -The pope mildly dislikes me and keeps excommunicating me, despite all the christianity-spreading I'm doing and my 1400 piety. I slid him a clean 500 bucks for him to forget about the whole excommunication thing, but then the chickenfucker just excommunicated me the next day. How do I deal with that? -Any suggestions on what characters to start a playthrough with next? I'm getting ready to wrap up my first real playthrough, leave a save, and try something else. I've had most of my fill of Spain and Italy at this point.
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Sep 12, 2015 16:20
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Maybe the newer DLCs make it less common? All I'm running is the base game + Sword of Islam. This isn't even the first time characters in this run have been excommunicated even. It's happened at least 5 times by now, most notably the day after I gave up catharism a century ago. Hell, my current ruler was excommunicated back during his regency when he was still a child.
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Sep 12, 2015 19:03
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I'm not sure how building up your court is supposed to work. I've been using the find characters option to try to invite skillful people to my court, but it is such a hassle to check each individual character to see if they're willing to accept my invitation. I also use the "invite noble/debutante/commander/holy man" options in the intrigue menu, but that's not very reliable, and I feel like there's much better uses for all that money. And then as I expand, I need to parcel out more titles for which I need more courtiers to become vassals, and sometimes I accidentally lose the skilled people from my court, so I need to go looking again, it's a never ending cycle.
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Sep 13, 2015 05:32
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I started up a game as the Duke of Lombardy in 1337, and everyone died of the plague in the span of about 2 years. Fastest game over I've had yet.
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Sep 20, 2015 19:38
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Which of the DLCs are worth buying in this sale?
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Oct 2, 2015 23:47
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All of the lands you control are listed in your list of titles on the character screen, but the only counties you control directly are the ones that you are specifically the count of. Also if you click the "direct vassals" map view, the counties you directly control will be your own color, and they'll show you as the owner if you click on them. And if worst comes to worst, then you can't go wrong keeping a handy little pile of money on hand to buy some mercs to bail your rear end out of a jam. Just be careful to keep enough money around that you can pay their upkeep, otherwise they'll immediately quit. Although if you've gotten yourself into a religious war, you can call in some holy orders to help you for no upkeep (unless somebody else is currently employing them).
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Oct 5, 2015 20:28
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I thought I would just have a fun game as Lombardy, under the thumb of the HRE, trying to steadily build up into Italy, but then the last king died and I somehow became emperor, and my ruler's still only 34, so he's got plenty of time to rule left. I didn't even know I was up for the title, the emperor's son was listed as my rival and I had to kill him, but that was only self-defense to stop his plot to kill me. Could I get some advice on how to manage the HRE? For some reason my demesne limit shrunk when I took the title, too. Also, now I've got these weird retinue troops standing around that I can't just disband, any primer on how to manage those?
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Oct 21, 2015 22:47
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I've been trying to build up to the kingdom of Italy while underneath the thumb of the HRE, but ever since the latest emperor switched the crown authority to medium, there's been nothing for me to do but quietly prey upon the independent merchant republics. I've been trying to build up a faction, but I can't seem to get one beyond 50% strength. I've been sending my spymaster out to scheme and politely ask/coerce people into joining my faction, but even after they say they'll join up, they don't show up on the faction screen. I'm not sure what to do.
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Nov 1, 2015 20:41
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So apparently if you join a faction for independence, it can intimidate your leige into transferring a bunch of vassals under your control? Also I've finally figured out what county capitals are.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:09
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Looks like you either don't have the cash or the prestige.
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Nov 9, 2015 23:03
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Do the Mongols trigger coalitions?
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Feb 5, 2016 18:21
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What's the advantage of leaving Merchant Republics around? I wound up destroying a few in my Italy unification game.
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Feb 8, 2016 18:23
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:What France? It's right over there, next to Bohemia and Poland. What's the matter with you, forget where France is?
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Feb 10, 2016 00:20
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you can also just take the hit, let your territory be divided on your death, and then pick your favorite son and fight it out as him. That's how it often happened historically.
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Feb 15, 2016 16:23
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Lombardy start in the 14th century works out great now that there's ways to deal with the plague in the game and you won't just have your entire family line die off out of nowhere. I resisted the lure of creating my own kingdom, and formed italy to be rewarded with a light tan kingdom that's hard to differentiate from white Naples and Papal state to the south and White HRE to the north. I already miss my ducal purple. Any advice for giving away counties? I've been getting away with max centralization for a while, but I've been a bit over the edge in demesne size for a while, and I was cheating by granting a bunch of them to my heir, but that doesn't work when my last ruler died and this one hasn't gotten down to business yet. Also, between vassals that get angry when off the council and inviting experts to court that don't become loyalists, I've not been able to pass any laws through my council for a while, which is worrying, although I haven't really needed to for a while. Is there any good way to deal with that?
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May 11, 2017 22:50
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Oh, I finally found out why my ruler wasn't squirting out any kids, the fucker went celibate when I wasn't looking. When his father inherited, I wound up looking around for high-martial characters like I often do, and found this guy off in a holy order who happened to be my dynasty, and it turned out he was my character's son. I invited him back, and he became my new heir after I tossed a few counties at him, but the holy life must've stuck with him. It's a real shame, I had this whole thing rigged up where his wife has an inheritable claim on Aragon too. Still wound up getting extorted by a courtier for an affair though. My current heir is the king of Brittany, because I prefer to send my non-heir sons off into the world to seed the dynasty, but I'm not to enthusiastic on getting involved in something so far away, and more importantly, he's some jerk with garbage stats and no face.
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May 12, 2017 02:26
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Well, the fact that my ruler never could father an heir never mattered, because the game ran out of time before he died. There's the downside of starting late. Just as well, I managed to grab both Italy and Naples, but I became enough of a threat for coalitions to be formed against me. I was really worried about eventually having to deal with the France-Castille blob and the Aragon-Portugal blob, and Sicily wound up becoming part of some bizarre spread-out Byzantium. So now I'm back to trying to unite Ireland in viking times. It's pretty remarkable to look at all these nearly empty provinces and imagine that I'll end up fully developing them over time.
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May 13, 2017 00:01
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I kind of prefer CK1's portraits. The cartoonier aesthetic fits in better with UI and you don't have to deal with as many blank stares at the camera. Speaking of portraits, I'm getting really tired of every character who catches a little plague or gets wounded putting on some kind of horrifying mask.
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Jun 15, 2017 14:38
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GamingHyena posted:It's been years since I played CK II and I'd like to get back into it but it's all a bit overwhelming. Is there a good tutorial for the basics of the game, or a province that's a good start for newer players to learn the ropes? This LP is pretty informative, but a fair amount may have changed since then.
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Jun 25, 2017 15:56
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Also you can work your way towards a higher title, if your demesne limit is 2, then you're probably just a count. If you become a duke, that limit is increased, and you can have lower vassal counts beneath you holding the land you can't control directly.
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Jun 28, 2017 15:58
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Reaper's Due, the DLC before Monks and Mystics was pretty good, it fleshed out the health system and added dynamic plagues and outbreaks along with prospering, and the only really bad thing it added was those ugly-rear end masks. I've got no plans to buy M&M even if it gets really cheap. The whole society feature holds no real appeal for me, and the secret cults seem like a nightmare to get a handle over from the outside, even if the extra councilor actions might be nice to have.
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Jul 10, 2017 17:59
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Jazerus posted:who do you think the louis is? The one with Clark.
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Jul 25, 2017 17:41
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Do they even model in the game the whole thing where Caliphs kept getting killed by their own bodyguards?
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Aug 16, 2017 01:59
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The thing that took me a long time to figure out about county holdings is that while there are holdings within a county that you can own or not own or whatever, there's also the main holding which is up in the corner, which you own directly if you own the county, and that's the one you need to upgrade. The other holdings you probably don't own directly, unless they have your own coat of arms on them, and you only get the benefit of through liege levies/taxes.
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Aug 21, 2017 18:34
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Last time I tried to play a game as duke of Apulia, a Jihad somehow turned it into a King of Spain game. I started a game of Ireland a couple months ago, and now that I've gotten back to it I sorta blundered into having a bunch of possessions on the opposite side of the continent. A greek dude I hired wound up inheriting Thessaly and a few other Greek possessions, and I inherited Ferrara and Corsica through family ties, and I've got a plan in place to get Sardinia brought into my possessions as well. My current wife's the Queen of Italy under the HRE, but my current dude is in a matrilineal marriage with her (he was the brother of my last dude who I wanted to marry off somewhere important, but then the Black Plague happened in 980), I don't really see any way to spin that into a unification between Ireland and Italy. Spreading every which way is neat. Of course, while I made all those acquisitions far afield, I've been slacking off on building my own empire. I've finally made my first push against Scotland, and I'm getting ready to start taking over the south of England piece by piece now that the Petty Kingdom of Cornwall has finally fractured. The only big problem I've been facing is that it looks like I'm going to need to start handing out dukedoms to keep under the vassal and demesne limits, and that means more powerful vassals to start civil wars. I already gave away Ulster and I couldn't stop the count of the Isle of Man from becoming a duke.
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Aug 29, 2017 21:11
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There was a lot of important trade that happened with sub-saharan Africa too, but I guess that doesn't get as much hype. Part of the how the new world was discovered was Portugal developing these big ships and navigation techniques so they could skip over north African middlemen to get stuff like slaves. Then some Italian guy tried to shortcut the long way around the planet to China with those new sailing techniques. I guess Paradox has a record of treating Africa as mostly just a speedbump, as opposed to their record with China where they try to model it, but screw up somehow. I like what they're trying to get around their ineptitude by modeling it indirectly.
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Sep 4, 2017 19:28
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People not being full converts to whatever religion they are is accurate, but everything else I've heard about M&M just sounds wacky and ridiculous. It doesn't sound like there's much of a downside to having a secret religion. There's extra jobs for your councilors which sounded neat, but it didn't seem worth the hassle and money. The only real problem with skipping M&M is that the game still occasionally gives you the option to secretly convert, and if you take it, the game crashes.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:43
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I can't stop myself from just choosing stewardship every time because I just love that extra demesne limit. Maybe hunting after my demesne's under control for health/combat/something to do during peacetime. Carousing's third, maybe Family if I either need to squeeze out an heir or ease family tensions, and I probably should try intrigue/seduction more, but I never do. Bastards can be so complicated. I think I've done scholarship a couple times, maybe when I'm raising an heir, but I guess it might help to keep my technology lead. I've never done theology though.
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Sep 7, 2017 18:39
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The Knights Templar have been stranded in Britain for the longest time now. I think Essex hired them when everybody in Britain was involved with a crusade for Jerusalem (we lost after I pulled my army out for better things) and I think they were being used in a personal war instead of the crusade, which I noted at the time as an interesting move that I didn't think the computer was capable of, but by now all the wars are over and they've stuck around for decades. I guess they don't know what to do since they don't have boats? I think they were even allied in one of my last wars on the continent, but they just stayed where they were.
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Sep 11, 2017 18:02
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This thread just keeps reminding me how bad of an idea it was for me to give my heir land on the exact opposite side of the continent (I'm King of Ireland and France, I gave him a county in Anatolia). At least I married him off first. I shouldn't even be trying to keep that county in in my personal demesne, but after I wound up inheriting it, it had something like 109 wealth, and I got greedy for money. I'm also a little afraid that if I don't personally own it it might just slip out of my realm, but that's probably also being too greedy. I've been bumping up against the vassal and demesne limits for a while now, and I may either have to decentralize a little or hurry up on becoming Britannia (or whatever the welsh name is). I do have everything I need to declare my own custom empire, but that's not optimal.
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Sep 12, 2017 18:19
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All I can recommend is the viceroyalties law, that's supposed to be good for empire managing. My current game I started in around 700, and I'm only 7 provinces away from Britannia, but I'm currently stuck in a hellwar against 3 separate rebellions along with Burgundy trying to get me to pay tribute. Turns out that getting a little overeager with possessions outside of your prospective empire can really lead to overstretching yourself. Alternatively, I'm only 5 provinces away from forming the empire of Francia if I pull a conquest of Brittany out of my rear end, because the HRE formed much further eastward than it did in reality, and the de jure empire of Francia is only 6 provinces big. Weird things happen to de jure borders in long games. The de jure Kingdom of Wales is also only the duchy of Cornwall, but for some reason none of the computer characters bothered to take advantage of that and become a king before I conquered that.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:55
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PureRok posted:Can someone explain why these guys have such a huge army? And how are they paying for it? I looked up the mayor dude and he's still running a profit even with a 1000 soldier army in there. It's been there for years and I want it to go away. Conmacc has more troops than I'd expect, unless it's got a lot of territory. Other than that, the numbers looks pretty reasonable aside from the whopping 4,500 dudes from Gryffindor. Must have been some kind of confusing confluence of events to make all those dudes from different realms all converge on one spot.
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Sep 19, 2017 16:59
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I've reached a peak in my  My continental territory seems impressive, but that was just a bit of cleverness of marrying off an heir to the queen of France when it briefly broke away from the HRE. Somehow the duke of Poitou got really aggressive and conquered all this junk underneath me (he's even got a wee bit of Africa that you can barely see). Here's the direct vassals map:  The most obvious avenue for advancement is by fighting the HRE for de jure parts of France, but that'd be difficult and slow. My only ally's the king of Burgundy by this point, and after I made my heir the duke of Kent, he somehow went and made his heir a baron of some place in the HRE. Confusing. There's also still the Nadrid and the Abbasids for holy war, but they're both really tough. A couple crusades have already tried and failed against the Abbasids. I've also got a claim I can push for the kingdom of Sjaeland, but I'd like to have a more coherent plan than that to work with. Also of note is the itty bitty de jure empire of Francia, which is probably the result of the HRE forming weird. I'm surprised that the duke of Brittany hasn't tried at least declaring himself a king to get more pull. The HRE's lousy with kings. 
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Sep 19, 2017 17:42
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I'm still not really sure how tributaries work, so I'm hesitant to get into them. Also, I forgot to mention, but my ruler's a secret Fraticelli, and I've been leveling up through the Fraticelli Faithful, and I'm not sure how all that works either.
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Sep 19, 2017 18:09
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 00:39 |
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I've got a save where the HRE keeps getting into a war with me with no declaration. No popup, no nothing, just all of a sudden a bunch of 10k stacks of soldiers who were wandering around my territory already go red, and there's nothing I can do. Why does this keep happening? It feels like some kind of bug. It's extra annoying since I went through all the effort of waiting for the realm to prosper.
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Sep 21, 2017 17:26
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