Yeah, the last game that I recall so wanting to be able to play but hitting such a wall in learning was, hmmm… probably Falcon 4. ;) But that one, I persevered and learned and the reward was worth it.
I just want an “easy” mode for CK2.
As someone who just started learning to play EU IV, I have to agree with you whole heartedly. But as you start working out the systems in CK2, it all ends up becoming much more easier to learn over time. It is simply making those connections and understanding how they work together, like with marriage and claims, or marriage and essentially deciding who to marry.
Try Sengoku from Paradox.
OK, so, watching BB and chilling, fired up CK2 and played as top dog of Mumu in Ireland, 1066. Nice and relaxed, just seeing what I could figure out. Married, had a son, messed around with my advisers, got some of my whiny nephews wives, saw the pop up that said I could make a claim on the southern region. Took me a while to figure out how to do that, then realized I needed to have my diplomat basically go declare war as the way to push the claim. Oh - I also still don’t get why, when I bring up a nephew who wants to get married, and I click on the option for him to arrange a marriage, I get the screen with a couple of profiles in it, him being one, and when I click to pick him a spouse I get zero options. OTOH, if I make him the main screen and click on the wedding rings, no prob finding him a wife.
ANYWAY - discovered I can’t raise armies until after I declare war, did that, and was about even with the enemy, but since my wife was the daughter of a king, I asked him to help. He said he’d be glad to, but I underestimated how long it would take his armies to show up! Fortunately they got there in time, and I won. I banished the guy who had been in charge and gave the land to my son.
So I just clicked and fiddled around, made choices when they popped up,put down a rebellion, no idea what I’m doing, LOL! I know I am playing at far less than maximum effectiveness, but it does seem to gradually be opening up, even though I’m not sure why or what I’m doing a good part of the time. But I think I’m going to play a while and THEN look at some of the tutorials - I think they’ll make more sense after having played first.
There are two things here, both doing the same thing.
Select a ruler of any kind[1] that isn’t you, right click on their face and go to the diplomacy screen, then click “arrange marriage”. This will bring up a box with your faces in them, and two blank circles, one attached to both of your faces. You are NOT arranging a marriage WITH him or yourself, you are instead arranging a marriage with someone in HIS COURT (which may also be him) and someone in YOUR COURT (which may be you). You are both the decision makers here – the people getting married basically have no say in the matter. Try it out! Click those black circles. You should be able to select any unmarried person in his court, and anyone from yours. If they select a man, then you need to select a woman, and vice versa. (Betrothals work in the same way)
Now exit that.
Select yourself so you bring up your profile, right click and press “arrange marriage”, then you’re doing the same process, only you’re arranging a marriage between someone in YOUR COURT and someone else in YOUR COURT.
Now exit that.
Select a random person who is not a ruler (e.g. your whiny nephews), right click, arrange marriage. The game automatically brings up that arrange marriage dialog with his face filled in one of the slots, and your court + empty slot on the other side. Naturally, if that person was already in your court (like your whiny nephews were), then you’ll be the decision maker on both sides. If you can’t find anyone, it’s probably because you have no young unmarried ladies. (You can pay money in the plot/decision menu area to bring in a debutante – basically a mail order bride).
Finally, if you go to the profile of someone in YOUR COURT and click the rings (these only appear on someone in your control), then the game opens up a box full of potential candidates that the AI itself would choose for this person and that would also accept. You are not limited to these people – you can manually try to arrange marriages, but a lot of the time other people tell you to bugger off. But this box is nice as it filters down to most of the “yeses” (but not all), allows you to sort by stats and stuff, so you can bring in brainy chicks and have them breed brainy dynasty members, etc. If you click on anyone in this box, then the game brings up the arrange marriage dialog but this time fills in both sides. Once again, it’s possible for you to be the decision maker in both cases. (If you’re trying to manually arrange a marraige and being told no, remember to hover over the button or the text – it explains in full the pros and cons of marriage. If it’s quite equal, a bag of money to the other ruler might tip them over the edge)
Pro-tip: Anyone in your court is under your control (that doesn’t count your landed vassals – they’re not really in your court or whatever). As such you can arrange a marriage for them, and are “expected” to do so. This is useful if you somehow have a nice prince from another realm in your court (e.g. he fled to you, or perhaps you invited him, or perhaps you took over his old lands and he’s just hanging around). He might have a nice claim. So you can forcibly marry him to one of your spare daughters, matrilinearly, which means you should hopefully have some dynasty members pop out with the same claim etc. (And if they don’t have the claim, then you can still push pop’s claim and just wait for him to die). Getting them in the first place is the difficult thing, however.
[1] any kind. Doesn’t have to be independent, or a boss. Can be a baron, count, duke, king, emperor, mayor, bishop, etc etc. They just need a title of some kind.
So I just clicked and fiddled around, made choices when they popped up,put down a rebellion, no idea what I’m doing, LOL! I know I am playing at far less than maximum effectiveness, but it does seem to gradually be opening up, even though I’m not sure why or what I’m doing a good part of the time. But I think I’m going to play a while and THEN look at some of the tutorials - I think they’ll make more sense after having played first.
Eesh, it’s almost as if people have repeatedly parroted advice about this playstyle in this very thread ;)
I think it is partly due to how some of us learn. I know I like to read up about stuff (sometimes excessively) before ‘diving in’. So naturally, we want to watch Let’s Plays or whatever to ‘know’ everything before starting. That works sometimes. Paradox games are not one of those examples. But it is counter-intuitive to us :(
I’m in the same boat. I like to read manuals and things before actually playing a game. My first day of playing Crusader Kings 2 (launch day-- I took the week off work…), I was reading everything and anything before/whilst playing the game, to try and understand it in full. But thankfully I had a lot of CK1, EU3 and dev diary preparation, so I spent equal amounts playing and reading. I played again after Charlemange update, and it was the first time I’d played in about 2_ years. Id forgotten almost everything, and decided to read up/watch a few videos first… but meh. That took too long, so I just jumped in. It worked well enough and I just looked up one or two unclear things as and when I needed to,
The game has grown massively since the first patch. I think, if you read everything there is to read, you’d spend 50 hours reading whilst someone else spent 50 hours playing. It’s the same with Dwarf Fortress – it’s too big to just read everything upfront. If you have to watch 50*1 hour tutorial videos before playing your first game… are you really playing the game?
Some games you just can’t min-max from the off, and you have to just blunder through and enjoy the ride!
While I think CK is a highly original and impressive game, it’s also counterintuitive in several ways. Many interface parts feel “programmer designed” as if someone purposely tried to make the game more complex by hiding important stuff and making you click through a million menus. Put bluntly; The interface is shit.
A good example of shit is another game I’m playing right now; Gnomoria, which has obtuse and underdeveloped features and no proper in-game explanations for anything. (otherwise known as a “WIKI-game”) It has the most used commands such as “mine walls” hidden by 3 clicks and puts new and unused commands such as “underground farm” on the “front page” of the farm menu.
It most reasonably allows for the space bar to pause the game but this doesn’t work if your mouse is over a menu button, it has to be hovering over parts of the actual map for it to pause when you want it to. You don’t even have to be in a menu for it to not work. If you do bring up a menu it likes to pause the entire game and it does so as well after each autosave without the option to make it stop.
Just like “Gnomoria”, CK2 is designed by programmers. New players who jump in and move their army to someones territory are given no feedback as to why that will do fuck all. You have to bring your army back and declare war(if you have a PROPER reason) before you bring out your guys. Because other nations don’t care that your armies walk around their lands IRL and you can’t actually prepare your guys for war by positioning them because that would be rude. (yes, I know your standing army doesn’t have to be “raised”)
On top of that it likes to have long lists of crap you have to go through with shitty options to properly sort them, such as when looking for people to bring to your court.
The game is still an amazing feat in itself but by god does the interface suck ass. They should really have a middleman who told those (most talented) programmers to fuck off when it comes to the UI.
I don’t find the interface to be the problem at all. I understand the interface for the most part and where I need to go within it. It isn’t always the easiest, but I can figure it out. The issue is that it is an extremely complicated game with many different mechanics that all interact together. The tool tips do give very helpful information on what will happen with your decisions, it’s just that there is so much going on in the game that isn’t always clear even with the tips. Comparing the interface to some buggy game is a bit unfair in my opinion.
As someone who is going through the game trying to learn it, I think it is quite fun just letting time go and reacting. The biggest thing I would ask for is a better help system. I would love to click a button that opens a help system that goes into extreme depth of what everything means.
I have also found the learning scenario very helpful if you haven’t played it. The issue there is I stopped receiving help notifications because I think I am supposed to successfully deal with my sisters faction. In two attempts that has resulted in long wars/sieges, so I wonder if I am missing something.
I don’t find the interface to be the problem at all. I understand the interface for the most part and where I need to go within it. It isn’t always the easiest, but I can figure it out. The issue is that it is an extremely complicated game with may different mechanics that all interact together. The tool tips do give very helpful information on what will happen with your decisions, it’s just that there is so much going on in the game that isn’t always clear even with the tips. Comparing the interface to some buggy game is a bit unfair in my opinion.
As someone who is going through the game trying to learn it, I think it is quite fun just letting time go and reacting. The biggest thing I would ask for is a better help system. I would love to click a button that opens a help system that goes into extreme depth of what everything means.
I have also found the learning scenario very helpful if you haven’t played it. The issue there is I stopped received help notifications because I think I am supposed to successfully deal with my sisters faction. In two attempts that has resulted in long wars/sieges, so I wonder if I am missing something.
The CK2 UI I think is one of it’s most impressive features. The game is dangerously close to being a spreadsheet simulator with maps, but the UI manages to cover up this fact quite handily and keep it feeling like a game. It does take time to learn, because you can get to some things multiple ways, and other things look similar but are different functionality. For as complex as the game is, I can’t image the UI being much better (without turning into Excel 1066AD).
Here’s another vote for the UI. I recall things getting a bit crowded sometimes, but other than that, I thought the UI was sensible and fun to work with.
Yeah, I have no idea what phero is talking about here. For the sheer amount of information it needs to provide (most of which will have extremely variable levels of usefulness to different players based upon play style) the UI in CK2 is pretty damned amazing.
The main way I think the UI could improve is to have a UI that organizes actions by goals. For example, if you want to improve relations you can give a gift, grant an honorary title, appoint to the council and probably more. So if the menu to interact with a character had an item “Improve relations” with the above as submenu items it would be a bit more clear what options you have. The way it is now, you have to know the different options you have, their effects and where you perform those actions.
The UI is good at giving details about the particular item your looking at, but not at the overall possible actions to achieve a goal.
Pressing claims: right from the beginning it says I can press a de jure Ducal claim on the region or whatever it is called to my south in Ireland. Is the only or best way to do that to send my Chancellor there to press the claim?
Is there a way to turn off the clouds on the CK2 map? A google search did not bring anything up.
I don’t think there is an option in game, but I’m pretty sure there are mods on Steam Workshop that do that.
It’s been a while, but I believe what that means is that you have a “press claim” CB for war against whomever it is that holds that province.
Edit: That is, the way to press the claim is to declare war.
I’m guessing you are in the 3 county Duchy of Mumu/Ormond? If so, just go to war and enjoy the simplicity that is De Jure claims. The Chancellor option is to fabricate a claim which would be a waste of your Chancellor’s time. Fabricating claims is useful for when you want to expand northwards (in the case of Ireland) and don’t want to wait generations for making claims by way of marriage and offspring.
Click the big flag telling you about de jure claims. It’ll automatically bring up a “declare war” box. Then press declare war and get fighting.
edit: And there used to be a file you could edit to turn things like clouds and shadows off. No idea where it is.
edit2:
C:\Users<name>\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\settings.txt
try setting draw_sky to no and see what happens. I once changed this file to make the game work on an ancient laptop – it didn’t help much :)