Anyone know of a good Let’s Play where someone is a vassal of a very large kingdom and gradually undermines it from the inside to get to the top? Haven’t played the game in a while.
Hmmm not of the top of my head but these guys are my goto’s for all things CK2 and EU4 related when it comes to Let’s Play videos.
You could always ask in the CK2 subreddit
Ok, looking at this in the Steam Sale, what are the must have expansions?
Sword of Islam, The Old Gods, Raja’s of India, Charlemagne, Way of Life
Is Way of Life unbroken now? Steam reviews are very negative.
I’ve not played it much since Charlemagne personally. I know the changes in Way of Life are a big deal in terms of how they change the game, but can not speak to the broken or unbroken state of them.
Next expansion! More internal mechanics woooot!
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/crusader-kings-ii-conclave-to-be-released-early-2016.901254/
Realm council made of vassals! (with factions?)
That stick their head in your decisions!
Bribe for favors!
New education system? Or maybe just an add-on? Childhood only traits?
I know the fans love this stuff, but this is another roadblock to me ever getting into the game. It just never seems to stop getting more complicated.
I actually don’t think thats the case, if we stick to the Christian feudal ruler in 1066. The core gameplay loop of marriages, inherited/de jure claims, and keep vassals happy has been unchanged since release for them.
The other internal mechanic change pack - Way of Life was basically a drop in replacement for the existing system, and also not complex at all (changing from “pick what stat bonus you may or may not randomly get” to “pick what stat bonus you want right now and a bunch of bonus events you may or may not get”). And more internal things to do is a really needed thing. Basically because the only interaction with your vassals is (a) is there going to be a revolt? or (b) scheming to strip them of titles to make revolt less likely.
If you get esoteric with the eastern stuff or want to mechanic abuse edge cases, sure.
One thing that bothers me about all these expansions for CK2 and EU4 is how they muck with the performance of those titles. These games get more and more stuttery with each addition and it’s much more apparent with CK2 given it is the oldest of the two. Paradox, time for CKIII please!
It’s just overwhelming to a newb, I think. At least to me anyway.
We had a whole discussion about how Paradox just shrugged about the in-game tutorial being broken, and adding more mechanics just makes things harder.
I don’t get it. The base game of CK2 is still there, newbies can go play that for cheap. There’s nothing that says they need to simultaneously learn mechanics related to Islam, India, vikings, etc.
The game is 4 years old now, of course expansions to the base game are going to adding features for existing players. Newbies don’t have to learn or even buy every expansion, though. Buy the base game and if you like it, start adding on the expansions.
Which is really key though. A new player doesn’t need those features. But as gamers we often take a different perspective where we feel we do need to play with all the expansions. Paradox games are really unique in that there are entire systems you can ignore at your leisure. You don’t need to mess with trade, or colonies, or League Wars, or or or… Sure you may be playing where you don’t take full advantage of your abilities if you send your merchants out once, then forget their existence, but if your goal is simply to see what happens? No biggie.
Telefrog, Kevin is correct. The games aren’t harder, or even necessarily more complex to play. They are just adding options to how you play. To someone not immersed it does seem like this wouldn’t be true, I do get that. The new feature lists seem like such huge changes, but in reality it is only adding flavor and options at the margins. Things that, for the most part, you can safely ignore. Lord knows the AI will ignore some of them too, or at least not utilize them as brutally as an experienced player would. Just don’t set it on ironman and do your thing.
But I’ve also put more hours into EU IV than any other game. Ever. The only games within 150 hours are EU III, Medival 2 Total War, and Napoleon Total War. So I also do not speak from anything approaching neutral here, so take my thoughts with a salt shaker.
It’s especially a bear if you’ve been running a game for a few hundred years. Gets even more bogged down with all the generated interbred characters shuffling around. It’s also why I generally avoid playing ironman in CK2, it gets pokey enough without the game wanting to autosave every time anything happens/every month otherwise.
So I’ve been watching The Last Kingdom lately on Netflix and it’s giving me the hankering to fire this up and play another round.
Alas, the game won’t start any more. Sigh, computers. I think it’s because I’m now running two monitors and the game doesn’t know how to create the render device properly (come on, paradox!). I tried the adapter settings.txt fix the game mentions in the error dialog but it didn’t fix anything.
Anyone encounter this?
Edit: Tried tinkering with settings, reinstalled twice…finally fixed it after doing a system reboot. Odd.
That’s the #1 rule of anything electronics related.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Yep, and it’s sad that it’s still applicable in 2016.
Picked up CK2 again recently… I never get very far into it, but I seem to know more of what I’m doing each time. That said, I’m confused.
I started as an Irish count and unified Eire, have part of Wales and a county in Scotland. Then I noticed that the Norge were fighting several wars, so I fabricated claims on the Duchy of Island (Iceland) and stole that fairly handily. So I’m King of Eire, Duke of Island etc. Now I have a tooltip asking me to nominate a successor to the King of Norge, an elective monarchy. But Norge and Eire are both King titles, so why do I have a vote? Do all de jure duchys have a vote in elective monarchy, even if they’re not actually vassals of the title being voted on?
Yes, they do. Iceland is considered a de jure duchy of Norway, and as such you holding that title gives you a vote for the King title of Norway.
Hello all!
I would like to ask for some advice and clarification… (Wall of text incoming)
This is my first CK2 game where I have at least a little bit of clue what I’m doing. Playing the game on vanilla, no DLCs whatsoever.
Started with the earliest possible date as Hungary, It’s right on the eastern border of the catholic world, so there are conqest possibilities in almost all directions. Or at least I thought so, then I saw the size of the unified HRE and Byzantium (played a lot of EU4 before and this was never the case there). No problem, there’s Poland and some heathen tribes in the east, Croatia to the south. During a failed conquest to the east, instead of sucking up the loss I sent a decent amount of gold in the HREmperor’s way to let my sister marry his nth son and secure an alliance. It was a steamroll from that point, me taking a corridor between the Baltic and Adriatic Seas east of the HRE. This meant Poland, west part of Croatia, and a lot of tribes near the Baltic. That’s nice and all, but then the HREmperor died and the alliance got annuled. Ok, I was strong enough to stand my own against rebs and most of the remaining tribes if they allied.
Somewhere during this time there was a quasi-revolt to change the election law to Elective. As I thought it is still a lot better than Gavelkind, I just gave in. <— Was this a good choice?
But I could not enact any laws, because 1/2-2/3 of my vassal hated my guts. When I realized what the problem might be, I had my daughter on the throne. Most of them did not like too much having a Queen on the throne. And there was a time when I had 5 demesne over the limit after a tribal conquest. I had a negative modifier called “Too many duchy titles” (I think). Thought this one is from the demesne size, but after reducing it to the limit by giving them out to vassals, the modifier stayed. And it was there even a decade later, then even after her death. So, it clearly isn’t that… That’s when I realized, this could be the titles the character hold on his/her character sheet. Yup, I had a ton of those, so started to give out the duchy titles to ppl here’n’there including the lover titles. Left only 2 on myself, one where my own counties were located and the other where I wanted my de jure CB used. That made everyone happy like liitle puppies. OK, there were 2 tribal chiefs who did not like me that much, but they were weak and easy to bribe with some gold… <— What’s the preferred amount of duchy titles to hold if you also have a Kingdom title?
Since I managed to enact some centralization and authority laws and had very good stewardship rulers, my demesne size got a lot bigger (4->7). I wanted my holdings to be close to each other instead of having them on the different parts of the Kingdom, I started to use up my “massive” treasury and income (3k+ with +20/m) with building and upgrading castles in my capital duchy counties. This increased my income to 30-33/m. Built new castles, because I wanted to use the tax and levy modifier for them being in my capital duchy. <— Was this a bad idea? Is it better to rather revoke some titles of the neighboring counties, rather than building new holdings as the new ones are only baronies and no infrastructure built up in them?
As I was not really sure how inheritance works in the different laws (Gavelkind vs Elective vs Primorgiture vs and so on) and with several titles of the same level, I went and created the kingdom of Wallachia and the empire of Carpathia (tooltip said I need two kingdom titles to create the empire title). What I could find (and understand) on the wiki was only that itás worth creating the empire title if that helps with managing the kingdom titles if you want to give them out. For a while it was good, managed to have elected the same person for all 3 titles.
But then I made two mistakes in a row… Sent my king into a 3:1 battle in Italy, where he got his head crushed and got that -6 allstat modifier… Then before I realized someone else got voted on for the kingdom titles. And the king died. Now with the kingdom title went the duchy title and with it all the counties I had originally. The barony castles remained under my control and the capitol went to Italy (had 1 county there). So I lost half my counties, around 3/4 of my personal levies, and about half of my vassal levies (went from 16k total to bit under 8k). My new elected heir become the one who went with the kingdom titles, so it would be nice if the new emperor died fast. But no, the double king had to die the next year and the kingdom titles went to two different person. <— Now what should I do? Try to get the titles back step-by-step slowly electing the same person, or try to revoke the titles? They both feel strong enough and I’m afraid the HRE allies won’t be helping enough. :-/ Or is there any other way?
Other than that, I have an often asked question: What DLC is “mandatory” and which is “good to have”? And mostly: WHY? I’d like to know what interesting, useful mechanics were added in the ones you’re recommending. I thought about the Way of Life for the ruler focus (no idea what else is in there) and the one which enables the retinues.
Feel free to criticize or give advice on anything I wrote, not just to my questions.
And thank you all for taking the time to read my mini-novel! :-D