Ck2 Too Many Held Duchies
I've seen it mentioned in other topics, but it deserves one of its own! Also it's getting a new expansion: that enhances the Byzantine Empire. And lets you poke people's eyes out.So if you haven't played CK2, it's a fairly unique game.
Also, when managing your vassals, do your best to avoid de jure overlap- in one of my first games as Scotland three of my main dukes were constantly fighting each other because I'd done a lousy job of landing them and there were too many claims and title usurpations.
- Besides I've got too many other plots in the queue - first, the son of the Duke of Orkney needs to die, so my second son's wife will inherit. Then there's those pesky descendants of the former Count of Carrick & Galloway, who all have strong claims since their daddy died in prison after I put down his rebellion and stripped his titles.
- I've held the Duchies of Wessex, Kent, Middlesex, & East Angle most of the game, including all the counties in said duchies. I do not hold any baronies, cities, or bishoprics. I'm working on getting some crown laws past and I noticed that I have a negative 'To many held duchies' modifier on almost all of my vassals.
If you've played other Paradox games, it's similar in its depth and the level of micromanagement required. All Paradox games basically play like Civilization on steroids, where you have to concern yourself with some very basic details. I've only played CK2 and Victoria 2, and couldn't get into the latter since managing the population types got tedious fast.In Crusader Kings 2, the management is all about relationships: with foreign leaders, with your liege if you have one, with your vassals, even with your own family.
War is very simplistic, you can quite easily get by without educating yourself on the various types of troops and leadership qualities, especially if you're off to the side and not trying to fight the big blobs (try throwing down with the Holy Roman Empire or the Fatimid Sultanate without having a good amount of Heavy Calvary and good generals for your armies and they'll tear you apart.) On the other hand, you have to micromanage your dynasty a lot. You don't really play as a country, but rather a dynasty. I've started out as an Irish duke and ended up as King of Jerusalem, with a good amount of territory in the Holy Roman Empire. And no territory at all in Ireland or Jerusalem. You'll have to make sure vassals are happy, that your kids are well educated and marry well (good stats, but also good alliances, but also not too related to you, but also with a good claim), make sure your liege isn't going to throw you in jail or revoke your titles, go on Crusades (or Jihads if you have Sword of Islam expansion and are playing a Muslim ruler), and try to gain claims on new territories.It's an interesting game, because you won't really win it.
You might end up as King of England and conquer most of Spain, or you might start out as a lowly sheikh and eventually see your Caliphate extend from Mecca to Morocco.Right now I'm playing a game I started as Duke of Brittany, now King of Brittany, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Castille. My wife had a claim on France that she passed on to my son after she was murdered, so in the meantime I'm taking over the few holdouts in Scotland and working on my own personal version of the Reconquista in Spain. When my current ruler dies, I'll try and get the pope to let me invade France.
After that is a big question mark. The HRE is enormous, they've conquered a good deal of North Africa and show no signs of slowing down, so even after I control the British Isles, France, and Spain, I'm not sure I want to tangle with them. Maybe try and conquer Byzantium. Mmmm, I am enjoying this immensely. I chose Heinrich, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, as an easy intro so that I can learn the ropes. I'm now about 45 years into it and he's about to die - I have a single son so the succession should be pretty straightforward.
Though I'm sure I'll learn the intricacies about succession soon.I figured out pretty quickly to check to see if a ruler is allies with hungary/poland/france/england/sweden/denmark/all-of-the-above before attacking him. My favorite thing to do (as emperor of such a large and powerful kingdom) is to infuriate one of my vassals into revolting, and then crush him like a bug and take his land.The only plots I've been able to get have been killing my wives. So I've gone through quite a number of them!It's a complicated game, or at least it's so far removed from modern politics it's hard to understand. I've never played another game like it, so I'm probably furthur behind the curve than most. I still don't really get the titles and claims. But I still like it. I'm not going to fault a game for not dumbing itself down for me!
Ck2 Too Many Held Duchies Work
Adam H wrote:Mmmm, I am enjoying this immensely. I chose Heinrich, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, as an easy intro so that I can learn the ropes. I'm now about 45 years into it and he's about to die - I have a single son so the succession should be pretty straightforward. Though I'm sure I'll learn the intricacies about succession soon.I figured out pretty quickly to check to see if a ruler is allies with hungary/poland/france/england/sweden/denmark/all-of-the-above before attacking him. My favorite thing to do (as emperor of such a large and powerful kingdom) is to infuriate one of my vassals into revolting, and then crush him like a bug and take his land.The only plots I've been able to get have been killing my wives. So I've gone through quite a number of them!It's a complicated game, or at least it's so far removed from modern politics it's hard to understand.
I've never played another game like it, so I'm probably furthur behind the curve than most. I still don't really get the titles and claims. But I still like it. I'm not going to fault a game for not dumbing itself down for me!I've played for a while now and still don't understand titles and claims all that well.Titles:Baron level (this also includes towns and churches/mosques) are just indicative of owning that specific holding.
A player can't be a baron alone.Counts own a county. All the barons etc within that county are direct vassals. Shiekh, Earl, Lord Mayor, Prince-Bishop and others are synonymous with this. A count has to actually own the county of his title (i.e. The Count of Rennes will actually control the province of Rennes). A count also has to have some holding within the county.Dukes are where it gets interesting. A duchy is both a de facto and de jure title.
In my game, the Duke of Normandy is the Duke of Cornwall as well. Yet he doesn't own either county, or indeed even a barony there.
And neither of the Earls are his vassals, both are direct vassals to me (the king). He does however have a Casus Belli against them with his de jure claim. Viswasam movie download mass tamilan mp4. Emirs are the equivalent.Kingdoms follow pretty much the same rules as duchies. It's fairly common to see King of Jerusalem not having any land in Jerusalem, since players often take it on a Crusade and then promptly lose it to the Fatimids who don't claim the title from them. Kings can't have more than two duchal titles without pissing off all their vassals. Sultans are the equivalent.Emperors are Kings writ large. Usually much harder to create an Empire, and there's only two to start.
Ck2 Duchies
Caliphs aren't equivalent to emperors, incidentally.Claims are confusing. They inherit like titles, but only to an extent and I have no clue what that extent is. Weak claims can only be pressed on titles in certain situations, but they do enable you to ask the pope for an invasion (this is how I conquered France.)Successions are. Firstly, make sure you know the law.
HRE starts as elective, so if you didn't change it, be sure your vassals are voting for your son. I generally prefer Primogeniture to elective, and far prefer elective to gavelkind. If you have SoI and play as a Muslim, they work totally differently.Then you have to make sure your younger sons aren't too powerful. I generally don't give them land. If I do, it's generally a barony in a county I own, and its because they have good stats and I want to make them a Councillor (except spymaster.
Your spymaster should never ever be anyone with a claim on anything of yours.) If you have Free Investiture, name them as the heir to a bishopric (via the religion window), and as long as they don't have land, this will remove them from the line of succession. Otherwise, matrilineally marry them to weak foreign countesses who can't press their claims. If you're very careful about it, and you cultivate younger sons well, you can set them up as vassals and their families will retain a +5 Same Dynasty opinion bonus. Risky though, since they'll usually have a claim and a negative modifier from wanting that title, so it only pays off with their distant descendants who don't have the claim.The biggest reason successions suck is the opinions. You get a horrible short reign opinion modifier. If your heir is worse in stats, you might have to give up some holdings to fit within your demense limit.
You generally have to spend a fair amount of money giving gifts to vassals who want to rebel, since you'll have less troops to put down their rebellions, because even the loyal ones won't like you as much. (Though if your heir has a higher stewardship stat, this is a good opportunity to expand your demense to match the new limit). Even if you don't have a succession crisis or revolts on your hands, you have less troops, meaning your expansion will slow down for a bit, and if there's a powerful greedy neighbor you could be in trouble.Tips to make successions smooth:1) Always educate your heirs.
And it's a good idea to educate your spares.2) ALWAYS EDUCATE YOUR HEIRS. If you let someone of a foreign culture do it, you can get a massive penalty. I didn't understand this at first and let my Andalusian wife educate the Prince of France.
Crusader Kings 2 Austria
You also get to have events and give them good traits. Downside is you can't choose a vassal with a great education bonus. So if you have a vassal of your culture (or wish to switch cultures), who has good stats and a good education trait, you can certainly take the gamble of letting them educate your heir.3) Always educate grandsons. Don't trust your sons to do it. If the sons are in your court, you automatically get to choose your grandkid's tutor. If they aren't, ask your son the day they turn 6 to let you be the guardian.4) Don't give your heir too much land.
The AI is dumb, he'll go and do something like be a tyrant or marry your grandson to his cousin or something.5) Save up some money for bribes and mercenaries when your king is getting old. Don't invest yourself in serious wars.6) Make sure no vassals have enough land that they can be a serious problem if they rebel. Weak vassals make for obedient vassals.Pissing off your vassals to rebel is smart! Especially good on foreign holdings, since after you seize their titles, you can install nobles of your own culture who won't have the opinion penalty.On a character screen, there's two buttons to the bottom left of the portrait. One is a scroll that will take you to the diplomacy screen.
The one above that will display plots you can do on that person, letting you do way more plots than appears on your intrigue screen selection box. I think the button is an envelope and knife. If it looks like a cloud, you can't try and kill the character.New info out about Legacy of Rome and the accompanying patch.You can have retinues of standing troops in the DLC! Their size is limited by tech, and they decrease the size of levies you can call up.
The Byzantine Empire will have new decisions and options.In the patch, they are changing a lot of the plots to work within the faction system they're putting in. So this seems neato.You'll get just a batch levy from vassals directly, so you don't have to concern yourself with the opinions of the vassals of your vassals.They're revamping the Orthodox system so that each Orthodox country has its own patriarch in addition to the Ecumenical Patriarch.Just to be clear, all the stuff within the patch is free, so we'll get factions, levy revamp and orthodox revamp for free. The Byzantium DLC is $6 which seems pretty good as well. I love this game. Which is probably not surprising because I like Paradox games in general, but CK2 is really one of the greats.For new players trying to figure things out, starting in Ireland is a good way to learn the ropes.
England and Scotland tend to stay out of your business until fairly late and you get to progress gradually from count to duke to king (protip: Ulster and Munster make the best demesne). Also, when managing your vassals, do your best to avoid de jure overlap- in one of my first games as Scotland three of my main dukes were constantly fighting each other because I'd done a lousy job of landing them and there were too many claims and title usurpations.I've been playing for quite a while now and I've spent plenty of time on the Paradox forums figuring stuff out, so if you're having trouble with something I can probably help you out. So Legacy of Rome is shaping up to be pretty neat. Factions are basically like plots with more options.Combat looks much better.
Levies won't replenish at home when they are in the field, so no dismantling levies and bringing them back up nice and fresh. You also only get levies from your direct vassals, which makes management a bit easier, and it also may reduce some of the perverse incentives going on with duchies in kingdoms. In a lot of cases, it makes sense to have no duchies other than the two you hold personally. With liege levies, you could reduce the number of direct vassals you have by giving duchies out, so rather than keeping 6 separate counts happy, you only have to keep the Duke of Barcelona liking you.
Even if you don't do that, it's nice not having to keep all the barons and mayors and bishops pleased.So in my game, it's 1300, and my realm, The Latin Empire, stretches continuously from Ireland to northern Italy, including Iberia, Gaul, and large swathes of what was the Holy Roman Empire. It also stretches further to Constantinople, though with counties here and there rather than continuous. I recently moved my capital from my beloved Rennes to Paris, actually giving up the Duchy of Brittany (to a branch of the de Normandie family that's been pretty loyal to House de Rennes.)I've also been fairly successful in homogenizing the nobility.
The British Isles are a bit tricky, since there's still a fair number of Irish, Scottish and Welsh lords, but I've managed to remove the Saxons and Normans from power. I used an Invasion CB on France, so all the lords there are Breton, and most of the other mainland lords have been replaced after rebellions or during a reign of tyranny from Emperor Conan II. The Byzantine Empire lost land to me, and to the Golden Horde. The Horde is pretty much broken now, and the Fatimids are taking back the Southeast, while Rus is capitalizing on their weakness and is dominating the North. In a few decades, the Horde and the Byzantine Empire will be virtually gone, and the only remaining powers of note will be my glorious Brittany/Latin Empire, Rus, and the Fatimids.I'm thinking of starting a Muslim game next, I've tried before but kinda failed.
Any advice on who to choose and how to manage decadence? I have 232 hours in this game and something like 4 complete playthroughs.For anybody new to the game, I strongly recommend starting off as an Irish count, and make the goal of your game unifying Ireland.
It's nice and isolated from the rest of the world, so you can focus more on country management without half a billion neighbors to worry about. I also played through as Ghana (then later, Mali), but didn't quite make it to the end. It got boring once I joined up with the larger Muslim empire that took over practically all of Africa. There just wasn't anything for me to do in my corner of the map. For a fun crusading game, I played Sicily, where I ended up with five kingdoms (Sicily, Jerusalem, Damascus, Syria, and Africa).
I got Portugal at one point, but gave it away to a crusader state because it wasn't near anything else in my kingdoms.My latest game was playing the a Duke in the HRE. I ended up becoming King of Bavaria and over time became one of the largest countries on the map without ever becoming emperor. I made up solidly half of the HRE, so the emperor never bothered me and in return, I never revolted. I took this game and used a CK2 - EU3 converter, and have nearly finished the EU3 game. I control all of Germany and Italy, half of France, half of Spain, all of northern Africa, Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem and nearby territories, and a few ports in Asia. Fun stuff!When Legacy of Rome is released, I'll probably play a Russian or Byzantine game.
I just can't get enough. Omgryebread wrote:I'm thinking of starting a Muslim game next, I've tried before but kinda failed.
Any advice on who to choose and how to manage decadence? You have to be a bit of a fratricidal bastard to manage decadence well as a Muslim lord. You can imprison your second sons and pretenders tyranny-free, and while they're jailed they don't accrue decadence. Or you can execute them (I'm not sure this is tyranny-free but I know it's the preferred method for some players). If you want to start small, just about any of the taifas (Spanish emirs) are fun to play.
The one centered on Seville (Abbadids?) are strong and have a good shot at forming Andalusia and then Hispania. If you want to play a larger state, I've always thought it was fun to form the Persian Empire as an Iranian-ized Seljuk dynasty. Fatimids are frankly a little OP so I've never found them that fun to play.
IcedT wrote:Fatimids are frankly a little OP so I've never found them that fun to play.They definitely seem to be the 'well, time to conquer the entire world' sort, which I enjoy the idea of quite a bit. The trouble with them is that decadence rapidly becomes a massive challenge to manage, especially if you aren't careful about pruning your family tree early and often, because as your realm gets larger and larger you need to give people lots of titles- which means they need to be dukes or have high stewardship. IcedT wrote:Anybody score Legacy of Rome today? I got it, and for the first time playing as the ERE became appealing to me. The faction system is a huge improvement and the new decisions make it a little more satisfying to pull a Justinian and rebuild the empire.Just got it today.
Factions definitely look like a good boost- and the Byzantines having a lot of fun quirks (like being born in the purple, or the honorary titles, especially the one that counts as being born in the purple) makes them interesting. Not sure what's a good time to play them- probably the Alexiad, but for whatever reason I like starting in 1066 (possibly to give myself even more years to run out the clock, but my games rarely last more than 100 years because I get tired of them after I grow a bunch). Just got the base game, still figuring out the ropes (followed advice in this thread and started as an Irish Earl).If I have someone who is not in my line of succession (say a talented member of my council) bugging me to find them a wife, should I be looking for any particular traits, or just hook them up with the first courtier who will say yes?Also, what attributes are important in daughters, assuming that the chances of them taking the throne (or having a matrilineal marriage) are very slim? You can match your non-landed courtiers with daughters who have inheritable claims?
I figured the AI would only agree to match them with males of similar status.Edit: Oh! I just realized as a result of your post - you only get special events regarding children's attributes if you assign yourself as their guardian.Another question: I pressed a weak claim to help my daughter-in-law become a duchess, but since I'm only a count she's not my vassal.
When I die and take control of my heir, will he have control, since he's her husband? Setzer777 wrote:You can match your non-landed courtiers with daughters who have inheritable claims? I figured the AI would only agree to match them with males of similar status.Edit: Oh! I just realized as a result of your post - you only get special events regarding children's attributes if you assign yourself as their guardian.You're probably right.
You might get lucky and get some distant cousin with a claim, but yeah.Yeah, educating your heirs personally is one of the most important things in the game. Those events will still trigger, just for the AI guardian, and not you.
Always educate your heir and your spare. If your heir is landed, make note of your grandson's birthday, and ask to educate him the day he turns 6. If your heir isn't landed, his sons will be in your court anyway, and you'll be responsible for choosing their guardian. Setzer777 wrote:Another question: I pressed a weak claim to help my daughter-in-law become a duchess, but since I'm only a count she's not my vassal. When I die and take control of my heir, will he have control, since he's her husband?Your heir will inherit your county, but his wife will rule the duchy independently (it's almost a personal union, since you're perma-allied spouses), and their children will inherit both their father's lands and their mother's. Be aware that if you have Gavelkind succession (which I think is the default in the Irish duchies), your grandkid will inherit the duchy and primary county but probably lose any other counties or baronies to pretenders.If you're going for the Kingdom of Ireland and you want to keep a large and stable demesne, I recommend switching to Elective as soon as you can. In a large realm, elective means giving up a lot of control over succession, but Ireland only has 5 duchies and you can hold two of them yourself so things aren't likely to get that far out of hand.
Also, I recommend forging personal claims in Ulster (so you can take those counties for yourself) instead of using de jure claims to vassalize them. Ulster and Munster make the best Irish demesne and it's better to expand slowly there but get a good hold on it than rush and make a mess of the place. I love this game, and have many fond memories of playing CK1 at my friends' house until four in the morning. I pre-ordered CK2 as soon as I could, and I will say I am very much impressed. It's almost exactly like CK1, except better in every conceivable way. However, one thing I love just as much as playing the game is reading the stories written by others based on their own (an example is ). Does anyone know of any good sites to find such material?Edit: And the first thing I do as Ireland is to change succession laws to primogeniture succession.
It's much less messy. Finally got around to playing this game over the past few weeks - it's just as good as I hoped.So far I've tried uniting Ireland, failing to invade the Isle of Man, inheriting a province in the Crimea trying to make my holdings there bigger and losing both them and the throne of Ireland. I then tried uniting Spain as Galicia - succeeding in conquering my brothers and driving the Muslims out of the peninsula but failing to then drive the French out of a single province that they had taken from either Navarra or the Muslims.What should I try next? Bigglesworth wrote:Finally got around to playing this game over the past few weeks - it's just as good as I hoped.So far I've tried uniting Ireland, failing to invade the Isle of Man, inheriting a province in the Crimea trying to make my holdings there bigger and losing both them and the throne of Ireland. I then tried uniting Spain as Galicia - succeeding in conquering my brothers and driving the Muslims out of the peninsula but failing to then drive the French out of a single province that they had taken from either Navarra or the Muslims.What should I try next?Do you have any of the expansions? For a completely different experience, try a Muslim country. I found Mali to be an interesting one, since things aren't too crazy at first, allowing you to get your feet wet.
So, picked this up again recently and tried out a republic.Is it just me, or are the other families at most a minor inconvenience if you're the Doge? With harsh city tax rates 45% of their income is coming to you, and with a reasonable amount of intrigue you can steal their trade posts left and right, and you can outstrip them in wealth so quickly it's not even funny.I do really like the mansion as a thing to upgrade, and the trade posts are a neat feature. It's just my Venice game feels like I have four vassal families which I don't want to give any lands to because they'll just spent the money from those lands making me worse off, rather than feeling like I'm in actual competition with them.