Crusader Kings 2

SRSLY



I am the Emperor of Scandinavia. I knew they were coming, after they ate all of Russia. The HRE ate Poland, so I made an alliance with them. They attacked me, I called in my other buddy Emperor, and it was on.

Here's the annoying part. Hordes don't take attrition effects like everyone else. So this death stack of 124.1k just wanders from province to province assaulting holdings and knocking them down. In the meantime, 2 35k stacks of HRE folks follow around behind them de-assaulting the holdings. Me? I'm in a boat with my 40k troops because troops don't take attrition on boats. WTF. Eventually the sheer mass of the HRE and Horde armies makes them collapse in on each other, and then my dudes jump off the boat and join the battle.

I wish there was a better way to balance the horde rather than just giving them no-attrition troops. Free troops from off the map, ok, but SRSLY.

edit: Aztecs haven't shown up yet. If they don't, I'm going to play a bit then go and start a new game in ~1220 or so.

My current King of Croatia has the ambition to improve his stewardship. While on his way to help his friend King Bohemund of Sicily he has spotted a run down inn in Split which he has now vowed to restore. So far we've picked out the new name - the Drunken Squire - and patched up some of the holes.

I like where this is heading.

So that Doomstack up there was the Golden Horde's sole claim to fame. After the Forces Of The West stopped them cold in Estonia and wiped out that stack, they didn't attack anyone anymore, converted to Catholicism, and now can muster a mere 40k troops. Have fun with your tundra, ya idiot Mongols.

So Emperor The Old dies, his son ChooChooBoogie comes to power (kids get named based on whatever my son is watching/doing at the time, hence Tractor, Einstein, CoatHanger, Alphabet, etc). The new Faction mechanic is good, but the leader is the weak point. I blitzed the Duke running the show, and took his 2 provinces, and him and his 8 buddies get thrown in the clink. The other revolt, the single old Count dies, war is over.

ChooChooBoogie was one of the last emperors of China.

Okay, he may have actually had other names.

King Tractor only lived for 3 months, Prince Einstein was, ironically enough, an idiot. He.... "had an accident".

PS: Marrying Irish people to Scandinavians makes for awesome names.

In other world news:

Sunni Islam has been wiped out
Hungary, France, and the Iberian branch of the Ylving family (descedents of Blanco "Ironsides" Ylving), are all fighting over the peninsular and North Africa. France is a total zone. England is full of squabbling lords that lose their kingship to Scotland quite often, and all resent the Viking presence. Poland is gone. The Rump of Russia just married into the Ylvings, so I'll be picking all that up rather soon. HRE continues to slowly blob out, the fact that their last 3 Kaisers all are named "The Cruel" makes me not want to tussle with them. ERE seems to still be in one piece.

So it's basically 5 major empire:
HRE
ERE
Scandinavia
Golden Horde (now Catholic)
Ilkhanate (now Shia)

... and a bunch of noise. Not sure what else I want to accomplish with this game.

I went and looked at the save file. The Sunset Invasion didn't fire properly.

This is sad.

Sunni Islam collapsing would be really great for me. Croatia is not in a good place when by 1095 the Byzantine Empire has collapsed and the Balkans are owned by Muslims 400 years too soon.

We're playing this on weekends via hamachi.

Sync errors are common (which sucks donkey dick) but you can still play pretty reliably.

Kat played as Leon and conquered Galicia plus central portugal. He's got two angry rebellious dukes who he's named various unusual things. At one point he had a son inherit Tuscany, but that son lost everything fucking with the HRE.

Riz played as Castille and conquered various Muslim duchies to create a weird penis country that holds much of central and southern Spain. He was critical in defending me from the ravages of the fucking Muslim hordes, and then I backed him in a couple of wars in return.

I played as the Duke of Barcelona, turned myself into Aragon through the transitive property of "suck my balls you tiny bitch king" and then married the woman I put on the throne of Navarre and gave our love child the duchy of Aragon (which promptly seceded when he inherited and my king won't die). So I've got a dual kingdom with almost all the de jure turf and a son who's gone crazy conquering muslims along the east coast. I'm also slowly conquering the islands in the Mediterranean because they're held by Muslims and I have fucktons of boats. I've also married into the French royal family on multiple occasions and regularly meddle in their civil wars. I spend more time helping them than they do helping me because the King is too stupid to dismember the mega Duchy that holds most of France.

At one point Nate showed up and played as Toulouse because that was the nearest Duchy to the rest of us. He gobbled up the various counts and fought in a French civil war, then had to drop out again.

Neither Riz nor Nate really knew how to play before we started our session. They asked questions that I answered while we played. Kat and I did the same thing the last time we played over hamachi, which is why he knows how to play now. Others are welcome to join in, just say hi on steam between 11 and 4 on the weekends. The basics required to play the game competently on normal are trivial to pick up; you'll be lost on a lot of the snazzier dynastic maneuvering but so what, you only pick that shit up with experience.


Kat and I also played a quick game as two dukes in Hungary. We accidentally ended up on different sides in a three way civil war that Kat won after I stopped supporting my AI ally. He executed my duke, but made up for it by granting me a second duchy.

The game is so much better in MP even when you're only playing co-op like we mostly were. I'd love to play a game in the HRE where we got feisty.

I was amazed at how I had no bloody idea what I was doing. Then about 6-10 questions later, I was sort of managing my little duchy.

Thanks for the help, Aeon221. I'll try tackling a few single player games now and have a chance of actually getting somewhere. I figure all the information I got I could have gone searching for and read, but it's much faster when you have someone teach you.

Man, we should pay teachers more. They're so useful. ;)

No we should eat them. DELICIOUS TEACHERS.

That sounds like fun. Also seems like a great way to teach newbies.
Why Hamachi? Is there no direct IP multiplayer?

Trust me, there's no way to play this game in multi except over Hamachi, whatever the game might lead you to believe.

That does sound like fun. 11-4 on weekends is tough because of kids, but isn't this the game that teaches you how best to disinherit and banish them?

Love to try a multiplayer game of this out, since I am very slow learning Paradox (and really, any deep strategy) games.

You don't have to play the whole time, Nate dropped out after like half an hour. The weird hours are because kat and riz are filthy euros and I'm busy whoring myself out during the rest of the day.

Playing this multiplayer sounds like fun. And since I'm part of the filthy euro brigade it's even better. So I have stalked some of you on Steam to get in on the action.

Thanks! Is everyone playing with Legacy of Rome? I will do what prep I can, but fair warning: I'm a n00bie!

You use whatever DLC the host has and I've got all the dlc barring mayan invasion. So we've been doing that.

As I keep saying newbie is totally nbd, the basics are really easy to grok.

Yeah, I had literally Zero knowledge of this game when we started but being on mumble and having people walk me through the more circuitous actions had me blapping infidels in short order.

I figured out how to plot an asassination against Kat pretty fast though.

So I finally got around to buying Sword of Islam and Legacy of Rome expansions. Any recommendations on fun Muslim rulers for a first non-Christian game? Spain seems like an obvious choice, but too obvious. I was thinking something in the Edessa area. Is that pretty much an invitation to be run over by Byzantium? In my previous games the Byzantimes pretty much painted that entire region pink.

This isn't a perfect place to put this, but it really doesn't need its own thread:

I have two Steam codes for Europa Universalis III Chronicles, which I assume is basically EU3 "Complete", to give away. First two to PM me get the hookup.

I present the best ruler of the Byzantine Empire EVAR:



Yes, that's a 65-year old Lustful Drunken Paranoid Slothful Murdering German Catholic on the Byzantine throne.

She succeeded another Empress that lived until she was 85 and at one point, had like 15 Ducal titles stacked up.

Gisela actually died of natural causes.

Cynical, not paranoid. Sheesh, it's like you don't even play this game.

NEW EXPANSION!

The Republic

Focuses on the "soft power" of Merchant Republics.

Venice, Genoa, Pisa, the Hanseatic League, or Gotland.

Can't wait, as usual. Everytime I think I'm getting bored, a new patch or DLC comes out that makes the game interesting again.

New LP plan: Shattered World LP as one of the Republics and take over the world muahahahaha.

Oh, yes. Republic of Ireland here we go.

I literally jumped in cold to this game yesterday when Aeon, Kat and Riz were already going strong. They managed to teach me how to play in about ~20mins, I was pretty surprised myself, and we had an enjoyable hour or two before Kat's internet starting dropping consistently.

Well good grief, people. Would someone else PM me so I can give away the second code?

I am disappointed in all of you.

EDIT: Crisis averted. Thank goodness.

Funny that, I was just about to PM you when I posted here earlier and was like "nah, they'll be long gone by now" :)

Damn right.

Paradox have been real good at pushing out expansions in a reasonable manner. Now I'm already wondering what the next one will be. Pagans, maybe?

More impressively, they patch almost all of the improvements into the base game, unlike some developers, who only patch the balance improvements in for people who buy the expansions.

I thought I'd play a nice relaxing game as a Swedish count of Smaland while waiting for the Aztec invasion. Instead I'm ruling Denmark, Poland and Sweden and I'm looking to add Norway and become an Emperor.

Not really sure how it happened!

I started out as a designed guy with awesome stewardship and a sick sigil but also the weakness trait and a few other negatives. I made nice with the king using my chancellor while building up my province and stayed loyal (but neutral) in the war with Erik the Heathen. He gave me the duchy, yay. Mostly though I spent my time raising like eight billion daughters and one son. Son eventually became duke, and then steward. He had a badass daughter, an ok daughter and an idiot son. Badass steward daughter matrimarried a lower end son of the Scottish king because I had ~plans~ for her.

For whatever reason (possibly because I had a sick nasty beard, probably because I was mad effective with my chancellor) I managed to rack up enough votes to get myself placed as the next king. And because I was the kig's steward, and therefore at court, I had the ability to take a more active role in assassinations (exciting new options)! Suffice to say the old king sucked down a faceful of surprise arrowsex and I was now king.

So I voted for badass daughter and the dukes followed suit! Femheir confirmed!

I revoked some provinces with plots and finally got myself up to four of the dang things, but with a massive income thanks to all the peacetime (meaning loads of money for upgrades).

King didn't do much exciting stuff because he was old, so eventually he died and daughter took over. She had weak claims on both Poland and Denmark, and both of them were racked by civil wars (denmark because it had failed to digest a hungarian conquest, poland because the king was a possessed imbecile). And her hubby? 20 point martial Scottish badass.

He basically facerolled through the armies of Poland and Denmark, leaving me in control of three countries, but with most of my turf trapped in an electoral monarchy. She's getting old and her son (decent stats) will inherit all three kingdoms, all of which have feisty dukes. The mod I'm running requires diligence for a king to pass the primogeniture law, so if I can hold onto the thrones and do some hunting I'll be able to get that shit down soonish.

All kinda more hyperactive than I'm used to, and all built on an incredibly fragile base rather than the multiduchy powerhouse I'm used to building before taking over a kingdom.

I am angryface because my Immortal ruler that I was going to turn the world Jewish with died of old age.

:angryface:

Clearly mods are supposed to work perfectly all the time otherwise heavens forfend.

So my valiant first Croatian King died during a battle in southern Italy. His son became king, but was only a year old. So we get a regent. Surely the Croatian people will give us a good man to guide the nation during my infancy.



Goddammit.

I do love me some CK2+.

Double Jewish? Unpossible!

Double secret Jewish.

Kat, Riz and I are playing as Saxony, Italy and Bavaria. I'm able to form the Empire of Italia after two kings (technically three and one was a queen, but I had a shitty depressed king so I made him commit suicide after two months so his son could inherit) and just need to be independent to finish the job. Riz has put together the Kingdom of Saxony and Kat is pushing together the chunky Kingdom of Bavaria.

And then the HRE declared Internal Peace. This doesn't effect me since I'm not de jure part of that empire and thus cannot be forced to obey those rules in my demense, but I DO own Holland and am therefore pissed. And the two of them are obviously extremely pissed about it.

So we formed a faction and have just declared war. I've got enough cash for 10-15k mercenaries basically indefinitely, plus my 15-20k standard troops. The two of them (being German) are significantly poorer. And the HRE popped a 26k stack adjacent to both of them. I'm hoping I can take it down but shit goan be brutal.

Since this was the last weekend before I bounce off back home for the holidays we probably won't play again until next year. I'm pretty excited to fuck up the Emperor and then fuck him up again for independence.