I did not think my chosen successor would end up killing me with a manure bomb. Astrid always was a feisty one.
Not only that. After having usurped her dear dad, who had her as his heir, she died a mere year into her reign. That left the throne wide open for an election crises and the Stenkil line was out of the throne despite having broken Norway and besting Denmark on the battlefield. To cap it all off my restless dukes took the opportunity to revolt against the manure murderer. Within three years Sweden was being ripped apart by civil war and a Danish invasion. BAH!
Eeexcellent. Yes, I know, Immortal rulers are cheesy. But it totally fits! Though I'm actually going to have to cheat because of it once I have the Empire of Israel, because you can't raise Crown Authority more than once in a ruler's lifetime. Expanding further is difficult. Holy Wars cost 100 Piety and the Muslim states throw 10k stacks at me if I invade any of them, so I might just expand into the Monophysite lands of Axum or west into the rest of Africa. (Incidentally, I love it when my vassals revolt. A half-dozen of them revolting is cleaned up within a couple of months, and I get to ransom all of them for 70 gold each. That's going to fund my construction of more cities in all of my core holdings eventually!) Also I totally thought I set him to one of the Jewish cultures instead of Levantine. Oh well; technically, Israel is in the Levant.
Because it's hard enough being a Jewish ruler! Actually, it was originally for some specific reason that I've long since forgotten. Now I'm just dicking around and conquering people and building things. I have other games for being srs bizness. (Also, how hilarious will it be to have an Immortal Possessed ruler of the world? Super hilarious.)
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=Crusader Kings THE GAME IS CHEAP RIGHT NOW BUY THE FUCK OUT OF IT.
Well it's like 4 quid more over here. Or I could buy base + the 2 big dlc's you mentioned for same price.
The collection doesn't include any of the expansions as far as I can see, just the ruler designer, the first dynasty shield pack, the mongol face pack, and a bunch of songs. I'd still get it because the ruler designer is fun, even if only occasionally useful, the dynasty shield pack means that in a game where youll spend a lot of time looking at shields you'll see ones that aren't cobbled together by an RNG, , and the mongol faces makes the mongols (when they appear) not look like arabs. The songs, meh, I have an mp3 playlist.
Sunset Invasion is there at its normal non-discounted $5. Now I have all the other expansions, folks. It's your job to help me learn this game. Even Aldie at BGG was posting about this sale!
You don't need the Dynasty Shields DLC. That is what Patrum Scuta is for. For DLC to get I'd say Legacy of Rome/Sword of Islam as well as the three face packs. That way you can enjoy the excellent Better Looking Characters mod. The music packs are perfectly optional - though I've been purchasing them during the sales for $0.49 a pop.
Since the Swedish game got screwed I've restarted as the Grand Duke of Novgorod. Sadly he's already taken to some terrible ideas. It ended with a broken leg and lessons learned.
Any way we can sticky really useful CKII mods to the first page of this thread, perchance? That would be great!
Project Balance is the only one I consider essential. http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?594436-Project-Balance-(AKA-Balansegang)
So I started a game as a count in Burgundy. Again the goal was to peaceably wait for the Aztec hordes, but I keep getting really awesome opportunities and feel the need to exploit them. I conquered four of the Burgundian provinces pretty promptly, and then aligned with the remaining two counts to take out the old duke in favor of myself. After that, I married into and inherited (through the magic of aggie seniority succession) the duchy of Orleans, plus conquered some other province. All in all I had about half of northern France under my colors pretty swiftly despite starting as an OPM. I used the money from all of that plus a tech thieving spy in Constantinople to tech rush, and used the funds from a vastly pimped economy to build a shitload of cities in my provinces (Dijon alone had like tree I built), most of which had unis. Cash from this financed a successful crusade of Mauretania, which netted me some seriously rich provinces once that shit was digested. I also swapped to primogeniture and am lined up to, uh, reverse inherit into the HRE through the Kingdom of Frisia (I'll inherit a king title, which bumps me out of France because kings can't rule kings, and into the HRE because Frisia is under them). I'm going to use THAT trick to form the Kingdoms of Burgundia and Lotharingia, which should give me all the historical turf Burgundy had. Meanwhile I'm ALSO attempting to line things up such that I inherit in a very particular order. Namely that my son lands Frisia from his mom while I land France through the electoral system and pass it on to him (by converting France to primo). If things go as planned I'll bring France with me into the HRE, which should mean I'm a hugely overwhelming powerhouse more than capable of conquering all the shit I want before flipping over into the Empire of Francia. This part is significantly riskier, and I'm neck and neck with some random prince I'm working to off. If I can do all this quick enough I should even have time to build a massive empire before the Azzies land. Wonder if I can somehow join team feathered warlord? All very exciting and has required some seriously convoluted maneuvering and one revolt where I utterly shamed the king so that I could force him to allow external inheritance again. Doesn't hurt that I have something like 3-4k heavy cavalry in my retinue. Basically armies run into that shit and go splat. tl;dr i'm penising my way through all the great houses.
Yo Aeon221, In that game we're waiting to resume, you know the one where me and Kat are lined up to be buttmutilated by the HRE so you can win independence. Well, I was looking at the map and I just realised that after that initial pounding and eventual freedom, chances are good that Denmark is going to awail themselves of tasty bitlets of my northern regions. Denmark hurts.
You're vulnerable because you haven't been developing your territories (building stuff in da castles) so as to pimp your turf, raise your income and increase your levy count. Also I bet five bucks your vassals all hate you since I think you still hold all the duchy titles in your realm still (we'll talk). And we're only independent for the duration of the war so that we can regain the right to fight inside the HRE. Once we've finished that it's back to peaceable dependence. I'll win my own war for independence in a decade or two, no worries.
I've been poking at it in SP, I know what should have been done but between not knowing before now and not playing Saxony from start. Well, Denmark hurts. The duchies thing isn't too bad, I doubt I'm over -10 from titles. the economy and especially the lack of tech is going to be painful though. Especially since Denmark can raise a very respectable amount of troops for it's size and I seem to remember them having gobbled a good bit of Sweden in that game.
So the Aztecs showed up in my France game! They conquered Wales. Then got conquered back. End of Aztecs. Wut.
I was having a lot of fun with the King of France though. Lived to be 82. Had 2 wives, a lover, and kids from all. Fought and killed the King of England in the 2nd War for Brittany. Married his grandson off to the daughter of the dead king. In his 70s, had an affair with this English princess. Yup, cuckolded his grandson with the daughter of the man he killed. Awesome.
Another development diary is up for The Republic. I'm hoping the kind of trade post system can be modified in the future to add in a system for large monasteries and the military orders.
The third dev diary is out. Looks like Aeon will have even more reasons to kill off his family in this DLC.
There's a short Gamasutra article out where they interview the lead designer. A little brief but still an interesting read.
No idea, We still play on occasion but the netcode is so, so terrible. If you see any of me, Kat or Aeon ingame we'll be happy to reload the latest save and let you be the emperor of the HRE anyday though.
