Crusader Kings 2

New patch came out, fixed a few of the little 1.09 bugs (like the Tanistry one).

I'm happily playing as a Genoese dude, decide to not buy the election and let some other dude run the republic for a bit. He does a shitty job, everyone starts revolting, but I stay out of it. I decide to join a Crusade that the Pope starts up. Other people in the Crusade: No one. Just me and the Pope. I, of course, don't notice this until after I show up with some Templars and mercs, and proceed to take over all of Andalusia.

Crusade over, I get the win, and because you get King-level titles in a Crusade, I LEAVE the Republic of Genoa and get 4 new Patrician families.

Whoops, didn't remember that was going to happen. So all the time I spent to install my family in Genoa now means... ? The succession in Genoa still has me as #1, but I got another message saying that another Patrician family has popped up in Genoa. Perhaps I'll throw in on the side of my other family dudes and fracture Genoa more, then pick up all the pieces.

My new mission is to reabsorb Genoa. I helped in the indepedence war that was won by my other family members, but now they're independent and you can't vassalize other republics, so seeya!

I've got a 35 year old head Patrician, time to do some damage!

One change I'd make is to have new Patrician families come from the realm rather than appearing as single person new dynasties. They've got no holdings, they're completely behind the game already.

Now that I'm caught up again with DLCs and expansions I want to give this another try to see if I can learn it.Are there any good tutorials online I can watch? And what's a good starting point for learning how to play?

Vikings!

http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/crusader-kings-ii-the-old-gods

YEESSSS! LET EUROPE TREMBLE BEFORE THE ARMIES OF THOR!

These are the ones I'm using, since the Tutorial blows hot chunks of death:

!



However, watching them is a bit too much like school for me, so I end up getting distracted by other things. I'm still waiting for a time us n00bs to do a comp-stomp with a vet.

That would be good, at least to try and make sense of things with a group. I convinced someone who was even more of a grand strategy noob last night to get it so I could probably rope him into some training sessions.

Those videos helped a bit. I think I'm just going to fire it up, choose a place and see what happens when I start taking various actions, now that I kinda understand the concepts of expansion/manipulation.

The feature list of the old god expansion has left me as a quivering pile of joy.

That particularly is just fucking awesome.

Anyone playing the Game of Thrones mod for this ? :)

I haven't tried the GoT mod since the new patch, but the quality has always been impressive.

I think what I want more than anything else for CK2 is a new version of the Broken mod. :)

That mod seriously got me more excited than the Republic expansion.

How does one advance past Page 7 of the first tutorial? After restarting it and opening the map mode menu above the mini-map (before reaching Page 7), clicking on the Independent Realms button or hitting the associated hotkey ('w') while on Page 7 doesn't advance me to Page 8. It's as if the button and hotkey are disabled on Page 7, the very page they tell me to click it! So I'm stuck on Page 7 of the first tutorial. Am I missing something?

Appears to be a bug that was introduced with the most recent patch. Back to the backlog pile with this title!

what is crusader king 2-- if you dont mind me asking

We mind.

Is that a spam bot or a real person? Hard to tell these days.

This is the brokenforum version of a Turing Test. Who is the computer? Who is the human? We will never know.

Not at all. You probably heard of War of the Roses ? The third person multiplayer fighting game in a medieval setting ? CK2 is pretty much the same, just with slightly worse graphics. However you get to play not only brits like in WotR, but arabs, italians and so on. More fun than WotR, definitely buy ! But remember to buy all DLC, otherwise you cannot join half the games. Happy hunting !

yeah i have heard of the WofR and thank you, you have helped me loads :)

And now I feel not so nice - was just pulling your leg. Seriously, just google it.

Don't worry about tutorials, here's how to play:

1) Tooltips are your friend
2) If you lose, it's still fun

I just picked this up yesterday at the recent Amazon sale and have spent a little time with it. So far I think all I've been trying to do is secretly assassinate everybody else's heirs, just to mess their heads.



Given that the tutorial keeps getting stuck on me too, I've been taking the tooltip suggestion to heart. Well see how things look after another dozen hours.

Yeah, at some point you just have to dive in and see what happens. I like what I've played, but I don't do very well at either boardgaming or PC gaming if I'm flailing about. Looking forward to a comp stomp someday.

And the next expansion was announced.

For those too lazy to click.

It will also allow players to start a few hundred years early, in 867 AD.

867 - interesting start year. Christian/Western Europe is basically at the nadir of the Medieval Period... The (Frankish) Empire has been split between West and East for a generation, and the Middle Kingdom has recently collapsed into the aether of history. The Muslims have been pushed back in the south, but the reconquista has yet to start in earnest. The Magyars have invaded Europe and are bringing back the terror of the Eastern Hordes. Viking and Muslim raiders make living by any coastline or river a dicey idea.

If they go back another century or so, and they'll have to start adding in support for the Frankish Mayors who ran things. Then I can fulfill my dream of playing the most important man in Frankish history - Charles Martel.

I started playing as a Republic last night and holy shit, it feels like a new game. One I don't know how to play. I'm making money by the boatload, though, so I feel like that's ok... but I want to go back to being a lord's pawn. And ultimately murdering that lord. That's ok, right?

Spent almost an hour poring over every detail as I created a custom, unmarried Count. Five minutes into my game he got the pox and died.

Rest in peace, Count Blergen Durfy.

This is why you don't invest large amounts of time in any one person. The game will kill them and anything they've ever loved.

There are some weird bugs regarding playing a republic, as you can't upgrade your house if your heir is not a mayor-class guy.

Even a county-claim on a heir with no holding puts them into that weird state.

More info on The Old Gods.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/05/crusader-kings-ii-the-old-gods-everything-we-know-so-far/

You can take over as the Aztecs when they invade! That's amazing and awesome and will probably make me finally pick up Sunset Invasion as well once Old Gods hits.

Sacrifice ALL THE DUKES.

How are you doing that, isn't it hideously expensive?

I've started a game as "King" of Sweden. I got several vassals and one, my brother in law (whose daughter is his heir - and also my wife, so am I right in thinking I should get him removed post-haste? :P) has started a 'faction' (don't know what that means) that favors himself for King of Sweden. This seems like a thing I should do something about.

What does that really mean and how can I find out more about it? Tooltips are great but you need to know where they are first. :P

So what are my options? Straight out assassination is way too blunt (not to mention hugely expensive). I can revoke his title but I suspect that will reduce my popularity with other heads of state. Imprisonment ditto. I can try to slowly win him via gifts but if he's so bent on the throne I doubt that'll make strong enough impact - plus again, expenses that could be spent on, er, I don't actually know what. Holdings improvements?

If I send him some courtiers, will they spy for me? Amusingly, he's my spymaster so that might not work so well. :P Hmm.

Note: total noob here. I keep firing it up and being intimidated by all the information. I sorta kinda grasp what my "kingdom" really is, at least - pretty rad how well it's portrayed that those olden days kingdoms were hardly that - but that's about it, so far.

Edit: ok, I pushed some buttons and let it run a while.

I sent off Erik the Pretender to spy for me in a province - now I realize I should've sent him somewhere with a higher risk of getting killed off. Ah well. I gave him some money but it's probably too late now that he's made the faction.

I found the Council menu. Ooooh, well, this is fancy isn't it. All sorts of possibilities open up with this alone. I see Factions is there too, I have to see what that ..

Oh. I died at 39. Pneumonia. Dayum. Okay, fortunately I had one kid who was the designated heir. I better marry him off quickly. Oh yikes, I can't marry downwards or I suffer a giant prestige hit - can you go into negative prestige? If not, maybe that's not so bad. :P There's a County that I could potentially marry into ... but yeah, -200 prestige is a ton (if you can go into negative). Let's see if we can start intermarrying with Norway's ruling class. Holy shit, the King of Norway has 30 children ... most of'em legitimized bastards. Awesome. Lustful attribute, go!

And now Erik has declared war if I don't abdicate. I have no idea how to DO WAR, but that's what this play is all about - let's find out. :D

Amusingly, he is still investigating this other province/county for me. His last act prior to declaring war was to send me some useful rumors about it that I could use, er, somehow. Very diligent man, that.

I see why people like this. This really IS the LP-making machine, isn't it!

Sometimes the best thing to do is let them declare war and beat the crap out of them.

Factions are only dangerous if they have lots of power. Find the people with the most troops (not necessarily he leader) and friend them, kill em, etc.

There's a tiny button below the character portraits on the left-hand side with a dagger on it. Click that and you can start a plot against that character. It doesn't cost anything, but unlike paid-for assassinations you must find co-conspirators and you don't get to know the results right away. Even if your victim's spymaster is your best buddy it can take anything from two months to five years before the actual plot goes off and you see if the character lives or dies.

Unfortunately, I think the King of Sweden starting scenario kinda comes preloaded with "you're going to get declared against in a week". :D War it is. Just um, have to figure out how it works.

Pretty much, yeah. If you start as Stenkil, you're likely to die pretty quickly, and once you're playing as heir Erik, Uncle Erik is set to declare war right away.

In this case it's the game pushing buttons to get an actual historical war to take place: the War of Two Eriks. Erik Stenkilsson and Erik the Pagan (aka Uncle Erik) fought each other for the Swedish crown. Historically, both died in the war. Hooray!

In fact, whereas most wars will be called "Third Latvian War for Independence" or what have you, if Erik declares war on Erik and you mouse over the war icon in one of their respective diplomacy screens, you'll see the war actually gets titled "The War of Two Eriks." The first time I saw that I thought it was a neat detail.

In CK2, though, if I start in 1066 as a ruler not involved in Scandinavia, most of the time I see Erik the Pagan on the throne of Sweden after not too long, so I expect it's fairly difficult to actually avoid or win that war if you start as Stenkil. Even if you lose, though, Erik often gets holy-warred to hell and back, so you can likely declare independence during one of those and start retaking your kingdom.

Yeah, I noticed the religion angle. Is there any way for me to plead for help in a holy cause?

At the moment it's "Jarl Erik the Heathen's War For Sweden", as my heir Inge is in charge. 'course absolutely anything could happen to him ...

I (mostly) ignore prestige when getting married. You can get prestige from all sorts of shit, but awesome stats are basically static. :P

Of course arranging marriages is probably my favorite thing in this game. Don't judge me!