Ok, how do I win a war? I have 1400 troops, he has 148 left and fleeing to another province where I'm besieging with 600, and he wont' surrender because "the outcome's inconclusive". What else can I do to my rightfully owned property (i.e. all the land he grabbed) back?
To win the war you'll need to siege back any holdings your opponent has taken and besiege a large number of his. So far as I can tell the AI will not factor in troop numbers into its determination on whether or not to accept peace terms.
Ugh, but he just "declared" them his! Maaaaaan. Ok, weird thing just happened. Their morale was down to zero and the number of defenders was down, the game claimed victory on that siege and ... now I'm sieging it again ... oh wait a minute, I think there were multiple holdings in this county. That might account for it.
See the shields on the upper corners of each holding in the lower right here: Top left is the shield of that holding (Barony, City, Church, etc.). Top right is (usually) the Earl of the county. When you have successful taken someone else's holding, your shield will appear in the middle of the top. When they've taken one of yours, you'll see their shield there.
Yeah, I occupied two of his counties and sieged 3.5 holdings when he decided to give up. And since it was a succession challenge, the counties reverted to my ownership. I also have this feeling that my dear old dad in law (or well, uh, I think the relationship is a bit more complex than that) the King of Norway decided to tromp in and maybe snatch up a county while it was in disarray, so I concluded peace talks quickly. Of course now he's scheming from prison and naming his buddies to positions of power in those same counties. I am tempted to ask him to convert to Christianity, since a lot of the problems stem from our clash of faiths ... they won't take my bribes/invites because of that, wonder if they'd stop talking to him if he converted? I'll try it. I can beat him down again if need be. :P I'm running out of courtiers to marry off to gain the support I need to improve relations, though. Hm. Still, lasting longer than I thought I would! :D This isn't just an LP generator, it's a Civ-like roguelike. Lots of complex rules and behaviors going on (well, with some possibly scripted bits although it seems that the traits/starting situations are responsible for a lot of it?) with some very interesting and unexpected results.
And thanks to the "Look up on Wikipedia" button it is also a history teacher ! Pretty much the swiss army knife of modern gaming.
As Duke of Munster and Leinster, I put a twice-troublesome half-brother in prison for a long time. So long, he liked me by 20-30 or so. He was in his 60s and I figured it was safe to release him. Somehow, he ends up in the King of England's court and that bastard declares war on behalf of my half-brother. Dammit.
Brilliant. :D I think judging by what he's doing FROM PRISON, it's safe to say he's not gonna let this rest. I decide TONIGHT (DUN DUN DUUUN yeah who am I kidding he's getting the chop).
Making people Chaplain seems to bring out the heretic in them. The corollary is: never make someone you care about Chaplain. It always ends in tears.
I think its actually the research job for chaplains that comes with the chance for heresy. It can be a useful way to get rid of people, just have them arrested when they go heretic. If your Crown Authority is Medium or higher you can just confiscate a heretic/heathens lands aswell.
I'm 2 counties away from taking over all of Ireland. I had an epic war with the King of Scotland when he tried to take Oriel. After falling to about -98% warscore and me throwing my 1200 troop stacks at his 4000 stack, I whittled him down, bought some mercs, and steamrolled toward his castle. Before long, though, his vassals declared war. With my military in such good condition, taking over the other counties in Ireland was easy. I'm still saving money to declare myself the king. After that, I'm aiming for Normandy, as I have some daughters there and some Norman princesses that married my sons. I might instead go for Scotland, though. Regardless, I can't imagine this plan will go awry in any way. Ever.
So the Aztecs invaded and did the best I've ever seen, taking over all of Northern Africa (stopping at my holdings) and lots of Iberia (going around me). They have a deathstack of 145k troops that they march around. So I've been prepping for the moment for them to get bigger than me, at which point I think I can do a Request Invasion CB and take it all back. I've got 35k of Retinue, I'm planning to hire all 3 of the religious orders, and use mercs and my realm troops to fill up every single boat I can muster and hire. Because there's no attrition on boats, that's where everyone's going to sit. Hopefully just having better troops and all the heavy cab and 20+ leaders will let me break that doomstack. Even if I lose, I can just make more troops, they can't.
Also, good work Ilkhanate: That is the single Ilkhanate province. It didn't last long after that. Also in my game, the HRE has mostly fallen apart, with Lotharingia and Bohemia and a bunch of counties becoming independent. At one point there were 3 competing wars for the throne of the HRE. I used the opportunity to consume a bunch of Italian provinces.
So, I declared war on Scotland after founding the Kingdom of Ireland. I thought that once I took over, I'd get scotland, but all that happened was that one of my courtiers took it over. No counties for me, even.
Nicest King a courtier could ask for. What claims did you use to start the war? Did you already have your own, did you fabricate them, or did you use your courtiers?
145k death stack!!! Ugh. Biggest I had seen was the 60k or so Horde stacks.. that is huge! What year is it?
I decided to play Croatia for some reason, and quickly learned that a) the royal line has some sort of derp gene, because it felt like half my descendants were slow or imbeciles, b) this is possibly due to a fondness for marrying their own cousins if I didn't pick a spouse FOR them, c) Hungary felt Croatia was far too stable with me running it, so decided to break apart and reform 3489723566 times just so someone in the area was a mess. My favorite ruler was a queen who murdered her derp brother for the throne (for which I was grateful) and then had to murder her derp son and his derp kids (there were three of them, and the smartest one was his slow daughter) to make sure her normal son and his GENIUS WIFE took over. The pope even forgave her kinslaying, what more could a girl ask for?
The upshot is that the new king has a major popularity problem and that the Kingdom of Scotland is going to disintegrate before your eyes.
So hey, there was a dev diary on the Old Gods expansion and an article on said dev diary. Seems like they've confirmed sailing down rivers, which is pretty much necessary for a Viking expansion, pagan concubines, and defensive bonuses for Baltic and Finnish pagans. Unfortunately, there wasn't much on Zoroastrianism, so I'm not quite sure how hard it'll be to bring back Ahura Mazda yet.
Okay, I am working my way through this thread, but are there any good new-player resources for CK2? A play-along LP or thread or guide that goes into what's important and why I should care? I haven't played this before, nor did I play CK1, but I'm really trying!
The tutorial is imperfect and kind of boring but it gets the job done. That's all I used. It probably left me unprepared for some of the game systems that I figured out through trial and error.
Troy Goodfellow just streamed a learning game of Crusader Kings 2 a few days ago, but he forgot to save the video forever unfortunately. Maybe if we all ask nicely we can get him to do it again. Keep an eye on http://flashofsteel.com/
