Crusader Kings II

[jomni]

I call it "Role Playing" because I can't think (strategize) beyond a generation.  Too many what ifs and too many constraints with regards to expansion.  And most of the stuff is quite reactionary rather than grand pre-planning.

Maybe playing King, it becomes more strategic with empire management.  But I don't play that level yet.


So here are newb questions:

How to increase my rank?  I am a lowly count.  How do I become a duke?  I know it happens when I gain all lands that form a Duchy?  I can claim neighboring provinces but my realm does not want me to start any fights.

I am actually playing a Count under the Papacy and my boss is the Pope.  How can one be Pope? Lol!  I guess that's dynastic suicide since Popes don't marry (or am I wrong).

Finally, I have yet to inherit land based on succession and diplomatic marriages.   I think this is the way to go.  How to engineer these things?  This is actually the grand strategic part that I haven't mastered.  Is it a matter of getting a family member inside ruling family and killing off heirs?  I'm quite a "good" guy and haven't thought of this yet.

[Nefaro]

I call it "Role Playing" because I can't think (strategize) beyond a generation.  Too many what ifs and too many constraints with regards to expansion.  And most of the stuff is quite reactionary rather than grand pre-planning.

Maybe playing King, it becomes more strategic with empire management.  But I don't play that level yet.

King and Emperor levels are just lots more vassals to try & keep happy.  So there is a lot more to do in juggling relations.

So here are newb questions:

How to increase my rank?  I am a lowly count.  How do I become a duke?  I know it happens when I gain all lands that form a Duchy?  I can claim neighboring provinces but my realm does not want me to start any fights.

When you take half a title's associated lands, or more, you can claim the title with some lavish spending on your part (~190 gold IIRC for a Duchy).  You'll get a pop-up stating you can claim a new title, at the top of the screen, which you can click on to take you to the De Jure Duchy/Kingdom page with the button available on it.  Dropping the money on it will also give you a nice big chunk of sweet sweet Prestige, too.  Note that if someone else is currently holding that title, they'll be rather unhappy with you and generally have a claim on it so watch out for a war. 

If you hold a realm title, but don't hold all it's De Jure counties, then you'll get a claim on them and so be able to declare a war of conquest for them.  So, if you have part of a Duchy and take the title, you'll be able to war for the rest of it.

You can check the De Jure areas with the appropriate map filters, and you can also see a list of everyone with a claim on any 'de jure' county/duchy/etc by clicking on a county within it and then clicking on the county's coat of arms.  That page will have a button to show a list of "Claimants", and will be blue if there are any (and it's clickable).  You can navigate through more of these pages going up or down on the totem pole (such as County-to-Duchy-to-Kingdom level) by once again clicking on the appropriate coat of arms listed. 

If you have a lowly courtier with a claim, you can support their claim by being able to DoW for conquest there too.  When you take your underling's claimed realm, he is installed as ruler with you as his liege.  So you can also shop around and try to find untitled courtiers to lure to your own court, in order to take specific counties with those courtiers' claim.

I am actually playing a Count under the Papacy and my boss is the Pope.  How can one be Pope? Lol!  I guess that's dynastic suicide since Popes don't marry (or am I wrong).

Players can't be the Pope.  But yes, not having any children would also eliminate you anyway.

Finally, I have yet to inherit land based on succession and diplomatic marriages.   I think this is the way to go.  How to engineer these things?  This is actually the grand strategic part that I haven't mastered.  Is it a matter of getting a family member inside ruling family and killing off heirs?  I'm quite a "good" guy and haven't thought of this yet.

Yes, you can marry in and then kill off all the male offspring, in order to get the female side to inherit.  But note that you generally want your main heir to be the one profiting from this because if it's one of your heir's brothers, then they'll just leave your court and start their own realm (although it should be allied with you so can still be advantageous).  A popular way of at least getting a better chance at making this stuff happen is to marry a few of your kin into their family and genetically infiltrate them.  With all the assassinations and deaths in wars going on, if you've targeted a demesne with few males, you may end up getting lucky down the road.  In the end - it's mostly luck anyway, unless you take the risks in making it happen (which can be a long shot too).

[son_of_montfort]

Playing a Count in the Papal States may not be the most dynamic of games. I have yet to see the Pope declare war to expand his territory and you have no chance of "inheriting" the throne. Also, the size of the realm is too small to have any duchies within it (unless you do the expanding). Italian duchies are small, and won't require too much to create expansion to create the title and usurp, but they also tend to be self-contained, so your "duchy" is probably already fully within your kingdom and ruled by the Pope.

You could try to gobble up some of the independents around you by sending your Chancellor to fabricate claims in nearby counties. Usually after taking one, you will have the 50% de jure right to usurp a larger title and get a casus belli against another county. That might be slow and boring work, however, as you will have to wait until the "press claim" dialog fires and you will likely need to be sure to have around 500 gold to press the claim.

My suggestion would be to restart in a more dynamic kingdom. Something like the count of Toulouse (southern France) in 1100 or 1000. Or maybe a county in Sicily in the Kingdom of Sicily at some point. That way the king will be more active than the pope and you have the chance to play some political games with neighbors also within your kingdom. The kingdom of Leon or Aragon are also fun and dynamic places to be a count.

[RooksBailey]

A heads up from Paradox:

We aim to release version 1.04 later this week, probably on Friday.

No word yet on the content.

[jomni]

Playing a Count in the Papal States may not be the most dynamic of games. I have yet to see the Pope declare war to expand his territory and you have no chance of "inheriting" the throne. Also, the size of the realm is too small to have any duchies within it (unless you do the expanding). Italian duchies are small, and won't require too much to create expansion to create the title and usurp, but they also tend to be self-contained, so your "duchy" is probably already fully within your kingdom and ruled by the Pope.

You could try to gobble up some of the independents around you by sending your Chancellor to fabricate claims in nearby counties. Usually after taking one, you will have the 50% de jure right to usurp a larger title and get a casus belli against another county. That might be slow and boring work, however, as you will have to wait until the "press claim" dialog fires and you will likely need to be sure to have around 500 gold to press the claim.

My suggestion would be to restart in a more dynamic kingdom. Something like the count of Toulouse (southern France) in 1100 or 1000. Or maybe a county in Sicily in the Kingdom of Sicily at some point. That way the king will be more active than the pope and you have the chance to play some political games with neighbors also within your kingdom. The kingdom of Leon or Aragon are also fun and dynamic places to be a count.

Yeah I felt kinda stuck after the 5th generation.  Fabricating claims don't help as I am not able to attack the target provinces because the Pope does not allow me to start wars with independent provinces.  Most of Italy is also under the HRE.  Members break away once in a while but evendually gets gobbled up by the bully. 

I can actually declare war on the Pope!  But that Rome has 3x military power vs mine.

Here's something interesting, one of my characters became Chancellor for the Papacy and I was sent on a mission to fabricate claims.  But the Pope didn't attack the target provice.

It was a good learning position though.  I'm kinda used to the interface and things to do with regards to my dynasty and court.

[James Sterrett]

SoM, if you ever post up your explanation of the vassalage system in CKII, I'd definitely read it.

[Grim.Reaper]

Looks like a new 1.04 patch released today....plus a tease about the next patch being new content with new DLC...

CHANGE LOG:

MAJOR:
- Revised the Message Setting system
- Religion groups are now marked playable in the religion file (no more hard coded rule)
- AI: Improved marriage acceptance. Smarter about "Desires Better Alliance". Values prestige gain or loss higher.
- Added some useful status info to the delayed character tooltip (similar to the info in debug mode)
- Cooldown added to excommunications (only for the same Pope though)
- Doubled the flanking damage bonus in combat
- Increased the flank leader Martial skill bonus in combat by 50%
- Fixed a CTD that can occur in a rare situation with characters having multiple wars against each other
- Nerfed taxes given by bishops to Anti-Popes by 50%
- Holy Orders now cost maintenance if you're in at least one offensive, non-Crusade war
- Halved all peasant revolt risk factors
- Added an "Isolated County" revolt risk modifier and cut the special events that used to simulate it
- Peasant Army size is now determined by the biggest holding garrison size (so they will always be dangerous)
- The Succession War CBs now have the proper success outcome
- Fixed a bug with the usurpation of titles that would hand over all vassals too
- AI: More wary of expensive assassinations
- AI: Fixed some issues with the correct Casus Belli choice
- AI: Tweaked vassal revolt risk to depend more on ambition from traits
- The duchies of Cornwall and Brittany are now de jure part of the Kingdom of Wales
- Buffed the Caliphates and the Seljuks. Nerfed the Byzantines.
- Added vassal Seljuk mercs; the Ghilman
- Now shows a portrait of the target in available player plots
- Hooked in missing plot icon in available player plots

MINOR:
- Upped the chances of dying due to disease a little bit
- Increased the effects of the genius, quick, slow, imbecile and inbred traits
- Reduced the levy size effect of some of the "recently occupied" modifiers
- Nominated bishops are now properly disinherited at once
- Fixed a bug with the guardian opinion modifiers given when entrusted with a ward
- Combat events will not happen until three days into a combat (to avoid commander deaths and such when overrunning tiny forces)
- When an Anti-Pope is installed in Rome, the old Pope no longer becomes an Anti-Pope
- Waived the opinion penalty for held elector titles for elective duchies and below
- Fixed a CTD issue that could occur in tooltips when hovering over Holding modifiers as they expire
- Vassal mercs can now always be employed by their liege, no matter their religion
- Scaled wealth effects and triggers are now based on nominal peacetime income
- Fixed an error in the opinion warning when banishing characters (not the correct figure.)
- The game will now also auto-generate an appropriate number of traits for children with not enough scripted traits
- Added a text warning/explanation for DoW on a revolter
- Traits are now read from multiple files, facilitating modding
- Fixed an issue with event ids in a namespace
- Fixed an issue with flipping "random god names" tooltips in fire event effect tooltips
- Fixed a bug with the decision 'Demand Duchy from liege' with duke tier lieges (should not be available)
- Fixed a tooltip issue with the "any" type event triggers
- Better tooltips for event triggers 'higher_tier_than' and 'lower_tier_than'
- Re-enabled selection of the same type of plot again for players
- Fixed an issue with save/reload of the last selected plot/ambition
- Fixed an issue with protected inheritance not always working under Gavelkind
- Exported MAX_ELECTOR_TITLES_LEGALLY_HELD to defines
- Exported the max duchies held opinion penalty to defines
- Exported the tax penalty for bishops loyal to the Pope or Anti-Pope to the defines
- The "recently conquered" holding penalties are no longer applied during civil wars or wars between vassals
- AI: Fixed a bug where the AI would grant titles to vassal mercs
- Added 'same_guardian' trigger
- Slightly nerfed William of Normandy's initial army size
- Switched the portraits of Harold and William the Conqueror
- Changed some title colors to conform better to their cultural region
- Added proper history for the Prince-Bishopric of Agen
- The Earl of Atholl is now a _legitimate_ bastard

Next patch is 1.05. It is a major content patch which will be released together with our first big DLC.

[TheCommandTent]

Im looking forward to what the DLC holds.

I am enjoying this game alot more then I thought I would!

[Nefaro]

I thought the first DLC was gonna be more period background music?  I recall there was a vote thread about what kind over at Paradox last year.

[republic]

Music would be great, that has always been a highlight of the AGEOD games

[Grim.Reaper]

They actually on the game release day accidentally made two music packs available briefly so no doubt those will come back at some point.  Not sure if that is the DLC they are referring to in the patch notes or something different.

[Nefaro]

Warning:

If you have 30 or more courtiers, all your characters will start receiving an increasing penalty to pregnancy chance.  I'm sure that was created so the AI wouldn't bog the game down with a bajillion courtiers but it looks to apply to the player also.  So if you're wondering why your overripe child bearing couples aren't kicking out ankle biters, this may be the reason.

This was discussed a bit by players on the forum thus far and I don't know if it's been addressed in this latest update.  I'd rather it be higher, if a player is to have it at all, especially when running a large kingdom.

[son_of_montfort]

Hard to make children when you have so many courtiers constantly watching you in bed!

[Nefaro]

Hard to make children when you have so many courtiers constantly watching you in bed!

That's always how I consummate an enjoyable night out.   Call the friends, neighbors, and family.  Hope they aren't still plotting your death, as you'll be rather disarmed at the event!

[son_of_montfort]

Actually, having courtiers present was a typical way to consummate a medieval marriage ceremony for nobility. If you don't "seal the deal" you can get the marriage annulled. Afterward, well... it takes a lot of political hedging and or lies to get an annulment. So courtiers were your "witnesses" that the deal had been sealed.