I'm a Fridaaayyyyyyy.......MAN!

[MetalDog]

And if you go vanilla instead of Charlemagne, Gus, start in Ireland.

[Gusington]

^Right, I've read that before. The Charlemagne era holds that spark for me right now though.

Meng - the '2.2' you mention with the Spanish tutorial - is the game brought up to v2.2 with Charlemagne or some earlier patch?

I've read that The Old Gods DLC and the new Charlemagne pack really transform the game. If so I'd like to get those and not miss out.

[MengJiao]

^Right, I've read that before. The Charlemagne era holds that spark for me right now though.

Meng - the '2.2' you mention with the Spanish tutorial - is the game brought up to v2.2 with Charlemagne or some earlier patch?

I've read that The Old Gods DLC and the new Charlemagne pack really transform the game. If so I'd like to get those and not miss out.

  I don't know, but if you get OLD Gods and Charlemagne, I think you will get the intro with the tutorial.

[Gusington]

Old Gods is pretty much required at this point, isn't it? When it was first released peeps were raving about it but I haven't heard much since. If I got both Old Gods and Charlemagne I would owe it to myself and would have to play through at least one campaign. Hopefully I would enjoy it as much as everyone here. I don't recall one single forumer who ever posted that they didn't enjoy CKII.

[Nefaro]

I'm in a quandary. 

Want to start a new CK2 game and eventually convert it to EU4 after reaching the end date (or nearly so).  But if I start in the Charlemagne period, that means it'll take even longer to get to that point.  I don't play with time compression up too high most of the time, either.  Dunno if I'd ever put that much more time into it. 

[Gusington]

^That sounds like an evolution of my quandary of just getting started. These games are so huge that it is a really significant time commitment. For that kind of time sink I need to know that it is worth it.

Another quandary I have is when to stop staring at your avatar.

[Nefaro]

^That sounds like an evolution of my quandary of just getting started. These games are so huge that it is a really significant time commitment. For that kind of time sink I need to know that it is worth it.

The time involvement is probably the biggest hump.  It takes a little bit to get things rolling in any new game and I tend to switch between games quite regularly anyway.  By the time I get back around to continuing, there's been new updates that make my save game obsolete.  :-[

It's ended that way every time I've begun a new CK2 campaign.  Most of my time was put into it back during the closed beta and weekly updates just murdered any prospect of a long game.  Timing the sweet spot between updates is the big challenge, now.

Another quandary I have is when to stop staring at your avatar.

Olivia Munn. 


LOL -->

[JasonPratt]

I started messing around with the game with the Old Gods DLC (and everything else up to that point added in, by the way), and the tutorial campaign is definitely new to Charl. Though I guess also included in the vanilla upgrade, too?

But it has a pretty good tutorial (still there) for the game mechanics without doing the tutorial campaign, too.

If you've ever played a Paradox engine game (whether the Europa engine or Clausewitz), it has obvious similarities (for obvious reasons) but the engine for the original CK was heavily modified to be more of a story generator, and this remake follows suit. As does EU 4 now, for that matter.

Is Charlemagne the best place to start? In relation to other possible starts in CK2, I don't know. I do hear that the events "around" that area, if you take the start that early, are heavily railroaded; this may be addressed in an update sooner or later. I'm enjoying playing the game far away from Europe.

The engine is certainly more elegant and workable than the pseudo-Europa1 engine of Great Invasions, but that's still the only major Dark Ages game fully covering the period -- which this game doesn't really, of course, 769 being about midway through the DA period assuming that 1066 starts the medieval period properly ("Roman" civilization in the West having recovered far enough, though spread through numerous squabbling subcultures, that it wasn't seriously in danger of falling again for a while if ever.)

Would starting at the Old Gods bookmark, about a century later, be a better difference? Having played both, though in quite eclectic places, I'd say they're about the same experience. Tech is generally a little better, but in this kind of game that's mainly an efficiency difference relative to other factions.

I'd say there's no point getting anything less than OG and Charl if you're interested in playing the Dark Age(s); but at this point the major content packs add a lot to the game. So it's probably better to just wait for another comprehensive sale.

[Gusington]

With that above Olivia Munn video, Nefaro wins the internet. Frickin' hilarious! Except I am worried that the same will happen to me and The Wife.

Thanks Jason - so...would it be ridiculous to get Charlemagne without The Old Gods? Or more ridiculous to get both? This game is byzantine.

[JasonPratt]

Ba-dum-tish!  ;D

Okay I just ran a test, and from what I can tell the basic game includes all factions operating at all dates -- but for the two earliest starting dates you'd have to have OG and Charl. I didn't try loading the game with ONLY Charl and not OG, but I think in practice this would mean you could start way back or at the standard "high middle age" start of 1066, and you wouldn't be able to play any of the Norse factions.

Otherwise the major DLCs unlock the ability to play as one of the faction groups. The Muslims and the Indians are around in vanilla, or in Charl, and will definitely do things, but they aren't available for you to play with directly: you can't start as a Raj or as a Muslim Emir unless you buy that unlock.

[MengJiao]

Old Gods is pretty much required at this point, isn't it? When it was first released peeps were raving about it but I haven't heard much since. If I got both Old Gods and Charlemagne I would owe it to myself and would have to play through at least one campaign. Hopefully I would enjoy it as much as everyone here. I don't recall one single forumer who ever posted that they didn't enjoy CKII.

  You could buy the basic game.  The tutorial is Spain in 1066 and see if you like it.  When I first started playing the game there weren't many DLC and I've only bought about 1/3 of them.

[Gusington]

I've got the basic game - fiddled with it some but not more than a few hours.

But Charlemagne and the Old Gods, because of what Jason describes above with the starting points, interests me more than the base game.

So...I think I will get the Old Gods and Charlemagne, because I am more interested in the earlier start dates. I would love to carry a game over from CKII to EU but I am so far away from that point it isn't even a consideration yet.

Instead I could complete a campaign in Rome 2 - EE, then a campaign in Attila TW (when released) and then start a CKII Charlemagne campaign. Then conceivably transfer that game to EUIV when I cross that bridge :)

[MengJiao]

I've got the basic game - fiddled with it some but not more than a few hours.

But Charlemagne and the Old Gods, because of what Jason describes above with the starting points, interests me more than the base game.

So...I think I will get the Old Gods and Charlemagne, because I am more interested in the earlier start dates. I would love to carry a game over from CKII to EU but I am so far away from that point it isn't even a consideration yet.

Instead I could complete a campaign in Rome 2 - EE, then a campaign in Attila TW (when released) and then start a CKII Charlemagne campaign. Then conceivably transfer that game to EUIV when I cross that bridge :)

My plan is CK Charlemagne (Big Chuck just made me his heir) and then maybe an indefinite hiatus and then Attila.  Working back into the past.

[Arctic Blast]

Well, I still haven't bought more Borderlands. I HAVE dropped 8 bucks and change for a zombie beat em up called Fist of Jesus. Because how could I not?!

[Gusington]

^Did you get the Massive Chalice of Wonder DLC?