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CKII is released.

Fens

Ford of the Llies
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I was wondering, who do you give out counties to? Family? Highly-skilled courtiers? I've done a mix of both. I found my bros like to revolt a lot (Aragon)... I'm not sure what it means when title is lost on succession, though. Does that just mean the place goes up for grabs completely once the king dies? Shouldn't the heir to the king be the successor to the county? Anyway, this bastard Duke of Barcelona allied up with a French bro and 12k French assholes pretty much wrecked my shit after trying to finish him off. Gotta pay more attention to the allied menu from now on... Also, is Aragon ridiculously easy or is it just me? I basically had free land grabs on all the surrounding territories. I captured shitloads of Emirs and Muftis, ransoming/executing/releasing the lot of them. Basically Aragon has de jure claims on a ton of surrounding land making for an easy start to the game. Quite enjoyable, regardless, as the place is buzzing with activity 24/7.

title loss on succession means, that the character you'll be playing with after your current one dies, won't inherit the title (someone else will and you can check out the line of succession by looking at the tooltips on the shields in the character screen). that's mostly due to succesion laws (gavelkind splits up evenly, elective might have the dukes vote someone else than your preferred successor).

the worst part about spain is maintaining it, once you've grabbed all the kingdom titles. the jimena family is huge and a thorough purge might be necessary to keep things in order. you'll also have to manage different culture groups and convert the heathen (when you hand out counties, check the culture group of the guy you're giving it to, since he might convert the county to his culture group and religion). i keep my counts limited to one county each and my dukes limited to one county + weak duchy (check how big the de jure duchy is before you hand it out) if possible (no family members apart from the heir get titles at all).

---
current game as rhodos:
started out as count of rhodos, brother of the duke of cibyrrhaeot. as my brother was unmarried, i was the heir to the duchy. unfortunately paying for assassins was out of the question for a poor county like mine. still i had to do something, before my brother manned up and produced heirs of his own. thus i raised my flag in rebellion and demanded the duchy for myself. surprisingly my brother fielded fewer troops than me and lost a few battles. that gave me a headstart but i never had enough troops to actually conquer his sole county. so it went to and fro a few times, when he got some troops and started chasing mine or i got some and started chasing his. finally he got a knock on the head in one of the battles and died soon after.

unfortunately he had managed to produce a daughter and instead of me, she took the crown, which meant the war was not over, yet. she was far too young to rule, though, so her regent did the intelligent thing and made her surrender to me. finally after years of slow progress i crowned myself doux of cibyrrhaeot. a doux with two counties and claim on another one, that was illegally occupied by a neighbouring duchy. a period of growth and repairs followed before i decided where i wanted to go next.

in the mean time, the basileus had died and his imbecile son took the throne. fortunately he managed to die in the first uprising and so the empire went back to more able hands. the next emperor asked me to be marshal and i agreed, flattered by the offer and expecting glory. i arrived in byzantium only to be sent to train troops. i swore to never forget that humiliation.

time went by and i took a hard look at the muslim world. there was some turmoil going on and at first i couldn't quite make out why. it took me a while to notice, that the shia caliph was a heretic druze. some called that a sign of the apocalypse, but i decided to call it an opportunity. as i was planning my first foray into the holy land, death came knocking and my son took the helm.

as the new doux i had to postpone my father's plans. the empire was at war and my troops were fighting battles under the banner of the basileus, instead of mine. the seljuk turks had launched an invasion, but were slowly losing ground. eventually they surrendered and my troops returned home. the basileus, believing himself unstoppable, tried to institute high crown authority laws, that would have made it even less probable for me to get the last de jure county of my duchy back. it didn't take long until a pretender rose up against the tyranny and tried to replace the old emperor. still being angry about how my father had been treated by that gluttonous swine on the throne, i decided to join the rebellion. turns out i wasn't the only one willing to join. the basileus still commanded a huge force, but he couldn't be everywhere, so the time was on the rebel's side on this one. in the end the old basileus was forced to abdicate and die a broken duke, instead of the shining light of orthodoxy he had aspired to be.

realizing, that the new basileus (brother of the old one) was still unmarried, i offered him one of my daughters. he refused. bastard. his heir (another brother) was unmarried as well... and he accepted my offer. lucky guy. the basileus... not so much. he died screaming the name of the duke who ordered his death, mine. the new basileus, my son in law, never tried to avenge his brother, so i guess he didn't really mind that much.
the won succession war meant a very low crown authority in the empire and i used this to grab the last remaining county of my duchy in a quick war, as i was by now able to pay for mercenaries.
in the mean time the holy land had splintered into handy little chunks i could conquer without risking too much. still i played it safe and instead of going full holy war, i decided to just press my wife's claim to the lands around antiochea. i did win the war and my wife became duchess. unfortunately she became independent as well and did not seek the protection of the basileus. stupid bitch. of course she was immediately attacked by muslims as well as neighbouring dukes alike. i managed to join her troops in defence of her three measly counties, but once my funds had run out, she was on her own and lost it all. two counties went to syria and one to one of the greek dukes. i raged. due to the still low crown authority i was at least able to take back the one county, that had been taken by my orthodox neighbour.

i decided that playing it safe was a cowardly thing to do and bravely went full on holy war once my coffers were filled again. disclaimer: this decision was in no way prompted by the caliph fighting the same guys on another front, so i could basically just waltz in and take over, without much fighting. it took a few wars and some poking the muslim world, but in the end most of galilee was mine. so much of it in fact, that i could safely pronounce myself despot of jerusalem, without actually owning the county of jerusalem. but i was old and the benefits of declaring myself king would have meant nothing to me. i decided to let my heir do that crowning stuff and hope the basileus wouldn't grab the title instead of me. in the mean time i started christianizing the holy land. or rather... i sent the guy i appointed as my head charlatan to do that, because he was expendable and good at preaching.

taking a look at the family situation i realized, that my heir was a massive moron. naturally i had him excommunicated, sent to prison and executed ... that'd teach him. i did miss, that his wife was pregnant, however, so instead of my decent son, my new heir turned out to be my moronic son's offspring. this in turn meant i'd have to live a bit longer and fear for my awesome despot title for some painful 16 years. turns out 16 was too long. after slightly more than a decade of consolidating power in the holy land, the doux of galilee (decided this sounded more impressive than doux of cibyrrhaeot) kicked the bucket.

as an 11 year old doux i was given a regent, whom i despised. his character was nothing a future despot would want to be like and i was glad when he was replaced by a better man, after a decent hand to hand wordfight. the moment i had enough support by the church, i grabbed the crown of jerusalem and put it on my head. under the benevolent rule of the basileus i had become primus inter pares among the vassals.

the caliphate was a mess and taking an opportunity here and an opportunity there, i managed to get jerusalem proper as well as the surrounding areas under control. seeing how i was in a good position to split the caliphate up between its holdings in egypt and arabia, i made a bold move for the sinai. a massively retarded bold move. i got lucky and captured the caliph himself in a battle and was able to force him to surrender in a war, that was about to turn really ugly for me.

the basileus, though technically my relative now, didn't help at all in my war, so i decided it was time to part ways. he was getting old anyway and it was only a matter of time before the empire would end up in a succession war. these were my thoughts when he turned 60. he lived till 82.

those were happy years for the peasants and burghers. i didn't join any wars, built everything i could and generally hoarded money for the big rebellion. then finally one fine day the joyous news of the basileus' death arrived and i immediately declared my war of independence. well... not exactly immediately... i waited for some other distracting uprisings, naturally. i managed to wriggle free, mere months before the new basileus crushed the last of the rebels. god's will i suppose.

the new basileus turned out to be a capable man (also married to one of my aunts), which was bad news for me. he wanted the title i had, and he'd stop at nothing to get it. he had me excommunicated five times. while each time i was able to get accepted back into the church some days later, due to my high piety, it did become annoying soon and i decided to have my sons become catholics. i was actually rather glad, when the basileus finally declared war. it was a dirty war with a lot of backstabbing and mercenary hordes roaming the land. in the end i prevailed... maimed and incapable of coherent thought after a knock on the head.

seeing my troubles, the sheikh of cairo decided to attack me for my sinai holdings. while i watched my armies assemble, i drew my last breath and fell into a coma, i didn't wake up from again.

the despot had died and was followed by a king. for the first time in history, the kingdom of jerusalem was ruled by a catholic. a scottish catholic. oh boy.

as a catholic i was able to buy some letters of indulgence to get enough piety to hire a holy order. my muslim foes didn't see that coming, but they were quick to understand, that the latest developments were disastrous for them. never had they faced a scottish teenager before.

the sheikh of cairo was quickly beaten and humiliated, the syrians, who had assumed me too weak to withstand their attacks, were brought to their knees and forced to eat haggis.

it was at this time, that jerusalem proper had finally recovered from all the conquest and i moved my seat of power from rhodos to the holy land. while packing my bags for the move, i noticed, that there were some people sitting in my dungeon. some of them had been sitting there for quite some time. turns out, that the caliph was still my guest. my funds were running low so i debated ransoming him to his people. unfortunately his regent had developed an unhealthy spending habbit, while his master was away, so he couldn't pay. fine, i said, your head on a pike it'll be then. and for my 16th birthday i had his head chopped off and presented to the scottish population of jerusalem the head of the muslim, who had liked me the most...
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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The only benefit from giving titles to family members is that it increases House prestige, which in turn makes your kids start out with more prestige.
 

Calem Ravenna

Scholar
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
Messages
192
In case people want to test the mod and chip in, here's the present version:

http://www.filedropper.com/kalevalav1

So, what's the story behind the chieftains of the uralic savages just east of Rus Komi provinces? Are they supposed to be ugricbaltic/baltic_pagan (in vanilla, finnish/finnish_pagan in your mod) or is it just laziness on part of Pdox? Come to think of it, are chieftains of the Bjarmia region, also Komi, supposed to be Lappish?
Oh, the Komi are a very real Uralic people that live in those areas to this day, and are closely related to Finns. Though in CK2 it's more of a blanket term for the Eastern Finno-Ugric peoples of the area, Komi themselves are native to in-game Bjarmia, as when you go further East you'd run into Mari, Udmurts, Muromians, Mordvins, etc. It's a fairly decent geographical blanket, as generally it's easiest to divide the ethnic lines of the time as Baltic Finns (division into Finnish and Ugric Baltic was nonsensical from accuracy perspective, and it also bears mention that the Ugric part means the peoples on the OTHER end of the geographical distribution of Finno-Ugrics, like Hungarians and Khanty), Lappish and a set for the Eastern peoples who've been pushed back by the Slav migration to Russia (there were no Slavs in Russia until the 8th-9th century, only Finno-Ugrics) during the few hundred years before game-start.

What I do have a problem with though is that the name file for Komi culture is something I must get around to, following more expertly opinion and advice on the subject.

European Russia is a big place bro. Slav settlement dates to possibly the 7th or even 6th century in central parts. But I tip my hat to your interest in your Uralic/Finnic kin.


I'll describe what I had in mind again, hopefully in a comprehensible way this time:

Start up a new 1066 game in vanilla. Navigate to the parts we're talking about (titular Duchy of Mordvins, some provinces in Bulgar) and look at the province cultures (komi, finnish_pagan). Now compare them to the cultures of the chieftains, who are ugricbaltic and baltic_pagan (in fact these chieftains are the only defined characters of ugricbaltic culture - the ones in the baltic are finnish). Now go north, to Bjarmia and Samoyeds. Lappish chieftains in Komi provinces. Hell, there isn't even a single Komi character defined at game start.

So, my question: Is this intentional (reflects some historical reality) or just something the people at Paradox didn't care about and just made some qucik characters on the spot? I even suspect these provinces were not Komi at first, instead they were Ugric Baltic and Lappish.


I was wondering, who do you give out counties to? Family? Highly-skilled courtiers? I've done a mix of both. I found my bros like to revolt a lot (Aragon)...

Depends on the succesion laws and family size I'd say.

Gavelkind - Family is preferable (especially the heir).
Primogeniture - Mix of both. Relations penalty lessens the benefit of having dynasty vassals, but they are still somewhat preferable.
Seniority - Family members.
Elective - Unrelated courtiers/vassals if you can ensure your designated successor inherits. Family members if you can not.
Open - Family members that are not pretenders to your titles.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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In case people want to test the mod and chip in, here's the present version:

http://www.filedropper.com/kalevalav1

So, what's the story behind the chieftains of the uralic savages just east of Rus Komi provinces? Are they supposed to be ugricbaltic/baltic_pagan (in vanilla, finnish/finnish_pagan in your mod) or is it just laziness on part of Pdox? Come to think of it, are chieftains of the Bjarmia region, also Komi, supposed to be Lappish?
Oh, the Komi are a very real Uralic people that live in those areas to this day, and are closely related to Finns. Though in CK2 it's more of a blanket term for the Eastern Finno-Ugric peoples of the area, Komi themselves are native to in-game Bjarmia, as when you go further East you'd run into Mari, Udmurts, Muromians, Mordvins, etc. It's a fairly decent geographical blanket, as generally it's easiest to divide the ethnic lines of the time as Baltic Finns (division into Finnish and Ugric Baltic was nonsensical from accuracy perspective, and it also bears mention that the Ugric part means the peoples on the OTHER end of the geographical distribution of Finno-Ugrics, like Hungarians and Khanty), Lappish and a set for the Eastern peoples who've been pushed back by the Slav migration to Russia (there were no Slavs in Russia until the 8th-9th century, only Finno-Ugrics) during the few hundred years before game-start.

What I do have a problem with though is that the name file for Komi culture is something I must get around to, following more expertly opinion and advice on the subject.

European Russia is a big place bro. Slav settlement dates to possibly the 7th or even 6th century in central parts. But I tip my hat to your interest in your uralic kin.


I'll describe what I had in mind again, hopefully in a comprehensible way this time:

Start up a new 1066 game in vanilla. Navigate to the parts we're talking about (titular Duchy of Mordvins, some provinces in Bulgar) and look at the province cultures (komi, finnish_pagan). Now compare them to the cultures of the chieftains, who are ugricbaltic and baltic_pagan (in fact these chieftains are the only defined characters of ugricbaltic culture - the ones in the baltic are finnish). Now go north, to Bjarmia and Samoyeds. Lappish chieftains in Komi provinces. Hell, there isn't even a single Komi character defined at game start.

So, my question: Is this intentional (reflects some historical reality) or just something the people at Paradox didn't care about and just made some qucik characters on the spot? I even suspect these provinces were not Komi at first, instead they were Ugric Baltic and Lappish.
Probably just Paradox fucking up. I'll get to fixing this stuff after I apply patch 1.05d compatibility.

I could also redefine ugric_baltic as Mordvin (I think it's a good choice for the blanket culture) and relocate them there and leave Komi to Bjarmia and Samoyeds. I don't think I'd even have to change the name file, in fact it probably works better (though still rather Slavic names)!

PS: You are correct that the "South" of Russia (slightly North of Ukraine, nowhere near modern Central Russia yet though) was settled by Slaves in the 6th century.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Back in action!

Added:
- Patch compatibility for 1.05d.
- Ugric Baltic is now Mordvin culture.
- Komi and Mordvin now use former Ugric Baltic name list, Komi has a few additions.
- Komi dynasties added.
- Mordvin dynasties added.

To do:
- Mordvin culture in Central Russia.
- Komi and Mordvin ruler cultures fixed.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Kalevala v3 is here! http://www.filedropper.com/kalevalav3

Fixed:
- Mongol tech modifier had broken parse. Should work now.

Added:
- More Komi and Mordvin names.
- Duchy of Perm for Komi, led by new character called Kudym-Osh.
- Readjusted borders of Mordvins and Rostov, Rostov is weaker now. (ie, Nizhny Novgorod wasn't conquered for over a hundred years at gamestart)
- Komi and Mordvin character culture and dynasties redefined.
- Mordvin culture added to the map.
- Bulgar religion representation improved, now the rulers have Islam but most provinces are Tengri. Bulgar and Syrt are Sunni.
- Bulgar culture is now Cuman.
- New culture, Mansi, added.
- Mansi characters added.
- Titular duchy of Mansi-Khanty added under Cuman Khanate as vassal.
- Onega now has Baltic Finnic culture.
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
Preliminary feedback on the BE/HRE part:

This is a new game started with 1.05d and Kalevala V3, as the duke of Barcelona, so I'm not interfering with any of the relevant dynamics. The following screenshots were taken at the beginning of year 1100.

TwbN9.jpg

As you can see, Toscana and Provence have broken away in a huge independence war. HRE is still one of the military superpowers, but I don't think they'll be expanding under the current Kaiser. They're also currently being attacked by France over some random county.

y8E0a.jpg

I think we might've overdone it with BE a little bit. Seljuks in particular were held back by internal problems, but Islam as a whole is definitely gaining ground. The big green blob you see is Mosul, kickin' some major ass. Note that all these realms are truly independent, it's not the middle of a war to depose the Basileus.

Edit: Apparently if you just remove some images from the folder, the game starts anyway and just shifts flag images along, leading to funny results. Fixed anyway.
 

Kayerts

Arcane
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
883
Prince-bishop is the count-level title for Christian clergy. In actual history, prince-bishops were mostly associated with the HRE, since the early emperors set fiefs under ecclesiastical administration as a means of weakening the power of the dukes of the realm. Needless to say, the Catholic church thought this was a grand idea.

Female bishops are weird, though. I'm going to guess it has something to do with free investiture; that can give some wacky results.
 

Multi-headed Cow

Guest
Huh. Even weirder, I don't have free investiture. She just sorta materialized as a prince-bishop when her sister took over her land of 3-5 odd counties.
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
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About 8 meters beneath sea level.
Created the kingdom of Sicily after two generations of struggling. Gave parts of my lands to my nearest relatives. Slowly expanded and noticed a duke was quietly turning into a little blob. Took some precautions. Went to war in Italy and had a splendid time. Looked back at my kingdom and saw that the duke somehow had inherited/stolen/something an entire extra duchy. Raised my eyebrows when my ruler was promptly assasinated and then lolled as the once small duke rose up against me. I love this game.

The hotfixes have been coming hard and heavy lately. Hope the last one fixes the mess the one before it made. Am still pissed that inviting courtiers has become nearly impossible and that I simply cannot send my children off to get educated. That last thing worked splendidly in CK1, seemed to work just fine in CK2 and then was unceremonieusly scrapped. Fuck that, I want my diplomatic options back.
 

scratchmonkey

Educated
Joined
Dec 30, 2010
Messages
86
Just a quick note on an outstanding bug in the current version of CK2: Events for tournaments don't expire after the tournament is over. This means that, eventually, sometimes decades after the original tournament, you will get the "your Ruler died at the Grand Tournament" event. Or if you're lucky, maimed. Or gay.

Since there are more bad events than good from throwing a Grand Tournament (and the only consistent benefit is raising *your* opinion of your vassals, not theirs of you), this means: don't ever throw a Grand Tournament.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
What's the tournament ranking decided by? Seems pretty common to have half-dead 60 year olds with bugger all military skill win when when you'd think it'd be young folks with high martial skill and traits like Strong or Duellist.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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What's the tournament ranking decided by? Seems pretty common to have half-dead 60 year olds with bugger all military skill win when when you'd think it'd be young folks with high martial skill and traits like Strong or Duellist.
It's a random event with chance modified by Martial value (8 and higher = higher chance at regular increments, 7 and lower = lower chance at regular increments), traits don't effect that. Bound to happen that eventually the results go weird when enough characters are rolling the chance. Traits only affect the other possible events, like being wounded (Brave makes you 50% more likely to get hurt/killed, being a Craven pussy twice as unlikely) or suddenly turning into a BRO (ie, if you're a prettyboy you're 50% less likely to turn into a BRO).

So gais, any test results? Stuff you want added or fixed?
 

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
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Swedish Empire
huh, and i just threw a Grand Tournament....dangit.

but i have noticed that sometimes i get pop-ups about some guy coming in second place in a tournament that i could have started some 2 years before.
 

Kayerts

Arcane
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
883
The only benefit from giving titles to family members is that it increases House prestige, which in turn makes your kids start out with more prestige.

Norfleet and I figured out over in my LP that increasing dynasty prestige makes the AI a lot more willing to accept marriages (since marrying into a prestigious house gives a significant amount of prestige), thereby giving you access to better claims, inheritances, etc. There are a few other advantages, but I'd say that's the most significant one.
 

frogmouth

Educated
Joined
May 3, 2012
Messages
15
So I'm a king and trying to marry off my daughters. I keep getting "desires a better alliance" from princes. Does my kingdom just suck or can I only marry off my daughters to dukes at the most?
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Added the building destruction event for Sieges:

- On average happens once per four months of siege.
- The event fires for the attacker, which triggers the actual destruction event for the enemy.
- Attacker personality has MAJOR effects on the event firing rate.
- In example, Just makes the rate 100% slower, but Wroth 100% faster.
- Impaler trait now makes you the scourge of your enemies, as it makes the event fire ten times faster.
- So now there's a potential war benefit to being a batshit insane mass murderer.
- By contrast a nice ruler will not spread destruction and mayhem.
- Attacker Martial value has no effect on building destruction.
- Defender skill matters though, as there's a cumulative decrease to event rate the higher the Martial value.
- The rate is 25% slowdown at 7, 10, 14 and 18 Martial.
- Localisation added for both events.

EDIT: Also 1.05e compability.
 

Phelot

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2009
Messages
17,908
Why did 5 of my 7 kids get gluttonous even though neither parent is nor any of their teachers have it? Is it just a weird random fluke?

No kids of mine are to be fatties!
 

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