CKII is released.

[RK47]

 

[Mortmal]

I'm very interested in EU 4 and CK 2, but I have not any experience into this kind of games. None.

So, is there any site/blog /channel whatever that is worthwhile in explaining the core mechanics of these games? No walkthroughs, but a bit better explanation than the tutorial that I found rather confusing?

Also, which is more noob friendly EU or CK? Thanks

Part of the fun is discovering by yourself, its a bit like a roguelike in a sense, losing is fun. Once you understand everything it lose some interests. Dublin is indeed the easiest start if you want to start feodal. 867 amalfi if you want to play a merchant republic , as its shielded by the huge byzantine empire at the peak of its power.
Most easy to play are nomads , as you have really to focus on one holding(your camp)and build up your retinue (a permanent army) .Focus tech and buildings on cavlary , just raze everything you conquer , allocate grazing lands to your vassal tribes and have many sons with as many women you can , send the sons as mercenaries . They have the less micro and most overpowered features.

 

[Beastro]

Go into religions.txt and add "matrilineal_marriages = no" to all religions but the shit Gnostic ones and problem solved (as well as the eternal Karlings BS).

 

[Machine]

Go into religions.txt and add "matrilineal_marriages = no" to all religions but the shit Gnostic ones and problem solved (as well as the eternal Karlings BS).

that makes game thats already shit easy even easier tho

 

[Beastro]

that makes game thats already shit easy even easier tho

If you're not handicapping yourself and just painting the map you're playing it the unfun way.

Set objectives, a timeline and the course you want history to go and follow it out as you write your own chronicle of the era.

Like atm I'm playing a prominent Anglo-Saxon house of Ealdormen who are the right hand of the House of Wessex, that slaughter any dirty Norse they get their hands across for the Great Heathen Army and Danelaw. In less than a century they'll go into exile in Ireland and Mann over Sweyns invasion and then to leave again and not return after Canute until the Harrying of the North where I'll take the country, form the Isles into an empire and make reciprocated invasions of Scandinavia until it's colonized by Anglo-Saxons and whatever Normans switched sides.

After that I'll engineer the empires downfall and think of somewhere else to go and expand to see how my legacy plays out.

Having that pan out may be tedious to keep history going the way you want it, but it produces far more rich history to look back on than just starting out over and over as a count and turning into a continent spanning empire in a generation or two. That may be neat to emulate a European Ghengis Khan one or twice, but it's only once of many ways of roleplaying and world building.

My next game will be 8th Century start as minor Avars who rises up to enthrall most of the Asian Steppe as they overrun North Italy, southern France and push into Eastern Germany and the Low Countries to invade the British Isle and isolate France and Germany from the rest of Christendom until things collapse and I decided to launch off against Iberia or Scandinavia to move eastward and face the Mongols in time.

 

[wwsd]

How does absolute cognatic work nowadays, anyway? I converted my Irish dynasty to Catharism once, and it was pretty cool, except that the AI just doesn't do matrilineal marriages, except for king-tier female rulers and successors. It's also like that with agnatic-cognatic primogeniture: ruling vassal duchesses and countesses get into regular marriages with male rulers, so their oldest child gets 2-3 duchies. I guess marriage strategising is all part of the game, but it's a chore to keep track of. Guess I should have used viceroyalties more often.

As for Conclave, hade modders fixed it yet? I heard there is a new patch at least, but is it any good? I'm still extremely hesitant about having to fight against medieval NATO.

 

[Makabb]

Anyone got the feeling that the game was enjoyable and now is a convulted mess ?

 

[Dayyālu]

Anyone got the feeling that the game was enjoyable and now is a convulted mess ?

I don't know, since.... six or seven DLCs ago?

I still mantain that CK2 was fun for me when I got the pirated copy of the baseline game. Sure, less events, less crap, but it was clear, self-contained, and good for what it was.

I buy a Steam copy with a good amount of DLCs, and I get a barely playable mess with substandard performance and stuff that does not make any sense. And they keep adding crap that makes the game unstable, bloated and unfun.

Again and again and again.

It's possible to, I mean, get back to a early version of the game with a legit Steam copy? I'm genuinely curious, because I'd like to play a controlled enviroment game with No INDIA NO AZTECS NO REPUBLICS NO JEWS NO EVENT MURDERSTACKS NO LULZANCIENTONES

 

[darthaegis]

Anyone got the feeling that the game was enjoyable and now is a convulted mess ?

I don't know, since.... six or seven DLCs ago?

I still mantain that CK2 was fun for me when I got the pirated copy of the baseline game. Sure, less events, less crap, but it was clear, self-contained, and good for what it was.

I buy a Steam copy with a good amount of DLCs, and I get a barely playable mess with substandard performance and stuff that does not make any sense. And they keep adding crap that makes the game unstable, bloated and unfun.

Again and again and again.

It's possible to, I mean, get back to a early version of the game with a legit Steam copy? I'm genuinely curious, because I'd like to play a controlled enviroment game with No INDIA NO AZTECS NO REPUBLICS NO JEWS NO EVENT MURDERSTACKS NO LULZANCIENTONES

Right-click on the game in your Steam library, click Properties, then betas, and on the dropdown menu you can select earlier versions of the game.

 

[Tytus]

Anyone got the feeling that the game was enjoyable and now is a convulted mess ?

I enjoyed up until Horse Lords - even with some stupid idea of the previous expansions. But now the game is just meh. I like the concept of the new expansion but the execution was a major fail. Especially with the raising children mechanic. Life Focus was one of the stupidest ideas ever. So you're saying I can't tell my spy to spy on someone becasue I don't have intrigue focus? That's retarded this is why I have people in my court and rulling council to do things I as a king lack knowledge in. If I have to be knowledgeable in the fields I want to act in, why do I even keep all those free-loaders on my council. And now that retarded, broken mechanic is applied to children.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

My main problem with Horse Lords is that it makes me wish to have/find out how to access some of the Nomad features like Clans and the like and try using them to make a more improved Tribal government so it's not just Feudal lite with THAT decision.

It's possible to, I mean, get back to a early version of the game with a legit Steam copy? I'm genuinely curious, because I'd like to play a controlled enviroment game with No INDIA NO AZTECS NO REPUBLICS NO JEWS NO EVENT MURDERSTACKS NO LULZANCIENTONES

Right-click on the game in your Steam library, click Properties, then betas, and on the dropdown menu you can select earlier versions of the game.

And the Aztec thing only happens if you specifically have and enabled the DLC.

 

[wwsd]

Anyone got the feeling that the game was enjoyable and now is a convulted mess ?

I enjoyed up until Horse Lords - even with some stupid idea of the previous expansions. But now the game is just meh. I like the concept of the new expansion but the execution was a major fail. Especially with the raising children mechanic. Life Focus was one of the stupidest ideas ever. So you're saying I can't tell my spy to spy on someone becasue I don't have intrigue focus? That's retarded this is why I have people in my court and rulling council to do things I as a king lack knowledge in. If I have to be knowledgeable in the fields I want to act in, why do I even keep all those free-loaders on my council. And now that retarded, broken mechanic is applied to children.

Focuses aren't bad in theory, but they're poorly integrated with the rest of the game. Which is a recurring theme, like in the days when you had both an assassination button and assassination plots.

 

[Tytus]

Focuses aren't bad in theory,

Yes, but Focuses shouldn't be a wall behind you hind ceratin mechanics. It should give you bonuses to already existing mechanics and maybe add more options, more events etc. But if I want to spy on someone or go on a hunt or try to seduce someone it shouldn't be restricted to Life Focus button. It makes all rulers look like one note characters from a bad comedy. Oh this one is the sneaky-spying one, oh this one is the brutish warrior one. And that's it. People are more complex than that. It's even worse that you can't change Life Forcus for five years. If you could change it at will maybe with some prestige penalty, or opinion change with the other characters. It would somewhat managable. But in the state it's in is just broken.

ike in the days when you had both an assassination button and assassination plots.

I actually liked this, to a point. Because it gave you the illusion of being able of hiring profesional assassins and not just relying on the family and friends of the retard you want to kill off. But it was handled really poorly. You could just save scum till it work. It needed it own mechanic a bit different from plots. But Paradox being Paradox instead of fixing it, they just removed it entirely.

 

[Konjad]

Well, if you use save scumming, then it's your own fault, faggot.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Paradox will keep adding shit to ck2, continuing to make this a disjointed Frankenstein of a strategy game, all because it's their money cow.

If people had stopped to buy their ridiculous DLC the they have had to rethink their aproach.

 

[Tytus]

Well, if you use save scumming, then it's your own fault, faggot.

If the game is build in a way that it invites save scumming because of broken mechanics than it's a bad game and that part should be changed. You retarded apologist. That is why plots are better than assassination buttons. But removing assassination buttons altogether instead of fixing it was stupid too.

I would also want a rework for imprisonment mechanics so it wouldn't be just a RNG check.

 

[Zero Credibility]

This game had plenty of half-baked or silly DLCs / patches before, but this one is one the worst for me. Which it really shouldn't be, finally we get something to expand on the core mechanics instead of more map, and it turns out so disappointing. The new council mechanics feel gamey, buggy and often stupid. The new education system manages to demand more micromanagement while at the same time being less interesting and far more random. And the less said about world war causing coalitions or magical ghost retreating armies the better.

But all those might be fixable by HIP or CK2+ in a couple of months. What I fear won't be is the new automatic call to arms. Not only is it aggravating for the player to be forced into distant wars at the most inconvenient time, it just kills the AI. AI gets dragged into every silly small time rebellion against their allies half across the world, loses most of their troops to attrition, gets stomped on by neighbours or factions. I have no idea who asked for this, it is just so much worse that the old system. If the price for turning down the call was too small, well increase it.

The best part is the solution to this shitty alliance mechancis some idiot on the paradox forums proposed - don't make alliances. Pure genius. You know what else might fix it? Not playing the fucking game any more. Oh, and Paradox has already announced they are working on the next DLC. But is anyone really surprised?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think the big problem previously was that the relations penalty from dishonouring an alliance call was just a non-issue. If anything, being a treatybreaker should be even more severe than trucebreaker, as in not limited by anything and lasting even longer.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Anything is better than not being able to brake a treaty at all. Of course, if there are going to be severe penalties for breaking treaties there better be sensible exceptions as well. Like, no penalty (apart from allies opinion) for refusing calls to offensive wars. And no penalties if called when already fighting another war (though ally may ask again when it's over). And teach the AI not to draw every ally into every petty war they can handle themselves easily ffs. I have no interest in being involved in 137th war to increase council power on the other side of the world unless my ally really, really needs me.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think a better solution to that would be have a separate defensive alliance and full alliance, with full alliance being very rare and reflecting almost monarchical union level closeness.

 

[Kem0sabe]

What else is left for them to milk as DLC? Almost every major faction has had an DLC upgrade, most game systems have been completely overhauled.

Maybe the can start selling the removal of features.

 

[Turrul]

From what I see on their forums, a "bugfix DLC" would sell like hotcakes lel

 

[Alienman]

What else is left for them to milk as DLC? Almost every major faction has had an DLC upgrade, most game systems have been completely overhauled.

Maybe the can start selling the removal of features.

Don't give them any ideas now.

 

[Beastro]

Seriously people, just find old torrents and play older versions of the game.

For me the game just after Charlemagne with CK2+ is perfect for me and what little it doesn't really do I can edit in, which is mostly cosmetic crap. That torrent isn't hard to find and it also comes with links to the main mods and their versions synced with it.

I've learned my lesson from this drop in quality. From now on with Paradox games I'll save all torrented versions of the game and the best mods with those versions on my external hard drive and see in time which ones are the best to play. So far the only things I've missed out on are the good parts of Horse Lords, but it's small potatoes compared to the what they screwed up since Charlemagne.

I'll still buy the base games and what DLCs are good, but I'll play the game on my terms and not continue to be fucked over by their shit patches.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

How many times must it be repeated that you can just select an older version you prefer with Steam?

 

[Beastro]

How many times must it be repeated that you can just select an older version you prefer with Steam?

Shit like that and turning off auto update doesn't work for me, it always resets and has always been that way since I've tried it.

Same thing with the update notice, it never displays the patch notes, it's always been blank for me.