CKII is released.

[Space Satan]

I'd rather not have more than two duchies. Better build your main county with shitload of castles as they give the most income and armies.

 

[Higher Game]

I'd rather not have more than two duchies. Better build your main county with shitload of castles as they give the most income and armies.

It's usually best to have a trade post in every demesne county you own. The uber capital only works if the crown focus events fire, or it's very early in the game.

I generally max taxes for Church and Burgher holdings, and max Levies for Tribals and Nobles.

Also, building up real infraestructure for lots of levvies ins't worth it until you've taken the absolute best duchy of your nation as your primary one, and the second best as well - maybe even took a smaller third one but without actually taking the duke title, if you have enough desmene capacity left.

But I do that aiming for the long game - using my vassals' troops in big wars and getting gold from the others.
But maybe I will try full taxes from everyone next time, not sure how the nobles take it tho.

It's very easy to explode threat by holy wars, since you tend to fight everyone anyway and win with mercs and holy orders, you might as well make that the goal in the first place. After that, it's decades of waiting to save up for the next big war, letting threat go down and working on the more peaceful focuses. And intrigue. In this time levies are useless, so gold shift for the win.

Multiple holy wars on a scale larger than actual crusades is cheesy, but so are the instant and massive de facto defensive pacts formed by the opposing religion, so I call it even and play with that in mind. Only Buddhism gets the balance right with its karma requirement for doing this.

 

[Beastro]

It's very easy to explode threat by holy wars, since you tend to fight everyone anyway and win with mercs and holy orders, you might as well make that the goal in the first place. After that, it's decades of waiting to save up for the next big war, letting threat go down and working on the more peaceful focuses. And intrigue. In this time levies are useless, so gold shift for the win.

Multiple holy wars on a scale larger than actual crusades is cheesy, but so are the instant and massive de facto defensive pacts formed by the opposing religion, so I call it even and play with that in mind. Only Buddhism gets the balance right with its karma requirement for doing this.

I came back after not playing since, like 2015. I couldn't find my old install of the game before Way of Life when so much changed, so settled on one after Conclave that works with a version of CK+ I found.

Shit like this is ridiculous. I haven't disabled it yet, but I have a feeling I will after reading posts like this. One of the neat things about Ck2 was that it didn't have a retarded infamy mechanic and you could enact great feats of expansion as historical. If only they'd focus on making collapse and breakdown more likely instead that would also be more historical that this crap.

 

[Average Manatee]

The threat mechanic can be disabled completely in the pre-game settings, and doesn't even disable achievements or anything. Its considered 100% legit to play without it. I think its mostly for MP.

That said, it does actually incentivize playing in a CK2-style fashion rather than just mindless endless holy wars everywhere, since inheriting realms doesn't give threat (IIRC?) and pressing a claim to an Empire or Kingdom gives way, way better returns in terms of land:threat ratio than holy wars. I think Crusades even give 0 threat since it's technically the pope who called them.

 

[Beastro]

Looks like my versions old enough not to have that option in, but modifying infamy still works in the console at least.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well not the Threat mechanic itself, you have a rule to disable defensive pacts. This effectively eliminates Threat, since the only thing Threat really does is cause defensive pacts to form.

If you mod, you can also do something like reduce the diplomatic range of defensive pacts, ie I personally mod the ranges and thresholds in Gnacht when I play because otherwise you end up fighting wars on a ridiculous stretch of geography so it gets annoyingly dragged out. In base game I tend to instead modify the Threat decay, but the really important thing is IMO to either disable Children of Destiny or take extreme measures in the console to avoid total ultimate border gore.

Oh yea, and always disable secret religions, the recruitment success on them is just completely bonkers so you will *always* have 90+% of the entire realm be part of some secret religion and the only thing you can do against them is indiscriminate mass murder since Moral Authority and anything else is totally irrelevant.

 

[Space Satan]

Threat is okay. I remember swallowing entire realms because noone would unite against me. If you are a pagan then threatless game becomes even more eploitable. I established Rus within a decade because snowballing of same faith vassals armies are absurd

 

[oscar]

CKII has been a piss easy game as just about anyone since the loan option got introduced way back in the DLC that added Jews.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Oh yea, and always disable secret religions, the recruitment success on them is just completely bonkers so you will *always* have 90+% of the entire realm be part of some secret religion and the only thing you can do against them is indiscriminate mass murder since Moral Authority and anything else is totally irrelevant.

I never had those problems with secret religions. At best the odd annoying cult or two.

Whenever I have them turned on, almost every heir is part of the secret religion, and possibly hundreds all around the realm. The last patch seems to have bugged the game rule against them, so latest heir let me see that "oh, there's 90 members in this cult including most viceroys", so I had to instead mod the events a little and make it impossible for the cult to recruit.

 

[IDtenT]

Oh yea, and always disable secret religions, the recruitment success on them is just completely bonkers so you will *always* have 90+% of the entire realm be part of some secret religion and the only thing you can do against them is indiscriminate mass murder since Moral Authority and anything else is totally irrelevant.

I never had those problems with secret religions. At best the odd annoying cult or two.

Whenever I have them turned on, almost every heir is part of the secret religion, and possibly hundreds all around the realm. The last patch seems to have bugged the game rule against them, so latest heir let me see that "oh, there's 90 members in this cult including most viceroys", so I had to instead mod the events a little and make it impossible for the cult to recruit.

The great cost of liberalism.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'm sure if I had it enabled in game rules, the other half would be devil worshippers.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

When they were first introduced I remember secret religions being everywhere, but they seem more toned back last time I played.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

That's the mass murder part. Or mass incarceration, in case you don't want kinslayer.

Also you can't tell if someone is a secret cultist or not outside of actually being in the cult. But when you are, you'll notice that the cult is so huge even that super-sleuth court priest is not going to be enough to get rid of them faster than they recruit.

 

[Beastro]

Well not the Threat mechanic itself, you have a rule to disable defensive pacts. This effectively eliminates Threat, since the only thing Threat really does is cause defensive pacts to form.

I know. There's nothing setting up a game about them and nothing in the files.

I've got a version somewhere after Horse Lords, so I assume they added that option for pacts in at a later date.

I don't like all the shit they've added to the game, and even playing up to horse Lords is a compromise, since I can't find an earlier version around that matches with the CK2+ versions kicking around on github.

Threat is okay. I remember swallowing entire realms because noone would unite against me. If you are a pagan then threatless game becomes even more eploitable. I established Rus within a decade because snowballing of same faith vassals armies are absurd

As Oscar said, Ck2 is too easy and it's also boring as hell to map paint. I go with a realm until it reaches a certain size or I run out of my ideas to do with it, then engineer a collapse and move elsewhere seeing how things go where I once was.

A good example of that was a Saxon dynasty game where I gave myself enough money and a claim on the Canaries to buy the ships and then invaded Andalusia and the Magrib before Chuck attacked Saxony, creating a Saxon empire reviving the Vandal name (Vandalusia) and such. Once I got far enough I broke it apart into successor kingdoms and then continued on from my rump state in Egypt, which moved onto attacking India. I was planning to keep going swallowing India and its borderland up by the time the Mongols came to face them, but my old laptop died.

 

[Catacombs]

in case you don't want kinslayer.

I killed 20 people from my dynasty in a war of vengeance. They were in court with a traitor. The "kinslayer" penalty fucked me up until it was so bad, a large faction within my kingdom went to war against me and forced a game over.

 

[Alienman]

Started to play again after a long break, and what the hell is up with assassinations? My heir keep getting assassinated, can't get anything done

 

[Catacombs]

Started to play again after a long break, and what the hell is up with assassinations? My heir keep getting assassinated, can't get anything done

Look for people in your court and vassals who have negative opinions and pay attention to them. Use your spymaster to weed out any schemes. Persuade as many people as you can from continuing their plots, if any are somewhat uncovered.

You could also send your heir into hiding for a while.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

You automate the persuasion when it will work too, provided you don't rather want to try and imprison instead (this will require a bit more micro since a good Spymaster will find out that everyone's trying to kill everyone).

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

If someone wants more Performance from CKII, this mod might help you:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1715780527&searchtext=

Changelog:

FERTILITY_BASE_MULT = 0.4 (Slightly lower base fertility to balance character count)
SECONDARY_SPOUSE_FERTILITY_MULT = 0.25 (Significantly lower concubine/second wife fertility to prevent children spamm by tribals and muslims, when they have 10+ children every time)
EVENT_PROCESS_OFFSET = 100 (Increased the delay between event loops for provinces and characters)
COURTIER_EVENT_PROCESS_OFFSET = 255 (Increased the delay between event loops for courtiers)
COURT_PRUNE_SIZE = 1 (Every court is checked for pruning)
PRUNE_MINIMAL_AGE = 1 (Every "unimportant" character is pruned at any age)

Game is blazing fast so far, like holy shit.

You do have to cope with the weaker fertility tho.

Playing an India game so far, but its actually a Nestorian/Messalian game, I just lack enough power to tell all the Hindu/Jain/Buddhist heathens to fuck off and convert. Thanks to marriages, my character (who's a freaking genius) rules a good chunk of Southern India, and his mother rules a good chunk of eastern India. Plan right now is to expand to Lanka until my char inherits his mother's domain. Then I'm going to start a conquest of Northeastern India, or fight the big Rajasthan realm if they get weak

 

[Catacombs]

Game is blazing fast so far, like holy shit.

Does this mean fewer events or something?

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Game is blazing fast so far, like holy shit.

Does this mean fewer events or something?

I haven't noticed fewer events, why?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well you can check for the EVENT_PROCESS_OFFSET value in regular defines, but you can basically mod the mod and change the value to reflect normal CK2. The courtier equivalent should be the one with the bigger effect I believe.

 

[fantadomat]

Game is blazing fast so far, like holy shit.

Does this mean fewer events or something?

I haven't noticed fewer events, why?

It is fewer events for no title and count AI,not for the player.

 

[HeroMarine]

Try not playing it on a toaster or something.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Try not playing it on a toaster or something.

Hey man, computers are expensive and shit. A good computer here won't go for less than 3k bucks and you know it.