CKII is released.

[ironyuri]

I've been playing with the Duke of Portucale, and GODDAMNIT the King of Galicia is a immense RETARD!!
I've played two matches today, and goddamnit, I lost both not because of my mistakes, but because my Liege is a IMMENSE IDIOT who sends Galicia into unwinnable wars for dubious reasons!
For starters, he ALWAYS backs the Countess of Zamora's plot to depose the King of Leon. It wins him nothing I can see, maybe only if one of his siblings gets arrested. That one he always wins, but its still sucky because it just makes Castille bigger.
Then he slams me and the other vassals headfist into retarded wars with Moslem rulers we can't win, usually Sevilla, or send us fighting against Castille. FUUUUUUUCK you, you majesty, I don't want to fight Castille, I just want to build and build until I can make a decent reconquista in Portugal, and maybe overthrown you and declare myself King of Portugal and Galicia! Is that much to ask?!


Is anyone else having problems with a idiot liege?

I got 99 problems but a liege aint one.

Rulled by divine right since day one.

I got 99 problems but a liege aint one.

 

[Malakal]

I've been playing with the Duke of Portucale, and GODDAMNIT the King of Galicia is a immense RETARD!!
I've played two matches today, and goddamnit, I lost both not because of my mistakes, but because my Liege is a IMMENSE IDIOT who sends Galicia into unwinnable wars for dubious reasons!
For starters, he ALWAYS backs the Countess of Zamora's plot to depose the King of Leon. It wins him nothing I can see, maybe only if one of his siblings gets arrested. That one he always wins, but its still sucky because it just makes Castille bigger.
Then he slams me and the other vassals headfist into retarded wars with Moslem rulers we can't win, usually Sevilla, or send us fighting against Castille. FUUUUUUUCK you, you majesty, I don't want to fight Castille, I just want to build and build until I can make a decent reconquista in Portugal, and maybe overthrown you and declare myself King of Portugal and Galicia! Is that much to ask?!


Is anyone else having problems with a idiot liege?

War is quite constant in CK2 and no kingdom enjoys peace. Either rebellions or expansion. Needs some AI tweaking so they at least analyze their chances, especially versus pagans and moslems - those dont bother with cb.

 

[Spectacle]

Yeah. In the "current wars" tab of the ledger you usually have to scroll down quite a bit to see everything. In most other paradox games the list is normally less than half a page, sometimes even empty

 

[Kane]

Given that he had Gavelkind succession, it's pretty stupid for the AI ruler to pursue independence because then his power would be stripped to 1 duchy. His only chance at retaining power was to become king, and either benefit from the primogenital rule or just from being on top and half of the duchies of France ruled by your dynasty. Now his dynasty is just fish food.

In my game of Capet, Aquitaine grew retardedly powerful aswell. He went for elective succession, like all my other vassals.

 

[Malakal]

Elective succession is the best as long as you can ensure your desired heir gets the votes. Knife in the back here and there and you always have the most competent man doing the job.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Btw, Pagan/Muslim playability issue has been solved. There's a cheat that allows you to switch chars ingame, and you can use that to switch to whoever you want. You have to check the ID of the char you want to switch to though.

Also, you can convert your character with a cheat, and people who've converted to pagans CAN be selected. This is useful for folk like Luzur.

 

[Spectacle]

Brotip: Boats are really useful. Since there's no naval combat you can go anywhere you want without getting intercepted, and it's much faster than walking. I easily won a civil war by gathering most of my troops into one stack, then boated them around and killed off the rebel armies before they could consolidate.

 

[hoverdog]

Been playing as the chief of Yatwiags recently, and even without all the christian stuff, it's bloody fun.

I'm trying to consolidate the pagans before the inevitable Poland/HRE assrape mostly. Got lucky in the beginning and pressed two claims (on Galindia and then on Zhmud), which in turn enabled me to create the duchy of Samogitia (giving me a CB on Memel) and usurp the duchy of Lithuania. Also change my succession law to primogeniture, my younger sons are fuming, but fuck them. I need three more counties (and a fuckton of piety) to create the kingdom of Lithuania, so that's my next move.
Oh, and I've assassinated the king of Potatoland, leaving : x with a 10 year old queen. It's a crying shame only Kuyavia rebelled (and got easily raped), a more disintegrated poland would make my life much easier.
I really hate that pagans haven't got those constant CBs on unbelievers like christians do. But what really makes me rage are those fucking loading times man, it takes at least a minute to load the game. And CTDs too, especially in december.


the game is easilyM: M: M: M: M:/ for me, even with those bugs and lack of pagan content.

EDIT: OH YES, Poland started a succession war on Denmark and Turov decided to assfuck Potatoes from behind. Now if only I could attack them too

 

[Sergiu64]

Well, I started as a Duke of Turov. Got my son married, gave away some of his dimense to lower the penalty, let time run on slow with ambition set to get rich... Got assassinated in Month 2. Rage quit.

 

[hoverdog]

Okay now. Fuck family, really now. My sons are morons.
But let's start at the beginning. High Chief Sarunas of the Yatviags somehow married a navarrian princess. She gave me five kids (three sons and two daughters), snapped and wanted to kill me, failed and fled before I was able to capture her.
I was able to change my succession law to primogeniture, which obviously upset my two younger sons. The oldest one, Jaugenis, was awarded Galindia, later Scalovia and Yatvyagi when I moved my capital to Lithuania. He was obviously happy. The middle one, Vytenis, more talented, got Sudovia, but was disappointed with my laws and plotted against me with Zemigalians. He was beaten and imprisoned - nothing unusual yet. However, upon sending to the dungeons, he somehow (a bug I think) was made successor! The fuck. I kept the traitorous scum locked nonetheless.The oldest demanded changing the law again, now to seniority. I had to agree since I was busy fightining fucking pruthenians and having 1/3 of my country against me wasn't looking too good. Jaugenis got his succession back.
Now enter Budrys, the youngest, and most talented, son. I gave him Kurzeme and he looked content. My pagan friends from Uppland wanted help to win independence from swedish christian scum, and I obliged. What did Jaugenis do? Insisted on getting his fourth county. 'Fuck you' I said, and he declared war on me, with his fucking youngest brother! My armies were crippled after fights with swedes and pruthenians (AGAIN), fortunately I had enough money to buy some mercs for a few months. They crushed my enemies, but what now? Jaugenis, the fucking moron, came to Danzig's help and declared war on HRE, and guess what - fucking pruthenians attacked him too. So before I was able to do anything and make him surrender, he lost two of his three counties. And I was ONE county away from being able to start a kingdom.
FUCK FAMILY.

 

[curry]

The AI is broken and needs to be fixed ASAP. Everyone plotting to kill everyone and starting rebellions all the time makes the game fucking tedious.

 

[Renegen]

The AI is broken and needs to be fixed ASAP. Everyone plotting to kill everyone and starting rebellions all the time makes the game fucking tedious.

I got that feeling in my game as Champagne. After I lost the crowns because of indiscriminate plotting and rebellions (from any vassal that had a negative opinion of me), the fun continued when I was a mere duke. I got excommunicated by some butthurt neighbors just because my rating with the pope was around 0, and then others were plotting to take territory from me in a duchy I had not consolidated. The worst part was every one of my allies refusing war after war to help me, I had half of France as my dynasty for fuck's sake!

I think the AI is fine, the opposite is also true, long periods of calm, but it really puts pressure on you to organize things perfectly because when things go bad, they go bad quickly. One powerful vassal or two and you're finished, you really have to plan long term.

 

[XenomorphII]

The AI is broken and needs to be fixed ASAP. Everyone plotting to kill everyone and starting rebellions all the time makes the game fucking tedious.

Yeah they plot to, but most of them have 0 support and no chance of success. Only imprison the one's that are actually dangerous, and just tell the little fish to go do something else. That way people will not hate you and rebel. (This is mostly based off of my Vermandois game in France, where I am now a Duke.)

 

[curry]

Nah, when you have primogeniture and a Kingdom with several Dukes as vassal it becomes a real pain. In my latest game I'm the king of Scotland and Ireland and have around 7 Duke vassals and every single time my ruler dies I end up having to fight atleast half of them. I think the -50 Ambitious and -50 Pretender modifiers are too much although I've seen vassals rebel with relationship close to 100.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, there's already two balance tweak mini-mods out there, and both make pretender/claimant/etc modifiers less insane.

On the other hand, my campaign as the High Chief of Karelia has gone smoothly. I didn't get crazy civil wars until the latest king (managed to conquer all of Finland de jure, happy times), which cost me my recent conquest in Bjarmia when the Lapp bastards backstabbed me. Currently my situation is fairly good now that everyone is in prison, and because I have zero threats in the West (my forces helped Erik the Heathen win his war, which crippled Sweden for good, eventually Norway went down the toilet as well), and Russians don't seem too keen on Holy War against me, and my own economy and military power is enough to keep would-be crusaders at bay. Anyway, going to give a complete saga of the unification of Finnish pagans later, with some pictures of various persons of interest.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

I find that daughters are great and that your sons should be killed of but one just before you die. Makes things easier, like modern day third world countries, only reverse!

I gotta try the whole anti pope thing, sounds interesting, since making money seems hard, unless you directly control an entire province with all towns and castles and plan your economy. How do you get your economies going? Raising the taxes seems like a dangerous gamble...

 

[Malakal]

Interestingly while in CK your family made the best vassals due to blood related bonus to relations now they make worst ones. Not only do they get the usual relation penalties other vassals get but now they get succession related ones too. Really no point to appoint them anywhere, best place to put them is prison. If only we had any way to make sure our successors live to inherit the throne...

 

[Trash]

Personally I like the whole Shakespearian angle on it. Them being a bunch of backstabbing bastards also makes the other inheritence options a lot more viable and historic. Early middle age dynasties often had gavelkind in one way or the other and indeed, often did lead to realms splitting up and being torn apart as brothers fought over them. With a little planning with honorary titles, bribes, sending some of to the church and cleverly choosing landed titles for others you can avoid a lot of headaches. If you think long term and keep a check on the relation modifiers you usually can come quite a ways. Also, short term tyrant penalties are way worth it. Then again, for me CK2 is more a game that creates good stories than a game in which you succeed by 'winning.'

Am also very much enjoying seeing the muslims invade Southern Italy and France. Though I do wonder if the Paradox 'solution' for stopping France from becoming an Iberian power isn't going to ruin that. I do hope that apart from trying to balance the game more they also fix the broken events and incorporate more laws, plots and ambitions. As it is I find especially the latter to be lacking.

 

[XenomorphII]

What is their solution for stopping France in Iberia?

 

[Father Walker]

War goals need to be fixed imo. I often find myself starting wars against the same person one by one, since I can't have a single war with multiple objectives.

This ambition system is cool. Too bad that most ambitions and plots are kinda meh. Plots to kill other folks make no sense often. Why do I have option to plot against my wife, but no options to plot against bros who are actually dangerous to me?

Battles are oddly similar to EU3, i.e. lots of chasing enemy units around the map.

Events seem to have the problem I've seen in earlier Paradox games, i.e. they have one obvious choice. I find myself choosing same options over and over, since others are pretty meh.

 

[XenomorphII]

The war goals need to be of the same type. If you have multiple claims on the same person, then there should be a "Press all claims" option to select.

 

[Luzur]

yeah, you should be able to choose which one to plot-kill from a list.

also more work on the war goal is kinda needed, like alliances, selling/buying provinces.

 

[Spectacle]

The historical reason for why France didn't expand into Iberia is the Pyrenees. Paradox games have never really tried to simulate the effect geography has on government, and instead we get various hackjob solutions to try and enforce "historical" behavior when the real historical incentives are missing from the game.

 

[Malakal]

The historical reason for why France didn't expand into Iberia is the Pyrenees. Paradox games have never really tried to simulate the effect geography has on government, and instead we get various hackjob solutions to try and enforce "historical" behavior when the real historical incentives are missing from the game.

The historical reason why France didnt expand at ALL during that time was because the French king couldnt order his vassals to do anything for him and his authority expanded not even over the whole Ille de France (however its spelled). We need better kingdom authority system with actual conditions that need to be met and penalties for kings power.

Minimal authority? You shouldnt be able to raise levies unless allied or invaded, no taxes. Each step up should be hard, require long reign, high stats and support from vassals. And often a won civil war. Right now you click and you get what you want.

Overall it needs balancing.

 

[Raghar]

This ambition system is cool. Too bad that most ambitions and plots are kinda meh. Plots to kill other folks make no sense often. Why do I have option to plot against my wife, but no options to plot against bros who are actually dangerous to me?

Because BROBERT would come and kill you.