CKII is released.

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yep, but I still miss the Friend system from CK1, and it'd be nice to have the rivalry system expanded to cover more. I mean, it is kind of nice when things get personal, the base game itself handles the whole casual skullduggery part already.

 

[RK47]

Not really. Most early middle age kingdoms faced a shitload of dissent the moment ye olde boss fucked off to the nether regions. Kings at the time were usually just figureheads who where merely tolerated by the powerfull nobility. Especially when they had some claims laying around themselves. Vassal loyalty isn't how much they like you, it is merely how loyal they are to you. Just face it, your nobles are a bunch of scrupulous pricks who would stab you in the back as soon as cheer you on. All depending on what they think they can get away with and/or benefit from the most.

Problem here is the cynical nature is all there to see, but I've hardly seen a single positive in this loyalty system. They like me. But doesn't even bother raising their own levy to fight wars. They just let me grab my share of the levy from theirs and leave me to do the battling. They have 400 gold, yet they won't even spare 75 to the Emperor for mercs.

The most I've seen are just 10-25 gold piece from a son or loyal mayor. That's just damn sad. It's really sickening when I do the new king Regime change by cleaning the dukes, counts, mayor and bishops - imprison banish routine and end up with thousands of gold that was unspent.

 

[Kattze]

Not really. Most early middle age kingdoms faced a shitload of dissent the moment ye olde boss fucked off to the nether regions. Kings at the time were usually just figureheads who where merely tolerated by the powerfull nobility. Especially when they had some claims laying around themselves. Vassal loyalty isn't how much they like you, it is merely how loyal they are to you. Just face it, your nobles are a bunch of scrupulous pricks who would stab you in the back as soon as cheer you on. All depending on what they think they can get away with and/or benefit from the most.

There are cases though that loyal vassals were fucked by their overlord because they were getting too big for the boot (ie. Abu Muslim and al-Mansur or in a more ancient example, Surenas and Orodes).

 

[Trash]

Stop playing vanilla and start looking into the mod scene, rk47. It really adds loads to the game and improves on pretty much everything you brought up so far. Including having nobles grant gifts and/or actually spend all that cash.

hardly seen a single positive in this loyalty system

Que? It's a perfect indicator on how and why your vassals feel about your rule.

Yep, but I still miss the Friend system from CK1, and it'd be nice to have the rivalry system expanded to cover more.

Absolutely. They really need to bring that back for more dynasty management related lulz.

There are cases though that loyal vassals were fucked by their overlord because they were getting too big for the boot

Pretty much everyone was fucking over everyone. Came with the territory. In game I'm constantly making sure to keep uppity nobles down or try and fit bigger boots when playing as a noble. One of my biggest disappointments with the (vanilla) game was how easy it was to increase crown authority when most of the middle ages was all about local nobility trying to diminish it with kings doing all they could to increase their centralist powers. Glad to see most mods make the cost for increase a lot steeper and the resulting hits in loyalty a lot harsher.

 

[Borelli]

The most I've seen are just 10-25 gold piece from a son or loyal mayor. That's just damn sad. It's really sickening when I do the new king Regime change by cleaning the dukes, counts, mayor and bishops - imprison banish routine and end up with thousands of gold that was unspent.

Once my court bishop was researching culture when the "he's gone heretic" message appeared. Normally i approach them in the prison and tell them "look man just drop the heresy and i will forget this ever happened", however i could not help but notice that:
1. this bishop had 200 gold just sitting around
2. banishing heretics has no piety cost
3. banishing people who only have single holding is only 10 tyranny
So from now on every time when one of my court bishops becomes heretic i hear CA-CHING.

 

[Commissar Draco]

average lifespan, chance of children reaching adulthood and birthrate of the period.

Which all should be adjusted to the fact you play as part of social elite with much better nutrition and medicine that average commoner had. Interesting period to play? Around 1100 with Roman Empire catching the second wind under the Commenos dynasty, not yet fully united Sicily, Weak and recently established Crusaders states and Fatimids and Seljuks still stronk. Almoravids should be the hard place for small Iberian Muslim statelets visavi Crusasers rock as they were historically the decadence caused Desert Tribe on Steroids.

 

[Trash]

average lifespan, chance of children reaching adulthood and birthrate of the period.

Which all should be adjusted to the fact you play as part of social elite with much better nutrition and medicine that average commoner had.

Did that. I used Hatcher's Plague, Population and Wrigley's and Schofields Population History for reference. And 'much better medicine' is something you should take with a kg of salt.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

For me the death of king is one of the most interesting part of the game and it would make it too easy if loyalty would cross over to their or something. These aren't some happy fantasy kingdoms where everyone is happy about the royal family.

About mods - got any recommendations? I tried King and Thane or something but it was bugged for me (I didn't have holy war cb agaisnt other religions etc.).

 

[Trash]

You only get Holy War CB's when you've got sufficient piety as far as I remember.

EDIT: Checked it. Piety based. And for mods I recommend the one I just posted a link to.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/ckii-is-released.69368/page-115#post-2646837

 

[Borelli]

For me the death of king is one of the most interesting part of the game and it would make it too easy if loyalty would cross over to their or something. These aren't some happy fantasy kingdoms where everyone is happy about the royal family.

True, but i would like if the 40 year old heir who spent 20 years managing a duchy would not provoke a "new guy! SHORT REEEIIGN" reaction from all vassals.

 

[Commissar Draco]

You have to have Infidel as a neighbor... Makes sense to remove unsanctioned Crusades/Jihads for Somalis and Swedes. What was wrong with Roman/Arab medicine? I am not speaking about Frankish or Turk Barbarians.

 

[Spectacle]

For me the death of king is one of the most interesting part of the game and it would make it too easy if loyalty would cross over to their or something. These aren't some happy fantasy kingdoms where everyone is happy about the royal family.

True, but i would like if the 40 year old heir who spent 20 years managing a duchy would not provoke a "new guy! SHORT REEEIIGN" reaction from all vassals.

I thought they changed that in one of the latest patches, so that the short reign penalty counts how long you've been anybody's liege, not how long you've been king?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

You only get Holy War CB's when you've got sufficient piety as far as I remember.

Oh, how stupid of me, didn't notice that. Gonna download the mod again now.

 

[Borelli]

For me the death of king is one of the most interesting part of the game and it would make it too easy if loyalty would cross over to their or something. These aren't some happy fantasy kingdoms where everyone is happy about the royal family.

True, but i would like if the 40 year old heir who spent 20 years managing a duchy would not provoke a "new guy! SHORT REEEIIGN" reaction from all vassals.

I thought they changed that in one of the latest patches, so that the short reign penalty counts how long you've been anybody's liege, not how long you've been king?

Yes. I forgot about that, still had my old gripes in my mind.

 

[Tigranes]

Trash what is a good mod combination now? CK2Plus doesn't seem to do as well for me anymore, if only it keeps crashing. Might be tempted into a pre-Old Gods run with Latin Empire.

 

[Trash]

Tigranes, the one I posted a page before and have already posted about twice now is a goodie. I seriously love the Prince and the Thane and fiddled around with it for a bit to include some stuff I enjoy. TPATT basically adds shitloads of ambitions, decisions, buildings and events to the game as well as graphical upgrades and lots of map and culture stuff. It's not a mod that throws around the basic gameplay but it does give the player lots of new options and things to do and experience. I love it.

And CK2plus was the mod that started it all and has gone to shit once Wiz decided he wanted to balance everything for his MP matches. CKII simply is not a game that should be balanced and ditching all that makes it fun to turn it into a mp mappainter really hurt my butt. He's hired by Paradox and the mod is basically all but dead now. Still, the guy made some massive improvements to the base game before letting it all go to shit and was the first one to show how much possibilities it had so kudos for that.

A Game of Thrones mod is awesome but don't expect too much fun playing as either night watch or wildlings. Do expect to see big improvements there with the new raiding mechanics from The Old Gods. It's gameplay improvements are mostly what all the other big mods also have together with some GoT specific stuff and it really works. Very atmospheric and they've introduced a lot of basic gameplay stuff (education, duels, etc)that made the mod scene overall much better.

Frankly most of the big mods nowadays borrow their more interesting and well executed parts from each other. It creates the usual DRAMA at times but also means that general quality has improved a lot. Still far from the quality we got with the massive DVIP mod for CKI but lately I'm starting to think we might see something like that as soon as the DLC bandwagon starts lagging. For now though Pdox keeps bringing incline to the vanilla game with those so I hope that wagon keeps rolling on for quite a bit longer. Very much looking forward to the Old Gods and what modders will do with it.

 

[Tigranes]

Thanks Trash. OK, I'll go with TPATT and Memento Mori. Just wanted to make sure the TPATT 'base' was the right one these days. I expect that Old Gods will take a couple patches/hotfixes to settle down anyway, so might go ahead and start a game.

 

[Trash]

Tigranes. Last version of TPATT is getting some flak for crashing repeatedly and the modder himself announced a new version for later today. The mod itself certainly crashes a lot for me (with and without added Memento Mori) I'll update the next version as soon as I get it. Seems the modder kept in a lot of small typos that can cause CTD's. Shouldn't be too hard to fix with one of the several pdox game file checkers floating around.

And goddamn, constantly the same tard(s) in the mod forum there who keep claiming that childbirth deaths and higher child mortality will bring the game crashing down. Every single time someone brings up these things one or two guys will instantly jump in to claim that. And it's bullshit. As many mods have shown (amongst those my own, Memento Mori and big ones such as CK2+ and GoT) there really is hardly any increase in loading times, memory use and so on. It's a fable that gets used to keep these feautures out of mods and stems from one dev comment way back during development when they used it as an excuse to not include childbirth deaths. With the last patch even they included values in definues.lua to determine how many people die at each age. Including at age 0. Ramp up the fertility and those values into extremes and run the game for an extended period. You'll see there won't be any problems performance wise. Or just go and play CK2+ for a bit. Wiz included childbirth deaths since almost the beginning and never had any trouble with it. More characters do not mean the game starts lagging. Period.

If you really want your CK2 to start chugging along you should try to install a few of those graphic and portrait overhauls. Especially the portraits can bring the game crashing down spectacularly.

 

[Tigranes]

OK, I'll Sozzy it up until that gets sorted out. I had installed and had a look around the 1204 start without doing much, but the mod definitely looks promising and I'm happy to check out MM.

 

[RK47]

Hahaha, ok and so ends my love story with Gavelkind.
I made some missteps in my Latin Empire game in regards to Gavelkind, but I was shocked at how effective it was when the circumstances are perfectly suited for it.

Emperor Baldwin I - Demesne cap 8 - No male heir.
Very easy succession. It goes to his brother. No issues.

Emperor Henri I - Demesne Cap 8 - Sole male heir.
Another good run, raking in income from 8 counties.

Emperor Shepard I - Demesne Cap 8 - .... 4 sons.
Pretty much fucked. The fatal mistake was getting married too early. Like 16 year old marriage and giving his wife Lustful trait over that poet event.

Firstborn: Hawke
When Hawke was born Shepard was only 20 something. Too damn early. Already Hawke is proving to be a bad candidate: content, kind, charitable, slothful.

Secondborn: Garrus
No telling how he will turn out. Received first event at 5 years old, loves to fight, encourages him, and gets Proud trait. Put him under 18 Martial Brilliant Strategist - he got Just trait, this is nice.

Third & Fourth Son: Twins. Wrex and Gaider.
Oh fuck. oh fuck.

Either I ditch Gavelkind or I start kin-slaying.

 

[EmoBunny]

Very nice work Trash

 

[Spectacle]

One thing about Gavelkind is that it doesn't split up counties, so if you own every single holding in your capital county then your primary heir will inherit them all, even if it means some of his brothers end up landless.
This gives you a strong and compact power base, but of course less taxes than spreading your demesne across many counties, since you wont have many mayor vassals. As a bonus each holding in the county can benefit from the marshal's levy buffing mission, giving a significant boost to your personal army size.

With the Old Gods coming up it seems like it's time to get used to gavelkind

-Spectacle

 

[RK47]

One thing about Gavelkind is that it doesn't split up counties, so if you own every single holding in your capital country then your primary heir will inherit them all, even if it means some of his brothers end up landless.
This gives you a strong and compact power base, but of course less taxes than spreading your demesne across many counties, since you wont have many mayor vassals. As a bonus each holding in the county can benefit from the marshal's levy buffing mission, giving a significant boost to your personal army size.

With the Old Gods coming up it seems like it's time to get used to gavelkind

-Spectacle

I am well aware of that, but I've held 8 core counties in the Latin Empire and I loathe to split them up between my future sons.
I can no longer remove a heir from succession by gifting him a church
Perhaps if I captured Rome or other Church based counties I would be able to do so...

 

[Trash]

Fixed a few syntax errors myself and TPATT seems to run much better now. Mind you, the mod maker went a bit overboard with all the reputation penalties so expect a lot of disloyalty in this version. I'm not gonna bother with editing it all myself since he's working on it himself. Nevertheless, here is a much stabler version of TPATT 2.1.1 with Memento Mori added as a little extra.

http://www.mediafire.com/?e9lz4zqoz6excl8

And Gavelkind means getting used to either splitting up the realm after making sure to keep a solid base for your chosen heir or getting rid of little johnny, mark and anthony to make sure pete gets it all. Which can be quite a bitch as a choice when people and heirs also die of disease, battle and so forth. Meaning that offing the offspring might seriously bite you in the back later on. Makes for interesting games.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The way to get used to Gavelkind is to embrace Unfortunate Accidents.