CKII is released.

[Humanophage]

New version of Geheimnisnacht mod (total conversion into Warhammer Fantasy) dropped. It's really good
Link

Snorri is a real Norscan merchant prince and a native of the Kuldevind Isles, despite his Beastman ancestry. He is an accomplished businessman, the head of the richest republic in the world. But xenophobes keep pointing at the hirsuteness of his skin and his large male organ, as if someone with a bovine head cannot be a true Norscan. The local extremists even murdered his brother. But slowly and steadily, he has won over many leading patricians, at least those who like money more than their own outdated bigotry. Snorri is charitable, brave, diligent, and formerly kind - but his poetic soul is often depressed because of the mountain of hate spewed at him by the less educated "human" Norscans. Graeling is a culture, not a race, and the diverse republic of The Isles serves as a beacon of scientific development exceeding even the Elves. The Beastmen-Graeling merchants are the economic glue of the north that brings the Dark Elves, the melting pot of the Chaos Wastes, and Norsca together through trade. It is sometimes difficult to overcome the ethnonationalism of the patrician newcomers who still bizarrely think of Snorri as a beastman and not a Norscan, so for now the bulk of the council are demons who harbour no petty prejudices. Snorri has a personal commitment to diversify the northern isles - ten kids and counting.

All hail the Beastman-Norscan merchant republic, the enterprising eight-point Chaos star of the north! Culture and self-identification above archaic biologism!

(the only two provinces are the two small islands on the right, the rest are just trade posts)

 

[zapotec]

New version of Geheimnisnacht mod (total conversion into Warhammer Fantasy) dropped. It's really good
Link

Better this or hexenstag?

 

[Wassersäufer]

New version of Geheimnisnacht mod (total conversion into Warhammer Fantasy) dropped. It's really good
Link

Better this or hexenstag?

Hexenstag is Old World only and runs considerably better and more stable for me than Geheimnisnacht, even when using GN with the only Old World submod. It reduces some of the feature bloat too (Winds of Magic, etc).
Newest Version of Hexenstag is borked tho, large areas of Kislev and Norsca will get pretty much constant Greenskin Rebellions which makes playing a minor faction basically impossible. AFAIK its also abandoned and there is no more development, so my Vote goes to Geheimnisnacht without Skaven.
EDIT: Chaos Undivided is also kinda worthless in HT, if I recall correctly you cannot become a Daemonprince and stuff like that.

 

[thesecret1]

Did you play Geheimnisnacht recently? They improved performance massively. A year back the game slowed to a crawl 100 years in, today it runs fine, at least on my machine, even with skaven

 

[Wassersäufer]

Did you play Geheimnisnacht recently? They improved performance massively. A year back the game slowed to a crawl 100 years in, today it runs fine, at least on my machine, even with skaven

Played it a few months ago with the last update, became very unstable for me after a around 100 years in game time. Gonna give it a try with 1.37 and see how much it has improved.
One more thing I forgot to mention: Hexensnacht has a large mutation system. Its cool in theory, but triggers waaaaaaaay to easily and will result in roughly 2/3 of your human children being automatically executed.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So I'm playing CKII Plus as the Spartenos from southern Italy (AKA one of the few Greek rulers there), with the objective of restoring Magna Grecia and then creating a Giga-Greek Empire - essentially, to take every single place that was ever colonized, owned or conquered by Greeks at any point in time, starting where Alexander the Great and all the other Greek rulers left of. So far I got southern Italy, Epirus and am starting to make inroads into North Africa.

Well, I take some peeks at the Middle East and notice a growing Karen Zoroastrian realm. Pretty cool.
Then I take a look and... well... look at it. LOOK:

This fucking Gigachad just brought back the Ancient Eranshah, Mazdraism and everything. I'm pretty sure he and his ancestors weren't Children of Destiny or anything, dudes just pwned all the Muslims and reconquered Ancient Persia. I didn't help him or anything.

Sammanids are still around but honestly? Not for long. This gigachad is even more powerful now, like 32k total troops now.

Considering the peak of my campaign is going to be doing Alexander the Great Mk II? This is AWESOME, because this is clearly the Final Boss of my Campaign in the making. GO, GO SUPER KAREN! CONQUER THE MIDDLE EAST! TANK SUNNI MA! GET STRONG, MEET ME IN FINAL BATTLE!

The Eternal War between East and West, Persian and Greek, draws close to a Final Battle.

 

[wwsd]

Which start date is that The Brazilian Slaughter ? Any plans to take over the ERE? Pretty fun in any case. For some reason I thought there was a special achievement for conquering Persia as a Greek Pagan, but I can't find it in the list in Steam, so I guess not.

Spartenos in 1066 is pretty hard, although I've played it so often now, I know how to cheese the start. Ally Venice and Verona (or some other nearby HRE duchy). Holy-war the Muslims on Sicily with their help (if you're in time and you're sieging all the relevant provinces, the Normans can't do shit, or will even help you if they declare war after you, because there's no mechanism for them to steal sieges). Then keep the Normans down so they don't get enough provinces to proclaim the Kingdom of Sicily. Then conquer provinces yourself until you can do so. Conquer all the de jure land (although it's hard to take provinces from the HRE or that one barony from the Pope). Then take over the ERE either by submitting to them, or marrying into a claim and jumping in to one of the many civil wars they'll have.

Pretty fun, but I know this procedure by heart now, and by the time I get into the purple, I just tend to get annoyed with managing the ERE. Maybe I'll try an earlier game start next time.

 

[wwsd]

Which start date is that @The Brazilian Slaughter ? Any plans to take over the ERE? Pretty fun in any case. For some reason I thought there was a special achievement for conquering Persia as a Greek Pagan, but I can't find it in the list in Steam, so I guess not.

The Old Gods.
Well, the plan was to take any place ever owned by Greeks at some point, definitively.
Well, I did put a kibosh on that one, started playing HIP. Looks cool but has a small issue in that new interface, in which you the control painel for units goes out of the screen if you select it while sieging a city, lolz.

I'm now trying a HIP Zoroastrian run in 768 start. Right inside the Abbasids. Its interesting that Title Revocation Banned is a thing, so I think I can keep myself from getting title revoked similarly to CKIII, making different religion vassals starts more viable.
For some reason I can't claim my liege's lands, tho.

Spartenos in 1066 is pretty hard, although I've played it so often now, I know how to cheese the start. Ally Venice and Verona (or some other nearby HRE duchy). Holy-war the Muslims on Sicily with their help (if you're in time and you're sieging all the relevant provinces, the Normans can't do shit, or will even help you if they declare war after you, because there's no mechanism for them to steal sieges). Then keep the Normans down so they don't get enough provinces to proclaim the Kingdom of Sicily. Then conquer provinces yourself until you can do so. Conquer all the de jure land (although it's hard to take provinces from the HRE or that one barony from the Pope). Then take over the ERE either by submitting to them, or marrying into a claim and jumping in to one of the many civil wars they'll have.

Pretty fun, but I know this procedure by heart now, and by the time I get into the purple, I just tend to get annoyed with managing the ERE. Maybe I'll try an earlier game start next time.

Spartenos are available in 1066? Huh, not aware of that.

They just own Naples in 1066, so not a very easy start unless you have spent years perfecting cheesing it to get a head start in a game that you'll abandon and then restart again and again, like a certain Dutch person who shall remain nameless. But in fairness, it's pretty frustrating otherwise, because the Normans are always within 1-2 counties of being able to create the kingdom, and then as Orthodox you can't holy-war them or do anything against them except painstakingly conquering them one province at a time, or trying to get a claim on them through marriage. Unless you enable some of the more overpowered CBs. And that's of course assuming they don't just conquer you first.