CKII is released.

[Kattze]

I don't know if this was accurate but I've read from pdox forums that republics were supposed to expand by a three-step model of building Trade-posts first then using coastal city CB then conquering the county.

 

[Average Manatee]

That wouldn't change things in the slightest. A republic with just trade posts is far stronger than anything else in the game. It's like a whole second game world that feudal lords can't touch, with no demense limits and only 3 other players. It's the equivalent of getting 150k retinue and 750/month income after conquering Ireland from an Irish count start, assuming you can be arsed to click the upgrade button approximately 2000 times. Except that Ireland is actually harder to conquer than the other 3 republics. Did I mention that just about everything a Republic does is untouchable by feudal lords? And there are no succession problems? No revolts? It's like taking everything of even minor difficulty in CK2, throwing it out, then consoling in infinite money/armies.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Crusader Kings 2: Libertardia

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Those Mediterranean faces. Greeks, Italians and Spaniards now look like Arabs. In any case I created this quick and dirty little mod in which these people keep their old (white) looks, while Andalusians, Turks and Persians use the new skin tone.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0k67m9clc9nxjhm

Should be compatible with any other mod as long as it doesn't edit cultures.txt

 

[mondblut]

You should be happy with republics now. Trade posts are basically mini-cities with no technology requirements to upgrade and are 2-10x more efficient at generating returns than anything else in the game (actually generating more money in a trade post than the max upgrades an early game city can get, for less cost than a bare bones city) and don't count against your demense. Also republics get ridiculous +retinue upgrades for both trade posts (+500 for 400 gold) and their family house (which gives +6000 for something like 1500 investment).

And of course, free casus belli against any naval province to take their city, which can then turn into taking the province once you have the city. Basically just dogpile any minor coastal nation so that you can get discounted trade posts (cost scales based on distance from nearest holding and how much ruler like/hates you, can go as low as 90-100 gold each). The ONLY way to face (minor) trouble is to get embargoed, which actually means some feudal nation declares war on you and destroys all your trade posts if they win. Solution is to bribe said nations and embargo other republics first, then build sweet cheap trade posts as soon as theirs are gone. Otherwise when I got embargoed by the ERE I just hired 3 merc groups and slapped their shit.

Just for lulz, after taking most of the trade posts in the Mediterranean and stretching up towards England I did a back to back invasion of France and HRE. When that was over I owned most of Spain, France and HRE. My final retinue limit? 70k from trade posts, 58k from manpower. And I had even stopped upgrading the trade posts after a point because I was simply too lazy to click upgrade 500 times.

For all intents and purposes Republics are the new Mongols. Or Aztecs, since they are about as historically plausible.

Sounds awesome. Gotta play it ASAP before Pdox listens to the whiners and nerfs it to hell.

But can you have an imperial tier republic? Painting the entire map on king-tier sucks, too many dukes to bother with. Besides, for some reason "Holy Roman Republic" sounds mighty cool :D

I guess I'll still wait for timurids to arrive and be crushed on the spot, then hand out some of the imperial demesne to lord mayors and play one of the resulting republics to the endgame.

Speaking of which; if you make a dynast a doge (more importantly, several dynasts into several doges), how do the family ties keep working? Both between feudal and patrician members of same dynasty, and separate patrician branches in different republics.

 

[Average Manatee]

Sounds awesome. Gotta play it ASAP before Pdox listens to the whiners and nerfs it to hell.

But can you have an imperial tier republic? Painting the entire map on king-tier sucks, too many dukes to bother with. Besides, for some reason "Holy Roman Republic" sounds mighty cool :D

I guess I'll still wait for timurids to arrive and be crushed on the spot, then hand out some of the imperial demesne to lord mayors and play one of the resulting republics to the endgame.

Speaking of which; if you make a dynast a doge (more importantly, several dynasts into several doges), how do the family ties keep working? Both between feudal and patrician members of same dynasty, and separate patrician branches in different republics.

First run where I didn't know shit about republics works. Would easily be able to do this 3-4x as fast knowing what I know now.

You sound like a pussy though. Needing an empire to map paint? The way to do that is to holy war all muslims, then convert to muslim and holy war everything else. Don't even need to honor truces. With the amount of retinue you should have the only limit to controlling the whole map in a few decades is how much you want to micro multiple wars and sieges at a time.

You can't hand out trade posts. They are with you forever. For eternity. Well, other families can steal them and they can be destroyed by embargos, but other than that they are eternally bound to you I think.

 

[Konjad]

On one hand I want to buy and play it... on the other it seems totally overpowered and boring...

 

[mondblut]

Yaaarrr.

(fuck, it's still called 'empire' though :/ )

You sound like a pussy though. Needing an empire to map paint?

I'd rather deal with 50 dynast kings, not 500 random dukes.

The way to do that is to holy war all muslims, then convert to muslim and holy war everything else.

Convert to mudslim? No way in hell.

 

[XenomorphII]

Wouldn't it be easier to go heretic then to go Muslim? Then devour what you want of your original religion's territories, and ditch your heresy (or not, I haven't done heresy in a while, does it still lead to lots of random provinces converting to other heresies due to low moral authority?) when you are finished.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'd rather deal with 50 dynast kings, not 500 random dukes.:

Your ridiculous standing army combined with the fact that you never have pretenders means you will never have rebellions or anything else. You can ignore your vassals for all it matters.

 

[IDtenT]

Still want to try a Nubian game with the new mercs.

 

[Konjad]

Wouldn't it be easier to go heretic then to go Muslim?

How exactly? You have to convert everyone twice instead of just once, sounds like more work, not less. What advantages does it have? Does pope is less likely to call crusade upon you?

 

[Average Manatee]

Don't even need to convert things. Hand duchies off to vassals, let them bother about shit like that. It's not like you care about the levy or tax the provinces provide.

 

[XenomorphII]

Wouldn't it be easier to go heretic then to go Muslim?

How exactly? You have to convert everyone twice instead of just once, sounds like more work, not less. What advantages does it have? Does pope is less likely to call crusade upon you?

Well, in my experience, if you send your court chaplain to do research, it doesn't take long for the he comes to you with heresy event to fire. Then you as (hopefully a relatively young ruler) go on a rampage. You can decide as he gets older whether to spread/maintain heresy (educate your children personally, send out chaplain to convert) or to drop it (send children to whatever original faith was tutors, and keep the chaplain at home). Delaying marriage in such a case is a good idea too (provided you have brothers or some other male members of your dynasty hanging around) as it allows for more time to decide what you want to do, and whether it will be practical to do it based on what is going on in that particular game. It can be really dangerous, but probably no more so then jumping to Muslim. Mostly, it gives you most of the expansion benefits of swapping to Muslim (as was originally recommended) without having to be Muslim. Only downside is that you won't be able to attack the other Christian religion for free (so Catholic heretics don't get to rampage on Orthodox and vice versa), and I am not sure if the problems with plummeting moral authority still exist (tons of random province religion changes).

Like I said it has been some time since I have run a heretics game (before SOI), but turning Scotland heretical was lots of fun for me. I never had the pope come after me, though the occasional holy war from France/HRE happened.

 

[Konjad]

Mostly, it gives you most of the expansion benefits of swapping to Muslim (as was originally recommended) without having to be Muslim.

Then why not just staying to be heretic and not becoming muslim at all?

 

[XenomorphII]

Mostly, it gives you most of the expansion benefits of swapping to Muslim (as was originally recommended) without having to be Muslim.

Then why not just staying to be heretic and not becoming muslim at all?

Err, I never said to become Muslim. I mean stay heretic or revert to original religion that your heresy comes from(Catholic most likely) after taking what you want. I was trying to provide an alternative route for those who wanted to go on a war path against their former brothers in faith and don't want to become Muslim.

 

[RedScum]

Ahh i remember when i played as Normandy -> England and one of my ruler embraced the heresy. Much chaos & fun was had in all over Europe:

Spoiler

There were barly a handful of catholic provinces left a couple of years later. It all started when i promoted my Anti-pope if i remember correctly. Good times.

 

[Konjad]

Err, I never said to become Muslim. I mean stay heretic or revert to original religion that your heresy comes from(Catholic most likely) after taking what you want. I was trying to provide an alternative route for those who wanted to go on a war path against their former brothers in faith and don't want to become Muslim.

Ummm... are you trolling me?

Wouldn't it be easier to go heretic then to go Muslim? Then devour what you want of your original religion's territories, and ditch your heresy (or not, I haven't done heresy in a while, does it still lead to lots of random provinces converting to other heresies due to low moral authority?) when you are finished.

Well, in my experience, if you send your court chaplain to do research, it doesn't take long for the he comes to you with heresy event to fire. Then you as (hopefully a relatively young ruler) go on a rampage. You can decide as he gets older whether to spread/maintain heresy (educate your children personally, send out chaplain to convert) or to drop it (send children to whatever original faith was tutors, and keep the chaplain at home). Delaying marriage in such a case is a good idea too (provided you have brothers or some other male members of your dynasty hanging around) as it allows for more time to decide what you want to do, and whether it will be practical to do it based on what is going on in that particular game. It can be really dangerous, but probably no more so then jumping to Muslim. Mostly, it gives you most of the expansion benefits of swapping to Muslim (as was originally recommended) without having to be Muslim. Only downside is that you won't be able to attack the other Christian religion for free (so Catholic heretics don't get to rampage on Orthodox and vice versa), and I am not sure if the problems with plummeting moral authority still exist (tons of random province religion changes).

Like I said it has been some time since I have run a heretics game (before SOI), but turning Scotland heretical was lots of fun for me. I never had the pope come after me, though the occasional holy war from France/HRE happened.​

 

[XenomorphII]

Than not then. My bad. Grammar fail.

 

[Konjad]

LOL

I haven't bought the Republics DLC, but I was checking the new characters in a country selection (or however it's called) and when chose Count Gebile of Piombino (Pisa)... laughed. They apparently forgot to disable it for non-dlc owners and you can just select that character and play the republic of pisa (with all the new stuff, menus etc)

 

[IDtenT]

LOL

I haven't bought the Republics DLC, but I was checking the new characters in a country selection (or however it's called) and when chose Count Gebile of Piombino (Pisa)... laughed. They apparently forgot to disable it for non-dlc owners and you can just select that character and play the republic of pisa (with all the new stuff, menus etc)

You can only play until you get elected as Doge.

 

[Konjad]

oh

 

[Destroid]

One thing I really like about CK2 is that losing a war is not a big deal. You don't lose hordes of expensive troops, and you don't (typically) lose a lot of territory.

 

[oscar]

Any mods dealing with Mongols and altering their mechanics?

 

[poocolator]

The plague has saved my dynasty from a decadence spiral while keeping my prestige and piety intact. Praise Allah!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Anyway, I'll get around to upgrading my stuff for the Republic DLC after they release the Scandinavia portrait and sprite pack. One thing I have in mind for Republics tho...

Patricians, Doges, etc will have zero base Demesne and no multiplier. This means the demesne limit for a merchant family will always be the Stewardship skill, and Legalism.

 

[George_V]

Hi Big fan of CK2 here... Just got registered... Any news about Prince and Thane update? (that is compatible with patch 1.09)

 

[Average Manatee]

Patricians, Doges, etc will have zero base Demesne and no multiplier. This means the demesne limit for a merchant family will always be the Stewardship skill, and Legalism.

No, you need to nerf trade posts and trade post acquisition. All this would do it make every city in the game with a 0-demense mayor ruler produce no income. And from what I've seen the average AI has about half of a stewardship point, so that means every AI city. Unless the count-level mayor is different from a duke-level or higher, but even still you are hardly doing anything and will seriously fuck over any AI doge.

If you want to properly nerf republics, make it impossible or at least significantly harder to plot to take trade posts unless in a feud or the other family has more total trade posts. Give bonuses to the plot if one family has massively more than another. Then raise trade post cost by 50% or so.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I've still got to play a full patrician campaign from Gotland (incidentally, getting the money for a mercenary doom army to conquer all the nearby pagans in a few years was piss-easy, after that just had to wait a while to get another mercenary doom army ready for independence war and voila Serene Republic of Finland), then I'll have a better idea about what's needed.

 

[Sranchammer]

Hi Big fan of CK2 here... Just got registered... Any news about Prince and Thane update? (that is compatible with patch 1.09)

they've been silent for awhile

 

[Destroid]

Playing a French Duke is teh hard.