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Crusader Kings 2

MoogleEmpMog

MoogleEmpMog

We have an EU4 thread, but no CK2 thread? That's extra heretical!

Speaking of heresies, there are suddenly a lot of them in my current game, because I achieved something I've never seen anyone even attempt: healing the Great Schism, not as Catholicism or Orthodoxy, but as the Miaphysite Coptics of Nubia.



I took Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch naturally in the process of securing the Miaphysite holy sites, and, after forming the Empire of Ethiopia, decided to try for the whole Pentarchy. And got it - Rome by forged claim and direct, bloody amphibious invasion, Constantinople by forged claim and humiliation of the Byzantine Emperor in war. (This seems to have destroyed the Byzantines, possibly by CK2+ mod event, since their former holdings immediately went independent.

The real trouble, it turns out, is getting 2000 Piety as a Miaphysite. I went through two Emperors who died before managing it before finally getting very young, very virtuous Tewodos there, who managed to be known as "the Saint" even before he mended the schism just by his innumerable virtues. (Unusually for CK2, he even acted virtuous, since I didn't dare risk anything that would lose me piety.)
 
o_O

That's... impressive. I've been in a position to do so before... if only I was actually Orthodox instead of Catholic. :p I tend to take over the Byzantines from the outside when I do my Roman Empire games (including one game as the Irish via Jerusalem...).

Out of interest, does anyone know if the converter works again in RoI? I remember reports that it didn't for a while, and I want to actually get a megacampaign going.
 
I'm very glad the latest patch adds india without the dlc, even though it makes old saves unusable. I'm having to rebuild my byzantine empire and by 950 have gotten a genius, 24 martial emperor called the holy and retaken the historical Byzantium already. I did accidentally induce inbreeding when I married my niece for her genius trait and had to save scum to not get an inbred son and get a genius. I did accidentally introduce the genius trait into all the Karolingians houses, which I feel might bite me.
 
I've been trying to start a megacampaign as the Norman Catholic Roussel de Balieul (who starts as the Duke of Charsinion on August 26th, 1071--that is, the day of the Battle of Manzikert, after which he historically was able to establish himself temporarily as a prince in Anatolia until his scheming caught up with him and he was ground between the Byzantines and the Seljuks).

Trying being the operative word here, as it's very tough going. Roussel's stats and traits are partially randomized (he's always a Skilled Tactician, but other than that it's pretty much anything goes), so there are a lot of restarts required per attempt to get a semi-decent Duke to play as (I've seen him have his best stats in the low-single digits...yeah, I'm not going to make a hard start harder when it's like a minute of work to try again). His court's stats are also randomized, so he might have a court with stats all in the lower teens to twenties, or with a 12 or 13 hitting it out of the park.

More importantly, he has a shitty geopolitical situation to deal with. To the west are the Byzantines, who have a habit of occasionally declaring war on the first week for their de jure territory. Since Roussel cannot hope to defeat them (having neither money for mercenaries, nor a huge retinue, nor a large levy at this point), this is another instant restart event. To the east are the Seljuks, who surprisingly have never given me trouble, but who stand in the way of my ambitions to (eventually) conquer Armenia and Syria. Finally, to the south are the only two independent Christian dukes in this region of the world; Cilicia, who controls a good chunk of the Kingdom of Anatolia (your logical target king title), and Antioch, who is screwed.

In my most successful game as them, I've managed to get to the 1140s independent without warring with the Byzantines or Seljuks (mostly by getting lucky with and sucking up to the former, as well as building up a substantial network of alliances), but haven't been able to expand past the three counties you start with (well, two counties and one vassal count who also happens to be the ex-duke; you obviously get rid of him right away). Since the Mongols are coming, and since Byzantine crown authority is too high to war within them for titles, I feel that that game is a failure (although I could be persuaded otherwise). I even lost a war with the Duke of Cilicia after an assassination spree that saw my current Duke's mother briefly gain the throne, due to their alliance with an independent county and its huge stack of event troops (I was able to get to 92% warscore, too...)

My goal here is to become the King of Anatolia (first), then the King of Armenia (second), and finally add Syria and Jerusalem to my titles (possibly destroying all titles other than Jerusalem to de jure drift them into Jerusalem), exporting to EUIV as a surviving Crusader(-ish) state. I am specifically not looking to become the Byzantine Emperor or the Latin Emperor, but remain a King for the purposes of making things more interesting. I may even intervene to maintain a relatively powerful Empire on my borders just to make things more interesting in EUIV. Does anyone have any strategies or advice for how to go about this? Normally I play kings or emperors, or dukes/counts who are either not fully independent or border similarly-sized independent realms, so I may simply be inexperienced at this...
 
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de Balieul is in a pretty bad strategic situation for sure. But like most states with bad starting positions (Zoroastrian Karen springs immediately to mind) your best bet is to swear allegiance to a nearby power who can defend you while you build up. Byzantium might actually be the best choice for that, as Michael Doukas is sure to mean plenty of revolts and intrigue. Just keep forging claims and picking off your neighbors and holy warring the Seljuks at opportune moments until you think you're strong enough to declare independence.

Edit - I made a sort of alt-history post-Manzikert scenario that turned out to be pretty fun with sort of fits into your timeperiod. The premise was that Romanos and the Doukids basically fought each other into a blood stalemate. Basically, I split Byzantium up between the Despotates of Greece, Bulgaria, and Nicaea and made Thesalonika an independent duchy and Byzantium a republic.
 
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Lord Vespasian said:
de Balieul is in a pretty bad strategic situation for sure. But like most states with bad starting positions (Zoroastrian Karen springs immediately to mind) your best bet is to swear allegiance to a nearby power who can defend you while you build up. Byzantium might actually be the best choice for that, as Michael Doukas is sure to mean plenty of revolts and intrigue. Just keep forging claims and picking off your neighbors and holy warring the Seljuks at opportune moments until you think you're strong enough to declare independence.
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Yeah, I more or less figured that out. Actually, the Seljuks seem quite passive if you don't go poking at them, so the Byzantines are your main threat. I tried (in the long-running independent game I mentioned) to marry to Byzantine dukes to grab their lands, but none of them would marry their high-ranking daughters to me...probably because I wasn't Byzantine.

There are a couple of problems with going Byzantine, though. First, Byzantine crown laws are lower than your effective laws, which is a problem if you want to get rid of your vassal count or switch to primogeniture. They're not low enough to prevent you revoking, though, and just getting married will get you enough prestige to take care of that; and I want to be elective anyways, so that I can choose my heir (I have the only vote, so it really is "choose your heir," too!). So that's that, I guess.

More importantly, the Emperor is Greek Orthodox, and you're Norman Catholic. Half the point of choosing Mr. de Balieul is to play as a Norman Catholic Anatolian duke, so this is a problem since you have constant relations penalties. Worse, the Emperor has a habit of 'asking' you to let them or their courtiers foster your children so that they'll become Greek Orthodox, which gives further relationship penalties when you refuse (he'll even ask for already-being-fostered kids, annoyingly enough), and will try to reconvert your Catholic provinces to Orthodoxy, which is annoying.

Also, I had kind of a terrible situation where Roussel had a late genius (! by pure chance, too!) son who ended up being okay (he was only a tough soldier despite being tutored by his Skilled Tactician father and Brilliant Strategist mother after his father died, but obviously had fairly decent stats anyways), but the stupid Emperor killed him in battle fighting a bunch of rebels, leaving his not-yet mature son as Doux. Then the Emperor went off and tried to conquer Apulia after my duke matured and killed him too, leaving some nonentity kid on the throne. I was...a little annoyed. Which led to the aforementioned long-running independent play through.

I suppose I can give it a shot. Leave the factions alone and/or forge claims so I can grab them when they revolt while they're distracted fighting the Emperor (and usually losing) or something...
 
I've never had an Ethiopia game where someone Muslim didn't step on my fucking balls within two generations.
 
Is there anyone else who wants to play a campaign where both the Mongol invasion and the goofy-ass Aztec invasion happen at the same time?
 
Just to share one of my favorite experiences playing CK2...

I once played a game as the Roman Empire that expanded into Sicily, took Alexandria but was pushed out during a Civil War, and ended up squarring off with the reformed Norse. The Civil War in question was particularly interesting; my lunatic emperor had four different factions warring for the throne, a Bogomlist Rebellion, a Sultan's bid for independence and the Egyptians retaking Alexandria. And get this, the Egyptians put down the Sultan's revolt themselves, and then launched a rather insane invasion of Achea that ended in failure. Best Civil War ever.

The game ended in 1060 as a update made the save unplayable, unfortunately.
 
Reveen said:
Is there anyone else who wants to play a campaign where both the Mongol invasion and the goofy-ass Aztec invasion happen at the same time?
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I wish they would just add an easter-egg start date with the Aztecs already present if you have the Sunset Invasion DLC so that you can conveniently play as them.

Also, it's important to note that the Aztec invasion can trigger as early as 1250, while the Mongol invasions don't stop until after 1300 (specifically, both the Il-Khanate and the Golden Horde can get reinforcements from Mongolia, the former as late as 1300 and the latter as late as 1320). So it's quite likely they will overlap, at least somewhat.
 
data549 said:
Just to share one of my favorite experiences playing CK2...

I once played a game as the Roman Empire that expanded into Sicily, took Alexandria but was pushed out during a Civil War, and ended up squarring off with the reformed Norse. The Civil War in question was particularly interesting; my lunatic emperor had four different factions warring for the throne, a Bogomlist Rebellion, a Sultan's bid for independence and the Egyptians retaking Alexandria. And get this, the Egyptians put down the Sultan's revolt themselves, and then launched a rather insane invasion of Achea that ended in failure. Best Civil War ever.

The game ended in 1060 as a update made the save unplayable, unfortunately.
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I had a komeni one where I stomped the Turks and Normans, rebuilt the empire up to Justinian levels and then had the Mongols kick my face in 10 minutes upon showing up.
 
Love the game a lot. Played over 300 hours. Now that I have some free time I'm going to try out the HIP and CK+ mods. Can someone be kind enough to give me an in-depth breakdown of what they do differently?
 
Emdeman said:
Love the game a lot. Played over 300 hours. Now that I have some free time I'm going to try out the HIP and CK+ mods. Can someone be kind enough to give me an in-depth breakdown of what they do differently?
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I can't speak for CK2+, but HIP's basically a modular compilation, so you can pick and choose what you get. The biggest improvement's the map, which is bigger and more detailed than the original one (though it hasn't been expanded to include India yet).

Generally, combat is a bit more decisive than the original. Expect to be able to score 100% warscore through battle in many instances. Traits also matter a fair deal, as they determine whether or not you can declare war in certain circumstances (holy wars, for example) or enact crown law reforms. Really though, there aren't any particularly enormous changes, just a whole bunch of very small alterations and tweaks in the interests of balance and playability.

One thing that's super-annoying, though, don't bother playing as any Anatolian Byzantine dukes in 1066, at least as of like a month ago. I don't know if they've changed this, but they sort of gamed the system so Byzantium loses Anatolia to the Turks. Unfortunately, when Byz loses, all their Anatolian land just switches to the newly-created Sultanate of Rum, so suddenly you're a vassal of a Turkish Muslim outside the Empire.
 
I've got two games running that I'm serious about.

The first is as the Khazar Jews where I'm basically conquering the stepes in preparation for my glorious return to the holy land.

The second is playing as Alfred, the Count of Dorset. I'm two generations in and I'm pretty much to the point where I'm able to create the Empire of Britannia. I've also managed to spread my bloodline enough that half of Christendom is a member of House Wessex.
 
horngeek said:
What, so Byzantium always loses to the Turks by design?
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Not exactly by design, but the early years are heavily tilted toward the Turks' favor in such a way that I've never seen them win on their own (I once played a game where every Anatolian duke revolted, which automatically cancelled the war because Byz no longer owned the land they were fighting for :p ). In part it's because Byzantium starts out at war with the Normans too, and because I'm pretty sure the Turks get events to help them along. Byzantium can bounce back, though, as after a couple years they get an event that launches a war to recover all the coastal provinces. It just sucks for those wanting to play as, say, Alexios Komnenos or Romanos Diogenes in 1066.
 
horngeek said:
What, so Byzantium always loses to the Turks by design?
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Its called the "Historical Immersion Project", I heard they wanted to bring CK2 as close to historically accurate as possible. Which means historical events have a higher chance of occurring.

Lord Vespasian said:
I can't speak for CK2+, but HIP's basically a modular compilation, so you can pick and choose what you get.
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What are the modules? I heard lately that they folded in the major ones into the main mod. Is that true? If not which ones should I hunt down?
 
Emdeman said:
What are the modules? I heard lately that they folded in the major ones into the main mod. Is that true? If not which ones should I hunt down?
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"The main mod" is the combination of all those mods itself, so there's no "folding in" to speak of. The mods come together in a single file. You pick which ones you want during installation.

There's four major ones: the map (SMHW or something), the balance (project balance), flavor (VIET), and interface improvements.
 
Lord Vespasian said:
"The main mod" is the combination of all those mods itself, so there's no "folding in" to speak of. The mods come together in a single file. You pick which ones you want during installation.

There's four major ones: the map (SMHW or something), the balance (project balance), flavor (VIET), and interface improvements.
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Oh thanks. I probably picked all of them when I installed it. Is there any way to check which modules you've installed, all I get is one checkbox called "HIP". Unlike CK2+ which spams its modules all over my mod list.
 
horngeek said:
What, so Byzantium always loses to the Turks by design?
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Not usually, most of the time they kick the shit out of them in my experience if they can avoid a civil war.

also, after three generations of genius war gods running Byzantium, my only son is an inbred, weak, hedonist, homosexual.

And my Basileus is getting old.
 
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Reveen said:
Is there anyone else who wants to play a campaign where both the Mongol invasion and the goofy-ass Aztec invasion happen at the same time?
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I did this in single player, as the Roman Empire. Twice, in fact; the first time around, my Brilliant Strategist, genius Emperor died under Aztec macuahuitls defending Madrid, capital of one of the restored Roman Empire's main allies, Leon. This resulted in a massive succession war at the same time as I was trying to fight the Mongols in Persia, Mesopotamia, Taurica and the Caucuses, and the Aztecs in Iberia, the Mahgreb and the Atlantic coast of France. The result was the Mongols taking Constantinople, Anatolia and most of the Levant, the Aztecs taking north-western Ibera and most of France, and a Roman Empire based in Italy and controlling the Balkans, Greece, North Africa and Egypt and south-eastern Iberia. It was actually pretty fun, even if it did represent the ruination of all my ambitions to restore the Roman Empire from the low point at the start of the Alexiad scenario.

So, I reloaded from before the Battle of Madrid, and this time my Emperor didn't die. This time, I got to be the leader of a united Christendom, striking back in concert against the invaders. I still couldn't stop the Mongols taking Persia, most of Russia and most of eastern and central Europe, but I threw the Aztecs back into the sea with fire and sword, and the deaths of the kings of France, Leon and Portugal put me in control of the vast majority of the former Empire. The result was a Roman Empire facing the Mongols along the Rhine and the Ilkhanate in Mesopotamia.
 
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