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The Cerdicings of Britannia: A Crusader Kings 2 Succession Game

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AAR Turn 10, Blazinghand as Ælfwald III Cerdicing Part 1
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    • AAR Turn 10, Blazinghand as Ælfwald III Cerdicing Part 1

    I've inherited our mighty empire as just a teenager. Looking back over our annals, I find that in our past were were Catholic, but now we mostly hold the true faith, that of the Germanic religion. Though our lands are vast, my vassals are unruly, and many are heathens. Our only true peers are Lombardy and the Byzantine Empire.




    Even with capable bribing with special offices and cajoling, I am only able to soften the opinions of the most powerful of my vassals.



    With half of my retinue deployed but funding preventing me from putting out the rest, I still have a large army. I set it to raiding nearby heathen shrines to build confidence in the Germanic religion. Due to the many forces allied against me, this is a safer way to build support for my beliefs than attacking the finaly holy site, at least for now.


    The realm is too centralized to manage effectively. I decentralize slightly and give more power to the vassals, as my regent says is a good idea. Surely he wouldn't lead me astray...


    I wonder what I missed.


    Ah! Heathens within!


    Even worse! Heathens without!

    So, I decided to stop here for the evening. This crusade is for our kingdom in Northern France, so it's very important not to lose. I think the strategy is gonna be "load all my dudes on a boat and rush Rome and hope for the best" or something similar. If I can siege down the pope's holdings, I think that can give me 100% warscore quickly. I'm not sure how organized the remnants of catholicism are but I want to wrap this up quickly and get back to raiding temples for moral authority.
     
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    • Blazinghand said:
    So, I decided to stop here for the evening. This crusade is for our kingdom in Northern France, so it's very important not to lose. I think the strategy is gonna be "load all my dudes on a boat and rush Rome and hope for the best" or something similar. If I can siege down the pope's holdings, I think that can give me 100% warscore quickly. I'm not sure how organized the remnants of catholicism are but I want to wrap this up quickly and get back to raiding temples for moral authority.
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    Can't say I'm a fan of this, to be honest. It really doesn't make sense that Catholic vassals would give you troops to help fight off a crusade, or winning by cheesing the warscore mechanics instead of fighting the actual war (especially when the game provides an out for just this sort of situation.)
     
    Jorlem said:
    Can't say I'm a fan of this, to be honest. It really doesn't make sense that Catholic vassals would give you troops to help fight off a crusade, or winning by cheesing the warscore mechanics instead of fighting the actual war (especially when the game provides an out for just this sort of situation.)
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    I'm sure there is a historical precedent, and loading an army up to smash Rome feels viable to me.
     
    Jorlem said:
    Can't say I'm a fan of this, to be honest. It really doesn't make sense that Catholic vassals would give you troops to help fight off a crusade, or winning by cheesing the warscore mechanics instead of fighting the actual war (especially when the game provides an out for just this sort of situation.)
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    Actually, this is an interesting question. Although a good number of my vassals (basically all the king-level ones) are germanic, some of them are Catholic. Can they get the option to join the Crusade on the side of the Pope? does this make them independent?
     
    Blazinghand said:
    Actually, this is an interesting question. Although a good number of my vassals (basically all the king-level ones) are germanic, some of them are Catholic. Can they get the option to join the Crusade on the side of the Pope? does this make them independent?
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    As far as I'm aware, they cannot. Check the opinion modifiers though, if they have the modifier for defending against infidels, then they likely cannot. (I got terminally bored of Germanics/Norse a while back, and haven't played them since, so I'm not sure.)

    Edit:
    Piren'e Colass said:
    I'm sure there is a historical precedent, and loading an army up to smash Rome feels viable to me.
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    Unless you actually capture the Pope, shouldn't that just anger them more and make them more dedicated to the cause?
     
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    Jorlem said:
    As far as I'm aware, they cannot. Check the opinion modifiers though, if they have the modifier for defending against infidels, then they likely cannot. (I got terminally bored of Germanics/Norse a while back, and haven't played them since, so I'm not sure.)

    Edit:

    Unless you actually capture the Pope, shouldn't that just anger them more and make them more dedicated to the cause?
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    Or terrify them with your absolutely terrifying force project
     
    Jorlem said:
    As far as I'm aware, they cannot. Check the opinion modifiers though, if they have the modifier for defending against infidels, then they likely cannot. (I got terminally bored of Germanics/Norse a while back, and haven't played them since, so I'm not sure.)
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    Hmm, this seems like it shouldn't be how it works in an ideal world. I guess they didn't consider this possibility. Like, I'm sure there are a few Catholic dukes under the Germanic King of France. Since the Crusade is for France, it would be totally cool if all Catholic vassals of the person defending against the Crusade (and vassals-of-vassals, etc) were given an event/option where they could declare independence and that war would get rolled into the Crusade. Clausewitz engine or whatever may not work well with this though, maybe this is more of a "I hope this happens in CK3" kind of thing.
     
    fighting crusades is actually the primary reason I converted. It's sort of the only big enemy we'll get to fight unless the mongols don't derp out, and they usually derp out.
     
    Blazinghand said:
    Hmm, this seems like it shouldn't be how it works in an ideal world. I guess they didn't consider this possibility. Like, I'm sure there are a few Catholic dukes under the Germanic King of France. Since the Crusade is for France, it would be totally cool if all Catholic vassals of the person defending against the Crusade (and vassals-of-vassals, etc) were given an event/option where they could declare independence and that war would get rolled into the Crusade. Clausewitz engine or whatever may not work well with this though, maybe this is more of a "I hope this happens in CK3" kind of thing.
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    The way vassal rebellions used to work, the one that started the rebellion would become independent and then could call their former liege's vassals to war as allies. So the engine could easily handle it, as it did so years ago.

    stratigo said:
    fighting crusades is actually the primary reason I converted. It's sort of the only big enemy we'll get to fight unless the mongols don't derp out, and they usually derp out.
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    I think this might be a fundamental difference between our play styles. I don't play CK2 for war, and I don't see that as the primary challenge of the game, like it is for EU4. I play for the stories it creates, not to fight off waves of revolts and crusades, or to try to paint the map. That kind of thing is more tedious than fun, at least for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that way of playing is in any way bad or wrong, it just isn't something I find to be very enjoyable.

    As an aside, this is a big part of why I never play Germanics anymore, and why I don't like some of the CBs the devs have mentioned in recent dev diaries. (I mean, why do we need a no CB CB, or a kingdom level CB restricted to countries that are already big blobs?)
     
    I actually like the Prepared Invasion CB; or at least, being on the receiving end of it once as Pictland. It gives the feeling of a crusade, with all these huge stacks of Germanics running around, and all your fellow Catholics coming to your aid. I didn't know that Germanics got a kingdom-level CB though. Is that for Reformed only?
     
    Blazinghand said:
    I actually like the Prepared Invasion CB; or at least, being on the receiving end of it once as Pictland. It gives the feeling of a crusade, with all these huge stacks of Germanics running around, and all your fellow Catholics coming to your aid. I didn't know that Germanics got a kingdom-level CB though. Is that for Reformed only?
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    The fylkir can call great holy wars, which are crusades with the numbers filed off and very awesome.
     
    Piren'e Colass said:
    The fylkir can call great holy wars, which are crusades with the numbers filed off and very awesome.
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    And as the player is almost always the fylkir, it gives the player a kingdom level cb once every thirty years, and due to the requirements for reforming and unlocking the CB, the player will always have the most powerful, if not the only country involved, and thus will always be the highest contributor. And since it is a crusade type holy war, it strips titles from everyone that isn't your religion and gives them to you. Reformed Norse has all of the raw conquering power of the unreformed version, but without the downsides that are meant to fracture the newly conquered land. It is basically super-easy mode. The one actual difficulty is gathering the power needed to actually take the holy sites while dealing with elective gavelkind, and as the new event bypasses the blocks on converting to unreformed Germanic, well...
     
    Jorlem said:
    The way vassal rebellions used to work, the one that started the rebellion would become independent and then could call their former liege's vassals to war as allies. So the engine could easily handle it, as it did so years ago.


    I think this might be a fundamental difference between our play styles. I don't play CK2 for war, and I don't see that as the primary challenge of the game, like it is for EU4. I play for the stories it creates, not to fight off waves of revolts and crusades, or to try to paint the map. That kind of thing is more tedious than fun, at least for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that way of playing is in any way bad or wrong, it just isn't something I find to be very enjoyable.

    As an aside, this is a big part of why I never play Germanics anymore, and why I don't like some of the CBs the devs have mentioned in recent dev diaries. (I mean, why do we need a no CB CB, or a kingdom level CB restricted to countries that are already big blobs?)
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    XD I'm too good at the game. Even Roleplaying, I set up extremely stable kingdoms and mange my vassals so that I get a revolt less than once a game. Like, if I die, it'll be in the first 20 years if I try a challenge run (like zoroastrian).
     
    stratigo said:
    XD I'm too good at the game. Even Roleplaying, I set up extremely stable kingdoms and mange my vassals so that I get a revolt less than once a game. Like, if I die, it'll be in the first 20 years if I try a challenge run (like zoroastrian).
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    Have you tried CK2PLUS? If you're at the empire level you have to deal with Imperial Decadence which gets worse the bigger you are. After a couple generations, things should be interesting.

    Or for a simpler challenge, change the game rules. Deadly plagues, more diseases, quartered demesne size and vassal limit, 4x revolt strength, and the earliest settings for Aztecs, Mongols, and the Turkish conquerors. I think that rule set up is generally enough to provide some challenge.
     
    I prefer to use marriage, murder and long term sabotage as tools instead of war. It both limits me a bit more and makes thing interesting.

    Didn't use it during my turn because being honest? For the long term sabotage you need to both get a lot of bastard children and keep any eye on them to prevent accidentally hitting yourself with a mine.

    It's difficult to do with succession games.
     
    So, I have a chance to change our inheritance system. Currently we're at A-C Gavelkind. What do we want? Elective might be really hard to wrangle, but that's an option. There's also Seniority, Primo, Ultimo, and Elective Gavelkind.
     
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