Crusader Kings II

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:07 pm

Most of the events have a choice that will allow you to gain Piety or lose less of it. There are some traits that bring a monthly gain as well.

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:20 pm

Got four years into the demo as the King of Poland before he died during a siege, leaving his two year old son as the new King. I quit at that point.

Lots of mechanics I don't understand as well, which is par for the course with Paradox. Technology research works how, exactly? What is the point of all of the courtiers that aren't landed nobility? How can I get my vassals to stop fighting each other and give me their damn troops? Why do my # of vassals increase when I haven't given anyone any land? Etc., etc.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:51 pm

Kelric wrote:Technology research works how, exactly? What is the point of all of the courtiers that aren't landed nobility? How can I get my vassals to stop fighting each other and give me their damn troops? Why do my # of vassals increase when I haven't given anyone any land? Etc., etc.

1) Courtiers serve a number of purposes. Marriage fodder. Potential councelors. New Vassals to hand titles off to. Also, if a courtier has a claim on a title that is below yours, you can press the claim on the courtier's behalf and get a Cassus Belli.

2) Here is my understanding of how tech works: It is mostly hands off, and the only things you can do to affect it is assign a councelor to research a particular schools (Military, Economic, or Cultural) or set a focus within the school (those little buttons on the right - the tooltips will tell you how close you are to a tech, and what it will get you). When you complete research, the improvement first appears in your capitol. From there is spreads throughout your realm (you will start getting messages like "County such-and-such has discovered level 1 of this-and-that"). From there the techs spread around the map. The only thing I don't know is when you set a councelor to researching, if it matters where he does it.

3) Vassals stop fighting each other only when your Crown Authority is high enough, which can be tough when you have Vassals with claims on each others land, since they have to approve the increase

4) I don't understand the question. Can you cite a specific example.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:59 am

Have a daughter.

Mr Bismarck · Post by **Mr Bismarck** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:45 am

SO, THIS IS AWKWARD.

My ally is calling me to war against his neighbour, which would involve me weighing in on the side of one of my sisters, by declaring war on the other sister.

That's going to be an awesome family get together.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 6:42 am

Kelric -

It just dawned on me that perhaps the number of vassals increased because you inherited a title.

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:05 am

tgb wrote:Kelric -

It just dawned on me that perhaps the number of vassals increased because you inherited a title.

Thinking back, I don't recall that I did. It is possible, though. IIRC, Poland starts with 15 vassals. After 4 years of play I somehow had 20 but had not gotten any more land. If I did inherit a title, it had to be in land within Poland that I already controlled to some degree.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:25 am

Is the learning curve in this game deep? Will a novice have a difficult time playing?

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:39 am

tru1cy wrote:Is the learning curve in this game deep? Will a novice have a difficult time playing?

As someone who's tried a few of the previous games from the same company/developer (EU series, etc.), I would guess yes. They're rewarding games, but they require a rather significant time commitment if you want to be even slightly proficient with the game.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:55 am

tru1cy wrote:Is the learning curve in this game deep? Will a novice have a difficult time playing?

The basics are not difficult to learn, and you can have fun just responding to events and picking off easy targets. There is a lot of stuff to learn as you delver deeper into the game, but there are several tutorials and gameplay videos on Youtube - I would suggest checking those out.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:58 am

Thanks Hepcat and tgb

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:37 pm

I've been really enjoying this game (my wife has her masters in Medieval history, so I've also been able to get her actually into a game I'm playing!) , but I'm brand new (did HOI years ago, but this feels WAY different) to this.

One question for tgb or any other proficient player kind enough to answer.

I (Duke of Toulouse, France) was asked to raise troops to join my king in a holy war against barcellona (no problem, it's just over the hill).

I see masses of troops being raised from all the counties and they all seem to be joining up with what I will just consider 'the Kings army' (about 2000 of em, after they all combined)

My army (two counties) that I combined into 1 stack, is sitting around trying to shadow these guys (I'm too small to just engage the army from Barcellon). Am I missing some 'official' way to participate in the Holy War, or just by raising troops and sending them into the heathens lands, am I participating ?

Second quick question...

... the above Holy War concluded (we won), and everyone returned to their wives. I had just gotten married (to the princess of Norway) and my wife had just had two kids, back to back. First a girl, then next a son (my heir). Things were looking great.

Event: Whoa. William, the Bastard (truly!) told some lie (I have no idea what it was) to the Philip, who promptly tossed me in a Dungeon (harsh... I was the king's Stewart of France.. as well).
My 10 month old son is being put under a Regent (who just happens to be my Spymaster, who just happens to be the man an Event forced me

to expose to the rest of our court as a sodomite.)

awkward, to say the least.

I am still alive (in fact, I had a recent event where I begged to be upgraded out of the dungeon, to house arrest. Granted) - but my character avatar has iron bars in front of him.

Question: Am I ever gonna get out of house arrest and be cleared of these bogus charges and regain my titles, etc? and/or is my son's future pretty much screwed as an infant in this position.

Mr Bismarck · Post by **Mr Bismarck** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:43 pm

Unagi wrote:I've been really enjoying this game (my wife has her masters in Medieval history, so I've also been able to get her actually into a game I'm playing!) , but I'm brand new (did HOI years ago, but this feels WAY different) to this.

One question for tgb or any other proficient player kind enough to answer.

I (Duke of Toulouse, France) was asked to raise troops to join my king in a holy war against barcellona (no problem, it's just over the hill).

I see masses of troops being raised from all the counties and they all seem to be joining up with what I will just consider 'the Kings army' (about 2000 of em, after they all combined)

My army (two counties) that I combined into 1 stack, is sitting around trying to shadow these guys (I'm too small to just engage the army from Barcellon). Am I missing some 'official' way to participate in the Holy War, or just by raising troops and sending them into the heathens lands, am I participating ?

I believe what's happening here is that the King has already raised the bits of your army that he wants and absorbed them into his own forces. You can raise your forces to follow him, but you don't need to and if you start punching people he's also punching, then chances are some of your men will die and he'll still take the province.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:47 pm

tru1cy wrote:Thanks Hepcat and tgb

If you can swing the gamble on the game, I'd take the plunge.

As tgb describes, it's actually fun to even just poke around, not be all that great at the game, but let it have it's way with you a bit. The game is friendly enough that I get the feeling after one does that a few times, one gets more and more understanding of the different layers (this is my hope for myself) to the game, and slowly masters them (or attempts to).

It's certainly not a 'conquer the world' game. It's a 'see what you can do with this' challenge, as I see it.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:54 pm

Mr Bismarck wrote:I believe what's happening here is that the King has already raised the bits of your army that he wants and absorbed them into his own forces. You can raise your forces to follow him, but you don't need to and if you start punching people he's also punching, then chances are some of your men will die and he'll still take the province.

So when I get the high priority mail that the king has asked for (can't recall if that was how it was worded, or if it said he raised em) me to raise troops in my two counties - I don't need to actually do anything? (It's true that the other counties in my Duchie had men "automatically raised" and auto-join up, but I really didn't see any troops from the two counties I lorded over directly.)

I was tempted to not actually press any 'Raise levy' button on my counties .... but I did. Later I actually did get an event to ask the King to re-pay me for my troop's cost, but I selected the option to just suck-it up and not ask for compensation.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:08 pm

Unagi wrote:
tru1cy wrote:Thanks Hepcat and tgb
If you can swing the gamble on the game, I'd take the plunge.

As tgb describes, it's actually fun to even just poke around, not be all that great at the game, but let it have it's way with you a bit. The game is friendly enough that I get the feeling after one does that a few times, one gets more and more understanding of the different layers (this is my hope for myself) to the game, and slowly masters them (or attempts to).

It's certainly not a 'conquer the world' game. It's a 'see what you can do with this' challenge, as I see it.

I've already decided to take the plunge. I pretty much did this with Football Manager 2010 and have been hooked ever since (thanks, Newcastle)

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:10 pm

Mr Bismarck wrote:My ally is calling me to war against his neighbour, which would involve me weighing in on the side of one of my sisters, by declaring war on the other sister.

That's going to be an awesome family get together.

Heh... in the above holy war that King Philip had me join in... to march against Barcelona and the Duke of Barcelona....

When I first read it, is struck me.... wait a minute. My Mother is the Duchess of Barcelona.

Mr Bismarck · Post by **Mr Bismarck** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:11 pm

When I was playing in Narbonne the King of France raised his armies every five minutes and although I was asked if I wanted to join in, clicking yes automatically sent some of my forces to him - maybe the county levees, rather than my personal ones? I'm not sure.

I could then raise my personal levees, but they couldn't join his main force. They ended up following them around like that eighth guy from The Magnificent Seven, just sort of getting in the way a bit.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:13 pm

tru1cy wrote:I've already decided to take the plunge. I pretty much did this with Football Manager 2010 and have been hooked ever since (thanks, Newcastle)

It's funny, in my head I've been making the same comparision.

Also, there is some analogy to starting a small club and learning things there that you don't really have going on in a big club - and here, where a small lord of a single county is a world apart from being the king, but it's all the same game.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:15 pm

Mr Bismarck wrote:I could then raise my personal levees, but they couldn't join his main force. They ended up following them around like that eighth guy from The Magnificent Seven, just sort of getting in the way a bit.

OK, that's exactly my experience. I won't worry about dragging my guys out the next time. Thanks!

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:20 pm

Well, it's been interesting for Charles I of Anjou, King of Sicily.

In a divergence from history, my Charles managed to avoid the Sicilian Vespers and keep control of a content Sicily (four counties) under his direct rule. I partitioned parts of the lower Italian boot to various vassals and had most of them rather pleased with me. A few Prince-Bishops still bore grudges against me, but it was relatively smooth sailing.

I managed to marry Charles II, the lame, to his historical bride Maria of Hungary, the third daughter of King Steven of Hungary (whose reign I expedited through a knife to his father's back). My second son, Phillippe was given the Duchy of Anjou and seemed content. At some point Pisa lost control of Sardinia to the heathen Moors from North Africa, and - being the faithful steward of Christianity that I am, I vowed to liberate these Christian lands from Moorish perfidy (declarations of holy war against Islamic and other non-Christian foes do not require a Causus Belli or a claim on the territory). The Sultanate of Africa was wracked with rebellion and war and I called upon my ally and brother Louis IX of France to aid me in the fight. It was a quick war and within the year the Sultan offered me control of the counties. I formed the Duchy of Sardinia (including Corsica) and gave control of the Duchy to my heir, Charles II.

In an effort to become a man exalted among men (get 1000 prestige), I hosted a great hunt. Unfortunately, wolves attacked and I was permanently maimed and temporarily wounded. It was a great failure, but the fortitude of this monarch is strong, and time will erase the wounds, and I will fight on despite the maimed leg. About this time, I noticed some discontent stirring in the dynasty. The younger child Phillipe was well known to be a maniacal schemer and he had hired the services of an efficient and ruthless spymaster. Tucked away in his castle in Anjou, he sent out assassins to remove his brother, the heir apparent, and his brother's son (named Phillipe at his birth, in honor of his uncle and would-be slayer). Phillipe clearly wanted the throne of Naples and would not be content with inheriting my titles of Duke of Anjou and Duke of Province. (NOTE: Actually Phillipe succeeded multiple times in murdering his nephew AND his brother. The first time it happened, I had no idea what was going on and reloaded, thinking that I had done something myself to get both of them killed. The event text decided it would not tell me about my grandson's death, so I was ignorant of it for quite some time. The next time I realized what was going on, and as I am trying to play a semi-historical game - I want Charles to get the throne as it was in history - I reloaded again and tried to prevent this.) Thankfully my spymaster, who I sent to protect my son and grandson from plots, caught the assassins trying to kill my grandson and informed me of the worst - it was my other son who was the culprit. Heartbroken, but unable to tolerate such a gross act of cruelty, I sent my bailiffs to arrest my second son.

Phillipe, however, would not be so easily taken. He escaped from the castle moments before the guard arrived and rallied his counties' forces in rebellion against me! Charging his older brother with the task of raising troops against the rebels, he solemnly rode to fight, brother-against-brother in the cold northern lands of Maine. My troops boarded boots drawn from Sicilian cities and went the long way through Gibraltar, up the Atlantic and disembarked from the bay of Biscay. It was a long siege of two well fortified counties. During this time, a few upstart counts in Italy decided to take advantage of my divided attention to declare independence, and I was forced to hire mercenaries to crush them. After about a year, the Italian rebels and my younger son capitulated - being sent to prisons in Naples to await my judgement.

I did not have time to judge the deeds of my younger son. Languishing in prison, he was found dead a mere few months later. It was always rumored that his older brother had repaid Phillipe's treachery in kind, succeeding against him where the older Phillipe's attempt against Charles's son had failed. But I was too heartbroken at the affair to see it, or to imprison my only remaining son for an understandable act of vengeance.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:29 pm

New patch:

- Loading a save where you had marked characters of interest or non-interest will no longer crash the game
- Fixed a bug with the de jure modifier not being initialized correctly for most kingdoms and above
- Fixed a tooltip crash in the Realm Tree
- Fixed an issue with long MP game connection times
- Fixed an issue with burgher heirs retaining burgher laws when inheriting a feudal demesne
- Fixed several script errors with the special CoAs in Dynasty CoA Pack DLC
- The texture in the Dynasty CoA Pack DLC now works correctly on all graphics cards
- Children of rulers now automatically get the appropriate claims when you start a new game (they don't need to be scripted in)
- Fixed the Steam install script so it won't run every time you start the application
- In order to ask for an invasion CB, you must be at peace and either have a claim on a primary title of the target's, or have fewer holdings in your realm
- AI will now change tech focus
- Revised reverse demands for CBs to make them more interesting
- Diplo AI: Will not allow matrilineal marriages with unimportant characters
- Diplo AI: Will say no to marriages that would make valuable courtiers (councillors) move
- Diplo AI: Will be reluctant to let skilled courtiers move to marry
- Diplo AI: Will now sometimes grant titles to unlanded courtiers again!
- Diplo AI: Fixed a bug where a completely beaten AI would surrender too easy
- Diplo AI: Muted AI spam about marriages if player already declined offer
- Diplo AI: Will not declare religious wars for overseas territories that de jure belong to an independent duke or king of its own faith
- Invasion AI: Better at not disembarking into an enemy army
- Invasion AI: Optimized prio target selection
- Invasion AI: Fixed an issue with pointless counter-invasions
- Invasion AI: Will now load armies in port when possible, in order to avoid loading armies onto the wrong fleets
- Invasion AI: Should now understand how to target peasant rebels
- Resigning now changes the checksum, so you cannot join an MP game without restarting the game (which would cause an OOS anyway.)
- Boosted the strength of peasant rebel units by 50%
- Fixed a bug with the CB for the Institute Gavelkind plot
- Upped the length of truces to 10 years (from 3)
- Added fractions to the revolt risk in the province view
- Added a monthly law vote check to make sure laws pass when they should
- Fixed a bug with port buildings not giving more galleys
- Fixed a problem with running the game on large TV screens
- Raised mercenary hire costs a little bit
- Flank leader damage bonus changed from 1% to 2% for each point in martial
- Fixed an issue where granting titles would disband troops
- Fixed an issue with a plot where the target would retain his title even when he folded
- Fixed a problem with playing the Earl of Durhamn causing immediate game over
- Ask for ransom interaction can now be initiated with the liege
- Ask to ransom interaction in the diplomacy window now has a proper title when selecting target
- Rebalanced the initial situation between William, Harald and Harold
- Gave Edward III a claim on France so the 100 years war bookmark will work correctly
- Corrected the history of Gevaudan to avoid dead "Serene Doges" of France at startup and make sure it has prince bishops at the end

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:33 pm

If you want a challenge, try playing as the Duke of Transylvania

Newcastle · Post by **Newcastle** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:41 pm

tgb wrote:If you want a challenge, try playing as the Duke of Transylvania

dude there are vampires? do they sparkle?

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:57 pm

Sepiche wrote:New patch:
- Fixed the Steam install script so it won't run every time you start the application

Oh, good.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:58 pm

baelthazar wrote:Well, it's been interesting for Charles I of Anjou, King of Sicily.

That was a very entertaining read.

baelthazar wrote:My troops boarded boots drawn from Sicilian cities and went the long way through Gibraltar

Naval technology was so primitive back then.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 2:40 pm

AWS260 wrote:
baelthazar wrote:My troops boarded boots drawn from Sicilian cities and went the long way through Gibraltar
Naval technology was so primitive back then.

I wonder if the ships were part of the navy, or were hired for the trip, in which case they were freebooters.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:13 pm

Har har... everyone is a comedian.

They did take plenty of whiskey though, being bootleggers.

Qantaga · Post by **Qantaga** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:32 pm

Unagi wrote:
tru1cy wrote:I've already decided to take the plunge. I pretty much did this with Football Manager 2010 and have been hooked ever since (thanks, Newcastle)
It's funny, in my head I've been making the same comparision.

Also, there is some analogy to starting a small club and learning things there that you don't really have going on in a big club - and here, where a small lord of a single county is a world apart from being the king, but it's all the same game.

That's spot on. I just started poking around with the Duke of Connacht to get a feel for the basics. Then, trying a game as the King of Norway was a completely different experience. In Connacht, it took half a year to get an event of any consequence. In Norway, I had a major court decision and a morale issue in a castle defense within a week.

I loved the original Crusader Kings, but I'm taking my time getting familiar with the mechanics (both old and new) again.

The game looks and feels spectacular. I can't wait to spend more time with it. I suspect I'll be sinking untold hours into this.

Chaz · Post by **Chaz** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:05 am

One of my buddies just got a new job, and decided to gift me a copy of this. Guess that ends my waffling. I'm totally gonna be a crazy Irish lord.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 8:55 am

Chaz wrote:One of my buddies just got a new job, and decided to gift me a copy of this. Guess that ends my waffling. I'm totally gonna be a crazy Irish lord.

Nice!

While he's at it, why not gift you *two* copies...

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:46 am

Newcastle wrote:
tgb wrote:If you want a challenge, try playing as the Duke of Transylvania
dude there are vampires? do they sparkle?

Yes. And if your daughter has the trait "mopey" or "emo" you can arrange a marriage.

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 2:35 pm

I'm just not understanding the details of the vassal system yet. I think once I do I'll really get into the game, but so far the demo and I aren't quite seeing eye to eye.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 2:41 pm

My ruler developed the trait "syphilitic" after a Grand Tournament.

I found that being a hunchback syphilitic makes you really unpopular with the ladies.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:45 pm

Kelric wrote:I'm just not understanding the details of the vassal system yet. I think once I do I'll really get into the game, but so far the demo and I aren't quite seeing eye to eye.

It took me a while to "get it", but perhaps I can help. What don't you understand?

Qantaga · Post by **Qantaga** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 4:02 pm

Hey tgb (and others), I've got a question for you.

I have a button at the top that tells me I can 'Create a Title," the Duke of Albany or somesuch. However, when I click on it to open the window, the Create tab in the larger Duke of Albany window is greyed out. I can't figure out how to interact with anything on that window (History is the only active button and it opens an empty window, too), nor can I find a way through the diplomatic interactions with characters to grant (create/bestow) that title on anyone.

Have you seen that "Create a Title" screen before?

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 6:14 pm

Qantaga wrote:Hey tgb (and others), I've got a question for you.

I have a button at the top that tells me I can 'Create a Title," the Duke of Albany or somesuch. However, when I click on it to open the window, the Create tab in the larger Duke of Albany window is greyed out. I can't figure out how to interact with anything on that window (History is the only active button and it opens an empty window, too), nor can I find a way through the diplomatic interactions with characters to grant (create/bestow) that title on anyone.

Have you seen that "Create a Title" screen before?

I have, usually associated with creating a Duchy. I know to do that you have to have at least half of the provinces in your demesne. There should be a list of provinces, and as you mouse over them you'll be told which you have and which you need.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 6:31 pm

Qantaga wrote:Hey tgb (and others), I've got a question for you.

I have a button at the top that tells me I can 'Create a Title," the Duke of Albany or somesuch. However, when I click on it to open the window, the Create tab in the larger Duke of Albany window is greyed out. I can't figure out how to interact with anything on that window (History is the only active button and it opens an empty window, too), nor can I find a way through the diplomatic interactions with characters to grant (create/bestow) that title on anyone.

Have you seen that "Create a Title" screen before?

You probably don't have enough money on hand for it. It usually takes around 190 gold to create a new ducal title, but you can tell for sure by mousing over the create button... that'll give you a rundown of what you're missing.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:43 pm

One of the best things about the interface is that if you can't do something, there is usually a tooltip to tell you why not.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 10:00 pm

Creating a title can require both piety and gold. Once you create a title, you get a de jure claim on any of the other provinces under that title that you do not yet own. Currently I am 9 provinces away form forming the kingdom of Italy, and once I do, I will have a claim on the other 18 counties in the Kingdom! Not an easy task, but over several heirs I might be able to do this.