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Crusader Kings 2 |OT| Strategy/RPG hybrid goodness

Sajjaja

Member
I'm finally playing the game. Finished the tutorial, got the Sword of Islam DLC. Any recommendations or tips for me to learn how to play? Should I play with people who have lots of vassals at first or no?
 

Torraz

Member
The four big dlc packs are on sale on steam for just under 10 dollars.

I only have the base game.

Are they worth it at that price?

Thanks!
 
You can currently get this for $5.80 together with a bunch of other games from Humble Bundle. It's still €39.99 on Steam so that seems too good to be true. Am I missing something? Do I need a bunch of DLC to make it enjoyable?
 

Fitz

Member
The game is decent on it's own, a lot of the core mechanics from the major DLC is available in the base game, mostly the DLC allows you to play as non-Christian non-monarchical nations.
 
Thanks. I already have 40 hours under my belt but a lot of stuff still befuddles me as I encounter it, and I haven't spent much time in middle years of the game, never mind the later ones.

Not often I still feel new after played enough time to finish several "normal" games!

Yeah I've barely scratched the surface.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Starting to watch the vid - it's a bit meandering and unfocused for a good while, does it get better?
 
My first 95 minutes of CK2:

  1. started as a duke in Bohemia
  2. acquired a "have a child" ambition
  3. conspired against my wife
  4. killed her and got a more fertile one
  5. fulfilled ambition
  6. got excited! I finally am becoming acquainted with some mechanics!

eJnklj3.jpg

A few seconds later a major scale war triggers: now I'm at war with the HRM because I had joined a "Independent" faction a few minutes earlier. What can I say, I just like to click on things.


It ended poorly. CK2 vs Me 1-0. Tomorrow I'm gonna try something easier.
 

R1CHO

Member
I started playing this game a month ago or something like that, and already have 73 hours registered, it's really interesting.

In my current play trough i started as Castille, and i have been able to conquer the whole Iberian peninsula, forming the Hispania empire, also won a crusade for Lithuania and i have been expanding using holy war cassus belly in the north. After that i invade the HRE with the pope's blessing, and now i am in a pretty powerful position.

My doubt now is about the mongol hordes, what is the best strategy to deal with them? The pope has called a crusade for Hungary, but i find pretty hard to fight the huge (100-150K) horde... i mean, yes there are more soldiers on my empire, but attrition makes very difficult to form armies of that size.

Suggestions?

OZcFcqL.jpg


Edit: Check this fucking disaster, having a larger army and terrain hills as an advantage:

rvIsIGg.jpg


I guess their mounted archers are killing machines.
 

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
The best way to handle the Mongols, if you are in western Europe, is to simply wait for the late game to fight them. By that time they will have usually exhausted their massive doomstacks because their initial Mongolian units do not reinforce immediately once killed, and eventually they'll begin to rely more and more on their regular, attrition-prone levies. If you are trying to fight them, however, then the most elegant solution is to lure them to a nearby sea province with one of your stacks, with as many units as you can muster waiting in boats to disembark just outside of the port. If you time it correctly, then you can basically join all your levies together into one massive force without suffering any attrition. Of course, that strategy might not always be possible depending on where you fight them.
 

R1CHO

Member
Thanks for the advice mate!

I got around 250K soldiers on a big fleet and jumped on the Mongol horde when they came chasing another small army, it worked!

The crusade has finished and now i also have Hungary.

Now i can create the title of Carpathia empire, is it a good idea? How does it work as i already have another empire? Vassal empire or independent?
 

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
Thanks for the advice mate!

I got around 250K soldiers on a big fleet and jumped on the Mongol horde when they came chasing another small army, it worked!

The crusade has finished and now i also have Hungary.

Now i can create the title of Carpathia empire, is it a good idea? How does it work as i already have another empire? Vassal empire or independent?
Since emperor is the highest level title, you have to hold both titles simultaneously. Giving it away would cause it to become independent. The main advantage of holding two emperor level titles, besides the prestige gain, is entirely psychological. It's immensely satisfying to collect as many emperor titles as possible. The downside is that there are obvious headaches associated with keeping another big title, one that you must personally hold at all times. You have to make sure that all your titles have the same succession laws, for instance. I believe vassals will desire titles that aren't your primary one, so there might be a negative opinion modifier for kings within that de jure empire (I'm not entirely sure if this is actually the case).
 

R1CHO

Member
Thanks again for the advice.

I was able to change the succession law of the HRE to primogeniture, so now my next character will inherit the two imperial crowns.

I have 4 male heirs now, so the others will get some kingdoms, but i am ok with that.

I hope my current character lives long enough to see the "change succession laws" modifier expire, if not, it's going to be difficult to have all the vassals happy.

Also the empire has grown quite a bit:

22fSM7p.jpg


After defeating the hordes, the two mongol nations are an easy prey; the Egypt sultan is also losing terrain... i don't really know what to do about the Bizantine Empire, it would be great to get it, but they are pretty stable, i have never seen an independent war withing the Empire, and i am not planing to claim it county by county; probably will leave them alone.
 

R1CHO

Member
20 years to finish the campaign and i am very hook up right now, it's more interesting than ever.

I was able to marry a grandson to an heir of Bizancio, unfortunately her father died year later, so i had to go to war against to make effective her claim. Now she is the Empress and my son the consort Emperor, but sadly the Bizancio is pretty fragmented right now; and they fucking hate her guts.

I got control of England with another marriage, and my current player is the first king of England of my dynasty.

A couple of decades ago the Thimurids arrived and grab a fair ammount of land in Persia, i was going to leave them alone, hoping that they centered their attention on Bizancio, but they decided to invade my Arabic lands... without being able to crush them with massive disembarks, it was a pretty hard fight, but at the end i defeated their doomstack, and now everything is easy on that front.

I want to try to grab as much as i can in this last years... it's not going to be very easy, because my character has some nasty traits, so the Pax of my own empire is kind of fragile; but i have a lot of money to deal with any problems.


Garnet - Thimurids
Purple - The part of Bizancio "controlled" by my daughter in law.
 
I've been meaning to play this. Of all my Total War games I keep going back to Medival 2: Kingdoms expansions and do the jerusalem campaign. its so fascinating!
 

DrSlek

Member
I love that almost 2 years onwards this game still gets shitloads of support and extra content.

Paradox are good guys.

In my current game I've united the British Empire under Sunni Islam with a Scottish culture.
Next game shall be hard mode. Restore the Roman Empire.
 

Sajjaja

Member
I love that almost 2 years onwards this game still gets shitloads of support and extra content.

Paradox are good guys.

In my current game I've united the British Empire under Sunni Islam with a Scottish culture.
Next game shall be hard mode. Restore the Roman Empire.

Well, it is the best game Paradox has put out.
 

Zushin

Member
Hey guys, just noticed the CKII Collection is on sale on GMG making it $79 (Australian here) down to $19 + 25% Voucher bringing it down to $15, which seems like an incredible deal. How is this game anyway? I haven't really played any grand strategy games before, the only thing I've really played is Civ5 and Shogun 2 which I really liked. Is this game for me?
 

gabbo

Member
I just installed it today, myself, and I've never been more intimidated by a game in my life (and that's after spending several hours with the demo).

As for if it's for you Zushin, try the demo now and hop on that GMG sale if it's still there tomorrow/the next day.
 

Zushin

Member
I just installed it today, myself, and I've never been more intimidated by a game in my life (and that's after spending several hours with the demo).

As for if it's for you Zushin, try the demo now and hop on that GMG sale if it's still there tomorrow/the next day.

Yeah I grabbed it. Too good of a deal to pass up lol.
 

phoenixyz

Member
How is this game anyway? I haven't really played any grand strategy games before, the only thing I've really played is Civ5 and Shogun 2 which I really liked. Is this game for me?
Same for me and I found CK2 to be one of the most enjoyable (and time consuming...) games I've played in the last years.

I just installed it today, myself, and I've never been more intimidated by a game in my life (and that's after spending several hours with the demo).
You mostly learn it just by playing. And if something happens you can't make any sense of you still have Google or this thread.
 

phoenixyz

Member
How come the OT for CK2 is only four pages???
You mean 2? #100postsperpagemasterrace

It's a complicated game. I feel like I need to take two weeks off from work to learn the basics.
You like Game of Thrones? Play the Game of Thrones mod in the beginning and just do what you want to do. You will probably fail hilariously but learn what the heck is going on while you are doing that.
 
I've read all the books but I don't have an urge to recreate the novel inside a game. A historic setting is more interesting to me.
 

CloudWolf

Member
So, I just have to bump this topic after what happened to me in my game this weekend. I was just casually playing as the mightiest vassal in the world, conquering lands and never having to worry about a single war because my liege dealt with that shit, when I married my son to the daughter of the Kaiser of an AI formed Empire of Francia (those damn Karlings, am I right?). She was second in line for the inheritance, but I decided against killing her brother because I liked being an almighty vassal. Also, I didn't particularly like the prospect of inheriting (literally) the entirety of Western Europe as a foreigner and infidel (I converted to Manichean not long after marrying my son, because I could).

...and then some vassal (a woman I now call (mild GoT-spoilers)
Queen of Thorns
, even though she actually was just a random countess) decided she didn't like the Kaiser's only son and whacked his ass. This in turn led to the daughter I married to my son inheriting the throne and eventually I inherited the Empire of Francia, which span from Africa to Norway (and incidentally also included the entire Italian Peninsula, which they took from me in the most useless Crusade ever since I inherited that land not a year later). This might've been the most succesful marriage I've ever done in this game and it was purely unintentional.

Some other weird stuff in my current game:

The AI forming the Empire of Carpathia, never seen them do that before
The Kingdom of Abyssinia not only surviving the onslaught of the muslims, but managing to grow and even stay Miaphysite. I fully expect them to form the Empire before 1453.
The Ilkhanate converting to the (long dead) Nestorian religion
 

belushy

Banned
Been playing the GOT mod and I bought the Ruler Designer to try and spice up my play through a bit. I use the ruler designer to make myself a strong, quick/genius, and huge and those traits never seem to pass on to my kids at all. :(
 

Lyng

Member
I am just getting back into this great game. The Learn to play Scenario added is a great way to get back into what everything does.
Also caved and bought Sons of Abraham and Way of Life. (had old Gods allready)
 

Chariot

Member
Hi, sorry for pushing this old thread, but I gotta ask. I played a bit of CKII with mates and at some point one always popped out of sync. We tried to save and restart and delete temporary files, but to little avail. At most we got a few more minutes until the next desync. The threads appearing when googling are not very helpful either. Does anyone here have experience and a possible solution with this?
 

ghostjoke

Banned
Anyone tried Monks and Mystics yet? Incredible that this game is still getting support (5 years later) although I've always found the DLC to be a bit pricey for what you get.

Quick run down of highlights of messing about for a few hours:

Lusty character.
Sister got involved with satanism.
Some incest later, I'm sacrificing holy men and POWs to Satan.
Widows for a Satan worshipping harem.
Wife mysteriously disappears.
Several churches are burnt down by order of the higher ups.
New wife isn't happy with new evil abode, leading to more affairs and orgies.
BASTARDS-BASTARDS-EVERYWHERE.jpg

Curse brother to hurry along my succession to crown; marshal just isn't enough.
Affair with Queen of Scotland. Turns sour after trying to indoctrinate her into Satanism.
Sacrifice a few too many people and rest of England discovers my deeds. Brother upheaves the entire order to keep the crown from me, sends me off to fight French.
Wife isn't happy. Try to use dark powers to make her loyal. She loses her mind instead.
Several bastards die via hands of various mistresses' various plots to see their son on top. Lunatic wife is oddly resistant to the plots against her, even when I try and help out. Eventually do a Satanic divorce (sacrifice).
My dude eventually dies repelling the French in Normandy.
Left with half a dozen kids <10 who all hate each other.
Court is split about 50/50 Christian/Satanist and a few stray crazies who have seen too much shit.

It's a ton of fun and exactly what I wanted from CK2 with mystical weirdness.
 
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