Crusader Kings III

[Solmyr]

So I caved and started as Rurik in 867. Expanded a bit and formed the Kingdom of Gardariki. Later on created a hybrid Norse-Russian culture (Rus) and decided to go for Vladimir's Second Choice achievement, so Rurik, his court and his vassals converted to Islam (it helped that I got a flavour event where my court was visited by a Muslim traveller from the Sultanate of Sind). Rurik died from cancer soon after and his son Helgi inherited him... unfortunately he's not as good, so we'll see how it goes.

[jimmy olsen]

My new king (inherited at age 11) is struggling with his weight, but aside from that, he's pretty good.

[Syt]

What an absolute unit.

[Syt]

So remember the two sisters I mentioned above? The "bad" one was still unmarried in her late 20s. I felt a bit bad and married her to a courtier with decent of mine who was a bit old but had decent stats and traits.

The younger, "good" one was married to my second son - he inherited the Kingdom of England when the Empress died. My new ruler was getting along well with his brother sitting on the English throne, but the girl then made a claim for the Francian throne and me and her became rivals. I made a public showing of denouncing her ... and later she tried to seduce me ... which I refused but made public to gain brownie points with my brother and my wife.

My brother died age 29 from a botched treatment (fortunately he already had an heir). She then married the son of a count who died of old age not a year after her first husband had died. And now she turns up pregnant and is marked a fornicator (though technically the kid could be from her deceased husband).

I checked in on her sister. She had lost her countess title, her husband was dead and she was kinda drifting from court to court. So I married her to one of my courtiers to bring her "home". (I'm sure I will not come to regret this ... )

[Josquius]

Not getting how head of house works.
Mine is a random courtier.

[Syt]

From the wiki:

When a House Head dies, their Primary Heir becomes the next House Head. One exception: The house head at the start of the game is determined differently. If the founder of the house is still alive, the founder will always be the house head. If the founder is not alive, then the house head at game start will be the house member with the largest realm size. This is why Ludwig II is the Karling house head in 867, even though he is not the oldest male child.

In my game the house is dead; though its line continues in House Carew, founded by Ivar's grandson.

[Josquius]

Also. How conversion works is dumb. You need to be insanely pious to do it.  That just makes no sense. Why would a super christian guy become non-christian suddenly? Surely the opposite is more likely?
My son went and became christian without my say so then inherited

[Syt]

The piety cost for conversion depends on how big a transition it is; the idea is (I suppose) to keep switching faiths a bit reasonable, i.e. not jumping from an African tribal religion to an extinct version of Hinduism so easily.

https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Faith

There's also events that allow you to change to different faiths (accidentally became Jewish once which pissed off all my Christian vassals ... ), esp. stress related or if your liege has a different faith.

[Josquius]

Sure. I get it should be expensive. But in piety? That makes no sense.

[Syt]

What would be a better alternative?

[Jacob]

What would be a better alternative?

Prestige and gold.

Prestige from taking the PR hit for changing opinion, gold to invest in the proper shows of faith, building new monuments, and whatnot.

[Valmy]

I liked it when playing my Zoroastrian games in CK2 when your heir would convert to Islam (sometimes secretly due to the secret Muslims society thing that would often be going on), and even though he would convert back ASAP once I got my hands on him the extreme damage caused by even having a Muslim ruler for one day would cause decades of hard work to repair. I always thought that was a little bit over the top. How did he manage to rewrite all the succession laws and turn the realm upside down in only one day? Muslims are hard workers. It took decades of hard work to get all that set up and this dude undid it all in only one day. And then spent the rest of his life trying to undo his one day of hard work.

So yeah sure just pile one enormous mana costs on top of that.

That was always the fun of CK. You have everything going great and rolling along for hundreds of years and then one tiny detail will escape your notice and detonate around you in a catastrophic manner, and it is rarely ever something like the Mongols invading it is some small thing that just cascades into a crisis.

[jimmy olsen]

My lovely wife has had three miscarriages in a row. I don't see anything wrong with her health. Could there be a hidden modifier? Or is it really just random?

Serbia and Anatolia are putting the Byzantines back together.

[Josquius]

What would be a better alternative?

Prestige and gold.

Prestige from taking the PR hit for changing opinion, gold to invest in the proper shows of faith, building new monuments, and whatnot.

And maybe having very low or negative piety as a condition.

Really 'piety' should be handled on a per religion basis to represent say a christian who is muslim-friendly vs. a rabid genocidal crusader. The more tolerant one would have a penalty to his christian piety but be not quite so hated by the muslims.

[jimmy olsen]

Barcelona marches on