Crusader Kings 2 Redux

[Kleves]

If you buy from Steam, do the patches come through Steam? Does it interfere with getting beta patches or anything?

[Drakken]

Could someone refresh my memory on what the final situation re succession laws in the game is? I.e. is a succession law associated with each title, separately, or is it the same for a duchy or a kingdom?

Each titular title, i.e dukedoms, kingdoms, and empires, come with their own succession laws, even if you create them.

So if you create the Dukedom of, say, Bourbon it will come with its own custom succession law, not your kingdom's crown laws.

[Drakken]

And how I suddenly went from having 600 soldiers ready in a province to barely 60.

A. Crown Laws decide which percentage of the levies your vassals will send to you in times of war.
B. Number of troops is heavily weighted by the opinion of the vassal towards you. If he doesn't like you chances are that he will send next to no troops with his bodily presence.
C. When you levy troops only garrison remain in the province. So if you levy the troops, send them elsewhere and get besieged in the province only the standing garrison will try to fend off the siege. Hence why it is a good idea NOT to levy troops from a province which will assuredly become a battlefield.

[Martinus]

Could someone refresh my memory on what the final situation re succession laws in the game is? I.e. is a succession law associated with each title, separately, or is it the same for a duchy or a kingdom?

Each titular title, i.e dukedoms, kingdoms, and empires, come with their own succession laws, even if you create them.

So if you create the Dukedom of, say, Bourbon it will come with its own custom succession law, not your kingdom's crown laws.

Thanks, that's awesome.

[chipwich]

What is the relevance of who gets to guardian my child? is there a chance they will stab him?

[Barrister]

What is the relevance of who gets to guardian my child? is there a chance they will stab him?

Guardian gets to make a bunch of decisions regarding the upbringing of the child.  Note: you can guardian your own children, thus guiding their upbringing yourself.

[chipwich]

Do you get stressed like in 1?

[PRC]

Yeah in CK1 if you raised your child yourself you had a chance to get negative health traits.  Not sure that status in 2?

[garbon]

Btw, via the tooltips I realized the tutorial was misleading.  You actually do what a high stat wife as half of each of her stats is adding into the realm's skills.

[garbon]

Do you get stressed like in 1?

There's no automatic chance of stressed, no. Which is good.

[Tamas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raTts-iGixU

[The Minsky Moment]

Mercs are already not very common. Their numbers are limited and dependent on geography, and they need time to rebuild themselves. So within a few decades very few merc companies are fully-manned, and quite a few are in fact depleted.

Hmm . . . well that's not quite right either because if there is a lot of fighting going on, the demand for mercs should allow the companies to regnerate pretty quickly (recruit new blood), assuming the money is there.

The real issue here is money - the game has you earning an "income" but in the 11th century this is predominantly going to be income in kind in most of the playable areas.  Because of the level of abstraction, that doesn't really matter so much for most purposes because most of the things your character spends "money" on -- supplying levied troops, feasts, paying corvee laborers to build buildings -- can be paid out in kind.  But mercs throughout history typically demand hard cash.  That's a big reason why the big successful medieval merc companies are concentrated in places and times like 14th century Italy, where there is a strong money based economy.

The point is there should be a very noticeable different in variety size and quality between 11th century mercs who are probably unorganized routiers rallying around a banner hoping to share in some plunder, and the great condottiere companies of the later period.  Perhaps that is so - obviously I havent got that far in the game - but it seemed to me the companies available in the demo seemed a little too strong and easily accessible.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's only going to be on steam and gamersgate IIRC, and I don't want to pirate it.

You don't want to pirate it; so the solution is to crack the demo? 

[Martinus]

Incidentally, a great solution for compliant vassals: offer to educate their children in your capital. Works wonders, and you can make sure they do not grow too ambitious or plotting.

Another great idea for removing a pesky heir (or potential heir) from a picture if you don't want to kill him and you have royal investiture - appoint him the successor to a current bishop (or better yet, found a bishopric for the pious man). Presto, a disgruntled shaveling with no inheritance rights.

I am now playing the game as Duke Robert the Old of Burgundy and enjoying it too much. All the children of my vassals (and in one case, my vassal, a 10 year old Count of Macon) are tutored by yours truly in Dijon and steered towards being docile little sheep. Meanwhile, it turned out that one of my vassals only heir is a young unmarried girl - so I started a plot to get rid of my old harrigan of a wife, Duchess Ermengarde. At first I had not too many backers, but when I found out that her (and my) son, Robert (second in line to the inheritance) actually started a plot with her to murder my first born, Henri, Marshall of Burgundy and the bitch backed it, Henri jumped on board.

Since I am not going to actually murder or imprison my second son (I'm such a nice guy), though, I made him a chaplain, sent on a mission to Rome and made him the successor to the bishopric of Autun, which should remove him from the picture for good.

Meanwhile, I bethrothed and then married my daughter Constance off to my nephew, King of France (inbred Capets ftw!) and now I am starting a plot to murder the King's little brother, Hugh, a babe of 10 years old (unfortunately, the King did not agree to actually send the brat to Dijon to be educated - which would obviously make it easier to arrange a little accident in all those nooks and crannies of the old castle here - but I am slowly gaining momentum).

Soon House de Bourgogne will rule unopposed. Mwhahahahaha.

Incidentally, a little "bug" - at one point my Duke was offered an opportunity to elope with one of the ladies of the court since his wife was getting bitchy and cold. The problem: his daughter was chosen as the object of his affection. Wtf? Or is it WAD and Robert the Old is just a new Fritzl.

[Maximus]

One of my vassals tried to claim Prima Noctae rights. I squashed that because I didn't want the revolt risk. Then I went and looked at him and turns out he was a 14-year-old hunchback.