Crusader Kings 2 Redux

[Viking]

Sorry, 1170.

Also, Richard the Monk founded two abbeys and built three castles. At 800 gold per pop. And then fully outfitted them.

Define fully outfitting, cause I think that costs like 10,000 ducats to do.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm at an interesting juncture with my Norwegian-Kings-of-England game.

When Harald I died the Norwegian rulers were fine electing his heir as King (meaning Magnus got to be both King of England/Norway.) When Magnus died, like all 6 of the Norwegian Dukes voted for his oldest son (Kare.) Now Kare is perilously close to dying of very old age (1140s and he's like 70.) A few things happened I'm not especially pleased about:

1. My oldest son somewhere along the line became a Saxon. I know he was born a Norwegian, but I gave him the Duchy of Lancaster when he was still a minor, so I guess children who grow up in a province have a chance of adopting that provincial culture. This annoys me because I systematically was installing Norwegian nobles across England, so when this guy takes over all the Norwegian nobles in both England and Norway will consider him a foreigner. Although I suspect over time my English rulers will convert into Saxons.

2. My oldest son fathered a bastard son and then a bunch of girls, so the future heir to the English crown is a woman and he's old enough now as is his wife that I don't see that changing. I haven't played a female ruler before, are there major penalty hits for it?

3. I don't know why but the Norwegian dukes hate my oldest son, the most votes he's ever had were 2 (and that was me + him.) Everyone else is voting for the Duke of Norfolk (yes, Norfolk, I guess because he was originally the Count of Telemark when I gave him the Duchy of Norfolk it kept him under the Kingdom of Norway even though his Duchy is an English one.) I don't actually know what determines this, most of my Norwegian Dukes have +50 or higher with me, several have like +100 and none have negative. I guess it could be the fact that Kare's son is a Saxon, and the Duke of Norfolk also has extremely high diplo and prestige so some of that may factor in as well (in fact I wonder how he has 1100+ Prestige as a Duke, he's also my marshal.)

Anyway, I solved #3 fairly creatively, I've basically given all Norwegian titles except Count of Trondelag and the Kingdom itself to Kare's son and then changed Norwegian succession to Gavelkind. If what I'm seeing is correct that means my oldest son will inherit the County of Trondelag and the Kingdom (looking on the succession page it shows my younger sons don't get any landed titles.)

[sbr]

I went back and was able to win the civil war and save the Kingdom for Roger III, but the Caliph found a 4K stack lying around somewhere and defeated my crusading army.  Fortunately they didn't pursue the broken army and I was able to hide in a corner while the Egyptians tried to retake Alexandria.  Once I won the civil war in Italy I was able to afford a nice merc company who sailed back to Egypt to try and regain the initiative there.  But once again foul luck hit poor young Roger.  The Byzantine Emporer decided he would press his claims on the Duchies of Apulia and Capua and sent a 10K army to make it happen.  Also the new Pope decided to be a skinflint and stopped helping support the crusade financially and I ran out of money and my merc companies revolted and are marching back towards Italy.

[Viking]

from the Paradox Forum

Here's the situation; starting with Provence, I've got about 7 duchies (Provence, Savoie, Dauphine, Mallorca, Tunis, Tripolitania, and Genoa) and I always have the popup telling me that I have the ability to create the Kingdoms of Burgundy and Africa. Besides the (relatively) minimal prestige bonus associated with creating the titles, what incentive is there for me to create the titles? My vassals will inevitably just start bothering me about too many held duchies and want to take my land.

I make much more money by keeping the duchy titles and land I have now directly, rather than becoming a king and having to govern that land through vassal dukes. Staying a duke keeps the vassals from starting succession wars or any problems with crown authority. And they're not going to revolt away from me because I have all the duchy titles, and I keep them small.

When I finally gave in and created the Kingdom of Burgundy, and gave away a few duchy titles, I immediately had a war on my hands to reduce crown authority, and I was only making about half of what I was before. I guess I should also note that by this point in the game I'd been independent from the HRE for a century and a half.

The life of a duke is a great one compared to that of a king.

Apparently mel brooks was not right about it being good to be king. Yes, your ducal empire will not magically recombine after succession wars, but then again, it seems that they might not have them.

[jimmy olsen]

Gay dukes rebel if the king is ugly!

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?588240-Homosexual-vassals-rebel-because-you-re-ugly

[jimmy olsen]

from the Paradox Forum

Here's the situation; starting with Provence, I've got about 7 duchies (Provence, Savoie, Dauphine, Mallorca, Tunis, Tripolitania, and Genoa) and I always have the popup telling me that I have the ability to create the Kingdoms of Burgundy and Africa. Besides the (relatively) minimal prestige bonus associated with creating the titles, what incentive is there for me to create the titles? My vassals will inevitably just start bothering me about too many held duchies and want to take my land.

I make much more money by keeping the duchy titles and land I have now directly, rather than becoming a king and having to govern that land through vassal dukes. Staying a duke keeps the vassals from starting succession wars or any problems with crown authority. And they're not going to revolt away from me because I have all the duchy titles, and I keep them small.

When I finally gave in and created the Kingdom of Burgundy, and gave away a few duchy titles, I immediately had a war on my hands to reduce crown authority, and I was only making about half of what I was before. I guess I should also note that by this point in the game I'd been independent from the HRE for a century and a half.

The life of a duke is a great one compared to that of a king.

Apparently mel brooks was not right about it being good to be king. Yes, your ducal empire will not magically recombine after succession wars, but then again, it seems that they might not have them.

I think you should definitely get more bonuses from being king, and have the Duchy limit go up 1 for every extra crown you get.

[Viking]

 I slowed down the rate of sieging (from 2 to 5) and went to the on action file and increased the rate of events happening on losing battles by five, essentially you get 5 times as many prisoners and doubling the amount of battle events, essentially killing characters twice as fast. You get to kill enemy nobles for a small piety cost IIRC so getting your hands on the enemy leader should end most wars.

I think this is justified since the three most decisive battles of the period (Hastings, Hattin and Agincourt) basically resulted in the entirety of the losing side's nobility dying on the battlefied either in combat or as prisoners.

Two mods I want to add, but don't seem to have figured out how yet are

A) Being in the line of succession should not mean you have the claim if only you can enforce it. But some way of modeling how the long reign modifier or trigger can be used to stop attempted usurpations and murder attempts. Being 10th in line should not motivate you to start murdering all your relatives.

B) using the on action losing siege to make the defending noble a captive. Basically if Duke X is "Ruling in Town Y" and you siege and capture "Town Y" Duke X becomes your captive.

[jimmy olsen]

I slowed down the rate of sieging (from 2 to 5) and went to the on action file and increased the rate of events happening on losing battles by five, essentially you get 5 times as many prisoners and doubling the amount of battle events, essentially killing characters twice as fast. You get to kill enemy nobles for a small piety cost IIRC so getting your hands on the enemy leader should end most wars.

I think this is justified since the three most decisive battles of the period (Hastings, Hattin and Agincourt) basically resulted in the entirety of the losing side's nobility dying on the battlefied either in combat or as prisoners.

How often were battles that decisive though? I thought they weren't that common.

[Fireblade]

I slowed down the rate of sieging (from 2 to 5) and went to the on action file and increased the rate of events happening on losing battles by five, essentially you get 5 times as many prisoners and doubling the amount of battle events, essentially killing characters twice as fast. You get to kill enemy nobles for a small piety cost IIRC so getting your hands on the enemy leader should end most wars.

I think this is justified since the three most decisive battles of the period (Hastings, Hattin and Agincourt) basically resulted in the entirety of the losing side's nobility dying on the battlefied either in combat or as prisoners.

How often were battles that decisive though? I thought they weren't that common.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_601%E2%80%931400

[Viking]

How often were battles that decisive though? I thought they weren't that common.

Battles weren't that common. Most campaigns in western europe were specifically conducted in a manner where it was hoped to achieve objectives without a battle. Unless the king was a romantic fool. Battles happened when the two sides were stupid enough to bump into one another or where one side thought itself so superior that the outcome was certain or they actually beleived this stuff about god being on one's side.

Battles were decisive. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single medieval battle that was indecisive like many gunpowder battles were. They were also random. Stamfor Bridge was a rout because the vikings were not ready and hastings was all but by Harold twice when random events (william removing his helmet and harolds shield wall breaking itself) turned the day around well before Harold was killed. Breaking the shield wall or making the an unopposed cavalry charge broke armies and broken armies were either captured, killed or left their arms and armor on the battlefield.

[Josquius]

I slowed down the rate of sieging (from 2 to 5) and went to the on action file and increased the rate of events happening on losing battles by five, essentially you get 5 times as many prisoners and doubling the amount of battle events, essentially killing characters twice as fast. You get to kill enemy nobles for a small piety cost IIRC so getting your hands on the enemy leader should end most wars.

I think this is justified since the three most decisive battles of the period (Hastings, Hattin and Agincourt) basically resulted in the entirety of the losing side's nobility dying on the battlefied either in combat or as prisoners.

Two mods I want to add, but don't seem to have figured out how yet are

Sounds good. Trouble is...it could well lead to a lot of crap where your king dies leading his 10,000 man stack against a few dozen rebels.
Sure, it could happen if he is a foolish git out for some peasant squashing fun and so he insists on being at the front...but....surely more logical would be that he detaches a few men to go fill them with arrows.

In general, I'd like to see France and the HRE chill the fuck out with overseas invasions.

The HRE especially.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm thinking of playing the HRE.

I wonder how long it would take me to conquer the world?

[Viking]

Sounds good. Trouble is...it could well lead to a lot of crap where your king dies leading his 10,000 man stack against a few dozen rebels.
Sure, it could happen if he is a foolish git out for some peasant squashing fun and so he insists on being at the front...but....surely more logical would be that he detaches a few men to go fill them with arrows.

Unpossible!!!111oneoenon

In this case it was added to the battle lost section of the on action section, not the battle won. But still, Richard should be at risk at the shithole fenced compound called chalus-chabrol

[Josquius]

I've had a ruler die in victorious peasant squashing.

[Syt]

It's 1117. Do you know where your English king is?

That's right, he's in Paris. Seems the Capets have inherited the crown.

And yes, my prestige sucks after the lost war against my uncle.