Crusader Kings 2 Redux

[Tamas]

What's cleary worse than the HRE, and is little surprise to lack a Paradox thread, is Byzantium. I don't mind it being tough. Hell, I dont mind it sticking to most of it's starting borders until the very end.
What I do mind is their conquests into Russia. I mind that.

My next game will probably start after their ass got handed to them.

[Tamas]

Also, Viking, I would be interested to hear more results on your warfare-tinkering. I dont want to change siege times but I hate replrenishing levies.

[sbr]

[Viking]

In support of my ongoing campaign to replace the King of France with Me as King of France I declared war to enforce the claim of my vassal the duke of orleans on the county of blois. Assembling my army and moving it into position i find that as soon as I had taken blois the duke of orleans declares independence from me, presumably since he reasons that I will be busy with this war I am fighting on his behalf against the King of France. Fuck that, take the prestige hit turn around and burn the fucker.

Regarding the warfare tinkering (and other tinkering)

What I did was to reduce the effect of personalities, boosted the same dynasty bonus from 5 to 25. This doesn't stop my relatives from wanting to kill me, but it does stop random nobles from revolting becuase I'm a zelous clubfoot hunchback and they only like pretty people who don't pray.

I boosted the replenishment rate by a factor of 3, doesn't seem to have too much effect, but this might be due to the change in warfare the siege tinkering did.

I reduced the time between siege calculations from 12 days to 2 days. This makes all siege activity 6 times as intense. If you have a really big army against an underdeveloped defense you take it on the first go, 2 day. What this means that if you don't have an army defending the region you lose that region if the enemy invades. So, if you wipe out the enemy army you will take many provinces before he manages to reform a decent army against you again. To put the change into perspective. With one army of 15k you can occupy all the castles of a 4 province duke in one season of campaigning. Remember with the siege calculations, if you don't outnumber the garrison then the siege never progresses. So to win a war you either have the bigger and better army or you fight an enemy that refuses to fight.

[Jaron]

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

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think I might eventually tweak siege times a little, reducing calculations to every 2 days is a bit drastic though. I think in general sieges should be about 50% faster in the 1066 scenario and I'd like to see some sort of "era" coding so that every 100 years or so there is an overall boost to fortification strength (on top of the advances you get from actually building stronger fortifications.) That reflects the technological advancement in fortifications from the period 1066 over the next few hundred years pretty well. In 1066 truly strong castles were exceptionally rare, many "castles" of the time still had wooden walls and realistically them being able to hold out for 12+ months is too much for that time period.

[Fireblade]

I'm seriously considering tweaking relationship hits when it comes to second and third sons. Yeah, there's plenty of examples of civil wars between brothers during the time period, but having to replicate the Ottoman Empire and having all your brothers murdered just so you don't have an insta-revolt or all your heirs murdered when someone else comes to the throne is just fucking retarded.

[Barrister]

Tried again with the Latin Empire since I better know what the hell I'm doing.

Figured the biggest priority would be to try and hellenize my family - thus everybody is marrying greek courtiers in hopes of switching our culture over to Greek.  No luck yet.

But in about 10 years about a third of the Empire has flipped to Catholic.  ummm.. thanks?  Seems much too fast.

But it seems as if I don't have to worry too much.  Even with penalties for religion and culture Constantinople is a beast and pumps out a huge amount of money.

[sbr]

I had the ultimate Crusaders King episode.

Roger d'Hauteville (my starting Duke's heir) formed the Kingdom of Sicily and was loved by everyone, at one point the vassal that liked him the least was at ~70 relations. 

In 1126 the Pope called a Crusade against Alexandria, and it was an ideal situation.  The Caliph was 3 years old and most of his vassals didn't like him, in fact most were in revolt.



Roger was getting old (~60) and decided that he wanted to go out with his boots on so he raised an army an set sail for Egypt.  There was almost no opposition and Alexandria was taken almost without a fight, though Roger did get the troublesome news that his oldest son, Amaury, had died.  No problem, Amaury's heir Roger II was of age and a much better ruler than his father.

The Egyptians finally mustered a force large enough to make battle, in fact their army was larger than the Sicilian Army.  The Italians were able to somehow win the very close fight but Roger I fell in battle, in July of 1128.  No problem, Roger II was more than ready to assume the crown, and the entire Kingdom barely missed a beat during succession.

But only 5 months later Roger II was assassinated.  And his 10 year old son took the crown.  And his Great Uncle Silvester, Amaury's brother, declared war to take the Kingdom of Sicily for himself and all of Roger III's Count/Duke vassals joined in the plot.  So at this point there is a 10 year old King and his entire army, along with Knights Templar and a merc company or two were in Egypt, and while it was close the war wasn't won (I had opne more province to take).  The Caliph wouldn't surrender and Roger III wasn't going to let his great-grandfather's crusade end in failure, especially being so close.  Roger III was too poor in vassals, treasure and piety to raise anymore levies so he surrendered the Kingdom to Silvester.  I also had the stupid though that since Silvester was of my dynasty I would switch to him, forgot you play people not titles. :embarrassed:  I did save right before I surrendered so I may save scum and see if I can save the kingdom.

For some reason after Roger III surrendered to Uncle Silvester the Caliph surrendered to Roger, even though warscore was only ~77% and I only had ~3500 men left in Egypt.

So now, after being King of Sicily a powerful and loved King who had done everything right to set up his dynasty for continued success I am playing a 10 year old Duke of Auplia, though he is also Duke of Sicily (holds Palmero-both castles- and Siracusa) and hold 3 Egyptian provinces, including Alexandria.

[FunkMonk]

What does it take to usurp the crown of England? I have 7 English Dukedoms and rule 75-80% of the country.

I think lots of piety and you both need to be at peace.

Haven't really been paying attention to piety. What's the best way to build that score up?

Making Prince-Bishoprics, going on crusade, having "piety traits" like Zealous, and I think even giving land to a Holy Order.

[Tamas]

lol good story sbr.


Regarding war, can levy-replenishment rates be modded? Ideally, they should be moddable separately for war and peace time.
I wouldn't mind relative quick replenishments during peace to avoid constant border-changes due to low manpower, but it's silly to wage total manpower war all the time.

[Syt]

My Duke croaked at age 75. His son Radomir inherited the Duchies of Pommerania and Franconia (he had the option of marrying his father's 22 year old, pregnant wife . . . I skipped that). One of his uncles was count of Stettin - and he was plotting to introduce seniority inheritance laws for the Duchy of Franconia. We had none of that, so we tried to imprison him - but instead he rose up in revolt. And most of the family with him.

It was a weird little war, in which the troublesome uncle was killed, but eventually Radomir had to concede defeat - he was reduced to a baron, while his other younger brother became Duke of Pommerania. The Duchy of Franconia fell back to the Kaiser, with the uncle's son (my new heir) as his vassal.

What a clusterfuck.

[Martinus]

In my restarted English game it's around 1070 and the great great grandson of William, Martin I the Great (no I haven't named him!) is the King of England, Scotland and Wales. It seems to me the key to success is to avoid early expansion but rather build up.

I have eight personal holdings in total, which includes four castle baronies in Middlesex with everything possible built in them, and four counties (one castle holding each) in York, Lincoln, Rouen and Vexin.

With my Middlesex holdings alone I get about 20 gold per month and can raise 4000 of personal levies which is often enough to win a war against the likes of Scotland or Wales. York and Rouen are kept as fast reaction centers in case I get rebellions or sudden invasions - and that's all without even calling my vassals for help.

I slowly develop keeping my vassals happy and not too powerful - I have Maximum Crown Authority in England and Wales and the penultimate level in Scotland. I am slowly replacing everyone with English nobility (yes, the King and Middlesex have switched to English culture at some point so the Norman rule is gone). It seems I can't keep my earls from creating themselves Dukes in most cases but that's all the better - they spend gold on it, and give me prestige. I usually acquiesce to giving them "their" counts as vassals but if I don't, I keep them out cold until they rebel, strip the ducal title from them and give it to the neighbor whom I like more.

All in all, the last two successions went almost without a problem - and if someone rebels, he gets stripped of their top title and released - so I'm just and merciful.

The Kings I got so far were:
William the Bastard
Richard I the Wise
Richard II the Monk (a Chaste Honest Humble Charitable Kind Gardener who was originally third in line to the throne but ended up surviving all his brothers and all of his sons, ruling for 40 years or so)
Martin I the Great

[sbr]

I assume 1070 is a typo, that would be pretty impressive in 4 years.

[Martinus]

Sorry, 1170.

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