Crusader Kings 2

[Lohrenswald]

That is an impressively large mega-empire. Is that from a Charlemagne start date?

yea, only the 769 start has playable zunists
Don't know much about playing nomads myself btw. I tried it once and didn't like it much

As for Ailedhoo it was pretty neat getting two bloodlines for one characters. As I said I don't know much about how bloodline inheretance works. I read on the wiki you could matrilinally marry a woman of your dynasty to a character with a bloodline you want, and then if you matrilinally marry one of their daughters to your character, your children will get the bloodline in addition to keeping those you already had. Is that what you have done? Is there anything more to it?

I tried starting playing as the duke of Hellas in 769 (who only holds Athens) in order to try and restore hellenism. That didn't go so well because I was iconoclast which is a heresy and only the official orthodox gets the delve into the classics decision, and trying to run a secret society to convert people was difficult and I had no experience with that. But mostly the problem was my characters kept dying to quickly, and when the guy I finally got to become hellenic died and I ended in a regency I kinda ragequit (I wasn't actully raging but I got very tired by it). That was some days ago and I haven't gone back to it since.
I kinda want to try that savefile again though because the frankish realms were united and had conquered Italy, which I don't think I've ever seen before, and that seems interesting.

I also tried playing charlemagne several times since that dlc came out, but I never managed to do it

 

[Ailedhoo]

I got Ragnarr's blood by having the mother of my Queen been married to the (legitimised) bastard prince of a Norse ruler who so happened to decent from Ragnarr.

 

[Ailedhoo]

OK I am doing a Charles start Isle of Man run, ruling as the house of Manaw of the now Kingdom of Manaw. As one who was raised on the Isle of Man... consider this my "home isle run."

However I am not here to tell you of my dominion over Pictland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwell and Brittany; rather I am going to tell you of the Child Crusade and its unpredicted victory.



King Gamon the Page of Our Lord ruled as the founder of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Frenchman took to the local culture, resulting in the new dynasty he would form adopting the name Gamon as its family name and the rather humoured notion of the Christain Sultanate of Gamon.



The Kingdom of Gamon ruled by the Gamon dynasty headed by Gamon the Page of Our Lord.

His is not the only tale I will tell; a fierce woman by the name of Shakira succeeded in conquering Austrias from the great Hispanic empire, resulting in a new Muslim kingdom in Europe.


Anyhow: the current status of Man

 

[Arakhor]

You're actually Manx, Ailedhoo, or just raised there?

 

[Ailedhoo]

You're actually Manx, Ailedhoo, or just raised there?

Lived there between when I was 3 till the year 2012 when I went to Wales to study international politics at the age of 20 coming to 21 for my birthday be in October.

Anyhow: I will like to declare in CK2 I have a char became one of two bloodlines.

First he build:


Then his virtues are set:

Thus:

Bonus: BURNING SHEEP

 

[Arakhor]

Don't you love the smell of mutton in the morning?

 

[Quintillus]

Excellent updates! Makes me wish I'd conquered more of the steppe.

 

[Ailedhoo]

The result of invading the Aztec conquests, then being guardian to the heirs of the empire...

 

[Arakhor]

1118, eh? Have the Knights Templar been founded yet?

 

[Lohrenswald]

Managed to get going in the end.
So for like 4 generations I had no progress. I had schemes to inherit a couple of counties but those went nowhere. But from the third generation on I had the hellene secret society running, and it got almost 100 members in the end. But with the fifth guy I got stuff running with a bunch of merceneries I was able to declere independence from the duke of Hellas (in 769 Byzantium controls only one county in the duchy of Hellas. The emperor had then essensially no other choice but to grant it to me as a viceroyality, but I lost it when more de jure territory was conquered) (also that's why he got known as "the traitor") and got my wife to be duchess of Achea.
In the end the only part of that that mattered was getting to become a direct vassal of the emperor though (at one point I was the vassal of a duchess that was a vassal to the king of Trebizond, so many steps away from the emperor). When I noticed the emperor had secretly converted to hellenic, I decided to openly adopt the religion. With that I guess I got a lot of popularity, and with only a few bribes I became the leading choice to inherit the empire. I didn't waste time and got the emperor assassinated and inhereted the empire. At the same time, the Abbasids collapsed due to decadense.
I then started to reconquer a lot of land (the previous emperors had even managed to lose Constaninopel) and revoked territories where I could, and placed relatives there to ensure that no matter who got elected it would probably be someone in my dynasty. I got a long way, but in the end there was a massive "overthrow ruler" revolt. I then decided to give in to that, because that just makes me play as my heir.
However then, there was a slowpox epidemic and I didn't get to shut the gates. The prompt said I couldn't do it while doing special activities, which I mean I wasn't doing, but I ended up dying shortly after that. I had managed to get the Traitor to be elected heir, but he suffered the same problems and also died of slowpox soon after (he also ended up getting morbidly obese (in general I've had a lot of fat characters this game, but only like a couple in the zun game)).
Now was the problem: even though a lot of people had converted to hellenic, not everyone had. And this new guy I got was Iconoclastic. I sort of ragequitted then (again not seriously, I had played for several hours and felt like taking a break anyway). I'm conflicted on whether to try and restore a savegame, or kill my wife, get a hellenic one, and use that to convert to hellenism.
Also I've never had the imperial diadem. I've found some guy in the realm has it, related to one of the previous emperors. I've wanted to try and get it, but I've not prioritised it and have focused on warring and installing family members to titles instead.

Also made a stupid custom family seal because I only started with a generic one (unlike for example the zunbils who get a unique one)


however, more important than any of that is that the duke of Abkazia identifies as a horse


(I've gotten about all of Anatolia since this screenshot was taken)

 

[Arakhor]

48 years for one basileus and then three in the the space of 15 months? That really is some next-level Byzantine shenanigans.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Polykarpos the Traitor was just a count the first 30 years of his adult life, so it's not as janky as it seems

anyway I did end up reloading and changing a bit:



Being forced to abdicate and then rewin the throne is now my new favourite thing lol

anyway you can see I got the huge country of Serbia that used to be north of me. That was a bit unexpected, because I simply used the "take an entire de jure duchy" casus belli, but apparantly that makes the holders in that duchy your vassal if possible, and it was, since I was an emperor and he only a king. So half the country is now tengri.
Unfourtunatelty, Hellenism doesn't get holy war casus belli, so I can only take one province at a time through war. I've been trying to favour invite claimants, but haven't had any luck with that so far. This has been an issue with trying to reach 50 % religious unity, because Alexandria is far away. Also I've gotten religious unity malus because of raiders looting temples at the edge of the empire, which I hardly notice when are around.
Additionally, after all this time, I've only managed to convert a single province to hellenism. Not sure how to get better at that. With religious reformation I did cosmopolitan nature last time, but managed to convert so little, that I'm thinking about doing maybe prozelytising this time.
In neater news though, Polykarpos the Bone-Squeezer created the olympian fighters society, so that was cool.

Anyway this kid is the son of a horse mayor:



I've unfourtunately not been so dilligent in trying to preserve the horse culture that was beginning to form in Georgia. I think Only one province is ruled by a man with horse culture at this point.

 

[Ailedhoo]

Manx has destroyed Byzantium.

By that mean the Forth Crusade happened.




It ended with my then Emperor's sister being granted the throne of the newly forged Latin Empire.



Gogoniant i Dŷ Manaw!

 

[Lohrenswald]

Bill the Pony's father was culturally a horse, I don't know how Bill the Pony became georgian, though

 

[Arakhor]

A real horse lord, eh?

 

[Lohrenswald]

Unfourtunately I think this was the last of the georgian horse lords

Anyway I've now reformed Hellenism. I get heir designation, but the imperial elective overrides that. Also the pontifex maximus title is kingdom-tier, which goes to my son no matter if I get another one of my dynasty to be successor. I can try changing the pontifex maximus to imperial elective too (haven't done so so far because I've been at war) or work around it by granting it as viceroyality to some old dude when I get old, but all that would've been avoided if it was duchy-tier instead

the guy I'm in that screenshot was a fairly distant relative I chose to get elected only because he had managed to get the imperial diadem in his inventory

eh I'll screenshot this too. He looks pretty neat with the pontificial scepter

 

[Lohrenswald]

Ended up giving the Pontificial College to my chosen successor, which for most of Kyros' life was the eldest son, but I changed it to another one, because he got a weak claim on the holy roman empire (which is about the best I could do.
Also got to restore the Roman Empire



Annoyingly that makes the imperial diadem unusable
Also created the stoic intelligensia (so roman culture will appear soon) and burned down all the churches in Rome

Anyway, a tip from me I guess: There're two ways to convert to hellenism. The first, like I did, involve holding one of the holy sites, delving into the classics and then secretly converting to hellenism. You'll then have to secretly spread the religion, and work from 0 % moral authority and upwards.
The other is that you get the option tio convert when you restore the roman empire. I'd recommend doing this instead, because then you'll have all the holy sites, and get to reform hellenism immidiatly (more or less, I reckon). I think this is the better choice, because unreformed hellenism is really weak, you don't get holy war casus belli, and can't demand conversion (reformed hellenism gives you both of these (unless you choose peaceful or cosmopolitan nature, maybe)). So use the more powerful orthodox religion until then.

Also horse lords dissapeared from Georgia, but reemerged in Serbia



I know it all is less impressive than my last game, but I've kinda checklisted world conquest now. And it might still happen, because I'm working to get my children claims on the huge hispanic empire

 

[Quintillus]

Time for a screenshot of my Horse Lord game! I'm still a human - the same human - but my horses are conquering the steppe!



I am the Yabguid clan of the Oghuz Turks, in central Asia. It may not look like a ton yet, but we've gone from four provinces to the mid-20's in the current Khagan's lifetime. I'm currently expanding in almost every direction except northeast, where the Uyghurs have conveniently made all their neighbors other than China tributaries, rendering themselves a non-threat. I'm currently adding a province at the time while awaiting a big opportunity - perhaps the Khazars (suzerains of the Byzantines), perhaps Tibet, perhaps even the Abbasids if they continue to run into internal difficulties. But those provinces are adding up.

I find being a Horse Lord to be a fairly good life. Lots of quick wars, no complaints from vassals about levies being raised, and relatively quick recovery after missteps. Gold is plentiful through pillaging, if rare within the empire - only recently have I started accumulating settled vassals for a more steady supply of gold.

In the greater world, the big news is the Magyars settling down as Vitebsk, and, hot off the parchment, a newly-converted-to-Islam warlord conquering Pannonia on Christmas Day, 808, after the failure of the Catholic Bavarians to do so earlier in the same year. None of the Pannonian provinces are Muslim - the vast majority are either Slavic or Tengrii - so it's hard to say whether it will last, but it certainly introduces an interesting religious variable into the picture in Europe.

 

[Lohrenswald]

It seems pretty good considering how little time has passed

I tried playing nomads a couple of times, but couldn't really get into it. One pretty annoying thing was the fact that you only get the good casus bellis when you get so and so much population, and it's hard to get to that point without those casus bellis.

Anyway I ressurected roman culture:



However I am a bit tired. I'm over the vassall limit after taking over HRE, even though it was hardly more than France, and I've given out as many viceroyalities as I can



And even though I've got like 9 children with claims on Hispania (although all daughters, my one son died) and a vassal with claims on all the Muhallabid kingdoms, I'm kinda tired of dealing with it all

started a bit as doge of venice in 1066, but felt kinda like nothing really happened there (little room to do stuff, and hard to seize other's tradeposts)

so I dunno, maybe I should just take a break from the game. It's kinda annoying how the game is kind of a rush when things go well, but a drag when thing doesn't

 

[Quintillus]

Yeah, I've only been using the one-province-at-a-time CBs, because of the pop requirements. I am starting to approach the 30K Invasion casus belli as my max pop, but it requires quite a few good provinces, and it takes time to acquire those.

It's kind of funny how you have such a large empire, but due to the vassal limit can only raise about 7000-8000 troops. But I know what you mean about becoming tired of it all after awhile; I've never finished a game due to that.

Update: Conquered four more provinces around (and including) Samarkand in the next four and a half years. I now have two horde armies raised at the same time! I like how as a horde, I can just invade whoever I want without having to fabricate claims first; it makes expansion speedy, and it not only doesn't cost anything, but is profitable. I have 1500 - 2000 gold stored up, even after continual upgrades to our capital and spending several hundred on a couple core heavy cavalry brigades for my shiny new army.

I'm running out of small neighbors, though, so Khagan Dogan is considering a large war. Will it be against the Tibetans, who have a moderate-sized army, but enough gold to hire quite a few mercenaries; the Taids in Persia who are weak, but tributaries of the powerful Abbasids, who in turn are fighting a defensive Holy War near Armenia; or Bashkiria, who along with their overlord Khazars are locked in a large and bloody war with the Uyghurs, but still have many troops? Or perhaps we shall bide our time a bit longer and expand against the northern Caspian against our remaining weak neighbor.

Pannonia continues to be a hotspot; they've repulsed another Bavarian invasion, but are fighting an indecisive defensive war against Saxony, and the Chieftess of Poland just declared war along with her husband the Chief of Slavonia. And to top it off, their conquering Islamic King died a natural death at 61, leaving his teenage grandson in charge; if it weren't for the Defending Against Foreigners bonus, there may well be civil wars, and some of the vassals are quite unhappy nonetheless. And there are civil wars in Byzantium, which appear likely to succeed and could call the Khazar tribute into question.