Crusader Kings 2

[Kyriakos]

^I suppose you did not land in the north, and march to Stamford Bridge then

 

[Yeekim]

Narses is the new Walder...

 

[warpus]

I've been slowly expanding my kingdom and focusing on that, but I've ran out of people in my court to put in charge of my new holdings. I go into my court and see a couple girls there, but all of them have the "assign title" (or whatever) option greyed out. My 2 sons don't have it greyed out, but I don't want them in charge of stuff. All the other people in my court are other relatives or people who have jobs like the marshall and spymaster.. Maybe that's not what the "RMB" menu is and I can create random guys to take over my new holdings elsewhere? 1

edit: My demense is 9/8 so not so bad, but still.. Is there a way to increase that 8 by the way?

 

[Sonereal]

How long does the tyranny penalty last? If more than one year, the -270 Tyranny relationship penalty I have with everybody is about to be very painful.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I've been slowly expanding my kingdom and focusing on that, but I've ran out of people in my court to put in charge of my new holdings. I go into my court and see a couple girls there, but all of them have the "assign title" (or whatever) option greyed out. My 2 sons don't have it greyed out, but I don't want them in charge of stuff. All the other people in my court are other relatives or people who have jobs like the marshall and spymaster.. Maybe that's not what the "RMB" menu is and I can create random guys to take over my new holdings elsewhere? 1

You cannot grant female characters any titles. The only way for a female characer to receive one is inheriting it with either true cognatic gender law (which is only for basque culture, iirc) or by agnatic-cognatic gender law if no eligible male character is left (e.g. with primogeniture succession all your sons are dead and you only have a daughter left).

However, I don't see any problem with granting titles to other, more distant relatives from your own dynasty. They are usually a bit more loyal thanks to their "kin" opinion modifier. Just make sure that they don't have any claims on your kingdom title (because in that case they are rather eager to plot against you). Claims can be checked by clicking on a character's portrait (they are shown one line above the owned titles, as COA with wide or thin green borders).

If you want more characters, go to the intrigue menu and use the decisions (e.g. "Invite a Holy Men to the court") to create new random characters.

With "RMB menu" I mean the menu that pops up if you make a Right Mouse Button click on a holding (to assign a randomly created lowborn character to it).

edit: My demense is 9/8 so not so bad, but still.. Is there a way to increase that 8 by the way?

You can increase your demesne size limit by:
(1) Holding a higher rank title (count < duke < king < emperor).
(2) Increasing your personal stewardship.
(3) Look for a spouse with high stewardship ratio. Half of your wife's stats are bestowed up on you (e.g. if you have diplomacy 10 and your wife has 10, your effective diplomacy is 15).
(4) Increase the "legalism" tech level to increase the demesne size limit.

How long does the tyranny penalty last? If more than one year, the -270 Tyranny relationship penalty I have with everybody is about to be very painful.

Iirc 10 years per act, each tracked seperately (so if you commit an act of infamy in 1000 AD and one in 1005 AD, your tyranny will drop in 1010 AD and then disappear in 1015 AD).

 

[warpus]

You cannot grant female characters any titles. The only way for a female characer to receive one is inheriting it with either true cognatic gender law (which is only for basque culture, iirc) or by agnatic-cognatic gender law if no eligible male character is left (e.g. with primogeniture succession all your sons are dead and you only have a daughter left).

I swear I was able to do it with a female! Just one though.. I think.. Maybe I'm wrong.

However, I don't see any problem with granting titles to other, more distant relatives from your own dynasty. They are usually a bit more loyal thanks to their "kin" opinion modifier. Just make sure that they don't have any claims on your kingdom title (because in that case they are rather eager to plot against you). Claims can be checked by clicking on a character's portrait (they are shown one line above the owned titles, as COA with wide or thin green borders).

I married off my first son & heir to the HRE's emperor's daughter.. She died a couple years later giving birth to a baby boy, who is now 5. It sounds like I should keep this guy around until he's maybe useful and not put him in charge of any vassals... right? Could he be useful? Could I assassinate the Emperor's two sons and then all the other male grandchildren he may have?

How else could he be useful? I have a feeling that he might be.

My heir is now married to a Byzantine princess and my only daughter just got married to some fancy prince from Spain. I seem to be a good matchmaker so far, but am a bit afraid that all my meddling is going to result in problems down the road with mutant children who aren't even Polish wanting the throne.

If you want more characters, go to the intrigue menu and use the decisions (e.g. "Invite a Holy Men to the court") to create new random characters.

Thanks!! That's exactly what I was after!

With "RMB menu" I mean the menu that pops up if you make a Right Mouse Button click on a holding (to assign a randomly created lowborn character to it).

oh

I usually go to the diplomacy panel for each member of my court that I think might be eligible and see if they are or if the invitation is greyed out. Your way seems much faster

(2) Increasing your personal stewardship.

How do I do this?

And thanks for all the help, this game is looking more and more fun

 

[PhilBowles]

There is one: If you make him a duke, you will create a republic that you can actually play (by saving and loading as this character) if you have "The Republic" DLC. This can be quite nice if you don't like the few default ones.
Even when not playing it, I guess it should be quite wealthy thanks to trading post, ultimately a bigger boon to your income than a regular duke.

Hmm, never knew that - I like the roleplaying a dynasty thing too much to reload as a new character halfway through a game, but it's nice to know the trade post option actually has a function for non-Republic states.

I am trying to assasinate him so the second son takes his place (Harald has like 15 children) but with not luck so far.

Oh dear. You're about to experience the wonders of gavelkind succession - it will be a good idea to assassinate the other thirteen as well.

Yes, losing a high-prestige character is a blow, but a portion of their prestige is passed onto their successor. I think it works proportionately, so if your king has high prestige when he dies you should have a fairly stable time as a successor (gavelkind aside). The most important thing is to be sure you have high diplomacy and/or a chancellor and/or wife with high diplomacy. In my current game Alfred held the kingdom together (he was a very good - and long-lived - chancellor) since I had very high diplomacy once my first king died.

I suppose you did not land in the north, and march to Stamford Bridge then

Wrong Harald, if it's the 867 start - that's Harald Fairhair, the founder of Norway (who consistently founds it in the game, usually with a high degree of stability). Hardrada has no choice about Stamford Bridge - he starts there in the 1066 start. He usually survives, though, even though he'll generally lose (he did briefly become king of England in one of my 1066 games, only to be sent back to Norway by William). I always like to keep an eye on Tostig - it would be nice to play him, but he's a pretty lousy character and he's one of those characters - like Bishop Odo in 1066, or Ubbe Ragnarsson in 867 - who tends to stick around as an eternal courtier, and isn't often given territory if he's got an AI liege.

I married off my first son & heir to the HRE's emperor's daughter.. She died a couple years later giving birth to a baby boy, who is now 5. It sounds like I should keep this guy around until he's maybe useful and not put him in charge of any vassals... right? Could he be useful? Could I assassinate the Emperor's two sons and then all the other male grandchildren he may hav

Yes, you can do that, and it can be a good idea - I put a relative in charge of Byzantium that way. But there are two things to be aware of if you're thinking of inheriting - one is that you can't ever have an emperor as a vassal, since it's the highest rank in the game. This means you'll never inherit the HRE through a vassal (such as a relative) even though you may inherit claims to it; the only way to inherit an empire is if the same character is the emperor of one and the heir to the other.

Secondly, you don't inherit the claims of grandchildren, only of children - so your son and heir will have a claim on his son's behalf that will let him go to war against anyone you don't assassinate to claim the empire, but you won't.

Also, if the reason you want to do this is to claim the HRE, the best thing to do is to kill off your son's other children and perhaps make sure he doesn't have any more (e.g. by killing or divorcing his wife and not remarrying, or marrying someone too old to be fertile - over 40 or so). This way, when your son dies his only heir will be the one who runs the HRE, and you will then play as that character and have a claim on the territory you started with (if you don't inherit it).

To demonstrate the above, say you're King of England and the heir to the Kingdom of England is the heir to the HRE, and the heir becomes Emperor before you die. Then you die, and as your heir the Emperor now inherits the Kingdom of England. If instead the Emperor's son was the heir to the Kingdom of England, because a kingdom is a lower rank than an empire, the Emperor would still inherit England; however he wouldn't inherit the Empire of Britannia, if that has been formed, unless he personally was the heir - if his son was, then the son would become independent as soon as he inherited.

Be careful though, since having only one surviving heir until late in your likely lifetime is very risky; if they die you can lose everything, and if they lose their own claim or position before you take command of that character, you can end up with a useless duke who may have a lot of claims, but probably doesn't have the territory, demesne limit or army to press them successfully (I'm still cultivating my deposed relative in Byzantium, who has reams of claims - actually his son is the relative rather than him - but I'd need to go to war with the empire to claim it).

How do I do this?

If your character starts with stewardship below 8, he can set himself an ambition to "Improve Stewardship" (I think ambitions might be expansion/DLC content, I'm not sure - you should know if you've had a notification that you need to set an ambition). This will trigger occasional events that give you options to increase your stewardship or to gain traits that have that effect. Otherwise, random events can sometimes offer traits that do the same thing. If you have Sons of Abraham, you can choose to go on a pilgrimage: this is basically a way of forcing the game to give you a sequence of random events that can result in you getting good (or bad) traits. There's no guarantee that these will include events that improve your stewardship, but they may do.

I haven't tried it, since I always "spend lavishly", but the holding feast and tournament event chains offer options for spending less - it's possible that selecting these options will give you a chance of improving stewardship.

Thinking ahead to the succession, if you want your character to focus on stewardship (personally, I wouldn't advise it - hire a good steward or marry one; I personally always focus on Diplomacy to keep vassals in line, and Martial to improve my armies), give him a tutor (when he's a child of 6+) who has "Midas Touched" or, if not available, another stewardship-boosting ability (this is another good reason to marry a steward - she'll then be available at court as a tutor), since a child has a higher than average chance (but not a certainty) of getting the same "career" trait as his tutor (this is the trait that's square, and at the start of the character's trait list - it will be green for abilities that improve stewardship more than other stats).

Ideally you'll have a career trait yourself that you want your son to have, so that you can tutor him - this means that you get random events triggering that let you select the types of personality (i.e. non-career) traits he receives. The events that trigger are influenced by the traits the tutor has (so, if the tutor is honest, an event that gives a child a chance of being honest will usually trigger) - again you can't rely on getting similar traits in your children, but by choosing tutors with good traits (if you don't have them yourself), you can improve their odds of getting them.

 

[Double A]

Oh

I usually go to the diplomacy panel for each member of my court that I think might be eligible and see if they are or if the invitation is greyed out. Your way seems much faster

Yeah but they usually have crap for stats. It's better to steal high stat courtiers from your vassals so you can put them on your council, or give the land to someone who likes you and has decent stewardship and/or martial. Remember that if they make more money, they'll build more buildings, which will eventually mean you get more money and troops from them, but it's generally worth more to just do very high city tax anyway.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I married off my first son & heir to the HRE's emperor's daughter.. She died a couple years later giving birth to a baby boy, who is now 5. It sounds like I should keep this guy around until he's maybe useful and not put him in charge of any vassals... right? Could he be useful? Could I assassinate the Emperor's two sons and then all the other male grandchildren he may have?

Don't ask me. I never marry my children with other characters to get claims (CK2 is easy enough as it is), so I have no idea how the actual claim system works in detail. I rather go for spouses with good stats to make sure that my heir (and potential heirs) can manage my kingdom.

For my females, I usually use matrinlineal marriage to snatch the best advisors across europe and bring them to my court. They will often reject, but IF they accept, they will always come to YOUR court, instead of the female character leaving, like in a normal marriage. Nothing better to grab a 20 martial guy this way.

How do I do this?

There is an ambition "Increase Stewardship" if you have low base Stewardship. It will occasionally trigger events that will allow you to boost the stat (e.g. reopening an old tavern). Apart from that, try to select event options that give stewardship increasing traits. Not much else you can do.

 

[madviking]

Narses is the new Walder...
View attachment 367689

walder in the agot mod has maybe about 25 named children

 

[Sonereal]

Iirc 10 years per act, each tracked seperately (so if you commit an act of infamy in 1000 AD and one in 1005 AD, your tyranny will drop in 1010 AD and then disappear in 1015 AD).

I did all the acts at once, so that screwed me over.

New game is going better. Started off as the Duke of Tuscany in Karling Italy. So proud of my grandson now.

Spoiler :

The Karling mega-alliance broke down and the boy king wasn't able to call in any allies. There was a short point of trouble when my a few vassals rose up and Aquitaine invaded, but the claimant died so that war sputtered out rather quickly.

 

[warpus]

Heh, this is what just happened in my Poland game. King died, one of the two sons became King. The other son became Duke of Prussia and a civil war started, with Greater Poland and a bunch of other smaller kingdoms breaking off as well. So then you had Prussia mostly between Poland and Hungary, and an even larger Greater Poland off to the side.. and then more Prussia. And since one of the brothers was married to a Danish princess, occasional Danish troops here and there. And the HRE meddling 1too, but I'm not sure exactly what they did tbh..

In the end I lost the civil war and my brother became King. I continued attempting to assassinate his heirs, hoping to eventually get back in the game.. and I ended up killing two of them, but I also died multiple times in the process, eventually becoming a Baroness who would produce me no offspring in the Piast dynasty.. So I quit the game.

The HRE also somehow now controls Krakow and the Polish capital is on a Polish island deep in Hungarian territory.

Fun first game! Will try again

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Wrong Harald, if it's the 867 start - that's Harald Fairhair, the founder of Norway (who consistently founds it in the game, usually with a high degree of stability). Hardrada has no choice about Stamford Bridge - he starts there in the 1066 start. He usually survives, though, even though he'll generally lose (he did briefly become king of England in one of my 1066 games, only to be sent back to Norway by William). I always like to keep an eye on Tostig - it would be nice to play him, but he's a pretty lousy character and he's one of those characters - like Bishop Odo in 1066, or Ubbe Ragnarsson in 867 - who tends to stick around as an eternal courtier, and isn't often given territory if he's got an AI liege.

Yes, he is Harald Fairhair. My next objective is to become king of Norway and hold three sacred places of the norse religion so i can reformate it in order to bring some civilization to this bunch of savages and to get ride of the gavelkind succession (i am not very sure about what it really is but seems something bad). Problem is that i cant find a valid casus belli against other norse kingdoms. Is there a easy way to achieve it quickly before Harald die?

 

[SouthernKing]

So quick question for y'all. The version of the game I got is just the vanilla game. Keeping in mind that I don't give a single rat's ass about cosmetic upgrades, only actual gameplay upgrades, what DLC is worth getting?

Definitely get the Old Gods, which adds the 867 start date.

Two others are really dependent on whether or not you want to play various factions; Sword of Islam for Muslims, Republics for...Republics. I'd get them when they're on sale or something, but it's your choice.

Legacy of Rome adds retinues and a couple of other things, most Byzantine-focused, some not. Most notably blinding/castration, so there's a reason to get it immediately It's not critical, but if you're playing there a lot I'd get it. If not, it's still worth grabbing when on sale.

I don't own Sons of Abraham yet, but I've heard it's mostly cosmetic (although it allows you to play the Jewish Khazars in 867). Still, it's got some cool event chains.

There's also the character editor, which I guess could be worth picking up, it's not that much.

 

[PhilBowles]

Yes, he is Harald Fairhair. My next objective is to become king of Norway and hold three sacred places of the norse religion so i can reformate it in order to bring some civilization to this bunch of savages and to get ride of the gavelkind succession (i am not very sure about what it really is but seems something bad). Problem is that i cant find a valid casus belli against other norse kingdoms. Is there a easy way to achieve it quickly before Harald die?

I haven't played as the Norse, so can't advise here I'm afraid - you can always try having your people converted to Christianity, if anyone's sent pesky chaplains your way, but then you lose the Norse bonuses.

Gavelkind succession is basically the penalty for being Norse (although other factions have access to it, and some have it by default, only the Norse are unable to change their succession law), although it is also historically accurate for the Norse (not so much for most other kingdoms). If you've played any non-Norse factions in 867 you'll probably see Norse kingdoms fragment early and often, and this is the reason.

When a ruler in a gavelkind kingdom/petty kingdom/etc. dies, instead of having all his titles pass to a chosen heir as with primogeniture (when they pass to the son) or seniority (when they pass to the oldest living - preferably male - relative, usually a sibling), the son gets the highest title (e.g. King of Norway) and the lower titles are divided among the remaining children (I think the system tries to do it evenly, but I don't play a gavelkind kingdom and - when I have played one in 1066 - switch away from gavelkind ASAP), each of whom will also inherit claims to the remaining titles.

The result of this is that, once your son inherits, he will have huge diplo penalties with all his siblings, who will want to claim other titles to add to their own - either going to war with you to claim the kingdom, or with other brothers to claim those territories. This usually means war as a result. I don't know if the Norse religion has a bishop-type system (I doubt it); for a Christian faction, you can force unwanted sons to revoke any claims they have by appointing them as bishops (basically, nominating them as successors to one of your bishops and waiting for the old one to die - that, or taking an active interest in seeing him die).

Unfortunately, unlanded characters, as most of your sons probably are, are very hard to assassinate because they don't have their own vassals, so you don't have people unhappy with them who can be bribed to joining your plot against them.

One thing to remember if you survive the succession crisis (or manage to reform the Norse religion before that) is that a gavelkind ruler does not want to have many sons!

Incidentally, this leads to a good tip for anyone playing in 867 and struggling against Norse aggression: assassinate the ruler of one of the more troublesome kingdoms (assuming he has more than one or two children) and there's a good chance the kingdom will splinter and you'll have an opportunity to move in and seize territory (by Holy War if adjacent, by claims if you've prepared one or are de jure liege) during the civil war.

I don't own Sons of Abraham yet, but I've heard it's mostly cosmetic (although it allows you to play the Jewish Khazars in 867). Still, it's got some cool event chains.

While I'm pretty lukewarm about the headline content, and play a Christian faction (Christians probably get the least attention in the expansion - fair enough, by their nature they're the default focus of the game and nearly every other expansion), I do recommend it because of the events. The game events generally become repetitive, and at least for Christian factions The Old Gods didn't add enough new events to cover 150 extra years of playable time.

From what I've heard the Jewish Khazars aren't much better-implemented than the random Jewish characters or the Jewish moneylender option: Jews have no unique abilities (like the Norse), game systems (like Muslim decadence or the new sects) or inheritance systems (like I think the Muslims or Zoroastrians); all they can do is found Israel and rebuild the Temple of Solomon, and I understand both have underwhelming game effects, but in general I think all of the 'faction packs' are worth getting for completeness, because usually you'll end up interacting with these states and characters even if you don't play as them (not having Jews in the game at all was, I agree, thematically a bit odd). Though the Khazars are already gone in my playthrough and I believe this is fairly typical.

I have heard that if you want to play a Muslim faction you definitely want Sons of Abraham, because Sword of Islam is not thought (at least on the CK II forum) to have done a terribly good job, not doing a lot more than unlocking the factions for play and adding a widely-disliked decadence system (no idea why it's disliked or what it really does). You also want The Old Gods as a Muslim, because the Shia/Sunni divide occurs as an event early in the timeline with the 867 start.

 

[Sonereal]

I don't own Sons of Abraham yet, but I've heard it's mostly cosmetic (although it allows you to play the Jewish Khazars in 867). Still, it's got some cool event chains.

There is a bit in under-the-hood stuff going on. The DLC isn't as flashy in its mechanics like previous ones though, but then again, it is cheaper than TOG.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

There is a bit in under-the-hood stuff going on. The DLC isn't as flashy in its mechanics like previous ones though, but then again, it is cheaper than TOG.

From what I have seen, the changes to religion are pretty decent. Heresies have become interesting options (and some can actually overthrow the pope and make "their" head of religion the true pope). The changes to the papacy makes the election of new cardinals more predictable and there are some interesting events that trigger every now and then.

I guess its sorta inbetween a DLC and a true addon, but as you said - the price is "okay".

Gavelkind succession is basically the penalty for being Norse (although other factions have access to it, and some have it by default, only the Norse are unable to change their succession law), although it is also historically accurate for the Norse (not so much for most other kingdoms). If you've played any non-Norse factions in 867 you'll probably see Norse kingdoms fragment early and often, and this is the reason.

Gavelkind is actually quite nice for Norse characters. The increased demesne size is great for conquest - and if you do it right (e.g. only have one top tier title), the fragmentation of your posessions isn't all that bad. It is certainly less predictable than primogeniture, but on the other hand your realm is much more stable during your life time. I think primogeniture is overrated (and elective is the most gamey choise anyway).

 

[PhilBowles]

From what I have seen, the changes to religion are pretty decent. Heresies have become interesting options (and some can actually overthrow the pope and make "their" head of religion the true pope). The changes to the papacy makes the election of new cardinals more predictable and there are some interesting events that trigger every now and then.

I guess its sorta inbetween a DLC and a true addon, but as you said - the price is "okay".

I'd forgotten the changes to heresies, but haven't run across them yet so I'm not very clear what they change; every so often my chaplain begs me to adopt Catharism during his research, but I routinely lock him up, demand a conversion, and then set him back to work again. What advantages would I gain from adopting the heresy? I have seen an antipope installed in France, but I'm not sure why or what he intends to do - it doesn't seem to upset the real one enough to have excommunicated either him or his French liege.

Gavelkind is actually quite nice for Norse characters. The increased demesne size is great for conquest - and if you do it right (e.g. only have one top tier title), the fragmentation of your posessions isn't all that bad. It is certainly less predictable than primogeniture, but on the other hand your realm is much more stable during your life time. I think primogeniture is overrated (and elective is the most gamey choise anyway).

Fair enough, however I think it's still correct to say that this is mainly advantageous as a gavelkind ruler with few sons - that way they get the greater demesne limit without most of the drawbacks. I think with 15 sons you aren't going to find that the fragmentation of possessions "isn't all that bad" (except perhaps that any given son may not have the strength to depose you).

 

[Double A]

Gavelkind is incredibly useful. Losing a few titles for a bit isn't a big deal if you murder your brothers or incite them to rebel (so then you can take the titles and still have alliances). Usually the game gives them the worst counties anyway.

You can also give your firstborn basically all your titles but one or two when you get incredibly old. He'll always get your capital.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I'd forgotten the changes to heresies, but haven't run across them yet so I'm not very clear what they change; every so often my chaplain begs me to adopt Catharism during his research, but I routinely lock him up, demand a conversion, and then set him back to work again. What advantages would I gain from adopting the heresy? I have seen an antipope installed in France, but I'm not sure why or what he intends to do - it doesn't seem to upset the real one enough to have excommunicated either him or his French liege.

The different heresies now have different effects. Some allow women to become priests, others have no head of religion. In general being heretic protects you from the wrath of the pope - and all other heretic bishops will be loyal tax payers to you.

Controlling an antipope does, again, protect you from excommunication and allows you to excommunicate other characters. As a vassal, you can get a lot of money from his treasury (either via church taxes or by banishing him once he has outlasted his use). Should you be able to conquer Rome, the old pope will be dismissed and your antipope becomes the new "true" pope (and will be very happy because of your help).