Crusader Kings II: Right now for free on GOG (June 2023)

[The_J]

Most people here probably already know the grand strategy games from Paradox.
These games are real-time strategy games where you manage your empire, build armies and conduct diplomacy.
One of them, the 11 years old Crusader Kings II is currently free on GOG, so if you feel the urge for more 4X, then go and download it right now.

 

[Kyriakos]

You wait long enough, and the mountain falls to your level.
Or something ^^

 

[user330977]

Didn't Crusader Kings II go free-to-play quite a while ago? It's been free on Steam for a rather long time.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Fippy]

Looks like a cash grab..standard edition basically means demo, and peoples point out that you need expensive dlcs for an okay experience.

 

[Quintillus]

Didn't Crusader Kings II go free-to-play quite a while ago? It's been free on Steam for a rather long time.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

That's true, a year and a half or more ago, I think.

It certainly is a ploy to get people playing the game so they buy the DLC... although every so often they'll have a Humble Bundle on that, too. I think they had one where you could get everything for about $20 shortly before it went free-to-play.

I'm not sure the DLCs are as "necessary" as they are for some other Paradox games. CKII is from 2012, and Paradox games had about as many expansions as Civ games back then (usually two), so they weren't designing them to have DLC in six months like they do now. I think CKII was there first game that had lots of expansions.

I'd still recommend it. It didn't pull me in quite as much as some of Paradox's other games, but for a lot of people it's their fave. Play a nice mid-tier duke in the Byzantine Empire or HRE, and have to deal with counts under you, other dukes alongside you, and the Emperor above you, fun times.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I liked CK2 back in the day but I feel it kind of peaked when the Islam DLC came out. After that they started adding a whole bunch of features like realm limits and stuff and it kind of just got complicated for no good reason. It kind of just bloated out of control at that point. At least in my view.

 

[Quintillus]

I liked CK2 back in the day but I feel it kind of peaked when the Islam DLC came out. After that they started adding a whole bunch of features like realm limits and stuff and it kind of just got complicated for no good reason. It kind of just bloated out of control at that point. At least in my view.

There was a time with no realm limits? I played at least one game pre-2.0 (and pre-map-expansion), but don't remember there being no limits.

I do remember that it was (and probably still is) possible to play in North Korea Mode, where you don't give out any vassal titles. There is a major penalty to income for doing so though, but with a minimum (albeit a super-low minimum). I know the balance around that was tweaked at one point since for at least one patch North Korea Mode was an optimal strategy.

Or do you mean the opinion malus if you have too many duchies/kingdoms/etc.? I often go a bit over that limit.

Personally I still wish the peacetime game were a bit more engaging, there's only so many times I can go on Hajj before it becomes repetitive. But we're probably coming at it with different preferences... I play with all expansions (except Sunset Invasion) enabled and still feel like there's a bit lacking.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

There was a time with no realm limits? I played at least one game pre-2.0 (and pre-map-expansion), but don't remember there being no limits.

I do remember that it was (and probably still is) possible to play in North Korea Mode, where you don't give out any vassal titles. There is a major penalty to income for doing so though, but with a minimum (albeit a super-low minimum). I know the balance around that was tweaked at one point since for at least one patch North Korea Mode was an optimal strategy.

Or do you mean the opinion malus if you have too many duchies/kingdoms/etc.? I often go a bit over that limit.

Personally I still wish the peacetime game were a bit more engaging, there's only so many times I can go on Hajj before it becomes repetitive. But we're probably coming at it with different preferences... I play with all expansions (except Sunset Invasion) enabled and still feel like there's a bit lacking.

There was no limit to the number of provinces you could hold. No penalty either. You could literally just hold everything. The current system of limits came out with Charlemagne.

 

[Quintillus]

There was no limit to the number of provinces you could hold. No penalty either. You could literally just hold everything. The current system of limits came out with Charlemagne.

That must have either been a very early release or a mod. The mid-2012 version of the "Desmesne" page on the CKII Wiki, a few months after release, notes:

While a character can in theory rule an unlimited number of holdings, this does not work in practice as every character has a demesne limit. The demesne limit is affected by a variety of different factors, amongst them the character's attributes, his tier, and his succession laws.

If a character goes above his demesne limit he'll get a reduction in income, increasing in proportion to how far above the limit he is. He also becomes considerably more likely to get a variety of negative demesne-related events.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

That must have either been a very early release or a mod. The mid-2012 version of the "Desmesne" page on the CKII Wiki, a few months after release, notes:

It was very long ago yes. And I think it was the vassal limit, now that I think of it. Like, these days you can only have so many of them but back in the day you could just build very tall by giving everyone tiny counties or something. I don't remember the details. But I remember the game being much more fun because I did not have to empower vassals by giving them lots of landed titles.

 

[Quintillus]

It was very long ago yes. And I think it was the vassal limit, now that I think of it. Like, these days you can only have so many of them but back in the day you could just build very tall by giving everyone tiny counties or something. I don't remember the details. But I remember the game being much more fun because I did not have to empower vassals by giving them lots of landed titles.

Oh, yeah, I think they did tweak the vassal limits at some point, to discourage being an Emperor with 152 weak Counts, but to heavily encourage multi-Dukes and the occasional King as vassals in such a situation. There also is the centralization (desmesne limit higher) versus decentralization (vassal limit higher) tradeoff.

I don't really mind the "have seven semi-powerful and a handful of fairly weak" vassals, it makes each vassal meaningful. But that did change at some point.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

All I know is that before I could paint the map my color and enjoy watching it blob and now it's become a vassal management simulator where I spend way too much time keeping them in line.