So bought teh agme and played a few hours as Scottland... not nearly as easy as I thought... In the beginning you have no money because you have no lands that you own- in fact my own dukes are richer and more powerful than me.. But after a series of political marriages and small wars I had untied Scotland and managed not to get swallowed by England. After that my King died and that resulted in a quite a few rebellions. The next King managed to acquire over half of Ireland but he made the mistake of making his monarchie elective and thus giving the newly made kingdom of Ireland the same freedom. But he also managed to conquer England (Rebelions and his French brother law helped). The next 2-3 decades were spent on securing the power and the invading of wales.. The new King is 30 years young and managed to invade Siciliana(the kingdom in the south of Italy) which makes him king of 5 Kingdoms.. the next goal is norway and the orkneys.

 

Okay, I've played three games so far. First one I quit because I was only using it to learn the ropes (and was in a horrible strategic position by the time I ended it). Second one went much better, until William the Bastard got crippled by a mace to the forehead, died, and every single one of my vassals rebelled. Third time I got through the Conquest of England, secured my rule through marriage and giving out titles, except I went a bit overboard and ended up accidentally giving away everything from my demesne bar Oxford. I ended up just waiting ten years for William to die, and then falling prey to the Rebellion of the Vassals MkII.

So here's hoping for fourth time lucky.

 

Like Aekiel I've played 3 games as England, three of which ended in rebellions. In the first one my vassals rebelled as soon as I unpaused the game. Apparently being King is meaningless.

The next two games I was more prudent, handing out counties and duchies to keep the nobles happy while I built up some sort of power for myself. But as soon as William died, the rebellions began anew, and I was forced to accept ridiculous peace terms and grant my vassals autonomy, which made me feel like this guy. It serves me right for not assassinating all the pretenders when I had the chance.

Heeding Tehan's advice I switched to Scotland, and had a much easier time of it. I am much weaker and poorer but it was worth it to not have dozens of squabbling nobles screaming for my blood every other minute. Right now my biggest worries are an errant Duke, currently more powerful than me, who is tied to the entire south of my kingdom and how I'm going to seize the Duchy of Teviotdale from the Lord who currently holds it. However, I have no free sons left to marry his only daughter.

EDIT: Does anyone think it would be worth it to break my eldest sons betrothal with the Princess of Navarre and instead try to marry him to the daughter of the Lord of Teviotdale? If I'm correct, if I dispose of the Duke the lands fall to his eldest child, and her husband (soon-to-be me) at which point I can just poison her wine or something. So, is it worth losing favor with the Navarres

 

/IF/ you have the piety and approval to do so, I'd say go ahead. You might fail, but CK2's failures are more interesting than most games' successes, so tell us how it goes. However, fair warning, I'm not sure of the succession laws of Scotland.

 

You can always Plot to kill your wife, and as King your courtiers, councillors and vassals will usually trip over themselves to join in - and with 100% or greater plot power, there's a 90% chance of success. Bump off wifey and wed the lass yourself.

Pretty sure you'd have to wait until the lands pass to the Duchess-to-be's heir, which after marriage would be a son or daughter of your dynasty. If they're your heir as well, then you personally will get control of the duchy and her demesne. But even if you don't make any offspring of the union heir, it would mean the duchy coming into the hands of a member of your dynasty, which is great for relations with them and increasing the prestige of your bloodline.

 

It was all for naught anyway.Just as soon as I had started working on getting a few more provinces, the Duke of Lancaster invaded with an army twice as large as anything I could field. I had to empty my treasury to get some mercenaries on the scene to help me fight him. In the end though it didn't matter, I was forced to surrender. At which point the mercs smelled blood and rebelled, taking my only province , Gowrie .

But it was the best thing to ever happen to me since it made me want to play as William the Conqueror again. This time I was ready too. I unloaded some of my counties and buckled down and prepared for war. About half of my vassals rebelled instantly.

But unlike Malcolm, William had a fuckton of money, and the English vassals had some pretty small numbers compared to the mercs I could buy. So I steamrolled all opposition and locked about half the nobles in my dungeons. I seized most of their lands and granted it to a couple of bishops and counts that had stayed loyal to me. Banishment is a fucking dream , I was rich again before I knew it.

The only Duke who escaped me was the Duke of Lancaster (apparently he was coded to just be an all-round prick) since I only got a vassal of his before he sued for peace. But no matter.

Bad-asses like William get to create Anti-Popes. And you know what Anti-Popes do? Whatever the fuck I want. I took the hit to my prestige and installed one of my spineless courtiers as Anti-Pope and excommunicated my Duke of Lancaster, giving me an excuse to throw him in the dungeons. He escaped, but I now had a valid reason to beat the shit out of him and take him prisoner anyway .

After that it was smooth sailing, I took most of the land and spread it out among my sons (which was a HUGE fuck-up) and hunkered down and dealt with the revolts against my 'tyrannical rule'. My daughter, and the heir that I was grooming tried to plot against me , but I caught them early and threw them in the dungeon to rot, along with the other half-a-dozen nobles, and later, my wife. All the opposition to my rule was sitting quite comfortably in a dank cell beneath my feet.

Then of course, I fucked it up. I killed my scheming son and tried to groom the next in line Prince William to take his place, training him and giving him about 4 duchies I couldn't keep for myself, lest the nobles started getting bitchy again. But I hadn't paid close enough attention to the line of succession, and I got a message saying that my newborn grandson, Prince William (yes, I know) was in fact my heir. And of course /King/ William decided to die right then, leaving the young prince in the power of his Regent uncle, who was far more powerful than he was.

Fuck.

Those first seven years were hard dude. It was one slow climb to try to keep my uncle happy while I built up some power of my own. At some point he actually usurped a Duchy from me I believe, which is when I decided that I was done with him.

I built up prestige by creating duchies and taking Cornwall from Scotland, and then created another antipope and excommunicated my uncle and threw him in jail. Then his wife started getting uppity so I jailed her too. Now I'm waiting for their only son, who is second in the line of succession to come of age so I can throw him in jail too.

And yes, I did all of this before I was eight :awesome.

Meh, now I'm just looking for any reason to attack the Scottish or the Irish and force them to become vassals while I wait to come of age so I can institute Max Crown Authority and become absolute ruler of Britain.

tl;dr: This game is fucking awesome.

 

If you want to get a foothold in Ireland, the way my William went about it is pretty reliable - click the province, click the coat-of-arms for the capital barony, and click 'claimants'. Everyone with a claim on the county will pop up, along with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. If it's up, they'll accept an invitation to your court, at which point you can go to war to place them in charge of the county in exchange for them swearing fealty to you.

 

That'll work for now, at least until I can find some way to go Cromwell on them and replace all the Irish lords with English ones to eliminate the culture penalty.

 

In my experience, they're pretty quick to rebel the second they smell blood in the water, at which point you can beat them back, jail them, strip them of their titles, give their land to your favourite crony, and banish them from your lands.

 

Just saved my Scotland game before I go to sleep, but I've got a bit of a problem. I had to raise cash quick to pay off some mercenaries, and luckily my eldest daughter was coming of age so she could marry the Prince of England I'd betrothed her to. Unfortunately, when the time came they wouldn't accept a matrilineal marriage. I needed the cash so I decided to just sell her off, have her excommunicated, and then let my second oldest daughter take over (she had better stats anyway). Then I died.

Now I'm stuck with a Queen in a marriage to an English prince, with a non-dynastic heir already born and nobody willing to support my plot to kill my husband. I've got a bead on one guy that would boost the chance up dramatically, but as it is I'm just hoping I don't contract TB or something, because if I die it's game over.

Should be an interesting game when I play it tomorrow.

 

You have created a situation where you will lose the game if you don't murder your children.

Crusader Kings 2, ladies and gentlemen. Accept no substitutes.

 

So after Iso the Cruel lost in 10 years the great Scotish/irish/english Kingdom that his grandfathers created, (Had the great idea to imprison every noble that tried to rebel and then banish them.. sadly after the half of them I had no more prestige/piety/ or money and even my most loyal vassals were out for my blood (900 tyranny points :-()

I tried my hand with the Navare Kingdom.. but never got better than 2 generation.. after that rebels and the united muslims kicked my ass.

After that i played as duke of Brittany.. the secure Homebase made conquering Spain much easier, (and i also played a lot safer/slower than in my first games) and the males of this family proved to be able to live long and healthy lives. After 100 years a quarter of Spain was mine and the rest was split between galicia and leon and I also had conquered the isle of sicily. But then came the first big crisis: just after I had killed my youngest son(and had no more bishopships and the sucession rules of that country would have resulted in me losing nearly half of my country) my heir (who was also my chancellor) got imprisoned and died while trying to get some Mauritans to rebel and thus enable me to conquer them. His heir also died quickly which left no suitably heir for the throne.. my house would have died... luckily i was able to ursup the kingdom of Aragorn and enable some female friendly succession so that my daugther could step in. next year the old duke(now king) died and left the land for her.. she was able to stabilize the power with giving away must duchys and reigned successfully for another 20 years. stopping serveral attempts of Muslims in retaking Spain. Now she is also old and her daughter needs to succeed her...

Edit: Is it possible that under some circumstances the holy orders cost nothing? I think that when i got attacked by Muria I had to pay no upkeep for them but after they capitulated I had to..

 

So this is just an idea, and one that's got a few problems, but I want to throw it out there.

Would y'all be interested in a DLP succession game?

If so, what are possible problems/cool shit you can see coming up?

Should it be the life of a ruler or a set period of time?

How could we determine the play order, given that the first few players would need to be pretty good just to establish something worthwhile?

Who would y'all want to play as?

 

I'd be up for one. I'm still getting the hang of the game a bit, but so far I'm doing quite well.

Depends on which country we pick. If we choose, say, Scotland, it'll be a pretty easy game for the first couple of rulers, because we don't have to worry about France or the HRE that much. England is a bit of a problem, but then the King's vassals are in a perpetual state of rebellion every time I look down at them. On the plus side though, it means we'd be the underdogs for at least three/four rulers, and it's always awesome watching the underdog win. Points if we do an AAR based on the game too, to chart progress.

I'd go with life of the ruler, but with a minimum of five/ten years so that you'll at least get to play a decent game.

Random Number Generator?

Who would y'all want to play as?[/QUOTE]

I'm thinking an Italian or Iberian kingdom. Close enough to the Muslims to allow easy crusades, but with the threat of those same Muslims, the HRE and France all nearby to counter you. I'd be a semi-difficult game I reckon, but fun nonetheless.

 

I'm thinking an Italian or Iberian kingdom. Close enough to the Muslims to allow easy crusades, but with the threat of those same Muslims, the HRE and France all nearby to counter you. I'd be a semi-difficult game I reckon, but fun nonetheless.[/QUOTE]


I'd be willing to try an Italian. Uniting the Iberian peninsula is easy and you curbstomp everything afterwards without breaking a sweat. I was making 20 ducats a month without an antipope, All my vassals were 40+ relations, and I could raise a personal army of 7000 troops, and a realm army of another 8000 with normal levy laws. This was all accomplished before 1150, mind you. Only threat is France, and one or two mercenaries are enough to tip the tide and let you march all the way to Paris before crushing them(around which time, half of France tends to revolt because LOLAquitaine). It's easy to groom your heirs and courtiers for 20+ stats, and personally tutoring all your children allows you to give all but your heir the content trait so they don't cause trouble.

I haven't played around with the British Isles outside my first game as a united Ireland, so Scotland could be interesting. Whatever's chosen, I'll probably throw my hat in too.

EDIT: Also, this game is goddamn addicting. I've had it for about three days and have 46 hours clocked, despite classes starting and working two of those three days.

 

I'd be down for it.

I've been running WizCK2, and enjoy it thoroughly. You can find it here, but I think you need a registered copy of the game, so for those of you playing *cough* second-hand versions, here's the features and a link:

Full changelog in the rar.

 

I'd be interested.

The player before you being a giant douche and specially tailoring a worst possible heir for the next player.

I'd vote for the life of a ruler. Would be a lot more interesting to have someone play an entire character and then write some mini AAR.

RNG, where's the fun if all the first rulers are King Richard the Lionhearts?

I'll throw in Poland for the pool as well. And seconding Iberia.

 

Just borrowed this off a friend, installing later today.

 

Seconding Tehan's suggestion for that mod, it's awesome, though if we go through with this succession game I'd rather not deal with everyone having it.

And yeah, that would suck... Oddly enough I didn't even include dickbaggery in the "possible problems" list, when typically I put it right at the top.

 

Oh thank god for those two. I was really disappointed when I fought to increase my Crown Authority and found it did more harm than good really.