That's easy to get around. By having it be a ruler each for each player, simply save a copy of the game just as you get a new ruler (and before you give it to the next guy). If he's a complete dick about it and fucks it up, you still have a copy of the new ruler to give to the guy after him, while he gets kicked off the list.

 

I just wanted to say that having a high personal diplomacy score is OP. People who hate me -35 become friendly 10-15 when I put them on the council of my King of Ireland and Norway. Though, England, France, and Scottland yanked me all at once and I'm down three of the places in Norway atm, I'm going to get money to hire mercs so I can Fuck up England. Those ducks are always ruining my powerplays.

I'd be in for a succession game too, though I only have experience in Ireland/Scottland.

 

I prefer HOI and Victoria but I've been playing a few attempts at this and failing miserably while starting to get a hang on the mechanics. Like everyone else, I started in Ireland because it looked out of the way without any big monster nations there to gobble me up early. Specifically Duchy of Munster: suffice to say, my son is a comlete dumbass but married to a genius Norwegian princess. I think I've been thinking too far ahead because the bitch wants to kill me and put the dumbass on the duchal-throne. In retrospect, I should have just married her instead and perhaps birthed an actual decent heir.

I think I prefer leading mass hordes of tanks across Europe in the name of communism too much to enjoy all this back-stabbing and intrigue.

 

Duke Murchad of Munster is my favorite ruler I've played as in about 60 hours of gameplay. He lives forever, can expand easily, is liked by most of his vassals with almost no effort. He produces pretty good heirs(barring Brian the bumblefuck, his son without a mother) and is a good all-rounder. I can claim the throne of Ireland in less than 10 years as him, without over-expanding or pushing myself too hard. I feel sad every time he dies, and he has had his grandson die of old age before he does. Also, if he gets randy he will have 10+ kids who won't try to kill each other anywhere near as often as any other ruler I've played as. Leader of the year, all year.

 

My wife gave birth to a pair of Lesbian Norwegian Twins. I think I've won the game.

I'll write something more on how I conquered the Iberian Peninsula and finland later. Like when I'm king of Scandinavia.

 

Couple of questions:
1- Has anyone noticed that they can't make mercenaries board ships, even if you merge a ton to get huge carrying capacity? This is a huge problem if you've given away Normandy and the Duke there starts trouble and drags everyone else into it. You can beat down everyone else but you'll never deal with the source of the problem.

Is this a bug or did they just nerf mercs?

2- If your daughter is a matrilineal marriage with a duke or something and they have children, will your grandchildren have rights to that Dukedom

3- IIRC correctly there's more than one kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, which one is the best to play?

 

Definitely a bug. I've been conquering northern europe with my all-merc army for a while now and I've always been able to use boats to get them there.

Castille, IMO. A few assassinations and you're king of three countries.

 

Matrilineal marriages mean any children from it will be considered part of the mother's dynasty. So if your daughter is married to a duke, the children will be part of your dynasty, and will inherit the foreign duke's titles.

 

Oh thank God, then all that work and murder wasn't for nothing :awesome.

@Fiat: Thanks, I'll update and see if it's fixed.

 

Castille might be the best for easy expansion, but everyone I've spoken to about Iberia has said that Barcelona is surprisingly fun. It's consistently come up as the 'best' nation to play on the peninsula, and I certainly enjoyed it.

 

I've set up a group for this succession game we're doing. If you want in just join up and we can start from there.

https://forums.darklordpotter.net/group.php?groupid=60

 

I did sort of well as Leon - started with crazy high intrigue so killed the King of Castille to inherit his land, then got drawn into a series of holy wars which killed my King, leaving his two-year-old daughter on the throne. Then she died suspiciously at age 16, and inheritance fell to the King of Galicia - and because he was a member of the same dynasty, I became him instead of it being a game over.

Then his five sons started stabbing the shit out of each other, and when the dust cleared two were dead, one was a Kinslayer, one was Dishonourable, and the last was a friggin' idiot, so I converted to Elective succession (after a few hastily-formed and -granted duke titles took my most pissed-off vassals out of my direct command) and nominated one of his daughters.

Now I'm collecting all the King-level titles in Iberia in the hopes of forming the empire of Hispania before the differing inheritance laws fragments my four united kingdoms.

 

In the course of 20 years I went from this to this. My marriages are really going well this game.

 

Prince Ramiro the fucking Dragon.

Eldest of six sons of King Garcia the Holy. One of only two that survived the massive assassination war that broke out over who would inherit the Four Kingdoms.




The infamy he gained led his despairing father to change the laws of the Four Kingdoms, naming his teenage daughter as heir instead. When King Garcia passed on, his daughter put more trust in him than his father, and granted him a duchy of his own - trust he repaid by killing her firstborn son and swearing allegiance to the Cathari heresy.

So she stripped him of his titles - all of his titles - and earned his eternal hatred.



Since he was a heretic, nobody objected. But she did not have him killed or leave him in jail to rot away to bones - out of misguided mercy or a need for money to fuel the war machine of the Reconquista, she confiscated his wealth and belongings and banished him from her lands, and he swore loyalty to the King of Aragon.

But after Barcelona fell to the Moors, and was reconquered by Queen Urraca the Great, she usurped the crown of Aragon, claiming that her de facto control of the lands of Aragon gave her the right to the de jure title. The Four Kingdoms of Galicia, Leon, Castille and Andalusia swelled to Seven with the addition of Portugal, Navarra and Aragon. And Queen Urraca became Empress Urraca, undisputed ruler of all of Hispania, which lead to the former King of Aragon, now merely Count of Alto-Aragon, to swear fealty peacefully, and in return he was granted his crown once more.



And this brought Prince Ramiro back into the realm of Empress Urraca. And though she, legally, cannot move against him without incurring the outrage of her vassals, her subjects love their Empress.



Edit: found another one!

 

He should have been named Viserys.

 

This. Tehan's post makes me want a new Westeros mad so bad xD.

 

In the end, the store of Ramiro the Dragon became the story of Hispania.

Six months after Queen Urraca became Empress Urraca, she died giving birth to Princess Brigida. Since the newly-formed Empire had no laws of it's own, succession reverted to the most primitive of forms, and her three-year-old son became the Emperor. Moving quick to secure loyalties, the Emperor's regent handed restored crowns to various families - Leon-Galicia, Castille, and Portugal all went to decendents of the original King of Galicia, King Garcia the Holy, and the still-leery Kings of Aragon and Navarra were granted authority over counts in their de jure realms. The new King of Castille immediately went to war with the new King of Leon-Galicia, and when he died of influenza, the conflicting inheritance laws of the two titles split them.

Guess who inherited the title of King of Galicia.



Between King Ramiro the Dragon's own prodigious talents, those of his newly-founded council, and the newfound distance between him and the courtiers that sought his death, he was now safe from daggers in the night - but not from swords in the day.

The true sons and daughters of Hispania still remembered his sins, and all the Kings descended from King Garcia the Holy had a legal claim on the title of King of Galicia. They invaded his new holdings, outnumbering his forces a dozen to one, and wrested it from him - and then turned on each other for it. It ended up changing hands five times in twenty years, twice by death and thrice by force of arms.



With his vassals concentrating on their own internecine squabbles over their new crowns, and nobody but an even younger sister with a claim on the Empire of Hispania, the boy-King had time to consolidate. He was educated by his father, a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and a financial genius. Under what everyone politely pretended was his command, the forces of Hispania reclaimed the last few lands still held by the Emirates of Beja and Murcia, leaving them with only a few counties protected by oaths of truce. When Emperor Esteban came of age, it was to a legacy of service to Christianity - and he did not shirk from the challenge.



The Pope called for all good sons of the Church to take the duchy of Ascalon for Christianity, as a launchpad for further crusades into the Levant. Many had already tried and been torn apart by the Shia Caliphate, but Hispania had an ace up it's sleeve - a close relationship with the Order of Santiago. They had been gifted the County of Castellon in thanks for their tireless efforts against the Moors, and had later sworn fealty to Hispania.

So when the 17-year-old Emperor Esteban landed in the Levant, it was not just with his personal levies and those of his vassals - it was with the backing of just under three thousand crusader knights and their own retinues. Needless to say, victory was total, and Ramiro's brother-in-law was granted the Duchy of Ascalon and the responsibility of ensuring Christian access to the Holy Land.



The Pope was overjoyed, and declared a month of celebration. At the tender age of seventeen, Emperor Esteban had exceeded his mother, Empress Urraca the Great, in prestige, his grandfather, King Garcia the Holy, in piety, and had joined the Crusades. So how did history choose to remember this legendary figure? The Great? The Holy? The Crusader?



Yeah. Fuck you too, history.

By the time Emperor Esteban the Young returned from the Crusades, Count Ramiro the Dragon had rethought his life. He had become content with his small demesne, grown lazy and kind and friendly from the simple life of a mere count. He had even turned to scholarly pursuits in his spare time. And while he would never have forgiven Empress Urraca for the innumerable list of titles she had stripped from him, his nephew was untarred by those sins. And between Ramiro's newfound gregariousness and Esteban's exalted deeds and stable rule, they became fast friends - and when Esteban formally requested that Ramiro turn his back on the Cathari heresy and re-embrace the true faith, he accepted. His nefarious abilities that once made him the enemy of all the Four Kingdoms were put to use serving the united Hispania as Spymaster, and when his advancing age robbed him of his cunning, he was named Seneschal of Hispania in recognition of his service to the realm.



The first seed of Hispania was planted when an assassin's dagger united the thrones of Castille and Leon in 1066. When the line of King Alfonso of Leon died out in 1085, bringing the Three Kingdoms under the control of King Garcia the Holy of Galicia, Ramiro was fifteen, and first in line to the throne. He was granted the Duchy of Galicia, and the funds this gave him access to enabled him to perform a very aggressive defence of his succession, which lead directly to his father electing Ramiro's sister, Urraca, as Queen when he died in 1101 - and when he was found to be plotting against her in 1108, she stripped him of all his titles, using his heretical leanings as justification.

He spent five years in exile before he retook control of a county in Hispania - and along with it one of the crowns he fought so hard for, which he wore for eight years before it was wrested from him. In 1126, at age 56, he renounced the Cathari heresy and was named Spymaster of Hispania, and served faithfully for over a decade.

Now the year is 1139. Ramiro is 69 years old. He saw Four Kingdoms united under his father, then the entirety of Hispania under his sister. He saw the last Iberian Emirate fall in 1123, and the last Iberian Sheikhdom in 1136. He is the last surviving child of King Garcia the Holy. Where he was once the most cunning mind in the Empire, he's now barely mediocre as his advancing age and newfound contentment have blunted his edge. He saw the rise of the Empire, and in the end, contributed to it's success.

When he passes, he will be remembered as a true son of House Jimena.

 

What other empires can be formed?

In landed_titles.txt I can only find e_hre and e_byzantium. There's also an e_latin_empire which is classed as the sole "titular empire".

 

I'm pretty sure Tehan's using some sort of mod for the extra empires.

 

He's most likely using a mod, there are two or three moderately popular ones that add more empires.