New patch is pretty awesome; being able to move duchies between de jure kingdoms, lots of improvements to plots, and being able to make de jure claims at the kingdom/empire level are all pretty nice. Really changes things up and makes for a whole new game.

Interestingly, the new patch also took a couple cues from CK2+. Will be great once a 1.05 compatible version comes out.

 

Its certainly interesting. Naming a dynasty of your own. Badass.

I found that the Coat of Arms configs were kinda limited(and complex too), but I have a feeling that mods will remedy that. (you can still make pretty cool coats of arms as it is)

Base stats, traits, children and marriage status all influence the age of the character. Min age being 16 and max 50. Awesome traits like 'genius' greatly increases the age while bad ones like 'wounded' decreases it.

At a first glance I found it kinda hard to make a ruler with decent stats and not being too old. Perhaps I was simply being too demanding of my character. Plus I did not have time to mess with it very much.

A minor bug that had me startled at first: When I started the game, my heir was of the dynasty I 'took over', even though I had a son that should be the heir. It corrected itself after a few days (Or due to me getting married. Not sure)

/edit.
From what I could tell, the DLC works alright if you are 'redesigning' a Count. Perhaps a Duke if he isn't a 'big name' and have a shitload of sons/alliances/great traits - It certainly wouldn't work well on Will the Bastard for instance...

In the few tries at playing as a portuguese count, muslins RAPED the Iberian peninsula. Game over in 10 years or so at each try. Im pretty sure they would eventually conquer it completely. I don't know if its the new war mechanics or simply the hispanic kings utter stupidity, but it feels unbalanced.

Luckly for me I'm going away for almost a week. Hopefully CK2+ will port to 1.05x by then.

 

Modding your own characters and dynasties into the game isn't hard, but until now it has been difficult to visually customise them, which is really all I use the Ruler Designer for. I don't like how the editor forces you to find a balance between age and traits. If I want to make a young genius character, I should be able to. Luckily I can mod that almost effortlessly in the save file.

Also, any character created with the Ruler Designer is totally new, without a family background. You can't just edit an existing character. By editing one of the game's starting characters, you completely delete them and replace them with someone totally new. A simple edit isn't permitted.

Still, like I said, visual customisation is now easier/possible, which makes it worth it for me.

 

And out comes CK2+ port..

That was fast

---------- Post automerged 20th Apr 2012 at 00:11 ---------- Previous post was 19th Apr 2012 at 21:01 ----------

You know, I found out that giving Genius and Strong traits to characters along with deseases to balance it out work really well.
Specially if said character is military education type. Health boosts from Strong/military traits makes the desease being cured very early

 

So, don't suppose we could get a link to the 1.05 compatible version of CK2+?

 

1.03. Though to be honest with all the polish vanilla's been receiving CK2+ is starting to lose it's lustre to me. The nifty features are being applied to vanilla, and all that's left is the super tedious 'balance' malarkey.

 

There's a pretty good balance mod that a friend of mine made. Already has a few hundred downloads, and is updated regularly. He spends over five hours a day just playing and modding CKII, and it balances the game nicely. To quote:

It does much more, but it would be one hell of a huge quote. Here's a pastebin link with a better description and all the changes.

Paradox Forums link.

If you don't have a paradox forums account, you can download the mod from here.

 

That does make it a bit aggravating. Oh well, I know enough about modding Paradox games to just undo the changes I don't like.

For those who want to know, the Duchy de jure assimilation rate is in the defines file in the common folder, and change "DE_JURE_ASSIMILATION_YEARS = 200" to 100

 

I really wish I was unemployed and could play this game again. It's so fucking epic.



D:

 

Do not like new patch.

Oh you have cool new DLC that let's you design your own coat of arms and characters, hey bro that's cool and all, but you broke all the coat of arms that exist in game already. I tried to play a quick game last night, on a fresh install of the game, and all of them were completely black. It made it hard to determine which side was which in third party conflicts (like England and Norway having a fight, which I didn't know because there were no coat of arms) and now Norway is a ridiculous monster, having assimilated England.

That has happened before too, is there a reason for that? Sometimes ransom shit happens Nd weird shit goes down, but in most games Norway takes England for a little while, if not the whole rest of the game, unless I pick on them after conquering some of the pagan lands nearby.

 

---------- Post automerged at 12:45 ---------- Previous post was at 07:28 ----------

Double-post, but for those of you who with sub-legit copies or are curious about the game, it's twenty bucks on Amazon.

 

Currently, this item is available only to customers located in the United States and who have a U.S. billing address.

Does everyone just give Amazon a fake American billing address when they buy products like this? I usually give legit details when using my credit card.

 

I have a US billing address and was wondering whether I would be able to get on Paradox Forums if I bought it on Amazon as a download? Apparently you need some sort of authentication if I'm not mistaken?

And if there are any mods or expansions, will I be able to use them as easily as on Steam? Does anyone know?

 

I can't see why you wouldn't gain access to the Paradox forums. The Amazon page says that CK2 requires Steam to install and play, so no worries there. They probably just give you a Steam CDKey.

I've heard, but haven't confirmed, that every copy of CK2 uses Steamworks except for the GamersGate version.

 

I bought the Ruler Designer DLC prior to reading any reviews of it. It's good for naming your dynasty and choosing a CoA, but outside of that the characters you create are noticeably inferior to just about everyone else.

Making a good ruler will put your age at about 200, and there's a maximum age of 50 that really limits your options if you're not willing to play with the settings and change it. The only character you can make is that son you sent off to a Bishopric so his decent brother will inherit instead.

You have no allies, no family, short reign bonus, and you'd better hope nothing happens because it's game-over if you die.

Also, you can't edit existing characters like they originally advertised, it forces you to create a new one. I regret buying it now, and it's only tolerable if I edit my savegame.



The development of the CK2 Game of Thrones mod is driving me crazy, I'm reading A Dance With Dragons now and I want to play it so bad it hurts.

 

---------- Post automerged at 08:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:53 AM ----------

My wife has a claim to the throne of England (I'm king of Ireland, Scottland, and Norway, which is a coup ill describe in a second) and I really would like to be king of all the isles. However, even after assassinating the old King (who I did not have a CB for her "claim England" or anything like that) the new guy does not a CB claim England or Dispute Succession. Am k doing something wrong, or will I not be able to press her claim because she is my second wife, has no dynastic heir with me, the game hates me, etc.

Also, wow. If I had done this on purpose it would have been pro. Since it wasn't, all I can do is shake my head and laugh.

I was King of Ireland and Brittany, and one duchy opposite of Kola. (I somehow always conquer them, it is too easy not to as Ireland) and I was trying to arrange a good match for my ruler. You know, a girl with good stats, who isn't fugly. It turned out that person was a process of Scottland, so I married her. After that her dad dies, and I'm not allied with them, so I'm spoiling for a fight. I go to declare my CB and 'lo and behold, the CB I can pick is Claim Scottland. Hell fucking yeah, I crush Scottland under my boot with about 2k men and a 1.5k merc. After that, I remember that dear old Mommy is Queen of Norway, who Daddy married. Open her portrait and she is like 40. Which sucks, I want to be a God King now Damnit!

I decide to wait it out though, helping mommy fight off two attempts at independence (the dumb broad wouldn't sue for peace even when I got her WS up to 100% for months). Unfortunately, the spawn of this leader is an imbecile, so -8 to all stats. despite that, he somehow manages to come out with 4+ in everything, with life of good traits so all my vassals fucking adore me. So then he has a son, and keels over, maybe in battle.

So I'm like, cool, whatever, he was an idiot. Reagencies aren't that bad, though the little money grinning fucker was stealing from me. It was at this point, as a child, all of Ireland (because somehow along the way, I became Scottish and cbf to send my heir to train under an Irish person with good stats) except for the zones I owned (5 of them, I started as Munster then conquered Connacht, Desmond, Ormond, and Ossory) decided to rebel and call in all their friends, which is about half my Kingdom. Then an uplift Scott tries it too. Okay, no big deal, just take them down one at a time, my army is like 9k.

Then mommy dies, and Osterlandet rebels. My retard of a mother let him collect like, 4 duchies though, so half of Norway goes with him, and all the others hate me for being young and not Norwegian. I managed to beat them all down except for some pissant county right next to the ex Norwegian capital, which managed to get 100% WS. Not sure how, and I know I didn't accept a surrender, but I got them back in the end. That's about where I am now, but in the process of putting down all the rebellions my ruler grew up to be a compete boss, almost the whole kingdom asides him, even the new guys. My title is "The Young" but whatever, I just wish I was named Robert, and after young it said wolf.

Other than that, as stated above, I'm trying to get England to fall into line. I had a plan for France, but the leader was an imbecile so I couldn't really push it because when be died it all went to shit. And somehow I'm in the line to be elected to Sweden, which is fairly large this game . I'm deciding if I want to force my succession if I don't win. Which, to be honest, I'm not sure how to do, but I think ill just Ty to bribe my.competitors supporters, then become loved and change the inheritance to fit the model all my other kingdoms are using.

I haven't expanded into the Iberian peninsula, which is odd. But to be honest, the game gives me a heart attack when it says "nearby Muslims may join I'm for lulz" so I've spent most of my time upping the fortifications on my counties. It is really nice to have a personal army that is like, 3k guys, because of shit gets really bad you can just steam roll the smallest opposition and use mercs to hold off the enemy for a bit.

I spent like 3 years at war with Scottland because I kept being able to capture military leaders and ransom them.

 

You need wait no longer.


Tried it for a while, loved it, even if there were problems with the independent realm thing, the Seven Kingdoms do seem to start out as seven seperate kingdoms, even though this is set during the War of the Usurper.

 

Holy fucking Odin. Now I /really/ need to get my game working.

EDIT: Well, apparently I can CK2 on a mac. Any idea if the mod will work on it?

 

Haha, I managed to snag a spot on the testing team a day or two after that, so I've been ensuring Stark dominance for some time. It's very polished and the attention to detail is reassuring.

 

Pretty sure you meant Robert's Rebellion there, friend. Unless you mean to be a dirty traitor to the Baratheon throne and its glorious heir Joffrey, that is.