The idea of switching from merchant to feudal never crossed my mind. Good thinking.

I know where the trade cap value is stored, so it's easy to modify. Was hoping to not have to do that though; stick with vanilla+dlc to learn the game properly. I guess I'll change the cap to something ridiculously high.

Going feudal and ruling merchants sounds damn intriguing though. That might be more fun than just being the next medieval Walmart.

 

There's an excellent LP over on Something Awful that features the petty goings-on of the Count of Fyn and his descendents. In the words of the author, 'instead of grand conquest, this game is going to be concerned with the petty, self-important bullshit of a nobody in the middle of nowhere'.

It is excellent. And the most recent update was written as a rap battle between the King of Norway and the current protagonist.

Link here.

 

Full changelog of the Gods and Kings patch, due out tomorrow.

Link.

 

That's an impressively large patch... Awesome.

 

So my first thoughts were "fuck yeah they're making technology relevent, about time" but then I read the rest of the changes.

There goes an easy free opinion bonus.

And there goes being able to get arround Splitting up the Empire.

So I can no longer get a ton of free positive opinion with vassals that I'm de jure lord of.

So yeah, should be fun, but I'm going to miss all of those exploits ;-;

 

Started as Svitjod (large duchy in modern Sweden), loaded up all my dudes in boats to go smack England around, and as soon as I land some fuckwit in Oland decides he wants independence. Load everyone back up in boats, head back home, annihilate is army, siege his castle, capture his wife, make her my concubine, force him to surrender, and sacrifice him to Odin.

He went out like a bitch, too.

Headed back to England and raided it so hard that I annihilated this place. It no longer exists. There was a bishopric, now there's an empty holding.

This was in the first year.

 

So played as an British viking... after conquering a fourth of England in the first 4 years I destroyed Scotland, conquered Ireland (very easy as viking) and after that concentrated on Scandinavia. 150 years later I rule the empire of Scandinavia (plus Britannia and some northern parts of france) and have reformed the Norse religion. My biggest problem to date is the goddamn gravelkind succession but that should be solved very soon.

West Francia was destroyed by me and Italy (owns the whole southern half of it) and east francia lost over half of its land to various neighbors/rebellions. The kingdom in the middle only lost some northern provinces but is otherwise very stable.

The upper half of East Europe is pure chaos with never ending wars between various small kingdoms while the lower half is in the hand of Hungary and Bulgaria.

Spain is overrun by Muslims but lucky not united..

All in all the patch is very entertaining but currently the Norse feel a bit overpowered..

 

Agreed that the Norse are somewhat OP. They get the benefit of conquest cassus belli together with a location that allows them to freely raid across Europe unlike other pagans. So far, despite the imbalance, I've been loving it. Some of the best parts are the lack of HRE, so no massive blobbing in central Europe, and the massive clusterfuck that is everything east of Bohemia. I also liked the inclusion of Holy Sites for all religions, though the Catholic ones were a little strange (why London?). It provides the religious aspect some depth and hints at potential development of the religion system in general (Theocracy DLC?).

I'm going to reserve judgement on the new technology system till I've played more. So far, I do like it, but I'm not too sure how it will balance out with a few centuries of play.

The Norse were fun, but I'm probably going to try out one of the less OP pagan religions soon, just to avoid the easiness of naval raids. The Zoroastrians look really interesting, given the speed with which they seem to get squashed by the Muslims around them. Recreating Persia should be a challenge.

 

Norse seem very OP, granted the nations that are being attacked aren't really very developed but it does kill the fun a bit. Had a lot of fun playing as Ironside, managed to become King of Sweden proper in about 5 years and then subjugated all of Norway too. Ivar Boneless has managed to take most of Scotland and the Saxon coastal provinces as well.

I thought sacking Rome would be somewhat more eventful than it was to be honest. Managed to get a lucky break with Flanders becoming independent so snatched up Zeeland and managed to reform the Norse religion after 15 years game time. Is there a limit on the number of concubines you can have? I was trying to capture the princess of France for a claim but seems like three is my max.

Other than that there is something very amusing about a 95 year old viking raiding Alexandria, can see the Norse becoming my new favorite nation to play as. Especially seeing as I was wiped out within 5 years when I tried Zoroastrian. Might go back to them later though.

 

I think 3 concubines are the max... And yeah it is easy becoming big as a Norse but the gravel-kind succession can ruin if you have a bit of bad luck.

I currently play Zoroastrian and it is really difficult... After a 100 years I finally manged to secure Kiva, Turkmenistan and a third of Persia.. Still it only takes only one invasion from Arabia or Hungary to make my life nearly impossible. And the marriage laws lead to very strange situations. My grandson married his own mother^^.

Can`t wait to see how the AGOT mod team includes this DLC.. I see a lot of cool improvements coming.

 

Click for big. I'm not Scotland

Protip: Creating merchant republics as Norse gives you RIDICULOUS amounts of boats. Went on a three-hundred boat tour of Europe and came home with 2500 gold, that's what funded my warchest to snatch Zeeland off Lotharingia and reform the Norse faith.

Double protip: Irish culture - Norse faith gives you access to raiding AND tanistry. All aboard the ruler designer!

 

So every game I've started as a Zoroastrian has ended in horrible failure. I went back to my Norse game and dicked around a bit. I'd already formed Sweden as Bjorn Ironside, so it was fairly easy to spam the 'Conquest' cassus belli on Finnish pagans to create the Scandinavian empire. On top of that, my son-in-law, who'd been rampaging through Russia, swore fealty to me leaving me with the Kingdom of Russia also and well on my way to forming the Russian Empire.

I also reformed the Norse faith, which was pretty cool. In retrospect though, I'd have left Norse unreformed for a few generations, allowing me to create the Empire and raise the Crown Authority without also having half my vassals hating me for being a heretic. If I didn't power-game it, I can see that the unreformed pagan religions would have been pretty fun, but I needed to hit Primogeniture fast, or else my Empire(s) will disintegrate.

On that note, the pagan attrition bonus is absolutely devastating. In invading parts of Lithuania, the average supply limit was around 800. My doomstacks of 3K-6K were getting annihilated, though the ability to use rivers for transport alleviated that somewhat.

Has anyone tried any of the other pagan reformation options? What are the other religions like generally? I'm curious if they're as well fleshed out as Norse and Zoroastrianism, and what reformation does to them.

 

Can't raise crown authority past Low if you're an unreformed pagan.

The biggest difference for Norse, apart from inheritance laws, once you reform is that you start getting vassal levies raised too long penalties. Before that you can pile every soldier you can find onto a boat and go fuck with anyone you feel like, but after you click the shiny gold button, it's just your own personal levies and retinues.

 

Playing a Nubia game with the latest patch, done pretty well (just formed the Abyssinian Empire with Nubia, Egypt, Jerusalem & Abyssinia under control, and Scotland, Sicily & Croatia ruled by Azim royality or relations). Cumania has absolutely destroyed Eastern Europe, with what's left of Hungary within the HRE (As in, an independent kingdom of German counties nestled within a circle of HRE territories) and between them and the Seljuk the Byzantine Empire has gotten hammered badly.

Just destroyed the Fatimids recently and I'm fighting for my wife (Queen of Sicily) and my half-brother (King of Scotland) in their own wars. One of my sister-in-laws (a double as she is sister to my wife and wife to a brother) has declared war against the Croatians, whose queen is married to my uncle (second son of my first king) and has fathered several children with. Also got some territory in Spain, after my first king married his only daughter to the King of Leon, whose own daughter (my cousin) in turned married a heir to the Duchy of Asturias. Brought them over and converted them and gave them Sinai, and when his dad died the place reverted to him.

All my brothers are either kings or dukes, I've got half a dozen sons and daughters to succeed me, and I'm surrounded by multiple hostile Muslim kingdoms. Thankfully the Seljuk are in the midst of a massive civil war stretching across all of the middle east, so I've been chipping away and taking duchies like Damascus & Antioch.

 

Ah thanks, I reformed before I actually noticed that.

Also, anyone had any luck with prepared invasions? I'm not sure how they work. I can't find anything in the decisions area, so is it unavailable because I'm reformed?

 

Diplomacy menu of whoever you want to invade. Should have a "prepare invasion" option.

 

Lol.

Mongols start with an attrition proof 60K doomstack. The Golden Horde starts with 120K and they basically start off facing the weak Russian duchies. That + free kingdom level invasion CBs (no border or piety requirements) ==hilarity.

The only problem is that sorting out who gets which piece of your new 40+ barony kingdom is tedious. And it takes a long time to move in Russia.

I'm backing up my game files just in case Paradox come to their senses and realize how fucking ridiculous this is. Ck2+ can also go fuck itself. Time to turn the ME into a pit of skulls and ash.

 

Norse really thrive off momentum. They have incredible CBs, a steady source of income and prestige, and can generate new family members quickly with concubines. And they don't have 'vassal levy raised too long penalties'. Plus they've got a couple of invasions that kick off early in England that, with a little luck, can really get the ball rolling.

But they can't change from Gavelkind, can't raise crown authority above low, they're absolutely pants at religious conversion, and they have specialized Norse-on-Norse CBs. And with the changes to how Gavelkind works and how you can't set successors for Norse temples, Gavelkind is even more difficult to manage than it has ever been before.

Basically, the Norse are built to have great leaders carve out huge empires that implode almost immediately following their death.

 

Unless your Irish. their inheritance law works really well with Norse religion.

Has anyone noticed that the HRE seems a lot less stable for a change? been playing as the Duke of Provence and we've been in civil war for nearly my current guy's entire life.
The new tech system is really goof IMO, getting a lot out of it in any case.

About the only thing I kind of have a problem with is the money thing, starting out I had an income of 4 or so, 30 years in and that's up to 13 without any troops in action. Is this unique because the area's wealthy or do the new buildings suddenly mean every bodies rolling in it after a few years?

 

For full broken, make a Norse-Norse merchant republic and switch to it. The combined income of trade posts plus raiding is obscene. Though you can't build trade posts until you hit a certain point in trade tech.