I have that problem a lot too but instead of dicking around and waiting for her to lose eggs while I figure it out I go into her character portrait, break betrothal and arrange marriage.

 

There should be an icon that pops up at the top of the screen. Looks like a heart/ring combination, iirc. Just click on that and it'll take you straight to the screen you need.

 

So, this is a playthrough I been playing since Old Gods came out. I've reached 16 generations of rulers, give or take a poor bastard or two, who died prematurely. I play as Sweden and later Scandinavia.

Just for a recap, this is how the world looked early on (897):

It took around 3 generations before I was able to secure the Empire of Scandinavia. Most of my time went establishing a powerbase, that kept being disrupted due to Gavelkind laws. I looted and pillaged my way through Europe, especially central Behemia, whom I looted continuesly for maybe around a hundred years.

The picture doesn't really show it, but eastern europe remained one big clusterfuck of independent states most of the time, until I finally conquered them all much later. Francia never managed to take Lotharinga, although the French emperor certainly tried. He only attacked me once, while I was Emperor myself, where I faced his 80k stack with my measly 25k. I was reamed, but I only lost a single county. I think it was around this time I reformed the Norse Faith.

Many years later (1221):

This is my empire at its strongest. Around the year 1000 I carved a bloody path through central Germany, I managed to secure enough rich territory to take the rest of Germany. In the same period, Francia had suffered plenty of internal conflicts, which left Germany wide open for me. I had already conquered all of Scandinavia and the coastlines surrounding the Baltic Sea. Surprisingly, someone had formed the kingdom of Russia, although that was rather shortlived.

Some time later, maybe 1150'ish I think, I managed to form the Empire of Russia and at the same I usurped the title of Empiror of Carpathia, essentially creating the Tri-Empire of Europe. Not really sure how that could be done, but whatever.

To ensure my income I created 16 Republics.. These were created over time, with my earliest being the nearly 200 years old Most Serene Republic of Finland, although I had around 7 or 8 in Italy and Sicily alone. I think I made around 250 Gold a month in 1221.

It was around 1100, I really started to form standing legions of soldiers. By 1200 these numbered 20k per legion with 4 legions and a fifth being assembled. That gave me a personal army of around 90k, and with these I took on the already broken Francia and later Byzantine and Arabia. It was also with these men that I managed to stave off the Ikhanate and a few years later, the Golden Horde. By this time my levies numbered over 900k.

Around ten years later the Mongols attacked. And while they attacked, nearly a third of my empire revolted, because I decided to fall into a coma and die.

My current self chose to give in to his traitorious vassals, yet still lost the invasion from the Golden Horde. I won most of the battles, but the 4 legions either starved to death in fucking Perm or were thrown against the Mongolian meat grinder. Even with large levies from Georgia and surrounding countries raised, I stil watched maybe 140.000 of my men die or starve in that conflict alone, not to mention the 80.000 from the fight with the Ikhanate a few years before. My legions had just been rebuilt, only to die off in an even bloodier conflict.

Right now, I need to stop the Ikhanate, who is still hostile to me. After that, I need to take back my lands from my former vassals, crush the Golden Horde and then annihilate the Ikhanate. After that I can continue my conquest of Europe.

I fucking love this game.

 

How is that working out for you? My strategy was always to create only a few, especially if you had good tech late in the game. I mean, if you split up the areas you only really need about four-six. You can kill their competition and permanently keep those happy in order to get the most taxes. Consolidation is best imo.

 

Very well, actually, but I get what you mean, though. However, I've started to give away duchies to mayors and bishops, instead of counts. For one, they are far easier to control once you hit emperor level. Secondly, a Lord-Mayor or even a small republic will net me far more gold than a duke ever could just from the basetax alone. Any more tradeposts are just a plus. And yes, I would rather have gold than levies, because levies can be used against me, while gold can be invested.

Now, obviously what you suggest makes sense: a few but very large republics will have room to expand and will net huge amounts of gold. However there's no guarantee that's going to happen, especially since the conditions for republic expansion have been tightened.

To back that up, take a look at this map of my republics again. With importance rated trough income, my most important republic is Mecklenburg (the yellowish color). They net me 67.8 gold a year alone. My least important is Crimea who still nets me 18.4 gold (pale yellow in the northern Black Sea). Both of those are fairly small, so I'm going to make that age old argument, that size doesn't really matter.

Even if I were to combine several of my mini republics, like maybe 4 or 5 into one massive one, I'm not really sure that would be better. I don't really believe that a republic, that covered let's say all of Scandinavia, would net me that much more gold, even with a larger trade zone bonus, to make it worth the extra political pull.

I disagree to some extent. For you as a ruler, and generally as a player, yes, you should consolidate everything you own personally, but never let your vassals consolidate. Sure, they will give you more troops, and gold for that matter, when they like you, but when they don't, or if they get ambitious...?

 

If the trade republics are fighting each other they're not fighting their liege. Since trade republics get a pretty hefty relations malus against their liege if they're feudal lords (-20?) it's pretty important to keep them in check. One megarepublic is a disaster waiting to happen, sixteen small ones are a clusterfuck that keeps any of them from growing too powerful while still feeding taxes into the imperial treasury.

The tax must flow. The Scandinavian Emperor cares not from whence the tax flows, as long as it flows.

 

Here's another playthrough I've recently done, as the Persian Empire, even though I haven't reached that part yet.

867

This is where I started. Note, my dynasty name is Samanid, but I'm light green, not dark.

897

The duke of Saffarid to the south, invaded his neighbour, Tahirid, and created the kingdom of the same name. I managed to secure Turkestan and Samanid and created the kingdom of Khiva.

But I was in a bad spot, because Saffarid (Sunni) really hated my guts and attacked me. And then, Cumania (Tengri), who had also recently formed, decided to join in.

But I won.

Because I had money, a decent army and enough clout with court intrique to stave of several attacks on two sides. I remember the first time in particular. Just as I was about to finish Saffarid off, after outmaneuring his 14k army with a 12k army, Cumania holy warred themself into Turkestan with about 9k men.

So after letting Saffarid bleed in the desert mountains to the south, I went north instead of persuing them, picked up a new band of mercs on the way, trounced the Cumanian army, looted their counties and went south again, gathering even more mercs, because in the mean time, Saffarid had recovered enough to gather a stack of about 8k men. I managed to defeat them, barely, by luring them into the mountains again, where their army was beaten to a pulp. Peace was declared and I had money again.

I think this happened at least twice in maybe 20-30 years, until I finally managed to secure some new land.

928

I'm now the dark green color.

I cut a bloody path through Saffarid and took many of their counties. I decided to take the most hostile land first, the middle that is, because they would suffer whenever they would attack me, and I promise you that suffer they did, and also so I wouldn't have to fight in those lands as a hostile invader.

981

Infighting in Saffarid has weakened them greatly, some of it I was even the cause of. Ever since I had begun my regime as the king of Khiva, my spymaster and chancellor had spent all of their time in the capitol of Saffarid, doing their best to weaken the Sultan's political strength. They revolted several times and each time I was there, ready to invade the sideliners.

I had also holy warred myself through Cumania, effectively devouring them.

The Arabian emperor was dangeously quiet during all of this. I believe he was locked in an extended all out was with Byzantine.

Which he won.

981 and the state of the Arabian Empire

Yes, that would be the AI in control of Arabia, Hispania, Aquitaine and Byzantine.

And as a sidenote:

981 and the state of the Zoastrian faith

As you can se, my holy wars have been quite succesful overall.

But still, woe is me when the Mongols come.

 

Man if you ever do a proper AAR. Ever. I'd love to read it.

 

Well, I don't know about an AAR, but I do have a small abandoned playthrough from two days ago.





This guy is Stefan von Österreich and he's not a good person. In fact, he's kinda nasty. He owns the itsy bitsy grey blob aptly called Österreich.





This is his father-in-law. While they were only betrothed then, he later married the Duke's oldest daughter and with her came a weak claim on the duchies of Verona and Carinthia. But she has a lot of brothers.





Correction, she had a lot of brothers.

Duke Stefan murdered his way through a sea of von Zähringen heirs, yet never came close to his goal of having his own children claim the duchies of Verona, Carinthia and Austria together.

Although there's still one son left on the screen, he was only an illegitimate bastard. However, Duke Stefan's wife had a nephew who became heir, when all of his uncles died mysteriously. He then had 2 heirs of his own.

Note:

By this time I gave up out of sheer frustration. I wanted to play a game with more intrigue rather than conquest, but this got a bit too weak for me to continue playing. It was rather fun in some aspects, certainly a much different style of play than I'm used to.

 

Fair enough.I wonder if it's actually better to create lord mayors instead of republics. They don't get that huge -50% tax modifier.

Good point. (Also makes playing a Republic in 867 very annoying)

Well, that's always a risk, but having fewer vassals allows you to focus and get a larger impact no? One errant king./republic? Here is 250 gold and my Chancellor, the increase in levies and tax from that little effort is much greater than if I had to go about bribing every duke.

I think I'm gonna experiment with big vassals for a while, see how it works out. Mostly because I'm going to be playing an Ancient Rome mod soon and it seems like the only way to make that game interesting, but I still want to see how much more effective it really is.

And on that note a question: has anyone tried to use Prince-Bishops? Is it true that they don't join factions?

 

A single king is easier to keep happy than a swarm of dukes. But a swarm of dukes is easier to beat down, should they become unhappy, than a single king.

Plus CK2 economics give you more money the less middle-men there are between you and the individual holdings. You taxing a duke directly gets you more money than your cut of a king taxing that duke.

But on the third hand, a king is less effort to keep track of than a dozen dukes, and they have enough power to expand on their own, gobbling up neighbours to expand their, and indirectly your, realm. And since you can revoke vassals as well as titles now, it's easy to yoink their new toys if they make things untidy.

 

The Old Gods DLC is finally on sale. 75% off. $3.74.

CK2 is $9.99
CK2 DLC Collection is $12.49
CK2 Collection is $19.99

None of those include the post-Old Gods DLC. These ones you'll have to buy individually:

Crusader Kings II: Dynasty Shield III
Crusader Kings II: Celtic Portraits
Crusader Kings II: Celtic Unit Pack
Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods
Crusader Kings II: Norse Portraits
Crusader Kings II: Norse Unit Pack
Crusader Kings II: Hymns to the Old Gods

Comes to $6.68 total, including The Old Gods.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/203770/

 

I have recently started playing, started with a bit customized character in Ulster, who died king of Ireland, with a son who inherited some a Welsh duchy, and is currently the husband of the Queen of England. If I can keep her on the throne till they get a child or two, I can start uniting the full island. Of course, I will have problems, since the King of Wales is also the king of Jerusalem, which means he can supply fairly large amounts of troops. Last time I had to beat around 10k troops, this is in early 1100.

 

EU4 pre-order bonus confirmed: CK2 to EU4 save converter. EU4 starts on Nov 11, 1444. Now I don't know which huge Empire to play first when it comes out. Britannia, Scandinavia, Roman Empire, or Frankish.

Also, in EU4, without Sunset Invasion/without any save converter, the Mesoamerican tribes are extremely backwards and tech really slowly until they can westernise, which takes a European nation reaching their shores and colonising. With Sunset Invasion... Flavour confirmed. Exactly what the flavour is, Paradox doesn't quite want to say.

 

It sounds awesome, no doubt. But I'm still not sure if it's enough to make me pre-order EU4. Before CK2 I hated every Paradox dev'd game I tried [HoI 2 and one of the others, maybe EU2/3]. I'll probably at least demo EU4 before giving it a go.

Given that Paradox are now DLC whores, I imagine that the converter will still be available, but for a price.

 

HoI 3 is vastly better than 2 but I have to agree that EU3 is in many ways a horrifyingly complex game and has not aged too well. Also, there are several major community created converters, so the only real advantage of the pre-order one is getting a CK2 to EU4 converter faster than the modders can create their own post-release.

 

Will be, yeah. I'm watching the recording of the stream right now; was sleeping when they were actually streaming it. Whatever date you actually stop your CK2 game will magically become Nov 11 1444. Even if you finish your CK2 game in 1453. It'll just cut and paste the map, essentially. The area outside Europe will be semi-randomised.

Reformed religions will be handled specially, etc. If you want a look at the game, Quill18 has been doing a series on EU4, playing as England, and taking intermittent episodes to explore different areas of the world. - Mesoamerica, Japan, China, India, etc. I found EU3 complicated, but apparently most of the sliders have been done away with, and my greatest hatred of EU3 and CK2, which is % chance effects (religion conversion, culture conversion).

Mostly, I want to play my GB-France-Spain-Portugal-Iceland Britannia and colonize America.

Edit: Unfortunately, that's also a SI game, which means that there's two giant Empires duking it out over America. Still got a week to redo this entire game and take over the world again.

 

Just got EU4. The pre-order comes with a copy of CK2 (the game itself) so 2 for the price of 1 if anyone is interested. As well as the converter and a few flavor/ skin DLCs.

Playing GOT has anyone noticed the tendency for the Lords paramount to marry their daughters to the current Lord paramount's brother? Just got had a game where Cat and Blackfish were popping out one kid a year, all the spawn of incest.

 

You pre-ordered on Amazon or Steam? Which version?

 

Got it off Steam, not sure think I saw that amazon has the same deal. Not sure on that though.