So yeah, I've started playing this again and wow, the early start from Old Gods completely changes the game if you're playing as Scotland. Instead of being able to slowly grab your de jure counties and then slowly expand into Ireland, whilst making sure that Norway and England don't try to fuck you up, you now have an incredibly divided England to the south ripe for the taking. Well, apart from the small fact that that small little duchy of the isles for some reason has a 13k stack and is invading a chunk of England riiiiiight next to you. And if what's his face the Boneless is able to grab most of those counties, then well, you're basically fucked since you're next on his shit list.

Luckily I was able to figure out the easiest way to stop this from happening, and that's to join in the war against him, and then delay his troops long enough so that the OTHER group of Nords fucking up England get half or more of the duchy, so instead of having one super huge Nord duchy next to you, you just have two medium sized ones which are slightly easier to deal with, especially once that doom stack is gone.

So far my game has been pretty interesting, whilst I was solidifying Brittania, the Muslims have been pretty busy, the Arabian Empire has fucked up most of the Byzantine Empire and has been able to expand pretty well, although they're kinda in the middle of a civil war right now, but that probably wont last long. The Andalusian's though, they were busy this game, they had managed to get most of West Africa, 90% of Spain, most of Aquitaine and West Francia, as well as most of Bavaria and whatever Germany is called back then. So basically, they were a bit of a threat, as such I had their kind assassinated, laughed as their entire empire dissolved into civil war and within five years I was able to take most of West Francia and Aquitaine from them which was pretty fun.

So the moral of the story is that murder solves all problems.

 

I honestly have a hard time playing lasting games. The outcome tends to be usually a binary system of either "I can crush everyone in my way to conquer the world without breaking a sweat" or "can't do anything because those asssholes 2 countries away have all the powers and have me surrounded".

I wonder if this is how Europeans felt like after ww2....

 

So I kinda got addicted to this game. I started 3 games- Ireland, England, and Brittany. I quit the first two because the Potatoheads got a bit stale and holy shit is it hard to reign in England under Willy. The whole time I'm just like "we could be great together, you know," and they just brush me off and try to install their favorite while I fend off the goddamn Vikings.

Brittany has been fun. I started as a small petty king slowly getting chipped away at by France, but now I'm about 300 piety from Empire Britannia (any tips on raising that quick? I've been sucking the Pope's shaft like a mofo). Started out taking Normandy while Willie fell to that clusterfuck he's got going on. Eventually, Denmark united England and Andalusia under its leader. I managed to make the Croatian heir my bitch (read: matrilineal married my heir). Conquered enough Irish counties to make the crown, and the rest of the island swore fealty.

The boy who inherited Croatia was married to the heir of Scotland, and meanwhile Castile stole the Iberian Peninsula and France. We traded the border counties back and forth a few times, and I pressed a Count's claim for a few Welsh dutchies, and he inherited the rest. I've been marrying pretenders and just slaughtering my way through the heirs. Did it for England and Castile, but Castile backfired on me because my betrothed refused to marry matrilineal even after promising such. I installed my dynasty as the HREmperor, because they've been bitching about a few counties I stole while they were revolting. Right now the Mongols approach, but the Byzantine Empire has been thriving, so hopefully we can deal on the eastern front.

That's about it. Any tips? My biggest concern is the piety and Castile.

 

Two words. Holy wars! One or two of them and you should have enough piety.

 

Also if you really want to maximize it make sure to give all the titles gained to bishops.

 

Sons of Abraham is now available for 8.99 on Steam. Bought it, but I won't have time to play for a few weeks due to term papers. Looking forward to hearing your reviews until then.

 

Bought it myself, have one major complaint thus far in the Kingdom of Israel = It's just a titular title laid over the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which of course doesn't de-jure shift. After playing for four straight hours slowly chipping away the Fatimids and building up my Jewish avatar from Count to King, I'm more than a little upset with that.

 

Got it as well. I haven't done the Jewish state thing yet, but I'm really liking all the other stuff they added (moneylenders, college of cardinals, etc.).

Word of warning, if you borrow money from the Jews, and you don't pay it off before you die, the debt is passed onto your heir.

 

You better believe it, motherfucker.

 

Not like it's much of a loss. No increasing interest means it's basically a massive near gamebreaking bonus at the start for no real penalty that you can easily pay off when you get to the point of being big enough that -10 opinion with church vassals would remotely matter. Or you can just expel the Jews after the loan to lose that if you don't care about the 2 point diplo loss, like say if you don't expect your starting character to live long enough for those two points to matter or you have less than 8 anyway so there's no actual loss because events.

Basically I don't like it much in its current incarnation. The penalty staying even if your character dies isn't enough to balance it. I have a similar feeling with the borrow money from the Pope mechanic. As long as you improve your relations with them all the time or just have lots of virtues it's a good 800-1000 gold per Pope even really early on.

I do like that martial score matters more though. There's actually a reason to have martial educated landed vassals now.

 

I just bought The Old Gods which is on sale right now.

I've been trying to conquer continental Europe as the mongol Khan. Having a blast.


Any other interesting ways to play with it? (the DLC)

 

I wasn't really interested in getting either Old Gods or Sons of Abraham...

This changed my mind.

 

Oh My God.

So yeah, I'm buying Sons of Abraham now.

 

trigger for it is event SOA.3000

 

New version of the Game of Thrones mod is up here. Adds a lot of the Sons of Abraham and a few other things. Essos is now included as well.

 

So I bought this game and all the expansions. I've played quite some EU3, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Like, any at all.

 

It gets easier with practice. Here's a quick guide I've written up that should help you out a bit.

1) You play as a character rather than as a nation. So instead of picking, say, France to play as, you'll be able to pick King Phillip or the Duke of Aquitaine or the Count of Toulouse. The goal of the game is to rack up points over the course of your entire dynasty, from parent to child, over the course of several hundred years.

2) Stewardship is your most important skill because it determines how many estates you can own and how much money you earn per month. Higher is better and traits that emphasise Stewardship (e.g. Temperate) are awesome.

3) It's always better to educate your own children, your heir and spare especially.

4) Your vassals should ideally have positive opinions of you (shown by the green or red number to the lower right of their portrait on the character screen) as this makes them less likely to rebel and/or plot against you. This number is affected by a lot of things, but the most common ones are: succession law, how long your reign has been, your Diplomacy score, your prestige and whether you have complimentary/conflicting traits with your vassal (humble people dislike proud people, as so on).

5) Wars require a casus belli to launch. Unlike the EU series, this isn't done through abstract means; each character may have claims on many different titles (like how Harold Godwinson will have a claim on the throne of England after William the Bastard or Harald Hardrada beat him).

If you have a courtier with a claim on a foreign province you can go to war with the nation it is in to try and install that courtier in power there. However, they will not become one of your vassals unless you are the de jure liege of the territory (e.g. you are the Duke of Ulster and you install a claimant as the Count of Oriel) or the claimant is someone of your dynasty.

6) A member of your dynasty is someone who is a direct blood relative to you who is not a bastard (legitimised bastards count as a member of your dynasty though). Children of a regular marriage will be part of the father's dynasty while children from a matrilineal marriage will be part of the mother's dynasty. This can get very complicated very quickly, which is why there is a little drop of blood on the portrait of anyone in your dynasty. Illegitimate bastards have a black drop of blood instead.

7) When a character dies all the claims that are inheritable (it'll say as much when you hover over the coat of arms on their character sheet) will be passed on to their children, both legitimate and not. Titles that they hold are a different matter and depend on what Inheritance Laws your de jure country has (i.e. William the Conquerer's territories in Normandy follow the French Inheritance Laws rather than English, because they're part of the French de jure nation).

8) This is a long one, but it's VERY IMPORTANT, so pay attention.

Your Inheritance Law dictates who in your dynasty inherits your titles after death. We'll start with who can inherit first.

Priority for inheritance is given to male heirs before female, so if you have a son all your daughters can say goodbye to any type of inheritance. Older children will also inherit before younger children.

Next up are succession laws. You'll come to detest these with a passion, I assure you.

a) Gavelkind Succession - The ultimate in power destroying succession laws. Having this law means that upon your death all your titles will be split amongst eligible heirs (sons, daughters, brothers, etc.). Your primary heir will inherit your primary titles. In the early game these will likely be King/Duke titles and a couple of counties (if you pick a big nation). Your secondary heir will inherit some of your other titles (decided at random, I think). If you have a tertiary heir and enough smaller titles to reach that level, he'll inherit as well.

On the plus side, Gavelkind does give you +33% to your demesne limit (i.e. how many titles counties you can personally own at once), so it's nice if you've got a lot of territory to gain but don't want to have to give it all away at once. It's still the worst of the lot though, since it splits up all the territories you may have invested money in to upgrade, and you don't get to choose who gets what when you die. It also gives a positive bonus to relations with secondary/tertiary heirs, but a negative bonus to your primary heir.

b) Primogeniture - At the opposite end of the scale is Primogeniture. This is essentially where your primary heir gets everything upon your death. It's my preferred succession law since it lets you consolidate power very effectively. Individual vassals will be hard pressed to match your military and economic might with this succession law.

c) Seniority - Not a law I've used very often, but very useful for accumulating titles that have been split amongst members of your family. Basically, the oldest male member of the dynasty inherits everything, from every member of the family. Of course the down side is that it's always the oldest member that inherits, so chances are you're not going to have much time with that character before he pops his clogs and you move on to the next guy, resetting your Short Reign relationship modifier for every vassal you have. Also useful if you want to swap to an alternate branch of the family tree but don't want to risk Elective Succession giving you an heir that is not of your dynasty.

d) Ultimogeniture - Essentially the opposite of Seniority. The youngest of your line inherits. I confess that I've never actually used this one since it seems completely pointless to me. In 99% of cases taking this law will result in regency after regency after regency, which will leave a lot of your realm out of your control for extended periods of time.

e) Elective Succession - Think of the Holy Roman Empire. In that there are seven Electors that cast votes for who they want to be the next Emperor, upon the current one's death. That's basically how this works, but on a smaller scale. Useful for the vassal relations bonus, as well as for being able to pick and choose between your family members for who gets to inherit. Not so good because your Electors may go against your wishes and elect someone different. It's a risky law to take, but if you've got a young family member that is just plain fantastic (as I got one time with a 21 Military, 18 Stewardship, Attractive, Genius, Brilliant Strategist that resulted from an uncle's marriage to a random Muslim woman from the Iberian Peninsula), it can pay off immensely.

There are a few other laws, but they're mostly for specific cultures or special territories like Merchant Republics and Bishoprics so you can safely ignore them.

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Well, that should see you on your way. If in doubt there is a wiki you can use.

 

Thanks. Much appreciated, now I can really start fooling around.

 

It really depends on how large your realm is, and whether you're independent or not. Are you a single county count under a duke/king? Then Intrigue is number one as that is what lets you plot your way to wresting control of your liege's realm. Are you already a King? Then Diplomacy is the most important as that directly effects your vassal's opinion of you. This is doubly true if you're an Emperor with King-level vassals.

Not to say Stewardship is not important. In fact, all of the attributes are important as each one effects your realm and how you play the game in some fashion.

Intrigue determines how well you plot against others, as well as how good you are at avoiding/uncovering the plots of others.

Learning effects your monthly piety gain (which effects your church vassal's opinion, lets you hire holy orders, create Kingdom/Empire titles, and a whole lot more), and also increases the amount of tech points you gain per month.

Martial effects how many troops you're able to raise from your personal demesne, and is important in determining how strong your character is in combat (that said, it isn't as important as your characters combat modifiers).

Stewardship effects your personal demesne as well as how much you make in taxes each month; having an exceptionally low Stewardship score can also be the trigger for some pretty bad events.

Diplomacy effects your vassal's opinion of you - which will also determine how many troops they'll raise for you - as well as your prestige gain per month. Prestige is important as, up to 2,000, you get a +1 relations bonus per 100 prestige with everyone. In addition, your characters prestige score is added to your dynasty's prestige score upon his death.

 

I find that money can basically cover all of those, if you have enough of it. Someone plotting against you? Give them money. Want someone dead? Give his spymaster money. Not a very good soldier? Mercenaries can fight for you. Diplomacy? Hah! Who needs diplomacy when I can bribe my way into your good graces? The only thing money can't really replace is a high Learning skill, which is why I try to pick up the best priests I can to boost my score up.

Of course you can't be this blatant with bribes if you're a single province Count, but you can upgrade your one county a lot quicker, giving you lots more options when it comes to hiring mercs or building barracks and so forth.