5/6 players still means a long while between games, if everyone takes the maximum time. Plus it's always a bit of a bummer when you get stuck in a regency and then your ruler dies before becoming an adult.

I just want everyone to have a decent game, because this is about fun at the end of the day.

 

The point of a succession game is to actually have different players playing different characters. What makes this approach to CK2 fun is that it actually is a simulation of history, rather than in single-player where you can force each character to act the same way (and have the exact same traits/education/long-term goals/etc.). Having a ten year cap wrecks that.

Also, I have no problem if you play the next character if you got stuck in a regency and get assassinated, or just keep playing until the regency ends.

 

You guys could wait a week and pick up the Charlemagne-dlc. You might have to start after the patch anyway, because of safegame-incompability (well, maybe, I've no idea if that's going to be an issue this time)

 

Oh, damn. Sorry about that, I worded it badly. Meant to say there's a ten year minimum.

Blame posting at 5am.

 

Okay, that makes more sense.

 

Anything to say about Charlemagne dlc?

I still haven't bought it, but a friend has tried playing with the tribes, and the game is considerably different than before - in the wildness outside of the christian realm. ;D

 

Also be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone having played it, or even just a game since the new update. The new vassalage/law/centralisation system will make things different.

 

They added a whole bunch of stuff. I'll hit what I've run into.

Vassalage: It's interesting, but I usually go for strong vassals at the highest tier, so it didn't cause me any problems. I haven't found out how its determined yet (if it's tied to a stat, a title, or just arbitrary based on secret math).

Demense: If you go over your limit, one of your courtiers will offer to distribute your extra counties. Don't let them as they do a horrible job of it.

Laws: It's interesting that the upper limit is tied directly to your tech. I think it's all based on Legalism, but I don't remember. I wish all of it was rather than just the upper bit; would make picking tech more interesting.

Centralization: I like strong vassals, so I never changed it from completely decentralized. More demense is nice, but proper vassal management is a pain as is, so why bother with the extra opinion penalty?

Retinue: They rejiggered the math so there is more access earlier on. The size changes are nice, as is the different costs. Someone else did the math though, and two of the archer/heavy infantry + one of the archer/light infantry is the way to go for max archers that won't auto die in combat.

Events: The 'story' events are solid. That said, like with any new dlc, the AI doesn't seem to have been tested yet, so expect some really stupid decisions (more so than normal).

Regent: I haven't had a regency yet, but I like that you can designate who you want to lead your realm. I want this to work the way it's supposed to.

Assassination: They killed the assassinate button. I liked that button. It ended host invasions, and was a nice way to get my character killed if I needed it.

 

Finally! This is one of the things that really annoys me, that you have no control over who becomes regent. Definitely looking forward to getting this DLC, just for this if nothing else.

 

Weak claims are strong now. You plot to kill someone, they find out, and go into hiding. This leads to a regency, and then you press those weak claims. :3

Feasts got nerfed; just a +10 opinion with your vassals now.

The tribal thing is neat. You're basically paying for a castle to change to feudal.

I guess it's nice that you can upgrade your vassals' and sub-vassals' holdings? It's not like money was that important or hard to get once you hit King and Emperor tier and could have all the vassal mayors and republics you wanted.

Also, the spymaster adds a +10% percent plot power when he's building a spy network. I think. it's probably tied to their intrigue stat, so I bet it goes up and down depending on how good it is.

Crown Authority being tied to Legalsim...I guess it makes sense, but damn that pissed me off when i found out in-game. Majesty is the tech to get now that the short reign modifier got added to it.

Elective-Gavalkind succession is fun.

All hail Zun, it gives you the Strong trait (and might blind you).

I haven't messed around with Vice-Royalties yet, but they look interesting too.

EDIT: What's the status on that succession campaign?

 

I tried out a short game. Since the tribal mechanics have arrived even without the DLC, it still broke down everything. It took me a short while to adjust and I was threading along the way.

The following post is half-rant half-battle report and half-stream of through and comments on whatever had my attention at the second. I might also need sleep, and will be going to do that soon. Here's the large and disjointed mess in post form about my experiences in the last three hours of the game:



Reforming faith is now broken for Romuva - or at least severely impeded. Earlier, there were five sites, two of which were further away. Now, there are only three, cutting out the nearest ones to the center. Why? Because these two have no temple built at the start and won't get one until you reform into a proper feudalism. Where one of the requirements is to have have a reformed pagan religion.

So, to build temples on holy sites and have all five available for reformation of faith, I first have to reform faith to be able to build the temples in the first place.

Great.

Mind it's still possible to simply have all the three remaining sites and get the ratio up by the way of wars, so there is that way.



Moving on.


There looked to be slightly more wars on the tribal side than before, but that might be me imagining things.


What really led me to this post was a situation that I do not understand in the slightest.

+++

You see, I started the game in Chernigov. The county. (There's also Chernigov the Duchy, which belongs to my father at the start of the game. He's important later.)

There's a usual start up madness, and a few failures on my part while dealing with a new system, and a terrible lack of gold.* I end up getting the Duchy of Turov after a third attempt to escape a single county position.

After a very short while, I make the two other provinces into my personal demesne, and as I'm looking for other venues of expansion there's suddenly a kingdom of Lithuania that pops up right next to me - two dukes of similar size merged into one with a subjugation war. Since my short term aim was ending up as king of Lithuania, I simply join up as a third duke of the lot, and vuolia, I'm nearly there.

Meanwhile, my father has won quite a few wars with my help and is on the edge of creating the kingdom of Ruthenia. Fun thing is, my younger brother is on the line to get the main fruit of my and my father's labour, but I do not mind. I don't plan to kill my family, at least not with the first generation ruler.

Now, a fun thing happens. Three neighbors attack Lithuania. Including my father, who starts a subjugation of the whole kingdom. I do not interfere and my father becomes the king of Lithuania. Since other Lithuanian dukes like me, and my father does too, I'm suddenly the heir.

Now, he rules both Lithuania and Ruthenia, and I'm happy to know that I'll be in a great position as soon as he dies.

It takes me five years of waiting for an 80 year old to die, but he finally does.

Now, I expected to get only the main title from him, and that my other brothers would take everything else. But... No. That's not what happened at all.

Somehow, I lost my duchy of Turov. I lost all of my three counties. All was taken by my half-brother, the king of Ruthenia. Instead, I got handed the kingdom of lithuania with but it's capital county to my name.

That would be well and par of the game, had I died and would have to play for my son. But no, here, my father died, and that forced a restructuring down on me.

Now, maybe I haven't played CK2 for a few months, but I have spent quite a few hours with earlier games and in all that time I haven't seen a case where inheriting something would remove any of your personal demesne. What the actual hell?

Anybody have an explanation that makes sense?


---
*Since I didn't see where I could be try to creating kingdoms like the Charlemagne folk can, the lack of gold for tribes seems like a terrible miscalculation on paradox's part (concerning dlc-less people). Since your income is an order of magnitude smaller, getting enough for a kingdom seems like it would be a chore.

+++

Oh yes, Raiding.

Raiding is now night impossible to do against other tribes. You can place a raider army on any of your neighbor's provinces all you want, but they have but 1-2 gold that is protected by the only building. So far I'm yet to border with a province that can be raided without a successful siege of the only building in the county. And even then, it was in 9-10 coin range.



So far, I'm disappointed because I feel like this update is trying to force us to buy Charlemagne to keep the game balanced properly.

We'll see how further games go.

 

It's probably a bug (or maybe not) with Elective-Gavelkind succession. Did you ever swear fealty to your father? That might have had a hand in it if you did.

Also, a beta patch was released that fixed the Romuva thing. Patch notes here.

Paradix is pretty bad about checking to make sure their new DLC doesn't mess everything up. Rajas of India was a flop because of this. They are pretty quick about fixing things though.

 

I swore fealty to some random king of Lithuania. Whom my father subjugated.
Then, the realm voted that I was a better heir than my half-brother. Then, father died. And I lost three counties and a duchy, instead gaining one and a kingdom.

Perhaps it's a one time thing.

 

Should be, the beta patch notes says they fixed it.

 

I don't suppose anyone has/knows of a fix for banners in the game turning completely black? I can't see family colours, sigils or anything, just every portrait where a family banner should go is a black box.

I've tried a clean reinstall as well as playing with no DLC enabled and neither one seems to have fixed it. I've not found anything on reddit or (as of yet) the Paradox forums on how to fix it, so I was just wondering if any of you guys have had a similiar problem and know how to fix it.

It doesn't make the game unplayable, but it's a lot harder trying to figure out who's who in terms of land, armies and general family.

 

After your uninstall, did you delete the CK2 folder in your My Documents folder?

 

I had the same thing happen to me. I don't remember why nor how I fixed it.

Are the black banners happening on new games too, or just old saves?
Did you uninstall all mods like AGoT and CK2+?

 

It's most likely something in the My Documents folder. Clear the cache/gfx folder and it should rebuild it just fine.

 

It was occurring in both old saves & new games - I thought maybe it was a graphical bug but turns out it was just the folder in My Docs as you guys suggested - all ficxed now.

Cheers folks.

 

So what does the newest DLC, Way of Life, add to the game?