Depends on when you're starting. 867 or 1066? 867 is fantastic, simply because of the starting gavelkind in the Karling dynasty kingdoms. I've yet to see any combined kingdoms survive longer than 3 or 4 years before it implodes, so any chance of the AI forming the HRE is unlikely.

1066, I haven't tried too much, but apart from a few unsuccessful independence wars, not much has changed for the HRE. It's still a giant doom blob.

 

1066, both it and France haven't really been united for about 40 years now, makes a nice change instead of the inevitably doomed independence wars after Hungary and Poland have been absorbed.

are there any benefits to playing as a christian in the 866 start? aside from the obvious no France or HRE?

 

Free investiture.. don´t think any other religion has that ability.

 

It's a pretty powerful way to manipulate the succession, and it gives you a relations boost with your vassals. Plus Christians can make Antipopes which can drain taxes from all religious holdings within the entire realm, which can really add up.

I've got a feeling that the theocracy DLC is going to include more reasons to play Christian lords as well as the ability to play bishops.

 

Is that confirmed?
Yeah I've never really bothered with free investiture really, I tend to opt for elective most of the time, just because it's easy enough to manage provided you don't have too many electors.

 

I've honestly never paid attention to my Church vassals. They've never been a problem for me, and the Pope has always stayed out of my way. If they do create a Theocracy DLC, they'd have to create an entire system for the Papal elections and the cardinals which should be interesting.

In the Paradox forums, someone suggested a DLC to enhance the Dynasty mechanics in game. Here's the suggestion;

While a little rough, I thought the general idea was incredible. Thoughts?

 

Could get behind that very easily. Make the GoT mod pretty amazing too. I think it would take a fair bit of work though, granted I've got no idea about programming so it might be less of a task than it seems to be to me. Rather have that than a race to the Pope one, although there is a lot of potential in plotting to have your priest brother become Pope to sanction your invasion of wherever.

 

Not explicitly, but it's been said a few times that ultimately they plan for everyone from the 1066 start date to be playable. Though since the Merchant Republic expansion, it might be that regular republics will never be playable.

 

Current state of my game. France is in three separate blobs, Aquitaine used to be owned by Umayyad but rebelled and is now it's own little Sunni Kingdom, and Burgandy is in the same state as France. Hungary was, at one point, the size of Russia, but got eaten away by rebellions and pressure from the West and has since collapsed. As for me (Scandinavia), most of my expansion beyond the De Jure Scandinavia isn't actually by me. It's by the Norse Republic of Holland happily expanding my empire without me having to lift a finger. (I just took Frisia with a prepared invasion, and gave it away after reformation. It's paid off this last century.)

I mostly find the state of France and Burgandy amusing. On a seperate note, The Kingdom of Italy has been, over the years, Byzantine, French, German, as well as Burgandian (?). The entire South end, where the Byzantine Empire now holds (again), was Norse for a while, after some random adventurer carved out a petty kingdom during a rebellion. After the Byzantines managed to sort their shit out, he was promptly bulldozed.

 

So anyway, I decided to start a new game with the new patch to try things out, that and because once you own half the map, the game gets kinda boring. New game is going pretty nicely though, I was able to get some nice marriages for my first heir to grab 4 from the HRE, 2 in Italy and 2 in Germany and I've been whoring my daughters out to various kings and emperors for most of the game for alliances which has been useful. I was able to win the 2nd crusade for Jerusalem, but instead of just ignoring it and focusing on Brittany and France, I decided to do something new this game and expand on that front as well, mainly to stop them from constantly declaring war on me for it. Long story short, a few decades of war later and I now own most of the african continent and most of the kingdoms around Jerusalem.

As for everybody else, a couple of first for this game, Sweden is basically just a single county now, with most of it's de jure counties just being either separate or part of Norway/Denmark, both of which are doing decent but not much past their de jure. For the first time in any of my games, the HRE has moved west and taken it's de jure counties that France starts with, but not much else apart from that, the fact they can't just holy war people that aren't next to them means they can't just steal africa any more which is nice. France is doing alright, it's had a few big civil wars, during which I've stolen a few counties but nothing major. Most of the eastern kingdoms are doing well, in fact Hungary controls it's exact de jure counties which is pretty impressive in that it hasn't grown or shrunk, and Cumania, the Byzantine Empire, the Seljuk's and Perm are all doing well, which means I'll have a nice meat shield for the Mongols.

Also, something that I've been doing different for this game, I don't usurp/create duchies any more. In fact, I have a realm size of 622 with ~5 duchies existing in my empire, which is awesome because most of my titles have elective monarchy so I basically choose who my heir is. Also, I'm pretty sure that the largest desmene outside of mine and my heirs has at most 4 counties in it, so rebellions aren't really something I have to worry about any more.

 

MOAR

DLC, that is.

 

Two more years...goddamn. The base game is almost unrecognizable to me now, I can only imagine what CK2 will look like at the end of it's lifecycle.

EDIT: And just as interesting: what the GoT mod will look like. All the expansions seem to complement it pretty well.

 

Yeah.. can´´t wait to see how they implement the new DLC.

PS: I hate the Mongols... after 400 years of painstaking expansion as Zoroastrian I finally had defeated the Muslims and reigned over the whole of persia and arabia. But I still seem powerless to stop the 120k hordes.. In 5 years I lost Kiva, Turkmenistan and Persia and didn´t even hurt their armies. Now Byzantine preys upon my lands and I have to expand into Italy to secure enough troops to withstand it.
I currently control Mesopotamia, Jerusalem, Arabia and Egypt and another Dynasty member controls Syria, Abyssinia, Mauritania and most of Spain.

 

CK2 - GoT: I'm currently testing the new version for the mod. Wildlings get some interesting features and Ironborn as well. Some changes to the map for navigable rivers. It's gonna be awesome

 

While that sucks, you're supposed to be powerless before the Mongols in the initial rush especially.

Like, the only advice anyone can reasonably give re: the Mongols is "don't be near them when they appear because they will jack you the fuck up."

Only way I've found to even make it a contest at first is by employing a Fabian strategy and just not letting them get to 100%. And that required being able to trade space for time and garrisons for chip damage on the stack via events/attacks.

Fabian strategies work brutally well in CK2 in general, since the AI is pretty dumb and will waste insane numbers of troops.

 

Managed to stop them in Mesopotamia and did expand into Italy and the Germany which gave me enough troops to beat them. 1400 and I control half of the map(Persia, most of middle east and the HRE plus Francia) personally while the Arabian Empire of my dynasty member controlls Abyssinia, Africa and Spain. Ilkhanate controls the russian and slavic territories and did defeat the Timurids. The northern kingdoms were never stable enough to really expand. Fun game.

After that I begun a game as the Byzantine Empire and compared to others they are really powerful. From the start I was able to compete with the Sunni Caliphate and to expand into its territory.

But the really interesting thing is what happened France near the year 1000.. somehow the AI created Empire of Francia and managed to secure it. That is something I have never seen before. Will be interesting to see how the game develops with such a strong catholic power.

http://i.imgur.com/F6sbNei.jpg

 

That's cute.

Check the date. While I was busy getting myself a kingdom (I'm Sweden) and getting to know the new features, I look down at central Europe to find it covered in blue; the fucking french had taken the kingdoms of West Francia, South Francia (or Aquitaine, I think), East Francia, Italy and Burgundy. It doesn't show on the map, but they did get some provinces in Spain and Croatia a little later as well. By that time he wielded an army of about
80-100.000 soldiers with around 60 vassals.

The funniest thing about my playthrough was probably that Hungary managed to conquer all of Cumania, then lose Hungary. About 50 years later they got Hungary back, but lost Cumania. Very strange. They did manage to form Carparthia later, though. Poland was annihilated fairly quickly, but the unlikely kingdom of Bulgaria held on for a pretty long time, much like Georgia.

Link to map (1107 and my most current save)

Right now I have the largest empire (Scandinavia) with all of Scandinavia, most of the Wendish, Rus and Holy Roman empires. Besides me there are the Emperor of Francia, Carparthia, Byzantine and Arabia. The king of Scotland (extremely distant relative to Bjorn Ironside of House Münso) has taken all of Britannia, Brittany, Flanders and most of Spain. For some reason he hasn't created an emperor title yet.

Together with him we are the last true powers of the Norse given that we have eaten everything else up.

 

Wow..somehow such massive Empire building never happens in my games.

Is the King of Scotland Norse? Because you can´t create Britannia as a Norse.

 

Well, the father ruled Aquitaine, while the son ruled West Francia, so it was only a matter of time. I think a lucky marriage secured East Francia, while Italy was conquered the old fashioned way.

Yes, he is Norse, so that would explain it.

 

It's incredibly easy to form Francia and really quickly become a super blob if you start as Aquitaine (and almost as easy if you start as West Francia), so it's not surprising the A.I. can do the same by chance.

Also it's the other way around. The son rules Aquitaine.