+3 To your chosen stat, or +2 and +1 health.

 

Bunch of new events as well, raising hunting hounds and what not. It's been fun doing that in between warring with all the other Slavic chiefs as I try and take over Kiev and Poland.

 

Well, it is largely cosmetic, and the change it brought to the interface is more annoying then helpful as all my ingrained reflexes are wrong.

Otherwise, I'm afraid that it will slow down later game even more, as events pop up a more often then they used to. I think.*

Haven't really used some of the lifestyles that give additional mechanics by simply having them, but it's a mater of time, till that happens. I'm afraid some will prove a lot more useful than others.


Otherwise, I'm disappointed I bought it so soon, but otherwise happy for another excuse to return to the game once more.

Is the Game of Thrones mod up to date yet?




*It might also be my new computer, as the fastest speed is at least twice as fast than before.

 

Nope. No sign of when it might update. Here's what they have planned though:dev diary.

 

Odd thought: Anyone done a Barristan Selmy playthrough? I.e, start as his father, and then keep him from joining the Kingsguard.

Seems like something that has the potential for awesomeness.

 

Nope - though I recently tried "The Freyening" after some discussion that led to the idea in Zooboss' ASOIAF quest. Basically start as Walder, than marry all those kids off through the Riverlands to create a network of alliances so you can rebel without being crushed and become LP of the Riverlands. Endgoal, get all those descendants land.

Actually got pretty far before it at fell down around me and Walder died, gonna be trying again soon.

 

Played as Aegon, and had a pretty awesome (on-going) run.

Almost immediately conquered the Stormlands, with the Riverlands/Iron Islands quickly following due to the Riverlanders having an uprising. I gave the Stormlands to Orys and the Iron Islands to a Greyjoy, but I kept Harrenhal/Riverlands to myself (because the Tullys were being annoying, and it amused me).

Annoyingly enough, all of the other kingdoms bent the knee. I never invaded Dorne, just because I never cared enough to. I did all this in two years, and then turned my attentions towards domestic matters- I had no heir. My two sister-wives had been annoyingly barren, so I turned my attention towards other women in my court; I think I had around 10 bastards by the time I died.

Rhaenys had three kids before she died, but one was a stillborn and the other a bastard. The last, my unfortunate heir, was named Rhaegar. Had the worst stats imaginable, and was especially annoying because Visenya gave birth to a son on the same day who was Aegon's second-coming (ended up with better stats than Aegon). I was quickly becoming bored with my game, so I got to work at engineering a 'Dance of the Dragons' situation.

Orys had two stillborns with his wife, so when he died I inherited. I gave all of his lands to my favored son, Vaemond, and gave my Riverland holdings to my eldest bastard Daemon. I married Daemon to an Arryn, and Vaemond to his sister (had to keep the bloodline pure). Rhaegar I married to a Martell, because I didn't care. I married a few of my female bastards to the other Lords Paramounts, and conquered a few kingdoms to give to my other bastard sons.

Visenya and Rhaenys died when I was around 50, and my youngest bastard Orys and Vaemond got their dragons. They had 31 and 40 military skill, after their dragons. My eldest Daemon managed to hatch one, as did Rhaegar. Daemon couldn't tame his, but Rhaegar managed it. I made sure that Vaemond got Blackfyre, and gave Orys (now King of Andalos) Dark Sister. I died soon after, and switched to play as Vaemond.

I declared that my brother Rhaegar was a bastard, and then declared war for the throne. My brother Daemon sided with me, as did my brother-in-law the Lord Paramount of the Westerlands. Orys sided with Rhaegar, the bastard, as did the North/the Reach/the Vale/Aegon's assorted Essos conquerings. I rather quickly descended on the throne. Rhaegar died 'naturally' in his sleep after I had imprisoned him, and all of his holdings went to me.

His dragon flew off to Rollingford, weirdly enough, and I'll probably give one of my sons the land in the hopes they'll get a dragon. I legitimized my bastard brother Daemon, in gratitude for his siding with me. Seems like everyone is getting dragons or dragon eggs, too.

One of Aegon's youngest bastards, Tagar, has an egg. My sister-wife has a dragon. Orys sister-wife has a dragon egg. Daemon's second son has a dragon egg. I'm kind of interested to see what a war with like 10 dragonriders would be like, but I'm getting bored of everyone surrendering when I try to conquer them. I'm basically just engineering civil wars for the hell of it.

 

Running a playthrough of the Bleeding Years now, as Lord Wyl Borrell of the Isle of Sweetsister in the Kingdom of Mountain and Vale. I managed to successfully assassinate the High Lady of the Three Sisters and her heir, and took out a loan from the Iron Bank to butter up the infant King. I requested the High Lordship and he granted me it, leaving me High Lord of the Sisters.

My plan now is to become independent and switch to the Lady of the Waves religion which is unique to the independent Sisters realm and allows raiding. I'm just playing at factions right now trying to stir some stuff up. A faction is gaining power to depose the King in favor of his older cousin so when it pops and civil war breaks out I plan on declaring a war for independence and hopefully managing to smash the King's armies while they fight the rebellion, then lay siege to the Eyrie until I take him hostage and win.

 

I'm playing through the Rebuilding Harrenhal scenario - starting in 8038 as House Harroway, high lords of Harrenhal.

The curse of Harrenhal is aptly named. The dice rolls are against me. I have fewer kids and they die more often. I've been breeding like crazy to try and keep my House afloat. Thankfully it seems that only the dynasty head's immediate kids are afflicted, my nieces and nephews and grandkids don't seem to be cursed. Consequently, I'm playing wide, not deep, and have scattered my dynasty members outside Harrenhal to breed. Lots of marriages to the nobles of the Riverlands.

I'm totally focused on the economy. Rebuilding Harrenhal is a multi-generational task, so I've got everything geared towards money production to feed the beast.

At first, the high lordship of Harrenhal wasn't generating enough income, and so I seized a neighbouring duchy for more funds. That wasn't enough either, so with judicious marriages and fabrications I grabbed a couple more counties, wed my daughter to the Targaryen heir and bided my time.

Soon enough the Tully's done goofed. They led a rebellion against the Iron Throne. Thanks to the King being my son-in-law I was allied to the Targs and supported the Crown. It wasn't long until the Tullys were beat down and stripped of their title as Lord Paramount. Guess which powerful Riverlander family, proven loyal to the crown, asked for and received the Lord Paramount title? Soon enough the entire income of the Riverlands was being brought to bear on Harrenhal.

With subsequent generations I've been slowly chipping away at duchies in the Crownlands. I've got a dynasty member as LP of the Vale [yay, assassinations!], and have even put my dynasty on the Iron Throne thanks to a marriage to a female Targ heiress and a fortunate death.

Somehow the Targs ended up ruling the Westerlands and I've been making it a side goal to try and kill them all and stamp out the threat of dragons in the Seven Kingdoms. I've had a couple of military ventures against the Westerlands in the last decade. Oh, the beautiful and bloody executions of Targaryen POWs. They hate me so much. I'm half expecting them to come with their dragons and burn down Harrenhal again. Ha ha ha.

As for rebuilding Harrenhal, it's slow going. So far I've managed to remove all of the debris. That alone took three random events [large debris -> medium -> small -> none] and I started the game sixty years ago. Can't wait to get it done. With 38KB in the Harrenhal_events.txt file, it should be quite a bit of fun.

 

I've spent a couple of hours trying to win The Kingdom of the North's independence as Robb Stark.

Succeeded only after a grueling amount of failed attempts. (I also restarted whenever Robb died in a battle or during a duel, even though Brann and Riccon were still available, and that didn't happen just once.)

Balon Greyjoy invades whatever happens in the first two weeks*, no real marriage for alliance is possible at the start even if Arianne Martell (for example) is available and Doran says yes on the tooltip, he marries her off before the offer's response arrives, and the Iron throne with Lannisters smack you around with superior numbers.

If I get any success at war with the Lannisters, Stannis or Renley gets the Iron Throne, and continue to fight me.

I haven't got much experience fighting with large stacks of the mod, which might have contributed to my failures, but the journey was interesting, to say the least.



So, what lessons I've learned the hard way:
1. Raising Riverland troops too early is a mistake. Raise them instantly, and you get ~15k troops. Which might win you a battle or two, but that is it. Wait till Lannisters take a few keeps, and you get ~24k.
2. Same with Winterfell and the Norther Lords. Waiting a couple of months while the Greyjoys siege your lands makes a difference of at least 10k men, which is enough to beat the Asha's army.
3. Riverlanders seem to always loose battles that are roughly evenly matched, or even when having a couple thousand advantage. Even with Blackfish, who has a whooping 32 Martial at the start of the war. Perhaps it's Tywin's fault.
4. Rob can only barely win one-on-one fights, taking victory only against Tyrion and similar tier opponents.
5. Roughly once every five times Renley isn't assassinated and starts a war for the Iron throne, either with Stannis or without. If he is, right after it happens you can get Robb married to Margary Tyrell - but there's only a short window for that.
5.2. If you have Margary as Robb's wife, Tyrells can promise to aid against Balon Greyjoy, but so far I've been unable to get them participate in the independence war.
6. Every once in a while, a vassal changes sides, and gets in your way.
7. If Riverlanders leave the Riverun unguarded for too long, The Riverlands get taken from you instantly as Tywin wins the siege of Riverun.
8. If you take the King's landing after Stannis/Renley has it, you get an option to free a lot of Lannister Prisoners. The option to not free them comes with a large minus, which was a disappointment.
8.1. After said event, Robb Stark couldn't win a defensive battle against 15K of Throne Loyalists with 14k of Riverlanders, where the Iron Throne troops were attacking over the river, even though during it he recieved five duel prompts and all five times his opponent ran away as a coward giving +10% morale, with an additional +10% from the Direwolf event. I had to restart since it cost me the war.



On the last attempt, I was prepared to save even money for a gift to Tyrells after Renley would croak, and had my courtier constantly improving relations via diplomacy, hoping to last out the war until Tyrells could help.

This time, though, Renley stayed alive to mess with my plans, and took the Iron throne just as my 24k Riverlanders (led by Robb, Blackfish and Maege Mormont) demolished two 12k Lannister armies one after the other.

Still, I managed to catch Asha's ~15k ironborn at the North with again double the troops, and the victory was enough to sign white peace with Balon Greyjoy, and focus back on Renley.

I pressed onto the Iron throne with 22k Riverlanders, and started a siege of King's Landing. After a huge battle (20k vs 22k) I barely won losing lots of men, and the siege continued with 12k men remaining. A small blob of 8k Tyrells were patrolling just on the other side of Blackwater Rush, and a 6k Iron Throners were ravaging the Riverlands.

All the while, the Norther army had been slowly marching downwards, taking care of a few traitor lords along the way.

Then, a surprise of another 10k throne loyalists appeared close by, and combined with the Riverland Raiders and Tyrells, making up an army twice my size just as the siege of King's Landing was about to be won.

I retreated towards the Stormlands, hoping to last until my armies could combine, but it was not to be. I got caught somewhere near Storm's End and obliterated.

It wasn't looking good, and then, in a twist of fate, Robin of the Vale decided to take back 'The Fingers' from the Iron throne (Baelish is a direct vassal to Iron throne), sending men of the Vale to attack Renley, making my war winnable again.

Long maneuvering made short, it was enough for the main host of Northerners to reach King's Landing and win a few more battles and finally succeed the siege of King's landing, capturing Renley's firstborn daughter.

That was just enough to win the war, and make the little princess into a ward of the North.

Finally.

Fun fact - Roose Bolton is (and has been since the white peace with the Greyjoys) the leader of the Liege Loyalist's faction, has no living heirs, and is getting old, so it's rather likely Robb's getting the Dreadfort soon.

There's still the question of the former vassals (The Rills, Wolfswood, Flint's Finger and parts of the Barrowlands) that remained under the Iron Throne, as by the look of things, I will only be able to press one claim at a time... With means the future war's will take a while, especially since we currently have peace threaty.

We'll see.

--
*I was debating with myself to try and give Theon a fief before he's gone to his dad's in two-tree days after the start of the game - there's no event to choose if he's going, but maybe giving him Moat Cailin could stop him from sending the message and solve the Greyjoy problem.



---

Semi-related question. Has anyone ever seen the Golden Company actually win the war for their claimant? He always lands in the Stormlands with the Golden Company, yet never succeeds, even when Martells join him and the Iron Throne has been weakened by wars.

 

Nope. I don't think Aegon ever won in any of the games I've played, whether it was because one of the other lords got to him first or I did. I've seen events where he was burned to death by Stannis, drowned by Victarion, flayed by Ramsay, blinded/castrated by Cersei and everything else that's possible to happen, but I've never seen him live past his landing in the Stormlands.

 

I mean there's an independent King of the Iron Isles, King of the North, Lannisters with half-troops at best and Tyrells and Stormlanders who have just been demolished by Vale and Starks, leaving something to the lines of 10k Iron throne troops for Renley, and when Aegon lands he gets Martell support, and still loses. Oh, and Vale had the tribesman trouble, so they didn't help Renley one bit. (Like he did all of the other times that happened when I was playing for lower lords and having little to no influence on his war).

I did not expect him to lose in a mere couple of months. I mean, how much of better position could he expect?

Is the Golden Company as worthless when you field it yourself via intrigue?


I'll probably try playing as Aegon at some point, just to see how bad of an idea his attempt really is.

 

That's because the AI in CK2 has not a single clue on how to handle an army. The only way I've seen AI armies win is when they manage to make superstacks.

 

In my game it was enough to keep the Westerlands/Tywinn busy so that Stannis could conquer Kings Landing after which I kneed and thus ended the Iron Born invasion.

And when Aegon landed I decided to support him, conquered Kings Landing and became the most powerful Lord Paramount (married his first-born daughter to my son, gave the Riverlands to Rickon and married the Tyrell girl)

 

That's not entirely true. In the last game I played I was Ragnar Lodbrok of the new Kingdom of Svipjod and got called into a war in England by some random ally. I won most of the battles but then pretty much all of England rallied behind Mercia's banner and formed a 15k superstack (this being early on in the game) that would have easily beaten my 9k stack on most terrain. Luckily, I was Ragnar Lodbrok, King of Svipjod and a beast among men. My generals and I all had ~21 martial to work with.

So I planted myself in the mountains of Wales and waited. And waited. And waited. Every time I moved out of the mountains the superstack would start moving. If I stayed put, it did too. So the AI recognises that trying to fight in the mountains is a losing proposition, but I'll be damned if it wasn't annoying as hell.

 

You missed the whole point of the struggle I had.

Joffrey never won in all of the tries*. Either Stannis or Renley beat him since I messed up the Lannister armies either way. I could have bent the knee at any time past that point, in nearly all of the attempts, since I both had ~40% warscore for white peace, or quite usually, after a few weeks an event would pop up suggesting that Lannisters are no longer on the throne and maybe Robb should bend the knee to Stannis/Renley.

If that had been my aim, I would have taken the option.

My goal was Kingdom of the North, not the seat of Lord Paramount.

That meant beating or at least beating off (in this order) Lannisters, Crownlanders (Joffrey), Ironborn, Stormlanders (Renley) with Tyrell and Crownlanders (Renley's) again. It took me the whole random length winter, I think. Ah - Robb is 16 at the start, right? He was 19 and a half when I won, so it took me three years.

And even when I finally have peace, there are four high lordships that I still need to wrest back for the North. And perhaps the Vale. I'd like to have Vale. Vale is North enough, right?


I wonder if Daenerys will show up at some point. She could die before she gets to landing in Westeros.


*Technically, there were times where Robb died before either Stannis or Renley won and I restarted, but even when I lost the Riverlands (twice), Stannis had taken the capital (once out of the two, to be fair, the other time I simply restarted).

 

Started a new GoT game. Seeing as it's a new version I decided to play as Jon Snow and his children. As Ned I sent him off to be educated by Tywin. This worked out pretty well as by the time he was 13 he had 14 stewardship and about 15 martial skill. I then sent him off to the Blackfish to finish his education whereupon he had a military skill of 22 and was a skilled fighter.

In the meantime Roose had died and Ramsey who I had made master of Moat Calin was busy trying to kill his wife and she him in between worshiping the drowned god. Jon became Jon Dreadstark of the Dreadfort and soon became Jon the Just. I then switched over to Jon and betrothed myself to Rosamund Lannister. I then won the Tourny of King's Landing and crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty. We married and we both fell in love with each other.

Meanwhile on the Stark front, Robb was married to a Manderly and had only had stillborn daughters. He spent his time being painfully average in everything before he challenged Howland Reed to a duel and Howland completely demolished him, ending Robb's rather unfortunate life. Sansa was married to Jojen Reed and seemed happy enough while Arya has become a fatty after being raised by Roose. Cersei died at some point so Robert married her and they had a kid.

Bran I had had sent off to Randyl Tarly who then chucked him out of a window and crippled him, proving that somethings can't be avoided.

Rickton had managed to father about five bastards by this point had a military skill of 24 and was called the savage.

Cat in between plotting to murder me started an affair with her brother, and got pregnant after killing his wife. Everyone knows, and she and Edmure are pariahs as well as everyone laughing at Ned for being cucked by some incestuous Tully's of all things.

Theon is ruling the Iron islands and he married Beth Cassel weirdly enough.

Meanwhile Janos Slynt, that paragon of virtue, has spearheaded an investigation into the details of King Joffery's birth and concluded that he is not Robert's. No one believes him though.

I went and got a Valeryian sword as well, I think I'll rename it the fang or something.

I'm thinking i'll make a new one and put Jon in charge of Castamere and try and bring the Old Gods back to the West.

 

Is Theon Old Gods or Drowned God? If he's Old God's I doubt he'll stay in power for long and that's the only way I know that he could've married Beth Cassel.

 

Weirdly he's stayed Drowned God this time, maybe he converted and then went back to the Drowned God? I wasn't really paying attention until there were thousands of people running around the islands. Usually he ends up converting in my games even when I give him to the least sociable cynic I can find in the North.

Most of the Ironborn are dead though, Robert had a last Hurrah in the Greyjoy rebellion mark 2, the one where its just Balon and they got wrecked even harder than last time. Jon sat in Barrowtown the whole time waiting for boats. As a result the lords are all kids, I think the oldest is Asha's Goodbrother husband who is 22 or so. So I doubt there'll be a rebellion anytime soon.

 

That's one amazing game, if only for the twists that kept happening.

Also, when you say 'new version' are you saying they finally updated the mod for the latest version of CK2?