Republics have seniority succession - which is why Republic seems so senile ; )

IIRC you can award the (Merchant Republic only) honorary title "Designated Heir" to override seniority. Usually a good move.

 

First of all. I as a homosexual Frankish emperor slept with the homosexual Pope that I had as a vassal (antipope installation hijinks) and got syphilis from him. This renders all arguments ever uttered by anyone anywhere entirely invalid.

Secondly, the whole "life expectancy in the middle ages was 30" thing is misguiding. Yes, on average that's the case. However, that is mostly due to how high the newborn infant mortality rate was. This is why there are separate statistics about how long a person who already survived to 15-20 could expect to live, and it's about 60 in medieval Europe. Which is where most of my non-strong kings die.

Finally, I'm honestly disappointed with the coalition tripe they introduced. I was decidedly trying to be open minded about this. But then, after not having played the game for a year, I decided achievements could be fun and went in to the new patch and started as Genghis Khan (where you get an achievement for conquering all of continental Europe). For those of you who never started out as Genghis Khan, the game starts you in an invasion war against the currently rulers of Persia, the Turkic Khwarezmid dynasty who have the best flag/banner ever in the history of the world. It's just black with nothing on it whatsoever.

So I invaded and annexed Persia. As the game wants me to do. Because it started me in a war with the Invasion casus belli against the current kingdom of Persia. I got over 140% infamy (25% is where you get coalitions) and every single 2 province minor duchy in the area coalitioned me. Problem number 1, this makes no historical sense. Problem number 2, this would be entirely manageable for the AI or in real life because these minors are just worthless bugs to be crushed under the heel of the Mighty Mongolian Empire, now-rulers of the fallen Persia... Except there are like 50 of them with 2 soldiers each and this is the Central Asia&Iran region where provinces are huge and travelling between any 2 province takes half a year. It's not a challenge, it's an exercise in minutiae and stress management. Problem number 3, noone was concerned about this game being easy to powerplay after the first 500 hours (great money/playtime value just for that), it's inherently exploitable and people who play it for thousands of hours do so because it's great for roleplaying and vassal management will never cease to be interesting.

Luckily, while it takes Paradox about 10 patches of tiptoeing around the issue to ever take back a bad change directly; they make this a non-issue entirely and allow you to roll back to most of the previous patches via the Steam beta system. You can even get achievements after having rolled back to any patch that allows ironman if that is your thing, provided the achievement was extant during that patch.

 

http://imgur.com/a/K1utf

Someone was horsing around a bit.

 

Anyone else like to edit saves before starting, just to set up a new scenario or starting situation? I started (in the base game and the ASOIAF mod) by giving my custom rulers expanded families and ancestry and then started doing it to state borders and other families. I never do it more than a generation into the future (takes away the randomness) but it's great for setting up AU scenarios without micromanaging every character marrying a hunchback lowborn or dying of sickness right away.

 

I am quite addicted to using the unlocked Ruler Designer mod, to give my dynasty a single ungodly capable progenitor that then spreads his greatness down the generations. I rarely get further than a century or two before moving on but I've always liked the idea.

 

I've never understood the Ruler Designer mod; why not just use console commands if you want godlike rulers?

I generally play this game on ironman, though after watching Vikings I had an urge to play as Ragnarr and I console commanded the shit out of the game, until I conquered all of Europe (circa like 850 AD). Also my first character wouldn't die, no matter how many times I gave him syphilis, so I actually only played Ragnarr for like twenty years.

 

Do you perhaps mean the Ruler Designer DLC? If so, it doesn't allow you to make "godlike" rulers. Every positive trait makes you older, and every negative trait makes you younger. The same goes for increasing diplomacy, martial, so on and so forth. Means that for every positive trait, you have to take a negative one or two, to balance out your choices.

 

I think he means a mod to the DLC itself. It's actually pretty easy to change the files to remove the age increases/decreases.

 

I just use it for multiplayer with friends because console doesn't work there. It is useful to me though because it lets me get off to a good start with a better than average character while not breaking my willpower to avoid using console commands.

 

Indeed, I'd say the ruler designer is a bit unbalanced in the opposite direction -- being underpowered. Giving yourself even a half decent character means they're going to be at best middle aged.

 

I've never had a problem getting a decent character from ruler designer DLC. You should really gear it towards breeding a future ruler.

Also there are a good few traits that lower your age but disappear quite quickly, within ten years. Things like "injured."

 

True, though frankly I just don't like the restrictions it places on you in regards to age and the like. I can see those restrictions for multiplayer for balance reasons, but for singleplayer I don't see any reason not to be able to just make a young god-king who's amazing at everything or a 70 year old drunken fail-king with zeroes in every stat and every inheritable genetic defect and no heir or spouse if I want to. You can't get achievements when using it anyway.

Oh well, there are far more and better things to complain about in regards to CK2 than the restrictions placed on the ruler designer.

 

Stressed is also a good one to grab, it shouldn't really affect you a whole lot. Lustful, as well as cynical and cruel. These hopefully will disappear relatively quickly, and give you a few extra points to work with.

 

Oh, I know all about how to game the ruler designer's system. I just think that in singleplayer you shouldn't have to game it since you don't get achievements when using it anyway.

 

That was what always killed me you'd think since they "balanced" it with the age penalties that they could at least allow you to get achievements on your custom character.

 

Way of Life is worth getting? I'm betting Chalemagne is.
I don't have Rajas, Horse Lords and Conclave.

Desperate enough to play the game I might not even wait for a deal. Have been trying to play Ivar recently (after binge watching Vikings). He always dies before early 50's at most.

 

Way of Life makes it pretty easy to have rulers with godly stats, but the events are fun.
RoI, HL are nice if you like playing with nomads or asian rulers like marahajas. Other than that, it doesn't add a lot if you exclusively play western european rulers.

I am ambivalent on Conclave though. I thought its mechanics weren't implemented all that well, and in a very 'gamey' way, like the fact that everyone wants to be a councillor for instance.
I like the concepts though, the infamy system, the new education stuff. It's just it needs to be rebalanced a bit. It's better than what it was when it was released though, so I'm hopeful.

 

The one thing I didn't like about Conclave was how it limited your power.

Well, maybe power isn't the right word. Perhaps options? Some of my favorite memories of CKII were doing crazy stunts to grab claims, like marrying your daughter and then taking that daughter as a concubine, castrate your parents, reenact the legend of Odiepus, put a horse on your council. That's severely curtailed now.

I understand that CKII Pre-Conclave was considered "easy" by many, but Conclave did nothing to allievate that. It added tedium, not complexity. Personally, I feel a better method would be to prevent blobbing; make empires more unstable the larger they are. It would have forced a lot more creative methods of spreading influence.

 

Thanks for the input guys, I decided to get Chalemagne and Way of Life. Couldn't wait for a sale. I am having tons of fun trying to play Ivar past his 60s. Of course, he always dies earlier.

In any case I have noticed that giving temples to sons doesn't exclude them from inheritance. I can't figure out what's the best way to avoid big splits. Using assassination plots is really the only way?

Create a new Kingdom "important decision" appeared to me, but I was afraid it would be a bad thing.

Way of Life was totally worth it, by the way. I haven't yet played on the earlier start date, though.

 

Create New Kingdom is just a way for you to establish a brand new kingdom level title, with a custom name. It's not a bad idea to try and set one up after a conquest spree, before your king dies and all your lands get split between his sons. If you only have one kingdom title it means your collection of lands stays together.