Hopefully there are some positive consequences for going with your characters traits rather than just negative for going against them.
For those that have lived through a Paradox sequelling, do expansion features from the previous version make it across, or does there tend to be a reset on that front?
On the reveal stream, they've said that they're keeping what worked and discarding what didn't.
Things that definitely did not make the cut are Merchant Republics and Nomads. Also, I believe the earliest start date is going to be The Old Gods one, so I guess Charlemagne is out as well.
They probably want to completely redo the Merchant Republic and Nomad coding. I read that the implementation of the republics was really badly hacked together.
IIRC the issue was that the Feudal system was hard-coded, so any exceptions had to either essentially be hacks to the game (like MRs) or obey the rules even when it made no sense (like all Nomads being king or emperor tier)
They've mentioned that, though it won't he possible in the launch version, it should be possible to implement a playable landless character now.
Hopefully there are some positive consequences for going with your characters traits rather than just negative for going against them.
For those that have lived through a Paradox sequelling, do expansion features from the previous version make it across, or does there tend to be a reset on that front?
On the reveal stream, they've said that they're keeping what worked and discarding what didn't.
Things that definitely did not make the cut are Merchant Republics and Nomads. Also, I believe the earliest start date is going to be The Old Gods one, so I guess Charlemagne is out as well.
That's a shame, I liked the Charlemagne start.
0
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PolarisI am powerless against the sky.Registered Userregular
Hopefully there are some positive consequences for going with your characters traits rather than just negative for going against them.
For those that have lived through a Paradox sequelling, do expansion features from the previous version make it across, or does there tend to be a reset on that front?
On the reveal stream, they've said that they're keeping what worked and discarding what didn't.
Things that definitely did not make the cut are Merchant Republics and Nomads. Also, I believe the earliest start date is going to be The Old Gods one, so I guess Charlemagne is out as well.
That's a shame, I liked the Charlemagne start.
You know, there is a remote possibility that they might add it as a DLC sometime...
decided to play a game as the duchess of Kiev in the charlemagne start to actually play a game in Russia for once and also reform slavic to destroy the patriarchy.
unfortunately someone beat me to destroying the patriarchy
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I have a female caliph in my current game as well. She control Africa to Tibet, Spain and France.
Hopefully there are some positive consequences for going with your characters traits rather than just negative for going against them.
For those that have lived through a Paradox sequelling, do expansion features from the previous version make it across, or does there tend to be a reset on that front?
On the reveal stream, they've said that they're keeping what worked and discarding what didn't.
Things that definitely did not make the cut are Merchant Republics and Nomads. Also, I believe the earliest start date is going to be The Old Gods one, so I guess Charlemagne is out as well.
That's a shame, I liked the Charlemagne start.
You know, there is a remote possibility that they might add it as a DLC sometime...
I suspect they need to figure out how to handle that era if they put it in again. It wasn't just an earlier start, it involved scripted events for playing as Charlemagne that many players never saw if they didn't feel like making the HRE.
To be honest since it was added I have felt that the Charlemagne start was by far the least interesting/fun start to play in.
Paradox needs to push some later than 1066 starts in CK3 because a lot of starts are super fun but very few people ever choose to play a date later than 1066.
I also want earlier starts as well. If we're talking about the whole Middle Ages, I think you should be able to start a game in 476 and go right to 1453.
I also want earlier starts as well. If we're talking about the whole Middle Ages, I think you should be able to start a game in 476 and go right to 1453.
The problem with a 476 start is that the structure of governance are entirely different, not to mention that lack of information on rulers. And then you also have to deal with massive waves of immigration in an intelligent way
The sort of systems it would require are very different than what would handle the high medieval period
I also want earlier starts as well. If we're talking about the whole Middle Ages, I think you should be able to start a game in 476 and go right to 1453.
The problem with a 476 start is that the structure of governance are entirely different, not to mention that lack of information on rulers. And then you also have to deal with massive waves of immigration in an intelligent way
The sort of systems it would require are very different than what would handle the high medieval period
Not to mention some contentious history with what we do know. Like that guy who was visited in a cave by an Archangel.
Or something more mundane, how modern England went from Briton to Anglo-Saxon.
Ah, I didn't know about that. When did feudalism as we know it start to take shape?
Typically the Carolingian period is considered the beginning of European feudalism
As the Frankish Empire grew, it increasingly needed to rely on the integration of local elites, but the biggest factor probably was its subsequent breakup and decentralization
I wonder if CK3 will let us play more with the government system. You can already go from tribal to feudal, but I wouldn’t mind more granularity within the broad categories.
Feudalism took shape as a result of monarchs needing smaller scale quicker responses to threats with a smaller budget.
Even the Eastern Roman Empire turned more and more to fuedal-like governance systems both as a natural result of local aristocracies leveraging more power during crises-es and because the nature of their wars shifted away from conquest to dealing with incursions. Autocratic imperial rule as in the hey day of the roman empire is very, very bad at dealing with dispersed problems like nomadic groups wanting to settle in your lands or smaller kingdoms/empires wanting to raid you for loot.
Also I mean most of pre-Roman Europe that was not in the Roman empire if forced to constrain to game mechanics would look more like tribal realms than feudal. (Although it's complicated because there were places north of the Mediterranean that did have decently complex cities there just like weren't a bunch of them and the cities were comparatively small as compared to what you'd find in Southern/Eastern Europe.)
edit: Also apropros of none of the above, but in that game where I noticed the Calipha I since panned the map over to India and Tibet's crest looked a bit odd... and then I realized that they were ruled by a Sogdian Nestorian dynasty. While yes that is the kind of dumb thing I'd do to proliferate some of the rarest cultures and religions in the game, no I had nothing to do with it.
Lets get some Assyrians vs Elamites vs Minoans up in this game.
"New starts for the game have been added!
Invasion of the Sea People: We're not sure who they really were, so we've added event troops that select their culture at random from a list!
Early Classical: Were some of these mythological heroes actual people? Who knows but now you can make them bone their siblings!
Neolithic: With unique assassination events to make up for no one knowing what an inn or beer were yet!
Paleolithic: Enjoy 300,000 in game years before you can hold territory!"
Lets get some Assyrians vs Elamites vs Minoans up in this game.
"New starts for the game have been added!
Invasion of the Sea People: We're not sure who they really were, so we've added event troops that select their culture at random from a list!
Early Classical: Were some of these mythological heroes actual people? Who knows but now you can make them bone their siblings!
Neolithic: With unique assassination events to make up for no one knowing what an inn or beer were yet!
Paleolithic: Enjoy 300,000 in game years before you can hold territory!"
There is a theory that beer is responsible for our change from being a nomadic culture to an agrarian one. Either because the process of making made the water used potable and kept settlements from being wiped out by water borne disease... or to protect the wild wheat fields so noone else could steal it and to make beer all year long.
Lets get some Assyrians vs Elamites vs Minoans up in this game.
"New starts for the game have been added!
Invasion of the Sea People: We're not sure who they really were, so we've added event troops that select their culture at random from a list!
Early Classical: Were some of these mythological heroes actual people? Who knows but now you can make them bone their siblings!
Neolithic: With unique assassination events to make up for no one knowing what an inn or beer were yet!
Paleolithic: Enjoy 300,000 in game years before you can hold territory!"
So uh, got a uh kind of different event chain in my Turov>Empire of Rus>Slavic Union game.
My current character's brother turned into a bear. Like a literal bear. I don't think I'll be able to make the Slavic Union if I culture convert but maybe I'll get him to making a litter and land the bear branch of the family somewhere.
So uh, got a uh kind of different event chain in my Turov>Empire of Rus>Slavic Union game.
My current character's brother turned into a bear. Like a literal bear. I don't think I'll be able to make the Slavic Union if I culture convert but maybe I'll get him to making a litter and land the bear branch of the family somewhere.
Are you doing a random-ish world roll with animal populations, or is this some sort of absurd occult event I've never heard of?
The Secret Bear event is a very, very rare Absurd event. Not Supernatural, I don't think. Nothing supernatural about bears, after all. Even ones that are somehow able to impersonate a human being for some time before being found out.
So uh, got a uh kind of different event chain in my Turov>Empire of Rus>Slavic Union game.
My current character's brother turned into a bear. Like a literal bear. I don't think I'll be able to make the Slavic Union if I culture convert but maybe I'll get him to making a litter and land the bear branch of the family somewhere.
Are you doing a random-ish world roll with animal populations, or is this some sort of absurd occult event I've never heard of?
the second one. i looked it up and the apparent triggers to have all the events fire to actually have someone (I think it's always a sibling) turn out to be
a secret bear are roughly one in one million, or one in five hundred thousand if your character is insane, or one in one hundred thousand if your character is paranoid. I'll post screenshots later.
i had never even heard of the event chain so I was quite confused as I started getting these weird events about my character's sibling. I did not see it coming at all.
Okay a couple of screenshots, didn't get any of the event because again I was totally blindsided by it
Bear Bro. (Yes I married him to a descendant of the chinese imperial family after I learned he was bear. Will eventually get him or his descendants to marry into China Imperial Family proper... IMAGINE BEAR EMPEROR OF CHINA)
Bear Baby.
Must ensure noble ursine traditions don't die out. I can't culture convert until at least forming the Slavic union, but I will do all I can to keep the bears around.
So uh, got a uh kind of different event chain in my Turov>Empire of Rus>Slavic Union game.
My current character's brother turned into a bear. Like a literal bear. I don't think I'll be able to make the Slavic Union if I culture convert but maybe I'll get him to making a litter and land the bear branch of the family somewhere.
Are you doing a random-ish world roll with animal populations, or is this some sort of absurd occult event I've never heard of?
the second one. i looked it up and the apparent triggers to have all the events fire to actually have someone (I think it's always a sibling) turn out to be
a secret bear are roughly one in one million, or one in five hundred thousand if your character is insane, or one in one hundred thousand if your character is paranoid. I'll post screenshots later.
i had never even heard of the event chain so I was quite confused as I started getting these weird events about my character's sibling. I did not see it coming at all.
One of my recent games had my character noticing that their sister was unusually hirsute. I quickly married her off thinking it was some sort of werewolf event before I remembered references to this chain.
I kind of love that they added bear cub portraits. Deciding to lean in on the Absurd events must have been fun over at Paradox.
I managed to roll both some freaky supernatural and some freaky absurd events in my last campaign playing as the Lithuanians from the Carolingian start. One member of my dynasty did the whole Alexander reborn thing, starting by thwarting an assassination attempt as an infant by killing the snake left in his crib, and rolled off to conquer Ireland and Scotland. Meanwhile the character I was playing was in a warrior society roaming the earth duelling random people for legend's sake, made his way to Constantinople, and found out the Byzantine empress had a crew of sapient bears as her bodyguards/champions who heard there was a badass in the neighborhood and wanted to try their luck.
One of them was wounded but survived the duel. I invited him to court and made him a bearon.
It was a deeply, deeply ridiculous campaign and it's convinced me never to uncheck "allow supernatural events" or "allow absurd events" because they're awesome.
argh the game crashed and now the save is corrupted, right when a Great Holy War for Perm was called, and I was going to make my bear bro the king of perm as was obviously preordained by the gods.
edit: since that game is unexpectedly done I decided to give a go in the new start date and try the Qarmatians and wow that's a fun start. despite some rough going i've gone south as far as oman and went did an invasion of iraq which i took from the abbasids. And now I have my capital in the single best capital province in the game, Baghdad. also killed my brother since that's what you do if you're playing as any character with decadence mechanics.
I should play some really isolated religion again because having to breed advisors is a lot more fun than just opening the character finder to find what you want
After many attempts, I finally managed to complete a Muslim campaign from the Charlemagne start all the way to the end.
I began as a Duke somewhere in Portugal, a vassal of the Umayyads. I grabbed some of the surrounding territory, mostly other minor rulers, then started plotting my invasion of Ireland. After a fabricated claim on one of the Irish southern counties, I just country conquest after county conquested my way across Ireland, and eventually the British Isles.
My plan was to become King of Ireland, but remain a vassal of the Umayyads. More or less. I had no intentions of causing trouble for my liege, but should a decadence revolt happen and the Umayyad Caliphate happened to fall apart, then I would declare independence and see where I went from there. I'm not a very ambitious CK 2 player, but I am an incredibly opportunistic one.
Meanwhile, I wasn't the only one working to expand my territory. The European Catholics were doing very well. Until they weren't. Several times did one ruler or another manage to pull together enough territory to form the Empire of Francia, but they just never quite got around to it, and then the whole thing repeatedly shattered into Gavelkind Kingdoms. Catholicism could've stood a chance.
More surprisingly, the African pagans did really well. Some ruler or other did manage to pull together enough territory to form an Empire, and then did so. The computer even managed to reform the African faith. This will become relevant later.
So. Anyway. After centuries of steady expansion into Europe and Northern Africa, the decadence revolt happened. The Umayyads lost, the realm was shattered. And I was in a prime position to snap up all the little remnants of the old Caliphate and declare myself Emperor.
My approach to Crusades, Jihads, and Great Holy Wars is pretty simple: Do I think we stand a chance and will my troops get where they need to be without getting eaten by attrition? If yes, then, sure, I'm in, why not? And so my forces landed in a Byzantine Empire torn apart by internal revolts and nabbed me a good chunk of Thrace, including Constantinople. I decided to hang on to Constantinople, even though I had no real use for it. My core territories were in Portugal. Constantinople is too far away to be that relevant. So I decided to make Constantinople the way to designate my heir - if I didn't want my firstborn to inherit, the favoured child would get to rule Constantinople and so become the heir. Amazingly, I never managed to lose Constantinople due to unforeseen inheritance shenanigans and the county remained the way I designated my heirs throughout the game.
Anyway, "South" Africa was very solidly in the hands of that pagan Empire, but North Africa was pretty divided, so I, well, conquered it. Only later did it dawn on me that I had vassalized the African pagan Pope. A pagan Pope who could, and did, proclaim Great Holy Wars for the faith. And who had the backing of a powerful pagan Empire. And every time the pagan Pope won a Great Holy Way, he got the territory. And because I was his liege, I got the territory as well.
So I accidentally stumbled my way into a situation where pagans fighting for their faith expanded the borders of my Muslim Empire.
I think this could have been a "World Conquest" run, if I were so inclined. I certainly had the troops and the money. So much money. I constructed multiple Great Works because I just didn't know what else to do with all my money. Sure, I could have hired every mercenary company in the world and swept across the map, but all that micro-managing would've been such a hassle. So I didn't bother.
I also pushed the Status of Women laws up to full equality, and imposed Absolute Cognatic inheritance rules on the Empire. This had one unforeseen consequence - vassal Queens asking me if they could please marry my husband. I should have seen it coming, of course. Muslim men don't stop being able to have multiple wives just because I'm playing a Muslim woman. But it was still surprising to have happen.
Oh, and I finally got the Secret Bear event chain. Only took 1050 hours of playtime.
But on the whole, this wasn't a very eventful playthrough. My realm was incredibly stable and just expanded gradually over time to swallow almost all of Europe and Northern Africa.
I still want to do African pagan, Han, and Shattered World playthroughs. But, frankly, I don't know if I'll ever get around to any of those.
WotanAnubis on
+13
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
If you don't have the Sons of Abraham DLC for CK2, it's apparently free on Steam for the weekend.
Decided to play a game as Mark "Bohemond" de Hauteville, also commonly known as Bohemond of Antioch. Most people who've played CK2 for awhile or have read at all about the history of the Crusades probably know who he is, but in short, he was the eldest son of the ruler of Norman Italy who fought with his father against Alexios to totally end Byzantine influence in Italy, and even served as the leader of one of the multiple attempted invasions of Greece by the Normans. To simplify court politics, he was the only son of his father's marriage, which was after the fact ruled to be illegitimate. This essentially stalled him out from any major inheritance in Italy when his father died. Irritated, when the call for Crusading came he saw the chance to stealliberate a realm for himself in the eastern Mediterranean. He was a talented, intelligent*, if entirely unscrupulous man who got closer than you'd expect to carving out a kingdom for himself. In the end though, all he left his successors was a small short lived state that mostly lived on as a vassal to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Anyways, the earliest time you can play as Bohemond as 'Prince of Antioch' is in June of 1098 which is just after the siege of Antioch had been settled and Bohemond left the de-facto ruler. It's been pretty fun, harder than playing as any of the historical kings of Jerusalem. I was a bit surprised that the game doesn't actually start with a crusade. Like known landless adventurers with ragtag teams of event spawned troops? I mean they'd be crushed but it's a little odd that I've never noticed how little flavor the historical crusade bookmarks actually have in a game ostensibly most about the period of the crusades.
You know, provided the Plague doesn't force a change of plans.
WotanAnubis on
+7
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
edited May 2020
IGN also has a nice map overview, which is slightly expanded and suggests a possible China expansion. Preorder is also up with a royal addition which includes:
- Expansion pass covering the first three upcoming expansions
- Bonus Fashion of the Abbasid Court Expansion Pass
I must not preorder.
Preordering is the mind-killer.
Preordering is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my desire to preorder. I will permit it to passover me and end up on a wishlist.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see my bank account.
Where the bank account has gone there will be nothing, because I am totally stoked about this even though I know they're going to run like 15 expansions on it and I'm still frustrated that HOI4 and Stellaris keep changing basic game mechanics like every few months but ahh fuck it let's do this thing.
Did you know that there is a bloodline in Africa during the Old God and Iron Century bookmarks that allows you to have Enatic-Cognatic succession. Also there's jewish provinces in Abyssinia... something something Queen of Sheba. I want a Enatic Cognatic Jewish Queen of Israel. For the funs.
Posts
IIRC the issue was that the Feudal system was hard-coded, so any exceptions had to either essentially be hacks to the game (like MRs) or obey the rules even when it made no sense (like all Nomads being king or emperor tier)
They've mentioned that, though it won't he possible in the launch version, it should be possible to implement a playable landless character now.
That's a shame, I liked the Charlemagne start.
unfortunately someone beat me to destroying the patriarchy
I suspect they need to figure out how to handle that era if they put it in again. It wasn't just an earlier start, it involved scripted events for playing as Charlemagne that many players never saw if they didn't feel like making the HRE.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Paradox needs to push some later than 1066 starts in CK3 because a lot of starts are super fun but very few people ever choose to play a date later than 1066.
The problem with a 476 start is that the structure of governance are entirely different, not to mention that lack of information on rulers. And then you also have to deal with massive waves of immigration in an intelligent way
The sort of systems it would require are very different than what would handle the high medieval period
Not to mention some contentious history with what we do know. Like that guy who was visited in a cave by an Archangel.
Or something more mundane, how modern England went from Briton to Anglo-Saxon.
But it would have to be a cool different game. The feudal systems just don't map very well over.
Typically the Carolingian period is considered the beginning of European feudalism
As the Frankish Empire grew, it increasingly needed to rely on the integration of local elites, but the biggest factor probably was its subsequent breakup and decentralization
I wonder if CK3 will let us play more with the government system. You can already go from tribal to feudal, but I wouldn’t mind more granularity within the broad categories.
Even the Eastern Roman Empire turned more and more to fuedal-like governance systems both as a natural result of local aristocracies leveraging more power during crises-es and because the nature of their wars shifted away from conquest to dealing with incursions. Autocratic imperial rule as in the hey day of the roman empire is very, very bad at dealing with dispersed problems like nomadic groups wanting to settle in your lands or smaller kingdoms/empires wanting to raid you for loot.
Also I mean most of pre-Roman Europe that was not in the Roman empire if forced to constrain to game mechanics would look more like tribal realms than feudal. (Although it's complicated because there were places north of the Mediterranean that did have decently complex cities there just like weren't a bunch of them and the cities were comparatively small as compared to what you'd find in Southern/Eastern Europe.)
edit: Also apropros of none of the above, but in that game where I noticed the Calipha I since panned the map over to India and Tibet's crest looked a bit odd... and then I realized that they were ruled by a Sogdian Nestorian dynasty. While yes that is the kind of dumb thing I'd do to proliferate some of the rarest cultures and religions in the game, no I had nothing to do with it.
Lets get some Assyrians vs Elamites vs Minoans up in this game.
"New starts for the game have been added!
Invasion of the Sea People: We're not sure who they really were, so we've added event troops that select their culture at random from a list!
Early Classical: Were some of these mythological heroes actual people? Who knows but now you can make them bone their siblings!
Neolithic: With unique assassination events to make up for no one knowing what an inn or beer were yet!
Paleolithic: Enjoy 300,000 in game years before you can hold territory!"
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
There is a theory that beer is responsible for our change from being a nomadic culture to an agrarian one. Either because the process of making made the water used potable and kept settlements from being wiped out by water borne disease... or to protect the wild wheat fields so noone else could steal it and to make beer all year long.
It's worth installing just to look at the map
"Make," them bone their siblings?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
the second one. i looked it up and the apparent triggers to have all the events fire to actually have someone (I think it's always a sibling) turn out to be
Bear Bro. (Yes I married him to a descendant of the chinese imperial family after I learned he was bear. Will eventually get him or his descendants to marry into China Imperial Family proper... IMAGINE BEAR EMPEROR OF CHINA)
Bear Baby.
Must ensure noble ursine traditions don't die out. I can't culture convert until at least forming the Slavic union, but I will do all I can to keep the bears around.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
No, I think it predates it by about a year.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
One of my recent games had my character noticing that their sister was unusually hirsute. I quickly married her off thinking it was some sort of werewolf event before I remembered references to this chain.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I managed to roll both some freaky supernatural and some freaky absurd events in my last campaign playing as the Lithuanians from the Carolingian start. One member of my dynasty did the whole Alexander reborn thing, starting by thwarting an assassination attempt as an infant by killing the snake left in his crib, and rolled off to conquer Ireland and Scotland. Meanwhile the character I was playing was in a warrior society roaming the earth duelling random people for legend's sake, made his way to Constantinople, and found out the Byzantine empress had a crew of sapient bears as her bodyguards/champions who heard there was a badass in the neighborhood and wanted to try their luck.
One of them was wounded but survived the duel. I invited him to court and made him a bearon.
It was a deeply, deeply ridiculous campaign and it's convinced me never to uncheck "allow supernatural events" or "allow absurd events" because they're awesome.
edit: since that game is unexpectedly done I decided to give a go in the new start date and try the Qarmatians and wow that's a fun start. despite some rough going i've gone south as far as oman and went did an invasion of iraq which i took from the abbasids. And now I have my capital in the single best capital province in the game, Baghdad. also killed my brother since that's what you do if you're playing as any character with decadence mechanics.
Well, apparently, Sword of Islam is Free to Keep this weekend. So if you don't have that one yet...
After many attempts, I finally managed to complete a Muslim campaign from the Charlemagne start all the way to the end.
I began as a Duke somewhere in Portugal, a vassal of the Umayyads. I grabbed some of the surrounding territory, mostly other minor rulers, then started plotting my invasion of Ireland. After a fabricated claim on one of the Irish southern counties, I just country conquest after county conquested my way across Ireland, and eventually the British Isles.
My plan was to become King of Ireland, but remain a vassal of the Umayyads. More or less. I had no intentions of causing trouble for my liege, but should a decadence revolt happen and the Umayyad Caliphate happened to fall apart, then I would declare independence and see where I went from there. I'm not a very ambitious CK 2 player, but I am an incredibly opportunistic one.
Meanwhile, I wasn't the only one working to expand my territory. The European Catholics were doing very well. Until they weren't. Several times did one ruler or another manage to pull together enough territory to form the Empire of Francia, but they just never quite got around to it, and then the whole thing repeatedly shattered into Gavelkind Kingdoms. Catholicism could've stood a chance.
More surprisingly, the African pagans did really well. Some ruler or other did manage to pull together enough territory to form an Empire, and then did so. The computer even managed to reform the African faith. This will become relevant later.
So. Anyway. After centuries of steady expansion into Europe and Northern Africa, the decadence revolt happened. The Umayyads lost, the realm was shattered. And I was in a prime position to snap up all the little remnants of the old Caliphate and declare myself Emperor.
My approach to Crusades, Jihads, and Great Holy Wars is pretty simple: Do I think we stand a chance and will my troops get where they need to be without getting eaten by attrition? If yes, then, sure, I'm in, why not? And so my forces landed in a Byzantine Empire torn apart by internal revolts and nabbed me a good chunk of Thrace, including Constantinople. I decided to hang on to Constantinople, even though I had no real use for it. My core territories were in Portugal. Constantinople is too far away to be that relevant. So I decided to make Constantinople the way to designate my heir - if I didn't want my firstborn to inherit, the favoured child would get to rule Constantinople and so become the heir. Amazingly, I never managed to lose Constantinople due to unforeseen inheritance shenanigans and the county remained the way I designated my heirs throughout the game.
Anyway, "South" Africa was very solidly in the hands of that pagan Empire, but North Africa was pretty divided, so I, well, conquered it. Only later did it dawn on me that I had vassalized the African pagan Pope. A pagan Pope who could, and did, proclaim Great Holy Wars for the faith. And who had the backing of a powerful pagan Empire. And every time the pagan Pope won a Great Holy Way, he got the territory. And because I was his liege, I got the territory as well.
So I accidentally stumbled my way into a situation where pagans fighting for their faith expanded the borders of my Muslim Empire.
I think this could have been a "World Conquest" run, if I were so inclined. I certainly had the troops and the money. So much money. I constructed multiple Great Works because I just didn't know what else to do with all my money. Sure, I could have hired every mercenary company in the world and swept across the map, but all that micro-managing would've been such a hassle. So I didn't bother.
I also pushed the Status of Women laws up to full equality, and imposed Absolute Cognatic inheritance rules on the Empire. This had one unforeseen consequence - vassal Queens asking me if they could please marry my husband. I should have seen it coming, of course. Muslim men don't stop being able to have multiple wives just because I'm playing a Muslim woman. But it was still surprising to have happen.
Oh, and I finally got the Secret Bear event chain. Only took 1050 hours of playtime.
But on the whole, this wasn't a very eventful playthrough. My realm was incredibly stable and just expanded gradually over time to swallow almost all of Europe and Northern Africa.
I still want to do African pagan, Han, and Shattered World playthroughs. But, frankly, I don't know if I'll ever get around to any of those.
Free to keep if you grab it this weekend, FYI.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Anyways, the earliest time you can play as Bohemond as 'Prince of Antioch' is in June of 1098 which is just after the siege of Antioch had been settled and Bohemond left the de-facto ruler. It's been pretty fun, harder than playing as any of the historical kings of Jerusalem. I was a bit surprised that the game doesn't actually start with a crusade. Like known landless adventurers with ragtag teams of event spawned troops? I mean they'd be crushed but it's a little odd that I've never noticed how little flavor the historical crusade bookmarks actually have in a game ostensibly most about the period of the crusades.
Crusader Kings 3, coming September 1st.
You know, provided the Plague doesn't force a change of plans.
- Expansion pass covering the first three upcoming expansions
- Bonus Fashion of the Abbasid Court Expansion Pass
Preordering is the mind-killer.
Preordering is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my desire to preorder. I will permit it to passover me and end up on a wishlist.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see my bank account.
Where the bank account has gone there will be nothing, because I am totally stoked about this even though I know they're going to run like 15 expansions on it and I'm still frustrated that HOI4 and Stellaris keep changing basic game mechanics like every few months but ahh fuck it let's do this thing.