Playing a Jain ruler is great because you get a health bonus, everyone loves you just for existing, you don't get new reign penalties, and you are always free to nominate who your heir is so you don't have to worry about your first-born son being a sixty-something idiot when you die, because you have a twenty year-old lined up.
It's because you're literally the emperor with no clothes.
Good god, the seducer pick for NPC's are utter bullshit. I've been cuckolded at least twice by the same neighboring count. I should have ran him through when I challenged and maimed his ass in a duel.
The seducer focus in general seems to be pretty broken, and AFAIK its been nerfed and used to be even worse. It seems to invariably result in a character with a dozen bastards and the title "X the Lecher". For example, Lennon the Lecher who I mentioned above. One of his few legitimate sons, Constantine the Lewd, is actually even worse, carrying on his proud tradition of creating a ridiculous number of bastards. Like his father he only has five legitimate heirs, only he has twenty-one bastards.
So what's the highest number of kids you guys have ever seen someone squeeze out? Someone on the crusader kings subreddit posted a screenshot of someone who had forty-something kids, mostly bastards. Also, what's the oldest character you've ever seen? I just had my steward die aged 81 which is the longest I've ever had a vassal live for, although looking at the character opinions screen under "search all" and sorting by age reveals that the oldest person in the world is currently age 83.
But what exactly is broken about it? Like I don't see much benefit in having tons and tons of bastards...
You can mass produce children and legitimize only the ones with traits you want in an heir. Not that it's reliable given the rarity of Quick, Genius, and Strong passing down.
Playing a Jain ruler is great because you get a health bonus, everyone loves you just for existing, you don't get new reign penalties, and you are always free to nominate who your heir is so you don't have to worry about your first-born son being a sixty-something idiot when you die, because you have a twenty year-old lined up.
Also, you get a +3 demesne limit bonus.
And with a Mongol culture you get the best CB in the game and some of the best retinues.
Mongol Jain is power gaming at its finest.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
A strong lusty Norse ruler with 3 concubines, lovers and replacing the concubines every 10-20 years would generate lots of kids. I had 18 legitimate heirs one time doing that, on gravelkind. I think like 4 or 5 died before inheriting though.
I still think there should be a handful of marriage war goals, like enforcing betrothals and forcing unmarried lovers who conceive children to marry.
I am also pissed you can not go to war with your wife over minor territories. Last time I go to war to put her on a throne!
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
I never changed my culture from Kannada when I did my Jain game, and while it was slow going for the first few hundred years, I managed to take all of India and a fair chunk of the Middle East by the time it was all over.
But I would've preferred if the Abbasids and other factions had been a bit more of a threat, Muslim rulers never really seem to make much ground in India - Sindh starts as Muslim 769 but it usually vanishes pretty fast
Patch 2.4 changelog, and as per usual they're hilariously terrible out of context.
Some highlights:
- Must now be at least a king level ruler in order to expel the Jews.
- Demanding Fatwas, castrating, blinding and throwing people into pits are now all targeted decisions.
- Characters who love their spouses very much are now less likely to join holy orders.
- Paranoid parents should no longer worry about potential plots against dead children.
- The lustful cabin can no longer cause multiple pregnancies or create children between two female lovers. [BOOOOO!]
- You no longer feel like you're partying on your own when inviting people that are not your vassals.
- You no longer punish yourself when a prisoner tries to flee from your prison by charming the guard.
- You no longer feel bad for having a romantic relationship with your spouse. [What if s/he's your sibling? Can we still feel bad?]
- You'll no longer try to talk to your dead children when you have the family focus. [This should have been changed to instead just give the ruler the lunatic trait!]
- Your sparring partner no longer wields a limb-creating healing stick when he accidentally hits you.
- You can no longer arrange a ball in the dungeons.
- Runestones no longer tries to mention non-existing parents.
- Discovering two vassals of the same sex engaging in carnal activities during pagan feasts no longer let's the liege join in on the fun.
- Fixed a bug with the 'Witch Nanny' being able to hold the Court Chaplain job
- Fixed a bug with the 'church_unfunny' modifier
- Blocked impregnation by female lovers or modded female 'husbands'
- Family Focus: fixed some issues with improved relations between dead family members
- Lovers in prison can no longer get impregnated normally
- Unlocked the standard gender succession laws for Tribals [WOOOT!]
- Muslims are now allowed to fire their Court Imam if he is of another religion!
- Fixed a bug with the 'spouse' field in plots only working on your primary wife
- Added missing adjective form of the kingdom of Saxony
- AI will not join wars against spouse
- AI: Toned down seduction by characters with many children
- AI: Toned down impregnation chances for seduction affairs with characters with many children [as long as they don't neuter me!]
- No longer possible to banish your spouse or concubine [but what if I want her great tracts of land?]
- Fixed a bug where the Chancellor might discover himself trying to fabricate a claim on his own titles and kill himself
- Tribal vassal opinion modifiers in Laws now actually work
- It is no longer possible to send chancellor to the wrong province in the tutorial.
- Rising tribal army army will no longer teleport the king from any other army.
- Underaged rulers are not allowed to lead armies any more. [No doubt past their bedtimes]
- Turkish portraits show blinded eyes, boils, scars and red spots correctly now.
- Being able to have concubines overrides polygamy now. [as well it should]
- Friends are now considered allies.
- History is now being applied correctly when the Old Gods DLC is enabled but the Charlemagne DLC isn't.
- Fixed a world peace bug when everyone would become allied to everyone. [You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one]
- Several Lovers events now checks that ruler/spouse/lover isn't incapable/imprisoned
- Male-only Lovers events no longer triggers for women
- Single-only Lovers events no longer fires for married characters
- Feudal life even no longer automatically causes incapable [???]
- Lovers event checks for imprisoned and incapable, checks religion_group instead of religion
- Lovers event no longer marries you to imprisoned+incapable lovers
- Made sure that events that require a character to have eyes do not fire for blind people
- Fixed that bedtime stories can no longer be told to dead children
- Fixed bug where the plot to kill allow-trigger did not properly check so that you did not try to kill the children of female lovers (it worked as intended against male lovers).
- Tyrany wars will now properly end when the tyrant dies.
- Marriages and betrothals are no longer blocked by being in a revolt.
- You can no longer grant Eunuchs tribal counties.
- Fixed bug where children were considered born in the purple even if the ruling parent was dead when the child was concieved.
- You no longer gain religious authority for looting temples of your own religion.
I'll miss talking to my dead children, and my straight queen being able to get her lesbian lover pregnant.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
This is the screenshot I took immediately after getting The Black Bishop (just five achievements left now!), and rarely has a ruler's nickname been better deserved. He murdered multiple Popes and scores of Cardinals, trying to put his dude on the Papal throne.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Good god, the seducer pick for NPC's are utter bullshit. I've been cuckolded at least twice by the same neighboring count. I should have ran him through when I challenged and maimed his ass in a duel.
The seducer focus in general seems to be pretty broken, and AFAIK its been nerfed and used to be even worse. It seems to invariably result in a character with a dozen bastards and the title "X the Lecher". For example, Lennon the Lecher who I mentioned above. One of his few legitimate sons, Constantine the Lewd, is actually even worse, carrying on his proud tradition of creating a ridiculous number of bastards. Like his father he only has five legitimate heirs, only he has twenty-one bastards.
So what's the highest number of kids you guys have ever seen someone squeeze out? Someone on the crusader kings subreddit posted a screenshot of someone who had forty-something kids, mostly bastards. Also, what's the oldest character you've ever seen? I just had my steward die aged 81 which is the longest I've ever had a vassal live for, although looking at the character opinions screen under "search all" and sorting by age reveals that the oldest person in the world is currently age 83.
Does writing your own mod to make your character an immortal God-King count?
Because I totally did that and had my guy live to >150 before I got bored of smashing everything in
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
I'm curious what "History is now being applied correctly when the Old Gods DLC is enabled but the Charlemagne DLC isn't" means, given that I'm playing with Old Gods but not Charlemagne.
Also not mentioned in those patch notes, adventurers no longer bring all of their money with them when they invade, which is a shame because banishing them was proving to be a pretty good source of income!
The only surefire way to kill them dead was with archer retinues since against Altaic commanders with a lot of horse archers, the battle will never leave skirmish phase
If any tactics your troops use switches it to melee, they will switch it back to skirmish on the next day
Having an insane, unstoppable wall of soldiers to throw at them also works. My rebuilt Roman Empire annihilated both Mongols and Aztecs like nobody's business.
+1
Options
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
- It is now possible to switch county capitals if you hold both the current county capital and the barony you wish to become the new capital.
Having an insane, unstoppable wall of soldiers to throw at them also works. My rebuilt Roman Empire annihilated both Mongols and Aztecs like nobody's business.
Yeah, my french roman army handled them through brute force
Well, I've now gotten every achievement except for Khan of Khans and the new ones in the upcoming expansion.
Something I discovered today: the best way to tech up fast in an early start (like Charlemagne) is to avoid spending any tech points until things stop growing on their own. Also, building Observatories. I got up to six blocks in some techs before the year 1000. The map for it was basically all dark blue, except for the white spot of my capital.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
0
Options
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Yeah, a big factor in my actually pulling off usurping Lombardy in my last play was hitting on observatories while getting tech-bleed from Rome since my capitol was next door.
Discovering two vassals of the same sex engaging in carnal activities during pagan feasts no longer let's the liege join in on the fun.
Boooo!
Fixed a bug where the Chancellor might discover himself trying to fabricate a claim on his own titles and kill himself
Ha ha ha ha. Now can your spymaster imprison himself is the question.
Void Slayer on
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Because of promised improvements of game engine in new dlc and patches i can't play CK2 for now. I want to try playing form start to beginning, and by now game slows soooooo muuuuuuuuch that it's very tiring. I hope that Paradox delivers.
Because of promised improvements of game engine in new dlc and patches i can't play CK2 for now. I want to try playing form start to beginning, and by now game slows soooooo muuuuuuuuch that it's very tiring. I hope that Paradox delivers.
On that note, I found something interesting in the CKII wiki:
One performance improvement of patch 2.4 was regarding huge Byzantine empires in late game, which were slowing down the game because each Greek person was evaluating against each other person in the realm "can I castrate?". 70% of the AI demands were about castrating or blinding someone.
One performance improvement of patch 2.4 was regarding huge Byzantine empires in late game, which were slowing down the game because each Greek person was evaluating against each other person in the realm "can I castrate?". 70% of the AI demands were about castrating or blinding someone.
I love this game.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
To be fair, when you're playing a character in the ERE, you are occupying a surprising amount of your brainpower with considerations on who to castrate or blind.
Because if you can do something in the game, the player is damn sure going to do it.
Man playing as a nomad ("We're so bad, gonna make you so sad, your new gods are just a fad.") is so much fun.
Annoying vassals? Dispose of them! Want to get most of the benefit of vassal lands without the headache of butthurt conquered vassals constantly trying to kill you and your family behind your back? Just make them pay tribute! Need more troops but running a bit short on the ole' cash? Troops for prestige!
Been playing a game as Khazaria in the earliest start and I've been growing pretty well as I've started to get used to the nomad mechanics. Thinking pretty soon I'll see if I can't make the Byzantines a tributary. (Did you know that tributaries are very likely to join your wars? Might see if I can't use the Byzantines to make the Caliphate a tributary.)
Between Tribal, Nomadic, Republic and Feudal/Iqta, I'd be interested in a system/mechanic where it's possible to switch between these government types. Right now your lands can only move one way and once there it's locked in place. You never get the chance to abandon this whole 'city' business and return to the wandering ways of your forebears.
Picked up the Horse Lords DLC but I'm not going to try the Mongols out just yet. Figured I'd do something a little different and try for a Zunist Empire!
Well, I had the kingdom of Afghanistan up and running only a couple generations down the line, but then... things started getting a bit dramatic.
My heir is born an imbecile but luckily I get to "teach him a lesson" about gravity. Manage to also swap over to Ultimogeniture because the next kid has crap stats developing.
Things are going okay next generation until I strike out against a nearby Indian kingdom to try for some territory. I guess they had some allies drafted for the war they were already fighting because they brought over 6000 units to bear against me when I wasn't even seeing armies at 2000 yet. Made peace quickly and then had two uprisings in quick succession... admittedly because I failed putting my vassals into jail but if they didn't want to be arrested they shouldn't have tried plotting to take over!
Put them down, sit around licking my wounds a little... another generation on and I manage to go back and grab one territory from the Indian kingdom after that truce expires. Except that during all of this I keep getting harassed by raiders, and then I get three separate vassal uprisings. Somehow I juggle all of this and catch my breath.
Until a few years later, when three more decide to rise up again! Oh, and some random Host shows up demanding something, too.
Well I guess I didn't quite understand what they all wanted because, knowing I can't fight all these wars at once with my weakened forces, I ended up ceding to the host only to find that he's now operating as a vassal to me? Unfortunately I still get beaten down by my vassals, and as the first one succeeds I realize all they wanted to do was put my (infant) daughter in charge instead of me! I didn't really have a problem with that, I would have given them that without a fight had I realized. I also granted a one-county dude his independence because, eh, I figured I could get him back later.
Unfortunately this didn't stop the other vassal from still pushing their own agenda, which was to replace my character with my aunt (remember I'm the little girl now). I can't win that fight either, but again, I'm a bit surprised as I end up being able to keep two territories and still hold on to all of my other titles. But I've been beaten down, badly, so I can't do anything but sit there and wait. And so I select my father, the former ruler, as my educator and bide my time, letting my forces build themselves back up.
Well, the person everybody wanted to be running the show instead of me turned out to be a right idiot, going to war with India again after another neighboring country to the northeast declares war on us... oh, and another vassal decides to revolt over, I don't know, something. I don't have any troops to throw at this even if I'd want to, which I don't, so I just wait and watch the trainwreck happen. I do manage to have my forces repaired enough to go and prevent the one-county bumpkin from taking some more territory from us, but I can't do anything but watch as my character grows up from 1 to 16 while my aunt loses territory and doesn't do anything productive at all. Oh, did I mention she converts to Islam? As if spreading the Zun faith wasn't difficult as-is.
At one point I wasn't generating any money at all because of raiders that the ruler was unable to fend off. So I passed the time by plotting to kill my uncle so that when my aunt died my father would get the kingdom back. That, and seducing any Zunist males I could find under the age of 30.
Several discovered plots later, I manage to off my uncle, but now both my aunt and my father absolutely despise me. What to do? I then realized I had an option available to me that I'd never used before, because I was not used to being someone else's vassal. I could create a faction to try and put me back in charge! Hmm, let's see if that... oh, right, I've still got all those duchy titles, which meant that all but two counties in Afghanistan were my direct vassals.
So time for a revolt where my side's got about 450% of the muscle they do. But since the two counties were far apart from each other, it still took some walking to get from the one to the other... during which time, my aunt dies, which means that my father becomes the head of Afghanistan again, just like I had planned for all these years earlier.
Except, you know, now he's on the opposite side of the battlefield against me. Well, not for long really, he surrenders within a week. So I've got the crown back, and he gets to commune with Zun.
And as an aside, strange and wonderful serpents have been sighted almost every single year.
The new commander interface is really nice, marrying your daughters off to highly skilled battle commanders so you can get them in your court is a really good idea now.
I keep randomly getting children as my rivals though, children in other nations I never interacted with...
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Picked up Horse Lords and started a game as the Bolghar in 867. The early bit was a bit rough with three wars early on. Luckly I was able to win them and set about stabilizing my realm. Everything was going fine, took a neighboring county, pillaged it and suddenly I got 20 notifications and a whole bunch of icons across the top of the screen. Somehow I'm now cheif of Pannonia which is split in two parts, one of which is pretty far from me and the other that consists of my current 3 holdings plus a bunch from neighboring Khazeria.
I have no idea how this happened and it feels like all my hard work of building my realm went out the window. Also I'm apparently not nomadic anymore, either. I have no idea what happened, probably just going to restart.
Bleh, converting counties to Zun is essentially impossible, so I have to figure out how to put Zun-faithful rulers in charge of the two holy sites I can actually conceivably conquer (have control of one but a tengri is in charge of it, the other one is still in Indian ruler hands) and it seems like every county I take ends up throwing a religious revolt in celebration.
Plus there's the Abbasids, who declared a holy war for like, the only Sunni county I controlled (I gave it to them after trying to put up a fight, my mistake there). I can only hope they leave me alone while I take these Zoroastrian counties to the South so I can put Baluchistan together.
Ah, figured out what I had done wrong. I was clicking through the special interactions with counties options too quickly and settled my tribe. I am the dumb.
On the plus side, I restarted and am well on my way to gobbling up Perm to my north with a great ally to my south in Kazaria. The major difference this time is I ended up absorbing both of my neighboring clans shortly after I started because they kept trying to depose me. Ended up splitting my clan after that which worked well since the guy in charge of the splinter clan loves me now.
Posts
You can mass produce children and legitimize only the ones with traits you want in an heir. Not that it's reliable given the rarity of Quick, Genius, and Strong passing down.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Also, you get a +3 demesne limit bonus.
And with a Mongol culture you get the best CB in the game and some of the best retinues.
Mongol Jain is power gaming at its finest.
I still think there should be a handful of marriage war goals, like enforcing betrothals and forcing unmarried lovers who conceive children to marry.
I am also pissed you can not go to war with your wife over minor territories. Last time I go to war to put her on a throne!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But I would've preferred if the Abbasids and other factions had been a bit more of a threat, Muslim rulers never really seem to make much ground in India - Sindh starts as Muslim 769 but it usually vanishes pretty fast
Patch 2.4 changelog, and as per usual they're hilariously terrible out of context.
Some highlights:
- Must now be at least a king level ruler in order to expel the Jews.
- Demanding Fatwas, castrating, blinding and throwing people into pits are now all targeted decisions.
- Characters who love their spouses very much are now less likely to join holy orders.
- Paranoid parents should no longer worry about potential plots against dead children.
- The lustful cabin can no longer cause multiple pregnancies or create children between two female lovers. [BOOOOO!]
- You no longer feel like you're partying on your own when inviting people that are not your vassals.
- You no longer punish yourself when a prisoner tries to flee from your prison by charming the guard.
- You no longer feel bad for having a romantic relationship with your spouse. [What if s/he's your sibling? Can we still feel bad?]
- You'll no longer try to talk to your dead children when you have the family focus. [This should have been changed to instead just give the ruler the lunatic trait!]
- Your sparring partner no longer wields a limb-creating healing stick when he accidentally hits you.
- You can no longer arrange a ball in the dungeons.
- Runestones no longer tries to mention non-existing parents.
- Discovering two vassals of the same sex engaging in carnal activities during pagan feasts no longer let's the liege join in on the fun.
- Fixed a bug with the 'Witch Nanny' being able to hold the Court Chaplain job
- Fixed a bug with the 'church_unfunny' modifier
- Blocked impregnation by female lovers or modded female 'husbands'
- Family Focus: fixed some issues with improved relations between dead family members
- Lovers in prison can no longer get impregnated normally
- Unlocked the standard gender succession laws for Tribals [WOOOT!]
- Muslims are now allowed to fire their Court Imam if he is of another religion!
- Fixed a bug with the 'spouse' field in plots only working on your primary wife
- Added missing adjective form of the kingdom of Saxony
- AI will not join wars against spouse
- AI: Toned down seduction by characters with many children
- AI: Toned down impregnation chances for seduction affairs with characters with many children [as long as they don't neuter me!]
- No longer possible to banish your spouse or concubine [but what if I want her great tracts of land?]
- Fixed a bug where the Chancellor might discover himself trying to fabricate a claim on his own titles and kill himself
- Tribal vassal opinion modifiers in Laws now actually work
- It is no longer possible to send chancellor to the wrong province in the tutorial.
- Rising tribal army army will no longer teleport the king from any other army.
- Underaged rulers are not allowed to lead armies any more. [No doubt past their bedtimes]
- Turkish portraits show blinded eyes, boils, scars and red spots correctly now.
- Being able to have concubines overrides polygamy now. [as well it should]
- Friends are now considered allies.
- History is now being applied correctly when the Old Gods DLC is enabled but the Charlemagne DLC isn't.
- Fixed a world peace bug when everyone would become allied to everyone. [You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one]
- Several Lovers events now checks that ruler/spouse/lover isn't incapable/imprisoned
- Male-only Lovers events no longer triggers for women
- Single-only Lovers events no longer fires for married characters
- Feudal life even no longer automatically causes incapable [???]
- Lovers event checks for imprisoned and incapable, checks religion_group instead of religion
- Lovers event no longer marries you to imprisoned+incapable lovers
- Made sure that events that require a character to have eyes do not fire for blind people
- Fixed that bedtime stories can no longer be told to dead children
- Fixed bug where the plot to kill allow-trigger did not properly check so that you did not try to kill the children of female lovers (it worked as intended against male lovers).
- Tyrany wars will now properly end when the tyrant dies.
- Marriages and betrothals are no longer blocked by being in a revolt.
- You can no longer grant Eunuchs tribal counties.
- Fixed bug where children were considered born in the purple even if the ruling parent was dead when the child was concieved.
- You no longer gain religious authority for looting temples of your own religion.
I'll miss talking to my dead children, and my straight queen being able to get her lesbian lover pregnant.
Does writing your own mod to make your character an immortal God-King count?
Because I totally did that and had my guy live to >150 before I got bored of smashing everything in
In honour of the upcoming DLC, an appropriate episode of my all-time favorite thing on Youtube:
but I seriously doubt they nerfed seduction focus enough
I was messing around with a Kurdish campaign and ended up with 47 bastards in my court from the nearby Persians seducing all of my women
like
no
One Arrow Alone can be Easily Broken but Many Arrows are Indestructible
As a steppe horde, have a population of 150 000.
Go West Young Mongol
As a steppe horde, have an independent tributary King or Emperor in the British Isles
Who Needs Vasco da Gama?
Own all the silk route ports in india as a European merchant republic.
Nobody's Business but the Turks
Conquer Constantinople as a Turkic steppe horde.
Run With the Wolf
Play as a character with Wolf's Blood.
Norse-East
As a Norse character, become King of Mongolia.
Steppe by Steppe
As a steppe horde, conquer the whole steppe region.
"Never start a Land War in Asia"
Start in Western Europe and completely conquer the region of Mongolia.
Pax Mongolica
Build 3 fully upgraded silk road trade posts.
Sword to Ploughshare
Settle a steppe mercenary with more than 20 martial in your lands.
Let's go out into the Field
Defeat a sibling in a war using the rival casus belli.
So we're all clear: I'm excited about the possibilities vis-a-vis Known Murderer interactions and other social events, if so.
Also, Friends = Allies is a hell of a buff to the already-good Carousing.
Also not mentioned in those patch notes, adventurers no longer bring all of their money with them when they invade, which is a shame because banishing them was proving to be a pretty good source of income!
I wonder how that will affect dealing with Mongols
If any tactics your troops use switches it to melee, they will switch it back to skirmish on the next day
Finally.
Yeah, my french roman army handled them through brute force
Something I discovered today: the best way to tech up fast in an early start (like Charlemagne) is to avoid spending any tech points until things stop growing on their own. Also, building Observatories. I got up to six blocks in some techs before the year 1000. The map for it was basically all dark blue, except for the white spot of my capital.
Boooo!
Ha ha ha ha. Now can your spymaster imprison himself is the question.
On that note, I found something interesting in the CKII wiki:
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Horse_Lords
I love this game.
Because if you can do something in the game, the player is damn sure going to do it.
I never got the chance to do this
What was it like
Yeah, for real. I didn't even know that was a thing. Time to mod it back in!
Oh, like any other medieval gay orgy, just more festive.
Annoying vassals? Dispose of them! Want to get most of the benefit of vassal lands without the headache of butthurt conquered vassals constantly trying to kill you and your family behind your back? Just make them pay tribute! Need more troops but running a bit short on the ole' cash? Troops for prestige!
Been playing a game as Khazaria in the earliest start and I've been growing pretty well as I've started to get used to the nomad mechanics. Thinking pretty soon I'll see if I can't make the Byzantines a tributary. (Did you know that tributaries are very likely to join your wars? Might see if I can't use the Byzantines to make the Caliphate a tributary.)
Well, I had the kingdom of Afghanistan up and running only a couple generations down the line, but then... things started getting a bit dramatic.
My heir is born an imbecile but luckily I get to "teach him a lesson" about gravity. Manage to also swap over to Ultimogeniture because the next kid has crap stats developing.
Things are going okay next generation until I strike out against a nearby Indian kingdom to try for some territory. I guess they had some allies drafted for the war they were already fighting because they brought over 6000 units to bear against me when I wasn't even seeing armies at 2000 yet. Made peace quickly and then had two uprisings in quick succession... admittedly because I failed putting my vassals into jail but if they didn't want to be arrested they shouldn't have tried plotting to take over!
Put them down, sit around licking my wounds a little... another generation on and I manage to go back and grab one territory from the Indian kingdom after that truce expires. Except that during all of this I keep getting harassed by raiders, and then I get three separate vassal uprisings. Somehow I juggle all of this and catch my breath.
Until a few years later, when three more decide to rise up again! Oh, and some random Host shows up demanding something, too.
Well I guess I didn't quite understand what they all wanted because, knowing I can't fight all these wars at once with my weakened forces, I ended up ceding to the host only to find that he's now operating as a vassal to me? Unfortunately I still get beaten down by my vassals, and as the first one succeeds I realize all they wanted to do was put my (infant) daughter in charge instead of me! I didn't really have a problem with that, I would have given them that without a fight had I realized. I also granted a one-county dude his independence because, eh, I figured I could get him back later.
Unfortunately this didn't stop the other vassal from still pushing their own agenda, which was to replace my character with my aunt (remember I'm the little girl now). I can't win that fight either, but again, I'm a bit surprised as I end up being able to keep two territories and still hold on to all of my other titles. But I've been beaten down, badly, so I can't do anything but sit there and wait. And so I select my father, the former ruler, as my educator and bide my time, letting my forces build themselves back up.
Well, the person everybody wanted to be running the show instead of me turned out to be a right idiot, going to war with India again after another neighboring country to the northeast declares war on us... oh, and another vassal decides to revolt over, I don't know, something. I don't have any troops to throw at this even if I'd want to, which I don't, so I just wait and watch the trainwreck happen. I do manage to have my forces repaired enough to go and prevent the one-county bumpkin from taking some more territory from us, but I can't do anything but watch as my character grows up from 1 to 16 while my aunt loses territory and doesn't do anything productive at all. Oh, did I mention she converts to Islam? As if spreading the Zun faith wasn't difficult as-is.
At one point I wasn't generating any money at all because of raiders that the ruler was unable to fend off. So I passed the time by plotting to kill my uncle so that when my aunt died my father would get the kingdom back. That, and seducing any Zunist males I could find under the age of 30.
Several discovered plots later, I manage to off my uncle, but now both my aunt and my father absolutely despise me. What to do? I then realized I had an option available to me that I'd never used before, because I was not used to being someone else's vassal. I could create a faction to try and put me back in charge! Hmm, let's see if that... oh, right, I've still got all those duchy titles, which meant that all but two counties in Afghanistan were my direct vassals.
So time for a revolt where my side's got about 450% of the muscle they do. But since the two counties were far apart from each other, it still took some walking to get from the one to the other... during which time, my aunt dies, which means that my father becomes the head of Afghanistan again, just like I had planned for all these years earlier.
Except, you know, now he's on the opposite side of the battlefield against me. Well, not for long really, he surrenders within a week. So I've got the crown back, and he gets to commune with Zun.
And as an aside, strange and wonderful serpents have been sighted almost every single year.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I keep randomly getting children as my rivals though, children in other nations I never interacted with...
I have no idea how this happened and it feels like all my hard work of building my realm went out the window. Also I'm apparently not nomadic anymore, either. I have no idea what happened, probably just going to restart.
Plus there's the Abbasids, who declared a holy war for like, the only Sunni county I controlled (I gave it to them after trying to put up a fight, my mistake there). I can only hope they leave me alone while I take these Zoroastrian counties to the South so I can put Baluchistan together.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
On the plus side, I restarted and am well on my way to gobbling up Perm to my north with a great ally to my south in Kazaria. The major difference this time is I ended up absorbing both of my neighboring clans shortly after I started because they kept trying to depose me. Ended up splitting my clan after that which worked well since the guy in charge of the splinter clan loves me now.
I just beat up both the Byzantines and the Abassid as Khazaria without much trouble