Charlemagne's Heirs!
Welcome to Charlemagne's Heirs, a hopefully epic series of posts about the restoration of the Vermandois branch of Charlemagne's family to their rightful place as rulers of the Frankish peoples and Holy Roman Emperor.
Brief History Lesson!Charlemagne was a Frankish King in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. The Franks, a Germanic people who inhabited the eastern bits of modern France and western Germany were one of the many barbarian tribes that attacked the decaying Western Roman empire and established a Kingdom of their own by the 6th century. Charlemagne himself was the grandson of Charles Martel (the Hammer) who halted Muslim expansion into Western Europe at the battle of Tours. After inheriting his father's crown and outlasting his rival brother, Charlemagne proceeded to kick ass and take names, expanding the Frankish kingdom to a kind of ridiculous size (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think no one controlled that much of Western Europe again until Napoleon):
In 800 AD he was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III after interceding against the Italians on the Pope's behalf. While this wasn't technically the title of Holy Roman Emperor, for the purposes of game mechanics, we're going to pretend it was. It was the forerunner to the eventual position, so we'll call it good.
Unfortunately for Charlemagne, despite having 20 children, within 250 years his male line had been reduced to one relatively small family with a territory just outside Paris. The Count of
Vermandois Herbert IV and his brothers Odo and Pierre. He also had one son, also named Odo who became the last of the Carolingian dynasty.
Us!
Our goal is to restore the Carolingian Dynasty to its former heights and reclaim the crown of King of the Franks (we'll call it France) and title of Holy Roman Emperor! And then we'll see what other crazy shit we can do and possibly liberalize the Kingdom or make it a cruel fascist despotism or lots of other things. Possibilities are largely endless.
This is a Let's Play, right? Where's the game?
Game? Not game! Games! We'll be playing through Paradox Entertainment/Interactive's epic series of historical simulations, beginning in 1066 with Herbert IV and going through the middle of the 20th Century. The games are:
Crusader Kings (1066-1399) with Deus Vult expansion.
Europa Universalis III (1399-1821) with Napoleon's Ambition, In Nomine, and Heir to the Throne expansions.
Victoria (1836-1936 technically, we can probably use some modding to make it 1821-1936 and make things right) with its expansion, Revolutions.
Hearts of Iron... 2? (1936-whenever the major world war we'll trigger ends) with whatever expansions HoI experts feel are recommended. I personally don't even own this game.
Wait, what? You don't own one of the games you're LPing?
Indeed I do not. For this is not just an LP. It's a Succession game! I'll be playing Herbert IV. When Herbert dies, someone will pick up with whichever one of his families members inherits his throne. Which should be Odo the Younger, unless he dies first. When Odo dies (assuming he does inherit) a third person will take over with his heir, and so on until we a) lose interest or b) have to start recycling people. EU3 also has monarchs and a similar method will apply. Victoria we'll have to jury rig something, especially if we switch to a more democratic form of government but we'll do what we can.
Anything else we should know?
A list of updates will be in the post below this one, so please leave that one for me. And the third post as well, if you would for the first actual update.
Here's
our thread on Paradox games in general.
Here's our Crusader Kings thread.
There are three inspirations for this idea:
1) Fintilgin's
Jerusalem thread, where he makes Jerusalem a kind of ridiculous empire.
2) Wiz's unbelievable
Hohenzollern thread, which got me interested in these games to begin with.
3) The ongoing
Serbia succession game/LP on SA's forums.
Any audience participation?
While waiting for your King to show up, I highly recommend to all current rulers allowing some decisions to be made by the thread at large. There are more options for such things in future games (National Ideas, for example), but for this one major decisions can be offered to the thread for commentary and voting and what not.
How do we claim characters?
1. People can claim characters as I post the family tree (in the next post) and whoever ends up surviving to inherit the throne gets to be the next player. When your current character dies you can choose a new person.
2. We just make a list and go in order.
I think I mildly prefer option 1, but I'll leave it up to whoever reads the thread!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Posts
The Reign of Herbert IV, Count of Vermandois and Hainaut, Duke of Valois (1066 - 1085) played by enlightenedbum
1066-1070 - Count of Vermandois, Duke of Valois?
1070-1080 - Herbert the Stable
1080-1085 - Herbert Schemes, Fails, Dies
The Reign of Odo I, Duke of Valois, Count of Vermandois, Hainaut, Brabant, and Ile de France (1085 - 1120) played by PolloDiablo
1085-1120 - Trading A French Master for a Norman One
The Reign of Saint Henri, King of Burgundy, Defender of the Faith, and Liberator of Jerusalem and holder of many other titles (1120 - 1140) played by Rhan9
1120-1140 "Saint" Henri Slaughters All Kinds of People, But Mostly People the Church Didn't Like, Apparently.
The Reign of Jordan the Adventurer, King of Burgundy Duke of Champagne, Flanders, Luxembourg, Orleans and Valois. Count of Yperen, Artois, Brugge, Gent, Hainaut, Amiens, Ille de France, Vermandois, Reims, Luxembourg, Brabant and Jerusalem. (1140 - 1163) played by Lowlander
1140-1144 - Adventures in Prussia
1145 - 1150 - Reclaiming the Norman Coast
1150 - 1157 - Lemmings to Alexandria
1157-1163 - The Conquest/Conversion of Alexandria
The Reign of Serlo I, King of Burgundy (1163 - 1180) played by Zedar
1163 - 1168 - Our Treacherous Heir Spreads Lies At English Court, Causes War
1168 - 1175 - Continued Reclamation of Normandy and Brittany OR Our Heir Is Now Both a Treacherous Bastard (Though Not Literally), But Also A Schizophrenic
1176 - 1180 - Yet More Wars!
The Reign of Godfrey the Mad, King of Burgundy, Duke of Champagne, Luxembourg, Orleans, Valois, and Anjou (1180 - 1187) played by starkiller
1180 - 1182 Godfrey Confuses Growth With Shrinkage (This is a quoted version of the post, but the links were broken in starkiller's, lowlylowlycook fixed it for him.)
1182 - 1187 Godfrey Descends Further Into Madness
The Reign of Robert the Fragile; King of Burgundy, Duke of Champagne, Luxembourg, Orleans, and Flanders (1187 - 1189) played by Kayne Red Robe
1187 - 1189 Robert Attempts to Stabilize Burgundy While His Internal Organs Fall Out
The Reign of Alexander the Poet; King of Burgundy, Duke of Champagne, Luxembourg, Orleans, and Flanders (1189 - 1235) played by shalmelo
1189 - 1200 - Alexander Stabilizes the Realm with the Help of His Cheating Hussy of a Wife
1200 - 1214 - Alexander Remains Oblivious to His Wife's Philandering, Writes Crappy Poetry, Inexplicably Raises A Badass
1214 - 1224 - Insanity Returns With a Vengeance
1224 - 1235 - The Decline of the Mad Poet
The Reign of Bjorn the Liberator, King of Burgundy, Duke of Champagne and Orleans (1235 - 1269) played by President Rex
1235 - 1245 - Catholicism Wanes
1245 - 1255 - Bjorn Deals With His Asshole Father
1255 - 1265 - Rome Liberated, Burgundy Grows Ever More Powerful
1265 - 1269 - Bjorn Liberates Aragon, Crowns His Second Son King
The Reign of Thomas the Heretic, King of Burgundy, Duke of Anjou, Burgundy, Barcelona, and Champagne (1269 - 1290) played by Reboot
1269 - 1279 - Thomas Conquers South France, Further Angers the Pope
1279 - 1290 - Thomas Is Excommunicated, Continues Taking Land, Crushing Rebellions With An Iron Fist
The Reign of Hamelin the Overexuberant, King of Burgundy and Aragon, Duke of Luxemburg, Cordoba, Mallorca, Valencia, Murcia, Barcelona, Orleans, Upper Burgundy, Bedford, and Auvergne (1290) played by lowlylowlycook
August - December 1290 Hamelin Attempts to Crusade, Gets Waylaid by the Duke of Anjou, Dies
The Reign of Emperor Louis (the Regency of Chancellor Eirene), King of Burgundy, Aragon, Castille, Egypt, England, France, Wales and Italy. Duke of Alexandria, Aswan, Badajoz, Cordoba, Cyrennica, Deheuharth, Valencia, Vitebsk, Jerusalem, Porto and Toscana. (1290 - 1309) played by Phyphor
1290 - 1296 Louis Makes Friends, Is Threatened by Civil War, Writes Adorably
1296 - 1300 Louis Proves to be Charlemagne's Heir, Desperately Needs to be Fertile to Give This Stuff Away
1300 - 1308 Louis Named Emperor, de Vermandois Family Dominates Europe
1308 - 1309 Louis Continues His Conquests, Is Assassinated
The Reign of Centule the Crusader, King of Burgundy, Aragon, Castille, Egypt, England, France, Wales and Italy. Duke of Alexandria, Aswan, Badajoz, Cordoba, Cyrennica, Deheuharth, Valencia, Vitebsk, Jerusalem, Porto and Toscana. (1309 - 1347) played by Elvenshae
1309 - 1321 Centule Goes On A Couple Crusades
1321 - 1347 Centule Forgets The Realm Needs to Shrink
The Reign of Frigyes, King of Burgundy, Aragon, Castille, Egypt, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Leon, Portugal, and Wales (1347 - 1367) played by starkiller
1347 - 1351 - The Ducal Wars Begin
1351-1367 - Continue, Peter Out
The Reign of Michael, King of Ireland, Burgundy, Etc. (1367 - 1377) played by Zedar
1367 - 1373 - Fundamental Instability Sets In
1373 - 1377 - PLAGUE!
The Reign of Ioannes the Paranoid, King of Burgundy, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Leon, and Wales (1377 - 1399) played by enlightenedbum
1377 - 1390 - The Magna Carta
1390 -1399 - The Sixth Crusade and the Second Ducal War
The State of Europe, 1399!
The Reign of Nicolas the Vampire, King of Vermandois (1399 - 1443) played by President Rex
1399 - 1410 - A New Era
1410 - 1420 - Flemish Revolts, Conquest of Liege
1420 - 1430 - Reconquest!
1430 - 1443 - The (First?) Mediterranean War
The Reign of Isaac the Conquerer, King of Vermandois (1443 - 1470) played by Phyphor
1443 - 1460 - Consolidation of France
1461 - 1470 - North African Conquests
The Reign of Louis V the Navigator, King of Vermandois (1470 - 1496) played by Elvenshae
1470 - 1477 - The Conquest of Lorraine/Discovery of Nouveau Vermandois
1477 - 1488 - The Second Moroccan Crusade
1488 - 1496 - War in Iberia
The Reign of Louis VI the Unchronicled, King of Vermandois (1496 - 1509) played by FarseerBaradas
1496 - 1509 - Mayan Conquest (chronicled after the fact by enlightenedbum) Also, a state of the world!
The Reign of Loius VII the Diplomat, King of Vermandois (1509 - ) played by starkiller
1509 - 1513 - Disaster!
1513-1518 - Religious Upheaval and Diplomatic Initiatives
1519-1522 - Flanders Reclaimed! And 1523
1523 - 1533 - Diplomacy Pays Off
Succession order:
shalmelo
shuss
Lachrymite
Arang
enlightenedbum
(When he gets the mod working successfully). Zedar
One of the final Carolingians, all hail Herbert IV, Count of Vermandois! Herbert has his wife, Adele, daughter of the Count of Amiens and Vexin, Raoul de Valois. Which is important, actually, as good Raoul allows inheritance to be traced through his womenfolk and Adele is his oldest child. His son, Odo the Younger stands to inherit his titles.
Game mechanics will be explained in italics in these early posts. So in Crusader Kings you're not really playing as a geographical entity as you are in most other grand strategy games (and in fact, we will be playing such an entity in the other three games in this series). Instead, you play as a dynasty. Members of your dynasty are indicated by the drop of blood next to their portrait.
Every character has a bunch of stats. Some of them are hidden like fertility and health, most of them are public. In this case, Herbert's got 25 gold, which also acts as our County's treasury, 100 Prestige which allows us to do a lot of useful things, like claiming new titles, and 100 Piety which measures how much the Church likes us (you want the Church to like you) and if we make it go high enough we can considered for sainthood! Gold we make each month, depending on the economic strength of our province(s) and any vassals we may or may not have. Prestige depends on our traits and buildings, as does piety. You can also improve prestige by winning wars and controlling vassals. You get HUGE amounts of prestige for going on Crusade when the Pope starts asking for them.
Then we've got the main stats that determine our character's effectiveness. Martial is a measure of their skill at combat and generalship. The higher this is, the better troops they command will perform. Diplomacy is fairly obvious, the better the diplomat the better deals we can make and the better our reputation is. Stewardship is how skillful at managing your provinces you are, the higher this goes, the more moneys you can squeeze out of your territory. Intrigue is how sneaky you are. The higher this is the better your efforts at spying (by which I mean assassinating people) will be, and the more provinces you can control directly without needing to appoint vassals to run them for you. The number in parentheses adds the value of your advisers to your own for your effective skill.
Then we've got a bunch of icons, they indicate our characters traits, which modify the above numbers and how much prestige/piety you get. Herbert here is lustful (lowers piety, increases fertility), Proud (more prestige, less piety), Temperate (less fertile, more piety, +1 diplomacy), Suspicious (+1 intrigue, -2 diplomacy), and he's a Martial Cleric (+4 martial, +2 diplomacy, +2 intrigue).
Then below that you can see his family, heirs, liege, vassals and a bunch of other stuff. For now it's important to note that there are three dudes with blood drops by them under heirs, so we have a reasonable buffer before game over (someone not of your dynasty inherits your throne). His immediate heir is Eudes the Younger (historical Odo), and if Eudes dies, Herbert's brother Eudes the Elder is next in line, followed by their brother Pierre. One of our first goals is to make lots more heirs by marrying off the three of them to young, hot, French noblewomen.
His energetic son Odo is his pride and joy. A man with a gift for management, he is the heir to the throne and currently working as Vermandois' steward. Unfortunately, Odo is without a bride, a problem which Herbert quickly seeks to rectify.
Same stuff, different character. There are a HUGE number of characters the game is keeping track of. It's really a pretty impressive little piece of software.[/I]
But first, Herbert decides to check out the County's finances. Things are in decent shape, with a fair amount of gold coming in each month. If Charlemagne's family is to be restored to their rightful place, dramatic improvements will have to take place. Herbert decides to make this his primary goal.
This is our finances screen. Scutage is how much we're charging our vassals for our protection. We have no vassals at the moment, so it doesn't matter. More you charge, the less loyal they'll be and the less money they'll have to raise troops of their own. Crown duty is how much the nobles are paying you, census tax is peasants, tolls are burghers, army upkeep is obvious, if it's too low your army will waste away which is no good, church donations are how much we're giving to the church, and then our main expense is we have to pay almost 2g per month to the King of France so he doesn't come kick our ass. And also protect us. Still we're making a respectable 2g per month.
Herbert also ordered research into a variety of new technological realms. Walls were troubling for the Franks to take and he expected to need to command many sieges if he was to restore the Frankish Kingdom, so siege equipment was at the top of the list. Moving troops around and improve efficiencies was a goal worthy of Charles the Great, so roads were next. And finally, he wished for Odo to be well educated, so improvements in Vermandois' schools were sought.
This is the tech screen. There are three categories: military, economic, and social. You research one of each at a time, but it's not really research. There's a mean time to each tech, and an RNG fires fairly frequently to check if you get it. Each individual thing listed there has five levels, each level takes longeron average to learn, though theoretically you could get it as soon as you click on it. I think the mean time is the level of the tech * 10 years, but I'm not positive. The hash marks to the left of the name indicate our level. I ordered us to improve our performance in sieges, to discover road building, and to discover how to make libraries, which are nifty. Also: I'm a builder at heart. I really, really like mines but Paris already has the first level of mining technology so I'm hoping it spreads to us. Technology can both be discovered directly, or it can spread from neighboring provinces. It's most likely to do so if you own both directly, but it can from provinces owned by other people as well.
Herbert had his wife working as his Spymaster, his son as his Steward and his youngest brother Pierre as his Chancellor. He lacked a Marshal entirely, so appointed his fairly incompetent brother Odo to the position. A crappy marshal was better than no marshal at all.
These are our advisers. The Marshal and the Bishop have to be male, and the Bishop needs a church education. The other three positions can be filled by anyone, male or female. Spy Master should have high intrigue, Marshal should have high martial, Steward should have high stewardship and Chancellor should have high diplomacy. Bishop just keeps the Pope off your back, but we don't have any males of the proper education in our court. Bastard sons make excellent bishops.
The strategic situation the Carolingians found themselves in was interesting, to say the least. Direct neighbors to the personal demenes of the French King in Paris, they were also directly on the French and German border. Any hostilities that may break out between the two Kingdoms may end up driving right through Vermandois. Of course, that also grants Herbert some opportunity for conquest, if the chance arises...
This is both good and bad, depending how things go. We'll see!
As his first active duty, he sought marriages of his son, daughter, and two brothers. Odo the younger married the oldest daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, which could be a highly useful place for him, except the oldest son and heir to the Duchy has 6 sons already and so it would prove difficult to assassinate the entire male Bourgogne male line. Alas, a useful family to have some relatives in to be sure. The other marriages were merely to the daughters and sons of local nobles of relatively little importance.
You arrange a LOT of marriages in Crusader Kings.
So, I missed the screen shot because my message settings were all screwed up from my previous Maximum Hitler game where I conquered half of Europe as Syria (oops), but...
The young King of France was appointing various vassals to various new titles in order to secure their loyalty as he was merely 15 years old. Among them, he granted Herbert the title of Duke of Valois! Suddenly Vermandois was part of a Duchy and Herbert had a vassal, his father-in-law, the Count of Amiens and Vexin.
Yay! In many ways, that's the hardest part of moving from County to powerful. We got it for FREE.
All hail Phillipe Capet, King of France! Phillipe the Wise!
Thought I'd show off our King. The guy we ultimately want to replace.
His brother found his new responsibilities stressful and became an even worse Marshal, and even less fertile.
Stressed is a really shitty trait that gives -1 to all qualities and makes you less fertile to boot. Bad times for Odo the Elder.
Quickly the menfolk of the dynasty got to work producing the next generation of Carolingians. Unfortunately, Herbert produced a daughter first.
I missed the first of these because they kind of get spammed when you're part of a large kingdom like France. Eudes the Younger had a son, which is excellent. Nicely done, Eudes.
The Bourgogne family desperately sought the French throne and couldn't stand the Carolingians, both as a family with a more direct claim to the throne through Charlemagne, a national hero; and as a family for the moment completely loyal and seeming a favorite of the Capets. The Duke of Burgundy began having second thoughts about marrying his daughter to Odo, and Odo began hating him back. However, he tried to make amends to make his wife happy, for he had fallen in love with his young bride.
These are events. Lots of them happen, I won't be showing too many of them, and neither should future players. Unless they fit some kind of interesting narratives. I would recommend taking shots of them though, as they could affect things when you're done with your update/round. We'll see a good example of those later.
When enough money was saved up, Herbert ordered the construction of a forestry to improve construction in Vermandois. By the time it was completed, knowledge of more impressive castles passed to the Duchy by way of Ile de France (Paris - bum).
We built something! I won't take a shot of all of these, but I thought I would for the first one. Forestries provide a modest income bonus and decrease construction time for future buildings.
His brothers and sons began having sons. The dynasty would continue!
Yay!
Safe in the knowledge that his heirs were producing offspring of their own and that the succession was safe for at least two generations, Herbert quested after a large beast roaming the countryside.
Yeah, nothing actually happened. No trait gain, no wound, no death. I'll play on tomorrow! Future updates will be shorter as I spend less time explaining mechanics. And hopefully Herbert dies at some point so someone else can take over. :P
For EU3 mod information:
EU3: Carolingian mod v1.05a (11/8/11)
Checkums will change after the game calculates the map cache and flagfiles and whether you're using the steam EXE or not.
(Checksums are displayed in the bottom left corner of the main menu)
This mod requires Europa Universalis 3 updated to Heir to the Throne's official 4.1 patch. Note that if you have the Steam version of Divine Wind installed over EU3-Complete you won't be able to downgrade to HTTT (if you plan on buying DW but want to play the mod then copy your EU3 folder with HTTT somewhere - the executables should still work).
enlightenedbum: support; province allocation; initial religion allocation
starkiller: playtesting; religion and Levant-area decisiion and mission ideas
Kayne Redrobe: playtesting; assorted content for Illyria, Scotland, Egypt
Phyphor: über play testing; balance testing and suggestions
President Rex: anything else (particularly after ebum's computer exploded)
Everybody that played through CK for their write-ups for the persistence events.
2. Extract the ZIP (which should have a Carolingian folder and Carolingian.mod at the root level) to the mod folder in your Europa Universalis III folder. For example, my path is C:\Program Files\Europa Universalis III\mod
Default Steam EU3: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\europa universalis iii - complete\mod
(if the mod folder doesn't exist then create it)
3. Delete the map cache
The game will regenerate it with the mod in mind. This is the cache folder in your map folder. e.g.
C:\Program Files\Europa Universalis III\map\cache
(the mod's map folder will retain its own version after you start it for the first time).
If you don't do this some pathing may be messed up and naval ranges will not be properly calculated. This will make the game take slightly longer to load the first time as it recreates the cache. If your flags don't match the right countries, delete flagfiles.dds in the gfx\flags folder (the game will also regenerate this file).
4. Run the EU3 launcher
This is EU3.exe in the Europa Universalis folder. Steam defaults to launching eu3game.exe, so you will need go to your EU3 folder.
5. Select "Carolingian" in the drop down mod selection list. and play
6. Acknowledge the launch through steam (if using steam)
Save Games
Save games go in the save game folder in the mod's folder. E.g.
C:\Program Files\Europa Universalis III\mod\Carolingian\save games
Previous Versions
Carolingian mod v1.04 (7/11/11)
Carolingian mod v1.03 (6/04/11)
Carolingian mod v1.0 (4/16/2011)
For historical background on our CK start
More on Charlemagne
Charlemagne (died 814) carved out one of the largest empires of the middle ages. At its height, his domain stretched from the Pyrenees to the Elbe (nearly to present day Berlin), including northern Italy and - by some accounts - even to western portions of present day Romania. He often stayed in Aachen (near the present day border of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany), but campaigned in Spain, Italy, Brittany (northwest France) and Germany (making numerous vassals of Germanic, Croatian, Serbian and Bohemian tribes).
Himself illiterate, he fostered the creation of schools and monastaries within his realm and had his children (including his daughters) taught. He was considered a great leader administratively and militarily by his own contemporaries. Much of his time was spent in the field, attempting to maintain his empire by a show of force (if the king's not around, then "what king?"). His legacy was so great that he was recognized as Carolus Magnus - Charles the Great. He was Charlemagne and Karl der Große in the native tongues of his land.
The Fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire
Frankish law followed a gavelkind inheritance: land was to be divided equally among sons (accurately enough, it's one of the worst in-game inheritance laws for maintaining an empire). Charlemagne attempted to satiate each of his sons with land. Carloman (died 810, later Pepin once the name was freed up by one of Charlemagne's other offspring) was granted northern Italy, Charles (died 811) was granted Neustria (northern France/Benelux, in an effort to defend against the Bretons in Brittany), and Louis (died 840) was granted Aquitania (southern France). After the death of his other sons, Charlemagne groomed Louis as his sole heir to the empire.
(Pepin's offspring would be the King of Italy, whose offspring would eventually lead to our sole ownership of Vermandois).
Unfortunately, Louis had three sons that outlasted him: Louis, Charles and Lothair. Upon Louis's death the sons warred over their inheritance until the Treaty of Verdun, which divided Charlemagne's former empire into three kingdoms without regard for geographical or cultural boundaries. Louis (or Ludwig) the German received Germany. Charles II the Bald received France and Lothair (unluckiest of all) received the middle kingdom of Italy and Burgundy.
Does this map look familiar? The in-fighting from this (and subsequent) treaty fostered over a millennium of disputes.
Lothair soon died and his sons split his land further. They alternately allied and fought with their uncles and fractured the middle empire even further. The surviving kingdoms also fractured as land was granted to nobles for administration in what would become the feudal system. Eventually poor administration and invasions by Moors, Bretons and Vikings led to the dissolution of Charles' empire with the rise of Odo, count of Anjou who would begin the long-lasting Capetian dynasty (in 1066 Phillip Capet is king of France). Louis' sons would end up revolting frequently, eventually leading to the nearly formal creation of Bavaria, Saxony and Swabia.
The Historical Herbert IV and the Death of the Carolingian Dynasty
Historically, Herbert IV was the great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of Charlemagne (himself the grandson of Charles Martel - often credited with stopping the spread of Islam beyond the Pyrenees). He had two children: Odo and Adelaide. In 1068 he married the daughter Rudolf IV of Vexin, eventually inheriting the title Count of Valois through her by 1077. He then died in 1080.
Odo was likely plagued by schizophrenia or epilepsy (hence his name Eudes l’Insensé (Odo the Insane)). He was disinherited - either by his father or a council of barons upon his inheritance. The lands and titles then passed to his sister Adelaide, who married a son of the King of France. Since inheritance laws of the Medieval era only acknowledge male inheritance, the death of her brother effectively heralded the end of the Carolingian dynasty. We probably don't want that to happen here.
Democracy means you've lost.
None of these LPs ever liberalizes, it makes me sad.
Would be nice to form the allies in HoI2 as opposed to the axis.
EDIT: I blame Crusader Kings. The 'you're playing a lineage, not a country' mentality tends to persist.
Also, my experience with these LPs is that hamming up the roleplay is the way to go.
Collapses are half the point! We need incompetence. :P
...could lead to potential power grabs by the playing individuals attempting to establish a dictatorship (if that'd be allowed) lasting longer. But then, that's about 750-ish years away from our present temporal situation.
EDIT: If I would die, we could instigate a plan to reclaim the throne by ~1115. Philippe Capet is having trouble with male offspring with only Louis Capet among his 8 offspring, and his oldest daughter is one year younger than our grandson...
EDIT2: I'm going to write up a second update once I wade through all the screenshots and then put two decisions to people in the hopes of encouraging posts.
The younger children of the Carolingian dynasty were approaching the ages where they would have to learn how to fend for themselves and be educated in the ways of court. Herbert arranged for his daughter to be educated at the court and raised by the nannies who indulged her every whim, making her a very selfish girl.
Lots of options, they open up different skills. You can also raise the children yourself, but that hurts your health, fertility, and bank account so it's not worth wasting on mere womenfolk.
Herbert kept a careful watch over the political situation in Europe. When the Duchy of Lower Lorraine started the German Civil War, he looked at the County of Hainaut right next to Vermandois. This looked like an excellent opportunity for expansion.
When you're small, you want to take advantage of situations like this. Attack people distracted in other wars, preferably with powerful Kingdoms.
Quickly, documents were forged that insisted that Herbert was the rightful Count of Hainaut as the heir of Charlemagne and war was declared. The Duchy of Lower Lorraine declared war on the Duke for daring to steal land from one of his vassals. Naturally Phillippe the Wise of France intervened on Herbert's behalf. This then triggered France's alliance with England, meaning the Duke of Lower Lorraine was now at war with England, France, and Germany. Along with the Duke of Valois, of course.
To declare war on a Christian, you need a valid claim for one of that Christian's titles. Pagans and Muslims you can attack all willy-nilly.
The Count of Hainaut, insulted by this fabrication challenged Herbert to a duel. The result was a draw.
Damn it, taking claims requires prestige and I would have gotten it for free like four days later!
Calling up his armies from his vassal in Amiens, Herbert quickly seized Hainaut and installed himself as the Count there as well. Unfortunately, he hadn't noticed the county was suffering from a small pox epidemic when he marched out to conquer it.
There's the peace negotiation thingy. You can generally take claims up to the war score, though that's not a hard science. Also you can do whatever the hell you want if you have the enemy's entire personal demesnes under your control. We want the county for ourselves. This hurts our reputation (as did claiming the title in the first place) which is vital when you have a lot of vassals, but not as much right now.
In 1072, the Pope launched a crusade to re-take the holy city of Jerusalem, currently in the hands of the infidel Muslims. Specifically, the King of Egypt. Herbert claims his armies are too small to do anything about that and begs off.
Pope wants Christians to go take some territory. You get huge bonuses to Prestige and Piety if you do so. The more powerful you are the more you're expected to go do something and the faster you lose piety while not killing Muslims. We're small enough we can ignore it.
Raoul, count of Amiens is dead. Fortunately, Herbert's son Odo inherits the titles through his mother, the late Count's eldest daughter.
Hurray! Our heir is now our vassal, which is nice and convenient. The only problem is we no longer have control over his decisions and when his wife Constance dies a year later he forgets to remarry and continue begetting. He has three sons, so it's not a huge deal, but still!
With the previous improvements Herbert has been making, including a jousting field and sawmill in Vermandois, the Duchy is improving rapidly and the people are impressed with the stability of the realm. Soon after, some forests in Hainaut were chopped down to make room for the expanding population and the county became significantly more prosperous, if still suffering from the small pox epidemic.
Stability is good, and only changes by events. High stability = positive events; Low stability = negative events.
Looking over the state of Christendom from Rome the Pope notices the increasingly powerful Duchy of Valois has no Bishop in its court. He asks Herbert to rectify this problem and suggests Hughes de Garlande for the position. Herbert accepts the offer and promptly appoints Hughes as his Bishop.
Germany was falling apart completely with various Duchy's claiming the title of King of Burgundy and wresting the title away from the German King.
Look at all the pretty colors! Germany almost always fractures early on. They're in yellow and used to control basically this entire screen. By the end of the update their territory is split in two and almost all of their vassals are independent Duchies.
King Phillippe decides to join the Crusade and asks for Herbert's troops as part of his expeditionary force to the Holy Land. Herbert agrees, not wanting to anger the King. However, he tells the King to pay his troops instead of doing out of his personal coffers. He also agrees when the King suggests that Herbert personally join the Crusade against the Egyptians.
This is kind of game-y, but you don't want to pay 30 gold per month when the King will do it for you. He (By which I mean AIs) can't go into debt like you can either, so screw that. The event asking us to declare war is a no braining, though there are comedy options there that are likely to get us excommunicated, which is the second or third worst thing you can be. Also, the third one makes us declare war on France. Not a good idea.
While touring Hainaut, Herbert catches small pox. God willing, he'll survive, but Odo the Younger prepares to take command.
With things going so nicely, Herbert asked for some extra taxes to be levied on his people. He wanted to improve the economy of the Duchy but needed money to construct infrastructure.
When stability is high, you get nice events, like this one. We can risk our stability (50% chance) to get a large amount of income now (about a year's worth). We can for sure lose our stability to get ~three year's worth. Or we can gain the generous trait. I took the 50% shot, and won the coin flip. Awesome. It was immediately reinvested in a tile factory in Vermandois. Herbert is a proto-Keynesian. :P
Also, Herbert visited a doctor, who put leeches all over his body and the small pox was sucked right out of him. Herbert immediately requested the doctor to try that treatment all over Hainaut. And suddenly the illness was gone and Hainaut was restored to full productivity. Leech based medicine became all the rage throughout France.
Phillippe got distracted on the way to Jerusalem and conquered Alexandria instead. And then made peace with the Egyptians, so the first French Crusade was over. Not exactly successful in its supposed intention, but an excellent campaign nonetheless.
The AIs all got distracted by Egypt proper and forgot to take Jerusalem. Of course, Alexandria is the best single province in the game, so this acquisition has made France's income kind of ridiculous and they have an ass whomping (seriously, it's huge; like 20,000 men which is three times what we can get in our two provinces and calling up our vassal's army) regiment in Egypt now.
Herbert married his eldest daughter off to the son of the Duke of Flanders, who was the greatest general in France. He got a small amount of money as dowry and saved it towards building a monastery.
He's got 19 Martial skill! This is important for later. Also, their sons will have a more direct line to Herbert's titles than Herbert's brothers and their sons. So Odo the Elder would require a lot of deaths to inherit and Pierre is basically screwed.
Antoine, the Duke's younger son, was old enough for Herbert to take a persona interest in the child's upbringing. A rambunctious child, Antoine quickly started attacking the other children and bullying them around.
Which I forgot to take a screen shot of. I encouraged him. By raising a child yourself you get a bunch of events that give him more traits than if we let the boring nannies/monks/nobles do it.
Researching the records in the library he had just built, Herbert discovered that the title of Duke of Toulouse had never passed out of the Carolingians command and the current holder of that title was a usurper. Phillippe didn't seem to agree and allowed the current Duke of Toulouse to retain his title.
Woohoo free claim. If he ever rebels from France we can declare war to take that title and get a bunch of free vassals. It's kind of far away (south central France, for reference) though.
Finally, the question which Herbert had decided to consult the nobles of the realm about. The Duke of Flanders has rebelled from French rule and is at war Phillippe. Confident in his highly skilled general of a son, he's trying to make an independent Kingdom (roughly Belgium, in this case). He had also noticed that he King of France had only one son, who was a courtier in the nearby Bishopric of Rheims and relatively unprotected. Herbert's grandson Henri would make a fine husband for Phillippe's oldest daughter and if Louis Capet were to um, fall out of a tower and no further sons born to Phillippe and his second wife, the Carolingians would have the heir to the French throne in their bloodlines.
We can:
1) Stay neutral.
2) Grab the title of Count of Gent (or the crappier province to the west of Gent that I forget the name of currently) and declare war for ourselves. We're about equal in terms of army size, but his Marshal is WAY better than our crappy one.
3) Comedy option: grab one of Phillippe's titles and rebel against him!
A) Assassinate Louis Capet (38 gold, lose 100 prestige/piety if we get caught), hope to marry off Henri to the French Crown Princess if ideally Herbert dies before she comes of age and is married off to some loser son of William the Conqueror.
Marry off Henri to the oldest French daughter and hope Louis dies before he can reproduce.
C) Ignore the French throne for now
2A.
Gift-wrapped oppurtunities for the taking.
Also: I will be able to take part in the EU3 stage (HTTT).
And if an heir of ours becomes King of France I vote for a newbie to play next and hopefully lose everything in a display of hilarious incompetence. Extra points if he plays the fiddle while doing so.
And yeah, if we manage to set up Henri's son as the heir to the French son I'm going to requires that be a newbie.
Re: Your question:
If your intrigue score + your spymaster's is higher than the Bishop of Rheims' + his spymaster's than I'd take a chance on option 2A.
Sometime later tonight, I want my reign to end before SC2 trial is downloaded so I can lose 7 hours of my life. :P
Also, the plot failed as we didn't time in time to control Henri's marriage. His sons may inherit the County of Avranches though. We did kill Louis Capet successfully! :P
Though now there's a Jacques Capet and interesting things are happening with Phillippe.
I feel dirty even thinking about unifying the HRE that way. It feels like cheating.
I meant collapses in CK so we don't enter EU3 all powerful. Plus CK collapses are the funniest. You'll note that Wiz collapsed himself fairly frequently. He was King of Germany by like the third update.
Anyway, done playing, Herbert's dead. Love live Odo! Update coming. And then I'll upload the save for PolloDiablo.
And because of the mechanic allowing the expansion of the HRE, you often don't just inherit all of the HRE but also a sizable chunk of France as well! His 'collapses' were often self-engineered to keep the game interesting and semi-challenging (allowing the crown of Germany to pass to someone else, splitting his German/Italian holdings before Victoria, etc), as opposed to the Serbian LP where it seems like half the players have no idea what they are doing.
Also the Carolingian cross is much more Celtic than anything related to Charlemagne. It's basically: "What's cool that starts with a C since our cross has so many Cs in it?" "Charlemagne? Charles Martel?" "That'll work."
Herbert worked to execute the crafty plan he had presented to the nobles in 1080. First, he grabbed a claim on the rebellious County of Gent just to the north of the Duchy. Then he arranged for Louis Capet to "fall down the stairs." And then he declared war on the County of Gent. Unfortunately, the Bishop of Rheims caught the man sent to kill the French heir after the deed was done, causing immense harm to Herbert's reputation as a pious and prestigious noble.
Also, Herbert's intrigue score of 3 may have had something to do with it.
The war proceeded predictably as the army of the Duke of Flanders and Herbert's armies passed each other. Fortunately Phillippe the Still Wise was fighting the war and came to the defense of Hainaut. This delayed the siege and allowed:
An exceptionally favorable peace agreement. Gent was given to Herbert and the Duke of Flanders paid 25 gold to stop Herbert from attack Flanders proper. With the Duke having defeated Phillippe's armies for the moment and laying siege to Hainaut, Herbert found this deal agreeable.
Three counties was too large a territory for Herbert to manage himself so he appointed his brother Odo the Elder to manage Gent.
Territory you can control is determined by intrigue score. If you exceed it, your provinces generate less income. Counts can control half the territory Dukes can with the same score, Kings can control twice as much territory as Dukes. There are also bonus provinces at certain dates, the first of which is 1100 AD, so in a few years we'll get an extra province we can fully exploit, hooray!
Herbert had big plans for his grandson, and hoped to make his heirs King of France.
He has nice stats too! His education isn't done yet, but with some decent luck he should end up with a martial score of 16+.
Who had been excommunicated by the Pope, losing his appellation in the process.
Being excommunicated suuuuucks. Claims on your titles are considerably cheaper to acquire, your vassals lose loyalty at a crazy rate (as we'll see in a second), and things are generally painful. Not as bad as Kinslayer, but bad. Our personal loyalty to Phillippe plummeted from 100% (and rising 3% a year) to 0% very, very quickly.
The Duchy of Champagne rebelled and laid siege to Paris itself! Herbert's prestige was still suffering from his "fraudulent" claim on Gent and being caught assassinating the King's only son, so he merely sat and watched as Phillippe desperately ran around the kingdom putting down rebellions. After Champagne fell the Duchies of Brittany and Toulouse went with it. Herbert contemplated using his own claim on Toulouse to seize that territory but decided those vassals would be a considerable distance from his own territories and hard to maintain control. Plus, he had roads to build and didn't want to maintain armies.
Antoine began questioning the existence of God. Not wanting to join his liege in facing the Pope's wrath, Herbert explained that God was very much real and we had to fight for his cause and destroy all heretics, particularly the Count of Yperen, northwest of Gent. Antoine became a zealous defender of the faith. To emphasize the point, Herbert ordered the construction of a monastery in Vermandois.
Late in life Herbert and his wife began to actually fall in love. With his wife no less! No longer of child bearing age, they found themselves connected on a personal level instead of merely fulfilling their noble duties.
The Duke and his wife the spy master in particular bonded over the successful assassination of Louis and their plot to make a Carolingian sit on the throne of France. Unfortunately news came that Phillippe had managed to produce another son, Jacques, who became the new heir to the throne. Not wishing to further risk his reputation which was still suffering from the murder of Louis and the seizure of Gent, Herbert decided to not take a risk and try to murder the infant.
His daughter Antoinette was resentful of the Count she had been fostered under and the anger she felt about it extended to include her father. She demanded a bag of gold or she would leave the court and strike out on her own. Herbert refused, thinking she would grow to love her family again now that she was back at court.
Also, her loyalty was only at 6% so we didn't lose much. It's growing again and she has 17 diplomacy so is our new chancellor. She married the Bishop to keep him happy.
Finally in 1085 after nearly 20 years of rule (OK, longer in history, but whatever) Herbert died in his sleep at the age of 53. Herbert had significantly increased the holdings of the Carolingians and improved their rank to that of Duke. He would be remembered mostly for his vast construction projects, greatly improve the infrastructure of the region, in particular Vermandois itself. His son Odo the Younger became the new Duke of Valois!
Game summary: we discovered roads near the end of my reign, Vermandois is building the simple version currently. Switched to mine research because the +1 gold thing is awesome.
Odo also has crappy intrigue (three) so we're not getting the most out of our now three territories. But I suggest saving them until his two sons come of age and make them counts. Odo's also single, as he never re-married. Also single: Phillippe's oldest daughter and our Phillippe (Odo's middle son) is 15, so maybe we can try to get into the Capet family still?
The cross is so mathematically pretty though! And we're Charlemagne's somewhat illegitimate heir anyway so we'll co-opt it in our alternate history.
I suspect it's fairly easy to work around the HttT issues. We'd want to do some border adjustments anyway and EU3 isn't terrible to do by hand if I've got large outlines filled in by some converter or another.
Oh, also I'll probably check out the world and post about what's going on as an interlude sometime tonight.
PolloDiablo should have it. I hope.
More edits: I found a CK -> HttT converter that seems to work for people, if it's not entirely done. From there should be able to fix a few things, add some missions, stuff like that.
Spain has pretty much fallen to various Muslims already. It's kind of sad, really. Phillippe is doing a fair job at controlling his territory despite the excommunication. Brittany is occupied, as is Toulouse, he's just chasing down armies before forcing surrenders. The French King is already starting to personally own quite a few territories from rebellious vassals.
The British Isles are basically status quo. A couple rebellions, but nothing serious. I think that's Scotland's initial territory but not 100% sure.
In Central Europe we can see that Germany has splintered significantly. The von Frankens who initially ruled the Kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy have lost the German crown to the Weimars. Meanwhile, the Duke of Bohemia has crowned himself King. In formerly German Italy a variety of powers have emerged with the strongest of them probably being the Duke of Tuscany who is currently the Papal Controller. Poland, Hungary, and Croatia are doing pretty well for themselves.
Lastly we can see the Byzantines have lost significant portions of Asia Minor, and various Crusaders have taken the northern coast of Egypt, including Phillippe's conquest of Alexandria. Currently, a Swedish Crusade is occupying Cairo. Of course, no one is really targeting Jerusalem at all as of yet. The Principality of Crete currently owns Jaffa-Ascalon so there's even a beach head for Christians.
In a country with elective gov't, all you'd have to do is agree that every 2 elections you switch players, or switch as soon as a different party comes to power. Elections fire regularly.