Hm, my vassals were a bit too successful and now my secondary heir stands to become Emperor of Mali and I don't have enough time to learn the stuff I need to to stop that from happening.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Given the bug reported earlier in the thread about how closing the game and reopening it breaks achievements, I decided to set aside my attempt to become Emperor of Hispania and focus on something smaller: Last Count, First King (As Nuno II Vimaranes, form Portugal). It was mildly frustrating, because I kept getting my lands overrun by holy wars while the Jimena siblings fought it out for Castile, or after successfully getting most of the lands I needed I couldn't get out from the Jimena siblings due to them being super-strong.
My successful run occurred after I had had a failed rebellion, escaped the king's dungeon, and then watched with glee as the king got holy warred by the rest of the Iberian peninsula. The Muslims killed off his armies, I hired a bunch of mercenaries, declared war again and took his capital, and that got me my independence. I just waited for the gold to tick up and got the achievement. I also snagged the Death Did Us Part achievement (Murder Your Spouse), because why not?
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
The Halfdan start might be too stressful for me. I had to immediately convert to stop myself getting holy warred to shit. I don't know if that's inevitable or if I have to Win More.
The Halfdan start might be too stressful for me. I had to immediately convert to stop myself getting holy warred to shit. I don't know if that's inevitable or if I have to Win More.
It took me a few restarts to figure out a good way to do things. My big thing was probably attacking Mercia when it was weakened. With them steadily chipped away until I could conquer the whole duchy at once, the only one that might think of attacking me while my troop count was boosted from keeping the event troops in reserve was Alfred. He ended up dragged into an ally's war on the continent and I basically left him alone. I also was biased towards archers for my men at arms since the AI skews towards Light Footmen early on. My Halfdan had the Gallant tree filled out when I started this run which helped a lot since Halfdan's a good commander so you really want him leading even without the boosts from Gallant and boosting champion effectiveness by 75% plus having more of them is a big help early on when you have almost no Men At Arms. Viking champions also often rip off enemy champion/knight heads boosting their skills by gaining the Berserker trait and flat out killing the enemy so they're even deadlier than other culture's champions. And being able to win wars at only 90% war score helps with things like keeping troop count up and spending less money.
ok... i see the problem. I upgraded 2 level 1 tribe holding to level 2, not castles. Now the weird thing, i can upgrade a tribal holding i conquered to a level 2 tribe, only if i give it to a vassal. But how does the grand king of england turn these lowly holdings into proper feudal holdings?
Note to self: Remember to re-check the matrilinenal marriage for your daughter whom you plan on inheriting after their spouse keeps dying.
Luckily, noticed just in the nick of time after succession to divorce the current hubbie, marry another, and seduce them for guarantee tumble, to have twins at age 46 (got pregnant at 45, which IIRC is normally the oldest a woman can be to still have kids) and with her Intrigue education, noone has the balls to stop me from keeping the Crown Authority at Absolute (Mom, who had maxed out on Prestige ranks and had a diplomacy in the upper 30's thanks to all her friends, still had everyone loving her after she raised it to that height) and designating one of them as the heir. Eldest son was my dynasty, but ended up dying after losing several limbs over the course of his grandmother's many holy wars, leaving a grandson that's rather terrible, at least compared to his many Intelligent and Genius family members, but he's basically the backup, with the eldest wrong dynast son matrineally marrying his cousin. Dunno if it would be a game over or have me jump dynasties (hopefully to the brother that my niece and soon-to-be daughter-in-law is the daughter of) but I figure it wouldn't hurt to try if worst comes to worse.
Anyway, fun times are abound! Unless I managed to live to 62 (mom made it to 63, so it's possible) I'm going to have a child heir with multiple adult claimants, at least one with kingdom of their own, and vassals who really do NOT like the Crown Authority level.
ok... i see the problem. I upgraded 2 level 1 tribe holding to level 2, not castles. Now the weird thing, i can upgrade a tribal holding i conquered to a level 2 tribe, only if i give it to a vassal. But how does the grand king of england turn these lowly holdings into proper feudal holdings?
There's a button to convert the tribe holding to a castle if you hold the tribal county yourself. Costs 500 gold to do.
So I've discovered a few more things your idiot children will do when controlled by the AI.
My last ruler ended up with 4 children after she excommunicated and jailed the first two before leaving them to die in the dungeon. The first died for being a glutton and I did not want to deal with the double whammy of obesity wrecking life expectancy and making gaining Devotion levels and their bonuses a Sisyphean task. Fitness is now mandatory in the line. The second died for just being pretty mediocre compared to every other sibling who was Quick or Intelligent.
This is the ruler that was Just, Humble, and something else that didn't come into play much. I now had enough troops to directly challenge the Byzantine Empire after taking chunks away from East Francia/Bohemia/Bavaria and Germania who also constantly fought each other. The latter was getting the worst of it and I timed some of my wars against them so that I could intercept their troop stack as I did not want to risk them becoming a continent-wide empire again. Being able to directly attack the Byzantines was important as they had expanded into southern France, most of Italy, and a good chunk of northern Africa so they were almost impossible to dislodge for the AI. I had Britannia, Hispania, and random chunks of Scandinavia and mainland Europe. Added Bavaria when I invaded the entire Kingdom and took it from whatever name the not-Germania German realm was using at the time which pretty much ensured the German realms would never have enough of an army to attack me.
I'd also decided I didn't like dealing with crusades. They are a slog on the defending end as you can't occupy an enemy capital or capture an heir to quickly end it. Instead it's 10 years or more of pushing away AI doomstacks and waiting for the war score to climb up as your economy strains under troop costs and you strain under needing to make sure your troops can stay supplied by splitting apart to spend a few months under the supply limit. So I decided I wanted to remove the pope. Well, actually three of my vassals had taken each of the Papacy's counties. And the Byzantine Empire had done most of the remaining work when it carved its way through Italy. And conveniently in the process it removed Catholic rulers but Lollard ones were still around. So the Pope had no Catholic churches in Italy to set up shop in. While there is a decision for some faiths to dismantle the Papacy, that seems to mostly be to strengthen heresies and mess with Catholicism's tenets. Just making the Pope unlanded seems to be enough to stop his influence.
I did however holy way the Byzantines for the Kingdom of Sicily. Not much in the way of Orthodox rulers to help them. I'd already given some kingdom titles to my second eldest living child who'd already popped out some Intelligent, Quick, and Genius kids and gave her a few Italian duchies and counties too. Meanwhile the Intelligent youngest son (and only living son at that point) got his first title in the form of the Kingdom of Sicily.
Then I discovered that something the AI does not always do so well is protect their capitol when a rebellion lays siege to it. The second daughter lost three grandkids that had Genius or Intelligent when the peasants went hog wild on the family. That killed off a good portion of my breeding project. My poor, poor breeding program. And also my grandkids. But mostly my poor breeding program.
This caused quite a bit of stress for that daughter as you can imagine and she picked up some coping mechanism traits.
Meanwhile the son came of age and rather quickly got lost an arm and died from being maimed. At least he left behind some smart kids.
The eldest daughter wasn't as impressive as the others being only Quick and also Craven but she had workable stats that were much better than her older siblings had been. She also had an eldest daughter that was a Genius. And her little brother also was a Genius. All the blackmailing and dying children had stressed out my ruler a bit so I started hitting hunts anytime I could. And during one my eldest daughter was caught having murdered a peasant. And she had an eldest daughter that was a Genius while she was only Quick and also Craven. I'd already had to arrest my other kids more than once for doing stupid crimes even if I released them quickly so killing the eldest daughter for that crime felt fitting.
That ruler ended up living until around 73. a nice change of pace from her two predecessors who died in their 60s from obesity. The one year warning popped up multiple times as she somehow kept hanging on a bit longer.
Her successor is now going to focus on working in another genetic trait into the line and maybe remove the Byzantines from Western Europe. Not really interested in expanding any further but my vassals have started taking counties near India. Any time I get warred for one I just surrender because I can't be bothered with single counties that far away. But if I can get Viking war elephants, that could change my interest there quite a bit. It'll look nice alongside Viking camel riders and Viking Reconquista.
ok... i see the problem. I upgraded 2 level 1 tribe holding to level 2, not castles. Now the weird thing, i can upgrade a tribal holding i conquered to a level 2 tribe, only if i give it to a vassal. But how does the grand king of england turn these lowly holdings into proper feudal holdings?
There's a button to convert the tribe holding to a castle if you hold the tribal county yourself. Costs 500 gold to do.
... where?
holy hell im dumb. Its the little circle castle button right by the tribal upgrade square.
My empire (Norse Britannia, reformed Asatru) is a huge mess right now. I own most of the British Isle, but also massive amounts of coasts all over the world, most of the Netherlands, and large chunks of Africa somehow.
I'm created an installed a huge bunch of kingdoms and bequeathed them to members of my dynasty, and am now also able to create the Empire of Italia due to my efforts to eradicate the papacy.
I'm now considering creating Italia, and either bequeathing Britannia to another member of my dynasty or just destroying it. Question is, who gets what vassals if I do that?
I know I can bequeath any titles I personally hold to whoever I want, but the only kingdom I currently personally own is Bologna. So if I create Italia and pass Britannia to someone else, how does my empire divvy up?
Subjugation wars are pretty convenient, it seems. Cost 750 prestige to declare, but I got the Kingdom of Sweden and vassalized their ruler, merging their kingdom with Scotland's. Now I can zoom out, look at the map, and play a game of a "Find the Scotland." Sweden had land all over the place. I just looked and I found a county in Nuraddin on the coast of Africa that's in my realm. It's owned by a 7 year old.
So King Alfy is 45, has ruled for 30 years, and is in great position to form an empire. Both kingdoms have elective succession but it looks like they're going to vote for different heirs. I'm pretty sure I'm just short on gold, as I have to create the Kingdom of Ireland before I can create an empire.
King Alfy himself is ridiculous. The family heriarch branch of diplomacy is pretty strong. +2 skill points for friends and +1 skill points for living children is real good. I have seven friends and twelve kids. My martial and my stewardship used to be low. Now I can't tell which one my wife is focused in.
WHAAAAAAAAT the shit. My archbishop just died. Granted he was a gay catholic athiest, but the new guy put in place is a paulist or whatever instead of catholic. Now suddenly im a paulist too? what the heck is up with that? Side note, there are NO counties around that are that archbishops religion. how does that even happen?
When defending against a war of subjugation it's not a great idea to, when seeing your capital under siege, run in with a personally-led army of five soldiers.
A month after war dec and with maybe 20 casualties i've increased my area 300%. My original border was that blue line, everything north was gained. I imagine there'll be a lot of trouble holding it since everyone living there hates me, and if I do hold it then when I die it'll get split off into its own kingdom of Sapmi again since titled are split evenly amongst heirs, but it has added a few de jure Finland counties I had been unable to grab since the start of the game and it will put 3/5 of scandinavia under my dynasty (Sweden is already ruled by my half sister) which hopefully will make it slightly easier to get the empire a few hundred years down the road.
I feel like the Halfdan start is definitely not a "relaxing in the fleeting moments of peace during PAX Online" kind of start.
If you want to play vikings but easier, I recommend Fairhair. He's up in Norway and can let us enjoy all the viking stuff, but there's no one instantly attacking you and you can take it a little slower.
I feel like the Halfdan start is definitely not a "relaxing in the fleeting moments of peace during PAX Online" kind of start.
None of the 867 starts are IMO. A lot of the rulers are tribal with all the issues that brings on top of being a very conquest centered government. And fedual rulers need to deal with all those tribal conquerers and many start out with a bunch of nearby feudal rulers having claims on their kingdom titles. 1066 is where you find more stable realms outside of the areas where Catholics border Muslims (eg Spain which will be full of holy wars and the occasional crusade or jihad).
I feel like the Halfdan start is definitely not a "relaxing in the fleeting moments of peace during PAX Online" kind of start.
If you want to play vikings but easier, I recommend Fairhair. He's up in Norway and can let us enjoy all the viking stuff, but there's no one instantly attacking you and you can take it a little slower.
The Scandinavian rulers need to do a lot of warring at the start to consolidate after which they deal with needing to deal with other tribal realms that have consolidated. Plus there's the whole converting to feudal thing. Halfdan starting out as feudal is a pretty big deal right now with how painful and slow adopting feudalism takes. I also think Bjorn Ironsides is a better choice for a Scandinavian start since it's closer to forming Sweden from the start and controls a holy site in their capitol county. Needing to figure out when to strike feudal realms to snatch holy sites is an added complication of the non-Scandinavian vikings but not terribly difficult if one of them doesn't blob up early on.
A warning to achievement chasers: Don't attempt achievements that are of the type "Start as character X, then complete task Y as part of the dynasty" because as soon as you move on from the original character and quit the game, the game disables that achievement.
I have like 15 hours invested in a "Mother of us All" run that can't get that achievement. Even though 80% of the work is done. (Biggest Empire in africa, second strongest on the map, got a stable power structure)
Dang! I heard rumors of this but no one was able to confirm when I asked earlier for my Duara playthrough. Ahhh well, I still had quite a ways to go anyways.
FYI Kidnapping the Pope doesn't give you any warscore in Crusades.
So much for that brilliant plan...
Not having any quick way to end defending a crusade is pretty miserable. Some people advocate just surrendering immediately and then taking back what was lost via conquests and holy wars as a better idea since it's quicker and easier on your economy.
That said, if you can unland the pope and effectively destroy the office that apparently causes a crusade to fail.
My empire (Norse Britannia, reformed Asatru) is a huge mess right now. I own most of the British Isle, but also massive amounts of coasts all over the world, most of the Netherlands, and large chunks of Africa somehow.
I'm created an installed a huge bunch of kingdoms and bequeathed them to members of my dynasty, and am now also able to create the Empire of Italia due to my efforts to eradicate the papacy.
I'm now considering creating Italia, and either bequeathing Britannia to another member of my dynasty or just destroying it. Question is, who gets what vassals if I do that?
I know I can bequeath any titles I personally hold to whoever I want, but the only kingdom I currently personally own is Bologna. So if I create Italia and pass Britannia to someone else, how does my empire divvy up?
IIRC, granting independence to a title grants the only the lands their de jure vassals own. Any vassals that are "missing" their de jure liege is under your primary title, and will stick with it until/unless the correct title is created.
So if you give away Britannia, they will get everything that everyone who has their capital in Britannia currently controls. Hopefully, that's just in Britannia, but if there is a vassal duke or king that also controls some coastal counties in Italia, those would transfer too and you would have to conquer them back. If they're inland counties with no connection to the sea, then under the default game rules you can just murder the guy you gave it to and they should become independent enclaves that are much easier to bring into the fold.
Another important thing to keep in mind; Under normal partition, lands you give away to heirs only count if they are still part of your realm. So if giving away Britannia is suppose to be a way to make sure one of the spares don't muck up your primary heir's inheritance, be warned that do so would only muck it up even more.
My empire (Norse Britannia, reformed Asatru) is a huge mess right now. I own most of the British Isle, but also massive amounts of coasts all over the world, most of the Netherlands, and large chunks of Africa somehow.
I'm created an installed a huge bunch of kingdoms and bequeathed them to members of my dynasty, and am now also able to create the Empire of Italia due to my efforts to eradicate the papacy.
I'm now considering creating Italia, and either bequeathing Britannia to another member of my dynasty or just destroying it. Question is, who gets what vassals if I do that?
I know I can bequeath any titles I personally hold to whoever I want, but the only kingdom I currently personally own is Bologna. So if I create Italia and pass Britannia to someone else, how does my empire divvy up?
IIRC, granting independence to a title grants the only the lands their de jure vassals own. Any vassals that are "missing" their de jure liege is under your primary title, and will stick with it until/unless the correct title is created.
So if you give away Britannia, they will get everything that everyone who has their capital in Britannia currently controls. Hopefully, that's just in Britannia, but if there is a vassal duke or king that also controls some coastal counties in Italia, those would transfer too and you would have to conquer them back. If they're inland counties with no connection to the sea, then under the default game rules you can just murder the guy you gave it to and they should become independent enclaves that are much easier to bring into the fold.
Another important thing to keep in mind; Under normal partition, lands you give away to heirs only count if they are still part of your realm. So if giving away Britannia is suppose to be a way to make sure one of the spares don't muck up your primary heir's inheritance, be warned that do so would only muck it up even more.
Oh I realize giving away Brittania will break up my empire, but I actually want to do that to boost my dynasty reputation (2 emperors in a single dynasty is a huge score boost), and I'm not even paying attention to what's going on in Britain anymore, as all my focus has been on Italy, so I figure why not just let the AI have fun with that while our Dynasty gets stronger and I don't have to deal with constant spam about what's going on up there.
My empire (Norse Britannia, reformed Asatru) is a huge mess right now. I own most of the British Isle, but also massive amounts of coasts all over the world, most of the Netherlands, and large chunks of Africa somehow.
I'm created an installed a huge bunch of kingdoms and bequeathed them to members of my dynasty, and am now also able to create the Empire of Italia due to my efforts to eradicate the papacy.
I'm now considering creating Italia, and either bequeathing Britannia to another member of my dynasty or just destroying it. Question is, who gets what vassals if I do that?
I know I can bequeath any titles I personally hold to whoever I want, but the only kingdom I currently personally own is Bologna. So if I create Italia and pass Britannia to someone else, how does my empire divvy up?
IIRC, granting independence to a title grants the only the lands their de jure vassals own. Any vassals that are "missing" their de jure liege is under your primary title, and will stick with it until/unless the correct title is created.
So if you give away Britannia, they will get everything that everyone who has their capital in Britannia currently controls. Hopefully, that's just in Britannia, but if there is a vassal duke or king that also controls some coastal counties in Italia, those would transfer too and you would have to conquer them back. If they're inland counties with no connection to the sea, then under the default game rules you can just murder the guy you gave it to and they should become independent enclaves that are much easier to bring into the fold.
Another important thing to keep in mind; Under normal partition, lands you give away to heirs only count if they are still part of your realm. So if giving away Britannia is suppose to be a way to make sure one of the spares don't muck up your primary heir's inheritance, be warned that do so would only muck it up even more.
Oh I realize giving away Brittania will break up my empire, but I actually want to do that to boost my dynasty reputation (2 emperors in a single dynasty is a huge score boost), and I'm not even paying attention to what's going on in Britain anymore, as all my focus has been on Italy, so I figure why not just let the AI have fun with that while our Dynasty gets stronger and I don't have to deal with constant spam about what's going on up there.
It's going to be a matter of figuring out what lands/vassals you want to keep. Any dukes that hold both Italian and UK duchies could be a point of contention. That's a big part of why I didn't break off Hispania and give it to a sibling. So much of that area is owned by dukes in Britannia and now even the kingdom titles in it are mashed up between siblings and their kids.
So I've run into an issue where I'm unsure if it's a bug or not... I've taken prisoner a duke level vassal after they rebelled against me, and thus am able to freely revoke a title from them as recompense. The game doesn't seem to want to let me take their ducal title, claiming "... it would make her hold only Titles with no Land".
Firstly, what does this even mean? Surely if I de-land someone then they just go from being a vassal back to a plain ol' noble? Secondly, she definitely would have some land since she'd still hold the Earl titles for the counties under the taken ducal title.
Picture of the error message under the spoiler
edit: Looking at some more of my imprisoned vassals (it was one helluva rebellion!) they are seem to exhibit the same behaviour, not allowing me to revoke their ducal titles despite having plenty of counties under them.
So I've run into an issue where I'm unsure if it's a bug or not... I've taken prisoner a duke level vassal after they rebelled against me, and thus am able to freely revoke a title from them as recompense. The game doesn't seem to want to let me take their ducal title, claiming "... it would make her hold only Titles with no Land".
Firstly, what does this even mean? Surely if I de-land someone then they just go from being a vassal back to a plain ol' noble? Secondly, she definitely would have some land since she'd still hold the Earl titles for the counties under the taken ducal title.
Picture of the error message under the spoiler
I think there's a lot of weird stuff going on with legal stuff in the game. I've been dealing with being unable to arrest vassals due to lacking high tribal authority when both me and the vassal are feudal. Had to console command a workaround though it's one that gives me a High Tribal Authority malus on opinion with feudal vassals.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Can't say I'm enjoying this "big ball of stuff" approach to what is happening in the game, at least not with better notifications to tell you what the fuck is happening. Start a new game and I've got two wars on my hands. Fight my way through one and take over the realm, but the second war just keeps ticking against me even though I have no fucking clue where the kingdom is at? And I'm losing because the enemy holds the "war target" and I'm sitting here going "what the fuck is the war target, can't you just tell me?" Then I lose the war where not a single battle happened... and nothing happens? But then I also lose a chunk out of the realm I just conquered because somebody decided to lay siege to one of my new counties, but the game never bothered to say "hey, one of these fifty armies moving around attacked your holding", it just told me when the fight was over and I lost.
Further, there is zero info on why the fuck the game will say I have X number of soldiers available and then my levies raise a fraction of that. What in the world is the point of saying I have 6000 soldiers available, but my levy can only drum up 1500 for some reason? The fuck am I missing here? Further, I paid for some men-at-arms and the game since they're "raised", but doesn't bother to tell me where the hell they are. Are they with the levies? Sitting around some town?
There's a difference between having a learning curve and just making the game a plain brick wall of non-information. I really appreciate getting spammed info like some vague enemy of mine just conquered something in the ass end of nowhere instead of being told I have a holding under attack.
So I've run into an issue where I'm unsure if it's a bug or not... I've taken prisoner a duke level vassal after they rebelled against me, and thus am able to freely revoke a title from them as recompense. The game doesn't seem to want to let me take their ducal title, claiming "... it would make her hold only Titles with no Land".
Firstly, what does this even mean? Surely if I de-land someone then they just go from being a vassal back to a plain ol' noble? Secondly, she definitely would have some land since she'd still hold the Earl titles for the counties under the taken ducal title.
Picture of the error message under the spoiler
I think there's a lot of weird stuff going on with legal stuff in the game. I've been dealing with being unable to arrest vassals due to lacking high tribal authority when both me and the vassal are feudal. Had to console command a workaround though it's one that gives me a High Tribal Authority malus on opinion with feudal vassals.
Did a bit more digging on the paradox forums, and it definitely seems to be a bug. Apparently there's a workaround where you give a county title from a different duchy to the offending Duchess, which will allow you to strip the original ducal title. Seemingly this leaves your given county title in some sort of limbo though, so it's two steps forward one step back
Can't say I'm enjoying this "big ball of stuff" approach to what is happening in the game, at least not with better notifications to tell you what the fuck is happening. Start a new game and I've got two wars on my hands. Fight my way through one and take over the realm, but the second war just keeps ticking against me even though I have no fucking clue where the kingdom is at? And I'm losing because the enemy holds the "war target" and I'm sitting here going "what the fuck is the war target, can't you just tell me?" Then I lose the war where not a single battle happened... and nothing happens? But then I also lose a chunk out of the realm I just conquered because somebody decided to lay siege to one of my new counties, but the game never bothered to say "hey, one of these fifty armies moving around attacked your holding", it just told me when the fight was over and I lost.
Further, there is zero info on why the fuck the game will say I have X number of soldiers available and then my levies raise a fraction of that. What in the world is the point of saying I have 6000 soldiers available, but my levy can only drum up 1500 for some reason? The fuck am I missing here? Further, I paid for some men-at-arms and the game since they're "raised", but doesn't bother to tell me where the hell they are. Are they with the levies? Sitting around some town?
There's a difference between having a learning curve and just making the game a plain brick wall of non-information. I really appreciate getting spammed info like some vague enemy of mine just conquered something in the ass end of nowhere instead of being told I have a holding under attack.
Disclaimer: I'm still getting used to the game systems myself, so take all below with a decent pinch of salt!
If someone is at war with you, there should be an icon in the bottom right of the screen showing the current warscore. If you click that it should take you to a page with the full details of the war, why they are fighting you etc.
Also if you scroll out a fair bit, you should be able to see some heraldry icons with flames over them, this is the main holding of the enemy/ies. These should also be contained within some red glowing borders indicating the entirety of the enemy/ies demesne. Likewise there should be some blue glowing borders around some of your land, indicating the areas the enemy needs to attack.
Currently raised army info is definitely hidden away, I didn't find it for a bit at first. There's a little scroll in the very top right called "outliner" or something, click this and you'll get a small list of useful things. One of which are all your currently raised armies! Double click it and you'll shoot to the army.
Speaking of armies, if you click on them you should get a small menu in the bottom left telling you about your army. Who is leading it (make sure somebody is!), what troops it contains (levies, men at arms and knights), supplies (hello more learning curve!) and probably more stuff I don't recall.
As for the numbers of your troops not matching up to what you're able to raise, I'm honestly not sure myself I'm afraid! In the first instance I'm not sure how that number works, perhaps that number includes your allies' available troops too? Secondly there could be some other factors that reduced that number legitimately. For example, if your war is against one of your powerful vassals then a large number of troops that used to come to you as vassal levies would be in their army!
Can't say I'm enjoying this "big ball of stuff" approach to what is happening in the game, at least not with better notifications to tell you what the fuck is happening. Start a new game and I've got two wars on my hands. Fight my way through one and take over the realm, but the second war just keeps ticking against me even though I have no fucking clue where the kingdom is at? And I'm losing because the enemy holds the "war target" and I'm sitting here going "what the fuck is the war target, can't you just tell me?"
Click the icon for the war, click on the underlined county, duchy, or kingdom name in the war description and it'll bring up the info for the contested titles. Click on the shield icon for the county/duchy/kingdom in the sidebar and it will snap the map to the location as always.
Then I lose the war where not a single battle happened... and nothing happens? But then I also lose a chunk out of the realm I just conquered because somebody decided to lay siege to one of my new counties, but the game never bothered to say "hey, one of these fifty armies moving around attacked your holding", it just told me when the fight was over and I lost.
You get a notification on the right side of the screen when one of your holdings is being besieged. If you click on the underlined holding name, it will bring up the location's sidebar and you can click on the shield to go to the location and see what's going on. The only time this doesn't pop up is maybe the edge case where you end up as a war target because your vassal conquered land another faction was also fighting for and already was laying siege to. If you click on the war icon you'll also be able to see what is affecting the war score by what percentage. Battles are not necessary, holding territory is the real key as it is a war over territory. Hover over any of those percentages and you will see a breakdown of how much each holding occupied is affecting the score as well as which holdings are involved.
Further, there is zero info on why the fuck the game will say I have X number of soldiers available and then my levies raise a fraction of that. What in the world is the point of saying I have 6000 soldiers available, but my levy can only drum up 1500 for some reason? The fuck am I missing here? Further, I paid for some men-at-arms and the game since they're "raised", but doesn't bother to tell me where the hell they are. Are they with the levies? Sitting around some town?
Your levies will take time to show up at a rally point depending on how far away they're coming from. This can take weeks or months depending on how far away they are and the triangle made of arrows both indicates that they are gathering. If you can't wait the full length of time, you won't get all 6000 raised.
Either hovering over that or trying to move that stack will inform you that they are still gathering but you can order them to move with what's assembled by holding Ctrl and clicking. Your men at arms will instantly deploy so long as they're not depleted though they will continue to replenish while deployed. You can get a list of raised armies you have as well as holdings by clicking on the button on the right side of the screen above the one for your realm. There is a typo when you hover over an army in that you need to double click to snap to it instead of right clicking as it says to.
There's a difference between having a learning curve and just making the game a plain brick wall of non-information. I really appreciate getting spammed info like some vague enemy of mine just conquered something in the ass end of nowhere instead of being told I have a holding under attack.
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
Massively goofed and found my heir of the Empire to be a 48 year old Queen in a patrilineal marriage, so no heir. Quickly committed to Norse Elective succession so we could guarantee an heir, which I wasn't happy about but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Only after that did I realize the Queen was a freak on the sneak and I had a bastard I could legitimize. D'oh. Well, time to ride out the election for a generation or two and feudalize. We were close when dad died.
I do wish when you get a notice that you can jail someone for being a murderer there was more context. Who did they kill?
We've spread the dynasty pretty thick in these parts, so it's not too surprising when someone ends up being a kinslayer, I just wish I could track back who it was they killed. But it's partly my own fault for having too many people under a very big umbrella fighting their own wars with outsiders and each other. No idea what's going on with most of these folks half the time till suddenly a new county pops up in the middle of the empire.
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
DISCLAIMER: Do not own, have not played, going by what I've seen posted here, which is a whole lot of questions on this general topic...
It sounds like the game desperately needs an interface tutorial, or a better one?
If the information is there, but they don't tell you where/how to find it...
There seems to be a bug in how the game counts levies. My special event levies I started with don't reinforce (gain back troops), so if any died it reduced the amount I had permanently. But when the game calculates my total possible levies, it uses the amount I started with instead of the current amount I had. So it constantly tells me I could have more levies, but they never reinforce. Eventually, I only had 75 out of 5000 special levies left, so I sent them to their death because I was tired of being told I could have 5000 more troops when I can't.
Also, be sparing with those special event levies some rulers (like the vikings) get. Using them in battles in sieges too early can weaken your army when they could be a good deterrent and backup. For my current run, I split off all my knights, man-at-arms, and regular levies and left the special levies at my capitol. This allowed my regular army to do all the work while the special levies simply kept my capitol safe. Be sure to ensure to check the supply limit, though. You don't want to lose those guys to attrition like I did.
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
DISCLAIMER: Do not own, have not played, going by what I've seen posted here, which is a whole lot of questions on this general topic...
It sounds like the game desperately needs an interface tutorial, or a better one?
If the information is there, but they don't tell you where/how to find it...
It's just how paradox games work I think. The tutorial would be a hundred hours long. Partially this is one of those games that's a game about learning the game.
CKII is a game I bought, played for 20 minutes, and didn't touch for two years after.
It is dense. A goliath of wholly independent and interconnected systems. CKIII is the same way. They are like PNP RPGs. If you are learning the rules as things happen in session 1, you are gonna have a bad time.
And there is just no way for a tutorial to be shorter than most AAA playthroughs while also being encompassing. It is that fucking packed.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with bouncing off of the game because of it.
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
DISCLAIMER: Do not own, have not played, going by what I've seen posted here, which is a whole lot of questions on this general topic...
It sounds like the game desperately needs an interface tutorial, or a better one?
If the information is there, but they don't tell you where/how to find it...
It's just how paradox games work I think. The tutorial would be a hundred hours long. Partially this is one of those games that's a game about learning the game.
yeah, but we're talking about basic interface stuff - "how do I", "where do I find", etc.
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Given the bug reported earlier in the thread about how closing the game and reopening it breaks achievements, I decided to set aside my attempt to become Emperor of Hispania and focus on something smaller: Last Count, First King (As Nuno II Vimaranes, form Portugal). It was mildly frustrating, because I kept getting my lands overrun by holy wars while the Jimena siblings fought it out for Castile, or after successfully getting most of the lands I needed I couldn't get out from the Jimena siblings due to them being super-strong.
My successful run occurred after I had had a failed rebellion, escaped the king's dungeon, and then watched with glee as the king got holy warred by the rest of the Iberian peninsula. The Muslims killed off his armies, I hired a bunch of mercenaries, declared war again and took his capital, and that got me my independence. I just waited for the gold to tick up and got the achievement. I also snagged the Death Did Us Part achievement (Murder Your Spouse), because why not?
Clearly the problem was not enough Dan.
It took me a few restarts to figure out a good way to do things. My big thing was probably attacking Mercia when it was weakened. With them steadily chipped away until I could conquer the whole duchy at once, the only one that might think of attacking me while my troop count was boosted from keeping the event troops in reserve was Alfred. He ended up dragged into an ally's war on the continent and I basically left him alone. I also was biased towards archers for my men at arms since the AI skews towards Light Footmen early on. My Halfdan had the Gallant tree filled out when I started this run which helped a lot since Halfdan's a good commander so you really want him leading even without the boosts from Gallant and boosting champion effectiveness by 75% plus having more of them is a big help early on when you have almost no Men At Arms. Viking champions also often rip off enemy champion/knight heads boosting their skills by gaining the Berserker trait and flat out killing the enemy so they're even deadlier than other culture's champions. And being able to win wars at only 90% war score helps with things like keeping troop count up and spending less money.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Luckily, noticed just in the nick of time after succession to divorce the current hubbie, marry another, and seduce them for guarantee tumble, to have twins at age 46 (got pregnant at 45, which IIRC is normally the oldest a woman can be to still have kids) and with her Intrigue education, noone has the balls to stop me from keeping the Crown Authority at Absolute (Mom, who had maxed out on Prestige ranks and had a diplomacy in the upper 30's thanks to all her friends, still had everyone loving her after she raised it to that height) and designating one of them as the heir. Eldest son was my dynasty, but ended up dying after losing several limbs over the course of his grandmother's many holy wars, leaving a grandson that's rather terrible, at least compared to his many Intelligent and Genius family members, but he's basically the backup, with the eldest wrong dynast son matrineally marrying his cousin. Dunno if it would be a game over or have me jump dynasties (hopefully to the brother that my niece and soon-to-be daughter-in-law is the daughter of) but I figure it wouldn't hurt to try if worst comes to worse.
Anyway, fun times are abound! Unless I managed to live to 62 (mom made it to 63, so it's possible) I'm going to have a child heir with multiple adult claimants, at least one with kingdom of their own, and vassals who really do NOT like the Crown Authority level.
There's a button to convert the tribe holding to a castle if you hold the tribal county yourself. Costs 500 gold to do.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
My last ruler ended up with 4 children after she excommunicated and jailed the first two before leaving them to die in the dungeon. The first died for being a glutton and I did not want to deal with the double whammy of obesity wrecking life expectancy and making gaining Devotion levels and their bonuses a Sisyphean task. Fitness is now mandatory in the line. The second died for just being pretty mediocre compared to every other sibling who was Quick or Intelligent.
This is the ruler that was Just, Humble, and something else that didn't come into play much. I now had enough troops to directly challenge the Byzantine Empire after taking chunks away from East Francia/Bohemia/Bavaria and Germania who also constantly fought each other. The latter was getting the worst of it and I timed some of my wars against them so that I could intercept their troop stack as I did not want to risk them becoming a continent-wide empire again. Being able to directly attack the Byzantines was important as they had expanded into southern France, most of Italy, and a good chunk of northern Africa so they were almost impossible to dislodge for the AI. I had Britannia, Hispania, and random chunks of Scandinavia and mainland Europe. Added Bavaria when I invaded the entire Kingdom and took it from whatever name the not-Germania German realm was using at the time which pretty much ensured the German realms would never have enough of an army to attack me.
I'd also decided I didn't like dealing with crusades. They are a slog on the defending end as you can't occupy an enemy capital or capture an heir to quickly end it. Instead it's 10 years or more of pushing away AI doomstacks and waiting for the war score to climb up as your economy strains under troop costs and you strain under needing to make sure your troops can stay supplied by splitting apart to spend a few months under the supply limit. So I decided I wanted to remove the pope. Well, actually three of my vassals had taken each of the Papacy's counties. And the Byzantine Empire had done most of the remaining work when it carved its way through Italy. And conveniently in the process it removed Catholic rulers but Lollard ones were still around. So the Pope had no Catholic churches in Italy to set up shop in. While there is a decision for some faiths to dismantle the Papacy, that seems to mostly be to strengthen heresies and mess with Catholicism's tenets. Just making the Pope unlanded seems to be enough to stop his influence.
I did however holy way the Byzantines for the Kingdom of Sicily. Not much in the way of Orthodox rulers to help them. I'd already given some kingdom titles to my second eldest living child who'd already popped out some Intelligent, Quick, and Genius kids and gave her a few Italian duchies and counties too. Meanwhile the Intelligent youngest son (and only living son at that point) got his first title in the form of the Kingdom of Sicily.
Then I discovered that something the AI does not always do so well is protect their capitol when a rebellion lays siege to it. The second daughter lost three grandkids that had Genius or Intelligent when the peasants went hog wild on the family. That killed off a good portion of my breeding project. My poor, poor breeding program. And also my grandkids. But mostly my poor breeding program.
This caused quite a bit of stress for that daughter as you can imagine and she picked up some coping mechanism traits.
Meanwhile the son came of age and rather quickly got lost an arm and died from being maimed. At least he left behind some smart kids.
The eldest daughter wasn't as impressive as the others being only Quick and also Craven but she had workable stats that were much better than her older siblings had been. She also had an eldest daughter that was a Genius. And her little brother also was a Genius. All the blackmailing and dying children had stressed out my ruler a bit so I started hitting hunts anytime I could. And during one my eldest daughter was caught having murdered a peasant. And she had an eldest daughter that was a Genius while she was only Quick and also Craven. I'd already had to arrest my other kids more than once for doing stupid crimes even if I released them quickly so killing the eldest daughter for that crime felt fitting.
That ruler ended up living until around 73. a nice change of pace from her two predecessors who died in their 60s from obesity. The one year warning popped up multiple times as she somehow kept hanging on a bit longer.
Her successor is now going to focus on working in another genetic trait into the line and maybe remove the Byzantines from Western Europe. Not really interested in expanding any further but my vassals have started taking counties near India. Any time I get warred for one I just surrender because I can't be bothered with single counties that far away. But if I can get Viking war elephants, that could change my interest there quite a bit. It'll look nice alongside Viking camel riders and Viking Reconquista.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
So much for that brilliant plan...
--Mark Twain
... where?
holy hell im dumb. Its the little circle castle button right by the tribal upgrade square.
oh my, and its an instant upgrade!
My empire (Norse Britannia, reformed Asatru) is a huge mess right now. I own most of the British Isle, but also massive amounts of coasts all over the world, most of the Netherlands, and large chunks of Africa somehow.
I'm created an installed a huge bunch of kingdoms and bequeathed them to members of my dynasty, and am now also able to create the Empire of Italia due to my efforts to eradicate the papacy.
I'm now considering creating Italia, and either bequeathing Britannia to another member of my dynasty or just destroying it. Question is, who gets what vassals if I do that?
I know I can bequeath any titles I personally hold to whoever I want, but the only kingdom I currently personally own is Bologna. So if I create Italia and pass Britannia to someone else, how does my empire divvy up?
So King Alfy is 45, has ruled for 30 years, and is in great position to form an empire. Both kingdoms have elective succession but it looks like they're going to vote for different heirs. I'm pretty sure I'm just short on gold, as I have to create the Kingdom of Ireland before I can create an empire.
King Alfy himself is ridiculous. The family heriarch branch of diplomacy is pretty strong. +2 skill points for friends and +1 skill points for living children is real good. I have seven friends and twelve kids. My martial and my stewardship used to be low. Now I can't tell which one my wife is focused in.
darn that worked in ck 2
Log it as a bug with paradox.
A month after war dec and with maybe 20 casualties i've increased my area 300%. My original border was that blue line, everything north was gained. I imagine there'll be a lot of trouble holding it since everyone living there hates me, and if I do hold it then when I die it'll get split off into its own kingdom of Sapmi again since titled are split evenly amongst heirs, but it has added a few de jure Finland counties I had been unable to grab since the start of the game and it will put 3/5 of scandinavia under my dynasty (Sweden is already ruled by my half sister) which hopefully will make it slightly easier to get the empire a few hundred years down the road.
We'll see.
I feel like I'm missing something,
If you want to play vikings but easier, I recommend Fairhair. He's up in Norway and can let us enjoy all the viking stuff, but there's no one instantly attacking you and you can take it a little slower.
None of the 867 starts are IMO. A lot of the rulers are tribal with all the issues that brings on top of being a very conquest centered government. And fedual rulers need to deal with all those tribal conquerers and many start out with a bunch of nearby feudal rulers having claims on their kingdom titles. 1066 is where you find more stable realms outside of the areas where Catholics border Muslims (eg Spain which will be full of holy wars and the occasional crusade or jihad).
The Scandinavian rulers need to do a lot of warring at the start to consolidate after which they deal with needing to deal with other tribal realms that have consolidated. Plus there's the whole converting to feudal thing. Halfdan starting out as feudal is a pretty big deal right now with how painful and slow adopting feudalism takes. I also think Bjorn Ironsides is a better choice for a Scandinavian start since it's closer to forming Sweden from the start and controls a holy site in their capitol county. Needing to figure out when to strike feudal realms to snatch holy sites is an added complication of the non-Scandinavian vikings but not terribly difficult if one of them doesn't blob up early on.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Dang! I heard rumors of this but no one was able to confirm when I asked earlier for my Duara playthrough. Ahhh well, I still had quite a ways to go anyways.
Not having any quick way to end defending a crusade is pretty miserable. Some people advocate just surrendering immediately and then taking back what was lost via conquests and holy wars as a better idea since it's quicker and easier on your economy.
That said, if you can unland the pope and effectively destroy the office that apparently causes a crusade to fail.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
IIRC, granting independence to a title grants the only the lands their de jure vassals own. Any vassals that are "missing" their de jure liege is under your primary title, and will stick with it until/unless the correct title is created.
So if you give away Britannia, they will get everything that everyone who has their capital in Britannia currently controls. Hopefully, that's just in Britannia, but if there is a vassal duke or king that also controls some coastal counties in Italia, those would transfer too and you would have to conquer them back. If they're inland counties with no connection to the sea, then under the default game rules you can just murder the guy you gave it to and they should become independent enclaves that are much easier to bring into the fold.
Another important thing to keep in mind; Under normal partition, lands you give away to heirs only count if they are still part of your realm. So if giving away Britannia is suppose to be a way to make sure one of the spares don't muck up your primary heir's inheritance, be warned that do so would only muck it up even more.
Oh I realize giving away Brittania will break up my empire, but I actually want to do that to boost my dynasty reputation (2 emperors in a single dynasty is a huge score boost), and I'm not even paying attention to what's going on in Britain anymore, as all my focus has been on Italy, so I figure why not just let the AI have fun with that while our Dynasty gets stronger and I don't have to deal with constant spam about what's going on up there.
It's going to be a matter of figuring out what lands/vassals you want to keep. Any dukes that hold both Italian and UK duchies could be a point of contention. That's a big part of why I didn't break off Hispania and give it to a sibling. So much of that area is owned by dukes in Britannia and now even the kingdom titles in it are mashed up between siblings and their kids.
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Firstly, what does this even mean? Surely if I de-land someone then they just go from being a vassal back to a plain ol' noble? Secondly, she definitely would have some land since she'd still hold the Earl titles for the counties under the taken ducal title.
Picture of the error message under the spoiler
edit: Looking at some more of my imprisoned vassals (it was one helluva rebellion!) they are seem to exhibit the same behaviour, not allowing me to revoke their ducal titles despite having plenty of counties under them.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
I think there's a lot of weird stuff going on with legal stuff in the game. I've been dealing with being unable to arrest vassals due to lacking high tribal authority when both me and the vassal are feudal. Had to console command a workaround though it's one that gives me a High Tribal Authority malus on opinion with feudal vassals.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Further, there is zero info on why the fuck the game will say I have X number of soldiers available and then my levies raise a fraction of that. What in the world is the point of saying I have 6000 soldiers available, but my levy can only drum up 1500 for some reason? The fuck am I missing here? Further, I paid for some men-at-arms and the game since they're "raised", but doesn't bother to tell me where the hell they are. Are they with the levies? Sitting around some town?
There's a difference between having a learning curve and just making the game a plain brick wall of non-information. I really appreciate getting spammed info like some vague enemy of mine just conquered something in the ass end of nowhere instead of being told I have a holding under attack.
Did a bit more digging on the paradox forums, and it definitely seems to be a bug. Apparently there's a workaround where you give a county title from a different duchy to the offending Duchess, which will allow you to strip the original ducal title. Seemingly this leaves your given county title in some sort of limbo though, so it's two steps forward one step back
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Disclaimer: I'm still getting used to the game systems myself, so take all below with a decent pinch of salt!
If someone is at war with you, there should be an icon in the bottom right of the screen showing the current warscore. If you click that it should take you to a page with the full details of the war, why they are fighting you etc.
Also if you scroll out a fair bit, you should be able to see some heraldry icons with flames over them, this is the main holding of the enemy/ies. These should also be contained within some red glowing borders indicating the entirety of the enemy/ies demesne. Likewise there should be some blue glowing borders around some of your land, indicating the areas the enemy needs to attack.
Currently raised army info is definitely hidden away, I didn't find it for a bit at first. There's a little scroll in the very top right called "outliner" or something, click this and you'll get a small list of useful things. One of which are all your currently raised armies! Double click it and you'll shoot to the army.
Speaking of armies, if you click on them you should get a small menu in the bottom left telling you about your army. Who is leading it (make sure somebody is!), what troops it contains (levies, men at arms and knights), supplies (hello more learning curve!) and probably more stuff I don't recall.
As for the numbers of your troops not matching up to what you're able to raise, I'm honestly not sure myself I'm afraid! In the first instance I'm not sure how that number works, perhaps that number includes your allies' available troops too? Secondly there could be some other factors that reduced that number legitimately. For example, if your war is against one of your powerful vassals then a large number of troops that used to come to you as vassal levies would be in their army!
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Click the icon for the war, click on the underlined county, duchy, or kingdom name in the war description and it'll bring up the info for the contested titles. Click on the shield icon for the county/duchy/kingdom in the sidebar and it will snap the map to the location as always.
You get a notification on the right side of the screen when one of your holdings is being besieged. If you click on the underlined holding name, it will bring up the location's sidebar and you can click on the shield to go to the location and see what's going on. The only time this doesn't pop up is maybe the edge case where you end up as a war target because your vassal conquered land another faction was also fighting for and already was laying siege to. If you click on the war icon you'll also be able to see what is affecting the war score by what percentage. Battles are not necessary, holding territory is the real key as it is a war over territory. Hover over any of those percentages and you will see a breakdown of how much each holding occupied is affecting the score as well as which holdings are involved.
Your levies will take time to show up at a rally point depending on how far away they're coming from. This can take weeks or months depending on how far away they are and the triangle made of arrows both indicates that they are gathering. If you can't wait the full length of time, you won't get all 6000 raised.
Either hovering over that or trying to move that stack will inform you that they are still gathering but you can order them to move with what's assembled by holding Ctrl and clicking. Your men at arms will instantly deploy so long as they're not depleted though they will continue to replenish while deployed. You can get a list of raised armies you have as well as holdings by clicking on the button on the right side of the screen above the one for your realm. There is a typo when you hover over an army in that you need to double click to snap to it instead of right clicking as it says to.
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
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Only after that did I realize the Queen was a freak on the sneak and I had a bastard I could legitimize. D'oh. Well, time to ride out the election for a generation or two and feudalize. We were close when dad died.
We've spread the dynasty pretty thick in these parts, so it's not too surprising when someone ends up being a kinslayer, I just wish I could track back who it was they killed. But it's partly my own fault for having too many people under a very big umbrella fighting their own wars with outsiders and each other. No idea what's going on with most of these folks half the time till suddenly a new county pops up in the middle of the empire.
DISCLAIMER: Do not own, have not played, going by what I've seen posted here, which is a whole lot of questions on this general topic...
It sounds like the game desperately needs an interface tutorial, or a better one?
If the information is there, but they don't tell you where/how to find it...
Also, be sparing with those special event levies some rulers (like the vikings) get. Using them in battles in sieges too early can weaken your army when they could be a good deterrent and backup. For my current run, I split off all my knights, man-at-arms, and regular levies and left the special levies at my capitol. This allowed my regular army to do all the work while the special levies simply kept my capitol safe. Be sure to ensure to check the supply limit, though. You don't want to lose those guys to attrition like I did.
It's just how paradox games work I think. The tutorial would be a hundred hours long. Partially this is one of those games that's a game about learning the game.
It is dense. A goliath of wholly independent and interconnected systems. CKIII is the same way. They are like PNP RPGs. If you are learning the rules as things happen in session 1, you are gonna have a bad time.
And there is just no way for a tutorial to be shorter than most AAA playthroughs while also being encompassing. It is that fucking packed.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with bouncing off of the game because of it.
yeah, but we're talking about basic interface stuff - "how do I", "where do I find", etc.