Crusader Kings 2

[Toonces]

I can't do an AAR nearly as well as UG, but in my current game, I started out as the Duke of Moray and I had the King of Scotland as my liege.  I married a 17 year old somebody who died of syphillis in like the first year of the game.

So, I got betrothed to the 0-year old (yes, zero) princess of the Holy Roman Empire thinking that might give me an in to the HRE in the later game.  Meanwhile, my heir is my sister and I have a good 16 years or so to go before I can start working on my own heirs with my 2 month old wife-to-be (I know, sick).

Meanwhile, the King dies, leaving his 5-year old son as heir.  I had a strong claim on the kingdom so I pressed a du jure claim and recruited like 3 of the counties to my side.  Now my 24 year old Duke is at war with a 5 year old and betrothed to a 2 month old.

As the war progresses over several years my Duke gets bored and has an affair with a mistress (+20% fertility, looking at the long game here!), he has a bastard daughter that I legitimize.  Score! now I have an heir even if it is a chick.

My "wife" comes of age, my mistress dies of "mysterious circumstances", and I catch pneumonia...but fortunately live.  I decide this little brat king of Scotland needs to go and I plot to murder him.  My brother-in-law from my first wife(my Marshall) gets excommunicated by the pope due to a plot by a Norwegian duke (jerk) and then gets drunk and lets out my plot about killing the king!  Everyone's opinion of me goes down.

Finally, I have every territory of Scotland except one beat and don't you know my plot to kill the king actually works?  So, of course the next little brat takes over which destroys my du jure claim, all of my captured territories revert to the new king and I end up right where I started from 20 years earlier!  Fortunately I had a save game right before the murder plot worked so I re-loaded that game, withdrew the plot, and then finished up my war with the original king and got all of Scotland.  It was a little cheat, but I didn't realize that by killing the little bastard I'd lose 20 years of work...lesson learned!

Now I'm sitting as King of Scotland, a young son and two daughters (one bastard) as heirs, an 18 year old wife, and a minor claim on some Muslim territory way down south somewhere.  Life is good!

Does that sound interesting to you?  Well, that, my friend, is Crusader Kings 2. 

[Toonces]

See, everything's going fine and then life throws you a curveball.  We'll need UG to sort this mess out...



Ok, first let's get oriented.  My little pop-up thingy said I had a weak claim on Kildare, in the center of the screen.  You can just see my army of 895 on the northern portion having just finished beating the Earl of Kildare and gaining ownership of it.

Shortly thereafter I get another pop-up warning that I have territories that will go to other kingdoms upon their current owner's death.  Hmmm.  So I drill down and the little brat in the top left corner is heir to Argyll, right smack in the middle of Scotland.

How did this happen?

Well the chick in the Liege picture is his mom.  She was married to a member of my court, my Marshall and the owner of Argyll...a good Scottish lad except he had married this Irish wench who is Countess of Kildare.  He died a natural death and his father, the kid's grandfather, was still alive and one of my guys.  So, I guess the law is that when the Marshall died Kildare passed from the wife to the grandfather which gave me (the King) a weak claim to Kildare.  All well and good and I seized that claim but now the little brat Walter, my Marshall's son and an Irish lad gets a claim to Argyll through his mom. 

WTF?!

So somehow I won Kildare but in the process have jeopardized Argyll...I guess...

I'm trying to marry his mom off to some fine Scottsman but for some reason that's not an option.  I guess I could try to knock the kid off...but then I need to figure out who Kildare (and Argyll) would go to on succession....  Boy, this is confusing.

[Toonces]

So here's where we are right now (I resized the pic so hopefully it's not so annoyingly big).

I don't entirely understand what's going on here.  Ok, so the Kingdom of Scotland is where you'd expect, outlined with dashed yellow/red lines and colored purples and blues.  I have on "direct vassal" view and I've got all sorts of colors going on (I should really RTFM on this).

I just recently won a war to acquire Galloway, maker of amazing golf clubs in about 950 years.  I was trying to get all of the Duchess's(?) territories including the one just north of Galloway and the islands to the west of Ross/Moray but for some reason, even though I conquered all of them I could only get Galloway.  There didn't seem to be an option to declare war for the whole kingdom.  Now, I can declare war on the islands but that would go against a Christian (see the cross-banner?  we're on the Crusades now) and would kill my standing with my Christian brothers and sisters.  I can afford the piety hit but I don't want to piss everyone off, you know?

So I am the King of Scotland and I think I own all of Scotland even though I'm different colors.  I think all those dudes/dudettes are my vassals.  The woman who is in charge of Buchan is plotting a fabrication claim on Moray.  I've got my spymaster over there building up my spy network in case I need to take her out and my steward is over their taxing her bum because she aggravates me.

Kildare got absorbed into some other Irish counties.  I don't have the bucks to go to war with Ireland right now.

Finally, I have a duchal claim on Caithness, north of Ross, but do take that I have to declare war on Norway...not a good idea right now.

Finally finally, I have weak claims on a province in the HRE as well as the WHOLE HRE due to my marriage to my wife (who only gave me one son...not cool.  Who needs 3 daughters?).

My character is 51 now, so I have to start looking/planning for what's going to happen when he dies.  I have a male heir (I think he's like 8 or 10) but I expect a revolution when I die and I need to work on some diplomacy I think.

[Toonces]

Last post for the night, especially since I'm talking to myself at this point (being on Hawaii time is kind of a bummer for forum interaction with you guys!).

So I revoked the Duchess of Buchan's title, went to war and spanked her and took her lands for myself.  I gave it to a nice reliable vassal who replaced my dead Marshall and then I married him to a 20 year old princess from Russia, so he's stoked.  I have to admit, she IS pretty hot.

Now then, I have several women in my court that I just don't know what to do with.  I have 3 daughters (one a legitimate bastard, I also slept with my sister in law, but that's another story...) that I have to marry off.  They're all in the 11-12 y/o range so I need to start planning ahead.

What makes this game so interesting is that I'm learning a lot about how all of these things worked back then.  Men inherit, women are like currency.  My daughters and single sister in law are like little timebombs waiting to go off.  I made the mistake in my last game of marrying my daughter to a Prince and then when I died the dude was about to inherit Iceland through succession laws.  Don't want to make that mistake.  On the other hand, marrying your females off to high-level dudes can build good alliances.  But you have to be smart about it.  Because, if the right people die you can end up with some other country having a claim to your kingdom that he can then press du jure and you're in a world of hurt.

I have 8 weak claims on the HRE and Russia right now because of marriages I have concocted so far!

I can't press them...I don't have the money or alliances to do that, but maybe the way to go about this is to find an enemy of the HRE, marry into that family to cement an alliance, and then press my claims....

Anyway, women are interesting in this game.  They're like aces, or even jokers, that you keep up your sleeve.  You can use them as either a one or an eleven, if you know what I mean.

Matrilineal marriages are always good- they keep the line with the woman- but not many people will go for them so far.  As King, I don't need to feed at the bottom within my own kingdom (although bottom feeding on Russia or HRE might be worthwhile...)

I was so scared as to what to do with all these women that I ended up googling it.  Here's a good post I found regarding women in CK2:

To me, daughters are more important. I can expand my kingdom more reliably by using daughters. Gaining a title via sons is more time consuming, and there's a chance the title will not be passed on.

For daughters:

1. Marry them off to princes or kings for a strategic alliance that will help you win major wars.

2. Find a courtier with a title claim (duchy claims are especially good) in a foreign country and have a matrilineal marriage. Press claims and when you win, the territory will be apart of your kingdom. Rinse and repeat. (I conquered almost all of Norway within a few years as Ireland by doing this).

3. Find a courtier with excellent traits and have a matrilineal marriage to preserve your dynasty.

For sons:

1. Find a courtier with a title claim that can be passed down to your son.

2. Find a courtier with exceptional stewardship skills to expand demense size.

3. Fina a courtier with good traits.

[undercovergeek]

Family women are perfect as you described especially if you can marry them to heirs and get matrilineal marriages

As for ladies in your court marry them out for prestige ASAP..... Un married men in your court get them married to ladies with high skills in all the fields as soon as you can... This brings them to court... Now you can't put the ladies on the council but you can their sons who usually inherit the motherly skills especially if you name that mother as a tutor as soon as they reach six..... Tuttor all the court kids boy and girl to improve their skills for better marriages and good councillors

[Nefaro]

From what I've read as to why the Matrilineal Marriage option was even included in the game (as it probably shouldn't be) is that it's there so you can pull your rear out of the fire and come back from having no sons, thus becoming a female ruler and needing heirs of your own doesn't give you a Game Over.  There was a fair amount of debate on whether it should be included at all, and how it can easily be exploited to blob out.   I know how frustrating it is when the RNG basically gives you that game over situation so I'm glad they included it.. but..

That guy's suggestion of marrying your daughters to lesser non-landed nobility w/ claims, under a Matrilineal marriage agreement, is just too far-fetched for me to believe, so I don't use it.  Actually, I only use the Matrilineal in those rare cases that I'm stuck with the aforementioned dead end due to having six daughters or some such, and want to continue but I don't use it to easily get claims & expand.  That's just too gamey for my tastes, but some people tend to go all out for the win as opposed to restricting themselves like that so it's all about how anyone wants to play.  I don't think Pdox has been in a hurry to add a lump of coding to restrict it as much as it should be, is the impression I've gleaned in the past.  I also have another niggle in the ruleset they need to work on (regarding the crown authority stuff being decided by the most powerful ruler in a region, and other independent rulers having to run their own kingdoms the same way) but they also act as if it's too much of a headache to change (and there's DLC to make!).   :-*

Sorry for bringing the fun level down a bit.  I had to vent little frustration on some stuff I feel is unfinished, is all.  Even excellent games have a few oddities like this, and CK2 is definitely an excellent game.

Continue on with your experiences, Toonces, I always enjoy reading about them.  Everyone seems to have their own style in running their own demesne.  8)

[Gusington]

Toonces you should consider putting all these posts together into one AAR for the main section here. Well done!

[undercovergeek]

Agreed.... Get it stuck up there, it works 3 fold... It immerses you more in your story, it certainly sparks other peoples interest and gives courage to press the play button and allows others to learn from your mistakes and victories... Just like killing the king thing

[Gusington]

Toonces can you hear us? Please contact Brant and LB and get this done up proper!

[Nefaro]

Toonces can you hear us? Please contact Brant and LB and get this done up proper!

He may well be in a CK2-a-thon. 

;D

[Nefaro]

I'm waiting for him to relate when the day comes that he has some sons.

And they're all mentally retarded, or get ill and die young, and the only one standout is so light in the loafers that he's not likely to make any sons of his own.  Quandaries abound.

:D

[Gusington]

This thing almost writes itself!

[TheCommandTent]

This game is great at telling a highly entertaining story!

[Gusington]

Maybe I should start playing it myself.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I've tinkered with it a bit but I'm still definitely in the "why did that happen?", "why can't I...?" stage.  Very frustrating.