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Why do this LP? Crusader Kings 2 is the first of Paradox's "grand strategy" games to really receive wide-scale recognition, and because Paradox games are widely encompassing of their chosen subject matter (read: the better part of two and a half continents) they therefore require an equally complex system to help the player control and keep track of everything that's going on. Therefore, it follows that there are a lot of new players that are experiencing this game for the first time that may find getting their bearings in the face of the complexity of the game somewhat difficult. Although Kersch has already made a fantastic instructional LP, he wrote it before many of the major gameplay patches and DLC added or modified core features. My goal is to have a finished product that will reasonably replace the (broken) in-game tutorial and hopefully lead to some of the hilarious ahistoritcal situations that Paradox games are famous for.  "Grand Strategy?" Crusader Kings 2 is a game that spans the entirely of Europe, Western/Northwest Africa, and western Asia from the battle of Stamford bridge in 1066 to the mid 1400's. You, the player, control one of the many lords that existed to wench and fight and expand their ambitions and guide your family line to greatness. Although at a glance the most prominent feature of the game is that it's a more complex version of Risk with lords and knights and vassal levies, the real meat of the game is in personal interaction between your character and the rest of the world. Warhammer-style sessions with teenagers, learning marshal abilities from a traveling karate master, and getting assassinated while passing the scroll repository are only a few of the many adventures you can find yourself in. CK2 is a game in which as the number of knives in backs increases, the number of problems violence is incapable of solving reaches zero.  How Will This Be Instructional? We'll start out slowly and define all the different parts of the UI before we take our first tentative steps into the game. As our holdings grow and the situation in the rest of the world diverges from reality I'll explain all of my decisions and allow for some input on what we'll do next. That said, we might face setbacks and get knocked around a few times. I've sunk an embarrassing amount of time into this game but I by no means always succeed. Hopefully though, by following along you'll be able to grasp the basic concepts and be able to utilize some of my experience to carve out a kingdom of your own.  Oh, Cool. Who Are We Starting Out As, Then? Because a Christian lord has already been thoroughly explored, I'm going to start out with a Muslim game to explore the different mechanics and hopefully also point out what's changed in the overall game since the last instructional LP was made. Specifically, we'll be starting as the Emir of Tunis in the middle of Northern Africa. It's a relatively safe place to start small and there are a few smaller nations around us that will be ripe for the picking once we get our affairs in order. If this LP is helpful enough I'll play a few other games to flesh out Republics, playing within a kingdom, or transition into some of the more popular mods depending on what people want to see.  Resources I've already mentioned Kersch's previous Let's Play of this game, but the thread over in games is also full of helpful people. You're free to ask questions in this thread as well and I'll do my best to answer them. I'm going to start this off by dumping a lot of explanations in your face, so let's get that out of the way early. Updates Update 1: Oh My Lords So Many Options (It's right below this, scroll down.) Update 2: Putting the U in UI Update 3: War In Our Time (1066-1070) Update 4: How to Win Wars and Influence People (1070-1076) GrabbinPeels fucked around with this message at Mar 6, 2013 around 20:27 |
| # ? Feb 28, 2013 06:53 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 06:49 |
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Part 1: Oh My Lords So Many Options Upon launching the game and selecting a single player game you are met with the following screen.  This is a veritable flood of options. I can change the year? What are the bookmarked dates for? I can play all these countries? Let's take it one step at a time.  This box at the top allows to change your starting year and the map mode. You can select any starting year and land ownership will change to reflect the (semi) accurate state of the world on that date. Most of the time you'll want to start with the default, and there isn't much reason to fiddle with this unless you're aiming for something specific. The more interesting starting dates are displayed in that larger box on the left of the starting screen, as well as some recommended rulers. We aren't going to change the starting date, so it's getting left alone. The seven smaller boxes below the date denote the map mode. From left to right, they are Terrain, Independent Realms, Counts, Dukes, Kings, Religions, and Cultures.  Independent Realms is the map mode we'll be in most often when we're in-game, and you can see how it clearly displays each realm and makes it easier to distinguish between them than the first picture, which was the Terrain mode. This map mode will distinctly display each realm under the highest independent title, whether that is an Emperor or an independent count. Don't forget, though, that you're not playing as "The Duchy of Apulia" or "The Kingdom of France". You control the ruler of that country and as such can be deposed, overthrown, murdered, captured in war, or catch gonorrhea at inopportune times. Crusader Kings 2 is a ultimately the story of people, not necessarily war and politics.  Skipping ahead a bit in the list, the Religion map mode displays the current religious situation in this area. Catholicism is strong within the Holy Roman Empire, France, and northern Iberia to the west. Orthodox Christianity holds sway in the Byzantine Empire and the squabbling Russian principalities. Islam, in green, is split between Shia in Egypt, the Levant, and part of Africa and Sunni everywhere else. Although it's cut off, you can juuuust see that to the left of "Shia" on the map the color becomes the slightest shade darker.  We're going to be playing as the Riyahdid Emirate, seen here in yet another shade of green ever so slightly different than all of the green around it. I said before we were playing as Tunis and that's still accurate: Muslim realms just take the name of the dynasty that controls them. On the right you can see our character, but we'll get into that. Let's check out those other map modes while we're here.  The Count view shows us all of the counts available to play in this area. The Counts to the northeast in Italy: Capua and Napoli, and Trapani and Girgenti on the island of Sicily are independent, while the others are vassals of the various Dukes and Kings of this region. As you may have noticed, the County of Bizerte is within our borders, and as such the ruler of that county (known down here in Muslim country as a Sheikh) falls under our control. We'll get more into that in the next update. This as good as place as any to go into detail on the different ranks of rules. Count is the lowest rank that a character can personally hold without losing the game. Muslim counts are, as I said, Sheikhs. We'll talk about the lower ranks once we get in game and can look at their holdings, but there are several names for this rank depending on a few other factors. For the most just remember that this is the smallest you can start out as and we'll delve deeper as it becomes appropriate.  Duke is the rank above Count, and as such can have Counts as direct vassals as we do. As a Muslim ruler we are called an Emir but there is no functional difference. You can see that we control one Duchy, but that the Duke Apulia over to the east is a Duke twice over. There is no limit to the number of duchies you can personally control, but as you move up the chain you'll want to delegate those responsibilities to your vassals lest they be discontent or you be overwhelmed. The Duke of Salerno, nestled awkwardly on the front of the boot of upper Sicily, holds a single county. We'll explore the concept of de jure territory later, but remember that realm size is not necessarily a direct indication of rank. Something else to remember is that an independent Muslim ruler, even a Count, will be counted as a Duke. This is because the head of a Muslim dynasty will always hold that Duke-level title regardless of the size of their realm. Accordingly, the Sheikh of Palermo appears on our map of Dukes, although you can see he controls two counties.  King is usually the rank of a ruler of a number of Duchies in the same way that a Duke controls a number of Counties. Muslim kings are known as Sultans. You can see here that the Sultanate of Africa has fallen on some hard times and now only controls two counties directly to our east. It would be a shame if some up-and-coming Duchy were to... take advantage of this situation, but that's for later. The starting Republics also start the game as King level titles, as you can see with Pisa's territory directly north of us. The sliver of white hiding behind the box right above Sicily belongs to the Papal States because the Pope is a King level title as well.  Here's the Independent Realms view of our starting area. Firmly entrenched in Muslim Africa, we can see our kin across the sea on the receiving end of the Christian boot that is Apulia. We'll be watching that situation develop with interest, as a powerful Christian Kingdom in the area could mean unwanted Holy Wars and a bunch of unwashed peasants showing up on our shores to claim what is rightfully ours.  The final box on the starting screen is the ruler of the land you have clicked on. In the Independent map mode, clicking once on a country will select the highest ranking ruler of that territory and a second click will select the lower ranking lord that controls the land directly. From this window you can see that we're the ruler of the Riyahdid Emirate, swear fealty to no higher lord, and are Bedouin Sunni Muslims. Bedouin denotes our culture, which you might remember as the one map mode I didn't show off. Characters of your culture will have no reason to think of you as a foreign invader and will afford you a higher relationship bonus. Rulers of your culture are also much more likely to swear fealty to you if you outrank them, and influence a few other aspects of gameplay.  The difficulty bar is something you're going to want to take with a grain of salt. By hovering the mouse above the bar we can see that our difficulty is Hard because we're a Duke and have few family members at the start of the game. In reality, we're not next to any particularly large kingdoms, and the only threats near us are the Hammidids to our west that share our religion.   For comparison, here's the Kaiser (Emperor) of the Holy Roman Empire and Kersch's starting ruler, Duke Murchad of Munster. Munster is a much easier start than the HRE, even though the bars would teach you otherwise. The Kaiser has thirty two vassals of a variety of cultures to manage that will tax his ability to keep his realm together on top of the aggressive posturing of the large Kingdom of France that lines his western border. The Duke, on the other hand, is the biggest fish in the relatively small pond of Ireland and has almost no outside threats to worry about. With all of that out of the way and our ruler selected, there's only one thing to do.   Oh my goodness, more buttons! All of these buttons are different! And there are numbers now! Some of you might not be thinking this, of course, but we'll get to the part where we actually unpause soon enough. For the rest, let's break this business down.  This shows up in the top right, and is the main hub for your character and the actions he or she can perform in the game. Next update we'll go into this in detail, but for the introductory update I'm just going to summarize this to avoid information overload. Coat of Arms - This small circle on the bottom left of the picture of our rather dashing character there will open the information screen for our main title. Character Portrait - Clicking on the portrait itself will display the information regarding your character, their family, their vassals, and all of the people This next bit is one of the first departures from Kersch's LP, as this section of the UI has been updated somewhat since 1.05. Council - This remains the same; it's the list of high level administrators who deal with some of the minutiae of your rule. Laws - The laws of your realm, from taxation to troop requirements to succession are available here. Technology - This button will show you the status of various technological developments in your holdings and allow you to focus certain technologies you want to progress further. Military - This will be the panel to open when you want to raise troops, check the amount of men your vassals can bring to bear when you ask, and create Retinues of standing retainers. Intrigue - This screen allows you to plot dastardly and underhanded schemes against other characters and also lists important decisions your ruler can make as well as potential threats, known plots, and any prisoners that may be languishing in your dungeons. Factions - This is the first entirely new development in addition to the removal of the redundant Diplomacy button (so redundant that I had honestly not remembered it had ever existed until I checked Kersch's LP to look at the differences) and the relocation of the Character Finder. This button will allow you to see the various coalitions of vassals in your realm that are pushing for various reforms in the way you run things, all the way up to outright independence from your "oppressive" rule. Religion - The Religion panel will show your current religion's head and Moral Authority, and for Muslims it also doubles as a browser for the decadent male members of your family that we'll get into in a moment.  We've got some icons floating around in the top center of the screen, but we'll get to those in due time. The top right corner of the screen has a series of icons and numbers above the current date and game speed (which is paused at the moment). These are very important resources that you'll be keeping an eye on for the entire game. You can hover over any of these icons for a breakdown of your monthly gain/loss of any of these resources should you so choose. Decadence comes first, a Muslim-only value that is a numerical representation of how well your dynasty is following the tenants of Islam. Unlanded, lazy good-for-nothing male members of your dynasty will slowly increase this number, while god-fearing administrators or brave warriors will decrease it and keep it low. 25% is absolute neutral, neither good nor bad. Going above this number means the morale of your troops and your overall income will suffer. Going too high will spark an immediate uprising that you would be hard-pressed to survive, so practice wise dynasty management which may or may not involve excessive amounts of brutal violence. We'll get to that. Money, as denoted by the coins, is the total personal wealth you accumulate from your various holdings, vassal taxes, events, wars, etc. It's essential for upgrading your holdings, paying for troops, for events, and many other things. Prestige is a general measure of how buff and studly your current ruler is. Winning wars and holding land will increase this score, which you need to spend on certain things as the game progresses. Piety is a huge resource that is absolutely essential for Muslim Rulers. Whereas Christian rulers use Piety to declare Holy Wars or ask for Excommunications, Muslims need Piety to expand, change laws, execute relatives, and more. Demesne Size is a representation of the amount of land you currently hold (in holdings, the first number) in relation to the amount you can directly administer (the second). Exceeding this number can cause overextension, bands of robbers, and general instability. Realm Size is the total number of all holdings in your realm, including those held by your vassals. Score is the rating of the ruling members of your dynasty determined by their piety and prestige on death. When the game is over this score is compared to other historical dynasties, but score isn't really a measure of how well you can play the game as you can control half the world and still not manage to beat the Capets.  Expanding this view a bit, we see a couple of envelopes and a tab for your Demesne. The area directly to the left of the envelopes will alert you to major and minor happenings that aren't quite important enough to show up as a notification. You can easily set which messages you think should show up where via the options menu, but for now keeping things at default is fine. Keep an eye on this as you play to catch up on what's happening inside your realm. The "Demesne" heading indicates a list of each holding you directly control as well as their yearly gold output, fort level, and the amount of troops that can be raised from them. We'll look at this in more detail next update.   Finally, the mini-map allows you to zoom around the world map with a click. The small button in the top right allows you to hide or display the wide variety of map buttons available to you, but you can drag the five you use most to the right. This is another change from the default UI. As we use these new map modes in game I'll go into more detail, but for now just know that the five that I concern myself with the most are Territory, Independent Realms, De jure Kingdoms, De jure Duchies, and Direct Vassals. Religion is another important mode that you might want to replace one of these with out of preference. The concept of de jure land will be fleshed out in the next update. Directly below these favorites are buttons that let you hide the map, but there are really no reasons not to lock it and keep it locked forever. Below the map itself are a series of eight buttons. Log - The first (the + button) lets you hide/display the log, which will stream every single minor event that happens anywhere along the bottom of the screen. Whether or not you leave this open is preferential, although for the purposes of this LP I'm mostly going to ignore it. Main menu - This button performs the exact same thing as the escape key. Why does it exist? Maybe there are people without that key. Somewhere. Largely unused. Ledger - This is filled with useful information about all the aspects of your realm. Taxes, claims, and what have you are all in here, as well as worldwide information on levy sizes and general dickwaving. As I'm sure you're tired of reading by now, this will be explored as soon as it becomes important. Home Province - Clicking this will center on the county that your capital is in. Title Finder - This handy tool lets you look up the formable titles available to you or find the location of others that already exist. Character Finder - Demoted from a large button in the upper left, this panel allows you to search through every living character in the game along with a series of filters that you can use to find certain kinds of characters. Zoom In/Out - These buttons perform the same function as the scroll wheel, which means I neglect them as much as I do the main menu button. Still useful if you possess a mouse without one, or play with a touchpad without scroll capabilities. If you're still with me after all those extremely exciting explanations, I'll see you next time when we GrabbinPeels fucked around with this message at Feb 28, 2013 around 08:09 |
| # ? Feb 28, 2013 06:54 |
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Update 2: Putting the U in UI Let's start off by taking a look back at the normal interface screen and take it from the top. Let's start with the Coat of Arms icon in the lower left corner of your character portrait up in the top left. Clicking on it brings up the following screen:  The Destroy option would let us completely get rid of the title if it were not our primary. I use this only in extreme circumstances so don't expect it to play a huge rule in the coming days. Make Primary allows you to switch your highest-level title to a different one as long as both titles are of the same rank. That is, you could go from being the King of Ireland to the King of Scotland if you had both titles and this change would be reflected on the world map. As Muslims, however, we display the dynasty name on the overmap so this really won't do much for us. Claimants brings up a list of everyone with a claim on the title in question. Once we get more into claims during game play we'll delve into this a bit further. Clicking History will bring up a list of all the holders of the title before you and the year they lost control of it. Some histories are defined all the way back to Charlemagne or the Prophet Muhammad so it can be neat to dig around in this. Below these buttons is a check box labeled De Jure. Right now the title applies to the three counties listed here, but later on in the update we'll talk about De Jure mechanics which play an important role in the game. In the bottom you can see our character, Munis I Riyahdid, and his titles. The crowns above the icons indicate the rank of each: you can see that our Ducal title has a larger crown than our two county titles, or the two holdings that we possess. Under "Income" you can see the money we receive per year from our own land, our vassal lords, and from our cities. We have no vassal clergy or trade income, so those stay at zero. Overall we receive about 42 gold a year, which isn't half bad to start with. Beside that "Expenses" reflects the money we spend maintaining our standing armies or paying mercenary companies to fight for us. We aren't at war and we haven't called our levies, so this doesn't affect our income yet.  Clicking on the picture of our character takes us here. This is a screen you'll become very familiar with, as you'll use it to check your own stats and to look at other characters. First off, the name and rank of our character is displayed across the top. If we had any inspiring or demeaning nicknames, they would show up here as well. You can also see that we're 36 years of age and belong to the Riyahdid family. Below our family name are three buttons that bring up our dynasty's family tree, our personal family tree, and the realm tree, which is where we see what vassals contribute to our troop levies. Once we go to war, I'll be showing this off, but the other two don't see much use. Continuing down the right side you can see our character's scores. They are, in order, Diplomacy, Martial, Stewardship, Intrigue, and Learning. The number in parenthesis is the associated score of our entire realm, calculated by adding our ruler's stats, his wife's (or in our case, because we're Muslim, his first wife's) stats, and the member of our council that corresponds to that skill's stats. Diplomacy is the stat that determines how much other people like us. A high score in this stat would give a character relationship boosts with other characters. However Emir Munis I has a Diplomacy score of zero, which either means he has no concept of social interaction or he's a massive rear end in a top hat. Since they both put us deep into regular Goon territory, I think we'd be okay with either one. Martial determines a character's effectiveness in leading troops on the battlefield. A score of 3 isn't going to put our ruler on the front lines anytime soon. We'll get our vassals to fight for us so he doesn't manage to hurt himself. Stewardship affects the maximum size of your Demesne and how much land you can directly control without penalty. A 5 isn't terrible, but a high Stewardship score is always nice to have. Intrigue is the first skill our Emir is actually good at, and we could do worse. Higher Intrigue gives us a better chance to succeed at plots against other rulers, vassals, or whoever we want covertly dealt with. Learning affects the rate that we adopt technology in our provinces, which we'll touch on when we get to that section of the U. A score of 5 isn't that fantastic either, but at least he's trying.  How are these scores determined? Between the ages of 6 and 16 a character is tutored by an adult. Depending on the skill and attributes of the tutor, the child gains "base" points that are then modified by their learned traits. As you can see here, Munis received a rather lovely education to begin with, but his deceitful, paranoid, and lazy nature don't do very much to endear him to people.  Each character has one education trait, ranked from one to four in each track. Our Emir has a rank 1 Diplomatic education, which means that his tutor was an exceedingly terrible teacher or we were too lazy to try. The rest of our traits modify our scores in slightly different ways, as you can tell from our Diplomacy score, and allow us to take unique options during events. Once we start interacting with the world we'll look at some specifically.  The small cloud over to the left beside the picture of our heir brings up these circles when you click it. You can give your ruler a particular ambition here, which gives you a bonus when you reach a certain level of prestige, number of kids, win wars, and more, depending on what you want. However, since our ruler is a bit poorer than we would like, we're going to concern ourselves with the "self-improvement" ambitions. Any score below an 8 is considered poor, which means the only thing people consider not terrible about us is the ability to stab people and get away with it. We'll be using these to slowly increase our scores up to eight over time. Some of the best event chains in the game can stem from these, so we'll be sure to better ourselves at the earliest opportunity.  Speaking of our heir, here's his character information. Young Ziyad seems rather resentful for a six year old, but you can the effect of our terrible Diplomacy here as well as the fact as we haven't sat on the throne very long. Our heir is also annoyed that we don't spend enough time playing 11th century catch with him or something because we're too lazy. At the age of six he has over half of his father's capacity for learning, though, so maybe he'll turn out well.  We have six direct vassals, the Sheikh of Bizerte and the scattered rulers of the holdings in our counties. These characters, Barons, Priests, and Mayors are the lowest rung of landed nobility. Some of their holdings can be held by characters (as Muslims, we can hold Castles and Mosques without penalty, for instance) but a player character must hold at least a county or it's a game over. The other game over situation is the lack of an heir of the same dynasty, but Muslims and their multiple wives usually have so many children that you run into problems with too many heirs. But we'll get to that.  Our list of allies isn't very long; the only person that we could call to war or that could call us into theirs is our Brother-in-Law, the King of Africa who controls those two counties to the east of us. Alliances are built purely on marriage ties, so care has to kept during successions to renew the ties that bind if you need the extra help.  Moving off the character tab, we see the list of our advisers and their respective skills. Everyone here is vastly more competent than our Emir (except the Spymaster, which is good because we can keep an eye on the sneaky bastard) and can be deployed to a country with one of three specific tasks. We don't currently have a Court Imam, so we'll have to appoint one once the game starts. The tasks that can be performed by each adviser are: Grand Vizier
Marshal
Steward
Spymaster
Court Imam
 Over in the law screen you can set the laws of your highest level titles, see the heir, and set succession laws. Since we're Muslim we only have one type of succession, which to put simply is "the strongest son" inherits where "strength" means "land, troops, and resources". Our relatives are pretenders to the Duchy, which could give our son some problems when he succeeds us. We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. On the bottom we can change the levy and tax laws for our different kinds of vassals. Muslims require piety to change laws, and we don't have enough of it at the moment to do so. Larger realms (Kingdoms and Empires) have an additional set of laws that we'll look at when they become available.  At first this screen looks utterly terrifying, but the reality is very little of this actually matters. Technology is a mechanic that prevents all the good buildings from being built at the start of the game and that slowly increases the effectiveness of troops and culture for each county. Muslim counties start out with significant leads in most of these categories that will slowly level out as time wears on. The small magnifying glasses signify which of the technologies you are focusing on, which doubles its rate of growth. Put a focus on Tactics, Farming, and Noble Customs (one for each category) and then ignore this screen for the next hundred hours of game play without too much worry. You can do some more advanced things with this screen but if that ever becomes important we'll go over it then.  Another very important screen, the Military tab shows you the troops you can raise from your own lands and from your vassals. As you can see, people don't seem to like us much and as such will allow us to raise twenty nine of their troops for war, which is clearly unacceptable. We'll have some spirited discussions with them later about changing their minds. This screen also allows to you raise these levies, and is the hub for Mercenary, Fleet, and Retinue management. It'll be a while until we get to raise a standing Retinue of retainers, but it's important to point out at this juncture that Retinues are one of the major changes since Kersch's LP. We'll be taking advantage of them as soon as we can. Once we get into a war we'll talk about Mercenaries, Holy Orders, and Fleets in depth.  The Intrigue tab is where we can plot nefarious deeds, see who poses a threat to our rule, interact with prisoners and check who's plotting what in our realm. This is also where important decisions can be made, such as the Hajj to Mecca and the addition of fresh blood to our court. We can also use these decisions to do lordly things like throw feasts, go on hunts, and hold bloody tournaments.  These are the plots currently available to us. We don't have much of a reason to murder our wife or our vassal, but taking his land for ourselves might be in the cards. Once we launch a plot we'll look at inviting other characters to join us and pulling it off.  For Muslims, the religion screen doubles as a Decadence notifier. On this tab we can see the head of our religion. Caliph Al-Qa'im I, and our Moral Authority. Moral Authority increases with victories in Holy Wars and Jihads and peaceful conversions of provinces, but is decreased by losing Holy Wars and rampant Heresies. Lower Moral Authority also increases the rate at which Heresies appear to raise peasant tensions and pit rulers against one another, so a high Moral Authority is best. Our Decadent relatives are our kin that hold no official positions. As such, they mooch off of our court and make us look bad to other people. High Decadence is again very bad, so anyone that we can't find a use for is going to find themselves about a head shorter and buried in a pit somewhere outside the castle walls.  On the top center of the screen are these icons. An icon will appear here when something urgent demands your attention. These tell us that we have Important Decisions are Available that we'll want to take a look at (in this case, taking the Hajj), there are Open Council Positions that need to be filled, that our Demesne is too Big and we should reduce our holdings*, we need to Pick an Ambition from the character screen, and that we can Press de jure Ducal Claims. Since I've brought this up before, this is an excellent time to talk about "de jure land", so let's get to it. *"But GrabbinPeels!" I hear you say, "In the first part of this, our Demesne limit was 4/4!" which is absolutely correct and I applaud you for your observational skills. But because Ruler stats are randomly generated on start and I neglected to save the version of the Emir I used for those shots, our current ruler has a poorer Stewardship score. There are ways to get around this that we'll use once we get rolling.  In the De jure Duchies map mode, you can see that a "De jure Duchy" isn't always related to the characters that hold them land in them. Essentially, "de jure" land is an abstraction used to denote areas of land that are considered to belong to one region or another. For instance, you can probably point out on a map what area of the world "France" is generally considered to be and what land has traditionally belonged to it. If you hold a de jure title, you can use it to press claims on any county that falls in your traditional borders. It's a recognized enough concept that it's a just cause for war, and rounding up half of the "de jure" land in a Duchy, Kingdom, or Empire is enough that with a little gold, you can create (or usurp, if the title is already owned) the title and go about unifying all the land associated with it. As you can see here, the land owned by the King to our east falls within our de jure borders, giving us the perfect reason to take some land from him by force. The county claimed by Tripolitania to our south is likewise considered to be part of Tunis, so we might see some conflict with them to claim our proper lands.  The De jure Kingdoms map view is the same thing but on a larger scale. Were someone to take control of half of the lands formally considered Africa, they could claim the King title for themselves or wrest it out of the hands of the weakened King that currently holds that title.  While we're looking at map modes, the Independent Vassals map mode is useful to see who controls what in a country. Once we expand our borders a little, we'll start using this map-mode more and more to check on our vassals and make sure no one is growing too powerful at our expense.  Clicking on a county brings up this tab in the lower left. You can see the current holder of the province (Us. If the 'stash didn't remind you who we were, the star in the upper right corner of the pictures denotes who you're currently playing as.), the primary holding, and a lot of other numbers that should be fairly easy to guess. The numbers beside the counts indicate the total amount of gold we receive vs. how much the county produces. We get 21.2 gold from this province a year because we own the Castle (the Wilayah) and the Mosque here. The flags in the top corners of each holding denote the lord that directly controls the holding (the top left) and the country that claims it. When both flags are the same, the ruler of the realm holds the title directly. You can also see that the majority of the population is Maghreb and Sunni, there is a .5% they will revolt, and that the "supply" is 21k. Supply is the total number of troops that can be stationed in a county without suffering attrition from lack of supplies, but our first war will see us going into more detail on that. Below the county income are icons that denote the Military, Economic, and Cultural technologies in a particular province. We are much further ahead in financial and social matters than we are in those related to the military, but most Christians would kill to start with a 6 in something so overall we're pretty well off. Below that are buttons that allow you to raise the local levies and fleets. Because this is our capital province, it doesn't border any water and we can't ever raise fleets from it.  Clicking on a holding (in this case our Castle) brings up this panel. You can see the tax income, number of troops that can be raised (the icon of standing troops), your fort level, and the number of men in the garrison (right below the troops) that will defend the castle if it comes under enemy siege. To the right you can see the full breakdown of troops that can be called into service from our castle: 55 light infantry, 138 heavy infantry, and 55 light cavalry. Each type of unit has particular strengths and weaknesses (some more than others) that will become apparent when war breaks out. The main area of the panel displays the holding improvements, which are structures that modify the holding. The moat increases the fort level of our castle, as does the palisade. The palisade also increases the total size of the levy and slightly increases our tax income. The village would increase our tax income, and the other buildings will further increase the strength of the holding's defense as well as the type and number of troops we can raise from it. Each building is listed with its build cost and build time, as well as its level that appears on the left. Each type of structure is capable of being upgraded three or four times as the technology becomes available.  You can see that our lone count vassal pays .4 of a ducat per year to us from his holdings. Let's take a closer look at this rear end in a top hat.  Ah. Well, there's a good reason he's our Marshal. He has 16 Martial score, which is only helped by his rank four education in that trait. I'm making an executive decision in saying that our ruler hates this well-educated guy who probably shows off his skills at all the parties and makes Munis look bad. The good news is that if he were to die unexpectedly without producing an heir his title would return to his immediate liege, so this is a situation that we'll take some... personal interest in.  That level four education trait gives our Marshal an incredible +9, as well as increasing most of his other scores and his health. This is why educating children with good tutors is an important aspect of the game. Our son is perfectly of age for this, so we'll look into assigning him to someone intelligent once the game starts.  The last button on the character screen I neglected to point out earlier is the diplomacy window. This can be accessed by clicking the picture of the scroll either beside the character's heir or from the county window. From here, we can perform a variety of interactions including giving him more land, asking him to raise a child in our care, letting him out from under our rule, or stripping him of his title and leaving him in shameful destitution. Crusader Kings 2 is an overly complex life-destroying simulator in more ways than one so we have plenty of options if this is our goal. That's the last of the basic explanations of the User Interface, thanks for hanging in this long and tune in next time where we'll actually hit the un-pause button and begin cementing our legacy. From here the updates will be much more action driven because things will actually be happening, but hopefully you can refer to this if you need to familiarize yourself with the way you interact with the game. GrabbinPeels fucked around with this message at Feb 28, 2013 around 07:59 |
| # ? Feb 28, 2013 06:54 |
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Awesome, maybe I'll actually learn how to play this loving game instead of just assassinating people and knocking up courtiers until I lose.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 07:41 |
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Lprsti99 posted:Awesome, maybe I'll actually learn how to play this loving game instead of just assassinating people and knocking up courtiers until I lose. Wait, that's not how you play Crusader Kings?
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 07:42 |
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Good lord I love CK2 threads. I'll be following this pretty much constantly. Really appreciate the detail you put into explaining how things actually work too, since I've always been too intimidated to actually play the drat things.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 07:42 |
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Testekill posted:Wait, that's not how you play Crusader Kings? The idea is to assassinate people and knock up courtiers until you win, so he's already two-thirds of the way there.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 08:00 |
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With the caveat that there's no such things as winning, only getting so big that you eventually can't hold onto your empire without shameful savescumming. Two short-lived Holy Roman Empresses in a row!  I'm pretty excited about this LP, I've been away from the game for a long time and new things are scary.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 11:47 |
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I've put over 200 hours into this game and you've already taught me two new things; tracking decadent dynasty members through the religion tab, and (unintentionally) that rulers have their stats/traits randomized on starting a game. I'll be enjoying playing along with this!
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 13:52 |
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Arglebargle III posted:I'm pretty excited about this LP, I've been away from the game for a long time and new things are scary. Same here. I left off my last save in September, having just finished a major conquest in southern Spain (when I already had the rest of it). I took one look at how many holdings I had to divvy up and thought, "NOPE, not today." Every subsequent patch has made me dread getting back into that save more and more. Thanks for doing the LP to show us the new mechanics.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 21:22 |
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I think your old save isn't compatible with the new patches anyway so you might as well start a new game.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 21:25 |
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I will be following this! I don't really like tunis position. They start kinda weak and I don't know where I would look to for expansion room. What is your plan for expansion? Sicily?
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 23:37 |
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Maybe this will be the LP that gets me to finally buy this game. A good job so far!
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 23:46 |
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Kanthulhu posted:What is your plan for expansion? Sicily? Sicily is kinda nasty to try and conquer with its proximity to the HRE and the Papacy. You conquer it then they decide that you are the worst heathen ever.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 23:56 |
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So have the patches fixed the issue Kersch got where he called a grand tournament that never ended? It became a Medieval Irish Thunderdome that tramped across the country killing everyone in its path until the current king got randomly killed by it.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 03:02 |
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Every time I try to play CK2, I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information and give up. Maybe this thread can change that.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 03:08 |
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I have to admit I'm a little sad that we wont see the trade nation thing used. However, I do enjoy that this is Muslim, because it's still something I've never done.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 03:08 |
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Omnicrom posted:So have the patches fixed the issue Kersch got where he called a grand tournament that never ended? It became a Medieval Irish Thunderdome that tramped across the country killing everyone in its path until the current king got randomly killed by it. So it was the Wild Hunt, basically. And this is a bad thing?
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 05:30 |
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KittyEmpress posted:I have to admit I'm a little sad that we wont see the trade nation thing used. However, I do enjoy that this is Muslim, because it's still something I've never done. GrabbinPeels has talked about doing a post or two on Republics later in the LP. (This is looking really good so far! Great work, GP.)
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 05:53 |
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Lprsti99 posted:So it was the Wild Hunt, basically. And this is a bad thing?
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 06:54 |
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Omnicrom posted:So have the patches fixed the issue Kersch got where he called a grand tournament that never ended? It became a Medieval Irish Thunderdome that tramped across the country killing everyone in its path until the current king got randomly killed by it. Can I have a link to the post where this happened?
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 10:21 |
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Omnicrom posted:So have the patches fixed the issue Kersch got where he called a grand tournament that never ended? It became a Medieval Irish Thunderdome that tramped across the country killing everyone in its path until the current king got randomly killed by it. Pretty sure the Infinite Tournament Bug has been slain, yes - or at any rate I haven't gotten it for ages and ages.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 11:37 |
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Pharohman777 posted:Can I have a link to the post where this happened? Don't remeber the exact update. http://lparchive.org/Crusader-Kings-2
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 14:05 |
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Update 17 has part of the endless tourney. The event code to shut it off was posted in the thread, and I thought made it into the OP. E: It's in the op for the thread in Games. quote:If you get the perpetual tournament bug (leading to a spectacularly crippled and dead nobility) you should open console and type "event 70002" to end it. I've had it happen to me as recently as whatever patch came with SoI. Snowdens Secret fucked around with this message at Mar 1, 2013 around 14:52 |
| # ? Mar 1, 2013 14:48 |
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Benagain posted:I think your old save isn't compatible with the new patches anyway so you might as well start a new game. Not true. I just loaded up the savegame (created under patch 1.06b) in my up-to-date Steam install (1.091 and a just-purchased DLC). There were no issues loading or letting it run after unpausing. I didn't play very long - 33/9 Demesne limit problems will manifest themselves quickly - but it zipped along at +4 game speed for a minute or two with no warnings or crashes. I know Paradox has a reputation for releasing buggy stuff, but there would have been a revolt if they broke savegame compatibility. Think how many people have auto-updates through Steam and similar platforms.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 19:19 |
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Brainamp posted:Don't remeber the exact update. http://lparchive.org/Crusader-Kings-2 Update 15 is the first where Kersch notes the endless tournament randomly killing people. If you have archive access you can track it down by that.
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 19:32 |
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BinLogic posted:there would have been a revolt if they broke savegame compatibility There was, but they put down the resistance with horse archers then quickly sued for white peace head of the revolt was later castrated
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| # ? Mar 1, 2013 19:36 |
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Update 3: War In Our Time (1066-1070) Well, let's start by taking care of those updates. We need a Court Imam, so I'll open the Council tab and click the blue "Appoint" button under the empty portrait. This brings up the list of-  Oh. Courtiers and vassals are only eligible for the position if they have a religious education, so it looks like we rule a realm of godless heathens. Luckily, we can fix this without too much hassle.  Over in the Intrigue tab is a decision to summon a Holy Man to our court. There's also a similar decision to summon a random courtier as well if you're ever running low on then, but stats are completely randomized so you never quite know what you're going to get.  Not bad! Our new Imam has a learning stat of 11, which okay with me. Anything over eight will do in a pinch, although we'll have a larger talent pool to pull from as the size of our realm increases.  Everyone but our Vizier is assigned to our capital county by selecting the icon of the action we want them to perform and clicking on Medjerda. The Marshal is set to Train Troops to increase our levies and the Steward is going to Collect Taxes to increase the monthly output of the two of our holdings in the county. The Spymaster and Imam are set to Scheme and Perform Charity respectively. The Spymaster will be able to detect any plots directed at us and our Imam should impress the locals and make us look good to the Caliph.  The Vizier goes across the sea to Fabricate Claims on the tip of Sicily. This is more of a contingency plan for now, but it never hurts to plan ahead.  Also, since we have yet to choose an ambition we select the Improve Diplomacy option because 0 in the stat that makes people like us is not going to fly.  There are still a few other minor things to do before we unpause the game. I throw out a few honorable titles by going to the diplomatic screen of my vassals (the scroll button on their information tab or their county view) and selecting "Award Honorary Title" from the list. Cupbearer in particular will increase al-Lakmhi's opinion of us by 15, so we go ahead and let him serve our wine to us. Never let it be said that we are an ungracious lord.  Our son already has a guardian, but she has a level two education herself and poor diplomacy besides. Her traits are, in order, Lustful (increases fertility), Ambitious (slightly raises all stats but gives a massive opinion malus to any leige lords), Wroth (an increase to martial skill at the cost of some intrigue and diplomacy), and Diligent (boosts all stats by one). All red traits are one of the seven deadly sins, and the green traits represent the virtues. It's generally good to have more virtues than sins, but there are benefits to most of the traits your character can acquire. All that being said, she's not a terrible guardian, but we can do better.  Our Count's massive martial skill means he should pass most of that off to our heir, and being entrusted with his leige's heir gives him another opinion boost towards us, which lets us raise more of his troops.  Like so. You can also see the bonus from our Marshal on our own troops, although we haven't rounded up enough peasants to fill up tot he cap just yet.  You might also remember that I mentioned a way around the 4/3 demesne size problem we've run into. First, I click the joined rings icon on my character's information tab to bring up a list of the eligible bachelorettes in our Emirate. As the game progresses and we become more powerful ladies from other courts will want in on our baby-making action, but right now it's limited to who we can find locally. I click on the treasure chest icon to sort the ladies by their Stewardship score and select Souzan up at the top. I send the request to our Count vassal (she's in his court, and he promptly accepts.  Now that we have our shiny new wife, we need to make sure she's considered our primary wife. Having just joined the court, she takes the place of a secondary wife to our current stat-less hag. There are a lot of ways to make the switch, but let's go with the easiest.  We navigate to her diplomacy page and choose the "Arrange a Divorce" option to boot her rear end into the desert.  Now that Souzan is our primary wife, half of her Stewardship score is used to determine our limit, and we're back in the clear.  Just one wife isn't going to cut it though. We suffer a penalty to our prestige every month because of people making fun of our lack of additional wives.  A few trips to the marriage screen later we fill up our harem and start accruing prestige again. With everything out of the way, it's time to get this train rolling. You can modify the game time either by clicking on the + and - in the upper right next to the date, or use the keypad buttons to do the same thing. The game can be run from x1 to x5 speed, and for the most part I play at three or four and slow it down during wars. With a couple of clicks the world starts to move again.  Including our neighbor, the "Sultan" of "Africa" with his two measly counties. By clicking on one of his counties we should be able to see what he's up to.  Any wars a character is engaged in appear under the county or diplomatic view as the seal of the enemy with a small sword banner. By hovering over it (pro tip: hover over everything) we can see that he's trying to grab Salerno over in southern Italy. With his men across the sea, he's going to have a hard time defending his holdings if someone were to declare war on him.  We declare war on him. It's a bit early in the game to start throwing troops around, but when opportunity knocks you either answer or weep in shame as your dreams of empire crumble all around you. As you can see here, we have to have a reason and a goal before we can declare war. These are called casus belli, or "cases for war". Since they hold land that is traditionally considered to lie within the Emirate of Tunis, we can choose which county we would like to contest ownership of and then select "send". We're going after the county of Tunis, because calling ourselves the Emirate of something we don't actually own is a little embarrassing.  I open the military tab and click the "raise levy" button that I pointed out last update, the blue icons just to the right of our troop count, for both our demesne troops and those of our vassals. By holding down the mouse and dragging across the screen we can select all of our troops in the area...  ...and then right click on a destination to order the march.  Once they're all gathered in Tunis we get another option. When multiple armies in the same location are selected, you can click the highlighted blue button to combine them together. I do that and prepare to siege the enemy castle.  Well that's embarrassing. Since our army is smaller than the defending garrison, we don't have enough men to mount the siege. The tiny red picture of a soldier with an exclamation point next to him is the UI's way of telling that you that you're just terrible, why are you even trying.  Undeterred, we move onto the capital. Since the Sultan took most of his army with him the garrison should be much more sparsely defended.  Pulling off something I never came across in my test games, the Serene Doge of the Pisan Republic decides that gently caress Tunis and introduces the concept of Holy Wars to us right out of the blue. A Holy War can be called against a state of a different religion with a few exceptions (Catholics and Orthodox characters can't Holy War each other, but Sunni and Shiite Muslims can) and targets all of the land within a single de jure county that the target holds. Since the Holy War is for Tunis, and all of our land lays within its de jure boundaries, losing this war would leave us landless and our game would be over.  Thankfully it's not as bad as it sounds. Republics get most of their men by paying for mercenaries to fight for them, which means that this early in the game they're not going to have the income to support an army too big for us to handle. This is especially true because every country of the same religion as the target (us) are able to help out. The Emirates to our south and west declare their support and immediately muster their troop levies.  Pisa drops off a thousand men on our northern coast and drives away a small army belonging to the Hammadid Emirate to our west. Our men are still making their way north from Mahadia, but right away we're at a slight numerical disadvantage.  The Doge of Genoa, every happy to gently caress over a rival Republic, sends us a generous stipend as a token of his esteem. Our war chest full, we're in a much better position to drive the Pisans off our shores.  A county can be besieged as long as the attacker has more men there than the defender does. Over time, the defender's morale will drop and the attacker will slowly take attrition from the fighting. Every now and then, events will fire that modify the situation a bit. This one lowered our own morale because some bastard is trying to save his rear end at the cost of our defenses.  By now, though, the Hammadids have grouped up their men and marched them east to catch the Doge's troops in the flank. I pause our men just to the south of the siege to wait.  Of course a full-scale invasion is no excuse to stop boning, so one of wives gets pregnant while we await the inevitable confrontation.  By hovering over a moving army (remember: hover over loving everything) you can see when they'll arrive at their next destination. We arrive a few days behind the Hammadid offensive, just as the Pisans reinforce by sea.  The battle goes quickly in our favor and the invaders are forced to retreat. The three icons across the center of the battle screen are Warscore Gained, Prestige Gained, and Piety Gained. The latter two are split across all of the leaders who took part, but the first contributes directly to the score of the war in our favor. Warscore how the game models the general course of the war. Victories in battle and seized territory increase your warscore and the likelihood that the enemy will capitulate to your demands. Warscore is rated from -100% (you've lost) to 100% (you've won tremendously), so 11.9% from one battle is particularly decisive.  While our men recover from the battle, our Imam reports that our charity has increased the local mayor's opinion of us. Depending on the skill of your Court Imam these will fire fairly frequently for a variety of effects that give us bonus opnion and piety every couple of years.  Back on the front, the enemy regroups in Tunis and our armies are too depleted to take the fight to them. But remember, Genoa sent us a particularly generous amount of gold earlier. It's time to put it to use.  The Mercenaries tab shows us a list of all available mercenary companies along with their size, composition, and monthly cost. We have plenty of gold in our personal treasury right now, so we hire the Berber Company and they appear in our capital.  The drawback of mercenaries (besides the money) is that they are deployed with no morale. Morale is a measure of how long an army will stand and fight, and is modified by building particular improvements or the traits of army leaders. Essentially, don't ever throw troops with low morale into a battle because an army of ten thousand can be beaten by a quarter of their number if the enemy is at full morale and they are not.  We select the mercenary company and move them up to join with the rest of our army. On the way Munis contemplates life and decides to express his feelings with poetry, increasing his Diplomacy by 2.  Selecting an army brings up this screen. The number in the top right indicates the total strength of your forces, and the blue button just to the right of it zooms to the army's location on the map. The four icons below the name of the army (Kamil leads the center so it's named after him) allow you to disband the army, break the army into smaller divisions, board the army on ships (if the army is in a coastal province with docked ships), and attach the army to an ally's command. Below these you can see the total number of each troop type we have. Right now we have Light Infantry, Archers, Heavy Infantry, and Light Cavalry. Although the battle system can get rather complicated, a general rule of thumb is that more dudes is always good and the larger army generally wins the day. For now consider armies to be giant cudgels and we'll get to the finesse in time. Underneath this is the leader of each part of the army, the center and the flanks. By clicking on the name of the leader can you change them out, but Kamil has the highest martial score here so he's staying put. There are factors that limit when you can change out leaders, but we'll get into that when we can actually do something about them.  The Hammadids have elected to attach their army to ours and add their numbers to any fight we get in. We're not able to change their composition or deal with them directly, but the extra manpower certainly helps.  Clicking the arrow next to our troop types opens this screen, which allows you to re-allocate troops to different wings of the army based on who raised the levy by clicking on the small arrows on the left and right side of the name of each troupe. Usually you can get away with clicking on "Auto-Balance Unit" there to the top right. Doing so changes the order of battle to this:  Which moves the large mercenary company to the center and places our own men on the flanks. The men are marching to confront the Pisan interlopers, so we'll see exactly how this figures into combat soon.  Meanwhile, our Emir has found himself in some difficulty with the finances and I have him ask his wife for help.  This gives us a small modifier to our tax income and the Content trait. Being Content gives us a nice Piety boost but we lose a point in Intrigue. We have a decent Intrigue score already so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  Battle is joined, and the center of the enemy lines immediately collapses. The Hammadid numbers swell our ranks on either flank and the mercenaries we hired have cut a path right down the middle. In battle each flank operates independently, assigning tactics on the fly and having their own morale. You can see here that the center column of the Pisans have lost all of their morale and have broken off. Beside morale is the total number of troops currently engaged in that flank and the red number below that is the rate at which men are being lost. Losing men causes morale to drop and can lead to a flank pulling out of the fight entirely, exposing the rest of the army to an assault on multiple fronts. The icons below the red number indicate the particular tactic the flank is following. Leaders with higher martial scores will use more effective tactics and deal more damage to the enemy.  Battles go through three phases: The Skirmish phase (indicated by the bow) in which archers and light cavalry have increased attack as the armies close, the Melee phase (indicated by crossed swords that didn't get used much this battle) in which heavier infantry and cavalry deal more damage, and the Pursue Phase (indicated by the horse) at the end of the fight when a flank breaks and begins to retreat. When a flank retreats, the enemy flank opposite it can attack other parts of the army from the side and deal increased damage. Losing a flank early on can play a large role in the outcome of a battle, as it did here. Our overwhelming numerical superiority didn't hurt either.  After the infidels scatter before us we follow their retreat and mop up, removing all Pisan troops from Tunis.  Your current wars are displayed at the bottom right corner of the map. Right now we're engaged in two wars, and the war against Pisa is 25% in our favor. Since we haven't actually done anything to our other enemies yet and there aren't any more troops around, let's fix that.  This is the siege view. You can toggle between this and the normal county view by clicking the icon to the lower right of the siege window of arrows pointing in different directions. The size of the attacking force influences the rate at which the defenders lose morale. Because they are significantly outnumbered, our attack isn't going to take long to take control of the castle.  Of course, we can always move things along by ordering a direct assault on the holding. Because we outnumber the enemy severly and because we're paying these mercenaries by the month, it's a good idea to do so by clicking the blue sword icon seen here. You must wait to assault until your siege engines have been built, which is a few days to a few weeks depending on the size of your force.  Our four thousand men effortlessly tear into the enemy city and give us 8.2 gold as a reward. The Sultan isn't of a different religion, so we don't get any Piety for sacking his capital. You can also see that we lost less than a hundred men storming the walls, and that the defenders have been completely wiped out. We get a corresponding increase in warscore and begin sieging the next holding in the county.  In the middle of this we receive news that one of our wives has given birth! It's a girl, so we're going to marry her off to some dude in sixteen years to forge some alliances. The game randomly assigns children names but you're free to enter whatever you want into the box. I'll leave it alone for now. Suffice to say that with three wives we're going to be getting this updates frequently, so I'll only point one out when it's noteworthy.  The county view changes as we siege more and more enemy holdings. The flag in the center of the holding window belongs to the country that holds it during war, so we've already gone through two of his holdings and are besieging the third. Holdings are sieged in order from left to right, starting with the primary holding and working down. The lesser holdings are generally more poorly defended and tend to fall faster than the initial one, but it can vary. While we finish up those sieges (and to prevent me from typing the word "siege" any more), let's take a look back at the title screen. If you recall, I mentioned that the Expenses portion of the tab would come into effect when we had troops raised.  Ouch. We're losing 37 gold a year because those mercenaries are expensive.  This translates to about -3 gold a month, but because we still have over 100 and because we pick up 7 or 8 gold a seige from looting we can maintain this for a little while.  While we're handling our domestic disputes, our allies are taking out the piecemeal reinforcements Pisa is sending down. Generally, taking out the initial surge of troops in a war almost guarantees victory unless your troops are mauled in the fighting. If a player ever loses an army the best thing to do is to stand down all levies and wait a few months. Armies cannot reinforce in the field if they are not mercenaries or retinues, so waiting and re-raising them will give you an army to get back in the fight. The AI doesn't seem to have the patience to wait for its levies to replenish so it will send wave after wave of low strength armies at you after you take care of the first one, although the size and kind of your enemy means that this isn't always true.  The war with Pisa has stalled, but we can't really take the fight to their territories because we can only raise 8 ships. There is no naval combat in Crusader Kings 2; instead, all a ship can do is transport 100 troops each. So right now we could transport 800 soldiers across at a time, which isn't very efficient and they could easily call up some mercenaries to beat us back.  Clicking on the icon of the war in the bottom right hand corner brings up the war screen. You can see the combatants, any allies, and the overall warscore.  Hovering over it (always hover) gives us a breakdown. Controlling the target of a war is worth more and more of the total warscore as time drags on. Since we slaughtered his men, we click on the "Offer Peace" button to see if he'll concede.  Wars in CK2 end one of three ways. 1. The attacker is victorious, and claims the land they declared war for while receiving prestige and other bonuses. 2. Neither side can gain a decisive advantage over the other, so the aggressor loses some prestige and the war ends. 3. The defender is victorious, gains prestige (if against a nation of another religion, piety and Moral Authority as well) and the attacker is forced to pay reparations. In this case, we just want him to back off so we offer a white peace.  He accepts, leaving us at war with only The Sultanate of Africa.  ...who promptly sends us a peace offering after we roll in and take Tunis itself. This is indicated by the circle with the dove icon on it to the upper left there, and appears right below the notification icons. This is also where alerts about proposed marriages and calls to war show up as well, so it's good to keep an eye here.  He offers to cede the county of Tunis to us as he has lost the war. Because the current holder is our culture and religion, he becomes our new vassal, expanding the count of Counts to two.  Finally at peace again, we select our army and click the red "Disband Unit" button, sending the mercenaries away and returning the men to the manpower pool.  That's a lovely shade of green. As we move forward, updates will begin to cover longer and longer spans of time as I have to point out less about the game mechanics. Our first update ends with two solid back-to-back military victories. I'll see you next time where we'll explore some of the Muslim-only decisions and see where else we can extend our influence. GrabbinPeels fucked around with this message at Mar 2, 2013 around 07:12 |
| # ? Mar 2, 2013 01:03 |
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Awesome, I've been thinking about trying some Muslim rulers while I wait for the pagan DLC to drop. Will be following this closely!
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 01:27 |
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Wow, this was an exciting start to the LP proper! One nit-pick: GrabbinPeels posted:The county view changes as we siege more and more enemy holdings. The flag in the center of the holding window belongs to the country that holds it during war, so we've already gone through two of his holdings and are besieging the third. Holdings are sieged in order from right to left, starting with the primary holding and working down. The lesser holdings are generally more poorly defended and tend to fall faster than the initial one, but it can vary. Left to right, surely?
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 06:46 |
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PleasingFungus posted:Left to right, surely? Whoops, that's what I get for doing it all in one go. Thanks, I'll fix that.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 06:49 |
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quote:There's also a similar decision to summon a random courtier as well if you're ever running low on then, but stats are completely randomized so you never quite know what you're going to get. Not quite random: the tooltip notes that the guy is summoned 'to assist with matters of stewardship' and this is entirely true; the new guy will ALWAYS have the Stewardship education traits. In the game data, the decision is called 'Create New Steward'.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 07:57 |
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A good rule of thumb with regard to sieges and assaulting holdings, for those still learning the ropes of this game: Do not assault a holding unless you have approximately ten times as many men as the holding has defenders. You can pull off a successful assault with less, but the cost to your own men gets progressively more ruinous, especially if you're assaulting a Holding with decent defenses. In general, a 10:1 ratio of attacker to defender will serve to relatively painlessly negate the fortifications and allow you a quick win through sheer dint of numbers. If you don't have the ability to raise that many men but sieging down the defender's morale is too slow, and you're willing to lose some guys, you can do the following: assault the fortification, but before the number of attackers drops too low (i.e. becomes smaller than the number of defenders), pause the game and give your men orders to march out to a different province - then cancel those orders to have them return to sieging before unpausing the game. As there is no 'stop assaulting' button, this is the workaround. What will happen is that your men will begin regaining morale as they continue sieging, but the defenders will not; any morale they lose in the battle cannot start recovering until the holding is no longer besieged. It is an expensive and often painful way to speed up a siege without having the men to safely pull off a total assault, but sometimes getting a siege completed a week early is a necessary evil.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 09:00 |
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Also if you pull that assault and cancel move with mercenaries, holy orders or retinues, they will regain strength while continuing to siege. Regenerating in the field becomes a massive advantage in speeding up wars. As far as sieging holdings, castles put up considerably more of a fight (for reasons that presumably will be discussed later) then I think churches/mosques, then cities. IIRC the game requires one of each in a county before you can repeat, so if there's a 2nd castle, it'll be at least the fourth holding. So you can struggle on the first castle, mow through the following church and city with ease, and then find yourself without sufficient forces for the last castle if you're not watching out.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 10:48 |
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:A good rule of thumb with regard to sieges and assaulting holdings, for those still learning the ropes of this game: Do not assault a holding unless you have approximately ten times as many men as the holding has defenders. The answer is More Archers, if possible. It's recently come up that Siege Assaults use the Skirmish stats of troops. The most powerful troops in Skirmish are Archers and Horse Archers, so...Not that this is a concern-that's getting into Retinues, which isn't for a bit yet.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 13:25 |
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Bloodly posted:The answer is More Archers, if possible. Eh, concern about army composition is for those who aren't conquering enough.  Seriously though I have never needed to worry about what exactly made up my armies as long as I just had more than the other guy.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 15:16 |
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Bloodly posted:The answer is More Archers, if possible. Yeah, I've never had to even think about troop composition, to be honest. The solution is always "have more mans."
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 18:14 |
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I'm trying to walk the line between being entertaining and being informative so I don't overwhelm anyone with a lot of explanations.  I'll fill out the rest of the information on sieges the next time we butt heads with somebody, hopefully people that read the updates read the rest of the thread as well so they can see all the input.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 18:15 |
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Bloodly posted:The answer is More Archers, if possible. I've found more cavalry, particularly heavy cav, more effective than archers. Archers are cheap and easy to get numbers with but they get slaughtered in everything but skirmish. I always build my retinues entirely with the light/heavy cav and they wipe the floor with mixed armies even when (within reason) outnumbered. Cavalry also do tremendous damage when the other army is fleeing, which cuts down on the time you spend chasing retreating enemies around the map.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 21:25 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 06:49 |
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Snowdens Secret posted:I've found more cavalry, particularly heavy cav, more effective than archers. Archers are cheap and easy to get numbers with but they get slaughtered in everything but skirmish. I always build my retinues entirely with the light/heavy cav and they wipe the floor with mixed armies even when (within reason) outnumbered. Cavalry also do tremendous damage when the other army is fleeing, which cuts down on the time you spend chasing retreating enemies around the map. Yeah, but cavalry suck at sieges, which is what Bloodly was discussing. Archers own at sieges but get beat up in combat; cav owns at combat but gets beat up in sieges; infantry doesn't own at either but doesn't suck at either.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 00:41 |
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