Anyone tried the Crusader Kings 2 demo?

The Game Room
1

It was released this weekend from Paradox. Played it for a few hours and I have to say I’m really enjoying it, although it sucks being stuck playing effectively one country (no way I’m going to play a Duke or Baron/Count without properly knowing how to play the game). The new interface is good even though there is a lot more to the game than the original, which I have to say I’m very glad about as I quickly ran out of things to do in the original and found it pretty dull.

Things I particularly like:
[ul]
[li]The new map - looks great, and there a ton of overlays which make finding the information you want easy[/li][li]The new perks system, borrowed heavily from Europa Universalis Rome[/li][li]Similarly the council system works well, with missions for each council member rather than their stats just boosting realm efficiency. Also there are tons of options around marriage, imprisoning, taking titles etc[/li][li]There’s lots of help available if you’re playing it, tools tips and a very useful tutorial. I’ll look forward to reading the manual when I get the game.[/li][li]The music! Holy hell this is a game where I can see myself keeping the music on as it’s fantastic. One of the tracks particularly, a choral piece, is so lovely I’ve once or twice stopped playing just to listen to it.[/li][li]The look of the game is great, and although it’s a Paradox strategy game and therefore not exactly starcraft 2 or anything, it looks very polished and pretty[/li][/ul]

Things I’m not so keen on:
[ul]
[li]Maybe it’s because I haven’t got my head around it yet, but managing titles seems a real faff. I can’t tell whether I should be setting up subordinate titles or hanging on to them, what’s best etc. I felt I had a better handle on that in the first game pretty quickly[/li][li]The combat, as usual, is pretty basic. Until later in the game when you have great control over the legal system you’re stuck with your ruler being army leader or whoever the computer appoints, so the only control you have over what’s going on is raising troops and just throwing them at the enemy. It’s pretty blunt, and because levies are pre-determined by the counties they come from you have no way to balance your army. I see a long-term strategy being needed to build the right improvements in counties to get your levies up to something more useful.[/li][li]The diplomacy system seems a bit… odd. You’re told in the tutorial there are no allies, just personal relationships with other characters (some who are rulers) but then you become allies in war with people you have marriages with. Also what is the point of having a high relationship with another ruler or count, does it do anything? No idea.[/li][/ul]
So far it’s more “like” than “don’t like” so as I said, will definitely be getting this out of the box despite Paradox having demonstrated they generally don’t release finished products (so I’ll probably play it for a bit then come back when they’ve dropped a few patches). According to the Paradox site it’s out in less than two weeks, yay!

**Mod Edit: **Clarified in the thread title that it’s Crusader Kings 2 demo, not Crusader Kings 1.

2

I haven’t played the demo yet, but that’s because I assume the actual release will be the real demo, knowing Paradox’s history.

I absolutely loved CK and I’ll be getting CKII but probably not for six months or so. I really do hope it’s great though.

3

Well I’ve put my money where my mouth is and preordered CK2 on Steam. Only a week to go before it releases :slight_smile: You also get the first game bundled in for free if you do so, in case that makes it more interesting to anyone.

4

I really liked the original Crusader Kings and so am looking forward to the new version. Paradox has a history of putting out initially buggy games, but they always fix things, and I enjoy them even if they aren’t perfect at release. I’ve preordered this one. :slight_smile:

5

And how! One of their recent games, Sword of the Stars 2, was so terrible I was one of the people virtually brandishing a pitchfork and demanding my money back (which they actually did have the decency to do). It made me think very hard about getting this one, but CK is an in-house development with devs who have a very good reputation, so I’m happy to pony up for this one (particularly after playing the demo, which as I said was very polished).

6

I got SOTS2.

It was definately released unfinished. It’s getting better with the patch updates. There’s still a memory leak somewhere. (At least, I think that’s what they’re called. The games gets slower and slower the longer it’s running. Must save and restart the game to clear that up, and get it back to a reasonable speed.)

I didn’t get Crusader Kings, but I love EU3, and like Hearts of Iron. Victoria 2 is a little dissapointing, for some reason I can’t put my finger on.

7

One reason I didn’t take to it was at the anniversary of its release I reinstalled it and the game still ran sluggish on my computer (I play BF3 without any problem) and Great Britain was still insanely powerful.

I played the crap out of the first one. The second, not so much.

To the OP: I didn’t know the demo was out already. I’ll probably play it and put the game on my wishlist. I’ll pick it up at the Christmas Steam sale, as by then the game might be playable.

Seriously, the first 6 months of a Paradox games are horrible.

8

I got to speak to the main CK2 developer (Chris) at Paradox Con last month; seems that Paradox have a/ learned their lessons and b/ got the resources now. CK2 has been at release quality for weeks if not months, and they’ve used the extra time to polish and bugfix to a standard I think unmatched in their history. Here’s one game that didn’t need a 1.01 patch on the day of release to be playable. It’s not often I see a game pre-release and am wowed by it like this.

SotS2 wasn’t their game, BTW, they published it not developed it (same with Magicka). That said, it was a clear case of premature release for which they must bear some responsibility.
Did someone report this thread for a title change yet? It really needs to say CK** 2** …

9

Yes good point Askance, it should refer to 2 - although it should be quickly apparent that I’m talking about the sequel rather than the original upon opening the thread. I’ll ask a mod to fix it :slight_smile:

10

I used to play CK several years ago, and liked it quite a bit. I just tried CK2 last night, and it looks like a good game, but damned if I could figure out how to do anything interesting.

What’s needed (which the manual doesn’t provide) is some explanation of what you can do with stuff, and where stuff comes from. For example, how do you get prestige, and what can you do with it? How do you get gold, and what can you do with it? How do you get titles, and what can you do with them? How do you get provinces, and what can you do with them? How do you get piety, and what can you do with it? Etc.

I wanted to post this at the CK2 forum, but it appears I have to wait 5 days after registering for the forum before I’m allowed to post.

11

I (think) I can answer these questions.

If it’s anything like CK1, and it seems to be, the whole point of the game is to decide what goals you want to pursue and go for them. There is a score, but if you don’t care about that you don’t have to follow it. You could, for example, decide you want to become Holy Roman Emperor come hell or high water. Or you might want a huge kingdom that spans Europe, tricky to achieve but possible.

The name of the game usually is to have as high a prestige and piety score as you can. The prestige of your ruler gets converted into a rolling total for your score, so when the game ends the prestige of each character’s prestige is your grand total. Having a higher prestige will also impact on the view of other characters in the game (you get +1 opinion from people for each hundred prestige points you have, which doesn’t sound a lot but as it’s for every character in the game it’s not to be sniffed at). You can also “spend” prestige when you want to take certain actions, like some pathways in events or when you want to fabricate a claim against someone. Also if you want to create some titles (such as you have enough counties in your control to create a duchy) you can do so but need a certain level of prestige - to create the Duchy of Moravia I needed to have 200 prestige plus a fair whack of gold.

Prestige is gained monthly by possessing titles and having vassals. If you’re a king you get a fixed amount for that, plus a small amount for each duchy and county that is under your direct control (this is your demesne). However you gain more from having vassals with titles. So, for instance, if you are a king and had a kingdom, two ducal titles and four counties under your direct control you would get less prestige per month than if you transferred the ducal titles to others and had them as your vassals. Similarly as a duke having counties directly gains you less prestige than having counts as vassals. This has to be counter-balanced by the need to have a number of counties under your direct control as you need them to generate money for you (you gain all the wealth from counties that are in your demesne).

Piety is needed to achieve certain things in a similar fashion to prestige, like create kingdoms (creating the Kingdom of Bohemia requires 200 piety). It also affects the opinions of religious leaders like Bishops and the Pope in the same way that prestige does for rulers. Again, like prestige, some events will cost you or give you piety. You gain a certain amount every month which is modified by some traits, but the biggest source of piety in the game is participating in crusades. You can also buy indulgences and trade gold for piety, but that’s an expensive way to get it.

Gold is, like in reality, the facilitator for everything else. You can use it to buy improvements for the holdings in your demesne, hire mercenaries, and partake in events in the intrigue section (like “hold a grand feast”, which in turn will have its own consequences and benefits). It’s also needed to partake in pretty much all diplomatic actions, if nothing else chucking it at people as a gift to improve their relations with you.

How do you get provinces? It depends on what level you’re playing at as that impacts your options. If you play in the demo as the king of Poland you can revoke the title of any one of your vassals and take over a county as yours directly, but you’ll piss everyone off immensely. To take over a county that belongs to a neighbour you need a casus belli to do so, you can’t just declare war on them for no reason. Your best bet as Poland, for example, is attacking pagans (such as the Pommerania or Lithuania) as you can use the holy war casus belli and appropriate any counties you can conquer.

If you wanted to take a country off someone in a neighbouring Christian kingdom the best way would be to try and arrange a marriage so that you eventually inherit the counties (not easy) or use your chancellor to fabricate a claim on a title. Fabricating a claim on a county doesn’t cost too much in terms of prestige/gold, but once you have the claim and want to press it against the owner of that county (likely some duke) you’re in for a war with him and potentially any of his allies and his liege. To make it worth your while it’s often a better bet to fabricate a claim on a duchy which then allows you to declare war on whoever possesses the title, and also you can try and usurp it directly off someone if you can take the counties that make up that duchy (you can see how de jure duchies are formed on the duchy overlay of the map).

How’s that for a start? Did you play through the tutorial section? It’s actually extremely useful and not at all painful, unlike a lot of Paradox games. In terms of doing anything interesting, you need to be in CK for the long game, and you only have 20 years in the demo so it’s automatically going to limit what you can do. Still, fun to tinker around with in the meantime whilst we wait for the game :slight_smile:

12

Mod:

Edited title to reflect that the thread is about the sequel, Crusader Kings 2, not the original.

  • Gukumatz,
    Game Room Moderator
13

Despite being so negative upthread…it’s all I can do to keep from buying CK2 today. I loved CK that much.

14

Reviews so far have been extremely positive, and they state that this is the most polished product Paradox has produced so far (for one thing the release version is 1.02b). I really don’t think you need to wait six months for a playable game, having played the demo lots I can personally verify that it’s playable now.

15

Just played for five hours - the time flew by! Really immersive although I’m not enjoying myself quite as much as I know I will once I have a better working knowledge of the game so that it requires a little less thought on what to do all the time. I just played William the conqueror which was going swimmingly until he died and my heir inherited, and then I realised I’d allocated the wrong counties to pretty much all my dukes so they were mighty pissed at everything when faced with paying alliegence to the heir, which they happily did for his father.

Grrrr!

16

It is fun, and a lot more complex than the original game.

17

I’m going to re-post something from the CK2 forum that seems to well encapsulate the game, for any curiosu lurkers here:

18

I think that’s a great piece of advice. It’s particularly pertinent if you’re playing a kingdom and move to the next generation and everything starts getting ropey and you think “I’ve messed this up”. No, that’s what happens! You may have made sub-optimal choices under your last king but you can never guarantee things go perfectly. The game is also not about the ever onward progression of your dynasty in a smooth curve. You may be able to keep annexing kingdoms and getting ever larger, but it’s pretty unlikely given how the game works. More likely you’ll hang on to one title or, maybe, go down to duke level at some point where it’s all to play for trying to climb the greasy ladder again. It’s all part of the fun :slight_smile:

19

That actually sounds right up my alley. My favorite part about Medieval: Total War II was building up my character and his retinue.

20

Cool :slight_smile: Just be warned combat is vastly simplified - it’s essentially build up a big army and throw it at your opponent’s. You can be tactical in choosing where to fight (like making them attack you across a river and get a penalty) and trying to build improvements in your provinces that give you more of the better troops, but you don’t direct combat.