I think this is amazing for a game in a niche category, where you stare at little more than maps and spreadsheets. According to Steam, I’ve played it for 289 hours.
One of my all-time favorite games :). I’m gratified it has found a substantial audience and profitable niche.
Well, it’s been in multiple bundles both “indie” and numerous Paradox bundles during Amazon sales. That’s not to belittle its popularity, just saying that its profitability might be over estimated by the “one million” number.
Cool, hope they celebrate with a 50% off sale so I can get it off my Steam wishlist already.
I somehow acquired a gift copy of CKII (just the base game) that I can give to you. What’s your Steam username?
Additionally, the base game and nearly all the expansions are on sale at Gamefly Digital, at least for now.
Congrats to them. I tried to get into the game, but it’s just too dense for me. I’l probably give it another shot over the holidays.
You don’t need to get into it and try to max/min it or anything. Just pick a place that sounds cool and go for a ride. Like they say elsewhere, losing is fun and all that.
Pro-tip: Don’t bang your chambermaid if your wife is your spymaster.
It’s one of my favorite games all time.
The basic gameplay is fun. It’s got war, politics and character interaction. You pick your own goals.
There’s near infinite replayability because of the sandbox nature. Simply pick a start date and a ruler. Form some long-term plans or wing it. It’s all good.
It’s also easy to mod, edit saves and/or cheat. So you can make the game harder or easier. You can fix situations to be more “realistic”. (I like to grant empire titles to NPCs, because they can’t seem to form empires very well.) Or you can set up very ahistorical scenarios and see what happens.
It’s not a perfect game, but it’s probably the best strategy game out there.
Better pro-tip: don’t make your spouse (or heir) your spymaster. 
It’s certainly a game that lends itself to staring at the screen for hours, trying to figure out what you should do. Kind of like an endless game of Risk that you can never win, but OTOH it’s one of those rare games where “winning” isn’t really the point.
I disagree. I’ve had some lemons for rulers. The sooner their reigns were over, the better. As long as my spymaster son was my heir and a good potential ruler, I was cool with a little nightshade in my wine.
The other day, I was thinking just how ruthless and horrible the game inadvertently encouraged you to be. 60 year old kings marrying 16 year old princess because they needed an heir and alliance. Forced concubinage. Assassination and “suicide by spymaster,” as described above. I’m having a nice run as a Carpathian Emperor, but I somehow managed to get most of Catholic Italy as well due to some lucky inheritance and a convenient death. My current goal is to replace every non-Catholic Hungarian with a Catholic Hungarian, and I’ve come to realize how the game passively encourages you to go to war with anybody not of your race or faith due to the opinion penalties. The middle ages were ruthless the way I play them.
Ah, the beauty of a sandbox game. Better is relative to your goals.
I tend to play to maximize the power of my current ruler. Even if that means breaking an uppity son. So I typically don’t give much powers to any of my sons, especially my primary heir, so that they never challenge me. Of course that means succession gets to be messy. But it’s fun to kill brothers and uncles!
If my current ruler is weak, they tend to die quickly, simply because I don’t play them as weak. They get into bad situations.
Sometimes, I’ll switch who I’m playing to another member of the same dynasty. So I’ll play the heir to a lousy king. I’ve played whole campaigns where I’ve always switched to playing my first son, as soon as he’s of age. That’s especially fun in an elective empire.