Crusader Kings III

The Game Room
61

So I put down a massive rebellion and ended up with over half my realm in prison. A few dozen revokes later and I got my realm mostly in order, minus the succession law.

I am king of Denmark, I own half a dozen counties and a pair of duchies all in Denmark. My cousin (the only king to not rebel against me) is king of Ireland and my three sons are kings of Danelaw, Scotland, and Wales.

The problem is, when I die, my duchies and counties go to my sons, but the kingdom goes to whatever random count of my dynasty everyone is voting for just to eff with me.

I’m not sure if I should be trying to play the election game to ensure a landed son gets my empire, or if it would be better to just strip the elective succession law from the title and go by partition instead. I am currently trying to save up the 1.5k prestige – it seems like such a waste but maybe it’s worth it to sort out my inheritance going forward.

62

Alright, I am down for a succession game with the understanding I will fuck all our shit up and set us back decades when I play. But yeah, count me in.

63

So after a lot of trials and tribulations, I scrapped together enough prestige to change my empire back to confederate partition instead of elective.

Right now my sons are kings of Danelaw, Wales, and Scotland. The king of Ireland didn’t rebel. I am also King of Denmark, which is still Elective, and I hold 8 counties there.

This means I dominate the election in Denmark. I can make sure my Scottish king son inherits. He is also my eldest son and since my other sons all have plenty of their own land the partition gives all my counties to my eldest son. So on my death he will be King of Scotland and Denmark, and can give up Scottish land to his own sons to ensure just one inherits everything again.

64

I’ve created an interest thread for the game.

65

So I saw this ad for the Complete Crusader Kings II for 69% off! Oh boy this might be a deal. It turns out that the ‘sale’ price is $78,62, down from $249,99. Has there ever been a game released that is worth $249.99? Maybe the Fallout games because they are massive and I put hundreds of hours into them. I understand many Paradox players put in an equal amount of hours into their games. But they are far cheaper to produce. This is scaring me off from buying any further Paradox games. They have an absolute right to charge what they want but I cant justify $250 for basically a 2D text based game.

66

None of those expansions are necessary. The few changes since CKII’s initial release date I would consider necessary are just free updates. Decide how you see fit, but I think the concensous within the online community Is that Paradox is responsive to design and game balance changes as free updates when the meta has a strong case.

67

I just realized that I had bought CKII on Steam. Im ready to take the dive. :beers:

68

Definitely not. I rounded out the DLC on a Humble Bundle sale where I was able to snag everything I was missing for a much more reasonable price (and was able to give away several codes to friends for the ones I already had).

But I have a friend who has bought each Stellaris and CK2 expansion as it comes out. For him, it’s almost more like a subscription service. He’s willing to pay his ‘membership fee’ every few months for the updates and content.

Put in that context, it seems more reasonable. Certainly no less mad than MMO players who pay subscriptions. It’s when you’re thinking about getting into the game and see Paradox wants you to pay 300 bucks for the ‘full game’ that you get that ‘the abyss is staring back’ feeling. Or when, like me, you think that you might like to round out your expansions and Steam tells you that it’s going to be 150 dollars to pick up everything you’re missing.

69

Isn’t the base version of CK2 free still?

70

I’m having a lot of fun with the “build your own heresy” feature. There’s a lot of interesting combos you can make.

It is. And it’s in a great state, with years of free updates and bug fixes included. For more value, you can get mods like HIP and CK2+, which are free as well.

The thing about Paradox’s implicit subscription model is that it’s entirely optional. You can buy the base game and you will get (for free) all the bug fixes and updates that come with (and are paid for by) the DLCs. You just won’t get the extra features of the DLCs. But if there’s some extra feature you want, you can buy just that DLC, which regularly go on sale once they’re no longer the most recent.

I’ve certainly got my value out of the game, with several thousand hours of play time.

71

You’re preaching to the choir, I have just under 800 hrs logged on Steam. I thought I’d just mention it to anyone on the fence about trying the older version to get their feet wet.

72

So last night I managed to found the Persian Empire! It was quite exciting :slight_smile: Zoroastrian, so lots of enemies. Now I just need to decide if I want to push into Greece, Egypt, or India first…

73

I thought I was in the succession game thread and was VERY confused by this post. :stuck_out_tongue:

74

haha, it would be impressive indeed if I managed to found the Persian Empire in Alboino’s lifetime! Funnily enough, I didn’t look that far East in the screenshots I’ve been taking, but now that you mention it, someone DID found the Persian Empire in the succession game:

I guess if I really cheesed it I might be able to inherit it from him or press a series of truce breaking holy wars or something… :stuck_out_tongue:

75

Guys i haven’t read the whole thread but is there a better “endgame” then CK2?

And by that i mean some sort of bit at the end of the game that shows highlights and greatest acheivments? Maybe a bit on each ruler? Seems like something like that was promised for CKII but never materialized.

76

Bumping for the bugfix patch this week. They fixed a lot of bugs, rebalanced some things. The Vikings aren’t nearly certain to take over the British Isles in the early start, for example.

I started a new game for the patch. I started as Wessex, but granted a spare county to a lowborn and switched play to that character. Wessex died and his brother Alfred (called the Great in our timeline). He was married to a Frankish princess, I forget which one. At some point, she wanted to seduce me. Who am I to deny a princess, even if she’s my liege’s wife? We became lovers.

Several years passed, Alfred had two daughters, but when his wife (my lover) became pregnant the third time, the gig was up. Apparently he was away at war (helping her brother) and was suspicious about the timing. She was jailed and I was branded a criminal. I weaseled my way to an official pardon, with some cash and promises.

The princess had her third daughter in jail, very blonde and almost certainly mine. (The genetics in the game are good enough that you can make a good guess who the father is by looking at the characters involved.) Yet Alfred accepted her as his own legitimate issue. I’m not sure why, maybe he still had a soft spot for his princess, since she was soon released from jail.

Fast-forward a few more years and Alfred died in battle (his Frankish brother in law was always at war). Wessex was split three ways among his three daughters. Guess who became my new liege? Yes, my own unacknowledged daughter, at the tender age of six! Fun times…

It turns out, you can get parentage hints through the marriage interface. I suggested betrothing one of my legitimate sons to our liege and the game warned we risked inbreeding. Legally, they could marry, but I wasn’t going to risk the marriage on one of my two sons with his half-sister. (Which was a good call, since his older brother turned out to be a serial killer, but that’s another story…)

By the way, the African pagans are a lot of fun to play, much improved over CK2.