I don’t pay much attention to whom I marry off courts members, and it never came back to bite me on the ass, AFAIK. The exception being male members of my dynasty whom I always try to marry with someone with some potential (say, the daughter of someone vaguely important. Even if you don’t follow them closely later as I do (in particular by providing spouses if they need one so that they can expand the dynasty), they can randomly end up with some title somewhere, and this give you points. I’ve had very remote cousins ending up as kings on their own.
Something I often do is marrying off unneeded people with good stats to members of the court of vassals, in particular vassal cities. Especially people with good stewardship, since the mayor will be picked first amongst the male members of the city’s court. Don’t marry off someone with a different religion/culture in one of your cities, in order to avoid having to deal with Russian Orthodox mayors who will dislike you for being Irish Catholic, and won’t let you raise their children, either, resulting in a string of mayors who hate you.
I pay attention to whom I marry them in, obviously, always picking potential spouses with very high stats for obvious reasons. It’s better to pick people from the same culture again for obvious reasons (malus preventing you from picking them as, say, bishops, can’t be given children to raise because they would turn them into foreigners…). Note that if they receive a title the wife/matrilineal husband of your courtier will leave with spouse and children. Not a big problem, but it’s better to expect it if your courtier married a princess or something.
Note that according to experienced players, the birth rate falls when your court is too crowded. And the likelihood of disease goes up. So, “unload” whoever you don’t need or expect to need by marrying them off, using matrilineal marriage if they’re male so that the birth rate of actually important people will stay high. I usually try to stay at 30 courtiers or less, but I’ve had courts with more than 80 of them. Unload females in particular since when they reach 40, they become useless except as tutors and you’re stuck with them until they die of old age.
Also, remember that if you’re marrying off close relative, they keep claims on your domain. So, if you don’t marry them for an alliance but just for prestige points, make sure their spouse is living very far away. For instance, if you’re playing in France, marry your daughter to some prince of the Rurik dynasty, who will give plenty of prestige but will never try to enforce the claim.
I just snagged this on Steam, and I haven’t played it yet, but how long does a single king’s reign last in this game, anyway? Would it be fun to have a game where we pass the savegame around our players here, each player taking the role of a single king and passing the save on when that king dies? We used to do that with Medieval II Total War, and it was a lot of fun.
FTR for new players, the four reasons to marry someone :
-For reproduction : you want to marry someone with the highest stats possible, in order to “breed” a strong dynasty
-For prestige : you want to marry someone very important from a famous dynasty to gain more prestige than you’d accumulate in a lifetime if you’re a lowly count/duke (or not to lose prestige if you’re powerful)
-For alliance : you want to marry someone from a neighboring relatively powerful family so that they’ll help you in war
-For inheritance/claims : you want to marry someone who is likely to inherit a title (maybe with the help of your spymaster) or have a claim that you intend to enforce.
Unfortunately, those goals are generally mutually exclusive. None is better than the others in itself.
In case you didn’t notice it, you’re not limited to the potential spouses listed when you click on the “rings” icon. You can browse the full character list in search of a hidden gem and propose a marriage via the diplomacy screen. But of course, this is time consuming.
I did but didn’t try to play as a viking or pagan dynasty, which is the point. However, I bought it because while reading about The Old Gods, I mistakenly understood that it allowed you to begin the game as a landless character ( a viking warband chief, for instance) or as a mercenary leader. It is not the case.
Even if you’re not particularly interested in playing as a pagan, one reason to pick up The Old Gods is to push the start date back to 867. It’s an interesting start: the Christian lands in Hispania are still united as Asturias, there’s no France, no England, and most notably no Holy Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire is quite a bit stronger and you probably have a good shot at reuniting the true Roman Empire.
The game lasts about 400 years or so. A single king’s reign can be anything from 60 years or so to 6 seconds. I just had a game where I was king of Poland, took over another duchy close to me, got overthrown and put in jail, schemed to get out and overthrow the one that overthrew me, then became king again. Now I’m trying to stabilize and build before going after something close by, because I think getting kicked off screwed my succession rules to gavelkind, and I think that’s something I REALLY don’t want, but I’m not sure how to fix it. My king is 68 years old right now, with 3085 prestige and 1085 piety.
The deal is that whoever wrote what we read was mistaken. There are landless viking leaders, but you can’t play one. At least not with the vanilla game. But I guess that since the concept is implemented some mod will give yous the opportunity to do so in the future.
Most notably, indeed. But I started a new game (playing a Dutch count), it’s only 879 and East Francia already took over Italy, the South of Lotharingia and all of West Francia except Paris that is an isolated island owned by the king of Aquitaine in a Germanic sea. I don’t know how it will evolve, nor if it’s going to be typical or atypical, but for now, it’s at least as bad as the HRE after only 12 years.
Ho!..and viking raids are a major pain in the ass if you live anywhere near the North Sea.
And to give the contrary example, the first ruler I played in my current game was quickly drafted to fight against Bavaria or something, was wounded, and subsequently died. In game time, he ruled for less than two years, in real time almost half an hour because since I was beginning the game I was checking everything, marrying people, etc…Otherwise it would have been closer to 5 minutes. Fortunately he had sons.
I keep getting the “Demesne Too Big” thing. It’s only at 4/3, and the way I see it having direct control over my counties is worth the -10 opinion hit, which can be easily made up with [del]bribes[/del] gifts, and if my vassals don’t like it, they can take it up with the axeman.
…right?
OTOH, they’re complaining about their levies being too high, but they won’t vote to lower them. WTF?!
Up to a point. An extra county ( or duchy if you’re a king, which otherwise can only hold a max of two before taking diplomatic penalties ) is not a big deal and can be useful especially if you’re planning ahead to set up a son. However going over your demesne limit not only decreases income via a financial penalty ( for every one over the limit and in every demesne ) and cause diplomatic penalties of -10 per for every vassal, but it also starts triggering unhappy events like thieves guilds, peasant revolts and smuggler rings in individual provinces. The more over the limit you are the more these events start popping up, including personally targeted ones that can stress and fuck over your overburdened ruler ( and very occasionally improve him, if he successfully rises to the challenge ).
So the equivalent of a barony or two extra? Can sometimes be worth the hassle. Several baronies extra? Usually not worth it, except perhaps short term in unusual conditions ( you are going to hand them over to someone very soon and are trying to hold on until then ).
By the way, regarding the “domaine too big” issue, IMO stewardship is the most useful char. Not only can you rule a larger demesne, but also you get more money from each fief, which means more everything ultimately.
Through some good fortune and shrewd planning I now find myself with a sizable, powerful army with which I could probably quite easily sweep all the way across Ireland very quickly. But is that wise? Is that just going to piss everybody off and make them join together against me?
That said, I’m finding warfare to be pretty dull. Like I said before I know that’s not what this game is about (and I like that about it), but I could definitely use a little more action than just moving my armies into the opposing county and waiting.
There’s no need to fight for all of Ireland. Once you’ve proclaimed yourself King, you can just go to the still-independent counts and ask them if you want to be your vassal. They’ll probably agree if you haven’t shown yourself to be too much of a bloodthirsty warmonger. And they’ll probably like you more than if you had outright conquered them. Plus there’s no need to wait around for a casus belli.
You want to be fairly aggressive. In the first century or so of the game, the small independent duchies and counties tend to get gobbled up. If you leave independent counties in Ireland, Scotland and England will start trying to grab them. You should try to create the Kingdom of Ireland as quickly as possible and start trying to grab the independent holdings in Wales and Scotland before the King of England or Scotland starts doing it. Also, once you control enough of the Irish counties and create the Kingdom of Ireland you should be able to vassalize the remaining independent counties without a fight.
I still need one more county before I can create the Kingdom title (I control 46% of Ireland), and I’m currently stuck on creating a claim somewhere. I don’t have anyone I can marry off, but my diplomat is very good, he’s come through every time before.
Incidentally, over in the other thread, we’re organizing a succession game of CKII, where one player runs a character then, when he dies, passes the savegame on to the next player who will play their successor. Hop on over if you want to join in. We’re currently deciding where we want to start.