You have to be willing to make your own fun also, you can make the game pretty boring if you play it safe.
Well,forgot many a thing about the game, so I have a question about succession (it won’t surprise anybody, I guess).
Lacking a child (no the case at the moment, but I could change the law easily now, and I should plan for the future), do other relatives (brothers, sisters, uncles, cousin, whatever…) are in line in all succession systems, in particular in gavelkin?
Specific example : I have many sons, but my heir has only two daughters. If I pick an agnatic succession (under gavelkin) and no males are born to my son, will his brothers become his heirs (since his daughters will then be barred from succession)?
Also, I noticed a new succession law probably added by some patch or DLC : ultimosuccession, where the youngest child inherit. I see the point from a game point of view, but is there any historical example of such an inheritance law?
Playing as a Republic, I’m confused as to where all the ongoing costs come from. In a “normal” game, you have few, if any, expenses in peacetime. As a republic it seemed quite normal to blow half my income on expenses I could never identify. Is this the price for all my male family members, or is there a fee for having a trade post, or a trade post in some specific circumstance?
I’m not a fan of gavelkind succession, as you can never tell who is going to inherit what. With absolute agnatic primogeniture, if a noble dies without legitimate issue, the title passes to his oldest surviving brother. If he has no brothers, then it goes to an uncle, etc. I think it’s the same with gavelkind, but I’m not sure how that whole “subdivision of the realm” is handled. I think if you hover the mouse pointer over your heir, it will give you the 2nd and 3rd in the line of succession.
Ultimogeniture was sorta-kinda practiced by the Mongols, where older sons would go off conquering more lands of their while the youngest would stay home to manage the family estate. Most famously, Genghis Khan passed the Mongol homeland to his fourth and youngest son Tolui, though the title of Great Khan passed to his third son Ogedei
Each male family member receives a stipend, so it doesn’t pay to have too many sons. On the other hand, they also increase the number of trade posts you’re able to control.
Ah. So far I’m having a hard time figuring which is the better bet; low males and low expense of high upkeep and high expense.
I did decide that lots of expensive brides is rather pointless. For most of the family, I introduce debutantes, or find a decent low-born wife.
If you know other Paradox games, it the funniest, due to the variety of events, options and situations. If you don’t know them, then I can’t answer, because I’ve no clue about your definition of fun. For instance, I find tedious The Sims or FPS, while millions find them super fun.
Remembering my games last year, I can’t remember any bug, in fact, except one (and I’m not 100% sure it was a bug). When the heir is someone remote (say, a cousin) the game didn’t seem to follow correctly the “male primogeniture” rule. I would say it’s bug-free.
About micromanagement, I wasn’t sure what to answer yesterday. After sleeping over it (thanks for ruining my nights and vacations, guys), I don’t think it requires a lot of it. I’m a micro-manager at heart. I think I spent yesterday 70% of my time searching for the perfect marriage matches, 20% searching for the perfect tutor for children and 10% actually playing. But that isn’t needed. The game provides you with a list of matches for your close relatives, it automatically assigns a tutor to children needing one, etc…
For instance, there’s much less micro-management than in Civilization, where you have to go through every single city which becomes tedious when your country is large. Here even if yours is (and it can’t be that large, the game design makes sure you have to handle part of your domain to vassals), there aren’t that many actions to take. Money is scarce, so you have to decide where to make an improvement. You can’t afford that many armies, so you can’t micromanage much there, either. I think most of the game, if not played by a micro-manager like me, is about decision making : What De Jure title should I aim for? Should I try to have this inconvenient guy (often, replace “guy” by “wife”) murdered/jailed/decapitated? Should I embark on a crusade? Whom should my heir marry?
Well…I’m not sure it’s really an accurate example of actual ultimogeniture. And besides, I can pick it even though I’m in the HRE. It’s pretty weird that they would allow that when even something like strict equality between male and female heirs is only allowed if you’re Basque.
Although when I think of it, the seniority system doesn’t have much historical basis in middle-age Europe either and I had no issue with it being present.
As a long-time Civ veteran, I agree that CKII is a lot less micro-managey. It’s been somewhat of an adjustment, but I’m really enjoying it.
Heads up: The Old Gods DLC is going to be released tomorrow. In line with normal Paradox practice, they’ll also release a patch for the base game:
This is a truly impressive list of changes, tweaks and bug fixes that you’ll get even if you don’t purchase the DLC. It includes the drastically revised technology system previously posted all the way down to this gem I stumbled upon:
Thank you all for your feedback! That all sounds great. I’ll pick up the game with all DLC soon, then. There goes what’s left of my weekends… 
I can’t wait! I’m been desperately wanting to play a longer campaign, and this is a great way to do it. Europe beware - the Vikings are coming!
Actually, come to think of it, I may go one better and build a vast Mediterranean empire, attacking the rich, soft Muslim empires and converting them to Odin-worship. 
OK. I’ve figured a partial answer to my question about gavelkind.
In case of Agnatic-Cognatic succession, it goes this way :
1)1st son
2)1st son’s sons
3)2nd son then his sons, third son then his sons, etc…
Lacking sons, it thus continue :
4)1st daughter’s sons
5)2nd daughter’s sons, third daughter’s sons, etc…
Lacking any male direct descendant, it passes to females :
6)First daughter then her daughters
7)Second daughter then her daughters, third daughter then her daughters, etc…
Lacking direct descendant it goes to brothers :
8)Eldest brother then his sons
After that, I don’t know. For instance, I don’t know if the daughter of the eldest brother inherit before or after the second brother, or the son of the first sister, etc…
Basically, heirs are first any male direct descendant, then any female direct descendant, then siblings.
Note : with the gavelkind and the agnatic system, not only women can’t inherit, but they can’t pass the inheritance, either. So, the sons of your daughters aren’t in line and lacking a son of your own, your title will go to your brother.
As I said, I’m not sure I’ll like the revised technology. Also, I noticed that the birth rate will be significantly reduced. It bothers me quite a bit. It’s already quite low for “non-important” court members. For instance, your Chancellor with tremendous stats often won’t have any child as it is, nor will your titleless brother.
The game’s been patched and I understand the DLC will be released at 1 PM EDT today. In the meantime, the EXTREME release trailer for The Old Gods is pretty amusing:
[You may want to turn down your sound.]
For my first try at The Old Gods, I chose to play as a Zoroastrian and recreate the lost glory of the Persian Empire. One of the first things I did was to marry my half-sister; my vassals seemed to like that.
This is on sale on Steam for the next 30-ish hours, in case anyone missed previous sales and was interested. I decided I would get it next time I went on sale only a day or two ago, too.
Zoroastrian is fun. It’s tough, but if you can take over the nearby Zoroastrian kingdom (which is not difficult if you use some cunning), you get a sizable empire. The nasty part is that Persia is on your doorstep and they can field huge armies… and they’re exactly where you want to be.
Two toher questions:
How do you start a Prepared Invasion as Norse/Tengri? And does anyone have a solid Norse-culture One Province Minor to start as?
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.
That sounds completely awesome.
A single king can rule for an awfully long time if they have decent stats - into his 60s and upwards, but of course the longer a king lives the older his heir is going to be when he inherits (unless succession laws change to something other than oldest son).
Anyway, I’m totally up for it. I haven’t actually managed to play any game for more than three generations of ruler yet, but I’m getting steadily better at this.
Ooh, succession game, I’m down with that.
Reign lengths can be extremely variable in this game. One king can reign for decades while his successor could be on the throne for a few short years. Consider how long the current Queen Elizabeth II has been around while her son is getting on in years and probably won’t be around for much longer when he finally succeeds her.