Playing as the King of Ireland and Scotland. My wife is the Queen of France. (Which means that technically I’m the king, but my wife is the real leader, so I don’t actually personally control France.)
Our son is the heir to the Kingdom of France.
Suddenly, with no warning, I get a message that my wife has returned to my kingdom. She is no longer Queen of France, nor am I King of France. Our son has now succeeded to the throne of France. But my wife, the previous title holder, is not dead. So what happened there?
LOUNE, you typically can’t raise levies from territories that were either recently conquered or have new leadership. Or if their vassals have a negative opinion of you. (Or in the case of bishops, if they like the Pope more than they like you, if you are Catholic.) So maybe one of those things was going on?
Btw, I’ve been tinkering with the army reorganization screen and if you can get a handle on what you’re doing, it can really improve battle outcomes. Like, a lot.
My son and heir went off to join the Varangian Guard. I had my misgivings, but allowed him to do so since it would give him boost in prestige. Now he’s come back, blinded and castrated. What will become of the Kingdom of Norway now?
So, its like they place a limit on the number of troops you can pull up, based on desmene size, then. Sure, you can have 51 holdings in your desmene, but everyone will hate you for it. Sure, you can give the Kingdom of Jerusalem to your heir, and then have zero control over it and the other various duchies as well. Instead of being able to call up 24,000 soldiers on a whim, now I have to decide on which half of the kingdom I can call up soldiers. If there’s a war on one side (which there will be, and has been), I have to hope my vassal will flood the afflicted area with troops. If there’s a war on the other side (which there will be and has been), I have to push everything I have over there.
Man. This king business sucks, aside from the wenches.
Does anybody know if there’s an updated manual available, including all the rules concerning the DLCs (muslims, republics, retinues, vikings…) and the various changes brought by the various updates?
Thanks. I’ll check it when I’ll have registered my game.
Still…For some reason, Paradox never could provide helpful manuals. You always have to guess your way around the game, or rely on experienced players. I could forgive them for this issue when they published their first game a dozen years ago, but now, they’re a large company and could presumably afford to have someone write and update comprehensive manuals.
So, I started yet another try in Poland, and I’ve been growing very aggressively, right out of the starting blocks. I’ve managed to take enough of Lithuania (11/21) most recently, and after each duchy I take over, it says I’m going to lose that title when I die. The way to avoid that, I think, is to hand it off to one of my kids, although not my direct heir, which annoys me greatly, but I think I have to do, due to desmene size (right?). So, I’ve been passing duchies out on the left hand side whenever I get them to kids. Now, if I create the Kingdom of Lithuania, I get the popup that says I’m going to lose it if I die, and to give it to my last-born. If I create the Kingdom and hand it over, it spawns off a whole new kingdom that isn’t necessarily even my vassal? I’m unclear as to why this happens, how I can stay around it, and what I’m doing wrong. I think that what I’m doing, with giving out the duchies, is setting the stage for a large scale civil war, with all the kids having direct, strong lines to the Kingdom of Poland, but aside from having a desmene of about fifty, I don’t know how to get around it. If I keep a desmene of 50, I still end up in full-blown civil war, and think I’ll be getting there anyways.
Side note: there’s lots of turmoil directly to the West, with the Holy Roman Empire. The Pope will let me invade them to start a war for the control of the Empire. I’m intrigued, although I think I’d be SEVERELY outgunned.
A king cannot be the vassal of another king, so if you have two kingdom titles and give one of the kingdoms to someone else, they will become independent. If you want both kingdoms to remain in your realm, you must have an even higher title, i.e., emperor. The 1.10 patch introduced a whole slew of new empire titles; I think there’s one for Poland-Lithuania.
Note that your vassals will grow restive if you hold more than two duke titles, but don’t mind if you have any number of kingdom titles. Of course, you have to contend with multiple kingdom succession laws, so maybe that balances out.
The most recent 1.101 patch must have introduced some changes to the AI. I’ve noticed that it will act more opportunistically. If I send my army off to fight some war, a vassal might rebel or another country will invade. It’s done that before, but not to the extent it seems to do now.
So after having wild success with both Invasions (which netted me all of England, plus Brittany) and Crusades (which got me the whole Kingdom of Andalusia), I’m hankering to do more of those! I’m not able to do that right now, and I have some game mechanics questions as to why.
First, to ask the Pope for an invasion, I need either a claim on the primary title or to have fewer provinces than my intended target. I don’t want to invade the HRE, so in order to invade Castille, I need a claim on their primary title, the Kingdom of Castille. How do I get that? I suppose I could try to marry a Castilian princess, but it’ll be forty years down the line before my grandson takes the throne and I don’t want to wait that long. Can my Chancellor fabricate a claim on a primary title if he’s in the right county? He’s got a skill of about twenty.
Second, is there any way to ask the Pope for a Crusade? I almost don’t care where; the last one got me the Crusader trait and half of Hispania, and neither of the two big Mediterranean Muslim powers can really match me.
Yes, it’s possible. Not guarranteed and may take awhile. Keep a lot of money banked so you can afford it if the event pops. Place your spymaster on the capital and you have a chance to get the county, ducal, or kingdom level title - but keep in mind that the kingdom-level title grab is very unlikely. However, taking a Duchy could split the entire kingdom and instantly make you the power there; plus with Hispania you’ll probably be able to become Emperor of Hispania.
Yes. Assuming he likes you enough and hasn’t held a crusade in a while, you may be able to request one. He usually won’t target anywhere except the Middle East, however.
I won’t be able to form the Empire of Hispania; I’ve got Irish culture. That said, Aragon and Castile are doing a great job splitting the place up by themselves, so I might be able to pick the whole place off anyway.
How do you request a Crusade? I see the three blank circle in the Pope’s window-- do those fill up with potential targets when it’s been long enough?
Never saw the Crusade request, but I grabbed Sicily when the Pope offed it up as a target.
Bringing up another question: How on earth do I grant titles to my eldest son to avoid losing them all when I die? I can only grant him the counties that are part of my demesne in England and Ireland, and not even all of those; no Kingdoms, no Duchies, not even the counties that are part of my demesne in Andalusia. I’m the Emperor, the King of Andalusia, the Duke of Seville, and the Count of Seville, and I can’t give any of those titles to my son to keep them safe from being split up among the other sons. I can’t grant him any of the newly-acquired lands in Sicily, either. They just don’t show up when I hit “grant landed title”, even after I click the “include lower titles” box. What’s going on? Everyone I’ve seen online suggests giving lots of titles to the eldest son to mitigate Gavelkind succession, but the game won’t let me do it!
I think they’re confused, as Gavelkind generally prevents that. You may be able to give titles to the eldest son, but they do have limits. First, you can only give a higher-rank title if you have a lower-rank title contained within it (down to the Barony). So you can give your kid a Count, and then possibly a Duchy that contains that count, then a Kingdom which contains the Duchy, etc. However, you cannot generally hand out any primary titles (usually major kingdom and ducal titles) you hold at all under Gavelkind.
I don’t understand all the rules myself, however.
On a second note, I’m beginning to dislike the culture rules, and especially how they interact with Empires. I decided to challenge myself by taking the Sami tribe all the way in Old Gods. I’ve taken over nearly all of Sweden and a big chunk of Norway - but culture is completely stuck in Norse. There an event which can change it on a county-by-county basis, but it’s extremely slow to fire and I might never see it. It also has difficult requirements so that it will have to march slowly down the peninsula if it ever fires at all. To add to the sucktitude, it turns out Lapp characters can’t create the Empire for that region. I’ve put in a huge amount of work slowly defeating one Norse character, evicting them from the their turf, gaining more and more power, until I’m the strongest in the region and my loyal vassals are belligerent and numerous.
I’ve thought about manually editing either the event or my character’s culture, although it’s annoying all around. It’s really obnoxious when I did a lot of work to conquer that widely with a Defensive Pagan tribe that has a crap starting position.
Yeah, culture is a pain. I had to delay the formation of my Empire for a bit as my King had gotten Greek culture-- have to remember to give your heir a tutor of the culture you want him to have! Maybe you can solve it that way-- get a courtier of the culture you want, then use them as a tutor for your kids. Might find that you can solve this thing without editing the file.
OK, here’s another nugget of Gavelkind minutia-- if you’re an Emperor, each son will inherit one kingdom, as well as any titles you hold in that kingdom. You also can’t hand titles out to your eldest son that your younger sons expect to inherit. To solve the problem, just hand out a minor, remote kingdom to each younger son. That solves the problem of them expecting to inherit something that you intended for your heir, and it keeps them from being all powerful-- my kid is tough, I guess, but he’s just not a huge threat holding Sicily, which is still entirely Muslim and really far away.
Yeah, it may work. Tutors with Gregarious and a high Learning are more likely to cause this. It’s somewhat disappointing as I was hoping to spread Lappish culture, but can’t things rolling. Plus, I’ve already replaced nearly every vassal lord with Lapps. Granted, the county culture doesn’t matter that much.
Amusing point: Gavelkind is actually very handy for Pagans, as you have the ever-present Casus Belli to constantly conquer. While it’s annoying to hand over titles you don’t want, it’s actually easy enough to conquer and conquer more, and handout out counties to your sons is a good way to shove off less-wealthy conquests to others.
…
Also, I’ve perfected what I call the Independence Shuffle. because Pagans have the ever-present Conquest Casus belli, you can take a troublesome lord (like, say, the leader of a faction you don’t want, or demanding Independence), force him out of the kingdom via the Grant Independence option, and then conquer him and shove him out, replacing him with a new lord more to your liking. He probably has one pitiful county and will be crushed quickly. For bonus points, use the troops of other vassals you don’t like, force them to assault, and then do the same to them. And laugh as they try to fight you off with 57 assorted soldiers. The best part is that no vassals object to this. If you’re Offensive Pagan, you can also use this to satisfy your need to go to war and get plunder.
If you missed the Amazon sale, Crusader Kings II collection is on sale on Steam for today only. The base game and all the DLC (except for the latest one) for $20. You can also pick up the other Paradox grand strategy titles like Europa Universalis III and Victoria II for 75% off.