Crusader Kings 2 was just released yesterday. Already it is much, much better than CK1. The plot/ambition system is really fun and adds tons of flavor. First game TR.

For my first game I wanted to be independent and small so I could really get into the little details. Started in 1066. I decided to be the king of Croatia. When I met my king I was able to click on a little button that pulled up his wikipedia page, Kresimir IV of Croatia, aka Kresimir the Great! Pressure!

To start I have a 44 year old king with a 23 year old wife and a 2 year old son. The king has good stats and good advisors. I have 1 brother who has a son (my nephew) that is a count of mine. And one other count and a duke that's a distant cousin. My brother's family is going to be quite the problem.

I spend my first few minutes looking through the techs i can research and the missions I can send advisors on when I get a message from the Emperor of Byazantium. He is changing his crown authority to absolute and is inviting me to vote on it. He says he considers me an elector even if I'm not officially a vassal...yet. Woah! I ignore his message and do not vote either way.

The bishops in the game are pretty cool. If they like you more than the pope they send tax money to you every month; if they like the pope more the money goes to him. As bishops are members of the Church and vassals they can be hard to keep happy. They get angry when you do impious things and when you do things that increase your power relative to the other nobles. Needing to keep the bishops happy gives you a reason to act like a real feudal ruler would. It's fun.

My wife is pregnant! This is good, I need another heir, although with gavelkind succession law too many is a negative. What's this? My spymaster has uncovered a plot! My brother is plotting to kill me! My only brother, how could he? I should throw him in the dungeon! I should take his head! No, what I'll do is dispatch my spymaster to my nephew's county and find out who else is in on this treasonous plot. I am informed that there is a rumor that my nephew is plotting to kill my only son and heir, although there is no proof of this rumor.

My wife has a son! I let my spymaster dig for about a year into the plot; hopefully he can discover the co-conspirators. I set about to fortifying my towns. Suddenly, word reaches me that my spymaster has been found murdered! He must have been discovered! This is getting bad. Shaken, I write a letter to my brother demanding that he end his plot. Yes, I know all about it. He responds by confessing and praising my wisdom and mercy. He swears he will drop the plot and never conspire against me again. I am willing to forgive, but never shall I forget. I dispatch my new spymaster to my nephew's county just to be sure. Our relations benefit from a big jump as he now gives me a "+50 merciful".

I've had my chancellor trying to manufacture a claim in neighboring Serbia but with no success. Suddenly, a rebellion breaks out there and sacks the capitol, sending the duke fleeing to another of his counties. The barbaric rebels even kill my chancellor. I offer this duke vassalization, eager help crush this lowborn scum but the duke declines and puts the rebellion down himself.

Unbelievably, my spymaster has proof of another plot. My nephew's wife is plotting to kill my son probably in hopes of her son rising to my throne! Attempting to kill your liege is intolerable enough, but conspiring to kill a seven year old boy? What evil is this?! I arrest her immediately. After a few months in the dungeon she falls quite ill in her cold, dark cell. I don't want her to die so I transfer her to house arrest. After holding her for 18 months I release her, all my demense marvels at how merciful I am.

I am now incredibly popular. The only elective laws available to me are gavelkind (bad) and elective (really bad) due to my low crown authority. This is a good time to increase my crown authority from min to low. Predictably, this greatly angers my vassals. I was not, however, prepared for the extent of the anger. One of my dukes sends me a letter demanding that I set my crown authority back to min. He informs me that if I refuse he will use his armies to make me comply and he will not be alone. I respond that I will not be blackmailed and will not comply with his demands. My two dukes call up their levies and prepare to force me to accept their demands. Incredibly, my nephew declares for me, perhaps feeling that he owes me for returning his bride to him. His troops are badly needed and help me outnumber the traitors, if only so. The civil war is on.

The revolting dukes send one detactment to cut attack my province connecting me to my nephew. The royalists are badly outnumbered but make a good showing before withdrawing from the county, leaving the castle garrison to resist the seige. The main armies, however, are what will decide the conflict. The duke who is leading the revolt attacks me, bravely leading this troops from the center. The two armies crash together and, the revolting duke falls in battle! His army quickly melts away and the rebellion is over! Furthermore, he died without an heir, leaving me to inherit his 3 county dutchy.

I give the dutchy to my 12 year old heir. It is time to build. I set about founding a new town. Then, suddenly, my king dies in his sleep. I am now 12 years old and inheriting a kingdom fresh off a civil war. Due to gavelkind inheritance, my younger brother inherits one of my father's dutchies. His court and mine suffer poor relations due to his ambitions. Who knows what the future will hold!

In conclusion, I obtained 0 claims, fought 0 foreign wars, and had a blast.

Sounds so cool, I'll have the game in a few hours...

ahh sounds sick.....

It's great, some ppl playing it in eu3 thread

I'm currently playing my second CK2 game. I'll put up a AAR of it later.

My 1st game:

Never having played CK1 I figured I'd start somewhere that looked easy. I figured this game would be the opposite of Eu3, where it is easier to start with the biggest countries. So after looking around I decided to play as the Duchy of Castille. You start with 2 provinces yourself and have two vassals, each with 1 province. So right off the bat I married one of my cousins and got to work. Early on it was easy going. Navarra split in half so I gobbled up one of those provinces. I was bordered by a 1 province muslim country so I conquered that as well.

All the Christian kingdoms in Iberia are the same dynasty so around this time the Galicia leader died leaving her young daughter in control. I declared war and set up my heir as the new Duke. So when I died he would take over my territories as well as the Duchy of Galicia. In the meantime I decided to take over the rest of Navarra.

Since this was a learning game and I had about 900 gold I decided to try my hand at assassinating. And by try my hand I mean killing everyone. Duke of Leon? Aragon? Random relatives? I'd kill a Duke, then kill his heir, then kill the heir of the heir. Suddenly I get a message saying I have inherited a bunch of Duchies/Counties/etc. lol relatives.

I now own the Northwestern portion of the Iberian peninsula. Time to turn my attention to my muslim neighbors. They Duchy of Leon was one of the areas I inherited in my killing spree. Previous to my inheritence they had already conquered a large muslim nation. I conquer a few more muslim provinces and then my King decides to die.

My muslim subjects decide to be dicks and rebel. As do some surviving relatives. After about 10 years of war and some mercenary help I have suppressed all rebellions and start working on my vassals relationships. Eventually my King dies and the process starts all over again. When my new King later dies, same cycle. I go through about 80 years not accomplishing anything and decide that is enough for my first game.

One thing I noticed is that it appears France is broken. They always rush and grab territory in the Iberian peninsula. In this game they had about 4 Iberian provinces. In my second game they have about 6 plus all of Sardinia.

Also after doing a bit of looking on the forums it appears the easiest places for noobs to start are one of the Irish counties or the Kingdom of Poland.

Got it last night, managed to squeeze through the tutorials between valentines day duties. Still feel like I know nothing about the game, having not played CK1, but looking forward to jumping in to a game this evening.

don't you have to have sex on birthdays and christmas too?

One thing that sucks is that there is no history button like in Eu3. Makes making a AAR much harder since you have to remember everything or take screenshots of everything. It be great is there was a button I could click and see the history of my dynasty.

Still got to understand marriages. Started a game as a 2 province irish noob and married the sister of the HRE right of the bat. Seems way too easy to me, there must be something behind it.

gotta try a thing...

marry sister of HRE
have heir
kill current ruler of franconia
???
inherit and profit?

I'm finding it incredibly difficult to work out whats going on and what will happen in the future. For instance, first game started as Duke of Leon. I got married, 6 months later my cousin poisons me and my brother inherits.

So i'm now playing as my brother who happened to be the Duke of Castille. I attempt to imprison my murderous cousin, but fail. She rebells but i put her down and now own her county.

So my holdings and levies have doubled in 4 years and i have no idea how it all happened really. I seem to suck majorly at the fighting and it just seems to be a game of numbers. Any tips would be appreciated (learnt a couple of things from jaytee's write up). Presumably the forthcoming expansions and patches will make it 5x better like every other paradox game

I did something similair in my current game.

I started as Count of Monferrato (lol 1 county). You start out with a male heir. I married him to the sister of the HRE (who is his heir). I then assassinated the HRE. My heir's wife then became Duchess of Franconia. Since as a Count with 1 province you have nothing to do I bascially just put it on speed 5 until I died. So now my wife is Duchess of Franconia and I am Count of Monferrato. She owned 5 provinces to my one. I forged claims on Genoa and took it over. Then revoked my vassals landed title on the City of Genoa and took it for myself (straight cash homey). Eventually I died and my heir inherited all of it.

I just don't get one thing, that was pretty straightforward in segoku. Why would i give ladn titles to people when I still have a ton of space in my max provinces stats. What are the pros?

Betrothed my heir to a 12 year-old lesbian. #winning

Sexual orientation was apparently optional back then. One of my Kings was gay but still managed to have 6 kids. Another one was straight until he went to a jousting tournament and then decided he was gay.

There is no reason. Maybe if you only have one slot left and the county you just took over was ****ty. Max provinces are kind of optional anyway, it just effects how your vassals feel about you. I've had Kings with 11/11 demesnes die and they the heir has 11/6 and I just ignored it for 15 years until he grew up and was 11/10 then I just gave one away.

well, i meant cooking dinner and stuff. the rest of it isnt a duty, but enjoyable nonetheless.

But I cannot figure out what the hell is going on in this game. Will need to do some more reading and bumbling through to get a good idea of where to start.

I know in CK1 you got a better return per county if you had less counties than your stewardship allowed. So you might make a little less but your demense as a whole makes more and is stronger. For me, I like managing all the vassals as that's what this game is really all about; delving into feudalism, politics, family, etc. not turning your country into the death star (which was laughably easy in CK1. You could pretty easily conquer the world in 3 generations)

mother****er

I upgraded from 1.00 to 1.02 and now my saves don't work. I was really happy with where I was in my latest game too

EDIT: Started a new game as the Duke of Apulia. My parents liked to ****, I have 15 siblings.

EDIT 2: I start with 5 children too, 2 of them bastards.

In a way, I suppose it's better for my queen to being having mistresses than affairs with guys, as at least I know she's not going to get pregnant.

lololol my dude is now know as "the chaste"...

...

...

he has 6 children...

Kingdom of Poland is definately noob friendly, playing it right now. You have a large country to pull levies from, easy targets in the pagans to the north and all your vassals love you. Only negative is gavelkind succession but that can be worked around.

First thing I did was assassinate my brother because **** him I want his lands. Then I married the Duchess of Toscona and my heir will inherit not only the Kingdom of Poland but also a large part of Italy. Your capital county has two castles in it so if you have your Steward collect taxes there and build up both castles money making upgrades you can get a fairly decent income coming in. It's only 1090 in my game and my monthly income is already +17.

By now my heir is just waiting to inherit but I also have 2 younger brothers and since this is gavelkind succession when I die my titles will get split between my sons. No problem. I conquered a two county pagan nation and gave each of my sons the bishoprics. Giving them bishoprics takes them out of the succession line. So my heir will inherit all my Polish titles. The Toscona titles will still be split between them but that is fine. If my heir inherited all those too his desmesne would be too big and he would have too many duchies.

Bascially right now I am just waiting around upgrading the castles in my capital. I could expand since I can raise almost 6k troops already without hiring mercenaries but I want to see how the succession will go and see what my vassals opinion of my heir will be. All my vassals love me (seriously 20 vassals all with 85+ opinion of me) but I don't want to expand a bunch and then have all my vassals revolt when my heir takes the throne.

Pretty awesome game, I played the **** out of the demo and have been playing a lot since Tues.

People want titles too, and Vassals always want more titles, including the Duke titles above their owned counties. When you get to King level you're only allowed 2 duchies to your own name, holding more gives -10 relations to all vassals, per extra duchy. So you'll want to give away all but the 2-3 best duchies to minimize that. Then, Dukes want to control all the land in their duchy, so you'll want to give away all the counties in those duchies to them (or make count vassals and give them the counts, I do this to lower the Dukes' power in case future generations get uppity). These are big penalties, like -20 for a count wanting the Duchy and I think -25 for Dukes wanting control of provs, so defo worth eliminating them in the long run.

Like right now I have a game which started as the Count of Pecs in Hungary. I worked my way up to become Duke of Pecs, then rampaged against the Muslims in Siciliy to add it, Capua and Salerno to my uber-dukeness. Also slowly expanded into neighbouring Croatia to eventually pick up the Duke of Slavonia. Married my oldest son to another Hungarian Duchess so that would eventually get inherited too. When it did, the inheriting grandson also got a claim on the King of Hungary from his mom the duchess, so obv I pressed that. Had 6 Ducal titles by that point and had to give them away to keep people happy, otherwise I'd be facing never ending revolts and plots. There were a couple counts I had to revoke in Sicily and Pecs to get those lands back, but everything else has been given away to make & keep vassals happy. I took a 3rd one back from one determined revolter once everyone else was happy; going to give it to my heir so he can earn more prestige before taking the throne.

No reason to give stuff away when you're at the Duke level except to keep your demense within the limits - the penalty for going over is p bad.

so tilting... formed a full kingdom of ireland pre patch, and can't seem to do it again now. I always fail........

edit: i had them monies, them bitches and them happy vassals It was the first generation too