But how do you actually do this? Right now the only noblemen I can get to matrilineally marry my daughters is if they are claim less "invite noblemen to court" type.

Yeah not everyone wants to lose their dynasty to a random girl

You either need to be in a position of power or have other good reasons to make them accept. If you have no other options, marry her matrilieally to a courtier to get the dynasty going. Would you want to lose every claim you have just to marry someone?

If everything fails, use BASaints method, get the county then revoke the title and you got the same result. Do it especially if he revolts afterwards, so you can put him in jail and revoke for free. The opinion penalty only applies if he accepts the revokation without revolting.

diplomacy, anyone?

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuu

everything was perfect. My son married the heir of the duchy of brittany on hiw own, i killed the current ruler and bam, my oughter in law inherits. Now I need to wait for a little boy and everything would be perfect to inherit the douchy of brittany.

then bam - my heir get's stressed AND syphilitic together. -35% fertility or something and -3 health... fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

omg omg omg my 4 year old grandson just murdered his father, so loltastic

Started as the earl of Oriel, united Ireland, made slow inroads into Scotland & Wales by pressing ducal claims, took a while but managed to usurp/form the two kingdoms and subsequently hoovered up the remaining independent states.

England was tougher, I found someone with a claim on the throne, got him to defect to me and arranged a matrilineal marrage between him and one of my daughters. They had a son who inherited the claim to the throne of England (after I killed his dad). Took a long time, but I managed to get him his kingdom. Then I had to make him next in line to my existing kingdoms. The only workable succession method was elective, but I was working under gavelkind, so I had to change all my kingdoms' succession laws. This pissed everyone off, and no one wanted to vote for him except me! If I had died at that moment it would've been curtains, so I took drastic measures.

Revoking a bunch of dutchies enabled me to dictate the successor of each kingdom, although fighting off the annoyed nobles while waiting to die was difficult. Luckily one of them was so annoyed that they poisoned me. My heir, the king of England, inherited the kingdoms of Scotland, Ireland and Wales!

After quickly moving my capital back to Oriel I have spent the last 15 years in pathetic appeasement to my seriously pissed off vassals. My kingdom is intact and consolidating. Next up, France.

Thumbs down to my arbitrary, hunchbacked, craven, homosexual, drunkard of a grandson that just rose to the throne after his awesome father died at age 36. He actually managed to get insta-excommunicated and ruin everything.

Real men use Invasion CBs:


Ireland was formed p fast; I made it Elective and made all dukes my dynasty members by revocation & such. Invaded Scotland and took everything, again gave all duchy territories to dynasty members (don't get the duke titles w/ Invasion, but gave them each the correct lands to make them on their own). Newly acquired Scotland had the Medium authority carried over, I immediately raised it to high and switched to Primo. That only affected Scotland though, still have to keep the Irish dukes voting for my 1st son. Lots of angry vassals later, I finally got Ireland's authority and relations up enough to make it Primo in 1198.

Now in the early 1200s, slowly building piety up so I can try to invade England, and waiting for claims to be fabricated in Wales.

England's situation is p lol too. The Normans succeeded but have been slowly losing to Godwin insurrection. Now the King is a Godwin, and the mega-duchy of Bedford (basically the west half of England) is Norman. If everything lines up, I'll hopefully be able to do an Invasion when they are bogged down in a crazy civil war, and I doubt the wars will stop any time soon.

i got raped, cursed infidels did me in.

gonna try somewhere in spain next

is there some sort of beginner's guide that's easy to understand? i've never played any paradox games before this and i just feel overwhelmed

my ******ed excuse for a son decides to start a war to usurp half my fledgling spanish kingdom while my army is busy fighting off the moors. the dumb **** wins, but i'm like 'its ok ill just make him my heir and it'll reunite the kingdom when i die'.

two months later the dumb **** loses a holy war and his entire kingdom falls into the hands of some muslim or other and he comes crawling back home to daddy!

so i had him executed

100 yrs later, i still haven't reconquered the lands he frittered away

There is one on paradox forums. I suggest watching some let's plays on youtube.

Yeah I found playing in Spain you basically get to a certain size and then spend all your time just fighting to keep your own land under control.

anyone tried joining crusades? from what i can tell its pretty useless and a huge drain on money. I raised 2k levies, hired 1.5k mercenaries and got like 8k holy mercenaries and was able to hold some territory from the seljuk turks (never got them to surrender) but they just kept sending huge armies against me that eventually defeated me and I had to offer a white peace

It takes a lot of people going on crusade to be successful, going in solo with 11k troops won't do anything - they'll just get wiped out by their 2nd or 3rd wave of armies (if they even survive the first).

The thing I don't like about crusades is that you go in only for a duchy, and with everyone and their dog targeting that 1 duchy it'll be divided between tons of countries if successful, which makes it easy pickings. If the CB made it able to take territory nearby instead of just the targeted area it'd be better. Historically the Crusades resulted in a lot of small states in the Levant, around Jereusalem, Antioch etc, not just 1 place.

Notice anything odd?

Also, there are 30 thousand mongol (timurid) warriors just chilling out in one of my provinces in southern portugal. They have been there for about 80 years. they have never attacked me, they just stand there doing nothing. wtf

They must be programmed to drive west?

guess so, but they're not doing any raping or pillaging, just chilling

now my pope is not only orthodox, he is brown.

wtf @ date, 1424? date extension mod?

no, game ends in 1452

Ya the initial Mongol doomstacks don't suffer any attrition, so the AI wanders around with them. I saw them in my Ireland game, passing through Poland while I was fighting a long war for it's throne.

i went mengele/fritzl on my own people and married off my sisters to my sons. i forgot about what i'd done untill i died and took over my heir. he only had inbred and homosexual children, no males. the only son i had got had died at age 2 due to being inbred and ******ed. then operation 'get a son' started, first step kill my wife so i can have normal children. then i catch queerness myself at a jousting tournament. at this point im 57 years old and don't know how much longer i can make it. comb through europe in search of the lustiest maiden i can find and get one with +45 to fertility. she gets pregnant twice with girls before finally giving me a male heir. i die a year later, 64 years old. phew. i think i'll stop inbreeding my own line and try and give it to my will-be-pretenders instead.

oh and also, the king of scotland helped some pretender grab a whole duchy off of me(irish king). you'd think the irish nobility has some sicilian in them because as retaliation I murdered his wife, his two sons and the next two up for succession before finally offing the king himself. fun times!

I generally play the game sans assassinations (seems gamey and way too easy to exploit) but how did you get away with all those without getting caught?