Holy crap the learning curve in this game is the steepest I have ever come across.

Started as scotland, and some vassal I have says he has a claim to my throne..... Any idea how I handle this? do I just kill him?

Also, that GoT mod looks bad ass. Once I figure out how the hell to play this game, I will get it for sure.... should be about 3 years from now

I actually thought this game was pretty easy to learn, just start as an easy county/duchy/kingdom. Try one of the Irish counties or the Kingdom of Poland.

Also read this if you still have problems: Guide to CK2

EDIT: When I say pretty easy I mean compared to other Paradox games.

CK2 > EU3 >>> HOI > Victoria in terms of easyness imo

Some changes since I last played. One of my vassals revolts. Whats with everyone around me becoming hostile? Playing as Poland one of my vassals revolts so I raise a 3k army, destory the rebels and siege their provinces. But I'm hostile to HRE, Hungary, etc. So the HRE are dicks and bring 21k men and kill my army and then siege the rebels and take the provinces for themselves. wtf is up with that.

You said it yourself. The HRE are dicks.

Any tips on how to make going to war with a fragmented realm that is all over the map less annoying?

My kingdoms are:
- Ireland
-Wales
-Denmark
-Brittany
-Jerusalem
- 4-6 each in Norway, Galicia, Italy (Genoa)

In case of war, I raise levies everywhere collect them in 6-7 little bunches of the map, raise ships (about month later, so I can select them more easily, otherwise it overlaps with the raised levies, which is annoying), get them to the counties where the collected armies stand, get them to their destination etc. yada yada

When I fight the infidels on the Iberian peninsula, I declare holy war. This is only possible for a single "duchy", correct?! So I beat their ass, enforce demands, get the provinces, and want to rinse and repeat, since I dont care about breaking truce against infidels (oooh, they like me less boohoo). But for that I have to dismiss all my guys EVERYWHERE, and then repeat this painful process FROM ALL OVER THE MAP (raise, gather, ship them there, dismiss) FOR EVERY DUCHY.

Am I doing it wrong?

Dat Byzantine

Was doing pretty good this morning. had my first false declaration on another irish county in 3 years, had enough gold saved to have mercs take it out...... Then a bitch with typhoid came into my court and killed half my family and most of my court.... The randomness can be slightly annoying....

Also, it is a lot easier to start in an area where you are going to capture county's of the same religion. trying to convert those sons of heathens take way too damn long!

Try not to split your kingdom up so much? Not too sure.....

does anyone have a good guide to succession and heirs and stuff? I just spent like 150 years trying to take a single stupid county, finally got it, 2 years later my dude died and I lost the county and cannot seem to get it back no matter how many people I kill there.

Well sometimes it's not the player's "fault" - if you marry of your dynasty people all over the place, women matrineally, you are bound to inherit all over the place randomly ...
I was more looking for suggestion how people deal with this tedious process efficiently (i.e. how to gather armies and load them into ships with fewest clicks possible etc.) Also, I want a functionality that let's me raise levies from just a selected kingdom, or from a certain radius etc., province by province is just awful, and I dont want to raise my whole realm everytime, and then dismiss the guys in Norway and Denmark ...

Usually you get a Vassal inheritance warning if something like this is about to happen (next to all the other "important" warnings). Then you figure out why this county would leave the realm. Check the inheritance laws of the respective province, and figure out why the dude inherits. This way you will also understand how these laws actually work - for example who is next in line when there are no male kids in Primogeniture etc.

Usually this happens if the dude who is next in line is vassal of some other liege, and not of your dynasty, or something.

Can you expel people from your court? I went on a spending frenzy to find some good stats, and now I want the useless ones gone.... Any way to do this other than becoming a serial killer?

I had this same annoying problem. I had the kingdoms of Ireland, Denmark and Lithuania. Was pretty annoying and cumbersome, probably like it would be in real life. Luckily, the king of England relieved me of having to govern Ireland.

anyone know how I can stop my earls from attacking eachother?

raise crown authority

Why would you want to?

Cause there is a guy in my country that now has as many county's as I do, because he keeps declaring war on my other earls. I do not want one guy to have that much power within my country.

Although, with the ability to use mercs, there is almost never a situation where I am in trouble late game.

Also, How do you calm the situation of succession? No matter how well I prepare the heir, or how much I control, death just ****s everything up and almost everyone hates me.

First off if you can beat this vassal in a war you might want to just try revoking one of his titles. The key is only revoke his title if he will say no. This will lead to a chance of war with the vassal. Then once you win the war you can revoke his title with no hit to your general opinion because he is a rebel. Also it is nice to give vassals a prestige hit every now and then and if the vassal is ambitious perhaps the oubliette will help out, young vassals are usually far more favourable towards their ruler anyway. This is not suggested if they are a border territory that a larger force has a claim on. Wash rinse repeat till the duchies look like you want. Another trick is to revoke when you are old once you have the bonuses of ruling for a long time to counterbalance the hit to general opinion if the vassal lets you revoke his title. Plus you are going to die soon so who cares. Then once the duchies look alright and you are generally liked institute high crown authority.

Having nice clean duchies helps the high crown authority can hurt but you will always be kind of disliked upon succession. I will try to keep older unmarried male courtiers without siblings around marry them to someone who is past childbearing age give them a duchy this should give you plots to kill them because you are their heir. Kill one or two of them when you are getting old if you can give your heir the duchy then he has a duchy he can give out once he succeeds you so he will have a duke who will support him. Plus if you have anymore duchies that have no heirs you should have those plots still and can work towards replacing dukes. You generally have the life of their wife to complete this because they will choose a fertile wife asap. This will limit the amount of building in the baronies though because of the fact that the earls gold is given to you instead of an heir that will build. So you have to become a little more hands on with building in the duchies you use like this for the short periods you control them. But you will pretty much be dislike by the majority of your kingdom upon succession and hated in satellite kingdoms the only cure is time or a nice match of your rulers traits and your vassals traits. Ruler is Kind etc

Careful though. If the vassal is really powerful and can call in allies you could be in trouble. Or if you have neighbors who will try to use the opportunity to slice off pieces from you or your vassal.

The expansion is out.

Steam Summer Sale should start in 2 days, hopefully it is on sale.

1.06 is awesome imo

Bumping to say this again.

I have logged 160 hours in this game, all with a single playthrough (never started a new game). Currently it is 1297 A.D., I am the emperor of the HRE and Brittania with like 8 kingdoms and 4 vassal kingdoms.

- I never payed attention to proper breeding, so my next heir will have like 6 stewardship and 8 diplomacy. I find optimizing this not fun, mostly because there is no way in game to find marriage partners based on certain filters (traits/claims etc.).
- My dynasty has 200 members
- Army management is still the least fun aspect of the game. I can raise 350k levies in my realm, getting them to all corners in the world, gathering, dismissing etc. is annoying
- Plotting in an empire is out of hand, after I clean up all plots, within a span of 5 years, there are 50 new plots (no exaggeration). Why can there not be a "End All Plots" functionality? It takes a gazillion clicks each time (Diplomacy, Scroll Down, Select Char, Go to Char Diplomacy, End Plot, goto 1)
- I took over the HRE with Autonomous Vassals, and I first switched to Free Investiture instead of upping Crown Authority right away. Now I can not change Crown Authority, and it will take 4 more rulers (i.e. 100 years?!) to get Crown Authority to the desired level. Can not revoke titles

All in all, greatest Paradox game ever

Forgot to ask, what is so awesome about 1.06? The game to me does not feel different at all, quality-of-life or otherwise. I didn't buy SoI, fwiw.

I didnt like the muslim expansion at first, but as I play it, its growing on me. The succession adds a twist in the game as there are almost always succession crises and you can pretty much choose your heir by giving them more land