So, I just bought CK2 today.The most common piece of advice seemed to be 'start as someone in Ireland and learn the ropes!' Fine I thought, and picked some guy with one region and one vassal. Three generations later, I'm in a position where my son and heir has an independent kingdom in the middle of Ireland while I got the rest, he happens to be a genius though and for some reasons he went from 100+ to negative 60 because he wants more land.
In Europe Otto marches on the path to an Empire, Rival Caliphs battle for control of the Muslim world and the last remnants of the vikings stir to the north. Hundreds of other characters have their own stories to tell. A thousand possibilities await in the Iron Century. Crusader Kings II: 3.2 Iron Century is a free update for everyone that owns Crusader Kings II, and it should be downloading. Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods, the fourth expansion for the critically praised strategy/RPG, finally enables you to play as a Pagan or Zoroastrian ruler, with particular focus on the dreaded Vikings and their tradition of pillage and adventure. Crusader Kings 2 tips: Don't be Lord Hinjo or Sean Bean, unless you want a dagger on your back. Be Lord Shojo, or be Uriel Septim VII (if ruling Holy Roman or Byzantine) or Daimyo Kubota (minus the sea monster) or Lannisters. Kinda remind me of Game of Thrones (back stabbing inbreeding families).
Land which I can't grant him because he's independent. I don't know.My guy, meanwhile, is a bit of an asshole, known as cruel and not very intelligent.
I spend the next three small wars trying to get him killed so my son can take over and unite Ireland with the help of his dad's war chest. For some reason I also have Cornwall, I don't really know how or why.
Succession/doling out titles is the most confusing system so far. I don't speak medieval.ANYWAYS, HERE'S THE FUCKING CRAZY PART JESUS CHRIST so, I can't get my guy killed but a golden opportunity presents itself. A glorious crusade. I send him down there alone with all the men he could muster from Cornwall. Because fuck Cornwall.321 men. They will join their lord in heaven and they will die in the mud outside of Jerusalem for the cause of a united Ireland.I look for the papal stack and I think 'hey, maybe if he dies fighting with the pope I'll get some sort of bonus'.
The fight is happening right outside Jerusalem and the Muslim stack is somewhere close to 12k and the Christians have 9k plus 321 brave souls from Cornwall. Somehow my fucking 'king' (he's not a king yet but it sounds better than 'my dude') manages to corner the leader of the caliphate in battle.
He defeats him and imprisons him and this helps end the war immediately and my idiot king, the guy I wanted dead, instead ends up with all of Jerusalem even though he only sent 321 men. That's like 50 titles/lands/whatevers over limit and my court consists of 11 people and I have like 3 sons. There's a bishop that holds 20 separate titles and he's pretty stoked.Just to give you an idea of how fucked up my kingdom is: I threw a huge tournament (because why not?) and as soon as it ended and people started to leave, bandits swooped down and raided every single entourage because there's more thieves guilds than toilets in the holy land at the moment. @SirOptimusPrime said:Oh man, that's a good one. I love hearing stories about this game because, so far, the craziest thing to happen to me is assassinating most of my 20 children one of my characters had (who is still alive at 74, by the way).I love this game so hard.My son kept marrying women with a shitty stewardship stat, and because of the circumstances, I couldn't arrange a marriage. So what I did was I kept assassinating his wives over and over again until I got one with a decent score. I kid you not, I murdered my daughter-in-law eight times.
If you know the basic mechanics of the game, I would suggest playing as the Holy Roman Empire. While you will have to deal with a shit-ton of vassal relations, your army is so huge you can just crush anyone and everyone. As a result, you can focus on developing your economic and diplomatic skills without any real worry of having half your kingdom revolt and beat you back down to courtier.Also, I always go for the crusades. Most of the time crazy shit like the OP mentioned happens all the time.
As France I ended up with most of the Islamic Iberian peninsula. After years of conquering Iberia in the name of the Pope, I ended up having to eventually give French Iberia independence or face a massive civil war. King Dude (aka King Art I 'the Cruel') died (gloriously) whilst fighting rebels in the holy land. This will be the last Irish army to fight in the open field in the holy land.His heir (King Dude II The Smart) immediately lost out on the claim of the holy land when his brother got the backing of pretty much every single vassal in the region right when King Dude Sr. The brother must've underappreciated my incompetence though (maybe due to the word smart being right there in my name, a clever tactic on my part) because during my futile attempts at doling out my new lands and titles I gave a random third of it to the pope. King Brother Dude, the new king of Jerusalem, immediately got excommunicated and in the same breath I declared war (ALL THE CLAIMS BITCH. IF YOU PLOT, YOU ROT.
LIEGES GET SIEGES) and started attacking his holdings back in Ireland. And fucking Cornwall. Piece of fucking shit Cornwall.For some reason I've become buddies with a Breton mercenary leader and a 7k stack appeared on the Irish mainland without asking for pay and we just roll King Brother Dude and all his vassals.
I click yes on all the buttons and somehow end up with a Prince-Bishop back in big J in the holy land. My grand strategy for holding my regions in the middle-east: click yes whenever some random noble asks me if they can come fight the infidels for me. Somehow, after like six wars with various Muslim factions, I still have a Prince-Bishop-whatever down there that counts me as his liege, and like two regions.
95% of The Kingdom of Jerusalem is now located in Ireland, either through neglect or brilliant strategy. All the vassals that backed King Brother Dude got conquered while I chilled back in Eire.After all this. King Dude II The Smart was at least smart enough not to die on the battlefield, but rather he stepped out of time whilst in his bed. Hopefully with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around his cock.Where I'm at currently: I have no idea which buttons to push in order to unite Ireland as the nation called Ireland, or if I even can. My grandfather's spy-master tried to jack the breaks on my wagon. An Iberian dwarf lady taught my eldest son how to fight. I was enjoying tinkering with Ireland again but then, suddenly.
'successful crusade!' And now I just got back at least half of the shit my great grandfather gained through his stupidity/expendability/luckity. I have no idea who I'm going to give all this to.
The cycle of ineptitude starts anew. With the help of the advice provided by Haltlam Reptar The Wise I finally managed to click the button that united Ireland. Green covered the Kingdom of Jerusalem rather than white. My former rivals were all either dead or exiled.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Ireland both secure, and most importantly. Mine.Finally there was peace. And this was the worst fucking thing that could happen. The heir to King Dude II The Smart starts breeding like crazy and seems to live forever. One son has the claim to the Kingdom of Ireland, and his younger brother will stand to inherit the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
All of this is made worse by my futile attempts at pleasing all the new branches of my burgeoning family. I'm great at bullying dukes and stealing their titles. Plus I throw pretty dope fucking parties. This is how I conquered Ireland. But at the end of all of this I still have no idea how to deal with a family, and a kingdom, of this size. I can't change the inheritance law and consolidate my power around a single heir because all my new vassals refuse to change the law. The old vassals hate me even more because I took some of their land in order to placate all my new sons and grandsons with lands and titles.I keep desperately handing out these lands and titles until I realize I've turned both my kingdoms into ticking time bombs.
Everyone has a claim to something. Everyone wants more than they already have. It hits me like a flagon thrown by an angry relative at one of my feasts: This place will turn into a Shakespearean play set in the Thunderdome when the king dies.
Even cousins of my grandsons have (albeit weak) claims to something of note. Shit turns really bad really fast when the king dies. I manage to hold onto Ireland and my dude is somewhat stronger than his brother. But the families just keep growing. With the next heir I find myself in a position where I can't please any vassals and my personal army strength is maybe 5% of the military total.Then I make the worst mistake yet.
A plotting faction that consists of maybe 70% of my vassals for some reason gives me an ultimatum: Change the law so my heir is chosen based on some notion of seniority. I should've just fought the civil war even though they outnumbered me 10 to 1, but I hit yes and now my heir is some random ass cousin twice removed from the glorious and proud lineage of Dude Kings. Worse still, his only somewhat proper claim is the fucking duchy of fucking Cornwall.
Crusader Kings 2 Mods
As soon as my king dies I end up with some random ass cousin twice removed. While he's got some claims and still inherits the title of king, he doesn't last. I get bullied and beaten by the brothers of the former king and end up a vassal to the joint Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Ireland.I fight yet another civil war and manage to free myself yet again. I start slowly picking up the pieces of Ireland and the years go.
I'm still broke. Then another civil war hits. I have no money. My main rival musters ten thousand men.
Guess where from? Fucking Cornwall. @Disconnect: I've found that switching to elective succession is better than primogeniture. Essentially, it allows you to nominate an heir. While all the other dukes and counts have a vote, I've never experienced an issue as long as everyone is mildly happy. The only trick is that you need to nominate an heir for each of the 'Kingdom' titles you hold. In Ireland, you should only have one (unless you are beating on Scotland) so that shouldn't be a huge problem.
This also allows you to keep all your titles under your main line. Essentially, never give any land or titles to any of your brother or sisters.
Crusader Kings 2 Console Commands
Sure, they will be mad but they can never really do anything about it.If you have more demesne than your maximum, shovel them off to the courtier that likes you the most. The only negative side effect I found from this strategy is that once your kingdom becomes fairly large (I'm talking France kind of large) your vassals will frequently war with each other. You just have to be careful that one vassal does not accumulate too much land.If you get bored of Ireland, I suggest playing as one of the Spanish kingdoms. The awesome part is that Leon, Galicia, and Castile are all brothers. So if you plot against people (which is what you should do if you want to murder someone) and you have a bit of luck, you can cobble together most of northwestern Iberia in a few years.
Once you have done that, you can choose to either go against your Catholic brethren to the east or wage a holy war against the heretics to the south. Holy Wars are fun, but you can quickly get overwhelmed so fabricating claims is generally a better strategy.Anyway, I can talk about this game forever. Glad to hear that someone else is experiencing the fun of uniting good ol' Eire.