[Morgoth]

It's the massive economic boost received from raiding that does it for the Vikings. And the ability to declare war for any territory bordering a river or sea.

I wonder if it's a little unbalanced. It'll be interesting to see how the world looks when I arrive at the normal starting date for CK2. Oslo is one of the world's economic powerhouses in my game, which was made possible entirely through funds from raiding expeditions.

[Gothos]

Well, I'd say that the pagan, and especially norse "powers" are somewhat offset by being locked in gavelkind. You can either play roulette with killing off wives after getting one heir and hoping he lives long enough, or bloody succesion crises. At least as Karen I can set elective monarchy after usurping a kingdom title. But hell. Now I'm wedged between Cumans and Hungarians, Persia and Abbasids. Not much room for growth, and each can launch holy wars against me. Think I might actually try expanding further north into tengri lands, they're weaker than gorram Persia. Or save up a thousand or so gold and maul Persia with a tonne of mercs on my side.

[MTS]

One of my friends came across this message while raiding today:

 943737_10152901247505265_1114733594_n.jpg (105.2K)
Number of downloads: 0

[Imperial Historian]

I started a game as the 17 yr old one county count in Norway. Vikings seem a touch overpowered though as by raiding for gold and buying mercenaries, plus a few well timed subjugations and prepared invasions my 62 year old starting character just formed the empire of Scandinavia and now rules this and most of England. Just waiting for one more subjugation to bring the Norse king of Scots into line. Raiding + mercenaries can quickly snowball.

Of course I'm sure this picture will change when my holdings are split between my 5 sons.

[Morgoth]

Imperial Historian, on 04 June 2013 - 02:49 PM, said:

I started a game as the 17 yr old one county count in Norway. Vikings seem a touch overpowered though as by raiding for gold and buying mercenaries, plus a few well timed subjugations and prepared invasions my 62 year old starting character just formed the empire of Scandinavia and now rules this and most of England. Just waiting for one more subjugation to bring the Norse king of Scots into line. Raiding + mercenaries can quickly snowball.

Of course I'm sure this picture will change when my holdings are split between my 5 sons.

Yeah, that's the challenge. And good luck keeping all of your vassals from fighting long enough to change inheritance one you reform the religion.

[Morgoth]

This fucking game.

Third generation and I think I've got my realm settled strong. Akershus produces 3 times the levies of any other territory, and the strongest contender to the throne outside of the family was stupid enough to start an assassination plot, so now he's safely imprisoned. My ruler, Snorre is just 19 and his wife has a claim to Sweden that her children will inherit. Snorre, poor man, is a brilliant strategist, berserker and a viking. And also an homosexual. One might think he's compensating with all those war skills.

His father, Ragnar found a locked chest made of some mystical metal when he burned Jerusalem. Snorre recently found a key of the same metal when he burnt Venice. Imagine my excitement. The chest was unlocked and revealed

Spoiler

a bunch of manuscripts so old they crumbled when opened.....

Next step is to re-norse the british isles and form an Empire.

[Ulrik]

Any tips for starting Viking? I was thinking about playing for Ivar, but now I decided to make my own little lord and conquer fame and Daneland...and Skandinavia...Britain... Seems to me easier than playing some count in vanilla CKII.

[Morgoth]

That's beaceause you're a huge big fsualure. Ut's ab enbarassaneebt. Really. It is. Ui'm sorry.

[Vengeance]

Morgoth, on 06 June 2013 - 10:13 PM, said:

That's beaceause you're a huge big fsualure. Ut's ab enbarassaneebt. Really. It is. Ui'm sorry.

Drunk posting again morgy?

I think that I am going to have to get this game on the next steam sale.

[Obdigore]

So I just bought this game and I'm fucking lost. A game where I actually have to use a tutorial? Bah.

So I started as William the Bastard, how do I press my claim on the province to my south-east?

[MTS]

Don't bother with the tutorial, the various Let's Play CK2 videos on Youtube are much better at explaining how to play.

As for the claim, if you have it already, you have to enter the diplomacy tab of the person who is the overall liege of that province (in this case I'd assume it's the King of France), and then declare war for your claim on that province.

[Ulrik]

OK, my poor viking raider got wounded in raiding Prague (I love rivers!) and died returning with loot...in 34 years...damn!

[Obdigore]

I never thought of looking for Lets Play videos. Thanks Sack-Boy.

[MTS]

Holy shitsnacks, Zoroastrians are hard...within five years the Saffarids declared a holy war on me. If that wasn't bad enough the Abbasids piled on immediately. I was hoping to hold off for a white peace, but my genius leader ended up getting captured in the first battle despite a martial score of 20, and so I lost the war immediately. The Saffarids then executed my dear leader, and so I'm down to one recently-conquered province in Turkestan that can't field any troops, and my 2 year-old son is now Satrap.

So it's not looking good at this point...

[Gothos]

It's a rough ride. Best bet at the start I think is to either expand into Turkestan and Khiva and wait for an opportunity to dick around with Saffarids, or swear fealty left and right and eat them out from the inside.

[MTS]

Yeah, to avoid losing entirely I ended up swearing fealty to the Saffarids, who held the Shahdom of Perisa by this stage. My problem was managing to take over Turkestan and Khiva before the Saffarids started a holy war against me, as after beating the Tahirids their next step always seems to be subduing the Zoroastrian satrapies. I've managed to claw my way back however and before the age of 21 Shapur al-Nashri II has managed to take back all the lands taken from his father. I'm now under the Abbasid empire however, which makes any attempt at independence that little bit harder.

[Morgoth]

Europe is a mess, but the Norse faith is growing stronger by the day. I'm not entirely sure how the game has been buit around the 800 AD start, but there seems little hope of the holy roman empire, Poland or Lithuania forming. Western Francia is embroiled in a never ending war with Aquitaine and unruly vassals, and though Italy somehow got formed in the early 900, it's collapsing and reforming about once every decade. How this will lead to anything resembling the original starting date I have no idea.

The Byzantine Empire is a superpower like none other, and I doubt it'll collapse unless something crazy arrives from the east. So at least that part of the world is stable.

The Kingdom of Norway-Denmark-Ireland is stable as always, with the son of Snorre, the current king safely proclaimed as the only candidate for all three titles. Which is good considering that Snorre suffers from the great pox. Shouldn't have done the dirty with all those greek concubines. As a true viking, Snorre and his siblings were all trained in war, as are Snorre's sons. As a result new provinces are added to the Norse realm every year. It's actually kind of crazy how well it works with their planned invasions of Northern France.

Snorre's son is going to face a challenge in being Norwegian, rather than Norse. But the hope is that this new cultural identity will spread all throughout the realm, supplanting Norse as the primary culture. Active education of the sons and daughters of the most powerful vassals (all members of the same dynasty), will make it easier I suspect.

Next step is to form an empire, which I suspect requires me to conquer Sweden too. I've been unwilling to do so previously as they've been the only other Norse kingdom, but now they've regressed to the old Norse faith and are therefore heretics in need of being purged.

[MTS]

I haven't been paying that much attention to the western part of the map in my current game but nothing seems to have changed much, other than Italy being relatively stable, England controlling all of Britain bar Ireland and the Spanish kingdoms starting to take some sort of shape due to the frequently fracturing Umayyads in the south (although they still control probably 60% of Iberia). At one point for several decades Hungary essentially controlled the Ukraine and everything in a straight line east to the edge of the map (including the de jure kingdom as well), but that has since fractured. Perhaps due to the strong Abbasids curtailing any westward expansion through Anatolia (the Abbasids control Armenia at the moment) and a united Bulgaria to the north, the Byzantine Empire has pretty much been in constant civil war since the game began, which is annoying for me, as I'd been hoping for them to be strong enough to tangle with the Abbasids, who have been ludicrously stable so far(one tiny civil war in the past fifty years or so).

At the moment I'm locked in a decade-long life-or-death struggle with them defending an invasion of Persia. I'd hoped to swear fealty to them once I'd gained the Shahdom of Persia, but I can't seem to anymore. Can kings swear fealty to emperors? Due to frequent gifts I'd managed to keep them away from me until now, but I've grown strong enough now that I can hold them off in the Iranian mountains if I play it smart. 50k dead Abbasids now litter the Iranian plateau, Shapur IV will make sure any more who try suffer the same fate. I'd hoped not to but I have no where else to expand, and if I win or declare a white peace they might leave me alone for a while and I can wait for a succession crisis. There's no point going any further north than Turkestan, as due to the inexplicable inability to use ships in the Caspian Sea now any further manpower I could gather would be useless, as it would take a year or more simply to march them down into Iran.

This post has been edited by MTS: 10 June 2013 - 01:21 PM

[Gothos]

Ok so I gave the norse another go, as the svin-something guy in Sweden. Went pretty splendidly so far. I started off with some raids and subduing kingdom of sweden, then my next move was against denmark - thanks to the kindly sir who unified the whole kingdom I could swoop in with one subjugation war to take it. after that I went after finland and norway as truce breaking is brutal in this dlc. all the while doing raids in the bay of biscay. made a dash for that holy site in east francia and...

Spoiler

 203770_screenshots_2013-06-11_00001.jpg (646.36K)
Number of downloads: 0

Since then I've annexed all the counties on the North Sea shore as lotharingia and east francia went into a full blown independance crisis. Formed empire of scandinavia, and right now I hold kingdoms of sweden, norway, denmark, finland and pomerania. might just go after lithuania and livonia to finish making the baltic an in-empire sea.
must say I'm pretty weak for an empire, though. nothing like byzantines or arabs or persia. but I'm safe in my corner of the world I think.

edit: protip - if you're gavelkind, do NOT create additional kingdom titles until you have empire.
also, that ruler up there? second son. first ruler died, my second one was weak, he caved to the demand to install the third son, a baby brother, on the throne. one assassination later he was back in the seat, but got murdered soon by his younger bro. which then reformed the norse religion. nice.

This post has been edited by Gothos: 11 June 2013 - 09:37 PM

[MTS]

Well, Seljuk was a bit of a letdown. Other than taking my satrapy of Turkestan (and ruining all my hard-earned conversion work) he left me completely alone and headed north. Has Seljuk ever gone south of the Caspian in anyone else's games?

Anyway, thankfully for me the Sunni Caliphate finally fractured into an infighting mess, what with an ancient caliph (seriously I think he was like 87 when he died), an old and short-lived successor and a youthful follow-up who found himself on the wrong end of a Byzantine lance within a year, leaving his 3 year old son on the throne, the Abbasids have had a lot of ambitious vassals to deal with. In a nice bit of historical truism the Fatimids look like they're going to have the caliphate by 1066, albeit a less powerful one. Also in the resulting chaos I've managed to gobble up most of north-western Iran and am working on Mesopotamia at the moment, coming that much closer to becoming Shahanshah.