[Morgoth]

Just acquired this game, and after a spectacular failure as the king of Norway I'm now starting to get the hang of it I think.

I've started out as the Grand Prince of Novgorod. A rather weak principality compared to those run by my uncles and cousins. However, I started with a decent intrigue score and a pretty good spymaster. Not to mention the ambitious, cynical and greedy character traits. Needless to say Miroslav (or however you spell his name) decided that his best course of action would be to start doing some light pruning of the family tree.

Ten years later and about two dozen dead family members, only two other branches are left and Miroslav has received the honorific 'the Dragon'. He rules by far the biggest part of the east. He's also acquired the cruel character trait, as well as the kinslayer, yet his stats have grown to be, if not excellent then at least very good. He's a few gold pieces away from a kingdom, and have grabbed hold of most of Lithuania before the Scandinavians have had time to commit to the region.

There are rebellions of course and attempts at invasions. Every member of the dynasty but his children hate the Dragon with a fierce passion. Not to mention the vassals forced to support the war effort with both men and grueling taxes. Still, every rebell is beheaded, so there's hardly an ambitious or envious man left in the realm.

Alas this tireless campaign of assassination and holy wars have left little funds to developing the nation, and the royal demesne poorly developed. Clever schemer that he is, Miroslav put his oldest son in training with the Steward, and found a genius courtier to be his bride. Sure there's a hit to prestige, but I believe the strength this union will bring to the dynasty will be worth it. After all, Miroslav have many other children perfectly willing to be sold of like cattle to ensure the strength of the kingdom. The heir to the kingdom of Norway is engaged to a daughter, Another daughter has been married to the third in line to the Byzantine throne (heeheeheeheeheehee), and a son is married to the oldest daughter of the King of Georgia (heeheeheeheehee). Might be it would be beneficial to leave off the warfare for a little to sit down and develop the land, but I'd rather not see Denmark or Norway (who rules all of England, that William was a pushover) grab hold of all of finland. Might give them ideas.

Amusingly, Miroslav's wife, a midas touched wonder, have found the Dragon a hard man to please. At some point she developed the paranoid, depressed, stressed and possessed traits. She's still producing children however. Miroslav is not a kind man. But whom else is to receive the new principalities acquired if not children of the dragon?

Recently one of his courtiers asked for funding to paint a depiction of St. George in our honour. He was promptly executed and his family banished.

I love this game

[MTS]

Being tyrannical is a lot of fun in this game. I only just found out you can blind and castrate prisoners as well.

While we were on the topic of republics though, I just noticed something weird. The Republic of Dalmatia asked me to join in their embargo against the Republic of Ancona. The war comes up as a Roman-Holy Roman Embargo War, and I get a -25 opinion hit from the Grand Mayor of Dalmatia for supposedly calling him into a war, when it was actually the other way round. That opinion modifier should only happen with allies anyway, not my vassals.

[Garak]

Got the game a few days. First run was as the King of Norway and that went ... poorly. Restarted as William the Bastard. Conquered England with the army raised from my lands + the levy and by spamming mercenaries (I had the mercs storm the castles, towns and churches and then disbanded them when they were too few). Soon after I became King of England (and left the French King without a Marshal) I had to put down a rebellion or two and stop a few plots. Yesterday, just before exiting the game to go to sleep, the King of France declared war on me. That bastard.

[Gothos]

You try with Norway, I say you try starting out early as Sweden. Minimum Crown Authority sucks big time, not to mention the huge vassalage mess and having two way stronger neighbours... plenty fun to get that country going, tbh

@MTS - blinding and castrating are exclusive to Byzantines, and were added in the Legacy of Rome DLC. never did it myself, I like being a nice ruler...

[Traveller]

This game sounds great. Is it a beast to run, 'cause it sounds more like a sort of text based game rather than a Total War?

I have to check this out..

[Gothos]

It shouldn't be hard on your hardware to be quite honest. There's a LOT of data it has to load on startup, and it can take several minutes, but once past that it's rather lenient. It's mostly a map with single models representing armies and a lot of windows. You might experience chokes when deploying retinues en masse as for a brief moment you'll have a gazillion small armies up and around, but that's brief. Game's pausable at any time so don't worry about that.

And yeah, you have to check it out



Mind you, has anyone done the multiplayer?

[Traveller]

Just had a quick look, it looks like the campaign map and politics of TW without the battles. If it will run on windows 7 on my laptop I'll get it, otherwise I'll have to wait until I've moved into the new house so I can set up the PC again.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 05 March 2013 - 09:48 PM

[Morgoth]

Gothos, on 01 March 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

It shouldn't be hard on your hardware to be quite honest. There's a LOT of data it has to load on startup, and it can take several minutes, but once past that it's rather lenient. It's mostly a map with single models representing armies and a lot of windows. You might experience chokes when deploying retinues en masse as for a brief moment you'll have a gazillion small armies up and around, but that's brief. Game's pausable at any time so don't worry about that.

And yeah, you have to check it out



Mind you, has anyone done the multiplayer?

I've not experienced the multiplayer yet, but would be willing to try it out. I assume I would have to take a week off from work to get a game finished though

On a side not, Miroslav has gotten the impaler trait now, and have so far survived half a dozen assassination attempts. He's 42.

I wish there was some sort of fear metric in this game, as I reckon the Dragon would be at the very top.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 01 March 2013 - 10:17 AM

[MTS]

Gothos, on 01 March 2013 - 08:09 AM, said:

@MTS - blinding and castrating are exclusive to Byzantines, and were added in the Legacy of Rome DLC. never did it myself, I like being a nice ruler...

Yeah I know. I like being nice as well, but in one of my more unfortunate successions I ended up having a fair few negative traits (4 out of the 7 or something) plus Cruel and all that, so I decided to roll with it. It was surprisingly fun. For instance after I'd crushed a rebellion I blinded and castrated the instigator, and released him from prison. Decided to be merciful to the bandwagon-jumpers, and just let them rot in the Oubliette until they died. Ended up falling to an assassination at 40 though, I believe they dropped something on me. Luckily my heir was pretty awesome, so they were all fairly happy when Alexios the Impaler finally kicked the bucket.

[Traveller]

Just installed this and apart from a bug in the first tutorial, it seems to be working fine.

I want to update it with the latest patch, but how do I do it? The launcher doesn't have a link, and the patch I downloaded says it can't find CK 2 anywhere. Also, everywhere I look online seems to assume that everyone knows how to patch games, so there's no help I can find anyway.

Any suggestions welcome.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 05 March 2013 - 09:49 PM

[Morgoth]

Well, Miroslav died at the ripe age of 72. At his death he had unified the kingdoms of Ruthenia (main title) and Lithuania, amassed just over 10 000 in prestige, and murdered his way to the head of the dynasty. Alas, his perfectly groomed son was murdered, most likely by his sister, the queen of Byzantium, who has acquired the unfortunate combination of ambitious, envious and elusive shadow.

So now the heir to the throne is Miroslav's grandson, Nikita. An excellent administrator and diplomat, but a terrible warrior and schemer. The direct opposite of the Dragon. So when he imprisoned two of his uncles and had them executed for starting factions for the kingdom, people were a little surprised. Still, with no ambitious family members left alive, and an embarrassingly meek group of vassals - courtesy of Miroslavs many purges - the kingdom seems safe. Alas, Nikita's great uncle, the king of Russia is set to expand south and eastwards and and might develop to become a serious threat. Nikita owns about half of the de jure kingdom of Russia, which makes for quite a lot of tension.

The Byzantine empire is a strong ally, alas their armies are tied up in a number of crusades and rebellions, not to mention a number of wars with the Holy Roman Empire, who controls Jerusalem. So, instead Nikita decided to reach north. A succession crisis split England from Norway (though they're still ruled by the same dynasty), but Norway is still the strongest force of the north. They control large swaths of Sweden and all of Finland. Happily the third oldest child of the current queen is a girl just one year Nikita's junior, and she's quick! Needless to say, in the inevitable battle for Russia, Norway will aid with their legions.

[MTS]

Sounds like a profitable marriage. My favourite thing about those sort of marriages is being able to murder my spouses's way into being heir to the throne, then my heir inherits her kingdom when she dies. I got three kingdoms that way in my Britannia game.

Things are getting rather boring in my Roman Empire game. The Middle-East and the Holy Roman Empire have been imploding fairly regularly for the last fifty years or so, meaning I now have absolutely no competition on the map. My only stumbling blocks were a Castilian kingdom that managed to unite over pretty much the entirety of the Iberian peninsula, but they never made any aggressive moves towards me, even once I'd gained a foothold in Iberia, so the only thing that changed was the number of lives I spent to inevitably gain victory. The other was a succession crisis that only lasted as long as it did because the instigator had 'rebels flock to his banner' which translated to two 30k stacks spawning at his capital and they made me quite literally conquer all of Egypt and Aragon before surrendering. I'm actually looking forward to tangling with the Golden Horde and the Aztecs at this point.

This post has been edited by MTS: 05 March 2013 - 09:26 AM

[Gothos]

Playing in the east, you'll have plenty of fun with the (spoiler alert!!) Golden Horde

[Imperial Historian]

Started a game as a welsh count, currently gobbled up wales and some of ireland, and am waiting for the gold to found the kingdom of wales. Was planning on slowly taking over the british isles, but I've lucked out and my second wife is now a 5 duchy french duchess. Waiting to see if she forms a kingdom, but my heir is certainly going to have a larger power base than I expected. I suspect I'll be tied up pacifying my new French holdings for a while before I hit the civil war wracked English.

[MTS]

Whoa! The Golden Horde have arrived and are carving up the Russian states in a very short space of time. This is gonna be fun.

[Gothos]

They're basically unstoppable at this point and have invasion CBs that fit entire kingdoms at once if they are formed, plus 120k troop doomstacks consisting mostly of OP horse archers and heavy cavalry, that are also immune to supply limits. So yeah, stay off their property

[Morgoth]

Yeah, I'm trying to keep Russia between where I assume they'll turn up. Also, Cumina is huge in my game and will take the brunt I imagine. Thankfully the Byzantine Empire is very powerful so hopefully they'll be able to hold off somewhat.

[Gothos]

Morgoth, on 05 March 2013 - 06:41 PM, said:

Yeah, I'm trying to keep Russia between where I assume they'll turn up. Also, Cumina is huge in my game and will take the brunt I imagine. Thankfully the Byzantine Empire is very powerful so hopefully they'll be able to hold off somewhat.

Golden Horde will roll over Cumania something wicked. And over Rus, too. They will gobble up everything. In most of my Poland playthroughs, even Ruthenia wasn't a safe bet. Take a look at what the Ilkhanate did to Seljuks and the others, it will be pretty much that. I don't know what makes the GH stop, but they eventually seem to, though not always. When I played Byzantine, they went as far as whole Poland, too, and were bickering with the HRE. Your best bet if you're not like the Roman Empire reborn is to hope they get unstable with rebellions, which seems to happen less in the latest patches. You might want to expand west and/or northward to have some safe haven.
As for the Byzantines... well. The no attrition thing of doomstacks is EXTREMELY powerful. I was able to hold off the GH and Ilkhanate, and the Timurids even, when playing as Byzantine/Roman, but I had like 600-980k troops available to throw at them and they seemed to keep to themselves once I bloodied their noses once each. If Byzantines are too strong for them, they'll just go for other objectives and you're still in deep shit.

Ultimately, you can just become part of the Horde and try to weasel your way up in the ranks somehow and take control of it.

[MTS]

Yeah, wow. The Horde have now arrived and are taking over everything. They hit the HRE like a brick wall in my first game, so hopefully they stop there, though the HRE is piddly by this stage, can probably barely field 50k men, if that. I've been in a few scrapes with the Horde, ended up surrendering my possessions on the eastern side of the Black Sea as the plains are just indefensible. Have roughly 95k in retinues by this stage, and am ready to fight them with much more if they come into the mountains of Georgia and Armenia. Hopefully I can hold them off.

[Gothos]

MTS, on 06 March 2013 - 03:20 AM, said:

Yeah, wow. The Horde have now arrived and are taking over everything. They hit the HRE like a brick wall in my first game, so hopefully they stop there, though the HRE is piddly by this stage, can probably barely field 50k men, if that. I've been in a few scrapes with the Horde, ended up surrendering my possessions on the eastern side of the Black Sea as the plains are just indefensible. Have roughly 95k in retinues by this stage, and am ready to fight them with much more if they come into the mountains of Georgia and Armenia. Hopefully I can hold them off.

I remember as Byzantine I managed to halt them at the Kingdom of Azov with some nice use of fleets. That's pretty much the only way to catch a doomstack with lots of your own troops to counter, and still I needed like 170k to beat their 110k stack... Remember one thing, my friend: armies embarked on ships don't suffer from attrition Lure them in with a weaker stack to a coastal province, land your main force, hope for the best.
Funny thing - once I was at like 500-600k retinues, the Ilkhanate just started attacking Golden Horde instead as they didn't think much for their chances against me after I successfuly defended Kingdom of Syria earlier... and the Timurids also spread northwards
But yeah, areas far from the coast? Hope their doomstack fades away!