Crusader Kings 2.

[Ganner]

So I like many others just picked this game up.   Being new to the franchise it quite literally throws you in to it with almost no help at all, and so far i found all the "hint" pages useless.

After a day or so of dicking around im starting to get the hang of the basic gameplay, what are some tips from you veteran players for those of us who picked it up on the steam summer sale?

[SeQuel]

As a huge fan of Europa Universalis 3 I didn't really like CK2.

Though I found it really interesting that you can be 50+ in age and marry a 6 year old. Not to mention the constant ambition to murder your own wife.

[Grumbs]

I watched this series of videos and followed his advise to play as a county in Ireland first. I'm still on my first game but played about 100 hours so far. Took over Ireland, Scotland, Wales and parts of England. Hoping to creates the Emperor of Britain title eventually. When I first got the game I did the tutorials but I still didn't really know wtf to do and didn't unpause a game the first few times I loaded the game up. Anyway these are the videos I used (they are pretty long though):

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL158344868202D6B3&feature=plcp

If you have any random questions I'll try to answer if I can. I am still a bit of a newbie though

General tips: Always have your councillors doing something. Keep all opinions of vassels over 0 by bribing or giving titles. Try to get matrilineal marriages with your daughters so you build up your dynasty. Get wives for sons with decent stats. I like to get high diplomacy for my leader just so I get better opinions from vassels, but you want like 10+ stewardship too (your wife can have this high though). Be the ward to your sons if you can so you get some control over their traits. Try to use wards for your dynasty that are the same culture as your primary culture, so you don't get the "foreigner" negative rep from them. I don't have more than 2 dutchies under my control when King because of the negative rep. Give them to members of your own dynasty but you don't have to give them all titles of the dutchy, just give them 1 country somewhere then the dutchy title (they have to have 1 country at least to become a duke). Don't hold more than your demesne limit, give them away to dynasty members

Don't let your vassels get too strong by giving too many titles to them, spread the titles around if you can and get your crown authority up. Don't keep gravelkind succession law, I think the one that allows you to nominate an heir is best. When you die, its worth spending some time giving out titles or bribing because you tend to have quite a few negative opinions at that point. Try to keep your 2 dutchies together, but you want the most profitable ones yourself. You can build holdings if you need to give titles out. You can look at enemy dutchies/counties you want to control and see if a claimant will accept an offer to join your court. Then give them a minor holding you've built (or a county) and then you can press their claims for them. If you are a higher rank than them then you will be their leige after the war

You get all the gold from your personal holdings (the main castle of the county you own usually), so build these up. Get the + gold upgrades first, then get the ones that give you more personal troops. I upgrade in my 2 dutchies (the ones I know I won't give away)

Pretty detailed game but once you get to grips with it its quite addictive

[Teeth]

I played the tutorial and knew enough to do basic stuff. You should find some friends to play with, its great in multiplayer. Try to find a veteran to play a multiplayer game with, he'll bring you up to speed in no time.

[Vibe]

Yeah started with a county in Ireland too, soon took over Ireland and made the kingdom. Still half clueless as to what I'm doing too

Now I want the Britain as Empire, but I'm up against much larger Scotland and England. Any advice how to approach them? Hire mercs and take county by county or just do some inheritance trick or something?

[Shatter]

I've had this game for a bit, picked up the Islam DLC during the sale. I agree that the tutorial doesn't really prepare you fully but after playing a game, you should have everything down. When I start playing this game, I definitely have a hard time putting it down. I always think "well I can just do this and quit, oh wait now I can do this now" and it just keeps going until I finally get off hours later than expected.

[Ganner]

So im in the middle of the oddest fucking campaign.

Im playing as Ireland, started off as an earl with one county, worked my way up to duke of Connacht, managed to secure most of northern ireland.  Had 6 kids 5 daughters :/.  Married off my first daughter to a 3rd in line or something to some county in italy with decent stats and matrilineal so i could keep them at court.  2nd kid is my heir and ward.  the other 4 daughters i marry off to the kings of Spain and Byzantium emperor.  My first character is universally loved by all, my heir has almost exactly the same stats so he will be loved too... but around his 21st birthday he gets some farking disease and dies.  Now my heir is my first daughter who everyone hates :/ and my character and wife are both in their 50s. :/

So as im closing in on the King of Ireland title my duke dies and my shitty daughter whom i don't care for inherits.  Now every one of my vassals hate me, the pope hates me... ug.  So my only option is to join every holy war possible and I do, sending my 1k troops off to spain and byzantium here and then.  After I have claimed the King of ireland title and only need 3 more counties to unify ireland the pope calls a crusade to Sicily so I recruit the Knights Templar and add my 2k troops and just go rampaging in italy, we win the crusade... and suddenly i control most all of italy???  The pope awarded me control :O  (oh and by the way, her son ended up inheriting the counties in northern italy as well after a few well timed deaths)

When i saved and quit My demense was 63/4 and I have no vassals to give any territory to because they all hate me.  The Kingdom of Ireland hasnt even unified Ireland yet controls most of italy. This is going to be fun.

[Teeth]

Haha Ganner 63/4 that's amazing! You're never going to get out of that with all of your land though. Pick out the 4 best countries and give those to yourself. And with best I mean most troops mainly. None of your vassals should be stronger than you, but having to give away 59 counties that is going to be tricky. Just click create new noble on the counties that you own now, this way you'll just enlarge your vassal pool with vassals that will love you because you give them land. Only though if you get your demesne down.

You might want to consider ditching Ireland if the land you have in Italy is considerable, managing rebellions in both is near impossible.

Now I want the Britain as Empire, but I'm up against much larger Scotland and England. Any advice how to approach them? Hire mercs and take county by county or just do some inheritance trick or something?

You should try to ally with one of these to take out the other, they can be a big help sometimes. Best thing is to wait for a big rebellion in Scotland and take em out that way. I have never had any good experiences with inheriting, its not reliable at all and surely very slow. What some tactical marriages can help with, is getting you a claim on the throne of Scotland. Otherwise you will have to take them county by county.

And yes, mercs. Build castle villages and castle towns in all your holdings, castle buildings are the only buildings that directly benefit you, so just build them. I am playing a very similar campaign and I have all of Ireland but the two most northern counties and I get 13 monies a month, which is enough to maintain a pretty damn huge mercenary force.

[Grumbs]

Nice Ganner . I don't have experience with that sort of situation, but maybe you can move your capital to somewhere in italy, pick your 2 best dutchies for yourself, create as many dutchies as you can and give them away to 1 vassel at a time. You can search easier for possible people with the Characters tab. Just scroll down to dynasty members or people with decent opinion/stats or traits. Make sure you have a good succession law so you don't lose it all

Then you can maybe start changing your primary culture to a local culture. Just make your dynasty members have Italian wards and you should end up phasing out Irish. You could ditch Ireland completely if its too much hassle as teeth said. I dunno how safe it is down there though, maybe you could keep ireland incase you get overrun by Muslims or eventually you will get a mongol horde event from the east, dunno if they can push that far

Vibe when I played Ireland England had many years of succession crises and had no allies so they didn't bother me at all. Scotland was allied with Norway but they didn't join any war against me. I found some claimants to take over larger pieces at a time. If you click de jure dutchies tab on the bottom right, find a large dutchy in scotland or Wales, select the county tab, then tick de jure, then click the Dutchy tab, then click claimants. See if theres anyone with a thumbs up for the dutchy. You can then invite him to court, make him your vassel (give him a county or holding), then you should be able to go to war for his claim and end up with him as your duke with his land after the war. Thats how I took over wales, scotland and Brittany for the most part iirc. Might have fabricated some and created or usurped some dutchies. You can also use claimants that don't have a thumbs up by marrying matrilineally to them so they come to your court. If you do that with your dynasty members you might get claims for their sons too.

Pretty much all game i've had minimal levies set in the laws, but ive put taxes high and crown authority I've ended up with at max atm. I have 10% feudal vassel tax. Its not much, but for places like Brittany its still bringing in a lot of gold. If you have decent tax income you can build up gold then use mercs if you need more troops for a war. Upgrade the castles you own for more troops too. I control Munster and Tyrone I believe, the 2 with the most counties. But I gave away Ormond because otherwise it only generates 25% of its gold I believe because its a city as capital. You still get about the same income from taxes by giving it away but at least the vassel can then upgrade it rather than waste the gold

[Taser]

Its a fun game thus far and well worth the 10 dollars on steam sale when I bought it. I'm halfway to taking over ireland. A few fabricated claims and then you can do du jure claims which does a steamroll. Currently the king of ireland with claims on scotland and potentially england soon. Not worrying about them right away until ireland is taken over. I want to consolidate my power first.

Its definitely a fun game but my first game went terribly since I screwed up and married my daughter off in a regular marriage. When she became the heir and eventually the ruler of my little province, she had 5 kids all under his bloodline. Thus when he finally died of stress, I got another husband which i was able to have a few male heirs from but I had 2 male heirs under the former that still had claim. I didn't know how to change the succession and which did what so I only had the option of killing my sons. Unable to do so before my queen died but she ruled for a very long time. Over 50 years with 3 husbands and 8 kids I believe. It was informative and I learned some things from that game so it was worth it even if I "lost".

[Hunter_the_Honourable]

I'm thinking of getting this but it looks confusing as hell plus from what has been said here I'm worried I'm gonna get brain fucked 

[Ganner]

The learning curve is steep, but once you pick it up its strangely addictive.  Also you can get lucky and bumble your way into a huge kingdom like i did

[Vibe]

Vibe when I played Ireland England had many years of succession crises and had no allies so they didn't bother me at all. Scotland was allied with Norway but they didn't join any war against me. I found some claimants to take over larger pieces at a time. If you click de jure dutchies tab on the bottom right, find a large dutchy in scotland or Wales, select the county tab, then tick de jure, then click the Dutchy tab, then click claimants. See if theres anyone with a thumbs up for the dutchy. You can then invite him to court, make him your vassel (give him a county or holding), then you should be able to go to war for his claim and end up with him as your duke with his land after the war.

Just did that and the claimant left my court as soon as I won the war, the fucking WHORE

[Grumbs]

Sounds like he wasn't your vassel when you started the war? You need to give him a holding first, like a castle you built or whole county. Don't think he could just leave without you being allowed to seige him and put him in jail/revoke a title. You need to be higher rank than he would be too. If it was a war for a dutchy then you need to be a King for example

[Vibe]

Sounds like he wasn't your vassel when you started the war? You need to give him a holding first, like a castle you built or whole county. Don't think he could just leave without you being allowed to seige him and put him in jail/revoke a title. You need to be higher rank than he would be too. If it was a war for a dutchy then you need to be a King for example

Oh yeah lol I didn't make him my vassal. Lost second claimant like this lol

EDIT: finally managed to get a hand on a dutchy in Wales and established my second kingdom, Kingdom of Wales. I take it I have to have 50% counties in Britannia to established the Empire and not 50% of Kingdoms, right?