Gaming Crusader Kings II/III

If they're moddable, blood feuds could be quite useful for Westeros, too (Blackwoods/Brackens, etc.).

 

Video dev diary for Conclave:



Also cheeky bump.

 

CK2 is free to purchase for a limited time (today and tomorrow I think) so if you've ever had any interest and you've yet to pick it up, do so now.

 

So they're giving away Crusader Kings II for $1, and it plus every expansion combined for only $15, for the next 4 days...

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/crusader-kings-2-bundle

 

Damn fun game. I just wish I had more time to really get into playing it.

 

It's a fantastic bundle for anyone who hasn't gotten the game yet for whatever reason. If you have even the slightest bit of interest you really should just buy the highest tier because it gives you literally everything outside of cosmetics. It's hundreds of dollars of value, even if you mostly buy the DLC during sales like I did.

 

I'm nearing the end of my first Grand Campaign.
I started as a Byzantine count, and ran all the way through to VIC2. (Haven't figured out the HOI4 converter yet, but I hope to finish it off eventually).
Spoilers for size.

CK2

Spoiler

In CK2 my primary goal was the formation of Greece. I achieved that after only a century or two, though I seriously handicapped myself by not declaring independents at the first opportunity. I figured it would be easier to gobble up all the Greek land as part of the Empire as opposed to separate from it. I gathered up Epirus, and had most of the Duchies on the Greek peninsula under my command when my dastardly cousin was voted Emperor and used his claims to confiscate well over half my hard won territory.
That was annoying (And happened more than once through the centuries sadly), but I pushed through and recaptured much of it over time. Early in the game the Empire converted to Catholicism, and with a united Europe won nearly every Crusade. The actual power of the Empire waxed and waned, at various points it extended from Egypt to Mongolia, but constant infighting meant few gains were long lives. The two most difficult campaigns were for Mongolia and India, both of which took the better part of a decade to finish. Mongolia was a major success and most of its lands were absorbed into the Empire, but the Crusade for India was only a Pyrrhic victory, we got to 100% war score but only occupied a handful of duchies in RL Pakistan.
My family spread far and wide, and my dynasty sat on most of the thrones of eastern Europe. By 1400 I knew the game was coming to a close, I had retaken most of the Balkans but was still missing a few key provinces I wanted to round off my kingdom (Constantinople above all).
With time constraints however, I decided to cut my losses and declare independents. I started a faction, used favors to call every major kingdom in the Empire to join a call for self rule, and reduced Byzantium to a rump state over night. (Well, they still had a fair few duchies in Anatolia, but they were scattered and easy to deal with.

Greece spent the next few decades building up its power base, weeding out disloyal vassals, and enforcing religious unity. With barely a decade left I decided to go to war with my former overlord in hopes of getting the desired territory. Sadly this was not to be, and the game ended before I could get to 100% war score.

EU4

Spoiler

I set myself up in EUIV with the goal of finishing what my ancestors started, and creating a united Greek Peninsula. Ideally I could create a continuous domain that was wide enough to reach from Venice to Crimea, and tall enough to reach from Athens to Hungary. In the time it took me to get a claim on Byzantines lands however they managed to ally with two major powers, Germany (Which controlled France and Poland but not Central Europe), and the Danish (who held most of Scandinavia and several key Baltic states). I couldn't take them all on myself, so I allied with three other major powers: Bohemia (Which controlled Central Europe), Armenia, and Egypt (Both of which were pretty much where you would expect).
Even with this extra bit of security I knew it would be a challenge to get all my allies to join in a war of aggression, so I watched, and I waited. To make things worse at some point Germany took over Iberia too. Not sure when or how.
Another major event was when The Pope lost the territory he had gained in India only a decade or two after the game started. The sub-continent was united under one ruler and they clearly did not approve of the previous European conquests. (I can hardly blame them). But without the strict Holy War mechanic from CK2 It was just me, the pope, and a handful of other tiny nations against the entirety of India and their allies. That war was pretty much lost the moment it began.

After a couple decades of avoiding conflict with my former liege, I finally saw a weakness, the Byzantines were allied with a minor Balkan power, Croatia. By declaring war on their ally I could fight them essentially one on one. Exploiting this I immediately took Constantinople, and picked off most of their other Greek territories over many decades of off and on warfare. The Danish eventually joined in to defend Croatia but their territory was scattered and there was little they could do to help. It took me centuries to finish of my former overlord, in part because I didn't want to violate any peace treaties, and also my attention was drawn elsewhere once they became less of a threat. By 1700 they were down to one province, east of Anatolia. I didn't want it because it was too far away from the center of my domain and it wouldn't be worth defending. So after a short war I gave it to Georgia, who had a core on it, was friendly with me, and was to weak to be a threat.

Protestantism never really took off in this playthrough, it fired somewhere in Russia, but no major power adopted it as their official religion. Strangely enough it resurfaced in Mexico at the turn of the nineteenth century and stayed their in a far more stubborn manner than anywhere else. Denmark eventually collapsed under its own weight, and was replaced as a major power by Pomerania (Basically taking all their North European Territories). After taking the Denmarks Greek lands I exiled them to Crimea and vassalized them for the remaineder of the game. My Allies Egypt and Bohemia called me into several wars with Germany, and I was more than happy to assist as they possessed the lands I needed to connect my lands to my Crimean Vassal (For whom I hoped to annex). Sadly the AI didn't take the hint, and gave me nothing for my efforts. Egypt got Iberia, Bohemia blobbed into Poland and Burgundy, and I got a little gold on the side. After being stomped thoroughly like five times Germany entered a persistent state of decline. Their technology was lagging and they were in deep debt. I was starting to fall behind myself as I focused on my idea's too much for the first half of the game, so much of my focus for the following centuries was keeping up with my allies and enemies alike.

In the late 17th century I found myself rather boxed in between major powers, my allies were north, south, and east of me, and I hesitated to declare war on Germany or Pomerania because I wasn't sure I would win. So I set my sights on America. Settled in the Mediterranean as I was, I knew I would never get a head start on colonization, so I didn't even try. My focuses were 100% in Europe for most of the game, but left with nowhere else to realistically go I looked west. I still didn't have the necessary colonial range, but when the Imperialism casus belli fired I declared war on a small native American tribe in Central America and vassalized them with ease. This was only a foothold, and a costly one since I already had several vassals and any land I annexed I couldn't core. But it did offered me leverage to grab the surrounding territories and eventually form a real colony. By the end of the 18th Century my colonial domain stretched into the Pacific ocean with all Native tribes in the area under the flag of my newly created Central American Colonies (Which were formally established when I was finally able to core my conquered land). I tried to do the same in Africa, to much less success. But I did use Central America as a launching pad to take over many South-Asian islands including Hawaii (Aloha!)

Around this same time I had noticed Germany had fallen a good ten tech levels behind everyone else and took this opportunity to invade, and steal a bunch of land from them singlehandedly. I still couldn't connect to Crimea because Armenia had taken several key provinces during the previous wars, so Denmark was destined to never become an official part of my domain (I know I could have annexed them anyways but I did my best to avoid boarder gore where possible).
The last major conflict of the game was an war for independence. As mentioned previously I had gathered quite a few vassals and colonies over the centuries and my enemies all wanted revenge, so they offered them support in a war against me. Thankfully my allies were loyal, so after several bloody years they were beaten and swore allegiance again.
Oh, and with Denmark and Germany having fallen from grace two of my biggest rivals were gone, and I was left with a shortage of enemies. Not wanting a penalty I broke my alliance with Armenia and set them as my new rival (They were one of the enemies that encouraged my vassals to turn traitor). In the year before I ended the game Armenia declared war on me, but we never came to blows because the conflict wasn't ported into Vicy2.

VIC2

Spoiler

Victoria 2 was probably the least eventful game to date, I spent most of it slaughtering rebels. I did institute a constitution when I had the chance, gave press freedoms, abolished slavery, etc. If the Commies and Fascists would have stopped rebelling I might have gone all the way to a republic. But I decided a powerless monarch was better then bloodthirsty dictator. Bohemia became Czechoslovakia and Egypt went full on Communist. I was involved in many wars, though I honestly gained little from them. The biggest threat to me and my ally Czechoslovakia (I never did get Egypt to like me again after porting the game over. Probably for the best all things considered), was Pomerania. They had little land in Europe, mostly confined to a dozen provinces around Jutland, but they had built a MASSIVE overseas empire, and control over a majority of North America. They and their allies beat us once, and I lost one territory in Italy (Which I never forgot. Now I know How France felt after their war with Prussia).

After regrouping, and a few World Wars we did manage to beat them pretty handily. I regained my Italian province, and demanded they release a half dozen German states to weaken them. Sadly this cost me a whole bunch of infamy and I spent most of the last three decades sitting on my butt waiting for it to go away (And killing rebels). I had one last war with Naples (Who declared war on my earlier in the game for several provinces in Sothern Italy but lost). Ultimately occupied and annexed them without much issue (Though they had a much bigger navy than I expected).

And that, was that.
Most fun I've ever had, more people should play grand campaigns, I know many say they don't have the patience but it really is a blast taking a one province state to major power status. Since each game has very different mechanics it really is a fascinating experience.
Now if only I could get HOI4 to work right.

 

Victoria 2 does result in spending a lot of time killing rebels...

HoI4, I'm afraid, would require extensive modding, because in your game world it absolutely wouldn't made sense with the focus trees available...

 

Would HOI3 work? I've never tried but it might be possible. It's not much older than Victoria after all.

 

In theory, Vic2 converted to HoI3. But that was a while back...

 

The mod release thread says the converter should work for HOI4.
In any case my issue is that some of the important file locaters aren't being found when I try to convert.
Plus I am already way above my video game budget for the year so I certainly won't be getting HOI3 any time soon.

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...is-happening-heres-ten-things-we-know-so-far/









I don't know about this, guys! They better not have paid DLC for CKII features. Plus the character "portraits" are pretty ugly.

 

Oh yeah, RPS, the "recent" "co-opting" of Deus vult.

 

Hmm...

EDIT - On the other hand, I like a lot less the intrusion of an ad on the launcher and another one on the start menu for CKII.

 

Victoria III... not confirmed?



Edit: And yeah, it'll probably have some stripping down of features for the base game. That's just how it is. But for sure some of the DLC from CKII will make it into the base game, like probably the different eras (at least 876) and stuff from Way of Life and Reaper's Due, etc. Probably no India but that's just fine.

 

India is included. I contend that they can easily carry over the CKII features they want to keep and mine DLC content from adding the rest of Asia and Africa. It's not gonna work that way cause money, but it should.

 

Victoria III is actually banned from PDX's Twitch chats.

 

On the one hand, I can kind of understand why. It would be constant spamming about it.

On the other hand, Victoria III when?

 

Gameplay teaser and release date for CKIII:



e.

And story trailer;



And six minutes of gameplay:

 

The tutorial is on Ireland, eh?



I do really like the idea of progression trees for characters.

 

Welp. There went another 75€.

 

I'm still going to wait for it to go on sale for 75% off in like nine months. I have other games to occupy my time. I still need to get more time into CKII for one.

 

I may or may not have spent 1,750 hours on CKII...

 

I'm still struggling to get past the tutorial on CKII

Cannot sort the using fleets(as a navy) bit for the life of me and my default use of right click for menu's just puts me back so often. It's just not intuitive (for me)