Gormongous

I see your point there, that all historical games are problematically reductive, but I think there's a big difference between placing a player in a historical milieu that could potentially demonstrate why certain immoralities existed, and just sanitizing that milieu to preempt the discussion altogether. For example, in Civilization IV at least, slavery is an early and effective option for government that you can take at any time and switch out of again whenever it becomes inconvenient, with no ingame commentary or consequences whatsoever. That's orders of magnitude more problematic that roleplaying the wife-murdering of a petty medieval lord, for which the game often punishes you pretty hard.

It makes me sound really sheltered to say so, but watching my cat fight FIV was the toughest thing I've ever had to do. People, they know what's going on, which is some comfort if cold, but animals are just doing the best they can. I'm so sorry it looks as though you guys have to go through that, Subbes. You have my thoughts. And yeah, what Miffy said, Lacabra. Take care of yourself and know that we're all here for you.

Maybe a bit esoteric for a thread named after Max Payne, but I don't think you even need musical training to laugh at this:

Honestly, though that would be cool, the intent that you express with those proposed systems was already anticipated, at least in part, by how technology research worked in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. You'd designate any number of four "values" (explore, discover, build, and conquer) as a priority, with the ability to change them at any time, and the game would work through the tech tree invisibly based on how those values were distributed. Once you got a sense of the tech tree (or if you turned "blind research" off in the game options), the sense of organic discovery was a lot less pronounced, but it still undercut the overwhelming march of "progress" that other Civilization games had and have in spades. Actually, I think a lot of what made Alpha Centauri work was its setting on a different world in the near future. By playing, you were writing a new history, which meant that a lot of the faux pas of "historical" 4x games were avoided. Not to mention "progress" in Alpha Centauri was nightmarish and unstoppable in a way that the main Civilization series never had the courage to make it.

Vassals are always wary of approving the child heir of a young ruler. Give them four or five years to warm to Sean I Vanaman, then Sean II Vanaman will be a shoo-in.

Well, I think the option would be to make city-states more demanding and have the consequences for ignoring that demand increase as the relationship develops. If a city-state asks you to declare war on someone right when you meet them, there's not much penalty to ignoring it, but if you don't do as they say when you're allied, the fallout should be ruinous. This would make pursuing city-states for diplomacy a valuable strategy, like it already is, but more all-consuming for resources and time. As it stands now, you want to pick up a few city-states as friends and allies, no matter what you're doing.

I think so. He's saying that history happened as it happened and that removing or changing the context is the death of history.

I think the idea of the initial post, odd rhetorical flourishes aside, is that the goofy sandbox of the Civilization games is actually pushing a particular lens of world history really hard. You only play as expansionist empires, expansion is resource-driven, "progress" is positive as well as a given, and someone wins history by being the biggest/best something. It's almost certainly unintentional, of course, but that doesn't make it less problematic. Stuff like this is what makes me glad that games like Neocolonialism are being made.

I went ahead and posted some sundry thoughts in the Crusader Kings II thread, along with starting character suggestions. Check it out: http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/7575-crusader-kngs-ii/#entry244719

Rather than clog the twitch.tv stream thread with general gameplay advice, I thought that I'd collect here a few conceptual pointers I've said during the streams, along with some recommended starting characters. 1) Crusader Kings II is about people. There is no political or social entity that is not embodied by a single person ingame. This means that there is no "right" or "wrong" in the logic of the game, except the opinions of others make it so. Territorial claims and righteous imprisonments are the two most obvious ways this is expressed, but there are many other situations where the positive or negative opinions of often minor characters makes all the difference. Like they say, if you've got to do something wrong, do wrong right. 2) Because Crusader Kings II is about people, instead of civilizations or cultures, you actually have a pretty narrow range of interactions with the game as the player at any given time. Generally speaking, you either effect change inside your realm though the missions you assign your councilors (except for the Chancellor and Court Chaplain, which have some other uses with other rulers), or you effect change outside your realm through the character screens and their associated diplomacy menus. Every landed character, count and above, is their own AI running their own court. As the player, you have absolute control of the people in your court, but you are at the mercy of everyone else in their own affairs, so you have to be careful to appeal to their interests, either through astute positioning or brute force. 3) Some people will hate you no matter what, just as some people will love you, though the latter is much less worrisome. The character traits, which each have opposites that make both parties hate each other, mean that it is impossible to be beloved by all. Your enemies, may they be few, express these unlovely feelings mostly through plots and factions, but better to outmaneuver them than just snuff them out, because Crusader Kings II is a long game, played over generations, and you don't want to burn time and resources better spent on your son's inheritance ending the Count of Podunk's delusions of grandeur instead. If you're rich and powerful, who cares who hates you? 4) Paradox will always have UI issues, I think. Crusader Kings II is vastly improved over earlier games, but there's still obscure bits everywhere. Fortunately, some valiant designer(s) added tooltips to literally everything in the game. Every number and object in the game has an associated pop-up box with information, like travel time for individual armies and hierarchy for the realm size value. A lot of the time, figuring out what's going on in Crusader Kings II is about finding the right thing to mouse over and get a tooltip that clears it up. Suggested Characters to Play on the September 15, 1066 Start, from Easiest to Hardest, and Why You Should Play Them Murchad Ua Briain, Petty King of Munster - Yeah, this is probably the best place to start. The player has about an even chance of forming the Kingdom of Ireland during Murchad's or his son Brian's reign, at which point you can start annexing parts of Wales, Søreyar, or even Brittany in order to take down Scotland. Once you've united all the Celtic lands of the Isles, invade England and reclaim Pyrdain for the heirs of Brian Boru! Svend II Estrid, King of Denmark - So what if you've got the Holy Roman Empire lurking at your doorstep? They have a civil war coming up once the game starts, whether from Burgundy or Italy, and that gives you enough time to make a marriage alliance with them or against them. Meanwhile, Norway is busy fighting with the Normans over England and Sweden has a succession crisis, so you're the only one really set to conquer Pomerania and Lithuania for Christendom. Once you've secured these kingdoms and doubled your territory, it's your choice whether to unite the Scandinavian lands under one rule or take on your neighbor to the south! Guilhèm VIII de Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine, Gascogne, & Poitou - You rule over three of France's nine duchies and could form the rival Kingdom of Aquitaine, if you could only break free. Lucky for you, your king is a fourteen-year-old child. Unlucky for you, you're forty-three and only have a seven-year-old daughter to inherit. Will you become the power behind the throne or get one of your own? Otto II von Nordheim, Duke of Bavaria - You're on the periphery of the Holy Roman Empire, but you have the most secure position. A few wars with your neighbors, nothing to gain the emperor's notice, and you can crown yourself King of Bavaria, making you a powerful vassal as well as a kingmaker. Or will you reach too far in your plotting like the historical Nordheimer family, which lost all of its lands when it turned against the emperor? Ioannes Doukas, Doux of Nikaea - Your half-brother rules an empire that has lasted eighteen hundred years, but a storm is coming. As his richest and most powerful vassal, will you help him stop the Turkish hordes, even if it would suit you more to see him weakened for the civil war that must soon break out over his idiot son and heir? Boleslaw 'the Bold' Piast, King of Poland - You rule over a united kingdom, but Seniority Succession means your brother, who owns half the country, is next in line. You must survive his intrigue and redistribute your lands among loyal followers, before the Premyslids of Bohemia or the Rurikovichs of Russia start to look your way. Alfonso VI Jimena, King of León - The Muslims are at the door, but your family has been granted a reprieve for a generation, now that the Umayyad Caliphate of Andalusia has fallen apart. You are the strongest of the three brother-kings, but two assassinations would make you the sole ruler of Galicia, León, and Castile. Surely your brothers would give their lives to see Spain freed from Muslim rule, even if you don't let them make the choice? There's a few other favorites that I'd recommend, like the Duke of Barcelona, the Duke of Provence, the Duke of Lower Lorraine, the King of Scotland, and the Duke of Apulia, but between the seven I've listed here, you'll get a full experience of everything the base game of Crusader Kings II has to offer. Hopefully we can start to hear some stories about people's games, if the stream has been any indicator!

You could, but inbred kids have a high chance of dying when they hit puberty. Maybe wait for him to come of age first?

Sadly, it's rather hard to make a Lord Mayor into a Lord. You'd have to give him a county (but not the one his town is in, that will disinherit him when you revoke the town), then revoke his town. If you do it quickly and smoothly enough, he'll become a Lord, with hereditary succession, but will hate you anyway for taking his town. It's really unfortunate, but raising Lowborn to nobility is not something for which this game is really designed. Also, crossed trowels over a pool of blood, I'd say.

Well, technically speaking, all Lowborn characters are "related" to each other, since the game just handles them all as part of one giant dynasty. The "inbreeding" between unrelated Lowborns has been a known bug for a while now. There used to be another Lowborn-related bug that was even better. Most popes in vanilla Crusader Kings II are Lowborn, so if you ever married a Lowborn woman, he'd never grant you a divorce, and he'd excommunicate you if you got caught killing her, because the game would consider them close relatives. Fun stuff.

I absolutely would, though probably not tonight. I feel terrible that I bought this, loved a few sessions with SecretAsianMan, pressured all my friends into buying it, and then have never managed to get around to it again.

Yeah! The amount by which Nick and Chris were distressed at marrying a thirty-five year old man to a thirteen-year-old made me feel really awful about the values this game has instilled in me.

It goes on sale every few months or so, take heart. Or, if you can't wait, buy the base game now and get all the DLC during the sale. Pretty much all the DLC that's five dollars and up are must-haves for repeated playthroughs, so you'll be getting it sooner or later.

Show us what date it is, you dog-hearted bastard. I'll only be impressed if you did that in under a hundred years. Just kidding, I'm a little impressed no matter what. You married into the king of France's line, right? For some reason, I always prefer conquest to marriage, even though the former is more inefficient.

All I know is that the Irish archaeology professor here gets really angry if you say it "Mer-Chad," like a half-fish half-Chad.

No, those are different ones, the Hohenzollern is many years old and from past installments of all the constituent games. I'd forgotten about the dude's Ireland-to-Egypt Let's Play with Crusader Kings II. It's actually a fairly good walkthrough of the challenges, expectations, and rewards at each level of rulership, even though it's from an older version. Thanks, Badfinger!

About two hours into the stream, Chris mentioned that games can start with Crusader Kings in 1066 and go all the way to 1964 with Hearts of Iron II: Armageddon. There are several online, but the most famous is a Let's Play of the Hohenzollern, minor counts in southern Germany and future emperors of the new German nation. The amazing thing here is how well the Let's Plays showcase the power of Paradox's games as story-generating engines. The simple recounting of events by the author of the Hohenzollern Let's Play, with very little roleplaying or interpretation, is several degrees better than some of the professional, published counterfactual and alternate-history sci-fi and fantasy that I've read over the years. It's just so cool, if you have any knowledge of a region, to see the history turn out just slightly different. It can be so striking.

For curious minds (the Wikipedia pages for the kings of Munster and for eleventh- and twelfth-century Ireland before the Anglo-Norman settlement in general being pretty abysmal), here is a genealogy page for Murchad mac Donnchada, the Thumbs' first player character. Oh, interesting! According to another Wikipedia page, Murchad was killed in 1068 fighting his nephew Toirdelbach ua Brian, king of Munster and de facto high king of Ireland from 1068 to 1086, after the former's father had been driven from the throne of Munster. Murchad's son, Bran or Brian, never even ruled So see, even with that fraught playthrough, they already did better than history! Well, not better than their nephew did in real life, but better than their own character.

I don't think I've ever posted in here, actually: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Gormongous

If I recall the buzz surrounding it, so many of the variables that would allow for really drastic overhauls of the game are still locked up in the executable itself and Firaxis has stated they have no intention of exposing them for modders. The closest we get to a total conversion mod is Civilization NiGHTS, which I've heard is a mostly successful attempt to rework the "unhappiness loop" and "carpet of doom" that are generally agreed to be the worst consequences of the game's design decisions.

I'm finally able to give back! I have the account information for an extra copy of Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece. It's a really different RTS that lets you play out the campaigns of the Peloponnesian War and Philip of Macedon at a really interesting variety of levels, kind of like a smaller but more intense Total War. Anyway, PM me and I'll get you the (temporary) email and password to download it, gratis. I can also mail you the optional CD, if you live in the US.

In short, yes. Pretty much every country has achieved world conquest or something like it in every Paradox game ever. There's someone out there with the patience and determination to do a WC with Bhutan in Europa Universalis III, so nothing surprises me anymore. The main problem with small countries or countries in the spheres of others means that, while you have less to do, what you can do is circumscribed by the larger powers, so in some ways you have to work even harder to keep apprised of both their situation and your own. What makes Ireland the tutorial island in Crusader Kings II is that you have no powerful neighbors, unless Scotland or England gets their shit together preternaturally fast. All the Irish lords are on equal footing, so there's less to miss if you're wearing (figurative) blinders. EDIT: If anyone would ever like me to coach them through their first playthrough of Crusader Kings II, I'm down. I spend my whole day in front of a computer and might as well put the six hundred hours(!) I have in this game to good use.