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Idle Thumbs 241: Suddenly the King of France

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Idle Thumbs 241:

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Suddenly the King of France

Your favorite creators are coming back, they've brought your favorite games, and to play them all you have to step into this skintight vibrating body suit. Plus, Nick returns to Crusader Kings 2 with disastrous (if unsurprising) results, and we stare straight into the surreal heart of the Frog Fractions 2 ARG.

Games Discussed: Rez Infinite, System Shock 3, Crusader Kings 2, Frog Fractions 2, Don't Starve Together

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Great Episode!

Only thing I could think of during the Frog Fractions Segment: If there's an incredibly complex, highly absurd and varying-in-nature ARG going on by the creator of Frog Fractions - is there no one asking themselves if this is Frog Fractions 2?
Especially since the production of all those additional games, websites, podcasts and whatnot surely take a lot of time and (kickstarter)money.

I for one would love it if he announced it in the end.

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there are only a few Crusader Kings II DLC categories. Some add music, portrait variety, how armies look on the map are all the micro DLC. The rest allow you to play as new factions, or enhances them in some way. All the DLC is added through patches to the vanilla game, you just won't be able to play those religions without the DLC enabled. :
Sword of Islam lets you play as a Muslim ruler.

Legacy of Rome adds content for the Byzantine Empire.

Sunset Invasion adds the Aztec Invasion. Turning this off is a good idea since the invasion won't happen.

The Republic lets you play as merchant republics.

The Old Gods moves the start date to 867 and lets you play as various flavors of pagans.

Sons Of Abraham lets you play as Jews and adds some religion game play features.

Rajas of India lets you play as a Indian religion.

Charlemagne moves the start date back to 769, probably as far back as it will go. (I secretly hope for a rise of Islam DLC)

Way of Life added some more character personality options for deeper role playing.

Horse Lords allows you to play nomadic factions and reworked how steppe nomads operate.

 

I usually play with all the DLC turned on except Sunset, since it really messes up late game. But if you start at 769 and have an awesome empire Sunset can be a fun late game challenge. In classic Crusader Kings style Sunset Invasion also adds a new STD to the game.

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In classic Crusader Kings style Sunset Invasion also adds a new STD to the game.

 

For a minute I was wondering what historical thing STD stood for.

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For a minute I was wondering what historical thing STD stood for.

Lovers pox*

 

Accidentally becoming King has happened a few times to me. In one of my earliest successful games I was the King of Ireland and was able to use my marriage alliance with the Holy Roman Empire to claim the Kingdom of France. Then I went on Crusade and became King of Jerusalem as well. Due to some succession law stuff I was not paying attention to I lost the Kingdom of Ireland to a brother when my ruler died. Quickly realizing how much of a pain managing my remaining two kingdoms would be for a newbie I gave Jerusalem away to another brother and switched to French culture to appease my vassals. Jerusalem quickly got swallowed back up by various Muslim kingdoms, sorry bro.

Another time I had married into the line of succession for the Kingdom of Italy while being the King of Navarra, but wasn't heavily pursuing it because I was busy with the Reconquista. However some faction in Italy realized how awesome I was and successfully overthrew the King of Italy to install me in his place. The game failed to notify me of the revolt until I became King.

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Great Episode!

Only thing I could think of during the Frog Fractions Segment: If there's an incredibly complex, highly absurd and varying-in-nature ARG going on by the creator of Frog Fractions - is there no one asking themselves if this is Frog Fractions 2?

Especially since the production of all those additional games, websites, podcasts and whatnot surely take a lot of time and (kickstarter)money.

I for one would love it if he announced it in the end.

 

Doubtful, because the kickstarter made it pretty clear it'll be an actual game that secretly is frog fractions 2 and that once it's discovered, the backers will get a copy of the game for free. If it's an ARG that people may or may not be participating in, I think a lot of backers would feel cheated.

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Hnnngh.. Nick's story made me want to play Crusader Kings II again so much.

The last time I played the game, I became the King of Norway through some good luck and a dash of filicide (my memory about the affair is a bit hazy so some of this might be off): I was playing as the King of Ireland and my mission to conquer England bit by bit was going nicely but the progress was slow. Everything changed when I realized that one of my daughters was next in line (or the second) to the throne of Norway. I immediately send my best assassins to kill the king (or the next in line), and after a some time (and probably a couple of loads) I managed to get rid of him. Eventually my daughter became the queen, and there was a huge civil war in which my daughter needed my help (Obviously, she was like eight or something. Probably hadn't even opened a tavern yet). I sent my troops to Norway to deal with the rebels. Then I took the next logical step and assassinated my daughter to become the King of Ireland and Norway.

It had to be done.

There was no other option.

You would have made the same decision!


I stopped playing soon after that. No idea why.

land_of_salmon_stout.jpg


Edit: I just noticed that I owned half of Iceland as well.

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Oh man, I love Crusader Kings. I'd love to see one of the thumbs try the After the End mod that allows you to play in post-apocalyptic North America, where Catholicism is only one of many religions in the game.

The Pope of St.Louis must contend with: the Abbess-General of Quebec, a feminist St. Ursiline church of Canada; the Evangelical Columbian Confederacy; the President of the Americanists, who worship the true gods of the past, the giant statues of Lincoln, Adams, ect; the Rust Cults of Michigan, who pray in great factories; the CEO of the Consumerists, who believe that the almighty dollar will strike them down unless sufficiently worshipped; the Atomicists, who willingly expose themselves to the holy radiation of the great ones; and the Cetics of California, who are totally into gurus and stuff, man. That in addition to various mesoamerican and native American faiths, as well as Caribbean Voodoo.

It's pretty rad.

I also, in the tiny town of Niverville, in the central Canadian province of Manitoba, was treated to Khorne playing at the town fair.

I was treated to this actual dialouge:

"When's Khorne playing?"

"The Corn stand is just over there."

"Really? There's no stage."

"Why would Corn need a stage? A little stand does just fine."

"Whoa, that's a low blow."

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The Hidetaki Miyazaki quote that made the rounds this week seems very relevant to the reader mail/ensuing discussion on polishing the fun out of games:
 

"Well, there aren’t any undiscovered items, or specific bits of gameplay," he says. "But Dark Souls is in some ways an incomplete game, and I like to think that it has been completed by players, by their discoveries, as they moved along. I’d love to say that the nature of this incompleteness was completely deliberate, but it is both deliberate and by accident, in different ways." 
 
Miyazaki reveals that during development he thinks about the different ways that players can enjoy the experience. "I am conscious of that when I make these games: I try to make a game that has beautiful open spaces, gaps, room for players to enjoy it in ways that were not authored," he says. "I never want it to be where you have to follow the rules completely, where you have to do things exactly as the designers intended. 
 
"I like to think that this way of creating – leaving spaces – is satisfying. So if there are incomplete aspects of Dark Souls III, please forgive us. When the player is inside the world of the game, there are various places where they feel they may be able to peek behind the curtain, pry open a window and see beyond."

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I am genuinely curious. In addition to Korn, is there also a Khorne, pronounced the same way?

 

Crusader Kings exists in that EVE space for me. I've played it for a few hours, but even sort of using walkthroughs as a rough guide, I immediately get trapped in analysis paralysis. I love hearing stories, I'll watch it, I've bought DLC... I can't sit down and play it. Each component is eminently understandable, but looking at all of it feels completely overwhelming.

 

Somehow, EU does not feel that way at all. I haven't played a lot of it, but I was able to jump in and, right or mostly wrong, make decisions with confidence.

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there are only a few Crusader Kings II DLC categories. Some add music, portrait variety, how armies look on the map are all the micro DLC. The rest allow you to play as new factions, or enhances them in some way. All the DLC is added through patches to the vanilla game, you just won't be able to play those religions without the DLC enabled. :

Sword of Islam lets you play as a Muslim ruler.

Legacy of Rome adds content for the Byzantine Empire.

Sunset Invasion adds the Aztec Invasion. Turning this off is a good idea since the invasion won't happen.

The Republic lets you play as merchant republics.

The Old Gods moves the start date to 867 and lets you play as various flavors of pagans.

Sons Of Abraham lets you play as Jews and adds some religion game play features.

Rajas of India lets you play as a Indian religion.

Charlemagne moves the start date back to 769, probably as far back as it will go. (I secretly hope for a rise of Islam DLC)

Way of Life added some more character personality options for deeper role playing.

Horse Lords allows you to play nomadic factions and reworked how steppe nomads operate.

 

I usually play with all the DLC turned on except Sunset, since it really messes up late game. But if you start at 769 and have an awesome empire Sunset can be a fun late game challenge. In classic Crusader Kings style Sunset Invasion also adds a new STD to the game.

 

Cordeos has the right of it, Nick. The vast majority of the DLC for Crusader Kings 2 is simply the cosmetic addition of music, portraits, and unit models. The ten larger and more substantive DLC entries generally enable different religions/cultures than Latin/Orthodox Christianity and different start dates from 1066 and after, without affecting gameplay otherwise. To be honest, none of them are as good as the base experience of a Latin Christian lord in the High Middle Ages, so the only "essential" DLCs are Legacy of Rome (for professional standing armies called "retinues"), Sons of Abraham (for the massive addition of events for Catholicism), and Way of Life (for more events and the "lifestyle focus" mechanic).

 

Personally, I love when Nick talks about CK2 because I know the game well enough to see the cheats that Nick's memory has made with the narrative. France does not start out as an elective monarchy, which is what Nick describes when he talks about the count/duke of Anjou being next in line for the throne, so it's clear that there was a faction revolt against France's law of primogeniture succession (probably owing to the minority of Philip I, an unhistorical sticking point for the AI due to the mechanics of reign duration and regencies). Actually, I wonder if Nick was elected King of France (rather than inheriting the title) because his wealth and power as King of England made him a desirable candidate and because he was still eligible for the crown through his possession of the duchy of Normandy... Anyway, the Aztec invasion triggered by the Sunset Invasion DLC (to be frank, Paradox's only "bad" DLC for CK2 because of its unhistorical gameplay and silly writing) only happens between 1250 or 1350, rather than a generation after 1066, so there are maybe a hundred and fifty years that Nick has skipped at some point in his story...

 

It's also difficult to recommend starting points for CK2. Paradox's default recommendations tend to be the rulers at a given point with the most power to have influenced history, rather than the most interesting scenarios to play out. As Chris points out, everyone recommends Ireland in 1066 as a starting point because you lack the power to make any mistakes that'll really ruin your game. For an experienced player, the problem is to find a lord with enough power that you don't have to spend the first generation or two waiting and watching, but also not have so much power that you're immediately body-slamming all your neighbors to death (I'm looking at you, HRE, you're the biggest disappointment of all). Between my professional studies and my time in the game, I feel like the most interesting starts for 1066 are:

  • King Boreslaw the Bold of Poland. You hold a self-contained kingdom that is relatively stable if not wealthy. You have all the pagan lands to the north and east available for expansion, but first you have to deal with your brother, the duke of Mazovia, who holds the richer half of your kingdom and is next in line for the crown.
  • King Svend of Denmark. Another self-contained kingdom. Norway will be occupied for the next fifty years with the struggle for England, whereas Sweden will be occupied by the inevitable revolt of Erik the Heathen, duke of Uppland. The Holy Roman Empire will come calling for Holstein once it's done depriving France of the Low Countries, but that's enough time to get some powerful alliances and possibly pick up some Baltic lands to fund a larger army, so long as your bastard son, the duke of Jylland, doesn't get in the way.
  • Any of the five German stem duchies, especially Duke Otto of Bavaria. All of these duchies are able to expand within the empire and keep it weak in order to make themselves strong, but the crown of Bavaria is within especially easy reach of the duke of Bavaria if you can conquer Carinthia. Once you're big enough, the decision is whether to break free of the empire, probably crippling it for the rest of the game, or become emperor yourself and use your numerous personal holdings to make a truly powerful empire.
  • The kings of Castile, León, or Galicia. Any of the three is heir to the two others. Kill your siblings or work with them in an alliance to capture the entirety of the Iberian peninsula, then look to France or Morocco for a greater empire.
  • Duke Guilhèm of Aquitaine. You hold three duchies and own the counties for two more. That's as many as the rest of France combined. Philip of France, the boy-king, is your liege but has no de jure power over you, so it's up to you to become kingmaker in the still-new kingdom of France or to break away and become your own king of Aquitaine, to expand into the fragmented lands of the crowns of Aragon and Burgundy. The only problem? You're forty-one years old, with a wife of thirty-two, and your only heir is your seven-year-old daughter Ainès.
  • Duchess Matilda of Tuscany. You own a third of the extremely rich crown of Italy, but you are a woman in a time when being a woman was even worse than being a priest or a commoner. A prudent matrilineal marriage with a talented son low in the line of succession of some other title will allow you to annex the surrounding bishoprics and towns, maybe even the weakened duchy of Lombardy, and give your son (or daughter, if you want to keep the streak going) a crown for his baptismal gift.
  • Duke Boso of Provence. Of all the lords in the fragmented crown of Burgundy, you're the best positioned to unite them. You hold two duchies, but you have a different culture from your liege the Holy Roman Emperor, making him likely to take notice in a way that he wouldn't with the stem dukes of Germany proper. Expand slowly and marry wisely, so that you can become king without the emperor coming for your titles — or so that, when he does come, you can fight back!

 

Crusader Kings exists in that EVE space for me. I've played it for a few hours, but even sort of using walkthroughs as a rough guide, I immediately get trapped in analysis paralysis. I love hearing stories, I'll watch it, I've bought DLC... I can't sit down and play it. Each component is eminently understandable, but looking at all of it feels completely overwhelming.

 

I won't be online for most of the holiday season, since I'm taking a break from the internet in general and the forums in particular for the holidays, but once the new year comes, my offer in the Random Thoughts about Video Games thread, to be a helpline via voice chat for a new player streaming their CK2 game, still stands. Ninety-Three and I tried multiplayer, which was workable but not great for the tendency of him to ask, "What's this button do?" and for me to answer, "What button?" and for us to spend the next five minutes trying to get on the same page. A stream would be so much easier!

 

I also agree that Europa Universalis 4 seems like a game that's more Nick's jam. As opposed to Crusader Kings 2, which is all about the individual and the family as vessels for power in the Middle Ages, EU4 makes the state itself, expressed in CK2 as a gestalt made out of the personal possessions of multiple people, the fundamental vessel for power. Therefore, EU4 is much more forgiving than CK2 when the player chooses to act against their perceived enemies, because there's not the concept in the former's systems of the state as a heterogeneous entity that needs to balance the interests of multiple people. You can just attack the person who threatens you without the worry that the person threatening you works for you and therefore you have no basis to attack them, regardless of how they feel about you.

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I will only add that some muslim kingdoms also offer a good starting point in CK2 - they where more richer and the sucession law is much simpler do deal. Now I just wonder, the music which Nick heard is from the Song of Yuletide dlc? I didn´t know it was funny song, so I never download this mod. Which reminds me that EU IV now has a Sabaton music dlc...I am not a big fan of heavy metal, but is kind cool hear a music with lyrics somewhat match the theme of the game, this is one reason why I love Metal Gear Revengence, the songs which play during the bosses, all have lyrics based on the bosses you face, which make the fights amazing and very anime.

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Doubtful, because the kickstarter made it pretty clear it'll be an actual game that secretly is frog fractions 2 and that once it's discovered, the backers will get a copy of the game for free. If it's an ARG that people may or may not be participating in, I think a lot of backers would feel cheated.

 

For reference, the Kickstarter reward reads:

 

 

Once The Jig is Up*, you get a digital copy of Frog Fractions 2. The package you download will not be named "Frog Fractions 2." If you figure out what it is named before The Jig is Up*, email me and I'll send you a download code immediately.

 

"The Jig is Up" is probably one of the best things I've seen in a Kickstarter campaign.

 

Edit: Oh, and this as well from the pitch:

 

 

Additional spoiler-free details: it will be considerably larger in scope than Frog Fractions, containing multiple levels of secrets that will take you many play sessions to discover. As such, it will be a downloadable title and will cost money. It will initially be available for PC, with Mac and Linux ports to come soon after.

 

Edit 2: And finally, from the FAQ

What if nobody ever finds Frog Fractions 2? If it gets to be six months or a year, I will probably leak the information in such a way that it can still spread via word of mouth. I don't think that will be necessary, though. I have found that the Internet is very good at discovering cool things.

 

Since the original ETA was 18 months, and the campaign ended in March 2014, and he's been dropping hints as the FAQ suggested he might, it's reasonable to assume that Frog Fractions might be out there already somewhere.

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Doubtful, because the kickstarter made it pretty clear it'll be an actual game that secretly is frog fractions 2 and that once it's discovered, the backers will get a copy of the game for free. If it's an ARG that people may or may not be participating in, I think a lot of backers would feel cheated.

 

Maybe the ARG is just a giant distraction. It just seems too intricate and too all over the place and too obvious. I would love it if they kept dragging this out and then randomly one day, just announced the actual game to no fanfare. That seems to be the one thing nobody expects.

 

But then in a twist, Frog Fractions 1.5 is secretly the sequel to Frog Fractions 2.

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The Rez vibrator is one of my favorite oddities in the history of gaming, and this piece about it (mildly NSFW) remains one of my favorite pieces of delightful video game writing.  I super duper want to see this body suit in action, that's also delightful and amazing.

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I won't be online for most of the holiday season, since I'm taking a break from the internet in general and the forums in particular for the holidays, but once the new year comes, my offer in the Random Thoughts about Video Games thread, to be a helpline via voice chat for a new player streaming their CK2 game, still stands. Ninety-Three and I tried multiplayer, which was workable but not great for the tendency of him to ask, "What's this button do?" and for me to answer, "What button?" and for us to spend the next five minutes trying to get on the same page. A stream would be so much easier!

 

I also agree that Europa Universalis 4 seems like a game that's more Nick's jam. As opposed to Crusader Kings 2, which is all about the individual and the family as vessels for power in the Middle Ages, EU4 makes the state itself, expressed in CK2 as a gestalt made out of the personal possessions of multiple people, the fundamental vessel for power. Therefore, EU4 is much more forgiving than CK2 when the player chooses to act against their perceived enemies, because there's not the concept in the former's systems of the state as a heterogeneous entity that needs to balance the interests of multiple people. You can just attack the person who threatens you without the worry that the person threatening you works for you and therefore you have no basis to attack them, regardless of how they feel about you.

 

Oh hell no I'm not suggesting EU4 for Nick! That would not produce stories nearly as interesting. I'm just suggesting it for me, and I agree precisely with your assessment as to why.

 

I have been thinking about you and CK2 and streaming. You made that offer a while back, we seem fairly gaming-compatible, and since I've done some streaming and video stuff, I think that would be super fun to try either live or recorded if you're up for it sometime. 3 goals- 1) Derive some enjoyment out of CK2 from actually PLAYING it for once, 2) Learn stuff about how it all works/maybe teach some people some stuff, 3) Wacky Crusader Kings shit.

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4) Weird history lessons

Yesssss.

 

I am both happy and sad that I never had the depth Gorm has in his education. A History Degree: a useful out in any discussion concerning the past.

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