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I thought the Viking DLC was going to be the last. It comes out Monday? Might have to start a new game.

 

They announced the Sons of Abraham DLC like a month ago, to not that much fanfare. It's mostly about adding pilgrimages and cardinals for Catholics and fixing a lot of what sucked about Sword of Islam. For some reason, totally ineffable, I really hope it's $10 and not $15.

 

Oh, there's also going to be Jews, too. Finally.

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After having played for four hours, I can do a quick roundup.

 

This is the DLC that makes Crusader Kings II feel like a complete game. Religious events are now everywhere when you're a Catholic. Religious decisions, too. You can pack undesirable courtiers (or heirs) off to monasteries, petition the pope to make your courtier a bishop somewhere, petition the pope for money, petition the pope for the title of someone he hates, go on pilgrimage, and so much more. Most of it's controlled by the weird, obfuscated college of cardinals that basically has you dumping money into a bucket in the hopes that you've dumped more than everyone else, but the effect on the feel of play is undeniable.

 

Everything just seems better tuned, and even though there are some big bugs as always (a broken decision basically gives the pope infinite piety, meaning that moral authority never goes down and therefore heresies never happen, plus apparently the pope can marry right now. Oh, and because of a bug with the Jewish religion, the Mongols spawn with a couple million soldiers), I was still getting a bunch of really plausible outcomes. The Spanish kingdoms united under Castile, nearly pushed the Muslims out, then broke apart in a succession war, during which the Almoravids ate up all their gains (and then France came in, which has been annoying since day one, but devs still can't give the AI a good reason not to grab land in Spain). The German emperor got excommunicated, which started a civil war, and he made an antipope in response. Byzantium lost Anatolia to a jihad, which started a civil war that put a new dynasty on the throne.

 

Yeah, the Fatimids are still rock solid and factions still fire a bit too often, but I truly think this is the best that CK2 has ever been. At least until infinite Mongols.

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■adventurers are now less common

Thank goodness. I wonder if my Georgia game will be playable now.

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They usually include a lot of the changes (outside of content) in the patches. So how necessary is the actual DLC vs playing with the patch?

 

Almost all of the balance tweaks are in the patch, not the DLC. The changes to levies, which are now deeply reduced by realm size and vassal opinion, make a lot of difference to the ebb and flow of the game; the Holy Roman Emperor can only field about ten thousand men at the 1066 start, so while he can still stop Italy from revolting day one, he can't stop it forever, so Italy's mostly independent by the mid-twelfth century. High crown authority offsets that, so Byzantium still starts out a monster, but one lost jihad and they're a paper tiger.

 

So yeah, the patch is a big deal, but I would really recommend putting Sons of Abraham on your watch list. It just fleshes out the experience of playing a Catholic ruler so much. Hospitallers offer me five hundred gold to build castles in my territory, my sons go off to join the Templars, the pilgrimage event chains (while a bit boring after a while) are beautifully written... I could go on for a while. This is exactly the opposite response I had to The Old Gods.

 

Thank goodness. I wonder if my Georgia game will be playable now.

 

Yeah! Yeah, it's good. I've played up until 1170 as king of Sicily and Africa (ironman, which is cool) and I've had exactly one adventurer: a fourth son of the Almoravid sultan, who hit me with eight thousand troops right as I was fighting a war with Byzantium to get back the heel of my kingdom. I don't know if the opportunism was on purpose, but it felt good, because it made me white peace with Byzantium in order to face the new threat.

 

 

EDIT: Awesome, the united kingdoms of Scotland and Norway just split between two infant twin daughters, Martha and Mor. I hadn't realized how much playing Europa Universalis IV was bumming me out, but Crusader Kings II is just so much more alive. Stuff happens all the time and you feel like you're being told the most amazing story, as opposed to just growing as big as you can as fast as you can until the devs slap you on the wrist and say, "Nuh uh! Not too big or fast!"

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You might have just doomed my evenings this week re-starting my Georgia game to see if I can hack it.

 

I might just load my current game and watch the world explode with the new balance changes.

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You might have just doomed my evenings this week re-starting my Georgia game to see if I can hack it.

 

I might just load my current game and watch the world explode with the new balance changes.

 

It'll be different, for sure. But it's still much saner than immediately post-The Old Gods. I've had several more cool things happen: a French queen, deposed, fought her usurper for independence instead and created the kingdom of Aquitaine; my cousin on the Scottish throne was attacked by my nephew the adventurer, brother to the duke of Benevento; the Fatimids finally collapsed after they lost a jihad against me, then lost everything south of Cairo to a rebellion that created a new kingdom of Nubia. I'd go even so far to say that it's saner than it's ever been since launch.

 

Also, Georgia is insanely hard unless you swear fealty to Byzantium, in which case it becomes trivial unless the emperor maxes out crown authority.

 

 

EDIT: Some people are having even more amazing things happen to them: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?736028-From-Holy-Kingdom-to-Unholy-nightmare-Why-this-is-the-best-DLC-yet

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It'll be different, for sure. But it's still much saner than immediately post-The Old Gods. I've had several more cool things happen: a French queen, deposed, fought her usurper for independence instead and created the kingdom of Aquitaine; my cousin on the Scottish throne was attacked by my nephew the adventurer, brother to the duke of Benevento; the Fatimids finally collapsed after they lost a jihad against me, then lost everything south of Cairo to a rebellion that created a new kingdom of Nubia. I'd go even so far to say that it's saner than it's ever been since launch.

 

Also, Georgia is insanely hard unless you swear fealty to Byzantium, in which case it becomes trivial unless the emperor maxes out crown authority.

 

 

EDIT: Some people are having even more amazing things happen to them: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?736028-From-Holy-Kingdom-to-Unholy-nightmare-Why-this-is-the-best-DLC-yet

 

I'm going it independent and had a good portion of Hungry for a while, but things started to go south when I got multiple Norse adventurers from way up north coming down to mess with me. Now the Byzantines are eating my personal demense one county at a time and I'm losing bits of Hungry to the son of the deposed ruler. I don't remember exactly the state I was in when I last shut it off in exasperation, but it was looking pretty dire.

 

I only comment on the explosion of the world because I figured the new levy rules would suddenly put some of the large countries at a disadvantage, followed by multiple civil wars and general unrest.

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Things I've been loving about this game:

  • My brother joining the Hospitaller Order, becoming rich, then leaving the order as an adventurer to press his claim on Scotland via our mother.
  • Raising a perfect heir with all seven virtues, then having him decide on his own to join a monastery when he came of age.
  • A peasant revolt freed Nubia from the Fatamids, then the Ilkhanate destroyed the Fatamids, so now Nubia stands alone as the sole bastion of Ethiopian and Miaphysite pride.

If you haven't been able to tell, I really like the expansion of religion in this DLC. The first two are things that happened, while not all the time, more than not at all in history. Having monasteries be present, even just through traits and events, is damn cool.

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The notes for Crusader Kings II beta patch 2.0.2 include two bullet points:

  • Added a "Depose Antipope" Casus Belli
  • Added an "Antiking" faction. The leader usurps the liege's primary title, deposes the antipope and passes papal investiture. The Pope can be called into the resulting war.

I am losing my mind. Never have we gotten closer to being able to recreating the Investiture Contest ingame! If the Holy Roman Emperor changes to free investiture, gets excommunicated, raises an antipope, and then his own vassals depose him to return to papal investiture, I will strip off all my clothes and run naked in the streets for hours.

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Man, I'm started as a Suomenusko count in the small two county petty kingdom that's up there between Finland and Karelia. I made it all the way up to the point where I had all of Bjarmia and Karelia, as well as a smattering of other counties. The succession disaster hit. I had four sons, the first two of which were complete idiots and the second two had some of the best stats I've ever seen in my own children. Unfortuantely, I died early and my two dutchies were split, leaving my crappy heir (whom I'm now stuck wtih) with Karelia and one of my really great brothers with Bjarma. I immediately had two internal wars, resolved the first and lost the second, busting me down to two counties.

 

I saved up for a while, had 75% of my liege's troops in my faction, then tried to take back over. I called in my two brothers, but both of them turned me down and joined the war on the other side. I was destroyed, even with the mercs I hired, and put in jail. Then my next door brother came knocking and reunited Bjarmia and Karelia, leaving me in jail with the two crappiest counties in the kingdom. I don't know if it's going to be possible to recover from this. Stupid gavelkind and stupid not being able to pick which of your heirs to play as.

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Paradox has announced that their next "expansion" DLC will double the map size to add India. I'm as thrilled as the next person, although I was hoping that Doomdark's talk about the remaining DLC being more intimate RP-focused affairs would actually have some effect. Also, I distinctly remember one of the devs saying a couple years ago when Crusader Kings II launched that they'd never expand the map east, because the system and design requirements would be too great. Oh well, we'll see, right?

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I hadn't heard that. I'm not sure how I feel about a new map. I always thought that was the point of moving over to EU.

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Here's my CKII story. I actually submitted this to Idle Thumbs Questions email before I had an account here, so in the unlikely case they ever read it on air, I'm sorry to double submit. But it seems more appropriate to post it here. This was the first game of CKII I'd ever played.
 
I started as a lord in Ireland. I then took over about half of the country. As I went, I granted my sons their own territory to ensure my family's hold on the thrown. Then, one of my vassals rebelled and managed to take over the entire country. Chalking this failure up to my own inexperience, I took the knee, stood down, and became a vassal of my former vassal. Curses!
 
I was sort of expecting the game to end at this point... but no, not in CKII. Soon after there was a huge civil war with three factions: the rogue vassal, myself, and my eldest son. The country rallied to my eldest son, who won in battle and proceeded to throw me in jail. He then had me executed. That's right. My son. Executed me.
 
Of course, all of you know, this meant that I then became my son. Aaaaaaand I was once again in control of 3/4ths of Ireland. 
 
From all this, my character gained the "Kinslayer" trait. Fortunately the pope was nice enough to absolve me of my sins.

 

Love CK2.

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Yup, I love it too. My favourite turn of events similar to that saw my death as lord of a small part of Italy's boot lead immediately to my direct control of an expanded Holy Roman Empire. Marriages. Can't beat 'em.

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The best thing about this game is how every single game is different.  I've started an Ironman Muenster game about four times now and the first three were completely different.

 

Plus, watching those Thumbs guys play is probably one of the most entertaining set of videos I've seen in a while.

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I suspect my fall will be so calamitous that I may just resign and start another game. I might go for vanilla next time. 

 

The fall can be the best part. I once lost most of the Iberian Peninsula after uniting the entire thing in a Holy War. The enemies killed half my sons and converted the others into their own leaders (I didn't know that could happen). My character committed suicide, which was super dark but seemed completely plausible. I managed to piece things back together and rise back up to conquer most of my lost lands before the end of the game. I had whole crusades that pit relatives vs. relatives.

 

One of my favorite things in CKII is when you die and are completely shocked at who you wake up as because you haven't been paying close enough attention to your dynasty. Keep playing!

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I just got into this game after trying for like a year (like every 6 months), and man, is it fun. I'm trying to create the Empire of Brittanica. I just became king of Ireland after like 5 generations of trying, and at one point losing about 5 counties. Luckily I was able to gain them back with my next ruler.

 

One of the most satisfying thing I've done is grant a random courtier with the Content trait a county and just having him be the happiest little vassal ever. This game is so fun.

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I plaued about two hours of RoI last night. The way that the new counties and countries are arranged is... poor. I tried starting out at the Stamford Bridge start as a couple different counts and found that the dutchies are all mis-aligned. The game starts with de jure wars all over India as the dukes re-arrange counties to get what's properly theirs (screwing me in the process.) I eventually decided to play as a duke however, and I had tons of options on how to expand because of all that strife, so I guess it's a plus or a minus depending on what you want to do. Addtiionaly, a friend was flipping between different times taking a look at possible starts and came across one king who was running at 72/9 demense size.

 

The caste system is interesting, the new religeons don't seem to have a lot of flavor to them, but that might change as time goes on. Some of the new UI features are awesome, but some are also broken, and the new UI skin is pretty hard to look at. I like how the traits now list "same trait relations bonus" and "opposite trait penalty" for things like Brave and Craven, but I've seen several tooltips that list "NONE: +10" for some reason.

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I plaued about two hours of RoI last night. The way that the new counties and countries are arranged is... poor. I tried starting out at the Stamford Bridge start as a couple different counts and found that the dutchies are all mis-aligned. The game starts with de jure wars all over India as the dukes re-arrange counties to get what's properly theirs (screwing me in the process.) I eventually decided to play as a duke however, and I had tons of options on how to expand because of all that strife, so I guess it's a plus or a minus depending on what you want to do. Addtiionaly, a friend was flipping between different times taking a look at possible starts and came across one king who was running at 72/9 demense size.

 

The caste system is interesting, the new religeons don't seem to have a lot of flavor to them, but that might change as time goes on. Some of the new UI features are awesome, but some are also broken, and the new UI skin is pretty hard to look at. I like how the traits now list "same trait relations bonus" and "opposite trait penalty" for things like Brave and Craven, but I've seen several tooltips that list "NONE: +10" for some reason.

 

Honestly, sounds like a perfectly typical launch for CK2 DLC.

 

And ugh. You better have some post about having crazy fun, Dewar, because otherwise you're confirming everything bad that I suspected from Rajas of India. Religions have some interesting features, but are ultimately shallow and bland, like every time Paradox has added a new religion or heresy to the game (except Norse, because Vikings are apparently worth the effort and Jews aren't). The sources are too scarce for much of the period, so there are a lot of ridiculous and unworkable starts (like when they added 867, which is full of bad guesswork and in-jokes like "House Aspergers"). The de jure setup is under-researched and poorly balanced, like every time Paradox adds more provinces to the map (West Africa is still a crazy broken mess, but the devs have stated on the forum that it works well enough not to receive any more attention).

 

I feel like I'm swinging back to the policy I had with Paradox in 2009 and before: wait and see. Since they're on Steam now, I get the added bonus of sales, although it's been four months and Sons of Abraham still doesn't get included in the blanket CK2 sales, so maybe not.

 

There are some great glitches and oversights this time around, though.

yM77uAO.jpg

 

 

EDIT: Aww, the image of a gay man getting pregnant by his lover doesn't work: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?764733-My-king-just-got-pregnant...

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I was having fun once I found a good start but, so far at least, the DLC doesn't seem to have added a ton. The added map size might be worth $15 to some people, but I was pretty happy with the land that we already had. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather have had a China expansion. It's too late for Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but there was still a lot of dynastic strife going on near the turn of the millenium.

 

I'll certainly report back after I've had some more time with it. 

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I was having fun once I found a good start but, so far at least, the DLC doesn't seem to have added a ton. The added map size might be worth $15 to some people, but I was pretty happy with the land that we already had. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather have had a China expansion. It's too late for Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but there was still a lot of dynastic strife going on near the turn of the millenium.

 

I'll certainly report back after I've had some more time with it. 

 

Paradox has said outright that they won't do China because it involves almost doubling the map and the engine can barely handle it as is, but then again those were the exact reasons they gave for not including India two years ago. I think they'll go with whatever makes the most high-profile DLC, in the end. People lose their mind when offered new start dates, new areas, and new religions to play. In contrast, for all the good Sons of Abraham did to the base Catholic game, it didn't get a quarter the press of The Old Gods or Rajas of India.

 

My hope continues to be that they do a realm-management/event-pack DLC, maybe with fixes for factions, succession laws, and the Holy Roman Empire, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen, despite two years of fan petitions and Paradox's statements right around patch 2.0 that all future DLCs would focus on the "internal" game. I plan to buy Rajas of India because playing the game makes my geography of a given region rock solid, but otherwise...

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Anyone see anything interesting in the steam workshop? That was honestly the most exciting part to me, centralizing what felt like a really fragmented and insular modding community, at least to me. Glancing through it, nothing really earth shattering is there yet, but I'm seeing a couple of little tweaks already, and hopefully that can help Paradox satisfy hardcore powerplayer folks and newer or less intense players. I'm hoping to have a much easier time swapping in and out little adjustments, and a tiny bit of customization goes a long way for me getting into a thing. Was EU4's steam workshop integration good? I don't own it, but it seems like it'd be a pretty similar situation.

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Anyone see anything interesting in the steam workshop? That was honestly the most exciting part to me, centralizing what felt like a really fragmented and insular modding community, at least to me. Glancing through it, nothing really earth shattering is there yet, but I'm seeing a couple of little tweaks already, and hopefully that can help Paradox satisfy hardcore powerplayer folks and newer or less intense players. I'm hoping to have a much easier time swapping in and out little adjustments, and a tiny bit of customization goes a long way for me getting into a thing. Was EU4's steam workshop integration good? I don't own it, but it seems like it'd be a pretty similar situation.

 

The integration is good, but Steam Workshop has a filesize limit of fifty megs, which means that most of the best modders, who work on big TC projects like the Historical Immersion Project or CK2 Plus, don't bother to package and split their stuff so it works on the workshop. In the case of EU4, the biggest and best mod is MEIOU & Taxes, which is on there but uploaded almost at a week's delay.

 

The only mod for Crusader Kings 2 that I see on there right now and that I know to be respected in the community is Crusader Kings Z, which is fun but mostly a goof.

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