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Okay, I'm about ten years away from a complete 1066 to 1453 playthrough as the Stenkil kings of Sweden. Most of my praise of the game as it is currently still stands, but I have a few sharper critiques:

  • The council system from the Conclave DLC is cool for maybe fifty years and then is the dumbest and most annoying busywork in a Paradox game since calculating supply weights in Victoria 2. In just under four hundred years of gameplay, I have had twenty-two factional revolts to "empower the council." Considering that it took me maybe seventy-five years to disempower the council, after I got bored of buying favors from my vassals to do the basic business of rulership, that is a revolt every fourteen years. That is too many revolts, especially since I am an experienced player who was using opinion thresholds, bribes, non-aggression pacts, and my spymaster to keep my vassals out of that faction. The problem, I think, is that there are no criteria barring vassals from the "empower the council" faction except for opinion thresholds: Any vassal with an opinion of less than +50 will join the faction and they won't leave unless they're +80 or above. The wiki tells me that the faction stops being a high priority if the council has the power to vote on laws and wars, but it's still stupid how it's done. No matter what you do, vassals will keep trickling into the faction slowly, until there are enough for a revolt, and then you get the ten-year opinion bonus that'll keep the faction from revolting again until it expires (although I have had back-to-back "empower the council" revolts twice). If only vassals that wanted a position on the council joined the faction, or if only "powerful" vassals did, that'd be one thing, but as it stands it's basically a system deliberately designed to nullify the best practices of vassal management. I hate it.
  • The minor epidemics, the everyday diseases like slow fever and smallpox, are too common and too lethal. This is usually the case with a new mechanic that's featured in a DLC, but it's still frustrating because hospitals do nothing (I have yet to see the +50% disease resistance of my capital city affect anything over the course of a hundred years) and doctors are as likely to maim you as save you (which wouldn't be too bad or too inaccurate, except the average character is seriously ill two to five times in an average seventy-year life). The coming of the Black Death is great, with your court huddled indoors and praying for it to go away, but it's lessened when an outbreak of consumption across three counties has largely the same effect. My current ruler, in his fifties, has five children and seven siblings. Six of those siblings have died from diseases or from complications relating to treatment, as have three of those children. We're a family of mask-wearing one-legged mutants, thanks to the futile ministrations of our doctors, and it's impossibly silly. Unless Paradox fixes things, it's advised to turn the setting for "minor epidemics" way down.
  • As a side effect of the high lethality accompanying disease, alliances have gone from one of the most transparent mechanics in the game to a fiddly mess that often screws you over. It used to be that a blood or marriage relation between close relatives (grandparents to grandchildren) allied the two parties. Apparently, that was being exploited, especially in multiplayer, because the AI tries its best to fulfill alliances, whether or not they're viable, while human players pick their battles, so Paradox made two changes: answering an alliance is now compulsory (or, if you have the setting changed in the options, effectively compulsory, unless you want to take the hit of half your prestige, two diplomacy, and -25 opinion for the next half-century for ignoring a call to arms) and blood/marriage ties form a non-aggression pact that must manually be upgraded to an alliance. In practice, this means that you're constantly having alliances broken by sudden deaths, marrying daughters to rulers who then won't ally with you, and having AI rulers invite you into four losing wars that'd cost you a combined 8,765 prestige to decline. Just about the only positive effect of the new system is that you can sign non-aggression pacts with blood relatives among your vassals, which does a great job of reducing the formerly suicidal decision of landing your brothers and uncles to a calculated risk. Otherwise, it's a fiddly and fussy system that's prone to breaking and hard to express intent through.
  • After all the changes, the Holy Roman Empire is still too powerful, and the game's setup still allows it easy expansion to turn its early dominance into permanent control of central Europe. Unlike Byzantium and the various caliphates and sultanates, which counter each other, the HRE is surrounded by France on its western flank, Poland and Hungary on its eastern, Denmark and the Wends to its north, and Sicily to its south. All of these are either small and fragmented or prone to fragment, especially in the 1066 start. Thanks to the changes in the Conclave DLC, it's easier than ever for the HRE to bootstrap itself to primogeniture succession, making it a rock-solid state that can expand without succession wars every generation. It probably won't be the Salians who enjoy the fruits of their labor, but some dynasty will, and that's ridiculous when, at no point in the Middle Ages, did the HRE ever behave as an expansionist power. Anything grander than an invasion of Sicily supporting the lawful inheritance of the Hohenstaufen there would have been unthinkable. Nevertheless, in my game, where I have fought wars every decade to keep the HRE in check, where France has stolen much of Lotharingia (with my help) and Byzantium holds most of Italy south of the Po (with my help), the imperial crown has still been passed effortlessly from father to son for two hundred years and the reigning emperor can still bring upwards of eighty-five thousand troops to bear on any problem. For comparison, I hold the crowns of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Pomerania, Lithuania, Russia, and Poland and I can field maybe fifty-five thousand under a good king. It's just lazy design at this point: I was sympathetic to Paradox's difficulties coming up with a reason why a ruler controlling (even nominally) the riches of the Rhone, Rhine, Po, and Elbe wouldn't be the most powerful ruler on the face of the earth, but not after three years and continued design choices that empower the HRE. Someone in their offices must really think that it's working as intended.

That said (hah) I had a good time. I just think I might be ready for Crusader Kings 3, whatever that looks like.

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Thanks for that great breakdown, Gormongous!

 

I enjoyed the hell out of CK2 and put over 100 hours in, but eventually got frustrated by mechanics changes. (In particular, they changed how much vassals resented having their armies levied which made my carefully crafted, thread-the-needle claim-pushing attempt instantly invalid.) Kind of sucks that changes made for multiplayer affect singleplayer games as well.

 

But it's great hearing about how the game is evolving, for better and worse. This game is so damn absorbing. I should see about those game customization options so I can avoid the stupid crap that takes me out of it. There's a glorious game in there somewhere.

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Hello people

 

I thought I'd share a recent In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, as it covers the Baltic Crusades. Not an topic I knew much about - it was interesting to learn more about the real world history that inspired CK2.

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7 hours ago, riadsala said:

Hello people

 

I thought I'd share a recent In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, as it covers the Baltic Crusades. Not an topic I knew much about - it was interesting to learn more about the real world history that inspired CK2.

 

Looks interesting, thanks for the heads up!

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CKII is without a doubt my favorite strategy game of all time. The familial politics, the ability to essentially have genetic traits that pass down through your lineage ( I had a cannibalistic, possessed King who managed to take over all of the Holy Roman Empire, his kids weren't much better) just feels amazing. Almost like a medieval soap opera that you can play out, I also find myself truly drawn to the characters themselves. I started a lineage based off an alternative history of the Loxley family (Robin Hood) and when Robins son (Arthur) was killed by his own brother Edward and the family began to turn from noble, charismatic people to a bunch of power hungry maniacs I truly missed Robin and Arthur. And ultimately educated Edwards kids not to be as awful as their father.

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3 hours ago, WhiteWolf7 said:

CKII is without a doubt my favorite strategy game of all time. The familial politics, the ability to essentially have genetic traits that pass down through your lineage ( I had a cannibalistic, possessed King who managed to take over all of the Holy Roman Empire, his kids weren't much better) just feels amazing. Almost like a medieval soap opera that you can play out, I also find myself truly drawn to the characters themselves. I started a lineage based off an alternative history of the Loxley family (Robin Hood) and when Robins son (Arthur) was killed by his own brother Edward and the family began to turn from noble, charismatic people to a bunch of power hungry maniacs I truly missed Robin and Arthur. And ultimately educated Edwards kids not to be as awful as their father.

Its also a really fun game to discuss in public, I was out with some friends last night and was talking about a game where I had four wives. Three of them would team up to kill my oldest son, then the alliance would shift so one would become the mother of the heir and the previous mother of the heir would plot to kill. I ended up having to throw them all in jail. Other people at our table were a bit confused about what I was talking about.

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1 hour ago, Cordeos said:

Its also a really fun game to discuss in public, I was out with some friends last night and was talking about a game where I had four wives. Three of them would team up to kill my oldest son, then the alliance would shift so one would become the mother of the heir and the previous mother of the heir would plot to kill. I ended up having to throw them all in jail. Other people at our table were a bit confused about what I was talking about.

 Hahah I fear I have no friends (outside of the internet) that play Ck2, I would absolutely adore a (CK2) dinner of some kind, invite all my CK2 friends and we each trade stories like nobles trading stories of famous hunts and battles xD.

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The Steam sale was a good occasion for me to catch up on CK2 DLC and give the game another shake. I started as the Weimar count (but technically margrave) of Istria and forty years later I'm king of Carinthia with appurtenances in Verona and the Steiermark. I am mostly enjoying myself? I'm probably going to go home and try to squeeze some more time in before a date (which is ill-advised), but I think I'm already a solid list of pros and cons of the latest version.

 

Pros

  • The map overhaul is good. The balance of holdings in counties, counties in duchies, duchies in kingdoms, and kingdoms in empires works about as good as it's going to work in the game. Areas that are prone to fragmentation have their own little kingdoms that can form and break away, although independence revolts are still way too rare. It was very common in the Middle Ages for border regions to slip into nominal suzerainty and it's immensely frustrating that CK1 supported that dynamic but CK2 does not.
  • The custom rules list is more inclusive and permissive. They let you turn off most of the combat overhaul, you can turn off the free casus belli that everyone gets now, you can fix how religion and culture and disease spread, they have rules that are really effective at curtailing border gore... and all of those options are available without disabling achievements! Paradox tends to have a problem with wanting you to play their sandbox games their way, but the custom rules list is a great feature that empowers the player (if it doesn't overwhelm them).
  • The "shattered world" and "alternate history" game modes look really good if you put in the time to figure out which customization options appeal to you. I couldn't be bothered myself, but...
  • The interface for raising a kid has a lot more clarity, making it virtually impossible to make a fucked-up idiot or to send away your heir to be raised by a cave bear. There are even highlighted icons to help you figure out what education is best for them!

Cons

  • The rest of the interface is abjectly terrible. The diplomatic menu is flooded with so many choices that you'll never take, the intrigue menu has a lot of good automation options but is otherwise a nightmare hidden submenus, and the council and laws menus are tabs within tabs within tabs. I have a great memory for these kind of things and even I get lost trying to find the button to click to forbid someone from leading an army or to change a law to let me appoint women to my council. I don't know how they're going to improve this for the next game, but they gotta find something better than medieval-themed pivot tables.
  • The council is still a pain to interact with and a source of constant aggravation if you disempower them. There's this whole system of factions and agendas and favors, but ultimately it's irrelevant. Councilors will never vote against their own best interest, no matter their relationship with you or your rivals, so every law change is simply a matter of dumping money into the council. I literally can't imagine a player who wouldn't put the law that disempowers them on the fast track after a few decades of play. Relatedly, favors seem to be nerfed? There's not much that you can do with a favor, especially if there's a large power disparity between the character who owes the favor and the character to whom the favor is owed, except requesting to be on the council, but most characters on your council are the ones with high stats whom you'd want there anyway, so owing them a favor costs you absolutely nothing.
  • Crusades and jihads are pointless back-and-forth all-or-nothing affairs that now leave you fabulously wealthy if you just go along with what the pope wants and don't try to grab land for yourself. I really have no idea what the new Holy Fury DLC changed in that respect, but at least you can set the custom rules to keep random AI rulers from getting Mediterranean-spanning empires, and the game makes it easy to switch to a relative of yours who claimed a title in the Holy Land if you want. I guess it's not as bad as it could be, but it's telling that my favorite thing about the system is that you can opt out, same as with the council.
  • Empires, especially the Holy Roman Empire, are still far too powerful and stable. I think that they've changed the way that voting in the HRE works to keep the emperor from being able to push any law through with brute force by creating more vassal dukes who love him for giving them titles, by instituting a bespoke "elector" system, but it's still way too easy for the emperor to fend off all comers and to expand at the expense of its neighbors. The HRE is simply too big and too culturally homogeneous (especially after vassals in Italy and Burgundy start converting to German for the opinion boost) to stay weak and fragmented like it was historically. At the very least they've made the switch to primogeniture difficult enough that it takes at least a century before the emperor is the hereditary title of whatever family was in power when the stars aligned, but it's still deflating. I have been a constant thorn in the side of the HRE and it's still annexed Poland and much of Croatia, Hungary, and Denmark.
  • The alliance system is still bad. A single-degree blood or marriage relation gives you a non-aggression pact, which you can upgrade to a full alliance with a diplomatic action, but the death of your current character forces you to renew all your non-aggression pacts that are less than three degrees and then upgrade them again to alliances, unless they remain within a single degree... It's so fussy and so easy to forget about until you're under attack and you realize that the king of Bohemia and the duke of Swabia have no diplomatic relations with you. At least they removed the penalty for allying with someone while at war? And don't get me started on coalitions, which seem to be a way of punishing the player for doing too much in an already-slow game. I turned them off in the custom rules and thank heavens I could.

So... basically, it looks like my issues are largely the same as two years ago. Still ready for Crusader Kings 3! If they could have interpenetrating fiefs with multiple lords, that'd be great (and terrible).

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