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I think that the first Crusader Kings is a fine game, but its design was a mess and it's very frustrating to learn the interface and then discover that there's some arbitrary stuff there that's not explained by bad messaging. I would not even think about playing CK1 without the Deus Vult DLC (the only DLC and basically a paid patch) and the "Deus Vult Improvement Pack" mod, which is a fan patch of the paid patch.

 

Once you've got all that, the game itself is reasonably straightforward. You generate prestige through events, through holding titles, and fighting wars, then spend that prestige to buy claims that you press in war. It's much less character-driven and there are plenty of systems that functionally do nothing (the peasant/burgher/cleric/noble meter in each county can be safely ignored, as can the friend/rival system) but I think the germ of what makes CK2 great is present in the prequel.

 

It's also worth noting, this most recent patch for CK2 has drastically improved the game's performance. It's running twenty or twenty-five percent faster for me, with less hitching during saves, and some people on the official forums are reporting up to forty percent increases in speed. You might want to boot it up again, just to check?

Is it because more people are dying of disease? Keeps the number of calculations down

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Is it because more people are dying of disease? Keeps the number of calculations down

 

I think it's just as much that they redid the save system, which was designed for a map and variables that were maybe a third what they currently are now.

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Both would be interested in your ideas for both, and what the differences are! I'm probably half way in-between. I've sunk a reasonable number of hours into the game (150 hours! But I've avoided reading up many hints and tips, lets plays etc, unless I'm really confused by a mechanic (so it took my ages to work out how raiding worked properly with vikings). I've been slowly picking up DLC every now and then during steam sales. I wonder if I should roll back to an earlier version of the game though as I don't have the latest few DLCs.

 

 

It depends if you want to know what settings I prefer or what settings I think would make the most newbie-friendly game. I could do both!

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I think that the first Crusader Kings is a fine game, but its design was a mess and it's very frustrating to learn the interface and then discover that there's some arbitrary stuff there that's not explained by bad messaging. I would not even think about playing CK1 without the Deus Vult DLC (the only DLC and basically a paid patch) and the "Deus Vult Improvement Pack" mod, which is a fan patch of the paid patch.

 

Once you've got all that, the game itself is reasonably straightforward. You generate prestige through events, through holding titles, and fighting wars, then spend that prestige to buy claims that you press in war. It's much less character-driven and there are plenty of systems that functionally do nothing (the peasant/burgher/cleric/noble meter in each county can be safely ignored, as can the friend/rival system) but I think the germ of what makes CK2 great is present in the prequel.

 

It's also worth noting, this most recent patch for CK2 has drastically improved the game's performance. It's running twenty or twenty-five percent faster for me, with less hitching during saves, and some people on the official forums are reporting up to forty percent increases in speed. You might want to boot it up again, just to check?

 

Thanks! The GoG release included the Deus Vult DLC but I will track down the fan patch also.

 

By CK2 "not running well" on my laptop I think I meant "at all", it's that old. No graphics drivers in Win 10 so anything 3D is bad. I think I prefer the 2D interfaces of CK1 and EU2 anyway, it feels more like a board game. I like the style of character portraits in CK1.

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Both would be interested in your ideas for both, and what the differences are! I'm probably half way in-between. I've sunk a reasonable number of hours into the game (150 hours! But I've avoided reading up many hints and tips, lets plays etc, unless I'm really confused by a mechanic (so it took my ages to work out how raiding worked properly with vikings). I've been slowly picking up DLC every now and then during steam sales. I wonder if I should roll back to an earlier version of the game though as I don't have the latest few DLCs.

 

Annoyingly, a lot of the really interesting changes deactivate ironman, so I'll ignore those, even though it'd be interesting to play with open interfaith religions and unrestricted vassal theocracies and republics, the game's designers don't want that to be a "real" option, so...

 

Anyway, here's my favored list of settings:

  • "Major epidemics" set to delayed dynamic. I don't like waiting for a date, so this setting being "any time before 1100 with limited aftershocks" works best.
  • "Minor epidemics" set to default. Some people might like it set to fewer, but it felt right how often my characters were getting sick, so I'm leaving it there in most games.
  • "Mongol invasion" set to historical. I know I just said I don't like waiting for a date, but the Mongols clean house to a ridiculous degree if they come too early, so I'd rather not risk it.
  • "Aztec invasion" set to off. It's dumb and, because of the geography of Western Europe, only really wrecks the British Isles and the Iberian peninsula, so I don't buy arguments that it's "balance" for the Mongol invasions.
  • "Shattered retreat" set to off. The ping-pong of the old battle system isn't particularly fun, but neither is the enemy army turning on invulnerability and running hundreds of miles back to home base. Given the choice, I'll pick the one that makes already-long wars even a bit shorter.
  • "Defensive pacts" set to off. This one's a no-brainer, the coalition system doesn't belong in Crusader Kings 2 and feels superfluous on top of the already-complex alliance and "religious defense" mechanics.
  • "Gender equality" set to default. You're probably not going to be tweaking the laws to allow for women councilors and heirs until late in the game, but the other option just removes the mechanic outright, so why not leave it in?
  • "Supernatural events" set to on. Same argument, why turn off more content, especially much-needed events, unless you're a deeply boring person?
  • "Dynamic de jure drift" set to restricted. This is almost enough to make me fall in love with the game all over again. Duchies only assimilate into kingdoms and kingdoms into empires if they're physically adjacent or share a single sea zone. No more Duchy of Hereford being de jure Castile because of some random inheritance two hundred years ago!
  • "De jure assimilation duration" set to default. I've thought about setting this to long, which is a three hundred-year duration, but I always start in 1066 and that means that basically nothing will assimilate, ever, which is boring, so...
  • "Culture conversion" set to combination. This is basically a package deal of three good changes: culture only spreads by direct land borders or a shared sea zone, melting-pot cultures like English and Russian appear faster, and mean time for culture conversion to happen is multiplied by three. The two full games I've played, the Low Countries and Italy still turn German, but they do in the fourteenth century rather than the year 1100. Totally essential.
  • "Religious conversion speed" set to long. Again, multiplying the time needed to convert by a factor means that counties flip religion in five to ten years instead of one to three, but it's better than nothing.
  • "Matrilineal marriages" set to on. Duh. The other option exists exclusively for crypto-misogynists who want the "historical accuracy" of their views represented.
  • "Custom realms" set to off. The mechanic is clumsy, the option clogs up the intrigue menu, and there's literally never a situation where you have three duchies, enough money, and enough prestige to create your own title, yet a historical title is out of your reach.
  • "Charlemage events" set to on. I don't like them, they're railroading to the extreme, but the 769 start is a total mess without them, because the AI just can't handle the setup. Necessary evil, right here.
  • "Pagan reformation" set to on. Again, I'd leave them out, but the rare occasions where they happens tend to provide much-needed buffs to the steppe nomads, so whatever.
  • "AI Seduction" set to on. I'm on the fence here about this focus. It's fun to find out your wife is cheating on you, but it's not fun to discover that every AI character is engaged in nonstop infidelity, making your kingdom one big orgy. I'm thinking about turning it off for my next game, since cheating and bastards can still happen via event and it'll cut down on the number of characters with "lover's pox."
  • "AI Intrigue" set to on. Again, on the fence, but AI characters rarely use the Intrigue setting. Still, maybe one bad experience would be enough to turn it off, since the kidnap and murder chains are really powerful if the AI happens to target you. I don't know!

The rest are settings with only one option allowed on ironman, so I'll leave them alone. Hope this helps!

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Cool, I will give that a try on my next game (which I'll probably start soon, once I've got this game if CiV and XCOM done!).

 

On a similar note, there's a publisher sale on this weekend on steam (I've been picking up the DLC for CK2 in a piecemeal fashion when it's cheap in sales). I now have everything up to and including Sons of Abraham, along with Way of Life. Is there any real good reason for me to get any of the more recent DLC before I start my new game?

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Cool, I will give that a try on my next game (which I'll probably start soon, once I've got this game if CiV and XCOM done!).

 

On a similar note, there's a publisher sale on this weekend on steam (I've been picking up the DLC for CK2 in a piecemeal fashion when it's cheap in sales). I now have everything up to and including Sons of Abraham, along with Way of Life. Is there any real good reason for me to get any of the more recent DLC before I start my new game?

 

You can pass on Rajas of India and Horse Lords. They're gimmick DLC that no one really players. You're probably going to need The Conclave, tragically, and Charlemagne has a few features that are useful, but that's it.

 

If they'd fix the bug where children don't get education traits if you don't have The Conclave, I'd probably deactivate that piece of DLC and see if that fixes everything else I hate about the game right now...

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Sounds like you have a real love-hate relationship with the game.

 

I'm surprised there aren't any mods that would fix these problems?

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For better or for worse, Paradox tends to put out pretty wide-ranging DLC that makes a lot changes.Sometimes those changes are for the better, sometimes not.

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Sounds like you have a real love-hate relationship with the game.

 

I'm surprised there aren't any mods that would fix these problems?

 

Sadly, the council, voting on laws, and the favor system are all hardcoded... perhaps intentionally, since The Conclave is their most divisive non-joke DLC. There are workarounds on the Steam Workshop, but the medicine's typically as bad as the disease. Also, generally, Crusader Kings 2 has reached a level of feature density that makes mods less and less feasible as corrective supplements. If you don't like the vanilla gameplay these days, you're probably going to find your fix in a total conversation like CK2+ or HIP, which has a holistic design, rather than get your feature fixes à la carte.

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Steam has a Paradox sale this weekend, and I was thinking about buying some Crusader Kings II DLC for when I'm ready to play the game again. Man, this sounds messy. Looking at the more expensive ones, I'm missing Charlemagne (which I think I will buy), Conclave (which sounds pretty bad), Horse Lords (which I like the name of, but don't know if I will find it useful), and The Reaper's Due (which is expensive, and I think I will have hard enough time without having to deal with the black death as well).


Gormongous, is the children not getting education traits if Conclave is not activated an actual bug acknowledged by the developer or an annoying feature? I.e. is it likely to get fixed within a couple of months, or should I buy Conclave just in case? The actual content of that DLC sounds very uuggh to me. 

 

Also, thank you so much for the settings and expansion recommendations! I really liked this game when I first played it, and the idea of a ton of additional systems affecting the gameplay is intriguing, but I also don't want to suddenly get wrecked by a major invasion event (or whatever) introduced by an unbalanced piece of DLC.

 

Edit: Checked the latest hotfix patch notes:

 2.6.1.1 The Reaper's Due

 

...

 

Fixed children not getting their education trait upon becoming adults when you don't have Conclave

I assume that the hotfix gets applied even I don't have The Reaper's Due? Sorry for these dumb questions, but the content model of this game makes my head hurt.

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Steam has a Paradox sale this weekend, and I was thinking about buying some Crusader Kings II DLC for when I'm ready to play the game again. Man, this sounds messy. Looking at the more expensive ones, I'm missing Charlemagne (which I think I will buy), Conclave (which sounds pretty bad), Horse Lords (which I like the name of, but don't know if I will find it useful), and The Reaper's Due (which is expensive, and I think I will have hard enough time without having to deal with the black death as well).

Gormongous, is the children not getting education traits if Conclave is not activated an actual bug acknowledged by the developer or an annoying feature? I.e. is it likely to get fixed within a couple of months, or should I buy Conclave just in case? The actual content of that DLC sounds very uuggh to me. 

 

Also, thank you so much for the settings and expansion recommendations! I really liked this game when I first played it, and the idea of a ton of additional systems affecting the gameplay is intriguing, but I also don't want to suddenly get wrecked by a major invasion event (or whatever) introduced by an unbalanced piece of DLC.

 

Edit: Checked the latest hotfix patch notes:

 

I assume that the hotfix gets applied even I don't have The Reaper's Due? Sorry for these dumb questions, but the content model of this game makes my head hurt.

 

Yeah, the patch is for everyone. This removes my last major caveat about recommending that people play without The Conclave.

 

It sucks, you know? The child education system in The Conclave are really good, in my opinion. In addition to having its options more clearly defined, it fixes the two major problems of the vanilla education: you can now educate your own children in careers different from your own, and there's no longer this dichotomy of player-educated characters being geniuses and AI-educated characters being trash. The former's still hampered by the two-child limit for character education, and the latter still happens to some extent because the AI loves its Martial focus for female characters, but it generally makes a more stable and reliable character pool.

 

But it's not really worth it, because the council and favor mechanics in The Conclave are ridiculous busywork. Like, they feel like they went from whiteboard to release without any intermediate stage. The occasional glory that is using a favor with your liege to press your claim in an impossibly difficult war is not worth the mandatory fifty-odd years that have to be spent every game defanging your own council, once you become an independent lord, so that you don't have to interact with the content for which you just paid a five-spot. Some players claim to love it, maneuvering against their own council to achieve their plans, but I think these people have more vivid imaginations than me, since "maneuvering against your council" means paying out favors or gold to three council members, initiating the vote, and then saving up for the next vote five years down the line.

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I bought everything except Reaper's Due and used Gormongous's recommended settings and had a blast. While the favor thing did feel mostly useless, I didn't hate the council stuff really? It added an additional mechanic that seemed to destabilize the larger realms and make it a little more complicated to stay on top. This play through was the first in a long time that I've not been able to keep my chosen heir on top of the elective monarchy list, so I had to make some compromises here and there and that felt right.

 

I started as a Duke in Middle Francia and had a shot to either get a second duchy or be elected the King several times. Then suddenly, when I'm not paying attention anymore the Empire of Francia was formed and then dumped in my lap via elective monarchy. Yay!

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I bought everything except Reaper's Due and used Gormongous's recommended settings and had a blast. While the favor thing did feel mostly useless, I didn't hate the council stuff really? It added an additional mechanic that seemed to destabilize the larger realms and make it a little more complicated to stay on top. This play through was the first in a long time that I've not been able to keep my chosen heir on top of the elective monarchy list, so I had to make some compromises here and there and that felt right.

 

I started as a Duke in Middle Francia and had a shot to either get a second duchy or be elected the King several times. Then suddenly, when I'm not paying attention anymore the Empire of Francia was formed and then dumped in my lap via elective monarchy. Yay!

 

When you do get The Reaper's Due, I'm recommending that everyone bump "minor epidemics" down to low, because I'm in a Sweden game where waaay too many young and healthy people are dying of slow fever and typhus. For about a fifty-year period, diplomacy was impossible because no one was living long enough to have kids and alliances were constantly breaking down, which was cool in theory but annoying in practice.

 

My grievance with The Conclave is now mostly that it requires so much micro to be "fun." If you want to increase vassal levies, be prepared to pay out for favors, and a vassal who isn't on the council because they're an imbecile is guaranteed to revolt... but when you disempower the council, three or four of your most powerful vassals are always in the "empower the council" faction, which poses a minimal threat to your rule even if you lose (change a law that you can change back in five years' time, plus lose a hundred prestige) and keeps them from actually challenging your rule or your more important laws. I don't think I've had a single "So-and-so for King" revolt in two hundred years of gameplay and, during the Black Death (which, annoyingly, hit in 1125), I went through four kings in seven years. I should be getting succession law and claimant revolts, but I'm not, because the AI is obsessed with the council treadmill.

 

I've also noticed that elective succession is now pickier with younger or unlanded heirs, which is good, though. I think it's two things: first, it's harder to breed diplo supermen with the new education system, and second, the AI seems to appreciate the difference between innate prestige (from being part of a major dynasty) and earned prestige (from title-holding) and will generally only vote for a young or unlanded heir if the current ruler has high enough prestige to make up for the heir's shortfall.

 

 

It's great on paper, but look at that border gore! I don't know if I can handle it.

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When you do get The Reaper's Due, I'm recommending that everyone bump "minor epidemics" down to low, because I'm in a Sweden game where waaay too many young and healthy people are dying of slow fever and typhus. For about a fifty-year period, diplomacy was impossible because no one was living long enough to have kids and alliances were constantly breaking down, which was cool in theory but annoying in practice.

 

My grievance with The Conclave is now mostly that it requires so much micro to be "fun." If you want to increase vassal levies, be prepared to pay out for favors, and a vassal who isn't on the council because they're an imbecile is guaranteed to revolt... but when you disempower the council, three or four of your most powerful vassals are always in the "empower the council" faction, which poses a minimal threat to your rule even if you lose (change a law that you can change back in five years' time, plus lose a hundred prestige) and keeps them from actually challenging your rule or your more important laws. I don't think I've had a single "So-and-so for King" revolt in two hundred years of gameplay and, during the Black Death (which, annoyingly, hit in 1125), I went through four kings in seven years. I should be getting succession law and claimant revolts, but I'm not, because the AI is obsessed with the council treadmill.

 

I've also noticed that elective succession is now pickier with younger or unlanded heirs, which is good, though. I think it's two things: first, it's harder to breed diplo supermen with the new education system, and second, the AI seems to appreciate the difference between innate prestige (from being part of a major dynasty) and earned prestige (from title-holding) and will generally only vote for a young or unlanded heir if the current ruler has high enough prestige to make up for the heir's shortfall.

 

 

It's great on paper, but look at that border gore! I don't know if I can handle it.

 

Hmm, I've been struggling keeping the council power as low as possible without actually looking at the consequences, so I've been fighting those wars. On the other hand, I don't fiddle with levies and taxes much, so the only time I've really needed a lot of favors was to change succession law and a few other fiddly things like that. I also wasn't a top level liege until fairly recently, so there haven't really been opportunities for full-on "overthrow the ruler" type wars either. I guess I'm just in the best situation to showcase the good parts of it and downplay the bad. 

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Hmm, I've been struggling keeping the council power as low as possible without actually looking at the consequences, so I've been fighting those wars. On the other hand, I don't fiddle with levies and taxes much, so the only time I've really needed a lot of favors was to change succession law and a few other fiddly things like that. I also wasn't a top level liege until fairly recently, so there haven't really been opportunities for full-on "overthrow the ruler" type wars either. I guess I'm just in the best situation to showcase the good parts of it and downplay the bad. 

 

Yeah, I think that The Conclave is at its best when you're a vassal duke or king, getting the benefits of the council without having to deal with the consequences constantly. The AI, generally, does not spend much effort or resources trying to disempower the council, so you've always got that dynamic going. When you're an independent king with dukes of your own, however, the council blocks virtually every useful law change and revolts like clockwork if you take away their power, so it's hard not to wish they were gone. "Enforce realm peace" is good, but not that good, and the trade for two demesne slots and no more bullshit is very tempting.

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The tendency in Paradox games for random inheritances and odd AI prioritization to produce countries with long snakey borders and arbitrary enclaves in the middle of nowhere. Think les Trois-Évêchés only worse.

Ps4uqQp.jpg

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That picture is the natural result of a strategic AI that prioritizes its conquests based on economic productivity and military weakness, rather than cultural or geographical proximity. There's probably an AI that could prioritize those things, given all the computer-generated solutions to gerrymandered districts in the US, but then Paradox fans would whine up and down the forums about the AI not fighting "optimally."

 

That is to say, the same Paradox fans who regularly post with puzzlement about why the Nordic kingdoms didn't fully integrate the Sami people until the nineteenth century or why the Byzantine Empire didn't try harder to annex Armenia or the Rus, because such moves would have been totally "optimal." You know, morons.

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Would be a pretty simply AI tweak. Just increase priory to regions that share several borders. It could be even added to the set up screen.

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