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riadsala

CK2 Succession Game

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could I also get added to the list?

 

Sure.

 

I've copied the first post to the blog. https://riadgameblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/3maidle-thumbs-forum-crusader-kings-ii-succession-game-part-i-gormongous/

 

You'll be able to find the RSS feed if you want to stay up to date that way.

 

if anybody has a wordpress account and would like to help post/edit the AAR, let me know :) Sorting out the picture formatting is a bit of a drag (they look a bit ugly if I don't insert them into wordpress manually).

 

We're off to a flying start :)

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I'm gonna say up front by the way, I am totally gonna be the screw up child that'll wreck my father's lifework. I look forward to this experience!

 

(Sorry Gor)

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I'm gonna say up front by the way, I am totally gonna be the screw up child that'll wreck my father's lifework. I look forward to this experience!

 

(Sorry Gor)

 

Don't worry about it. I've crushed CK2 to death so many times that "winning" it doesn't really do anything for me anymore. I finished my life around 1:30 today and it went pretty well, so I think I have you in a strong position to stay the course, at least. I'll have some brief pieces of advice, if you want them, after I finish all my recap posts.

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Bertrand II: 1072-1093

 

Count no man happy until he is dead. If that is the case, my child Garcia is now happier than I have ever been, after only six months of life. I am unsure if the infants of Purgatory are Catholic doctrine yet, but if they are, I wish him a swift passage through the darkness and to the throne of glory. Amen.

 

Five years and almost nothing accomplished. I am slothful, as well as a little bit shy now, but this is ridiculous. Bringing a recalcitrant bishop to heel is barely a drop in the bucket that must be filled. Despite my retiring nature, I need to steel myself for greater things if I am going to seize a crown of my own!

 

First step, marry a second wife — rather, a third wife according to history, but whatever. Since I have royal pretensions, only the kinswoman of an emperor is suitable for me. My cherished liege, Henry IV Salian, does not see my stature sufficient to marry even his sisters or nieces, so I turn to the other Rome, ruled by Constantine X Doukas. I marry his daughter Anna, a genius by all accounts and well enthused at the prospect of being a future queen, at least once the bride price arrives.

 

ck2_8.png

 

To cement the bond between the Bosonids and the Doukas, I marry my other sister to Anna's brother Andronikos, who is a typical Greek insofar as he is very skilled with money. A dual wedding, the best way to ensure eternal friendship between two houses! It almost salves the wound of Andronikos' prompt lynching when the peasants were terrified of his strange words and ways.

 

ck2_11.png

 

Oh well. In what is quickly becoming our house motto, whatever! I have the marriage, I have the money, so now it is time to make clear to all my ambitions. From now on, Bertrand of Provence will style himself King Bertrand of Provence. Surely recognition will follow.

 

ck2_9.png

 

As if blessed by God Himself, Anna and I fall deeply in love and soon have a son. I name him Acfred, a familial name of the counts of Carcassonne, as a small atonement for the murder of my sister near those mountains. He is my beautiful boy and I will treasure him for all time.

 

ck2_14.png

 

He is also born sickly, though not quite so much as the pneumonia of the dearly departed Garcia, so I began a strict regimen of fasting and chastity to speed his health. The priests of my court, especially the bishop of Nice with his powerful sacral knowledge, tell me that this is pleasing to the Lord, who does not want to see us become too closely tied to earthly things. I can see what they mean, for my son is manifestly a gift from heaven!

 

ck2_15.png

 

The rewards are quick in coming. My first daughter by Anna is a bright and loving child. We quickly become best friends, despite over three decades separating us.

 

ck2_16.png

 

Children really are a joy! I am beginning to wonder whether the unlucky years of my first marriage, especially her childlessness and then death in childbirth, were a result of Mathilde's sin. Certainly, there is nothing like that between Anna and me! We even have a second boy, which I name Jaufret after my cousin, just recently departed from this earth.

 

ck2_18.png

 

Of course, having him leaves me with some disquiet. To be sure, Provence is wealthier than the lands of southern France and eastern Spain and it is safer than the war-torn lands of northern Italy and southern Germany, but it is nonetheless impoverished and threatened by the scourge of a partible inheritance. It pleased my forefathers to see their lands divided equally among their children, regardless of merit, but when I look north to Forcalquier, where my listless cousins rule, I think fearfully of what enmity could arise between Acfred and Jaufret after I return to the Lord. My fruit will not be a kingdom scattered to the winds. For now, I will choose Acfred as my heir in toto, but I will make it clear as I raise him that his brother is his charge just like he is mine. After all, that is the nature of lordship. A man might be elected to it, but he cannot elect which parts of it he wants for his own.

 

Meanwhile, the world around me is falling apart. Some years ago, early in my reign, the Holy Roman Emperor raised an antipope, Theodore III of Aquileia, in opposition to the reform papacy that denied the supremacy of a lay emperor under heaven. It was of no notice to us in Provence at the time, but in 1093 the death of Pope Alexander II and the election of Pope Hormisdas II inspired Guzelin I Salian, the new Holy Roman Emperor, to install his candidate in Rome and end the schism.

 

ck2_19.png

 

The war was not even a year in length. The might of the most Christian emperor was on display for all, and even the pleas of the beleaguered Hormisdas to turn it against the Saracens desecrating the birthplace of Christ beyond the sea fell on deaf ears.

 

ck2_21.png

 

I doubt this brief controversy over investiture will even be remembered, a generation from now. The writings of the church fathers were just so clearly in favor of the emperor's position. Render unto Caesar what is of Caesar... The earthly sword is the rule of law... Anyway. Hormisdas fled and gave his blessing to an antipope in the frontier kingdom of Castile before dying, but that fraud is of no account. The universal Christian empire is whole once more and forevermore.

 

Of greater concern to me and mine is the duchy of Dauphiné. I finally have a plan that will unite it forever under the Bosonids, and it won't take any work at all...

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Don't worry about it. I've crushed CK2 to death so many times that "winning" it doesn't really do anything for me anymore. I finished my life around 1:30 today and it went pretty well, so I think I have you in a strong position to stay the course, at least. I'll have some brief pieces of advice, if you want them, after I finish all my recap posts.

 

Advice from "ghosts" is perfectly fine :) 

 

And, of course, choosing to destroy your father's legacy is also fine. On that note, it would be handy to know what the heir thinks of his/her predecessor on handover.

 

[i'm now in Copenhagen for a long weekend but I'll check in when I can and try keep relatively up-to-date with the blogs posts and forum thread.

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I'm totally planning on having parental baggage in my write up. I think I ought to even do a paragraph retrospective of my life before I start playing.

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I'm totally planning on having parental baggage in my write up. I think I ought to even do a paragraph retrospective of my life before I start playing.

 

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish my final post, which won't get touched until Sunday night now, but I love the idea of this. Honestly, I have great expectations for my heir, because I've left him with genius levels in the game's most important stat, a ton of money for a one-title duke, and a one-generation wait until the kingdom can be made, so I'll be interested to see how you take it.

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I'm excited for this, even if you can't finish up the write up until then could you let me know if I am going to be playing Acfred? If I am I'd also like to write a bit of the retrospective to set myself up for how I'll be playing.

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I'm excited for this, even if you can't finish up the write up until then could you let me know if I am going to be playing Acfred? If I am I'd also like to write a bit of the retrospective to set myself up for how I'll be playing.

Yeah, you're playing as Acfred, diplomatic genius and duke-consort of Dauphiné. Spoilers! I don't remember your wife's name, because her only value to me is dead now that she's given you two sons.

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Yeah, you're playing as Acfred, diplomatic genius and duke-consort of Dauphiné. Spoilers! I don't remember your wife's name, because her only value to me is dead now that she's given you two sons.

Sweet. I've already got a couple good notes for Acfred. I should play a bit before I get the save file, to refresh my memory of the game.

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Don't suppose anyone could suggest a good podcast that covers the period the games are going to take place in?

It would act as good prep work as well as filling the gap I have atm in my podcast feed having binged my way through The History of Rome, Revolutions, & Hardcore History

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Don't suppose anyone could suggest a good podcast that covers the period the games are going to take place in?

It would act as good prep work as well as filling the gap I have atm in my podcast feed having binged my way through The History of Rome, Revolutions, & Hardcore History

I have yet to find a good medieval podcast. The History of Byzantium is fine, the British History Podcast is not, and I lost interest in finding a good one after those two. Way too many Anglocentric podcasts, anyway, like this one, which really doesn't look terribly bad other than focusing way too much on the least important part of western and central Europe except maybe Spain. When I get back in town tomorrow night, I'll try Medieval Archives, which seems a little late but broad enough to be potentially not terrible.

I am also sad because these lectures look great but are tied to an over-expensive membership in an association of no repute. I've desperately wanted to record my own for years, but I don't want to do it alone and no one else in my department is interested...

 

 

EDIT: Having listened to a couple episodes of each, Norman Centuries is competent enough, but marred by an uncritical retelling of events and some creeping Byzantinophilia, which is unsurprising from the author of 12 Byzantine RulersMedieval Archives is quite accurate, although overfond of its own punchy delivery, to the point that I found it impossible to listen to any episode all the way through. I'm honestly surprised that there's no "History of Germany from Charlemagne to the Golden Bull" podcast, but then again there's not even a good book in English about that region and period. The best that comes to my mind is Germany in the High Middle Ages, c.1050-1200 by Horst Fuhrmann, and that's a thirty-five year old volume in translation!

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A heads up, I may need to defer my place. My laptop seems to be overheating a lot, especially with Crusader Kings 2. I'm trying to play a bit to get ready but the attempts have not gone well. I'll let you all know if I need to be pushed back as soon as I can tell clearly. I don't wanna start into the file then have to give up my place after a week or anything like that.

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Bertrand II: 1094-1102

 

As the learned Bishop Evrard of Aix tells me, it is spoken among the learned heathens of a man named Sisyphus, who was cursed by the devils that the ancients called "gods" before the revelation of Christ. For rebuke of his cleverness, which leads even the wise astray, Sisyphus had to push a boulder up a hill, in the full knowledge that it would roll down the other side once he had reached its crest. He was bound thus for all eternity, until we shall all made whole again with the Second Coming. Evrard is fond of offering to me this tale, when I meditate on the path that the line of Boso has taken down through history. He is a wise man, I know, because I appointed him myself.

 

I see now the boulder in front of me for the past thirty years, shaped like a great fish, and I turn my face from it. I think not that I will ever hold the title of Dauphin, which would make known to all my family's rightful claim to Lower Burgundy as kings. It is not within the Lord's merciful plan to make it so. As a devout Christian, living near to the end of times, it is not my place to question the fate that has been set for me.

 

And yet... my son's fate is not set, as far as can be told. If I can, in my remaining years, I will set it for my beautiful boy and smile down upon the fruits from heaven.

 

ck2_17.png

 

Acfred will marry the eldest daughter of the current dauphin's only son. Berchte is a fine girl, with a pride and kindness well suited to her noble blood, although I have already begun to find at times that she is a bit too proud of how kind she is to her maids. No matter, the doddering dauphin, Artau de Forez, agrees to the match, perhaps thinking that I am the doddering one, given that a match between our houses finally legitimizes his illegal control over Lyon and Forez.

 

Woe to him. My beautiful boy is already shaping up to be a genius at handling people. I will connive with him and his wife, once Artau dies, to dispossess the new duke of Dauphiné, by death if necessary, and see our houses united in the third generation, borne by a new Aeneas and Lavinia. When the snows melt in the first months of 1094, they are made one in matrimony and the first step is taken.

 

ck2_20.png

 

To be honest, I hate that it has come to this. The dauphin's son Wilhelm is a pious man, which makes him dear to God but not to men. I had saved up a great deal of money to rally conspirators to my cause, but I spend very little of it. Eight nobles swear an oath to me, with my spymaster as proxy, and begin to plot. I turn my mind, not a little thankfully, to other things.

 

Indeed, my beautiful boy has taken well to his wife and to the business of the court. Less than three months after his majority, Acfred succeeded in proving long-lost claims to Savoy that I did not know were ever even held by the Bosonids. That fat idiot from Vienne, Guiges d'Albon, could not do the same in Lyon after three decades of work, good riddance! With our first claim happily in hand, we press it against Duke Pierre. The second War of Burgundian Restoration is underway!

 

ck2_22.png

 

Grand though its name may be, the war is relatively bloodless affair and ends in the summer of 1096 after only thirteen months of hostilities. The intercession of the newly-crowned king of Bohemia, brother to the husband of my oft-forgotten bastard daughter Cecilia, is a great factor in the peacemaking, which leaves the Savoyads with their holdings around Turin and the loose dependency of the bishop of Valais.

 

ck2_24.png

 

The only rival of equal power to my own is now the Neuenburger dukes of Upper Burgundy, who are distracted from the matters of the Middle Kingdom by their many vassals and their marriage ties to the distant duchies of Lombardy and Brandenburg.

 

Time passes. I still wait for word from my oathsworn brethren in the Dauphiné. My daughter and friend Faidida comes of age, so after several months of deliberation, I give her hand to Duke Hughes of Aquitaine, a powerful ally to counterbalance the dukes of Toulouse if the kingdom of France continues to disintegrate as the Robertian line of the Capets lose the power they inherited from the now-extinct Heinrican line.

 

ck2_23.png

 

I soon decide that this was a mistake. King Hughes II of France is a pneumoniac weakling married to a spinster, but his brother and heir Eudes is an able warrior with at least four sons to his name. I have sent my closest friend to live on the Bay of Biscay for naught. A match to the king of the Bavarians, just crowned on February 12, 1097 in Munich, would have been a far wiser choice, but... ah, whatever.

 

I cannot even focus on the frustration of a bad marriage because I have heard word again of that blessed fool Wilhelm. Did you know that he has survived nine attempts on his life? That is why I call him blessed. I call him fool because he is not yet alive to any murderous intent against him. He has even fathered a son in the intervening months. With this sign, I try to draw the reins of my conspiracy, but it is too late. He drinks poisoned wine at the feast of his son's christening and is dead by the morrow. Even in death, I have never seen a man more beloved by God.

 

ck2_25.png

 

After half a decade of near-constant bloodshed, I found myself inclined to wait a few years to see if young Hans, the new duke of Dauphiné, is meant for a life on this earth, but I am soon confronted in this by my daughter-in-law Berchte. Still proud and still fond of women, she is now also prone to lies and troublemaking. Her father died before Hans' christening, she says. If anything is a sign from on high that the succession should not pass from father to son, it is an untimely death of such a sort. While she speaks such obvious nonsense, she looks at me too long and too deep for my comfort, before returning to her chambers. I wonder...

 

Then, after I am done with that — though it took the entire night without sleep to do so — I call my council and tell them to prepare for war. Let her be called a usurper, I care not. I am defending the rights of a future generation, though I will miss my beautiful boy when he is far away in Lyon. The war is short and my heart is heavy.

 

With that accomplished, assuring the providential future of the Bosonid kings of Burgundy, I 

 

ck2_26.png

 

Gack.

 

Iah harrubah nauf. Shifh mah wabbuh naruh. Guh, auh whish nauh gah grabbuh leth nah. Hahuh! Naugah nun wah.

 

Tug nug grabbuh iah nauf. Wallah nah wah. Nun, nun.

 

ck2_27.png

 

Gah! Hanuh, hanuh, hanuh. Wag auf ish duh nah wah? Puh wallah nauf auh? Iah nagguh auf wah...

 

Buh awah! Ah! Ah!

 

ck2_28.png

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Okay, something of a recap, which I'll hopefully reedit into something sensible if this headache ever goes away:

  • I haven't had this much fun with Crusader Kings 2 in maybe half a year. I know a lot about the kingdom of Burgundy, owing to its geographic and dynastic proximity to the subject of my dissertation, but I tend to avoid it in CK2, because the game's mechanics conspire to ensure that events can never play out as did history there. All the dukes convert to German culture, the Holy Roman Emperor uses his troops to keep them in power, there's no fragmentation or dissidence, and France never annexes the region. Still, trying to roleplay an ancient dynasty with over-the-top pretensions to glory made it fun. I wish I could keep playing...
  • I was incredibly unlucky in some ways and incredibly lucky in others. I ruled for thirty-six in-game years (which bothers me a little, because William Bertrand succeeded in 1051, so I ruled fifty-one years in reality) and I got one forged claim, despite my total diplomatic score never dipping below 40. One! On the other hand, the Holy Roman Empire never started any stupid wars, besides little skirmishes with France over the Low Countries, so it was always stable enough for me to have a good income. I also had a terrible education, so I risked educating Acfred with my chancellor, Guiges the Fat, and it came out beautifully! He's diligent, brave, kind, and charitable. I couldn't have raised him better myself.
  • I know that I gradually got more and more religious in my in-character voice as time went on. It was really me getting more comfortable writing as him, but I also like that it sounds like an old man finding God after a somewhat disappointing life. I only that I could have captured with equal clarity the bitterness of having the supposed love of my life treat me monstrously after my stroke. Did she hate me all along? Emergent narrative, indeed!
  • The most important things moving forward are threefold: make sure to educate Acfred's two sons personally and continue the high-diplomacy eugenics program, so that the realm can continue to expand once the Dauphiné has been inherited and the kingdom created; keep the nest egg of a thousand gold as much intact as possible to hire mercenaries in case the Holy Roman Emperor figures out what you're doing and tries to revoke a title from you as a non-native duke; and marry inside the Holy Roman Empire, with the kingdoms of Bohemia and Bavaria particularly, because the emperor is married to the duchess of Tuscany and will soon be a huge landowner able to put down any rebellion.
  • Here's a quick summary of the past thirty-six years below. The only really notable things are the subjugation of the papacy to the empire, the failure of the Norman conquests in England and southern Italy, and the centralization of the Pomeranian, Finnish, and Abyssinian crowns.

 

ck2_map_1.pngck2_map_2.png

 

A heads up, I may need to defer my place. My laptop seems to be overheating a lot, especially with Crusader Kings 2. I'm trying to play a bit to get ready but the attempts have not gone well. I'll let you all know if I need to be pushed back as soon as I can tell clearly. I don't wanna start into the file then have to give up my place after a week or anything like that.

 

There's a couple of tweak guides on the Paradox forums about how to reduce CK2's load on the graphics and processor. Maybe look at those? I'd really like to have you follow me up, you seem to get the role. How should I pass the save file on, anyway, whoever does follow me?

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I have yet to find a good medieval podcast. The History of Byzantium is fine, the British History Podcast is not, and I lost interest in finding a good one after those two. Way too many Anglocentric podcasts, anyway, like this one, which really doesn't look terribly bad other than focusing way too much on the least important part of western and central Europe except maybe Spain. When I get back in town tomorrow night, I'll try Medieval Archives, which seems a little late but broad enough to be potentially not terrible.

I am also sad because these lectures look great but are tied to an over-expensive membership in an association of no repute. I've desperately wanted to record my own for years, but I don't want to do it alone and no one else in my department is interested...

 

 

EDIT: Having listened to a couple episodes of each, Norman Centuries is competent enough, but marred by an uncritical retelling of events and some creeping Byzantinophilia, which is unsurprising from the author of 12 Byzantine RulersMedieval Archives is quite accurate, although overfond of its own punchy delivery, to the point that I found it impossible to listen to any episode all the way through. I'm honestly surprised that there's no "History of Germany from Charlemagne to the Golden Bull" podcast but then again there's not even a good book in English about that region and period. The best that comes to my mind is Germany in the High Middle Ages, c.1050-1200 by Horst Fuhrmann, and that's a thirty-five year old volume in translation!

 

Have you ever listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History? I enjoy it as an entertainment product, but I've never been sure if it's that good as an actual history lesson. He's definitely got some shows that dip into this period.

BTW, I'm enjoying the hell out of this thread, even if I'm not participating in the game.

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I'm gonna try out those tweaks and see if I can still play. We could email or Dropbox the file pretty easily. They're not that big, right?

Also we should totally post about this elsewhere on the forums so other people can follow along who normally ignore the strategy board.

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Have you ever listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History? I enjoy it as an entertainment product, but I've never been sure if it's that good as an actual history lesson. He's definitely got some shows that dip into this period.

BTW, I'm enjoying the hell out of this thread, even if I'm not participating in the game.

 

I find Dan Carlin really frustrating. I've only listened to one stretch of Hardcore History, the "Death Throes of the Republic" hexology, and I went from loving it in the beginning to hating it by the end. Carlin has a talent for rooting out the more extreme interpretations of any historical figure and a penchant for using them because they're interesting rather than necessarily true. These are both things against which I've struggled myself in my own professional career, so they're really hard for me to take in stride. Having to hear Carlin go on and on about Gaius Marius being a rock star of the ancient world, rather than trying to contextualize him within his own times, almost made me quit on its own. I really have no problem with people listening to him, because history is history and I won't begrudge people a more salacious take on it, but one look at his website, with "Blueprint for Armageddon" and "Prophets of Doom" as two of the latest releases, tells me that he's still not for me.

 

I also doubt that Carlin would ever do something like the history of the Holy Roman Empire. There are titanic confrontations between people who purport to rule the entire world, but these confrontations repeatedly end in compromise and failure for both sides. The upshot of the Investiture Contest and the Hohenstaufen's destruction is the enslavement of the pope to a different secular power and the end of the Holy Roman Empire as a political force on its own. I don't think that matches Carlin's style. Heck, it took me several years to get to know the people involved in that massive two hundred-year clusterfuck before I found my own place in it.

 

I'm gonna try out those tweaks and see if I can still play. We could email or Dropbox the file pretty easily. They're not that big, right?

Also we should totally post about this elsewhere on the forums so other people can follow along who normally ignore the strategy board.

 

I agree about publicizing this, but I won't do it myself because I'm by far the most prolific poster in this thread. Maybe someone can drop a mention in the "Random Thoughts about Video Games" thread. Anyway, here's the save file. I used TinyUpload, because the file's only three megabytes. Good luck!

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I'm sure Troy would tweet if we ask really nicely. Heck, he might even take a turn of playing a character.

 

I'll try and get the blog version up-to-date in a day or so.

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Gormongous, out of curiosity, what's your dissertation on?

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I was thinking about the fact that there's probably a fair bit of skill differential between players, and had a idea which might help alleviate that while also giving people a fun way to contribute:

 

"When a player dies, he can (if he wishes) nominate a (ideally long serving) member of his characters council, from this point on as long as that character is alive and part of his successors council the player may offer advice to the new ruler about his play though but must do so fully in character as much as possible."

 

maybe its a silly idea, but I haven't played in a succession game before (& i think maybe I'm not alone in that) and it might take some of the pressure out of it for the newer players without it turning the more experienced players into back seat monarchs

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Gormongous, out of curiosity, what's your dissertation on?

 

I started out researching conquest, settlement, and state-building in the Latin East, but I gradually moved to the marquisate of Montferrat, a noble house that built itself almost entirely out of marital and martial prestige in the twelfth and thirteenth centures, especially via crusading, before it was ground down by the circumstances leading to the Italian Wars. My dissertation in particular looks at the lives of three generations of marquises, all of whom participated in crusades to escalating degrees, and uses new research about the institution of crusades and the Mediterranean cultural system to reassess the overly regional conclusions of Leopoldo Usseglio's I marchesi di Monferrato in Italia ed in oriente durante i secoli XII e XIII, written in 1926 but still considered authoritative.

 

Hopefully that doesn't make me totally googleable. If all goes well, I've got an article getting published in a festschrift through Ashgate this summer, which will be the inception of the documented part of my academic career.

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I was thinking about the fact that there's probably a fair bit of skill differential between players, and had a idea which might help alleviate that while also giving people a fun way to contribute:

 

"When a player dies, he can (if he wishes) nominate a (ideally long serving) member of his characters council, from this point on as long as that character is alive and part of his successors council the player may offer advice to the new ruler about his play though but must do so fully in character as much as possible."

 

maybe its a silly idea, but I haven't played in a succession game before (& i think maybe I'm not alone in that) and it might take some of the pressure out of it for the newer players without it turning the more experienced players into back seat monarchs

 

 

It's an idea, and sure why not, but I don't think anybody should be under any pressure to "play well" when it's there turn. Part of the fun will be watching the ebb and flow :-) And I'm speaking of somebody who knows next to nothing about gaming the quirky mechanics, etc. :)

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I started out researching conquest, settlement, and state-building in the Latin East, but I gradually moved to the marquisate of Montferrat, a noble house that built itself almost entirely out of marital and martial prestige in the twelfth and thirteenth centures, especially via crusading, before it was ground down by the circumstances leading to the Italian Wars. My dissertation in particular looks at the lives of three generations of marquises, all of whom participated in crusades to escalating degrees, and uses new research about the institution of crusades and the Mediterranean cultural system to reassess the overly regional conclusions of Leopoldo Usseglio's I marchesi di Monferrato in Italia ed in oriente durante i secoli XII e XIII, written in 1926 but still considered authoritative.

 

Hopefully that doesn't make me totally googleable. If all goes well, I've got an article getting published in a festschrift through Ashgate this summer, which will be the inception of the documented part of my academic career.

 

That's really cool! I don't know many people who work on medieval history. Nearly everybody in my department is either a modernist or early modernist.

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