CKII is released.

[Turrul]

Well, I started another game in Wales in 867 and generally had an interesting 80 years creating an empire and trying out the seduction approach to my usual eugenics project. Ultimogeniture + legitimising the first child as backup and then the best candidate works great, didn't even bother getting married. I did kind of fuck up by legitimising too many kids and then giving them land. Should have left them as bastards to prevent them from having claims on my stuff. Seriously, that is the last time I will ever give duchies to my family.

Anyway, maybe they did tone down seduction a bit, but I still didn't have any problems with it (but then I restricted myself to lowborn and unmarried targets, preferably after I got them to my court), it was quite easy to find good candidates and some events just give you courtiers with several good traits. Of course, when the AI does it it's still disruptive as hell and likely to end in multiple murders.

Also, I really, really hate those fucking vikings. I get it that I'm playing in the viking age and that Britain is supposed to be viking central. But you'd think that after the first 100 thousand vikings failed to return from my lands they would get the STAY THE FUCK OUT message and look somewhere less suicidal for loot. It's just unbelievably annoying to play whac-a-mole with viking raiders, not a year doesn't go by that at least a couple of groups try it. And every time, raise levies, load them in boats, land them on top of the raiders, dismiss levies and the boats. And my vassals were mostly useless. Finally I snapped and put all my retinues and some cheap mercs on permanent viking-whacking duties, just roaming around with organiser leaders (the AI doesn't expect that and usually starts running for the boats too late) and killing every fucker that lands on my shores.

Going to start another game now, preferably somewhere far away from the fucking vikings.

Fucking Viking boats are some huge hassle, I agree. They should've designed some mechanics back in the Old Gods DLC to make vikings avoid you. Something like paying tribute if you're weak, or some abstracted shore guard forces like what Alfred the Great did would've been enough.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

While sitting on the bus today, I did a little brainstorming on my earlier thoughts on a mod to expand tribes into a full alternative ruling model instead of a rather barebones pseudo-westernization thing it is now. Seriously starting to consider doing it at some point.

- Link tribal society with pagan religion, with "advanced" tribal society being unlocked by religion reform.
- Christianity and Islam reduce requirements to shift to standard feudal model of the game.
- There definately needs to be additional buildings for this sort of thing. My personal idea was to have one religion specific building, one culture group specific building, province terrain specific building, a retinue building per title tier from duke and up, and one or two culture specific buildings (ie, shipwrights for Norse and Estonians).
- Culture/religion specific alternate prestige troops.
- Culture and religion decides additional succession laws for "advanced" tribes.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

One of VIET's additions?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

 

[Delterius]

Ten thousand hours of Crusader Kings 2.

Holy Shit.

 

[Mortmal]

With my 810 hours, i am just a filthy casual then...

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

I thought I would be on the upper end of the spectrum with 340 hours... Still past the average.

 

[Renegen]

I'm surprised the game only sold 1.1 million copies, that's with everyone saying how great and unique it is, journalists giving it free publicity to appear sophisticated and common 75% off sales and that's been going on for 3 years. The DLC model is clearly working in expanding a niche game out as much as possible, it's the same people who go back to CK2, not new ones.

 

[cw8]

Some people bought CK2 because they heard about it but don't actually play it and keep it in the backlog. Some tried to play but can't get past the initial learning curve and never bothered to go past that.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

While sitting on the bus today, I did a little brainstorming on my earlier thoughts on a mod to expand tribes into a full alternative ruling model instead of a rather barebones pseudo-westernization thing it is now. Seriously starting to consider doing it at some point.

- Link tribal society with pagan religion, with "advanced" tribal society being unlocked by religion reform.
- Christianity and Islam reduce requirements to shift to standard feudal model of the game.
- There definately needs to be additional buildings for this sort of thing. My personal idea was to have one religion specific building, one culture group specific building, province terrain specific building, a retinue building per title tier from duke and up, and one or two culture specific buildings (ie, shipwrights for Norse and Estonians).
- Culture/religion specific alternate prestige troops.
- Culture and religion decides additional succession laws for "advanced" tribes.

First part makes no sense unless you consider the ability to form tribal federations under a form of unified but decentralized leadership. A council-like of elders/tribal kings that acts as a form of elective monarchy would be neat.

Nice to see that I'm not the only one autisming with things like that irl.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

While sitting on the bus today, I did a little brainstorming on my earlier thoughts on a mod to expand tribes into a full alternative ruling model instead of a rather barebones pseudo-westernization thing it is now. Seriously starting to consider doing it at some point.

- Link tribal society with pagan religion, with "advanced" tribal society being unlocked by religion reform.
- Christianity and Islam reduce requirements to shift to standard feudal model of the game.
- There definately needs to be additional buildings for this sort of thing. My personal idea was to have one religion specific building, one culture group specific building, province terrain specific building, a retinue building per title tier from duke and up, and one or two culture specific buildings (ie, shipwrights for Norse and Estonians).
- Culture/religion specific alternate prestige troops.
- Culture and religion decides additional succession laws for "advanced" tribes.

First part makes no sense unless you consider the ability to form tribal federations under a form of unified but decentralized leadership. A council-like of elders/tribal kings that acts as a form of elective monarchy would be neat.

Nice to see that I'm not the only one autisming with things like that irl.

The idea I'd have if I were to get off my lazy ass and do it would be to enable other succession laws for tribals. Main thing to do would be to make sure the option to just leave when succession occurs remains on the table for vassals and that sort of thing. Other than that, one thing I'd see would be to alternate demesne limits and such to account for a more nomadic existence compared to the more urbanized Western Europe and Middle-East, as well as limit the ability to revoke, vassal convert and outright conquer non-tribal titles (read: You pull a Golden Horde and you'll just have a huge bunch of heathen city-dwelling devils vassalized and paying tribute).

Still, probably the most important thing would be to add more cultural variables to tribals, namely additional buildings and alternate Summon Mook decisions so there's more flavour.

 

[sser]

Heads up: Charlemagne DLC is on sale for $3.75. I haven't gotten it yet because last I read there were a lot of issues, but that's a pretty good discount.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yup, sad that Way of Life hasn't gotten cheap yet but definitely scooped up Charlemagne at that price. Considering just breaking down and buying the Way of Life bundle for $7ish from Brazilians. Been in a bit of a CK2 mood and if I wanna dive back in I'd kinda want to do so with Way of Life.

 

[cw8]

Bought Charlemagne. Kinda made a point to only buy Paradox DLCs at 75%. I buy their games at launch though. I wish they made the DLCs DRM-free and able to run without Steam like the base vanilla game. Or best yet bring the games to GOG.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm surprised the game only sold 1.1 million copies, that's with everyone saying how great and unique it is, journalists giving it free publicity to appear sophisticated and common 75% off sales and that's been going on for 3 years. The DLC model is clearly working in expanding a niche game out as much as possible, it's the same people who go back to CK2, not new ones.

It's multiple times more than most, perhaps any, Paradox game to date. Given their budgets, it's a huge money maker even without DLC. Pdox games always have been comparatively niche. Your conclusions are wrong.

 

[Renegen]

I'm surprised the game only sold 1.1 million copies, that's with everyone saying how great and unique it is, journalists giving it free publicity to appear sophisticated and common 75% off sales and that's been going on for 3 years. The DLC model is clearly working in expanding a niche game out as much as possible, it's the same people who go back to CK2, not new ones.

It's multiple times more than most, perhaps any, Paradox game to date. Given their budgets, it's a huge money maker even without DLC. Pdox games always have been comparatively niche. Your conclusions are wrong.

I recall EU3 had sold 500k? Your conclusions are wrong.

 

[Tigranes]

 

[Echo Mirage]

The legacy of Rome expansion sounds interesting. But I just don't know if I can remove that much kebab over that length of time.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

My conclusions are right because I have numbers and numbers never lie.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/292982/ Charlemagne, released October 14 2014, 73 Steam reviews

http://store.steampowered.com/app/279620/ Wealth of Nations, released May 29th 2014, 8 Steam reviews

Quod ipso demonstrandum emptor diem pluribus ergo.

Edit: Also the most important part of Legacy of Rome, Echo, is the retinue system. In fact I sorta feel like Charlemagne doesn't look that special unless I wanna play in the earlier start date (Though custom kingdom and empire formation should be nice) whereas with Legacy you'll be using retinues in every single game of CK2 after getting it.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Wasn't there a retinue nerf at some point?

Its been a long while since I played but one review mentions it, stating that it makes the expansion worthless.

Or is that overblown hyperbole?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Wasn't there a retinue nerf at some point?

Its been a long while since I played but one review mentions it, stating that it makes the expansion worthless.

Or is that overblown hyperbole?

There was a retinue nerf (Relatively recently IIRC. Sometime around Charlemagne or Way of Life) but I don't know if it nerfed retinues into oblivion. Took a CK2 break and haven't played since the nerf hit. I do know that overall they should have been nerfed because before that point once you reached a certain size the majority of your army was freely reinforcing anywhere always standing always loyal retinue with no upkeep. Was ridiculous.

Edit: Yeah, looking it up a bit more now it sounds like retinues are just a standing hand-picked core of your army now instead of the majority of your army themselves. You probably wouldn't be horribly gimped without Rome since IIRC increased retinue size decreases levy size, but I dunno. I'd still want Legacy of Rome for it if I was you, but I'm a horrible Paradox DLC packrat too.

 

[Average Manatee]

Used to be you got 5 retinue points per holding, now you get 2/3/4/5 retinue per holding depending on how high your rank is. Also the reinforce cost was increased and reinforce rate was decreased.

TBH the nerf targeted counts/dukes too harshly (for which retinue size wasn't a problem and who were hard-pressed to fund them) while Kings/Emperors are just fine (lots of money to burn). Only true overall nerf is the reinforce rate decrease, you can't walk around with a 15k stack of archers assaulting every holding and reinforcing faster than you take casualties. Now you need 25k to do that.

 

[Absalom]

Yeah retinues are still gonna be your primary fightan' force. Much easier AND more effective than your levies. Course if you have welsh culture than retinues transform into the finest piece of pure cheddar cheese you're gonna get in Cuckold Kings.

 

[Zero Credibility]

From my experience retinues are still good for some things: inflating your troop count against factions and quickly sieging down holdings. Of course, only the skirmish / light infantry retinues are really useful for that. Other retinues cost too much points to be good at the former and the shitty assault system makes them useless for the latter. As for battles, retinues can still give you some extra manpower, but that is not likely to be of critical importance in wars unless you are running a Roman Empire or something as large.

And even then with the tech nerf retinues get compared to ordinary levies and the huge costs of reinforcing some of the more expensive retinues you are likely better off sticking with skirmish / light infantry. If you must bring retinues to the battle, better to crush the enemy in the skirmish phase and avoid paying their reinforcement for years. Use that money for mercs instead. Everything else (including almost all cultural retinues) is clearly a worse choice. Shame, it's just not the same playing the greeks without cataphracts.

Anyway, stopped playing this for now, maybe I'll continue after a patch or two. Things that piss me off (that come first to my mind anyway):

1. viceroyalties - these clearly don't yet work the way they were supposed to. Any time one of your strategos / exarchs dies there is a significant chance that the liege will be stuck with all his debts, holly relics, retinues and, most annoyingly, all his courtiers, instead of all of them going to his actual heir. I do not enjoy having hundreds of useless people in my court in the least. This bug has been around for some time now and is still not fixed. Amusingly, some fanboy on their forums has actually defended this as working as intended, saying that this was a drawback of using viceroyalties. Yeah, right - it's a feature, not a bug.

2. AI, just AI. I'll skip over things like atrocious pathfinding (seriously, several times now I have seen AI armies moving from one side of Egypt to another by taking a shortcut - through Europe) and say that I agree with RK47 - AI is just doing things for the sake of spamming shit. Vassal collecting each other wives for lovers like pokemon instead of sensibly taking an unimportant mistress or two (or three)? Check. Vassals killing each other despite there being zero benefit for them in it, just because they have the intrigue focus? Check.

Focuses just made this clear, but it was there before. I love playing greeks, but the greek AI just doesn't know how not to use greek blinding / castration decisions. An important prisoner that can be ransomed for a nice sum of gold, an unimportant child captured in a siege, a rebellious vassal that should really be kept in the dungeon - doesn't matter, AI always spams blinding / castration. AI doesn't care that his piety is already negative, doesn’t care that this is a sure way of becoming cruel, doesn't care that the castrated vassal is going to hate him for the rest of his life.

 

[Absalom]

From my experience retinues are still good for some things: inflating your troop count against factions and quickly sieging down holdings. Of course, only the skirmish / light infantry retinues are really useful for that. Other retinues cost too much points to be good at the former and the shitty assault system makes them useless for the latter. As for battles, retinues can still give you some extra manpower, but that is not likely to be of critical importance in wars unless you are running a Roman Empire or something as large.

Top kek. My welsh retinue commanded by welsh commanders (martial skill doesn't matter, only culture) can easily krump doomstacks of twice their size. It's not even a contest, I'll lose 500 droogs tops while they lose 6000+ and my morale is still near-perfect.