Completed Let's Play Crusader Kings Deus Vult (God wills it!)

[Ivar the Boner]

Well I send myself wrong saves for Heimdall and since I can't continue Heimdall LP yet, I decided to do something else in meantime..

Welcome to let's play of a game that is now (quite rightfully) forgotten and overshadowed by it's sequel: Crusader Kings Deus Vult. I'm doing this as a tribute to something that once was my favorite Paradox game (untill they released sequel) and also as a tribute to the Codex, because codexian LP of CK (as a kingdom of Castille) was first Let's Play I ever saw/read.

This is going to be "in-character" LP but I won't completely "LARP" it, I will only make shit up based on events. Also, please remember that even though characters at the start of the game are based on historical rulers I will NOT treat them as such and I reserve myself right to disrespect them when I will feel like it.

Now let's start this shiat:



"Wiedzcie, panowie, kto nie ruszy dziś. Tam, gdzie Bóg poniósł śmierć i z martwych wstał..."

A call to crusade, call to liberate place of birth and death of Christ from heathens. But we are not entirely sure where exactly christ's place of birth is, and since we are going to play as polish duke - we will start looking around Lithuania...

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TABLE OF CONTENT:

Duchy of Mazovia

Update 1 Władysław Herman
Update 2 Władysław Herman
Update 3 Władysław Herman
Update 4 Władysław Herman, Zbigniew (Herman), Jerzy (Herman)
Update 5 Jerzy the Sceptic
Update 6 Jerzy the Sceptic
Update 7 Jerzy the Sceptic
Update 8 Jerzy the "Sceptic"
Update 9 Jerzy the "Sceptic"
Update 10 Jerzy the "Sceptic"
Update 11 Jerzy the "Sceptic"

WE LITHUANIA NAO

Update 12 Gościwuj the Wrathful
Update 13 Gościwuj the Wrathful
Update 14 Gościwuj the Wrathful
Update 15 Gościwuj the Wrathful
Update 16 Gościwuj the Wrathful
Update 17 Gościwuj the Wrathful
Update 18 Gościwuj the Wrathful (now Cumanicus)
Update 19 Gościwuj the Wrathful (now Cumanicus)
Update 20 Imram Who's Father Was Killed By Cumans
Update 21 Imram Who's Father Was Killed By Cumans
Update 22 Imram Who's Father Was Killed By Cumans
Update 23 Paweł Piast
Update 24 Paweł Piast
Update 25 Paweł Piast
Update 26 Paweł Piast
Update 27 Paweł Piast
Update 28 Piskla the Restorer
Update 29 Piskla the Restorer
Update 30 Ziemowit Piast
Update 31 Ziemowit Piast

Commonwealth of Both Potatoes

Update 32 Ziemowit Piast
Update 33 Ziemowit Piast
Update 34 Zygmunt Piast
Update 35 Zygmunt Piast
Update 36 Zygmunt Piast
Update 37 Zygmunt Piast
Update 38 Zygmunt Piast
Update 39 Zygmunt Piast
Update 39 Zygmunt Piast
----------------------------

Update 1 - Władysław Herman

Spoiler

From Duchy of Mazovia chronicle "God's Will" by Wańko the Lustful

"There is land that was directly touched by God's hand. Land of justice and wealth, land where food is plenty and technological advances are making people lives easier... but this land is not subject of this chronicle. I'm going to tell you history of most backward part of kingdom of Poland: Duchy of Mazovia..."

Wańko The Lustful circa 1066 anno domini

Since starting as a king is quite lame but I haven't played this game in years so I decided to start with something relatively easy. Historically Mazovia was a shithole during middle ages. Thanks to constant Lithuanian raids it was poor and depopulated (Real chronicles says about astronomical number of polish slaves kidnapped during lithuanian raids, we can't really trust them becuase whole of fucking Lithuania would be speaking polish by thirteen century if those number were true) also it was most narrowminded part of Poland, thanks to being Mazovia I guess. But CK don't really depict it right and duchy of Mazovia is clearly strongest vassal of Poland. Also, our main dude Władysław Herman became king after Bolesław Śmiały went apeshit on a deceitful bishop. But I will do everything to NOT become king of Poland and instead try to form kingdom of Lithuania.

Our duke Władzio himself. With martial skill of 4 he can hold a sword, but not much beyond that. And with intrigue of 10 he can backstab someone... sometimes. He's also selfish, deceitful, arbitrary and indulgent. Cheery guy.

- I might be selfish, deceitful, arbitraty and indulgent... But I'm brother of a king so you can all blow me

"All was well in Mazovia, people were zealous and our liege was wise..."

And this is our bro, king Bolesław Śmiały (The Bold). He's quite good but nowhere as overpowered as they made him in CK2 where he can clean the floor with El Cid with his martial skills. As you can see we are his succesor so we WONT kill him untill he got a son. We don't want to be a king... yet.

And this is how our political situation looks like. We directly control county of Kujawy and Płock and we have Czersk as vassal. The rest is pretty much in hands of our bro because all other vassal of Poland are weak as shit. Poland itself is far from being strongest nation but is extremely secure. "Germans" should leave Poland alone and Russkies are in their "Pizza state" so they should be in no position to threaten Poland.

- Damn Krauts and Fucking Russkies are not our only neighbours though, we also have unwashed pagans at our gates...

"And full of compassion to other people, even those of different status and faith..."

- Wańko! bring me the council member!

Well, we really have only one dude in the council and since its spymaster you can clearly see where Władysław's priorities lays... Sieciech Topór (interesting last name, it means "axe") is pretty good spymaster, we are not planning to assasinate anyone yet but in CK your domain size is dependant on your INTRIGUE skill, reasoning behind this is beyond me.Now we really don't how much to do so we shall start the game, wait for

events and more courtiers (so we can have actual council) and then we'll let Władzio do the talking...

- My Lord, I was busy looking for suitable wife for your highness and I think I found a good, young lady of noble family. She is known for having all skills good wife should have, she's kind...

- Show me her picture Wańko!

- ... Here you go sir.

I choose Sybil because she looks like total bitch and her last name is Montgomery. I don't give flying fuck about here skills or traits.

- Send my marriage proposal Wańko!

Count of Sussex agreed to Władysław's demand proposal to marry Sybil. We are poor fuckers so we choose to take duty (not taking it would give us 4 prestige, meh).

- Le daughteeer! you shall mary a duke-e! rejoice, this will be le fantasie moment for the whole familee-e!

After month of travel from Sussex to Płock.

- People of Mazovia! rejoice! Our lord shall marry Sybil de Montgomery!

- Sybila Montgomerska!

After marriage celebration we unpause the game and wait for some royal fucking to commence and hopefully bring us some heirs. Also fun fact, While one of polish dukes was putting poland back together as a kingdom he besieged one castle in Mazovia because guards there did not recognise said duke army right to enter Mazovia. When asked why, they said "Because you are polish!" (in perfect polish language), dukes army leader then asked "Who the hell are you then?" there was much confusion in Mazovian ranks after this question...

While we were waiting for our wife to arrive in Płock we managed to got few more courtiers and now we have whole council assembled. And it's actually quite decent council. We made Sybil our chancellor, since she's Norman she probably know french language so she should be great diplomat...

With monthly income of 6.62 we managed to save enough money to start building forestry in Płock. This will improve our income in Płock by 5%.

There will be a lot of fighting in near future so I decided to start "researching" slashing weapons. Discovery of shortswords and raising noble power in our counties should greatly improve numbers and quality of our knights (best units in the game).

Slightly east from us lays extremely weak chiefdom of Galindia. Unfortunately they are allied with tribe of Prussians who can field more men than we do. To make matters worse Władysław suck donkey balls at warfare so for now we can only stare at pagans and look all scary and shit.

Some time have passed and all royal bedroom gymnastics proved to be still in vain. But we apparently have great reputations and people of Mazovia are proud of us. We gained 'Just' trait (+1 stewardship and -1 martial).

Good job władysław!

After royal tumbling Sybil if fucking speaking in tongues!

She turned out to be pretty decent. She's not prodigy but our child have pretty good chances not to be complete failure.

- Sire, we received letter from our Vassal, count Jarosław of Czersk, he's congratulating you on making Sybil pregnant! this man is devotely loyal to our cause.

Well, is he? REVOKE HIS TITLE!

- But sir...

- DO NOT QUESTION ME!

We done this because MAZOVIA MUST GROW LARGER and we can't wage war with martial skill of 2... also forestry was build.

We have a son!

It's a boy my lord!

- He shall be called Zbigniew!

Władysław decided to celebrate by hunting boars with bishop of greater poland.

Glory is all mine!

Then I noticed that Pommeranians are at war with county of Lubeck. We can raise more troops than Pommeranians AND their leader is hunchback with martial skill of 3. This is our chance to wage sucessful war. Now, there is problem with waging war while being someones vassal. Pommeranians at first will try to sign peace with us but then they will try to do it with our liege and our liege will accept it and this will end our war. Then we will have to declare war on them right away (loosing 100 prestige for declaring war during truce) and they should have no money left to peace out our liege. It's annoying but that's how it is.

We declared war on tribe of pommeranians. Notice that that other people in poland are also at war with them now. But they will just have their armies stand in one place not doing anything. Their armies can be useful if we got our asses handed to us though (which is quite likely with martial skill of 2).

- MEN! RAISE! LET SPILL SOME PAGAN BLOOD!

- This will be glorious!

We joined our regiments and our army outnumbers pagans quite soundly. There are bad news though... Władysław is leading this army.

- FOR THE GLORY OF GOD!

Well, we won but we were fighting only 600 hundred guys led by fucking hunchback.

What the fuck Sybil?

- Immaculate conception...

Whatever, we got siege on our hands!

Pommeranians decided to attack us while we were laying siege to Danzig. Fortunately for us they did not join their regiments and are sending them at us one at the time.

- Well, yeah pregnency is fucking hard to hide!

We decided to "Keep here under watchful eye" (from Danzig). Unfortunately we didn't got 'Suspicious' trait and Sybil is now friends with our spymaster Sieciech, so hes probably the one we ordered to keep eye on her, fucking great.

We crushed pommeranian army and their chief is trying to sign white peace with us. No way!

County of danzig signed peace with the king and we have to "re-declare" war on them loosing 100 prestige.

And then Władysław showed heroism fighting 78 guys...

TWICE!

We are broke and we have to spend some piety and prestige not to get stability hit. We are going to do it beacuse you can't raise realm stability in this game, you have to wait for random event raising it.

We finished the siege on our bro accepted peace offer from Danzig... he got 7 gold pieces for it.

Aaaand we had to declare war on danzig again, it brought us to negative prestige.

Now we have to choose who will raise our heir Zbigniew. We shall do it ourselves loosing some money in the process.

Our son have problems learning to talk so we beat the shit out of him (while sieging Danzig, we probably told him to push siege tower or something). It worked, he learned to talk and did not get any trait for it.

We completely annahilated what was left of Pommeranian army and we continue to lay siege to Danzig. Then I noticed that french landed in stettin, they are our allies but I don't want their help. I don't want france to have any land anywhere fucking near me.

... And then chief of pommerania revoked chief of danzig title and signed peace with king of Poland for 8 gold pieces. We have to declare war on them again.

When it rains, it pours...

Time to lay siege to danzig for the third time!

Guy who is screwing my wife showed me "proof" that my first son is bastard. He's trying to set HIS son as my heir.

Go fuck yourself, he's mine.

We gained 'Reckless' trait. Now we have martial skill of 1.

"Our" second child turned out to also be a boy. He's name will be Jerzy.

AI is constantly sending stacks of 100 guys at us and they managed to severly wound our marshall during one attack.

We finally finished the siege of danzig.

We immidiately send peace offer, demanding ONLY Danzig because I'm scared that our bro will sign peace with them again.

They accepted, and we gained one more county. Unfortunately we loose a lot of money and shitton of prestige and it will take us some time to recover. Beating the shit out of some random pagans around us and accepting shitty peace deal to gain prestige is out of the question since our bro will keep accepting their peace offers and we won't get anything from them.

Mazovia grow larger and Poland now have access to the sea. Problem is, Danzig is pagan and have different culture (Weneds, also slavs but not poles). We set clergy power in Danzig to maximum to speed up religious conversion process. I have no idea how to change speed of culture switch of provinces so we shall leave it as it is for now.

And that's it for this episode. We married a norman chick, make a baby with her, gone to war and our spy master also made a baby with her. Then we conquered Danzig after declaring war on it 4 times.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 2 - Władysław Herman. Recovering from debt.

Spoiler

Well, last war went freaking great. We conquered one province and lost huge amount of prestige becuase our liege kept
accepting enemy peace offers. It always happened to me but I never had to declare war on someone 4 times. Whatever, debt and extremely low prestige should make this campaign a little bit more interesing. I also forgot to tell you that i'm playing on 'normal' difficulty and 'weakling' AI aggresiveness (it's reccomended setting for this game, on normal aggresiveness AI tend to implode all the time). I also have 'personal rule' that only my child or child of my child can inherit, so if our kids die and and some random cousine will inherit our titles, game is over. But we are not 'tied' to title of duchy of Mazovia. If we form kingdom of Lithuania and then lost Mazovia or simply decide to leave europe to make crusader kingdom we can still continue as long as our child or grandchild inherits.

We are welcomed in this session by our spy master with habit of screwing our wife ending his romance with her and threating to leave if we won't give him money. We don't have any money to spare so we will risk him leaving.

She was also 'serving' our spy master quite well, but whatever. I ain't even mad, good job Sibyl

Our marshall was wounded during skirmish at Danzig and he keeps loosing his martial skill. That's terrible because our only other guy who could be a marshall have martial skill of 2, so he would raise our abilities to whooping 3.

Now the steward is ill and our wife got pregnant again. I think she may have brought some exotic illness with her from british isles... Also, William the Bastard is pope controller now. Scots beware.

Finally some good news! Danzig is no longer looted and Czersk is now 'prosperous'.

Well, it turnes out that declaring war 4 times in a row on guys with whom we had truce is not such a bad thing. People loves us and we lost 'deceitful' trait.

Loosing deceitful trait balanced out our skills. Now we suck at everything.

Burghers wants right to be appointed into a council. We are going to decline because Władysław is a traditionalist.

But there are some good news. Germany imploded and german king have pretty big civil war on his hands.

Miracle worker offers his skills to heal our steward. Since steward is the one who pays for it I have no fucking idea why the choice is ours. We decided give it a try and our steward is healed.

Same event happend to our marshall. Unfortunately he was not healed. Also, we have third child.

I decided to take a look at those little dudes and it turned out that none of them is mutated freak. But our first son is now 'vengeful', probably beating crap out of him at siege of Danzig left a scar or two.

We are out of debt and our counties starts to prosper again. We gained 4 gold, I would prefere to gain prestige but I'll get over it.

Now we have to decide who will raise our second son. Since we don't see much chances for him to inherit we order monks to raise him.

Basically all the power over Danzig "are belong to" clergy so nobles feel bad about it. I decided to give them some more power to keep their loyalty.

Ok, that's enough.

You know what we do with unfaithful wifes in Poland? we let goats suck on their tits!

Yes, and I also know what you do with man who falesly accuse woman of being unfaithful. He is forced to go under the table and bark like a dog, loosing all respect he had...

Well, shit.

Well, she don't have any new 'friend' so Władysław might be simply paranoid, can't blame him though.

Bohemia declared independece and Holy Roman Empire is in all kind of problems.

I planned to keep low profile until we recover a little bit from our negative prestige but our weak pagan neighbours got attacked by principality of Polotsk and I was afraid that they might be completely annexed by orthodox. So we decided to declare war on tribe of Yatvingas to get something from them before they fall.

No time to gather all of our troops, we must attack quickly!

Their army pretty much routed upon contact with our "Płock regiment" and we started the siege of Yatviagi.

Thanks to our 'traditional customs' law burghers got more power and loyalty. Feudal contract seems to be better choice because it improves relations with your vassal but I don't need it now, we don't have any vassals.

Then the siege stopped and I was pretty sure that Yatvingas signed peace with our king, but no. Siege started again so probably their chief died and they had sucession or something like that.

We quickly captured Yatviagi and Lithuanian chief agreed to give it to us through peace offer.

Like danzig it's different culture and religion. I don't know if Crusader Kings have "culture groups" so I will have less problems controling Wends than Lithuanians (since Wends are slavs and lithuanians are balts). But eventually those two provinces should switch culture to same as their liege's (or our heir will switch culture to theirs, which happend to me once or twice).

Newest addition to our domain slightly tarnished our reputation but now we earn 14,59 gold per month. Which is quite an upgrade compared to 5 we started with. Getting Danzig was nice but it won't give us anything in the long run. It's de jure part of kingdom of Poland, not Lithuania (which we want to form) and the rest of pommeranian counties have been captured by our brother so we won't be even able to create a title of duke of pommerania or pomeralia. But it gives us money and troops which we will need to conquer other Lithuanian provinces.

We can now choose our firstborn education. I went with 'court education' which might not be best option but is most likely choice for a heir of Władysław.

Holy crap, she's shitting them kids out fast! I wouldn't mind having a daughter so we could marry her off instead of giving her land to avoid prestige hits.

Pagans are not happy with my rule. Well I don't want to piss them off too much for no reason (we can't convert them through this event) so we shall 'buy their loyalty'.

Because our spy master is too busy fucking our wife we lost our claim. I don't remember on what we had this claim so no biggie.

Ok, bribing pagans to shut them up was ok but allowing them to shag sheeps for Perkunas is unacceptable!

We lost some peasants loyalty but Yatviagi is not revolting (yet).

Sire! I bring grave news, our marshall Bolko died.

Defeater of Weneds! Conqueror of Lithuanians! God damn those pommerannian skirmishers who wounded him!

Goodnight sweet Bolko...

We had to hire new marshal, who is terrible and we now have martial skill of 3.

Our youngest son needs education. Since there is relatively high chance that he's actually OUR son we won't give him away to be educated by monks. Some local noble shall take care of him.

My liege, situation when clergy holds most of the power in a county greatly absets nobles in Yatviagi, maybe we should grant them more power to keep their loyalty?

You might be right, we need to convert pagans but we can't afford to lose loyalty of the knights... Let's balance the power in Yatviagi a little bit.

Goddamit...

I mean, great!

My liege, your bastard second sond needs formal education. He seems to be quite talented at intrigue...

No wonder... Well, send him to army so he wont kill our legitimate heir firstborn.

Thieves guild is terrorizing our capital. We would have to build "Court of Justice" to get rid of them, but since we can't afford it we have to wait for them to disband on their own.

Apparently we pissed off archbishop of Kuyavia. He's quite good ruler and have 3 counties so it's not a good thing.

Kujawy refused to pay taxes, since Władysław is not merciful guy we decide that...

Who does not pay will be hanged!

This is probably bad decision since we could afford to lose some gold (100 in this case) but like I said, Władysław is not merciful guy. Will Kujawy revolt? we shall see in next episode...

 

[Absalom]

When/How did Poland transition to an elective monarchy? Other than that, great LP! And the Holy Roman Empire always implodes

 

[Ivar the Boner]

When/How did Poland transition to an elective monarchy? Other than that, great LP! And the Holy Roman Empire always implodes

Thanks! You mean when historically Poland transitioned to elective monarchy? Technically after 1569 Union of Lublin (Creation of Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which was very effectively delayed by Lithuanian nobility for very long time) but in practice first foreign king after Piast dynasty died (1370)* had to pay large sums of money and promise not to use polish troops in his wars (not that he had to this king was Loise of Hungary, king of Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Cumania and duke of whole shitton of places) to buy himself enough loyality of nobles to be crowned a king.

*Year when only polish king with title "The Great" died - Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great), he actually had a lot of children, and even couple of sons... none of the legitimate though.

 

[Absalom]

Cool! I always wondered about that. Presumably you'll avert such a thing in your lp, right?

 

[Ivar the Boner]

I'm "allergic" to bastard in Crusader Kings, which is strange because they have their uses, so I'm not planning to make any of those myself, I will try to have only legitimate kids. If I will be able to form kingdom of Lithuania (which might be quite hard because it will lead us to conflict which Rus states) I wouldn't mind alliance with Poland, but I actually never crowned myself a king thus declaring independence from my liege so I don't know if won't lead to war with polish king. I'm not planning to be both king of Poland and Lithuania though (Not that I have something against idea of historical Commonwealth). I would rather go fight muslims in middle-east to run away from mongols make things more "crusadey". Also I don't think that your characters can gain "nick-names" like in CK2 so I will have to make some nick-names for my further rulers myself (I don't have to do this with Władysław since he starts with one, Herman, which I have no bloody idea what it means since he was definitely not one of germanised Piast rulers).

 

[Absalom]

Hmm. Sounds a lot more interesting than the map-painting extravaganza I usually indulge in in these types of games. Yeah, CKII really just improves everything CKI did, but everyone is doing lp's of that at the moment.

 

[Imperator]

The loyalty system annoying in this game my vassals always turn against my.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Yes, I was shocked that CK2 was pretty much better game than original straight out of the box (well, better at everything but the box itself, I don't know what paradox were thinking when they choose cover for CK2). But CK1 still have it's charm, mainly because it's completely random and you don't seem to have power over... anything. I remember my game as Duchy of the Isles (later Kingdom of the Isles) conquering Ireland as them and appointing only Norwegian vassals so they would be loyal to Norwegian liege... and then my heir randomly switching culture to Irish and everything wen down the toilet.

 

[Kattze]

That is what I like in CK1. Everything is much more random. In CK2, HRE would always be a behemoth in Central Europe, Republics would always own North Africa and Byzantines would, for some reason, expand towards Russia.

 

[RK47]

The problem with CK2 is that retinue tends to give large empires a high amount of stability - because the more manpower you convert to retinue, the higher your troop count compared to factions, hence the factions would theorically fail to hit the 'revolting' stage.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 3 - Władysław Herman, Piast lullaby and very polish response to "christian unity".

Spoiler

Piast Lullaby, song made up as a lullaby sang by mother of Bolesław The Valiant to her son. It's not traditional, it was made up for polish historical novel but it's quite interesing since it uses "leli leli" lyrics fragments which are used in a lot of polish folk songs and don't mean absolutely anything. Famous polish chronicler during middle ages, Jan Długosz, was once tasked with completing "Polish Pantheon" of old slavic pagan gods. Problem was that catholic church done such a good job at eradicting all sign of paganism that he was unable to find any old gods names. So he went to tavern to listen to peasants singing, he heard a lot of "Leli leli" and "Oj dana, dana" which he could not understand so he decided that those must be names of old gods. So official Polish Pantheon is full of "Yo-ho-ho God of Bottles of Rum" and such, because of this polish historians tend to call this Pantheon "Polish Tavern".

Also I'm quite surprised that Teutonic Order is not sending me hate mail through pope. Like everything in CK, emerging of Teutons is by random event which ask you if you wan't to give your castles to holy order. Maybe they are not interested in Danzig and will start annoying us after we conquer Prussia.

Only interesting event so far. Geza, king of Hungary, is papal controller. Which may be bad news for Poland.

Yatviagi revolted. And not just put county in 'revolt' state lowering it's income, it actually spawned an army which is sieging province.

It's just a mob of peasants, I shall crush them personally with my faithfull Płock Regiment!

ATTACK!

... Or not, first we have to choose who will educate our youngest son. We choose to have him educated by nannies which will give him "selfish" trait, and that's not that bad since it gives him +2 stewardship.

We have crushed this 'rebellion'. I completely forgot to change my noble power in my counties and as you can se we don't have ANY knights. Well, maybe "Szlachta Mazowiecka" is poor as balls and can't afford horse and armor so our nobles are infiltrating enemies dressed as burghers heavy infantry!

Our firstborn formed a strong relationship with his mentor, since he's not tutored by our spy master I will allow them to become friends.

ITZ!

And it's even called for Jerusalem! not Rome or middle of germany!

Seignor, sachiés qui or ne s'en ira
En cele terre ou Deus fu mors et vis
Et qui la crois d'outremer ne prendra
A paines mais ira en paradis.

Wiedzcie, panowie, kto nie ruszy dziś
Tam, gdzie Bóg poniósł śmierć i z martwych wstał,
Kogo zamorski nie ozdobi krzyż,
Tego zapewne też ominie Raj.

Oh, so If we won't pack our stuff and go slaughter some dudes living far away we will all go to hell?

Yup

Damn, I might consider it then!

"In a rather famous anecdote, Leszek once explained to the Pope that Polish knights could not participate in his Crusade because there was no mead/beer to be had in Palestine."

It's actually true story about polish duke Leszek the White.

Our fierce rival, archbishop of Kuyavia rebelled against king of Poland! I don't have any claims on his land so I won't participate direclty in putting him back in line. Unless our brother will call for grand mobilization. AI tend to do this, rising all troops in realm... and then do absolutely nothing and it will make his vassals go broke and be even more rebellious. So if our bro will demand to use our troops, we will have to kick archbishop ass ourselves.

Archbishop is actually beating the shit out of our king.

Yup, Kraków regiment got their asses handed to them. Polish king is siegieng archbishop land but he's doing it with multiple 700 guys regiments and archbishop is walzing through poland with stack of 4k man.

HA! just look at our brother, he can't even keep his bishops in line! If he only made ME marshall of his army I would end this silly rebellion. Since our glorious victories over barbarians polish borders are safe! he should thank me for that!

FUCK!

We quickly gathered all troops we could and we are in the process of sending them to Kujawy because it seems like most likely place for prussians to attack. I actually don't know what those guys are thinking. Władysław sucks at warfare, but comeone, prussians have 1500 guys, we have 4467! MAZOVIA STRONG!

Prussians went for Danzig. We shall gather our troops, crush their army and then conquer all their provinces.

We outnumber them heavily and we don' have to cross any river to attack them. We should win easily.

My liege! this is not best moment to be hunting boars! you are leading an army!

DO NOT QUESTION ME WAŃKO!

Well, prussians decided not to fight our army and are retreating to prussia. Which is actually wise decision because if we wan't to chase their army, we will have to attack them through the river.

What the fuck are you doing here? Prussia still belong to balts!

Mind your own buisness!

Sieciech (our spy master) get them! leave no kraut alive!

We showed them!

Our brother managed to deal with Kuyavian rebellion. Apparently, archbishop had claim on kingdom of poland, well he lost it, along with all land he had.

We arrived in Chełminskie, prussian army is split into two small groups, we could send some of our soldiers to deal with them while the rest is sieging Chełminskie, but that's not something that guy with martials skill of 2 would do.

People are bitching that we all young men were called to war and there is no one to tend to fields. We decided to give peastants some money and gain prestige and piety because we are in the debt anyway so it doesn't matter.

We 'liberated' Chełminskie and our brother send us some help, there is is total of 9000 polish soldiers to fight 1500 prussians...

No thanks, I think we got this.

Prussians managed to take Danzig, well shit happens we will take it back.

We took Marienburg, now let's take Danzig back and make peace with prussians. Also we had to sell our fishery because we are broke. We shall rebuild it later.

Actually we don't have to take Danzig back. Chiefdom of Sambia is not at war with us so we conquerd all provinces that belong to chief of prussians and poor bastard had to accept any deal we wanted. We took Chełmińskie and Marienburg. Now we have too much land and our reputation is probably terrible.

That's good moment to end this (quite short) update. In next episode we will have to give out some land and create some vassals because we can't control this many counties directly. Our reputation is only "slightly tarnished" but we are still at negative prestige so we may have problems keeping our new vassals loyal. So yeah, Poland reacted to petition for "christian unity" in form of crusade by having civil war with archbishop and then we liberated some pagan lands... but from WRONG pagans.

 

[SirArvedeth]

Great LP Ivar! I'm wandering - in original CK, are Russians such a pain in the ass as in CK2? Everytime I'm trying to conquer them, all duchies join the war and literally gangbang me -.-

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Great LP Ivar! I'm wandering - in original CK, are Russians such a pain in the ass as in CK2? Everytime I'm trying to conquer them, all duchies join the war and literally gangbang me -.-

No, CK1 have different "alliance system" so russian states are not allied all the time because of dynastic relations. In original CK you can form alliance with whomever you want to without need to marry their daughter or something. Thanks to this you can sometimes even see Lithuania emerging because it don't get automatically crushed by russians. It also makes mongol invasion even scarier because there is no huge Russian empire to stop them (like pretty much always happens in CK2).

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 4 - Władysław Herman. Middle ages, middle ages never changes.

Spoiler

We gained new land and our realms looks kinda silly now. Completely random expansion gave us boost in income and troop count but we are not getting any titles for it. I hoped I will be able to create title of Duke of Pomeralia because we hold 2 out of 3 counties there, unfortunately our brother, the king, created this title so we are shit out of luck. Next goal would be creating duchy of Prussia but we need two more counties. We also "work" at 80% efficiency because we have more land than we can control directly. We have to create at least one vassal.

There is one guy in our court who is complete dick (indulgent and deceitful), therefore, he likes us. We will give him county of Yatviagi because it is a shithole even by Mazovian standards.

Like so. Now we have vassal who is devotely loyal and is still gaining loyality because my reputation is not as bad as I thought (slightly tarnished, only -1,5 relations with vassals). Now we are running at 90% efficiency and I'm ok with that.

We had to sell forestry somewhere because we are broke. Our income is peanuts because we have to pay 13,7 gold mothly to our liege. Our brother should soon stop taxation of his vassals so I think we are going to be fine.

One good news though - Our marshall stopped sucking. Well, he's still quite bad but he have martial skill of 6 instead of 2. So that's an upgrade if I ever saw one.

Our spymaster Sieciech (father of our second son) catched illness. HE DESERVED IT!

Well, well. I said I will try to avoid situation that can lead to having bastards but Władysław is selfish AND indulgent. I think we can let him screw some wenches. And then, he deserved some fun after all this bullshit with whole court screwing his wife.

Our bro lowered taxes a little bit. Soon we will be able to rebuild infrastructure we were forced to sell to fuel our defensive war with prussians.

I gave most power over new provinces to clergy (because they are all pagan) so not even burghers are unhappy about it (since we have traditional customs law they loyalty is naturally higher).

Oldenburg declared war on duchy of silesia. I don't care much about western Poland but I'm afraid that our liege might want to have some of our troops (which will lower our income even more).

Sire, your brother, our great king Bolesław requests that we mobilize our troops to defend Poland.

Goddamit... Yeah, send order to mobilize our mighty host.

Yes sir, your loyalty is worthy of utmost respect considering in what poor financial position we are! I'm proud to serve you my liege! FOR POLAND

Yeah, yeah, but don't pay them

W-what?

You heard me right, my brother wants us to give him our soldiers, which we will do. He never said that we have to pay them right? that's his problem.

Right... as you wish, sire.

We agree to mobilize all of our soldiers. Which would cost us 59 gold per month. We set army upkeep to 0 and hope for the best...

Oh...

Duke is dead! LONG LIVE THE DUKE!

Fortunately, our firstborn inherited. He's only 10, we will have to wait till he finishes his education to see if he's any good.

Crusades ebb out... wut? Well, crusade is over and Jerusalem is in hands of byzantines.

KROM?! WHERE IS DE WIZARD WHO KILLED MAH FATHER?! VER ARE DE TWO SNAKES FACING EACH OTHEEEER!?

Zbigniew is sceptical now, which gives him +1 intrigue and whooping -3 monthly piety. We gon get excomunicated!

Poland conquered Oldenburg and Count Zbigniew said some bad things about us in front of our liege. We demanded satisfaction but i didn't lead us to have fierce rivalry with count of Oldenburg.

Germany must be really in rough shape if they ask duchy of Mazovia for alliance... we declined.

Asshole who killed our father want our jew gold or he will leave. We told him to have a nice journey and he run away to Hungary.

We made Beata Halicz our new spymaster. She's zelous and we are sceptical so she will probably murder us soon.

Wha... I was fucking joking about her killing me!

So yeah, we play as Jerzy now (Second son of Władysław) he was born thanks to immaculate conception (we were sieging Danzig when Sybil got pregnant) or our wife was cheating. Nobody ever proved he is a bastard so he counts as our son, we can continue playing (But we are running out of dudes). We also fired spymaster Beata and hired chick with intrigue skill of 3 so she will have lower chances at killing us...

They drop like flies... I mean LONG LIVE THE DUKE!

Then we let time fly for a while. There was couple of not very important things happening, first we had to change our steward because he was "roughing up" population of counties to get more taxes which gave us small amount of gold but was putting provinces in state of revolt (lowering our income in the long run) we now have extremely crappy steward but I hope to get better one soon. Then our marshall left us and we hired a new one, who is actually better (martial skill of 8 instead of 7). Then we switched to "feudal contract" law. Mostly to have more knights in our armies because with traditional customs we had none.

I planned to wait until Jerzy grow up, marry some chick and make few babies but I'm very concern about Principality of Polotsk (grey blob east of us) growing power. I think we have to quickly grab some pagan land near us before Polotsk will do this. I decided to attack chiefdom of Galindia.

They are allied with Lithuanians but they are weak as fuck so they should not give us any problems.

Since we are not adults yet we order our marshall Janusz Rawicz to lead glorious Mazowian army into victory!

As you can see we gained some knights thanks to law change, we have 232 instead of 0. But we still have mostly light cavalry and light infantry.

King of Poland accepted Galindian peace offer. We will wait couple days (for other polish soldiers to go back home) and then re-declare war on Galindia.

Meanwhile, Jerzy grown up. Amazingly, he kinda looks like Władysław.

We declared war again (loosing 100 prestige) and now we are preparing to crush Galindian army and sieze their land.

Our steward gained martial skill while we were fighting. I forgot to tell you that we hired prussian pagan as a steward because having heretic/heathen in council leads to hilarious events.

We won but our bishop got wounded (probably by pagan steward).

Then we quickly finished siege and took Galindia from pagans.

And that's it for this episode. In next one we shall marry our duke and think about some nick-name and "profile picture" for him.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 5 - Jerzy the Sceptic, new ruler and Hungarian blitzkrieg.

Spoiler

This is only Hungarian song I know...

Time of strife has ended, apprently God wanted you to take rule over Mazovia and summoned your father and your brother to Him earlier...

If you say so. Now, old man, find me a good bride... but Wańko?

Yes, sire?

No more norman chicks, ok?

As you wish sir...

Goddamn, I don't remember finding potential bridge who is not butt ugly to be so hard. I was also looking for one that is also 'sceptical', and this chick here is not only 'sceptical' she is also 'suspicious' so she's perfect match for Jerzy!

What about this Swedish young lady sir?

She's nice, I like her. And scandinavians are honorable people, Swedes would never invade Poland!

Absolutely! never!

NEVER!... Riiight, send my marriage proposal to our friends Swedes.

Sire, count of Smaland agreed to our proposal.

Great! I told you Swedes can be trusted. Now bring me my sweet Aleta and we shall begin our marriage celebrations.

Jerzy decided to create bishopric of Galindia as a part of his marriage celebrations. We gave it to some swedish dude, I don't what he was doing in our court. Unfortunately we could not give bishopric to our pagan steward, I once made a dead dude a bishop so I thought that everything is possible in CK...

I formed alliance with duchy of Silesia hoping that they could be useful if we decide to grab some land inside Poland but those idiots decided to rebell and want our help. They are not getting any I'm afraid.

Either all mazovian Piasts are paranoid as hell or they can't keep their wifes under control. We choose "it's probably nothing"

And it is actually nothing. But we gained trait 'generous' for it (penalty to stewardship and bonus to piety and prestige).

Three things have happened. Marienburg revolted.

Send there my marshall. I'm busy.

Aleta is expecting a child.

Told ya I'm busy *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

And I reinstalled Deus Vult Improvement Pack. I screwed up installation before, I was looking up on Pdox forums why I get "unknown string wanted" events. Standard PDOX answer is "BECASUE YOU PIRATED THE GAME", then someone posted a message not to listen to fucking pdox admin and his pirate bullshit, just install DVIP and graphics pack in RIGHT order (Which actually means do not install BOPACK graphic mod events at all, beacuse those are included in DVIP) and now we have right events instead of "unknown string wanted" and "crusades ebb out". This "child skill detoriates" event is added by DVIP to make sure you won't get ridiculously good leaders.

We showed Marien-Burgers who's boss and Pope want's us to get Jerusalem back (Byzantium lost it).

Aaand pope is sceptical. Well, at least he's not muslim.

Honorable knights! servants of our Lord... Cathol. You have to take Jerusalem from filthy hands of the heathens... and don't fuck it up this time, ok? don't let fake romans take it!

Our brother Władysław come of age. Jerzy decided to marry him to polish woman...

... From Somerset.

She actually have highest martial skill in whole duchy of Mazovia. Too bad we can't tell her to wear fake dick and lead our armies.

Sire, we finished construction of new castle in Płock!

Sweet balls on fire!

Heathens shall tremble!

Jerzy finished his education. He became 'Tough Soldier'.

Well, what can I say? he suck.

My Lord, I was searching through your father belongings and I found documents proving that county of Abauj rightfully belong to duchy of Mazovia!

This is where Abauj is.

... Where did you found those 'documents'?

In little notebook called 'Why Hungary should belong to me'

Goddamit Wańko, burn it before Hungarian king see it!

Revolt made my wife nervous and she gave birth to stillborn child.

They shall pay! Send my brother's wife to crush them!

Women can't lead armies my lord!

Crap... then send my marshall!

We made our wife a spymaster. She likes us a lot so TECHNICALLY she should not plot to kill us.

My lord, our financial situation improved quite a bit, now we can spend some resources to improve infrastructure in our counties...

Or wage war and grab more land... Summon my new marshall!

Sir, we should strike at weak chiefdoms of sambia and Scalovia. Sambia should fall very quickly, Scalovia is allied with tribe of Pechengs but my Hungarian comrades would never allow pagans to march through their land to attack polish catholics! I also thought about reforming our cavalry...

Orban, I already told that cavalry with wings slapped on their backs will NEVER work, stop wasting my time with this Hungarian madness, this is ridiculous!

As you wish, sire.

But you can put in motion your plan to conquer Sambia and Scalovia.

We shall attack those two weak chiefdoms before Polotsk eats them. Knowing our luck we will probably have to declare war on them couple times putting ourselvs in more negative prestige.

 

[RK47]

'huge russian empire stopping mongols in ck2'

O_o doesn't happen often in CK2 in my 300 hours played.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

'huge russian empire stopping mongols in ck2'

o_O doesn't happen often in CK2 in my 300 hours played.

Well, it almost always happens to me. But randomness is what CK series stand for so I guess things are different for everyone.

 

[RK47]

It's not really about randomness, the word 'Russan Empire' is already a mystery to me. AI-created Empires are very,very rare. Russians with terrible tech is always a pain to start.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

That's strange. Russian empire (And I mean literaly "empire" title) form very often in my CK2 games. Unless I play somwhere near there and stop them. But that's may be version specific, I don't use 1.09 patch and republics DLC. I'm allergic to republics after playing CK1 so I did not bother with this dlc and patch.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 6 - Jerzy the Sceptic. MAZOVIA MUST GROW (even when we don't want it to)

Spoiler

News at 11. France imploded, and it must have happened some time ago because this is not civil war, this is how France looks like now. So, fuck you Charles Martel! (I think he was the one who incorporated Aquitanne to Frankish kingdom but I could be wrong)

And we declared WAAAAGH! on chiefdom of Sambia.

Our Hungarian marshall, Orban the Invincible, has gathered our mighty host and he's getting ready to beat prussians from Marienburg.

Prussians decided to flee from Marienburg and make their last stand in Sambia. Also, king of Poland tried to send us some help but Danzig had revolt and rebels annihilated polish regiment.

... And then our marshall finished his education during battle with Prussians...

He's quite nice now.

Orban managed to beat chief Budo and is now sieging Sambia. We also had to kill rebels at Danzig because they were killing regiments polish king was sending to help us. Then siege finished and, amazingly, our king DID NOT accept peace offer from Budo (He was offering 100 gold coins). Now, first time for the long time, ruler of mazovia have positive prestige.

We had to give up one title, I planned to give up Czersk but I missclicked and granted our former marshall county of Chełmińskie.

"... Hereby granted title of Count ot Tsh...Cer...shr..."

Oh for fucks sake.

"County of Chełmińskie."

Whatever...

No time to celebrate! Hungarian blitzkrig must continue!

Not very surprising since we outnumbered them more than 4 to 1.

And Jerzy have a son!

We managed to ninja'd county of Scalovia before our king accepted peace offer from Yatvingas.

Now we again have too much land. Unfortunately we don't have anyone to whom we could give titles (Our courtiers are either hungarian or hates us). Well, we will have to build some Royal Posts (they lower inefficency penalties).

Good job Orban!

Why so sceptic?

Atone for my sins? pfff, pope will have to prove that I'm sinner!

Do you think this is motherfucking game?

God have mercy...

More sinners!

Medieval version of YO MOMMA SO FAT!

Burn this fool!

Our bro matured. We decided to marry him with some polish chick to have more polish people in the court.

And we have another son!

Not much happening (other than getting excomunnicated and stuffies) so I decided to show you that reconquista failed, badly.

Sir, you should make census of your belongings, four goats, one cow and two types of cheese are missing!

Shhh... but, yeah, you're right.

We gained trait 'energetic' and it made our wife dislike us so we should think about changing spymaster.

What's wrong with those people? do they think they can accuse me of anything?! This is not my child!

Then some time have passed and Curonians declared war on us.

Orban, gather our troops, we must defend polish borders!

Orban is valiantly fighting chief Rushky. Sounds like name for super-hero dog from Canadian comicbook.

Orban won and now we siege Memel.

We managed to capture memel and chief Rushky was forced to accept our peace offer (We gained Memel). Curonians are allied with Polotsk, so I think they hoped that Polotsk will help them. Fortunately for us, prince of Polotsk did not feel like fucking with Poland so Curonians got crushed. Then we had to give away some land so I gave my brother, Masław, county of Danzig. Now we have to wait till we are no longer at debt.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Update 7 Jerzy the Sceptic. Teutons to the rescue, going down the toilet and our personal Canossa.

Spoiler

WE SOO SLAVIC

We were very unlucky last time, and week after the war started we got "war too long, situation crap, give money plox" event and we were forced to go into huge debt to mantain our realm stability.

On a bright side, now we can create duchy of Prussia, which will give us some prestige boost. Unfortunately we don't have enough money to do it just yet.

And this is the event I was talking about. We conquered prussia and teutonic order want our castles. If we agree teutonic order will be created (Probably in Marienburg) and we will gain 50 piety. If we tell them to go away, we will loose 50 piety and there is chance Marienburg will become heretic province. We are already excomunicated so we don't care.

Marienburg bitte?

NEIN!

Principality of Polotsk conquered Zhmud. Now we will have to fight ruthenians to form Lithuania.

But they don't seem to be that scary, especially with Boris as a prince.

We lost 1 stability and I'm getting a lot of bad events because we are also running at 65% efficency. I decided to give Memel to my bastard brother. It is a gamble, he's very disloyal now but he's loyalty is rising because of my prestige and no taxes. Hopefully he won't rebell.

We have to get ourselves deeper into the debt to mantain realm stability.

Or got ourselves deeper into the debt for no fucking reason. We loose stability anyway. Well, it's not end of the world, at least we don't have 'realm duress' trait yet.

Good news. Since we are 'sceptic' we cannot convert provinces to our faith by force and we had to wait for clergy to do their job. And they finally managed to convert Sambia.

[/FONT]

Boris of Polotsk died and some kid took over. Now Polotsk is in civil war and have 'realm duress' (basically constant civil war state).

In the east, Turks are being lazy. And 'fake romans' are actually taking land from them.

Which is strang since Turkish sultan have martiall skill of fucking 20 and Byzantium have 'realm duress'.

Ok, I'm willing to spend 100 prestige to gain 1 stability. We will have this prestige back when we create duke of prussia title.

Our wifes threaten to leave our court if we don't give her money. Well, she can't leave so we are not going to give her anything. But it remind me to...

Wańko, I think we need new spymaster.

But your wife is clearly our best intrigue person my lord!

Trust me Wańko, we NEED new spymaster...

As you wish sire.

We have our first looney! unfortunately it's no one important.

My lord, talented writer (totally not me) offered to write your family chronicle...

Tell yourself this writer that we can't afford don't need family chronicle!

We gained trait 'trusting' and lost 1 intrigue skill. We are back at 60% efficency and we don't have anyone trusthworthy to give land to... Teutons offered their help.

Actually, let's give them some land. What could possible go wrong?



Maybe this?

Nah.

We already had this event! screw it, we can't afford to loose more money. Fuck stability.

We started a new trend. Now Hungarians gave Acre to hospitallers.

My lord, our vassal, count of Chełm declared war upon Egypt and Jerusalem...

...AHAHAHAHAHHAHA!

... Should we help them, my liege?

AHAHHHAHA!... SURE! why the fuck not?

Sheikdom of Jerusalem is attacking Kraków. They lost, but I forget to check relations of Sheikdom of Jerusalem.... and they are vassals of Seljuk Turks. So, good fucking job Chełminskie!

Stranger things happend in reality though, Lithuania after forming personal union with Poland attacked vassal of... Tamerlane (spoiler - Lithuania lost).

We managed to save enough money to create duchy of Prussia. Now we will gain more monthly prestige which should help us control our vassals.

... We were in debt for week (-4 gold) and it lowered our stability to -3. Crusader Kings gonna... Crus?

Sir! Pope send us a letter informing us that he can allow you return to catholic church if you atone for your sins!

Tithe or GTFO.

I think time has come to swallow my pride. My realm is in bade shape, I need to do something about it and this seems like a good start...

WILL POAP ACCEPT OUR JEW GOLD? WILL MAZOVIA GO DOWN THE TOILET? SEE NEXT TIME!

 

[Storyfag]

I am still waiting for that promised Myth 2 LP, you know.

Also, this needs a bump.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

I am still waiting for that promised Myth 2 LP, you know.

Also, this needs a bump.

Oh yeah, I remember promising that... It actually can happen sooner than you think, not because this LP is going to hell*, update I'm currently working on is going retartedly good (I think game took pity on me). Also, thanks for bumping good sir.

* It's because things go very slow, not much happens so I will have to start making shit up.

 

[Storyfag]

Have another bump, then