In Progress Odin demands blood! Let's revive the Viking Age in Crusader Kings 2!

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Whats the deal with the coat of arms of the kingdoms?

How do you mean?

Why is the CoA for the HRE showing Hamburgs CoA instead of the Black Hawk/Falcon/Bird thing on Gold Background, and why does Norway/Sweden/Denmark have non standard CoAs as well. That would be my guess at any rate. Decided to mod them to suit your tastes more?

Yeah this.

 

[Kayerts]

Whats the deal with the coat of arms of the kingdoms?

How do you mean?

Why is the CoA for the HRE showing Hamburgs CoA instead of the Black Hawk/Falcon/Bird thing on Gold Background, and why does Norway/Sweden/Denmark have non standard CoAs as well. That would be my guess at any rate. Decided to mod them to suit your tastes more?

Yeah this.

Oh, curious. I do remember the HRE having the historically accurate and cooler-looking imperial eagles when I first installed the game. At some point it switched, but I never bothered checking into why.

The Internet tells me that some versions of the game have weird installation order conflicts between the Coat of Arms DLC and some of the early patches, so that's probably the culprit.

 

[Kayerts]

You going to manage to grab the Empire this way? It looks like you'll manage to pull it off without even having to commit much violence. Apparently the Emperor doesn't realize this Minor Doux has just sold the entire Empire off to Norsemen.

Nah. I've got ~4000 men, 6000 at full strength. There are doux that could kick my ass.

The real reason, though, is that my powergaming tendencies are losing to my LARPing tendencies. Odin does not want the Christ-Men's crowns. He wants their blood. I can with some difficulty justify my Vikings swearing fealty to a Christian king, if they immediately follow with a nationwide purge that erases his bloodline from the earth. But boning down with some princess and waiting to inherit scraps from Christian tables is not the Viking Way.

I exploited "all your children get claims on your titles" [..] This is the ONLY way to acquire Agnatic Titular titles that you cannot usurp or recreate.

Ah, that makes sense. For some reason I didn't realize that claims inherited even in cases of non-hereditary succession.

That's not the only way to get an agnatic titular title, though. Aside from the depose liege trick I used to popify Gungnir, there's at least one alternative we'll see in a future update.

I prefer the opposite approach, giving out land nearly exclusively to dynasty members. In the short term, this can destabilize your realm as immediate dynasty members are claimants to your throne, but in the long term, that's a +5 rel penalty that never goes away, PLUS a significant starting Prestige bonus that will anchor your realm's stability. Once your dynasty is sufficient spread out that only a FEW of them are immediate claimants to the throne, and these you seat in shitty duchies with long-lasting conquer penalties that won't produce any kind of profit or army to revolt against you with.

It's certainly what the devs intended. There are still a few advantages I find pretty valuable toward the mid-late game, though: keeping your AI-controlled heirs' prestige low lets you go for the Exalted Among Men ambition once you assume direct control (+10 to relations), the +5 relations bonus gets overshadowed by the Kinslayer trait if you get caught murdering an uppity familial vassal, and prestige is cheap. (Crushing rebellions is a surprisingly good source of it.) Plus, my usual solution when I get caught murdering someone's close kin is to murder them, too, and genetic purges work best when you're not purging your own bloodline. How are you dealing with failed assassinations?

That said, your later comments make me suspect our different experiences with the ability to marry infidels (you have it, and I don't) are related to this. Your dynasty is presumably a lot more prestigious than mine, which probably results in different prestige effects for marriages. Looks like it makes a pretty dramatic difference; that's a strong argument for your approach.

Well, just murdering your way to Constantinople is one thing. Doing it as a filthy heretic or infidel, on the other hand...

Nah. If I go to the court of Christian emperor, it will be with sword in hand and an army at my back. It is the Viking Way!

Yeah, about that: That can be a bit of a problem: According to the datafiles, Court Clog actually impedes the ability of your courtiers to reproduce, so it is best to purge the untermenschen and ennoble the rest ASAP to keep the court roomy and the important courtier lines breeding. You can intentionally sabotage other familes by unloading the untermenschen on them. Some of them you're just stuck paying waste disposal fees on, though. The useless old ladies can be impossible to get rid of otherwise, as they are past sell-by date, so no one wants them, but their stats are so terrible that they cannot be used as tutors or anything else...and they will harm your court as above by clogging it and impeding reproduction if the size exceeds 30.

Interesting! Can you talk a little about the mechanics there? I know that I've definitely been able to reproduce with much more than 30 courtiers; does it apply some sort of continuous function on the excess?

 

[Norfleet]

Nah. I've got ~4000 men, 6000 at full strength. There are doux that could kick my ass.

Well, in your case, you won't have to do much: It's already a matrilineal marriage to their heir: If you direct your heir down that bloodline, you'll pick up the Empire without any bloodshed at all. Aforementioned Doux essentially sold the Empire to you for free.

The real reason, though, is that my powergaming tendencies are losing to my LARPing tendencies. Odin does not want the Christ-Men's crowns. He wants their blood. I can with some difficulty justify my Vikings swearing fealty to a Christian king, if they immediately follow with a nationwide purge that erases his bloodline from the earth. But boning down with some princess and waiting to inherit scraps from Christian tables is not the Viking Way.

Well, in your case, you've already set up all the pieces, if not by direct intent to do just that. Worth considering, making the entire Empire Norse.

Ah, that makes sense. For some reason I didn't realize that claims inherited even in cases of non-hereditary succession.

Well, the inheritance of claims is hereditary. If said courtier dies without children, the claim won't go to the crown like their money does. If you're marrying someone who is actually in a position to personally inherit the title, you can go the really cold and cheap method of marrying, boning, and then murdering people until they first, inherit the title, then murdering spouse to pass the title to your kid, then murdering the kid to cause the title to revert to you. Although the entire process is often a little too awkward unless it happens at an extremely convenient time.

That's not the only way to get an agnatic titular title, though. Aside from the depose liege trick I used to popify Gungnir, there's at least one alternative we'll see in a future update.

Depose Liege only worked because the Pope's ignored succession laws allowed you to be considered a successor, as the only heir. If you are Deposing some other liege, it just puts some other successor on the throne, and if you're not on the list at all, it puts whichever one "you" like "best". Note that YOU aren't actually consulted about this decision.

It's certainly what the devs intended. There are still a few advantages I find pretty valuable toward the mid-late game, though: keeping your AI-controlled heirs' prestige low lets you go for the Exalted Among Men ambition once you assume direct control (+10 to relations)

Yeah, I never see that ambition around anymore. My ambition list is pretty much entirely limited to plots to pointlessly murder my wife...and it always has been. No idea why.

the +5 relations bonus gets overshadowed by the Kinslayer trait if you get caught murdering an uppity familial vassal, and prestige is cheap. (Crushing rebellions is a surprisingly good source of it.) Plus, my usual solution when I get caught murdering someone's close kin is to murder them, too, and genetic purges work best when you're not purging your own bloodline. How are you dealing with failed assassinations?

With the kind of crazy spymasters I turn out, I regularly see "chance of being busted" rates of 5% or less, with bust chances < 20% even for cold assassinations without the Spymaster deployed, if I'm not assassinating an actual landed noble: Whacking a random courtier is something like 80% success, 0% bust. It just hasn't happened. Also, half of my assassinations are actually "accidents". There are a fair number of ways that you can "accidentally" cause the death of a specific noble. Arranging your armies a certain way has a high probability of causing an aforementioned noble to be injured and/or killed, as I discovered after accidentally losing a king or two this way...at that point I stopped accidentally losing people this way and started doing it intentionally. As a side benefit, it also involves the sacrifice of about a few thousand of aforementioned vassal's troops.

That said, your later comments make me suspect our different experiences with the ability to marry infidels (you have it, and I don't) are related to this. Your dynasty is presumably a lot more prestigious than mine, which probably results in different prestige effects for marriages.

Yes, at this point the prestige effect for marrying my dynasty is so high that even a random courtier results in a net positive even for an Emperor.

Nah. If I go to the court of Christian emperor, it will be with sword in hand and an army at my back. It is the Viking Way!

What about the court of a Mongol Khagan? If you finagle yourself into being the Khagan, you'll get to use that really nice "Invasion" CB that will let you just kill anyone you want for no reason whatsoever. Otherwise you're going to be stuck in your little box taking one province every 10 years or so. There IS one HUGE major drawback to being a Pagan, which is shared in my case with being a Filthy Heretic: Claimants do NOT want to join your court from abroad, which removes your ability to invite them and then push their claims. Odin's going to get a lot more boredom than blood unless you do something about it.

Interesting! Can you talk a little about the mechanics there? I know that I've definitely been able to reproduce with much more than 30 courtiers; does it apply some sort of continuous function on the excess?

It's not a hardcap, courtiers still CAN reproduce, but it's as if you replaced their comfy chairs with cheap bicycle seats. There are two items inside defines.txt: _CHDEF_BASE_NR_CHILDREN_PER_COUPLE (2), and most importantly _CHDEF_COURT_SIZE_CHILD_PENALTY_THRESHOLD (30), which reduces that number by 1. What this appears to mean is that the average courtier will produce a base number of 2 children. You may or may not have noticed that very few courtiers seem to manage to fire out more than 2 babies from their crotchcannons the way your royal fambly can. When the number of courtiers exceeds 30, even this will be dramatically curtailed.

 

[Kayerts]

Well, in your case, you won't have to do much: It's already a matrilineal marriage to their heir: If you direct your heir down that bloodline, you'll pick up the Empire without any bloodshed at all. Aforementioned Doux essentially sold the Empire to you for free.

Ah, no, it's not a matrilineal marriage. The doux was pretty adamant on that point; from his perspective, he's losing a good steward and getting nothing in return. I could probably put someone more pliable in charge, but, again, I'm not actually trying to inherit the empire.

I feel like nailing down the details of my long-term plans at this point would ruin the fun, but I will say that if things go as planned, it should be pretty satisfying even from a powergamer perspective. If you're curious, I can PM the details, but it's probably best to keep it out of the thread for a while. Sort of feels like showing how a magic trick works before I actually perform it.

It's certainly what the devs intended. There are still a few advantages I find pretty valuable toward the mid-late game, though: keeping your AI-controlled heirs' prestige low lets you go for the Exalted Among Men ambition once you assume direct control (+10 to relations)

Yeah, I never see that ambition around anymore. My ambition list is pretty much entirely limited to plots to pointlessly murder my wife...and it always has been. No idea why.

Paradox actually implemented upper bounds for declaring the "accumulate X piety/prestige/gold" ambitions, so if you're over those, they won't appear as options. I personally think this is dumb; if you want to mod that out, the threshold values are in common\objectives.txt.

With the kind of crazy spymasters I turn out, I regularly see "chance of being busted" rates of 5% or less, with bust chances < 20% even for cold assassinations without the Spymaster deployed, if I'm not assassinating an actual landed noble: Whacking a random courtier is something like 80% success, 0% bust. It just hasn't happened. Also, half of my assassinations are actually "accidents". There are a fair number of ways that you can "accidentally" cause the death of a specific noble. Arranging your armies a certain way has a high probability of causing an aforementioned noble to be injured and/or killed, as I discovered after accidentally losing a king or two this way...at that point I stopped accidentally losing people this way and started doing it intentionally. As a side benefit, it also involves the sacrifice of about a few thousand of aforementioned vassal's troops.

Interesting. I've had similar assassination rates (20+ intrigue rulers and ~30 intrigue spymasters), but presumably your familial vassals have a pretty high intrigue score themselves, no? Since they're members of House Ubermensch. And even so, I still got busted often enough that the "dishonorable" modifier became a serious concern. How many landed vassals are you actually whacking?

mechanics

Good stuff. I did notice a rash of infertility among my courtiers; I assumed Freyja was displeased with us.

 

[Norfleet]

I feel like nailing down the details of my long-term plans at this point would ruin the fun, but I will say that if things go as planned, it should be pretty satisfying even from a powergamer perspective. If you're curious, I can PM the details, but it's probably best to keep it out of the thread for a while. Sort of feels like showing how a magic trick works before I actually perform it.

I'm interested, mostly because I want to see if it could be of use to me. I'm terrible at making LPs because I have zero creativity and play the game like a spreadsheet. Hell, I play the game *AS* a spreadsheet: I digest the save file into Excel and process it every so often to determine my next course of action. I probably spend more time there than actually in the game itself. It would be the most boring LP ever, I have an utterly soulless playing style.

Interesting. I've had similar assassination rates (20+ intrigue rulers and ~30 intrigue spymasters), but presumably your familial vassals have a pretty high intrigue score themselves, no?

True, but keep in mind the primary purges are conducted against babies. Babies have really bad intrigue scores. Since the behavior of vassals is actually fairly predictable in terms of how they're going to act out, you can spot the bad eggs pretty early.

How many landed vassals are you actually whacking?

Actual vassals? Honestly? Probably like 10-ish. It feels like a lot when you're actually doing it, but when I actually count them, it's not actually that many. More often I whack them by Arranging An Accident rather than actually assassinating them outright. Holy Wars are dangerous stuff. Particularly when you're assaulting a plague-infested province. Whacking babies, on the other hand, is, well, like taking candy from a baby. With detection rates in the 0-2% rates for babymurder, it's pretty easy to get away with. It is also possible to instantaneously strip a target's spymaster protection at the same time you murder him for even better odds: I tend to murder my harder targets this way. Take your vassal's spymaster and give him a title. Voila: He is no longer your target's spymaster. Your target is now spymasterless and a sitting duck, because even a 15+ intrigue ruler is only as hard as a regular untermensch ruler and court when you've just relieved him of his 20+ spymaster brother. Aforementioned spymaster is now probably rather pleased with you, and if he isn't, well, he hasn't had time to appoint his own spymaster, either.

 

[CappenVarra]

Now that's some interesting and informative discussion right there; not as amusing as the epic saga of Odin's chosen, but good stuff nonetheless

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, but the man can't churn out saga that fast. Think of it as a commercial break.

 

[Karr]

Amazing saga so far, i can't wait till you form the "Herdonur Heithina Aetta" AKA The Norse Empire.

Heil Odin

 

[Luzur]

Btw Kayerts, I've added a mod to the CK2 thread in Strategy Gaming. Haven't done much for Norse, but I've improved lots of other things.

Vaarna, i hope you collect these changes of yours into a single big overhaul mod?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Btw Kayerts, I've added a mod to the CK2 thread in Strategy Gaming. Haven't done much for Norse, but I've improved lots of other things.

Vaarna, i hope you collect these changes of yours into a single big overhaul mod?

I have. Current pack is Kalevala v3, and to that you can add the hotfixed txt file I posted later that reduces the penalty modifier on BE.

 

[Luzur]

well, i did it last night, united Scandinavia, in the year of our Lord 1211.

i had my eye on Norway for some 20 years now, seeing them flip wars on and off with England, England invading Norway, Norway invading England on and on etc.
i placed troops on the border when they where off in England after getting the approval from the Pope to claim Norway as my own, and just after i had saved and was about to send the LETTER and give the order to cross the border, my king died and all hell broke loose at home since his son was too young to rule and had to go regency for a few years more, and vassals dont seem to like regents much (eh?), so i spent the following time using the troops meant for the Norway front to popamole rebellious dukes and dukettes.

well after the last rebel fell (Duke of Skåne, beheaded AGAIN) i scanned Norway how they where doing and saw they where almost defenceless, every levy was off in England and King Olaf of England had some 800 men as a occupying force in Bergen and every norwegian able to lift a spear was in Northern England, so i saved, paused, sent a "I ATAK U NAW ROFL" letter to Norway and rallied every levy i had, hired 2 mercenary armies as a extra ATK boost (fuck it, if i loose this i prob loose big time anyway), placed them in perfect surgical strike positions, from Vik to Narvik, some 15.000 men in combined raised levy and 10.000 mercenary troops, in the south targeting Vik, Oppland, Bergen and the Heartlands of Norway and the middle targeting Tröndelag and Römsdal, men from the kings own demesnes and surrounding vassals (Hälsingland, Dalarna, Västergötland, Östergötland etc) in the Swedish Heartland and a mercenary army, in the north targeting Nordland and Finnmark, savage Finnish troops with the best Swedish commanders and the second supporting mercenary army, i saved again, gave a "crack her open boys, tonight we dine in Oslo" order and un-paused.

well, the border breach went smooth, no border guards where visible, and the armies began sieging their designated targets, still unopposed.

after some weeks of free reign, i was beginning to wonder where the hell the norwegians where? are they out in the bay with some monster army on boats? i was nervously masturbating by then.

no, just the home town defenders and me, towns fell, churches fell, castles fell, north Norway fell to the Finns not even needing the mercs, in middle Norway my army was just some weeks away from reaching the ocean, south Norway was abit harder but nothing serious since the northern troops on their way south would reinforce the troops getting stuck.

then, as just Rogaland, Telemark and another province was the only ones left to take before total victory, the norwegians came home.

3025 norwegians, where i had expected close to 10.000 or more.

i PPFFFFTTT, crushed them with a merc army, then sued for peace and annexation.

if only i could create a Empire title of it all.

 

[Jaedar]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Luzur, sounds like you'll have a lot of fun when the Golden Horde arrives.

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

Ends automatically in 1453. There is no win condition, but there are scores, awarded for the combined prestige of your dynasty (I think). In addition, every time your ruler dies, his prestige is added to the score. The fun of the game is mostly picking an interesting character to play, and setting a goal for yourself. Like in XenomorphII's LP, where he starts as the Orthodox count of Napoli, and makes it his goal to become Basileus.

 

[Luzur]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

i dont know? wait for time to run out and/or rule the known world i guess.

i think i'll wait for the Mongols to show up from now on, no real targets left to face, since they all are as strong as me or stronger, although i have a claim on England so thats an option if i want, but i feel that would be more work then fun.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

Ends automatically in 1453. There is no win condition, but there are scores, awarded for the combined prestige of your dynasty (I think). In addition, every time your ruler dies, his prestige is added to the score. The fun of the game is mostly picking an interesting character to play, and setting a goal for yourself. Like in XenomorphII's LP, where he starts as the Orthodox count of Napoli, and makes it his goal to become Basileus.

The score is calculated by adding the at-time-of-death prestige and piety of each dynasty member to a grand total.

So when is one of you going to give feedback on my mod? I wanna know what to fix/add!

 

[Luzur]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

Ends automatically in 1453. There is no win condition, but there are scores, awarded for the combined prestige of your dynasty (I think). In addition, every time your ruler dies, his prestige is added to the score. The fun of the game is mostly picking an interesting character to play, and setting a goal for yourself. Like in XenomorphII's LP, where he starts as the Orthodox count of Napoli, and makes it his goal to become Basileus.

The score is calculated by adding the at-time-of-death prestige and piety of each dynasty member to a grand total.

So when is one of you going to give feedback on my mod? I wanna know what to fix/add!

im gonna do a new game with your mod after this one is finished.

 

[Kayerts]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

It's intended as an open-ended simulation, so the player defines their own objectives. The game theoretically spans the end of the Viking Age (1066 and Hardrada's fall at Stamford Bridge) to the end of the medieval age (1453 and the fall of Constantinople). Paradox did draw up an achievement list for people who were looking for things to do, but their idea of what constitutes "difficult" is amusing. (The AI regularly comes close to completing what they list as the most difficult achievement.)

In this game, I won't consider the Vikings to have succeeded until we've established Norse hegemony over the Baltic and taken vengeance upon Imperial House Salian. If we get that far, I'll come up with something to do next . . .

e:f;b

 

[Kayerts]

well, i did it last night, united Scandinavia, in the year of our Lord 1211. [..]

That was awesome; I'm linking this in the OP.

 

[XenomorphII]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

It's intended as an open-ended simulation, so the player defines their own objectives. The game theoretically spans the end of the Viking Age (1066 and Hardrada's fall at Stamford Bridge) to the end of the medieval age (1453 and the fall of Constantinople). Paradox did draw up an achievement list for people who were looking for things to do, but their idea of what constitutes "difficult" is amusing. (The AI regularly comes close to completing what they list as the most difficult achievement.)

In this game, I won't consider the Vikings to have succeeded until we've established Norse hegemony over the Baltic and taken vengeance upon Imperial House Salian. If we get that far, I'll come up with something to do next . . .

e:f;b

Wow. I had no idea those even existed. Those all seem to be stupidly easy. Where are my conquer the world as Ryukku (the tiny piss ant Jap Island in EU3 that is pagan) equivalents?

 

[Kayerts]

Wow. I had no idea those even existed. Those all seem to be stupidly easy. Where are my conquer the world as Ryukku (the tiny piss ant Jap Island in EU3 that is pagan) equivalents?

Seriously. Pentarch and Protector of the Holy Places are legitimately effort-intensive, at least starting as a one-county count, but I'm pretty sure Justinian can be easily completed within the first half of the game.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

So.... how do you win in CK2? Does the game end?

Ends automatically in 1453. There is no win condition, but there are scores, awarded for the combined prestige of your dynasty (I think). In addition, every time your ruler dies, his prestige is added to the score. The fun of the game is mostly picking an interesting character to play, and setting a goal for yourself. Like in XenomorphII's LP, where he starts as the Orthodox count of Napoli, and makes it his goal to become Basileus.

The score is calculated by adding the at-time-of-death prestige and piety of each dynasty member to a grand total.

So when is one of you going to give feedback on my mod? I wanna know what to fix/add!

I've entered a self-loathing phase, where I play SC2 and try to not rage-delete it. I'll get you some feedback with the new BE modifier tomorrow.

By the way, playing as Georgia is quite fun. Even more fun if you don't notice your heir becoming a heretic.

 

[Kayerts]

So when is one of you going to give feedback on my mod? I wanna know what to fix/add!

I meant to reply to it over in the main CK2 thread, but I think Chrome ate it. Anyway, it looks interesting, though I don't think I'll use it in this game. (Different de jure borders of Finnish duchies mean that I'd have done some things differently.) Also, the link isn't working for me, so I'm going off the posted changelogs.

Here are thoughts:

* More historical background is always a plus, good work there.

* You mentioned possible holy orders / mercs -- the CK2 mercs are mostly based on historical companies; if you can maintain that, great, and more mercenary options for northern pagans would be good. (I think having a capital in some parts of Finland can get you Russian mercs, amusingly enough.) I'm not sure about holy orders, though. The three Christian knightly orders were basically it for the Catholics, and I'm not aware of any analogue for other religions.

* Unification CB seems redundant vis-a-vis existing mechanics. If I'm a badass Finnish chieftain, the vanilla game's outlets of creating appropriate ducal titles or the Kingdom of Finland (which in 1.05 gets me a de jure claim on the territory) feel like a pretty reasonable representation of my expansionist ambitions. I don't think giving players another outside option hurts anything, but I don't know how meaningful the feature is.

* Tribal Raid CB is good. Money was one of the more annoying things about my starting position in this game, and it doesn't really make sense that a bunch of well-armed Vikings would be sitting around saying, "Gosh if only there was some way we could get money. Maybe we could ask our rich Christian neighbors for tips on mutual funds?"

* I'd limit the penalty associated with being the Roman Emperor to de jure vassals of the ERE (or cultures that were vassals of it), since the internecine conflict was due to political and cultural factors, rather than the entire world having some cosmic grudge against the man Equal To The Apostles. In Xeno's LP, it wouldn't really make sense for House Spartenos's native Nnapulitanos to hate them for making it big.

* Why'd you pick 1265 as the date at which ERE penalties expire? Nothing I'm aware of actually happened then, although there was the Nikaean reconquest earlier in the 1260s and alliances with the Mongols later.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, the 1265 end date for the penalty modifier was partly historical and partly arbitrary, it's when the ERE was reinstated in Constantinople, and I figured that by then BE will have been kicked deep enough in the mud to be living on borrowed time.

Also, the penalties will stay full-scale for BE due to how easy their starting position is otherwise, and that being BE is supposed to be mega-hard mode in my opinion.

Tribal Unification CB "cuts red tape" for pagans, allowing a means of expansion that isn't limited to fabricated and de jure claims. It also has an improved Lithuanian version that makes life better for Lithuanians and much more likely to resist Christian crusaders.

 

[kazgar]

While useful, shouldn't this be in the strategy games ck2 thread?

This one is for viking invasions!