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Apparently my vassal nobles don't really like me. I think it might have something to do with me kicking a few off their lands so I could give it to my family and children. In fact, I know it's precisely this because the character ledger shows me exact the likes and dislikes towards you of any character in the game. It's one of the many new features of Crusader Kings II that make running a medieval dynasty a little easier than in its predecessor.
Back in 2004 Paradox came up with a game that was part the Sims, part RPG and part grand strategy game set in medieval Europe. Crusader Kings as it was called, tasked you with guiding a noble dynasty through the turbulent Middle Ages. It was a game that instead of having you worry about conquering the world made you worry about whether or not your sickly heir would survive his childhood and whether or not your steward would try to run off with the treasury.
Now Paradox is busy polishing the sequel for its launch in February and I've been able to play around with a press preview for awhile now. What immediately strikes me as I launch Crusader Kings II is, apart from how great the new engine looks, how familiar yet also different everything is. You will still need to focus on the characters as you guide your dynasty from 1066 until 1452. Your vassals are as apt to rebel as ever and you'll still see your favorite heir succumb to such horrid plagues as the common cold with distressing regularity. Apart from these recognizable basics however I'm glad to report that Paradox has done their best to improve on basically every feature of the original and even add quite a few new ones.
Starting at any date from 1066 onwards you can choose to play as a count, duke or king. All provide their own challenges, opportunities and hazards but one thing they do have in common: you'll rule over at least one province. Provinces have a main settlement that belongs to the noble that owns the province. This can be a settlement of one of three varieties: churches, towns or castles. A church provides piety and allows you to meddle into church affairs, a town provides the most income and a castle keep will provide a larger armed levy. With enough gold you'll be able to buy specific upgrades to these settlements such as a moat to help with the defense, market places for more income or muster fields for more troops. In the provinces there are usually also a number of other settlements like these that might belong to you or your vassals.
Your noble and every other character in the game is an individual with his or her own stats, traits, titles, title claims, ambitions, piety, fame, gold and connections to other characters in the game. They also have opinions on other characters that get more detailed as they stand closer to them. A duke from Germany might see a count from Spain as a foreigner and a fellow Catholic but will have a much more detailed list of likes and dislikes towards his immediate liege who lives next door. These opinions are extremely important as the game is primarily character driven and is all about the interactions and machinations of all the countless characters. Apart from a robust diplomacy screen that lets you pick and choose from a wide range of options there is also the plotting mechanism that was introduced in Paradox's Sengoku. This time around the mechanism is a much more powerful tool. You can pick ambitions for your character to try and achieve but the range of possible plots is also greatly expanded. Want to limit the authority of the crown, wage a war for independence, start a succession crisis or murder that blasted infertile bitch of a wife? All possible and not just for you. Expect a lot of meddling in your affairs from your own vassals and neighbors. Not to mention that your own beloved relatives have no problem sticking a knife in your back if it brings profit for them.
Which brings me to this, what made Crusader Kings great for me was the fact that a playthrough invariably provided Shakespearean drama in spades. Crusader Kings 2 upped the ante with the improvements regarding character interaction and the plotting mechanism together with an AI that's constantly fighting to get ahead. In a single playthrough my first noble was assassinated by an unknown party, my heir was excommunicated through the machinations of a vassal, a brother tried to usurp an important title and my wife killed my spymaster because she wanted the office for herself.
Needless to say that in an environment as hostile as this diplomacy through other means plays an important role. To wage war you'll raise levies from your own settlements and your vassals will give you levy troops if they like you enough. Well, or are sufficiently cowed and intimidated. You'll also be able to hire mercenaries. They are expensive and when you run out of money are prone to either leaving or even turning against you. Still, especially in the smaller conflicts between lower rank nobles the sudden inclusion of a force of several hundreds can tip the balance. If you go the route of the true Christian crusading king and do your best at smiting the infidels you'll also be able to call upon the knights of the different holy orders to come and help you kick some heretical ass.
Your armies are composed of a centre and a left and right flank that are all being commanded by their own noble character. One that if your authority is high enough you get to pick or else you'll just have to hope that the craven coward leading your oh so important right flank won't turn tail at the slightest whiff of the enemy. A large part of warfare also revolves around sieges. I'm glad to be able to report that while still not terribly engaging they are now done much more transparent with their length depending on the size of the garrison and the besieging party and the various events that can happen.
In a game called Crusader Kings II set during the Middle Ages it's no wonder that religion also comes into play. The church plays a major role with its power to excommunicate rulers (opening the way to start a holy war against them) and its ability to call for a crusade. As a king however you don't have to idly stand by but can also decide to nominate an anti-pope so you can't be excommunicated anymore and to get those greedy bishops to finally start paying their taxes directly to you. That this lowers the authority of the church leading to heresy to spring up is something that probably won't bother you too much if you're the type to try and replace the pope with one of your own.
As mentioned before the engine looks great. Europe, a good chunk of Russia and the Middle East are represented in rather splendidly looking detail. The various map modes are all easy to use and equally pleasing on the eye. The game also sports an impressive array of medieval themed music that ranges from quiet ecclesiastical themes to rousing instrumental parts. Sound effects however are very sparse.
The build I've been playing is a feature complete press preview. As it is now it's clearly not a finished game yet but is already surprisingly stable and even fun. It seems Paradox has learned from the past and is finally over the whole '3 patches before being playable' thing that plagued their products for so long. The amount of polish being applied is also refreshing with extensive tutorials being made and an interface that's both easy to navigate and very informative at the same time. If there is anything for me to nitpick about it's the apparent lack of province wide bonuses and penalties like bad harvest, plundered or the dreaded thieves guild one from the latest game. This could still be in development however. I'm also hoping that the destruction of settlements and settlement improvements will make an appearance. There are the expected balance issues and a troubling difficulty in checking out the claims for individual titles. As it is, however, the preview build has been more genuine fun and polished than most Paradox games I played upon release during the last couple of years. Paradox has managed to capture the whole Shakespearean sense of drama and intrigue that made the original so much fun and has combined this with a great engine, excellent interface and many new gameplay elements. I honestly can't wait for the release of Crusader Kings II in February.
