[OT] Crusader Kings Westeros: Another Game, Same World

[lh197]

The tutorials in the demo are doing their very best to try and put me off, but I love the concept so far shame that I get stuck waiting for tutorials to register that I've already done what it is asking me to do (happened 4 times in the battles tutorial)

[Skizbot]

The tutorials are always terrible in these games. The best thing to do is just choose a small, manageable realm and learn by trial and error.

There's a way to alter the demo that lets you play for as long as you want, not just 20 years, but its a little complicated. Anyone can PM me if they want to know how.

@Skizbot: Ok I will do that. Just yesterday I realized you could hire some cheap mercenaries, at first I thought they all costed about 300, but if you scroll down you will find some cheap ones. Got a 1500 army for only 60. That will make games easier.

Mercs are awesome, especially early game when your levies are pretty small. They're a bit OP in the demo, the developers said that in the full game they will cost twice as much.

[Dux]

How do you truly conquer a territory? I was playing as an Irish earl and conquered the two territories of the neighboring earl(thanks to mercs), but the territories didn't fully come to my rule, instead they stayed "occupied" but I couldn't do anything in them.

@lh197: I had the same problem in the battle tutorial, was it when you have to move your ships? You have to move them to the sea tile just north of you then you have to land them on the mainland, I can't remember the territory's name, but it starts with a M.

[Skizbot]

To conquer a territory, first you obviously have to be at war- easy with muslims and pagans, not so easy for fellow christians. You need to have a claim to the land, which can come from forging a claim with your, uh, either steward or spymaster, which takes a while but is very useful. You can also invade land that is considered part of your de jure duchy if you're a duke or kingdom if you're a king. If you have good enough relations with the Pope and high piety, you can ask for excommunications and/or the permission to invade certain realms.

Dux, it sounds like you were playing an Irish character who could invade territory that was considered part of your duchy. To take control of them you need to make peace with the province owner and have him accept your demands. The best way to get them to accept peace is to FULLY occupy the province, which means not just taking control of the castle, but also any towns or churches included in it. If you click your besieging army you will view the siege menu and you'll be able to see if there are still any defenders left. Once you've occupied everything, or at least most of it, click the little war icon in the bottom right that shows you your warscore and lets you demand concessions.

Now, since you're not really claiming this land for personal holdings, but rather claiming their territory as part of your realm, you wont get full control of the province as part of your personal demense, instead the province holder will pledge fealty to you and become part of your duchy. The land will be part of your realm, you can raise levies from it, but it will be controlled through your vassal (the guy you just beat in the war), rather than being part of your personal demense. Not every war works like this, but the "join my duchy" type war I'm assuming you waged is basically fighting to make someone bend the knee to you, rather than actually giving up their land to you personally.

If you want to change that, when the war is finished you can go to the diplomacy screen for your new vassal and revoke his title (count, earl, lord mayor or whatever of the province he owns). They won't like this so they will probably raise their levies, though they should be diminished since you just beat them in the war. Rinse and repeat- conquer the province once more, and this time when you win the province owner will be put in prison. Go to the imprisoned guys diplomacy screen once more and once again revoke the title, that will make sure that rather than passing to his heir the province will immediately become your possession. After that you can banish him, execute him, release him, or just keep him in jail.

Now the province is your personal holding, you'll directly get the income from it and can build improvements in it. You can keep it for yourself, or give it to your son or a different vassal. Hope this makes sense, its easier than it sounds .



Having lots of personal holdings (your "demense") is good, but in the top right bar you will see that their is a limit on how many you can hold without incurring penalties (probably 6 for your Irish duke). If you're only playing for 20 years its doubtful you will ever have more than 6 personally owned provinces, but in a longer games with larger realms this demense limit means that you will have to rely on vassals to manage parts of your territory, just like feudalism worked in real life. A big part of Crusader Kings II, maybe the biggest part, is managing your vassals. Almost every action you take, from raising levies, changing laws, to revoking titles will affect your vassals relations with you in some way.

[Memories of the Time]

@Skizbot: i agree with your last opinion ^^ for this reason i think that CK II could be the best game to develop a westeros mod, at least with regard to the diplomatic way (that i think is the most importante, in the Martin's books)

[Dux]

Ok thank you skizbot +rep

[lh197]

My gawdddddd this game is a chore at first. Finding myself completely incapable of accomplishing anything, but really desperate to get into it because it seems like it'll be incredibly deep once it gets rolling.

[Skizbot]

Yeah, its really, really complicated at first. Anyone new to the series should probably spend at least a half hour looking around the different menus and screens before they even unpause. Not for the faint of heart or people that need instant gratification. New players will fail miserably their first 2 or 3 games, there's just no way around that, but losing can actually be pretty entertaining in this game.

This post, and the whole thread in general has some pretty good advice for what you should be doing when you first start up a campaign.

[lh197]

Thanks for the help never played a real time based strategy that's on such a huge scale before, it's quite a challenge to keep up with.

[Dux]

I completely agree.

I still have huge problems. Yesterday, after much pain and an huge debt, I conquered England as Norway. The King of England finally surrendered and I was know as the Conqueror, 2 days later all of my new vassals in England and most old vassals in Norway, including my 2 sons, rebelled . Then a Normandy army besieged my capital and I had to surrender the title King of England to William, who thus became the Conqueror while he hadn't conquered anything! Then I rage quit.

[jacb547]

I completely agree.

I still have huge problems. Yesterday, after much pain and an huge debt, I conquered England as Norway. The King of England finally surrendered and I was know as the Conqueror, 2 days later all of my new vassals in England and most old vassals in Norway, including my 2 sons, rebelled . Then a Normandy army besieged my capital and I had to surrender the title King of England to William, who thus became the Conqueror while he hadn't conquered anything! Then I rage quit.

Can you be Norway in the demo?

[Dux]

yes, start the game as one of the four characters then as it starts loading, quickly click on the territory you want to play.

[Skizbot]

I completely agree.

I still have huge problems. Yesterday, after much pain and an huge debt, I conquered England as Norway. The King of England finally surrendered and I was know as the Conqueror, 2 days later all of my new vassals in England and most old vassals in Norway, including my 2 sons, rebelled . Then a Normandy army besieged my capital and I had to surrender the title King of England to William, who thus became the Conqueror while he hadn't conquered anything! Then I rage quit.

That sucks! But at least its an interesting way to lose. It makes sense that the dukes would want to rebel since you're a foreign conqueror taking over their land. You can hand out some gifts and honorary titles to keep the most important vassals friendly to you, but eventually you would need to start replacing them with loyal dukes of your own culture, just like William did in real life. Of, course, that will probably lead to rebellions as well, which would be hard to manage if your armies are drained from the war with England.

In my latest game as an Irish duke, my starting character died and his heir took over, a guy hated by everyone. He had traits like Cruel, Slothful, and Craven in addition to low piety and one of my rival Irish lords succeeded in having him excommunicated. His own son hated him and finally rebelled and took over the duchy, which was great for me because this son had much better stats. Now playing as the son, everything was going great, I married a daughter of William the Conqueror, connecting our dynasties. I started inviting people who had claims to the different counties of Ireland to my court, so I could go to war on their behalf and press their claim, putting them into power as my vassals, and I soon controlled nearly half of Ireland. Everything was going well until my beloved young leader suddenly developed pneumonia and died, with only his daughter to take over. Now I'm at war with the other half of Ireland and my leader is a 3 year old girl .

[thespaniard]

has anyone had trouble with the AI cheating i used that little glitch posted above and the second i invaded an enemy nation 3 5000 troop armys showed up outa nowwhere even tho their levys were only 600. i figured they just hired mercs but how would they end up with 15000 mercs and have enough to pay for them?

[Skizbot]

As far as I know, the AI doesn't cheat in this game. I assume the country you invaded was pagan- the pagans have some special "warrior cult" building that lets them field big armies, its the only thing that stop them from all being wiped out by Christians in the first fifty years.

[Harpsichord]

The tutorials are always terrible in these games. The best thing to do is just choose a small, manageable realm and learn by trial and error.

Actually, apparently (I haven't checked) CK 2 has the best tutorials by Paradox so far.

Yesterday, after much pain and an huge debt, I conquered England as Norway. The King of England finally surrendered and I was know as the Conqueror, 2 days later all of my new vassals in England and most old vassals in Norway, including my 2 sons, rebelled .

Norway is basically set up like that. The sons will very often rebel. A reasonably viable (though not the best) strategy as the English is just to wait it out until Norway falls apart on it's own. William's a bit different to deal with.

[lh197]

Actually, apparently (I haven't checked) CK 2 has the best tutorials by Paradox so far.

Good lord. I can't imagine what the bad ones were like, the CK 2 ones were kinda useless. Was still utterly clueless when I started.

Also, I can't manage to do that 'click on a territory after you've pressed play' thing, I still always end up as some HRE Lord who I manage to get killed in about a month.

[Dux]

you click on one of the four characters, you click on play, you click on a territory (E.G Dublin county) in the map before the loading starts. It you do that it should work.

[VarrKhaitan]

To those people who need a bit off help to start.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YslnH...6&feature=plcp
its very good and really shows what to do in the game and so on and on.
So look it up, I sure did =)

[Skizbot]

Holy crap. Mongols.

Just saw them appear for the first time. Luckily, they're near Persia on the other side of the map so they shouldn't be bothering me much, but they're split up into 3 giant armies with a total of 100,000 soldiers .

In the Westeros mod this mechanic might be able to be used to represent a Targaryen invasion by Aegon or Dany, even if Essos isn't included in the map.


Oh, and the heir to my Kingdom of Ireland and Wales is a dwarf. I should have named him Tyrion .