Originally Posted by
Thangaror
Really? How? Especially in the HRE diplomacy is terribly complicated, having and Emperor, an Anti-Emperor, a Pope, an Anti-Pope etc.
Humm, you say that the game lacks diplomacy and them you say HRE diplomacy it is terribly complicated 
But, as I already answered, you can do it, as long as you are in the sphere of influence of one of them, whenever a dispute to the HRE happens you can choose your side through the faction system of the game if you are part of the HRE. It is pretty simple really.
Originally Posted by
Thangaror
Can you support Henry with money, like John Lackland supported Henry's son Emperor Otto IV.?
You not only can support him but you can support ANY character with money in the game, just send it through the diplomacy tab, as long as they are in your diplomatic range. Their opinion of you will increase based on the diplomacy skill of your character for a certain amount as well.
Now, me playing as John giving otto (future emperor) money:
I can send as much money as i want (and have) to him.
Originally Posted by
Thangaror
As King Richard Lionheart, can you convince the German Electors to elect your nephew Otto IV. as Emperor in opposition to Duke Philip of Swabia? (yeah, I just re-read that part on German history
)
Yes, since he is your nephew he can call you for the alliance when the war pops up. Or you can invite him to your court and press his claims against Filip and thus making him emperor.
Now, since this chain of events (the civil war between filip and otto for the empire) its not hard coded in the game, like the invasion of england by william the conqueror in 1066 Stanford bridge bookmark, it wont happen automatically if you play as john, but you can make it happen by your own and put otto in the command of the empire, no doubt about it, and if you load the game in 1210 there he is as the emperor (and he even has the excommunicated trait if i'm not mistaken).
Well, you can't. You can't meddle in the affairs of a foreign state. It's impossible.
Rofl!
Dude, seriously, you dont have any idea what you talking about. It's not only possible but it is most common tactic of the game if you want to put your dynasty in the top of power in Europe. For example, you can meticulous arrange marriages with other ruling dynasties so eventually one family member will get a claim on that kingdom, like if you marry one of your sons with the daughter of the king of asturias, even if this daughter its far away in the line of succession, if they have a son (which will be your grandson from your dynasty, if it is a regular marriage) it is quite possible (depending on the succession laws on that realm) that when the actual king dies your grandson will get a weak claim in that realm, than you can push his claims and put him into power (and eventually you will possibly want to ensure that he will keep it, because the vassal can rebel if they dont like him, and again you can join him in eventual civil wars, or even lending money to him as i already showed you its completely possible).
Or you can have a member of your dynasty that is a duke of that realm and starts a faction to take that throne, you can than offer to join his side on the civil war and ensure that he succeeds.
Thats for example, again, how i managed to put my dynasty members (house senulatovic) on the throne of Hungary, Iberian Kingdom (asturias/castille/aragon), Kingdom of Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria and even the newly formed Kingdom of Jerusalem (ROFL!) in my last play through as king of croatia... and i'm not even starting with the various duchies and counts across the whole europe... its around 30 as you can see in the pictures:
So how can you say a foreign power cant influence the politics of a kingdom???
Oh, and i just remembered when taking these screenshots that there is a member of my dynasty who is even the grandmaster of the Knights of Calatrava Holy Order (its the last one of the second picture)!!! Rofl! I remember I vassalized the Knights of St. Joan in this play through aswel. The amount of things you can do in this game is amazing!
Even as King you can't lure one powerful baron/count into rebelling against his count/duke with the promise to gain the contested title.
Of course you can, in fact incite rebellions is one of the easiest things to do if the vassal already have a low opinion of his liege, just use your chancellor to incite a rebellion. Easy as pie.
If your vassals are warring each other, you can't meddle in their affairs.
You can, but only indirectly and depending on the royal crown authority law of your realm AND the opinion of your vassals about you . And thats only representative of the feudal period political era. What you have to understand is that in ck2 you are not playing as a nation, but as a character, a feudal lord, not a country. And playing as a feudal lord, even as a king or emperor, you have to understand that you just are a king because there is a bunch of other guys (dukes and counts) that reckon you as a king and theirs rightful liege, but there is nothing preventing them to change their mind if they dont like you or if you dont have enough authority over them. Some of them can even consider themselves independents by some time, others can reckon you as a king but they may not like you and than they will, no doubt, do things that you disapprove like provide you with little levies and taxes and rage their private wars against you or other vassals without caring if you approve it or not and so on... there are even some lords that will always try to preserve some degree of freedom to their lieges no matter what, that’s the case in HRE for example, where it is much more difficult for the emperor to rise the crown lawn authority.
So, if you wanna be able to meddle with your vassals political affairs, than you have to do it just the same way that a feudal lords did in that time; through diplomacy (making your vassals like you and them preventing them to plot against you and even against each others) or ultimately through brute force (going into war to subdue them)!
Dont expect that a bunch of feudal lords will follow blindly your orders just because you have a crown over your head and call yourself a king... thats only realistic from that period political system.
This is a correct depiction, but you should be able to force them to end the war, or at least you should be able to support one contestant
pro forma.
Again, you can, but your crown law authority must be high enough and to do that (high crown law authority) your vassals must like you in the first place . Which, again, is only realistic. Also, as a vassal, you can join different sides of factions through the faction system within the realm, and that can vary in a very large range of political choices, even the crown law authority per se, because you can plot to make a faction to lower the crown law authority (for example), and than when you feel that you have enough backup from the other lords of the realm, you can confront your liege (the king or emperor) to lower the crown authority.... he can accept or deny it and go to war against you and your faction.
Also, did you ever encounter the AI doing diplomacy?
Yes, always. Specially if you play as a vassal within a large kingdom, the other dukes/counts will be inviting you to join their factions all the time if there is a poor king in the throne (or even if there is a good one, depending on the scenario).
Even if you play as a independent character there should be plenty of diplomacy that the AI will ask you to handle.
Did a foreign chancellor ever arrive at your court to improve relations? Nope!
What do you mean by that? It is pretty logical why the AI wont put a chancellor in your court. The opinion system exists to evaluate the opinions between the player-AI and the AI-AI, but theres not how the AI convince you to like more of it because, well, you are the player after all and you know what is your opinion towards any other character in the game anyways! You do what you do want in the game would the AI like it or not. But that doesnt prevents the AI of still trying to do diplomacy with you, as afore mentioned.
Even so, you can notice that there is in fact an alleged opinion between your character and other characters in the game (it stays just above the AI character opinion of you), and if you play as a vassal, frequently your AI liege will try to improve it by giving you some award title or even, in a severe case, try to bribe you by handing you gold.
Here’s the example as me the king of croatia and one of my vassals the duke of Dalmatia. His opinion of me is 52 (very good), but apparently my character wont like him very much (even though I, as a player, am indifferent to that particular duke as long as he is happy with me):
Probably. But in
real time I'm sitting in front of the screen waiting for some stupid building to finish although the game's speed is set at 5x.
Only you, because I frequently will be involved with the other gazillion features of the game, like putting my dynasty in half of the thrones of Europe (including papacy), fighting wars, intriguing schemes and factions, arranging marriages, plotting assassinations, making sure my heir will be well educated and have good traits, making sure my own character have good traits, controlling my vassals, my courtiers, my counselors, crusading, making sure the pope likes me, doing the tons of events that his game offers, etc, etc, etc, etc (there is so much to do in this game, seriously!) and the building will be ready before i even realize it. You must have been played a very old version of the game to be without any other option besides building. In fact, building is one of the most trivial things to do in ck2.
Nevertheless, does the Roman Emperor have ANY impact on who is elected Pope? Well, I think he should. Or does the Pope have any influence on who's elected next HR Emperor? Many german bishops were prince electors, but the Pope doesn't chose a favourite in CK2.
ANY character in the game can have an impact on who is elected pope, as long as he is powerful enough to. Thats because you can campaign fund your best bishop to ensure him a place in the college of cardinals, like here i'm funding my mate osmund to assume a chair as soon as any current cardinal dies (if you are an inpatient one you can even try to plot and assassinate one of the current cardinals to ensure your man will be there in a short period, why not?):
Once he is cardinal he has the chance to actually be elected pope if the majority of the cardinals vote for him. But for this he has to be of high papal suitability as you can see in the screen.
Now, its actually pretty easy to put your "puppet" pope of your preference if you are powerful enough, just fund a young bishop with good traits and high diplomacy/learning stats so he can have high papal suitability and with the given time its almost sure he will became pope since time as cardinal seems to matter too in the cardinals voting system... heck i was even able to put my uncle in the holy seat in this game, lmao:
If you are really powerful and rich what you can do is always fund the campaign of your bishops and by that ensure that all the cardinals of the college are yours and eventually the pope will be one of them. Needleless to say that this tactic will cost you a huge amount of money, but its doable.
Actually the Pope is completely inactive, which in history he certainly was not. The church ever sought to gain control over counties and baronies in Italy. Aforementioned Otto IV. didn't care for the Pope's desires and consequently was excommunicated.
Actually it isnt. The papacy is one of the most important game mechanisms when you play as a Christian and, hell, even as a non-christian because it can call a crusade against you (and he frequently will if you conquer some historical Christian land or put in risk the Christianity), or you can ask him to call a crusade against another non-chistian character of your interest, he can excommunicate you (and he will if he dont like you), or you can ask him to excommunicate any other Christian character of the game thus giving you and any other Christian a free casus belli on him... heck you can even request him for a divorce or money in trade for piety if you want.
But, of course, he will only do any of those things for you if he has a very good relation with you, thus the importance of having a "puppet" pope in the holy seat 
Its even possible for you to steal the papacy as an emperor and declare yourself as your holiness the pope! But for that you have to be really powerful and play your cards right.
Infinte? You can build Castle Towns and the such. Period.
LoL. I like how you talk about something you clearly dont have a clue about with such assurance!
And the economic system was way more "pretty" than you're suggesting since say 1200.
Maybe. I wont start an historical discussion here, but that’s a lot arguable.
In TW increasing the tax rate reduces growth. In CK your vassals get a bit grumpy (does anyone care?). In reality, if taxes and toll fees are increased, trade routes might shift to other locations. In reality, certain towns were famous for certain goods (Lübeck was a Hanse-City, Augsburg famous for it's armour, Venice for exotic stuff from the orient, flemish towns for laces and cloth etc.). Can you lure a certain industry into you county? Or does you local currency at some point become that important it's still famous centuries later, like Ducats or Florints?
In fact, in CK it works the other way around; if your vassals dont like than they wont pay you as much! About industry... hmm, we are talking about medieval times here pal... the only "Industry" they have back them was slightly manufactured artisans traditional centers in some regions, but nothing you could call really an “Industry”, and as you pointed out, it was all everything very traditional and unlikely to switch to another regions. About trade, we will get there no worries.
While all this is rather complex, my point is: There's no trade! Only taxes. No trade, no tolls. You can't establish trade routes, toll unions and all this stuff. You can't improve trade by building/improving roads. Many Nobles became insanely rich because of tolls, or because they were lucky enough to have some silver or gold found in their county.
Yeah but the thing is... THERE IS TRADE!
Do you ever played as any commercial republic? I bet you even know that they exist in game. But they do, as Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, Gotland and the Hanse you just cited (among others).
These commercial republics are supposedly to represent the trading aspect of the game. They are constituted of various family's who fight for control of the different regions by building trading posts in coastal regions. They also fight with one another for control of these trading posts and you can even fight embargo wars to size foreign trading post of others republics or families! And obviously different regions have different trading values, exactly to represent what you talked about certain regions having privileged access to raw materials and goods (specially the eastern ones)... better the region, better the trading post value and more trading income the republic will get, trading posts can also be upgraded. And the republics will pay a small part of the trading post profit to the owner of that region if they arent the ones that own it.
Now, the best part is that if you are powerful enough and have the lands/titles to do it, you can actually create trading republics as vassals which will often guarantees you a 
load of cash in the long run if you play your cards right. Now, as you can see in the screenshot bellow, in my same croatian king example, i created 2 trading republics, Duklja and Krete, and you can see from bellow the regions each one of the remaining republics control and the trading post info in Krete, which presents the income of the trade zone and how much the family who owns it is profiting from.... oh and the grand-mayor of Krete happens to be of my same dynasty aswell (my dynasty owns half the Erope 
):
And here you can see the two grand-mayors pay me a huge amount of cash for the trading posts they own in my lands + the taxes for being my vassals... i think all those embargo wars against venice paid off pretty well huh?
Again, CK2 doesnt have a complex economic system, granted, but its not the point of the game in the first place. The point is to emulate the life of a feudal ruler in medieval times.... you cant expect a highly complex economical system from a game which have such a high focus on Role Playing anyways.
If you want a complex economic system, go play Europa Universalis for example, there you will have goods, prices, supply and demand, interest rates, budget sliders, colonies tariffs, interest rates, inflation, trade leagues, centers of trades, merchants and a so highly complex economic system that in the end of the day you probably even know wtf is really happening in the economy anyways (just like real life economists, like me lol).
But, you have to take in consideration that;
a. Europa universalis its actually a full strategy game were you play as an actual nation instead of a character and thus you can actually try to control the economy and not be a part of it, as you are when you are a single individual.
b. The time period that Europa universalis take place is one that actually the economy is thriving with the era of great discoveries and the boom of mercantilism.
And its not like its designed for dummies too. If you go to the Paradox Forum you will see a ton of posts of people who actually struggle a lot to make money in ck2 and goes bankruptcy.
IIRC the city of Goslar is present in game. Well, Goslar was rather rich because of the silver and other ores found in the Harz mountains, and therefore it was an apple of discord between the Dukes of Saxony/Braunschweig and the HR Emperor. But there are no resources in CK. And while in reality you could conquer Goslar, and only Goslar, while in CK2 you have to conquer the county itself (speaking of Goslar, it actually was a "Freie Reichsstadt" and thus only was subject to the Emperor and never the Duke of Saxony. HRE diplomacy really sucks big time in CK2!).
About the resources, yes there are no resources, but frequently the wealth of a region is presented by (besides the afore mentioned trading zone value) its base tax value, richer regions have more base tax and so on. About the Goslar city thing, well, ck2 has the most historical accurate background i have ever seen in any game of my life, and frequently Paradox Interactive brags itself for being the most historically accurate game designer out there. I dont doubt you that there are errors thought. Even so, if you compare to RTW vanilla, which is a joke and even shown wrong borders for provinces in that period, ck2 is every historian wet dream.
Also, you should double check this city history, it really depends in the time frame, search for the exact time frame when it was under direct vassalage of the emperor and then check ingame how it is, sometimes is just a matter of different time periods, vassalages switched a lot form hand to hand in those days.
So, how does the player have any influence on the tactics?
Again, read this:
once you understand the numbers you will see that your generals traits, martial ability, units types, terrains, and another factors are of major importance in the outcome of a battle.
The only thing you can do, is to appoint a good leader and chose a comfortable position, hoping the AI will attack. The most common tactic throughout history, using light troops to lure the opponent into an attack, is impossible in CK.
Rofl. Again, you say something is impossible when actually, it not only possible, but actually one of the most common tactics that players do!
You dont hope the AI attack you. You split your armies in different provinces and lure the AI to attack you in your good spot. Since the AI will calculate her chances and since she will have a much bigger army she will attack besides terrain disadvantage. Now, the thing is, the AI in ck2 isnt stupid, if you try to reinforce the army with the other half before she engages in battle she will immediately cancel its armies advance. So in the end we have the almost exact scenario you pointed out; the player needs to lure and let the AI engage a weaker part of his army and then reinforce it with the other half.
HOWEVER, thats not a sure won battle because it will take some days/weeks for your reinforcements to arrive and if your generals cant hold the morale of your highly outnumbered defensive army you can lost the battle even before reinforcements arrive. I myself already lost battles that way. Specially if your units are too bad comparatively with your enemies... and even if you have good generals, frequently the AI will have some good ones too.
If you raise an army, you have zero influence on it's composition (except buildings).
You can influence your retinues, which are your private armies, just like the screen shot bellow, you see i can hire skirmisher retinues, pikeman, heavy infantry, cavalry and even cultural retinues (which are exclusive for each cultures) and many others. Like you can see in the tooltip a Skirmish retinue is composed of 400 archers and 100 heavy infantry:
So yes, you can actually influence your army composition (and i'm not even talking about mercs and holy orders). What you cant control, like you very well said, is the levy armies!
Which is actually highly historically accurate for that time. The feudal lords trained their personal armies (retinues) as they wished, since they represented the "professional" share of his army, but they had little control over the levies that they could summon for countryside.
You can't even influence when which unit type attacks during a battle.
Thats because the battle system is divided in three phases. In fact, every unit type fights in almost all the phases (with some rare exceptions), but some excels in specific phases like the archers in the skirmish phase, the light/heavy infantry and heavy cav in the meele phase and the light and heavy cav in the pursue phase. Also, there are units that are good in all three phases of combat, like the feared mongol horde’s horse archers, which in top of that receives bonus for fighting in the steppes.
Which isnt, per se, a bad thing strategically speaking. That’s because you can actually make some strategical moves out of it. For example, if you are playing with the english/bretons/welsh culture you can hire longbow mans as your cultural retinues, which are pretty much improved archers. If you have a lot of them, and since the skirmisher phase its the first one in the battle, than you can actually decimate much larger armies only in the skirmish phase of the battle. Thats historically accurate too since the english actually used that strategy and won many historical battle with it, like azincourt (i think thas the name).
Even religion can have influence in the battlefield, since there are some pagan religions which give some pretty relevant moral bonuses to their troops if the battle takes place on their own lands. Last but not least, it was you that said it was only a matter of numbers in the first place. I just proved you were wrong.
The oddest thing though is that no matter where the army actually should be, once two hostile armies are in one county they always come to blows.
I dont know why you think it is odd. And even if it is, its not like a bad thing at all, armies have to clash eventually.
And e.g. a river crossing is always present even if the defending army should be miles and miles away from the river.
Now that would be odd: why the defending army would be miles away from such a good defensive spot in the province like a river crossing?
Facing a strong opponent, guerrilla warfare and cutting supply lines would be a nice thing. But that's impossible.
Thats not impossible. You can do it. Its only a bad tactic to split your armies when you can form a doomstack, defeat the enemy army or quickly assault their holdings and sack it while the enemy forces are spread trying some sort of “guerrilla” tactic. Of course if you have the smaller army than you will find yourself in a bad situation. But thats exactly how warfare was that time. Guerrilla tactics were not as useful that time because the lack of organization and long distance communication methods. Frequently the invaders would group up a large force and seize the enemies holdings for sack... and that’s it. Guerrilla is much more of a modern day tactic than a medieval one.
Gosh, you can't even chose which settlement to besiege first when attacking a county! (Sucks especially when Pagans wish to plunder some silly Church).
Ok, now you have a point. I personally think that only half or so of the non-castles holdings should be protected by the castle walls in any given province.
Being of the same dynasty is essentially the same as marriage. Crusades and same religion? That really doesn't count as an alliance. As if you had a choice.
So, I count three possibilities: Marriage, same dynasty, religion. You speak of dozens?!
I dont see how same dynasty is the same thing as marriage. You can have a same dynasty ally without any marriage needed. Also, you do have a choice to enter in religious conflicts like crusades and holy wars. Thats 3, there are 4 more; culture in some cases, same factions, same vassalage if you are a vassal and fighting a foreign power and if you press another character claim he will automatically becomes your ally (if he is a dynasty member and/or your vassal already and the pressed title is not the same value as yours [i.e. pressed ducal title and you are a king] he will become your vassal).
Thats 7. Ok, just half a dozen.... but how many types of alliance there is in RTW, for example?
Just check that screenshot of my alliances tab that I posted above... there are 38, do you still think is any difficult to get an alliance in this game???
Which is an incredibly simple task. Thanks to the AI's stupidity.
LoL. No comments here. RTW AI rocks!
Getting great generals is also ridiculously simple.
If you are a prestigious and powerful king/emperor, than yes, it is (and its only historically accurate, plus the AI frequently get good generals in the same condition). Now try to play as a single county count in iceland and see how easy is to get a good general . You will frequently have to play as your ruling character as a general and thats not a good idea if you want to avoid an early death.
Summa summarum: RTW lacks in many things, but the tactical component (i.e. the battles) is great. If you want to make game that focuses on strategy, like CK2 does, the game has to be much more complex, as is the nature of strategy compared to tactics. But CK2 fails in so many points.
Yeah, In the end, I kinda agree with you. But the points you pointed out were very amiss
. Yes, RTW lacks many things but it is a great game with its tactical component.
I dont think CK2 is a complex game either.... although a lot of people would disagree, i think its the most simpler of the Paradox Games. I think Europa Universalis and Victoria 2 for example are way more complex.
But the thing you have to understand is, ck2 its much more a RPG centered strategical game. So you cant push it too much in the strategy/tactical aspect of it. However, as a RPG/strategy game and a game that offer so many possibilities and re playability, ck2 is as a great game as RTW is in its tactical focus.
Thats why I play ck2 and RTW for different reasons. But yes, both of them have its good aspects and lacking points, as any other great game.
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Had some good times playing Oblivion (though I didn't like the actual Oblivion part of the story!)
