TheDarkLordSeth said:

I got a de jure claim on a neighboring land but their sizes are relatively matched to my army and there is a river in between. How do you take over that province?

Click to expand...

Split your army. Lure the enemy to attack you, and add bulk of your army to the battle once they are committed.

Something I've noticed is that you're generally more effective if you put your army into single file when fighting enemies of equal strength. You'll route the enemy much easier due to the heavier causalty rates you inflict upon him.

xcorps said:

You can get wounded or maimed in battle as well. Maimed is a sure road to death. You could very well die from a wound too.

Click to expand...

Not really; I remember I had a Croatian king who got maimed around 30s, recovered (yes, miracle did happen) in 60s and live on to 70s.

CK2 was interesting to play at the beginning. And while it took some time to get the jist of the game, I learned the basics and beyond in order to survive. I found it quite tedious in acquiring gold. In the end, I think it was in between ok and good.

My Danish King (the maimed crusader, he has since kicked the bucket but made it to his sixties) was faced with a political problem and came up with an innovative solution. The Duchess of Livonia had a wide demense and no children. Her heir was a vassal of the King of Rus, not of me, and although not old, her husband was celibate. So it looked like I was going to lose a fair chunk of my realm to a King who I was not confident I could defeat in war.

So he ed her and knocked her up with a bastard son. Problem solved.

He was called Henning II "The Great" but I called him Henning the Lad.

nhytgbvfeco2 said:

unless you are the de jure liege of the land on which you press the claim

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks for clarifying.

Or is the negative warscore for not occupying the province you're claiming fixed?

Click to expand...

There is a warscore penalty for time. Some war types have a higher penalty than others. The Crusades have a very slow penalty, but wars for independance are faster. However, this penalty is easy to overcome against a single county. If you capture all three holdings and he has no fielded levy he will capitulate. I had a county last night at -80 warscore while my entire army was helping Aragon fight a Holy War for Valencia. I had to keep raising and dismissing mercenaries to deal with his levies, and I couldn't afford to keep them hired long enough to seige the holdings. After 2 years of that, I thought I was going to lose the holdings, but the Holy War finally ended and the warscore went from -80 to +30 as soon as I captured the barony.

i got totally raped after unifying the iberian penisuela and converting it to cristianity. i thought it was a good idea to establish a foothold with my 2 surplus demense in kreta. got a jihad against my capital. got like 40k invading troops and even my long standing ally mauritania betrayed me, while the golden horde decided it wanted to roll over my possesions defended by some holy orders in the balkans. initially it wasnt so bad, a few thousand men here and there thrown at me in spain but nothing i couldnt handle. then s=i suddenly got a few 10k stacks alnded all over the place. i crushed 3, but then mauritania betraye me and invaded with 30k. frances troops where depleted by then. i was like F* it, ill dig in in the balkans. i survived some more holy wars there and got supported a lot by the holy roman empire and a grew again and together i conquered whole of deeper russia. and then the golden horde initiated rape mode and surged across my lands wiping out my troops and destroying a few hunderd K of troops from the whole cristian and muslim world as we both tried to put a stop to them. we got oblitirated. so now i need to choose a new liege. any suggestions for someone with a not too bad starting position? ruler doesnt matter much as i can jsut create my own genius now.

EDIT: too bad though we cant play muslim. would be cool to conquer the iberian penisuella as a muslim and then proceed to take over europe's core while the pope throws crusades at you

Wow, sounds like your doing pretty well to me. I've never been able to unify Iberia.

was actually pretty easy. i managed to kill of the king of castille before he was able to produce a heir and then with his funds killed of the king of galicia(i married them both to 16 year old celibates) and then used the combined millitary force to quickly crush some of the strongest muslim factions before they overgrew me. after that it was a bit of a cakewalk until i was left with navarra(that went down in civil strife) , aragon, and a small french colony that i slowly eredicated in 3 generations while slowly converting whoel of spain to catholism. but now im deadP) and dont know another fun nation to play with. suggestions?

The HRE. You know you want to blob.

nah. HRE is no fun. its just one big mass of counts n dukes you need to keep under control and steamroll anyone who opposes you. just tried barcelona. i got a GREAT wife(best intrigue in the game AND a genius) but then valencia decided they wanted a holy war against me-_-

To inherit provinces, it works to get your king to get betrothed to the heir, preferably before they are 16. They will be married, and their children will inherit your kingdom and theirs.

xcorps said:

Wow, sounds like your doing pretty well to me. I've never been able to unify Iberia.

Click to expand...

I finally managed to do it as Navarre with a created character. Had France and Aquataine (kingdom) as allies which helped. Once the crusader orders came about it was fairly quick.

To inherit provinces, it works to get your king to get betrothed to the heir, preferably before they are 16. They will be married, and their children will inherit your kingdom and theirs.

Click to expand...

I would marry a female duke or kill her father so she became duke, have a child with her, and murder her and then the child so that I inherited it.

but, anyone have a fun duke/king to play with?

Lol... I just wait for her to die

Hungary is fun... You can grab land from the pechenegs at the start

TheDarkLordSeth said:

What are the ways to tie other provinces to yourself through marriage?

Click to expand...

Chances are it'll only work if the heir or ruler is female. You'll want to marry your King or your Heir to them. The other approach is to marry your heir to the eldest female and then assassinate all males ahead of her in the line. You can do it with female rulers/heirs on male targets, but you'll need matrillineal marriages, and if they're high in succession chances are they won't accept.

I managed to inherit Poland this way, and also got my dynasty on the throne on the Kingdom of Lotharingia.

Another thing you can do is to look out for potential brides with a claim on the target. Marry them in, then press their claim. A child will then unite both your lands and theirs. I just did this with a large Hungary in my current game. One note of warning. If you do this with your heir and not your monarch, chances are kids will end up in their court, which will mean those kids are at the mercy of AI tutors (and potential culture jumps).

Kanaric said:

I would marry a female duke or kill her father so she became duke, have a child with her, and murder her and then the child so that I inherited it.

Click to expand...

This on the other hand is the very aggressive way. If you're not planning on save-reloading though and playing it properly, it's very high risk since that Kinslayer trait is a massive annoyance. If you pull it off though, you can keep repeating it.

grumph said:

nah. HRE is no fun. its just one big mass of counts n dukes you need to keep under control and steamroll anyone who opposes you. just tried barcelona. i got a GREAT wife(best intrigue in the game AND a genius) but then valencia decided they wanted a holy war against me-_-

Click to expand...

Here you go...

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?604942-Usurping-the-Papacy-D

Read the thread, then decide if you want to give it a whirl and let us know. It looks interesting, but I'm not going to abandon my current game to try it.

What are the ways to tie other provinces to yourself through marriage?

Click to expand...

Marry one of your children to the claimaint of another title.

As an example:
I arranged a betrothal for my heir to a princess of Sweden who had a claim to the throne of Sweden.
They hit 16, get married.
I wait until they have a male child, then declare war on Sweden to press the claim on the throne for the daughter in law.
I win the war. The new Queen is now the ruler of Sweden. My son leaves my court for Sweden and is now the powerless King. They have a male child. That child is now the heir to the Kingdom of Sweden from his mother and the King of Scotland from his father.

If I don't press the claim, the claim usually passes on through generations. Thus when my son and daughter and law ascend to the throne of Scotland, their male child will still inherit the claim on Sweden. There are cases where a claim will pass out of the possession unless pressed in war. I don't really understand the exact precursor for that, but you can hover over the claim on the diplomacy window for the claimant and it will tell you if the claim will be inherited.

To tie a claim by matrilineal marriage the process is the same, but you have fewer potential claimants to chose from. Usually only courtiers will accept a matrilineal marriage. This has the advantage of insuring that the claimant will come to your court instead of leaving for another court. You can also search for claimants that will accept your invitation to court. They will be obligated to accept your desire for a matrilineal marriage. In this case, however, you need to wait until the son of that couple is born and press the sons claim. That way he becomes your vassal. If you press the claim of the man you invited to court, you will lose his vassalship unless the title you wish to bring into your realm is part of your de jure realm. For instance, if you invite a claimant for the Duchy of Meath playing as Scotland and you press the invited courtiers claim, he will become independant.
If it were the Duchy of Moray, he would become your vassal. If you press the claim of the son (who is now in your dynasty) the Duchy of Meath would become part of your realm and the son would be your vassal.

You can also use marriages to flood the court of another kingdom with your dynasty members. I have used non heir sons to marry into the family of the King of England. He had 3 daughters, I had a son to marry to each of them. After the King with whom I arranged the marriages died and his daughters had heirs, a few well placed assassinations put my grand and great grandchildren on the throne. Although they are not in any way tied to my Rulers realm, I do get a better score for the rulership of my dynasty. I also accomplished this with the King of Ireland (purely by accident) and the Kingdom of France. This method also creates additional claimaints that are part of your dynasty. I just invited 3 Princes of England who are all dynasty members into my court and have claims on the Kingdom of England. They are married already and have children. Once I put out the brush fires with a few earls and a border dispute with Ireland, I'm going to roll England into the fold. Since those Princes are all part of my court, I don't have to worry about another realm scooping one of them up and pressing his claim against me.

This on the other hand is the very aggressive way. If you're not planning on save-reloading though and playing it properly, it's very high risk since that Kinslayer trait is a massive annoyance. If you pull it off though, you can keep repeating it.

Click to expand...

I get kinslayer often but usually I try to avoid it. I dont save load. The kinslayer trait doesn't bother me because I usually dont have family with massive holdings. I think i've only had 2 dukes at most revolt against me.

I had one king where I was ruling like some tyrant or mad king from game of thrones executing revolters and banishing people and putting down massive revolts with help of my allies. Was a hilarious reign but he died by the time he got to 35 due to assassination. Tried to imprison a woman who had a plot to kill the king and kept failing to kill her so her plot succeeded.

They left for France and were ruling in the realms of Toulouse and his grandson conquered them since he had a claim on the Kingdom of Aquataine which I took then DOWed france for the bits in there.

I think the only time I had massive problems due to my actions was when I was excommunicated and didn't have money to pay off the pope. Kinslayer really didn't ever cause me major issues.

The occasional civil war makes the game fun and interesting once you have established power so long as you are not in areas where there are a lot of people meddling in your affairs picking off your revolting holdings. My neighbor Aquitaine lost 1/4 of its territory doing this and when I took that title I had to fight some epic wars to regain its holdings.

To find a claimant:

Click on a county. You will see the coat of arms for the county next to the county name at the top of the information page. Click on the coat of arms and it will open another page. On that page there will be a "claimants" button. Clicking on that will open a list of all the claimant for that particular holding. The green thumbs up or red thumbs down will tell you if they are willing to accept an invitation to your court. You might occasionally be able to give a gift to a claimant that won't accept your invitation to change their mind. Click on the portrait and hover over the NO button at the bottom of that page for tooltip. Count the red - and green +. If they are even, try a bribe.

If you look back up on the bar above the claimaints/history buttons, you will see the string of coat of arms for the soveriegn ladder. You can quickly navigate from a city to the kingdom it is in that way.

To check if an individual has a claim, click on that person to open the information page (the one with the stats). Under the portrait is a bar for titles and a bar for claims. You can hover over the coat of arms in the claims for tooltip information. On the resolution I play at, I sometimes get the wrong coat of arms information because I think my cursor is hovering in one place and it's actually in another.

One thing that annoys me is that if you don't give the claimant territory in your realm then they do not join you when you win the war fighting for their claim. Sometimes I dont have the money to build a barony for decades for them due to expenses elsewhere but I suppose its good like that otherwise I would expand ridiculously fast.

Kanaric said:

One thing that annoys me is that if you don't give the claimant territory in your realm then they do not join you when you win the war fighting for their claim. Sometimes I dont have the money to build a barony for decades for them due to expenses elsewhere but I suppose its good like that otherwise I would expand ridiculously fast.

Click to expand...

They will if the claim you are pressing is part of your de jure holdings. They also will become your vassal if they are in your dynasty.

Kanaric said:

I get kinslayer often but usually I try to avoid it. I dont save load. The kinslayer trait doesn't bother me because I usually dont have family with massive holdings. I think i've only had 2 dukes at most revolt against me.

Click to expand...

Suppose that's my issue. I tend to favour giving duchies to my dynasty whenever possible, because I tend to see half the game as being focused on making my dynasty powerful and not necessarily just the primary line.

That said, if you're not doing that I suppose Kinslayer is not that big a deal.

A -25 relations hit with every vassal and dynasty member...That's about 50 points worth of personal diplomacy. It's a permanent malus. It increases a base revolt risk by about 15% (based on opinion)if a vassal becomes rebellious and can almost never be overcome without at least 3 virtues. You get a smaller hit from the tyrant malus for revoking a duchy, and that malus can disappear.

TheDarkLordSeth said:

I think this game would attract much more players if it involved a well tutorial. I bet a lot of people try the demo and get scared.

Click to expand...

The Tutorial seemed fine to me.

TheDarkLordSeth said:

I think this game would attract much more players if it involved a well tutorial. I bet a lot of people try the demo and get scared.

Click to expand...

Once I realized the tutorial was crap, I quit fooling with it and jumped in. It was the opposit for EUIII. I went through all the demos and never touched it again.

That's the reason I learned to play the game without tutorial, all by myself.

It was hard and long way, but I am good at the game now at least.

Patch 1.5e offers considerable changes:

1. Now neighbours of same religion would much more likely to support your against other religious groups in a defensive war.

2. Those "reinforcement" would now stick with you force, allow you to decide where the force should concentrate.

3. That however also means you can abuse it; in fact you can never sign a peace treaty for that war and bring the army to fight other campaigns, which means you can simply declare multiple wars several time and use that huge allied force to fight for you.

4. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to build up your children into something you want now.

hellheaven1987 said:

Patch 1.5e offers considerable changes:
4. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to build up your children into something you want now.

Click to expand...

How? It a great issue for many!

I don't want a weak heir whose insanity has no cure and vassals try to replace him now and then.....

4. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to build up your children into something you want now.

Click to expand...

Please elucidate.

Here are the changes in e.

- When you press the claim of a vassal ruler, he should now remain your vassal
- Kingdoms that are not previously de jure part of an empire can now also be assimilated
- AI: Fixed an issue with calling allies into single wars
- Fixed an issue with the regency events
- Fixed numerous typos in the database and event files
- AI: Fixed a bug with rulers being able to nominate dead children to titles, if not of their own dynasty