Crusader Kings 2

Watch the History Channel Crusades doc on You Tube.

bump

Got shitton of good podcast, but its not available in english

Playing CKII

Not Playing EUIV....
#gamershit

One word that makes me apprehensive about EU4

Institutions

EU3 Mods still amazing

EU4 is fucking shit man, it's a boring ass board game that takes no skill.
At least CK2 is a fun RPG and immersive

Damn it, I need more history in my life

I love having this stuff in the background as I /gsg/

Its pretty good tho. You should try eu4 meow and taxes

Well I can recommend Horrible Histories.

dailymotion.com/video/x4zsmuj
Target audience of these shits were kids of course, but its pretty fucking good to learn genuinely interesting and sick things about history

revolutionspodcast.com/
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloads
your mileage may vary but it works for me

Prove it

EU3 was better

Press F to pay respects to the grand strategy genre

>eu3
>better than 2018's EU4 with meow

Nope and nope.

>shitty ui
>no forts
>crap sliders
>custom and random nations/new world
>significantly better naval focus
>elements from other paradox titles like Great Powers, Traits, Regents

+all the sweet things from meiou

Think eu4 is the only sequel thats actually better than the predecessor

Someone that played EU3 religiously here

How I learn EU4? Is meow necessary? Cause I know niggermod is pretty mandatory for Vicky 2

Meiou is pretty necessary, however if you havent played eu4 before I recommend pirating the latest version with all dlcs and a fresh youtube playthrough

Brainlet.

i bought this game and i want to enjoy it but im just so lost and confused on what to do

Why do Paradoxfags think they're intellectuals for playing single player board games with shit UIs?

I don’t, but to claim ck2 is harder than eu is laughable.

Oh Jesus no, it's not harder. CK2 is an extremely easy game, especially late game. I just don't like EU4's difficulty, feels even more artifical than CK's

howdumb.ru

CK2 is hard only when your ruler dies and now your vassals hate your guts and your brothers want to fuck you up and steal the throne

well yeah because its a boardgame

Not since they changed the technology mechanic. It actually makes sense now. Of course a European country will fuckup some African shithole if they have guns and the Africans have spears. Although that doesn’t mean you can’t still win it’s just harder.

Either start in Ireland, and have a slow but stress free way to learn how to play, or start under a strong lord as a duke, and have a faster but with someone to protect you from getting smeared off the map. Also youtube videos.

What's a fun and relatively easy start to get into with CK2? Been bored lately. I have pretty much all of the DLC except the newest shit that came out.

New player here. I can help explain some concepts to ya in basic terms. Dont ask me about advanced concepts tho, I got the basics down.

Also:
Diplomacy > Intrigue > Stewardship > Militancy > Learning

In that order, make sure to nurture loyalty in your children. You can do that by assigned them a guardian that is loyal to you and never give land to people in your court that have claims on clay you own as that will hurt relations. Fuck the pope

1066 England. Well the norman England

What's the name of the ruler? I'll look into it.

Literally mimic a youtuber

William

Stewardship and Martial are way more important than Intrigue or Diplo until late game.

how do you have fun with this genre? There's no goddamn gameplay of the direct interaction variety. Please, I want to enjoy it, I really do but I'm with OP... I want some real characters or something to do besides arrange marriages and watch years fly by on a timer

Stewardship and Martial can be pumped by advisors
Hell, It's really not difficult to find Jews for the council seat. Letting any bitch ass vassal on the council is verboten

Roleplay. Make a custom character at game start and then see how his children fuck up his legacy

Huh. Stop forcing it.
Also if you shit in history or just dont like it seriously avoid this genre. Maybe HoI4 since ww2 is not as niche as medieval europe/middle east

Diplomacy=Militancy>Stewardship>>Intrigue>>>>>>>>>Shit>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Learning

Diplo makes it so your vassals and other lords don't hate you. Also the more your vassals like you, the more men the raise
Milit allows you to raise more men in lands you control
Steward raise income from all sources
Intrigue is really only good for killing people, and even then it's worse than having a higher diplo since invite to plot works based off of how much someone likes you
Learning affects tech growth? I honestly forgot what it does.

>find wife
>open the console
>type add_trait immortal
>type charinfo 1 and marry_anyone
>pollinate *wife's id* *your id*
>wait for kid while fucking other people's wives
>if girl type age *her id* 16
>if boy try again
>get rid of wife or keep, do as you please
>pollinate *daughter's id* *your id*
>do the same shit until you die but while playing normally
Don't forget to fuck other people's wives and daughters, if you can raid, do it and abuse the women you get.
Oh and get some indispensable sex mods.

Where my option to connect directly

Well Martial is actually not important. It affects the size and reinforcement of YOUR demesne levies only.

Learn the real life history of a dynasty and try and beat what they did. Or try and rebuild an empire with a direct descendant of it. Or set up cooky ahistorical shit and have fun with that too!

I mean that's all I ever do and it's kept me interested on and off for 3 years

>Where my option to connect directly

Which can be really important when you set up a fat little 12 slot demesne and keep your vassals fractured. Of course diplo plays into this as always but Mil can still be really good

Imagine my shock when I realised that my Irish empire had more powerful army than
>Holy
>Roman
>Empire

It's always fun to have built a powerful empire only to see it crumble because the son of your character is a retarded pussy who wants to pray instead of conquer

when you reach a level where you can maintain 12 demesnes your army is prolly 50-70k big already. Keeping nobles happy or killing them in your dungeons is just easier and comfier than micro fracturing. Even with ck2+ or hip

One of the best things I ever got from a book fair was the Rotten Romans book they made.

Buddies said they tried everything to connect but I don't think they did and they don't wanna try again

They are demanding I buy it on steam instead But Im broke and without a job
I wanna try with a Cred Forumsirgin but I don't think anyone has my pirated version

It's funny to see Cred Forums talk about grand strategy, it's like watching 8 year olds talk about their big brothers games

Back to /vg/ my elitist friend

Imagine the shock when your people realized that your annual potato harvest is infected by a strange fungus

no forts
>forts
>good
crap sliders
>not the best mechanic
custom and random nations/new world
>playing EU with custom nations

Yes, and that raised amount can help swing a war in your favor. Vassals never give you all of their men, no matter how much they like you, so being able to raise more of your own, with a high demesnes size, which is also increased by stewardship I forgot to mention earlier, you can single handedly win wars without your vassals.

Irish didnt have potatoes yet

>he doesnt know the meme

Forts are actually 10 times better than sieging every single provinces for 2 years

When will eu3 fags buy proper CPUs that can handle Meiou?

Monarch Points > Sliders

If your friend has steam then he's up too date, no way too play with him
As for the direct connect thingy I think there was an option to go too the meta server too direct connect, dunno if they changed the UI, it's been a while.

The Rick And Morty fans of vidya

Grand strategy doesn't require a high IQ and no one at /gsg/ implies so, sorry you're retarded
People that play these know they're autistic map painting sims

>Mana
>Good

Thank god you can pirate every DLC this game has otherwise i would been pissed desu.

Have you ever been at the Paradox forums? kys

No, I don't browse reddit and reddit colonies

Certainly better than slider gymnastics. If this is your only argument, your taste is shite

You'll never get it. Making that type of game is risky unless you are paradox.

So far your only argument is "sliders bad" so you aren't on any higher ground m8

check shit posted earlier by other user

>crap sliders
you sure showed me

enlighten us why domestic policy shit is better please

No video games require high IQ

>inb4 Rule the Waves

More depth than just "oooh, numbers grow"

>More depth

You sure showed me. Just confess. Your shitty eastern euro pc cant handle superior Ayylmao and Taxes 2.2

Mana points have more depth than sliders though.

>want to play ck2
>usually wind up getting to the point I can go with imperial shit, viceroys whatnot
>can't actually have an entirely viceroyal realm in the current patch because the computer forgot how to hand out viceroyalties
>byzantium is all kinds of fuck and almost if not entirely populated by hereditary titles within a century
>devs have been relatively silent for weeks now outside some intern saying he wants to do thing with titles
>duchies of kermanshah, tigris, hamadan, and esfahan are currently titular and the computer loves to destroy titular titles below their top tier title so can't have say a feudal duchy setup in persia and grant a titular guy a viceroyal king title or he'll destroy the duchy of x and transfer any land/vassals he previously had to jibal or khozistan
EVERY FUCKING DLC RELEASE/SUBSEQUENT PATCH IT'S SOMETHING WITH THESE SWEDISH FUCKERS HOLY SHIT

Also make more sense in a kind of twisted way. State finance was almost entirely decoupled from a lot of things that it was used for in EU3.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>more depth

Its literally the same system. Only difference was you had to wait 10 to 50 years between these deep slider changes instead of gradual mana. Eu4 is a much more polished and complex version of eu3, especially with overhaul mods

why not just play as emperor then change

>Eu4
>complex

Why are the muslims so powerful?
Seems like everytime I play, they take over the spanish peninsula and eventually steam over France and take chuncks out of the HRE. Even the Byzantines get torn up to a significant degree. Unless I take part in Crusades or personally fight them back the Muslims seem to be superpowers

My bad I missed the quantifier "more". Stupid animeposter is stupid

but it's not, eu3 wasn't complex either but eu4 is the simplest game paradox has shit out to date

Nobody said it's a complex game you stupid third wordler. As you can see I corrected it to "more complex" At least interpret before shitpost

Historically, they were doing better than the Euros for quite some time and only were beaten back by movie levels of heroic deeds

See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cid

He's the reason the Spanish aren't Muslim, seriously tho, read his article, nigga was an action movie protag before it was even a thing

and read what i wrote, eu4 is the most simple gs game of all
pump mil tech
pump mil ideas
win game

That's wrong and inefficient. WCs you stack core creation cost reduction.

Alright so you admit that the last time you touched the game it was years ago. And it was strictly vanilla

Oh it's the "Game is 2ez4me as a lucky nation" episode again.

played it today actually, destroyed france as brittney easy
you're just trash

Why would you anonymously lie on the internet? And to brag. What are you trying to accomplish?

>eu4 is hard
lol

it's not bragging if it's fucking easy
just stop being bad

Show me your Ryukyu playthrough

Somebody else giving the chinese the best eunuchs and bitches so i can bribe them to deytroy entire empires?

I mean the function weas never used against me and its pretty easy to obtain 5000 Grace

>ming protection
lol, try albania

No you did not. You're just a poor slav unable to run proper Clausewitz games on potato

Okay so what is your superior Ryukyu tactics

>albania
So Skanderbeg&Hunyadi rekting the Balkans

no lessons for free

>liking bloatmods that make your game run like shit

I neglected to mention that it's possible to circumvent it as an Emperor-tier player by simply never having king-tier viceroys, or by only having duke-tier viceroys under yourself directly while one's king-tier viceroys have feudal vassals.

It's still annoying as one's realm expands, and guarantees that Byzantium will go full fuedal within a century's time if not half that.

If (for sake of example) you're playing as Byzantium and gain control of the entirety of Sicily, you have six strategoi ready to join factions and shit up the place in general. Being able to roll those six strategoi into one exarch makes things simpler, and it is significantly easier to plug one asshole compared to six.

The problem arises once the exarch begins accumulating viceroyal duchy titles from his vassals-- the exarch, being a computer-controlled character, does not currently know what to do with viceroyal titles. He may be a plugged up asshole, but he's accumulating a lot more shit behind his blocker than he would normally, and his vassals can smell it. His vassals will have a -10 opinion penalty for every duchy the exarch holds past the usual two.

With the Exarchate of Sicily, in the worst-case scenario, the Exarch will have up to 17 count-tier vassals, only holding a single county himself in Neapolis. Every one of those counts wants a duchy that the Exarch is incapable of handing out, and at least five of those counts possess a strong claim on a duchy. The Exarch has a guaranteed -40 opinion penalty from holding excess duchies alone, on top of the opinion penalty from vassals desiring duchies, on top of whatever trait differences exist. The Exarch of Sicily is extremely likely to be overthrown around this point.

While this has interesting potential for keeping vassals weak, it's fucking tedious and can fuck up tech flow which is pretty fucking annoying in earlier start dates.

It's the RP element.

Is there a mod that makes expelling jews easier?

I've been playing all the tier 1 nations in EU4 and only Muscovy/Russia and the Ottomans are left. Which of those two should I play next?

Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII/VIII/X are pretty solid if you don't mind pre-made characters being the bulk of the cast and custom-made characters having next-to-nothing for dynastic shit barring whatever you're willing to shit out for hours in create-a-character.

Such a fucking shame the steam versions are chinese/japanese only currently.

>Seems like everytime I play, they take over the spanish peninsula

This is cause the AI is retarded and Asturias thus won't take every opportunity to take chunks of land off rebelling vassals early in the 769/867 scenarios where the Bedouin Umayyad AI will try to genocide all of its vassals that aren't Bedouin (the AI being utterly and completely ethnically intolerant is a major flaw in the game).

Also
>769/867 start, playing a ME Muslim
>waiting for Seljuk to spice things up
>on the off-chance that he survives the 10 yrs between his spawning and his conquest, he turns Persian in a heartbeat and usually dies immediately afterwards
>tfw this was only implemented due to the same whiny 12yr old players who demanded adventurer conquests be nerfed, ensuring that the Turks can never reprise their important role in Muslim history

well, at least they've nerfed Harold in mid-1066 so that William stands a chance of winning, though I've noticed players complaining about this too. Why do ppl like their game to be as static as possible?

One last thing
>they literally haven't implemented nomadic Jurchen and Khitan hordes spawning after Chinese civil wars - they are always feudal, meaning they'll at best conquer a single county and assimilate

I got CK2 + Old Gods from the paradox bundle a few weeks ago. Played 54 hours. I really want to like it, but the game pisses me off to no end. It feels like when the you get too big the game just decides it's time to rape you.

I started out in Munster, Ireland 3 times and I always manage to unify Ireland, but whenever I try to chip into Britannia the game just keeps throwing factions and attacks at me dwindling me down until I'm drowned out by everyone who's trying to get a piece of me.
One game I got excommunicated repeatedly. Every time I repented, I got excommunicated again the very next week. This kept happening several times until I lost all my resources. And my bishop was ALWAYS on top of the Pope to improve relations.
I like how in the tutorial it makes it look like you can assassinate people in the line of succession to gain control of titles, but outside the tutorial I almost never had a strategy like that be viable. It was only useful after succession in gavelkind when I would closely manage my heirs and assassinated them to regain control of any titles I lost.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong here, but somehow things always turn to shit. I don't press claims on those who are too strong for me, like if they have more levies or they have strong alliances. I don't go to war unless I have a large enough safety net of gold to fend off enemies that would try to exploit my position. I build up my holdings and don't give away anything in my primary county. I don't march my armies into bad terrain like straits or rivers. I try to marry into good genetics and tutor my primary heir. I don't allow foreign cultures/religions as vassals. I try to be as strategic as I can, but it doesn't work out. I don't know what more I can do to succeed.
Maybe I'm playing it wrong and it's not about expanding but roleplaying a dynasty or some shit. Maybe I need more DLC. I got EU3 in the bundle as well so I might try that since it's less focused on characters.

Holy shit someone else who plays CKII because they want more KoDP shit. Man, my friend sold this game to me by saying it was like KoDP but with more intrigue.
This.
I don't understand the appeal of diverting your attention from the game you're playing. And if you can't play the game without some diversion, why in the fuck are you playing that game?

That said, History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is good.

Reminder to report and ignore shitposters

>listening to a podcast diverts too much attention away from the game

Some day you're gonna realise that grand strategy is actually pretty shallow and that the real autists play shit like Dominions 5 and AI War.
It diverts ANY attention away from the game. Nigger I have literal ADHD and I don't need to do that.

>I don't allow foreign cultures/religions as vassals.

you're missing out

one of my favourite runs was 769 start Karluks, where I invaded India from Central Asia after turning Muslim, and then tried to make a homeland for all Turkish ethnicities, as well as Afghans and Indian vassals, just like a true medieval Indian Sultan would. Their endless civil wars for every single viceroyalty as well as my ambition to conquer the whole of the subcontinent kept my interest right in the 1440s, tho this was before Tibet, so the difficulty of achieving this might have spiked with the last expansion.

*I meant that the 10yr waiting period between Seljuk and Sabuktigin's spawn and conquests is a result of player whining.

Well I do not have literal ADHD and need more stimulation

That's why I usually have an idle game running in the background as well, multitasking is fun.

Also, has anyone noticed what a joke the Mongols have become? They usually can't even conquer Cumania anymore due to the AI not knowing how to 100% war res a large nomadic enemy.

You are having fun wrong. If you need more stimulation I suggest rocking backwards and forth on a dildo while you play. Otherwise, the game should be good enough (and immersive enough) to occupy your full attention. THAT is how you treat true art.

>yfw Muslim and your wives going at it each other
wat do

anyone here played Jade Dragon?

Oh, you're one of those faggots

Sorry you need your full focus one one thing to enjoy it, other people don't have such handicaps

fap

I've played 2 game as a Chinese count in thrall to the Western Protectorate so far. The first one was the better of the two. 769 start. I first directed China to destroy Tibet and then Byzantium so they wouldn't make unsightly blobs, and soon after I was able to take advantage of a lucky coincidence of there being a peasant revolt in Dunhuang and a civil war in China to declare a war of independence and stop the AI from defeating the rebels, which I then vassalised and unlanded. From there on, I built a western Chinese Empire in Tibet and Mongolia, ignoring the Mongols, who BTFO'd themselves withing 20 yrs of spawning as usual, until I grew too confident and attacked Mongol China, causing 200k troops to spawn against my 50k, blowing up my Empire some 200 years before game's end. Apparently, you're supposed to use the Chinese Imperialism government to own only cities and amass a crazy treasury to defeat China with, but I overlooked the perks of my new government system.

>be me
>start a new dinasty as the count of Pisa
>decide to make him an holy man
>works pretty well
>my liege gave me Florence and Siena
>I have a Civil war with two counts
>capture the first, make white peace with the other one because my manpower is shit
>things goes pretty well until he dies
>my heir is a woman
>she is only a child when the other guy STILL tries to be independent
>wreck his shit, imprison him
>decide to let him go
>she spent the rest of her life slutting around while his husbands dies one after another off "illness" before giving her a child
>in the end decide to let her marry a beta cuck orbiter who gives her a legit daughter
>she dies off childbirth
>the guy's son from Siena still wage war to me
>this time I willl probaly lose because my manpower is weak as fuck

Should I just give up to Siena for now?

>disallow land-conquest vs nomads prior to x tech for feudal realms
>have seljuk/sabawhatever prepare a conquest vs a target realm for two years upon spawning with their numbers increasing every month based on turkish realm strengths or some shit like that
just a shame the code's probably too fucked to allow a special initial casus belli that'd target all realms current and future so long as any such wars are still ongoing that have holdings in x duchy/kingdom to sieze all land in said duchy/kingdom

>Is it cause there is no other strategy RPG like it
Even without strategy part there's no RPG like CK2. I mean it's literally the only single-player game that gets tabletop roleplay 100% right.

>>disallow land-conquest vs nomads prior to x tech for feudal realms

a thousand times this

fkn Byzantium/Samanids REEEEEEE

also why the fuck isn't the rurikid dynasty given a manifest destiny casus belli for the russia region prior to 1066

what

somehow forgot to mention that liberation casus belli should still be available for valid targets regardless of tech x

because Rurik has enough CB's at his disposal as is, but that doesn't matter anyway cause he'll always end up being devoured by the freakishly strong Finnic realms around him. The Mordvins and Finns will always dominate Russia in 769 and 867.

I came over In Our Time, a BBC radio programme the other day, and I can't stop listening to it. Plenty of episodes appropiate for the era.

You need to tweak the .ini a bit for that authentic medieval experience.

that feel when no mordvin specific flavor beyond rus being named mordvinia when held by a mordvin culture character and some titular "tribe of x" titles that are unused when they could be used as the basis for bookmark-specific de jure setups

that feel when vola bulgaria is SHIT

Post a screenshot user

Sorry, I deleted the game after a particularly invested Assyrian Abbasid 769 run. I threw in the towel when Persian Seljuk got himself killed just as Byzantium started expanding into Poland and my empire was in ruins after this one Caliph who was such an asshole that his entire realm disintegrated in 15 years. Swear to god, I flinch every time Byzantium curls its grasping claws around Wallachia. Remember Mauricius, Paradox, huh?

He's right you know

Pretty much, I just wish they would expand on it. I think a fantasy setting would allow more freedom. I doubt anyone will ever try it though

I don't think I've had a tabletop roleplaying experience like CKII, save the endless ingeniously rickety PC Plans (tm).

Name me another vidya that comes closer too that experience as far as character interaction and decision making goes.
Now I'm not saying ck3 or w/e should mimmick tabletop, but it's an original and fun path to follow

>I think a fantasy setting would allow more freedom.

try this out

ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Warhammer:_Geheimnisnacht

>tfw too brainlet to play ck 2

Honestly, text based adventures aren't too far off. Planescape: Torment is closer than CKII. KoDP, besides its setting, has a pretty good approximation of the sorts of moral choices you might get from a good GM. Plus, roguelikes as a whole for dungeon crawlers.

CKII's good precisely because of its roleplaying, but it's not much like a tabletop RPG.

What's the problem user?

ROTK X with the PUK is probably the closest thing to CK2-but-better. But it's not out in English. ROTK XIII with the PUK is pretty good.

...

I don't understand a lot of things.
Why when I (king) died I went down from 10k to 3k personal levies?
Why does it say that I'm going to lose titles upon ruler's death despite my son being the heir?
Why would I press someone else's claim?
Why when I presses a claim, a vassal of mine got lands without them changing into my country, and why did I get another opportunity to press claims after that, which in turn put some random unrelated to me person in charge of the land?
What does de jure even mean?
Why does prestige and piety even exist, I can't spend it on anything aside from some rare random events and it doesn't seem to be affecting anything by itself?

There's probably more but I don't remember.

No bully pls

Oh and what does it even mean that a holding is of a wrong type? It doesn't seem like I can change it anyway.
And why would I create a duchy? It would only give me a penalty for holding too many of them.

>Why when I (king) died I went down from 10k to 3k personal levies?

Beacuse the new guy is not as good commander as the old king or your vassals doesnt like you as much and wont give you as many troops.

>Why does it say that I'm going to lose titles upon ruler's death despite my son being the heir?

You may have gravelkind which means some of your land will go to your other sons which you wont be playing as.

>Why would I press someone else's claim?

They will like you/they are family/you can add their land to your own if the person is a vassal of yours.

>What does de jure even mean?
"describes practices that are legally recognised, whether or not the practices exist in reality."

>Why does prestige and piety even exist, I can't spend it on anything aside from some rare random events and it doesn't seem to be affecting anything by itself?

It gives you points and effect your opinion modifer with various characters i.e priests like piety and lords like prestige. If you have more they will like you better.

I just started playing last week and it's consumed my life. Same thing happened when I tried EU4 but I think CK2 is even better. Surprised because I usually like EU's era better than medieval settings.

>Why when I (king) died I went down from 10k to 3k personal levies?
Probably your heir has very low martial or your previous king had a high one, you should upgrade your keep (castle) to have more levies, also, build another castle in your capital and upgrade it too, your capital city will have a bonus for levy size.
>Why does it say that I'm going to lose titles upon ruler's death despite my son being the heir?
Make sure your sucession laws are primogeniture to make only one son get all your titles, gavelking will split your titles between all your sons
>Why would I press someone else's claim?
It's faster to expand this way as they will be your vassal if they are a lower rank than you
>Why when I presses a claim, a vassal of mine got lands without them changing into my country, and why did I get another opportunity to press claims after that, which in turn put some random unrelated to me person in charge of the land?
Are you sure he was a lower rank than you? You can't vassalize a king while being a king
>What does de jure even mean?
From law i think, if you click on the map options you will see a "de jure duchies/kingdoms" option, if you own more than 50% of that "de jure" you can create/usurp the title for yourself, but beware, holding more than one kingdom title or lots of duchies will make your vassals very angry.
>Why does prestige and piety even exist, I can't spend it on anything aside from some rare random events and it doesn't seem to be affecting anything by itself?
Prestige is useful for being a dick without paying for it, you can violate truces and revoke claims, just make sure you don't get it to a negative value, piety is useful for raising the moral authority of your religion and inviting holy mans to your court (intrigue tab), these holy mans are useful after holy wars because you usurp duchies after winning one.
Not sure if i was clear enough, if you have any other doubts just say.
I think i may have fucked up the formating here a bit.

>Why when I (king) died I went down from 10k to 3k personal levies?

Because your current ruler's martial skill is lower than the old ruler's and cause your vassals don't like you as much, giving you less of their manpower for the levy.

>Why does it say that I'm going to lose titles upon ruler's death despite my son being the heir?

Because you likely have the default Gavelkind succession law enabled, meaning your titles will be split between all of your (usually male) heirs after your death. You need to reach Legalism tech 3, change your government to Late Feudal, and then enable Primogeniture to keep all of your demesne united.

>Why would I press someone else's claim?

Because if the claim you're pressing is of a lower rank than your own, you can give the claimant a province from your own demesne and make his new realm your vassal. You can also marry a female claimant to a member of your own dynasty and have your dynasty inherit the realm after her death.

>What does de jure even mean?

Legal fiction. An example would be Georgia and Croatia in the 1066 start - they are legally a part of the Byzantine Empire and thus some laws passed by the Byzantine Emperor apply to them too, but they are de facto (in reality) independent.

>Why does prestige and piety even exist, I can't spend it on anything aside from some rare random events and it doesn't seem to be affecting anything by itself?

Piety is important to Muslims if they want to go to war with other Muslims. Catholics get excommunicated if they have negative piety afaik. If your Prestige is below 2000, you will not get the maximum opinion bonus with your vassals. Apart from that, prestige is important to tribal and nomadic vassals in the expansions.

>Oh and what does it even mean that a holding is of a wrong type? It doesn't seem like I can change it anyway.
If a county has a city or a monastery as its "capital", then it's the wrong holding type (assuming you're a normal feudal castle dude). Make a castle the county capital.
>And why would I create a duchy? It would only give me a penalty for holding too many of them.
When you are a king, you don't want to directly rule a fucktonne of different counties. Instead, you delegate. You give a local, capable count control of all his surrounding counts -- i.e. you give him a duchy. That way, you keep your vassal count below the maximum.

Thank you. I guess I'll play some more and try to figure things out. I already played EU IV and HOI IV, but this one seems the most confusing so far.

>Oh and what does it even mean that a holding is of a wrong type? It doesn't seem like I can change it anyway.
It means that, as a feudal ruler (the only kind you can play as a Christian) you cannot directly control neither cities nor churches/temples, but you have to give them to somebody else (preferably a no-name courtier, but inviting holy men, debuttantes and nobles can work too, if you've got money). Keep in mind that, if your heir's first title is a city or a temple, as a christian, you'll get a game over.

>And why would I create a duchy? It would only give me a penalty for holding too many of them.
Having them gives you prestige, regardless of opinion. PRestige is useful for many things, but it's a mostly a score thing.

Well, yes, HOI4 and EU4 are the easiest Paradox games. CKII is also easy, though, and you'll get the hang of it just by fucking around.

If you've already played EU4 then you're really close to knowing CK2. Just keep at it. I know all the game's mechanics after two days of playing it thanks to what I already knew from EU4, been playing about a week now.
I'd like to stress that knowing the mechanics doesn't imply I'm actually good at the game either, but I at least understand why things went to hell and how I fucked up.

>give them to somebody else (preferably a no-name courtier
Why not to someone who is already my vassal? A different mayor or a bishop?

>de jure
Basically the game world has a blueprint of how territories and borders should look like. In game the actual real time borders don't always correspond to this blueprint. This can be used as a casus belli (reason to go to war) if you want to expand. Say you hold the county titles of Deasmhumhain and Urmhumhain, but not Hlymrek. The 'de jure' duchy of Munster is made of those 3 counties, but it doesn't actually exist in the game world. You can create this 'de jure' duchy because you have more than half of the counties required to create it. Even if you create the duchy you don't control Hlymrek yet. This gives you the option of offering vassalage to Hlymrek or it gives you a casus belli to declare war on Hlymrek.

You don't want to give any of your vassals too much power because they might revolt against you. Especially if they have a strong claim on your title (i.e. siblings).

>meow and taxes

I see, thanks.

I've got one more question though. Is there a way of taking land without actual conquest? Like could I persuade someone's else vassal to join me with his lands for example?

Just google things you don't understand one by one and don't try to grasp all at once, half of enjoyment of CK2 is in discovering new things even after hundreds of hours.
>Why when I (king) died I went down from 10k to 3k personal levies?
Military skill and personal traits, also new ruler might have not inherited all the holdings.
>Why does it say that I'm going to lose titles upon ruler's death despite my son being the heir?
Check your succession laws. You son may inherit the main title but there's probably a shitload of smaller ones you have.
>Why would I press someone else's claim?
It depends. If you don't have your own claim usually. Or if you're a cuck.
>Why when I presses a claim, a vassal of mine got lands without them changing into my country
You pressed his claim then and the title you claimed for them wasn't within borders of your titles. For example: your guy have a claim on some county, this county is within a duchy you can can create but which you haven't created yet, so after you conquer that province for him he isn't your vassal technically.
>What does de jure even mean?
"By law", in context of CK2 it means that these are correct historical border for some title which make sense (as Paradox thinks, kek).
>Why does prestige and piety even exist, I can't spend it on anything aside from some rare random events and it doesn't seem to be affecting anything by itself?
For some playstyles or at some stages or playthrough they are your main resource, they also affect opinions.
>what does it even mean that a holding is of a wrong type?
That means that your Emperor holds some shitty barony or church, give it to other vassal or you kids and forget.
>why would I create a duchy?
To create kingdom from duchies you hold.
To "compress" counties into duchy for better titles management.
Perfectly you keep your highest title and distribute most of lower ones among vassals so you don't exceed holdings limit.
Also see my example with vassals' claims above.

Yes, if they are from the same culture as you, you are a higher rank and more powerful than them they will accept a vassalization offer.

What you can do is ask to small counties and duchies to join you, but it's really hard to do as a king, and, if you're an empereor, kingdoms will basically never join you unless on the brink of disappearing, but why would you do that?

Another way is to screw around with successions in other countries, in a way that you get to install your heir both on your and somebody else's throne. It's rather complex (you need to find a childless husbandless queen/ heiress; a king that's stupid enough to accept a matrilinear marriage while having a precarious succession, like heirs with cancer or sickly babies; or just murder the fuck out of everyone in a dynasty you married some time ago), but it usually gives you a lot of land in one go.

>seeing your roman empire run be ruined by an elective revolt

You should kill the game in the task manager if this happens

I just keep trying to get the Croatian kingdom big and strong but it always fails.
I guess the country truly is doomed, fucking Zvonimir and his curse

Playing as Ireland and Andalusia has formed and taken one of the duchys. I do I get them the fuck off my island? Also, the Byzantine Empire has English clay

Post screenshot plz
Also, send those mudniggers back to the sea

I have no idea wtf happened

The Peninsula was ravaged by war and then out of nowhere it was fucking united. The magenta are the Byzantines and the slightly lighter green is Andalusia
Honestly thinking of just restarting

Forgot image

Middle East as a non-Muslim is hard too.

also
>EVENT TROOPS

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Damn what a clusterfuck, it looks pretty tough to expand now with united scotland, england AND byzantium. think you should restart because the byzantines have close to 30k troops and they always seem to be ready to go around the world with them

>Depressed
Sounds about right

>dev diary today
>here's some map teaser also we're working on a dlc buy it fucker
>still no bugfix for viceroys

What viceroy bug?
The only dev diary i liked this month was the last Goy4 one about formable nations

you actually like those eu4meme formable countries?

Holy shit how is it possible to have such a shitty taste, I hope you die of asscancer

computer doesn't know how to hand out viceroyal titles

translates to byzantium going feudal very quickly and makes exarchs hold onto way more duchies than they should

How do I consistently wage war on my neighbours doe?

I only took so god damn long cause my faggot councilors took ages to fabricate claims

The actual son I was grooming to be King decided to fuck me and join the Crusades. He immediately got jailed and turned into a faggot leaving my JUST son as my King and me with a wasted save.

Please elaborate on why i have shit taste. The game AI will never be fixed so alt history is the only thing left in that cluster fuck. All there is to do in Goy4 is non stop war till you get involved in some faction shenanigans and you're at war with El Salvador even though you started as Buthan.

The base game itself gets boring quite fast, as Historical titles lose their appeal when they stop adhering to history and go off the rails.
But CK2 is an awesome framework for any strategy game with feudal mechanics, there are a plethora of great mods that function perfectly with the games design, The Warhammer and Asoiaf mods, just to name two.

It's hard to expand without claims as a Christian on that Island. If you wanna get cheeky, you can switch to a Heresy or some other Religion and do Holy Wars.

Look for someone with a claim to a thing you want that will join your court, land them and press it, if the claim is on a lower tier than you, you vassalize it.

Get a good Chancellor, he can sometime get claims on entire Duchies.

What expansions do you have? Jade Dragon has some more CBs.

I like to make my own challenges and do the harder achievements (Empire of the Sun,
the Saoshyant one, King of Israel, etc) while not converting.

Together with EU4 this game has gotten worse and worse after the 4th expansion DLC or so. It's such a broken mess of dozens of little mechanics they've added yet for most of the game you either just wait doing nothing until events come up or truces end. Combat is literally just doomstacking with zero tactics.

All the expansions, I got a pirated copy
Which doesnt like multiplayer apparently

Eu 4 has better combat imo, pips are RNG but at least add more depth. Crusader got really bad after the india patch. Worthless region that only lags the game

I found out that the best combat to me was V2's but only very late in the game as an European power who didn't crush all others early on. Frontlines, using the terrain, switching generals, baiting with defense generals and even having some different army comps for raiding and reinforcing the front. It felt like a nice simplified HoI3 game.

Look the best game of this genre is aurora, of course you have to be a little autistic but it's not a simpleton map painting simulator

Eh, it was the people's fault

What is niggermod?
The only mod I ever used for V2 was HPM.

HPM with more genocide

Can anyone tell me how to play this game as a non hord. Cause if I`m not I just sit there doing nothing or fight 600000 stack rebellions

Just stack retinues and no one will rebel against you. Also, build castles in your capital province to get more levies. Revolts are calculated depending on your military strenght.

if you keep getting factions its almost always because your dukes arent in control of their de jure counties.
not enough information to give advice on anything else

HIP is the only mod which makes the game tolerable, really

>CK2
>EU4
>caring about difficulty in either game at all
retards

Who here makes custom leaders without picking all the good shit?

They're just gatekeeping, usual stuff like "You havent really finished dark souls if you didn't do a no hit run blindfolded durr"

In EU4 or CK2? There is actually a bug in EU4 that lets you make a 6/6/6 immortal leader and a super powerful nation easily