Accuracy of the game?

No, the game is a massive simplification of the highly diverse range of societies that existed in Europe during the middle ages. In the real world, there was little similarity between the rulership of an Irish duke and a Byzantine emperor (and feudal levels weren't as neatly arranged), but they work within the same framework in Crusader Kings. The usage of marriage to cement alliances was rather widespread in much of Europe, however, and in general Crusader Kings captures the flavor of the era very well, even if most of the details are heavily simplified.

The family lineage history is quite accurate within the significant families, but probably not so much for the less known corners of the world.

for a VIDEO GAME it does a decent job, but I would agree with Athas

I've spent a lot of time around the characters page and I would say that if you go past 1000ad it starts being less accurate.

This game has more historical detail and research put into it than any other Middle Ages game I've seen, but that doesn't mean its perfect. There are standardizations made that make the political environment across all Christian European realms look more uniform than it really way, but I'm sure you can understand why this is helpful in game terms. Expect mods and DLCs to expand on the differences between certain regions and add more details.

Its still a game, but it is by far the most accurate game depicting European feudalism ever made.

Otto Bismarck said:

I've spent a lot of time around the characters page and I would say that if you go past 1000ad it starts being less accurate.

Click to expand...

Of course, that can be said about history in general, not just the history in this game .

The borders, dynasties, and so forth (the content, if you will) are simply better than any historical game of similar scope and research difficulty (that is, a few general text books on WWII convey a lot of the essential information and point to sources for the granular stuff, whereas medieval scholarship is necessarily more scattered by the contemporary absence of the printing press and the many hundreds of years and hundreds of thousands of noble families involved).

The mechanics are problematic. It's not just that they're oversimplified. I have few complaints about the economic system so far, for example, even though it is arguably the least developed part of the game, and the one where the most opportunities were therefore missed. Paradox is a small company taking on a massive task and medieval economics just didn't rate very highly in their priorities, which is almost fitting given that it didn't rate very highly in the priorities of medieval rulers either.

So it's not what they abstract more than I'd like or even what they get wrong. It's what they get unnecessarily wrong. The developers have said the AI could handle military access, but they chose not to include it because it "wasn't very important" in the period and armies could just march through territory if they wanted, so it wasn't worth the pro forma diplomacy. This is simply incorrect, and it has a tremendous impact on the realism and immersiveness of the game to have armies marching unmolested from the Urals to Portugal, particularly as trespass doesn't even grant a CB. It's not just that MA is the default-it cannot be "cancelled" even by DOWing most of the time, as you're unlikely to have a lot of CBs. I don't know why the developers are under this impression, given how much research has clearly been done on the substantive part of the game, but I hope they change their minds.

Another example is the peace system. There have already been big arguments about the absence of defensive claim pressing, but what's mystifying is the absence of other peace terms, like variable truces, indemnities, tributes, marriages, etc. Of course, one of the biggest peace terms missing is right of passage, so all this fits closely together. You ask about diplomacy. Apart from peaces, generally the system seems pretty robust, as robust as you'll probably find in a complex strategy game that requires an AI. But it's too rigid. There are too few (if any) non-claim CBs, too few claims (but this can probably be modded) arising from disputed successions (one of the principal sources of major warfare in the period) or land disputes between relatives (the other major source), etc., and the Papacy and its excommunication system appear to be broken, at least in the demo.

So far, I have not been swept away by the other thing you specifically ask after-raising levies and presumably mercenaries, their length of service, impact on relations-but this is the demo and changes have apparently been made to make it more fun over a twenty year span. They've also definitely created the mechanics for mods to smooth out, make more realistic or make more difficult (or MP-friendly).

And that's where I give them a lot of credit. Despite my criticisms (which are provisional given that we've only had the demo and it has no multiplayer), I think they've built a wonderful, multifaceted, powerful platform for modders and multiplayers (my main interest, via rules and human diplomacy). No mistake about it, this seems like their most polished product ever and the most exciting, to me, since at least HOI II, maybe EU II, which I think is the greatest multiplayer game ever made. They've clearly put a lot of care, attention and love into it, polished it up in a way they haven't previously had the resources (I suspect) to do pre-release, and have already been remarkably receptive to the concerns of fans reacting to the demo.

It's a great idea, well-executed. It's not perfect, at least not for people (like you, like me) concerned about realism and immersiveness or (like me) multiplayer and general difficulty, but I'm going to buy it and I urge you to do the same.

There's nothing like it on the market. And they ought to be proud.