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I'm trying a game without fabricating any claims or inviting any claimants to court. It was 150 years before I made it up to the Duke-tier. But a lot of fun.

I started in 1078 so the ERE would have already lost most of Anatolia to Rum and the Iberian Christians would have a chance. And I also cheated and tag-shifted to marry the Duchess of Aquitaine to the King of England (I couldn't resist when I saw it was possible to recreate history that way). As a result the game has been pretty historical:
  • The Kingdom of Jerusalem was formed, but with England and France occupied by the Hundred Years War, most crusades have been inconclusive or failures,
  • Seljuks had a successful Jihad to recapture Jerusalem, but almost immediately got backstabbed by the Mongols, who now have all of Persia and Arabia.
  • In the West things are a bit less historical. The HRE inherited Wales?! And the Muslims eventually recaptured Sicily, and now are driving north. Spain has been more or less a stalemate.
 
Playing as the Sunni Caliph starting in 1077,

I gained independence from the Seljuk successors (can't remember the desert tribe that took over the Persian Sultanate; Ulucids, maybe?) about a generation ago and expanded to become Sultan of Mesopotamia, but couldn't get one duchy in time before it went over to Persia.

The Abbadids successfully invaded France and are still Sultans of France with Iberia being a checkboard of Abbadid and Almoravid. No Andalusian Sultanate. The HRE has taken Aquitaine, though.

The Fatimids lost control of Abyssinia so there's an independent sultanate down there. However, after the Sultanate of Rum was crushed by the ERE, the Fatimids launched a jihad for parts of Anatolia, which was successful. The Papacy counter-crusaded and won most of it back - for the Papacy. They have been holy warring back and forth ever since. The same thing happened in Sicily and now the Papacy controls all of the Sicily and big parts of Anatolia.

The ERE took all the Cuman lands and was slowly expanding up with Russian help, but Rus was crushed when the Golden Horde showed up. It reformed after being destroyed once but the Horde is invading again.

The Ilkhanate initially successfully invaded Persia and Khiva, and temporarily took a few Persian counties off me, but then I counter-invaded Persia and won, crushed every Ilkhanate stack, and the Ilkhanate now consists of a single county on the edge of the map. Contemplating wiping it out but I think I'll leave them around so I can maybe usurp the title one day.

Biggest question now: my Caliph has the opportunity to launch a jihad. What to jihad? Egypt, for a major expansion of power and to crush the Shia heretics? Get everyone together to take on the Golden Horde, which is looking mighty scary? Finally crush the ERE by jihading for Greece? It's hard to know.

Decadence has never gone above 5%, I can raise 10k troops personally and another 50k+ from my vassals (more like 65k if I'm defending against infidels).
 
I am currently playing Abyssinia. Which I am doing a grand campaign with and putting it on youtube. :D 1146 so far. Conquered mecca. Oh and did I mention I am also Iconoclast?
Nice.
 
Playing as the Sunni Caliph starting in 1077,

I gained independence from the Seljuk successors (can't remember the desert tribe that took over the Persian Sultanate; Ulucids, maybe?) about a generation ago and expanded to become Sultan of Mesopotamia, but couldn't get one duchy in time before it went over to Persia.

The Abbadids successfully invaded France and are still Sultans of France with Iberia being a checkboard of Abbadid and Almoravid. No Andalusian Sultanate. The HRE has taken Aquitaine, though.

The Fatimids lost control of Abyssinia so there's an independent sultanate down there. However, after the Sultanate of Rum was crushed by the ERE, the Fatimids launched a jihad for parts of Anatolia, which was successful. The Papacy counter-crusaded and won most of it back - for the Papacy. They have been holy warring back and forth ever since. The same thing happened in Sicily and now the Papacy controls all of the Sicily and big parts of Anatolia.

The ERE took all the Cuman lands and was slowly expanding up with Russian help, but Rus was crushed when the Golden Horde showed up. It reformed after being destroyed once but the Horde is invading again.

The Ilkhanate initially successfully invaded Persia and Khiva, and temporarily took a few Persian counties off me, but then I counter-invaded Persia and won, crushed every Ilkhanate stack, and the Ilkhanate now consists of a single county on the edge of the map. Contemplating wiping it out but I think I'll leave them around so I can maybe usurp the title one day.

Biggest question now: my Caliph has the opportunity to launch a jihad. What to jihad? Egypt, for a major expansion of power and to crush the Shia heretics? Get everyone together to take on the Golden Horde, which is looking mighty scary? Finally crush the ERE by jihading for Greece? It's hard to know.

Decadence has never gone above 5%, I can raise 10k troops personally and another 50k+ from my vassals (more like 65k if I'm defending against infidels).
I'd like to see a screenshot of that.
 
This. I'm stuck on a roleplaying issue. Long story short, I started in 1296, eventually picked up the Komnenoi (Byzantine claimants), who are now my vassals, meanwhile the main branch of the Palaiologi has been usurped by a cadet branch, where the current Basileus is incapacitated and his heir is old and only has one, unmarried daughter. Whom I can get to come to my court but can't marry her to the Komnenoi claimants because they desire a better alliance. I kinda feel bad about the idea of marrying her to my son (Poland plus now Cyprus, Bulgaria and Greece) to take over the Byzantine Empire. Even though I could then vassalise every independent in the de iure and instill a measure of peace there. (And give the Komneni more land than they had ever ruled, except as kings, not emperors.) And I won't press that Komnenos claim to go through 20 years of slaughtering Christian armies and pillaging Christian lands to consolidate their power only to see them squander it badly again. So I'm basically stuck on this political/moral/whatever choice.
 
Started as Abbadids in Sevilla, swallowed the other Muslim/Christian nations in Spain and formed Hispania. Somehow one of the Capets (brother of the King) converted to Sunni so I invited him to my court (I was just looking for a good steward) and like 30 years later pressed his claims on France and England. The King of France had just taken over Denmark so I got that into the empire also. Oh and I won a jihad way back for Anatolia. Now I have all of the British Isles, and my sub-king in France just took Burgundy from the HRE.

The Fatimids (Egypt) gave way to the Bahadids who gave way to someone else but their lands are still huge. When they aren't fighting civil wars they have as big an army as me, about 250,000. At this point it's a bit of an exercise in tediousness, I see now why people don't just like to grow as large as possible because it's just a matter of how much of the map I can paint yellow by the end of the game. Unless decadence gets me but it's only at 19% right now; I'm pretty ruthless towards my decadent family members. I think it's about time for a new game where I don't abuse the mechanics as much.
 
Whom I can get to come to my court but can't marry her to the Komnenoi claimants because they desire a better alliance.

How about cheating then? I have no qualms about cheating to correct for AI stupidity. I'd turn on neg_diplo, then pause, make the offer, and tag-shift over to the Komnenoi and accept the proposal.
 
I'd like to see a screenshot of that.

Attached. I guess it make it bigger you have to right click and go to the full dropbox link (in my browser, anyway).

current%20game.jpg


I went ahead and added a savegame, too.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28726768/Mesopotamia1248_04_18.ck2

Actually, I can raise way more troops than I thought. And it looks like the Golden Horde is about to wipe out the last Il-Khanate county. :(

Edit: just won a jihad for greece. the golden horde is invading taurica. just realized my nephew was the ere. haha.

Also, something incredibly weird is going on with the other European kingdoms. Denmark merged with Norway, fine. Sweden merged with... Croatia. Somehow the King of Croatia/Sweden's son became the King of Poland because he's one of the last Piasts, through his mother. Somehow that child... is also the heir to Denmark/Norway. So in a generation we might see a combined Croatia/Sweden/Denmark/Norway/Poland. Except that the King of Hungary has a claim on Poland (somehow) and is pressing it against the child-king/uber-heir.
 
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In my current game;

1. Piotr the Great of Poland died while in the midst of a land grab against the Golden Horde. His heir, Piotr II, Duke of Latium, was excommunicated by request from his uncle, Wylislav, Duke of Novogrod. The ensuing succession war lasted for close to 10 years, pitting 1/2 of Poland against the other half, with HRE gobbling up Upper Scalia within 2 years of the conflict, never to be returned.

2. The conflict ended when, fortunately for Poland, Piotr the II died of illness, and passed the throne onto his son, Tomislav. Of course, Tomislav got married to some frigid... woman, who did not produce an heir in the first 10 years of his marriage, so he decided to hook up with the Countess of Polstok. Needless to say, that the Queen got super pissed when a little Tomislav was born... and then legitimized. I suppose the marital indiscression sparked something deep down inside her majesties loins and produce another heir, whom she aptly named Kasimere (after Kasimere the Great, 1103 - 1178, who came to power at age 10 on the corpse of his uncle who was also killed in a succession war...).

3. Of course, Tomislav is not horribly popular, and his most beloved cousin had amassed about 12 counties and 3 duchies during the succession crisis. With his fairly low Stewardship, he is unable to hold enough counties personally to be able to straight out shatter the Duke of Greater Poland, so he did the next best thing and plotted his assassination, which failed sparking another civil war that ended in a white peace (no real loss for Tomislav). Second attempt at the assassination worked.

4.The next 10 years was a succession of noble whack-a-mole. When finally all seemed to be pulling together, the HRE imploded into a civil war. The perfect opportunity to unite the fueding lords in a war of property acquisition, starting with the recapture of Upper Scalia. All went well up until 97% war score when the grab magically ended inconclusively (which of course, 97% victory in less than 6 months is certainly inconclusive). As a consolation prize, the Prince-Bishop of Sacz revolted, giving me an opportunity to put my legitimized bastard son to rest and cleaning up my marital indiscretion, but I can't, because he is my heir, and I can't send him off to the church (I'm guessing my wife is going to take care of that problem eventually).

So, as you can see, all is well in Poland.
 
Started as Dublin, took a while to form Ireland, decided to wait on the death of the duke of Munster to have my family inherit it, which was stupid, I'm new.
Now bloobbed most of Scandinavia, then the queen married the king of Scotland and they promptly took ulster. Having no ability to do anything against them, and not knowing enough to create proper alliances, I turned to wales, with Scotland and norway and myself deciding to gently caress the duchy of Gwynfed and conquer it for other, though I had marriages to make it worthwhile. Norway decided to take Dyffed, god knows why, and steal a county from my eventual duchy.
I finally have both northern Walsh duchies, after making sure all claimants were in my court, when Scotland decides to make Connacht a bishopric and steal it from me. No allies replied to either side, but Scotland's army was nearly double mine, so cheating a bit to see what I could do amounted to losing it.
I'm undecided about what to do, theres nowhere to expand, even Brittany has the alliance of the couple from hell.
Britain and France are mostly constantly dealing with internal struggles, but are stable, the hre imploded and the emperor only controls jerusalem directly (that was a wasted marriage), Denmark is gaining some nice lands, but doesn't help me against Scotland. Russia is huge, Poland and Lithuania (?) are of a nice size, and the ERE is disperse, but holding.
I've got a potential norwegian queen in dinasticly married, but she's barren, so that won't help me much. Ive also got the second heir to Scotland, with child, along with other claims, so if somehow I got the army size I'd pay them back. Short of accumulating a ton of gold over 10 years or so and buying every mercenary, I don't see what I can do but wait.
I've decided not to rage quit and see what happens, try to get more alliances or something, waiting for the couple of doom to die. Any thought?
 
I am currently playing Abyssinia. Which I am doing a grand campaign with and putting it on youtube. :D 1146 so far. Conquered mecca. Oh and did I mention I am also Iconoclast?
Iconoclast?
 
Update to my current game. Abbadid dynasty doing work. And no I'm not them.

o4fto.jpg


Europe is pretty much getting beasted on.
 
My game (above) just got really scary.

After successfully jihading for Greece, and consolidating Persia a little more, I got a random dynastic courtier who's Persian. Currently I'm Bedouin so I'm going to try and swap over and form the Persian Empire.

However, the Golden Horde converted to Catholicism. Go figure. Now the Pope has called a Crusade for Greece - the first thing I have to deal with when I play again tonight. I'm terrified the Golden Horde will join, but I don't know how many doomstacks they have left. They might have been mostly used up fighting against the Il-Khanate and the various Rus states. If I'm lucky, the Tengri Il-khan will show up against and invade the Golden Horde. The Il-Khan is still alive but in Aral. I'm hoping his reinforcement events will still fire.
 
In my current game?

I am slamming my head into the wall, wondering if purchasing CK2 has coincided with a massive drop in brain capacity.

I figured; "Uniting Ireland doesn't seem like a big job, I'll try it as my 'tutorial' after doing all the tutorials"


So far I've failed miserably to make it past my first heir:

1. First game I simply ran out of piety and couldn't form the kingdom, eventually the King of Scotland decided Ireland was his and marched 4000 men in.

2. Second game my ruler died early and my heir was given a regent who hated him and raised him poorly, eventually rebelling and overthrowing my dynasty.

3. Third game ran for 35 years with my Councillor guy sitting on Kildare trying to drum up a fake claim, nothing, eventually Ossory revolted and suddenly had 700 men to my 350~, why do rebels get such huge armies?

4. Fourth game Ossory revolted part way through conquering the southern Ireland, again, raising a force of 700 men in the middle of my invasion of Connaught, crushing my army of 600 in a day.

5. Fifth game my children would not stop trying to plot to kill each other, it was an endless string of assassination plots every other month, my lord gained a mistress (damn you lusty!) and eventually my wife had my leader murdered (she was *screwing (sorry) the spymaster). Then my heir was too weak and my lords overthrew him.

6. Sixth game I married one of my heir's sisters to a duke from Spain, he decided that my duchy was his and marched 2500 men in.


What the hell am I doing wrong? I feel like there's no way to win! I know that's not true but it's brutal. I'm watching my invasions, keeping my vassals as happy as I can, making my claims, doing right by the crown, marrying into power, marrying into inheritances, keeping the peace with England and Scotland as best I can... but no... every time...

It's like they say on TV: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."

Apparently my attempts to build a strong Kingdom as a test are proving ultimately futile. :_(
 
Well, i'm playing using The Prince and the Thane, and starting as the Earl of Mide, I managed to marry into Oriel, and take Dublin and Leinster by war. My heir had a harelip, my second son was a hunchback, my daughter was an imecible, and my third son was Quick, so i plotted to murder all my children so the Quick one was my heir. I succeded, and the Quick one died of illness a few days later. I feel terrible.... and not because i just murdered a bunch of infant babes.:rofl:
 
Started as the Ottomans (Good old Osman) when they only had three counties under them. Took over the King of Trebizond, the King of Armenia, and a few random counties rebelling from the Il-Khanate when I noticed that Jerusalem was revolting from the HRE (who had taken it in a crusade.) Took the Holy Land for myself as well, but unfortunately the HRE decided they wanted it back after they put down the ten+ revolts they were facing...

Now the Byzantines, who have re consolidated much of Greece, Byzantium, and any of Armenia I didn't control, have decided it was time to stomp those puny Ottomans before we had a chance to grow any larger and challenge them. Little do they know, I've been covertly supporting (and even causing) many of the rebellions they've been facing, so their invasion is really quite justified. I'm probably about done with this game anyway - more of a test of the Muslim system in a busy area than a serious campaign.
 
Just started off a brand new one, only played a tiny bit, as a custom ruler in the easternmost Seljuk province. While the Sultan was busy invading Roman-held Armenia, I decided to try my luck and declare independence - it was a very long, brutal war (6 years in total I think), but eventually I was overwhelmed by Seljuk doomstacks and my Beylerbik (however you spell that) was imprisoned. While in prison I tried to assassinate the current Sultan, so as to get someone on the throne a little more sympathetic, so I could ask for a ransom and get free. As you could imagine, the plot was discovered and I was unceremoniously executed - the title passing to a 4 year old son.

What will probably happen: My vassals already hate me but, thankfully, I hold all county-level titles within my duchy (or is that, sheikdom level titles within my emirate), so there's no chance of rebellion. That said my demense is oversize and I'll need to parcel out territory to my brothers soon, which means the entire emirate will be ruled by regents who hate each other with a vengeance, while at the same time the Sultan hates me...there's a storm coming.
 
Its 1425 and I've set up my kingdom for an EPIC succession crisis sure to completely shatter my well manicured kingdom. I have something like 8 sons from my first marrage and 2 sons from my second. All of them are landed. I married the first son from my second marriage to my arch nemesis the Duchess of Greater Poland. My heir is set to take over the super provinces, but there are so many half-uncles, and brothers floating around that there is no way that when King Tomislav the Bold dies that the empire will not fracture into a 1000 pieces.

Which is good. HRE, Golden Horde, and the major Muslim caliphates have all splintered. Just need to shatter the Hispania Caliphate before I die (which should be no problem with being able to raise 100k+ soldiers).
 
Croatia

I'm playing as Croatia in the year 1106 and own the kingdom of Jerusalem, The duchy of Damascus, The Duchy of Tunis, The lands that once belongded to the Pechnengs and several counties near Damascus. I made a character via the ruler desingen. She died after 12 years leaving a 10 year old harelip on the throne. I'am really loved by my vassals so I have maximum feudal levies otherwise I woud not use my vassals to their fullest as they are willing to give me their entire levie. Luckly for me in every war I capture around 20 to 25 guys who can then be ransomed or executed shoud they complain. Money, prestige and piety aren't a issue so the only problems are the revolts in recently captured Tunis and Jerusalem. The kingdom of Sicily is a bit innoying as they are constantly attacked by muslims in their Jihads. This is a problem as I noticed in my previous game whilst playing as the HRE that shoud they take sicily the woud go on and capture Europe. Pretty innoying as every muslim faction woud go and fight you. Even with a troop levie of 280k it's still a bit of a issue. Does anybody know why the Muslims are so eager to take Sicily? Whenever a Jihad is ended it takes a year and then a new one will come. Despite a army of 11k guys and ample money for mercenaries this coud become a serious problem in the near future.

Sorry about my bad English :p
 
The norwegian king rules Norway, Finland, Sweden (apart from what is now de jure Poland), and England. He also holds the Canaries and Granada and the last holdout of what used to be the kingdom of Jerusalem. The actual sultana of Jerusalem is licking her wounds in Damascus.

Right now half the rulers of Christendom(2 holy orders/6 kings including France) have joined Norway in the final defence of Jerusalem as the muslims are trying to throw us out.