Conquest of the Whole World in 40 Years with a Duchy

[smeggy]

Loading saves when things go bad even once a campaign makes me wake up sweating at night and gave me plenty of whipping scares on my back. The purgatory has an extra spot reserved it seems

 

[Klarum]

The game doesn't have much difficulty.. You can play without any save-load and achieve a similar result.
Although you might have to try a few times due to some unexpected results.. (Like your king being killed in the first battle, against a very small enemy army)

This invalidates any achievement you were after. With save scumming anyone can probably achieve the most ridiculous feats. All you need is time and patience.

Not to be all negative, your compilation of tips is quite good, even if most of them are gamey so players like me don´t use them. But that is just because we have different definitions of fun.

Its a great post for players looking for tips or even understand how the underlying systems work.

Finally I hope you did buy the game and rewarded Paradox for their work developing the game. Only saying this because you have not registered the game.

 

[Cainrae]

The whole fun of CK2 is overcoming the unfortunate situations that arise. Not reload when they occur

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Since you are not contributing with anything remotely related to the topic cant you gentlemen just make a tread in which you can share your views on save/reloading instead.

 

[unmerged(201095)]

Since you are not contributing with anything remotely related to the topic cant you gentlemen just make a tread in which you can share your views on save/reloading instead.

It would be nice, but I don't see that happening. Too much Internet tough guy syndrome.

 

[Pannonian84]

Nice posting, but are you sure about education?

Afaik guardians don't tend to give the same traits, but use their traits for a decision. For example a zealous character will always use the "pray to god" option if the choice for a trait for the child occurs, while for example wroth characters tend to take the aggressive decision and so on.

So for careful trait decisions i wont second your idea to give your primary heir 50% of the time to another guardian.

Also: cognatic may be nice, but in a real game (sorry for that but with lots of loading its not "real") you can easy get problems with too many claimants. If you're unlucky your 3rd degree niece will get the throne, and have an heir thats not of your dynasty...

 

[Delta107]

Nice guide! Its going to be very nice for the newbies.

 

[smeggy]

It would be nice, but I don't see that happening. Too much Internet tough guy syndrome.

Did I mention my love for load/saving? I sure hope so, and in case it snowed under in troll posts I'll make sure I did so again. Which is kinda a conundrum, and fascinatingly off topic.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Nice posting, but are you sure about education?

Afaik guardians don't tend to give the same traits, but use their traits for a decision. For example a zealous character will always use the "pray to god" option if the choice for a trait for the child occurs, while for example wroth characters tend to take the aggressive decision and so on.

So for careful trait decisions i wont second your idea to give your primary heir 50% of the time to another guardian.

Also: cognatic may be nice, but in a real game (sorry for that but with lots of loading its not "real") you can easy get problems with too many claimants. If you're unlucky your 3rd degree niece will get the throne, and have an heir thats not of your dynasty...

You are right. In nearly all situations you are better off education your heir yourself. What you can do, if you have a poor or undesirable specialization, is to turn over your heir to a guardian with the desired specialization shortly before he turns 16.

 

[unmerged(201095)]

Did I mention my love for load/saving? I sure hope so, and in case it snowed under in troll posts I'll make sure I did so again. Which is kinda a conundrum, and fascinatingly off topic.

:laugh:

 

[Caeneis]

So I tried the whole stealing heir's thing in a Scandinavian Empire game I was playing (trying to get England) i invited the claimant gave him a county in Finland, killed his father and... Nope Independent England and the county gone with it. So i'm not entirely sure what I did wrong, if you could give me an answer Sultanyegah on how you did it i'd really appreciate it as I am really interested in your strategy.

 

[scelestus13]

So I tried the whole stealing heir's thing in a Scandinavian Empire game I was playing (trying to get England) i invited the claimant gave him a county in Finland, killed his father and... Nope Independent England and the county gone with it. So i'm not entirely sure what I did wrong, if you could give me an answer Sultanyegah on how you did it i'd really appreciate it as I am really interested in your strategy.

Needs to be equal title. If you gave him a king title, he would have staid. Or, if you were trying to get duchies away from certain stable grey blobs without messy wars, give the heir a duchy.

 

[unmerged(726429)]

I'm pretty sure the strongest move for the first few years of gameplay if you're purely min/maxing is just to hold every bit of demesne yourself. There's simply no other way to earn cash that fast early in the game, and cash is the limiting factor in early military strength. The fact that it also gives you a larger levy size and no risk of rebellions is a footnote, as is the fact that everyone in your court hates you and (for a few years) you can't afford to land heirs. Once you have a massive war chest and can start keeping most / all the mercenaries on retainer, you hand out all your holdings.

@Coanda
I respect you for your constructive posts and I care for what you say. But my method is a bit different there.

As you said, the problem is filling the coffer early.
What I plan for that: Snatching all courtiers all around the world to my court and steal their golds one way or another.
Then use the army of newly acquired women courtiers to snatch a whole lot of courtiers again.
That is similar to banish all, but in this case, I make it without creating a tyranny.
Thus, I am loved by all my Vassals and I get their gold and levies at the same time.

I tried holding all titles by myself too, but army costs was higher that way. I might try that to the extent to be sure..

@Sweynforkbeard
You can hold a lot of titles, one of which has Absolute Authority, and you can switch to that in the same day, raise full levies, and switch back..
Cheesy, but gets the work done.

Also holding every land by yourself makes every snatched heir hate you too. As my strategy depends on conquering most of the world without any war, that's a very bad idea.

@grisamentum
You don't know the methods I proposed, so your evaluation doesn't have a meaning for me.
What I meant by "opinion penalty is nothing" meant that "Raised Levy penalties can be dealt easily".
Which meant, you can keep all Vassals at 100% and get 80% of their levies for free. You also get their gold by various ways..

You are also overly aggressive.

@Caeneis
As Scelestus13 said, you need to give him an equal title.

General Strategy:
Snatch all Kingdom heirs and give them a Kingdom, kill their fathers (plotting is easy against kings, so plot), get their Kingdoms for free.
Snatch all Duchy heirs and give them a Duchy, kill their fathers (assassination is a good option), get their Duchies for free.
Snatch all County heirs and give them a County, and wait for their fathers to die.. It's not worth to kill for a County.

While you do these, continuously fight with Muslim countries and conquer what you can.
Then you'll have enough titles to distribute.

You can also use excommunication-heretic revokals to free some titles and re-grant them to heirs.

 

[Zireael]

You should be able to organize a sieging army. Sometimes an enemy approaches you when you are sieging and if your army doesn’t have commanders, it’s frustrating to click move, organize, cancel move and lose that 20 days of `making siege equipments’.
• You should be able to search traits. It’s really boring to search for Organizers among hundreds of man each time you try to select a commander for a hastily needed army. Or it’s time consuming to search for a “zealous” young mistress, who is also humble & kind (to marry a heir). Or trying to search for a genius trait bride candidate. We should at least be able to search for just one trait, or sort people per a specific trait.
• There should also be a “Search Courtiers” button at Find Characters window.
• There should be a much functional search for people. We should be able to search people based on any of their character data.

Agreed completely.

 

[unmerged(533139)]

How much of this is relevant in the last patch? They did a lot of nerfing in 1.092 for example (republics, holy war CBs, truces, etc).

 

[semaphore]

WC isn't hard if you abuse the mechanics; holding on to the world might be trickier.

 

[BurningEGO]

A nice guide full of exploits, you should had renamed the title of the thread and made it "Ultimate Guide of Exploits" or something.

I am seriously wondering if some people actually do some of these exploits... In one line of yours, you recommend people to waste like 5 hours to invite all possible courtiers from all possible places just for claims... Sorry dude but thats nuts.

 

[AltarofScience]

Getting the whole world is super hard due to nerfs. But I would say forming an empire from a duchy on first ruler is the new hard mode. With huge truce penalties shit is real now.