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You know the Vendetta idea is pretty sweet, but what about the reverse of vendetta? It would also be good to have some way to forge a long lasting alliance or close tie to a dynasty, not really applicable to a republic. This of it as your dynasty and this other dynasty have ties that go back decades or century's so you get some form of loyalty bond between your two houses.

I know you can forge alliances with marriages and all, but that just doesnt really strike me the same way. I am thinking sort of like the long standing alliances between say House Stark and House Mormont in aSoIaF.
 
Tanistry might be a decent way to represent Novgorod after 1136. It was hardly a republic in the usual sense. If the patch doesn't include the option to form a tanistry faction I might make one myself.
 
I've got a question that I'd really appreciate somebody from the dev team answering. This because it's going to affect my strategy for an AAR quite a lot and I'd prefer to have it sorted beforehand (won't have the benefit of a prior sandbox experience running a republic AND a patrician family).

Basically, the problem is this: I suppose your own cash as the family is commingled with the cash of the Republic, or am I wrong? This leads to the important question:

– Is campaign fund contribution derived from your own personal cash or otherwise something "legitimate" or is it a filthy misappropriation of the public penny for your own selfish re-election needs?
– If you have the same money pool to upgrade your own holdings and palace, and the holdings of the Republic itself, this leads to an obvious conflict of interest: so what are going to be the AI's typical decision-making patterns when reconciling the need to upgrade yourself and upgrade the Republic (to simplify)?

Also, for the benefit of the human player, could you perhaps make it so that upgrades to holdings, advantageous contracts with other rulers, land acquisitions, successful wars (especially to throw off an embargo, defensive war vs coastal invasion by another republic, or something like that) counts towards re-election chance? I'd obviously appreciate winning the elections and leading my Patrician family to mercantile greatness but I wouldn't like to be forced into the slush fund realm too much (basically wouldn't like the system to be based on some form of obvious corruption, even when applying 11+th century thinking). Making municipal construction count towards re-election would 1) be historically accurate, 2) provide an incentive to invest in the Republic as a whole and not only in your own little family.

Thanks for your time!

Also, it's thoroughly lovely to see the Venetians, Genoese and even the Pisans finally in the game. They'd thrown their weight some, stamped their stamp all over the Med, it wouldn't have been the same without them. Similarly the Hansa. Gonna make it more interesting up in the North. Here's hoping the German fans will pick up the scent (as folks who should have the most natural feel of that time and place of us all).
 
First of all these patrician events seem enjoyable:).

Now my opinion on the patch highlights;).
Nice inheritance laws, but I'm unsure, whether I'll use them a lot; though tanistry certainly adds flavor to the IIRC Celtic regions. The grant independence diplomatic option, I assume for kingdoms, IMHO is a nice addition. Likewise I really like the cultural renaming option, but I do wonder how this is implemented; only in predefined cases or for each culture?
 
The second event in this DD starts out with "Somewhat surprisingly..." but the only option at the end is "I am not surprised." Which is it: surprising or not surprising?

EDIT: Or surprisingly surprising? :)
 
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I believe it'll be 7-8 euros, I'm not entirely sure though as I don't buy anything on steam in either currency.

Anyone else noticed that Ultimogeniture could allow you to have a load of sons, then wait for the best one of the lot to grow up and be the youngest adult before causing your own ruler's death? Obviously it's not that easily done, but the possibility is there.
 
any chance that we could get pseudo-elective at some point (say ... letting it need Legality or Majesty rank 4) ... elective only within descendents of your patriarchal grandfather
 
[*] Ultimogeniture Succession: the youngest child inherits

Where are you planning to use it by default and what conditions to make it available? You see, I'm a little concerned because it seems that historically it was used by the Mongols (am I paranoid in seeing a connection with the new 1241 starting bookmark?) and farmers or other commoners in certain Germanic lands, while I'm afraid of the AI switching to it for some noble families in core Europe. (Not particularly pleased with the thought of people running around with it in their HRE or France games, either, but it's their game after all.)

Tanistry: A version of Feudal Elective where the electors must pick a member of your dynasty, but will tend to pick distant relatives, preferably old claimants

Sounds cool, great to have something traditional for the Celts and the Norse. Will the tanist play some important role unique to him in your realm other than being the guy who presumably succeeds when you die?

Grant Independence Diplomatic option

People wanted that a lot. Out of curiosity, is there a peaceful Demand Independence option? (Not saying there should or shouldn't be, just asking.)

Automatic cultural renaming of titles in your realm. So you'll automatically see Smyrna turn into Izmir if held by Turks, etc.

Interesting. Are you actually throwing a ton of place names into the game at this point then? The Polish-German frontier comes to mind (Silesia and Pomerania, Wroclaw/Breslau, Gdansk/Danzig etc. comes to mind).

Will you also be addressing the situations where it's somewhat unclear as to why a character uses Count or Earl or Chief as his title (his own culture or his liege's/original grantor's culture or something yet else?) or especially when the title changes in the game? I've had some Earl-Count switches as Kadoc of Cornwall, for example (stayed Breton, the king was Norman all the time, never had a duke above me).

Added 1241 Bookmark - "The Mongols"

Great. Can there be hoping for moar music?

The Reign length opinion modifers are now dependent on how long a character has been the liege of someone, not how long the primary title has been held

Wunderbar! That's lovely. I really appreciate the absence of Short Reign penalties when you obtain a higher title, let alone switch the primary one. But actually, I'd have one reservation. IMHO you should benefit from having been the King of England for decades when the old Duke of Gloucester moves on to the greener pastures and his kid accedes. There's no reason for that kid to hate you just because he's new to the position. As in, sure, your vassal-liege relationship is personal and unique to you but on the other hand you're the old king who's been around forever. Makes no sense for someone who was born under your kingship, grew up under your kingship, fought in a crusade under you etc. until he inherited his father around the age of 30, also under your kingship, to start off hating you.

Also, can you please take actual accession dates in historical starts? For example, some characters in 1066 have been in power for a longer while but the same is true for other-than-player-characters in any other start, including old kings who'd ruled for decades before according to the history of the title. It'd make sense to grant them the Long Reign benefits already at game start.

All merc regiments now grow in max size over time

Great. Initially, it was like having a heap of cash could win you any war against anybody, followed by a time when you could hire a max of <25K mercs while a large kingdom had >50K levies. Now, obviously, it's not like it was easy to get together such a huge band of mercs historically but anyway.

Added more mercenary bands: Finns, Lapps, Abyssinians, Nubians, Lithuanians, Scots, Irish and Alans

Great! Could you perhaps make a vassalised or otherwise tweaked band for the Abyssinians and Nubians (using a Varangian-Guard-style personal relationship to the monarch rationale, signifying e.g. the loyalty of some tribes that don't have proper holdings)? This to avoid them dying so fast, especially with Nubia often being all in one duchy entirely in Egypt's de iure.

Speaking of which, have you considered removing Nubia from Egypt's de iure kingdom and making it a small 1-duchy de iure kingdom, Navarra-style? Egypt could still gain the territory in a holy war (de iure kingdom could be Christian only, or even restricted to a particular denomination, possibly also culture) and drift it, while there would be an interesting side effect to this for crusade-oriented games: Egypt, being 3 counties less (and those hardest to conquer as a crusader, at that!), would be easier to usurp after taking duchies in holy wars. The Delta (Damietta), Sinai and Alexandria are all more or less coastal, enabling them to support a larger sieging force, especially after capturing 1 or 2 holdings (it can go up to almost 30K supply for the attacker), leaving Cairo as an interior heartland. It would become possible to usurp Egypt after taking two of its duchies in holy wars, perhaps one of them from a rebelling Emir. The effect being that when you usurp Egypt, the Fatimid or the Ayyubid ruler can no longer hold emirs as vassals in the typical situation (i.e. that he doesn't have another kingdom title). This would reflect the specific weakness and lack of cohesion that people speak in the forums about not being reflected in the game.

This is actually historical thinking behind a number of crusades: you don't loiter about Syria or Arabia or any lost lands, you go straight to Egypt. If you dislodge the regime there, your life becomes much easier. Nobody actually succeeded but there were mutliple instances of only narrow failure. Supposedly, Amalric I (at the exact timing of Saladin's own bid for Egpyt) would have had them if it hadn't been for disagreement with the Byzzies, St. Louis IX was rather close to it when he lost, etc. (While Jean de Brienne probably gave the Ayyubids some serious cramps, and Kaiser Frederick II got Jerusalem back for a brief time pretty much by talking about it.)

The above dawned upon me when I actually usurped the k_Egypt title in one of my games as St. Louis IX (8 Nov 1226 start)... and suddenly all of the Ayyubid emirs on the map fell off and became independent. Still not pushovers individually, by the way, still allied to each other because of being the same dynasty (unless not, but then likely to be intermarried) in addition to sharing the same faith (so probably unlikely to fail to join a holy war defence), but the middle east became a different place.

Didn't gain that much from that otherwise, actually. Maybe if I'd set up a Doge in the Delta for some big taxes I'd have earned some serious cash but otherwise not really. CK2 doesn't have magical provinces like EU. ;)

We'll be posting the full patch notes in another thread very soon.

Looking forward to that.
 
Both this DLC and patch are shaping up to be very nice.