Five Years of Crusader Kings II

[Vindahl]

Great thread, appreciate the honesty on looking at the game in retrospect - and happy anniversary...

CK2 is still one of my favorite games of all time. And though I love the expansions and the many free patches and everything, a little part of me feels that the game gets more and more complex (in a bad way). I might not be popular for saying this, but sometimes I would wish that you would also keep in mind to simplify the game, and perhaps remove some things or use time on making them more user-friendly and improving, rather than putting more mechanics and options in the game.
Of course it is amazing with many many ways of playing, rules, options and stuff to expand, and the good thing is that you don't have to use it all.

 

[steveh11]

Crusader Kings II is my least favourite PDS game - which is a bit like saying it's my least favourite chocolate. In many ways I preferred the original CK.
I've never quite managed the successful 'paradigm switch' from EU/HOI/VIC (and now Stellaris) to CK2. Original CK had more of EU's flavour to it.

HOWEVER, I still play it sometimes. It can be fun, it can be frustrating and it can be a launch platform for a custom EUIV start - which leads me to my main point: Please keep the converter going and up-to-date as much as possible.

 

[Chreees]

CK2 was my first Paradox game and is still my most played Paradox game. I will always remeber spending a large amount of my GCSE study leave playing the AGOT mod, which we nicknamed 'crash of kings', with friends.

 

[in heaven]

One thing i'd like to say about ck2 and stellaris. I've never played stellaris and only watched youtube playthroughs, so i might be wrong.

I think main issue with stellaris is it was way too big project at release. CK2 started with little amount of features but very polished ones which felt meaningful and then left out features were added with dlc and free patches. Stellaris just added a lot of features at release but they were just not polished or as impactful so it felt like a big sea with no fish for us to catch. I hope when you start developing CK3, you focus on quality over quantity.

 

[Tapio]

Eh... you know that Devine Blood is a HISTORICAL concept? Something to read fpr you about Xwedodah:

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/marriage-next-of-kin

It's not a joke against Zoroastrians... it's historically acurate. Incest is part of medieval Zoroastrian culture.

You should read the article you just linked to me and tell me that you honestly believe that divine blood in game was reality as it is in game? Quote:

In the post-Sasanian Zoroastrian literature, xwēdōdah is said to refer to marriages between cousins, which have always been relatively common

Sasanian dynasty ended 651. The game is post-Sasanian.

There is no reason to be offended by this.

It's a largely inflated accusation. Whether you are offended personally and how much is your choice. While I play the game if I play Zoroastrian, I ignore the game rule and live with the penalties.

Now, Messalians, you can actually make an argument that it's factually inaccurate (though not ahistorical, from a certain point of view) to have Divine Blood: from what I've read, their portrayal in-game is based more on what their contemporary opponents accused them of rather than their actual beliefs.

I agree that the games version is mostly based on what they were accused of by opponents, perhaps deliberate misunderstandings of theology to marginalize them and make them seem immoral and decadent probably much like Christian were cannibals according to the Romans. The article linked by @Thure is a good one.

You can toggle off the devil spawn and immortality stuff you know.

This is a good point. I haven't gotten into changing game rules much.

 

[Thure]

You should read the article you just linked to me and tell me that you honestly believe that divine blood in game was reality as it is in game? Quote:


Sasanian dynasty ended 651. The game is post-Sasanian.


It's a largely inflated accusation. Whether you are offended personally and how much is your choice. While I play the game if I play Zoroastrian, I ignore the game rule and live with the penalties.

This was just the usage of the term. We don't really know how it was exactly during the middle ages. But other parts of the text agree that it still happened and was sourced. Just because the term was used differently in the Middle Ages does not mean, that the whole practice disappeared suddenly.
We even have sources from the Pahlavi era.

 

[Baldwin XI]

And that's exactly why you can choose to disable such content with the Game Rules

I'm not going to reward Paradox with my hard-earned money for content with ideas that I fundamentally oppose. Why Crusader Kings II has veered into satanism territory lately is beyond me. It was unnecessary.

 

[Tapio]

This was just the usage of the term. We don't really know how it was exactly during the middle ages. But other parts of the text agree that it still happened and was sourced. Just because the term was used differently in the Middle Ages does not mean, that the whole practice disappeared suddenly.
We even have sources from the Pahlavi era.

I have read the article and would have used it as a source even if you hadn't linked to it. We can talk about this in some other thread if you wish.

 

[fargoniac]

After Crusader Kings II is finished with all its expansions, will work on Crusader Kings III begin?

 

[Kolonel]

Happy birthday CK2!

Even though pre-ordering is against my principles, I did so with this game back in the day and haven't regretted it since (I do want my Holy Knight forum icon back though ).
It's my favorite PDX game by far.

 

[StarSword]

I'm not going to reward Paradox with my hard-earned money for content with ideas that I fundamentally oppose. Why Crusader Kings II has veered into satanism territory lately is beyond me. It was unnecessary.

The game rules are part of the base game.

 

[Baldwin XI]

The game rules are part of the base game.

I know that. And it doesn't matter whether or not the content can be disabled. It's a matter of principle. What gets rewarded gets repeated.

 

[hannibal_barca]

Guys, I still really dig the Nomads! I still play as them. Horse Lords is actually my favorite expansion. Please don't ever abandon it. You live and learn next time you have better infrastructure to tackle bigger concepts.

 

[TrojanAC]

I really liked CK2 in the beginning and bought most of the expansions over time but somehow I was drawn back to EU IV, I can play a short 10 hours game of EU4 but somehow I find it hard to dive into the more fleshed out CK2, I really don't know why, but I click around for 1 hour and just stop to try the same things again one expansion later.

 

[Keanon]

That real trade, meaningful navies and actual peace deals never made it in are easily the biggest flaw in my optics.

The HRE invade, you managed to win, but you will never get anything but money even if you sieged every single castle in the HRE (Not that this should be possible, mind you, but it illustrates the problem), you can never say "I will recognize this claim, if you recognize this claim of my own." like you could in CK1.

There's actually a surprising amount of features I still, to this day, miss from CK1, like the option not to swear your new king allegiance.

Playing as Norse and never having to fear running into another Norse fleet diminishes the fact that you're a viking raider incredibly, some of the most shaping battles of the viking age were fought on the sea.

And without trade; all value felt fake, provinces are all about the size of the duchy and the number of holdings, it doesn't matter what terrain, what temperatures, if the farmland is good, if there's many people, they're just these two small numbers completely distanced from any reality there might've been.

And lastly, duchies being static entities also left a lot to be desired, the de-jure map had to be decided to try and match 700 years, duchies should've been able to be reformed by some means to reflect reality.

 

[VoodooEconomist]

After Crusader Kings II is finished with all its expansions, will work on Victoria III begin?

Fixed

 

[Thure]

I know that. And it doesn't matter whether or not the content can be disabled. It's a matter of principle. What gets rewarded gets repeated.

This is the reason why Paradox collects user data. They look how many people play with this features. And it seems like the majority plays with fantasy features.

 

[Silversweeeper]

This is the reason why Paradox collects user data. They look how many people play with this features. And it seems like the majority plays with fantasy features.

Very much this. Not buying an entire DLC gives them no information about what you disliked about the content.

Besides, supernatural stuff (and technically Satanism) has been in since release (Voice of Satan/Jesus, the hole in the ground, etc.), so it isn't exactly a new direction...

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I'm not going to reward Paradox with my hard-earned money for content with ideas that I fundamentally oppose. Why Crusader Kings II has veered into satanism territory lately is beyond me. It was unnecessary.

Wait, so you are complaining that they created a feature where you can actually have an heretical conspiracy in a middle age scenario when accusations of heresy and real or perceived heresy happened a lot?
I mean, you are apparently ok with Cthullhu/Necronomicon story lines but you draw a line when they use Satan (and they had the Hellspawn story line since, I don't know, Sons of Abraham?)

I mean, it's your beliefs and I won't be the one saying what you should or should not believe in, it's just that I became honestly curious why you became offended only now and not before.

 

[StarSword]

Very much this. Not buying an entire DLC gives them no information about what you disliked about the content.

Besides, supernatural stuff (and technically Satanism) has been in since release (Voice of Satan/Jesus, the hole in the ground, etc.), so it isn't exactly a new direction...

I think what people are complaining about is that prior to TRD, the fantasy stuff was usually ambiguous enough that you could RP that it was just your character believing something that had a rational explanation (Cthulhu could be a hallucination, and the dragons and giants in the chronicle are probably peasants telling tall tales). TRD's is more blatant: immortal characters for example.