New to CK1

[Kovax]

Maybe I'm just being dense, but I don't seem to be able to get a handle on this game (CK1 complete). Played for about a decade, and really don't have a clue what I should be doing. Built a few province province improvements, chose a couple of "likely to be useful" techs to research, married off a couple of courtiers both within and outside of my kingdom, but basically I'm just waiting until this childless king dies and some relative with better stats takes over.

I've reduced my Scutage to where my vassals have a slight positive Loyalty drift, rather than slipping negative due to the king's horrendous 1 in Diplomacy. It seems like every year to two years, one of them takes a large Loyalty drop for unexplained reasons, and takes a year or so (or most of the year's finances as a bribe) to recover that Loyalty. I don't dare declare a war, because I can't afford the Loyalty hit, and the finances are still tenuous enough to make it seem like a war would be a financial disaster. Is there some direction or focus I should be aiming for, or is this game "simply" a matter of waiting for random events to happen, and dealing with them as best you can?

I tried to find a good tutorial AAR, but the dozen AARs that I've read so far appear to either be heavily RP oriented, or else game the system and assume that you already know all the tricks....not very useful for a beginner. Any hints or explanations (other than something on a Steam forum) would be appreciated.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Not sure what you are asking for.
You know this thread : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ads-mods-and-general-game-information.347074/ , right ?

Also check the FAQ subforum.

 

[Kovax]

Thanks, I had found some of that material independently, but the list makes it easier to access, and the one tutorial AAR I had not seen turned out to be a huge help. Sadly, it was ended early due to the next patch or expansion making the campaign obsolete. The FAQs, which I had seen previously, were a decent source of assorted hints, but I was missing some of the underlying concepts that the AAR cleared up, so the FAQs were initially a lot less helpful until I filled in some of the blanks. Now I've got a bit better idea WHY I'm doing some of those things, and the info makes more sense.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Thanks,..

Good that i could help a little.

There is also an old WIki which is not huge, but maybe a bit of help (which i had posted on the CK1 Steam forum by the way ) :
http://editthis.info/CrusaderKings/Main_Page

I currently can't recall much of CK1 (though i love it), so i sadly won't be of much help on detail questions.
Cheers

 

[Kovax]

Unfortunately, I'm still not getting the point of this game. Current situation:

Started as a count in Hungary with 2 provinces, one decent, the other poor. Gaining about 1.4 money, 0.1 prestige, and 0.3 piety per month. Got hit with a "poor soil" event, which reduced the money from the better province, but it's still more productive than the weaker one. Found spouses for my two heirs, and gave the eldest the weaker province for his own, since my count is getting a bit up there in years, and the landless heir had started driving my monthly prestige slightly negative.

After a couple of years, I was able to afford a forestry building in the province, and roughly a year later, my Liege lord declared war on the Pechenegs, requesting my troops. I complied, my troops mobilized and left under the king's control, and the Pechenegs made a bee-line for my province, passing through the king's own provinces on the way, and laid siege to my province. My troops were already gone, following the king on some pointless detour to the opposite side of the kingdom for no apparent purpose, while the main Pecheneg army stormed my hill fort, and a month later it was "Game Over". Does the AI always go after the player?

Reloaded to several months before the war, and when the king declared war again, I waited a month or so until the king's troops were already engaging the Pechengs before complying. An 8 year stretch of wars ensued. As the Pechenegs began to weaken after 3-5 years of fighting, I got three "Insulted at a Tournament" and "Insulted before your Liege" events within the span of a year, giving me claims on 3 provinces, along with rivalries. With my entire troop compliment tied up under the king's control, I had no alternative but to delay my response, hitting me with a Prestige penalty for each event. When the war seemed about over, one of the king's vassals (I believe it was his bastard half-brother) revolted, and another 4 years of conflict followed until both the Pechenegs and the vassal were put down, before I FINALLY got my troops back.

Now, I've got claims on (and rivals from) 3 different provinces, none of them adjacent to me or in the same duchies, all on good terms with the king, and all of them more powerful and far more prestigious than me, while I'm several hundred gold in debt due to the war, and looking at the prospect of spending the next decade or so just to bring my Prestige back to where it started. What are my options? Restart?

 

[Kovax]

After two more starts and seeing what I did wrong, things went much better. Same start, slightly different events, way different outcome.

As before, I started boosting my province's income slightly with a Forestry building, and then set some cash aside for the likely event of war. My Liege certainly didn't disappoint me, although it was the Pechenegs who started it this time, by attacking one of the Hungarian vassal provinces. I mobilized my main province's army on my own, and a few days later the King called for troops, taking my second province's army when I accepted. At least I had manual control of one army.

Defeated one of the smaller Pecheneg armies and took 2 provinces from them, which technically gave me the ability to create a Duchy in the future. Assisted the king in defeating another army, and that's about the time when the first rebellions started. Once the Pechenegs were essentially on the ropes, I withdrew to my own province and disbanded the army to conserve funds, leaving me with a trivial income loss for the battered remains of the army under the King's control. The rebellion grew, soon encompassing over half the kingdom, until the King was no longer able to defend his own provinces and started to "peace out" with various individual former vassals. After refusing several events to join the rebellion and declare war on my Liege, I received an event which permitted a peaceful departure, then declared war on a couple of those other breakaway vassals, giving me (and my sons) sufficient provinces to control 2 more Duchies. Eventually, the King was left with just two of the conquered Pecheneg provinces and nothing in Hungary itself, and the wars petered out.

It took a few years to recover from the heavy debt, aided by the duties paid upon the marriage of an eldest daughter, but I was eventually able to create the Duchy of Pest. That was followed by the Duchies of Wallachia and Esztergom, and then I started recruiting former vassals of the King into my new "de facto" but unofficial kingdom. At that point, my ruler had the good sense to depart this world, leading to his eldest son not being bound by some of his father's truces, and the rapid inclusion of yet another duchy, followed by a claim on the title of "King of Hungary". A brief war shortly before the turn of the Century, and he was officially King of Hungary in 1099.

His own eldest son was given two scattered provinces, and the younger son a single one. The eldest acted on his own to declare war on one of the two remaining independent breakaway Duchies, which brought me into the fray in his support, and by the end of it, he was a Duke.

One of the recently integrated provinces surprised me when its King passed away and it was inherited by the widow of the former King; the real shock being that her son/heir was also the young King of Germany and a host of other titles....I removed her immediately and rolled with the loyalty hit to my other vassals, to avoid having the German Emperor with a personally owned province deep in Hungary, although he may still get a claim on it when she passes away.

When my current king passes away, ending the current truces, and his son ascends to the throne, there will be a war to bring the last Duchy into the fold, and finally reunite the Kingdom. There's still a long way to go until the 15th Century.

I think I've got a better idea of the mechanics at this point. I like the game, but the graphical interface is frustrating, and a lot of personal info is difficult to access if you're trying to compare two personalities in different realms....a lot of clicking to go between them.

Thanks for the links to various guides and wikis, since there's no tutorial for this game, and it takes a bit of playing to understand WHY to do or not do various things under the circumstances.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Sounds good. Nice to know.

but the graphical interface is frustrating, and a lot of personal info is difficult to access if you're trying to compare two personalities in different realms....a lot of clicking to go between them.

Like to elaborate ?



Off-topic mod info:
- I strongly recommend using this sound mod https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/iamwhoas-sfx-1-0.356382/,
especially for the changed catapult and COA-click sounds, which are rather loud and 'shocking' in the original.

- DVIP is a great overhaul mod. Basically impossible to play without it, once you did. The only issue i had with it were these resurrecting north african muslim states.
Veldmarschalks' mods are great too, but i didn't play them enough.

 

[Kovax]

Like to elaborate ?

Examples:
You go to replace your Steward, and there's a list of candidates to choose from. No tooltip functionality to show their stats, so you have to open up your ruler's screen and sort through the various courtiers to find each of the candidates individually. Since the pictures overlap by a lot, they're hard to select at times, and finding 3 courtiers in a line of 15+ can be tedious, especially when one of them turns out to be a younger sibling or offspring of the king, and isn't even in that list.

You spot a message that Heinrich has inherited Konrad, and gotten the following titles and provinces, and the name Konrad sounds familiar, so now you've got to pan around the map to find those provinces, so you can see who this new guy Martin is. You eventually spot the one province nearby, which has a fort icon but no shield, so now you've got to find the province that has his shield icon, half-way across Germany, before you can get info. Fortunately, clicking the first province changes the color of the second, so it's not quite as difficult to pick out.

There are places where tooltips work, and places where they don't. Some objects are "clickable", others are decorative, so it takes a few hours before you even find some of the controls. It's not "broken", but far less than optimal or consistent. When I first started, I didn't have a clue what I was actually supposed to do, and it took a good 10-20 hours of play to figure out WHY you would do things, and realize that I had missed golden opportunities and done things which were counter-productive.

Then there's the inherent limitation of the mechanics, where various conditions properly affect the MTTH of various events, but the odds of the different possibilities within each event are fixed, rather than depending on or modified by factors which clearly SHOULD influence them or the odds of them happening, relative to the other potential outcomes.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the game, but much of it seems like it was done piecemeal, rather than planned out in a consistent manner from the start. I assume that some of that was the result of features being added by the expansions or patches, and not enough time/money to retroactively change the existing functions to match, but since I bought the "final" version, I had no chance to see its development.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Examples:
You go to replace your Steward, and there's a list of candidates to choose from. No tooltip functionality to show their stats,

Hmm...you click on "appoint" to the right of the empty councillor spot and get several characters
and their respective (in this case stewardship) skill level, name and portrait...and at least contrary to CK2 the characters actually look different.

If you are interested in all stats you can hover your mouse over court members at the bottom in your char window
or you open the ledgers' Court page (1) and compare their stats there.

You spot a message that Heinrich has inherited Konrad, and gotten the following titles and provinces, and the name Konrad sounds familiar, so now you've got to pan around the map to find those provinces, so you can see who this new guy Martin is....

IF he is a vassal of yours, you can open the ledger, sort your vassals by name, find him and click on him to get moved
to the map spot where he is around...or search for his first name among your vassals by hovering your mouse over them from left to right.
IF he is someone else's vassal or liege you can find them through either the lieges or one of his vassals characer window.

If you mean a tilte and character search, well that's indeed not around, but keep in mind when the game was made (around when you joined the forum).
Wasn't common back then as far as i recall...and you get a chance to learn and engage in geography.

so now you've got to find the province that has his shield icon, half-way across Germany

The latter sounds as if you might play on a small resolution and have to scroll a lot.
If so, change it in settings.txt in the game files folder. I play on 1920x1080 just fine.

There are places where tooltips work, and places where they don't. Some objects are "clickable", others are decorative, so it takes a few hours before you even find some of the controls. It's not "broken", but far less than optimal or consistent. When I first started, I didn't have a clue what I was actually supposed to do, and it took a good 10-20 hours of play to figure out WHY you would do things, and realize that I had missed golden opportunities and done things which were counter-productive.

You are playing a Paradox game....

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the game, but much of it seems like it was done piecemeal, rather than planned out in a consistent manner from the start...

Game was originally intended to be made by a (outsourced) russian developer who messed up and then Doomdark and Johan had to remake the game
in about half a year or so, so far the official version of the story and its probably close enough to the truth.
So the inital release was definitely chaotic enough.

Apart from that i have troubles recalling any game by Paradox ever being planned out in a consistent manner from the start.
At least it didn't appear to me that way, but that's probably just me...

-------

So far with my extremely witty remarks and super helpful comments on your elaboration...........



Conclusion :
Use the ledger and play more until you get accustomed to the game,...as with any Paradox game.
You're welcome.

My pleasure.

Aard

 

[Kovax]

IF he is a vassal of yours, you can open the ledger......

You are playing a Paradox game....

There's a ledger????? I guess I learned something today.

Good point about being a Paradox game. I guess I need to keep that in mind.

Meanwhile, after the last remaining independent Duchy within Hungary voluntarily requested vassalization, after having repeatedly rejected my own requests, I attempted to launch a modest Crusade. The "expectations" had gradually increased to the point of costing me -0.5 Piety per month, which was barely offset by my various increases. The king gathered up almost 1000 gold to hopefully cover the costs, and sent a total of about 6000 men in two stacks toward Burgos in distant Spain. By the time they arrived, they were down to under 4000 men, and my King had passed away from old age at 72. I Sieged and occupied the province that the crusade was targeted against (Burgos), which gave me insufficient warscore (I spotted that feature last night, rather than spamming offers and wondering why they were accepted or rejected) to force the Sultan to give up the province, and a couple of days later got hit by 14,000+ Moslems. The day before they arrived, my Marshall passed away unexpectedly, leaving me with two leaderless armies outnumbered 4:1. The outcome was definitely not pretty. I had hoped that the Sultan of Sevilla would still be preoccupied with his newly gained land holding in Ireland, and not have 14K troops to spare back in Spain, or that I'd get some assistance from at least one of the other dozen-plus countries at war with Sevilla....no such luck.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

There's a ledger????? I guess I learned something today.

Though you probably know already by now....

Minimap, right side, the icon between plus and minus.

Some F6 key or so also opens a page of it.

Meanwhile, ... I attempted to launch a modest Crusade.
The "expectations" had gradually increased........

.....and a couple of days later got hit by 14,000+ Moslems.....

Sounds fun.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Not sure what you are asking for.
You know this thread : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ads-mods-and-general-game-information.347074/ , right ?

Also check the FAQ subforum.

Are there any plans to move that WIKI you linked to
http://wikis.paradoxplaza.com/
?
With HoI III having a WIKI it can’t be just for the newest in each gameseries?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Are there any plans to move that WIKI you linked to
http://wikis.paradoxplaza.com/
?
With HoI III having a WIKI it can’t be just for the newest in each gameseries?

I doubt it, as that wiki isn't/wasn't part of paradoxian.org, but i also thought of suggesting it.

Like to go ahead and suggest it yourself ?
In here maybe: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rg-has-expired-update-they-have-moved.996916/
I feel i got on their nerve enough by now.

By the way, as you can see in this post , the older Wikis from paradoxian.org are actually on the official Wiki server by now,
so does the one for HoI II, but for whatever reason Meneth doesn't want to add them to the overview page you linked.

The argument being that most people would get to them via Google anyway...
To be fair, another argument was that these Wikis are not actively updated anymore, though it's possible.

 

[hattorihanzo]

interesting thread, I will give Crusader Kings another try soon or later..

 

[ConjurerDragon]

I doubt it, as that wiki isn't/wasn't part of paradoxian.org, but i also thought of suggesting it.

Like to go ahead and suggest it yourself ?
In here maybe: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rg-has-expired-update-they-have-moved.996916/
I feel i got on their nerve enough by now.

By the way, as you can see in this post , the older Wikis from paradoxian.org are actually on the official Wiki server by now,
so does the one for HoI II, but for whatever reason Meneth doesn't want to add them to the overview page you linked.

The argument being that most people would get to them via Google anyway...
To be fair, another argument was that these Wikis are not actively updated anymore, though it's possible.

The old games WIKIs links have been added to the frontdoor since my last visit to that page

http://wikis.paradoxplaza.com/

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

The old games WIKIs links have been added to the frontdoor since my last visit to that page View attachment 328749
http://wikis.paradoxplaza.com/

Still not part of it.
We were talking, back then in may, about the CK1 Wiki (in post#4), which has not been added since, as i said as it wasn't part of paradoxian.org
and probably as noone suggested it, so....

PS:

Oh...., after thinking about why you added that 'cheers smilie '..
You were refering to the "add them to the overview page" part concerning the old paradoxian Wikis...
I see. Got it.

Yeah it's done now.