A picture's worth a thousand words, so here's another two thousand words on the issue. As I said on page four, I've run two hands-off games for exactly fifty years (ending on September 15,
1166 1116) with the following changes to vanilla:
1) The Holy War CB was completely scrapped.
2) The county-conquest CB was extended to be freely available to Christian (Catholic, Orthodox and Heretic) dukes and counts, but not kings or emperors, as long as the CB target was not Christian and the character has at least 50 piety.
The results were as follows:
Yeah. This speaks for itself, really.
(Note that the Lithuania in the first image was a revived Russian duchy. The original Lithuanians really get the kick almost as quickly as Nubia under this setup, or Lübeck for that matter.)
My conclusion is that Holy War either needs to go, or it shouldn't be as easy to invoke for such a huge profit. What's more, there should be war outcomes other than "harharhar I'm stealing all your land" - such as imposing tribute, or maybe forcing someone who isn't your liege to decrease crown authority, or adopt a certain succession law.
I've made my stance pretty clear, but I haven't claimed to be objective. Those are my opinions about a friggin' video game, for ChuChu's sake;
of course they aren't going to be objective. I think that playing Pagans at the moment is pretty unfun because it's EXPAND OR DIE at the lowest possible level: total success or total failure. There's no room for diplomacy, no room for flavour, no room for subtlety, no room for shenanigans. You expand or you die - usually the latter. And all the while, it doesn't feel too different from playing Catholics, trading in some pretty strong CBs for considerably more levies. Except that said levies stink out loud when pitched against retinues, holy orders, and all non-Pagan levies because they're at tech level zero. Hell, you look up the Nakonids on Wikipedia, you'll see that some of them had a pretty turbulent life. In CK2, they are instantly eaten by Denmark and no-one bats an eyelash, not even the Emperor. This is another problem:
there are no spheres of influence in CK2. You get the joint defenses in religious wars, and of course the de-jure mechanic, but that's it, and they aren't sufficient. If, say, Byzantium bites off a huge chunk of Croatia, Hungary is usually just fresh out of luck to do anything about that. This lack of repercussions, or any containment measures from outside, pretty much invites blobbing all over the place and hampers the element of diplomacy, which should be crucial to a character-driven game. That's it, that's my standpoint.
Now, my opinion is indeed subjective, but I think my reasoning is pretty much understandable. Yours, however, is not. You claimed that Pagans were silly powerful to the point of imbalance, that you can conquer Sweden with Lappland by only pressing fabricated claims, and that Scandinavia is easy pickings; then you suddenly changed your mind and suddenly Lappland is HARD and you prefer the challenge;
you expressly said that CK2 is a game where you should be able to pick any ruler and do what you want, and not be confined to "historical accuracy" and then when I criticize that you cannot do anything as the Count of Lübeck, or many of the Northern Pagans, I'm suddenly wrong about enjoyment or something, even though we share the same opinion.
I don't follow. I also didn't get your pun.
It is possible to convert to Judaism, but it requires a lot of learning. And before you officially join the Chosen People, the rabbi is required to try and dissuade you from converting three times. You also have to get circumcised--as far as sins go, not getting circumcised is right up there with drinking blood, cursing the Lord and sacrificing your children to Moloch. (No, really; you incur the same punishment.)
