Post your CK2 empire!

[Mitxel]

Do read past the first line, please. "Tribal cultures should certainly be susceptible to cultural change."

In any event, I do think you should be able to impose your culture on your subjects (France and Spain certainly did, although maybe not so much in the CK2 time period)—I just think you should have to do it deliberately. It should be the outcome of a purposeful policy that has both advantages and drawbacks, rather than an automatic process that magically turns everybody from Jerusalem to the Indus into Mongols.

Mixed cultural retinues would be so cool, too. You don't want English longbowmen as auxiliaries in your Scottish army or Finnish cavalry in your Swedish retinue?

Well, cultural conversion was usually not a conscious policy, this being the days before nationalism. So it happening as a by product of trade and foreign local nobles makes sense.
It should be allot slower except in rare cases though. (English melting pot, maybe add one for Sicily, Andulsian/Spanish cultures should swing back and forth quickly.)
And honestly, Magyars and Turks aside, no one should be converting to steppe cultures. That's just, no.

 

[Lord_P]

Well, cultural conversion was usually not a conscious policy, this being the days before nationalism. So it happening as a by product of trade and foreign local nobles makes sense.
It should be allot slower except in rare cases though. (English melting pot, maybe add one for Sicily, Andulsian/Spanish cultures should swing back and forth quickly.)
And honestly, Magyars and Turks aside, no one should be converting to steppe cultures. That's just, no.

Agreed. It makes no sense that half of the world is Mongol in fifty years if you start in 12whatever.

 

[Montem]

Agreed. It makes no sense that half of the world is Mongol in fifty years if you start in 12whatever.

*pokes signature with ideas*

 

[Tufto]

Agreed. It makes no sense that half of the world is Mongol in fifty years if you start in 12whatever.

The Kwarazmshahs have made almost all of Persia Turkish in my current Byzantine game, and the Golden Horde have made most of Hungary Mongol. It's extremely annoying and kinda immersion-breaking.

 

[Scotty the Scot]

Well, cultural conversion was usually not a conscious policy, this being the days before nationalism. So it happening as a by product of trade and foreign local nobles makes sense.
It should be allot slower except in rare cases though. (English melting pot, maybe add one for Sicily, Andulsian/Spanish cultures should swing back and forth quickly.)
And honestly, Magyars and Turks aside, no one should be converting to steppe cultures. That's just, no.

Considering this is an alt-history game everyone needs to be able to convert culture.

Anyway, this isn't a culture thread.

 

[Nigerian_Prince]

As regards culture: in my current game, French culture has taken over northern Iberia, western Germany and all of Italy aside from de jure Sicily. All of the de jure Byzantine Empire is Greek. The fact that empires can convert their subjects to their culture so quickly negates the very meaning of empire (that is, an empire is intrinsically meant to be composed of many different ethnic or social groups). Its pretty silly really. Added to that, there seems to be no consistency to the culture changes. The Byzantines in my game have owned an enclave in Sweden for over a hundred years and yet Greek culture hasn't appeared in this enclave even though the Dukes/Duchesses of it have all been Greek. Similarly, everything west of Russia is "Pecheneg" and all of England is Norse. It's absolutely bizarre and random. The Lombards have totally eradicated Andalusian culture too.

Anyway, here's some screenies from said game. Behold, the Empire of French Empire! (Blue blob)

Originally I started out as the Pala kingdom in Bengal, but after I became Samrat Chakravartin in the mid 1100s there was nothing else to do really so I messed around playing as other AI countries. I started as the Kingdom of Andalusia (green in Iberia) which I renamed Lombardia because apparently it was ruled by Lombards who seized the land as crusaders against the native Muslims. It was bordered by the huge and sprawling Kingdom of Aquitaine, the Teutonic Order (who had conquered all of Portugal) and the Mezwarids in North Africa, who strangely still had the empire of Hispania despite owning no land within it. I played as Lombardia/Andalusia for a while before moving on to play as Germanic Sweden. I got tired of that after a while because its exhausting playing as unreformed pagans after 1000. Anyway, I moved on to Aquitaine which was interesting to say the least. When I took over, the "de Poitou" dynasty was about to die out but i managed to salvage it (the AI has a very bizarre way of managing their kingdoms/duchies). I unified Francia and had a very fun game from 1230 on when i took over them.

Had an excellent Emperor in 1299: Charles the Great who conquered Jerusalem from the infidels, consolidated the territory of the empire and had high stats in pretty much everything except diplomacy, which didn't matter because he was strong, brave, just and kind. A true warrior-king who managed to get maimed in the Holy Land in his 40's and yet still live to 72.

Anyway, enough talking. Here's some more screenies of a religious and political nature:

Dynasty map of Europe. A de Poitou is almost certainly in line to inherit England too as of 1350 (only son of the menopausal Queen)

See that orange speck in the top right hand corner? That's what the AI did to my beloved Hindustan/India after i left it. It only collapsed after 10 years too, but when I left it it was dangerously unstable but unified. The kingdoms of Maharastra, Rajputana and Karnataka are just too damn strong in comparison to the others and end up declaring independence every 5 minutes.

And now we come to one of the more unusual yet fortunate stories from my game. In the early 1200s, the Il-Khanate invaded as scripted and conquered a section of central Asia. Then the Golden Horde invaded as scripted. Both hordes simultaneously started a war for control of Turkestan. Then the Il-Khanate decided that Persia was too hot a destination and invaded Cumania, conquering it easily and stretching their borders to Moldavia. But there was one missing component: where was the Golden Horde? It simply DISAPPEARED during that war with Turkestan, like the entire horde just vanished and didn't conquer a single county. I tried to find it in the "Independent Realms" page in the ledger but there was no sign of them. I searched for "Golden Horde" in the "Find Title" utility and I found Batu Jochid chilling out in Sarkel with nary a county to his name, just a formidable sounding titular empire. He sat here for forty years before suddenly invading and conquering Hungary in its entirety with tens of thousands of event troops. He then invaded Byzantium and did well against them but the Pope called an abrupt crusade for Hungary, which I partook in. The Mongols spawned tens of thousands of event troops and held us off for ages, but then in the end they just converted to Catholicism and sat in Hungary, which was now called "Golden Horde" (you can see it in the screenie below, its a yellow blip in Hungary). Weird stuff. Anyway Russia was spared and the Il-Khanate converted to Nestorian Christianity and imploded soon after into a load of Messalian heretic states.

More oddities include a totally Iconoclast Byzantium and Teutonic/German colonies in Ukraine and Volga Bulgaria, which led to a weird, Pecheneg Hochmeister called Balashk who then ironically stemmed the tide of the Il-Khanate invasions in Ukraine. You really couldn't make this sh*t up. Catholicism did well and Sunni Islam stayed very unified throughout: I don't think I saw a single heresy. After I usurped the pope with my antipope, Christianity was on a knifes edge as regards moral authority but fortunately nothing much happened.

Will probably finish this game soon. I tried experimenting and bringing it over to EU4 but some European (Catholic) nations weirdly have the Muslim techgroup and the Abbasids are westernised :glare:

 

[goro91]

Since noone has posted anything and i don't want to see this thread die i'll post my own recent game pics.
Started as a Count of Bordeaux with a custom character. Nothing game breaking, just a diplomacy focused character, about 16 or 18 diplomacy skill. The huge blue blob of the franks took a long time to break and at some point i feared an empire would form and i would be stuck under a karling forever. But alas gavelking once again prevailed

Spent about 60 years staying in Bordeaux marrying and making sure my children were well educated. A huge rebellion began to lower crown authority. Then it was the time to strike. So many years spent on upgrading Bordeaux and a very skilled in military matters king, made sure that i had a big enough levy to take down the duke of Aquitaine and seize his throne.

The first Duke of Aquitaine:

After this i spend some time gaining more counties to have enough power to stop rebellions.
The son of the usurper:

After a few years the king of Aquitaine died and a 12 years old boy took the throne. But he had to appoint a regent. And he was foolish enough to put me in such a position. The next in line was 2 years old boy not even capable of ruling. I persuaded a few others to help me kill the king and in an unfortunate accident the king died falling from his chamber's balcony.

The baby became king and seeing the kingdom in such a vulnerable position i declared war to seize the throne for myself. Taking a loan from the jews i hired some mercenaries and destroyed all the king's forces with ease.

The next years saw the expansion of my kingdom. The Karlings spent years fighting each other for the different thrones of the previous huge kingdom of francia which meant it was too easy for me to grab land from all of them.
Here is the last map i took picture of showing my kingdom:

I'm a few years ahead from this map and my king is a military genius with 27 martial skill. I solved my toulouse problem. The duke of Toulouse as the years passed managed to make a duchy with about 12 counties in it. Which meant in a rebellion he would be a huge threat. I revoked his duchy which lead to a rebellion. After i won i made 2 new duchies and reduced him to ruling 1 county. In other parts of the world the Abbasid blob has gone to hell and about 5 dynasties are fighting each other. Tengri has reformed and has started a great holy war against the Byzantine Empire.

The norse had managed to unite all scandinavia except Denmark and managed to conquer a big part of the dutch coast but not the religion center. They also conquered small part of Normandy. Unfortunately since the religion wasnt reformed they stayed as tribes and the huge kingdom broke apart and they spend the last few years fighting each other. In the east the russians have reached poland and its a matter of time before the slavic faith reforms as well.

In britain england is a strong kingdom interfering in the french region. Spain is still under muslim rule but divided in different dynasties. That will soon be fixed when i finish with the remnants of the frankish kingdoms. All in all this is one of the most exciting games i've played and shows huge promise. There are no blobs left and the balance power is great. I'll post more pics soon

 

[Simmy93]

So this is a game i've been ploughing away at for a while now, Charlemagne start I wanted a different kind of British Isles game, so I chose the count of Somerset, but made a custom ruler. This was Volsung Volsungar, a little nod to the sagas, including naming every boy-girl twinset 'Signy and Sigmund'.

I wanted an Anglo-Saxon germanic game, so that's what i made! It was very hard to begin with, the funny thing is, the Germanic faith was restored by an AI duke, and not me. Thankfully the HRE stomped him. After claiming the Fylkirate and the holy wars came about I pretty much tried to expand my faith's influence. I great holy warred Andlusia, which at the time was most of Iberia, Aquitaine, Egypt, Rus and Epirus. Some had decent names like Avalon, some had silly names like AEgypt. I decided to take a map screeny at this point because its 1066, so from Charlemagne until the Norman start, here's the Anglo-Saxon Germanic influenced Europe!

The Volsungar Fylkirate of Anglaland (wessex custom Empire). This is during the reign of Fylkja Gytha.

Political:

Religious:

And just to show my family thrones, the dynasty map:

 

[Sylas]

Here is the mighty empire of Al-Andalus

 

[goro91]

Wow. Amazing borders in europe and your own as well. Did you start at charlemagne date and ended up like this?

 

[Chyll]

Wow. Amazing borders in europe and your own as well. Did you start at charlemagne date and ended up like this?

Yeah, those borders look a little too tidy.

 

[l0rdg4m3r]

So this game is far from over since aztecs are still somewhere in atlantic and waiting for them has become boring. The game started in viking age start date and since my 2 pals started the game before me i joined later with half the stack that my characters(Jorvik) starts in so it was little bit interesting but still he managed to conquer some counties, make Kingdom of Thorland and then it was onwards to conquer England. Although we didnt interfere too much later on, in early stages Britannia(me) and Normandie did help each other but as time progressed there was no need for that. Our fylkir which blessed by Thor has issues with his country constantly as you can see on pictures is the only thing thats interesting in this game,and so far both me and Normandie player sank maybe 15k gold into his country or even more.Atm if both me and Normandie would go to war it would come down to whos gonna amass their 150k+ stacks first, Normandie does have big advantage cause he is big orange blob in middle.
Pillagin is everything, we have never had so much gold in our life Rome got burned while it was catholic like 15+ times and later on byzantine aswell the game was fun but the waiting for aztecs is killing us, Normandie has pillaged his neighbors so much that now he has, i mean she( current ruler female=) ) issues with who to pillage, I got saved by India.
All the catholics got bloted, there are still some orthodox left but soon they will be blooted aswell. The reason why alot of nowdays russia isnt bloted, I mean conqured is because of Scandinavian issues but as we are teaching the player how to play, its gonna be conqured someday hopefully. Hope you liked my little story of this multyplayer bloting and pillagin session(300 years till the end)

 

[Dadoverde]

How to make a dinasty of queens... and say that of "power for women" (Homage for my female friends) So, nothing better than focus in Basques and Cathars.

Well, the start point has his history: One Visigothic count called Casio converted to Islam, and his family Banu Qasi remained ruling between Navarra and Aragon, with so good relationship with Christian kingdoms that one of the rulers was half-brother of the King of Navarra.

In CKII we find the Qasid as a count of Najera under the rule of Umayyad, but Basques. So... time to grow. First, get Navarra count and duchie, and expand sideways with taking more counties, and no difficult with depredated Asturias. That ended in a still occupied Hispania, and the Umayyad king so stable and not a good look for future with Medium Crown Authority, Mauritania also taken, and decadence nearly 0.

And then, the light: The Ummayad proclamed the Hispanic Empire and that means become king. And then, the great split. When the old Abderraman Omeya (as we say here) died, there was a hole for declare a revolt for lower crown authority, and at the same time of attack of united French, catholics and mauritians revolts. And after reaching west, time for independence.

Once the Kingdom of Navarra as a northen reality, it was easy to become Catholic and start Reconquista. And one thing new: After losing Toledo's capital, the Umayyad was forced to be a have a new capital... TRIBAL!!! (Weak army, but if happens, so great muslim hordes)

So slowing growing south, with absolute cognatic, 19-years-old Blanka arrived throne. With a long live ahead, she managed to be Queen of Castile, Asturias, Portugal, Aragon and Aquitania (French spilited, also the Reformed Germanic "Sweden"). With a conversion to Cathars by cultural research, Navarra become Empire by autocreation.

And here we are. Now time to enjoy setting woman to woman across the lands in a so unusual gameplay.

 

[Kansai-kun]

Here's an empire from a playthrough I discontinued because I felt that I achieved pretty much what I wanted - and also because defending against the Mongols and constant rebellions isn't fun. I present the Ghaznavid Empire of Hindustan:

I converted one of my heirs to Buddhism just so I could create India - I renamed it to Hindustan because I found that it was more fitting for a Persianate empire. I really wanted to integrate Afghanistan - Kabul is still my capital and the area around it my centre of power - but the Mongols took Kunduz at some point and I never got it back.

I divided my empire completely into viceroyalties to partly negate the cultural opinion malus. My vassals are a colourful mix of Rajputs, Hindustanis, Turks, Persians and other cultures. That provided an additional challenge and also kept Turkification to an absolute minimum - there are maybe three or four Turkish provinces in my whole empire.

Another challenge was the Islamisation of these lands - which is very difficult when your religion doesn't control any holy sites. I'm one of two major Sunni rulers left - the other one is the Almoravid sultan of Mauretania. The Seljuks are a shadow of their former self, only controlling a few provinces west of the Ilkhanate. I'm also not sure if they're still Sunni.

The situation in Europe is... interesting. The Estrid dynasty rules over Denmark, Norway and Sweden, a German noble became king of England and the Rurikids put a kinsmen on the Hungarian throne. Sicily is a merchant republic, but still ruled by the Hautevilles and the king of France is a Breton - meanwhile Scotland is ruled by the Irish.

The world of 1249:

This is a game I'd like to continue in EU4, provided the converter works to a certain extent. Maybe I'll also make one of my ramification threads; we will see.

 

[Lord_P]

That Fatimid blob, though...

"Decadence is fair and balanced!"

 

[Kansai-kun]

That Fatimid blob, though...

"Decadence is fair and balanced!"

The Fatimids have 0 % decadence at this point - maybe it has somethind to do with this being a pre-WoL save. I noticed that, when I played Muslims post-WoL, it was nearly impossible to keep my decadence on a humane level. But then I noticed that the Fatimids always survive, as their Mamluks make them almost revolt-proof.

 

[Vine]

As regards culture: in my current game, French culture has taken over northern Iberia, western Germany and all of Italy aside from de jure Sicily. All of the de jure Byzantine Empire is Greek. The fact that empires can convert their subjects to their culture so quickly negates the very meaning of empire (that is, an empire is intrinsically meant to be composed of many different ethnic or social groups). Its pretty silly really. Added to that, there seems to be no consistency to the culture changes. The Byzantines in my game have owned an enclave in Sweden for over a hundred years and yet Greek culture hasn't appeared in this enclave even though the Dukes/Duchesses of it have all been Greek. Similarly, everything west of Russia is "Pecheneg" and all of England is Norse. It's absolutely bizarre and random. The Lombards have totally eradicated Andalusian culture too.

Anyway, here's some screenies from said game. Behold, the Empire of French Empire! (Blue blob)

Originally I started out as the Pala kingdom in Bengal, but after I became Samrat Chakravartin in the mid 1100s there was nothing else to do really so I messed around playing as other AI countries. I started as the Kingdom of Andalusia (green in Iberia) which I renamed Lombardia because apparently it was ruled by Lombards who seized the land as crusaders against the native Muslims. It was bordered by the huge and sprawling Kingdom of Aquitaine, the Teutonic Order (who had conquered all of Portugal) and the Mezwarids in North Africa, who strangely still had the empire of Hispania despite owning no land within it. I played as Lombardia/Andalusia for a while before moving on to play as Germanic Sweden. I got tired of that after a while because its exhausting playing as unreformed pagans after 1000. Anyway, I moved on to Aquitaine which was interesting to say the least. When I took over, the "de Poitou" dynasty was about to die out but i managed to salvage it (the AI has a very bizarre way of managing their kingdoms/duchies). I unified Francia and had a very fun game from 1230 on when i took over them.

Had an excellent Emperor in 1299: Charles the Great who conquered Jerusalem from the infidels, consolidated the territory of the empire and had high stats in pretty much everything except diplomacy, which didn't matter because he was strong, brave, just and kind. A true warrior-king who managed to get maimed in the Holy Land in his 40's and yet still live to 72.

Anyway, enough talking. Here's some more screenies of a religious and political nature:

Dynasty map of Europe. A de Poitou is almost certainly in line to inherit England too as of 1350 (only son of the menopausal Queen)

See that orange speck in the top right hand corner? That's what the AI did to my beloved Hindustan/India after i left it. It only collapsed after 10 years too, but when I left it it was dangerously unstable but unified. The kingdoms of Maharastra, Rajputana and Karnataka are just too damn strong in comparison to the others and end up declaring independence every 5 minutes.

And now we come to one of the more unusual yet fortunate stories from my game. In the early 1200s, the Il-Khanate invaded as scripted and conquered a section of central Asia. Then the Golden Horde invaded as scripted. Both hordes simultaneously started a war for control of Turkestan. Then the Il-Khanate decided that Persia was too hot a destination and invaded Cumania, conquering it easily and stretching their borders to Moldavia. But there was one missing component: where was the Golden Horde? It simply DISAPPEARED during that war with Turkestan, like the entire horde just vanished and didn't conquer a single county. I tried to find it in the "Independent Realms" page in the ledger but there was no sign of them. I searched for "Golden Horde" in the "Find Title" utility and I found Batu Jochid chilling out in Sarkel with nary a county to his name, just a formidable sounding titular empire. He sat here for forty years before suddenly invading and conquering Hungary in its entirety with tens of thousands of event troops. He then invaded Byzantium and did well against them but the Pope called an abrupt crusade for Hungary, which I partook in. The Mongols spawned tens of thousands of event troops and held us off for ages, but then in the end they just converted to Catholicism and sat in Hungary, which was now called "Golden Horde" (you can see it in the screenie below, its a yellow blip in Hungary). Weird stuff. Anyway Russia was spared and the Il-Khanate converted to Nestorian Christianity and imploded soon after into a load of Messalian heretic states.

More oddities include a totally Iconoclast Byzantium and Teutonic/German colonies in Ukraine and Volga Bulgaria, which led to a weird, Pecheneg Hochmeister called Balashk who then ironically stemmed the tide of the Il-Khanate invasions in Ukraine. You really couldn't make this sh*t up. Catholicism did well and Sunni Islam stayed very unified throughout: I don't think I saw a single heresy. After I usurped the pope with my antipope, Christianity was on a knifes edge as regards moral authority but fortunately nothing much happened.

Will probably finish this game soon. I tried experimenting and bringing it over to EU4 but some European (Catholic) nations weirdly have the Muslim techgroup and the Abbasids are westernised :glare:

What map mod is that?

 

[westamastaflash]

The Principalites of Venice, Hispania, and Francia (Charlemange start).

At least 95% of these counties are ruled by lord mayors / doges / serene doges.

Golden Horde converted to Orthodox.
Ilkhanate converted to Hindu.

I'm hoping to roll this one to EU IV.

 

[Zolotaya]

Here is a political map of my current campaign, c1420.

I started in the Aquitaine realm as Duchess of Toulouse. Eventually I grew into the HRE. There have been some very fun developments in this campaign. Here are some highlights:

• 3 Pagan religions reformed: Suomenusko religion, the Romuva religion and the Tengri religion.
• Wendish empire formed, conquered all of Scandinavia and most of Rus. They fell apart but you can still see remnants of the empire in Poland and Sweden.
• Abbasids broke into three major realms: Egypt, Arabia and Persia, around the 1200's
• The Byzantium empire was invaded by 2 of the Mongol hordes (Ilkhanate and Timurid) losing the de jure kingdoms of Taurice and Alan but then regaining them.
• The Finnish realm has stayed independent (Once Wendish empire broke apart) and has expanded into the Baltic.
  
• My vassals expanded by themselves into:
  • Tunis
  • Ireland
  • Britain
  • Danmark

 

[Mudcrab]

The historical Burji dynasty with sort of correct Mamluk flag ready for EUIV conversion.

But this was a game of watching what the Umayyads were up to and following their lead. A compliant bedfellow for many centuries meant no real angst as Burji and Umayyad carved up the cake, first come first served. 'Viking Ummah' achievement gained with this game.