Post your CK2 empire!
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Next stop: Mecca. Say, do you think have room for myself and tens of thousands of my best friends (immortals and horse archers) to take a little permanent vacation at the Kaaba?
It's funny because one holy war there will decrease their moral authority by 20. If you want to beat on the Muslims further, try taking Egypt and freeing Abysinnia under a Zoroastrian ruler. Egypt was a former Sassanid province, and would make a great staging ground for trying to beat the Byzantines back, who will probably try to take your land at every chance they get.
Been there done that
1. My yougest son (19 yo or so) and and heir just become and Byzantine emperor (thats a very long story, but it was done with a single plot assasination of some unimportant Karling prince
). 2. My oldest son is married to queen or West France,
3. My middle son is King of Africa and husband of Queen of Aquitanie
4. My doughter was matrilinealy maried to the heir of Kingdom of Burgundy. They both died but their sons are heirs now.
5. Some random cousin i found in Moesia (offspring of a marriage from over 100 years ago) and invited to my court is married to the queen of East France (I know, thats a shitload of Queens
)6. My grandson is married to a woman with a claim to Kingdom of Asturias that i'm just pressing. Funny story about this one! My old wife&nice that was at the same time Byzantine Empress(part of 1.) died and since my king is 75 and refuses to die I decided to marry him to the random princess for some free money while not losing prestige. That happened to be a Asturian Princess. Not long after that child from Wessex dynasty takes over a throne of Asturias. I notice that she has a claim and i can press it. But since my marriage is unlikely to produce heirs I just devorce her (Miaphisite ftw! Just 100 piety for that!), marry her of to my grandson and press her claim
All in all after taking almost 100 years to conquer egypt (after non-ruler designed Duke of Axum start. Have to admitt 1st 2 wars vs. Egypt required shitloads of reloads :/) I will probably restore Roman Empire in next generation and in 30-50 years Solomonids will rule most of the Europe.
But back on your topic: I assume you have started as some random norse and then used Planned invasion. Where have you landed? My plan for the next game once i'll finish one described above is to do that and go for Tunis to recreate Wandal Kingdom of Africa
EDIT:
Actually I played another 20 years or so after those screenshots were taken, and some of the dynasty schemes went sideways:
- Asturias lost to vassal rebelion,
- Solomonid king of West France died in battle with soon-to-be Solomonid Aquitanie leaving his sister on a throne. She is regulary married to a Knytling.
- 1st two Solomonid heirs of Burgundy got assasinated and new one is Slow.
And almost no one wants to marriage with my dynasty anymore
Still, I'm 2 wars away from recreating Roman Empire. I actually never done that before, so I guess it's especially cool to do it with Ethiopians. Bringing Miaphisitysm to its rightful place etc
Still I wish I was good enought to not have to reload in those 1st wars with Egypt. Maybe if I have used Ruler Designer and not had god awful rulers for 1st 4 generations Oh! Can you see whos ruling Sardinia? It's Makedon dynasty - one i've marriaged Bysantium away from. I'll keep them there as long as possible as a memento
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Game so far playing as the 867 start Premyslids, subjugated Pomerania as fast as possible then broke from Moravia. My culture is Pomeranian as is most of the kingdom which has dejure drifted all of Bohemia, Poland, and Lithuania.
Things of note so far:
Navarra has pretty much completed the reconquista complete with dejure drift and culture change to Basque.
Scandinavia has formed but is still unreformed Norse under the Ynglings of Sweden.
Karlings still hold Occitan Aquitaine and are set to inherit France.
Byzantines have been pretty stable and even managed to take back Armenia and Georgia.
867 start, figured I'd use hitting the 15 september 1066 mark to make an evaluation as to what has been going on so far
Starting of course with pictures
Firstly, pretty picture, I'm (obviously) the Persian Empire. A Zoroastrian ruler designer character based on Karen to be specific.
And here's the current map of the world. Unfortunately several countries happened to have a civil war when I took the picture.
I started with holy warring the Alavids (Shias, so the other Muslims didn't help them) and then got myself vassalized by the Samanids (Khiva). and ate their vassals from the inside. Meanwhile the Saffarids managed to conquer the rest of the Iranian rulers. So, instead of aiming to become king of Khiva and getting stuck between undesired Steppe lands and a large Sunni ruler, I went with declaring my independence from them via faction and signing up with the Saffarids to continue eating vassals over there for the next 40 years or so.
At that point several other vassals got a bit unruly so I decided to again go for independence and added a holy war for Birjand to that bit of disloyalty and from that point on quickly ate the remnants of the Saffarids and formed persia (Kingdom level) and removed all but one of the remaining independent countries between me and the Abassids before the Seljuks arrived. Who promptly decided it'd be a good idea to split their army in two groups so that they could quickly be wiped out. The only thing lost in that war was the thousand or so gold I was a bit overeager in investing on mercenaries
With the speedbump that was the Seljuks out of the way I could start joining the Byzantines in their race to devour as much as possible of the Caliph who, although having a slightly larger maximum army size than myself, was unable to do much against the combined forces of the Romans and Persians and around 1015 the Abassids were removed from the map with the Byzantines in control of Syria, most of Jerusalem and the northernmost duchy of the kingdom of Mesopotamia and me having taken over Mesopotamia and the duchy of Arabia. The rest of the Caliphate having declared independence to the point of removing the caliph from the map.
Following this came a period in which I expanded unopposed towards the south and along the African coast to the west. North of that I sometimes managed to take some land from Greek revolters along with fighting a few wars over small pieces of land with the Byzantines proper, sometimes with them having revolts and sometimes with them at full strength, the latter type of wars tended to be rather devastating to both of our countries' armies. Unsurprisingly considering they had the equivalent army size of the next 5 countries in line on the ledger (With the Persian Empire making up about half the army size of said five).
North of that we have some Tengri Turks whom I've left alone most of the time since I did not want to open up another race for land between myself and the Byzantines.
Just before the taking of these pictures I decided to let the Catholics know that they have a threat on the southern side of the Mediterranean and fought Francia, helped by East Francia and the Pope, for Menorca and followed that up by fighting Asturias for Seville and that is where I plan to further expand in the future.
Interesting notes about the other countries. Francia is elective and has most of the time been held by non-karolingians. Poland is Pomeranian. Ruthenia is Polish. Chud (North of Ruthenia) used to own Ruthenia as well and is Mordvin. England and Scotland are (reformed) Norse.
Starting of course with pictures
Firstly, pretty picture, I'm (obviously) the Persian Empire. A Zoroastrian ruler designer character based on Karen to be specific.
And here's the current map of the world. Unfortunately several countries happened to have a civil war when I took the picture.
I started with holy warring the Alavids (Shias, so the other Muslims didn't help them) and then got myself vassalized by the Samanids (Khiva). and ate their vassals from the inside. Meanwhile the Saffarids managed to conquer the rest of the Iranian rulers. So, instead of aiming to become king of Khiva and getting stuck between undesired Steppe lands and a large Sunni ruler, I went with declaring my independence from them via faction and signing up with the Saffarids to continue eating vassals over there for the next 40 years or so.
At that point several other vassals got a bit unruly so I decided to again go for independence and added a holy war for Birjand to that bit of disloyalty and from that point on quickly ate the remnants of the Saffarids and formed persia (Kingdom level) and removed all but one of the remaining independent countries between me and the Abassids before the Seljuks arrived. Who promptly decided it'd be a good idea to split their army in two groups so that they could quickly be wiped out. The only thing lost in that war was the thousand or so gold I was a bit overeager in investing on mercenaries
With the speedbump that was the Seljuks out of the way I could start joining the Byzantines in their race to devour as much as possible of the Caliph who, although having a slightly larger maximum army size than myself, was unable to do much against the combined forces of the Romans and Persians and around 1015 the Abassids were removed from the map with the Byzantines in control of Syria, most of Jerusalem and the northernmost duchy of the kingdom of Mesopotamia and me having taken over Mesopotamia and the duchy of Arabia. The rest of the Caliphate having declared independence to the point of removing the caliph from the map.
Following this came a period in which I expanded unopposed towards the south and along the African coast to the west. North of that I sometimes managed to take some land from Greek revolters along with fighting a few wars over small pieces of land with the Byzantines proper, sometimes with them having revolts and sometimes with them at full strength, the latter type of wars tended to be rather devastating to both of our countries' armies. Unsurprisingly considering they had the equivalent army size of the next 5 countries in line on the ledger (With the Persian Empire making up about half the army size of said five).
North of that we have some Tengri Turks whom I've left alone most of the time since I did not want to open up another race for land between myself and the Byzantines.
Just before the taking of these pictures I decided to let the Catholics know that they have a threat on the southern side of the Mediterranean and fought Francia, helped by East Francia and the Pope, for Menorca and followed that up by fighting Asturias for Seville and that is where I plan to further expand in the future.
Interesting notes about the other countries. Francia is elective and has most of the time been held by non-karolingians. Poland is Pomeranian. Ruthenia is Polish. Chud (North of Ruthenia) used to own Ruthenia as well and is Mordvin. England and Scotland are (reformed) Norse.
I'm quite happy with my Habsburg "Empire" so far. Started off with a habsburg ancestor who was the count of argau. With good marriages and alliances, I was able to expand within the HRE. Hopefully I can try for HRE Emperor soon, but I think I will wait until Burgundy is a de-jure kingdom in ~50 years.
Direct vassal view screenshot(to see my territory more easily):
I know Habsburgs actually eventually ended up with Austria, but I took advantage of the situations presented to me.
Direct vassal view screenshot(to see my territory more easily):
I know Habsburgs actually eventually ended up with Austria, but I took advantage of the situations presented to me.
Not technically my empire, because I played more of a "possessed God of War" where I intervened in something like 6 wars throughout the game that the AI had started whenever I got bored because I had this running in the background (basically I fought off the Mongol Empire for various nations then quit when the Timurids showed up), but it's so perfect that I just had to share. http://www.mediafire.com/view/op6olwi7ouwucci/ck2_map_1.bmp That France there is a merchant republic and that Hispania there is a theocracy. Russia inherited Sweden like 7 years before the game ended and currently follows an Orthodox heresy, the Latin empire's culture is Russian and its religion is Shia. Burgundy pulled an Austria an inherited a ton, with a current realm size of 232 and owns Norway, Burgundy, Apulia, Salerno, Genoa, the southwesternmost province of Iberia, Tyrol, Bavaria, parts of Brunswick and Franconia and other scattered provinces within the HRE. Abyssinia fully formed under the Monophysite heresy. Venice, Greece, and the Caliph-Sultan of Africa fight for dominance in Asia minor. Jerusalem is independent and Mali (the state religion of which is the Yazidi heresy) isn't all chopped up/owned by Genoa like it normally is. England (which owns Wales, Ireland, England, Gascogne, Aquitane and a bit of Iberia) has been pushing and been somehow been pushed back by Scotland for like half a century now at least. Byzantium has been chopped into bits of Trebizond and Hungary (which is split between it and Poland). Perm continues to hold to the Tengri old gods and has somehow repelled a bunch of Timurid invasions (seriously! How?) up until this point, but is now actually succumbing. Catholic is the only religion with an authority higher than 33% because it's the only one without huge Heretical states walking about. It's just such a fun map to look at. Oh, and somehow the total wealth of the Duchy of Oman is over 100k (split between a duke and 2 counts), so it's just 20k short of the Papacy.
1066 so i thought its time to show how ive been doing in my current game.
My Empire of Carpathia:
Started off as a Ruler designed minor Prussian Chief, abused the crap out of subugation wars to quickly conquer the other tribes in Lithuania including my own High chief and Formed the Kingdom, from there worked my way down and to the east against the Slavic Tribes while reforming my Faith. By the time my now King Stephen the Blessed died he had most of the De-Jure of the Wendish empire in his Grasp except for some minor Duchies and a Bohemian tribe turned christian which made it a prick to attack.
Decide from there id create the Carpathian Empire as Baltic nations get screwed in that department, had to find my way through a considerably strong Reformed Tengri Hungary until i could finaly form it.
Other then that its been mostly getting everything within the two empires de-jures from Christian Dukes and Kings, only thing outside that i got was a chunk of denmark to kill off the largest surviving norse nation to help reduce the constant Raid harrassment
Sweden, norway and the petty Kingdoms of Denmark fought constantly though Sweden after it turned Christian obliterated most of them except for Sjealland which i took over.
For a long time there was a super powerful Kingdom of Germany that controlled parts of France, italy and the rest of Central Europe but it fell apart in the last hundred years which is somewhat of a shame.
France and england have been a mess the entire game so far, Currently Byzantium controls some of france due to them being othordox for some reason and cedeing to them.
Ruthenia recently formed and is doing well, they are the last bastion of the Slavic religion, Perm has been doing what Perm does including for a while being a seperate Kingdom of Perm and Duchy of Perm.
Once Hungary died out the Tengri nations survived for a bit but with the Turks flooding over them it seems that the only other reformed pagan religion is being extingiushed.
Norse survives in Iceland, a few of those islands and weirdly Dublin which has been so the entire game almost, constantly sending raiding parties at me to be squished.
Havent concentrated much on the south though the West african pagans still seem to be alive and well and so are the Abyssinians, the area has been for the most part stable for the duration of the game, not doing much at all so far except for those Italian merchants taking some of the coast.
Been spreading my religion at a fair pace, most of the empire except for a few spots are done.
Didnt get a pic but about 50% is Prussian culture, slowly spreading it.
What should my next goal be? i dont want to do a World conquest otherwise id be most of the map now since i can holy war everyone, trying to do a full CKII-VickyII game thus dont want to be obcenely powerfull within the timespan of one game.
Can you influence the map to help Kingdoms and maybe even empires form? Id like to see some more stable opponents.
Also can you hold more then two emperor titles? if so i may take over Byzantium aswell.
My Empire of Carpathia:
Started off as a Ruler designed minor Prussian Chief, abused the crap out of subugation wars to quickly conquer the other tribes in Lithuania including my own High chief and Formed the Kingdom, from there worked my way down and to the east against the Slavic Tribes while reforming my Faith. By the time my now King Stephen the Blessed died he had most of the De-Jure of the Wendish empire in his Grasp except for some minor Duchies and a Bohemian tribe turned christian which made it a prick to attack.
Decide from there id create the Carpathian Empire as Baltic nations get screwed in that department, had to find my way through a considerably strong Reformed Tengri Hungary until i could finaly form it.
Other then that its been mostly getting everything within the two empires de-jures from Christian Dukes and Kings, only thing outside that i got was a chunk of denmark to kill off the largest surviving norse nation to help reduce the constant Raid harrassment
Sweden, norway and the petty Kingdoms of Denmark fought constantly though Sweden after it turned Christian obliterated most of them except for Sjealland which i took over.
For a long time there was a super powerful Kingdom of Germany that controlled parts of France, italy and the rest of Central Europe but it fell apart in the last hundred years which is somewhat of a shame.
France and england have been a mess the entire game so far, Currently Byzantium controls some of france due to them being othordox for some reason and cedeing to them.
Ruthenia recently formed and is doing well, they are the last bastion of the Slavic religion, Perm has been doing what Perm does including for a while being a seperate Kingdom of Perm and Duchy of Perm.
Once Hungary died out the Tengri nations survived for a bit but with the Turks flooding over them it seems that the only other reformed pagan religion is being extingiushed.
Norse survives in Iceland, a few of those islands and weirdly Dublin which has been so the entire game almost, constantly sending raiding parties at me to be squished.
Havent concentrated much on the south though the West african pagans still seem to be alive and well and so are the Abyssinians, the area has been for the most part stable for the duration of the game, not doing much at all so far except for those Italian merchants taking some of the coast.
Been spreading my religion at a fair pace, most of the empire except for a few spots are done.
Didnt get a pic but about 50% is Prussian culture, slowly spreading it.
What should my next goal be? i dont want to do a World conquest otherwise id be most of the map now since i can holy war everyone, trying to do a full CKII-VickyII game thus dont want to be obcenely powerfull within the timespan of one game.
Can you influence the map to help Kingdoms and maybe even empires form? Id like to see some more stable opponents.
Also can you hold more then two emperor titles? if so i may take over Byzantium aswell.
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Viking land conquered Brittania,Hispania,Francia
Man, I was going to poste my awesome Scandinavian Empire… not anymore. Nice work.
Here is my updated Britannian Empire, one long rule later.
Bulgaria and Byzantium (perpetually at war with each other) are really, really, really starting to annoy me
Bulgaria and Byzantium (perpetually at war with each other) are really, really, really starting to annoy me
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Behold the Khazars!
Actually, if you can fend off the initial Pecheneg assault, conquering most of the steppes in one lifetime is very easy. All of that except Persia was conquered under Manasseh II, the starting ruler of Khazaria in 867.
Actually, if you can fend off the initial Pecheneg assault, conquering most of the steppes in one lifetime is very easy. All of that except Persia was conquered under Manasseh II, the starting ruler of Khazaria in 867.
I give you:
My unintentional Wendish Empire:
I started as the tribe of Sorbs with the intenton of reforming the slavic religion and assimilating the kingdoms of Lithuania Poland and Bohemia into Pomerania.
Ruthenia formed as the second slavic kingdom in 977, and had a succesful run. however in 1049 there was a rebellion to put my wife in the throne, that was a chanca I could not pass so I obliged and went to war in the rebel camp. My son inherited and when i came to control him, I destroyed Ruthenia since I'm kinda obsessed with de jure drift.
THe blobbing part came with the reformation. I had 3 of 5 holy sites by 1020 and rushed to conquer counties in a civil war torn bohemia to increase moral authority, that and looting. In 1022 I was able to reform the Slavic church with High priestess Halina I.
Now I RP a bit, and since the religious heads need some temporal power I gave the church the duchy of Moravia It would have been better to grant her a holy site but since they were unavailable she had to settle with that.
Everything went smoothly for 70 years until the first Great Holy War was called, against Hungary. Since at the time I was busy defending a Slavic Pomeranian kinng i had olaced in Germany, I entered the war quite late. By the time I joined the High priest already had a huge crusade score, therefore the whole kingdom of hungary became the desmene of the church while still being my vassal.
Everything went downhill from there, or should I say uphill? With its newfound power the High priest was able to holy war at will and kept adding duchies to Pomerania. On the subsequent Great holy Wars, i had to intervene and actually win them, otherwise the HP would win them by him/herself and become and even more powerful supeduke inside my realm.
The duchy of Ungvar is the desmene of the Church. It doesn't have the whole of Hungary because I revoked a lot of Duchies after he revolted. It was fruitless
I managed to defeat the Golden Horde by the second Invasion they declared on me. WIth a bit if luck and the whole realm levies, their doomstacks fell and I was able to keep Volga Bulgaria inside Pomerania. Then the HP called for another GHW for Cumania and took it back from the still weak mongols.
Almost the whole realm is Slavic. and Pomeranian culture have extended far and wide.
Germany is almost all my making, i put a pomeranian slavic king in 1081 and defended the realm ever since.
Trade is dominated by an Italian Iconoclast Venice, the republic of Prussia and the Republic of Moldau.
A Karling Queen of Italy married a greek Makedon and Italy Lotharinga and Bavaria slowly became Orthodox. But now the ERE is ruled by an English Cathar.
FInally the south of Iberia is ruled by a Slavic norse of my dinasty, and adventurer in 1379 and I have defended ever since.
My unintentional Wendish Empire:
I started as the tribe of Sorbs with the intenton of reforming the slavic religion and assimilating the kingdoms of Lithuania Poland and Bohemia into Pomerania.
Ruthenia formed as the second slavic kingdom in 977, and had a succesful run. however in 1049 there was a rebellion to put my wife in the throne, that was a chanca I could not pass so I obliged and went to war in the rebel camp. My son inherited and when i came to control him, I destroyed Ruthenia since I'm kinda obsessed with de jure drift.
THe blobbing part came with the reformation. I had 3 of 5 holy sites by 1020 and rushed to conquer counties in a civil war torn bohemia to increase moral authority, that and looting. In 1022 I was able to reform the Slavic church with High priestess Halina I.
Now I RP a bit, and since the religious heads need some temporal power I gave the church the duchy of Moravia It would have been better to grant her a holy site but since they were unavailable she had to settle with that.
Everything went smoothly for 70 years until the first Great Holy War was called, against Hungary. Since at the time I was busy defending a Slavic Pomeranian kinng i had olaced in Germany, I entered the war quite late. By the time I joined the High priest already had a huge crusade score, therefore the whole kingdom of hungary became the desmene of the church while still being my vassal.
Everything went downhill from there, or should I say uphill? With its newfound power the High priest was able to holy war at will and kept adding duchies to Pomerania. On the subsequent Great holy Wars, i had to intervene and actually win them, otherwise the HP would win them by him/herself and become and even more powerful supeduke inside my realm.
The duchy of Ungvar is the desmene of the Church. It doesn't have the whole of Hungary because I revoked a lot of Duchies after he revolted. It was fruitless
I managed to defeat the Golden Horde by the second Invasion they declared on me. WIth a bit if luck and the whole realm levies, their doomstacks fell and I was able to keep Volga Bulgaria inside Pomerania. Then the HP called for another GHW for Cumania and took it back from the still weak mongols.
Almost the whole realm is Slavic. and Pomeranian culture have extended far and wide.
Germany is almost all my making, i put a pomeranian slavic king in 1081 and defended the realm ever since.
Trade is dominated by an Italian Iconoclast Venice, the republic of Prussia and the Republic of Moldau.
A Karling Queen of Italy married a greek Makedon and Italy Lotharinga and Bavaria slowly became Orthodox. But now the ERE is ruled by an English Cathar.
FInally the south of Iberia is ruled by a Slavic norse of my dinasty, and adventurer in 1379 and I have defended ever since.
I don't see how you would conquer the other tengri rulers with only a single subjugation. I'm guessing this was before the latest patch?
I'm always impressed by people that go into Russia, I always find it so messy out there that I avoid it like the plague. The closest land I ever own to there is taurica (if I'm in the south) or lithuania and perhaps novgorod to hug the northern coastline. Otherwise the borders just get ugly and the mongols come a knocking. :/