What were some of your favourite HIP games?
- Thread starter Militantti Talitintti
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
This game here that I started with the Count of Milan, through marriage I became my grandson King of Lombardy, then I expanded through the Carolingian kingdoms to form the Empire of Lombardy, so I had the brilliant idea of changing the succession to Seniority, I gave several kingdoms for familiaires, and the Empire spent decades with civil wars, Emperors were murdered until it reached 100% decay and the Empire was disintegrating, until I was left with just one county on the side of Paris.
There's been so many, literally years worth (over 3414 hours on HIP alone), but there's a few that stood out for me, in no particular order. The first four are listed in the "Post your empires..." post somewhere if you're wanting to take a look.
1) There was one in particular that I enjoyed thoroughly, mostly for the religious mechanics. I took an Uighur Manichean nomad from the steppe and over the course of a few generations managed to conquer Iran and resurrect the Persian Empire with my by-now Persianized Manichean dynasty. Probably the most fun part of this was sending out missionaries to far off places like Rus and Scandinavia to convert them to Manichaeism
2) There was a custom Norman whom I took from Count of Malta, to Duke of Cyrene and I took his sons/grandsons from King of Egypt, then married the Queen of Jerusalem and formed the Holy Empire of Jerusalem. I managed to conquer everything in the eastern half of the map and wipe out Islam. I'm a big fan of bastard feudalism, so I placed one of my many bastards on the throne in the Maghreb, who with a little help managed to subdue all of Africa.
3) Another one was my Reformed-Romuvan Samogitian Empire. I immediately got to the task of conquering the Baltic region and reforming the Romuvan religion to hold divine marriage in high esteem. I set myself a few conditions for this one. First, I'd execute or sacrifice any non-Romuvan in my realm just because. And second, I was only allowed to marry close family members to keep the bloodline extra special.
4) I had another custom character, a French Count of Gallura. I took him from Gallura to Africa, creating a new Empire of Carthage and conquered Italy. Probably one of the most fun games I've had.
5) I'm currently working on yet another Byzantine Empire but this time the goal is to reconquer Alexander's empire as the House of Makedon and claim the Alexander bloodline.
Last edited:
Definitely my Outremer RP playthrough (unfortunately no screenshots since it was on my old PC and ones I´ve posted on the internet are no longer available).
Started as Edessa in 1103, became kingdom after conquering Antioch from Muslims, spread eastwards, got Jazira as second kingdom (renamed Nineveh), pushed even further east, conquered western half of Daylam (renamed Tabriz), split the kingdom on succession.
Tabriz fell to Muslims decade later, Nineveh was inherited by 3 different dynasties (male member has a daughter, whose son then has a daugher, whose son then has a daughter) until I conquered it back century later, conquered both Jerusalem and Tabriz, fended off Timurids, split the kingom on my character´s death (now taking Tabriz as my new kingdom, not stayind in Edessa) and then followed over a century of decline when Jerusalem fell (again, it happened like 5 times in the playthrough), Nineveh lost Jazira (most of de jure kingdom pretty much), Edessa got completely destroyed and became minor state with Edessa itself falling to Nineveh.
Eventually, Crusaders were pushed away in 15th century, with last remnants of Edessa and Nineveh being destroyed at the end of it. House de Rethel survived in Germany where member of line from Edessa inherited a county.
Then there was another RP run as Antioch where I won Byzantine throne in a war, launched 4th Crusade through console and then spent next 2 centuries reconquering everything from Antioch itself (which became new capital of the Empire). It ended with streak of extremely capable emperors who restored Byzantium and ended up reconquering territories it had at the beginning of 5th century for a short time (before Jerusalem was lost to Jihad).
And lastly, my current Karling campaign where I started as last female Karling in 1081 with aim to do RP run where I put my brother (or his son if he has one) as my Crusade beneficiary.
Byzantines completely screwed up, lost Constantinople and Crusade was launched where I somehow managed to win it. Ended up doing old Edessa split thing and ended winning Crusade for Nicaea, which I later conquered on another ambitious character who then created Latin Empire.
Karlings eventually switched to Greek, conquered all of Anatolia and Greece, but are now at sort of a weak point because of peasant rebellions (which I let win for RP purposes and because I was becoming too powerful) that took eastern Anatolia and also crushed MA of Catholicism after failed crusade after which I switched to Orthodoxy (heresy by this point). Right now, Crusade was started against me and then recalled because of little support.
Started as Edessa in 1103, became kingdom after conquering Antioch from Muslims, spread eastwards, got Jazira as second kingdom (renamed Nineveh), pushed even further east, conquered western half of Daylam (renamed Tabriz), split the kingdom on succession.
Tabriz fell to Muslims decade later, Nineveh was inherited by 3 different dynasties (male member has a daughter, whose son then has a daugher, whose son then has a daughter) until I conquered it back century later, conquered both Jerusalem and Tabriz, fended off Timurids, split the kingom on my character´s death (now taking Tabriz as my new kingdom, not stayind in Edessa) and then followed over a century of decline when Jerusalem fell (again, it happened like 5 times in the playthrough), Nineveh lost Jazira (most of de jure kingdom pretty much), Edessa got completely destroyed and became minor state with Edessa itself falling to Nineveh.
Eventually, Crusaders were pushed away in 15th century, with last remnants of Edessa and Nineveh being destroyed at the end of it. House de Rethel survived in Germany where member of line from Edessa inherited a county.
Then there was another RP run as Antioch where I won Byzantine throne in a war, launched 4th Crusade through console and then spent next 2 centuries reconquering everything from Antioch itself (which became new capital of the Empire). It ended with streak of extremely capable emperors who restored Byzantium and ended up reconquering territories it had at the beginning of 5th century for a short time (before Jerusalem was lost to Jihad).
And lastly, my current Karling campaign where I started as last female Karling in 1081 with aim to do RP run where I put my brother (or his son if he has one) as my Crusade beneficiary.
Byzantines completely screwed up, lost Constantinople and Crusade was launched where I somehow managed to win it. Ended up doing old Edessa split thing and ended winning Crusade for Nicaea, which I later conquered on another ambitious character who then created Latin Empire.
Karlings eventually switched to Greek, conquered all of Anatolia and Greece, but are now at sort of a weak point because of peasant rebellions (which I let win for RP purposes and because I was becoming too powerful) that took eastern Anatolia and also crushed MA of Catholicism after failed crusade after which I switched to Orthodoxy (heresy by this point). Right now, Crusade was started against me and then recalled because of little support.
My bloodthirsty Norse pagan run was surprisingly enjoyable, despite some wrong decisions.
European Pagans in general offer a lot of fun.
European Pagans in general offer a lot of fun.
.png){kind=avatar}
@Austregisel @KingHaydenIII @DorlasAnther
Hearing your stories like this is awesome, as the creator/lead around here that's been putting in countless hours for so many years to help enable extra cool games such as these for you guys. At least half of my motivation in modding comes not from the desire to tinker / script neat stuff but from my hope that at least some decent percentage of our players are getting the most out of all the little and big things HIP does for their gameplay experiences -- most behind the scenes, although some of course quite visible.
Also, I really like to see that my ideal vision for how CK2 campaigns should be played is indeed being realized to an at least noteworthy extent, hopefully helped along with the huge amount of mechanics in EMF aimed at encouraging such playstyles. That is, in the stories you shared, you all experienced great rises and falls, setbacks, vindication: the perfect recipe for building a rich campaign narrative.
In contrast, there are always going to be those that feel absolutely compelled to never allow any setback, even an imagined potential one that could happen in the future, and they usually would like to annex the whole map if they could without clicking 'Declare War' and 'Offer Peace' enough times to induce carpal tunnel, and these sort of folks tend to be the most vocal users which I encounter, so good stories shared are very refreshing to me.
I am the HIP lead, the EMF lead, titles, titles, titles, etc.; not only that, but I have been since a year after I started playing CK2 not longer after initial release. Thus, I'm incredibly enamored with this game (particularly what we've made of it at HIP-- truly cannot go back to vanilla).
I'm also a strong believer that a modder should actually play their own mod in more than just a testing / observation capacity for real & long campaigns (some of which motivated me to do some pretty nice, though informal, AARs on our Discord-- link to our Discord server is on http://hip.zijistark.com/ if you're interested) in order to stay in touch with the "feel" of the mod's gameplay and polish. Therefore, even when I may have laid CK2 to rest otherwise, I've still been playing crazy ass HIP campaigns for years, motivated by this modding principle.
TL;DR: I've spent countless hours playing countless campaigns of HIP over 7 years (since inception). I truly cannot even remember the vast, vast majority of them off the top of my head, despite the fact that I'm only considering the ones which really immersed me and kept me playing for more than 60 years (at least 3 generations of rulers, basically). Thus, it's actually quite difficult for me to go into the kind of detail that the others have so far, so I'll just answer your question directly and briefly suggest a couple campaigns I've done which might appeal to you:
[1043] Duke William Iron-Arm de Hauteville of Apulia
Start as an OPM with a titular duchy, freshly granted to the former mercenary and famed commander and warrior William Iron-Arm (so nicknamed for his impenetrable defensive skills at swordsmanship in a combat performance in a particular battle against the Muslims in Sicily [Syracuse in particular, IIRC] as a (pseudo-)mercenary(/-adventurer) commander (before being actually landed with a castle in 1043), whom historically went on to create one of the most interesting dynasties in the era. His predecessors drove out both the Muslims and the ERE from Southern Italy, united Sicily and, with Papal blessing, created the first Kingdom of Sicily -- not to mention later forays into Antioch and even a [just barely failed] bid for the throne of the Byzantine Empire.
You get access to special CBs which will make it much easier / actually possible to fulfill your historical destiny if you so wish.
[867] Form the Saint-Empire Romain, a version of the HRE which will become a de jure "HRE of the West" (or just form the standard HRE)
EMF has completely changed how 'form the HRE' games work, and I've done this type of campaign so many times it's insane. I can't seem to get enough of HRE restoration runs. They can also be done from the 936 start, but I haven't had time to do one yet since that's new on SWMH since the latest release only.
There are special unification CBs for any King of one of the traditionally Karling kingdoms (i.e., France, Aquitaine, Lotharingia, Burgundy, Italy, Bavaria, and Germany) that basically work as if you have a [virtual] permanent weak claim on any such neighboring traditional Karling kingdom. It's a very nice balance of getting fun out of conquest and empire-building but only with CBs that make you actually have to plan and be very aware of everything else happening in the former Carolingien/Frankish Empire in order to opportunistically make gains.
All the while, you're going to be holding possibly a multitude of kingdom titles whose succession laws likely diverge (and if not, well, Gavelkind, yo) as you near forming the HRE variant of your choice, so the risk of losing it all and ending up the new Karling-equivalent dynasty of Europe (bunch of independent kings of your dynasty) and then having to recover from that and somehow still unite the former empire is always right around the corner the closer you get to your goal.
Once/if you achieve your goal, it's all about the glory of the empire. You could choose to try to consolidate the rest of continental Europe (whichever is more appropriate for your chosen HRE variant -- in the regular HRE, you might want to bring the western kingdoms into the fold, and in the SER, you may want to expand into Iberia or bring Germany/Bavaria into the fold). I usually like to grow a bit more in European hegemony while I'm working on clever new ways to plant the seeds for any way I can to get a hold of the ERE throne so that it may be destroyed in union, leaving only one One True Christian Empire.
I usually start these games as a Count or a relatively weak Duke, as then I must race to somehow become King of one of those traditionally-Carolingien Kingdoms before some AI manages to unite the HRE on its own. I haven't tried this setup, but I imagine that playing an MP game where multiple players start as Kings of any of those Kingdoms would be thrilling as you struggle against each other to unite ("NO, unite under MY banner-- not YOUR banner!" "No, YOU! Enjoy your regency, BTW..." *plot to assassinate succeeds*).
Ah, crap, I had so many other starts I wanted to recommend, but I've spent way too long writing this already... Ah well, maybe I'll come back to it, or I'll see you on our Discord server. Happy gaming!
Hearing your stories like this is awesome, as the creator/lead around here that's been putting in countless hours for so many years to help enable extra cool games such as these for you guys. At least half of my motivation in modding comes not from the desire to tinker / script neat stuff but from my hope that at least some decent percentage of our players are getting the most out of all the little and big things HIP does for their gameplay experiences -- most behind the scenes, although some of course quite visible.
Also, I really like to see that my ideal vision for how CK2 campaigns should be played is indeed being realized to an at least noteworthy extent, hopefully helped along with the huge amount of mechanics in EMF aimed at encouraging such playstyles. That is, in the stories you shared, you all experienced great rises and falls, setbacks, vindication: the perfect recipe for building a rich campaign narrative.
In contrast, there are always going to be those that feel absolutely compelled to never allow any setback, even an imagined potential one that could happen in the future, and they usually would like to annex the whole map if they could without clicking 'Declare War' and 'Offer Peace' enough times to induce carpal tunnel, and these sort of folks tend to be the most vocal users which I encounter, so good stories shared are very refreshing to me.
I am the HIP lead, the EMF lead, titles, titles, titles, etc.; not only that, but I have been since a year after I started playing CK2 not longer after initial release. Thus, I'm incredibly enamored with this game (particularly what we've made of it at HIP-- truly cannot go back to vanilla).
I'm also a strong believer that a modder should actually play their own mod in more than just a testing / observation capacity for real & long campaigns (some of which motivated me to do some pretty nice, though informal, AARs on our Discord-- link to our Discord server is on http://hip.zijistark.com/ if you're interested) in order to stay in touch with the "feel" of the mod's gameplay and polish. Therefore, even when I may have laid CK2 to rest otherwise, I've still been playing crazy ass HIP campaigns for years, motivated by this modding principle.
TL;DR: I've spent countless hours playing countless campaigns of HIP over 7 years (since inception). I truly cannot even remember the vast, vast majority of them off the top of my head, despite the fact that I'm only considering the ones which really immersed me and kept me playing for more than 60 years (at least 3 generations of rulers, basically). Thus, it's actually quite difficult for me to go into the kind of detail that the others have so far, so I'll just answer your question directly and briefly suggest a couple campaigns I've done which might appeal to you:
[1043] Duke William Iron-Arm de Hauteville of Apulia
Start as an OPM with a titular duchy, freshly granted to the former mercenary and famed commander and warrior William Iron-Arm (so nicknamed for his impenetrable defensive skills at swordsmanship in a combat performance in a particular battle against the Muslims in Sicily [Syracuse in particular, IIRC] as a (pseudo-)mercenary(/-adventurer) commander (before being actually landed with a castle in 1043), whom historically went on to create one of the most interesting dynasties in the era. His predecessors drove out both the Muslims and the ERE from Southern Italy, united Sicily and, with Papal blessing, created the first Kingdom of Sicily -- not to mention later forays into Antioch and even a [just barely failed] bid for the throne of the Byzantine Empire.
You get access to special CBs which will make it much easier / actually possible to fulfill your historical destiny if you so wish.
[867] Form the Saint-Empire Romain, a version of the HRE which will become a de jure "HRE of the West" (or just form the standard HRE)
EMF has completely changed how 'form the HRE' games work, and I've done this type of campaign so many times it's insane. I can't seem to get enough of HRE restoration runs. They can also be done from the 936 start, but I haven't had time to do one yet since that's new on SWMH since the latest release only.
There are special unification CBs for any King of one of the traditionally Karling kingdoms (i.e., France, Aquitaine, Lotharingia, Burgundy, Italy, Bavaria, and Germany) that basically work as if you have a [virtual] permanent weak claim on any such neighboring traditional Karling kingdom. It's a very nice balance of getting fun out of conquest and empire-building but only with CBs that make you actually have to plan and be very aware of everything else happening in the former Carolingien/Frankish Empire in order to opportunistically make gains.
All the while, you're going to be holding possibly a multitude of kingdom titles whose succession laws likely diverge (and if not, well, Gavelkind, yo) as you near forming the HRE variant of your choice, so the risk of losing it all and ending up the new Karling-equivalent dynasty of Europe (bunch of independent kings of your dynasty) and then having to recover from that and somehow still unite the former empire is always right around the corner the closer you get to your goal.
Once/if you achieve your goal, it's all about the glory of the empire. You could choose to try to consolidate the rest of continental Europe (whichever is more appropriate for your chosen HRE variant -- in the regular HRE, you might want to bring the western kingdoms into the fold, and in the SER, you may want to expand into Iberia or bring Germany/Bavaria into the fold). I usually like to grow a bit more in European hegemony while I'm working on clever new ways to plant the seeds for any way I can to get a hold of the ERE throne so that it may be destroyed in union, leaving only one One True Christian Empire.
I usually start these games as a Count or a relatively weak Duke, as then I must race to somehow become King of one of those traditionally-Carolingien Kingdoms before some AI manages to unite the HRE on its own. I haven't tried this setup, but I imagine that playing an MP game where multiple players start as Kings of any of those Kingdoms would be thrilling as you struggle against each other to unite ("NO, unite under MY banner-- not YOUR banner!" "No, YOU! Enjoy your regency, BTW..." *plot to assassinate succeeds*).
Ah, crap, I had so many other starts I wanted to recommend, but I've spent way too long writing this already... Ah well, maybe I'll come back to it, or I'll see you on our Discord server. Happy gaming!
This is a sentiment that I completely share. There's nothing wrong with vanilla, but HIP is just so good.
Three campaigns stick out in my memory, but a little background information, first:
I always start my playthroughs the exact same: single-county count of Wurttemburg, usually around 1081. I basically make myself in the ruler designer, and my family name as my dynasty, and I see how big I can grow my realm from one county. I make it a personal rule to never save scum, and just roll with the punches, no matter the outcome. With that said, are my top 3:
Started in Wurttemburg, and over the generations I somehow inherited land in Leon. Vassals in Germany revolted against me, I lost, and the only land I had left was the one county in Leon. From there I rebuilt my dynasty, ended up as the King of Leon, and eventually was able to take over all of Iberia and form the Empire of Hispania.
From there, I pushed north and took France. Around this time, Byzantium was at war with the HRE, so I decided to do the same and attacked from the West. The two front war ended up dissolving the HRE with Hispania and Byzantium absorbing the realm. Somehow ended up with a claim on Byzantium, so naturally I declared war, won, and a year before the game ended I controlled all of Europe from (modern day) Portugal to Turkey.
The other memorable game was when I was HRE emperor, changed succession law to Dynastic Elective and created a bunch of king-tier titles, gave them out to my close relatives, and did a massive vassal restructuring. With the next HRE emperor, I eventually changed the HRE succession to Primogeniture, which basically locked the HRE to my dynasty forever.
This was long enough ago that I was able to export this campaign to EU4 and continue it. Was a ton of fun!
The last campaign was my most recent playthrough, where I ended up forming the Empire of Franconia, and punching a huge territorial hole in the HRE. Somehow I joined a revolt against the HRE emperor and was independent. As Duke of Franconia, I used that window of opportunity to create the Kingdom of Franconia. When the revolt ended, I was back in the HRE, but still remained a king. I slowly expanded my realm, declaring de jure war over neighboring counties. Eventually I was big enough to form my own empire, so I declared an independence war against the HRE, won, and in the end my Empire of Franconia was larger than the remaining HRE, and occupied what would be now as southern & western Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Croatia.
I always start my playthroughs the exact same: single-county count of Wurttemburg, usually around 1081. I basically make myself in the ruler designer, and my family name as my dynasty, and I see how big I can grow my realm from one county. I make it a personal rule to never save scum, and just roll with the punches, no matter the outcome. With that said, are my top 3:
Started in Wurttemburg, and over the generations I somehow inherited land in Leon. Vassals in Germany revolted against me, I lost, and the only land I had left was the one county in Leon. From there I rebuilt my dynasty, ended up as the King of Leon, and eventually was able to take over all of Iberia and form the Empire of Hispania.
From there, I pushed north and took France. Around this time, Byzantium was at war with the HRE, so I decided to do the same and attacked from the West. The two front war ended up dissolving the HRE with Hispania and Byzantium absorbing the realm. Somehow ended up with a claim on Byzantium, so naturally I declared war, won, and a year before the game ended I controlled all of Europe from (modern day) Portugal to Turkey.
The other memorable game was when I was HRE emperor, changed succession law to Dynastic Elective and created a bunch of king-tier titles, gave them out to my close relatives, and did a massive vassal restructuring. With the next HRE emperor, I eventually changed the HRE succession to Primogeniture, which basically locked the HRE to my dynasty forever.
This was long enough ago that I was able to export this campaign to EU4 and continue it. Was a ton of fun!
The last campaign was my most recent playthrough, where I ended up forming the Empire of Franconia, and punching a huge territorial hole in the HRE. Somehow I joined a revolt against the HRE emperor and was independent. As Duke of Franconia, I used that window of opportunity to create the Kingdom of Franconia. When the revolt ended, I was back in the HRE, but still remained a king. I slowly expanded my realm, declaring de jure war over neighboring counties. Eventually I was big enough to form my own empire, so I declared an independence war against the HRE, won, and in the end my Empire of Franconia was larger than the remaining HRE, and occupied what would be now as southern & western Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Croatia.
Last edited:
I can say with confidence I would have moved on from CK2 a long time ago if not for HIP. As it's be said previously on this post, vanilla is fine but it just doesn't do the job HIP does, especially with regards to religion. Cheers for all the good work over the years!
- 1
Definitely have helped tremendously to that end. Thank you and the rest of the HIP team for all your hard work!
What a coincidence that you mention this...
Last edited:
Thank you all for the comments. Please do keep them coming.
Currently trying out the Manichean Uyghurs. First time playing nomads, but conquering the steppe is a breeze. My pagan proselytizing missions have all been in vain!
Currently trying out the Manichean Uyghurs. First time playing nomads, but conquering the steppe is a breeze. My pagan proselytizing missions have all been in vain!
The best - pick any of the three:
Harald Hardrade, Harold Godwineson, William the Bastard de Normandie 1066
and the very close rest:
William Clito Count of Flanders 1127
Erik the Heathen of Uppland ~1066
Herbert Karling ~1066 (or so, the last Karling
Alexios Komnenos 1081
Guelph I Welf ~1066
Harald Hardrade, Harold Godwineson, William the Bastard de Normandie 1066
and the very close rest:
William Clito Count of Flanders 1127
Erik the Heathen of Uppland ~1066
Herbert Karling ~1066 (or so, the last Karling
Alexios Komnenos 1081
Guelph I Welf ~1066