You're choosing, I'm playing

[gorillacakes]

Great thread!

 

[Rozmarzony]

Oh, thanks. You probably got there from Christian Egypt thread?
By the way, I need to continue it, but huh, sometimes inspiration for ck2 is damn difficult to find.

Edit: Ok, now at least 1 post is updated.

 

[kolibri8]

I had this in mind for weeks ^^:

I suggest the Count of Vermandois in 1066: Heribert IV (the last Carolingian)

Goals: Restore Charlemagnes Empire by

holding the following titles:

• Holy Roman Empire (e_hre)
• Kingdom of Burgundy (k_burgundy)
• Kingdom of France (k_france)
• Kingdom of Germany (k_germany)
• Kingdom of Italy (k_italy)

and additional controlling the de jure territory of the following titles:

• Kingdom of Aquitaine (k_aquitaine)
• Kingdom of Bavaria (k_bavaria)
• Kingdom of Frisia (k_frisia)
• Kingdom of Lotharingia (k_lotharingia)
• Kingdom of Sicily (k_sicily)

I think that's all or did I missed something? :unsure:

Furthermore:

• Vassalize the Pope
• Make Rome your Capital
• directly own Julich (Aachen), Paris and Pavia

Rules:

• As Count or Duke preferably name your male legitime Offspring, Herbert, Odo or Albert, in the respective language, other Names could be Bernard, Roger, Robert, Stephen, Landulf, Liudolf, Peter, Hugh and Guy
• As King or Emperor preferably name your male legitime offspring Charles, Carloman, Pepin, Lothair or Louis in the respective language
• No matrilineal marriages, if the male line fails, you have failed.
• stay catholic

Boni:

• become dutch or german (as there is no actual germanic frankish culture in vanilla, those two are the closest)
• marry your daughter Adelaide (only daughter at game start) to Hugh Capet (brother of King Philipp of France)
• let Eudes (heir at game start) become Mad, and desinherit him (you'll need another son then)
• let Adelaide and Hugh inherit Vermandois, and continue with another count(r)y
• legitimize your claim to the Roman Crown by marrying a byzantine Princess.
• Name your Empire Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Germany Eastern Francia and France Western Francia.
• The territory of Bavaria, Frisia and Lotharingia is de jure Germany

 

[Rozmarzony]

nice, doing it already ^,^

 

[Menschenhasser]

Byzantine Empire: count of Tyana, Theophylactos Abstartos, father of the future emperor Romanos Lekapenos. Since Charsianon' capital is in Tyana, current doux can take away your demesne as soon as possible.

What about this guy [867]? It's hard to get independence from Byzantines

 

[Haldan]

Tried out Aella of 'of Northumbria', Petty king of Northumbria in the Old Gods start date?

 

[Rozmarzony]

Tried out Aella of 'of Northumbria', Petty king of Northumbria in the Old Gods start date?

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-m-playing&p=16589893&viewfull=1#post16589893

What about this guy [867]? It's hard to get independence from Byzantines

Gonna check, thanks.

 

[Rozmarzony]

Chapter 33
Restoration of the Carolingian Empire
1066 - 1076
Part I

My character at the start. Probably almost every ck2 player know this start, so i'm not gonna explain entire situation. I'm having 2 unmarried brothers and 2 kids.

marry your daughter Adelaide (only daughter at game start) to Hugh Capet (brother of King Philipp of France)

Pretty fast got claim for second county, however, due to having negative prestige I can't attack for it. Ruler of Amiens is my ally and I need to have 50 prestige to start the war... so not now. But why I ever fabricated claim for his lands? He's in my de-jure duchy, so after winning war with him I could create duchy.

Marriage policy.

My character in 1072. As you can see, he has only good stats and well, I farmed piety a lot too. As for gold, I got it mainly from Jews.

Crusades started because of this:

Spoiler

Possible explanation for situation, thanks FreeSoc!

Some of makes sense. I'd imagine (admittedly this is just guessing based on the information available, but hey ho) that the chain of events is:

The little Basileus' dad allows him to be tutored by the Count of Kars back in the day when Kars was part of Byzantium and the Count was Orthodox.

Then the Seljuks either tribal-invaded or Muslim-invaded Armenia, making the Count of Kars one of their vassals.

The Count, being a sensible kind of guy, converted to the Islamic faith of his new overlords. As the old Basileus had died, however, and had since been succeeded by the kid, the child-Basileus was not in a position to change his own tutor and therefore got converted to Islam.

When Templars were founded, another 300 went into my treasury.

Great news.

At pause, when crusade was started, I hired 2 holy orders for piety + 1 mercs bands with boats. (700 gold will be more than enough to transport them into Holy Land)

I let infidels to wipe out second crusade army. Otherwise, petty king of Britanny could have too many points.

Then time for my roflstomp.

In the meantime, one brother joined to holy order, why not.

And my son became adult, unfortunately, I can't make him mad.

How crusade looked like at the end. For orange I marked personal holdings of sultan, the only holdings, which got assaulted. (because there was only small garrison unlike in other provs)

Fast blobing in progress.

That colour... beautiful.

In the next ep...

Going for independance!

(In theory, I could just go for elective -> me gaining french kingdom, but not this time.)

​

 

[Divilly]

Duchy of Jerusalem? Why not kingdom? Gold? Btw nice chapter

 

[Rozmarzony]

Duchy of Jerusalem? Why not kingdom? Gold? Btw nice chapter

Thanks!
Gold in second place. I can't create title equal to my liege. : )

 

[yequr]

Nice as always What is it with independant duchies of Kent relocated to France though? I've seen that more than once, for some reason...

 

[Rozmarzony]

Nice as always What is it with independant duchies of Kent relocated to France though? I've seen that more than once, for some reason...

King of England granted it to duke of Kent? It's part of Normandy, and I'm always using post-Stamford Bridge scenario.
And thanks!

 

[kolibri8]

Nice, when will we see the next part?

 

[Rozmarzony]

Chapter 34
Restoration of the Carolingian Empire
1076 - 1079
Part II



Using 2 cheapest mercs bands. French army is pretty small, but that's because of some former civil war and bad relations with vassals.

After such glorious victory, it can't end in bad way.

Getting Paris.

Somehow french soldiers got there and conquered one province...

They got pushed back pretty fast.

Thanks to ticking warscore war ended, resulting in complete success.

What's funnier, king of France still accepted marriage.

My ruler is getting better and better. Got brave and wroth traits. ​

Now, what I did in following months:
-Changing capital to some coastal prov in Jerusalem.
-Getting ambition to create Jerusalem.
-Creation of second duchy.
-Expelling Jews to get more money.
-Creation of Jerusalem itself.
-Thanks to it getting 2000 piety, 5000 prestige, and another 1000 prestige from ambition.

Remember how I abused pope as El Cid?

​

Now, the most important question.

Vassalize 2 holy orders for 1000 gold and roflstomp entire muslim world, then just Europe... or invade HRE instantly?

Unfortunately because I'm having capital in Jerusalem and don't have thousands of money for mercs, first option is much more favored, but at same time, less roleplay ok, because Im Karling focusing on Europe, not some butcher of muslims!

 

[unmerged(271387)]

Conquer the Middle east in order to conquer Europe

 

[Rozmarzony]

Meh, I decided to abandon it. So slow. Only crusading. Shame on me!

But don't worry!

It's my atonement

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-...AAAHdc/YeEzJdQIiSc/s1152/2014-02-27_00233.jpg

(I will post chapters in following days/weeks.)

What's worst, I did it within ~2 hours. I'm burned out.

 

[Rozmarzony]

Chapter 35
Restoration of the Carolingian Empire II
Part I


Classic start.

Hoard gold and piety for some years.
I got celibacy/chaste/zealous traits early on, so it helped with piety.
As for gold, max taxes for churches/cities, steward and loan from Jews

Normal mosaic in France.

After that civil war ended king of France was hated by all his vassals.

So I joined to the faction for elective. Only me (some low count) and duke of Anjou were in it, but still, it was enough with the help of mercs to "push" our elective reform.

Elective France... means only more revolts.

In the meantime I used all that turmoil to gain second county.

What's nice, because I didn't rebelled against king of France, he granted me dukedom of Orleans allowing me to form faction for France.

Another king, hated by everyone.

It was... too easy. I just lost money for mercs, cause other dukes won the war for me.

First phase ended.

​

 

[Vince75]

At first I thought you did an holy war, I didn't get it haha.

 

[Divilly]

What's nice, because I didn't rebelled against king of France, he granted me dukedom of Orleans allowing me to form faction for France.

Dishonored!

 

[Rozmarzony]

Chapter 36
Restoration of the Carolingian Empire II
Part II



So I'm King of France. Now it's good time to farm some money...

Ofc. I expelled Jews and started taking gold form Papa, but I found another nice strategy to get a lot of gold. Wait for a moment when vassals will scheme against you, this will allow you to imprision them, then ransom and just repeat. A lot of gold. Just don't use option to auto-stop plots.

To have ability to ask Pope for money, and later, for invasion.

Due to such situation... I have more holdings than HRE, so I need to wait until some of these civil wars will end.

So why not 2 holy wars in Iberia to gain even more piety and prestige?

Some other bonuses.

11 retinues of archers, for future wars.

After some months, finally I can do this.

First battle. (that 12k are my retinues and levies, no mercs this time)

Second battle. Still won because of archers and river crossing. In the left you can see that I assaulted few provs.

Last clash.

​