Playdate: Crusader Kings II

I really like watching people learn this game...Idle Thumbs's series was really good too. Long live King Ragnar!

MY. GOD.

This is (one of the many reasons) why I <3 you, mate. I'm a pretty proficient pun maestro, but sometimes you spit something of such high calibre it makes me feel like never speaking/typing again.

Meanwhile, back on topic...

Am I disappointed this wasn't a VinnyVania week? Yeah, a lil. Am I constantly stoked at what Master Walker brings to the site? You bet your butt I am. So, so good.

Endurance run!

One thing I noticed during this video was how cordoned-off the player (conceptually, not just Austin) becomes as he tends to his territory. The vast majority of time is spent looking at this tiny fraction of the world, even though the big picture is only a scroll of the mouse away. It's a neat effect.

Edit: ha, they brought this up within 30 seconds of me unpausing the video.

Oh man, @alex is wearing a Future of the Left shirt. I sure hope that he's as prone to bursting into McLusky lyrics as I am.

please make this a regular segment.

i could watch hours of this.

Was your Ancestor Vlad the Impaler?

"Why is 'Inbred' so low?"

First big laugh of the morning. Thank you, Vincenzo.

Oh, and thanks @austin_walker for continuing to kill it. Since you arrived GBeast content has become my favorite part of the site.

Since it's multiplayer too they could have a West vs East Clash of Civilisations.

It'll never happen.

@nonesun: Boy howdy, that Metal Gear sure is casual huh? Don't get me started on Bloodborne.

There just aren't enough games with incest and babykilling anymore

Oh god why is Austin trying sooo hard to save the life of this Niketas.

@austin_walker Just FYI, the lines on religion view doesn't mean mixed. It means it's a populace of one religion ruled by a ruler of another - so Messina at the start is a Sunni populace ruled by a Catholic ruler for example. I don't think CK2 is any more granular than that when it comes to how it models the religion of a province.

Thanks for doing this video - CK2 is one of my absolute favourite games! Awesome stuff!

GBE Playdate is a great feature. I hope they continue to use it to show of cool games. I also hope that they continue to play CK2.

Basically what I'm saying is GBE Playdate should happen every day of the week.

Seems like Austin is still somewhat new to the series himself, not realising troop movements in your land is no biggie if you're not at war, and not realising he had a castle.

Then again i have over 500 hours clocked in this game so a lot of this stuff is second nature to me.

This video was cool, i love this game. Have played like 300 hours

I wish the tutorials were a bit better in these games, it's a couple of pages and when you enter the game you've forgotten all of it. It's a bit overwhelming.

I lost it when they killed the guy that converted. XD

Austin is quickly becoming one of my favorite people at Giant Bomb.

Great showing.

@dudeglove: Holy shit, this is amazing!

Murdering babies, making terrible decisions concerning spy masters, trusting drunken idiots, waging wars that can only go south and losing trust with your 6-year old son. Yeah, this had everything which makes this game special.

I'd love to see more stuff like this out of the GBeast. Keep up the good work, Austin.

I own this game. Hopefully someday I will play it.

Great feature.

I want Austin and Dave to play for a while themselves, get good at the game, and then come back on competing livestreams in a war for global domination against each other.

Or, well, what I'm saying is: I miss Dave.

It's pretty easy to look at the rest of the map and suddenly realize the HRE (or another great empire) has taken over just about everything since you last looked.

Or, in the case of the Playdate, the Norwegian king successfully pressed his claim on England.

I think the DLC in Crusader Kings is amazing.

Because they essentially update the standard game for free.

They generally only become necessary to own unless you want to play a specific government / religion.

If not, you just wind up with new territory added and new politics, and you can watch the AI engage with the new DLC mechanics.

Love this game. Love this feature. More, please!

@dudeglove: The patch notes are great as well, from Patch 2.4.1.

• AI is no longer able to assign invalid commanders.
• Non-seafarers will no longer raid using boats.
• Concubines now only have personal opinions of their man
• Fixed a bug when it wasn't possible to interact with the family palace in some cases.

@austin_walker: What DLC would you say is worth owning for this game? Especially if you want to make a custom ruler.

@dizzyhippos: So you need the Ruler Designer at least for that, and then Legacy of Rome is a good idea because of how it updates military stuff in key ways. After that it's all about what sort of ruler you want to play. Take a look at the list of major expansions and ask "Is that who I want to play and/or would their inclusion make the life of who I am playing more interesting?" For my money, I like Sword of Islam and Old Gods the most, but I haven't spent a lot of time with Rajas of India or Horse Lords so maybe if I did I'd wind up loving those too!

@zedprime: Holy shit! How did we miss this!?

@fiyenyaa:Oooh, okay right! Thanks for the reminder!

@austin_walker: Awesome thanks for the quick answer

Ended up staying up until 3am last night playing CKII, first time playing since the Way of Life expansion came out. Couldn't stop my king of Leon from throwing parties, making babies and securing his future legacy until one of the kids caught the bubonic plague. A month or so later the king is dead leaving a bunch of babies, the queen regent, scheming vassals and Portugal to fight for the power vacuum. It did not end well.

About to dive in for more. Thanks for rekindling the flame, Austin/GBEast!

I've played 700+ hours of this game and, as much as I genuinely love that Austin enjoys it, i't is unbelievably frustrating seeing him not know how to do some fairly basic stuff. I can tell he hasn't played in a few months due to not knowing some of the updated UI things for example

Time to dive right in.

They should have finished this game and ported it over to EUIV so the descendants of Vincenzo could do war with Napoleon. It would only have taken them another 33,500 hours or so.

Great playdate, I hope GBE returns to CK2. It's a great game to let Vinny get real creative while Austin drives.

This inspired me to start a new game of CK2 with the same settings as Vincenzo. Currently Alexenzo pushed out the muslims from the island, converted the people to Catholicism, declared independence from his lord and is currently trying to gain enough territory in the boot of Italy to usurp the title of King of Sicily. Good times.

I always feel a bit lost when i have to play the game myself, but it's pretty entertaining to just watch it play out without having to struggle with the menu's myself.

GBeast has been putting out PURE GOLD lately. @austin_walker you have been such an amazing addition!

please @austin_walker get this to be a Metal Gear Scanlon type feature. It would be soooooooooo good to just play a whole game of Crusader Kings 2 for the site.

Oh boy, I hope this continues.

I wanted to get into this game but I got scared away instantly.

THIS is the way for me to experience this game.

intrigue = baby killing skill. SOLD

I would love to see a part 2 to this.

Wait, did Austin lie to Vinny? Because I'm pretty sure while there might not be Sicilian culture, there's definitely Roman and Italian culture in the game.

Please do more of this! It was super fun!

This was a great playthrough. Would definitely watch more, thanks Austin.

I <3 this so much. I've played CK2 for awhile, but including a group that don't quite know the mechanics really makes it shine. Please keep playing this brilliant game!

@dorianotten: I think that's what they were talking about on the beastcast about irrational anger and such. Nobody cares how long you've played the game for, just enjoy the video or go do something else. Also Austin said in a comment that it's been 2 years since he played, so calm your boots mate.