For someone who still hasn't given himself the time to play any Crusader Kings II as of late, I'm super pumped for this expansion! Being from Norway makes it even more fun. I plan to play as Danish King Canute II and conquer all of England and the North. Viking domination, yes please.

Oh yeah, super extreme trailer. Beards.

This was great lol thanks!

Wish I could run this game on my computer, Ill have to settle for still trying to learn Europa Universalis 3

Picked this up as soon as I woke up today. I have like 250 hours in Crusader Kings 2, but just randomly mess around rather than go all out. I really should start getting into the nuance of the game as that's when it really takes off. Also if you don't have Crusader Kings 2 yet you can generally find it on sale for $10 on Steam, Amazon, or Green Man Gaming.

This is.... this is wonderful!

That trailer was fantastic.

So extreme!

My most played game of all time. Paradox is incredible. Good luck with your Danish invasion man, I've been playing as Ivar the Boneless since this morning and the poor Danes have been getting shit on by my brothers armies lol!

For those unaware of Crusader Kings 2 still I can't recommend it and the Game of Throne mod (with vikings and pagans enabled, Essos is on it's way :D!) that the community made enough.

I love the style of humor Paradox has. The beards bit especially is making me consider learning how the heck to play CKII.

IMO best way to learn to play:
hit the ~ key

type in cash (gives you 5000 gold) piety(5000 piety) prestige(5000 prestige)

repeat as often as you like

I felt like playing a few games with cheats let me run through all the systems and just sort of press buttons and see what they did. Also the last update has made the game way more approachable imo. Tech tree has been completely revamped and I think they even updated it with a new tutorial.

Yep, they did kinda update the tutorial but those cheats are the better way of learning how to play the game till you're good enough to play without. You could also give your character all the best traits by typing add_trait (trait name, e.g. brave) after pressing ~

I didn't know this, thanks. I'll try it out and see if I can't learn more about the mechanics and functions.

As is usually the way with expansions for CKII, Vikings in the Old Gods start date are super OP. I managed to conquer almost all of Scandinavia, northern Germany, and northern Poland within the lifetime of two rulers. Sure, gavelkind succession complicates matters by meaning that every son of your ruler inherits a portion of his lands upon his death, but if you just keep one king title, then the main heir still gets all the vassals, and your brothers are vassals to you as well, meaning that you can find fun and creative ways to screw them over without outright warfare. Also in the game I played, almost all of Britain fell to the Norse, and the talk of making the Baltic pagans better able to defend themselves doesn't seem to have come to fruition, as me (Denmark) and Sweden found it pretty easy to take lands in Lithuania and Pomerania. My conquest of the Finno-Ugric tribes in Finland has also been swift and elementary. Magyars also seem pretty powerful, conquering much of the area around Romania, Bulgaria, Cumania, and southern Poland before or after settling in Hungary.

That aside, it's a great expansion. There's still a ton of stuff that I haven't tried yet which I'm super curious about - for now, all Viking lands have the culture "Norse", and the claim is that eventually there will be a schism which creates the specific Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish cultures. But just the fact that they gave you an option to start 200 years earlier is enticing enough; it means you actually have the time to build a strong empire in Persia or Russia before you get steamrolled by the Mongols (I did once build up a strong enough Russian empire to resist the Mongols and crush them, but that's only because I was super lucky).

And speaking of the Mongols, I love that they're now playable. I've spent a lot of time fighting, dreading, and cursing them, and now I get to be on the other end of it. You can even play as Genghis Khan himself, so I am definitely going to see just how much land I can conquer as the Mongols - the furthest I've seen them get previously is the Golden Horde in eastern Germany and the Ilkhanate in Anatolia and Greece.

@atlas: Mongols are great, they even have their own flavor events! Best part is, if you have the character creator, the Mongols are like a build your own empire from scratch. You start with like 60000 men so you're virtually unbeatable. I can't wait to try playing as Mali from the earliest start date myself.

I love raiding, raiding is the best new mechanic ever

So metal...

The real key to learning CK2 as a new player is just accepting that getting your ass kicked is part of the fun. Even the people who really know what they're doing will still occasionally get screwed over by the RNG by unlucky assassinations, bad trait rolls, that bastard pagan neighbor who won't stop molesting your border provinces, whatever the hell else. The reality of the game is that the constant emergent gameplay that might make it feel like you're just getting stomped on is a huge part of what makes CK2 (and other Paradox games, for that matter) so endlessly fascinating for people who take the time to get under the surface. There just aren't many situations where even when you felt like you had your ass completely kicked in that you won't be able to come back, even if one of your heirs will have to be the one to get the job done.