This topic made me go watch the quick look. The quick look made me buy the game. This game is going to destroy my life.
Crusader Kings II
Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Apr 18, 2012
The sequel to Paradox Interactive's Crusader Kings is a grand strategy game that focuses mostly on the dynasties of medieval Europe. Games begin as early as 769 and can span until 1453. Expansions have expanded the game's scope to include the Middle East, India and the Eurasian Steppe.
This game is fucking insane. Let me explain how.
Apparently randomly marrying your daughters into every single major European power will at some point pay off. Let it be known that Ireland was saved by the intervention of the Holy Roman Empire. Together we tear down Thunderdome.
At the end of all of this - after three, four or maybe five civil wars - I've finally gotten some sort of grasp of how I want to deal with vassals. First of all: don't randomly revoke their titles. Rather than understanding my brilliant strategies, the act of revoking reorganizing titles and land apparently get easily misinterpreted as acts of tyranny. This is not good and adds a negative score to everyone. Secondly: Occasionally isolate the angriest, or the most powerful, and either provoke them into an uprising or steal their stuff through generating false claims. Then fuck their shit up and banish them to Cornwall. Thirdly: hoard gold like crazy and rely on mercenaries rather than the troops of your vassals/your holdings. At least until you have the land and cash flow to get some beefy castles.
The Kingdom of Ireland has now enjoyed about 100 years or so of relative peace and calm. I've got about 35k soldiers (30/70 split between me and my vassals) and a steady stream of cash. My vassals are expanding (on their own I should say, which is pretty fucking cool to watch. Whenever there's civil war in either Scotland or England they take a stab at grabbing some more land.) in Scotland and southern England. Inheritance is split up among sons, but there's only one kingdom to inherit now. Everyone likes me. Even the angry dwarf lady that runs my shit on the English mainland.
... I'm still a fucking idiot though. My latest misadventure took off when the pope called a crusade against Finland. "Hey, Finland ain't shit." I thought to myself and started calling in all my troops. I didn't read the fine print though. While it was a holy war for Finland, it wasn't a holy war against Finland. I sail over there. Hungry for glory and local delicacies such as grötpiroger and mämmi. Ready to turn the thousand lakes of Finland red. I land with ten thousand men and suddenly realize that the portrait of the man I'm fighting doesn't look very Finnish at all. In fact, the man looks sort of Asian. Oh... that's the Golden Horde. Oh.... that's a stack of sixty thousand men and horses coming towards Karelia. Oh... I just disbanded all my ships because I'm too greedy to pay the small upkeep. Oh... my king is leading this army.
About five minutes ago my first game of Crusader Kings II ended. Guess which one of my kings accumulated the most score during one individual reign? Yep. King Dude the accidental conquerer of Jerusalem. My last ruler was second best and got 8k while the great primordial Dude King managed to get a whoppin' 10k. Total score: 62953.
What was the state of the Kingdom of Ireland when the game hit the year limit of 1453? Well...
I managed to conquer Scotland from the Genoese. Yes, the Genoese spread from their trading posts into the castles and keeps of Scotland. They were rich and held land in Italy, Scandinavia, continental Europe and Africa. They had one major weakness though: the crazy ass Doge had converted to some weird cult. Anyone could at any point declare holy war against them and their wizard Doge. And I did. Like a motherfucker. Over and over again until the beautiful green of Ireland spread all over Scotland like a moss that specialized at punching the Genoese in the face.
My crusadin' adventure in Finland did not end well, big surprise there, but fifty years later down the line the paragons of Christian virtue, faith and will were called back into Northern Europe once more. This time against Sweden. Sweden which had converted to the religion of the Mongols. Like a bunch of punk-ass bitches. They bet on the wrong horse lord though. The Timurids had them wedged in from the east and now a crusade was coming from the west.
It was a rather short affair and I was granted the lands of Sweden and the years that remained of my game looked peaceful from where I was standing. But by now we all know that I'm not only tactically incompetent, but rather just incompetent in general. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, the Timurids started spreading across Scandinavia. Yes, I was stupid enough to fight them. One landless lord in Ireland (whom I recently tried to murder because he'd already come at the king once and missed) managed to gather enough support for a rebellion. Meanwhile I lose an army of 50k against a 120k Timurid stack. The Kingdom falls apart and separates into five or so pieces... and this is the last thing that happens before my final score pops up and the game ends with a cliffhanger.
What happened to Cornwall? Well, we reconciled and the man that ended up running it during the reign of the last Dude King was a genius with a military rank of 25. He helped me beat the Genoese in a war that lasted about 5 years. He was imprisoned twice. At one point by the Genoese and at one point by me. I clicked the wrong button, he forgave me. That's true brotherhood. They were one of the few that stood by me as civil war erupted right after we lost 90% of our military to the Timurid horde. Ultimately the Cornish and I shared two very important traits: stupidity and bravery. The unofficial motto of the Dude dynasty.
Thanks for reading duders.
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