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[ibot66]

What would you like me to show you? Me crying in Constantinople?

Mostly religion/ culture maps.
Also the kingdoms.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Never make kingdoms in an elective empire, that's just asking for trouble. Hell personally I never make kingdom vassals ever as any succession type. Retinues, personal and close by vassal levies with a sprinkling of mercs is generally enough to squash any army. Plus you just lose way too much taxes and levies by going through another vassal level, even more so if you're imprisoning the poor bastards all the time.

In elective want to make sure electors have as little votes and power as possible. A series of arch-prince bishops will make sure that your own personal vote is upheld. Make sure that as many vassals as possible remain counts especially those outside of your de jure so you don't have to deal with too many electors.
Finally make sure if you plan to land your kinsmen with electoral titles that they're not of your direct line and instead fairly removed. This will give you more options to vote for incase your own line gets plagued by a hereditary disease and also will remove some of the nasty relationship maluses for close family that elective brings. Under no circumstance do you want your children having electoral titles since it carries a massive -35 relationship hit (first son) and -15 thereafter.

Personally I find while elective is very powerful I tend to move away from it before becoming an empire. Elective is best used to play marriage games and to shape/build a kingdom. Tanistry is perhaps the best and most stable empire succession choice but it does take some manipulation to really get going and of course is limited to the Celts.

[umiman]

I'm not a big fan of metagaming the system too much as I find it's really boring. I've "beaten" the game so many times before so these times I'm only really looking for fun. I could do quite well with just tonnes of dukes but it's silly. Far more interesting to have the myriad of kings scheming under me while I reign supreme. Also having the entire kingdoms is hilarious for conquests and rebel squashing. My favorite was the Kingdom of Scotland which for some reason, had small little plots of land EVERYWHERE! I could be fighting a losing battle in Italy and desperate for reinforcements when I notice Scotland owns Venice. Oh hey, 30,000 men out of thin air! 

I also like occasionally keeping low royal authority just to see what kind of chaos my vassals cause.

It also provides a much healthier challenge to the game since, as I evidenced, I can be destroyed quite easily if I screw up. I like that.

I should try out tanistry though, never had a chance to before. Is it limited to Scotland? I used ultimogeniture for this run and it was very good.

[Dutchling]

It's limited to the Celtic religion group, but you can get it even if you're unreformed pagan.

[Descan]

Celtic -religion- group? I think you mean culture.

One of the things I like doing in CK2 is taking over kingdoms and then giving them independance as their own state, with my religion (I tend to play as an infidel surrounded by heathens ) in the head and none of their vassals changed religion. It helps that sieging provinces gives you children captives, so I can educate them as my religion (hopefully not culture too :C) and then when they're adults, free them and then invite to court. As a heathen in the court, and as a shared religion, they tend to say "Hey yeah sure", then I can press their claim on the kingdom.

Tuathan Egypt here we go~

[jhxmt]

Started first game of CK2 in ages, first game of Old Gods ever.  Started as High Chief of Zelkiewskiziaeitaicha (I may not have remembered the name correctly).  Used ruler builder to make a weak, hedonistic, lustful, cruel, proud, patient, genius ruler.  Immediately moved to imprison my three vassals to claim their holdings.  One rebelled, put him down using the levies from the other two.  All three vassals in prison.  Can't banish them as I don't have the piety.  Drat.  (I can't recall - it's banishing that gives you their holdings, right?)

So I declare war on a de jure county next to me.  Attack it, besiege the castle.  They can hardly muster any troops elsewhere, while I have eight hundred guys knocking on their front door.  Yes, this is indeed how my crushing of the world begi-

GAME OVER.

Note to self: when playing with a weak ruler with no heir (yet), don't let him lead the charge at your enemies' castle.  Sigh.

[Descan]

Banishing gives you all their money and all their holdings.

Having a few rich vassals is good for emergencies, imprison him and banish him and get all his money to get mercenaries to fight off the invaders who drove you to this.

I usually banish people if I can get away with it, like foreign adventurers with 900 gold each.

[umiman]

Can't run a good empire without a few profitable banishments.

[Felius]

Elective is suicide in large empires.

I didn't want to develop carpal tunnel syndrome, so I had to create lots of duchies and kingdoms to minimize army organizing time to fight rebels and other such threats. When you make kingdoms and such, all you have to do is select one of their provinces to summon their entire levy. So you can easily create 10,000 strong armies in foreign lands. It's one of the reasons why I could expand so easily. I used the Islamic gilded cage system of imprisoning all the major kings so they couldn't really cause any trouble. However, my previous Emperor died so suddenly that I didn't realize I only imprisoned 3 kings this time.

Not to mention all the previous successions tended to go relatively well with only minor rebellions as they were all quite normal. Males, with good traits, excellent diplomacy and the massive prestige of the dynasty. This time, I had so many negative relationship traits and terrible diplomacy.

I could have save scummed to fix that, but that's not really fun.

Anyway, here's Norse Britannia a few years before the collapse. We conquered everything and I had about 8 kings under my control. There were many kingdoms I couldn't create simply because of the creation requirements. My main kingdom was Ireland but I sent all my retinue troops to blitzkrieg Constantinople so I could move my stuff there. That moving all my retinue troops is what really killed me.

http://i.imgur.com/IOa6ccQ.jpg

Most of the misc conquests you see all over the place were from my various kingdoms and duchies going out and declaring wars. It was another of the reasons why we could expand so well. Very easy to grow when you've effectively got a dozen independent conquerors operating under your name. Almost the whole of Spain, Scandinavia and Lithuania were done by my vassals. I should have shown you a picture of the kingdoms so you can see just how varied the conquests were.

Dat Empire!

All Hail Britannia!

But seriously though, elective in big empires is not that bad, specially if you seed your dynasty in all major titles around. Even if your ideal candidate does lose the election, you still get a dynasty member in the throne and therefore play as him.

[umiman]

I managed to take back my empire! Thank you factions!

So many brutal civil wars, this is why I love CK2 so much. The intrigue is just so lovely.

Anyway, you guys wanted more maps right so I thought I'd show you.

http://i.imgur.com/vUBBu32.jpg

So in this first image you can see what I did in the 29 years past disaster. Empress Unnecessary's sister (Empress Finally) took over, rallied the kingdoms and retook the empire. After that, she decided to have the entire nation "born again" and rechristened Britannia to Scandinavia. Following that she declared great holy war on Africa and took almost the entire thing in one sweep. The rapidity in which they surrendered was absurd, barely 2 weeks. The rest of her vassals of course, continue to sweep through the East on their own accord like a plague.

http://i.imgur.com/lHAYt9o.jpg

In this second image is all the vassal kings under her domain. I believe there are 15. Skotland, England, France, Aquitaine, Norway, Lotharinga, Asturias, Africa, Germany, Bavaria, Pomerania, Denmark, Svipjod, Finland, Burgandy. As you can see, when you get to such a ridiculous size, kingdoms are basically duchies. Also note just how widespread everyone is. Everyone has land everywhere.

http://i.imgur.com/6YiBIxt.jpg

Finally religion. For some reason Norse spreads extremely fast. It's probably because of the permanent 100% authority from all the constant holy wars. Catholics no longer exist, though we gave the Pope a church off in the boondocks somewhere. I don't really know where he is but occasionally he'll declare a crusade. It's quite cute, like a pet.

[Mongol13524]

Any advice on retinue composition?

[somebody]

Any advice on retinue composition?

Go for culture specific retinues, they usually come with culture specific buildings which make them even stronger.

Also Greek culture retinues are OP.

[Djohaal]

Playing CK2 with a friend is even more fun. He played as a norse queen while I played as Djohaal Mac Djohaal from Ormond. My char was quite skilled, and as soon as I took desmond an angry oldfart king from brittany shows up with 3000 trops and ends my fun by bludgeoning my head. I'm comatose and my only daughter is retarded, and sadly my wife isn't into kinky sex with her comatose husband. So I eventually die and my retarded daughter who is universally 0 skill assumes, everyone hates her.

By a stroke of luck I manage to marry the chaste brother from the serene doge, and in another war for a claim I made for my friend (who was my lord during that time), I get arrested by the enemy as peace claim. Fortunately I had two sons in that period... the elder one is also retarded. After escaping the jail and arresting my husband who was stealing funds as regent, now I asked my buddy to plot to murder my elder son, while I'm pampering the younger (non-drooling) son to a life as a good ruler. Once he comes of age I'll probably rebel against my friend's rule, only to give myself in to be arrested and executed so my son can get things going in that damn county.

[Felius]

Playing CK2 with a friend is even more fun. He played as a norse queen while I played as Djohaal Mac Djohaal from Ormond. My char was quite skilled, and as soon as I took desmond an angry oldfart king from brittany shows up with 3000 trops and ends my fun by bludgeoning my head. I'm comatose and my only daughter is retarded, and sadly my wife isn't into kinky sex with her comatose husband. So I eventually die and my retarded daughter who is universally 0 skill assumes, everyone hates her.

By a stroke of luck I manage to marry the chaste brother from the serene doge, and in another war for a claim I made for my friend (who was my lord during that time), I get arrested by the enemy as peace claim. Fortunately I had two sons in that period... the elder one is also retarded. After escaping the jail and arresting my husband who was stealing funds as regent, now I asked my buddy to plot to murder my elder son, while I'm pampering the younger (non-drooling) son to a life as a good ruler. Once he comes of age I'll probably rebel against my friend's rule, only to give myself in to be arrested and executed so my son can get things going in that damn county.

This really makes me wonder why you didn't go elective. If your dynasty is bigger than the immediate family you could put a cousin in the throne and be done with it.

[Djohaal]

-snip-

This really makes me wonder why you didn't go elective. If your dynasty is bigger than the immediate family you could put a cousin in the throne and be done with it.

My dynasty was just... me. Then just my retarded daughter. Then just her retarded and not retarded son. Risky gambit indeed, if the smart son dies of black death before getting some courtesan preggo.
Plus I couldn't touch the sucession laws because queen derpina was hated by all her vassals like -90.