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[Mono124]

Yeah, but that's not setting their house in order.  That's setting their house on fire.

Look at it this way.  Their entire life, they've been living according to the rules of the nobility.  Then, right before they die, they start trampling all of their vassal's rights.  In real life, that would A be a very confrontational, active thing for a depressed person to do and B almost certainly result in a succession crisis, or the assassination of the heir.  But in CK 2's logic, these sort of actions actually make the heir safer, because AIs don't remember which holdings they used to own or how they lost them.

I'd actually been slowly settings things right the entire time, but yeah, I don't really play my ck2 characters "in character". It is a bit exploity, but I think it's stupid that Wales, Alba (Scotland), and Ireland as well as Britannia as a whole are Medium crown free investiture primogeniture, but because I usurped England instead of chasing down the title owner to his last county, it's low crown papal gavelkind and my dukes keep fighting each other for counties, wasting my levies and making superdukes.

[umiman]

I almost lost the Empire of Britannia in my Ironman game. I had just gotten done being retract/revoke happy trying to fix my ducal dejure lines, and lo and behold, my 80 year old ruler didn't die until he was 95. During those 15 years I had a horrid time bribing everyone and crushing uprisings. Lesson learned, don't retract/revoke unless you are depressed and can suicide immediately, because the RNG will let you live much, much longer than you thought you would.

Haha, I never do that for that exact reason. It always happens that way.

I like imprisoning my vassals though, there's no real need to retract and revoke if they're in jail. And usually when they're in jail, someone else will take their lands.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah, but that's not setting their house in order.  That's setting their house on fire.

Look at it this way.  Their entire life, they've been living according to the rules of the nobility.  Then, right before they die, they start trampling all of their vassal's rights.  In real life, that would A be a very confrontational, active thing for a depressed person to do and B almost certainly result in a succession crisis, or the assassination of the heir.  But in CK 2's logic, these sort of actions actually make the heir safer, because AIs don't remember which holdings they used to own or how they lost them.

I'd actually been slowly settings things right the entire time, but yeah, I don't really play my ck2 characters "in character". It is a bit exploity, but I think it's stupid that Wales, Alba (Scotland), and Ireland as well as Britannia as a whole are Medium crown free investiture primogeniture, but because I usurped England instead of chasing down the title owner to his last county, it's low crown papal gavelkind and my dukes keep fighting each other for counties, wasting my levies and making superdukes.

Couldn't you just destroy the title and re-create it?

[Mono124]

Yeah, but that's not setting their house in order.  That's setting their house on fire.

Look at it this way.  Their entire life, they've been living according to the rules of the nobility.  Then, right before they die, they start trampling all of their vassal's rights.  In real life, that would A be a very confrontational, active thing for a depressed person to do and B almost certainly result in a succession crisis, or the assassination of the heir.  But in CK 2's logic, these sort of actions actually make the heir safer, because AIs don't remember which holdings they used to own or how they lost them.

I'd actually been slowly settings things right the entire time, but yeah, I don't really play my ck2 characters "in character". It is a bit exploity, but I think it's stupid that Wales, Alba (Scotland), and Ireland as well as Britannia as a whole are Medium crown free investiture primogeniture, but because I usurped England instead of chasing down the title owner to his last county, it's low crown papal gavelkind and my dukes keep fighting each other for counties, wasting my levies and making superdukes.

Couldn't you just destroy the title and re-create it?

You cannot destroy gavelkind titles, sadly.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I just got severely upset by the game, as I started as Kildare in 867 (ironman mode) as one of my first games, with the goal of uniting Ireland and maybe using that seat to push the Norse out of Britannia.  Instead, the Norse got themselves a "peasant" revolt that somehow was lead by three leaders with 20+ war stat, and 7000 troops, of which over a thousand were heavy cavalry.  (At at time when no heavy cavalry existed in Western Europe.) They then went on to holy war and annex everything else in Britannia, and there was basically nothing I could do about it - I could spend ALL my gold buying mercenaries, but that only won me a defensive war; I couldn't press the advantage, and they get thousands of troops from nowhere that their counties blatantly are incapable of levying. 

At the same time, after getting my leader all sorts of good traits through things I actually did, like bravery by leading troops in war, I suddenly had all my good traits randomly removed, my son's wife (Princess of Scotland) dies, so he IMMEDIATELY goes off and pisses away his prestige marrying some hunchbacked lisping zealot commoner after flunking his education to a Gray Eminence and getting the Appeaser instead.  At which point I die fairly soon after right in the middle of starting a battle. 

I'm done with this game, at least for a while.  There's too much utterly random crap in this game for me to enjoy it.  None of my choices ever seem to matter because some random BS completely beyond my control always upsets everything I do.  "Progress" in this game seems to be based upon savescumming the crap away, or just plain "cheating" the more obvious way, and starting as someplace huge.

[umiman]

Ireland and UK in general is extremely hard with Old Gods start date. It's almost as bad as playing the Jewish kingdom. Don't blame yourself.

[Descan]

The Norse (and basically the Pagans in general) all start with event troops. So I mean, they're a known factor, it's not a "random levies they can't support".

Well, it technically -is-, but without 'em, the pagans would be fucked over within 2-5 game years.

Instead they fuck everyone else over. Not a perfect system.

[BFEL]

I got the ruler designer DLC for kicks and... holy shit.  Its like a min maxer's wet dream.  Want a sixteen year old with 60 intrigue (or any other stat)?  How about a Sayyid Muslim as the ruler of the HRE?  Maybe you want a billion kids?  Or perhaps you just want to be loaded up with unambiguously good stats right from the start?  You can do all that, and it isn't terribly hard.  My favorite thing is that you can start with the excommunicated trait and then immediately issue a declaration of repentance, netting you +20 in any stats in exchange for >100 gold.

I'm probably not going to play many games with designed rulers (the game is easy enough as it is) but maybe I could think of something to mix up the normal gameplay.

You think that's bad? Try the "Wounded" trait, it nets you free points and goes away after a month or two, leaving behind the "scarred" trait, which is a straight INCREASE in monthly prestige. Also ANYONE can be Sayyid, for ZERO points, so no matter who you are there is no reason outside of RP to not have a random bonus with muslim peeps.
Also its a known fact that attractive women are pretty much guaranteed to be loved by everyone ever. Matrilineal marriages are a pain, but still if you want an easy start to iron out some things you can't go wrong with someone everyone is too busy ogling to war at.

The main drawback of the Ruler Designer in my opinion is that you generally start dynasty-less, which can be a problem if you replace a King or Emperor, but not so much if you replace a count.

[Mono124]

So I broke the Papacy, sortof. I basically created an anti-pope, then claimed the Papacy using him and made him my little pope vassal. I all the sudden started getting 80+ gold per month due to taxes from my new vassal. I decided I didn't want to lose having the pope as my vassal (on succession unless the College is voting for a pope that is from your empire, you lose the pope as a vassal), and used the 80+ gold per month to fund my own bishops and assassinate bishops in the college that were not mine. After a few months, there is a British pope, and 9 British cardinals, and a campaign fund of 300+ being deposited every time a cardinal dies.

[Taricus]

You didn't break the papacy, you made the church of England!

Never mind the seat of power being in Rome. What with Britain's climate, it probably makes a nice change for those bishops

[Maldevious]

Any idea why my rebelling vassals get 5-6 thousand bonus troops for no reason? I am sick of these 'rebels flock to the banner of...' events.

[Tjoh]

The rebels flock to.. event hasn't been balanced for the levy rebalance of 2.0. Should be fixed in the future.

[Digital Hellhound]

Spoiler: I feel so proud (click to show/hide)

So what happens when you give a man cash cheats, frustration, and too much time on his hands? Yes, all of them took the throne and died on the same day. I'm imagining this continuous stream of would-be Dukes and Duchesses* rushing into the coronation chamber only to be set upon by an endless army of ninjas - or possibly just falling into spikes or an endless void or something.

Immediately after unpausing, I was killed by a hooded stranger. Given that I killed every member of their dynasty, it was probably just the vengeful ghosts of the dead that killed me.

*Granted, like five of them were still unlanded when I dealt with them.

[NW_Kohaku]

The Norse (and basically the Pagans in general) all start with event troops. So I mean, they're a known factor, it's not a "random levies they can't support".

Well, it technically -is-, but without 'em, the pagans would be fucked over within 2-5 game years.

Instead they fuck everyone else over. Not a perfect system.

No, it's not the Norse, themselves, it's the "peasant" revolts.

The Norse took over a county near the south of Ireland, and then the religious/cultural unrest and other factors caused the revolt chance to hit 90%, and a revolt took place, spawning in 7000 troops from nowhere. 

This "rebellion" had leaders with 20+ military stat, and was hostile to everyone (but at the time, I could just get out of the way,) even while conquering most of what the soon-to-be Kingdom of Denmark had taken from England/Ireland.  I tried to lead a strike against Denmark, taking advantage of the "cover" the rebellion provided, but trying to take anything during this revolt meant that ultimate doom stack of 7000 troops would come my way to take their castles back. 

Once they won their rebellion because NOBODY could stop them, they declared themselves King of Ireland, made the Kingdom of Ireland, (when they only had 2 of the counties of Ireland, and I had 6 of the 7 I needed to make the kingdom!,) and then started annexing everything else. 

And Ireland wasn't the only place that happened - Scotland was getting clobbered by the pagans, so they had a 7000 troop super army spawn in from nowhere as a "peasant" revolt in a country whose actual kingdom was only capable of mustering 1500 troops on a good day.  West Francia had nearly obtained a full Frankish Empire before being ripped apart by two simultanious "peasant" revolts that spit out triple the number of troops on its lap than any of its non-cheating neighbors could muster. 

The "peasant revolt" system is just flagrantly broken and completely unsuited for that time period.  Since when do "peasants" have thousands of knights at their disposal?  Where were they keeping them?  The simple answer is that these aren't peasants, they're obviously just generating some mercenary doom stacks to create an army, and don't give half a damn about game balance when they create these things.

In Old Gods, the castles and such have no upgrades whatsoever, so I'm capable of mustering about 400 troops per county I can control, but these guys spawn in troop numbers that are obviously geared towards giving an established kingdom from 1066+ trouble.  It's flagrantly unbalanced.

Again, I thought this game had had years of patching to balance this stuff out?  These things like mercenaries and peasant revolts are blindingly obviously unbalanced, I can't imagine they wouldn't have figured this stuff out if they had ever bothered playtesting their game at all.

[Fniff]

Spoiler: I feel so proud (click to show/hide)

So what happens when you give a man cash cheats, frustration, and too much time on his hands? Yes, all of them took the throne and died on the same day. I'm imagining this continuous stream of would-be Dukes and Duchesses* rushing into the coronation chamber only to be set upon by an endless army of ninjas - or possibly just falling into spikes or an endless void or something.

Immediately after unpausing, I was killed by a hooded stranger. Given that I killed every member of their dynasty, it was probably just the vengeful ghosts of the dead that killed me.

*Granted, like five of them were still unlanded when I dealt with them.

Congratulations, you are now a medieval fantasy villain.