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[cerapa]

Once again, no, it wasn't a faction or anything, it was a peasant revolt against the Dutch invaders.

They called themselves the "Irish Liberation Army", they won and created and claimed for themselves the "Kingdom of Ireland" at the same time, even though they only controlled two counties in Ireland.  Then they started annexing the rest of Ireland with their super-stacks because the independent counties could only muster 400 units to their 8000. 

Oh. I ran into one of those in Poland. Quite crushable and gave 200 prestige when defeated I think. A bit tougher than regular peasants though, so all the counts should still be vassals(or are the Irish minors dukes? I don't play in that area).

Were you the person that got the rebellion? If the ones getting the rebellion didn't crush the stack, then yeah, they stick around and wreak havoc. If you were one of the Irish minors, then the best option would have been to swear fealty and eat it from the inside-out. And I'm pretty sure de-jure claims cause vassalization when pushed.

Two things:

First, a quick look at the achievement boards states that only 5% of players ever use Ironman Mode, the mode that exists explicitly for preventing savescumming.  My complaint was that this sort of utterly random crap is easily countered through savescumming, so that tells me an awful lot about how people are playing this game.  It also tells me how utterly garbage Paradox's crapshoot events sub-systems are in this supposedly strategic game.  There is little to nothing at all strategic about these random events, but they tend to make up the bulk of what you contend with in the game, because few events besides open conflict can be resolved with actual strategy. 

Second, it's pretty clear that most players are going the easier road of either playing as a king or emperor or else playing as someone who can easily marry into, inherit, or usurp a kingdom or empire.  The fact that most of these problems I'm complaining about are so unsolvable at the duke/count level is probably why most people are not playing these smaller roles. 

So yes, apparently, nobody is playing the game, at least, the one I'm playing.

Most people don't use ironman cause the saving times get quite ridicilous. Plus most people just aren't interested in that stuff.

There really are a lot of events that can screw you over and where you can't do anything about them, like a string of deaths or a bunch of rebellions at the same time as an invasion. Most of the strategy comes from preventing those things from happening or destroying you by holding as good a demense as possible, controlling your vassals and keeping fat stacks of gold around in case you need mercenaries.

I was actually under the impression that a lot of people start as dukes or counts. Personally I never start with kingdoms. Managing someone elses power structure without eating it from the inside out is a pain in the ass. But to be fair, I don't play as independant dukes and counts. Independant dukes and counts are just fucked. Unless you are a pagan, in which cause everyone else is fucked.

[Wiles]

Once again, no, it wasn't a faction or anything, it was a peasant revolt against the Dutch invaders.

They called themselves the "Irish Liberation Army", they won and created and claimed for themselves the "Kingdom of Ireland" at the same time, even though they only controlled two counties in Ireland.  Then they started annexing the rest of Ireland with their super-stacks because the independent counties could only muster 400 units to their 8000. 

I'm not trying to say it's a faction revolt. I'm just trying to point out that it is not a peasant revolt, it's a different beast entirely that is a lot stronger than a peasant revolt. Peasant revolts typically have mostly light infantry and they never usurp/create kingdoms when they are successful. This type of revolt consists of "landed nobles" (again, nothing to do with factions or vassals) and have a lot better units and a lot more of them (large enough armies to take on King level realms). 

I'd argue that playing at the Duke and Count level is doable, perhaps a lot of people don't have the patience for it but for me it is the more interesting way to play the game. Some starts are hard, and sometimes random events pop up that are unfair. "Unfairness" is an element of the game that appeals to some and not to others. Saying there is no way to deal with these events strategically is something I don't agree with, there are ways out of a lot of situations. The more familiar you are with the game the more easily these "unfair" events are dealt with. Sometimes you have to lose a lot of ground, but that's the nature of the game. I enjoyed my first Ironman playthrough, I had to suck it up and lose some ground now and then instead of my usual reload 'till I win approach. It was a refreshing change of pace.  I don't think I'll keep playing Ironman though, the save times on my crappy laptop got a bit long nearing the end.

The added bugginess of the new releases can be frustrating. It's a game that has evolved a lot since it came out, and this last release was a fairly major balance change. Usually the bugs aren't this numerous or this bad. There have been lots of beta patches and it's been fairly obvious that the small team that is still working on Crusader Kings have been working hard to fix them.

[Mono124]

I don't know what the hell happened with the new update, but I had an easily crushable revolt happen in Scotland (14k of their levies vs 20k of mine) and I was destroyed when they were reinforced 16k troops from nowhere. I had no chance, they crushed me.

[Maldevious]

I don't know what the hell happened with the new update, but I had an easily crushable revolt happen in Scotland (14k of their levies vs 20k of mine) and I was destroyed when they were reinforced 16k troops from nowhere. I had no chance, they crushed me.

Is this even after today's most recent update? If so, that is disappointing.

[Mono124]

I don't know what the hell happened with the new update, but I had an easily crushable revolt happen in Scotland (14k of their levies vs 20k of mine) and I was destroyed when they were reinforced 16k troops from nowhere. I had no chance, they crushed me.

Is this even after today's most recent update? If so, that is disappointing.

Yeah. I'm not sure if it might be because I used an old save or what, but it was after 2.02.

[BFEL]

So I started a Ironman game with a Designed Ruler, Catrina of Dorset. She started with 30 intrigue and the Attractive and Strong traits. Hilarity Ensued when she matrilineally married the second in line to West Francia. Unfortunately that didn't stick because that guy was maimed and had a bad habit of dying from that. Stupid lightweight. Can't even take a little friendly amputation! And the bastard didn't have the decency to get poor sweet Catrina preggered before dropping either!

Anyway, later married some other dude, a relatively minor Prince of somewhere I don't give a fuck about. Have like 8 kids now, its getting ridiculous.
But yeah, Wessex, which I am unfortunately tied to. The bastard king tried to revoke Somerset from me. I found out about his plan beforehand and plotted his death. Sadly, he found out and everyone pulled out of it. THEN he actually pulled the revoke, which I denied and handily beat him with a little help from my friends that I bought with jewish gold. Well, white peace because pagans right next door, no time to faff about stabbing each other. Now we just sit next door to each other and hate silently while we wait for the truce to wear off.

Oh and yeah, pagans. Jorvik is pretty decent, but Jylland took pretty much the entire middle of England because I don't know. And then some other pagans I don't know knocked on my door and I merced them to death. Wessex is pretty handily fucked right now, the whole kingdom is just Dorset, Wessex and like 3 other places (Somerset got taken by pagans)
I am having quite a lot of fun

[kaian-a-coel]

Yeah, 867 england pagans get quite ridiculous. My previous game had Jorvik's queen eating all of england and wales and half of scotland while I desperatly tried to unify ireland. She had like 20k stacks by the time I quitted definitively (and restarded another game in italy). That was before 2.0 though.

What, for some, appears to be random unfairness (or unfair randomness), is most of the time player errors. Your ruler died and suddenly some half-cousin press his weak claim agains your 6-years old? Well maybe you shouldn't let your character lead armies without an adult heir as a back up. And forget about marriages giving claims to random people. (learned this one the hard way).

[Dutchling]

My Irish game went pretty smoothly, although that mostly happened due to failing pagans. The only real threat was Brittany but Jews + imprisoning and banishing mayors made me survive them.

[kaian-a-coel]

Ha. In my irish game britanny was utterly screwed. I had a county, england another, and a third went to norway of all things. I think east francia got some too. XD

Also muslims all the way up to the Loire, one more county and I would have had common border with the Umayyad. As Ireland.

[Digital Hellhound]

867 England's Norse nations always seem to be swarmed by all the Catholics and convert to save their own hides in my games. I did once witness a Muslim-Skotland deathmatch over the island, which goes down as one of the most strangest scenarios I've seen in CK2.

(Skotland won, unifying Britannia as Norse, but never created the Empire title, sadly.)

[Descan]

I think lowering the starting event-levies for the Pagans in England would go a long way to fixing that issue.

I think what should happen is that they have a relatively good success early on, but lose their troops over time and get beaten down by the Catholic pain-train, unless played by a player who can handle it.

I haven't played since religious rebels were put in, so maybe that helps after a Norse conquest.

[mainiac]

I think lowering the starting event-levies for the Pagans in England would go a long way to fixing that issue.

The problem is that the mechanics don't favor a balance of power.  The more the norse conquer, the weaker the catholics get.  Rebels don't work with the catholics so they are basically a third faction.  There won't be balance between norse and catholic unless the norse conquer exactly the right number of counties while loosing exactly the right number of event troops.

[umiman]

I only have about 40 years left before my game finally ends. Holy crap, I've never actually "completed" a CK2 game before.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I listened to some of the guys on here and proceeded conquering through England and Spain. Not sure about North Africa as I don't like having to traverse all the way there all the time. It's funny that when you vassalize the Papacy, you can make the Pope grant you titles for anything you want, so conquering things is a piece of cake. I've even used the guaranteed excommunications to replace enemy kings with my family members.

I'm trying to get Ireland but I'm not sure if my plan will work. Maybe you guys know the mechanics.

Right now Ireland uses the elective succession type, so even though I managed to get my half-brother's sperm in their queen, the children aren't getting nominated. I'm thinking that once the son gets 16, I'll assassinate the queen and use the son to force a kingdom claim on the whole land.

Norway is just having a minor civil war and I'll probably step in at some point and instate Imperial rule.

-------------------------------

By the way, since I don't have much to do in game I spend quite a lot of time watching my vassals and they get into some very interesting shenanigans.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem for example is very odd. I founded it several hundred years before this point in time when the Pope gave the land to me after we won the crusade. I gave the title to one of my family members and told him to take care of it, gave him independence, then I buggered off as I didn't want to deal with the inevitable gigantic doomstack retribution. Within 5 years, he got reconquered by the Muslims.

I kinda wrote it off at that point but when we retook the place about 20 years before this time, I found an extremely weird situation:

1. When you take lands as a victory in a crusade, you evict all the non-Christians and subjugate their lands for yourself. In this case I didn't get anything, as everyone in Jerusalem was apparently Christian.
2. It wasn't a duchy any more, the family members I sent to handle it turned it into the Kingdom of Jerusalem while they were vassalized under the Muslims. They did this while still remaining Christian somehow.
3. Their succession laws are absolute cognatic. Wtf? So they are actually run by queens.
4. They somehow managed to change their entire culture type to Levantine, even though the initial guy I gave independence to was German. I have no freaking idea where they got that culture group from as it didn't even exist before them as far as I've seen.
5. The Karlings were still in charge, which doesn't make sense at all as they should have been deposed by the Jihad that got rid of them in the first place.

[Descan]

If you want to, on completion you can create interesting vassals and then release them, then convert it to EU4. Like a Catholic Greece (you might have to cheat to get this one working, like "givetitle k_greece" or whatever and then give a courtier that title, don't think you can form it without Greek culture), surviving Jerusalem, etc.

You can go further if you can find different culture/religion courtiers, like making a Coptic Egypt or an Orthodox England.

Edit: Levantine might be a melting-pot culture like English is, formed after a Jersualem has been around for a while.

[umiman]

Greece is Catholic. I converted the entire Byzantine Empire very, very, very early on in this campaign. Strategic marriages and strategic assassinations get you everywhere.

And yeah, I think that must be how Levantine must have been formed. They must have switched to Baltic at some point to get Absolute Cognatic, then transformed to Levantine.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this Ironman game. Being forced to stick with my mistakes and such made me see some very interesting and amusing scenarios. And all the major victories way back when I was still a Duke / King felt so massive as there was no recourse if I failed. So this current situation where I rule over everything feels quite special. I've never gotten this far even without ironman mode in the past.