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[stabbymcstabstab]

It's singleplayer so don't feel bad

[RedKing]

Recently finished up a game where I started as Genghis Khan (from the "The Mongols" bookmark). Six generations later, the borders of the Khanate stretched from Sindh to the Polish-Hungarian border and included all of Russia, Persia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Managed to reform Tengriism and spread it through the vast majority of the Khanate, especially after I crushed the Sunni Caliphate and dropped their moral authority to a whopping 2.0 thanks to holding Jerusalem, Baghdad, Mecca and Medina (and they lost Cordoba to a Navarrese crusade). Oh, and after 100 years or so of having my capital in Crimea, I moved it to Constantinople.

Twice I completely conquered Hungary, and twice the Catholics waged a successful crusade to recover it. As big as the Great Khan's hordes are, it's a tough slog against the HRE, France, England, the Holy Orders, *and* all the mercenaries in Europe (thanks to the deep pockets of the Holy See). Especially when they've got lots of heavy infantry in mountainous terrain against metric fucktons of horse archers and light cavalry. The 2nd Crusade went on 21 years. 


Oh, and I played with Sunset Invasion on, thinking the Aztecs would take that pressure off me and let me steamroll the HRE. Fucking feather-heads conquered Iceland, Norway and Galicia. And then proceeded to sit there and do nothing for the next 200 years. What kind of sorry excuse for bloodthirsty Aztecs are these??

[Retropunch]

As I see it as a historical game trying to be as realistic as possible, I've cheated in completely unfair circumstances which would be incredibly unlikely. I once had such an overwhelmingly bad streak of luck with events on a game that had been going well for ages that I just decided that it was too much going wrong for it to make any conceivable sense.

Part of the fun is in the chaos, but at the same time it can be a little bit *too* chaotic, especially when you don't have as much control over the circumstances as you probably would in real life. Games are supposed to be enjoyed, so if you get more enjoyment out of it then I don't think it's a problem!

[EnigmaticHat]

- You can petition the Pope for an invasion, but that's difficult to pull off. Additionally, if the area you're invading is heretic or infidel, you always have the Holy War casus belli. Otherwise, you're going to have to rely on fabricated claims.

Be careful with this... the pope's opinion of you nosedives if you request one (I forget by how much but I think it was a healthy dip).  In my attempt to unite Spain at some point I realized I could swallow Aragon whole if I simply Requested Invasion, and the Pope granted it.  However, his opinion of me cratered into the negatives, so the King of Aragon had me instantly excommunicated.  All the other Spanish kingdoms united with Aragon instead of me (pulling in even the Irish from familial ties), and my own kingdom sank into civil war.  In the ensuing chaos, the Muslims of course took that opportunity to raise hell.  I had to empty the treasury to hire half the mercenaries in Europe to recover, it was pretty brutal.  I have to admit it was one of the more gratifying wars to win by the time it was all over, but it was also the most unexpected war I had gotten myself into and nearly ruined me.

If you want to make the pope like you you can give land to Catholic religious characters (aka bishops) or buy indulgences.  You can also send the court chaplain to improve religious relationships in Rome.

[kaian-a-coel]

It's 969 and I finally got an empire.
Thanks to a revolt in the kingdom next door I was able to conquer a single county, which led to me being able to usurp Cumania!
I then sent vassalisation requests to pretty much everyone, with mixed success. Three dukes remained and refused to submit. I conquered one of their three counties each, and then things happened.
The previously Tengri ruthenia was invaded by a Host, and despite my help were defeated.
The pope called for a crusade on tengri Hungary (third crusade of the game!), which was repelled. The vast armies of the HRE, west francia, and gargamel the duke (guy had like 7000 men in three counties! wtf?) were annihilated by the Tengri hordes.

THEN I was able to do an extremely quick holy war on a duke that was lying around and reached the 80% necessary for the empire. Spent ten minutes creating kingdoms, giving them away, and cleaning up the borders.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next target: bloody ruthenia (I'd appreciate a Great Holy War), then suomenusko Russia once I reach lvl4 tech.
Or maybe the muslims.

[Sheb]

I find the game way to easy once you get an Empire and can set up claimants on Kingdom.

[Korbac]

I find the game way to easy once you get an Empire and can set up claimants on Kingdom.

Can it all still go wrong if you end up with a bad heir, or are you able to reliably counteract that?

[Mictlantecuhtli]

There's usually always a point where even the weakest leader cannot fall due to the sheer manpower you can raise in comparison [even without rushing for all the 6 slot provinces] and lack of competent AI. I've found the point where my personal levy is ~5000 [10,000 in Europe proper] that I usually steamroll the rest of the challenge, certain RNG factors withstanding of course. My biggest challenge in CK2 lately is early rebel spam. Otherwise I just win in short order and have fun making the world my dynasty's plaything.

Hence why I also do uber-challenges, like playing Celtic religion/Jewish/etc in places where there is very little chance to survive. If I play as a real Duke or a kingdom from the beginning I find I basically can't lose anymore. That's probably the price of playing CK2 for years, though.

You can always handicap yourself in multiple ways to increase the difficulty, not killing 'fixing' heirs that are bad, having a poorly organized vassal tree with overlapping claims to encourage infighting, picking elective/gavelkind successions, only letting your direct daughters matrilineally marry, etc, etc.

[kaian-a-coel]

Elective isn't even a handicap if you pay attention to your vassals. I use elective and the only problem I had was an assassination to do on someone threatening to inherit instead of my grandson. Now everybody vote for my chosen heir, and I can chose to skip annoying heirs like my worthless 50 years old son.
Plus, if you raise your heir yourself, you can't really fuck it up. And if yourself are half-decent to begin with, he'll turn out amazing. (My heir is currenly kind, patient, diligent, honest, just, zaelous, and a grey eminence. Also he's married to hot lesbian twins. I know lesbian lower fertility but I wasn't going to pass on strong/attractive, -15% be damned. And he has two sons already so whatever.

[RedKing]

I find the game way to easy once you get an Empire and can set up claimants on Kingdom.

Actually the fun part is when you have multiple empires and have to try and keep them from splintering among multiple children. As Great Khan, I was Khagan of Russia, Tartaria, Carpathia, and the Persian Empire. And the titular imperial title of the Mongol Khanate. Ultimogeniture makes for an interesting challenge, especially when you have to force yourself to keep it in your breeches after a certain age to avoid having a child heir and a long and crippling regency.

Another self-imposed challenge (especially suitable for an Aztec, Mongol or Norse game) is to *always* have your main army led by your ruler, even if he's a 0 Martial craven bastard. Not only does it make combat more difficult but it leads to more frequent death-by-battle and all the fun that comes with a new ruler taking the throne.

[Duuvian]

I find the game way to easy once you get an Empire and can set up claimants on Kingdom.

Actually the fun part is when you have multiple empires and have to try and keep them from splintering among multiple children. As Great Khan, I was Khagan of Russia, Tartaria, Carpathia, and the Persian Empire. And the titular imperial title of the Mongol Khanate. Ultimogeniture makes for an interesting challenge, especially when you have to force yourself to keep it in your breeches after a certain age to avoid having a child heir and a long and crippling regency.

I'm sure you know this and were attempting not to game the system, but you can always destroy or not create all but one of your highest tier of titles. With gavelkind your main heir always gets the main title, and the others of that rank do not splinter away as independent from you.

- You can petition the Pope for an invasion, but that's difficult to pull off. Additionally, if the area you're invading is heretic or infidel, you always have the Holy War casus belli. Otherwise, you're going to have to rely on fabricated claims.

Be careful with this... the pope's opinion of you nosedives if you request one (I forget by how much but I think it was a healthy dip).  In my attempt to unite Spain at some point I realized I could swallow Aragon whole if I simply Requested Invasion, and the Pope granted it.  However, his opinion of me cratered into the negatives, so the King of Aragon had me instantly excommunicated.  All the other Spanish kingdoms united with Aragon instead of me (pulling in even the Irish from familial ties), and my own kingdom sank into civil war.  In the ensuing chaos, the Muslims of course took that opportunity to raise hell.  I had to empty the treasury to hire half the mercenaries in Europe to recover, it was pretty brutal.  I have to admit it was one of the more gratifying wars to win by the time it was all over, but it was also the most unexpected war I had gotten myself into and nearly ruined me.

If you want to make the pope like you you can give land to Catholic religious characters (aka bishops) or buy indulgences.  You can also send the court chaplain to improve religious relationships in Rome.

I haven't done it recently, but in an earlier game I sometimes gave the Pope control of bishoprics in the hope he would build the bishopric up with his nearly unlimited Pope gold.

Popes really like getting bishoprics, and the cost to yourself isn't that high. As a bonus, the Pope kept releasing these bishoprics to the rightful ruler of the county after a few years or decades. I'm unsure if this still works as it was a long time ago.

That said, I have no issue raising his opinion with council members. Both the chancellor and the court chaplain can be sent to raise his opinion, quickly and for free.

Speaking of council members, would anyone else like to see them travel on the map to their destination? I always thought it was odd they essentially can teleport around. It would make it harder to use the councillors which might not be a bad thing. In an earlier game around when Sword of Islam came out, the Mongols WRECKED everything up to the borders of Poland. I kept them out of Poland by sending my Chancellor to say sweet things to the descendants of Genghis. The mongols went around conquering everything but my own holdings; and even when I did occasional counter attacks to recapture duchies with holy wars while they were busy elsewhere they never attacked me before I attacked them when truces expired.

[EnigmaticHat]

You can't destroy titles under Gravelkind.  At least not titles of the highest level.

There are other ways around though.  Only holding one of the top tier is one.  Only having one son is another.  Switching succession early on as a Duke is the easiest (although it only works if you create the higher titles rather than usurping them).  You can also switch to ultimogeniture since I believe that the crown authority requirements are so low any ruler of a appropriate religion can switch to it within their lifetime.

[Duuvian]

Ah, ok. I guess I assumed you could destroy them. I just never create them in the first place.

[Sheb]

Okay, I have a question: I noticed the duchy of Spoleto (vassal of the HRE) was growing very large (around 10 provinces), so I found a claimant, landed him and pressed his claim. And then I only got the 2 de jure provinces.

Now, I did the same thing on my LP game, on an independent Duchy, and got the whole of it. Is this normal? Is there a way around it?

[Sindain]

Okay, I have a question: I noticed the duchy of Spoleto (vassal of the HRE) was growing very large (around 10 provinces), so I found a claimant, landed him and pressed his claim. And then I only got the 2 de jure provinces.

Now, I did the same thing on my LP game, on an independent Duchy, and got the whole of it. Is this normal? Is there a way around it?

Did the duke of Spoleto hold multiple duchies? 'Cause that's what it sounds like.