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[Grim Portent]

In my quest to find fun mods that aren't total conversions, I've been trying out a simple mod that adds a Satanism religion and it's been pretty fun so far.

Started out as a Greek Satanist Emir of Jerusalem as part of the Abbassid Empire. Eventually won my Independence and some more counties through civil wars among the empire. Two Caliphs had to step down as a result of civil wars I fought against them before becoming independent.

Of course in order to win the fights against the much larger armies of the Caliph I had to take advantage of a Satanic mechanic that lets me sacrifice a child and 500 piety for 666 elite heavy infantry. Good thing my wife/concubines had given birth to a few bastards I could cull.

Currently trying to gather enough duchies to form my own kingdom, and later an empire. Planning to hew a big chunk out of the Abbassids now that they're starting to fragment and then try to carve my way into Europe to snatch up my faith's holy sites.

Kind of wishing I hadn't turned off my werewolf/vampire/giant mod before trying this one. Playing a satanic giant werewolf would be pretty hilarious as far as waging war goes. 

[Grim Portent]

Can anyone recommend any little mods? Stuff like new government types, traits or religions rather than full conversions like the GoTs mod or the Warhammer mod (though I do plan to try that one, chaos is bound to be fun.)

[Teneb]

Can anyone recommend any little mods? Stuff like new government types, traits or religions rather than full conversions like the GoTs mod or the Warhammer mod (though I do plan to try that one, chaos is bound to be fun.)

The only "small" mod I tried any time recently was Ancient Religions Reborn (or something similar to that name).

If I remember right, it adds/reworks Hellenism, Kemetism and Druidism.

[Rolan7]

Better Gender Laws makes it possible for anyone to go absolute cognatic, or even enatic, but nobles will be *very* upset about absolute cognatic if you don't have the typical requirements.  It also fixes a lot of bugs about cognatic to actually work, particularly female councilor positions and army commanders.  There's also an option to fine-tune the absolute cognatic to control who is eligible for council seats.

It also adds a fun made-up heresy to Miaphysite, with a female pope.

[BFEL]

with a female pope.

You can never have enough girlpope

[Urist McScoopbeard]

with a female pope.

You can never have enough girlpope

*fempope

[umiman]

One of the very good benefits of absolute cognatic is that you can put women in every position. So you can have all female councillors as well as give women lands.

Highly recommended.

One of the funnier things that happened to me was when I gave one of my nieces a large queendom and the very first thing she did was change the succession laws to enatic. I'd never seen that before. I thought it was very hilarious for some reason.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not sure how AI handles gender law changes. Rulers always default desire more harsh crown law and vassals always default desire less harsh crown law, but I have no idea how gender desire is calculated.

[Grim Portent]

So far I think the satanism mod may be my favorite.

It's not quite complete, and it doesn't naturally occur in game, so any satanists have to be made in ruler designer, (I would've made it a Catholic or Orthodox heresy personally, but it's creator made it a stand alone faith) but the features it does add have easily made up for the weaknesses inherent in being despised by all other faiths and are pretty fun in a cheesy over the top HAIL SATAN kind of way, a bit like the Child of Satan event but with better soldiers and less familial murder.

Sacrificing a child and 500 piety for 666 very powerful, very expensive to maintain soldiers has given me the ability to fight armies several times my size and wage near unending war (which I need to, without raiding my savings are depleted in very little time). All that's been holding me back is finding more enemies I can wage Holy Wars on.

Starting as the Emir of Jerusalem in service to the Abbassids, I've now carved a vast empire out of the Byzantines, Abbassids, Georgia and the tribal lands to the north of Georgia. I'm the biggest single nation around, the most beloved ruler in the world, my descendants are already beyond counting and my armies number in the tens of thousands.

I'm over 100 (super high health stat from character designer) and have outlived more than half of my children and several of my grandchildren, castrated a Byzantine Emperor, stole the wives of an Abbassid Caliph, outlasted half a dozen of the Caliphs, instituted Elective Monarchy and Absolute-Cognatic succession in two of my kingdoms, though the third can't be changed yet and the Empire is not yet Cognatic.

All it cost me was 3000 piety and the lives of one of my sickly children, 2 bastards my unfaithful concubines bore for my vassals and three captured children of the Abbassid Empire. My legion of hellspawn has never lost a fight, though attrition of all things has felled many of them and they can only be in so many places at once.



Even the Giant, Lunatic Werewolf Viking was less fun than this, and he fought Cthulhu.

I'm actually somewhat curious as to what the maximum potential lifespan someone can have is. I know high health lets you live longer, but I don't know what the random equation used is, or at what age health simply can't overcome the penalties to your death tests.

Also, I wish there was a way to mass ransom people. Constant war and raiding has left me with a prison filled with 70+ inmates (the highest point was 97, but they've been dying of age and diseases) and I can't really be bothered to process them at all.

[Descan]

There are mods for that last one. An intrigue decision.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

So I've been thinking about getting back into CK2 after a very long hiatus. EU4 became my strategy game of choice but I'm not really liking it's current direction and want a change.
Anyway some questions.

I stopped playing around the release of Rajas of India. I own all the DLC before Sons of Abraham. I don't care much for the start dates before 1066. Which DLCs would I consider the best bang for my buck? Any current hidden sales for CK2 I might have missed?

I used to play exclusively with mods. In particular Project Balance and VIET. Are those still a thing? I vaguely remember them getting folded into some huge bloated mod with all the province names written in various foreign. If so what is the goto "vanilla+" mod (if the game even needs it anymore)?

How fundamentally has the game meta changed? Is elective/tanistry still easy mode? Is the old tactic of owning two or three duchies, filling them with cities and using that gold to fund mercs still working? Is there any major changes that has modified the baron/count/duchy/king/emperor dynamic?

Has the game expanded on the end game at all? One of the major reasons I stopped playing CK2 was just having nothing to do in the game once you've (easily) blobbed. I didn't care much for Paradox expanding the start date or map instead of working out those issues either.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

To answer the age question, with a high enough health stat, pretty much forever. However, the chance of you becoming incapable after ~300 years of age is quite high.

Experience: messed around with health and had my emperor live till the ripe old age of 318 when I had to use the console to kill him.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm fairly certain from playing mods with it enabled that the "Immortal" trait prevents you from developing Incapable no matter how old you get.

[Rolan7]

Almost a shame.  It could have been like all those old fables.  "A charming fox appears and offers you immortality: Y/N" "Y" "Haha you IDIOT"

[umiman]

It's just in those mods though.

If you use the ruler designer to give yourself a craptonne of health then you can live a ridiculous amount of time like Urist said but get incapable fairly easily. I had a guy die at 138 but he got the incapable trait at around 70. However, for some reason he didn't need a regent. Not sure why.