What's that supposed to mean?
The difference between salvaging and piracy on the high seas is an important legal distinction
Anyway, any tips for a new player?
Pick a powerful King, but not a powerful Emperor. Crusader Kings, as the name suggests, is easiest to learn as a King, as your vassals aren't terribly strong relative to you, and you don't have to deal with a powerful liege.
Alternatively, start in Ireland after the Norse have turned into Christians. Ireland is a very safe place to learn the ropes, as it is fairly independent of continental struggles.
You probably want to avoid living on the borders between religious groups, they tend to be messy places for beginners to start. Pagans will raid you and the rest may holy war you, holy wars being an especially devastating type of war to lose.
Otherwise, the most important thing to consider is that your titles do not matter. Losing your independence, losing a Kingdom, losing your counties you have held for 300 years, losing you Empire - whatever, as long as your landed family survives with heirs you will still have a game. This is the most unusual aspect of CKII, but the coolest and most important concept to grasp. You must always keep in mind you are not a nation or a faith, you are running a dynasty as its guiding hand, and learning when to empower or restrict your family is pretty important, but something to learn when you've grasped the basic concepts.
Fortunately the basic concepts are really easy to learn. Gold is good: Upgrade your income buildings first (castle walls, castle town, always. Sometimes the castle town will have a different name, owing to culture, but functionally all castle towns are the same). Upgrading your capital holding is good (the capital holding is the one you usually intend to keep for the entire game, in a conventional strategy). Marrying people who are beautiful, genius, strong or brawny is an absolute must, in order to improve the chance of your heirs having these traits. Beware the plague. Do not piss off your wife, if you fear the assassin's knife. Be wary that having many eligible heirs is good when you are playing as the father, but when the father dies and passes down to the heir - all those siblings who are now equals to you, are also claimants to you. The more titles your family holds, the more prestige you get - this applies to the number of titles your family has ever held, in the entirety of history. Prestige is good, it raises the opinion of nobles to you, whilst piety does the same for priests (piety is a little harder to get, but basically build churches and acquire "good" traits to get piety).
Oh! And beware the plague, and stay away from the steppes. That way Mongols come. That said, if the Mongols or someone hopelessly more powerful than you does border you, just surrender to them and become their vassal. Adopt their culture and religion if you have to, the whole point is to be flexible like water, not strong like rock, because rock can be overcome where water will adapt
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Topic: Crusader Kings 2 is released. (Read 2119538 times)