Are you new to Crusader Kings 2 and don’t know where to start? You probably encountred the tip to start from Ireland for the begging but the game is still slow and/or confusing? Fear not for this guide will show you how to create a kingdom in one character!
- Primogeniture: High Crown Authority. Ultimogeniture: High Crown Authority. House Seniority: High Crown Authority. As a final note, keep in mind that different succession laws also require certain innovations so even if your authority is high enough, you may not be able to do what you want.
- Ck2 tanistry vs gavelkind, Gavelkind - Crusader Kings II Wiki Ck2.paradoxwikis.com Agnatic-cognatic gavelkind uses a strong form of male preference: when there are both sons and daughters, only the sons will inherit. With gavelkind succession, dead characters do not 'placehold' as they do under primogeniture.
Chapter 0: Before We Start
Before we start let’s clear something out that can be confusing for new players:
1 Latest & Greatest 2 Crusader Kings II Wiki 3 NewsNews 4 How to Browse this Wiki 5 Please Contribute Your Knowledge Crusader Kings II game manuals, walk throughs, strategy guides, game mechanics, tips and explanations. Learn how to play, share how to win. Crusader Kings II is the latest Paradox game released February 14th 2012 featuring complex social geo political simulation of the medieval. To open the console in Crusader Kings 2, press the ` (grave) key on your keyboard. Send commands by typing them into the console and hitting ENTER on your keyboard. If you can't open the console, or need help using it, see our CK2 console help page. To find character IDs, type the charinfo command into the console. After using this command, character IDs will be shown in the tooltips of.
Cassus Beli is a reason for war. Without it you can’t fight. You can wage war against someone who has lands you or one of your courtiers have claim on and few other reasons, but for the sake of this guide we will need just Claim and De jure.
De jure means “by law”. Every duchy consists of counties, every kingdom is made of duchies and so on. If you have duchy title, but not all of it’s de jure lands belong in your realm, you can wage war against outside holders. Winning De jure war always results in realm coming to your realm (but if you are the king it’s not always for you, I will describe it later).
Claim is “legal” right for the land. Legal is in quotation marks since they can be fabricated (important!). Pressing a claim means wage a war in a name of person having the claim agains person holding the title. Winning the war not always result in land coming to your realm! If you are not claimant there are two conditions that must be met to get a land through Claim war:
- Claimant must already have land in your land (barony will suffice).
- The title you are pressing claim on must be lower than yours.
For example, if ou are a duke and you press claim on a duchy for someone else, that person will be independant. But if you are king and press a claim on duchy for your vassal duke, then duke will have two duchies and you still are his liege.
That should be enough to get you starting.
Chapter 1: Starting Up
Step 1: Choosing your character.
For begginers, Ireland with a starting date of 1066 is a good choice for couple of reasons. Most rulers are count-tier which means they have up to 3 counties which is low. That gives you early advantage since you can easly gain more lands and be the most powerful person in the land.
Easiest characters are:
- Murchad ua Brian, duke of Munster – he is a duke with a single county, two vassals, a De jure claim on a nerby county, male heir and, what’s most important, a historical bloodline. That bloodline can be passed to his descendants which give ua Brians an advantage over other Irish rulers.
- Aed ua Conchobair, duke of Connacht – an old guy with realm of two is weaker than Murchad, but still relevant since he is duke, but he lacks the bloodline and lands. His advantage lies in his position. West Connacht has a double battle modifer giving your troops advantage and giving enemies disadvantage at the same time (attacking from here gives our troops disadvantage though).
- Murchad ua Cheinnselaig, count of Dublin – his start is a little bit trickier than the last two since he is a count and has no de jure claims. But he has two things other counts hasn’t at that is county of Dublin which is both duchy and kingdom de jure capital (it gives nice modifier to troops) and is an heir for county of Leinster, which makes him triple count. His dad has to die first though, by natural means, or your scheming. He is old, so you can just wait up.
For the sake of simplicity, the rest of the guide will be made as if ua Brian was chosen to play.
Step 2: Council. First thing you do is checking your council.
- Set your chancellor to Fabricate claim job on whatever county near you, but in case of Desmond it’s not needed(you already have De jure claim on it so it ‘s not neccesary, but if you fabricate claim you prevent a civil war, more on it later).
- Set your marshal to train troops in your capital
- Set your steward to collect taxes in your capital
- Set your spymaster to Study technology in another country (if you are ua Cheinnselaig and are plotting to kill your father set him to Build Spy network in Leincester)
- Set your chaplain to improve religous relation with any of your bishops.
If any of your council members has their stats below 15 here is a quick way to change it:
Go to Find character.
Set join court on yes and search all (remember that only men can be in council, exception is rulers wife who can be spymaster).
Filter them by what ability you need and invite those with best. Profit!
Having done that let’s go to the next step, which is…
Step 3: Stabilizing your realm using a civil war.
Primogeniture Or Ultimogeniture? Help For A Newbie | Paradox ...
Yes you read that right. You are going to cause a civil war to get the counties your vassals have. We are doing it because if you control the county, you get all the troops, if it’s your vassal, it’s 40% at best. How do you do that though? There are 2 ways: the way of tyrant and the way of intrigue.
The way of tyrant is simpler one, but crippling your opinion. Just revoke the titles one by one and crush them. Be careful though, this impose tyranny (-40 opinion, ouch).
The way of intrigue takes longer but doesn’t impose tyranny:
- Go to intrigue (F7).
- In My Plots you have a table, click on the blue “Choose a plot”.
- Choose “Revoke county of …”
To succeed you need 80% plot power and at least 1 backer (that’s why your chaplain works on improving relations). If you meet the requirements, there is decision to revoke the county. By revoking them in this way vassals usualy rebel, which means you have to apply good old way of crushing them to bits. You should have more troops from your one county and vassal so it’s no worry.
When you hold all counties in your realm you can get to next chapter.
Chapter 2: Conquest and Creating the Kingdom
So you have your realm stabilized. Good. Next step after winning the civil wars is more wars.
Step 0: Press your de jure claim on any counties that are outside of your realm and proceed to do with them what you did in chapter 2. If you are over your demense limit, raise the centralization law
Step 1: Fabricate Claim.
This is the reason most people don’t play as Ireland when they learn to play. Other countries can gain lands by pressing other claims, but Irish usually have to do without it at the beginning, which is bit tedious.
If you managed to fabricate the claim, just press it and win war and proceed to next step.
Step 2: Foregin Climants.
If you didn’t or you don’t want to wait for Fabricate to work then find a county you want to conquer. Click on it’s shiled and it will take you to the realm page. There is a button named “Claimants”. If it’s grey then though luck, try elswehere. If it’s blue, then let’s get to party. Clicking the button shows you the list containing all people with claims to that realm. If beside their portrait is green thumb up, then you hit a jackpot and can invite him to court. You can now press his claim in war, BUT DON’T DO THAT YET! If he doesn’t have land in your realm, he will just become new independent ruler, so first you have to give him something (even a barony will suffice). Then press the claim and win the war. If you are short on counties to give (leave at least as much as your most powerful vassal have to yourself), then just chapter 2 someone. Repeat this step until you have 10 counties in your realm, and then…
Step 3: Long live the king!
You can create a kingdom now, but don’t be so hasty, there is one last thing to do before making kingdom! Your deflaut succesion law is Gavelkind which means all your sons get some of your lands when you die. You want to change that to ethier Tanistry or Primogeniture.
When I wrote Tanistry, I felt the fanbase howl in hatred at me, but please just listen.
Both succesion laws make it so all your ladns go to your heir after your death. Difference is that in Primogeniture your heir is always your eldest child (usually son) and in Tanistry your heir is Tanist.
Tanist is chosen by you and your vassals from your dynasty (they tend to favor the elders). So you ask why the hell would I want that. Answer is simple: usually you don’t, but there are two exceptions:
- If your realm is full of counts of your dynasty, it enables you to gather all your familys land back togheter (not quite, since vassals usually favor landless heirs, but it’s possible).
- Primogeniture gives all your not-eldest child -10 opinion on you, which means nothing, unless they are also your vassals.
For the rest of the land, ethier conquer them with de jure claim or offer them vassalization. Many accept if you haven’t waged war on them.
Chapter 3: What Next?
When you become the king, you should already have a knack on this game, so ethier go play someone else, or become emperor of Britannia.
To become emperor, just do what you did earlier on dukes instead of counts. Best order of conquering the British isles is Wales, Scotland and England. Wales are just a bunch of dukes, like Ireland was before you happend, but it has less land than Ireland, so it’s not a best start. Scotland is already a kingdom, and it can kick your ♥♥♥ quick if you don’t watch it, but getting it piece by piece is quite easy. England is trickier due to it’s size, but doable if you have Wales or Scotland under your thumb.
It’s time for another game review! *gong*
Lately I’ve been completely addicted to Crusader Kings II. I don’t typically get really into games like this, but it happens every once in a blue moon, and typically either with something totally mindless (hi, TF2) or something that requires a lot of thought. That said, I’m going to try to be fair, so while I personally want to give it high ratings because I can’t stop playing it, my taste in games knows no rationality.
Preventing Succession Crisis
—
Gameplay: 3/5
I really want to bump this up considering I like it, but while it can be as addicting as any game, the gameplay has some fairly glaring flaws.
The main issue with CKII (and, actually, a lot of Paradox’s games) is that it’s very difficult to get into and has a fairly steep learning curve. The tutorial is absolute junk in how it takes you through — don’t hit the Continue button; you’ll miss parts. Go back to the topics and go through them one by one. Even then, it skims some bits that become important later on, though by that time you’ll have hopefully figured the UI out enough to be able to make your way.
Once you get past figuring out what the hell is going on, though, you’ll be in an environment of courtly intrigues and feudal battles for supremacy. If you like anything resembling high fantasy or medieval fight scenes, you’ll enjoy yourself. The system by which alliances are determined is complex and interesting, mostly consisting of marrying off your children. Whether pregnancy happens and the gender of the child is completely luck of the draw — certain personality traits of the character affect the chance of becoming pregnant (i.e., there is absolutely no chance of a eunuch having kids, and a woman over 40 is “past childbearing age”, but a Lustful character will beget children on anything that stays at court long enough). So, when I say “try to have a son”, what I mean is either try to change the line of succession to your title to something that allows daughters to inherit (this is difficult if your empire is large for a few reasons) or try to avoid you or your spouse kicking the bucket. Marrying off courtiers can also gain you allies if a courtier is your kin.
Another way to gain alliances is to send your children to be tutored at another court (or by a courtier of your own). This is useful if a particular individual has traits you would like to see in your child or heir, and you get a reasonable bonus to the character’s opinion of you for entrusting them with a ward.
The combat AI is not great. It’s not total garbage, but it’s simplistic and seems like it got pushed to the wayside in favour of the alliance/intrigues capability. When you decide to go to war (or get dragged into a war by your liege), the outcome is again largely determined with simple percentages. I’ve lost battles that should have been trouncings because of what is essentially a bad roll of the dice. It’s entertaining but unrealistic. Calling troops in to war from your allies is borderline useless as they will come to your capital and sit there with no way to effect any kind of control. Your allies calling you in typically means you’ll be soloing the war unless you just don’t send any troops. (Which is actually a perfectly valid strategy incurring no penalty, so if it’s a war you don’t really care about, it works.) You may, however, want to consider sending troops to the Crusades when they get called.
Sending your troops somewhere seems to attempt the quickest route though certainly not the most strategic or direct. There is no way to modify the strategy your troop movement takes, so you’ll have to fudge it on your own.
All in all, getting the hang of it is tricky and it has some downfalls (particularly if you like battles), but it’s fun and engaging otherwise, and watching your characters grow and develop and eventually die is entertaining.
Eyes & Ears: 4.5/5
Knock half a star for repetition, but the music is actually fairly good. You’ll hear the same music and sounds in the background, but the music isn’t annoying and the sounds are actually useful to alert you to things going on (i.e., you’ll want to know when your son has a child).
The graphics are pretty if a little bit dated in some ways, and the attention to detail in the faces and names is also interesting. They paid much more attention to character detail than other details, though the map is accurate and the number of crests for even very small houses is impressive.
Performance: 3.5/5
On my Lenovo ThinkPad E430 with integrated gfx and 8GB of RAM, it runs okay. Some parts are slower than they should be, strictly speaking, and the game takes an incredibly long time to load. I have to conclude that it’s a result of inefficient memory usage rather than a lot of things going on, because it shouldn’t take upwards of two minutes to load a few game saves.
Otherwise it runs pretty well, and even bringing up as many troops as possible and going through a number of characters in quick succession doesn’t stymie it.
Overall: 3.66/5
CKII is actually a decent game. It’s not the greatest game you will ever play, but for a strategy game from a company known for in-depth strategy games, it holds its own.
—
Fun Tips From Your Friendly Neighbourhood Casual Gamer
1. Either have a son, or make it so your daughters can succeed you.
Agnatic elective is incredibly annoying and requires a lot of work and bribery to get your vassals to not turn on you, so if you can, absolute cognatic primogeniture is a decent way to go. (Or ultimogeniture if your eldest is an unfit ruler.)
2. Bribe everyone you can, early and often.
Making gifts to key people is a pretty good way to get a permanent opinion boost, which can mean the difference between plotting against you and allying with you. Don’t discount small lords with minimal holdings; if they go to war for you it can make a difference.
3. Don’t forget your council!
Make sure your councilors are out doing things. In particular, never never never let your Chancellor or Spymaster be sitting idle. The Chancellor is an easy in for diplomatic relations if they’re a capable diplomat, and the Spymaster is a pretty good way to ruin your rivals’ and enemies’ days. Your Marshal is also useful if you’re having a revolution problem.
4. Play nice with the Pope.
It might be obnoxious, but the Pope’s favour means a lot. Being excommunicated is a big hit to everyone’s opinion of you and is a valid casus belli for people to make war upon you, just because. If you do end up excommunicated. the Pope is not in any way immune to bribery, so sending him a gift can tip the scales just enough in your favour to be able to successfully petition for the excommunication being lifted. You can also send your Chancellor to curry favour with the Pope for you.
—
What Is The Best Succession Law? :: Crusader Kings II General ...
Party on, Wayne!