CKII is released.

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

The best way for Rome to truly rise is to realize it fell because Marcion was right.

Rome fell because of many reasons,on of which was accepting Christianity thus destabilizing the empire and loosing any semblance of unity. Late Rome was very like modern day western Europa,tolerant and liberal.

Rome lost any semblance of unity once the Crisis of the Third Century kicked in. The adoption of Christianity was a desperate gamble to restore that unity.

Rome's fall is absolutely unrelated to religion. It has much more to do with the fact that Rome had a plunder economy and run out of territory to plunder.

b- but muh slave morality!!!!

 

[Sranchammer]

Rome lost any semblance of unity once the Crisis of the Third Century kicked in. The adoption of Christianity was a desperate gamble to restore that unity.

Rome's fall is absolutely unrelated to religion. It has much more to do with the fact that Rome had a plunder economy and run out of territory to plunder.

Yawn

 

[Beastro]

Gonna try getting back into this with an old version of CK2+.

If I disable the DLCs from Way of Life onward or so, do the patches from then on still apply?

If so I dunno what to do. I've peeked around for a version around 2015 for that, but have had no luck.

 

[Space Satan]

Playing slavic pagans is a pain. If as european lord you have to worry about vikings, as a slavic ruler you are sandwitched between vikings, steppe nomads and all local tribals who could raid. My retinues and levies are operational almost 90% of time, repelling rading parties from half the world. My martial ruler had dozen of layers of scars and his personal skill level is godlike from all that combat events(thanks to 2 relics of armor and axe he won all duels). Portrait is like a red sponge.
So far my major agenda is to become Emperor and establish several vassal kings so they could assemble their own big hosts and deal with nomads on their own. I had to increase light cavalry retinues just to stop ping-ponging and to wipe retreating armies faster.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Preben]

Is it my bad luck, or are the pagans nowadays extremely prone to go Christian? I started as Poland in 1066 and barely managed to conquer two Pomeranian duchies before the rest of Pomerania, most of Lithuania and more than half of Finns converted. It looked almost like a chain reaction.

 

[Fedora Master]

It seems very RNG based, in my game the Slavs are still around and unreformed and the Vikangz went reformed 50 years in.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Looking at the files, there's a new AI decision to be baptized that requires 1) being tribal, 2) not being a reformed religion, 3) higher tier than count, 4) prestige 500. The AI will use this decision depending on year (only 800-899 reduce the AI odds to convert, everything after raises the odds), whether they are Romuva or Bon (these reduce the odds and remove the century raises), religious authority (below 50 raises the odds incrementally, 60 and 100 lower the odds), if they're Cynical or have Sympathy for X traits (raises odds), friendly vassals (lower the odds), realm size (below 50 raises odds, above 50 lowers incrementally), being in negative cash (raises the odds), being part of religious wars (winning lowers odds, losing massively raises odds), but most importantly the strength of non-pagans within diplo range and whether or not there are bordering pagans (need 5 or more to lower odds, less than 5 pagan neighbours raises odds).

Since most pagans are small realms, they will convert the moment they hit 500 prestige and it isn't 800-899. It won't happen if they reform (holy shit I've never even heard of vikings reforming on their own) or succesfully form large empires.

 

[Space Satan]

Every month pagan neighbooring lords are asking for mass conversions. This comes with non-agression pact so You'll better fill your pact limit to prevent this neverending spam.

 

[Fedora Master]

Honestly after playing a few dozen hours now I can't say I'm THAT impressed with the patch that came with Holy Fury. It's still a hell of a gamble to send your 20 Martial Genius guy to war and quantity still wins out against quality unless you have the flavor of the month retinues like scottish pikes with Italian commanders. The AI is still schizophrenic and contrarian for the sake of fucking with the player as well.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

The pagans asking for great conversions is pretty spammy, been working on a Byzantine game and the Slavs keep spamming me with the events, lots of free piety, and they tend to collapse and put pagans back in charge to keep the cycle going. The strangest thing I've seen yet though is an AI Bon reformation. Pagans are really powerful with Holy Fury. The endless powerful raiders were pretty annoying until I learned just to park retinues/mercs in wallachia, constantinople, and trebizond. I can;t imagine trying count level game bordering raiding pagans now though.

 

[Humanophage]

Sadly, there still aren't any good reasons not to blob, so you end up doing it automatically because there isn't very much else to do. Want to spread your religion? Blob. Want to survive? Blob. Want more money? Blob. Want richer cities? Blob. Want more people? Blob. Want to have control of more holdings? Blob. The weird ahistorical Crusader-Chinese liaisons are still there, and the AI is still incapable of exploiting them. The Mongols are still a bunch of losers who can't even beat the Eurasian Steppe nomads. The nomads, in turn, get curbstomped by any Christians, even though in reality they continued their dominance until much later. Personal interactions still boil down to a genius eugenics program and weird 'lulz'.

It is still an entertaining game because of the atmosphere and the historical specificity, so it does stimulate the imagination. But it could have been so much more if they concentrated a bit better on peaceful activities and population, like in Victoria 2. Another good thing would be to increase inherent differences between provinces - at the moment, they mostly boil down to the number of slots, whether the province is coastal, and what feudal unit they belong to. Why can't places be made more distinct and individual? Even introducing trade routes made the geography much more interesting, so an important trading area like Trebizond is distinct from a backwater like Oleshye (at least it's reduced from the bizarre 5 slots to 1 in the update). The difference between a mountainous area, a densely forested area, and a steppe should be colossal in Medieval times, but it is barely a factor, except for military purposes - and then not as much as expected.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well there are certain caveats there in regards to Victoria 2... After all, you have plenty of reasons to blob there too, like Coal.

 

[Humanophage]

Well there are certain caveats there in regards to Victoria 2... After all, you have plenty of reasons to blob there too, like Coal.

Well, that's historically accurate (Elsass-Lothringen, Donbass), and it can be supplemented by spheres of influence. It also discourages general blobbing and encourages control of certain strategic provinces. Besides, you can get quite a lot of coal and similar resources from prioritising population growth and migration (e.g., an industrialised Korea with banned emigration would have a huge coal-mining population), which is a viable alternative route. Moreover, much of the coal is controlled by the truly powerful empires like Germany, Britain, or USA, so you can only challenge them in later game if you wish to, which is congruent with the concept of world wars - but by that time your economy is probably very functional even without their coal. The conquered areas will also be militant and hard to industrialise because of their non-accepted cultures. There are reasons to blob out, but there are other priorities as well, and there are some penalties for doing so.

CK2 is ultimately frustrating because every game you play is mostly the same story about conquering your hapless neighbours, whereas there is some diversity and difference between nations and goals in Victoria 2.

CK2 probably also needs harsher and longer-lasting outcomes for wars, even if you are victorious. E.g., if your forces get seriously damaged, that should incapacitate you for quite a while. Cities can get very seriously damaged if captured, and decades of improvement could be wasted. It also needs better balancing efforts - as it stands, defensive coalitions against obvious aggressors dissipate within a couple of years, and they are pathetic in any case.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

This is true, and your ability to undercut the chosen despised nations are more limited compared to Vicky 2.

Also that defensive coalition thing can vary, since in Gnacht I had to tone down their formation or any war would soon enough drag to a tremendous extent because entire continents would be in a defensive pact.

 

[Higher Game]

Sadly, there still aren't any good reasons not to blob, so you end up doing it automatically because there isn't very much else to do. Want to spread your religion? Blob. Want to survive? Blob. Want more money? Blob. Want richer cities? Blob. Want more people? Blob. Want to have control of more holdings? Blob. The weird ahistorical Crusader-Chinese liaisons are still there, and the AI is still incapable of exploiting them. The Mongols are still a bunch of losers who can't even beat the Eurasian Steppe nomads. The nomads, in turn, get curbstomped by any Christians, even though in reality they continued their dominance until much later. Personal interactions still boil down to a genius eugenics program and weird 'lulz'.

It is still an entertaining game because of the atmosphere and the historical specificity, so it does stimulate the imagination. But it could have been so much more if they concentrated a bit better on peaceful activities and population, like in Victoria 2. Another good thing would be to increase inherent differences between provinces - at the moment, they mostly boil down to the number of slots, whether the province is coastal, and what feudal unit they belong to. Why can't places be made more distinct and individual? Even introducing trade routes made the geography much more interesting, so an important trading area like Trebizond is distinct from a backwater like Oleshye (at least it's reduced from the bizarre 5 slots to 1 in the update). The difference between a mountainous area, a densely forested area, and a steppe should be colossal in Medieval times, but it is barely a factor, except for military purposes - and then not as much as expected.

CKII butt rapes my CPU as it is. There's also the problem of going full retard like Star Citizen.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

By the way, somebody in leddit found out that Holy Fury increased chances of leaders being wounded and dying in combat, possibly as balancing for the new personal combat ability and Warrior Lodges. So yeah, if you aren't in a Lodge or just suck in Personnal Combat, I would stay away from the battlefield. I think 30-50 is decent and superior to AI characters. Bellow that, stay home.

I wish you got more penalities with age. It would also be cool if women had a inherent penalty due to women being weaker than men, but naah, too unPC.

CKII butt rapes my CPU as it is.

One cool thing about CKII is that every big patch runs faster since Reapers' Due.
I actually want them to make more DLCs and patches just to work more optimisation.

 

[Fedora Master]

By the way, somebody in leddit found out that Holy Fury increased chances of leaders being wounded and dying in combat, possibly as balancing for the new personal combat ability and Warrior Lodges. So yeah, if you aren't in a Lodge or just suck in Personnal Combat, I would stay away from the battlefield. I think 30-50 is decent and superior to AI characters. Bellow that, stay home.

I have lost pregnant women on the battlefield because the game somehow still forces you to partake in battles even if you aren't leading armies. Frankly, the more I look into these changes the more I think Paradox can go fuck themselves.

 

[Obsequious Approbation]

Just started playing Holy Fury, but now Muslims and Pagans are a complete travesty in my current MP game. The year is ~1150, Orthodox Christianity has spread as far as Jerusalem and the farthest reaches of the steppes, whilst Catholics have taken the rest of North Africa by storm. The only pagans that still persist in the vicinity of Europe are the Suomenusko, and even they dwindle by the decade. Barring the odd impotent Jihad, there's no proper Muslim invasion to speak of. How am I supposed to bring the fight to the faithless if the Byzantines and HRE are everywhere in sight, converting the bastards?

I'll probably wait for some patches. Or the Geheimnisnacht update, if it ever comes.

 

[Fedora Master]

Go figure Paradox are dumb:

He is already rank 4 martial education, has 2 leadership traits and is not Norse berserker. And he is not eligible for warrior lodge events either. The only condition our example character is eligible for is a negative one.

• In previous version you would only be eligible for wounds and death in battle. 50/2800 1.8% per pulse to get one of those events. I'm not sure how often on_combat_pulse fires, maybe somebody could fill us in on that, anyway, moving on.
  
  
• In Holy Furry the event list is split into 2 and the Null event is only on this first list. The combat event is given a combination power of 500, five times more weight than the old injury/death events combined. So take our example leader again. He is only eligible to get injured or die in an combat event, again for argument's sake. So he now has 500/3250 chance to get injury or die. Thats 15.4% per pulse. Over 8x more likely to get injured or die.
  

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKi..._you_feel_like_you_die_more_in_battles_thats/

 

[JarlFrank]

the game somehow still forces you to partake in battles even if you aren't leading armies

wut

 

[Fedora Master]

the game somehow still forces you to partake in battles even if you aren't leading armies

wut

I misunderstood the 3 commander slot rule. Just because your character isn't directly assigned to one of those slots doesn't mean they aren't IN the battle, which is retarded in and of itself and doubly so when your character is a female ruler but that's been in the game since vanilla so it was my own fault.

 

[LizardWizard]

the game somehow still forces you to partake in battles even if you aren't leading armies

wut

I misunderstood the 3 commander slot rule. Just because your character isn't directly assigned to one of those slots doesn't mean they aren't IN the battle, which is retarded in and of itself and doubly so when your character is a female ruler but that's been in the game since vanilla so it was my own fault.

There is a button under character portrait that forbids from leading armies.

 

[Fedora Master]

the game somehow still forces you to partake in battles even if you aren't leading armies

wut

I misunderstood the 3 commander slot rule. Just because your character isn't directly assigned to one of those slots doesn't mean they aren't IN the battle, which is retarded in and of itself and doubly so when your character is a female ruler but that's been in the game since vanilla so it was my own fault.

There is a button under character portrait that forbids from leading armies.

I don't expect women to be commanders in the first place when setting the rules to historical gender roles but after playing around with Lodges some more that shit is completely out of control anyway. Paradox just can not help themselves with their incloooosive bullshit.

 

[JarlFrank]

Historically, female rulers in actual ruler positions did lead armies on the battlefield. It's just that they were rare, but it's not like it didn't happen.

The only issue with CK2 would be female rulers coming to power too regularly.