CKII is released.

[CthuluIsSpy]

I took a break from it. I find that CK2's 867 start can be a bit of an exhausting grind. Especially when you have to constantly play whack-a-mole with fucking factions and traitors over the course of 600 years.
Keep in mind that this was just after my Norse Imperial Scandinavia campaign, and that was an ordeal because of the Crusade spam.
Its still ongoing. Might return to it eventually.

Iirc, I only needed 3 territories before becoming Sashoyant. All under control of the Byzantine Empire, and all while having to deal with idiot nobles who don't seem to understand that if the Empire falls due to their shit so does Zoroastrianism.

Playing CK2 allowed me to understand why so many leaders turn to tyranny; if you have to deal with traitorous and stupid bullshit on a daily basis, eventually you'll just put your foot down and send every single self-serving and wife-fucking cunt to the oubliette. I would send to the gallows, but Paradox doesn't want you to execute traitors without some absurd penalty, so I'll have to give them a slow, agonizing death through starvation instead.

 

[mondblut]

become immortal
@
switch to gavelkind

 

[Preben]

Together with the now long abandoned The Prince and the Thane one of my fav mods was Crises of the Confederation. A mod that put CK2 into space. Heavily influenced by Dune and WH40K and featering everything from neo-feudalism to cyborgs and pirate space queens it was mad fun. It has been abandoned a long time ago but recently resurfaced with a new dev team. I'm stoked.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1921207930&searchtext=crisis

To begin, Crisis of the Confederation/Confederation at Crisis/Crisis at Confederation is a recently revived total conversion mod for Crusader Kings 2 created by Galle. The mod's development began in 2013, petered out in 2015, and has recently returned under a new team (with one old developer). The mod forgoes the usual historical or fantastical trappings of CK2 mods in favour of a sci-fi hodge podge drawing from Dune, Foundation, Fading Suns, Mobile Suit Gundam, Warhammer 40k, the Arthurian cycle, and a touch of Star Trek. Future development will likely lengthen the list. Elaboration on the lore will be in the following dev diaries.

With that out of the way, allow me to introduce the team. The ones that aren't on Reddit can be found on the Discord (see below).

Cjay - Lead Developer
LordKeeper - Artist for the original team, and now the new team.
u/Alexmaths - Developer
u/zombaxx - Developer
u/CaC-TheGoldenGun - Developer/Dev Diary Writer
Ballisticwaffles - Writer
Krunch - Writer
Dr. Evil - Writer
And you, possibly - We accept applications, see our Discord.Discord https://discord.gg/DZ68Afv - ! Direct Download Available Here ! -

File Size
Posted
Updated
123.577 MB
26 Nov, 2019 @ 4:44am
21 Apr @ 4:00pm
21 Change Notes ( view )

Never tried that mod, might give it a shot. Are there any aliums or just humans?

 

[Mikeal]

How do you do fellow Earthlings?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh is that what shattered world does? Cool, I need that game mode. You can make your own nation from scratch, right?

 

[Mikeal]

Nope it's a full conversion mod set on terraformed Mars in the far future. After loosing contact with the Earth, Marsian population lost all of it's advandced technology and devolved into Dark Ages.

 

[Xamenos]

Oh is that what shattered world does? Cool, I need that game mode. You can make your own nation from scratch, right?

Shattered world is the normal map, just with every single county as independent.

Nope it's a full conversion mod set on terraformed Mars in the far future. After loosing contact with the Earth, Marsian population lost all of it's advandced technology and devolved into Dark Ages.

Interesting premise. Does it have any features other than the new map? How does it compare to the postapocalyptica America mod whose name I can't remember?

 

[Mikeal]

Shattered world is the normal map, just with every single county as independent.


Interesting premise. Does it have any features other than the new map? How does it compare to the postapocalyptica America mod whose name I can't remember?

Unfortunately very poor. There are no mod exclusive cultures/religions and even though there are new kingdoms on the map when it's come to creating titles you can only create good, old European titles.

It was After The End Fan Fork.

 

[wwsd]

So how do I play Zoroastrians in the 867 without swearing fealty to Muslims? I want to form the Persian Empire.

Every few months i reinstall ck2 and play this start. Just lost again. Without pretending to be Muslim (im not even sure how you do that ) its intense.

I always go and take Khorasan in the first few months of the game cause you can steal it while the two muslimids to the south fight cause they always declare war when game begins. Try and save your 4k starting troops as much as you can and declare war on muslim neighbours while they are enagaged in wars and rebellions until you are strong enough to stomp them.
Once you get a decent kingdom going get some swords and armour made and start upping your infrastructure (theres a couple provinces that good levies/income that are easy to capture.)
But I always keep minimum of 500 gold for mercenaries lol. Cause usually the abbassids (or so.e other major muslim power will) try and stomp me at some point. And then you just get swamped in wars bouncing your kingdom above debt with war reparations and ransoming their family members. The maybe one time (out of like 10+ played.) I became a contender to byzantium my daughter was possessed by satan and just started murdering all my heirs and i was too fucked up about to change inheritance laws so i just ragequit lmao

Playing Karen viking age start is like crack tho

Also if you have Jade exp they are alot funner to play imo because you can sell your sister to the chinese emperor for crossbows and ming vases lol
Also get silk road effects

Speaking of Persians, I had some fun last week with Tabaristan starting in 1066. They are Shia but have Sassanid blood and sometimes events giving them sympathy for Zoroastrians. Anyway, I started conquering neighbouring vassals of the Seljuks bit by bit. It's hard because the sultan tends not to like you and he tries to revoke counties from you if you get too big. But it becomes easier as you accumulate more Silk Road provinces and trade posts in the area, so you get lots of money. I was able to win one or two revocation wars but the sultans just keep trying so I had to shrink sometimes as well. Still in the end I was able to get independence when the sultan was otherwise engaged, and was able to form the Sultanate of Daylam. With that it was little effort to form the Zoroastrian cult and get most of my family and the few duke-tier vassals of Daylam involved as well as communities in most of my demesne, so I instantly had a good basis when I openly declared myself.

From there the long and arduous fight to get the de jure Persian lands and Zoroastrian holy sites. The Seljuks fell apart into roughly an Egypt/Levant/Jerusalem part that was often targeted through holy wars, and a part of the remainder of Persia, Arabia and Yemen. Ghaznavids were still around and a nice chew toy. Mongols were the toughest bastards. I held them off for a while by marrying a daughter to them. Later they converted to Buddhism and I did make war on them trying to get the holy site in Balkh, but other Buddhists came and helped them out. Still I was slowly able to whittle down their event troops and keep the situation under control. They expanded more into Russia instead. With all the Persian and later Iraqi lands taken from the Seljuks, eventually you get 30k, then 40k, then 60k troops and the whole thing becomes a walkover. With the occasional distraction of yet another Seljuk adventurer with a claim on Persia invading with a measly 10k host.

I'm now in the mid-14th century, I got the Empire title and the Saoshyant title, ironically with one of my poorer rulers who died shortly after. I should try to finish the game but there's little else to do except wait for the Moabadan-Moabad to call more great holy wars for the Levantine and Anatolian areas that were controlled by the Persians in the Achaemenid and Sassanid periods. Which are now also automatic curb stomps. There's this kind of power progression where at first you're the underdog and it's a struggle just to avoid getting your shit revoked, but eventually you become immensely powerful.

At some point the Arabian part of the Seljuks somehow became both Catholic and a theocracy, not sure what happened there. I think perhaps a Seljuk with a claim who owned a mosque, who pressed his claim through factions and then converted. Or was secretly Catholic all along. It's interesting how Islam collapses completely when you have a Zoroastrian resurgence in their eastern area while there is no player keeping the HRE and other Catholic powers in check. I've only seen one Jihad succeed, otherwise it has been a constant string of successful crusades. In this game Sicily also took all of Libya and Tunisia while the HRE conquered all of Algeria, Morocco, Mali, and all the other sub-Saharan African lands in the game. They are already immensely OP when you're the player competing against them, let alone when you're leaving them unchecked. Sunni Islam just gets down to <30 moral authority due to all their problems while the Catholics dominate everything. Around the 12th century the Catholics successfully crusaded for Anatolia (conquered by Seljuk invasion) and the Byzantines barely lifted a finger against them. They have no way of fighting the Catholics effectively since they can't holy-war for duchy-tier areas.

Interacting with China is pretty amusing, haven't done that much before. Getting siege engineers from them is incredibly powerful. It's pretty fun taking Baghdad within weeks with a whiff of Chinese gunpowder.

I haven't played CK3 yet but looking through the thread on that game, apparently now the Byzantines are suddenly super-stable? Talk about overcompensating...

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

What DLCs do you have? Cults are buggy for me because the AI keeps making secret societies as well and I don't really have a way to counter those, and I don't think Silk Roads are available either.

 

[oscar]

Yep Muslims seem a lot weaker this time around. Catholicism has the heresy issue but otherwise gold from the pope and all the bonuses from them holding most of their holy sites makes it much stronger than in CK2.

I think the division of Islam also makes holy warring Islamic realms a lot easier. Only neighbours join in instead of you having to fight 3/4 of the Islamic world when you're holy warring for a province in Portugal.

 

[wwsd]

What DLCs do you have? Cults are buggy for me because the AI keeps making secret societies as well and I don't really have a way to counter those, and I don't think Silk Roads are available either.

I've got the lot of them. Silk Road is available through Horse Lords or Jade Dragon.

Yeah can't really stop the AI from starting secret societies. Sometimes I would notice a vassal or even heir having sympathy for Islam and you already know what's going on. Or being "highly suspicious". Best you can do is have your chaplain hunt for heretics and barbecue any you find. I don't know if it's possible to eradicate a cult this way. I guess maybe if you catch the few members early on?

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

I have the itch to play this again. I have all the DLC for it, what is the hardest ruler to play now?

 

[Tytus]

I have the itch to play this again. I have all the DLC for it, what is the hardest ruler to play now?

Play as a count in Carelia or Iceland - you basically get jack shit at the start of your gameplay.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Yep Muslims seem a lot weaker this time around. Catholicism has the heresy issue but otherwise gold from the pope and all the bonuses from them holding most of their holy sites makes it much stronger than in CK2.

I think the division of Islam also makes holy warring Islamic realms a lot easier. Only neighbours join in instead of you having to fight 3/4 of the Islamic world when you're holy warring for a province in Portugal.

Since every muslims takes 4 waifus they get a ridiculous amount of children, and since unlike CK2 they don't have their special succession form but rather are stuck with partition. The combination of this results in that they end up in a special kind of succession hell and their rulers are always weak.

 

[Catacombs]

I have the itch to play this again. I have all the DLC for it, what is the hardest ruler to play now?

Shattered World mod and start on the most remote island you can find. Try building power with little to no military; only diplomacy.

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Theodora]

Shattered World mod and start on the most remote island you can find. Try building power with little to no military; only diplomacy.

Is there a reason to use the mod over the features built into 3.0 and later?

 

[Catacombs]

Shattered World mod and start on the most remote island you can find. Try building power with little to no military; only diplomacy.

Is there a reason to use the mod over the features built into 3.0 and later?

If Shattered World is built into 3.0, then use that because it's probably more stable. I haven't dived too deeply into the differences between the mod and integrated version.

 

[Theodora]

If Shattered World is built into 3.0, then use that because it's probably more stable. I haven't dived too deeply into the differences between the mod and integrated version.

I haven't actually started a SW game, but the generator and its depth of options was really impressive imo.

 

[Catacombs]

If Shattered World is built into 3.0, then use that because it's probably more stable. I haven't dived too deeply into the differences between the mod and integrated version.

I haven't actually started a SW game, but the generator and its depth of options was really impressive imo.

I recommend SW if you're an experienced player. More challenge, and it's fun to build up your duchy from scratch.

 

[Xamenos]

I actually found Shsttered World less challenging than a normal game the first time I tried it. Everyone starts on equal footing and it was pretty easy to outexpand the AI and become an unstoppable juggernaut.

 

[Catacombs]

it was pretty easy to outexpand the AI and become an unstoppable juggernaut.

Have you tried bumping the difficulty up?

 

[Xamenos]

That wouldn't really solve the problem of it being easier than an equivalent start in umodded CK2, would it?

 

[Catacombs]

That wouldn't really solve the problem of it being easier than an equivalent start in umodded CK2, would it?

If you make the AI harder, then they'll likely expand quicker and put up more of a fight, no? You could also start without the "domination" casus belli that speeds up expansion in the early game.