KickStarter Let's Play: Crusader Kings II - Random World

[HeroMarine]

Crusader Kings II

Paradox's best Grand Strategy game based on European Medieval Era, plus its surroundings

I'm preparing the beginning of a Let's Play (LP) of Crusader Kings II (CK2) to be started soon. It will be played on Random World, which is a feature in the game that generates random worlds that spreads realms, cultures, religions, etc. around the area map (Europe and its surroundings - North Africa, Middle East, Siberia and up to India). This feature can create fantastic worlds with little semblance to history, but I will waste some time to keep regenerating worlds and fidgeting with the results in the game file until I have something not that crazy going for the LP. A Random World that is still recognizable Medieval European.

I will be using my own balancing mod (which strives for more realism than vanilla). The playthrough will thus be used to help iron out the bugs and keep an eye on this supposed balance.

Here's some Random World generating settings just so you guys can have a feel of what I am going for:

I'm planning to start at the very beginning of the Medieval era, before the feudal system really exploded.

A lot of random stuff.

Since I will be taking some time to actually begin, generating random worlds to your liking is an art, I want to know from you guys: What do you would like to see? What type of character/dinasty should I play? Any interesting goals, overarching or not? Feel free to input your comments and I'll try to accommodate them in my new game.
Thanks already for the support, this is great fun for me and I hope to generate entertaining content in doing this.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Thanks for sharing this, it’s a lot of fun to read along. A coastal city-state like Valencia under El Cid would be pretty cool, but you should follow your gut. Looking forward to what you come up with!

 

[HeroMarine]

On some aspects of the creation of a Random World

Unless you want a really weird Random World creation, you need to fix the files after world creation. Check if the world create makes sense based on what you expected and where you want to play in. Examples of Random World created.

See, these are example os Random Worlds generated with the exact settings I picked from the first post. Note that I set up all cultural and religious names to random! It takes a while to get used to those names. At first you might find them hilarious, then you start finding them increasingly annoying but if you do stick to a set Random World and play in it for centuries (lol) you will eventually get used to them and begin treating them as normal. Yes, it does take a while.

One thing you should check after creating Random Worlds and beginning to play with them is if the random spread of holy sites for the religions are being correctly generated.

Maybe I'm unlucky but I never got it to work properly and I always have to go in the save file and change the holy sites so religions can minimally function and the penalty for not-owned holy sites doesn't spiral out of control pushing moral authority for religions to zero and spawning all heresies the game can think about.

I just did that for the Random World I settled for in this Let's Play and we'll talk about it more later.

 

[HeroMarine]

So the surprise has been spoiled, and this is the first character I will use for the Let's Play; he seems an amusing chap to follow as we delve deep in this very low-fantasy and hopefully a little realistic/simulationist take on the Medieval Era that is the purpose of this thread.

And here is his (random) world:

Religious map (Europe is covered in Christian-similes).

I will mostly be focused on Europe for most of the LP, though I may occasionally jump out to check the periphery. Interestingly, with the random cultures thing, we have this Italian sounding people living in the British Isles, and I will pick the king of the south of England (heretofore Logudororia): King Giustu "the Fair" di Logudoro. Let's play!

But first, another pause for more rules:

I believe these rules will serve us well for the purposes of the LP but I won't bother you detailing every choice. If you're curious about why something was picked just ask below.

Now we're talking!
We are playing a Ceredigioner Ruddhaard Feudal King. These names will become more familiar as we play along, for now it's a variation on one of the Italian cultures with a variation of the vanilla Miaphysite faith. Sounds good for now.

Here it is! Our Kingdom in glorious orange paint with the capital in the county of Shrewsbury.

And here is our glorious first PC, King Giustu "the Fair" of Lugudoroia. He is 25 years old, married with six children, and he has some very interesting traits. Gifted with superior appearence and good looks, he earned the nickname of "the Fair", that is, the Handsome. This has been Giustu's main drive, though he's not a simple man. From his stats, he has excellent Intrigue skills but a terrible Diplomacy skill, with the rest fairly average. We will see how this will shape up his life and the kingdom in the future.

 

[HeroMarine]

Let's zoom out and take a look at the landmass of Europe in this newly created world:

Western Europe and the west part of North Africa are feudal, while the surroundings are tribal (or nomadic).

The economy is bare bones even in the feudal lands, which are rather poor, and trade lanes are undeveloped.

Cultural map: England is mostly inhabitted by the same culture, while the north of France and Germany are a mix of cultures. Southern France and Sardinia have the same "Tuscan" culture, while Spain is divided in what seems like cousin cultures, same goes for southern Italy and the Balkans. Northwestern Africa seems to be consolidated on the same culture as well.

Religions map: The religions based on Christianism dominate Europe and Northwestern Africa, while other religions are in the periphery.

Finally, the political map. We can see King Giustu's Kingdom of Lugudoroia in southern England, while the north of the island and Ireland are each a different kingdom. France mostly divided between two kingdoms, same goes for Italy. Germany and beyond further divided in smaller states, while Spain is consolidated into an Empire.

Reminder that this is the starting point at the earliest date in the game and we expect to see major changes with the passing of the years. Most of the fun will be had in that.

With all that in mind, we'll finally begin playing as this King Giustu's character and see if we end up liking him or not, and where he leads his kingdom.

 

[Demo.Graph]

This setup begs for inter-christian crusades and religious pogroms everywhere.
Otherwise, pretty vanilla.
Oh, what're the tech levels? Is there a possibility for a technological threat from the east (a la Muslims)?

 

[HeroMarine]

This setup begs for inter-christian crusades and religious pogroms everywhere.
Otherwise, pretty vanilla.

Sure does. I'm hoping to simulate a Christian-based medieval age but with distinct character. There will be tons of religious strife, no doubt. Well, we'll see.

Oh, what're the tech levels? Is there a possibility for a technological threat from the east (a la Muslims)?

Tech levels are at the bottom, I set it on random but the first date start is really bare bones. I'll be looking into it next post, with more pre-gameplay analysis of the starting world.

 

[HeroMarine]

New places, cultures and religions

Like I said before, it will take a while to get used to these new names for places, cultures and religions, even if the first are just renaming of randomly rearranged de jure kingdoms and empires (duchy names are changed but their territories are the same). Cultures are functionally the same also, just renamed and randomly relocated. Religions are a little trickier because not only they are renamed and randomly relocated, they are also changed, both in lore, holy sites and, most importantly, their functionalities. Their characteristics in a newly generated random world are also picked at random leading to very crazy results, but I worked to change them close to the ones they represent (Christianity, Islam, the various paganism and Eastern religions). Some still remained very different. We'll analyze them more in detail as we play.

Kingdom of Lugudoroia

Let's finally talk about the place where we will be playing the first character, the aforementioned Kingdom of Lugudorioa. Spatially, it's de jure location is basically all of south of the Great Britain island, while to the north there is a de jure kingdoms that encompasses all of northern England and Scotia. The whole island of Ireland is a de jure kingdom as well. And these three kingdoms together form a de jure empire.

De facto, there's a small independent duchy centered on Winchester in the middle of the south coast that will likely be the target of incorporation by the kings of Lugudorioa.

Now let's take a closer look at Kingdom.

King Giustu's Kingdom of Lugudorioa is composed of several duchies that generate almost 40% of the very high income of 52.17 ducats a year (that's 4.35/month), based on Feudal Tax alone. Currently the kingdom has no expenses as the army is not mobilized and we haven't started using the money, but we sure will!

The kine of succession follows old-style Gavelkind and it will likely remain that way for a while. It means every title the King has will be divided between his children, older boys (Agnatic-Cognatic) taking the best titles first. This will generate some familial tension which could lead in the extreme to succession wars.

Let's look at the rest of the laws of the kingdom:

As you can see, nothing special with the laws of the kingdom. On the contrary, they are the most basic and decentralized, while the council has basically no power.

Early start (769) means low technology, and northwestern europe got the unlucky draw in the random technology levels distribution. This explains why most law changes are locked. I'll later make a single post getting into the details of technology distribution around our world.

Vassals, mostly the dukes, have almost twice the troops that King Giustu's have (1700 vs 1000).

More details about the vassals:

That's a lot of people! I there's right Dukes and two Guidices (Counts), along with some barons, mayors from the demesne. And look!
While one Duchess loves the king, the rest is reticent or dislikes him. King Giustu better change this if he wants to have a successful reign. Let's see if we can change that when we start playing as him, and fast.

 

[HeroMarine]

Before we even start playing as the first guy, let's take a look at some aspects of this Random World and how it ended up being generated and tinkered with. After all, we'll be using it for a long time and while it looks a lot like Medieval Europe and its surroundings, it's also different.

Let's take a look at the biggest empires:

The first Empire, the Aydhab Empire, is the Byzantine Empire analogue. You can check a box in random world creation that automatically creates one for your new world, HOWEVER, it sometimes creates them in a weird place, as is the case here.

This tribal Byzantine Empire analogue had me looking for the world generation code. Decided to let it stay despite the fact it will generate a lot of problems in the region.

This huge tribal empire will be one of the first things to crack, I expect many, many civil wars.

The Basileus belongs to a religion with the caste system, based on hinduism. His personal stats are low and he will rely heavily on advisors. At least he has nine children, five boys (including one of age). He is young enough to birth even more.
He is not a big fan of King Giustu, considering him a mere low caste infidel. Not that they'll ever interact, their realms are far from each other.

The low vassal limit is going to be a major problem for the Basileus.

His now legendary bloodline will help a little bit with the minor vassal opinion bonus but I don't think this will prevent the civil wars and dismemberment of the empire, or at least a significant reduction in size.

One of the funniest consequences of the spawn system generating a bizarre tribal Byzantine Empire analogue is that the Basileus can't wear the Imperial Diadem until he advances the government to Feudal, meaning it remains inactive.

This is the randomly generated hinduist analogue religion, it will be amusing for roleplaying in future posts.

Speaking of religions, let's take a look at the religions generated in this world:

I hope you all appreciate the new names for the religions. In all random worlds generation, they are based on the original religions in the game but are set to have random features. I changed some of the random changes to let them more like the real religions but let some of the changes in for variation. Also, I had to change all their holy sites in proper locations so their moral authority aren't close to zero and make them subject to religious revolts all year long. Also, some holy sites are close to their bothers which will hopefully generate interesting religious wars. We will be first playing as King Giustu, who follows the Creed of Rhudda, based on one of the Christian religions but also a little different in some ways. I'll get to it eventually.

Most of the big religions have decent/average moral authority, but some are pretty low:

Hellenic and Aztec are unchanged in random world, but since I've set Aztec Invasion off, the later will not appear.

Going back to largest empires, we have the Holy Roman Empire analogue. In this game they are the Holy Léonian Empire, based in the on the Hispanic Peninsula. They are more traditional in that they are both feudal and its religion is the Catholic analogue. If you compare it to the Byzantine Empire analogue, the Aydhab Empire, they are approximately the same size. But when you compare army sizes, it's quite different.

Ranking the empires by army sizes leads to interesting results. Kingdoms with realms as small as 20 provinces make it to the top 3. That's because some religion features give them huge bonus in terms of levies and this might make them candidates for huge expansions early game. The Holy Léonian Empire is #6 and our Kingdom of Logudoroia drops from #6 in size to #11 in army size. Note that the Byzantine Empire and HRE analogues start with 1000 gold instead of the typical 100 gold start (some realms have already spend that money, as this screenshot is from Jan 5th).

On the 5 days I let the game play without input just to test if it would not crash, the AI has already started 5 wars and I expect many hundreds of wars in the first years of the game, but we will monitor it later to see if the situation is too unbalanced leading to an exaggerated number of wars.

Here are the 10 bloodlines that the game has generated for our random world. There's even another guy with a "The Fair" nickname, King Elmede, meaning he will also have the increased sexual attraction genes. His bloodline, in fact, every bloodline listed here seems dangerously small. I expect some will thrive with hundreds of members while others will die out.

Now that we inspected some aspects of this Random World where we will be playing, I will first focus on playing the King Giustu's character and only looking at stuff in his neighborhood, though I will eventually comment on events and developments further away if they are noticeable or interesting enough. See you next update!

 

[HeroMarine]

After all this examination of our randomly generated world, let's finally play with the first character: King Giustu's the Fair!

A quick reminder of who he is and his Kingdom of Logudoroia:

With his capital in the castle of Shrewbury.

Our king only directly rules over a three provinces, with the aforementioned castle of Shruberry Shrewbury as the capital of the county, Chester to the north; both bordering the northern kingdom of Bosaicenia. Finally, the hard to pronounce county of Perfeddwlad, where the castle of Denbigh is located.

Let's focus our first efforts on internal affairs at first. We will set the crown focus on our capital of Shrewbury to help develop it. With the money I'm starting with, I'm paying $75 to build Castle Walls I on the castle of Shrewbury to increase Levy Size by 2.5%, income by 0.2/month and fort level by 0.5, this should be the first thing built in any castle with a sane administrator.

As we've seen before, the Kingdom has a size of 96 holdings, which are organized under vassals and more vassals. Let's take a look at our direct vassals.

Eight Dukes and two Guidices (Counts), along with some barons, mayors from the demesne. Two of the most important Dukes have a negative opinion of the king, and to avoid revolts and mischief, that's who we will be working on. At first, we'll try to improve their opinions and appease them.

On the family front, everything seems fine.

We have enough kids to secure succession, and they all have positive opinions on their father. We just need to properly raise them.

We also have good relations with the wife.

This is a great idea, since as she is an ambitious, envious and deceitful Elusive Shadow, she could do real harm from behind the throne. Both husband and wife are young (25 and 24, respectively) and can easily have two dozen more kids eventually.

Let's take care of the first starting decisions relating to our character. The Realm Council:

I'll keep the council for a while, but I'm eyeing on getting rid of that not that powerful Duke with the thumbs-down.

I have put the council on what seemed the most useful jobs. Notably the Marshal researching military tech and the Patriarch converting one of the three provinces that are of the same group but different.

Now for King Giustu's himself, he has had enough time living a family life bearing children with his wife. And yet, his diplomacy skills are on the floor and he lacks any friends, his Dukes dislike him, etc.

On reflection, his current ambition is to get a friend and expand his social life.

Because of that, his current focus will be carousing. let's put that beautiful face of his to use in parties.

Cheers! Everybody likes the host of a party.

I mentioned early that King Giustu's children need to be properly raised.

Let's tutor our seven year old heir, Prince Corona, with the help of councilors and noblemen and prepare him for rulership with the Pride focus.

Now for foreign affairs, how about we consolidate our control on the south of the island? We have ducal claims on this independent Dukedom.

Let's check out this Duke and his realm.

LMAO Literally an imbecile, zero skills in everything, negative personal combat. He has a little over 500 troops but we have over 3,000.

Time for war!

We will first defeat him and gain the county of Wiltshire for Duke Olisae of Lugudoroa, its de jure owner. This is the perfect option as this Duke will be thankful for a long while.

War declared! It will add to the large number of early wars from the weird configuration generated for the Random World.

All levies raised, we have a numeric superiority so overwhelming this war will be merely a formality.

Let's concentrate the numerous forces in a single army and attack.

Check back for the next post when we will recount how the war goes and much, much more. Hope you guys enjoy it!

 

[HeroMarine]

Time to put the show back on the road. Let's recall how the war starts:

One of the many, many wars that will begin this January.

In the first couple months, King Giustu concentrates his army north of Wiltshire and invades the county. Meanwhile, Duke Mantredu's army moves to bath.

What's that big army on top of Winchester?

That's right! Soon after the war broke out, the local peasants revolted.

Lead by this Pupa chap and his crew, not a bad guy in my opinion.

We will deal with them later.

After a while, we decide to assault the castle with our much larger forces. Otherwise, we would waste too much time in the siege.

After the easy victory, King Giustu's army moves on the enemy forces at the province of Bath.

The battle will be very easy given the disparity in numbers, but let's analyse the tactics of the commanders.

Our glorious King Giustu the Fair leads the right flank the army, with powerful and angry Duke Gòsamo leading the central part of it. Note the high number of heavy infantry in the army.

Interesting. I will adjust how some of tactics are picked in the mod to favor better commanders instead of poor ones or none.

What's this? Our king wants some of battle action?

Hell yeah, let's duel this commander:

Wait, what? Some Baron was quicker.

Talk about the Militant Church!

Like I said, easy win.

While I was at war, I had one my ancient dukes die on me and his son take up his place.

That red hand means he's a powerful duke AND that he's pissed with me.

His father was the Chancellor and despite Duke Pasqualis only having Diplomacy 10, we'll go with him for now just to appease him.

There, much better.

Another oldster bites the dust. This time, my big fan Duchess Rosina.

Her son doesn't like as nearly as she did. He's a powerful duke and he's pissed.

He wants in on the council but I'll have to put that on hold right now.

Let's continue the war and siege another province from Duke Mantredu, our enemy.

Our enemy's army disintegrated but that peasant revolt is worrying.

If they defeat and replace the Duke before I win, the war will be cancelled and white peace'd.

As time goes by, my warscore will keep increasing up to the desirable 100% when I will be able to enforce my demands. However, the peasant leader only needs to conquer that one province and he gets 100% instantly, replacing the duke and upsetting my war.

Looks like we'll have to fight some peasants next episode, stay tuned.

Oh, didn't I say there was going to be a lot of wars starting early on because of how the Random World generator most likely creates a very unstable starting point?

It's still August and the number of wars has jumped to 60+ and that's not even counting any war that has been over yet.

More to come soon!

 

[HeroMarine]

Last post, our good King Giustu the Fair was considering attacking the peasant revolt so he could get to siege Duke Manfredo of Ogiastra's capital at Winchester County.
And voilà that's just what he did.

Look who's escaped to the Isle of Wight, our good Duke's army - or what's left of it.

The battle at Winchester against the peasants goes easily as their flanks have no leader, so King Giustu quickly routs the right flank.

Get out of my way, peasants! I will let you deal with your imbecile duke, but not today!
Note that the king's army has a ton of heavy infantry, which is devastating in melee but almost useless in the skirmisher phase. We have to address this imbalance in our military at some point.

Perhaps we could have lost much less men if we had more archers or light cavalry for example.

Now we get to siege the city of Southampton, the county's bishopric and castle. Should be easy as the rebels had already dealt with the castle earlier. We will assault it all without worrying for heavy casualties.

Now the Duchy's capital is under our control, we should have enough to impose our demands.

100% is how we do it. Let's give them peace.

My good vassal, Duke Olisae, will be thankful for a long time for gaining this giudicato (county).

With war done with, we can look at our internal affairs.
One thing I find it very important is to have our good men in court married and having their families prospering. Let's see how our court is going.

The "Find Characters" interface is the easiest way to handle it, in my opinion. You get to filter who in your court is a single adult. In Random World games, your court will be generated with people of all types, from genius to talented to useless to dangerous. I see that my commander Lisandru here is unmarried, so I'll see it to find him a wife.

There are no single women in my court, but thanks to the "Decisions" interface, we get to Invite one of the noble young ladies of the country to our court.

Introducing Rossana de Lacon Gunale

This 16 year old débutant is single and ready to mingle. I hear she's very good with money, so will be a boon to her husband. I intend to marry her to my commander Lisandru.

However, Lisandru is of non-noble extraction, a Lowborn, so the marriage will have to be Matrilineal meaning that Lisandru and his progeny will be adopted by House de Lacon Gunale. A step up for our man.

Let's see how our couple is doing on their honeymoon?

Fantastic. He's a mediocre commander but not a bad guy I'm sure. With time he'll like me more.

Let's get back to the "Find Character" interaction screen.

You can see that Lisandro is gone from the list of singles - he's married now. But there's more people to play matchmaking with. A lot of the kingdom's treasure will go into recruiting damsels to start families.
So, we can continue the process by getting our commander Comita married and so on and so forth.

You will note that there's a geezer, Porkinu the Court Physician, who is 70 years old. We recruited him through an event.

I hope the money is being well spent.

What else we can say about the time we ruled from the battlefield?

Our Spymaster found a plot by this ungrateful duke to fabricate a claim on MY kingdom. The nerve. He's too powerful for now to risk a civil war over this, but we've got to do something in the near term.

The man shows no respect.

Speaking of lack of respect, we received news of the Kingdom of Bosaicenia to the north.

King Floru is dealing with his lower level vassals with no mercy. Let's remember that.

That's it for now for this quick update on the unraveling of the war with the imbecile Duke of Ogiastra. Tune in next time for more politics and personal life of King Giustu the Fair in this wonderful Random World.

 

[HeroMarine]

770: a new year comes for King Giustu the Fair, who is having the time of his life.

Castle Walls have been built in the capital at Shrewsbury. The Kingdom will prosper.

WAIT, WHAT!?

Dude, I thought we were pals. What's with these insults and the war declaration? Are you out of your mind? Just because you have a slight edge on military and you're good leader doesn't mean you can think of attacking a fellow king. You will regret this!

My military isn't up to par with his, but I have a ace in the sleeve to get quick results: mercenary bands!

I will be needing some extra gold to pay for this so I will have to deal with those detestable Osraigeian merchants.

Now we're talking! Let's concentrate the armies and mercenaries in the target of the war, Chester, before we launch our own early invasion into Bosaicenian lands. Their armies are nowhere to be seen.

By the way, we are one and half years in and the world is shock full of wars, some having started in the first days of the game. The lands will keep changing hands for a long time, stability will be rare.

We get a little jumpy and cross the border with our main army into enemy lands, King Giustu the Fair leading his men. The rest of the troops will arrive soon. We start the siege.

We are caught by surprise by Bosaicenian forces during the siege and have to give battle.

The battle happens in the plains of Salford, but in the hurry to deploy the army, the right wing is formed without a clear leader. Thankfully, the enemy is even more disorganized the we are, lead by a single mayor. Our left flank routs the enemy's leaderless right flank and all the army can concentrate in crushing the center.

Glory! This was a quick but bloody battle, the edge in mercenaries saved a lot of our people's lives. We get 52% warscore, which will go a long way in us winning this war.

Bad news! Our messengers have informed us that some Mankia peasant has raised an army against us in Leicester. We better wrap up this war with the Bosaicenian so we can deal with the revolt before it does too much damage.

Our siege of Lancaster successfully ends with an assault.

We take this opportunity to sue for peace with King Floru. This war was silly on his part and I hope he learned a lesson.

Yes, he learned that our Kingdom's military is a little too much for him to handle.

A white peace and the return of status quo. Now we will lead the army to deal with the peasant revolt.

Good news, this time the messengers bring the excellent information that King Giustu's beautiful wife is pregnant again. He receives the message on his way to give battle to the peasants.

The battle at Nottingham turns out to be a peasant massacre.

King Giustu's is fighting like a monster, killing dozens of would-be soldiers with his own sword, surrounded by his trusty companions. He goes deep into their formation and pledges to destroy them.

In the bloody carnage, he sees himself becoming an aggressive leader. He will fight even harder into the enemy.

What's this? That's foul!

The peasant leader Mankia takes advantage of the reckless sense of defense of the King to surround him and gets his kill even if he's losing the battle.

What a disaster. While the Army is celebrating without hearing about their King's death, the terrible news quickly spreads and turns all men silent. That a waste. Curse the odious Markia.

After a while, at the Shrewsbury, pregnant Queen Dorotea has no time to mourn her husband. She moves quickly with her loyal entourage to have her eldest son, Corona, crowned the new King of Lugudoroia.

Despite beavely dying in combat. King Giustu the Fair is set to pass on the Chronicles written by envious men as a libertine. However, many will view the late king with fondness.

The new King Corona is only eight years old, and the Kingdom of Lugudoroia will be ruled by the powerful regent and the council until he becomes of age.

Even as a eight years old kid, the young King Corona is adamant in his orders to have the responsible for his loving father's death, the peasant leader Mankia, executed as soon as possible. The news of this will strike fear into the hearts of other would-be peasant leaders for a long time.

The king's heir is his younger brother, who bears his father's name, Giustu. The regent is Duke Olisae, who gained a giuducatto (county) from the late King Giustu and is very grateful to the royal family. As Spymaster, he gets to know a lot of the back-scenes of the personal lives of the courtiers and vassals as well, meaning he will be position to make good decisions as regent.

While some are being born, others are dying.

Duke Leonardus, the old dead duke's son is appointed by the Regent as the new Chancellor so he gets to be in the council and become content with the new, young king.

King Giustu the Fair left another legacy to this random world, his posthumous son Serafinu, who will be renamed "Postumu".

This is the world in which young King Corona becomes King. The different states and religions will compete for survival and triumph for the next centuries.

One of the regent's act is approving the funding of a castle town in Shrewsbury, this will lead to a prosperous county and kingdom in the long term.

While the castle town is being built, the young boy Corona goes on an adventure of his own.

We stop them. Don't be mean to little children, boys.

"No kid should be hungry in my kingdom", Corona thinks. He gives money to poor little kid and this episode marks him.

The Castle Town is finished to celebration of all in Shrewsbury, including the young king.

Tune in next episode of the Random World, as little King Corona will have the chance grow up to become a mighty leader in Lugudoroia!

 

[Azira]

Live by the sword, die by the sword it seems.

 

[HeroMarine]

Live by the sword, die by the sword it seems.

He got a little too much into it and met a formidable foe. RIP.

 

[HeroMarine]

All was well in the Kingdom of Logudororia for our little King Corona in late 772. This created a false sense of security for the little boy, as he was about to learn, life is hard if you want to be a great ruler. The aristocracy was going to take advantage of the fragility of the Royal House to push for more power.

In September 772, Duke Vivianu of Gunalelia brought the nobility demands to the little king: the most powerful vassals of the kingdom, the mighty dukes, had joined in a conspiracy to threaten the king with rebellion if he did not expand the powers of the Royal Council. Left with no other options - a civil war would be disastrous - the regent confirmed with that the nobles would be acquiesced.

Thus, henceforth, the council's approval is now required for Declarations of War:

It does suck, as I cannot declare wars on a whim anymore, but we will have to deal with this from now on.

Interestingly, the increase in Council power comes with the obligatory opening of another chair in the Council, that of the "Advisor" a role with seemingly little responsibility other than vote in these important decisions.

And yet, for my kingdom another place in the Council is exactly what I need (in fact I would like two openings).

Not those two dukes with the red fist symbol, Leonardus and Abisatu? That means they are powerful dukes but unlike the dukes with the brown fist symbol, they want a place in the Council. I have a minor duke in the coucil, Vivianu, because I chose him as a Steward. Maybe not an optimal decision in hindsight considering you don't usually want powerful dukes outside the Council because you increase the potential for resourceful conspiracies against you. In any case, what's done is done and I'll not be replacing Vivianu for now, only picking Leonardus for the role of Advisor in the Council, as he is the strongest between him and Abisatu.

This leaves Abisatu still pissed off with the situation and I get less support from him, both financially and militarily. It's good to have some Dukes as children as they can't demand much until they grow up.

Looking at the list of my vassals, I see one Duke with a strong negative opinion of little King Corona:

He's from a different religion (in the same religious group) but he's zealous, which means he thinks the King is his religious enemy. The religion aspect gives the following opinion minuses: -15 for the regular "religious differences", -45 extra for being zealous, and the -37 and dropping with time for the opinion of predecessor, King Giustu the Fair. He also had a terrible opinion of King Corona's late dad because of religious differences. However, we don't need to worry much about this duke because he only rules a very small part of the kingdom and he has very little in the way of power and resources, but make no mistake, he is our enemy.

I could try to imprison him but it would open a can of worms in the "tyrannical" path. We'll deal with him more subtly. I'm sending priests to his area to try and convert the populace for now, but that is a very slow process.

Another interesting aspect of the game that we can look over now that the realm looks like it has stabilized is the epidemics situation. Crusader Kings 2 has the mechanics of spreading deadly diseases around the world, and usually building a hospital is the way to deal with most of the danger of them. Since we are beginning the game in the dark ages, we have little in the way of resources to build hospitals for now, and we'll have to rely on our court's physician to take care of any diseases we and people in the court catch. Around the world, there are currently the following epidemics:

We are safe for now, but for how long? These epidemics seem to be spreading in coastal areas.

Soon enough, our capital is struck with a Slow Fever (Typhoid fever) epidemic:

Note the red circle symbol with the diseased guy.

Quickly, that illness spread to the court and our poor younger brother is one of the victims.

One of our many brothers, this little guy could have been a great person, but he's gone, defeated by the dreadful disease. The royal family is inconsolable. Such is life in the medieval age.

Summer, 773: the slow fever epidemic takes over the north part of the island

That's it for today's post. We will continue playing and follow King Corona's upbringing in this harsh environment. Let these events remind us that it's good to be the King but it's also hard!

 

[HeroMarine]

Our little King Corona has a Non-Agression Pact:

Who is this Refulfo Bracara? What ties are those... Marriage between King Refulfo and... Queen Dorotea? His mom? In the few years from the death of King Giustu the Fair, King Corona's mother is already re-married, and to another king nonetheless.

Powerful woman.

A master of intrigue and deceit, this ambitious woman rose from the obscurity of peasantry to become the wife of two kings and the mother of another. At 28 years old, she has many children with her late husband and is still able to birth more for the king of Bracaraland.

Now what is this place and who exactly is their king?

King Refulfo Bracara is also of the same religion as the Kingdom of Lugudoroia, the Creed of Rhudda. His culture is Icelandic, not Ceredigioner, so there's adaptation to be done by Queen Dorotea. King Refulfo at 55 years old is not an impressive ruler, but he managed to father three sons, a heir and two spares, all of whom are men of age. He might father more kids with the new queen but they are unlikely to inherit the kingdom only in the improbable event of all his first three sons dying.

The Kingdom of Bracaraland is located in what is today the region of south of Sweden, it appears to be a recently civilized area, with some tribal lands and more heathens as you go further north. It is not a very rich kingdom. We see the land is also suffering from the Slow Fever epidemic, which further contributes to King Refulfo's stress. To make things worse, King Refulfo seems to be embroiled in a war with his northern neighbor, the more savage and pagan land of Faberiinia.

A huge tribal confederation lead by the warlord Remismund Faberi.

Despite being less civilized, they are getting the upper hand in the war. The situation in Bracaraland seems precarious. Losing the war, it won't be long until other pagan kingdoms and tribes around it will try to vulture its carcass. Can the Kingdom be saved?