C K fuckin' 2 thread (CKII / CK2)

>Money making tips?
make sure to have a high stewardship rating on your character, it and martial are probably the most important. Get a good steward and have him collect taxes in your capital. Build up castle towns and increase taxes to boost income. Also borrow cash from the jews in emergencies.
>needed DLC requirements?
I would say Sword of Islam, Old Gods, Holy Fury, Legacy of Rome, Charlemagne, Horse Lords, and Way of Life. That was you will have access to most characters and features. The others depend on what you feel like playing. You can probably skip Conclave and Reapers Due desu.
>where to start for a newb (that isnt ireland)
Playing as one of the spanish kingdoms in 1066 like they make you in the tutorial is pretty good since they start small to mid size and you will be pretty safe from muslim invasion because all neighbouring realms will most likely back you up.
>tips hints anything to make me better?
Playing in western europe is easy mode in general, not just Ireland. Also consider playing as someones vassal so you can do whatever you want while still being protected from invasion

>>Money making tips?
Have 2 holdings in your main starting province.
Build all the "+tax income" buildings you can in those.
keep all your vassals happy so they give you gold
ransom/banish all of your prisoners for more gold
eventually you get to a point where you have more gold than you know what to do with.

>where to start for a newb (that isnt ireland)
start as a duke of somewhere like france, germany, byzantines and practice brown-nosing your way to the top.

with seduction focus you can fuck dozens of side girls. put babies in the tummies of other rulers and spread your jizz like a disease. satanism lets you also do the same, but also you can kidnap and sacrifice basically anyone on the map at your will.

Building anything is a waste of money imo unless you're already so rich you have literally nothing else to spend it on. They have terrible return of investment rates, you're always better off using it on mercs or something to conquer someone instead.
Also I think Legacy of Rome can be safely skipped these days. It used to be required for retinues, but they made that part of the base game I believe, so it's no longer important.
Really though, use the DLC unlocker. Most of the gameplay altering DLC is at least kind of important, and the game is balanced around the assumption that you have it all.

can i kill jew

>>needed DLC requirements?
just pirate them all like everyone else does. pirating DLC in paradox games is as easy as drag-n-drop the files into the game's mod folder and running the dlc activator .exe.
the dlc are all good but turn off Sunset Invasion. it's the only universally disliked DLC and mostly intended as an ahistorical way to fuck over an expert player near the end of the game.

>starting location ideas
give nordic and slavic areas a try. lots of small, weak neighbors to invade, unique combat bonuses (slavs get a +50% defensive bonus in their own territory, so it's easy to bait the AI into attacking you) and you can RAID for lots of free gold (and raiding also weakens their defenses before you attack them).

How do you even lose a kingdom? At that size, you have no reason to have duke vassals
Are you being overthrown? Or is your realm splitting on ruler death due to gavelkind?

>kidnap and sacrifice basically anyone on the map
sure unless they're anyone even slightly important

i've had no problem doing it to kings and the pope. if anything I thought it was incredibly OP and only balanced out by the decently high chance that one of your kids becomes the spawn of satan and assassinates all of your other children/heirs/family.

dropped the game after monks and mystics because of how unfinished it felt, did they add anything interesting since then?

Among the best ways to make money is to have a lot of castle holdings in your capitol province, building castle towns for income, and keeping your steward there collecting money. A castle holding you control will make you more money than a city vassal. Plus, it gives you stronge demense troops, and you have no risk of losing your holdings even if that province is the only thing you control. Your non-primary heirs can't touch it.

Holy fury basically completed what maybe should've been in monks and mystics, but societies as a whole still feel a little underwhelming to me. But, I also don't really know what I want from them.

Pagan mechanics were expanded somewhat in holy fury. When you reform, you can choose the mechanics of the reformed faith. You decide who controls it, whether that be yourself like the caliph, some smuch, like the pope, or several people, like orthodox. Moreover, you can now decide specific doctrines, such as astrology which gives a unique trait for your sign, and readings. They also added warrior societies for pagans, which at the highest level make you immune to death while leading an army.

realm always splitting, but some of all of that really

Which succession law is considered ideal early on, and which id considered ideal overall?

Everyone seems to be gushing about the new DLC, is it actually good or are people just taking the piss?

Get out of gavelkind (especially elective gavelkind) as soon as humanly possible, it splits your holdings. The others are mostly all OK, although I'd avoid elective. Elective can usually be exploited to get whoever you want in but it's not worth the effort or the possibility of it going wrong. Personally I go straight for primogeniture as soon as possible, a stable and predictable succession is ideal.

Elective is fine depending on the situation. A lot of kingdoms can have 3 or fewer duchies, in which case you can hold 2 without penalty and choose your successor every single time. Elective is the best because of that - you can always pick your best heir.

As a kingdom you can and should be expanding by at least a few duchies per generation anyway. That theoretical ideal situation where it can be useful doesn't last anywhere near long enough for it to be worth being in elective at all.

>tfw turning europe slowly but steady into hapa central

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Those duchies don't become de jure electors for at least 100 years. Further, you can just buy favors from dukes and make them support your chosen heir for 30 years.

get the black death dlc, conclave and holy fury OP.

Start as a pagan tribe for easy mode growth

>played 270 hours
>money making tips?
>bitching about needing to play without cheats
>probably doesnt even use sex mods

You are a nigger. I hope you get your foreskin ripped off.

Or you can have primogeniture and not have to worry about it becoming an immense problem to have multiple kingdom titles or empire titles. It's not worth it at all just for slightly higher stats unless you're going to be sitting with 1 kingdom title for generations, which you really shouldn't unless you're just roleplaying or something.

Yes, you can even take all their property and expel them from your realm.

>start early middle
>grow huge
>get bored
>restart

you literally cant though, no mixed race portraits.

>primogeniture
>so your gay indulgent wastrel son can inherit instead of your brave genius

Ok, chinese then. Happy now?

Way of Life makes the game worse. The different focuses are stupid and overly gamey, and the AI can seduction focus just like you can. It's fucking retarded and belongs in the trash

>THIS mad the computer cucked you and put a bastard in your wife

What is the point of the wonders they are expensive as fuck and almost useless?

>t. got cucked

They have SOME use and you have too much money.

Literally doesn't matter by the time you're kingdom tier, but if you're bothered by it there's plenty of other ways to get rid of him that don't require using a succession system that will break your realm apart if you dare to continue expanding.

This just kill her and kill the other guy

>elective
>breaking your realm apart
Are you bad?

Just a gold sink. Everyone ends up with a practically infinite amount eventually, might as well pour it into vanity projects like that.

>mfw still no fucking idea how technology works in CK2

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>have to much money
Cant help I imprisoned all the western Europes kings and concubines thier wives and ransomed them

It ok, bro, you got cucked. It happens to the best of us. Just kill off your whore of a wife and the chad who cucked you

I didn't buy Way of Life and never pirated it. The cucks are the retards like you who wasted your time and money then dick licked Paradox for shitting up the game

It always has a chance to break your realm apart eventually if you're holding multiple kingdom and empire titles. And if you're refusing to expand beyond one elective title then you are bad. The benefit it gives is almost nothing, and the potential downsides are huge. It's a bad succession system, to the point that it's literally inflicted as a punishment by the game if you lose power to your council.

What do you even need the other titles for? Prestige? You'll have thousands by the time you inherit later in the game.

You should build to one ultimogen or primo empire title. All electives are trash

that's what a spymaster and marrying a woman with the Chaste trait is for.
Also marrying a lesbian (homosexual trait) is a surefire way to make sure you wont get babies that arent yours. She'll still get seduced by and cheat on you with other women but at least she wont get pregnant with someone's bastard.

If you're Christian make super sure the Bishops like you more than the Pope. Being able to give your favorite courtiers Church offices with Free Investure is massively underrated and worth pissing off the pope almost always, since the Germans fuck up his Authority almost instantly anyways.

Or, you know, you just don't buy or pirate Way of Lie since it is shit.

Each province has its own tech level in each specific tech. Techs gradually spread from province to province. Duke tier rulers and above generate tech points based on their stats that they can spend to jump up a tech level in their capital.
The end result of this is that you should try to find your permanent capital as quickly as possible, as any tech points you spent earlier are basically wasted when you change. There are like 1 or 2 good techs in each category that are 100X better than all the others, just dump all your points in those and let the natural spread handle the others. I can't remember all the important ones off the top of my head, but legalism and the one that increases retinues are probably the two most useful.
You take other titles from other people when expanding through claims or succession or whatever. You can consolidate them all into 1 eventually if you want, but for practical purposes it's easier if you keep everything primogeniture and deal with any outliers as they come. A bad succession or two can't really hurt you much as long as your titles are all primogeniture no matter how many you have, but if you die twice in quick succession with elective titles you can be completely fucked over. It's just not worth the risk when there's almost no benefit.

I have 1000 hours in the game. This guy fucking gets it. Retinue tech and unlocking Crown Authority/Viceroy titles is crucial for empires. A large standing army makes the AI less likely to revolt and attack.

>easier
What is the risk? By that point you should have so much money buying favors is easy, and rebellions are piss easy to put down with proper tactics.

Tanistry is the most God tier of Inheritance Laws and makes playing Scotland very comfy.

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You can, just everyone declares war on you as you try to build it.

tanistry is actually pretty fucking good
it's not perfect but it's a decent alternative to primo if you want to select a specific heir

Implying its not Reformes Pagan with Elective. It's literally a CHOOSE YOUR HEIR button from your children.

The major risk is dying twice quickly. You die once and your prepared heir gets everything, that's fine, but if the prepared heir dies before you can set up the next one you're fucked. Same sort of thing can happen if your heir dies and you die right after.
With primogeniture you have your prepared heir, and you have a spare, and you probably even have a second spare after that. Even in the worst theoretical scenarios you're perfectly fine, you know exactly how it's going to go no matter what happens.
Unprepared elections however, there's basically no way to predict. A couple of key characters dying in a short span of time and the AI could vote anywhere for anything.

>being this angry your fictional wife cheated on you

just kill her and get a new one, no reason to trash all the other great focuses because of one imaginary thot

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this. women/wives dont mean shit in CK2. they're just a stat modifier, baby machine and land acquisition tool.

>quickly
All you have to do is buy the favors immediately. Money should be no issue, and if it happens before you can even do that, primogeniture is the default before any electors select anything, which takes some in game time.

Coming back from another hiatus and don't want to fall into same bland Tutorial Island habit, what are some other starting times/duchies that aren't too complicated but also not boring as hell?

Are we playing?

The shit in Way of Life is overly gamey and shit. Retards like you cheer it on, but pretty much all of the focuses are garbage and just to provide an easy mode for people willing to give Paradox money. I'm sorry that you're a brainlet who eats whatever Paradox shits on your plate, but don't try to project that those of us with taste are cucks because we don't pay to eat shit

Italian count in Charlemagne start

If you want to start as a one province lord, revoke the titles of all the lords below you. Fuck the baron, fuck the bishop, and most importantly fuck the mayor. Take their shit, they can't do dick about it. Oh, they give you like 30% of their earnings in taxes? Well the taxman wants more cash, and those shits are bottlenecking your money. Fuck the middlemen, you don't need them. Enjoy full taxes from all your holdings. They'll be pissed, but they can't do shit about it except maybe try to kill you, but fuck it, that's what the spymaster's for. The beauty of it is that since you won't have any other lords below you, nobody but the saps you just fucked will think of you as a tyrant, so you can redistribute the town and church holdings to new lords once you get more provinces and castles.

The favours take time to buy, they also take time be called in, and worst of all there's always the chance people will just say no. That pretty much never happens in normal circumstances, but if you die twice quickly you can end up as a heavily disliked new ruler, an ugly six year old or something, and then there's a good chance you can't buy your vassals favours anyway.

Lol this is funny

One suboptimal rulers out of many of your choosing, and that being a very rare occurance, is better to me than gambling with every succession.

Slowly spread your dynasty to every single county and duchy in the kingdom. Every time you conquer something place a relative there. If a relative overthrows you just marry back into control since they ALWAYS accept proposals for relatives. As you conquer new lands you'll get Duchy that consist of 4 province usually, revoke another non-family member Duke either by yanking it in a civil war or just antagonize them somehow with plots and shit. In the new Dukedom you conquered give all 4 provinces to a family member each and then give the non-family Dukedom to someone that holds one of the new 4 provinces then give the Dukedom to one of the remaining 3. The brand new Dukedom will be hell bent on fighting that 4th guy for the province because its his de jure land and the 4th guy will be stuck swatting the counts in his Dukedom. They'll be stuck fighting each other so you wont have to worry about them. 200 years in and I effectively no longer have to wage wars because my Dukes are so embroiled with internal wars and the loyal ones will be conquering shit on their own. I played a Byzantium run recently starting from the Charlemagne start. I started as the Strategos of the Sicilian Theme and went independent during an early civil war. Conquered all of Italy and then married onto the Byzantine throne and thus entered Byzantium again. Restored Rome and effectively ceased external war waging. So we're talking Italy, Greece, Anatolia and bits of a few other places just for the event trigger for switching to Roman Empire. By 1100 I owned every single duchy in Europe up to the Baltic states. No war waged, all of the work was done by Dukes and Kings within the Empire.

duchy of aquitaine

Unless you are some tibertian monk-king, you literally get a 75% penalty to tax and levies due to being the wrong government for your holdings. You can hold baronies and castles fine though.

A suboptimal ruler doesn't matter, splitting titles does. Ending up as the ugly 6 year old isn't too much of a problem itself, but then you can't control the next succession because you can't control the electors. The next succession can tear your realm apart or hand it to a non-dynast if you die again.
The only downside of primogeniture is occasionally getting one suboptimal ruler in much the same way, but given the huge amount of control you get over raising your children in the game these days and the methods you have for removing bad heirs, it's rare in primogeniture too.
When they're going well, elective and primogeniture are mostly the same. You're getting rulers you picked or raised yourself, and everything is fine. When they're going wrong primogeniture can land you a sub-par ruler, but only elective can do real damage to your realm.
A sub-par ruler with primogeniture is nothing, it barely matters at all, your vassals' opinion of you barely matters and even if you die quickly as a hated ugly child everything is still fine. If that happens with elective though it can tear everything apart.

Kkkikh

Don't pretend ck2 is anything resembling difficult in the first place. Focuses give you actual things to be doing instead of sitting on your ass waiting for that claim to finish.

Pretty sure you can buy favors even as a child. I just really hate having my ruler live until he's like 63 years old and being succeeded by a 45 year old with a bunch of weird kids. I found elective extremely easy to handle, I don't know what to say to you. It just werks.

This. The game is so easy to get a commanding amount of wealth and land in that the problems posed by seem like inconveniences, and even if I try hard to avoid them, when they come along I'm actually grateful to have something to do or a potentially difficult war to fight. I find myself doing shit now like starting as a vassal count of the byzantines in sardinia so I can gain the duchy, fabricate a claim on syracuse, secretly convert to hellenism and try to restore the pagan roman empire.

>Update adds a literal fountain of youth

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>it wasn't hard for me anyway so I needed to pay for a shitty easy mode DLC

Top kek

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>270 hours
>just starting to understand it
sounds about right

The way of life paths at least provide entertaining events. Being able to duel without having to be a pagan is nice.

ok then user enjoy doing the same thing with every character (that is, nothing at all) while you sit around looking at the map waiting for a chance to declare war or have a child, the rest of us will enjoy our "easymode" focuses that have arguably more frequent negative events than positive ones.

>amped up for a crusade
>fucking Venetians change the target to constantinople
>change it back to Arabia to continue fucking up muslims and spread my dynasty's titles
>fucking Venetians change it AGAIN like 4 days before the crusade begins, with no notification warning me
DONDOLO!!!!!

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Ck2 is a great game, but I feel like the devs are fucking lazy.
I have no problem with paying for DLC, but the DLC they release always feels pretty low effort and like they could have fleshed it out way more with tons more options and events.

It's a roleplaying game, my dude.

CK2 is basically a CYOA storybook at this point. The warfare, economics, etc are all just minor inconveniences you navigate through easily. May as well make the events interesting.

It works until it doesn't. The possibility for failure is always there because you can't secure your successions nearly as well as you can with primogeniture. Only the next single succession is ever guaranteed, and you have to keep setting it up every time. Usually that's no problem, but when RNG fucks you in the right way, it can be impossible.
Primogeniture is planned out and secure for the next 6 inheritances, more if you bother to actually look through the family tree and work out what will be next. There's no gamble, ever. You usually have time to set things up however you want, and if ever you die unpredictably and aren't in a position to fix things you're still secure for generations.
Children can buy favours by the way, but people that dislike you won't sell them to you, or if they're being affected by something else. It usually won't happen, but multiple deaths leading to an unpopular young ruler can easily cause it. Most of my time in this game has been in multiplayer, and I've seen it happen plenty of times. There's no benefit compared to well played primogeniture (which is the exact opposite of a gamble), and the ever present potential for catastrophe, especially if you're expanding and taking/creating more titles.
Sure, that's true. The game's pretty easy when you know what you're doing, that doesn't make a bad succession law good though. You could do a WC with elective gavelkind, constantly splitting and retaking your land if you wanted, but it isn't a good strategy.

you leave those poor muslims alone user, now go sack those byzantines like a good christian

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>retinues nerfed to hell and back and then hell and back again for years
>removed the option to pay an assassin for years
no

I guess what I'm saying is that elective is easier to game than you think. It doesn't even have the issue of retaking things that elective gavelkind does. I can't imagine how you could call elective "bad" in a game where money and land and soldiers come to you so easily - at worst should see it as not quite as good.
>nerfed for years and years
and they're STILL amazing.
>removed the option to pay an assassin
I'm not usually a fan of calling things badwrongfun but it was kind of insane. I remember constantly beggaring my realm when the timurids took over most of the east, winning a holy war, spamming assassinate on their ruler until it worked so I could immediately take more lands with my ridiculous retinue. They had like 30 rulers assassinated in a few years. "Welcome to Europe, chinks."

>None of the DLCs make the game worse.
Sunset Invasion?

It's easy to game to make your next ruler good, but so is primogeniture. The thing that differentiates different succession types is not how they work when they're good, it's how they work when things go wrong. Primogeniture basically cannot go horribly wrong if you're playing remotely sanely, the worst that can happen is a sub par ruler, and even that is unlikely. Elective can go horribly wrong through unpreventable pure RNG, to the point that it can shatter a realm or hand over everything to non-dynasts.

You turn Aztec invasion off in the game rules anyway, so it can't make anything *worse*. Basically it does nothing except add Aztec religion and culture to the ruler designer.

>he can't handle the 100k aztecs that don't reinforce each other in battle
ez to kill 200 thousand of them with my 40k stack
I'll stick with my elective succession where I can have 5 genius rulers in a row without losing any titles. If you have time for electors to select heirs, you have time to buy favors. If you don't, primogeniture is the default. It just werks.

>mfw I was playing the best game of my life, weeks and weeks of hard work
>mfw my only heir its black
>mfw my wife and me are both white

console "delete my life"

I've pretty much had this entire conversation once before.
Elective is a bad idea, at least if you're playing multiplayer or ironman. Don't say I didn't warn you.

>achievements
Good luck man, I gave up after like 30%.

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>Save randomly fails right at 1300AD

I will never get the achievement for playing from the 800s to the endgame.

>focuses are garbage
now I KNOW you're pretending to be retarded.
you use different focuses for learning different traits you want and for removing negative traits like stress, depression etc. Plus some have rare event pop-ups that are really beneficial.
you just hate things because they're new and scary to you.

What's the best beneficiary to hand out your Crusade lands to?

And then you get random nerfs for dumb reasons.

after 225 in EU4 I accepted that it's a losing battle that will never end. I just look at achievements for interesting runs if I can't think of one myself.

Without the jews who will be the money counters?

your 50 year old auntie who is childless.

>tfw your character is a nigger but it's okay because she broke the back of Islam

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I thought it would be better for women who matrilineally married

>your character is a nigger
>Empress

Her dad seduced the wife of an African warlord he conquered, and all her older non-bastard siblings died of disease at a young age. She got legitimized and took over, and turned out to be really really good at killing infidels.

How do I get into grand strategy as a thing
Can I do stupid shit like or make a militaristic papal state that controls all of Europe without wasting disgusting amounts of time? I want to do stuff like that

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Elective's great till it isn't
Sure, it's great in the beginning when you can pick and choose your favorite high stat genius heirs and what not, but a couple generations down the road and your vassals are gonna start making your life a living hell, voting for morons with more clout than your preferred son, and even trying to take the title for themeself. Next thing you know, you're out of a kingdom

>without wasting disgusting amounts of time
I don't think grand strat is for you

You need EU4 if you want to conquer Europe as Battlepope.
Huge Jewish empires can be done on either CK2 or EU4.
Either way though, it will take disgusting amounts of time. You'll most likely waste disgusting amounts of time just learning the game before you even actually get to attempting the crazy huge empires.

>Kill rival
>Castrate his sons and send them to China
>Seduce his "grieving" wife and daughters to be apart of my personal harem
Is there a better feeling in the world?

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I'm 347 hours in, and I've only just started weaning myself off needing cheats.

I've probably fapped more to CK2 than all porn games combined, unironically.

>Pick seduction focus
>Spend the next 10 minutes just fucking pretty women
A vicious cycle

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The child you want to be your heir, under elective succession where you can ensure he inherits after you nominate him.

Having a wide incestuous family circle.

>buy favor
>call in succession support

>rule for 40+ years
>create a stable kingdom
>die
>heir asusumes the throne
>gets pushed of balcony by brother
>"kid genius"(3 years old) of assasinated king is king now
>murder uncle becomes regent after he removed grandmother from regent position
>mfw
Amazing how this game can fuck you over so fast after playing so long.

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>Castrate rival
>Not just killing

Have you no honor?

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m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hhu4hM-0oY
4 years in and over 1000 hours played and i only have like 60% of trophies, a lot of them are rng bullshit, like catching that damned white stag
I made a Jewish Roman Empire in ironman before while also going for the Kingdom of David achievement, just remember to mend the schism before you do so that the catholics don't shoah you with crusades. Converting to Judaism was a bit hard though because i lacked a couple of dlcs, eventually i managed to get a jewish guy to educate my heir and after fighting a civil war due to revoking counties from christians i managed to convert most of the empire.

>LoR
>(no)
i don't know what i even did before without retinues, i just remember there being a civil war upon every succesion and sometimes another 1-2 in the middle of the ruler's reign as well.

>saving gold for the post-succession civil war
You're bringing back fond memories, user.

But beneficiaries can only be girls

ME

reddit

?
No, they can be male relatives