Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date

If you’ve just picked up Crusader Kings 2 and can’t wait to get started, then it’s worth taking a look over my. It goes over the most basic mechanics that will help you to create a successful first game, from which you can self-learn everything else you need to know.Of course, the advice in that guide is very basic, and I intend to flesh it out with followup articles to help you make your way through a game without complete cluelessness at a later date. However, if you’ve already read it and just can’t wait to dive in (my definite recommendation) then you might be looking for advice on the best place to start.Thanks to Crusader Kings 2’s character-based play, there are plenty of options open to you, from mighty Emperors down to measly provincial Counts and everything in between.

1. Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date Time
2. Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date List
3. Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date Release

Here in this part 1 of the medieval role playing real time strategy game of Crusader Kings II. We start as the earliest start date, Novgorod, and attempt to form the Kingdom of Rus, and one day. Crusader Kings 2. Description: The only Greek ruler left on the Italian peninsula, this start provides a clear goal: liberate your fellow Greeks in Sicily and the heels of the boot, then unite Italy and convert it to Orthodoxy. This start would normally be brutal, being surrounded by Catholic, Norman/Italian rulers. Goshen Sagas for Crusader Kings II May 4 2019 Released Sep 17, 2018 Grand Strategy Based on the fantasy world of Goshen and the books/stories set within, by Dillon B. Sapp and Cody Lee Collins.

Even without any of the DLC there are potentially hundreds of starting characters to choose from across a 400 year timespan, before even including non-Christians and 2 additional, pre-1066 start dates.The game does have some options for you, including interesting historical bookmarks and the characters who are most relevant and enjoyable in that time period. However, a few of these are DLC-only, and for a beginner, I don’t really recommend any of them anyway. As strange as it sounds, the best place to start a Crusader Kings 2 game is not as one of the largest powers, but among some of the weaker options. Starting as a Duke or CountStarting as a king seems like a fun idea, but is fraught with peril. Any but the smallest of kingdoms will have to contend with a mess of vassals, each of whom will contend to bring about your downfall. Not to mention a historical setup that’s a horrible tangle to try and figure out.

It’s fun in its own way, but similarly quite complicated, and a new player will have enough on their hands just trying to figure out the basics.Starting as a Duke will give you the best ratio of power to responsibility. As a Duke you can have vassals, but your vassals will generally be small and weak. Added together they give you a strong force to fight with, but individually aren’t too much of a hassle. As an independent Duke you can often begin to absorb some of your smaller neighbours, or as a vassal to a king you have less to worry about from threats outside the realm. As you grow you can shape your realm into a system that works for you, rather than against you, and eventually become a king with a much better grasp on internal politics.Starting as a count offers slightly more of a challenge than a Duke, but with similar rewards. You won’t have any real vassals until you can upgrade yourself to a duchy rank, which also makes it harder to absorb your neighbours. However, you’ll be shaping your entire realm from the ground up, so that you never have to deal with a vassal you didn’t choose yourself.

A king who used to be a count will usually have a strong powerbase within their realm, and dominate internal politics. If you can make it that far of course. Starting in the British Isles or the Iberian PeninsulaRegardless of which DLC you’ve got, I always think that the best place to start is in the British Isles or Iberian Peninsula (Spain).

Particularly Ireland or one of the Iberian kings (yes, despite what I said about Dukes).Ireland: Ireland is often colloquially referred to as “Beginner’s Island” thanks to its opportunities to learn the game relatively undisturbed. Right on the Western edge of the map, and fractured into plenty of minor powers, Ireland is safe from most outside threats.

The only superpower you might have to contend with early on is England, and they have enough worries with the joint Norwegian/Norman invasion and subsequent unrest to bother you for a while. Not to mention, they don’t really care that much about conquering Ireland.Starting as one of the Dukes in Ireland means that you can begin to fabricate claims on your neighbours and take their land, and the Casus Bellis you get from duchy titles will help speed the process along. Once you have about half of Ireland conquered you can form the kingdom and the rest tends to fall into place quite quickly. Go at your own pace and you’ll feel nicely in control for most of the start of the game. Once you’re a king, you’ll have a good powerbase to expand from and experiment with.Castile: I mention Castile as the foremost of the Iberian powers, partly because (spoilers) they end up winning, historically, and partly because they’re nice and central in the area.

Unlike in Ireland, Castile does border an immediate threat in the form of various Muslim kingdoms and duchies, and has dynastic problems with neighbouring kingdoms too. View this as a blessing rather than a curse.Having other kings of your dynasty around is a good way to build alliances, and potentially inherit their thrones too. You’ll have claims on your relative’s titles, especially if you keep intermarrying with them, and when they show weakness you can expand quickly by taking them over.Meanwhile, your Muslim neighbours to the south offer you quite a nice Casus Belli in the form of Holy War, which allows you to take entire duchies at a time. Just watch out, because neighbouring Muslim dukes will join them in the defense of their titles, so be ready for a big war, or plan it out opportunistically.Other than the Iberian Muslims and your dynastic neighbours, however, Castile has very little to worry about in 1066 and shouldn’t have too much trouble eventually securing the entire Iberian peninsula for themselves. Much like Ireland, once you’ve expanded a little, you should have a good powerbase to play and explore from. Other Starting OptionsFrance: France offers you plenty of choice when it comes to duchies, but relatively little options to expand. You’re surrounded by other, equally powerful dukes, so will need to be patient and opportunistic to grow your realm.

If you want to try playing just as a vassal, however, France is a great place to start, with nothing much to do but play the diplomatic game.Holy Roman Empire: Like France, the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) offers a player peace and relative stability as a vassal, without having to worry about outside threats. The HRE also offers a bit more opportunity to expand, with so many dukes and counts that you can marry or fabricate on your neighbours and almost always find someone weaker than you. Thanks to its start as an Elective Monarchy, it also offers you the chance to become Emperor for a while, just to experience the sort of headache that starting with a large title can give you.England: Starting as Harold Godwinson is a huge mistake. If you hadn’t heard, he has a very short and turbulent reign. However, starting as an English duke can be a bit more interesting.

Once the Norman and Norwegian invasions are over, and the dust has settled, internal politics becomes very interesting and, like Ireland, you have very little else to worry about. Set yourself up as a powerful Duke and rule the realm by proxy, or have a go at the crown yourself.Hopefully that should be plenty to start with, and with the knowledge of how to get married and go to war you’ll be well on your way to creating a fruitful and long-lasting dynasty.Keep your eyes peeled for my next post on the different Casus Bellis you can use to expand your realm, and how to get hold of them.

Crusader Kings is a historical grand / game produced and published. It's set chronologically before its sister series, and uses a variant of the Europa Universalis II engine.The game was originally developed by Snowball, who abandoned it in a very unfinished state, forcing Paradox to do some last-minute fixes before release; this makes the game exceedingly buggy and all but unplayable in its post-release state. Some furious activity both by the community (via modding) and Paradox Interactive itself (via both patching and the Deus Vult expansion) has rendered the game significantly more stable and fixed many of the gameplay mechanics.The gameplay itself is somewhat original in concept: Rather than playing a particular nation you play as a dynasty (with direct control being vested in the head of said dynasty) in medieval Europe starting in 1066 and ending in the early 1400's.

While you can raise armies, form alliances and so forth the most important aspect of the game is management of your family and estates: The amount of land you can directly control is limited by certain factors, and thus you have to parcel out land to your vassals. The vassals have their own personality traits and ideas (some of which make them butt heads with you, or each other). The focus on individual characters and the dynamics within your dynasty gives the game a quality that is almost -like.

It's also notable for being one of the first Paradox Interactive games to rely on with complicated triggers rather than chains of to drive the game, which would go on to become the staple of the company's later games. A sequel, Crusader Kings II, was released on February 14th 2012, and has also been released. Blown up in manure explosion: target went out with a bang.poisoned wine: I think I shall celebrate with. Beer.: Invading China. There are steep requirements to fulfill before it is even possible note You must be an Empire-tier ruler, you must have 300 counties in your realm, you must border the eastern edge of the map, and China must not be destabalized, the war itself is difficult (China sends larger doomstacks than even the Aztecs while all your counties have -75% replenishment), and losing the war means your primary title is destroyed.

Essentially the only players who can attempt this are ones who have already conquered most of the world.:. The Family focus has no active actions you can take or ongoing event chains, and the events in it mostly give small relationship bonuses with close family and do not fire often.

However, staying on the path gives you 20% fertility, +2 diplomacy and +1 health, a close to 100% chance you'll fall in love with your spouse (+50% fertility) and the ability to become or for your dynasty, which gives you an additional +1 diplomacy and +20% fertility, making it the perfect option for rulers who want to live long and leave a healthily growing (and landed) dynasty behind. Unlike Rulership and Theology it also has no downsides; the worst Family focus will do to you is cause you to become Proud. Extracting tribute from neighbours. The attacker is spared the trouble of actually managing the defender as a vassal or his lands (if the war was over territory), and strengthens himself at the expense of the defender.: Horse Lords adds a Nomadic form of government for steppe tribes to reflect their more fluid and less settled way of life. Nomad armies are heavily structured around cavalry (including the infamous ), and horses feature prominently in their special mechanics and event chains.: In Crusader Kings II, any nation with a lot of coastline can become a serious contender at amphibious warfare, and merchant republics require coastal access to build trade routes, but the true sea kings are the Norse. All counties of Norse culture get free level 1 shipbuilding tech when the 'Dawn of the Viking Age' event fires around 790 AD (and start with them in the 867 AD start date), while (also chiefly Norse, though the Saxons follow the same faith) can sail up major rivers to raid inland and portage ships between them, and may declare county conquest wars against any coastal province (instead of merely ones on their own borders as other pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims can). They also have a slew of traits they earn by raiding.: There is nothing stopping the player from playing odd religion-government type combinations.

Muslim merchant republics? Buddhist nomads?

However, for them to be playable, you would require the corresponding expansions.:. There's an event chain which begins with a neighbour boring you and sending envoys asking for money, and you can nail the envoy's hat on his head or send roses to him. If you nail the hat, and makes everyone around mad at you, with an option at the end of the chain saying something along the lines of 'Perhaps I should begin planting roses?' . In one of the Improve Intrigue event chains, you can frame a nobody for jewellery theft. Thirty years of in-game time later, your ruler will suddenly wake up in the night and realize the man is still in the dungeons for a crime he didn't commit, and will rush to the dungeons to let him out after a nightmare, while your character takes a hit to their piety. After seeing what a foul condition he is in,.: Factions gauge their chance of successfully rebelling based on how many soldiers the members of the faction have in relation to how many you have, without taking gold or alliances into account.

This mean your vassals might form a faction and revolt against you thinking they have the advantage, only for your mercenaries to crush them all.: You can recruit landless foreign noblemen and use them as. They usually have to be in your own religious group (otherwise the fact that you're infidels relative to each other tends to put the noble's below the required threshold), and it helps if they have a claim on a title that they think you might help them win, but it's completely possible to be an Irish Catholic duke with a Greek or African general leading your army.: Lunatic event chains in 'Conclave' allow you to gain horses as courtiers. Apparently they can be pretty good ones too. If you find a way to make your horse immortal, Caligula's actual horse will show up and challenge you to a duel to the death.: The apparent fate of those who die from dysentery, as the tooltip on their character portrait states they died ' '.

There's also an assassination plot where you blow someone up with manure.: There's a chance that a character leading troops into battle may suffer a particularly bad blow to the head that renders them incapable, meaning they'll need a regent if they happen to be the ruler.: The Way of Life DLC gives us the Seduction focus, which allows rulers to actively target other characters in order to seduce and sleep with them, and (sometimes) take them on as lovers.: One of the potential trials of immortality is to steal an item from a shopkeeper. If you get caught, you try to persuade the shopkeeper that you are his liege lord, but the shopkeeper doesn't believe you and has his guards beat you to near death.: Due to a more random generation system, characters in CKII are more individualised as compared to. Furthermore, portraits change in relation to traits (battle scars, boils) or when characters are assigned jobs. Marshals and army leaders wear helmets and armor, dukes wear golden tiaras outside of battle, spymasters wear hoods, and so on. DLC content packs expand this further.: Characters with the family focus get 'Family first!'

As a personal motto.: Due to an bug in Conclave, where the members of their realm council dislike them because the PC holds too many titles (feudal)/want more land (nomads), then disagree with giving out land because they dislike the PC due to wanting more land. The only reliable solutions are to fire the council altogether (which pisses them off even more) or bribing enough councillors to agree (which can get expensive), though sometimes granting titles to relatives of council members works.: Zealous characters take a dim view of their co-religionists having sympathy for other faiths.: Zigzagged. On the one hand, it's perfectly possible to have a sweet, caring pet cat. On the other, cats in a random world have a bonus to murder plots, and the cat character comes with the Deceitful, Wroth, and Proud traits (while still being a normal cat).: The Arbitrary trait is described as a character that cares little for right and wrong, and choosing things almost at random (it is represented by a six sided die).

It also comes with a decent drop in vassal's opinions and stewardship. A lunatic, on the other hand, will do extremely random things (or nods to historical deranged monarchs, such as ) and your vassals will LOATHE you for it. Arbitrary can also lead to or when combined with the Kind or Cruel traits.: One of the lesser DLCs for the game is a ruler designer that allows you to create and customize your own rulers to replace any of the default ones. Another DLC, released later, allows you to change existing characters names, portraits and dynasty names mid-game.: Rulers who follow certain religions can, with all that entails.: Downplayed. While China will sometimes become expansionist and force other Empires to be tributes, and while it can produce armies far in excess of what most other Empires can field, only realms on the eastern part of the map need worry about this.:. Patches of no-man's-land are sometimes used to represent impassable peaks on the map, with gaps between them for mountain passes.

This is especially evident in the Alps. At a tactical level, commanders may be able to find a chokepoint in battle, limiting how many troops on can face each other on a given flank, helping offset a numerical disadvantage.: Happens more or less by default if a family has upwards from 5 or so members who hold a title (i.e. Gavelkind inheritance will sooner or later result this). All of these family members get a small opinion buff for same dynasty (and were automatic military allies in versions before 2.5), but they also tend to have a design on each other's titles ( especially if they're closely related since they'll have claims on their relatives' titles) and frequently send assassins after each other.

Some (in)famous historical examples are the Rurikids who collectively rule most or all of Russia divided into half a dozen Grand Duchies and the Karlings who hold most of Central Europe during the 867 start.: Lunatic characters appear to live in their own little bubble of reality, one they share with. They're also prone to passing laws to ban things like violence for 'the salvation of the realm.' .: Feast event chains such as pagan religious festivals may lead to one of your guests banging a serving girl in full view of the party. They may get embarrassed and stop, or keep going.:. Crusader Kings II uses different hues of the same colour to indicate similarity in its various map modes. On the political map mode, the Iberian Christian kingdoms for example share similar shades of yellow and red, while their Muslim neighbors are green. Similarly in De Jure Duchies mode, all English, French and German duchies are coloured in different shades of red, blue and white, respectively.

The Kingdom of Burgundy is. Well, guess. For the Religion map mode, Shi'a and Sunni Muslim are represented by similar but distinct shades of green, while Orthodox Christianity is purple and Catholicism is in white.

Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date Time

Heresies have differing shades from their mother religions (e.g. Fraticelli is light brown, while Cathar is light blue).: With the Way of Life DLC, a landed character can seduce any adult of the appropriate gender and orientation. Even if that character or otherwise has.

And after seducing this character you can choose to start a long-term sexual relationship.: Food Poisoning is one possible ailment your characters can suffer from with The Reaper's Due active.: Countries within diplomatic range of China can indulge in quite a bit of Sinophilia. They can use grace note which represents good relations with the Chinese Imperial Dynasty to hire Chinese Advisors, request Chinese Artifacts, and even marry the Chinese Emperor's daughter. It's possible to gain grace by sending the Emperor artifacts, castrating your courtiers and shipping them off to be the Emperor's courtiers, giving your female relatives to the Emperor's harem, and even.

This is justified in that China in this time is a superpower and gaining their favor has a lot of benefits.: The game makes a distinction between a province's culture and religion, and that of the character holding the title (who will spawn courtiers, minor nobles, of his own culture). The province will tend to shift to match that of its ruler over time, or the ruler can change cultures to that of their capital province, but in the meantime there's a small increase in revolt risk. Additionally, some cultures, such as English and Russian, are programmed to be created by having a province of one culture be controlled by a ruler of a different culture.: Invoked with the 'studying stellar movement' event chain branch from the 'building an observatory' decision (requires the Scholarship focus).

The chain allows the player character to eventually figure out heliocentrism if pursued to its end. During the discovery phase, you can choose to rebuff your religious head (assuming you're not said head yourself) when he asks you to stop. At the very end, you can choose to publish the results of your research, further snubbing the clergy, but earning considerable prestige at the same time.: You can be contacted by someone claiming to represent an Abyssinian prince.

Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date List

If you have the 'Scholar' trait, you can reply by pointing out that the names in the message aren't Abyssinian.: it's possible, though rare, that your troops may accidentally kill their own commander in battle.: The friend mechanic allows you to become friends with characters in your court, including friends of the opposite sex. If you end up seducing and/or marrying your friend, then it is this trope. Can also go the other way, since most marriages are (or just to have someone to put a potential heir into), but certain events can trigger one actually.: One of the potential encounters while out on a hunt is a wild boar. It has a small chance of killing or injuring you if you choose to dispatch it yourself, but bringing it down also gives you a fair bit of prestige.: Due to with Glitterhoof and Horse M.D.

(both being horses you can acquire as courtiers through Lunatic events in Conclave and The Reaper's Due), it is possible to produce entire dynasties of horses that otherwise act exactly like human characters. The 'Horse' trait they both have makes it impossible to impregnate them or grant them titles, but it's possible to educate children with them or nominate them to Catholic bishoprics, which creates literal Horse Lords that will generate horse courtiers. But if you don't try to break the game with them, Glitterhoof can cause a lot of hilarity because, 'Horse' trait aside, s/he can do all the same things as a human character.: Insane characters.

Crusader Kings 2 Earliest Start Date Release

Between chasing imaginary gophers, outlawing pants, trying to seduce rose bushes, Insanity is mostly.: Crusader Kings II introduced the ability for characters to form secret conspiracies to achieve some goal or another, called ' It's pretty much inevitable that at least two are going to crash into each other sooner or later.:. At one point a King-Bishop was allowed to become the predicted next Cardinal, but not allowed to become a Cardinal. Thus, if a King-Bishop became the predicted next cardinal (which was highly likely due to the 'secular power' modifier) he would prevent others from becoming Cardinals while himself never becoming a Cardinal, inevitably reducing the College to a tiny number. Rajas of India adds temporary titles for revolts.