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Post by Judkins Moaner on Mar 9, 2015 12:27:38 GMT -5
Having posted a few times on my miserable exploits in Paradox Games' glorious Crusader Kings 2 (and Europa Universalis IV) in the VGT thread, I figured it might be better to just create a separate thread, as I feel weird about getting in the middle of discussions of games I don't play (though who knows, down the road?). So consider this a thread for anyone who wants to talk about CK2, EU IV, or Paradox games in general, I guess.
Went with the Ivar the Boneless start for CK2: The Old Gods last night when I probably should have been sketching, and had a hugely up-and-down but vastly entertaining rest of the ninth century. Finished Sudrejyar's wars with Northumbria and East Anglia, went raiding all throughout the Mediterranean (as far afield as Crete) and stuffing my coffers, and then started to slowly conquer Ireland, the latter two tasks really ramping up under Ivar's son and successor, Sigtrygg (875-89). Sigtrygg's underage heir, Ivar II, started out as a snot-nosed little punk but gradually came out all right through careful tutelage, probably just as well as he inadvertently created a united Ireland under the upstart Dunlaing, who founded the Kingdom of Ireland in a revolt against Sudrejyar (in which the carefully husbanded Islander raiders from the game start were utterly annihilated). A couple of years later, he went to war in an attempt to finally stomp out the "evil tyrant" Ivar II, but the now far cannier Ivar converted to Catholicism just in time and now rules over a much-reduced petty kingdom, a far cry from his earlier circumstances but better than being under the Hibernian yoke of that muttonchopped usurper. All this and it's barely 900. I definitely don't expect this game to last much longer but man, it's been a hell of a ride.
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,659
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 9, 2015 14:59:42 GMT -5
Do you have any suggestions for getting started with this game? It seems like something I'd like but I'm still such a middling EUIV player that tackling another of their games seems ambitious atm.
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Mar 9, 2015 16:24:48 GMT -5
Do you have any suggestions for getting started with this game? It seems like something I'd like but I'm still such a middling EUIV player that tackling another of their games seems ambitious atm. Try one of the playthroughs on YouTube and see what you think. The ones from Quill18 and Arumba might be the most informative (I sort of learned how to play EU IV from the former), and there's a good basic one from some guy whose name I can't remember that takes the William the Conqueror start just to acquaint newbies on the military side of things. If you've got the time, though, I highly recommend running through the 14-part (at last count) series from the Idle Thumbs guys. They start with Munster and conquer Ireland (1066-1140). Not only is the commentary frequently hilarious, but it does a really good job of emphasizing the game's appeal (for me, at least), which is that it creates a personal, family narrative of the kind you really don't get in EU IV (which is more about building an empire or whatever). You can do that kind of thing with CK2, but the family dynamics and how they affect game play is really one of the things that make it unique. Definitely download the demo, too, and try that out; it'll give you a good idea of whether you like it. I played Boleslaw II of Poland and was thirsty for more by the time it cut off twenty years in.
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,659
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 9, 2015 16:30:02 GMT -5
I actually own the game already, it's sitting on my queue waiting for me to gather the fortitude to dive in.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Mar 17, 2015 23:10:16 GMT -5
Currently in the middle of a game as the Sultanate of Mali (formerly the Emirate of Ghana) struggling to reform my society into feudalism while retaining Paganism and maybe conquering my way to a port on the sly.
Everything but taking land from the Arabs is working out pretty okay.
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Mar 18, 2015 13:10:18 GMT -5
I played Europa Universalis II literally daily, mostly hours daily, from August 2002 through about 2006-2007. Without a doubt my favorite computer game of all time. (Any Paradox forum regulars from that era might remember me.)
Recently purchased EU IV but there just isn't enough time in my day. Try to squeeze in the occasional hour on weekends, but it's hard. I think my current game is as the Ottomans?
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Mar 18, 2015 16:16:22 GMT -5
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Mar 18, 2015 16:36:53 GMT -5
Uh...yeah. Yeah I did. For the last year or so at least, that was my preferred gameplay. And also Kaigon's mod where every single province is its own country with casus belli on every surrounding country.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Mar 18, 2015 17:02:44 GMT -5
Ron Howard Voice Mine too! I mostly played what I called Fortress Bohemia games. Retain early Hussite Protestantism, put my sliders to be as specialised militarily and as pro-science and tolerance as possible, and then hunker down behind increasingly advanced walls as I got besieged repeatedly by my neighbours. Also played a game as Mecklenburg were I got filthy rich by just controlling as many centres of trade as possible. The guys who made AGCEEP later released a game version of the mod, For The Glory, using the EU2 engine. It's on steam, I own but never got around to playing it.
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Apr 5, 2015 22:50:13 GMT -5
Finally closed out my Old Gods game with the Ivar-the-Boneless, Sudreyjar start. For most of the game, my characters' (all right, my) greed and incompetence resulted in the once-proud Ivarings being restricted to East Anglia (and then just Norfolk and Suffolk after those Wessex assholes declared a holy war for Essex; it's like they knew Sade would sort of be from there one day). Ivar Ironside (r. 889-925) eventually proved too clever for his own good, being assassinated after having his heir raised by a Jewish refugee in an absent-minded fit. For the next fifty years, Sudreyjar was ruled by this guy: On the one hand, it was cool as fuck, and Sigtrygg was a great ruler, investing in his people and helping out his allies when he could, especially during the Manner conquest of Jylland (969-72), in which "Sigtrygg's March" took his armies across Britain from victory to victory, particularly at Crowland and Crossraguel (both in 970). Sadly, his Jewish religion meant that he was ripe for Christian holy wars, the most devastating of which took place in 974-75, after which he was defeated and forced to live in exile in Finland, of all places (still not sure how that happened). My character devolved to High Chief Inge of Sami, a distant relative (though not the one with which Sigtrygg took refuge), and I'm not sure how (or whether I want to) proceed with this. It'd be nice to build some ships and get revenge on that Mercian prick who overthrew my Jewish kinsman, but there are a few other games I want to finish and/or run into the ground. Still... ain't nothin' like CK2, and that's still a fact.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Apr 5, 2015 22:59:28 GMT -5
@patrickbatman I played a Charlemagne era game as the Kingdom of Gideon, the Ethiopian Jewish nation that happens to be surrounded by Ethiopian and Nubian Christians. When you're the underdogs relative to those guys, you're not in a very tenable position. I lasted around a decade before Abyssinia seized my two provinces.
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Jun 16, 2015 7:48:57 GMT -5
So I gave myself a little reminder last night that you never know what's gonna happen in this game.
I have two games going which have fallen on hard times. My Ivar the Boneless start, described earlier, has seen the Ivarings, a little over a century later, demoted to minor chiefs of Lappland (though the King of Northumberland's a distant relative). That said, young Ivar Ingesson escaped from the Lappish chief's dungeon to become something of a badass, and now he and his brother potentially hold the balance of power in northern Scandinavia. I'm guessing my next bout with this timeline will involve me rebelling to (hopefully) regain the High Chiefship of Sami.
Also, in the late tenth century next door, the Umayyads have regained control of Andalusia, only it isn't my Umayyad (Emir Hafsun of Granada) but Zeyd, Emir of Sevilla and a distant relative. Before his restoration of the dynasty, though, Hafsun fabricated a claim on Gwent, of all places, and leveraged it to conquer most of South Wales and become Emir of Deheubarth. His eccentric plans of conquest unhappily coincided with the then-Sultan, a Muhammadid, declaring war on the King of Aquitaine to recover some French provinces. It wouldn't have mattered had the King not been involved in a war to usurp the King of Wales's title. Thousands of French troops, already in Wales, turned on Hafsun's guys, but, as they weren't actually fighting to conquer the Emirate of Deheubarth, it thankfully didn't matter in the end and may even have allowed the Sultan to win his war and maintain a Muslim stronghold in central France. Not sure what the next move will be; some of the other Emirs are fighting to deprive Hafsun's son Mahmud of the Emirate of Deheubarth, and I'm fine with that so long as it remains Muslim for a little bit longer (the King of Aquitaine will almost certainly steamroll it sooner or later). Hafsun's increasing infirmity may lead him into some interesting decisions. Ireland? Iceland? The Canaries?
Oh, I forgot how much I loved this game. I'd thought about quitting in both of these but they turned out to be more interesting than they'd been in decades (of game time).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2015 8:29:31 GMT -5
I just had a very promising empress of my Basque Hispania empire fall ill and die at 44 after reigning for just two years. Such is life.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 23, 2015 13:01:21 GMT -5
Recently played a Victoria 2 game where I narrowly succeeded at modernizing Sokoto and turning it into a liberal democracy with a robust cavalry force that could defeat reactionary rebels and not get swallowed up by the massive invasions of the West into Africa.
Now trying to find a good converter to Hearts of Iron so I can continue to curtail the rise of sub-Saharan African fascism, and maybe find myself an alliance that helps dismantle the European empires of the region (Germany has a huge semi-independent client African state I'd like to make friends with) but not sure how this damn converter works yet.
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Aug 5, 2015 10:18:30 GMT -5
Is the Mac compatability for Crusader Kings 2 only viable on laptops more recent than 2011? And I guess other Steam available games as well?
Signed up for Steam yesterday, tried to install the CK 2 demo for Mac, but it said my platform can't support it or something. Also read somewhere if you try to buy the game itself they won't refund you if it can't download.
UPDATE: It does appear to be a CK 2 specific (rather than Steam-wide) issue with my MacbookPro. I'm downloading a demo for a different game "Making History:The Great War", which so far seems to be going OK.
UPDATE #2: "Making History:The Great War" suuuuuuucks! Was all excited to alter history, have Austro-Hungaria shore up trade with Italy to keep them in the Central Powers (LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO), bolster rail capacity, instead of immediately going to war with Serbia just round up the usual subversives put a lot of artillery along the frontier with them and mass my forces along the Russian border instead. But the damn game is difficult to move around in, they won't let me move units and I was getting frustrated and gave up.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 6, 2015 16:24:37 GMT -5
Ladies and gentlemen: Hype. PARADOX IS GOING TO SPACE Stellaris. It's going to be a grand strategy game IN SPACE. I mean I could just stop there. But my god this sounds great. ...also I am in the middle of a long game in Crusader Kings 2 as what I guess will be known as the Empire of Alba, as I've formed Britain as Ireland. Just trying to bring the pesky Scots to heel, but the blighters created the Auld Alliance with France. I also have dynastic ties with Aquitaine and shit I started out playing a lowly Irish chieftain but I think I have become a Plantagenet.
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Post by ComradePig on Aug 21, 2015 10:07:02 GMT -5
Papists innnn Canaaaddaaaaaa
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Aug 21, 2015 17:01:33 GMT -5
Ladies and gentlemen: Hype. PARADOX IS GOING TO SPACE Stellaris. It's going to be a grand strategy game IN SPACE. I mean I could just stop there. But my god this sounds great. Oh, this can't happen. Not now. I'm at work so can't watch the video, but come on.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 26, 2015 12:16:55 GMT -5
I just found an extended timeline mod for Europa Universalis IV. It goes from 2 A.D. to 2015 A.D., and lets you play centuries after the present date. I haven't been able to play it just because I keep scrolling through all the years of history and just looking at the options - do I want to be the Quraysh when Mohammed ruled them, at the dawn of Islam? The kingdom Odoacer created after he dissolved the Western Roman Empire? Iran during the Iraq-Iran war? Wei ruled by Cao Cao during the Three Kingdoms era of China? (Unfortunately, the game classes Zenobia's Palmyrene Empire as rebels and thus unplayable; although they also do the same to Islamic State. There's a caustic joke in here somewhere.) And at a cursory glance it's a mod that has made an effort to simulate its diverse periods and places - 'Chalcedonian' is the Christian state religion available prior to the medieval split between Catholic and Orthodox (and 'Secular' is included as the state religion of most modern states.) The scale is mind-boggling; although to what extent the EU4 base gameplay can effectively simulate everything between the Xiongnu and South Sudan is an open question - briefly dicking around with it I noted secular countries regarded the religions of all their provinces as heathens; presumably the mod avoids that being a concern. Still, I may need to cancel some things... every things...
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Post by Azetbur is def not a fascist on Aug 26, 2015 19:57:37 GMT -5
I love these games. Here's an independent Portuguese-speaking Mexico owning half of Japan. I had nothing to do with this, and am near the end of a Teutonic Order -> Germany run.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2015 10:01:53 GMT -5
I'm playing a Latin Empire game and doing fairly well (although the Mongol Empire is fucking gigantic and I can't make much headway against them). Their leaders keep switching from Reformed Tengrism to Sunni Islam and back.
What are some of the weirdest things you've seen in your games? Some of my favorites were the time that most of Siberia became Hindu and when the king of Aquitaine converted to Judaism. (He got a crusade called on him.)
EDIT: Oh, and the time when the Pope crowned the Holy Roman Emperor, who then quickly converted to Catharism.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 29, 2015 10:51:47 GMT -5
What are some of the weirdest things you've seen in your games? Offhand the weirdest thing I can think of is something I did as Mecklenburg in Europa Universalis II. I had a simple enough plan: DOMINATE TRADE. And I meant that by basically controlling all trade centres - easier said than done when you have exactly one province, even if that province is a trade centre. Nonetheless I kept picking up coastal trade centre provinces across the world, conquering all the ones I could - which was basically any that weren't capital cities of countries (unless those countries were one province.) So I found myself controlling Guangzhou, the Ivory Coast, Cape Town, Goa, Genoa, Courland, Kanto... and nothing other than those trade centres. I was very rich and had huge navies. In the endgame I got bored so I colonized all of Australia in a few minutes. Obviously this scheme would make little sense in EU4's trade nodes, but it was fun.
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Post by ComradePig on Sept 11, 2015 0:42:27 GMT -5
The age of Catholic Kangaroos is upon us!
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Sept 20, 2015 9:43:40 GMT -5
All I wanted to do was to make my Empire of Brazil the dominant superpower in South America was that too much to ask? Just a little nibbling here and there in my conquest of Uruguay and Paraguay following my crushing of the republican rebellion in the historical Ragamuffin War, having a righteous Argentina try to gain land from me and me picking up a little in return, and maybe eating French Guyana whole in retaliation for the French backing the Dutch efforts to contain me and here I am, an international pariah that must maintain a massive standing army or I risk opportunistic invasion by the Peruvians or worse; unlikely to have my plays backed by my erstwhile ally, the fascist British Commonwealth (we got along better when they were a democracy, and not so good when they were still communists; so it goes.)
In conclusion the Paradox Plaza Mod for Victoria 2 is fun.
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Sept 21, 2015 21:01:09 GMT -5
So I just had my most glorious run of CK2 in a long time. The continuing Ivaring saga (denoted as "Ivarbling" on my save games) just gets weirder and more wonderful. When I last checked in, the Ivaring dynasty of Ivar the Boneless had, after a fantastic run of power and raiding in the tenth-century British Isles, been reduced to a single county in frigid-ass Lappland, and were barely able to hang onto the High Chiefship of Sami, from which they were eventually deposed. Ivar the Wise, Chief of Vasterbotten, wisely (hence the name) decided to throw in and swear fealty to the King of Sweden. Little by little, the Ivarings started to inch back into solvency, until his son Bertil and especially his magnificent granddaughter Astrid found themselves with multiple duchies. Bertil's chiefships were threatened by his resentful brother (yet another Ivar), but Astrid held their enemies off after his death, with a strategic flourish that was equal parts brilliance and luck. Most of her prisoners (kinfolk, too) were sacrificed at a Great Blot, and she decided she had come too far to let scruple get in her way, having her own son murdered to prevent the patrimony dissolving too far. The 1060s saw Ivaring ships once more terrorize the Mediterranean (Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearics, Tuscany, and Andalusia) and certain portions of the western Sahara. A few attacks on Wales and Ireland didn't go so well, but that shit isn't over; the Ivarings want revenge on those Hibernian fuckheads for throwing them out of Ulster and the Isles. In any case, all hail Astrid: Yet another reminder, as if I needed one, never to quit a game.
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Post by Lt. Broccoli on Oct 28, 2015 10:38:22 GMT -5
My wife wants ideas for what to get me for Christmas, and I was thinking of adding this to the list. I loved Medieval Total War when I was able to play that...I would probably never actually have time to play this, but it looks like something I would play obsessively if I had the time.
Is there actual crusades gameplay, or is it just sort of a theme-setting title?
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Nov 11, 2015 0:14:00 GMT -5
Is there actual crusades gameplay, or is it just sort of a theme-setting title? As a Christian ruler, you can declare holy wars (or jihads, if you're Muslim), but I think only the Pope can declare a Crusade. The actual military details involved in fighting aren't really any different from "regular" wars, though.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 2, 2016 12:28:19 GMT -5
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Feb 23, 2016 20:17:53 GMT -5
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Apr 8, 2016 21:26:33 GMT -5
I'm not doing this right, clearly. I downloaded CK2 to my good laptop and started another game as... *drumroll*... Hasteinn of Nantes. I wish I'd known about this Glitterhoof crap when I did. That said, I've had an entertaining game. Hasteinn's son Ragnarr completed the conquest of Brittany and declared himself Duke in 891 just before his death. His grandson Ragnarr II converted to Catholicism c. 940 and his daughter Emma has become one of my favorite characters since the aforepictured Astrid Ivaring; fighting in and winning battles, murdering recalcitrant Godis (even if she gets discovered) and carrying on flirtations with doomed Jewish courtiers. She's still only in her early forties; looking forward to more weirdness.
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