PC Gaming Discussion

[SmoothPancakes]

Alright, the three levels of the in-game Tutorial, as well as reading through the 60 page game manual, I now definitely understand this game better. I still have the 140 page, player-created, in-depth guide to read, but I'm going to wait until I'm done with my current game.

I started a new game in Ireland, not even 20 years into it, already declared war on a neighboring county due to de jure claims that I had on it. Now that I finally knew what the hell I was doing, I was able to raise my own personal army, as well as have my vassals raise their levies, combined the multiple forces, whooped the enemy army's ass and laid siege to their city. While I was laying siege to their city, their remaining 140 or so soldiers went and tried to siege my city. It didn't work though since I had more defenders than they had attackers.

After two or three years, my vassals were starting to get upset after multiple years of war and their levies continuously being raised the entire time, so I had enough gold that I called in a mercenary army, sent them to completely wipe out the remaining 100-some soldiers of the enemy army (the mercenary army was 1200 men strong, so it was over the second they showed up), and then sent them to combine with my forces. With the additional 1200 forces, the siege was only a month or two away from ending, the count of that land finally offered to surrender (he refused to surrender just a couple months earlier when I tried to demand it), and became my vassal.

Where I stand now, I have my chancellor trying to fabricate claims against another county, the count of Breify (or whatever the name of the county I conquered was) started pissing me off as he was still butt hurt about getting his ass whooped in war, so since I was unable to strip him of his title (was missing one out or six or seven requirement to do it), I threw his ass in prison, where he has been for the last year and a half. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with him. I could show forgiveness (and win some brownie points with my vassals) and release him and let him go free. While it could make my vassels all like me less, I could banish him from the land, getting rid of him while simultaneously stripping him of his title. I could execute him, which would piss my vassals off at me pretty good. Or I could just let him sit and rot in prison until he dies.

On the non-dungeons and death side, I did immediately solve my "lack of an heir to my dynasty" problem upon entering the game, arranging a marriage with a Princess from Tuscany. Gave me a son and a daughter before dying at the age of 21. Arranged another marriage, this time with someone from the French realm, so I currently have claims to Tuscany and French lands, in addition to the kingdom I'm trying to build in Ireland. Got another two daughters from the second marriage.



I will say, at first I was concerned the game only went from 1066 to 1453, it seemed like it would be over fast, mainly because I'm so used to both the Total War and Civilization series, where you have Summer/Winter and then a new year, or each turn was a new year, etc. CKII, having time advance one day at a time, I've already put over 2 hours into my current game, and I'm only maybe 10, 15 years tops into it, and that's from raising the advance time up to a fast speed to get through some quiet periods where I was just filling up my treasury before going to war. If I kept it at the lowest or second to lowest speed the entire time, I doubt I'd be even 5 years into the game at this point. So I'm very glad to see it's a slow, long, realistic advance over time, so that nearly 400 years of game length will actually take a long ass time and many hours to get all the way through (assuming my dynasty doesn't collapse and die before reaching 1453 ).