Paradox games but definitely NOT GAMES OF THRONE

[Ruki]

France? Weird.

Also? King of Ireland again

England is falling apart too.

[KevinStorm]

England's been in a constant state of war for something like 30-40 years in my game.

Which is fun, because my daughter was married to the Duke of Northumberland until he was killed. Now she's regent for their son.

[Gazz]

France? Weird.

My first guy (Murchad, Duke of Munster) became King of Ireland, I had 4 sons, the first one was 21 years older than the rest and crap, the next two were weakings and the youngest, Donnchad was an absolute beast who I happened to marry off matrileanally to the daughter of King Philip of France because I wanted an alliance. King Phil then died in battle, leaving only two heirs, his daughter and his son, who became King of France with the King's sister as his heir, one unfortuante accident later and my youngest son was married to the Queen of France and his son, Pilib became heir to the throne.

I then changed the succession law of the Kingdom of Ireland to elective and revoked all the duchy titles so only I had voting power, elected Donnchad as my successor and then died, so he became King, 30 years of internal struggle against my brothers and sons followed where I ended up imprisoning four of them and assassinating a nephew, switched to Primogeniture succession and now the King of France was also the heir to the Irish throne.

Now I'm Pilib, King of France and Ireland, Ireland is peaceful as my borthers are now all Dukes but France is a complete clusterfuck as when Pilib succeeded (before I took control of him) pretty much all the French Dukes declared wars of Independence because Pilib is Irish and I could only save a few duchies by flooding France with Irish troops. Once I get some sort of stability to what is left of the Kingdom of France, I will start reclaiming territory.

But yeah, I've ended up with France ruled by an Irishman and Ireland split up completely amongst a bunch of Frankish dukes.

[TEOL]

Yeah, the culture penalties once your empire starts growing can be a complete bitch, especially when they get combined with short reign penalties and pretty much leaves you in a position where no one can take over without immediately being hit with a bunch of unavoidable rebellions. In such a situation I've started winding everything down once my ruler reaches the age of sixty or so and basically saving up so that at least I can buy some mercenary doomstacks to deal with it (as well as revoking titles and all the unpopular shit I can think of, because as long as you make sure you don't do it enough that they actually rebel, you're pretty much off the hook once your current ruler dies ). But of course that doesn't help if your ruler dies unexpectedly for some reason, which usually means you eat a bunch of territory losses.

[Quom]

I am downloading this so I can play a Game of Thrones mod, has anyone played it and is it any good?

[Gongsun Zan]

So the first expansion (of 5 planned!) is coming out tomorrow. Muslims aside, I'm really excited about the AI finally learning how to assualt holdings and deal with attrition. Strong and Weak claims looks pretty interesting as well.

MAJOR:

- Muslim Decadence System

- Muslim Polygamy

- Added new provinces, titles and history for Mali, Songhay and Ghana

- Added the province of Aprutium (split off from Spoleto)

- Added the new creatable Empires of Russia, Britannia, Spain, Francia, Scandinavia, Persia and Arabia

- Strong and Weak Claim System

- Overhaul of game text for Muslims

- Added plots to claim titles

- Split up the former Kingdom of Khazaria into many de jure kingdoms

- Split the Kingdom of Rus into the kingdoms of Rus and Ruthenia

- Added the duchies of Susa and Latium

- Revised murder plots completely. No decisions, just events.

- Commander traits added

- Heavily revised combat tactics

- Loads of new events

MINOR:

- AI: Much more eager to join Crusades/Jihads if it has de jure interests in the target kingdom

- AI: Much more eager to join Crusades/Jihads if in the same realm as the religious head

- AI: More stubborn about fighting decadence revolters

- AI: Tweaked Crusade targetting - will no longer target kingdoms with 0 'holiness' value for that religion

- AI: Non-Muslims will not accept marriages for female relatives with Muslims, unless they are vassals

- AI: Now prefers giving baronies/counties to courtiers with static dynasties rather than creating random characters

- AI: Vassals of vassals can now correctly revolt to depose their liege

- AI: DoW now factors in the strength of enemies of enemies

- AI: Willing to join another rebelling vassal's war for the crown only if they'd like them better as _liege_

- AI: Vassals should no longer start wars (except for revolts) if the whole realm is under attack from outside

- AI: Caliphs will now be more aggressive with calling Jihads

- Army AI: Will now assault when appropriate

- Army AI: Fixed a problem where you could trick AI armies into ping-ponging while it was trying to gather its forces

- Army AI: Fixed some issues where it would not count attached units properly

- Army AI: Better at moving across land without marching together with other armies, causing unnecessary attrition

- Army AI: Improved attrition check in targetting calculations

- Army AI: Fixed an issue where it would merge armies to huge sizes by not considering attached forces

- Invasion AI: Fixed an issue where it would choose poor secondary targets if the target province was too heavily defended

- No longer possible to call lieges to war against their own vassals

- Fixed a bug with the succession message not being shown for the ones who inherit titles

- Fixed an issue with the de jure law vote message not going away when trying to approve it

- Slightly increased merc reinforcement rates

- Fixed a memory leak with timed opinion modifiers that time out naturally

- Moved the county of Chalons into Lower Burgundy and Grisons into Upper Burgundy

- Fixed a bug with the depose liege CB sometimes making the new ruler independent (bug in the effect 'abdicate_to_most_liked_by').

- Fixed a bug with the effect 'abdicate_to_most_liked_by' that would invalidate outside wars

- Fixed a bug with the 'grant_title' effect which would assign the liege to the liege of the granter

- Fixed a potential infinite loop in war name generation

- Fixed a bug with the Feudal Elective law being tolerated for Republics

- If the loser in a war is imprisoned, he is now automatically released on peace

- Fixed a bug with created characters sometimes getting duplicate education traits

- People who avoid imprisonment will now always flee to another realm

- Added a whole bunch of cleaned up title coats of arms

- Muslim coats of arms should now use better colors

- No longer allowed to grant titles to prisoners

- You can now correctly press the de jure claims of vassals of vassals

- Fixed a bug with being able to call vassals of vassals of the enemy into wars within the same realm

- When winning (enforce or reverse) a war, all prisoners from your realm held by the enemy are now released

- Added opinion modifiers 'Imprisoned my Child' and 'Executed my Child'

- No longer allowed to ask to join outsider wars against your liege

- Fixed a bug with the depose liege CB in republics and bishoprics

- Rulers deposed with the 'depose' casus belli no longer get any land from their old vassals to remain rulers

- Fixed an issue where a ruler could not offer peace to a rebelling vassal if he had holdings occupied by another (loyal) vassal in a separate war

- Fixed a bug with the hostility icons for loyal vassals in separate wars with rebelling vassals

- If a vassal is at war with another vassal who is rebelling, the war no longer ends if the liege wins and the rebellion is crushed

- Fixed a bug with lieges ending up in two wars if a vassal revolted while a revoke action was pending

- Blocked excomm wars against revolters

- Fixed some issues with succession not being recalculated after certain event effects

- Peace Offers now make it clear whether it's a demand for surrender, white peace or surrender

- Cleaned up all CB tooltips

- The initial Seljuk-Byzantine war is now a full invasion of the de jure kingdom of Armenia

- Added "Scarred" trait

- Fixed a bug allowing rulers of a hostile religion to vote for de jure laws even when not de facto vassals

- Toned down base attribute gain of children from guardians

- Optimized the CPU heaviest events

- Fixed a nasty old crash bug with the defection of the Victual Brothers

- Fixed a hostility bug with allies helping to defend against a revolter

- Fixed an issue with Gavelkind inheritance in baronies, where the youngest child would inherit first

- Fixed an issue with the random seed in delayed events

- Fixed a bug allowing you to usurp titles from your own vassals

- Fixed an issue with vassals of vassals gaining independence when you pressed their claims

- The titular kingdoms of Naples and Trinacria are no longer creatable in-game

- The Ecumenical Patriarch will now refuse to excommunicate a character who has repented, even if the Emperor asks

- Merc navies will now disband when not getting paid

- Fixed an issue with the lower Crown Authority plot when the liege folds to the ultimatum of a vassal king

- No longer possible to grant duchies to barons

- The event effect 'destroy_landed_title' now gives the current holder a strong claim on the title

- The events where the Mongols receive reinforcements no longer trigger if the titles are held by non-Tengri or non-Mongol rulers

- Fixed an issue with attached units and siege outcomes

- Fixed a bug with Revokation plot wars against vassals who lose the title to someone else

- Fixed a bug where a vassal in revolt against his liege would sometimes have the war end inconclusively when the liege got a new liege

- Fixed an issue where children would change guardian if they became landed

- AI spouses of lower rank than you will now always accept education requests- In feudal elective titular realms, _all_ vassals of the appropriate tier are now electors

- The death of a spouse no longer makes characters lose their jobs

- Characters who end up leading the troops of their enemies should now automatically return home

- The opinion penalties for revoking a title are now applied whether or not the target accepts or refuses

- If a vassal refuses a title revokation and wins or achieves a white peace, the 'declared_war' opinion modifier is now cleared (meaning the liege does not get a 'free' title revokation)

- There is no longer a cooldown for calling allies to war who _accepted_ a previous call

- Primogeniture: more heirs should now be listed

- Gavelkind: fixed a glitch with grandchildren

- Removed impassable terrain between Kartli and Albania

- Fixed unit position in the Irish Sea

- Made Sviatopolk Rurikovich (count of Zaozerye in 1066) a legit bastard

- Heretics and infidels are now barred from inheriting anything that the religious head holds

- The portraits for undiscovered murderers should now be hidden in the event window

- Mercs and Holy Order commanders should no longer be shown in the quick marriage window

- Now always allowed to attach your units to your lieges' units

- Added an event where a ruler converts to the native culture

- Adjusted and improved the events where provinces change culture

- Reactivated the lifting FoW for allies in wars

- Doubled regular assassination costs

- The "Arrange Marriage" button now shows random courtiers if there are too few interesting women around

- There is now a slight chance of a random education outcome

- Fixed some issues with war invalidation for banishment of landed characters

- Can no longer banish mercs, holy order heads, or religious heads

- Attached units that are not in the same province as the master unit are no longer hostile to the master unit's enemies

- The spouse will now get a message on divorce

- Fixed some historical issues with Chios and Lesbos

- The liege should now get pressed claims on _all_ titles of characters who declare independence

- If an ally could legally call you into a war, you should always be able to ask to join as well

- Battle Death should now show the unit owner rather than the unit commander

- Vassals of lieges who are fighting their liege will no longer revolt

- Holy War CBs are now valid for Catholic vassals of Orthodox lieges, etc

- Added automatic county conversion events for Muslims (35500 and 35501)

- Pathfinding now prefers friendly territory to enemy territory

- Vassal vs Liege wars should now end with a _mutual_ truce

[Ruki]

How much is the expansion? I've never joined a holy war

Also, tried to take Iceland...Norway has a huge fucking army. And while I was trying to beat them down I had TWO revolts at the same time. Fuck. So I white peaced with Norway, smacked the rebellion down and then another person revolted :/

And besides GoT...any other good mods out there?

[Katsuya]

Someone convince me to get this

[TEOL]

I've played a few mods, but they're all a bit random (had some fun with ones that remove the big empires and kingdoms from the starting map and make it more of a free for all). Plus there are loads of random little ones, like ones that add more portrait options and little cosmetic things like that. Best bet is to have a look through the official forums and see if anything catches your fancy.

I tried the GoT mod a few weeks ago I think it was, found it super buggy and annoying and gave up on it... don't know if it's improved since then, but lots of people seem to be playing it so I'd guess so. As much as I love GoT, I can't see it replacing the European map for me at least.

[TEOL]

Someone convince me to get this

Frankly, if my diary doesn't convince you, I don't know what will.

EDIT: I say this because my diary includes the sentence 'I've been seduced by the same woman who bore my traitor son's bastard daughter', and if you want to play some other game after reading that, I cannot help you.

[Gongsun Zan]

How much is the expansion? I've never joined a holy war

Also, tried to take Iceland...Norway has a huge fucking army. And while I was trying to beat them down I had TWO revolts at the same time. Fuck. So I white peaced with Norway, smacked the rebellion down and then another person revolted :/

And besides GoT...any other good mods out there?

I think the expansion is about 10 quid, but if you don't plan on playing the Muslims you get all the other stuff free anyway.

As far as graphical mods go, Better Looking Characters is pretty decent, although I haven't tried the newer versions where the guy went a bit obsessed with clothing colors. Other than that I run Patrum Scuta with my own additions to replace all the ugly randomized Coat of Arms.

[Ruki]

I've played a few mods, but they're all a bit random (had some fun with ones that remove the big empires and kingdoms from the starting map and make it more of a free for all). Plus there are loads of random little ones, like ones that add more portrait options and little cosmetic things like that. Best bet is to have a look through the official forums and see if anything catches your fancy.

I tried the GoT mod a few weeks ago I think it was, found it super buggy and annoying and gave up on it... don't know if it's improved since then, but lots of people seem to be playing it so I'd guess so. As much as I love GoT, I can't see it replacing the European map for me at least.

Holy crap, I was thinking of something like this yesterday! I was thinking, "Man, it'd be great if everyone started off as a county instead of an empire." Where can I find that mod? Might make me abandon my current game for it.

How much is the expansion? I've never joined a holy war

Also, tried to take Iceland...Norway has a huge fucking army. And while I was trying to beat them down I had TWO revolts at the same time. Fuck. So I white peaced with Norway, smacked the rebellion down and then another person revolted :/

And besides GoT...any other good mods out there?

I think the expansion is about 10 quid, but if you don't plan on playing the Muslims you get all the other stuff free anyway.

As far as graphical mods go, Better Looking Characters is pretty decent, although I haven't tried the newer versions where the guy went a bit obsessed with clothing colors. Other than that I run Patrum Scuta with my own additions to replace all the ugly randomized Coat of Arms.

I don't plan on playing the Muslims, so yay free stuff!

[TEOL]

I've played a few mods, but they're all a bit random (had some fun with ones that remove the big empires and kingdoms from the starting map and make it more of a free for all). Plus there are loads of random little ones, like ones that add more portrait options and little cosmetic things like that. Best bet is to have a look through the official forums and see if anything catches your fancy.

I tried the GoT mod a few weeks ago I think it was, found it super buggy and annoying and gave up on it... don't know if it's improved since then, but lots of people seem to be playing it so I'd guess so. As much as I love GoT, I can't see it replacing the European map for me at least.

Holy crap, I was thinking of something like this yesterday! I was thinking, "Man, it'd be great if everyone started off as a county instead of an empire." Where can I find that mod? Might make me abandon my current game for it.

Broken Kingdoms is the one I use. It keeps some of the duchies from the standard game, but I tried one that literally brought everyone down to count level and I prefer this one, as most of the single county provinces just stayed that way for decades and it was boring as hell (although I understand someone else is working on a similar mods that will alter rules regarding things like culture to make the AI more expansive). Played a game in this mod where I started out as Duke of Bohemia and ended up growing and growing until I had an empire across half of Europe, it was badass.

As long as I'm at it, I'll list some of the other mods I'm using at the moment:

Better Looking Characters and Syren's Nicknames - both purely cosmetic. BLC Zan mentioned, it just adds more options for the character portraits. Syren's Nicknames does exactly what you'd expect, adds a bunch more nicknames to the game, which is one of those added flavour things that I love.

Kingdoms Abound - allows you to turn any four duchies into a kingdom and any three kingdoms into an empire. Use this one with care. It's great for creating your own empires, which can be a pain if you acquire multiple kingdoms outside the bounds of the two existing de jure empires, but the problem is the AI can also use it, and they use it to fucking wreck the de jure map by creating unnecessary kingdoms. The next patch is supposed to introduce more de jure empires covering the whole map, after which I'll probably stop using this mod.

CK2Chooser - fun little utility that basically gives you a random character (and even time period, if you want) to play. Great for if you want to try something different than normal, but don't know who to pick.

Matchmaker - another utility, this time one that gives you some more options when searching for potential wives and husbands.

Since I know people will ask about it, the Game of Thrones mod is here. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if you have to sign up to the forum to view a bunch of these, but if you don't then you can always browse around there and see if any mods catch your fancy (as I do every now and then).

[Ruki]

In the Game of Thrones mod....does the war for the Throne ever end? :/

Also, why the hell can't I fabricate any claims?!

Edit: Seriously, this is kind of retarded. I went through about 3-4 characters and only had one claim. Most of that time I had someone with a 20 skill. And the war? The highest it got was to +45. I didn't care which side won, I just wanted it to end >_<

[The Lusophone]

And the war? The highest it got was to +45. I didn't care which side won, I just wanted it to end >_<

So much this. Got to the point where, as the Red Viper, I did the cash cheat x5, hired all the mercenaries and joined Robert, just to end it.

Then Doran died, and his one remaining heir caught consumption and died too, leaving me with Dorne... who until that point had fought for Aegon (Rhaegar's son)

[TEOL]

Yeah, the war mechanics in that mod are weird. I'm guessing they haven't changed much since I last played it then

[Quom]

This game is far too complicated for a simpleton like me. I was expecting Civ level of management, this is insane, is there a way to get an advisor who handles stuff for you so you can just do the fun stuff?

[TEOL]

All the stuff is fun stuff. :@

[METALMAN]

That expansaion looks cool. I had a quick look over the developer diaries and the Muslim stuff seems pretty in depth. I will probably buy it!

[Quom]

Fine, fine, I shall play all of the tutorials. Having some idea of how all this shit worked in real life would probably help.

grumble grumble