just ordered CK

[lord of the mark]

Im having lovely fun with the Piasts, on my 3rd king, at 1150 or so. Have most a realm of poland, 2 bohemian provs, almost 2/3 of Lith, and some of Ukraine. Have a demesne of about 14 provs, three sons all are vassals, one is duke of Pomerania, my older bro (we have salic Consang of course) is Duke of Prussia, and some distant cousin is Duke of Mazovia. My new king began with a piety problem, so Ive been handing out bishoprics to get the demesne to manageable size. Have kept an alliance with germany/HRE to keep peace on that side. Oh, and my provs are well developed with improvements.

[Alexander I]

I'm seriously loving Crusader Kings: Deus Vult.
Great expansion.

[lord of the mark]

Ive taken cental Rome, Sienna and Florence from the dastardly muslims, and even fought them in Spain. But I got a little too clever trying manipulate my heirs under salic consang, and running royal prerog, and ended up with realm distress and multiple vassal revolts. Finally got those under control.

[Ecthy]

Realm distress

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ecthy
Realm distress

nah, we managed it and recovered.

Only current potential threat to the greater Polish realm is Germany (HRE) circa 1190, Germany gets realm distress, and starts to fall apart. Realm distress.

[Ecthy]

How did you get over it? I've had it as Sicily/Naples before and it never stopped. It was anteceded by a weird effect: due to "character traits" of my king, all of my vassals had a decreasing loyalty. Reputation was OK, must have been his being a Misguided Warrior or something like that. Changing your laws from Feudal Contract to something else must help also, since they started demanding Elective Law or at least Gavelkind as well, and this was just after conquering some parts of central Italy and Croatia!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ecthy
How did you get over it? I've had it as Sicily/Naples before and it never stopped. It was anteceded by a weird effect: due to "character traits" of my king, all of my vassals had a decreasing loyalty. Reputation was OK, must have been his being a Misguided Warrior or something like that. Changing your laws from Feudal Contract to something else must help also, since they started demanding Elective Law or at least Gavelkind as well, and this was just after conquering some parts of central Italy and Croatia!

yes law seems to matter (i got realm distress while on royal prerog) though its not clear to me if it is a direct effect, or via the effect of royal prerogative on vassal loyalty. Anyway, I got an event that gave me the choice to go back to feudal contract, which I did. I also reduced scutage to zero or so. and I just kept beating down the disloyal vassals. Other than that I stopped conquering, allowed my rep and prestige to build back up, and at some point realm distress went away.

Im pretty sure that happened BEFORE my king died and was succeeded by his son, but id have to check my savegames to be sure.

[Alexander I]

What areas do you like to play the most?
Personally, I'm enjoying the Crusader States a lot: Jerusalem, Antioch, even Lesser Armenia...

[lord of the mark]

only areas ive played are Naples/Sicily (the Hautevilles) Denmark (the knytlings) and now Poland (the Piasts). And this has occupied most of my gaming time since November - and i didnt get past 1150 on the first two games. My gosh, these games take a long time to play through!

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
only areas ive played are Naples/Sicily (the Hautevilles) Denmark (the knytlings) and now Poland (the Piasts). And this has occupied most of my gaming time since November - and i didnt get past 1150 on the first two games. My gosh, these games take a long time to play through!

I like to turn up the speed during the lulls (waiting for cash, stability, that mad spendthrift idiot king to die, etc.)

I like to start relatively small (usually smaller duchies) and build up from there, so I try to steer clear of the big names like the English Plantagenets (Angevins), French Capets, and German Hohenstaufens.

I've done a few abortive starts just to test the waters -- you know, to see if this or that particular faction is worth playing. In the savegames I've played for any noteworthy period of time, I've had some fairly interesting experiences.

I too have tried the Hautevilles and the Knytlings; the Piasts sound interesting, I might have to try them out, though my personal preference lies in the Holy Land as I mentioned earlier.

Playing as Jerusalem in 1187 is fun, though quite challenging. You get to work with fairly famous characters like Guy de Lusignan, Queen Sibylla, Reynald de Chatillon, and Balian of Ibelin, but you still have a relatively small start and lots of room to expand. I've also tried Lesser Armenia (Roupenids), Cyprus (exiled Komnenids), and Antioch (descendants of Bohemond d'Hauteville) which are all interesting.

The key in the Crusader states is to whittle away at your neighboring enemies without getting bogged down in long wars with superior powers, especially if that superior power happens to be Saladin.

In my Antioch game (starting in 1187), I managed to crown myself King of Syria by about 1210 -- no small feat if I do say so.

Great game!

[Alexander I]

Another fun one is the unification of Ireland.

I played as Leinster --it's fun to play the other warring factions against each other while reaping the benefits yourself.

[lord of the mark]

this is why this game rocks

so the King of Poland, despite holding a vast empire from Lithuania to Bohemia, inluding Florence and Rome and Salzburg, is suffering a clinical depression (or would be, if there were clinics in 1219) Perhaps its his advanced age (almost 65) or the many wives and children hes buried, or the fact that none of his remaining sons is an ideal candidate for the kingship. Or its all the wars and double cross and nasty politics hes experienced. Or the vague sense something is out there on the Steppes, that will yet impact his kingdom.

So when the Pope calls a crusade to liberate Jerusalem, its natural to go. And why not take along his very talented Marshall, who HAPPENS to be a muslim arab, and will know the lay of the land very well.

The Sheik of Jerusalem is diplomatically isolated, and so the war goes fast, proceeding quickly to a siege that is almost done.

When the Pope sends word that a muslim official is not acceptable. Regretfully (well actually just hitting the button quickly, assuming I must have another high martial stats guy) the kings turns his comdrade in arms over to the inquisition. Feb 7, 1220.

Two weeks later, Jerusalem falls to the Polish army. That same day, the king is found dead, a suicide.

[Ecthy]

I'm proud to admit that last night I had my first real successful crusade since I've begun playing this game. Normally I find it a nuisance to spend money for troops overseas, then having to ship new troops as the old armies shrink over time etc.

But this time it al worked out just fine. Playing as the Hauteville, 3rd generation as silver tongue king Bernabó son of Roger Borsa son of Robert Guiscard. I had amassed 3 kingdom titles: Naples was the obvious one. Then I had laid a claim on the kingdom title of Italy for cheap that was in possession of the Burgundy royal house. The reason for this: Mathilde of Canossa (THE Mathilde, cool to see her in this game!) had practically conquered Germany and made it a hereditary kingdom, so the old German kingdom was reduced to Burgundy - she didn't claim the title of Italy anyway so I caught it for 50 prestige, made some war in upper Burgundy and voila became King of Italy without any province up there. This of course results in an eternal state of attractiveness to any duchy or county declaring independence from the house of Mathilde. Of course, when they go to war to recover their former vassals I never join, they're still too strong.

Anyway, the third kingdom title was that of Tunisia after conquering parts of North Africa. The big enemy there was the Fatimid Kingdom, stretching rom the Cyrenaica over Egypt into the Levant, all green colored. When Mathildian Germany went to war with them, their provinces where empty of troops, an occasion which I exploited immediately. In the end we saw the complete liberation of Egypt, several new duchies as vassals as well as a new kingdom title: King of Egypt.

Next: off to the west to liberate the Kingdom of Algiers.

ATM I produce around 5 prestige points a month.

Edit: some more info: the secret of success was indeed having built a strong economy and using the right laws. I'm on Feudal Contract so my vassals are quite loyal. I almost haven't made any war on any christian realm so my rep is just fine. The crusade gave me lots of prestige and piety, around 4,000 each ATM and the king is just 30 years old. Then I conquered Tunisia (the Lybian and cyrenaican parts) with troops from Tunis and close by provinces which I had built up over years. Egypt I did with troops from Salerno and Naples since I wanted my king to conquer Egypt into demesne for immediate repartition.

But even the provinces I conquered with my Tunisian troops, partly led by vassals and partly by my Marshall I managed to repart just fine, since with all my prestige and diplomacy value I can revoke individual counties etc just fine. They just know that for returning the odd county they'll be rewarded with a newly-founded duchy

[lord of the mark]

key to making crusades less annoying, aside from being close like the D'hautevilles -where its more like normal expansion - is to go for a crusade target when its not being rule by a very large muslim state - like in my current game, Jer was ruled by an independent (alloidal, to be technical) sheikdom.

Egypt I find tends to get all weird.

In my current game England got really world. Now I know it kinda makes sense to let everyone have military passage on everyone else, since borders just werent that defined in this period - but across religious lines it sometimes doesnt make sense (Im playing 1.05, no DV, BTW) England went on a crusade war against the Seljuks, and did poorly - Seljuks sent armies across europe, embarked for England and conquered most of it and took the title. Now there seems to be no more king of England, though English christian nobles have reconquered MOST of the country.

And yes the starting characters are cool - I too noted Matilde of Cannossa. One reason Im looking forward to trying the other scenarios - cause the starting positions and characters are cool.

I think youre doing better with revoking cause the early Dhautevilles tend to have good traits and to be popular or maybe its your diplo . Playing as Poland Ive found revoking a lot gets me into trouble. I generally just have my king lead sieges against religious enemies.

[Ecthy]

My game has changed into pure empire-building. All the other Christian kingdoms with the possible exception of Poland and maybe England have crumbled into pieces. The muslims had gained total control of France and large parts of Hungary so I'm the only true player. Oh, and Germany.

By now my prestige increases by 11 points each months, what with 8 kingdom titles (Naples, Jerusalem, Egypt, Tunisia, Italy, Croatia [this destroyed one kingdom, and I did it only for the heck of claiming and winning a title in war], North Africa, Mauretania, soon to be enhanced by France) and tens of dukes as vassals.

You might say this is a sign for me playing on too easy a degree but that isn't so. My expansion was driven by the absolute necessity to do so, since the muslims got everywhere. It obviously couldn't have been as successful against Christian states, what with reputation and the claiming of titles etc. So it's the weak Christian AI and the resulting necessity to expand, not the low difficulty and the ability to, that got me into this position.

I had one realm distress which was rather weak anyway. Many vassals that declared independence, mostly peacefully, came back after some time since I had the relevant kingdom titles. Exception was the levant, but now I'm king of Jerusalem as well so it should be all stable.

One vassal, the duke of Milan has become very strong in France and now holds like 5 duchies. I control about the same amont of duchies in France and in the end it will be me to create the kingdom, but that strong vassal worries me.

In exporting games to EU2, county vassals turn into directly controlled provinces just as demesne does, whereas duchies become real vassals. So by the end of the CK game you should revoke all the duchies or deal with vassals in the EU2 game.