• Succession Laws | Crusader Kings II Wiki | Fandom
• Why Is Ultimogeniture Easier To Implement Than The More ...
• Preventing Succession Crisis

It’s time for another game review! *gong*

Lately I’ve been completely addicted to Crusader Kings II. I don’t typically get really into games like this, but it happens every once in a blue moon, and typically either with something totally mindless (hi, TF2) or something that requires a lot of thought. That said, I’m going to try to be fair, so while I personally want to give it high ratings because I can’t stop playing it, my taste in games knows no rationality.

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Gameplay: 3/5

I really want to bump this up considering I like it, but while it can be as addicting as any game, the gameplay has some fairly glaring flaws.

• Ultimogeniture puts younger people on the throne, who will then potentially have a longer reign. Of course, there's always a chance your heir is a child when you die - especially when you keep taking young wives and/or concubines - but what's a game of Crusader Kings II without a period where your Regent keeps mysteriously falling off balconies?
• Crusader Kings II is a grand strategy game set in the Middle Ages, developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive as a sequel to Crusader Kings.The game was released on February 14, 2012. A sequel, Crusader Kings III, was released on September 1, 2020. Crusader Kings II stood out from earlier Paradox Interactive games in that it attracted a more widespread.

The realm rejoices as Paradox Interactive announces the launch of Crusader Kings III, the latest entry in the publisher’s grand strategy role-playing game franchise. Advisors may now jockey for positions of influence and adversaries should save their schemes for another day, because on this day Crusader Kings III can be purchased on Steam. Primogeniture is the simplest and the most intuitive system of succession, useful not only for kings but also for players who want to climb on the career levels. If this system is the actual one in the country, it's enough to marry one of ruler's daughter and then kill all her brothers and older sisters.

The main issue with CKII (and, actually, a lot of Paradox’s games) is that it’s very difficult to get into and has a fairly steep learning curve. The tutorial is absolute junk in how it takes you through — don’t hit the Continue button; you’ll miss parts. Go back to the topics and go through them one by one. Even then, it skims some bits that become important later on, though by that time you’ll have hopefully figured the UI out enough to be able to make your way.

Once you get past figuring out what the hell is going on, though, you’ll be in an environment of courtly intrigues and feudal battles for supremacy. If you like anything resembling high fantasy or medieval fight scenes, you’ll enjoy yourself. The system by which alliances are determined is complex and interesting, mostly consisting of marrying off your children. Whether pregnancy happens and the gender of the child is completely luck of the draw — certain personality traits of the character affect the chance of becoming pregnant (i.e., there is absolutely no chance of a eunuch having kids, and a woman over 40 is “past childbearing age”, but a Lustful character will beget children on anything that stays at court long enough). So, when I say “try to have a son”, what I mean is either try to change the line of succession to your title to something that allows daughters to inherit (this is difficult if your empire is large for a few reasons) or try to avoid you or your spouse kicking the bucket. Marrying off courtiers can also gain you allies if a courtier is your kin.

Another way to gain alliances is to send your children to be tutored at another court (or by a courtier of your own). This is useful if a particular individual has traits you would like to see in your child or heir, and you get a reasonable bonus to the character’s opinion of you for entrusting them with a ward.

The combat AI is not great. It’s not total garbage, but it’s simplistic and seems like it got pushed to the wayside in favour of the alliance/intrigues capability. When you decide to go to war (or get dragged into a war by your liege), the outcome is again largely determined with simple percentages. I’ve lost battles that should have been trouncings because of what is essentially a bad roll of the dice. It’s entertaining but unrealistic. Calling troops in to war from your allies is borderline useless as they will come to your capital and sit there with no way to effect any kind of control. Your allies calling you in typically means you’ll be soloing the war unless you just don’t send any troops. (Which is actually a perfectly valid strategy incurring no penalty, so if it’s a war you don’t really care about, it works.) You may, however, want to consider sending troops to the Crusades when they get called.

Sending your troops somewhere seems to attempt the quickest route though certainly not the most strategic or direct. There is no way to modify the strategy your troop movement takes, so you’ll have to fudge it on your own.

All in all, getting the hang of it is tricky and it has some downfalls (particularly if you like battles), but it’s fun and engaging otherwise, and watching your characters grow and develop and eventually die is entertaining.

Eyes & Ears: 4.5/5

Knock half a star for repetition, but the music is actually fairly good. You’ll hear the same music and sounds in the background, but the music isn’t annoying and the sounds are actually useful to alert you to things going on (i.e., you’ll want to know when your son has a child).

The graphics are pretty if a little bit dated in some ways, and the attention to detail in the faces and names is also interesting. They paid much more attention to character detail than other details, though the map is accurate and the number of crests for even very small houses is impressive.

Performance: 3.5/5

On my Lenovo ThinkPad E430 with integrated gfx and 8GB of RAM, it runs okay. Some parts are slower than they should be, strictly speaking, and the game takes an incredibly long time to load. I have to conclude that it’s a result of inefficient memory usage rather than a lot of things going on, because it shouldn’t take upwards of two minutes to load a few game saves.

Otherwise it runs pretty well, and even bringing up as many troops as possible and going through a number of characters in quick succession doesn’t stymie it.

Overall: 3.66/5

CKII is actually a decent game. It’s not the greatest game you will ever play, but for a strategy game from a company known for in-depth strategy games, it holds its own.

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Fun Tips From Your Friendly Neighbourhood Casual Gamer

1. Either have a son, or make it so your daughters can succeed you.

Agnatic elective is incredibly annoying and requires a lot of work and bribery to get your vassals to not turn on you, so if you can, absolute cognatic primogeniture is a decent way to go. (Or ultimogeniture if your eldest is an unfit ruler.)

2. Bribe everyone you can, early and often.

Making gifts to key people is a pretty good way to get a permanent opinion boost, which can mean the difference between plotting against you and allying with you. Don’t discount small lords with minimal holdings; if they go to war for you it can make a difference.

3. Don’t forget your council!

Make sure your councilors are out doing things. In particular, never never never let your Chancellor or Spymaster be sitting idle. The Chancellor is an easy in for diplomatic relations if they’re a capable diplomat, and the Spymaster is a pretty good way to ruin your rivals’ and enemies’ days. Your Marshal is also useful if you’re having a revolution problem.

4. Play nice with the Pope.

It might be obnoxious, but the Pope’s favour means a lot. Being excommunicated is a big hit to everyone’s opinion of you and is a valid casus belli for people to make war upon you, just because. If you do end up excommunicated. the Pope is not in any way immune to bribery, so sending him a gift can tip the scales just enough in your favour to be able to successfully petition for the excommunication being lifted. You can also send your Chancellor to curry favour with the Pope for you.

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Party on, Wayne!

How to achieve a stable realm. From starter to advanced. Part 2. Once you’re done with this guide you’ll know how to achieve and maintain a stable realm. Once you’re done with the entire series you’ll have an understanding of Crusader Kings 2.

Internal Stability: Succession, Law, Council and Titles

General rule: Always ensure internal stability before external expansion.

First check your succession laws and figure out which one you want. Go for any succession law that ensures your family and preferably you will get to keep as many titles as possible each succession. Primogeniture (your oldest inherits) and Ultimogeniture (your youngest inherits) are great for this. You’ll have to meet certain requirements to change the succession law, make these your goals. Any form of Gavelkind will split your realm up in one way or another.

To change a law you’ll need your council to vote your way unless you’re already an absolute ruler. Pick councilors that will vote for you (mainly loyal ones, these are indicated by a black heart on a green field). The first law to go for is title revocation. Secondly reduce the power of your council until you’re the absolute ruler and then pass whichever laws you want. Once you’ve become the absolute ruler of your realm you’re free to pass laws without a council. This is when you should select councilors based on their skill instead to advance your realm technologically and to be able to utilize each councilors abilities more efficiently. Over time you’ll have to pick councilors you don’t want, councilors that just suck and that will vote against you too avoid large factions or revolts. It’s generally better than outright war. Wars cost time and money and should you get caught up in a revolt your external enemies will use that chance to press claims. Therefore it’s important to always have a loyal vassal base. Balance handing out council positions, gifts and honorary titles to achieve one. This is done by making as many vassals as possible pass the 70 opinion mark. By that point they’ll usually avoid backstabbing you and joining factions. Usually. Some traits will have them doing that anyway (lustful, envious, ambitious, greedy and so on)

Now that you’ve got your stable base and your council you can start picking off your enemies. The number one enemy is any vassal with a title that could easily be yours. Anyone who’s title you can inherit if they should “accidentally” die and if you haven’t reached your demense capacity yet. Demense capacity is the maximum amount of counties your character can control. This is shown in the top right corner. Tiny realm stability is mostly down to you having more titles and thus more men than your other vassals. This changes as your realm grows in size and it becomes more about how many people like you. Despite the size however, you want as many titles as you can possibly have. They provide you with money, men and elector titles (votes). Having more than 2 duchies will give your vassals a slight negative opinion of you, -10 per duchy above 2. If you’ve got too many they’ll revolt (due to the low opinion). You can have as many kingdoms as you want if you’re an emperor but handing them out reduces the amount of enemies you have to deal with. They become the kings problem instead as they’re now his direct vassals instead of yours. If you’re not an emperor make sure that each kingdom you hold has the same succession laws otherwise you risk splitting your realm up when your character dies.

Internal Stability: Pruning the Realm with Arrests

The “discovered plots” section in intrigue is your main tool to cleaning your realm. Arrest everyone here that doesn’t have a county. Everyone with a county or higher that is your direct vassal, can revolt if you attempt to arrest them. When you’ve made your initial arrests check each vassal with a county and decide if he’s worth arresting or not and act accordingly. Here’s how to judge vassals:

• 1. Is the character a threat to you or your realm? Does he have too many titles or soldiers? Arrest and oubilette.
• 2. Does the character have a different religion or culture? Arrest and oubilette.
• 3. Do they have bad genetic traits? Every dynasty is to be pruned like a tree, a bad genetic trait is a branch that must be cut or your people will become genetically unhealthy and you risk having these traits make their way into your family. Arrest and oubilette.
• 4. Do they have sympathy towards any religion that is not your own, or possess traits such as deceitful, envious, possessed, ambitious, lunatic or similar? Characters with these are undermining the stability of your realm. They will plot and start any war they can to get more titles. This is determined by a hidden in-game variable directly affected by afore mentioned traits. Arrest and oubilette.
• 5. Are they lustful? Lustful characters spread disease and generate rivalries. Characters who are rivals will actively seek to kill eachother and eachothers family (these could be highly skilled characters you rely on). Arrest and oubilette.
• 6. Is the character your rival? Arrest and oubilette.
• 7. Are you in desperate need of money? Check if anyone you’ve arrested has a lot of gold and can be banished, you’ll get his gold. You can also arrest someone and ransom him back to himself. If you’re not desperate for money this is a waste of time as vassals can revolt if they evade the arrest and that could cost you even more money and manpower.

In short the only people you want to keep are healthy characters with your culture and religion that like you. All others can be arrested (unless you’re short on people, then you’ll have to make do).

Early on it doesn’t matter who is in your realm or what religion and culture they have. You only need a lot of highly skilled people. When you’ve got a big realm you want to get rid of all who are not of your religion and everyone who is not of your culture, otherwise they will form secret societies and gather followers to eventually attempt a takeover and they’ll always dislike you for not having their culture/religion. You can clean your court by using the “purge” filter outlined in the previous guide and asking everyone who doesn’t fit those 2 criteria to leave your court.

Internal Stability: Pruning the Realm with Plots

Plots allow you to neutralize enemies. Enemies that are both inside and outside your realm. A neutralized character is either in your prison or dead. Each plot requires plot power. The more you have the better but don’t waste gold on convincing more people to back you if you already have enough. Enough is 80% for fabrications and 150%+ for assassinations. You can choose to get higher in assassinations if you want or have to speed up the process and if you’ve got money to spare.

If you’ve got a vassal with too many titles that has a smaller army than you make a plot that fabricates a claim on one of them and station your troops inside his county before revoking it. You can choose to revoke the title inside the intrigue menu under Decisions once you have enough plot power.

If you’ve got a rival or a large threat inside or outside your realm, plot to murder them. The larger the threat the faster it should be killed.

Fabrications and killings can also be used to prune the realm from people with a culture and religion different than yours or with unhealthy genetic traits. This is a last resort though as revoking their titles and asking them to leave your court is often faster. If for whatever reason you can’t revoke their title this is the way to go.

Succession Laws | Crusader Kings II Wiki | Fandom

Internal Stability: Pruning the family

You family is your lifeline. The more healthy family members the better. You don’t have to be afraid of family members that spread claims to your titles or prepare invasions against you. It’s better to have 300 extra lives and lose a few provinces (although you never will if you work on your realm) than to have your dynasty die out and your game end. If you’re able get matrilineal marriages for your women to further your dynasty. The alliance part of the game is weak and alliances rarely matter except in a few cases. The AI doesn’t know how to make useful alliances so you’ll only have to when you’re in real trouble.

If you’ve got a character that’d just suck as an heir or that’s got an unhealthy genetic trait and you are a christian you can order the person to take vows making them less likely to bear children and disinheriting them. You can also order them to join a holy order to the same effect.

Don’t be afraid to murder a family member if that person or a faction has started a large revolt against you in said family members name. Killing them will end the war immediately. Worst case scenario you’ll be known as a kinslayer and get a negative modifier with all your vassals. The kinslayer trait can be removed if you pay the pope to forgive your sins. This can be an alternative if you think the revolt will cost you more time and money than kinslaying. And who knows, maybe you’ll get away with it? If you’re playing as a muslim you can just go ahead and kill, they can’t get the kinslayer trait.

If you’ve got a family member with an unhealthy genetic trait and you can’t order them to take the vows, killing them usually isn’t worth it. Just make sure they like you so they’ll stay in your court and never marry them off.

External Stability

Why Is Ultimogeniture Easier To Implement Than The More ...

This is easily achieved by having more soldiers than all neighboring countries or by having enough strong and loyal allies that any neighbor doesn’t want to touch you. At most you might have to murder a kinsman that’s planning an invasion against you or another kingdoms leader that has too good stats but if you do you’ve already failed at maintaining internal stability. There are cases where you can use an incoming planned invasion to your benefit. If you’re being invaded all your vassals get a +25 opinion of you because you’re defending the realm against invaders. This can be used to revoke a title and keep the invasion war going for a while. I’d only do this if that revokation really mattered to internal stability (perhaps a festering culture that is not your own).

Preventing Succession Crisis

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