RB goes medieval - a CK:DV succesion game

[Mist]

REPORT NUMBER 3: 1090-1100

Ok, guys, first things first: I'm a total noob who thought that Crusader Kings had a function like that of Civ IV, which saves screenshots when you press the printscreen key. Apparently, I was wrong and I wasn't taking any screenshots during my turns. So, I'll do my best to recreate what happened during my turns.

That function is under F11.

When I loaded the save, I saw quite a bit of problems:

1st. The Court

One of this happy marriages was between our own magnificent count Vseslav Rurikovich. Since he was a widower, I decided to marry him with this beautiful, several years younger, midas touched girl:

Yeah, guys, love is beautiful......

This wife has some scary attributes there. She's literally a monster.

Or it was supposed to be....

Here's what happened. Our dearest wife quickly proceded to become one of our rivals. Here's one question to everyone that is a noob like me: what happens when you put your wife (the one who hates your guts) as the kingdom's steward?

Let me make one thing clear. You never, NEVER, put a wife ( or anyone else ) that hates your guts in any sort of position of authority. That's just asking for trouble. The better stats they have, the more trouble thy bring if they hate you

But since you eventually figured this out yourself it looks like you won't do that again

Well, I changed the steward alright. But, she was my wife, I couldn't let her to rot in some dark place of our court.

Oh yes you could. There's no bigger enemy in this game than your own family

This is a screenshot from the save I received. Notice that the peasants have 0% power in the province. IIRC, Mist said that this shouldn't get lower than 15% to avoid revolts. But the power distribution on the provinces was very, very crazy...

10-15% is the sweet spot for a social strata that's not supposed to have a lot to say. I don't know what you mean by crazy, but high peasant/burgher and low noble/cleric everywhere was by design to get a proper troop composition.

We even had an event because of the Crazed trait of our leader that said he was trying to build the Babel Tower!!! We lost 350 gold with that!!! BABEL TOWER, FOR CHRIST SAKE!!!!

Did we by any chance got excommunicated or heretic?

She's getting an ecclesiastical education, since it so hard to get a diocese bishop.

It's middle ages before Henry VIII. Women. Can't. Be. Priests. Or bishops She would make a better Spymaster, but she should still turn out okay.

[Ichabod]

That function is under F11.

Damn!!!

This wife has some scary attributes there. She's literally a monster.

Yup, I'm a terrible ruler, but a very good matchmaker

At least until the bride I sent you start robbing your economies and titles

But since you eventually figured this out yourself it looks like you won't do that again

Fool me thrice, shame on...?

10-15% is the sweet spot for a social strata that's not supposed to have a lot to say. I don't know what you mean by crazy, but high peasant/burgher and low noble/cleric everywhere was by design to get a proper troop composition.

We had provinces with something like 40%/60%/0%/0% power...

Did we by any chance got excommunicated or heretic?

Now that you mention it, yup... But we wer "recommunicated" later during the turnset.

It's middle ages before Henry VIII. Women. Can't. Be. Priests. Or bishops She would make a better Spymaster, but she should still turn out okay.

Hmm... er... *cough* yeah *gasp* I knew that... *cough* Just wanted to see if you were paying attention...

[regoarrarr]

Nice turnset Ichabod - I thought you wrote it up very well! Too bad Vseslav is still hanging on. He really needs to bite it

[SleepingMoogle]

Alright, I have the save and will start playing tomorrow. Any suggestions on where to go from here are very much welcome.

I figure I'll try to put down the revolts and stablize the realm where possible. Can I raise an army to stomp down the peasants or something?

Also, is it possible to play the game in windowed mode? Thanks a lot!

[Ichabod]

Nice turnset Ichabod - I thought you wrote it up very well! Too bad Vseslav is still hanging on. He really needs to bite it

Thanks, regoarrar!

I ended up roleplaying the turnset very well, playing like a crazy, depressed old man

It's a shame that I lost the screenshots. The amount of revolt events that happened was very funny.

@SleepingMoogle:

Unfortunately, we have to wait for the death of Vseslav... Next step should be become King of Lithuania, since kings have a multiplier bonus on the number of provinces they can control directly. I think we only need one more province of the list (and some of them are pagans).

[Darkmantle]

Um considering that the king cost you 350g for that stupid tower would it be worth looking at assassination options now?

[sunrise089]

Can you assassinate yourself in this game?!

[Mist]

I figure I'll try to put down the revolts and stablize the realm where possible. Can I raise an army to stomp down the peasants or something?

The passive rebellions eventually fizzle out, costing some prestige. Drop taxes to sustainable minimum, raises church doantions and whack whatever province takes arms in the meantime. Unfortunately as long as Vseslav lives, that's only going to be damage limitation.

Also, is it possible to play the game in windowed mode? Thanks a lot!

Yes, you have to add the 'window' switch to the shortcut, like :
"c:\whatever_path_to_the_game\Crusaders.exe WINDOW"
This requires your desktop to be set to 16bit colour depth though or the game will crash on startup.

Can you assassinate yourself in this game?!

That would be mightily useful at times, but sadly it is not possible.

[Mist]

Updated the Index in the first post.

Code:

Ichabod         <--- Just played
SleepingMoogle  <--- UP
Twinketoes      <--- On Deck

[SleepingMoogle]

Alright, before starting I have a long look at the realm and what's going on with it. So far my experience with Crusader Kings is limited to installing the game and making sure it works, and reading this thread. With several provinces in revolt and a leader fighting shadows, this is about as close you can get to getting thrown in the deep end. It should be great fun though!

Actually, things aren't quite as bad as I thought, but we aren't doing great either. Three provinces west of Polotsk are revolting, and some others are struggling to bring in a decent income. Hopefully the old man will breathe his last soon so that a more competent leader can undo some of his follies.

First things first, there's two female courtiers looking for a husband according to the warning in the upper-right corner of the screen: Eirene and Theophano. Both are grandchildren of Vseslav and daughters of the recently deceased Svyatoslav. They are also extremely disloyal (it doesn't help much that one is schizophrenic too I suppose ), so in order to remove them from the court I propose to marry the sane one to the Chancellor of Poland in a bid to improve relations with them, and the other one to a courtier in the county of Kolomna. We already have good relations with the latter due to familial ties, but I figure that if anything bad were to happen we can take the reputation hit, and we're better off with having the troubled, disloyal grandchild not filling Vselav's head with further delusions.

I have no idea what we can do to stop the revolts at this time, so I let the game resume.


1100


January 1100

Zhmud finishes constructing a Tile Factory. The province can build a Training Yard, Road Network or Sawmill next, but they all cost way more than we can afford right now.

The Count of Kolomna agrees to the marriage proposal! We neglected to mention Theophano comes with a manual until after shipping her away of course.



February 1100

The King of Poland accepts the other marriage proposal as well. This was to be expected since Eirene has stats, but we already know what happens when you hand the reins to a disloyal prodigy.

I've been looking at the army in Ptsov to our immediate north. The current ruler likes us due to some familial tie, so I'll leave it for now in favor of focussing on the revolting provinces. Is there any way to determine what they're actually doing?

Three Field System spreads to Zemigalians. We can't really do anything with it at this point though.

We also get this event:

Veleslava is the daughter of Vselav and his new wife Nuala. As she is already selfish and suspicious, it probably isn't that strange other kids give her a wide berth. I went with the second option (Help the child along) since the outcomes seemed to try and steer her away from being a complete monster. Veleslava ended up with the Amiable trait (-1 Martial, +1 Diplomacy), which probably was the best result available.



March 1100

Svyatoslav's brood is keeping us busy:

Andrei is one of Svyatoslav's sons, with all the bad-doy personality traits, while Verkhoslava is a daughter of the late Nikita (the worthless courtier who Vseslav packed off after getting too close to his fist wife). Verkhoslava actually is a pretty decent girl, just not too loyal right now (then again, who is?) I ended up picking the second option to try and minimize damage, and fortunately Verkhoslava didn't see much in Andrei and never agreed to becoming friends.

More growing up:

Aibinn is a daughter from Vseslav's wife's first marriage, which makes her about as disloyal as one can be. Her stewardship score is actually not too bad, and can be increased further once she completes her court education. Hopefully that Temperate trait she picked up (-2 fertility, +1 diplomacy, +2 yearly piety) will make Vseslav's eventual successor somewhat more palatable.

The rest of March passes without much happening.



April 1100

Road Building spreads to Sudovia. The province is still revolting though, and we can't afford to build roads either way.



May 1100

Andrei is old enough to marry now. As Vseslav's grandson, I suppose we should eventually find him a bride. It's too bad that he's extremely disloyal, as his stats are impressive despite his bad personality traits. I'll keep him around for now, at least until his court education finishes. Perhaps we can turn him around eventually.



June 1100

Speaking of which..

That would be a keeper if only he liked us. Ugh.. any suggestions on what to do with him would be welcome.



July 1100

A month in which nothing happened. I can't really keep track of what happens in the event bar at the bottom of the screen, as the vast majority of names means nothing to me.. if something happened inside of our borders I presume I'll be notified of it.



August 1100

One of our pagan provinces holds on to its former festivals.

This is a bit of a pickle as Zemigalians is one of the few provinces that is still making us money. Still, we want to end up converting them so I went with option one. No revolt, but the peasant loyalty dropped to 0%. I microd the province a bit to make sure that wouldn't have lasting effects.

As it turns out, not all of Vselav's recent decisions are cursed:

Sure, we'll take that.

Somewhat less thrilling news too:

Viacheslav (yet another of Svyatoslav's sons) picks up the Reckless (+1 intrigue, -1 martial, +1 yearly prestige) and Weak-willed (-1 Martial, +1 Intrigue) traits as he grows up. Combined with his court education, he might grow into a decent spymaster, but like everyone else he's disloyal.

At around this time I notice our reputation has crept back up to respectable again. Warfare sounds like a really bad idea at this point though.



September 1100

Finally the news that everyone has been waiting for!

After 71 long years, Vseslav finally breathes his last. After a suitably brief period of mourning for crazy old dad, Roman took over the reins. This is him at the moment:

Roman himself is not the youngest anymore, though perhaps his martial training will keep him around for a little while longer. Unfortunately he has only one child, because he and his wife hate each other with a passion (they consider each other rivals). 4-year old Grigorii is currently the successor (and may be the only child from this unhappy union), followed by Vseslav's other sons.

Right now, his vassals are as follows:

Matei of Osha: 32 years old, married and with several kids. He is an ally of Roman (63% loyal, increasing with 5% per month)

Steikint Rurikovich: 18 years old. He's married but doesn't have children yet. (62% loyal, increasing with 5,8% each month)

Davyd Rurikovich: 50 years old and Roman's oldest brother. He doesn't like being passed in the succession (49% loyalty), but has seemingly accepted it (+4,8% per month)

Rogvolod Rurikovich: 35 years old, and a younger brother. This one is a little more problematic (46% loyalty, +2,8% per month) as he considers Roman a rival.

Rostilav Rurikovich: 40 years old and another brother. Rostislav isn't very confident in Roman's abilities right now (40% loyalty), but seems to be fairly forgiving (+6,8% per month)

I figured this would be a good place to end my first session, as we need to decide what to do next from here. I'll probably pick up play again tomorrow.

I attached the save below if anyone wants to have a closer look.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21346291/Save.rar