We Need a Jagiellon! - A Crusader Kings 3 Story

[Krill]

...But you could overdevelop and then swap and reap the financial rewards, rather than go broke like you did here?

[pindicator]

Ringaudas, Part One: The Leper Emperor

When death looks you in the face so intently as it does Ringaudas, what do you hope for?  What drives a person to continue on?  For Ringaudas, there was a stark choice laid before him at the beginning of the game:




Does he fight for every scrap in a bad situation or does he give in to the inevitable and try to end his fate?

We all know the answer here.  This is Realms Beyond!  This is the place that built itself on variant play, difficult starting positions, and playing through bad scenarios for the challenge and fun of it.  Will we hit that Attempt Suicide button for a 50% chance at going straight to our Intelligent young and healthy player heir?  No sir!  We will sire our own heir!

And so it became a simple goal, but a goal none-the-less.  The Leper Emperor was going to sire his own heir.

Here's what we're up against:



I'm not positive how the inner workings are, but I'm going to assume that the -95% Fertility penalty is additive.  Meaning if I can stack enough plus-modifiers for Fertility, then we can overcome this and presumably get Ringaudas to knock somebody up.

First thing is first: Ringaudas needs to get married.  As you might imagine, the ladies were not exactly lining up to become Empress of Greater Lithuania.  No large houses or established kingdoms would marry me their daughters or widows.  Most of my candidates were over 40.  But there were a few from lower houses.  And we did not care what house or what alliance she might gather, just so long as she could stand the thought of sleeping with a leper.

In addition, we wanted someone who had their own Fertility bonuses to help overcome that -95% from being a Leper.  There are a couple Congenital traits that increase Fertility.  Fecund gives +50% Fertility.  Beautiful is the highest on the physical appearance line and gives +30% Fertility.  And of character traits, there is Lustful which gives +25%.

After searching through the lists and filtering for these traits, I came up with two ladies that could be suitable:




Diedke von Holstein had the Fecund trait giving her +50% Fertility, while Pulcheria Karaionatan was both Beautiful and Lustful for +55%.  However, Pulcheria was also Ambitious, and I started to worry that Lustful and Ambitious might work against me.  If she slept around behind my back and it wasn't really Ringaudas' heir then would that really be in the spirit of things?  (Later I would then ask myself: if I never discover the secret then does it really matter?)  Also, Diedke's Gregarious would mean she would get along better with Ringaudas as he was also Gregarious.  Perhaps I was also a bit enraptured by Diedke's superior stats, but in the end I made the call that losing the 5% overall Fertility bonus was okay here.  We send a marriage proposal to Diedke and she agrees.

Normally I would spend money on a feast here, but instead I spend it on searching for a Physician.  We need to live as long as possible to try and give ourselves as much time to have children:




The search takes 2 weeks, but we pay 50 Gold for the most experienced person, Aras.  He has high Learning stat but no Physician trait.  Hopefully he is young enough that he will develop that with experience.

There was one more thing I did to help with my Fertility.  One of the Lifestyles available under the Diplomacy tree is Family Focus




Again, assuming all these are additive with the Leper penalty, then this brings us up to just a -25% Fertility.  That is the same as a Chaste character, and I see them running around with kids all the time.  Could this really be possible?

I also take on as many concubines as the game will allow me (3).  There are no characters available in my realm who have any bonus to Fertility so i just grab the few courtiers who are available.  Although I do waste one slot: in my own twisted sense of humor I decide to take on Danilla as a concubine.  Yes, the same Danilla who was concubine to both Skirmantas' and Vingoldas' before.  (She was not Ringaudas' mother; I have to draw the line somewhere.)

The next thing we need to do is buy ourselves some time against rebellions.  Already King Kesgaila of Poland is heading a faction to become Emperor.  I decide this is a time I'm willing to use the cheesy prisoner execution strat for Dread and clear out my prison.  All the Executions brings Ringaudas up to the maximum of 100 Dread.




In addition, I betroth my half-sister Princess Anele to the heir of the Kingdom of France, Prince Godefroy.  France boasts an army of almost 10,000 troops, and so I feel content that this will be the only alliance I need.  Besides, most alliances end with a monarch's death and I don't see any reason to waste betrothing the other younger sisters.  Also, with a betrothal we will get to renew the alliance when they actually marry, so if Ringaudas doesn't last more than 5 years (a serious possibility) then the next ruler will get to ally with France when the two of them wed.

One further point, having a household member married to a king or queen will give my Dynasty a serious boost to monthly Renoun.

The Factions slink away into the dark corners of the empire with these moves.  Ringaudas will never face a serious rebellion like Vingoldas did.  However, in a turn the French then call us to their aid as they are in the midst of a rebellion for independence.  After the armies of Smolensk were defeated I disbanded all but enough troops to siege down their palace; I do not want to spend what little money I have shipping units to France.

With that taken care of, Ringaudas focuses on the goal at hand: sleeping with his wife.




A few months into the Seduction Scheme we get our first of two decisions.  Here Ringaudas decides to pay a compliment to his wife, and picking the compliment that best fits her traits will either help or set back the seduction attempt.  The game has seemed to remember that I am in fact playing a Leper, and the initial 85% success chance has dropped down to 30%.




Ringaudas chose his words carefully, and the Empress blushed at his complimenting words.

His next opportunity would come the following winter.  In January 1148 there was a reading in Kernave.




We are up to 50%!  Get this one right and there is a real chance of this succeeding.  This choice became very important; in fact, the whole seduction scheme might rest on choosing the right reading material here.  Remembering Diedke's education as a Master Philosopher, she might be more inclined with learning something.  And yet, Intrigue was her highest stat and wouldn't being entertained play along with intrigue?

I chose to go with The Almagest.




She had wanted to be entertained after all!  And with the chance dropping to 35% we now were in perilously low odds.  But still, could the spear conquer the tank despite it all?




Alas, no.

I believe the game makes you wait 5 years before attempting to seduce again, and Ringaudas may not have 5 years.  So we started a scheme to Befriend her.  We would make as much of the time as we could.




But here Ringaudas seemed to find a way to soften the hard exterior of Diedke.  He was getting some success.  Perhaps if he could just live long enough then the next seduction attempt may have a better footing from which to start?

In November of that year my Physician, Aras, tells me that we need to undergo treatment for Ringaudas' leprosy.  He recommends taking drastic measures.  Knowing that I will have to survive for such a long time for any hope at having children, I agree with him.

The results did not go well.




I let Aras off with only a stern rebuke.  We were attempting the impossible and there was no need to be angry at the man for failing such a difficult task.  Besides, one-legged men had sired children before.  Surely Ringaudas would have his own chances.

Met with the disappointment of failure, and freshly Wounded from his botched treatment, Ringaudas turned to what his father turned to in failure:




And here I first noticed the Death's Door notification.  The Severe Health penalty from being Wounded stacking with the Severe Health penalty from being a Leper meant that Ringaudas was on Death's Door.  Only a miracle would save him now.




Sadly there was no miracle.  In March of 1149 Ringaudas succumbed to his disease, leaving yet another unfinished war for some minor Russian county for his heir to inherit.

Other Happenings:

• Ringaudas' mother, Matylda, died in June 1147.  The stress probably did not do well for Ringaudas, but at least both parents did not out-live their son.
  
• We finished researching Early Medieval era tech and now set on our first technology: Battlements.  I almost went Manoralism to unlock all the economic buildings of the era, but then remembered that you need to have the next level of castle to build those buildings anyway, and so Battlements is first.
  
• King Tovtivilas and King Kesgaila decided to declare war on Sweden for the county of Slesvig, the last county within de jure Lithuania held by foreign lands.  It has not gone well and King Kesgaila is now in Sweden's dungeons.
  

[pindicator]

...But you could overdevelop and then swap and reap the financial rewards, rather than go broke like you did here?

Kind of.  Each era has a Development cap and the Tribal era puts the soft cap at 20.  I had the capital up to 13 when we switched, so I could have gone farther.  I could have also built more economic buildings, true.  But I had only done the transition once before and that game I had been so large that the economic impact wasn't nearly as bad.

[El Grillo]

RIP poor Ringaudas, better luck next time.

[Commodore]

Well, at least you have a comically handsome fellow, already an established and capable ruler, correct?

[sunrise089]

“ And we found out today that old saves will be stuck at 0 garrison, which is not great at all. It’s also embarrassing that it slipped through
Anyway, we’re looking into patching that.
For now I recommend you roll back if you can, or start a new campaign.”

Don’t really understand that but it doesn’t seem ideal...

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

"We all know the answer here.  This is Realms Beyond!  This is the place that built itself on variant play, difficult starting positions, and playing through bad scenarios for the challenge and fun of it.  Will we hit that Attempt Suicide button for a 50% chance at going straight to our Intelligent young and healthy player heir?  No sir!  We will sire our own heir!"


This is the same thought process that led to my all Normal type Nexomon Extinction team. 


Too bad Ringaudas couldn't have his heir.  You'd think a CK character would stay as far away from Physicians as possible, given the "medicine" of those times.  Hopefully the AI will get more aggressive in the coming episodes.

[pindicator]

“ And we found out today that old saves will be stuck at 0 garrison, which is not great at all. It’s also embarrassing that it slipped through
Anyway, we’re looking into patching that.
For now I recommend you roll back if you can, or start a new campaign.”

Don’t really understand that but it doesn’t seem ideal...

Ugh, thank you for pointing that out.

What it means is that all sieges will be instant since there will never be a garrison in the county to defend. I'll double check my save but if that's the case then I probably will just start a new game

EDIT: Just checked and it is true. Every garrison is at 0 and is recovering men at a rate of 0/month. That is officially a RIP

[Krill]

Old school Democracy game?

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Ugh, thank you for pointing that out.

What it means is that all sieges will be instant since there will never be a garrison in the county to defend. I'll double check my save but if that's the case then I probably will just start a new game

EDIT:  Just checked and it is true.  Every garrison is at 0 and is recovering men at a rate of 0/month.  That is officially a RIP

Is there no way to uninstall the patch and continue with the old file?