Welcome to the last Asatru-practicing duchy in the world.
Erik III 'the Heathen' Munso is a Prince of Sweden, but has not adopted the new Catholic ways of his Nephew, King Erik II, or his sister, Queen Mother Ingrid Emundsdotter. In fact, the Norse religion that once reigned over all these lands but a hundred years ago is now being pushed out by Catholic missionaries. Only a few counties practice the old ways, and of those only Erik III and his vassals openly resist Catholicism.
By the way, I think I know why they refer to the religion as Asatru and not Norse. Paradox has reserved the term Norse to apply to the Norse culture group and I doubt they wanted the confusion of a religion and a culture of the same name.
Speaking of culture, one of the high points of the new expansion is the new fluid culture system. Culture's can converge, diverge, and you can have acceptance to one or many on a variety of aspects that I haven't even kept up with all the way. So this game will try to highlight the changes and illustrate my discovery of the new system.
We start the game as Swedish culture, which according the game diverged from Norse culture back in the year 1000. Norse culture only remains on Iceland in the 1066 start date. Highlighting a few things that make Swedish culture unique, let's look at the culture screen. We can see that our nephew, the King, is the haed of Swedish Culture, and so he'll be making all the decisions about which technology we research and maybe some more that come with the new cultural mechanics. Before the only thing that would separate cultures was their technology but now we have an Ethos, Cultural Pillars, and Traditions, each with their own bonuses and stats to make the cultures play in their own unique manner. Open the spoiler for more details on Swedish Culture in particular.
Speaking of our King, he is Catholic and rules over 2 dukes, 4 counts, a Prince-Bishop, and the Grand-Mayor of the island of Visby. Nobody particularly likes the King but nobody particularly dislikes him either: Opinion among the vassals range from +11 (Count Toke of Varend) to -44 (Prince-Bishop Adalvard 'the Young' of Skara. We could attempt to sow dissent, seeing how Erik II has an Intrigue score of only 5. But then again, we aren't that much better at 7.
We have 4 vassals of our own, each of them Counts and each Asatru-practicing Swedes.
I also like this screenshot as it shows my lands within Sweden as a whole.
As far as how to open up, I do plan on doing some expansion initially. To my north there are a few tribal lands, and since Angermanland and Sjeltie are also both Swedish and Asatru they should be relatively easy to bring into the fold. Further north we run into Sami of the Ukonusko faith. Or west there is Norway, which has taken almost entirely to Catholicism. Eventually I will want to take over Sweden as well, but I hope to do it internally rather than by bloodshed. Erik II may have turned his back on his forefather's faith, but he is still family.
Finally, let's take a look at the Swedish Court itself:
It's a sparse court. Once we take the place over we're going to have to make some serious improvements.
One interesting thing that you can do is have your language spoken far and wide as the court-language of distant lands. Become your own "lingua-franca", if you will.
I think we can add that to our goals as well: try to spread Norse far and wide as a language.
Erik III 'the Heathen' Munso is a Prince of Sweden, but has not adopted the new Catholic ways of his Nephew, King Erik II, or his sister, Queen Mother Ingrid Emundsdotter. In fact, the Norse religion that once reigned over all these lands but a hundred years ago is now being pushed out by Catholic missionaries. Only a few counties practice the old ways, and of those only Erik III and his vassals openly resist Catholicism.
By the way, I think I know why they refer to the religion as Asatru and not Norse. Paradox has reserved the term Norse to apply to the Norse culture group and I doubt they wanted the confusion of a religion and a culture of the same name.
Speaking of culture, one of the high points of the new expansion is the new fluid culture system. Culture's can converge, diverge, and you can have acceptance to one or many on a variety of aspects that I haven't even kept up with all the way. So this game will try to highlight the changes and illustrate my discovery of the new system.
We start the game as Swedish culture, which according the game diverged from Norse culture back in the year 1000. Norse culture only remains on Iceland in the 1066 start date. Highlighting a few things that make Swedish culture unique, let's look at the culture screen. We can see that our nephew, the King, is the haed of Swedish Culture, and so he'll be making all the decisions about which technology we research and maybe some more that come with the new cultural mechanics. Before the only thing that would separate cultures was their technology but now we have an Ethos, Cultural Pillars, and Traditions, each with their own bonuses and stats to make the cultures play in their own unique manner. Open the spoiler for more details on Swedish Culture in particular.
Speaking of our King, he is Catholic and rules over 2 dukes, 4 counts, a Prince-Bishop, and the Grand-Mayor of the island of Visby. Nobody particularly likes the King but nobody particularly dislikes him either: Opinion among the vassals range from +11 (Count Toke of Varend) to -44 (Prince-Bishop Adalvard 'the Young' of Skara. We could attempt to sow dissent, seeing how Erik II has an Intrigue score of only 5. But then again, we aren't that much better at 7.
We have 4 vassals of our own, each of them Counts and each Asatru-practicing Swedes.
I also like this screenshot as it shows my lands within Sweden as a whole.
As far as how to open up, I do plan on doing some expansion initially. To my north there are a few tribal lands, and since Angermanland and Sjeltie are also both Swedish and Asatru they should be relatively easy to bring into the fold. Further north we run into Sami of the Ukonusko faith. Or west there is Norway, which has taken almost entirely to Catholicism. Eventually I will want to take over Sweden as well, but I hope to do it internally rather than by bloodshed. Erik II may have turned his back on his forefather's faith, but he is still family.
Finally, let's take a look at the Swedish Court itself:
It's a sparse court. Once we take the place over we're going to have to make some serious improvements.
One interesting thing that you can do is have your language spoken far and wide as the court-language of distant lands. Become your own "lingua-franca", if you will.
I think we can add that to our goals as well: try to spread Norse far and wide as a language.
Suffer Game Sicko
Dodo Tier Player
Dodo Tier Player
Good luck with resisting the tide of Christianity erasing the old faith!
