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Pete's Crusader Kings II (PC)
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| [January 14, 2014 12:03:22 AM]
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I decided to give the Grand Prince of Kiev another shot. Once again, I tried to change my succession laws to keep my empire together, but I noticed that my vassals were much more unhappy with me. While the rulers, borders and such are always the same when you start a new game, apparently the personal characteristics of the leaders are randomly generated each time. I decided to start over a few times until I happened to roll a prince with decent traits that everyone liked. I changed the succession laws and hoped that I could stave off any invasions from my kinsmen.
Perhaps because of my characters winning personality, no one tried to invade me. Rather, everyone kept inviting me to participate in their wars. It seemed to go pretty well, and I won the wars for once. However, I never really profited from them. I tried to fabricate some claims so I could keep some of the territory, but it didn't work. I guess I had to be the one declaring the war or something.
During one of my campaigns, this time helping my son-in-law, the Byzantine Emperor, my heir died of an illness back home. I was over fifty and my new heir, my grandson, was just six months old. Since I had given my son his own county, my new heir was now out of my control, and I had no ability to do much to help him. I just hoped I could survive until he became of age.
In the end, he grew up and assassinated me at age 69, taking over the kingdom.
All three games technically lasted about the same number of years, but it is interesting to see the differences in how they played out. While my own actions in game certainly had consequences, in the grand scheme of things, I didn't seem to be able to do much to change the course of history. I still don't think I quite have the hang of this game.
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| [January 12, 2014 08:35:40 PM]
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I decided to play again, once again playing as the Prince of Kiev. This time I changed my succession laws to primogeniture, so that my realm wouldn't get smaller every time I died. Again, this made me pretty unpopular, but it only involved bribing one of my vassals. I had considerably fewer attempts on my life this time and I lived to be an old man in his fifties. Unfortunately, I became rather infirm and senile, to the point where I had to name a regent to rule the country. It was about this time when my brother (who apparently had a much bigger kingdom) decided to invade.
The war seemed to be going rather well for me, at first. I raised a decent army and went off to besiege one of my brother's provinces. I won quite a few battles and nearly conquered the county. Considering how few troops he had at the front lines, it seemed a rather poor choice for him to invade me. Unfortunately, a huge army slowly marched in from somewhere, which was about twice as big as mine. It made short work of my troops and then moved into my territory. Half a dozen other nobles decided to declare war on me at this point as well, though I don't think it did much to change the course of the war.
In the end, my brother made peace, after I had died, and left my son with a tiny kingdom in the southwest. It seems as though he died soon after, because his huge empire was soon a bunch of warring counties that occasionally asked me to jump into the fighting against one or another. Despite this shift in power, I was never able to take back my rightful throne in Kiev, leaving me an old man in a rather unimpressive kingdom.
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| [January 11, 2014 08:00:07 PM]
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Given the complexity of the game, I started off playing Crusader Kings by following the tutorial. It seems like the tutorial was created for a slightly different version than the one I actually own, as there were a number of discrepancies between what the tutorial said should be happening and what actually happened in the game. The largest difference is that the queen, who was supposedly dead, was still alive. This meant that the tutorial essentially froze when it got to the section on arranging marriages, as the game wouldn't allow me to marry while my wife was living, but the tutorial wouldn't move on until I did. Fortunately, I was able to eventually get out of the tutorial and start a new game.
I started off playing as the Grand Prince of Kiev, who controlled quite a few provinces. Unfortunately, the number of provinces I controlled created unrest among my vassals, but it wouldn't allow me to grant more than one of my provinces to them. As such, within a few years, none of my vassals liked me much. I tried to see if invading a neighboring pagan state would improve conditions, but I couldn't quite manage to do that either. I ended up just disbanding my armies and focusing on other interests (my king bought an inn and turned it into a rather successful little business). Unfortunately, while I was off fixing up old buildings and sponsoring artists, everyone started trying to murder me. I think my son (who I thought liked me) was the one who finally pulled it off, pushing me out of a tower.
When my son took the throne, most of the kingdom went to his siblings and other relatives. He was left with a tiny kingdom with few resources. He managed to have a son and start improving his ruling abilities when someone assassinated him, too. His heir was only five or six at the time, so he had a regent appointed until he was of age.
Somehow, my grandson managed to be the best ruler of the dynasty. Everyone liked him, and he managed to keep on doing what his predecessors had. I never bothered raising an army, though armies were constantly marching through my lands. No one ever bothered attacking me, though, so I suppose that's okay.
In general, I have no idea if I was doing a good job or not. I lost most of my starting lands, but most of my problems were from having too much land to begin with, so maybe that was a good thing. I certainly wasn't about to conquer the world, but that doesn't seem to be the point of this game, anyway. Maybe keeping a modest kingdom running slowly but surely is a good thing?
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Pete's Crusader Kings II (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 11 January, 2014
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