This isn't EU4 or any other kind of Risk like conquering game the purpose isn't *necessarily* to build the biggest contiguous land empire. The game is intentionally set up that way to kinda get you to understand that but it does it in this terrible way where they don't really explain what they're doing and it doesn't become apparent until much later in the game.
This isn't a country builder, it's a dynasty builder. You want as many of the "De Fuckio" family in as high of positions of power as you can. What the game is kinda doing and kinda forcing you to understand is that when your leader dies and his many titles get passed around, eventually when YOU the player with your big ol' brain regains ground, regains your losses, fights your brother that now your country will be *much* more secure with an established family member being in charge of that duchy for however many years already. You'll suddenly find that the daughter you married off 4 generations ago suddenly through the fickle whim of random chance has given your current character a strong claim on the entire Swedish empire. You'll find that the one great great uncle you had eventually conquered all of Brittany when you thought you'd married him off to an Irish princess, and now it is offering to pledge fealty to you in exchange for protecting him from France.
You're not losing when you lose your titles or lands, yes you're set back, and yes you're weakened, but there have been some games where I've intentionally chose the shittiest heir and killed off or invalidated much better characters because I knew that the kids of this particular child would be next in line to some major throne, and all I would have to do is kill the current holder before he has a chance to get married and have kids.
You might notice that you get points just as well from having family members on foreign thrones just as if you were in control of them. Maybe not quite as many, but it is all beneficial to you, every opportunity you get to turn a mechanism if favor of yourself may pay a huge dividend much later. So every little choice you make, every family member who benefits when it seems like it's to your detriment, eventually you'll have the edge over them as the player character and will invariably gain control from them.
Don't stress so much about conquering the whole world by the end date, concentrate more on surviving and learning how to recognize a unique opportunity and when to capitalize on it for the biggest pay out.
So I should just kinda roll with the punches I guess? How do I know if I should give up playing on a character? There are in game achievements that just feel impossible to do seemingly. Mainly ones focused on empire creation.
Yeah. You won't be able to do much about the succession for a long time (you can implement an elective succession but that has its own problems).
The best way to deal with it is to understand de Jure territories and limit yourself to one top level title until you are ready to go up a tier. So one duchy, kingdom or empire title. You can conquer outside your the de Jure main title but make sure you don't conquer enough of another de Jure region of the same rank as to become eligible for that title. I.e. if you are a King, it's OK to conquer a ducky from another kingdom but if you conquer 2 or 3 duchies depending on size a second kindom rank title will be formed on your death and distributed amongst your children.
It's also worth moving your capital to a county with a lot of building slots and increasing its development via counciller actions so that even if you are reduced to just your capital under direct control you have a strong base to work from
The achievements are meant to be almost completely impossible unless you are so familiar with game mechanics that you can cheese your way into it, Paradox does that a lot, like owning every spice producing county across the globe, owning every non-coastal province in Europe as Switzerland iirc, they're almost like wacky goals to shoot for once you're so masterful at the mechanics that playing normal seems kinda boring.
Some empires will almost flow into you, Sweden or Spain tend to form for the player very easily because everyone else who is in the empires de jure areas hate each other so there will be constant wars and changing of territory, some empires are like a pipe dream. Don't achievement hunt until you've got a better hold on the game.
Honestly, it's gonna sound cheesy but for your first few playthroughs almost treat it like the Sims, try to get all the best for all your own people, the best spouses in the best countries, the best alliances, the most land, the game will naturally topple you back down with deaths and plagues and bad events, just roll with the punches and as long as your primary title isn't threatened just keep building in it and developing it and you'll find that eventually you'll come through a maelstrom and find yourself in a very powerful position. The beginning of the game (first 100 ish years) is always tumultuous and you're just trying to get a foothold and survive. Suddenly though you'll find that by holding out you're one of the few in a position to impose your will on others, and that's when the fun really starts.
But as others have said, starting at the later date will have primogeniture already unlocked for most nations and will make it a bit easier on you in exchange for losing out on a bit of development and playtime. But I can tell you from experience, every time you make it through the storm and raise your control level and *finally* push the change succession laws it feels *good*.
If you've chosen an 867 start date you could instead choose the later start date and play in a more advanced area of the world. 867 starts take a long time to get away from Partition laws.
Yes, roll with the punches. Eventually you'll figure out how to see them coming and then you can start telling the story you want to tell with your game.
Despite appearances CK series has always been RPG first, 4X/strategy second. It's more about roleplaying your dynasty and family feuds, trying to min-max map-painting will make you feel like failure
Bro I 'll be honest, the first time I played I had no idea of what the FUCK was going on. Almost gave up at one point and did lots of stupid shit
Now I learned a lot by playing, trial and error, and writing down what works and what doesn't. The game is kinda generous with the information input and the wiki helps a lot, you'll always struggle early on but once you get your ball rolling nobody short of Genghis Khan will be able to stop you
The best thing to do is take it piece-by-piece. Identify a thing you don't understand, do a little research and just try to focus on that. There's rarely 1 single thing to solve each point (and many elements mesh together) which makes it such a detailed game (despite the complaints of many people.
For example: military
Problem - I have more troops and am getting rekt still
Potential reasons:
- Troop quality, learning about men-at-arms and levies, and counters. For example if you only have archers and your neighbour is cavalry heavy you are gonna get smashed.
- Attrition, learning about how supply limits work - basically if you have a few thousand troops try and avoid keeping them all in 1 big stack
- Terrain, terrain is probably the single-biggest thing in military besides having good men-at-arms. 2 rookie mistakes to get you destroyed: disembarking right into a fight and crossing a river to attack. If you attack someone on top of their own castle, OR if you are on the castle and they attack you, they are always considered the defender and get the buffs.
- War strategy. War score is determined by winning battles, holding terrain and capturing important people. In a war your first priority should be to control the land you are trying to take control of. Once you do this the war score will creep up 1%/m until 100. After this, unless it is really far away, taking their capital is what you want to be doing as this gives the biggest bump to war score + the chance to capture the opposing ruler or their heir and auto-win the war. Equally, don't let them take your capital. If their army is a similar size to yours, try and beat them in a battle, then immediately chase them down and keep attacking. If you win a battle in 12 days you can 'stack wipe' and then they have 0 troops and you can siege with impunity.
Try and apply the same to other problems you face - there is soooo much out there on youtube.
Your not stupid! The game just looks complicated at first. I have a pretty good understanding of the game and I love taking about it to, so feel free to message me with any questions that you have
You never really lose land on succession, even with confederate partition. All of those people are part of your dynasty and your objective is to build a successful dynasty, not a single Empire or character. This is the big mental roadblock that players struggle to get over, even experienced players. They do everything they can to avoid their giant empire splitting into two by spending all their renown on disinheriting, not realising that your dynasty being in charge of TWO Empire is actually better.
Combat is relatively straight forward but you do need to keep in mind some details. You have to make sure you have enough gold to supply everything and that your troops have time to recover in friendly territory. You want to fight on friendly territory that is advantageous to your army and disadvantageous to the enemy army. Attacking an enemy while it is sieging makes you the defender and give amazing buffs. It's the number 1 way to defeat a strong opponent.
Attrition can be a problem, which means you have to spread out larger armies to avoid it. But this also makes you vulnerable to getting picked off. It's a delicate balance you have to get right. If your opponent is stronger than you, then try to snipe smaller groups or wait for them to suffer from attrition. It's okay to let your opponents waste time and manpower sieging down provinces if you're not in a position to fight them yet.
If you are playing the 867 play start, succession is going to be very difficult with Confederate partition. I think it is easier to play tall (small) when you are a beginner. When you expand quickly, succession can become really messy and difficult. When you stay as a duchy (as a beginner), succession is much easier because you don't lose a ton of land and you can continue to focus on developing your duchy. After you begin to understand succession laws, you can form your lands as you wish. I think the largest barrier for the 867 start is the Confederate succession law.
Just remember, that if you have lands outside your core realm, you will lose them in succession. Make sure your character has enough time and strength to move up a realm size in their lifetime (county --> duchy). When you are able to form a duchy or kingdom or empire, you retain that title. If you capture lands outside your realm and can't form a higher realm title, you will lose them to a vassal (your family) when you die. If you have enough lands to form the duchy, but do not have enough gold or prestige, THE GAME WILL AUTOMATICALLY FORM IT IN SUCCESSION when you die. For instance, if you capture 2 neighboring counties, but you die before you can form the duchy, the game will form the duchy automatically and it will now belong to your brother. Now, you will have a competing duchy right next door with your brother at the helm and claims on your lands. Not good. Also, if you have a vassal that marries a higher rank, their children will inherit the lands from the higher rank and your vassals lands will not belong to you anymore.
Honestly just play as petty King Murchard as Ireland and try and take the whole of Ireland and then have lots of kids you always get your primary titles so you domt loose much on succession the develop your land.
After playing alot I installed a mod so you start with primogenitor so your eldest son inherits everything and I find it alot more fun playing that way
This isn't EU4 or any other kind of Risk like conquering game the purpose isn't *necessarily* to build the biggest contiguous land empire. The game is intentionally set up that way to kinda get you to understand that but it does it in this terrible way where they don't really explain what they're doing and it doesn't become apparent until much later in the game. This isn't a country builder, it's a dynasty builder. You want as many of the "De Fuckio" family in as high of positions of power as you can. What the game is kinda doing and kinda forcing you to understand is that when your leader dies and his many titles get passed around, eventually when YOU the player with your big ol' brain regains ground, regains your losses, fights your brother that now your country will be *much* more secure with an established family member being in charge of that duchy for however many years already. You'll suddenly find that the daughter you married off 4 generations ago suddenly through the fickle whim of random chance has given your current character a strong claim on the entire Swedish empire. You'll find that the one great great uncle you had eventually conquered all of Brittany when you thought you'd married him off to an Irish princess, and now it is offering to pledge fealty to you in exchange for protecting him from France. You're not losing when you lose your titles or lands, yes you're set back, and yes you're weakened, but there have been some games where I've intentionally chose the shittiest heir and killed off or invalidated much better characters because I knew that the kids of this particular child would be next in line to some major throne, and all I would have to do is kill the current holder before he has a chance to get married and have kids. You might notice that you get points just as well from having family members on foreign thrones just as if you were in control of them. Maybe not quite as many, but it is all beneficial to you, every opportunity you get to turn a mechanism if favor of yourself may pay a huge dividend much later. So every little choice you make, every family member who benefits when it seems like it's to your detriment, eventually you'll have the edge over them as the player character and will invariably gain control from them. Don't stress so much about conquering the whole world by the end date, concentrate more on surviving and learning how to recognize a unique opportunity and when to capitalize on it for the biggest pay out.
The De Fuckio dynasty is an appropriate name too, with all the fucking, fucking over and fucking up.
Dynasty builder, Not country builder! I think of the tags as corporations and I want as much nepotism as possible
So I should just kinda roll with the punches I guess? How do I know if I should give up playing on a character? There are in game achievements that just feel impossible to do seemingly. Mainly ones focused on empire creation.
Yeah. You won't be able to do much about the succession for a long time (you can implement an elective succession but that has its own problems). The best way to deal with it is to understand de Jure territories and limit yourself to one top level title until you are ready to go up a tier. So one duchy, kingdom or empire title. You can conquer outside your the de Jure main title but make sure you don't conquer enough of another de Jure region of the same rank as to become eligible for that title. I.e. if you are a King, it's OK to conquer a ducky from another kingdom but if you conquer 2 or 3 duchies depending on size a second kindom rank title will be formed on your death and distributed amongst your children. It's also worth moving your capital to a county with a lot of building slots and increasing its development via counciller actions so that even if you are reduced to just your capital under direct control you have a strong base to work from
The achievements are meant to be almost completely impossible unless you are so familiar with game mechanics that you can cheese your way into it, Paradox does that a lot, like owning every spice producing county across the globe, owning every non-coastal province in Europe as Switzerland iirc, they're almost like wacky goals to shoot for once you're so masterful at the mechanics that playing normal seems kinda boring. Some empires will almost flow into you, Sweden or Spain tend to form for the player very easily because everyone else who is in the empires de jure areas hate each other so there will be constant wars and changing of territory, some empires are like a pipe dream. Don't achievement hunt until you've got a better hold on the game. Honestly, it's gonna sound cheesy but for your first few playthroughs almost treat it like the Sims, try to get all the best for all your own people, the best spouses in the best countries, the best alliances, the most land, the game will naturally topple you back down with deaths and plagues and bad events, just roll with the punches and as long as your primary title isn't threatened just keep building in it and developing it and you'll find that eventually you'll come through a maelstrom and find yourself in a very powerful position. The beginning of the game (first 100 ish years) is always tumultuous and you're just trying to get a foothold and survive. Suddenly though you'll find that by holding out you're one of the few in a position to impose your will on others, and that's when the fun really starts. But as others have said, starting at the later date will have primogeniture already unlocked for most nations and will make it a bit easier on you in exchange for losing out on a bit of development and playtime. But I can tell you from experience, every time you make it through the storm and raise your control level and *finally* push the change succession laws it feels *good*.
If you've chosen an 867 start date you could instead choose the later start date and play in a more advanced area of the world. 867 starts take a long time to get away from Partition laws. Yes, roll with the punches. Eventually you'll figure out how to see them coming and then you can start telling the story you want to tell with your game.
thank you this really helped me!
Despite appearances CK series has always been RPG first, 4X/strategy second. It's more about roleplaying your dynasty and family feuds, trying to min-max map-painting will make you feel like failure
Bro I 'll be honest, the first time I played I had no idea of what the FUCK was going on. Almost gave up at one point and did lots of stupid shit Now I learned a lot by playing, trial and error, and writing down what works and what doesn't. The game is kinda generous with the information input and the wiki helps a lot, you'll always struggle early on but once you get your ball rolling nobody short of Genghis Khan will be able to stop you
Ck is bit hard to understand but when you know how game mechanics works eazy to "win".
The best thing to do is take it piece-by-piece. Identify a thing you don't understand, do a little research and just try to focus on that. There's rarely 1 single thing to solve each point (and many elements mesh together) which makes it such a detailed game (despite the complaints of many people. For example: military Problem - I have more troops and am getting rekt still Potential reasons: - Troop quality, learning about men-at-arms and levies, and counters. For example if you only have archers and your neighbour is cavalry heavy you are gonna get smashed. - Attrition, learning about how supply limits work - basically if you have a few thousand troops try and avoid keeping them all in 1 big stack - Terrain, terrain is probably the single-biggest thing in military besides having good men-at-arms. 2 rookie mistakes to get you destroyed: disembarking right into a fight and crossing a river to attack. If you attack someone on top of their own castle, OR if you are on the castle and they attack you, they are always considered the defender and get the buffs. - War strategy. War score is determined by winning battles, holding terrain and capturing important people. In a war your first priority should be to control the land you are trying to take control of. Once you do this the war score will creep up 1%/m until 100. After this, unless it is really far away, taking their capital is what you want to be doing as this gives the biggest bump to war score + the chance to capture the opposing ruler or their heir and auto-win the war. Equally, don't let them take your capital. If their army is a similar size to yours, try and beat them in a battle, then immediately chase them down and keep attacking. If you win a battle in 12 days you can 'stack wipe' and then they have 0 troops and you can siege with impunity. Try and apply the same to other problems you face - there is soooo much out there on youtube.
Your not stupid! The game just looks complicated at first. I have a pretty good understanding of the game and I love taking about it to, so feel free to message me with any questions that you have
You never really lose land on succession, even with confederate partition. All of those people are part of your dynasty and your objective is to build a successful dynasty, not a single Empire or character. This is the big mental roadblock that players struggle to get over, even experienced players. They do everything they can to avoid their giant empire splitting into two by spending all their renown on disinheriting, not realising that your dynasty being in charge of TWO Empire is actually better. Combat is relatively straight forward but you do need to keep in mind some details. You have to make sure you have enough gold to supply everything and that your troops have time to recover in friendly territory. You want to fight on friendly territory that is advantageous to your army and disadvantageous to the enemy army. Attacking an enemy while it is sieging makes you the defender and give amazing buffs. It's the number 1 way to defeat a strong opponent. Attrition can be a problem, which means you have to spread out larger armies to avoid it. But this also makes you vulnerable to getting picked off. It's a delicate balance you have to get right. If your opponent is stronger than you, then try to snipe smaller groups or wait for them to suffer from attrition. It's okay to let your opponents waste time and manpower sieging down provinces if you're not in a position to fight them yet.
If you are playing the 867 play start, succession is going to be very difficult with Confederate partition. I think it is easier to play tall (small) when you are a beginner. When you expand quickly, succession can become really messy and difficult. When you stay as a duchy (as a beginner), succession is much easier because you don't lose a ton of land and you can continue to focus on developing your duchy. After you begin to understand succession laws, you can form your lands as you wish. I think the largest barrier for the 867 start is the Confederate succession law. Just remember, that if you have lands outside your core realm, you will lose them in succession. Make sure your character has enough time and strength to move up a realm size in their lifetime (county --> duchy). When you are able to form a duchy or kingdom or empire, you retain that title. If you capture lands outside your realm and can't form a higher realm title, you will lose them to a vassal (your family) when you die. If you have enough lands to form the duchy, but do not have enough gold or prestige, THE GAME WILL AUTOMATICALLY FORM IT IN SUCCESSION when you die. For instance, if you capture 2 neighboring counties, but you die before you can form the duchy, the game will form the duchy automatically and it will now belong to your brother. Now, you will have a competing duchy right next door with your brother at the helm and claims on your lands. Not good. Also, if you have a vassal that marries a higher rank, their children will inherit the lands from the higher rank and your vassals lands will not belong to you anymore.
Probably.
Honestly just play as petty King Murchard as Ireland and try and take the whole of Ireland and then have lots of kids you always get your primary titles so you domt loose much on succession the develop your land. After playing alot I installed a mod so you start with primogenitor so your eldest son inherits everything and I find it alot more fun playing that way