I just finished my first game of Crusader Kings and thought I'd highlight a few things for other new players that got me through (and made it fun).
Of course, some of these will undoubtedly be slightly ill-informed but I'm sure the veterans will clarify where necessary.
Kingdom of Castille, Grand Campaign, Standard difficulty settings
Overall Strategy:
- Pick off small Muslim kingdoms in the south of Spain with three or less provinces and weak or no allies, right away.
- Wage war in the south where necessary to prevent a single Muslim kingdom from growing to large. This is critical: if any of them consolidate and blob you'll be finished. Keepting them broken up is more important than growing your territory.
- Keep an eye on Leon: they're likely to attack if you wage war early in the south and leave yourself exposed.
- An early alliance with Navarra may keep Leon at bay.
- Expect to inherit part of northern Spain and don't attack kingdoms you may inherit anyway.
- Consolidate northern Spain into your kingdom through small wars, inheritance and diplomatic vassalization.
- Push into the south and take it all
- Push accross the water into North Africa, then east into the Mediterannean towards the holy land
- Think about going after Scissily, particularly if they're taking North African and other provinces in the way of your expansion.
War Tactics
- In the early game, make the power of your nobles in each province 40% or greater. This will give you lots of knights in your armies--the most powerful unit.
- When fighting with your own armies, start with at least 500 in your treausury, if not more. Make them very short wars or your economy will suffer (ongonig negative balance) and you'll get bad events.
- As you wage war and gain more vassals, fight with their armies instead. Raising their armies will lower their loyalty by 20%, so don't do it to vassals who's morale is already on a decline. You can then spend your money on troop transport and province improvements, instead of army maintenance.
- Every time you settle for peace, try to vassalize and also recognize their land claims. This will usually improve your reputation, rather than lower it. Good reputation means good vassal loyalty and more troops. Also, don't be afraid to settle pease for less than you can actually gain by your warscore. The difference between peace and warscore equals the prestige you get from the war. More prestige means a whole lot of good stuff--vassal loyalty included.
- Take provinces that will allow you to create Duke and King claims where possible. These give you a one-time prestige boost, and then passing them on to your vassals will give you an ongoing prestige boos.
Succession
- Try to anticipate which of your heirs will inherit
- When you're pretty sure who it will be, start giving them your duke titiles. this will assign the vassals associated with the titles to them, making their empire larger and their prestige nice and high.
- When your heir inherits, there will be less loyalty dips in the vassals because most of them will belong to him already. in fact, some may have been replaced by him by his own kin by that time--even better. His high prestige will also help here.
- I even declared war on some of my non-bloodline vassals so I could take their duke titles and give them to my heir, keeping everything in the family.
I got lucky waging war with Scissily: I could only afford a claim on one of his counties, but mid-way through the war I got the "This War is Personal" event or some such. I chose an option that gave me a 25% chance of getting a claim on his king title, and it worked. When I settled for peace I claimed the title and ended up with the entire kingdom, vassals and all.
This is still achievable without the luck: just save up the prestige needed to grab his King title (about 3000, I think). Might be a good thing to do at the end of your current ruler's reign, since your prestige will drop massively and your heir will be all juiced up and ready to go from the duke titles you've given him by then.
Of course, some of these will undoubtedly be slightly ill-informed but I'm sure the veterans will clarify where necessary.
Kingdom of Castille, Grand Campaign, Standard difficulty settings
Overall Strategy:
- Pick off small Muslim kingdoms in the south of Spain with three or less provinces and weak or no allies, right away.
- Wage war in the south where necessary to prevent a single Muslim kingdom from growing to large. This is critical: if any of them consolidate and blob you'll be finished. Keepting them broken up is more important than growing your territory.
- Keep an eye on Leon: they're likely to attack if you wage war early in the south and leave yourself exposed.
- An early alliance with Navarra may keep Leon at bay.
- Expect to inherit part of northern Spain and don't attack kingdoms you may inherit anyway.
- Consolidate northern Spain into your kingdom through small wars, inheritance and diplomatic vassalization.
- Push into the south and take it all
- Push accross the water into North Africa, then east into the Mediterannean towards the holy land
- Think about going after Scissily, particularly if they're taking North African and other provinces in the way of your expansion.
War Tactics
- In the early game, make the power of your nobles in each province 40% or greater. This will give you lots of knights in your armies--the most powerful unit.
- When fighting with your own armies, start with at least 500 in your treausury, if not more. Make them very short wars or your economy will suffer (ongonig negative balance) and you'll get bad events.
- As you wage war and gain more vassals, fight with their armies instead. Raising their armies will lower their loyalty by 20%, so don't do it to vassals who's morale is already on a decline. You can then spend your money on troop transport and province improvements, instead of army maintenance.
- Every time you settle for peace, try to vassalize and also recognize their land claims. This will usually improve your reputation, rather than lower it. Good reputation means good vassal loyalty and more troops. Also, don't be afraid to settle pease for less than you can actually gain by your warscore. The difference between peace and warscore equals the prestige you get from the war. More prestige means a whole lot of good stuff--vassal loyalty included.
- Take provinces that will allow you to create Duke and King claims where possible. These give you a one-time prestige boost, and then passing them on to your vassals will give you an ongoing prestige boos.
Succession
- Try to anticipate which of your heirs will inherit
- When you're pretty sure who it will be, start giving them your duke titiles. this will assign the vassals associated with the titles to them, making their empire larger and their prestige nice and high.
- When your heir inherits, there will be less loyalty dips in the vassals because most of them will belong to him already. in fact, some may have been replaced by him by his own kin by that time--even better. His high prestige will also help here.
- I even declared war on some of my non-bloodline vassals so I could take their duke titles and give them to my heir, keeping everything in the family.
I got lucky waging war with Scissily: I could only afford a claim on one of his counties, but mid-way through the war I got the "This War is Personal" event or some such. I chose an option that gave me a 25% chance of getting a claim on his king title, and it worked. When I settled for peace I claimed the title and ended up with the entire kingdom, vassals and all.
This is still achievable without the luck: just save up the prestige needed to grab his King title (about 3000, I think). Might be a good thing to do at the end of your current ruler's reign, since your prestige will drop massively and your heir will be all juiced up and ready to go from the duke titles you've given him by then.
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