By Jupiter, Huetlatoani! (AAR: 1st full CK2 playthrough went completely off-rails)

[Sunshine Moon]

(Preface: The tone of this is fairly informal; I may do a more heavily narrative AAR in future, but this 'incredulous' first-person tone seemed to fit what went on here.)


So. Uh.


This was to be my first "full" 1066-1453 playthrough of my new favourite game. Prior to this I'd played only one real game, the King of Leon 'tutorial', and had got about 100 years in before getting distracted, and a multiplayer game as William of Normandy that lasted all of one session. This was to be the real one. The one I followed through on. The one where I really buckled down and learned the intricacies of all the mechanics.


By about halfway through, my friends who play and have played for years were marvelling in terror at the ludicrousness I was concocting. I rushed to this forum to create an account for the specific purpose of telling you all this tale.


The set-up, all with no real reason other than I felt like it:


-Ironman mode


-Supernatural & ludicrous events on


-Full gender equality on


-Mongols & plagues set to random


-At first the only DLC enabled was Way of Life, but as you may have guessed from the title, I would add more as I went. Somehow, this didn’t completely break the game!


-There will be screenshots, but I only started taking them about 100 years in (which is where the second post will begin), so for this first post it’ll just be retroactive screenshots of my past rulers, and one demonstrative mockup


-I switch between tenses a lot when I get excited. Sorry about it

Table of Contents

Part 1: Holy Roman Empire (this post)

Chapter 0: The Fuck Am I Doing?

Chapter 1: In Which I Decide What The Fuck I Am Doing

Chapter 2: Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, and Duchess Matilda of Tuscany

Part 2: Byzantine Empire (page 1)

Chapter 3: The Byzantine Shuffle

Chapter 4: The Cult Sensation Sweeping the Nation

Chapter 5: Stop Hitting Yourself

Chapter 6: Operation Whatever

Part 3: Empire of Greece

Chapter 7: All Hail Theodora

Chapter 8: Infinite Pope Wars

Chapter 9: The Republic of Nowhere

Chapter 10: Ocean's 180,000

Part 4: Aztec Empire

Chapter 11: Romance of the Four Empires

Chapter 12: The Pope Strikes Back

Chapter 13: Crusaded Queens 2

Part 5: Greece the Unstoppable (page 2)

Chapter 14: Queen Takes Duke

Chapter 15: My God Can Beat Up Your God

Chapter 16: Get Schooled

Part 6: Grand Finale

Chapter 17: The Final Boss of Europe

Chapter 18: Greece Forever




Part 1: Holy Roman Empire


Chapter 0: The Fuck Am I Doing?


I initially chose the 1066 Holy Roman Emperor start with the general goal of “messing up Europe as much as possible”. Easy mode, right? Don’t worry, I found a way to screw it up very quickly.


The first order of business, aside from generally getting more of a feel for the game than on my previous playthroughs, was a complete whim that would determine the course of most of the game: “Hey, I’m the Holy Roman Empire. I have the top half of italy, why not grab Rome too?” All I had to do was create a sub-kingdom to give me a de jure claim, and the war itself to kick the Pope out was easy. No problem at all!


Except that I immediately got excommunicated. So I set up an antipope. Who almost immediately died. And I got excommunicated again (I later found out that the historical Kaiser Heinrich Salian was excommunicated five times by three different Popes, so I was only following in his footsteps). It was already a running joke among my friendgroup that me playing CK2 inevitably devolved into finding new and entertaining ways to make enemies of all of Christendom, so I was off to a fine start.


And then it was time to grapple with a new concept to me, having previously only encountered gavelkind and primogeniture: ~elective feudalism~.


It turned out I was not very good at elective feudalism and my personal heir did not become the next Holy Roman Emperor, and the guy I spent years trying to assassinate so he wouldn’t become the next Holy Roman Emperor, became the next Holy Roman Emperor.


Good start.

I'll post these as we get to the end of each ruler's life, as that's the version of them these images represent. Just, uh...ignore those round shields and anything else that might indicate stuff about the current state of my realm. We’ll get to that.


Chapter 1: In Which I Decide What The Fuck I Am Doing


So, now I was playing as the son of Kaiser Heinrich 'the Hunter': King Heinrich II of that one kingdom I created, Romagna--I only made it to swipe Rome, but having it ended up saving me from...well, I don’t remember the details, but either an early game-over or spending the game as a duke up in Germany.


This downgrade really lit a fire under me, though. What did I want to do? Well...I had Rome, didn’t I? Wasn’t there that one expansion? So, I installed Legacy of Rome (and Sunset Invasion, just for the hell of it) and laid out a very long-term plan for becoming Emperor of a new Rome.


The in-character way I thought about it was as a ‘dream’ passed down through the generations of Salians. Kaiser Heinrich only had the vague shape of it, the desire for the county as a crown jewel in his empire. It took a learned man to formulate a real plan, to give words to the dream. A man like King Heinrich II 'the Strange', builder of observatories, reader of the Necronomicon and sporter of a wicked moustache.


So as him, I start laying the foundations, moving the capital of the kingdom to Rome after building a castle there to make the capital holding so I can have it without penalties.


And that’s right about when everything caught fire, thanks to…


Chapter 2: Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, and Duchess Matilda of Tuscany


Hoo boy, the trouble this family line caused me. Undoubtedly my Salians’ greatest rivals.


Duchess Matilda of Tuscany started as easily the most powerful vassal of Heinrich ‘the Hunter’, someone I just sort of waved jovially at as she made conquests of her own and did my best to keep moderately happy.


Then I became merely the King of Romagna and she became my neighbour, and much more powerful than me. And immediately started plotting to fabricate a claim on my kingdom. Scary!


The historical Matilda of Tuscany was indeed powerful but left everything to an incompetent son who lost it all. Not so this one! She was succeeded by the equally-menacing Matilda II, who also immediately started trying to fabricate a claim on my kingdom. I start plotting to assassinate her, but before either of these things can happen, well...a lot of other things happen.


All through the rule of Heinrich ‘the Strange’ I’d been clinging to my kingdom for dear life against huge factions, two revolts in rapid succession, and raiders from every corner of the Mediterranean, but finally getting a few years to stargaze in peace filled me with undue confidence and almost destroyed everything. My thought process: OK, if I want to become the Roman Emperor, first I need to be the Byzantine Emperor.


This presents a minor problem:

I come up with three plans for dealing with this:


-Become Holy Roman Emperor again, attack Byzantium directly

-Declare independence from HRE, somehow win, swear allegiance to BE, work up from inside

-Marry an heir into being landed in the BE and leave everything to them, then work up


Feel free to tell my there’s an obvious solution to pick, I’m new and was even more new at the time. At first I figured that last one seemed easiest, but then I noticed! A faction for Independence within the HRE, and gaining a lot of steam! Almost as many troops as the Emperor! So I figured plan 2 it is and joined up, increasing their power even more!


As you can tell from my naively optimistic tone things were about to stop working out so neatly!


It occurs to me: To swear fealty you need to be a neighbour, so I should find some small realm in southern Italy that has a county next to one of the BE's borders. So I do, and pretty confident I can take it, fabricate a claim and declare war! Yay!


AND HERE IS A LIST OF THINGS THAT HAPPENED IMMEDIATELY AND ALSO JUST ABOUT SIMULTANEOUSLY:


-Heinrich II died, leaving me as the fairly middling King Hermann, whose reign can be characterised as "fuck's sake"

-I discover that my target is also fighting some powerful Doge, making us hostile to each other, and my army runs smack into that guy’s and gets demolished

-Disease sweeps the land (see: my king died)

-And the icing on cake, the leader of the independence faction decides now, now is the moment! So now I'm at war with the new Holy Roman Empress and my army is currently getting ground to paste by some guy I've never heard of and also the plague! So that's good!


That faction leader, by the way? Duchess Matilda II of Tuscany, of course. Yes, she’s still plotting to steal my kingdom. Yes, I’m still plotting to kill her. This game rules.

I’ll open something that isn’t a kill-list when I get to rulers who actually had bloodlines and stuff.


I decide that since most of the HRE is north of me I can focus on trying to scrape a victory on the little county I've got my eyes on and leave the revolt to take care of itself...which ends up resolving inconclusively and I'm back to being an Imperial vassal. Perfect. Well, at least I can get back to my personal conquest in hope that I become independent later, that should go fine--aaaand my kingdom revolts because I've had my armies raised for so long.


I'm not going to relate to you a blow-by-blow of the...at least two hours I spent in cold determination, manoeuvring troops around Italy, half my kingdom sieged, random overseas raiders popping up, my remaining vassals furious, my coffers emptying from paying mercenaries…suffice to say that if I didn't love this game to pieces, there are about three separate points I would have given up, but I went into the next room and had a good think and came back, and I pulled things together piece by burning piece. (Right in the middle of it all some guy wanted my one remaining bit of German territory and declared war for it as well! I just let him have it)


Both wars won. Huge numeric disadvantages overcome. I had gold. My vassals were happy. I got that county I wanted. I felt like I deserved a medal for that one. Even better, Matilda II dies and is thus no longer a threat…


...now meet her daughter, Matilda III. This initially seems to be an excellent change though, for a few reasons: this one isn't trying to claim my kingdom; due to some costly wars and titles slipping via succession, she has less troops than me; and also she has no children, and her heir is one of my vassal duchesses! Which means when she dies, all her territory will pass into my realm! I’ll have a very powerful vassal, but I can deal with it, it’s fine.


So that's a fantastic state of affairs! Do you think it lasted? Do you? King Hermann was nothing if not dogged and resilient, but he sure had to be...see, apparently she won some wars or inherited some stuff while I was tending to my own affairs, because suddenly I get the alert: She's only gone and created the Kingdom of Italy and become a Queen.


That list of good things a couple paragraphs back? It is now a list of bad things! Let's examine:


-Now she has more troops and power than me again, so. Cool.

-Some of my counties are, de jure, part of said Kingdom, so she totally has justification to attack me even without fabricating a claim

-And if she dies and my duchess inherits her kingdom, she'll become independent and take like a third of my kingdom with her!


But now my counterattack begins: Aggressively doing nothing.


I notice she's pregnant, and if she has a kid it'll take priority in inheritance and my vassal won't get her shit when she dies. And I notice something else: Unlike my (vastly superior) feudal elective Kingdom of Romagna, her Kingdom of Italy is gavelkind. So if I give her as few problems as possible for a while and let her hopefully have at least one more child now the first has been born, if something were to happen to her then…


That never ends up working out, cause dicerolls are like that, so I just get on with making like a Greek city-state and swallowing as much of the Mediterranean as possible to make my next push for independence easier. I end up going through a couple rulers quite quickly during this little series of wars. I had a pretty sweet heir, Winfrida, lined up, so I took advantage of Hermann gaining the Depressed trait to have him remove himself from the picture. It didn’t seem in-character for him to take his own life for real, though--I got the impression of someone pragmatic and quietly stubborn, so in my mind he faked it and quietly slipped out to live the rest of his life in the wilderness, passing on power for the good of the realm, and the dream. Maybe Winfrida caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the crowd at the coronation.

A hard, dour man, but what a fantastic beard.


Not that she lasted long--she was doing very well until five years in she was slain in battle. It happens. I had the opportunity to have her be captured instead, but that would have resulted in losing a defensive war and seriously hurting the realm, so she became the second ruler in a row to make a sacrifice for the greater good, so death before surrender it was.

My intended heir during Winfrida’s reign had been Karlotte, a minor noble of the dynasty who’d been spending her time throwing parties and seducing every woman in Romagna, which is all totally rad but she’d racked up some opinion penalties in the process, so with the “surrender or die in battle” decision staring me in the face, I quickly opened the laws tab and nominated a promising lad with high Martial called Christopher instead.


All the heir nomination I'd been doing did cause the number of duchies and hence electors to creep up over time, so while I used to be able to choose whoever I wanted, by the time of Christopher’s reign I was pretty firmly locked into Karlotte, which was more or less fine but I figured she was older than him so alas, the throne previously promised to her might pass her by...but no! He died in his 40s, she ascended the throne already getting fairly old, and proceeded to live a good long time yet.

I did some more county-swiping from smaller realms, assassinating spouses to break up alliances, all that good stuff, the Mongols arrive in the mid-1100s and scare the shit out of me with their army size, but they manage to burn out and settle at a relatively stable size just before reaching the middle east.


But the act that would be the true legacy of Queen Karlotte 'the Merry', party lesbian grandma queen of the Mediterranean, was yet to come!


-


So, that’s the first part, covering my time in the Holy Roman Empire. Oh, and don't worry, it gets wilder with time--and we haven't heard the last of, as she was now known, Queen Matilda of Italy, either.

 

[Idhrendur]

That's quite the start.

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Thanks! I'm mostly itching to tell the recent stuff when I really did some weird things to the world map, but I want to get it out properly in full (whether or not it gets much attention, tbh--I'd like to have it in one place I can refer back to)

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Part 2: Byzantine Empire


Chapter 3: The Byzantine Shuffle

This time, it was for real. This time I led the independence faction, and only declared the war when I was good and ready. And we won! Together with Queen Matilda once again, and some random Count who jump on-board at the last second, we fought the Emperor and this time, we won! I carefully kept most of my troops in the north of Italy, forcing him to come to me onto favourable terrain, and before long he accepted our demands.

So, hooray! Romagna is now a strong, independent kingdom who don't need no empire--jk time to hand the Byzantines the keys to most of Italy.

So I immediately swear fealty to the current Basileus, who's presumably more than a little surprised but happy to take the new land and power. (Matilda's Italy, meanwhile, remains independent to this day, her descendants ruling it quite capably and remaining competent rivals even once I've grown much larger than them)

I would spent a lot of this playthrough as a Byzantine vassal King/Queen of Romagna, or Ravenna as it decided to be called when I converted to Greek culture to become more eligible for the Imperial throne. Because getting elected Emperor/Empress was my goal for quite a long time, but it turns out even though I'd now got feudal elective pretty much on lock, the special HRE/Byzantine versions were still pretty challenging to me. I never quite got elected, even despite two rulers in a row being the first or second in line for years at a time...I guess I can put part of it down to luck, even if I'm sure a more experienced player could have managed it. But my failure here eventually gave rise to something more fun, so I'm ultimately cool with it.

And that was more or less the reign of Queen Karlotte 'the Merry'! She left the realm in a pretty nice and stable place. Honestly, half the time it's the rulers who aren't particularly outstanding stat-wise who I get attached to, and get a bit more roleplayish about. Like, playing a gay character with the seduction focus is gonna have limited use since your list of possible targets is pretty small and you can't get kids out of it, but based on what she'd got up to before I took over playing her, when I noticed the reigning Basilissa swung that way too, I couldn't not switch to seduction and have Karlotte try and win her over, y'know?

And that led right to another ruler with a very eventful life...

Chapter 4: The Cult Sensation Sweeping the Nation

The next expansion to get Frankenstein'd into this game midway through: Holy Fury!

Because while Karlotte's heir, despite certain unfortunate allegations, was quite the machine of violence--check that personal combat skill!--and came the closest I ever got to becoming Basilissa (although being eligible for the throne is dangerous--it turns out when you're a commander they expect you to lead armies!)...

...there was something missing.

And that something was blasphemy!

Some of these screenshots circle blindingly obvious things, because I took them to illustrate what I was doing to friends who don't play the game.

I'd actually previously done a tiny bit of the secret religion thing as Karlotte, discovering it was overall cheaper to fake-convert to Orthodox and then renounce my secret Catholicism than to completely convert in the first place, that midpoint producing the amusing declaration "I may be singing the praises of Jesus, but in my heart I truly worship...Jesus!", but this was the real deal. Delve into classics, find Jupiter, found a cult and get all the cool kids involved!

Well, that was the plan. It was a little difficult in practice. See, my experience with cults in my previous playthrough had been Catharism, which as a Christian heresy, can recruit people simply by conversion and then recruitment. But Hellenism is Pagan, a totally different religious group, so first I had to evoke sympathy for pagans! And you can fail at any stage of this! I managed enough, though, and was making slow progress in expanding the Hellenes. It did at least help me not care what branch of Christianity everyone was, as I'd turned Italy into a melting pot of German, Italian, Greek, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and every heresy of those two things under the sun, even before I got everyone worshipping Diana in secret.

And while I'm on religion...

Genghis Khan found Buddhism, I guess! Good for him!

Chapter 5: Stop Hitting Yourself

When Emma died...well, you might notice something.

The Church labelling her "the Unfaithful" in life and then beatifying her in death is kinda mixed messages, gotta say. Good thing they didn't know she was a secret pagan...

Anyway, this led to the rule of King Christopher II! Or rather Christophoros II, as he started calling himself when he became Greek. And the cult spread pretty damn far during his reign!

But most of what happened under his reign was just...dumb shit. So that's what this chapter is about: me tripping over myself trying to be clever.

-Started a war to claim an independent count's territory. Fought a mighty battle and defeated his main army. Gloriously slew his best commander. Wait, hold on. He was his own best commander. Control of the county passed to his heir. My claim is no longer valid. The war immediately ends inconclusively. Nice.

-Later, trying to fabricate a claim on a different county. Completely forgot I was doing this, notice the owner is married to my daughter. Hey, nice, we can form an alliance, let's do it! Then I frantically remembered I wanted his shit and started plotting to murder him so I can break the alliance...and my daughter who I married to him joins the plot???

-For some reason the emperor made me/Christophoros a commander? Why? I'm an Indulgent Wastrel with 8 martial! Regardless, this actually gets me close to being elected a couple times, but every time, the empire would immediately collapse into three civil wars at once and prop up a new emperor and I'd lose my shot, which as far as I can tell is just how the Byzantines roll. Revolts every five minutes around here.

-One of my vassals tried to claim a duchy in Italy, but I didn't want her (then her son, who inherited the war) getting too powerful, so I kept subtly tripping them up until they lost. Everything from sending the King of Italy money to keep paying his mercenaries, to "Oh no, we're getting raided? And in your county? Oh nooo...how terrible...someone should really do something about that."

I did discover that you can give a mayor a county and then a duchy and create a vassal merchant republic though! Which I just wanted to do because it's cool to scroll down my vassal list and see Dukes and Doges and Prince-Bishops all alongside each other, but also to get lots and lots of money.

And that's pretty much the reign of King Christophoros II.

Nice enough guy, but absolutely nothing on his successor...

Chapter 6: Operation Whatever

It was at this point that I became the greatest ruler this line has ever seen: Theodora.

I actually managed to do marriages and inheritance right for once and produced someone awesome!

It was supposed to be her mother Eusebia, but she kept making rivals and duelling them until she died of injuries, and to be honest I'm sort of glad she did, because then we got this demigod.

And this is also when I made a very important decision: "Ugh. Fuck it. Whatever."

To be more specific, I was fed up trying to get elected and decided to install one more expansion, Charlemagne, and just do my own thing, and screw the Byzantines. Some interesting times were ahead first, though.

Tried to get some bears in my court. Didn't work. Press F and all that.

And then the HRE, who I was allied with, attacked the Byzantines...for one of my counties! Because of the alliance, I couldn't join the war and fight them properly! But my armies were still hostile to theirs, so I could still fend them off and stop them increasing their warscore, while I plotted to murder their claimant and eventually managed to do so and make their claim disappear, ending the war. Things were getting weird elsewhere in the map, too--England was now known as Lloegyr, and remains so, due to its Welsh rulers, and Ireland now contains the "Petty Kingdom of Aragon", which has no land in Spain...

But as the second half of the 1200s rolled along, it was time to begin. I started pressing claims left and right within the Byzantine Empire, taking advantage of the lowered crown authority from civil wars to swipe duchy after duchy, and to my surprise, the Empress helped! She kept seeing me end up with part of a de jure duchy, and going, oh, that's an uneven border--but Theodora, you're wonderful, I'm sure I can trust you with more! And just kept transferring more and more vassals to me! It became a bewildering spiral of power as those vassal transfers gave me more claims to press, and I ended up with half the empire! I can only think the Emperors had gotten complacent with Ravenna--its rulers hadn't nominated themselves for Emperor for a long time now, and it had long been the most powerful supporter in keeping the Empire together, a vast reserve of power mostly keeping to itself. But you gotta watch your vassals, man.

This character eventually got amazing enough I even founded a legendary bloodline, and she became known as Queen Theodora 'the Benevolent'. But I was at a crossroads, between "Theodora has 8000 prestige, and if I was independent I could create a custom empire, but if I want to do that I should do it soon, as she's getting quite old now, and who knows when I'll next have enough prestige?", and "but I still have so many claims on other parts of the Byzantine Empire, and it's so much easier to take it while part of the Empire..."

Eventually I hit the point where I once again said, "Whatever". I don't care, I want independence, I want my empire, I want...

This.

Given how many times over I was more powerful than the Basileus, I'm really surprised he didn't just accede to my demand, but as it was, the civil war consisted mostly of just sitting on Constantinople until it burned down. You'll notice there's a Great Work there--I'd conquered Venice recently, so its Great Garden transferred ownership to me. What a prestigious, awesome person all around this was. And she wasn't even done yet.

And that concludes the second part! The third one will, like these first two, probably be quite quick to write up, and then it could be a little while before I finish the story after that as I actually have to play through the last ~150 years of the game.

 

[stnylan]

All in all sounds like fun

 

[Sunshine Moon]

It has been! But especially this part here.


Part 3: Empire of Greece

Chapter 7: All Hail Theodora

Yes, Empress Theodora wasn't done carving her name into the history books just yet. In addition to founding an empire and a bloodline, it was time to reveal the Hellenic faith to the world.

...right after we claimed the last holy site. I'd made sure to get ahold of the other four with internal conquests while still part of the Byzantine Empire, but the fifth is Alexandria, which the Fatimids held. And the Fatimids had been getting crazy powerful. Under the Sayyid Shia Caliph Biktor, they'd spread to most of north Africa and the entire Middle East, leaving only Iberia for the Sunnis (who had managed to mostly kick the Catholics out, to be fair to them) and founding the Empire of Arabia.

But hey, we're still pretending to be Christians so let's just holy-war them for Alexandria and invite the Holy Roman Emperor! This...actually worked pretty well. A pretty nasty civil war happened to spring up among the Fatimids and most of their armies were occupied, so it was really the supply limit that was my greatest enemy. But we won! And that meant, time to come out into the open, and furthermore...

I tell you, you gotta do some kind of pagan playthrough sometime so you can reform it. So much fun.

This was just the 'default' doctrines when I first opened the screen, though; the ones I went with were:

1. Unyielding: I figured that I'd be up to my neck in defensive wars as Christendom flips out pretty soon, so a defensive bonus both in terms of military and conversion seemed useful to hold on to what I'd created. Didn't realise this meant only Zealous AI rulers convert provinces though! Oops.

2. Stability: Again, to try and shore up my grip on all this new power and territory.

3. Enatic Clans: Theodora's legendary bloodline is only passed on matrilineally, so I figured with enatic open succession, I'd be able to make sure I kept the bonus without too much trouble. The consorts thing would be neat but I think Hellenic disallows all form of concubines/consorts. (I still seem to be able to put men on the council, though, which while it conflicts with the doctrine's description is useful for keeping the talent pool large)

4. Autonomous: No special reason (almost went for Temporal, and to be honest they all seem interesting enough to try out), I just liked the idea of everybody getting a little bonus to choose from, and some bonus Learning besides. See, we're more civilised than you.

Speaking of said word, I must have overlooked the unique Civilised doctrine Hellenics can choose, which would be really good considering how many vassals I now have, but there'll be more playthroughs. Feel free to tell me I made bad choices, I'm not trying to play optimally, just have fun (but will still listen & take note for next time).

But anyway; I got to work, converting counties, demanding conversion from my subjects, revoking titles from those who refused and repeating this process from duchy down to barony level, rebuilding the wonkier parts of my realm structure from the ground up with loyal Hellenic women holding the land (giving precedence to the Zealous ones who'll convert counties for me). This process would continue for a long time, as there of course remained a strong Orthodox presence in the empire, and still does. It's a work in progress. it's only very occasionally someone revolts against my attempted revocation, but I'm doing my best to make sure no single vassal gets powerful enough that if they revolted it's a problem--honestly, it's usually fine because it makes it easier to revoke everything and gives me a "crushed rebels" opinion bonus.

But yeah! It's nice, you know, being able to completely change the kind of things you see in the game interface.

A far cry from the usual bishops.

So yeah.

I think this is going well.

At this point I just had to further commemorate this ruler, so!

Time to build my own great work, that I didn't steal by conquering someone else!

But everything wouldn't be sunshine and roses forever...

Chapter 8: Infinite Pope Wars

Try to imagine the Pope, sitting in his chambers in Orbetello (the Salians kicked the Papacy out of Rome almost two hundred years ago now), minding his business, watching the birds fly through the pleasant Italian morning sky outside. A knock at the door. A terrified-looking messager. "What troubles you?"

Now see his face growing paler and paler as the message is relayed.

"...the empire of what?"

So it wasn't too surprising that before long I found myself on the receiving end of a Papal War to try and oust me from Rome (it'll be a good while before they can do another Crusade). Several Catholic realms jumped on-board, but most notably the powerful Holy Roman Empire and the wealthy Most Serene Republic of Pisa. And oh man, that one was tough. I fought them off, though, receiving heaps of gold, prestige, piety and moral authority, congratulating myself on a job well-done and looking forward to that 10-year truce, during which I could rebuild my forces and continue to consolidate my power.

And then they did it again like under a year later.

So...it turns out that since the truce applies to the main combatant, in this case the HRE, but the guy who declares the war is the Pope, nobody is bound by said truce. I don't know if this is intentional or a bug, but I suspect the latter, since papal wars are quite a new feature.

And halfway through winning this one, Theodora the Benevolent sadly breathed her last.

What a life.

So now I'm her daughter, Basilissa Theodora II, my current ruler to date. She's not nearly as spectacular, and I have to downsize my demesne significantly.

So I win another papal war, and though I get rewarded for it again, I can see how it's wearing down my troops. I can't do this indefinitely, and some things really need peacetime to be done.

Sooooo I go into the game's cassus belli file and remove papal wars entirely (I actually cut and paste it into a separate file so I can put it back if I've broken something I didn't intend to). The game detects that I've modified it and tells me I'm not playing Ironman mode anymore, which is fair enough, but now the save file title, "ironman_holy roman empire", is really a testament to how far off-track this thing has gotten.

This seems to work--next time the Pope tries to declare a war for Latium, no war happens. All good! You can just do regular holy wars at me like everyone else, mate. (I'm sure the next update will put papal wars back in my data file, but hopefully the bug if it is one will be fixed by then and the truce will work properly)

So that's good, but what's the second Theodora to do with her 'hard-earned' peacetime? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Chapter 9: The Republic of Nowhere

The current balance of power is a pretty precarious one between four empires of different faiths: My Hellenic Greece in the centre, the Catholic HRE to the west, the Orthodox Byzantines to the east, and the Shia Fatimids to the south. My thinking is this: Eventually I'm gonna be really seriously taking one or all of them on. So to prevent a bunch of little realms jumping into Holy Wars to help them, I should spend this more chill time period swallowing up little independent realms of their faith nearby both of us. I start with Italy, which has a lot of small Catholic and Orthodox realms dotted throughout and nearby.

One of these was the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Which is entirely located in Croatia. Because I conquered the county of Venice, and re-created its duchy, and used that to create my own Republic of Venice on the island itself, but the prior Venetian ruler I kicked out of it also owned two Croatian provinces, and it's not possible to usurp a merchant republic's primary title. So now there's a Republic of Venice, in Venice, and a Most Serene Republic of Venice, in Croatia. That won't do, I decide, and conquer both of their remaining counties, obliterating that kingdom-level title from existence. Aaaand I can't recreate it because wrong government type. So I'll just leave it up to my vassal Republic of Venice to maybe one day get prestigious and wealthy enough to create the kingdom title. I'm an Empress so they'd still be my vassal, it'd just mean more prestige for the both of us.

Another of these little places was Pisa, another single-county Most Serene Republic. I conquered them too, but their main title wasn't destroyed! Because they still held several individual cities scattered all the way from Spain to Greece! So now they hold no counties and are completely invisible on the main map, but still exist as a faction and love joining defensive pacts against me. Spooky. I might do a "holding" war someday to kick them out of my territory, or embargo to free up more ports for my own republics' trade posts, but I've got bigger things to worry about honestly.

A satisfying reminder of how much better at this game I've grown was when one of these independent Italian realms, a duke in the south, ended up with one county and two vassal counts while I held the other two counties in his de jure duchy. So I reasoned, if I usurp this duchy, he'll become a count, right? And he can't then have counts as vassals, right? Correct! Usurping it split his realm into three individual independent counties, all laughably easy to conquer.

I've been using pagan conquest to do so, by the way; it's perfect for these small wars. Unlike holy wars, it doesn't get other rulers of the faith jumping in to help, which is of course what I'm picking these small fry off to prevent when I move on the big boys later. And unlike claims, since they're not of my religion, I get all the holdings, so I can raise up new Hellenic vassals to govern the place and get ~3 dicerolls at getting a Zealous one each time, and not have to faff around converting everyone or revoking their stuff. Plus, it boosts moral authority a little bit, which helps offset my vassals trying to do holy wars and getting their asses kicked all the time.

So that's going well, but then, a far grander plan occurs to me...

Chapter 10: Ocean's 180,000

So the Aztecs arrived a while back, but here we do see the one consequence of loading in a bunch of expansions mid-game...they didn't attack anybody or claim any land. They've just been sitting there on the French coast with 180,000 event troops, chilling out peacefully, since they arrived. Disappointing, but it gives me a thought:

Surely there's some way I can make use of this.

And I'm pagan now, so they'll actually talk to me. A little. And since they're not landed, they'll probably be a bit more receptive than usual to invites, marriage invitations, that sort of thing...

Oh, hello. If I send him a gift first, the heir to the Aztec Empire (titular, but comes with all their gold and troops) will come to my court.

And now he has a big opinion bonus towards me, he'll convert to Hellenic. And since I chose Enatic Clans, if he were ever to become Aztec Emperor, would it not switch from Agnatic to Enatic?

If, for instance, I...

murdered my husband,

married this Aztec prince,

murdered his brother the emperor,

and if we had a daughter...

Oh yes.

Now we're rolling.

Greatest heist in history.

With one small problem.

THE GOD DAMN BLACK DEATH.

I spend several months frantically sending councillors to safe places, putting myself at the head of armies and marching them to safety, making my daughter's tutor a councillor so he can be sent to take her somewhere disease-free...but it gets my Aztec husband. He dies, age 35, of the plague.

And my daughter inherits the Aztec Empire.

And I already gave her a duchy so she could start earning prestige before I became her. But now she's an Empress, so she can't be my vassal anymore.

SO. UM.

There's the Aztec Empire.

In Sardinia.

Worshipping Jupiter.

So that's where I'm at now.

It should be fine, as I'm still lined up to play as Kyra next, but I don't want to try and get Theodora II killed at least until Kyra grows up and I can see if her education trait came out okay, and that's seven years in which I have no idea what this nine-year-old is going to do with the largest army in the world.

 

[youstas]

Subbed!

 

[stnylan]

Certainly not going to say you made bad choices. Nothign says you have to choose the "unique" option for each pagan faith. I am really intrigued you went Enatic - I think that is probably the best difference, because it is so tied into the reality of your game. Without Theodora perhaps you would have chosen "Civilised", perhaps not, but as it is this makes a much more interesting faith.

 

[Olenksey]

A nine-year-oldbHellenic with the biggest army in the world?
I smell lots of fun.

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Thanks, all! I'm currently in the mid-1310s and will collate a proper update when another 'era' seems to have come to an end.

Certainly not going to say you made bad choices. Nothign says you have to choose the "unique" option for each pagan faith. I am really intrigued you went Enatic - I think that is probably the best difference, because it is so tied into the reality of your game. Without Theodora perhaps you would have chosen "Civilised", perhaps not, but as it is this makes a much more interesting faith.

That's a very good point! Rulers like that leave a mark on their realm for generations to come.

-

For reference, this is what I mean by the delicate balance between the four empires that comprise me and my immediate neighbours:

The Fatimid name isn't writ as large as usual due to the civil war they're undergoing (and the fact I scooped a chunk out of the exact centre of their territory), but you can see how much territory they hold.

For the record, the Timurids, which you can see on the right there, didn't get too far in their initial conquest event, but seem to be being lead by a child of destiny type character with a million special bonuses, so they could do quite well quite soon.

 

[stnylan]

That is indeed a very delicate balance of power

 

[Alfred Packer]

Is 'delightful mayhem' a good way to describe this?

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Is 'delightful mayhem' a good way to describe this?

That'd be about it!

I'm currently trying to speed through the last century of the game before the update in a few days which I figure might mess up the save due to changes to stuff like technology. So the last part or two might be sooner than I anticipated. (I know vaguely there's a way to play earlier versions of the game, but it seems less hassle to just race the home stretch.)

 

[alscon]

Well that's a weird and wild ride so far... you've got my attention .

 

[Sunshine Moon]

All right, real life obligations came up (work mostly) so it looks like I'm not finishing before the update. Ah well, I'll just hope it doesn't break the save, and figure out how to roll back to the previous version if it does.

But in the meantime...as of the late 1360s, I think I've got enough material for:

Part 4: Aztec Empire

Chapter 11: Romance of the Four Empires

So as I mentioned up there, there's a bit of a standoff between me and my three emperor-tier neighbours, but all that would change when my big stupid plan paid off.

My heir, Empress of the Sardinian Aztecs, came of age, and hey! She's just as good as I was hoping! Well, time to dispose of Theodora II...

...this proved a little difficult. I switched to rulership focus, but couldn't get her stressed or depressed (of course, every other ruler who so much breathes in the direction of business focus picks up stressed...), and no matter how many battles I sent her to lead, she came out A-OK. My chance finally came when the merchant republic I'd set up in Ancona ages ago ended up with a Christian as its latest Doge. Excellent! No matter how woefully outnumbered, merchant republics will always refuse if you ask to revoke a title, and nobody will object if I try due to their infidel status. So I send a revoke-title request, they refuse and declare a revolt war, and I immediately surrender, which causes Theodora II to abdicate in favour of her daughter Kyra! Perfect!

So, that was the reign of Theodora II, not quite as magnificent as her mother but kept the fledgling empire stable in its early years and put the grand plan to assimilate the Aztecs into motion, even if it wasn't her name that would be remembered for it. She stayed alive as empress dowager quite a while into Kyra's reign too, being quite useful for educating children.

That skull, by the way, was gifted to me by Alf, possibly the best commander I've ever had. I liked Alf. He was a Norseman I invited to my court and generously agreed to convert to Hellenic. He was a lunatic, but that's fine, it didn't stop him leading armies very well--he won every battle I pointed him at as both Theodora's, and after slaying an enemy commander, presented me with his skull. It even lists the decapitated guy as the "original owner", which is cute.

The chronicle updated to show his post-death portrait, but in life he wore a big wolf-pelt hat as his commander helmet and everything. Cool guy.

But let's move on. Now I'm Kyra Salian, Empress of Greece, and Empress of the Aztecs.

With all the territory, wealth and manpower that implies. Marvellous. I quickly changed Greece to my primary title as it felt like it fit better with the character of this realm, but it was fun seeing this for a second:

And my event troops were still labelled "Aztec Army (Greek Company)" even after I changed back to being Greece, which is probably a glitch, but a welcome one honestly.

Oh yeah, and because I'm now Aztec Empress, I keep getting notifications like "Rome has fallen to the Aztec invaders!" "Now they're in Constantinople!", which is fun.

But all right! First order of business was, of course, to revoke Ancona for real this time. I sent, like, 15,000 Aztec troops to stand on each of their three counties before making the demand, and of course, they still refused, immediately activating three monstrously unfair sieges. I love how stubborn the AI can be. So all right, I get that revoked and hand it back out to newly-generated vassals, all nice and Hellenic and loyal.

Not relevant to the text around it, this law page is just so funny to me. How did we get here.

And now comes the main theme of Kyra's reign: Expansion, of course. I have an enormous army that requires no upkeep from anybody and very rarely suffers from attrition! When if not now? So I get into a cycle of attacking the Byzantines, the HRE, the Italians, and the couple smaller realms still hanging around Italy (and Constantinople, as mentioned--it's just such a nice county), a process which would continue until--I believe actually a ruler or so later--I finally managed to hold basically all of Italy. Spreading Hellenism is going well, too, and it's getting pretty decent-sized text when looking at my home area, though it's kind of hard to see under all my armies. It would take until about 1360 for it to become properly visible if you zoom all the way out, but something that is visible is...

...uh...you good there, Shia?

Anyway. Stages 2 and 3 of the statue of my now-grandmother is going well, so well I keep congratulating myself on doing it!

I'm told this is getting fixed in tomorrow's update. Fun while it lasted.

But hey, why am I called Kyra 'the Holy' there? Well...

Chapter 12: The Pope Strikes Back

One thing slowing my expansion was that the Pope still had one county I hadn't driven him out of waaaay back as my first character; and it was in one of my duchies, which gave me problems maximising my demesne's potential. He made me tread carefully around defensive pacts and generally expand slower than I otherwise would, what with his propensity to throw tens of thousands of mercenaries at problems and have his whole religion leap to his defence is you attacked him directly.

So, both because I wanted all of Italy and he was living in Orbtello, and because I've come to regard the Pope as my recurring nemesis in any game of CK2, I decided it was finally time to kick him out. Especially after that whole papal war business.

But before I could do so, I got a "crusade for Rome imminent" notification! Only one year away! Well, I still have most of my Aztec armies, let's just marshal them into position, and...nothing happened. They called it off. Somehow. Man, I know I'd been giving Catholicism's moral authority a battering, but I don't think it ever fell so low they couldn't call a Great Holy War. And they successfully did a crusade for Jerusalem like, two years later after a heretic king ended up ruling it, so I really have no idea why they decided to leave me alone there.

Well, regardless! I've had enough of this nonsense. A good old regular-sized Holy War will be just plenty to kick his Holiness out of Italy for good.

Please imagine the sound of the entirety of Europe rushing over the hill screaming, far too late to stop 84,000 guys jumping up and down on the Pope's single county, ending the war before any help could even arrive.

I actually made a copy of my save file (since it's not registering as Ironman anymore anyway, I figure what the hell, since this is out of genuine curiosity about game mechanics) in order to test if doing it via de jure claim would allow me to vassalise him. It did not! So I did it via holy war, for that sweet sweet moral authority. Shame, that would have been the funniest thing in the world.

He was unlanded for a while, but eventually someone took pity on him and gave him a bishopric in Germany, and another in Abbadid Spain somehow. Good for him.

So, time to turn back to internal matters. Since my previous playthrough ended up as a Cathar thing, and this one had equality turned on at the start, I so far haven't experienced that old CK2 lament, "enough daughters! Give me a son!"...aaaand now I'm suddenly experiencing it in reverse! Enough of these useless sons, give me a daughter who can inherit! Speaking of which, my daughter, Giacinta, is getting along well, except...hold on. A bastard child (luckily her husband's intrigue is low enough him being mad isn't super-worrying)? With who?

One Doge Alessio "the Lecher", eh? Well, that checks out, at lea--he has...great pox. Oh, she is not sleeping with that again if I have any say in the matter.

Giacinta, darling, I don't think you should be seeing that man anymore.

Just trust your mother, dear. He's bad news.

Speaking of Doges! I've seen some discussion around the forums as to how merchant republics interact with the enatic clans doctrine, and some suggestion that they're kind of not supposed to. And as far as playing as one goes, that may be so, but as far as having vassal merchant republics...

It turns out, it can work just fine!

I say "can"...it doesn't always. Let me clarify. When you create a new city vassal with an enatic religion, it always generates a woman. When you grant a coastal mayor a county and then a duchy, though, it generates Great Houses, and those seem pretty hardcoded to always generate men upon creation. And if a Great house dies out on succession and a new one is created, it will also generate male leaders. But those houses, due to the religion, will be locked to enatic-cognatic seniority. So if their members marry and have kids and last a while, as they are wont to do, then when the women come of age they'll jump to the head of the line of succession.

So basically, if there isn't too much political turmoil, within a generation or two it'll be a female-led republic for as long as that stability lasts, but if there's some chaos (like having to revoke the whole thing because a True Believer Christian got ahold of it and grant it to a new mayor), there's a not-insignificant chance you'll get men for a while. And, well...merchant republics do love them some chaos, is something I've learned.

The only real 'glitch' is the game doesn't have a term for a female Doge, so it just calls them Duchesses. They are definitely Doges in all but name, though, and just as liable to keep asking me to embargo people I have peace treaties with every five minutes.

But, hooray! The conquests are going well, Greece is getting pretty big on the map, and I even got a sweet name out of it:

Nice. (Ignore my huge demesne there, I'd just won a holy war with the Byzantines for the island of Sicily so I very briefly had every holding there before raising new vassals to distribute them to)

Except one of my vassal queens seems to have had the same idea.

Oh well, there's plenty of swords to go around. I made sure to dedicate a temple to Diana next in honour of receiving the name.

In time, Giacinta passed, leaving me as Kyra II, once again Greek in culture after a couple of Italian Empresses, and as her I got quite a nice event!

I didn't realise that could happen. That's really cool, and I appreciate it. (Of course, I took Just.)

I also got an event in which it gave me the option to end a difficult pregnancy by swallowing poison to abort it. I didn't want my character to die before her potential heirs came of age, so I did so, figuring a slight temporary drop in health and fertility, and the loss of another potential heir, was worth keeping her alive for a while...and was quite upset when it turned out there's also a chance word can get out that you've done this, resulting in huge opinion penalties from pretty much everyone. I'm absolutely not going to turn this into a bit on real-world politics, though perhaps the fact that it's been a hot-button issue lately contributed, as I'm aware that it's part of the tableau of medieval values the game presents (you can burn people at the stake for witchcraft to gain piety, after all...), but it did take a bit to unpack my instinctive emotional upset at this. Maybe because there was nothing in the initial decision to hint that this was a possibility, even as flavour text, and maybe because it clashed with the image of this specific empire I had. Ah well, more exciting things were about to happen.

Like another "crusade imminent" notification! Ah, well hey, they backed down before, I'm sure they'll back down again...right?

Chapter 13: Crusaded Queens 2

Well. Shit.

So, yeah, I'm now the direct target of a crusade which seems to be backed by every Catholic ruler in the world, and though I'm very large and powerful, I'm still the only Hellenic realm in the game, and my Aztec forces have been quite depleted by all my conquests.

Well. At least the "defending against infidels" opinion bonus gets everyone off my back for that other thing.

It takes everything I can muster to fight them off, and some consistently smart positioning besides. I'm extremely glad now that I set up the Myrmidons (the Hellenic holy order) as Theodora the Benevolent, as they come to my aid without me even asking, as do a lot of my vassals, which starts to make things doable (the Myrmidons in particular win a lot of battles for me). But any gain or loss in war score per battle is very small given the scale of things, and I can't really push out into enemy territory without overextending and leaving myself open. So, what to do.

Well, I don't actually have a plan, but I figure, I can at least give the Pope a big old fuck-you for pulling this (what do you mean, "I instigated all this"? Nonsense) So I quickly hire some African mercenaries and present them with my personal navy and, presumably giggling the whole time, order them to go sneak through Christendom and ransack the Pope's two remaining bishoprics. I just think it'd be fun.

I send two groups of soldiers, one to Germany and one to Spain. They're sneaking over mountains, fighting attrition, tiptoeing around retinues and floods of Christian reinforcements heading for Italy, which continues to be the main battleground (thank Minerva for that Unyielding defence bonus and all the county-converting I've been doing to make use of it). It's some real Odysseus shit. The one in Germany is, of course, part of the HRE, who have joined the war, so first I have to siege down a really tough castle, and before I can do that the stack gets its ass kicked by twelve thousand or so of the Kaiser's finest.

The Spanish one, though, is in Abbadid territory, and of course they're not part of the crusade, so I can go straight to sieging the Pope's bishopric, which is pathetic and falls instantly.

And the war score instantly jumps from 18% to 81%.

What.

...wait. The Pope is the primary attacker. And he only has two holdings in the world. And I just occupied one of them. Of course that's what happens. Gods, if I hadn't been so petty and vindictive I might have been stuck in a stalemate forever.

So I march 40,000 Greeks and Aztecs up to Germany immediately, and set fire to that province until I reach the remaining bishopric and tear it to the ground.

Kiss my pagan ass, your Holiness.

And that brings us up to now: 1368, under Basilissa Kyra II, earning the name 'the Glorious' for defeating the might of the entire Catholic world. Naturally, my moral authority is doing great, and theirs is in the dumps--though not as bad as Orthodoxy's, which is regularly hitting sub-20 levels, meanwhile its heresies are reaching the 40s. They're just lucky I don't have Sons of Abraham enabled, or it'd probably get supplanted by one of them and become a heresy itself.

I didn't think things would be so eventful, so hey, maybe there'll be more than five parts in the end. However many it takes to get to 1452.

 

[stnylan]

The Christians have many lessons yet to learn.

 

[Alfred Packer]

CK Crazyness is a real thing, but this AAR has pushed quite far beyond that. How delightful!

 

[alscon]

Well, the Aztecs have happily ravaged plenty of land in the name of their new empress.
I get a feeling that this isn't the last we've seen from the pope .

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Glad you're all enjoying! Yes indeed, I'm sure I haven't heard the last of them.

Realised I forgot something pretty funny from the start of the reign of Theodora II: When I became her, it turned out she was secretly Orthodox! As soon as I'd made Hellenism public and the state religion, the Christians had started counter-cult-ing me! So I had her join their society so I could keep track of their numbers and maybe deliberately fail a couple "so-and-so wants to leave the society" events to thin them out a bit...but immediately they went public, with like 10 members! (When I made the Hellenes public, we had about 100, plus a lot of prepared ground) So I very quickly had to go "secretly convert to Hellenic" from controlling a holy site then "openly adopt faith" in order to avoid the ire of all my vassals. Which must have been very confusing for the poor count of somewhere or other who was their oracle--he seemingly gets the empress' support and decides to go public, then she immediately turns around and converts right back to paganism and revokes all his titles!

In-character, I guess that makes it a successful infiltration? She tricked them into coming out into the open, where they could be dealt with. She always was a clever one.

 

[Specialist290]

I just read all this in one sitting, and all I have to say is: Glorious