GUIDE FOR BEGINNER
I’m not an expert so this guide is not a strategy guide. But when I bought the game I’ve look through this forum for guidance and while I’ve found a bit here, I had to search the net and read a lot in order to understand what I should do at the beginning. So this guide is there to guide you through the first hour of play cause for me it was very hard to know what to do first and get going. You will not understand this guide if you don’t read the manual. You need to know where the info is and this is well written in the manual. What the manual don’t do well is telling you how to do it and what repercussion it will have and this is why I’ve wrote this guide. I repeat this is not a strategy guide.
Right at the start, you’re given a choice between playing a king, a duke or a count. Go head with the Duke because you’ll have some vassals (count don’t) and not too much (as Kings does) and you’ll have Demesnes at your disposal to grant titles.
The era you choose will determine how many advances already exist in the game. Some historical event will also happen in different time. Choose your province carefully knowing those events. For example, choosing a Spanish province in the first era, you might find yourself dealing with the invasion of the Muslim. Or if you choose a Sweden province in the second era you’ll have do deal with the Mongol. It also determines how much time you’ll be playing. If you choose the latest era, you’ll have less time to develop the history of your family before you reach the end date.
Try to choose a Duke that has very good skills, diplomacy and Stewardship being the two most important one for now. Martial should be over 6 also. Also try to choose a Duke that is not married (difficult) and is young as you’ll be able to choose your wife
THE COURT
The first thing to do, once you’re in the game, is to paused the game and go through all the courtiers you have. Now appoint all positions in your court to the best person possible (best Martial skills for Marshal, Best intrigue skill to spymaster, etc). Once this is done, go over your Vassals and check their loyalty. Hover the mouse over the loyalty statement (right under the skills) and check how his loyalty will be varying. There you can see what is influencing their loyalty, therefore knowing what to do to ensure a positive loyalty.
Once this is done, be sure to check your treasury and look at each slide to see how it will influence the loyalty of your subjects and be sure to make a little money. Recruiting of soldiers for different class depends on their taxation rates and the favor you’ll give them (in the province menu). I always favor the noble at the start to try and recruit more knights. But be careful as some province will not give you any knights.
Also check at what you could build in your provinces and do it right away.
Then check at the advances you want to research. For now you’ll have enough in your hand so don’t spend too much time there.
AN HEIR
Still with the game paused, you should now find a wife (if you don’t have one already). Try to find a YOUNG (below 27 and preferably bellow 20) wife with very good skills and very few bad traits. First go through all the kings in the Christian’s family and look at their daughters. Marrying king’s daughter will bring you prestige. If there is no daughter then look for king’s sister. If there are no royal wives available, try to find a rich father with a lot of prestige who could help you with the wedding duty and boost your prestige.
You need a son and because children are made out of skills and traits from both parents, needless to say that choosing a good wife with a lot of good skills is important and might take you a long time (I once went 30 minutes in finding one but god was I glad to see my first son having 3 tens and 2 nines in his skills.
Now you can get the game going at normal speed
BREATHING ROOM
While waiting for your first son to be born you can now check the province around you and try to identify anyone without liege and offer them vassalization. If they don’t want to join you, then you can think about grabbing their title, look at who are their allies. Look at his army and the armies of his allies and compare it to yours. If their allies are far away, you may choose to ignore them in the balance of power because it will take time for them to arrive. Once you will have grabbed their title, you'll be able to declare war on them. If you go through the process of declaring war without confirming it, you'll be able to check how many soldier he can get compare to you. This number is not necessarely what he will be able to gather cause his allies might be far away so check the relation map (the little flag left bottom of the screen). Click on the province you want to check and see which province is under his control (dark green), and from which province he might get help (Light Green) and who is their allies (blue). So if that he is alone and that the number of soldier he can gather from his provinces are fewer than yours, you might go head and declare war.
If you can mobilize the armies of the provinces directly under your control without having to mobilize your vassal’s army it’s better because mobilizing their army will render you unpopular. In any case, when you are ready to take a province, declare war on your objective and march on it.
From that point, take a good look at the armies around. Sometime you’ll see a big army coming your way. If it’s one of your allies it’s ok, but if you see that it’s one of your enemies’s allies and you know you will not win the fight, retreat and try to make peace. Be aware that declaring war on a liege with many allies is suicidal because the allies of his allies will also declare war against you. So try to target province with no allies.
The fight begins and then the siege follows. Surely the invaded province will offer you peace proposal. You might consider it if there is money attached to it but more time than not, they will offer their titles and the same amount of money they proposed earlier when you will have liberated their provinces.
One easier way of acquiring provinces is to march on the non-Christian province. But be careful not to target a lord with too many allies or province. Normally your liege will also declare war and help you on taking over you enemy. Once you’ll begin to take on provinces, be sure to check the maximum number provinces you can control directly (Hover the prestige indicator at the top) and grant titles to your most talented and loyal subject.
Don't do war too often and on a long period of time cause it cost money and it affects your reputation (which you can see in the status screen right under the stats of how many provinces you control)
AN HEIR PART II
Once your wife provides you with children, and that should happen in the next year or so otherwise you might consider changing your wife (assassinate her), you should ensure that the better child will inherit. Check the succession laws. It might be a little bit confusing but it’s not really. Basically you have succession law that give inheritance to the strongest vassals, which is not a good idea because if you die and the strongest vassal is not someone from your family it’s game over. You have laws that elect the older or strongest brother and from there you have laws that allow the sons of female to inherit or not. I’ve found that changing the law to ensure that the strongest child will inherit is the best choice because you can always give a title to the child you want to inherit and keep the others at the court for a while. That way it’s easy to choose which of your sons you will be playing when your actual liege will die.
PROTECT YOURSELF
Be sure to have a positive piety because excommunation is your worse enemy. So now you should have enough to play with. There is a lot more things to learn and by looking on fan sites you should be able to master Crusader kings.
Just another little thing. Write down the story of your dynasty (what people call After Action report (AAR)). It’s very fun to see the evolution, errors and events that happen throughout the history of your family.
I’m not an expert so this guide is not a strategy guide. But when I bought the game I’ve look through this forum for guidance and while I’ve found a bit here, I had to search the net and read a lot in order to understand what I should do at the beginning. So this guide is there to guide you through the first hour of play cause for me it was very hard to know what to do first and get going. You will not understand this guide if you don’t read the manual. You need to know where the info is and this is well written in the manual. What the manual don’t do well is telling you how to do it and what repercussion it will have and this is why I’ve wrote this guide. I repeat this is not a strategy guide.
Right at the start, you’re given a choice between playing a king, a duke or a count. Go head with the Duke because you’ll have some vassals (count don’t) and not too much (as Kings does) and you’ll have Demesnes at your disposal to grant titles.
The era you choose will determine how many advances already exist in the game. Some historical event will also happen in different time. Choose your province carefully knowing those events. For example, choosing a Spanish province in the first era, you might find yourself dealing with the invasion of the Muslim. Or if you choose a Sweden province in the second era you’ll have do deal with the Mongol. It also determines how much time you’ll be playing. If you choose the latest era, you’ll have less time to develop the history of your family before you reach the end date.
Try to choose a Duke that has very good skills, diplomacy and Stewardship being the two most important one for now. Martial should be over 6 also. Also try to choose a Duke that is not married (difficult) and is young as you’ll be able to choose your wife
THE COURT
The first thing to do, once you’re in the game, is to paused the game and go through all the courtiers you have. Now appoint all positions in your court to the best person possible (best Martial skills for Marshal, Best intrigue skill to spymaster, etc). Once this is done, go over your Vassals and check their loyalty. Hover the mouse over the loyalty statement (right under the skills) and check how his loyalty will be varying. There you can see what is influencing their loyalty, therefore knowing what to do to ensure a positive loyalty.
Once this is done, be sure to check your treasury and look at each slide to see how it will influence the loyalty of your subjects and be sure to make a little money. Recruiting of soldiers for different class depends on their taxation rates and the favor you’ll give them (in the province menu). I always favor the noble at the start to try and recruit more knights. But be careful as some province will not give you any knights.
Also check at what you could build in your provinces and do it right away.
Then check at the advances you want to research. For now you’ll have enough in your hand so don’t spend too much time there.
AN HEIR
Still with the game paused, you should now find a wife (if you don’t have one already). Try to find a YOUNG (below 27 and preferably bellow 20) wife with very good skills and very few bad traits. First go through all the kings in the Christian’s family and look at their daughters. Marrying king’s daughter will bring you prestige. If there is no daughter then look for king’s sister. If there are no royal wives available, try to find a rich father with a lot of prestige who could help you with the wedding duty and boost your prestige.
You need a son and because children are made out of skills and traits from both parents, needless to say that choosing a good wife with a lot of good skills is important and might take you a long time (I once went 30 minutes in finding one but god was I glad to see my first son having 3 tens and 2 nines in his skills.
Now you can get the game going at normal speed
BREATHING ROOM
While waiting for your first son to be born you can now check the province around you and try to identify anyone without liege and offer them vassalization. If they don’t want to join you, then you can think about grabbing their title, look at who are their allies. Look at his army and the armies of his allies and compare it to yours. If their allies are far away, you may choose to ignore them in the balance of power because it will take time for them to arrive. Once you will have grabbed their title, you'll be able to declare war on them. If you go through the process of declaring war without confirming it, you'll be able to check how many soldier he can get compare to you. This number is not necessarely what he will be able to gather cause his allies might be far away so check the relation map (the little flag left bottom of the screen). Click on the province you want to check and see which province is under his control (dark green), and from which province he might get help (Light Green) and who is their allies (blue). So if that he is alone and that the number of soldier he can gather from his provinces are fewer than yours, you might go head and declare war.
If you can mobilize the armies of the provinces directly under your control without having to mobilize your vassal’s army it’s better because mobilizing their army will render you unpopular. In any case, when you are ready to take a province, declare war on your objective and march on it.
From that point, take a good look at the armies around. Sometime you’ll see a big army coming your way. If it’s one of your allies it’s ok, but if you see that it’s one of your enemies’s allies and you know you will not win the fight, retreat and try to make peace. Be aware that declaring war on a liege with many allies is suicidal because the allies of his allies will also declare war against you. So try to target province with no allies.
The fight begins and then the siege follows. Surely the invaded province will offer you peace proposal. You might consider it if there is money attached to it but more time than not, they will offer their titles and the same amount of money they proposed earlier when you will have liberated their provinces.
One easier way of acquiring provinces is to march on the non-Christian province. But be careful not to target a lord with too many allies or province. Normally your liege will also declare war and help you on taking over you enemy. Once you’ll begin to take on provinces, be sure to check the maximum number provinces you can control directly (Hover the prestige indicator at the top) and grant titles to your most talented and loyal subject.
Don't do war too often and on a long period of time cause it cost money and it affects your reputation (which you can see in the status screen right under the stats of how many provinces you control)
AN HEIR PART II
Once your wife provides you with children, and that should happen in the next year or so otherwise you might consider changing your wife (assassinate her), you should ensure that the better child will inherit. Check the succession laws. It might be a little bit confusing but it’s not really. Basically you have succession law that give inheritance to the strongest vassals, which is not a good idea because if you die and the strongest vassal is not someone from your family it’s game over. You have laws that elect the older or strongest brother and from there you have laws that allow the sons of female to inherit or not. I’ve found that changing the law to ensure that the strongest child will inherit is the best choice because you can always give a title to the child you want to inherit and keep the others at the court for a while. That way it’s easy to choose which of your sons you will be playing when your actual liege will die.
PROTECT YOURSELF
Be sure to have a positive piety because excommunation is your worse enemy. So now you should have enough to play with. There is a lot more things to learn and by looking on fan sites you should be able to master Crusader kings.
Just another little thing. Write down the story of your dynasty (what people call After Action report (AAR)). It’s very fun to see the evolution, errors and events that happen throughout the history of your family.
