Post your CK2 empire!

[RenevB]

I ended the Monarch's Journey with something like this. Played a couple of years after this, but the general idea still stands. That is what you're supposed to do, right?

I haven't really spent a lot of time on the challenges, because (see an earlier post of mine) I wanted to properly finish a Charlemagne start date game.

There is one Monarch Journey challenge game where I have completed 2 out 3 challenges, the third has probably become impossible, but I have ended up in a very interesting situation. I may go on with that one, I may wait a couple of days and continue with CK 3 instead.

Perhaps my starting character isn't entirely obvious from that screenshot. (By the way I now remember I also have some counties in Sicily which aren't in the screenshot).

Spoiler

I started as Harald Hardrade. Pretty standard start with winning the war for England, but I was overconfident I could keep an elective and a primogeniture kingdom together. After one or two characters, I lost the election for Norway - and with it the event troops. The timing was such that the first crusade was about to start, so I went that way. Right after winning and taking over as the crusader queen in question, I pondered on my situation and thought "this is bad - I only own the de jure kingdom". Indeed, though I started a war for Tripoli, a Jihad was soon called and I managed to win the war before losing the jihad and ending up as a one county ruler. Expansion opportunities were pretty much limited to a couple of one county rulers in Sicily. The second crusade was redirected to Byzantium, which did give me the opportunity to grab a county or two extra in Sicily. Somewhere along the way I went native to Sicily, that is Greek-cultured.
Then it was back to "normal" expansion with the occasional holy war, war on revolts and regular CK2 taking whatever opportunity you can.

All in all, with some easy wars and some very intense moments, this turned out to be the most fun I had with this game in a while.

 

[ThePettyQueen]

100 years into the game,trying to decide between Slavic Union or Russia. On the one hand, I already have almost all of the SU; on the other hand, I'm Russian...

Also, Sapmi, Eire, and Burgundy have formed, while western and central Europe is one big mess. Lombardy is still Lombard. I can't see anything that would trigger early crusades - the Umayyads are south of the Pyrenees, Braunschweig has stayed Germanic, and while Svithjod holds Aquitaine, they've converted to Catholicism.

 

[Karlington]

100 years into the game,trying to decide between Slavic Union or Russia. On the one hand, I already have almost all of the SU; on the other hand, I'm Russian...

The Slavic Union and the Russian Empire are both rare in the game in that creating either one of them grants special game-technical benefits.

If you form the Slavic Union you will get a bloodline.

The holder of the Russian Empire has the ability to upgrade tribes to castles with only a tier 1 hillfort (instead of the usual tier 4 requirement). This is because its supposed to be a representation of the Russian tsardom come early and enable you to "colonize" eastward into Asia as the Russian Empire did.

I'd recommend deciding on which benefit is better for you and go for that one.

 

[DPS]

100 years into the game,trying to decide between Slavic Union or Russia. On the one hand, I already have almost all of the SU; on the other hand, I'm Russian...

View attachment 624653

Also, Sapmi, Eire, and Burgundy have formed, while western and central Europe is one big mess. Lombardy is still Lombard. I can't see anything that would trigger early crusades - the Umayyads are south of the Pyrenees, Braunschweig has stayed Germanic, and while Svithjod holds Aquitaine, they've converted to Catholicism.

Who did you start as?

 

[ThePettyQueen]

The Slavic Union and the Russian Empire are both rare in the game in that creating either one of them grants special game-technical benefits.

If you form the Slavic Union you will get a bloodline.

The holder of the Russian Empire has the ability to upgrade tribes to castles with only a tier 1 hillfort (instead of the usual tier 4 requirement). This is because its supposed to be a representation of the Russian tsardom come early and enable you to "colonize" eastward into Asia as the Russian Empire did.

I'd recommend deciding on which benefit is better for you and go for that one.

Whichever I do, I'll most likely do the other in a different play-through, so right now I'm thinking about who else I want to try playing as. Might be fun to form the SU as Polish or Bohemian - Russia doesn't offer options like that. Bloodline is nice, but I already forged one and married in two others, and haven't done a legendary journey yet. So... it's currently leaning towards Russia.

Who did you start as?

Dobrava of Kiev. I'd AAR it, except I have no screenshots from the first two rulers.

 

[DPS]

Dobrava of Kiev. I'd AAR it, except I have no screenshots from the first two rulers.hA

I was going to say, "Nice job rolling back the nomads" but you don't appear to have Horse Lords. Still a good job, but tbh, I don't know if it's possible to do that well as Kiev in the 769 start with HL active, at least not without a lot of cheese and exploits.

As for whether to stay as Rus or go SU, mechanically, given what I see on the map, you don't need the special ability Karlington mentioned and the bloodline for forming the SU would be more useful to you, but you might want to stay as Rus for RP reasons.

Have you reformed the faith and gotten your holy order yet? If so, they may hold some baronies you need to form the SU, and that can be tricky. You don't really want to expel them , but you might not be able to own all the required baronies without doing so, unless you convert to another faith.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

The holder of the Russian Empire has the ability to upgrade tribes to castles with only a tier 1 hillfort (instead of the usual tier 4 requirement). This is because its supposed to be a representation of the Russian tsardom come early and enable you to "colonize" eastward into Asia as the Russian Empire did.

This is a great tip, Karlington. Thanks for sharing.

If I ever decide to try again for the "Never Start a Land War in Asia" achievement, I'm definitely going to try to form the Empire of Rus along the way. If I deactivate the Horse Lords DLC, the Steppe should be tribal the whole way from Lithuania to Mongolia. Based on what you said above, the Rus Emperor I should be able to quickly convert tribes to feudal settlements, which would help greatly with supply and levies when moving East.

Let me know if I'm thinking of this correctly.

 

[ThePettyQueen]

I was going to say, "Nice job rolling back the nomads" but you don't appear to have Horse Lords. Still a good job, but tbh, I don't know if it's possible to do that well as Kiev in the 769 start with HL active, at least not without a lot of cheese and exploits.

As for whether to stay as Rus or go SU, mechanically, given what I see on the map, you don't need the special ability Karlington mentioned and the bloodline for forming the SU would be more useful to you, but you might want to stay as Rus for RP reasons.

Have you reformed the faith and gotten your holy order yet? If so, they may hold some baronies you need to form the SU, and that can be tricky. You don't really want to expel them , but you might not be able to own all the required baronies without doing so, unless you convert to another faith.

Yeah, it's a nomad-free lifestyle for me!

Faith is reformed, and holy order already vassalized. Same culture, head of faith, de jure territory - no trouble at all.

This is a great tip, Karlington. Thanks for sharing.

If I ever decide to try again for the "Never Start a Land War in Asia" achievement, I'm definitely going to try to form the Empire of Rus along the way. If I deactivate the Horse Lords DLC, the Steppe should be tribal the whole way from Lithuania to Mongolia. Based on what you said above, the Rus Emperor I should be able to quickly convert tribes to feudal settlements, which would help greatly with supply and levies when moving East.

Let me know if I'm thinking of this correctly.

Empire of Rus and Empire of Russia are two separate things, actually. You need to hold Rus in order to form Russia, which is the one that grants the special ability - and Russia is huge. It's pretty much what I hold on that screenshot (minus a few bits in the west) plus everything up to the Ural mountains. Including Crimea, which usually means having to go up against the Byzantines - although by the time you hold all the rest, you're probably strong enough to handle them anyway.

You can see the requirements here.

 

[Karlington]

This is a great tip, Karlington. Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome.

If I ever decide to try again for the "Never Start a Land War in Asia" achievement, I'm definitely going to try to form the Empire of Rus along the way. If I deactivate the Horse Lords DLC, the Steppe should be tribal the whole way from Lithuania to Mongolia. Based on what you said above, the Rus Emperor I should be able to quickly convert tribes to feudal settlements, which would help greatly with supply and levies when moving East.

Let me know if I'm thinking of this correctly.

I believe so, yes. As you mentioned turning off Horse Lords will ensure all the nomads become tribal, and with the special ability to upgrade tribes into castles at tier 1 hillforts instead of tier 4 you should be able to save some time and money.

Though remember this:

Yeah, it's a nomad-free lifestyle for me!

Faith is reformed, and holy order already vassalized. Same culture, head of faith, de jure territory - no trouble at all.



Empire of Rus and Empire of Russia are two separate things, actually. You need to hold Rus in order to form Russia, which is the one that grants the special ability - and Russia is huge. It's pretty much what I hold on that screenshot (minus a few bits in the west) plus everything up to the Ural mountains. Including Crimea, which usually means having to go up against the Byzantines - although by the time you hold all the rest, you're probably strong enough to handle them anyway.

You can see the requirements here.

It's only the empire of Russia that has the special ability. The empire of Rus does not.

I can't let this opportunity pass without mentioning that I have a guide to forming the Russian Empire in my signature - or here, if you don't have signatures showing.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

Empire of Rus and Empire of Russia are two separate things, actually. You need to hold Rus in order to form Russia, which is the one that grants the special ability - and Russia is huge. It's pretty much what I hold on that screenshot (minus a few bits in the west) plus everything up to the Ural mountains. Including Crimea.

It's only the empire of Russia that has the special ability. The empire of Rus does not.

I can't let this opportunity pass without mentioning that I have a guide to forming the Russian Empire in my signature

Thanks to both of you for pointing out this important detail. I was guessing that Rus and Russia were the same thing, but that notion couldn't be more wrong.

Below is a screenshot from the 867 start. In addition to the highlighted kingdoms making up the Empire of Rus, you would also need the following kingdoms to form the Empire of Russia:

Empire of Rus - Chernigov, Galicia-Volhynia, Novgorod, Ruthenia, Vladimir
Empire of Russia - all of the above, plus Nenetsia, Perm, Volga Bulgaria, Khazaria, Alania, Crimea. You also need Russian culture.


To get the "Never Start a Land War in Asia" achievement, I need to start in Western Europe. I was thinking about using the Duke of Pomerania in 867. He is the easternmost ruler in the CK2 Western Europe region. He is already Feudal, has a great cultural retinue, and close to the Romuva holy sites. I could switch religions, reform the Romuva faith, and then use Pagan county conquests and Holy Wars to fight my way across the Steppe. If I select Proselytizing when I reform the faith, that should help spread my religion fairly quickly post-conquest.

But at some point, I will need to get Russian culture to form the Empire title. How does that work exactly? Will it spawn automatically once lands of East Slavic culture (Ilmenian, Severian, Volhynian) convert to a reformed faith? Or will I have convert my own culture to East Slavic first, then wait for an event/decision to become Russian?

 

[DPS]

But at some point, I will need to get Russian culture to form the Empire title. How does that work exactly? Will it spawn automatically once lands of East Slavic culture (Ilmenian, Severian, Volhynian) convert to a reformed faith? Or will I have convert my own culture to East Slavic first, then wait for an event/decision to become Russian?

It doesn't matter what faith the provinces themselves are; they'll start flipping to Russian as long as the ruler himself (or herself) isn't an unreformed pagan. But you don't actually have to reform the faith first, because they'll also start flipping if the ruler isn't of East Slavic or Finno-Ugric culture.

 

[ThePettyQueen]

To get the "Never Start a Land War in Asia" achievement, I need to start in Western Europe. I was thinking about using the Duke of Pomerania in 867. He is the easternmost ruler in the CK2 Western Europe region. He is already Feudal, has a great cultural retinue, and close to the Romuva holy sites. I could switch religions, reform the Romuva faith, and then use Pagan county conquests and Holy Wars to fight my way across the Steppe. If I select Proselytizing when I reform the faith, that should help spread my religion fairly quickly post-conquest.

Another potential start would be any Germanic pagan - there are a few starting in Western Europe in 769 (Saxony), 867 (British Isles & Brittany), and even some in 936, although they're weaker - and use the coastal county conquest to gain a foothold in the Baltics and expand rapidly. Once there, you can switch to Suomenusko or Romuva for easy reformation if you want to avoid gavelkind. (Romuva, of course, doesn't even need to be reformed to get eldership.) If you choose to be Norse, you could combine it with the Norse East achievement - you'd just have to swap back to Norse culture after forming Russia, which should be easy enough if you have eldership.

 

[jonjowett]

So, what are we looking at here? Player character is a Christian duke, and the screen is centred on the Islamic kingdom of Egypt... Hmm...

Maybe if we look at Egypt's vassals?

Oh. Oh dear. Egypt's about to have a very bad time, isn't it?

---

This was almost certainly the longest I've ever played as a duke. Nearly 200 years as a Coptic Miaphysite vassal of the Muslims, growing internally and using China to destroy both the Abbasid Empire (about 100 years before the screenshots above) and the multi-king of Egypt.

At first, I relied on fabricating claims with my Chancellor - but this was very slow. During this character's lifetime, I discovered a much faster strategy: JD border war to take one county; hold the county personally; use a plot to get a claim on the duchy; give the county away (to keep demesne size down); murder the current duke (to delete the truce). This guy went from 6 duchies at age 17 to 18 duchies at age 75 (above).

Immediately after unpausing, I created a custom empire with Imperial Administration and gave out all of the duchies as viceroyalties. Easiest transition to viceroy empire ever!

TL;DR - Playing as "That Annoying Vassal" is surprisingly fun!

 

[Rockphed]

So, what are we looking at here? Player character is a Christian duke, and the screen is centred on the Islamic kingdom of Egypt... Hmm...

View attachment 650718

Maybe if we look at Egypt's vassals?

View attachment 650717

Oh. Oh dear. Egypt's about to have a very bad time, isn't it?

View attachment 650715

---

This was almost certainly the longest I've ever played as a duke. Nearly 200 years as a Coptic Miaphysite vassal of the Muslims, growing internally and using China to destroy both the Abbasid Empire (about 100 years before the screenshots above) and the multi-king of Egypt.

At first, I relied on fabricating claims with my Chancellor - but this was very slow. During this character's lifetime, I discovered a much faster strategy: JD border war to take one county; hold the county personally; use a plot to get a claim on the duchy; give the county away (to keep demesne size down); murder the current duke (to delete the truce). This guy went from 6 duchies at age 17 to 18 duchies at age 75 (above).

Immediately after unpausing, I created a custom empire with Imperial Administration and gave out all of the duchies as viceroyalties. Easiest transition to viceroy empire ever!

TL;DR - Playing as "That Annoying Vassal" is surprisingly fun!

Did you call down China on your liege, or was that serendipitous?

 

[jonjowett]

Did you call down China on your liege, or was that serendipitous?

First, I called China to dismantle my liege's liege. Then I called China to dismantle my liege. (And I did lots of other nasty things in between.) I was officially the worst vassal imaginable. So much fun :-D

(In every run, I make a point of acquiring as many wrong-religion tier-5 artifacts as possible. In this run, I got 3: axe of perkunas, yada tashy, and {one other I forget}. Each tier-5 artifact gives 10k grace and invasions cost 5k, but dynasty changes and/or golden ages mean it's better to use the remaining 5k grace on scholar-bureaucrats etc than to try to save it for a century.)

EDIT: I always knew I wanted to call in China to dismantle all of my liege's kingdoms, so that I could recreate them myself and then immediately create the custom empire. (I also went Catholic for a day so I could make the kingdom of Cyprus for my pet MR - another reason to stay duke-tier.) I obviously could have won an independence/claim war at any time in the last century or so, but the surrounding Muslims would have caused problems afterwards. (Eg: Abyssinia-Kanem-NAfrica is a Muslim Child of Destiny; Persia is owned by the Shia Caliphate; most of India has been conquered by a random adventurer from the king of Egypt's family; and the Umayyads took both France and Germany.) In the end, I pressed the nuclear/Chinese button because it was no longer possible to fabricate claims using plots - there weren't enough adult non-zealous non-content vassals to get 3 supporters. And because I had one of the largest armies in the world, so I felt fairly secure.

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Yeah, it's great fun playing as a far too powerful vassal.

 

[bcw2311]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the glorious Empire of Air.

This started in 769 in the county of Daura. Air was the first duchy I was able to found in 797, and the Kingdom of Air was created in 849. The Kingdom of Ghana was taken 34 years later, before Mai Seydou II reformed the African religion in 899, having just taken the final holy site of Draa from the Muhallabids.

With Air now dominating sub-Saharan Africa, the kingdoms of Mali, Songhay and Hausaland followed; Kanem could have been formed too but as it was split in half by the creation of Air, I aimed to get at least one half to drift across as its de jure area was now quite silly looking.

The Empire of Air was created by Grand Saltigue Ijaba in 939 and the Kingdom of Nubia, reduced to two duchies as the majority had drifted into Abbasid Egypt, followed later. The now titular Empire of Mali was the last title to be added before Ijaba’s successor, Bawo, feudalised in 977. This final screenshot was taken the day after Bawo’s death. The red county at the bottom of the map is my tributary, whilst the similar shade lilac strip on the Mediterranean is part of Sardina and Corsica.

Ultimately quite a straightforward run, I assume benefitting from being on the edge of the map, hence the story above isn’t too exciting. I had visions of seeing Air written across all of Africa but having completed my three main objectives (reform, custom empire and feudalise / MR), picked up a bloodline through Bawo and not being brave enough to pick on the Abbasid blob, a lot of the challenge and interest has now gone for this run. And with there being so many other challenges I still want to take on in CK2, it feels the right time to call it a day.

The only interesting item of note elsewhere in the world was the Umayyads converting to Zoroastrianism fairly early on. The Iberian peninsula stayed remarkably peaceful for quite a long time, but Karling France and the Abbasids have now chipped away at them.

Which leads me on to the Kingdom of Maghreb that you can see on the map. As the Umayyads were Zoroastrian, now a Mazdan heresy, I was confident it would be a straightforward fight when I declared a Great Holy War for Maghreb in 975, but even then won it far too easily.

With Bawo being by far the biggest contributor to the war and Grand Saltigue, I had assumed (not given any thought otherwise) that Maghreb would become my latest addition. I was therefore rather confused, and still am, when I saw that it had been awarded to this lady:

I don’t know if I missed something in terms of having to nominate a beneficiary like with the Crusades, I certainly didn’t see any pop-ups, but if it is going to go to another character, I really don’t know why it was someone I’d not heard of and a member of the same dynasty that already owned the title, even if she is Hausa and reformed African. Any suggestion or pointers would be welcome.

Thanks for reading

 

[jonjowett]

I don’t know if I missed something in terms of having to nominate a beneficiary like with the Crusades, I certainly didn’t see any pop-ups, but if it is going to go to another character, I really don’t know why it was someone I’d not heard of and a member of the same dynasty that already owned the title, even if she is Hausa and reformed African. Any suggestion or pointers would be welcome.

Pagan GHWs follow the old-style crusade mechanics: If there is a claimant of the correct religion then they receive the benefits. You can see this in the war screen (if you check) but it's otherwise not very obvious. If you can reload a save before winning the Crusade, you could kill her... or give her a barony/county and hope she becomes your vassal after winning.

 

[Karlington]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the glorious Empire of Air.

View attachment 657028

This started in 769 in the county of Daura. Air was the first duchy I was able to found in 797, and the Kingdom of Air was created in 849. The Kingdom of Ghana was taken 34 years later, before Mai Seydou II reformed the African religion in 899, having just taken the final holy site of Draa from the Muhallabids.

With Air now dominating sub-Saharan Africa, the kingdoms of Mali, Songhay and Hausaland followed; Kanem could have been formed too but as it was split in half by the creation of Air, I aimed to get at least one half to drift across as its de jure area was now quite silly looking.

The Empire of Air was created by Grand Saltigue Ijaba in 939 and the Kingdom of Nubia, reduced to two duchies as the majority had drifted into Abbasid Egypt, followed later. The now titular Empire of Mali was the last title to be added before Ijaba’s successor, Bawo, feudalised in 977. This final screenshot was taken the day after Bawo’s death. The red county at the bottom of the map is my tributary, whilst the similar shade lilac strip on the Mediterranean is part of Sardina and Corsica.

Ultimately quite a straightforward run, I assume benefitting from being on the edge of the map, hence the story above isn’t too exciting. I had visions of seeing Air written across all of Africa but having completed my three main objectives (reform, custom empire and feudalise / MR), picked up a bloodline through Bawo and not being brave enough to pick on the Abbasid blob, a lot of the challenge and interest has now gone for this run. And with there being so many other challenges I still want to take on in CK2, it feels the right time to call it a day.

The only interesting item of note elsewhere in the world was the Umayyads converting to Zoroastrianism fairly early on. The Iberian peninsula stayed remarkably peaceful for quite a long time, but Karling France and the Abbasids have now chipped away at them.

Which leads me on to the Kingdom of Maghreb that you can see on the map. As the Umayyads were Zoroastrian, now a Mazdan heresy, I was confident it would be a straightforward fight when I declared a Great Holy War for Maghreb in 975, but even then won it far too easily.

With Bawo being by far the biggest contributor to the war and Grand Saltigue, I had assumed (not given any thought otherwise) that Maghreb would become my latest addition. I was therefore rather confused, and still am, when I saw that it had been awarded to this lady:

View attachment 657029

I don’t know if I missed something in terms of having to nominate a beneficiary like with the Crusades, I certainly didn’t see any pop-ups, but if it is going to go to another character, I really don’t know why it was someone I’d not heard of and a member of the same dynasty that already owned the title, even if she is Hausa and reformed African. Any suggestion or pointers would be welcome.

Thanks for reading

It seems everything is going well for the nation of Air.

Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[bcw2311]

Pagan GHWs follow the old-style crusade mechanics: If there is a claimant of the correct religion then they receive the benefits. You can see this in the war screen (if you check) but it's otherwise not very obvious. If you can reload a save before winning the Crusade, you could kill her... or give her a barony/county and hope she becomes your vassal after winning.

Ok, thanks for explaining. It was an Ironman game so I wouldn't have been able to go back, and by that point I knew I was coming towards the end so probably wouldn't have done so even if I could. But I'll certainly bear that in mind for my next pagan run

It seems everything is going well for the nation of Air.

Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Nothing to apologise for - why do you think I chose Air rather than one of the other duchies in the region