Chapter 1 CK Gameplay
I started out as the Duchy of Toulouse subject to the French king… It’s actually a nice starting position as you have a decent stat king.. get to choose your bride, and have a little starting gold, and are in a excellent position to take advantage of either the holy land crusades or re-conquista events in Spain.
First thing was to set laws… I prefer as a rule having lots of troops available over gold so I set laws to
Feudal contract, I tend to leave the ecclesiastic laws at balanced as that gives you some troops and helps prevent getting yourself excommunicated. I also prefer Salic Consanguinity… this follows the salic law gives your sons your title but does allow for the strongest of your sons to inherit rather than the eldest. It also gives you a fair amount of control on who inherits as part of the calculation is lands held and so all you have to do is dump large number of titles on your heir to ensure that he inherits.
The next thing is to find a bride… I like using the CKeditor to filter through brides and find a good one… all I do is save the game. Pause it, and open the save file with Ck editor and filter for the bride I want.. generally my criteria are Stewardship >9, with the highest stats I can get after that for Diplomacy, health, fertility, marshal and intrigue in that order of importance.
First couple years are concentrated on building the lands I hold with sawmills etc.… soon the crusade events start firing and that’s when you opportunity comes. In previous patches I used the Spanish crusade events to increase the size of my kingdom but this time around England, Scotland, Germany, and my King jumped right into the crusade to free Valencia… that would usually mean I would do all the work but they would get all the lands…which sucks… so I stayed put and concentrated on building my provinces… I even refused initally to mobilize for my king cause I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of it. but after building up my military a bit and seeing a few weakend muslim provinces I jumped in and grabbed a few.
my origional holdings plus a few territories picked off from Spanish crusading - I also need to note that I don't hold all the light green provinces. one of the spanish duchies has the same color. I or my vassals control Castelton, Valencia (Re-Captured actually after the origional crusade was ended and a muslim state took it back from France) , Alamansa, and Mallorca, the others are controlled by someone else. I know there is a symbol for King of Naples there but I didn't have an earlier picture.. territory didn't change much though.
However that crusade was quickly over and the next came soon after for Alexandria… as usual the Fatmids intimidated the European powers into inaction so nothing happened…
However England and France were soon at war and Germany joined in against France… so while my king was busy I went off and started to conquer Sicily. I started with the smaller provinces and over the next several years worked up to the Zirid kingdoms. My disloyalty also allowed me to get an alliance with Germany and I used that to my advantage. I took Malta and a few other Sicilian provinces and Germany concentrated on North Africa..
Soon after that set of wars the Kingdom of the Fatamids splintered into single kingdoms in the Palestine area so while my king was busy again in Spain crusading I took advantage and conquered Tyrus, and Beruit to use as a jump off point for more crusading.
foothold in Palestine
Spend a few years rebuilding and with a new king and with the Alexandria crusade still active and the Fatmids still embroiled with re-conquering their rebel states and with an alliance with Germany I decalred war and attacked Alexandria. I took Alexandria before my allies could mobilize to the theatre and grabbed the Piety and Prestige gains.
alexandria crusade captures
My next move was to use the Prestige gains to grab claims on the Duke of Apulia and the southern Italian provinces. And used the high piety to quickly lower the BB rating from doing so… after my BB was back at 0 and my armies were rebuilt up I attacked Apulia… (again Germany and France were busy with the latest crusade in Spain so stayed out of it) and conquered the area formerly owned by Apulia… that with my Scilian provinces allowed me to take the title of King of Naples. And now I was playing a nation.
KING OF NAPLES!!!!
Letting the BB from that set of conquests dissipate took some time and I did have to bribe some of my vassals to stay loyal.. and again waited for a new king and a new crusade helped…the next crusade was against Jerusalem and with my base in Alexandria and Tyrus I was well positioned to press the attack… just as a reminder the Fatmid kingdoms had split up so capturing Jerusalem and most of the rest of the holy land was a simple matter. I used the prestige gains to start grabbing claims for my next goal… King of Italy. …
Holy land crusading - not much to it when the Fatmids obligingly split themselves appart - note not all those green territories are mine.. there's a muslim state in the area with the same color
While I was doing that the AI papal controller decided I must have been a threat and excommunicated me… well since I was excommunicated anyway, and I had a fairly old king I decided to grab the papal states provinces and capture Rome… the BB and excommunicated status just about sent my kingdom into splinters but I managed to hold on till the king died but his heir had to spend lots of cash and military to prevent and recapture rebellious provinces.
The next king after that was able to increase his prestige and piety by mopping up in the holy land against the now broken Fatmids. After a period of recovery it was time to take on the next big challenge… Germany. Again waiting till Germany was busy elsewhere I declared war and started to move up the peninsula. It took several wars and generations of kings but eventually I was able to usurp the title King of Italy from Germany. The strategy in the Germanic wars was to grab the titles of the duke controlling the region... grab those then declare war on that duke only.. you then capture his home province and any other count title lands he holds directly and then get him to surrender his duke title and any count titles. with that pease genreally his vassals follow him and join your kingdom.. my general rule was then to pass the land and duke title to either one of my younger sons, or to one of the counts that was formerly a vassal. giving up those titles helps with BB control and the loyalty of the counts you just approproated vassalship from... i generally only kept under my own control the riches provinces... ( Rome, Byzantine, Alexandriea Venice, Genoa, etc) and passed the rest to vassals.)
Result after several generations of wars with Germany... that was a fun series of wars!!!
During the Germanic wars a nice little opportunity did pop up however… at some point the Byzantine empire lost their capital and the Dardanelle provinces. True to form a crusade was called and I immediately took the opportunity to grab Byzantium, Thrace and the other neighbouring provinces… This was really ideal… not only did I get one of the riches provinces in the game but I was able to get the prestige/piety benefit from taking one of the core Byzantine provinces…
I now controlled what were arguably the three richest provinces in the game.. Byzantium, Rome, and Alexandria. It wasn’t much of a stretch from there to add the next two riches provinces of Venice and Genoa to my Kingdom…
Swimming in cash and prestige now… it wasn’t much of a stretch to win. And with 1400’s approaching I started to think of setting up the EU2 game for success. The Mongols proved to be a non-entity, the Golden horde getting squished by Poland after spearheading into the Balkans, and the Inkanate getting eventually beaten back by a alliance of Byzantine, and the Seljuk’s. The plagues were weathered without too much of a problem and the heresy rebellions were a constant irritation.
The next century was spent consolidating my hold on existing lands and then conquering southern Spain, Portugal, and the western half of North Africa. Most of this was to consolidate and set up for the EU2 game rather than our of need.
At the end of 1419 I sat as the most powerful kingdom controlling Italy, southern France, Spain, Portugal, Palestine, Egypt, Constantinople and the surrounding land, and Morocco.
Reading how the conversions work I re-organized the kingdom so that Palestine, Egypt and Morocco were my most powerful duchies and true to form those were the ones split off as vassal states in the conversion with my holding my core states in Italy, southern France/Spain and Portugal…
My rivals were Poland.. who controlled most of eastern Europe and Russia having conquered it from the Golden horde, Germany, Sweden, England, France controlling northern France and northern Spain, and Byzantium and the Seljuk’s in the east.
The world in 1419...
Italy
Spain
middle east - note I spun off the kingdom of Jerusalem... the intent my curiousity to see how a Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem would fare in EU2... you know... see if Jerusalem would colonize america.. etc... as it turned out they didn't do very well, quickly succumbing to Poland and then in turn back to the muslims... although France is currently controlling Jerusalem itself in 1750...
western Europe
northern Europe
Onto EU2.
