Crusader Kings 3 - Its Crusader Kings 2 with a paint job

[Swine Schwein]

Motherfucker, those Danish King Emperors (my lieges, I still have to suck their cocks and it's not changing anytime soon) aren't fucking around. Each one is more of a conquering madman than the last. Somehow they figured out the perfect succession. Their Empire of Scandinavia is now the biggest realm on the fucking map and it keeps expanding, there's always at least two expansion wars going on.

Gladly my vassal-duchy is not a border land anymore, so my life is peaceful, although shameful and it's hard to expand since everyone has the same liege.

My King-Emperor-Tyrant made me his spymaster though. I realized I could start a "claim throne" scheme against him. How does it work, do I just get an unpressed claim with that? Better not try, I have no forces, factions or even good allies

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Motherfucker, those Danish King Emperors (my lieges, I still have to suck their cocks and it's not changing anytime soon) aren't fucking around. Each one is more of a conquering madman than the last. Somehow they figured out the perfect succession. Their Empire of Scandinavia is now the biggest realm on the fucking map and it keeps expanding, there's always at least two expansion wars going on.

Gladly my vassal-duchy is not a border land anymore, so my life is peaceful, although shameful and it's hard to expand since everyone has the same liege.

My King-Emperor-Tyrant made me his spymaster though. I realized I could start a "claim throne" scheme against him. How does it work, do I just get an unpressed claim with that? Better not try, I have no forces, factions or even good allies

You will get a pressed claim on his realm if you succeed the caim throne scheme. From there you can start a faction to install yourself as emperor. Speccing in to diplomacy and befriending the other powerful leaders in the realm would be a good idea at that point, they may join the faction and fight alongside you as an ally when the time comes. Alternatively go down the intrigue path and just keep assassinating and sewing chaos until the realm fractures, allowing you to pick up the pieces.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Israel run is on fire rn.

Spoiler: More shit

Working on putting every title underneath me in the hands of my dynasty members before transitioning to administrative government. Polygamy, unrestricted marriage and a mod that raises your chilld limit to 99 means its already more accurate to call us a breed.


The mod I used to add Star of David to the emblem editor also added an AK-47 and I am only human....




Judaism, my first divergent faith from Rabbinic served well. Chosen People (Communal Identity) is actually underrated if you're trying to revive a dead culture. Once you've converted a county to your religon it then becomes much faster to convert it to your culture too, which normally takes a very long time. Divine Marriage to get piety from the inbreeding I was already doing was obvious, and I had set a side goal to see if I can populate the whole nation with 1 dynasty directly descending from a single Israelite, as is traditional.
Communal Possessions backfired as I came in to power not through a peasant rebellion but through buying a county, so I missed out on the peasent leader perk (the original reason for this run) and the opportunity of said perk being virtuous.

Switched to Kabbalah (esotericism) and Exaltation of Pain for 3 easy virtues in the Wise Man, Flagellant and Sadistic. The Wise Man trait and its associated events start spawning often with Esotericism (Kabbalah its called for Jews ingame), Flagellent you can get through having a mental breakdown, and Sadistic you can get through torturing people. Sadistic is also the best perk in the game for stress management, as well as succession management, allowing you to assassinate unwanted kids. Paired with Exaltation of Pain, Sadistic also becomes a virtue that gives you both piety and stress loss from torturing prisoners, and you still have the option to ransom or do whatever else is needed of them afterwards unlike Ritual Sacrifice/Blot.

The Assassins idea is for the next character to schism in to.


I started as Hebrew, which was completely dead with no technology, Israeli is a devergent culture from that.



I think I'll stop expanding once I take the rest of Arabia, Baghdad and also maybe East Africa and Zanzibar as they'll be easy pickings then. Build tall for another 1 or 2 generations, fend off The First Crusade and then become adventurer as a lesser descendent upon succession. Move east to create Bene-Israel, or to the Steppe and do the Greatest of Khans thing as a Jew. Maybe Zionist China?

Edit: The buffs from Jewish holy sites plus there close proximity makes them very powerful once established. Switching the Halakkah authority doctrine to Toraic also makes the scholar trait from the learning tree a virtue which is pretty neat.

I gotta keep this save. Jewish superpower rivalling the Eastern Romans before 1000 AD is a wild setup.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Formed Rome once more, was hunting the achievement for becoming Eastern Roman Emperor as a Palaiologos dynasty member starting in 1178. The "hack" for ensuring the jump to Hellenism goes smoothly is to create a new Orthodox faith first that is pluralist and has Syncretic Folk Traditions, thus making them mostly tolerant of pagans whilst themselves still remaining tolerated by other nearby Christian faiths.

I took Alexandran Cathecism, Communal Identity and Syncretic Folk Traditions, theocratic clergy but with no head of faith, temporal revocable realm priest, pluralist attitude and polytheist. "Neo Christo Romanus", an intensely Roman nationalist sect of Christianity that incorporates the Greek Pantheon in to the Christian canon, somehow.

Convert as much of The Eastern Roman Empire to this new faith first before then taking the reform true Roman Empire with Hellenism decision. It makes more sense too, easing in to it with a halfway point thats essentially a Christian sect that has abolished the head of faith and drifted toward older local religious traditions. More realistic. I'm now trying to find a way to adopt mandala government to become God Emperor of Rome (without commands).

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Big autism incoming: Conquering China as The Roman Empire and seeing what happens if you then take the "cleave the empire" or "sieze the Mandate of Heaven" decisions.

Spoiler

It took a lot of optimising, but I finally managed to make a stable Roman Empire even after taking the harder decision that gives you access to the empire level Roman Invasion CB but also spawns an early Mongol Invasion, level 3 plagues and peasent revolts.

Spoiler: How

The key was to ease in to it with precursor faiths that made most of the realm tolerant of pagans prior to the switch to unreformed Hellenism, building hospices and other plague reducing buildings in holdings early (tip: the water management line of buildings you unlock from the "waterworks" silk road innovation is extremley OP for development and plague control), and for the peasent revolts you just have to move your rally points around and spawn mercs to deal with them as needed. It takes too long for your own troops to muster anywhere once the realm reaches a certain size, mercs are just much faster and slaughter much higher their number in peasent revolt units easily.

Spoiler: Faiths

Christus Romanus, a decentralised Christian faith whose main purpose was aforementioned pagan tolerance through Syncretic Folk Traditions and pluralism. Turns out you can take the "Mend The Schism" decision as any Christian faith, including a completely made up one of your own design, which is somehow both polytheist and Christian at the same time. This then converts most Catholic and Orthodox holdings to [your Christianity} holdings.


My reformed Hellenism took Adaptive to further ease tensions with the more dogmatic vassals that hadn't become Roman-Christian yet, and once most of realm had stabilised and become reformed Hellenic, I then achieved my final goal of PAX ROMANA



Astrology for random 25% boost in lifestyle exp through stargazing (also faster naval speed), Household Gods makes being The Emperor of Rome a virtue (via the Augustus trait) whilst also giving you more influence, faster conversion speed and no opinion penalty with other faiths, and Megalithic Constructions for big development boosts in temples via megalithic buildings.

Spoiler: Cultures

First diverged culture was Romanus, because the game doesn't let you pick "Roman" (the actual in-game Roman culture is dead on all start dates and is missing the uniquely Roman-esque flavour content that the Greeks received, so it's better to just make psuedo-Roman with a divergence from Greek). I went with Industrious in the divergence and then Storytellers through a reformation later. You get the option to adopt the Latin language and heritage through a legend seed you gain access to after restoring Rome.


Vaticanus is a hybridisation of Romanus and Dutch that also marked the relocation of the capital from Constantinople to Rome. This was purely for the sake of replacing Storytellers with Agrarian, and then siezing all the farmlands in Italy to turn them to this new culture. Headcannoning it as Dutch irrigation and land management techniques being adopted and becoming a large boon to the Roman economy.


These farmlands are also, conveniently, my personal domain counties. Money is no longer an object in this campaign.

Cleaving The Empire:



Despite how uneven it looks I still have about 10k more troops than the new Eastern Roman Emperor.


Claiming the Mandate of Heaven:



Turns out you get both hegemoneys, but The Roman Empire remains your primary title. It also gives you primogeniture succession and turns the whole realm to celestial government.



It relocated the capital to Zhingshao too, which I immediately fixed:



So you do get to be Emperor of both Rome and China simultaneously, though unfortunately you then have to play China's rules (celestial government), which I still haven't even tried.

It fucked my vassal limit up bad:

Another key part of stability at this size is doing my best to keep all kingdom and empire titles to myself and have only have duchy level vassals. Once you reach vassal limit, give one of the smaller insignificant kingdom titles within the de jure of your primary title to a dynasty member (one with no claim on your primary title) and transfer them the respective dukes. (Moldavia, Burgundy, Brittany, kingdoms that are small and insignificant and scattered enough to pose no real threat if they unite against you). Duke level vassals are much easier to deal with than kings or emperors, so minimise the latter until you reach vassal limit, then make sure they are relatively weak and scattered once you are forced to give out higher titles. Level 4 administrative government let's you have 400 vassals before buffs, which in my experience can cover most of western europe, Britain, Africa, Arabia and Persia before you start needing to divy out some of your kingdoms to vassals.

I'm going to reload back to just Rome and continue the world conquest without forming China.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Humerous unforeseen consequence: I'm pretty much unable to host feasts any more as they always take at least three years to start. This is because I have to wait for a couple of Chinese guests to make their way across the entire known world to join me before it can begin.