DarthHelmet86 wrote:I think that depends on how much power the king or queen had. If a duke felt he/she had enough of his own to press his/her claim I don't really see what is stopping him/her from doing so. There have been times where the king while being in charge was dependent on his lesser nobles and they knew it and pressed their claims to power.

This, I can see... but there was no actual contact between me and the Duke - he just suddenly was the Duke! If it was a plot, then I could totally go with it. The Duke could get sufficient support for his side to press his claim, then his overlord could, via pop-up, judge the numbers in favour to see which whether to submit to his vassal's request or deny it and possibly face an uprising. If the King then agreed, it'd still be the King creating the title, paying for it, and the Duke would get the benefit! Likewise, it would still be a duchy of that realm.

The way the game does it is not realistic, I agree. In the game, if you're a count and you have the necessary provinces and money to create the duchy, you can do it instantly. The money just disappears. You should have to bribe your liege to convince him to let you create the title, or go into revolt if he doesn't let you create the title.

They probably did it the way they did it to keep the game simple.

They need to fix battles. If you have two sides, one with 6000 troops and one with 5800 troops, and the types of troops are pretty equal, the battle will usually result in the larger side taking 50 casualties while the smaller side takes 99%.

Took my current guy 11 years to get a son. He had 4 daughters first. I was starting to get worried.

Rome Existed wrote:They need to fix battles. If you have two sides, one with 6000 troops and one with 5800 troops, and the types of troops are pretty equal, the battle will usually result in the larger side taking 50 casualties while the smaller side takes 99%.

That doesn't seem to be the case when I play; sometimes the victor loses around 1/5 his army. Also, sometimes, in close battles, it will appear that you are winning, then the battle turns and the other side wins. Also, terrain is a factor; I've noticed that battle losses and attrition seem higher when fighting in the desert against moslems.

Rome Existed wrote:Took my current guy 11 years to get a son. He had 4 daughters first. I was starting to get worried.

It does seem like the game enjoys torturing you, sometimes. There's always the guy who keeps making daughter after daughter. I think I had around 7 daughters in a row one time, until the randy old bastard decided that some 17 year old fancied him, gave her a good tumble (it's good to be the king) and had a bastard son right before he croaked. Then there's the guy who mysteriously doesn't produce any heirs for decades, and you start to worry that an idiot inbred kinsman is going to inherit all the titles, but then finally cranks out an heir at an advanced age. The game is laughing at us, I can feel it.

Shagz wrote:

Rome Existed wrote:They need to fix battles. If you have two sides, one with 6000 troops and one with 5800 troops, and the types of troops are pretty equal, the battle will usually result in the larger side taking 50 casualties while the smaller side takes 99%.

That doesn't seem to be the case when I play; sometimes the victor loses around 1/5 his army. Also, sometimes, in close battles, it will appear that you are winning, then the battle turns and the other side wins. Also, terrain is a factor; I've noticed that battle losses and attrition seem higher when fighting in the desert against moslems.

Rome Existed wrote:Took my current guy 11 years to get a son. He had 4 daughters first. I was starting to get worried.

It does seem like the game enjoys torturing you, sometimes. There's always the guy who keeps making daughter after daughter. I think I had around 7 daughters in a row one time, until the randy old bastard decided that some 17 year old fancied him, gave her a good tumble (it's good to be the king) and had a bastard son right before he croaked. Then there's the guy who mysteriously doesn't produce any heirs for decades, and you start to worry that an idiot inbred kinsman is going to inherit all the titles, but then finally cranks out an heir at an advanced age. The game is laughing at us, I can feel it.

I had a guy who didn't have any children during about 50 years of marriage. The wife then died, married a 16 year old and then cranked out son after son after son. Of course that cost me most of my lands since I had Gavelkind.

Just started playing the new Charlemane ex-pac.
They really nerfed regencies even further.
Now you cannot even give gifts to your disgruntled vassals, without the approval of your regent.
Meaning, you're usually stuck with them hating you until and if you manage to get old enough to become of age.

It's always a good time when your regent steals from the treasury.
As for the Charlemagne expansion: I heard they were doing that. It sounds cool. I'll have to buy it whenever I get around to getting my internet back at home.

Another change I, personally, don't like, is that you can no longer increase your demesne maximum through Legalism tech.
The only influences now are: rank, succesion laws, stewardship and centralisation laws.
None of which you can adjust on easily.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Another change I, personally, don't like, is that you can no longer increase your demesne maximum through Legalism tech.
The only influences now are: rank, succesion laws, stewardship and centralisation laws.
None of which you can adjust on easily.

Problem was that everyone just used all their cultural tech points for legalism and legalism only. Retinues also got hit with the nerf baton. For good reason.

It's a good idea to wait around for a patch or two to come along btw, a lot of bugs were introduced with the Charlemagne patch.

Just been chatting about Northern Cyprus. It seems the Crusader and Templar castles there although falling apart are at least still there because there hasn't been much development in that bit of the Ottoman Empire and the castles haven't been too much reused in the local towns!

Strange conservation effects of not having too much happen for a long time!

It's it wrong that I want to execute that prisoner? You know which one.

Mmmmmm, 2 Queens in a row (that's gone down well) and now my heir is a Muslim. I'm gonna guess that's going to go down worse than having Queens.

How did your heir manage to get himself Muslim?
Hope your empire is strong enough to fight off multiple holy wars at once.

Shagz wrote:How did your heir manage to get himself Muslim?
Hope your empire is strong enough to fight off multiple holy wars at once.

I have no idea. It appears that at some stage he has decided to move to France and live in an area occupied by a huge Islamic empire. It won't let me assassinate him.

I'm the Queen of England and Wales and I have some territories in Ireland and a good chunk of Scotland.

I'm able to raise an army, with my current Queen, of about 13k. I was hoping to have a larger army but I haven't been able to do much building with the 2 Queens ruling because assassinating people (paying off people to join the plots) has been expensive as has been bribing the plotters themselves to stop. There's always plots against me that I need to whack people over.

I'm curious about what happened with your muslim heir. It's actually never happened to me in all the years I've played this game. When he took the throne, surely it resulted in your vassals revolting and the pope calling for a crusade...? If not, that's something Paradox really needs to work on.

I've had a christian heir in a pagan kingdom, but never a non-christian heir in a christian kingdom.

I just learned something. After starting out as a three county High Chief of Greater Poland at the Charlemagne start and having conquered the de jure territory of the Wendian empire, Walachia, most of what would become the Kievan Rus, Bohemia, Moravia and a couple of minor bits I reformed the Slavic faith. I also happened to have a Stone hillford in my capital, so it told me I could adopt Feudalism. "Yay", I went, "cities and heavy infantry, and taxes! Feudalism, here we go!"

Fuck you for not telling me that my levies and my vassal levies would drop to not even a tenth of what I used to have, because none of them had stone keeps and hence no castles once I converted to Feudalism. I could have dealt with not being able to make tribal armies rise out of thin air at will, but going from some 15k levies to not even 1,5k AND having everyone hate me because a) they were now the wrong government type and b) the wrong (i.e. unreformed) religion was just too much.

Say, would it have been fine had I taken over already feudal holdings in - say - Bavaria and taken them for myself? That would have left me with a couple of thousand personal levies at least, even if the vassal levies would still have been worth fuck all.
Should have just enjoyed my reformed paganism and waged holy wars out the ass and THEN converted to feudalism a hundred years or two later.