Spud and the Guide of Crusader Kings 2

I put to much work into this. This wiki could use guides as a category. Why shouldn’t I start, eh? I can’t let all that work be Buried

Yo about CK2 Pallas. It is a really difficult game to learn. I watched a few guides, cause the tutorial sucks. First, if you can, cheat mod. Helped me learn things. There are many good starts,
Petty King (Duke) of Mumu (Munster) in Ireland
Duke of Bohemia in the HRE
Duchess of Tuscany in the HRE
Ive heard those are all good. I’ve had trouble with Mumu, haven’t tried the others. My first one was the Irish petty kingdom of Connachta, a good end goal being unite Brittania. I am also fond of Iceland. You get intrigue, and if you can pull it off properly you can erase your only vassal and be the sole ruler of Iceland. For your games, I always have rebellions set to zero, vassal land and demense size (that’s land you personally control. Much better then vassals cause you can get all the levied and it won’t betray you.) and rebellions at zero because when you got a big empire THOSE PEASANTS REVOLT EVERY SINGLE TURN

Theres this really annoying thing called Casus Belli. You need to justify your wars. Against other Christians. Holy wars are the best as you can get more land and all your Christian or Arab bro’s like you more. So it’s always a good idea. Now to claim land you need a claim on it. You have advisors that can perform different things. I didn’t use any of my advisors exept for the chancellor until like 5 months into the game, you don’t need them that much. Chancellor can forge claims which you need for the majority of Casus Belli. Relatively easy as Ireland as your neighbors are small and you only need to forge on one province to get to conquer them all. I believe if you keep them in the capitol after you get a claim on capitol province you get a claim on the whole Duchy, then kingdom and more. Pagans can bypass this cause there Vikings and can fight whoever they want. I have no idea about Muslims

Vassals are hard to deal with. If they don’t like you when you ask to levy there soldiers they don’t give you any. So if you have infinite demense on, I slowly take all of there land for myself. However, it doesn’t disable the opinion penalty for having so much demense, so everybody in my entire empire hates me. But hey, they just hate you cause they can’t be you

Tou can plot on people to murder them. Very useful to deal with succession. There are many Kinds which you can change in the law panel. Gavelkind SUCKS. It splits up your demense with all your kids! So you have to kill them. Primogeniture is the best, your firstborn gets it. Or Tanistry, which is unique to Ireland and Scotland. Your family votes for which family member gets the throne. The game is all about your dynasty. It ends when your heir isn’t of your dynasty or your dynasty is all dead.

Women and men, there simply not equal in the dark ages. There are succession laws. Absolute Cognatic means it doesn’t matter if the heir is boy or girl. Agnatic means just make. Agnatic Cognatic means just make but can be female if you have to.

Crusades are real fun. The pope chooses a place for you to go wreck, you can give the land you take to someone you like or keep it for yourself. Or somebody else may take it. You have to have the highest crusade war score. Whoever starts a siege of a province gets the cred it, so you can kind of cheat by putting like one dude on every province so the other crusaders just help you. Then the pope gives you stuff Muslims have Jihads. They function the same

Gold is money. You can bribe people, upgrades settlements. I didn’t know about that for like a year so it’s not all important. You need gold for a lot.

Piety. Needed for some things. Makes the pope like you and his bishop bros

Prestige. Makes nobles like you. How famous you are

For armies. You can use gold to hire mercenaries which are super tough but have huge upkeeps. You can raise every soldier in your demense, and raise vassals for war. Vassals won’t give you all of there guys if they hate you, unless you have crown authority to max in wich case they are forced to.

Traits. Green is good. Red is disease. I forget the sign for sins and there are some more. Traits are stuff like, Kind, Charitable, Zealous, Greedy, Wrathful...Homosexual. Every character has many traits. they will decide how the AI guys act, and give certain things.

Stats exist. I didn’t bother much with them when I was a noob. There just stuff like how good you are at plotting.

Leading a army is something your dude can do by attaching him to the head of a army. During a battle it will show all this strategy stuff. Don’t bother. I still don’t even know how the game even works with all that flanking and stuff, It will make more sense in three.

Marry right! Wife’s with good traits, marry into other kingdoms. It’s a good way to get claims! You can marry your son to a princess, which gives him a claim on the kingdom, so you can declare war on it to give the kingdom to your son, so when you die it will be yours! Don’t feel bad betrothed people to kids...these things happen in the medieval era. As for incest...it happens sometimes. I once had a lot of incest on accident cause I kept marrying into the same dynasty of French people over and over and over

I didn’t know half of this stuff when I started. And I still formed Irish Britannia, Alba, and was a super cool crusader. I didn’t even mess with the law stuff aside from succession rules I cheated in cause I had no idea how to change it outside of that. It comes with time.

-Emperors Potato, Lord of Dawi and Spuds