What is Crusader Kings?

• Catholics - The big guns of Christianity, who control the vast majority of Western Europe. They're pretty simple; they have a single head of their Religion, the Pope, who can grant divorces, excommunicate people, and give the go-ahead to Invade heathens. Their widespread power base also gives a lot of opportunity for marriage politics (there is basically no circumstance where someone will let their daughter marry an infidel).
  
  Catholics can go with either Free Investiture (ruler picks bishops) or Papal Investiture; bishops pay taxes/give troops to either their ruler or the pope, depending on who they like better, so Catholic rulers had best be pious if they want to rake in the dough. Catholics with sufficient prestige can also set up an Antipope; bishops may pay taxes to that guy (and by extension, the ruler who established him) instead, and he holds a claim to the Papacy (which is mainly interesting because it means a sufficiently powerful ruler can vassalize the Papacy if they press his claim).
  
  
• Orthodox - Mainly present in the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox religion and Catholicism split in 1054*, having previously been united. While they do have a singular religious head - the Ecumenical Patriarch - they, unlike the Catholics, also have lesser patriarchs who can also grant divorces and excommunicate people (though only the Ecumenical Patriarch can grant the Invasion CB).
  
  The other thing worth noting about Orthodoxy is that - if the Pentarchy (Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch) is brought under total Orthodox control - the Great Schism will be healed, and Catholicism reduced to an Orthodox heresy. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same as Catholicism.
  
  While this game will be starting in the ninth century, religious tensions had been brewing between East and West for a while, so the Catholic and Orthodox churches being considered separate is a reasonable gameplay abstraction. It's possible that the next expansion - which will refine Christian and Muslim mechanics, as well as adding Judaism to the mix - will change the way the Schism works.
  
  
• Miaphysites - Honestly pretty much just "Orthodox, but less interesting." Due to having much bigger doctrinal differences with the other major Christian sects, they can't heal the Schism if they complete the Pentarchy. This kind of means there's not much point to doing so, since their Holy Sites don't match up with the Pentarchy.
  
  They're mostly based in East Africa, and they're not much less fucked by Islam than the West African pagans are, which might be interesting.
  
  
• Muslims - Shia and Sunni rulers have basically identical mechanics. Their religious heads, the Caliphs, are different from all others - first, they are primarily secular rulers, with the Caliphate being merely one of many titles for them; second, it is possible for either Caliphate to dissolve if no suitable heir exists (and, in fact, the Shia caliphate doesn't exist as of 867), though it can be re-established later.
  
  Muslim rulers are expected to have multiple wives, and have to deal with Decadence, which increases for members of the dynasty with insufficient holdings. As decadence grows, taxation and army morale decrease, and if it's allowed to reach a fever pitch, a rebellion may rise to topple that dynasty and take over as rulers (though vassals can declare independence if they succeed).
  
  Muslims also have the Agnatic Open succession rule at all times - whichever son of the ruler is most powerful gets all of his titles upon succession. Honestly, it's probably one of the best succession laws around unless your chosen heir dies prematurely, due to the level of control it gives you over who inherits.
  
  
• Zoroastrians - A Monotheistic religion at the edge of the Middle East, once the official religion of the Persian Empire but marginalized after a Muslim invasion. They start with no religious head, but if they can retake the Empire, they gain one (and the ruler that does so, as well as all his successors, get pretty heavily rewarded for doing so).
  
  Also, Zoroastrian vassals fucking love it if their ruler has an incestuous marriage. Thankfully, you can take concubines as well to ensure a supply of not-inbred heirs.
  
  
• Pagans - Any of the various polytheistic or animistic religions that are gradually giving way to Islam and Christianity. In addition to being able to conquer or loot any territory adjacent to their own, Pagans can Subjugate each other to massively expand their realm. Attackers of an organized religion also take considerable attrition penalties when in an unreformed pagan holding. Unreformed pagans tend to be stuck with Gavelkind succession (that's the kind where your titles are divided between your kids, and is Very Very Bad for realm stability), though sometimes they can switch to Ultimogeniture (the kind where the youngest kid gets everything).
  
  Historically, paganism in Europe and North Africa was supplanted by monotheism, but here they have the ability to reform, codifying their structure and establishing a High Priesthood similar to the Pope, Patriarch or Caliph. By doing so, they lose a couple abilities, but gain the ability to wage Holy Wars and Great Holy Wars, plus they're much better at conversion. Some subjects will refuse to accept the changes, remaining as heretic Old Pagans, but that tends to die down pretty quickly.
  
  Subsets: Norse (who, as vikings, get to conquer/loot any coastal province and sail down rivers), Tengri (mongols and a couple of other steppe tribes that settle in Eastern Europe) and Super Aztecs (if we run Sunset Invasion) are the Offensive Pagan religions; they get a boost to attacking, but their subjects get antsy if they spend too long without a war. The Defensive Pagan religions are Slavic Pagans and Romuva (who hang out around Eastern Europe; the Slavs considerably outnumber the Romuva, who are confined to Lithuania), Suomenusko (Finland and Russia), and West Africans (who are confined to Mali, and are basically completely fucked by Islam unless they get super lucky); they get a boost to defense and have no obligation to go to war.
  

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There's two major aspects of war in Crusader Kings - Battles and Sieges, the former of which we'll talk about in more detail once we get into a sizable confrontation. Sieges automatically happen if you have an army in the same province as an enemy-controlled holding; if your force outnumbers the defending force (a permanent garrison, plus any unraised levies from the holding), they will slowly lower the population and morale of the defenders. Once the morale hits zero, the holding is taken over, which grants a certain amount of "Warscore." At 100% Warscore, the enemy will always unconditionally surrender, but they may offer surrender earlier if they're in a particularly bad situation or they know they have no chance at victory.

A siege can also be turned to an Assault after a certain set-up period, usually a couple of weeks at the most (this is reduced with a larger force). This is not recommended unless the attacking army considerably outnumbers the defenders, as it's far less safe than a siege and the defenders have the home team advantage. With an attacking force around 9-10 times the size of the defending force, casualties become minimal and there's basically no reason to bother with a drawn-out siege. Otherwise (barring special circumstances, typically attrition penalties), sticking out the siege tends to be wiser.

Also worth noting: Cities and temples are a lot easier to besiege than castles, particularly when they aren't the capital of the county (which, usually, they won't be).

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Note to self: Start hoarding human cattle.

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This isn't really relevant to anything yet, but it's worth noting. At the beginning of the game, only the Sunni Caliphate exists; the Rise of the Shia Caliphate occurs randomly later on, though it tends to happen near the beginning of the game.

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Castle Towns are probably the most important thing to build in the early game. Your personal holdings (as opposed to counties or individual holdings you delegate to vassals) pay 100% of their tax income to you, rather than only a portion; while you don't quite get the +2.00 a month it claims, presumably due to expenses and the like, it does give a boost to income that's crucial to building a strong army later on.

Naturally, our ambitious and impatient chief isn't going to waste any time figuring out this book (or failing to do so)... which is actually probably a good thing, as the alternate path gives us the Mystic trait - +1 to our Intrigue score, which isn't too useful at the moment - instead of Scholar, which grants us a quite lovely +2 to Learning. There's also Scholarly high chiefs to our north and west, so we get relationship bonuses with them (not that we really need it, considering our might, but it's nice).

Both Mystic and Scholar are "Lifestyle" traits, indicated by the blue shield (the only different-looking one is the Muslim-only Faqih). You can only have one at a time; they all grant a stat bonus of 1 or 2, and an opinion bonus with anyone else of a matching Lifestyle (again, except for Faqih, which grants +10 to vassal opinion and apparently doesn't grant the "matching lifestyle" bonus? why is it even a lifestyle trait what the heck). Mystic is probably the worst one; it gives you +1 to Intrigue, but Impaler does the same and increases your Morale Damage bonus when leading troops.

tl;dr don't worry Ulfr that book wasn't worth it anyhow.

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The Magyars, who had previously controlled that big ol' blob due south of us, have now conquered Hungary and relinquished all their titles to the east of it. There are now independent counties all around us, most of which are a de jure part of the Kingdom of Ruthenia which I currently have my eye on.

You can see where this is going.

Also I got attacked by accident and then I kidnapped a guy in a siege, but I failed to screenshot those. WHOOPS.

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Mainly showing this so you know about the Warscore bonus for Total Control. That is, if someone totally controls the disputed territory of the war (or, in a vassal revolt, all the holdings of the traitors), they gain a steadily increasing Warscore bonus. This is particularly useful when fighting a larger enemy, as a 100% occupation score will require besieging more than just the holdings you're actually after.

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The way technology works in CK2 (as of this LP) is that each province has its own tech level; sometimes the local tech level is important (most notably when building improvements in your holdings), other times your capital tech level is the only thing that matters (as is the case with most, if not all, Cultural Technologies). Tech increases slowly if the province has neighbors with a higher level in a given area of research; your capital can also gain technology, in the same way, from a province you send your spymaster to Study Technology in.

You also gain technology points based on your stats (Learning, plus either Stewardship, Martial or Diplomacy based on the tech group), rank (higher rank gives a small multiplier to your tech growth rate), battles (military tech points only, obviously) and any schools in your Demesne, or collection of personal holdings (Universities give economic tech points, Monastic Schools give cultural points). Enough tech points, and you can instantly rank up a technology.

Here I chose to go with Military Organization, since it applies to all troops (rather than only one class) and is quite practical, particularly if the Norse faith becomes reformed later on.

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Up to the Northwest, Lithuania is becoming united by their own charismatic High Chief.

WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL NAMED VASILIY. From here, you can also see that Rurik of Holmgardr has been expanding eastwards.

OH NO HE DOESN'T HAVE PARENTS (nah, they're just not historically noted. that's the case with a lot of petty nobles around this time period, but since I ruler designer-ed his dynasty of course he's not going to have parents programmed in!

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Important note: Only the leader of the siege gets warscore once it's completed, and you can't "take over" a siege so long as their army's still around, nor can you besiege occupied territory under normal circumstances. Not a problem if it's an ally of yours, very much a problem if someone else has captured the territory you need so they can win their own war.

Ulfr's no quitter.

So, battles. Here's all the information on them (most of it is pretty unnecessary to learn, so feel free to skip ahead):

• A battalion's morale automatically goes up when not engaged in combat (including when besieging a holding, but NOT when assaulting one).
  
• An individual levy (from a single holding) has only one flank; a merged battalion has up to three flanks, each of which can have one general assigned.
  
• Generals increase damage of their flank by 2% for each point of Martial they have. More notably, generals provide bonuses (and penalties) based on traits, amplified (or reduced) based on Martial ability - traits are first added (e.g. if someone is both Patient and an Aggressive Leader, the base becomes +10% - 20% = -10%), and then the multiplier is applied.
  
  In Ulfr's case, he started with Aggressive Leader and picked up Flat Terrain Expert along the way. His Martial is above 20, which completely negates most (if not all) penalties. As a result, he gains, a bonus to damage (from Aggressive Leader, which doesn't reduce Defense because its penalty was negated), a bonus to morale damage (from Cruel), and a bonus to damage and defense (from Flat Terrain Expert; it appears to apply after other effects, since otherwise Aggressive Leader ought to negate the defense bonus). He'd also gain an additional damage bonus (from Aggressive Leader) were he in the Pursuit Phase, on which note...
  
• The three phases are Skirmish (archers excel), Melee (infantry and pikemen excel), and Pursuit (cavalry excels; one flank is retreating from the other flank, which happens at about 25% of total morale).
  
• All the damage of the attacking flank (a combination of the base attack strength of the units involved, and any active modifiers) is divided evenly among the unit types of the defending flank (e.g. if a flank is 60% light cavalry, the cavalry will receive 60% of the damage), then reduced by defense strength (similarly calculated). The final result is the casualties of that flank subgroup.
  
  Every time a soldier dies, the other soldiers in the flank take morale damage. Once one flank has fled or been slaughtered, their attacker will join up with an adjacent allied flank.
  
• Certain Generals' traits, combined with the makeup of their army, can lead to special tactics. Some are good (e.g. Clever Ambush), some are bad (e.g. Hesitant Commander), most are tradeoffs. There are so many of these that I honestly wouldn't even bother learning them, just remember that generally, an unambiguously beneficial trait (like Inspiring Leader) leads to good tactics.

SHORT VERSION: Archers skirmish, infantry melees, cavalry pursues; pick generals with high martial and good bonuses; deaths in a flank lowers that flank's morale.

Took 169 casualties, inflicted 318 and routed the enemy. 41.4 Warscore, 3.1 Prestige (but no piety) to my generals, and .1 military tech points. One of those is a loooooot more useful than the rest.

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BRINGING THE BOY UP RIGHT

Spymaster discovered a plot against us. Looks like it got quite a bit of support, unsurprisingly.

Looks like we have a good shot at tossing him in jail for the next Blot...

Well, fuck. He fled to a court outside our jurisdiction, but thankfully he's powerless and terrified of us, so he knocks it off anyway. All is well.

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THAT'S more like it.

As you can see, fully occupying the disputed territory isn't the only way to win a war; obliterating the enemy army can work, too. In fact, sometimes (particularly with peasant revolts) it's the best way to go about it.

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As an interesting side note, the standard Dyre the Stranger is my courtier since I used the ruler designer to set someone else up as king, and the History of the Petty Kingdom of Konugardr shows him as a previous holder (though he doesn't despise me for usurping his title). This seems to be standard procedure if you use the Ruler Designer.

(11-02-2013, 04:37 AM)Coldblooded Wrote: »Having already played as Denmark and Bavaria in the unmodded version, I'd kind of like to see a game take place a little further away. How about someone from Eastern Europe, Africa, or the Middle East?

For traits, let's go with an ambitious military strategist to start off with.

Also let's have our first leader be female, because why make things easy for ourselves?

If not for the fact that ladies can’t do much in CKII unless it’s modded (in particular, they can’t be generals, which would mean all our Martial bonuses would be going to waste), I would definitely have done that.

(11-02-2013, 09:30 PM)Dais Wrote: »If you're partial to using the ruler designer, the hellenic faith is an option I've found interesting lately. I've only tried playing as a hellenic dude in a really stupid way, but I imagine it's still a moderately interesting challenge. Any pagan would be quite interesting though.

I actually was looking into the Hellenic faith earlier, but it seems that (since it mainly exists for historical reasons, similar to “generic pagan”) it can’t be reformed and doesn’t have any interesting mechanics. Curiously enough, it is apparently considered “Reformed Pagan” despite lacking a religious head and retaining conversion penalties.

(11-04-2013, 05:05 AM)MrGuy Wrote: »If not for the fact that ladies can’t do much in CKII unless it’s modded (in particular, they can’t be generals, which would mean all our Martial bonuses would be going to waste), I would definitely have done that.

(11-04-2013, 08:20 AM)Coldblooded Wrote: »Ah well, as long as we get to fight everybody, I guess that's all that really matters.

I'm guessing that you must be pretty close to conquering the Kingdom of Ruthenia by now?

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With that latest conquest, I have the clout to establish a couple more duchies, boosting my prestige and fulfilling a necessary qualification to become King of Ruthenia.

Unsurprisingly, the local chiefs are less than pleased with Ulfr's rule, and quickly begin to rise in rebellion. "Factions" are basically a mechanic where vassals will group around a certain cause (the biggest ones being reduced crown authority, a change of succession law, the installation of a new ruler, or independence) if they're displeased with their leader.

In this case, even if all three of them banded together, they wouldn't be that huge a threat. Otherwise, I'd put effort into placating them or maybe even grant one of them independence to ensure the stability of the realm.

For now, I could use some scratch, and having an army pre-raised won't exactly hurt.

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"No, I have changed my mind." Ahahahahahahaha.

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It was pretty much only a matter of time.

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Lucked out here. Diligent is a rock-solid trait, giving you +1 to all your base stats. That plus Ambitious gives us a global modifier of +3, which is pretty cash.

More tech advances! I went with a Heavy Infantry upgrade, Castle Infrastructure (which increases tax income from castles, and allows you to build more things in them) and Majesty (which provides a small multiplier to piety and prestige gain over time).

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Though it was tempting to birch him, I decided that Ulfr didn't really have a reason to do that to his beloved kid. Now they can smash skulls against big ol' rocks together, as father and son!

The war proceeds without incident. I should note that there's a reason I'm taking a circuitous route here - attacking armies get a penalty if they cross a river into the target province. Sometimes speed is better, but often it's worth sacrificing some time to improve your chances of success.

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Somewhat annoyingly, even if your vassals would be okay with you revoking a title (which, if the target is a traitor, they always are at least once), they never accept banishment. I get it as a game balancing thing, though.

Two rebels eligible for banishment, and none of my other vassals would dip into the negatives from my tyranny. I go ahead with it and am now swimming in ye olde cashe.

I immediately blow said lucre on duchy-level titles. Delicious!

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Let's talk ambitions. They're triggered by a certain lack in life - if you have a stat lower than 8, you can take an ambition to improve it; if you don't have a son or a daughter, you can take an ambition to make a baby of that particular sex; if your vaults are empty, you can take an ambition to hoard some gold, and so forth. They're pretty neat, and Become King would be very useful for Ulfr.

Would be useful.

But hey, let's not get into that now when we have another Vasiliy to take down!

Seriously. So many fucking Vasiliys. I checked and there's another one lurking around our southern border.

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Lots of consolidation to the northwest. Greater Poland is getting particularly big, and I expect Lithuania to be united by either the High Chief of Zemaiteje or the Tribe of Lettigallians very soon.

I build a militia training ground to get some more light infantry (but, more importantly, to get lots of archers in the future). I'll spare you the details of any further holding improvements unless it's something super special.

Awww, fuck. Slothful (as one might imagine) is the antithesis of Diligent, making you slightly shittier at everything. Birching the kid doesn't make him shape up, either.

Oh, my, somebody didn't get the message from the thrashing I gave his old lackeys.

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And here, my friends, is where Ulfr gets completely fucked. But we'll address that in a bit.

There is a brief glimmer of hope! I have as many guys as he does, plus I'm Offensive Pagan and he's Defensive outside of home turf. Surely my awesome Varangian warriors shall obliterate him!

Or we'll get completely wrecked. Piast not only has a larger army than us, but for some reason, his troops are roided up like nobody's business. On second glance, the reason for this seems to be that he has more archers, while we have more cavalry - remember how archers excel during Skirmish, but light cavalry is only at its highest potential during Pursuit? It's a small difference, but it's enough that if he has decent generals, the advantage quickly compounds itself.

Honestly, there's not a lot I could have done to foresee this coming, though if I had spent less money on duchies and more on shoring up my defenses, I might have had a greater chance. C'est la vie.

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Though pricey, the mercenary troop definitely seemed worthwhile; once again, my forces were equal to that of my enemy, or so it would seem. You'd think I'd have learned from the first defeat.

I did have a plan, however - since Piast's army was in the forest and I was on the plains, I would wait for him to come to me, triggering Ulfr's terrain bonus.

Probably should have tried to lead him across a river as well, in retrospect.

The bastard won't even let me surrender, nor do any of his men bother killing me. He's really determined to rub it in.

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Normally that bishop would be imprisoned and murdered ten times over, but I figured it was a pretty extreme situation.

I think that if he had managed to convert Ulfr before the war ended, he would have actually kept his land (since the Subjugation CB only applies to other pagans, I think it would have become invalid). But that's just one of many what-ifs.

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Desperately trying to stave off defeat, I went for an assault on Konugardr. Heavy casualties resulted.

Needless to say, it was a pyrrhic victory.

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Naturally, I immediately started talks of rebellion. Piast responded by trying to buy Ulfr's loyalty with cheap, meaningless titles. What kind of slimy bastard would do something as ridiculous as that?!

I also worked on murdering Ulfr, since he had two sons; under the Gavelkind succession he's limited to, and since he has multiple duchy-level titles but no kingdom-level ones, his realm would have been split, giving Ulfr an opportunity at redemption.

(I fucked up a save and this time Ulfr's son ended up heading the Independence faction, but otherwise no major differences happened so don't worry about it)

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EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ULFR, NOTHING WILL GO WRONG, EVERYTHING IS GREAT FOREVER

Oh, what, now people are snatching up provinces when they revolt? Whatever is this world coming to?

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State of the World, c. 890

Looks like the High Chief of Zemaiteje did, in fact, manage to become King of Lithuania. Good for him, I suppose.

Up north, Rurik's managed to become a proper king rather than a petty one - King of Rus, specifically. Meanwhile, we're stuck serving some moron who by all rights ought to be a king, but expanded in a profoundly stupid way and just look at where we are now.

Things look a lot worse for us than they actually are, seeing as our ruler right now is chaste and stressed (both of which negatively impact his fertility) and he lacks any children. Thankfully, his brother produced a couple of sons, so we're not in "dynastic extinction" territory quite yet. It'll be tricky to recover from this trouncing, but we'll manage it. (Trust me, I already started working on the next update!)

(11-05-2013, 01:31 AM)Granolaman Wrote: »Aiming for the Mediterranean next right? Those vikings need some salt in their veins.

I think the Mediterranean is perhaps a bit of a ways off. And it's about to get even harder to conquer, as you'll see in the next update. Think we're best served by focusing on domestic issues at the moment.

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The first thing I do, since both my spymaster and my ruler are quite good at intrigue, is send her off to Constantinople to [strike]steal[/strike] research technology. Doing so increases my capital's tech improvement rate over time, and sometimes doles out a bundle of 50 tech points in a random area.

Early in the game, Constantinople (being the capital of the Byzantine Empire) and Damascus, over in Arabia, tend to have some of the best tech levels, so it's often a good idea to send your spymaster there if you can afford to. If I recall correctly, Paris is also quite good in later start dates.

An independent county, bordering our own? And its holdings have terrible levies and garrisons? He's not a Vasiliy, but it'll have to do.

Allies are generally "whoever's close to you via marital or dynastic ties." They can be quite useful, but they'll only come to your aid if they like you enough compared to your enemies (and, often, won't bother if the people you're attacking or the province you're defending are too far away). Keep in mind that every time you call them to war, they get a temporary opinion penalty, so you can't just keep doing it constantly.

You're also expected to answer their calls to war, but this... isn't hugely enforced, mainly because there's nothing stopping you from nominally joining a war but not actually committing any troops to it (besides the chance of the enemy besieging you and making your holdings temporarily less effective, anyway). That said, prestige gains from battle are increased for allies, so it can be a good idea to actually help out if it's convenient.

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With our friend's help, we easily take Chortitza. We still can't actually create a duchy or anything, but it's nice to have a little extra income.

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I don't know whether it's because we're Chaste or someone's spymaster was starting shit (one of their tasks can lead to spreading rumors that a noble of the province is homosexual), but everyone thinks we're buttfuckin'. It doesn't actually seem to have an effect on our reputation, besides occasionally making us give up a tiny bit of piety or prestige, but it's not exactly helping Frodi's perpetual state of anxiety.

(For the record, "I'll talk about it" gives -10 to prestige, which is usually a drop in the bucket, while going to the brothel gives a temporary -1 to all our attributes. But since Frodi is so stressed and fearful, he doesn't want to take any goddamn chances. The event fires several times, may have been a factor in us losing our chastity, and then fires a few times more.)

We snap at them both - Kol because we're so stressed, Kinga because we're terrified of what might happen if Piast thinks we've risen above our station.

Things go okay with our steward, though.

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Occasionally, the boss pesters us with an offer to let one of our family members free for a paltry sum. We should definitely have one as an heir, but, hm... would Frodi rather have his brother, who if nothing else is still young and full of energy? Or his dad, who considers him a massive disappointment and will probably spend most of his time plotting to murder us and bashing courtiers against rocks?

Yeah, he wasn't really worth 10 gold when it comes down to it.

Plus, hey, he grants us both all his claims when he dies! Except... they're weak instead of strong. And Thorbrandr's kids can't inherit them unless he's able to press them, which...

Well, first of all, every one of these provinces is impractical to attack for one reason or another (mainly strong levies/garrisons; we could easily take Terebovl if not for that). More importantly, though, a weak claim can only be pressed under special circumstances, as noted above. For the most part, we're S.O.L.

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WELL,

FUCK.

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And this is why Gavelkind sucks. Since Piast had two duchy titles, no kingdom titles, and two sons, his realm was split in two (and rather unevenly), basically pitting them against each other immediately. If he'd expanded differently and gotten Poland locked down, he wouldn't have had this problem, so I have no sympathy for the rat bastard.

Anyway, we ended up a vassal of the Duke of Mazovia...

Who apparently did not have a lot of good generals if he seriously thought cowardly old Frodi was worth the trouble.

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And great! All our claims are weak (though to be fair, since he's a child, we could press them against Siemowit) and we have no fucking army to speak of, but I suppose we're a threat to the bastard. Neither he or his successor ever lets us out.

Greater Poland briefly erupts in its own micro-civil war, but it cools down after a while. Pretty much as soon as that happens, Lithuania gets torn apart, though. Gavelkind is monstrous, man.

And speaking of broken power bases, our piece of shit liege lets us be independent! But we can't actually swear fealty to anyone else as long as we're in jail, which... kind of exposes us to Conquest and instant game over. Not the best idea in retrospect.

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After a while, I get bored of pretty much just waiting for Frodi to up and die already, and nudge the process along.

Oh no what a tragedy taken before his time et cetera what evera. Let's move on to Thorbrandr.

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Since we know we aren't going to do very well on our own, we partner up with Rurik the Second. We're an enclave, which isn't the best position defensively, but hopefully our liege can take care of that - our concern is what gives us the most opportunities for expansion, and "surrounded by potential enemies" is good for that.

Also, for some reason, Rurik is fucking showering praise on us even though we're no real threat to him? Or maybe we are legitimately a really good spymaster, but he wants us to stay on his good side. Hey, works for me regardless - honorary titles and council memberships give you prestige and a bit of extra gold over time.

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Dang, The Abbasid Caliphate Is Huge

The Abbasids generally get a powerful empire going early on, but this is pretty ludicrous; they've more or less wiped out the Byzantine Empire and I'm fairly sure Bulgaria is next. Maybe it's for the best that we didn't get a chance to become Orthodox; it doesn't look like a winning theology.