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Old 16-05-2013, 21:33   #1
Shabbaman
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Default CKII: holiday in Venice

And we're back to our regular schedule: playing Crusader Kings II. This time I'll be trying the features from the republic DLC, which makes trade republics playable. This is cool because:
-I suppose the game will be more about the economy instead of feudal marriage crap. It's the economy, stupid!
-trade republics are elective, so there is a bit of a minigame between different families, Romeo&Julia style.
-republics are the new hotness, monarchies are so 1672.

You might've guessed what republic I picked, but a lot of thought has gone into picking Venice. My preference would be the Hansa, but that'd mean I'd start as a vassal of the HRE again... and I've seen enough of the HRE. With Venice being on an island I figured I should be safe from bullying emperors. Let's see how that works out.

So now I'm playing as Domenico Contarini. Starting the game I notice two messages at the top of the screen: I am unmarried, and I get to form a duchy. Duchy... wait what? I'll ignore that (for now at least), and I'll find me a genius wife to start the Contarini Breeding Programme. The first good thing about playing a republic: you don't get a rep hit for marrying common people (although you have to pay if you want to marry a noblewoman), so finding good DNA is easy. I notice I also have a bunch of sons, none of them with any good traits. Oh well, can't have it all.

Now I figure out what it is I could do. I have no gold, no army and no claims. Hm. At least I can send my council on missions for free... I have something resembling an income, though it's just as bad as any common duchy start. So I wait for a year, see some galleys sunk by bad weather (lose 50 gold), see some luck with trading (gain 100 gold), and get the appropiate amount of gold to build my first tradepost:



So what's this? I build a trade post and get filthy rich? If by filthy you mean "you don't have money for soap", then yes. This trade post earns me around 10g... per year. Somehow investing 159.6g for 10g/y return doesn't seem so good to me, but hey, this is what you're supposed to do as a republic so I'll roll with it.

I've build my first trade post in Zadar. Or Zara, depending where you're coming from. Zara was important for Venice, it was one of their first "colonies". Fun fact: the venetians got the crusaders of the 4th crusade to besiege Zara for them, because the crusaders couldn't pay for their ship passage in coin. Then they proceeded to sack Byzantium. I doubt I'll get to that (I've yet to see the ERE or HRE crumble like they historically did), but it's an enticing prospect. But the main reason I build there was because I was on holiday there two years ago. Pretty city, with Venetian city walls and all.

So now what? Well, I've increased my income by 10 g/y, so the waiting time for the next trade post will be significantly less. I build a couple more trade posts. While the game is running at triple speed, I'm browsing through the different menus. The republic screen shows the status of the different families, including successor status. If I put a bit of money in the campaign fund, my son is assured of succession:



In the same screen I found that I can upgrade my home. Fun. All upgrades cost money. And I have none. There are two upgrades that have economic value: a personal vault, and an improved palace. I always wanted a personal vault, so I build one. It's also the cheaper of the two.

At this point I discover that there's apparently a limit to the number of trade posts you can build. This seems odd to me, since Genoa was spamming trade posts at the north sea coast in my previous game. I had send my chancellor to improve relations in Djukla (no money for pushing forged claims anyway), because better relations mean cheaper trade posts. But when I wanted to build one... I had exceeded the limit. I discover that having adult male family members in your court increase the amount of trade posts. Somehow the Contarini family is wandering all over Italy, so I invite a couple of them back to court and continue spamming. Unfortunately having more of those males at court means you have to split profit (in other words: pay upkeep), and they cost more than the trade post provides. Derp. I upgrade some of the trade posts, though the return on investment is calculated in centuries, not years. There has to be another way to increase revenue.

While waiting for more gold I'm training my map staring skills, and I notice the HRE moves it's capital. You might remember this guy:



Clearly the AI is better at this game than I am

By now I'm getting bored: I want to do stuff. My army is still pitiful, and I cannot afford mercenaries. Improving trade posts also increases my retinue cap, so once I invest 200g I get a retinue of 500 men. That's a huge step from where I'm now, so that's the plan for the short term. Improving levies seems a poor plan. I still haven't completely figured out retinue upkeep, but I think it's still cheaper than mercenaries. At least the first 500 men, getting more than that doesn't seem viable for now (but neither is hiring mercenaries). Coincidentally I discovered/remembered that it's possible to make your wife spymaster. And intrigue is still cheap!



Eliminating the heads of the other families seems a viable strategy to me.

Now that I have a somewhat decent army, I decide it's time to expand my territory. I had played a bit with the unique CB's: you get a claim on territory if there's a trade post. And you can attack rival trade republics at will. Seems fun (once you get an army). Still, even with an army, most lords will have a larger army. Luckily for me this is Crusader Kings II, and most of the time there's a succession war going on somewhere. At first I pushed a claim for a trade post from another venetian family, but that doesn't seem worthwhile to me (although trade post placement cost is relative to the distance to the closest venetian territory, so it's still worthwhile) and I noticed that most money still comes from demesne, not trade... (LAME) so making my rivals rich will not be part of my winning strategy. So, step two of my masterplan, I push my claim on the county Zadar as soon as the kingdom of Croatia is in some crisis:



That wasn't so hard. Now, old Domenico dies and is succeeded by his second son. Yay.
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Old 04-06-2013, 14:26   #2
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Well, Domenico didn't die after all. At the time I was warring on Pisa, the tradepost of Malta specifically. The major factor in these wars is whether you manage to occupy whatever it is you're declared war for, and in the case of a tradepost... well, apparently you can't capture tradeposts unless they're in a city owned by your enemy. And if you can't capture your target, your opponent gets free warscore which increases over time. In other words: I couldn't win that war, even if I took all his cities. So I backtracked to the point before I declared war, and lo and behold, Domenico lived another 10 years. In this time I managed to expand the venetian trade zone all the way to the levant:



Costly tradepost is costly.

And not only because of the investment itself: to expand the tradezone this far I had to extend my tradepost limit. Expand the palace, get more family members (who eat money) at court. Expanding the palace is worthwhile, I found some upgrades even have stat upgrades:



Although there's no way (because it's not documented in the game and nobody bothers to put the info in the wiki) to tell what the other tier 2 upgrades do, I suspect they're upgrading the other stats. I think this is a new feature, as I hadn't noticed it before the patch. What patch? Oh yes, there's a new patch including the Old Gods DLC (and BEARDS). One of the features is revamped tech research: you can now add funds to a specific research pool (much like EU3). And apparently there are new techs, yay.

Well, yay...

One of the techs is trade practices: at tier 1, you get a 100% penalty to your tradepost limit. For 2000g (or ten million years of research) you get to tier 2, where you get only a 50% penalty and +2 tradepost. At tier 3 you get no penalty and more tradeposts. So what does this mean? This means I can't build the two tradeposts I had left towards my tradepost limit. At least, not until I waste 2000g. Why is this relevant? From above picture you might've seen the income from some tradeposts is below 10g/year. Basically this means that the family member I have to feed costs more money than the tradepost gives in revenue. This might not be the end of all things, were it not that in the meanwhile I asked around why I wasn't already swimming in gold like I was supposed to as a Doge. The answer is twofold:
-the city trade zone means crap, it only looks nice on the map but it doesn't do anything: only a family trade zone connected to the capital will significantly increase income
-the major factor in trade zone income is the number of cities you own in that family trade zone

Besides all that, you still earn a lot more from those cities (your demesne, basically) than from your tradeposts. The sane thing to do is to use your tradeposts to get CB's and claim cities. I've found that republican CB's are a bit buggy: for most of my tradeposts I don't get a CB. This could be because the primary holding in the county is a city, or because the holding is the capital of another nation, or something completely random. This is annoying the hell out of me.

But that was not the reason I quit with this save (yes, you're reading that correctly). At a certain point Pisa declares war on me over the city of Zara (but why I can't declare war on them over the city of, say, Naples is beyond me, and still annoying the hell out of me). Go ahead, a good way to get some money in war reperations out of Pisa. Or so I thought. Pisa showed up with a mercenary army, so I hired a nice army of 6300 men. The mercenary army instantly arrived in Venice.

So.

Did you know Venice is an island?

I found that to move an army of 6300 men you need 63 galleys. I have 60 galleys.

So.

Did you know you can't split a mercenary army?

Sometimes this game just sucks.
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Old 07-06-2013, 12:58   #3
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I couldn't stand leaving this savegame like this, so I just restarted as Venice. A quick look at the tech screen showed that I started halfway to Trade Practices III, so no tradezone penalty this time. I guess the Old Gods DLC broke my save (retarded).

Anyway...

I started with finding suitable breeding stock for the male Contarini's. All of them, because with seniority succession that's highly relevant. I got myself a strong (+3 to every stat) spymaster wife, and the most prominent rival family head is already disposed of.



My breeding programme pays off soon:



This isn't relevant for now under seniority succession, but at least it's a promising start. My goal for now is to get a family trade zone in the whole Adriatic. I'll need to find a way to steal some opposing family holdings to make that work.
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Old 07-06-2013, 22:27   #4
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I didn't even need to search for a way to grab holdings, the way to grab them found me! It's alsmost as if I'm in soviet Russia. My spymaster discovered a plot of the head of the Dandolo's to seize my tradepost in Zara. When you discover a plot, you can ask the plotter kindly to cease and desist. Or, you can throw him in jail. Well, you can throw any of your vassals in jail, but when you've discovered a plot, nobody will care. You don't want to be know as a tyrant as long as that isn't necessary. Anyway, jail. If you want to throw someone in jail, there's a fat chance he will rise in rebellion.

And thats A Good Thing(tm). Why, you ask? Because after you beat them senseless, you can revoke their titles without penalties! So that's how I got the city of Zara.



If I didn't have pics to prove it, you wouldn't believe that the head of the Ziani's was just as stupid:



I'm assuming Spalato is Split, just like Zara is Zadar. This is easy, I've increased my demesne by two without waging war. My personal economy is looking better now as well. What's bugging me is that my vassals can start "seize tradepost" plots, but I can't. I've found that you can only use this on families who own more tradeposts than you do (so tough luck for me).

Having all these high intrigue characters at court makes plotting easy. I've killed all family heads, and I've been so succesfull that for some families there aren't any adult males left:



And this is what happens if you kill the last one:



A bit of a pity, I had hoped to inherit his tradepost as well.
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Old 08-06-2013, 23:32   #5
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For some reason people want to give me their money:



And with that money I build tradeposts. My family trade zone now looks like I want it to be:



The plan is to expand a bit to the Greek peninsula, and capture cities along the coast. By now I have enough holdings to take on the smaller nations. I got my first county, because the Croatians seem to be fighting amongst themselves all the time.



And my second county.



And because I die, my heir can declare war on the croats again:



Now, the Byzantine empress got her empire back together, and apparently she doesn't like me. She wants Venice for some reason. I suspect it's because the croatian lands that are now mine are de jure part of her empire. That sucks, because now it's too expensive to build tradeposts in Greece. And even worse:



Totally uncalled for. I'll send my spymaster stepmother at you, you bitch! Luckily there are still people who want to give me their money:



I have a feeling this won't end well. But that will have to wait until after my holiday. Not in Venice though.
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Old 27-06-2013, 21:01   #6
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It didn't end well for old Domenico. He (I) got succeeded by his cowardly son.



I have to bribe some council members to keep them happy. After succession you get a harsh "short reign" penalty. And for some reason it pays off to keep your spymaster befriended...

Iacopo keeps expanding the family's demesne. I now own a coastal city in Zeta.



And with my spymaster happy, I keep getting results from intrigues against the other families. Despite my own poor intrigue stats...



And yet the other families plot against ME. I try to put them into jail, or rather I try to fail to put them in jail so they'd rise in rebellion. In that case I could smash them and then put them in jail, which would allow me to strip the traitor's titles. This guy rather flees to Pisa unfortately.



And when the old duke of Dubrovnik dies, the truce expires and I grab Zeta itself:



The Byzantines aren't Dubrovnik's best neighbours either, they're grabbing his other lands. And the Byzantine bitch empress isn't even trying to be my nice neighbour:



That's what I was afraid of. As I see it, there are two possibilities to survive the angry Byzantine expansion drift: become their vassal, or pray for a huge succession war in the Byzantine empire. For now, I go with the latter. I surrender Zeta for now. I do get my revenge though, I manage to kill the Byzantine heir:





The Croats keep declaring war on me. I don't really mind, because this nets me prestige and gold.



And every time he declares war on me, I don't need to keep the truce afterwards. So I keep expanding my territory. As a bonus, the first time I see a crusade for the holy land succeeding.



Yes, that actually happened.
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Old 28-06-2013, 16:53   #7
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I keep spamming intrigue plots to kill opposing family members, with great success. Compared to the Germany game, I like where this is going. It's also easier than in the Germany game, since because of my low rank I can get a lot of lowborn women with high intrigue stats at my court. Although gamewise it's not that useful (it'd be useful if the other family heads would be old and my heir would be young). At least the popups are amusing.

A real pity I can't start "seize tradepost" plots though.





Iacopo dies and is succeeded by his brother Andrea.



And more Croatian coastal resorts are owned by the Contarini's:



Speaking of resorts, did you know that the city center of Split (or Spalato, as it is called ever since I own it) is build within the walls of Dioclatian's palace? I read something about it while we were on holiday in Croatia, so we visited the town.



The walls of the palace are still standing and were used as city walls. It's huge. Truely amazing, and worth a visit.

I notice one Byzantine province where I own a tradepost is independent, so I seize the city immediately.



The popup obscures that the Byzantines have almost annexed all of the Balkan. The few remaining Croatian counties and my Dalmatian provinces are all that's left here of their de jure lands. There's the kingdom of Sicily (fun fact: it has a Norman lord, historically accurate), but since the empress has married the Sicilian king... meh. I've decided that swearing fealty to the Byzantine empress is the wisest thing to do. Any thoughts?
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Old 01-07-2013, 11:59   #8
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I started my new session with vassalizing myself to the Byzantine bitch. Sadly this is the only way I see to keep my lands. I don't think being a vassal will change a lot for me, besides paying a quarter of my profit to the empress. That, and all my lands get renamed in greek.



Now that I don't need to worry about Byzantine invasions I start a war with the rival republic of Pisa (I noticed that Genua somehow got wiped out, which is a pity). With the help of a minor mercenary band (and, I have to admit, the fact that they were at war with Sicily and that my new liege and wife of the Sicilian king send over a 15k stack did help a bit as well) I defeat the Pisans and grab one of the tradeposts on Italy's eastern shore. Because that tradepost is in my family's trade zone means that it'll give me a lot of revenue. Another option is to get their demesne and really hurt their income and levy size. I get the option to go for the Sardinian cities, but those are quite remote. I'd rather get Capua, but for some reason that is not an option.



The new Billung emperor (three Billungs in a row, the AI is definetely better at this game than I am) is not immediately popular, and I take advantage of the Hollander league independence war by grabbing Pescara.



Meanwhile, some random duke is pushing for the title of Basileus. Strangely enough he even wins, which means the bitch empress is deposed. What's even stranger: suddenly I'm independent again. That's not a situation I want to be in now, but if this means I become independent every time the emperor dies, then this is an easy way to get out of vassalization. It might make sense if the fealty is personal. Or maybe it's because my main title isn't within the de jure realm of the ERE (although it'll drift there in 100 years). Anyway, long story short:



The new basileus likes me. Or maybe he doesn't, but he grants me a honorary title anyway:



Because the title is in greek, I can't make out if "anthypatos" is A Good Thing (tm) or not. It does grant me a prestige bonus though.

I fight another trade war with Pisa. I strategically picked the tradepost of Salerno.



With Salerno, the southern part of my tradezone is connected again with the northern part. This means a big boost in tradezone value.

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Old 10-07-2013, 17:20   #9
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The new basileus might like me, nobody likes the new basileus. The deposed Byzantine empress is revolting, so I take the opportunity to take a city from her.



In that image you can see the new tech screen. I acquired enough points to invest in Town Infrastructure IV. Funny thing, despite the former Byzantine bitch took a lot of Croatian lands, the king of Croatia comes to her rescue in my war to reclaim my cities. It doesn't help much. However...



It's a lot of money, but this means I'd get to usurp another duchy title (and get a claim on Veglia).



After I finish the war, I start a new war to punish Croatia. Oh, and also because he's weak from the previous war. Right after I start the war, I die. Luckily I declared war just before that, otherwise all that money to fake the claim would've gone down the drain...



I found this to be hilariously funny:



The Billung AI wants to marry my daughter. Sure, why not. This might even mean that if I decide to secede, I'd have an actual ally that can stand up against the Byzantine emperor.



And thanks.

The multiple revolts against the emperor aren't working for him. This is a bit annoying, as this means the "rebels" are coming for my lands.

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