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JUDAS!

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No, not the Lady Gaga song, as great as it is. No I’m talking about Jihad Sultans 2 Crusader Kings 2. Let me set the scene for you guys.

Using the Character Creator I began as a German-culture Christian in Gao, and quickly expanded to take the surrounding lands and form the Kingdom of Songhai. So far so good, but then my male line seems to just end and I have nothing but daughters for like 50 years, and despite the continuation of expansion at first I’ve been struggling to keep things together. Why? Because my country is full of FAITHLESS BACKSTABBING MENDACIOUS FRAUDULENT TWO-FACED DOUBLE-CROSSING PERFIDIOUS RECREANT TRAITORS, THAT’S FUCKING WHY!

I’m so mad. I try and be a nice, benevolent ruler. But people keep rebelling and that necessitates tyranny to keep the land together – which of course makes people dislike me further. There should probably be a fear modifier for a consistently victorious tyrant because I always manage to find a way to win, whether it’s by attriting the other guys to death in the horrendously bleak deserts of Africa, taking loans until I can afford the mercenaries needed to win, or through the sheer luck of capturing the leader of a rebellion in battle.

My current Queen, Queen Luna I of Songhai and Ghana, is only 35 years old and she just put down the “Third War to Depose Queen Luna”, the “Second War against the tyranny of Queen Luna” (Caused by people who you try to arrest or revoke the titles of saying “Nah bro” and revolting instead; but I only tried to imprison them because they were involved with other revolts!), and some random attempt at independence by some podunk no-account count of Povertania, West Africa. Oh and then my still-pagan neighbors in Tarkur took a shot at me and I had to cede some territory because it was in the middle of one of those other wars.

Why is there never a vassal swarm in my DEFENSE?

Twenty-two years on the throne and already in this mess. And furthermore thanks to not having ANY SONS EVER ARGH I don’t have people I can hand landed titles out to any more; so here I am sitting pretty with a ton more provinces than I can administer and nobody loyal to give the damned things to. Mom tried that with Duke Valerian II and he got outmaneuvered by Dukes Emich I and II, the latter of whom ended up with ALL THE DUCHIES. Which meant I had to fight 3/4 of my country simultaneously because Emich II was all “Oh ho ho ho I’m not going to settle for that oh no I’m Petyr Fucking Baelish, Littlefinger big ambitions, time to betray the daughter of the woman who gave me power in the first place!” So now my country is a ruined hellhole, going from the most prosperous and powerful Christian state outside Europe to an impoverished, contracting realm with no money, no manpower, and no loyal vassals in the space of twenty years.

I love this game.

e; Oh also there’s Rome 2 announced.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

In Which a Strategy Game Tugs at my Heartstrings

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I never thought that a Paradox game, of all things, would touch my heart so much, but, well, it did.

See, in Crusader Kings 2, you play as a dynasty. If your character dies, you become the next character in your line, and so on and so forth. In my current game as the Holy Roman Empire, I started out as the Kaiser, and then became my firstborn son when the Kaiser died. At that point everything went down the tubes over the matter of a few in-game years as my jealous younger brother declared war on me, took most of the empire from me, defeated me soundly, and finally instilled me as a minor Duke of a couple of provinces. Then I died (rather mysteriously, I might add) and suddenly I found myself playing as my next heir– a four-year-old boy.

I was still sort of reeling from this whole development when a lone character approached me– my uncle, then in his late teens. His name was Prince Heinrich the V. He asked for a title and some land, so I gave him some so I wouldn’t have to micromanage all of mine. And at this point he became the one character in the game who was kind to me. He tutored me. He was on my court as my spymaster. I could always count on him for a favor. I imagined that my little boy character looked up to him as a sort of hero figure to latch on to, and even out-of-character I appreciated that this guy was one of the sons of the original Kaiser that I’d started out with and because of that I was attached to him.

Time went on and the boy grew up. Once he hit about 15 years old, I got this event:

Now one thing about Crusader Kings 2 for those of you who don’t play it: Every character gets several “traits”, both physical and personality-wise, and these effect different stats on your character. A gay character gets a hit to their fertility rate and it affects diplomacy a little, but mostly it’s just there for flavor.

And so I clicked the okay button, figuring it was just a random event of sorts, and then, a few in-game days later, I got another event:

So it wasn’t just random. My character had developed feelings for the one person in the game who was kind to him.

Put that last image on the right side of this one and you have basically my exact reaction.

Rather nervously I clicked the button. I wasn’t sure what would happen next in the game or if it would have an effect. As it turned out– it didn’t really. There were no more events about this particular storyline, although– tellingly– Prince Heinrich V remained kind to me.

My character grew up, married a woman (you can only marry the opposite gender in game), and had a couple of kids, some of whom I put into Prince Heinrich’s tutelage. At some point around here I was mysteriously killed and I found myself playing one of my daughters, who grew into an upstanding Duchess in part due to the fact that Prince Heinrich tutored me and whacked all of the negative traits out of me. In the little story in my mind, I could imagine him raising me like his own child as a favor to my dad.

Most of this stuff is long-past in my game, but that little storyline, spawned by a couple of events, has stuck with me. I never thought I’d get this many “feels” out of a Paradox grand strategy game, but I’m glad I was proven wrong.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

Crusader Kings 2: A Paradox Game for People Who Don’t Play Paradox Games

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Games by Paradox Interactive tend to attract a specific sort of person and you either are or aren’t that person. The games involve staring at maps and charts for hours at end and doing a bunch of micromanagement, and let’s face it, that either appeals to you or it doesn’t.

Well, yesterday, after spending about thirty minutes getting Crusader Kings 2 to run on my computer (You know your computer is bad when…) I spent a good several hours with the game, and while it’s probably too early for me to make some sort of definitive statement on the matter, I’m already getting the sense that this is, as I said in the title: A Paradox game for people who otherwise don’t play Paradox games.

Let me explain where I’m coming from here. Let’s take the other Paradox games. Victoria is about micromanaging pie charts, economy and government. Hearts of Iron is about micromanaging military forces and supplies. Europa Universalis goes for a more nuanced “just take over the world” approach and throws you right into this with no real explanation of what’s going on.

Crusader Kings, on the other hand, is about your family. The core mechanic of the game mostly revolves around who’s marrying who and who’s tutoring who and so on. For the average person, this is far more intuitive to pick up on than whether or not you need more supply convoys, or something.

Paradox continues to make the game accessible to newbies with the inclusion of comprehensive “hints” which explain every bit of the UI, a tech tree that mostly runs itself if you want it to, and military at the push of a button.

If you are the Holy Roman Empire, this is what happens when you press that button.

There is, of course, more to do for veterans or people who warm up to the game quickly. It’s a Paradox game, so there’s warfare, and you can also do fun and exciting things like assassinating people or throwing people into dungeons. But none of this stuff is exactly necessary if you’re just warming up to the game, and you can spend hours pouring over your family tree and selecting potential brides for your sons.

The result is that Crusader Kings 2 is a game that does a very good job of easing newbies into the Paradox family and introducing them to typical grand strategy concepts and UI features, while still maintaining a decent amount of complexity for those who want it. It used to be that I’d recommend a newcomer to the genre try Europa Universalis 3 as their first game, but I think I’m going to have to change that recommendation to Crusader Kings 2. This really is a solid, enjoyable game so far, and if any of you guys have been wanting to make the jump to grand strategy for a while but have been iffy on it, well, now is a great time to do it.