Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I recently started playing Crusader Kings 2, a game I have had sitting in my games library for a very long time now. Like the other grand Paradox strategy games, they are complex, time-consuming and often very buggy affairs. I feel like I ought to like them but it’s easier to appreciate them in the abstract than to actually sit down and play one seriously. It gets especially bad if I actually need to do extra history reading just to understand who’s who and what’s going on.

To those who don’t know, the difference between this series and the better known Europa Universalis games, apart from the timeline, is that in the EU games you play as a nation but in CK2 you’re actually one specific person. Typically you gain control of a duke or a king (though you can go all the way down to a count if you want) and directly control only a limited number of holdings. However, you may have many vassals sworn to you. CK2 is therefore a game about delegating authority and managing personalities. In a way, it’s like The Sims. Each person has different personality traits and wants different things. If your character’s personality is compatible with theirs and you manage to give them what they want, everyone stays happy. If you have a personality clash and a vassal desires a landholding under your control, be on the look out for a rebellion in the near future.

Anyway after messing around with the game for a short time in order to get familiar with the interface, I promptly downloaded the excellent A Game of Thrones mod for it. This way I don’t have to actually read up on European history and hey, the mod actually adds a ton more mechanics to the base game. So I’ll be writing a game diary on what happens in my game.

I’ll be playing as Prince Doran Martell of Dorne under the Crowned Stag scenario, that is immediately after the rebellion of Robert Baratheon that ends in him being the holder of the Iron Throne. This way, I’ll have a nice, long period of peace to learn the game and hopefully Dorne is powerful enough to have decent options while not being too directly embroiled in war with the other major factions. I can’t guarantee however that this will result in an interesting game since I intend to play conservatively, much as Doran Martell did in the novels, but we’ll see what happens. Note that I’ll upload large versions of all screenshots. Just click on the image to get the full version.