Crusader Kings 2 Tutorial

Yes i know, the game is old. But i want to share the game for those who perhaps haven't heard of it before. Crusader Kings 2 is a strategic game set in the medieval ages, there are multiple start days you can choose from and then you can choose any character in that date ruling a county, duchy, kingdom or empire. Your character inevitable death isn't game over but you continue as his/her heir so be sure to have an heir by marrying in a young fertile age and you should be good. If you have serious negative fertility modifiers then that's one line of the dynasty gone. Usually you have siblings or other family members to replace you. There's 2 types of game over: 1: Not having an dynastic heir. 2: Losing all your holdings. You can even take lands just by tactically marrying into being heirs. Next is cabinet positions, There are 5 different council positions as there are 5 different 'skills'. Obviously pick the best for the job unless you want to sacrifice that for relations. Best for relations is the other minor positions who have no effect other than opinion and the one special minor position which is the regent and you really need to pick the best in case for emergency. Next is the laws section, here you can change your succession laws in 3 ways: 1: You can change if women are even allowed for succession and if they have same preference as men or not. 2: You can change who is the heir, either its your dynasty's heir or its elected. 3: You can change how land is shared (or not shared at all) Either the land is shared to all your kids with the oldest taking the primary title (usually the most powerful title you hold) or the oldest or youngest takes all the land you had. If you want your dynasty to spread over the continent i recommend sharing but if you want ultimate power from you i recommend not sharing but beware of the limit of land you can hold. The other side of laws is crown authority tax and levies laws. Higher crown authority basically benefits you but makes your vassals dislike you so beware. Same with taxes and levies. Basically higher risk = higher reward.

Technology is spread around the world. In the start it seems like the byzantine area have technological advantage in the start. As i said technology spreads so having a neighbor that has better tech helps you improve that part of tech and catch up. The second way is by manually upgrading tech which requires either military, economic or cultural points to upgrade. You can get these points from buildings, spymaster spying, marshal focusing on military advancements, steward focusing on economic advancements and bishop focusing on cultural advancements. Military is mainly levies from your holdings or from vassals but can also have hired soldiers from other parts of the world. Don't forget there are also ships to move around. Since there is always a possibility of an war save up of at least around 500 gold so you can always have an decent hired army available and maintain it for about 3 months or longer. If you actually have more power than that(county or poor economy and duchies in some cases) you can rely on your levies and economy to single handed beat the enemy. Plot can helps you revoke or kill targets you find easy. Or you can just focus on defense and stop any plot if possible. You can also hire people to your court so that you have more people available to have one of the 5 council positions. Hosting tournaments is also an possibility for prestige and opinion in expense of gold (might include side effects of wounds minor and major or even death to the participants). There are also other things you can do depending on your situation events wise.

Religion is a major factor in medieval times. You can ask for excommunication or a divorce from your head of faith. If a title that is not yours is not the same faith as yours, you can declare a holy war but it has risk of bringing its fellow faith believers to war too( if you declare war on a christian the people who follow the same faith with him may join on his side. Don't forget there can be crusades and jihads on any moment so keep an eye on your neighbors faith. The last part of the most i can fit in this tutorial is factions. Factions can be created by your vassals with usually low opinion of you and other vassals can join the faction, they always have a purpose. They want to either depose you and have someone else in the throne, change succession laws, lower crown authority cause basically they want power from you. When they have a significant amount of soldiers (around 100% or higher compared to your amount of soldiers). Solutions are to keep your vassals happy or to be that powerful and give your vassals minimal power to the point you forget factions are in the game.