Crusader Kings Complete Beginners Guide

Overview

Play this excellent game without fear of getting lost! This guide will cover all you need to enjoy your first game.

Introduction

Crusader Kings is an excellent game, yes, it’s old, but it holds up very well. CK It’s a medieval grand strategy game, unlike other strategy games, like Civilization, you do not play as a Kingdom or state, or civilization, you play as the head of a Dynasty, a King, Duke or Count, with a court, advisors, family and lands to rule, and peers that usually will want to get their hands in your lands, and quite frankly, you will want that too.

The objective of the game is to finish with the highest score in the year 1453, but the end game is whatever you really want it to be, usually in the form of land and nobility titles goals, some time you can set your goal to get all Germany under your control, another you may want to rule Greece, other time you will want to focus in control the Middle East.

Most of the time this games will be long, especially if you start in 1066, the earliest date in the game to start from, the other two dates you can start from are 1187 and 1337.

What can you expect from this game?

* CK plays very much like a board game, so you will be staring at a map A LOT.
* You will be balancing your royal budget, waging war is not cheap.
* You will be marrying people for convenience, a very good way to get young wives and powerful advisors, and from time to time be the heir to a nobility title.
* Move armies and plan cunning attacks on your enemies.
* Breed your successor, if you fail to father a son and have no successor of your own blood line, the game will end. And most of the times you will be finding the way to ensure a proper successor among all your candidates.
* Use the ‘Pause’ key and the ‘Control’ + ‘+’ and ‘Control’ + ‘-‘ to pause the time and control the game speed A LOT.
* Plot against a rival Kingdom to make it fall, just for their land or to weak a powerful rival.
* Although the game plays in real time, you will be having the “one more turn” kind of feeling.
* A great sense of satisfaction as you see your Kingdom grow and your vassals love you.
* A horrible sense of frustration as you see your Kingdom break apart and your vassals declaring war on you because your successor is hated/inept.

What can you expect from this guide

This guide covers the basics, it will let you play with enough information to actually enjoy a game. CK is kind of a complex and difficult the first couple of times you play it, but it really is not that difficult once you get to know how it works.

The Interface

The interface is quite simple and minimalistic, there are no complex menus or a lot of icons or buttons. Most of the commands are self-explanatory.

• Top Bar, where your resources, date & pause button, and info flags are displayed.
• Province Improvements, shows improvements availables to build in the selected province.
• Social groups power buttons, with this ” + ” buttons you can increase the power of each social group present in the selected province.
• Province Details, economic, strategic and social information is shown here.
• Ruler Portrait, clicking on it will open your character window.
• Coat of Arms, clicking this will center your main province and will display the Kingdom information along with your ruler portrait and the “Kingdom menu”
• Ruler Actions, a list of actions related to your ruler and Kingdom management is shown here.
• Court, clicking here you can assign courtiers to be advisors in your court.
• Treasury, customize the amount of taxes and other expenses here.
• Advances, opens the advances screen.
• Laws, opens the laws screen.
• MiniMap, access to various minimap modes, zoom levels, the Ledger screen, and the game menu.

Pause Button, date and game speed

In the top right corner of the screen you will find the date, and if you click on it, it will pause the game, you are going to be pausing the game a lot, and adjusting the game speed also, so here are the keyboard keys related to these commands.

Pause key, press it and it will pause the game, press it again and the game will continue.
Control + Numeric key minus, will decrease the game speed.
Control + Numeric key plus, will increase the speed of the game.

Info flags, this flags or banners will show important information, like vassals with low loyalty, courtiers that can be married, provinces being sieged, advisors seats currently empty and a warning when the Kingdom efficiency is below 100%.

Resources

Gold, your money, with this you do most of the things in the game, buy province improvements, pay tributes and taxes (if you are a vassal), pay for your active regiments, give gifts to another rulers, etc. You gain this by collecting taxes, asking for tribute and some events, give you gold too.

Prestige, claiming titles (which you need if you want to go to war with any catholic Kingdom, making war with other catholic nations is not well seen just because, you have to have a reason, and in this game claiming a title of a rival’s land is that reason) cost you prestige. You gain this by some traits your ruler can have, with some random events, but mainly by winning wars, conquering lands and going to crusades.

Piety, doing favors to the pope, or spreading the catholic faith with buildings in your provinces or via events you will gain piety, you can’t do much with piety, it serves to gain good standing with your peers and the pope. A word of caution, do not let your piety get into negative numbers, it can lead you to get excommunicated from the Church, once there you are easy target to the others catholic Kingdoms.

Stability, it is not a resource per se, but gaining stability can help you cash out loads of gold or prestige. Every now and then (there are a lot of modifiers to the time you can gain +1 stability, being +3 the maximum and -3 the minimum) you will earn a point to the stability of your Kingdom, some events will trade you 1 point for a reward like 20,000 gold, or can give you the chance to avoid something bad. Getting into debt or having negative prestige will earn you negative stability points, leading your kingdom to disaster. At the end the type of stability will determine the kind of some events the game will present you.

Provinces

The map is divided by provinces, you as a ruler will have a number of provinces you can control directly, this number is determined by the Intrigue stat of your ruler, if you exceed this number your Kingdom efficiency will start dropping from 100% and will start loosing income and I’m pretty sure the game will start throwing some interesting events at you. To avoid this you can start granting titles to your courtiers, making new counts or dukes, gaining new vassals.

When you select a province, the province window will show at your left, clicking here will let you choose new improvements to build, you can activate the province regiment here too. In CK the army you control is determined by every and each province. Each province can hold one regiment and its composition will be determined by the power each social group has. There are 4 social groups:

• Peasants
• Burghers
• Clergy
• Nobles

Giving power to each group has its consequences:

Peasants
Giving power to this social group will lower the power and loyalty of the Nobles, the regiment of this province will have more light infantry and the tax income of the province will increase.

Burghers
Giving power to this social group will lower the power and loyalty of the Clergy, the regiment of this province will have more archers and pike men, the tax income of the province will increase.

Clergy
Giving power to this social group will lower the power and loyalty of the Burghers, the regiment of this province will have more light cavalry and heavy infantry, the tax income of the province will decrease.

Nobles
Giving power to this social group will lower the power and loyalty of the peasants, the regiment of this province will have more knights, the tax income of the province will decrease.

So you can fine tune 3 things with this buttons, how much gold the province is generating, the composition of the regiment of this province, and the loyalty modifier the social groups are getting. And this last part is very useful, because the higher the loyalty modifier, the higher the taxes that particular social group can tolerate. Keep this in mind, the social group that generate the most taxes is the peasant group, next is the burghers, and last is the noble group, the clergy group doesn’t pay taxes at all.

The province window is composed by three parts, the province improvements, the social groups power buttons and the province details.

The province improvements let you choose what improvements to build (provided you have the gold needed) and let you activate the regiment of the province.

The social groups power buttons, these buttons lets you adjust the power of each social group in the province.

The province details will show the next pieces of information about the province:

• Income, how much gold, piety and prestige the province is generating each month. (if you mouse over this part, you will see the base income of the province as well as any modifier provided by any improvement and advances)
• Plunder, how much gold, piety and prestige you will get if you (or your enemy) pillage the province.
• Religion, the creed that predominates in the province.
• Culture, the culture that predominates the province.
• Terrain, there are various types of terrains, some provide modifiers to the combat that takes place in that province.
• Fortification, shows what kind of castle you have in the province, the bigger the castle, the longer it takes to siege it and take control of the province.
• Supply limit, if you gather an army bigger than this number in this province, your army will suffer a big deal of attrition and begin to lose soldiers.
• Conditions Icons, some events will apply conditions to the province, making it better or worse, applying modifiers to the taxes collected there, building time or man power available.

You will also see the Pillage! button here. This button will grant the resources noted in the plunder section and will apply the Looted condition to that province for some time.

Terrains

• Desert, movement not restricted, no defense bonus.
• Plains, movement not restricted, no defense bonus.
• Forest, movement hampered, medium defense bonus.
• Hill, movement hampered, medium defense bonus.
• Mountains, movement very hampered, big defense bonus.

Character Window

This window show the information regarding the selected character: portrait, date of birth, date of death (if the character is deceased), age (if the character is alive), Kingdom he/she belongs to, titles, gold, piety, prestige, traits, attributes (martial, diplomacy, intrigue & stewardship) and character relations (Liege, vassals, parents, spouse, children, siblings, successors, ally, friends, rivals and court members).

Traits, attributes & advisors

Perhaps the most defining things in a character, much like in a RPG game, these will make a character good or bad at something in the game.

Traits will define who the character will get along with, what kind of events the character is likely to face, and add modifiers like prestige, piety or fertility (hidden attribute). Some traits will give advantages, like the emperor trait which grants bonus prestige, and others will give penalties, like the excommunicated trait, which throws the character out of the catholic Church and makes him/her easy target to other catholic empires.

Some traits are gained at birth, others by education, and most of them by events. So be specially careful with events involving your ruler, because some traits can lower attributes like intrigue or stewardship, or even lower his life expectancy, and dying having no bloodline successor means game over. Sometimes you will face events presenting you a choice betwen two evils, so make sure you choose the lesser one.

Each attribute is a must for something important in the game:

Martial, military skill, grants a bonus if the character is leading a regiment into battle. A high score is a must for your Marshal, the military advisor.

Diplomacy, diplomatic skill, used when the character is a diplomatic mission, like asking for peace or offering vassalization. A high score is a must for your Chancellor, the diplomatic advisor.

Intrigue, conspitarory skill, affects directly in the numbers of provinces your ruler can control directly, more provinces translates into more taxes, it also increase the chance of success in an assassination attempt. A high score is a must for your Spy Master, the intelligence advisor.

Stewardship, administrative skill, it affects how much gold you make from taxes. A high score is a must for your Spy Steward, the administrative advisor.

There is one more member of your court that doesn’t need a particular attribute to stand out, the Diocese Bishop, he serves as the main clerical representative in your Kingdom. He can be elected Pope or Bishop, and his piety influence the piety of his ruler.

You may notice a number in parenthesis beside the scores of the attributes when viewing a ruler, that is the combined score of the ruler and his advisor, so if your ruler doesn’t have the best scores, you can ven them out finding good advisors, you may want to have advisors with scores 17+, 20+ if possible, my personal order of importance is Steward, Spy Master, Marshal and Chancellor. A good Steward can make a difference between gold in your coffer and an empty one. And gold means everything, even if you have the greatest Marshal and the biggest army, you won’t be able to keep them crushing skulls if you can’t pay their wages!

One good strategy at any time of the game to get good advisors (but not a Marshal, women can’t be Marshals) is to open the Ledger (F6 key) go to the Potential Brides page (number 5) and search for the bride with the biggest score in whatever attribute you are looking for, and marry her with an unmarried member of your court, and tada! A free good advisor for your ruler!

The Kingdom Info

When you click in the Coat of Arms, the kingdom info will appear in the left side of the screen, from top to bottom you will see: your Coat of Arms, The name of your Kingdom, the ruler portrait, the Coat of Arms of your vassals and The Kingdom info.

• Income, how much gold a month are you making.
• Manpower, how many soldiers can your entire Kingdom can muster, your personal regiments plus your vassals’ regiments.
• Demesne (french word for “Land of the Lord” I think, pronounced “di man”, kinda), number of provinces your ruler control directly.
• Efficiency, if this number is below 100%, it means your ruler has more provinces than his Intrigue score plus some other modifiers let him handle, to bring this number to 100% again, you must grant titles to members of your court to manage those provinces, every province comes with a Count title, you can grant titles in the Actions “button”. A word about granting titles, whenever you can grant a Duke title, do it, because having a Duke as a vassal will grant you a bonus modifier to the prestige generated every month for your ruler! For every province above the max number permitted, your efficiency score will drop a 10% and your income will start dropping. If the score drops too low, your Kingdom will start breaking apart, negative events will occur and vassals will declare independence and even war.
• Reputation, this is very important, for every bad action, like grabbing titles, revoking titles, declaring war while your army is already in the enemy province or being discovered in an assassination attempt, will add points to your (hidden) reputation score, so a good reputation score is zero, a bad reputation score is anything far from zero, I think 30+ is the worst of them all. Having a bad reputation will hit your vassals’ loyalty, and vassals with low loyalty tend to break away or declare war. So be very careful and do not be naughty, unless you need to. Having high piety will slowly lower your reputation score, 1000+ piety will bring that score low quickly enough to not get burn in the heat. Dying will also lower the reputation for your successor.

The “Kingdom menu”

Below the Kingdom info you will find the “Kingdom menu”, this weird collection of “buttons” with different shapes, is where you will find a lot of important actions and sliders to tune up your Kingdom.

• The Actions button (The Sword and Shield)
• Court (The people standing)
• Treasury (The Coffer)
• Advances (The Catapult)
• Laws (The Orb and the Wand?)

The Actions button (The Sword and Shield)

Clicking this will show a list of actions your ruler can perform and below information about your Kingdom, Name, number of provinces, name of the ruler, monthly income, current ally, current vassals and current title claims. Note: If you click on any Coat of Arms in the map, a similar screen will appear with a list of actions you can perform with that ruler and info pertinent to that Kingdom.

The list of actions you can perform is:

* Only available if you click on any other Coat of Arms than yours.
** Only available if you are the controller of the Pope.

Mobilize host, activate all the regiments within your personal demesne, a quick way to go to war if you don’t feel like going from province to province activating every regiment.

Grand Mobilization, activate your regiments and ask your vassals to mobilize theirs, if their loyalty is low, they can deny your request.

Offer Marriage, you can marry your courtiers at your will, maybe you want to give an specific spouse to your successor.

Send Assassin, you can get rid of an unworthy successor or an infertile wife, it will cost you gold, but if the attempt fail, it will cost you prestige and piety as well, and your reputation will take a hit. Attempts on high profile characters will be costly and the chances of success will be slimmer.

Declare war*, you can only declare war if you hold a claim in any title the enemy ruler holds, if he is at war with one of your vassals, or if the ruler is a religious enemy.

Sue for Peace, opens up the negotiation window, in the war your victories grant you a war score, your peace demands have a cost, if the cost is less than your war score, your demands are most likely to succeed, your demands can have a negative cost, like you giving up a title, this helps to even scores, maybe asking for a King title cost much more than your victories generated. To propose a demand yo have to click on the gray boxes, if it is green you are benefiting from it (you are keeping a title or being installed as a ruler in a province) if it is red then your enemy is benefiting from it (you are giving up on a title, or let him be installed as a ruler of a province), the first box will let you ask your enemy to be your vassal (green) or you will ask for being your enemy’s vassal (red).

Send Gift*, you can improve the loyalty of a vassal giving him/her gold.

Send Fosterling*, you send one of your children to live with another ruler, you wont be able to influence his/her development but will improve your relations with that ruler.

Grant Title, allows you to grant a title, Counts, Dukes or even Kings can be “promoted”. This can help you if you have an efficiency below 100%, or if you want to increase your prestige output you can grant Duke titles, every duke you have as a vassal will give you a bonus modifier to your prestige generated every month.

Create Bishopric, turns any of your provinces into a Bishopric, Bishops can be elected Pope. Doing this will grant a piety bonus.

Create Title, owning a set of titles let you create new titles, like the Duke of Macedonia or the King of Jerusalem, doing this will cost you gold but will grant you an amount of prestige.

Usurp Title, when you control more than a half of a Duchy or a Kingdom, you can claim the Duke title or the King title at no cost, and without the reputation hit from having to grab it. This only gives you claim on the title, you still have to battle the actual owner.

Grab Title, you can lay claim (illegally) on somebody else’s title, this way you can declare war. This cost prestige and will hit your reputation bad.

Offer Vassalization*, you ask another ruler to become a vassal, Duke or Count, without the need of going to war to do so.

Pledge Allegiance*, You ask another ruler to become his/her vassal. If you can’t beat them, join them!

Revoke Title*, you can ask a vassal to give a title back, but he can refuse, and you may have to take it by force.

Excommunicate**, you can throw out of the Church a character, he can’t inherit, and will be easy target for attacks. The Pope must have more prestige than the target.

Revoke Excommunication**, the target is no longer excommunicated.

Court (The people standing)

Your court has five seats for advisors,

Marshal, the martial attribute score of the Marshal will add to the martial attribute score of the ruler, it also add modifiers to the speed of the development of military advances, and I think it will also affect how quickly the regiments replenishes, and of course the higher the score the better your troops will perform.
Chancellor, the diplomacy attribute score of the Chancellor will add to the diplomacy attribute score of the ruler, this affect how well your negotiations perform.
Spy Master, the Intrigue attribute score of the Spy Master will add to the Intrigue attribute score of the ruler, your personal protection and the success on assassination attempts are partly dependent upon the Spy Master.
Steward, the stewardship attribute score of the Steward will add to the stewardship attribute score of the ruler, it also add modifiers to the speed of the development of economic advances, but more important, it will add a modifier to the taxes you collect, the higher the attribute score, the higher the modifier.
Diocese Bishop, he serves as the main clerical representative in your Kingdom. He can be elected Pope or Bishop, and his piety influence the piety of his ruler.

Treasury (The Coffer)

There are three important things in CK, 1) gold, 2) gold and last and above all 3) gold, if you don’t have gold it’s going to be game over pretty quickly.

So let’s take a look at the Treasury screen.

From top to bottom we have:

Scutage, this tax your vassals, instead of sending a big regiment, they will pay gold and send a small regiment when asked, but there is a downside, it will apply a negative modifier to his loyalty, so use this carefully and preferably when your vassals have high loyalty values an high loyalty positive modifiers.

Crown Duty, this tax your Nobles, if too high it will apply a negative modifier to their loyalty value, but this effect can be countered with improvements like the Grand Palace and with advances like the Noble Customs group. You can also lower the tax to get a positive modifier.

Demesne Income, as the manual says “The income from your demesne.”. I’m not sure how this gets calculated.

Census Tax, this tax your Peasants, if too high it will apply a negative modifier to their loyalty value, but this effect can be countered with improvements like the Church and with advances like the Popular Customs group. You can also lower the tax to get a positive modifier.

Tolls, this tax your Burghers, if too high it will apply a negative modifier to their loyalty value, but this effect can be countered with improvements like the Moneylenders and with advances like the Profane Art group. You can also lower the tax to get a positive modifier.

Army Upkeep, this is how much it cost to maintain any active regiment, so be careful and just activate regiments when needed, don’t let them standing around doing nothing because it will cost you. With the slide you can choose how much are you going to pay for that maintenance, if below the maximum, your army will suffer from attrition and will decay eventually.

Church Donations, This is how much gold you are giving to the church, your Clergy loyalty will get a positive modifier with your donations, your monthly piety generation will too. If too low the modifier will be negative. If you want to save money you can lower your donations, and counter the negative modifier with improvements like the Church or advances like the Religious Stringency group.

Duty to Liege, this is how much you are going to pay to your Liege in case of having one.

If you are having trouble making gold, don’t be afraid to raise taxes, just keep an eye on your social groups loyalty values, if it gets too low it may cause rebellions. Once in a while lower the taxes to get better loyalty values and then again raise them later.

Advances (The Catapult)

The advances will add modifiers to your soldiers’ attack or defense values, to the tax generated in a province, or unlock improvements for you to build. Once an advance is unlocked, it has to propagate in your provinces, it means it is not available immediately to all your provinces. You can influence what group of advances you want to research, but it will no te a sure thing, so this system is kind of chaotic, you may end up unlocking advances in other group.

The advances screen will show you three categories of advances, military, culture and economy, each one with multiple groups, each group have five levels, you can click on each group, and then on each level (in roman numbers), and it will show you the benefits of unlocking that particular level. Clicking on a group will show you in the main map the provinces that have that advance unlocked, by colors for each level.

Improvements can speed up the the unlock time for advances, like the School or the University.

Laws (The Orb and the Wand?)

Your Kingdom is ruled by laws, there are three groups of laws, Inheritance laws, Realm laws and Religious laws.

Inheritance laws, they define how your successor is chosen, you need to modify this laws to decide who will inherit your Kingdom. Be sure to choose one from your bloodline, otherwise when your ruler die it’s game over.

Realm laws, they define how your taxes are set, how can you tax your vassals, and may cause specific events.

Religious laws, they define how your ruler and the Church interact, affect the relation with the Pope, and may cause specific events.

Similar to the advances, every time you click on a law, the main map will show you by colors, what laws are enacted in every other Kingdom.

You can’t change laws at will, there must be a period of time between changes, and constant changes will cause reactions from your vassals. Have in mind your vassals can and will enact different laws than yours, and this can be beneficial or perjudicial for your relations.

Laws will define pretty much how you will be playing, so know them and try them.

MiniMap

The minimap has 5 map modes, 3 filter, 2 zoom levels, the Ledger and the Game menu buttons.

Map Modes

Terrain map, the default view, it shows the terrain map.

Relational map, shows personal demesne, vassals, Liege, allies, enemies, claim titles relative to the Kingdom selected. I spent most of my time in this mode.

Economic map, shows with colors how rich (green) or how poor (red) the provinces are, not really a fan of how it works.

Religion map, shows by color the religion of the provinces, Catholic is white, Pagan is gray, Orthodox is brown and Muslim is light green.

Realm map, shows by color the Kingdom of the provinces. Sometimes Kingdoms share colors, and makes the use of this mode confusing.

Filters

Coat of Arms, toggle on or off the view of Coats of Arms in the map.

Units, toggle on or off the view of the units in the map.

Forts, toggle on or off the view of the fortifications in the map.

Zoom levels

There are three levels of zoom, use the Zoom out and Zoom in to accommodate your view. You can use the numeric key plus to zoom in and the numeric key minus to zoom out.

The Ledger
If you need a concentrated view of some data, this is the place. Pressing F6 will open the Ledger.

There are 14 pages

• Your Court
• Your Dynasty
• Rulers in Your Realm
• Our Vassals
• Potential Brides
• Our Demesne
• Buildings
• Manpower
• Army
• Possible Inheritances
• Our Titles
• The Claims of our Court
• Our Relations
• History

You can sort by any column clicking on the header of that column, ascending or descending, clicking once or twice.

Game menu

• Save
• Export
• Options
• Hints
• Surrender
• Return

Pressing F10 will open the Game menu.

Army and War

War is inevitable so be ready for it, as I said earlier, maintaining active regiments cost gold, so if you are planning on a long war, make sure you have gold to spare, you can adjust the Army Upkeep slider in the Treasury screen, but your regiments will shrink because of the attrition generated by the lack of gold to pay wages. Moving by sea and by enemy territory will also cause attrition.

The power each social group has in a province will determine the composition of the regiment. Each regiment can have the next type of units.

Knights (Heavy Cavalry), good against non-mounted units, weak against pike men. Related to the Noble social group.
Light Cavalry, good against most units, weak against pike men. Related to the Clergy social group.
Horse Archers, a unit only available to the Mongols and Arabs. Good against heavy armored units, weak against pike men.
Archers, good against heavy armored units, weak against cavalry and infantry. Related to the Burgher social group.
Heavy Infantry, good against archers, pike men and light infantry, weak against cavalry. Related to the Clergy social group.
Pike Men, good against cavalry, weak against heavy infantry. Related to the Burgher social group.
Light Infantry, good against archers, weak against everything else. Related to the Peeasant social group.

Defeating a regiment does not grant a province, you must siege the province with your regiment and then negotiate the demand. Fortifications help to slow down the siege, a Huge Castle will need 10,000+ soldiers to siege it effectively. Certain advances will grant modifiers to the siege, speeding it up.

Remember to DISBAND each regiment after war ends. If you disband your regiments in any province from your realm you will only lose 10% of the soldiers you can muster in the home province of the regiment. If you disband in enemy territory, the regiment will take longer to be at full capacity.

Hotkeys

This game could use more hotkeys, sometimes enter works with “accept” buttons sometimes it doesn’t, same thing with Esc to “cancel” buttons.

• F2 – Score Screen.
• F6 – The Ledger.
• F10 – Game Menu.
• ~ – Province Search (this is the key on top of the Tab key).
• M – Open/close log window.
• Arrow keys – Moves the map.
• Home – Center the map in your capital.
• Numerical plus – Zoom in.
• Numerical Minus – Zoom out.
• Control + Numerical Plus – Slow down the game speed.
• Control + Numerical Minus – Speed up the game speed.
• Pause – Pause the game.
• Control + (1 thru 0) key – Assign the selected regiment or groups of regiments to that control group.
• (1 thru 0) key – Recall the control group.

Tips

• At the beginning of your game get new advisors by marrying male courtiers, us the ledger to search for potential brides and sort them by stewardship, Intrigue or Diplomacy (women can’t be Marshals), look for the one with the highest score and double click on his name or dynasty to open the character screen, then click in her Coat of Arms, to bring the actions menu with her Liege, offer marriage and select a male courtier. Try to look for scores of 17+, 20+ being the best. And make sure she is not from your bloodline (you don’t want the Inbred trait, if the character has a blood drop icon in his/her portrait is from you bloodline, a relative)
• If you have an unwed ruler, marry him ASAP, using the ledger look for potential brides, age 19-21 so she can get pregnant easily. If she packs the lustful or/and indulgent trait, better, those traits increase the fertility score of the character. Remember if your successor is not from your bloodline the game is over as soon as your ruler die.
• Having multiple children increases the odds of having a worthy successor, if any of your children has good attributes scores and is not the first choice in the successors section, change the inheritance law, and as soon as he finishes his education, marry him with a potential bride using the ledger, look for good stewardship score (maybe she can be his first steward advisor), with age 16 too and not from your bloodline (again you don’t want the Inbred trait), so they wont start having children right away. Once married, grant him a title, make him Duke if you can, this will increase the odds of him gaining prestige before you even die, so when the time has come, maybe he already has vassals of his own and a good amount of prestige. Having a title in some inheritance laws will making him the first choice if he wasn’t already.
• If you are planning on playing a short game, start in 1337. Believe me, staring in 1066 can make a game last for 80-100+ hours.
• Make your first goal to grab and own a Duke title, being a Count will limit your growth, besides your aim should be being a king within your first dynasty generations.
• Start by looking for weak neighbors, but not weak provinces, always look for the most profitable provinces. Look for catholic targets, the Muslims can be more powerful than you can handle at first.
• One easy place to start is Ireland, starting as count of Mide, Dublin, Desmumu or any place around can be good place to start as a noob.
• Get an ally as soon as you can, it increases your odds of evading early bullies.
• Raise your taxes only if it is worthy, getting 1 gold for a big loyalty hit may not be a good idea. Only if the loyalty values are high and the modifiers are not, raise your taxes at will.
• When you have vassals and they are loyal, having scutage tax can be profitable, if you have problems with low loyalty (maybe because of your reputation) set the scutage to zero.
• Don’t let your reputation go beyond “We have a very bad reputation”, and always try to create a Bishopric, having 700-1000 piety will help you recover your reputation “quickly”.
• When your ruler die and your Kingdom is big, be ready to fight with some vassals that will not like you. If anyone rebels and declare independency or even declare war, go and let your sword do the negotiations, when you win, just make them your vassals again, do not revoke their title (do not force them to install you as a ruler of their province) because that can damage your reputation, and if you do that several times, your reputation will be in very bad shape, and the rest of your vassals will dislike you and will start breaking away too.
• When you have a medium realm (maybe capable of fielding 10,000-15,000 soldiers) and enough gold to keep them fighting for some months, look for muslim rulers with no Liege and small demesne, 1 or 2 provinces, and go declare war on them and grab their lands, this is a very quick way to expand your Kingdom.
• Avoid the Sceptical and Heretic traits, because more often than not they lead you to excommunication, or the church will be bullying you, asking for big amounts of gold, until you get excommunicated for not paying.
• Grant titles when your Kingdom Efficiency drops below 80%-70%, always grant Duke titles whenever you can, having Dukes as vassals will grant you a prestige bonus modifier to your prestige generated each month. Keep at least one Duke Title, reserve it for your child successor.
• From time to time check your provinces for new improvements available to build. if you have the gold invest in those. Try to build the ones granting gold bonus if possible.
• Use the Ledger to get a quick glance of the loyalty of your social groups, if the average loyalty in all your provinces is high, around 80%+, then you can raise the tax of that particular group.
• Remember to look at the advances window and set your focus.