hey, i’m ‘roleplaying’
Heh, I try to sneak some of my compassion in where I can. I have’t really explored outside of the Tutorial Irish family, and now I’m really invested in my family.
My first ruler, I forget his name, spent most of his life conquering neighboring counties in Ireland. This led him to accrue a huge amount of stress, and he took it out by visiting a local brothel ONE. TIME. WELL, the first person he slept with, he IMMEDIATELY got syphilis. Like… He was dead months later, and his wife has publicly shamed him.
The next ruler was a handsome lad Brian mac Brian Brian (Irish names are weird) and his focus was on intrigue. But, I made a bunch of mistakes thinking that BBB would have respect on entering court. Most of my vassals didn’t give a shit about me, and Ireland was wrought with civil strife until BBB died of ‘natural causes’ at 32.
He was able to father a son, Olav, and Olav happily had familial connects with a Norse family. These connections helped a lot in dealing with domestic issues, and I swear… Nothing helps your character get money and prestige like Crusading. Olav is basically my William Wallace now… Or the Irish equal. He finally managed to unite all of Ireland under one kingdom, and has plans to expand into Scotland. (There are people in Scotland that I could wage holy war on.) Though, Olav is a man who has spent most of his life in war, away from his homeland, and in a way has NO connections because most of the court and council ship was wiped out from the Crusades we went on. When Olav came home, his court was basically empty.
So, I’ve been working on building money and influence with my local lords, hoping to get some kind of stable lasting government installed. Olav is 42 now, and while he isn’t at any kind of health risk right now, he won’t have a long life if he keeps warring like he is. Perhaps Scotland can be a task for my son, Scott. (I named him after a friend in Discord.)
I want to carry this line all the way to the end of the playable timeline, then I wanna explore playing some Khans of African leaders.
Some advice I’ve learned: Marry outside your culture. At first, I thought, 'Maybe I should marry my family into the local Irish lordship? That rarely generated results. Meanwhile, marrying family into French, Norse, and Saxon families? Yeah, they help a LOT when you’re dealing with local lord issues. I’ve won civil wars with the help from Olav’s Norse mother from the north.
While it sounds evil, honestly the best way to help make your lord loved and wealthy is to crusade/jihad. This opens so many benefits. Your bishop will actually like you, and give you de jure fabrication abilities. The pope will willingly send you money with no real cost to the relationship. (He was at 32+ with me no matter how much I asked for money.) Selling hostages also is a great benefit, and a lot of times the AI will be too fixated on on border clashes to notice your small army swooping in and taking the capital. You can then make like… 125 per hostage.
I have found it easier to just kill or capture your vassals that won’t listen to you. I’ve had a couple of kids who wouldn’t stop fighting petty squabbles in my land, and most the time they refuse to listen to you. Revoking their titles and imprisoning them seems to do the trick. Children make HORRIBLE vassals. Most of their motivation is sending thousands of men to die because their bully in the county over called them a nerd or whatever.
