Crusader Kings 2: House of Zee Mau Part 2
(continuing from Part 1)
Based on the same reasons outlined in Part 1, my first ruler was an Irish ruler and this time, I chose Dublin county so that I had access to galleys at the start. I customised the ruler so that he was of the House of Zee Mau :) Alas, I forgot to customise the house's emblem and therefore it is now the same as an Irish noble house *grumble grumble*.
I learned a couple of things:
Gosh, I didn't realise how small all the screenshots are. Sorry about that. Basically, this picture shows the current year (1203) and the number of rulers (3 male rulers followed by 3 female rulers).
I started off with Dublin but slowly fabricated my way to Kildare, Leinster and Ossory in Ireland and 3 Welsh counties in Wales. Through a marriage, I inherited the county of Lincon in England. Predictably, the population of the Irish counties are Irish, that of the Welsh counties are Welsh and Lincoln is English. They are all Catholic. No surprises there.
This is where I made my mark: towards the end of my first ruler, he had enough piety points to hire the only Holy Order available at that time (Knights of Hospitaler, I think) to participate in the crusade for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I didn't expect to win because there was a rival ruler who contributed a lot to the war. Moreover, the first ruler died before this crusade concluded. Fortunately, the hire Holy Order remains hired and I pushed hard and managed to beat the rival's contribution by less than 1% margin. I became King of Jerusalem even before getting the crown for Ireland :)
One thing I learned shortly later when Jihads were called by the Muslim rulers to take back Jerusalem was that my ruler enjoyed +75 in opinion among his vassals while defending against infidels. This was useful during the period where short-reign penalty applied during the initial years of a new ruler. In fact, at times I declined to accept peace entreaties from the Muslim ruler until that penalty was gone or gave me time to recover from penalty due to levies raised against other countries. The danger of prolonging the Jihad was that the enemy could simply declared it a success despite not succeeding in their objective but thereby depriving me of reward of prestige and piety, and moral authority of the Catholic (and conversely, penalties for the Muslim rulers).
I made special effort in using my Court Chaplain to convert counties in Jerusalem to Catholics. I had succeeded in doing so for all counties except for one by the year 1203. Also, there were a few counties that had Irish population majority too.
More about Jerusalem later.
My second ruler took the opportunity to also joined the crusade for Andalusia and succeeded in getting it awarded to him due to having contributed the most. Thanks to the Holy Order :)
To date, there are only 2 counties that are Irish populated. Majority of the counties are still Andalusian, Iberian and Castillian. However, I managed to convert many counties to Catholic.
So my second ruler was a King of Andalusia and King of Jerusalem, duke of 2 Irish duchies and liege of 3 Welsh earls. Great start to the game!
Unfortunately, my third ruler had to give up Jerusalem due to multiple rebellions at the start of his reign. I chose to give up Jerusalem and fought for my Andalusian kingdom because of the latter and the Irish/Welsh counties are quite close to each other but far from Jerusalem. Not only does this affect logistic (moving troops around) but also that rebellion is more likely in counties that are further away from the capital (I've made Seville the capital county).
Yes, it's sad to give up some land but sometimes you have to do that as otherwise you can lose even more.
The 4th ruler is the 1st female ruler. There were double penalties here: -10 for being a female ruler and -10 for having a female ruler. Her reign was very short: 2 months!
Next was a young female ruler with, yet again, female heir. This was even worse because since she wasn't an adult yet, her statistics were pathetic. Surprisingly she survived 8 years before being murdered by her Master Huntsman in a hunting outing (arrow to her throat!).
The third female ruler became the 6th overall ruler. Something then interesting happened: some Jerusalem counts and countesses proclaimed loyalty to this ruler and informed her of their effort to dispose the then female ruler of Jerusalem and to install my ruler as the new ruler. Funny thing was that the only response she could give was "This could not be good" or something like that lol.
Her loyalists were succeeding quite well but I thought I should help along by offering to join their war. That was how I regained Jerusalem.
The 6th ruler has reigned for 32 years and counting. Finally there is some sort of stability after the short reign of the 3 previous rulers.
Based on the same reasons outlined in Part 1, my first ruler was an Irish ruler and this time, I chose Dublin county so that I had access to galleys at the start. I customised the ruler so that he was of the House of Zee Mau :) Alas, I forgot to customise the house's emblem and therefore it is now the same as an Irish noble house *grumble grumble*.
I learned a couple of things:
- Swedish and Norwegian counties can be good places to start. It is still harder than Irish because I believed there are already the Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of Norway at the start but should be easier than, say, France or Spain because of lack of huge threat...until possibly when the Golden Horde appears centuries later.
- It's not really a good idea to design your ruler as young as possible because he may outlive your sons and that causes quite a number of problems, notably your sons wanting to assassinate your ruler! This may ease the pressure of piling negative traits on your designed ruler just to decrease his age.
Gosh, I didn't realise how small all the screenshots are. Sorry about that. Basically, this picture shows the current year (1203) and the number of rulers (3 male rulers followed by 3 female rulers).
I started off with Dublin but slowly fabricated my way to Kildare, Leinster and Ossory in Ireland and 3 Welsh counties in Wales. Through a marriage, I inherited the county of Lincon in England. Predictably, the population of the Irish counties are Irish, that of the Welsh counties are Welsh and Lincoln is English. They are all Catholic. No surprises there.
This is where I made my mark: towards the end of my first ruler, he had enough piety points to hire the only Holy Order available at that time (Knights of Hospitaler, I think) to participate in the crusade for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I didn't expect to win because there was a rival ruler who contributed a lot to the war. Moreover, the first ruler died before this crusade concluded. Fortunately, the hire Holy Order remains hired and I pushed hard and managed to beat the rival's contribution by less than 1% margin. I became King of Jerusalem even before getting the crown for Ireland :)
One thing I learned shortly later when Jihads were called by the Muslim rulers to take back Jerusalem was that my ruler enjoyed +75 in opinion among his vassals while defending against infidels. This was useful during the period where short-reign penalty applied during the initial years of a new ruler. In fact, at times I declined to accept peace entreaties from the Muslim ruler until that penalty was gone or gave me time to recover from penalty due to levies raised against other countries. The danger of prolonging the Jihad was that the enemy could simply declared it a success despite not succeeding in their objective but thereby depriving me of reward of prestige and piety, and moral authority of the Catholic (and conversely, penalties for the Muslim rulers).
I made special effort in using my Court Chaplain to convert counties in Jerusalem to Catholics. I had succeeded in doing so for all counties except for one by the year 1203. Also, there were a few counties that had Irish population majority too.
More about Jerusalem later.
My second ruler took the opportunity to also joined the crusade for Andalusia and succeeded in getting it awarded to him due to having contributed the most. Thanks to the Holy Order :)
To date, there are only 2 counties that are Irish populated. Majority of the counties are still Andalusian, Iberian and Castillian. However, I managed to convert many counties to Catholic.
So my second ruler was a King of Andalusia and King of Jerusalem, duke of 2 Irish duchies and liege of 3 Welsh earls. Great start to the game!
Unfortunately, my third ruler had to give up Jerusalem due to multiple rebellions at the start of his reign. I chose to give up Jerusalem and fought for my Andalusian kingdom because of the latter and the Irish/Welsh counties are quite close to each other but far from Jerusalem. Not only does this affect logistic (moving troops around) but also that rebellion is more likely in counties that are further away from the capital (I've made Seville the capital county).
Yes, it's sad to give up some land but sometimes you have to do that as otherwise you can lose even more.
The 4th ruler is the 1st female ruler. There were double penalties here: -10 for being a female ruler and -10 for having a female ruler. Her reign was very short: 2 months!
Next was a young female ruler with, yet again, female heir. This was even worse because since she wasn't an adult yet, her statistics were pathetic. Surprisingly she survived 8 years before being murdered by her Master Huntsman in a hunting outing (arrow to her throat!).
The third female ruler became the 6th overall ruler. Something then interesting happened: some Jerusalem counts and countesses proclaimed loyalty to this ruler and informed her of their effort to dispose the then female ruler of Jerusalem and to install my ruler as the new ruler. Funny thing was that the only response she could give was "This could not be good" or something like that lol.
Her loyalists were succeeding quite well but I thought I should help along by offering to join their war. That was how I regained Jerusalem.
The 6th ruler has reigned for 32 years and counting. Finally there is some sort of stability after the short reign of the 3 previous rulers.
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