Welcome to the final installment of the Gameranx Crusader Kings II guide. In the four previous installments, I've covered most of the moment-to-moment decisions you'll be making. But you also need to be planning where you want to be, and that can get complicated. Here's some of my advice on how to succeed over time.
First, links to the previous sections of the guide, for reference:
Part One: Introduction and Interface
Part Two: Laws and Factions
Part Three: Diplomacy and War
Part Four: Relationships and Marriages
Part Five: Long-Term Planning
Scoring
Your long-term goals in Crusader Kings II are….whatever you want them to be. You can play in medieval Europe's sandbox. However, it does keep a “score” of your rulers' combined Prestige and Faith points. This is entirely possible to ignore, but most actions that you'll want to take will likely increase those scores anyway, so they're a decent lens through which to view long-term planning.
Land Acquisition
The most consistent way to build Prestige is to increase the size of your lands as well as your demense, and that's probably how most people would play Crusader Kings II. So let's look at a few of the most common ways to acquire land.
You've already seen one, back in the Military section: the De Jure Claim. That's the most consistent form of acquisition, but it's limited—you have to have the titles for that, so once you run out of De Jure claims, you need to work on new titles.
Acquisition by Marriage
The most peaceful form of acquisition is the marriage of two houses, with the heir eventually managing to take both, so long as the succession laws in both lands work out. In order to see how this works, we'll have to start a new game. The Duke of Saxony, in northern Germany, has an unmarried, adult male heir, which is what we need. So start a new game with him.
Go to your son's Arrange Marriage menu, and you'll note that women with titles are at the top of the list. Mathilde, the Duchess of Tuscany, happens to be at the top of that list. As another important duchy in the Holy Roman Empire, Tuscany would make a great ally and an even better addition to our lands. So arrange that marriage.
As long as the laws remain the same in both Saxony and Tuscany, and the leaders aren't overthrown, this will lead to their child taking over both Duchies. That's two generations away, but it'll probably happen, and make you a local power.
That's enough with Saxony for now, though you can try it later if you want to. Let's reload our game in Aquitaine to check out some other expansion strategies.
Fabrication
Remember how I said that we should wait to use our Chancellor, back when I discussed the Council? Now's the time to use him. He has two major uses: he can Improve Relations in courts that he's sent to, but he can also try to Fabricate Claims on other counties.
Click on that option, then send him to Nantes, just north of our lands in the duchy of Brittany. You can see from the menu what the chances of Fabrication are. They're not great generally, but they can improve significantly with Chancellors with high diplomacy.
One important thing to note about Fabrications—they've got a high cost in both Prestige and money , and if your character doesn't make the attempt to press the claim before he or she dies, it's gone forever. The money cost can be especially prohibitive in the early game. On the other hand, they're one of the best ways for an aggressive player to expand quickly.
I chose Nantes because the Duchy of Brittany is isolated and should be fairly easy to defeat in a war, and it won't necessarily weaken France as a whole. Isolating weak leaders and picking off their lands is the general best strategy in Crusader Kings II.
Opportunism
Be the wolf. Be the cheetah. Isolate your rivals and attack when they're weakest. The key to this is to pay attention. When you see armies start moving around, or when you see kingdoms or empires suddenly break up, they're weakened. That's when you pounce. Remember when we started the war with Toulouse and the Count of Auvergne decided to launch his rebellion then? That's exactly what's necessary.
As it stands, in 1074, my Aquitaine game is a paradise for opportunists, as a quick glance at the map makes clear. France is in the middle of a civil war, with the Duke of Burgundy in the east making a play for the throne. Toulouse has a smaller war as well. To the south, the Spanish kingdoms are both defending against Muslim incursions and their own civil wars. And to the east, in the Holy Roman Empire, a massive rebellion focused in Italy threatens to detach huge chunks of land.
Picking which of these, if any, to take part in requires a significant amount of risk management. Here's the crucial issue: most rebellions fail. If you attack a rebelling lord, and he or she gets beaten before you can win, you lose all progress in the war—it just ends. On the other hand, if you attack the static party and they win their other, your war on them will continue, but they'll probably be stronger and can beat you more easily.
There are two ways you can manage this, one immediate, one long-term. Since our long-term goal is likely to become a king on our own—either of France or independently—this French Civil War may be a good time to declare independence. So if France is winning the war handily, they'll probably finish it off and we'll get smacked down and perhaps imprisoned/executed. If they're losing the war handily, then Duke Robert will take over and likely do the same thing. But if it's balanced, we can likely swoop in and gain our freedom.
In order to check on a war, click on one of the provinces of the people involved. In this case, that includes the entirety of France, so we can check it from our own provinces. Click on one, and notice that under the character portrait are the wars currently engaged in. Hover your mouse over them and you'll see the Warscore. In this case, it's a positive 11%, which means the aggressor is slightly winning, which the tooltip conveniently notes is Duke Robert. That's exactly the sort of score we want to see.
Now, look at the map next to the Warscore. We can see the French army and the Burgundian armies here, both stuck at around a measly 200 troops. Meanwhile, we know that we can rely on at least 1200 from raising our levies, probably more. All available information suggests that, if we want to open diplomacy with the King of France and declare a war for independence, now might be a very good for that—unless their allies Denmark are on their way.
Joining Others' Wars
The longer-term, relatively risk-free way to weaken—or support—rival lords is to Offer To Join wars where you can tip the balance to achieve the goal you want. Let's head east to the Holy Roman Empire to see how that works. If we're going to expand to the east, we're very likely going to need to challenge the HRE, and beat them. That's gonna be hard.
Empires in Crusader Kings II are monstrous, delicate things. With so many counties, comprising modern-day Germany, Holland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Switzerland, as well as eastern France and Northern Italy, the HRE is a monster that, when stable, can summon armies of tens of thousands. On the other hand, because it's so huge, it's extremely difficult to control, and instability is constant. You'll want to take advantage of that insecurity when you can, yes, but you can also encourage it in a mostly risk-free fashion.
Right now, it looks like some of the French and many of the Italian possessions are fighting against the main HRE. Click on one of them to check out the war and Warscore. You can see that a whole pile of lords are fighting for Independence from the HRE, and they seem to winning. If we want to join the war, we'll have to find Lord Mayor of Bologna, who's leading the war.
This is a good opportunity to use the search button to find Bologna, which is pretty far from our current location. On the bottom right of the screen is the Find Title button, which looks like an arrow pointing toward a puzzle piece. Type in Bologna, and you'll see the Grand City pop up. Click on it, and you'll be taken to northern Italy and the county screen opened.
From there, open diplomacy with the Mayor, then Offer To Join War. Independence is the only option. Hover your mouse over it and you'll see the outcomes of the war. If your side wins, a bunch of lords become independent. And if you lose, the leader gets imprisoned, and you may lose some prestige, but that's it.
You can help possibly severely weaken the HRE for only the cost of a bit of prestige, the opportunity cost of not doing other things, and your vassals being unhappy with your troops being in the field if you use them. That's often a good deal.
Titles and Claimants
Inviting a disgruntled Claimant to a rival's title can be a decent way to break up powerful duchies or kingdoms, and occasionally add directly or indirectly to your own lands. Click on the county of Urgell, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees and directly south of our possessions. Now, click on yellow and black checkered shield on the top left of the screen to be taken to the information screen for that title.
This Title information screen is one of more useful in the game for long-term planning, and as you've noticed, it's a little odd to get to. So let's check out what's available.
The first thing to do is to check the De Jure box. That will show what's within a title and what titles can vassalize it at a more conceptual level. With the checkmark off, it shows what's actually included in the title, which I've never found useful. Note that in this case, switching the checkmark on and off doesn't do much except change the shields on the top of the Title menu. With it off, there's only one, the Duchy of Barcelona. With it on, there's also the Kingdom of Aragon and the Empire of Hispanola. Those appear and disappear because the Kingdom of Aragon exists but doesn't currently have possession of Urgell, and the Empire of Hispanola doesn't exist. (How to create those will be discussed shortly, starting with the “Creating or Usurping Titles” section.)
At any rate, we're here to try to disrupt the County of Urgell. We can do that by clicking on the Claimants button. Much like the Invite to Plot option, this gives a list of relevant characters who can lay claim to the County of Urgell. Their willingness to become a member of your court is shown by a red thumbs down or a green thumbs up. You can also send them gifts to make that more likely. Notice that here I've got a couple people who would be happy to come to my court, notably Guillem d'Urgell. Click on him to be taken to the diplomacy screen and Invite him to Court. In a few days he'll accept and you'll get a message that he (and his wife and any children he might have) has joined you.
This serves two purposes. At a simple level, inviting characters to your court can keep you well-stocked with talent. Even if I never press these claims, I do this every so often, especially if my Council is looking week. Second, I can now press Guilherm's claim on Urgell. I discussed the usefulness of this the Weak Claim section in Part 3 of this guide (not terribly useful, if you remember) but there may come times when it's one of the best ways to subvert a rival's lands, as you'll discover through deeper playing.
Religious Wars
We've discussed breaking apart nearby rivals, but sometimes you want to prop up your neighboring kingdoms instead of weakening them. Look south to Spain, and you might see why—the Christian kingdoms are under attack from the powerful Muslim lords. So you may want to Offer To Join War for them, to prevent them from falling. Why is this an issue? Because if Spain falls, southern France is next, and using religion to expand is really easy.
You have a permanent Causus Belli and the ability to seize land from leaders of opposite religions by declaring Holy War. Scroll south a bit and click on Mallorca, the island off the Spanish coast. Click on its owner and go up in rank until you can find the liege to declare war on, and give that a try. You'll see that you have the option for Holy War for land in duchies that they own. This lets you take huge chunks of land, quickly. The land is usually largely useless after conquest, thanks to its inhabitants being unhappy to be owned by a new religion, so you'll have to go to your Council and use your Chaplain to Convert those provinces. But they're yours.
Here's the catch: any defender in a religious war can have their co-religionists join the war as though they're allies. And they will. More than that, the Islamic powers are, at the start of the game, significantly stronger than their Christian counterparts. So this is an extremely risky move on our part, especially before Holy Orders appear. Those come after the Crusades start.
The Crusades and Holy Orders
It won't take long for the Pope to start declaring Crusades for the Holy Land—1095, historically, less than 30 years after the earliest potential game start. Crusades offer good, relatively risk-free ways for Christian rulers to gain Prestige/Faith points as well as weakening the most powerful Muslim empires. (The AI may also be hard-coded to be more likely to join). If you want to join, just open diplomacy with the Pope and offer to join the war. Successful Crusades may lead to a Jihad, which in Crusader Kings II is simply the Islamic equivalent.
Holy Orders like the Knights Templar will slowly appear once the Crusades start. These are like mercenary armies, except they're especially large and effective. You hire them with Faith points instead of money, making them easier to acquire, although they still cost money to maintain. You can also only use them against non-Christians. Wise use of Holy Orders can help a great deal against the significantly more powerful Muslim states. The situation in Spain is tremendously volatile—I've seen an Islamic empire surge north through France and even into England, but I've also seen victories in Spain lead to a wider Christian conquest of the entire Mediterranean.
Creating or Usurping Titles
You may have noticed the drop-down on the top of the screen saying that you have the ability to create the title of the Duchy of Bourbon. Creating titles—or usurping them, if someone else already holds it—is one of the better long-term goals. In addition to increasing Prestige, it also offers you De Jure claims over any part of that Title that you don't have.
This is a major conceptual part of the game, so it's worth examining more closely. Click on the title creation button, and you'll be taken a the Title screen for the Duchy of Bourbon. If you have the De Jure box marked, you'll note that there are three counties in Bourbon, and since they're green, we own all of them. Hovering over the Create button will also show that we have 3/3 counties, as well as how much money it will cost and how much Prestige it will earn.
If the title already exists, but you still have enough land to create it, you're given the chance to Usurp it. This is an almost identical process, except that the person the title is usurped from isn't going to be a fan of yours.
Beyond the cost, there are disadvantages to creating/usurping duchies. We're still under Gavelkind succession, so multiple children would mean these duchies would be lost. Even if we weren't, more duchies under our control, and not under our vassal counts', would be a drag on our relations.
On the other hand, multiple duchies are much more manageable and even beneficial if you happen to be a king.
Climbing the Feudal Ladder
Here's the basic form of how you climb the feudal ladder. If you're a count, you have a county. Once you have a few counties, you should look into become a duke. Once you have a few duchies, you should look into becoming a king. And once you have a few kingdoms, you should look into becoming an emperor.
Right now, we have a few duchies, and can create another, so becoming a king seems like a reasonable goal to work toward. There are two ways to do this: we can try to take over our existing king's job, or we can create our own kingdom.
The path to becoming the King of France is fairly narrow. We can work on/hope for a change to the succession laws to Election, and then win one. We can get extremely lucky in marriage politics, as discussed above. Or we can start a Plot or Faction to take it over. These are plausible, of course, but there are options outside of the Kingdom of France.
Let's see what it would take to usurp or create a kingdom. Click on your home province of Bordeaux again. Note that in the center of the County screen are coats of arms, both labeled “Aquitaine.” The bottom one of those, with a simple crown above it, indicates that Bordeaux is part of the Duchy of Aquitaine. The Aquitaine with the more ornate crown above it, on the other hand, is the Kingdom of Aquitaine. Well, how about that? Click on the shield to get taken to the Title info screen.
Now, notice how the map changes to show a golden glow surrounding almost the entirety of southern France. Those are the De Jure boundaries of the Kingdom of Aquitaine. It includes every single one of our possessions. As a matter of fact, we happen to control the bulk of the traditional Kingdom of Aquitaine.
Hover your mouse over the Create button. It says that you need to control 50% of its counties, and we already own 17/24, for 71%. That's the hardest part of creating a kingdom—so what are we missing? The red text shows the problems. Initially, we don't have enough money or Faith—those are simple enough, and come with time.
More pressing: “Cannot create or usurp a title of the same or higher rank than our liege.” That makes sense: if you want to be a king, you can't have another king still be your boss. In other words, if we want to make a play to create the Kingdom of Aquitaine, we're going to have to declare independence from France.
De Jure States
Hopefully by now you're mentally translated the commonly seen term “de jure” into “traditionally and legally a part of.” One of the most efficient ways to expand your power in Crusader Kings II is to capture enough of a title to claim it, and then to use the De Jure claims to consolidate that power. Using the coats of arms to get to the Title info screen is one way to access that information, but there are others.
It's time to head back to the map buttons on the bottom right of the screen. Use the + button to see the range of options available. The three we're looking for are the De Jure Duchies, Kingdoms, and Empires. Click on De Jure Duchies, then zoom out enough to start see both the color coding and the duchy names. Given the general rule that you need half of a title's counties to create/usurp it, you can use screens like this to plan where you want to make your fabrications.
You can also see what parts of the map are likely to be flashpoints by comparing the de jure lands with current borders that might not fit. Note that the Duchy of Anjou is evenly split between the southern French part and the northern part attached to Normandy, which is part of Norway in my game. Should either side get ambitious, that will likely trigger wars. Switch to the De Jure Kingdoms map, and you'll see that the Kingdom of Aragon, on the northeastern side of Spain, is criss-crossed with different borders, some of which belong to Christian kingdoms, others, Muslims. Thus, without significant consolidation, it seems clear that Aragon will not be a major player.
Finally, click on the De Jure Empires map. This—eventually—is our goal. There's nothing higher than the Empire level, so that's the most efficient way we'll be able to manage huge amounts of territories. (If you're using mods that slightly alter the game from the Paradox forums, like the CK2+ mod, these can dramatically change the De Jure duchies, kingdoms, and especially empires.)
Stay on Your Toes
I've framed most of this discussion as one of long-term planning, but one of the core facts of Crusader Kings II is that plans can fall apart constantly, and new opportunities take their place. I've played full games as Aquitaine before, and while it may seem like trying to create the Kingdom of Aquitaine is the most obvious path, that quickly got taken away from me.
Here's how: my first duke had a few children, then died before he could change the succession laws. The Gavelkind succession meant that I lost several of my northern counties, as well as the 50% of Aquitaine counties I needed to create that kingdom. On the other hand, I ended up being very successful at fabricating and pressing claims to the south, in Aragon. Eventually I ended up with enough counties there to become the King of Aragon, so I declared independence from France and became king.
I successfully expanded through Spain, while increasingly strong kings of France recaptured the Aquitainian lands. But that was okay, because I was also able to add the Kingdom of Leon to my possessions. As the game drew to a conclusion, I had a few weak rulers, who lost much of Aragon to the Muslim kingdoms, and then a huge chunk of the other Spanish possessions to a new kingdom, Castille. As Crusader Kings II nears its end, powerful kingdoms and empires consolidate all lands, leading to the creation of nation-states in the early modern era. I saw that coming as Castille dominated me, so I destroyed the title of king, and asked to be integrated into Castille as a duke, as it was the only way to survive.
The ebb and flow of power and goals from region to region, from strength to weakness, may have been slightly raised in the game I just described, but it's not rare or bizarre. Losing is fun, but so is winning. Crusader Kings II is about those stories/histories, and it encourages you to try to make cool, weird stuff happen, and it also forces some of that upon you. Be opportunistic, and also go with the flow, and you'll have a great time.
Conclusion
You should have a solid grounding for playing the bulk of Crusader Kings II now. There's plenty more in the game, but developing a fluency with it will let you sort what's important from what's not. And remember: experimenting and sometimes losing is fun.
And here are the basics of how to play:
• Pick a duke or minor king at the start of the game
• Develop infrastructure by using your Council to research technology and funding buildings within your demense
• Check on your laws, and change them as necessary for stable succession, as well as for either keeping vassals happy or demanding more money/troops from them
• Keep an eye on factions worth joining for yourself, or that need to be dismantled within your own lands
• Use marriage to build alliances
• Win wars quickly by defeating enemy armies in the field, and capturing/holding the target counties
• If defeated in the field, disband armies and wait for replacements until you can win. Mercenaries can tip the balance, if you can afford them
• Vassal happiness determines likelihood of civil war if it's bad, and amount of support, both for military and for laws, if it's good
• Vassals are made unhappy by ambition, personality conflicts, restrictive laws, and raising their army levies for aggressive wars
• Keep vassals happy on an individual level by giving them gifts of gold, honorary titles, or land
• Keep vassals happy in general by showing mercy to prisoners, throwing feasts or tournaments, and lowering restrictive laws
• Pay attention to your neighbors, and take advantage of their weaknesses
• Use your Chancellor to Fabricate Claims to increase your lands
• Create/Usurp Titles in order to gain power, prestige, and De Jure claims for further expansion
Have fun!
