STATE OF THE WORLD: 1285
The Something Awful Forums > Games > Let’s Play! > Let’s Play Crusader Kings 2
What? Yet another CK2 LP? I know, I know. But this one has a twist! It’s participatory! Yes, that’s right– you get to help steer the destiny of a nation! Will you lead a kingdom to greatness? Or drive it into the ground?
We’ll be starting at the 1285 bookmark, since this is my first Let’s Play so I don’t want to get stuck playing for like a zillion years! But if things go really well, maybe we can continue into Europa Univeralis?
First things first, though! We need to decide who to play as! Here are some of the interesting starts we could choose from!
First, there’s obviously the Byzantine Empire! Hot on the heels of Valeria the Apostle’s reconquest of Rome, I think it’s a pretty easy start! Especially since CK2 doesn’t bother modeling things like the New Byzantine split in the Senate. And look how great Trajan II’s stats are! Do note that he’s content, though, so we can’t do things like declare imperial conquest wars or get the next theme system reform yet.
For a more challenging start, there’s the Bichri Empire, which is what you got after the Turks were caught in a Byzantine/Mongol trash compactor for like 200 years. They’re actually a lot more powerful than they look on paper– they’ve been holding their ground against the Ilkhanate lately. Downside: The current Badshah is a literal baby, since the Byzantines had just killed the last guy.
The Ilkhanate itself is still sitting pretty in Persia. In spite of their conversion to Sunni, their main enemy is still the Sunni empire to their west. The Bichri have done a better job of holding them off than the Seljuks or Baytasids, though, so if we play as the Ilkhanate, don’t expect it to be all doomstacks and good times.
To the north is the Golden Horde. They’re still Tengri, but their doomstack is also toast and most of their provinces suck. We’d have our work cut out for us if we tried them!
West of the Golden Horde are the warring Rurikovich kingdoms of Kiev and Novgorod.
Serbia and Croatia are busy fighting one another for control over the Danube and hopping the Byzantines don’t remember they’re up there.
Hungary has long sat behind the safety of the Carpathian mountains and being a source of warm bodies to fill out Crusades. But maybe now’s the time for them to shine?
Lithuania sits in between the two, still holding true to the old gods of Baltic paganism.
The Holy Roman Empire is still in the midst of the doldrums it found itself in ever since Henry IV died, but it’s still one of the most powerful states in Europe.
France, meanwhile, has prospered under the Jimena dynasty. By the 1285 bookmark, they’re in a very good position compared to how they were doing even just a few decades earlier.
Defiant Brittany is still not only maintaining independence, but carving out a little domain of their own on the northern coast of Iberia. I feel like they’d have a lot of potential as a colonial power if we export our game to EU4.
The kingdoms of Wales and Scotland are in the middle of an epic struggle for dominion over Ireland. We could pick either one of them and try to add all of Ireland to our growing empire– or take the reigns of the sleeping giant of de Conteville England and force both these Celtic upstarts out.
Or we could try to take over Iberia! By 1285, the “Reconquista” had come to a screeching halt, with the Catholic kingdom of Léon and the Sunni Al-Murabitun and Banu Barghawati sultanates stuck in a threeway stalemate– while foreign powers like France, Brittany, and Provence creep across the Pyrenees.
If we really want a challenge, we could choose somewhere in Italy. Most of the Italian powers from earlier starts– Venice, Sicily, Genoa, etc., are long gone thanks to Empress Valeria (and, in the case of Genoa, some pissed-off Bulgarians), and we’d have the Byzantines breathing down our neck. Pisa is the strongest remaining Italian republic, and they’re still a major trading power in the Mediterranean– plus, they’re the one thing in between the Papal State of Orbetello and Byzantine Rome, so that’s a feather in their cap.
Or, if we really, really want to torment ourselves, you could vote to play as the Bulgarian mercenaries who had just destroyed the Republic of Genoa after their checks for fighting the French bounced. They named their petty kingdom New Bulgaria, since Old Bulgaria had been carved up by the Byzantines and Croatians. Is the world ready for another Bulgaria?
Norway is the strongest power in Scandinavia, since by 1285 the throne of Denmark was pretty firmly in their grip. Or we could play as Sweden, since playing as somebody named “Nils Puke” is pretty hilarious.
Finally, we could play as one of the powers of Africa. There’s Ghana, which has been remarkably stable under the Sosso dynasty.
By 1285, the previously stable Fatimid domains finally cracked. The Fatimid caliphate’s control over Egypt has just slipped away, after Sultan Alam banu Fatimiyyun improbably claimed the title of the defunct Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and seized most of Egypt and the Holy Land for a rival Fatimid state.
And then, finally, there’s the absurdly rich Republic of Somalia– more prosperous than ever under the tolerant Mu’tazilite leadership of Boqor Kooge Shiikh.
TRADE MAP
OOC: Rest in fucking pieces, Genoa.
RELIGION MAP
CULTURE MAP
OOC: Please take these with a GIANT grain of salt. When I convert this, I’ll be going over culture and religion with a fine tooth comb, so if we continue to hold, say, Anatolia and Italy, there will be way more Turks, Italians, Sunni, and Catholics than you see here. But we have like a zillion vassals and they’re all using their own court chaplains to convert, so RIP Catholicism.
WORLD MAP, 1285
