Crusader Kings II & The Bastard Son

Recently I've been playing the absolute shit out of this game. There is absolutely nothing like it in the market at the moment. It's a grand strategy game; but rather than focusing on building units and conquering the land, it concentrates on maintaining relationships, making decisions and ruling over your lords and ladies, all while maintaining a good relationship with religious leaders, trying to avoid being usurped or invaded and attempting to expand your realm. It feels more human than your average grand strategy game, which is regularly just tables and statistics. It's about the characters, not the numbers.

Crusader Kings II places you as a Christian (other religions are playable with expansions) noble in the medieval era. You can choose from a variety of rules, from Counts to Kings and in any Christian country. You can also play from any era from 1066-1337 and even choose to play as famous dynasties from that point in time (William the Conquerer, anyone?). You play as a single person, through hundreds of years of medieval history, taking over as your heir once you die (in many, many ways; from a hunting accident to a fatal accident to being assassinated with a snake). The aim of the game is to keep your dynasty alive and in power; there is no "final goal", its very open and quite sandbox-esque. There is a point system that compares you to famous dynasties on a leaderboard, and score is calculated by adding together the success of each individual ruler. It's not necessary to pay any attention to this mechanic though, just holding a country, or even a duchy together through the entire time period is an achievement in itself.

What makes this game so interesting is that every count, every duke, every king is looking out for himself, trying to gain as much power as possible. You have to deal with dilemmas and decisions, things like; "Do I assasinate my eldest son because he was born a dwarf and mentally handicapped?" and "Should I imprison my brother for plotting to claim my cousins land as his own?". These situations aren't scripted, they arise according to the situation at hand . Every game is different, and as you rise in power (or struggle to maintain it if you started at the top) you gain more enemies as your vassals (the nobles that you rule) try to further their own interests.

I really don't think I'm describing the scale of this game well, let me instead share with you the story of my last playthrough.

I started as an Irish duke, owning a single county in Ireland. In the time period I chose Ireland is split into various countys, each with independent counts and each as powerful as the other. I made it my aim to unite Ireland under one banner; my own. I started as the Duke of Munster (the dark green area of the Ireland). One man managed to do it all, and his name was Earl Locán. It was the first son of the original person I chose, beloved by all. Through the clever work of marrying off brothers, sisters and cousins and a bit of luck, I managed to give him the whole of the South of Ireland. This was enough for Earl Locán to declare himself King, and demand the other Counts swear fealty and become Locán's vassals. This went smoothly, nobody dared to declare war and the whole of Ireland was united. The people dubbed him "King Locán the Great", he was the man who united Ireland in less than a generation and brought peace to the land.  He married the Duchess of Brittany (the purple area of France) who had only one son.  They had a son together who would inherit and unite Ireland and Brittany, if only her other son, born to a French Duke wasn't in the way. I sent an assasination team after him, and they succeeded.  The perfect plan.

Too bad they were caught in the act though, right? They bloody squealed, and revealed everything about the plot. Brittany got real mad with me, but because I was married to the Duchess there was nothing they could do! Of course my wife wasn't too pleased either, I mean, I just had her son killed. Unfortunately the renowned king met his fate to this cruel woman, who arranged for a carriage ride to go "horribly wrong". Killed, and nobody knew her involvement.

This is where things went a little awry. His heir, Ormond, was not well liked at all, being cruel and lustful, the vassals of both Ireland and Brittany despised his unholiness. Ormond's eldest child was Baseborn, although named after the great king Locán. This caused a succession crisis, with every duke wanting a different person on the Irish throne, and rebellions within Ireland that took 30 years to quell. Fortunately, after the rebellions things began to calm down, and Ormonds sights turned to expanding the realm. He had to grant the title of Duke of Brittany to his bastard son to stop the rebellions. This turned out to be the Dynasty's downfall.

Ormond conquered Wales, and created the Kingdom of Wales. Again, he was holding too much land, so granted a duchy to his bastard son. His legitimate son was to inherit all of Ireland, and the idea was that the two brother would rule side-by-side.

Big mistake. The bastard son had Ormond assassinated, and I suddenly found myself playing as a 5 year old King. The bastard declared Brittany and Wales independent and under the rule of the Kingdom of Wales, not Ireland. Uhoh. He now had more forces than me and a claim on all my lands, and because I'm playing as  a damned 5 year old there's nothing I can do about it, all decisions are made by my Regent, (who was French by the way, I still think she was in Lorcán the bastards pocket!) He declared war for the Kingdom of Ireland, and I watched helplessly as his forces decimated my lands.

So my kingdom fell apart within a generation. But I had so much fun doing it. It's a steep learning curve but so good to play. Not to mention you learn a little history here and there!

This game feels really "Song of Ice and Fire". The backstabbing and deceit is great. If you can pick up this game, I really recommend it. If you're not sure, watch a few Let's Plays on youtube and get the free demo. If you like Game of Thrones, or strategy games in general, you will absolutely love this. Paradox really got it right with this one.