The Kingdom of Sicily: A Paradoxian TL

After finally managing to purchase all of Paradox’s flagship games, I have decided to play and document my “Grand Campaign”, where I start out as the Duke of Apulia, playing Crusader Kings from 1066 (our POD, I suppose) until 1399, then convert the save file to Europa Universalis 3 (1399-1821) then converting that save file to Victoria 2 (1836-1936) before converting the save file yet again to Hearts of Iron 3 (1936-1948) meaning that we will essentially be playing the same nation in a consistent (although probably not entirely realistic) alternative history timeline.

Without further ado, let’s begin what could be an incredible journey through history. Or I could get invaded by the Byzantines ten years in. Regardless, I’m playing the first Crusader Kings game, despite my desire to get the sequel, as I really can’t afford to buy CK2 and am doubtful that my computer would run it. However I personally believe that CK is not as bad as people make it out to be and I’ve always had a lot of fun playing it.

So, as I said, we are playing as the Duke of Apulia, Robert Guiscard D’Hauteville:

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He has pretty good stats, and a strong line of succession under the semisalic consanguinity law, whilst he also owns quite a bit of territory in Southern Italy, as we can see in the following screen shot:

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The four provinces in dark green are the ones that Robert owns directly, whilst the light green ones are our vassal’s, meaning that they give us most of the money they make whilst we control their military and defend them, but our character does not own the territory outright. The orange provinces are counties that we have a claim on, meaning that we feel they belong to us and that we can therefore declare war on them to try and capture the territory. Originally Robert owned five of the provinces, but owning too much territory makes our vassals angry at our greed and sometimes leading them to revolt against our rule. This was something I didn’t want to deal with right at the start of the game so I immediately gave away the province of ? to the Count of Taranto, another one of my vassals, meaning that I was under my territorial limit and could get on with business without worrying about revolts.

My first action was to appoint some advisors and sort out the budget, before I declared war on the nefarious Count of Napoli who owned territory that rightfully belonged to our people.


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As you can see they mobilised an army, but it was pitifully small (946 men) that proved no trouble for the 1870 I called into service from Foggia and Apulia, and within a couple of months I’d destroyed their forces and occupied the county, before suing for peace with the count;


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As you can see, I installed myself as leader, but I then gave the county to a vassal (the Count of Benevento) to keep everyone happy, which I suppose defeats the point of fighting for the territory in the first place, but having the county under my influence has certain uses. Not only this but the Count of Benevento decided to give the title to his son, the 17 year old Robert de Hauteville.

In the mean time, the counties of Lecce and Apulia ran out of manure, plunging them into poverty. And people say leadership isn’t glamorous. With the news of the manure crisis fresh in my ears I decided to declare war on my second claim, Capua, to claim more income to help my impoverished people. I forgot to take a screenshot of the declaration, but here’s me taking the land after my inevitable victory;

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I also happened upon an event that rewarded me with 200 ducats that paid for my relatively expensive conquests. I gave our new county to the 17 year old Count of Napoli, because inexperienced adolescents can never have enough power.

This means that we now directly own or control through vassals the entirety of Southern Italy (apart from Salerno) as well as Messassina in Sicily;

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This means that if I gain 2 more counties in the area I can create the Kingdom of Sicily and crown myself King, which not only gives me a great deal of prestige (the more prestige, the higher your ranking amongst other dynasties) but also allows me to control more territory without having to use vassals. I decided that the best way to get the necessary number of titles would be to gain the two Sicilian provinces highlighted in green below:

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In the mean time I was looking at the County of Salerno and realised that the Count didn’t have any children.

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Which meant that if the Count tragically died in a terrible accident, utterly beyond my control, then all his titles would pass on to my son, Roger Borsa, the heir apparent to all my possessions...

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woops...

nb. Are you guys interested in this, would you like me to keep going? Any C&C will be greatly appreciated
 
Regardless, I’m playing the first Crusader Kings game, despite my desire to get the sequel, as I really can’t afford to buy CK2 and am doubtful that my computer would run it.
But wait, then how are you going to run Victoria 2? Or HoI3 for that matter. :confused:

In anycase, wow i havnt seen CK1 in forever. :D
 
KEEP GOING!!! This seems intresting.

Thankyou, I've already got a few more episodes queued up :)

But wait, then how are you going to run Victoria 2? Or HoI3 for that matter. :confused:

In anycase, wow i havnt seen CK1 in forever. :D

They work, I've checked :D However, CK2 doesn't run very well on a lot of computers, as the huge database of characters and so on really eats up processing power. And yeah, I personally love CK1 but it is starting to look dated (hell, it looked dated when it came out!)
 
But in a good way.

Not sure if this is the best forum to post it on, but check with a mod - and wherever you have it, by all means continue! :D

Paradox is really good at modeling butterflies - or maybe just batshit insane chaos.

A suggestion: After a while, go into the save file and mod the Byzantines to have semi-salic law.

Because while there's nothing wrong with elective law representing the chaos until someone strong takes over, having it continue isn't appropriate.

It's not necessary, but it seems like it would be a better pseudo-historical game that way.
 

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely make the change you were suggesting, about what year would you recommend doing this?

Regarding whether this is the right forum, I wasn't sure but I eventually decided that it was just a TL aided by a game and screenshots, but if a mod wants to put it somewhere else then that's fine.
 
Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely make the change you were suggesting, about what year would you recommend doing this?

Regarding whether this is the right forum, I wasn't sure but I eventually decided that it was just a TL aided by a game and screenshots, but if a mod wants to put it somewhere else then that's fine.

Depends on how things stabilize, but I'd say no later than around 1090 - earlier if it looks like whoever is Emperor is beating up the Seljuks and the like, later if things fall to pieces. But past that point, either the Seljuks have run amok or they haven't, from my experience.

OTL Alexos Komnenus was on the throne in 1081, but the way CK works might not support that exact date as the point things are functional again (for a given definition of). So it's mostly when it looks right in game.

As for the forum: Yeah. I'm not sure we really have a forum for this sort of thing, if this isn't it.

So we'll see what the mods say.
 

The Sandman

Banned
Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely make the change you were suggesting, about what year would you recommend doing this?

Regarding whether this is the right forum, I wasn't sure but I eventually decided that it was just a TL aided by a game and screenshots, but if a mod wants to put it somewhere else then that's fine.

Download the demo of CK2, see if it runs on your computer. The only difference between it and the full game is that it restricts your choice of starting characters and times, it only gives you 20 years, and you can't save. Otherwise, it's the full game.
 
This is fascinating; reminds me of when I played Civilization (the original) on my old Macintosh; boy, your choices were really limited then, though it was fun. But, it got so big for a 40MB machine...

But then I tried a game like this at my college friend's when we visited back in '03, and boy, it was so complex! I can't imagine how complex the games are now. So, if you wanted, can you advance technology, too? Have your country dsicover the Americas? Will the plague or the Great Famine of 1315-1317 impact thigns?

Not that I would have time, but if i did, it would be fun. Then gain, I'd probably just be writing; when i broke my leg is when i got a lot of "Brotherhood and Baseball" completed and checked.
 
Download the demo of CK2, see if it runs on your computer. The only difference between it and the full game is that it restricts your choice of starting characters and times, it only gives you 20 years, and you can't save. Otherwise, it's the full game.

Thanks for the advice, I just did that and, unfortunately, it didn't work. It was incredibly laggy, to the point where clicking from one province to the other took about 30 seconds.

CK2 is completely worth it, even if it's super slow. It is way better than the original.

I agree, it's a lot better from what I've seen, but like I said, it doesn't work, so I'm going to play the inferior game, though I hope you keep reading :)



This is my favourite thing about Paradox, they're immensely complex with a steep learning curve, but the sheer amount of choice makes them so rewarding and renders all other games in this genre (i.e. Civ 5) rather stale.


I'm doing a Grand Campaign with the Sicilies.

Awesome, keep us posted, we'll see how you do compared to me :)
 
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