Editing Crusader Kings (section)

==Some More Detail==
The game world for CK2 is Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, Central and Southern Asia as well as what we would consider Western China. The map is then divided into whole mess of little territories called counties. Each county is/can be part of a duchy, each duchy part of a kingdom and each kingdom in turn, can be, or already is a part of an empire. Depending on which game start date you choose (Early Middle Ages of 769, the Viking Age of 867, the Iron Century of 936, the High Middle Ages of 1066 or the Late Middle Ages of 1337) will determine what kingdoms and empires are on the map.

Once you make your choice of start date, <s> you select an independent realm (usually a kingdom but you can select down to a count who rules only one county if you wish) </s> You can then choose any start landed character independent or no whose highest title is above Barony I.E. Counts and, if you have the proper DLC, can then make you're own ruler. Designing the ruler is divided into a few steps, not unlike making a character for typical RPG. You start by designing their looks which is dependent on their ethnicity (you can mix things up too, making a Bedouin woman in Finland or an Irish man in Sri Lanka if you want), then you move on to design their family crest/coat of arms. After this you get to the meat of your character where you choose a bunch of traits for them to increase or decrease their stats. The five "main" stats are Diplomacy (how well you can chat with these inbred asses), Martial (how well you can cleave that Viking berserker in half), Stewardship (how well you can manage your vassals as well as how many you can handle), Intrigue (want to poison your daughter-sister-wife? This is the stat you want) and Learning (how well can you read and/or reason). Three other sub-stats play a big part of the game as well - Health (pretty simple to understand), Fertility (how likely you are to have a kid when doing the nasty) and Age (do you need an explanation on this one?). Every trait you pick raises and/or lowers almost all of your traits and may also affect how others treat you. For example, you could start the game as a Genius (boosts all of your stats basically) but you're paying for it by being older. If you have a lot of good traits but are too old to survive more than a day without someone spoon feeding you prunes, you could take a couple of debilitating traits such as Inbred though that carries a lot of stat, health and fertility penalties as well.

Once your character is made and you're in the game, your ultimate goal is survival of your bloodline, and always have legit successor. Everyone and their Anti-Pope wants your lands. You can turn enemies into friends, friends into enemies and convert to heresies but everything you do comes at a cost of either manpower, gold, prestige or piety (usually combinations of them as well). And you want babies, lots of them. The more kids you have, the more likely at least one won't end up in some Sultan's prison and the more likely you are to let your dynasty continue. Once your character dies (from plague, war, poison, old age or otherwise), if you have an heir that holds territory or inherits your lands, they are your new character. Hopefully you raised them right and they are not inbred, slow, left-handed, cruel heretical zealots.

As your realm expands, the realities of medieval feudalism will start to set in; you will start having to give out and manage territories to your extended family and supporters, as increasing the lands that you rule directly will start to incur high financial penalties. The trade off is that if you don’t manage your internal politics well, that nice juicy region you just conquered will be yoinked away by rebellious relatives, especially if they don’t like the fact that you just started a new religion where inbred nudity is not only permitted, but encouraged. One counter to this is the so-called “North Korea strategy,” whereby you jail your vassals while moving around their offices and possessions until you become the sole power of your kingdom. This still incurs a big financial penalty, but if your empire is large enough, the sheer volume of taxes you receive will far outweigh it.