[Hottentot]

Well, it's done: the first full campaign is finally over. Started as a count in England, ended as the king of Manyplaces. I created or usurped all in all 6 kingdoms, but in the end held only 5, because I gave the kingdom of Jerusalem to one of my sons for roleplaying purposes. He managed to lose over half of it in far less time than it took me to create it in the first place. On the other hand, I didn't care, because I had originally created it as a throw away kingdom just for the huge prestige and piety bonus.

The sequel is a clear improvement over CK 1, even in such early stage of its life. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the future patches and expansions will bring. I miss some stuff from CK 1, such as friendships and (yes, still) more conveniently available information. The occasional micro management is still something that hampers the experience, but nothing that couldn't be lived with or, better yet, improved at some point.

My main gripe is, that the game got almost pointless once I had acquired enough land. Until that point it had been a struggle: getting the kingdom of England felt like an achievement, because I had set it as my goal and worked for it for a long time. But after that I had no idea what I would do other than get more land. OK, so Ireland was easy enough. Scotland I didn't even want, so I was content with installing my cousin there as a puppet king. Then I really didn't have anything meaningful to do, so I decided I might as well conquer France piece by piece from the independent heretics (there wasn't, at that point, a single catholic province left in there) and then convert it back to the parent religion. It was easy, because the solution to any war was: "Raise 100,000 soldiers and send them all to one place."

The whole Jerusalem project started that way too. I wanted to use those levies for something, so I sent them over and over again to bash any religion in the world that started with the letter I, including the Iconoclast heretics. At that point there wasn't really any tactics or sense of strategy left in the game. All I had to do was to land anywhere I wanted with (at most) about 200,000 drunken English tourists, have them assault every single clay cottage they found and then send a "do you give up or shall we continue" note to anyone I happened to be at war with.

Sure, I still played the inheritance game too and got three duchies from Scotland eventually because I had claims on them, but...why? If I wanted, I could have smashed the whole country anyway, anytime I wanted. When I started the game, I thought that maybe I'd just take the English crown, then grow my power in the isles, but never expand into the continent. But there just wasn't enough left to do. There wasn't anything I could do with my huge kingdom, other than make it even bigger with more senseless wars. The domestic policies just didn't exist. The only plot I could ever start as a mighty king was to kill my wife.

Keeping the vassals happy wasn't difficult except maybe during a succession, but even then a few gifts and honorary titles were usually all I needed. Actually, I at some points hoped they would rebel just so there would have been a change. The more vassals I got, the more the game turned into "kill this army of rebels that the vassal can't deal with independently" or "click to end his mastermind plot through diplomacy only to have him start it again next month." At some point I didn't even want to expand anymore, because more vassals brought more plot clicking and more peasant rebels. But then again, there really wasn't anything else left to do than expand.

All in all, a great game and hopefully will grow even greater. Still I can't help noticing that the most memorable moments were those I played as a count or a duke. The endgame wasn't nearly as much fun. Hopefully there will be some improvements on it, so that the obvious answer to someone asking "Gee, king, what are we going to do tonight" is no longer: "The same thing we do every night..."