Anybody playing Crusader Kings 2?

[Hottentot]

I have been an idiot. I should have remembered the most important lesson from CK 1: make love, not war. I have been wasting my time and resources on useless wars for single counties, when I could have just as well been making babies and getting it all that way.

I'm correcting the mistake as we speak, though. Once I got Oxford and pressed the claim of my vassal for the county of Dewon, I realized that England has been divided by only very few individuals who have ridiculous amounts of titles. And daughters.

The duke of Lancaster was overjoyed when I proposed that his daughter would marry me, a king. Think of the prestige, man! Unfortunately my dear future father-in-law, who was like a real father and a genuine idol to me, never got to enjoy that prestige, because in the wedding he suffered an accident involving steps of a tower and banana peels.

My baby mach...dearest wife made me a few children. Unfortunately our marriage was a short one, because after a few children, she too went to investigate the tower and didn't notice the bright yellow bastard on the steps. I was overwrought with grief and can only hope that her heir, my son, can be as good ruler to the lands of Lancaster as she was. While I will never get over the loss, I'm sure this was the will of the almighty. Funny thing how I always told her: "Dear, we should have only a few sons, not more, because then they will start arguing about the lands and cause a huge civil war in the future."

My poor first born son was lonely without her mother. I tried to fix the problem by getting him a friend. The duke of York (and a few other prestigious titles) fortunately had a daughter of about the same age as him. I'm a little worried how it goes, though. The duke seems to be cursed for his sinful life, and for some reason all his sons have been meeting their fruity end while playing in the tower of his castle. I have forbidden my son and his future wife (now the heiress of the duke) from ever going there.

My people have been worried and asking: "sire, this is a temperate zone (whatever that is), where do all these bananas come from?!" How should I know?! Maybe they migrate or something! The swallows could carry them. African swallows!

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On a more serious note, how do you guys handle vassals? I have so far noticed that making my brothers vassals is a bad idea, but more distant relatives such as uncles are pretty safe. Do you give lots of land to a few vassals or divide them among many vassals (that would make the rebellions easier to put down, but then you would have to take care of the relations more).

The antipope is great. I can randomly excommunicate anyone I don't like in my realm and take everything they have. It's almost too easy. Especially good for rebellious vassals, since then you can take their titles away without anyone complaining. I have noticed that if you put down a rebellious vassal in a war, you can only revoke one title. That doesn't make any sense: he has clearly shown that he wants my head on the block, so why would I let him keep any titles at all?

The warscore is pretty wonky. It seems that I can slaughter the English king's doomstack and it gives me a few percents of warscore. Then he retreats to the North, finds a few hundred of my Irish allies in there being drunk and doing nothing, drives them back to the sea and it suddenly makes my warscore go to negative?