Seeing a random king with the Papal Tiara made me laugh. Now I kinda hope we get it as a mechanic to setting up our own anti-pope.
I wanted to see how playing as Daurama Daura feels now compared to 6 years ago and yeah it's a bit different.
You start as a Nomad ruler now and you can just become an adventurer, which I did. I travelled all of the eastern world and decided to become Viet. I eventually landed myself on the South of the Horn of Africa, which has 5 insanely powerful landmarks. But before doing that, I made sure to build castles as an adventurer in the free holdings in Zanzibar. Those castles I built get to start at tier 3 and with a money building that you physically can't build in them normally.
After landing myself, I conquered Lanka to get in range of South East Asia. Then I conquered every bit of Tai land possible and gave it to Tai rulers to boost my cultural acceptance. After hybridizing Viet and Tai, I gave all the land away and focused on Africa. I chose those 2 cultures because they get Lords of the Elephant and Mystical Ancestors, as well as every having access to every Chinese silk road Innovations.
While still an adventurer I made sure to recruit the best units I could get and the Kataphraktoi felt like the best choice. We're nearing being able to hybridize with Nubian to regain our African Heritage. And thanks to the Evangelize the realm decision you get via legends, revolts have been pretty infrequent.
Playing as Daurama is waaaay more interesting than it used to be.
27 years old with 82 martial is beyond insane. From the day she was born, Athena was a traveler in her dad's company. In this screenshot it's right after her dad died and she took over. She travelled quite literally the entire known world, except for sub-Saharan Africa. There are so many capital landmarks that the Worldly Knowledge perk makes your character and their followers absolutely insane.
This is on ironman and without mods. It probably needs a bit of a nerf.
My heavily pregnant daughter made me an awesome mace and she just so happens to be a doppelganger for Chlyer Leigh from Not Another Teen Movie.
In this clip I'm doing a University Study, while also tutoring a child and also performing a play.
I learned recently that you don't have to stay in a county while performing a scheme, if you start doing the scheme while already at that county. This lets you always have a scheme contract running, while you do other things.
Similarly, if you do your University Studies while located at the university, you can freely travel and do contracts and your studies at the same time.
The Ledger (shift + f1) shows basically any information you want to search for. In this instance I can look at cultures in the world, filtered by mine and see that 4 counties are being converted to my culture. This is incredibly useful when trying to end the Iberian Struggle via Dominance, which I managed to do this run, largely thanks to Vassal Directives to promote culture.
The Ledger has much more information if you want to delve into it, but this was my favorite thing it does.
Not only is the castle at tier 3, when Norse can't even build them at tier 2 yet, but it also has a Watermill. Watermill's aren't able to be built in baronies that aren't the capital barony and they're also not available until the next era of technology.
Turning the Isle of Mann into a 2 castle county has proved to be exceptionally powerful. Huscarl Henry is gonna conquer the world off the back of 1 county.
Almost exactly 3 years before this event popped up, I was an adventurer. Thanks to being an adventurer I had over 60,000 piety, so I conquered literally all of Iberia in 2 wars by buying claims with the Sanctioned Loopholes perk. Pretty much right after my coronation, I had the Conqueror event trigger.
My wife has 58 martial mostly through the Worldly Knowledge adventurer perk (stewardship tree). My kids are absurdly, insanely strong through that perk. We quite literally conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula within 1 year and each of my kids and their spouse now holds a duchy or two.
Border Gore is gone and we can live in peace. Becoming a Conqueror is a good sign to retire the run.
I got the achievement A Living God on Earth in this run, which requires you to play through 4 different characters and die via acceptable means. I went for the Aspect of Destruction, which was very easy to max out by just constantly conquering neighbors.
Once I got the achievement, I swapped to playing as an unlanded dynasty member and just let the AI manage my old realm. So far they've forced Persia to be their tributary and then the Mongols spawned in. Now we have 3 giant empires in the East that will collide into a huge mess.
Meanwhile, I'm setting up my own elephant dynasty in Iberia and watching from a safe distance.
This game is an eldritch horror sometimes.
I'm the Queen of Pagan playing as an Equal Religion. I conquered Bengal and gave all the land to women over the age of 45. They basically acted as viceroyalties until my grandkids came of age.
As the old ladies started to die and I inherited the lands back, I gave that land to my heirs kids. Then the final lady died and I gave land to my heir so that she was sandwiched between her own 2 kids. I assumed they'd be friends and ally together to conquer our neighbors, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
My heir is now maimed after being attacked by her own son and daughter. She spent 50 years safely in my court and within a year of finally being entrusted with land, she's basically dead.
This character is the brother of the current Holy Roman Emperor. An event triggered when their father died and I got to instead play as the brother of the new HRE, but as an adventurer. He got 4 of the valued courtier traits while I was playing as his dad thanks to hybridizing our culture. I also gave him 4 personality traits through tutoring him as a child and I picked up Zealous through a special event while on a Pilgrimage. That special event also made him a Saint.
Then I travelled the world. He has 10 completed lifestyle trees, with 10 spare learning lifestyle perks. All his kids are master craftsmen, with them having 30-50 in all the good stats. His health is immaculate for a 64 year old. And he has more prestige and piety than you could spend in 3 lifetimes.
It's amazing what you can do when you aren't held down by the weight of ruling land.
Changing Domain Limit to be tied to Education and Lifestyle Perks has made getting more domain limit feel like an actual growth for my character. Before the change I would usually marry a partner with high stewardship and play characters with stewardship educations, just to get more domain limit.
With this character, I sent her to University as a child for 2200 gold and she got a 4 star education. Then I spent 2000 gold on a University visit to gain a 5 star education. I also chose to maintain peace for 5 years as my Coronation Oath, which gave me 1 domain limit permanently.
Then I went travelling. Pilgrimages to Santiago and Canterbury let me visit a bunch of points of interest across Europe. And finally, a visit to the nearby Silk Road let me get a few closer points of interest.
After ruling for 30 years I've amassed a bunch of different lifestyle perks to focus on a higher domain limit, by doing a variety of activities. Diversifying and getting literally as much experience as possible has made the journey to a higher domain limit feel like genuine character growth.
Hosting the Inspection cost me 130~ gold and I paid no money for the events that triggered during it. Not only do I get an immediate return on my investment with 450 gold, I also give ridiculous modifiers to the county.
Lucca is owned by my son and it's just a regular county that isn't very developed and has nothing special. But it's now making 9.5g per month thanks to the inspection. And it's only on a 2 year cooldown, so I can just boost my economy like crazy with only 2 points invested in the travel lifestyle.
I'm going for the A Living God on Earth achievement, which requires you to go through 4 generations of family. So I decided to try get some super strong elephants while doing it to make it more interesting. I hybridized Oriya and Burmese to get all the elephant culture boosts and the retinue elephants carried hard.
I allied with my niece, who was an adventurer and had claims on Tibetan kingdoms. I helped her get the Kingdom of Amdo and China attacked her the instant she took over. My character is a ridiculously good commander, so I just stood on a mountain and let China attack me while I had 50 advantage.
For some reason China has over 80,000 gold, so he won't even notice that loss, but it did show me that my elephants are strong enough to beat China. And I haven't maxed them out yet.
All 3 of these options are bad, but compassionate people can't blackmail others without a stress induced heart attack, and China is a literal piggy bank thanks to people cheating on exams.
For a solid 50 years I've had my spymaster finding secrets in China and they've never run out of secrets to find. A "cheated on exam" blackmail becomes a strong hook, and those last for life. So there's a growing list of Chinese people who owe me money every few years.
So my son will become fat. For the greater good.
I like playing as utterly monstrous looking characters to see how my kids inherit my weird traits, but I think I went too far this time. One son is basically a cyclops.
I married this guy matrilineally to my grand daughter, so once they got married he moved to my sons court and, hilariously, my son made him his Jester.
Then my son pushed Glums claims and I gave Glum land, but the king of Poland had Glum excommunicated.
Then Glum lost his face.
Then Glum died young, but his son is really good, so I made him a king.
I started playing this run as hideous little goblin so that everyone detested me. It was a very fun challenge run and now I get to watch my dynasty get all my weird facial features. It also made incest way more wild, since we already had a bunch of negative traits in the gene pool.
She had a long, successful life and then decided that she needed to finish up in the mortal realm, and go join death in the harvesting of souls. She's even wielding her magic staff.