Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Crusader Kings II: Creating a character without the Ruler Designer

 When considering a new start to my Scottish campaign, I came up with a new method of designing characters that does not require the Ruler Designer. Even though I had the designer, I wanted a more randomised start rather than picking my stats, but definitely wanted to set up the name. For those that do not have the ruler designer, this method should work too. Here’s the shortened version:
1) Create a town and name it to your surname
2) Keep inviting nobles to court until one comes with that surname
3) Grant a landed, playable title to the new character.

Creating a town: 

 - You will need to choose any province with a blank space. If you have one in mind, awesome, but any province will do.
- You will also need 700 gold. This will equate to about 5 years of play as a king, or ~15 years of play as a duke. At maximum speed without any wars this takes around ½ hour for a duke. Don’t forget to assign ‘gather taxes’ from your court. You might want to save before creating the city if you feel like using that start for other surnames.
- Once paid for, the town will take about 2 years to build

Naming your town: 

- To rename a town you must be the highest independent sovereignty over that title. This means that if you are an independent earl or duke you can do it, but if you are an earl or duke under a king or emperor, then you need to save the game, load it as the king or emperor and rename the city.
 - Once renamed, load the game back as the current ruler of the province the city is in to pass it on.

Invite nobles to court 

- Once you have control of the direct ruler of the new city, invite nobles to your court until one arrives with the new city’s title. Congratulations! There’s your new randomly generated character!

Grant landed title 

- Now that you have the character, all you need is to grant him any title of earl or greater so that you can play them. It doesn’t need to be the same title as the city, but since you have gone to that effort to make a home base, it hay as well be your capital too.

Starting REALLY small. 

- Since your character has just been generated, you will have 0 money, 0 prestige, 0 piety.
 - You will also have 0 court if you took you new character over immediately after creating and assigning them a landed title. With no money this makes it rather interesting bringing in the right people to hold down council positions.

Good luck with the game!