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No review or CK would be complete without a mention of the artwork and music. Always of a high standard for strategy games generally, the artwork in Crusader Kings is nevertheless a significant step up. The possibility of more than a thousand counties, each having to have their own unique Coat of Arms, plus hundreds of duchies, principalities, archbishoprics, and assorted kingdoms, tribes and other political entities mean that they spent a staggering amount of time assembling hundreds of authentic shield graphics. Every military unit is likewise represented by an historically accurate sprite with 18+ frames of animation each. Moreover, every single person in the game has a profile portrait, made up of (I guess) a randomly shuffled assortment of ears, eyes, hair, facial hair, etc., which strongly carries the sense that these are individuals and not merely bundles of statistics and traits. Minor children are not given portraits, only silhouettes as befits their potentialities. The music is likewise always a strong point and Crusader Kings is no different. More than a dozen songs, over 35 megs of mp3s support and enhance the medieval atmosphere. Where their other games used licensed music, I believe that these are all original titles. My only wish is that the mp3 playlist information would be complete, so I could tell the composer and performers involved. “War Without End” is perhaps my favorite. For what it’s worth, it takes only a few moments and some minor text editing to copy over the entire music directory of EU2. I now play CK with nearly 70 songs, 250 megs of music, so it never gets repetitious.
It’s a good thing that the UI is Paradox’ usual high standard – 2-level informative popups, just about everything clickable – because their manual is once again lackluster. Certainly it performs its minimum-necessary function of how to click to do whatever, but what is most obvious about the manual is what it is lacking. We could definitely use a much fuller explanation of how combat works. When does a regimental commander decide it’s time to run? How does a “cowardly” or “martial” leader change this? How are combat factors calculated, resolved, and applied in multi-regiment battles? Inheritance? What happens when a vassal with no heirs dies, does control revert to the liege? What if there is no liege? Who inherits from a childless Bishop? There is so very much going on ‘under the hood’ so to speak, we don’t necessarily need the absolute figures but a wealth of player tips wouldn’t be amiss, something like “When offering a diplomatic marriage, it’s more important to offer a high prestige husband to a woman of high prestige, than vice versa (especially if she’s young & healthy).” I don’t know if this example is true, I’m just guessing – which is the point; I don’t think I should be entirely guessing with something this important to the game.
Multiplayer CK is outstanding. Like HoI, CK multiplayer has a much-needed pause feature with which any player can pause the otherwise constantly-running game to issue orders or whatnot. Other players are able to un-pause after 30 seconds, keeping this from being a severe drag on game speed. Although my beta version still had a few lockups and CTDs, it generally played very smoothly over a LAN. I couldn’t test internet play, but I’m hopeful as the maturity of the basic game engine has made each release since EU more stable than the last. In fact, it was during multiplayer that it really struck me how different CK was from EU and the other games. I was playing as Hungary, and was conquering barbarian tribes eastward along the Black Sea as money an opportunity presented. Another player was Poland, and he got into a tussle with the Principality of Gallich, a three-county demesne on the eastern end of our mutual frontier. His armies were out of place and weakened by his previous efforts against the pagans around the Baltic. So I offered to help, and also declared war on Gallich (I did this out of sheer altruism, although there were two counties that Gallich had taken from barbarians that I was hungry to have…). Well, only a couple of months into my efforts I had just gotten a couple of medium-sized regiments in place to invade Gallich and my Polish ‘friend’ secured a separate peace where he garnered the title of Prince of Gallich. My first thought was “Rats!” since those two provinces I wanted suddenly became vassals of the Poles. In EU, this would have been the end of it. Separate peaces suck, but there it was. But I was in for a little shock: this was CK, and it wasn’t over at all. The former Prince of Gallich, now merely a count of the overmuscled County of Gallich and a Polish vassal, continued to attack me! So I had to struggle to get more regiments mustered over there, to put down this upstart’s forces. I conquered him, eventually, but I had to use the forces of a Hungarian Duke that I wasn’t too fond of, and since his forces conquered Gallich, it was his to claim. All in all, it was not a happy result.
A final, wonderful point. I’ve talked a great deal during this review about Paradox’ other games, particularly Europa Universalis 2, which picks up historically roughly where Crusader Kings leaves off. This is not purely academic, since CK has the Holy Grail that players have been slavering for since the first previews of CK came out: a savegame exporter that allows you to take CK games and turn them into a startgame for Europa Universalis 2. With the pair of games, you can play nearly 800 solid years of European history, from 1066 to 1820.
I tried it a couple of times, and am sort of stunned to say – it works. I exported a CK game from 1107 to EU2 a bit earlier than one really should, since EU2 doesn’t technically start until 1419. My totally ahistorical state of Bohemia – including the western 2/3 of Poland and the entire Baltic coastline from Luebeck to modern-day Finland – existed! It had reasonable levels of income and played well for the first few decades of EU2 that I tested. One catch was that one of my vassals was the Duke of Austria, and in each of the games I exported his loyalty was not as high as I’d like, right around the 66% range. I expect that this explains why, when I opened EU2, I found that his counties weren’t actually part of Bohemia, but instead were a separate vassal state (in the EU2 sense, of course). Makes sense to me, but I certainly hope that the manual they provide with the game (I didn’t get one) explains these sorts of connections. I did notice that despite my CK reputation of “hated by everyone” I started EU2 with relations of +125 for many states. I noticed also, that upon importing into EU2 it’s not quite sure of how to handle the characteristic differences in military procedure from CK. In the middle ages, armies are raised and disbanded for a particular need – it’s not uncommon to go for many years without having any standing forces at all. But EU2 interprets this as military weakness. At the start of the EU2 game, you’ve got nothing for military forces at all. So I might recommend that you deploy a number of regiments BEFORE you save & export. I’m going to keep playing with it, though.
Reviewing CK, like every other game they’ve put out, is a Sisyphean challenge: where can one possibly start? There’s no other game that I can think of that’s really attempted to capture the shifting and fractious loyalties of the Middle Ages, the cross between the political and personal has probably just been too complex for anyone to want to tackle. Crusader Kings has done it magnificently.
A lot of people – mainly ones that have never played an EU game – are going to try to compare CK to Medieval Total War. Let me try to forestall that. They are by and large different games. MTW and CK superficially cover the same ground, but their focus is entirely different and their aspirations are entirely different as well. Both do what they want to successfully. MTW is more about a strategic shell around a battle game, which CK is a strategic/political game in which the clash of arms is instrumental, not intrinsic. While there may be internet acrimony and factionalism (isn’t there always?), I’m going to continue playing both. I’ve thought of a lot of metaphors for comparison, but invariably those are misinterpreted as a slam one way or another, so I’ll keep them to myself. Medieval Total War I like, and enjoy. I confess, however: Crusader Kings I love.
First, this is a gold master I’m playing. Paradox is renowned for their constant and consistent support for games including meaty patches that not only fix things found to be broken, but also improve gameplay every single patch. I know gold masters aren’t supposed to be the stablest things in the world, but I’ve played for multiple scores of hours without a crash or lockup. That’s better than some released games I know. I played multiplayer and that wasn’t quite so flawless, but it was much more stable than previous Paradox titles. This has a lot to do with the basic maturity of the engine, I’m sure.
Second, I have to be careful - I’m running out of superlatives for Paradox products. I’ll make it abundantly clear: I fell hard for the first Paradox game I stumbled onto, Europa Universalis. Then EU2, next HoI, followed by Victoria, and now finally Crusader Kings. So what can I do? I well know that any reviewer who says again and again that a certain series of games are “the best ever” begins to sound incredible, no matter how enthusiastically I say it or how genuinely it’s meant. So what have they left me? I’ll leave out the superlatives and give you the cold hard facts of my testing and playing: I’ve had the game for over a week, and I can’t stop playing it. My online FPS teams are ticked at me because I’ve not been showing up for the usual nights. My spouse, fortunately, saw that I’d gotten another game from Paradox, so her whole level of expectation as regards my housework contribution and parental responsibilities has dropped – but for how long? I’ve got scads and scads of screenshots of something interesting or cool, far more than my Editor will post on SGO. I have friends that are sick of me talking about CK in real life, and I am frankly distracted at work. So draw your own conclusions about what I think about Crusader Kings.
I was going to write a full AAR of my experiences as Duke of Bohemia, because that gives you an extremely complete picture of what happens in a game of CK. I will if I get a few responses asking for it, but I think after 9 pages of review you’re probably eager enough to quit reading, go get the game, and start playing. I know I am, because while writing this I’ve left the game running slowly in the background, and I’ve noticed that the Duke of Brandenburg – a fat, juicy set of three or four counties between Bohemia and my counties in Lubeck and Mecklenberg – has decided to revolt against Heinrich, King of Germany. My lovely wife having died a few years before, I felt it was finally worthwhile for my 69 year old King to remarry Reginsuit von Pfirt, not coincidentally the mother of Mark vard Stadten…the Duke of Brandenburg. He has thus far refused the legitimate requests for vassalization from his new father and I feel that it’s my responsibility to beat some obedience into the lad. Duty calls.
- Your obedient servant, Wratislaw Przemysl, King of Bohemia, Duke of Podlasia and Prussia, Count of Usti nad Labem, Kaliskie, Praha, and Plzen.
NOTE: If you are planning on taking advantage of the export-game function and continue your dynasty into the 19th Century, you should make sure you get the latest 1.08 Patch for Europa Universalis 2 at http://www.paradoxplaza.com/Downloads.asp . There are host of changes, many having to do with code updates so EU2 can better accept the wide variety of start-state conditions possibly handed forward from a long game of CK.