Thursday, January 24, 2019

Crusader Kings II Edition

Once again I find myself wasting... I mean, spending quality time with some of my favorite strategy games. Hearts of Iron 4 filled that role for a large part of last year. I played the 'Lord of the Rings' mod for that game and got some enjoyment out of playing Lothlorien, stealing the one ring and betraying everyone to Sauron by becoming a ring wraith to take over the world (yay corruption!)

However, this year I find myself coming back to Crusader Kings 2. Fortunately, this obsession should subside soon enough, but while I have it, I've taken the opportunity to explore some of the lewd mods available for the game.

Specifically, I've installed Dark World Fantasy, along with Dark World Extras and Dark World: Beyond Heresy.

These mods add several fantasy races to the game, such as succubi/incubi, werewolves, vampires, dragons, reptilians, nekos, abominations, and a handful of others I'm forgetting, along with many more sexual options you can take with various characters. I've tried a few of the races, and for my money the succubi are the most fleshed out of all the races, since 'Beyond Heresy' has significantly expanded your options by adding a Catholic Heresy you can eventually attempt to convert everyone to (yes, we're all Lilithanists now!)

I'm also planning at trying out House Irae at some point (Dark Elves) as that adds religious options too, but probably after I've finished my current play through. By then I'll probably be Crusader Kinged out for awhile, so maybe later. Much later.

Depending on which expansions you have, I would highly recommend turning adventurers and great conquerors off, since they can make the game almost unplayable if you're planning on building a large empire and spreading your religion. Turning off defensive pacts and allowing theological empires to hold more land would also make this scenario more fun. Since these mods disable achievements anyway, there's no shame in making the game a little bit easier for your own enjoyment. I usually play on Iron Man so that the game runs more organically, but you can always save scum if it gets to be too much to you.


Here I'm already 223 years old, and have conquered all of Italy, attempting to spread my cult of pleasure up into Europe. You can start out as a particular 'dark world' race at game start, as I did here, but you can also work your way up the succubus/incubus ladder from nothing as long as your character has the 'Lustful' trait.


If your character has 'Lustful', you will be able to select the 'Chosen of Lilith' secret society in the societies tab. Once you're a member, you need to work your way up the rank to tier 3, 'Lover,' at which point you can infuse yourself with Demonic blood and become a half demon alu-fiend
(female) or cambion (male). Once you've reach tier 4, you will be given the option to infuse yourself with Lilith's blood and become a full succubus or Incubus.


To be fair, having the succubus trait doesn't really give you anything other than some intrigue and an opinion gain, but it unlocks a lot options for you take. One of the powers in the secret society at level 2 allows you to beautify yourself into an attractive bombshell succubus which will give you +45 approval to all male vassals, which is super useful when building your domain. You also get the ability to heal yourself of illnesses, which is amazing due to how often everybody seems to get cancer.


It also unlocks the ability to hold a blood moon ritual in the intrigue menu. This requires a prisoner sacrifice or a peasant sacrifice, but afterwards mother Lilith will offer you immortality. This makes the game pretty easy (if you survive the rival immortal event), but if you're just fooling around it's fun to play with.

One of the most useful abilities that has been added is to curse an enemy with a disease (or multiple diseases). That enemy crusader king won't be too hard to break if he's a leper with pneumonia that (oh by the way) might also be the plague.


Additionally, if you're playing a succubus/incubus, you can use the 'Kiss of Seduction' ability to try to get someone to be your lover. The event menus get boring after awhile, but there's a fairly large chance you'll succeed eventually as long as you're attractive enough. It's pretty easy to hold a realm together if you're hopping into everyone's beds.

These mods also add some interesting intrigue options and buildings which can unlock more intrigue options. Prisoners can be enslaved, trained, then kept or sold for money. A slave trader can be built which pops open a periodic event giving you the option to buy slaves. There's also some silly stuff like building a wizard's tower and recruiting Hermione, who then of course messes up a sex spell and turns herself into a dumb bimbo.


Not everything is good, however. Some of the canned events in this mod tend to fire too often, such as the one offering you to fuck your progeny when they come of age (this does, however, give you a massive bonus to opinion if you need it).

 Vampirella tends to show up early on in a game and keeps trying to seduce you, whether you're male or female. Might as well send her away if you're not interested. Bloodrayne also shows up, but she's actually useful if a rogue vampire shows up trying to kill you (pro tip, always run away from the vampire if you don't want your immortal ruler to be killed).

If you're planning to start your own religion, then it can get pretty complicated. Both your pope and the original pope can call crusades, so you can end up having dueling crusades running at the same time, which can get more than a little confusing. You need to control Rome to start the Lilith papacy, so it's a good option to start somewhere in Italy. Lilithanism only allows female bishops, so as it gets established, more and more male bishops will be removed and replaced with women. If you force a male bishop to convert religions he'll be defrocked and replaced, which can be quite useful.

I broke the system by granting my Lilith pope the county of Rome, then offering her vassalization, which she promptly accepted. Very useful because I can then keep granting her additional churches as I acquire more land and keep her under my thumb.


At this point my ruler is 297, and people keep suspecting her of being immortal. I cancel that -40 opinion by jumping into their beds, or by making them have sudden manure accidents (although I honestly don't need to do that often because everyone is in love with me).

I've conquered a large chunk of mainland Europe and I'm interested in seeing how far this goes. The only downside is that the game starts to chug with so much going on.

There's quite a bit to explore here. If you're a fan of CK2, I would recommend giving it a spin.

If you wish to try the mods out, all mods to CK2 need to be unzipped in your user folder on your C:\ drive in this folder, then enabled in the CK2 loader before starting the game:

C:\Users\<User>\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\mod

Additionally, you will need to create a free LoversLab account to be able to download them.

Happy gaming!

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