The Thanasiad [CKII LP] [NO 56k]

[GuppyShark]

Oh right, you haven't played this game before.

Incorrect. The previous thread indicates our lord has been well tutored.

I vote for execution, traitors deserve no better.

[TheHammer]

He's a damned good soldier... Be a shame to see that go to waste, or worse end up in a foreign army. Can you revoke his title and keep him around with compulsory military service as punishment for his crimes?

He's guaranteed to start plotting against me because he will hate me at -100 after I revoke his title.

Perhaps but a Landless courtier would hardly be capable of much plotting, especially with the relatively modest gifts he has in that arena. I wouldn't make him marshall, but he could certainly be an able bodied commander for your army of conscripts.

If he can't be reformed, death is the best option. Don't want him banished to a rival court where he might return to claim his lands backed by a host of men.

[FaxModem1]

Your Grace, I concur with building up the walls and then the town, followed by securing the rest of Sicily. Having no enemies on our borders as well as the entire island to prosper will help our treasury.

[phred]

I say remove the traitor's head. He's not worth the trouble of keeping around if he hates you that much.

I also put my vote in for building walls and towns, followed by securing Sicily.

I don't know much about the local law, so I'll leave that to more knowledgeable associates.

[Vaporous]

Revoke his title and keep him imprisoned for life.

[LaCroix]

Revoke his title and keep him imprisoned for life.

Well, given the high standard of our dungeons, that will only be a few more weeks, so that would be just the same as executing him, just vastly more cruel.

On our future plans, I agreee with the other Lords, if we can't secure our lands, we will not be able to amount to anything. We need to rebuild, conquer, and fortify the whole island - and then invest in a fleet to protect our interests. It's more effective to sink ships than to fight the hundreds of soldiers they carry on our shores.

Also, someone needs to make sure that our soldiers will reach their shores unmolested.

[Dominus Atheos]

There is no naval combat in this game, so soldiers always get to where they want to go.

[phred]

is there any military advantage to having ships? Or are they purely commercial? We should probably have a few either way.

[Kinyo]

Ships are indeed important. Without them our men would have to walk to their destination. What would be a short hop across the sea would otherwise be a long march through Lombard, Frankish and Muslim lands.

[Thanas]

PART II: ZE GERMAN


The traitor was executed. We were merciful and did not castrate and blind him first. Somehow, he failed to appreciate that.


It was decided to the chief diplomat to Salerno to prove our claim to that treaty.
"What do you mean I need a claim? That land is rightfully Roman"
"Sadly only the Emperor can act upon that fact"
"But I am more Roman than he is"
"But he is the Emperor"
"But....FINE."



ZE GERMAN proved to be a highly industrious wife.



We were challenged to a match....

...which we of course won.

FINALLY, A SON WAS BORN.

"My lord, your wife insists on naming him a German name."
"Nonsense, he will have a proper Roman name. I shall speak to her...."
(a few minutes later)
"You know what, German doesn't sound so bad..."



As the backbone of our realm were the cities, we shall tax them accordingly.


We invested in art and culture...


...while our lord invested in angering his nobles.

There was a rather uncomfortable discussion....


"Why can't my wife take care of these things?"


Are you sure we are not a merchant republic?

Money is good.

"I wanted to seize it but ZE GERMAN gave me a bad look".

Money....always helpful.

The Duke was told to mind his own business and pay interest for stealing Roman land.

Before we could set sail, there was one minor problem to take care of. In the ruins of Messina, a thieves guild had set up shop.

Thanks to the efforts of ZE GERMAN, for which we took credit, they were eliminated.

We finally reached Antioch and presented a dozen horses as present.


"JESUS NEVER HAD A FORK".


Damn Priests, messing with my business.


....

HOLY CRAP WHAT A SHITTON OF MONEY.

As we are the just, we reward loyalty.


The sultan had died and been replaced by a young boy. Said young boy had been captured by our Lord, The king of kings (title) king of kings (name)
and educated in the proper manner.

As a result, he was utterly hated by his new subjects.


We offered to take care of it by declaring war to liberate Muorica.


Muorica held a whopping three cities in addition to one large castle. Can you say MONEY?


As the Bulgarian band had gotten decimated in some eastern war, we hired some steppe horse archers from the eternal enemies of Rome.


Something about war and money gets ZE GERMAN'S blood going.


A massive revolt in Africa forced the boy king to deploy his forces there and robbed him of most of his levies - and his fleet.


FRIENDS ARE AWESOME.

(tbd)

[Thanas]

(cont'd)


With the forces tied up in Africa, the rather small levy was easy pickings for our steppe archers.


A son was born, receiving a proper Roman Name.


...*backs away slowly*


Boy, she really likes me in armour.


MWAHAHAHHAHAHHA. MWAHHAHAAHAHAHAHHAAAAA.



Our realm now.


3 sons now. Proud.


BIG BALLS FOR BIG MEN.

Who better to educate our son and heir than our Lord and Master?



Conversion went as expected.



Shall we debase the coinage? Why, of course.


Doesn't matter, made money.

We used the profits to build a larger settlement around our castle for even more profits.


CATASTROPHE
OUR LORD AND MASTER IS DEAD.

AND HIS SUCCESSOR IS A NITWIT.

....well.

We sold off some land to get more money.


...and declared war of course.

This was for the greatest county in all of sicily, Palermo. Three castles, one mosque, one city.

The boy-king of Africa was once again embroiled in religious revolts, so the war went well

...although there were a few setbacks.

Still, we won.


************************

Our glorious nitwit of an Emperor continued to ruin the Empire. He wouldn't even fight for his country.


We promptly married our now adult daughter:

to the crown prince...

ONLY TO HAVE HIM CHANGE TO SENIORITY SUCCESSION.

And then, this nitwit of an Emperor decided to declare war on Bulgaria and Hungaria at the same time.

THIS WENT VERY WELL.


He also lost all the territories at the Adriatic coast - and Colonia in the east. In short, within three years, this asshole lost all his father had gained and then some.

Thankfully, he soon had to capitulate to another faction which caused a far better candidate to be chosen. Even better, that guy decided to marry our second daughter.


He also was a very wise ruler.



Investing in Business sounds like a great idea.


OUR SON TURNED OUT GREAT.


He was promptly betrothed to the Porphyrogenneta.


Some large beast was found. It would look good on our wall.

The boy king of Africa....

was murdered by his vassals and succeeded by his uncle.


...who we promtly declared war on, this time hiring both the steppe archers and our trusted Bulgarian friends.


(TBC)

[Thanas]

While we were at war, our son died.


ZE GERMAN was quite proud of having artisans now. She keeps mumbling about building a larger hall or something full of workers. What nonsense.


My people love me. He shall have a special spot in the post-battle mass grave.

ZE BETRAYAL







....
Well, crap.

Oh well, there are plenty of fish in the sea...




...and plenty of bandits to vent my anger at....


...and finally our diplomat came through. He managed to prove that I was the descendent of Roman senatorial families which held Salerno. This of course had always been true, but apparently the damn lombards don't trust anything that doesn't have a SEAL on it.

No, not that kind of seal.


We hired our regular mercenaries and crossed the narrow sea.


The enemy, not blessed with our deep pockets SUPERIOR ROMAN ORGANIZATION, took a while to get organized.


and then attacked us with equal forces, running straight into our defensive positions.



This single battle decided the whole war. We had finally gained Salerno.

As the duke was about to drink his fifth celebratory goblet of wine, he felt a strange situation. As he lost consciousness, he heard the final words...

ZE GERMAN SENDS HER REGARDS.

***********************
(So what happened here is that my divorced GERMAN wife decided to assassinate me in revenge for divorcing her unfaithfulness. Apparently she got my son and heir to cooperate.)






End of Part II: ZE German. Part III Matthias coming soon.

[Esquire]

Pity about the poisoned celebratory wine - still, Ioannis will go down in history as a great man. We're close to solidifying control of Sicily, and we've got both a toehold in Italy and a convenient enemy to expand at the expense of, though we'll probably need to start setting up a subordinate nobility at that point, if I'm correct in thinking we've been ruling everything directly up to now.

I'd recommend finishing the conquest of Sicily, then expanding eastward across Italy. At that point we might even be powerful enough to start getting involved in high-level Imperial politics; I don't know how powerful the other nobles are, though.

[Kinyo]

The expansion is indeed going well and should be completed in Sicily at the very least while still developing the land recaptured from the unwashed enemies. We may even find some decent vinyards so our liege can make his own private reserve, free from poison.

What has been achieved so far and with what is going on with other parts of the empire Ioannis' actions will be seen in a good light as about the only case where the purple line on the map is not in retreat.

With this in mind I see two longer term plans for the house of Thanas, lords of Sicily.

The first, is not one I would recommend, would be to continue the liberation of Sicily and southern Italy from the muslims and Lombards and then cut ties with the weak emperors and rule with a new crown on the head. I would not propose this as it makes an enemy of the Lombards in the north and the Empire in the east. A wounded Empire is still a strong Empire.

The second is slightly different but instead of a new crown for a new Kingdom we give the Empire the bloodline it truly deserves on the throne. Though such a course of action would require the wealth and the men that southern Italy can bring.

[phred]

Alas, poor Ioannis, he was a wise ruler. Hopefully his heir will show similar wisdom and complete the unification of the Isle of Sicily.

We should probably secure our hold there first, and build up some alliances before trying to get a fancier hat though

[Thanas]

A question - are the posts becoming too long? Shall I compress them or is this about the level of detail you want?

[Jub]

I like what's been done thus far. I'd make more suggestions, but I don't know enough about the game to add anything meaningful.

[Esquire]

I actually like the longer posts, but if you're feeling like it takes too much time to put them together it might be a good idea to release an update every decade, or something like that. I love the level of detail, and of course all the pictures are excellent.

[Thanas]

I am in a bit of a bind - those posts so far were maybe 2 hours of gaming, but three hours of writing the posts. I played 2 hours today again, you do the maths. Point is unless there is a monster update each day my game pace will progress so far that the audience doesn't have a lot to decide.

So my proposal is that instead of showing every single dejure war, I would only focus on the important character events and unless there really is a major war and battle, not waste four or five pictures on the conquest of county X.

[Jub]

That sounds like a healthy medium, but if I had to choose between having longer posts and less say or more say and less pictures, I'd be content just to let you play your way with the odd question asked of us at key junctures.

[GuppyShark]

I am in a bit of a bind - those posts so far were maybe 2 hours of gaming, but three hours of writing the posts. I played 2 hours today again, you do the maths. Point is unless there is a monster update each day my game pace will progress so far that the audience doesn't have a lot to decide.

So my proposal is that instead of showing every single dejure war, I would only focus on the important character events and unless there really is a major war and battle, not waste four or five pictures on the conquest of county X.

I sympathise with the dilemma, I used to edit my Madden games into youtube videos and I would easily spend 150% of the game time on just cutting out all the between snaps stuff.

I recommend cutting back on the detail - we don't need to see every event that pops up, nor every castle, village and monastery sieged. What we want to hear is an epic tale of the Thanasian dynasty.

I think every war is worth showing but "we went to war with Count Dooku and took his stuff" is a sufficient level of detail if there's nothing of interest that happens in said war.

[Thanas]

PART II MATTHIAS


"All hail our wise and glorious Lord Matthias, Droungarious of Sicily...."

Within a few minutes, the handover was complete. Our dear mother was fully rehabilitated, the previous affair blamed on the nefarious second wife of our father (may he rest in peace - and may nobody ever discover our poison). Said second wife was banished and our dear mother ZE GERMAN quickly assumed the post of master of coin.


Our realm and the situation nearby. (the purple boot is not ours, just coloured the same).


We were ambitious.

While leading Imperial armies in the East of the Empire, this happened:


We always need good commanders.

(Said infidel actually was a great soldier. More on that later)

Our dear mother ZE GERMAN squeezed the greek peasants.


Our betrothed, the Porphyrogenneta, came of age and we were married in a splendid ceremony.




....twin girls. Well. At least she is fertile....


Another revolution had occured in Africa. Now they had put a blinded guy on the throne.


MOTHER LIKES COIN. MOTHER LIKES SQUEEZING GREEKS. MOTHER IS GOD.


The money was put to good use.

Our Basileius had trained us well before his untimely death.

Three guesses how that war turned out.


Our-father-in-law invited us to a feast. Nothing of importance happened there.


A claim. Finally.
(I won't describe this war as it was just one 2k vs 8k battle.)


Niiiiice. We are now Megas domestikos of the Empire.


With us holding the majority of territory in Lukania, we claimed the duchy.


Love ya, mom.

The situation in the rest of the Empire was stabilizing.

Our liege and master even expanded eastwards when the armenian kingdom was weakened by religious riots.



More claims.


Our liege and master decided to finally do something about the bulgarian scourge, who couldn't call on their hungarian allies this time (the hungarians got their teeth kicked in by the HRE when attempting to invade Austria, like in OTL)

We decided to finish up the conquest of Sicily.


Yeah.... (notice the commander of our Army? He is that infidel we rescued earlier).

We finally converted a province.


Our sister, which had been married to the Emperor, died. Oh no.


We strove to further fund business in the region.


"More money for the church? Why?"
"Because faith controls the serfs, dear."


Our great enemy died.


SICILY WAS OURS.


Mother promptly celebrated that fact by squeezing the Greeks more.


A SON WAS BORN ONTO US.

He was given a PROPER ROMAN NAME.


Money money money.


....Wait, what? Yeah, you go ahead and accuse us of treason when we are married to the Porphyrogenneta and training all the Imperial soldiers at Constantinople.

Phew. I need my balls and eyes still, thank you very much.


Mother singlehandedly has funded our entire wars and claims so far. Seriously. Her squeezing the peasants attracted so much money as all our other revenues combined.

Our genius brother was now made Chief Diplomat and promptly proved to be very efficient.



WE ARE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER TREASURY.


Mum? Mum? Mummy? Mother? NOOOOOOO....

"It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Richara. In her long life, she was a faithful and efficient wife, birthing a grand total of 8 children, of which 7 were legitimate and six survived to adulthood. Her descendants include:
- the former Empress and the current crown princess.
- A bishop
- two countesses
- the chief diplomat of Sicily
- and our great Lord Matthias Thanas, Droungarios of Siciyl, long may he reign."

(tbc)

[Thanas]

(cont'd)

Our Lord decided that the Bulgarians needed to be pushed back once more, with us leading the armies to do it.

Bulgaria, already weakened by losing the previous war, lost nearly all of Northern Macedonia.



With our DEAR MOTHER ZE GERMAN dead, the burghers decided to mutiny. So we solved it via an old-fashioned Greek tradition.


Our brother did the righteous work of extorting people and lying to get us more claims.


The territories were swiftly conquered.





...apparently nothing moderates a man faster than a pregnant wife.


LET'S BUILD A GIANT TOWER


...177 gold? DAMN IT. Where is a German when you need one?


Extra money for contracted work? That makes this half-German grumble.

But where is the stone coming from? Well, we can either build a quarry:

or importing the stone

As we literally cannot afford the former, we have to chose the import route.

They died for us and we rather not have our masons riot, thank you.

We told the church to shove off. The tower will be our stairway into heaven.

I AM MATTHIAS, BUILDER OF TOWERS. GLIMPSE UPON MY LARGE DEFINITELY-NOT-PHALLIC-SHAPED TOWER AND DESPAIR.

******************
The next year, there was the question of what to do with our claim upon the papal lands. We needed that land to claim the Despotate of Sicily. But the pope had a lot of men and teriritories.


TO WAR.



Thankfully we had remembered to hire the heavy Bulgarian infantry again.
Although there were some setbacks:

...our bulgarian infantry smashed through their center and deciding the war.



Meanwhile, elsewhere....

The other bulgarians weren't doing that well against another Imperial invasion.


To celebrate, we continued our tradition to squeeze rely on the cities:




Our realm in Italy...
to which, after another small war:


We added the duchy of Benevento.

We promptly celebrated this with a night at the local tavern.

PICKLED EGGS FOR EVERYONE.


WORK WORK WORK.

We betrothed our son to the crown princess, his cousin.

What? Don't look at us like that. This is perfectly healthy and never will have bad consequences. The bible tells us so.

A trade route to the far north was established...



Earning us even more money.

Our wealth and power made us eligible for marriages into the highest families of Europe. As our twin daughters came to age, one was promptly married of to the crown prince of the HRE:

...while my brother was ordered to marry the sister of said prince:



....old age set in....

but we were not too old to forbid our son to become a monk.


The marriage into the royal family of the HRE was celebrated.


***********************
SICILY

All we needed now was one more County to become de jure King of all of Sicily.



This county was held by the duchy of Ravenna, which currently had a boy Duke.


The armies met near the contested territory.


Our Bulgarians once again won the day. But this was not the end of the war, for the boy duke called in several allies.

Two years later, the allied army was finally caught...


and our realm expanded thusly.


Our brother married the bethrothed princess...


and we finally created the Despotate of Sicily.



Some dukes swore fealty out of loyalty (and generous bribes)




but others ...others did not. Extremely troublesome was the Thema di Calabria, which was a direct vassal to our liege Lord. We asked him to transfer this vassal to us, as was just and proper.


Our liege had a high diplomacy skill and thus could afford to speak nonsense that effectively meant "pray for it because I'm not going to make that happen".

This sent us into a fit of rage and eventually into a brain aneurysm.



...from which we never recovered.

Matthias I, Despot of Sicilia, Droungarios of Sicilia, Duke of Capua, Lukania, Benevent, Count of Alvito, Messina, Palermo, Syrakus, Muorica, Agrigentum and Drepanum, Lord of Cifala Diana, had died.



*****************
End of part II. Matthew (or Matthias) turned out excellently, far surpassing his father in acheivements and connections. We now have become King and married our sons/daughters to Emperors. The future looks very bright.

[GuppyShark]

GLORIOUS!

[phred]

He had a good run. Uniting Sicily and leaving it with a solid income.

Those maps are a mess to read. What do we own on the mainland?