Customer Reviews

Crusader Kings

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The game has not been "discontinued" at all, and according to Johann (lead programmer) on the Paradox forum, should go gold in March 2004 and ship late March or early April 2004.

Not sure why Amazon won't offer it, could be a Euro-$ conversion problem.

But it has not been discontinued, and looks to be a great game for those who like deep strategy like Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron or Victoria.

Epilogue:

I bought the game when it was released in Europe. The version here I am sure is 1.03 which is very stable and represents an imporvement over an already fun game.

In CK you play any one of numerous Kingdoms, Duchies or one of an vast supply of Counties. Want to play Ireland> Start as Duke of Meath (recommended) or Ulster (much harder) and do not upset William the Conqueror.

Marry your children off well and you could end up with claims on much of Europe. You play a dynasty, not a geograpic place, so make sure you have an heir and a spare. When looking for a bride for your #1 son, I'd suggest getting a very bright girl (to get bright grandkids) over a girl with connections, but the choice is up to you.

Like nearly all Paradox games, CK offers virtually unlimited replayability. Although you cannot play Muslim dynasties, you can play families from Ireland to Poland, from Sweden to Sicily.

CK is a fun game. After you're done you can convert your savegame into a scenario for Europa Universalis 2 (you need version 1.08). So you could conceivably play from 1066 until 1819 between the two games. That's plenty of time to conquer the known world.

The idea of a historical strategy game set in the Middle Ages is very appealing, but the implementation should have been better.

The game feature a variety of bugs, most of which can be grouped into two categories--design flaws and crashes. Crashes are the most annoying, since the game has a relatively long loading time (on a 1.6Ghz AMD). So even with autosave on, I sometimes had to abandon the game for a few days because of the frustration of having to reload it over and over again. Worse yet, one of the bugs caused the game to crash while autosaving, resulting in corrupted save files, and no ability to reload.

In addition to the crashes, the game also features several major design flaws. The most serious one is the ahisorical (and not particularly fun) way of implementing the Mongol invasions. At present, the Hordes will always do one of two things: conquer the entire map or get completely wiped out.

Many people at the Paradox (the developer's) forums reported these bugs and many other bugs, so I am definitely not the only one who has experienced them. Problems like these are almost always the result of faulty code, and not the user's hardware. It is reasonable to expect software to function properly on a system that meets (and exceeds) the advertised requirements. This software does not do that, at least not in the present version (1.03).

The game has plenty of enjoyable qualities, but the various bugs often make playing it a frustrating rather than enjoyable experience. Paradox usually releases a series of patches for a game, gradually fixing it. If you wait for patch 1.05 or 1.06 before you buy it, you will probably be getting a great game.

There's already a very good review of the game that describes what the gameplay is like, so I won't get into all of that. This review will concentrate on the bugs involved. I initially started playing the game after the 1.01 patch came out, and have now upgraded to 1.02. Though many people had CTDs on the 1.00 version, I have not had a single CTD on the newest patch. And my computer seems especially prone to CTDs. Purely anecdotal evidence, but I think any CTD problems have been fixed.

Most of the remaining bugs relate to gameplay issues. For instance, how the game determines which noble controls the pope does not work as its supposed to. Some character traits of the noblemen/women and their courtiers never show up: hare-lip, hunchback, stutter, and more. The AI never seems to go on crusade and leaves all the Muslim-bashing to the player. Regional titles do not exist as they should. (for instance, the game calls the lowest level of playable noble a Count in England instead of an Earl) Your courtiers will not get married on their own, but with the 1.02 patch you can no longer arrange marriages for them. Many other issues also need fixing.

With all of that said, however, my score of four stars relfects the game as it currently stands, version 1.02. This is the first game I've played that attempts to simulate the feudalistic relations of medieval Europe with any success. A lot of the game involves challenges such as rebelling vassals, finding suitable marriage partners, and knocking off your nasty younger brother so that he doesn't interfere with your son's inheritance. When all the bugs are fixed, the game will deserve a 5 stars in my mind. And Paradox, the developer, certainly will continue tweaking the game. They just came out with a new patch for their flagship game, Europa Universalis II. Since the game is three or four years old, this at least shows their commitment to getting things right.

One final note: Crusader Kings will be released in North America sometime in June, but the game can be purchased now at Paradox's website: www.paradoxplaza.com. You'll pay about $45 including shipping because of the crappy Dollar-to-Euro exchange rate, but will get the game at least two weeks sooner. I ordered directly from them and received the game four days later. From Sweden to Colorado, that's pretty good time! Certainly better than Super-Saver Shipping! ;)

I ordered this from Paradox themselves in Sweden. It arrived within a week.

Based on the Europa Universalis game system, this truly strategic game is engrossing.

Its twist to that well respected game system is in its dynastic components. At the heart of this game is building relationships and alliances through marriage pacts, and providing for the continuation of your dynastic line through history by making good marriages for your own character and producing capable offspring. Each character in the game has strengths and/or weaknesses. The player must take into account the personal relationships they forge for good or ill.

It isn't easy for a petty nobleman to conquer a neighboring province, especially if a major power owns it as one of their many holdings. To accomplish land expansion takes long, careful planning - much as it did in real Medieval Europe.

For anyone who is an aficionado of the European Medieval Era, this game gives the best sense for what it was like to be a member of the noble class of that day, if not one of the monarchs. Take care, though, because true to history many of the Dukes and Counts are actually more powerful than some of the Kings. There's even features in which to designate the particular laws that govern inheritance for your own lands, selecting between primogenture (as became the norm in most of Europe), the older Frankish custom of division among all sons, even allowance for females to inherit, as occurred in some lands.

For those who would berate this game or any other because it supposedly has bugs, my suggestion is that you upgrade your hardware. It isn't capable of running modern software if it crashes trying to run some. This game, and every other, runs perfectly on my PC. Usually, it's a matter of installing a more modern video or audio card, with sufficient memory to handle all that the program asks of it. (I am the president of a computer software company.)

The person complaining about Paradox's frequent updates doesn't seem to understand what they're about.

I've played EU II for quite some time and I love the frequent updates, which are based largely upon input from players. Most of the updates are not bug fixes, but tweaks and enhancements to the game to make it even better. For example, many EU II players are history buffs, and they suggest events to be added to the histories of the more obscure countries. Or, if a majority of players thinks a certain element of gameplay needs to be tweaked to make it more realistic, Paradox listens and incorporates it into the game. How many software publishers can you name that go to such lengths?

EU II is an outstanding game, and I'm greatly looking forward to Crusader Kings. But don't take my word for it, check out (...) and decide for yourself.

Continuing the trend of EU and EU2, and true to their name, Paradox's latest release is the video game version of a...paradox. Very cool game. Lots of depth. A great thinking-man's game for those who enjoy grand strategy, historical accuracy, and realism. The interface is very reminiscent of the EU series, with a few changes to general game play (for example, diplomacy improvements and character development).

I won't spend time on the specifics of what I liked and disliked about the game, because ultimately I cannot recommend it...for anyone. I suppose there are some who have run these games bug-free, but after three games in the series run on three different computers with different components--and encountering the same incessant bug--I'd say Paradox has a problem. And the bug is not one you can live with. The game crashes to desktop with even greater frequency than EU2, and none of the patches for any of the games ever fixed this basic problem. And in case you think you can get by with frequent savegames and reloads, CK introduces the new crash-during-load bug.

A quick check of their technical support forum confirmed what I suspected, that a lot of people get this problem. I see Paradox Tech Support trying to one-off these bugs as some kind of video/sound/driver problem (which they could be, on a large scale) but until they acknowledge the ubiquity of the problem and address it en masse I suggest staying away.

Try http://www.paradoxplaza.com. Paradox sells their own games from there.

I have mixed feeling about this game. It has taken dynastic strategy to a whole new level. The concept is amazing, but the game play is sometimes weak.

The few positives:

I wish Medieval: Total War had this kind of depth in the dynasty management. Crusader Kings has a lot of flexibility. You can play as any count, duke, or king in all of Europe. You control the marriage of your children and other children in your line. You can change how inheritance works in your realm (strongest vassal, eldest son, strongest son, etc.)

I like the way troops are mobilized from your vassals. You can either directly call up the vassals troops which lowers the loyalty of your vassal or make a request to him to mobilize all his forces which he may or may not honor due to the situation.

The many negatives:

Loyalty of vassals is handled poorly. It is really unmanageable. Vassal loyalty was an unending problem. I constantly had to monitor loyalty of the vassals and sparse out titles to stop infighting. You also can not tell whether their loyalty to the liege is increasing or decreasing over time without checking monthly. I turned to writing down all the vassals in my territory and kept track of it each month. Not fun. It would have been nice to have an indicator to show if the loyalty is increasing or decreasing and by what factor.

The manual provided with the game is so incomplete it is laughable. There is zero help to understand how to play the game other than this. You simply learn to play by making constant mistakes. There should be some kind of help menu in the game to explain how features in the game work.

Combat leaves a lot to be desired. First note the only control you have over the battle is whether you continue to fight or flee. The battle is basically decided by quantity and quality of the troops and their morale. However, most times I noticed that they didn't really fight because the morale would drop so fast even from full morale that no damage would really happen. Maybe there is some specific reason for this, but again without a quality manual how do you tell. I realize this is not the major focus of the game, but it could have been developed better and less frustrating.

I liked the way you mobilize troops, but I hated what happened next. While you have some options to change the power of different groups in a province which affects the troop type split, you have zero control of the number of troops that you call up. Basically you call up all available resources in the province. This may not sound like a bad thing, but if you can't afford to maintain that amount of troops you either go in debt or disband the whole group. The other annoying thing is that you can go in debt for having too many of your troops mobilized, but the computer controlled countries (including your vassals) do not. I think all countries should have to deal with the debt situation and it should affect vassal loyalty if the your vassals go into debt because you have their troops mobilized too long. Basically this part was just poorly thought out.

The game became very repetitive as the same events would occur over and over until the computer managed to get you to have the trait that it wanted.

The computer does not handle the Crusades well. The computer will respond to the Crusades, but only half hardly. What's worse after Jerusalem was conquered, the Crusade stayed in effect and the computer started attacking anyone who held it.

I did not have a lot of problems with bugs. I am running the game with patch version 1.05 with a computer with Quad Core 2 Intel processor with tons of memory and Vista OS. I have experienced a couple of crashes, but have not had any crashes during loading. What I didn't like is how the game exits when you lose your last heir under your control. It just shuts the game down. No summary telling you that you failed and what your status was before your exit. I thought the game had crashed.

In summary, the game has its good points, but the frustrations out weight the positives. Hopefully other games will pick up the well developed dynasty management. With all the great games out there don't waste your time here.

This is a great game.If you like the dark ages and/or grand strategey this is for you.It delves deep but not to deep into nobilty chain of command.It is a RTS but not your typical RTS.Simmler to other paradox games like Hearts of Iron

I never had a probelm with it but appartly u will if you have a bad computer

Hi,

Where can I buy this game? It doesn't seem like it's available
in North America. I can't find it listed on amazon's UK site either.

Thanks...