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Looking at Elena, we can see that she's of the Occitan culture. One way to find out where these places are is to click on the shields in those characters' rows.Īlternately, Crusader Kings II shows the characters' culture next to them, and those are easier to remember. So let's say you're scrolling through this list and you see that you can have an alliance with Samos or Somerset or Anjou. That one's trickier, and being able to see it easily depends on your grasp of medieval geography, which isn't exactly super common. Second, we want someone close to us, so they'll be quicker and more likely to respond to any call to arms we may make. So what are we looking for in our alliance? First, we want someone of equal of greater power-a Duke or a King is most likely. Here's the important thing: a blue flag on the bottom right of their portrait indicates that marriage will lead to an alliance. So Emperors, Kings, Dukes, Counts, etc will appear first on the list, followed by their children. Like that menu, this one is usually sorted in the way that we want, so you'll rarely need to worry about sorting it again. This opens a menu of potential spouses, very similar to the one we used to adjust our council earlier. Underneath the blank “Husband” marker is a button which shows a pair of rings, and can be used to Arrange Betrothal. I'm going to click on the second daughter, five-year-old Elena de Poitou. Yours will almost certainly be different, but the process is the same, so this should work with any child your character happens to have. So if you marry your daughter to another duke who is removed in a civil war, the alliance with that duchy no longer exists.) (Worth noting: as soon as that marriage is not to the leader/sibling/child anymore, the alliance is off. If a leader, or their siblings or their children marry a leader, sibling, or child, that comes with an alliance. Instead, alliances are based purely on people. In Crusader Kings II, alliances don't come from a diplomatic interaction between friendly leaders, as they do in most strategy games. Click on your character portrait, and down at the bottom, you'll see five info tabs, like Family or Vassals. Maintaining a web of alliances can be critical to winning wars, and eventually you'll at least have to defend yourself. The other parts of the guide can be found here: I'll also cover Tutoring children and how Traits work, as well as Intrigue.Īs ever, this guide is intended to be read and played in order, so I'll be carrying on with my Aquitaine game. I'll also discuss how marriage works, and how it's used to create alliances, which should cover the bulk of the moment-to-moment decisions you'll be making in the game. In the fourth part of this guide, I'm going to cover the Opinion system that creates relationships between characters, the most impressive component of Crusader Kings II.
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