Crusader Kings II

Crusader Kings II

Developers   Paradox Development Studio

Publishers   Paradox Interactive

Engines   Clausewitz

Release dates Windows February 14, 2012 OS X May 24, 2012 Linux January 14, 2013

Crusader Kings

Crusader Kings	2004
Deus Vult
Crusader Kings II	2012
Sword of Islam
Legacy of Rome
Sunset Invasion
The Republic
The Old Gods
Sons of Abraham
Rajas of India
Charlemagne

Key points

Performance can be poor in the later game due to the increased save game size and the increased number of calculations that have to be performed.

Many of the game's tutorials are broken and cause it to crash.

General information

Crusader Kings II Wiki

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys
Amazon.com
GamersGate		DRM-free version is no longer updated or supported.
Green Man Gaming
Humble Store
Publisher website
Steam

All versions require Steam. The GamersGate DRM-free version is no longer being updated or supported.

Steam version can be launched without Steam running.

Has got a lot of DLC available.

Essential improvements

Note that any mods installed will use the settings.txt located in the mod subfolder, e.g. %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\A Game of Thrones\

Notable mods

• A Song of Ice and Fire, also known as the Game of Thrones mod.
• Keyboard Shortcuts

Game data

Configuration file and save game data location

	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II
OS X	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II
Linux	~/.paradoxinteractive/Crusader Kings II/

This game does not support the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux.

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud
GameSave Manager

Video settings

Graphics option	Option	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See Borderless fullscreen windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See Anisotropic filtering (AF).
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Listed as 'Multisample Level' in game. Options are 0, 2, 4 and 8.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
High frame rate

Windowed

Edit fullscreen Open settings.txt in the game data folder Change fullScreen=yes to fullScreen=no

Borderless fullscreen windowed

Borderless fullscreen added in patch 2.1

Whilst this feature is not natively supported, a similar effect can be achieved by setting the game to windowed mode and setting a custom resolution.

Change native resolution and set windowed mode Open settings.txt in the game data folder Change fullScreen=yes to fullScreen=no Now locate the line dictating resolution: size= { x=[Desired x-axis resolution value] y=[Desired y-axis resolution value] } Set the values for x and y to your monitor resolution and the game will run in a borderless fullscreen windowed mode. Note some text-blurring may occur.

Anisotropic filtering (AF)

Edit anisotropic_filtering Open settings.txt in the game data folder Go to anisotropic_filtering=0 Change this value to any number greater than 0 and less than 8 for varying degrees of anisotropic filtering.

Input settings

Keyboard and mouse	Native	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio settings

Audio options	Native	Notes
Separate volume controls		Ambient sounds and music.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Notes
LAN play
Online play

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Console commands

All the console commands can be found on the Crusader Kings II wiki. Only some of the debug commands are listed below. Discretion is advised when using the console as it is very easy to cheat with it (adding/removing traits etc.).

Press ~ (or the equivalent key above Tab ↹ on your keyboard) or Alt+Numpad 2+Numpad 1 in-game to enter console commands.

• fullscreen - Toggles fullscreen
• clear - Clears the console
• debug_assert - Toggles asserts on/off
• debug_bloom - Toggles bloom on/off
• debug_borders - Toggles borders on/off
• debug_citysprawl - Toggles city sprawl on/off
• debug_dumpevents - Dumps event data to game log
• debug_hires - Toggles terrain hires mode on/off
• debug_info - Toggles debug info
• debug_lines - Toggles debuglines
• debug_nogui - Toggles GUI on/off
• debug_nomouse - Toggles mouse scrollwheel on/off
• debug_postfx - Toggles postFX on/off
• debug_rivers - Toggles rivers on/off
• debug_sky - Toggles sky on/off
• debug_smooth - Toggles frame smoothing on/off
• debug_terrain - Toggles terrain on/off
• debug_textures - Dumps texture info to debug log
• debug_tooltip - Toggles tooltips on/off
• debug_trees - Toggles trees on/off
• debug_water - Toggles water on/off
• debug_wireframe - Toggles forced wireframe on/off
• help - Print out all console commands or a specific command's description
• observe - Switches to play no character at all
• refresh_portraits - Refreshes all character portraits as soon as possible
• reload filename - Reloads the gui or lua file
• reloadinterface - Reloads the entire interface
• reloadtexture texture-filename - Reloads the specified texture

Issues fixed

Activation code length

If your activation code is too short for the code input box upon installation, fill the additional spaces with the character 'X', e.g. for a code formatted as AAAAA-BBBBB-CCCC you would input it as AAAA-ABBB-BBCC-CCXX-XXXX-XXXX.

Graphics card stress/overheating

This is a likely cause of a game crash if your system only just meets the minimum system requirements to run the game. With such crashes, usually your graphics card will be at fault. One way to reduce stress on your graphics card is to turn off some of the more system-intensive options.

1. Open settings.txt in the game data folder
2. Change draw_trees=yes to draw_trees=no
3. Change draw_rivers=yes to draw_rivers=no
4. Change draw_postfx=yes to draw_postfx=no
5. Change draw_sky=yes to draw_sky=no
6. Change draw_bloom=yes to draw_bloom=no

This will prevent the game from rendering trees and thus significantly reduce the amount of information your graphics card has to process, in turn reducing the overall load on your system.

Multiplayer incompatible versions

Your game version is given by "CK2 v<version> (<checksum>)" (for example, "CK2 v1.06 (YYEV)"). After a multiplayer match, its possible for the checksum to change in some PCs (for example, to "CK2 v1.06 (ZYEV)"), while the others keep the same checksum. This won't allow you to play in multiplayer due to incompatible versions. Restarting the game fixes this problem.

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	XP, Vista, 7
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+
System memory (RAM)	2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2 GB
Video card (GPU)	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon X1900 512 MB of VRAM

OS X
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.6.8
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core Duo 2GHz
System memory (RAM)	2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2 GB
Video card (GPU)	ATI Radeon HD 6750 / NVIDIA GeForce 320 / NVIDIA GeForce 9600

Linux
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+
System memory (RAM)	2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2 GB
Video card (GPU)	ATI Radeon HD 6750 / NVIDIA GeForce 320 / NVIDIA GeForce 9600 1 GB of VRAM