Crusader Kings II

Crusader Kings II was released in 2012 and developed and published by Paradox Interactive. It is the sequel to Crusader Kings, which was released in 2004.

Video Settings

Anisotropic filtering (AF)

1. Open %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\Settings.txt
2. Go to anisotropic_filtering=0
3. Change this value to any number greater than 0 and less than 8 for varying degrees of anisotropic filtering.

Windowed

1. Open %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\Settings.txt
2. Change fullscreen=yes to fullscreen=no

Borderless fullscreen windowed

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.

Open %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\Settings.txt
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.

Console Commands

Press ` in-game to enter console commands, before typing the following:

• fow - Toggle fog of war on/off
• cash - Gives player 5000 gold
• piety - Gives player 5000 piety
• kill <character ID> - Kill indicated character
• religion <set name> - Change your religion
• marry_anyone - Marry anyone, including close family
• allow_laws - Set any law with no waiting or voting
• play <character ID> - Control corresponding character

Issues and Fixes

Activation Code Length

If your activation code is too short for the code input box upon installation, fill the additiona 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 %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\Settings.txt
2. Change draw_trees=yes to draw_trees=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.

Useful Links

• Crusader Kings II Wiki