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71-421: The game is a dynasty simulator in which the player controls a medieval dynasty from 1066 to 1453 . Players are able to start at any date between September 15, 1066, to December 31, 1337 . Through the strategic use of war, marriages and assassinations, among many other things, the players work to achieve success for their dynasty. The game depicts or mentions numerous historical figures, including William

142-405: A hacker had to interpret the machine code and locate the critical point where the number of lives is decreased, impacts detected, etc. Sometimes the term POKE was used with this specific meaning. Cheating was exploited by technology-oriented players due to the difficulty of early cheats. However, a cheat industry emerged as gaming systems evolved, through the packaging and selling of cheating as

213-585: A "dynast" is a family member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchy's rules still in force. For example, after the 1914 assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife, their son Maximilian, Duke of Hohenberg , was bypassed for the Austro-Hungarian throne because he was not a Habsburg dynast. Even after the abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Duke Maximilian and his descendants have not been considered

284-566: A blind-eye to such trading as detection and prevention requires resources and banning players also results in losses of revenue. Cheating in online games is common on public game servers . Some online games, such as Battlefield 1942 , include specific features to counter cheating exploits , by incorporating tools such as PunkBuster , nProtect GameGuard , or Valve Anti-Cheat . However, much like anti-virus companies, some anti-cheat tools are constantly and consistently bypassed until further updates force cheat creators to find new methods to bypass

355-552: A car with greater acceleration, or just visual gags such as "big-head mode" in GoldenEye 007 . Some games humorously penalise the player for using another game's cheat codes. For example, using cheat codes from Doom in Heretic gives the opposite of the desired effect, such as instant death instead of invulnerability or stripping weapons instead of providing them. Unlike other cheating methods, cheat codes are implemented by

426-408: A certain sequence. Less common activation methods include entering certain high score names, holding keys or buttons while dying, picking up items in a particular order and otherwise performing unintuitive actions. Some games may also offer a debug console that can be used to edit game parameters. Effects might include unlocking a character or improving a character's performance: for example providing

497-584: A clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time, stipulating that dynasts who marry Roman Catholics are considered "dead" for the purpose of succession to the British throne. That exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts before triggering it by marriage to a Roman Catholic. A "dynastic marriage" is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, so that

568-450: A common type of video game hacking is through the use of DLLs . Users use a third party program to inject the DLL into their game of choice. Editing a saved game offers an indirect way to modify game data. By modifying a file in persistent storage, it is possible to effectively modify the runtime game data that will be restored when the game attempts to load the save game. Hex editors were

639-402: A common use for lagswitches was the ability to understand enemy positions without any risk to the player. For example, if a player was unsure whether an enemy was present in a room, they could activate the lag switch to block network traffic momentarily. This would allow the player to enter the room and scout for enemies without their movements being transmitted to the game server. As a result,

710-485: A family with influence and power in other areas, such as a series of successive owners of a major company, or any family with a legacy, such as a dynasty of poets or actors. It is also extended to unrelated people, such as major poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a "noble house", which may be styled as " imperial ", " royal ", " princely ", " ducal ", " comital " or " baronial ", depending upon

781-464: A female. Dynastic politics has declined over time, owing to a decline in monarchy as a form of government, a rise in democracy, and a reduction within democracies of elected members from dynastic families. The word "dynasty" (from the Greek : δυναστεία , dynasteía "power", "lordship", from dynástes "ruler") is sometimes used informally for people who are not rulers but are, for example, members of

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852-572: A female. For instance, the House of Windsor is maintained through the children of Queen Elizabeth II , as it did with the monarchy of the Netherlands , whose dynasty remained the House of Orange-Nassau through three successive queens regnant . The earliest such example among major European monarchies was in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, where the name of the House of Romanov

923-417: A framework of successive dynasties. As such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, and also to describe events, trends and artifacts of that period (e.g., "a Ming dynasty vase"). Until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty: that is, to expand the wealth and power of his family members. Before

994-632: A framework of successive dynasties. As such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned. Before the 18th century, most dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally , such as those that follow the Frankish Salic law . In polities where it was permitted, succession through a daughter usually established a new dynasty in her husband's family name. This has changed in all of Europe's remaining monarchies, where succession law and conventions have maintained dynastic names de jure through

1065-559: A game and introduced cheat codes to make this process easier. An early cheat code can be found in Manic Miner , where typing "6031769" (based on Matthew Smith's driving license) enables the cheat mode. Within months of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord ' s 1981 release, at least two commercial trainers appeared. 1983 advertisements for "The Great Escape Utility" for Castle Wolfenstein (1981) promised that

1136-614: A home computer or console. It allows a user to modify the game code either before or during its execution. An early example is the Multiface for the ZX Spectrum, and almost every format since has had a cheat cartridge created for it; such as Datel 's range of Action Replay devices. Another popular example of this is Game Genie for Genesis , NES , Super NES , Game Boy , and Game Gear game consoles. Modern disc-based cheat hardware includes GameShark and Code Breaker which modify

1207-540: A nephew of Queen Elizabeth II , is in the line of succession to the British crown , making him a British dynast. On the other hand, since he is not a patrilineal member of the British royal family, he is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Comparatively, the German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover , a male-line descendant of King George III , possesses no legal British name, titles or styles (although he

1278-408: A non-cheating player. Notable examples include the following: Cheating exists in many multiplayer video games . While there have always been cheat codes and other ways to make single-player games easier, developers often attempt to prevent it in multiplayer games. With the release of the first popular internet multiplayer games, cheating took on new dimensions. Previously it was rather easy to see if

1349-438: A player will attempt not only to form beneficial alliances, but also to select marriage partners with strong heritable traits to maximise the quality of offspring and thus strengthen the dynasty. This requires balancing sometimes conflicting interests; for example, while one possible marriage might allow some desirable alliance to be formed with another ruler, it may also require marrying a spouse with some undesirable traits. Such

1420-427: A product. Cheat-enablers such as cheat books, game guides, cheat cartridges helped form a cheat industry and cemented cheating as part of gaming culture. However, cheating was not universally accepted in early gaming; gaming magazine Amiga Power condemned cheaters, taking the stance that cheating was not part of their philosophy of fairness. They also applied this in reverse; games should also not be allowed to cheat

1491-412: A single + and a number appended to their title, representing the number of modifications the trainer has available. In the 1980s and 1990s, trainers were generally integrated straight into the actual game by cracking groups . When the game was first started, the trainer would typically show a splash screen of its own, sometimes allowing modifications of options related to the trainer, and then proceed to

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1562-571: A step further and allow the player to export and import data edits. Edit templates of many games for a console are collected and redistributed as cheat packs. Emulators also frequently offer the additional advantage of being able to save the state of the entire emulated machine at any point, effectively allowing saving at any point in a game even when save functionality is not provided by the game itself. Cheating hardware such as "Instant Replay" also allows such behavior for some consoles. Somewhat more unusual than memory editing, code injection consists of

1633-437: A successor during their own lifetime, or a member of their family may maneuver to take control of the dictatorship after the strongman's death. Cheating in video games Cheating in video games involves a video game player using various methods to create an advantage beyond normal gameplay , usually in order to make the game easier. Cheats may be activated from within the game itself (a cheat code implemented by

1704-482: A trade-off can occur in the reverse as well: one possible spouse could possess highly desirable traits but yield no new alliances for the player's dynasty. While the player can choose to play as any noble with at least a county in their possession, there are some government types that are unplayable without modding the game. These include theocracies (such as The Papacy ), holy orders , mercenaries, and republics . The merchant republic government type, however,

1775-467: A usual practice to load games into memory and, before launching them, modify specific memory addresses in order to cheat, getting an unlimited number of lives, currency, immunity, invisibility, etc. Such modifications were performed through POKE statements. The Commodore 64 , Amstrad CPC range and ZX Spectrum also allowed players with the proper cartridges or Multiface add-on to freeze the running program, enter POKEs, and resume. Some games tried to detect

1846-432: Is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics . A dynasty may also be referred to as a " house ", " family " or " clan ", among others. Historians periodize the histories of many states and civilizations , such as Ancient Iran (3200–539 BC), Ancient Egypt (3100–30 BC), and Ancient and Imperial China (2070 BC – AD 1912), using

1917-627: Is entitled to reclaim the former royal dukedom of Cumberland ). He was born in the line of succession to the British throne and was bound by Britain's Royal Marriages Act 1772 until it was repealed when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Thus, he requested and obtained formal permission from Queen Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999. Yet,

1988-666: Is frowned upon and disallowed, often leading to a ban . However, certain games may unlock single-player cheats if the player fulfills a certain condition. Yet other games, such as those using the Source engine , allow developer consoles to be used to activate a wide variety of cheats in single-player or by server administrators. Many games which use in-game purchases consider cheating to be not only wrong but also illegal, seeing as cheats in such games would allow players to access content (like power-ups and extra coins) that would otherwise require payment to obtain. However, cheating in such games

2059-579: Is launched, Paradox servers collect information about the game setup such as game version, single player or multiplayer, and what mods are in use. Data collected on 23 April 2017 showed that at least 42% of users on that day had activated at least one mod. Data also reveals that multiplayer " cheat mods " are popular, too, as are graphics or GUI mods. A few accuracy and realism mods have also been produced by fans, such as Historical Immersion Project and CK2+ . A large number of total conversion mods are also available: Paradox actively encourages modding, and

2130-431: Is lost. More modern methods typically involve lower level packet editing or forgery in a " Man-in-the-middle attack " style. For example, symmetric encryption keys could be read from the game's memory, granting access to inbound packets. These packets could be edited to provide the client game with information that does not reflect the server's reality. I.e. if an enemy player uses an ability that should slow your movement,

2201-555: Is nonetheless a legal grey area because there are no laws against modifying software which is already owned, as detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The most basic type of cheat code is one created by the game designers and hidden within the video game itself, that will cause any type of uncommon effect that is not part of the usual game mechanics. Cheat codes are usually activated by typing secret passwords or pressing controller buttons in

Crusader Kings II - Misplaced Pages Continue

2272-539: Is playable with The Republic expansion. In addition, all non- Christian characters are unplayable without the purchase of the DLC that unlocks them, including Muslims , Jews , Hindus , Buddhists , Taoists , Zoroastrians , Jains , Zunists and various pagans . Aside from the official expansion packs, third-party mods are available on sites such as the Steam Workshop . When a Crusader Kings II (CK2) game

2343-423: Is really difficult, right? I never played it that much, and there was no way I could finish the game, so I inserted the so-called Konami Code." A bot is a type of artificial intelligence (AI)–based expert system software that plays a video game in the place of a human, to perform actions (repetitive or not) that enable advantages to be achieved. Cheating can easily be achieved by modifying the game's data while it

2414-412: Is running. These methods of cheating are often less reliable than cheat codes included in a game by its creators. This is due to the fact that certain programming styles or quirks of internal game logic, different release versions of a game, or even using the same game at different times or on different hardware, may result in different memory usage and hence the trainer program might have no effect, or stop

2485-483: The Game Genie , created derivative works of games and thus violated copyright law. The most basic way of achieving this is by means of memory editor software, which allows the player to directly edit the numeric values in a certain memory address. This kind of software usually includes a feature that allows the player to perform memory searches to aid the user to locate the memory areas where known values (such as

2556-721: The order of succession to the Dutch throne , and consequently lost his title as a "Prince of the Netherlands", and left his children without dynastic rights. Empress Maria Theresa of the Habsburg dynasty had her children married into various European dynasties. Habsburg marriage policy amongst European dynasties led to the Pax Austriaca . Historians periodize the histories of many states and civilizations , such as Ancient Iran (3200–539 BC), Ancient Egypt (3100–30 BC) and Ancient and Imperial China (2070 BC – AD 1912), using

2627-452: The wallhack , which allows a player to see through solid or opaque objects or manipulate or remove textures, meshing , which is the action of pushing an item/npc/player into the graphic boundary of another object/player/location in a manner not intended by the game developer, and ESP , with which the information of other players is displayed. There are also cheats that increase the size of the target's hitbox , allowing shots striking close to

2698-399: The $ 15 product "remodels every feature of the game. Stop startup delays, crashes and chest waiting. Get any item, in any quantity. Start in any room, at any rank. Handicap your aim. Even add items". In a computer game, all numerical values are stored "as is" in memory. Gamers could reprogram a small part of the game before launching it. In the context of games for many 8-bit computers, it was

2769-433: The 18th century, most dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally , such as those that follow the Frankish Salic law . In polities where it was permitted, succession through a daughter usually established a new dynasty in her husband's family name. This has changed in all of Europe's remaining monarchies, where succession law and conventions have maintained dynastic names de jure through

2840-756: The Conqueror , Charlemagne , Genghis Khan , Harold Godwinson , Robert Guiscard , Robert the Bruce , Harald Hardrada , El Cid , Constantine X Doukas , Harun al-Rashid , Alexios I Komnenos , Richard the Lionheart , Ivar the Boneless , Alfred the Great , Baldwin I of Jerusalem , Boleslaw the Bold and Saladin , but allows for the player to choose less-significant figures such as minor dukes and counts , and for

2911-561: The Multiface and refused to load if it was present. The earliest models had no ability to "hide". Later revisions either included a switch, hid if the menu had been opened and closed before loading the game, or automatically hid. For instance, with POKE 47196,201 in Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum, immunity is achieved. Magazines such as Crash regularly featured lists of such POKE instructions for games. In order to find them

Crusader Kings II - Misplaced Pages Continue

2982-485: The actual game. In the cracker group release lists and intros, trained games were marked with one or more plus signs after them, one for each option in the trainer, for example: "the Mega Krew presents: Ms. Astro Chicken++ ". Many emulators have built-in functionality that allows players to modify data as the game is running, sometimes even emulating cheating hardware such as Game Genie . Some emulators take this method

3053-505: The chief or present title borne by its members, but it is more often referred by adding the name afterwards, as in " House of Habsburg ". A ruler from a dynasty is sometimes referred to as a "dynast", but this term is also used to describe any member of a reigning family who retains a right to succeed to a throne . For example, King Edward VIII ceased to be a dynast of the House of Windsor following his abdication. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families,

3124-618: The creation of entirely new characters with the use of the Ruler Designer DLC. Success is defined solely by the player. The only in-game objective is to obtain as many prestige and piety points as possible in order to surpass the various historically relevant European dynasties in a fictional prestige ranking system (the three most prestigious ones being the Capetian , the Rurikid and the Habsburg dynasties). The game ends when

3195-531: The descendants are eligible to inherit the throne or other royal privileges. For example, the marriage of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, making their eldest child, Princess Catharina-Amalia , the heir apparent to the Crown of the Netherlands. The marriage of his younger brother, Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau , in 2003 lacked government support and parliamentary approval. Thus, Prince Friso forfeited his place in

3266-618: The developers regularly tweaked the game in order to make modding easier, furthermore there exist in-depth guides on how to mod in the Crusader Kings II wiki. A demo was released on February 4, 2012, which featured four playable characters over a 20-year span. A marketing campaign for the game featured light comedy videos on the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins. The game, based on the Clausewitz Engine ,

3337-477: The elected positions of republics and constitutional monarchies . Eminence, influence , tradition , genetics , and nepotism may contribute to the phenomenon. Hereditary dictatorships are personalist dictatorships in which political power stays within a strongman's family due to the overwhelming authority of the strongman, rather than by the democratic consent of the people. The strongman typically fills government positions with their relatives. They may groom

3408-477: The game as one of their game of the year nominees. By September 2014, Crusader Kings II had sold more than 1 million copies, with the expansion pack and DLC sales totaling over 7 million units. This makes it Paradox's most successful release prior to the debut of Europa Universalis IV . According to Paradox Interactive , the game was played by an average of 12,500 players every day, with an average playtime of 99 hours per player. Dynasty A dynasty

3479-481: The game code from a large database of cheats. In later generation consoles, cheat cartridges have come to be replaced by cheat discs, containing a simple loader program which loads a game disc and modifies the main executable before starting it. The legality of this type of devices has been questioned, such as in the case of Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. , in which Nintendo unsuccessfully sued Lewis Galoob Toys stating that its cheating device,

3550-555: The game developers themselves, often as a tool to playtest certain aspects of the game without difficulty. One of the earliest known examples of this type of cheat is the Konami Code , created in 1986 by Konami developer Kazuhisa Hashimoto as he worked on porting the 1985 arcade game Gradius for use on the Nintendo Entertainment System . Hashimoto is quoted as saying "The arcade version of Gradius

3621-424: The game from running altogether. Modifying game data usually constitutes a violation of a software license agreement that prohibits modifying the program at all. Cheating via memory editing involves modifying the memory values where the game keeps its status information. The way to achieve this will vary depending on the environment in which the game is running. A cheat cartridge is attached to an interface port on

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3692-415: The gameplay and "lasting appeal" a 9/10. A reviewer for Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote that Crusader Kings II was "probably the most human strategy game" he ever played. Rob Zacny of PC PowerPlay , who gave the game a 7/10 score, called it a "brilliant treatment of feudalism in terms of strategy and story" but also stated it "requires major investment to overcome information overload ". Kotaku named

3763-506: The item. An alternative method for cheating in online games involves modification of inbound or outbound network traffic between the client and server. One early implementation of this concept was seen with lag switches. A lag switch refers to any hardware or software mechanism that temporarily limits network traffic. They grew popular as, unlike most cheats, they could be used on the Xbox One and PS4 consoles. In first-person shooters ,

3834-451: The items in a treasure chest, while another represents the player's inventory, then the player can save the game before and after picking up an item from the chest, and continue play using the treasure chest file before the item was picked up, and the inventory file from afterward -- allowing the player to pick up the item repeatedly, gaining multiple instances of the item, if the program's logic does not prevent them from having more than one of

3905-469: The line of succession. Dynasties lasting at least 250 years include the following. Legendary lineages that cannot be historically confirmed are not included. There are 43 sovereign states with a monarch as head of state , of which 41 are ruled by dynasties. There are currently 26 sovereign dynasties. Though in elected governments , rule does not pass automatically by inheritance, political power often accrues to generations of related individuals in

3976-416: The modification of the game's executable code while it is running, for example with the use of POKE commands. In the case of Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum computer, a popular cheat involved replacing a Z80 instruction DEC (HL) in the program (which was responsible for decrementing the number of lives by one) with a NOP , effectively granting the player infinite lives. On Microsoft Windows ,

4047-518: The most basic means of editing saved game files (e.g. to give the player a large sum of money in strategy games such as Dune II ). However, as happened with game editors, dedicated game-editing utilities soon became available, including functions to effortlessly edit saved data for specific games, rendering hex editing largely obsolete for this purpose. If a saved game is stored in multiple files, it may also be possible to cheat simply by mixing and matching these files. For example, if one file represents

4118-421: The number of lives, score or health level) are located. Provided a memory address, a memory editor may also be able to "freeze" it, preventing the game from altering the information stored at that memory address. Game trainers are a special type of memory editor, in which the program comes with predefined functions to modify the run time memory of a specific computer game . When distributed, trainers often have

4189-409: The original game developers), or created by third-party software (a game trainer or debugger) or hardware (a cheat cartridge ). They can also be realized by exploiting software bugs ; this may or may not be considered cheating based on whether the bug is considered common knowledge. The first cheat codes were put in place for play testing purposes. Playtesters had to rigorously test the mechanics of

4260-412: The other players cheated, as most games were played on local networks or consoles. The Internet changed that by increasing the popularity of multiplayer games, giving the players relative anonymity, and giving people an avenue to communicate cheats. Examples of cheats in first-person shooter games include the aimbot , which assists the player in aiming at the target, giving the user an unfair advantage,

4331-496: The packet detailing the slow factor could be modified to a lower value, manipulating the client game into applying the lower value. Techniques like this are not as common as simple memory manipulation and are typically only used in specific scenarios. In games having attainable achievements or high score records, or both, cheats by nature allow the player to attain achievements too easily or score point totals not attainable or extremely difficult to attain through legitimate means by

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4402-585: The player's current character dies without an heir of the same dynasty to succeed him/her, when all landed titles of the count rank or above are stripped from all members of the player's dynasty (including themselves), or when the game reaches its end in 1453 (unless the player is in "observer mode", at which point the game will continue onwards). The game employs a genetics and education system, through which children inherit many traits, culture, religion and skills from their parents and guardians . This adds an additional layer of strategy to marriages, such that

4473-521: The player. Guides, walkthroughs, and tutorials are sometimes used to complete games but whether this is cheating is debated. Later, cheating grew more popular with magazines, websites, and even a television show, Cheat! , dedicated to listing cheats and walkthroughs for consoles and computer systems. POKE cheats were replaced by trainers and cheat codes. Generally, the majority of cheat codes on modern day systems are implemented not by gamers, but by game developers . Some say that as many people do not have

4544-422: The player’s character technically remained in the safe position from the server’s (and enemy's) perspective. Once the player had gathered the necessary information about enemy locations, they could deactivate the lag switch and resume normal play. Many games have since implemented "anti-desync" measures to limit the effectiveness of lagswitches. This may include the client game preventing player movement if connection

4615-409: The rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term "dynast" is sometimes used only to refer to agnatic descendants of a realm's monarchs, and sometimes to include those who hold succession rights through cognatic royal descent. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people. For example, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon ,

4686-513: The target to register as hits. In online trading card games, creating multiple accounts by jailbreaking a device to get more rewards can be considered as cheating because it is unfair to players who have only one account. In online multiplayer games , a player may use macro scripts , which automatically find items or defeat enemies. The prevalence of massively multiplayer online games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft , Anarchy Online , EverQuest , Guild Wars , and RuneScape has resulted in

4757-671: The time to complete a video game on their own, cheats are needed to make a game more accessible and appealing to a casual gamer. In many cases, developers created cheats to facilitate testing, then left them in the game as they expanded the number of ways people could play it. With the rise in popularity of gaming, cheating using external software and hardware raised a number of copyright legal issues related to modifying game code. Many modern games have removed cheat codes entirely, except when used to unlock certain secret bonuses. The usage of real-time achievement tracking made it unfair for any one player to cheat. In online multiplayer games, cheating

4828-500: The trading of in-game currency for real-world currency. This can lead to virtual economies . The rise of virtual economies has led to cheating where a gamer uses macros to gain large amounts of in-game money which the player will then trade for real cash. The Terms of Service of most modern online games now specifically prohibit the transfer of accounts or the sale of in-game items for 'real-world' money. The enforcement of these terms varies however from one company to another, many turning

4899-462: Was due to disagreements over how to choose a non German house. In Limpopo Province of South Africa , Balobedu determined descent matrilineally , while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mother's dynasty when coming into her inheritance. Less frequently, a monarchy has alternated or been rotated, in a multi-dynastic (or polydynastic) system—that is, the most senior living members of parallel dynasties, at any point in time, constitute

4970-459: Was maintained through Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna . This also happened in the case of Queen Maria II of Portugal , who married Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry , but whose descendants remained members of the House of Braganza , per Portuguese law; in fact, since the 1800s, the only female monarch in Europe who had children belonging to a different house was Queen Victoria and that

5041-436: Was met with generally positive reviews and has attained a metascore of 82 at Metacritic . GameSpot reviewer Shaun McInnis stated: "Through a complex system of diplomacy and backstabbing, Crusader Kings II makes every power struggle an engrossing one" and he lauded the gameplay while noting the "lackluster tutorials". IGN summed up their review by saying "an intense learning curve, but a unique strategy experience". IGN rated

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