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Place your Spymaster in Constantinople of the Byzantine Empire to study technology.
The art of learning to fabricate a claim on neighbouring territory will get you far.
Picking good marriage alliance partners is crucial.
Always observe the counties you're planning to attack for whatever reason. If you see a river crossing symbol, consider your numbers and theirs. You'll take a strong hit if you're the attacker.
Also, take a look at this guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121284125
It's one I used to try and get the basics. That all said, don't worry if a month from now you still struggle. This is a game that you can pour hundreds if not thousands of hours into and still learn new things about. But never give up because I promise you that as you get the hang of it you'll get sucked in! :)
I'm not sure I agree with this, Mack. I played the vanilla CK II forever and enjoyed it greatly. The DLCs certainly add to the game -- but I don't believe that they are essential to one's enjoyment.
Edit: Oh, sorry OP. This is a fantastic resource. I use it all the time.
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Crusader_Kings_II_Wiki
Now, for some tips and suggestions.
Marriage:
When picking a bride for yourself and your male relatives, be sure to pick women with high stats. Your overall realm stats are the combination of your stats, your wife's stats, and your councillers stats. You can either pick brides whose stats make up for your shortcomings (marrying a wife with high diplomacy because you have low diplomacy) or double down on your strenghs (marrying a wife with high martial because you have high martial already).
In addition to stats, you also need to bare in mind prestige. If your wife is related to someone who holds a higher title than you, than you'll gain prestige from the union. If your wife is related to someone who holds a lower title than you, you'll lose prestige from the union. It might be worth it to take a -300 prestige hit if your wife has great genetic traits, but be careful in case it is not.
Speaking of traits, these are important as well. When possible, try to get wives who have good genetic traits like Genius, Quick, Attractive, or Strong. These genetic traits have a chance of being passed down to the next generation (traits like ugly, stutter, lisp, hunchback, hairlip, clubfoot, slow, imbicile, lunatic, and other bad genetic traits are to be avoided LIKE THE PLAGUE). Nongenetic traits are also important: while a lustful wife is more fertile (more likely to bare children), she is also more suseptable to adultery.
If your wife is in love with you, than she won't have sex with Lord Perdvert from three counties over.
Never Never NEVER marry a woman whose more than five years older than your character. Men can have children until they croak, but women become infirtile when they reach the age of 45. If possible, marry a woman whose younger than you to ensure you take advantage of all their fertile years.
If you play as a merchant republic family, you have to pay money to marry noblewomen. However, your relatives also get events by which they get wives of their own.
If you play as a pagan, you can have 4 concubines in addition to your wives.
If you play as a muslim, you can have 4 wives.
It doesn't add to your final score, but if you want to do or have anything that does than you'll need a lot of it.
You can borrow money from Jews, and get more money from banishing them afterwards, but if you let Jews return eighty years later than you'll have to pay them back (I'm pissed off the game won't let me Farm Jews anymore).
You can also get a small but consistant amount of money each month from taxing your provence and your vassals. You can place your steward on a provence to increase the taxes from here, and sometimes he'll collect a tithe and give you that money.
Finally, you can randsom prisoners captured in battles and wars. Courtiers = 10, Barons = 25, Counts = 75, Dukes = 125, and Kings and Emperors = alotofmoney.
You can pick the business focus if you have the ways of life DLC, and occasionally get events for hundreds of coins.
my usual startup (typically starting as a weak duke or a strong/multicounty count):
1.) find an ideal duchy near you that you conquer somewhat easily. Look for a 4-5 county duchy, a rich 3 county duchy will be worse than a mostly good 5 county duchy. Look for that duchy's capital county (swap map view to 'duchies', hover over the counties to find the natural capital, it'll be labelled 'duchy capital'), make sure it's attainable--that'll be your first target within the duchy, if possible. Typically it's controlled by a moderately strong duke so you may need a few counties under your belt before you gun for it.
2.) attempt to fabricate a claim on your first county within the duchy. Look for easy fights--if you're a two county count, you should dump on any single county count. Priority is that capital county but again, that's typically idealistic. If you're going straight up (you're a three county duke vs a three county duke) make sure you've got at least 300 gold for a mercenary army. Hire them before the war starts so they have peak morale. Wait until the enemy raises his troops, send in the mercs and wreck his army. Once they're fleeing send your regular troops to follow those troops and disband the mercs.
3.) diplomat is fabricating, martial is training troops in your capital always. Really try to avoid pulling him out of that unless it's a very dire situation. Steward is always increasing tax income in your most profitable county. That's not always your capital (especially early game it's usually counties on water as their cities have bonuses to income), check the 'income' map view. Spymaster is always studying technology somewhere, preferably a place where you won't draw ire when he's discovered. Your priest should build rapport with your religious head (for catholics dump him in rome and forget about him).
4.)spend no money on holding improvements, feasts, etc. All of that is going towards mercs or saving for eventual city placements. AI will also judge you stronger than you actually are if you have more money in the bank--it's aware that you can hire mercs and adjusts their war planning accordingly. That helps prevent you from being on the defensive, which will generally get you nothing in the early game (bad counts will pay ~40 gold for losing a war b/c their income is garbage, which is definitely not worth the damaged levies and tax income from the war). Spend no tech points until you own the capital county we talked about before.
5.) focus on developing your sons military skills. Not only do they function as great commanders when you're a low tier count or duke no one cares about your diplomacy--you need more troops for the war machine! The bonuses for having 15 martial or above are nuts and can easily make the difference in a war.
6.) once you have the capital county, you're going to want to make that your captial. You can now spend your tech points, focusing on military organization, castle/keep and legalism for the three trees. Keep saving that money and look to acquire the rest of the duchy (through marriage or claim fabrication). Don't settle vassals within the duchy...your goal is you personally controlling everything within that duchy--all counties that you control within your 'capital duchy' (that's the duchy your capital county is within) get a bonus +15% to levies, sizable when you've got a five county duchy.
7.) assuming you're not starting at 769/867, you should have some points in legalism. Get that centralism up as high as you can as fast as you can so that you can control all the counties without a malus to your income or troops. Second priority is increasing the taxes on burghers. They can't rebel so jack 'em up high.
8.) once you control your duchy you should focus on building cities within every county that you control. This will take a while but every city you build increases your income considerably. Try to focus on whatever county your steward was in to maximize income.
9.) by about 100 years in you should be a duke with 4-5 counties inside your duchy and ~20 gold per month. At this point independence, deposing liege or simply playing how you want should be simplicity itself.
Many people come to CK2 from other strategy titles and think they can bring their min/max philosophy with them and take over the map. CK2 is a lot more subtle and layered than most games though, so just having your noble family survive through many generations is a grand achievement in itself. Concentrate on survival of your name as an RPG until you understand the mechanics enough to change history. :)