Thursday 5 March 2020

Crusader Kings 2 bloodline tier list. Pick the greatest bloodline and prosper!



Holy Fury DLC brought to the game many significant changes. One of them is the ability to found your own bloodline that will carry on in the veins of your successors. From the pure gaming point of view this only strengthens the snowball effect in CK2, we are just getting stronger and stronger. But if we want to role play a bit, it's a pretty nice addition to this DLC.
Bloodlines have many modifiers, few are useless, few are strong. This post will help you pick a great bloodline!
There are a lot of modifiers so I made 5 tiers, where S is very good and D is not very useful.
I rated them based on how much they help you when you are powergaming.
All of the bloodlines and requirements on how to get them can be found here https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Bloodline .

S TIER
Ashoka Bloodline
Heir to Alexander Bloodline
Ruthlessness Bloodline
The Builder Bloodline

Ashoka and Alexander’s heir are super strong just because they allow one invasion CB per ruler, which accelerates our conquests rapidly. Of course they are hard to come by.
Ruthlessness bloodline helps to keep our vassals in check, so they are not becoming stronger and stronger, we can imprison them easily and most importantly can plot to revoke any title they have. Last one is the builder bloodline, flat 20% reduction on cost and build time will help our economy to kick off faster.

A TIER
Any bloodline that occasionally gives us great warriors or theologians
Warrior Lodge bloodline that has a chance to give us better commander
Philosopher bloodline
Family
Zeal
The butcher

If we have any bloodline that gives us good commanders then we have a huge advantage in battle. We are able to get a 20 or even 30 martial score commanders with two battle traits. These two are very strong bloodlines, we can even consider them S tier. Philosopher bloodline speeds up our technology growth, especially culture. And if we are in the diplo range with China we can sell artists and poets for some grace. Family gives us options to improve some stats of our family, and if paired with monastic order we can create superhumans with no eugenics needed. Zeal works as mini Alexander bloodline, but except invasion CB we have a religious liberation that targets the entire kingdom and instead of annexing land, we reat tributary state loyal to us. The butcher is big QoL bloodline, we can personally assassinate people, without the need of plot backers, just like one of the quests in the Assasin society.

B TIER
Any tanistry bloodline
Any bloodline with intimidating execution
Vile blood
30-20% to combat effectiveness
The warrior philosopher
Special city/castle/church building bloodlines
Theology
20 to personal combat
Mercenary children
Silent killer
Musa the lion
Looting artifacts and capturing commanders

It's getting crowded here. Perhaps tanistry bloodline should be higher, but since we can switch culture for tanistry succession then I decided B tier is the place for it. Rest of the bloodlines are flat bonuses and some flavour. Let's say it's better to have a bloodline from this list than a bloodline from C tier :)

C TIER
15% and less to combat effectiveness
Any amount of prestige/piety
15 to personal combat and less
Sky burials
Culture and religious conversion
Bigger crusade share and cheaper crusader state
Byzantium killer
Vassals less likely to join faction
Benefactor bloodlines
Can disband factions
Northern Crusade Bloodline

We name this tier better this than nothing. Most of them are unnoticeable changes and some flavour. Disbanding factions would be way higher if the cooldown wasn’t so long for it. Byzantium killer is more of a trophy bloodline than a useful one. But as I said in B tier, it's always nice to have an additional bonus.

D TIER
All the rest

Most of these are +5 or 10 opinion bonuses that can be achieved with enough technology level or artifact or kind trait. Not very useful and pursuing to add them to your lineage might be a waste of time.

If I missed any please let me know in the comments. Real game changers are S and A tiers, they can really give us a big boost and make the game way easier. We can group B C D tiers in one group and mark them as nice to have and S and A as gamechangers. I did not write all the bonuses for the bloodlines or how to get them because you can read it on CK2 wiki. If you liked this tier list you may also like these two:

Holy Fury reformation tier list
Interesting religion/culture/government combo

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