CKII is released.

Here's my bet: They're going to make a theocracy (extra stuff for all religions all around) expansion, then one or two Alternate Scenarios and then expansions expanding the map east.

That's right, kids: We're gonna play Mongols, more Turks, Chinks and Indians. Ever wanted to lead the Mongol armies into world conquest? Soon, very soon, we will.

 

But muh catholics. Muh catholics!

 

Didn't they say a while back the expansion after TOG would focus on improving the economy system and introduce trade goods?

 

81 fucking years.

._.

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He's a motherfuckin' bro.

 

Dude is the oldest looking fucker I've ever seen in CK2.

Am guessing Bravery perk was crucial for this to occur.

 

In terms of investment and reward, I realize going to middle east is not a good idea.
Persian Campaign
1. It's slow. Really slow. The time it took to travel is longer than it does to siege.
2. 1 is made worse when the revolts appear. Local levy won't be enough until things stabilize, but the levy raised means no war declaration till the stupid revolt is put down and the army is dismissed.
3. Lack of coastal areas as you head inland means slower and slower movement. The moment I planted my 25k retinue on Persian campaign, I knew I better get shit done cause I don't feel like coming back there any time soon.

Now compare that to heading west:
Byzantine and Beyond
1. Soft targets - sub 2k levies that yields easily to 10k Skirmish Retinues.
2. Lots of coastal targets means faster troop deployment, you can easily park a retinue on the waters, declare war, land, fully cap a county within a month. You cannot do that in Middle East.
3. Republics makes excellent vassals. Their fleet and money contribution is off the charts.
4. Kingdom titles are so easy to usurp and with Zoroastrians Holy War CB, it should be a simple matter of connecting conquered Duchies as one CB lead to another.
5. Since European holdings are better developed, that means more money too!

Let's not even talk about Russo territories dominated by Pagans with their 1000 supply caps.

 

Tech now is bugged - youcannot redduce\remove Pagan attrition on home territory even with 5 Mil.Org. tech. So waiting for patch.
As for rebellions - I thing so far the best way is to create king-level rulers - they tend to deal with rebellions by themselves quite well, just takes time for them to react.
For the time being the most effective way to deal with pagans is to get a blob of 10-20k of footsloggers and assault holdings right after arriving.

 

I would love to play yellow people, but I very much doubt they will expand the map ever. The new DLCs are just going to flesh out the current map with more gameplay stuff or other elements.

Maybe it's for the better though, better to have smaller map with much detail to it, than a simplified large one .

 

Better diplomacy options. Screw more map.

 

Going back to the very first "wtf is this shit" topic in CK2, what's the method you guys use to deal with Mongol invulnerable mega-stacks? Currently my favoured method is to get them involved in a decisive battle in Hills or Forest, where on day 1 of the battle the tactical assassin corps is unleashed against all their commanders. Then its ping pong.

It's still not good enough though, you can get the warscore to call for White Peace easily that way, but I haven't managed to pop their moles three times in a row in ping pong, so the mega-stacks just end up going home.

Do Tengri have it? I distinctly noticed that I got rid of the penalty against them, and then against Norse.

 

I think it's the wrong way around. If the pagans have level 5 Mil Org tech the attrition is removed. Which is somewhat of a downside when you rush it 100 years ahead of time and suddenly 25k stacks from Arabia can get in to your kingdom of Mali.

Make sure that you use skirmish/longbow retinue to assault the holdings. By far the best at it.

Ideally you want to defend in hills/mountains (mountains are 50% better) and get the enemy to cross a river (major if possible, 2x the penalty). You're looking at +10-30% bonus and -10-30% penalty. Also if at all possible you'll also want the leader bonuses for each terrain. I always try to get mountain leader ASAP by always fighting my major battles in mountains, that's worth +20% and is modified by your martial (which boosts all traits by 5% per point), so you are looking at potentially +40% in mountains if you have a 20 martial leader with mountain leader. Altogether it's conceivable to fight an enemy who is at 80% efficiency while you are at 160%, a 2x power divide.

Nothing wrong with just killing Mongols, their 60k free no-attrition stacks are one time and as soon as they die they are gone for good.

 

Well, I have a severe shortage of mountains, but lots of rivers.

 

There's a way to beat mongols. Tried it often and IMO, most effective way to beat them constantly.
I assume you play as a nation near eastern map border. Like Rus or islamic empires. Only land battles.
1. Swarming
Absolute Crown Authority is a must - you'll need minimum 120k of troops. Get purely Heavy infantry retinue as Russia for +60% def bonus or pikeman\HI as others. Grow as large as possible and be as agressive as you could - you have to accumulate huge manpower.
2. Buffer
First of all you'll need a buffer state at the map border. For Russia it's mostly Cumans and Khiva for muslims. This may change but their role is to provide you with time to mobilize your vast empire and let your armies arrive to the border. Sometimes your vassals will wage wars of their own and will take this border provinces - do anything to reoke them and grant this lands to some foreign idiots, like ecumenical patriarchs.
3. Breeding
Every son you have should be trained in military. As christian rulers it is easier - you can switch to elective and have one or two capable rulers. the main agenda - get Organized military trait. It's the most crucial part of the strategy - it gives you Movement Speed: +20.0%. Once your wife reaches 45 years - divorce or kill her and marry someone with genious\strong\lustful trait. Son-producing machine should not stop. With pagans you should rape and fuck everyone with vagina.
4. Money reserves
Get 1500+ gold reserve. Always.
5. Tech
Get as much Military Organization tech as possible, 2 will be perfect. reason - bonus support limit. Techs will be mostly balanced but try to get attack techs first- as your main goal is to do as much damage as possible.
6. Preparations.
Once the Horde arrives and start butchering the buffer state - mobilize all your armies and move 20-30k stacks to the border. With luck, you'll have support limits of 30k or 25k. Buy all mercenaries possible. Amass your several stacks and wait. Now here's a tricky part, you have two options - either wait until you'll be attacked, or attack on your own.
7. Battling the Horde.
The reason it is more favorable to attack, is that mongols separate their stacks after war with buffer state ends. They NEVER do so during the war, but in between they actually do. So if you see 40k army in neighboring province- instantly set Organizer as main army leader, unite the stacks in 60-80k doomstack and attack. You are moving MUCH faster and with much HI will be able to deal decent damage to the stack and intercept mongols before they will unite. Main goal - devastate not yet united doomstacks before attrition eliminate your army. Do not bother assaulting holdings- you are just wasting your men to attrition. Usually there are two 40-45k mongol doomstacks and you have to eliminate them as quickly as possible. Pursue defeated stacks and soon you may get 100% warscore even without taking any holdings. Act as fast as possible - attrition will eat your army.

The strategy is gamey and rely on yet unstacked army of mongols. If they stack to 80k, you have slim chances for victory with 100-120k army of yours, if they manage to get doomstack up to 100-120k - just quit - there's no hope of winning or even reducing the numbers.
P.S. That was for vanilla CK2 but now forest and hills have crippling terrain modifiers so you, in theory, can beat 80k doomstack with less manpower.

 

Beta patch is out on Steam

Code:

MAJOR:
- Added a "Retract Vassal" interaction
- Disallowed destruction of non-titular titles under Gavelkind
 
INTERFACE:
- Added lots of portrait fixes from the "CK2 Portrait Fixes" mod by zebez
- Adjusted the random CoA colors and color choices
- Scripted a lot of CoAs for various dynasties
- The CoAs of titles named after a dynasty now match the dynasty CoA
- Bishops no longer wear pope hats, but the pope does
- Livonia now has the correct pagan flag
- Buildings requiring a coastal province now show up in the tech tooltip even if the capital is not coastal
- Fixed some tooltips in the settlement view not showing building levels with the name
- Nicknames are now shown for heads of religion
- The 'Grant Independence' action is no longer even shown if the recipient is not your vassal
- The 'Prepare Invasion' action is now shown but grayed out if you are at war with the recipient
- Added missing Bektashi religion description
- Endgame screen now shows correct score for characters
- Added missing name of the Reformed Aztec Church title
- Tweaked the religion colors to make them more distinct
- Corrected some event text typos
 
GAMEPLAY:
- Norse Pagans can no longer employ the coastal conquest CB against other pagans (neighboring counties can still be taken though)
- The Subjugation CB can now only be used once per lifetime instead of every 10 years. (Unless you have the 'Become King' ambition.)
- Characters with the "Become King" ambition and access to the subjugation CB can no longer move their capital out of the de jure kingdom
- Subjugated rulers of another religion now get a smaller opinion bonus vs the winner, lasting for a shorter time
- Fixed a bug with many vassalizing casus bellis where the target's own counties would be seized when they should not be
- Tengri Pagans are now limited to Agnatic succession
- The Jomsvikings now reform if the Norse reformation takes place
- Fixed an issue where the primary heir under Gavelkind would not inherit the capital county
- West African pagans can now also raid
- Lowered the spawn rate of TOG rebels by 20%
- Added the "Ghanan Band" mercenary company
- Slavic, Baltic and Finnish Pagans now get a bonus to their levy sizes, at the cost of their garrison bonus
- Fixed a problem with the decadence invasion event
- Fixed a bug with decadence revolts ending strangely on the attacking ruler's death
- Court Chaplain job events no longer restricted to men for pagans
- Made the Chancellor job to improve relations more effective
- Mercenary ships will no longer spawn in major rivers
- The Viking trait can now only be gained by adults
- Heirs returning from the Varangian Guard to take the throne of their dead father can no longer get the same event twice
- Piast the Wheelwright and his son are now of the Piast dynasty
- Pagan festivals can now only be held in summer as intended
- City Shipyards now produce slightly more galleys than their Castle and Temple counterparts
- Fixed a bug where banishing landed vassals would not take all their titles
- Under Gavelkind, your oldest son will no longer ask for titles
- Added additional names and dynasties for Roman characters created in the Ruler Designer
- Added an earlier king of Ireland to make Irish liberation revolts possible
- 867: Strengthened the coastal Baltic, Slavic and Finnish tribes with better Holdings
- 867: Slightly strengthened the initial forces of Ivar and Halfdan
- 867: The Karling kingdoms are now on Agnatic succession
- 867: Moved Uglich from the Meryas to the Vyatichi
- 867: Byzantium is now properly on Primogeniture, not Gavelkind
- 867: The Duchy of Meath now exists, called "Tara" by the Irish
- 867: Made some important vassals to the King of Italy Italian culture to prolong the survival of the culture and ensure more internal troubles
- 867: Adjusted the initial political and dynastic setup among the Baltic tribes to make them more resilient
- The vassal opinion for free investiture law now correctly only applies for Catholics
- Build cost and time is now affected by your capital tech, not the average tech in your realm
- Ignoring pagan defensive attrition is now controlled by your capital tech, not by the average tech in your realm
- Own fort level no longer affects ability to navigate major rivers
- Tweaked the AI bonuses on Hard and Very Hard difficulty settings
- Successful non-claimant adventurers are now known as "the Conqueror"
- Fixed a bug with weird dynasty names for the commanders of Liberation rebels
- Castrating or blinding a prisoner now removes the righteous imprisonment cause when they are released
- The ambition to gain a council position now only increases a skill the first time it is successful
- The generic Pagan religion now has a description and holy sites
- Added the Hellenic religion
- The events when certain cities are sacked now properly trigger for the Mongol Empire
- The event when you raise a runestone as a zealous Reformed Norse character no longer treats you as a Christian
- Captured Rebel leaders now have a "Broken Spirit" modifier, making them pretty useless
- Fixed a bug where Gavelkind could produce republics
- Fixed a general bug with multiple kingdom inheritance that could produce republics
- The decision to create the Kingdom of Leon now makes it a de jure part of the Empire of Hispania
- Trade posts are no longer counted towards the Prepared Invasion realm size limits
- Fixed a bug with being able to semi-grant invalid duchies and kingdoms to your heir under Gavelkind
- Heathen priests can now inherit titles
- Mayors and heathen priests will now marry if they are heirs to other titles
- Lack of Piety rumor event now only triggers for Christian lieges as intended
- Trade post garrisons now give less retinue cap increase
- Moved the counties of Loon and Julich from de jure Cologne to Luxemburg
- Technology points are now gained by own demesne when containing buildings that give technology points
 
AI:
- Will not convert to Norman culture if in a huge Norse empire
- Higher prio on building temple towns
- Adjusted propensity to backstab brothers of the faith who are primary parties in holy wars
- Behaviour is now affected subtly by the difficulty settings
- Tweaked max field army sizes a bit
- Will not agree to concubinage for title claimants
 
MODDING:
- Exported BASE_REVOLT_CHANCE_MOD and TOG_REVOLT_CHANCE_MOD to defines
- Added a 'can_appear' field to dynasties to prevent for example the Seljuks from appearing before their event

 

What? Can you install beta patches on Steam?

 

- Added lots of portrait fixes from the "CK2 Portrait Fixes" mod by zebez

Lol. Modders fix all.

 

I also loved that. Loved it more that they admit that they're using mod fixes (honesty is good).

You just have to opt in on the steam library game settings page.

 

You really don't want anything other than archers. Pound for pound they are the best unit by far, and skirmish is the dominant phase of most battles.

 

My retinue is mostly split between archers and cavalry for the most part, with a few Shock retinues to round up the numbers for heavy infantry.

 

Nope. If you have HI they got the best stats AND the best tactics vs HA. With cultural retinue HI will become even stronger. They can reduce skirmish damage to almost nothing and in skirmist HA will beat anything as they are most powerful and have powerful tactics as well. HI on the other hand can withstand HA barrage and then deal shitload of damage.
There's really no point in hiring anything but HI if its your cultural one. Maybe some cavalry to add for pursue

 

Heavy Infantry are priced at 2x the price of Archers, they have way worse stats compared to the numbers you can field. Cultural retinue doesn't do anything other than slightly change your numbers, and it's not like you can specialize tactics if you are including levy.

Horse archers aren't much stronger than Archers in skirmish stat-wise and cost 2x as much. A given archer retinue will absolutely demolish a horse archer retinue for the same cost. And archers have the more powerful tactics (+300% damage, +420% if you are english/welsh).

Trust me, archers are the best retinue if doomstacking with levy (if acting on their own you want the cheapest supplemental unit to create a 60/40 archer/other split, which minimizes the chance of an enemy charge).

 

Thanks!

 

It's not a matter of cost, because HA are created, not bought.
Horse Archers have Swarm tactics that fire specifically vs archers. Which adds +300% to attack. HI always fire shielfwall with +300% def vs HA. And in melee HA fire +300% once again and you can't stop it with archers.

 

Retinue cap cost. I'm assuming everyone is at cap. Archers cost 1 retinue cap each, Heavy Infantry and Horse Archers 2 cap each.

Archers have tactics that give +300% attack too (+420% if you are english or welsh). Melee simply won't happen in most battles, if your composition is right you'll have at most a ~15-20% for each flank to engage in melee after 2 weeks and again every 2 weeks. By the end of the first two weeks most battles are decided and I don't think I've seen any battles last a full month.

Plus going all archers you can simply cheese assault holdings (assaults are always skirmish battles) to get to 100% war score before the mongols even arrive with their doomstacks. Hilarious way to beat them.

 

One down, two to go. Golden Horde attacked my bros in incline over at Kingdom of Perm, so I quickly joined in to nip this problem right at the bud. Turns out it was very lucky in general, the Mongols split their doomstack into three in order to chase the Permians around. My armies arrived and easily took care of the first 20k stack with the use tactical assassin corps followed by brief ping pong. The second battle required a bit more setting up, but eventually the main attack force of 70k attack my three main armies at Bashkirs in Bolghars, which decisively ended the war in my favour when the Mongols lost 50k troops in the battle, leaving them with a total of 40k troops against my now combined army of 50k and incoming reinforcements of 34k troops. So in the end Golden Horde was stopped from ever becoming a problem. Feels good man.

Now the Ilkhanate is coming back for more after a failed invasion against me and Perm (they still retained full doomstack after both, due to assault rush giving enough warscore) after a brief succesful invasion of Persia against the Abbasids (finally they lost something, though the Basque have succesfully executed reconquista of Spain). This time I fully intend to destroy their doomstacks, and then give them a taste of their own medicine by taking Turkestan. When the Timurids arrive, they'll be everyone else's problem.