CKII is released.

Retinues are pretty popamole when you think of it. They make it easy to win any civil war, and let you game the tactics system to always have a favorable tactic, something the AI doesn't know how to do. Play with Legacy of Rome disabled if you want CK2 to be an actual feudalism simulator.

 

Before TOG, my solution was to marry my daughters to both Khans and let them kill each other eventually.
Always help the weaker one and whittle the stronger one till they're stuck in a stalemate.
Golden Horde adopting Sunni faith while Ilkhan turned Nestorian is perfect too.

 

If you play with retinue disabled, you'd end up with merc doomstacks anyway on top of the levy spam to beat the AI.
Coastal conquest being an exercise of precision fleet drops. Inland conquest being unrewarding as fuck - etc.
These are the things that human learned and adapted to, that the AI never mastered.

The moment the player forms an Empire he should feel unchallenged and start a new game. Personal opinion, of course.
I'm just feeling it atm with Zoroastrian Byzantine connecting Holy CBs through Italy, Burgundy, Aquitane, France, West Francia, Lothangaria, and then Bavaria. I even stole a few coastal strips off Sweden for fun. Gotta love Lubeck county slots. Perfect for me.

 

I preferred the old "assassinate Khagan until fuckhueg civil war occurs, take out rebels piecemeal" method.

 

Well, I did that too, and a few generations later, my Frankish King of Jerusalem has a weak claim on Golden Horde. I'm a little surprised, but whatever. I want that Empire title without attacking Byzantine.

 

Yea, somehow one my grandchildren ended up as Khagan once. Since he had no children of his own... Yea, sometimes the good of the realm requires sacrifices.

 

I never have any qualms about killing a relative or a wife. I regularly murder or make bishops out of sons to weed out the civil war threat. The realm always comes first. The needs of many etc.

 

"Son, the reason I never let you or your ten brothers leave home is because I love you. It's also why I secretly murdered your ten brothers and their children, my little Strong Genius."

 

It's hard to truly game the tactics system, at most you just bias it a bit. If you raise levies you'll have fucking everything in various quantities and if you don't raise levies you die to someone who outnumbers you 3:1 unless you get in quick and snipe stacks before they doomstack.

Otherwise I agree that as soon as you are emperor the game is pretty much over. Hell, even most kingdoms make you an OP mess since as a player you know to acquire maximum jewgold and with 1k in the bank you can fight off just about anyone and take land at a whim.

If anything I'd stop using Mercs if I wanted to make it hard. It's nothing but paying money to make a problem go away, like assassinations but 100% foolproof and can be used offensively. My game as Mali forced me to stop using Mercs because there simply aren't any available and it was a much better game for it.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Hilarius

 

Wow! Those skirmish retinues are certainly overpowered. In my Spain game I was able to siege all the holdings of four counties of an African Sultanate that invaded Portugal, using a 16K stack that was formed by 6K skirmish retinue + 10K levies and demense, in an incredibly short time, losing only like 2.5K soldiers and using the "Attempt to take holding" button in all the sieges.

The sultanate was barely able to assemble his army when I quickly reached 100% on the war score. It wasn't even able to cross Gibraltar. r00fles!

Also, few months after this, I had an invasion event of a christian "host" army with four consecutive 8K+ stacks. I though that invasion events was only available to sarracens and pagans. Just to be clear, it was a christian dude the one invading me.

 

I think it's just that Norse are way worse than anyone else when they send an adventurer.

 

I think the way it works is that any landless characters outside your realm with claims on your lands can assemble a host. At least I've seen someone I banished come back a decade later with a host. Which is fine for me, I banish them once and take all of their cash, then I beat their host and execute/banish them to take even more cash. I've seen 500 dosh from beating these things, though they do tend to arrive at bad times.

Norse are the only leaders that can call an invasion, and it seems to work a bit differently. They get some free units but not nearly the 10-50k stacks that landless adventurers can conjure out of thin air, more like 1-5k free units. The main advantage is that it's just a great CB that lets you take an entire kingdom in one go.

 

Are varangian events activated by Norse religion or culture? I've converted my Norse king to Zoro after the spectacular collapse of Norse moral authority resulting from Denmark be c oming catholic (I can't be assed to conquer all the way to Scandinavia just to reform Norse religion)

 

Yeah, I was able to beat them easily. The issue was that this happened concurrently with a rebellion on a recently conquered county, so I had a little bit more of difficulty.

 

Mongorians are no longer a threat. Ilkhanata's doomstacks are destroyed, and the border pushed to Turkestan. Now the Abbasids just declared jihad for Persia, and promptly crushed them, leaving them only with Khiva. They've recently converted to Nestorian faith, so they're even less of a threat now. I sincerely hope the Timurids can put some spice into the Abbasid stability bollocks (Jihad dropped their Decadence from 100% to 0%, though it didn't really seem to do anything to them at 100%). Well, at least they leave me alone.

Meanwhile, the Pope called another crusade against mighty Finns, which means I'll go wreck shit at Rome again so he knocks it off again. Karlings don't seem to give two fucks about this, they're too busy fighting over who rules Germany (Frankish Italy is the one France and Germany ally against currently). Most of continental Europe is Frankish (ie, Bohemia is Frankish due to having been part of Aquitane since forever). Navarra continues to be the specialist is muslim removal, having conquered more and more of Spain piecemeal.

 

Finally got around to finishing up a Zoro game.

First major war against Islam (Persia/Arabia) was handled thanks to mercs and about 2k gold saved from the beginning of the game. Went straight for the jugular, starting a holy war for Baghdad and Dulafid at the same time. Then the Kingdom of Arabia broke up from the Arab Empire and I took Tigris. My personal demesne ended up being super-charged thanks to entirely 6/7 holding provinces.

As for the second war (bearing in mind I'm still far weaker than both of them were). Well, let's just say I created quite the Crusader King:

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Right Flank is all my retinue, 50/50 Defence/Skirmish. Less than 60% archers prevents them from closing in on day 3 and the archers go on to do terrible, terrible damage thanks to the traits. The center and left flank are 1 merc horse archer regiment each along with some levies vs byzantium.

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Here's Skirmish retinue totally not being overpowered, with absolutely no traits or terrain in my favour. If you can assuredly rout an enemy in 3 days by stacking every archer on one flank, you win so hard it ain't even funny. This is those same merc groups, just here to skirmish and pin the enemy while archers kick ass.

BTW, if there is one thing Republics are ridiculous for, it's ships. I have almost no coastline but these guys are supplying me with 80-150 ships off at most a duchy worth of provinces. They seem to not do good economically this early on though because AI can't into tech rushing Trade Practices.

End game map:

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I managed to become the Hispanic Emperor, now I will go for the two african sultanates. Remove moros from the premises.

 

Is it possible to sustain mercenaries on loot from taken provinces?

 

Yes, but you need decent capital to sustain the first few months. Then once the ball starts rolling, you can break truce and keep the momentum going.

Also: I'm bored. Time to start a new game.

 

Is there some guide that covers shit for retards beginning like me? I've spent the last 2 weeks looking up shit on how to play this game but ever since that 1.1 patch for TOG I can't find shit to help me in the slightest. Every guide I have found to help my dumb ass has told me to pick some Irish duchy but since all the changes it's been a complete nightmare my last 5 games as the guides show troop size being in the 300 range but they shit out 2k stacks at me and i've got about 800 dumb fucks at my back. So is there some retard guide for me since all the changes to everything so that I'm not reading out of date shit and getting taken out within the first 5 years due to the enemy having shitloads more troops and money than I can even imagine having in that position?

 

Don't play in 866. It's not really a good learning environment.

 

And don't bother reading guides that have 'troop sizes', surely you can see how that's not particularly cost efficient information. I'd think starting as a Duke in a powerful kingdom could work well.

 

I don't have the Old Gods DLC so I am still in 1066. My main problem is due to the changes to technology and having De Jure claims be 51% instead of 50% fucking up easy expansion in areas like Ireland for easy learning have crashed any of those opportunities. I also brought up troop sizes because of how upgraded the counties are now as opposed to them usually being level 1 on everything but now shit is level 2 to 3 on some things. After my frustration with dealing with Ireland as the supposed "noob area" I just picked some backwater muslim country but now run into the problem of the Fatimids having an ungodly number of troops even though they have fractured into numerous little kingdoms in comparison to my little shit band of morons.