CKII is released.

Golden Horde

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

 

Besides from what I can tell its a Polish ruled HRE. Poland strong!

 

Hm, aren't doges supposed to receive half the family members' personal fortunes when they (the members, that is, not the doges) die? Because mine surely don't. All money of the deceased proceed to their kids, and when there are none, they just go *pooof*. What the fuck? Am I supposed to do a long string of doge suicides to recover their cash?

(not like that works, my current doge just heroically rode into a 5000-strong rebel stack with a 150-strong zero-morale vassal levy and miraculously escaped unscathed... 14 times)

 

IIRC dying in battle is a constant chance and therefore its more likely when you have prolonged engagements.

 

I wonder if the best way to deal with Mongol invasion is still Tactical Assassin Squadron.

EDIT: To elaborate further on the grievances of reindeer docker, generally the main problem is that not only reindeers are only important to the Sami and Samoyedic way of life (Lappish is a rather complex thing to represent in the game, since actual Sami were nomadic herders even at this time, but the supposed Kvens, or Kainuulaiset, were a group referenced in some texts of the time, and in dodgy pseudohistory that the pagan Finn map in CK2 has to rely are presented as the larger Northern tribe state for Lappish). If you were to pick an animal symbol for Finnic paganism, you'd be best off with the bear or swan, which were actual sacred animals; personally I'd use either a symbol modeled after Saint John's Arms (symbol was extensively used among Finns and Estonians since pre-Christian period, called Hannunvaakuna) or the gold jewelry finds that supposedly depict Turisas/Tursas/Turso/Iku-Turso or the ones that depict Kalevanpoikas (it bears mention that in terms of position, Sons of Kaleva is probably the most accurately named hypothetical pagan Order, since Sons of Kaleva, or Kalevanpoikas, is the titular ascribed to mythical heroes/demigods/giants).

Incidentally, if anyone wants, I've whipped up another improved namefile for Finns and Estonians. It's especially good for Estonians, the source material I now have in my bookshelf proved very useful. It's rather shameful just how lazy the Estonian namefile is, not just the fact it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with ancient Estonian names, but also that it's just a copypasta used for all non-Finnish/Lappish Finno-Ugrics. FFS, it's not that hard to just get a copy of Livonian Chronicle of Henry.

 

nah the mongols now split their stacks.

 

I noticed that you've fought some battles where you had more than 30K troops. How were you able to gather armies so large without troops deserting due to the supply limit, especially since armies move slow in the eastern part of the map? Did you converge troops from multiple counties?

I've used +50K armies before (even 120K once), but in coastal battles where I could keep them all aboard ships before bringing them to the fight.

 

I've fought off the Mongols as Finns in the East a few times, and generally the trick really is in converging in on them from multiple directions, or taking a stand in a location you can reinforce from all around it really fast.

That just means tactical assassins are less pivotal.

 

The real problem last time is that they never split up. Not splitting a 100k stack that ignores supply is what makes them super strong.
The latest change made them do-able.
You just gotta know when to give ground and let them 'in' before trapping them with a superior force.
Also, collected my Papal Investment after nearly a century.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

 

Yea, the 100k attrition free stack was hell. Usually even if you won a crushing victory, immediately after you'd take so much attrition that it's even numbers again - or worse.

 

1. The trick here is to have high military org to increase supply accommodate as many army as possible.
And only make them converge within a month of the battle to reduce the attrition loss. It's ok to lose a 1000 or so if it results in full stack power reaching its destination.
Boat bombing doesn't work anymore. 50% morale is too huge of a penalty and the mongols take a long time to get to the shores. On the mean time you bleed cash and not regaining morale due to fleet raised.

2. Joining Wars, not being a target
The trick I used when facing the Mongols is pretty much using a 'diversion' AI kingdom as their first target, preferably one of your same religion.
Hence I gifted the papacy a few states in Cumania. I knew the Mongols won't hit me first cause I'm too big of a target.
The AI always prioritize weaker conquests.
Hence, offering to join war - the advantage becomes clear:
a. You can raise your levies, get in position to strike without getting any of the smaller stacks cut off in anyway.
b. You can then mass your levy, merc, retinue army in one spot, then smash it as they spread their stacks to siege multiple areas of their target.

If you had declared outright war, you cannot mass levy first. That is the clear advantage of joining a war to defend the Mongols.
Once they lost their first war, declare Holy War and purge. They should be broken by now.

 

In terms of mods, which do you guys recommend, CK+ continuation or project balance?

 

Playing Brittany now. A lot easier when you can expel the Jews and get mercs to deal with your Norse neighbor. Planning on going Cathar once I've firmly broken Francia's spine.

Disappointed though. Pagans are converting to Catholicism on-masse. Gonna be a dull EU4 transfer if they don't improve.

 

You generally have to manually take care of the conversion of pagan religions, since most of them won't reform and you'd be stuck with a bunch of inane Animists.

 

Yeah, I've only seen the Ai reform Tengriism, and that's because Tengrii are blobbers. Still, I'll see how they end up and save edit where appropriate.

 

The Jew loan option is a no-brainer actually.
For -3 Diplomacy you gain 500 gold at the start of the game.
How the heck is that not advantageous?

 

-2 diplomacy actually. And since you can just take the improve learning ambition, you can earn it right back in a few years.

It also makes managing succession a lot easier. No matter how screwed up things get, your new character will always be able to summon 500g out of nowhere for emergency mercs or assassinations.

 

I have been getting random events where I lost technology points due to the gap the Jews left. I expelled them three kings ago so that is kind of annoying.

Clearly Paradox hasn't read Cleve's totally truthful rants about how there have never been any Jewish inventors.

 

I have a game started since before the Old Gods and Sons of Abraham patches were released and noticed that they erased the prestige and piety values for dead characters (the total score is still there). When I exit a game and look at all my previous rulers, they all have a score of zero except my current ruler. Did anyone else experience this bug?

 

I am suprised, that it only that, since I don't think it's wise to install major patch in the middle of your game. I always start a new game or choose to not update before completing the old one.

 

Well, I didn't foresee this.

The idea was to design a ruler that would be 'guaranteed' to live abnormally long, maybe in the upper 80s, by taking the negative traits and investing everything into health. The idea was to make an insanely ugly pot that just wouldn't fucking break -- and which would somehow become the founder of a great dinasty.

That bastard lived to be 120. This must have been a bug.

 

I would have preferred not to install the patches until I was finished, but I had auto-update enabled. At least the game isn't broken. I'll deal with things as they are and disable the automatic patch downloads.

 

Why? I wish death to my character when they are 60-70 years old, depending on circumstanses. And since then, they find themselves on the every major battlefield. So I can't even imagine what to do with ruler over 100 years old. Although some health are good for minimizing the chance, that your character would die before succession is secured, but definitely not to the point, where you see your carefully raised heir dying from old age and leaving you with underage heir.

Marvellous steam auto-updater updating your game even after specifically asked not to? You should be able to make a copy of your game and use that copy without fearing of new patch realize.

 

That's what happened to Louis XIV "the Sun King". He had a reign of 72 years and his son and grandson predeceased him, leaving his five-year old great-grandson to
inherit the throne.

Regarding Steam, I just disabled the auto-updates for CK2, so I'll have to wait until the next patch to see if it worked or not.

 

Bros, what are the requirements for creating norse holy order?