CKII is released.

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

- 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).

What? Can you install beta patches on Steam?

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

Thanks!

 

[Space Satan]

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).

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.

 

[Average Manatee]

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.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

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.

 

[Spectacle]

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.

 

[RK47]

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.

 

[RK47]

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.

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.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

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.

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

 

[RK47]

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.

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.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

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.

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.

 

[thesoup]

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.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

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."

 

[Average Manatee]

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.

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.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[JarlFrank]

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

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

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.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

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

 

[Average Manatee]

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 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.

 

[Kattze]

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)

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

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.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

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.

 

[Average Manatee]

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:

Spoiler

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.

Spoiler

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:

Spoiler

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

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

 

[baturinsky]

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

 

[RK47]

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.