So I've run into an issue where I'm unsure if it's a bug or not... I've taken prisoner a duke level vassal after they rebelled against me, and thus am able to freely revoke a title from them as recompense. The game doesn't seem to want to let me take their ducal title, claiming "... it would make her hold only Titles with no Land".
Firstly, what does this even mean? Surely if I de-land someone then they just go from being a vassal back to a plain ol' noble? Secondly, she definitely would have some land since she'd still hold the Earl titles for the counties under the taken ducal title.
Picture of the error message under the spoiler
edit: Looking at some more of my imprisoned vassals (it was one helluva rebellion!) they are seem to exhibit the same behaviour, not allowing me to revoke their ducal titles despite having plenty of counties under them.
I'm not sure if the error message is wrong or the behavior is wrong or both, but the behavior I've seen is that you can't revoke a duchy without first revoking every county under it, but you can usurp it by decision. I was able to revoke a duchy and the single remaining county under it at the same time with a single revocation reason, but I couldn't revoke either individually, with the same message you got. It makes some amount of sense if you sort of squint and tilt your head just right, since if you want just the duchy and you already hold enough counties you can just usurp it by decision, if you don't have enough counties you can revoke them until you do. The tooltip should probably say something like "You can't revoke a duchy with counties under it; duchys can be usurped by decision".
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
DISCLAIMER: Do not own, have not played, going by what I've seen posted here, which is a whole lot of questions on this general topic...
It sounds like the game desperately needs an interface tutorial, or a better one?
If the information is there, but they don't tell you where/how to find it...
It's just how paradox games work I think. The tutorial would be a hundred hours long. Partially this is one of those games that's a game about learning the game.
yeah, but we're talking about basic interface stuff - "how do I", "where do I find", etc.
The entire game is just interface though. There's several dozen systems you're tracking.
The tutorial does give interface information. It puts glowing boxes around the buttons you need to click and won't proceed until you are on the window it wants.
It doesn't cover everything of course, but I got enough info to be able to figure out how to continue. There's also a constantly updating "current issues" indicator that tells you about wars you can start, people you can ransom, kids who need to be married or educated, if you're over your personal holdings limit, if you can usurp a title, allies you can call to war, important people you might want to increase opinion of, etc etc etc. Just following those can help a lot as well.
All the information is within the game itself within two or three clicks.
DISCLAIMER: Do not own, have not played, going by what I've seen posted here, which is a whole lot of questions on this general topic...
It sounds like the game desperately needs an interface tutorial, or a better one?
If the information is there, but they don't tell you where/how to find it...
All the screens mentioned come up at some point during the tutorial as does the golden rule that if something is underlined you can hover over it for more info. The latter is one of the first things covered.
They may have glossed over the outliner or at least not told how many things it can track or how useful it is. But that's also the kind of thing that one might not realize is so useful until they've spent time in the game. Tracking all your holdings, armies, and characters you decide are of interest (e.g. people you're waiting to outlive so you can declare war against their splintered or unallied children) is kind of overkill when your entire domain and armies fit into a small part of the screen like in the tutorial.
My empire (Norse Britannia, reformed Asatru) is a huge mess right now. I own most of the British Isle, but also massive amounts of coasts all over the world, most of the Netherlands, and large chunks of Africa somehow.
I'm created an installed a huge bunch of kingdoms and bequeathed them to members of my dynasty, and am now also able to create the Empire of Italia due to my efforts to eradicate the papacy.
I'm now considering creating Italia, and either bequeathing Britannia to another member of my dynasty or just destroying it. Question is, who gets what vassals if I do that?
I know I can bequeath any titles I personally hold to whoever I want, but the only kingdom I currently personally own is Bologna. So if I create Italia and pass Britannia to someone else, how does my empire divvy up?
IIRC, granting independence to a title grants the only the lands their de jure vassals own. Any vassals that are "missing" their de jure liege is under your primary title, and will stick with it until/unless the correct title is created.
So if you give away Britannia, they will get everything that everyone who has their capital in Britannia currently controls. Hopefully, that's just in Britannia, but if there is a vassal duke or king that also controls some coastal counties in Italia, those would transfer too and you would have to conquer them back. If they're inland counties with no connection to the sea, then under the default game rules you can just murder the guy you gave it to and they should become independent enclaves that are much easier to bring into the fold.
Another important thing to keep in mind; Under normal partition, lands you give away to heirs only count if they are still part of your realm. So if giving away Britannia is suppose to be a way to make sure one of the spares don't muck up your primary heir's inheritance, be warned that do so would only muck it up even more.
Oh I realize giving away Brittania will break up my empire, but I actually want to do that to boost my dynasty reputation (2 emperors in a single dynasty is a huge score boost), and I'm not even paying attention to what's going on in Britain anymore, as all my focus has been on Italy, so I figure why not just let the AI have fun with that while our Dynasty gets stronger and I don't have to deal with constant spam about what's going on up there.
I figured that was the point.
I'm just saying that if you give a son Britannia *now,* instead of waiting for it to pass on succession, they will still get a bit of whatever else you still control on succession. Unlike normal when what lands you give them alive count towards their inheritance.
So if you're giving it to a dynast for renown, it should be someone who is not currently due to inherit anything, at least from you or anyone in Italia. Good pick would be the husband of a daughter you had matrilenially married, since their heirs would be your dynasty and she has zero chance to inherit anything as long as she has brothers. Just kill him off one a couple of their sons have grown up, and you're good.
Speaking of inheritance, something is going on with it not splitting up duchies with my vassals. My superdukes with 2 or 3 duchies are passing all of those along to their kids while the rest only get counties.
At what point can you tell all the Counts and Dukes to stop fighting each other? Its like a constant civil war in england between these small vassals.
You want High Crown Authority, which may not be available from the beginning depending on culture. Certainly not in 867. You need the "Royal Perogative" innovation which becomes available in the early middle age.
0
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Starting to wrap my head around the nasty interface better, plus get an idea of what dangers to look for in the game.
First game was an Easy Northmen attempt. Mostly just poking around to see what did what. Ended up taking over a couple neighbors, then kinda got swamped by unhappy locals in the conquered area. Kinda sucks when everyone around your starting area is a religion that hates you. Game basically ended when a neighbor twice my size somehow got to have an army five times bigger than me and then rolled right over me. Nothing I could do there.
Restarted with the same setting. This time I realized the game gave me 5000 extra soldiers to start with, so my first conquests were MUCH faster. Then I looked at that deadly neighbor from before and saw the problem: the ruler there hated me. Shifting him was going to be too hard, so I looked at his family. His unrelated heir hated me too, but was vulnerable to assassination. His only son merely disliked me, but was too young to rule. I managed to assassinate the heir designate, so now the son is the heir. Hopefully, I can get his father killed and sway him, leaving me with a large ally on my border instead of an inevitable conqueror.
And if I'm lucky, I can marry somebody into the line and make big headway on getting the northern third of England taken care of.
Really not a fan of how much religion works against you if you aren't Christian or Catholic, though. Converting counties takes forever, and dealing with all that unease is such a pain. Can't I do the quelling BEFORE the uprising? I know that crap is gonna happen, just let me oppress them right now instead of waiting.
At what point can you tell all the Counts and Dukes to stop fighting each other? Its like a constant civil war in england between these small vassals.
You want High Crown Authority, which may not be available from the beginning depending on culture. Certainly not in 867. You need the "Royal Perogative" innovation which becomes available in the early middle age.
And of course by that point there's a good chance your realm is already a mess in terms of dukes holding lots of non-dejure counties. I've got a few vassal kings unhappy with me because they want control over a de jure duchy by the holder is also a duke in my primary kingdom so I'm waiting for him to die and hopefully the game not to screw up splitting up duke titles. I'm missing the ability to revoke non-dejure holdings from someone without tyranny. In my particular case I could excommunicate people and revoke titles that way but that's not an option for all rulers.
Starting to wrap my head around the nasty interface better, plus get an idea of what dangers to look for in the game.
First game was an Easy Northmen attempt. Mostly just poking around to see what did what. Ended up taking over a couple neighbors, then kinda got swamped by unhappy locals in the conquered area. Kinda sucks when everyone around your starting area is a religion that hates you. Game basically ended when a neighbor twice my size somehow got to have an army five times bigger than me and then rolled right over me. Nothing I could do there.
Restarted with the same setting. This time I realized the game gave me 5000 extra soldiers to start with, so my first conquests were MUCH faster. Then I looked at that deadly neighbor from before and saw the problem: the ruler there hated me. Shifting him was going to be too hard, so I looked at his family. His unrelated heir hated me too, but was vulnerable to assassination. His only son merely disliked me, but was too young to rule. I managed to assassinate the heir designate, so now the son is the heir. Hopefully, I can get his father killed and sway him, leaving me with a large ally on my border instead of an inevitable conqueror.
And if I'm lucky, I can marry somebody into the line and make big headway on getting the northern third of England taken care of.
Really not a fan of how much religion works against you if you aren't Christian or Catholic, though. Converting counties takes forever, and dealing with all that unease is such a pain. Can't I do the quelling BEFORE the uprising? I know that crap is gonna happen, just let me oppress them right now instead of waiting.
Remember that historically Halfdan and Ivar did not succeed in their campaigns. Their starts have a number of challenges and additional things a player has to juggle.
People should avoid playing pagan rulers until they have a better understanding of the game. Frankly people should avoid the 867 start and stick with 1066 until they're familiar with the game. The tutorial is a 1066 game for a reason as even if you don't play as a pagan or tribal ruler in 867 you still need to contend with them as neighbors playing with a different ruleset. Pagan rulers and tribal rulers have a lot of perks but also a lot of disadvantages including different formulae for getting troops from their vassals that depends on how much they like their liege. Because they usually start with neighbors that hate them for their faith around, they can take advantage of not needing a cassus belli beyond being a different faith but that goes both ways. It's a different play style that rewards aggression but punishes overextension and has a very swingy effect. Converting counties only takes a long time until you reform your faith and doing so gives you a ton of freedom to tweak things to your liking without needing to worry about other denominations labeling you a heretic to war with. Pagan games are ones of frequently making gains and losing some of them and involve things like declaring war against and killing your siblings being a regular and optimal thing on succession. They're not hard the way starting as a count surrounded by kings is but you need to know more than as a Catholic of Muslim ruler to thrive. Don't play as a pagan until you know the systems well enough to defend against a crusade because that's a thing that can happen a lot in a game called Crusader Kings.
Reforming a pagan religion is also incomprehensibly difficult.
It is achievable but not plannable, and it depends where your holy sites are. First you need enough military strength to be conquering.
You need a ruler with some way of positive piety income. I was able to pull mine of one someone that ruled for roughly 18 years before reformation, from 25 to 43, that holy warred a lot and had a +piety trait and no sins. I reformed into a 2800 piety reform after the 50% discount in the learning tree.
There is a real gamble mechanic on Ironman, I was making roughly 200 piety a year, and that is about what you need to for instance change 1 extra minor stance.
Reforming a pagan religion is also incomprehensibly difficult.
I feel that this is mitigated by the fact that Pagans can go to war with whoever they feel like, whenever they feel like. As long as you're making sure your armies are in good shape, you should always be warring(c)
I mean, it's part of their religion! Your people get upset if you're NOT at war.
As an 867 pagan, your first order of business is to eat up any and all counties nearby that are weaker than you, and form a duchy ASAP. Then, any time you capture someone not from your court or your religion, check if they're worth anything in ransom. For anyone you snag that's worth 10g or less, EXECUTE THEM! You get Dread, Piety and the only people who get mad at you are your victim's families, who you likely don't care about anyways.
Once you build up dread, you'll be way less likely to have to deal with vassal revolts. Once you're a duchy or higher with high dread, neighbouring counts of your religion might just willingly ask for vassalization in exchange for your protection.
Once you have a Duchy secured, your next order of business is to try and decide what kingdom you want. As the Norse, you have a whole lot of options, or you can even shoot for creating the Danelaw in England by occupying a specific list of eastern counties (East Anglia, Wessex, and a few others that I forget). But if that looks too tough, you can just shoot to create Scotland or Wales or the Isles, or even opt to stay home and create any of the nordic countries. Remember that, if you're a Duke, you want to try to avoid creating additional duchies until you're a king, because all equal-level titles get shared among your heirs once you die, so your empire will split up.
That said, that might happen anyways if your Duchy gets big enough to encompass multiple De Jure duchies, because if a single Vassal gets enough counties of their own to form their own Duchy, they'll become independent of you, so it's always important to check the De Jure map and, as a much as possible, try to avoid having any of your cronies own too much land of their own.
Basically, once you snag a new County over your limit, always try to make sure you give it to a new person in your court, if possible, not to an existing vassal. If any one of your vassals starts getting too much stronger than the others, they will start taking over your court, and become a threat to your power.
As far as reforming a religion is concerned, that is a mega-goal that you kindof have to decide you're gonna do immediately once you start on a new character. Typically, this is the option I consider if I get a character with high learning. If you decide you want to reform, then the first thing you need to do is get started on the Learning perk path and snag the perk that cuts reform Piety cost in half. After that, do everything you can to boost your Piety score. A good priest on your council, Pilgrimages when you can, a spouse with high learning that you can set to help you out are all good ideas. Oh, and don't forget executions. Lots and lots of executions. If you're not in a position to invade other countries, raid. Raiding can also get you juicy prisoners to execute. When you raid, consider putting your ruler as the commander of your army, as there is a chance you'll trigger an event that gets you bonus goodies, and look for raid targets that are not of your religion, so that you don't take any penalities when you execute them.
Sorry if that went on a little long there, but I hope it helps!
Speaking of inheritance, something is going on with it not splitting up duchies with my vassals. My superdukes with 2 or 3 duchies are passing all of those along to their kids while the rest only get counties.
IIRC there is a couple of bugs at play: one which a non-county title gets it's own gender preference title succession law if it is inherited by someone whose primary title is the same tier, and another where gender preference title succession laws aren't considered for partition.
So at one point a duke inherited another duchy title (possibly because dad was a duke and mom was a duchess, and the other parent has just died) and because of bug #1, bug #2 came into play and now their primary heir gets both titles.
Is the AI super dumb with peasant revolts? I've at at least 2 dukes get killed in a siege from rebels, and also my infant granddaughter after the capital of my sons duchy rebelled and took down the fort while he was away in a war.
Speaking of inheritance, something is going on with it not splitting up duchies with my vassals. My superdukes with 2 or 3 duchies are passing all of those along to their kids while the rest only get counties.
IIRC there is a couple of bugs at play: one which a non-county title gets it's own gender preference title succession law if it is inherited by someone whose primary title is the same tier, and another where gender preference title succession laws aren't considered for partition.
So at one point a duke inherited another duchy title (possibly because dad was a duke and mom was a duchess, and the other parent has just died) and because of bug #1, bug #2 came into play and now their primary heir gets both titles.
I think I might have one of these coming into play in my game, but at least it's in my benefit! Currently king of Scotland and Ireland with two male sons, and both titles are currently said to be going to my first born only. There is an option to revert the Scottish title from it's own law to dynastic(?) law, so I assume that's why it's not being counted in under the same partition? Whether that's by design IDK...
Man, this game is confusing enough without bugs coming into play and mucking with things too! Still loving it though!
Is the AI super dumb with peasant revolts? I've at at least 2 dukes get killed in a siege from rebels, and also my infant granddaughter after the capital of my sons duchy rebelled and took down the fort while he was away in a war.
During a siege theres a possibility of people being killed. I had an heir killed in a siege that lasted less than a month. The enemy didn't get in, my armies broke it, but the heir got killed before we got there.
The Catholics are all gone. I got rid of them because I needed people to be cool with incest so I could create the Kwisatz Haderach. But, somehow the Pope is still a thing, and that motherfucker is still declaring Crusades.
Except, as mentioned, there are no Catholics. If there were some Catholics, it would be whatever. I would fight them and then it would be over.
But when there are no Catholics, except the Pope, then all I can do is let the war score slowly tick up over ELEVEN YEARS. Eleven years of not being able to fight people of my faith. Eleven years of vulnerable realms getting snapped up by infidels because technically they're my ally in a war.
A war with one dude. Him declaring a Crusade should be like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, but somehow it still becomes my problem.
EDIT:
Further information:
-He launches a Crusade every five years after the conclusion of the last one.
-He cannot be abducted because he is not within diplomatic range because he does not seem to actually reside anywhere.
shiiiiiiiiit. and somehow the daughter i matrinally married to some scott with a holding is now the queen of scotland! But its elective. shame i cant take advantage of the situation. Guess i'll just have to press the claim on east francia that my son somehow got? theyre huge though. Maybe after i create the kingdom of frizia since somehow one of my direct vassals in my duchy around london ate up the other guys and a couple dutch jarls and now actually holds the duchy of holland. was quite surprised to see that above my capital. And one of my nephews holds the duchy next door to holland in northern france! Hes a vassal under the french king, but hes still of my house.
This game is nuts with what happens while your distracted. Shame pushing my wifes claims for the kingdom of Burgundy and Italy wasnt feasible.
Reforming a pagan religion is also incomprehensibly difficult.
It depends on the religion. It's not terribly tough as Asatru since having human sacrifice as a tenet means vikings can execute prisoners for piety instead of losing it. This includes same faith prisoners. They aren't worth as much as infidels but every bit helps.
Four of their holy sites are in coastal counties too so you only need to conquer one county to snag them. The one in Uppland gives a big boost to piety earned too so when you start playing as the ruler you plan to reform with they can get a nice boost.
Beyond that, fighting bigger battles against different faith realms gives a big boost to piety so having your reformer-to-be war with enemies that can field over 2k dudes helps.
Reforming a faith with only landlocked holy sites that are spread out would be much more of a pain though.
The Catholics are all gone. I got rid of them because I needed people to be cool with incest so I could create the Kwisatz Haderach. But, somehow the Pope is still a thing, and that motherfucker is still declaring Crusades.
Except, as mentioned, there are no Catholics. If there were some Catholics, it would be whatever. I would fight them and then it would be over.
But when there are no Catholics, except the Pope, then all I can do is let the war score slowly tick up over ELEVEN YEARS. Eleven years of not being able to fight people of my faith. Eleven years of vulnerable realms getting snapped up by infidels because technically they're my ally in a war.
A war with one dude. Him declaring a Crusade should be like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, but somehow it still becomes my problem.
EDIT:
Further information:
-He launches a Crusade every five years after the conclusion of the last one.
-He cannot be abducted because he is not within diplomatic range because he does not seem to actually reside anywhere.
That's interesting. In my game he ceased to exist as pope once some of my vassals took over all the papal counties. There weren't any Catholic churches in Italia anymore by then because of the Byzantines and heresy. Others have reported similar and wondered why bother dismantling the papacy via decision if it's already gone before then. He should at least be clickable as the head of faith if you look at the Catholic faith from the religion window so you can figure out what you have to conquer to unland him again.
The Catholics are all gone. I got rid of them because I needed people to be cool with incest so I could create the Kwisatz Haderach. But, somehow the Pope is still a thing, and that motherfucker is still declaring Crusades.
Except, as mentioned, there are no Catholics. If there were some Catholics, it would be whatever. I would fight them and then it would be over.
But when there are no Catholics, except the Pope, then all I can do is let the war score slowly tick up over ELEVEN YEARS. Eleven years of not being able to fight people of my faith. Eleven years of vulnerable realms getting snapped up by infidels because technically they're my ally in a war.
A war with one dude. Him declaring a Crusade should be like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, but somehow it still becomes my problem.
EDIT:
Further information:
-He launches a Crusade every five years after the conclusion of the last one.
-He cannot be abducted because he is not within diplomatic range because he does not seem to actually reside anywhere.
Right-click on the pope's portrait. There should be an icon at the top of the pop-up menu that will zoom you in to where he is. It should also say where he is at the top of his description like "residing in king so-and-so's court in X".
That said, sounds like you need to dissolve the Papacy. That's what my guys are working on too.
He doesn't have any land and I don't have a decision to dissolve the Papacy, even though I reformed the Great Schism.
Must be a bug.
He doesn't need to have land to "exist", the pope can be unlanded like, if someone takes over Rome. He could be living at another ruler's pad. Does his portrait show up when you click the war banner? Try to see if you can access his details from there.
Just create a pet catholic duke. He'll give the church to the pope (probably, eventually) and then you might be able to go stomp on him to end the crusade?
He doesn't have any land and I don't have a decision to dissolve the Papacy, even though I reformed the Great Schism.
Must be a bug.
He doesn't need to have land to "exist", the pope can be unlanded like, if someone takes over Rome. He could be living at another ruler's pad. Does his portrait show up when you click the war banner? Try to see if you can access his details from there.
His details show up but he literally isn't anywhere. Like, the space for his location is just blank. If I click his title, it goes to Rome, but that's my capital and even if I raise troops I can't attack him there.
My genius viking Empress is now in her 40s after taking the throne in her 20s. She's en route to being able to consecrate the bloodline in a few years. She has a good amount of kids with Genius or Intelligent and her non-primary heir kids are married/betrothed to characters with Robust or Herculean. This does mean I'll need to carve out more territory to give to them though I'll wait a bit to make sure they don't screw up not defending their families during sieges. A breeding program means needing lots of kids so managing succession gets trickier. Have to give them land and kingdoms but not too quickly or else they marry their kids together instead of letting me work new traits into the dynasty. Well, new good traits anyway.
In addition to the breeding program, I'm now collecting regional techs. Since some vassals took counties between Arabia and India anyway, I'm now chipping away at southern India. Meanwhile my steward is making western German counties culturally Swedish to unlock those techs.
I'm continuing to chip away at the Byzantine presence outside of the Greece/Turkey area and have been saving my two opportunities per ruler to take an entire kingdom away for them. Might also try a great holy war too. I've removed Burgundy from their grip this reign and my next goals are Aquatine and Sardinia.
I've just gotten high crown authority so I'm not looking at trimming dukes of non-de jure vassals. This is going to take a while. I'm also making a note to add Scandinavian elective to any duchy titles I create and give away to make help ensure they get spread out among a duke's kids on succession as a partial workaround of partition bugs not splitting up duchies properly.
In order to make my brother have kids to pass on his genius and his wife's robust trait I gave him a duchy in Burgundy where he promptly pissed off the locals and lost against a rebellion that deposed him and gave the titles back to me. I immediately gave him the titles again. I swear he's the one AI ruler not relentlessly banging out kids, often illegally.
By the end of this reign, Spain is going to be a mess of patchwork kingdoms from all the small kingdom titles I'll create and hand out to my non-primary kids. They'll go along nicely with the existing patchwork of kingdoms spread out among my ruler's siblings.
I'm also allied with both a kingdom within the Abbasid empire and a super duke in East Francia because they were the only two rulers proposing non-marriage/family alliances and more than 2k troops and I'm strong, diplomatic, and prestigious enough to not care so much about being an infidel.
I'm currently somewhere around 1100 and have just started the transition to the High Medieval era. I think I need to have some Learning focused heirs to bridge the tech gap more quickly especially if I'm going to also be working in the regional techs.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Alright, definitely starting to see the fun of the game. Started a new game in Munster and after trying a game in the earlier era, yeah, this was so much easier. I'm quickly moving through Ireland gobbling everything up because I'm not having to deal with massive cultural and religious discontent, the one big obstacle being Dublin. For whatever reason, it could field an army twice my size despite being a quarter my holdings. My spymaster is crap, but he manages to dig up a pile of secrets on the Dublin court over a couple years, one of them being a strong hook on the poor ruler's OWN SPYMASTER.
Using the hook, I coerced the spymaster into helping me assassinate the guy (chances of success went from less than 20% to 95%). This split the Dublin holdings into multiple separate solo lands with their own armies, effectively tearing the army to pieces without having to use a single soldier. Now that big obstacle is a pile of easily-conquered individual lands, all from doing sneaky sneaky things.
The alternate route would've been to build up my levy numbers, but that would've taken years and years of construction. This way I can take all those holdings in a fraction of the time and effort, without having to worry if Dublin is going to jump me at some crucial point and hammer me with a big army.
Alright, definitely starting to see the fun of the game. Started a new game in Munster and after trying a game in the earlier era, yeah, this was so much easier. I'm quickly moving through Ireland gobbling everything up because I'm not having to deal with massive cultural and religious discontent, the one big obstacle being Dublin. For whatever reason, it could field an army twice my size despite being a quarter my holdings. My spymaster is crap, but he manages to dig up a pile of secrets on the Dublin court over a couple years, one of them being a strong hook on the poor ruler's OWN SPYMASTER.
Using the hook, I coerced the spymaster into helping me assassinate the guy (chances of success went from less than 20% to 95%). This split the Dublin holdings into multiple separate solo lands with their own armies, effectively tearing the army to pieces without having to use a single soldier. Now that big obstacle is a pile of easily-conquered individual lands, all from doing sneaky sneaky things.
The alternate route would've been to build up my levy numbers, but that would've taken years and years of construction. This way I can take all those holdings in a fraction of the time and effort, without having to worry if Dublin is going to jump me at some crucial point and hammer me with a big army.
Martial score makes a big impact on levy amounts. A ruler with a good martial stat with a marshal with a good martial stat can draw up a massive number of troops from not much land. Case in point, Alfred of Wessex could muster enough troops to threaten my Halfdan after I took over Mercia and some other counties even with his event troops. Dude has a martial score of 24 which is almost unheard of and many rulers struggle to hit that number with both their ruler and their marshal combined.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, I figured it was just something like Dublin was built up a lot more than me or something. I had a bunch more land but it was all pretty fresh conquests so I knew it was pushing my levy numbers down, but I've been taking some skills to accelerate making the locals accept me and that's helped a fair bit.
I could definitely see how I could overcome Dublin militarily, it was just going to take a long, boring time of buildup and waiting so it was pretty great that the assassination broke everything up.
I also definitely noticed that the military totals were less for the individual lands than for the aggregate so even if Dublin had kept all its lands, it looks like the ruler was a big part of their army size and losing that would've taken out a fat chunk of military anyway.
I somehow even managed to beef the Munster start. I'm getting worse at this game.
Things can change pretty significantly from game to game, having a harder time doesn't necessarily mean you're paying worse, you might just be getting unlucky
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
Arg. 400 years into a game, save file is corrupted.
Aaaaarrrgggggg.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
+1
Options
HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It’s interesting reading more about reformations here. I wonder what my chances are to reform Tengri in Transylvania considering I assume the holy sites are on the opposite side of the world.
My five year old granddaughter thought it was a good idea to try and take a county from me while I was fighting a war out east in Estonia. I was able to field an army three times as big, beat her in a battle, and retake the war target.
Since I was the dynasty head, I could call in her into my war in Estonia, so I thought I'd be clever and split her attention. Sure enough, her army showed up as an ally and she headed east, so I went to siege her capitol and end the war.
Next thing I know, I get a notification that one of my sons has been kidnapped. Turns out she went straight to my capitol and took it as an "ally."
I'm going to need her dad to have a talk with her about proper banner use.
Posts
I'm not sure if the error message is wrong or the behavior is wrong or both, but the behavior I've seen is that you can't revoke a duchy without first revoking every county under it, but you can usurp it by decision. I was able to revoke a duchy and the single remaining county under it at the same time with a single revocation reason, but I couldn't revoke either individually, with the same message you got. It makes some amount of sense if you sort of squint and tilt your head just right, since if you want just the duchy and you already hold enough counties you can just usurp it by decision, if you don't have enough counties you can revoke them until you do. The tooltip should probably say something like "You can't revoke a duchy with counties under it; duchys can be usurped by decision".
The entire game is just interface though. There's several dozen systems you're tracking.
It doesn't cover everything of course, but I got enough info to be able to figure out how to continue. There's also a constantly updating "current issues" indicator that tells you about wars you can start, people you can ransom, kids who need to be married or educated, if you're over your personal holdings limit, if you can usurp a title, allies you can call to war, important people you might want to increase opinion of, etc etc etc. Just following those can help a lot as well.
All the screens mentioned come up at some point during the tutorial as does the golden rule that if something is underlined you can hover over it for more info. The latter is one of the first things covered.
They may have glossed over the outliner or at least not told how many things it can track or how useful it is. But that's also the kind of thing that one might not realize is so useful until they've spent time in the game. Tracking all your holdings, armies, and characters you decide are of interest (e.g. people you're waiting to outlive so you can declare war against their splintered or unallied children) is kind of overkill when your entire domain and armies fit into a small part of the screen like in the tutorial.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I figured that was the point.
I'm just saying that if you give a son Britannia *now,* instead of waiting for it to pass on succession, they will still get a bit of whatever else you still control on succession. Unlike normal when what lands you give them alive count towards their inheritance.
So if you're giving it to a dynast for renown, it should be someone who is not currently due to inherit anything, at least from you or anyone in Italia. Good pick would be the husband of a daughter you had matrilenially married, since their heirs would be your dynasty and she has zero chance to inherit anything as long as she has brothers. Just kill him off one a couple of their sons have grown up, and you're good.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
You want High Crown Authority, which may not be available from the beginning depending on culture. Certainly not in 867. You need the "Royal Perogative" innovation which becomes available in the early middle age.
First game was an Easy Northmen attempt. Mostly just poking around to see what did what. Ended up taking over a couple neighbors, then kinda got swamped by unhappy locals in the conquered area. Kinda sucks when everyone around your starting area is a religion that hates you. Game basically ended when a neighbor twice my size somehow got to have an army five times bigger than me and then rolled right over me. Nothing I could do there.
Restarted with the same setting. This time I realized the game gave me 5000 extra soldiers to start with, so my first conquests were MUCH faster. Then I looked at that deadly neighbor from before and saw the problem: the ruler there hated me. Shifting him was going to be too hard, so I looked at his family. His unrelated heir hated me too, but was vulnerable to assassination. His only son merely disliked me, but was too young to rule. I managed to assassinate the heir designate, so now the son is the heir. Hopefully, I can get his father killed and sway him, leaving me with a large ally on my border instead of an inevitable conqueror.
And if I'm lucky, I can marry somebody into the line and make big headway on getting the northern third of England taken care of.
Really not a fan of how much religion works against you if you aren't Christian or Catholic, though. Converting counties takes forever, and dealing with all that unease is such a pain. Can't I do the quelling BEFORE the uprising? I know that crap is gonna happen, just let me oppress them right now instead of waiting.
And of course by that point there's a good chance your realm is already a mess in terms of dukes holding lots of non-dejure counties. I've got a few vassal kings unhappy with me because they want control over a de jure duchy by the holder is also a duke in my primary kingdom so I'm waiting for him to die and hopefully the game not to screw up splitting up duke titles. I'm missing the ability to revoke non-dejure holdings from someone without tyranny. In my particular case I could excommunicate people and revoke titles that way but that's not an option for all rulers.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Remember that historically Halfdan and Ivar did not succeed in their campaigns. Their starts have a number of challenges and additional things a player has to juggle.
People should avoid playing pagan rulers until they have a better understanding of the game. Frankly people should avoid the 867 start and stick with 1066 until they're familiar with the game. The tutorial is a 1066 game for a reason as even if you don't play as a pagan or tribal ruler in 867 you still need to contend with them as neighbors playing with a different ruleset. Pagan rulers and tribal rulers have a lot of perks but also a lot of disadvantages including different formulae for getting troops from their vassals that depends on how much they like their liege. Because they usually start with neighbors that hate them for their faith around, they can take advantage of not needing a cassus belli beyond being a different faith but that goes both ways. It's a different play style that rewards aggression but punishes overextension and has a very swingy effect. Converting counties only takes a long time until you reform your faith and doing so gives you a ton of freedom to tweak things to your liking without needing to worry about other denominations labeling you a heretic to war with. Pagan games are ones of frequently making gains and losing some of them and involve things like declaring war against and killing your siblings being a regular and optimal thing on succession. They're not hard the way starting as a count surrounded by kings is but you need to know more than as a Catholic of Muslim ruler to thrive. Don't play as a pagan until you know the systems well enough to defend against a crusade because that's a thing that can happen a lot in a game called Crusader Kings.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
It is achievable but not plannable, and it depends where your holy sites are. First you need enough military strength to be conquering.
You need a ruler with some way of positive piety income. I was able to pull mine of one someone that ruled for roughly 18 years before reformation, from 25 to 43, that holy warred a lot and had a +piety trait and no sins. I reformed into a 2800 piety reform after the 50% discount in the learning tree.
There is a real gamble mechanic on Ironman, I was making roughly 200 piety a year, and that is about what you need to for instance change 1 extra minor stance.
I feel that this is mitigated by the fact that Pagans can go to war with whoever they feel like, whenever they feel like. As long as you're making sure your armies are in good shape, you should always be warring(c)
I mean, it's part of their religion! Your people get upset if you're NOT at war.
As an 867 pagan, your first order of business is to eat up any and all counties nearby that are weaker than you, and form a duchy ASAP. Then, any time you capture someone not from your court or your religion, check if they're worth anything in ransom. For anyone you snag that's worth 10g or less, EXECUTE THEM! You get Dread, Piety and the only people who get mad at you are your victim's families, who you likely don't care about anyways.
Once you build up dread, you'll be way less likely to have to deal with vassal revolts. Once you're a duchy or higher with high dread, neighbouring counts of your religion might just willingly ask for vassalization in exchange for your protection.
Once you have a Duchy secured, your next order of business is to try and decide what kingdom you want. As the Norse, you have a whole lot of options, or you can even shoot for creating the Danelaw in England by occupying a specific list of eastern counties (East Anglia, Wessex, and a few others that I forget). But if that looks too tough, you can just shoot to create Scotland or Wales or the Isles, or even opt to stay home and create any of the nordic countries. Remember that, if you're a Duke, you want to try to avoid creating additional duchies until you're a king, because all equal-level titles get shared among your heirs once you die, so your empire will split up.
That said, that might happen anyways if your Duchy gets big enough to encompass multiple De Jure duchies, because if a single Vassal gets enough counties of their own to form their own Duchy, they'll become independent of you, so it's always important to check the De Jure map and, as a much as possible, try to avoid having any of your cronies own too much land of their own.
Basically, once you snag a new County over your limit, always try to make sure you give it to a new person in your court, if possible, not to an existing vassal. If any one of your vassals starts getting too much stronger than the others, they will start taking over your court, and become a threat to your power.
As far as reforming a religion is concerned, that is a mega-goal that you kindof have to decide you're gonna do immediately once you start on a new character. Typically, this is the option I consider if I get a character with high learning. If you decide you want to reform, then the first thing you need to do is get started on the Learning perk path and snag the perk that cuts reform Piety cost in half. After that, do everything you can to boost your Piety score. A good priest on your council, Pilgrimages when you can, a spouse with high learning that you can set to help you out are all good ideas. Oh, and don't forget executions. Lots and lots of executions. If you're not in a position to invade other countries, raid. Raiding can also get you juicy prisoners to execute. When you raid, consider putting your ruler as the commander of your army, as there is a chance you'll trigger an event that gets you bonus goodies, and look for raid targets that are not of your religion, so that you don't take any penalities when you execute them.
Sorry if that went on a little long there, but I hope it helps!
IIRC there is a couple of bugs at play: one which a non-county title gets it's own gender preference title succession law if it is inherited by someone whose primary title is the same tier, and another where gender preference title succession laws aren't considered for partition.
So at one point a duke inherited another duchy title (possibly because dad was a duke and mom was a duchess, and the other parent has just died) and because of bug #1, bug #2 came into play and now their primary heir gets both titles.
I think I might have one of these coming into play in my game, but at least it's in my benefit! Currently king of Scotland and Ireland with two male sons, and both titles are currently said to be going to my first born only. There is an option to revert the Scottish title from it's own law to dynastic(?) law, so I assume that's why it's not being counted in under the same partition? Whether that's by design IDK...
Man, this game is confusing enough without bugs coming into play and mucking with things too! Still loving it though!
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
During a siege theres a possibility of people being killed. I had an heir killed in a siege that lasted less than a month. The enemy didn't get in, my armies broke it, but the heir got killed before we got there.
The Catholics are all gone. I got rid of them because I needed people to be cool with incest so I could create the Kwisatz Haderach. But, somehow the Pope is still a thing, and that motherfucker is still declaring Crusades.
Except, as mentioned, there are no Catholics. If there were some Catholics, it would be whatever. I would fight them and then it would be over.
But when there are no Catholics, except the Pope, then all I can do is let the war score slowly tick up over ELEVEN YEARS. Eleven years of not being able to fight people of my faith. Eleven years of vulnerable realms getting snapped up by infidels because technically they're my ally in a war.
A war with one dude. Him declaring a Crusade should be like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, but somehow it still becomes my problem.
EDIT:
Further information:
-He launches a Crusade every five years after the conclusion of the last one.
-He cannot be abducted because he is not within diplomatic range because he does not seem to actually reside anywhere.
This game is nuts with what happens while your distracted. Shame pushing my wifes claims for the kingdom of Burgundy and Italy wasnt feasible.
It depends on the religion. It's not terribly tough as Asatru since having human sacrifice as a tenet means vikings can execute prisoners for piety instead of losing it. This includes same faith prisoners. They aren't worth as much as infidels but every bit helps.
Four of their holy sites are in coastal counties too so you only need to conquer one county to snag them. The one in Uppland gives a big boost to piety earned too so when you start playing as the ruler you plan to reform with they can get a nice boost.
Beyond that, fighting bigger battles against different faith realms gives a big boost to piety so having your reformer-to-be war with enemies that can field over 2k dudes helps.
Reforming a faith with only landlocked holy sites that are spread out would be much more of a pain though.
That's interesting. In my game he ceased to exist as pope once some of my vassals took over all the papal counties. There weren't any Catholic churches in Italia anymore by then because of the Byzantines and heresy. Others have reported similar and wondered why bother dismantling the papacy via decision if it's already gone before then. He should at least be clickable as the head of faith if you look at the Catholic faith from the religion window so you can figure out what you have to conquer to unland him again.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Right-click on the pope's portrait. There should be an icon at the top of the pop-up menu that will zoom you in to where he is. It should also say where he is at the top of his description like "residing in king so-and-so's court in X".
That said, sounds like you need to dissolve the Papacy. That's what my guys are working on too.
Must be a bug.
He doesn't need to have land to "exist", the pope can be unlanded like, if someone takes over Rome. He could be living at another ruler's pad. Does his portrait show up when you click the war banner? Try to see if you can access his details from there.
His details show up but he literally isn't anywhere. Like, the space for his location is just blank. If I click his title, it goes to Rome, but that's my capital and even if I raise troops I can't attack him there.
In addition to the breeding program, I'm now collecting regional techs. Since some vassals took counties between Arabia and India anyway, I'm now chipping away at southern India. Meanwhile my steward is making western German counties culturally Swedish to unlock those techs.
I'm continuing to chip away at the Byzantine presence outside of the Greece/Turkey area and have been saving my two opportunities per ruler to take an entire kingdom away for them. Might also try a great holy war too. I've removed Burgundy from their grip this reign and my next goals are Aquatine and Sardinia.
I've just gotten high crown authority so I'm not looking at trimming dukes of non-de jure vassals. This is going to take a while. I'm also making a note to add Scandinavian elective to any duchy titles I create and give away to make help ensure they get spread out among a duke's kids on succession as a partial workaround of partition bugs not splitting up duchies properly.
In order to make my brother have kids to pass on his genius and his wife's robust trait I gave him a duchy in Burgundy where he promptly pissed off the locals and lost against a rebellion that deposed him and gave the titles back to me. I immediately gave him the titles again. I swear he's the one AI ruler not relentlessly banging out kids, often illegally.
By the end of this reign, Spain is going to be a mess of patchwork kingdoms from all the small kingdom titles I'll create and hand out to my non-primary kids. They'll go along nicely with the existing patchwork of kingdoms spread out among my ruler's siblings.
I'm also allied with both a kingdom within the Abbasid empire and a super duke in East Francia because they were the only two rulers proposing non-marriage/family alliances and more than 2k troops and I'm strong, diplomatic, and prestigious enough to not care so much about being an infidel.
I'm currently somewhere around 1100 and have just started the transition to the High Medieval era. I think I need to have some Learning focused heirs to bridge the tech gap more quickly especially if I'm going to also be working in the regional techs.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Using the hook, I coerced the spymaster into helping me assassinate the guy (chances of success went from less than 20% to 95%). This split the Dublin holdings into multiple separate solo lands with their own armies, effectively tearing the army to pieces without having to use a single soldier. Now that big obstacle is a pile of easily-conquered individual lands, all from doing sneaky sneaky things.
The alternate route would've been to build up my levy numbers, but that would've taken years and years of construction. This way I can take all those holdings in a fraction of the time and effort, without having to worry if Dublin is going to jump me at some crucial point and hammer me with a big army.
Martial score makes a big impact on levy amounts. A ruler with a good martial stat with a marshal with a good martial stat can draw up a massive number of troops from not much land. Case in point, Alfred of Wessex could muster enough troops to threaten my Halfdan after I took over Mercia and some other counties even with his event troops. Dude has a martial score of 24 which is almost unheard of and many rulers struggle to hit that number with both their ruler and their marshal combined.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I could definitely see how I could overcome Dublin militarily, it was just going to take a long, boring time of buildup and waiting so it was pretty great that the assassination broke everything up.
I also definitely noticed that the military totals were less for the individual lands than for the aggregate so even if Dublin had kept all its lands, it looks like the ruler was a big part of their army size and losing that would've taken out a fat chunk of military anyway.
Things can change pretty significantly from game to game, having a harder time doesn't necessarily mean you're paying worse, you might just be getting unlucky
Aaaaarrrgggggg.
Since I was the dynasty head, I could call in her into my war in Estonia, so I thought I'd be clever and split her attention. Sure enough, her army showed up as an ally and she headed east, so I went to siege her capitol and end the war.
Next thing I know, I get a notification that one of my sons has been kidnapped. Turns out she went straight to my capitol and took it as an "ally."
I'm going to need her dad to have a talk with her about proper banner use.