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[hector13]

Can't say I've noticed that, but I've not played since the most recent update. I played two full games (one from 769, one from 864 or whenever) with the one immediately prior, didn't see that happening with the Aztecs or Mongols. Maybe they're different though...

[Kanil]

I had some Vikings reinforce just about faster than I could kill them. Was pretty... interesting. In the hands of a player, that 6k stack probably could have conquered nearly all of Christendom. As it was, I had to follow it around for over two years to finally chip it away to nothing, and spent a ton on mercs in the process.

[misko27]

Now that sounds like a fun glitch. Time to do some experimenting then.

[Innsmothe]

Let this game prove fucking testament to how fucking pissed off I can get.

Byzantine empire, trying to reform Roman empire. Abbassids adamantly REFUSE to fall apart. They could fucking have 100 decadence and a shia uprising alongside a massive independence revolt and they'd somehow fucking walk through this shit unscathed.

I think I worked out how.

They are ignoring attrition (They have either equal or worse military organisation tech than me) and went from 50k troops to 70k troops the instant they DoWed me without hiring anyone.

This game leaves me speechless, and by no means in a good way.

EDIT: By ignoring attrition, I don't mean completely. They had enough supply for 16K troops in my land. I was on that tile and it was dropping them to 10K. No, winter was not in effect there.

I've actually gone and uninstalled the game because at this point it's just turned into a fucking pisstake and can't be doing me any good since it seems to be enjoying making my blood pressure spike.

It's easier in CKII+ where the Abbasids are drunk and fall all over the place.
But if you are going for achievements (which I think are the leading cause of stress on my part, so I ignore them now.), go for it in the Viking start and try focusing on the Balkans first, for troop numbers.

[Ehndras]

I got screwed bad as the Norse early on, for once. Which, admittedly, has been WAY more fun than my usual "Scandinavian Empire conquers half the world, burns rome to the ground, sacrifices the Pope, takes the queen of France as a concubine, and turns Europe into a cesspool of heresy and regret" games.

The gavelkind "young sons may form kingdoms or take independence without a fight" mechanic is frustrating but AWESOME.

Ragnarr Lodbrok's spawn have spread all over, converted to or from various faiths, converted others, conquered lands on their own, founded, lost, destroyed, conquered, and carved up various kingdoms, the Holy Roman Empire was just crowned in 894 or some such, the Emperor promptly declared war on Pope Alexander the II who had just crowned him Emperor, and the god damn Slavic pagans are taking over Finland as my great-uncle (one of Lodbrok's youngest sons) finally dies and the Kingdom of Karelen gets cut in half by Estonian Slavic conquerors.

Oh, ps, MONGOLIAN EMPIRE.

Yeah, I didn't realize setting it to random might make them show up like... Now.

Cue the Emperor of the mongol hordes reaching Rus, being betrothed to my underage daughter, and saving me from an eventual nightmare for one generation (or until one of countless circumstantial deaths).

...I've NEVER seen the HRE form. NEVER, not in a single game I've ever played.|

I have also NEVER seen the mongols actually survive long enough to unite.

WAT

[Descan]

*FINALLY* formed my Crimean Empire as a Nestorian Russian.

I bit the bullet and turned Feudal because I was seriously falling behind, it was 1200 or so before I abandoned tribalism. Starting from Charlemagne... Yeah. Those 500 prestige troops + the raiding ability is just... So addicting. I kept putting it off.

So when I was finally able to stabilize my realm and formed my custom empire (made of Ruthenia, Wallachia, and a kingdom carved out Kiev, Chernigov, and Pereslavl, and Crimea/Cherson duchies from Khazaria) I decided enough, time to actually start building up instead of relying on prestige. Maybe in another hundred years I'll be strong enough to take on the byzantines, carve out the last few counties from Wallachia and start making inroads on the Nestorian pentarchy... Maybe I'll take Baghdad and Jerusalem and unlock the Nestorian holy order, make up for my lack of tribal troops. IIRC you only need to own them and have them be nestorian... Which is a bit tough, to be fair, but the Abbasids collapsed (kind of. They're no longer the Sunni caliph, they had been relegated to a single duchy, but now are the head of the Seljuk empire. Fortunately that empire is barely any part of Persia, the middle east is fractured into a bunch of different kingdoms, including a Shia Syriapotamia.)

[CABL]

@ Descan

You shall try to unite Russia as a custom Putinid dynasty. Just select High Chiefdom of Ilmen (Glorious Leader was born in Leningrad/St. Petersburg) at Charlemagne bookmark, edit him with Ruler Designer and voila! You can go unite Russia under Putinid's banner.

[pisskop]

idk about cheating, ive never seen cheating ai, just a malicious rng.  in fact ive followed a few
select kingdoms closely ingame before to verify how the ai gets their junk.

they have never cheated in a way the player cannot.


anywho, on higher difficulties, the ai morale bonus alone makes it a chore to be pagan.  then i think they also get a bonus to prestige and piety?  makes pagans dangerous and often underestimated.  since light troops rely on numbers and morale more than heavies.

[Grim Portent]

Interesting little loophole I'm sure some of you have already learned of, but for those that haven't:

Societies don't kick you out if you become a religion that can't join them. I first learned this when I temporarily converted from Germanic to Catholic to stop some Holy Wars and found I was still a member of the Hel cult and still had all my abilities.

Lately I've decided to abuse this a bit, and converted to Catholic again, joined the Hermetic society, and then back to Germanic. I have remained in the Hermetics, and can now make adults in my court join by making them my apprentice, even if they don't meet the normal requirements to join. They stay members even when the honorary title is revoked and given to someone else.

I now plan to make all of the most powerful people in Scandinavia part of the Hermetic society, and keep passing the membership to my heirs so long as I have no non-adult heirs.

[scrdest]

Kind of makes sense, really. It's just that the implementation might be revealing how rushed this expansion was...

[misko27]

Oh yeah greatorder, a bit of advice. I've been in your situation, and all I can say is be proactive. The Abbasids are like Yellowstone: They may blow up tomorrow, or they may do so in a million years. But you can help them along.

One particularly useful thing I did in my Rome game, which I actually pulled off twice, is to Holy War the Abbasids when they are under attack (or succession; ideally both). The AI seems to have a decent sense of when to dogpile a strong foe (although I've seen them be pretty foolish too), so you can help that along by adding to the troop numbers against them. And one particularly useful thing is when you Holy War, if you can Holy War against a duchy which is held by the top-liege rather than by his vassals, you can greatly weaken them relative to their vassals if you win (whereas if you holy war a vassals duchy, you might even make them more stable). This is how I destabilized the Ummayad Empire in Hispania (whereas previously they had rock-solid control of that territory): I holy Warred Valencia, which was land the Ummayad leader held personally, and when I checked back later I found that they had split into lesser kingdoms.

[Descan]

One thing important to watch out for: If a realm is under attack from infidels (I'm not sure if it's ANY attack, or just a holy war, but it definitely at least is holy war) the vassals get a +40 relationship bonus with their liege. Which directly translates into more vassal troops. It could definitely account for where those extra 20k troops came from; I've seen the Byzantines oscillate from 25k to 40k+ over the years in my game, almost always just from the diplomacy of the liege and the relationship they have with their vassals, and they're always at least 10K or 20K more vassal troops when they're the target of a jihad. It gets to the point where diplomacy is more important a trait for a ruler than martial, when it comes to war (and definitely when it comes to internal stability; If you can manage to assassinate the rulers until a shitty-diplo ruler comes into power, that'll be the best time to strike. Even better if it causes a revolt, too.)

[umiman]

If you're really intent on attacking the Abbasids, be aware that not all their territory is valued the same.

All their military power and economic wealth is centralized in very specific areas. If you take out even one of these from their hands, you're basically shooting off one of their limbs.

Here's a picture:



Basically, their heart is Baghdad. But that's kinda too far away unless you're India or Zoroastrian or Mongol or something like that. Though if you're one of those, if you take out Baghdad, you've more or less destroyed the blob permanently.

For everyone else, if you can take out Egypt and something else like Damascus / Antioch or one of those coastal high value provinces, you've also kinda crippled the blob too. Egypt is fairly easy to take. the rest tend to get conquered in a crusade or so.

[Chosrau]

So today I learned that even if a Child of Satan/Demon Child somehow fails to secure rulership for themselves, they don't just sit there doing nothing. This one decided to take some ships and sail west. Good riddance I thought.

I should have seen it coming, but it really caught me offguard.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

Sunset Invasion led by a Child of Satan.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

This looks like a really damn rare event.  You are now obligated to play this through and tell us what happened.