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[Descan]

In my Serbian Latin Empire game, I was able to get a good 35k troops from mercenaries.

Of course, this was -after- they'd had time to expand, and it cost me an arm and a leg. 3+ 300g armies, each with a monthly budget of 40g. Each had 10k themselves.

[kaian-a-coel]

You can also revocate baronies and take their titles for yourself, it cost prestige and all, but then you're able to raise ALL their levies. Worked wonderfully for me (tripled army size), but I dont think AIs do that.

[Anvilfolk]

It's probably also worth waiting until you get the 700 monies it costs to make a NEW barony or whatever they're called. That's another castle making troops for you - and don't forget that you can upgrade your castles to have way more troops. I think that's the main way to get more troops, but if you neglect that you'll be at the initial troop level forever.

[scrdest]

It's probably also worth waiting until you get the 700 monies it costs to make a NEW barony or whatever they're called. That's another castle making troops for you - and don't forget that you can upgrade your castles to have way more troops. I think that's the main way to get more troops, but if you neglect that you'll be at the initial troop level forever.

Yes, upgrades. Norway's armies always suck numerically since I always forget to work on infrastructure >.<

[Sheb]

But then, infrastructure is only important if you're small. Once you've reached a certain size, it's easier to just attack more countries. If there are still a few Muslim minors in Spain, just go over there and Holy War them. Or wait for a larger one to be attacked by someone and attack it. Or wait for Egypt to implode and attack smaller duchies/counties.

Then, make sure your vassal who own Egypt/Spain/Whatever also got at least one county back home. Then you can raise his levies there, and all his troops will spawn there, even the levies from castle half a world away.

[Cthulufaic]

I don't think that works so well anymore since you can't holy war someone if they are too far away.  Also AARs are hard; I lost before it reached two pages 

[EnigmaticHat]

In my experience mercenaries are at their strongest when your'e small and a given merc company is double the size of either side of the war.  So you want to save up your money and work on getting claims, and then when you press those claims you have a huge army backing you.

Then once your country is big money is better spent on retinues, gifts, or burning for fun because being big in CK2 is easy mode if you built the country yourself and have properly sized vassals.  Honestly, the payoff from upgrading your holdings is fairly small for the time and money it requires, and tedious on top of that.

[Rolan7]

It's probably not a good strategy but I avoid raising my taxes too high because I know my vassals will reinvest (some) of that income into the improvements.  Frankly I've played too many hours of 4X games to ever micromanage another build queue.
(Why yes my vassals do get uppity a lot!  It's fun trying to hold things together though, even if I can't quite get to empire-size).

[Felius]

In my experience mercenaries are at their strongest when your'e small and a given merc company is double the size of either side of the war.  So you want to save up your money and work on getting claims, and then when you press those claims you have a huge army backing you.

Then once your country is big money is better spent on retinues, gifts, or burning for fun because being big in CK2 is easy mode if you built the country yourself and have properly sized vassals.  Honestly, the payoff from upgrading your holdings is fairly small for the time and money it requires, and tedious on top of that.

If I remember correctly they do increase in size with the years, so they are not useless in the late game. Doubly so if you are playing as a republic, which tend to have ridiculous amounts of money and isn't able to field quite as many soldiers.

On a sidenote, now playing a Byzantine Empire game starting from the Old Gods start date. I'm in my third ruler right now, not even hit year 1000 yet, and just managed to end the schism. So far, from what I'm seeing, the Byzantines have two main challenges: First, internal stability, because damn if your vassals won't get annoyed and decide to revolt if you don't manage them carefully. Second, the big Muslim blobs around them, which can occasionally be really annoying to defend against. I suppose it gets even worse once the eastern enemies enter the map, but not got to that point yet in this game.

[EnigmaticHat]

On a sidenote, now playing a Byzantine Empire game starting from the Old Gods start date. I'm in my third ruler right now, not even hit year 1000 yet, and just managed to end the schism. So far, from what I'm seeing, the Byzantines have two main challenges: First, internal stability, because damn if your vassals won't get annoyed and decide to revolt if you don't manage them carefully. Second, the big Muslim blobs around them, which can occasionally be really annoying to defend against. I suppose it gets even worse once the eastern enemies enter the map, but not got to that point yet in this game.

In my observer game (the one where the Byzantine Empire went Monophysite) there had been so many people who successfully seized the throne and then got booted out that roughly a third of the Empire's direct vassals had a claim.  I literally saw 4 separate factions pressing 4 separate claims to the throne, fighting each other and the few remaining loyalist soldiers in a massive clusterfuck.

[Sheb]

Muslims are only a problem in the beginning, in my experience the AI can't manage the decadence system, so after a while those big blobs just keep imploding.

[Felius]

And now, on the year of 974, the Roman Empire is once more. Peasant revolts (and occasionally religious revolts) pop out about every year, but most of the time I can simply let my vassals handle them. House Makedons controls most duchy and kingdom titles in the empire, which makes it quite a bit easier to avoid massive rebellions, specially since I'm running with elective.

[Descan]

I've reformed the Gaelic faith as the King of the Scots. The old ways are practiced throughout the Scottish kingdom, which stretches from Munster to Caithness, and down to York, Wales, bits of Lancaster, Cornwall, Kent, and Brittany.

England is a mess of revolts in the other half of England, and Essex and London City is under the control of the Holy Roman Empire.

Castille owns all of Spain, but once Brittania is united I will spread the faith to all of the West.

And then, finally, with my allies of Tuathan Spain and France, we will take the fight to the hated Romans.

Just wish I could convert this to EU4 but it's a mod and I don't see it getting the updates it needs to convert any time soon. :/

[ibot66]

I was just playing my first game as Munster, and the pechenegs managed to take Hungary. Then, in 1089 or so, a crusade was called for Hungary.
I somehow managed to get the highest war contribution, and now in 1090 I am the king of Hungary and duke of Munster.

[thvaz]

Started playing Old Gods as Gotland to convert a reformer norse religion to EUIV, and by 1100 I had already united the norse people in a empire, with the addition of the Lithuania, Poland e Pomerania kingdoms. The kingdoms under my empire started to expand west and east, and by 1200 I owned Skotland, England, Rus (to the east) and most of the iberian peninsula. The reformed norse expand too easily, and soon will surpass Islam as the  biggest religion. The norse culture is destroying most of the cultures they find too.

Currently I had to let England and Skotland to be independent ( a series of bad emperors turned the empire in a mess of revolts) and they now expand the norse culture and religion across the Holy Roman Empire where France should be.

The mongols just appear, and the aztecs are coming too, but I don't know if the map will be more interesting by 1444 to expand...to many cultures destroyed by now...the map seems less diverse than the default EUIV start.