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[EuchreJack]

Page 666 (on default) so...
HAIL LILITH, of the Better Gender Laws mod.

Also haha, yeah short reign modifier is definitely a thing.  Though with retinues, it's usually just a feint which results in unloyal lords being purged as the scum they are.

True, every new lord must seduce his vassals into revolting, then take their stuff, creating a new power base for him/herself.  Especially under any sort of Gavelkind.

[Cruxador]

HAIL LILITH, of the Better Gender Laws mod.

Nah, I'm gonna hail Lillith of the Dark World mod.

[Kot]

HAIL LILITH, of the Better Gender Laws mod.

Nah, I'm gonna hail Lillith of the Dark World mod.

L- lewd. Like, very lewd.

[Cruxador]

L- lewd. Like, very lewd.

:3

[Sirbug]

Is there any chance to win while having smaller army? Are there any strategy that would let me cope against larger army rolling in from the neigbouring kingdom?

[scriver]

Oh crap, I just realised that now that I have all of the DLC, the warhammer and apocalusa mods might be fun to try again.
I am way to stuck in my "on GoTmod to rule them all" mindset.

Is there any chance to win while having smaller army? Are there any strategy that would let me cope against larger army rolling in from the neigbouring kingdom?

Yes, but only to a point, and it depends on a lot of things. Using terrain to your advantage (place your troops on mountains or hills/forests behind a river), for example. Then there is the difference in culture and tech to consider - a tribes light infantry will have a very hard time defending against 1066-onwards cavalry and heavy infantry no matter the numbers (while the opposite will find it easier to defend themselves against numbers), but unreformed pagans get a bonus when defending in their home provinces, and so on, so more details might be needed to tell if you're screwed or not. Who and what and where are you playing?

Remember that loosing a war is not the end of the game unless you loose all your realm's provinces. You can still prevail over time in ck2.

[Loud Whispers]

Is there any chance to win while having smaller army? Are there any strategy that would let me cope against larger army rolling in from the neigbouring kingdom?

Sit in your castle, wait for winter, send out raiding parties to attack any small enemy units and disband when larger ones strike. Take advantage of terrain, allies, and the fact that the more troops a larger power loses the more power internal factions and foreign powers gain over them, hopefully inciting a civil war / foreign invasion

[Sirbug]

Another game and I'm some random count in Hungary. Didn't know what to do so I became a derange kingslayer. Killed two kings in rapid succession for no reason. Decided to stop at third successor.

Now I attached my army to my new queen's army and run around helping suppress multiple revolts.

UPD: After intial unrest I am now stuck with my county, in stable, prosperous country with no advancement opportunity. Is there any hope something would happen, or should I just give up?

[Grim Portent]

Another game and I'm some random count in Hungary. Didn't know what to do so I became a derange kingslayer. Killed two kings in rapid succession for no reason. Decided to stop at third successor.

Now I attached my army to my new queen's army and run around helping suppress multiple revolts.

UPD: After intial unrest I am now stuck with my county, in stable, prosperous country with no advancement opportunity. Is there any hope something would happen, or should I just give up?

You should try to become a Duke, form a faction for Elective Monarchy, curry favour with other lords to have yourself become the new successor to the throne then murder your sovereign.

Staying king after that will be harder, at least until you can change the succession type.

[EuchreJack]

Is there any chance to win while having smaller army? Are there any strategy that would let me cope against larger army rolling in from the neigbouring kingdom?

Sit in your castle, wait for winter, send out raiding parties to attack any small enemy units and disband when larger ones strike. Take advantage of terrain, allies, and the fact that the more troops a larger power loses the more power internal factions and foreign powers gain over them, hopefully inciting a civil war / foreign invasion

Adding to that advice, I'll point out that armies lose troops in sieges, sometimes lots of troops.  If the numbers aren't too unbalanced, then just letting your opponent bleed themselves dry on your battlements might work.  As a Pagan Saxon Duke, my liege (and myself) won against the numerically superior Frankish King Karl the Great the Old.  As you can see, Old Karl didn't do as well as historically.

Speaking of which, Tribes can create troops out of nowhere with Prestige, and everyone else can generally save up for some mercenaries.  In my non-tribal games, I try to save ~200 gold for emergency mercs.  In tribal games, I tend to do the same with Prestige, except saving 500 Prestige.

[Uristides]

Today I found out even if you lose control of a holding during sucession you'll still have direct control over its levies if they are raised when you die. That way I took my brother's troops for a raiding ride on his own territories, trimmed them assaulting a holding and then he had pratically zero troops to fight me when I decided to subjugate him next

Oh, and before I forget: are there any tricks(except favors, I don't have conclave yet) to manipulating elective titles? No bribes are ever enough to convince the voters to go for my nominated heir.

So there's a few glaring expections to the above advice:

1)Retinues. You have complete control over them, so building a wing of an army with a strong focus works very well
2)Hordes (using the horselords dlc). Hordes are proben out by 250 man unit, so you can build focus here as well
3) Mercenaries. Many mercenaries have a different troop mix than normal levies. You can pull off some neat tricks with these.
4)vassal levies from another government form (e.g. tribal vs. feudal). Different types of holdng give vastly different troop mixtures, which means that you should take care how they're deployed.

In general strong skirmish troops can hold their own in smalller battles, but once we get into the 2k+ fights the melee folks begin shine....kee that in mind when you're looking at what your unit composition is. Particularity when dealing with tribal vs. Feudal combat.

I heard about the retinue specialist flank thing. I'm guessing that mercenaries come into play mostly by allowing you to fill in the ranks while preserving the composition's "purity"? I mean, any moderately sized enemy will be able to field armies with flanks far outnumbering a retinue alone.

snip

Wow, that's a great guide, thanks.
Guess one of my problems is that I insist on playing count/duke starts in small dynasties and always lose interest before the big dynasties start allowing me to marry into their highest branches. India will have to wait until at least the next sale, but I'll see to try my luck with some of those more entrenched dynasties when I'm done with my current campaign.
I'm well aware of the first two bullet points but the last two will take me some practice to digest. Usually I'm marrying people hoping I'll get someone with fat claims down the line and granting titles hoping the same won't happen, but off to studying sucession laws we go.
I'm guessing once you have the target realm overflowing with your kin the bloody bit gets way easier? I've managed to have people in the sucession line before, but it's hard getting enough people to back your plots against the other possible heirs when you're regarded as a foreigner and sometimes also an infidel.

God, I actively try to avoid giving titles to close family members whenever and wherever possible. It creates a situation that's too messy to deal with, and the prestige loss and upset little cry babies are easily dealt with.

It's what I'm used to do too, though I don't remember it ever biting me in the ass except for stupidly letting some titles out of my immediate sucession line the fear is always there.

Another game and I'm some random count in Hungary. Didn't know what to do so I became a derange kingslayer. Killed two kings in rapid succession for no reason. Decided to stop at third successor.

Now I attached my army to my new queen's army and run around helping suppress multiple revolts.

UPD: After intial unrest I am now stuck with my county, in stable, prosperous country with no advancement opportunity. Is there any hope something would happen, or should I just give up?

I really hope your county is in northern Hungary and your dynasty's name is Báthory.

[Lightningfalcon]

Is there any chance to win while having smaller army? Are there any strategy that would let me cope against larger army rolling in from the neigbouring kingdom?

Sit in your castle, wait for winter, send out raiding parties to attack any small enemy units and disband when larger ones strike. Take advantage of terrain, allies, and the fact that the more troops a larger power loses the more power internal factions and foreign powers gain over them, hopefully inciting a civil war / foreign invasion

Adding to that advice, I'll point out that armies lose troops in sieges, sometimes lots of troops.  If the numbers aren't too unbalanced, then just letting your opponent bleed themselves dry on your battlements might work.  As a Pagan Saxon Duke, my liege (and myself) won against the numerically superior Frankish King Karl the Great the Old.  As you can see, Old Karl didn't do as well as historically.

Speaking of which, Tribes can create troops out of nowhere with Prestige, and everyone else can generally save up for some mercenaries.  In my non-tribal games, I try to save ~200 gold for emergency mercs.  In tribal games, I tend to do the same with Prestige, except saving 500 Prestige.

That's how I won an invasion as Essex. Even with everyone in Britain allying with me for some reason, I only had 6000 troops vs the 9000 troops the vikings (I think) had. Would have had  another thousand more but I had just finished with three wars in a row in order to consolidate my future power over Britain (I had just figured out the tactic of luring claimants to my court and marrying them to my daughters). I let the vikings throw themselves at Middlesex , which had pretty good fortifications since I've been throwing money at it for a while. They went down to 6000 troops, and I was able to defeat them by virtue of my awesome martial skills.

[Stealtharcadia]

I swear the Charlemagne start date can go either way. I went from a one county chief in Livonia to the High Chief in like five years without even declaring war. My liege had no children, killed off the only other chief (his heir) since he got cuckolded a couple times. Seriously, this chief slept with his wife and all three of his concubines. It left me as his heir, and enough people in his court hated his guts enough that assassinating him only took a few months.

So now 'ol House Arkadia has the ducal title, where I just subjugated Estonia and Karelia in just a couple years. So in order to raise the money to make the kingdom of Finland, I've built a shipbuilder and I'm now plundering England. It feels a little awesome/funny to be doing Viking stuff before the Vikings even started.

Last time I played, it took me a whole generation to go from count to duke. Then Saxony subjugated me and I spent 100 years under their thrall before they were weak enough to break apart. So to rise so fast feels a little bittersweet.

[Teneb]

I swear the Charlemagne start date can go either way. I went from a one county chief in Livonia to the High Chief in like five years without even declaring war. My liege had no children, killed off the only other chief (his heir) since he got cuckolded a couple times. Seriously, this chief slept with his wife and all three of his concubines. It left me as his heir, and enough people in his court hated his guts enough that assassinating him only took a few months.

So now 'ol House Arkadia has the ducal title, where I just subjugated Estonia and Karelia in just a couple years. So in order to raise the money to make the kingdom of Finland, I've built a shipbuilder and I'm now plundering England. It feels a little awesome/funny to be doing Viking stuff before the Vikings even started.

Last time I played, it took me a whole generation to go from count to duke. Then Saxony subjugated me and I spent 100 years under their thrall before they were weak enough to break apart. So to rise so fast feels a little bittersweet.

There are two main difficulties (and one secondary) with the CM start: The Karlings, The Abbasids (, and the Ummayyads). If you start as anything bordering them, you'll be in for a bad, bad time.

[EuchreJack]

I swear the Charlemagne start date can go either way. I went from a one county chief in Livonia to the High Chief in like five years without even declaring war. My liege had no children, killed off the only other chief (his heir) since he got cuckolded a couple times. Seriously, this chief slept with his wife and all three of his concubines. It left me as his heir, and enough people in his court hated his guts enough that assassinating him only took a few months.

So now 'ol House Arkadia has the ducal title, where I just subjugated Estonia and Karelia in just a couple years. So in order to raise the money to make the kingdom of Finland, I've built a shipbuilder and I'm now plundering England. It feels a little awesome/funny to be doing Viking stuff before the Vikings even started.

Last time I played, it took me a whole generation to go from count to duke. Then Saxony subjugated me and I spent 100 years under their thrall before they were weak enough to break apart. So to rise so fast feels a little bittersweet.

There are two main difficulties (and one secondary) with the CM start: The Karlings, The Abbasids (, and the Ummayyads). If you start as anything bordering them, you'll be in for a bad, bad time.

Is there any chance to win while having smaller army? Are there any strategy that would let me cope against larger army rolling in from the neigbouring kingdom?

Sit in your castle, wait for winter, send out raiding parties to attack any small enemy units and disband when larger ones strike. Take advantage of terrain, allies, and the fact that the more troops a larger power loses the more power internal factions and foreign powers gain over them, hopefully inciting a civil war / foreign invasion

Adding to that advice, I'll point out that armies lose troops in sieges, sometimes lots of troops.  If the numbers aren't too unbalanced, then just letting your opponent bleed themselves dry on your battlements might work.  As a Pagan Saxon Duke, my liege (and myself) won against the numerically superior Frankish King Karl the Great the Old.  As you can see, Old Karl didn't do as well as historically.

Speaking of which, Tribes can create troops out of nowhere with Prestige, and everyone else can generally save up for some mercenaries.  In my non-tribal games, I try to save ~200 gold for emergency mercs.  In tribal games, I tend to do the same with Prestige, except saving 500 Prestige.

Not always, but you need to be prepared.  That above description was the third attempt as a Saxon lord.  The other two attempts (in which I played the Head Saxon) ended with me subjugated by the Karlings, then stripped of titles to Game Over.  Being a Saxon Vassal rather than the Saxon King probably helped.