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[Paul]

Playing as tribals, I found a rather entertaining exploit.

As long as the county has more than one holding, you can set all the holdings to plunder. Once the entire province is plundered some fun things happen.

1). The 10 year rebellion penalty goes away.
2). The province no longer counts as a holding for Tribals, so you can hold as much land as you want.
3). It uses the Nomad mechanics in that the culture and religion stay whatever your character is.

Using this, you can pillage your way across a region using mercenaries and tribal armies. Carve out a huge empire for yourself, only actually using the high slot provinces. Once you eventually decide to stop you'll have tons of money left and enough prestige to build up a solid set of Tribal provinces, and the whole region will be your religion and culture. As your dynasty grows and you get solid lines of heirs going you can build up the empty provinces and pass them out. You can pick whatever crazy culture/religion combo you want and spread it across the world.

[ZeroGravitas]

Playing as tribals, I found a rather entertaining exploit.
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this all sounds totally intended. empty provinces changing culture and religion/not counting as land/etc isn't "nomad mechanics." it's empty province mechanics.

[Cruxador]

Yeah, it may be immoral but it's what Sweden tried to do to Poland and the Baltic, and the Sami and similar to the policy in Skane. Tacit acknowledgement of genocide as a useful thing seems expected from a Swedish dev.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah, it may be immoral but it's what Sweden tried to do to Poland and the Baltic, and the Sami and similar to the policy in Skane. Tacit acknowledgement of genocide as a useful thing seems expected from a Swedish dev.

Everything I could find on that sounds like exactly what happened in US history but on a small scale, for less time and only against one group.

[Cruxador]

Yeah, it may be immoral but it's what Sweden tried to do to Poland and the Baltic, and the Sami and similar to the policy in Skane. Tacit acknowledgement of genocide as a useful thing seems expected from a Swedish dev.

Everything I could find on that sounds like exactly what happened in US history but on a small scale, for less time and only against one group.

Yeah, US is in the same boat, obviously, though the US talks about it a lot more.

[StagnantSoul]

200 years into playing the kings of Wessex, some russian woman kinsman takes the throne? God I love british politics.

[Tawa]

200 years into playing the kings of Wessex, some russian woman kinsman takes the throne? God I love british politics.

Reminds me of an England run I did last patch where I started as the Anglo-Saxon Duke of York, tried to get William to beat Harald and Harold, gradually turned my dynasty English, and then eventually usurped the throne. At one point, an extremely distant relative of mine found himself with a strong claim, in Russia. He was Orthodox, I'd never seen him before in my life, and inexplicably, the Prince of Novgorod came after me to press the kid's claim. The Prince of Novgorod didn't own any boats or ports and apparently was trying to get my distant relative on the throne through sheer force of will.

[umiman]

I'm trying to do a Han Chinese run (with a count) off on the most right hand corner of the map in ironman 769 start. It's pretty tough. Haven't had much success so far, mostly due to how shitty the start is, but I'll get there eventually.

[Paul]

Playing as tribals, I found a rather entertaining exploit.
---

this all sounds totally intended. empty provinces changing culture and religion/not counting as land/etc isn't "nomad mechanics." it's empty province mechanics.

The reason I believe it's an exploit is you normally can't pillage the last holding of a province unless you're a nomad, and I'm pretty sure that if playing a nomad the empty province counts as a holding. It doesn't let you pillage a province that only has a single castle as tribal, for instance - nor can you pillage tribal holdings. But if you first build a temple and then pillage the castle first then the temple, the castle will continue pillaging despite being unable to pillage it if you first pillage the temple.

As a Muslim tribal you could conquer the entire world and hold it all yourself without any fear of losing any of it due to succession and with zero vassals. You wouldn't actually gain troops or have any real use for the land, but you could hold it all without penalty and use mercenaries and tribal armies bought with the vast gold and prestige generated from plundering all the holdings.

[scriver]

Yeah, it may be immoral but it's what Sweden tried to do to Poland and the Baltic, and the Sami and similar to the policy in Skane. Tacit acknowledgement of genocide as a useful thing seems expected from a Swedish dev.

Everything I could find on that sounds like exactly what happened in US history but on a small scale, for less time and only against one group.

Yeah, US is in the same boat, obviously, though the US talks about it a lot more.

Why do you, a Californian, even pretend to have even the slightest hunch about what "Sweden" does and does not talk about?

[umiman]

My attempts to create a new Imperial Han have been... mediocre at best.

After restarting about 10 times I finally had a start where I didn't get roflstomped by one of a million things that can roflstomp a completely alien culture with an alien religion surrounded by behemoths. And if it isn't an invasion from Tibet or the Khagans or frigging China itself then it's one of a million adventurers who decides to stomp me into the ground.

The biggest problem was trying to create a duchy because I was stuck with gavelkind for a good long while. If I didn't get an independent duchy, my lands would constantly be split up and I'd have to reconquer them. The issue with that is that in this area of the world, all the duchies are located horribly. Everyone owns half of every duchy. This made starting out under the Western Protecterate impossible, as there were no viable duchies to form in that area whatsoever. Nor would you even want to do this, as if you ever rebel against the western Protectorate, China will send reinforcements of like 10,000 men. So I had to start next to Tibet as a count under some dumbass duke there.

That failed quite a few times until one run where the duke got consumed by Tibet, making us all Tibetian. This gave me a great start as now I was much, much safer to slowly expand. After a few decades of growth, I usurped the duchy from my idiot liege. A bit after that I declared independence from Tibet alongside a bunch of other schmucks. One nice side benefit of being Han and Taoist is that you get a really steady stream of Imperial Grace with the Chinese Emperor. So I could continuously rope his help along the way. Nothing overpowered. Just stuff like nice artifacts and super generals and so on.

A few decades after that, I was an independent duchy north of Tibet, sandwiched between all the superpowers of the area. The nomads to the north, the Tibetian empire to the South, the Muslim nomads to the left, and the Chinese to the right. You'd think my best friends would be the Chinese, but they were the first to want to get a go of my newly formed duchy. They demanded me to be a tributary, but there's no way I could accept as it would mean 50% of my income would go to them and a huge chunk of my manpower. It's awful. So I had to fight.

It was 12,000 men vs my 6000. I thought I was boned but I had no choice. I put all my troops at a chokepoint with a minor river and hoped for the best. The Chinese crossbows obliterated around 1/2 my army but when it came to actual blows, we actually pulled off a miraculous win. I guess those super generals the Chinese lent me made the defining difference. The Chinese were humiliated and we basically established ourselves as a new superpower in the area. They also had to pay me 1000 gold, which helped a ton.

Now we're a small Kingdom around this stupid desert. China hasn't been able to do anything from almost 50 years now because of a famine so I've been using this opportunity to fight with Tibet. It hasn't been going well for me. I was hoping Tibet would concentrate on their holy war with India for me to land grab the rest of my de jure kingdom, but they decided to abandon their holy war and move all their troops up north to fight me. We've been fighting for over 15 years now and no progress really has been made. The only reason I'm still in the fight is because basically all my land is on the Silk Road, so I get buttloads of money.

----------

Here's a map of what the area looks like:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you can see, I'm a poor little bloke surrounded by giant blobs.

[scriver]

For my Aladdin game I started as one of the Han vassals in the Basin too. It took some time but i managed to turn the splinteredness of the region to my advantage. New casus bellis sped it up a lot.

The thing that helped the most was that Tibet got super diminished by an independence civil war. At first they had started expanding their Basin holdings and I was planning for having to bow to them and expand as a Tibetan vassal, but then said civil war hit and caused the whole empire to collapse, leaving the Tibetan Emperor with about maybe 1/5 of his de jure lands split into two enclaves, and the rest of the region made out of a bunch of tiny kingdoms and petty kings. Tibet has slowly been reassembling itself since then (the Western Protectionate has gobbled up a few pieces of it too) by now I can go head-to-head with the Abbassid Superblob and win so they're not a threat any more.

[notquitethere]

As you can see, I'm a poor little bloke surrounded by giant blobs.

Hang in there! Is there any use in creating internal strife with your chancellor to help break up Tibet? I know that's a possibility but I've never really got it to work out myself.

[ZeroGravitas]

My attempts to create a new Imperial Han have been... mediocre at best.

After restarting about 10 times I finally had a start where I didn't get roflstomped by one of a million things that can roflstomp a completely alien culture with an alien religion surrounded by behemoths. And if it isn't an invasion from Tibet or the Khagans or frigging China itself then it's one of a million adventurers who decides to stomp me into the ground.

The biggest problem was trying to create a duchy because I was stuck with gavelkind for a good long while. If I didn't get an independent duchy, my lands would constantly be split up and I'd have to reconquer them. The issue with that is that in this area of the world, all the duchies are located horribly. Everyone owns half of every duchy. This made starting out under the Western Protecterate impossible, as there were no viable duchies to form in that area whatsoever. Nor would you even want to do this, as if you ever rebel against the western Protectorate, China will send reinforcements of like 10,000 men. So I had to start next to Tibet as a count under some dumbass duke there....
As you can see, I'm a poor little bloke surrounded by giant blobs.

I avoided all of this by switching to Islam ASAP - marry son to a nomadic Sunni, then when I die (I started 68 years old), secretly convert, set up all my provinces to convert, then announce. Also if you start in the 867 bookmark, China is in a civil war, so you can immediately throw off tributary status with no penalty.

It's so vastly superior - you automatically get one of the best succession laws, you can holy war all the nomads around you (which are nicely split between Tengri and Mazdan at start), you can personally hold all your temples with no penalties for more troops and money, etc.

I'm the sand-colored sand (Xiyu) -

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I do have a scary Hindu empire to my east but I beat them in one holy war already. The Fadilid is actually a highly successful Shia caliphate that emerged in Iraq. Once I beat all my early neighbors, I ran into more Sunnis so I swapped to Shia (thanks to a bride from the Fadilids) and have allied with them now. Next up are the Abbasids, who, while relatively weak, still have vastly more levies than I do and are squarely in between me and getting to North Africa.

[umiman]

As you can see, I'm a poor little bloke surrounded by giant blobs.

Hang in there! Is there any use in creating internal strife with your chancellor to help break up Tibet? I know that's a possibility but I've never really got it to work out myself.

Yeah I've been getting my spymasters and chancellors to slowly work away at Tibet.

I can only go south anyway, as Tibet is significantly less scary than the Seljuk Turks who own everything from there to Aztec Constantinople.