Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Teneb]

so i slept with my wife out of wedlock, and then married her before the baby was born.

the bastard event triggered and i legitimized my son, much to the dismay of my wife

Haha, it's all about appearances I guess.

Shouldn't have fornicated outside of the holy matrimony.

What happened to Byzantium horse archers being the best retinue? Or was that the strongest unit?

Byzzies get the cataphracts, not horse archers. Cataphracts are pretty damn good, since it's a reliable way of scoring yourself more heavy cav.

[Loud Whispers]

What happened to Byzantium horse archers being the best retinue? Or was that the strongest unit?

Byzzies get the cataphracts, not horse archers. Cataphracts are pretty damn good, since it's a reliable way of scoring yourself more heavy cav.

To be fair, cataphracts are heavy cav and horse archer cav. In absolute terms the cataphract is the most powerful retinue, with the light archers giving the retinue powerful staying power in the skirmish phase in time for the oversized contingent of heavy cavalry to completely shrek the enemy. However they're the most expensive retinue and unless you're already a hegemonic Empire it might be risky trying to amass them in favour of a much larger, cheaper and more effective generic defence retinue blob. And if you're a hegemonic Empire you don't need cataphracts to win; it just gives you more options to win, when your military victory is pretty much already certain. It does however give Greek cultures good options against all of their foes, with the horse archer-heavy cavalry mix being good at dealing with Arab, Nomad or Slavic light cavalry

[USEC_OFFICER]

Byzzies get the cataphracts, not horse archers. Cataphracts are pretty damn good, since it's a reliable way of scoring yourself more heavy cav.

Cataphracts are 150 heavy cavalry and 100 horse archers retinues, so I guess it counts. Horse archers were apparently great in Horse Lords but have since been nerfed since then and are highly dependent on the terrain and RNG to be worthwhile. Basically they count as light cavalry for tactics, but many light cavalry tactics give them penalties if they trigger. Plus the horse archer boosting tactics only work in terrain that is not forest, woods, mountain, jungle, or marsh, so if you're fighting in that terrain you're out of luck. Heavy cavalry are good units but cost a lot if you get them from retinues, which obviously includes cataphracts. They aren't bad just not as great as generic shock/defensive retinues when you crunch the costs/numbers.

To be fair, cataphracts are heavy cav and horse archer cav. In absolute terms the cataphract is the most powerful retinue, with the light archers giving the retinue powerful staying power in the skirmish phase in time for the oversized contingent of heavy cavalry to completely shrek the enemy. However they're the most expensive retinue and unless you're already a hegemonic Empire it might be risky trying to amass them in favour of a much larger, cheaper and more effective generic defence retinue blob. And if you're a hegemonic Empire you don't need cataphracts to win; it just gives you more options to win, when your military victory is pretty much already certain. It does however give Greek cultures good options against all of their foes, with the horse archer-heavy cavalry mix being good at dealing with Arab, Nomad or Slavic light cavalry

Light cavalry beat horse archers though. Harass tactics, which light cavalry trigger, have affinity against swarm tactics which horse archers trigger only if the terrain is in their favour. If the terrain is not in their favour then horse archers only trigger harass tactics which is grants penalties to them. You need archers to trigger volley tactics to counter harass tactics, not horse archers.

Of course the heavy cavalry will proceed to wreck face when things get to melee but that's because they're heavy cavalry. That's what they do once you can finally afford enough of them.

[Teneb]

Guess I misremembered. Horse archers were also incredible pre-Horse Lords. I have no idea when they got nerfed, but spamming Horse Archers was pretty much a valid strategy.

[umiman]

Yeah, horse archers were severely nerfed a few patches back. They used to be de facto the best unit in the game bar none with perfect stats. Nowadays they're like... light cav but more expensive but better at defending.

That being said, light cav (and horse archers) are a good unit to have alongside heavy infantry and heavy cav. They have the best stat distributions for their cost.

[ZeroGravitas]

I wish elephants were better. Sadly they are quite understatted / overpriced. I think the advantage is supposed to be that they have good tactics and you actually don't need that many of them.

[USEC_OFFICER]

From what I've heard/seen their tactics are kinda lacklustre too so... Yeah.

[Micro102]

So I just saw the emperor of Byzantium have -24 raised levies modifier, then half a year later he declared a holy war as the attacker and now the raised levies modifier is gone. My first suspicion is that holy wars negate the raised levies modifier, but the only way I can think that he gained the levies modifier in the first place are all the holy wars he has been declaring.

Also, as a side note, how do I royally fuck up the emperor of Byzantium?

[umiman]

So I just saw the emperor of Byzantium have -24 raised levies modifier, then half a year later he declared a holy war as the attacker and now the raised levies modifier is gone. My first suspicion is that holy wars negate the raised levies modifier, but the only way I can think that he gained the levies modifier in the first place are all the holy wars he has been declaring.

Also, as a side note, how do I royally fuck up the emperor of Byzantium?

Put your spymaster on him and let him spread rumours that he's a heathen homosexual born out of wedlock.

[pisskop]

declare war on him for tiny scraps of land while he is fighting claims on his throne.  the ai seems to put a really low priority on one county when whole empires are at stake

[Micro102]

Another baffling question.

So I managed to get my daughter matrilineally married to the son of a duke's first daughter and who had only daughters. I managed to kill the duke, passing the throne onto said first daughter. I thought that would make her only son the next heir, putting my family line in the duchy, but instead it made the middle child, a female, the next heir. Why?

We are in Byzantium. How does a middle child female have priority over a first born son?

Silly me, I missed the bastard trait.

[Loud Whispers]

Woah... So was running a multiplayer game with one of me m8s, pretty standard. He started off as the Caliph of the Abbasid Empire, but decided to jump down to Egyptian Sultanate after it proved too stressful for him (he was fairly new to the game). I started as a Count of Esfahan, only I was Han, Confucian and Zhuge Liang. I carved out my own small (but elite) Duchy in Persia before being assassinated at age 33 by one of my courtiers, passing down the throne from my genius strategist to his imbecile of a son. Funnily enough, my imbecile of a son proved through stubbornness and bravery, to be an incredibly talented ruler, managing to eliminate traitors, peacefully convert all the Zoroastrian and Sunni courtiers to Confucianism, thereby securing the internal realm. Meanwhile my good friend in Cairo expanded the Egyptian Sultanate, holy warring all over the place, giving every single land he conquered to just three Dukes.

My imbecile-son-and-immensely-talented-ruler eventually persisted to become the last heathen Prince of the Abbasid Empire, and survived having cancer for 18 years, dying at the age of 61. In the West, my friend's Sultan was assassinated, then the next Sultan assassinated, Cairo and the Sultanate being inherited by his brother, while his line of the dynasty was exiled to Mount Sinai.
Where this gets weird is that on my screen, I saw his brother get assassinated, putting him back in charge of Cairo and the Sultanate. On his screen, his brother had birthed an heir and he was still an exile on Mount Sinai. I saved the game and restarted, and in this save his brother had been assassinated and he returned to Cairo as Sultan. We joked about how he had this terrible dream where he was an exile on Sinai, but then lamented that we had not tried to make two saves to discover if our games had split, creating two timelines - of the darkest timeline, and the brightest timeline.

We subsequently spent the next generation fending off the Caliphs. I still remain a Han Confucian and have survived having my entire Duchy occupied for 9 years and survived the Caliph trying to seize all of my lands five times now. When the Caliph had 20,000 men, I thought I needed 10,000 to force him to white peace. When the Caliph had 25,000 men, I thought I needed 7,000 men to force him to white peace. When the Caliph had 30,000 men, I thought I needed 3,000 men to win. I like this run very much, I've escaped the brink of destruction so many times... In one particular instance I nearly rage quit when on the cusp of one final battle, a band of Turkic mercenaries took 350 gold and left without fighting a single battle, and against all odds I survived that. I may make an AAR of it, but I just regret not making those two saves. Timeline split!

[Teneb]

Funnily enough, my imbecile of a son proved through stubbornness and bravery, to be an incredibly talented ruler, managing to eliminate traitors, peacefully convert all the Zoroastrian and Sunni courtiers to Confucianism, thereby securing the internal realm.

He was too dumb to know the meaning of failure.

[Loud Whispers]

He was too dumb to know the meaning of failure.

Inspirational

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My single player campaign has sadly ended prematurely owing to a surprise jihad from the Shia Caliphate appearing right next to my small duchy. Which is a shame, because this really was an extraordinary game - the germanics reformed before the viking age, and I've only ever seen the AI reform them once before this! Perhaps more extraordinary:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Charlemagne's son converted to Judaism

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After his court doctor became his guardian. This resulted in a tense succession struggle as in the next 10 years, three Kings were assassinated

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Resulting in Sunni Karlings taking over. The Sunni Franks subsequently began holy warring into the pagans of Germany and Catholics of Italy while the Umayyads finished off the Asturians. I really would have liked to see how that one played out!

[Glloyd]

I gotta say, I'm not the biggest fan of the halfway implementation of China in the game. I'd rather just all or nothing than how it is now. It seems kind of wonky and unfinished from my experience with it. Like the fact that if you put your son on the Chinese throne, you'll get random siblings of them popping up as your children because of events, even though you never actually had those kids. I think I have four sons who have no mother and were just spawned into the world as my kids because of that. Also, the "take a royal bride" has no upper limit on it, so if there's a lot of realms in range of China and the emperor has a long life, you end up emperors who have literally dozens of children out there, especially once they die and the game starts spawning more random sons of theirs. Also the fact that if China has a plague, it won't show up in the Western Protectorate. Also, the fact that it feels like dynasties never change, and the state of China has little impact on what the Western Protectorate does. Also the fact that if you're a nomad and supplying horses to China, you can settle as feudal and the supplying horses modifier won't go away, so you just get free grace for no penalty because feudal rulers don't have manpower. It also just feels way too easy to beat China as a nomad, because they'll just fling their armies into the steppe to die of attrition and get picked off in individual battles because they split them up so much, and you don't have to occupy China, just kill a few armies and occupy the few WP provinces that might be on the map at any time.

It just feels cheap and half-assed, and I wish they had either fully implemented China, or just not done it at all, and instead had gone in a different direction with the expansion (like adding naval combat, or better trade, or fleshing out republics to any interesting degree or any other myriad of things they could have done). I like some of the events, and the new Chinese artifacts are cool to try to collect, but the expansion doesn't really seem worth it for what it adds, and the implementation of China is really lacking. What do you folks think?

Oh, also, I asked this in the EUIV thread, but has anyone tried to convert a game with Jade Dragon to EUIV? What happens to China? I can't find actual documentation on it anywhere.