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Avernus posted:I'm doing something like this in the earliest stat date by being Venice and sending all my kids to be educated in Danmark. This is great because if they convert not only to paganism but Norse culture as well, they come home with names like Giovanni Giovannisson. As of the Viking era, no pagans will take my next generation but I have enough pagan kin to keep it up in-house. The first of the Venitian Norse Pagan generation has just been elected Prince Mayor, and the pope (my Prince Mayor's uncle) hates us. A pagan dynasty member is already the Godi of Rialto and conversion is well under way. The thing I love about doing it that way is the unreformed Germanic retinue bonus. I started in Catholic Ireland once and became a republic as a Catholic, then became the fylkir. When I reformed the faith, the retinue cap dropped from like 21k to 16k. It's a huge bonus. It'd be interesting to try and do it without ever reforming the faith, but I'd imagine once you'd expanded a bunch you'd get some seriously wicked revolts.
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Jun 17, 2015 01:20
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Volkerball posted:If you have old gods you should try a Norse Germanic republic. They're stupid overpowered. I started a tutorial LP in the LP thread that I really need to continue sometime that shows the basics of what you'd need to do. A year or so ago I played a game as svipjod where I ended up loving with India and I've been in love with republics ever since. I still play feudal sometimes but republics are my go-to government. There are a few basics a new player should keep in mind, such as... * It's better to be the defender than the attacker, especially in non-flat terrain. If the numbers are close you can turn it in your favor by dividing your forces and enticing the enemy to attack you on hills/mountains with his entire force while your reinforcements wait nearby. * If you're going on the attack check the terrain. You may think you have a comfortable advantage like 4500 to 2800, but if they're defending on mountains you might get your rear end handed to you. * Composition matters. Archers are great, heavy infantry is good, any cavalry is good, light infantry SUCKS--and levies tend to mostly be light infantry, especially if they're tribal. Horse archers are ridiculously badass and a big reason why the Mongol hordes are so terrifying. You can check the enemy army's composition by hovering over it. Again--light infantry is terrible. An army of 1000 that's all cavalry/heavy infantry/archers (which some mercs will provide) will destroy an army of 3000 that's mostly light infantry. * Pay attention to morale. Your *own* levies and retinues start at full morale, but vassal levies and mercs start at zero morale and you have to wait a while for their morale to fill up before you send them into battle. An army with low morale will break and run almost immediately, losing the battle. An army coming off a ship will be at half morale, so don't send your army off a ship and directly into battle unless you overwhelmingly outnumber the enemy. * Pay attention to supply limits. Attrition can murder you if you aren't careful. This goes double in the wintry north and quadruple if you're fighting pagans and don't have Military Organization level 4 yet. * Favor commanders who have good commander traits, if you have any. In particular Organizer is the best trait by far for a lead (center flank) commander, as it makes your whole army move significantly faster. Winter Soldier is hard to get but very overpowered in wintry terrain. Otherwise just pay attention to the situation when choosing commanders--if you're going on the offensive you want the Aggressive guy, but if you're about to be attacked swap him out for the Defensive Leader guy. Swap in a Siege Leader if you're about to lay siege (you have to break the siege to change commanders so be sure to do this first). Holy Warriors are great if you're fighting infidels. Etc. I actually periodically scan the character list to see if there's an Organizer around I can get into my court. 20 ducats is a cheap price to pay for one, especially if he's young. * Retinues: Buy Archer retinues always, unless you have a particularly good cultural retinue. If your cultural retinue's just knights or housecarls or something then just ignore them and buy Archers. Also Welsh characters have an incredibly overpowered Archer-specific tactic, so it's not necessary but it's a very nice bonus if you have an archer-heavy army to have a Welsh commander around. * Don't lead your army yourself, and don't have your awesome heir do it. It doesn't matter if he has a 21 Martial score. Just. Don't. The advantage 21 Martial provides over 11 actually isn't that huge, and your great character will get killed because this is CK2. (And, because again this is CK2, if you send your rear end in a top hat oldest son with a 6 Martial to lead your army he will never, ever get killed or injured.) Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 02:39
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I thought we had settled on a mix of infantries backing a core of just under 60% archers? Wouldn't want to give your opponent the chance to automatically trigger melee with a Charge on undefended flank.
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Jun 17, 2015 02:49
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I usually do okay with 65% archers or so (it's hard to actually get higher than that unless you're Welsh). The standard (non-Welsh) archer retinue is 80% archers, 20% heavy infantry--when you combine it with your levies the archer percentage is going to go down into that mid-high-50s area anyway. I don't think "whoops, too many archers" is a problem that comes up very much (unless, again, you're Welsh).
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Jun 17, 2015 02:57
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Eric the Mauve posted:* Don't lead your army yourself, and don't have your awesome heir do it. It doesn't matter if he has a 21 Martial score. Just. Don't. The advantage 21 Martial provides over 11 actually isn't that huge, and your great character will get killed because this is CK2. (And, because again this is CK2, if you send your rear end in a top hat oldest son with a 6 Martial to lead your army he will never, ever get killed or injured.) No he won't get killed, he'll get hit in the head with a stray rock and become incapable, thus staying in the line of succession but guaranteeing a regency for life when he inherits. Excelzior posted:I thought we had settled on a mix of infantries backing a core of just under 60% archers? Wouldn't want to give your opponent the chance to automatically trigger melee with a Charge on undefended flank. Yeah this is important - you absolutely do not want a full flank of archers because the opposing flank will get a special tactic they can fire off immediately that changes the phase to melee, rendering the archers more useless than even light infantry. Ideally you want about a 50/50 mix of archers/infantry - pikemen are the best since they have the most morale and good defense, but heavy infantry are decent too and will be more effective if the flank lasts into the melee phase. A good mix of retinues is 1:1 skirmish/shock, or if you're English or Welsh, 1:1 longbow/defense.
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Jun 17, 2015 02:58
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Excelzior posted:I thought we had settled on a mix of infantries backing a core of just under 60% archers? Wouldn't want to give your opponent the chance to automatically trigger melee with a Charge on undefended flank. yeah basically http://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/2lhyzv/optimum_retinue_calculations_in_2205 really though, so long as you have a majority archer retinue with a bunch of heavies, lights, and pikes, it's going to be able to wreck anything the ai will throw at you. i like to add in cav too because they're really strong, if not optimal cap usage. you can min/max further than that if it's fun for you, but it's not necessary to build a really strong army. i can even toss in like 1/6 or so of that 400 LI 150 archers for 550 cap (or whatever it is) retinue to boost my numbers for sieging, and my guys still go 300 on bigger stacks all the time. it might not even be that much. i think in my rome game i've got a 30k strong retinue with maybe 4k LI. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 03:00
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lol i'm so deep into republics i didn't even remember that retinues are just a supplement for most players and not the only army they use most the time.
Volkerball fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 03:02
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You don't need to break a siege to change Commanders. Just pause, click to move the army, change the commander, cancel the move and unpause. The siege will continue as if nothing happened (except you now have a Siege expert in charge).
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Jun 17, 2015 06:58
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kingturnip posted:You don't need to break a siege to change Commanders. Is Paradox ever planning to change this? I don't quite understand why you can't edit commanders/flank composition without this little workaround. It seems like a bunch of pointless extra clicks for something that should just be a button right on the army bar.
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Jun 17, 2015 07:07
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The Cheshire Cat posted:This is basically the most you can do 95% of the time. Battles in CKII generally boil down to "more mans = win", with maybe terrain factors giving one side an edge if they're closely matched. You have very little control over your levy composition, especially when you call up vassal levies (which will be the bulk of your army in any large realm), so you can't really do much in the way of fine-tuning your army aside from assigning commanders with high martial skill. Ive been playing this game for hundreds of hours and Ive never cared about fine tuning my armies. I will usually merge it all in 2/3 big stacks and just put good commanders on each of then, never even looking at their composition. And 90% of the times, more men = victory anyway. My most elaborate war strategy is to leave a smaller stack in a province with one or two bigger stacks in adjacent provinces. The AI is dumb and will strike at the smaller stack with all they got, and then I send the bigger ones in and win. It always works. Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 13:20
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I never give a poo poo about army composition beyond assigning whoever the guys with the 3 best martial scores who aren't cowards to lead my biggest stack. Until I end up losing and getting half my army owned, then I briefly start paying attention to the finer details just in time for it to be way too late to make a difference.
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Jun 17, 2015 13:25
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I usually ignore army composition unless I'm fighting pagans––then I have to remind myself "oh, almost all of his army is lovely light infantry" and attack even though I'm outnumbered. A couple of minor questions. I have a vassal merchant republic, but I'd like to a) move their location (so that, when I gain an empire and create new king-level titles, they are my de jure vassal) and b) eventually grant them a king-level title. The second seems straightforward: grant them most of the duchies in a kingdom, destroy the kingdom title, and wait for them to recreate it. Something like that? The first, I'm less sure about. My plan is to grant them another duchy title and revoke the first one. I am concerned that the process might be more difficult than that. In the past I granted a duchy to the mayor of a city in my own demesne. Boneheaded way to create a republic: the city thereafter belonged to the republic, for some reason I couldn't revoke the city, and then the rear end in a top hat count to whom I granted the other county in the duchy took over and effectively made the republic useless. Is there some rule for when one can or cannot revoke title from a republic? e: Maybe this is all a fool's errand. Is there any compelling reason to have a king-level republic vassal? I suppose one could do just as well with several ducal republics. Aschlafly fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 14:10
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I think I would transfer count vassals from the kingdom I wanted them to have, and hope they create it. Just don't give them enough land before you're an emperor.
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Jun 17, 2015 14:38
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Elias_Maluco posted:
I tend to do that as well. Another trick I found was to take the first holding in a province and if their stack is unwilling to attack my stack get mine moving out and away from them. The ai figures, heh I'll just move in and take it back and they can take the attacker penalty, then I cancel the move and they don't stop moving in so I get to be the defender. I never bothered much with the raiding stuff as the norse, how does that work? Your turn on the red icon, besiege the place like normal and bounce on? Can you get away with having a lower number of troops? I regularly see like 500 guys besieging places there's no way they are taking normally. If its my problem I'll go hunt them but normally I'm thinking wtf are they up to. Current game I'm king of denmark with some time to kill before I can do the next thing Goofballs fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 15:49
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Goofballs posted:I never bothered much with the raiding stuff as the norse, how does that work? Your turn on the red icon, besiege the place like normal and bounce on? Can you get away with having a lower number of troops? I regularly see like 500 guys besieging places there's no way they are taking normally. If its my problem I'll go hunt them but normally I'm thinking wtf are they up to. Current game I'm king of denmark with some time to kill before I can do the next thing Basically yeah. Sieges are where the money is with cities, temples, and castles going from most to last valuable. There's also a sort of skimming mechanic where you can land anywhere without enough troops to siege and still get x amount of gold every four days. That's what you'll see the ai doing for a really long time into the game, but as a player it's not worth the bother until you can win sieges with vassal levies and retinues.
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Jun 17, 2015 17:00
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Aschlafly posted:e: Maybe this is all a fool's errand. Is there any compelling reason to have a king-level republic vassal? I suppose one could do just as well with several ducal republics. IIRC, you can't actually give kingdom level titles to vassal republics or theocracies. The best you can do is give them the dejure land and maybe some seed money so they don't blow all their cash on county improvements. I'd recommend just sticking with a bunch of ducal republics.
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Jun 17, 2015 18:25
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Is going from Tribal Norway (mostly southern and central norway with some friendly relatives holding the north) to Merchant republic Norway going to get me killed? I think I am a long way off from doing this since I'll need to reform my Germanic religion.
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Jun 18, 2015 04:26
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Keeper Garrett posted:Is going from Tribal Norway (mostly southern and central norway with some friendly relatives holding the north) to Merchant republic Norway going to get me killed? I think I am a long way off from doing this since I'll need to reform my Germanic religion. Probably not. The main problem is that most of your troops evaporate and you don't start making bank right away, so you are vulnerable for a few years. Try to save as much gold as you can ahead of time, and marry/betrothe your kids into every possible family nearby so you have lots and lots of nearby allies.
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Jun 18, 2015 05:01
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Ahh yeah, I will still have tribal vassals, but they won't like me as much and since I get their troops directly it'll be harder to get nearly as many. 1100 hours and I have yet to play as a Merchant Republic. I love this game.
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Jun 18, 2015 05:13
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Man once you get rolling though a Norse merchant republic is really good. I have a retinue of 8k, a mercenary army of 6k, and I'm still getting +22 gold a month. My vassals are still catching up (11k from them) but in the meantime I built a couple castles in my capital province and my personal levies are another 7k strong. It's only 911 and I have the Scandinavian empire formed, I have half of England, and the Germanic faith is reformed. The kings of Francia are Waldensian, and the king of Lombardy is somehow a Sunni. He took over Rome triggering the crusades in 903 but the only crusade to retake Lombardy so far failed miserably.
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Jun 18, 2015 07:03
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After many a game of getting ganked the moment I convert from tribalism, I'd recommend waiting to convert until all of your demesne has all the tribal upgrades, most of your vassals have a Stone Hillfort/Large Market City, and you have enough gold stockpiled to hire plenty of mercenaries, start construction on a new holding in each county in your demesne, start some upgrades in your capital, and some extra gold as a buffer.
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Jun 18, 2015 10:03
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Note: that is a lot of gold. And a lot of prestige for those tribal buildings. It is worth it, though: When you upgrade your tribal holdings, you'll wind up with a few buildings you likely don't have the technology for.
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Jun 18, 2015 13:32
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Running a massive Celtic pagan Breton empire on Tanistry is all awesome and thematic but GOD is it infuriating sometimes. Though I guess even that's kind of awesome in a King Lear meets Hamlet kind of way.My High King of Britannia, Salamon the Cunning, spent his 25-year reign following up his mother's conquest of England by turning around and destabilizing the Karling empire (since they actually formed it for once, and unified everything between the France-Brittany border and Austria, which is terrifying for any pagan neighbours that let them get their feet under them). Salamon outlived five Carolingian emperors (mostly because he executed four of them after capturing them in battle and got the fifth executed by a usurper he helped win a civil war) and fathered nine children, eight of whom were still alive when he died at 51. Which is where the trouble started. I'd hoped for of his four eldest kids (all daughters, the WORST of whom had a highest stat of 12) to succeed him so I gave them all duchies I'd sliced off the Karlings to raise their profile, but despite this the vassals insisted on voting for the 13-year old kid of his cousin the Princess of Bedford and her Welsh duke husband instead. Fine, fine, this is how Tanistry tends to work, the kid looks promising enough. But of course, during the regency, three separate pretender factions form, (two of them, of course, for Salamon's daughters - one of whom he'd nominated before he died but nobody else had voted for), one of them fires and thankfully takes the critical mass of support for the other two with them, I spend the entire regency plus two more years fighting a civil war, followed by a Welsh liberation revolt that has triggered just as I won the civil war, and while fighting it was kind of a blast trying to scramble together the cash for more mercenaries etc, and mapgame the best way to trick the rebel stacks that outnumbered me into attacking at a disadvantage, all that death would have been avoided if there was some way for vassals to remember "hey I just voted for this guy over these ladies maybe it'd be silly to immediately revolt to overthrow him?" My only consolation is that the Karlings have meanwhile lost Italy and East Francia to revolts, are fighting two separate Waldensian heretic revolts and an independence war, and have literally five dynasty members left alive. The work continues. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Jun 18, 2015 |
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Jun 18, 2015 20:29
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Merchant republics are pretty fun. I started a Venice game in 769 (note: don't do this. You can't build trading posts for a while) and I've just been cucking all the other patricians to get their wives to help me murder them. I've completely wiped out two houses in less than 40 years.
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Jun 18, 2015 23:09
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Had a weird outcome just now. I was doing a great holy war for Burgandy, hit 100% and it turned independent, I think? Its savoy not Burgandy. It all belongs to some random Karling, he has like 47 titles. He's Germanic religion. I guess he converted at the last second. Now his heir is some other karling who's a duke for the king Lothargia. I won't even have a case for war when my troops leave. He will take marriage to a niece but not matrlinearly so I don't even know what to do with him. I guess he's an ally. If he get crusaded him I'm not helping. I'm a little annoyed with the outcome. The fucker doesn't even have any troops or money. I'm guessing it ends badly for him. Oh and of course because he has no loving money he can't make a title so he can't hand out counties Goofballs fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jun 19, 2015 |
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Jun 19, 2015 01:31
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Getting out of losing all your poo poo to a holy war by converting to the religion in question is an option for characters, yes.
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Jun 19, 2015 01:58
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Suddenly got an idea: Instead of the somewhat clunky carousing and feast interface elements; FEATS AND CAROUSING SHOULD BE PLOTS, with the same auto invite mechanics and maybe with event modifiers based on diplo and stewardship. Mind blown, I know. I hope paradoxdev-sempai notices me.
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Jun 19, 2015 10:49
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Can't say I agree with that, feastings fine as it is, and costs gold like it should. Plots dont cost any gelt. Carousing should be reworked a little maybe, with an invite all vassals button or something its a pain in the arse when youre a kingdom or empire to get everyone involved.
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Jun 19, 2015 12:56
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Does anyone have a good recommendation for playing as a Merchant Republic?
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Jun 19, 2015 17:13
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Hadaka Apron posted:Does anyone have a good recommendation for playing as a Merchant Republic? As with all things in For something bit less vanilla, you could one of the Baltic pagans. Possibly one of the Khazar Counts on the Black Sea?
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Jun 19, 2015 17:29
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I was actually thinking of starting as one of the existing Republics in-game without being tribal first, but I'll give Ireland a whirl.
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Jun 19, 2015 17:32
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Can't say I agree with that, feastings fine as it is, and costs gold like it should. Plots dont cost any gelt. Carousing should be reworked a little maybe, with an invite all vassals button or something its a pain in the arse when youre a kingdom or empire to get everyone involved. Plots are also for hostile, covert stuff. Feasting and carousing doesn't really make sense as something that should block out planning to murder someone or fabricating a claim on a title. One nice thing that I think HIP does with feasts is that it changes the decision to something you can activate at any time, and then it fires when October rolls around - same with hunts and summer fairs in their respective time frames. Basically rather than having to watch the clock for the right date to roll around, you just queue them up whenever you want and the game handles it for you. A "carouse" decision could also be added that would basically just invite a bunch of random vassals or courtiers, for when you don't really care about individual relationships and just want the carousing diplo bonuses. Hadaka Apron posted:I was actually thinking of starting as one of the existing Republics in-game without being tribal first, but I'll give Ireland a whirl. Venice is usually a safe bet - being an island makes you ridiculously defensible so long as you get your levies up BEFORE enemies arrive, you get 6 holding slots and are surrounded by wealthy territories, and you can pledge allegiance to the Byzantine Empire and take it over from the inside if you want to since you're a de jure vassal of theirs. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jun 19, 2015 |
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Jun 19, 2015 17:33
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What if we had feast plots that were surprise birthday parties.
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Jun 19, 2015 17:35
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What Merchant republics have you made in your games? I had one in Basra in my Saffarid game and one in Murcia in my Basque Spanish game.
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Jun 19, 2015 17:38
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Do Hungarians ever whinge about the map in the Paradox forums? Every time I do modding with the vanilla map, I get to Hungary and I start getting all rustled. Pest is half of Budapest, which straddles the Danube River. The County of Pest, in CK2, doesn't even touch the Danube River, though. It's on top of the Tisza, which is an entirely different river. Groogy, pls fix. The discrepancy makes it really hard to approximate the location of Roman settlements in Pannonia, okay. 
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Jun 19, 2015 18:06
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Comedy Republic option - a ruler-designed Zoroastrian somewhere in the British Isles.
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Jun 19, 2015 18:33
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So do tribals need to be part of a reformed religion AND go feudal in order to get off of elective gavelkind? I just reformed the Romuva and I could swear the tooltip said that I'd have access to the other succession laws when I did.
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Jun 19, 2015 18:36
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CharlestheHammer posted:What if we had feast plots that were surprise birthday parties. I like the idea
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Jun 19, 2015 19:04
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CharlestheHammer posted:What if we had feast plots that were surprise birthday parties.
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Jun 19, 2015 19:07
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 And when plots go awry!
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Jun 19, 2015 19:44
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