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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Feudal European countries have a considerably better unit mix than tribals. Especially if they're a more advanced one like France. You'll be stuck with mostly light infantry and archers, while they'll have a lot more heavy infantry, spears, cavalry, etc. They're probably worth easily 3 of your troops each. If they recruit a holy order, it's even worse for you. Unless it's early on in the game, in the earlier start dates. Then the unit mixes are more even between christians and pagans. As the game goes on and feudalism gets more advanced, the pagan tribes slowly lose their advantages. That's one of the interesting things about the early start dates IMO. If you're pagan, you get huge defensive bonuses but it's a race to reform your religion and turn to feudalism before the christians get too powerful. If you're a christian, you just have to hold out as long as possible against viking attacks until your tech and troop quality gets advanced enough. Then pagans all over the map will start collapsing and dying off or converting to christianity or islam or whatever. Generals can also have a big impact, especially since they added personal treasuries and artifacts. Some artifacts might give a character +10% morale damage, or defense bonuses, or whatever. So sometimes you get a perfect storm of shittiness during one battle, in which your generals might have lovely traits, making them roll a "timid advance" (or something along those lines) tactic that ruins their performance on that flank, while you just happen to be going up against some super-general with good traits, high martial skill and a bunch of combat artifacts in his inventory and he just crushes you.
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Oct 7, 2018 01:50
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Terrain and attacking over a river can also screw things up for the attackers. The former you don't have a ton of control over usually, but the latter is something to avoid.
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Oct 7, 2018 01:52
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Is there anything in the game that tells you what kind of troops are good for what, or is it just better to push heavy infantry/whatever over other kinds of troops..? Mostly I just try to have way more guys than whoever's attacking me, which is generally the best strategy. Does morale boosting stuff help much? I feel like I've won wars because I have good morale-boosting modifiers. But I could be making poo poo up.
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Oct 7, 2018 03:09
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big dyke energy posted:Is there anything in the game that tells you what kind of troops are good for what, or is it just better to push heavy infantry/whatever over other kinds of troops..? Mostly I just try to have way more guys than whoever's attacking me, which is generally the best strategy. Generally there isn't really much in terms of "specialization" in terms of troop types. Like terrain types do affect some more than others, but not really in significant enough numbers that you always want say, pikemen on the mountains or whatever. Basically all there is to know is that light infantry are garbage and serve mainly to inflate an army's apparent size. They can be more or less ignored when estimating matchups unless both sides are tribal in which case all they've got is LI. Archers used to be good but are fairly useless now, so you can lump them in with LI. Everything else is pretty much "fine". Like statistically heavy cavalry are much better than other types, but you won't get them in the kinds of numbers where it will make that much of a difference - 90% of everyone's troops come from levies, which have basically a fixed composition across the board, so ultimately only army size really matters except in extreme cases (if you get really, really big as an empire, you can have full retinue armies roaming around that are large enough to take on levies on their own and will punch way above their weight because they're pure HI or cavalry or whatever rather than having a ton of LI/archer filler). Morale modifiers can make a significant difference when you have two armies that are very closely matched in numbers, but if you're heavily outnumbered they won't really help and if you outnumber the enemy they won't matter because you'll win anyway. There are a few key scenarios where you can see a much smaller army beat a much larger one, but these are rare and generally not something you'll be counting on to win wars - they're just nice when they happen. Usually it's a combination of a bunch of factors like defending against a river crossing, on good terrain, where you get the "narrow" bonus on one or more flanks. And as mentioned, having a lot of retinues tends to give you better army composition than pure levies so they will hit a bit harder overall than other armies their size.
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Oct 7, 2018 03:21
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Sydin posted:Order of importance for combat, at least in my experience: What you get bonuses to is also a huge deal that informs what you build and how you fight with it. Most (all?) Italians get morale bonuses to pikes which is massive. It makes pikes way better on offense and punch far, far above their weight on defense. Most nations just want to spam as much heavy infantry as they can vomit on the field but boy howdy do Italian pikes wreck poo poo.
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Oct 7, 2018 03:53
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If your army has a small or empty flank, which comes up occasionally if you have few units with unbalanced numbers and aren't paying much attention, then the enemy's corresponding flank will dogpile your center with big damage bonuses. Also, be wary of terrain and generals. Those are the big gamechangers in combat. Also, sometimes the RNG just doesn't go your way at the beginning of a combat, and once a battle starts to lean one way then things tend to snowball.
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Oct 7, 2018 03:57
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Defensive pagans can also punch far above their weight when defending at home, but this obviously doesn't apply to a Norse army.
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Oct 7, 2018 04:09
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Rirse posted:What the gently caress, I am attacking France with vikings, and I have 4500 soldiers and they got 2000 and they won. Get yourself an axe.
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Oct 7, 2018 04:42
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Gavelkind is total bullshit, I played well as Duchess of Tuscany and still ended up with only one county eventually because my characters had too many sons. It was a fun game, but I never really got anywhere despite being King of Denmark at one point. Next game I'm starting out with someone who has Primogeniture right from the start.
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Oct 7, 2018 10:28
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I never really played without whichever expansion got rid of crown authority but apparently you can get ultimogeniture (youngest eligible child is heir instead of oldest) at way lower authority which is a good alternative and is actually my preferred succession type. You end up with more regencies but also with much longer reigns.
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Oct 7, 2018 15:01
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ToxicSlurpee posted:What you get bonuses to is also a huge deal that informs what you build and how you fight with it. Most (all?) Italians get morale bonuses to pikes which is massive. It makes pikes way better on offense and punch far, far above their weight on defense. It's specifically Italian and also Scottish culture, not Latin or Celtic groups, nor Lombard or Pictish. This also gets even better with the cultural tactics. +300% Pikemen Offensive, +120% HI Offensive, + 60% Heavy Cav Offensive.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:14
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The dumb thing is you don't have a lot of levers to control your mix unless you have retinues at which point you just stack cultural, defense, or heavy depending on the bonus situation or your war meta tactics (alpha strike the capital with defense, alpha strike the host with heavy). Burn the whole tactics system to the ground.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:36
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Just started a game as Turkish nomads. Being a horde isn't quite as easy as it was when the DLC first came out but I've still managed to take over most of the western steppe. I'm preparing to take on the Khazars who are the other power in the region with the ultimate goal of conquering Constantinople.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:48
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On the other hand I low-key love being a Malian Merchant Republic and drowning the world in my light infantry hordes even though they objectively suck, they still siege like a mofo
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Oct 7, 2018 18:59
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Is there something going on with Nomads and battle bonuses as well? I routinely see my armies as a nomad crushing larger and equal size enemy armies without much trouble. Thats even when I was stacking horse archers because I didn't know what was good. is it just heavy and light cavalry overrunning levied light infantry or is there something else going on?
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Oct 8, 2018 00:29
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Horse Archers were once good, at least one iteration of the combat system ago and possibly longer. Part of the problem with retinues and combat generally is they've changed the balance a million times without ever really fixing the underlying issues, so it's almost impossible to get advice and know it's current (especially when it's usually more than good enough to just have more guys and better commanders.)
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Oct 8, 2018 00:32
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MinistryofLard posted:Is there something going on with Nomads and battle bonuses as well? I routinely see my armies as a nomad crushing larger and equal size enemy armies without much trouble. Nomad armies have MUCH better composition than normal levies because they're all cavalry. Even light cav are significantly stronger than light infantry (one light cav is equal to 2 light infantry in skirmish phase and 3 in the melee phase), and when you have super specialized armies, tactics tend to have a much stronger effect because your entire army benefits from the bonuses and nobody takes the penalties. They will punch way above their weight, especially since if a tactic would only buff units that aren't in your army, it gets removed from consideration, so you'll get all cavalry friendly tactics from your generals and no infantry friendly tactics. The tactic choice thing is pretty major because normally your composition is so mixed that it tends to pretty much cancel itself out with buffs and penalties. Especially since if you're a nomad you're probably in the Altaic group, who get a cultural tactic that happens to be very good for everything you have. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Oct 8, 2018 |
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Oct 8, 2018 00:40
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If you're in the altaic culture group I'm pretty sure you get a tactic that keeps the battle in the skirmish phase if you stack light cavalry, and since light cavalry are like, the best skirmish phase unit, it makes them able to demolish armies many times their size
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Oct 8, 2018 02:44
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How does the restrict marriage option work? I was over my demense size, so I gave a barony to my five year old son and heir. The plauge came and now Ireland is ruled by an infant girl of my dynasty. Tried to bethroth them but she doesn't show up as an option. Why?
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Oct 8, 2018 05:04
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Sydin posted:3. Commander stats/traits. This is getting into the weeds of combat tactics (you can read about it in detail here if you want but imo it's not necessary) but basically look for guys with high martial and no negative traits. Stutter/Lisp, Craven, and Cruel in particular are the worst to have on a commander. Cruel is... an odd duck, because it debuffs everything but your cavalry, but buffs the living holy gently caress out of your cavalry. If you're running retinues that spam cavalry, Cruel might actually be kind of broken. e: No, seriously, it's +180% offense to light and camel cav, and +300% to heavy cav. That's goddamn bonkers.
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Oct 8, 2018 05:21
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Cruel is... an odd duck, because it debuffs everything but your cavalry, but buffs the living holy gently caress out of your cavalry. If you're running retinues that spam cavalry, Cruel might actually be kind of broken.
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Oct 8, 2018 06:07
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darthbob88 posted:It's specifically Italian and also Scottish culture, not Latin or Celtic groups, nor Lombard or Pictish. This also gets even better with the cultural tactics. +300% Pikemen Offensive, +120% HI Offensive, + 60% Heavy Cav Offensive. Huh. Did that ever change? I remember getting just plain all morale, all the time when I was playing Venice. It led to a hilarious fight when the Byzantines charged into my blob of pointy boys that they outnumbered 3:1 in the mountains. The pointy boys didn't even drop below half morale. It was hilarious to watch the gigantic Byz blob slam into them while my guys just went "lol, nah." Still, morale bonuses really shouldn't be underestimated.
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Oct 8, 2018 07:05
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Charlz Guybon posted:How does the restrict marriage option work? I was over my demense size, so I gave a barony to my five year old son and heir. The restrict marriage box keeps your landed children from arranging their own marriages for 10 years. Are you trying to arrange a marriage between the queen of Ireland (who's not your courtier) and your son (also not your courtier any more)? That's not something you can do.
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Oct 8, 2018 07:42
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Phlegmish posted:Gavelkind is total bullshit, I played well as Duchess of Tuscany and still ended up with only one county eventually because my characters had too many sons. It was a fun game, but I never really got anywhere despite being King of Denmark at one point. Next game I'm starting out with someone who has Primogeniture right from the start. Kill your family. How did you manage to lose King of Denmark? Switching to elective to avoid gavelkind? Try elective gavelkind sometime its the best of both worlds. Polish people and maybe some of the other eastern europeans in their culture group default to it, makes for a pretty fun game of constant civil wars.
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Oct 8, 2018 08:13
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:Try elective gavelkind sometime its the best of both worlds. no don't
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Oct 8, 2018 08:37
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it's funny that this thread didn't get a halloween rename because it basically didn't need one
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Oct 8, 2018 08:44
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:Try elective gavelkind sometime its Fixed that for you.
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Oct 8, 2018 08:51
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Torrannor posted:Fixed that for you. I kinda like elective gavelkind better than straight gavelkind. It makes it easier to reassemble poo poo as you conquer the gently caress out of your brothers.
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Oct 8, 2018 09:11
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it's also pretty easy to game elective gavelkind if you have access to decent conquest cbs. have as many off-brand counties outside of your capitol duchy or petty kingdom as you do sons. just only have the one top level title... or some weird titular/single county title that'll you'll eventually have to kill a brother for, but you know, that's a pretty cake war cuz he only has the one county.
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Oct 8, 2018 10:48
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Various Meat Products posted:The restrict marriage box keeps your landed children from arranging their own marriages for 10 years. Are you trying to arrange a marriage between the queen of Ireland (who's not your courtier) and your son (also not your courtier any more)? That's not something you can do. Yeah. That's dumb. As long as your kid is a minor you should have complete control over that if his gaurdian.
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Oct 8, 2018 12:16
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And immediately upon loading the game up, I had the options to betroth the two so I did. Weird.
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Oct 8, 2018 13:52
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:Kill your family. How did you manage to lose King of Denmark? Generally killing your family is how you lose the King of Denmark—Norway will inherit.
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Oct 8, 2018 14:21
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I was two duchies short of reforming the roman empire but then my female heir inherited and a bunch of vassals set me back by declaring independence. Misogyny destroyed Rome.
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Oct 8, 2018 16:11
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:Kill your family. How did you manage to lose King of Denmark? Switching to elective to avoid gavelkind? I had so many heirs that my main heir ended up with only one county. Interestingly, it wasn't even my Scandinavian subjects that rose against me, it was one of my rear end in a top hat brothers. Is there a list somewhere of all the rulers that start out with Primogeniture? Had a good game going as the Duke of Lombardy until I stupidly non-matrilineally married off both of my granddaughter heirs and it was impossible to rectify the situation due to an insane combination of events
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Oct 8, 2018 16:25
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Well gently caress me silly, apparently they're doing a new Arab portrait set as well.  https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/new-arab-portraits-confirmed.1122636/
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Oct 8, 2018 18:09
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I gotta admit, I always kinda liked the Arab portraits, and I'll be sad to see them replaced. The new portraits are always good though, so at least there's that.
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Oct 8, 2018 18:17
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catlord posted:I gotta admit, I always kinda liked the Arab portraits, and I'll be sad to see them replaced. The new portraits are always good though, so at least there's that. It's 100% up to you if those portraits get replaced or not. Of course, if you are like me, then there's no choice. GIVE ME ALL THE PORTRAITS!
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Oct 8, 2018 18:50
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Torrannor posted:Of course, if you are like me, then there's no choice. GIVE ME ALL THE PORTRAITS! Yeah same. Man, they're really working their portrait guy to the bone, that brings us up to six entirely new portrait packs: French/Occitan Italian West Slavic Central Slavic South Slavic Arab In addition to all the new portrait assets for the new crowns, societies, and religion, and on top of all of that the Byzantines are getting new holding art too.
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Oct 8, 2018 18:54
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It's so absurd, really. I've never paid for any cosmetic content. Cool mounts in WoW, cool card backs or alternate heroes in Hearthstone, blood pack in Warhammer, whatever. I don't need it. But I bought every single CK2 portrait pack.
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Oct 8, 2018 19:02
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I was playing as Alfonso of Leon in the 1066 start and within 20 years the pope called a crusade. I've read people's advice about just sending some soldiers there to hang out so you get the "Crusader" trait/modifier, so shipped an army over and just had them camp out in Acre and stopped looking in on them. I'd written them off cause Christians were getting whooped all over the map. somehow we won and crazily I'd "contributed" the most, so now I had the Kingdom of Jerusalem and was over my demesne limit by 55. e: this game I'd decided that my daughters were gonna run poo poo (I had three in a row, a boy, and two more girls) so I formed the Empire of Leon and gave one of them the Kingdom of Jerusalem + all lower titles. Now I just need to get Primogeniture up and running indigi fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Oct 8, 2018 |
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Oct 8, 2018 20:01
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