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ilitarist posted:In all my years of playing CK2 I never actually got to play in Ireland. Just tried it, earliest start dates, one of 2 province dudes - Dublin de jure duchy, I think. I previously played Easter European tribals, but those were Pagan and much more dynamic. You want to use the Extort Tribute CB a bunch at first. For the life of your ruler you'll be able to call in that independent chief to fight in your wars. Once you've beaten one, wait a while for his army to recover (a year? a couple months? It's been a minute, can't remember), then attack a single province you have a claim on and hopefully win it with your tributary's support. Jade Dragon gives you some new CBs that let you attack neighboring provinces without a claim for some amount of gold and piety (prestige? I think it was piety) so if you've got that you can steamroll the island fairly quick, probably within the lifetime of one ruler.
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Jun 11, 2019 00:07
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I'm wrapping up my Irish Empire first time for babby run*. I have Legacy of Rome, and Way of Life. What should I do next? I am a basic bitch who is just learning. *(Turns out my queens first marriage was not matrilineal, and also, I hosed up the succession. I think I can revert to an earlier save before I did, and go full Tanistry everywhere, but I mean, is that really a good idea?)
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Jun 11, 2019 00:13
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Eminent Domain posted:Sometimes this ends poorly. I've only had it once though. Yeah, I was wondering about that.  It's the little things in this game that make me happy: 
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Jun 11, 2019 00:14
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bunnyofdoom posted:I'm wrapping up my Irish Empire first time for babby run*. I have Legacy of Rome, and Way of Life. What should I do next? I am a basic bitch who is just learning. Join the 1066 Spanish thunderdome. King of Leon and his 20ish Intrigue along with being pretty close in the line of succession for the kingdoms his brothers have give you some options. Any of the other brothers are good too as everyone has claims on everything. Oh and you can always go holy warring for the rest of the Iberian peninsula if you don't want to beat up other Catholics. I am hella PEEVED fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 01:22
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That sounds pretty fun
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Jun 11, 2019 01:39
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So Khazaria converted to Christianity, conquered most of Russia, settled down in France(?!) and lost their non-french possessions. The Khazar kings were overthrown by a local Frankish dynasty, whose Queen was later excommunicated. In order to be crowned Queen of Ireland, the Pope demanded I launch an excommunication war against France and I ended up putting a rightful Catholic Khazar back on the throne. This game. 
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Jun 11, 2019 01:54
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Grand Prize Winner posted:You want to use the Extort Tribute CB a bunch at first. For the life of your ruler you'll be able to call in that independent chief to fight in your wars. Once you've beaten one, wait a while for his army to recover (a year? a couple months? It's been a minute, can't remember), then attack a single province you have a claim on and hopefully win it with your tributary's support. Jade Dragon gives you some new CBs that let you attack neighboring provinces without a claim for some amount of gold and piety (prestige? I think it was piety) so if you've got that you can steamroll the island fairly quick, probably within the lifetime of one ruler. Yeah, that's what I did but I haven't even required any help from my vassals. My first ruler had become a duke and expanded my realm from 2 to 5 provinces. Second one had tons of prestige due to obsessive dueling and manage to create Ireland as well as turn it into the Merchant Republic. And it was much easier than expected, probably thanks to Christianity. Of course, this also means problems. I have smaller retinue and raise troops manpower, no looting. Due to early tech I only have 1 trade post. We'll see what happens.
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Jun 11, 2019 06:53
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This republic gameplay is... meditative. I remember liking it when the DLC had just come out but back then it was bug-ridden and unbalanced. But now I look at it and the core loop fascinates me much more. Unlike feudal lords, patricians have interesting internal politics combined with external politics. For feudal lords (even with enclave) you don't really care about your neighbors except in fight or flight terms. Even with de jure mechanics ownership over land is binary. Your dynasty is really connected to your realm, usually if one suffers then the other crumbles. I feel that all of this dictates a very specific playstyle. You have so many options but the right one is military and a little diplomacy. Others often feel like what you do when you can allow yourself to be ineffective. What good is your ruler specializing in sciences or becoming a famous seducer if someone comes and conquers you? Perhaps it's more viable when you play as a vassal but I'm used to playing in places of civilization clash (Eastern Europe and Middle East) so the enemy more often wants to kill you rather than vassalize. Anyway, the republic feels like it utilizes game mechanics much better. You can see ahead that your dumb son will probably not become a doge after your death. But that's fine. You'll still have your trade empire to expand, you can even handle some minor wars, you can prepare by befriending the probable next doge. More importantly, your character can do whatever he's good at. You'd still want to raise a good heir but you can also just have a big family and point and whoever looks good and throw some money at electors. The republic will continue to function and maybe even expand without you and that's fine. There it really feels like you're playing as a dynasty cause it makes sense for you to realize your characters potential instead of trying to turn your virgin heir into Chad Brilliant Strategist. And when you interact with other rulers you peacefully add holdings in their territories which leads to interesting outcomes, it's not just about trading land. Kinda wish they'd double down on this in CK3 and find a way to make gameplay for everyone more character-focus and less land-owning focused. They've even managed to do a similar thing for tribals who can build up with prestige, but for feudal lords, you mostly use prestige to get more Casus Belli (at least with Jade Dragon, previously I struggled to understand why do you really care about prestige as long as it's above 0) and you want gold to sustain your army, treasury, good relations with everyone and so on and so on. I understand that gameplay I'm describing is hard to marry to feudal lords (except maybe Byzantium?..) but it feels so much more suited to those mechanics and even the basic idea of the game.
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Jun 11, 2019 08:54
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DeathChicken posted:As for the earlier question on the Crusades, the Pope seems to heavily factor in how many dudes you got killed when it comes time to handing out rewards. So running your decently sized army into a giant sized meat grinder would be a Good Thing as far as that goes. Haha, that is exactly what happened. Gotta say, creates a real moral hazard...
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Jun 11, 2019 09:13
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i could not disagree more about the republic stuff; the internal politics in particular are only relevant until you have killed your first crop of great families, after that they are nothing more than trade post pinatas for you to carve up any time they hit the magic number 4. the initial crop when you become a republic ostensibly will have land, holdings, and power that makes them capable of fighting back, but once you overleap that hurdle none of the newly spawned families will have a chance in hell of stepping to your established empire. there's no reason to ever give other families an inch, so they never get one. i've literally never run into a situation after the first generation or two where my dumb son won't become doge because anyone who might edge his incompetent rear end out suddenly gets an urge to fly off of their mansion rooftop. i have absolutely no reason to value these other families, so i do not. i have every reason to value being doge, so i value that quite a lot. feudal games demand that you give a large amount of power to vassals in order to manage the realm, and due to the claims system it is practically a guarantee that someone will eventually swerve out of line to take a swing at you in a big way.
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Jun 11, 2019 09:24
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It just depends on how you play it. Yeah, you can minmax and devastate the other families in short order every time, the same way you can overthrow your liege and put the rest of the realm under your boot as part of a feudal empire every time. But there's something to be said for playing as a vassal, and also for playing a piece of a republic rather than solely playing as a hereditary monarch. And it's not purely a role-playing thing. The stronger your rival families are, and the more they build, the more they contribute in taxes to the doge. The more they can step in and rule without immediately being a 1000% drop off from your personal demense and fracturing your realm if they become doge. The entire empire gets richer and stronger if you allow them to thrive alongside you. My favorite way to play lately has been to kill off all the families, and then put the fresh families in charge of a coastal kingdoms somewhere over time. Let them develop and build out that area, and give them plenty of space of their own by putting other families kingdoms further away. They'll tend towards building up around their personal capitals. As they get stronger, deeper, and more competitive, republic gameplay really takes off, because the family rivalries and trade wars become much more serious, and much more entertaining. And you still have to manage your feudal vassals the same way you would as a feudal ruler, so that isn't exclusive to them. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 09:38
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You're probably right. I have hundreds of hours in this game but I never got that "deep" into it, I haven't powergame it or continue the game for a long time after I feel safe (meanwhile I rarely drop EU4 game). I usually went for harder starts and either perished or created an empire and become bored with sustaining the feudal realm. But this first generation looks fun to me at the moment. Those feudal swings happen, of course, but they rarely feel impactful or interesting. Maybe it's because I don't pay enough attention to feudal lords; the game has "threats" screen but it would probably benefit more from some sort of "important characters" screen which is helped by a council somewhat but not much. Even in something like Imperator Rome internal troubles feel better to me; there you can see character loyalty stat being affected by a variety of things, most of which are due to your actions. Internal problem in CK2 is usually about a grandson of some dude I've granted a title now hates my current ruler because he's ambitious and doesn't like gluttonous and I have a short reign. I don't have a sense of history with that dude cause I'll probably never interacted with him before, he's one of my 10 vassals. Dealing with him will require a war probably and, again, that's why there are martial-focused rulers and bad ones: diplomacy and intrigue may allow me to murder the dude but it's unreliable and passive, and stewardship approach will only make it a little easier to bribe that person which will probably not really help. Then again I might pay more attention if I play on higher difficulty or force myself to continue into the late game.
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Jun 11, 2019 09:40
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It's a matter of playstyle. There are a lot of optimal ways to play CK2 that make the game more boring to me. There are several ways to play merchant republics for example. Playing as Venice, you can absolutely stay a one county state, while still being the dominant military (and economic) power in the Mediterranean Sea, thanks to your retinues and trade posts. But there's always the chance that a dumb AI doge gets you into wars that get you conquered by somebody else, causing a game over. In that case, I neuter the other families just for self preservation, and it can be a fun experience. Or I can try to make the republic a small kingdom, like forming Sicily as Amalfi. Then you can let the other families keep more of their trade posts, and even give them cities and counties in your realm, and it can be a pretty engaging experience, too. It's also not as risky when you lose the dogeship. This can make for some really fun emergent storytelling, which you wouldn't experience if you play optimally and keep the other 4 patrician houses being ruled by minors.
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Jun 11, 2019 09:59
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I still say the biggest disappointment about merchant republics is the lack of competition. I don't mean within your republic, I mean other republics. I'd love for the AI to get changed a little so that any coastal King+ will attempt to establish a vassal merchant republic. I want the trade zone mapmode to be a Technicolor rainbow of economic struggle. I've seen the AI accidently make republics before but only like twice. I still like merchant republics as they are though. Most of the time when I play tribals I form a MR rather than going feudal. Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 13:19
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I feel it's sorta kinda problem of AI?.. Trade republics are crazy useful and when I get big enough as a feudal lord I want them nearby - even if they wouldn't pay me they'd be useful to get those crazy bonuses to town income. As I understand it historically merchant republics stayed small, so they're more like towns in CK2, but even those towns were much more of a pain for kings with their liberties and control over money. So big merchant republics that game portrays as duchy+ size entities should be very hard to control or have a great autonomy if we want to stay historical and for AI to not look dumb. Also strange that creating a vassal merchant republic is the only interesting interaction with the economics for a feudal lord, there's also Silk Road but it's very limited geographically. Every other internal development is about paying gold for a building to get more gold later, even CK1 had more of that.
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Jun 11, 2019 13:26
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Coolguye is a minmaxer. About 3 months ago he advertised a stream aimed at educating beginners about the mechanics of CK2, and as soon as it started immediately began buying debutantes for some minmaxy reason that made no sense on its face. Not that there’s anything wrong with how you play a video game, but it was pretty confusing. I’m almost the opposite of a minmax player so this discussion on republics has me interested in finding out how enjoyably they play. When my wife and I play together I just tell her “make sure my commanders are married” and she has fun doing that, so working with Patricians together might be even more fun.
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Jun 11, 2019 13:31
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I've always wanted to do a MP game with a buddy of mine where we're both patrician houses in cahoots within the same republic. Likewise with clans in a khaganate. The problem is said buddy continually bounces hard off of CK2 lol. E: almost forgot about this post: WHO'S A GOOD BOY?! I'M A GOOD BOY! Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 13:44
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Fuckin hell Gascony in the new bookmark is hard af
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Jun 11, 2019 13:48
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I wouldn't call myself minmaxer but it's hard for me not to do what seems to be the most useful long-term in CK2 and feudal gameplay seems very obvious in what you do. You have to get land and vassals, you have to have an heir and succession secured and you need a power structure that would minimize the effect of inevitable civil wars. Maybe there's a way to evade all civil wars but it'll take much more attention than minimizing them. Maybe there's a way to forge your dynasty with DNA and bloodlines but it too is hard to do. But in any case, most of the things you can do won't help you that much. Republics exist on their own so it might make perfect sense to focus on your prestige/estate/trade zones/bloodlines/societies/treasuries - all those things that as a feudal lord you do when you can't expand in a normal way or big enough to fool around.
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Jun 11, 2019 14:29
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poo poo I love me a good post-succession civil war. Gives you an excuse to do some house cleaning and put land back in its proper de jure place and strip some power off complete dickhead troublemakers in the process.
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Jun 11, 2019 15:04
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Coolguye is a minmaxer. About 3 months ago he advertised a stream aimed at educating beginners about the mechanics of CK2, and as soon as it started immediately began buying debutantes for some minmaxy reason that made no sense on its face. Not that there’s anything wrong with how you play a video game, but it was pretty confusing. Those debutantes were seduction targets. I also explained precisely why I went the way I did versus a few other solutions that I explained as alternatives (such as just starting with a fistful of kids the way my stream partner did) - because I do not feel safe from a dynasty wipe unless I have at least ~50 dynasts, due to how badly a plague can devastate a family. The entire stream had a huge laugh about how many people my first guy was seducing and made a shitload of anime jokes so I don't feel like this got lost in general. If it is "minmaxing" to use the Seduction focus effectively then I just don't know what to tell you, man. What would you have me do, just get married to a lustful wife and hope the dice decide I get to play the game, especially when I am playing it for others? Come on. Similarly, the idea that I need to just flatly drop basic threat discernment to not be a "minmaxer" seems really absurd to me. Unlike in a feudal setup, where I need my vassals to keep my country together, in an MR I do not need a rival patrician for anything. They are one hundred percent in my drat way and it isn't just mechanically advantageous, it's historically accurate to get rid of those impediments as soon as you can and as vigorously as you can. The mutual need in a feudal setup is what causes interesting alliances, de-facto drift, massive revolts, and in general all of the insane fights and bullshit that make this game what it is. Even if you are very diligent about cleaning house in a feudal society it is going to happen because every rat bastard in your realm is marrying for claims and just them bumping uglies will cause supercounts and superdukes to happen, entirely legally. It's a flaw inherent in the feudal system (from your perspective as a ruler), that causes the interesting conflicts (for you as a player). You can go back 50 pages on this thread and not find a single interesting story about a merchant republic because they're just not that interestingly designed. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 16:31
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My Francian emperor died leaving everything to my only male heir: a 1-year old legitimized bastard that *whoops* turned out to be Sunni. Everything changed to caliphate, including music and UI. Some things are just too gloriously hosed up to save-scum away. It took a decade of constant infighting vassals to climb up to enough prestige to change culture and religion.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:13
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Coolguye posted:Similarly, the idea that I need to just flatly drop basic threat discernment to not be a "minmaxer" seems really absurd to me. Unlike in a feudal setup, where I need my vassals to keep my country together, in an MR I do not need a rival patrician for anything. They are one hundred percent in my drat way and it isn't just mechanically advantageous, it's historically accurate to get rid of those impediments as soon as you can and as vigorously as you can. The mutual need in a feudal setup is what causes interesting alliances, de-facto drift, massive revolts, and in general all of the insane fights and bullshit that make this game what it is. Even if you are very diligent about cleaning house in a feudal society it is going to happen because every rat bastard in your realm is marrying for claims and just them bumping uglies will cause supercounts and superdukes to happen, entirely legally. It's a flaw inherent in the feudal system (from your perspective as a ruler), that causes the interesting conflicts (for you as a player). Once again, if you are expanding and would like to have levies, you will get feudal vassals as a republic, so none of this is exclusive to feudal characters. And once again, by not allowing your rival families to generate any income, you are lowering the amount of money your realm generates. Significantly, because they have the potential to make an assload. It's like having a vassal republic as a feudal character but constantly assassinating all of the family members.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:25
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I don't think I like the Reformation mechanism. It should be something like gaining control of the religion by attracting all the best shamans, getting them literate, getting them to codify the tenets of the faith, and then disseminate and enforce your version of it, something like that. Collecting these locations in the rear end end of nowhere is kinda less cool than it could be.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:58
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Beef posted:My Francian emperor died leaving everything to my only male heir: a 1-year old legitimized bastard that *whoops* turned out to be Sunni. Everything changed to caliphate, including music and UI. Which is kinda funny, if you think about it... "We hate you because you're not Catholic!" "I'll convert immediately!" "Ugh, no. We'd don't let just anyone become Catholic. At least make a name for yourself first."  EDIT: Even funnier when you realize the King is only a year old. Baby's gurgling the Shahada in his cradle and all the dukes are freaking the gently caress out.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:02
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Fintilgin posted:Which is kinda funny, if you think about it... Imagine each vassal going full "He's not christian!!!!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E7Ju3b8wCY Update: Ruler died 2 days after turning 16 in a rando battle, leaving the empire in the hands of a slow uncle and an incapable 0/0/0 heir. Does this game have an invisible misfortune variable?
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Jun 11, 2019 21:28
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For a couple generations England in my most recent run was Taoist. Best guess was that someone within the chinese sphere of influence got a mail-order bride, then died and she shuffled westwards, possibly more than once, until the king of England married her and converted.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:31
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aphid_licker posted:Collecting these locations in the rear end end of nowhere is kinda less cool than it could be. Beef posted:Does this game have an invisible misfortune variable?
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Jun 11, 2019 21:53
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Volkerball posted:Once again, if you are expanding and would like to have levies, you will get feudal vassals as a republic, so none of this is exclusive to feudal characters. And once again, by not allowing your rival families to generate any income, you are lowering the amount of money your realm generates. Significantly, because they have the potential to make an assload. It's like having a vassal republic as a feudal character but constantly assassinating all of the family members. which is what you do when you let a weak patrician family get to 4 trade posts before murdering them all, which often pushes another patrician family to the magic 4 number, repeating the process until you are drowning in trade posts (and, therefore, money). the money made comes from trade posts, not some magical nowhere for existing as a patrician. who's going to make better use of them - you, or your rivals? further, it is unique insofar as you actually do not need feudal vassals as a republic for anything either. grooming vassals as an expanding MR is a requirement, but after you have revoked a county title from a feudal vassal you can give the lord mayor title to any dumbfuck you want. give one grand city and a ducal title to your kids in the worst case scenario if you like, but it's not required. city vassals are no real threat - county level city vassals don't even have a hereditary inheritance mechanic. you don't even have to be especially thorough. feudals require a certain critical mass of other feudal titles to play the claim game so just existing in an area where they are in the minority really neuters their options. and even then, at 40% feudal and appropriate laws, you are still getting substantial levies from them. and that's if you even actually care about the relative number of levies, because by the time you have cycled around 10 times and have ~15 trade posts to your name, you could hire half of the mercenaries in play and still not really feel the burn that bad. it was the same way with feudal rules over MR and Theocracy vassals for a while, you didn't actually need those feudal vassals for anything so you would just make a shitload of MRs and theocracies and rule over that instead. there's a reason why they changed it so feudal lords max out at 10% of those alternate government types in their realm - but this doesn't really apply to merchant republics because cities are what they're made of.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:01
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like Dublin is a better capital for a British empire than London. It's much more central to the rest of the isles. London as a capital only really makes sense if you're working with important holdings on continental Europe. This is where I am in my central Europe game. I say central Europe rather than "Holy Roman Empire" because the power swings have been violent and swift. I went from Emperor to King of East Francia to King of Germany after a war for independence to Duke of Swabia after some shitlord deposed my guy to SIEG SATAN after the Demon Child event triggered, followed by becoming Demon Queen of Germany, swearing fealty to the HRE again, holding onto my kingdom very precariously through some truly masterful abuses of casus belli mechanics (used a plot to nullify a rebellion by killing the heir, demon possessions to neuter factions... that kind of stuff), having Demon Queen the Second take over, and then getting knocked back to Duke of Swabia, holding a patchwork of duchies and counties across central Europe. I'd really like to move my capital to Prag and take the duchy as my demense, but historically I've had Baden as my capital, and I am one block away from getting Tolerance 6 for Full Status of Women. Prag is not so highly advanced, and I really want to make sure that my primary title can preserve any powerful women in my bloodline. On the other hand, the de jure duchy of Prag is pretty much perfectly shaped, and Prag itself has 6 building slots. At the moment, I'm just hoping I can hold my Dark Tyranny together long enough to start being able to rip some other duchies back and eventually rebuild my kingdom. Whether I accomplish this by staying a Satanist and just deposing everyone and installing loyal acolytes, or by going back to being a good Catholic really depends on if I can consolidate my holdings right now, and overcome the problems surrounding my Demense/Vassal limits. Central Europe is a pain because a lot of the ducal titles are just two counties, so you end up with a million dukes running around and it is a pain to keep track of who is actually powerful and who is just a glorified count.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:06
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like Dublin is a better capital for a British empire than London. It's much more central to the rest of the isles. London as a capital only really makes sense if you're working with important holdings on continental Europe. Or if important holdings on the continent are "working with" you. Some uppity Frenchman comes across the channel, it's better for you if you have your armies waiting for him when he lands - as Harald Godwinson found out.
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Jun 11, 2019 23:09
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Warmachine posted:Central Europe is a pain because a lot of the ducal titles are just two counties, so you end up with a million dukes running around and it is a pain to keep track of who is actually powerful and who is just a glorified count. this also helps address your problem because it gets rid of a lot of those trash ducal titles so you never have this confusion again.
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Jun 11, 2019 23:16
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Coolguye posted:the only thing better than having a rival family make you a lot of money is for you yourself to make a lot of money. As patrician families grow, they get richer exponentially, because their family size compounds. By executing families back to back, you're not allowing that to happen. It's the equivalent of catching snowballs rolling down a hill after they've rolled 6 inches here and there and saying look how much snow I have, when all that snow is dwarfed by how much there would've been if one snowball had been allowed to roll all the way down the hill. Those 4 fresh families don't have time to have children, or build palaces or anything, so you're scraping them for 1 trade post at a time, once they've managed to save up enough to build some, which can take a while starting at ground zero over and over. These trade posts are also randomly dispersed, and usually don't fit into your trade zone. So you get one trade post that may not even have a trade zone bonus, much less a connected to capital bonus. I tend to just abandon these once I'm flirting with my trade post limit, because they are a waste of a slot. Exploiting them is hardly the best way to generate income. quote:further, it is unique insofar as you actually do not need feudal vassals as a republic for anything either. grooming vassals as an expanding MR is a requirement, but after you have revoked a county title from a feudal vassal you can give the lord mayor title to any dumbfuck you want. give one grand city and a ducal title to your kids in the worst case scenario if you like, but it's not required. city vassals are no real threat - county level city vassals don't even have a hereditary inheritance mechanic. you don't even have to be especially thorough. feudals require a certain critical mass of other feudal titles to play the claim game so just existing in an area where they are in the minority really neuters their options. and even then, at 40% feudal and appropriate laws, you are still getting substantial levies from them. and that's if you even actually care about the relative number of levies, because by the time you have cycled around 10 times and have ~15 trade posts to your name, you could hire half of the mercenaries in play and still not really feel the burn that bad. Having Republican vassals is silly as a republic. They stack the deck in favor of your biggest strengths, whereas feudal vassals upgrade your weaknesses. Feudal vassals aren't much of a threat either if you develop your republic right, so it's silly to revoke them in the name of establishing control while weakening your realm. A republic that has centuries to develop and isn't constantly getting knee-capped can easily balloon to hundreds of trade posts among all the families, which provides stupid tax revenue. Revenue you need to build and sustain your retinues, and to develop your personal holdings to keep your realm of feudal vassals in check. You also need money to build up your palace, build holdings and upgrades in cities, upgrade your trade posts, etc etc. It's surprisingly easy to spend 100,000 ducats when you have that much. There's a ton of strategizing as you go down that path, and a lot of depth. Your gimmick isn't even the most powerful way to go about building a republic, much less the only way like you seem to be framing it. Don't blame the game for not enjoying the rather tedious way you decided to play as a republic. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 00:47
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Volkerball posted:As patrician families grow, they get richer exponentially, because their family size compounds. By executing families back to back, you're not allowing that to happen. It's the equivalent of catching snowballs rolling down a hill after they've rolled 6 inches here and there and saying look how much snow I have, when all that snow is dwarfed by how much there would've been if one snowball had been allowed to roll all the way down the hill. Those 4 fresh families don't have time to have children, or build palaces or anything, so you're scraping them for 1 trade post at a time, once they've managed to save up enough to build some, which can take a while starting at ground zero over and over. These trade posts are also randomly dispersed, and usually don't fit into your trade zone. So you get one trade post that may not even have a trade zone bonus, much less a connected to capital bonus. I tend to just abandon these once I'm flirting with my trade post limit, because they are a waste of a slot. Exploiting them is hardly the best way to generate income. quote:Having Republican vassals is silly as a republic. They stack the deck in favor of your biggest strengths, whereas feudal vassals upgrade your weaknesses. expansion wars are pretty much exactly what mercenaries are best at because those wars are all on your terms. you can chill out and wait for (or induce) a weak moment in your target if you don't already outclass them. after they have an infant ruler or a revolt kicks off you can pile in and hire a couple of merc bands to blitz down the war target and peace out of the war fast. there's a reason so many early openers for abrahamic religions involve taking a loan from the jews to buy mercs and break out. a MR just does that on a regional scale when attacking. if your concern is precluding invasion then there's a ton of ways you can handle that problem, not the least of which is just stacking skirmish retinues to massively inflate your troop counts and then sticking them on the rear end end of nowhere. AIs will not attack you unless they think they have a good numerical advantage. certainly, it will cost a nontrivial amount of money to fill out such a retinue, but it's virtually cost-free after it fills and the entire point of it is that it should not attack and is there to intimidate. before this too is called out as a 'min-max' strategy, keeping large numbers of dudes hanging around for intimidation rather than effect was a time-honored military tradition until machine guns made it possible to just mow down those dudes like wheat. further, you'll note that i didn't advocate not having ANY feudals, just enough that their game of thrones poo poo can't meaningfully affect the functionality of the republic. as nothing necessitates having them, they're easy to bleed down to this level. lastly, the idea that the levies are for responding to internal threats falls apart when we realize that feudal levies are frequently the source of those internal threats in a MR. heavily filling out and upgrading holdings to respond to internal threats works much better for a feudal ruler because feudal rulers have larger demesne sizes and their holdings yield more dudes. it's not uncommon to raise 10k dudes from a single county as a feudal ruler, but you're never getting that many as a doge. this puts you at an inherent disadvantage and makes having too many feudal vassals a pretty bad idea because they represent a credible dick-kicking threat. the primary difference between a feudal empire and a most serene republic is that the former has no choice but to accept the fact that their dicks will occasionally get kicked. the latter does not and loses relatively little by nailing the dick-kickers' shoes to the floor.
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Jun 12, 2019 01:44
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Coolguye posted:they don't get richer exponentially, they get richer geometrically, as you can see from looking at your own family. you don't square or cube your money for having an extra 5 sons, you double or triple it. Fair enough, but there are enough tax multipliers and trade limit boosts from the families developing their palaces and holdings that they will build far more trade posts than what you can squeeze from them. It's worth pointing out as well that the further from your land a county is, the more expensive a trade post is. Getting 3-400 gold together to buy a trade post is a big ask for a new baron level family with no land, so there's a point of diminishing returns when all the nearby counties have trade posts built already. Probably around 40 trade posts. Compare that to about 200 your republic could have in it. quote:i am still unmoved by your argument because the bonuses/etc from the trade zones you're referring to are unimportant when compared to simply having the trading post functional. the fact that you are 'flirting with your trade post limit' shows how messed up this approach is. there's no penalty for being over your trade post limit and an extra 4-6 trade posts that aren't performing great will still outperform someone who's stuck at their limit, no matter how well optimized. That's not true. A bone stock trade post with no bonuses will provide an income of somewhere in the 10-20 range. A silk road trade post with all of the bonuses you can get stacked is at 200+. The difference is marginal if you only look at things in the context of the next 5 years or so, but over the long term, it's huge. Strategizing your trade network isn't entirely necessary, but it certainly does provide a hell of a lot more money. You're right about playing with the trade post limit, but that's another aspect of depth in republic gameplay. To build the biggest networks, the game is broken into phases. A growth phase where you are breeding as much as possible and building your trade network, and then a culling phase where you slim down and cut away those family dues. It's a process but it's easy to clear 100+ trade posts in your personal network this way. quote:this is an absurd objection since you just got done defending a riskier mode of gameplay in order to get more money, and go on to defend how much money you need after this point - this line of thinking will go on to become a greater systematic threat that will definitely require more money to, from time to time, suppress. but to take the idea at face value, precisely what is your goal here for chasing levies? making expansion easier? precluding invasion? responding to internal threats? Allowing your patrician families to grow and get rich doesn't come at the cost of your levies like replacing a bunch of feudal vassals with Republican vassals does. They aren't equivalent. And it's not really risky since patricians don't join independence factions, and at most will ask to empower the council. The levies are for the same reason anyone else needs them. To conquer poo poo, and give you the strength to stand up there with the likes of China, the Mongols, and the Aztecs. Mercenaries alone won't make you a global power, and having all of them hired and raised is going to be pretty cost prohibitive with only a couple dozen trade posts. At a larger scale, they ain't poo poo. Pretty sure the varangian guard I made in my last game would beat down all of them combined, and I could keep it raised alongside all my levies indefinitely.  quote:if your concern is precluding invasion then there's a ton of ways you can handle that problem, not the least of which is just stacking skirmish retinues to massively inflate your troop counts and then sticking them on the rear end end of nowhere. AIs will not attack you unless they think they have a good numerical advantage. certainly, it will cost a nontrivial amount of money to fill out such a retinue, but it's virtually cost-free after it fills and the entire point of it is that it should not attack and is there to intimidate. before this too is called out as a 'min-max' strategy, keeping large numbers of dudes hanging around for intimidation rather than effect was a time-honored military tradition until machine guns made it possible to just mow down those dudes like wheat. further, you'll note that i didn't advocate not having ANY feudals, just enough that their game of thrones poo poo can't meaningfully affect the functionality of the republic. as nothing necessitates having them, they're easy to bleed down to this level. These two paragraphs are contradictory. In the first you're arguing that you can dissuade foreign invasion with your retinues and in the second you're completely ignoring that to argue that a doge can't have an imposing enough force to dissuade revolts because their personal levies are too small. The fact is that no character of any type in the game can generate more personal levies than a decked out patrician. And that's not just due to skirmish retinues. If you aren't being obnoxious and conquering the whole world like I was in the above screenshot, you can deck yourself out with tens of thousands of heavy infantry and cav and whatnot, which is handy because retinues are the best force for raiding in the game imo. Also because crusaders and invaders often don't give a poo poo about your force size, and will attack you if they are even in the ballpark, so it's nice to have some muscle for anyone who would try their hand at calling your light infantry bluff. The retinues are on top of the forces you get from all the baronies you own, which are also among the most developed baronies on the map because of all the money and tech you have flowing in, and you can carry 8 or 9 good ones easy. You can literally keep the entire feudal world in check as a republic if you play your hand right. Spending the time building up a republic and tapping into that strength at whatever scale fits my goal for that playthrough is one of the funnest things to do in this game imo.
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Jun 12, 2019 03:45
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Volkerball posted:Fair enough, but there are enough tax multipliers and trade limit boosts from the families developing their palaces and holdings that they will build far more trade posts than what you can squeeze from them. It's worth pointing out as well that the further from your land a county is, the more expensive a trade post is. Getting 3-400 gold together to buy a trade post is a big ask for a new baron level family with no land, so there's a point of diminishing returns when all the nearby counties have trade posts built already. Probably around 40 trade posts. Compare that to about 200 your republic could have in it. quote:That's not true. A bone stock trade post with no bonuses will provide an income of somewhere in the 10-20 range. A silk road trade post with all of the bonuses you can get stacked is at 200+. quote:Allowing your patrician families to grow and get rich doesn't come at the cost of your levies like replacing a bunch of feudal vassals with Republican vassals does. They aren't equivalent. And it's not really risky since patricians don't join independence factions, and at most will ask to empower the council. beyond that, i didn't recommend mercenaries to become a global power, i recommended them for close external wars that you couldn't win trivially otherwise (e.g., the conquest movements that MAKE you a global power). i'm not really feeling like you're reading what i'm typing anymore. quote:These two paragraphs are contradictory. in the context of a revolt, the precise levies that we theoretically propose will keep us safe from external predation are the same levies that are coming to kick dicks. this is precisely the duality that i was attempting to call out as a particular risk that, somehow, is now a contradiction? i presume you are familiar with revolt specifics in this game already so the fact that you are trying to pick at this is incredibly confusing to me. if you had sufficient retinues to cover internal security in the first place, you had sufficient retinues to cover external threat intimidation - and, once again, you didn't need the feudal vassals. quote:You can literally keep the entire feudal world in check as a republic if you play your hand right. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 05:53
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Coolguye posted:You can go back 50 pages on this thread and not find a single interesting story about a merchant republic because they're just not that interestingly designed. Or because no one cares to try them. I don't see people playing nomads or Indians much too.
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Jun 12, 2019 06:56
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Is there a way to transfer over the coat of arms you picked for dynasties from one save to a new game? Or just the dynasty names?
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Jun 12, 2019 08:30
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Grouchio posted:Is there a way to transfer over the coat of arms you picked for dynasties from one save to a new game? Or just the dynasty names? https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Dynasty_modding
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Jun 12, 2019 08:39
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Coolguye posted:they compete with you for the dogedom, which encompasses like 90% of the power in the republic. a strong patrician family is effectively an always-on claimant faction. four of them is four always-on and always threatening claimant factions. a feudal lord would be horrified to have that state of affairs, it is insane to me that this is downplayed as fine. In my current Ireland Republic game the families that are powerful enough to expand the borders of the republic on their own. Northumbria became Cathars and they spam it with holy wars tearing it apart, each has their own truce. As far as I understand, you don't want your feudal characters ever do that cause they can suddenly become too powerful and rebellious, but the republic seems to remain stable. Is this a suboptimal strategy?
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Jun 12, 2019 10:14
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