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Masonity
Dec 31, 2007

What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'Malle?

verbal enema posted:

Probably 8k piety to reform the faith nooooo

Easy peasy. Just execute everyone in your jail. You can even use the mass execution button.

If you have a trait that causes stress for executions, you'll game over doing them individually. But do all at once and then use a feast/hunt to lower stress and you'll be on edge but fine.

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Jedi Knight Luigi
Jul 13, 2009

EmbryoSteve posted:

The previous (first) ruler was my great grandfather who ruled for 50 years before passing it to me when i was 7 years old which I find funny. The first rulers son (my grandfather) died of plague after having just one son and my father was killed in battle when he was 23 after just having the one son.

It seems like CK is really good at having generational skipping stuff like this happen. I’m pretty bad at remembering to bar my sons from being knights so it happens to me quite a bit especially in the first years when you might not have a lot of courtiers in the first place.

Just barely got Détente last night. For most of the rest of the conciliation phase I thought I wasn’t gonna make the prestige threshold. Thankfully I had enough money to make two duchy titles to put me over the edge. Then I released one of my sons as an independent duke and couldn’t get an alliance with him—thankfully he swore fealty to the neighboring kingdom I already had an alliance with, keeping my holdings under 50%. Enacted during the 3-month transition period to the next phase. Biggest “phew” of my CK life.

SlothBear
Jan 25, 2009

I really like the Linguist cultural trait for piety earning. You get so much and you learn all the languages in the process. It's almost always one of my first reforms, and it's cheap to boot!

Quorum
Sep 24, 2014

REMIND ME AGAIN HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE?
Apparently the RICE mod is going to be implementing interactions with and settlement of Greenland (and, if you hate having money, Vinland) in the form of a Struggle available to Northern Atlantic rulers, and it looks like a really interesting application of the mechanic.

ilitarist
Apr 26, 2016

illiterate and militarist
I wonder if mods will get around to model China with that struggle thing.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

verbal enema posted:

Probably 8k piety to reform the faith nooooo

Step 1: Raid rulers with a different religion
Step 2: Win battles
Step 3: Laugh all the way to the piety bank


Norse tribals (or anyone who can raid overseas really) are actually hysterically overpowered, you can effectively generate infinite prestige and piety, which are the only currencies that matter to you.

Midnight Voyager
Jul 2, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

TaurusTorus posted:

Of course you have to feud with the bastards that killed your own blood!

That's actually how it started. My brother was my best friend and my cousin from a cadet house murdered him. So it kicked off a feud.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Decided to try a start in Khazaria. Wanted to try a Jewish guy for once and try to make my way down to restore Israel. Apparently I start the game married to a relative though? My realm priest comes to me like 10 years in and says my marriage is a sin. Doesn’t say we’re related, but oh well, time to get divorced and marry someone with good stats.

Also horse archers are very nice to start with.

SlothBear
Jan 25, 2009

Bird in a Blender posted:

Decided to try a start in Khazaria. Wanted to try a Jewish guy for once and try to make my way down to restore Israel. Apparently I start the game married to a relative though? My realm priest comes to me like 10 years in and says my marriage is a sin. Doesn’t say we’re related, but oh well, time to get divorced and marry someone with good stats.

Also horse archers are very nice to start with.

If a realm priest doesn't like you they can accuse you of this even though you aren't related if it's a sin in your religion.

Albino Squirrel
Apr 25, 2003

Miosis more like meiosis
Finished the Daura achievement last night, feels good. Took me until 1180 because I needed to tech up my siege weapons to be able to take out Egypt in a reasonable amount of time. I can't recommend Sanctioned False Conversions as a religious tenet enough, really helps to wipe out the last few holdout counties.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

SlothBear posted:

If a realm priest doesn't like you they can accuse you of this even though you aren't related if it's a sin in your religion.

Didn’t know that. I think he did have a negative opinion of me at the time, which would explain things.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Oh cool CK3 is in Humble Choice this month

Thread, is CK3 a good game? I played 763 hours of EU4 but have never played CK2.

Are there any must-have DLCs?

verbal enema
May 23, 2009

onlymarfans.com

QuarkJets posted:

Oh cool CK3 is in Humble Choice this month

Thread, is CK3 a good game? I played 763 hours of EU4 but have never played CK2.

Are there any must-have DLCs?

CK3 kicks rear end but isn't quite on CK2's level yet imo

all the DLC's add some really cool stuff I am loving the Royal Court DLC

In my current game I started as the Jarl of Jylland and just played slow eventually swearing fealty to the King of the Danelaw and then spending dozens of years doing most of the heavy lifting in all of my liege's wars to keep him in power and strong enough to not get kicked out of England. Eventually I subjugated the King of Norway then had my liege who was my best friend murdered so I could usurp Denmark from his son then I took over Sweden and finally conquered the now Catholic king of the Danelaw and made my own custom empire of Greater Jylland.

My current characters father conquered some land in England and forced the Catholic counts there to convert to Asatru because ew Christianity. Doing so resulted in some executions which had one of his vassal counts hate his loving guts despite him trying all he could to placate her. Well he died and I took over as his son and was like "I'm going to make things right with her!" I then proceeded to do a mass execution not paying attention that i killed more of her family so now she hated MY guts. I spent years trying to get her to chill out and talk to me eventually getting her to be kinda whatever about me. Then we became friends! but i forgot to stop a murder scheme against her and she found out! So I gave her a ton of money and a nice English Horse and a personally written poem about how tough she was and then she swore loyalty to me! I did it! But alas my character decided after all that no she's a bitch and we became rivals again! Then she died and her daughter took over and she is cool with me despite all the absurd poo poo her mom went through.

I also stole a hoop toy artifact from some french dick who wanted it back so I gave it back but then burnt his castle down again lol

Oh the dejure lands of Greater Jylland consist of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Brittany (which I got because of my Jarl's was playing Big Brains style with marriages and inherited the entirety so all I needed to was create the kingdom title) unfortunately I didn't know when you take the Danelaw from someone it destroys the title which is DOGSHIT because I was going to make that my primary!!!!

verbal enema fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Sep 19, 2022

Hellioning
Jun 27, 2008

CK3 is good. The DLCs are also good, but the price increase on the flavor packs are absurd, so I'd really recommend the royal edition so you don't spend 13 bucks on Northern Lords.

ilitarist
Apr 26, 2016

illiterate and militarist
CK3 is good but it's a very different kind of game. I like it and don't regret buying a full price Royal Edition ( with first 3 DLCs) but it's less of a strategy game and more of a Role-Playing game. EU4 is a cool map painter even if you don't care about history, it has persistent "characters" in form of countries with their ideas and special abilities. CK3 is a sandbox that is all about stories and random events and chaos. By design it doesn't have this constant numbers go up aspect of other empire builders, even of you know how to game the game to avoid partitions and succession wars each new character is a step back in many regards.

a podcast for cats
Jun 22, 2005

Dogs reading from an artifact buried in the ruins of our civilization, "We were assholes- " and writing solemnly, "They were assholes."
Soiled Meat
Speaking of partitions, I heard that Sardinia is the new tutorial island and went for that one for my first proper campaign. I had a couple of aborted campaigns due to stress and succession mismanagement and then, due to the new patch.

In my current one, I just founded the Kingdom of Sardinia in 940s and own all de jure counties except one, which is a matter of a dissolving alliance. I also have a ruler in his early 30s who has 4 genius kids, only one of which is a daughter. I'm sure there will be more kids. I guess it's the games way of getting back to me about the first ruler, who had 1 son and 5 daughters.

So, what do I do next? I worry that the succession and partition may turn out to be a pit of vipers, especially as the two oldest kids are picking up hostile traits. At the same time, I'm uncomfortable with bumping off kids as is and doing it to geniuses seems like a complete waste. At the same time, I'm not yet powerful enough to conquer much land to give out.

edit: I'm new to the game, but I think the DLC is worth it. Even the event packs. Or maybe especially the event packs, given how repetitive the events can become.

verbal enema
May 23, 2009

onlymarfans.com
In that Greater Jylland game I've had tremendous luck of only having one son and like 5 daughters per character I've played and even more luck with none of those sons dying before me.

TorakFade
Oct 3, 2006

I strongly disapprove


a podcast for cats posted:

Speaking of partitions, I heard that Sardinia is the new tutorial island and went for that one for my first proper campaign. I had a couple of aborted campaigns due to stress and succession mismanagement and then, due to the new patch.

In my current one, I just founded the Kingdom of Sardinia in 940s and own all de jure counties except one, which is a matter of a dissolving alliance. I also have a ruler in his early 30s who has 4 genius kids, only one of which is a daughter. I'm sure there will be more kids. I guess it's the games way of getting back to me about the first ruler, who had 1 son and 5 daughters.

So, what do I do next? I worry that the succession and partition may turn out to be a pit of vipers, especially as the two oldest kids are picking up hostile traits. At the same time, I'm uncomfortable with bumping off kids as is and doing it to geniuses seems like a complete waste. At the same time, I'm not yet powerful enough to conquer much land to give out.

edit: I'm new to the game, but I think the DLC is worth it. Even the event packs. Or maybe especially the event packs, given how repetitive the events can become.

If you can grab the duchy of ... eh, the Balearic islands, forget what it's actually called - you should be able to hybridize your culture with Catalan which has Visigothic Codes and thus you can have High Partition waaaaaay early (plus an extra duchy that is relatively easy to have drift into the Sardinian kingdom and can be given to second sons or whatever), which should help a lot. I varangian adventure'd there with Haesteinn and am having a grand time raiding the pope and the rest of the italian coastline every few years, between that and the sardinian mine I can keep a gigantic army of varangian veterans going and no one can stop me anymore

TorakFade fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Sep 19, 2022

ilitarist
Apr 26, 2016

illiterate and militarist

a podcast for cats posted:


So, what do I do next? I worry that the succession and partition may turn out to be a pit of vipers

Here's some general newb advice, I'm not an expert but I think you need a beginner's advice, not some leet strategies.

Once you get your first kingdom and conquer all of its territory the expansion becomes tricky. All the vassals outside of your de jure territory only pay you half of what they owe so expanding beyond the first kingdom is tricky. And if you create a second kingdom the country will be divided on succession. So what can you do?

1) Consolidate. Vassals don't like if you have too many duchies so it's a good idea to have a duchy and control all the counties in it. You could stuck bonuses and stuff like that. You can use claims and hooks to revoke counties from vassals, you also need 2nd level of authority I think.

2) Still expand without creating new kingdoms. At this point you probably still have neighbouring small duchies and you can usually catch them without allies after a succession.


3) create new kingdoms as long as you have enough prestige to add custom law to titles and make them Elective. Some cultures have access to cooler elective laws that limit who can be a candidate to your family. This way you can usually make sure your heir inherits several kingdoms, and you can use kingdom de jure advantages (pressing claims, easier peaceful vassalizing, better taxes from de jure vassals) but an unfortunate series of events can make it so that some unrelated dude wins the elections and you lose a kingdom.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

This Khazaria run I'm doing is almost too easy. Start as a tribal emperor and I'm surrounded by little 1-2 holding counts and dukes. The hardest part is deciding which direction I want to go, and so far I've just been expanding outward in every direction. You start with horse archers, which are pretty good unique MaA, and I can raid, so building up my army was a piece of cake with all the prestige I'm getting.

I have been making bee lines for my holy sites, and I've already reestablished the Jewish High Priesthood. Now to go through the Abbasid Caliphate to reform Israel.

Only thing I need to do to feudalize is to get more innovations, which will probably take me a while unless I hybridize, which I'll probably do soon. I should probably make my way NW so I can hybridize with the Norse and really crush everyone, or maybe with Greek and get cataphracts to go with my horse archers.

I did have a real creepy groomer thing going on. My guy at 16 was betrothed to a comely 3 year old at my court (ok, that's already creepy to say), then I had him educate his future wife. So now the teacher has married his pupil, then promptly seduced her because I wanted to make sure to kick out a kid quickly since I was already in my 30s with no kids.

Bird in a Blender fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Sep 19, 2022

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
Does anyone have the quick rundown on MaA? Like the TL;DR version. I know mixing and matching is frowned upon, but what’s the good and bad?

Is it like stacking cavalry, or are unique units the way to go?

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

You can search my posts, I've posted the run down a couple times before but it's been a while.

The short answer is that Varangian Veterans, Horse Archers, and Armored Cav (and it's cultural variants) are the top tier units. Stack those if you can. If you can't afford to field ACav, run Armored Footmen instead.

Some of the cultural MaA are good, but others are complete garbage.

Party In My Diapee
Jan 24, 2014

PittTheElder posted:

You can search my posts, I've posted the run down a couple times before but it's been a while.

The short answer is that Varangian Veterans, Horse Archers, and Armored Cav (and it's cultural variants) are the top tier units. Stack those if you can. If you can't afford to field ACav, run Armored Footmen instead.

Some of the cultural MaA are good, but others are complete garbage.

I saw somebody claim that archers are really good, though from my ck2 experience that sounds wrong. Any truth to that?

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Archers bring the most damage per gold spent for the MaA (with the assumption that levies are tanking), but that's moot as if you're severely gold limited in the short term you should just be using mercs instead. MaA's long term goals are about having an elite standalone force that sits under supply limits and abuses combat width mechanics - archers won't do that.

typing out a tl:dr right now:
-Rule 0: Get more siege units. Siege units speed up wars, which save you so much goddamn time and money, it's nuts.
-Stack the same type, as unit countering mechanics discourage mixing, which the AI does and results in them sucking
--Optional: IMO, use your cultural unique units, because once you've done the hyperoptimal thing it gets old fast, and using juiced up 'suboptimal' units can be fun in their own right.
-Heavy Inf are literally foolproof, as they have no explicit disadvantages and the building the juices them can be built anywhere
--Heavy Cav are a fun "win-more" option in the very lategame once you stack enough bonuses to outdo their penalties. If in doubt, just pick from the above options instead.
-Once you've picked your pony, stack bonuses from buildings like nuts. Levies are worthless midgame compared to a tooled up army.

-Optional: Stack bonuses on knights too, they ramp up very quickly and are devastating.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

The issue with that is that stacking anything is better than generalizing, so it's okay. Archers also used to be better in the release version when you got flat bonuses from buildings rather than percentages.

As it stands now they're probably a good alternative to Footmen if you're super broke or lack the terrain to build barracks, they're quite a bit cheaper for not being too much worse.

ilitarist
Apr 26, 2016

illiterate and militarist
Note that it all heavily depends on terrain and buildings you build. With a decent domain you can have some unit types powered up a lot. Archers and Light Footmen are buffed by a lot of buildings available on a varied terrain. But Light Footmen are like half a step better than levies and are mostly there to counter heavy footmen. So archers are OK as a rule of thumb.

If, like me, you're playing Nepalese ruler with a lot of provinces in mountains (same goes for basically everything except for plains) you might have very few opportunities to build cavalry oriented buildings.

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
PSA: If anyone is having a lot of stuttering/hitching issues in 1.7, apparently some of the evaluation logic they added for Offer Vassalization is running amok and overusing CPU time (similar to the castration bug from CK2 but less funny) - there's a mod to fix it for now on the forums or the workshop and I can testify the experience is night and day.

(now if only I could figure out what's making the game crash randomly while saving because that gets real annoying real quick, but my game is heavily modded so presumably it's my fault)

SlothBear
Jan 25, 2009

DoubleNegative posted:

Does anyone have the quick rundown on MaA? Like the TL;DR version. I know mixing and matching is frowned upon, but what’s the good and bad?

Is it like stacking cavalry, or are unique units the way to go?

Compare your cultural MaA to the baseline unit and see if they're actually that much better. Many of them are (esp the viking ones bc ofc they are) but many don't come until later in the game too. There are also a lot of cultural units that require having a tradition that makes your armies somewhat worse so don't be afraid to take a hard look at it and ignore it or swap it out. Isrealite cultures for instance get a light infantry unit that is supposed to be defensive but light infantry is awful for playing defensive (and pretty much in general imo) so I usually ignore it and go heavy which is far better than the unique MaA for the way I play.

I typically pick one type of MaA to focus on and be sure to build the building that supports them in all the counties I plan on keeping in my line. The Duchy buildings for knights are stupidly good so consider those over your MaA building. In fact stacking knights and their bonuses should be something you do alongside your MaA pick. Oh, and be sure to ad siege units too.

Here's the trick for getting amazing knights. Go your courtiers. Sort by unmarried. Find them spouses, sort by prowess. Be sure to matrilineal marry your female courtiers to absurdly powerful knights. It almost feels like cheating it's such an easy way to get 30+ prowess knights anywhere. If you really want to cheese use the "find a physician" decision and right click invite to court everyone who will join you for free before you close the window with 'they don't impress me' for a nearly constant supply of female courtiers to marry off to powerful knights. You can use the same trick to find a super good high intrigue female spymaster to marry to one of your male courtiers and park them in the nearest huge court to find secrets and use hooks on any single unlanded courtiers to force them into your court and marry them off to whatever stat you need. This all feels super cheesy after you do it for awhile but starting out it's a great way to drastically reduce the difficulty if you're struggling with anything. Oh and couple this with the golden obligations perk in the first stewardship tree and blackmail the landed characters as well for what feels like nearly infinite gold.

Back to MaA - another terrain consideration is what terrain you plan to hold. Cav for instance doesn't really get support buildings in hills and mountains, but gets great ones in desert and flatlands.

After that its almost a matter of taste and locality. Look at the terrain you'll be doing your fighting on if you plan to stay local, but if you're thinking of taking over the whole world or restoring rome or something it's probably not worth considering since you'll be fighting all over anyway.

I personally love Light Cav because you'll stack wipe everything that comes at you eventually. Heavy Infantry is pretty much the opposite, you'll pretty much never stack wipe unless your numbers are overwhelming but if you're planning on fighting mostly defensive or small scale wars that will be over before your enemy can regain all their troops you slaughtered it hardly mattes.

Also keep in mind you're hardly married to your choice, you can always go through your holdings and swap out one building type for another down the line.

a podcast for cats posted:

Speaking of partitions, I heard that Sardinia is the new tutorial island and went for that one for my first proper campaign. I had a couple of aborted campaigns due to stress and succession mismanagement and then, due to the new patch.

Sardinia and Sri Lanka are both much better newbie islands than Ireland, especially 867 Ireland, imo.

Regarding inheritance, don't be afraid of the disinherit button to keep things with one kid if you have too many valid heirs. I used to freak out at the possibility of losing renown but honestly it's not that big of a deal versus keeping your titles together.

As far as what next I definitely agree with taking Majorca and founding the Baleric Isles kingdom and getting involved in the struggle since it sounds like you have the DLC!

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Speaking of knights, something I had for the first time on this run is equal Martial in my religion, which lets women be knights. At the beginning of the game, my best knight was my wife with 30 prowess. That isn't something available to most people at the start, but it's nice to essentially double the pool of available knights.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
Alright, thanks for the advice y'all! My current run is a "restore Rome" run unfortunately, and my two personal duchies are the two smack dab in the middle of Italy. So it sounds like my best options are Heavy Infantry or just knuckling down and doing the comparing and contrasting of unit types.

scaterry
Sep 12, 2012

DoubleNegative posted:

Alright, thanks for the advice y'all! My current run is a "restore Rome" run unfortunately, and my two personal duchies are the two smack dab in the middle of Italy. So it sounds like my best options are Heavy Infantry or just knuckling down and doing the comparing and contrasting of unit types.

Note that you can 'steal' other culture's MAA by educating your heir to that culture, and once you've built a cultural-specific MAA you don't have to be that culture anymore to increase its size/use it.
Educate a child to Mogyer and abuse Horse Archers, they are degenerately strong and have basically no counters.
However if you have pillage2 and/or ERE legacy, Varangian Veterans/Mubarizun are better.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

SlothBear posted:

Regarding inheritance, don't be afraid of the disinherit button to keep things with one kid if you have too many valid heirs. I used to freak out at the possibility of losing renown but honestly it's not that big of a deal versus keeping your titles together.

Even keeping all your titles together is kind of a non-requirement that people freak out about. Even if your brother inherits some chunk of your dad's demense, you are almost certainly the top level lord and you can just eat the tyranny cost to revoke it from him if you need counties. Even better it'll usually kick off a civil war and allow you to bring back many counties!

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

DoubleNegative posted:

Alright, thanks for the advice y'all! My current run is a "restore Rome" run unfortunately, and my two personal duchies are the two smack dab in the middle of Italy. So it sounds like my best options are Heavy Infantry or just knuckling down and doing the comparing and contrasting of unit types.

Just want to say that you can keep things simple with MaA. There's a ton of things you can do to optimize it, but you don't really need to do that to have an advantage over the AI. If you're really not sure what to do, then go heavy infantry (armored footment) or heavy cavalry(armored horsemen). Those are the two strongest of the generic, MaA. Barracks give bonuses to heavy infantry, and are generally widely available. So if you go all-in on heavy infantry and make sure to build barracks every chance you can, you're going to have a leg up on the AI. Armored footmen also have no terrain bonuses or disadvantages, so you can essentially ignore where and when you're fighting. It's really the simple way to go if you're not sure what to do.

I'm sure there's a lot of opinions on this, but I tend to keep 20-30% of my MaA slots for siege weapons. So if I have 5 slots, one will be for siege weapons, but if I have seven, I'll form a second regiment, and then wait until I'm up to 9 or 10 before I add the third one. Also make sure to keep these updated, which means disbanding onagers and making a new regiment of mangonels when they become available and so on. It's a little expensive, especially in the later game when your regiments start getting really large, but it's worth it because siege times can shrink rapidly.

Coward
Sep 10, 2009

I say we take off and surrender unconditionally from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure



.
So, can I get some advice for MaA in West Africa specifically as I am trying to find time to redo a Mali run? Does rushing Heavy Infantry make sense if you're going to be facing equal numbers of Light Infantry? Or should I just stack Guinean Highlanders? Being stuck in Tribal for a while means not being able to build many of the buildings, does that make a difference? After the first run it kind of feels like I should focus on ridiculous Champions strategy.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Champions will work really well for a Tribal run. Buildings do make a difference, and War Camps would boost skirmishers, which is what I think Guinean Highlanders are. The issue there is that their base stats are so bad that the percentage bonus doesn't do much. Heavy Infantry will do great if you can afford multiple stacks of them, as the AI will not specialize against you, and the counter mechanic is strongly dependent on relative numbers.

Sahel Horsemen are an option as well; I don't think you'll have any building boosts for them in the Tribal era, but that just means you can spend all your prestige recruiting MaA and delay buildings :v: They are barely better than the Guinean Uplanders though

PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Sep 19, 2022

Saganlives
Jul 6, 2005



If you're a history nerd you should know Brett Devereaux, an actual historian, started writing a series on Crusader Kings 3 and how it presents a theory of history via mechanics and gameplay and how accurate that theory is in it's portrayal of the period. (Hint: pretty close in interesting ways!) He also wrote a (completed) series on Europa Universalis 4 and Victoria 2. They are all interesting reads. I also recommend his series titled The Fremen Mirage which tackles the idea that decadent men lead to hard men that lead to decadent men again, it's very good though not immediately relevant to Paradox games.

Softface
Feb 16, 2011

Some things can't be unseen
If you want to see how effective MaA stacking is, here's a shot of what my +250% effectiveness Druzhina did to the entire Bavarian army.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Saganlives posted:

If you're a history nerd you should know Brett Devereaux, an actual historian, started writing a series on Crusader Kings 3 and how it presents a theory of history via mechanics and gameplay and how accurate that theory is in it's portrayal of the period. (Hint: pretty close in interesting ways!) He also wrote a (completed) series on Europa Universalis 4 and Victoria 2. They are all interesting reads. I also recommend his series titled The Fremen Mirage which tackles the idea that decadent men lead to hard men that lead to decadent men again, it's very good though not immediately relevant to Paradox games.

Oh poo poo yeah. Before I read I'm very curious if he shares my thoughts re:

  • The MaA meta really encourages you to play as a fiscal-military state of the 1600s, with the focus on dumping as much cash into your MaA to become a bad actor in an anarchic world lacking stabilizing political institutions.
  • The world starts off overly economically under developed, with far more difference in the development state of the world between the start dates and end dates than there should be
  • Individual AIs, while supposedly being motivated by their personalities, even powerful ambitious characters don't seem to do much (which I understand is probably done in the name of computational non-complexity, but the outcome is that the most the AI seems to do is plot to murder everyone they know, which is hardly ideal)

PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Sep 20, 2022

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
He doesn't really go into it on that level of game-mechanic granularity in the main posts (though it might be worth raising them in comments) - the inquiry is more about, like, do the games have a theory of history (as in, an idea of how history happens) and how do they express it, and what do they convey to the player through that expression?

They're enjoyable reads anyway, I just don't think they're about the games as games so much as they are about the games as historical...learning tools? Texts? Not sure of the word I'm aiming for here.

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Coward
Sep 10, 2009

I say we take off and surrender unconditionally from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure



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PittTheElder posted:

Champions will work really well for a Tribal run. Buildings do make a difference, and War Camps would boost skirmishers, which is what I think Guinean Highlanders are. The issue there is that their base stats are so bad that the percentage bonus doesn't do much. Heavy Infantry will do great if you can afford multiple stacks of them, as the AI will not specialize against you, and the counter mechanic is strongly dependent on relative numbers.

Sahel Horsemen are an option as well; I don't think you'll have any building boosts for them in the Tribal era, but that just means you can spend all your prestige recruiting MaA and delay buildings :v: They are barely better than the Guinean Uplanders though

I remember rushing the Heavy Infantry early and just getting stacks of them, but it seemed like I was losing because everyone else had stacks of Light Infantry only or mostly and I was getting countered. Might have I been misinterpreting what was going on?

Champions do seem like they might be the winner. Might have to Martial focus initially before moving on to Learning (want to make Manding the developed and enlightened centre of the world).

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