I think everyone, because of those videos, starts off on Ireland. Apparently, they call Ireland “noob island”. I have a save file in Ireland and one in Poland right now, and both are going along well right now.
Ireland seems to be an ideal training ground. It’s small, it’s mostly isolated from the rest of Europe, and the big boys in Great Britain are still occupied with each other.
It seems like I’m able to get arranged marriages rolling to/from Ethiopia pretty well, so it is my goal, in pretty much every game, to make Ireland into “Little Ethiopia”. I already have a black king of Ireland right now as I clean up the last few counties, and I’m not sure if either of the Ethiopian provinces have white kings yet.
My soldiers even have Etiopian skins (har har), and I can build Ethiopian training places to make light infantry more effective. Also, some of my towns have an Arab tileset.
Also, because of marriages, I currently have a weak claim on the county of Rennes, the Duchy of Brittany, aaaaaaand the Byzantine Empire. I had some Ethiopian claims before, but those went away.
These vary based on your ruler culture. Note that if you swap culture, you lose culture buildings. This really sucks if you had a lot invested in them. Your vassals may be unhappy with your culture if they don’t share it, which can push some marginally displeased peeps over the line into outright rebellion.
Culture can also factor into what Empires you can declare - these are not map based as Kingdoms and Duchies are.
My next king is an Irish Catholic, but his heir is Ethiopian again, I think. This is kind of fun.
This is another hidden trap of an England start. If you’re Saxon or Norwegian you can build housecarl buildings for extra heavy infantry + bonuses, if you’re Norman, jousting yards ( or whatever they’re called ) for extra knights. But if you then go along with that scripted to conversion to an English culture, say bye-bye - you have to start over with longbow whatevers for those extra archers/bonuses.
For that reason you should put off building those specialty buildings until you are sure you’ve locked yourself into the general cultural milieu you prefer.
On that note, the combat mechanics heavily favor heavy infantry. They’re damn near the best thing you can have, from a cost-effectiveness point of view. Archers are good, and cavalry is solid, but armies that favor them would likely beaten by heavy infantry-focused armies in battle. (Horse archers rock the most, but they’re expensive and hard to come by. Most cultures get none whatsoever.)
Sorry, I realized the above may not be as clear as it could be. Basically, the Melee phase is the most important, and archers are nearly useless. In theory, enough archers can soften up the enemy in the Skirmish phase, but it’s extremely rare for that to matter as much as the Melee phase. The Pursue phase only happens if you start routing the enemy; you get jack squat otherwise. So your most cost-effective army-building strategy is to focus on heavy Infantry. They’re your bread-n-butter melee unit. Heavy Cavalry, Light Infantry, and Archers are good to buy second, although I will often start developing a holding by grabbing some more Archers and Light Infantry via the Militia Training Grounds and Archery Range structures, just to get some bulk for my forces. Archers and Light Infantry are cheap, and every one which takes a hit is a Heavy Infantryman who lives to fight next combat round.
Okay, so I became King of Ireland and weaseled a foothold in Wales (I married my brother to the Duchess of one of the Welsh counties) and they produced an heir of my dynasty.
But then my guy died of old age, and my son was a decent leader but he got maimed in battle helping his uncle in Wales and died after less than 10 years in power, but luckily he did have an heir (though it’s a daughter), and further luckily she came of age just a month after her father died. So now I am the Queen of Ireland, but there was a revolt and a lot of plotting against me for being a female ruler and revoking a few titles, and while I crushed the revolt and resolved the plots against me, now all my vassals despise me for being a tyrant.
The Queen is still quite young (23), I’ve married her matrilineally to a Scottish prince, and produced multiple children. Should I just wait out the tyranny, or is there something proactive I can do about it? I’ve spread around all the money that’s going to help and the vassals’ opinions of me are still WAY below zero.
BUT: I noticed that the new nobles I invite into my court are not affected by the tyrannical actions that caused all of my vassals to hate me, and have quite a good opinion of me, so tell me whether this is a good plan: revoke ALL titles, imprison, execute, or banish all of my current vassals and ill-opinioned courtiers, and just bring in a whole new court. Is that genius or madness?
A plan even more genius-or-madness: assassinate * yourself *.
I kid, of course. I don’t think you can do that.
I’m going to start a succession thread shortly.
What did you do to get the tyrant thing? If they revolted you should be able to take one of their titles without an opinion penalty and then leave them in prison where they won’t be able to plot or revolt (and you can put them in the oubliette if the opportunity arises).
Unless you’ve already got a sizable number of your vassals imprisoned, this is easier said than done. If you just go down the line taking titles you might de-title a count or two without a fight, but most of them are going to revolt, especially once there’s already a revolt going. If you just go down the line imprisoning them first, you’ll probably nab about half of them. Either way you’ll be fighting a war with around half your realm and with a bunch of penalties associated with too large a demense and a bunch of mayors and bishops who hate you. You avoid that by just redistributing the titles as you seize them, but then you’ll have to refrain from doing anything tyrannical after you win the wars.
So you’ll probably end up fighting wars for the better part of a decade, probably not a whole lot better off than if you’d just toughed it out. The big purge might be more fun, though.
I don’t remember exactly but there were a few unpopular decisions, a bunch of people got assassinated, a bunch of people died on their own so there was quite a lot of dispute and claims on titles because with my two previous guys I gave out landed titles without including the lower titles (I know better now), and putting down that revolt really pissed everyone off (it involved almost everybody).
That’s a good point. I do like fighting wars, and I probably have quite a while before I can move on Wales (I can’t get anyone to help me kill the Duchess, and she’s only 29 so she’s probably not going to die on her own for a long time).
That’s one big advantage of female rulers-- they don’t get killed doing dumb things like leading troops and hunting boars so they tend to have pretty long reigns.
One other hint for an Ireland game is that depending on what’s going on in France, Brittany can be a good next step. It has a Kingdom title that can be created if you have celtic culture and since (IIRC) the duchy is unified at the start of the game, you can grab it in one war if you can get a claim on the whole duchy.
Banishing is a sure-fire road to being a despised tyrant, especially if you hit a very well-landed vassal. Each title of theirs you confiscate adds negative rating and if they had several you’re gonna be screwed :). In addition if you imprison a plotter but he hasn’t raised a rebellion yet, your vassals will frown on any confiscations. If I play as Harald Hardrada I occasionally will completely dispossess Harold Godwinson just to gain his rich lands and break up the center of Godwin power ( as I’m usually conquering from the north and avoiding William I tend to get sufficient warscore before taking Wessex ). Since Hardrada is pretty old, I figure I can weather the storm until he dies and it can be worth it not to court an even more massive Saxon rebellion.
But it is a tactic to take very judiciously, because nobody likes a tyrant. There is a time limit - I think after 20 years they will forget why they hate you ( i.e. almost a generation ), provided you don’t keep confiscating estates and unlawfully imprisoning people left and right. Still, it can be fun to role-play. Go by your character traits - if your queen is kind and charitable try to ride things out with bribes and whatnot. If she’s cruel and greedy, do what you gotta do ;).
Fun fact: characters created after the tyrannic action don’t get the relations penalty… which means if the situation fits, you can imprison/banish every. last. vassal. This gives you all the titles - and then you create new characters to fill up the slots.
The downsides are that lots of people in your court will hate you until the end of time, but they’ll have no position, wealth, or power. Additionally, if you get unlucky you can spark some rebellions, or end up with foreign characters who have claims on your lands. But these are relatively minor and can be handled appropriately. Doing this is considered one of the most effective ways to play as Zoroastrian: you swear fealty to Khiva, use the faction system to put in place Elective Monarchy and then install yourself as ruler, and then dispossess all vassals of their lands and take what you want, leaving the rest to new nobleman you create using the “Invite a Nobleman to Court” option from the Intrigue screen. This also makes it extremely easy to change your laws, and the vassals will be extremely loyal and willing to do anything you want.
ETA: I actually had a Nine Hundred point relationship penalty with one character by the time I was through. But I bet I can do better!
Okay, so I decided to wait it out and manipulate rather than go all-out civil war on the situation. With some plotting and a lot of luck, my most bitter enemies, the ones that matter at least, have either met an untimely, mysterious doom, died on their own, or just got over it, and now I am almost universally loved by all.
Now, I am turning my attention to Wales. The Duchess died on her own and her heir (my grandfather’s brother’s son) just came of age and is now King (Duke?) of Gwynedd. My question now is: what now?
He is of my dynasty but not in my control. He is married but as yet has no children. His current heir is actually the wife of one of my vassals, but she is not of my dynasty so I could go to war on her behalf but it would not result in my gaining control of Gwynedd. How do I use this situation to my advantage?
Co-operative succession game thread here
Does anyone like playing as a Muslim ruler? I think I prefer I, although the assassins tend to carve their name into my wives at an alarming rate.
The secret to playing a Muslim ruler, I’ve found, is to keep your family tree as tidy and compact as possible. First of all, you must never, ever give titles away to family members - if you do, then you’ll lose control of them and your decadence will spiral out of control. The key is to constantly invite nobles and holy men to fill up any new positions you create.
With multiple wives, you can generate a wide pool of sons to ensure that your successor is the best. (Once you reach the level of king, you may want to bring on some infertile wives to keep the rates down). Once you have one you like, give him a title - I like to hand out a single county. And once that son becomes you, you imprison and kill all your brothers (though it helps to keep one or two behind bars until you have sons of your own.)
Basically, you’ll be safer if you always have the ‘small dynasty’ modifier up.
I’ve just got my first claim on a duchy. That’s nice. One war, a clot of land, and everyone is happier.