Saltborn: A Crovan AAR

matt12th said:

Who let a man that fat into a starfighter! Also I thought you swore off using your leader in these battles, or is crown authority too low for that? Great update, great AAR!

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Crown Authority is good, but there are a lot of instances where putting the ruler in charge of an army has benefits, like getting the 'Crusader' trait. In this war, I let Andrew take the lead in order to collect piety from fighting heathens(I don't think he gets any, or as much, piety from battles unless he's actually present, as opposed to ruling from his castle). Then, of course, there are the instances where I simply forget to assign another leader. The ruler is very high on the automatic leader list, so he'll command one levy or another when you issue a general call to arms.

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The most terrifying thing about this most recent tragedy is not the loss of my most promising monarch, but that the Regent, my Steward, threatens to do a better job of managing the realm:


I didn't even know we had a Thieves' Guild...

Nevertheless, braindeath aside, the war against the heathen is indeed finally concluded in my favour:



That doubles my treasury, which was far from empty beforehand. A wave of infrastructural improvements sweeps across Scotland.

Riding the wave of my heathen-bashing reputation(that is, carried on a stretcher), I decide it is time to bless King Andrew's legacy with some proper conquest, which he never had the opportunity for, poor thing.


Also, a muslim Brittany is just silly, really.

I restrain myself to just raising my personal levies, rather than strain relations with my vassals. Sevilla is already busy defending against fellow muslims in Spain, so resistance should be minimal.



For once in this miserable playthrough, my predictions prove correct.

Harold Sieghardson casually eradicates another Thieves' Guild in Ossory and a Smuggler's Ring in Argyll.

Also, Prince Alfwold grows into a man:



The Crovans are slowly turning into a breed of administrators. Surprisingly militarily proficient administrators.

I have him marry Estrid of Godwin, the daughter of the Welsh-cultured Duchess of Normandy, vassal of France(go go multiculturalism!).

As the marriage celebrations die down, the war over Brittany acquires fresh tension as Emir Adfuns II of Sevilla calls Emir Abdul-Hakam III of Algarve into the war. While a small power, they can still field a disproportionately large army. No match from my full levies, but too much for my personal army to handle. I am forced to draw men from my more loyal vassals to fend off Algarvian landings in Brittany.



Thankfully, the holdings in Brittany are not as heavily fortified as those in the muslim lands to the south, so the sieges progress much quicker, especially when besieging cities and bishoprics. By June 1364, half the peninsula is under my control:



Bittersweet news arrive two months later as King Andrew the Disappointingly Ingominious finally gives up the ghost, leaving the throne to Alfwold I.



I manage to mollify Pope Lucius by making him High Almoner, but Duke Máel-Íosa is a different problem. I content myself by sending my Spymaster to Uncover Plots in his capital, hoping to get the chance to imprison him before he can do something stupid that will get him imprisoned.

Furthermore, I pick the Ambition to Become a Paragon of Virtue. At a current Piety of -3 and a monthly piety decrease of 0.09, I am off to a great start.

Exactly three weeks later:



I just can't catch a break, can I?

At least this silences rebellious voices, but Mauretania, even after the bloodying they took just a couple of years ago, still has almost 90 thousand men at their command against my 19 thousand.

In December I at least manage to produce a son. Since creativity is not a Crovan virtue, I name him Andrew.

To my great irritation, Emir Adfuns refuses to acknowledge defeat until I have collected 100% warscore against him:



I keep the richest county, the county of Vannes, for myself while dealing out one each of the other counties to various courtiers. Harold Sieghardson gets the County of Rennes for his services and I make the County of Nantes into a prince-bishopric. Together with the piety from handing out all the bishoprics in the duchy to created vassals, I am more than able to afford the services of the Knights Hospitaller in the struggle against the Moors.

Peace in Brittany allows me to direct my full force against the advancing Moors. I hit them like an angry ton of bricks:



Meanwhile, my anti-Pope Lucius excommunicates Duke Waltheof of Galicia at the request of Prince Sigeric. Those two are fighting a war over some Spanish county of little import.

By January 1366, Mauretania is down to 62 thousand men and Scotland down to 15 thousand. Not bad.

Even better, in March I destroy the last of the infidels that had crossed my border:



Of course, it is not long until they have fresh stacks of 14 thousand marching towards me-



Rather than ship my soldiers off manually to deal with this, I simply disband the non-mercenary/order regiments and raise them again. This leaves about 10 thousand men in Spain to ward off minor incursions and about 19 thousand in Britain.

The battle is costlier than I would have liked:



The last muslim in Scotland is killed in November:



And now I have to go through the bother of shipping all these guys back to Spain. Sigh.

But by now I am feeling confident enough to send armies into Portucale:



In mid-1367, another 14 thousand Moors land in Scotland and promptly split up to siege two provinces. I ship 14 thousand soldiers over to take care of them and sail back. Bother bother.

At least by this time I have made a serious dent in Mauretania's armies. They're rated at 34 thousand men against my twenty thousand. That's right. I'm replenishing troops faster than I'm losing them.

In June, after I've taken care of one half of the Moors in Scotland, the other is reinforced, bringing their numbers up to almost equal mine in theatre. This is unacceptable, of course, so I hire a mercenary company to uneven the odds. The last mercenary company.



Scotland is cleansed again and the tide begins to swing decisively in my favour. The Emirs of Fes and Badajoz rise up against the Sultan and I really pour men into Portugal:



Even as his army drops to 25 thousand to my 19 thousand, the Sultan refuses to surrender.

It takes some serious beating down before I am able to force peace upon him:



If that doesn't affirm my legitimacy, I don't know what does.

Kelly Hrdina said:

I am very confused by this. Did you somehow end a chapter on a positive note?

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Well I have to keep you guys guessing or this wouldn't be exciting.

arosenberger14 said:

Wait, did the Mauretanians break a truce with you? Crazy buggers! Great job dealing with their doomstacks! You should strike first once the current truce runs out, if you're going to have to put up with this you might as well weaken them a bit. Gibralter makes for a great chokepoint

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Mauretania has a lot of unruly vassals right now. If I attack too soon I may unite them under a common cause. I'll let them simmer for a while and attack them when stronger vassals rebel.

Stuyvesant said:

It's probably just a cliffhanger (a reverse cliffhanger?) and at the start of the next update the usual Crovan horribleness will resume immediately. Alfwold might hit his head, or get maimed hunting rabbits, or something suitable like that.

I'm impressed with your handling of Mauretania. That's 0-2 for the Caliphs (not even counting the personal losses they have suffered from your assassins). But even with all that, King Andrew still managed to die with negative piety? Or am I confusing the son's details for his dearly departed daddy's?

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Yeah, I think you've mixed up. King Andrew died with a positive Piety of 61.7.

SonofWinter said:

Are you unable to take any lands from them, if they attack you? Or did you gain land and I didn't notice?

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CBs in CK2 are simplified so that there are only three possible outcomes to any war: The attacker enforces his claims, a return to status quo, and the defender enforces his claims. As the most recent war was declared with a Religious Defence casus belli, victory for the defender results in prestige boost for me and prestige loss, piety loss and war reparations for the attacker. Other casus bellis have other results from peace treaties, but the defender can never gain land. On the other hand, he is not bound by a truce, either, only the attacker. So I could peace out and on the next day declare war on Mauretania while they are still weakened. This mechanic is to prevent silly outcomes of religious wars like in CK1, where various muslims often ended up owning isolated provinces in Scotland, Denmark and Hungary.

SonofWinter said:

Also, can you take out the revolter states and add them to the Greater Crovan EMPIRE?

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It's folly to attack a revolter state before it makes peace with their liege. Otherwise they will just make peace with him as soon as you start making some gains, and your war with them will end inconclusively*. Attacking the liege, meanwhile, does not have the same risk but instead carries the risk of rallying otherwise unruly vassals to the liege, stopping the revolts. I would rather wait until a properly powerful vassal, like the Emir of Kabylia, revolts and then snipe a duchy from Mauretania.

*One way to get around this is when more than one vassal declares war on their liege together(either through a Plot or alliance). You can then snipe the junior partners of the war at will because they can't make a separate peace with their liege.

Il Pagliaccio said:

This AAR is great. Would it be possible to have a State-of-the-World update?

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Welcome to the forums and yes, absolutely! I was always going to make a State-of-the-World report but it kept slipping my mind.

Ivir Baggins said:

Why does England own Moray?

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The Duke of Lancaster inherited those lands, nothing I could do about it except have a Crown Authority of High or more, but Scotland is running at Limited at the moment. I'll get around to bringing those lands back under Crovan dominion.

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The State of the World in 1371


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There are, naturally, several vassals at war with their liege. Their borders with the realm at large are marked red in order to give you an idea of what the realms look like normally.

You may notice that I have added the county of Burgos to my Spanish holdings. It was a very uneventful war against a single-sheikhdom minor so don't worry, you didn't miss a thing.

Let's take a closer look at things, starting with Northern Europe. We're all pretty well acquainted with Britain so I'll start with Scandinavia:



King Harald the Lionheart was defeated in his bid for the English throne in 1066, and was knocked senseless in some battle. He still outlived his son Magnus of Trondelag, who died in 1069, and his grandson Harald, departing in 1094. When he finally passed himself, only his daughter Ingegerd remained to take the throne, and after her death House av Rost would sit on the throne of Norway without interruption, except for a short eight year period at the dawn of the 13th century, when a member of House Piast usurped the throne before falling to rebellion. Norway and Poland have ever since shared tightly intertwined fates and frequent wars. In fact, the Duke of Greater Poland and Pomerania, and the Duke of Vitebsk are both Norwegian vassals.



The royal House af Stenkil successfully replaced the Swedish elective monarchy with Primogeniture early in the kingdom, because they never lost the throne through unfavourable succession. On the other hand, they kept close marital ties with the Rurikovich dynasty until their male line died out with King Anders "Ill-Ruler" in 1208. The crown passed to Queen Margareta, already wedded to one Jerzy Rurikovich, son of the King of Lithuania and brother to the queen of Poland. The crown of Lithuania unfortunately passed from his grasp but his heir inherited the Kingdom of Sweden, which has been ruled by Catholic Swedish Rurikoviches ever since. Near-constant civil strife has prevented the kingdom from expanding their borders, however, except for a single county in Finland, the favourite hunting grounds of the Scandinavians.



Denmark gained the most from the conquest of Finland, and even conquered Pomeralia, Courland, and Livonia, but the throne declined even as the borders expanded. The male line of the royal House of Ylving died out with King Gnupa on the penultimate day of 1177. The crown passed to his eldest daughter, Queen Estrid, married to Magnus von Andechs, nephew of the count of Innsbruck. From then on the von Andechs would sit on the throne of Denmark as it declined. For a brief while the crown passed to the House of Gälta, until King Valentin, then Count of Bornholm, successfully brought it back through warfare. But with only a single county under his personal control, and a poor one at that, he has been hard-pressed to defend his title and his borders. Already the Duchy of Slesvig and Courland(ruled by a cadet branch of the House of Godwin) and the Duchy of Karelia(ruled by a branch of the House de Sens, the most powerful family in France) have gained their independence, each almost as powerful as the entire kingdom.



The Kingdom of Rus was created by King Mstislav the Silent, of House Andreievich, in late 1209. He was descended from Count Matfei of Kostroma and Yaroslavl, whose granddaughter Marina Radoslavovna married Duke Stepan(House Lukinich) of Perm, Vladimir, Hlynov, Rostov, Moskva and Pereyaslavl, who gained his titles from his mother Zabava the cruel, of House Rurikovich. Russian politics are a nightmare of intertwined marriages and successions and I can't make sense of half of it. Anyway, there's currently a civil war going on for the crown which the rebels are just about to win, resulting in the crown moving onto the brow of Duke Matfei 'The Just' of Pereyaslavl, of House... of Pereyaslavl. He is descended from Count Matfei... of Pereyaslavl. Yes, a randomly generated Count is going to be King of Rus. Not bad.

As for the Russian Rurikoviches, there's Duke Yaroslav of Rostov and Duke Gavriil of Sarkel, not counting scattered Counts and Barons. Neither Duke is especially powerful, with Duke Yaroslav commanding a single county directly and another two in vassalage, all poor, and Duke Gavriil controlling his de jure duchy, a mediocre patch of four counties.



Poland has been the whipping boy of the period, caught between the HRE on one side and the emerging Kingdom of Rus on the other, with the Scandinavians and even the English swooping in to grab what they can any time war breaks out with either. They still managed to grab enough territory from the Pagans around them to claim the Kingdom of Lithuania, however. The House of Piast has been in power since the start, except for a 21-year period in the 13th century when the crown was first usurped by Duke Bogomil "The Effeminate" of Mazovia, of House Swidnicki, then by Duke Demid of Polotsk, of House Rurikovich, and finally reclaimed for House Piast by Queen Elzbieta, daughter of Duke Dalimir "Half-Hand" of Lesser Poland.



The crown of France is currently held by the House de Sens, but through the Elective Succession system, it often finds its way into the hands of the other two major houses of France, House de Normandie and House d'Anjou. Currently, House de Sens holds the duchies of Holland, Flanders, Barcelona, Champagne and Orleans, House de Normandie holds Auvergne, Mallorca, Aquitaine and Poitou, and House d'Anjou holds Valois, Gascogne and Berry. As a fourth player, the House Saint-Gilles holds Bourbon and Anjou. Normandy, meanwhile, has found its way into the hands of Duchess Hunydd, of House Dinefwr, from whence it will pass to Count Christian, of House of Godwin.

The Capets, meanwhile, have lost all titles above Count-level. The most powerful, Saxon Count Maldred, still holds the counties of Paris, Auxerre, and La Marche.

You may, of course, note that there have been large changes in the French-Imperial border, but it may surprise you that, as far as I can remember, no wars have been fought between the two. Instead, Holland passed to France through inheritance and the Empire expanded into France by conquering land that Muslims conquered earlier from France. To make matters even more silly, the dirty heathens converted a large share of Toulouse to Maghreb culture, which it retains to this day.



Unbelievably stable, the HRE is the dragon of this game. The Imperial dynasty is House Staden, descended from Dukes of Brandenburg. They have been uncommonly able at putting down rebellions and increasing prestige through conquest against heathens and Christians alike. The current Emperor has claimed the Kingdom of Bohemia for himself, cutting down his greatest threat, and even conquered the Kingdom of Croatia in the east, and has pushed strongly into the Kingdom of Hungary.

He even conquered Rome from the Pope, too. Who does that?

Also of note is that the Imperial capital has not been anywhere near the de jure land of the Empire for about two hundred years. The Emperors much prefer to hold court in Sicily or Szombathely, in de jure Hungary.

Meanwhile, the Salians, who start out as Emperors and usually hold it, live on as Dukes of Baden and nothing else.



You would say Hungary is the other whipping boy of Europe, caught between Rus and both Roman Empires. You would see that they've been the unfriendly lady of the Germans since the start, looking at the map. You would note the endless civil wars tearing the realm apart every generation.

You would then be surprised to see that Hungary is not only winning the game but leaving everyone else in the dust. At this moment the Hungarian royal dynasty, House Árpád, has a score of 122,324. In second place is the Holy Roman Empire at 47,402. The Crovans are in seventh place with 29,105. I'm dumbfounded at Hungary's success but I think their secret lies in winning every one of those constant civil wars and letting none of their monarchs live past forty, making full use of their children's birth-prestige.



If the Holy Roman Empire is the dragon of this game, then the Byzantine Empire is the Lovecraftian horror. The Greek Emperor has at his command an army that is at least twice as big as the next contender, and has personally or through the independent efforts of his vassals extended Orthodox dominion to encompass the Black Sea almost completely, stretch out towards the east north of the Caspian until mapmakers shake their heads and even conquered a large part of Persia and Syria.

The Doukas, however, have little to be joyful of, however. In 1118, the Imperial diadem was usurped by Alexios "the Ironside" of House Murzuphlos, Doux of Achaia, from Emperor Kallistos II "the Just". House Doukas lingered on as Doux of Thrace and Coloneia, later adding the duchies of Mosul, Edessa, Baghdad and Aleppo to their holdings, through conquest of Muslim lands. The male line died out two generations later with Nikodemos, leaving the holdings to House Dalassenos until 1344, when they seem to have been split um amongst a number of holders.

Note the Kingdom of Georgia, a huge blob by western standards, and the mega-duchy underneath that. How I have never seen either of these revolt is beyond me.

Of particular note, however, is the Duchy of Turnovo, which has been independent since the middle of the 13th century, when Duchess Helene "the Ironside" of House Doukas, only to die in 1254, leaving the duchy to her Russian-cultured son Ivan "the Merry" of House Kievskiy. In 1298 the duchy would switch House again and gain a Staden monarch, ensuring the duchy's survival through an alliance with the Catholic Emperor.



The Seljuk Turks never managed to gain any momentum against the Byzantine Empire, instead fighting desperately against the pressure of a multitude of glory-hungry Roman vassals eager to expand their holdings. On the other hand, unlike many of the great houses in this game, the Turks are still led by House Seljuk. Meanwhile, the Il-Khanate invasion fizzled out after conquering the Turks, possibly because of the Golden Horde invasion, which never gained any ground at all. The Muslims of the Middle East are divided entirely between the monster Caliphate, the respectably-sized but still struggling Turkish Sultanate, and the Emirate of Sanaa, which has survived through being too insignificant to get in a bother over.



Finally, we have the Western Muslims. Things did not always look so bleak for the Christians in Spain. At the end of the 12th Century, King Lope of Leon, Galicia, Castille and Portugal controlled almost half the peninsula, with France and Aragon controlling two more duchies. As the 13th century dawned, however, the situation deteriorated incredibly quick as the Emir declared himself the Sultan of Al-Andalus and conquered vast tracts of land from the Jimena. The Sultan of Mauretania quickly seized the opportunity to follow in Al-Andalus's wake. From there is was a steady downwards slope for the Christians, towards the conquest of Al-Andalus by Sultan Yahya of Mauretania and reaching its nadir with the conquest of Leon by the Crovans.