• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I think the guide is too hard on Agnatic/Cognatic Elective. While it is true that you end up with more pretenders, it allows you to nominate a daughter over a son. That can be very helpful if you want to ensure that your most qualified family member inherits.
 
Let me say again how appreciative I am that you are doing this. Keeping it updating and doing the necessary testing is some work (I hope you have a fast machine that takes just a couple of minutes to reload saves for test purposes). So here is some more input:


This is for Installment 8, shown at post #9:

in the Claim CBs paragraph I suggest this change:

If your character has multiple personal claims upon a single realm you can press all of them at once ("Press all claims"), but otherwise you can only push a single claim for one claimant per war.

Invasion CB: Clarify which holding counts you compare.

Mention Overthrow Ruler CB is the "War for NameOfMyRealm" CB?

Excommunication claims are also good for trying to weaken and destabilize the target realm by forcing it to go through a succession and new reign turmoil, especially if the successor is weaker or has more liabilities. An untimely gavelkind succession can break it up (which I call a gravelkindling of the realm).

Gaining CBs: Change "Forge the claim" to "Fabricate the claim" as used in game - for clarity.

For inheritable claims, I can press male claims, but not female claims (though I don't recall trying it for a female ruler). It it only works for males or female rulers, it coulid be plainly said that way.

Using Your CBs: You mention granting a county, but isn't any land enough? It might also help to note the tooltip is incomplete. It describes when the claimant becomes your vassal, but does not mention that an existing vassal remains a vassal with the exceptions that are mentioned.

Summary: 10 year truce with truce-breaking penalty for the "Attacker".

Might add a reminder to make all declarations of war before raising any levy armies (and that mercenaries and navies are not a problem).


General military grand strategy comment: Alternating large wars with small ones can reduce the opinion penalty for keeping levies raised durin the large wars by fighitng the small ones entirely or mostly with just your personal troops and mercenaries.
 
Someone should probably confirm this but Gregarious and Diligent supposedly increases the likelihood of your tutor culture flipping your child.
Yup, it does. Pretty sure I noted that in the installment on culture.

You might add mention in the Education chapter where you discuss culture change in "A Few Things To Watch Out For".

On a related topic - can you confirm that the Stewardship numbers in the culture change table you created are the Count's personal total and not State Stewardship?
 
You might add mention in the Education chapter where you discuss culture change in "A Few Things To Watch Out For".

On a related topic - can you confirm that the Stewardship numbers in the culture change table you created are the Count's personal total and not State Stewardship?
Personal total, yes.
 
Meneth: Would it be a feasible expectation to have this Guide (finished, or almost) and ready for a print version by the end of March?
Yeah. I don't think I'll be covering much more, if anything, beyond a table of opinion modifiers, and possibly alliances.
 
I think the guide is too hard on Agnatic/Cognatic Elective. While it is true that you end up with more pretenders, it allows you to nominate a daughter over a son. That can be very helpful if you want to ensure that your most qualified family member inherits.

That it does, but having female heir also decreases relations with vassals, so you ought to be careful with that.
 
One thing I still struggle with is when I am allowed to declare war, and on whom.
For instance I'll get a claim on a county then not be able to use it due to realm laws. Would have been nice to know before paying for it eh?

The game is a bit cryptic about claims and war decs. Changing per realm per rank. How do I know what the realm rules are when no king exists? If I claim X CB what are the results?

Some more depth on what options are available when your a count, then duke, then king, in regard to realm laws & CB's. When they apply and when they don't...etc.

Thanks
 
I have a spreadsheet set up to guide me in exactly that, I just don't have enough combat experience in game to really judge how well the spreadsheet model matches the combat model. I'll clean it up, send it to you, and open the assumptions and results up for discussion.

So I'm late with this, but I did finally get to it. Force composition analysis, or who's worth what in combat.

A man leaves combat in one of two ways: he dies (which his defense rating protects against) or he flees in terror (which his morale rating protects against). He causes those effects in the enemy by attacking them. So the basic measure of worth in combat I call the ADAM rating: Attack, Defense, Attack, Morale, multiplied together.

But there are multiple phases of combat, and each unit has different attack and defense ratings for each phase, so different ADAM ratings. It's easy enough to compute those different ADAM ratings, but how do we combine them so that we can meaningfully compare archers (strong in skirmish) to heavy infantry (strong in melee)?

Short answer: I guessed. I made skirmish count twice as much as the other two phases in the overall ratings. My reasoning was that every battle is guaranteed to have a skirmish phase. A strong skirmishing force can win a battle outright, or seriously bias the outcome of melee in favor of its side. Every battle is also guaranteed to have a pursuit phase once one side has won. While this last phase is irrelevant for determining the winner of the battle, it matters quite a bit in winning wars, as this is where you do the bulk of your killing.

So the formula I use is 2*Skirmish ADAM + Melee ADAM + Pursuit ADAM. I then divide each unit's rating by the rating of light infantry (the lowest overall value unit) to get a relative scale shown below in order of increasing power

Unit RBV
Light Infantry 1.0
Archers 1.7
Heavy Infantry 3.3
Pikemen 5.1
Light Cavalry 14.8
Horse Archers 23.1
Heavy Cavalry 48.5

That's why Holy Orders and their heavy cavalry are so frightening: the knights alone can take on up to 50:1 odds depending on how bad their opponent's force composition is. Note that Mongol horse archers are no laughing matter either. With this in mind, it may be more useful to compare units to the heavy cavalry. This is how many of each unit it takes to make a fair fight for one knight. Also useful for comparing the value of different types of castle buildings to your levies.

Unit R HC
LI 48.5
Archer 28.5
HI 14.7
Pike 9.4
LC 3.3
HA 2.1
HC 1.0

The raw ADAM numbers for each phase, for those who wish to weight the phases differently in search of more accurate results
Unit Skirmish Melee Pursuit
LI 36 81 81
HI 6.25 720 40
Pike 1.2 1200 0.48
LC 80 108 3200
HC 80 8000 3200
Arch 192 2 12
HA 1372 252 2401

It's important to note that this is all based on the base stats for each unit. Technology, leader skill, tactics, terrain, etc can all alter these relationships. As far as technologies, since attack strength counts twice in the ADAM rating (once for killing, once for breaking morale), a 10% increase in attack rating is a 21% increase in combat power (1.1 x 1.1 = 1.21). So prioritize offensive technology whenever it makes sense to do so, especially for your most numerous troops.

Summary:
- Knights > Horse Archers > Light Cavalry > Pikes > Heavy Infantry > Archers > Peasant light infantry
- Improving offensive technology gives roughly twice the benefit of improving defensive or morale technology

Next time I'll use these unit ratings to rank the buildings in order of combat power per gold to determine build order.
 
One thing I still struggle with is when I am allowed to declare war, and on whom.
For instance I'll get a claim on a county then not be able to use it due to realm laws. Would have been nice to know before paying for it eh?

The game is a bit cryptic about claims and war decs. Changing per realm per rank. How do I know what the realm rules are when no king exists? If I claim X CB what are the results?

Some more depth on what options are available when your a count, then duke, then king, in regard to realm laws & CB's. When they apply and when they don't...etc.

Thanks

On the same topic why the hell means "You can t wage declare war to "X" because he is independent" ? What the hell even to infidels. On the joke side who cares if he s 18 + and have enought money to keep himself up.
On the serious note that one stuff i really don t get and its not explained anywhere.
 
Insomnia makes me productive in some ways. Build orders for castle holdings based on combat power as described above.
Note that the keeps, walls, Italian, Russian, English and Iberian buildings are better than their individual stats indicate and should be built sooner, as they improve the effectiveness of troops from other preexisting buildings as well. Several buildings appear in these lists prior to their prerequisites, that just means that those buildings are more cost/time effective than the prereq. If you can't build something at the moment, just skip down to the highest ranked item you *can* build

If gold is your limiting factor, i.e. you want the best army you can get for the least building cost, build in this order, or as close to it as your tech level allows:
Warrior Cult
Wall 1
Wall 2
Wall 3
Wall 4
List 1
Altaic 1
Stable 2
Stable 1
List 2
Altaic 2
List 3
Altaic 3
List 4
Stable 5
Stable 4
Altaic 4
Stable 3
Iberian 1
Iberian 2
Iberian 3
Iberian 4
Barracks 1
Barracks 2
Scot 1
Militia 2
Scot 2
Barracks 3
Scot 3
Balt 1
Barracks 4
Scot 4
Militia 1
Balt 2
Barracks 5
Militia 3
Barracks 6
Balt 3
Balt 4
English 1
English 2
Train 2
Wall 5
English 3
English 4
Keep 6
Keep 5
Keep 4
Keep 3
Keep 2
Train 1
Keep 1
Italy 4
Italy 3
Rus 4
Italy 2
Italy 1
Rus 3
Rus 2
Rus 1
If you have gold to spare but need the best troops you can get ASAP, use this order (as best you can):
Warrior Cult
List 1
Altaic 1
Stable 1
List 2
Stable 2
Altaic 2
Stable 4
Stable 3
List 4
Altaic 4
List 3
Altaic 3
Stable 5
Iberian 1
Iberian 2
Iberian 4
Barracks 1
Scot 1
Iberian 3
Barracks 2
Scot 2
Barracks 3
Militia 2
Balt 1
Barracks 4
Militia 1
Balt 2
Scot 4
Militia 3
Scot 3
English 1
Barracks 6
English 2
Barracks 5
Balt 4
Train 2
Balt 3
English 4
Keep 6
Keep 4
Keep 3
Keep 2
Train 1
English 3
Keep 5
Keep 1
Wall 5
Wall 3
Wall 1
Wall 2
Wall 4
Italy 4
Italy 3
Rus 4
Rus 3
Italy 2
Italy 1
Rus 2
Rus 1
For general use where both gold and time are concerns, use this order, again as far as possible:
Warrior Cult
Stable 1
Stable 2
List 1
Altaic 1
Stable 3
List 2
Altaic 2
Barracks 1
Stable 4
Iberian 1
Barracks 2
Militia 1
Militia 2
List 3
Scot 1
Iberian 2
Altaic 3
List 4
Stable 5
Altaic 4
Barracks 3
Balt 1
Scot 2
Wall 1
Iberian 3
Iberian 4
Barracks 4
English 1
Balt 2
Militia 3
Wall 2
Keep 2
Train 1
Wall 3
English 2
Scot 3
Keep 1
Train 2
Scot 4
Barracks 5
Keep 3
Wall 5
Barracks 6
Balt 3
Balt 4
Keep 4
Wall 4
English 3
English 4
Keep 6
Keep 5
Italy 4
Italy 3
Rus 4
Rus 3
Italy 2
Italy 1
Rus 2
Rus 1

Summary / General guidelines
- If you can build Warrior Cults, stop reading now and go build them. The AI is set to build them 300% of the time for a reason.
- Max out buildings that give you the best units first. A small number of knights is almost always better than a large number of other units, and worth paying/waiting for.
- Be aware that the Keep, Wall, English, Italian, Russian, and Iberian chains have effects on the value of other existing buildings too, so they will usually be a higher priority than their positions in these lists indicate. Their bonuses apply to all relevant troops of that type from that castle, not just to the ones added by the building itself (which is all I could readily examine for these lists). The top tier Russian building adds 46% percent to the defense of all your heavy infantry, which is quite a lot of troops getting a hefty bonus. The 4th level offensive bonuses add 114% to the power of pikes, archers(!) or light cavalry(!)
 
Last edited:
Really appreciated all the effort you guys put with this guide. Don't know what I'd done without it.

But I have one request. :)

It'd be cool if we could get a thorough understanding of how inheritable claims work. I'm experiencing them in-game with different results. How many generations do they last? How do they expand through your pool of children? Heirs, pretenders, rest of your children? Are they dependant on the claimant kingdom of origin succession laws?

For example, I married a claimant of the kingdom of Hungary, my son had a claim on it, but it wasn't inheritable anymore. My son pressed it and won it. The next generation I invited the brother of the king of England who had a inheritable claim and I married his only child, who was a daughter, to my son. But when the guy died, his daughter could only press her claim in a war, it wasn't inheritable. Hungary had agnatic-cognatic primogeniture, but England is agnatic primogeniture. I'm thinking that must be the difference in those two examples.

I'm a total noob in this of looking in the game files. What files should I look to investigate all this?

EDIT: I think I've figured it out and it's much more simpler than I thought. All the children of a title holder will have an inheritable claim on that title. The guy who eventually gets the title keeps passing the claims on his own children, the inheritability of the claim on the other siblings though, dies with them and their own children will have it as non inheritable. In my prior example, I married the daughter of a king without realizing it. I don't remember reading this in the guide though.
 
Last edited:
I'm guessing you've got a spreadsheet for it? I'd like to add that (and your commentary) as an installment.

It'd be cool if we could get a thorough understanding of how inheritable claims work. I'm experiencing them in-game with different results. How many generations do they last? How do they expand through your pool of children? Heirs, pretenders, rest of your children? Are they dependant on the claimant kingdom of origin succession laws?
Claims seem to be inherited for two generations, then expire unless pressed.

For example, I married a claimant of the kingdom of Hungary, my son had a claim on it, but it wasn't inheritable anymore. My son pressed it and won it. The next generation I invited the brother of the king of England who had a inheritable claim and I married his only child, who was a daughter, to my son. But when the guy died, his daughter could only press her claim in a war, it wasn't inheritable. Hungary had agnatic-cognatic primogeniture, but England is agnatic primogeniture. I'm thinking that must be the difference in those two examples.
The Hungarian claim only got inherited for two generations (claimant -> your son), while you were trying to inherit the English claim for 3 generations (English brother -> English daughter -> your grandson)

I'm a total noob in this of looking in the game files. What files should I look to investigate all this?
This type of stuff is generally hardcoded.
 
I'm guessing you've got a spreadsheet for it? I'd like to add that (and your commentary) as an installment.
Flattered. Sent you a PM with my email, will send you the sheet back.