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How to survive a Jihad?

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I am seeing quite a bit of advice regarding use of Holy Orders, or having a massive income to feed mercenaries. Unfortunately, that doesn't really help in the early game when the very first Jihad is called (1080 or so, like mine above). Similarly, Holy Orders don't seem to arrive til after the first Crusade, sometime after 1090. While the gamey boat abuse seems like the "best advice" for survival, it seems a bit limited when dealing with 3-4 doomstacks roaming around a confined area like the Italian peninsula, while standing in a defensive position at best means I can kill a few hundred, maybe a thousand more enemy troops before I get sent into a forced retreat (or wiped out completely).

Thinking on it some more, I went back in the save and looked at my other called allies - sure enough Hungary and France *were* gathering troops to send to my aid, unfortunately for me, they were trapped in the "gather more tiny stacks to add to the big one" loop, and would not have arrived for another 2-3 years at best. I think the only reason England made it down was the limit of troops that can fit on a group of boats helped speed up their response time.
 
I survived to two jihad against Sicily, but only thanks help from the Pope and HRE... naturally I do a massive use of Holy Orders.
I think that with 1.06 the muslims are too much powerful, and I don't like it.
 
This isn't really Jihad advice, so much as playing Apulia in general advice. All those juicy rich Muslim provinces in Sicily are going to be worthless for 30 years. So before taking them and beginning the conversion process, consolidate power in your duchy. Namely you want to imprison(try to piss him off and get him plotting) and banish your brother. It nets you two provinces, and tyranny isn't going to wreck your game. If you can afford to form the Kingdom of Sicily early you can use De Jure claims on the Sicily, wait until the truces disappear and revoke to avoid the conquest penalties. Holy Warring at the start of the game isn't a good idea.

Also switch out of gravelkind before unpausing. Best thing about playing an old fart, you've been Duke for 10 years already. And there aren't any active crown laws. Primo now.
 
What's really fun is when a jihad is called against a player-controlled Sicily while there is an ongoing crusade for Jerusalem. Most of your allies are busy trying to conquer the holy land, all of the holy orders and affordable mercs are in use, and while the Fatamids are busy trying to defend Jerusalem their allies are busy mustering doomstacks destined for a vacation in sunny southern Italy.

This happened to me in my first Duchy of Apulia game after 1.06 hit. I held out for five years by destroying enemy armies as they landed, but once the 10-12K doomstacks began to arrive it was the beginning of the end for me. :\

And just so there's no mistake, I'm not complaining about this. This game would be a lot more boring if jihads were easy to defend against. :)
 
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grisamentum said:
Uh, what? Why? IRL there was a decade-long rebellion plus other problems that brought down the Fatimid caliphate. If that doesn't happen in your game then the Fatimids will expand until it does.

As it is now you're just complaining that you couldn't win a war. Ok, so? If you can't protect yourself swear fealty to someone who can or get better at warfighting.

Guess what, playing certain rulers at certain points is pretty much a guaranteed loss without serious powergaming. It should be that way.
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Making assumptions about people and sarcasm are a bad combination. I'm simply talking about how they act in the "vanilla" game without user modifications curbing their power to be more realistic. Before SOI the region was reasonably manageable without dumb luck.
 
When I played the game starting in any of the Sardinian provinces I only managed to survive early holy wars by swearing fealty to either France or Genoa at the start of the game since they both have a significant amount of troops that can arrive by ship. I've never tried to play the kingdom of Sicily, but I can tell you that in all games that I played from Sardinia, Sicily was either mostly or entirely captured by muslims by the early 1100s, but then usually later on recaptured by Byzantine. If you start in Sicily I'd say you better capture some remote land somewhere like Ireland for when you get wiped out in Sicily. I never managed to survive by actually staying in Sardinia, though I did last long enough there to allow me to relocate to France or Ireland.
 
Zorlond said:
Coming from the opposite side of this issue, I can definitely agree that the Fatimid military is rather overpowered as you get into the mid-1100's. .
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It does not always take that long...

ck2_5.jpg


I am the count of Lucca. My skin is only dark because my mother was Maghreb.

Story behind:
Matilda (my liege) successfully revolted from HRE. Fatimids Jihad against Kingdom of Sicily - easy win. Pope Crusades for Sicily - spectacular defeat. Fatimids conquer Matilda easily (I revolt away right before Tuscany is no more). Fatimids holy war the Pope - easy win. Then I swear fealty to France for protection. Fatimids then holy war HRE for rest of Italy - they win in months. Thats when I took this screen. Short time after while France is occupied with Scotland, another Muslim takes Taranto (in Sicily) from me. After that, the French King revoked Cremona (land-locked blue in Italy). After that I said fuq this and started over.
 
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DamianGrim said:
Well, HRE is more "democratic" at the start. ;)
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Yeah but because the ai tend to rush full ca without any thought behind it , the HRE usually gets Med ca pretty quickly and onward to Absol ca in no time. You can be gamey to circumvent it , but meh , i kinda just wish the ai were less trigger happy about raising it , since not many rulers wielded the power that comes with Absolute ca in those days.







As for how to defend against a jihad? In this situation its really not likely you will survive. Ordinarily you can survive some very big Muslim attempts due to Holy orders , but its too early for them to exist l0l. Also though , ive noticed the Muslims fielding some very very huge numbers of Heavy Cavalry since 1.06 (wad?).
 
grisamentum said:
Uh, what? Why? IRL there was a decade-long rebellion plus other problems that brought down the Fatimid caliphate. If that doesn't happen in your game then the Fatimids will expand until it does.

As it is now you're just complaining that you couldn't win a war. Ok, so? If you can't protect yourself swear fealty to someone who can or get better at warfighting.

Guess what, playing certain rulers at certain points is pretty much a guaranteed loss without serious powergaming. It should be that way.
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He wasn't complaining about the ahistorical result. He was noting that the historical outcome is basically impossible. And considering that the south italian christians did just fine for themselves historically it shouldn't be the case that they should be a guaranteed loss. Their situation was hardly precarious in 1066.
 
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