Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Muslim + holy war is wayyy too strong

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • 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.
Crusader Kings II 69868 Bug Reports 19707 User Modifications 10588 Suggestions 5969 Tech Support 6361 After Action Reports
U

unmerged(533139)

Sergeant
1 Badges
Aug 7, 2012
72
0
  • Crusader Kings II
So I played my first SoI game today and I started out as a 4 county duchy to make things a little bit easier (the one with Tripoli in it). I quickly expanded to about 10-15 provinces by using some fake claims, holy warring the independent counties, and luckily pursuing a strong claim to a neighboring emirate once they had a succession crisis. All that done in about 10-15 years (around 1080s) which is not too shabby since most of the time I had to siege my enemies and I only had about 1000 strong army since the provinces didn't get a chance to lose their penalties yet.

Then came something really interesting.. around this time my children finally grew up so I started getting alliances with the 2 big Sunni sultanates (Egypt and Persia) and then I noticed the Byzantine Empire was having one huge war (guessing a Succession Crisis) since 70-80% of its duchies were showing up independent on the map. So what do I do? Declare holy war against the closest independent duchy and invite my friends the Egyptians and Persians

It worked out a lot better than expected, they brought in about 16k stacks each and once I noticed that I quickly finished the war. Then I'm like, hmm well can I get even more duchies this way? So I wrap this up and declare war on pretty much every Byzantine duchy rebelling (missed maybe 2-3 further ones, and a few dukes had 2+ duchy holdings so I couldn't absorb them entirely). I had probably 10+ holy wars going at once.

Of course the Egyptian/Persians end up doing all the work for me.. I just run around like a madman sieging provinces. Since this is super early in the game (it hit 1090 halfway through -- I remember because the Pope called a Crusade to retake Sicily and Egypt had to pull out which slowed my progress) most cities were <500 troops defending them which meant a 20k stack chewed through that like butter.

I got like 50+ provinces in just a few years. I had so many I ran out of dynasty members to give them to!

So yeah, maybe something needs to be fixed here.. Holy War is supposed to be "balanced" because you can only attack one Duchy with it, not an entire Kingdom but this doesn't apply in case of independence wars plus the fact that other Muslim rulers love joining Holy Wars, and you have a crapton of wives/kids which means its trivial to get every other Muslim nation allied with you (except the ones you want to conquer).


---------

TLDR I got about 50 provinces in <5 years even though I started out with just 4 provinces at the beginning of the game and 15 provinces before the war (same ruler).
 
Doesn't really matter, I am planning on imprisoning the adults once they pop out a few sons so I have a surplus of dynasty members to give away counties to. I don't think you can have more kids when you're in prison, can you? I can always execute the family line till I get my counties back.
 
Yeah, the holy war mechanic WOULD be broken, if you hadn't just guaranteed an empire collapse of your own...
Enjoy that decadence...
 
Not really following you? The only thing I can think of is I'll get sick of managing hundreds of counties every generation and imprisoning everybody. I can always give out counties to people outside of my dynasty (I think if you do non-great house isn't it a randomly generated dynasty?)
 
Downtown1 said:
Not really following you? The only thing I can think of is I'll get sick of managing hundreds of counties every generation and imprisoning everybody. I can always give out counties to people outside of my dynasty (I think if you do non-great house isn't it a randomly generated dynasty?)
Click to expand...
The thing is, you've given counties to dynasty members. In a generation or two, they will be completely out of your control and, depending on a lot of different factors, the decadence will add up FAST.
 
Why would they be out of my control? I'm a King now and fast on my way to becoming an Emperor, so wouldn't they stay vassalized under me even in the unlikely case they expand on their own and create new titles? What am I missing here?

Also there's no matrilinear marriage for Muslims unless they convert to Christianity I guess so the land being passed out of my realm is out of the question (anyway that would go *outside* the dynasty which seems to not be a problem).

Bear in mind this is my first SoI game so maybe I'm not fully understanding the succession mechanics here..
 
Not to mention the decadence of other counts/dukes within your realm. Making your blobs become morale negative by the time they are of any real use, in 100 years. Its your first game with muslim decandence, don't assume its all a cakewalk.
 
Before the war against the Byzantines I purged every single non-dynastical Count/Duke, I was hoping the extra tyranny would make it more likely that someone would finally kill my guy (and they did but when he was already aged 60 and well after the majority of the Byzantine conquests was over). So I have full control of who has what county via penalty-free imprisonments/executions of dynasty members.

The only real assumption I'm making here is that baron-level titles will have insignificant decadence since I just created new vassals for those instead of giving it out to family members.
 
Look at your religion tab... look at your decadence growth. Pretty soon you'll hit 100% decadence, have armies with awful morale and tribal invasions (30k stacks with good morale) to deal with.
 
Decadence growth is 0.21% per month (manageable for now) and 0 if I imprison all adult relatives.. but for now there is no reason since I want them to pop out more sons. I just don't understand what the big deal is here. I went from a 1 county to like 15 kingdoms on my Christian game, this is just a lot easier since you can conquer without having to find claimants or forging CBs.

You can grant land to 0 year olds and until they turn 16 they don't get any decadence, all the meanwhile you have a Count/Duke/Whatever who will not rebel against you without being provoked, seems pretty amazing.
 
Why don't you just play for the next hundred years and see how much you like your "over powered" empire then instead of not paying attention to people who are warning you of what will happen in 100 years? There is a very good reason in almost all the games I play there are no Muslim factions left at the end, the decadence mechanic has a great deal to do with it. I would read up on all the threads that mention it, it might open your eyes or not.
 
Muslims in my Castille game were expanding and attacking me like crazy, but once their decadence hit 100, they had all kinds of shit to deal with, and all of their gains they made in 40 years I was able to retake and bite a chunk of out of their core andalusia in 5-6 years. Soon after I formed Hispania and kicked them all out.

Muslims can expand fast but they also fall apart fast, whereas Christendom is bit of a more steady affair, with your empire relying on your titles and claims to hold it together, rather than pure conquest.

Just keep playing and wait for the next set of events like decadence and Christians crusading against you. You might not enjoy your empire for long.
 
Decadence is evil. For the first few generations as a new ruler it is not really a problem, but it easily can run rampant after 3 or 4 generations, unless you control your dynasty very strictly. And if you have handed out lands to all of your sons and then when your son takes over, he tries to imprison his brothers, he might end up with a civil war to depose him because of his tyranny. If you have played the game as a Christian ruler after getting SOI, notice how dynasties rise and fall amongst the Muslims.

Though I guess it does simulate the real world Muslims. First Mohammed took Arabia. Then the Rashidun took Egypt, half of Africa, Jerusalem, Syria, Armenia, Mesopotania and Persia, before they ended only 31 years later. The Ummayyad took over for another 100 years and took all of the lands to India (not on the CK map), all of Africa, the Mauretania and 90% of Iberia. And then they imploded, followed by the Abbasid (who got kicked off most of their power 150 years later, being reduced mostly to Baghdad), and then the Fatimids (who lasted for 270 years, but in the waning years consistently lost territory, so they only held Egypt in the end).

Decadecence is really a killer and if you hit 100%, your smallest and weakest vassal go all crazy on you and spit out doomstack after doomstack after doomstack.
 
Yea, the true challenge is keeping low the decadence.
The Holy War CB isn't that powerful...invasion CB is much more strong! It simulates the fast muslim expansion during the rising of a new muslim dynasty, and their skill in converting the conquered "vassals"...however decadence will strike them down in 4-6 generations circa...unless the player do something
 
I doubt it's muslim or holy war that is at fault here, rather:
- alliance mechanismus (as long as they like you, they will send all their troops for no cost and no benefit for them)
- Egypt/Persia being OP
- the attrition limit too high or lack of distance attrition penalty, in fact armies should be suffering constant low attrition even if not fighting/sieging and not over limit
 
Attrition is good, only at the early game I can forget about it...50 years after you need bigger armies to assault and fight, attrition start giving problems...:closedeyes:

Only during late renaissance-1600s armies start to need supply trains, before you get the supplies from the land you are crossing, so the supply limits is well done.
But true problem is that there isn't any option to pillage and scorch the land (as in CK1 and EU3)...it would give some money to the pillager, decrease piety, decrease the supply limit, add some warscore if you pillage enemy land and reduce the siege-time...

for the Alliance, in middleages the blood-bond was the stronger and lonelly that could grant a true alliance.
 
Only during late renaissance-1600s armies start to need supply trains, before you get the supplies from the land you are crossing, so the supply limits is well done.
Click to expand...
You probably want to look up Richard Lionheart's crusading and 30 Years War and then retract that obviously incorrect comment.

If anything, the supply limit should grow as time passes, due to better local technology (agriculture, etc) and better invader's technology (supply organization).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back