I don't really "get" decadence

You can only really control it by jailing and executing all the men in your dynasty. It seems like you were supposed to control it by continually capturing new lands to give to your relatives, but the fact is thanks to polygamy, your families will be huge, and if you give your men land, they will take wives themselves and your family will grow exponentially. There isn't enough land in the game to manage that, so there's no need to bother. Just jail them.

+ It's totally bugged atm.

Jail every male relative that isn't the heir and throw away the keys. It's the only real way to manage Decadence permanently.

Heh, just go back a couple of pages, there is a thread pushing 30 pages on this very subject. But what everyone else said. Just imprison your male relatives and everything should go fine. That said, I don't play muslims anymore either.

FredricBastiat said:

Heh, just go back a couple of pages, there is a thread pushing 30 pages on this very subject. But what everyone else said. Just imprison your male relatives and everything should go fine. That said, I don't play muslims anymore either.

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Am I the only person who finds it easy to manage decadence just by spamming Ramadan and fighting wars a lot?

Five_X said:

Am I the only person who finds it easy to manage decadence just by spamming Ramadan and fighting wars a lot?

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thats not the problem ... you can keep decadence down pretty easy.
the thing is ... decadence forces you to mass conquest and/or decimate your family and/or a combination of these
and in the end it even doesnt do a good job at what it was implemented for, instead of de-blobbing a muslim state it just replaces the ruling dynasty with a new random generated one. yes the blob will be scattered a little right after the decadence war, but the new ruler will have strong claims on everything lost and thus AI will retake the whole original blob within max 2 years.

the main thing (for me) is that being forced to NOT land your dynasty members just feels majorly unrealistic.
spamming wars (increasing your realm = increasing your decadence income) to keep your decadence down is a backfire thing
especially when you combine these two and play muslims like any sane feudal / dynastic ruler wouldve acted in this time period. (watch arumbas defective decadence series on youtube)
you dont even need to land every single male dynasty member you have. just go with the ones that got good stats and/or like you.
as soon as your family gets a certain size and you do not imprison all male members when they turn 16 you will get thrown decadence at you in abnormous amounts, only way to counter that would be to land them, leading to more family members again, leading to you being forced to war not only to keep your decadence down from war contrbution but also to gain more lands to land more dynasty members.
and there we go ... you just entered the decadence maelstrom and after a certain point there is no way to get out of there anymore.
sure you can play on ... take the decadence revolt when it comes, maybe win it, maybe loose it (most likely ;P), then try to retake all your former titles from within again. but you will still have abnormous decadence amounts and only for a short time its not you who will be the head of dynasty ... until you become the highest ranking/powerful member of your dynasty again.
--rinse and repeat--

this is why most people do not enjoy playing muslims any more, because the curent decadence system is just contraproductive to the whole game
it doesnt fix the problem it is supposed to (de-blobbing muslim states, thats atleast what the majority of the community thinks its made for)
it forces players into a way of playing that feels unrealistic / majorly gamey (not everyone [i even guess the majority] doesnt even want to play gamey at all)


that there are ways to game the decadence mechanics doesnt mean that it is fun to play muslims

As others have said, just imprison and execute all your male relatives who aren't your heir (or assasinate them, if they're your sons). You can also give councillor positions to sons with good attributes as this stops decadence from increasing. I'm into my fourth generation now and I have 0% decadence!

Five_X said:

Am I the only person who finds it easy to manage decadence just by spamming Ramadan and fighting wars a lot?

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Probably not. There are a lot of ways to deal with it, all of them too effective for my taste. Unfortunately, they mostly require you to do borked-up things to keep it down, thus my sig.

Well historically, imprisoning all the male dynasty members is what the Ottomans did and they were the most successful and longest surviving Islamic empire in history. So in that sense it might actually be working as designed by forcing you to imprison them in order to survive.

The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II begun the practice of killing every brother and half-brother in 1451...for succession purposes and not due to "decadence". The Ottomans never went after every male dynasty member and I've heard it argued that the policy of imprisoning brothers and half-brothers later on contributed to the Ottoman Empire's decadence and decline, as quite a few sultans took the throne after spending decades in the Gilded Cage and had developed mental problems of varying degrees.

It isn't hard to manage decadence, but it requires a bit of counterintuitive strategy. A short while ago there was a huge thread about the failures of decadence both as a representation of history and as a gameplay element.

Oh, and a small tip: imprisoning children is easier due to their low stats, even though they don't generate decadence you may be interested in making them spend their entire life in prison.

Ammas11 said:

Well historically, imprisoning all the male dynasty members is what the Ottomans did and they were the most successful and longest surviving Islamic empire in history. So in that sense it might actually be working as designed by forcing you to imprison them in order to survive.

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I always love when ppl come with this statement and actually dont know how its really been

The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II begun the practice of killing every brother and half-brother in 1451...for succession purposes and not due to "decadence". The Ottomans never went after every male dynasty member and I've heard it argued that the policy of imprisoning brothers and half-brothers later on contributed to the Ottoman Empire's decadence and decline, as quite a few sultans took the throne after spending decades in the Gilded Cage and had developed mental problems of varying degrees.

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this ... thx
so the imprisoning is historically not even relevant to the ck2 timeline and doesnt have anything to do with decadence either

Duke of Awesome said:

I've had Sword of Islam pretty much since it came out, and I've tried playing a Muslim quite a few times but I never really understood the decadence mechanics. I would start out fine, but as I grew bigger and more powerful, my decadence would increase. Eventually it got to the point where I never played a Muslim game past the 3rd generation and now I don't play them at all. So what am I doing wrong here? What's the point of decadence and how can I control it?

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read the decadence tooltip

go to the religion tab

read all the tooltips

deduce solutions

test them

alter as necessary

Five_X said:

Am I the only person who finds it easy to manage decadence just by spamming Ramadan and fighting wars a lot?

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it has gotten a lot easier with all the CBs that reduce decadence.

that said, there's still no reason to let your brothers live, unless they have good traits to reproduce or are your best possible counselor.

Duke of Awesome said:

The problem I had is that the solution given to decadence is completely counter-intuitive to everything the game wants you to achieve. You want a big family that spreads across different kingdoms, but if that happens then you're decadence goes through the roof. If you have a small family, then why am I playing a dynasty building game and not EU3?

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I thought decadence was only affected by characters within your own realm. Maybe I mis-remember that.

Nevertheless, the idea that "you want a big family that spreads across different kingdoms" is... odd. I don't see that this game is particularly a dynasty building game at all. Dynasties don't seem particularly important to it, and there's no real advantage to building a large dynasty for non-Muslims, either.

Duke of Awesome said:

The problem I had is that the solution given to decadence is completely counter-intuitive to everything the game wants you to achieve. You want a big family that spreads across different kingdoms, but if that happens then you're decadence goes through the roof. If you have a small family, then why am I playing a dynasty building game and not EU3?

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thats exactly what i meant with "counterproductive to the game" in my first post
well put :happy:

grisamentum said:

I thought decadence was only affected by characters within your own realm. Maybe I mis-remember that.

Nevertheless, the idea that "you want a big family that spreads across different kingdoms" is... odd. I don't see that this game is particularly a dynasty building game at all. Dynasties don't seem particularly important to it, and there's no real advantage to building a large dynasty for non-Muslims, either.

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the end score of the game contains your DNYASTIC SCORE in comparsion to historical dynasties

Edit:
thats the thing ...
in ck2 you play a family (hence why you swap to another dynasty member when you loose your titles or the game is over when your heir is not of your dynasty)
in EU you play a state