Just came back after a year - wow, event troops and factions are OP

They nerfed the event troops in the last update.
Just take 300 gold from the Jews, expel them and then hire mercs. 500 gold gets you lots of mercs.

To prevent someone from joining a faction they need to have at least 60 opinion of you and to get them to leave they need to have at least 80 opinion of you. Also, faction leaders will use their spymasters to try to coerce other vassals to join regardless of their opinion of you (you can do the same when playing as a vassal leading a faction) and a vassal coerced to join the faction will remain there until you send your spymaster to Scheme in their capital to coerce them to leave.

Event troops were nerfed in the latest patch but they can get large if you hold alot of land outside of your capital duchy or kingdom. Patch 2.0 nerfed vassal levies hard so that levies raised outside of your capital county have increasing penalties. You can raise 75%, 50%, 35%, and 25% of vassal levies in the capital duchy, kingdom, empire, and outside de jure territories respectively. And, AFAIK, you don't have a capital duchy, kingdom, or empire unless you hold those ranks so if you're an independent super-duke with half a kingdom then you're getting the outside de jure penalty with all vassals outside your capital duchy. But the sizes of both event troops and vassal levies can be modded in the defines.lua file which is what I did with my game.

I posted this a couple days ago, but since I didn't title it "OMFG PI SUX!!!" it sort of slipped past most people's radar.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ed-Levy-mechanics-by-modding-the-Defines-file

There are some gamey ways of maximizing troops in 2.0 (holding *all* of the holdings in your capital county and all counties in your capital duchy, ensuring that your capital is in the capital duchy of the kingdom/empire, etc) and also ways of changing your gameplay to make it easier (minimizing feudal levies and maximizing income), but in general it's extremely easy to modify the troop levels yourself. Just open the defines file with Notepad++, make whatever changes you want (I listed exactly what I did and why), and you're all set.

Btw, in case you're wondering there have been probably *hundreds* of thread on this over the past couple months. Some people liked the changes, some don't, but the whole thing has been pretty much beaten to death by now. That's why this thread is a bit quiet.

JaguarXJ6 said:

Thanks. Consolidation in the capital to maximize tax collection was something I always strived for. So far editing the events got the game working, but I'd like to strike a better balance when I'm not on the airplane and can more easily modify the game when I have AC power.

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Consolidation in the capital gets you an obscene amount of troops. Not only do you get all of the troops from the holdings, you get a 50% bonus for it being your capital county and then you can Train Troops for additional bonuses. Then hold your counties in the capital duchy for your kingdom/empire and you'll get an additional 15% for all of the troops you raise from holdings you own there.

Combine that with the massive reduction in troops from your vassals, and you'll see that there's really no point in vassal levies, especially if you're using retinues. Between those and your demesne troops your biggest concern will be cash flow, as they're now ungodly expensive.

Honestly, factions are kind of underpowered. Keeping everybody at +60 is way too easy.

Iron Chariots said:

Honestly, factions are kind of underpowered. Keeping everybody at +60 is way too easy.

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I disagree, but I'm pretty sure that this has been gone over again (and again, and again, and again). When as a duke in France I generate 50% of my liege's troops all by myself, that makes it WAY too easy to succeed as a count/duke. Or when you have a kingdom and 2 dukes can get together and somehow equal 50%+ of your forces (and yay, free troops flocking to their banner!), that's a problem.

But hey, that's why Paradox made everything adjustable by the player.