How are you guys feeling about the balance?

There was a quote about how Paradox felt the Mountainous border region would make it hard for the Muslim powers to advance into India...

In 5 games, within 100 years, EVERY Single one he Muslim powers conquered that mountain region within the first 5 years. And were swarming almost unstoppably into India. The Sammanids and Saffarids are just... WAY Too strong against the Indian powers.

It doesn't help the India Mercenaries are TWICE as expensive at the cheapest point. There need to be at least 2-3 Indian Mercenaries which cost in the 77 range instead of 144. That will help. But still not enough.

in my greek baktria game the Sindh sultanate got carved up by the pratihara then the saffarids swooped in and conquered Sindh. However the bugged revolts are keeping them from pushing deeper into india. It seems like India is a touch weak. Im not really going to touch RoI until the religious unrest bug is fixed. Also yeah the mercenaries are ridiculous.

Quick question if they implement a hotfix patch would the fixes in the patch affect my current baktria game?(well its really Punjab I will reclaim actual baktria once the samanids weaken). Like 3 of my provinces have religious unrest and its rather annoying.

Interesting points. In my game the Hindus advanced beyond their starting point into Saffarid territory. Also,The Tulunids conquered every province in Africa (excluding the Myaphisite territories), and the first Catholic crusade was to reclaim Sicily (about year 1000). There seems to be a lot of more blobbing then what there used to be. Small nations are wiped out quickly, leaving large mono-coloured blobs dominating the map.

AndreasPhokas said:

in my greek baktria game the Sindh sultanate got carved up by the pratihara then the saffarids swooped in and conquered Sindh. However the bugged revolts are keeping them from pushing deeper into india. It seems like India is a touch weak. Im not really going to touch RoI until the religious unrest bug is fixed.

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India is incredibly weak, my Zoroaster Samanid save was pretty much instant victory in every war I waged in India (I took the entire Punjab kingdom and of course Afghanistan off of them) but strangely, I didn't have any of the religious unrest bugs in my realm - so you might be safe to invade India as a Zoroastrian

Yeah I've converted some of my provinces. Uhan something something the dejure capital of gandhara, I converted it to Nestorian( and renamed it to seleukeia) and it still has the religious unrest modifier. It spawned a 10k wave of rebels.

With Gandhara/Lahore/Multan under my control I can nearly go head to head with the samanids and saffirids(individually). But in that game saffirids are really having issues with rebels. It does seem like pratihara is really weak though for its size. Also doesn't help the AI is dumb, Pratihara and pala both holy warred me and sent in like 10 2k stacks that I just devoured.

I have two campaigns (1st as ERE - lasted 100 years and 2nd Khazaria lasting longer) in RoI. The Sunni powers have acted differently for me than for most it seems. They are tough but not the out of control blobs others are seeing. In my current campaign the Abbasids have had 2 decadence wars changing dynasties both times and losing duchies to independence. The Byzantines had taken Sicily Crete and Cyprus as is normal to pre-RoI experiences... they also have taken Jerusalem triggering Jihads of which the Sunnis have called 2 (failing both) and the Shias called one (which succeeded).

The Karlings have stable (in size) realms that often have inter-dynastic conflict. The Pope has called one Crusade which is still on-going into Hungary but the Holy orders have established themselves in Jerusalem under a Catholic Byzantium Duke...

The Persian Sunni power in this game actually lost the war with the Hindu power for the Afghan region and it wasn't until this power was subjugated by the Seljuk that eastern Persia was not being chain invaded by Indian powers.

The Norse have acted historically (ironically) establishing Jorvik as the Danelaw in England but all their efforts failed and currently the local petty kings are fighting in chaos in the Isles there.

Bulgaria survived the Magyar invaders who made a historical sized Hungary but they just sat there doing nothing for 150 years (until I smashed them but that is a story of another thread).

The bugs such as the never-ending religious revolts ( I'm on my 19th Tengri revolt) and the missing button for reforming religion hurt but I'm milking these revolts for cash - I get 300+ gold when I string them out and allow them to capture holdings and they do murder the title holder sometimes, allowing me to get rid of ambitious jerks easily....

All of this is to say I do not see major balance issues just tweaks needed. Sure the +moral of Muslim armies makes things more difficult but that is something that is pretty easy to tweak. (or fixing the Grey Wall tactic so it does not hurt other unit types).

In my game the Raja of Pratihara has 7 kingdom titles under Primogeniture, and is expanding into India unmolested.

The Indian Holy Orders are TINY too (Unless all the other ones got changed as well).

Like... every other Holy Order I know of is twice as large, and much more powerful. Unless 40 Elephants somehow matches 3000 Heavy Infantry...

TurtleShroom said:

The balance has been thrown out, in my opinion, by the Distance Limit. I can barely play the game the way I enjoy it most anymore because of it. (One time, I had a Jainist Hungary, but I couldn't marry any Jains except my own, which led to a lot of creepy cousin marraiges and half-sister/grandson unions, too.)

If there as anything I could ask for to be changed, it would be removing the Distance mecanism for Swearing Fealty. That was sort of a big deal, you know, and I'm pretty sure anyone will take free land and new money sources, regardless of how hard it was to establish contact.

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how far you thinking .... someone from india telling a king of hungary they are now their vassal? lol