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The system does suck, it's a universally accepted fact.

I never have a problem with adventurers unless my realm is extremely unhealthy. They are sacks of gold waiting for me to banish and confiscate, as far as I'm concerned.

Adventurer warning? Let's plan what to spend that 500 gold on in two years.

The last time I had an adventurer actually win was when I was in the middle of a civil war and being victimized by a crusade at the same time. And even then, he just occupied some crap and won by ticking war score. I could have beaten the guy eventually if I could have gotten armies over there.

Hell, I turned LoR off and ran a game with no retinues and I still never got in trouble with any adventurers, including the time both my banished brothers launched attacks within months of each other.
 
If I had to choose between facing both Shia and Sunni Jihads at the same time, alone and facing an adventurer megablob, I'd pick jihads every time...
 
I'm currently playing a Jerusalem masochism game. I prefer having kid kings facing double jihads and Seljuk blobs to adventurers.
 
I dont have much issues when I get invaded, but I had a situation my neighbour got invaded and then turn on me.

You have not raged until and 32K stack of event troop of a Andalusian Sultan with 50% decadence but inume stack wipes out 16k defending on the mountains. Since event troops dont seem to be affected by decadence, I lost half of my two county kingdom and they lost about 5k men by the end of the war and that by storming the holdings. They win, the sultan dies and less than a year later the new sultan does it again. This time, 42k or them and did not have full levies yet and lose my last county.
 
They seriously do need tweaking. Personally, I've never ever lost to an adventurer when they targeted me (I only once lost because the adventurer targeted my duchy but declared war on my liege = you don't get a warning and the AI is obviously too dumb to assassinate them). But even though I can handle them perfectly when I do know they're coming... it's a completely unfun aspect of the game. "Oh, hey time to throw away your money on assassinations!". It's not really fun or engaging at all.

Curently playing as the King of Georgia from 867 and had two adventurers announce their intent on taking my kingdom within 6 months of each other... year is 9xx.

One of them is a kin of mine within my own court, so -40 tyranny opinion to arrest him (because treason is not against the law apparently), 350g to assassinate him (potential kinslayer and counter-assassination by some completely unrelated ruler if he were in another court) and everyone likes him and therefore unwilling to join plots versus him. I just had to end up eating the tyranny since I need my gold for the constant De Jure wars by Byzanitum and the Holy Wars from the Abbasids while trying to expand northwards away from the mess. My vassals already hate my guts for raising levies so much in my effort to expand into the safer north, so the tyranny really hurts.

It's a difficult region to begin with without the game throwing 30k stacks at me from absolute nobodies (which also spawn on my capital) while I'm barely onto playing as my second character. The Empire of Byzantium can barely field 25k troops itself. I can hire a ton of mercenaries for 1200ish gold and still would only have 16-18k troops max without absolutely bankrupting myself. So, the solution is to always kill them - which is hampered if they're too far away. Apparently they're not too far away to decide they want your stuff though. If they do manage to spawn then it's too late to kill them because their temprorary title comes with a magical forcefield that prevents any assassination attempt (and plot kills usually never manage to get enough support once the invasion starts).

Though once I've got my Empire established I welcome adventurers. They remain 30k in size even when you have a 90k man empire... so they're walking bundles of cash from 500-600 gold, waiting to banished after getting defeated.
 
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Just today I faced a pretender host. I usually assassinate them, but this time I couldn't, because of diplo range...so I gathered my levies and retinues and waited...waited...waited(he had to march from Spain to Persia).

Just as my whole army was assembled on my border Mountain province, and I was beginning to get confident, thinking that the attrition in neutral territory would surely decimate the enemy, I see the army one province away: 38k troops, while I had 17k. I panicked. Hired about 10k more mercenaries with the gold I had saved, sent them to the battlefield province, and prepared for the last stand, wanting to end in a final blaze of glory.

About 5 seconds into the battle, the host leader was surrounded and killed, ending the war inconclusively. I stared at the paused screen for about a minute, then started laughing madly :rofl:


Still, without that stroke of luck, I was probably doomed there, with not much else I could've done. I am all for challenges...but that is too much, especially when there's really no explanation about how the unknown, landless, and dirt poor pretender managed to get that many people on his side.
A system where an "adventurer" actually has to get support from his friends and/or my enemies, and where his potential strength varies depending on said support and his initial standing(strength of claim, dynasty...) would make it much easier to understand and accept the invasion. The way it is now, it feels like a cheap, gamey way to throw some forced challenges around.
 
I've never had an adventurer pose a real threat... but I never play as a vassal. I get the impression that things are poorly balanced in general as a vassal, and there doesn't seem to be much fun in it. So... play as independent?
 
A system where an "adventurer" actually has to get support from his friends and/or my enemies, and where his potential strength varies depending on said support and his initial standing(strength of claim, dynasty...) would make it much easier to understand and accept the invasion. The way it is now, it feels like a cheap, gamey way to throw some forced challenges around.

More like a small chain of events, you get a early warning of a man who is a decendant with a claim on your title.. then maybe 1 or 2 events that can help you prevent a war (gift him the title, high diplo/martial skill to scare him out of it) etc. Lots of cool things they could do event related.
 
Can utterly shred the AI too and really mess up the map. I edited the events to dramatically tone down frequency and slightly reduce average strength partway through my norse game. I also used the console to kill any adventurers I noticed that weren't targeting me.
I was playing 'catch and release' and creating norse kingdoms, not expecting that small kingdoms in formerly pagan areas would overrun Catholic Europe. Despite reducing the events adventurers were still responsible for the fragmentation and eventual collapse of Germany ( Even without my help Pomerania, Sweden & Bohemia trashed Bavaria & East Francia after Adventurer hosts broke their realms in pieces) as well as the fall of the Christian realms in Spain to a muslim blob when a strong kingdom of Asturias got broken into chunks.

Essentially, instead of map changes reflecting cunning and conquest from one AI state against another, it's now a matter of who loses the adventurer lottery.
 
I've never had an adventurer pose a real threat... but I never play as a vassal. I get the impression that things are poorly balanced in general as a vassal, and there doesn't seem to be much fun in it. So... play as independent?

So... don't play as a vassal once you have TOG activated, because Adventurers are horribly balanced? Er. No.
 
Adventures are good idea but badly implemented. Too bad eu4 is taking all of their attention. Mercs also should get some events and not to be so generic. There are more than one occasion of merc betraying their master for gold or land.
 
Can't have the game too easy.. I understand but loosing one war doesnt mean the game is lost, reclaim what is your birthright!

Well, half the issue is that the AI will lose, which is a mess.

Plus the adventurer will target the liege--so if they have a claim on your land, and you aren't independent, then you get no notification, the AI loses to a ridiculous doomstack, and you get a game over.
 
Can't have the game too easy.. I understand but loosing one war doesnt mean the game is lost, reclaim what is your birthright!

Difference between the game being too easy and essentially deciding "you lose". But seriously, no righteous arrest for someone openly plotting treason? Random inept tools getting every troops to stomp an empire? Is this supposed to be taken seriously?

Besides, the AI cannot handle the mechanic at all, even stable kingdoms that are at peace usually lose (these realms should essentially always beat hosts unless they get unlucky). And if the AI can't handle the mechanic that something is fundamentally wrong with it, just like Decadence.
 
The fun thing is that the way hosts scale is so obviously, unambiguously gamey.

People don't like the term, but think about it: the game looks at how many soldiers you can normally muster, and so spawns the amount of troops it deems necessary to give the appropriate level of challenge. Gamey.

It makes sense that if a target has a lot of soldiers, hosts would only attack if it they thought they had a chance (i.e. enough guys). But rather than the adventurer having to bow and scrape to get the money to put their bigger host together, it happens automagically without any regard for the actual strategic simulation that's ostensibly going on.

Hosts exist outside the simulation, solely to provide some interest to players who know how to exploit the AI in wars. Gamey.
 
Except, the players who now how to exploit it can still splatter adventurers, and thus nothing is achieved except frustrating those that can't, messing up the AI, and annoying people that think the mechanic is silly.
 
No. I mostly assassinate, I still fought some.

Learn2Read.

It's kind of hard to stash gold for potentially several assassination attempts while also finding some super spymaster in just 30 years of game play (as I wrote year was 897). I can do it but it's cheesy and also severely limits the pool of starting characters.
 
Just as my whole army was assembled on my border Mountain province, and I was beginning to get confident, thinking that the attrition in neutral territory would surely decimate the enemy, I see the army one province away: 38k troops, while I had 17k. I panicked.

Adventurers are capped at 30k, they can't have 38k. And if they are at 30k and you are only at 17k, you are doing something wrong. Most likely quite a few thousand of your troops are dead and haven't replenished, or your vassals generally hate you.

I just played a game as Ireland where I didn't expand outside of it. Over the course of the game I faced 6 adventurers, I beat 5 and lost to 1. That one I lost I was only a duke and fighting a defensive war against another duke, and couldn't finish it before he attacked. All in all none of them were dramatically bigger then me, like 7k vs 9k or 15k vs 18k. Using a little strategy I was able to beat them. The game is not all about just having bigger numbers. Adventurers cannot replenish their numbers, use this to your advantage. Let them siege down your counties, stay behind them and take those counties back, let them slowly burn through their force while not gaining warscore. Once they can no longer assault holdings and they have to long siege them, its over, events still happen where they will lose between 1 -5% of their force, it only takes a couple of these to be a devastating effect on their whole army.

As far as people in your court doing it. Its historical, and could be worse. One of the most famous of all Byzantine emperors came to power this way, Alexios Komemnos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexio...nd_revolt_of_the_Komnenoi_against_Botaneiates
 
Adventurers are capped at 30k, they can't have 38k. And if they are at 30k and you are only at 17k, you are doing something wrong. Most likely quite a few thousand of your troops are dead and haven't replenished, or your vassals generally hate you.

Wrong on the second count! You can never get all of your vassal levies and vassal's vassal levies etc., and adventurers are based on the sum total of all realm troops. This is how people keep reporting 30k adventurer stacks when the Byzantine Empire or the Abassids are unable to field 2/3 of that, and they aren't even playing as one of those two.

Thus, in a scenario where your realm is sizeable but not huge, or lots of delegation is going on, you can quite easily get hugely outnumbered by adventurers. :/