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When the game breaks your spirit

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May 30, 2013
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The game just did it again to me :D. I was having a ton of fun, started as count of Krakow in Poland, 867 start. I wont bore you with the fun I had getting powerful enough to form the kingdom of Poland & Lithuania.
Well, I was expanding towards Pomerania, I had like almost 8k troops (1,5k of them hussar retinue which I wanted to try out, they are good), I had a nice +11 gold per month income, all counties in my realm have been converted to catholic... Life was good, you know?
I'm not one of those people that go on expansion frenzy, taking advantage of game mechanics to become world power, min/maxing to the point of making the game a "who can do world conquest faster" etc. Just trying to have fun. Forming Poland & Lithuania took me 80 years of casual playing / having fun. & then the game decided I had enough fun :D.
The independant duchy of Bohemia to the south was under an Arpad son, so naturally was an ally to the Hungarians. Reformed Tengri I might add, so I couldnt convert them to catholicism to avoid confrontations with them. So he decides to attack me for the whole kingdom of Poland.
Naturally he has like the same number of troops with me somehow. He brings in an indipendent cousin of his with some more troops. Then he calls in the rest of Hungary along. Those 3 together had like 25k-30k troops against my 8k plus a merc band of 4k troops.
Then an adventurer declares his interest in my lands. While I was at around -40% warscore with the Bohemians/Hungarians, a second adventurer declares he plans to attack me.
Long story short, I was so broken after losing so much in this particular game, that I'm thinking "has paradox been listening too much to the min/maxers who bark on the forums about "the game's too easy, I roflstomp it with my eyes closed""? Has the game become so unfriendingly (I'm making up words now) predatory to casual gamers?
Or I'm simply still sore by the beating & trying to blame something/someone? Whatever the case, the game managed to break my spirit again :D no emo stuff ofc, I'll be playing a new campaign in like an hour or two.
But, has the game ever destroyed you so much as to think "ok, you win game"?

edit: Mind you, I do not intend to start a "L2P" conversation or something, just want to know if you guys ever been broken by the game :D. This time I'll start somewhere far away from the Hungarians (most likely).
 
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I always assassinate adventurers the moment they announce their attack, so they're rarely (if ever) a problem.

And, well, you're playing beside Tengris. You can't possibly expect to have a casual game there.
 
Playing as a Parsi (Gujurati) Zoroastrian republic in India and doing surprisingly well until the Jains in the provinces you took over rebel - 14 times. And the Hindus have about 6 rebellions around the same time.

It's the game telling me I'm playing a bit too weird, I think.
 
Adventurers are inevitable and sometimes come for you lands in the least desirable lands, but you were responsible for letting the carphatian bros band together. Always keep an eye on your neibghours and how many strong allies they have. Should their entire alliance be too strong for you, you should send your chancellor to improve relations with his allies from time to time. If you had done that, his allies would have probably said "Nah" to his Call to Arms.
 
This one time, I was playing as Norway, and trying to form Scandinavia, and I accidentally inherited the byzantine empire. The last pieces of it at any rate. Suddenly I was stuck in gavelkind, with horrible laws, my hard work would fracture completely as soon as a succession would happen, and I didn't feel like fixing that whole mess.
 
You are correct now that I think about it. Before the indipendant duchy of Bohemia was under an Arpad Hungarian Tengri character, it was under a non powerful indipendent Slavic duke... who must have been attacked by a Hungarian Tengri adventurer... of the Arpad dynasty, unfortunately. He had the same amound of troops to my joined Poland Lithuania cause of his "adventuring days spawn troops". Which is kinda lame, but thats how it works nowadays I guess.
 
Seriously bad luck with the adventurers, but Hungary isn't too impossible to handle as long as you haven't reformed the slavic faith and didn't convert to Catholic or anything. That defensive attrition can bring their doomstacks down to a manageable level surprisingly quickly.

Other things to do: send your chancellor to improve relations with Hungary and also get a marriage alliance. Good relations will put off the inevitable war with Hungary as long as possible. You also should call Hungary in to any war, especially against unreformed pagans. It'll wear out their doomstacks a significant amount (and is also useful for getting more land, which you can make an independent realm under your dynasty if you don't feel like being expansionist. Ruthenia's probably a good place to subjugate if it forms, and will either be a big source of manpower or a powerful ally depending, as long as they don't have any claims on Poland).
 
When it rains it pours......I always try to keep some cash saved though for bad luck so I can hire some mercs to give a boost.

Also losing sometimes isn't so bad - better than it being faceroll easy.
 
I had a nice little game going a few times through as the Empire of Britannia. I'd managed to inherit some mainland European Lands and I was busy converting (read conquering) the Norse lands. The Kingdom of Jerusalem is also mine. I'd just held off a HUGE Jihad from the Shia world. (The Shia were ALL of Islam somehow; I have no idea how it happened. I looked away for a few decades and when I look back, everyone's Shia.) Anyway, my armies are depleted, my retinues are broken, my economy is shattered, I'm practically bankrupt, and the Duke of Jerusalem decides that he's going to declare a rebellion. Okay, well, I still have 16,000 retinue troops that'll be continually reinforcing in the area. He raises about the same number in levies. But retinues always beat levies.

Then troops flock to his banner. I'm raising some units in Ireland to put down a Norse raid (They're having a last gasp at it.) and it takes me a day or two to look.

Now, for some perspective, everybody had been pissing and moaning about event troops for the past few months due to some balancing issues after "nerfing" levies. And I had been telling people to "suck it up and deal". It was almost like the game had been listening to my forum conversations. Because I look back to Jerusalem. The guy had 120,000 f***ing soldiers! Okay, so this is a problem. I raise every levy I can, and I have approximately the same number of troops, but most of them are in Scandinavia and the British Isles. (And Hungary.) Well, okay. I have an "organized" leader, so I'm leading the 120k troops on a merry chase, and naturally, they're taking some casualties from attrition. I load my other troops onto boats and send them towards Jerusalem.

My 22 year-old King gets ill. Two days after falling ill, he dies "after a period of illness". He has three children, the only male heir a legitimized bastard who is three years old.

My realm explodes. EVERY SINGLE DUKE rebels. My entire empire shatters into shards of glass and flaming counties. My retinue troops are run down and crushed. Event troop after event troop event occurs. I'm forced to surrender again and again to rebelling dukes. At the end of it all, I control only what was in my personal demesne, which is to say two duchies in Ireland. I even had to surrender that Kingdom title. I had spent CENTURIES building the Empire, only to see it undone in less than two years.

Unfortunately, before I could start working my way back to the top, that save game got corrupted somehow and lost.
 
Tulunids getting 40k event troops in 880s, I'm the duchess of Tripoli right next to them.

After being promptly Holy Warred by Tulunids and Abbasids I gave up.
 
General Karthos said:
I had a nice little game going a few times through as the Empire of Britannia. I'd managed to inherit some mainland European Lands and I was busy converting (read conquering) the Norse lands. The Kingdom of Jerusalem is also mine. I'd just held off a HUGE Jihad from the Shia world. (The Shia were ALL of Islam somehow; I have no idea how it happened. I looked away for a few decades and when I look back, everyone's Shia.) Anyway, my armies are depleted, my retinues are broken, my economy is shattered, I'm practically bankrupt, and the Duke of Jerusalem decides that he's going to declare a rebellion. Okay, well, I still have 16,000 retinue troops that'll be continually reinforcing in the area. He raises about the same number in levies. But retinues always beat levies.

Then troops flock to his banner. I'm raising some units in Ireland to put down a Norse raid (They're having a last gasp at it.) and it takes me a day or two to look.

Now, for some perspective, everybody had been pissing and moaning about event troops for the past few months due to some balancing issues after "nerfing" levies. And I had been telling people to "suck it up and deal". It was almost like the game had been listening to my forum conversations. Because I look back to Jerusalem. The guy had 120,000 f***ing soldiers! Okay, so this is a problem. I raise every levy I can, and I have approximately the same number of troops, but most of them are in Scandinavia and the British Isles. (And Hungary.) Well, okay. I have an "organized" leader, so I'm leading the 120k troops on a merry chase, and naturally, they're taking some casualties from attrition. I load my other troops onto boats and send them towards Jerusalem.

My 22 year-old King gets ill. Two days after falling ill, he dies "after a period of illness". He has three children, the only male heir a legitimized bastard who is three years old.

My realm explodes. EVERY SINGLE DUKE rebels. My entire empire shatters into shards of glass and flaming counties. My retinue troops are run down and crushed. Event troop after event troop event occurs. I'm forced to surrender again and again to rebelling dukes. At the end of it all, I control only what was in my personal demesne, which is to say two duchies in Ireland. I even had to surrender that Kingdom title. I had spent CENTURIES building the Empire, only to see it undone in less than two years.

Unfortunately, before I could start working my way back to the top, that save game got corrupted somehow and lost.
Click to expand...

Oh my god, that's pain!
 
Hungary can be a real pain to live nearby especially if they reform Tengri
Put an end to more than 1 game of mine (specifically a Poland, Kiev and Khazaria game)
The Tribal Invasion CB makes them an especial pain. Most other foes lose a war and its not game over
 
Christos79 said:
You are correct now that I think about it. Before the indipendant duchy of Bohemia was under an Arpad Hungarian Tengri character, it was under a non powerful indipendent Slavic duke... who must have been attacked by a Hungarian Tengri adventurer... of the Arpad dynasty, unfortunately. He had the same amound of troops to my joined Poland Lithuania cause of his "adventuring days spawn troops". Which is kinda lame, but thats how it works nowadays I guess.
Click to expand...

There was a discussion about adventurer event spawn troops. I think they should lose them. I lost a holy war once because a two county province joined with twice my levies.
 
For every completed campaign I usually have 4-6 aborted attempts. In my most recent aborted attempt (as Flanders), I had managed to get my cousin elected to the HRE throne and I figured us being the same dynasty I'd have some help with my struggles against the French Karlings. Turns out, one year later, that both the Karlings and my cousin decide they want to divide my realm between them. So much for family dynastic loyalty.
 
In my game with Karen I had to face a cuman adventurer with 25k troops. And that was just in the moment of greatest weakness, after a long defensive war against the Abbasids and the Saffarids. My luck was to have held the adventurer after a battle.
 
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