• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
But some people find tweaking things until they reach some optimal (for a given definition of optimal) solution. My fiance is like that some times. She likes to figure out price/ounce when she purchases, not because she's extra stingy, but because its like a game for her.

She's a min-maxer.

There.. For a Virgo like me, I could just not bring myself to let go and spent hours upon hours for inviting courtiers and arranging my realm on just 1 paused day..
Everything should be neat and tidy..

Some of you surely played Heroes of Might and Magic 3..
There're some people out there who try to play the whole game without losing a single unit, even if it's totally unnecessary.
That's just the way some people are created..

Some suggest that I post an AAR.. Even if I played and I posted a Video one, people would be bored to death for seeing the same paused screen for 5 hours..
I'd have to 120x those parts.
 
Some interesting ideas but not all of them are necessarily fitting for a speedy WC. Now, I dont really have the patience to do a real WC but I think you need more of a battle plan to really push the limit.

Forinstance, I struggle to see the purpose of going heretic. If you really want to conquer fast then you need to add the strength of those you conquer to your own. Example, as William, when you conquer England you should use the holding you acquire to buy the loyalty of the existing local lords (though, you should also get some piety for an invasion CB which you can get by giving titles to existing bishops). Throwing in a wrong religion penalty is hardly helpful.

Those troops in turn will help you with the next stage of your grand battle plan; the invasion of the HRE. Getting an empire title is all important since you can go straight into to the business of conquering the christian world by kingdom claims which also kind of render going heretic mute.

It should take about 5-7 years to conquer England, France, HRE and the easy food around e.g. Wales, Britanny and Ireland.

The only title in the christian world you cannot really get by means of pushing claims is the ERE so that is probably most efficiently acquired though a marriage claim.

For retinues. If you are going to blitz a WC you are simply not going to face any dangerous enemies after the first few years and for that reason your retinues should consist entirely of the cheapest archer unit. Firstly, because they excel at assulting and secondly because they more effectively add to your faction resilience.

Now, in terms of tricks.

(Gamey, very) Banish all, is an effective albeit tedious process of amassing a huge fortune and solving any future issues caused by the rapid expansion. You can "buy" the needed piety by granting titles to existing bishops as long as these bishops are below their demesne limit. This is ofcourse also helpful when you have to get around to banishing them because you will have fewer vassals to banish in total.

After you have taken the HRE is probably the best time to circle your crown law up to absolute, banish every man woman and child from your lands, destroy unnecessary titles and install a sea of easy to control bishops (vassalize the pope too). That will give you an extreemly stable realm, unlimited financial resources, a huge retinue and the largest levy in the world.

For maximum economic control you can even take it one step further by keeping direct control over all city vassals in the realm. This would be a whole lot simpler and much more profitable than waiting around to arrest people for plotting.

My guess is that this is probably one of the best shots available to push for the fastest possible world conquest.
 
I made the Russian Empire on 1135 less then 100 years and yes my ruler is a shia heresy easy to conquer Russian area but polish became orthodox don't know how that happened. Volga Easy to make, second empire bit harder Finland easy to conquer.

BTW i played Bulgar duchy as my starting nation.


Click to view full size!
 
I just started reading your guide, but I have noticed a couple of things which seem wrong:

• Never give your sons a title until they are 16 (to decide for their educations yourself)
• You might think giving titles to your heirs when they’re young helps with Prestige, but that way I have no control over his education. So it’s better to let all your heirs stay unlanded till they are 16. You can reserve the creation of many Kingdoms/Duchies to boost his prestige on the day of his coronation anyway. (Especially Kingdom of Jerusalem, which gives 5k prestige bonus on creation).

This is not true. You can have perfect control over their education even if they are landed. The only thing that landing them prevents you to do is choosing their spouse. That's why you should do the following: arrange betrothal--> grant them a title--> educate them (when they are at least 6 years old of course). You can always choose their mentor even if they are dukes.

• When an heir gets to 16 and doesn’t have good traits and you have optional heirs, just make him a bishop.

It doesn't work like that. You can make bishops out of your sons as long as they are not the first heir. You can't send your first born (considering you are using Primogeniture) off to a church career.

• Contrary to the popular belief, unless your diplomacy and/or intrigue stats are high, don’t educate your heir yourself. Educating your son yourself lets you select traits during bringing up. But a very low stat heir is just not worth it. Instead, you can select a good stat-good trait guardian to raise your heir. – I disagree with this now. 3 good traits are better than 20 diplomacy. Thus it’s best to raise a child %50 yourself and 50% a good guardian –.

This reasoning implies that a guardian has better stats than your ruler. But if your ruler has good traits and has been groomed properly (as you are suggesting to) he will have good stats AND good traits. So, in the majority of cases, it's best to educate your heirs yourself.

Also, if you raise the levies of a duke you want to imprison, and then he rebels AFTER you raised them, they will turn hostile. So it is irrelevant to call them to arms or not.

I think there are a few other points I would argue with. I'll save the reading for future times.
 
On education- Unless you get bad luck with some useless older heir with a useless, older grandson (Byzantine Empire sometimes has this difficulty) then generally it goes like this for me: Generation 1: best traits, highest grey eminence diplomat teaches my son. After that, I teach my son, so I can give him all the traits I want (ambitious, zealous, diligent, brave, kind, temperate, etc.)
 
Many thanks for the positive feedbacks.

I wrote the guide during my first playthrough and had many change of idea in the meantime. There might be many forgotten/overlooked/wrong parts as well. I will correct them whenever I am directed in the correct path.

For now, my response to the above posts is as such:
@Sweynforkbeard
Going heretic is not my main plan for conquest but a tool I used during it. It has many useful applications and doesn't have much downside really. You can use it as much as you wish and you can convert back anytime. Also having lots of heretics has a very nice use... (such as granting them your demesne, granting them independence, starting holy war against them and invading and re-invading your cities. You can do it once in a few days, gaining ultra-fast gold..)

My main weapon for a fast conquest is "snatching (stealing) heirs".. Although I am surprised why people don't comment about it, but talk about crafting claims or "stealing claimants".. I've conquered 2 kingdoms in just 1 day without any real effort other than the cost of assassinating 2 kings + gifting 2 courtiers.. That's really a powerful tool.

I also won't be short on armies, because when you "snatch a heir" and get his lands for free, you get his levy ready too. That gives you a large enough levy very fast. Also as your retinue depends on conquered lands, you can easily go over 40-50k levy after 1000 holdings, which is enough for many occasions too.

Also a wrong religion penalty + heretic penalty won't matter when you're conquering real fast.

BTW, you can invade HRE with a 10 holding Duchy and a LOT of gold.. Or rather you can get a Duchy of HRE and purchase your way to the crown and get rid of the emperor and become an emperor fast, which I would prefer over an invasion.

Thanks for the archer tip.. After I learned about the skirmish units' superiority during assaults, I've decided to make a test on different units to see the minimum required days for invasion. (Although I used mounted troops mostly due to attrition limits.. But as I don't go conquering deserts now and chose to conquer most of the inland by sieging shore provinces, I might not have a problem with attrition..)

About Absolute Crown Law, I am thinking to have at least 2-3 empire laws and use them by instant-switching when necessary. (i.e. Suppose I have the Empire of Francia with Absolute Law and HRE with Medium Law. On the same paused day I can switch to Francia, banish everybody and re-switch back to HRE, without creating any discontent.. Cheesy, but works.. I explained this in TITLES section)

I also don't bother for Vassal gold, because it's really minor along Siege + Imprisonment + Demesne Granting gold.. But I might also use that for extra leverage. (Altough I tend to grant holdings to a few large Vassals to be able to summon large armies at any point on the world when I need them).

Thanks again. Really.

----------
@Joe_Chip

1- I didn't know that I could decide for the sons' educations when I make them a Duke. Will try that. Thanks.

2- For making a bishop, your point is taken. But in that case, I'll make bishops for all the unwanted rest and have to deal with only 1 heir.. (Not like my first game, where I had to kill half my heirs).

3- For educating the children, I suppose as long as you have some good diplomacy + intrigue stats, you can educate your heirs yourself. Otherwise, I'd prefer to educate them 6-11 years myself and let a very high stat guardian educate them 11-16 years.

4- You might be wrong about raising the levies of a Duke before imprisoning him. Because I did this many times and the levies didn't turn hostile (v1.091). (I also re-checked this now, and same result)

----------
@scelestus13

As stated above, for a low stat king (first generation), you can educate your heir for a few years yourself and let a guardian educate him for a few years. I have to make extensive tests about
a) During which years trait events pop up? Does it have a higher frequency for earlier or later years?
b) During which years the heirs gain more stats from their guardians? First 5 or Late 5?
etc.
But as testing these takes 10 years of gametime and even if I tried that with a totally conquered world (just to fast forward without any problem) this would require many hours to test a high enough number of heirs to get statistically meaningful results. I've really gotten old to try for such things :}
 
Conquering whole europe in 40 years is impossible without very big army. And that would require you most propably to hire all mercenaries. If you can gather sum of over 2000 gold(or more i am not sure) in such short period of time - then maybe. But you would need to fight many wars at the same time. Whole CKII "World" is something that i would call europe - at least in cultural sense. Even thou not as a continent - but on the other hand, europe is not real continent, unless we take india as continent. It is part of landmass of eurasia.

Without hiring mercenaries, i find it is impossible to coquer all that land in such short time. Even then, i realy doubt it to be realistic option.
 
Conquering whole europe in 40 years is impossible without very big army. And that would require you most propably to hire all mercenaries. If you can gather sum of over 2000 gold(or more i am not sure) in such short period of time - then maybe. But you would need to fight many wars at the same time. Whole CKII "World" is something that i would call europe - at least in cultural sense. Even thou not as a continent - but on the other hand, europe is not real continent, unless we take india as continent. It is part of landmass of eurasia.

Without hiring mercenaries, i find it is impossible to coquer all that land in such short time. Even then, i realy doubt it to be realistic option.

... lol? How is anyone supposed to start with this mess? What are you talking about?

And then the muddle about "Europe is not a continent"? How is that relevant to anything? Even if Europe is not a continent, who cares? What does it have to do with the thread?
 
... lol? How is anyone supposed to start with this mess? What are you talking about?

And then the muddle about "Europe is not a continent"? How is that relevant to anything? Even if Europe is not a continent, who cares? What does it have to do with the thread?

Huh?

Most important thing is at the beggining. And i say conquering whole europe, so i just specify what is europe when i talk about it. Rest is just if someone would try to say that it isn't europe.

EDIT: And the point of this post is that i find it impossible to do conquest of europe, aspecialy as duchy - in 40 years. At least for CKII
 
Hmm,

I decided to try the opening move as William. I became emperor of the HRE on the 27. May 1071 thus finishing the initial round of conquest.


By 1. April 1073 I had managed to fully purge every single title within England, Ireland, Britanny, the HRE and Frankia.

Endresult
99k levies, 9600 retinue limit (there is the grand army)
42,5k gold (there is the gold to finance an even grander army)
716 holdings (and...there is the even even grander task of handing them all out again)

Scotland and Wales (the third empire), Apulia, Navarra, Aragon, Barcelona, Croatia, Hungary and pretty much every duchy in Russia has available invitable claimants. So basically the christian world is all but done for.


One thing that really slowed down the process was cleaning out the rebels in the HRE. The leader of the rebellion had already been occupied by the former emperor so I could not take his personal holdings. I ended up having to siege down every single rebel before he would accept surrender.

The subsequent arrest and banish process ofcourse also added more fire to put out. Incidentally, the assign to counsel trick, does improve the odds but they can still rebel.

Now, the optimal solution would probably be to 1. go absolute CA 2. elective 3. free investiture 4. min church levies (you will get 80% from crown law anyway) 5. max church tax and assign the land back in the hands of army of PAbishops and forget that these vassals exist.

An alternative solution would probably be just to keep all the holdings personally and just steamroll through and finish the job.



Anyway, from a push the game mechanisms perspective it was an interesting experiment but I think I will go back being a king now.
 
4- You might be wrong about raising the levies of a Duke before imprisoning him. Because I did this many times and the levies didn't turn hostile (v1.091). (I also re-checked this now, and same result)

Yes, you are right. I even tried that with another human player. Apparently there is a part of his levy which you can raise and always use (the one that he allows you to borrow based on laws and his opinion of you), and his other personal part who will fight for him.
 
Yes, you are right. I even tried that with another human player. Apparently there is a part of his levy which you can raise and always use (the one that he allows you to borrow based on laws and his opinion of you), and his other personal part who will fight for him.
If he becomes hostile to you then you will not get any levy from him. If the levy is already raised before the hostility begins, the levy will simply disappear. This is easy to prove by loading up any game where revocation is allowed, raise a levy, revoke a title, they declare war rather than accepting the revocation, and the levy you raised disappears.
 
If he becomes hostile to you then you will not get any levy from him. If the levy is already raised before the hostility begins, the levy will simply disappear. This is easy to prove by loading up any game where revocation is allowed, raise a levy, revoke a title, they declare war rather than accepting the revocation, and the levy you raised disappears.

I already said "I've re-tested this again and it works as I said"..

Raise the levy, try to imprison the Duke and if he turns hostile, just use his levy against him..

@Sweynforkbeard
If you hold many titles by yourself, you'll get special events that says things like: "Due to having a very large demesne, you cannot control it properly and a Thieves Guild formed in your XX City, which will stay there till 1453 and reduce your tax outcome" etc. (was sth like this).

So it's not a good thing to hold all by yourself.

I also got HRE on 1071 and conquered all the rest, up to the last county by 1081.

But I am confident that I could do this even with a County and in 40 years easily (with 1.091 though.. 1.092's truce breaking penalty is too high).

Just check the Guide I gave at the beginning of the post. It has really cheesy points to make this all possible.
 
I already said "I've re-tested this again and it works as I said"..

Raise the levy, try to imprison the Duke and if he turns hostile, just use his levy against him..

@Sweynforkbeard
If you hold many titles by yourself, you'll get special events that says things like: "Due to having a very large demesne, you cannot control it properly and a Thieves Guild formed in your XX City, which will stay there till 1453 and reduce your tax outcome" etc. (was sth like this).

So it's not a good thing to hold all by yourself.

I also got HRE on 1071 and conquered all the rest, up to the last county by 1081.

But I am confident that I could do this even with a County and in 40 years easily (with 1.091 though.. 1.092's truce breaking penalty is too high).

Just check the Guide I gave at the beginning of the post. It has really cheesy points to make this all possible.

It doesnt really matter. The only real consequence of doing that is that your realm will effectively stop developing. But ofcouse, if you primary goal is just to finish a WC in less than 40 years you shouldnt really care.
 
It doesnt really matter. The only real consequence of doing that is that your realm will effectively stop developing. But ofcouse, if you primary goal is just to finish a WC in less than 40 years you shouldnt really care.

Exactly. Some people posting on these forums seem to lack the ability to weigh benefits against negative consequences.
 
Exactly. Some people posting on these forums seem to lack the ability to weigh benefits against negative consequences.

And that was directed towards me? How hilarious..
You hop in only to insult someone (about whom you have no idea of), based on his opinion about whether to use a method or not?

Some people posting on these forums seem to lack the ability to develop logical behavior skills.

@Sweynforkbeard
You should also consider that if you hold all the land by yourself, you'd have to pay for all the Levy you raised.
But if you distribute the land to your Vassals, you get their Levies for free. The opinion penalty is really nothing.
I can continuously wage war for 10 years and boosting all Vassals for 120 points is not a big matter if you continued to conquer for 10 years..
I'd also get most of their golds by imprisoning them, so it wouldn't matter in the end.
 
And that was directed towards me? How hilarious..
You hop in only to insult someone (about whom you have no idea of), based on his opinion about whether to use a method or not?

Some people posting on these forums seem to lack the ability to develop logical behavior skills.

I don't think you know what most of these words mean, because what you're saying doesn't make any sense. We are talking about a pure min/max scenario. There are no opinions: there is a right answer and a wrong answer. One method will produce a faster result than another. It is an empirical question, not a question of opinions.

"Logical behavior skills" is exactly what I'm saying you don't have if you decide on a strategy or method without actually weighing the costs against the benefits. The cost of a strategy is only relevant when compared to the benefits. Rejecting a strategy without considering the benefits is exactly what I am saying is illogical.

@Sweynforkbeard
You should also consider that if you hold all the land by yourself, you'd have to pay for all the Levy you raised.

Yes, but it doesn't matter, because you acquire a ton of gold when you banish people.

But if you distribute the land to your Vassals, you get their Levies for free.

That's just it: you don't. You don't get their levies at all.

The opinion penalty is really nothing.

The opinion penalty is why you do not get their levies.

I can continuously wage war for 10 years and boosting all Vassals for 120 points is not a big matter if you continued to conquer for 10 years..
I'd also get most of their golds by imprisoning them, so it wouldn't matter in the end.

If they do not like you you do not get all their troops.
 
I'm pretty sure the strongest move for the first few years of gameplay if you're purely min/maxing is just to hold every bit of demesne yourself. There's simply no other way to earn cash that fast early in the game, and cash is the limiting factor in early military strength. The fact that it also gives you a larger levy size and no risk of rebellions is a footnote, as is the fact that everyone in your court hates you and (for a few years) you can't afford to land heirs. Once you have a massive war chest and can start keeping most / all the mercenaries on retainer, you hand out all your holdings.
 
And that was directed towards me? How hilarious..
You hop in only to insult someone (about whom you have no idea of), based on his opinion about whether to use a method or not?

Some people posting on these forums seem to lack the ability to develop logical behavior skills.

@Sweynforkbeard
You should also consider that if you hold all the land by yourself, you'd have to pay for all the Levy you raised.
But if you distribute the land to your Vassals, you get their Levies for free. The opinion penalty is really nothing.
I can continuously wage war for 10 years and boosting all Vassals for 120 points is not a big matter if you continued to conquer for 10 years..
I'd also get most of their golds by imprisoning them, so it wouldn't matter in the end.

First off all. The whole banish everyone is exceedingly gamey and even more so when you essentially have to hand out churches for the sole purpose of getting more piety to banish even more people (and then ofcourse you turn around and banish your new bishops). None of that is probably really needed atleast as long as, in this case, William lives a reasonably long life.

Just do an endless cycle of conquest and dishing out titles to existing great nobles to keep them bound to you and you should do fine.

Now.. if you do decide to go the banish route, Then;

The vassal route: The PAB under absolute CA strategy is basically the strongest vassal control mechanism available. You will get the benefit of the majority of levies (80%), very large positive modifiers to oppinion and even some taxes. Nice and simple.

The keep it all route: No matter laws or opinion you can only drawn levies from a portion of your vassals actual troops (50% as fare as I remember). Hence, the above PAB strategy will only give you 40% (80% of 50%) of the levies you could raise if you controlled every single holding personally. This is essentially the key to that strategy! You will have no income, the levies raised will be a constant massive drain on your finances, any vassal you acquire will instantly hate you, you will be spammed with thief-guild messages etc etc. BUT, you will have full and undiluted access to levies allowing you to muster forces that will fare outstrip anyone else on the map!

Again, comparing the two cases, by not handing the titles out again I would have access to 100.000 levies and 10.000 retinues (more since many holdings have not regererated from the civil wars yet). The alternative strategy of handing them out should produce 40.000 levies and 10.000 retinues.

So, the question you need to ask yourself is: What price are you willing to pay for an additional 60.000 troops? That is the trade-off between these strategies.