Monastic Feudal Merchant Horde strategy idea

[Urloc the Great]

I recently played horde and had this thought:
Horde doesn't have over the demesne limit, a modifier that is basically -90% to levies and tax income and your vassals hate you, they only get the local modifier for the wrong holding type which is a local -75% to levies and tax income.

Now here comes the fun part of the thought:

Levies: Since you can increase your local levies with your own martial skill (+5% per martial, starting at 10 martial) and with the right religions, you can basically offset the negative modifier for wrong holding type

Tax income: This one is harder, since stewardship effects your global tax income, not your local. But with religious taxes you get +25% tax income for holdings/counties with different religion. So you basically get 50% tax income from your holdings.

Now to the strategy (Needs at least Horse Lord and Holy Fury DLCs):
Start as a tengri horde (or convert to tengri if your horde doesn't have tengri), join the Eagle warriors and rank up until rank 2, then save the society currency.
Do "call of the steppe" (intrigue decision, requires tengri and rank 2 of Eagle warriors) and get as many 25 prestige troops as possible and at least enough population for the Nomadic Invasion CB (30.000 and at least 75% of max)
Nomadic Invade a feudal kingdom, occupy as much as possible, you'll keep everything occupied from the main target realm, even the stuff outside of the target kingdom since it is an invasion
Revoke every vassal so that you own every holding, but don't raze anything and dont pillage, if a pillaging event pops up during siege
Switch religion from Tengri to Germanic and reform the faith with:
Nature: Any that doesn't convert, or is less likely to convert and any that doesn't reduce the levies (e.g.: No Proselytizing and no Unyielding)
Doctrine: Religious Tax + a free slot that you can fill as you please
Leadership: Autonomous is preferable for the direct +2 Martial (Germanic and Tengri specific bonus), but the others can get +2 martial too through the great holy war trait

Since you never actually acquire new nomadic lands, you will never have to fear any minor (haha, quite the misnomer actually) clan uprisings and your other clan(s) won't demand any new land. Just conquer feudal land at your hearts content, at some point not even your own holy order will be able to stop you (they will try though, if your threat level is high enough)

 

[majdavlk]

why keep the holdings yourself instead of having them owned by vassals ?

 

[Sledjer]

As far as cheesy nomad tactics go, there just isn't anything that beats nomad north korea mode.

Start the game by buying as much of the 25 prestige troops as you can, raid until you get back a decent chunk of prestige, and then park your army on your vassals capital and absorb clan one by one until all of your vassals that hold more than one county have been absorbed. When a minor clan rises up, immediately surrender.

In the mean time, constantly upgrade your capital for population growth. Minor clans will keep rising up but they will only take one county and once you have 8 they will stop rising up. If you have absorbed all your larger vassals and built for population growth then you will be much stronger than all 8 combined and you can ignore them.

I don't recommend holding any holdings directly except to pillage. You get much more in the long run by giving them to vassals who will upgrade buildings and pay taxes. Will also provide a lot of possible councilor options so you can make sure everyone is either a yesman or a zealot. Even that isn't ideal though, unless you want constant revolts forever once you conquer enough land. You will never be able to convert much land without vassal counts and dukes, and that 4% revolt chance really adds up. Best to do is pillage all wrong culture holdings until the county becomes nomadic and culture converts, and build temples in correct culture and religion counties. The one exception is that its probably a good idea to not pillage the holdings in lots of coastal counties because they have boats. Id still give them to vassals though.

Except in the boats case, pillaging is pretty much always better than giving the holdings. Gives tech points to let you further upgrade your capital, and once you rule over enough land with a capital upgraded for population growth, you will have such a big population that you can always use invasion CB simply because you cant add land fast enough to make a big enough increase in your population capacity.

 

[jonjowett]

When a minor clan rises up, immediately surrender.

Actually, I think it's better to proactively decide on 8 counties for your eventual 8 one-county vassal khans. Then, whenever you absorb a clan, create a new clan in one of those counties (by splitting your own clan). This way, you don't need to worry about the minor clan uprising occurring in an inconvenient county (eg. SR trade post). Also, you can give them the most useless nomad counties imaginable (eg. counties with only one holding slot), and you can site them far away from the silk road (so they won't do an inter-clan raid on your SR county).

 

[majdavlk]

As far as cheesy nomad tactics go, there just isn't anything that beats nomad north korea mode.

Start the game by buying as much of the 25 prestige troops as you can, raid until you get back a decent chunk of prestige, and then park your army on your vassals capital and absorb clan one by one until all of your vassals that hold more than one county have been absorbed. When a minor clan rises up, immediately surrender.

In the mean time, constantly upgrade your capital for population growth. Minor clans will keep rising up but they will only take one county and once you have 8 they will stop rising up. If you have absorbed all your larger vassals and built for population growth then you will be much stronger than all 8 combined and you can ignore them.

I don't recommend holding any holdings directly except to pillage. You get much more in the long run by giving them to vassals who will upgrade buildings and pay taxes. Will also provide a lot of possible councilor options so you can make sure everyone is either a yesman or a zealot. Even that isn't ideal though, unless you want constant revolts forever once you conquer enough land. You will never be able to convert much land without vassal counts and dukes, and that 4% revolt chance really adds up. Best to do is pillage all wrong culture holdings until the county becomes nomadic and culture converts, and build temples in correct culture and religion counties. The one exception is that its probably a good idea to not pillage the holdings in lots of coastal counties because they have boats. Id still give them to vassals though.

Except in the boats case, pillaging is pretty much always better than giving the holdings. Gives tech points to let you further upgrade your capital, and once you rule over enough land with a capital upgraded for population growth, you will have such a big population that you can always use invasion CB simply because you cant add land fast enough to make a big enough increase in your population capacity.

i think that my strategy is more meta.

as imperial emperor, have nomadic king vassal own all counties but have all holdings in direct vassalage to you (you the emperor)

 

[Urloc the Great]

why keep the holdings yourself instead of having them owned by vassals ?

Hordes are limited in their number of vassals, but not limited in their number of holdings held.

Plus: With vassals you have to decide wether you want to get money OR troops from them. While directly holding them you get 50% of the holding income AND what ever you manage to get the levi modifier to be starting at 5% of the levies of the levies at 0 Martial skill going up to 105% of the levies at 20 Martial skill or even higher with higher Martial skill. And don't forget that vassals give lower levies the further away from your primary title they are.

 

[majdavlk]

Hordes are limited in their number of vassals, but not limited in their number of holdings held.

Plus: With vassals you have to decide wether you want to get money OR troops from them. While directly holding them you get 50% of the holding income AND what ever you manage to get the levi modifier to be starting at 5% of the levies of the levies at 0 Martial skill going up to 105% of the levies at 20 Martial skill or even higher with higher Martial skill. And don't forget that vassals give lower levies the further away from your primary title they are.

barons dont eat vassal limit

and you should get more troops and gold from a holding if its held by vassal without the wrong gov penalty, unless you stack martial or stewardship high.

but with vassals, you can stack tax bloodlines