Fresh start : questions

[R.Graymarch]

Hello

I just started the game and was looking for a "quick questions" topic but could not find any in the first pages of this forum

So I started, inspired by DanIsStoned Crete tutorial. My goal is to unify Crete. I know that I could have chosen Rome but apparently, republics are a little complicated for a start. Egypt could be a good candidate but it's not as peaceful. So I chose Crete and especially Knossos (no mods)

In my first war, I went without my feud because his loyalty was not at 33. I paid him but apparently it needs time to build up. And when I wait, my allies call me to war so I have less control on what happens. Am I too impatient or unlucky? Edit: I just notice "dominating stance" to get an opinion boost with levies up /Edit

During a reload, I managed to be at war and it was going well, except my ally occupied the province so the only option in the peace deal was to give him the province, which is not something I want. Was I just unlucky? What does it depend on? First on the province (if that's the right name)? Higher troop numbers ?

Also I did not manage to get a general, it was my ruler and I could not change that (even at peace, with levies raised)

Thanks for your help and apologises if it's very basic questions

 

[DukeLeto42]

Ok, let's break it down. Yeah, feudatories are liable to be dicey in terms of loyalty in the early game. The power equity will do that to you.

Next, siege controller is indeed first to land on the territory (that's the term for the smallest territorial unit in the game; don't worry, we all mix them up with how they're different across all titles).

As for the general business, regional levies are led by the region's governor; in your capitol region, that means your ruler is in charge. Unless and until you run legions, you can only choose decent generals to rule other regions or recruit mercenaries with decent leaders.

 

[IsaacCAT]

If you are the war leader you can transfer the control of a province by using a little icon on the terrain picture in the province window.

Best generals can be found on mercs armies. At the start of the game they are very useful, specially to assault forts for faster sieges without losing your own manpower.

 

[R.Graymarch]

Thanks for the answers, it helps a lot

Best generals can be found on mercs armies. At the start of the game they are very useful, specially to assault forts for faster sieges without losing your own manpower.

Thanks but I cannot afford merc right now (is it possible to get loan à la EU4?^^)

If you are the war leader you can transfer the control of a province by using a little icon on the terrain picture in the province window.

Yes, I read that but you can only transfer control of territories that you control, right? I cannot take the control of an province taken by an ally even if I'm warleader, correct? I ask this because there was no such icon

 

[DukeLeto42]

Thanks but I cannot afford merc right now (is it possible to get loan à la EU4?^^)

No, but you can trash your buildings for a partial refund, so if you have enough...

 

[IsaacCAT]

Thanks for the answers, it helps a lot

Thanks but I cannot afford merc right now (is it possible to get loan à la EU4?^^)


Yes, I read that but you can only transfer control of territories that you control, right? I cannot take the control of an province taken by an ally even if I'm warleader, correct? I ask this because there was no such icon

Best way to finance at the start of the game is to use your levy from your capital region that is lead by your ruler to sack cities or capital territories. That will trigger the event where you can get a lot of money. Mind you that you need to wait for some years before you can sack a city again (if it has been sacked by another player/AI it also disallows you saking it again).

See Commanders in the wiki:

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Army#Commanders

About transfering ocupation it seems you have to wait for the AI to transfer the territories to you, unless they have a claim on it:

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Warfare#Occupation

 

[R.Graymarch]

Thanks.
My mission is to unify Crete so I assume that AI Crete may have same mission and won't transfer occupation as it has a CB on that territory.

About sacking, the guide advises not do that on provinces from my culture, especially if I want to leverage them to conquer more soon after.

 

[IsaacCAT]

About sacking, the guide advises not do that on provinces from my culture, especially if I want to leverage them to conquer more soon after.

This is true if you consider the cost of killing pops, but you already have a chance to kill them every time you siege a territory through enslavement:

Siege - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

Unless you are going to kill all the population in the city, the cost in POPs early on is not important compared to the advantage you get by financing your expansion.

Thanks to having enough money to hire mercs you can expand and get hold of 1400 POPs in the first 20 years from a small nation of 200 POPs. Not sacking cities can save you 10-20 POPs but then you rely in your levies to expand. Do the maths.

If you want to be purist/RP and not kill your own culture POPs, you have to improve your economy. Build cities and metropolis for the +1 trade good, block slaves promotion and move slaves in territories with high value trade goods, e.g. precious metals to have surpluses of goods and have the AI to buy your trade goods, do not annex everyone around you but keep feudatories or make League cities that trade with you. Also, change your national ideas to increase trade and taxes, discover civic left tree inventions, set your trade economic policy to export focused and your diplo stance into mercantile whenever you get down from 50 AE using appeasing stance and high tyranny. Hight Tyranny is very good for AE reduction and slave output, up to 50% at 100 tyranny.

 

[IsaacCAT]

republics are a little complicated for a start.

They are more complicated than monarchies but they give you the best politics experience of the game.

Tribes are the most difficult to play though. They cannot compete with legions and their laws are subpar. Each tribal election will decrease your stability, because the next tribal chief may not be a young character you can cascade to a very low stability period until a fresh strong young chief is elected.

https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Government#Tribal_elections

 

[R.Graymarch]

Unless you are going to kill all the population in the city, the cost in POPs early on is not important compared to the advantage you get by financing your expansion.

Thanks to having enough money to hire mercs you can expand and get hold of 1400 POPs in the first 20 years from a small nation of 200 POPs. Not sacking cities can save you 10-20 POPs but then you rely in your levies to expand. Do the maths.

Is that also true if I full annex a country (yesterday with only one territory)? Because the territories I conquer and their POPs will become mine. I understand that sacking will bring instant cash (at the cost of the economy) but having new slaves in my capital vs POP in the original territory is maybe a choice to make (gold for merc vs extra levies). Am I missing something ?

 

[IsaacCAT]

Is that also true if I full annex a country (yesterday with only one territory)? Because the territories I conquer and their POPs will become mine. I understand that sacking will bring instant cash (at the cost of the economy) but having new slaves in my capital vs POP in the original territory is maybe a choice to make (gold for merc vs extra levies). Am I missing something ?

You are right, the choice is gold for merc vs extra levies. However, remember that those extra levies are function of levy size multiplier and integrated pops (excluding slaves). If those POPs are not from an integrated culture or slaves they will not add any levy size. For example, for 10 integrated non slave POPs with a levy size multiplier of 10%, you are adding 1 cohort.

My experience is:
Early game mercs are more useful
Later until mid game integrating cultures is more useful
Mid game to late game assimilating pops (unintegrating some of the previously integrated cultures) is more useful

 

[R.Graymarch]

Next, siege controller is indeed first to land on the territory

I tried again but it does not work. I'm first on the territory but then my ally comes and he takes control. There is a button at the right of the siege % progression to take command of the siege but it's not active because I don't have enough soldiers

EDIT : I continued without allies to avoid this. I won but I'm not sure why my levies got smaller (POP changes to other classes?). People were unhappy, civil war and I lost....

 

[Ir0nSlug]

Don't know about the tutorial you talk about, but I did a cretan unification by myself to learn the game. Took me several tries.
I went with a democracy and didn't find it especially difficult to manage. you just got to complete a single party objective to get enough support (51%) to do what you want.

What I did was probably not optimized but it worked: I went the ol' CK2 way, slowly building a war chest then relying on mercenaries.
For the first years I tried to maximize profits. I chose Mercantile stance and focused on importing the more expansive available goods, disregarding the bonus. I tried to make the best use of my starting inventions to maximize my income, defund forts and navies, etc...
When it felt enough I hired the cretan mercenaries and went to war with. First war I took the western part of the island. With that I was the dominant power. After that I was able to secure an alliance with Sparta iirc. Then grabing the other half of the island was easy, despite rhodian intervention. As Crete, sparta left me, but I allied with the much more powerful Epirus.

I tried the cretan allies way like you seem to have done, but it was absolute pain, so in the end I did it by myself (well with mercenaries) and carefully choosing my first target (an alliance between 2 or 3 weaklings). Took me two tries with mercs tho, because I didn't understand well that forts impact movements at first.

 

[R.Graymarch]

Don't know about the tutorial you talk about, but I did a cretan unification by myself to learn the game. Took me several tries.

Thanks for the feedback.
I did not try again because my plan was to rewatch the videos (but it's a total of 3+ hours and I could not find motivation) because it was a step by step tutorial (in current patch) so it seems odd to me that I cannot replicate this...
But maybe your approach is correct and I should try by myself, with the mercenaries.
The slope is quite steep and it's not helping to start

 

[Ir0nSlug]

Thanks for the feedback.
I did not try again because my plan was to rewatch the videos (but it's a total of 3+ hours and I could not find motivation) because it was a step by step tutorial (in current patch) so it seems odd to me that I cannot replicate this...
But maybe your approach is correct and I should try by myself, with the mercenaries.
The slope is quite steep and it's not helping to start

Yeah I don't know why but while it is a good game, I found it kind of hard to get into it.

The other thing you could do is just playing Rome, it's waaaaaaaay more easy. It can seem intimidating at first but you can focus on one single aspect at a time, Rome is that easy. Just bully the weaker countries, take care not to rake too much Aggressive expansion to keep the people happy, and try to integrate the most populous cultures you conquer (like the etruscans) to get a huge army + science. That's pretty much everything there is to it.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Thanks for the feedback.
I did not try again because my plan was to rewatch the videos (but it's a total of 3+ hours and I could not find motivation) because it was a step by step tutorial (in current patch) so it seems odd to me that I cannot replicate this...
But maybe your approach is correct and I should try by myself, with the mercenaries.
The slope is quite steep and it's not helping to start

Might I make a suggestion? Try Pandya as a starting nation.

Pandya is one of the kingdoms in southern India. You have a lot of directions to advance in, have a strong enough start that you can expand pretty easily, and aren't struggling to build a basic realm. Additionally, you've got a distinct long-term objective of beating Maurya, the big blob in your region that (due to its heritage) won't be doing much expanding but is still a good challenge to unifying India.

Oh, and as someone who didn't try it for way too long: use Invictus; it's got a great set of mission trees for Pandya.

 

[R.Graymarch]

The other thing you could do is just playing Rome, it's waaaaaaaay more easy. It can seem intimidating at first but you can focus on one single aspect at a time, Rome is that easy. Just bully the weaker countries, take care not to rake too much Aggressive expansion to keep the people happy, and try to integrate the most populous cultures you conquer (like the etruscans) to get a huge army + science. That's pretty much everything there is to it.

Yeah, I know it's a good path but I'm wary about republics because it's harder to master, no?

Oh, and as someone who didn't try it for way too long: use Invictus; it's got a great set of mission trees for Pandya.

Thanks for the suggestion. However before trying mods (and later missing achievements), I would prefer first to be at ease with the base game. It seems more logical to me when the mod changes so many elements (from what I read)

 

[DukeLeto42]

Yeah, I know it's a good path but I'm wary about republics because it's harder to master, no?

Truth be told it's more of a tradeoff. Kingdoms require managing your family, which can be costly and it's all too easy to forget about marrying a kid off and find your family running out of members. Republics don't have that problem, since you cycle between families and can let them handle it themselves when they aren't in power. They do require you to keep senate approval high if you want to engage in wars, which means it's possible to have an election cycle where you just can't declare war. While republics pretty much guarantee you'll have several truly garbage rulers, kingdoms require careful planning and no small amount of luck to avoid having an incompetent for decades.

 

[Ir0nSlug]

Yeah, I know it's a good path but I'm wary about republics because it's harder to master, no?

Never played monarchy so far so can't compare, but republic doesn't feel that hard. At least with romans it kinds of balance itself on its own, so far I only had to do a couple mission to keep populares happy. It's actually nice having to sometime not choose the best character for a task, but one from a great family to keep them happy. What I do is get the best characters as researchers, not matter their family, but try to only use great families member for political offices. The way great families and parties overlap is very cool. From time to time you'll get memorable characters, the shrewd bastard, the overcompetent but corrupted governor, the popular populist, etc...

Also, it seems you can just bypass the scorned family problem by making fleet of 1 ship to grant admiral positions, but it get expensive in wages.

 

[olivenkranz]

Rome is the easiest republic by far, beacuse it has a unique version where all parties like it if you attack and expand. The others are harder, but doable and have stronger laws for the most part.