My FINAL Abbasid Speed Run

[jwalche]

That's right. This is the final. I won't redo it regardless of any new tricks or tactics. Those who don't want to see it, please bear with one last thread. After spending a few months on this thread as a diary, when the world is conquered, the contents will be organized, edited and posted on AAR section to be remembered.

To see my previous threads where I was still researching and building up strategies. These were the foundation of my strategy building.

Abbasid is fun: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...uite-enjoyable-to-play.1160218/#post-25256912
First draft plan: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...led-guild-for-speed-wc.1161781/#post-25277387
My almost final trial: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...t-final-speed-wc-trial.1163732/#post-25305098
Topic discussion on vassal levy: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-out-of-thin-air.1166277/page-2#post-25345464

I will be periodically updating as I play very slowly. Before introducing any game breaking tricks, I will first report them to dev.

Ironman. All default settings. All updates and DLC up to Holy Fury (No Great Works)

769 Start Date. Badshah Al-Mansur 'the Pale Spider' of the Abbasid.
Starting Stats: Diplomacy 10 (+2 Mohamed's Seal), Martial 11, Stewardship 1, Intrigue 17, Learning 3
Goal: Finish World Conquest in about 5 years.

Title of the Report: Al-Mansur the Repented Holy Man.

Here is an introductory screenshot, exactly 3 months from the start. Realm size has increased from 417 to 666. (666 has nothing to do with Iblis)

Not a single foreign county was taken by force or even murders (not yet). There has been no mass imprisonment and executions (except a couple hundreds isolated on a single county). It has been only three in-game months, but long long time was spent on pauses, not to mention previous games that served as learning experience.

Days were spent on a pause. Fortunately paused time was mostly for planning and math rather than mindless clicking that my previous runs suffered. Small miscalculation could end the game right there. But thanks god no more ransoming grand mayors that really broke the pleasure with frequent pauses.

The secret of Al-Mansur's early success has been asking nicely. Ask neighbors nicely and they swear fealty to you. Ask vassals nicely and they give you all their titles. Defensive pact is not an issue when diplomacy and intrigue are your main weapons.

 

[similan]

It sounds like you have every detail figured out. So what is the plan you're going to follow to conquer the world?

 

[jwalche]

It sounds like you have every detail figured out. So what is the plan you're going to follow to conquer the world?

I have many plans. But there are randomness in the game, especially in Ironman, so some has to be figured out as it goes. More will be figured out as it goes. For what I have planned, it would be more interesting if I show it as it goes. You can see the links to my previous threads and get some ideas though.

But the basic idea is simple.

For internal affairs; Make some money without hurting piety too much. Make some prestige with the money. Buy some mercs. Use merc based military strength and prestige to revoke vassal titles. Raise new vassals on temples to make some piety. Rinse and repeat.

For external affairs; Move around capital and change religion and culture to the target neighbor. Offer vassalization. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, assassinate foreign kingdom rulers if you have or can favor invite their heirs. Eventually invade the rest if I must.

 

[Patriarch of Bub]

But what about the ERE and Tibet? They are empire level so claimants won't work, right?

 

[jwalche]

But what about the ERE and Tibet? They are empire level so claimants won't work, right?

ERE could be taken from inside. Tibet could be shattered by China. But my goal is fastest world conquest and I can't avoid many wars. I haven't expanded any through wars yet. But I have just declared my 5th holy war to a former vassal. My point was that many wars still can be avoid to save time. My armies are also marching to a single county foreign realm. I have to take that by force so that I will have access to the county's local culture.

To nicely ask neighbors to become my vassals, I need to conform their religion and culture. For that I need to be able to change my capital, which can only be done during peace time.

Here I am declaring my 5th holy war against an Ibadi duke. He has no army. So the war will be won instantly the following day when my army arrives.

 

[jwalche]

June 1, 769. Phase 1 is concluded. Phase 2 is the first war campaign which I will have to spend a few hours to plan efficient army deployment. I will post a quick update on current status, and start working on somewhat detailed AAR for the first 5 months. I will go back to playing more when this is completed.

Let's see current screenshot. Then I will organize the status report as each of council members. But for the summary, we have accepted fealty from many neighborhood realms and revoked all our old and new vassals' land titles. Now to expand more we need access to Europe, so we just launched belated claim wars and some small wars along with them. Once we have France, we will try to accept fealty from European Pagans.

Chancellor's Office

Dozens of neighborhood duchy realms have sworn fealty to us, which increased our realm size from 417 to 698. Most of holdings came with 4 large dukes who immediately accepted our offer. The rest of realms were mostly Muslims of other denominations and Berber Africans. We are now Afghanistan Buddhist and currently accepting fealty from two large realms of our culture and religion. In a few days, we will become Zunist and accept fealty from the last Zunist realm.

We can take a few more Central African vassals once we win a few counties of different cultures first. But the major expansion will be on British Isles and Eastern Europe after first we establish our presence there by winning Francia.


Martial's Office

Our first five wars were unfortunately holy wars against our former vassals, which were all very brief. Our first real foreign war was a single county realm of Afghanistan culture, so that we could become Afghanistan. But today, we have declared four major wars - kingdom claim wars on West Francia, Middle Francia, Bavaria, and Ayudha. We are also starting a dozen small wars to small realms, to have presence in India, British Isles, and Central Africa. So that our Chancellor can convince more realms to swear fealty to us.

Our retinue cap is 10k, but it is still very small, about 500 men only. Our realm can provide over 100k levy. Unfortunately, between having large demesne, switching capitals, cultures, and religions, they are all destroyed. That's a shame since we have never used it.

However we have 100k mercenary companies instead, and we will buy 50k more of them today. We already have our mercenary crossing border to our African enemies, and are marching to India. The rest will be ready to be shipped to Europe today.

We have almost no ships and no vassal merchant republics now. But we will charter two dozen republics today and will levy at least 500 ships within days to carry our troops to Europe and British Isles.


Steward's Office

We have a prosperous city in our realm, where hundreds of rich citizens are willing to pay 300 ducats to be recognized as a mere patrician for a second. We have funded creating hundreds of ducal titles for our prestige, and purchased 100k mercenary army, dismissed, and re-purchased on different counties on our new borders.

Our bank balance is 15k ducats, and we estimate 8k to be spent today to purchase and re-purchase mercenary bands for our wars.

Fortunately, our Court Chaplain can supply us 5k excessive piety, which we can convert to 150k ducats through our rich and prosperous city with hundreds of rich citizens. This will be our 4th time visiting the city, and hopefully for the final visit.


Spymaster's Office

Our external affairs have been inheriting 3 Muslim realms through plot murders. The work is still in progress and we have not gained any foreign realm yet.

Internally, most of our former vassals accepted our generous offer to revoke all their titles and living in peace as free man. However we still had to imprison and execute hundreds of rich patricians on our city of prosperity to fund our operation. We also had to try to imprison hundreds of infidel priests. We tried to just scare them off, but we had to execute those who failed to run away, so that we could offer to to revoke their titles, and offer those churches to new priests of our newly converted religion.


Court Chaplain's Office

We cannot do well without pleasing our heavenly lord. We had been extremely cautious to minimize imprisonment, and only executed infidels except for a few rare occasions. We offered our hundred temples to our lord 3 times, once each as Christian, African Pagan, and Buddhist, and our lord rewarded us handsomely with thousands of piety each time.

With the lord's reward, we supported imprisoning infidel priests and patricians which costed 10 piety per imprisonment. Our lord also allowed us to execute them piety free as they were all infidels at the time of execution. We can spare 5k piety set outside from what we needed to declare wars, to be used to imprison more rich patricians. If that's not enough, then, well, our temples will have Zunist priests.

 

[jwalche]

A great start. One of the very best start I ever had. He got 10 diplomacy with +2 ring, and 17 intrigue that became 19 immediately with seduction focus. The other stats don't matter much.

There are four large neighbors who will swear fealty right away, and a small one soon after. Accepting them will make my threat level hit the ceiling and bring a world pact against me. I can survive that.

But the most important new vassal is this single county far from home. He will always swear fealty even though we don't share a border. And he opens diplomatic range to Europe and allows me to share boarder with many realms in this area.

 

[jwalche]

As a Muslim, observing Ramadan seems is just the natural things to do on day 1. And it gives me 15 piety. Not much. But now I have 40 piety.

3 days later, I am rewarded by 15 more piety.

That was great. Because now I have 55 piety, I can embrace the Ash'ari Tech. And I get to have 100 more piety!

All that was for the one goal. Being able to change Muslim realm law for 100 piety, and now we have Title Revocation enabled.

 

[jwalche]

Our next step involves a very special county. I love the count and even his courtiers. Just look at this guy, the count's spymaster.

I am going to make him a noble, by giving one of my only three demesne counties.

As for his former master, I have many surprises. I would like to send my martial to keep him safe.

But that's not all. I borrowed 300 ducats from Jewish merchants. And I will buy not one, but two ducal titles with all the money I got. And I will make him not just a duke, but a grand duke with two ducal titles, although those do not come with any counties. I only have two.

Now he became my direct vassal duke, just like his former spymaster is now my direct vassal count. Wait. There is more. Even though his stewardship skill sucks, I make him my steward anyway.

I am like the Giving Tree. I make him my Designated Regent and Court Calligrapher.

He could count my money and lead my army too.

He is so happy, if I was ever going to imprison him. He would almost let me. I really didn't want to take any chance in this game. But just for this once, very early in the game, 92% chance is something I will have to make an exception.

Well he is now safely in my prison.

The thing about infidels is that the heavenly lord is just fine with executing them. No piety cost.

And now I have a coastal county in my demesne! We all know how rich a coastal count is right? But we will start modestly. Or else we will suffer from heavy consequences. Let's just tax about 15k ducats on this county. It will give us some spending gold to start. We will get out of poverty in couple of days.

 

[Patriarch of Bub]

But how can you change capital so many times? It's pretty much limited to once per ruler, except returning to the older capital?

And how will you deal for those kingdoms who either don't have claimants (yet), or you can't get hold of one?

 

[jwalche]

But how can you change capital so many times? It's pretty much limited to once per ruler, except returning to the older capital?

Abbasid's starting capital's de jure kingdom and empire titles are not created in the start and I have no plan to create them.

Abassid's starting main title is Empire of Arabia, but it's starting capital is in de jure Empire of Persia. Also it doesn't start with any kingdom title.

Pretty mixed up right? So the thing is, I can give my capital county to someone until my capital is moved to where I want it, as long as the target county's capital is a castle.

Of course, I wouldn't want to be giving a county to someone 200 times every time I want to move my capital. Because I have to move my capital several times on a day! But don't worry. There is a very efficient and fast relocation system. We will get to there later.

And how will you deal for those kingdoms who either don't have claimants (yet), or you can't get hold of one?

The four kingdoms are only kingdoms that I can reliably get claimants from the start. There are three other kingdoms that someone on my realm can inherit through murder plots if I get lucky.

The rest of non-pagan rulers who won't swear fealty can get tribal invasion CB even though my realm won't be tribal. There are many other CBs that I will mix, crossing religion lines often to have the best CB for each situation. We will get to there soon enough.

 

[jwalche]

Great News! What do you do with all the useless inland cities that don't give much of anything? I figured out how to levy ships from them. Hundreds of ships from each inland city. All will be shared eventually.

 

[jwalche]

Now that I reported all my exploits to Paradox, let's return to our day 4 and make some money. We won't be greedy here as we can't afford to go to deep in negative piety. Let's just make small spending gold - 12k ducats.

We just got our hands on this lovely and rich coastal county called Kurdistan. It has a barony city and a temple. I imprisoned the mayor before I executed the count who became a duke, so that I could revoke his city title immediately. The priest I didn't care so I just transferred him to a random count.

I make the city as the county's capital.

And give it to someone of
1. "Not" my religious group
2. My culture
3. No family members

Then we give him the ducal title that we created today. And now we have our very first vassal merchant republic.

Each merchant republic must have 5 patrician families. So system creates 4 large families with the same religion and culture of the grand mayor we appointed.

The grand mayor we just made is pretty happy with us. He has no wife or spymaster yet. So a decent state intrigue, and our highest martial vassal or courtier suppressing revolt one the county allows us to imprison him for 100% chance. Being of the same culture was also helpful.

Now the four patrician families. They are not our direct vassals. So we can safely try to imprison him. Executing him is piety free because they all are infidels. That's why the grand mayor had to be of a different religion group. We don't have to kill them all. But we have to at least make one of the four families go extinct.

When anyone of the patrician families dies out, a new patrician family is risen among the rich citizens of grand city of Kurdistan.

All 500 ducats the extinct family had is lost forever. His grand mayor still has only 500 that he was given by the system. But that's ok. We are not after the small change.

 

[jwalche]

But this 2nd generation patrician families are quite different. First, they start with only 300 ducats instead of 500 (Bad), but they don't have any family members to inherit their titles and gold (Good), and when they are successfully imprisoned executed, all the 300 ducats are inherited by his liege, the grand mayor (Very Good!!!)

Because this patrician was just created, he has no idea of our past crime. He doesn't love us. But it's enough that he doesn't hate us. We don't get always 100% imprisonment chance. But we get pretty high. Out of 40 that I imprisoned and executed on that day, only 2 escaped. No big deal.

40 executions later, our grand mayor is now 12k ducats rich. To get his gold, we need to revoke his titles. But we can't do it yet because we had just given him the titles. So let's wait one year.

Just kidding. Let's just make sure that when he is executed, his heir would be one of the 2nd generation patricians. You don't have to kill off all the first 4 families to die out. Just kill them until a child inherit the family, as our grand mayor prefers an adult heir. Let the poor kids live. You don't even have to imprisoned them.

When we have a second generation patrician as the grand mayors heir and secured in our dungeon. We can safely execute the grand mayor. Now the imprisoned grand mayor has all the gold, and his titles can be revoked as we did not give titles to him.

But be very careful as to ONLY REVOKE HIS DUCAL TITLE. If you revoke his county title at the same time, he will become a courtier of some random ruler. We won't be able to easily inherit his gold. So let's just revoke his ducal title and let him live as a happy lord mayor.

Just kidding. We can wait a day and revoke his county title as well. He won't become some random ruler's courtier if we waited one day.

But he is not our courtier either. He is a courtier of nobody. Not belonging to anyone. If we execute him now, his gold is lost. If we save and reload now, he becomes a random ruler's courtier again. So let's just let him live for now.

I wasn't kidding this time. I would really let him live... for one day. Because on the next day, he will become our courtier. Now we can finally execute him.

And now we are 12.5k ducats richer. This is a good starting capital. Don't get greedy. We already have nearly 500 negative piety which will hurt. We will have to pay 300 ducats instead of 100 for each ducal title, and we won't be able to do anything that requires piety.

We can do this again after we recover some piety first. Until then, we will just have to be very frugal and get by with 12.5k ducats for a month or even two. We will prioritize our spending on important matters first - such as creating ducal titles and buying mercs, which are vital for our next step. I will be back tomorrow for the next step.

 

[jwalche]

I haven't posted more reports, but I played about a months more because I wanted to apply some new ideas.

It's July 4, 769. Ethiopian Jewish Al-Mansur just accepted fealty from the last Jewish realm. Now the only thing left in East Africa is Abyssinia. I don't like to fight a large kingdom under defensive pact. I can't accept new vassals if they are fighting against me due to the defensive pact.

On Central Africa, I just won a force vassalization war and almost winning another. Those will give me access to two Central African cultures that will allow me to peacefully vassalize a few more realms there. I will probably briefly convert to Muslim before African again. I am trying to collect those 25 x 3 tech points repeatedly by being a Sunni. It's not very cost effective to convert religion just to get some tech points. But, for now, that's only reliable way without being a tribal and pillaging holdings.

On the West, I will get a large tributary Muslim kingdom with one plot murder, and 30k mercs are marching to a kingdom on foot and ships. I levied 10 fleets each with 250~400 ships from 10 inland mayors. Well, they were vassal kings when I levied the ships. But they are now just barony mayors. When I get the kingdoms I will peacefully vassalize some Indian dukes.

On the North. Not much is going on. I am trying to plot murder a boy so we can inherit a large Muslim kingdom there.

On Europe, I have a few claim wars on Britannia. When I win them, I will become Anglo-Saxon Christian and accept fealty from most of realms there. My armies are on sale to Fricna and Bavaria. When I win them, I will hire some local mercs and start accepting fealty from some European Pagan realms there. Hopefully we can get at least Bavaria within this year.

 

[Yeekim]

You, sir, are an absolute madman.
Keep those updates coming!

 

[jwalche]

You, sir, are an absolute madman.
Keep those updates coming!

Thanks for the encouragement! To keep the interests on, I will explain how I created large fleets since it will be a while to that moment.

First, you need to be emperor tier, several ducal titles that their de jure kingdom titles are not created, a spare kingdom title, several coastal cities, and several in-land cities. (Read bottom for Kingdom tier method)

I created my fleets when I had 260 counties in my realms so that I could have 26 republic counties. But anything above 30 counties will do.

First, I created 25 single county merchant republics. I could give each just one city holding, but I had enough prestige to waste on revoking extra castle title from each of them. So I just raised city vassals and gave them the county where their cities are.

Then I chose an inland county with a city, made the city as the county's capital, raised barony vassals on that county, and transferred the vassals to a random count. For the kingdom title, I gave all its de jure ducal titles to another count. In fact, I gave all extra ducal titles to that count and immediately imprisoned that count with 100% chance as he had only one tribal holding and no spouse or spymaster. This is necessary step so a new count given that county won't have negative opinions to me. And I put my highest stat martial to suppress revolts on that county.

To make things easier, I renamed the county by putting "_" in front so that it will be on the top of the list when I give away that county.

Now the prep is ready, I raised a vassal from an inland city, and gave him the target county. Since the target county's capital is a city, the vassal moves to the county, then I gave him the spare kingdom too. The duke who hold the kingdom's de jure duchies have a different duchy as his primary duchy so he doesn't become the new king - prince mayor's vassal.

Now we have a very happy prince mayor who has exactly three titles - A kingdom, a city county, and a city barony from an inland city of a different county, but no vassal at all. With my high state intrigue and martial mission on his capital county, I imprison and execute him easily. Note that I couldn't revoke titles that I just gave him, so I had to execute him. Since it was an inland republic, a new character is generated and became the new prince mayor.

This prince mayor doesn't "love" me, but he doesn't hate me and I gave him gold and minor titles. If my state intrigue was lower, I would have spared an empty ducal title or not given him a castle barony. But it was already enough to imprison him for 100% chance.

From this point to the next day, the game cannot be save/reloaded. It has to go through naturally. If, for any reason, you had to reload the game, you have to execute him and imprison his successor.

It's still same day when the 25 merchant republics was created. An imprisoned king without wife, regent, and councilors can still have 25 vassals without going over vassal limit. So I transfer all the republics to him. After exactly one day, I levy ships from one of his vassal merchant republics. I don't know exactly how it works. But I know that I can at least levy 10.4 ships per republic, totaling 261 ships. Sometimes I can levy up to 17 ships per republic totaling 425 ships, or anything in between. But those are rare.

Now the vassal levy is actually provided by your vassals' court and not the vassal themselves. My raised levy ships will stay as long as the the court is not destroyed - in other worlds, the king is still landed, regardless of changes in his vassals and primary title. I can revoke his titles because I didn't give them to "him". I gave them to his executed predecessor. So I revoke his kingdom title and county title to reuse. Now he is an inland barony mayor of some county. To easily remember the cities where my ships are attached, I renamed the city by putting "z " in front of the name. The city court will survive as long as I don't revoke it. Even at the current mayor's death, a new mayor will be generated because it is a republic, and my ships will last.

I regularly mass revoke titles from all my direct vassals. To protect the mayors from being accidentally revoked, I make a count, imprison him, and transfer the mayors to the count. Most of my vassals are not imprisoned. so it's easy to see which vassals I should not revoke, and the mayors now have an additional shield from my inevitable mistake that could be a disaster in this Ironman game.

It's still the second day, and I repeat the process with another inland city.

On 12th day, I have 11 fleets of 260+ ships each because I raised a fleet every day from the second day. I have enough ships for now. So before I revoke the king's titles, I first imprison heir patrician of each merchant republic, and attempt to imprison each grand mayor. If a grand mayor is caught, I execute him. Then I revoke the king's kingdom and county titles.

Now I have 25 direct vassal grand mayors who all inherited their titles from their predecessors, and are imprisoned. I revoke all their titles, ducal, county, and even city. I could have just revoked their ducal and county titles, and wait 1 day to revoke the last title so that they could be my imprisoned courtiers with 500 ducats each. I had enough gold so I didn't bother.

The result: I no longer have any merchant republic vassal. But I still have 11 inland barony level mayors who I levied 260+ ships each from. I made a good use of 11 inland city titles that were pretty useless until then.

P.S. I wanted send a few fleets to where I could only reach through river travel. So I converted to my Germanic concubine's religion, ordered two fleets to travel to there through river, and converted back to my previous religion - Buddhism - to not disappoint a neighbor Afghanistan Buddhist ruler who was considering my offer to be vassalized.

P.S. If you are still a king. Here is what you can do. After creating merchant republics, give each grand mayor an inland city, imprison them for 100% chance as you make a new one before they see your tyranny, execute them, and imprison their successor. Always have your martial suppress revolt on the target county, and reload the game first to correctly reflect the arrest chance, and gift the newly generated mayor to aim 100% or close chance to imprison. When all the grand mayors are ready, wait one day, Levy 10~17 ships from each grand mayor, and revoke their ducal, county, and barony castle titles. You could have avoided giving the barony castle title as described above, which will increase imprisonment chance. Now they only have an inland city title each, and the 10~17 ships from each of them will stay just like above. And you can rinse and repeat for all your inland city titles.

I would avoid using castle barony titles as the ruler's death could result destruction of the ships along with any boarded army. You could use temple titles as long as it's not on Iqta government if you must. But would rather use them to keep raising new priests for 25 piety at a time - which we will cover later. I can collect 2400 piety from my 160 temples about twice a month, or 4000 piety with an exploit that I don't have a complete understanding yet. It's still a lot of work so I only collect as much as I need.

 

[jwalche]

How to pray a lot and then still pray more?

Actually I am talking about getting 25 piety from raising each barony temple vassal.

Let's say we have 100 temples in our realm, and revoked all the former priests, and raised new priests to collect total 2500 piety. It was good to have 2500 piety. But we spent all now and need more.

The way I see, there are three ways.

1. Wait a year and revoke all the priests, and raise new set of priests.

2. Make a new count, imprison him, and transfer all the priests to him, and try to imprison them all. If one runs away, that's great. For those who are get caught, we can change our religion to execute them without piety penalty. Either way, we now have 100 priests who are successor of the original priests. Now they can be all revoked.

3. This I don't understand. But it works. Make a Muslim count, imprison him, and manually transfer each priests to him, one by one. Then kill the Muslim count. For the reasons I don't understand, I can revoke the priests even though I just raised them and it hasn't been a year.

 

[jwalche]

Let me post a small update. My realm has expanded to 934 holdings now. This is the biggest expansion in 9 months as far as I know. Please enlighten me if you have seen something faster. The success was due to accepting fealty and gaining external inheritance through plot murders as much as I can, instead of causing needless bloodshed.

I had a pleasant surprise with Abyssinia - The king didn't have enough de jure counties. Once I accepted fealty from all the ducal realms in it, I could usurp his kingdom title. Now reduced to a duke, the former king of Abyssinia swore fealty to us. Still fighting wars in Europe. I am fighting with a single county realm in Central Africa. Once I have it, I can change my culture and receive fealty from the remaining two African rulers.

Also I think I can take big chunks out of Tibet, by inviting ducal heirs, giving them a kingdom title, and murdering them to have their brothers / fathers to inherit the kingdom and become my vassals. Some heirs are considering my invitation offers as of now. And I just reformed African religion with Equality and Cosmopolitan. Hope that can give us some opportunities to inherit more foreign titles.

 

[jwalche]

So. How exactly do I increase realm absurdly fast with Equality and Cosmopolitan?

First, find some rulers with a female relative - a daughter, sister, whatever - and bring her to your realm in any means - favor invite her or her husband, just invite her, seduce her, marry her to you or your other male dynast. In this case, I had invited the couple already. I have regularity checked to see if there is any one with claims to be invited.

The girl doesn't need to be an heir or claim holder. Who has time to plot murder lowly vassal dukes or wait an eternity to press that weak claim?

When you land her thanks to Equality doctrine, her foreign landed close male relatives will be her heirs. That's all that matters.

Now, give her a shitty tribal count where your martial has been already posted, give her an empty kingdom title, and immediately imprison her for 100%

By the way, I love shitty tribal counties. It's easier to win holy wars when your just created enemy's only county is a tribal county with levy deflated. And tribal vassals don't count on your vassal limit. Not that I have too many vassals this time....

Holy wars are great when you can win within couple of days from the declaration. Otherwise they become invalid when i have to change my religion.

It so happens that holy wars give me a clean county without a vassal, and the former ruler's all ducal and higher tier titles are destroyed for free... even if a king had 70 ducal titles.

It takes a lot of mouse clicks and 7k ducats to to recreate the ducal titles. But doing so gives me 14k prestige so I don't mind. I burn through prestige and piety real fast by keep changing cultures and religions. I sometimes just waste them while attempting to get multiple fealty swearing from diverse realms given time. For example, Day one - become Religion A / Culture A, Day 3 B/B, Day 6 C/C, Day 10 go back to A/A and jost cross fingers that B/B group rulers wouldn't decide when my religion/culture are still A/A.

And execute her.

Her large duchy brother inherited her kingdom. Because the kingdom title is of higher rank, it becomes his primary title and now he is my vassal. I only need to revoke all his titles now.

It so happened that her husband's sister was also landed in Tibet. I land and execute him as well. Which will make his sister my vassal too.

After taking care of a few more heirs, My realm size increased from 934 to 973 within 6 days of reformation. Tibet is not so scary any longer.

More girls with landed brothers, fathers, and cousins are still coming to my court. Tibet and Chinese Protectorate still have few more counties to be lost, peacefully.

Tibet has a king vassal who I can't absorb this way. But I can use the girl (I forgot if she was his sister or daughter) to make him an independent emperor with taking another big chunk of land from Tibet.

It so happened to be that one of the high born girls was my wife. So I now have ruler unmarried warning.... It's ok to imprison and slay your wife. Just do it while your are a pagan to avoid horrible "wife slayer" opinion modifier.

My ruler is already having hard tome to be a decent seducer with gluttonous trait, old age, and switching religion several times each month. He didn't need that wife slayer label.

I said this before and I will say it again; Gender inequality is the core of the game hard-coded in every aspects. It was not and cannot be fully ready for the power of Equality doctrine at the hands of anyone with a decent understanding on inheritance mechanics.

The basic concept is that a realm keeps sons and marry off daughters and sisters. The game has a not so great, but at least some protection for male heirs from being stolen and used against their own dynasty.

Females don't get the protection. In fact, they are encouraged to be married off. It was not a problem with gender inequality game concept. But with Equality, every grown up female dynasts, especially sisters and daughters of the ruler or his powerful vassals become potential bombs to be used against by a hostile realm with that doctrine.

Gender equality had already been there of course, through legal system. But that path required decades or centuries of technological and legal advancement. By the time you have those, you wouldn't need to use it a lot, and probably only use it for roll playing concept. You would already be a roll player after centuries in a game.

Inheriting foreign realms is of course a basic game concept, well balanced without Equality. With Equality though, we get several times more chances to abuse it and it is totally not balanced any longer.

... Well, of course nothing can be balanced when you exploit. But the technique I explained on this reply has nothing to do with exploit. It was just a normal play using the basic concepts as far as I understand.

Sadly, it's within the first year of the earliest 769 start. Most of powerful rulers of the world do not have unmarried adult sisters and daughters. Tibet was an extreme exception. I don't plan to drag this game for years until the little girls to grow up to be abused because my goal is completing world conquest within five years.

Anyway, what do you think so far? Do I get the praise of being the worst abuser of all time yet? Or I am not quite where my predecessors have been?

Either way, when Muslim, Buddhist and African realms are nearly gone, and Francia will go down and Tibet decimated within the first year, World Conquest in 5 years seems more achievable now.