To paint the map with one color asap, what I need is a reliable army and a reliable and repeatable CB that can take out large area.
I have tested this method with my favorite Sigurdr Ring, but it can be used for any other pagan. Pretty soon, I will restart a game and try to set a record. But I don't know when I will have enough time. So I will share the method I have tested for anyone to try.
1. Early Stage
With Sigurdr Ring, the first step is imprisoning and executing one of my vassal who has two counties. I would restart an Ironman game if this fails. This increases my demesne to 5 counties immediately, and increase my levy from 2k to 3k.
I will choose seduction focus and get concubines to get about 5~6 sons as soon as I can. I will legitimate them immediately. This is vital for my strategy as each son will provide a pagan subjugation CB.
Next, I will try to make most of my small to medium neighbor pagans my tributaries. I need to take 2~3 counties with "Border Dispute" CB to have access to declare more tributaries CB. I would storm all the tribal holdings, use a organizer commander to save time, and don't wait my levy to replenish unless I have to.
It gets easier and easier as I gather more tributary allies. I will stop after or before making Sjalland a tributary depends on situation.
I will get a lot of prestige since I will get 200 each from a tributary war, which I will save and don't use to upgrade my holdings. I really need them as much as I can have to create and support a large tribal retinue. I will frequently see if there is a high born girl that I can take as my concubine or invite first, to get more prestige this way. Any high born girl in my prison will be my concubine and not ransomed for 10 ducats. I don't mind breaking betrothals or abducting married women.
Keep all the noble women in your court until they are age 35, after making them your concubines and setting them aside. They usually have a claim so they won't be court pruned. When your sons become adults, they can re-concubinate all the noble women you have collected to get prestige again. I have gained 500 prestige from a single king's daughter this way.
I will also create tribal retinue as they become available. Use any one depends on your style. Pure LI retinue is best for carpet signing, LI+AR can be added to your levy and make the early fights far easier with Feint Tactics enabled, and LI+LH are best overall through end game.
Also, while I would not upgrade my tribal holdings with prestige (except shipyard), I will spam the 37 ducats level 1 Earth Hillfort whenever I can afford to increase my retinue cap. I will upgrade my vassal's holdings too, since I will eventually take them.
As the game goes, you could adopt feudalism earlier. BUT DON'T!!!! See step 10 first.
Also, you could adopt feudalism earlier. BUT DON'T!!!! See step 11 first.
2. First Expansion
By now I have about 2~2.5k current levy left out of 3~5k max levy, and have 5~10k potential tributary ally army. I also should be able to get "Make a King of.." CB.
I will use the first Pagan Subjugation CB on Saxony, and defeat it with help of my tributary allies. Use your spymaster to see enemy's troop movement. When war score reaches 100%, get ready to attack all the duke level neighbors that has any county within de jure Swedish kingdom. Set your ambition, finish the war on Saxony, release those duke level tributaries, declare war ambition based subjugation war on those duke level tributaries.
If you couldn't take Sjalland with Ambition Subjugation CB because it has no county on Sweden, use Force Vassalization CB by spending 1000 prestige.
I will then ask to accept vassalization to county level neighbors of my religion.
Now you are the major power on Scandinavia.
Don't dismiss your levy yet. You might need it for step 3.
3. Reign of Terror
Now that you have enough counties with level 1 hillfort on your realm, and many vassals to abuse. It's time to consolidate power.
Hopefully you should have at least one duke level vassal imprisoned from the last war. If not, try to imprison a small duke with different religion on the newly subjugated territory. If it fails, defeat the rebel and you have one or more imprisoned duke. If the duke has sons, imprison and execute them all to make sure you are the heir. You don't want any potential heir already landed in a foreign realm.
Once you have that, transfer all your county or lower level vassals to him. Now it is time to start imprisoning.
While I can keep trying to imprison my in-direct vassals, I still want to increase chance to grab their ducats and minimize them running to another realm with all the saved ducats. For that, I would first try to imprison all the spymasters of them. Save. Reload to see their state intrigue updated, and start imprisoning all the counts' sons and then counts, and also barony level vassals. I can maximize making ducats by ransoming those who can afford, and re-imprisoning them.
Finally, I will also imprison all the daughters of counts and dukes, so that I can make them concubines and get prestige from them when they reach 16.
After all that's done, I will have huge demesne and many angry vassals. I will create all the prestige retinue I can, using the saved prestige.
4. Change of Ruler
By this time, I will try to imprison a vassal for no reason until I fail and get rebellion. I will loose the war to hand over power to one of my sons. In my last game, I died from battle would while doing the above step 3, but I still managed to see it through. Hopefully the heir won't be Ragnarr as I want to use Ragnarr the final ruler. Your realm could have been broken into smaller realms, but don't worry about it and don't try to consolidate it yet.
5. Declare and win another pagan kingdom with Pagan Subjugation CB.
The new ruler will enable me to have a new Subjugation CB, which I will use on another major Pagan kingdom.
It is quite a challenge to do that under regency and a small army. It could be easier to skip Saxony for now, and take another, larger Pagan kingdom first, instead, and move to step 4 with Saxony skipped for now.
6. Rinse and Repeat.
Repeat step 3~5 until either you used all Sigurdr's children's Subjugation CB, or all the major Tribal realms are subjugated. By this time, I would have managed to get rid of most of my pagan vassals through multiple reign of terrors, have a huge tribal demesne that most of tribal holdings are upgraded to level 1 hillfort, and through it, 10~20k prestige retinue.
The initially broken down Sigurdr's realm will automatically consolidated each time that a son adjudicates his power through a rebellion.
I would target Bulgaria as the last pagan realm to subjugate. It is large and rich, and most of it's counties have castles.
7. Ships.
By this time, I should have a shipyard in Uppland and 18 ships. I can make more ships by creating single county Merchant Republics when ever I grab a county with a city (the first one would be on Saxony, and many on Bulgaria).
8. Raiding.
I would have not been raiding much, except to make a potential enemy weaker first. I didn't need too much gold and repeated reign of terrors have funded my levy upkeep and earth hillfort upgrade. Now is a good time to start raiding on Francia on Saxony border, and Byzantium from Bulgarian border, or anywhere else since I should have a few dozen ships now.
9. Tribal Invasions
Move capital to an Altaic county, adopt local culture, this enables the powerful Pagan Invasion. You can't use it on pagan realms, but most of pagan realms are already gone anyway. Abuse it as much as you want. But leave Byzantium for now.
10. Adopting Feudalism
The above method can make me to consolidate most of Pagan land in a short time, likely within 20 years. Military Organization tech level 2, a huge prestige retinue army, and personally hold most of Tribal counties in the game that has level 1 earth hillfort. Now that you have abused both Pagan Subjugation CB and Pagan Invasion CB as much as you want, It is a great time to adopt feudalism. Either upgrade Uppland or move capital to a county with a castle and adopt feudalism.
Now you suddenly have hundreds of castles, cities, and temples to land. Take your time and enjoy. Your newly created feudal vassals will soon provide good levy to support your tribal retinue, which you get to keep even after adopting feudalism.
And your current ruler would be the famous Ragnarr in his early 20's. He won't have that huge negative piety since his father and brothers did all the dirty work for him. All his vassals would love him for giving them all the brand new castles.
11. Become an Emperor
I found the best way to become an Emperor is swearing fealty to Byzantium and taking it within. You get to gave a great already developed system and well developed capital.
12. Kingdom level Claim CB
Now that you are an emperor, you can collect kingdom level claimants, land them, and press their claim. The most famous claimant would be the last Merovingian guy in Eu, who has strong claim on both West and Middle Francia. Buy favor with 400 ducats if you have to. You might be shocked that you can't land him. Don't worry though, as you can de-monk him by first giving him a temple.
13. The world is yours!
You should have painted most of the map in your color now. Finish the world conquest. Be creative. Find new exploits and share them!
14. What to do with all the rebels?
The fast expansion will bring numerous rebels and adventurers. Unless you have a nearby army that can easily take them, just give them the land. It is often easier to loose a peasant rebellion, make the county independent, and get the prestige back with a tributary war when your army pass by it next time, and ask vassalization. Adventurers can be landed and then soon be imprisoned / executed in your next round of reign of terror. Don't let them slow you down.
15. Due Credits
Majority of my methods have been adopted by this creative and ingenious AAR. I simply added abusing Pagan Subjugation with multiple sons, abusing Pagan Prestige Retinue with North Korean mode and spamming Lv1 Hillforts, Abusing Merchant Republic's instant ships, and utilized new border dispute and force vassalization CB.
Really the only exploit that I personally found was making multiple sons with seduction focus and using them (even as infants), to get unlimited Pagan Subjugation CB outside of your de jure kingdom.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-conquest.920272/
I have tested this method with my favorite Sigurdr Ring, but it can be used for any other pagan. Pretty soon, I will restart a game and try to set a record. But I don't know when I will have enough time. So I will share the method I have tested for anyone to try.
1. Early Stage
With Sigurdr Ring, the first step is imprisoning and executing one of my vassal who has two counties. I would restart an Ironman game if this fails. This increases my demesne to 5 counties immediately, and increase my levy from 2k to 3k.
I will choose seduction focus and get concubines to get about 5~6 sons as soon as I can. I will legitimate them immediately. This is vital for my strategy as each son will provide a pagan subjugation CB.
Next, I will try to make most of my small to medium neighbor pagans my tributaries. I need to take 2~3 counties with "Border Dispute" CB to have access to declare more tributaries CB. I would storm all the tribal holdings, use a organizer commander to save time, and don't wait my levy to replenish unless I have to.
It gets easier and easier as I gather more tributary allies. I will stop after or before making Sjalland a tributary depends on situation.
I will get a lot of prestige since I will get 200 each from a tributary war, which I will save and don't use to upgrade my holdings. I really need them as much as I can have to create and support a large tribal retinue. I will frequently see if there is a high born girl that I can take as my concubine or invite first, to get more prestige this way. Any high born girl in my prison will be my concubine and not ransomed for 10 ducats. I don't mind breaking betrothals or abducting married women.
Keep all the noble women in your court until they are age 35, after making them your concubines and setting them aside. They usually have a claim so they won't be court pruned. When your sons become adults, they can re-concubinate all the noble women you have collected to get prestige again. I have gained 500 prestige from a single king's daughter this way.
I will also create tribal retinue as they become available. Use any one depends on your style. Pure LI retinue is best for carpet signing, LI+AR can be added to your levy and make the early fights far easier with Feint Tactics enabled, and LI+LH are best overall through end game.
Also, while I would not upgrade my tribal holdings with prestige (except shipyard), I will spam the 37 ducats level 1 Earth Hillfort whenever I can afford to increase my retinue cap. I will upgrade my vassal's holdings too, since I will eventually take them.
As the game goes, you could adopt feudalism earlier. BUT DON'T!!!! See step 10 first.
Also, you could adopt feudalism earlier. BUT DON'T!!!! See step 11 first.
2. First Expansion
By now I have about 2~2.5k current levy left out of 3~5k max levy, and have 5~10k potential tributary ally army. I also should be able to get "Make a King of.." CB.
I will use the first Pagan Subjugation CB on Saxony, and defeat it with help of my tributary allies. Use your spymaster to see enemy's troop movement. When war score reaches 100%, get ready to attack all the duke level neighbors that has any county within de jure Swedish kingdom. Set your ambition, finish the war on Saxony, release those duke level tributaries, declare war ambition based subjugation war on those duke level tributaries.
If you couldn't take Sjalland with Ambition Subjugation CB because it has no county on Sweden, use Force Vassalization CB by spending 1000 prestige.
I will then ask to accept vassalization to county level neighbors of my religion.
Now you are the major power on Scandinavia.
Don't dismiss your levy yet. You might need it for step 3.
3. Reign of Terror
Now that you have enough counties with level 1 hillfort on your realm, and many vassals to abuse. It's time to consolidate power.
Hopefully you should have at least one duke level vassal imprisoned from the last war. If not, try to imprison a small duke with different religion on the newly subjugated territory. If it fails, defeat the rebel and you have one or more imprisoned duke. If the duke has sons, imprison and execute them all to make sure you are the heir. You don't want any potential heir already landed in a foreign realm.
Once you have that, transfer all your county or lower level vassals to him. Now it is time to start imprisoning.
While I can keep trying to imprison my in-direct vassals, I still want to increase chance to grab their ducats and minimize them running to another realm with all the saved ducats. For that, I would first try to imprison all the spymasters of them. Save. Reload to see their state intrigue updated, and start imprisoning all the counts' sons and then counts, and also barony level vassals. I can maximize making ducats by ransoming those who can afford, and re-imprisoning them.
Finally, I will also imprison all the daughters of counts and dukes, so that I can make them concubines and get prestige from them when they reach 16.
After all that's done, I will have huge demesne and many angry vassals. I will create all the prestige retinue I can, using the saved prestige.
4. Change of Ruler
By this time, I will try to imprison a vassal for no reason until I fail and get rebellion. I will loose the war to hand over power to one of my sons. In my last game, I died from battle would while doing the above step 3, but I still managed to see it through. Hopefully the heir won't be Ragnarr as I want to use Ragnarr the final ruler. Your realm could have been broken into smaller realms, but don't worry about it and don't try to consolidate it yet.
5. Declare and win another pagan kingdom with Pagan Subjugation CB.
The new ruler will enable me to have a new Subjugation CB, which I will use on another major Pagan kingdom.
It is quite a challenge to do that under regency and a small army. It could be easier to skip Saxony for now, and take another, larger Pagan kingdom first, instead, and move to step 4 with Saxony skipped for now.
6. Rinse and Repeat.
Repeat step 3~5 until either you used all Sigurdr's children's Subjugation CB, or all the major Tribal realms are subjugated. By this time, I would have managed to get rid of most of my pagan vassals through multiple reign of terrors, have a huge tribal demesne that most of tribal holdings are upgraded to level 1 hillfort, and through it, 10~20k prestige retinue.
The initially broken down Sigurdr's realm will automatically consolidated each time that a son adjudicates his power through a rebellion.
I would target Bulgaria as the last pagan realm to subjugate. It is large and rich, and most of it's counties have castles.
7. Ships.
By this time, I should have a shipyard in Uppland and 18 ships. I can make more ships by creating single county Merchant Republics when ever I grab a county with a city (the first one would be on Saxony, and many on Bulgaria).
8. Raiding.
I would have not been raiding much, except to make a potential enemy weaker first. I didn't need too much gold and repeated reign of terrors have funded my levy upkeep and earth hillfort upgrade. Now is a good time to start raiding on Francia on Saxony border, and Byzantium from Bulgarian border, or anywhere else since I should have a few dozen ships now.
9. Tribal Invasions
Move capital to an Altaic county, adopt local culture, this enables the powerful Pagan Invasion. You can't use it on pagan realms, but most of pagan realms are already gone anyway. Abuse it as much as you want. But leave Byzantium for now.
10. Adopting Feudalism
The above method can make me to consolidate most of Pagan land in a short time, likely within 20 years. Military Organization tech level 2, a huge prestige retinue army, and personally hold most of Tribal counties in the game that has level 1 earth hillfort. Now that you have abused both Pagan Subjugation CB and Pagan Invasion CB as much as you want, It is a great time to adopt feudalism. Either upgrade Uppland or move capital to a county with a castle and adopt feudalism.
Now you suddenly have hundreds of castles, cities, and temples to land. Take your time and enjoy. Your newly created feudal vassals will soon provide good levy to support your tribal retinue, which you get to keep even after adopting feudalism.
And your current ruler would be the famous Ragnarr in his early 20's. He won't have that huge negative piety since his father and brothers did all the dirty work for him. All his vassals would love him for giving them all the brand new castles.
11. Become an Emperor
I found the best way to become an Emperor is swearing fealty to Byzantium and taking it within. You get to gave a great already developed system and well developed capital.
12. Kingdom level Claim CB
Now that you are an emperor, you can collect kingdom level claimants, land them, and press their claim. The most famous claimant would be the last Merovingian guy in Eu, who has strong claim on both West and Middle Francia. Buy favor with 400 ducats if you have to. You might be shocked that you can't land him. Don't worry though, as you can de-monk him by first giving him a temple.
13. The world is yours!
You should have painted most of the map in your color now. Finish the world conquest. Be creative. Find new exploits and share them!
14. What to do with all the rebels?
The fast expansion will bring numerous rebels and adventurers. Unless you have a nearby army that can easily take them, just give them the land. It is often easier to loose a peasant rebellion, make the county independent, and get the prestige back with a tributary war when your army pass by it next time, and ask vassalization. Adventurers can be landed and then soon be imprisoned / executed in your next round of reign of terror. Don't let them slow you down.
15. Due Credits
Majority of my methods have been adopted by this creative and ingenious AAR. I simply added abusing Pagan Subjugation with multiple sons, abusing Pagan Prestige Retinue with North Korean mode and spamming Lv1 Hillforts, Abusing Merchant Republic's instant ships, and utilized new border dispute and force vassalization CB.
Really the only exploit that I personally found was making multiple sons with seduction focus and using them (even as infants), to get unlimited Pagan Subjugation CB outside of your de jure kingdom.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-conquest.920272/
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