Almoravids and Almohads in Iberia (lack of)

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Vityviktor

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Jul 18, 2011
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Almoravids are mostly missing in the Iberian struggle, despite all these claims held by Abu Bakr at the beginning. Having them invade or vassalize the Taifas is very rare.

The Almohads, on the other hand, don't even show up or they're too weak to win, let alone invade the Peninsula.

I think both should be buffed and reworked in order to have them fit within the Struggle system. Their absence is not only ahistorical but also makes the region feel more boring than it should.
 
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In the meantime you may want to try out the Historical Invasions mod.
 
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I think the fatamids should up in 900 if the Umayyads don’t pop. The Umayyads not popping makes them overpowered. They will easily strike into the Maghreb.
 
Maghreb (North Africa minus Egypt) is underpowered in every PDX game ever, change my mind
Underpowered and underrepresented. The only bit of dedicate content or flavor they ever received was the Mare Nostrum DLC for EU4, with the pirates and that stuff.

I understand the main focus of Fate of Iberia was, of course, Iberia. But that was also a good moment to give at least some flavor to the dynasties that actually managed conquer vast extensions in Iberia, halting Christian expansion.
 
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Yeah, the Almoravids, Idrisids, and Almohads should definitely feel more present. At the moment, I think part of the problem is that there's a lot of wealth and levies in Iberia that just aren't available in the Maghreb. Additionally, the AI is just... Not aggressive enough.
 
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Additionally, the AI is just... Not aggressive enough.
Yeah, I noticed that. Probably related to the numerous alliances (probably affecting AI strength calculations). There's also very little infighting between Taifas, unlike the Christian kingdoms (claim wars).
 
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In game context there is lack of reason for Taifa to give Almoravid the Iberian area. That's because Taifa in the game can actually fight and have the manpower(and alliance) to resist the Christian Iberia.

While in real life according to admittedly probably from biased sources, Taifa are very wealthy but their army are hopelessly weak and their manpower thanks to decline on tribal levy due to lack of Arabs and Almanzor reform force them to relied on outside Iberia as their manpower pool which are mostly Berbers.

I'm not sure that can be replicated in the game without another extensive expansion. The best that could be done with just an update is to buffed the Berbers to have more armies and make their AI more likely to invade and get involved in Iberia. Wouldn't be suprisef if the Berber still prefer to attack the weaker African tribe below rather than the complicated Iberian.
 
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Yeah, by 1066 is very clear that the Spanish Christians had the upper hand over the taifas. The northern ring of taifas were basically tributaries by that point (indeed, fighting over who got which tributary played a huge part in the fallout between the Jimena brothers), and within a little over a decade of unifying the kingdoms, Alfonso would take Toledo and be in serious danger of taking the rest of Iberia. It's why the taifas finally made the decision to invite the Almoravids in, even knowing that it risked them deciding to annex their lands (which they knew was a risk, and which did happen).

In-game, any given major taifa is roughly as strong as the three main Spanish kingdoms combined, so even if they successfully combine, there is no real threat to the taifas.

Admittedly, it's not the only case of ridiculously ahistorical strength ratios. My go-to here is the Hautevilles in Sicily in 1066, who historically should be a major threat to Byzantium, but in-game are a joke (to the point that Paradox had to ahistorically give them Bari rather than leave it in Byzantine hands, because otherwise they'd never take all of Sicily).
 
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Admittedly, it's not the only case of ridiculously ahistorical strength ratios. My go-to here is the Hautevilles in Sicily in 1066, who historically should be a major threat to Byzantium, but in-game are a joke (to the point that Paradox had to ahistorically give them Bari rather than leave it in Byzantine hands, because otherwise they'd never take all of Sicily).
That's more to do with the game having what's essentially mass mobilisation imo. The game currently models the Byzantines as being able to field the same number of troops against the Normans in Sicily as they can against the Seljuks in Asia-Minor.
 
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Almoravids and Almohads played a significant role in Iberia, I honestly was expecting them to be also involved (or at least interloper) in the 1066 start date when I first saw the dev diaries.

Ibn Tashfin, the heir to the Almoravid in the 1066 start, was one of the most influential rulers in both Iberian and Moroccan story, it's kind of sad to see the Almoravids barely doing much in Iberia.
 
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That's more to do with the game having what's essentially mass mobilisation imo. The game currently models the Byzantines as being able to field the same number of troops against the Normans in Sicily as they can against the Seljuks in Asia-Minor.
Sure, but the Normans historically invaded Greece multiple times and occupied a good chunk of it, only really being defeated the first time by a combination of threats to invade Sicily by the HRE and a Venetian naval campaign that threatened their supply lines, and the second time by the Byzantines bribing away a good chunk of Bohemond's army. They remained a major threat to Greece thereafter (they sacked Thessalonica in 1185).

I'd say it's less logistics and more how the game represents wealth and armies, which are closely tied together (such that a rich province is inherently a militarily powerful province; contrast EU4's development system where base tax, production, and manpower are all separate).
 
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Almoravids are mostly missing in the Iberian struggle, despite all these claims held by Abu Bakr at the beginning. Having them invade or vassalize the Taifas is very rare.

The Almohads, on the other hand, don't even show up or they're too weak to win, let alone invade the Peninsula.

I think both should be buffed and reworked in order to have them fit within the Struggle system. Their absence is not only ahistorical but also makes the region feel more boring than it should.
In the Next flavour pack is supposed to be muslim mechanics. There could be something interesting about this point.
 
In the Next flavour pack is supposed to be muslim mechanics. There could be something interesting about this point.
they will probably just slap a few minor changes to the clan government, probably in the form of vassal contracts, since the flavor pack will only have heavy focus on Persia, they had the best opportunity to give flavor to the Almoravids with Fate of Iberia but oh well
 
they will probably just slap a few minor changes to the clan government, probably in the form of vassal contracts, since the flavor pack will only have heavy focus on Persia, they had the best opportunity to give flavor to the Almoravids with Fate of Iberia but oh well
They might return to it in a few years, or there's a dev with a special interest in the Almoravids that might do something with it. No one saw the Jewish stuff coming with 1.9.1.
 
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If we ever do. It still baffles me that they've never bothered to give North Africans the cultural tradition to be able to raid. And they never reform to have it without player intervention
You're giving me the idea to try just adding "Practiced Pirates" to Butr culture. That might be a lot of fun, especially since now it will only be smaller rulers who will be allowed to raid.
 
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If we ever do. It still baffles me that they've never bothered to give North Africans the cultural tradition to be able to raid. And they never reform to have it without player intervention
About the raid. As far as i know the one with strong naval tradition at the time(Merchant Republic and Maghreb Pirates) are both notorious pirates. Genoa even manage to snag one of the Ottoman Prince at the time.

I was kinda hoping both of them would have practiced pirates but Berber would be more focused on desert while Italian are more focused on cities.
 
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