Are nomads over powered?

[Pro]

From my first Horse Lords game I've found that nomads are very fun to play but they seem a little bit on the strong side. By the time I bordered the Abassids as the Uygurs I didn't have to fear them the least. They were easy to beat even without calling on any vassals. There are a number of factors that I think contribute to the steppe peoples being a little strong:

-First of all they have very strong armies.
-A greater amount of the power of the realm is wielded by the top liege personally. As a non-nomad ruler your demesne size grows less than linearly with your realm size and at some point stops all together. Nomad lieges can stay more powerful than most of their vassals put together.
-Feudal rulers underestimate the strength of nomads. I saw both myself and other nomads attacked constantly by feudal rulers that were less than half as strong. The result was lots of free gold, prestige and piety for very little effort.
-Nomads have a lot of gold income. Especially compared with feudal rulers who often get little tax the nomad tax is huge.
-Combined with the above the nomad buildings are very cheap for what they do. They are similarly costed to feudal buildings, you have more gold to spend on them, and they affect your entire realm.

Agree? Disagree? Agree, but for different reasons?

 

[sleeperul]

where they not overpowered in real life? Also they bring challenge and I heard that there are something called forts I suggest you to use them.

 

[Cymsdale]

Q: Are [thing the expansion is designed around] overpowered?

A: Always yes, until the new hotness replaces them.

 

[OmegaAleph]

It depends. If you manage to get a border with the Abbasids, you ARE going to get invaded, and there's practically nothing you can do about other than sit in the corner and cry.

 

[Pro]

where they not overpowered in real life? Also they bring challenge and I heard that there are something called forts I suggest you to use them.

If you read my post you'd see I've only tried playing *as* them, not against them yet. And no, they were powerful in real life, but not over powered (real life kinda decides what is OP).

It depends. If you manage to get a border with the Abbasids, you ARE going to get invaded, and there's practically nothing you can do about other than sit in the corner and cry.

I got a border with them pretty early on and had no problem defeating their invasions. Nomad troops beat twice their number in levies without trouble (<20% casualties) and that was as big stacks as they could use because of supply limits.

 

[Sopot]

They are pretty powerfull in general and I think it's the AI as a whole that underestimates the power. I started as the lilac hoarde(Uygurs) and as soon as I joined my first war(tribute defending), the weakest clan decided he was far stronger than me, despite me having double his troops, so he sent his demand and marched his 500 horses up towards my lands, I marched my 1000 down to his capitol and took it within a second, instant 100% war score.

 

[Tufto]

Eh, who cares. It's fun to play as them and to try to fight them off .

My general first impressions are that the nomads are much, much more fluid; if they're large they're extremely powerful, but this is always a fairly ephemeral state. They will collapse just as much as they rise. Thus, one needs to bide one's time and be pragmatic.

Take my shiny new Otuken game, for example (yes, they're nomads themselves, but also tributaries to the big power in the region). I simply bided my time and built up my armies, watching and waiting. And sure enough, after some early expansion, the Uyghurs were crippled by an Anxi invasion which I took advantage of to seize some lands and conquer half the Tarim Basin. Then the Uyghurs recovered by expanding into Transoxania, vassalising the Bajanids, but then have been ripped apart by their vassals having an independence revolt.

Meanwhile, further west, the Khazars began to dominate before collapsing themselves; now the Yabguids are rising, but are facing stiff opposition from the aforementioned-former-Uyghur-vassals-whose-name-I-cannot-remember, who have over 4000 troops (whereas cashflow woes mean I only have 1750, despite having a pretty large amount of stuff at this point). It's like it was promised; fast, fluid, with large-but-unstable realms. Kinda like real life, really while they may have a military advantage, the Nomads have a decisive political disadvantage.

 

[Anthedon]

I've only played a little bit so far. But the 90% population requirement for the Invasion CB seems to slow down things considerably.

 

[Assalander]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I find myself short of cash unless I raid constantly, with most of it going into raising my horde, and not a lot left to put into buildings. I suppose it gets better once you max your manpower. In any case my persian vassals in Khiva gives me as much cash as my nomad population (with 10% feudal tax). But it depends A LOT on stewardship so maybe that's that.

Unrelated, but it's funny that your Martial score actually seems to have less of an impact as a nomad than as a feudal ruler on the amount of troops you get :/

edit: There's a little gamey trick to speed up the invasion CB, just give away some of your land to another clan, and you'll find yourself in overpopulation instantly >

 

[Zsrai]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I find myself short of cash unless I raid constantly, with most of it going into raising my horde, and not a lot left to put into buildings. I suppose it gets better once you max your manpower. In any case my persian vassals in Khiva gives me as much cash as my nomad population (with 10% feudal tax). But it depends A LOT on stewardship so maybe that's that.

It's funny that your Martial score actually seems to have less of an impact as a nomad than as a feudal ruler on the amount of troops you get :/

You do know that 2 of the Retinues cost Prestige and not Gold, right? So far I've been splitting my retinues about 50/50 and that's kept my gold costs down.

 

[Abnwtwtud]

It depends. If you manage to get a border with the Abbasids, you ARE going to get invaded, and there's practically nothing you can do about other than sit in the corner and cry.

I've got to say, the Abbasids weren't much of a problem as Turkestan. My horse archer horde easily defeated their armies, usually three times the size, without any difficulty. It actually got to the point that after I unified the steppe tribes I was able to invade and subjugate the entire Abbasid Empire, giving me all of the Middle East, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt in a single war. This was all accomplished before 900 AD. I'd say the nomads are definitely extremely powerful as they are.

 

[Kaltorak]

The horde stacks are definitely intimidating. The masses of light cavalry means if you lose the fight you lose most if not all of the stack that fought it. And the compositions trash your average feudal levy at least 2:1 and in good conditions at even greater disparities. If everything goes well they are certainly overpowered, but they do struggle to recover from hardship. A stack wipe for a nomad can become fairly terminal if they don't have spare gold/prestige.

 

[Assalander]

You do know that 2 of the Retinues cost Prestige and not Gold, right? So far I've been splitting my retinues about 50/50 and that's kept my gold costs down.

Yeah I know but I can't resist horse archers and heavy cav

Plus the Khazars were destroying me with an army composed in majority of heavy cav so I had to follow the course to armament.

 

[Pro]

After playing a bit more I think I found out what made me think nomad blobs were too stable: it seem like after a nomad gains enough tribal provinces the warscore you gain against them falls until the only way to win is to occupy all their provinces. I had a game now were I invaded a nomad duchy that had conquered a tribal duchy. Between holding all but two of their provinces, their capital, their clan's capital, their ally's capital, their ally's clan's capital, and having killed all of their and their ally's armies I still only had 83% war score. And that was including having held the war goal for a year.

In my last game Khazaria had constant civil wars and constant wars on mulitple fronts, with many of their provinces occupied much of the time but they never lost a single one except to me. I think that was because half their provinces were tribal and no one could ever get 100% war score so they always had time to eventually make a come back.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I find myself short of cash unless I raid constantly, with most of it going into raising my horde, and not a lot left to put into buildings.

Why would you ever spend cash on your horde? I've never built anything but pure light cavalry. On the steppes you're going to run into nothing but a mix of light cavalry and horse archers. Either they roll harrass, and you win because more of your troops benefit from it, or they roll some variant of swarm in which case you annihilate them because of the bonus of harrass against swarm. And against non-nomads it still wins because it's a pure formation of decent soldiers.

 

[OmegaAleph]

On the note of compositions, what are people finding is best? My horde is current 800/5000/1200 light/archer/heavy cav, all using the 75 gold options. I'm not actually sure if that's best, but I figured keeping light cav to a minimum wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

[Kapitalisti]

-Feudal rulers underestimate the strength of nomads. I saw both myself and other nomads attacked constantly by feudal rulers that were less than half as strong. The result was lots of free gold, prestige and piety for very little effort.

That's just realistic. What red-blooded ruler with a proper and ordered realm would think twice about whacking those uncouth barbarians on the head for daring to challenge him?

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

where they not overpowered in real life? Also they bring challenge and I heard that there are something called forts I suggest you to use them.

The way I see nomads IRL, it's not that their culture/tactics were overpowered, its because a hugely scattered disorganized and large number of groups got united together by an extraordinary OP individual/dynasty a la Mance Rayder with the freefolk and that's what makes them strong. It falls within a few generations when that initial charisma and the lasting prestige that came with it burns out.

If it wasn't for that unity across all the independent nomads there is no way they could have terrorized the world, which was part of why they had a nomadic life to begin with.

I've not played horse lords yet and I've reverted my game back to 2.3.6 to finish up my Iron Man game but from what I've been reading I hope Paradox is not just making nomads OP for the sake of making them feel terrifying/OP. For a game with so much focus on details any power should be derived from stats/mechs of what actually lent it said power.

 

[Pro]

On the note of compositions, what are people finding is best? My horde is current 800/5000/1200 light/archer/heavy cav, all using the 75 gold options. I'm not actually sure if that's best, but I figured keeping light cav to a minimum wouldn't be a bad idea.

I'm pretty sure you should avoid horse archers like the plague; The horse archer tactics got heavily nerfed this patch (pure HA tactic gives +100% damage for HA, while pure LC tactic gives +300% damage for LC). I didn't actually see the LC/HC option, so I thought you should absolutely avoid HC as well. Since you can get HC without HA then they're ok. A little better than pure LC I think, but not nearly enough so to justify them in most circumstances.

 

[Kaltorak]

Why would you ever spend cash on your horde? I've never built anything but pure light cavalry. On the steppes you're going to run into nothing but a mix of light cavalry and horse archers. Either they roll harrass, and you win because more of your troops benefit from it, or they roll some variant of swarm in which case you annihilate them because of the bonus of harrass against swarm. And against non-nomads it still wins because it's a pure formation of decent soldiers.

I started out using the prestige retinues until I had to recoup my losses and found myself in the negative thousands of prestige which obviously has other unpleasant consequences. How did you deal with the upkeep?

 

[Pro]

I started out using the prestige retinues until I had to recoup my losses and found myself in the negative thousands of prestige which obviously has other unpleasant consequences. How did you deal with the upkeep?

Never really had a problem with it. I was overflowing with prestige just by playing normally.

Edit: The pure LC costs two fifths of the mixed one though, in addition to being better. If you used the mixed one then the lower cost combined with the lesser need for reinforcements (from not having horse archers) might explain it.