Are nomads over powered?

[LACKADAISICAL]

They're powerful, but vulnerable. They can't easily move into new regions without becoming feudal (pillaging takes a long time), and the AI tends to prefer settling than pillaging, which leads to realms fracturing when the hordes move out of the steppes. They are also extremely weak defensively, since all it takes to get ~100% warscore against a horde is one solid battle and sieging their capital. Once they get hit bad, they sort of go in a failure-spiral for a few years too, since reinforcing defeated hordes can take a huge amount of prestige and gold--if their prestige goes negative, clan sentiment plummets.

Even with all that they are still extremely powerful, but they should be! For example:

Nomads should be a serious threat, especially if combined, but it should seriously not be possible for them to all combine and take over Persia. And yeah, the Charlemagne start sucks and will continue to suck for the rest of time and anyone that plays on it can pretty much expect terrible games.

Historically, nomad groups took over all of Persia (and beyond) THREE TIMES. The Seljuks, the Ilkhanate and the Timurids. They also took over the heartland of the Byzantine Empire, the Carpathian basin... etc. So yeah, nomads are super strong, but not any stronger than they were historically (and even now they will probably never take over Anatolia unless the player is controlling them).

 

[Assalander]

If you're Tengri, you get +30% LC Attack and Defense just from your religion. I strongly urge you to use LC

Yeah well, I don't really pay attention to tactics and such, all I can tell is that the Khazars were actually owning similar-sized armies with their heavy cav. So it's not that useless. Couldn't compare HA and LC though.

 

[victimizer]

I think the subjugation CB should not be available against sizable Empires. It's silly when you can destroy the Byzantine Empire or the Caliphate in a single war.

 

[toroltao]

No, militarily they're powerful, but the AI doesn't know how to manage clans properly, which means they collapse once every so often, even if they expand extremely fast in spurts. You are op if you are playing as a nomad, but not the AI, which is fine imo, since as the player you will always be somewhat op.

The AI also seems to settle a lot, which makes nomads a lot less threatening.

 

[hashinshin]

I think the difference between player and AI hordes is TOO vast.

Byzazzies are OP in both player and AI hands. Nomads are "oh wow that's big I'm really scared of th- nevermind they died" in AI hands.

 

[kemor]

They're powerful, but vulnerable. They can't easily move into new regions without becoming feudal (pillaging takes a long time), and the AI tends to prefer settling than pillaging, which leads to realms fracturing when the hordes move out of the steppes. They are also extremely weak defensively, since all it takes to get ~100% warscore against a horde is one solid battle and sieging their capital. Once they get hit bad, they sort of go in a failure-spiral for a few years too, since reinforcing defeated hordes can take a huge amount of prestige and gold--if their prestige goes negative, clan sentiment plummets.

Yea, they can't handle anything going wrong, that's why I'm not worried one bit when it's AI playing them, despite couple clans having everything from Black Sea to Finland and all the way east. As France in 850, I'm actually letting them clean up a bit more on my eastern borders, maybe till 900 or so, makes it easier to just grab everything afterwards. Apparently, Byzantine and Sunnis are thinking the same thing, looking at them like turbulent child, ignoring them most of the time and just spanking them when they cause a fuss.

Historically, nomad groups took over all of Persia (and beyond) THREE TIMES. The Seljuks, the Ilkhanate and the Timurids. They also took over the heartland of the Byzantine Empire, the Carpathian basin... etc. So yeah, nomads are super strong, but not any stronger than they were historically (and even now they will probably never take over Anatolia unless the player is controlling them).

Easier to destroy then build something. These guys just came to conquer shit and wreck havock (probably chewing some gum while at it) but look at how long they lasted. Seljuks? barely 150 years. Ilkhanates? Not even a century. Timurids? what? 100 years or so? It's easy to destroy shit and then what? Apparently they never figured it out and that's what's missing currently: Nomads appear too stable in the hands of a player. It should be constant rise and fall, mainly based on epic characters. Player should do nothing but genetics and character development as nomad
Franks, Lombards and whatnot can handle a generation with an inbred, that's what Feudal's for. Nomads should IMPLODE if you don't have a 20/20/20/20/20 strong/genius dude and clean up the entire board for 50 years if you do.

 

[Fimconte]

-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.

This isn't really true, if you have a properly set up hyper-capital and hyper-dukes, vs traditional 'de jure' type layout.
Granted, some might consider non-traditional setup as 'cheesy', but taking advantage of the game mechanics is the basis of any game.

 

[majorlupa]

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.

Camels

You're ignoring tactics, which matter far more than any holding or religious bonus.

Getting rid of light cavalry means eliminating a lot of very bad tactics in melee and making it much more likely that your horse archers will activate the "Retreat and Ambush" tactic, putting them back into the skirmish phase.

Pure horse archer horde is bad when expanding into the steppe. They will rek feudals and tribals tho.

 

[fridabina]

I find that the Heavy vanguard beats both armies with horse archers and pure LC armies from other nomads and they are excellent against feudal levys. Also if you move your capital into one of the regions Byzantium is in you get access to pure HC retinues for 100 gold letting you have some heavy hitting forces. Then again i still prefer some LC mixed in with the HC to boost their skirmish a little bit.

Also on the topic of camels, are they really worth it compared to the Tengri boosted LC? The only area they are better in is in Morale and Melee attack, all other stats are better for the LC which also generally is in great numbers. I suppose the Desert camel building could make it worth it though?

They should probably add a prestige limit/hit to subjugation. It is way to easy to conquer Byzantium/abbasids with it and then have an endless supply of vassals to revoke -> pillage, and then have NO problem with vassal uprisings at all.

 

[finndiesel841]

I think Later gamer the Feudal Kingdoms will started to be able to push back when the pagan attrition is no more.

 

[fridabina]

I think Later gamer the Feudal Kingdoms will started to be able to push back when the pagan attrition is no more.

Tengris are not protected by pagan attrition. But the bigger levy size/retinue size of feudals in late game is probably enough if the horde population is kept in check. It's just that a player nomad can spiral out of control pretty fast with an well placed invasion within the first 100 years.

 

[Prince de Conti]

I've run three games on Observer mode just to check it out, they don't budge from the Steppes - keep in mind, the Turks overran the Middle East and settled in Anatolia.

 

[LACKADAISICAL]

Easier to destroy then build something. These guys just came to conquer shit and wreck havock (probably chewing some gum while at it) but look at how long they lasted. Seljuks? barely 150 years. Ilkhanates? Not even a century. Timurids? what? 100 years or so? It's easy to destroy shit and then what? Apparently they never figured it out and that's what's missing currently: Nomads appear too stable in the hands of a player. It should be constant rise and fall, mainly based on epic characters. Player should do nothing but genetics and character development as nomad
Franks, Lombards and whatnot can handle a generation with an inbred, that's what Feudal's for. Nomads should IMPLODE if you don't have a 20/20/20/20/20 strong/genius dude and clean up the entire board for 50 years if you do.

Point taken, but the argument that nomads are too stable in the hands of the player could be applied to most realms in CK2. The byzantine empire was historically rife with infighting, but in the player's hands it is the most stable realm on the map thanks to viceroys and such. Same goes for France, which was crazy decentralized historically--in the hands of the player, it is generally easy to keep stable and centralized.

Personally I don't find it fun when your realm unavoidably arbitrarily implodes on succession due to things you can't really control. It is one of the reasons I don't think playing as tribals is very fun.

 

[CyaN]

About prestige troops: they're risky. I never had any problems with them and I used them exclusively, until I faced an unlucky dynasty crisis: my sons took very long to have male children of their own, and they died young in quick succession, so I was finally inherited by a small boy. My horde needed some reinforcements by then, because there had been a couple of rebellions as usually happens with new, unprepared rulers, but my character quickly run out of prestige. And prestige troops are replenished by spending prestige, but they won't be reinforced if you're already at negative prestige. So I lost 30 prestige every month, and not a single troop was replaced. By the time I was at peace and had regained the Khaganate again, I was at -700 and everyone hater me because of it (fortunately, every clan leader was already in jail). The only option I had left was dismissing my horde (ugh) and rebulding a gold-based horde. And I think I'll keep at it for the foreseeable future. You can save gold for a rainy day and it will be inherited by as many successive rulers as needed, but you can't save prestige*; as soon as your succession goes awry (and it always goes awry eventually) you're in for a lot of trouble as your own troops will become your doom.

*You can save gold and buy titles to get prestige, though, that's a very good idea if some are still available.

 

[Pro]

They are also extremely weak defensively, since all it takes to get ~100% warscore against a horde is one solid battle and sieging their capital.

My experience is that this is only true up to a point. I'm not sure the trigger is a certain size or a certain number of non-nomad vassals (the two tend to go hand in hand), but at some point they flip from being trivial to gain warscore on, to requiring you to occupy most, or all of their provinces, or letting them repeatedly rebuild their army and smashing it.

 

[aitaituo]

So what is the Han dynasty then? Nonexistent?

The mane nomadic empire of the Han's era were the Xiongnu. Who were effectively the Mongols of the 3rd Century BC and were one of the strongest nations on Earth.

Well. They were that because the Han, who initially were only able to pay off attacks, decided that enough was enough.

A nomadic group wouldnt be a threat to China for over a thousand years. The Xiongnu themselves were for the most part exterminated. What was left scattered.

You seem to be overlooking some events from between the end of the Han to the beginning of the Yuan. Like the Zhao dynasty, who were Xiong Nu that invaded the Jin dynasty in 300 AD and established a smallish state that nonetheless occupied friggin' Chang'an, and the Northern Wei who were Xianbei that occupied most of northern China from the end of the 4th Century to the mid 6th Century, and several of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were founded by Turkic tribes, and the Liao dynasty who controlled much of northern China coeval with the Song, and the Latter Jin who forced the Song to retreat south and kept China divided until the Yuan.

Nomads were a constant threat to China until the Qing, when they, the Russians, and gunpowder, made sure that the steppes would never pose a threat to much of anyone. But even then the Qing were continually mindful of the northern frontier.

 

[victimizer]

The way hordes settle could be changed. Perhaps there should be a process of settling rather than just a khan just jumping into a castle all of the sudden.

 

[Matthias_Wlkp]

Behold! The Pink blob!

 

[Robert II]

Behold! The Pink blob!

Go burn the abbasids down

 

[Matthias_Wlkp]

It's not mine. I was running an observer game to test the performance. This is what I got

For some strange reason, Pink Blob was not very interested in Duchy of Azerbaijan...

They took Greece from The Byzantines around 800 AD