Best Cultural Building NOW?

[RobRoy3]

So most of the culture-based buildings have been nerfed a bit, in terms of numbers, but have also gotten slight increases to their offensive/defensive scores or morale.

The Altaic Horse Breeders was always a personal favorite of mine, as were the Byzantine Cataphracts. But the first required shameless exploits to get, and playing the Byzantines used to feel like a shameless exploit, itself. So, I generally felt the Frankish and English buildings were the strongest "legitimate" buildings, and sometimes let that influence my country/culture selection.

The one building that didn't get much of a nerf was the English archers, so I'm guessing that one, already one of the best, is the likely winner. But I'm wondering if the changes to the combat system might actually be sufficient to make quality and type of troops more important than numbers? If so, could the buildings that give, say, a 1.0 boost to offensive or 1.5 boost to defensive be better, even if they give fewer troops, now?

Or does quantity still rule? Anyone have enough combat experience, post-patch, to weigh in?

 

[RobRoy3]

I'm not sure I've got the hang of the revisions to the combat/leader systems, yet, but it seems to me that numbers still matter more, based on one turkish culture game.

Anyone else have observations that suggest fewer, perhaps higher quality, troops might be better? Still soon after the release, I realize...

 

[Comradebot]

Hard to say... though I have won a few battles with a disadvantage, though given I'm Nubia and my troops are trash I doubt its a huge indicator.

With that said, I do like the Ethiopian cultural building. Its very easy to just spam Light Infantry in your baronies and retinues to take advantage of their bonus to attack.

 

[Yenzen]

The Greek/Latin ones now seem pretty pathetic, because the bonusses will apply to very few units. In comparison the Italian, Iberian and Scandinavian ones are now very strong, since normal castle buildings will actually produce the relevant units in good numbers.

I mean what's the point of the byzantine +7,5% to horse archers, when each holding will only have some 50-70 of them at most? +15% upgrades to heavy infantry is five times more useful when your holdings have hundreds of them!

 

[Mods]

All culture buildings are equally useless unless they stop disappearing at some point

 

[Apocal]

All culture buildings are equally useless unless they stop disappearing at some point

You can only have culture buildings for your ruler's culture. If you shift cultures, they all disappear.

 

[Eldorian]

I'm not sure I've got the hang of the revisions to the combat/leader systems, yet, but it seems to me that numbers still matter more, based on one turkish culture game.

Anyone else have observations that suggest fewer, perhaps higher quality, troops might be better? Still soon after the release, I realize...

I regularly use 8k sized retinues of cataphracts that easily destroy 12k troops of inferior quality.

 

[Eldorian]

Best culture building is Scottish. It's got a typo in it that changes 15% to 150% improved defense on pikemen. Invincible pikemen!

	#Scottish Schiltron
	ca_culture_scottish_1 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = {
				OR = {
					culture = scottish
				}
			}
		}
		prerequisites = { ca_wall_2 }
		build_cost = 200
		build_time = 730
		pikemen = 30
		pikemen_defensive = 1.5
		ai_creation_factor = 101
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				FROM = { religion_group = christian }
				year = 1085
				has_building = ca_barracks_1
			}
		}
	}

If you want, you can change the "pikemen_defensive = 1.5" to "= .15" and fix the typo.

 

[Wheem]

I've wondered about the answer to this myself, even before the most recent patch. The Irish building implemented in 1.06 has "felt" fairly decent to me, since I think the defense bonus applies to all heavy infantry from that particular barony (or county?), and not just that which is provided by the cultural building itself.

I'm not 100% sure if it's been updated for 1.07, but http://ckiiwiki.com/Building_Analysis is sorta handy for giving you an idea of how much benefit the various cultural buildings provide. If that analysis is to be believed, the Squire Lists seem disappointing - I suppose because the numbers they provide are so low?

 

[Eldorian]

I've wondered about the answer to this myself, even before the most recent patch. The Irish building implemented in 1.06 has "felt" fairly decent to me, since I think the defense bonus applies to all heavy infantry from that particular barony (or county?), and not just that which is provided by the cultural building itself.

I'm not 100% sure if it's been updated for 1.07, but http://ckiiwiki.com/Building_Analysis is sorta handy for giving you an idea of how much benefit the various cultural buildings provide. If that analysis is to be believed, the Squire Lists seem disappointing - I suppose because the numbers they provide are so low?

I think it actually works out now with retinues. See, squire lists, cataphracts, and Altaic horse breeders produce stat mods for troops you'll never have many of, EXCEPT, those cultures also now have a special retinue composed of fully upgraded troops of said type. So, while it is sort of useless to build said culture buildings, the retinues said cultures can hire are super elite, able to pack incredible power into a small number of troops, which is good when you have to boat them around and worry about attrition.

So, while the cataphract building is kinda lame, producing a small number of troops and a stat bonus that doesn't affect many troops made by other buildings, the retinue you can hire is super elite.

 

[Eldorian]

An aside, has anyone figured out which troops gain the bonus a culture building provide? Only troops from the building? Troops from the same castle? Troops from the same county?

I've been assuming it's the troops from that castle, but the way tech buildings work, I was thinking it might be that same county.

 

[TheDoctor987]

Best culture building is Scottish. It's got a typo in it that changes 15% to 150% improved defense on pikemen. Invincible pikemen!

It looks like there is the same typo for the Altaic/Persian building as well.

 

[Eldorian]

It looks like there is the same typo for the Altaic/Persian building as well.

Indeed, but you can't spam horse archers.

 

[Frozen_Predator]

Best culture building is Scottish. It's got a typo in it that changes 15% to 150% improved defense on pikemen. Invincible pikemen!

	#Scottish Schiltron
	ca_culture_scottish_1 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = {
				OR = {
					culture = scottish
				}
			}
		}
		prerequisites = { ca_wall_2 }
		build_cost = 200
		build_time = 730
		pikemen = 30
		pikemen_defensive = 1.5
		ai_creation_factor = 101
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				FROM = { religion_group = christian }
				year = 1085
				has_building = ca_barracks_1
			}
		}
	}

If you want, you can change the "pikemen_defensive = 1.5" to "= .15" and fix the typo.

so now I know why my invasion of Scotland failed, fixing that typo and gonna spam indulgences to give it another go.

 

[barrind]

Are the scottish pikemen defense and horse archer offense genuine bugs then? Why have these not been fixed in a Steam patch? I guess the horse archer one should be changed to 0.1 from 1.0?

 

[Sleight of Hand]

I fixed the Scottish bug in my mod (it presumably is a bug) but I do think the Mongols should be overpowered.

 

[Avernite]

I regularly use 8k sized retinues of cataphracts that easily destroy 12k troops of inferior quality.

On a similar note, while my 12k cataphracts could not quite defeat the 2 holy orders, levies and retinues (total 30k troops or so) that Catholic France threw at me, a subsequent war against France utilizing 25k cataphracts allowed me to beat and annihilate all 3 holy orders. In one battle, some 8k cataphracts faced some 8k of various French troops (including a battered holy order, I think. At least the sprite was still a cavalryman) and annihilated every one of them.

Obviously, they had generals tailored to making cataphracts kick ass.

 

[DLFebin]

I fixed the Scottish bug in my mod (it presumably is a bug) but I do think the Mongols should be overpowered.

They have doomstacks without attrition already, cultural bonus is overkill. But anyway, not only Mongols have it, but all Altaic group.

 

[barrind]

So do you fix this by editing the 00_buildings.txt file in the ck2/common/buildings folder directly, or do you have to create a small mod somewhere else?

 

[Sleight of Hand]

So do you fix this by editing the 00_buildings.txt file in the ck2/common/buildings folder directly, or do you have to create a small mod somewhere else?

Either way your multiplayer checksum will be different, but yes, you want to do this:

	#Scottish schiltron
	ca_culture_scottish_1 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { culture = scottish }
		}
		prerequisites = { ca_wall_2 }
		build_cost = 200
		build_time = 730
		pikemen = 30
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]pikemen_defensive = 0.15[/COLOR]
		ai_creation_factor = 101
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				FROM = { religion_group = christian }
				year = 1085
				has_building = ca_barracks_1
			}
		}
	}
	ca_culture_scottish_2 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { culture = scottish }
		}
		trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 1 }
		upgrades_from = ca_culture_scottish_1
		build_cost = 300
		build_time = 1095
		pikemen = 40
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]pikemen_defensive = 0.15[/COLOR]
		ai_creation_factor = 100
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				FROM = { religion_group = christian }
				year = 1165
				has_building = ca_barracks_1
			}
		}
	}
	ca_culture_scottish_3 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { culture = scottish }
		}
		trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 2 }
		upgrades_from = ca_culture_scottish_2
		build_cost = 400
		build_time = 2190
		pikemen = 60
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]pikemen_defensive = 0.15[/COLOR]
		ai_creation_factor = 99
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				FROM = { religion_group = christian }
				year = 1210
				has_building = ca_barracks_1
			}
		}
	}
	ca_culture_scottish_4 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { culture = scottish }
		}
		trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 4 }
		upgrades_from = ca_culture_scottish_3
		build_cost = 500
		build_time = 2190
		pikemen = 80
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]pikemen_defensive = 0.15[/COLOR]
		ai_creation_factor = 98
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				FROM = { religion_group = christian }
				year = 1260
				has_building = ca_barracks_1
			}
		}
	}

	#Altaic and Iranian horse breeders
	ca_culture_group_altaic_1 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { 
				OR = {
					culture_group = altaic
					[COLOR="#FF8C00"]culture_group = iranian[/COLOR]
				}
			}
		}
		prerequisites = { ca_wall_2 }
		build_cost = 200
		build_time = 730
		light_cavalry = 10
		knights = 5
		horse_archers = 10
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]horse_archers_offensive = 0.5[/COLOR]
		horse_archers_morale = 0.5
		ai_creation_factor = 101
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				year = 1066
				has_building = ca_wall_1
			}
		}
	}
	ca_culture_group_altaic_2 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { 
				OR = {
					culture_group = altaic
					[COLOR="#FF8C00"]culture_group = iranian[/COLOR]
				}
			}
		}
		trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 1 }
		upgrades_from = ca_culture_group_altaic_1
		build_cost = 300
		build_time = 1095
		light_cavalry = 15
		knights = 5
		horse_archers = 15
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]horse_archers_offensive = 0.5[/COLOR]
		horse_archers_morale = 0.5
		ai_creation_factor = 100
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				year = 1150
				has_building = ca_wall_1
			}
			AND = {
				FROM = {
					top_liege = {
						primary_title = {
							title = k_seljuk_turks
						}
					}
				}
				year = 1066
			}
		}
	}
	ca_culture_group_altaic_3 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { 
				OR = {
					culture_group = altaic
					[COLOR="#FF8C00"]culture_group = iranian[/COLOR]
				}
			}
		}
		trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 2 }
		upgrades_from = ca_culture_group_altaic_2
		build_cost = 400
		build_time = 2190
		light_cavalry = 15
		knights = 10
		horse_archers = 15
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]horse_archers_offensive = 0.5[/COLOR]
		horse_archers_morale = 0.5
		ai_creation_factor = 99
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				year = 1230
				has_building = ca_wall_1
			}
		}
	}
	ca_culture_group_altaic_4 = {
		potential = {
			FROM = { 
				OR = {
					culture_group = altaic
					[COLOR="#FF8C00"]culture_group = iranian[/COLOR]
				}
			}
		}
		trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 4 }
		upgrades_from = ca_culture_group_altaic_3
		build_cost = 500
		build_time = 2190
		light_cavalry = 20
		knights = 10
		horse_archers = 20
		[COLOR="#FF8C00"]horse_archers_offensive = 0.5[/COLOR]
		horse_archers_morale = 0.5
		ai_creation_factor = 98
		
		start = {
			AND = {
				year = 1290
				has_building = ca_wall_1
			}
		}
	}

That will fix the Scots and Mongols, as well as correctly give Kurds a culture building at all times. Here I've given a 50% bonus rather than 100%.