The arduous duty great privilege of writing this week's Dev Diary has fallen to me, and in a desperate but vain attempt to fill Doomdark's shoes, I am here to talk a bit about the various options that are open to pagans when waging war.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_Prepared_Invasion.jpg

Prepared Invasions
Norse Pagans, or Vikings as they are known to the common man, have the unique ability to launch Prepared Invasions against non-pagans. This undertaking can only be done by small to middling Viking realms, and the target of your invasion can't be too small or too big (it needs to have between 9 and 40 holdings).

The way this works is that you declare your intention to invade a particular realm. This will cost you a lot of prestige (which can be gained through looting, as explained in the previous Dev Diary), and you'll have two years to prepare before going to war. During this time warriors from across the Norse lands will flock to your banner, hungry for loot and plunder. Needless to say, if you fail to declare war before these two years are up, you will lose face.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_King_Ambition.jpg

Subjugation
Pagans won't shy away from fighting each other, and all pagan rulers may make use of the new Subjugation casus belli. This lets them attack other pagans within a specified target kingdom, but it can only be used every ten years unless your ruler has the new ”Become King” ambition. If you are the victor of a Subjugation war, you will vassalize all lords within the target kingdom.

Pagan Conquest
Pagans can always declare war for control over a single neighboring county, and in addition to this, Norse Pagans may also go to war for any coastal county.

Tribal Invasion
This casus belli can only be used by independent Altaic (Turkish and Mongol) and Magyar pagan rulers, and it targets entire kingdoms in what amounts to massive horde invasions. You may have been on the receiving end of these before, but now you'll finally get a chance to unleash them yourself as you ride in from the steppes to carve out an empire.

View attachment CKII_ToG_DD_03_Peace_Too_Long.jpg


And finally, a few more items that have a significant impact on pagans and how they wage war:
Non-pagans suffer from a significantly smaller supply limit when in pagan territory, which limits their ability to march massive armies towards the heathen homelands at the start of the game. This penalty will eventually be removed as you progress through the Military Organization technologies.

As was touched upon in the last Dev Diary, Norse and Tengri pagans lose prestige if they have been at peace for too long. The Suomenusko, Romuva and Slavic pagans are less focused on offensive warfare and do not have this penalty. In addition, their warriors enjoy several defensive bonuses, especially when fighting in provinces with their own religion.

That's all for now!

 

[unmerged(150945)]

I do think that the prepared invasion mechanic sounds like something that could be developed into a good mechanic for (at least the first) crusade. That said, you would want to add an option for actual landless non-heir (or even duke or count) characters to get involved (judging from King's playthrough the adventurers were randomly generated). That then would hoover up all the mini-armies that make the crusades as they stand so annoying (kings, of course can do their own thing). You could even add crusade events like the on hajj sequence for muslims (which may make up for not controling your own army). One advantage is that the kingdom can then be independent rather than an appanage to another, so no HRE blobbing in the middle east.

There is also the issue of throwing anything like this anywhere other than the KoJ, is probably doom for the unfortunate recipients, so the numbers would need to be tweaked a lot.

Its well outside the scope of TOG, but may be worth considering in the future.

Yeah many of these new features could/should be applied to other peoples besides the Norse. Raids could be an option for North Africans and Magyars, and prepared invasions would be great at representing crusades.

 

[Elfryc]

There's only one problem that I can think of regarding these adventurers joining the crusades: Several times I have seen over a dozen nations go on crusade on one target. If you have fourteen nations declaring war, and each of them get free armies, then how would that be fair for the target of the crusade? Because one could say the same should apply to the jihad, meaning that the targets of these invasions would have next to no chance of surviving the holy war, be they Christian or otherwise. If nothing else, should adventurers not be added to holy invasions, I would assume it's due to balancing issues.

What if you are surrounded by larger realms, how are you supposed to go to war without already knowing you will lose. I dont see why anyone would commit suicide like that

I don't see anything chocking in the fact that each character in game has to ask to himself if he prefer to be the vassal of a powerful king/emperor, or to be imprisonned, unlanded or even killed. That was the case in that time, so that's part of the game.

Just as an example, think to true Crusade against the Cathars, or to the battle of Navas de Tolosa: there were Spanish, Frankish of German knights, soldiers and mercenaries within the crusaders.

In the case, for example, of the Nasrids in Granada, they choosed to pay a tribute to Christian kings, because they just used the opportunity created by the battle of las Navas de Tolosa and later failure of the Almohads to face the Christians attacks linked to the Reconquista, facing even Muslims rebels and mercenaries allied to Christians.

No UNO in that time, so life was slightly harder...

 

[Randarkmaan]

It would be a good way to improve upon Crusades I think, adding a little flavor to it.

Say the Pope declares a Crusade for Jerusalem (or any other applicable de jure kingdom or duchy) and rather than how it is now where the pope declares war and others can join it have it trigger a diplomatic option for catholic characters (when interacting with the pope) to "Join Crusade" or "Swear to take the Cross" which functions exactly like declaring a prepared invasion for a Norse pagan except it is against the Crusade's enemy for the lands in the crusade target. Then the characters who have taken the cross have two years or so to declare war on the crusade target (crusades always took some time to get going, furthering the argument for using prepared invasions). During these two years landless knights, younger sons of powerful lords, and scores of religious fanatics and pilgrims will flock to your banner from all over Europe (perhaps if there is a way to give preference for these characters and forces spawning for characters with high piety?), but if you have not declared war (or maybe have not reached the crusade target, i.e gotten the crusader trait, IMO this would be better) within a set amount of years (seeing as how it's further away and often against powerful muslim kingdoms, giving crusades 3 or 4 years to head off might be better compared to Norse prepared invasions) your character will lose a large amount of prestige and piety.

If the Crusade succeeds then CK2+ already contains a mechanic for allowing independent crusader states to form, simply also allow the crusade victor (or victors) to also select any of the characters who joined the crusade to receive the main title and the lands, with the counties and ducheis under it beign filled out with other crusade adventurers.

Also disallow the pope from taking the cross, he declares the crusade he does not fight in it. And the crusading armies should be under the control of the characters who "take the cross" not the pope, nor should it use the Hajj mechanics, that would take away from the gameplay, especially for a player either participating in or defending against the crusade.

I'm pretty sure some variation on this could be modded in rather easily based on what is already accessible.

 

[SRM]

I think it's like secondary wive for Muslim ruler.

Except there's already a function for multiple wives, which isn't the same as a "take concubine" action. This is something new.

 

[3inar]

Except there's already a function for multiple wives, which isn't the same as a "take concubine" action. This is something new.

Its a woman you can hav sex with instead of your wife. Will probably have negative efect on your relationship with your wife but culd be a good ideea if you whant children when your wife cant provide.

 

[logan333]

Why between 9 and 40 holdings?

This really seems pretty gamey, right? Clearly it's so the vikings can invade the smaller saxon kingdoms in Britain but not France. But the limit feels arbitrary. If your not getting the results you want, something else needs to be adjusted. How many 40 holding nations are there? Few. A 40 holding limit just seems weird, and after the very start of the game it will make this feature pointless because there won't be any kingdoms that small left.

Although I agree it sounds gamey, there should be a limit, getting a gang together to invade a single county is just stupid, your army is likely to make fun of you. The vikings never did try to invade something larger than a single petty Kingdom (Svien and Knut were Christian so assume different invasion systems), so I'm guessing its based around that, they might be able to invade Scotland or parts of France (breakaway duchies) but never the entire thing. You might be able to argue the Lombards (which come from Scandinavia and were as good as Vikings) invaded Italy/the Ostrogothic Kingdom like that. I think it would be pretty gamey if simply by luck or skill a Viking petty King could conquer all of France. At that point the entire CHRISTIAN populace would probably take offense, thats about 7million people, the Vikings had enough trouble trying to rule over the Irish populations it conquered, who ended up converting them, both their religion and culture.
I'm also curious about the other Christian groups at the time, like the Lombards were still hanging on in southern Italy at the time and the Asturians.

 

[riadach]

the Vikings had enough trouble trying to rule over the Irish populations it conquered

It should be remembered that these populations were quite small too. A strip of land on the east coast and a few cities and fortresses dotted elsewhere.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

It should be remembered that these populations were quite small too. A strip of land on the east coast and a few cities and fortresses dotted elsewhere.

Wasn't Limerick viking as well ?...or well one place at least on the west coast.

 

[gorillacakes]

Wasn't Limerick viking as well ?...or well one place at least on the west coast.

yep, spot on, it is indeed Limerick.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Oh and Waterford, but thats about east.

 

[riadach]

Wasn't Limerick viking as well ?...or well one place at least on the west coast.

It would be one of the cities and fortresses dotted elsewhere.

 

[riadach]

Oh and Waterford, but thats about east.

I never said they were confined to the east. I said the large strip they controlled was on the east.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

My comment wasn't intended as criticism, rather as a supplement if you like.

 

[unmerged(610093)]

Now maybe we have something to keep republics in line.

Yes

 

[mika1369]

We want the Vikings to strike at the coasts and sometimes, if they are able, to actually settle down and take the coastal provinces for themselves, as they historically did in Normandy and elsewhere. But they aren't nearly powerful enough to take and hold all the coasts you mentioned, at least not for any significant length of time...

all thats needed to break this is one large stable viking realm and BOOM all coast belong to the vikings

 

[guillec87]

Will they be able to assemble enough troops to defeat a Holy Order? If not, then, when the Teutonic Knights arrive, the game will be over

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Will they be able to assemble enough troops to defeat a Holy Order? If not, then, when the Teutonic Knights arrive, the game will be over

To get to that stage you're in the late 11th century. Just getting your pagans to survive to that point is a victory in and of itself.
Failing that, they're probably as likely to cope with the Holy Orders turning up as any equivalent sized Catholic near muslims once they get their Holy Order...