David vs. Goliath

[fsantoianni]

I have started a Jewish state in Africa, south of Egypt, with the eventual goals of restoring Israel and Restore the Faith High Priesthood (both are decisions available when you play as a Jew). I have moved south, conquered and absorbed many of the troublemaking neighbors and now I have a quite large kingdom. But there is a problem: I have almost 7000 levies available, which is quite big against most other neighbors and compared with my starting point, but still nowhere near the 25000 of the Abbasid caliphate (plus 6 allies). Who control the territories and holy sites I would need to control to achieve such goals.

I may grow in size with time, but they grow in size as well. Mercenaries are not big enough to make a difference. I have no neighbors of comparable size around to turn into allies. What can be done, then? Is there another way to dramatically increase the size of my armies, or to reduce the size of theirs? Or to seize those territories in some way other than warfare?

The irony is that I named my first ruler "David", and now I'm in an actual David & Goliath scenario.

 

[CollectorOfBolts]

Switch to the Skulduggery focus and start working on the Schemer skill tree.

If you can pull it off, murdering the Caliph when he has multiple sons and partition succession will likely result in a weaker Caliph with potential succession crises and likely fewer alliances than his predecessor. (It is probably worth checking what lands his primary heir already has (if any) and what he stands to inherit beforehand, though just murdering successive rulers tends to work eventually.)

If murdering the Caliph is not really an option (low success chance with no one wanting to join the plot), then try to murder his allies and/or his relatives that are giving him the problematic alliances. Note that only external alliances matter here; he cannot call on his vassal allies to fight you.

An alternative route would be to swear fealty with religious protection and then start taking lands from the Caliph's vassals from inside the empire. Then, once you are strong enough and have the lands you want/need, declare independence. Note that this can be risky as your liege can give away your lands to populist revolts and the religious and cultural differences will make this more likely (see https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ersight-regarding-populist-uprisings.1531575/ and many other threads complaining about this issue).

 

[SoloSupreme]

CollectorOfBolts is right. You should try to kill the caliph to bring instability on the Abbasids. But, you should try to do that on your immediate neighbors too. It weakens everyone, gives you a chance at expansion, and it gives you breathing room from hostile kingdoms.

Edit: Shameless plug