Dealing with unrelenting raiding

[Kurblius]

Raiding by various "host" armies is becoming a pain in my Byzantine game. I'm getting a 1 K to 5 K armies spawning on my demesne every month or so, which requires me to raise my levies to hunt it down to 100% destruction (otherwise they just come back when I'm gone). Heck, it's so frequent and widespread I decided to build little trade forts on my demesne so I get a warning message when they've destroyed it. As far as I know, there is no "raiders plundering demesne" message popup I can activate, there's only a general one for if they raid ANY of my provinces, which is too frequent to be useful.

Granted, my demesne are the wealthiest lands in the world at this point so it's a natural target but my annoyance level is reaching the point where it's undermining my enjoyability of the game. I don't mind it if they just attack my vassal's lands, I just don't want them on mine. I'm thinking of converting to hellenism and then reforming and taking the civilized doctrine and then parking levies permanently on my demesne. Could mean my vassals are left exposed, but presumable they'll be able to raise and park permanent troops too once they adopt reformed hellenism as well.

Never tried reforming with the new Holy Fury, so I'm asking is this logical? Are there other ways to deal with unrelenting raiding? I hate having to use one slot in Doctrine for Civilized when there are so many other better choices I would much rather pick if I didn't have to deal with raiders.

 

[Karlington]

You can negotiate with the raider and sell/give them a county. In return they will protect all your current provinces from raiding for 10 years. What this means in game terms is that the provinces won't be raided by raiding adventurers.

If you sell/give therm a country through negotiations they insta-convert to your religion the moment the deal takes place, but you can plot to kill them (usually you get several hundred % plot power) and then revoke it as soon as their different-religion-heir inherits.

Personally I have had enough of this disgustingly annoying feature and will turn off Horse Lords the next time I play. The DLC renders playing for achievements horrific.

(You can turn off or reduce the raiding adventurer frequency in the game rules, but it disables achievements.)

 

[Kurblius]

Yeah I'm aware of this mechanic but I was frustrated by the fact the last guy I tried it with refused a province I picked because he had "wants a duchy" as a modifier. Otherwise he just picks a random one, which I refuse to give him. But I'll look into it some more. I'd probably excommunicate rather than murder him later.

It just occurred to me that with the Civilized thing, raised levies don't cause opinion malus but might I still have to stand down to declare war? If that is the case then it really makes the armies semi-permanent rather than permanent.

 

[Karlington]

It just occurred to me that with the Civilized thing, raised levies don't cause opinion malus but might I still have to stand down to declare war? If that is the case then it really makes the armies semi-permanent rather than permanent.

Yep, that's the way it works.

Remember that they still cost money to have raised, though, so if you almost always have full levies raised your vassals may lag behind in development.

 

[jwalche]

I was frustrated by the fact the last guy I tried it with refused a province I picked because he had "wants a duchy" as a modifier. Otherwise he just picks a random one, which I refuse to give him. But I'll look into it some more. I'd probably excommunicate rather than murder him later.

Give him whatever he wants. It's usually worth it. He protects you for 10 years. He has some event troops that will make your realm stronger. (He will send me all his event troops on top of his demesne levy if he is tribal). He could still be raiding your enemy's realm.

At the end, he is your vassal. Plotting a single vassal shouldn't be a problem. Plot murder if he doesn't have landed heir outside of your realm. Spy on, imprison and revoke if he has one which is often the case for adventurers.

If you get very lucky, your realm can expand by first giving him a higher rank title before his external heir inherits his titles when you plot murder him. Let's say you are an emperor and he is the second son of a dead foreign duke. Give him the duchy he wants. Even give him a kingdom title. Plot murder him and see his older brother becoming your vassal king, along with a foreign duchy. Murder the brother and you get them all.

It is harder and dangerous to imprison higher ranking vassals, but not any harder to plot murder your vassal king. He is likely to be of an infidel foreigner, and all your vassals will be eager to join the plot.

 

[Darkhosis]

Raiding by various "host" armies is becoming a pain in my Byzantine game. I'm getting a 1 K to 5 K armies spawning on my demesne every month or so, which requires me to raise my levies to hunt it down to 100% destruction (otherwise they just come back when I'm gone). Heck, it's so frequent and widespread I decided to build little trade forts on my demesne so I get a warning message when they've destroyed it. As far as I know, there is no "raiders plundering demesne" message popup I can activate, there's only a general one for if they raid ANY of my provinces, which is too frequent to be useful.

Granted, my demesne are the wealthiest lands in the world at this point so it's a natural target but my annoyance level is reaching the point where it's undermining my enjoyability of the game. I don't mind it if they just attack my vassal's lands, I just don't want them on mine. I'm thinking of converting to hellenism and then reforming and taking the civilized doctrine and then parking levies permanently on my demesne. Could mean my vassals are left exposed, but presumable they'll be able to raise and park permanent troops too once they adopt reformed hellenism as well.

Never tried reforming with the new Holy Fury, so I'm asking is this logical? Are there other ways to deal with unrelenting raiding? I hate having to use one slot in Doctrine for Civilized when there are so many other better choices I would much rather pick if I didn't have to deal with raiders.

I just did the same as you, played whack-a-mole. Having the richest land on map, all these adventurers will just magically appear in middle of your territory. When I had a smaller land mass, I found best method was to keep a decently sized retinue one 'space' away from my capital, which then will funnel all these adventurers to capital. It works for adventurer claimants, too.

I was doing some 'paint the map' thing though so eventually realm got to, say, size of France + Germany, & then I hostile with usually 6-10 of these things at once.

Sure, you can give some county, but basically it is just doing this to avoid the hassle of micromanaging chasing these useless mobs around the map. Perhaps the AI should 'learn' something when multiple adventurers get wiped out going to same spot over and over and pick some other realm to beam themselves into.

 

[Kurblius]

I just did the same as you, played whack-a-mole. Having the richest land on map, all these adventurers will just magically appear in middle of your territory. When I had a smaller land mass, I found best method was to keep a decently sized retinue one 'space' away from my capital, which then will funnel all these adventurers to capital. It works for adventurer claimants, too.

I was doing some 'paint the map' thing though so eventually realm got to, say, size of France + Germany, & then I hostile with usually 6-10 of these things at once.

Sure, you can give some county, but basically it is just doing this to avoid the hassle of micromanaging chasing these useless mobs around the map. Perhaps the AI should 'learn' something when multiple adventurers get wiped out going to same spot over and over and pick some other realm to beam themselves into.

If I was going to modify it, I'd probably make it so that raiders appear during moments of weakness rather than constantly. New king, civil or foreign wars, regencies, "incapable" trait, and they should descend and wreck a little havoc. However, raids should become less likely if you have a strong ruler who has crushed a raid in the past 5 years similar to the "crushed rebellion" modifier we get now (which could be counteracted by a much stronger negative modifier if character enters regency, civil war, or become incapable). Historically viking were famous at keeping tabs with internal politics of the British Isles and exploiting moments of weakness. As a further incentive Norse players could even get a pop-up alerting them whenever a character marked as a person of interest gets a regency or dies, during which time counties become easier to loot and siege as raiders.

Raiders ultimately are not mindless bots who love ramming themselves against a but opportunists.

 

[knppel]

It's whack-a-thousand-moles. Granted, it's worth it, once 120,000 civilized bloodthirsty legionnaires raid the rest of the world for you.
Civilized is a specific hellenic thing, and is better than other doctrines, even if mostly your vassals profit from heir designation. But the raised levy stuff alone. You can be raiding for 20 years while waiting for the threat to decline if you want to, and build douzens of wonders. Top tier armor and weapons for two douzen landed kinsmen. Builder bloodline easily. etc. etc.

 

[Kurblius]

It's whack-a-thousand-moles. Granted, it's worth it, once 120,000 civilized bloodthirsty legionnaires raid the rest of the world for you.
Civilized is a specific hellenic thing, and is better than other doctrines, even if mostly your vassals profit from heir designation. But the raised levy stuff alone. You can be raiding for 20 years while waiting for the threat to decline if you want to, and build douzens of wonders. Top tier armor and weapons for two douzen landed kinsmen. Builder bloodline easily. etc. etc.

Yeah the raiding is great, especially with the Sea Bound doctrine. It's a real joy being able to sail up the crazy long Danube as the Romans, or into the North Sea via the Dneiper, or into the Caspian Sea... painfully long land wars or raids suddenly end in months. The entire Western Steepes are open for rapid invasion. If the Byzantines had adopted viking naval tradition I think they'd have conquered the world.

 

[iniudan]

If you sell/give therm a country through negotiations they insta-convert to your religion the moment the deal takes place, but you can plot to kill them (usually you get several hundred % plot power) and then revoke it as soon as their different-religion-heir inherits.

If they have children they usually convert with them and zealous adventurer don't convert if you sell them land.

 

[Byzantium2000]

Yeah Playing a 1261 Byzantine start and I’ve been raided at least a 125 times now it’s insane. All the Mongols converted to Islam and half the Genghis dynasty has raided me to death.

 

[Karlington]

If they have children they usually convert with them and zealous adventurer don't convert if you sell them land.

I have never seen their children convert, not even once, and I've sold counties to them dozens of times. Perhaps I've been lucky, in which case I need to start playing the lottery.

Didn't know about the Zealous bit - interesting, thanks!