Fatimid problems at startup 1066/1081

[Hootieleece]

I know this is a long beaten Topic but....i was wondering why i never see Fatimids explode in Civil War and why after the NO jihad nerf I never see the Ethiopians last a generation.(Most recent game,The Alexiad,as Alexios Comnemus)

As one of many players on this forum have been calling for Fatimids to be nerfed.I loaded up as them and as their Nubian neighbors.The most glaring deficiency is the fact that The Caliph is 6 holdings over his demesne limit,yet nobody hates him for it.

The only difference between the two start ups is that Fatimid Caliphate basically loses all the Foreign vassals who might plot and rebel.

The Caliph only has 3 Sons and NO daughters.Only 1 son is landed so there is No succession war.

I even started a game and let it play awhile(3 years didn't touch a button) to see if over desmesne limits made vassals angry.NO!and I never saw a Thieves guild event or anything.

The reason you often see Fatimid Invasion of Greece is that Fatimid Caliphate can wrack up piety by Holy warring the nubians with its uber strong vassalized mercenary unit.It is twice as powerful as Byzantine Varangian Guard.

Fatimid vassals love the Virtuous Long reigned Caliph So much that Factions will never form.

So he can raise CA to medium immediately thus keeping vassals from fighting each other.

As for Nubians,Axum,Ethiopia. All three together militarily make the Christians in Iberia seem like Superpowers and Ryuku World Conquest possible....(without gamey exploits)

The No jihads till 1187 is a good start but I think upping the cost of Holy Wars(Duchy) to 200 piety(and deduct from piety score) by winning you will get it all back and then some.(Could go for Christians also)and possibly upping the piety cost of Invasions.

Because even with less than 100 piety i am able to declare Holy War for Nubia and it doesn't subtract from piety score.

 

[nurgles_herald]

The biggest problem is that the game doesn't model the fact that the Fatimids were in the middle of a civil war in 1066- the Fatimid army had relied upon different ethnic groups for different roles, and these ethnic groups had (of course) become political groups, and these political groups vied for power for most of the second half of the 11th century. And by vied for power I mean slaughtered each other in the streets. Not really sure how to best model a bunch of your army killing itself, but it is true that the Fatimids are ahistorically powerful.

 

[Panzerschiffe]

I thought the Fatimids had gotten a bit less overpowered but then 15 years in my new game and they have all of Greece now.

 

[Hootieleece]

The Fatimid invasion of Greece killed an earler game of mine as a Byzzie Vassal(Doux of Achea)The problem is that they declare invasion of Greece take like 9 holdings in Anatolia and get the Entire Byzantine Empire.

 

[volcanopele]

Of course, you could defeat the Fatimids in their Invasion of Greece... That's what did it in my game. The Fatimids descended into civil war about a year after their failed invasion and I was able to scoop up Tripoli and Beirut in the chaos. Lather, rinse, repeat...

 

[unmerged(523589)]

If you can get 2 duchies in egypt you can usurp the kingdom of egypt and dissolve the entire fatmid kingdom.

 

[CelticMutt]

If you can get 2 duchies in egypt you can usurp the kingdom of egypt and dissolve the entire fatmid kingdom.

I think you need more than that. Not a full three duchies, but more than two - I had an English game where I took the duchies of Diametta & Cairo to break their power, but was a few counties short of 50% for usurping the kingdom.

 

[unmerged(523589)]

Maybe I got lucky and the duke I took it from had a couple more counties.

 

[High_King]

Isn't this Fatimid issue very, very easily dealt with? :/ Surely all the Devs have to do is switch up the 1066 start so that there is a noble, or small band of nobles, greatly dissatisfied with the Caliph, who will naturally gravitate into a faction together and spark off a Civil War (or something, I'm just throwing out ideas off the top of my head). I don't really understand why this HASN'T been dealt with yet...

 

[kamikaze470]

If you aren't too picky about your starting date, then start in 1076 or later. The Fatimids have shrunken drastically and they're a manageable foe to deal with, making Crusades to become more plausible. The 1076 start is only a year before the appearance of Rum, and the Catholic realms in the Spanish Iberia are also unified under the Castillan banner, with decent CA to potentially turn the tide there as well. It's a win-win situation.

 

[Trunting]

The biggest problem is that the game doesn't model the fact that the Fatimids were in the middle of a civil war in 1066- the Fatimid army had relied upon different ethnic groups for different roles, and these ethnic groups had (of course) become political groups, and these political groups vied for power for most of the second half of the 11th century. And by vied for power I mean slaughtered each other in the streets. Not really sure how to best model a bunch of your army killing itself, but it is true that the Fatimids are ahistorically powerful.

these different groups were the Kutama Berber and the errr Nubians I think... but how to implement this?

 

[victimizer]

Stop complaining. Just use the console to weaken them at the beginning. I basically do it to all the major empires at the beginning of the game: HRE, seljuqs, byzzies and fatimids. When they're distracted by civil wars at the start up, it gives the smaller factions time to get started, making for a much more interesting game.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Isn't this Fatimid issue very, very easily dealt with? :/ Surely all the Devs have to do is switch up the 1066 start so that there is a noble, or small band of nobles, greatly dissatisfied with the Caliph, who will naturally gravitate into a faction together and spark off a Civil War (or something, I'm just throwing out ideas off the top of my head). I don't really understand why this HASN'T been dealt with yet...

'cuz they don't care so much any more. AFAIK the devs who built CK2 have all moved on to new projects, and the teams doing the expansions care more about new features than about fiddling around with old features. Schedules need to be kept, implementing new stuff is more fun than wading through someone else's code. And all that.

The initial CK2 release was very well balanced, but since 1.05 (more or less) it's gone down the drain. You can play mods though, they help a great deal.

 

[Hootieleece]

Of course, you could defeat the Fatimids in their Invasion of Greece... That's what did it in my game. The Fatimids descended into civil war about a year after their failed invasion and I was able to scoop up Tripoli and Beirut in the chaos. Lather, rinse, repeat...

But it's hard when your not the Basileus.I generally like playing a vassal.In game i was referring I was Doux of Achea and AI Basileus lost the Empire in 1070 after beating Seljuks easily.

 

[SRM]

I saw the Fatimids fall in my current game, actually. They decided to invade Italy and wound up conquering everything but the Papacy, but in the process the Pope launched a successful Crusade for Jerusalem (that France snatched up because they dropped 5k troops in at the very last battle after I'd lost half of my 1k man Welsh force helping win the war) and a massive rebellion toppled the Fatimid dynasty. Their successors are currently failing to keep Italy under their control.

Fatimids are very stable and powerful, but they're not invincible.

 

[yourworstnightm]

They should start with higher decadence. Basically everyone considered the Fatimids decadent back then.