The idea is to divide up their armies; the CK2 wiki has a good guide on how to do it.
Fighting China is bs
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The idea is to divide up their armies; the CK2 wiki has a good guide on how to do it.
The problem is not China (or Mongol) death stacks late game.
The problem is you have mistakenly expanded into Khotan (Tarim Basin,) Tibet, and/or Mongolia.
Your core may be all the way in Constantinople and it will take you 2 years to muster enough men into those areas.
Worse unless you have been developing these three areas the entire game, chances are high they are undeveloped.
For example I often build my desmense in the Daylam. It's all mountains and deserts up there, but by end game I can easily supply a 45k army in a county. Meanwhile a steppe county or Tibetan mountainous/desert held by AI may only hold 13k in the summer, and 7k in winter as late as the 1200s.
If you want to invade China, either live with the low supply or grant independence to Tibet and Steppe counties before declaring invasion (unless you have been developing the area personally.) Tarim Basin is a maybe. As a bustling feudal area it gets a lot of development. Problem is it's also raided a lot, stunting said development. I personally would grant it independence due to the proximity to China and distance from your core levies.
If I wanted to invade China "early" with say, 2 empires worth in size, I would grant independence and hold out at the chokepoints in developed Persia/Arabia, hold Himalayas from the Indian subcontinent, or fight in a Russia you have personally developed. China will arrive at around the same time you can get gather your army.
You can maybe hold out without granting independence if you have conquered most of the world and have a massive merc and retinue army sitting in the Tarim Basin. They'll buy time for your mustering.
Last but not least you can revoke all of the Tarim basin and grant one county to each of your largest vassals for OP magic levy summoning. Just do that well ahead of time since you don't want to raise levies when everyone is -100 with you.
The problem is you have mistakenly expanded into Khotan (Tarim Basin,) Tibet, and/or Mongolia.
Your core may be all the way in Constantinople and it will take you 2 years to muster enough men into those areas.
Worse unless you have been developing these three areas the entire game, chances are high they are undeveloped.
For example I often build my desmense in the Daylam. It's all mountains and deserts up there, but by end game I can easily supply a 45k army in a county. Meanwhile a steppe county or Tibetan mountainous/desert held by AI may only hold 13k in the summer, and 7k in winter as late as the 1200s.
If you want to invade China, either live with the low supply or grant independence to Tibet and Steppe counties before declaring invasion (unless you have been developing the area personally.) Tarim Basin is a maybe. As a bustling feudal area it gets a lot of development. Problem is it's also raided a lot, stunting said development. I personally would grant it independence due to the proximity to China and distance from your core levies.
If I wanted to invade China "early" with say, 2 empires worth in size, I would grant independence and hold out at the chokepoints in developed Persia/Arabia, hold Himalayas from the Indian subcontinent, or fight in a Russia you have personally developed. China will arrive at around the same time you can get gather your army.
You can maybe hold out without granting independence if you have conquered most of the world and have a massive merc and retinue army sitting in the Tarim Basin. They'll buy time for your mustering.
Last but not least you can revoke all of the Tarim basin and grant one county to each of your largest vassals for OP magic levy summoning. Just do that well ahead of time since you don't want to raise levies when everyone is -100 with you.
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Transferring vassals will do as well. Thats not so revoke- heavy. Once you are this size, that time for summoning an army is an issue and planning a chinese invasion is even a serious thing, you surely have vassal kings or even multi- kings. Transferring an eastern count or duke to them all to magically summon your french vassal-levies in Afghanistan via a ducal sub-vassal is no major issue
EDIT: The biggest logistic issue is probably to get your own levies there in time for action
If we're going to include gamey tactics, I think I would prefer to abuse warrior lodges to give my character 8+ commander traits. Once you have that, and put all of your troops in the flank led by your emperor, enemy armies literally melt.
Caveat: I haven't actually tried this tactic vs China. But I have used it effectively to win battles where I was massively outnumbered (including things like attacking while outnumbered 4-to-1, across a river and into mountains), so I think it would probably work. And you wouldn't need to completely distort your empire to win a Chinese invasion.
I'm going to have to be a lot more careful about battles when she finally dies. No more teleporting-in at the last minute to pull victory from an otherwise-inevitable defeat...
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My strategy against the Mongols (haven't fought them in a while, though) was to lure stacks to somewhere bordering water, and then just boat-bomb them. For luring them, either use a general that's faster than they are, *or* take turns raising and dismissing levies from the counties right next to them. Draw them one county at a time, and then crush them with ~100k troops stationed offshore.
I'd assume that China would be similar?
I'd assume that China would be similar?
I think it depends where you're fighting them. If your heartland is on the north-east of the map, good luck luring the Mongols/Chinese to an ocean...
If I invade China from a western European power base- will their doom stacks come all the way over to my lands?
In theory, yes. But long-distance AI pathfinding can sometimes fail, so YMMV.
Also, bear in mind that the Chinese armies are immune to attrition, so you wouldn't gain anything by forcing them to schlep all the way to the other side of the map.
Also also, I think that you have to own counties near or on the eastern edge of the map to be allowed to invade China. So, your powerbase might be in W Europe, but you'd need some presence in Mongolia/Tibet/India.
If you had no lands outside Britannia apart from a single county on the eastern edge of the map (required to enable invasions) and invaded China... then I think the AI doomstacks would get very confused and probably freeze in place (after full-sieging that one county).
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Yeah, I'm definitely not that- I have an Empire that includes most of Italia, Germania, Carpathia, Wendish Empire, Scandanavia, Brittainia, and Byzantine Empire and ou tto Caspian Steppe but not into Cumania area as of yet and about 200K troops total as of now. . . eventually I want to invade China just to have done it (and because I have about 250 years left with no real goal to accomplish other than tick the clock towards the achievements).
Go for it!
Just bear in mind that you'll need to own a county on the eastern edge of the map before you can take any hostile actions against China. Conquering a snaky path all the way over there sounds dull, so maybe you can find a claimant or something...
Do I need to own on the Eastern map edge, or just within diplomatic range? I thought it was the latter. . . I also need to use my my 5,000 Grace before throwing that all away so I sense a requested invasion soon. Oh, also have to wait out my peace deal I guess.
Check the tooltip in-game to be sure, but I'm pretty certain that the wiki's correct on this matter: you need to border the eastern edge of the map.
Worked pretty well the last time I did it (granted, which was years ago). Raise all of your armies and put them on boats *except* the ones in the area where you're going to try to lure the doomstacks. Then when there's a 'stack you want to destroy, raise the army in the province next to them until they take the bait and start coming to destroy you. After they're locked in, disband that levy and raise one in the province next to it. They'll take the bait and continue chasing you all over the map, assuming that you have a direct line from where they spawn to some body of water. I think I used to be able to lure them all the way over to the Black Sea back when I was fighting Mongols.
Although now that I think about it, this must have been pre-Horse Lords since I remember raising and dismissing troops in the steppes. However, it shouldn't be that hard to draw forces over to somewhere along the Indian coast.
According to the decision code, you can also border the Western Protectorate.
If you have 40-100k troops:
Send one army of 20-30k or so to re-siege whatever the Chinese are taking, preferably a couple of provinces behind their front line. This will cause the Chinese army to split up, as some will go to re-re-siege whatever provinces you re-sieged. Assemble the rest of your army somewhere and have 'em all in stacks next to each other to avoid attrition. Once a splinter of the chinese army is sufficiently isolated from the rest, engage and kill that stack. Repeat this until you have 'em beaten. Works faster the larger your army is, but I made it work with an army of 50k without all to much hassle. Took forever but worked, chinese forces will not reinforce so whatever you kill remains dead while your stack replenishes.
Works smoothly so long as you have a lot of territory (say Tibet).
If you have 100k+:
I usually just engage them trying to stack defensive bonuses like forests/mountains and crossings. Not sure if I'm lucky but in my games the chinese always without fail has trash generals, rarely anybody above 10 martial. Just invite the brightest generals from around the world and you should be able to sweep the chinese back into China no effort.
if you have 30k or less then frankly maybe you shouldn't mess with China.
Send one army of 20-30k or so to re-siege whatever the Chinese are taking, preferably a couple of provinces behind their front line. This will cause the Chinese army to split up, as some will go to re-re-siege whatever provinces you re-sieged. Assemble the rest of your army somewhere and have 'em all in stacks next to each other to avoid attrition. Once a splinter of the chinese army is sufficiently isolated from the rest, engage and kill that stack. Repeat this until you have 'em beaten. Works faster the larger your army is, but I made it work with an army of 50k without all to much hassle. Took forever but worked, chinese forces will not reinforce so whatever you kill remains dead while your stack replenishes.
Works smoothly so long as you have a lot of territory (say Tibet).
If you have 100k+:
I usually just engage them trying to stack defensive bonuses like forests/mountains and crossings. Not sure if I'm lucky but in my games the chinese always without fail has trash generals, rarely anybody above 10 martial. Just invite the brightest generals from around the world and you should be able to sweep the chinese back into China no effort.
if you have 30k or less then frankly maybe you shouldn't mess with China.
So I'm playing as Tibet right now, (got Sakya Trizin this run), and had the lovely experience of this, and it is such nonsense. So after a Chinese dynasty change (they threw out the Borjigins after like 4 years), I didn't get Grace up fast enough to get a marriage and didn't think to just take a plain peace deal in the meantime and they came in to retake the duchy of Jiuquan after being non-present on the map for a century or two. I decided to fight it. They sent 90k troops vs my nominal 50k, I had lots of money, threw mercs at it. Was extremely rough, but was winning. When I was at 90% warscore they unilaterally declared White Peace without it asking me. annoyed, but whatever. 2 years later they attacked again when I was busy and couldn't fight it off. Now my vassals keep trying to holy-war it back so I have constant "lost holy wars" -MA because vassals send 20k vs the WP's nominal 10k, but they get 40k backup from China.
Part of me wants to break the peace deal I got after and show them what's what, but I saw what happened to the Deccan Empire during the (later and still current) Expansionist phase - 150k vs their 30k in a subjugation and suddenly my southern border's all yellow (I had 80% of India then, 100% currently). Luckily the Black Death swept through shortly (and completely missed Tibet and India, which was hilarious for me) and when a bunch of WP generals in a row died of it the De Jure Requirement kicked in and that southern swath all went independent statelets, or I don't know what would've happened.
anyway the doomstacks are ridiculous, China fielding 40k or more single-stacks in 1k supply limit counties is obscene, vassals need to be able to consider actual target strength when declaring wars, and while I look forward to CK3's new system hopefully handling things fundamentally better than the always-not-great supply limit, something should really be done to mitigate the degree of just not following the rules of the rest of the game...
Edit: Update on this many years later, peace deal from later marriage ran out and I didn't see it, and then this happened. Expansionist Golden Age is nasty... I have about 90k troops in my whole empire, not that I could get them there in time, nor is it worth it over one county, but it's just... offensive IMO. Especially when he rolled up and demanded horses like two seconds before this and I granted it...
Part of me wants to break the peace deal I got after and show them what's what, but I saw what happened to the Deccan Empire during the (later and still current) Expansionist phase - 150k vs their 30k in a subjugation and suddenly my southern border's all yellow (I had 80% of India then, 100% currently). Luckily the Black Death swept through shortly (and completely missed Tibet and India, which was hilarious for me) and when a bunch of WP generals in a row died of it the De Jure Requirement kicked in and that southern swath all went independent statelets, or I don't know what would've happened.
anyway the doomstacks are ridiculous, China fielding 40k or more single-stacks in 1k supply limit counties is obscene, vassals need to be able to consider actual target strength when declaring wars, and while I look forward to CK3's new system hopefully handling things fundamentally better than the always-not-great supply limit, something should really be done to mitigate the degree of just not following the rules of the rest of the game...
Edit: Update on this many years later, peace deal from later marriage ran out and I didn't see it, and then this happened. Expansionist Golden Age is nasty... I have about 90k troops in my whole empire, not that I could get them there in time, nor is it worth it over one county, but it's just... offensive IMO. Especially when he rolled up and demanded horses like two seconds before this and I granted it...
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It's not a lot of help for your current run, but there is a game rule that allows you to turn off Chinese Major Invasions. Once bitten twice shy...
So my issue is China has been slowly taking over the world. The Holy Roman Empire (which includes the UK), France, and the Byzantine Empire are all a part of the Western Protectorate. I can beat them in a battle, but if I lose a single holding to them, I lose 30% warscore, and they always have more troops to send with their event troops that don't suffer attrition. I'm playing as a Scandinavian Republic in the mid 1200s and own Northern Germany all the way to Eastern Croatia. I didn't start a war, but I got the event that makes you a "protectorate" or begins a war with the western protectorate. The Mongols have just started as well, so I'm hoping that might divide some attention from my many attempts to break free from China. Doesn't help that everytime my character dies (which is often since I'm a republic) I have to start from square one, The one time I got close to 100% I suddenly had a crusade called on me which made it even more difficult to defend myself... and then I died. Any way to break free from Chinese control when they literally own the world and I can't stay alive long enough to wage a full war against them?
Yes, expansionist China is hard - maybe even unfun. (This is why I turn off major Chinese invasions in game rules - you might want to look into this for future games.)
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To recover this particular game, you're going to need to learn to cheese the combat system. It sounds like you have sufficient territory to raise monumentally large armies (or, since you're a republic, enough gold to hire ALL THE MERCS). The WP gets a lot of event troops - but they are finite. Spread your armies out just enough that they don't suffer attrition due to supply, bait a Chinese stack into attacking into defensive terrain, then sweep in with overwhelming reinforcements. Rinse and repeat. The most important thing is to never lose a battle, because warscore is floored at -99% until the WP wins a major battle against you (or 3 years have passed). This makes it "safe" to lose some territory while you're concentrating your armies or wiping out other stacks. (This means that, if you're fighting a bigger enemy, it might be better to disband an army and accept the loss of levy, rather than losing a battle.) The "Invading China" section on the wiki goes into a bit more detail, and much of it is relevant to your situation.
Alternatively, you could give up and become a tributary. If China is about to be invaded by Mongols then there's a good chance that you will be able to break free without a war (via an intrigue menu decision) within the next few decades. Unfortunately, you're a republic, which means that becoming a tributary will put serious strain on your finances (it'd be easy to lose more than 100% of your income due to the combination of 50% tribute and LARGE% family dues). You can work around this by asking all of your adult male family members (other than your designated heir) to leave your court, and bring them back once per decade so you can build more trade posts.
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For the future, you need to start using the "designated heir" title to elect young rulers. (You mentioned that your rulers are turning over rapidly, which makes me think that you're not using this feature.) The bribes will be expensive, but this approach can be extremely worthwhile - especially if you've been breeding for genius+strong.
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For maximum combat cheese (requires Holy Fury and decades of setup in-game):
Make a young martial-focused character your next ruler, and take him on a tour of all the warrior lodges. Pick up the rank 2 commander trait from each one (as well as 2 normal commander traits, if possible), aiming for a minimum of 5-6 commander traits. (8-10 commander traits would be ideal.)
There are also some artifacts that buff combat stats. If you have choices in your loadout, I suggest you prioritise boosting PCS to 100ish (to ensure you nearly always win battlefield duels) then boost martial (because martial multiplies all army combat stats) then boost individual army combat stats (morale, damage, etc).
After all that, any armies he leads will be able to defeat MUCH larger armies (depending on troop quality and terrain, anything from 5 times bigger to 15 times bigger): move all the subunits into the same flank (eg. centre if you have "Direct Leader") and put your ruler in charge. Opposing armies will literally melt.
This approach does have some disadvantages. First, it requires a LOT of setup time. Second, you have to continually focus on levelling up in the societies and your character can't focus on much else. Finally, your character can't be in two places at once. Yes, he can instantly teleport between armies, but you still need to be careful to ensure that he's not needed in more than one battle at the same time.
- Warrior lodges require HF - not sure if you have this.
- Don't ever become zealous while a member of a wrong-religion warrior or you'll be kicked.
- To switch lodges:
- Ensure you have {250 piety + 1000 prestige} or {500 piety}
- Leave your previous lodge
- Wait 90 days
- Pause
- Secretly convert to a pagan faith from concubine / holy site (costs 250 piety)
- Personally adopt faith
- Apply to new warrior lodge
- Convert back to original faith. (If you have RoI you can convert to your capital county's religion - costs 1000 prestige. Otherwise, do the secret conversion thing again.)
- Unpause
There are also some artifacts that buff combat stats. If you have choices in your loadout, I suggest you prioritise boosting PCS to 100ish (to ensure you nearly always win battlefield duels) then boost martial (because martial multiplies all army combat stats) then boost individual army combat stats (morale, damage, etc).
After all that, any armies he leads will be able to defeat MUCH larger armies (depending on troop quality and terrain, anything from 5 times bigger to 15 times bigger): move all the subunits into the same flank (eg. centre if you have "Direct Leader") and put your ruler in charge. Opposing armies will literally melt.
This approach does have some disadvantages. First, it requires a LOT of setup time. Second, you have to continually focus on levelling up in the societies and your character can't focus on much else. Finally, your character can't be in two places at once. Yes, he can instantly teleport between armies, but you still need to be careful to ensure that he's not needed in more than one battle at the same time.