Fix Fatamids

[unmerged(206584)]

The easy solution is to lower muslim ships to next to nothing. It wasn't until the ottoman turks in the 1400's did a muslim power have real shipping and even then it was rather weak compared to small powers.

Dutch Areas, Genoa Venice should be the only ones with real navies they can field for themselves. Dutch areas because abundance of cities, and genoa and venice because they are trade capitals and needed the navy for shipping. Perhaps there should be a flag for "natural port" areas to encourage it and rebalance the harbour chain line

I can't count the times the fatamids have taken the entire byzantine empire in <10 years because they ship an entire army into greece. The byzantines lose greece and most of the constantinope area while the rest defects.

 

[Immortal Impi]

The easy solution is to lower muslim ships to next to nothing. It wasn't until the ottoman turks in the 1400's did a muslim power have real shipping and even then it was rather weak compared to small powers.

This is why Muslim piracy did immense damage to Europe and the fleets of the Caliphates thrashed Byzantium's time and time again, right?

 

[riknap]

The easy solution is to lower muslim ships to next to nothing. It wasn't until the ottoman turks in the 1400's did a muslim power have real shipping and even then it was rather weak compared to small powers.

Dutch Areas, Genoa Venice should be the only ones with real navies they can field for themselves. Dutch areas because abundance of cities, and genoa and venice because they are trade capitals and needed the navy for shipping. Perhaps there should be a flag for "natural port" areas to encourage it and rebalance the harbour chain line

I can't count the times the fatamids have taken the entire byzantine empire in <10 years because they ship an entire army into greece. The byzantines lose greece and most of the constantinope area while the rest defects.

The problem is that the only way to naturally nerf the Fatimids naval capacity is to decrease naval levies around the board, which also affects the christian realms
This in turn makes crusades nigh-impossible, since allied armies can't enter the same fleet, and the AI is rather atrocious in terms of sending armies abroad in a single army.
And worse, I don't think I've seen the AI hire a naval fleet once and use it sparingly (ie. disbanding it once transport has been done) which results in them being bankrupt and thus the "Lack of Funds" malus which is a great -.5 morale in their armies..

 

[unmerged(206584)]

This is why Muslim piracy did immense damage to Europe and the fleets of the Caliphates thrashed Byzantium's time and time again, right?

They weren't shipping entire armies to sack Sicily on some silly pirates boat.

If you wanted to get across the Mediterranean you paid the man in venice.

 

[maidros]

This is why Muslim piracy did immense damage to Europe and the fleets of the Caliphates thrashed Byzantium's time and time again, right?

Ehh - pirates were a few hundred thugs sacking a bunch of undefended towns and the countryside. There is a difference between that and sending 20K troops from Egypt to Galicia.

 

[maidros]

I'm not saying they had military superiority (a lot of the texts I read about the crusades squarely put the reason why Jerusalem survived long as it did was mostly because of the in-fighting of the caliphate)

what the game does acknowledge in an abstracted form though is their superior technology relative to western standards (think damascus steel for example). what then game FAILS to properly simulate is pop-specific intrigues and its general effects, whether in politics or military (the game treats soldiers as a homogenous resource, and for good reason since properly making mechanics wherein soldier-culture matters and generals plot against each other, as happened in Manzikert, would make a whole-different game. Or at least require mechanics as extant as the current feudal mechanics of CK2).

The kingdom of Jerusalem SURVIVED because of Muslim infighting. It was not created because of Muslim infighting. It was created because the Christians outfought all the major powers in the region - Khilij Arslan at Dorylaeum, Ridwan of Aleppo and Kerbogha of Mosul at Antioch, and the Egyptians at Jerusalem and Ramillat. And in all the battles (except perhaps Dorylaeum), the Christians were heavily outnumbered.

Damascus steel?!!? The sword makers of northern Syria were not part of the Fatimid kingdom. What Damascus steel are you talking about? The Fatimid army comprised of swathes of Sudanese bowmen, backed up by Berber and Arab horsemen and some Turkish mercenaries (who were horse archers). The Caliph had a particular incentive in not equipping any group well, because they would pose a threat to him if any group gained superiority (which is precisely what happened - the Turks gained superiority and turned on the Caliph himself). The Fatmid army of the late eleventh century was a poorly equipped, poorly led army with abysmal morale. One of the major problems was that the knights armour was proof against the arrows of the Sudanese bowmen and the Berbers and Arab horsemen did not care to get into hand to hand combat with the knights because they saw no reason to risk their lives for a king they owed no particular loyalty to.

 

[riknap]

The kingdom of Jerusalem SURVIVED because of Muslim infighting. It was not created because of Muslim infighting. It was created because the Christians outfought all the major powers in the region - Khilij Arslan at Dorylaeum, Ridwan of Aleppo and Kerbogha of Mosul at Antioch, and the Egyptians at Jerusalem and Ramillat. And in all the battles (except perhaps Dorylaeum), the Christians were heavily outnumbered.

Damascus steel?!!? The sword makers of northern Syria were not part of the Fatimid kingdom. What Damascus steel are you talking about? The Fatimid army comprised of swathes of Sudanese bowmen, backed up by Berber and Arab horsemen and some Turkish mercenaries (who were horse archers). The Caliph had a particular incentive in not equipping any group well, because they would pose a threat to him if any group gained superiority (which is precisely what happened - the Turks gained superiority and turned on the Caliph himself). The Fatmid army of the late eleventh century was a poorly equipped, poorly led army with abysmal morale. One of the major problems was that the knights armour was proof against the arrows of the Sudanese bowmen and the Berbers and Arab horsemen did not care to get into hand to hand combat with the knights because they saw no reason to risk their lives for a king they owed no particular loyalty to.

T_T you really like nitpicking specific off-hand examples huh :sad: :laugh:

disregarding minor details like whether or not muslims had superior equipment relative to the Franks, the point I was trying to establish is that by 1066, the muslim states had a "general" superiority in tech relative to the west christian states. whether or not this is entirely accurately and properly-represented in-game is a different question from the fact that the handicaps that are present in reality which affected the Fatimids more than they affected the Franks are not present in-game, which you have just shown yourself (armies of varying ethnicity who are not particularly fond of each other).

I can't debate with you regarding details since the last time I read texts on the crusades was at least a year or two ago, and I read them whenever I want to escape from the mathematics necessary in studying engineering (basically, I read them for pleasure and thus tend not to remember minor details in exchange for the overall story). Though I do know that muskun infighting was the main reason why the first crusade itself succeeded, and why the KoJ survived for a couple of centuries. Things like the crusaders allying with muslims to keep the balance of power, as well as succession crises and things like Mosul refusing to swear fealty to the caliphate and similar matters, are what weakened the Fatimid Caliphate, but they aren't represented in-game quite enough. Just like the ERE shouldn't be able to expand into the west with ease because of historical details like politics yet easily doing-so in-game, neither should the Fatimids be overpowered if the tiny factors that hampered them historically could be represented. But it can't because it'll require more mechanics than are feasible in terms of dev-resources vis-a-vis marketability [the more complex something is, the smaller its market is obviously] )

 

[unmerged(527492)]

That's easy: just give them access to mercenary fleets.

The Fatimids in real life would never have been able to afford the cost of the Navy needed to invade Greece. (Overabundance of naval power is a general game issue though).

 

[TheLionHeart]

Maybe they could make it when you are defending against a holy war, an event trigger that causes all provinces of the defending faith to get a much higher levy and says that much of the peasants have enlisted in the army to defend against the heathens, maybe also get a morale boost. This will help fix how the fatimids (and Muslims in general) just pick out a target without much provinces and crush them with no scars, making the small Christian kingdoms of Spain to actually stand a chance against Islamic conquest and jihads.

 

[Talq]

Not much to go on, but the mechanic the Fatimids abuse has moved from jihads to invasions (I've had similar games to others - the AI fatimids obliterate the Byzantines in two invasions then move on to Sicily etc etc.). Of course part of the problem is that the invaded country does NOT get allies outside of those they have made through marriage, so Sicily etc get steamrolled with no opportunity to intervene from outside. To be honest, swinging the nerfbat hard at any form of Kingdom level CB was a good start, and invasion CBs where there is no real control outside a trivial piety cost (that will even be made up when you reallocate the cleansed churches) need to be looked at hardest (outright ban if they are not instead run trough a separate AI filter, and invasions no longer cleansing churches/mayors/baronies would be a good start). The long term alliance with the Seljuks is also highly questionable and has substantial balance implications

One hopes Paradox learns from overpowering nations in DLC in future.

 

[BonSequitur]

Making overseas invasions altogether harder across the Mediterranean seems obvious to me. The entire reason Constantinople was so important was that it acted as an effective roadblock, because a full-scale naval invasion wasn't really in the cards for anybody coming from Anatolia. Similarly, the crusading armies had serious difficulties in procuring enough ships each time around...

But even then, the fatimids, and Muslims in general, seem to vastly outclass the Christian states in a way that's not quite warranted. Iberia is inevitably taken over entirely by the taifas even though historically they were in decline, etcetera. I think those provinces probably just need to be rebalanced, or muslims need to have less efficient laws; it's a bit bizarre that at the start of the game, Robert Guiscard can field about half as many men as the emir in Sicily.

The easy fixes that would help now are reducing Jihads to territories that are adjacent to Muslim lands, and making invasion only valid against other Muslims (So they have to use holy war to invade Christian lands, and holy wars are harder to prosecute because anyone can jump in on the defender's side).

Generally speaking, large-scale and long-distance wars are too easy to prosecute right now because the game just doesn't model the difficulty of troop movement over long distances in the era. A big reason the fatimids had trouble in the era was precisely that they couldn't move their armies all over their territory easily like the game allows; indeed, this was also a difficulty the Byzantines had, constantly having to fight wars with only a fraction of their total capacity because of the slow and difficult process of moving them from one end of the empire to the other.

 

[Ciccillo Rre]

The solution is easy: raise dynastic decadence. This way the troops from all Egypt will see their quality decreased. I do not see why it can't be done in line of principle, as starting Seljuk decadence was lowered; if the devs think that they don't want to penalize the Fatimid player, well... come on, do we really think that playing the Fatimids is currently any challenge?

Otherwise, go for holding-based nerf, as it was done for the Byzantines in the past. I don't see why the Byzantines deserved such a nice treatment and the Fatimids don't, as they are much more game-breaking than the Byzantines were before.

 

[perpetualmuse]

The Fatamids being OP is an old issue, they know.

I didn't read the whole thread, but my thoughts are:

If they knew it was an issue and agreed with the majority of the people posting here then they wouldn't have made them stronger with the last patch. Adding a large decadence reduction for winning holy wars and invasions just makes things totally insane. The last single player game I played, the original Fatimid Caliph lived to 85 (he has the strong trait after all). Before he died, he had lost no land and had taken all of Sicily, Italy, Burgundy, Greece, Anatolia, Africa and Mespotamia. Not only that, but he was having no trouble holding it together.

Before the patch, the only saving grace was that the AI management of decadence was so poor that quite often they screwed themselves up eventually because of that, but this takes longer to happen now and the Seljuks also start with very low decadence too. It seems to me that making holy wars and invasions reduce decadence further was to try to combat how poor the AI is at managing decadence, but they should have improved the AI rather than doing what they did.

 

[Sleight of Hand]

The easy fixes that would help now are reducing Jihads to territories that are adjacent to Muslim lands, and making invasion only valid against other Muslims (So they have to use holy war to invade Christian lands, and holy wars are harder to prosecute because anyone can jump in on the defender's side).

+1

If I knew how to code that, I'd do it.

 

[ASPGolan]

wow, this thread escalated quickly, but their are a lot of good ideas. I also think the muslims shouldn't be so quick to use boats to move troops around.

 

[victimizer]

I think they should really fix grand strategic elements of war. Invasions across the mediterranean should be much harder. I.e. it's far too easy for a muslim power to invade italy; likewise, it's ridiculously easy for the HRE to annex all of north Africa.

In reality, neither scenario would be easily achieved: north Africa was extremely difficult to hold, especially for Europeans facing against the desert oriented forces of muslim powers.

 

[maidros]

T_T you really like nitpicking specific off-hand examples huh :sad: :laugh:

disregarding minor details like whether or not muslims had superior equipment relative to the Franks, the point I was trying to establish is that by 1066, the muslim states had a "general" superiority in tech relative to the west christian states. whether or not this is entirely accurately and properly-represented in-game is a different question from the fact that the handicaps that are present in reality which affected the Fatimids more than they affected the Franks are not present in-game, which you have just shown yourself (armies of varying ethnicity who are not particularly fond of each other).

Not in military technology. That is the point I am trying to make. The Muslims of the time had no superiority in military technology. They were superior economically, maybe culturally (it is debatable, anyway), but certainly not in military technology. The Fatimids should start with extremely poor Military Tech scores.

Though I do know that muskun infighting was the main reason why the first crusade itself succeeded, and why the KoJ survived for a couple of centuries.

I don't know what you have read, but in the first crusade, the success of the Christians was, in my opinion, because of two factors.
1) The knights were a real surprise to the Muslims of the time. There were no proper responses to the charge of the heavy cavalry which excelled in attacking stationary targets. Except for Khilij Arslan, none of the others used horse archer armies and none of them had mobile horsemen to take advantage of the weaknesses of the heavy cavalry of the Europeans.

2) The poor morale of the Muslims and the superior discipline of the European knights. The European knights, fighting hundreds of miles from friendly territory put a (reasonably) disciplined army into the field, and fought with impressive zeal for what they believed was a holy cause, while the Muslims had poor morale, and terrible discipline (especially Kerbogha of Mosul and the Fatimids). When faced with real opposition, they fled rather than fought.

 

[victimizer]

Pfft. European knights were not disciplined: holy orders had somewhat better cohesion, perhaps, but the knightly class was difficult to control both socially and militarily.

The Fatimids having lower military tech? Why? The Europeans didn't have a technology advantage; they had a quality advantage that proved fleeting later on. The knights stemmed from a highly privileged social class that could draw on the resources of the rest of the society. But they were scarce and formed only the core of the crusades. The crusader armies had plenty of riffraff as well to fill the rank and file.

Europeans should have an advantage in Europe and on the shoreline of the mediterranean. The muslims would have an steep advantage in desert terrain and the deep inland of the middle east. Libya and North Africa, for example, should be essentially impossible for HRE and others to conquer in 1066.

They were superior economically, maybe culturally (it is debatable, anyway)

In the 1066? No it isn't debatable. The muslim empires had made siginifcant agricultural advances by that time, which weren't well known in Europe. And agriculture was like 95 % of the economy at this time, so these advances had real effects. Cultural advances depend on the eye of the beholder.

 

[maidros]

Pfft. European knights were not disciplined: holy orders had somewhat better cohesion, perhaps, but the knightly class was difficult to control both socially and militarily.

The Fatimids having lower military tech? Why? The Europeans didn't have a technology advantage; they had a quality advantage that proved fleeting later on. The knights stemmed from a highly privileged social class that could draw on the resources of the rest of the society. But they were scarce and formed only the core of the crusades. The crusader armies had plenty of riffraff as well to fill the rank and file.

The knights were more disciplined in the first Crusade, which is what I am referring to in my post. As for the Fatimids, the army was viewed as a necessary evil by the Caliph (which was mostly made up of mercenaries, Sudanese, Berber or Turk) and he did not want them well armed, because they would pose a danger to him.

In the 1066? No it isn't debatable. The muslim empires had made siginifcant agricultural advances by that time, which weren't well known in Europe. And agriculture was like 95 % of the economy at this time, so these advances had real effects. Cultural advances depend on the eye of the beholder.

I was referring to cultural advances only, not economic tech. I agree the Fatimids had better economic technology.

 

[unmerged(206584)]

Balancing the navies and the AI usage of them will fix the Mediterranean conflicts. It should be impossible for anyone that isn't using venice or genoan boats or in the later parts of the game the frisia area to get across vast swaths of land.

Natural habour bonuses and a retooling of the harbour line would fix that.

Balance the invasion cb's etc so muslims aren't pounding everything in quick wars, make the fatamids more civil war prone. Reduce the AI war fighting in iberia in general. Like if I try and become the king of castille within a month I am called to war by Galicia to fight the entirity of iberia.

Also there is a lot of misinformation about knights, some would lead charges before signals were given yes but it didn't effect battles too much until the proliferation of horse archers and lancers operated by the turkish invaders. The Knights would lead a charge, the lighter more mobile horsemen would evade nullifying the charge of heavy knights and then slaughter the peasants etc that the knights left after they were tired out and then finish the knights. In pitched land battles with infantry knights reigned supreme.