Harald Fairhair's Ambition

[Blodhevn]

Harald fairhair in 867 is a great playthrough for players. he has great stats,traits and starts with a lot of prestige and room for conquering. as a norwegian myself ive watched quite a lot of ck3 playthroughts of him from youtubers and i play a lot of the norse myself.

When played by players, they can take advantage of all he has to offer as well as quickly divorcing his wife for either alliance marriage or a quick+giant woman that is always available in the norse region for a quick congenital and a chance of "intelligent" upgrade.

As i said, i play a lot of vikings, doing different shit with them and playing different styles/areas and campaigns. but Harald fairhair's ambitious nature is cucked by his wife when it comes to the AI, he never ever conquer anything at all. the only thing ive seen him do is take a single county in either wales or england(and once in holland after a split of lotharia). he never attempt to get a dutchy or expand beyond 1 county. he cannot form alliances until his kids are born and if he does create an alliance which is very often with jylland(about 1k start, strongest/second strongest non recommended viking) the only guy who takes advantage of this alliance is jylland. He is the least ambitious of any of the norsemen.. guy sits on his 2 start counties and 1k prestige all game until he gets outgrown and fcked over. every single time.

ive tried to ally to him and "protect" like a guardian , waiting for him to declare war and to help him in his wars. but he doesnt, not ever.

he must be bugged or something.

telemark is the county over, part of his de jure and holds a single county vs Haralds 2 out of 4 (last belongs to Sigurd Snake in-the eye) and he wont, not a single time conquer it.. (ive played this game for 902h now. i get why he doesnt go for the single county in Sigurd's realm right away. but seriously AMBITIOUS characters should be... ambitious

Cries of a norwegian watching Bjorn ironside and Sigurd snake in the eye fighting and conquering - being real "vikings" while little harald sits at home playing house with peasant wife(who wasnt a peasant in real life ,but the daughter of a jylland king .. which makes sense why they ally, but shes a peasant ingame).

(i dont know what flair to use to get some attention to this)

 

[NexusSix]

I dunno after finishing 602 Vikings I kinda hope that Finehair sits in his backwater and dies a quiet fools death.

 

[Evethor]

What does the wife have to do with this?

Harald Hårfagre should be scripted too go after the kingdom of Norway, It messes with the power balance if Sweden or Denmark eats all of Norway.
Currently he is too limited by the AI who seems to favor raiding and conquering land in England.

 

[pevergreen]

(i dont know what flair to use to get some attention to this)

A tip: Not that one.

 

[NexusSix]

Wasn't this always the case though in CK2?
Especially the 769 viking age start would see Sweden or Denmark dominate unless Saxony decided an all out invasion. Smaller states and Norway never even got started in this time line.

In regard to the conquest of Britain its probably just hard coded into the Norse scripts due to it being the Great Heathen invasion. I personally hate playing this time line as i find it way to scripted in regard to the "Britain or bust" feel. I always preferred playing a count and building a Duchy > Kingdom.

 

[Pied-Noir]

I did actually revamp 867 Norway a bit and strengthen Harald's position by making him duke of Viken and giving him a couple more vassals. This makes him an easier start and means the AI is more likely to form Norway as him.

The changes were based largely on @Darkath's suggestions here, and are available to try here.

 

[Chlodio]

peasant wife(who wasnt a peasant in real life ,but the daughter of a jylland king .. which makes sense why they ally, but shes a peasant ingame).

I mean, Harald himself is probably a 12th-century fabrication:

Through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, historians broadly accepted the account of Harald Fairhair given by later Icelandic sagas. However, Peter Sawyer began to cast doubt on this in 1976,[11] and the decades around 2000 saw a wave of revisionist research that suggested that Harald Fairhair did not exist, or at least not in a way resembling his appearance in sagas.[12][13][14][15][16][17] The key arguments for this are as follows:​

​

There is no contemporary support for the claims of later sagas about Harald Fairhair. The first king of Norway recorded in near-contemporary sources is Haraldr Gormsson (d. c. 985/986), who is claimed to be the king not only of Denmark but also Norway on the Jelling stones. The late ninth-century account of Norway provided by Ohthere to the court of Alfred the Great and the history by Adam of Bremen written in 1075 record no King of Norway for the relevant period. Although sagas have Erik Bloodaxe, who does seem partly to correspond to a historical figure, as the son of Harald Fairhair, no independent evidence supports this genealogical connection.[18] The twelfth-century William of Malmesbury does describe a Norwegian king called Haraldus visiting King Æthelstan of England (d. 939), which is consistent with later saga-traditions in which Harald Fairhair fostered a son, Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri, on Æthelstan.[19] But William is a late source and Harald a far from uncommon name for a Scandinavian character,[20] and William does not give this Harald the epithet fairhair, whereas he does give that epithet to the later Norwegian king Haraldr Sigurðarson.​

​

Thus the Icelandic saga-tradition of Harald Fair-Hair can be seen as part of an origin myth created to explain the settlement of Iceland, perhaps in which a cognomen of Haraldr Sigurðarson was transferred to a fictitious early king of all Norway.[29][30] Sverrir Jakobsson has suggested that the idea of Iceland being settled by people fleeing an overbearing Norwegian monarch actually reflects the anxieties of Iceland in the early thirteenth century, when the island was indeed coming under Norwegian dominance. He has also suggested that the legend of Harald Fairhair developed in the twelfth century to enable Norwegian kings, who were then promoting the idea of primogeniture over the older custom of agnatic succession, to claim that their ancestors had had a right to Norway by lineal descent from the country's supposed first king.[31]​

​

 

[Blodhevn]

Wasn't this always the case though in CK2?
Especially the 769 viking age start would see Sweden or Denmark dominate unless Saxony decided an all out invasion. Smaller states and Norway never even got started in this time line.

In regard to the conquest of Britain its probably just hard coded into the Norse scripts due to it being the Great Heathen invasion. I personally hate playing this time line as i find it way to scripted in regard to the "Britain or bust" feel. I always preferred playing a count and building a Duchy > Kingdom.

Sigurd and bjorn stay mostly within scandinavia and conquer. so does jarl dag of uppland norway next to harald. jamtaland ( start with all counties of their dutchy) also does well usually. only the smaller 1 county norwegian chieftains and visby(gotland) seems to go that route of taking single counties outside of scandinavia.

this is my first time playing any paradox game so i wouldnt know. i just hope they code him differently so he will focus on expansion closer to home, especially since he has the men and resources.

 

[Blodhevn]

I did actually revamp 867 Norway a bit and strengthen Harald's position by making him duke of Viken and giving him a couple more vassals. This makes him an easier start and means the AI is more likely to form Norway as him.

The changes were based largely on @Darkath's suggestions here, and are available to try here.

Yeah, glad im not the only one who noticed. i dont need him to be similar to sweden who always comes out on top but i'd at least want him to do something, to be a factor. Harald is less a factor than any other chieftain in the game. probably because he got oppland(jarl dag) up north, sweden to the east and sjelland from down below coming for his territory locking him to only expand west. which he never does. well he goes west, to england for a single county in england which will be contested very soon by stronger foes.

 

[Blodhevn]

What does the wife have to do with this?

Harald Hårfagre should be scripted too go after the kingdom of Norway, It messes with the power balance if Sweden or Denmark eats all of Norway.
Currently he is too limited by the AI who seems to favor raiding and conquering land in England.

If he didnt have a wife ( its apparently his historical wife, but she is a noble of jylland according to myth/history so she shouldve come with an alliance at the start) he would be able to quickly secure an alliance with someone for protection & expansion similar to what the other chieftains with sons/daughters do at the start of the game.

they could just make the wife the daughter of the jylland duke at the beginning.

yeah he should be scripted to do that. especially taking his dejure county of telemark which is right next to him and is just a single county cheif.

 

[Blodhevn]

I dunno after finishing 602 Vikings I kinda hope that Finehair sits in his backwater and dies a quiet fools death.

i stopped watching vikings in the first part of season 5.

 

[NexusSix]

i stopped watching vikings in the first part of season 5.

Ah the Vikings time line....
S1: Pretty Cool
S2: WOW this is awesome
S3: Hmmmm
S4 P1: Yawn
S4 P2: That was anti climatic....
S5 P1: This is getting tedious
S5 P2: Yeh your out of ideas right?
S6 P1: Ah where have you been for 3 seasons?!
S6 P2: Bravo

As a whole.... you lost me in the middle.

 

[NexusSix]

I mean, Harald himself is probably a 12th-century fabrication:

Most of them are built up on stories and ideas. Ragnar Lodbrock was probably multiple people and the "sons of Ragnar" are more likely just warlords who said they were related to Ragnar in the same way that Ragnar claimed Odin himself as an ancestor.
Fame and Glory

 

[JonathanViking]

What does the wife have to do with this?

Harald Hårfagre should be scripted too go after the kingdom of Norway, It messes with the power balance if Sweden or Denmark eats all of Norway.
Currently he is too limited by the AI who seems to favor raiding and conquering land in England.

Tbh all Vikings should favour England BUT fairhair should have an exception that he Favours Norway a bit more Maybi

 

[Ezumiyr]

No character in CK should be scripted to do anything, except maybe the already scripted "invaders" like Timur, Chingis and the Ghaznavids.
This is a problematic way to railroad historical behaviours in CK for things that should go through game mechanics. It's problematic because there are many characters on the map that are much more attested than Ragnar and should deserve their own scripts too... taking a lot of time from devs, and for what? Diminishing the sandbox side of the game? Not a good idea.

For example, if the consensus is that Vikings should only aim for England, then we should identify why. And the thing is that Vikings historically followed the path of least resistance andmore profit - they raided England, sure, but also many, many other places in different regions such as the Mediterranea and Russia, and they traded too. Their mark is their geographical mobility, that wasn't shared by most people of western Europe at that time.
So what do we do from there? Personally I think that norse invaders work fine in general. However, they could use a different conquest mechanic that is closer to crusades, meaning that the conquered lands would belong to a benefector and not necessarily the initial conqueror. Additionally, there's a fine game mechanic in Historical Immersion for CK2 that let the "potentially conquered" give lands to "conquerors", in exchange for vassalage and even religious conversion. This would make norse conquests more dynamic and historical than just blobbing out of proporsions and unifying western and northern Europe under Sweden (which happens way too often currently).
Of course, the norse could benefit from more advanced trade mechanics as well, so it would make sense for them to "colonize" some areas next to the important rivers of Russia.