Horse Lords questions

[joos]

I recently started playing as the sole mongol khagan in the Old Gods start and I have a few questions:

1. Will my khans pillage holdings? I conquered a county which had a castle barony in it and I kept pillaging it till it became grazing land. During this process, the revolt risk went up to something like 60% and I had to put down four buddhist rebels. This seems like a lot for the AI to handle. If I had given the county to one of my khans, would he have pillaged or would he create a baron vassal there?

2. I noticed the clan demanded land when I went up to four counties. I saw the calculation in the clans screen. Does that mean I only get to hold four counties for as long as I am a khagan or does this go up with tech?

3. Can I still have regular dukes and counts as vassals?

4. Is it better to have regular vassals or clan vassals? Clan vassals don't seem to count towards vassal limit, so that's a big plus. But they don't pay tax. Is there a limit to the number of clans I can have under me?

5. If I give regular counties to my sons, will they go feudal?

6. If I give land to my family, will the other clans still consider it land held by my clan and be upset?

Thanks for your answers.

 

[kmh42]

1. Will my khans pillage holdings? I conquered a county which had a castle barony in it and I kept pillaging it till it became grazing land. During this process, the revolt risk went up to something like 60% and I had to put down four buddhist rebels. This seems like a lot for the AI to handle. If I had given the county to one of my khans, would he have pillaged or would he create a baron vassal there?

I am not 100% sure about that but as far I know the AI dose not pillage land. But maybe I never seen it.

2. I noticed the clan demanded land when I went up to four counties. I saw the calculation in the clans screen. Does that mean I only get to hold four counties for as long as I am a khagan or does this go up with tech?

It goes up with realm size. This system tents go balance the realms size of all khans. But a countie with many baronies and only one free holding is not part of this calculations. So you can hold it freely and get money and troops from the baron vassals

3. Can I still have regular dukes and counts as vassals?

Yes you can but the will have constant -30 wrong government opinion modifier. You can revoke there titles without become tyrant.

4. Is it better to have regular vassals or clan vassals? Clan vassals don't seem to count towards vassal limit, so that's a big plus. But they don't pay tax. Is there a limit to the number of clans I can have under me?

You can have a max of 8 vassal clans. Maybe mix them a little to balance you realm. But if you want to stay all the way nomadic than go for nomadic vassals only.

5. If I give regular counties to my sons, will they go feudal?

Yes! Do not land them! Send the best son away as a mercenary but don't forget to marry him and all others. Nomadic succession can be tricky. You only survive when you have a son or brother of you culture.

6. If I give land to my family, will the other clans still consider it land held by my clan and be upset?

no

I am not an expert on this mater. Maybe check that out: http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Nomadism#Clan_sentiment

 

[joos]

Thanks a lot, @kmh42.

Another question. Is it possible to conquer the steppes, iran, middle east, turkey and india and remain nomadic all the way AND not have any regular vassals?

 

[kmh42]

Actually there is but it's using many exploits and bugs: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/valar-mongolia.914231/

An alternate way is to give all kingdom tier titles to your kahns and transfer all feudal vassal to them so you have not to deal with those feudal vassals on your own. This is how I have done in my Mongol-World-Conquest: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-conquest-with-the-mongols.894569/

 

[CaptainPolyp]

Hi, I am quite a beginner myself, currently learning nomadic mechanics. I came up quite nicely in my game as the mongols (beginning around Samarkand and Khiva in 1060, with the character builder to change the culture from turkish to mongol, not ironman mode... it's my first full game). I expanded mostly into Persia/afghanistan/pakistan/iran, projecting to invade Constantinople at some point (not a huge achievement given how powerful nomad mechanics are) and, more importantly, meet Timur and support his conquests (if it is possible).

I have a few precisions from what I've learned.

joos:
2. I noticed the clan demanded land when I went up to four counties. I saw the calculation in the clans screen. Does that mean I only get to hold four counties for as long as I am a khagan or does this go up with tech?

kmh42:
It goes up with realm size. This system tents go balance the realms size of all khans. But a countie with many baronies and only one free holding is not part of this calculations. So you can hold it freely and get money and troops from the baron vassals

Just a little precision from what I observed in my game: You can have up to 33% (or 40% ???) of the counties in your realm. you must give up the rest to your vassal clans. Except that, here's the trick (as kmh42 mentioned), only the counties with less than 2 buildings are counted in this total. Your capital counts as a building. If there are 2 or more buildings (not just baronnies, whatever building), the county will not be demanded by your vassal khans. However, the empty holdings in these counties will still count in the calculation of your max population (thus increasing your population growth and manpower). Thus, keeping 2 building in part of your counties allow being far stronger than your nomadic vassals and not having to give up too much land (as long as they have one new county from time to time), while still being loved by them (around 60-100% clan sentiment and khans with >50 opinion without being in the council). This is also possible to keep a limited number of nomadic vassals (easier to maintain high clan sentiment).

In my game, I keep all the cities (for taxes with tax oriented laws, for silk road trade posts bonuses, and because I don't want an empire full of emptiness). Counties with two cities like Samarkand, Khiva, Esfahan or Baghdad are basically 4-5 free empty holdings + good tax income* + shitloads of money from trade posts* if on the silk road (as cities increase the value of a trade zone).

* when the "burned the land modifiers" will expire

Yes you can but the will have constant -30 wrong government opinion modifier. You can revoke there titles without become tyrant.

When I revoke, I become a tyrant but only for my non-nomadic vassals... So you basically don't care as if they form a faction which fire, you should crush it with the help of your vassal khans (if necessary), emprison them and take one free title of each of them (without further opinion penalty).

Yes! Do not land them! Send the best son away as a mercenary but don't forget to marry him and all others. Nomadic succession can be tricky. You only survive when you have a son or brother of you culture.

agreed. they will not like you anymore (even hate you if you revoke and imprison in order to pillage)

joos:
6. If I give land to my family, will the other clans still consider it land held by my clan and be upset?

kmh42:
no

I never tried to give land with an empty capital slot (and non-nomadic vassals holding the buildings... or with no buildings) to a nomadic courtier. I can try this evening as I do not play in ironman. I expect that the courtier will become a tribal vassal tho (so it would not upset your vassal clans since the land is not yours anymore).

edit: I'm dumb... you can't give a county with only empty holdings since there is no title to give. you can't give a county with an empty capital holding slot either. well... bla.

This is too bad; it would be great being able to give a portion of your population along with the county so that you can create a new vassal clan around a character from your court as an alternative to the aleatory generation of new clans... (kinsman or not... if you want to reward an heroic commander or a loyal council member for instance, by allowing him to create his clan)

 

[CaptainPolyp]

Thanks a lot, @kmh42.

Another question. Is it possible to conquer the steppes, iran, middle east, turkey and india and remain nomadic all the way AND not have any regular vassals?

I guess this is possible without abusing too much (mongol hordes are really op and pillaging provide a lot of money and science...).

If you do not want any non-nomadic vassal, this means you'll have to burn every building to the ground. As the steppes are not greatly developped, there are not much buildings so no real problem. When you arrive in Khiva/Persia and further south west, you'll have to do a lot of pillage to avoid having any mayor or religious vassals... be ready for managing a lot of revolts and simultaneously your wars for expansion.

You can hold 2 buildings in some of your counties to avoid having to give out too much counties to your vassal clans. They will be worthless if you don't have a vassal to hold them due to the penalty for holding buildings of the wrong type (which is huge since you are constantly in the process of pillaging); but this still allow you to keep the remaining empty holdings of these county to further increase your max population and keep being stronger than your vassals (so that they cannot inherit the empire since your population is far greater than theirs).

If you do not do that (it feels a bit like an exploit), you can still keep the all best counties for yourself and give out the 3-or-less empty holdings counties to your vassals in order to keep your population higher than your vassal's and avoid loosing the control of the empire at some point.

I forgot one point. you'll have to revoke a lot of titles which can be problematic with Conclave, when you need the council's approval (or take tyrant modifiers). In my game, I began with laws set for the maximal power for the council. Fortunately, when I formed the mongol empire by decision, all the laws set themselves to absolute power for the ruler, forbidding the council to even ask for more power (so no factions). It made things very easy for me since I can revoke feodal/iqta vassals as I please without pissing off my nomadic vassals. if not possible to form the mongol empire, you'll want to focus on removing the council's power over the decision to revoke title (taking favors to pass the law if necessary). I don't know how it is to rule a nomadic empire while being a complete tyrant even to your nomadic vassals.

 

[Aries666]

One thing worth pointing out is that if you are going the all nomad route and burning everything you are best keeping whole dukedoms to yourself and giving away other dukedoms piecemeal to you vassal khans. This will cause your khans to hate one another due to holding counties in the same dukedom which means they are less likely to hate you. The most tiresome thing about this sort of playthrough is the slow and inefficient pillaging function.

 

[joos]

Thank you everyone. So, let me see if I have understood correctly:

- Having at least two building in a barony you control will prevent that entire county from being counted as potential clan land
- But having those two buildings means that I can't pillage further and nor can I expect the culture/religion to change soon (without having a court chaplain)
- Always send sons off to be mercs to gain prestige
- Can freely revoke non-nomad titles and not incur any tyranny from nomad vassals
- Forming Mongol Empire makes my council powerless.

Brilliant. Now a couple more questions

- Do nomadic khans create duchy titles? I have been giving out land randomly to my khans and haven't created any duchy or kingdom titles yet. But will my vassals create duchy titles? As @Aries666 mentioned, will this make them hate other khans who have land in those same duchies?

-When I started, I had the 'settle tribe' action possible for my steward. But then, the steward died and I didn't have any other eligible candidates until recently. My new steward is a Cuman (a refugee from nearby Cumania) while I am Mongol. I notice that the steward has regular 'feudal' actions and no 'settle tribe' option. Is it because he is not of the same culture?

- I have a couple of mongol men in my court who are lowborn and who have the title 'advisor'. This gives them a seat in my council. They are in my court, but they don't show up as potential candidates for marshal/chancellor/steward etc positions. What gives?

- I am not able to revoke the earlier mentioned 'advisor' title from them, nor am I able to give the title to anyone but my own dynasty. This is strange, because I currently have a low-stat khan vassal who wants a position on the council. He is useless in any occupation but I thought making him an advisor will appease him. But I can't.

- I can form the Mongol Empire even without being a Tengri, right? When my khagan converts to, say, Islam, will all the nomadic lands also convert immediately or should I painstakingly convert each and every one. Also, what about my vassal khans? Will they convert or should I make them?

 

[kmh42]

Having at least two building in a barony you control will prevent that entire county from being counted as potential clan land

Having at least two not free holdings (baronies [curches, tiribes, cities, castels]) in a county you control will prevent that entire county from being counted as potential clan land.

But having those two buildings means that I can't pillage further and nor can I expect the culture/religion to change soon (without having a court chaplain)

You can pillage till no building in every barony is left. When you pillage one more time the holding gets destroyed. But this makes it's more worthless in the long run. I think it's better to let this two holdings alone and give it a lowborn vassal from you culture and religion.

- Always send sons off to be mercs to gain prestige

This depends how you wanna manage you succession. I had a hard time the first couple of times to no accidentally get game over.
Get a wive for you and all your sons and take as many concubines as possible. Breed like crazy. After that, send your best sone away till he is far more prestige then the others. Get him back so he did't convert or get killed. When you see that he gets no sons send away another younger son.
I had two strategies: Always get inherited by a son so I had long and stable reigns.
the other one was to inhered as fast as possible to use subjugation as often as possible.
Jsut convert when you heir is away. So he stays tengri and when he inherent you can convert again to every religion. This way you can invite claimates very freely.

- Can freely revoke non-nomad titles and not incur any tyranny from nomad vassals

yes

- Forming Mongol Empire makes my council powerless.

Your power makes the council powerless. Sadly I didn't play Nomadic very often since conclave but in a large realm, especially when you have a lot of barons, you should able to have enough content people to put on the council. So they vote for you. When you expand very hard you give many feudal vassals and land to your kahns so they always like you.

- Do nomadic khans create duchy titles? I have been giving out land randomly to my khans and haven't created any duchy or kingdom titles yet. But will my vassals create duchy titles? As @Aries666 mentioned, will this make them hate other khans who have land in those same duchies?

The AI does that for no real reason. It just gives you more prestige. You don't need this. @Aries666's strategy sounds promising. This should be a good way against factions.

-When I started, I had the 'settle tribe' action possible for my steward. But then, the steward died and I didn't have any other eligible candidates until recently. My new steward is a Cuman (a refugee from nearby Cumania) while I am Mongol. I notice that the steward has regular 'feudal' actions and no 'settle tribe' option. Is it because he is not of the same culture?

Wiki:
Settle Tribe (only for tribes)
You should have:
Collect Tribute (only for nomads)
This sound very wrong. Can you provide screenshots?

- I have a couple of mongol men in my court who are lowborn and who have the title 'advisor'. This gives them a seat in my council. They are in my court, but they don't show up as potential candidates for marshal/chancellor/steward etc positions. What gives?

'fire councilor' is a diplomatic action. Right click on those people and select this option. When you want this people in another council position that you choose 'change council position'.

- I am not able to revoke the earlier mentioned 'advisor' title from them, nor am I able to give the title to anyone but my own dynasty. This is strange, because I currently have a low-stat khan vassal who wants a position on the council. He is useless in any occupation but I thought making him an advisor will appease him. But I can't.

You just can give nomadic lads to kahns and not to someone else. You need castle, city or church to give someone other a title.

- I can form the Mongol Empire even without being a Tengri, right? When my khagan converts to, say, Islam, will all the nomadic lands also convert immediately or should I painstakingly convert each and every one. Also, what about my vassal khans? Will they convert or should I make them?

ASAIK the only requirement for Mongol Empire is the mongol culture.
All 100% nomadic lands (no a single barony) will convert imminently under you control. All other counties you have to convert the old fashioned way.
You vassal Kahns will convert to you religion when they like you and the clan sentiment is good. But they also often convert to religions of provinces they hold.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

edit: kmh42 was faster than me... I keep my response as it is. it emphasize a few different aspects.

still an edit:

Having at least two not free holdings (baronies [curches, tiribes, cities, castels]) in a county you control will prevent that entire county from being counted as potential clan land.

Sorry for my approximative CK2 vocabulary. In my messages, the buildings designated the cities/tribes/castels/churches/nomadic capitals, whereas the holdings designated the slots where you build them... I'll try to be clearer next time. Thanks for the corrections kmh42

the original response:

Thank you everyone. So, let me see if I have understood correctly:
- Having at least two building in a barony you control will prevent that entire county from being counted as potential clan land
- But having those two buildings means that I can't pillage further and nor can I expect the culture/religion to change soon (without having a court chaplain)

This is a downside of doing that. It is still possible to revoke the title of the holding's holder and create a new random vassal from your religion and culture to speed up the religion shifting (if you allow yourself to have non nomadic vassals). I did that in the kingdom of Punjab: mass revokation and creation of new vassals when I created this feodal vassal kingdom.
An advantage of keeping the cities (and a few religious buildings where there is only one city), despite the taxes and trade zone bonus, is that it allows building universities and church schools for extra science.

- Can freely revoke non-nomad titles and not incur any tyranny from nomad vassals
- Forming Mongol Empire makes my council powerless.

At least this is what happened in my game. all the laws I had changed were also reset at their default value (balanced tax/levies laws, minimal status of women)... except for the council power laws.

- Do nomadic khans create duchy titles? I have been giving out land randomly to my khans and haven't created any duchy or kingdom titles yet. But will my vassals create duchy titles? As @Aries666 mentioned, will this make them hate other khans who have land in those same duchies?

You can create duchies. I don't know if vassal khans do it. but for sure, if they have a duchy, they will want all the de-jure counties in it.

-When I started, I had the 'settle tribe' action possible for my steward. But then, the steward died and I didn't have any other eligible candidates until recently. My new steward is a Cuman (a refugee from nearby Cumania) while I am Mongol. I notice that the steward has regular 'feudal' actions and no 'settle tribe' option. Is it because he is not of the same culture?

I don't know for the "settle tribe" action. All my stewarts (whatever the religion/culture) have standard feodal actions (taxes, economic science and construction) (edit: I confounded "collect taxes" with "collect tribute" so no, this is not the standard feodal actions as kmh42 already pointed out).

- I have a couple of mongol men in my court who are lowborn and who have the title 'advisor'. This gives them a seat in my council. They are in my court, but they don't show up as potential candidates for marshal/chancellor/steward etc positions. What gives?
- I am not able to revoke the earlier mentioned 'advisor' title from them, nor am I able to give the title to anyone but my own dynasty. This is strange, because I currently have a low-stat khan vassal who wants a position on the council. He is useless in any occupation but I thought making him an advisor will appease him. But I can't.

maybe you can use the "change council position" interaction. Advisor is a council position I guess?
I don't know for the other thing

- I can form the Mongol Empire even without being a Tengri, right? When my khagan converts to, say, Islam, will all the nomadic lands also convert immediately or should I painstakingly convert each and every one. Also, what about my vassal khans? Will they convert or should I make them?

I formed the Mongol Empire as a buddhist. All the empty counties are of the culture and religion of their direct holder I think. I don't know if your vassal khans will automatically convert although I expect they will not. They may in the future.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

I got a little question myself.

There's someting weird in my game about the non-nomadic vassals' taxes. They seem not to be taken into account in my income when I look at my income/expense listing (I just got income from my personal holding, nomadic taxes, trade and tributary). When I look at the expense listing of my vassals, there is no mention of any taxes. This is strange since when I click on a county (not affected by "recently burned the land") and look at the money produced in that county, it is specified how much gold is paid to me and I can look at the tooltip to see how much my city vassals (or other vassals but it is mostly mayors) owe me as taxes. I also formed a vassal feudal kindgom which does not seem to pay taxes either.

They got -100 opinion due to me revoking every feudal vassals (except mayors and a few religious vassals) for pillage but with heavy tax oriented laws, I still should have some money from them. This is not too much of an annoyance for me since I'm sitting on a pile of 21K gold, while earning 20-30 gold per month while my horde is reinforcing at full speed. With vassal taxes, my income would be a bit ridiculous (with >20/year per city) and I don't mind having a limited income in this game which is not very hard (plus I still got a lot to pillage and I can raid on top of that).

Still, this is stange since before I formed the Mongol empire (and was leading the khanate of Khiva), my city, religious and feudal taxes were shown properly in my income/expenses listing and my vassal's and I'm pretty certain I was earning these taxes.

Is that normal? Working as intended ? Or is the special title "mongol empire" a bit broken?
Is that only a tooltip error? (it would be strange given that I don't feel I get much more income per month than what's written in the tooltips; most of my money comes from pillaging)
Am I missing something which could prevent me from earning taxes? (the -100 opinion, the absolute power law, anything else???)
Is there someone else who noticed that?

 

[kmh42]

I got a little question myself.

There's someting weird in my game about the non-nomadic vassals' taxes. They seem not to be taken into account in my income when I look at my income/expense listing (I just got income from my personal holding, nomadic taxes, trade and tributary). When I look at the expense listing of my vassals, there is no mention of any taxes. This is strange since when I click on a county (not affected by "recently burned the land") and look at the money produced in that county, it is specified how much gold is paid to me and I can look at the tooltip to see how much my city vassals (or other vassals but it is mostly mayors) owe me as taxes. I also formed a vassal feudal kindgom which does not seem to pay taxes either.

They got -100 opinion due to me revoking every feudal vassals (except mayors and a few religious vassals) for pillage but with heavy tax oriented laws, I still should have some money from them. This is not too much of an annoyance for me since I'm sitting on a pile of 21K gold, while earning 20-30 gold per month while my horde is reinforcing at full speed. With vassal taxes, my income would be a bit ridiculous (with >20/year per city) and I don't mind having a limited income in this game which is not very hard (plus I still got a lot to pillage and I can raid on top of that).

Still, this is stange since before I formed the Mongol empire (and was leading the khanate of Khiva), my city, religious and feudal taxes were shown properly in my income/expenses listing and my vassal's and I'm pretty certain I was earning these taxes.

Is that normal? Working as intended ? Or is the special title "mongol empire" a bit broken?
Is that only a tooltip error? (it would be strange given that I don't feel I get much more income per month than what's written in the tooltips; most of my money comes from pillaging)
Am I missing something which could prevent me from earning taxes? (the -100 opinion, the absolute power law, anything else???)
Is there someone else who noticed that?

I personally doesn't look very often on the income/title screen so I don't know. Maybe I will check that out tomorrow do confirm on observations.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

Maybe it has to do with me owning far too much holdings (>20-30). this is not written anywhere that it affect the income coming from the vassals (whereas the tooltip in the demesne taxes specifies that these taxes are greatly reduces due to oversized desmene) but maybe this is it... I'll see when my pillaging will be finished.
one sure thing, this is not due to the "mongoil empire" title itself... I had 2 previous saves from before I formed it and in one of them, I had income from vassals, not in the other (where I think i had more holding... but I'm not sure).

 

[kmh42]

Maybe it has to do with me owning far too much holdings (>20-30). this is not written anywhere that it affect the income coming from the vassals (whereas the tooltip in the demesne taxes specifies that these taxes are greatly reduces due to oversized desmene) but maybe this is it... I'll see when my pillaging will be finished.
one sure thing, this is not due to the "mongoil empire" title itself... I had 2 previous saves from before I formed it and in one of them, I had income from vassals, not in the other (where I think i had more holding... but I'm not sure).

I started two test games. 1066 Kiva and 1220 Mongol Empire. Both are Nomadic realms with some feudal/iqta vassals. On there title scree there is Feudal/City/Church Tax listed!
Nomadic rulers have no demesne in the transnational sense. They can hold as many nomadic land as they wish when the nomadic vassals don't mind and when they hold to much castles/cities/churches, they only get reduces tax from those places.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

Thank you for checking. Given the tooltips available in the game, it is supposed to work as you describe.
I'll come back here when pillaging all my holdings will be over. Then I will not have the penalty for personally owning castles and mosques and I'll be able to see if my vassal tax problem is coming from this.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

Hello, it took me maybe a hundred years but I finished pillaging most of my holdings... Now I only own four of them and my non-nomadic vassals (cities, temples as well as kings and merchant republics) began paying me taxes (with penalties I guess since I still hold four holdings).

So everythings' OK, no bug. Just: it would be nice having a tooltip somewhere, clearly informing about that. For instance which is the cut-off number above which you completely stop receiving taxes and by how much the penalty increase for each holding held (when below the cut-off).

That said, I think not receiving taxes due to owning holding for pillage is completely worth since you get 100 gold by year by holding (2 pillage per year)... Vassals taxes never got close to such amount. I got 350/y from a whole bunch of cities as well as 3 merchant republics (2 liking me a lot) with maxed out tax shifted law (and I'll need to put the law back to the inferior level in order to get boats... I want my horses to pillage Rome).

edit: now with only 2 holdings held (without counting my nomadic capital) I get more than 1000 gold only from cities (my vassal kingdom does not provide me much tho... so I guess this in terms of gold, this is quite good; it equals to pillaging simultaneously 10 holdings, without the science benefit of pillaging. I guess this is still better to free counties slots to increase population and manpower, but city vassals can povide an interesting amount of taxes.