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Safsoufa

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Jun 9, 2020
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I'm interested in getting Sword of Islam because I want to play Muslim rulers but the reviews on Steam are pretty bad and from asking on Discord people say that there are not many differences, just a reskin. Wanted to ask here as well.
 
No op Crusade, you get jihads wich are imo much more balanced. You get to choose your heir with iqta government wich is pretty powerful. You basically chose your best son and give him a mosque and he is now heir over all your lands (no gavelkind is pretty neat). More taxes from vassals and more taxes from infidel lands is also powerful. You also get access to the mighty invasion casus belli, wich is very strong (1000 piety for a whole kingdom). Theres also decadence to balance them out but it is super easy to keep under control (even more if you are the caliph). Overall muslims are very powerful but i Guess the sheer opness of the holy fury Crusades keeps them in check
 
Forgot about the many wives you can have, wich is a double edged sword (lots of sons but these damn wives can and will try To kill their step-sons to assure their own sons succession to your lands
 
It's not as interesting as Christian. Flavour events suck (copy-pasted Quran quotes, bunch of stuff that barely makes sense). Iqta succession is straightforward but boring: your first son inherits everything, and if you don't like him, just bung some titles on another son to make him 1st in line. Daughters, and thus women, are worthless and to be ignored (like playing a 10th century version of Saudi Arabia), as women can't inherit, nor marry matrilineally (unless you mess with the silly "status of women" laws in the late game).

Also a nightmare to deal with vassals if you're like me and obsessive about everyone holding de jure land. Every Muslim gets a free conquest CB on anyone they neighbour, so every vassal will attack everyone they border.
Plus side, though: free duchy revocation.
 
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muslim faith is conquest based faith
simply you have more sons, more stable govement and more taxes from heathens.
They have better cbs that can be used to conquer even more and its very difficult to lose titles
Trouble is its very difficult for nations to change dynasty since women cant give surnames to their children ever and they cant rule untl future laws unlocked but you dont want to do it unless she is very good because it actually allows you to slip your dynasty from power

They use Piety as a resource, You can use it to declare great wars to conquer a lot of land allways.
on the other hand christians want to have christian lands more unless they want to make pope happy. As christian you want to pass laws that stabilize your realm and compete with others to become most contributing crusader.
If you vassalize pope somehow you become warmongerer as muslims and influance all catholics drastically.
So here is the deal:Catholism is more centralized more authoratian religion that is led by pope and pope can do a lot of things so if you control pope you control europe
on the other hand muslims are more distant to each other. Yes there is Caliph but he mostly cares about wars and nothing else its just a very presigious title.
Its close to imposible to unite realms as muslim with diplomacy while for catholics its everyday stuff.
Muslims tend to snowball much faster than catholics but if a catholic empire forms and stabilizes itself it tends to become as much as powerful and even more valueable
 
Just to elaborate a bit on the Open succession: basically, your most powerful heir inherits everything. If you land 1 and only 1 of your sons, he'll be your heir. So wait until most of your sons are adults, and land the best one of the bunch, and he'll be your heir. If you happen to die before landing any of them, it'll basically default to Primogeniture, and your oldest son will be your heir. Be careful about fathering bastards, though, because Open succession doesn't care about legitimate sons vs bastards, so if you have a bastard eldest son who hasn't been legitimized, and none of your sons are landed, the bastard will inherit and it'll be game over.

Also, under Itqa government, you can own temples (which will be mosques) with no penalty, which can be especially helpful for players who like to play tall.

I would disagree with the poster who stated that playing as a Muslim under Iqta is less interesting than playing as a Christian; personally, I think both are less interesting than playing as a pagan, especially with Holy Fury.

Also note that there are a few Muslim realms that start off as Tribal, rather than Iqta; I haven't played any of them, but AFAIK, playing with then is about the same as playing as a Christian tribal ruler.
 
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^ I haven't properly played pagan yet (apart from an old game when ToG came out as a viking count of somewhere in Sweden). But i find in the inevitable downtime that it's more fun managing your daughters to inherit land, or to further your dynasty, or to snag useful unlanded men, or even just a little pact -> alliance with someone whose war you can join.

With Muslims, they're good for nothing. If you marry your daughters off, they'll inevitably be killed for trying to poison another son, or for trying to convert to another sect of Islam (even with 100% MA). I often marry daughters to viceroy kings, who execute them in droves for one reason or another. The lack of diplomatic expansion is a real let down, since it's an interesting part of the core CK experience (which is to say, Christian games).

I looked forward to playing Muslims, as in my mind i expected it to be a case of easy expansion but infighting and difficult to maintain through succession. I thought decadence would mean any son without land would become decadent until he has land -- preferably something proportionate to realm size. So you'd have to land sons, and thus weaken yourself and your desired heir.
Instead people randomly become decadent, and quite randomly accept to stop-being-decadent, and if they don't you can kill them. So everyone just grows obese in title accumulation. Which is what makes it quite boring.
 
Yeah, Christian gameplay is all about the marriage game, manipulating inheritances, inviting claimants, etc., which I find more interesting.

Muslims and pagans tend to already start with easy CBs and much less importance on claims/inheritance, so the idea is that you should be more concerned about managing the after-effects of expansion (Muslims have decadence, pagans have enforced gavelkind, possibly elective, until they reform). Which you prefer is a matter of preference (I far prefer Christian gameplay, but I know some people who are the other way), but in general I find pagan mechanics as a better take on the "easy CB" style than Muslim mechanics, and have a clearer goal in terms of reforming.

It's worth noting that decadence has changed drastically at various points: when SOI was released, it worked strictly on the dynasty level, as a number that ticked up based on the number of unlanded (or insufficiently landed, if you were big enough) sons. The AI couldn't handle it, people complained, and it led to a situation that people found to be unfun. So they eventually changed it to the current system (where characters become decadent on their own, and you tell them to cut it out). I have no idea what CK3's take on it will be.
 
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Yeah, Christian gameplay is all about the marriage game, manipulating inheritances, inviting claimants, etc., which I find more interesting.

Muslims and pagans tend to already start with easy CBs and much less importance on claims/inheritance, so the idea is that you should be more concerned about managing the after-effects of expansion (Muslims have decadence, pagans have enforced gavelkind, possibly elective, until they reform). Which you prefer is a matter of preference (I far prefer Christian gameplay, but I know some people who are the other way), but in general I find pagan mechanics as a better take on the "easy CB" style than Muslim mechanics, and have a clearer goal in terms of reforming.

It's worth noting that decadence has changed drastically at various points: when SOI was released, it worked strictly on the dynasty level, as a number that ticked up based on the number of unlanded (or insufficiently landed, if you were big enough) sons. The AI couldn't handle it, people complained, and it led to a situation that people found to be unfun. So they eventually changed it to the current system (where characters become decadent on their own, and you tell them to cut it out). I have no idea what CK3's take on it will be.
with new personality traits abilities that making almost no trait truly negative and also stress I expect if decedence return I expect it to be related to stuff that reducing stress by committing sins
adultry,drinking,being lazy etc... such actions will cause decedence if they are common in your dynasty.
Instead you are supposed to spend time with friends etc to keep decedence and stress low at the time
This way it will be actually challenging mechanic.
currently its a stupid trait you ask AI to get rid of... as far as I know you cant even get it and it is %100 negative trait that AI actually has no reason to want to keep it but keeping it for RP reasons only
if bounded to stress mechanic it will make sense why you would want to be decedent while reminding your other dynastic members to not be
 
I thought decadence would mean any son without land would become decadent until he has land -- preferably something proportionate to realm size. So you'd have to land sons, and thus weaken yourself and your desired heir.
That was how the original iteration of the system worked, but iirc that meant the easiest way to play was to murder every male member of your dynasty other than your own sons (and then on succession execute all your brothers immediately.) And of course the AI didn't do that so every large Muslim realm got constant decadence invasions.
 
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Yeah, to reiterate what others have said, they're definitely easier to start as a lowly count and work your way up. Conquest CB against your neighbors is extremely powerful when you're small, and can enable you to grow as a vassal. You can also hold mosques in your demesne, and they give you a bunch of money and some troops. So when I play its usually:

1) Go on pilgrimage to Mecca for piety.
2) Change law to enable revocation of titles
3) Revoke any mosques (or castles) in my demesne.
4) Conquer.

I really like it because the area that they're in is extremely interesting. You have strong counties, the Silk Road running through a bunch of them, as much or as little conflict as you want, etc. They've got Indian religions to the east, nomads to the north east, Christians to the north west, and African tribes to the west. And a, hodgepodge of stuff in the horn of Africa to the south.

Decadence is pretty easy to handle, and if you're a vassal you're pretty secure anyway. Only real downside is that Holy wars don't give you the titles, just (pissed off Christian) vassals. But otherwise, go have fun!
 
Only real downside is that Holy wars don't give you the titles, just (pissed off Christian) vassals.

And once you pass the law to revoke titles for religious reasons, that's easily handled.
 
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As others have said, it's a religion built for conquest. Think of them as pagans but without the crippling Gavelkind, their Open Succession is basically Primogeniture but with the option to choose your heir by landing them. Women are completely useless aside from alliances (there's no inheritance game either as a result), and Decadence is an extremely minor mechanic that you can nip in the bud by holy warring and exempt your character from it completely if you simply become an Ashari. That said, all men outside of your heir are a potential liability. To make it easier to lock them up when they inevitably become Decadent, don't bother landing them.

Other things also play into the idea of conquest- Iqta taxes for conquering infidels, the free duchy revokes (which you'll need since holy wars vassalize rather than granting you the land), the Conquest CB for a paltry amount of piety, and the Invasion CB which requires a good chunk of piety. Speaking of which, piety is a pretty big deal too. The two aforementioned CBs come from that, dealing with your Decadent relatives require piety, and you also can't change laws without it as well. The Theology focus is your friend to say the least.

As was mentioned by someone else though, the big counterweight to all these advantages is the insanely overpowered Catholic crusades. There's also a possible threat from the nomads and Chinese, depending on where you are exactly.
 
Speaking of which, piety is a pretty big deal too. The two aforementioned CBs come from that, dealing with your Decadent relatives require piety, and you also can't change laws without it as well. The Theology focus is your friend to say the least.

Yeah, it was good of you to point that out; the rest of us had forgotten to mention it. Piety is a big deal for Muslims in the game, which is actually probably the biggest difference from playing as a ruler of any other faith.
 
Be aware that although daughters are largely useless, they're still a potential powder keg ready to explode.

They generate inheritable claims that they'll pass on to their offspring.

Just like everyone else if you marry your daughters for alliances, Make sure that it's not the top title holder/your direct vassal or his heir.

Otherwise you will likely generate foreign claimants who may be strong enough to press that claim in the next generation.

Sons are also the same. All of them get strong claims on the top title and a large negative opinion against other brothers. They're more likely to leave your court and be a claimant threat or adventurer.