how do you expand as a Nomad in Reaper's Due?

[efreund]

Hi, like many of you, I am picking up CK2 for the first time in about a year. So happy with the Reaper's Due patch! Last time I played for any real length of time was after Horse Lords was released, and I learned how Nomads worked. I played Conclave briefly enough to get the gist of council-fu, and I've mostly got a handle on that. But now that I'm back in the saddle (harhar) I can't figure out what to do?

How do you expand as a Nomad (in the Reaper's Due patch)?

My problem seems to be with CB triggering conditions. Against other Nomads, or against Tribals, I have the border-conquest CB, fine. But against those juicy Feudal/Iqta targets? How do I attack them??

• I don't have any border-conquest CB against Feudal/Iqta targets
• there's a basket of three other CBs which have the little dude-with-spear icon (Invasion, Subjugation, and something else), which I find very frustrating:
  • when I hover over the CB themselves, where it lists the various conditions to call the war, what happens if you win, etc. - I meet the various conditions and can click the selection button
  • for whatever it's worth, most of the time, my council approves of it (but I've also gone to war without their consent before, this is is doubly a non-issue)
  • but when I hover over the "Send" button (which is disabled for those three CBs), I get a fairly complicated list of conditionals, but the important bit is that I have to have a certain population before I can declare war
    • this population threshold is explicitly different for Tribals vs non-Tribals, and I basically always have enough to meet the threshold of Tribals
    • but the population threshold for DoW against non-Tribals is a moving target, and is always about 10%-20% higher than my current population; I keep re-checking as my population grows, and I keep being below the pop threshold to DoW!!
• there's the "Make Tributary" CB, which is a dandy way to quick net some Prestigue for a new ruler, but since lifespans are so short in Reaper's Due (and tribs go indie on death), it doesn't feel as "worth it"
  • also, since tribs don't technically count as your territory for purposes of calculating borders (for CB-purposes), this isn't an expansion strategy
• as a Nomad, my Councilor doesn't have the ability to fabricate claims
• as a Nomad, I cannot Holy War (even though I'm non-pagan)
• marriage-and-inherit-fu could work, I guess, but that doesn't feel like the proper way of the Horse Lord

So what do I do? It seems my major problem is the bolded part above. But in order to get my population up, I need to do stuff, like take land from other Nomads, prune my vassals' holdings, etc. But doing this moves the goalpost. It seems like I have the CBs, I just don't have ... the will? What gives?

How can I expand?? I'm Altaic culture group (Uyghur specifically) and Manichean religion if that matters. I'm the leader of the Horde and not a tributary to anyone else. I have no non-Nomad vassals or holdings (intermittently held tributaries not withstanding). Do I need to convert to Tengriism to get better CBs?

I wanna burn some Iqta holdings to the ground! Long-term goal is to take Persia and become a Manichean Saoshyant. But I can't even pick off an OPM count in the Tarim Basin!

Thanks for any insight.

 

[Sunspawn]

You're supposed to keep other nomads around and use the Humiliate CB to steal population from them.

 

[RagingJaws]

Religion does matter, in terms of CB's. Manicheans, if I remember right, are slower to expand due to not being able to doing single province border conquests.

Population really doesn't take many first tier %pop growth buildings before growth gets into a very healthy %month range, providing ample time to subdue ducal regions, even without using humiliate on other nomads. I've never really had a problem using the cb's presented, though I've rarely felt the need to use Invasion. I find taking duchies and the time it takes to burn them down to empty holdings is just long enough for my population to grow enough to be able to subdue another region.

Maybe I'll start up a Ughyer game and see for myself. I've only ever played as Tengri Nomdas (Mongols/Turks).

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

Religion does matter, in terms of CB's. Manicheans, if I remember right, are slower to expand due to not being able to doing single province border conquests.

Population really doesn't take many first tier %pop growth buildings before growth gets into a very healthy %month range, providing ample time to subdue ducal regions, even without using humiliate on other nomads. I've never really had a problem using the cb's presented, though I've rarely felt the need to use Invasion. I find taking duchies and the time it takes to burn them down to empty holdings is just long enough for my population to grow enough to be able to subdue another region.

Maybe I'll start up a Ughyer game and see for myself. I've only ever played as Tengri Nomdas (Mongols/Turks).

It's not just Manicheans. If you're any religion other than pagan ones like Norse or Tengri you can't county conquest settled peoples, only nomads and other tribals.

So if you're Buddhist nomad, you still won't be able to county conquest a Muslim or Christian realm, and the reverse is true as well.

Basically, the only way for you to county conquest settled peoples as a nomad is to have a pagan religion.

 

[Aries666]

I started up a game a Khazar last night, initially you should humiliate some hordes and make tributaries of others. For Uyghur once you have done this you should start county conquests of Buddhists in the Tarim basin raising everything to the ground as you go, this will net you a good chunk of money and prestige to expand your horde and build up your camp. Wherever possible create new Khan when you get land requests, early on having a few strong Khans is more of a threat than help. Once you have all that you should be able to hit the 30k pop limit to use the invasion CB but if you're not there yet you can expend 300 prestige to take neighbouring duchies through the subjugation CB. I would beeline for Khiva mostly so that you can raise it to the ground making yourself spectacularly wealthy and prestigious.

You should try and convert to Tengri aswell, for reasons posters above mention.

 

[efreund]

Thanks for your replies!

I guess what I don't "get" is how those population thresholds are calculated. Like I said, it's a moving target. On a conceptual level, what am I going for? How is this calculated? It's not transparent to me what my pop needs to be at, other than "about 20% higher", regardless of what I do, it keeps moving out of reach. The tooltip isn't super helpful.

 

[Tatterhood]

Thanks for your replies!

I guess what I don't "get" is how those population thresholds are calculated. Like I said, it's a moving target. On a conceptual level, what am I going for? How is this calculated? It's not transparent to me what my pop needs to be at, other than "about 20% higher", regardless of what I do, it keeps moving out of reach. The tooltip isn't super helpful.

As I understand it, you need a certain percentage of your max population, which is based on how much land you hold. So any conquest you do in the meantime is potentially counterproductive if your goal is to get to using the fancy CBs.

Edit: Actually, I think it's just invasion that requires a certain percentage, and for the other two it's just a flat number. Maybe you should check those ones and see if you can do them, if you've only been trying invasion.

 

[Zander]

Yes. 90%, last I knew. So increasing your maximum really doesn't help. Keeping your maximum constant and increasing the rate of growth will give you those CBs.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

If you didn't know, you can also abandon counties to increase population growth, and you lose the population limit from the county as well which should easily put you through the 90% threshold.

 

[efreund]

Yes. 90%, last I knew. So increasing your maximum really doesn't help. Keeping your maximum constant and increasing the rate of growth will give you those CBs.

K, n00b question time! How do I keep my maximum constant (I guess this means "stop expanding"? or is there something more implied here)?
And How do I increase the rate of growth (just "build the right buildings in capital"? or something more)?

I guess population mechanics are quite opaque and non-intuitive to me. I get how they feed into manpower and feed into army-growth, but I don't get the supply-side of it at all. (Which apparently determines which CBs you can use? It's really too bad that organized-religion Nomads can't Holy War, since only Pagans can Border Conquest: seems like an odd asymmetry.)

Continued thanks o my fellow forumites!

 

[Tatterhood]

K, n00b question time! How do I keep my maximum constant (I guess this means "stop expanding"? or is there something more implied here)?

If you give away land to other clans it will reduce your maximum without reducing your current population.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

K, n00b question time! How do I keep my maximum constant (I guess this means "stop expanding"? or is there something more implied here)?
And How do I increase the rate of growth (just "build the right buildings in capital"? or something more)?

I guess population mechanics are quite opaque and non-intuitive to me. I get how they feed into manpower and feed into army-growth, but I don't get the supply-side of it at all. (Which apparently determines which CBs you can use? It's really too bad that organized-religion Nomads can't Holy War, since only Pagans can Border Conquest: seems like an odd asymmetry.)

Continued thanks o my fellow forumites!

You can abandon or give away a province as I suggested above. Your maximum population decreases and you get a population growth bonus as well if you just abandon.

 

[efreund]

OK, cool. Thanks Dabian and thanks Tatter.

So taking these tactics and cobbling them into a strategy, tell me if I'm understanding correctly:

Basically, you need to "breathe in and out", which is to say, capture some land from other Nomads to stimulate faster population growth, then as you start to approach your max, shed these newly captured lands (to vassals, hopefully), to drive your max pop below your current pop, then DoW a serious landed target. Burn them to the ground, grow your pop, then shed them to drop your max pop, etc. Don't go for constant growth, but oscillate?

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

OK, cool. Thanks Dabian and thanks Tatter.

So taking these tactics and cobbling them into a strategy, tell me if I'm understanding correctly:

Basically, you need to "breathe in and out", which is to say, capture some land from other Nomads to stimulate faster population growth, then as you start to approach your max, shed these newly captured lands (to vassals, hopefully), to drive your max pop below your current pop, then DoW a serious landed target. Burn them to the ground, grow your pop, then shed them to drop your max pop, etc. Don't go for constant growth, but oscillate?

Ya, pretty much, but if you do it right, constant growth should be guaranteed. It's not like you lose actual population if you shed counties, not unless your max pop falls below actual population levels. If possible, I'd just switch to Tengri since it gives you a significant bonus to light cavalry, and you can switch to whatever religion you like later on.

 

[Aries666]

Yeh the max cheese method is to conquer land, give it all away (after pillaging if that's your thing) the put yourself back under the pop limit and declare on the next kingdom. Most of your quick WC's are going to be doing this.