Irritating Event Invasions

[duccen]

I have recently spent many hours playing as muslim rulers and I absolutely love their ability to expand and conquer quickly. But something that just outright ruins the experience for me is when a vassal out of nowhere launches an invasion on me [playing as the Seljuk dynasty]. I wouldn't matter much, if not for the fact that he was granted 50,000 goddamned troops immediately! They just spawn out of thin air. At the time I had a total levy size of 37,000 men; plus the 10,000 mercenaries I was able to recruit, but I still stood no chance of winning as he quickly stormed and captured my domains. He ultimately won and was declared the new sultan and I was imprisoned and downgraded to duke [beylerbey] of something irrelevant. This made me ragequit and write this thread. Why is this implemented and how is a one-county vassal given that oppurtunity? Does this happen while playing Christian rulers? And just for the record I am not using any mods. Please share your input.

 

[Grubnessul]

Those are desert warriors, upset with your decadence. Keep it low by killing and landing your sons. It's a feature special for Muslims.

 

[Nintz]

What he said.

To be clear, this is caused by decadence. Decadence is a Muslim-only feature, and is specifically designed to prevent them from having a huge, rich, and stable kingdom for very long. Christians don't have this.

Decadence is caused when your adult males in the family don't hold enough land and titles for their individual ranks. A prince, for example, needs at least a duchy. If you have a very talented ruler, special events can lower decadence a bit, and decisions can also lower it by a few points once in a while. The Seljuks in particular are rather difficult to start off, because the family is very large, and usually gains more than the required decadence level fairly quickly.

 

[duccen]

What is the recommended decadence level?

 

[Grubnessul]

IIRC 25% is the normal. Above it you'll receive penalties, below bonuses.

 

[Lamprey]

Just keep it at 0 for the 20% money/morale boost. It's quite easy, actually. Some ground rules:
1. Nobody in your family except for you should ever own land. Any adults of your dynasty, other than yourself and your heir, should be in prison and/or dead.
1a. Dead is better than in prison.
2. Your heir should be on the council once he's an adult.
3. Hold Ramadan from time to time to lower decadence.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Something you can abuse (but lets face it, decadency is gamey to the point of being silly as it stands) is to make your sons spy masters, send them to Greek lands until they get castrated.

Even if you give land to all your family members, its easy to hand out enough land to keep under %70 decadency by having frequent invasions and giving non-city titles to family members only. Be warned, this is a lot of micro and downtime. Its kind of fun, though. DO NOT become an emperor. You can't control the decadency of your family members who are vassals of a king.

 

[duccen]

How do you kill/imprison your sons without pissing everyone off? And why would you ever want 2 or more wives if that is the case?

 

[Grubnessul]

You want those wives for the prestige/alliances. Also, Muslims can imprison their sons without pissing off their vassals IIRC.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

You want those wives for the prestige/alliances. Also, Muslims can imprison their sons without pissing off their vassals IIRC.

I think just your extended family. Sons you just have to either not have or deal with some other way. Maybe rile them to revolt/plotting and then imprison them.

 

[duccen]

I've just tried imprisoning several of my grown sons as different Muslim rulers. You still get the the -40 dislike points from your vassals for being a tyrant.

 

[Alpinia]

Every person of your dynasty except your sons can be imprisoned without penalty.

 

[Grubnessul]

Every person of your dynasty except your sons can be imprisoned without penalty.

Oh, my mistake.

 

[unmerged(600321)]

Handling decadence is fairly easy.


1. Imprison wives when they try to kill a son. Don't let them out (wives in prison don't get pregnant).
2. Imprison non-children male relatives and banish them. No tyranny opinion gained for this. Safest to first grant them a minor holding (barony, city, etc) before imprisoning them. This prevents any risk of them running away (they will fight you and get crushed easily).
3. Educate your children with guardians with low intrigue. You can make an exception for your heir and 1-2 backups, if needed.
4. Give newly conquered counties with levy penalties to all adult sons other than heir (can't imprison, execute or banish them without tyranny opinion). This way they are extremely easy to imprison/banish/kill once your heir takes the throne.
5. Give your best trait son some land to ensure he is your successor. Agnatic open is awesome because if you marry 4 genius wives, chances are one of your sons will be a genius. You can basically almost always have a genius heir take over and get all the bonuses (+5 opinion and bonuses to all stats is damn nice). You can't achieve this with any Christian ruler unless you save scum or risk kinslayer by killing any non-genius heirs.


Decadence at 0-5 is fairly easy to maintain once you get it lowered. Just make sure you have at least 2-3 male dynasty members alive in case you die. You don't want to kill every last dynasty member. Give these 2-3 people a holding (or several if you are big because you will need to if you want to avoid decadence) to keep the decadence low.

 

[hajutze]

Just a note, you can give your kin cities ... they count as land and mayors (and the turkish equivalent) don't marry ... soo ... no kids.

 

[Alpinia]

I think winning a holy war or successfully defending against it reduces your decadence by 10, and winning a jihad or successfully defending against a crusade by up to 100.

 

[NezzeOne]

Every person of your dynasty except your sons can be imprisoned without penalty.

More appropriately -- brothers can be imprisoned. Fathers cannot wantonly kill their sons, but male children can imprison and execute their brothers without incurring a penalty.

 

[Alpinia]

More appropriately -- brothers can be imprisoned. Fathers cannot wantonly kill their sons, but male children can imprison and execute their brothers without incurring a penalty.

I'm not able to test this right now, but I'm pretty sure you can also imprison/execute uncles/nephews/cousins/random kinsmen/etc without penalty.

 

[Dutchling]

Decadency get's kinda broken if you get relatively large. I was Emperor of Hispania, and I had various sultans who still increased my decadency. Ever since that happened I turned decadency off (making it give no bonuses or make it ever increase). This also made the (not already overpowered, like Fatimid) Muslims less pathetic.

 

[MartinSWE]

More appropriately -- brothers can be imprisoned. Fathers cannot wantonly kill their sons, but male children can imprison and execute their brothers without incurring a penalty.

With the huge negative opinion modifiers for brothers and even worse half-brothers it is recomended to immediatly imprison all your brothers/half-brothers whenever you get a new ruler. they will mostly hate you and will be inclined to cause problems if left to their own devices.