is "sons of ragnarok" good or bad?

[makaramus]

I see many people claimed it bad and many say its good .
I think its ok one. I like being able to reach byzantium or venice quickly as scandinavia but wasting entire doc sounds like a waste
yet "invasion" cb its giving is not bad too since you can automaticly expand your realm by invading vassals
So I wonder : is it worth to take it? or raiding only western and northern europe is more than enought?

 

[Serenity84]

By the time you reform you don't need prepared invasions yourself. For vassals it's a tossup. It can be good if they succeed. I've seen them conquer the entire British isles themselves. But I've also seen them fail a lot and reduce MA.

So if you like vassals expanding take it. If you'd rather conquer only yourself take Sea-Bound instead

 

[makaramus]

By the time you reform you don't need prepared invasions yourself. For vassals it's a tossup. It can be good if they succeed. I've seen them conquer the entire British isles themselves. But I've also seen them fail a lot and reduce MA.

So if you like vassals expanding take it. If you'd rather conquer only yourself take Sea-Bound instead

wait... do sea bound even worth it?
I was gonna pick ancestral + monastic order as example since I think its funny synergy

 

[SSA]

Sons of Ragnarok is less beneficial to you, (because odds are you are going to be fairly large by the time you reform), and is more beneficial to your vassals.

I personally recommend if you want to have a warrior religion pick
1. Warmongering or Unyielding- Depending on if you want to play offensive or Defensive as a religion.
2. Bloodthirsty Gods-This isn't as good, but the ability to grow piety with the special bloodlines you will have access to with sacrificing your prisoners to your God will make your successors gain more respect, and with an execution bloodline your secular executions may boost opinions rather than lower opinions.
3. Unrelenting or Haruspicy- if you go warmongering; unrelenting gives bonus to your attack, while if you went unyielding haruspicy can give you benefits to giving something in exchange for morale.
4. Temporal or Hierocratic- depending on whether you want to declare the GHWs or whether you want someone to declare GHWs on your behalf.

I wouldn't recommend Autonomous or Autocephalous because even though Autonomous has a military branch that gives 10 combat, you lose access to GHW, and Autocephalous isn't great because having multiple religious heads gives your realm less power for vandalizing a religious head.

 

[Bernard95]

Pretty much useless. As others have said, by the time you've reformed you won't be able to use Prepared Invasions and the sea raiding part is no big deal either. Means nothing to you if the AI prefers coastal targets and as long as you're Norse culture you can always raid and you get your ship discount. There's many other things you could take that are way more useful such as Agnatic/Enatic Clans, Meritocracy, Astrology, Unrelenting, or Stability. There's even some fun/flavor ones like Divine Marriage, Bloodthirsty Gods, Haruspicy, etc. that would have their uses as well.

 

[DmUa]

Yep. Totally useless... Except it gives you access to viking traits that grant massive opinion bonuses to germanics and other vikings. Other than that yeah 101% useless111 It doesnt give you ability to drop nukes and travel trough time.

 

[makaramus]

Yep. Totally useless... Except it gives you access to viking traits that grant massive opinion bonuses to germanics and other vikings. Other than that yeah 101% useless111 It doesnt give you ability to drop nukes and travel trough time.

Oh I thought germanic gets it allways

 

[Woifee]

Germanics get viking traits anyway.

I never take Sons because I need prepared Invasion only once and I don’t want my vassals ruining my borders by taking a huge chunk of land. I don’t like the more aggressive AI part for the same reason.

I also prefer to raid swithout ships. They cost money. I usually get borders with feudal realms and raid them.

 

[makaramus]

Germanics get viking traits anyway.

I never take Sons because I need prepared Invasion only once and I don’t want my vassals ruining my borders by taking a huge chunk of land. I don’t like the more aggressive AI part for the same reason.

I also prefer to raid swithout ships. They cost money. I usually get borders with feudal realms and raid them.

I love raiding with ships since its giving you very wide options
but yea considering novgorod staying germanic it will be better to let eastern seas ruled by them while I raid west

 

[Woifee]

Temples and cities in England and spain are as good as those in Francia.

As Saxony I made a PI to zake germany and burgundy and later I can raid francia and Italy all the time. No ships needed.

When I start with Bruno Ludolfinger, he is quite young, I can get like w0k or even 30k gold toll he dies. More than any tribal ruler ever can spend.

Also Its easy to get the raid 300 holdings bloodline with him.

 

[balmung60]

I love raiding with ships since its giving you very wide options
but yea considering novgorod staying germanic it will be better to let eastern seas ruled by them while I raid west

If you can raid, you can raid with boats. What Sea-Bound brings to the table is raiding for Pagans that don't otherwise get it, river travel, and a 90% discount on boat levy upkeep.

 

[Castimirr]

It's the most disappointing unique one to me because it's just Sea-Bound combined with downsides. The prepared invasions are useless to me as a player, and the AI tends to fail them constantly, which hurts MA.

If I recall correctly, Daring also allows/encourages people to go off as adventurers. The trait is nice, but I get tired of good commanders trying to strike out on their own. I've taken to just raising my capital levies and destroying their Hosts, then inviting them back and telling them to get back to work.

In my current game, I had my family commanding armies in Iceland during the first wave of the plague. My second son decided that was a good time to go off and get some land. He managed to snag some in Ireland and then promptly caught the plague and died. Fortunately, everyone else survived so he wasn't needed, but it was super-annoying at the time.

As to the people saying they don't raid with boats, you are missing out on a lot of money and prestige. Raiding by land doesn't get you the extra prestige and most of the counties near you can't compete with Venice, Rome, Constantinople, Egypt, and the Holy Land, especially with the trade posts boosting them. Not that it is hard to get prestige, but when you are still tribal that's just more for building and hiring retinues. Plus, it's fun planting co-religionists all over the place when you capture an heir and make sure they are raised "properly".

 

[junassa]

If you aren't worried about achievements you can get mods that allow for more doctrines. Right now I'm playing with 6 doctrines for the sole purpose of having SB + D. I was just under the realm size limit so I was able to take most of the Kingdom of Africa. The AI fails a lot but hey they took Arabia and now closing in on Egypt.

 

[mario1789]

It's not bad--it's just not especially interesting because it gives the player little agency by the time of the reformation.

The player usually can't invade after reformation because reformation usually requires substantial conquest. So the player has to allow the AI to use the invasions, which it will do from time to time with some usefulness. But the player can't make an interesting choice as to when the AI does this, so the lack of agency is less interesting for the player.

The other most important aspects--raiding and the viking/pirate traits--often can be obtained by a bloodline instead. River access provides a handy choice from time to time but not especially critical to most strategies. So the choice is less interesting because the benefits can be obtained otherwise (or the player already has them through a bloodline) or aren't especially grand.

Compare the player agency in Sons of Rangarok with the player agency in Bloodthirsty Gods. Bloodthirsty Gods isn't especially powerful, but the player has tons of agency: sacrificing prisoners (for relatively little gain), the mediocre bloodline, sacrificing population for boosts, blood games, flower wars (not nearly as powerful as prepared invasions), mediocre but flavorful traits (much less powerful than the viking traits), etc. All of this is player agency, so it is more fun--I'll take Bloodthirsty Gods much more often than Sons of Ragnarok.

So because of the diminished agency, the Sons of Ragnarok is just less interesting for the player at the stage of the game where the player makes the important and permanent choice to take it or to take something else.

 

[Btdg]

Germanics get viking traits anyway.

I never take Sons because I need prepared Invasion only once and I don’t want my vassals ruining my borders by taking a huge chunk of land. I don’t like the more aggressive AI part for the same reason.

I also prefer to raid swithout ships. They cost money. I usually get borders with feudal realms and raid them.

Use vassal ships to raid. There’s generally more of them so you can carry more loot and they cost nothing to raise. The raised levy vassal penalty goes away as soon as you start raiding. And when you return you get ridiculous amounts of orestige

 

[Woifee]

Use vassal ships to raid. There’s generally more of them so you can carry more loot and they cost nothing to raise. The raised levy vassal penalty goes away as soon as you start raiding. And when you return you get ridiculous amounts of orestige

Sure as feudal, but not as tribal.

 

[ZacmanTheDamned]

It all really depends on how successful you allow your religion to be beyond your personal control. If you're going to just consolidate Scandinavia and some small other realms, then build up strength for a WC while maintaining highly centralised control of just what land your vassals are allowed to hold, stick with seabound. On the other hand, I like to slowly rip kingdoms out of Europe and Britain, then slowly turn them into powerful local authorities and set them loose rather than just eat everything. This, combined with the mass conversions you'll likely get on eastern Europe if you feudalize quickly, makes prepared invasions really useful in just chipping away at Christendom and Islam (and Africa, since I find they tend to reform if you break the Islamic world).