Knights Templar Custom Nation fun!

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

So I had been playing around with a mod that unleashed the custom nation builder(Unlimited points, no restrictions on how high an Idea can go) and for fun I replaced Bosnia and Serbia with a stupidly OP "Knights Templar" so I could fight a silly war with the Ottomans where I was heavily outnumbered but ultimately victorious. The result was predictable, but still enjoyable. I defended Albania and they gave me nothing in the peace deal so I annihilated them before laughing off the silly campaign.

It is nice to play something light hearted from time to time

That got me thinking though, if I were to make a more realistic TKT how would I go about it, and who better to help me than the EU4 board.

This would(obviously) be an alternate timeline where the Knights still exist. I'm thinking they would still be pushed out of the Holy Land, but still in the rough neighborhood. They are still a prestigious and wealthy order and they never get targeted by France over debts. So here we go:

800 point cap

Name: The Knights Templar
Government: Monastic Order
Religion: Catholic
Tech Group: Western
Units: Eastern
Culture: Francien(?) My logic here is the first Grand Master was from Troyes. I can't find any figures on who the Knights pulled most of their ranks from, so this is what I'll go with unless someone else has something better.

Land: I honestly don't know what land I should give them. Cyprus is an obvious choice, but that just seems like a good way to sit for a very long time doing nothing but hoping the Mamluks don't come knocking. I could give them Malta as well so they would have a bit of a power base. Possibly in this alternate universe France pays back their debt with a handful of provinces in the south of France? I'm very open to suggestions.

Ideas: I have a couple thoughts, but I am unclear on order and strength.

Cavalry Combat Ability-The Knights were know for their heavy Cav

Shock Damage-Doubling down on the Cav

Manpower Recovery Speed-To simulate people joining the Order from outside held lands

Trade efficiency/Tax efficiency- To simulate donations

Lowered Interest per anium- To simulate innovations in finances

Raid Coasts- I don't think the Templar knights were well known for raiding, but this will represent a constant state of Warfare with the Muslim nations and add something to do during down time, which I fear there will be much.

Diplomatic reputation-They were a popular order for a time and in this alt-history they managed to keep France from ending them.

Fort Maintenance- I stretching here but they did build castles.

?????

That's about all I have. I'd be very grateful for thoughts, participation and critiques. I'm a history enthusiast, but by no means an expert so I'm sure I have several things terribly, terribly wrong.

 

[KaiserWilhelmI]

Something about banking should be included in their national ideas, since they pretty much invented banking. Also from wikipedia: "They (Templars) owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East, built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships."
So they really were a "state within state". The Templar army could also move freely in Europe with papal sanction.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

I'd say something for banking (less interest, maybe) and shock damage as your traditions.

1) Military bonuses are obviously appropriate but I'd go for quality bonuses over manpower boosts as the fighting wing of the templars were more known as a small skilled force. They never had more than 2,000-odd knights. Discipline, tradition, morale, cavalry combat and shock bonuses are all appropriate and you could pick any of them.
2) Financial bonuses should have a banking rather than a trade kind of feel. I'd be against trade boosts.
3) Development cost reduction might be appropriate? They were notably good at managing & improving the land they controlled. Alternatively, advisor cost reduction or bonus advisors. The templars had a hell of a lot of people working in chapter houses & so on, including nobles and other well-connected people and often their most skilled men weren't their combatants.
4) Dip rep is definitely appropriate. Solid alternatives would be AE reduction or + diplomatic relation slots.
5) One naval idea (maybe galley combat or ship durability?) would be appropriate, especially if you build quite a scattered mediterranean state.
5) Missionary strength could maybe be in the last few ideas if your order's ambition is to retake the holy land.

Land should include Cyprus plus fortified coastal outposts in Israel and Syria. Cyprus would make the most sense as a capital, I think? You could give them individual coastal provinces almost anywhere in the Christian world to represent land grants by individual rulers. Portugal, Spain, the balkans and southern France would all make sense.

Obviously this is all just my two pence.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Some good stuff there. I'll wait a little longer then play around in the Nation Creator and post the final outcome. Probably tomorrow.

 

[Yuiiut]

As per the CK2 converter ideas for them, the Templar are interesting. +10 disc is a bit of a relic from an elder age, though

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I like a lot of this. I'll probably use this for a base now that I know it exists. Definitely going to tweak some of the ideas like the extra leader and Heathen tolerance. One seems useless and the latter seems...generous to the events that transpired during the Crusades.

 

[sr999]

Interesting and great fun. Obviously the idea is to RP it. With that in mind...

(Disclaimer: by way of law I'm a modern Templar of sorts but retain few illusions)

Thanks to @Yuitt, but I would start from different premises than the CK2 converter.

In my view the starting point is to consider the effects of the downfall of the Templars to reverse-engineer how a surviving Templar nascent-state might have devloped and, even more importantly, how other nations might have developed if the Templehad survived. Basically we have to invent 140 years of history in general terms.

For instance the Templar remnants in certain places (such as, most obviously, Spain and Portugal), were reformed/absorbed into national military Orders created for the purpose: in that role becoming the vanguard of the Reconquista, on behalf of their domestic nations rather than their original Order. So to mod it, you might want to transfer some of the Reconquista/Berber DHEs/missions etc to the Templars. Maybe also give them Murcia and Languedoc (more below) - which I imagine would be controversial but at least would set up nicely plausible conflicts with everyone especially France, while Portugal and Spain thus become less interested in Granada and the Berbers... Etc.

Similarly you might consider other things to try to focus Temple attention to the East, such as:

• missions focusing on the obvious places such as the Holy Land (permanent claims might be way OP)
  
• random events giving them boosts to money (donations) when anyone calls a crusade and they're fighting the crusade target; or perhaps better would be events creating small "transport fleets" as donations in kind.
  
• Conversely, temporary morale losses and random manpower transfers from Templars to anyone fighting the owners of any Holy Land provinces whenever the Templars themselves are not fighting that same owner (to represent their own members putting up two fingers to the management and saying hey just because our gutless leaders don't want to fight doesn't mean we can't);
• perhaps good/bad things happening dependent on their relationship with the Pope (cough), if you want to boost monastic order events. But maybe short of your leaders being burned at the stake...
• Anti-Templar missions for Sunnis, and/or anyone holding Holy Land provinces, are essential.
  
• Beyond that, it would be very nice to have random crusade-like Sunni jihad DHEs against any Templar-held Sunni territory - with bonuses to all Sunni fighting the Templars plus penalties to all Sunni who are fighting them? After all the Templars were rather good at attracting Islamic hostility.

These are just random suggestions: some of them might be very difficult / impossible (especially the last) if you're not either a modder or computer techie.

Ideas? Not sure you need raiding. A few things like serious extra negative attitudes, missions etc, from Islamic nations might do the trick there (see above!). Overall, mostly agree with @Horn and Ivory except for naval and missionary:

• there's no suggestion the Templars were ever keen on boats. Though in fairness the Hospitaller's boating skill was emerged from their raiding etc so I guess that raiding and boat ideas stand or fall together. What you could do I suppose is reduce the price of transport boaties to simulate other nations' willingness to help you ship your berserkers to the Holy Land.
  
• Missionary is just silly. I mean the Templars were much more keen on killing evil ("malecide not homicide") than converting it, right? Very much along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius. Besides, you get all the conversion bonus you need from Religion. Please tell me you're going to take Religion, right??!!!!. You need some serious penalty events if you haven't taken it anytime after 1460!

Specific niggles:

• Banking? I think as they were the lenders rather than the lendees, tax bonus might be better than interest reduction? Or trade as their profits were linked to others' trade? Yuitt's suggestion of inflation reduction has merit. But I incline toward tax bonus as of course they were excellent estate managers. (If you like you can substitute one of the proper banking thingies)
• Discipline? I note the Templars were notoriously indisciplined outside their own tiny order, not awfully good at taking orders or sticking to any plan. So I simply don't like discipline.
• Similarly dislike tolerance of heathens, see above. They may have liked infidel insights, but still didn't like infidels or even peasants?
  
• Army Tradition? Temple arrogance also led to poor leadership and poor strategic and tactical judgment so I also dislike army tradition for them.
• Dip Rep? Anyone who gets burned at the stake arguably has sub-optimal dip rep... but I let that pass coz we're pretending it couldn't happen...
• Shock damage? I don't like even that... because their numbers at the top hard-core level, were always small (if only because of their aristo obsessions). So their undoubted deadliness better might be represented as +1/+2 Shock leadership ,because the hard-core lads can be present in decent numbers in only a few places at once - while the insanely fanatical squadron charge technique, from which the whole army could benefit, seems sufficient to justify it across the whole army?
  
• I like both development cost reduction AND adviser cost reduction - though extra advisers and leaders without upkeep are tempting?

It'd be nice to add nerfs such as core cost penalties (given their conformance to the crusader ruling-as-elite rather than colonizing/integrating model) and stability cost penalties, but we don't have those yet!

So FWIW here's my Templar 200-point and "ideal" provinces and top ten ideas list, merging both suggested sets and adding mine.

Sample provinces - simulating (a) the Templar holdings everywhere (coastal for access), and (b) political tensions as the Temple morphs into a nation-state:

• Cyprus (obviously, as the springboard to the Holy Land)
• Corfu (capital, for range to others - less implausible than Malta as all over the place in the 14th century, plus useful instant conflict with Ottomans)
• Murcia (to facilitate Templar aggression against Granada, and to cause trouble with Castile/Aragon
• Languedoc (because it fits so well with Cathar conspiracy theories! and to cause trouble with France)
  
• Lika (to cause conflict with Austria and Hungary without weakening Austria)
  
• Salento (for trouble with Naples/the Italian peninsula, while still permitting a reasonable relationship with the Pope)
  Essex (for trouble with England, would have picked Norfolk but range too far and Kent would get in the way once England has been Eexited)

Ideas - Sequence as you wish but for me front-loading combat, diplo relations, and bank/estate tax bonus seems appropriate. I've put the "200-value" ideas by default. Alongside them, in parentheses, I put the "ideal" values (which would take total cost up to circa 350-370 depending on leader values):

1. +10(20) Cavalry Combat Ability [tradition]
   
2. +10(10) Morale [tradition]
3. +1(1) Shock leadership pip
   
4. +1(2) diplo relations
   
5. +10(20) Tax bonus (option trade bonus or traditional banking idea)
   
6. 10(20) Development cost reduction (yes, this deliberately doubles down on the estate management, but you can substitute here if desired)
   
7. -10(20) Transport cost reduction (yes, kind of useless but...)
   
8. +1(2) Diplomatic reputation (let's assume by this time they've learned to play nicer with people)
   
9. -10(20) Adviser cost reduction (or extra advisers or leaders without upkeep to taste)
   
10. -20(20) Fort Maintenance [ambition]

(Yes, I'll try out the 200-point version (unmodded) - but I'm not good at reporting back!)

HTH

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Excellent stuff. I didn't plan on making a mod, although I probably could. I'd rather stay away from the modding board as I don't wish to register my account. I did that once and regretted it...

I'll be making the custom nation tonight(I hope they have fixed the nation saving bug.) Thank you for all your help, I'll post what I settle on. I will be using more than 200 points, I've played enough hard starts in this game for a while.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

• there's no suggestion the Templars were ever keen on boats. Though in fairness the Hospitaller's boating skill was emerged from their raiding etc so I guess that raiding and boat ideas stand or fall together. What you could do I suppose is reduce the price of transport boaties to simulate other nations' willingness to help you ship your berserkers to the Holy Land.
  
• Missionary is just silly. I mean the Templars were much more keen on killing evil ("malecide not homicide") than converting it, right? Very much along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius. Besides, you get all the conversion bonus you need from Religion. Please tell me you're going to take Religion, right??!!!!. You need some serious penalty events if you haven't taken it anytime after 1460!

I suggested boats partly because I imagined that a surviving order with a bunch of provinces scattered around the Med would find that it needed a naval presence (i.e. the ability to reliably transport troops between its holdings) to be viable long-term: doubly so as the game doesn't simulate 'military access throughout the Christian world'. Can certainly see the argument against though. Missionary strength because the game tends to simulate a penchant for murdering all the heretics as missionary bonuses (it is after all an effective way to quicly change the religious profile of a province).

Overall though, those are some beastly suggestions. Well-argued and precise.