3) I'm not sure what the deal with the event that pops up where I have a choice of either dying, or a knight appearing in my court, but I clicked the knight option and suddenly an insane amount of troops (like 30-40 thousand in 10 thousand stacks) appeared from nowhere in my counties, more than any ruler in the world had at that stage (most I'd seen or had was about 1000), and wiped me out mercilessly. This wasn't clear from the event text, which suggested I would have a character appear in my court who I assumed I would be able to make a marshal or something and more a bonus than a game ending event. I also don't understand what happened or where all those soldiers came from or why there were so many. Also given the Gavelkind situation I found several times I would respond to a call to arms of a brother and find out he had picked this option, and again, the one act of agreeing to war with him would be a 100% certain game ender. I couldn't see any way to identify these crazy guys beforehand, so ended up having to turn down every call to arms I received just in case.
this happened because you went negative on your prestige. You probably went negative on your prestige because you were hoarding too many counties. Give some away to family, preferably your heir
I'd also appreciate if anyone had any tips how to survive the savage period at the start, as after about 10 tries on very easy (and I consider myself a decent if not good player) I found it impossible to survive. Especially with all the events out of my control where I can get overrun by the magically appearing mega stacks or have myself auto-declare war on a bigger enemy who can then take all my land and will refuse surrender. I only got through it to play the rest finally by using observe and selecting a duke after the savage period ended. Though admittedly I did start at the earliest date
1. Try to stay at war with those YOU choose. You don't want to be forced into a conflict with the wrong person at the wrong time. This won't happen so long as you are at war with someone, so pick someone weak.
2. don't expand in just any direction. You want to minimize the number of neighbors you have so that fewer wars will be declared on you. The best way to do this is to take counties that lead to you having the fewest possible neighbors.
3. When it's getting close to time for the cultural shift around 111, you will want to keep as much land as you can. Try to get rid of some of your heirs somehow and try to have a larger demesne. It may eat up some prestige but so long as you don't go negative you'll be fine. Once the shift happens the barbarians next door who wouldn't attack you before (if they are of your culture) will be happy to do so now.
4. Try to spread your own culture and religion around a little by giving away land that you don't want or need. It will help protect you early on and create a more interesting game later. Barbarians are less inclined to attack others of their own culture when there are foreigners around to attack instead.
5. If someone declares war on you you don't have to take their land. You could just defeat their army, make them no longer a threat to you, and use their county as a sort of wall between you and whats beyond them. I don this all the time and it can really help.
6. Once you've won a fight, don't always enforce demands. Let the county transfer to you automatically. Enforcing demands won't give you the gold and sometime you have the recently conquered penalty.
7. Occasionally dismiss your troops, even if you are at war. It will help you to restore your numbers. Remember, even though you levies are always restoring you can't raise them until a certain percentage has restored while you have levies raised. If you dismiss the raised levies you can then raise everything. It can sometimes be a significant boost.
8. When you give away land, put your heir in a location that allows him to expand. Then place your other children/relatives somewhere behind him. He will gain more land and they will help him do it. Then, after succession, you should get all his land.
9. Another way to deal with succession is to conquer enough baronies to disinherit most of your male children. You will not be able to spread your religion and culture very far and the resulting game will be less interesting, but it is possible to keep a greater number of your original counties if you take this path.
10. If you have spread your dynasty all over the place, consider using seniority succession for a while. It is terrible once you get too big, but is very useful early in the game and allows you to unite more dynasty lands than other succession types.
