Did you guys ever tried Nomads? That's beyond insanity level of OPness
Also on retinue - cap is calculated based on number of holdings in your realm. Fully stocked feudal realm will be able to wield much more retinues.
Also on resources and raiding - I assume we are talking WC, and at some point you will have lesser and lesser targets to raid, your retinues might die out to attrition, you need to restock and might have a problem with prestige restock. You also need to beat those Mongols and Aztec (well, ok...you all hate poor redskiners - let's swap them with yellowskiners) and place your pygmy on Dragon Throne. Those doomstacks might challenge your tribal retinues.
What jwalche said is fairly true in many cases (you can number crunch you LI be more efficient than your LC), but it does not matter actually what army you will have - under human control any army can be deadly. Your insane commanders against those 0 martial mayors....you can do it with feudal armies too
You can do it even better I suppose, cause you still have access to LI+Arch and you have pikes, so don't even need mercs.
Also, don't try to think of CKII as a proper wargame with 'what blablabla is better'. You better enjoy it as is. Yeah yeah - we all can think of a thousand ways to crunch the numbers (really - nomads are beyond op, you can't even properly play low with them - so then let's all play nomads and stay nomads forever?). But the meme side? But the imbecile ruler as commander having only your 0 years old brother as last dynast left? But the nonstop f..ry and limitless male heirs with elective gavelkind?
My point - in reality there is nothing to WIN in this game, but there is a lot to EXPERIENCE and ACHIEVE.
P.S.: That African shots, saw them in other thread too. For lulz wanna flex too (and it was waaay before), just to help with numbers, 'cose that puny 10k on 17k is not impressive enough
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While I agree with your main points, I still have a few things to say;
1. OP nomad. True. Especially from day 1 if you dismiss the the starting LC+HA horde and get pure LC horde, until you have enough money to get LC+HC.
2. Raiding. Raiding is almost pointless by itself. It's usefulness comes from being able to capture women and children. I won't bother much unless I have a warrior's lodge rank or something. The ransom money totally compensate your tribal retinue's loss. As the prestige from raiding alone is enough replenish it. Raiding is good for getting full experience of the game, with all the destroyed buildings, holdings, and traits / bloodline to create. Raiding is good for exploit world conquest, as you can steal enemy vassals with their wives.
3. Feudal being strong at Player's hand. Absolutely true both in normal game and exploity games. But the fun is handling a supposed to be weaker tribal and becoming op I guess. With last Feudal game, I never get to use it's retinue because the world was united in less than 2 years and my retinue size never reached even 10k (the limit was over 120k, but the world couldn't wait for it to reach its full strength)
That said, I think self-owning (which is exploit by the way) the same number of fully upgraded tribal counties give more retinue points than having same number of fully upgraded feudal counties. (doesn't matter if in demesne in feudal realms) Though I am not sure and the number would be comparable anyway.
But in the beginning a tribal county with level 1 hill fort gives more retinue than a feudal county just one upgrade.
4. With basic understanding of the battle mechanic, you don't need to crunch numbers all the time. It is probably need only a few battles in the very beginning, until your really weak realm can be strong enough to hold its own. It gives more enjoyable experience to a standard roll playing game starting as a small tribal, simply because you can survive the beginning.
With my current game with 769 Sigurdr Ring again, I didn't go for the Feint tactics at all. I didn't build any buildings hill forts or prestige based, until I became a king and united all Germanic faith. I wanted to save 5000 prestige to forge a bloodline fit for a hero - Silent Killer. What little gold I got from ransoming my tribal neighbors, I used on inviting my fellow lodge members and paying off conspirators.
For retinue, I got a few LI only retinue in the beginning because they can siege better than LI+AR, and replaced them to all LI+LC after subjugating Saxony because they can storm holdings better than LI+AR. For battles I have my allies' army so why use mine? I didn't do that dirty North Korea exploit so I have all my royal vassal chiefs, from the traditional families! Well, I did plot murder or duel killed most of adults so my chiefs are mostly children. I love children. Especially that they don't start wars very often.
It was possible because Sigurdr's start is so powerful that I didn't need any number crunching and battle plannings. Getting a couple of Romuva and Suomi holy warriors was more than enough. Sigurdr can snowball by just making all neighbor counts as tributary. Each new tributary makes you stronger since they can't refuse your call. Then you make all the three duchies in the south as your tributaries using the tributary allies. Then you subjugate Saxony with 1000 of own men and 5000 tributary allies.
After becoming a king, all count neighbors will swear fealty to you, and you can force the few completely levy-depleted (from fighting your wars) petty king neighbors with 1000 prestige each. All it takes 5 years (hurried) to 10 years (relaxed). I don't plan to expand my realms from here. I am enjoying relaxed expansion and roll playing, while breeding and collecting bloodlines. I will probably found a small custom empire instead of uniting Scandinavia, and become a Christian too so that I can become a Crusader King. I had never enjoyed all the events that the game gives.
For roll-playing, I also became Hero and lodge master of Germanic Warrior's lodge. I sent armies of lovers to plot murder all ruler members of level 3~4, and gift-invited unlanded ones to plot murder in my court. Until I became the lodge master as lv2 on my 7th year, and became a hero renown free. A true warrior of women and battles I think. Or a hero-schemer whatever.
Hero-schemer works. My duel targets try to run half the time, but my high intrigue gets them 80% of the time. I have about 150 PCS from all the duel experience, duelist trait, and so forth.
Then I used my saved (instead of leveling up to level 3) renown to start a legendary gathering, with the bar almost full now. Too bad that Ragnarr and his brothers just became members as a 14~12 years old boys and can't join me on my heroic journey that bards will sing about.
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