Is it good? Didn't play CK2 in ages, but kind of bored of EU4, and have no so much time to learn HOI4.
Planning to buy Horse Lords
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Yes and no.
Yes because it makes the far eastern regions interesting and adds a fun government to to play with.
No because when you played one nomadic ruler every other one plays the same. And the AI suck in being nomadic. In nearly all my recent games all nomadic are gone after a few hundred years.
I think when you can get it cheap then there you can make nothing wrong.
I would recommend conclave more
Yes because it makes the far eastern regions interesting and adds a fun government to to play with.
No because when you played one nomadic ruler every other one plays the same. And the AI suck in being nomadic. In nearly all my recent games all nomadic are gone after a few hundred years.
I think when you can get it cheap then there you can make nothing wrong.
I would recommend conclave more
I've enjoyed pillaging the cowards who hide behind walls. If you are interested in pillaging and burning with a horde at your back, it is certainly worth it 
Not to mention the idea of creating a mercenary bands is pretty badass as well.
On the note of HoI IV, it's not all that hard to learn either, and the tutorial is fairly well done to get you started.
Not to mention the idea of creating a mercenary bands is pretty badass as well.On the note of HoI IV, it's not all that hard to learn either, and the tutorial is fairly well done to get you started.
IMO yes. Although reception to it has been rather mixed so you might not agree. It's also an 'optional' DLC that doesn't really affect anything if you don't play as a nomad.
Horse Lords adds the Nomadic government type. Nomads are very powerful on the offensive since they rely on retinue-like Horde troops which can reinforce and are easily customisable. They also have lots of offensive CBs, including a single-county conquest CB, a duchy-level conquest CB, an interesting Kingdom-level Invasion CB that depends on population levels and a possibly-overpowered subjugation CB that can destroy entire non-nomadic Empires.
In exchange they are supposed to be very unstable since they are forced to consolidate their realms under very large powerful vassals called clans, which have a unique relations system. It's not really possible to go North Korea Mode as a horde, even temporarily. Horde lands have no settlements (except the capital encampment) so they can be occupied very easily without a siege. As with tribal counties, feudal kingdoms can build forts in occupied horde lands in order to keep them from being re-captured easily and help with supplies. Because provinces change hands so easily, the real strength of the Hordes comes from their, well, Hordes. Battles with Nomads are usually very decisive. Nomads also have a rather unpredictable succession system in which the son with the most prestige inherits, and the clan chiefs can and will attempt to seize control by force if they're dissatisfied for any reason.
The problems with Horse Lords mainly stem from the fact that Hordes are *not* actually very unstable, despite the developers' intentions. Civil wars are frequent but hordes rarely actually break up. In the beginning of the game the small Central Asian hordes (like the Turks, the Kipchaks and the Karluks) will quickly be conquered and destroyed by their more powerful neighbours in Mongolia and the Pontic steppes, Russia will fall to the Khazars and eventually the whole northeast quarter of the map will end up dominated by one or two enormous nomadic superpowers. The game appears to be designed to make settled peoples hate nomad rulers (in order to further destabilise the Hordes) but in a bizarre decision the developers decided to make tyranny basically inconsequential for them, meaning that nomads can just revoke every single settled title without consequence. This might be different now with the altered council (I haven't been a horde since I installed Conclave), but in my experience a nomadic empire can just rule by terror and crush everything beneath their horses' hooves. North Korea Mode might be impossible since you need to have clan lords in your empty steppe provinces, but settled provinces are fair game. It's possible to hold the entire Byzantine Empire by yourself as long as you allow the clans a few scraps of land in Hungary.
That being said, this is a genuinely fun expansion most of the time. Nomads exist off-map, they cannot be destroyed except by killing all their soldiers, so if you find yourself annexed by the Uighurs you can declare an invasion and migrate off to some distant country for conquest, provided of course that they didn't kill all your soldiers. Raiding is brilliant fun of course (as with pagans) and from a role-playing perspective the range of possibilities for interesting conquests is amazing. Maybe a band of Alan mercenaries will leave the steppe and journey to Brittany or Spain and set up a Catholic kingdom of their own? Maybe the Karluks will unify the steppes into a great empire, only to be crushed and forced into India? Maybe Turks will aid a Zoroastrian rebellion/restoration and destroy the Abbasids? One of the most fun play-throughs introduced by the Old Gods expansion was as Hastein, going around the world and setting up some exotic new Norse kingdom, and Horse Lords really doubles down on that sort of great migration experience. Once you actually start conquering the world you become an unstoppable superpower and the game turns rather easy, but isn't that unfortunately the case with the rest of CK2?
Horse Lords adds the Nomadic government type. Nomads are very powerful on the offensive since they rely on retinue-like Horde troops which can reinforce and are easily customisable. They also have lots of offensive CBs, including a single-county conquest CB, a duchy-level conquest CB, an interesting Kingdom-level Invasion CB that depends on population levels and a possibly-overpowered subjugation CB that can destroy entire non-nomadic Empires.
In exchange they are supposed to be very unstable since they are forced to consolidate their realms under very large powerful vassals called clans, which have a unique relations system. It's not really possible to go North Korea Mode as a horde, even temporarily. Horde lands have no settlements (except the capital encampment) so they can be occupied very easily without a siege. As with tribal counties, feudal kingdoms can build forts in occupied horde lands in order to keep them from being re-captured easily and help with supplies. Because provinces change hands so easily, the real strength of the Hordes comes from their, well, Hordes. Battles with Nomads are usually very decisive. Nomads also have a rather unpredictable succession system in which the son with the most prestige inherits, and the clan chiefs can and will attempt to seize control by force if they're dissatisfied for any reason.
The problems with Horse Lords mainly stem from the fact that Hordes are *not* actually very unstable, despite the developers' intentions. Civil wars are frequent but hordes rarely actually break up. In the beginning of the game the small Central Asian hordes (like the Turks, the Kipchaks and the Karluks) will quickly be conquered and destroyed by their more powerful neighbours in Mongolia and the Pontic steppes, Russia will fall to the Khazars and eventually the whole northeast quarter of the map will end up dominated by one or two enormous nomadic superpowers. The game appears to be designed to make settled peoples hate nomad rulers (in order to further destabilise the Hordes) but in a bizarre decision the developers decided to make tyranny basically inconsequential for them, meaning that nomads can just revoke every single settled title without consequence. This might be different now with the altered council (I haven't been a horde since I installed Conclave), but in my experience a nomadic empire can just rule by terror and crush everything beneath their horses' hooves. North Korea Mode might be impossible since you need to have clan lords in your empty steppe provinces, but settled provinces are fair game. It's possible to hold the entire Byzantine Empire by yourself as long as you allow the clans a few scraps of land in Hungary.
That being said, this is a genuinely fun expansion most of the time. Nomads exist off-map, they cannot be destroyed except by killing all their soldiers, so if you find yourself annexed by the Uighurs you can declare an invasion and migrate off to some distant country for conquest, provided of course that they didn't kill all your soldiers. Raiding is brilliant fun of course (as with pagans) and from a role-playing perspective the range of possibilities for interesting conquests is amazing. Maybe a band of Alan mercenaries will leave the steppe and journey to Brittany or Spain and set up a Catholic kingdom of their own? Maybe the Karluks will unify the steppes into a great empire, only to be crushed and forced into India? Maybe Turks will aid a Zoroastrian rebellion/restoration and destroy the Abbasids? One of the most fun play-throughs introduced by the Old Gods expansion was as Hastein, going around the world and setting up some exotic new Norse kingdom, and Horse Lords really doubles down on that sort of great migration experience. Once you actually start conquering the world you become an unstoppable superpower and the game turns rather easy, but isn't that unfortunately the case with the rest of CK2?
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I personnaly like it more with horse lords even as non nomad... It's better with hordes in central Asia than with tribals.
To explain better for the OP, basically what Horse Lords changed about tyranny was that nomad vassals do not care at all about any atrocity or crime provided that it's committed against a non-nomad. Apparently CK2 believes that Nomadic Empires operated under a kind of segregation system where the glorious tent-living master race cared nothing for the cries of the filthy house-peasants and were basically fine with their Khagan taking all their land for himself as long as he didn't touch the clans' precious fields of nothing. You can literally execute every feudal vassal in your empire and there will be no opinion modifier amongst the clan lords whatsoever. Of course the settled people will all hate you as normal, but they hate nomads anyway and since they will always provide 100% of their levies/taxes to you there's no consequence from that. If they do rebel you can just send in the hordes to massacre their pathetic armies, smash their castles to the ground and steal their wives.
Going on a rampage of tyranny can be fun of course but it makes the game a bit too easy for nomads, and futher more steppe nomads weren't Nazis devoted to killing and pillaging everything. The Mongols went around wiping out towns, but they're The Exception, other nomadic empires didn't depend on ridiculous levels of brutality.
Going on a rampage of tyranny can be fun of course but it makes the game a bit too easy for nomads, and futher more steppe nomads weren't Nazis devoted to killing and pillaging everything. The Mongols went around wiping out towns, but they're The Exception, other nomadic empires didn't depend on ridiculous levels of brutality.
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If anything the correct balance would be to have the nomads getting mad at you for owning non-nomadic holdings (that haven't been pillaged, in order for you to actually have an opportunity to pillage them down to nothing as intended) and have some sort of decadence-like system to weaken hordes that depend upon castles and cities more than pastures. Give decadent leaders a choice between settling down and returning to the steppes. Non-nomadic vassals should also be able to break away peacefully on succession.
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I'd buy it during the steam summer sale on Thursday. That's what I'm doing
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Unless you're in Russia and the Khazars are ruining your day...
I've tried quite a few times to survive trapped beetween Khazars and the ERE with the goal to "tribalize" and later "feudalize" the steppes as a challenge but I'm yet to succeed
After trying Nomads with Conclave...
Bloody hell they've ruined it! Spoilt all the wonderful migration fun by nerfing the nomad super-CBs. Invasion now requires 30,000 population, I can't just go and lose all my land and run off to India to re-enact the Hepthalites, no, someone *HAD* to complain about the 'exploit' of giving up your territory intentionally and going on the rampage. Subordination needs 50% of your pop-cap, although admittedly that CB was always less fun owing to the fact that you needed a border to use it. Subjugation is also nerfed, you need 10,000 population to do it.
Bloody hell they've ruined it! Spoilt all the wonderful migration fun by nerfing the nomad super-CBs. Invasion now requires 30,000 population, I can't just go and lose all my land and run off to India to re-enact the Hepthalites, no, someone *HAD* to complain about the 'exploit' of giving up your territory intentionally and going on the rampage. Subordination needs 50% of your pop-cap, although admittedly that CB was always less fun owing to the fact that you needed a border to use it. Subjugation is also nerfed, you need 10,000 population to do it.
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After I bought horselords I made this thread. The cliff notes, it's pretty good but cumbersome.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ations-with-horse-lords.916535/#post-20880218
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ations-with-horse-lords.916535/#post-20880218
Not so far as I know, I haven't played CK2 since I posted that thread though. As with a lot of Paradox DLC it just felt that they didn't really play test the main features enough and I think CK2 is at a point now were any problems that are present will likely never be addressed.
Pillaging is a hassle and I only do it to either steal money or wipe out a small area for resettlement. It's also completely a-historical. Nomads were not really vicious predators aiming to destroy everything and lay waste to the earth. The Mongols sacked some cities (probably not as badly as their propaganda makes out) but that was a military tactic, there was no aim to make the world into a desert.
On the Dan Carlin's podcast he brings up a story about a time when the mongols noticed people from an occupied city where trying to marry their daughters to mongol soldiers to save them from abuse, they had every girl and woman raped in front of their parents.
Another spectacular story that if I remember right was told by the mongols is that after losing a prince in a battle they had a 1000 enemy soldiers executed in front of the mother as retribution.
These may be stories and propaganda, but it is the kind of image the mongols wanted, that way they had to fight less as people would rather surrender than fight such foes.
On the mongols in the game, I feel they could use an extra opinion malus when the current khan dies, that way it reflects the succession instability that stopped their advances. But I am not sure about the rest of the nomad, I feel they work fine, maybe it is just my opinion that the tribal counties should be given a tiny bit more of a defense against them.
I think it is totally worth buying if you enjoy playing with Vikings and raiders, nomad resource management feels different than any other government type, they are the more RTS'y of the playable governments in my opinion
Another spectacular story that if I remember right was told by the mongols is that after losing a prince in a battle they had a 1000 enemy soldiers executed in front of the mother as retribution.
These may be stories and propaganda, but it is the kind of image the mongols wanted, that way they had to fight less as people would rather surrender than fight such foes.
On the mongols in the game, I feel they could use an extra opinion malus when the current khan dies, that way it reflects the succession instability that stopped their advances. But I am not sure about the rest of the nomad, I feel they work fine, maybe it is just my opinion that the tribal counties should be given a tiny bit more of a defense against them.
I think it is totally worth buying if you enjoy playing with Vikings and raiders, nomad resource management feels different than any other government type, they are the more RTS'y of the playable governments in my opinion
Mongol invasions (at least during Ghengis Khan's reign) were not only about war. Part of their strategy was about making loud and painful examples to encourage peaceful submission of nearby populatios, and maybe some stories were made up to achieve this (by their enemies and by themselves).
However, refusing to submit had dramatic consequences; they razed Samarkand and Bukhara when taking over the Khwarezmians, they completely wiped out the Western Xia who betrayed them (I've sometimes read that it could be the first genocide in history although I'm not sure it's true) and Persia took decades to recover from its Mongol invasion (with most of its population killed... well there was a famine just at the same time... doesn't help either).
Their governance was surely quite progressist in terms of cultural and religious tolerance, they encouraged and organized trade and some mongol rulers (for instance under the Ilkhanate) permitted a prosperous and flourishing reign for the territories they controlled (rebuilding them). But they were not really the steretypes of "good savages" (providing they were savages... whom they were not).
However, refusing to submit had dramatic consequences; they razed Samarkand and Bukhara when taking over the Khwarezmians, they completely wiped out the Western Xia who betrayed them (I've sometimes read that it could be the first genocide in history although I'm not sure it's true) and Persia took decades to recover from its Mongol invasion (with most of its population killed... well there was a famine just at the same time... doesn't help either).
Their governance was surely quite progressist in terms of cultural and religious tolerance, they encouraged and organized trade and some mongol rulers (for instance under the Ilkhanate) permitted a prosperous and flourishing reign for the territories they controlled (rebuilding them). But they were not really the steretypes of "good savages" (providing they were savages... whom they were not).
I'm enjoying Horse Lords. /shrug
Sad that horse archers are so ahistorically weak, though.
Sad that horse archers are so ahistorically weak, though.
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