Shiaa Ireland - How to raise moral authority?

[fleetothemoon]

Hi all.

I was playing Canary Island and originally planned on reforming African religion building an African Empire from there but my nearby neighbor was gobbled up by a huge Sunni Iberian blob... so I figured I might as well just convert to Islam and invade Ireland instead, since I never played Iqta before anyway. I picked Shia since they had a unique society and also because, I could easily convert to it via the society.

So after a few fabricating claims and using conquest CBs, I took over the entire Ireland. However, I had trouble converting the provinces here since moral authority was really low. The main reason for this was because Shia controls none of the holy sites. All of them were controlled by a super mega Sunni blob, who is too far away from me to interact with, let alone declare war on. Of course, even if I could get closer to them, I would be severely outmatched...

There is a medium Kingdom sized Shia caliphate around Tripoli sandwiched between two mega Sunni blobs. I don't envision them ever being able to take the Holy Sites on their own.

With that in mind, what can I do to take over these holy sites? I don't really want to invade Middle East and just want to have fun terrorizing Christian rulers in the north, raiding them with berber culture, but this doesn't seem like a feasible long-term strategy if my MA keeps tanking. Should I just convert to Sunni or Catholicism?

 

[Rydelfox]

I think a successful Muslim county conquest should give 1% MA (I know if does for the pagan version), a successful holy war gives 3% MA, and if you are able to raid (I don't think Muslims get this inherently, but you can also get it through culture) you can loot temples of other religions for 1% MA each.

 

[BuddyLove]

Holy Wars are the way to go-- pick on the remaining Pagans and the pesky Catholics; pick countries you can bully around and conquer quickly, and Holy War them for the most counties per shot.

Then you get to replace all the Churches with mosques.

Antagonize Catholic vassals and get them to rebel (one at a time) or be imprisoned, then you can revoke their titles and again take the Churches for mosques.

Alternately, if the Vassal is already positive towards you, Jack that score to 100 and demand conversion-- then they will help convert others.

When you're going through the prisoner tab, after you've ransomed everyone, you will see you have people you can banish-- you can also demand they convert to be released, and voila, more good Shia Muslims to help.

Alternately, if you have gold, you get moral authority just for building Churches- so go on a Mosque building spree and litter Ireland with Mosques in every county.

 

[Zsrai]

You're still Berber culture and can raid... so get raiding. Sacking enemy Temples is 1% MA, and you'll get plenty of cash to hold off any Catholics that end up coming for you and prestige/gold for holding upgrades.

Holy Wars are always good, but may be dangerous since they call in coreligionists; it may be worth waiting and seeing if any Germanics invade and trying to HW them (or the Catholics while they are distracted with Norse invaders).

Finally, if you just want to mess around and raid... you can do that as a Catholic anyways since you're Berber culture. Just don't burn down too many Temples in the process or you'll tank Catholic MA. Maybe take some trips down to Gibraltar and raid the hell out of the Muslims down around there if you're worried too much about MA. Or go Sunni and raid the Catholics into the ground.

 

[jwalche]

Muslim county conquest is bad. It costs 50 piety that you don't get back. And piety has big uses in Muslim play. Muslim invasion costs 1000 piety. Holy war and raiding are the way to go. Holy wars also lower your decadence if it is not already at 0%.

Buy mercs with raiding gold to protect your raiders to burn the temples when the enemy stack comes after your raiders, stay firm on your ground until you have burnt every holdings in Rome and Constantinople to ground, come back to them every two years.

Get Chinese siege engineers if you can. And Chinese strategist who will train Chinese siege engineering to your commanders, who are already siege leaders. I had a Chinese siege engineer who were also a siege leader, giving +180% siege speed with 20 martial. Make vassal merchant republics to levy their ships, so your raiders will never have to walk between counties on foot. Just load and unload. The mercs guarding your mostly LI raiders can walk as you can't have that many ships. I once had a good working system that I could burn every Mediterranean holdings in about two years. A perfect timing because it takes two years for them to put down the fire so that I can burn them again.

Just mindless raiding of a couple decades will raise your moral authority to top and ground Catholic to 0%, inviting all sort of heresy and Francia and Italy breaking down into smaller pieces on their own. You also get huge prestige and golds to forge a great bloodline and create a custom empire.

 

[fleetothemoon]

Thanks for the tip everyone. Looks like I just need to go and raid like crazy

 

[Zsrai]

Thanks for the tip everyone. Looks like I just need to go and raid like crazy

I find that is the solution to most problems in CK2.