so i started the demo with poland..

[unmerged(57202)]

and i just dont understand why there's so little amount of troops to the counts and dukes in my realm.. in every province i got on avarege 400 troops, and to my vassals only 6-10 on avarege. how do i change that? i wanted to counqure the country to the north, but they got thousends of troops!
thats all, i'm sorry for my not-so-good english..

 

[Bertouch]

and i just dont understand why there's so little amount of troops to the counts and dukes in my realm.. in every province i got on avarege 400 troops, and to my vassals only 6-10 on avarege. how do i change that? i wanted to counqure the country to the north, but they got thousends of troops!
thats all, i'm sorry for my not-so-good english..

1) Raise the opinions your vassals have of your ruler. 2) Change the laws so that Crown Authority increases.

Both of these will help you get more troops from your vassals.

 

[yourworstnightm]

Yes, basically the vassals send you only portions of their potential troop number if a) they don't like you and b) they can get away with it. So the only remedy is as Bertouch explained to try to raise Crown Authority and increase your relationship with your vassals (which you need to increase crown authority anyways).

 

[maniac23]

Also building improvements in your castles that increase levy size and troop diversity help as well as raising your tax income. A good strategy with Poland is to save up some money and hire a merc army to take on their horde while you siege their provinces.

 

[yourworstnightm]

Money is your friend. If you want to beat pagans, you need to be able to afford mercs.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

Pagans certainly aren't the punching bag they were in CK1. I have seen Mecklenburg with an army of almost 6000 men in 1066, which is certainly more than Poland or Denmark can raise at the start of the game. And pagans seem to have tendency to bandwagon if you DoW against one of them, so quick war against Pomerania can turn into battle against 10 000+ pagans from Prussia and Lithuania.

 

[SlyEcho]

But you can easily ignore these other wars since they are unrelated. When you win what you originally wanted, you can just surrender to the other pagans.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

But you can easily ignore these other wars since they are unrelated. When you win what you originally wanted, you can just surrender to the other pagans.

True, but it will cost you huge number of prestige and make you look like a total loser in the eyes of your vassals.

 

[SlyEcho]

It's not a huge number for a king. It's much better to sacrifice prestige than to lose all your troops (fight with levies) or money (fight with merc). Especially when a powerful duke is just waiting for a chance to strike.

Of course you don't have to surrender to every one of these, only the most powerful ones that you can't hope to take on.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

It's not a huge number for a king. It's much better to sacrifice prestige than to lose all your troops (fight with levies) or money (fight with merc). Especially when a powerful duke is just waiting for a chance to strike.

Of course you don't have to surrender to every one of these, only the most powerful ones that you can't hope to take on.

But why lose at all? If you time your attack other pagans might be busy elsewhere and if you have proper allies you can actually win the wars, thanks to their help. In game as Sweden I married one of my sons to elderly Rurikovich princess and got help of several Russian principalities to my battles against pagans.

 

[S0ny B1ack]

Pagans certainly aren't the punching bag they were in CK1. I have seen Mecklenburg with an army of almost 6000 men in 1066, which is certainly more than Poland or Denmark can raise at the start of the game. And pagans seem to have tendency to bandwagon if you DoW against one of them, so quick war against Pomerania can turn into battle against 10 000+ pagans from Prussia and Lithuania.

Yeah, i personally like the changes they made to pangans - in CK1 starting near them was almost like having free additional territory at the beggining. Now you have to prepare to take them on, save up money for mercs, improve your holdings (during the demo i managed to raise 1000 troops in my capital and more than double the levy size in 3 or 4 other provinces - which made a huge impact) and be opportunistic When some of the pagans are busy fighting another christian ruler you can take the chance and invade another one of them (at least he won't have that much help from his neighbours)

 

[3inar]

Change to a pagan religion and you will gett a improvement in your capitol city of the region with the pagan culture called "Warrior cult" and this will give you about 500-600 more troops for every region you own with pagan religion.

I know it is a realy bad thing as the catholics getts free holy war declarations on you but I whanted to add a new suggestion to the lisst
BTW, building the "warrior cult" will only cost 10 gold in every region.

I tried this in Sweden as a norse pagan and I was unstopable, while every one catholic in sweden had about 500-700 troops in every region I had 1100-1700 troops in every region. When I had 4 pagan regions under my control I had about 4600 troops in total(all my own troops, vassals had about 200).

The only real problem being a pagan is the options to declare war isent to bigg.

 

[SlyEcho]

Later when everyone has upgraded their castles the pagan advantage becomes smaller. The added troops are also of a lower quality.

 

[3inar]

Later when everyone has upgraded their castles the pagan advantage becomes smaller. The added troops are also of a lower quality.

Then you have to uppgrade your castles as whell

 

[Conqueristo]

Played the demo three times now with Poland.
Every time, Duchy of Silesia has rebelled and declared war not too long after I changed the law allowing me to revoke titles.
Whenever I went for a pagan bashing up north, every neigbouring pagan would subsequently declare war on me.
My first game got stuck when my leige's lover fell pregnant (known bug).
The second game lasted the whole 20 years, I slowly built up Krakow's fortifications, inherited Mazovia and Plonsk. Duchy of Greater Poland did a Ducal War, gaining that one province to the north I can't recall. Beheaded the Duke of Silesia after jailing him and putting him in the obloulette (sic).
My last game had the King die in battle against Silesia's forces, and the kingdom was inherited by his daughter (married to princess of Denmark) at age 2. It was cool seeing the regents change every once in a while - couldn't dismiss my regents either!
Still inherited Mazovia. Went pagan bashing against Danzig and subsequently was drawn into war with Mecklenburg, Lettigallians, Lithuania - thankfully my 20 years was up. During that time I also saved 800 bucks and built the new Barony of Warsawa in my Krakow province.