Some thoughts after playing a Muslim realm for the first time

[arothuris]

First thing came to mind is that you would expand so fast as a muslim, provided that you have enough manpower, and if you don't honour truces with realms of another religion group. I started as the Oghuz Turks from 1066. It's now 1180, and I control the area of kingdom of Khwarizm, Khiva, Cumania, Alania, Georgia (except 1 county), Armenia, and duchy of Tyumen, Crimea, Cyprus, Trebizond, Nikaea, and Thrace including Constaninople. Kingdom of Anatolia is about to fall in my hands very soon too, and I looked like the Golden Horde basically (I created the sultanate of Khwarizm instead of usurping Khiva, and Khwarizm's colour is almost identical to Golden Horde, if you look at it in independent realm map mode). I haven't been able to expand so fast in any of my previous games as a Christian ruler, neither Catholic or Orthodox. Never tried Miaphysite so I don't know, but I think their mechanics should be very much the same to the Orthodox. ERE is pretty much destroyed by me, and I had a mixed feeling about this, as I was playing a faithful Greece despot vassal to the Baselius in my last game. Well, I have to make myself strong as I stand at the front line against the Mongols when they arrive, and ERE just presents opportunities all the time with their stupid civil wars.

Second thing is about successions. Every succession is so bloody it kinds of make me sick. Tooltip said I would banish them to stop decadence, but I ain't sure I wanna take the risk of that kinsman rising to power somewhere else out of my control, and cause decadence there I can't manage, so I basically execute them all everytime a new ruler succeed. Very sick of it. If someone would provide other means in dealing with them I will be very grateful

Lastly is about religion. The MA of Sunni faith is always quite low compare to other major religions, due to holy wars in Iberia and northwest Africa. When France and HRE put her hands in the area, MA just shrinks like freefall, despite my constant holy warring in the eastern side of the map. Is there any other way to raise MA besides holy wars? Currently the MA would raised by 0.1 each month due to my character's diplomacy according to tooltip, and I can't find another way to raise it more. All kinds of heresy pops up in Persia, Mesopotamia and Arabia and it's now slowly spreading into my realm. It just take too much effort to root it out after multiple counties turns heretic

It also seems so slow in the spread of the Sunni faith. When I played a Christian ruler, religion convertions were usuallly pretty fast. Now I could have provinces conquered for over 60 years and still not convert. Actually 3 of my starting counties are still Zoroastrian, and its been over 100 years into the game already. Should I try getting my court chaplain to convert them? I think I saw somewhere you don't need to convert religion of counties if you are playing muslim, but I dun quite get why.

Edit: some more on expansion - the invasion cb is just crazy. All u need is 500 piety, and its easy to get with 1 or 2 holy war. As a Catholic u will need to be granted the invasion by the pope, but for muslims u dun need anything other than piety. If the AI act just like me that dun honour truces, they would take half the world in short time, esp the fatimids

 

[hannibal_barca]

ahh, the bloody wars of muslim succession. Thats why I love playing the muslims. Always some bloody war to look forward too.

 

[arothuris]

ahh, the bloody wars of muslim succession. Thats why I love playing the muslims. Always some bloody war to look forward too.

I have been lucky to have only fight 1 succession war. A brother revolted day 1 my new ruler succeed, so I dun get to imprison him. Otherwise it has been peaceful, but bloody, very bloody

 

[Cuthuthulu]

Give them a nice house, good food and drink. Never let them leave. No need for bloodshed.

 

[unmerged(600321)]

I never get quite as big as a Muslim ruler as I do with Christian rulers (especially byzantine count/duke starts due to overpowered cataphract retinues). To handle decadence, I usually imprison my wives whenever I can without gaining tyranny (e.g. when they try to kill my children). Also, I imprison/assassinate/banish all make relatives other than children. All my adult children get some minor counties, but I try to give them counties that can't raise troops due to conquest penalties. That way, my chosen successor can easily handle them all in succession. All my cousins/other male relatives get granted a barony or equivalent and then imprisoned/banished or killed. This way, they won't run away when I try to imprison them and will revolt instead. If you plan accordingly, you can easily handle successions without much trouble.


Christian kingdoms often get bigger because it is easier to gain claims with your daughters and then conquer new lands with the claims of your daughters children (matrileaneal marriages by daughters). This way once you get an Empire, you can easily add new Kingdoms to it to expand without having to have 10-50 or more battles per county or duchy to take over a Kingdom. One nice conquest is easier and much more feasible when your daughters and sons can help you get claims, rather than just sons (since muslim daughters cannot marry matrilineally).

Also, if you want to go pure conquest, nothing beats Byzantine. Once you have 1000-1500 holdings (1/3rd of the map), you have like 100k in cataphract units (60k heavy cavalry, 40k horse archers) and you can conquer everything with just retinues. The muslim single county conquest mechanic is nice, but it is only useful in the early game. Plus, most muslim rulers have too high a crown authority early, and I only tend to grow during the frequent independence struggles if the crown authority is medium or high. THe invasion CB is really nice, but it causes a ton of problems because you end up keeping most of the foreign vassals. As you grow with the invasion CB, you tend to end up with many revolts that slows down your growth. A similar problem is faced with Christian marriage based claims that lead to conquests, but if you play Byzantine (easiest for world conquest) and ensure orthodox dominance, most of your conquests in the Christian world will share your religion (i.e. less revolts). Also, with the Roman Empire (not holy roman), you will have de jure control over a larger portion of the map and thus less independence issues. Also, once big enough if you want to disregard truces, you can holy war your way to map conquest against the muslim rulers. Not as quick as an invasion CB, but I prefer holy wars since I can replace the vassals and ensure culture/religion matches.

Muslim games are unique, but I never have really tried to conquer the whole map with them. I usually have too many issues with in fighting and dealing with foreign vassals due to invasion CBs to actually get past 2000 holdings. I would likely have been more successful if I just holy warred my way, but this should not be done till you get big enough to solo the entire Christian world (breaking truces = high chance of pope's invasion against you). I have only actually conquered the map in my byzantine duke start (Roman Empire), but it is possible with other starts.

 

[Lwantssugar]

how to manage decadence in a nutshell: observe Ramadan if possible, next if you have male kinsmen at your court see if they make a decent councilor, if not 1 million years dungeon, if for whatever reason you are unable to imprision them (most likely because theyre not in your court but still in your realm) put a knife in their back. its a bit mean true, but they like to ask to be moved to house arrest and I always grant it since it has less chance of killing them but still halts decadence. plus in the event they escape theyre counted as banished so again its not your problem anymore

 

[arothuris]

Give them a nice house, good food and drink. Never let them leave. No need for bloodshed.

how to manage decadence in a nutshell: observe Ramadan if possible, next if you have male kinsmen at your court see if they make a decent councilor, if not 1 million years dungeon, if for whatever reason you are unable to imprision them (most likely because theyre not in your court but still in your realm) put a knife in their back. its a bit mean true, but they like to ask to be moved to house arrest and I always grant it since it has less chance of killing them but still halts decadence. plus in the event they escape theyre counted as banished so again its not your problem anymore

The problem in long-term imprisoning is that it take up too many court space... my current ruler had 4 brothers which wasnt a lot, but they manage to breed so many kids in just 1 generation - I ended up putting 20 ppl in jail. And about banishing, I still dun know what would happen if that kinsman of mine somehow gain land outside my realm. From what I see from the seljuks, every landed member count towards the same decadence, inside the realm or not. Dun quite wanna take that risk though its not very likely that they gain land in another realm.

I never get quite as big as a Muslim ruler as I do with Christian rulers (especially byzantine count/duke starts due to overpowered cataphract retinues). To handle decadence, I usually imprison my wives whenever I can without gaining tyranny (e.g. when they try to kill my children). Also, I imprison/assassinate/banish all make relatives other than children. All my adult children get some minor counties, but I try to give them counties that can't raise troops due to conquest penalties. That way, my chosen successor can easily handle them all in succession. All my cousins/other male relatives get granted a barony or equivalent and then imprisoned/banished or killed. This way, they won't run away when I try to imprison them and will revolt instead. If you plan accordingly, you can easily handle successions without much trouble.

Christian kingdoms often get bigger because it is easier to gain claims with your daughters and then conquer new lands with the claims of your daughters children (matrileaneal marriages by daughters). This way once you get an Empire, you can easily add new Kingdoms to it to expand without having to have 10-50 or more battles per county or duchy to take over a Kingdom. One nice conquest is easier and much more feasible when your daughters and sons can help you get claims, rather than just sons (since muslim daughters cannot marry matrilineally).

Also, if you want to go pure conquest, nothing beats Byzantine. Once you have 1000-1500 holdings (1/3rd of the map), you have like 100k in cataphract units (60k heavy cavalry, 40k horse archers) and you can conquer everything with just retinues. The muslim single county conquest mechanic is nice, but it is only useful in the early game. Plus, most muslim rulers have too high a crown authority early, and I only tend to grow during the frequent independence struggles if the crown authority is medium or high. THe invasion CB is really nice, but it causes a ton of problems because you end up keeping most of the foreign vassals. As you grow with the invasion CB, you tend to end up with many revolts that slows down your growth. A similar problem is faced with Christian marriage based claims that lead to conquests, but if you play Byzantine (easiest for world conquest) and ensure orthodox dominance, most of your conquests in the Christian world will share your religion (i.e. less revolts). Also, with the Roman Empire (not holy roman), you will have de jure control over a larger portion of the map and thus less independence issues. Also, once big enough if you want to disregard truces, you can holy war your way to map conquest against the muslim rulers. Not as quick as an invasion CB, but I prefer holy wars since I can replace the vassals and ensure culture/religion matches.

Muslim games are unique, but I never have really tried to conquer the whole map with them. I usually have too many issues with in fighting and dealing with foreign vassals due to invasion CBs to actually get past 2000 holdings. I would likely have been more successful if I just holy warred my way, but this should not be done till you get big enough to solo the entire Christian world (breaking truces = high chance of pope's invasion against you). I have only actually conquered the map in my byzantine duke start (Roman Empire), but it is possible with other starts.

Its not real hard to deal with foreign vassals from invasion cb in my opinion. They get a +75 opinion for subjugation, so most of them will convert religion if u ask them. Actually all of them converted so far in my game. Then send their heir (or heir of heir if heir is old enough already) to someone of your culture to get tutored. After 1 or 2 generations u have dealt with the foreign malus as well. I actually like the invasion cb more than holy war, it gives me levies & income instantly. Or u would just revoke titles. With medium CA or higher, u r free to revoke as long as the titleholder is an infidel.

 

[Hackworthy]

It also seems so slow in the spread of the Sunni faith. When I played a Christian ruler, religion convertions were usuallly pretty fast. Now I could have provinces conquered for over 60 years and still not convert. Actually 3 of my starting counties are still Zoroastrian, and its been over 100 years into the game already. Should I try getting my court chaplain to convert them? I think I saw somewhere you don't need to convert religion of counties if you are playing muslim, but I dun quite get why.

Muslims don't proselytize, you receive bonus tax from non-Muslim provinces.

 

[BlackBarook]

I never understood the lack of features that the Muslims got. An example would be the lack of succession laws that weren't Turkish based, and the inability for females to rule or maternally marry. Europeans get to do it even if it was a rare thing back in the day. I also never understood the whole reason behind the decadence thing. But meh whatever.

 

[Ciaphas Cain]

The problem in long-term imprisoning is that it take up too many court space... my current ruler had 4 brothers which wasnt a lot, but they manage to breed so many kids in just 1 generation - I ended up putting 20 ppl in jail.

And you can execute them all for 400 piety.

 

[solamyas]

THe invasion CB is really nice, but it causes a ton of problems because you end up keeping most of the foreign vassals. As you grow with the invasion CB, you tend to end up with many revolts that slows down your growth. A similar problem is faced with Christian marriage based claims that lead to conquests, but if you play Byzantine (easiest for world conquest) and ensure orthodox dominance, most of your conquests in the Christian world will share your religion (i.e. less revolts). Also, with the Roman Empire (not holy roman), you will have de jure control over a larger portion of the map and thus less independence issues. Also, once big enough if you want to disregard truces, you can holy war your way to map conquest against the muslim rulers. Not as quick as an invasion CB, but I prefer holy wars since I can replace the vassals and ensure culture/religion matches.

Dont you know you can freely revoke heretic vassals' title with medium crown authority. You dont end up with many revolts because they like you alot, there is a invader bonus for first generation of subjugated vassals. And you dont suffer from recently conquerred modifier for levies and taxes. If you revoke the elders title before they die you can save the other counties for your younger kinsman or children, that way you can absolute authority over their education and marriage and still remain in demesne limit.

Second thing is about successions. Every succession is so bloody it kinds of make me sick. Tooltip said I would banish them to stop decadence, but I ain't sure I wanna take the risk of that kinsman rising to power somewhere else out of my control, and cause decadence there I can't manage, so I basically execute them all everytime a new ruler succeed. Very sick of it. If someone would provide other means in dealing with them I will be very grateful

In my first game (1st day, Çağrı Beyoğlu Alp Arslan Han aka Seljuq) i didnt like muslim mechanics but decadence give soo much opportunity.

Is your neighbour growing rapidly? invite some one from their dynasty, wed him with 4 lustful wives, than give him a barony. If you are lucky when decadence based tribal invasion hit them you can grab some lands from both side with qiuick castle storming while they kill each other.

Is one of your powerful vassal a rebellious scheming bastard? Extend his dynasty with same tactic without barony giving part. Either he giveaway lands to his kinsman or decrease his armys moral and income thru decadence. At that point you can ask to your court imam issue a fatwa for revocation of their title. Imams always accept fatwas in my games (counselors are my kinsman at most time so why not :laugh: ) Since you are play as a caliph maybe dont need to imam's permission

 

[Kyoumen]

It is very easy to grow rapidly into an empire as a Muslim state, compared to playing Christians. It is also very easy for your empire to collapse into bits as a Muslim state, compared to playing Christians. That is part of the beauty of it - they just don't play the same way.

Now, managing decadence is done in a few ways. The boring but more or less effective way is to imprison or kill every relative that isn't your direct offspring, and put those offspring that aren't your chosen heir on the council. That's easy mode and you can keep it going more or less forever provided you make sure to have a backup heir or two that you avoid killing until new rulers have their own offspring. It almost always gives you a hit when observing Ramadan (as you get the event where you either free your prisoners or gain decadence) but you'll lose enough overall to counteract it.

More fun is to try and ride the tide. Land your sons (reduces decadence and gives loyal retainers now, at the cost of more problems later). Keep a smaller demense (you get less decadence the less percentage of your total maximum demense you personally own). Only imprison/execute the most useless or rebellious relatives, if that. It IS possible to keep your relatives loyal as a Muslim, with cleverness and bribery - they do get positive modifiers as well as negative ones. Free your prisoners at Ramadan. Wage aggressive wars against anybody nearby that looks even halfways vulnerable to lower decadence. If you get successfully invaded due to high decadence, plot and scheme to take your titles back (the AI Seljuks actually succeed at this reasonably often - surely you can do better than the AI!). Expand, expand, expand! And hell, why not give your rebellious half-brother the kingdom of Ghana? He might well just get invaded instead of you, and then you can lower decadence by warring the whole thing back again. You're rich, and with some temple holdings your piety is through the roof - there's no invasion or war reversal that enough mercenaries can't fix. Unless there is. And then you lick your wounds, plot revenge for the next decade, and enjoy the decadence reduction from all your bloody struggles. Rule a Jenga Tower of an empire that grows progressively more unstable and tricky to keep upright, but which always has the potential of coalescing into a HRE-mauling juggernaut whenever a talented leader stabilises the situation for a decade or two. It's a lot harder than the imprison-or-kill-everyone route, but for my money it's also a lot more fun.

And yeah, Muslims should be able to have female rulers (Yemen was ruled for decades by a woman during the timeframe of the game), but people would complain endlessly about it if Paradox had made it possible, so them's the breaks.

 

[arothuris]

And you can execute them all for 400 piety

Yeah, I had to holy war once, to have them......

In my first game (1st day, Çağrı Beyoğlu Alp Arslan Han aka Seljuq) i didnt like muslim mechanics but decadence give soo much opportunity.

Is your neighbour growing rapidly? invite some one from their dynasty, wed him with 4 lustful wives, than give him a barony. If you are lucky when decadence based tribal invasion hit them you can grab some lands from both side with qiuick castle storming while they kill each other.

Is one of your powerful vassal a rebellious scheming bastard? Extend his dynasty with same tactic without barony giving part. Either he giveaway lands to his kinsman or decrease his armys moral and income thru decadence. At that point you can ask to your court imam issue a fatwa for revocation of their title. Imams always accept fatwas in my games (counselors are my kinsman at most time so why not ) Since you are play as a caliph maybe dont need to imam's permission

You actually gave me some new ideas in dealing with my muslim neighbours. Never thought of it that way, might have to try if the Fatimids start to get itchy. Doubt it though coz there decadence are getting to go up real fast, after an uncle or something stole the throne from the Shia Caliph. They used to be able to control it quite nicely.

And Caliph? There's really nothing you can do with being a Caliph, except u get another nice title. I still need to ask my Imam to issue a fatwa. I sometime wonder whats the point of being a Caliph... u dun have any special or unique things u would do with it.

It is very easy to grow rapidly into an empire as a Muslim state, compared to playing Christians. It is also very easy for your empire to collapse into bits as a Muslim state, compared to playing Christians. That is part of the beauty of it - they just don't play the same way.

Now, managing decadence is done in a few ways. The boring but more or less effective way is to imprison or kill every relative that isn't your direct offspring, and put those offspring that aren't your chosen heir on the council. That's easy mode and you can keep it going more or less forever provided you make sure to have a backup heir or two that you avoid killing until new rulers have their own offspring. It almost always gives you a hit when observing Ramadan (as you get the event where you either free your prisoners or gain decadence) but you'll lose enough overall to counteract it.

More fun is to try and ride the tide. Land your sons (reduces decadence and gives loyal retainers now, at the cost of more problems later). Keep a smaller demense (you get less decadence the less percentage of your total maximum demense you personally own). Only imprison/execute the most useless or rebellious relatives, if that. It IS possible to keep your relatives loyal as a Muslim, with cleverness and bribery - they do get positive modifiers as well as negative ones. Free your prisoners at Ramadan. Wage aggressive wars against anybody nearby that looks even halfways vulnerable to lower decadence. If you get successfully invaded due to high decadence, plot and scheme to take your titles back (the AI Seljuks actually succeed at this reasonably often - surely you can do better than the AI!). Expand, expand, expand! And hell, why not give your rebellious half-brother the kingdom of Ghana? He might well just get invaded instead of you, and then you can lower decadence by warring the whole thing back again. You're rich, and with some temple holdings your piety is through the roof - there's no invasion or war reversal that enough mercenaries can't fix. Unless there is. And then you lick your wounds, plot revenge for the next decade, and enjoy the decadence reduction from all your bloody struggles. Rule a Jenga Tower of an empire that grows progressively more unstable and tricky to keep upright, but which always has the potential of coalescing into a HRE-mauling juggernaut whenever a talented leader stabilises the situation for a decade or two. It's a lot harder than the imprison-or-kill-everyone route, but for my money it's also a lot more fun.

And yeah, Muslims should be able to have female rulers (Yemen was ruled for decades by a woman during the timeframe of the game), but people would complain endlessly about it if Paradox had made it possible, so them's the breaks.

Thanks for the feedback. I might try letting some of my not-so-troublesome brothers keep his lands and pass it on later, as I really like to see dynasty members all across the map. I usually land a lot of relatives when playing Christian rulers, now I dun see any except myself as a titleholder in the dynasty, which is really sad.


One more thing about muslim realm I noticed is that ur landed sons dun tend to get bad traits as in a Christian game. Maybe its due to muslims dun have as many amusements as the Christians. As a Christian u would go hunting, hold summer fairs, and throw feasts, every year if u'd like, and all these events have chances to give bad traits. I tended not to land my chosen heir because of this. Half of the time my perfect heir became a... less than impressive person after landed. On the otherhand, muslims dun get any of those events, all they have is Ramadan, and u can only do it once every 5 years I think, and so far I dun notice any bad traits from the event. Except u tend to get sick then infirm if ur character is a bit old.