The Death of The Tribal Government Type: How It Makes Everything Less Fun (Including Pagans)

[SBolshevik]

Before you skip this thread because it's a wall of text, here's a nice TL;DR: Tribals are a chore to play, and are in dire need of fixing.

Charlemagne introduced the tribal governments. It was something to finally differentiate the pagans from the organized religions, but also to differentiate more "civilised" followers of organised religions from the less "civilised" ones. A great idea, right? Well, on paper it is, but in practice it's quite dull.

For starters, the tribal government type means that you have really, really low income. Your provinces are really poor, barely getting to 1 gold in tax value, unless you happen to have a temple in your province. But hey, you can raid! Except you can't gain almost anything from it, and that's the problem. The developers used a workaround in Ireland and Pictland, making all the provinces have one bishopric, but this workaround doesn't exist elsewhere. As a result, you end up having pagans who really can't benefit from their ability to raid at all, because they don't have Christian neighbours and they don't have a coastline (or they have it but don't have shipbuilding technology). This could, of course, be fixed by giving armies themselves the ability to carry loot, like ships already can. It'd also be a step in the direction of simulating historical long-distance raids, like those of the Hungarians in the 10th century.

It was also said that members of organised religions would approve of raising tribal organisation, yet with Conclave this absolutely isn't the case. The council resists these changes, despite the fact that they (illogically, since the tribe is becoming more centralised) gain more power from them.

The idea of limiting unreformed pagans to the tribal government type until they reform, besides being nonsensical, is also not fully enforced. Nomadic unreformed pagans are able to become feudal or republics with ease, just by conquering land with a castle or city. On the other hand, tribal unreformed pagans can't become feudal or a republic. Why? According to the devs, it's because their religion is unreformed. Very logical, I must say. I'd argue that the current relationship between feudalisation and reformation is backwards. One ought to have a legitimate infrastructure before reforming, because the reformation requires writing holy scriptures, convening councils, a hierarchy within the priesthood, etc. It seems a bit lopsided to have to make a holy book and codify your religious practices before bringing your realm to a state where that would actually be possible. I mean, who the hell is going to write your holy book in the steppe?

There are also some quite illogical setups of feudal vs tribal governments in regard to the afformentioned rules of unreformed pagans and feudalisation, such as Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria being feudal in 769 (and Serbia staying pagan and feudal in 867), Pomerania in 867 and 1066, and Russia in 1066 onwards, though not related to feudal pagans, has a huge problem with everything except Kiev and Novgorod being tribal for quite some time, which leads to wonkiness when a tribal grand prince conquers those two principalities (like tribal Rus with its capital in Uglich).

 

[Bernard95]

I'll agree with you in part- tribals were never exactly fun to play in the first place even after the devs decided to nerf the building costs. As you mention, you're usually broke since raiding by ship tends to be prohibitively expensive (assuming you even have the tech for it) if you're not Norse. Only source of income you can depend are little border raids and then the business focus from WoL if you're anything else. On top of the income issue, there's reformation, which can be yet another chore depending on the circumstances. Then the addition of Conclave completely killed it for me at least since you have to slowly work way your way up to complete council control whether you like it or not.

And on a side note, it was Charlemagne's patch that introduced Tribals.

 

[SBolshevik]

And on a side note, it was Charlemagne's patch that introduced Tribals.

Thanks, it's fixed now.

 

[Fitzjacob]

A bit hyperbolic title perhaps, but I mostly agree. I wasn't aware of the inconsistency with nomads being able to settle if unreformed but the Ilkhanate (which in game terms would be settled nomads) were (unreformed) tengri until 1295 so it makes sense. The inconsistency is still bad though.

A "hotfix" for the income issue might be to let tribals build temple holdings with piety rather than gold. Wouldn't fix any underlying issues of course and I can't say if early temple spam might bring troubles down the road. I'd probably be better than the castle spam which occurs when territory switches between tribal and feudal hands in rapid succession. Completely agree that long distance raids without boats should be possible, but they should probably not be allowed to carry as much loot as sea raiders (or maybe they should be able to overfill their bags in exchange for movement speed making them sitting ducks). Nomads should also benefit from this.

Last paragraph is also spot on. Don't care much about the 769 start anymore but 1066 Russia really needs a fix.

Tribals didn't get a lot of love in Conclave, hopefully they get a proper rework with a later patch.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Tribals are also militarily weak due to lack of Heavy Infantry and Pikes, which makes raiding more hazardous than it should be. The norse being militarily weaker than Ireland or England doesn't make a lot of sense, either.

 

[SBolshevik]

I wasn't aware of the inconsistency with nomads being able to settle if unreformed but the Ilkhanate (which in game terms would be settled nomads) were (unreformed) tengri until 1295 so it makes sense. The inconsistency is still bad though.

I agree with that being the norm, honestly, it's not like religion is going to prevent you from moving into a castle.

Tribals are also militarily weak due to lack of Heavy Infantry and Pikes, which makes raiding more hazardous than it should be. The norse being militarily weaker than Ireland or England doesn't make a lot of sense, either.

The nomads also like completely destroying any tribes in Russia and Siberia, especially the Hungarians.

 

[RagingJaws]

Tribals are suppose to blob and convert. By not converting, you are going down the ahistorical path which is harder.

For starters, the tribal government type means that you have really, really low income. Your provinces are really poor, barely getting to 1 gold in tax value, unless you happen to have a temple in your province. But hey, you can raid! Except you can't gain almost anything from it, and that's the problem. The developers used a workaround in Ireland and Pictland, making all the provinces have one bishopric, but this workaround doesn't exist elsewhere.

The Norse are the easiest to overcome the income deficit, due to free ships, and get into non-upgraded castle income territory (4ish gold per tribal holding) but you can do it with all but the most isolated Suomenusko starts with some work. The key, of course, is ransoming and sacking temples of your faith/other pagan faiths. Temple sacking is harder with non-norse characters but there are still several locations in the Baltics that are viable. Ransoming will be the most often early income generating force powering your demesne construction.

As a result, you end up having pagans who really can't benefit from their ability to raid at all, because they don't have Christian neighbors and they don't have a coastline (or they have it but don't have shipbuilding technology).

You don't need to solely raid Christians. Actually, raiding Christians early on is harder because many starts don't have the numbers to sack castles and the easier bishoprics/cities are often in realms much stronger than your own. Easier and quicker to turn on your pagan neighbors. The point of raiding early on is to get bodies to ransom back, not gold from sacking holdings.

It was also said that members of organized religions would approve of raising tribal organization, yet with Conclave this absolutely isn't the case. The council resists these changes, despite the fact that they (illogically, since the tribe is becoming more centralized) gain more power from them.

The idea of limiting unreformed pagans to the tribal government type until they reform, besides being nonsensical, is also not fully enforced. Nomadic unreformed pagans are able to become feudal or republics with ease, just by conquering land with a castle or city. On the other hand, tribal unreformed pagans can't become feudal or a republic. Why? According to the devs, it's because their religion is unreformed. Very logical, I must say. I'd argue that the current relationship between feudalisation and reformation is backwards. One ought to have a legitimate infrastructure before reforming, because the reformation requires writing holy scriptures, convening councils, a hierarchy within the priesthood, etc. It seems a bit lopsided to have to make a holy book and codify your religious practices before bringing your realm to a state where that would actually be possible. I mean, who the hell is going to write your holy book in the steppe?

I agree. Tribals are not allowed to convert to a more feudal structure for game balance reasons though. It's far easier to reform a faith with castle levies, that actually have good troops, as opposed to the nerfed trash LI/A combo tribals get. You can circumvent that through decisions/education with a little work, reconverting afterwards. The Devs want tribal play to be lots of local raiding, blobbing, and kingdom separation at character death into mini-realms that slowly get converted to Christianity/Orthodox via AI brute force proselytizing.

 

[SBolshevik]

Tribals are suppose to blob and convert. By not converting, you are going down the ahistorical path which is harder.

It's made hard enough by having to deal with having an awful army and the impending threat of other, larger religions (especially after Military Organisation 4). I don't see the point in making it additionally harder for you just because you're an "unreformed pagan".

The Norse are the easiest to overcome the income deficit, due to free ships, and get into non-upgraded castle income territory (4ish gold per tribal holding) but you can do it with all but the most isolated Suomenusko starts with some work. The key, of course, is ransoming and sacking temples of your faith/other pagan faiths. Temple sacking is harder with non-norse characters but there are still several locations in the Baltics that are viable. Ransoming will be the most often early income generating force powering your demesne construction.

In the Baltics, yes, but further inland temple-looting becomes less viable. Again, it could work better if you could actually carry loot from provinces that aren't directly next to yours.

I agree. Tribals are not allowed to convert to a more feudal structure for game balance reasons though. It's far easier to reform a faith with castle levies, that actually have good troops, as opposed to the nerfed trash LI/A combo tribals get. You can circumvent that through decisions/education with a little work, reconverting afterwards. The Devs want tribal play to be lots of local raiding, blobbing, and kingdom separation at character death into mini-realms that slowly get converted to Christianity/Orthodox via AI brute force proselytizing.

They've utterly failed in their idea to make tribal play blobbing, then kingdom separation - everything tends to stay as part of a huge blob or gets split into several blobs that reunite within several years.

 

[Damarrocarion]

Here are few ideas which would make playing tribal bit more fun:

1) New building called "Hall of Warriors" which would generate small amount of pikemen & Light Cavalry (HI is already generated via Hillforts) representing wealthy warriors of the tribe. Would convert to cultural building upon going feudal. Would also make so that you get some bonus from technology aside from "Raise tribal army" decision.

2) Rare event which can trigger as part of Theology focus or upcoming prosperity event, where shamans tell you a place in province X is sacred to (insert deity name).
You would have two options:
- Visit the location, gain piety and possibly zealous
- Not worth the effort, lose piety gain cynical.

However, if you would happen to have significant amount of piety, lets say 500 you would get third option.
- We shall properly show our dedication to (insert deity)! Gain zealous, lose 500 piety. New temple holding appears to said province

3) Allow raiding for tribal vassals under feudals (against adjacent realms of course)

4) Let unreformed pagans switch to regular gavelkind when in max tribal org (otherwise smartest route to play is convert with first ruler and swap to gavelkind).

5) As with nomads, let settled realms make marriage with infidel tribals to simulate how various realms converted for political gains.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

In fairness I don't think the requirement of reformation is just "for game balance". To run a Feudal society you need, at the least, a literate scribal class. Historically this was provided by the Christian clergy, indeed the benefits of a literate administration was a major selling point when converting the Germanic Pagans, along with contact with the more prosperous settled Christians.

If you refuse to cozy up to the Church you'll need to develop your own pagan literate class of priests before you can emulate the Christian Feudal administration.

No, I think the problem is just that the Tribal/feudal disparity is too great on the province level.

 

[SBolshevik]

In fairness I don't think the requirement of reformation is just "for game balance". To run a Feudal society you need, at the least, a literate scribal class. Historically this was provided by the Christian clergy, indeed the benefits of a literate administration was a major selling point when converting the Germanic Pagans, along with contact with the more prosperous settled Christians.

I think that particular issue is really a chicken and egg situation, you're not sure which really came first. Did you have to have a society on an advanced enough level, or was that a prerequisite for going to that level? I'd honestly argue that the first is the case.

Granted, the goðar did have their own script, but there were few documents written in runes in general, let alone before Christianity came into Scandinavia.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

but the Ilkhanate (which in game terms would be settled nomads) were (unreformed) tengri until 1295 so it makes sense.

Before 1295, most Ilkhans were Buddhists and none were Tengri tho. A few were Nestorians such as Hulagu himself and Tekuder was muslim. But religious diversity and tolerance in the Mongol states is not well portrayed.

But I kind of agree with most of the OP's message and the inconsistency between tribals and nomads.
I do not experience some of the problems in my Finland game. It is a bit slow at the beginning but by getting shipbuilding as soon as possible, you can raid quite early (even before the viking event fires). But the problem still stand for non-coastal tribals.

Gold is an issue, and building bishoprics is very hard to do. At some point, calling a tribal army is easy and very powerful. It mitigates the gold problem but you still need well improved markets to maintain the army. It still feels like a clumsy fix to allow tribals to keep up against more powerful neighbours, and it can be easily abused (maintaining state of war, ...)

 

[SigurdStormhand]

I think that particular issue is really a chicken and egg situation, you're not sure which really came first. Did you have to have a society on an advanced enough level, or was that a prerequisite for going to that level? I'd honestly argue that the first is the case.

Granted, the goðar did have their own script, but there were few documents written in runes in general, let alone before Christianity came into Scandinavia.

Well, what we know is that all the petty Germanic Kingdoms adanced once they embraced Christianity and literature, the Germanics that built the big early Empires (like the Visigoths) were already Christinaised and literate. We can also point to Ireland where Christian monasteries developed Insular Script and the practice of putting spaces between words so that less literate people were able to read. Ireland Christianised, then it consolidated and advanced, similarly the literate Anglo-Saxons were able to consolidate their kingdom and use writing as a weapon to "out organise" the Danes and ultimately defeat them through superior logistics.

On the other hand, there an argument that you should be able to Feudalise if you can seize enough Feudal provinces and then convert them to your religion.

 

[SBolshevik]

Well, what we know is that all the petty Germanic Kingdoms adanced once they embraced Christianity and literature, the Germanics that built the big early Empires (like the Visigoths) were already Christinaised and literate. We can also point to Ireland where Christian monasteries developed Insular Script and the practice of putting spaces between words so that less literate people were able to read. Ireland Christianised, then it consolidated and advanced, similarly the literate Anglo-Saxons were able to consolidate their kingdom and use writing as a weapon to "out organise" the Danes and ultimately defeat them through superior logistics.

Yet it shouldn't be impossible for a kingdom to start utilising such logistics on their own, without an organised religion. After all, writing had to start somewhere.

 

[RagingJaws]

It's made hard enough by having to deal with having an awful army and the impending threat of other, larger religions (especially after Military Organisation 4). I don't see the point in making it additionally harder for you just because you're an "unreformed pagan".

If you are still tribal by the time the AI gets to Mil Org 4, it's your fault. I should have mentioned that I don't talk about Player v Player games, where a good player can usually make tribal players' lives miserable.

In the Baltics, yes, but further inland temple-looting becomes less viable. Again, it could work better if you could actually carry loot from provinces that aren't directly next to yours.

I think you missed or ignored the point I made about ransoming. Temple looting is nice but most of raiding as a tribe goes into sacking tribal holdings, ransoming kids/heirs, and getting the province loot bar empty. I booted up a game in Lithuania about 40 minutes ago to make sure I wasn't wrong in my memory on how non-norse played and all I'm doing is slowly circling independent provinces around my chiefdom and sacking them. Each one provides anywhere from 9-12 gold and takes something around four months to drain of all value (loot bar and all). That's 36-48 gold a year before any possible ransoming is done. I've been unlucky with capture RNG, so I've only had a few ransoms sent out but even now I can pay for 2k troops and still be making a minuscule profit. Once you get into the green with a full raiding army raised, you've got past the very very early part of tribal play.

I wouldn't mind having a new mechanic where you can loot beyond initial borders/coasts though but it'd have to be balanced. Really isn't hard to get the money needed to upgrade your holding.

They've utterly failed in their idea to make tribal play blobbing, then kingdom separation - everything tends to stay as part of a huge blob or gets split into several blobs that reunite within several years.

They failed in a sense that it's easy to reunite kingdoms, AI or player, but blobbing isn't hard and with blobbing=income and expanded raid boarders.

I find tribal play fun despite the raid micro. Hasn't really felt like that much of a chore. I just wish tribals had more creative and unique events associated with them, the mechanics themselves are fine.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Yet it shouldn't be impossible for a kingdom to start utilising such logistics on their own, without an organised religion. After all, writing had to start somewhere.

Well, writing started in settled regions in the fertile Nile Delta and the Crescent in Mesopotamia. Our modern alphabet can actually be traced all the way back to the phonetic use of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, this try for Latin script but also for the Norse runes which clearly developed through contact with the Romans.

The history of written language in Europe and the Middle East is rich and very interesting but the bottom line is that everyone bar the Egyptians and Babylonians had a leg up from someone else.

 

[brifbates]

The only real issue I have with tribals is you are stuck with a fully empowered council but don't get the "councilors can't faction" benefit from it. Worst of both worlds crap like that on top of craptastic elective gavelkind on top of laughable li armies takes a whole lot of fun out of the game...

 

[killcreak]

AI under tribal is completely helpless after that abomination of a DLC called Conclave. Once in a blue moon they pull off a reformation but are never able to collect enough money to bribe the council and raise the tribal organization. Even for a human player the only way is to get coastal at all cost and raid like crazy.

Who cares about balancing the game though, no revenue in that business. Let's introduce kittens instead.

 

[SBolshevik]

They failed in a sense that it's easy to reunite kingdoms, AI or player, but blobbing isn't hard and with blobbing=income and expanded raid boarders.

It'd make a lot more sense if on death all your vassals on a level just lower than yours (counts if you're a duke, dukes if you're a king) became tributaries, and you had to reconquer them, otherwise they would become independent upon your char's death.

You make a good point about looting, though.

Well, writing started in settled regions in the fertile Nile Delta and the Crescent in Mesopotamia. Our modern alphabet can actually be traced all the way back to the phonetic use of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, this try for Latin script but also for the Norse runes which clearly developed through contact with the Romans.

The history of written language in Europe and the Middle East is rich and very interesting but the bottom line is that everyone bar the Egyptians and Babylonians had a leg up from someone else.

In regard to that, some pagans already have access to a script, and it's only a question of whether they utilise it properly. The Norse have runes, Slavs have runes taken from the Norse (if Črъnorizьcь Hrabrъ is to be believed that Slavs wrote črъtami i rѣzami, most likely referrng to runes) and the peoples of the steppe have the Orkhon script.

The only real issue I have with tribals is you are stuck with a fully empowered council but don't get the "councilors can't faction" benefit from it. Worst of both worlds crap like that on top of craptastic elective gavelkind on top of laughable li armies takes a whole lot of fun out of the game...

It's a serious problem when an entire part of the game is made to be quite a bit of a chore.

 

[kmh42]

Before you skip this thread because it's a wall of text, here's a nice TL;DR: Tribals are a chore to play, and are in dire need of fixing.

Charlemagne introduced the tribal governments. It was something to finally differentiate the pagans from the organized religions, but also to differentiate more "civilised" followers of organised religions from the less "civilised" ones. A great idea, right? Well, on paper it is, but in practice it's quite dull.

For starters, the tribal government type means that you have really, really low income. Your provinces are really poor, barely getting to 1 gold in tax value, unless you happen to have a temple in your province. But hey, you can raid! Except you can't gain almost anything from it, and that's the problem. The developers used a workaround in Ireland and Pictland, making all the provinces have one bishopric, but this workaround doesn't exist elsewhere. As a result, you end up having pagans who really can't benefit from their ability to raid at all, because they don't have Christian neighbours and they don't have a coastline (or they have it but don't have shipbuilding technology). This could, of course, be fixed by giving armies themselves the ability to carry loot, like ships already can. It'd also be a step in the direction of simulating historical long-distance raids, like those of the Hungarians in the 10th century.

It was also said that members of organised religions would approve of raising tribal organisation, yet with Conclave this absolutely isn't the case. The council resists these changes, despite the fact that they (illogically, since the tribe is becoming more centralised) gain more power from them.

The idea of limiting unreformed pagans to the tribal government type until they reform, besides being nonsensical, is also not fully enforced. Nomadic unreformed pagans are able to become feudal or republics with ease, just by conquering land with a castle or city. On the other hand, tribal unreformed pagans can't become feudal or a republic. Why? According to the devs, it's because their religion is unreformed. Very logical, I must say. I'd argue that the current relationship between feudalisation and reformation is backwards. One ought to have a legitimate infrastructure before reforming, because the reformation requires writing holy scriptures, convening councils, a hierarchy within the priesthood, etc. It seems a bit lopsided to have to make a holy book and codify your religious practices before bringing your realm to a state where that would actually be possible. I mean, who the hell is going to write your holy book in the steppe?

There are also some quite illogical setups of feudal vs tribal governments in regard to the afformentioned rules of unreformed pagans and feudalisation, such as Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria being feudal in 769 (and Serbia staying pagan and feudal in 867), Pomerania in 867 and 1066, and Russia in 1066 onwards, though not related to feudal pagans, has a huge problem with everything except Kiev and Novgorod being tribal for quite some time, which leads to wonkiness when a tribal grand prince conquers those two principalities (like tribal Rus with its capital in Uglich).

A few good and a few bad points you have:
Bad points:
Tribalism shouldn't be easy. The lack of money is WAD. You wanna overcome Tribalism after all and you definitely can! You just need some time, patients and generations (except you blob like crazy with ther norse). This IS the fun part! What do you need money anyway, prestige is you currency!
Raiding over multiple provinces is also not a good idea. The AI is not able to handle such a system. This would lead to a huge AI vs Player balance issue.
Good points:
Tribalism + Council mechanic are indeed strange. There is no point in raising TO except you go for feudalism.
The inconsistency with unreformed Nomads an unreformed Tribals/Feudals is also strange. There should be a way of reforming the government without changing/reforming religion but this should be a very limited one. E.g.: Only available when bordering a feudal realm,...

1) New building called "Hall of Warriors" which would generate small amount of pikemen & Light Cavalry (HI is already generated via Hillforts) representing wealthy warriors of the tribe. Would convert to cultural building upon going feudal. Would also make so that you get some bonus from technology aside from "Raise tribal army" decision.

This will never happen!

2) Rare event which can trigger as part of Theology focus or upcoming prosperity event, where shamans tell you a place in province X is sacred to (insert deity name).
You would have two options:
- Visit the location, gain piety and possibly zealous
- Not worth the effort, lose piety gain cynical.

We do get some events for them.