tribal-feudal balance

[Broetchenholer]

Compared to feudal lords, tribal chieftain are much better in increasing their powerbase in the early game. The income of single feudal counts is so pitiful compared to the expenditure needed to increase that income, that feudal realms remain largely undeveloped for long parts of the game. The only exceptions are stewards to their liege, who generate magic money and are extremely good at developing their counties. This, combined with prestige fueled men-at-arms and raiding for most tribal chiefs gives tribal realms a ridiculous headstart over feudal ones to the point that tribal realms are straight up stronger compared to their feudal neighbours. This effect is even increased by the fact, that despite not being gold focused in their economy, tribal chiefs are flush with cash to hire mercs in their wars while still maintaining positive income for their armies, resulting in debt spirals for comparable feudal lords. Once the first inheritances occur, this problem is increased. As income and country size is not necessarily important for a tribal lord to thrive, even the newly halfsized entities are powerful enough to keep growing their powerbase through raiding. This results in the whole tribal world be completely maxxed out in buildings very soon, and very many houses with meaningful leavies, that can all contribute to call to arms and enable chiefs to dig in the smaller prey as well.

So, even though both worlds are splintering into smaller pieces, the feudal side of these pieces are not able to boost their economy while the tribal side is.

I am not sure how to solve this issue, but it needs a solution. It's not a balance, that once feudalism is reached, the realm doing it falls of the grid in terms of power. The setback due to feudalizing needs to be diminished, because without it, the newly feudal baby state will simply be eaten by the monstrous tribal neighbours it still has. I actually loved the balance of CK2, where the slavic tribal nations were extremely hard to invade, but when they tried to attack theig neighbors, they were weak. Another thing that might work is reducing the amount of gold the tribal holdings provide unupgraded for raiding. Currently, it makes almost no difference if i attack a bavarian or a silesian county. And then, i would add a stopper for the merc spam the tribals can do, they are less focused on economy but can use their more then comparable income, that they do not need to spend on their standing troops, on mercs. This makes zero sense. This would then be balanced by making it more easy to survive feudalizing, for example by granting the option to convert their tier2 tribal buildings into tier1 feudals or by giving a huge reduction in building cost for the first x years as feudal lord or by keeping the income of the tribal nation for x years.