Trying to get "Khan of Khans" achievement for the millionth time.

[MrBug86]

Hey, everyone!

As you may have guessed from the title, I'm having issues getting this achievement, and I have been since the days of Rajas (my save file would always corrupt when I got into Iberia, but I understood the mechanics at the time very well). After giving up for a couple of years (mostly work related), I have come back for another crack at things.

While I do understand that there are a few guides out there that have helped my understanding of Nomads a little bit, I really need help figuring out how to apply it specifically to the Mongol Empire start in Feb 1220. I've been trying to get a grasp of how to expand fast enough to beat the clock, but pillaging the kingdom of Persia seems to result in 40k stacks of rebels within a year every time. Plus, I'm not sure if it's better to dish out as much land to my vassal clan Khans as possible or just keep it all, since I've seen posts claiming the virtues of either path. I was used to playing in the old style where you just have a ton of counts, with no dukes or kings, but I feel that style has gone out the window with Nomad governments.

I'm also still not really sure how I'm supposed to raise a big enough force to basically go for a WC (because you almost have to take out the Middle East so they'll stop Jihad-ing you). Again, I haven't regularly played for kind of a while, so if anyone could share a strategy in which Nomad mechanics are applied to this scenario explained in basic terms, that would be amazing.

I also haven't figured out if reforming Tengri would really matter that much with the new rules. It seems like maybe not, but again... I just feel a little out of my element.

Thanks for reading. With any luck, some of you out there can help a scourge from the East whip Europe into pasture land.

 

[drspringwater]

I did it pre-conclave, would recommend turning off shattered retreat and defensive pacts.

As for conquering and dividing land...When you use invasion on someone you will take every county in the kingdom you chose to invade, in addition, you seize every county they own that you have sieged even outside of the target kingdom. (It is only necessary to siege the capital barony/holding of each county. NOTE: you can declare multiple invasion wars at the same time, i.e. With 90% population you can declare invasion on Croatia, Hungary, and Bulgaria simultaneously.


When dividing land, I recommend revoking all holdings, keeping anywhere from 1/4-3/4 of the counties and giving out all the baronies, cities, and temple by "create a vassal" button. This will ensure solid income even if you only do it for Persia. The remaining land I give out to individual courtiers (same religion and same culture) with high stewardship, give the strongest two provinces in a duchy to a distant family member, as well as two ducal titles. You'll have some very upset ducal relatives that are pretty powerful, but if they rebel you should still easily crush them. After Persia I mostly just gave counties to the super dukes I made, and let them handle rebellions.

If the Middle East is a problem, conquor, pillage, and grant independence so you have a nice buffer spanning most of Arabia.
After I conquered to Eastern Europe (~Croatia/Hungary) I gave out much of my steppe land to the point where I had 90% max population, and invaded multiple kingdoms in Western Europe - here on out is just a mad dash to Spain.

Good luck.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

I dunno if you are familiar with the usual nomad tricks so I write the detail anyways. Sorry if I explain things you already know.

I'm not sure you need to conquer Persia but it can make a good reserve of pillageable holdings early on. I would pillage Persia for gold, but keep 2 holdings in each counties so that they does not count as nomadic land (vassal khans will not ask for more land while empty holdings will still increase the population of your clan and make you stronger than your vassals). You can pillage only 5-6 counties at a time, around a 10K stack of your horde to control the rebellions. It also avoids growing you max population too quickly, so that the Invasion CB keeps being available (compared with pillaging everything and clearing too many holdings at the same time, thus increasing your max population too much).

For the steppe land with no holdings, I would give what needs to be given to vassal khans (you don't have time to fight discontent clans).

As drspringwater pointed, the invasion CB is very important early on to easily get the holdings for pillage, and late for conquering big shunks of land in one go.
One trick to make it available quickly is to pillage all holdings but keep 2 holdings with 1-2 improvements in each counties so that you maximize your population growth for a while (without your vassal khans asking for land), and when you've got a population big enough, finish off a bunch of holdings at the same time, give them to your vassals so that your max population will decrease (but not your current population), allowing you to hit the threshold to unlock Invasion CB.

One thing to note: I did not try this achievement yet... This is how I would do but I'm not sure it works 100%. The idea is just to grow very strong while keeping the nomadic vassals quite weak, and get gold by pillaging most of the land (without clearing everything so that they don't become nomadic land). I just hope this strategy is fast enough.