[Venting] Raiding is completely over the top

[King_of_Spain]

The amount of raiding and adventurers that I get as the Byzantine Emperor, also controlling the north coast of Western Europe, is ridiculous – roughly five to ten per year. So many of my churches have been burned that my MA has taken a -45% hit, meaning Orthodox sits at roughly 6% at the moment, and therefore most of my realm is heresies, meaning I also get about 15-20 revolts per year.

I can deal with this on a technical level – I have enough troops to defeat them all if I can be bothered. But playing whack-a-mole literally non-stop has become so boring that this playthrough has almost become ruined for me. The heresy revolts I understand as well, given MA is so low. But that 1% hit is totally immersion-breaking when they stack up to torpedo any chance of keeping my religion together.

Don’t know if anyone else has the same experience as a large realm?

 

[Darkhosis]

The amount of raiding and adventurers that I get as the Byzantine Emperor, also controlling the north coast of Western Europe, is ridiculous – roughly five to ten per year. So many of my churches have been burned that my MA has taken a -45% hit, meaning Orthodox sits at roughly 6% at the moment, and therefore most of my realm is heresies, meaning I also get about 15-20 revolts per year.

I can deal with this on a technical level – I have enough troops to defeat them all if I can be bothered. But playing whack-a-mole literally non-stop has become so boring that this playthrough has almost become ruined for me. The heresy revolts I understand as well, given MA is so low. But that 1% hit is totally immersion-breaking when they stack up to torpedo any chance of keeping my religion together.

Don’t know if anyone else has the same experience as a large realm?

Yes, during my first (and will be the only) 'paint the map' game.

The most that were ever hostile towards me (that I noticed) at any one point was 15, average was probably half a dozen -- for a good 30-40 years of game-time (which took maybe a week of playing to get through, spending so much time chasing them around). Essentially this was with France + Italy -- maybe a few counties in Spain. Mostly these adventurers would just pop up in the middle of empire, somewhere in France, or occasionally in Rome (which I believe coincided with me moving my retinue out of Rome).

It'd be nice if these adventurers learned from all these other adventurer failures and would then pick some other target. Yes, it's no fun at all.

ed: I noticed with the early start when I'm playing 'typical' game, Christianity essentially goes to 0% for some 50 years, then recovers a bit to maybe 50-80, then back to 0. I believe this is caused simply by all these Christian temples no longer being Christian temples .... hence they are then able to recover a bit ... but after recovering, all these temples are raided again, and it is back to zero. You also deal with some massive amount of heresies. I suppose this is a separate issue though, dealing w/ this infatuation with Vikings being overpowered. Technoviking takes some tour around France, England, and Italy every few years.

 

[knppel]

The amount I raid back 150 years later with 120,000 Legionnaires in the field makes up for the early hazzle.
The Varangians can protect the Krim.
Of course if you make it your first duty to also protect Flanders no one can help you

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Tributize neighboring Nomads and grant kingdom viceroyalties once you are able to.

Do NOT conquer said Nomads unless you want to open yourself up to more raiders.

King viceroys will have some power and will help you swat some of the smaller raiders away.

I generally play in Daylam/Persia so I get raided a lot by Nomads. They are an absolute terror early game (you can lose with a larger stack,) and I would recommend you park whatever retinue you can along your desmense even when going to war. They'll be dedicated to hunting raiders in the vicinity.

Or in your case keep the Varangian Guard back at home when you go out for war.

Edit: oh, you are referring to Western Europe. In which case you must be massive. Just make a few king level viceroys to hold the coast. They'll handle most of the raiders in their territory. Light infantry should be easy to swat in comparison to nomads.

 

[King_of_Spain]

The amount I raid back 150 years later with 120,000 Legionnaires in the field makes up for the early hazzle.
The Varangians can protect the Krim.
Of course if you make it your first duty to also protect Flanders no one can help you

See, this is the problem. Because of course I don't care about Flanders getting burned to the ground when Flanders is held by my vassal, until it happens 45 times, and my MA is dead as a result. Then Flanders becomes Iconoclast/Waldensian/take your pick and I get 15-20 religious uprisings a year in my realm and they target me, not my vassals.

 

[knppel]

Let me rephrase: Why by all means is Flanders in your realm?
I mean evidently it only brings troubles

 

[Kurblius]

Yeah I posted about his just a couple days ago. Also posted one way to fix it while keeping the feature.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dealing-with-unrelenting-raiding.1163968/

I think there are two AI raiding mentalities. I have observed that having a standing army in an area will deter land raiders from materializing in that area. The AI seems to be able to sense raised doomstacks. I can keep these stacks raised without cost or penalty in my game since I adopted the Civilized doctrine (which I did precisely for this reason). The same should apply for retinues, though mine aren't really that big yet.

When it comes to naval raiders though I find they don't give a flying fuck. They'll drop off next to a doomstack regardless of your doomstack next door. Fortunately those dudes seem to target my demesne specifically rather than my outlying vassals, which are harder for me to get to.

 

[Karlington]

Yes, this is a horrific problem. Next game I will play I will probably disable Horse Lords, since that DLC is what activates raiding adventurers.

(I know they can be toned down or eliminated in the game rules, but I'm playing for achievements, and you can only get achievements with full raiding adventurers. )

 

[catweaselcrow]

Can't you settle one of the raiders in a province you don't care about (e.g. Flanders)? That will give you 10 years of raid immunity.

 

[incognitus]

The raids are a complete pain, I agree. I have found that probably the best way to deal with adventurers, though, is to just give in to their demands and then attack them right away. I had a few claimants campaign against me for some Kingdom, but since they only got the one county that has the kingdom capital, I could just siege that down within a short timespan and force them to surrender while their ridiculously large armies were still far away....

 

[Rags17]

Sorry not sorry but I have zero sympathy here, this sounds as if it is completely and utterly WAI. You have a super empire stretching from the Middle East to the North Sea and you’re suffering endless border wars and local revolts. Tell it to the Romans !

Running a continent spanning empire should be nigh on impossible, at least in the long run, border raids and insurgent revolts are the primary tools (for now) to do that.

 

[pacja]

I haven't played Byz in a while, but I used to find raiders in vassal lands even somewhat useful: when I wiped those leeches for them, they were more prone to join factions and cause trouble, but as soon as I decided to leave them fight alone, they got too busy and drained to become a nuisance. If they got beaten a bit too much, I used to station the Varangian Guard near the raided zone (usually Trebizond and the eastern border) and let them recover a bit or, once I unlocked exarchs, I created one there to deal with them (didn't even need to have him in the council, since his levies were always so spent that he was keeping a low profile).
Also, I confirm that stationing your retinue just outside your capital is (or used to be, haven't tried recently) a good bait for raiders: they flock there because is filthy rich and get crushed without having to run left and right.

 

[Hound Archon]

You have a super empire stretching from the Middle East to the North Sea and you’re suffering endless border wars and local revolts. Tell it to the Romans !

Running a continent spanning empire should be nigh on impossible, at least in the long run, border raids and insurgent revolts are the primary tools (for now) to do that.

Except you have exactly the same problem if you play as - for example - Samarkand in the earliest starting date bookmark. You only have 12 provinces, but 3 or 4 of them will be permanently occupied by the infinitely respawning adventurer hosts that somehow magically conjure endless reinforcements out of thin air despite sitting in the middle of the enemy territory.

You drive them off, another adventurer comes literally next week. 100% uptime on being raided, you can't even dismiss your vassal levies (which pisses them off) because you need to keep chasing away the not-so-little turds with their 4.5k stacks that never... go... away...

 

[BuddyLove]

If you're that big then your vassals should mostly handle those guys without you having to worry about-- if it's a particular region then you might need to make a more powerful vassal there.

 

[Duuk]

Regardless of who you're playing as, if you play a 769 start Catholicism implodes due to Moral Authority being 0 due to raids.

It's an issue.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

I agree with the others who say Raiding is too much of a pain. One place that seems to get constantly hit is the Trade Post in Trapezous, in Trebizond. Often the bastards will sit there until their have sieged down and destryoed the Trade Post, and if you own the county you need to be 100% on top of that or a Merchant Republic will swoop in and seize it before you can build another.

Constant low-level raiding might have been a thing but in Anatolia you regularly see 4-6,000 strong stacks on raids, which is basically an invasion.

 

[King_of_Spain]

Yes, this is a horrific problem. Next game I will play I will probably disable Horse Lords, since that DLC is what activates raiding adventurers.

(I know they can be toned down or eliminated in the game rules, but I'm playing for achievements, and you can only get achievements with full raiding adventurers. )

Cheers, I might.

Can't you settle one of the raiders in a province you don't care about (e.g. Flanders)? That will give you 10 years of raid immunity.

Yep, but it also gives all your vassals a -15 opinion malus, which is an equally massive pain.

Sorry not sorry but I have zero sympathy here, this sounds as if it is completely and utterly WAI. You have a super empire stretching from the Middle East to the North Sea and you’re suffering endless border wars and local revolts. Tell it to the Romans !

Running a continent spanning empire should be nigh on impossible, at least in the long run, border raids and insurgent revolts are the primary tools (for now) to do that.

I get where you're coming from, but it's not that I *can't* run the empire, it's that I can no longer be bothered. I am fine; my realm is still there and I beat every revolt etc. It's that the sheer number makes gameplay so repetitive that it gets boring very fast. My complaint is about the gameplay experience, not the difficulty.

 

[Gender]

I too run the game with horse lords DLC disabled for this reason

 

[Evangeline]

If I'd known you can get rid of them by disabling horse lords, I'd done that months ago, lol! I never even play nomads!

 

[Rags17]

:
I get where you're coming from, but it's not that I *can't* run the empire, it's that I can no longer be bothered. I am fine; my realm is still there and I beat every revolt etc. It's that the sheer number makes gameplay so repetitive that it gets boring very fast. My complaint is about the gameplay experience, not the difficulty.

Okay, you got me there. It seems that like looting, handing out titles and improving holdings there needs to be some sort of effective mass action option, maybe as a decision on your Chancellor or Marshall. (The existing hand out titles option doesn't qualify as "effective").

Being able to set your Marshal to Hunt Raiders would be great - the custom decision could even have options from "Raise 10%", "Raise 30%" and "Raise 50%" of your levies and let them do all the work of tracking down and killing raiders.