What is with the Magyar supertroopers?

[PeterCorless]

Tribal. Plus, getting to ≥500 Prestige takes a long time when you have to matrilinearly marry, which immediately gives a -100 hit right off the bat. (Sure, you can take points back instead of cash, but you're still way in the hole.)

Plus, you need to spend Prestige if you are going to upgrade your demense holdings. At 500 a pop for upgrades, do you do the "one time" troop, or do you build for long-term improvement.

My holdings got to 1,200 - 1,500 troops is for 3 provinces. I could do "restart scumming" over and over again to possibly get more holdings, but this is about average. Also depends on your mil skill too. Sometimes I've only gotten to ~1,000 if my military is too low.

Yes, yes, yes, I can do better. But after about 20 starts, it's getting ludicrous.

 

[Narvait]

"One time" troop of course.
This "one time" lasts until you keep the war going or they are killed off. Just declare next war BEFORE forcing Peace on the first.

Stop only after at least Kingdom. Upgrade buildings only when you have ~1000 exp in reserve for troops.

 

[szmik]

You need to take AI into consideration. When a country starts a war AI likes to pile up on it, so don't start first. Wait for neighbour to go to war, then attack. Other neighbours will pile up. Then wait for next one.
Sometimes RNG screws you and you're ganged. I had 3 "want to be Lithuania" starts, where I was eventually ganged, because I was too impatient with starting wars and too weak to fight all my neighbours at the same time. Then I realized AI prefers to gang player if given a chance.

 

[PeterCorless]

I was able to get into the early 800s and finally got 6 total provinces, plus alliances with Bohemia and Poland, and together, we got our asses wiped by the Maggys.

They decimated us all, combined.

Welp, the only thing that saved me in this run was that they were also being simultaneously attacked by the Byzantines. So we snuck in and sieged down the provinces we needed plus his forts, and I just parked my troops in his last province to get to 100%.

Yay! We lost all the battles, but we won the war.

Net result? I took a province.

They are down to 4 provinces, and can still amass an army of 2,500 - 3,000 troops it looks like.

I am up to 6 provinces, and can barely match them in numbers. Which would melt at the first sign of battle.

 

[PeterCorless]

"One time" troop of course.
This "one time" lasts until you keep the war going or they are killed off. Just declare next war BEFORE forcing Peace on the first.

Stop only after at least Kingdom. Upgrade buildings only when you have ~1000 exp in reserve for troops.

As soon as I get a few hundred prestige, I add a new building to my capital. But I'll keep your advice in mind for future warring.

 

[PeterCorless]

p.s. I now have an underage lunatic stress-case. 12 years old and already off his rocker.

 

[StarSword]

As soon as I get a few hundred prestige, I add a new building to my capital. But I'll keep your advice in mind for future warring.

Most tribal buildings don't actually transfer to feudalism or merchant republic: you have to get them to at least level 2.

 

[Aries666]

Not sure what the problem is, just did this in 30 mins .

Next war would subjugate Meshchera and form Ruthenia and it's plain sailing from there. At opening build zeal and legend as soon as you get extra troops subjugate your weakest neighbour, preferably someone without an heir. Then imprison and execute them to inherit their land. Rinse repeat. Oh and fire your sypmaster otherwise they will assassinate you for being a tyrant.

I should add that just before you form your kingdom and hand out titles you should execute all your courtiers then generate fresh courtiers though the intrigue tab and hand out excess titles. That way you end up with a completely happy realm despite your earlier reign of terror.

 

[Zsrai]

Another thing you can do is let the Magyars die horribly of attrition on your provinces, especially in the winter. Tengri suffer the Pagan Homeland Attrition of other Pagans, just like Christians, Muslims, etc. do. They can take something absurd like 40% attrition up in the Komi provinces, and while the Russian heartlands aren't Arctic the winter should still SERIOUSLY hurt them.

Since you have a couple of provinces, trade land for time while allowing for Father Winter to kill your enemies. Just like every successful Russian defender in history

 

[jpinard]

Not sure what the problem is, just did this in 30 mins .View attachment 167043
Next war would subjugate Meshchera and form Ruthenia and it's plain sailing from there. At opening build zeal and legend as soon as you get extra troops subjugate your weakest neighbour, preferably someone without an heir. Then imprison and execute them to inherit their land. Rinse repeat. Oh and fire your sypmaster otherwise they will assassinate you for being a tyrant.

I should add that just before you form your kingdom and hand out titles you should execute all your courtiers then generate fresh courtiers though the intrigue tab and hand out excess titles. That way you end up with a completely happy realm despite your earlier reign of terror.

From a quick game, no one is really going to bother you right away since everyone around you has about 1k. Kind of like when you play a horde, your neighbors are pretty much just waiting for you to screw up so they can subjugate you. Depending on the RNG, hope that maybe you raise a host of warriors, happen to get decent martial skill on Dubrova, or just wait until someone else loses some troops for whatever reason then strike. Take the Become Queen of Ruthenia ambition and give yourself the power to revoke titles on Day 1. When you win that first war against whoever and your truce expires, place your army on top of your new vassal's capital and then proceed to revoke so you get some land. Pretty much your general strategy though is just going to be run from the hordes by subjugating what's around you until you have some prestige to work with. When you have say 1.5 or 2k in prestige hire a few tribal armies and then proceed to bum rush the Magyar/Khazar the capital holdings. Also note that you shouldn't just look at the top liege's troops before you declare- each clan maintains its own army that will join its liege. Like I had said before, you definitely want to at least bring twice what they have if not more and if you can help it lure them into your territory shoud you have to fight them.

I am bookingmarking this to use for future reference. Stuff I'd never think of doing myself.

So is the ability to execute all those courtiers an easy thing to do if you're not Catholic?

 

[Aries666]

I am bookingmarking this to use for future reference. Stuff I'd never think of doing myself.

So is the ability to execute all those courtiers an easy thing to do if you're not Catholic?

Yep not a problem, a few might escape abroad the point here is to rid your court of courtiers with -100 opinion who will try and likely succeed in assassinating you. Once they are all gone just refill with randomly generated courtiers, I am going to play on in a bit so will take some pics show you how it pans out.

You can of course execute your courtiers sooner but you will then have to forego councilors and generals.

The main purpose here is to form a kingdom really fast so your realm wont fracture due to gavelkind whilst allowing you to take you pick of the best counties in the kingdom.

 

[Aries666]

Ruthenia formed 784. Funny thing is this game is likely lost as I'm a 34 year old chaste female who is yet to have a son.

Nice happy realm, large demesne. Next move would be to head south to grab the slavic holy site at Husi so I can reform slavic. Keep increasing tribal org every 10 years and if I managed to live to the grand old age of 74 adopt feudalism.

 

[Bernard95]

I am bookingmarking this to use for future reference. Stuff I'd never think of doing myself.

Happy to be of help!

Ruthenia formed 784. Funny thing is this game is likely lost as I'm a 34 year old chaste female who is yet to have a son.
View attachment 167176
Nice happy realm, large demesne. Next move would be to head south to grab the slavic holy site at Husi so I can reform slavic. Keep increasing tribal org every 10 years and if I managed to live to the grand old age of 74 adopt feudalism.

It's a shame you don't have WoL for the Family or Seduction focus. The extra health and fertility or extra attraction and fertility would certainly come in handy right about now. If your courtier Zhenye Blackbird was still around I'd definitely think about having Dubrova throw herself at him, considering he's a Strong Genius. Possibly you could also ditch the husband you have now and maybe take a lustful courtier or something if you had to. Still, it isn't that unlikely that you would live that long to become feudal so you could change your gender laws.