Crusader Kings 2

[General Maximus]

Anybody know a quick way to control the spread of Catholicism after the schism is mended? That is another problem behind my empire is that the Catholics have pretty much been allowed to go unwatched and now they're usually the ones behind my rebellions.

The best thing you can do is to keep a good court-chaplain and use him to convert provinces. And be sure to hand out more and more provinces to vassals. The more vassals you have, the faster your territories will convert (since all vassals will convert their provinces at the same time, instead of one by one).

And keep some armies to crush rebels.

[EmperorBatman999]

Pretty standard to what I've been doing.

I do get the ability to revoke titles from Catholics without penalty and allowing me to replace those provinces with fresh Greek Orthodox nobles, but I still find this a long process.

[General Maximus]

Pretty standard to what I've been doing.

I do get the ability to revoke titles from Catholics without penalty and allowing me to replace those provinces with fresh Greek Orthodox nobles, but I still find this a long process.

I have divided my empire into many 'rebellion zones' where I focus on the converting and crushing rebels the most. Here they are:



The most rebellious territories are western Europe. I have to keep a 5,000 Cataphract retinue in each of those territories. Whenever someone pops up, the retinue goes and crushes him. Egypt and Levant are also very rebellious for some reason, even though they are all Orthodox now.

Although I am keeping retinues in western Europe, they take so much retinue-cap that I am short on more rebel-crushing retinues in the eastern front. I am barely earning enough to keep up mercenaries to crush rebels, because I cannot raise levy without all lords joining the Independence faction. Here you can see it:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ferdiad]

You're doing it wrong IMO, I stack Catas into stacks of 20 and basically only use them to fight all my wars. Whenever I get a rebellion I just raise the nearest vassal to put them down.

[General Maximus]

You're doing it wrong IMO, I stack Catas into stacks of 20 and basically only use them to fight all my wars. Whenever I get a rebellion I just raise the nearest vassal to put them down.

If it could be recommended, I will disband my all Cataphract retinue and put back the 'Comitatenses' and 'Limitanei' armies. Limitanei are the garrison troops of the later-period Roman Empire, and of course Comitatenses are the mobile field armies. I would use levies to do the work at home, while the retinue armies go campaigning.

The problem is the levy. The levy in the rebellious provinces is not large enough to face rebel armies yet. Until it grows, I cannot disband my retinues from there.

[General Maximus]

Alright...so I have completed making my calculations for reorganising my ERE army.

The armies are called Comitatenses, based on historical Eastern Roman Comitatenses from 4th-5th centurries. Each army has following composition:

4 Cataphract units
6 Cavalry units
10 Shock units
20 Defence units

Overall, these are 40 units. This makes a grand total of:

1,800 Heavy Cavalry
800 Horse Archers
2,400 Light Cavalry
4,000 Heavy Infantry
5,000 Archers
6,000 Pikemen.

These make up a total of 20,000 soldiers. A historically accurate Eastern Roman Comitatenses had exactly 20,000 soldiers. ERE had 5 Comitatenses in 458 AD, spread throughout their lands, and each with same composition, making a grand total of 100,000 men. Looking through game, one Comitatenses is enough of an army to defeat a big foe. And

So my goal is to have 5 Comitatenses within my empire. However, each Comitatenses requires 38,000 Retinue Cap, which means I will have to get at least 190,000 Retinue Cap if I am to achieve my goal.

And it is 1105 and I have only 18,000 Retinue Cap till yet.

Now the Limitanei. This concept is very simple. Historically, Limitanei were professionals but in this game, it would require too much retinue cap to have both Limitanei and Comitatenses. So in this game, Limitanei are going to be regional levies. For example, all levies from Anatolia are Limitanei of Anatolia; all Egyptian levies (from Cyrene to Sinai) are going to be Limitanei of Egypt.

The roll of Limitanei will be to hold aid their regional standing Comitatenses when battles are fought on homeland. Unless really necessary or a Comitatenses army is very close to the rebels, I will only use levies to crush rebels.

And those 5 Comitatenses have their specific garrison regions. One will stand in and watch Greece and other European lands, with it's home base in Adrianopolis or Philippopolis (I will decide later). Second one is for Anatolia, based in Ikonion. Third one is for Syria, and stays in Antioch or Aleppo. Fourth is for the souther Levant, and stays in Jerusalem or Ascalon. Fifth and last one is for Egypt, and stays in Alexandria.

It would've been great if Paradox allowed us to name Retinues. I would have named them Comitatenses I Graecia, Comitatenses III Syrica, Comitatenses V Aegyptus etc. Now it seems I have organized the armies enough.

[Double A]

It's worth noting that generic retinues don't get the 60% cumulative bonus to stuff and therefore are a waste of money unless you really, really want a lot of archers or heavy cavalry, or your cultural retinue is light cavalry.

[absinthia]

You're doing it wrong IMO, I stack Catas into stacks of 20 and basically only use them to fight all my wars. Whenever I get a rebellion I just raise the nearest vassal to put them down.

not sure about the army composition, but overall it seems reasonable to me. vassals will revolt and are not reliable, retinus are. though i usually keep all mine in a big lump at the capital.
when ever there is a factional rebelion i put them on ships and assault any coastal holdings or armies i can easily reach. with a stack of 20K i quick assault holdings and soon have the upper hand. if i can avoid it i do not raise levies, as that tend to make the other vassals angry. also vassal levies has to be mobilized and organized, it take a lot of time/effort and they might be depleated by enemy stacks.
the way i try to organize my realm is big powerfull dukes close to my center or allong the coast and small counts as my dirrect vassals around the edges and inland. the small counts is easy to beat with levies(should a major rebellion occurr) and the dukes has to defend their lands from my imediate counter attack.
after the initiall battles are fought and the scale tip in my favour i often split the retinue and use half as marines, asaulting coastal holdings and smaller armies on the march. it is usually within this phase that my charater gets killed in battle.

and did you notice that rebeling characters is kept as retinue commanders(unless it was fixed in last patch)?

[eXistenZ]

Great, my game is ruined due a bug. my heir marries the daughter of a duchess, who is going to inherit two duchies (gavelkind). When i load up the game, the inheritance has swapped, and she is only getting one duchy, and her sister the two i wanted.

Anyway to fix this in the save files?

[Pethom]

I'm really surprised about the turns of events in the game. I started off as the small independent Count Faste of Dal. Swore fealty to the swedish King when his vassal Duke Erik of Västergötland wanted to usurp me and make me his vassal. About 20 years after becoming vassal the swedish King made Björn, son of Faste, Duke of Västergötland. I later on found out that some Dukes wanted Björn to become the next heir to the throne (Feudal Elective Succesory) and joined that faction. The Dukes later on left that faction and I was alone and woke up to being at war with the King about my place as the heir. I raised my 800 levies and walked to the Capital. Fortunately the swedish army was busy fighting in Finland and some other Dukes joined me. The swedish army returned from Finland with about 5000 men, beat the hell out of my huge 800 men strong army and went back to Finland. I raised a new army of about 600 men and in the middle of all this the King dies and Björn is the new King.

It took about 50 years but now it's a reality.

Now begins the hard part to give titles to Björn's sons and grand sons to secure that his Dynasty gets as much power as possible. I would also like to revoke the titles from all members of the old swedish royal family and later on annihilate or banish them if possible. I unfortunately can't change the succession law right now. I hope the other Dukes don't want someone outside of my dynasty to become the heir. If that happens it would lead to Björn beginning to fight for independence and for the right to some of the duchies he would have claim on as a Duke.

Now I'll have to sit down and read Meneth's (I think) articles about Keeping Vassals Weak, Distributing of Power and How to Stabilize the Realm.

[Clagius]

Great, my game is ruined due a bug. my heir marries the daughter of a duchess, who is going to inherit two duchies (gavelkind). When i load up the game, the inheritance has swapped, and she is only getting one duchy, and her sister the two i wanted.

Anyway to fix this in the save files?

Load up your game to the point she is about to inherit and assassinate her sister.

[Double A]

Why wait? Just kill the chick now. I don't see why you were going to let her get away with one duchy in the first place.

[eXistenZ]

Why wait? Just kill the chick now. I don't see why you were going to let her get away with one duchy in the first place.

Yeah, luckily nature did it works and she died very early, allowing me to inherit huge plot of land. I can almost create italy,.

But in my opinion, the HRE is way too stable. Every realm has a few civil wars during the ages, but the HRE seems to have no problems. which makes becoming independent quite difficult. Especially annoying is it when your wife starts an independence fight with the kaiser with not even 20% faction strength...

I also cant get rome if im only king, and england has sicily. Might start a game with a new character. Hopefully the HRE isnt gonna be a pain like this every time

[Ferdiad]

HRE isn't stable really, they lose Bohemia and german minors all the time.

[EmperorBatman999]

Hey, does anybody know a way to get rid of the little towns held by other factions in your land without fighting a series of seperate wars each time? The HRE has a bunch in my land. I'm not talking about the little independent baronies that show up sometimes, but rather an entire kingdom or empire has holdings inside your counties.

[Ferdiad]

County holder should become heir of say a barony if there's no heirs.

[EmperorBatman999]

The problem is that churches and towns don't have direct heirs, they're just given another leader when one dies. And I don't think you can run out of heirs.

[Kamikaze470]

Hey, does anybody know a way to get rid of the little towns held by other factions in your land without fighting a series of seperate wars each time? The HRE has a bunch in my land. I'm not talking about the little independent baronies that show up sometimes, but rather an entire kingdom or empire has holdings inside your counties.

You have to war them. There isn't really another way.

If you're lucky then maybe all their owned provinces will belong under one ducal title so you can get it all in one go. (Had this happen to be before, I was puzzled as to why, but I went with it anyway)

[Ulyaoth]

OK some stupid random **** happens in this game. A random vassal decides to rebel to try to install a random dumb half sister of mine to the throne so I crush her after I claim somerset which happened to rebel from England at the time, finally doing some expanding. To beat england in an earlier war I had to hire like 10000 mercs so that I could bash his armies to the ground nonstop(somehow he gets like instant manpower replenishment so he can immediately raise another 10000 man army after I destroyed his 20000 man army) while besieging London entirely, and he still wouldn't accept peace even though he had no chance to do anything more in that war than annoy me. This is leading me to think I'll never be able to reclaim parts of scotland that the HRE took over somehow from the duke of Hereford who previously held them since I'm guessing even if I beat his armies in the area the stupid paradox AI will consider that it still has an army and lots of territories and so will never accept defeat of a far flung territory.

Also, what exactly does a truce do? It doesn't seem to have any kind of effect on anything at all as I can immediately declare war again, is it just a opinion penalty with the guy you declare on?

[Double A]

It's an opinion penalty with everyone who shares his religion. You also lose some prestige.

Doesn't really matter for holy wars, but try not to do it against your religious brethren. Truces are between characters and not countries, so if one of the signers dies or is dethroned, you can go ape again.