For a strategy game that excels at making things personal, there's one portion of Crusader Kings 2 that's always felt a little impersonal: combat. I typically feel a bit helpless while battles are raging, and even when there's a random event that puts a sword in my hand and an enemy right in front of me, it still doesn't really feel like I'm involved.
Hooni's Rebels and Warmongers mod address that, among other things. When you find yourself in battle, as I did when I began a new game and immediately started a big pointless war, it opens up some new combat options. While battling with my neighbor to test the mod, I found myself face to face with a foe, and after deciding to take him on, I was given a choice of where to stab him. The head, for a chance at blinding him? His torso, to maim him? His limbs, to hobble him? You're also shown the chances of your attack succeeding. I naturally went for the head, but missed, and my enemy counter-attacked.
The mod also expands the options of a few other common activities, like gift-giving. Look, money is always a fine gift, but it's a little impersonal. Why not give someone a rare jewel, or a camel, or a bunch of elephants? If you're strapped for cash, you can always give someone your gratitude, and I'm sure they'll accept it with the same excitement someone does when you've made a donation in their name to charity.
Still, I'd save up for the elephant. Even if they don't want an elephant, it's really tricky to re-gift. Elephants are pretty noticeable.
While we're talking about animals, you can breed horses with the mod as a little side activity. I'm afraid I didn't do very well when I attempted to breed aggressive horses. My goal was to flood my countryside with insane horses to distract my subjects from the war I'd started and was horribly losing, but they pretty much all died as foals. I'm not a particularly good king, if you hadn't noticed.
The education of children is expanded, giving you a little more control over the traits your child is learning, or at least giving you a few options that might steer them in the right direction. You can even engage in theological debates with other leaders. And why not? Just because the internet doesn't exist doesn't mean you can't yell in someone's face about religion.
You can read more about the features of Hooni's Rebels and Warmongers, and subscribe to it, in the Steam Workshop.
Every county generates some amount of troops. Its quantity you can increase thanks to proper buildings (look at: Economy: Developing of lands and increasing incomes) and laws (Laws) but also human relations matter. The more vassals like you, the more army they'll send you. The good ruler should balance between subordinates' respect and number of possessing lands. Only such combination let him gather big, unbeatable armies.
Usually vassals have more army than their sovereigns.
Troops are being produced in every land you possess, also in those possessed indirectly. To hire warriors, you need to click on the chosen province and choose the icon of recruitment. If you don't like clicking, you can send messages to all warriors in the kingdom, by choosing the icon of an army in the upper menu (screen above). But you have to remember that armies, that wander through the land, are less eager. Their leaders will lose respect to the ruler, what may end with a rebellion. The small land owners get upset the fastest, and the most patient are kings and dukes. But even there do not trust them: tired soldier is an unreliable one. So when the battle dust falls, send boys to their homes. They'll get calm and ready to the next campaign.
Defender gets a bonus to morale if he is fighting on the mountainous terrain. Attacker gets penalty, if he crosses the river.
To understand how particular types of troops works, you need to look at battle's course. It happens without your participation: about the result decide troops' number, quality and placing. You can divide your troops on three flanks before the battle, but it doesn't affect the course: it's better to keep them in one, strong wedge. Such solution solves also a problem of incompetent commanders. In the front of the flank the greatest generals from an army stands. So, more important than the formation is understanding a mechanism of struggling. In the first phase only shooters and little of melee fighters participate. Second phase is a direct encounter between all troops and the third one is chasing the defeated enemy.
For instance, if your enemy has bigger army it's not worth to send a lot of cavalry upon him, because its main usage is chase. It's better to bet on pikemen, light and heavy infantry and archers. In big number they should stand against enemy's rush and break his morale. Only then you can decide to send some horsemen who'll finish running opponent. Of course you can part and move your troops: it's special icon dedicated to it (screen above). Yet you can't move single formation (bowmen) but only whole groups (like Silesian Army).
Formations divide on few categories, which are described below:
From left: light infantry, pikemen, archers, heavy infantry, light cavalry, mounted archers, heavy cavalry.
Light infantry - base type of troops, quite well at all tasks with no specialization. In comparison with better troop it loses defence.
Pikemen - great in defence (lot of HP and strong melee), but totally bad in offensive and chasing.
Archers - they attack firstly, cause big damages, but then they almost don't participate in the battle. As they have little HP, they often dies (especially when chased).
Heavy infantry - very tough troop, melee only. Do not take part in the first phase of battle and chases.
Light cavalry - weak in the first phase, average in the second, but perfect in the third one. Despite pretences have quite satisfying number of HP.
Mounted archers - good in every phase, particularly in the first and third. It's typical troop for muslims, but Christian rulers can hire them as mercenaries.
Heavy cavalry - very tough unit, perfect at chases and melee. Unfortunately, they require high advancement of the castle what is a rare thing.
How else you can divide troops? There are also mercenaries and knight orders. First ones consume huge amount of money, but they spring up immediately and numberous. But remember, that they serve only for money and without the soldier's pay they'll rebel. That's why sometimes it's profitable to send your mercenaries on death as first ones.
And knights orders are hired for piety points and can fight only against infidels (they decline fighting against believers of the same religion). Their big advantage is that they have no soldier's pay, if they're fighting on the heretic's land and you're a faith defender. Of course obvious flaws are recruiting only during crusades and jihads and that they're available only for catholics.
I've just bought CK2 and apparently a recent patch has invalidated most if not all walkthroughs. For instance, the Ireland start does not work anymore because you need 51% instead of 50% to create a duchy.
Lacking that, the preferred way to expand apparently is war. But I've tried a few times in Ireland, and also in southern Italy. Doesn't matter: defeat is unavoidable. In Ireland I just get stuck in a stalemate without any gains. In Italy my army was wiped out by a family member rebelling, even though he held only a single county with ~1000 troops and I sent in everything (~2500 troops). Despite that, I lost all my troops and he lost 69 or so.
Plotting hasn't achieved anything either, nor marriage. In fact the only positive change in territory I've ever seen was when I started in Dublin, since that sets you up to inherit from your father.
The war tutorial is less than helpful. It has Argyll with less soldiers than a single barony in the real normal game. No wonder that works.
So, is there a intelligent solution to expand? Picking just the right initial leader with enough internal stability and sufficient armies to beat up much, much, smaller neighbours? Wait several hours more and get lucky with marriage?
(Yeah, I'm aware this does sound like I'm quite unhappy. First and last Paradox game I bought. Spent 12 hours so far just in the game, without a single feel of achievement or having learnt something. That's a first in 300 games I've played over the years)
MSaltersMSalters
2 Answers
First and Foremost, you should stop playing as a count, it is no longer as straightforward as it used to be. By playing as a weak starting character, you are intentionally handicapping yourself for a game you were completely unprepared for. Try playing as a french duke to begin with. That means that you will have the power of your liege for defensive wars, and can declare war on people much weaker than you, ie rebellious counts and weaker dukes. You should start out only going to war with people who you outnumber by 50 percent, minimum, since you have to deal with seiging and defended bonuses.
You should try not to rely on warfare. Making the right marriage matches and waiting up to an hour for them to come to fruition is part of the game, (playing the long game is part of all paradox games really). In fact, Marriage is actually a much stronger mechanic for taking territory than combat. Not only that, but marriage is the most powerful mechanic in combat as well, because it allows you to call allies with vastly larger militaries than you can command early in the game. An alliance with the king of NearbyNation will let you call in thousands or tens of thousands of additional troops.
Still, the overall point is to stop playing as weak characters. Counts and the occasional 1 province duke in ireland are not advisable start locations for someone unfamiliar with paradox games, because like real life, paradox combat is very swingy. A 20 percent difference in starting numbers can be a 200 percent difference in casualties. That means when starting out, make sure you absolutely have a substantial numerical advantage against whoever you declare war on.
As for your example of losing a battle where you had superior numbers, you probably made a mistake with regards to combat morale, but its difficult to know without screenshots. Even if they had a vastly better general you should not lose a 1000 to 2500 fight, unless you had virtually no morale (probably from not paying the men).
Basic Concepts to Practice:
Crusader Kings 2 Battle GameplayLawtonLawton
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Recapping the comments, plus what I've learned elsewhere & through playing
I already mentioned the places where troop strength info is scattered. Here are the all the places where I've found information about troop strengths:
Crusader Kings 2 Combat Tactics
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