With the new patch and DLC for Crusader Kings 2 now released, I'm taking my first serious stab at getting into the game.
But since this is my first serious stab, I won't be running a narrative AAR as might be expected (especially from me, and especially with this game). Mainly I'm just going to fish for gameplay answers I haven't been able to find on the web yet, and also for advice on my position as I go.
My operating theory for learning the game has been to choose an independent county or small duchy in an out-of-the-way corner of the map, one which will need lots of growth (so I'll have some things to do) but which on the other hand doesn't have a lot of options yet (so that I can stay focused on figuring out what can and should be done) nor is likely to be bothered yet.
I was originally going to play as the Count of the Faeroes, north of Scotland, who only has one little island cluster (counting as only one territory), and had actually started a narrative AAR as Sigurdthr from an Old Gods bookmark (before the Charlemagne release) since she's one of the few female chieftains available so early in the game (or at all); but when the DLC finally released she wasn't a playable character farther back (as expected, naturally) and the religion there was Catholic now (which I certainly don't mind but which I know from Wiki research was certainly false for this time period, the Norse overran the area before the OG start date but they didn't overrun a Christian settlement), so that soured me a bit on re-starting there.
I thought very hard about playing the last king of the Jews, at the headwaters of the Nile -- I think his name is Phineas at the earliest bookmark -- since that would be a very colorful and historically interesting position, protected and yet also a bit threatened by the surrounding Ethiopian Christian tribes, and he certainly has a lot of room on tech to grow. But then as I was mousing around to get an idea of his extended neighbors I saw an odd splash of color in the sea off the Horn of Africa.
There I found, very unexpectedly, the last king of the Nestorians.
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There's the island of Socotra.
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And there's the island of Socotra again in relation to as much of the world as the window can show at once.
(Or not quite, as I ticked the resolution a down a bit from the maximum 1080 so I could run the game in a window -- fullscreen allows alt-tabbing out, but not the normal screenshotting command. If there's an alternate command in CK2, I don't know what it is yet.)
Spoiler: I chose to play as Philemon of Socotra. Just because that little island is also known as the Yahballaha Emirate is not a laughing matter!
Okay, it sounds like a laughing matter, I'll grant you that. ;)
(I think it means YH the Lord in Judeo-Christian Aramaic, btw. But that's admittedly an educated guess.)
Some quick background for situational context...
....
.........
Wait, there's no way to give a quick background. Sorry. I legitmately tried and it ran for ten pages.
Um. Summary. Nestorians are trinitarian Christians who, rather like the "miaphysites" in the game (mostly along the west coast of the Red Sea, and up in the Armenian region), split off from central orthodoxy (now the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodoxy, both in game at this point and in modern history, but back then still one Imperial group) over mutual misunderstandings about what each side was saying in subtle disputes over how the two natures of Christ, divine and human, related to each other in Jesus. (All three sides mostly reconciled on our Christological issues a few decades ago, or at least the two wings did with the two central orthodox groups, not sure if the wings did with each other. Long story.)
They had a vastly huge though not numerically very successful evangelical reach, all the way out to China and even to Japan for a few months, and liked to share culture with the non-Christian groups along the way, being generally unjudgmental about the religious differences. (Possibly because, like the misaphysites, they came from strongly universalistic Christian teachers, in their case Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mospuestia who in their days were key champions of trinitarian orthodoxy, too.)
Unfortunately, they never gained any political power as a group (though they had a lot of influence as intellectuals and professional scholars, starting the West's and maybe the world's first medical university in Nisibis for example); so they got caught unable to defend themselves between the crushing juggernauts of Muslim conquest from the south and Mongol expansion from the north (or the equivalent of that for the time period; I forget if they were actually Mongols yet) -- though they came within an ace of convincing one of the main Khans to convert to Christianity. (Later one of his descendants converted to Judaism, and you can play him from an Old Gods bookmark start I think, though most of his area isn't Jewish per se and he doesn't claim Jewish descent like the Solomonids down in the mountains of Ethiopia.)
So while there are still a ton of miaphysite areas at the earliest point of CK2, including some dukes and small kings down along the Red Sea (not to be confused with the lone remaining Jewish king down there, though he's very kewl also and obviously related to the situation), there aren't many Nestorians anymore, even this relatively early, and most are ruled by Muslim emirates and the local Caliph up in what's now northern Iraq.
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They're the five counties in the red hash under the fog of war in the middle. Yep, that's Mosul and a few other names familiar to us in modern times right now! Baghdad and Rayy are white because for some reason they're holy sites for Nestorians in the game -- I don't know the historical rationales, though I suspect Nisibis (which aside from being one of the world's first scientific research centers was also one of early Christendom's first four seminaries for instructing Christian teachers) is down there. (The Nestorians had to move it from Edessa, if I recall correctly, out of the Eastern Empire during the mutual backbiting. Again, long story.)
As might be expected we also like Alexandria and Antioch (where the two largest first Christian seminaries were located, both of which the Nestorians have strong historical connections to, even though they ended up rivals of Alexandria), and Jerusalem (duhhhhh). If we can BY SOME MIRACLE WHICH WON'T AT ALL INVOLVE ME HACKING THE GAME CODE BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW FOR THIS GAME somehow pick up those territories we'll gain massive religious influence for spreading our slightly different version of trinitarian orthodoxy again. (And, by the way, Christian universalism. :smitten: )
But those are the last Nestorians. Except for down south, in the little island emirate of Yahballaha.
Anyway, that's why even though I'm not Nestorian in real life I'm a bit jazzed about finding that the new DLC with its older bookmark provides an opportunity to play the last Nestorian king, off on his little island where the Muslims can't get to him yet, the final tiny remnant of a vast missionary push that originally dwarfed the whole of the Roman Empire -- and faced with the annoying prospect of having to team up with the Miaphysites (in this case the Ethiopians) to deal with the nearby Muslim counts and dukes (especially since they tend to be pirates).
Next up, I'll go into actual detail about what I've been up to since gamestart -- as the screenies show, I've run a few months already -- and I'll ask my first big question about how to proceed. I imagine I'm going to have to live for a while with having chosen my first ambition poorly, but I want to know how to even try getting a set of the other ones when-if-ever I get a chance.
Awesome, I love this kind of stuff that ck2 throws up
Has great tale potential JP
One thing, do you have a navy?
Yes, I know some players complain that having India around breaks the game somehow, but I love having the extra corners like that: I wish I knew more about Indian history so I could recognize little details plopped in and say, hey, this place had an interesting backhistory and coulda-shoulda been a contender, and now we can give it a try! Similarly, I'm glad the western coasts of North Africa, down below the Muslim areas (currently), are available for playing: I'd like to start a campaign to unify Mali and see what could be done from there.
That being said, I have literally no idea whether this little Nestorian Emir is historical or if a designer at Paradox just thought it would be nifty to tuck him in there. ::)
Right, so, navy: no, at the moment I can't levy any kinds of troops at all, including navy. Don't know why and that would be another question, soon, because I'm off the coast of several pirate factions, and if I'm going to try to recover the bedouin lands of Arabia (being king of Arabia is one of the long-term super ambitions) I'm definitely going to need ships.
Interestingly, Yahballaha has almost the maximum tech level of any faction for this startpoint: level 1 everything in culture and economy (level 2 on any of that would incur over 75% extra research cost for being ahead of the time period), and they're close to finishing research on the next/first level of everything else. Though this may explain why I can't levy anything, because strictly speaking they don't have level 1 military tech on anything yet. Still, shouldn't I be able to levy pre-1 troops?? And they didn't get out on that island by swimming. Hell, the Faeroes on an Old Gods start have a 1-1/2 naval level, probably because they're descended from Viking invaders from the south (ironically, not from Norway though both waves of settlers came from Norway originally), AND THEY HAVE NO TREES TO BUILD SHIPS WITH! :2funny: Which led me to infer that their fishing/whaling ships were always getting old and worn out, and wealthy families were sending occasional buying parties south to Scotland and Ireland to buy new ships with whalebone ivory for trade. (The new young chieftainess knows a lot of the wild stories told by the occasional merchant and from similar trips, must likely be true because those impossible "trees" are clearly real -- that's how she parses the bits of Christianity that arrived on the islands via trading families a generation and a half earlier, too: the god was once a man, or vice versa, who worked with wood and died on something like a ship mast. Right, but I'm not playing that game now, don't get distracted... :crazy2: )
I'll post up some tech shots later this afternoon/tonight. The rest of the family is off on holiday so I'll have a lot of undisturbed time this weekend. :coolsmiley: (Unless the nieces take pity on me and invade, though that would be nifty so I wouldn't complain.)
Post 2
A few incidental notes first. F11 is how to take screenshots in game, so I could stop using the window now (and go full 1080) if I wanted to; but I like having the window open on the desktop for reference and mousing around, even though it makes screenshots a little more difficult for me to properly trim.
Also, despite my recent complaints somewhere (not upthread apparently...?), CK2 does now have a clear way to load saved games from the main screen. Not sure how long that's been there, but whatever I'm glad to see or find it.
To recap what I told U'geek earlier today, I have no navy and can't apparently get one if I needed it. I was wrong about not being able to raise any land troops either, but in my defense the relevant buttons looked just as greyed out. I can raise 724 troops from desmesne levies, or 89 instead (?) from vassals. I think if I raise more from the demesne than the total possible from my vassals (6 from one and 83 from another if I wanted to raise levies from specific people), they'll have none to contribute themselves. So in this case financially it would be better to raise the first 89 troops from them, and then the remainder from the demesne generally (since then they'd be obligated to pay upkeep on the 6 and the 83 respectively) -- BUT politically it would be better for me to raise them from the domain (since I hate typing that other word ;) ) instead, so as not to annoy those two vassals, one of whom has a fairly shallow opinion of me anyway.
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I'm ignoring the two available merc groups right now, as I have no particular use for them and couldn't afford them anyway. They're from different parts of Ethiopia for what it's worth.
I could also (theoretically) create (and later add to) a retinue, which in this game means the professional permanent army loyal to me directly (while domain levies are loyal to me directly but aren't as permanent or necessarily as professional). I can have multiple retinue companies based on military tech and maybe some other factors, but they're also more expensive to buy up front. Maybe to upkeep, too, I haven't checked; there's also a reinforcement cost, which has to start being paid immediately for training for finding and hiring troops into whatever company I build, on top of the institution cost, which in any case is prohibitive as I don't have anywhere near enough gold for even the cheapest such company. Also, each company of retinue troops uses some of my retinue capacity, of which I only have 22, which is ludicrously not enough for even the smallest retinue company.
None of that matters, though, since I can't build ships (including not a personal flotilla for my retinue), so I'd just have a hilarious camel icon (representing the best units I'm currently capable of in the group if I raised a levy from the county) standing around on the island near my researching counsel.
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There's the fleet tab; as you can see it's quite similar except no ships are listed as available, whether from my vassals or from my domain generally (or from mercs). How that's even possible for an island nation I have no idea.
My guess at the moment is that my shipbuilding tech is only at 91% right now and currently growing at 7.2% a year, 4.5% of which is coming from my spymaster if I understand the rollover correctly. It also says my other councilors are adding 60% but doesn't give a rate, so... whatever.
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"Shipbuilding" is the next to last tech in the left column.
When that fills up... well I don't know, do I get it automagically? Or do I have to spend tech points on it anyway?
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My educated guess is that I can upgrade to the next level any time I want if I have enough tech points to spend, which right now I have only 1.44 and I nominally need 100, BUT since I've researched 91% I only have to pay 9 and would theoretically have to pay none at full research, BUT since the next level of shipbuilding tech would be ahead of the curve for this time period there's an 18.7% penalty. So 9 points times 1.187 = 10.683, which doesn't seem quite close enough to the actual current cost of 10.089 (even if the 91% is rounded off from a fraction), but flatly adding 18.7 points (as a percentage of the base cost) would be 27.7 points of cost to buy.
Anyway, more importantly that would get me only LEVEL ONE shipbuilding tech, which any island nation really ought to have already, specifically a shipyard unlocked for any city, temple, or castle in the county (assuming the appropriate coastline or large river I guess). Do I have to add that to my properties, though, or do they add automatically at that point?? My guess at the moment is that they add automatically, but either way this probably explains why I can't raise ships yet, which is retarded for this little nation. It's also slightly retarded that this tech would also give me a .9% addition of some kind (speed of production? strength?) to my galleys, AS THOUGH I CAN ALREADY BUILD THEM AND THIS WOULD BE AN IMPROVEMENT, WHEN THE GAME PREVENTS ME FROM BUILDING THEM BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THE TECH, ARGH! Craziness. Maybe the addition comes from another factor though. The only drawback to the rollover tabs is that the game doesn't provide a way to get more rollover explanations about their information.
As it happens, the island of Socotra has already been developed to have (what looks like) a fort as its capital city, Qualnsiyah; and two other settlements, a bishopric of Qadub, and the city of Tamrida.
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And there it is. I seem to recall in the previous version before the new update, this view would show the population instead of the supply, but whatever.
My chief immediate enemy on the map is likely to be whoever thinks they own the Emirate of Sanaa, since the Shiekdom of Socotra (not to be confused with my Emirate of Yaballaha which would include whatever I pick up eventually) is traditionally part of that small but larger Emirate. Currently that's Emir Yazd of the Arwadid Emirate. Note that our personal Emirates aren't necessarily equivalent to any larger or smaller emirates we may be laying claim to. Unfortunately I have no claims on anything other than my island right now; and I'm not sure I want to play the 'forging documents' angle.
Here's what the local potential dukedoms look like on the map.
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The colors are variations of the basic color of the religion of the person with the current best claim on the ducal territories, which is why our little island is Muslim green like the rest of Sanaa.
You may notice that the actual holding-lines don't necessarily match up with the ducal territories -- some are actually claimed as such by a duke or emir or whatever, and some are only potentially a coherent region. The game treats those areas as having once been solid regions of administrations in the past so that someone could try to become duke of Medina or of Oman again (if they aren't already) by taking the appropriate territories. (Medina and Oman are to the left and right of Sanaa, going around the Arabian peninsula, but from this camera position their dukedom names don't fully show up.)
From this map distance, you might be able to see that Emir Yazd currently owns all of Sanaa except for us, and has started picking up part of Oman. (His border color pattern looks very similar to whoever is holding the Berbera region, but that's someone else not him. They're potentially an enemy, too, though.)
Okay, if I zoom in a notch further, the fog of war kicks into play but the individual counties also map up.
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And there you can see Yazd has taken control of Mahra. His capitol county is in the upper left portion of his region, Sanaa, though the fog makes it smudgy in this screenshot. It's south of Asir.
You may notice one of his counties is brighter green than the others, like Mahra except not so smudgy. That's because at the beginning of my game I sent my grand vizier Akin there to improve relations with us.
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Why? Mainly because Akin is the only counselor who is completely useless at improving my tech so I wanted to put him to work elsewhere, and I'd personally rather improve relations than forge claims or sow dissent like a spy. Why there? Because it was one of the nearest counties where the ruler had only a slightly poor opinion of me, and the only such county among Yazd's crew. I also sent him a cash gift, so right now he actually likes me, which will improve over time with Akin there, though he still likes his liege better. Eventually I'd like to get him to switch allegiences, maybe while Yazd is off prosecuting war with Oman (which happens to be what's brewing by the way. I think -- if I'm reading the details right they're having a holy war due to being in different Islamic groups.)
My Marshal Shiban, my Steward Aram, and my Chaplain Bishop Halil, are all back here in Socotra researching tech, which is why there are three guys standing on our island in those screenies. My spymaster Musa Musaid is up somewhere near the occupied Nestorian areas feeding us more tech information from one of the Caliph's dukes. (The game gave me only three options of where to send him, all kind of in that region, possibly because my tech is already quite nice compared to the rest of the world, and possibly because of the local Nestorian connections letting him infiltrate over the border into counties with better tech than us. This has already quickly paid off with a package of cultural information, which is why you may have noticed, from an earlier screenie, our cultural research has built up 50.8 points already despite only having a rate of .2 per month.)
My steward was the only one who started off with a little negative opinion of me, but I made him high almoner (letting him give out court charity every month), which improved his opinion greatly, though overall it's still meh-ish: only 10, though better than a couple of others.
I have a few other courtiers but not many; one of the others is ruling the city of Tamrida.
This early in the game, possibly also due to this being the earliest possible gamestart, practically no one is married. And the pickings are slim for me to arrange marriages with: only one lowborn woman. I could bring new ones to court but that would quickly cost more money than I currently have. I may have to borrow 300 gold from Jewish merchants soon...
This leads me to my first big question: I figured my first ambition, relatively easy to score points on, ought to be to marry -- but afterward I started looking around and the only Nestorian woman available anywhere is still lowborn which would hit me for 200 prestige when I only have 31.8 right now -- I'm not sure the game would even let me! And she's definitely the best pick I've found so far, as she has mostly good traits and most of the other women nearby don't like me (partly for religious reasons and partly because I'm cruel and lazy. Though at least I'm just and humble, that helps sometimes.)
I may have to go shopping farther east rather than among the local Christians and Muslims -- possibly the religious difference won't matter so much then.
Anyway, that isn't my first big question. My first big question is, how do I improve my stats? Diplomacy, martial, etc. I mean the personal stats of Philemon himself, not the state stats.
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That's the colorful column just right of middle, with the little icons that read 3, 7, 8, 6, 2 next to them (and much larger stats in parenthesis -- those are stats for our nation thanks to me and various other factors like tech and my counselors.)
It's apparently possible, and not just by accident, because some of the ambitions were to increase my various low stats. But I haven't found any way to do that yet, either in the tutorial or online or in the (hahahahaha) manual.
Relatedly, I need to check how long it will take for the ambition list to reset if I cancel marriage -- I tested doing that without saving, and it didn't reset the ambition options immediately. Does it take a half-year? A year? Does the reset clock start only after I cancel, or does it start after I assign an ambition (so if I cancel after the reset limit I can immediately assign a new one, but if before I have to wait)? It certainly isn't a month or a season (quarter year), I already tested that.
Right, that's enough for tonight. Peruse!
okaaaaay -
looks like you can call up 700 odd troops
send your spy to somewhere that already has discovered ships, there is a chance hell steal their tech and speed yours up
im not sure the first ship tech actually gets you ships, it might be number 2, but yeah when you have the tech points, invest them in ship building
your wife will give you 50% of her stats, find a good one with high whatever you want, try and find one with one of the 8 super stats (usually marked in green - things like tactician, courageous - the size of her bonus will let you know what class of skill it is, there are 3 grades of skill from something like tactician to master tactician) and it will be passed onto your son
maybe start looking around for target number 1 and stick the chancellor on there to forge a CB, it can take a long time
Can't do that with the spy yet for two reasons:
1.) He's already assigned way up north, near the other Nestorian-majority population counties (but not actually in one). Can't reassign him until late July. Up in my first post, there's a screenie that happens to show where he's at though I didn't call attention to it at the time: he's in the bright non-fog county just west of the five Nestorian county cluster.
Edited to add: I decided to be slightly less lazy and post it again for reference:
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Hm, he's a little farther away from the Nestorian population bloc than I remembered; can't quite see the name from here, but Al Jazira is between him and them.
2.) The game only gave me three options of where to send him, and none of those were counties with shipbuilding possibilities. For all I know, those will still be the only possibilities later this year; but if they change to a county on the coast, yep!
For those who don't know (though U'geek will), the game tracks tech advances per county, which can vary. So even though the Caliph, ruling the very large "Abbasid" area where I sent my spy, almost certainly has at least level 1 shipbuilding, the county I could send my spy might not have had it anyway due to variable tech spread -- and (so far as I know) couldn't have had it anyway being solidly landlocked.
This also means that I have no idea how to directly improve tech in any county other than my capitol. The game just tracks ambient tech spread due to a couple dozen factors. But there may be a way to directly improve it in a county, possibly by spending more tech points again. I'm not sure -- I know the game will show the relative tech positions of any of my non-capitol counties if I mouse over them while the tech screen is up, but that would seem to mean the tech screen goes back to the capitol if I move the mouse-pointed back to that screen to try buying an advance. ???
Yes, my 700+ levy troops are quite nice considering I only have one county to work with. However, everyone around me has multiple counties to work with, I think -- I'll check again but I don't think I have any other random counts sitting around within sailing reach not already allied with at least a ducal liege.
Thus my initial plan of gaining a spearhead in the Sanaa region by friendly diplomacy (rather than by forging claims and pissing off a number of people stronger than I am.) I've made some good advances there already, considering it's only early May of my first gameyear.
However, I'm also spending money a LOT faster than I can possibly replace it in any tolerably quick span of time: I've got a 4. something rate per month, which is great considering I only have one county, but that means I've about spent my replacement budget for the year already. Thus my pondering about getting a loan from Jewish merchants, which I can pay back whenever I want. (I suppose that's up to a point, to prevent spam-abusing that tactic.)
Holy crap, even the first ship tech might not get me ships?? That would be insane! -- what the hell's the purpose of adding .9% of some benefit to galleys if I still can't even build galleys yet except by going to level 2???
I've seen potential wives with good stats, but either their lieges hate me and would never approve the marriage, or they hate me and would cause me unending trouble (or both), or at best I'd take a 200 point prestige hit as none of them are nobles. I'm not sure the game would even allow me to do that, or what would happen if I did. I don't want to risk a coup when I only have one county, and rather rubbish stats myself.
Seems like you're saying the only way to achieve the stat improvement ambitions is to marry a wife and pick up from her; but aside from not being at all sure that half her stats count, for the game engine, as improving my stats (...wouldn't it count toward the state stat total, like from a counselor or from tech??), that means unless I'm polygamous or a widower (the former of which the game doesn't allow for Christians I think) I can't fill both the married ambition and a stat improvement ambition. And that doesn't seem right at all...
Incidentally, because of the goofy way early-start dates work, I might or might not have a son even though I don't have a wife; and since I do have a son, that makes me a widower or a divorcee already. ::) Like everyone else in the game right now. >:D (Though the game doesn't treat us like that.)
Yeah she just lends you the stat boost, actual boosts come from random events, other than that you get what youre dealt
It must be a new thing - you used to be able to put your spy anywhere, even Constantinople before you discovered ships so maybe they nerfed this
Tough start this!
Now I'm starting to wonder if intentional stat improvement is a new thing, too, then. It seems crazy to offer an ambition that you can only randomly luck into.
Will post more information presently.
Okay, as to the ambition to raise poor stats -- this has been around since at least 2012, and was part of a DLC/patch released back then (splitting the ambitions from the plots). Apparently if such an ambition is chosen, eventually the game will generate a plotline which will raise the stat +2 if I succeed, or still +1 even if I fail.
As I suspected, the wife doesn't help this ambition.
Not sure what that actually entails yet (the thread on Steam wasn't specific about details), but at least I understand the mechanism now.
Quote from: JasonPratt on October 17, 2014, 06:17:58 PM
Okay, as to the ambition to raise poor stats -- this has been around since at least 2012, and was part of a DLC/patch released back then (splitting the ambitions from the plots). Apparently if such an ambition is chosen, eventually the game will generate a plotline which will raise the stat +2 if I succeed, or still +1 even if I fail.
As I suspected, the wife doesn't help this ambition.
Not sure what that actually entails yet (the thread on Steam wasn't specific about details), but at least I understand the mechanism now.
huurrumph, i may not have that DLC then - i know theres ambitions like get married, become chancellor, become rich but ive not often seen many that actually handover a stat boost so to speak
To be fair, those ambitions only show up if the stats are poor. And mine largely suck.
I still don't know how long it takes to reset an ambition once I cancel it. I may experiment with that tonight since I just passed my first year: if the clock reset is running behind the scenes starting from the day I chose the ambition, I should think 1 year would be the limit and I can redo it now...
Part 3
I poked around in non-Abrahamic counties east of here, but found no wives even available to say no; and checking back over the areas with potential wives earlier shows either no prospects remaining, or poor prospects, or decent prospects whose liege forbids it.
In my defense, that isn't any different from when I started the game, only now there are fewer of the same options. So, no marriage for a while. I need to become more awesome I guess. I'll try to keep track of my counselor and son's ambitions to get married (if any) to try to help them, though.
Checking on my court, only a few have an ambition to get married right now (not including my son Athanasius). My spymaster Musa is one, however, and has the least opinion of me (only 5) out of anyone wanting marriage; so out of curiosity I click where he's working up in Tel Bashir to see if there are any good prospects for him. Not only is there a woman also wanting marriage, and who only has a -2 opinion of me, but who has mostly decent traits -- and the Emir Abd al-Malik of Edessa, whom I have a ridiculously high opinion of (91) even though he kind of despises me (-22), approves the request! Maybe, he's considering it.
Unfortunately, I can't find anyone else for Aram, another counselor. And at this point I think I might as well start the clock again.
A few days later, May 19, Zabel (who is a Coptic Christian) arrives at Socotra, having teleported there -- where her husband-to-be is not, amusingly. ;) The Caliph gave his blessing! Wow. I wonder that if that improves his opinion of me slightly? Hard to tell. No need to do more, the marriage happens automatically I guess -- both are married to each other now, and have a significantly better opinion of me as I fulfilled their ambitions.
A different Musa, just a random courtier, is the last person with a significant dislike of me, -10 -- which to be fair is perfectly understandable as I'm socking every last person on earth with -20 against me for being both lazy and cruel.
While clicking around as the clock runs, I find how to open up the screen for improving the cities in a county. This indicates I'll need time and gold (and lots of each) to put tech improvements into play once they're researched. More on this later I guess.
Shortly before Christmas (I don't recall if the Nestorians celebrate Jan 6 or Dec 25), as I'm messing around in various options (having rejected ticking up my taxes by about 20% which would tank my reputation with the bishop and the baron holding that town), I decide I can afford the 4.something gold to go on pilgrimage -- this is regarded as an "intrigue" plot because it has nowhere else to be classified I guess. ??? I'm not given an option to go to the two special Nestorian sites; maybe they're just a bit too far away. There doesn't seem to be any special difference to going to any of the other three, Constantinople, Antioch, or Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is a bit closer so I go for that. Seems to fit Bethlehem and the Christmas season anyway.
Jan 1, 770, the game autosaves. I've run my first year. No big advances, but no disasters either (unless my pilgrimage plans end with me being ransomed by some Muslim Caliph or something...)
Okay, after my manual save (a few days later just to be sure), I cancel my ambition to marriage -- and no valid ambitions pop up. I'll run it for a while and see what happens.
Part 4
Completely by coincidence, I finished packing and went on pilgrimage Jan 6 -- which if it isn't Nestorian Christmas would be the Feast of the Wise Men or whatever that feast is in old catholic communions. (I'm embarrassed not to know... In my defense, I'm also Baptist. ;) )
Going on pilgrimage instantly improves my rep by 10 points with everyone, so even Athanasius my son thinks substantially better of me now. (Again, to be fair, a lot of his dislike was based on my cruelty and sloth.)
Unfortunately, I forgot to assign a regent, so the game randomly assigned me on: my spymaster Musa Musaid who's farther away than I'll be if I had gone to Antioch instead! {headslap} He's a shy, wroth, cruel, cynical little intricate netweaver -- but fortunately he's also now one of my staunchest supporters, at 33 opinion, with nothing against me other than my cruelty and sloth.
I know for a fact I can gain traits (for better or for worse) by doing various things, so I wonder if I can lose or transform a bad trait somehow....
My Grand Vizier Akin sends good news, that his mission in Taizz with Sheikh Talib is going well. "I seem to have managed to make him understand what a benevolent and peaceful ruler you really are, and he sends his regards." Perfect! Can I afford to send more gold to Talib? Maybe he needs a wife? Jesus, no, he has three already, or one and two concubines never mind. Also he's off campaigning in Hendjan (and I have not the slightest idea where that is, it doesn't seem to be anywhere feasibly near on the map), so the game is being rather wonky on this point -- but not so much as Musa Musaid being my regent. Whom, incidentally, I must petition now to arrange any marriages! I hope this doesn't lead to trouble when I get back; I had other counselors with much higher opinions of me, still on the island, whom I would rather have been regent.
I accidentally remember I can move him around now, since it has been a whole year since he was first assigned; and I accidentally remember now that I can't right or left click on any of his options to check their tech level before moving him, which is COMPLETELY RETARDED!! Consequently he has moved for at least six months to Al Hasa (in modern Saudia Arabia) on the coast. Where fortunately their economic tech is a little better than ours, but unfortunately they have no military tech yet and thus no shipbuilding, sigh...
Okay, how in God's great name do I get my regent to approve something?? Clicking on him directly only activates his move option (as I discovered somewhat to my lament); going to diplomacy from his personal page gives me options to relate to him, but not to sign off on things I want to do like send money to sheik Talib again! AARRGH! I guess I'll just have to wait until I return home from pilgrimage.
If I return.
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I take the risk in helping put it out. 30% chance of brave trait, 10% of wounded (possibly concurrently); neither happens. Better than 100% chance of craven. (Or wait, a few days later I notice that "brave" has been added to my traits after all? I don't think I already had that. Shouldn't the game tell me when that happens???)
A few days later, a much better event: sailing on the sea awakens my curiosity and so I can take a choice -- either 70% chance nothing happens (or a 30% chance of picking up a point in either martial or learning), or I can gain 30 piety for sure by staying in prayer, which is no small addition. I do need the stat boosts, but I also need improved reputation and I can surely get that. On the other hand I'm going to pick up piety if I make it back alive anyway -- would having that much more really help me? I take the chance; nothing happens. Dang. (Or maybe I picked up an extra point in martial and the game didn't tell me again, who knows? Definitely not learning, I'm still at 2.)
Feb 5, arrived safely at Jerusalem; nice flavor text for the announcement, cute joke about finding a place to stay instead of a stall, ha ha. ;)
A few days later on the 10th, I get an social event (at the Jerusalem crossroads) which gives me another good choice: 30% chance of picking up a point in either intrigue (I have 6, pretty average) or learning (2, I need the pickup for sure); or 50% chance of picking up 2 points in diplomacy (I only have 3) and several other benefits by getting the Gregorius trait. Unfortunately, I don't know whether it's even possible for me to pick up a trait now, as the list looks full. Hm. I save the game, to test whether that can give me the same shot later (save scumming? ;) ) and go for the trait, which has the better chance of success and better results for success.
Well, it certainly didn't work since I didn't get the extra diplomacy points, but I don't know whether that's because of a bad roll or because my trait list is full. Since I have nothing to lose either way, I resign to menu and reload the save -- and voila, there's my event choice again! That's worth knowing anyway!
After 10 retries, no trait result, which means there's a 99.902 percent probability that a character has a maximum number of traits and my list is full (even though one is only temporary, on pilgrimage); or that the game seeded the roll already and I was always going to fail if I chose that option. (I did test whether the clock has to start again for a win to take effect, but that didn't seem to help.)
Having spent 10 minutes trying to test that, I don't feel bad about save scumming the other way to try getting a point for my learning. However, I GOT NO RESULT WITH THAT EITHER! Which, while not as improbable as losing a coin toss 10 times, is still pretty unlikely. This seems to indicate the game either calculated my results already regardless of my choice (with a loss calculated either way), or else saving at the choice nulled the opportunity to win anything, at least on a reload, which would admittedly fix save scumming for results.
By February 20 I'm already back home, no problems, the regency hands back over a few days later, I pick up 30 piety and the pilgrim trait. That means my trait list is probably full now, unless I manage to flip one (for better or for worse).
It also means I can send a gift to Shiek Talib now -- but I'm told it won't increase his opinion of me further, so I don't bother, I just leave my vizier there. His opinion of me may be maxed out now, hard to say if my vizier will increase it again.
Marriage options are better (thanks to my piety increase and pilgrim status, at least among Christians) but still not great. I'm going to be super annoyed if canceling my marriage ambition has ruined me from getting ambitions ever again, though...
Done for the night I guess!
My 'vanilla' experience is the main traits can be lost or countered only by these kinds of events.... you'd obviously lose craven by becoming brave, it's worth noting now that any off spring should inherit brave but will prob get cruel from you also..... find a wife that cancels these bad ones
Part 5
U'geek makes a good point about finding a wife who will help reduce the chances of passing bad traits down to my heir -- but I already have a son who's actually pretty good (though only 13 years old). Considering I only have one county right now, I'm tempted to not even bother more children -- 13 years from now I might have more territories but I'll probably also be dead and my son ruling. More important will be finding him a good wife when the time comes a few years from now.
Of course, if I lose my son and don't have a spare the game is effectively over (maybe). But that won't likely happen unless we're invaded and conquered, and having only one county that would be game over, too.
Other than 'seeing' rumors of the last Jewish king being besieged in Sieman, after having retreated from his lower-land and larger other county (which is sad), nothing much happens until late July when I can finally move my spy again. This time I'm being careful to look at the potential areas -- and then to click the nearby (where my spy can't move) so I can click the areas and check their tech levels!
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As you can see, almost but not all of them are in the Abbasid Empire, which if the font is accurate is the largest empire on the map by a fair margin at the moment. More to the point, only some of those counties are on a coastline. None, as far as I can tell, have shipbuilding more than 1; but only the counties up in the Eastern Empire (and former areas nearby) have more shiptech than that right now.
In fact, only one of them (on closer examination) even has shipbuilding of 1:
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Makran, at the faaaaaaaaar eastern edge of the Abbasidian Empire. Yep, I'll go park Musa there for a while. The Emir has the slightest positive opinion of me, since we're both brave and humble; I'm tempted to run my vizier over there, too, and try to score 60 points by money and diplomacy, which would put his favor of me over that of his Caliph. But on the balance, I'd rather tic off the Arwadid duchy than the LARGEST EMPIRE ON THIS SIDE OF THE PLANET! Also, I'm unsure if my vizier can continue improving relations with the sheik in Tarizz or not, and if I move him I'll never be able to test that. Though I still have no idea where that sheik is campaigning right now: where is "Zahedan"? Or is it "Zabedan"? -- the game font isn't always clear.
Mousing around I find the "find character" button below the minimap. Okay -- bringing that up, and doing a search, I discover that Talib is mainly a woman's name! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! But there are also a bunch of guys with that name. Sorting by opinion of me naturally brings him up to the top of the list; but clicking his portrait only opens his personal screen, and that doesn't help. (Though along the way I notice he's one of the heirs to that Emirate, so my diplomacy could pay off huge there one day...) Right-clicking his portrait, however, brings up two possible suboptions, one for diplomacy, and one for going to the character. I click that one and...
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Boom, there he is! Not too far from Makran, as it happens! He should be marching into detection range of Musa my spymaster soon! Crap, that's all the way over near India! His Caliph must think that's the best direction to expand the Abbasidian Empire right now; possibly to pick up any spares of the old Persian Empire while he's at it.
This by the way shows again how broken some parts of the game engine are. My vizier is back in his home county courting him diplomatically, and he's three thousand miles away, and wasn't much closer back at the start of this year when he sent me his regard! Crazy. But not any crazier than Musa being chosen as my regent while I was off to Jerusalem on pilgrimage.
Speaking of Musa, after a couple of months (into October) I happen to remember I ought to check in on how well he's helping my technology -- and dang if he isn't only helping with "majesty" research! Dammit, Musa, you had one job, one job! This was the only place I could send you that had better shipbuilding than me, and all you're researching is "majesty"?!?! I need galleys, fool! Christ.
Well, in January I can pack him up somewhere else I guess.
Meanwhile, I'm studying that nifty "find character" tool, to help me wifehunt. And by the way, I still have no valid ambitions after canceling marriage as an ambition. I'm pretty sure the gamecode is borked there, great...
Search all (the whole population of the game); women (duh); not married (duh); sort by high opinion of me...
And here's the list (the map colors are for independent domains, nothing to do with marriage, just for color on the screen, and to give a larger idea of where my spymaster is currently working until I throw his worthless butt somewhere else at Christmas):
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I have to say, Adila that courtier in Taizz looks interesting. Her stats are mostly rubbish, and she's Muslin, but she has a monstrously high "learning" skill (which I definitely need), and not only does she have sympathy for Christians (and for Jews) but she's a theological mastermind! (I don't know if that would mean anything to my character, but I like it! {heart!} More importantly in-game, it's contributing to her monstrously high "learning".) She's temperate, cynical, humble, and shy. And her liege has a higher opinion of me than anyone else in the world right now, so he's likely to approve a marriage. Plus, while she doesn't have quite the highest opinion of me yet in the list, it isn't far behind the highest, and fulfilling her ambition to marry would ratchet that up by 15 at least. And she's a bedouin, so she wouldn't be considered a foreign wife. Odds are pretty good she'll convert, too. The only drawback is that she's only a courtier, so though her family is probably well-connected she's the lowest rank in the game, and being "lowborn" (not a noble yet) she'll sock me with a huge prestige penalty if I marry her. Not that I have much prestige yet anyway, but neither am I going to gain much in my current position so I'm loathe to give up any at all. Plus I'm unsure the game will even let me.
Clicking on the "Great House" filter leaves me with a bunch of underage women; filtering by "adults" leaves me with only 3 feasible picks, the most interesting of which is Helmsuinda Aldaberts, 18 year old niece of Prince-Bishop Odacre of Valais, a Frankish girl whose opinion of me would be moderately good after I marry her (since I'd be fulfilling her ambition to marry), and whose stats are mostly better than mine, especially in intrigue as she's quite the little netweaver. Her traits overall could stand improvement, but she does have room for improvement -- or for getting worse, I guess. Unlike the other two Great House possibilities she's young enough to safely bear children, too (and isn't lustful like the Lombardian munchkin, I mean Munichingi, so she won't cause church problems.)
I decide to try Adila first: she may crush my prestige to nothing (or worse than nothing), but we'd get along quite a bit better. Alas, Adila "must not marry an infidel", and that sinks any hope. I could try sending her a gift, which would improve her opinion of me my 31, but I'm not sure that would overcome the huge minuses in the "do not marry an infidel" problem.
And Helmsuinda is too distant to interact with. So that's that. Back to the, um, courting board. (No noble girls nearby to betroth with my son, either.)
My next best non-noble bet seems to be Genseoua, a young Nubian woman (17 years old) from the county of Napata in the petty kingdom of Makuria (highlighted with a yellow paintbrush below to overcome the fog of war).
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Her liege, Count Thoma, only dislikes me slightly, but dotes on her (47 opinion) even though she doesn't like him much (-13). Her stats are generally great, including in learning and diplomacy where mine are weakest, and her traits are all uniformly good except for being ambitious (which still adds great stats mostly. And being my queen shouldn't be a problem for her ambition unless she tries to aim higher!) Being a nubian will make her a foreigner at court, but that can be overcome. While she has a base reluctance (probably due to distance and a difference in culture and in our Christianities) of two minuses, her opinion of me (which is only going to increase for helping her achieve her ambition of marriage) is three plusses; so she agrees (nice to see that marriages aren't forced in this game, usually) and it's up to her liege to approve I guess! I send out the invitation.
Doing so instantly makes her a nubian noble, so I guess that's a good sign -- not that it helps me any, as she's clearly a noble from marrying me. My prestige shoots directly into the gutter a few days later at -160.3, Christ... that'll take a while to overcome, and will be passed onto my son I guess. But that means Count Trauma (or whatever his name) has agreed to the marriage! -- to which I apparently also agree with an "Ok". Was that a meh?? This woman is a pretty amazing catch for a non-noble. At only four years older than my son, though (I'm 33, so for the time and place this isn't bad), I may have to watch them, but they're both good people so I'm not worried.
I could collect a Royal Aid Duty (i.e. a tax) to help pay for the wedding, but I decide to refuse, which will bump my prestige back up a lot. Still -60, but dang any improvement is worth it. I note along the way that the wedding doesn't cost me anything substantial anyway, the "duty" was just an excuse to get a little more gold.
Weirdly, her opinion of me immediately drops to 4, despite what should have been a 15 point increase! This is slightly due to my new negative prestige (that was for your sake, darling, ingrate), but mostly due to the fact that being in court exposes her to more opinion factors, the main one being my short reign (-16) and my personal diplomacy (-3) though why those didn't count before I have no idea, especially the latter, I have no idea.
I could fix this by first giving her 20 gold as a gift (increasing her opinion +25) and then by demanding she convert from Miaphysitism to Nestorianism (which she would be probably very willing to do after the gift since on balance she's only -1 against it and her opinion of me would increase quite a bit after the gift -- and awarding an honorary title if necessary.) But I don't know that I want to spend 20 on her. Yet.
On the other hand, I do need a regent rather than having the computer assign one randomly, and she'd make a much better ruler than me in practically any regard anyway; so I award her the title (which, strangely, also costs me .4 gold per month, but her various bonuses to state stats easily pay for that), and she bumps up +20.
I also decide it makes sense to have her tutoring my son Athanasius (though admittedly that might cause a few problems later since he's a teen, heh). This bumps her opinion of me high enough that I can at least try to get her to switch to Nestorianism, which should also improve her opinion of me by 10 if she agrees.
Meanwhile, Aram, my Steward, doesn't like being removed as the tutor (-15), but he wants to get married, as does one of my courtiers Jahira (who was also a possibility for tutoring Athanasius by the way -- in fact the game autopicked her when I started the process of assigning him a new tutor, possibly so that they would 'court' for marriage later), so after arranging that they both like me more and Aram goes back to his previous opinion.
A few days later, Nov 5, my wife Gen agrees -- though since I demanded the conversion I don't gain anything after all, switching one demerit (religious differences) to another (demanded conversion) at -10 either way. Dang. Had I just let her alone she might have converted anyway. Oh well, lesson learned.
By early December I'm now known as Philemon the Just, though what that changes other than having a nifty title I have no idea -- nothing as far as I can see. Did my "just" trait upgrade?
An old priest mislays a chalice in early December and thinks bandits have taken it; I give chase until I'm exhausted, and obviously don't catch the non-existent bandits. But I earn another 15 piety and that's nice.
Shortly before the end of the year, the last Jewish king falls in Semien. One of his territories, down-mountain, Tigrinya, goes to the kingdom of Abyssinia (Ethiopia); the other, Semien itself, is now part of the chiefdom of Kassala and ruled by Tomas its chief -- though the county itself is separated from Kassala by Ethiopia and Gondar. That seems likely to cause trouble later.
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While that doesn't affect me politically at all, I hope it doesn't bode ill for me as an omen!
Off to lunch with year 770 in the bag, and an ominous start to 771...
Part 6 -- Year 771
Incidentally, a few extra DLCs were released as graphical updates to go along with the Charlemagne DLC; but I haven't bought them yet, as they don't really factor into my area of the world. Oddly, no new music pack was released.
I'm pretty danged ticced that canceling my ambition to get married means I'm stuck in some kind of non-ambition loop. Does it reset in 10 years? That would suck.
First: TRY TO FIND SOMEWHERE MY SPY CAN BE MORE USEFUL!
Fortunately, his network has increased again a little, and while none of the prospects seem prospectable at first, eventually I find a little sheikdom up in the Caucasus, Dwin by name, in the Uqaylid Empire, ruled by Bakkar Sultan of Armenia (which man that hurts, Armenia was the first Christian nation per se), and heir to the Emirate of Edessa (where the catechetical seminary at Nisibis originally came from by the way. Also I figured out on the map where Nisibis is, not far south of where Musa is now parked -- it isn't a town in Baghdad, so I haven't got the faintest idea why the game treats Baghdad as holy to the Nestorians.)
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Ukeleleland is up there in the middle, defiantly planted between the three largest empires on this side the planet. They do have balls! -- and they have surprisingly good tech, including better than 1 shipbuilding (despite Dwin itself being a landlocked county, but the tech is presumably filtering over from the Black Sea or the Caspian.)
That gets my spygears working nicely. I'll be keeping Musa up there a while.
I honestly have no idea whether I should keep Grand Vizier Akin up in Taizz diplomatting with Sheikh Talib: have I already improved his opinion of me as much as could ever happen by this route? I'm willing to keep the Vizier there taking the occasional roll for improvements if there are actual chances for improvement: Taizz is my best doorway back into Arabia someday. But if Akin has shot his wad already, I should be moving him on to other areas on mission.
I decide I ought to be working on the personal loyalty of the key sheiks of Arwadid, not just one of them; so I hike my vizier over to Kathri and send Sheikh Muhammad there (spymaster to Emir Yazd by the way) a princely gift of 65 gold. His opinion of me shoots up immediately to 59 (from -10)!
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The colors represent the relative opinion of the lords of the various territories toward me (with Kathiri brighter due to a lack of fog of war). That's two out of 6 in the Arwadid kingdom. Next year I plan to do the same for Mahra next door; meanwhile maybe my vizier Akin can add some extra oomph.
On April 1 (SURELY BY COINCIDENCE!) a merchant offers to sell me a finger of John the Baptist. I'm pretty pious already, and I'd rather not spare the 20 gold, so I refuse. Only a 20% chance to pick up cynical after all.
I pick up cynical. I'm still generating good piety, and my intrigue goes up by 2, but I take a few hits in other regards.
I consider holding a summer faire when May rolls around, but I'm not sure it's worth it -- or that I understand it. It would cost 25 gold, which I can afford but would be a large chunk of the money I'm trying to buy opinions with on the mainland; and would only add .05 prestige a month. But it seems to be in effect until the end of the game (on until I die maybe). Is that +.6 prestige per year until I die (.05 x12)? Or .2 per year (.05 x 4 summer months through till August each year)?
No idea. So I decide not to.
I wasn't paying enough attention to tech I guess; sometime before October 10 I earn enough to buy the rest of Shipbuilding Level 1! Woot!
Not that this means much until I build at least one shipyard at one of my towns. I'll need 144.3 gold for that, and about another year to build once I pay for it. Not anytime soon, then, but a major hurdle overcome!
And that ends out my year in effect.
Year 772
This year starts auspiciously with a little bell announcing I can choose a new ambition! Woot! Rooked out of gaining prestige for marrying, unfortunately, which plus footing my wedding bill (or rather refusing to fax a tax to pick up some gold for it) would have just about totally offset my prestige loss for marrying a lowborn woman. Argh... But still, no complaints, I wasn't sure I wouldn't have to wait 10 years for the thing to reset.
I seem to get more chances to improve my diplomacy than my learning; and it affects me a bit more in diplomacy (duh), so I choose that. I currently have 3, and if I can bring it up to 8 then I'll also earn 100 prestige which God knows I also need.
Next up, sending most of my gold to Sheikh Youkhanna of Mahra. This raises his opinion of me substantially to 48, much more than he thinks of his own Emir. The other two sheikhs in the region, aside from Yahdz himself, will be much harder to crack, as their dislike runs over (or rather under) -70 -- mainly because they're both zealots for Islam, and my being cynical now doesn't help either. I send Akin to Bayda, which if I can pick up loyalty someday will have the advantage of forming a contiguous territory bloc, isolating the sheikh of Aden from his liege in Sanaa. (Also I marry Akin to the remaining woman at court, which should make them both rather happier; and her diplomacy is good so she'll be able to help him more.)
Around April 1, the damn-fool king of Shewa, a little two county petty chiefdom, decides to declare a holy war on the Muslim nation of Shirazid: quite a choke point since most of Abyssinia lays between them.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=Http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F674%2FIrhyrN.png&hash=056fe35ec1ae5b8d2a5aa31d47e7619a94c75431)
Emir Yazd decides to help Shir defend its territory, the upshot being that about 100 soldiers from Bayda (where my vizier is parked) are marching off to Yazd's capitol for some reason, instead of marching down to the straits at the mouth of the Red Sea -- which would also be closer, since although Sanaa is next door the terrain is so rough the troops won't get there for fourth months!
I wish I could help out by sending some troops in galleys to flank Shir and help prevent Arwadid from getting across, thus helping my Miaphysite fellow Christian (even though I'm Nestorian) -- maybe also giving me a shot at collecting Berbera. Unfortunately, despite being an island nation I HAVE NO WAY TO MAKE MILITARY VESSALS! I only just now researched the tech, finally. It'll be forever before I can afford to build the yards, and a year after that before they're ready.
Sigh.
Oh well. Play the hand that's dealt I guess. I do notice my military organization tech can be improved now, so I buy the rest of its Level 1. This will help me when I start to campaign one day, especially in pagan lands (which won't count for Muslims since they aren't pagans but still.)
At the halfyear, just after August starts, I move Musa down to Bostra, in the heart of the old kingdom of Syria (now overrun by the Abbasids of course.) I already have all the military tech I wanted from Dwin, and this new area has level 7 and 8 techs for econ and culture, so that should be good.
I'm studying what little I can see of the Shewa chief's siege of the capitol fort of Harer, his first target, when the game seems to freeze -- dammit did it just crash?? I haven't saved in forever!
Phew, it was just my vizier saying he has succeeded in improving the opinion of sheikh Qawurd of Bayda. Sweet! {save game} Hopefully in a year or two I can throw some gold his way, which will bring him solidly into the green (even if not so much as some of his fellow sheikhs.) Meanwhile I'll leave Akin there to work some more, though I suspect once I've improved diplomacy one time I'm only asking for trouble. Since I don't want to risk causing diplomatic trouble, I go ahead and send Akin down to the county of Aden to see if he can work a similar miracle there.
The year ends with what looks like a counterinvasion by the king of Shirazid into Abyssinia after Ethiopia also declared a holy war on Shir (separately from Shewa's war). This is despite Shewa still besieging a main Shir capitol.
Oh and my son Athanasios comes of marriage age, and upon turning adult picks up the Grey Eminence trait which is good, he's going to need it. Next up, finding him a wife to rule our tiny nation after I'm gone.
if the son is a grey eminence surely that makes him prime spot for your chancellor role?
what speed are you playing on?
Not very fast right now, maybe 30 minutes a year if I just let it run.
I've got a good chancellor who has been doing well for me, so I'm loath to tic him off by handing the role over.
cool, ive used it in the past if i need to improve relations with the son, plus i think he gets prestige, especially if its an ambition of his, and remember youll be playing this guy one day
Well, God knows he's going to need the prestige, because I messed up how to marry his mom. ;)
Next up this year will be checking to see if there are any noblewomen in range worth him marrying (and who think vice versa).
Year 773
Incidentally, I just realized my son's portrait changed as he matured, which is a nice touch; and then I noticed my wife's portrait also changed after she married me, which was an even nicer touch! "Honey, why did you start painting skeletal bones on your face after marrying me?" "...it represents my devotion to you." "Awww! {beam}{kiss}"
So as you may have noticed already, I gave my beard a wigsnap to something neater, because I figured Gen would like it and oh my God I'm such a sad and lonely person I need a real wife.
...back to playing CK2 then! Up next, finding a wife for my pretend son so he won't get too cozy with my African mail-order bride because that isn't creepy at all!
Unfortunately, right now the only feasible options in reach of diplomacy are lowborn women; and while a nice Kurdish woman has a freakishly high combined stat score somewhere near 50, and a few others are in the mid-30s (with room to grow), I don't want to start Athanasius off with a negative 200 prestige hit. Besides, he doesn't have the ambition to marry yet anyway. On the other hand, my other Musa, baron (or the Middle Eastern equivalent) of my city of Tamrida (a trading city on Socotra, not to be confused with my capitol which is a fort), could stand to have a better opinion of me, so I arrange him a wife while I'm at it. Then I realize his ambition was to be steward which is never going to happen with his ridiculously low score, but we'll see maybe his hot new Kurdish wife can help with that as she's a supergenius. Then I realize I've got it wrong, he isn't the sheik of that city either. He's just some guy at court. :uglystupid2: :tickedoff:
I will add here that if I were truly evil, I'd marry her to Musa, assassinate him since he's a bit of a stone, and then as a noblewoman she'd have a title to marry my son with! Fortunately for Musa I'm cruel and lazy, not evil.
I don't have any reason to move my spymaster or ambassadorvizier around this year, and not enough gold saved up to help offset the poor opinion of my last two enemies in Arwadid on the coast; so I spend my time trying to figure out what's happening under the fog of war in Shirazid (where much of modern Ethiopia and the Etririan coast is, thoroughly overrun by a Muslim emirate sometime before gamestart). King Oda Gosh (not kidding, that's his name) of Abyssinia seems to be doing well under the circumstances: despite a counterinvasion in Asayita, he's pressing a siege in Tadjoura, and seems to have solidly taken Harer though its ruler hasn't quite given up yet. Note that Harer was the original target of King Mekonnan of Shewa who started this war in the first place -- so he won't be getting it after all.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F538%2F9py20u.png&hash=f688500a6f48c5e30b4db9e0c6b992512f4961a8)
Oh, and Gen is pregnant. :)
Why is there a picture of a blonde writhing around in satisfaction? I'm going to say that was Gen's idea and move along.
On May 7, Ath proposes, quite reasonably and accurately, that he would make a better Grand Vizier than Akin. This is technically true: Akin is no slouch at (13), but Ath is a supergenius level diplomat at (19). Ath would be better able to protect himself from intrigue, too. On the other hand, if he goes down while out on mission (to one of my main enemies for example where Akin currently is), my game is probably over depending on what happens with our new child. I decide to take the neutral route and give Akin a chance, rather than rebuke Ath or replace Akin. Worth thinking about, though!
On May 23, while I'm chuckling to myself over King Gosh now having effectively traded territories with Emir Talut, Spymaster Musa (which would have been my rapper name back in the 80s) reports back with a huge deposit of tech points. Innnnnnn... {rolling a 3 sided die} Economy! I can immediately improve my build time and cost by .6% (not something I'll be using anytime soon anyway); or my tax rate from the temple or the castle (but not the city). In a few years I should be able to do both of those latter techs, actually; but I might as well benefit from one now, and helping the Temple infrastructure capabilities will give me more of an econ boost (since the bishop likes me more than he likes our Patriarch) so I'll take that sooner rather than later, and get the castle tech in a few years.
On June 15 I get an event probably tied to my ambition to improve my diplomacy:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F743%2FuxY22o.png&hash=4e6610fd3b2b4bc6c299d9cf3b0c29917c3da25d)
Accepting this doesn't actually change anything however.
The year half-gone I check for any new landed-ladies for Ath, but none yet.
The biggest news in the rest of the world is that while I wasn't looking some ambitious Muslim unified an African kingdom along the northern coast of the continent. You might remember from an earlier screenie that only two small clusters of counties up there, quite far separate, started the game as "Africa", with several groups between. That's been sorted!
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F746%2F0YsZHJ.png&hash=885ca9aea0588b76bd20f4064de7bfba13ccf1e5)
Western Francia is doing quite well, too, for those of you who care about Charlemagnish things in a Charlemagne expansion. But I don't. I don't even know if that's Karloman. And I'm not looking either. So there. (Okay it's Karl son of Emperor Pepin, father of Pepin the hunchback. While clicking around I ran into Bishop-prince Turpin of Rheims and squeed a little.)
Meanwhile on Nov 15... wow, that's my birthday in real life, too! Gen gives birth to a daughter. She wants to name her Saaman; I lop off the masculine ending (for English languages anyway), and hope this bodes well for me taking Sanaa one day and the duchy it's attached to.
In early December the game interrupts me moseying around the map to tell me "Yahkt" or someone like that died of pneumonia at age 20, and I have no idea who it's talking about. None of my court was named Yak, so far as I know. It wasn't one of my counselors or one of my barons running the city or the temple-town. Really game? Are you just making up facts to amuse yourself now?
And so ends 773, with us not dead yet.
Year 774
I decide to retire Akin as vizier and promoting Athanasios, my son, after all. Akin won't like it but he'll still be net positive in opinion and I can give him a formal title if I decide he needs the ego boost. The transition works smoothly, and even results in Ath's diplomacy ticking up a notch to 20 for reasons I'm unable to trace. (The game should show me why but it doesn't. Did I imagine it being at 19 previously...? I swear I saw him at that a minute ago when I was preparing the switch.) I plop him immediately into Aden where he proceeds to be less vulnerable to intrigue and better than 68% likely to win me some favor each year. I may need to do something about his piety, though, as he's ticking up a slow negative drop from being cynical.
The invasion in Shir has reached the third and final county, Zeila, and I can't help but hope King Gosh makes it, though on the balance he's at zero for his efforts with one county gained, one lost, and the Emir has taken back his capital county of Harer. I wish I could send some ships and troops to help but that doesn't seem likely anytime in the next five years.
This leads into my goal for the year: SAVE UP GOLD! I've got to be able to pay for some shipyards.
I took more of a hit by demoting Akin than the game told me I would, but I made him cupbearer in his retirement so he's back to slightly liking me again (4). I'd give him some gold as a reward for faithful service but I need to save gold right now.
I could move Musa a little west into Damascus, which has slightly better tech than his current assignment, Bostra; but that's also where the Caliph of all the Abbasids lives (apparently?) so it would be riskier for him. Then again, I need the techs. Go Musa go!
I really ought to look around online to see whether there's any point keeping an agent in a county for further benefits once they've sent back some results.
Now the boy wants to get married. Well, there are no noblewomen anywhere within communication distance; though I notice the Purple Princess of the Byzantines has put herself on the marriage market! They're of an age, and even if I didn't try for a matrilineal marriage (which would be insane and nothing the Emperor would ever accept despite or even because her royal claim is actually stronger than older siblings) she'd make a good wife for him: she only has good traits, though her actual stats are a bit average. If he brings me a good result from Aden I'll send him to the heretic orthodox court and see if that helps any courting, heh.
Yay Musa! -- on Sept 20 he brings back no less than 50 economy tech points. I promptly spend it on castle infrastructure, which brings an immediate tax improvement even though I'm not building better castle tech yet (saving my gold).
Interesting. On Dec 18 Ath reports that there was an independence faction in Sanaa, led by the cupbearer Sheik of Mahra, one of my new kind-of-allies. I also notice he's still in charge of Mahra, notwithstanding his factioning. I also, by the way, notice that Sheik Talib of Taizz has gone back to ambivalence toward me; but I bet this means I can send him gold again, if I was handing out gold again.
Just as importantly, Ath reports on Dec 20 that he has succeeded in his diplomatic efforts with the Sheik of Aden! He still doesn't like me at all, but it's a good start. Well done, son guy! Alas, your diplomatic range doesn't extend up to the Purple Princess (a lass). I guess you're going to Taizz instead to keep the diplo fires burning.
We'll see about your prospects next year, son.
Update: since things are going pretty slow for a while, I'll probably be posting 10 year increment entries until things spice up a bit. Progress is being made, just slowly. It's the middle of the Dark Ages after all, and I'm just a guy on an African island with a small court. :)
warrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Waugh isn't going to happen until I can get a fleet (unless I'm invaded, which would have to be by someone long-distance at this point in the game), which is several years out.
Once I have any fleet at all, though, I'm going to be dominating the local pond, at least in naval power: the only people with decent ocean power right now are far the hell away from me, and would have to sail around the African cape (not possible in-game) or (re-)take Egypt or Sinai and build a Red Sea fleet using their tech.
Not that I'll have much power to project when the time comes, though for a little island nation we have a very decent military (potentially). Quality I'm well up to par on most combat techs. My main advantage will probably be that the local Muslims (except maybe the Berbers over on the Horn itself, who don't seem to be warring anywhere) will have killed off a number of their own troops already in fighting land wars.
Anyway, I'll probably finish the 10 year bloc tonight and drop in an update.
Mercenary fleet - waaarrggh
...costs even more gold than buying my own shipyard, and happens not to be available anyway (yet). I would have my own cheaper permanent fleet before being able to afford to hire a merc fleet for however long.
Could be a good idea, later, of course. Also, good pirate accent melding! O0
Note: I didn't quite get through my 10 year plan, but I figured this was a good place to stop and do an entry. For reasons which will become apparent at the end. The game is about to change -- if I can figure out how.
Year 775
At this rate I'll need another 3 years to get the gold for the shipyards (probably at my castle) and then another most-of-a-year to construct them. Though I think I'll pick up 6 galleys for my levy by doing so, and won't have to build them separately.
By the time May 776 rolls around, Ath has already been asking about arranging a marriage; and I'm worried he'll flip or start doing foolish things if I don't find someone pronto. Unfortunately, there simply isn't any noblewoman in diplomatic range who is also Christian (of some sort). So he's going to take a 200 hit to his prestige -- hard to recover from.
That said, checking non-prisoned adult women in our religious and cultural group who are in diplomatic range, Neelab of Arsuf in Egypt, 55 stats from great traits (her strongest competitor had 54 from dangerous traits) -- but only likes me 6. That won't get any better down the list, unfortunately.
Sorry, son guy. You'll have to settle for a cute awesome exotic Egyptian girl who will give you a harsh prestige hit. I don't want you causing trouble with that great Muslim girl in Taizz and starting a war.
Sheik Sa'af agrees, and Neelab is arrives on Socotra in time for a June wedding.
In early Jan 777, my bishop finds a great philosopher right here in Socotra whom, if I hire for 12.12 gold, will grant 50 cultural points. That'll set me back about half a year from starting on my shipyards (finally), but I don't gain cultural points quickly at all and the investment should pay for itself many times over eventually. I agree.
Crap, 119.2 culture points! Whatever should I do with those?!
I don't give much of a poop about noble, popular, or religious customs right now: all they seem to do is add some bonuses (and at this point still minor ones) to the opinions of those courtiers I assign to holdings (castle, city, temple respective).
Tolerance would help me minimize the effect of cultural and religious differences on people's opinion of me (and mine of them I think). Not bad, but the last two options seem better.
Majesty would decrease the time of the short-reign opinion penalty (which seems kind of inconsistent anyway, though that may be due to the earliest possible gamestart screwing with mechanics); and helps generate more piety per month; but most importantly (for a family who has to marry non-noblewomen and who can't go campaigning much yet) it adds 2 whole points of prestige gain per month.
Legalism... hmmm... this unlocks medium crown authority and medium centralization. Centralization increases my domain size and my vassal limit, though honestly right now that isn't an issue and I can still go to "low" centralization from "minimum" already. But it will be important later if I want my kingdom to grow. Medium crown authority... I don't have the faintest clue what that does. High crown authority (like a legalism level 6 or higher) starts to unlock the highest levels of levies and taxation, but I already have everything but the highest unlocked. It doesn't seem to affect succession laws. Maybe it affects prestige? This is something an onboard CK2opedia would be handy for answering. (Why this game doesn't have a more thorough at-hand manual or glossary or index is beyond me.)
I don't have enough to pick 2, so if I only can pick 1 then I'll go with the obvious prestige uptick. Majesty 2 it is!
If my fog of war tells me correctly, the Ethiopian / Shir war has finally wound down with borders back at par. Good hustle everyone!
My son (sent over to Kathri for its round of occasional diplomacy) says an Arwadid army (of a little over 700 troops) is heading for the Umayid Emirate (modern Oman, and themselves currently besieging Dhu Zabi where the modern United Arab Emirates are). Yeah, y'all go over there and fight and die for a while...
Sadly, June 7 my son's new wife, Neelab, dies after an illness I didn't know she had; based on the crying baby in the background, I infer the "illness" was "being with child".
Their daughter was saved, however, and was named Rashida.
Hopefully my son won't want another wife for a while, as I don't want him saddled with even more of a prestige hit, and the only unmarried noblewomen of our culture group and religious group in diplomacy range are his own daughter and infant half-sister.
By March 778, the Arwadid Emir has crushed both the Umayid Emirate and the county of Dhu Zabi which the Umayid themselves were attacking: his kingdom wraps impressively all around the south of the Arabian peninsula now. My guess for his next stop would be back to Africa to smack around Ethiopia, since they're the only people he can reach by land who aren't his own Caliph of the monstrously powerful Abbasidian Empire. Of course, he might decide the time has come to invest in some ships and invade other places over in Africa. Though if he has ships, his wisest course by far would be to stomp all over us instead. Notably a Muslim just joined my court from out of nowhere -- is this what a spy looks like?
The only good news in this, aside from his troops being currently thinned and spread out, is that a number of his key coutiers like me reasonably well for an infidel.
The other good news is that I should have a few galleys in a little over a year, as I'm able to build my shipyard now (specifically on my castle so I can levy my galleys without annoying my sheiks, and so the yards will be a bit better defended.)
Athanasios, currently in Aden (the Arabian mouth of the Red Sea), says wherever Yazd's troops are going, it isn't toward us apparently, unless they're marching north to embark by ship. Possibly he has received permission to go help his Caliph in a war elsewhere: in this game, assisting a battle earns more prestige than initiating one.
On August 24, I send Ath back further east to a potentially better diplomatic target in Zadi, where he reports that a small group of cavalry is marching toward the Persian Gulf. This makes no sense to me (are they going home? from where?) until I check around in the fog of war and see sieges going on in Muscat and Dhu Zabi. Wait, I haven't provided a screen in a while:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F538%2Fk7xKY4.png&hash=518b6948e01d52e7c8dd266f12e6089a9f1ca310)
There. Awww, did you grow too big too fast Emir Yazd? Is civil war breaking out now in that little duchy you sucked up? TOO BAD!
Weirdly, Ath reports catastrophic failure at getting a Mayor (???) of one of Dhofar's cities to like me, reducing his opinion by 2 years instead. But the actual sheikh of Dhofar, Yahya, isn't affected at all: he's still -20 (largely because he's a decent guy and doesn't like me being cruel and lazy. And an infidel of course.)
And then a few days later on (my real-life birthday) Nov 15, he reports success where it actually counts, sheikh Dhofar. Like I said, weird.
By the way, when I reported earlier that the Arwadid Emirate overran un Umayids, I didn't mean the famous Umayid Emirate up in Spain right now, but a different Emirate with a similar name.
Finally, May 27, 779.
A day of rejoicing.
A day of shipyards finally finished.
Oooh, is someone in Berbera? Hmmm... Maybe they need help...
Year 779, late May
Now, with shipyards, I can finally project power.
King Gosh from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) either has some ships as well, or... gosh I don't know, maybe he has a splinter army cut off behind Shirazid, and since they couldn't get out they decided to attack the slightly smaller Berbera nation in Berbera County. The Emir of Shir is helping the defense. Maybe I should help the attack by my fellow Christian against, let's be honest, a duchy stolen generations ago by Muslim pirates.
Much like Shir.
And like Arwadid for that matter (where the pirates originally came from).
And like Arabia as a whole, where the peaceful Nestorians were living with the local tribes and working with the Persians when, well, you know what happened.
Wow, it's amazing how crazy one little shipyard can make me...
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. If I can get some troops over to help King Gosh, who by the way I notice has consolidated that petty kingdom which started the previous war in Shir, that will help my prestige overall (because aiding a war nets more prestige, assuming we win); and help my relationship with arguably the rightful king of the region (a fellow Christian, too, though of miaphysite Christology); and possibly result in my gaining a new county or two, from which I could also build a base for freeing Africa from Muslim incursions and then work my way across the straits to Arabia.
Here are the local independent realms, currently:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F912%2Fu1NOeF.png&hash=53d2d57daac65dc2840c7b4a76228bc1d107f852)
And here are the local counties, rather blotty thanks to the fog of war:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F743%2Fauoh22.png&hash=265010b9b7551e8b49445b25990f31fda46d0442)
My goal now is to get some troops over to Berbera and help King Gosh. Or take over the invasion from King Gosh perhaps!
Unfortunately, while I now have a max total of 6 galleys from my domain, to be part of my personal fleet, I don't have 6 "unraised" ships. So, do I wait for my shipyards to make my ships? That would be annoying: I don't want Gosh to take the petty kingdom of Berbera first! (Even though I feel sorry for its young 8 year old king.) Argh! um... go Emir Taht, help little king Abadir!
By September 11, though, A DATE I PAUSED ON COMPLETELY BY COINCIDENCE, I still have no available ships. I'm willing to reload from my previous save (since nothing really has happened yet), but I need to know how to actually construct ships, or whether this happens automatically and if so how long it takes. I understand the point to RAISING a fleet, but I have no unraised ships to raise, only a 6 galley potential. What am I missing??
Oct 779
Gen is pregnant again, which I suppose is good; still no ships even possible to raise from my maximum of 6. I got a chance to increase my siege tech to level 1, which seems like a good idea. I may not be the highest tech on the planet yet, but only a couple of counties where Musa has a spy network have slightly better tech than I do overall, and he's parked in one of them, Hajr (in what is modern central Saudi Arabia). The other would be Medina on the Red Sea coast; but where Musa currently is he has no chance at all of being discovered, so I'll leave him there for now.
By early December, Ath has finished his mission in Duqm for now, and no one else in Arwadid seems even a little likely to move in my direction; so I send him over to the mountains of Aksum to talk in King Gosh's court. Couldn't hurt. Gosh is about to win in the capitol county of Berbera (dangit), and I seriously have no idea how he even got there since he doesn't even have level 1 shipbuilding capabilities. My only guess is that he marched across Shir in the previous war and when that Emir won the war Gosh's army was trapped on the other side and unable to get home. So they invaded Berbera. A good idea for him! -- ruining an opportunity for me. Or my lack of ships are, rather.
Anyway. Ath is tutoring his little half-sister Saana now, which is adorable. Still no noblewomen for Ath to marry, and his prestige is so terrible I dare not marry him to another 'common' wife again.
January 780 arrives, and still no actual ships to raise as a fleet to join in the Berberstomping. sigh...
At the end of August, Goth picks up the Horn of Africa and adds it back to Abyssinia. Good for him; he earned it. Shirazid splits his two territory blocs in two, which makes this even more of an accomplishment!
On May 21, Gen and I have another daughter! (A lot of daughters in our court, by the way.) Gen wants to name her after our beautiful little island, and I agree, with a slight difference to help distinguish the names -- and to honor Gen's heritage by using her accent for "Socotra": "Scetara".
In late October, as the Feast of All Hallows approached, we learned to our amazement about a monster in our midst: a bear had come to our island from a merchant ship, apparently meant to be a pet of someone in our court, but it had grown large on the voyage here and escaped. When Athanasios heard about this he demanded to come home and join me in hunting for it. We found the bear and fought it together, father and son -- and it nearly killed Athanasios! But with extreme effort I saved him, earning even more regard from my son, who wisely decided to return to the court of King Goth (with his new story to tell at court, I hoped.)
On December 1, as I dulsutorily toured my shipyards...
...I FOUND A SHIP HAD BEEN BUILT!
It could only carry 100 troops (and support), and for my purposes I would need the whole fleet. But it was a start. At last.
now war?
Not yet. There isn't anywhere around that a 100 troops would accomplish anything, and that's all my one galley can carry.
I might be able to sail up the Sea and go after some of the African tribes (other than Ethiopia who isn't tech'd up as far but has far more troops and great defensive terrain.) But they're still fellow Christians, and I don't think this king would do that without due cause which they haven't given.
The Muslim Berbers would have been absolutely the perfect initial target (though not with only 100 troops landing at a time days apart), but King Gosh squashed them by a miracle with a splinter army that couldn't get back to Abyssinia. Now they're part of the Abyss. Great for him, not so great for me.
Shir would get support from Awardid across the strait, which in this game my galleys can't block. King Gosh would probably help; any territory I got, I might let him have later if I could fight back onto the Arabian mainland successfully.
After that, Awardid -- but they're a good 9 times bigger than I am. But also exhausted from 12 years of land fighting, for themselves and for the Abbasid Caliph. It's an open question whether attacking Awardid would trigger a giant crush from the Abbasids: I don't want to ticc off the largest Empire on this side of the planet, but I don't know what kind of alliances may be in effect there.
I could try invading India, but that's a lonnnng way away and I'd want to pick my target carefully. Also, India never did anything to hurt the Nestorians (we actually helped them a lot); but like any other Christians we have a permanent cause for war with Muslim factions due to them overrunning peaceful areas a few generations back.
Most likely I'll cruise along a few more years, letting my shipwrights build up my fleet and looking for opportunities. If I get all 6 galleys up I'll initiate a war on Shir; otherwise I'll let King Gosh do that first (since he's probably inclined), and then ferry over whomever I can to help him, thus picking up more prestige (for aiding) than for initiating a fight myself.
Year 781
With Ath's mission to King Goth not going anywhere, and Taizz's sheik back to being -11 toward me, I migrate Ath back to Taizz at the start of the year.
The Awardid Emirate has been having trouble with Muscatian Peasant revolts for a while, and around April 1 (ha ha) a rebel rouser name Fadil pulls together about 270 troops in Taizz. They try to move out of the area into Bayda, the county immediately eastward, because Sheik Talib is doing a good job kicking their asses. That's because Talib by himself could potentially raise 1740 troops, though all would be weaker than level 1 -- not counting the garrisons of his four cities in Taizz, nor counting the troops of any of his allies. This is not a small point for someone trying to figure out how to best go about reclaiming the Arabia...!
Anyway, if I'm reading the data correctly, Talib has levied the city of Mocha, and while those 432 troops are down to 290, it's enough to send Fadil packing off to find a weaker target if possible. By May 1 it's all over: Fadil has been imprisoned and his little army dispersed. On May 15 he is banished from Arwadid lands, which is kind of surprising: not killed.
On September 6, one of our new Muslim courtiers, Samir Samirid -- also known as the worst troublemaker at court -- decides he would make a better grand marshal than loyal Shaiban. While this is technically true (17 vs 12), Shaiban is nothing but loyal to me (92 opinion), and adds more skills elsewhere than Samir could ever dream of. Frankly, I'm going to find the old man a wife if I can (who may bump up his stats even more)! Samir can go jump in the sea, and I let him know I'm in charge here. This is going to make his attitude toward me worse.
After checking around for available women close to his age, I settle on:
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Rabiya the Impaler!
...what? She has good stats, and her traits are mostly good. Mostly. Shiban is delighted, everyone's happy. Maybe I'll let her practice on Samir if he keeps causing problems. Her Muslim Caliph or Emir or whoever is happy to get rid of her, and flatters me amazingly in the process. Hopefully Shiban will live happily ever after with Widow Mistress Rabiya and her creepy daughter who happens PURELY BY COINCIDENCE to look like Wednesday Addams.
Speaking of flattering, my practice at public speaking in front of a mirror (from a few years ago) has paid off, and so my diplomacy sucks somewhat less than it used to. I wondered if this would fulfill my diplomacy ambition, but since I'm still only 5, not yet 8, I guess it continues to run.
So ends year 781. Still only 1 galley.
Quote from: JasonPratt on October 26, 2014, 12:47:15 PM
and her creepy daughter who happens PURELY BY COINCIDENCE to look like Wednesday Addams.
Bwahahaha!! I do so enjoy your "slightly aside" commentary, Jason. Good show. :2funny:
Quote from: JasonPratt on October 26, 2014, 12:47:15 PM
So ends year 781. Still only 1 galley.
Man, those bloody things are taking forever!
Year 782
Still no forward movement on various points (or not enough to count as distinct progress yet), but I notice that my vassals and court generally have a very high opinion of me, enough to easily absorb a -20 drop. So I raise feudal taxes from none to large, thus increasing the tax income by 20%. This will be helpful later I hope!
Weirdly, it seems to have no effect at all, not on tax income, and not on my vassal's opinion, even though I'm locked out of changing laws again for another couple of years. Double-checking my ledger, I see my feudal tax has certainly not kicked in. Maybe it doesn't until the start of next year.
I pick up another 2 diplomacy again in October; still short of the 8 I need to fulfill this ambition I guess, but it's good for other reasons, too.
On Dec 25, Ath's mission to Sheik Talib comes through again -- and while looking for my next diplo target I notice that the opinion of everyone on the southern coast of Awardid seems to have notched up toward me substantially.
After checking around, I discover this is because several sheiks and the local Emir Yazd have recently died, leaving very young boys under regents as their heirs. Who have almost no opinion of me at all!
I promptly send Ath to their capital, Sanaa, and consider my options. A really good vizier can fabricate claims on even a dukedom. I don't like the word "fabricate", as it implies falsity, and I have a legitimate claim to the area though not so far as the game is concerned. I shall have to ponder this. At any rate, Ath can't change tasks for half a year. Though he'd have almost a 20% chance of succeeding in making the claim if he did.
And so the year ends... WITH TWO GALLEYS NOW! For all the fat lot of good that will do me, but at least I have options.
Year 783
Nope, the taxation didn't start up in January either. THIS IS SUPER WEIRD! Have I run into a legitimate bug?
I decide Spymaster Musa has been hanging around Hajr too long, and send him back to Damascus for a while. I wonder if having picked up some tech points from a county invalidates tech points being ever picked up again there? -- unlikely, but is there a limit before the possibility resets? I do have a couple of other options 6 months from now; places I don't think he has been to which could provide some points.
Theoretically he's also sending back tech information helping me to advance my techs from the 'other' side, reducing the cost by developing them farther. Why my actual researchers aren't capable of doing this, I have no idea: they only seem to generate tech points, not direct research on the techs upon which the points would be spent. Are there structures which would help with this? No idea.
On Jan 26, I receive some priests and officials from our Patriarch -- who frankly ought to be falling on his knees every night and every morning that our faith has produced even one king, even though I'm hidden off on a faraway island. But maybe that's the problem: he only has one king to try to influence, and so he's trying a little too hard out of eagerness and/or desperation.
My wife, who by the way agreed to my demand that she publicly renounce miaphysitism for our orthodoxy (which has understandably colored her opinion of me ever since, and which I regret doing)? -- God bless her heart, she suggested I rebuild a church on our island.
Whereas Bishop Halil, my court chaplin and feudal lord of the temple-city of our island, thinks I ought to scare our Patriarch by talking tough and showing I won't be pushed around. Seriously, what the hell?? Gen is upset by this advice, and she'll be more upset with me if I take it, though I would gain 10 prestige, which frankly I need more than I need more piety.
Still, she'd only be a little upset (-15 to the total) for a couple of years. And I took a MASSIVE prestige hit to marry her, which I have only recently been able to climb out of (56). Whereas if I take her advice, I might possibly increase my learning (20% chance) and gain a trait (content) that I really don't know what good it would do (mainly it affects people's opinion of me by a lot in my favor when they have it!) or even whether the game would allow me to slot it into my trait list which looks reaaaalllly full already. Halil will be happy either way, since the church that would get rebuilt would be his! -- so the fact that his own opinion is to talk tough to the Patriarch carries quite a bit of weight with me. (This is a coincidence of the game, by the way.)
I tell the Patriarch his knees ought to be cracking when they hit the floor thanking God I exist at all.
A few months later Gen is pregnant again. So that didn't turn out too badly!
On the other hand, a book I've been illuminating myself with for about a year seems to be digging at my mind. This seems like cursed frogurt. Neither option gets rid of the book, or clearly spells out the results, but I go with the less madmannish answer and hope for the best.
At exactly the same time as both these events... this happens.
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Really, game? Is this connected with the book? Is this punishment for talking smack to the Patriarch? Or for having ridiculously high piety? I DIDN'T WANT 381 PIETY!
I know enough to know there is no way this doesn't end badly.
Fasting and praying to the Blessed Virgin at best gives me a 50% chance of nothing, and a 50% of Suspected Demon Spawn. Apparently I'll lose -20 public opinion either way on that.
Consulting Halil, the other option, doesn't seem to do anything. But no obvious risk either. Sigh. I consult Halil.
Great, now my options are certainly bad no matter what: divorce and imprison my wife, with Scetara gaining "bastard" status (and a reason to hate and fight me); or they pick up "Suspected demon spawn" and "suspected witch" status automatically and I lose 200 piety and -40 general opinion. Neither of which helps Scetara.
The hell of it (so to speak) is that in this game the charge is probably true! And of course Gen is pregnant again with another child. Which she'll bear in prison and in disgrace now.
Well, my piety can take the hit: I'm literally more pious than the Patriarch or any other religious leader right now. My best bet in the long run is probably to have little Scetara assassinated, but I'm going to be faithful to my wife.
A few days later I figure out more of the book and become a mystic; which does by the way add another trait, though the little icons are starting to overlap. This is interesting information in itself! -- it means trait-gaining options are still viable. (It also means my intrigue ticks up a few points.)
By the way, my law for taxing my vassals still hasn't gone into effect. On the other hand, I didn't lose the general opinion, my wife and daughter did. So that's a plus, in a way.
How awesome is my son Athanasios, by the way? So awesome that he has convinced a 2-year-old boy that I am benevolent and peaceful! Yay!
Time to arrange some betrothals?? I have a charitable daughter. And a "slow" possible demonspawn.
Since it's late May, I decide to hold a summer fair. Oh, and Scetara gets a new nanny from nowhere. This nanny is not long for this world: I'm having her assassinated pronto.
On the other hand, she does have a bunch of good traits and skill stats. But I can't take the risk. The game is saying she's trouble.
Spymaster Musa is down with this plot, and so is his wife Zabel. Athanasios, not so much. My Steward's wife Jahaira wants in, as does some random woman named Shahzadah. YOU KNOW RABIYA THE IMPALER IS READY TO GO! (Come to think of it I should have probably just imprisoned Julienne and let, um, nature take its course.) I'll probably bring Musa home later this summer to build a spy network; he seems a bit burned out tech spying anyway.
Bishop Halil complains a few days later about too many peasants entering the city. I point to the belly dancers and tell him to be quiet, I talked smack to the patriarch for his sake, and my wife is currently pregnant. And thanks to him, people think she's a witch now. So shut up.
(The fact that I'm plotting to kill the mysterious spy who showed up to nurse Scetara does not make me a hypocrite about this. Also there are belly dancers, as I could prove from the screenshot announcing this plot if I cared to do so.)
The plotters all decide to go with the plot over the next few days. We'll see what happens.
My little granddaughter Rashida needs a guardian now, which in this game means a tutor: why they don't just say "tutor" I don't know as that would remove some potential confusion. Anyway, normally I'd send her to my wife the suspected witch, who is the awesomest person in my kingdom except for my son who is already tutoring someone -- except I'm worried she really is a witch, and I want to dodge further bullets along that line.
Oh, actually the most awesome person is now Julienne, the suspected witch I'm trying to murder. Sigh.
Hey, great, Ath can tutor two wards! Excellent, he has nothing but great traits and skilz.
A monkey show goes horribly wrong, and I pay the guy to leave which somehow earns me 5 prestige. It's possible that the belly dancers are making me distracted.
On July 1 I decide to pick up some prestige by delegating my busywork to my councilors: this socks them for -15 opinion, but only for 5 years and the worst any of them have to start with is 41. Partly because my taxation still isn't running what the hell.
I've been saving economy tech to go to Town Infrastructure II, which would increase my tax rate from towns by 12.5%; but looking over my various options for increasing my gold income I find that by simply going to Improved Keeps II, which I can do right now, I'll open up a bunch of further economic improvements which will only cost gold. So I do that.
First up, I spend 72 gold on upgrading the walls of Tamrida, since that will make me the most gold in the long run. I can do the same for my castle of Qualnsiyah and for the Churchtown of Qadub, too, with similar potential results, but I'll probably go with the bishopric next as it makes the next most money. At any rate the walls won't be ready for more than a year.
On August 15 I bring Musa home to set up a spy network and give him a break in spying for tech, which he hasn't had much effect on for years.
Athanasios actually manages to improve a different sheik's opinion of me before the time when I can change his mission. The young Emir cannot marry an infidel, and cannot marry matrilineally (or however the French spell that ;) ), so I instruct Ath to start making a case for my claim to the duchy or at least to the county of Sanaa. I'm just going to ignore that the game calls this "fabrication".
A white hart is seen in Socotra, because I was stupid enough to spend money on a winter hunt here (when I should have been saving that money on infrastructure improvements {headdesk}), and apparently imported a white hart. Having released it into what passes for "the wild" in our little island jungle desert hills, it is soon found with much fanfare and excitement in court. I send my best hunter, the malcontent Samir after it whom really I should have had imprisoned on general principle; this gives him 20 prestige, and he hates me somewhat less. I should have gone after the thing myself and picked up 10 prestige, but the game isn't always clear about who will get the prestige or piety or whatever and I thought I'd get more for letting him go.
I do find a stag of my own while out hunting -- just how many stags did my contact import?? 5 prestige. I'll need 3 years to earn enough money to set up more wall improvements THAT'S WHAT I SACRIFICED FOR THIS STUPID HUNT!!
Then Mayor Jabil wants to talk about deer parks. I CAN'T AFFORD DEER PARKS YOU NIT! Wait, hold on... I haven't borrowed money from Jewish merchants yet. I should probably do that. Still told Jabil to get real; he'll lose 10 opinion of me for 10 years, but that's okay. My local temple vassal Bishop Halil isn't happy about me borrowing money from the Jews, but he'll get over it, wasn't a bad hit. I immediately set the walls of his church to be improved, he'll like that! I'll owe the merchants back 350, but I can pay it whenever. 11.67% interest to be paid back whenever isn't bad terms.
On my actual real-life birthday, Gen bears us (IT HAD BETTER BE US!) a son. She likes the name Khaireddin. Hopefully not because it sounds like the Gaelic phrase Cair Ettin, or giant of the tomb!
So ends year 783... NOW WITH THREE GALLEYS! Apparently these will be Christmas presents for me for a while.
oh man you know what youve unlocked here dont you?
From reading around previously, I have a good chance of having unlocked either a sorceress or the outright Anti-Christ. And I don't know of anything that can stop this, except maybe assassinating her nurse. And I'm not sure about that!
Year 784
Okay, I think I've figured out the "feudal vassal tax" problem: the other tax categories are for cities and for temples, so this only affects the taxes I would get from castles held by my sheiks -- but I don't have any, I hold the local castle.
On Jan 31, Spymaster Musa tells me I really ought to stop going out at night to pick fights in bars (or something). My only option is to refuse his request, instead of doing the sensible thing, which socks him for -15 opinion for 10 years. He can take the hit but I don't like this. What am I, the Dark Knight Returning?
This doesn't bode well. On July 24, after a fairly non-eventful year, Jahira, wife of my steward Aram, died of a great pox. Not only does this tick down his quite terrible stewardship score, but she was one of my key plotters against whatever (literally) the hell Julienne is doing.
I retire Aram, and hire a new courtier Ibrahim as steward. His stewardship stats are still dirt average (only 8 ) but that's better than Aram's (6), and I may be able to find him a wife to help, plus Ibrahim only has good traits. Aram will still be moderately in my favor with an opinion of 8... uh, whoops, I miscalc'd that somehow! More like -8. I marry him to one of his co-conspirators, who herself wants to get married while Aram wants a son.
I have suddenly come to realize that when I set my counsel to research tech, it doesn't mean they're adding to my tech points at all. It means they're increasing the spread of my tech through my counties, OF WHICH I ONLY HAVE ONE!
This whole time they could have been doing something more useful... sigh. Well, when my steward's reassignment slot opens up early next year, I'll port them all somewhere more helpful.
Oh, crap, something tried to kill my oldest daughter, Sanaa, and in game terms it was most likely Scetara. No options yet.
There's a peasant revolt in Dhofar (in Oman, up on the coast), but by the time I went up there to help the Awardids would have stomped it I think. More to the point, anything unrest up there helps me in the long run in case I have to do military action.
However, the new Abyssinian king has also started a new holy war campaign in Shirazid.
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THIS MAY BE MY OPPORTUNITY AT LAST! Maybe. I could send 300 troops over, and maybe go get some more.
Tadjoura would be the weakest county to attack, but also the one with direct access to the mainland. But also the one with most exposure to problematic enemies. Zeila would be the strongest, and also the one with the most developed cities, but their total levies are only about half what I could call up.
Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to split my castle levy troops into fewer than 300 troops. Or at all really. Which means I can't load them onto my galleys. Actually it means that even if I get my full 6 galleys I WON'T BE ABLE TO LOAD THEM ONTO MY GALLEYS!
That's messed up. I guess from a game-engine perspective it makes things a bit simpler; and of course I could call up my puny levies from my city and temple, they could go easily, but they wouldn't be able to do much once they got there.
Sigh.
This also means I can't possibly have enough ships to get anything done for several more years, because I'd need to build shipyards at either my city or my templetown (maybe both), which are busy improving their walls for a while longer. And then ships would have to be built there. Fortunately I would only need one or two more ships, but those would still have to be constructed. Which clearly takes about a year apiece.
So ends 784. Still trapped on the island.
im waiting for the 4 witches with 100+ in each stat to turn up
then its war!!
Heck, maybe I'll marry them! Might as well go for a harem, apparently I've already married a witch. THE BONES SHE PAINTED ON HER FACE AFTER OUR WEDDING SHOULD HAVE BEEN A CLUE I GUESS?? I just didn't want to seem racist.
Year 785
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On January 1, I hear that Iconic Eastern Orthodoxy has become a de facto heresy, with Iconoclasm becoming the new Orthodoxy. "The bickering of fools does not concern me!" I grumble. The sad little retarded anti-Christ in my palace concerns me.
And now I have a harsh choice. I can spend more than half my ducats to build a city shipyard, and in a year I'll finally be able to project military power. Or I can wait a little longer and upgrade my city guild hall to a toll both, more than doubling my gold income (adding 3) per month once it's finished -- but use all my gold. I would need another 3 years minimum to gain enough gold and use the build time for ships. But then again I need a minimum of another three years anyway (more like four or five), as the ships don't appear automatically! I won't actually be delayed much, and I could use the gold income increase. Sigh. Going for the gold... (Which I'll still need another year to collect before starting this!)
On August 19, King Rema of Ethiopia, a fairly noble man to be fair, succeeded in taking down both Harer and Tadjoura next door in one fell swoop -- also getting rid of a countersiege going on in Asayita where he staged the assault from. Only the capitol county of Shirazid remains. (I'll have a screenshot further down the comment which will remind readers where those places are.) I could do nothing to help, so I get nothing. sigh. Good for him, though; the area really did belong to him originally.
I seriously think about sending him gold so that I could improve his opinion of me enough to have him agree to betroth his teenaged daughter to my Athanasios -- which wouldn't be too weird, they're only 10 years apart -- without King Rema insisting on matrilineal marriage. But I don't know that that would gain anything over in Ethiopia, since he has a male heir already. And I don't really want land over there anyway; I want Arabia back.
On mid-November, I gained another 2 points in diplomacy, pushing me over the average 8 target (to 9), and fulfilling that ambition!
Next ambition... hmm... well it's either improve my learning or become king of Arabia, and the latter definitely isn't going to happen in my lifetime! The former probably won't either, but at least I'll be adding a few points every few years.
So ends year 785.
Year 786
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Oh for pity's sake. On March 2, someone murdered my little 2 year old boy, apparently Scetara. That plot to murder her nanny had better get cracking.
On March 22 someone or something (apparently Scetara) goes after Saama again. Sigh.
By May 3, 5 ships of my personal levy have been completed; though I now have near 930 troops from my castle alone, not counting another 110 or so from my other two towns. 110 could not be enough to strike even at a weakened county on the mainland, not and also hold it; and the game doesn't allow me to raise partial levies, so I'd need a minimum of 10 ships to move my main levies. At least they'll be fairly asskicky whenever I get enough fleet to send them anywhere...
Okay, I've changed my mind from earlier last year: I might as well go ahead and make the city shipyard instead of waiting later to make something that will take nearly two years to build and THEN having to earn enough money back to build the city shipyard which will take another yearish to build plus then another yearish for each ship. I'm losing too many opportunities by not being able to push power out onto the mainland.
My retarded demon baby girl turns 6 in late May, and would normally need a tutor now; but if she's going to grow up to be trouble I'd rather her stay untutored. Sorry, but giving her good traits is no guarantee she won't turn out to be the anti-Christ: I'm convinced her nanny is a witch and she has great traits! Much less am I going to amp up her competency with good stats. Right now, being "slow", she has stats of 0 down the board. I'm sorry for her, but I'm sorrier for my dead and terrorized children.
Ath is pestering me for a wife again, which is perfectly understandable but I don't want him to suffer a further prestige hit for marrying a 'lowborn' woman again. And there are no adults from Great Houses within diplomacy reach. I do however find a daughter of the high chief of the realm of Kassala, who by a quirk of helping old King Goth during his assault on that poor Jewish enclave (God rest their souls), also happens to own the county of Siemen up in the mountains where the Jewish ex-patriat Temple was built and I DEFY READERS NOT TO MAKE PUNS ABOUT THIS! (I think that grammar added up correctly...)
The only drawback is that she's currently 13. But I can arrange a marriage for later; she has only two traits so far but good stats for someone so young. This will ally me with her father, which could be a problem later as if he gets in trouble I may not be able to reach him without invading someone first.
Oh well. Boy needs a wife again, if he can just wait another three years, and everyone's happy with the arrangement. Ath won't inherit anything (probably), but he we won't lose the island either. I make the arrangements.
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As December nears its end, Gen becomes pregnant again. IF YOU'RE SENDING YOUR DAUGHTER TO KILL HER SIBLINGS WHAT'S THE POINT, DEAR!! #5thworldproblems
Thus ends 786.
LOL! I don't quite know how to define your narration style, Jason, but either way, it's definitely entertaining. O0
(Yes, I'm certainly not doing a normal narrative AAR here, unlike with WW1 Ethiopia and the Blood Bowl Amazons. Whom I want to get back to someday by the way.)
Year 787
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I hate to say that my retarded daughter's nurse needs to die, but she needs to die and soon (if it isn't too late already). My plot power is already over 75% but I've seen no forward movement on the plot at all since I set it up, and neither have I been given any special options (though the game said with higher plot power would come more options). Maybe I have to get the power over 100% before anything at all happens. Unfortunately, up to now I didn't dare invite anyone else because they were either incompetent at intrigue (thus possibly spoiling the whole thing) or else, like my son Ath, would have been against the plot in ethical principle.
But this is giving me grey hairs. Or old age is. One of them.
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I love my little skeletora-faced witch-wife to death, but the nanny has to go. Fortunately, checking around at the start of this year I see we've added a couple of new people at court who should be on board for the plot and who don't suck at intrigue. I invite them in. By early February, both have agreed: the French kisser Julienne must die.
Just in time? Or not? By March 7 I've fallen ill. Well, I turned 50 this year after all, I'm horribly old and my days are numbered.
By mid-July, the shipyards of Tamrida have been built, and already have produced 2 more galleys. I lack only another 2 more before I can send out my 904 levy troops somewhere: yes, because of game design I can't get rid of those 4 extra troops, so they'll need their own galley. More room spread out for everyone I guess; not that this will help their morale while at sea.
My next immediate goals are purely economic: upgrading my three cities to increase effective tax incomes, starting with Tamrida (since its return on investment will be best). I'll need more gold to do that, and should probably wait until I have a surplus of around 30 in case of an emergency. This is a project I will bequeathe to my son, as only by a miracle from God could I survive to see it done. But I will have given him, at long last, the ability to pursue feats of arms on the mainlands: may he or our heirs reclaim Arabia for Christ!
On July 27, Gen gives birth to our first son, whom we will name Philemon. I might as well name him Doomed, for his older brain-dead sister will probably kill him at night. Thanks ever so much, Gen. (Someone misunderstands my satirical babbling and the baby is Christened "Doommed". Like Ahkmed, but with more doom.)
By mid December, as I feel the winter rains soaking into my life -- a miracle from God after all! My illness passes, and I am restored to health! TAKE THAT YOU FRENCH NANNY WHOM I CANNOT IMPRISON WITHOUT MY TENDER-HEARTED SUBJECTS THINKING I AM ONLY A TYRANT!
So ends 787.
Year 788
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The year is ginning along without event, when all of a sudden the nice young Emir of Arwadid whose court Ath has been camped at for years searching for a way to produce a claim on his dukedom, decides to declare war on us. This doesn't seem to be connected to Ath's mission; it may simply be that our island has been part of their Emirate's territorial ambitions for generations, and has held off their piratical attempts all this time -- though to be fair, in my lifetime they have not been pirates at all but much more civilized. Likely enough, his counselors have prodded the seven-year-old boy to issue the war declaration.
Ath proposes a daring plan of traveling the Arwadid lands building up diplomacy again while at war, hoping to bring the young Emir's vassals to reject the attempt. I doubt this will work but it seems more productive than trying to suss out any claims I could have on Arwadid. Ath quickly discovers more than 1300 troops on the march to Bayda, presumably to embark on galleys there for invading our nation. We will likely see them in late October, so we have a little time to prepare.
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Honestly, we don't have much hope. Each of those territories could be, and probably is, sending hundreds of soldiers to their docks to embark on galleys to flatten us.
On the 20th of September, Gen announces she is pregnant again, and enough galleys to ferry 900 troops appear off the coast of Taizz, along with another 115 soldiers. Fortunately, the troops in Taizz have turned around and are marching back into Sanaa, which will delay their embarkment by another few weeks -- though whether that will make any difference in the end, who knows?
Still, the war hasn't started at the end of 788. Maybe we can talk or procrastinate our way out of it after all.
you have money for mercs? how many provinces does the aggressor have?
Not nearly enough money for mercs.
The aggressor has 11 provinces. I'll show a map here soon.
Year 789
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That plot against Julienne will have to wait, if it can. Our research has been handicapped with Spymaster Musa and his wife at home; I plan to send him back out in the world, but (because the clicking mechanics are different when assigning him to tech spy from the "councilor" tab) he decides to go to Sanaa first for a few months and give us an idea of what kind of military we're facing. A lot.
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Odds are very good this represents only around a tenth of the total military strength the little Emir is mustering against us. Fortunately, the same game limitations hamper him as us: he cannot split up 1400 levy troops and so would need 14 ships (or more rather) to carry them. At the moment only those 779 troops are a serious threat to us, so far as we've seen; if he brings in the nearby 294 (which are marching to Bayda) he probably won't be able to ship them at all! Or maybe he'll ferry them in galleyloads. The nearly 1500 troops in Sanaa itself are of no concern anyway until he has a bloc of 15 galleys to move them.
My diplomatic options don't allow me to request an invasion from anyone; but my best chance for survival will be if King Remah Armah of Abyssinia decides this is a good time to mess with Arwadid directly by invading, either by galleys or across the strait into Taizz or Aden.
I realize from a prophetic dream (ahem) that I've been pushing my luck not to have raised my levies yet and properly assigned them to the best commanders and to flanks etc. Good and loyal Marshal Shaiban warns me that galleys could drop off troops without us even having seen them approach. So let's take a look at that.
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This is how the game sets up my combined army initially.
With a little shuffling, and some VERY unclear mechanisms about how to assign unit commanders (and why can't my marshal of all people command a unit???) I end up with this:
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Frankly, aside from my Marshal (WHOM I CANNOT FOR SOME REASON ASSIGN TO COMMAND ANYTHING ARRGH) my best military commander is a Muslim emigree who only likes me a little. I guess I should find him a Muslim wife as he wants to marry; not sure I'd trust him with my troops.
The game code is somewhat broken here, though: despite finding a nice lusty Ibadi woman (with otherwise good stats and a relevant age) who wants to marry, she refuses to marry Samir (or maybe vice versa) because DESPITE BOTH OF THEM BEING IBADI MUSLIM they mustn't marry infidels. {headdesk} So there's no chance of him marrying anyone at all. I do however manage to assign him command of the central army anyway. This doesn't improve his opinion of me.
On Feb 14 (awwww... does Valentine's Day exist yet?) Princess Nejin Hadareb finally turns 16, and still wants to marry my son and heir Athanasios. This will ally us with Chief Thoma of the kingdom of Kassala, currently the 3rd largest Christian kingdom in Africa; though I can't think this will help us in any military way. Still, once the marriage goes through later in February, I send him the invitation to join the war.
And on March 2nd, he answers the call to war! Though how he's going to go about that I have no idea. Still, he immediately musters about 600 troops, some of them from his stranded territory at the former Jewish temple in Semien, and how they're going to even get to him, who knows. Through one of Abyssinia's territories, looks like. I was hoping that by asking him in, he'd bring some allies who have galleys on the coast, or even Abyssinia itself -- I hope I didn't send him into a war against his own neighbors in order to try to help us!
At about this time, March 9, a galley with not-sure-how-many troops (2 shields worth, whatever that means) arrives offshore.
We're ready, and I can only hope his army is bankrupting him faster than it's bankrupting us; I wish he had delayed another year or two until I could get more economic upgrades, because right now I'm bleeding -1.16 gold per month: if I had not built shipyards but rather waited a little longer to build tax booths in Tamrida, I could have stayed at war forever (so far). I can last a long time with this, but not forever.
On April 21, Gen delivers another baby son, Al'sodoommed; I'm feeling pessimistic about his chances. Though I haven't seen any problems from Scetara and her nanny recently.
My army seems to be keeping the galley troops from invading as of June 1. It's a standoff until Emir Frank or Farku or whatever his name is sends more ships and troops I guess. Bleed that money, Fakru, bleed it!
I sent Ath to Kathiri, one of the ports closest to us where the invasions seem to be staging from; and in early July he reports diplomatic success. I try to decide if I should send him a monetary gift to improve his opinion of me over that of his young Emir; but I don't know for sure that would accomplish anything useful Probably better off using that money to pay my troops to hold off, and hope for the best. When Sept 4 rolls up, I'm thinking of moving Ath over to Muscat on the far eastern coast, because the Emir there has about the same opinion of me as of Frank: I might be able to accomplish a lot there!
Or maybe not; not long afterward, in late August, Ath somehow succeeds in raising Sheik Muhammad's opinion of me again, and I'm well above his Emir in his opinion now -- but it doesn't seem to matter. No new diplomatic options open up. Still, what else can I do? By Sept 16, Ath has already succeeded: he's on a roll!
And what the heck is up with the warscore?? little Emir attacked me, and yet his warscore is growing because I don't hold his capitol. He hasn't done one single thing to improve his standing in the war. By mid October he's up to 2 percent! At this rate he'll win without doing anything other than letting his troops starve off my coast!
At the end of September, Spymaster Musa of all people blabbers about the plot to kill Nurse Julienne while in a drunken stupor. Apparently the drunken stupor was in DAMASCUS since that's where I've got him stationed right now. Fortunately, the only person this affects is Julienne herself, whose opinion of me tanks to the bottom.
On November 15, my beautiful first daughter Samaraa became a woman able to marry; but unfortunately there are no noblemen nearby to offer her hand to.
Thus ends 789, with a little Emir winning an aggressive war against me simply because I haven't taken his capitol yet.
Year 790
--------
Since it has now become painfully obvious that the game will assign bad plot results to people even if they are masters at intrigue (simply assigning them randomly to plotters), I go ahead and fill out the plotter list with whomever I can find (except for Scetara's mom Gen, though I bet the game would let me do that anyway and even succeed with her on board! :P ) This brings me up to 103.6 percent plotting power. Now let's see what happens.
On March 6, I send Ath back to Sanaa, the capitol of Arwadid itself, to see if he can get that little warring Emir back on my side.
This gives me the idea of checking his balance sheet, which the game allows me to do for no good reason by the way (not because I moved Ath to the capitol), and indeed Arwadid is eating 23.58 gold a month. What we don't know is how much gold he currently has in the bank, but it couldn't have been much more than 300 to start with because he's in hock to Jewish merchants for a loan.
Of course, he could send home most of his levies, and get back in the black, and still win his stupid war if the game simply tallies him a warscore for accomplishing nothing aggressively at all (so long as I haven't smitten his capitol).
Scetara tries to kill Al'sodoommed on May 21, but misses. Better than succeeding in killing Ath who, being on the mainland and a high intriguer, ought to be immune to such attempts; but I had a nightmare about that happening last year (ahem ;) ).
On July 31 I set city taxes higher (thought I did that last year... maybe it was during a nightmare about things that happened but didn't...?), and Cupbearer Aram's wife Shahzadah contracts someone to saw the railing under where Julienne frequents. About dang time.
I'm pretty sure I just insulted Gen by babbling in my old age about the likelihood she's trying to poison me with cookies, but in my defense DEMON DAUGHTER! Her opinion of me drops by 15 for 2 years, and I pick up Cynical for 2 years (-5 opinion generally, but +1 to intrigue and diplomacy).
August 26, gravity becomes a much more cruel mistress than Julienne threatened to be. Hopefully this will stop the murderous attacks on my children. Otherwise my daughter is next, sigh.
Thus ends year 790.
Year 791
--------
I think I see the problem with the war. It isn't a war to take my country, Emir Farkyu has framed it as a war over the title of Awardid -- which in hindsight means this may actually be my fault for sending Ath to dig up claims on it!
Consequently, so long as he holds Sanaa, the capitol of Awardid, he wins eventually.
I could pack up my ships and try to take his capitol before he takes mine, but I doubt that will work.
My only two possible hopes are (1) he calls off the fight due to bankruptcy (but who knows how much gold he had to start with, or how far in the hole the game will allow him to go); or (2) Ath diplomats him far enough to call off the war because he likes me (but who knows whether that's even a game mechanic).
In late February, my beloved Saama started complaining about not being married though I had promised her I would find someone. I was waiting and hoping to find someone of great house who would marry with her as the heiress; but since she insisted, and since she seems rather taken with my Steward Ibrahim Tamird (and vice versa), and since marrying them would improve his stewardship a bit, thus costing me less money per month and allowing us to hold out against Awardid a little longer -- I gave my blessing. Everyone seems happy.
Awardid has improved their finances, too, a bit; now they're only losing 24.40 gold a month. COME ON ECONOMICS, I NEED A WIN HERE!
Ath makes a first diplomatic success, raising Faruk's opinion of me to 8, but that doesn't stop the war. He won't accept a white peace either (which admittedly would cost him in piety and prestige).
Meanwhile, over in Africa, King Rema of Ethiopia concludes a crushingly quick war against Gonder, taking it into the Abyssinian kingdom.
I wish I hadn't brought Ath's father-in-law into our war, because Kassala is just sitting there unable to do anything with its levies, being bankrupted at more than -5 gold lost per month. Sure, if Arwadid bankrupts faster (and the game even lets us win that way), he'll pick up major prestige for agreeing to help us, but still.
Dhofar, on the coast up in Arwadid, has set off another of its occasional peasant revolts. That will only help us, though how much so who knows?
So ends 791, with another signal diplomatic victory. Little Faruk now likes me 43 percent (max always seems 100 or -100 even if the numbers add up farther). Still not enough for him to call off the war, but I have hope because now when I go to diplomacy and offer peace "Enforce Demands" is available as an option! That wasn't true before; and moreover there are only 2 minuses to his refusal to accept demands, whereas (oddly) the white peace option has many more minuses because his warscore is already at 35%!
Go, Ath, Go! We can last another 158 months at this rate, or a little longer actually! How long can Arwadid last?!?
Year 792
--------
While poking around early in the year, I realize Jabir, Mayor of
Tamrida, has used some of his own money to improve the city barracks all by himself. That's great -- you've always been loyal to me, Old Jabir (now 50 and looks 80), which is why I've got you leading a wing of our army in defense of our island, even though my opinion of you is terrible (-17, to his 92 of me). But I wish you had spent it on the toll booth, SIGH!
I also come to realize (when Ath's next success is actually to increase the opinion of the Sheik of Dhu Zabi, where the United Arab Emirates are today and the city of Dubai), that "Enforce Demands" wasn't a new option opened up, only pre-selected when I go to offer peace. Sigh. Still, it's my only real hope other than them running out of money.
On September 29 (Michaelmass), the little remaining sheikdom of Shirazid agrees to get drawn into the war over Arwadid; and the peasant rebellion in Dhofar is actually winning! The main castle of the county has almost been defeated, though the main city and mosque town are still in good shape. Why hasn't Dhofar mustered levies yet to solve this problem?? Weird.
So ends 792, with Emir Faruk 50% of the way toward winning his war by default -- even though at a -50.27 ducat defict per month he ought to be bankrupted long ago and unable to keep his war going.
Year 793
--------
On February 9, Adila daughter of Aram (a very pious man of much prestige in court, who always wanted to be grand vizier but just didn't have the talent for it), born 19 years ago, starts flirting heavily with me. I ignore her advances and gain 5 piety; and promptly marry her off to the Muslim commander of my armies, who apparently isn't Muslim since he's okay with marrying a Christian now (and cannot marry a similar Muslim woman due to game wonkiness).
Mayor Jabir dies of old age at the end of March, and I replace him with a good minor nobleman, Isir, who will be a better steward of the town anyway. He's also better at military matters, and I make sure to assign him to the Tamrid levies. (Oddly, I have been unassigned from the Bishopric levies, so I assign myself back.)
Old Spymaster Musa brings back some cultural tech points from Damascus in early May, though frankly I wish it had been economy tech which I need much more. But it allows me to bump my Tolerance up to level 2, which will help with my diplomatic efforts a little. (All other options would only help improve the opinion of various mayors in my counties toward me, which isn't of any use right now.)
On May 9, 793, the Viking Age begins. We've managed to survive into the 2nd level of the game, which may make our techs a little less expensive to upgrade now. Also I honor old Marshal Shaiban for his work in training our levies, without which we wouldn't be losing this war against Arwadid through default instead of by invasion! (Not actually sarcastic against Marshal Shaiban...)
On June 8, my wonderful grandaughter Rashida, whom I managed to forget existed, comes of age and reveals herself to be an underhanded rogue, which in this game isn't actually bad (though it tics off her martial skill slightly). Mainly it means she has a major uptick to her diplomacy stats (which due to other traits was only 10 before -- her traits are actually quite good but not much for diplomacy), and a slight increase in her sexual flirtiness. ;)
Sadly, there are still no noblemen around to whom I can marry her. Unless maybe that Sa'aadin guy? He's kicking quite a bit of butt among the Arwadid!
Back to being ill on July 6.
By August 15, I feel confident the game is flagrantly cheating, since Arwadid is hemorraging money at almost 60 gold per month by now and yet they can still afford to be at war -- even though they also seem paralyzed and unable to do anything about the peasant rebellion meandering around their southeastern coast.
Sept 23, well again, except for how sick I feel at the unfairness of the game: 61% warscore against me, just for holding the capitol.
So ends 793 as the broken pseudo-war continues.
Year 794
--------
Okay, as of Feb 11 my diplomatic efforts (after randomly focusing on a court poet sheik who hates my guts and is of no use in trying to solve the situation) have finally reached Emir Faruk for a third time, pushing his opinion of me up to 64. As a result, I could get a white peace if I asked for it, which will only tag him for prestige and piety (which he can easily afford to lose, GAWD he has 1080 prestige.) But now I want to see if I can get him to accede to my demands if I get his opinion of me higher still.
I've got a save back in 793 March (and also now in 794 after getting this diplomatic achievement), if this plan doesn't work out (which will be due to me trying to figure out how the game plays itself, bleh). I have a suspicion that if I can sucker his troops into invading and then bloody them up this will affect his willingness to surrender to my demands.
Shaiban gives me a 50% levy reinforcement rate for a couple of years in July.
And that ends Year 794.
Year 795
--------
I'll have to make a decision soon about whether to offer that white peace, because his warscore is now 81%.
Unfortunately, I'll probably have to take it, as Faruk just picked up the trait "Zealous" which knocks his opinion of me back 60 points to (4). DAMMIT! He's drinking 70.93 gold ducats a month being at war, and yet he can keep at it. Is this the game being bugged, or did he really have that much gold to start with?
Other than being able to upgrade the church taxation rate (not that this helps me much, but I'm down to losing only .63 gold per month), nothing else happens this year.
Year 796
--------
All right, enough of this crap. He's at warscore 96%, so I'm going to save the game and then temporarily disband my personal levies to see if I can get him to invade and then catch his troops when I raise my levies again.
Yep, that starts bringing them in. Let's see what kind of surprise awaits them or us...
Well, the first surprise is that when I raise my liege levies again, once the battle starts, all three of my armies seem to instantly converge in one army with no flankers, which is run by Aram my steward (of all people): a guy who has a military skill of 3!
We still win. But dang that was stupid.
Reload. (Though I may wish I had saved that win...)
The next time I start by disbanding everyone temporarily -- at which instead of invading, the Emir's fleet turns around and goes home! The hell!!
Reload.
Only dismiss my personal levies again; and the fleet turns around and goes home again. SIGH!
Reload.
Dismiss everyone again, and the Muslim fleet still goes home.
At this point I'm thinking of fleeting up and following them!
The rebel leader has taken over Dhofar and made a truce with Emir Faruk, splitting Arwadid in half, and leaving the whole eastern side rather weakened.
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If I packed up some troops, I could probably snag a territory or two over there, and Arwadid wouldn't be able to do much about it (I think).
Fortunately, I realize the fleet was probably sailing home to top off with troops again, and that it'll be back now that peace has been made with the rebels on the mainland. But fine, I'll recover some gold for a month or two until they return. This will give me a chance to put my newly trained troops into my levy brigades -- the game doesn't let me assign them otherwise unless I disband and reform.
On Feb 6 the Emir's fleet is back and his troops dismount to attack. Time to form up!
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A day later, his troops turn around and climb back on his ships, SIGH!
Really? -- only way to get him to fight me is to sucker him in with vassal levies and then send in my town levies led by ARAM OF ALL PEOPLE!? That seems like a horrible waste.
On April 1 his warscore is 100%. So what.
... HOLY CHRIST! WE WON!
I don't even know how. What the hell heaven? Emir Philemon the Just controls Sanaa?? That's unpossible! Did his country bankrupt out of the game? Did the bug run in my favor instead of his?!?
I enforce demands, he accepts.
I don't get the title of Emir of Arwadid (I guess), but he pays me back in lost gold. Man. I don't even.
I don't even feel like a won it. I mean, yes I feel like I won it: by all rights I should have out-economied him. But that doesn't seem to be what happened. The game seems to think I occupied the Sanaa capitol until he capitulated after several years.
...yeah, what about you over there Shirazid? You're in a war with Ethiopia right now aren't you?
Well that was an...interesting end to the war. I've even less idea of what to make of it than you. ???
Still, all's well that ends well -- at least for now. Well done, Jason!
did he die?
U'geek, nope, everyone is still totally alive.
My tentative guess is that, thanks to a bug, my vizier parked in Sanaa (their capitol) for diplomacy purposes counted as my army holding Sanaa despite a seriously large (for the region) real Arwadiddling army parked there, too. Maybe because my vizier is also my son and heir Athanasios? ???
What should have happened is that they either quit the war early before they went bankrupt, suing for peace; or that they were forced to quit the war having gone bankrupt.
Or, okay, no, what should have happened was that they brought batches of troops to the nearest port city, so long as the batches were less than 900 men (and presumed support). They vastly outnumbered me but they lacked the galleys to invade me with more than 900 troops at a time; but they could have ferried them over in batches. Later when the peasant rebellion started up in Dhofur (or wherever that was), that wouldn't have been feasible; but had they done this from the beginning I would have been steamrolled.
Instead the computer got scared and parked his ship off the coast, until I tried leaving with some troops to draw him in -- and then he went back to top up his fleet with as many troops as he could carry. But it still wasn't enough numbers and quality to deal with the solid troops we had defending the island from a naval invasion (which has a couple of different severe penalties until the troops have been on land long enough to no longer count as a naval invasion.)
I pondered last night what to do next, reloading a few times to test gameplay theories. (I don't like doing that, but the game mechanics aren't documented enough for me to safely continue at this point without understanding them better.) I'll report this afternoon.
Year 796 part 2
---------------
Now, I could fleet up and go stick my nose into what's happening in Zeila, Shirazid's last county, which is currently under assault by Ethiopia (a nominal ally of mine, sort of, who looks like he may also have a war on his northern border soon from another African Christian tribe); but I have a possibly more lucrative and evil righteously crazy plan.
What if I declare war back on Arwadid again? And then do that again and win? I'm the aggressor, does that mean I would actually get the whole duchy? And would that be exploiting the engine too much, offsetting one bug (he shouldn't be able to afford troops now) with another? Or, would doing so actually reverse the bug on me and now the game thinks he's sitting in MY capitol occupying it?
Some testing indicates that I can declare war on the Emir, we only made a truce; and I could do so over two different duchies, Oman and Sanaa. I could also declare war on the guy who took over a county of Oman and yet not declare war on Emir Faruk; but Faruk might come to his aid. (I could also give back some of his gold as a gift, sending his opinion of me up into the mid 70s, but he still wouldn't accept betrothal to my granddaughter, despite Rashida being pretty awesome -- but not Muslim.)
If I do go to war with the Emir again, I certainly shouldn't try to invade anywhere, since he'll only muster an army and thwomp me in that county several months later.
On the other hand, if I muster an army and go after the rebel in Dhofar, I'd probably need a lot more troops to fight him than I currently have, seeing as how he has a lot of garrisons at least. But then again, so long as I don't attack I could take them slowly -- he doesn't have any friends in the region, probably.
Testing indicates that declaring war on Emir Faruk, doesn't result in the same weird "Emir Philemon holds Sanaa" situation which was earning me 1.27% warscore every month. So I couldn't win that way. But I might eat his troops progressively if he sent them in galleys to my island. In order to do that, I would have to raise only my vassal levy troops at first in order to provide some initial resistance to his invasions, and then spot-raise my personal levies once the invasion is running. But then I would give up being able to assign a good leader to the combined army (much less multiple good leaders), because due to game engine limitations or problems they would all be regarded as under one leader whom the computer has persistently chosen to be Aram my cupbearer the least competent military leader in my court.
Still, I did win that way once (before a reload for further testing) without many casualties; after some initial archery skirmishing I killed his troops faster than he could retreat them back to his ships! Repeat 10 times, and he would have a lot of difficulty resisting any invasion from me anywhere on the mainland, so long as I took it slow and besieged his cities carefully. That would admittedly take so long per county that he could feasibly train enough more levies to make my invasion worthless; and even if I had enough gold to run almost 110 month (which I would, based on a test invasion of the weakest county over past Dhofar). But if I only went after his capitol county of Sanaa, I might be able to take all those cities before he could train more troops. And then... would that be it? Would I at least gain the duchy of Sanaa (not just the county)? Don't know. I do know I would have to strip my island of all defenses to try that, and even if I was sure he had no more levies at all to send, he could raise 400 guys during the three years I'm in Sanaa and carefully countersiege me back. Nor does that take into account THE GIANT EMPIRE ALLY OF HIS NEXT DOOR who might send any number of troops to ruin my day since Sanaa is on their border.
Another option is that I don't try to make war at all yet, but hang back and spend my war-won money upgrading my economy base.
I haven't decided what to do; I'm just spitballing ideas. Another war possibility, though, which would avoid the risk of pissing off the Abbasidian Superempire, would be to go after small independent duchies and petty kingdoms on the continent. Though I would still likely need to drain my defense troops to do so; and I might inadvertently trigger a counter war with Ethiopia. Or I could try sailing over to India and messing with petty kingdoms there, though that would seem to be pushing too far. (I can't go anywhere nearer without running into the Abbasids.)
I suspect militarily my best bet would be to go after Dhofar and hope Faruk likes me enough not to want to help the peasant rebel usurper there (or to invade me himself with a new war, though I don't think he can initiate one right now if he's bankrupt. Though I don't really know that for sure.)
For reference, here are some maps again:
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Abyssinia (aka Ethiopia) has taken over Gojjam or Gondar or both since that last screenshot (I don't have my game loaded up right now to check), but otherwise the situation up there is about the same. The country outlined in yellow, Kassala, is an ally of mine; my son married the chief's daughter. He's probably bankrupt now, but could have picked up some prestige from agreeing to help me in my war with Arwadid even though all he did was take troops out of that Semien pocket up in the mountains and make it helpless if his ally Abyssinia decides to take it.
Year 796 Part 3
---------------
Okay, overall my best shot at putting my troops to positive use anytime soon is to pack up my personal levies, along with all the galleys I can muster (because I'll need them all), and ship them to Dhofur to invade that guy before he gets his armies back (perhaps). If that triggers a counterwar by Emir Faruk again, well fine, let him destabilize his country further, I'll send everyone home again to await his arrival.
Scetara my beloved little spawn of Satan, who has a surprisingly high opinion of me all things considered (and who hasn't tried to kill any of her siblings since her nanny tumbled to her death, perhaps not-incidentally), comes of age in May and mutates from a retarded girl of no skills at all into a fine princess. I promptly marry her off to King Afework (??) of the petty African kingdom of Shewa, which also allies me with them. If she brings about the apocalypse, she'll do so in a very weak land where she can't cause too much trouble and two or three fairly strong nations nearby can put her down perhaps -- while being weakened in the process of course. Possibly with military help from me if necessary, as I'm allied with at least one of those kingdoms (Kassala) already. On the other hand, if Ethiopia keeps doing their steamroll thing, I'll get causus belli with them and maybe can gin up a confederation to stop them.
This looks like the best possible way to both neutralize and make good use of my little Tyke Bomb. YOU GO, GIRL! GO AWAAAAYYYY!! (They get a June wedding, awww...)
On May 27, Nejin Hadareb, the new young wife of my son Athanasios, dies after a period of illness. sigh. I don't know who else is around I could feasibly marry him to.
I had to reload at one point because I didn't understand the war declaration rules properly and ended up with my little army sitting in Dhofar doing nothing for a month while I was unable to declare war; first because I had armies in the territory I wanted to declare war with (huh??) and second because I had raised levies already in order to fight the war I wanted to declare (HUHSH?!?) Sending my troops back to the boat didn't help; but I may have lost by the reload because I originally had scored a couple of further diplomatic coups with Emir Faruk and in the original version Ath's wife hadn't died. Oh well. Fortunately there's another decent wife nearby, a Nubian countess named Maria Eionkoudid, whom I promptly arrange him another marriage with. Meanwhile my awesome granddaughter Rashida has no one yet, sigh.
At about the time my troops make landfall, Ath scores a diplomatic coup with Faruk after all, so everything's okay there. Dhofar has a larger army than mine parked next door (in very weak Duqm), just standing there not doing anything which is weird. I promptly start a careful siege of their capitol city the castle Salalah. My morale isn't all that great to begin with (having just been on boats for a few days, you wimps), but unless he sends his troops home to help he's going to lose. Faruk doesn't seem to care yet, but he's busy helping Shirazid defend their last county against Ethiopia again.
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There's the situation. I can't decide if this is another weird computer bug; or if they're waiting to recover all his troops from assaulting Arwadiddian counties northward before he smites me; or if the general quality of my troops are scaring him off; or if he's waiting to see if I unwisely hurry a siege and bleed off my troops first.
Before I save for the night, I remember that my two sons -- now spared from Scetara apparently(?) -- Doommed and Al'sodoommed, need guardian/tutors. Ath and his daughter Rashida are by a good margin the best candidates, other than my wife Gen whom I don't know whether I can trust in such matters anymore; so I assign the two boys between them.
Year 796 Part 4
---------------
Jesus (or Issi in Arabic, right?), it's only July 1 this year...
I've had vassal levies out for too long (even though it's only ships right now), so my two barons (or the local cultural equivalent) are starting to get slightly peeved (-1) every month. Not a problem for the bishop, as he's well over 100, but the new mayor of Tamrida only likes me 18 points. I grant him cupbearer, that guy having died a while back; this improves him a bit.
By mid-July, a large squad of Faruk's troops (6 light infantry, 6 heavy, 2 pikemen, 2 light cav, and 1 archer) are passing through Dhofar on their way to Duqm next door where that mass of Dhofarians are standing around not protecting Dhofar from my sieging. Samir waves at them as they trot by. By August 1st, my troops are well recovered from their few days on the ocean and are basically camping out around the city toasting hot dogs while we wait for the castle garrison to decide they've satisfied their honor sufficiently to surrender. A nice polite minimal casualty war so far. Once we've built our siege weapons around mid-August, the enemy morale starts to drop faster, but as of Sept 22 we're still likely to be here at the castle another 150 days or thereabouts; or sometime in February. We could technically try an assault right now, but our losses would be grossly high. Before my siege units were finished (though the on-map siege graphic always shows a trebuchet) the game showed a somewhat longer time before a siege could be feasibly attempted. At the time it was 67 days, which by Sept 22 we're well into but I don't think we could have passed it yet -- but I don't know because the game designers forgot to include that running total after siege engines were completed.
Another round of illness starts Dec 12 -- will this be the crud that kills me? Down to 24.6% morale at Salalah; at a loss of 4.4% every 12 days, that's another 67 days to go. Will Sheik Sa'daddin do anything to save his little county before then?
Speak of the devil! -- Dec 16 starts the fight!
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He outnumbers me, and can pit three fronts against me (with variable generals each way). The first round isn't going so badly, considering I have only 173 archers (though most are on horse, I think, with only 18 on foot, so that helps) and he has SIX HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN! That's a large proportion of his full 1370 (at this point), so if I can close in I'll smack him hard -- which my 117 camels will certainly help with. Right now though Samir has chosen to go with a shieldwall tactic during the skirmish phase while most of Sa'd's troops are busy volley harassing me (central and on my right) as Sad himself feints on my left.
Unfortunately, he murders me badly: his archers are able to eat my morale down far enough, and Samir never bothers to try more than a shieldwall, so Sad can then overrun Samir and destroy his army utterly. No survivors (except Samir, somehow). The AI played me very well.
I call the fleet home and disband them. Starting the next month in March I'm back to a 2.47 gold income per month; and I have enough gold left over from my goofyass war with Faruk to start upgrading the city of Tamrida to having toll booths. A couple of years from now, that will give me +3 gold a month. sigh. I could have been halfway there by now, and still with all my levy troops, plus almost 2.5 gold per month meanwhile, had I just stayed home.
By May 6 I'm back to my usual health. Still alive, Saddaddyo! I'll be back someday when you can't afford it! Actually, since we're still at war, and he hasn't upgraded his county much, I'm earning about 6 times as much profit as he is, so I ought to recover much faster: but if I don't bring significantly more archers it won't make any difference!
On May 15, Athansios and his (3rd) wife Maria finally have a son! So unless Scetara returns to murder him (I wonder how things are going over there in that subkingdom of the Abyss, heh heh), the game will continue. They want to name him Philemon, and I Philemon am entirely okay with that.
Year 797
--------
Actually we're already well into May at this point, but where I stopped last night seemed to be best.
Upon loading I'm informed that my vassals have deducted 2 opinion from me for keeping levies out too long, which makes no sense as I disbanded all levies a while back. I could better imagine them being pissed that I killed off all my own troops. I double check; no levies out at all. Maybe the game just means I built up -2 total resentment from levies so far, and enough time hasn't passed for that to go away yet.
I manage to negotiate a marriage for awesome granddaughter Rashida with the young prince who is heir to the petty kingdom of Gondar over on the continent -- largely swallowed by Ethiopia, but now aligned with them. Not sure what to do if Gondar calls for aid, ba-dump-tish. But any children will be heirs on her side of the family, so Ath as her father may have a claim on Gondar eventually.
By early September, the game seems to be getting bored with my non-war with Dhofar and starts tacking a 5% penalty against my warscore. Which is reasonable of course, but it means that unless Sa'd sends his army out to get massacred somewhere else I'm not going to win, since he can slaughter my troops with massed archers: a point I have certainly taken note of for future reference! -- but which I can do nothing about for a long time.
This does finally explain the super-bizarre ending to my defensive war against Emir Faruk, though. The game said I was winning because I held "Sanaa", and I couldn't figure out how that was possible because OBVIOUSLY Faruk held that county, his capitol; which is why I thought the game really meant he was winning (until I won).
What the game meant, not very clearly, is that I held the DUCHY of Sanaa. Which I didn't, I still only held our little island of Socotra, but that's part of the de jure Duchy of Sanaa, over which Faruk had been pushed by his courtiers (I suppose) into a war with me. The designers didn't provide any way for the game to distinguish this better, other than to say I held Sanaa.
Similarly now, I'm going to start taking 5% warscore damage per month because Sa'd still holds "Oman", meaning the DUCHY of Oman, over which we're having a holy war. Of course he only holds one county of that de jure dukedom (or the Middle Eastern equivalent thereof), but that's how the game distinguishes it.
I would try to go for a white peace now, since I can't afford a "surrender", but that wasn't an option even back after I lost my whole army; so I don't know what I'm going to do.
A Sunni uprising is afflicting parts of the Ethiopian coast at the mouth of the Red Sea, but I don't have enough levy troops rebuilt yet to go help with that. I'll be watching to see if I have any hope of swooping in afterward to take some Sunni territories though if they win. For whatever it's worth, old Marshal Shaiban has kicked levy reinforcements into 50% overgear.
So ends 797.
Year 798
--------
We start the year with a downtick of my warscore to -71%. By the end of the year I don't know what's going to happen. I hope we can afford to surrender!
I don't understand the spytech issues. Supposedly Old Spymaster Musa should be improving our Light Infantry tech 9% a year (or 8.4% now since he's getting a bit old and ill), by stealing it from Damascus (where he's currently posted), thus reducing our eventual buy cost for it. I haven't seen that nudge up even a little yet, though. Town infrastructure and trade practices are still at 1.6 each also. I'll try to remember to keep him parked in Damascus for a while; if I see no improvement by Jan 799 I'll know something is foofed in the game code.
By July, the peasant revolt on the Ethiopian coast is over; as I should have reasonably expected, Ethiopia won. No opportunities for me there.
On Jul 17, my first daughter Saama bint Yahballaha died after a period of illness, probably meaning pregnancy. She was only 24. This especially hurts because she had happily married Ibrahim Tanrid, my Steward, who has a great diplomacy score but not so great stewardship, which Saama was helping with. I promptly spend 20 gold or so to impress a young Nubian (nubile? :D ) financial genius to move to the Soctran court (she couldn't quite edge over to marrying Ibrahim otherwise) and marry them off by late October.
Thus ends 788.
Year 789
--------
Something is definitely screwy with the spymaster tech engine, or else I don't understand it properly. Light infantry research ought to have advanced AT LEAST 8 percent by now, but it hasn't advanced at all. Neither has town infrastructure or trade practices.
I'm dropping a line to the Steam forums to see if anyone else has noticed this, or to get advice if I'm doing or understanding the mechanics wrong -- but I don't understand how I can be misunderstanding the mechanics here. ;) A possibly-over-quick scan of the Paradox CK2 forum doesn't seem to indicate such a problem.
On April 1 (I seem to recall this happening on April 1 last time, too, which makes me a bit suspicious of an in-game joke?), the Iconoclast sect of Orthodoxy dwindled away again so that Orthodoxy is orthodoxy again and iconoclasm is a heresy. Not that this affects me at all; it's just interesting to see that dispute go sailing past during game-span. :)
My toll booth system in Tamrida was completed; but it only added 3 gold a year not 3 a month. Which is admittedly more reasonable, but disappointing.
Around mid-July, Mayor Isa of Tamrida decides he's had enough of Marshal Shaiban messing with levy reinforcements, and sets up a bureaucratic campaign to undermine troop training by 200% until December. sigh.
All right, it's September and our warscore is at 95%. My levies haven't fully recovered yet, but my only hope is to try running my main levies back to Dhofar and then quickly reinforce them with vassal levies who will have most of my archers.
This only has any chance of working if Sa'd has sent his armies somewhere else and gives me some time to overcome the morale issues inherent in landing troops by boat. He has levies in his cities for sure, but not so much that our mission is impossible from the outset.
Unfortunately, some cheap scouting by galley (before raising my troop levies) show his army is still just standing there waiting for me -- not counting levy reinforcements. With them outnumbering me, and out archering me, and with morale hits from a sea invasion, I'd be slaughtered pronto.
So, I send the fleets home and disband them again. Crap. I'll lose the war a few months later.
On Nov 13, Old Spymaster Musa dies of severe stress. Maybe that's why he wasn't providing the tech research anymore? His son Muslihiddin ibn Musa has always wanted to be spymaster, and unfortunately I can't appoint his mother, even though she would be a little more effective; but he's only a point or so worse than his Dad and that could improve over time. I find him a good intrigue wife and send him out to return with tech!
So ends 799.
Year 800
--------
This'll be a harsh year {shaking head}. I'm going to start off out of the gate (or on Feb 1 actually) losing my war with S'ad, which will bankrupt me and hit my prestige hard, too.
At -53 gold, I'll need a little more than a year and a half to break even again. sigh. My prestige and my piety both chunk down strongly, too (though my piety remains ungodly strong. Um, so to speak.)
One of my main generals, Samir Samarid, dies in bed of old age around the beginning of June. I blame you for our loss in Dhofar, Samir. You should have charged those archers a lot sooner. (And, um, I should have supplied you more troops especially since that would have reduced your relative deficit of archers a lot. Sorry.) Being a good Nestorian I pray for his Muslim soul.
My "learning" ambition seems to be following a track of carousing with monks. Hopefully this doesn't end with me being a drunkard later.
On July 13... the hell?
Caliph Ismail, Emir of Medina and cupbearer of the Arabian Empire, declares war on me. Fine, you old coot, bring it.
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Medina is no small kingdom in the Arabian (or a little more properly the Abbasidian) Empire. You can see it outlined in yellow up there. If he has enough ships I'm in big trouble, probably game ending trouble. If his liege the Emperor decides to gang on, well it's only a matter of time then.
It's kind of weird, because he has sympathy for both Judaism and Christianity, and if he hadn't declared war on me he'd have a 30 opinion of me -- and still has 10!
On August 19, he brings an Emir of Damascus into war with me, but he's only the court musician (though heir to a sheikdom somewhere). Emir Umarahid of the Emirate of Tigris is rather more of a problem. Al-Hasan 2 Taid Emir of Jerusalem piles on, too. And Muhammad the Emir of Syria.
Out of those, the only ones who might have galleys who can reach me (or at all) are Medina and Tigris; it doesn't matter how many troops are raised, unless they can be put into ships properly, and that remains to be seen. Things aren't entirely hopeless yet.
As of Dec 15, none of his allies have contributed a drop yet, which is kind of hilarious; also he appears to be in revolt against his own Emperor as part of an alliance (likely with those other nits). This should be amusing!
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Maybe I should levy up some galleys and go scout his coastline for vulnerable areas? -- crap, no can't do that yet, I'm bankrupt. Sigh.
It might not matter. A few days later on Dec 12, TWENTY FIVE GALLEYS park off the island and disgorge some camel jockeys.
Don't know how many that counts as, yet, but this is probably game over.
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I call up the levies anyway of course, assign proper wings and commanders, and pray for a miracle.
On Dec 28 they finish landing and the battles start on the beaches. My left and right flanks immediately rout, though that's understandable since the enemy comes in with no center.
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By Jan 1 things aren't utterly worse yet, though the skirmish phase is still going on and my left wing is being run down by cavalry. Fortunately I (Philemon the general) am currently hallucinating that I'm visiting a hermit's cave to learn wisdom, so the shock isn't too bad.
So ends year 800.
Year 801
--------
On Jan 6 or thereabouts my wings totally fail, and the enemy converges on my center, outnumbering me 2 to 1. The only good news is that their morale is substantially worse than mine. But mine is starting to fail.
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As might be expected, their archers are simply murdering me. But hey, by Jan 10 I have managed to badger my imaginary hermit into teaching me an endless stream of platitudes and maxims as my hopes for the future collapse around me!
By Jan 15 it's all over but the sobbing and probably the raping and burning.
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The besieging army's morale is still bad, 33.7%, but they'll regain 11.2% a week if they just sit around, and they have no good reason to do otherwise.
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Not necessarily game over, but only if the game burps up a reprieve. Which it might, if the Abbasidian revolters think they need those troops on the mainland more than slowly chewing their way through three cities on a podunk island off the coast of Africa.
Another possibility might be to swear fealty to someone else. Though I'm unsure whether this is allowed if I'm at war, and whether the game would even let me continue -- it should, I could start as a count or a duke with a liege, but we'll see.
I'm surprised I lasted this long, really.
Year 801
--------
By Mid-January, the revolting fleet has sailed away, leaving around 2050 combat troops and their support camped around Qualnisiyah our capitol fort city. Our morale has started dropping already, but they will need most of a year to bring us to capitulation; and still will then need to take our other two cities. Unless they try a direct assault later.
We cannot submit to another stronger nation for protection while we are already at war; and we have no strength to throw them off the island. Our only hope is for political fortunes elsewhere to lead the troops to evacuate in order to meet a greater threat. Relatedly, my diplomatic genius son and heir, Athanasios, promptly moves to Mecca (where I should have sent him months ago when the Abbasidian Revolt started) to try to improve the Emir's opinion of us enough for him to call off the assault.
Old Marshal Shaiban rallies the people in a masterful way, increasing our levy reinforcements by 50% for a year in early April. But I can't see how it will possibly make any difference.
Galleys return and depart again in late April, bringing reinforcements for the invaders, now numbering around 3300. This will reduce their normal siege time, and also increase their ability to overrun us more quickly should they so choose.
Ath continues his brilliant career with an early diplomatic success leading Emir Ismail to favor us more. Scouts give the impression the besiegers seem a tad less by early June; possibly some have died of natural causes.
Adila keeps trying to seduce me, which is especially inappropriate in our circumstances! I continue to refuse.
Our old friendly adversary, Sheikh Talib of Taizz, one of the pretender heirs to the Arwadiddian throne, dies of natural causes in mid-August. He was 63. I pray for his soul as a good Christian would, and wonder if we shall meet in paradise soon.
Morale has already depleted to almost nothing in the city; and yet our continued defiance has actually improved our relative warscore slightly! In a hundred and sixty months I might even win, ha ha!
Soon afterward, the invaders (now down to a mere 3245) win the siege of our capitol fortress. The city of Tamrida will fall more quickly, despite having twice as many troops to resist them.
Old Marshal Shaiban will not live to see us fall. He dies a natural death of grief. I appoint prince Haeran Zagwe of Gondar as our new marshal. GONDAR CALLS FOR AID! -- that isn't going to work.
Sheik Mukhtar ibn Talb of Taizz, decides to do what his father would not and raise rebellion against his liege. This will likely end soon in defeat.
Tamrida falls in early December; only Qadub our temple city remains. This will take longer, as the church is easier to defend and has more troops, but the end is nigh.
And nigher than it seems: the old bishop, hoping to spare our people further hardship, surrenders on December 25, regarded as the day of Christ's birth by some of our brethren. The Muslims, respecting the Prophet Issi as they regard him, accept the surrender. I die from shame; or perhaps I quietly take a place as a beggar in the streets, to finish the brevity of my life in the island I was privileged to guard as the last, and only, Nestorian king.
Post-mortem
--------------
I'm fuzzy about what I could have done better, under the circumstances of this particular game. I started off with some real advantages in culture and economics, and those helped me pick up a standard level of military capability quickly, as well as upgrading most of my economic and cultural tech to level 2 eventually. I started with three cities, each of one of the three types, so I had a good spread of opportunities there and didn't have to build anything from scratch in that regard. Several facilities in each city had already been upgraded to level 2 when I started the game.
Still:
1.) I lacked galleys. This is completely bizarre for an island nation, especially as a Nestorian culture would have kept a lot of the older Greco-Roman tech (which historically got handed to the Muslims so far as they wanted any of it). Without galleys I couldn't aid Christian semi-allies on the mainland against Muslim aggression, nor could I try to recover any of the Horn of Africa myself -- particularly the small Berber kingdom which would have given me two more counties to work with.
2.) Archery superiority wins heavily. I don't know that I should have, or even feasibly could have, upgraded my light infantry techs and buildings to make more archers, but I will certainly keep that in mind for any future playstarts.
3.) Quantity is its own quality. (See also archery superiority.) Small independent factions are likely to be overrun quickly unless, as we were, they are insulated from invasion by a lack of ships able to bring troops. This is really the only reason we lasted as long as we did. But it was also a main reason why I thought we could last long enough for me to practice the game mechanics on a small nation -- and that turned out to be true.
4.) By the same token, had I not felt like I should be role-playing a the last Nestorian king, I would have been well advised to offer fealty to the king of Abyssinia immediately, or if not him some other strong Christian kingdom on the African mainland within diplomatic reach. As a "Nestorian", and the last such ruler in the world (maybe the only one who had ever existed), I didn't think that it would be psychologically proper to submit to a "Miaphysite" ruler; but I, or my heirs, might have lasted far longer had I done so.
5.) It's possible that I was distracted a little by the Antichrist plot, even though that turned out better than I was afraid it would. But it turned out better largely (perhaps??) because I sent my spymaster home to help put a murder plot into action, and that took several years of him not helping my research (assuming that mechanic isn't broken as evidence later suggested). But that was partly because I didn't understand the plot mechanics: a plot has NO CHANCE AT ALL OF EVEN STARTING until its power reaches 100%, though it could be vulnerable in several ways. I should have assigned enough people, which I certainly could have done, to get 100% immediately.
well done?
excellent tale, learn from lessons and try again or onto a new bizarre corner fo the world?
I may go back and do the Faroes, though if I do I'll take some time to figure out how to lightly hack the starting position so that they'll be pagan (as they certainly were at the new starting date, not Catholic) and have at least one shipyard (as they certainly would, being an island nation of ex-patriat Scandanavians.)
I wouldn't mind taking a stab at being the last King of Israel either, down in the mountains of Africa, though I'll probably get steamrolled early by Ethiopia or maybe Kassala (which is what happened in my game above).
Another possibility is one of the pagan kings of Africa over on the west coast.
Or one of the far northern kingdoms perhaps; not Iceland, but up at the Kola peninsula or to one side or other.
I wouldn't mind restarting Socotra, but I seriously don't know what I could do there other than offer fealty to someone else. I may reload/restart from the earliest save and look at whether it's feasible at all to try for a Berber reconquest. Possibly with a light file hack to give me a shipyard start.
First though I'm going to BE VICTORY as the Russian space minister (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=11711.0) in Buzz Aldrin's new game. :)
Nice job, Jason. An entertaining/informative read as usual, and yoyou certainly did better than I could! :P