>vikings and nomads with 5,000 units keep looting my country
>rise up 7,000 men to attack them
>lose because ???
>my vassals are angry at me for trying to defend them from raiding vikings and nomads
>cant declare war on them because these raiders dont even own land
>cant stack wipe them because they reinforce by hundreds per month
>vassals start a war because they hate me for using their levies to protect them from looters
what the fuck is this game.
git gud
I have 214 hours in this game and still don't understand how combat works.
Never cross rivers and always outnumber them unless you have a set of god-tier generals.
If you are low on tech or play as a tribal and have mostly light infantry nomads will rape your ass, because their cavalery armies are more powerful than your troops.
this t b h
Or you have a strong as fuck cultural retinue type.
The obvious answer is to just sit back and fuck your sisters while everything goes to shit around you
>vikings and nomads with 5,000 units keep looting my country
Is it really yours? If it belongs to your vassals let the snow nigs chimp out. Only take action if they're attacking a county you own
the snow nigs were sacking Constantinople :(
Put your military tech into organization and fill your retinues with Cataphracts.
Also form the Varangian guard ASAP
You'll eventually reach a point where you can win entire wars with just your retinues and Varangians
this tee-bee-aytch vham
this
Don't forget to spam defense retinue
t. retinue pro did all the math
That doesn't answer the question though, that's just how you not lose at combat. Everyone can amass a big army, look at country modifiers and stack them all to your benefit, but that's very superficial.
What's the best unit composition and more importantly, how do conclude that?
Hhow does a battle actually work, what are the factors that decide what numbers lose.
In EU and Vicky it's the line of battle, in CK it's the flanks and shit, you can go through these games for hundreds of hours and have no idea what the fuck is actually going on when two doomstacks meet.
You shouldn't really care about foreign raiders unless they're fucking up a county you yourself own, or if you're playing a pagan yourself and want to keep moral authority high in order to reform the faith. While raiding weakens vassals, it may also play to your benefit since it means they're weaker to oppose your rule as well. When coming to combat make sure to utilize the biggest death stack (as long as county supply limit allows it), and before battle check that all flanks have a high Martial general. Retinues are also one of the most important things you can have, they're basically units that are always pre-raised unlike normal levies and reinforce automatically even on the move. Leveling up military organization tech and having a big realm increases your personal retinue limit.
If you're playing for the first time with all the DLC I'd suggest playing as an Irish count at the earliest start date. It's called the tutorial island for a reason: they're Catholics who have the most fleshed out vanilla game mechanics, you don't have to worry about reformation like pagans, they start Tribal meaning you can later choose to go feudal or merchant republic, since you start as a count you experience everything from lowest tier to highest ruler tier gameplay and forming the British Empire is a good first goal, you'll learn about Casus Belli along the way, plus Ireland is mostly detached from the rest of the big world meaning no sudden death stacks. One other important thing is that unlike other tribals they also have access to their unique Tanistry succession from the get-go meaning it's much easier to hold your starting realm together.
>god tier generals
best feeling in the world when your character is one
don't they get utterly raped by the vikings?
>earliest start date
1066 unless you enjoy getting buttraped by vikings
(op here) i have roughly 414 hours in the game and i still have never felt like i've fully understood the game enough to play a full game without getting my ass kicked
>tutorial's broken
Literally can't even get started.
Have good commanders with combat traits that give advantageous bonuses for the area you are fighting in or the units you are fighting with, fight in terrain that gives you the advantage, don't cross rivers or attack into mountains.
Martial score is not everything when it comes to generals, traits are more important past 16 martial, which is the point where commanders choose the best tactics the most often.
Having a single type of unit or two types of units from a retinue is generally better than the mix of units you get from levies, as it limits the amount of tactics your commanders can pick from, giving you better odds that they choose a good one instead of a bad one.
never have a craven commander even if they have good martial score
Or Organizer, which also can activate timid advance. A slothful/shy, wroth/aggressive leader, lisp/stutter or cruel commander also give bad tactics.
sometimes threat is stupid
sure I can get you're a worldending monster at 100 threat but seriously, the entire world declaring war on you in defense of a an opm in the middle of siberia is a bit much
the cruel wroth/agressive bad tactics only trigger if you use heavy cavalry in addition to a lot of light infantry though
generally speaking I'd consider the cruel bonus to morale damage a benefit over its situationally bad tactic
I am become the remover of kebab. Also, is the Strong trait from Sun party extremely rare or did they remove it at some point? I've never managed to get any traits from it and the whole thing feels a waste of money to be quite honest. Apart from the initial flavor text which is always the same there's no randomly firing special events like other religions' festivals.
Gameplay wise Zunists don't feel really special, though the area itself is really different to play compared to others since you start in a clusterfuck of Indians, Abbasids and nomads, though the last can be allied due to their paganism. You don't really have to worry about CBs since everyone is a possible target.
I prefer to make all my non-inheriting sons generals since even with an extremely high martial score + personal combat stat RNG can still fuck you over and kill you.
Certain religions also give bonuses to units, f.ex. Zunists get +30% Levy size, +20% heavy infantry ATK and DEF.
This game fucking cheats sometimes. One time I was invading Germany and had completely destroyed their forces. I was sieging their capital, and suddenly a 12,000 stack of "french army" appeared in their capital and obliterated my army. They had no alliance with France, and it had way more artillery than anyone else in the game.
I try to play honestly, but in cases like that I'll cheat my way to making it even
some countries have specific one-time decisions that give them armies in times of trouble
all instances of inheritable traits being gained through events have been replaced with their non-inheritable equivalents
instead of strong you'll be earning the brawny trait
also usually you're true however for tribals having high martial score isn't just for being a commander, it also directly raises the number of troops you have access to by a significantly larger amount than for feudal lords. For small tribals without vassals this increase can actually more than double the troops available which is a massive bonus
eu4 has all sorts of historical events that fuck things up which is great if you're into learning that shit but for me it's annoying as fuck
How did you survive as Zunists? I did Zoroastrians a very long time ago back when Old Gods first came out but after literally thousands of hours in EU4 I suck ass at CK2 now.
shouldnt of pirated the dlcs
>shouldnt of
>should not
>should not of
I looked, and I'm pretty sure there was a similar decision, but not one that exactly corresponded.
On a similar note, while trying to unite norse sweden, I had all but 3 provinces. I attack one (after confirming prestige was too low for the 2500 event spawned, and the dude pulls up 11,000 troops. Check it out, and he had a force limit of 9,000 man levy (this was early 800's). His marshal was somewhere around 10, and he had average buildings. Completely absurd. I had to use all of my prestige for event spawns to get one county
Chancellor sucking Abbasid caliph's dick 24/7, allying with nomads, saving all money for emergency mercenaries and chipping away at Indians or Abbasids if they were having a rebellion, beelining towards Baghdad for its holy site whenever possible. After reformation it becomes a lot easier since you get access to the holy order that is about 10k free men if you're attacked.
Some luck may have also contributed, since the Catholics managed to snatch Jerusalem in their first crusade.
Having the caliph on 100 relations doesn't seem to help at all, if he wants to he declares war regardless. Most of the time within the first few months.
Strange, at least when I played it seemed that good relations prevented war declaration. I did end up getting DoWd by them twice or so with minus opinion leaders (though not at the very beginning which can be counted as a stroke of luck), but waited until they got to my land for the heavy attrition penalty and managed to retaliate with mercs and sue white peace ASAP.
It's probably just luck, I've had him declare war on me within 2 days of starting the game before. I don't have a clue whether opinion actually influences the luck though.
Were you attacking one of the "defensive" pagans (Slavic/Romuva/Suomenusko)? They have decisions that can raise 2.5k stacks from piety as well as prestige, so even an OPM can be more trouble that it's worth