RB goes medieval - a CK:DV succesion game

[TheArchduke]

No, but we can send her off to a monastery ( kills her in game terms ) once she gets caught red handed and get a church dispense for another marriage

If worst comes to worst, there is always the friendly assassin next door. (No kidding, you can do that)

[regoarrarr]

Great report. One quesiton - how do you tell what dice roll we got on those events? Is it just a matter of checking the character afterwards to see if they got that trait?

[Mist]

If worst comes to worst, there is always the friendly assassin next door. (No kidding, you can do that)

Yeah, but it's an expensive nuclear option, that shouldn't be tried at home to often. We can't afford it yet. And didn't I mention she is the spymaster?

Great report. One quesiton - how do you tell what dice roll we got on those events? Is it just a matter of checking the character afterwards to see if they got that trait?

Everything apart from attribute increases shows in the game log. Attribute changes need to be checked on character card.

[Mist]

[SIZE="6"]April 1069[/SIZE]

I'll break at this point because we're probably ready to the heathens and go for the This way whole next part will be about war.

But let's do things in order.

Davyd finally came out of education. The outcome was average.

That leaves him with an Intrigue of massive 3. He might get few traits over coming years, but that will not alter his profile significantly.

He's barely average Marshall and nowhere near enough being a good ruler. I'm seriously reconsidering giving him any land at all and might end up engineering an exile.

Next there were two decisions to make about how to raise our younger sons, or to be more precise, who to put in care of that process.

• Doing it yourself costs money ( expenses ), prestige ( you behave odd, this was not the norm ), health ( stress, effort, etc. ) and fertility. The upside is that it gives much greater control over child's growth and outcome is usualy better.
  
• Giving the child to the nannies makes it Selfish.
  
• Giving the child to the monks makes it Modest.
  
• Giving the child to the local noble makes it Trusting.
  

Good rule of thumb is to raise succession candidates yourself once you have at least two, send potential stewards off to nannies, spymasters/clerics/diplomats/marshals to monks and kids with no future to nobles. This is no exact science, but above approach generally works for me. Therefore Svyatoslav went to nannies and Rostislav will be in our care.

We researched Battering Ram and got a spread of Stonepit to everywhere except... yes, West Divina

But that's because West Divina was busy being pagan and making trouble

So you want me to loose 50 prestige over some superstitions? Yeah, sure. This place is heading to hell in a handcart, fast. It's not in a revolt yet, but chances for peaceful conversion are shrinking fast.

We also got one of the power struggle events.

When dealing with these it's important to remember three things :

• Piety > Prestige > Gold
  
• Always take one that causes smaller shift
  
• If direction of the shift is unwanted, fix it by province micro
  

Here I sided with the clergy and then promptly handed back all the power to burghers. You can call this pragmatism

I also had a look on the international stage to see what's brewing there. Nothing threatening us directly, but this is interesting.

The orange bits mean that Prince of Pereyeslavl has been making territorial claims against Prince of Kiev. And so has Prince of Chernigov. This will most likely lead to war of the three biggest powers to our east and south. And we will have to decide if we want to get involved. Remember we're allied to Pereyeslavl.

Finally there was some family trouble. Our third son, Gleb, just grew into adulthood, got bored at home, and decided to push his luck. Like this.

No kiddo, you're not better than Branka. To be honest, you're a rather hopeless case so get the hell out of here. And somewhere far. Like Hungary. Cause that's where Bereg. And this is why you don't leave your kids idle - they will push for court functions regardless whether they are any good for them or not. If he was any good I'd just debuff him and carry on, but since he's not. Harsh.

And now, to the war plans. Let's pull the map.

To qualify for the crown we need to take all the provinces marked with X.
We also want to keep the provinces marked with a star to ourselves. They are rich.
All the tribes in circles should be preferably vassalised, they carry unique ducal titles that can not be recreated once we eliminate them. But that requires us to get the crown first. So it'll be somewhat tricky balancing act with cash as main throttling factor.
Secondary factor might be manpower. We can mobilise just under 5500 now, that's enough for the Lithuanians, but might not last for the rest. Any break in hostilities forced by manpower shortage will delay us by about 5 years.

[Twinkletoes89]

Well, if we have the manpower, we should hit the two provinces we wish to keep first. Get the richest settlements quickest and we will get most benefit out of them.

[uberfish]

Yeah given this analysis attacking the lilac coloured faction first would seem sensible. Aren't we going to end up with 3 more West Dvina basket cases though?

[Mist]

[SIZE="6"]The Lithuanian War[/SIZE]

After this most of the important stuff in game will be described in detail. I'll probably split next 10 years into two parts and it's going to be Rego's turn.

Before hostilities start troops need to be called to the front.
Do we need to call the vassals? No, we have enough troops to handle the war on our own, and we should conserve the treasury.
That means only regiment to be moved forward is the one from Minsk. Let's mobilize it in advance and move to Jacwiez.

Important : Maintenance fees are paid at the end of the month. Always. NEVER raise a regiment near of the month. You're wasting loads of cash this way.

So Minsk got mobilised at 1st. It took them 3 weeks to get to destinations. After a wait for the next month to start we mobilised all three provinces and declared hostilities.

And saw just how much it cost us to go all-out

I saved money for this war by not building anything thus far. We've got 190 gold in the treasury. That's enough for 6 months of hostilities, any more and we're rather broke.

So off they went.

Ignore that distraction at Podlasie, that's the chiefdom rebelling against Kiev, and it won't conclude in any sort of reasonable time. God knows why TBH.

Each regiment has a leader and there are rules concerning the assignments.

• First regiment raised gets the Marshal if it's outside capital, or the Ruler if inside
  
• Second regiment does the reverse, so ruler if outside capital, Marshal in capital.
  
• After that regiments are assigned male nobles from your court in order of martial skill
  

Therefore if possible it's important to make sure the Marshal gets the biggest regiment. Martial skill of regiments leader gives combat bonuses.

We took care of stack composition earlier by setting province power.

That said the basic rule of combat is : Number win.
Leadership, stack composition and techs do affect combat length and casualties on both sides. But larger army will still win in 9 times out of 10. That 1 in 10 is when weaker side has a much superior commander ( like 21 martial skill vs 10 )

Let the battle commence.

Our archers massacred them during Advance and Skirmish phases and they broke on first charge. Result :

They lost 4 men for every one that fallen for us

More on combat, from manual

The combat resolves in six distinct phases. The phases are displayed at the top of the Combat Screen. You may not control your units once combat is
joined. During each phase specific unit types, (...) attack.

1. Manoeuvre: a short delay while the forces jockey for position
   
2. Advance: Archers, Horse Archers
   
3. Skirmish: Archers, Horse Archers, Light Infantry, Light Cavalry
   
4. Front: All (Archer fire halved)
   
5. Flank: All (Archer fire halved)
   
6. Retreat: One side retreats or is extinguished
   

The combat will loop through phase 2 to 5, until one side has too low morale or is eliminated and combat ends with phase 6.

Knights
This unit type is sometimes called Heavy Cavalry, but is actually something more. Recruited from the highest social group, those warriors are superior in training and morale. Very good against none mounted units, though Pike Men can be deadly opponents to this troop type.

Light Cavalry
This unit type is cavalry that has traded armour for speed. It is a standard troop type and is good against most other types.

Horse Archers
A Mongol speciality, this type of unit can only be built by the Hordes and the Arabs. The unit fires during every phase of combat. They are deadly against all heavy armoured units.

Archers
They are lightly armoured footmen. They can use either Bows or Crossbows and are very good against heavy armoured units.

Heavy Infantry
This is Heavy infantry that can go toe-to-toe with any other type of infantry. It is especially effective against Archers, Pike Men, and Light
Infantry.

Pike Men
This is an anti-cavalry type of unit that is especially effective against Knights, but can perform well against other unit types as well.

Light Infantry
This unit type consists of lightly armoured footmen. They are not very good against anything but Archers, but they are cost efficient if used in great numbers.

Our current stacks are Archer, HI and Pike heavy. That's a result of Traditional Custom and high relative burgher power. When preparing for Mongols we will have to switch to Popular Law ( for light armoured army emphasis ) give more power to nobles ( for Light Cavalry ) and even more for Peasants ( Archers, Light Infantry )

Enough digressions, on with the war. Amongst our fallen was Boris

Slain by a stray arrow while directing fire of his regiment. He was a valiant young man and one of our succession hopes. A terrible loss.

After the victory in the field it was time to take the fort. Thanks to our relatively large army ( for a hill fort ) and knowledge of Battering Ram siege proceeded quickly.

Taking a mere month. That left us with following situation on the field.

Lithuanians sent a regiment of 600 to siege the fort at Jacwiez. Lack of siege and numbers meant it was getting absolutely nowhere and I was happy to leave it at that.
Main army after taking heavy casualties in battle was retreating north with remaining 700 hundred or so. Lack of morale meant they would be of no consequence in the coming month.
That left a fresh regiment of 900 in Sudovia that needed taking care of. All four of our regiments were merged into one and sent at the enemy.

Of course leaving a hostile force besieging your province is never without risk

But two sieges and one brief last stand later we reached the end.

Out of land the tribes had to accept our conditions. First the lesser one in Zhmud

And then their former masters

And at that all hostilities ended, as we were slightly in debt already and could not afford the war for much longer.

So what did we get out of the war? Prestige, piety, two rich provinces and a new vassal. This picture sums it all up.

There are some new concepts that need to be introduced here :

Warscore - how good do you fare in the war, this is the limiting factor for AI in considering peace offer. All peace offers above warscore will be rejected. These below will be considered and weighed against chances AI thinks it still has.

There is one exception from above rule - if you control all of AIs land and it controls none of yours you may drive through any pace terms you wish. But going above warscore in this way will hurt your reputation.

Reputation - how noble and knightly do you look in the eyes of others. It has nothing to do with respect though ( it's covered by prestige ) . If people think you're scum, they won't like you.

Our reputation after this war is Slightly Tarnished. It gives our vassals -1.6% monthly loyalty penalty, makes our titles easier to grab and makes us slightly more likely to be targeted by AIs. Reputation will improve with time and can be improved by handing out titles. I'd generally advise not to start wars below Respectable and not to drop below Tarnished. Highest you can get is honourable.

And this is it for the war update. Stay tuned for the next five years I shall hopefully build some stuff and conquer a bit more.

[regoarrarr]

Lack of morale meant they would be of no consequence in the coming month.

How can you tell this?

Also, how are you taking the screenshots? Is there any kind of in-game mechanism a la Civ (I wouldn't think so) or are you just doing a print-screen and then pasting it into Paint or the image editing software of your choice?

[Tyrmith]

What are the benefits to vassilizing a territory? Did you only vassilize because you couldn't control any more territories, or simply couldn't get them scared enough?

[Mist]

How can you tell this?

Have a look at this

I marked combined morale bars for each side in a black box. Before this battle was over Lithuaninan morale was almost wiped out ( the bar was nearly empty ). It takes few ( at least three ) months of complete inaction to bring the morale of a broken regiment to a level at which it can last few rounds of combat. AI rarely does this.

Also, how are you taking the screenshots? Is there any kind of in-game mechanism a la Civ (I wouldn't think so) or are you just doing a print-screen and then pasting it into Paint or the image editing software of your choice?

F11 takes the whole screen and saves is as a bitmap in main game folder. After that I'm just cutting, pasting and cropping things together. In MS Paint of all things

What are the benefits to vassilizing a territory? Did you only vassilize because you couldn't control any more territories, or simply couldn't get them scared enough?

Three reasons :

• There is only so much territory we can control directly and it depends on rulers unmodified Intrigue. The formula is ' Demesne = floor ( Intrigue / 2 ) '. Each territory over the limit makes us loose efficiency and control over all territories. We get less tax, more chance for bandits, risk loss of stability, stress and other nasty things. While you can run an inefficient realm it's never advisable to do it for very long.
  
• These territories are pagan and as such need converting to end religious tensions. Before that happens they have all the variables to end can end up as another West Divina. Two I've taken are worth the risk as together they bring income of over 8 gold a month.
  
• It's much easier to get a pagan vassals' convertion and get him to convert his county, than convert the county ourselves. And it saves all the rebellious hassle.