Going from tribal to feudal is painfull. Start with Bjorn Ironside

[Jonkra]

I just have to ask how long i'm supposed to be in a world of misery after going from tribal to feudal. I started as Bjorn Ironside.
I knew it was going to be a rough ride going from tribal to feudal, but this is starting to feel like a bad joke.

I left tribal with 55k troops, 11k gold stored and 35gold/month, after going feudal and had to accept 8k troops and 8gold/month.
Okej I thought, i'm gonna handle it.
I spent most of my gold on buildings and reached 18gold/month income, but my troops haven't risen above 10k.

For the last 150 years i've been in almost constant religious wars that is screwing up my income beyond reason. And if that wasn't enough I constantly have to send gifts and sway to not loose my empire.
I can no longer build anything because my petty treasury is always focused on waging war. The only thing keeping me alive is prisoners I can ransom and hooks I can demand money from.
How long is it supposed to be like this?

[NachtRitter]

Just convert to gain some peace time to build things up, then convert again in the next generation.

[JuX]

Sounds like you are simply waging defensive wars inefficiently. Long as you retain war goal, you will eventually win, so all you need to do is to summon the army to defeat the invading army and disband afterwards to save money.

Also since you are feudal now, you should have access to feudal contracts.

[Tarshaid]

Before having next era's innovations, it's going to be hard to get an actual increase in strength. And if you're struggling to stay afloat, you won't be able to build up in any way.

But the conversion is more or less painful depending on what you already have, be it vassals that are already feudal (so they already have proper buildings and are less pissy now you're no longer tribal), or a personal domain with special buildings: rushing holy sites and similar stuff can ensure that you have a proper stream of income (a little less for pagans but extra levies as well) while most of your vassals take a heavier hit, so at least inside threats will be tamer.

I've read that there had been updates on converting to feudal, last time I clicked it my personal domain was converted with feudal buildings, but not my vassals'. Not sure what happened in your case, but you should basically count on your vassals being absolutely useless and struggle to improve.

However, even if you lost knights, you should still have you men at arms, and that's your saving grace in war, especially considering that feudal buildings buff them.

Now I don't know how much pain you are in right now, but if you spent 150 years getting endless crusades in your face, that your vassals haven't built up in any way and that your treasury is dry so you stopped as well, it only seems that your enemies are getting stronger faster than you are.

[GorishiDan]

When i played as Ivar the Boneless it was actually quite chill going to Feudal from Tribal. That character starts with 5K Special Soldiers but at war with all of it already ready to die so i immediately surrendered both wars and made sure only to use those Special Soldiers when actually needed them. So they were basically my line of defense after i Feudalized. Worked well.

[Go0lden_Archer]

Best bonus to feudal is ability to boost man at arms. So do it. Focus on one specific MaA unit and build lots of buildings for it. For example archers type. With those buffed you can win decisively vs 100k levies with tiny forses of like 10k.

[JuX]

Originally posted by Go0lden_Archer:

Best bonus to feudal is ability to boost man at arms. So do it. Focus on one specific MaA unit and build lots of buildings for it. For example archers type. With those buffed you can win decisively vs 100k levies with tiny forses of like 10k.

That´s a bit foolish.

When regiment limits are low you want to recruit stacks of unit types that are most suited to your realm environment, to ensure terrain bonuses. When limits start to increase then you want to increase variation to ensure enemies always take counter role penalties, since computers tend rely on levies over actually recruiting regiments.

Also your suggestion doesn't really work on earlier eras when you can't even upgrade the building that far to provide significant bonuses. Only way it would work is later in the game and by cheesing the innovations through cultural conversion for a tribe.


Easiest way to dominate several times larger armies is by focusing on martial lifestyle, as you can crank out like +20 advantage through commanding, focus and perks. If you have martial education and martial spouse you will become godlike on the battlefield.

[CrUsHeR]

That generally is the idea with the current mechanics. Becoming feudal is rough, and it is best to do so with a faith that is friendly to powerful neighbors.

Obviously in scandinavia, catholicism is the only true choice. You also have an advantage from being theocratic, your realm priest will earn a ton of money from the first round of temples built by you, and immediately invest that into upgrades. While the cities you found will take like a 100 years just to pay their costs back.

It isn't just the missing tribal holdings, but you also start with very low development and innovation progress. Likely a tribal realm won't ever catch up with the already developed realms and cultures any time soon.


Thus i would say that if you play tribal, you do that because you want to play tribal. Not because you want the easy fast tribal expansion and then seamlessly become a stable empire like Byzantium.

[Zornvel]

So i only played tribal till know and Bjorn, all vikings were easy.

You need to reform your religion very soon as viking this is easy sacriface people, make war no love go for the lifestyle tree were you only pay the half for reforming it, don't forget you can also change the doctrines, laws and so on, it's only more expensive.
The pagans don't care about your religion and the Catholics will be busy with other things at the begin.
Then change the religion of evey country in your kingdom (should be easy and you don't need the religios guy for anything else because you don't need claims as tribal)

You can also just become catholic, but this is the wrong way.

You need an Empire, as tribe easy.

Develop you country, you should be by 20 in you capital, develop more if you can, also turn the other cultures to yours and give vassals of you religion/culture the new land they will (sometimes) change the religion/culture there.

The higher the delopment the faster you will get new technologies (works also as tribe) In feudal the higher development will increase levy/income
Also there is in the lifestyle learning -> Scientific is what you want.

When you have all the techs then this great techupgrade thing start should take 15-20 years during this time no new techs.

You should prepare yourself to feudalize you need 10k+ money the more the better. And best a ruler with the architect stewardship tree, why? the new holds were much cheaper and you need just 3 years not 5 to build them and time is important. More hold means more money + soldiers.

However in feudal times the Man at arms are king they can easy destroy armies 5 times bigger then them (just build the buildings that improve them) also some guys will tell you there is this one super strong unit better then others, simply no mix you armies.

[Jonkra]

Originally posted by JuX:

Sounds like you are simply waging defensive wars inefficiently. Long as you retain war goal, you will eventually win, so all you need to do is to summon the army to defeat the invading army and disband afterwards to save money.

Also since you are feudal now, you should have access to feudal contracts.

The wars are quite short, it's the number of wars that is an issue. And that they always is as powerful as me or more. If one starts an holy war two more were sure to follow.
But now they have changed their tactics ;P They wait until I start a war now, then two or three holy wars are upon me. I even went back a save and waited with my war, and just like that no one is attack me.
But everytime I start a war now two or three holy wars is there immediately, it doesnt matter who i'm attacking. I even tried to wait 5 years with a conquest just to see if anyone attacked me, but nothing happened. But 10 seconds after I declared war, two holy wars was there.

[JuX]

Originally posted by Jonkra:

The wars are quite short, it's the number of wars that is an issue. And that they always is as powerful as me or more. If one starts an holy war two more were sure to follow.
But now they have changed their tactics ;P They wait until I start a war now, then two or three holy wars are upon me. I even went back a save and waited with my war, and just like that no one is attack me.
But everytime I start a war now two or three holy wars is there immediately, it doesnt matter who i'm attacking. I even tried to wait 5 years with a conquest just to see if anyone attacked me, but nothing happened. But 10 seconds after I declared war, two holy wars was there.

You have pretty much stated now what the problem is. It's simply your own folly

Only a fool would be waging war in a weakened state, so how about enjoy the peace time and build up your newly formed feudal realm. This isn't some map painting game, so there is no incentive to be rushing out for conquests, especially when you clearly don't have the strength to do it.

[Zornvel]

Also don't forget you don't have to win all wars, go out with white peace or simply surrender, sometimes it's not worth fighting a long war over one country if you could came back later and take the whole duchy.

[Bermag]

No reason to rush into feudal. Make sure you have converted most of old faith before doing it and like other said max out MAA and you holdings. I did not switch until I had finished all oftribal innovation. It was not that bad but yes you took a huge cut of levies and taxes. I chose to do it when my immidate neighbours were busy (most dangerous to me at that time was east/west francia). I also already hold Empire of Scandinavia (playing as Danish.

[Sol]

When you feudalize, you want to start by having converted any "Old Religion" to your new faith. You also want to use the Norse Sacrifice wars to gain LOTS of prestige, Piety, and Gold. This way you can hire Men at Arms, Mercs and Holy Orders to help sustain yourself. Try to remember that these troops are not Levies and you don't need 20k of them. Disband immediately after every war to avoid paying for troops you don't immediately need to use.

When you're ready, it's important to build Economic Buildings like any Trade Port, Guild Halls, Farmlands - then, Walls - then, pick your Men at Arms primary type and make buildings that give you bonuses to those MaA types. In the beginning, this is the difference between losing initial wars and winning them.

In order to become stable, you need a few things to happen:
1. County Control.
2. Gold to become stable.
3. Development to increase Fascination to get more techs.

You don't need all the levy troops from counties. I just raise MaA units by pausing, raise local troops, then move them before unpausing so that they don't reinforce with levy.

One thing I found that helps is if you leave enough demense space to take over an already feudal realm nearby. Even if it's not great, an already Feudal county or two can really help lift you up in the right direction. You can intentionally lose these counties once your "core" is built back up.

You might also want to remember that you can have the old leader move realm capital to one of these already feudal counties, then your new ruler can build it back up whenever your core is prepared for it. The main benefit in doing this is you achieve stability much sooner.

If you wish to do this, make sure you conqueor them right before you feudalize.

The whole point is to get Gold to become stable so you can start buying holdings and upgrading them to get your other bonuses in. I usually start as Sigurdr Snake-In-The-Eye, because Sjaelland is a "fair" distance from most relevant map areas - the ones he's not immediately able to reach, he's a few conquests from being in diplomatic range of.

If you want the whole Norse > India thing, Rurik is a better start as he's already in Russia and you can attack Kerch fairly reliably. My games where I do this see my India ending at Kutch/Dwarka then I give away the territories in between, so I wind up with 2-3 "clusters" across the map. On succession, any landed relatives can spread the dynasty. This is just my long game though. The path to getting there starts with building the coffers, preparing my successions, and setting up my feudalization. And the whole secret is making sure I have enough gold, prestige, piety to retain MaA, Mercs, and Orders.

Outside of mods, I am not aware of any method to perform standard raids "Raise as Raiders", so you want to make sure you don't lose that until you can afford to.

Lastly, don't wait to reform the faith, get started on that as fast as possible. That's how you build your coffers. You control the 3 counties in Scandanavia first - then you need to prepare for the upcoming wars for Zeeland and Paderborn. Marry up a few alliances in Scandanavia to help you with these wars.

Zeeland and Paderborn DO risk you being target of Christian Holy Wars, so those are your last two. I usually wait to claim these two until I am otherwise ready to feudalize - when I reform, the old asatru need cleaned up before I actually feudalize because I don't want old religion wars AND catholic crusades against Zeeland and Paderborn at the same time. You want to minimize this time, so that you're able to focus on crusade defense and whatever else your goal is.

BEFORE FEUDALIZING - ensure that you properly raid whoever you raid up Germany and East France just to give them the "is raided" penalties when you feudalize, so that can help stymie them for a little bit, destabilize and defund them... that's where -most- of the trouble will come from, so might as well...

[Commander Boreale?]

Another option is to conquer and move your capitol to a well developed feudal territory shortly before switching to feudalism. You will need to do this a little before feudalizing, since you'll need to convert the culture/religion, and restore control, but if successful you will have a good infrastructure ready and waiting as soon as you switch to feudalism.

For example, in my start as bjorn ironside, I conquered the kingdom of the Romanga and moved my capitol to Rome (after converting it to paganism and teaching the people Swedish) before feudalizing. you'll still want to have a good bank of gold to hire better Men-at-arms ASAP, as well as mercs as a last resort, but if you use sway schemes against your biggest neighbors (in my case the byzantine emperor) you should be able to avoid wars you can't win.

[Silverlock]

I'm not having an issue with it yet. I started as Gotland 867, formed the empire of Scandinavia and reformed the Norse religion. By 1027 I had met the requirements to go feudal so I pulled the trigger. I'm only two months in but my troop count went from 70k to 62k so while it dropped it's still more then enough to deal with anyone on the map. My gold income seemed to drop but I'm still making 13 a month and my Vassals seemed to be very happy. Still the real test will be when the current ruler dies and his heir takes over.

My only issue right now is that I still can't research Early Medieval.

Edit: Seems I spoke to soon. Once I called up my army the count dropped down to 13k well good thing I have lots of gold for mercenaries if needed.