King of all the Isles achivement almost broke me mentally

[Don-Meisner]

Finally after waay to much time i got the "king of all the Isles" achivement
Control all island in the atlantic, baltic and mediterranean sea as a norse Asatru while keeping my realm size below 80.

I had to restart so many times. Dealing with all sorts of trouble. Large easten realms with the fame trait conqourer conqueror. Holy wars, crusades.
First i tried as Jarl Haesting because is just the strongest viking character but he is so old right from the start. Also 8/10 times you end up getting murdered by the french king!!

After that i tried as Ivar the Boneless and focused on getting the Kingdom of Isles and mann for the extra buff speciel troops.
Almost every run i tried to castrate the Byzantine empire by taking Thrace from them, also i needed the huge income from the city to sustaine my army while raiding the pope, italy and Venice again and again.

Sometimes i lost islands from time to time to huge empires or stupid succession.
I feel almost like a broken man, It took my hours and hours over serveral days.
I feel like Thanos when he says "It nearly killed me, but the work is done. It always will be”

What are your experience with that achivement?

[Razorblade]

The Mann and the Isles decision is a trap; you're much better off staying Tribal and paying cheap Prestige for your Men-At-Arms, rather than going Feudal and having to pay actual money for them.

Even taking the Making a Killing dynasty legacy with all of the free Renown you get from the decision is simply a worse option than just staying Tribal. I can't imagine taking on the Byzantine's OP Administrative government and thousands of gold using a Tribal-era Feudal government with a limited tax base.

Not to mention, M&tI is a pretty bad de jure kingdom; the land sucks, and there's not much of it. You're better off making a larger, custom kingdom. You should be able to pretty easily conquer up to Sardinia in your first lifetime, meaning you can incorporate almost every island you'll need except the Byzantine ones into a single kingdom.

[dwarfpcfan]

Originally posted by Razorblade:

Not to mention, M&tI is a pretty bad de jure kingdom; the land sucks, and there's not much of it.

Agreed the only decent duchy that becomes De Jure Kingdom of Mann and the Isles is Stratclyde which is nothing to write home about but with five counties all costal for trade ports it's... decent if you invest in it.

Sudreyar/The Isles is a bad duchy, Nordreyar/Northern Isles is in the running for one of the worst duchies period in the game. Mann is a 1 county, 2 holdings duchy so also one of the worst in the game. And that's all the de jure duchies it gets if you take the decision.

This is all because Paradox guillotine nerfed the decision completely by eliminating the 8 free building slots you used to get on the Isles. Before the nerf, those 8 building slots in your capital holding really made the decision worth it.

But now to fully take advantage of the decision you basically have to grab as much land as possible outside of the de jures to form it. Ireland, Iceland and Cornwall (if it doesn't get grabbed by England) are where you want to expand as much as possible to have enough land and income to survive early game as Mann and the Isles.

Which usually means you'll lock yourself out of the King of all the Isles achievement because of the maximum realm size restriction.