question about playing nomads

[that guy]

So I'm trying to get the "Seven Centuries" achievement and the CK2 wiki suggested nomads. Conquering the world = less courts = less CPU usage = faster max speed.

I've played a couple decades as a nomad and I can't seem to get much higher than a 3k horde because whenever I get more than 5 counties to myself I need to give it away or else face revolts.

How am I supposed to beat back the mongol horde's death stacks when they appear if I only have 3k? Also, if I have to create 5 county vassal clans all the time, how is that any better CPU wise than being feudal?

[Zsrai]

Keep growing in general. You reach a point where you have to give away a smaller and smaller part of your country to your sub clans (which cap out at 9, FYI). Something else to do is conquer settled (anything but Tribal really) lands and then pillage all but two holdings (preferably Temple & City or City & City if you can); those lands don't count as Nomadic Counties for land desire of your clans. Finally, since Nomads don't care about the de jure structure, you can just give away the worst land (low holding slots) to your clans while keeping the big beefy counties with lots of slots for yourself. The only downside is that your county won't change culture/religion like it will if you pillage it all down to the dirt.

If you're really desperate to get away from the eastern edge of the map before blobbing, you can right click on a county shield and "migrate" away; it gives up the county to a new nomadic realm and you get a bonus to Manpower. The AI never really does it but it can be useful to put a few small buffer states between you and the Mongols or other Nomad blob if you're trying to get to Europe quickly.

[cybul]

I would add, from day 1 upgrade your capital holding. It's fairly cheap to start and the bonus' really help. If you move capital it all comes with you, nothing is lost. When you pillage holdings you acquire gold and one of the 3 tech points. So if you expand into territory with 'wrong holding type', keep as many as you can for yourself, pillage them repeatedly. Get points and gold, use gold to upgrade, use points for tech. Eventually they will be fully pillaged and only have the desired grazing areas.

TBH the wiki has some good info for playing as nomads, probably better explained than me :D

http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Nomadism

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

As far as the Mongels go, I would not worry too much depending on when you start and what parameters you set for their invasion. If you have a normal 13th century attack it should not be much to push them back. If it comes in the 10th century, that might be a different story.

This is kind of a cheesy tactic. Force or let the minor clan rising events take place by not splitting or forcing the other clans to split. When you get the clan uprising, surrender to them and they will become a minor clan under you with a large event spawned army and small population. Feed them some territory to keep them happy and they will more than likely ally with you on your wars.

Burn everything to the ground and keep expanding.

[that guy]

So I started a new game and this time I surrendered whenever I get a large enough clan uprising. After I get the new vassal, I imprison and execute him or he escapes and I siege down his single holding then imprison and execute him.

After doing this for a while, I've inherited ~12k event troops. I haven't been able to build up much prestige because of all the surrendering I have to do and everyone hates me because of tyranny. I'm probably going to be assassinated sooner or later.

I'd gotten up to around 20 counties before I decided to just give up and actually create vassal clans so I don't get a revolt every month. It's incredibly hard trying to split up the counties so that none of them can create a duchy title and keep them away from neighbors weak enough that they start expanding. Guess that means I should aim for the northeast corner ASAP.

[cybul]

Where are you playing on the map? I think to start with you should be expanding into fellow nomad lands to get the grazing areas, rather than the razing of provinces. If you give out land with no grazing area that doesnt count for 'clans want more land' negitive modifier.

sounds like you need to give out more land if you keep getting uprisings. Its a pain to divide up a vast empire, and I usually just select a holding with the fewest pastures to give away. I never stress too much about it, just click around and make sure they dont have 2 ajoining if poss.

Not sure killing the uprising khan is worthwhile unless you have too many...after all its a new khan to to help divide the land with.

Like I said, as soon as you have cash spend it on capital upgrades. Those 1 and 3% really begin to add up! Then start building up your retinue (which you can do with prestige for some troops). Or do it the other way around, but you need population to build retinue. Goes without saying, but military tech should go into cavalry and mil org first.

Nomad is not like feudal, you dont need to keep all the land. Just make sure you have the best and more than the next biggest clan...and get a blood oath with them if you can.

[that guy]

I decided to see how long I can keep playing North Korea mode:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=915306926

After getting to 30 counties or so, I started getting clan uprisings every month. I've found that there can only be 1 clan uprising at a time, so now I just ignore them. They just stay in a corner of my realm and I win through ticking war score.

I've even stopped surrendering and then executing them for event troops after getting ~30k of them. I have to spread them through three counties just so they don't die of attrition.

[that guy]

I had to start a new game again because the last game got corrupted or something so that I couldn't get any achievements. A couple screenshots:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916668452
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916669082
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916669345

I'm reaching the limits of what I can do without setting up vassal clans. The clan uprisings would get reinforcements from every single county I possess that has any holdings at all. So once I finish taking out the rest of the tribes, that's the end of North Korea mode.

I think this latest game might have gotten corrupted as well, because for some reason I cannot arrange a marriage for my new ruler... I guess I'll know when I try for the "Steppe by Steppe" achievement.

[that guy]

Well, I've stopped playing North Korea mode, so now I have more questions.

I know that clans do not care about counties with 2 or more holdings in it which means that I can keep them to myself. So when I conquer such counties and they have more than 2 holdings, should I pillage them down to only 2? And do I keep the holdings for myself since I have no demesne limit or hand them out?

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

I usually pillage everything down to bare ground. The strength in having tribals is your horde and you should not have any use of levies of any sort.

[that guy]

Originally posted by C2H5SH:

I usually pillage everything down to bare ground. The strength in having tribals is your horde and you should not have any use of levies of any sort.

I know, but I get to keep the empty holding slots in such counties for myself without having to worry about vassal clans coveting them. And I'll eventually need ships in order to take over the British isles.

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

Playing as a nomad, I have a fair amount of minor clans under me. I try to keep them somewhat small and equal in size as far as population so that they are not revolting or going independant on me all of the time. I pretty much give them as much land as they ask for and try to grow as fast as I can using the invasion cb. The thing about the invasion cb is that it allows you to take out huge swaths of land with a single war. In order to get the invasion cb, you have to constain your own clan by giving land away.

With that in mind, I try to burn everything to the ground becuase after a war I might have to give out 20 units of land to the minors. If everything is burnt down I don't have to look at which counties to give them. I give them pretty much anything and everything just to speed up the game becuase the UI is really sheet for doing this.

As far as not having boats. Never been an issue as you always have some and its always been enough even when pillaging everything. Depending on where your capital is I think you should be able to get some merc boats too.

[Zsrai]

Pillage down everything but 2 holdings, and then just give those away to courtiers. That way you can own 90% of your Horde yourself and build a ginormous army while keeping your vassal clans in check and happy.

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=917279278

This is about 375 years into the game from the early start date, but it kind of shows what you should be aiming for as far a your clan and your minor clan vassals.

Total pop is about 900K. My pop is about 400K. The other 500K is split between the 8 clans. My pop cap with 79 units of land is about 425K. My current population is over the 90% threshhold to use the invasion cb.

My point is that you can't grow fast unless you are using the invasion cb. You can't use the invasion cb unless you are contstrained. It's a lot more effcient to contstrain yourself by giving out land to the minor clans so that you can use invasion cb at will.

[that guy]

The invasion CB is not an issue for me. I don't know if they've changed it, but I can use invasion whenever my population is over 75%, not 90% like you say. In fact, I could use invasion even before I created my vassal clans; it's how I took over eastern Europe. Just look at my previous screenshots. Now that I've created my vassal clans, that's even more true.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=917417324
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916976632

Only reason I haven't declared invasions to take over the rest of the world yet is because I'm worried about the amount of revolts I'd face as I pillage all those new holdings. Also, I'm waiting for Karlomann to die (he killed Charlemagne this run) so Francia splits up and I can swallow it in smaller chunks.

Anyway, I've decided that I will pillage my counties until there are only two holdings, preferably both cities or city + temple. If there are baronies that I don't pillage, I will hand them over to unlanded male relatives so they don't start an adventure against me. (One of my brothers left my court and did exactly that even though he was my chancellor and had +30 opinion of me.)

At the moment, my questions are:

1. ERE: invade or subjugate?
2. Religion: reform tengri or adopt something else?

In my screenshots, you can see that the earlier one I had changed to christianity (iconoclast) but I reverted back to tengri because I needed to do some county conquests for the piety to create some kingdom and empire titles.

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

My bad about the 90%. I thought you were just starting the game on your initial post. It looks like the screenshot that you well on your way.

So what I do is set the target for the invasion. Then I go and assault all of the holdings outside the target area. I'll either assault the target area holdings or just demand victory. Then I pillage everything that I can and leave just enough troops behind to knock down all of the rebellions. Once its grazing land it doesn't revolt or care what religion you have.

Just don't do what I did and try to take the whole ERE in one invasion bite. I ended up pillaging about 80% in one go and my empire almost imploded. I would have to say that if you do invaded and pillage it will move your tech levels far ahead of time and the money from pillaging is unending.

As far as religion goes, anything that lets you pillage and have concubines should work well. I went with Zoroastrian from the start and never gave it much thought to change to anything else.