Dear gawd, help me with horse lords please!!

[Paulogbfs]

I have had 450 hrs before i stopped playing CK2 just before the release of Horse Lords.
Having acquired all recent expansions yesterday, i started playing as the mongols and it seems like a totally different game, i am more lost than a nun in a ♥♥♥♥♥ house!

before you scold me , i have read as many as i could from CK2wiki, so maybe you guys can clear up some doubts?

- The best thing to do as a nomad is to raze everything to the ground (à la total war attila) in order to have tons of empty holdings for population/pasture etc?

- the silk road thing, i assume i can construct trading posts as a nomad? If i conquer another silk road "county", i should pillage only the capital holding or not at all? I want to be riiiiich as Floyd Mayweather.

- So i should always have a blood pact with the strongest vassal clan?

-Are horse archers still trash? thats a shame, by my research,it seems they dont employ very good tactics. So should i stick with LC and HC as a mongol tengri?

[Gingermonkey]

Most of these are just my opinion, so dont take it for fact but,

1. For the most part. If you are conquering tribals, its usually the best bet. But if they are feudal i keep them around for the taxes. Plus if you conquer say, Constantinople, its a pain in the butt to pillage completely.

2. Silk road territory i tend to keep intact as is.

3. Blood pact basically means they will always join you in your campaigns, so yes strongest is usually best unless you want to break apart another clan so they dont get too powerful.

4. Horse archers are great. Unless they patched it, LC and horse archers can easily crush superior numbered forces. With just a mix of 4k of the two, i've easily crushed an Abbasid blob of about 10k before.

[KG]

Originally posted by Josh:

4. Horse archers are great. Unless they patched it, LC and horse archers can easily crush superior numbered forces. With just a mix of 4k of the two, i've easily crushed an Abbasid blob of about 10k before.

Right after HL came out I guess? Horse archers are pretty manky at the moment - they really trip up your tactics, as the OP read elsewhere.

[that guy]

I've only played one nomad game to completion while I abandoned all the other ones I started in less than 50 years, so keep that in mind.

A province with less than two holdings is considered a nomadic province. If you own more than 33% of the nomadic provinces in your realm, your nomadic vassals will be unhappy. You're also at risk of a minor clan uprising if you have fewer than 8 nomadic vassals. Plundering a province also increases revolt risk in that province as long as it still has holdings in it. So at times, it is better not to raze a province. But if the province is tribal or has only a single holding in it, by all means raze it to the ground. Just be sure not to raze too many provinces at the same time to avoid dealing with multiple revolts every month.

Like any ruler, if you control a silk road province then you can build a trade post on it so long as you are not over your trade post limit. It doesn't matter to me if a province is on the silk road or not, I still decide whether or not to plunder it based on the criteria I outlined above. You do not need holdings in the province in order to have a trade post there.

Yes, it's a good idea to have a blood pact with your strongest vassal. I tend to not care though because all my vassal khans have only 1 province, and they're all on islands with no ships to come raid my lands even when we're in a feud. Once you have 8 vassal khans, you don't have to worry about minor clan uprisings anymore.

While playing, it seemed to me that pure light cavalry was better than a mix of light cavalry and horse archers but I haven't run the numbers. Light cavalry costs prestige to maintain while horse archers cost gold, and when you're just starting out you tend to be short on gold. Of course, pure heavy cavalry is better than either and you should switch to that once you can afford it.

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

In my limited experience, I tend to burn everything to the ground. I never found a need for taxes once you get the horde up and going. I also found it a lot easier when you have to give out land to the other clans. The UI is really crap and I found myself giving land with buildings to the other clans and then it wouldn't lower their needs. If you really want to micro manage it, I suppose leaving some holdings would be a benifit.

I went with about 50% horse archers and the rest split between heavy and light. I have no idea if it is oppitimized. I was shredding armies twice my size. Even fighting equal sized armies in mountains and across straits seemed easy. If you raze everything and tech up fast, it won't matter what the make up of your army is.

[Paulogbfs]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/51zkn1/summary_of_optimal_nomadic_horde_composition/

Horse Archers need some buff!

[Paulogbfs]

I have another question:

I just came upon a 5 "slots" silk road province. Of course i changed my capital to it.
So should i raze everything to the ground except one city (which i give to a courtier and profit with a small amount of income buffed by the silk road?)
This province with one city i left untouched will count for other clans to be mad at me?

[that guy]

Originally posted by choksquaker:

This province with one city i left untouched will count for other clans to be mad at me?

As long as a province has less than 2 holdings then it counts as nomadic, which means your vassal clans will want it.