Prestige Management as Tribal

[Edge]

How do you guys play tribals in terms of prestige? It seems like an obvious strategy is to abuse tribal army, but on the other hand you use prestige to build your buildings. I find myself really reluctant to use tribal army because I see it as a short term waste of prestige vs building buildings with it which you then have forever.

How do you play it?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

about half and half.

Keep an eye on your neighbors and see what they're doing with their prestige and only spend on buildings when you have extra to do so or if you're getting really old and could die soon (and if you're going to spend it on an army, attack someone who's been spending heavily on build upgrades so you get some better last value from it). And make sure to try and get your heirs to be proud and even assign them to mercenaries companys (if you can), give them titles and try to give them some land to hold so they can start getting prestige for themselves so you'll have a solid base when succession happens.

If you can declare tributary wars do so as often as possible this not only takes prestige from your neighbors and gives it to you, it allows you to also use their troops and siphon their money. And prevents easy access for them to gain prestige from wars on their own.

get all the free raiders you can, and keep them busy and try to raid as much but as cheaply as possible to maximize your prestige/gold gains via raids/sacks/ransoms/blot sacrifices.

Also look into marrying into strong nearby familes to get non-aggression pacts so keep some of the pressure off if you want to build stuff.



Though it mostly depends on if I'm going conquest or a more passive playthrough.

Conquest heavy you should obviously go for broke and try to form a Kingdom ASAP as this gives a lot more reliable personal power as well as better passive prestige gain. And it's pretty easy to keep the smaller guys down once you do so that they can't raise more than 1 or 2 armies at once.

For a more passive playthrough I'd typtically wait until someone nearby got big and just swear fealty to them. Unlike feudal being a tribal vassal gives your liege almost nothing (and very few of them can reliably pass any tribal organization laws) and takes some of the pressure off to defend yourself, allowing to to focus more on building up. (though obviously if you plan to go Republic you'll have to stay free since you can't reform to anything but what your liege does, unless you decide to break free once the inevitable succession crisis happens).

The main reason I like building up buldings though is because a fully upgraded tribal stronghold has access to upgrades that you normally won't get the tech for for a long time, so I definitely try to at minimum finish the upgrades that turn into level 2 walls, as this saves tech points for other stuff (I typically hate spending tech points until I've completely exhausted all immediate sources of easy free tech).

[Huntlol]

Originally posted by kaiyl_kariashi:

about half and half.

Keep an eye on your neighbors and see what they're doing with their prestige and only spend on buildings when you have extra to do so or if you're getting really old and could die soon (and if you're going to spend it on an army, attack someone who's been spending heavily on build upgrades so you get some better last value from it). And make sure to try and get your heirs to be proud and even assign them to mercenaries companys (if you can), give them titles and try to give them some land to hold so they can start getting prestige for themselves so you'll have a solid base when succession happens.

If you can declare tributary wars do so as often as possible this not only takes prestige from your neighbors and gives it to you, it allows you to also use their troops and siphon their money. And prevents easy access for them to gain prestige from wars on their own.

get all the free raiders you can, and keep them busy and try to raid as much but as cheaply as possible to maximize your prestige/gold gains via raids/sacks/ransoms/blot sacrifices.

Also look into marrying into strong nearby familes to get non-aggression pacts so keep some of the pressure off if you want to build stuff.



Though it mostly depends on if I'm going conquest or a more passive playthrough.

Conquest heavy you should obviously go for broke and try to form a Kingdom ASAP as this gives a lot more reliable personal power as well as better passive prestige gain. And it's pretty easy to keep the smaller guys down once you do so that they can't raise more than 1 or 2 armies at once.

For a more passive playthrough I'd typtically wait until someone nearby got big and just swear fealty to them. Unlike feudal being a tribal vassal gives your liege almost nothing (and very few of them can reliably pass any tribal organization laws) and takes some of the pressure off to defend yourself, allowing to to focus more on building up. (though obviously if you plan to go Republic you'll have to stay free since you can't reform to anything but what your liege does, unless you decide to break free once the inevitable succession crisis happens).

The main reason I like building up buldings though is because a fully upgraded tribal stronghold has access to upgrades that you normally won't get the tech for for a long time, so I definitely try to at minimum finish the upgrades that turn into level 2 walls, as this saves tech points for other stuff (I typically hate spending tech points until I've completely exhausted all immediate sources of easy free tech).

how do you declare a tributary war?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

requires Horse Lords, i think.

[EmotionallyBroken]

I dont bother upgrading at all, you're supposed to take from others, not generate your own. Thats kind of the whole point of raiding, its a waste of time to generate your own wealth when you can simply take it from others already created.

[Huntlol]

Originally posted by No:

I dont bother upgrading at all, you're supposed to take from others, not generate your own. Thats kind of the whole point of raiding, its a waste of time to generate your own wealth when you can simply take it from others already created.

hes talking about managing prestige not wealth

[kaiyl_kariashi]

only 1 of the tribal upgrades affects wealth (and you generally only raise that one if you're going for Merchant Republic or just don't want the prestige going to waste because you're about to die and bought everything else). The rest boost your personal levy or make your troops raised from that holding stronger. Or allow you to raise boats.

[BanDHMO]

Avoid tribal army if I can, unless I'm a weak single-province tribe, and even then I'd rather use other event troops. There's never enough prestige for building everything I want.

[Segovax]

Originally posted by kaiyl_kariashi:

only 1 of the tribal upgrades affects wealth (and you generally only raise that one if you're going for Merchant Republic or just don't want the prestige going to waste because you're about to die and bought everything else). The rest boost your personal levy or make your troops raised from that holding stronger. Or allow you to raise boats.

Well, market town also automatically upgrades to Castle Town 2 if you go feudal, it's not a bad idea to upgrade it if you're sitting on a pile of money anyway.

[Edge]

Main reason I want to focus my prestige on building buildings is for the conversion to feudal. I don't like to stay tribal too long, maybe a couple generations. My goal is to get to feudal and before I get there I want my castle to be as strong as possible.

It's a huge savings to max out the buildings as tribal before you convert, not to mention the fact that your survival may depend on it.

[Huntlol]

Originally posted by Edge:

Main reason I want to focus my prestige on building buildings is for the conversion to feudal. I don't like to stay tribal too long, maybe a couple generations. My goal is to get to feudal and before I get there I want my castle to be as strong as possible.

It's a huge savings to max out the buildings as tribal before you convert, not to mention the fact that your survival may depend on it.

but if your tribal vassals dont turn feudal then you are in big trouble because you're gonna have no levy and huge revolts