Greek Culture (Ck2), subset of Byzantine Group is the Best (group) of Cultures to abuse

[Dark3nedDragon]

If you're like me, you'll no doubt find yourself embroiled in a 40 year civil war at some point or another. Where a powerful king dies after uniting the land, leaving multiple heirs fighting for the throne all Game of Thrones style, and short of killing your siblings or similar rivals, there are very few options for dealing with them. The same goes for disinheriting undesirable children.

If you take the Greek Culture in, bring a person with the Greek culture into your court, assign your children to them (as guardian) and set them to adopt their guardian's heritage, culture + religion (preferably force them to convert to your religion first, only doable if they like you and aren't a zealot).

But, why?

Well, in the Greek culture (Byzantine Group) new options are unlocked for prisoners, and new rules for inheritance come into play. Blind and castrated persons are not eligible for title inheritance, and are new options unlocked once you take this culture. You can do it to a prisoner, castrating them prevents them from siring offspring (obviously), and blinding them blinds them (while also preventing them from inheriting, though they may be able to have children who inherit their claims).

Why is this important? Kinslayer is a massive penalty, or can be, and is not always the preferable option. Sometimes it's far better to simply castrate or blind your undesirable heirs or rivals rather than killing them, it can severely remove them from being a threat. Just be careful as the game can be unpredictable, you might end up playing as the kid you took to the chop shop.

[Liberty Prime]

Id say Norse is actually, especially when pagans. They are so OP with the cassus bellis and river raiding stuff.

Edit: not to mention the Germanic reformed religious head is secular, so even more cassus belli.

[Meyro]

After you have setup your demesne and gained a few levels of military organization any revolt should be easy to handle. But for early game greek culture can help managing dynasty claimants. your demesne levy and retinues should be pretty quickly strong enough to prevent most of internal revolts because your troop number compared to possible revolt is too large.

My personal view which religions and cultures are most OP if you manage to setup

Any offensive pagan faith; They get demesne levy size bonus that should be huge bonus. Secular religios head gives control of great holy war CB allowing easy conquest of any kingdom you wish.
Any defensive pagan faith: They get extreme defensive bonuses if battle happens on provice that has the religion. This would be even bigger bonus than levy sizes but it is very hard to spread defensive pagan religions. But if you manage to raise moral authority then none can win battles when you fight in a home province.

Scottish culture: Insanely strong retinues and Scottish commanders have even stronger but rare battle tactic. Only weakness is heavy infantry advance tactic gets +300% very often. This makes it likely that you might prefer Italian commander against feudal ai.
Italian culture: Again insanely strong retinues and common battle tactic that is very good against heavy infantry.
Arabic culture: Camel cavalry is probably second most powerful retinue type. They also gain nice +300% bonus vs advance tactic that is fairly common for feudal levies.
Norse culture: Early game raiding provides huge income but late game the gold loses its value when your demesne is completely build. Then you might want to change to one of stronger cultures. Also berseker tactic for norse commanders is worse than default advance tactic would be.

But a special case for Greek culture is gavelkind inheritance. This combination would allow you to have only one heir while still gaining the demesne size bonus. The 30% extra demesne sizes can be huge bonus if you have enough good castles to hold. Too bad castles in the capital are far better than outside it making this combination slightly worse than it might look like.

[Liberty Prime]

Originally posted by Pauli:

After you have setup your demesne and gained a few levels of military organization any revolt should be easy to handle. But for early game greek culture can help managing dynasty claimants. your demesne levy and retinues should be pretty quickly strong enough to prevent most of internal revolts because your troop number compared to possible revolt is too large.

My personal view which religions and cultures are most OP if you manage to setup

Any offensive pagan faith; They get demesne levy size bonus that should be huge bonus. Secular religios head gives control of great holy war CB allowing easy conquest of any kingdom you wish.
Any defensive pagan faith: They get extreme defensive bonuses if battle happens on provice that has the religion. This would be even bigger bonus than levy sizes but it is very hard to spread defensive pagan religions. But if you manage to raise moral authority then none can win battles when you fight in a home province.

Scottish culture: Insanely strong retinues and Scottish commanders have even stronger but rare battle tactic. Only weakness is heavy infantry advance tactic gets +300% very often. This makes it likely that you might prefer Italian commander against feudal ai.
Italian culture: Again insanely strong retinues and common battle tactic that is very good against heavy infantry.
Arabic culture: Camel cavalry is probably second most powerful retinue type. They also gain nice +300% bonus vs advance tactic that is fairly common for feudal levies.
Norse culture: Early game raiding provides huge income but late game the gold loses its value when your demesne is completely build. Then you might want to change to one of stronger cultures. Also berseker tactic for norse commanders is worse than default advance tactic would be.

But a special case for Greek culture is gavelkind inheritance. This combination would allow you to have only one heir while still gaining the demesne size bonus. The 30% extra demesne sizes can be huge bonus if you have enough good castles to hold. Too bad castles in the capital are far better than outside it making this combination slightly worse than it might look like.

Norse culture also allows coastal count conquest CB which is nice. Also I think Norse can still raid no matter what their religion is. Don't forget prepared invasions either. My vassals always launch their own even though I usually can't (too big) and expand my realm extremely fast.

[KG]

The loathsome cultural retinue really sucks a lot of the fun out of playing Greeks for me. I usually try to come up with some better-than-levies combination of cultural+generic retinues but HA+HC just doesn't work - and they're ferociously expensive.

[Liberty Prime]

Originally posted by KG:

The loathsome cultural retinue really sucks a lot of the fun out of playing Greeks for me. I usually try to come up with some better-than-levies combination of cultural+generic retinues but HA+HC just doesn't work - and they're ferociously expensive.

+1

German/French/Breton Knights are far more powerful as well as slightly cheaper. Plus couched lance charge is just devastating. I put just one flank of pure knights and the other flanks pikes, and I can easily beat enormous armies very fast.

[Meyro]

Originally posted by butters:

Originally posted by KG:

The loathsome cultural retinue really sucks a lot of the fun out of playing Greeks for me. I usually try to come up with some better-than-levies combination of cultural+generic retinues but HA+HC just doesn't work - and they're ferociously expensive.

+1

German/French/Breton Knights are far more powerful as well as slightly cheaper. Plus couched lance charge is just devastating. I put just one flank of pure knights and the other flanks pikes, and I can easily beat enormous armies very fast.

Knights are good against feudal levies too because there is often +300% bonus for charge vs common advance for feudal levies. But Knights are a bit weaker than camel cavalry. Camel cavalry has clearly better attack for skirmish phase and slightly better attack per maintenance for melee phase.
Camels have weakness that their melee defence per maintenance is worse than knights have. But Camels gain defence bonuses from culture buildings while knights gain offence bonuses which makes camels overall better than knights.

Pikemen are simple OP with their high morale, melee phase attack and defences per maintenance. Scotish culture buildings even provide defence bonuses which makes them better than Italian moral bonuses.
Even defence retinues are much better than feudal levies or many other retinue types (including Cataphract). Pikes have only weakness that feudal levies often use advance which gains the +300% vs the stand fast of pikes. One can try mixing defensive and shock retinues for better skirmish tactic and chance for melee phase advance when playing against ai with feudal levies. But I haven't yet figured if mix is better than pure defence retinues with Italian commander.

[KG]

I see that Druzhina and Gallowglass have gone unmentioned... so I'm mentioning them. Not amazing but they're good... without being pikes

Pauli, there were two thread in the last year or so on the PDX forums that took a really close look at retinue effectiveness for a number of situations/metrics. I somehow don't have them bookmarked but you should look them up.

IIRC Cataphract literally came in dead last for cultural retinues by almost any measure. Expensive, not effective, contradictory tactics, not enough of them to discourage revolts...