Fun 769 Nomad Start?

[Biggus Dickus]

Hi peeps, bought the Horse Lords DLC (along with Jade Dragon) and I'm looking to try out a fun character at the earliest start possible. I'd like to play as a Khagan and work my way up to Genghis Khan levels of blobbing, but I'd prefer not to be fighting various tribes/nomads/the Roman Empire too much to begin with. Any recommendations? Are there any fun nomads that people like to choose generally?

[Biggus Dickus]

Wait, I think I meant "Khan" or "sub-Khagan", if you will. The vassal, basically.

[Soul Binder]

You could try one near Tibet that follows a Zoarastrian heresy and look to conquer Persia and restore the high priesthood.
Also unless I'm mistaken (dont have Horse Lords DLC myself yet) the main reason to play nomad is for the fighting/raiding. They are more the direct go beat people up type and less of the backstabbing politcal intrigue type. to that end several of them start off with doomstacks of troops at their disposal.

[lunamo]

Magyar is a very flexible start, you can convert to/reform many religions; become feudal and still raid. You also will not have to face the abassiblob or china's until you can take them(the byzantine empire should be more occupied with its feudal/iqta neighbors)

[bri]

Originally posted by lunamo:

Magyar is a very flexible start, you can convert to/reform many religions; become feudal and still raid. You also will not have to face the abassiblod or china's until you can take them(the byzantine empire should be more occupied with its feudal/iqta neighbors)

Issue is Magyar is fairly weak and everyone around them has a reason to attack and generally does...

[lunamo]

The tribes are very weak and some in valuable steppe terrain, if you raid-conquest them 1 county(or duchy if you have the prestige) at the time, you can field a big enough army to defend yourself and your khagan. Being a vassal also lets you hold land without the clan asking you to give to others. You can essentially create a nation within his borders until you feel safe enough.

[Biggus Dickus]

Originally posted by Soul Binder:

You could try one near Tibet that follows a Zoarastrian heresy and look to conquer Persia and restore the high priesthood.
Also unless I'm mistaken (dont have Horse Lords DLC myself yet) the main reason to play nomad is for the fighting/raiding. They are more the direct go beat people up type and less of the backstabbing politcal intrigue type. to that end several of them start off with doomstacks of troops at their disposal.

I like the sound of going Zoroastrian, would it be more straightforward to restore Persia than playing as a landed character then?

[Soul Binder]

Restoring Persia is probably easiest done by a nomad start with a character following one of the Zoarastrian heresies.

Other option is to go feudal as a Zoarastrian count under a muslim ruler and then work to build a good power base within the larger empire/kingdom. Only real advantage you have as a Zoarastrian Count is that much of the population in yor starting area are Zoarastrians as well in the 769 start, but unless you start using cheats be prepared for a very difficult game trying to hold out against muslim powers and raiding nomads.

With either the Nomad start or a feudal start you will be sitting good financially with very little effort as they both will place you on or next to some of the richest provinces in that region and in prime position to take control of a major chunk of the silk road.

[Azunai]

restoring persia as a nomad is *a lot* easier and faster than working your way up as one of the small zoroastrian feudals.

you don't actually have to pick a nomad that starts as zoroastrian. that's just a bonus. you can simply use the character finder to find zoroastrian women, take one as wife or concubine and use the decision to secretly convert to her faith, then openly adopt it.

i generally like to preserve the holdings in conquered lands. pillage is a one time influx of money. keeping them as vassals is a steady stream of gold and the counties that have more than 2 holdings don't count as nomadic, so you can hold any number of them without your vassal clans demanding more land for themself.

with decent gold income, you can easily afford to run a horde of nothing but heavy vanguard. which is overall much stronger than the generic light cav/horse archer stuff you get for prestige.

the only difficulty as a nomad is the early game when you are limited to county conquests and once per lifetime subjugation. once your population is large enough to unlock the nomad invasion CB, your blob is unstoppable.

in my nomad to persia game, i first had to subjugate (and mass revoke) transoxiana from the original holder to get big enough for subjugation, but then i could gobble up khorasan (another independent realm) and the small stuff in afghanistan very quickly.

and then i had a horde of like 10,000 heavy cav and 5,000 light cav and declared an invasion on the abbasids and took all their provinces in de jure persian empire in a single war. kinda tedious to siege down all that stuff. that war took like 1-2 hours of real time, but afterwards i had a massively huge hybrid nomad empire with an insane number of direct baron tier vassals and a ridiculous income.

[Soul Binder]

Suggest checking out the WIKI if you want good info on playing Zoroastrian and potential starts/strategies. It's where I've gotten most of my info from and use it for reference all the time.
https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Zoroastrians

[Biggus Dickus]

Originally posted by Soul Binder:

Suggest checking out the WIKI if you want good info on playing Zoroastrian and potential starts/strategies. It's where I've gotten most of my info from and use it for reference all the time.
https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Zoroastrians

Something along the lines of "incest is wincest", right?