the extremely specific requirements to get the jomsvikings is a joke

[Dundee]

the developers clearly are stupid making a requirement that there be a holding slot open.
guess ill just do what everyone does and never play ironman again. also sick to death of having to constantly kill vassals people who have negative opinion just to change succesion law rinse repeat someone spills the beans rinse repeat some more.

[Dundee]

gonna play catholic and never ever go pagan ever again. worst fun ever.

[Evil Crusader]

The first is debatable, and yes, it's not that great.
The second is part of what makes the game tick - it's already very easy once you know how to do it, don't make it even easier please.

[Dundee]

i dont want it to be easier, im just sick of having to get rid of people just to make succession first born son, im over it now, its too much effort, drunk bastards keep outting my plots and killing my rep with everyone, so i executed as many of my vassals as i could then deleted my save file. ironman - not even once.

[Dundee]

got the old gods just to reform norse, fix the succession, bring jomsviking and norsedom into Eu4. but that was a big pain in the ass. took me 200 years to reform norse thanks to other norse losing holy wars. then i find out the joms are never coming..

[Evil Crusader]

It's not that difficult, it can be done under 100 years (without pushing, if you want to get gamey then it can be done in 50 years or so).
CK2 expansion is easy because it feeds itself: the more you expand, the stabler you are. It's when you are content and big and you stop getting new, grateful vassals and more retinues that the boat starts rocking, HARD.
Instead of killing sons and trying to enact Primo, you could have rushed the foundation of an Empire (Britannia or Scandinavia), snagged a province in Pomerania for them to build in and simply stockpiled money/troops to deal with the other siblings by provoking them to rebel when you're stable and then seizing all of their titles.

[identifiedasbeingdisrespectful]

there are also the limited benefits of using gifts and titles to raise vassal happiness. If a vassal is pissed at you for a specific reason, some of them fade over time, others don't

[Wraith_Magus]

The Norse have so many ways to conquer so much territory so quickly, it's not even funny.

If you really want to try, you could easily make Reformed Norse in 25 years. It only takes a subjugation for one of the initially Norse holy sites, a county conquest on the perpetually-distracted Karlings for Zeeland, and/or a prepared invasion or two successive county conquests for Braunshweig to get holy sites. Then, you can just go crazy county conquesting everything in Ireland, Pomerania, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, Wales, and maybe even Spain if need be to bump your moral authority up. There are tons of easy targets, and other pagans are much harder to invade after reforming, so go nuts on the slavs while you can. If those other norse are losing a war, and you don't want that to happen, then join the war.

If you take at least one of the possible locations the Jomsvikings can spawn with a county conquest (and why wouldn't you?) and make sure that you transfer vassalization of the city and church to another vassal, and that the count is a count of just that one county, then the odds that they will have the money to buy any other holdings is basically nil.

If you are trying to get the Jomsvikings, there is basically no excuse for not getting them, as Vikings are pretty easy.

[Cloudwasher Sloth Tamer Pro]

Originally posted by wraith_magus:

If you take at least one of the possible locations the Jomsvikings can spawn with a county conquest (and why wouldn't you?)

The very same thing happened to me as happened to the OP.... The reason you don't capture the territory outright (unless you know about it ahead of time) is that its not possible locations, its only ONE possible location (a province in northern germany, dont remember name of it off hand), and that location is located outside of scandanavia and not a holy site, so a norseman trying to reform would not go for the territory unless they had specifically looked in the wiki to know that they needed to take it for the jomsvikings.

I've played games where I reformed with the west african and slav religions, and the requirements for both of those were simply to reform the religion and your holy order will appear. The norse are the only religion that has a specific provincial requirement for their holy order and that isn't made clear to most people until they learn the hard way.

In retrospect, I should have known though considering how much more powerful the norse are than other religions. The coastal raiding (when done right) is such a huge cash cow that it's probably best from a balance stand point that the jomsvikings require some extra effort to call up.

[Burn]

I played as Rurik of Novgorod and what I did with my second character (Rurik's son - Helgi) was phenomenal! Not only did this guy reform the Slavic religion. He also conquered and created the whole Russian Empire, managed to change laws of succession to primogeniture, converted all of his vassals to his religion and forced to convert the neighboring lords and changed the culture of the lands to Russian. He was nicknamed "The Magnificent", which I wasn't surprised to see, but was very happy. Just to think of it that when I started to play for this faction, all I wanted is to roleplay. Not going all balistic and gamey, but just relax, have fun and think as if I'm the character I'm playing ... guess the game rewarded me for that, but then my ironmode save got corrupted and I can't play it anymore ... I was yelling when that happened ....... .... I still have the save ... I hope someday there will be a way to fix it ... until that day I don't play ironmode anymore.

[Evil Crusader]

You were lucky, the game tends to call everybody and their sister 'the Great' even if they simply have a gazillion prestige but control five provinces.
Very well done, Burn! But yes, I can understand your intent of roleplaying - going gamey lets you win the game all too easily.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by cloudwasher:

The very same thing happened to me as happened to the OP.... The reason you don't capture the territory outright (unless you know about it ahead of time) is that its not possible locations, its only ONE possible location (a province in northern germany, dont remember name of it off hand), and that location is located outside of scandanavia and not a holy site, so a norseman trying to reform would not go for the territory unless they had specifically looked in the wiki to know that they needed to take it for the jomsvikings.

The Pomeranians are easy targets.

And it's not one specific county, either. I've seen Jomsvikings in different places in different games, although are always somewhere in Mecklenburg or (duchy) Pomerania.

Either way, it's coastal, and as a Norse, you have the ability to county conquest any coastal county not of your religion, and the Slavs are the easiest, closest targets. Hit up all the Pomeranian coastal counties (most are only nations of 1-3 counties, anyway,) and you can't go wrong.

And again, it's free land. (Or at least, land of such a trivial cost as to virtually be free.) Why wouldn't you take it?

Originally posted by cloudwasher:

I've played games where I reformed with the west african and slav religions, and the requirements for both of those were simply to reform the religion and your holy order will appear. The norse are the only religion that has a specific provincial requirement for their holy order and that isn't made clear to most people until they learn the hard way.

In retrospect, I should have known though considering how much more powerful the norse are than other religions. The coastal raiding (when done right) is such a huge cash cow that it's probably best from a balance stand point that the jomsvikings require some extra effort to call up.

Keep in mind that the holy orders for all those other religions were added at a different time.

Jomsvikings were added with ToG, I believe, and were part of the general viking theme. The other holy orders were added with "eh, whatever, have a holy order, we don't care" effort with Sons of Abraham after people presumably were complaining about the absurd unfairness. You are percieving laziness as a reward.

Originally posted by Evil Crusader:

You were lucky, the game tends to call everybody and their sister 'the Great' even if they simply have a gazillion prestige but control five provinces.
Very well done, Burn! But yes, I can understand your intent of roleplaying - going gamey lets you win the game all too easily.

Oh yeah, let me tell you...

My guy that goes from duke of Jylland to Emperor of Britannia in one generation? Nicknamed "The Fat" because he started the game with gluttony.

Some of the guys he conquered? "Gamall the Lion" took the throne with 8 counties, and never won a single war, losing each county one-by-one to "The Fat". Some other guy in Wales was called "The Conquerer" for taking ONE COUNTY as an adventurer. I TOOK EIGHTY, JERKS! My first prepared invasion took 12 counties from my starting point at 3. Then they named his reforming son "the Fat", too...

THAT'S IT, BLOOD EAGLES FOR EVERYONE!

Amusingly, my globe-conquering next ruler was named "The Kind". Presumably, my subjects wised up, so I let them keep their lungs as a reward.

[Burn]

@wraith_magus,
regarding the nicknames, I think of it differently. Even if you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ nickname, you still get one, because you are a ruler. If you think roleplay wise, then the name "The Fat" might have been suitable for your character, because, well, you went from some Duke to a bloody Emperor. Your character is gluttonous, but maybe not only for food, but also for power, so "The Fat" might mean that you got super powerful in a short amount of time :) think of Dota2, when noobies feed the enemy and then the enemy gets fat xD
It's hard to take the AI serious when you try to roleplay (nicknames, wars, marriages, etc), so I try to make some kind of logical backstories like this to make it more sense.

[Burn]

btw after writing my first post in this thread, I was reminiscing the events of my Russia playthrough and I decided to try once again to play the game in ironmode. I just love this game :) anyways, this time I deselect all the dlc (expect tOG) and it looks good now. No broken save game file (yet).
Anyways, this time I decided to convert to Christianity from the get go (there's a Chirstian courtier in Smolensk, she's already married, but her daughter is not adult yet. So just wait till one becomes adults, then imprison and take as concubine. You'll get an intrigue option to convert to Christianity. After you convert your concubine will disappear), because of the Pope and the Crusades.
I'm playing as the 5th generation from the first ruler Rurik. Let me tell you one thing - don't play a Christian Russian ruler so early ... the game will slowly devour you!

[Sohei]

Paradox is pretty bad about having very specific requirements for things to work a certain way and then never communicating those requirements to the player within the game.

[markdb92]

I like it requiring a slot to form one I can prevent them from ever forming thus keep these pagans weak. Thier raiding is too annoying as is.