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I've actually tried this. The problem is that Ireland is naturally very weak, so when they go to war it's against vikings or scots with 2k stacks vs the 600 they normally have.
I've honestly NEVER had any luck calling in allies. They simply "like my enemy too much", which is slightly ridiculous given that half of them are kinsmen.
Once you gather up some strength from picking off the little guys, set up a retinue with a strong composition and start wrecking armies larger than yours and the game will snowball from there.
At the start, your best bet is to focus upon neighboring territories. Fabricate a claim on something you can reach in Munster, and try to become duke of that, so you can De Jure claim the last county.
All you really need to take out another Irish earl is more troops in total than they have in their garrison - they'll levy their troops to lose to you in direct combat. Mostly, this comes down to who has the better martial score. If they are a vassal, they generally won't levy all their troops (the same as your vassals won't) so you'll want to have enough troops to outnumber their garrison AND their levies before you attack.
Your personal ruler martial score is a +5% troop levies per point. (But you start with -50%, so you need at least 10 martial just to break even...) Setting your martial to train troops is another +5% per point of martial. You get a flat +50% for your capital county, and +25% for being in the same duchy as your capital. If you have a 20 martial ruler with a 15 martial marshal, you'll get a grand total of +175% troops in your capital county. If you stretch it or use tyrrany to take your churches, you should be able to muster 1000 troops or so from a single county pretty easily.
Look at this page for advanced methods of boosting your troop count via tyrrany: http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Advanced_Small_Start_(Guide)
You can generally snipe Dublin out from under the norse when they aren't paying attention if you just move fast enough.
Once you get vassals, you can change the laws to make max feudal levies, which is basically +25% leige levies for a mere -5 relations. Total bargain, never play without it.
Generally speaking, I've won plenty of fights against nominally numerically superior foes by simply moving faster than they do. When enemies raise vassal levies or hire mercenaries or holy orders, they start out with 0 morale. Your personal levies start with 100 morale, your retinues can be on the border marching into their lands as you declare war, and mercenaries can be used to do the same thing.
What you want to do is attack your opponents before they can bring all their troops together, and fight them when they still have low morale. I've defeated 12k troops from a whole kingdom using nothing but a 2k stack of retinues before, just because I hit their holy order before they had morale, and all the other troops kept charging in to try to support their fleeing comerades before getting broken, as well.
Generally speaking, enemy allies should never matter. They almost always are too far away and are too distracted with their own wars to do anything. So long as you never let a war drag on, you should generally be capable of winning, or at least destroying all the troops your main opponent has, thus rendering what pitiful supply of reinforcements the allies will sacrifice in the name of their alliance too little too late by the time they get there.
To win a war, all you need to do is take the territory you are claiming, and then hold it. If you're really outnumbered, like trying to take out Dublin early, you can generally just siege Dublin and sit on Ulster (where they would have to cross a straight or amphibious assault to get to you) until your warscore hits 100% rather than go looking for a fight elsewhere. AI generally doesn't attack you if you are roughly even in size if it means crossing a straight or river or if you're on a hilly territory. (And they'd lose if they tried, anyway...)
You will want some "spies" - I usually break off some tiny 5-man liege levy of my cities or something, or a single ship if I can, and spread those out to watch enemy movements. Ships can't be attacked, so you can just use them to light up territories to give you advanced warning of incoming enemy troops, and move to intercept. Land troops can be killed, but losing 5 men is nothing to worry about at all. Still, if you want to keep your spies active, move them out of the way of your enemy if they go after you (they'll probably ignore a stack that small, but might just happen to be walking through that territory, anyway, and step on your spy while they are going through.)
If you're forced into fighting someone, anyway, try to trick them into fighting in unfavorable conditions. If they won't fight you in Ulster while crossing a straight with all your troops there, pull a third of your troops back a county, then rush them back in to reinforce your troops. The enemy can't change its mind when they're already in battle.
Finally, keep in mind that generals make a HUGE difference in whether you win or lose. (So do retinue bonuses - Gallowglass retinues have +60% defense, which makes them MUCH tougher than their numbers suggest.) A general's martial score affects what those little military bonuses do, improves morale, and also lets you have a better chance of selecting the good military tactics in combat. If your general has 20 in martial, it nullifies any negatives on things like "Heavy Infantry Leader", and doubles the bonuses. (Except "experimentor," which is the only military trait you don't want.) Even craven generals with 20 martial have no downside. I've beaten enemy troop stacks thrice my size while fighting across a river just by using retinues and good generals.
It would take me about ten years just to get enough gold to hire a mercenary, and probably another 10 to get enough gold to sustain his costs long enough to actually win the war. It just doesn't seem viable super-early into the game.
Awesome, I'll definitely take a look at this. Thanks.
You could hire mercenaries by borrowing money from the Jews. But that doesn't account for the cost of fabricating a claim and bribing a decent chancellor to join your court (if you start with a scrub one on the council and you're playing ironman). You start with around 40g. That won't cover the cost of your first fabrication. That will cover the 20g or so you ca use to hire a decent chancellor and a decent spymaster. Why spymaster? Because you want to immediately send a good one off to steal the tech for Military Organization, which raises your levy percentage. If you're lucky enough to start the game with one or both of those councillors having 15+ stats in the right place, then hire a decent martial and a decent steward. The steward increases your income and then you'll need the martial to help win battles.
Use the find person tab to find decent courtiers to invite to your court with the right skills who also hate their liege and like you with a difference of 75+ between the two opinions. These are the courtiers you can hire. Don't bother with people already assigned to their liege's council, they won't desert. It's the courtiers with a red/negative opinion of their liege and a green/positive opinion of you who you want to look through for good stats. If you can't find any who have that 75+ point difference or who can't be bribed into liking you more to meet that number, then try going on a pilgrimage to raise your prestige and piety. That will increase co-religion opinion and then look again. Search by all realms, males, not a ruler, same religion group and any culture. Then sort by the stat you want, like diplomacy. Scroll down the list looking for "courtier in the court of...." not those who are already on a council, looking for someone with a green opinion of you. Click on the portrait when you do, check the opinion of the liege. If it is negative and the difference is 75+ or you can get it there with a bribe, invite them to your court. It doesn't always work, but it must be 75+ for them to even have a chance to accept.
Once you have a decent chancellor or already have one with 15+ in diplomacy, then send him to fabricate a claim on your nearest neighbor which owning will help you form a duchy (unless you start as Tara, then just take Ulster or Tyrconnel, since you already have a duchy). The claim is going to cost - probably more than you have (especially if you had to bribe councillors to join your court). Now is the time to borrow money from the Jews. Fabricate the claim. If you have enough left over for mercenaries (minimum of 150 gold plus enough to cover several months of at least 7.10 gold wages - say 200 gold to be safe), then you're set. Otherwise, you'll have to wait a few more months or even years before you can successfully invade without cheating or resorting to the somewhat gamey Tyrant solution the wiki suggests. During that time, use your spymaster to steal Military Organization (look for a country which has a full 1 box in that tech but about the same in the others, so that tech will be the one stolen). Use your chancellor to make your chosen target's vassals unhappy, to reduce his ability to raise troops when you invade. And wait. Try not to spend any money.
Yes, this takes awhile. But once you get one or two counties in your control, you'll have plenty of troops to take the rest of Ireland. And in an 867 start, many of your neighbors keep stupidly sending off their levies to fight the Ragnarsson's, so you might get lucky and find one who wasted his entire army and whose remaining garrison is low enough such that your newly Military Organization-buffed levies can siege it without having to buy mercenaries. Just remember that even if you have 400 troops and their garrison is only 355, for example, the attrition during the siege will lower your troop strength and you could end up with less than the garrison, ending the siege and wasting the entire trip. Better safe than sorry.
In any game I play, no matter what, my first priority is getting councillors with their primary stat at least 15 or more. This will save you much more in the long run than the cost of bribing people to come join your court. They all matter. Martial to win battles and raise extra levies and research tech and discourage revolts in newly conquered heretic/infidel regions. Steward to naturally increase revenue and research tech ( never use them to increase build times or raise tax revenue). Priest to convert newly conquered territory, research tech (and for Catholics keep the Pope happy with you). Most importantly, spymaster to keep you alive and put down factions and steal tech (and kill off those unwanted poor-stat babies your wife will keep producing whether you like it or not) and the all-important chancellor to fabricate claims if you aren't playing a culture which can raid freely like the pagans or is surrounded by religious enemies for holy war conquests. And that describes 867 Ireland, all Catholic and no one safe nearby to attack early in the game (the Ragnarsson's will eat you for breakfast before they've had time to settle in and start breaking apart).
No, most of the time you do have to take your time when you're small. It's a long term game, especially in that case. Lot of good advice on other things already here, so look at that as well, but chances are most of it will take a while.
On the other hand when you're small you can usually just wait while the game runs at maximum speed.
One thing you might consider is using some mercenaries for multiple wars - Declare one, win that, keep them raised, and declare another one fairly soon. It's cheaper than hiring them again if you don't leave them sitting around for too long.
Also remember you get some gold for occupying enemy holdings - Not always a lot, but it can help pay for the mercs. Hopefully you won't have to rely on that till you've figured out how much you should get (it's based on the base tax of the holding+fort level, but it's been a while so I don't remember exactly how it works) - But I've won wars using that gold to pay for mercs even when my savings were out. Just got to make sure they won't demand their pay before you get the money.
Now I just have to figure out how to deal with a pair of doomstack adventurers and I'll be golden.
Where are they coming from? Generally speaking, you can take on people up to 2-3 times your size if you catch them trying to make an amphibious landing.
Again, a good trick to use to get an enemy to attack you when you have a superior position is to split your forces, and have your troops moving to reinforce already when the fight starts.
Split off small stacks of ships from a church or something to get a few "spy" ships that tell you where the enemy is ahead of time. In general, though, the enemy AI is REALLY awful about figuring out where to land. (I've seen adventurer doomstacks literally sit on my lands when they were supposed to be attacking someone else without ever moving until the leader died of old age. They just bugged out and forgot to attack.) They will generally only be capable of figuring out how to land as close to the target territories as possible, so you can stand in their way and force an amphibious assault battle for maximum denfensive advantage.
(In one of my Great Holy Wars, I had France only managing to pull together 15 ships at a time, bringing in 1.4k troops to fight my 10k stack when they were capable of fielding nearly 20k total troops. Plus, I was fighting them as defender in an amphibious assault.)
If they're on the British Islands, and will come by "land", try to hold them at the straight between Ulster and Scotland. (Again, hold some troops back, and move them up to your own forces so that they arrive just a couple days after the enemy will join battle with you so that you don't "spook them off".)
While you do have to start out slow, it's not true that you have to wait to get enough troops to overcome a garrison. Garrisons on Ireland in 867 are only about 260 troops each. Even if you do nothing at all else, with a 15 martial leader and a 15 martial marshal, you should have a total of nearly 400 levies in your capital even with the flat awful castles they start you out with.
(While adding to your gold income is important, seriously, buy the mustering grounds first, though. With all the bonuses, that'll be an extra 150-200 troops right there.)
You can generally just revoke your church, though, if you need troops. Your castle starts out bare-bones, but the church is upgraded to the best of your technology, and has twice the troop levies your castle possesses.