Playing tall Socotra

[Tomes]

If all goes well, I'll eventually get more holding slots. Should I just fill them with castles or should I build cities and temples as well?

[Langkard]

Is it even possible to play tall with just a single province? I've never tried it. Good luck!

[Tomes]

Originally posted by Langkard:

Is it even possible to play tall with just a single province? I've never tried it. Good luck!

I once played Socotra (769 start) into the empire of Abyssinia and managed to start construction of a great harbor within the first character's lifetime, because the Silk Road income is insane. For this playthrough, I'm hoping I can just raise enough mercenaries to discourage a landing if someone attacks me, which they shouldn't be able to do in the first century or so because no one has enough boats or troops. Other than that, I plan to be a rat and destabilize neighboring realms with assassinations.

[Varainger]

From memory you can onyl get one more holding slot on Socotra through the..or is it actually, two ? Right, one through building a great work/wonder and upgrading it two levels and the other by increasing..forgot the correct word, well the province wealth over time....or so.

Even when buiding castles, i doubt this will be enough to prevent an attack 200 or three hundred years down the road. If not Yemen, then the Arabian empire might want to swollow you. Still worthy to test, if you don't mind the challenge.

Either way sounds interesting and impressive.
I never had the courage to try a serious campaign with that island.
So actually it appears i have no helpful comment to add.
Hmm..., sorry.

Good luck.

PS: IF you can change culture to one that can raid, i'd think berber culture here, then that could be fun to annoy neighbours or so and make additional money for mercs when needed.

[[OCe]Kagari]

I think you can have max holding slot through prosperity events? I played tall Iceland and got max holding slot on all counties, besides a MR socotra has the access to the silk road which is very beneficial for the money

[[OCe]Kagari]

The wiki has some beneficial insight about this
https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Holdings#Getting_additional_empty_holding_slots

[Tomes]

Originally posted by OCeKagari:

I think you can have max holding slot through prosperity events? I played tall Iceland and got max holding slot on all counties, besides a MR socotra has the access to the silk road which is very beneficial for the money

Yes, there is a prosperity event that fires rarely and gives a new slot for money. Getting to max prosperity within the first 50 or so years is doable by spamming summer fairs (haven't done feasts because I don't want to get fat and die).

[Langkard]

Need to keep us apprised of the way it goes. It sounds fun!

[jfoytek]

Socotra is a challenging play thru depending on how you attempt it....

If you avoid converting to Muslim and avoid bending the knee to the mainland...
Well you will definately need a LARGE warchest, and max Castles and you will need to know to raise your troops "Before the death" Stack arrives....

Its because of the Malice of you not being Muslim and being Part of De jure Muslim land you will find this play thru can be one of the toughest depending on the date your starting....

Its absolutely one of my favorite challenges in the game and I often play as Socotra and only Socotra not expanding and I attempt to transform Socorta into Welsh or Dutch culture and go full catholic even further annoying my neighbors....

This has also lead to my game ending very abruptly as a even a 25-35K Muslim Death stack with No Morale landing against all the troops and merc's you can afford with a Morale advantage, can get overwhelmed and then its Game over....

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by Langkard:

Is it even possible to play tall with just a single province? I've never tried it. Good luck!

It sure is I do it all the time....

[galadon3]

Originally posted by OCeKagari:

I think you can have max holding slot through prosperity events? I played tall Iceland and got max holding slot on all counties, besides a MR socotra has the access to the silk road which is very beneficial for the money

Yes correct the prosperity event can fire until you have the maximum of 7 slots, only in the crown focus province though (wich shouldn't be a problem if you only have one^^).
I did a tall game with brittany once, brought every province of the duchy to 7 holdings.

[Varainger]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Originally posted by OCeKagari:

I think you can have max holding slot through prosperity events? I played tall Iceland and got max holding slot on all counties, besides a MR socotra has the access to the silk road which is very beneficial for the money

Yes correct the prosperity event can fire until you have the maximum of 7 slots, only in the crown focus province though (wich shouldn't be a problem if you only have one^^).
I did a tall game with brittany once, brought every province of the duchy to 7 holdings.

Interesting,i thought the prosperity event to only be possible once in a campaign.
Good to know. Cheers to both of you.

[galadon3]

Yea it takes some time, since the event for the slot needs the province to be booming and be the crown focus (and THEN trigger^^), and booming has quite some chance to get lost during an epidemic and ofc booming makes the province more vulnerable for epidemics too.
In said brittany game I had the whole duchy filled with quite well upgraded hospitals after a while.

[bri]

It's also somewhat expensive to pay when the event fires...

[Schraube]

Originally posted by Langkard:

Is it even possible to play tall with just a single province? I've never tried it. Good luck!

MR Venice can do it. 6 holdings slots means 5 cities all benefiting from your stewards "collect taxes" (easily a 70% or higher boost with a good steward) and the tradezone boost(can't remember off the top of my head - either a 50% or 100% boost at max?). With the high income, you can easily afford to fully upgrade all of them, netting you a massive base income and levy; then you add level three prosperity, a great harbor, and the post-three-prosperity events that give permanent modifiers to things like levies or taxes, and you get a county that overshadows entire kingdoms in how much levies and money it generates. Multiple cities with maximum base income that gets trippled are crazy strong.

And since MR republics can expand endlessly beyond their tradepost limit by just assassinating their patricians whenever they have a multiple of 4 tradeposts.... you can still grow your retinues and income even beyond that :D
Though it's an annoying amount of micromanagement.

[Tomes]

Originally posted by jfoytek:

Socotra is a challenging play thru depending on how you attempt it....

If you avoid converting to Muslim and avoid bending the knee to the mainland...
Well you will definately need a LARGE warchest, and max Castles and you will need to know to raise your troops "Before the death" Stack arrives....

Its because of the Malice of you not being Muslim and being Part of De jure Muslim land you will find this play thru can be one of the toughest depending on the date your starting....

Its absolutely one of my favorite challenges in the game and I often play as Socotra and only Socotra not expanding and I attempt to transform Socorta into Welsh or Dutch culture and go full catholic even further annoying my neighbors....

This has also lead to my game ending very abruptly as a even a 25-35K Muslim Death stack with No Morale landing against all the troops and merc's you can afford with a Morale advantage, can get overwhelmed and then its Game over....

I guess building castles is the way to go, then. I'll need the levies to deal with those stacks. I don't quite recall how many I could raise when I did the Abyssinia game, but it was about 10000 including the retinue, and I didn't have all holding slots filled. I think I'll be fine as long as the Muslim blobs around me implode every now and again.