Aztec Horde crushes me

[Fantasy Fan]

So, I had been playing my first game as Count of Dublin to learn the mechanics and strategy behind CKII. After almost 200 years of building to become King of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales with 67% out of 80% to create Emperor of Britannia title, the sunset invasion begins and the aztecs land about 110k troops in Scotland. I had been looking for a reason to start over anyway in 867 since I recently got The Old Gods and Sons of Abraham. How would you guys deal with this? Between myself, vassals, and allies, I would be hard pressed to field 25k men. Are there any tricks I'm overlooking? It feels like a big "F you" DLC by the programmers if you're playing in the islands. I have a problem with fielding big enough armies with a demesne of 8, usually. Maybe I should just build nothing but castles and max them out? I don't really know what to do, other than start over and hope they hit another nation first next time. It sucks being forced to quit or lose most of the 30+ hours of time I put into gaining that land the first 200 years. I'm bad at gaining allies and I don't really understand how to get the most out of marriages.

[TentacleMayor]

You could disable the DLC or stay away from the westernmost part of the map.

[YimacMasaru]

That is the purpose of this DLC! It is meant to f**k you up! Play a nation in the east (e.g. HRE), expand there, disable the DLC or have extreme amounts of luck.

[Fantasy Fan]

That teaches me for buying a DLC pack bundled with the game before playing it or doing research.. buyer's remorse.

[beegee84]

its only worth having it switched on iff your playing in the centre or east and you want the west to have a simler handicap the east gets with hordes

[beegee84]

you can easily turn it off in a tick box and play everything else

[wspray87]

I enjoyed it in one game where I was King of Scotland and they landed in Spain. They still attacked me after a while but I just barely won. You may be overlooking the Crown Authority- increasing it makes a big difference to how many troops everyone pools together for war. It takes a few generations to increase, and I forgot it in similar circumstances.

[Fantasy Fan]

Steam has user reviews disabled for this DLC. I was going to give it a 0, but I couldn't. I have disabled it, but I haven't started playing a new game yet because that last game left me a little disgusted. At least I learned a little while playing it, so the huge amount of hours I put into that game wasn't a total waste.

[Alico]

U can beat them but even after u destroy their stacks of doom ur empire will start falling apart cuz of low levies massive revolts. I beat them 30 yrs ago but after those 2 massive wins it's all chaos. I had Brittania+northern France+Bavaria and fielded an army of 70k ppl+other recruits. I recommend keeping cities and castles for urself, 1 dutchy, don't give king titles cuz revolts will be huge. Achieving end of game with a ruler I don't think it's that hard, it's hard to achieve it with an empire. I played Agnatic-Cognatic Ultimogeniture.

[CerealGuns]

They're beatable if you're big enough when they arrive. Otherwise if they conquer you and you end up as a vassal of the Aztec Emperor you can try to take them down from the inside (or convert to Nahua and try to replace the Emperor). The purpose of Sunset Invasion is to provide a credible threat to large late game empires.

Don't expect your personal demesne troops to make much of a difference to threats of that size since they'll be limited regardless of how big your empire becomes. I usually focus on building cities in my demesne for the extra income. I like to keep a few thousand gold in reserve for hiring mercenaries in case of emergencies (sometimes as much as 10 thousand if I'm expecting trouble). Mercenaries and Retinues tend to be of higher quality than levies. Also be aware that starting on the eastern side of the map makes you vulnerable to 3 Mongol Hordes instead (+ Seljuks if you start in 867) and you can't disable those.

Personally I find recovering from a major setback to be one of the most satisfying things in Crusader Kings so don't get discouraged if things go badly.

[catma59]

There is not a real good way in order to deal with them that I have found. You should be able to call in your allies if you have married yourself and your children correctly. The most fun I have had playing CKII has always been when all of my plans go to complete hell.

The first game that I played, I created the Empire of Hispania when the Aztecs landed in France. From there it was all hell to destroy their doom stacks. Took probably 50-100 years overall but between myself and the HRE we were able to take them down. Once the stacks are gone it's a matter of picking of piece by piece. After we pushed the Aztecs out I controlled all of Spain, most of France and a mexican standoff with the HRE.

[Exothermically Eclectic]

Originally posted by catma59:

After we pushed the Aztecs out I controlled all of Spain, most of France and a mexican standoff with the HRE.

I admit, I giggled.

[La Follet]

at this point in your game you cant rly do much against the aztecs because u r just plain too small. like mentioned earlier if u do become a vassal, you can convert to nahua and bide your time till you are able to declare independence. pretty much in all my ck2 games, if i do not interfere against the aztecs, they will be destroyed in a few decades since their special troops composition arent that great and they lose a lot in their western european invasions. plus they barely get enough levies with the penalties to effectively fight the rest of europe.

to deal with aztecs in a new start:
just grow and expand till you are big enough. make sure u focus all your military research into military organizations. since you have learned the mechanics of the game, it will be easy for you to expand and be large enough to counter them. when you are large enough, you can easily even beat their hordes with just retinues. in my most recent game i had controlled britannia, hispania and francia (i started as a count in ireland). and was too lazy to expand, but i already had 60k retinue troops and they were just the normal 100/400 cavalry type. i crushed his forces without using any levies nad mercs. just used proper maneuvering making sure to atttack his stacks before they bunch up to become a doomstack.

[Fantasy Fan]

How would I go about getting a big retinue like that besides military organization and upgrading the castle buildings necessary? I had level 4 or 5 organization, but I did somewhat neglect the retinue buildings early on because I didn't even know what it was until the mid 1100s. As a result my retinue was only 5500 men and the levies I could raise in addition to that brought me to around 25k men.

[Exothermically Eclectic]

Retinue cap is based on how large your realm is.

[Boskov]

The solution to Aztecs, Mongols, and Timur is to get really, really big. If your retinues aren't enough, then boat bomb them (gather your army in a fleet and land it on the enemy). They break up into stacks of 10-15k in my experience, but stay fairly close together to aid each other if needed.

Boat bombing was nerfed with a morale hit but even at 50% morale a stack of 100k+ will wipe out a 15k stack of Mongols and leave no survivors. A little gamey, but so is a massive attritionless army pillaging your lands.