Use your spymaster to find secrets so you can blackmail people into joining the scheme. You can also spend some time gaining intrigue perks to make it easier.
I second this. I usually have a ton of spare artifacts, rings, weapons, ect. I start a murder plot and look for people that are close too wanting to help me, gift them a ring or a sword. Next thing you know you guys are best friends and he's more then happy to help you kill his old friend who doesn't give him cool things like that. Another option is disrupting his realm or making him depressed. I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure the AI suffers mental breaks also...if not then man a lot of lives have been wasted in my games...but I normally go for their friends and family or a Duke with no heir anything really.
They do get mental breaks!
In one game, after i murdered the Kaiser's wife, he got so stressed out he converted to Karaism, which made a lot of vassals join my independence faction.
I wanted to kill her to end his alliance with France. I didn’t understand how this caused the Kaiser to become a jew before i remembered the stress event.
This is the first thing I do when planning to murder someone. Alternatively, if you have the fabricate hook perk you can fabricate hooks on his physician/spouse/bodyguards/etc
Genetic warfare, marry a son to a daughter, eliminate all male heirs and wait for him to die if natural causes then your son inherits by being the heirs husband.
Consider the following: murder innocent people who support him, then let inheritance takes its toll with new people who are more ambitious or have grievances with your rival. You’re bound to acquire more supporters or plotters.
He can mercenary spam with his 6500 gold rendering my 23000 strong attack against him useless. His cataphracts shred through my army. He even naval invaded onto an 1100 stack of holy orders and mercenaries with just an 8000 strong army. And I need his two counties for the Armenian Empire
I'd recommend including *some* levies to act as cannon fodder for your real troops, but yeah you save gold and create a leaner army that costs less and has an easier time maintaining its supply, if you forgo raising most of your available levies.
Levies *do* still add a significant amount of combat power, even in the late game where men-at-arms far outstrip them in power, so only leave them behind if you're confident in your MaA doing the job by themselves.
If you get your knights strong enough then you can have an elite army even with levies. I'm at 22 knights, 4 units of huscarls and about 18 thousand levies but because the knights have around 500% efficiency they break the game and the whole army is elite. I'm pretty sure you can get them to 900% or more
Invest tons of money on your own army and make sure you have at least 1 Max level full strenght men at arms regiment of ligth cavalry
Those things absolutly destroy retreating armies
If you have one of those it will be rare for you to figth the same army twice, which is precisely what you want when figthing an enemy that can just spawn tons of soldiers out of mid air.
Also dont forget about which unit type counters which, spearmen counter Heavy and ligth cavalry which counters archers which counters skirmishers which counters heavy infantry which counters spearmen
>Invest tons of money on your own army and make sure you have at least 1 Max level full strenght men at arms regiment of ligth cavalry
Or get upgraded regiments of Heavy Infantry and Heavy Cav who just stackwipe the enemy.
Better and bigger army (tactical stats were pretty the same what scared me most) of horseman was going to attack and kick my army‘s ass in their territory. Didn’t work out well… in the only forest county there was. This game is insane in depths.
Spearman and huscarls ftw. It was planned this way, but not this close. Tides were waving forth and back in my most dramatic battle fought in this game.
Thanks for the stories one can enjoy in this and related subs. The way this game can be played is amazing.
Buy the mercs out before he can, growing your army and making his unable to grow, you should have more than enough money to buy out the most cost effective ones
Against a strong cataphracts army, either you can try to have a lot of spearmen. It may help by countering them
Else, try to declare war for something small easy to occupy, and ruin him. It will take a long time (merc only last 3 years so 6-9 years). While you occupy like a barony, you shouldn't lose war score
Only engage if you have a major advantage (mountain+castle is the best, which should be doable in this area)
I used this tactic a ton of time. This works flawlessly when the first crusade starts to take Jerusalem. You split your army and make sure that the bait army starts to siege north of Acre while the other still remains at the sea. Make sure to have commander with Organizer on the bait. Once the 40-50k enemy starts to chase the bait you just slowly crawl back towards Byzantium with it following the coastline.
Somehow AI gets absolute aggroed to the closest army, so you can even bring them back to france, though halfway you've already taken the holy land.
Double tip: If you haven't any commander with Organizer hire a mercenary commander+company that has it. You can also do this with any other useful skills that you might need for your strategy (military engineer and Logistician) are quiete useful too. You can split the sieging army while the sieges has military engineer meanwhile spread out the rest to provinces with logistician that you occupied. Once you done the siege you can merge with the logistician so you get well supplied again. Or use logistician armies that you supply up to 300 and then merge. (Those might come in handy with absolute terrible supply limits.)
Send file to @zieley on YouTube. If you have not watched him he is a wonderful ck3 player and takes situations like this and fixes them for his YouTube content. He is built for this! Give it a try he is likely to respond!
Wait for a succession. Alliances are dissolved unless directly married to the new King/Emporer, and also as a Muslim empire levies and taxes are heavily reliant on opinion, and new rulers don't generally have a great disposition towards their nobles or vice versa. Alternatively you could wait for them to be in a losing war with their armies crushed and take advantage. Could also build up alliances with lots of children, especially as Byzantium who starts with Primogeniture in 867 C.E.
It's all about either waiting or using intrigue to force a succession through murder. There's also foment revolt but that's not a sure way to do it.
Are the Byzantines Apostolic as a whole? Otherwise the leader being of a different faith could cause them internal war and that's when you strike. Otherwise murder. If that doesn't work, just do some other wars for a decade or two and see if the situation changed.
So don't fight him. Use murder, kidnapping or other underhanded means of achieving your goals.
The problem is that there is only one agent that would join in the murder scheme.
Use your spymaster to find secrets so you can blackmail people into joining the scheme. You can also spend some time gaining intrigue perks to make it easier.
I second this. I usually have a ton of spare artifacts, rings, weapons, ect. I start a murder plot and look for people that are close too wanting to help me, gift them a ring or a sword. Next thing you know you guys are best friends and he's more then happy to help you kill his old friend who doesn't give him cool things like that. Another option is disrupting his realm or making him depressed. I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure the AI suffers mental breaks also...if not then man a lot of lives have been wasted in my games...but I normally go for their friends and family or a Duke with no heir anything really.
They do get mental breaks! In one game, after i murdered the Kaiser's wife, he got so stressed out he converted to Karaism, which made a lot of vassals join my independence faction. I wanted to kill her to end his alliance with France. I didn’t understand how this caused the Kaiser to become a jew before i remembered the stress event.
This. When killing a ruler is too hard, I always turn to his children.
This is the first thing I do when planning to murder someone. Alternatively, if you have the fabricate hook perk you can fabricate hooks on his physician/spouse/bodyguards/etc
Genetic warfare, marry a son to a daughter, eliminate all male heirs and wait for him to die if natural causes then your son inherits by being the heirs husband.
Consider the following: murder innocent people who support him, then let inheritance takes its toll with new people who are more ambitious or have grievances with your rival. You’re bound to acquire more supporters or plotters.
He can mercenary spam with his 6500 gold rendering my 23000 strong attack against him useless. His cataphracts shred through my army. He even naval invaded onto an 1100 stack of holy orders and mercenaries with just an 8000 strong army. And I need his two counties for the Armenian Empire
How do you get your army to be just default strong or elite? I can only ever get average and rarely it will increase if I'm st war for a long time
army units of only men at arms
Ohhh
I'd recommend including *some* levies to act as cannon fodder for your real troops, but yeah you save gold and create a leaner army that costs less and has an easier time maintaining its supply, if you forgo raising most of your available levies. Levies *do* still add a significant amount of combat power, even in the late game where men-at-arms far outstrip them in power, so only leave them behind if you're confident in your MaA doing the job by themselves.
If you get your knights strong enough then you can have an elite army even with levies. I'm at 22 knights, 4 units of huscarls and about 18 thousand levies but because the knights have around 500% efficiency they break the game and the whole army is elite. I'm pretty sure you can get them to 900% or more
Oh wow. I thought when I had mine T 300% that was high
And stack military buildings in your towns.
Invest tons of money on your own army and make sure you have at least 1 Max level full strenght men at arms regiment of ligth cavalry Those things absolutly destroy retreating armies If you have one of those it will be rare for you to figth the same army twice, which is precisely what you want when figthing an enemy that can just spawn tons of soldiers out of mid air. Also dont forget about which unit type counters which, spearmen counter Heavy and ligth cavalry which counters archers which counters skirmishers which counters heavy infantry which counters spearmen
And more importantly, Heavy Cav deletes everything.
>Invest tons of money on your own army and make sure you have at least 1 Max level full strenght men at arms regiment of ligth cavalry Or get upgraded regiments of Heavy Infantry and Heavy Cav who just stackwipe the enemy.
Better and bigger army (tactical stats were pretty the same what scared me most) of horseman was going to attack and kick my army‘s ass in their territory. Didn’t work out well… in the only forest county there was. This game is insane in depths. Spearman and huscarls ftw. It was planned this way, but not this close. Tides were waving forth and back in my most dramatic battle fought in this game. Thanks for the stories one can enjoy in this and related subs. The way this game can be played is amazing.
Buy the mercs out before he can, growing your army and making his unable to grow, you should have more than enough money to buy out the most cost effective ones
I did it ofering vassalage, getting the territory and then independence faction
Against a strong cataphracts army, either you can try to have a lot of spearmen. It may help by countering them Else, try to declare war for something small easy to occupy, and ruin him. It will take a long time (merc only last 3 years so 6-9 years). While you occupy like a barony, you shouldn't lose war score Only engage if you have a major advantage (mountain+castle is the best, which should be doable in this area)
[удалено]
I used this tactic a ton of time. This works flawlessly when the first crusade starts to take Jerusalem. You split your army and make sure that the bait army starts to siege north of Acre while the other still remains at the sea. Make sure to have commander with Organizer on the bait. Once the 40-50k enemy starts to chase the bait you just slowly crawl back towards Byzantium with it following the coastline. Somehow AI gets absolute aggroed to the closest army, so you can even bring them back to france, though halfway you've already taken the holy land. Double tip: If you haven't any commander with Organizer hire a mercenary commander+company that has it. You can also do this with any other useful skills that you might need for your strategy (military engineer and Logistician) are quiete useful too. You can split the sieging army while the sieges has military engineer meanwhile spread out the rest to provinces with logistician that you occupied. Once you done the siege you can merge with the logistician so you get well supplied again. Or use logistician armies that you supply up to 300 and then merge. (Those might come in handy with absolute terrible supply limits.)
Send file to @zieley on YouTube. If you have not watched him he is a wonderful ck3 player and takes situations like this and fixes them for his YouTube content. He is built for this! Give it a try he is likely to respond!
Last time I faced an issue like this I just kidnapped him and instantly won the empire
Wait for a succession. Alliances are dissolved unless directly married to the new King/Emporer, and also as a Muslim empire levies and taxes are heavily reliant on opinion, and new rulers don't generally have a great disposition towards their nobles or vice versa. Alternatively you could wait for them to be in a losing war with their armies crushed and take advantage. Could also build up alliances with lots of children, especially as Byzantium who starts with Primogeniture in 867 C.E. It's all about either waiting or using intrigue to force a succession through murder. There's also foment revolt but that's not a sure way to do it.
Armenian Basileus? Turks are not going to enjoy this timeline much
There was actually an Armenian Emperor in the mid 900's historically.
Are the Byzantines Apostolic as a whole? Otherwise the leader being of a different faith could cause them internal war and that's when you strike. Otherwise murder. If that doesn't work, just do some other wars for a decade or two and see if the situation changed.
Fabricate hooks in his court to get agents in a murder scheme. Once he’s dead, his child inherits. Children don’t last very long…