The Retinue system is a huge buff to large polities, who will be able to afford a giant standing army that can be one day from dropping into an enemy's territory when war is declared. That's one thing I've definitely noticed in my LP.
I played a bit yesterday, started a game as a Duke in the Byzantine Empire. Yeah, the split between plots and ambitions is great, along with the factions. In vanilla, it was very rare that any rebellions were any problem, as they were so disjointed. It also looks like you can't plot to murder your underage children now?
So I'm enjoying this. Fired up a Duke... (err... Doukas) in the Byzantine Empire. Proceeded to faction away, started some civil wars, made myself independent, started really expanding. Muslims showed up, conquered Greece, destroyed the Empire in 1120. I was "yay!". Then they took over my new country of Bulgaria, leaving me the King of Bulgaria with 2 counties in Turkey. Everyone else started converted to Islam. Boo.
New DLC! The Sunset Invasion. Aztecs invade Europe. It's ahistorical, but I love this idea. I always try to figure out how to make historical "underdogs" win in the Paradox games, so this sounds fantastic to me.
You won't be able to play as the Aztecs at least until modders get involved. They will basically be Mongols 2.0.
The modders will get on it within a day, CK2 is remarkably easy to mod, so if you're hyped for being able to play Aztecs that's not going to be an obstacle. As far as alt-history it seems pretty neat but I'll probably pass on it unless it includes a game mechanic that ends up being required by one of the mods I play.
I'm willing to bet the human sacrifice mechanic mentioned will at least be integrated by the Game of Thrones mod. Seems like it would be appropriate for the Red God.
After a bit of thought I realised that an Aztec invasion of Europe might be the most disastrous military venture in history, even if we assume they had everything required to bring an army across the atlantic. Two simple reasons. One, their skills in metallurgy are bronze-age at best. No metal armours, no metal weapons. This is a significant technological disadvantage when facing enemies with access to maille armour and steel weapons. But that disadvantage is still not nearly as big as the second one. No horses. In an age where mounted warriors were the military and social elites, when Genghis Khan conquered an empire off horseback and when the western european knight came into prominance the Aztecs have no horses. Worse than that, they have no experience fighting against cavalry. An infantry force can be formidable in it's own right but with zero institutional knowledge of how to deal with a cavalry charge they're just a rout waiting to happen. It also means that the Aztecs can't scout as well as their opponents, nor can their foragers range as far.
Could be that since the idea behind the scenario is that the Aztecs came to power earlier, could be they've got more metallurgical advances by then. The horse issue is trickier to hand-wave away.
I kinda figure that any society capable of sending ships across the atlantic has advanced far enough that it can make metal nails, so having the aztecs with iron/steel weapons too don't bother me other than that it makes them a bit less iconic than if they wielded their obsidian-edged macuahuitls.
Third reason: no immunities to communicable diseases. Even with the first two, they're going to lose 90% of their army to a host of Eurasian diseases.
Well, again, if the idea of the scenario is that the Aztecs had more European-like tech than they did in regular history, it is plausible that they would have equally European-like communicable diseases. Having a bunch of communicable diseases hanging around in your population (and herd immunity to such) is largely a function of population density (and relatedly, agricultural intensity). In a version of reality where the Aztecs had more European-like tech, they might presumably also have more European-like population densities also and hence, more European-like communicable diseases. The horses are harder to get round - the evidence suggests that the Americas were simply lacking in suitable horse-equivalent dometicatable species at the right time.
The link I posted earlier said that it will be Europeans that will be devastated by diseases brought over from America. REVENGE!
Meh. I would have much preferred an expansion eastwards to the Indus so as to include the rest of Persia, Afghanistan, the Aral Sea (back when it existed!), and parts of Pakistan. Timurids ho!
Sure, but those are both temporary disadvantages. A well organized and highly motivated society would learn from their early mistakes & come back stronger. The historical Aztecs were both of these things, as well as being bloodthirsty psychopaths on top of it. (The other mesoamericans were shocked by just how violent the Aztecs were.) Granted, it would make their initial appearance rather unimpressive. "Who the hell was that?" "I dunno. Apparently wearing lots of feathers is how they do war in their homeland though."
Sure, people will learn, and learn rather quickly, when their survival is at stake. But horsemanship is not easy, neither is the skill involved in breeding horses, or training horses for war, nevermind working out new tactics to incorporate cavalry. It would take a generation at least in my estimate before they could have something resembling a decent native cavalry force and the knowledge of how to utilise it effectively. Mercenary cavalry offers a shortcut, but not to an initial invasion force that has no idea where to hire mercs or how to utilise them on the field.
You know... I had never thought of it like that. I was thinking more in terms of "cavalry counter-techniques" rather than development of actual cavalry, but even so... how long did it take the Swiss to develop pikemen? It's funny... when I think of pre-industrial warfare, I never think of the developments as "technologies". After all... a pike is a fucking stick of wood with a pointy metal end. How hard could that be? Answer: plenty hard, when you factor in all the things you mentioned.
The Swiss were just starting to get a hang of pike warfare in the early 14th century, their rise to fame was in the mid 15th century. So the Aztecs would have to figure out pike warfare from scratch, with cavalry they could atleast emulate their enemies but here they have to be inventive and that takes a certain kind of genius that isn't going to pop up on demand. And pike fighting is plenty hard. We've got surviving military manuals from the pike-and-shot era that go over the pike drills. Handling giant sticks in formation without getting tangled up takes lots and lots of practice. And then you still have to fight the urge to run like hell when a cavalry charge is coming. I'm not sure I'd consider these developments technology either, it's more of a body of institutional knowledge.
Many of our diseases came from other large land mammals. The ability to domesticate cows, horses and other animals directly led to certain diseases (and our general resistance to them). The lack of many large domesticable land mammals outside Eurasia entirely prevented the ability for Aztecs to get that many diseases. Also, the general North-South axis of other continents prevented the movement and spread of mammals, populations and plants. Hence the Aztecs could have never had the large number of Eurasian-like communicable diseases.
Yes, but for this scenario to work at all the Aztecs have to have somehow gotten hold of some better domestic land mammals or they wouldn't have been able to achieve the population density to have the European tech.... as the book we're all referring to without naming has it, you really need the whole package all together. :)
Some sort of domesticated bison kind of thing maybe? Elkriding cavalry? Since it's fantasy, why be reasonable? *only mostly joking* Alternatively, there could be multiple Aztec invasions. The first one could be pure light/heavy infantry and archers, with a scripted-in penalty vs cavalry. The second invasion could have pikes. Flipping a province to Aztec culture would give you a culture building that zeroes out your cavalry output but upgrading it gives you massive numbers of infantry and a huge bonus to steadiness / some combat bonuses. It would be an interesting balance experiment, actually. Cavalry are fucking amazing in CK2 (which is why the 100/400 HC/LC split Retinue is so good), but you could possibly just have really tough infantry with higher morale / which take less morale damage or a big bonus to pursuit-phase Light Infantry. The first gives you "tank like a boss" and the second gives you "hit them with enough of a local numbers advantage and you obliterate their army instead of just routing it".
Alternatively, just give them fucking cannon. Massive amounts of morale damage in all phases, good melee damage, shitty skirmish and pursuit damage. Fuck-all for defense in all phases.
That reminds me, another huge disadvantage of no cavalry is that harrying a routing enemy becomes much, much harder.
You know, I don't think Paradox has ever done anything to stir up its fanbase quite like this new DLC. They are forcing all discussion to the official announcment thread (to stop the spam on endless "this is stupid!" threads), and that thread has reached 1200+ replies in just a couple of days. I suspect they did not expect this kind of reaction. ;-) There is a preview of the DLC on Destructoid now. It looks like the Aztecs show up with overwhelming force - stuff like 100k armies. Then they are allowed to develop cavalry from the lands they take over. Intermarriage and such is also possible, so if you always wanted an Aztec spouse now is your chance. The only really interesting feature they are including is the ability to rename provinces, apparently.
The DLC is stupid, but it's a fun kind of stupid. That Paradox has a lot of dumb-ass fans shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who spent fifteen minutes on their forums.
I picked up the Rome expansion and have been playing around with the new stuff via a Irish Duke since its been awhile since I last played. It does add some stuff, but its more in terms of depth then new mechanics. So instead of your vassals firing off completely unexpected actions, you can see things coming and choose how to deal with them in different ways. They also seem to have toned down the "its best to educate your own kid" strategy. You get fewer chances to impact abilities now, so what you end up with is a kid closer to your ruler's abilities.
You can find similar bitching in the Anabasis. Xenophon was constantly peeved that they'd beat enemies but couldn't chase the fuckers down and kill em off, so the guys they beat would just show up the next day. And the next. And the next. Eventually they formed a light infantry unit to do some chase work, but any enemy with cavalry was able to keep them at bay indefinitely. I sometimes wonder if all the battles of the ancient world in places where cavalry was not prominent were intended more as a sort of entertainment rather than attempting to win. You'd spend your spring planting, your summer fighting the neighbors and drinking heavily, your fall gathering and your winter, well, in bed. Hibernating. The Italians of the Early Renaissance managed to invert it. Their Condottieri fought with (almost) nothing but mounted soldiers and invariably had relatively bloodless battles. We've replace that deep seated need for seasonal brawling with sport. Perhaps that's why almost no one watches winter sport! It's out of the season we consider appropriate for violent conquests. The Romans, according to Livy, had an enormous protest over their first winter campaign (against the City of Veii). In any event, Napoleon wasn't saying anything new about cavalry.
Ok, I have downloaded the Sunset Invasion and will add it to my already started Danish game that's in the mid 1100s. This game is interesting because William the Conqueror did nothing of the sort, and it's been a Norwegian squabble for the throne of England. They've got through 7 kings in in 15 years. One of them was my bastard half-brother that I made a Bishop to get him out of my succession squabbles that one of the English Duchesses thought would be a great king.... I helped them (for giggles, mainly), and so at the age of 65 he became the King of England. And had no kids, so the throne went to one of my counts, who then died next month, and so... ha ha. Let's see if they get eaten by Aztecs.
