Which DLC to get ? Crusader Kings 2 short dlc guide.

This thread pops on reddit everyday. I have decided to write short guide which DLCs you should get.

tl;dr
Must Buy:
Way of Life 7.99 euros
Conclave 14.99 euros
Reaper's Due 9.99 euros
Wider Content
The Old Gods 14.99 euros
Charlemagne 14.99 euros
Sons of Abraham 9.99 euros
Legacy of Rome 9.99 euros
Pick-what-you-like DLCs
Horse Lords 14.99 euros
Republic 9.99 euros
Sword of Islam 9.99 euros
Rajas of India 14.99 euros
Sunset Invasion 4.99 euros


In my opinion there are 3 tiers of dlcs. Lets name them Mandatory, 2nd Tier, 3rd Tier.

Mandatory.
So I think that there are absolute two mandatory DLCs that add flavor to any country we play. Way of Life and Conclave. 

With the Way of Life we are able select a life focus which greatly improves flavor of our game.
It costs 7.99 Euros

Conclave gives us new education system for children (similar to way of life foci) and new council mechanics that makes the game easier or harder, depends on our vassals and our ruler. It costs 14.99 Euros.

Weird Tier.
I do not know where to put this DLC. Legacy of Rome allows us to buy retinues and adds some flavor to the Byzantium. I don't know where to put it because it is not so much of content but ability to purchase retinues makes it almost a must-buy. I doesn't have a fancy picture so I don't upload it. It costs 4.99 Euros.

2nd Tier
DLCs with much content.

The Old Gods

Allows us to play pagans and blesses us with earlier start date. With this DLC you can drop boring vanilla Christians and burn some villages with your viking chief or bury yourself deep in snow as a Suomenusko tribe. It was a huge deal at the release day, Vikings were super strong  and the rest of the pagans super boring :) Good times. After 2.6 Patch however, all of the pagans are with some flavor. It costs 14.99 Euros.

Charlemagne

Border gore simulator with even earlier than The Old Gods start date. It helps the AI to create huge frankish blob in the middle of Europe. It is very unbalanced start but hey, it is fun. However, it is in 2nd tier due to many new fun starts to play. It costs 14.99 Euros. Not worth it's price in my opinion.

The Reaper's Due

The newest DLC. I was contemplating to put this in the mandatory tier as it gives a bit of dynamism on the whole map. Main two mechanics are disease spreading around the map with it's flag ship ; The Black Death, and prosperity for our provinces. It is 3rd DLC you should get imo. It costs 9,99 Euros, totally worth it.

Sons of Abraham

Solid DLC. Does not add much visible content but adds a lot of decisions and events for Jews, Christians and Muslism. If you don't play these 3 religions do not buy this DLC. It costs 9,99 Euros.

3rd Tier

Get whatever you like.

Now that I listed all of the core DLCs, it is time for cherries or bananas on top.

Horse Lords

It is my personal favorite because I am interested in Nomads from the great steppe. Beside ability to play as totally OP horse lord, we get Silk Road mechanic. It improves income through provinces it passes. If you were used to boring Christians and start playing as a nomad prepare for a small shock. release day Horse Lords felt like a clumsy mod but now its all good! It costs 14.99 Euros.

Republic

Nothing much to say here. It allows us to play a merchant republic. Do not buy if you don't have Legacy of Rome DLC as republics rely on their retinues. If you are not interested in playing a Republic then don't get it. It costs 9,99 Euros. Not worth it imo.

Sword of Islam

You wan't to piss off 'kebab removers' and unite entire map under the flag of the prophet? Then get Sword of Islam. Muslims are easy mode conquerors with easy vassal management. It costs 9,99 Euros.

Rajas of India

If you get hot just thinking about playing Hindu and study kamasutra then get this DLC. Indian Subcontinent its not that bad. It costs 14,99 Euros. Super overpriced.

Sunset Invasion

Aztecs kill Europe. Fantasy DLC that I don't like. It costs 4.99 Euros. 

I hope I did not miss any lol...

How to be a good chieftain. Crusader Kings 2 Tribal Government guide.

Yet another post about tribes. I am afraid this guide won't be newbie friendly. If you want a nice guide for new players let me know in comments.

tl;dr, have high martial, pick war focus, build war camps, don't overextend, have large capital duchy, smash your enemies.

Let's jump right into it!

As a tribe chieftain prestige means more than money. You build buildings and summon armies with it. Therefore, traits, techs and events that boost up our prestige are welcomed.

Traits that boost our prestige: Scarred, Proud, Renowned Physician, Viking variations, Born in Purple and Augustus. Last two are quite hard to get, but oh well. Now you have a reason to start a new game and get that Augustus trait with your tribe :) As for the techs, there is only one, majesty. I recommend to put 2-3 points there after our legalism is level 1. I won't mention the events that give us some prestige because there is a lot of them and it is not really a post with a long list of events.

Stats.
I favor only one stat worthy of a strong chieftain. Martial score. High martial means more levy and more levy means more room for expansion and being save from hostile invasions. If we lack high martial score we better have good diplo to keep our vassals happy. If you have a low martial and diplo score then right click on your portrait and suicide. We don't really need stewardship as tribal government gives us domain size bonus and our income is so low that even 50 stewardship won't help it. Learning doesn't give us anything cool and intrigue is good secondary trait, a chieftain with high intrigue and low other stats is bad. Martial is the best for tribes. Sigurd smash!

Way of Life foci.
If we have 1-3 star martial education then War focus is the way to go. We can get two leadership traits and get to 4 star martial education real quick. Improving martial equals more warriors! Hunting is good as always, martial bonus, dogs etc. However, I think that business focus is 2nd best after War. Business is a focus that gives us things that every chieftain dreams about, money and prestige. Minting coins, trade route, building garden or tower reward us with either money or prestige or both. Business is a very good focus with little risk of being depressed. Fourth best for defensive pagans is Theology, because as you already know defensive pagans can summon 2000 event troops for 200 piety and theology focus gives us much piety and +1 health on top of it is very good. If you are not playing a defensive pagan then 4th best is Family focus with good bonuses for fertility, health and global opinion bonus. 5th for me is Carousing, obviously to become friends with your vassals. 6th Scholarship, I don't really like it but if you wanna rush shipyards in the Charlemagne start then pick scholarship. Last ones for me are intrigue based foci, I don't like Intrigue at all and Seduction is only fun when you are bored, although you can use it to cheat(hehe) elective gavelkind and always have only one heir.

Buildings.
Your very first two buildings are going to be war camps. War camp gives you more warriors to conquer new lands and women. If you already have level 2 war camp and you are still in the disadvantage then get it to level 4. The next one I like to go two levels of weapon-smith, it gives morale and levy reinforce rate. As you know tribe warriors do not wear armor so you have to make sure that your weaponsmith sells them very sharp axes to boost their morale. High morale with tribal levies is very important as it allows us to sometimes win a battle with stronger feudal armies. After that it is pretty much whatever you need, except practice range which is very bad building, build it last.

How to deal with elective gavelkind.
Gavelkind succession sucks, and elective gavelkind sucks even more. But there are ways to mitigate the damage. First, don't expand too much. I know you are very ambitious chieftain but try to keep one kingdom title and do not conquer more than 50% dejure land of another kingdom. If you hold 51% of a uncreated kingdom title land, then upon your death the title will be created for your genius strong son that your vassals didn't vote for. Just be content with what you have, large realm doesn't mean much if you are tribe. What really matters is your own domain, and here comes my second point. Pick a duchy with many counties in it. Novogrod duchy is a good example, it has one strong county and 3 decent ones. Lets say your ruler died and he had 4 sons, your elected heir got Novogrod and his brothers one county each. It is not the end of the world. You can easily pick them one by one with a plot to revoke their counties because your brothers hold land within your dejure and capital duchy. Even better when one of your brothers decide to go independent, you get a strong claim on all his lands and you can press them all in one war. So, after 3 short wars you would regain full control over Novogrod duchy and enjoy full levies from it for another generation. Thats why I think that large duchy is useful to quickly jump back in the business with large levies. Smaller duchies like Kiev (2 counties) are not so good for us. Lets assume our ruler had 2 counties in Kiev duchy and 5 counties somewhere else, his second sons are going to grab these 5 without a chance to get them back without a tyranny (unless they declare independence on succession). Long story short, don't overextend and have large capital duchy.

2nd trick to deal with Elective Gavelkind is mentioned earlier seduction focus. The main idea behind it is to not have wife or concubines and just start poping bastards and legitimize only one, and only legitimize second when the first dies. This ensures that we have only one heir and he will inherit everything. It is quite risky however, we can always succeed our daddy but die of cancer 2 years later without a heir and game over screen.


Few tips

• Don't attack feudals unless you are certain that you can defeat them in the skirmish phase.
• Pick a steward with high stewardship and shrewd/quick/genius. He can find 500 gold for you :)
• Tribesmen like it big, try to breed strong trait into your dynasty
• Muslim tribals have access to open agnatic succession law, and Celtic tribes to tanistry.
• Do not rise your tribal organization ever. Do it only when you wan't to convert to feudal.

Reaper's Due and Defensive Pagan tribes gameplay.

Hi!

Reaper's Due and the free patch that came with it gave a little more flavor to defensive pagans, which had nothing except a feast every 5 years or so(West African had nothing :) ). Free patch 2.6 added three new intrigue actions for defensive pagans.

1. Summon Devout Warriors - we are allowed to summon 2000 event troops for 200 piety in the defensive wars against heathens. This is a funny thingy where an OPM can summon a deathstack of 12k warriors out of thin air. As I saw on reddit many players still don't know about it.
2. Worship Ancestors - We can ask our ancestors for few things: companionship, luck in war, prosperity, wisdom and health. Of course one of these favors won't be for free. We can sacrifice a part of our body, prisoner, some money to throw a feast, or just carve a small idol for small sum of money. I think that it doesn't matter what we do, the outcome is random. But, from my experience worshiping ancestors will grant us a positive outcome 70% of the times, 25% it will be failure and 5% nothing will happen. There is plenty of the outcomes, I don't want to spoil all the fun for you. Play a tribe and see for yourself!
3. Patron Deity - I think this is very OP thing. We can select one patron deity from four choices. Each of them gives +2 to a stat (except learning) and takes away another, example +2martial-1diplo. It is not a big deal, but events associated with these patrons are super strong. I will mention few. +2 diplo patron will boost of fertility and grant global opinion bonuses, +2 martial can boost our martial score and increase levy size in our capital by 25%! +2 intrigue can boost our intrigue score and reveal plots. And finally the real banger is +2 stewardship patron, we can get prosperity level 3 within 2 years, and another bonus called blessed lands +20% tax bonus in our capital. Level 3 prosperity + blessed lands + trade route+4 lvl market village can give us a decent income (for a tribe). Not to mention we can become friends with people who worship the same patron as us.

With these changes defensive pagans are actually capable of defending themselves and not get destroyed after few years. Nice and quite important thing is that AI will always summon piety/prestige warriors if the have less levies than their enemy. Overall Slavic, West African, Romuva and Suomenusko are finally playable and I am having a blast playing Suomenusko Russia right now.

I recommend start somewhere in Mali or Poland and start kicking ass with not-bad-at-all defensive pagans!

List of interesting religion/culture/government combinations.

Posted this on reddit a while ago. Plenty of interesting combos, not so hard to pull off.

NOMADIC

• Religion: Tengri

It might be obvious but nomadic retinue can consist of Light Cavalry units, and Tengri gives 30% to LC attack and defense

• Religion: Hindu

30% Morale is good at the every stage of the game.

• Religion: Muslim

It has a few bonus events that help with the relations a little (hajj and faqih/hafiz), but it is mostly for 25% jizya tax. If we conquer new non-muslim feudal lands and generate muslim governors for them, we would get a bit more income after some time.

• Religion: Jain

Relationship bonus for your vassals (+15 from Jain and possible +5 from a sect). If you want to keep your sedentary vassals happy, this is the religion to pick. As a nomad you retain all of the aggressive CBs anyways: Invasion, Subjugation and Subordination.

• Religion: Germanic

Blot can boost up your morale for a while and you can get traits like Sea King by raiding inland with your horde.

• Religion: Pagan Defensive

I did not check it but I am positive that our horde troops would get 80% defensive bonus in our territories.

• Culture Group: Altaic

Retreat and Ambush combat tactic. Simply put: unreliable tactic.

• Culture: Alan

Castrating and Blinding for the cruel rulers out there. Also Embolon charge tactics, which isn't bad.

• Culture: Mongol

Allows the creation of the Mongol Empire, and the Mongol Empire has a special hunt called Nerge which gives huge morale boost and can be used quite often.

• Special Mention

Immortal Hindu Khan of Khans would have permanent 30% Morale from Religion and 15% from the Khans of Khans modifier + occasional bonus from Nerge. Khan of Khans also gives opinion boost for vassals. It lasts only one generation so Immortality is a must.

• Cheese/Favor Only

Culture: Frankish, Occitan, Norman, German, or Breton Can invite these commanders to lead our cavalry flanks and fire 420% HC damage combat tactics.

REPUBLIC

• Religion: Muslim

4 wives will speed up our trade post limit. Also, no decadence.

• Religion: Pagan and Dharmic.

Concubines and raiding. Special mention to Unreformed Germanics bonus 30% more retinues which would be great for a republic.

• Culture: Norse, Berber, Altaic (did I miss any?)

Raiding. Can be paired with Muslim religion.

TRIBAL

• Religion: Muslim

Open succession prevents succession crisis and by being independent muslim we get +5 presitge per month which helps upgrading tribal holdings. Decadence at 0% also helps our light infantry win battles that reach melee phase.

• Culture: Celtic
• Religion: Jain

Hard to pull off but I think it would be cool. Celtic cultures allows Tanistry succession. Jainism increases our domain by 3 so with some laws and nice stewardship we can get around 15 domain bonus. If we will have only barony level vassals as a King, we will be able to select our next heir with ease(I don't know if heir designation would work with Tanistry).

• Culture: Mongol
• Religion: Jain, Buddhist

Mongols can have ultimo succession as a tribe and religions mentioned above can designate any progeny as the heir.

• Religion: Hindu

Very little compared to others but 30% morale for tribes is good.

FEUDAL/IQTA

• Culture: Norse, Berber
• Religion: No Pagan, No Hindu

Can raid.

• Culture: Celtic
• Religion: Germanic

Can be strong if we get lucky and our vassals vote for high martial heir.

• Religion: Jain
• Title: Byzantine Empire

Born in Purple, Jainism, Jain sect will grant us huge vassal opinion bonus. The downsides are limited CB