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.