2020 version : http://cyberkhansite.blogspot.com/2020/02/crusader-kings-2-tribal-guide-for-2020.html
I decided it's time to update my very old guide, some things stayed the same, some completely changed, overall in my opinion tribals are even stronger than they were before.
Little disclaimer. I won’t write here about North Korea mode, it is a style of play I don’t like and never played it. It works, but it won't be included in this guide. I also own all DLCs, so if you miss any of the dlcs, and something from this guide does not work for you, it is probably because you are missing certain DLC. I am happy to answer any questions in the comment section.
For the reference https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Tribalism
Some basic facts are here, but in this guide I will try, once again, to tell you how to be a better tribal chieftain.
Pros and Cons
+ Can field huge armies early
+ Can take concubines (except muslims and polygamy reformed pagans)
+ Can join warrior societies
+ Bigger domain
+ Can manage vassals easier
+ Absurd retinue cap
+ Can raid
- Our armies are basically dirty people with rags and some sticks
- Succession crisis happens more often
- Guess what kind of tax guy with a stick can pay? Low income
- Low vassal limit
- Warfare becomes tricky after feudal realms build up their heavy
infantry buildings
- Cannot use imperial laws
Retinues
The biggest change in Holy Fury DLC. Before version 3.0 tribals couldn’t field large retinues, but Holy Fury removed event spawned troops (decision to spawn 2500 troops for 500 prestige) and gave tribals some retinue cap in tribal buildings. This allows us to reach absurd retinue cap if we have many fully upgraded holdings.
To not make it so easy we are only allowed to get some light infantry spiced up with horses, archers or heavy infantry, all this for the cost of prestige, however, we are also allowed to pay money for culture specific retinue, and this gives us some room to crush feudal armies fairly easily. We can even have elephant troops as tribals, I haven't tried it yet but it must be awesome. Funny thing is that we inherit our retinues when we turn feudal, and they cost prestige in upkeep and reinforcement.
Succession Crisis
All right, when tribals were introduced in the Charlemagne DLC, our only enemy was elective gavelkind type of succession, it just splits our realm among our kids and creates kingdoms for them. To counter it we could change to culture that allows tanistry succession or turn muslim for open succession.
Holy Fury is giving us more tools to mitigate succession crises. Now we don't have to change culture for tanistry, it is enough if we have a bloodline that enables this law. I won't write how to breed a bloodline into our dynasty, just look on ck2wiki. Romuva and African religion start with eldership succession, it works the same as tanistry, moreover, we can reform other pagan religion to enable this law, or use open succession law.
However, in Holy Fury, people with high personal combat score can challenge us to a duel for our titles, if we accept and win they die, if we accept and lose then we die and our heir is probably left with some shitty province or game over or we can play as our foe if he was from our dynasty. If we refuse then we get craven trait, and if we refuse again we get some negative opinion modifier. It is worth to mention that tribals have special trait for kinslayers, it just lowers some diplo and dynasty opinion, but other tribesmen see you as a tough guy.
To sum up, tribals have more options now to avoid big realm splits or consolidate their realm faster if these splits eventually happen.
Income
Our income as a tribe is very low. With fully upgraded holding we will have some much troops that we won't be able to sustain them with our shitty income. That’s why we have ability to raid, we can just move our troops to a province that borders ours and loot it, or if we have boats we can voyage around entire map. Most of the times raiding will be our main source of income, and if we are persistent with it, we can make way more than feudal lords.
Second thing that helps us with some cash is trade, at this moment we have two main trade routes, silk road and the one in Africa. Silk road pays more but it can close completely if Chinese Emperor is isolationist, African one needs to build up and it generates some cash even if gold mines are dry. Even one trade post can boost our tribal income by 200% or 300%.
Next we have tributary states, it's pretty straight forward: your tributaries pay you money and help in wars. I personally like to bully some Byzantium or Umayyads for a fat check, I can’t be bothered with opms and such.
Last thing that I really like is ability to pillage holdings, just like nomads do. I like to leave cities as vassals in the province, but burn down temples and castles. If we have few provinces to pillage then gold stacks up pretty fast.
In my opinion if you aren’t bored to grind conquests and raids then looting and pillaging is your mojo, otherwise go for trading and having tributaries. Of course you can have all 4 and swim in gold.
Warfare
My favorite part, because future of your tribe depends on your troops quality and condition. Fighting another tribes is easy, 90% of the time bigger numbers win. Real fun starts when you have to take on big feudal death stack or nomad ponies.
Holy Fury gifted us with retinues, and instead of spamming even more we should make our retinues backbone of our army. If we can then we should buy heavy infantry, pikes, light cavalry, if not then I suggest we change culture. With troops that can withstand melee vs feudal troops and lots of light infantry we can go toe to toe with more advanced realms for longer than before.
As we know AI is stupid and will never build strong retinues, therefore we must have it in mind when we call them to war.
On the other hand we should not neglect our light infantry, it is wise to invest in some light infantry tech after getting our military organisation lvl 4. We should build up weaponsmith lvl 4 in our every province, it gives us 40% moral for our piss poor soldiers. It is also good to have commander with morale defence modifier to lead them, actually we should focus on morale while we are tribals, our numbers will do the rest.
Tribes were early bloomers and then they were falling down when the difference between light infantry and heavy feudal levies was showing. Now tribals can also have strong troops and can boss any realm around.
Statecraft
I don't know how to call it so it is gonna be called statecraft. Right now I can see clear 3 ways of managing our domain. Third is NK mode but I already said I won't spend time on it. Let’s establish that the more provinces we hold personally the better, since it gives us larger retinue cap.
First one is keeping our domain clean from any temples, cities and castles. It allows us to have large light infantry numbers, it is also good when we have good cultural specific building (for example 7 slots fully upgraded Polish Poznan, with 30 Martial ruler, marshal training troops can yield around 1000 light cavalry). Our income will be low and retinue cap slightly lower than the solution number 2.
Obviously it's possible after some conquests, because most tribals start with only option one available. Basically we want to keep temples, cities and castles as barony level vassals. This will spice up our troops a little with some heavy stuff, give us more income, and slightly better retinue cap. It will lower income and troop count in our tribal holdings.
Both are viable, I prefer little mix, I keep only cities as barony vassals and that's it.
Way of life foci
I would suggest to pick war focus at the start to boost our troop count. When we build up some retinues then we can pick whatever we want. There are some other ways but situational, we can pick business focus to counterfeit currency and get some gold, or learning to get fast military tech lvl 1 and invest in these shipyards for raiding. We can also pick seduction and spawn horde of bastards and then pick only one to legitimize when we are locked in elective gavelkind.
Buildings
Almost every building is important in our tribe.
https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Tribes#Buildings
Let me write some quick notes. Earth hillfort is important as it gives 100 retinue cap, we can build it and expand later in the game, I suggest we build it in every province even when our capital is not ready yet. Same story with market village.
Shipbuilder, having some ships really opens up more raiding possibilities.
Training grounds, usually I build it as the last upgrade.
War camp, I max it very early. Really boosts up our troop count, at that helps us with wars and to scare of potential factions and foes.
Culture specific building, it is one to max early, gives bonuses to all the troops, retinues too.
Weaponsmith, the most important building of all. Gives us morale, retinue cap, and reinforce rate. Max it if your neighbor is angry feudal.
Practise range is meh, I rarely build it. It is nothing bad if you do want it, build it at the end.
What I do is to max out my capital and max out weaponsmith in all of my domain + earth hilfort and market village for retinue cap.
Warrior societies
One of the best Holy Furry additions. We fight, drink and have adventures with our lads. It is designed for pagans , but if we are tribal and not zealous then we can join with any faith(but we have to be neighboring any pagan realm). They are very similar but have some unique powers based on religion.
For example Africans can create spirit masks and fetishes, Romuvans get free fort upgrade and the most stupid of all 1000 pikes event spawned troops. We can boost our martial and personal combat skills, and also get a decent bloodline. At second rank we are allowed to pick 3rd commander trait which might be very beneficial if we set our retinue according to it, also, when we have 3rd commander trait from Chinese commander, then we can have 4th one for ultimate greatness.
These societies boost our martial and personal combat skill and these are useful skills for every chieftain.
Vassal management
This will be short section. I see no point in rising tribal authority early in the game. Rising tribal authority only gives power to our vassals and nobody wants it. We can do it later on when we want bigger centralization and +2 domain limit from absolute rule (but we gotta rollback all the council power caused by full tribal authority). We can enact religious mandate with minimal authority so we will have easy time revoking heretics.
Prestige
Our income is low but we do not need lots of money as a tribe. Our main resource is prestige. It is needed to build most of the buildings and buy and keep up retinues.
Biggest source of prestige is raiding, we are able to reach 5k-10k fairly easy. Then we have passive prestige income like concubines, artifacts, bloodlines, tributaries. These are not completely useless because we don't need to do anything to acquire prestige.
Prestige also matters in the elections, and with more succession types now, half of the tribals need to sway some sort of elector in his favor.
Turning feudal
It's even better now than in reaper's due, we get to keep our retinues and they will still cost prestige. I suggest we fully develop tribal counties before feudalising. It is not a bad decision to feudalise, but I think tribalism is more flexible.
Final words
Tribes are awesome! Go check them out! woo
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