Bay 12 Games Forum

You have to siege the province fully so it surrenders. You just can't raid all the gold and move on. It had a pretty high chance when TOG was released, it might have been lowered in the latest patches.

A lot of games have auto-detect for graphical settings now. They generally work well enough but I've never found changing the resolution too much of a hassle though. I do hate when a game has to restart every single time you change the smallest graphical setting.

Quote from: Bdthemag on June 20, 2013, 04:30:59 pm

"Heartbroken Xbox One employee lets rip."

Quote

given time to mature it could have turned into something worth having as a gamer much like DLC

I lol'd.

That was a fantastic read. You got to give Microsoft credit for finding and employing the most delusional people in the world. Clearly an equal opportunity company.

Couldn't you just assassinate the rival claimant?

Lolcat, can you explain your retinue tactics?

Cthulhu, mercenaries maybe?

There was a wonderful guide written up on the forums with a whole bunch of information. I'll try to find it. I'm terrible at trying to explain the combat mechanics of CKII, they're a little bit all over the place.

EDIT: Couldn't find the guide but I found some good information here.

Unit Types
Combat tactic

As you can see from the combat tactics it's generally best to stack a sole unit type or unit types that complement each other so you get the good tactics. Since you should always stick to cultural retinues (unless it's light infantry or light horses) you generally want to stack those unit types together. Vassal forces will come with a vast mix of units which will influence tactics to be much more random. On top of that they generally have a bunch of light horses which you must always avoid. LH have pretty useless stats and they will employ tactics that will gimp your other units. 
Note that non-cultural retinues will not have any bonuses while cultural retinues will have bonuses equal to the highest cultural building you can construct.

It's always best to find a leader with leadership traits that will benefit your stacked army. If there are cultures with a cultural tactic that will heavily benefit your army, such as Schiltron, you'll want to either employ some from over seas to lead or make a ghetto for renewable leaders.
If you have light horse or light infantry you'll want to employ a non-cultural retinue and mix in vassal forces. Light infantry cultures can survive off self and vassal levies alone since the cultural building will give a massive increase to the brunt of your army.

Do note that to effectively "game" warfare you'll need to be a fairly big size to have decent stacks of retinues. King level and higher is generally required. It also helps to invest all military tech into retinue size as well. 

When I get big enough I tend to treat my vassals just like enemies and do everything in my path to weaken them. I tend to avoid using levies since if you build your retinues correctly you can take out stacks five times bigger, the addition of levies tend to screw up tactics.
I love constructing great big stable empires which nothing could ever crush. My crowning achievement in the game is when I go into observe mod and the AI empire doesn't collapse and even expands. Feels good to make something that even the brain dead can control.
I've always strangely prefered stable, sustainable and renewable systems to sheer "power gaming". One of the reasons I have trouble with survival and city building games. 

Game over. A feudal dynasty cannot become a republican dynasty, but a republican dynasty can become a feudal dynasty.