Overview
“I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”Ghengis Khan.This guide will show you how to conquer the entire known world in a couple of hundred years. It has been updated for version 2.2.1.
Introduction
I’m assuming that you’re starting play as Ghengis Khan in the year 1220 – this now requires you to select ‘Custom Game Setup’. This is quite a late start; we don’t have a country, and our objective is the complete conquest of the known world by 1453, so we can’t afford to waste time. Fortunately the Mongols have some advantages:
First, you have a starter horde, which requires no upkeep and doesn’t have to be disbanded between wars. These guys won’t last forever, and aren’t normally replaced, so don’t waste them on poorly planned siege assaults and close-matched battles. Your regular levies are more expendable.
Secondly, you start with an Empire. In earlier versions of CK2, you started with Ultimogeniture, but now you’re forced to endure Gavelkind. This is normally a very bad type of government, but the advantage of an Empire (as long as you only have one) is that it can only go to one son – so even if you lose some counties during inheritance, your younger brothers should remain as your vassals.
Thirdly, you have Mongolian culture. Philosophers have long debated which is the best religion. Well, according to Crusader Kings 2, the answer is ‘Reformed Tengri’. The Tengri religion makes it possible for you to use the Invasion Casus Belli, the best type of war, as often as you want.
Lesser men may waste their time forging claims for counties, but you are Khan! Might makes right!
Invasions
Invasions cost 500 prestige to declare, but if you’re following this guide, that will be fairly insignificant in almost all situations.
For an invasion, you pick a target leader, and a target kingdom. If you win the war, you get the kingdom, and any other provinces you captured during the war. That means you can capture all the territory of a leader in a single war!
Let’s say I’m attacking the Holy Roman Empire (please don’t try this at home – not until you’re in a position to bring a vast army to their borders). I pick Germany as the target kingdom. What I then do is occupy every Holy Roman county outside of Germany (click on the De Jure Kingdoms map button to see where that is). For a province to count as occupied, you just have to successfully siege the first holding in the county. Doing this should gain you enough war score to force a surrender – if not, capturing at least one territory in the target kingdom will boost your war score significantly. Note that you don’t have to accept surrender just because your war score is 100% – wait until you’ve occupied all the non-target provinces you want. (This is particularly important to get right during your first war, since Ghengish starts our already invading Khwarezmia – you want to capture as much land as possible before making peace.) Also remember you can start two or more wars at once if your armies are sufficient to win both simultaneously. This saves on having to repeatedly demobilise and remobilise your levies. It is a good idea to use this when attacking neighbouring allied powers – if you’re going to have to fight both at once, you might as well conquer both at once.
(General war tactics apply: Make armies that aren’t so big as to suffer attrition. Keep them close together to support each other if attacked. Sweep his armies from the field – preferably not with an army you are commanding in person, which is needlessly dangerous. Then divide your forces to siege many provinces simultaneously. Don’t assault castles unless you’re in a special hurry.)
When you win a war, the nobles are kicked out of the lands you occupied. The lands you gained but didn’t occupy – in the above example, the ones in Germany – come over to you, but with their existing vassal lords, who are now sworn to you as their new master. Both types of conquest have their advantages.
The advantage of clearing out lands is that they make great presents for your not-so-loyal minions. Go to your list of vassals and sort them by rank. Among your high ranking followers, see who doesn’t like you. Then give them one of your new provinces. Make sure you tick the ‘include lower titles’ box or you’ll have to give them the cities and temples individually or face their resentment. You should gain 60-120 loyalty for each county you hand out, depending on the number of holdings in it. I’ve had vassal kings who had a -100 relationship modifier just from how long I’d been using their armies for and who still loved me. If you don’t have any vassals you want to bribe with land, use the ‘Invite a Holy Man to court’ intrigue action a few times and pick a loyal-looking courtier to give the new land, ideally with the Content trait.
The main advantage of not clearing out lands is that you don’t have to hand out all the territories, which gets tedious when you gain a dozen in one go.
You will occasionally want to gain territory by other means. If you can capture someone’s land with a Holy War, that will save you 500 prestige and boost your religious authority (but you risk unexpected enemies joining in to defend their religion). If someone is already a Tengri, you can boost your relationship (gifts, sending in your chancellor) and persuade them to become your vassal peacefully.
Title Management and Laws
Since the limit on the maximum number of vassals was introduced, this has gotten more complicated…
Duchies (High Chiefdoms): Avoid making them unless you have a reason. (Such as ‘I need a quick prestige boost to be able to call an invasion’ or ‘I want to give it to a specific vassal’ or ‘I want to convert three direct vassals into one’.) When you die, your new heir is at immediate risk from the inevitable Independence faction (the only faction you really need to worry about). Creating duchies and handing them out is a good way to gain an immediate +60 loyalty boost to get you through to the next big invasion – as long as you have the money saved up. Try to avoid giving away the duchy containing your capital.
Kingdoms (Khanates): As you expand your empire, it’s probably a good idea to keep one kingdom for yourself (preferably the one containing your capital), and give the rest to your vassals. Try to avoid letting any one vassal gain multiple kingdoms in case they start to think they can replace you. In order to keep them loyal, you’ll probably have to hand out a lot of counties. This isn’t a bad thing as long as you don’t give too many to any one Khan. When you raise troops, you raise all the troops from your direct vassal in one place. This means that by giving an Indian king a province in Poland, you can instantly teleport all the Indian armies under their command to Europe. Note that because of this, you should try to raise armies manually by province rather than press the global ‘raise all vassal levies’ button. The ‘Direct Vassals’ map view makes it a bit easier to see where the good options are.
Empires (Khaganates): You can create / usurp, multiple empires if you want, but it’s probably not worth the high chance that some quirk of inheritance law will split your domain in two. They’re also another thing for your vassal Khans to be jealous of. They give you a prestige boost, but you should get tons of prestige from fighting wars. They enable De Jure conquest, but Invasions are almost always better.
Losing kingdoms to your extra sons is no problem, since they can still be subjects of your empire, but losing a whole empire is a serious inconvenience. You can increase crown authority and change the succession laws of an usurped empire, but this creates a lot of resentment.
Laws: I’d recommend a decentralized empire to allow for more vassals, Primogeniture in your primary kingdom if you can get it, medium crown authority once you’ve got your inheritance laws sorted out, and a small feudal tax to keep the money rolling in.
Capital
Impose a vassal tax as soon as possible – they won’t mind the tax as long as you keep handing out the territories. Always keep a war chest – that is to say, enough money to hire mercenaries that will get you through an otherwise unwinnable war.
One time I had 4,000 moneys (or whatever unit of currency this game uses) and I thought it was more than enough. Then a crusade was declared against me. I hired mercenaries, killed a hundred thousand enemy soldiers, captured Rome and forced a White Peace with a few hundred left in the bank. At that point I lost the ‘defending against infidels’ loyalty boost and suddenly had to deal with a massive independence faction with no reserve to call upon. (This is the problem with the hyper-expansionist style of play – you are reliant on capturing new territories to keep your minions happy, which means you can’t afford to waste much time on defensive wars.)
Don’t spend too much money on gifts to vassals – not when you can give them provinces.
Don’t spend money on buildings either, if your war chest isn’t full to bursting. They cost too much, and one building makes little difference when you’re operating on an imperial scale. As a conqueror, it’s often better to move your capital from time to time anyway – somewhere like Constantinople is good (as long as its tech levels are decent). Mercenaries always appear at your capital, so a coastal province is best if you want to be able to get them to where the war is. It’s worth building universities and monastic schools in your capital if you have the money and aren’t expecing to move any time soon.
Religions rebellions, peasant revolts and adventurer armies
Yawn. There will be no end of these, sometimes four at once. (You won’t usually have time to hold a Nerge.) Raise an army in the area, wait for it to mobilise to full morale, chase them down, repeat until war score is 100. (Actually, White Peace is fine when dealing with peasants.)
An annoying consequence of this is that it’s practically impossible to hold a Nerge, since apparently a single uprising in a distant province makes it impossible to go hunting – not that Nerge’s are particularly important. You might want to do one early on when there are less people to rebel, just so you can say you did.
Remember not to let these sidetrack you too much. When you have a huge territory, there’s no real problem with leaving a rebellion to fester for a while, then wiping it out once you’ve won your current invasion. If the rebels capture some of your provinces, you can get back the looted gold when you take the leader and banish him.
Religion
Try to make your vassal Khans Tengri and win the right kinds of wars to get your religious authority level up to the point where you get notified that you can create the reformed Tengri church. Holy Wars can make this happen faster. The reformed church gives you most of the advantages of a conventional religion – the ability to demand your subjects convert, a religious mercenary company – without taking away your Invasion ability.
This seems to be a lot easier with recent patches.
Ruling the world
If you succeed in turning the entire map one colour, you can keep playing to see if you can hold your empire together. This is surprisingly difficult since you no longer have new territories to give out. A good tip is to not tick the ‘automatically end plots’ button in Intrigue. Leave your Spymaster scheming in the capital. Wait for your Khans to start plots. Arrest them – focusing on the ones in the Independence movement first. (You can raise an army and send it to their territory before trying to arrest them – then, if they rebel, you’ll be able to bring them down in no time.)
Once you have one in prison, do not ransom them. You can strip them of their kingdom, assuming they did something sufficiently traitorous – or you can just keep them there, where they can’t join factions. (There is a good – but fairly brief – relationship boost you can get with your vassals for releasing prisoners, but don’t do this with someone who hates you unless you can transfer their vassalage to another Khan.)
Your main focus should be leaving your heir in a position to survive the tricky first year of his reign. The more duchies and kingdoms he can hand out, the better. You can also lower vassal taxes – you’re probably pretty rich by now. What do you need so much money for when you already rule the world?