Overview
This guide is for a 867 Norse Start and walks you through character selection, a path for conquering and reforming the Norse religion and the steps to form a stable primogeniture scandinavian empire in a single ruler’s lifetime.
Setup
I have personally confirmed that this guide still works through patch (3.3.0)
I am running MaM, TOG, WoL, SoA, LoR, and Char. DLC (may not be compatible with Conclave Thanks to @ Nekcarb for confirming that this guide is Conclave compitable)
Pick King Haraldr of Ostlandet in 867 Start.
Form Ironman game w/o defensive pacts and shattered retreat
Subjugate Kingdom of Norway
January 867 Before you unpause, propose low tribal organization law, pick become king of Norway ambition (KoN) and martial focus, bribe and recruit any siege commander with martial 8+, declare war of subjugation on the 6 mainland KoN independent lords, and raise army and call for tribes. Have your councilors train troops, build legend, study technology in Constantinople, and build zeal.
Keep your two stacks split and move one up north and bootleg the second around the bottom. The goal here is to siege out the other guys 2 at a time and quickly, do not fight their armies (because they will soon be your armies). let them siege your holdings.
March 868: I have sieged down and subjugated the mainland KoN before they were able to siege my capital. DO NOT CREATE THE KoN!!! For this to work you need to stay at Duke level to the very end.
Expanding your territory
Eastern Conquest phase 1
April 868: For the next part you will use the remaining event troops and a 500 prestige 2500 man tribal army to lead your tribal allies using the conquest CB to conquer Kingdom of Lapland and Kingdom of Finland. The trick here is to never call your personal levies so you can constantly keep declaring war on the next domino in the line to fall. Always have a new war called and have your allies called in (with their response) before you close out the war you just won. That way your tribal allies and your 2500 man tribal army do not disband and your death stack stays together. This phase is to simultaneously bring more Empire of Scandinavia (EoS) territory under our rule and to increase Germanic moral authority via conquest CB (very important later).
Subjugate Denmark
October 873: With the phase 1 of the eastern conquest almost complete (the remaining independent lords should have truces in effect), we turn out attention to King Sigurdr of Sjaelland. Before the last eastern conquest war ends declare a war of subjugation against King Sigurdr of Sjaelland. This will be the biggest fight for you to date. Feel free to call up your levies (and an additional 500 prestige tribal army if needed) for this fight.
Eastern Conquest phase 2
July 875: With the successful Subjugation of most of Denmark we turn our attention back east to clean up the remaining independent lords now that the truces have started to expire. Pat yourself on the back if you dismissed your levies and declared your eastern conquest wars before finishing the war in Denmark. Around this time the 10 year cool down on proposing new laws should expire so go ahead and push for medium tribal organization (the 40 years of total cool down to get to Absolute tribal organization is the bottleneck in this play through). I also used this time to push subjugation of the islands out west that are part of de jure KoN.
January 880: We have conquered much of EoS (minus Sweden) and we have a couple last things to do before we start to reform.
Conquer the Duchy of Mecklenburg
January 880: One of the strategies of this play though is to conquer as much of the other unreformed pagans as possible before we reform the Germanic religion. Once we reform then we will suffer high attrition in their land and it makes wars against them more costly in man power and gold (for forts). The reason to go after Duchy of Mecklenburg is because that is where the Norse holy warrior Jomsvikings will form later if it is in Norse hands (some other conditions also apply). This is a good opportunity to take it.
Reforming the religion, going feudal, and forming your empire
Conquest of Zeeland and reforming the faith
January 881: With the conquest of the Duchy of Mecklenburg all but wrapped up, an opportunity presented itself. The owner of Zeeland (Germanic holy site) is distracted with an internal and external conflict and I now have a 8K death stack (with no personal levies in it) waiting to stomp something. My moral authority is sitting at 94% with a whopping +52% coming from successful county conquests! The only thing missing to reforming the religion is controlling a third holy site (Zeeland anyone?). Time to declare war, capture Zeeland and be able to reform the religion at our leisure.
Step 3 Profit!
February 890: I reformed the Germanic faith and used the new found holy war CB to bring the rest of Denmark into the fold (their ruler still followed the old ways). Unfortunately, Sweden converted immediately so I was unable to holy war them for a quick bite of their kingdom. I had to settle for a ducal de jure claim. In this decade I upped the tribal authority to high. This took my ability to wage war down severely but is a necessary step (at high tribal authority, you can no longer call your tribes to war) for going feudal later. If you played your cards right you should of just ended a period of non-stop war that lasted for ~23 years where your doom stack and event spawned armies traveled from conflict to conflict without ever disbanding. How to spend your next 10 years? Raiding! I called up ~3000 levies and set them to raid and sent them off to pillage Venice. Use this money to upgrade the hill fort in your capital to stone (required to go feudal).
Adopt Feudalism
January 900: Over the last 10 years, I raided Venice and the rest of the Mediterranean for gold and prisoner ransom, I gobbled up the last remaining pagan heretic counties in the EoS and Holy warred against Sweden who foolishly converted to Christianity. I also finished the stone hill fort in my capital and adopted absolute tribal organization. I have all of the requirements in place to convert to feudalism. At this point in the game I am two counties short of being able to create the EoS so I have decided to put off going feudal (lose military might, gain financial power) until I win one more holy war with Sweden. It has been almost 33 years to the day to get to this point.
Change succession laws and create KoN and EoS
December 905: After winning another holy war against Sweden, it is time to put this guide to bed. To get a primogeniture succession law for your empire title you have to follow these steps in order. First, adopt feudalism if you have not already done so. Second, change your ducal succession law to primogeniture (without legalism 4, the only way to get primogeniture is through ducal law change). Third, THEN create KoN and a second king level title. Fourth, create EoS title. If done in this order then you should have a reformed Germanic, feudal, primogeniture, emperor level title on Ironman with no exploits or cheats. And all it took was ~39 years of warfare, raiding and diplomacy. Good luck from there!
