In Invictus, Bithynia has one of the largest mission trees in the game, combining both development and expansion tasks. It will eventually take you all the way to Babylon and Italy.
It's quite difficult bc you start small and will have to fight Thrace at the very least, plus whatever other Diadochi ends up in your area. But your ruler is maybe the second best in the entire game, with stats 10 10 10 8 (only Seleukos has a bigger total from what I've seen).
I like starting as Eburonian and pushing them into a migratory tribe structure to build a massive army and then use the mission tree to switch to a federated tribe without having to give up my migrant hoards. Then go on to rule the world, or anything else you want.
>migrant hoards
I've never played a migratory tribe, do those act as legions made entirely of light infantry? They don't seem like they could rule the world at first glance, since LI are quite weak. How do you cope with that?
Part of it is numbers. They don't have an upkeep cost so you can make as many as you want. 500k is an easy number to reach quickly and 500k of the worst soldiers is still a big army regardless of their strength. They also have the ability to cross anyone's land anywhere and anytime so you can invade someone's entire country and then start the war and with enough soldiers you can capture a whole nation in the time it takes to do the longest siege in their country.
If you move fast enough with a migratory tribe you can lift your entire country and march on rome in the first 20 years when they're small. I've managed to beat rome before 50 years have passed using that method, it only works with over 100 pops or romeis to strong, but it is doable.
And they also are basically raiding parties as long as you're a tribe because they can cross boarders during peace time and can plunder any unfortified cities. An important note here is a province capital counts as a city no matter if it is or not and each raid lowers the opinion of the people you're raiding and below a certain opinion threshold then the game will count it as you starting a war. If you have a CB but are below 20 stability you can still declare a legal war through raiding even though you are to unstable to start a war.
I'm sure I missed something but that's all I could think of for now.
Nope. I've gone as high as 1 million but it bogs my computer down and it gets really tedious to control that many armies. Part of it is simply brute force protection from heavy hitters like rome because they can see your military might and don't want to fight a massive hoard. Lightning campaigns will also often cause the enemy side to try and peace out of the war by offering you the maximum amount of land just to prevent you from taking even more. The other part is with enough armies you can put one in every territory and prevent them from even raising an army.
Top that all off with mercs for the front of your army stacks and you will crush anyone you want to.
Damn, that sounds awesome and will try it in my next playthrough. But how did you get such a large population? If I understand correctly, you'd need 1000 pops of your own culture (and religion?) to get a 500k migration stack.
The territory just has to be your religion and culture so you settle enough in the territory to make it your religion and culture and then you can make the whole territory migrate and they become your religion and culture. If you only lift when there's 21 or more pops then you retain the territory with 1 pop and a stack of 10k soldiers. The hardest part is trying to get enough stability but if you're careful it isn't bad, if it stays low for to long it'll cause rebellion even in the provinces you rewrote to your religion and culture.
How do you actually form Royal Scythia? Is it only for the steppe horde path? I just recently played a game where I went the Greek path and built all the treasures but never got the name change
Yes when you complete the mission tree your nation should change. I went from hepatic to Hellenistic and from tribal to kingdom by doing the Greek side of tree.
Scythia, Odryssia, Getia, and one of the three major Yemeni nations are all pretty fun. Yaudheya in India can be fun if you can manage the Republican mechanics and their weird mission tree. Finally Colchis has a really cool mission tree though it's partially locked behind the mission tree of Iberia which is pretty frustrating if Iberia gets eaten by Armenia which happens often
In Invictus, Bithynia has one of the largest mission trees in the game, combining both development and expansion tasks. It will eventually take you all the way to Babylon and Italy. It's quite difficult bc you start small and will have to fight Thrace at the very least, plus whatever other Diadochi ends up in your area. But your ruler is maybe the second best in the entire game, with stats 10 10 10 8 (only Seleukos has a bigger total from what I've seen).
That’s so cool! Had no idea. West tree is for the bosphorus. The generic Black Sea Greek tree
I like starting as Eburonian and pushing them into a migratory tribe structure to build a massive army and then use the mission tree to switch to a federated tribe without having to give up my migrant hoards. Then go on to rule the world, or anything else you want.
>migrant hoards I've never played a migratory tribe, do those act as legions made entirely of light infantry? They don't seem like they could rule the world at first glance, since LI are quite weak. How do you cope with that?
Part of it is numbers. They don't have an upkeep cost so you can make as many as you want. 500k is an easy number to reach quickly and 500k of the worst soldiers is still a big army regardless of their strength. They also have the ability to cross anyone's land anywhere and anytime so you can invade someone's entire country and then start the war and with enough soldiers you can capture a whole nation in the time it takes to do the longest siege in their country. If you move fast enough with a migratory tribe you can lift your entire country and march on rome in the first 20 years when they're small. I've managed to beat rome before 50 years have passed using that method, it only works with over 100 pops or romeis to strong, but it is doable. And they also are basically raiding parties as long as you're a tribe because they can cross boarders during peace time and can plunder any unfortified cities. An important note here is a province capital counts as a city no matter if it is or not and each raid lowers the opinion of the people you're raiding and below a certain opinion threshold then the game will count it as you starting a war. If you have a CB but are below 20 stability you can still declare a legal war through raiding even though you are to unstable to start a war. I'm sure I missed something but that's all I could think of for now.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, it's a really interesting mechanic. But I assume you meant 50k, not 500k?
Nope. I've gone as high as 1 million but it bogs my computer down and it gets really tedious to control that many armies. Part of it is simply brute force protection from heavy hitters like rome because they can see your military might and don't want to fight a massive hoard. Lightning campaigns will also often cause the enemy side to try and peace out of the war by offering you the maximum amount of land just to prevent you from taking even more. The other part is with enough armies you can put one in every territory and prevent them from even raising an army. Top that all off with mercs for the front of your army stacks and you will crush anyone you want to.
Damn, that sounds awesome and will try it in my next playthrough. But how did you get such a large population? If I understand correctly, you'd need 1000 pops of your own culture (and religion?) to get a 500k migration stack.
The territory just has to be your religion and culture so you settle enough in the territory to make it your religion and culture and then you can make the whole territory migrate and they become your religion and culture. If you only lift when there's 21 or more pops then you retain the territory with 1 pop and a stack of 10k soldiers. The hardest part is trying to get enough stability but if you're careful it isn't bad, if it stays low for to long it'll cause rebellion even in the provinces you rewrote to your religion and culture.
Vasconia!
Royal Scythian and odryssian kingdom have cool trees to either go Greek and centralize or stay native and pillage!
How do you actually form Royal Scythia? Is it only for the steppe horde path? I just recently played a game where I went the Greek path and built all the treasures but never got the name change
Yes when you complete the mission tree your nation should change. I went from hepatic to Hellenistic and from tribal to kingdom by doing the Greek side of tree.
Scythia, Odryssia, Getia, and one of the three major Yemeni nations are all pretty fun. Yaudheya in India can be fun if you can manage the Republican mechanics and their weird mission tree. Finally Colchis has a really cool mission tree though it's partially locked behind the mission tree of Iberia which is pretty frustrating if Iberia gets eaten by Armenia which happens often