When they spawn, they will be at 0% moral. When someone hires a holy order, that order will spawn in their capital (or nearby if there are troops present). You can also mark the grandmasters as special interest characters so you get a message when they join or complete wars. To find out what a holy order is doing, look up their names on the wiki, enter them into the "find title or region" window (button below the minimap) and click the portrait of their grandmaster. So when they just fought a hard war, they will usually be below their nominal strength. Just keep in mind that the enemy can hire the orders as soon as their current war is over.Īlso note that holy orders replenish their troops over time. A great opportunity are crusades, because holy orders will almost always join them. So you should strike when most holy orders are occupied elsewhere. So when someone else hired them, or when they are landed and got into a war of their own, then your enemy can not hire them too. Holy orders can only join one war at a time. Keep track of what the holy orders are doing An additional positive side-effect of raiding is that you can use raiders to decimate the enemy troops without them hiring any holy orders or attacking your homelands like they would in an official war. So keep on raiding to finance your castle upgrades and build a money buffer from which you can hire some mercenaries if you need them. You will not get a "raised troops" opinion penalty as long as the troops are set to loot and you are at peace. You can even raise your vassal levies as raiders. This makes your heavy infantry extremely deadly during the melee phase of battles, especially when you got a good commander with the Heavy Infantry Leader trait.Īlso don't forget that as a Germanic Pagan you can still raid even after you became feudal. The attack bonus it provides applies to all heavy infantry from that castle, not just the housecarls themselves. Pay special attention to the Housecarl Training Ground upgrade. After a few upgrades, your castles will spawn more and most of all better troops than before. Not only do your troops take a huge dip and your councillors can no longer perform the jobs which cause small armies to spawn in your capital, you also lose the ability to instantly raise 2.5k tribal armies for 500 prestige each.īut if you survive the transition, you will soon become far stronger than you could ever be as a tribal ruler. Yes, you will become a lot weaker the moment you convert from Tribal to Feudal. These are some of the lessons learned: Do not wait to convert to Feudalism What can I do to stand a chance against the holy orders and prevent being steamrolled by the Catholic kingdoms in central Europe?Īfter playing my current game for some more time I think I understood the mechanics of holy orders well enough to answer my own question. Let's see how much of adifference they make. I think I am supposed to have at least one holy order of my own (the Jomsvikings) but for some reason they refuse to spawn even though I think I fulfill the requirements listed on the Paradox wiki Update: 20 years later the Jomvikings finally spawned. In my last game I converted to Feudalism which was the start of the end, so I am wary of doing it again. And don't even get me started about that crusade for Pomerania where the pope showed up with his 20k army totally thrashing me, my vassals and my allies.
Now every little Catholic duke keeps surprising us by conjuring up 4000-9000 soldier armies of heavy cavalry and heavy infantry which tear through our armies like paper. But when the Catholics receive their holy orders, everything changes. I reformed the Germanic faith and me and my allies from the Scandinavian region made good territorial gains in England, Germany and Poland.
Everything goes well until the early 900s. The year is 945 and I am running into the same issues I had in the first. My self-imposed goal is to spread the (reformed) Germanic faith as wide as possible and make it the dominant religion in Europe until the end of the game. I am playing Iron Man Jarldom of Sjælland Kingdom of Denmark from the Old God's start.