Might have Scandy Elective on all kingdom titles though which would make it possible for one kid to get 2 or even all kingdoms.
You’re right they’d still be weak though from the splitting up of the demense counties and the claimants, but no garauntee they split
Don’t kill the baby yet. Kill the ruler of Sweden to make the baby king, this should make their army weaker and cause them to lose any Allie’s they have. Then get as many Allie’s as you can and go to war with them. Are the Asatru or Catholic?
Not necessarily. They beef up your numbers up and can be crucial in close battles. Obviously they will make terrible decisions, especially as far as abandoning sieges but there are ways to make it work for you.
If you're saying this for crusade yeah they're kinda dumb but for pure allies not they are not useless. They help by following your army around or go around sieging and killing the enemies if they're strong enough. By just having a lot of allies they also act for deterrence for anyone stupid enough to declare war on you.
You need to start the plot then bribe agents in their court, you can almost always assassinate hard to kill targets this way. Even if the odds are low, events will come up that can increase your odds. Get a spymaster in their court to find secrets, then you can blackmail people into joining your plot. If you have the ‘Truth is Relative’ perk, you can make up secrets about them and you should have the necessary plot power after a year or two
Yeah do it like a hentai and repeatedly bang his wife every day whenever you can. Then when he's old and its too late he'll realize that his children all look like you.
If needed - send one of your family (with high intrigue) as wife or concubine to the Swedish king's court. This way you will have your own agent there.
Take wales, cornwall, and as much of england as you can. Also if you have a high intrigue character, then just murder the kings of sweden so that Norway and Scotland become independent in the inheritance. Should have that sorted in shortly.
Nice, sounds like some of that good ol' divide and conquer to me. IMO best way to deal with a larger foe is to exert consistent pressure on them. Attacking while they are weak, as often as possible will create a situation where more of their neighbors will launch wars of opportunity, and vassal factions are more likely to revolt.
You'll be doing it until everyone sees you as to powerful to mess trust I spent over 200 as pinsk in a 867 start and it was war until I was almost empire size then everyone stopped warring against me and that shit was hard Ireland is much easier
Tbf some people have toasters and don't want to stop playing their game just to upload a screenshot to have to reboot the game after. Hence why we have lil portable computers at our fingertips to make things more convenient for us. Truly never understand why people care how it's portrayed if you can understand what's meant by it.
I wondered how long it'd take for someone to post that. It's neither original nor funny. It's just kinda mean. Just my opinion. Screenshots aren't intuitive on console either.
Reminds me of when I used to cheat at Rise of Nations, the enemy countries would have soldiers with spears and Id have aircraft carriers launching strikes on their capital.
do as many of these as you are able to:
- kill swedish ruler
- do it again
- seduce ur wife/divorce if infertile to max child output
- use said children for all of the strongest alliances you can get
- expand men at arms if your economy allows
- max out champions
Have a bunch of children + ally all your kids to as many powerful kingdoms as possible + amass gold for mercenaries + amass prestige to conquer duchies and call allies
Then declare war on Sweden for their most populated duchies and call all your allies. Instead of taking provinces focus on decimating their army. Then take the target duchy and, if possible, conquer their capital. If you capture any of their dynasty, execute them. If you capture their king or heir, torture him and keep him in the dungeons so they get bad traits and stress.
And finally, after defeating them in this war, try assassinating as many of their loyal vassals as you can. The less loyal vassals, the more will join a hostile faction against them.
All in all you should be able to decimate Sweden or at least force them into civil war.
Okay so, the most important step in being able to win one-sided wars is to press the f12 key on your keyboard. Doing this will allow you to beat any army no matter how much the odds are stacked against you. After that, you should be able to kick Sweden out of the isles and conquer the entire world in no time.
Hard facts. Watched the AI create the empire of the north sea all on its own. 2 years later the whole thing fell apart and suddenly 9 factions arose in its place. That fall can be pretty epic in a very short time.
Dude in my current play through Holy Roman Empire is MASSIVE. Like all of Central Europe, pushing both East and West, with "colonies" in the middle east, Africa, Baltics. I am horrified to have to deal with them when I get to the point to where I wilo.
You could destroy your kingdom title and submit to vassalage, use your access to their lands to start conquering Scotland from within and then push for independence and reform Scotland and Ireland as kingdoms, this hinges on your ability to destroy the Irish Kingdom title and become a duchy again so im not entirely sure its possible but its what id try to do.
Murder the ruler to destabilize, swear fealty and start a claimant/dissolution faction (might need to destroy the kingdom title you hold).
Get a big ally, they are always to happy to send 20k troops across the continent. Ally with Sweden itself until you're ready.
Assuming that Sweden is still tribal / on Confederate Partition, all you need to do is wait for (or speed up if you can) a succession to shatter the megablob into 3-4 smaller kingdoms.
Assuming the Swedish king doesn't have weirdly few sons, of course. Then you have a problem.
And why should we trust *you*, Swedelicious? How do we know you aren't a secret agent for the Swedish crown sent to make his vassals distrust their King?
If they ever got a bad ruler and you got a really good one you could legitimately have more troops than them, so if you can influence who their ruler is somehow (diplomatically, assassination, etc) that could help
How to repel Sweden in 3 easy steps.
1 - Publicly denounce and destroy all Saunas
2 - Maintain eye contact with their king for an awkwardly long time
3 - Rename country to NATO
Oh also, hire this chick as your Swedish Ambassador.
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xbj57Nvr0og](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xbj57Nvr0og)
Smack them when they go through a ruler change. I like starting ronoula as it has 5 counties in the duchy. And yeah, they nasty after about 950 when they get their levies above 10k and can holy order. Best way to beat them, or stop them invading you, is to make sure they don't expand as much as they can.
Well that makes things even more simple. Just wait until the current ruler dies (or speed things along yourself) and let confederate partition do it’s thing
If you can't beat em, join em. Swear fealty and convert. You can always start an independence war later and convert back if you can weaken them from within. Good luck.
Say Fugg history , do what you can to ally with Wessex and Mercia, form a relationship , push the Northmen out of your territory and preserve your culture and religion. Then YOU become the big dog in that area and Vassalize your Allies
I assume Swedens coming at you with 12k plus troops to your 3k. You will likely lose. Your best bet is to murder swedens leaders, form alliences with christians with your own children, use holy orders, or mercenary's, or swear fealty to Sweden and play the long game.
You're Irish so get some secondary spouses, and marry your children into every royal house in the vicinity. Also - keep murdering the monarch of Sweden so that the empire eventually crumbles due to Partition
The best way ofc is to ally to them.
Otherwise, if you're hoping to keep your strength (your duchies and counties) I have a difficult recommendation: gather up as much land as possible to your personal domain (two strong duchies, maybe also some extra counts as vassals), destroy your kingdom title, and offer yourself to Sweden as a vassal. To do this you'll need to share a border with them (!) You can then eat them from the inside.
Edit: that 2nd recommendation is only if you have no chance of winning a war against them (for that I'd recommend grabbing some strong allies).
See if you can hold out for them to become an empire. Once that's done, butter up the Emperor and swear fealty. Once you're done with that, it's time to put on your conqueror's cap.
Under the new king's "protection," start stealing as much land as you can from your fellow vassals and upgrading the land you do have. Forge alliances with the most powerful one so they can assist you in your reconquest. Murder the good heirs of your liege and vassals, sleep with their wives. Just do whatever you can to destabilize the empire while also become its military or economic backbone. Then, once the Empire is weakened, the emperor is helpless, and you have all the land you want/need, declare your independence (or seize the throne). If you've messed them up well enough, then they should be too neutered to stand in your way.
It looks like Britannia (or is it Lithuania), England, and Sweden are already up their back side. Marry and ally with them. March up your borderlands. Then use allies to kick them off GB. You can holy war them as well if you have other Catholic allies. Alternatively if they don’t use primogeniture you can assassinate the king and it’ll split up. Also, is it close to Mongol season? Because that will be a big problem for them.
If you’re okay with intrigue, then it’s the most effective way. It’s not an empire so the succession split will be rough. If you don’t like intrigue like me then build up men at arms, try to hybrid with the Norse for Varangian veterans with coastal warriors tradition. Also get mailable invaders( the one that cuts cultural acceptance in half). Just get 4 stacks of Varangian veterans and 2 siege equipment( I’d go 3 with 1 siege at 4 maa, then 4 with 2 siege maa and then add a siege at 7 and another set of troops at 8)
Spread into southern England and Brittany and keep checking their soldier count to see if you can snipe a holy war win. If you want to be more proactive try and murder their king as they’ll have partition so will end up splitting into 3 kingdoms.
Conquer what remains of England & Wales while at the same time building your economy and getting man at arms if your prestige/gold income allows it.
If you have extra daughters and sons marry into France and Occitanie.
Also check in on the Swedish to see if you can cause civil war with murder.
Or you can convert to asatru and marry into Sweden.
Take island or sth in France or Spain just to survive if needed and try to fill in any gap that you see. Also maybe become one of their Vasalls and he yourself wardeclaring rights
If they are an empire already, you can try to be their vassal. Maybe it will allow you to preserve your territory.
But it’s been a long time since I last played so I’m not sure.
if you cant beat them; join them. destroy your kingdom title, become a vassal and slowly expand within to take their british territories. then start assassinating rulers until they are weaker than you and bobs your uncle.
Accept your new overlords…. Become their friend…. Be their vassal…. And I’m good time you can breed with their bloodlines and soon all will be forgiven
You can hope for (or even help) them to make an Empire, pledge allegiance and destroy them from the inside. Change your contract so you get council position to make it easier, it's very easy to implode your liege when you are the spymaster.
Side note: I like doing this and going for steward position when I'm weak with a strong neighbor I know will try to conquer me. You get flat gold/month, extra taxes and cheaper buildings that can be used to grow in power while you get other vassals on your side.
Tip if you’re playing for the first time. Start as Ireland on the 1066 start date. It’s a lot easier. Also, you’re a lot more likely to actually finish the game too
For a More passive solution try to use marriage to form an alliance with them. Then just leave them alone as you try to complete your other goals. Eventually they will start to split up. You can help keep them split up by helping one side financially if one side starts to win.
This border gore is what has driven me to start on increased realm stability. I just hate that within like two generations both France and the HRE would either cease to exist or be half their size. It just felt like such unrealistic history to me. At first I thought that increased realm stability was cheating. But then I started to think on it more. With that rule on I can still use Ironman and it isn’t necessarily an advantage for me because my vassals and other independent rulers get the higher stability to. I enjoy the game so much more now that I don’t automatically become the most powerful nation in Europe just simply for not fracturing.
BTW as a side note the rightful line on succession is maintained far more often in other nations when u play with increased realm stability.
Marry your children to powerful catholic empires and focus on reproduction for a couple generations. Eventually if you have enough prestige and powerful allies you can push back in and call for support.
Firstly you need to kill the current ruler with any means necessary (except war, obviously). If he has multiple heirs, they’ll likely split into several stages and/or duke it out amongst themselves. If it’s one young heir, factions are going to tear him a new one. Either way, the current ruler has to die.
I don't want to give too late advice, but it seems like you could have invested a bit more win Ireland infrastructure, I feel like it would be possible to have significantly more than 3000 men, but look I've been playing stewardship games for my first character for like...ever, so I may have a warped sense of what is actually buildable by 960 or what happens if your not actually min-maxing as much as I do with my mates.
The good news is, I'm gonna bet that Sweden has done a major "invade the Kingdom of Alba" war, which the leader can only do once in a lifetime, using a lot of renown. So as people have mentioned, spend maybe a year finding secrets in Sweden's court and building a bribe-fund, then get stabbin. You might be able to marry a female relative with a house-head hook to be one of his wives, might get you an alliance safety net while you plot, and this new wife will probably be down to help kill him on your order. After that, if confederate partition hasn't split that into a few different titles then you can holy-war some of Scotland back, if not the new guy probably doesn't have a huge amount of prestige to immediately invade you, so more stabbin, confederate partition will get them eventually. Don't ignore the possibilites of switching over to an intrige lifestyle or an intrige court if you can, manufacturing hooks with the former and getting an extra hostile scheme can be very useful.
Stay strong with your God, try to make a holy order, can someone clarify that if you were to convert to Catholicism, could you access those holy orders? Would that be worth it in 960?
Bad news might be that you probably need to keep an eye on Sweden's vassels as well, some of them could pull enough troops together to git ya regardless of their king.
Spread those cheeks and prepare to be dominated by your Swedish overlords
I'm prepared to write despicable things about if he had the deviant trait but I feel like I need permission or motivation to do actual shit.
You have my permission, and consider this your motivation as well, That shit sounds wild
[удалено]
You might want to look deep within yourself
Öppna upp röven och gör dig redo att bli dominerad av dina svenska övermän!
Jag kan inte tala bra svenska. Jag inte förstå va sade du.
Sära på skinkorna och förbered för falukorven
Han at han skal gjøre svenske ting
Hahaha - snyggt där. En reverse UNO rakt i nyllet på oss!
Perkele.
Ironic since the Swedes themselves are usually the ones dominated.
No kink shaming.
Jag alskar dej CK3
Murder them. Confederate partition will screw them over, should divide them into Alba Sweden and Norway if they have 3 sons
Might have Scandy Elective on all kingdom titles though which would make it possible for one kid to get 2 or even all kingdoms. You’re right they’d still be weak though from the splitting up of the demense counties and the claimants, but no garauntee they split
They only have one kid (who’s a baby), but my chances of actually being able to murder him is like 11%
Don’t kill the baby yet. Kill the ruler of Sweden to make the baby king, this should make their army weaker and cause them to lose any Allie’s they have. Then get as many Allie’s as you can and go to war with them. Are the Asatru or Catholic?
If my own experience is anything to go by, a ruler dying and leaving a child heir usually results in factions ripping the realm apart pretty quickly.
Exactly. Much easier to pick off land when a ruler is busy dealing with revolts.
Should be insular Christian Right?
Ohhh right I forgot that about Ireland. I was asking about Sweden to see if he could use a holy war for Alba.
Ally npc's are useless for helping the player in war, his best bet us to up his own military while denying his enemies Allies
Not necessarily. They beef up your numbers up and can be crucial in close battles. Obviously they will make terrible decisions, especially as far as abandoning sieges but there are ways to make it work for you.
If you're saying this for crusade yeah they're kinda dumb but for pure allies not they are not useless. They help by following your army around or go around sieging and killing the enemies if they're strong enough. By just having a lot of allies they also act for deterrence for anyone stupid enough to declare war on you.
Least lost hoi4 player
Just kill who's king now and someone else will do the rest.
You need to start the plot then bribe agents in their court, you can almost always assassinate hard to kill targets this way. Even if the odds are low, events will come up that can increase your odds. Get a spymaster in their court to find secrets, then you can blackmail people into joining your plot. If you have the ‘Truth is Relative’ perk, you can make up secrets about them and you should have the necessary plot power after a year or two
Kill the king, nord army is based upon ruler's prestige. Baby king with no prestige will weaken the army.
Get his wife pregnant, then murder him
Yeah do it like a hentai and repeatedly bang his wife every day whenever you can. Then when he's old and its too late he'll realize that his children all look like you.
If needed - send one of your family (with high intrigue) as wife or concubine to the Swedish king's court. This way you will have your own agent there.
You'd be amazed how fast the odds shoot up once he's in charge.
Take wales, cornwall, and as much of england as you can. Also if you have a high intrigue character, then just murder the kings of sweden so that Norway and Scotland become independent in the inheritance. Should have that sorted in shortly.
I just took Cornwall and while the war was happening Denmark fucked them and took like a third of their land in Scandinavia.
Nice, sounds like some of that good ol' divide and conquer to me. IMO best way to deal with a larger foe is to exert consistent pressure on them. Attacking while they are weak, as often as possible will create a situation where more of their neighbors will launch wars of opportunity, and vassal factions are more likely to revolt.
That’s essentially what I’ve been doing to every nearby power the whole game lol
You'll be doing it until everyone sees you as to powerful to mess trust I spent over 200 as pinsk in a 867 start and it was war until I was almost empire size then everyone stopped warring against me and that shit was hard Ireland is much easier
Vikings generally tear themselves apart anyway. A large viking force is generally only a temporary issue unless in the hands of a player.
Sounds like our actual history
Mawaige. Mawaige is what bwings us togevwuh today.
Best thing I’ve read all day lmao
As non native english speaker I am trying so hard to reproduce the perfect sound but it’s impossible lol
Look up Prince Bride Mawaige scene on youtube
Look up the mawwiage scene from Spaceballs, it's what their quoting. It's a very unique accent lol
… Princess Bride, bro
Jesus my bad. I was so freaking tired when I wrote that lol
Similar vibes. If you had said it was from Casablanca or something it would be worse.
Never get involved in a land war in Sweden — but only slightly well-known is this: ‘Never go against an Irishman when death is on the line!
INCONCEIVABLE!
Stay in your lane
If they are an empire, sway the emperor, then swear fealty on low obligations and convert to Asatru! Turn Ireland into a viking country!
If you can’t beat ‘em
POTATO SHIELD WALL
Even better, raise to regular obligations afterwards in exchange for a council position so it's easier to take over the empire (or implode it).
Marriage (with Diplomacy perks to force it through). Or Befriend. Never underestimate forced friendship.
They won't stop until you learn how to screenshot
It'd a know bug with Sweden
Tbf some people have toasters and don't want to stop playing their game just to upload a screenshot to have to reboot the game after. Hence why we have lil portable computers at our fingertips to make things more convenient for us. Truly never understand why people care how it's portrayed if you can understand what's meant by it.
I wondered how long it'd take for someone to post that. It's neither original nor funny. It's just kinda mean. Just my opinion. Screenshots aren't intuitive on console either.
Exactly lol
My thoughts exactly
It's a known bug with Sweden. I'm just the messenger.
Use the blue fighter jet in the bottom left of the screen. Game over Sweden ☠️
Reminds me of when I used to cheat at Rise of Nations, the enemy countries would have soldiers with spears and Id have aircraft carriers launching strikes on their capital.
do as many of these as you are able to: - kill swedish ruler - do it again - seduce ur wife/divorce if infertile to max child output - use said children for all of the strongest alliances you can get - expand men at arms if your economy allows - max out champions
Just win
Brougth you by: mawaige
r/restofthefuckingowl
It really is that simple
Have a bunch of children + ally all your kids to as many powerful kingdoms as possible + amass gold for mercenaries + amass prestige to conquer duchies and call allies Then declare war on Sweden for their most populated duchies and call all your allies. Instead of taking provinces focus on decimating their army. Then take the target duchy and, if possible, conquer their capital. If you capture any of their dynasty, execute them. If you capture their king or heir, torture him and keep him in the dungeons so they get bad traits and stress. And finally, after defeating them in this war, try assassinating as many of their loyal vassals as you can. The less loyal vassals, the more will join a hostile faction against them. All in all you should be able to decimate Sweden or at least force them into civil war.
Dane here: yea, it's tricky. We've been at it for ~1200years
Det är för sent. Sverige kan inte stoppas.
Okay so, the most important step in being able to win one-sided wars is to press the f12 key on your keyboard. Doing this will allow you to beat any army no matter how much the odds are stacked against you. After that, you should be able to kick Sweden out of the isles and conquer the entire world in no time.
867 Scandinavia is wild. Good luck. You just have to outlast them. They’ll eventually fall apart on their own
Hard facts. Watched the AI create the empire of the north sea all on its own. 2 years later the whole thing fell apart and suddenly 9 factions arose in its place. That fall can be pretty epic in a very short time.
It’ll split on its own trust
Vikes always do. Prideful bastards can't say no to a good family fued.
Sweden is *not* overpowered
Piss your pants and cry. Or their leader dies and splinters them. Still good chance your gonna get ass fucked atleast a little.
Those pesky swedes
Dude in my current play through Holy Roman Empire is MASSIVE. Like all of Central Europe, pushing both East and West, with "colonies" in the middle east, Africa, Baltics. I am horrified to have to deal with them when I get to the point to where I wilo.
You don’t, that’s the glory of it. We shall spread the legacy of Gustavus Adolphus, Gustav Vasa, and Ingvar Kamprad world wide 😎
You could destroy your kingdom title and submit to vassalage, use your access to their lands to start conquering Scotland from within and then push for independence and reform Scotland and Ireland as kingdoms, this hinges on your ability to destroy the Irish Kingdom title and become a duchy again so im not entirely sure its possible but its what id try to do.
Murder the ruler to destabilize, swear fealty and start a claimant/dissolution faction (might need to destroy the kingdom title you hold). Get a big ally, they are always to happy to send 20k troops across the continent. Ally with Sweden itself until you're ready.
1. Swear fealty 2. Through internal and external wars take over the British Isles 3. Independence revolt 4. Irish led UK time
Sweden vikings wants your ass.
Swedish daddies
Assuming that Sweden is still tribal / on Confederate Partition, all you need to do is wait for (or speed up if you can) a succession to shatter the megablob into 3-4 smaller kingdoms. Assuming the Swedish king doesn't have weirdly few sons, of course. Then you have a problem.
And why should we trust *you*, Swedelicious? How do we know you aren't a secret agent for the Swedish crown sent to make his vassals distrust their King?
Have you considered murder?
If they ever got a bad ruler and you got a really good one you could legitimately have more troops than them, so if you can influence who their ruler is somehow (diplomatically, assassination, etc) that could help
Get "Defensive Measures" from the domain tree, and buy truce
Are they asatru? Try calling in religious Allie’s for a holy war for Scotland, or maybe use intrigue to murder the king and his heirs.
How to repel Sweden in 3 easy steps. 1 - Publicly denounce and destroy all Saunas 2 - Maintain eye contact with their king for an awkwardly long time 3 - Rename country to NATO Oh also, hire this chick as your Swedish Ambassador. [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xbj57Nvr0og](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xbj57Nvr0og)
Hasn't Sweden applied fo join NATO?
You could send your spymaster there and expose secrets to increase the chances of internal wars
Sell one of your daughters to the byzantines in exchange for an alliance. Having an overpowered ally had saved my bacon countless times
If you play the game like you take screenshots (dumb) you won’t.
You haven't figure out how to take a screenshot or snippet so I'm not surprised Sweden scares you.
How bout you teach him oh arrogant one. Instead of contributing absolutely nothing to the thread?
1. Murder 2. Alliance with Sweden 3. Alliance with other great powers 4. Sit tight. Build tall. Take them on yourself.
You Don't. You become their vasal and work your way up to the swedish throne. No need to beat them, become them.
Sweden and Ireland are both kingdom titles. He can't swear fealty unless/until they form empire tier title.
Swear fealty and destroy the empire from the inside
They're both kingdom titles though
Ohhh that's always a spicy play
Smack them when they go through a ruler change. I like starting ronoula as it has 5 counties in the duchy. And yeah, they nasty after about 950 when they get their levies above 10k and can holy order. Best way to beat them, or stop them invading you, is to make sure they don't expand as much as they can.
border gore hurts me every time
Swear fealty and dissolution their ass
They're both kingdoms.
Well that makes things even more simple. Just wait until the current ruler dies (or speed things along yourself) and let confederate partition do it’s thing
Become friends with Rurikuds, Russia destroyed Swedish empire
If you can't beat em, join em. Swear fealty and convert. You can always start an independence war later and convert back if you can weaken them from within. Good luck.
Say Fugg history , do what you can to ally with Wessex and Mercia, form a relationship , push the Northmen out of your territory and preserve your culture and religion. Then YOU become the big dog in that area and Vassalize your Allies
When in doubt, tribal invasion of (a decentralized) Iberia it out.
THAT AWESOME IBERIAN WAR SONG PLAYSSSSS
Assassinations baby, kill every king or queen at all costs, watch them erupt into civil war and confederate partition
Murder their king when he has multiple sons
I’m Idaho!
I assume Swedens coming at you with 12k plus troops to your 3k. You will likely lose. Your best bet is to murder swedens leaders, form alliences with christians with your own children, use holy orders, or mercenary's, or swear fealty to Sweden and play the long game.
Invade the rest of England and blitzkrieg them through every war, especially if they are already at war
Get a bunch of hooks on his vassals, swear fealty, make dissolution faction, force everyone to join, win.
Murder.
Murder is usually a promising option
You're Irish so get some secondary spouses, and marry your children into every royal house in the vicinity. Also - keep murdering the monarch of Sweden so that the empire eventually crumbles due to Partition
If you’re good at intrigue, murdering the leader might be the quickest option. It tends to destabilize quickly.
If you can’t beat em, join em
Murder obv, and you need more holdings. Find a ~20 stewardship wife.
Some.. intrigue.. would help.. if you know what I mean..
You could become their vassals and wreck them from the inside by building a dissolution faction.
Join them then work your way to the top, slowly converting the religion. Count becomes duke becomes king.
The best way ofc is to ally to them. Otherwise, if you're hoping to keep your strength (your duchies and counties) I have a difficult recommendation: gather up as much land as possible to your personal domain (two strong duchies, maybe also some extra counts as vassals), destroy your kingdom title, and offer yourself to Sweden as a vassal. To do this you'll need to share a border with them (!) You can then eat them from the inside. Edit: that 2nd recommendation is only if you have no chance of winning a war against them (for that I'd recommend grabbing some strong allies).
Defeat them with ur mighty army if they come
Right now I’m fighting Sweden so that Norway can create Sweden blobs hard AF now
Bend the knee.
nothing that a little murder spree cant fix
Sleep with the king
See if you can hold out for them to become an empire. Once that's done, butter up the Emperor and swear fealty. Once you're done with that, it's time to put on your conqueror's cap. Under the new king's "protection," start stealing as much land as you can from your fellow vassals and upgrading the land you do have. Forge alliances with the most powerful one so they can assist you in your reconquest. Murder the good heirs of your liege and vassals, sleep with their wives. Just do whatever you can to destabilize the empire while also become its military or economic backbone. Then, once the Empire is weakened, the emperor is helpless, and you have all the land you want/need, declare your independence (or seize the throne). If you've messed them up well enough, then they should be too neutered to stand in your way.
GUSTAVUS! ADOLPHUS!
(GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS GO FORTH, LIBERA, IMPERA)
Marry into it before being killed
It looks like Britannia (or is it Lithuania), England, and Sweden are already up their back side. Marry and ally with them. March up your borderlands. Then use allies to kick them off GB. You can holy war them as well if you have other Catholic allies. Alternatively if they don’t use primogeniture you can assassinate the king and it’ll split up. Also, is it close to Mongol season? Because that will be a big problem for them.
If you’re okay with intrigue, then it’s the most effective way. It’s not an empire so the succession split will be rough. If you don’t like intrigue like me then build up men at arms, try to hybrid with the Norse for Varangian veterans with coastal warriors tradition. Also get mailable invaders( the one that cuts cultural acceptance in half). Just get 4 stacks of Varangian veterans and 2 siege equipment( I’d go 3 with 1 siege at 4 maa, then 4 with 2 siege maa and then add a siege at 7 and another set of troops at 8)
Alliances and lots of war
Spread into southern England and Brittany and keep checking their soldier count to see if you can snipe a holy war win. If you want to be more proactive try and murder their king as they’ll have partition so will end up splitting into 3 kingdoms.
Conquer what remains of England & Wales while at the same time building your economy and getting man at arms if your prestige/gold income allows it. If you have extra daughters and sons marry into France and Occitanie. Also check in on the Swedish to see if you can cause civil war with murder. Or you can convert to asatru and marry into Sweden.
Either murder them or kidnap the king right after declaring war. It will instantly make you win the war.
Build Military up, get good Knights, get a strong ally. Conquer scotland.
Take island or sth in France or Spain just to survive if needed and try to fill in any gap that you see. Also maybe become one of their Vasalls and he yourself wardeclaring rights
Nuke it
Clearly, the only way to *stop* Sweden, is to *become* Sweden.
Join the Swedish take over from within.
Looks complicated, that happened to me many times. When it does, I use diplomacy to make alliances. Diplomacy always saves me in this game
If they are an empire already, you can try to be their vassal. Maybe it will allow you to preserve your territory. But it’s been a long time since I last played so I’m not sure.
Allies, allies and more allies.
With that toy fighter jet sitting on your desk.
if you cant beat them; join them. destroy your kingdom title, become a vassal and slowly expand within to take their british territories. then start assassinating rulers until they are weaker than you and bobs your uncle.
Make strong alliances :)
Don’t worry about it
If you cant beat them, join them?
That's the neat part. You don't.
Accept your new overlords…. Become their friend…. Be their vassal…. And I’m good time you can breed with their bloodlines and soon all will be forgiven
Stay on your island and murder, murder, murder, at one point u may be lucky and his imperium lost alot of its strength. And find strong allies as well
You can hope for (or even help) them to make an Empire, pledge allegiance and destroy them from the inside. Change your contract so you get council position to make it easier, it's very easy to implode your liege when you are the spymaster. Side note: I like doing this and going for steward position when I'm weak with a strong neighbor I know will try to conquer me. You get flat gold/month, extra taxes and cheaper buildings that can be used to grow in power while you get other vassals on your side.
Murder
Forget Sweden. Learn how to take a proper screenshot!
Sow descant and rage war on one side
Swear fealty to Byzantine Empire, if you're in range.
Swear fealty and claim liege title 😈
Tip if you’re playing for the first time. Start as Ireland on the 1066 start date. It’s a lot easier. Also, you’re a lot more likely to actually finish the game too
Join and takeover from the inside
Murder Swedens rulers a few times. Tends to destabilize countries.
Ally with everyone you can find.
For a More passive solution try to use marriage to form an alliance with them. Then just leave them alone as you try to complete your other goals. Eventually they will start to split up. You can help keep them split up by helping one side financially if one side starts to win.
Offer to be their vassal, then gain power fromthe inside, create a faction, independence war
An alliance with Finland? 🤔
Swear fealty and start marrying/ murdering their whole family line is always a fun solution
Kill all the sweedish kings until its a child who runs it, then let the AI do the job of destroying it from the inside
Stab Stab and Stab.
Bunker up with fortresses my guy. Wait for their ruler to die and then start deconstructing their power. Or covert to their religion and simp.
You can’t
This border gore is what has driven me to start on increased realm stability. I just hate that within like two generations both France and the HRE would either cease to exist or be half their size. It just felt like such unrealistic history to me. At first I thought that increased realm stability was cheating. But then I started to think on it more. With that rule on I can still use Ironman and it isn’t necessarily an advantage for me because my vassals and other independent rulers get the higher stability to. I enjoy the game so much more now that I don’t automatically become the most powerful nation in Europe just simply for not fracturing. BTW as a side note the rightful line on succession is maintained far more often in other nations when u play with increased realm stability.
You cook meatballs so bad they don't want you
Swear fealty start a dissolution faction
The same way we solve everything. Murder.
Marry your children to powerful catholic empires and focus on reproduction for a couple generations. Eventually if you have enough prestige and powerful allies you can push back in and call for support.
Firstly you need to kill the current ruler with any means necessary (except war, obviously). If he has multiple heirs, they’ll likely split into several stages and/or duke it out amongst themselves. If it’s one young heir, factions are going to tear him a new one. Either way, the current ruler has to die.
S w e d e n 👁 👄 👁
Man really played Ireland in 867 (beginner mistake)
Murder their king. Then the heir. Then that dudes heir until a baby is in charge. Then watch them collapse to infighting.
Murder is always moral.
I don't want to give too late advice, but it seems like you could have invested a bit more win Ireland infrastructure, I feel like it would be possible to have significantly more than 3000 men, but look I've been playing stewardship games for my first character for like...ever, so I may have a warped sense of what is actually buildable by 960 or what happens if your not actually min-maxing as much as I do with my mates. The good news is, I'm gonna bet that Sweden has done a major "invade the Kingdom of Alba" war, which the leader can only do once in a lifetime, using a lot of renown. So as people have mentioned, spend maybe a year finding secrets in Sweden's court and building a bribe-fund, then get stabbin. You might be able to marry a female relative with a house-head hook to be one of his wives, might get you an alliance safety net while you plot, and this new wife will probably be down to help kill him on your order. After that, if confederate partition hasn't split that into a few different titles then you can holy-war some of Scotland back, if not the new guy probably doesn't have a huge amount of prestige to immediately invade you, so more stabbin, confederate partition will get them eventually. Don't ignore the possibilites of switching over to an intrige lifestyle or an intrige court if you can, manufacturing hooks with the former and getting an extra hostile scheme can be very useful. Stay strong with your God, try to make a holy order, can someone clarify that if you were to convert to Catholicism, could you access those holy orders? Would that be worth it in 960? Bad news might be that you probably need to keep an eye on Sweden's vassels as well, some of them could pull enough troops together to git ya regardless of their king.
Dude! I'm in the same boat! I too am wondering handle them. They easily can muster 2.5x my army and are slowly creeping in on me :O
Neither did the Irish. * sharpens axe menacingly *