Becoming High King of Ireland

So I decided in my next play though to unite the clans of Ireland and become the High King. So I'm looking for some advise and some critiques on how I would set my kingdom up.

Name of my kingdom: "Kingdom of Eriu" 
Character name: "Conan mac Conall" will change this to "Ard Ri Conan mac Conall" once I become king. (Name means little wolf son of strong wolf)
Capital: Dublin

Back Story:

Being a descendant of Conall Cernach it is in Conan's blood to rule his own kingdom one day. With such a prestigious blood line the small folk look to Conan to be their hero in the face of the Heathen invasion and the strife and devastation of the clans at wars. Conan's father was a warrior, but met his fate when he was ambushed while tracking some cattle thieves that stole from his lord. Conan is set on revenge for now, but talks about being like the fiana and forming his own warband to help the people of Eriu in its darkest hour. After selling off the last of his possessions Conan sets out to find like minded companions and maybe one day he will live up to the reputation of his great ancestor Conall Cernach.     


Phase 1

I think my first step would be to go around and build relations with Lords and village leaders and getting permission to recruit in every settlement in Ireland "due to recruitment bug atm"

Phase 2

Work on building wealth through trade and starting to work on my right to rule points. I will probably work as a mercenary, but not attack any Irish lords to keep as high as relations as possible. I want the Irish lords to join my faction at some point or as many as possible. 

Phase 3

Once I get a good army going I will start to work on driving the Viking out of Ireland and try to capture Dublin as my starting capital or one of their castles in Ireland. I figure this would do the least amount of damage to the Irish factions.

Phase 4

I want to get as many Irish lords to join my faction as possible, I'm just not sure what would be the best way to go about this so any tips here would be great. I will put as many points into persuasion as possible hope that helps. I just don't want to take a bunch of land and drive all of the Irish lords to other factions not in Ireland. 

Thanks for any help and thoughts about accomplishing this.

   

For starters, everything in the Singleplayer's Manual by Gladius (Link) would be good to get a grasp on, especially the faction and lordly politics.

Other handy links.
SinglePlayer Campaign Info
This can tell you what the game thinks lords will consider when deciding to join you or not, in addition to other fun bits of knowledge.  Some of it, probably the town and village mechanics, will be different for the mod but the variables will likely be similar.

Vassals - M&B Wiki

Phase 1: Make sure you target the lord personalities that you want to have around.  I don't know if the mod changed the personality comments to identify them with, but it should be reasonably clear what pattern they will follow.  Upstanding and Martial type lords are the main ones you want to have good relations with, as you will want to start your little rebellion with them if you can.  If you want, at this phase as well, you can see about taking missions from various lords to make Debauched and Quarrelsome lords lose standing with their leaders.  Those guys will wreck any plans you have if you bring them on to your team, as they take huge reputation hits whenever you give anyone else land, which means you end up back in Swadia having to constantly deal with lord reputations to make those jerks actually work for kingdom goals.  Martial lords will take a minor reputation hit when you give lands to others, but if I recall correctly they come with more troops than usual and are thus good early picks.

Phase 2: Don't be so quick to not attack these lords.  Releasing lords when you catch them on the field can be a useful relationship boost.  Also, remember that using different explanations of your right to rule will cause problems with the less stupid lords.  You will have to tailor your path of argument to what lord types you want to recruit primarily, and the second tier desirable lords can occasionally be told a different story to get them along.

Phase 3: At this point, make certain that you can probably convince some lords to join your cause at this point, out of the faction you attack.  Preferably ones with forts or other significant land holdings, so that you can skip siege battles against those targets.  As far as damaging Ireland, just don't loot and burn villages in Ireland.  If I remember correctly, or at least at some point in the game's history, the AI only looks at troop counts when it comes to defenders and deciding if it is worthwhile to attack a place, and some farmers or other low tier troop on the bottom of the garrison list would beef up that defense for a very minor fee.  Its probably for the best that enemy lords don't feel like attacking your personal land holdings alone.  Also, if possible, try to let the enemy lords come to you in the field or in a siege defense, as the reputation penalty with them is lower than just outright attacking them.

This is a massive issue for you though: Some lord virtually will not defect.  You will have to obliterate the faction, and if/when they show up again in a new faction recruit them.

Phase 4: Basically you need high relations with them, and that persuasion does help.  The rest is, in part, random chance.  You can have 100 relations with a lord and 10 in persuasion and still fail to convince a lord to join you.  As you gain territory and allied lords though, the odds start to go in your favor.  The military power is one of the bigger problems you have out of the gate, as the lords look at troop counts, land holdings and lord counts in their calculation of joining you or not.  Try to keep one unassigned land holding around, so that the lord will be able to see that there is territory up for grabs, making them more likely to join you. -Remember, if the lord ends up in your court trying to join you, he is probably no good.  Try to know the lord personalities before you get into the thick of it.

Added a small back story to set up for the campaign. That is a great post normal and thanks for the advise, I will definitely report back how these tips work out in VC. 

Reiksmarshal! I have been waiting for this story for months now! Is it going to happen or is this in the past? A story on becoming the High King of Ireland would be awesome!

Wow ... I didn't think anybody was interested in this so I didn't complete this campaign and decided to wait until RE was released. I may rekindle this idea and work on my video production quality. 

reiksmarshal said:

Wow ... I didn't think anybody was interested in this so I didn't complete this campaign and decided to wait until RE was released. I may rekindle this idea and work on my video production quality.

Click to expand...

I'd watch

I'd definitely be interested.

Ok so I'm putting together a new character, what do you guys think about this name "Conn mac Tuathal"?

Conn - Chief
mac - son of
Tuathal - ruler of the people

Sounds like a good name to me

Do eeeeet

This sounds like it would be fun series to watch, do you have any videos up?

The rise of Ard Ri Conn mac Tuathal coming soon ... (shortly after the release of 2.012)


This is a great theme song for this Celtic warrior king.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCddp3vyGXY