Here's a series of bullet points that would dramatically improve the Dothraki experience. All would be simple to do, and a lot of them way easier than how they're currently modeled. I'm tempted to do it myself, since I've done similar work for hordes in regular CK2, but I don't have the energy to update it for every new release from here to eternity. So I'm bringing it to the mod dev's attention. I posted this on their own forum as well, since I've never been sure how often this one is checked.
1) Dothraki should have been handled with retinues, or else spending prestige and money to attract new regiments, and which stay raised permanently, representing the growth of the khalasar. Having one single massive regiment that's raised, moves to fight, then has to be disbanded and the journey made again to where you were before if you wanted to attack another kingdom nearby, makes it a pain in the ass. And also unrealistic. I did not feel mobile at all playing the Dothraki.
2) Retinues, mercenaries or event troops would have been a vastly superior way to model the experience. The slave camps should've been kept for the free cities.
3) A triggered modifier of some sort for wealth generation (receiving lots of tribute, owning lots of slave and horses, would result in a modifier providing more wealth and prestige) would work better than the current system of relying on holdings for money. In fact, I would disallow most councillor actions and province-related tasks for Dothraki characters, and have all their prestige and money come from modifiers based on event actions or decisions choices, to better represent a travelling horde.
4) A Dothraki Khalasar trait or modifier that continually gives prestige and money over time, would allow them to rebuild (by using decisions to 'buy' more dothraki troops) over time. Although any lost war should drop them a level. Troops acquired by event or decision, just like retinues, don't need to be disbanded to declare war. I've done a similar mod of my own for Wildlings and peasant leaders/heresiarchs (although for heresiarchs, I based it off piety, and made both the peasant leader and heresiarch trait give prestige and piety so the longer they stayed active, the more of a threat they became).
Another nice benefit is that with event troops/retinues/mercenaries, your horde can actually travel across the map, instead of disbanding all the time. It does work. I've made it work for crusades and such.
5) The Khalasar holding and slave camp is remarkably clunky, especially with the way it needs the extra help to fill up up the levy after you move. Worst of all, having it all come from a holding results in a gigantic unit stack that can't be split. Consequently, I spent most of my time chasing around smaller khals and going deep into debt, cause I couldn't split my army to catch him.
6) It's currently very easy to form the Dothraki Empire in 10 years. During which time the Dothraki Sea got hugely crowded, with my own provinces being repeatedly taken by courtiers forming tiny khalasars until I had nowhere to move my capital to avoid overgrazing. The hardest part is chasing. At least if troops were handled by event or decision you would have some kind of incentive to try and keep them alive, instead of just raising one monster stack and disbanding them over and over. There is little to no organic sense of a khalasar rising or falling from a bad loss, defeat or victory. Given that victories (see below) would give prestige, that's how a khal would replenish losses.
Rising in rank (to king, emperor, etc) should not be possible by creating titles. Only through event. So it won't interfere with a prestige mechanic.
7) The +30 Stewardship bonus to Dothraki is quite possibly the clunkiest and least aesthetic way to handle that particular mechanic. I am surprised it ended up in the final version. It's so poorly done that I very nearly quit out. But I managed to endure 46 steward castellans and treasurers, until I formed the Empire.
For future modders: If your vision requires an artificial +30 to a particular stat in order to work - there's probably a FAR more elegant way to realize it. It's just not worth the impression it gives.
8) The Dothraki horde should only occupy one province at a time. They can't take a new one, until it's time to move on. This could mean that the Acquire Grazing Land CB isn't available until one area is grazed out. Then they can declare war and move on. Consider this: Even a horde of a million people would be the tiniest fly speck in the average Dothraki province. One province should be 10x more than enough for a nomadic horde!
9) The Dothraki Sea should be vast, with even a mighty khalasar able to get lost in it. Not unbelievably crowded after only a few short years, and with everyone your vassal and nothing to do. Raiding for slaves and extorting money from the Free Cities should be a luxury, with most of the conflict happening between rival Dothraki hordes.
10) New Dothraki hordes could form whenever a prospective ambitious khal with enough martial, and enough fighting ability, and enough prestige manages to appear. You could try and keep them down, by winning a duel, or if they win the duel, they take off with part of your horde. Perhaps they'll take less of the horde if you don't elect to fight, and more if you lose.
They should not form the way they do now, with random courtiers randomly taking your grazing land and vassalizing themselves to you. I managed to fill the whole Dothraki sea with vassals with no grazing land for me to move to.
11) Most every time two Dothraki khals meet in battle, there should be some kind of duel involved. There's nothing in the game currently about collecting bells. A Tournament-like icon of the number of enemy you have killed and bells acquired, adding to prestige in the same way tourney victories do, (and prestige being a commodity in raising regiments) would have been nice.
If this means game over for the computer after a single, mighty day of battle...so what? Another khalasar will arise. There's no dynasties to protect here. A single mighty day of battle is how several khalasars came to an end, in the books.
And again...BELLS! Drogo was considered an exceptional Dothraki khal because he never once had to cut his braid. Imagine how epic it would be to emerge victorious in twenty+ duels and battles on the Dothraki sea, and manage to emulate Drogo's extraordinary accomplishment...which resulted in him managing to form a massive khalasar.
12) Dothraki khals should rise and fall much faster. Every time he dies, there should be an automatic loss of the khalasar's numbers and prestige. His son might inherit half of it (if he's really capable, and lucky), but most will have to start over. More often, they might start out with a minimal khal and have to start over again. It's a different playstyle than Westeros or Essos, focused more immediately on the life of your character. One dying and another inheriting should almost feel like a new game in some ways. That's what nomadic hordes are about...how far one's individual greatness will take them.
13) This also makes sending money back to Vaes Dothrak in return for more Prestige a MUCH better deal, if Prestige is being used to buy troops.
14) There should be more duels for Dothraki in general, whether weddings or battle. Although for non-battles, I'd make wounded a more common result than being killed. Dothraki should always be able to take the ambition to increase their combat ability. I'd like to see more of them end up with Strong as well.
15) Bloodriders! Something needs to be done with them to represent how vital they were for a khal maintaining control.
A good and easy way is to change how the Councillors work for the Khals, and have each one essentially be a Bloodrider that's focused on a slightly different area. So all Dothraki would require a 'Bloodrider' trait to take a councillor position. You receive about a half dozen of them (all at 14-18), when you become khal. They'll be the only ones that can ever hold those council positions for you. If one dies, you just go without. That represents how the Bloodriders, (with their stewardship, martial, intrigue, diplomacy, etc) were basically the eyes, ears and hands of the Khal. They're how he was able to manage such a large horde. A lost Bloodrider should be a tragedy.
This has the bonus of giving each new 'regime', its own flavor and character, depending on what kind of assets his bloodriders turn out to be, and how well they 'advise' him (represented by the councilor's bonus to these areas). They'll still all be martial educated. But one may still end up with a great intrigue, stewardship, or whatever. That would be another way to separate the Dothraki from Westeros or Essos. The lack of dedicated stewards and diplomats.
16) Additionally for Bloodriders, there could potentially be a mechanism to raise new ones if you fall below 3, as the books don't entirely clarify that. Events where they intervene in duels with opposing khals, sacrifice themselves to save your life, are wounded and maimed in battle alongside you, and sharing your wives and concubines with them, would all be highly appropriate. It would be less complicated than the slave management window...which it should replace, more or less.
17) In that vein, the slave management should essentially be removed from the Dothraki. It's a completely different vibe than for the Free Cities. I would simply represent them by triggered modifiers as mentioned above, and instead, just have concubines. There's no real way for the Dothraki to manage them at the moment anyways except to breed them (why bother?) or beat them. They can't sell or take them as concubines. I would just leave this mechanic to the Free Cities and focus on a Khal's Bloodriders and concubines instead.
18) Speaking of which...Dothraki should be able to take concubines! Why on Earth was this disallowed for them? There is virtually no other way for them to contract marriages.
19) Finally. When declaring war upon a Free City, the Dothraki should be able to demand a noble concubine or wife instead of taking the money. Obviously, it would bring them Prestige. And if they make one of the concubines their wife, their son should be able to inherit her claims.
20) Not only does this make an alliance between the horde and that city-state, giving an incentive for a Free Cities player to buy into that mechanic...But more importantly, it gives Dothraki players a way to realistically acquire claims. Such as how Dany's son would have acquired a claim to the Iron Throne, because Drogo took her as his wife instead of as one of his many concubines.
Granted. If a Dothraki ever does claim a kingdom, it would probably descend into anarchy unless he turned his back on the horde lifestyle. And I can see some events further down that road. But everything before this should be implemented before worrying about that.
BONUS 21) It's worthwhile to remember that much of the current Dothraki Sea was built on the ruins of the kingdoms that the Dothraki invaded and conquered during the Century of Blood. They were only stopped at Qohor. This would be a very worthy end-game goal for a khal that rises as mighty as Drogo to have to contemplate. If they would rather take another go at destroying the Free Cities and giving up the easy source of tribute. Combined with potentially extorting noble wives with claims for their kids to inherit, would make for a more satisfying Dothraki end-game.
Nothing I've suggested would be difficult to do. I could even advise how to do it, as I'm pretty familiar with all the files. But I hope that most can see, comparatively, the above fixes would make for a much better Dothraki experience than the way they're currently implemented.
In short...The Dothraki experience should be a roller coaster. Just like Drogo's life was.
The only thing this post doesn't address, is something the current version doesn't address either...How to make khalasars suck at sieges. There might in the future be a way to better determine how well a unit does sieges based on its composition, but at the moment, it would probably need to be a hidden siege triggered event of some kind that improves defender morale and interferes with assaulting. A more elegant solution probably has to wait till a future patch from Paradox that opens up new ways for how we treat armies.
I've tried using a trait that is like Siege Leader in reverse, but honestly, if an army is big enough, it seems to make virtually no difference, and doesn't affect assaulting.
1) Dothraki should have been handled with retinues, or else spending prestige and money to attract new regiments, and which stay raised permanently, representing the growth of the khalasar. Having one single massive regiment that's raised, moves to fight, then has to be disbanded and the journey made again to where you were before if you wanted to attack another kingdom nearby, makes it a pain in the ass. And also unrealistic. I did not feel mobile at all playing the Dothraki.
2) Retinues, mercenaries or event troops would have been a vastly superior way to model the experience. The slave camps should've been kept for the free cities.
3) A triggered modifier of some sort for wealth generation (receiving lots of tribute, owning lots of slave and horses, would result in a modifier providing more wealth and prestige) would work better than the current system of relying on holdings for money. In fact, I would disallow most councillor actions and province-related tasks for Dothraki characters, and have all their prestige and money come from modifiers based on event actions or decisions choices, to better represent a travelling horde.
4) A Dothraki Khalasar trait or modifier that continually gives prestige and money over time, would allow them to rebuild (by using decisions to 'buy' more dothraki troops) over time. Although any lost war should drop them a level. Troops acquired by event or decision, just like retinues, don't need to be disbanded to declare war. I've done a similar mod of my own for Wildlings and peasant leaders/heresiarchs (although for heresiarchs, I based it off piety, and made both the peasant leader and heresiarch trait give prestige and piety so the longer they stayed active, the more of a threat they became).
Another nice benefit is that with event troops/retinues/mercenaries, your horde can actually travel across the map, instead of disbanding all the time. It does work. I've made it work for crusades and such.
5) The Khalasar holding and slave camp is remarkably clunky, especially with the way it needs the extra help to fill up up the levy after you move. Worst of all, having it all come from a holding results in a gigantic unit stack that can't be split. Consequently, I spent most of my time chasing around smaller khals and going deep into debt, cause I couldn't split my army to catch him.
6) It's currently very easy to form the Dothraki Empire in 10 years. During which time the Dothraki Sea got hugely crowded, with my own provinces being repeatedly taken by courtiers forming tiny khalasars until I had nowhere to move my capital to avoid overgrazing. The hardest part is chasing. At least if troops were handled by event or decision you would have some kind of incentive to try and keep them alive, instead of just raising one monster stack and disbanding them over and over. There is little to no organic sense of a khalasar rising or falling from a bad loss, defeat or victory. Given that victories (see below) would give prestige, that's how a khal would replenish losses.
Rising in rank (to king, emperor, etc) should not be possible by creating titles. Only through event. So it won't interfere with a prestige mechanic.
7) The +30 Stewardship bonus to Dothraki is quite possibly the clunkiest and least aesthetic way to handle that particular mechanic. I am surprised it ended up in the final version. It's so poorly done that I very nearly quit out. But I managed to endure 46 steward castellans and treasurers, until I formed the Empire.
For future modders: If your vision requires an artificial +30 to a particular stat in order to work - there's probably a FAR more elegant way to realize it. It's just not worth the impression it gives.
8) The Dothraki horde should only occupy one province at a time. They can't take a new one, until it's time to move on. This could mean that the Acquire Grazing Land CB isn't available until one area is grazed out. Then they can declare war and move on. Consider this: Even a horde of a million people would be the tiniest fly speck in the average Dothraki province. One province should be 10x more than enough for a nomadic horde!
9) The Dothraki Sea should be vast, with even a mighty khalasar able to get lost in it. Not unbelievably crowded after only a few short years, and with everyone your vassal and nothing to do. Raiding for slaves and extorting money from the Free Cities should be a luxury, with most of the conflict happening between rival Dothraki hordes.
10) New Dothraki hordes could form whenever a prospective ambitious khal with enough martial, and enough fighting ability, and enough prestige manages to appear. You could try and keep them down, by winning a duel, or if they win the duel, they take off with part of your horde. Perhaps they'll take less of the horde if you don't elect to fight, and more if you lose.
They should not form the way they do now, with random courtiers randomly taking your grazing land and vassalizing themselves to you. I managed to fill the whole Dothraki sea with vassals with no grazing land for me to move to.
11) Most every time two Dothraki khals meet in battle, there should be some kind of duel involved. There's nothing in the game currently about collecting bells. A Tournament-like icon of the number of enemy you have killed and bells acquired, adding to prestige in the same way tourney victories do, (and prestige being a commodity in raising regiments) would have been nice.
If this means game over for the computer after a single, mighty day of battle...so what? Another khalasar will arise. There's no dynasties to protect here. A single mighty day of battle is how several khalasars came to an end, in the books.
And again...BELLS! Drogo was considered an exceptional Dothraki khal because he never once had to cut his braid. Imagine how epic it would be to emerge victorious in twenty+ duels and battles on the Dothraki sea, and manage to emulate Drogo's extraordinary accomplishment...which resulted in him managing to form a massive khalasar.
12) Dothraki khals should rise and fall much faster. Every time he dies, there should be an automatic loss of the khalasar's numbers and prestige. His son might inherit half of it (if he's really capable, and lucky), but most will have to start over. More often, they might start out with a minimal khal and have to start over again. It's a different playstyle than Westeros or Essos, focused more immediately on the life of your character. One dying and another inheriting should almost feel like a new game in some ways. That's what nomadic hordes are about...how far one's individual greatness will take them.
13) This also makes sending money back to Vaes Dothrak in return for more Prestige a MUCH better deal, if Prestige is being used to buy troops.
14) There should be more duels for Dothraki in general, whether weddings or battle. Although for non-battles, I'd make wounded a more common result than being killed. Dothraki should always be able to take the ambition to increase their combat ability. I'd like to see more of them end up with Strong as well.
15) Bloodriders! Something needs to be done with them to represent how vital they were for a khal maintaining control.
A good and easy way is to change how the Councillors work for the Khals, and have each one essentially be a Bloodrider that's focused on a slightly different area. So all Dothraki would require a 'Bloodrider' trait to take a councillor position. You receive about a half dozen of them (all at 14-18), when you become khal. They'll be the only ones that can ever hold those council positions for you. If one dies, you just go without. That represents how the Bloodriders, (with their stewardship, martial, intrigue, diplomacy, etc) were basically the eyes, ears and hands of the Khal. They're how he was able to manage such a large horde. A lost Bloodrider should be a tragedy.
This has the bonus of giving each new 'regime', its own flavor and character, depending on what kind of assets his bloodriders turn out to be, and how well they 'advise' him (represented by the councilor's bonus to these areas). They'll still all be martial educated. But one may still end up with a great intrigue, stewardship, or whatever. That would be another way to separate the Dothraki from Westeros or Essos. The lack of dedicated stewards and diplomats.
16) Additionally for Bloodriders, there could potentially be a mechanism to raise new ones if you fall below 3, as the books don't entirely clarify that. Events where they intervene in duels with opposing khals, sacrifice themselves to save your life, are wounded and maimed in battle alongside you, and sharing your wives and concubines with them, would all be highly appropriate. It would be less complicated than the slave management window...which it should replace, more or less.
17) In that vein, the slave management should essentially be removed from the Dothraki. It's a completely different vibe than for the Free Cities. I would simply represent them by triggered modifiers as mentioned above, and instead, just have concubines. There's no real way for the Dothraki to manage them at the moment anyways except to breed them (why bother?) or beat them. They can't sell or take them as concubines. I would just leave this mechanic to the Free Cities and focus on a Khal's Bloodriders and concubines instead.
18) Speaking of which...Dothraki should be able to take concubines! Why on Earth was this disallowed for them? There is virtually no other way for them to contract marriages.
19) Finally. When declaring war upon a Free City, the Dothraki should be able to demand a noble concubine or wife instead of taking the money. Obviously, it would bring them Prestige. And if they make one of the concubines their wife, their son should be able to inherit her claims.
20) Not only does this make an alliance between the horde and that city-state, giving an incentive for a Free Cities player to buy into that mechanic...But more importantly, it gives Dothraki players a way to realistically acquire claims. Such as how Dany's son would have acquired a claim to the Iron Throne, because Drogo took her as his wife instead of as one of his many concubines.
Granted. If a Dothraki ever does claim a kingdom, it would probably descend into anarchy unless he turned his back on the horde lifestyle. And I can see some events further down that road. But everything before this should be implemented before worrying about that.
BONUS 21) It's worthwhile to remember that much of the current Dothraki Sea was built on the ruins of the kingdoms that the Dothraki invaded and conquered during the Century of Blood. They were only stopped at Qohor. This would be a very worthy end-game goal for a khal that rises as mighty as Drogo to have to contemplate. If they would rather take another go at destroying the Free Cities and giving up the easy source of tribute. Combined with potentially extorting noble wives with claims for their kids to inherit, would make for a more satisfying Dothraki end-game.
Nothing I've suggested would be difficult to do. I could even advise how to do it, as I'm pretty familiar with all the files. But I hope that most can see, comparatively, the above fixes would make for a much better Dothraki experience than the way they're currently implemented.
In short...The Dothraki experience should be a roller coaster. Just like Drogo's life was.
The only thing this post doesn't address, is something the current version doesn't address either...How to make khalasars suck at sieges. There might in the future be a way to better determine how well a unit does sieges based on its composition, but at the moment, it would probably need to be a hidden siege triggered event of some kind that improves defender morale and interferes with assaulting. A more elegant solution probably has to wait till a future patch from Paradox that opens up new ways for how we treat armies.
I've tried using a trait that is like Siege Leader in reverse, but honestly, if an army is big enough, it seems to make virtually no difference, and doesn't affect assaulting.
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