For a tiny bit of Prestige and so that my heir can transfer vassals to make dukes happy? Bad idea?
They'll be equally happy (well, equally happy at you. Someone will get the hate), and less powerful, if the county is transferred to ANYONE that's not you.
Also, they'll be more likely (in my experience) to get the "Stressed" trait, which means they die young and with their heirs barely out of their diapers.
Make sure to have those titles owned by someone within the same de jure kingdom. That means they can't fight each other if you have medium crown authority.
This is, I guess, more useful for areas where kingdoms and dukedoms are larger entities.
Though personally, if the dukedom consists of 5 or more counties I'd just (at some point) confiscate all the lands, destroy the ducal title and then hand out the counties to individual counts.
Counts are just so much more passive and happy than dukes. Although there is the drawback that a dukes capital tends to be more evolved and developed, so overall you get somewhat lower quality troops. In numbers they tend to be pretty even. Counts have fewer troops than they would have if one of them was a duke, but on the other hand dukes don't like you as much (so that would mean a smaller portion out of those troops).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Heavy Cavalry IS that powerful once you hit the melee phase.
They're pretty bad in the skirmish phase (the opening phase. Though they have a good defense so they take few casualties), but after that they rock (which each one worth two heavy infantry or three light infantry).
Although since it was only 500 heavy cav I'm guessing that the majority of the difference was a higher tech level, in particular for armor and infantry/cavalry melee weapons.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
For a tiny bit of Prestige and so that my heir can transfer vassals to make dukes happy? Bad idea?
In my opinion, yes.
You want as few direct vassals as you can, as it makes preventing rebellions much easier. And keeps any that do start from spiraling out of control.
And a trick for that - whenever you hand out a Duke or King title, hand it to the vassal whose county is the closest to yours. This will minimize the distance penalty.
Yeah. It can get pretty crazy. I have that problem with my scandinavian empire. My old kings tend to become so old that their long reign bonus is through the roof (like "+37" and stuff like that) and since my direct heirs die young my kings tend to be replaced by 15-year-old boys. It gets a bit chaotic. Thankfully my demesne is currently so well developed (and teched compared to the rest of my kingdom) that fully a third of my maximum possible fighting force are household troops.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
edited September 2012
I'll see who I can transfer under whom to clear things up. Wish me luck.
Hmm... I seem to have Ecumenical Patriarchs underneath me. Do I want that?
I can raise about 14k from personal troops. I own the 3 counties in my original southern Duchy in Ireland that each have an extra castle that I own. With my Marshall training troops in my capitol, I can get about 5k troops from the one county. The others are around 3.5k each. My problem was that the Kingdom of Ireland and Scotland have pretty crappy holdings that only allow you have a total of 4 or if you're really lucky 5 holdings in a county, so I never had a good choice early on
Same problem in Scandinavia. Outside Denmark it's pretty much all crap. In my case I've stretched my personal holding so that my demesne is the entire Duchy of Östergötland plus the entire (or most of) the Duchy of Finland. Primarily because I wanted a controlling interest in both Sweden and Finland (I hold the Duchy of Östergötland and Finland. Karelia, Norrland and Uppland have all been dissolved. Which means I have 100% control in Finland, while in Sweden I only need one extra vote).
The extra slots is mostly cities except in my Sörmland and Östergötland. It means that I both have an insane income and a sufficient fleet under my thumb to move all my troops. Basically I can deploy my troops in the right spot before the enemy has even moved inside my empire borders. Fleets are VERY useful if you want to rule in Scandinavia.
I also have enough troops that I can challenge the HRE for dominance (I think. They've never deployed their full strength against me since they're always busy fighting the encroaching muslims), and after building universities in all my cities (Church schools too) my tech level is pretty good.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
question: I'm trying to give my heir the kingdom of Greece (since I've created the Latin Empire title). I hold no personal land within Greece, he has 5 counties and a duchy within Greece. When I go to grant a landed title, the kingdom of Greece just doesn't appear (regardless of checkbox status).
Thoughts? Why can't I give him the kingdom?
The Latin Empire is technically a titular title; the game treats the other titular titles (Pope, Caliph, Grandmaster) as King level; if it's the same for the Latin Empire you won't be able to give away Greece as (I'm guessing) it'll actually be your primary title.
The Fourth Estate on
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
If someone is your direct vassal what reasons would prevent you from transferring the vassalage?
question: I'm trying to give my heir the kingdom of Greece (since I've created the Latin Empire title). I hold no personal land within Greece, he has 5 counties and a duchy within Greece. When I go to grant a landed title, the kingdom of Greece just doesn't appear (regardless of checkbox status).
Thoughts? Why can't I give him the kingdom?
The Latin Empire is technically a titular title; the game treats the other titular titles (Pope, Caliph, Grandmaster) as King level; if it's the same for the Latin Empire you won't be able to give away Greece as (I'm guessing) it'll actually be your primary title.
Interesting. Before forming the empire, Ireland was my primary title. Could it have switched?
I can give him the Kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland, I believe, just not Greece. Can I change that?
Durinia on
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
You want as few direct vassals as you can, as it makes preventing rebellions much easier. And keeps any that do start from spiraling out of control.
I'm going to disagree with that. IMO, it's better to have a lot of weak vassals than a few very strong ones.
Both ways have drawbacks. If you have a lot of weak vassals, things can get crazy if you fail badly or an ugly two year old inherits with a crap regent, as you gain a massive patchwork of revolting vassals everywhere. Having kingdom titles for those areas makes reconquest fairly simple, if time consuming, in the worst case scenario. On the other hand, strong vassals will take less overall work to keep in line, but can also be harder to placate, and if they do rebel you can be in more serious trouble.
Prince Bishops and Prince Archbishops make for amazing vassals outside your immediate vicinity. For example, if you're Emperor of Britain and you pick up territory in Spain, Bishops will flip the religion fairly quickly, be very unlikely to rebel as long as your traits are positive, and you can still get decent troops from them. They also rarely try to expand beyond their duchy. Give one county to each Bishop, and except for PAB's appearing in two county duchies they'll keep quiet all game.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I consider going for Prince Bishops and Prince Archbishops exclusively to be gaming the system. At least more so than I'm willing to do
And worst case scenario for your situation is that you're reduced to minimal crown authority and are reduced to a few counties. With my situation, the worst case is that you end up with an ambitious King (or mega-Duke) and you have to put him down. You don't have to worry about cascading revolts because you have enough honorary titles and money to placate everyone else.
As long as none of your vassals are more than, say, 25% of your total forces you can handle them in a revolt. And when they're that large, they'll have enough problems with their own vassals to keep them under control. It also increases the size of your levies since you have less people to keep happy.
Finally, and most importantly, it minimizes the number of "Desires Duchy" and "Desires Kingdom" penalties.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I didn't think there was Desires Empire penalties. Apparently there are.
I guess the biggest problem with having vassal kingdoms is the AI sucks at running a kingdom and will lose wars of independence right and left. Somehow that frees them of their Imperial ties too even though they didn't rebel against me. I can't join the wars either. I don't even get a claim on it.
Yeah somewhere in the Byzantine Empire takeover I inherited these weird entities, Ecumenical Patriarchy is a "kingdom" with no territory, and the Titular Kingdom of Tripoli is another. Any idea what their deal is?
I've never had a crusade for that area before. The Muslims had taken over all but about 3 counties in the kingdom even - so I made off like a bandit. (They didn't even show up to defend the crusade)
That just happened to me. I was awarded the Kingdom of Jerusalem for donating the most to the crusade. Didn't even have a chance to dump it on someone before I had war declared on me by over 30 of my vassals. Got to the point where I got bored of clicking away war declarations and just quit the game.
I consider going for Prince Bishops and Prince Archbishops exclusively to be gaming the system. At least more so than I'm willing to do
And worst case scenario for your situation is that you're reduced to minimal crown authority and are reduced to a few counties. With my situation, the worst case is that you end up with an ambitious King (or mega-Duke) and you have to put him down. You don't have to worry about cascading revolts because you have enough honorary titles and money to placate everyone else.
As long as none of your vassals are more than, say, 25% of your total forces you can handle them in a revolt. And when they're that large, they'll have enough problems with their own vassals to keep them under control. It also increases the size of your levies since you have less people to keep happy.
Finally, and most importantly, it minimizes the number of "Desires Duchy" and "Desires Kingdom" penalties.
I feel that PAB spam in overseas colonies taken via Holy War is significantly less abuse of game mechanics than pretty much any use of mercenaries.
Desires Duchy and Desires Kingdom penalties shouldn't really be a thing if you never actually create the kingdom titles (or destroy them ASAP) and you set up Dukes so they control the territory in their Duchies and nothing outside it.
I've never been reduced to minimal amounts with Duchy spam. The worst I can remember it getting was a Sicily game where I controlled Sicily, Greece, Spain, the Holy Land, and North Africa. Family in Spain and Greece, random descendants of conquered people in Sicily, PABs in Africa and the Holy Land. When everything blew up except for Sicily I zerged down Greece and then Africa. Parts of the Holy Land were conquered by Islam before I got there, and I lost most of western Spain. It took about fifty years to get it back.
I've had games where I've tried going with Kings, and it never works out well for me. Increased numbers of plots to change the succession method seem to crop up. Without High Crown authority, King's powers get out of had really quickly. When things blow up badly, I've been reduced to basically being just another king. By way of example, I had a Spanish game where I basically had the Emperor title, using Andalusia as my personal kingom without a title to it (wrong culture, can't form it). Aragon declared war on a duchy in my stomping grounds, so I raised crown authority. My king died, a plot popped up that I could not stop for Lack of Power, and my arrest attemp failed. And then everything I controlled basically said Trollolloll and rebelled. I was absolutely crushed and reduced to basically just my personal holdings.
I personally have never been as successful with kings as vassals as I am with duke spam. Duke spam, in my experience, creates a realm that's significantly easier to keep in order, at the cost of being more labour intensive. Use of kings means less work, but significantly nastier rebellions.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I have no idea. I wish I could get it to happen again. Their are some scary Dukes who would give me a hard time if they were to rebel.
I'm curious as to what the rebellion chance is based off of. I've had vassals at ~50 positive relationship with a rebellion chance. And then their are some with -10 that don't want to rebel. I don't get it.
I don't know what it was, but I had a string of rebellions last night. Maybe my previous truces from the last time around expired? I also had rebellions almost immediately from some newly landed vassals. I had just won a holy war and gave the counties to newly invited nobles, and within 6 months they had both rebelled. They were at like 90 relationship when I gave them their counties. What gives?
If you go to your Intrigue section, there's a Threats tab that shows all vassals that are considering a revolt. If you hover over the percentage, it'll show you a break down of causes.
I made a post a few pages ago that included the largest causes.
Some of the more important modifiers (my numbers may be slightly off as they're from memory): are below. 30% Are they a de-jure vassal? If so, the revolt risk is reduced by 15%. If not, it's increased by 15%. 20% Are they the same culture? If so, the revolt risk is reduced by 10%. If they're a separate culture group, increased by 10% 100% How far away is their capital from your capital? The further they are, the higher the risk. -100% How much of their levies are available? If they're all dead, they're less likely to rebel. 20% What crown authority do you have? High is +10%, Absolute is +20%. Note that these are completely independent from any of the direct opinion modifiers, such as additional crown authority penalties
And some of the sneaky opinion penalties you might miss (names may be slightly wrong): 25% Desires Kingdom of Place: Any duke vassal who is the de-jure vassal of one of your secondary king titles. 25% Desires Duchy of Place: Any king of a kingdom where you control a duchy or duke vassal. 25% Desires (Control of) Holding: Any count of a county where you control a holding or vassal. 25% Desires (Control of) County: Any duke of a duchy where you control a county or count vassal.
Note that the "de-jure vassal" check is a good reason to NOT destroy kingdom titles, as they're actually less likely to revolt despite the higher opinion.
Religion has a pretty huge modifier too if I remember it correctly.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I have no idea. I wish I could get it to happen again. Their are some scary Dukes who would give me a hard time if they were to rebel.
I'm curious as to what the rebellion chance is based off of. I've had vassals at ~50 positive relationship with a rebellion chance. And then their are some with -10 that don't want to rebel. I don't get it.
I don't know what it was, but I had a string of rebellions last night. Maybe my previous truces from the last time around expired? I also had rebellions almost immediately from some newly landed vassals. I had just won a holy war and gave the counties to newly invited nobles, and within 6 months they had both rebelled. They were at like 90 relationship when I gave them their counties. What gives?
If you go to your Intrigue section, there's a Threats tab that shows all vassals that are considering a revolt. If you hover over the percentage, it'll show you a break down of causes.
I made a post a few pages ago that included the largest causes.
Some of the more important modifiers (my numbers may be slightly off as they're from memory): are below. 30% Are they a de-jure vassal? If so, the revolt risk is reduced by 15%. If not, it's increased by 15%. 20% Are they the same culture? If so, the revolt risk is reduced by 10%. If they're a separate culture group, increased by 10% 100% How far away is their capital from your capital? The further they are, the higher the risk. -100% How much of their levies are available? If they're all dead, they're less likely to rebel. 20% What crown authority do you have? High is +10%, Absolute is +20%. Note that these are completely independent from any of the direct opinion modifiers, such as additional crown authority penalties
And some of the sneaky opinion penalties you might miss (names may be slightly wrong): 25% Desires Kingdom of Place: Any duke vassal who is the de-jure vassal of one of your secondary king titles. 25% Desires Duchy of Place: Any king of a kingdom where you control a duchy or duke vassal. 25% Desires (Control of) Holding: Any count of a county where you control a holding or vassal. 25% Desires (Control of) County: Any duke of a duchy where you control a county or count vassal.
Note that the "de-jure vassal" check is a good reason to NOT destroy kingdom titles, as they're actually less likely to revolt despite the higher opinion.
After a hundred years, people will become a de jure vassal if you don't have the de jure kingdom title over them and you have their entire duchy. So, if you can survive an extra 5% chance for 100 years you reduce rebellion chance by 25%.
Factor in that you essentially need High Crown authority to keep Kings from getting bigger within your empire and Duchy spam looks even better.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
It's 55% chance for a number of years (10? 20?) because of the destroy penalty. And you only need Medium Crown Authority to prevent conquests, since inheritance shenanigans are effectively impossible to prevent.
Plus, the true revolt risk modifier is -10000000% because they're not your direct vassal anymore :P
Began my Stjerne (Star) Dynasty as a lowly Norse Chief of Ängermanland. Managed to gain some holding before I had to swear fealty to the Finnish pagan chief in order to prevent Norway and Sweden from gang banging me.
Turned out that was a great decision. Managed to usurp the other vassals title and county and gained independence only after 4-6 years of being a vassal. Sweden broke up due to civil war and Norway had problems with the succession line. So I slowly gobbled up Sweden and usurped the title while also becoming the Religious Head of the Norse faith (was fixing some code in landed_titles.txt and afterwards my previous religious head was gone, enabling me to create the title for myself).
So while it was going great for me, it was going even better for Norway, that cancerous blob.
In this alternative universe, the Kingdom of England never existed.
Furthermore, the cancer is spreading.
While Norway can field 20k troops, plus an extra holy order (since I am of a pagan faith), they are more interested in killing off the Finnish people. This enables me to build up my lands so I eventually can field multiple mercenary companies without running out of funds.
And then some dickhead had to ruin my fun.
My ruler dies at the age of 45 leaving the entire kingdom and religious title to my next heir. My faithful archpriest (duke level), who has been a loyal supporter, suddenly decides to rebel against my new heir instantly. It is nothing I can't fix, but my second duke also decides he wants to be a poo-poo head. Again, nothing I can't fix.
Until Norway, Denmark and some bastard Swedish duchess decides they want my toys. Blam, 20k troops from Norway and 10k troops from Denmark and a measly 2k troops from the duchess swoop in over my lands, whoop my own troops and seize all the lands of my rebellious vassals. Lost 6 counties and to add insult to injury my income level also dropped to 2g/month from 12g/month (this was before the rebellions and happened after the heir transition).
The only solution, of course, was to nuke the save game from orbit.
Fuck you, Denmark and Norway. Have fun ruling your petty lands in oblivion.
Lesson learned: Don't be both ruler and the religious head of your faith. You gain no benefits (besides having a more powerful crusade CB). It is better to grant the religious leader a country, so he can build his own troops and assist you in wars.
It's 55% chance for a number of years (10? 20?) because of the destroy penalty. And you only need Medium Crown Authority to prevent conquests, since inheritance shenanigans are effectively impossible to prevent.
Plus, the true revolt risk modifier is -10000000% because they're not your direct vassal anymore :P
You only get the destroy penalty if they're there when you destroy it. So, conquer France or the Holy Land or whatnot, destroy the title, then hand out the goods. In cases where that doesn't happen, the Recently Conquered penalty can be your friend, as it means that they won't have troops to raise, meaning that they won't rebel.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
It is nice that CK2 is so moddable that you only need a very basic understanding of code structures to be able to customize the game to your needs.
Finally I managed to figure out how to get the titles right and how to add special buildings to the various heads of religions (so that the Pope gets a special army building so he isn't defeated so easily, republics get more armies so they aren't pushovers and leaders of various heresies also get pope armies). It makes it a bit easier and better to play as a pagan and request an invasion when your "supposed" allies aren't doing their job of protecting the True Faith™ .
It is nice that CK2 is so moddable that you only need a very basic understanding of code structures to be able to customize the game to your needs.
Finally I managed to figure out how to get the titles right and how to add special buildings to the various heads of religions (so that the Pope gets a special army building so he isn't defeated so easily, republics get more armies so they aren't pushovers and leaders of various heresies also get pope armies). It makes it a bit easier and better to play as a pagan and request an invasion when your "supposed" allies aren't doing their job of protecting the True Faith™ .
Please tell me you named the Pope's building something like "Swiss Guard Barracks" and had it produce Heavy Infantry.
Of course ignoring the fact that the Swiss Guard didn't start protecting the Pope until a few decades after CK2 ends.
It is nice that CK2 is so moddable that you only need a very basic understanding of code structures to be able to customize the game to your needs.
Finally I managed to figure out how to get the titles right and how to add special buildings to the various heads of religions (so that the Pope gets a special army building so he isn't defeated so easily, republics get more armies so they aren't pushovers and leaders of various heresies also get pope armies). It makes it a bit easier and better to play as a pagan and request an invasion when your "supposed" allies aren't doing their job of protecting the True Faith™ .
Please tell me you named the Pope's building something like "Swiss Guard Barracks" and had it produce Heavy Infantry.
Of course ignoring the fact that the Swiss Guard didn't start protecting the Pope until a few decades after CK2 ends.
Nah, I went with something more simple like Papal Army. Most of my changes are not really grounded in historical accuracy, but more aimed at an equal game playing field.
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MackenzierGold Star Police NinjaLurking... less than usual.Registered Userregular
So while it was going great for me, it was going even better for Norway, that cancerous blob.
In this alternative universe, the Kingdom of England never existed.
I've had a somewhat similar situation pop up in my most current game... England has effectively ceased to exist and is now a tangled mass of Norse & Swedish duchies. In this same game, Scotland has also managed to be the most stable realm I have ever seen so far, only one civil war and no expansion in 200 years of play.
Steam: Mackenzier
FFRK: 9rRG
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El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
....Did anyone end up actually taking the spanish learning game?
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38thDoE on steam
They'll be equally happy (well, equally happy at you. Someone will get the hate), and less powerful, if the county is transferred to ANYONE that's not you.
Also, they'll be more likely (in my experience) to get the "Stressed" trait, which means they die young and with their heirs barely out of their diapers.
Make sure to have those titles owned by someone within the same de jure kingdom. That means they can't fight each other if you have medium crown authority.
This is, I guess, more useful for areas where kingdoms and dukedoms are larger entities.
Though personally, if the dukedom consists of 5 or more counties I'd just (at some point) confiscate all the lands, destroy the ducal title and then hand out the counties to individual counts.
Counts are just so much more passive and happy than dukes. Although there is the drawback that a dukes capital tends to be more evolved and developed, so overall you get somewhat lower quality troops. In numbers they tend to be pretty even. Counts have fewer troops than they would have if one of them was a duke, but on the other hand dukes don't like you as much (so that would mean a smaller portion out of those troops).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
They're pretty bad in the skirmish phase (the opening phase. Though they have a good defense so they take few casualties), but after that they rock (which each one worth two heavy infantry or three light infantry).
Although since it was only 500 heavy cav I'm guessing that the majority of the difference was a higher tech level, in particular for armor and infantry/cavalry melee weapons.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
In my opinion, yes.
You want as few direct vassals as you can, as it makes preventing rebellions much easier. And keeps any that do start from spiraling out of control.
And a trick for that - whenever you hand out a Duke or King title, hand it to the vassal whose county is the closest to yours. This will minimize the distance penalty.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Hmm... I seem to have Ecumenical Patriarchs underneath me. Do I want that?
38thDoE on steam
Same problem in Scandinavia. Outside Denmark it's pretty much all crap. In my case I've stretched my personal holding so that my demesne is the entire Duchy of Östergötland plus the entire (or most of) the Duchy of Finland. Primarily because I wanted a controlling interest in both Sweden and Finland (I hold the Duchy of Östergötland and Finland. Karelia, Norrland and Uppland have all been dissolved. Which means I have 100% control in Finland, while in Sweden I only need one extra vote).
The extra slots is mostly cities except in my Sörmland and Östergötland. It means that I both have an insane income and a sufficient fleet under my thumb to move all my troops. Basically I can deploy my troops in the right spot before the enemy has even moved inside my empire borders. Fleets are VERY useful if you want to rule in Scandinavia.
I also have enough troops that I can challenge the HRE for dominance (I think. They've never deployed their full strength against me since they're always busy fighting the encroaching muslims), and after building universities in all my cities (Church schools too) my tech level is pretty good.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The Latin Empire is technically a titular title; the game treats the other titular titles (Pope, Caliph, Grandmaster) as King level; if it's the same for the Latin Empire you won't be able to give away Greece as (I'm guessing) it'll actually be your primary title.
38thDoE on steam
Interesting. Before forming the empire, Ireland was my primary title. Could it have switched?
I can give him the Kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland, I believe, just not Greece. Can I change that?
--Mark Twain
I remember reading you weren't able to give out kingdoms as basilus, perhaps that extends to the latin empire as well?
I'm going to disagree with that. IMO, it's better to have a lot of weak vassals than a few very strong ones.
Both ways have drawbacks. If you have a lot of weak vassals, things can get crazy if you fail badly or an ugly two year old inherits with a crap regent, as you gain a massive patchwork of revolting vassals everywhere. Having kingdom titles for those areas makes reconquest fairly simple, if time consuming, in the worst case scenario. On the other hand, strong vassals will take less overall work to keep in line, but can also be harder to placate, and if they do rebel you can be in more serious trouble.
Prince Bishops and Prince Archbishops make for amazing vassals outside your immediate vicinity. For example, if you're Emperor of Britain and you pick up territory in Spain, Bishops will flip the religion fairly quickly, be very unlikely to rebel as long as your traits are positive, and you can still get decent troops from them. They also rarely try to expand beyond their duchy. Give one county to each Bishop, and except for PAB's appearing in two county duchies they'll keep quiet all game.
And worst case scenario for your situation is that you're reduced to minimal crown authority and are reduced to a few counties. With my situation, the worst case is that you end up with an ambitious King (or mega-Duke) and you have to put him down. You don't have to worry about cascading revolts because you have enough honorary titles and money to placate everyone else.
As long as none of your vassals are more than, say, 25% of your total forces you can handle them in a revolt. And when they're that large, they'll have enough problems with their own vassals to keep them under control. It also increases the size of your levies since you have less people to keep happy.
Finally, and most importantly, it minimizes the number of "Desires Duchy" and "Desires Kingdom" penalties.
I guess the biggest problem with having vassal kingdoms is the AI sucks at running a kingdom and will lose wars of independence right and left. Somehow that frees them of their Imperial ties too even though they didn't rebel against me. I can't join the wars either. I don't even get a claim on it.
Yeah somewhere in the Byzantine Empire takeover I inherited these weird entities, Ecumenical Patriarchy is a "kingdom" with no territory, and the Titular Kingdom of Tripoli is another. Any idea what their deal is?
38thDoE on steam
38thDoE on steam
That just happened to me. I was awarded the Kingdom of Jerusalem for donating the most to the crusade. Didn't even have a chance to dump it on someone before I had war declared on me by over 30 of my vassals. Got to the point where I got bored of clicking away war declarations and just quit the game.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
Any news re: when the new DLC drops? the one that makes playing Orthodox/byzantine empire more interesting.
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
I feel that PAB spam in overseas colonies taken via Holy War is significantly less abuse of game mechanics than pretty much any use of mercenaries.
Desires Duchy and Desires Kingdom penalties shouldn't really be a thing if you never actually create the kingdom titles (or destroy them ASAP) and you set up Dukes so they control the territory in their Duchies and nothing outside it.
I've never been reduced to minimal amounts with Duchy spam. The worst I can remember it getting was a Sicily game where I controlled Sicily, Greece, Spain, the Holy Land, and North Africa. Family in Spain and Greece, random descendants of conquered people in Sicily, PABs in Africa and the Holy Land. When everything blew up except for Sicily I zerged down Greece and then Africa. Parts of the Holy Land were conquered by Islam before I got there, and I lost most of western Spain. It took about fifty years to get it back.
I've had games where I've tried going with Kings, and it never works out well for me. Increased numbers of plots to change the succession method seem to crop up. Without High Crown authority, King's powers get out of had really quickly. When things blow up badly, I've been reduced to basically being just another king. By way of example, I had a Spanish game where I basically had the Emperor title, using Andalusia as my personal kingom without a title to it (wrong culture, can't form it). Aragon declared war on a duchy in my stomping grounds, so I raised crown authority. My king died, a plot popped up that I could not stop for Lack of Power, and my arrest attemp failed. And then everything I controlled basically said Trollolloll and rebelled. I was absolutely crushed and reduced to basically just my personal holdings.
I personally have never been as successful with kings as vassals as I am with duke spam. Duke spam, in my experience, creates a realm that's significantly easier to keep in order, at the cost of being more labour intensive. Use of kings means less work, but significantly nastier rebellions.
If you go to your Intrigue section, there's a Threats tab that shows all vassals that are considering a revolt. If you hover over the percentage, it'll show you a break down of causes.
I made a post a few pages ago that included the largest causes.
Note that the "de-jure vassal" check is a good reason to NOT destroy kingdom titles, as they're actually less likely to revolt despite the higher opinion.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
After a hundred years, people will become a de jure vassal if you don't have the de jure kingdom title over them and you have their entire duchy. So, if you can survive an extra 5% chance for 100 years you reduce rebellion chance by 25%.
Factor in that you essentially need High Crown authority to keep Kings from getting bigger within your empire and Duchy spam looks even better.
Plus, the true revolt risk modifier is -10000000% because they're not your direct vassal anymore :P
Began my Stjerne (Star) Dynasty as a lowly Norse Chief of Ängermanland. Managed to gain some holding before I had to swear fealty to the Finnish pagan chief in order to prevent Norway and Sweden from gang banging me.
Turned out that was a great decision. Managed to usurp the other vassals title and county and gained independence only after 4-6 years of being a vassal. Sweden broke up due to civil war and Norway had problems with the succession line. So I slowly gobbled up Sweden and usurped the title while also becoming the Religious Head of the Norse faith (was fixing some code in landed_titles.txt and afterwards my previous religious head was gone, enabling me to create the title for myself).
So while it was going great for me, it was going even better for Norway, that cancerous blob.
In this alternative universe, the Kingdom of England never existed.
Furthermore, the cancer is spreading.
While Norway can field 20k troops, plus an extra holy order (since I am of a pagan faith), they are more interested in killing off the Finnish people. This enables me to build up my lands so I eventually can field multiple mercenary companies without running out of funds.
And then some dickhead had to ruin my fun.
My ruler dies at the age of 45 leaving the entire kingdom and religious title to my next heir. My faithful archpriest (duke level), who has been a loyal supporter, suddenly decides to rebel against my new heir instantly. It is nothing I can't fix, but my second duke also decides he wants to be a poo-poo head. Again, nothing I can't fix.
Until Norway, Denmark and some bastard Swedish duchess decides they want my toys. Blam, 20k troops from Norway and 10k troops from Denmark and a measly 2k troops from the duchess swoop in over my lands, whoop my own troops and seize all the lands of my rebellious vassals. Lost 6 counties and to add insult to injury my income level also dropped to 2g/month from 12g/month (this was before the rebellions and happened after the heir transition).
The only solution, of course, was to nuke the save game from orbit.
Fuck you, Denmark and Norway. Have fun ruling your petty lands in oblivion.
You only get the destroy penalty if they're there when you destroy it. So, conquer France or the Holy Land or whatnot, destroy the title, then hand out the goods. In cases where that doesn't happen, the Recently Conquered penalty can be your friend, as it means that they won't have troops to raise, meaning that they won't rebel.
Finally I managed to figure out how to get the titles right and how to add special buildings to the various heads of religions (so that the Pope gets a special army building so he isn't defeated so easily, republics get more armies so they aren't pushovers and leaders of various heresies also get pope armies). It makes it a bit easier and better to play as a pagan and request an invasion when your "supposed" allies aren't doing their job of protecting the True Faith™
Please tell me you named the Pope's building something like "Swiss Guard Barracks" and had it produce Heavy Infantry.
Nah, I went with something more simple like Papal Army. Most of my changes are not really grounded in historical accuracy, but more aimed at an equal game playing field.
I've had a somewhat similar situation pop up in my most current game... England has effectively ceased to exist and is now a tangled mass of Norse & Swedish duchies. In this same game, Scotland has also managed to be the most stable realm I have ever seen so far, only one civil war and no expansion in 200 years of play.
FFRK: 9rRG
It's been a while since we got a new update
I... didn't know that was possible. Maybe I should tone down the hedonism a little.
If you want the save, just pm me