The possible amount of customization is insane for a character that you'll probably only play for a few hours.
True but imagine hoew your CHUDs kids will turn out
Something that's fun to do in The Sims is "breed out the ugly". Make a character as hideous as you can and see how many generations it takes you to get a normal looking kid.
The possible amount of customization is insane for a character that you'll probably only play for a few hours.
True but imagine hoew your CHUDs kids will turn out
Something that's fun to do in The Sims is "breed out the ugly". Make a character as hideous as you can and see how many generations it takes you to get a normal looking kid.
Damn I've been looking for excuses to boot up The Sims 3 for the last few days.....
The new Ruler Designer makes it maybe a little too easy to get the 'Paragon of Virtue' achievement.
Anyway, playing around a bit with it, the 400 point limit for a character you can still get cheevos with feels pretty fair. It's enough points to make your character excel in a few specific ways, while forcing them to suck in others. Or just make a fairly decent character. Or whatever.
I picked up this game to play with a friend, and I adore it aesthetically and conceptually, but I think my biggest issue is I am Not Good at it.
I feel like I can't really successfully set a goal for myself like "I want THIS piece of land" and acquire it without resorting to warfare, and I'm 100% understanding this is just because I don't fully grasp all the diplomacy/shenanigan mechanics yet.
But also I am a tired old man now. Is there a youtuber or something that can provide me a crash-course to sleeping my way to the top? Or murder-scheming my way to the top? Basically any of the good stuff. I feel like if I get one thing as a foothold it'll give me the space to explore around, because damn this game is huge.
It is extremely difficult to acquire land without resorting to warfare. It will almost always require both marriage and assassinating hose ahead of you in the inheritance line.
Though if you don't want to directly control the land, sometimes you can successfully ask others to become your vassal, assuming you're powerful enough.
I feel like marriage is a good way to get claims, but then you need to fight to press the claims. Inheriting land peacefully is possible but not common.
I picked up this game to play with a friend, and I adore it aesthetically and conceptually, but I think my biggest issue is I am Not Good at it.
I feel like I can't really successfully set a goal for myself like "I want THIS piece of land" and acquire it without resorting to warfare, and I'm 100% understanding this is just because I don't fully grasp all the diplomacy/shenanigan mechanics yet.
But also I am a tired old man now. Is there a youtuber or something that can provide me a crash-course to sleeping my way to the top? Or murder-scheming my way to the top? Basically any of the good stuff. I feel like if I get one thing as a foothold it'll give me the space to explore around, because damn this game is huge.
It's important to know that while you'll hear tales of people doing some ridiculous power grabs via marriage and seduction, those both take some careful planning over stretches of time and no small amount of luck. The last bit is very important because such opportunities are relatively uncommon and even when they do pop up all sorts of things can go wrong while waiting to execute a plan. There's a reason that the community has a meme about perfect heirs contracting cancer, pneumonia, or the plague. For the most part this is a game about slow and gradual expansion of power where you might have generations of rulers that do nothing but build up and stabilize the realm. This is a grand strategy game but it's not a 4x game. The exception to the gradual expansion part is if you start out next to rulers of different faith or are tribal or pagan and none of those are particularly recommended for your earlier games. That didn't stop my first serious game in CK2 being in holy war happy Spain but those games had things fall apart rather dramatically at times.
In other news, someone discovered that the ruler designer acknowledges certain absurdly high stat values:
Tuning in again for the first time in a while (since the release of CK3 at least), what's the consensus so far on the sequel?
It looks like most people here have moved on to CK3. I have most of the expansions to CK2 and I worry I'll find CK3 missing too many of the features I like from CK2, as Paradox games seem to launch a little thin until they build up a DLC catalog. Would you guys recommend I hold out for a while and play another CK2 campaign, or upgrade?
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Tuning in again for the first time in a while (since the release of CK3 at least), what's the consensus so far on the sequel?
It looks like most people here have moved on to CK3. I have most of the expansions to CK2 and I worry I'll find CK3 missing too many of the features I like from CK2, as Paradox games seem to launch a little thin until they build up a DLC catalog. Would you guys recommend I hold out for a while and play another CK2 campaign, or upgrade?
CK3 pretty much has the best features from the DLC of CK2.
Tuning in again for the first time in a while (since the release of CK3 at least), what's the consensus so far on the sequel?
It looks like most people here have moved on to CK3. I have most of the expansions to CK2 and I worry I'll find CK3 missing too many of the features I like from CK2, as Paradox games seem to launch a little thin until they build up a DLC catalog. Would you guys recommend I hold out for a while and play another CK2 campaign, or upgrade?
CK3 pretty much has the best features from the DLC of CK2.
I feel like I should secure the entirety of my capital duchy by am not sure how to go about it. I always end up in a position where my vassals are huge and keep expanding and I’m sitting there with 2 places
Tuning in again for the first time in a while (since the release of CK3 at least), what's the consensus so far on the sequel?
It looks like most people here have moved on to CK3. I have most of the expansions to CK2 and I worry I'll find CK3 missing too many of the features I like from CK2, as Paradox games seem to launch a little thin until they build up a DLC catalog. Would you guys recommend I hold out for a while and play another CK2 campaign, or upgrade?
CK3 pretty much has the best features from the DLC of CK2.
Tuning in again for the first time in a while (since the release of CK3 at least), what's the consensus so far on the sequel?
It looks like most people here have moved on to CK3. I have most of the expansions to CK2 and I worry I'll find CK3 missing too many of the features I like from CK2, as Paradox games seem to launch a little thin until they build up a DLC catalog. Would you guys recommend I hold out for a while and play another CK2 campaign, or upgrade?
CK3 is pretty feature complete. It is missing some things compared to full DLC CK2 IMO, namely in goals to pursue while at peace such as bloodline pokemon, societies, or artifact collecting but there's still a lot as is.
I picked up this game to play with a friend, and I adore it aesthetically and conceptually, but I think my biggest issue is I am Not Good at it.
I feel like I can't really successfully set a goal for myself like "I want THIS piece of land" and acquire it without resorting to warfare, and I'm 100% understanding this is just because I don't fully grasp all the diplomacy/shenanigan mechanics yet.
But also I am a tired old man now. Is there a youtuber or something that can provide me a crash-course to sleeping my way to the top? Or murder-scheming my way to the top? Basically any of the good stuff. I feel like if I get one thing as a foothold it'll give me the space to explore around, because damn this game is huge.
I mean, taking land will involve war 90% of the time, the trick is getting the claims so that you can declare war in the first place. Marrying into land is largely a case of planting seeds and hedging bets; in my game I managed to get France under my dynasty's control because I'd married one of my daughters matrilineally to the French King's third son, and by sheer co-incidence the first two in line died before they could inherit. Similarly I had married a son into the Byzantine Empire for the prestige and forgot about him until 50 years later the game let me know that one of his sons had a strong claim to the whole empire. And checking their forces vs ours it turned out that their new Emperor was garbage, and already fighting two other claimants. So I took a shot, sailed my army straight to Constantinople, and by sheer luck captured the Emperor after I won the siege, winning me the war instantly.
Now keeping all of that land is the real trick, I only controlled England, France and the Byzantine empire for a very short period of time before my King died and inheritance happened, but I figure as long as its in my dynasty it'll be easier to get back in future, plus having three emperors in the dynasty is going to be good for my splendor.
The people of reddit are taking full advantage of the new ruler designer, some quite impressive creations in there so far. Hardly any abominations at all!
Note: Some abominations.
And then there's this whole album of characters created for an upcoming GoT mod:
There are a few minor missing features I'd like to see. More stuff to do while at peace. Even more RPG stuff and decisions. But these are minor things.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
There are a few minor missing features I'd like to see. More stuff to do while at peace. Even more RPG stuff and decisions. But these are minor things.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
I think the lack of things to do in peacetime is part of the blobbing. The AI doesn't have any more to do than the player. Holding stuff feels like it could use some tweaks to keep the powers that start big from just growing and growing but that's a delicate balancing act.
There are a few minor missing features I'd like to see. More stuff to do while at peace. Even more RPG stuff and decisions. But these are minor things.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
I think the lack of things to do in peacetime is part of the blobbing. The AI doesn't have any more to do than the player. Holding stuff feels like it could use some tweaks to keep the powers that start big from just growing and growing but that's a delicate balancing act.
There's some wierdness with the CBs, too. As the HR Emperor, I or my vassals have claims on a decent chunk of the ERE. But no one person has more than a small Duchy claim. Why can't I go to war and press all our claims (or at least a decent chunk of them)?
There are a few minor missing features I'd like to see. More stuff to do while at peace. Even more RPG stuff and decisions. But these are minor things.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
I think the lack of things to do in peacetime is part of the blobbing. The AI doesn't have any more to do than the player. Holding stuff feels like it could use some tweaks to keep the powers that start big from just growing and growing but that's a delicate balancing act.
There's some wierdness with the CBs, too. As the HR Emperor, I or my vassals have claims on a decent chunk of the ERE. But no one person has more than a small Duchy claim. Why can't I go to war and press all our claims (or at least a decent chunk of them)?
My guess would be you can't because allowing that had the AI immediately completely wiping out players way too often. It feels like the kind of thing limited because it actually made the game less fun.
CK3 is a much more intuitive game to play, has a ton of quality of life features, and is more dynamic. It looks better and runs better (on modern machines at least), particularly late game.
It is also significantly easier, particularly the internal politics side. And the AI is handling it better.
Those stabler internal politics lead to blobbing. Realms spend less time in civil war and thus have more time to grow, and fall apart less.
I had a lot of fun in the first month of release but now playing other stuff, and will probably come back on big content patches or if big mods starts hitting milestones.
There are a few minor missing features I'd like to see. More stuff to do while at peace. Even more RPG stuff and decisions. But these are minor things.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
I think the lack of things to do in peacetime is part of the blobbing. The AI doesn't have any more to do than the player. Holding stuff feels like it could use some tweaks to keep the powers that start big from just growing and growing but that's a delicate balancing act.
There's some wierdness with the CBs, too. As the HR Emperor, I or my vassals have claims on a decent chunk of the ERE. But no one person has more than a small Duchy claim. Why can't I go to war and press all our claims (or at least a decent chunk of them)?
There some innovation that let you do that. Divine Right in the Middle Medieval era lets you push more than one of your own Claims at once. Rightful Ownership in the Late era lets ou push more than one of other peoples.
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LowHitPointsSword of the AfternoonMichiganRegistered Userregular
With the new character creator it is incredibly easy to create the Norman culture in 867. Select the Duchy of Nuestra, create a character with Norse culture (can even be Catholic to not get any religion animus), and the decision to create the Norman culture is there day one.
According to the wiki when created the Norman culture gets all innovations unlocked by French AND Norse culture, so you start with 13 or 14 of the tribal era innovations unlocked. Decent development in the provinces, and you start with two counties in the Duchy of Anjou. It is now one of my favorite starts.
There are a few minor missing features I'd like to see. More stuff to do while at peace. Even more RPG stuff and decisions. But these are minor things.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
I think the lack of things to do in peacetime is part of the blobbing. The AI doesn't have any more to do than the player. Holding stuff feels like it could use some tweaks to keep the powers that start big from just growing and growing but that's a delicate balancing act.
There's some wierdness with the CBs, too. As the HR Emperor, I or my vassals have claims on a decent chunk of the ERE. But no one person has more than a small Duchy claim. Why can't I go to war and press all our claims (or at least a decent chunk of them)?
There some innovation that let you do that. Divine Right in the Middle Medieval era lets you push more than one of your own Claims at once. Rightful Ownership in the Late era lets ou push more than one of other peoples.
I haven't gotten to Rightful Ownership, yet. I assume it just allows me to press one person's multiple claims, not multiple people's singular claims?
So I'm starting another new game as a one-province Count up in Siberia. I'm surrounded by a couple of other single province Counts and there's a three-county Duke nearby.
With the Ruler Designer, I make a ruler who's good at Martial, because when you've got one province and are surrounded by people who also have one province, you want someone who's good at fighting.
Anyway, I swallow up some of my neighbours when the nearby Duke declares war on me. I can't win, but at least I make the war last, and it takes some time for him to take one of my recently-conquered counties from me. Oh, well. At least I'll be protected by the Tru- aaaaand a fuckup from my Chancellor cancels the Truce and the Duke can declare on me again if he feels like it.
OK, you know what, I'll just offer to be his vassal and be protected that way. So, sheltered under the Duke's protective wing, I conquer some more counties.
And then, about ten years later, the Duke dies and his realm gets split among his underage heirs. Now the new Duke, my Liege, has one single county - the one county the old Duke took from me. And here I am, his one and only vassal, with five counties to my name.
So, yeah, let's just say, this was the shortest time I've ever spent being a loyal vassal.
That can be a lot of work if you have a big house, but the benefits of founding a coven are very nice so it is worth the effort. My normal approach is to get into a religion where witchcraft is accepted, and then just constantly expose the secret after you convert people if it stays secret. That way you don't lose progress on knowing the witch secrets/witch traits between rulers, which is helpful since it can be a multi-generational effort.
One big caveat, if you reform a religion that does not allow open witchcraft into one that does, converting people to witchcraft tends to stay a secret even when you think it shouldn't. On the other hand, if you start with one that accepts it, people who get converted get the trait up front instead of the secret.
Arglblargl. I have two Duchy titles that keep showing up as creatable. I assume whichever idiot son or grandson I assign it to just keeps destroying it? It's really, really annoying.
As you get bigger you are never going to have perfect duchy coverage because the AI has some rules for destroying them, so just two is only the beginning. Really it just means you have titles always available for creating if you have money and need prestige.
Has anyone shaken out a strong feeling on whether it's better to stick to the classic "as small a family as possible while guaranteeing heirs" or go wide for the renown?
Playing vikings, I've had a bit too aggressive a penchant for going wide, I think, which tends to start to bite me after 3 or 4 heirs.
Has anyone shaken out a strong feeling on whether it's better to stick to the classic "as small a family as possible while guaranteeing heirs" or go wide for the renown?
Playing vikings, I've had a bit too aggressive a penchant for going wide, I think, which tends to start to bite me after 3 or 4 heirs.
I mean ideally you want to try for both, spread your dynasty far and wide but keep as many of your personal holdings as possible. Of course the game is set up so that its hard to do both, especially early on when your succession options are limited. I've had some success with matrilineal marriage; marrying off surplus sons matrilineally for alliances so that their heirs won't inherit, and vice-versa getting other rulers to marry your daughter matrilineally so that their children will be of your dynasty and possibly in line to inherit some titles down the line. A big family means you can afford to plant lots of these little seeds around the world, and if you're lucky they'll start paying dividends a few generations down the line.
Has anyone shaken out a strong feeling on whether it's better to stick to the classic "as small a family as possible while guaranteeing heirs" or go wide for the renown?
Playing vikings, I've had a bit too aggressive a penchant for going wide, I think, which tends to start to bite me after 3 or 4 heirs.
I tend to blob a bit too often myself and it gets tough to keep track of, especially if I want to try some of the more niche things like forming a coven.
I'm trying something different this time - playing Bohemia, and just Bohemia, with expansion only coming up if something seriously appealing/unavoidable shows up nearby.
It's a great place for trying that, since you start with six counties, some of which are enormous, and Bohemia has single-heir succession.
Posts
The possible amount of customization is insane for a character that you'll probably only play for a few hours.
True but imagine hoew your CHUDs kids will turn out
Something that's fun to do in The Sims is "breed out the ugly". Make a character as hideous as you can and see how many generations it takes you to get a normal looking kid.
Damn I've been looking for excuses to boot up The Sims 3 for the last few days.....
https://www.crusaderkings.com/en/news/dev-diary-44-1-2-bits-bob
Improved UI for battles and dynasty window
An attach army feature to force one army to follow another
And stuff to make ugly people uglier?
Anyway, playing around a bit with it, the 400 point limit for a character you can still get cheevos with feels pretty fair. It's enough points to make your character excel in a few specific ways, while forcing them to suck in others. Or just make a fairly decent character. Or whatever.
I feel like I can't really successfully set a goal for myself like "I want THIS piece of land" and acquire it without resorting to warfare, and I'm 100% understanding this is just because I don't fully grasp all the diplomacy/shenanigan mechanics yet.
But also I am a tired old man now. Is there a youtuber or something that can provide me a crash-course to sleeping my way to the top? Or murder-scheming my way to the top? Basically any of the good stuff. I feel like if I get one thing as a foothold it'll give me the space to explore around, because damn this game is huge.
Though if you don't want to directly control the land, sometimes you can successfully ask others to become your vassal, assuming you're powerful enough.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's important to know that while you'll hear tales of people doing some ridiculous power grabs via marriage and seduction, those both take some careful planning over stretches of time and no small amount of luck. The last bit is very important because such opportunities are relatively uncommon and even when they do pop up all sorts of things can go wrong while waiting to execute a plan. There's a reason that the community has a meme about perfect heirs contracting cancer, pneumonia, or the plague. For the most part this is a game about slow and gradual expansion of power where you might have generations of rulers that do nothing but build up and stabilize the realm. This is a grand strategy game but it's not a 4x game. The exception to the gradual expansion part is if you start out next to rulers of different faith or are tribal or pagan and none of those are particularly recommended for your earlier games. That didn't stop my first serious game in CK2 being in holy war happy Spain but those games had things fall apart rather dramatically at times.
In other news, someone discovered that the ruler designer acknowledges certain absurdly high stat values:
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
It looks like most people here have moved on to CK3. I have most of the expansions to CK2 and I worry I'll find CK3 missing too many of the features I like from CK2, as Paradox games seem to launch a little thin until they build up a DLC catalog. Would you guys recommend I hold out for a while and play another CK2 campaign, or upgrade?
CK3 pretty much has the best features from the DLC of CK2.
Can I play as a bear in CK3?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
CK3 is pretty feature complete. It is missing some things compared to full DLC CK2 IMO, namely in goals to pursue while at peace such as bloodline pokemon, societies, or artifact collecting but there's still a lot as is.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I mean, taking land will involve war 90% of the time, the trick is getting the claims so that you can declare war in the first place. Marrying into land is largely a case of planting seeds and hedging bets; in my game I managed to get France under my dynasty's control because I'd married one of my daughters matrilineally to the French King's third son, and by sheer co-incidence the first two in line died before they could inherit. Similarly I had married a son into the Byzantine Empire for the prestige and forgot about him until 50 years later the game let me know that one of his sons had a strong claim to the whole empire. And checking their forces vs ours it turned out that their new Emperor was garbage, and already fighting two other claimants. So I took a shot, sailed my army straight to Constantinople, and by sheer luck captured the Emperor after I won the siege, winning me the war instantly.
Now keeping all of that land is the real trick, I only controlled England, France and the Byzantine empire for a very short period of time before my King died and inheritance happened, but I figure as long as its in my dynasty it'll be easier to get back in future, plus having three emperors in the dynasty is going to be good for my splendor.
The people of reddit are taking full advantage of the new ruler designer, some quite impressive creations in there so far. Hardly any abominations at all!
Note: Some abominations.
And then there's this whole album of characters created for an upcoming GoT mod:
https://imgur.com/a/n7Lf5fI
You also can't play Nomads - they're just Tribal this time around.
The other things I miss are artefacts, interaction with China, and the Aztec invasion.
There are a few mechanics that result in odd, very ahistorical behavior though. Like the Byzantines conquering land beyond the Danube or the Black Sea and holding it. Or mighty empires always avoiding each other to pick off easier prey.
(Yes, it's a lot easier to gobble up tiny petty kingdoms than mighty empires, but the potential reward is also much, much higher.)
I think the lack of things to do in peacetime is part of the blobbing. The AI doesn't have any more to do than the player. Holding stuff feels like it could use some tweaks to keep the powers that start big from just growing and growing but that's a delicate balancing act.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
There's some wierdness with the CBs, too. As the HR Emperor, I or my vassals have claims on a decent chunk of the ERE. But no one person has more than a small Duchy claim. Why can't I go to war and press all our claims (or at least a decent chunk of them)?
My guess would be you can't because allowing that had the AI immediately completely wiping out players way too often. It feels like the kind of thing limited because it actually made the game less fun.
It is also significantly easier, particularly the internal politics side. And the AI is handling it better.
Those stabler internal politics lead to blobbing. Realms spend less time in civil war and thus have more time to grow, and fall apart less.
I had a lot of fun in the first month of release but now playing other stuff, and will probably come back on big content patches or if big mods starts hitting milestones.
There some innovation that let you do that. Divine Right in the Middle Medieval era lets you push more than one of your own Claims at once. Rightful Ownership in the Late era lets ou push more than one of other peoples.
According to the wiki when created the Norman culture gets all innovations unlocked by French AND Norse culture, so you start with 13 or 14 of the tribal era innovations unlocked. Decent development in the provinces, and you start with two counties in the Duchy of Anjou. It is now one of my favorite starts.
I haven't gotten to Rightful Ownership, yet. I assume it just allows me to press one person's multiple claims, not multiple people's singular claims?
With the Ruler Designer, I make a ruler who's good at Martial, because when you've got one province and are surrounded by people who also have one province, you want someone who's good at fighting.
Anyway, I swallow up some of my neighbours when the nearby Duke declares war on me. I can't win, but at least I make the war last, and it takes some time for him to take one of my recently-conquered counties from me. Oh, well. At least I'll be protected by the Tru- aaaaand a fuckup from my Chancellor cancels the Truce and the Duke can declare on me again if he feels like it.
OK, you know what, I'll just offer to be his vassal and be protected that way. So, sheltered under the Duke's protective wing, I conquer some more counties.
And then, about ten years later, the Duke dies and his realm gets split among his underage heirs. Now the new Duke, my Liege, has one single county - the one county the old Duke took from me. And here I am, his one and only vassal, with five counties to my name.
So, yeah, let's just say, this was the shortest time I've ever spent being a loyal vassal.
Those're some good stats for a drunkard. Or just in general, really.
at this point I can say I've successfully bred geniuses into my immediate family. All my kids have it too.
Currently trying to make everyone witches for the coven decision but its really tedious.
One big caveat, if you reform a religion that does not allow open witchcraft into one that does, converting people to witchcraft tends to stay a secret even when you think it shouldn't. On the other hand, if you start with one that accepts it, people who get converted get the trait up front instead of the secret.
Like if my heir is a witch he should keep my knowledge of who else in the family is a witch.
Playing vikings, I've had a bit too aggressive a penchant for going wide, I think, which tends to start to bite me after 3 or 4 heirs.
I mean ideally you want to try for both, spread your dynasty far and wide but keep as many of your personal holdings as possible. Of course the game is set up so that its hard to do both, especially early on when your succession options are limited. I've had some success with matrilineal marriage; marrying off surplus sons matrilineally for alliances so that their heirs won't inherit, and vice-versa getting other rulers to marry your daughter matrilineally so that their children will be of your dynasty and possibly in line to inherit some titles down the line. A big family means you can afford to plant lots of these little seeds around the world, and if you're lucky they'll start paying dividends a few generations down the line.
I tend to blob a bit too often myself and it gets tough to keep track of, especially if I want to try some of the more niche things like forming a coven.
I'm trying something different this time - playing Bohemia, and just Bohemia, with expansion only coming up if something seriously appealing/unavoidable shows up nearby.
It's a great place for trying that, since you start with six counties, some of which are enormous, and Bohemia has single-heir succession.