Vassals revolt. When the emperor dies, they rebel just because. Some want specific lands, others dont like the Emperor and others want to change the centralization level. If I where to give everything away (and I have tried giving a lot of lands through vassal transfer) I don't think it would fix everything.
What is happening is that I have large revolts, am forced to call everyone to arms and then the fact that I have called people to arms gives rise to further discontentment and further revolts. I have been gaining the revolt wars but the game gets really boring conquering the same lands over and over.
I have now given away all my duchies. let's see if it works
I gave away all duchies and indeed the number of revolts went down to a manageable number, and my income remained the same. Is there any point to having duchies as the Eastern roman emperor?
Then my Emperor died again, and I had 10 rebelious doux , and sent then to be vassals of the patriach, which solved again the rebelious mood, but which leaves the patriarch on top of half the troops in the empire. Any suggestions on how to cut the parthiarchy down to size again?