Crown Authority: Help me understand why higher is better.

Dearmad · Mar 2, 2012

It lowers the noble's like of you so even with the slightly greater vassal artmies I can raise, seems like I wouldn't want it too high- holding on to the vassal armies too long lowers their like of me even more... and eventually they get angry.

OR does this somehow apply:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-Crown_law_revoltrisk_increment-10&highlight=

and so while they may hate my guts, they rebel less often, which would be sorta wrong.

Anyway you out there who play this game like power gamers, tell me why I want more crown power.

znrch · Mar 2, 2012

Well, High Crown Authority keeps holdings from being inherited from someone outside of your realm.

MajorHeartfire · Mar 2, 2012

If you don't have High Authority then your territory can be inherited by those outside your Kingdom. For example, if my Duke marries the Princess of France, then their child will inherit France, AND my Duchy.

Medium Authority prevents internal conflicts. Without it, your vassals can fight each other for land. Sometimes this happens frequently, and sometimes it happens rarely. But, I don't know how to intervene in these conflicts and they are nothing but disruptions to my realm's outward projection. What if I get invaded while they are fighting? I can't raise either of their levies!

MajorHeartfire · Mar 2, 2012

To add to my previous message, as long as you don't have the lowest form of Crown Authority, you can get by. At the lowest level you can't even control who leads your armies...

unmerged(26764) · Mar 2, 2012

The most important part about crown authority is it places a floor on the minimum percent of levies that your vassals have to give you.

Vassals don't give you all their levies. They give you a percent of their maximum (your feudal levy law) based on how much they like you. Whatever their relationship with you is, that's the percent they give you. If they like you at +50, that means they give you half of the maximum levies, set at the default at 80 % -- so 40 % of their total.

Crown authority sets a minimum that trumps all that. At absolute crown authority, it's 40 %. No matter how much a vassal likes or hates you, he has to give you 40 % of his troops. If he likes you a lot, he can give you more -- up to 100% of the maximum (at default 80%, and if you raise your feudal levy law even 100%). But even if he's at negative relations, he still has to give you 40% of his troops when you call -- as much as if he was at +50 relations.

That's why high crown authority is valuable. Plus the other perks -- stopping vassals from declaring their own private wars and stopping inheritances outside your kingdom.

Aquilegia · Mar 2, 2012

High Crown Authority is nice when you have a bad ruler. Although your vassals don't like you they Must give you a percentage of their troops, increasing your power against rebellious vassals/other enemies (but your vassals will dislike you more). Although being liked with no crown authority works better for the amount of troops, you can't count on always having a good ruler/smooth succession. And the other benefits are nice too : p

It's a trade-off between lots of power with good rulers and no power with bad rulers with low authority or reasonable and guaranteed power always with high authority. (I like medium to high authority, with lower authority in secondary kingdoms, but that's personal)

Dearmad · Mar 2, 2012

But wouldn't higher authority lead to more rebellions and such since they'll like the king less? Or does that modifier I mentioned in the link in the OP actually make them rebel LESS but like me less too with higher authority?

Meneth · Mar 2, 2012

Valinn said:
Vassals don't give you all their levies. They give you a percent of their maximum (your feudal levy law) based on how much they like you. Whatever their relationship with you is, that's the percent they give you. If they like you at +50, that means they give you half of the maximum levies, set at the default at 80 % -- so 40 % of their total.

1/3rd actually (*0.8, so 26.7%), as the scale for levies goes from 25 to 100, not 0 to 100.

Dearmad said:
But wouldn't higher authority lead to more rebellions and such since they'll like the king less? Or does that modifier I mentioned in the link in the OP actually make them rebel LESS but like me less too with higher authority?

Higher crown auth gives higher rebellion list. It goes -20%/-10%/0%/10%/20%. So each step up is 10% more revolt risk, and 10 less opinion (giving another 10% revolt risk if opinion is under 0, and 5% if above)

Dearmad · Mar 2, 2012

Meneth said:
1/3rd actually (*0.8, so 26.7%), as the scale for levies goes from 25 to 100, not 0 to 100.

Higher crown auth gives higher rebellion list. It goes -20%/-10%/0%/10%/20%. So each step up is 10% more revolt risk, and 10 less opinion (giving another 10% revolt risk if opinion is under 0, and 5% if above)

It's that last bit there that you write which makes me think- NO THANK YOU.... yet most people in here post about running as absolute monarchs all the time. Crap if I did that there would NEVER be peace in my realm. I have about two civil wars per regnum, one coming in and one due to some mishandling I must do... And when they rebel, I lose them as vassals anyway... so woopdedoo on that extra 10% of troops.

I still don't get it.

Maybe I'll just have to try running at that level sometime.

Meneth · Mar 2, 2012

Dearmad said:
It's that last bit there that you write which makes me think- NO THANK YOU.... yet most people in here post about running as absolute monarchs all the time. Crap if I did that there would NEVER be peace in my realm. I have about two civil wars per regnum, one coming in and one due to some mishandling I must do... And when they rebel, I lose them as vassals anyway... so woopdedoo on that extra 10% of troops.

I still don't get it. Maybe I'll just have to try running at that level sometime.

I like Medium Crown Authority the best. The revolt risk is neutral at 0%, and I only lose 10 opinion. In return I get a guaranteed 20% of all levies, free title revocation of heretics/infidels, ability to appoint commanders, and vassals that cannot grow via internal fighting.
At the same time I set feudal levies to minimum which nicely makes up for the crown law opinion penalty.

unmerged(26764) · Mar 2, 2012

Meneth said:
1/3rd actually (*0.8, so 26.7%), as the scale for levies goes from 25 to 100, not 0 to 100.

Are you sure about that? I've been obsessive about backwards analyzing the tooltips to figure out what's actually going on. If the maximum levy is 80 percent of the total, that number then seems to be multiplied by the percentage the vassal likes you -- +25 is 25 %, +50 is 50%, and so on. So if the vassal makes available up to 80% of the total and likes you +50, he will give you 40% of the total. If you bump up feudal levies to maximum, he will then give you 50% of his total. Unless the tooltips are wrong, I'm pretty certain this is how it works.

This issue why I now swear by absolute crown authority. Sure, I love not worrying about pieces of my realm getting inherited away. But the difference in levied troops is enormous. At lower crown authority, many of your vassals will be giving you half as many troops. So what if they rebel a little more? My army when they do is twice as big. And that bigger army makes it possible to take down big targets like the HRE and France, which you may not be able to accomplish at all with lower crown authority.

Meneth · Mar 2, 2012

Valinn said:
Are you sure about that? I've been obsessive about backwards analyzing the tooltips to figure out what's actually going on. If the maximum levy is 80 percent of the total, that number then seems to be multiplied by the percentage the vassal likes you -- +25 is 25 %, +50 is 50%, and so on. So if the vassal makes available up to 80% of the total and likes you +50, he will give you 40% of the total. If you bump up feudal levies to maximum, he will then give you 50% of his total. Unless the tooltips are wrong, I'm pretty certain this is how it works.

Might start at-25, actually. From my defines.lua "MIN_LEVY_RAISE_OPINION_THRESHOLD = -25, -- Below this opinion value you'll get the least amount of troops possible", but I might've somehow inserted that - by accident. Could you confirm whether yours says the same or just 25?

Bertouch · Mar 2, 2012

Just a note to the effect that medium crown authority or above does not grant immunity from vassals declaring war on one another. It grants immunities from war of said vassals in your de jure kingdom. So if you've expanded your kingdom and two dukes from lands originally outside yours are feuding over a county, you will get to still watch all the fireworks.

Appointing commanders? Can't say I've come across this. Unless you mean appointing counts who in turn become commanders when their troops are called out, what do you mean?

Meneth · Mar 2, 2012

Bertouch said:
Just a note to the effect that medium crown authority or above does not grant immunity from vassals declaring war on one another. It grants immunities from war of said vassals in your de jure kingdom. So if you've expanded your kingdom and two dukes from lands originally outside yours are feuding over a county, you will get to still watch all the fireworks.

Appointing commanders? Can't say I've come across this. Unless you mean appointing counts who in turn become commanders when their troops are called out, what do you mean?

If you don't have at least limited crown authority, you cannot appoint someone as the leader of a flank in an army, which can lead to an army having characters with low martial-skills as their commanders.

kentonio · Mar 2, 2012

Bertouch said:
Appointing commanders? Can't say I've come across this. Unless you mean appointing counts who in turn become commanders when their troops are called out, what do you mean?

I assumed he meant selecting which commanders lead each wing of an army.

Antonius66 · Mar 2, 2012

I just finished my first game. I kept Medium authority in every kingdom I had (9 of them) except for a couple odd situations where I needed to change it to change a succession law. I found the trade between a lower floor of troop minimum and more loyalty more than worth it. I pretty much tried to keep my vassals as happy as possible all the time so I honestly almost never cared about a minimum 40% of their troops when I was trying to get 70-100 anyway.

CirMag · Mar 2, 2012

Meneth said:
Might start at-25, actually. From my defines.lua "MIN_LEVY_RAISE_OPINION_THRESHOLD = -25, -- Below this opinion value you'll get the least amount of troops possible", but I might've somehow inserted that - by accident. Could you confirm whether yours says the same or just 25?

If I remember right;
It starts at -25 and each point above is .8% added, that being multiplied by maximum levy size of course, and the crown authority acts as a floor.

Max levy mod (Levy Law) * Relations mod(.8[25+relation]) = base levy %
if base < minimum (crown authority) then minimum = actual, else base = actual
Actual * levy size = levied troops

Bertouch · Mar 2, 2012

Meneth said:
If you don't have at least limited crown authority, you cannot appoint someone as the leader of a flank in an army, which can lead to an army having characters with low martial-skills as their commanders.

Sure, only I wasn't advocating anything. I was simply pointing out that the blanket statement that vassals wars stop because of medium crown authority or better is inaccurate.

Myself, I prefer medium to high. You get most of the benefits, without another nasty -10 to vassal relationships.

BurningEGO · Mar 2, 2012

I have played the game for almost 300 hours by now and i run all of my kingdoms at medium crown authority.

It gives you 2 big things, that i need:

- Revokation of titles
- No war between vassals of the same said kingdom

I remember trying high crown and even absolute crown authority, but the hit to relations is huge and when you get a new ruler, you are pretty much screwed up. It doesnt compensate. For multi-kingdom empires, like the ones i build, high/absolute crown authority is suicide. Sure, for a small kingdom it might be doable, but when you find yourself ruler of more than 10 kingdoms, you wont stand a chance. Amount of troops arent really an issue in such large empires anyway, and i value vassal relations more. Higher vassal relations = more troops, while higher crown authority ONLY increases the minimum of troops they are forced to give you.

neo120590 · Mar 2, 2012

I currently have 8 kingdoms in my game. In England (my start) I have high authority and I haven't had any succession crisis revolts there in a generation (lots of money helps). In Denmark it was absolute when I conquered it but I lowered it to high. The rest I keep at medium. Medium of course is a great balance. The reason I keep high in those two is because I need the troops there to conquer new territory. In the isles I still need to take Ireland and Scotland. In Denmark, the dam hordes are up there and sometimes christian? wtf. Also bordering the HRE on 2 sides I get scared of them declaring war even though I can raise more troops than them. By the time your king has been around 20-30 years the "long reign" bonus counteracts the negative of crown authority.

Crown Authority: Help me understand why higher is better.

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