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Yes, but if that duke gets pissed off, he now has 2+ counts that he can drag to war with him (against you). I would rather piss off a few counts and fight small scattered armies.

It's more helpful for large Kingdoms, where you can have close to 200 counties, and 20 duchies. Much easier to keep the Dukes happy than every single Count. Easier to keep a stable realm, though much more difficult with rebellions.

In general, unless your Duke is a title claimant, pretender, or Ambitious, you should have no problems keeping him above negative.
The configuration I find best for min-maxing troops and balancing relations is Absolute Crown authority, Min Levies, Min Taxes. This lets a small amount of wealth trickle up, along with you being able to raise 40% of troops anywhere.
Plus, this way you can control exactly how you want to expand.
 
It's more helpful for large Kingdoms, where you can have close to 200 counties, and 20 duchies. Much easier to keep the Dukes happy than every single Count. Easier to keep a stable realm, though much more difficult with rebellions.

In general, unless your Duke is a title claimant, pretender, or Ambitious, you should have no problems keeping him above negative.
The configuration I find best for min-maxing troops and balancing relations is Absolute Crown authority, Min Levies, Min Taxes. This lets a small amount of wealth trickle up, along with you being able to raise 40% of troops anywhere.
Plus, this way you can control exactly how you want to expand.

Well I suppose that's true when your realm gets that big. Personally, I think I would still prefer having minimal duchies (by minimal I mean no more than half your land covered in duchies). I think I will try your suggestions for min-maxing out levies.
 
As a king there are really only two basic rules:

Don't have counties in the duchies of someone else and don't have a count in your duchy, even if that means giving up demesnes and you should not claim or usurp every duchy that you can. Have the two, you can have without penalty, but not more.

Another important rule that makes things easier: Don't give fiefs to your brothers or sons that are not your heirs, these will have huge opinion penalties and it can become quiet ugly, when your current ruler dies and the heir is suddenly surrounded by 5 or more dukes, that are all pretenders and hate his guts in addition to the short reign penalty he gets.

If you have a foreigner as a vassal, try to be the guardian of his child or at least give his child a guardian of your culture group. DON'T ever give a potential heir to a Vassal, that has another culture group as the rest of the realm or do so, IF you have another culture group than the rest of the realm. Children can gain the culture group of their guardian, this way you can change either a foreign vassal to become your culture group in the next generation or let your heir become the same culture group as your realm, avoiding the penalties your ruler has to endure.
 
Another important rule that makes things easier: Don't give fiefs to your brothers or sons that are not your heirs, these will have huge opinion penalties and it can become quiet ugly, when your current ruler dies and the heir is suddenly surrounded by 5 or more dukes, that are all pretenders and hate his guts in addition to the short reign penalty he gets.

They really need to up the penalties for having unlanded sons, because keeping them all at home is kinda gamey, because now why would you want to risk the pretender issues.
 
They really need to up the penalties for having unlanded sons, because keeping them all at home is kinda gamey, because now why would you want to risk the pretender issues.

They should only do that, if they make it easier to control them. Having a strong family should make it easier to control a kingdom, not the other way around.
 
Strange... I've been hand picking, educating, and pruning all the rulers in my current game... I've had 3 successions and only 1 very small rebellion (happened during the first succession) for 110 years of game play. It's been relatively stable, kinda boring at times, lol.

I've handed everything out to my dynasty members almost exclusively (to include pretenders). I may have to recant the whole idea that you have to avoid handing things out to your family members.

My relations have been phenominal for the past century. Practically 100s all the way through. I decided that I wasn't expanding fast enough, so I took some risks and installed a duke and some non-dynasty counts here and there. Some of them have ambition tendencies. Lets see how that one plays out...
 
Strange... I've been hand picking, educating, and pruning all the rulers in my current game... I've had 3 successions and only 1 very small rebellion (happened during the first succession) for 110 years of game play. It's been relatively stable, kinda boring at times, lol.

I've handed everything out to my dynasty members almost exclusively (to include pretenders). I may have to recant the whole idea that you have to avoid handing things out to your family members.

My relations have been phenominal for the past century. Practically 100s all the way through. I decided that I wasn't expanding fast enough, so I took some risks and installed a duke and some non-dynasty counts here and there. Some of them have ambition tendencies. Lets see how that one plays out...

So the recipe you used for stability is 1) Picking good traits with some diligence and 2) Only using family members as dukes/counts/etc.? Or did I miss something?
 
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Using family members doesn't help in any way. At best they get a +5, but that is all. It may work with family members, if you're lucky, but for mie it ended with a big revolt of all my family members (they marry each other, gain alliances through that and if they don't like you as much, as they like the one count who's revolting, the will turn against you) and after I defeated them, I revoked their titles and set some strangers in the counties and from then on it was rather easy, even usurping a kingdom worked fine, after I planed, which duchies I would give away and which demesnes I would hold on to.
 
So the recipe you used for stability is 1) Picking good traits with some diligence and 2) Only using family members as dukes/counts/etc.? Or did I miss something?

What I find to be true is that when you avoid ambition, greed, envy, etc, and look for humble, contentment, kind, etc, that alone is enough to form a sort of backbone of stabilization. I did have a brother who revolted as he got the -50 pretender modifier. Other than that, it seems to come down to what their personality traits are.

I do believe that handing things down to close family members, such as sons to exclude the heir, is likely to lead to a rebellion upon succession. As long as you do not give more than one county, and everyone else likes your heir, it becomes a minor problem rather than a major one.

Ultimately, your dynasty accumulates prestige by the titles they own. If you keep them all locked away, I believe your personal prestige, and the prestige of your dynasty diminishes, and this would effect your overall score.
 
I am going to retract the idea that you should keep your dynasty members away from titles. I think as long as you keep your dynasty well groomed, rebellions will not occur that often. Handing out one county only, and duchies to people you can trust will also keep your kingdom from crumbling internally.

Put simply, handing titles out to dynasty members and growing your dynasty is an integral part of the game.
 
Is it possible to get a save game file of a stable huge kingdom/empire? I would like to see the organization of provinces and duchies within a realm.

You would most likely see that the player has managed to become unassailable through good education and huge retinue, instead of having micromanagement the duchies and provinces of his realm. Another nice way is to hide the annoying brawling on count/duke level by handing out kingdoms and reigning as an emperor over just a handful of vassals.