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Something you can do is give your heir land before you die. That way he/she gets prestige and piety, every 100 points gives +1 to relations boost to the corresponding people. Otherwise save up money to gift vassals asap. I'm sure other people can give more tips
 
Something you can do is give your heir land before you die. That way he/she gets prestige and piety, every 100 points gives +1 to relations boost to the corresponding people. Otherwise save up money to gift vassals asap. I'm sure other people can give more tips

Granting land is troublesome, but giving them a council seat and the best unlanded title you can will greatly help when they finally get on the throne.
 
The only problem with giving your heir all this land is that once he is king you will need to redistribute it to other dukes, or if he fortunately has an heir, give it to him. This can result in somewhat unstable duchy setup, but I do often use this tactic when I need a reliable placeholder for a duchy.
 
you can also grant the heir some land early so that he'll gather some prestige and when you die and he steps up, he'll have enough to effectively boost opinion.
 
I managed to get my first king's second son to become heir. He's awesome with 14+ in all stats and the following traits:

Illusive Shadow, Just, Temperate, Gregarious, Genius, Scholar and Amibitous.

Now he's got a smart wife as well but only 1 daughter no sons to pass on his awesome dna :( Three months into his new reign he lowers his chances for an awesome male heir by having too much fun at a tournsment and becoming homosexual.

Perfect character partially ruined. I was a sad panda.
kilarious
 
I managed to get my first king's second son to become heir. He's awesome with 14+ in all stats and the following traits:

Illusive Shadow, Just, Temperate, Gregarious, Genius, Scholar and Amibitous.

Now he's got a smart wife as well but only 1 daughter no sons to pass on his awesome dna :( Three months into his new reign he lowers his chances for an awesome male heir by having too much fun at a tournsment and becoming homosexual.

Perfect character partially ruined. I was a sad panda.
kilarious

Do your succession laws allow for a female heir if no make exists? If so, make sure she is married matrilinial when the time comes.

If not, change it to that -- or to elective or seniority, either of which would extend your succession to members of your dynasty beyond your children.
 
I try and just save up money when my ruler starts getting near forty that way the heir can have some cash to buy people off. However, you may want to look into trying to avoid giving any conniving rivals to the crown land...that usually always sets up a civil war with one prince wanting the crown and other dukes will like to follow him, because hey, that king will like me because I fought for him.

I don't know how much giving the heir land works makes sense though so I'd try that too, but avoiding rivals with land is always a good thing, marry them off and send them far far far away so you don't have to worry about them creating trouble :) and besides the point is to spread the dynasty to ensnare Europe in you ilks grasp is the best way to make it work anyway I think.
 
So, if he has high enough Prestige the vassals won't rise up as much? How else can I raise Prestige? I know that marrying well helps.

Creation of titles, having many dynasty members with titles helps down the line, using the landless titles. Winning large battles in war, several wargoals grant prestige. Winning tournaments if vassal to a king. Having many titles or counties. Lots of things. :)
 
I gave my heir all sorts of land and the kingdom descended into chaos again on succession... it's frustrating. Also, when his brother declared war with the backing of France I realized there was no way I could win, so I surrendered. Instead of the brother becoming king though, the character shifts so that I am now the brother but my old character is still king. Is that WAD? What did I surrender then?
 
Hire mercs and crush them. Pay attention to why your vassals are upset; if you can placate the ones with the most power you can use them to subdue the others. Unfortunately you can't always please all your vassals with good leadership so you have to crush skulls.
 
When your vassals are threatening rebelion, check the intrigue tab and see why by hovering over the relations and revold risk numbers. When you die, make sure you pause the game and sort out any problems first. Often on succession, you go over your demesne limit and may have more than 2 duchies. Make sure you give away your extra titles before you unpause.

If I don't educate my heir myself, I make sure he is educated by a same culture, same religion person with good diplomacy and good stats. High diplomacy helps with relations.
 
If I don't educate my heir myself, I make sure he is educated by a same culture, same religion person with good diplomacy and good stats. High diplomacy helps with relations.

I've been educating them with higher Military scores, so maybe this is the problem... Also, I re-read the manual and it seems that the Chancellor is pretty important too.
 
When possible I will try to educate my Duke's heirs. They always accept, and it gives me a mento bonus and allows me to screen them for bad traits like ambitious.
 
When possible I will try to educate my Duke's heirs. They always accept, and it gives me a mento bonus and allows me to screen them for bad traits like ambitious.

A side-note to this; since you can only have two wards at a time, and often want to educate at LEAST one of your own sons, I try to keep some content bishops around to educate the heirs of my vassals, as this increases the chance that they'll be content themselves. Not perfect, but anything helps.
 
I actually had a succession go smoothly! I loaded up my heir with lots of titles. Every time I saw a vassal getting uppity, I encouraged them to rebel, took their title, and gave it to my heir. Also, I paused on the day of succession and handed out all those titles which I now couldn't support to my rival family members to placate them. It seemed to work and I only had one earl rebel.

I'll have to check out educating my dukes' heirs. That actually sounds like a good idea.