How easy is it to get good stats for a Leader, 100+ years after game's start?

The guide is very succinct, but heres a few cliffnotes:
age 0-6 stat growth is based on base stats of father and mother
age 7-16 stat growth is based on stats of guardian. every year on your child's birthday they have a chance to 'level up' their stat by 1 point, this is a % based occurance dependent on the stat values of the guardian. 15+ almost ensures a proc.
Child's education trait will always be the same as the guardian, but not necessarily the same level (quality)
finally, your guardian gets all the events that you do when you mentor a child, and they will pick the options that mimick their traits. So a slothful guardian has a good chance of making your child slothful. So avoid guardians with lots of deadly sins or traits you wouldn't want for yourself.

How much do the guardian and the parents influence the child's stats?

I agree with the idea of educating children to get good stats, but to do it outside the court look pretty time consuming. if I am going to grand a count to someone, it will be someone that I picked due to his good stats and I married that guy personally with a good women - young and with good stats to make a good court of their own. The same is with cities or duchies. For me it's easier to influence my court and produce good courtiers and then grant them land titles. Penalty for revoking is really short so you can do it with all your country/kingdom. When you place the right people to right places, your court will produce by himself the good courtiers and your work is done.

Also, a lot of killing is required but when you have the money, just invite to your court a good spymaster (25+) and kill everything you wish without any problem.

For a king and his children, only stewardship matters. Diplomacy is a bonus and secondary in "trying to achieve".

vz02 said:

I agree with the idea of educating children to get good stats, but to do it outside the court look pretty time consuming. if I am going to grand a count to someone, it will be someone that I picked due to his good stats and I married that guy personally with a good women - young and with good stats to make a good court of their own. The same is with cities or duchies. For me it's easier to influence my court and produce good courtiers and then grant them land titles. Penalty for revoking is really short so you can do it with all your country/kingdom. When you place the right people to right places, your court will produce by himself the good courtiers and your work is done.

Also, a lot of killing is required but when you have the money, just invite to your court a good spymaster (25+) and kill everything you wish without any problem.

For a king and his children, only stewardship matters. Diplomacy is a bonus and secondary in "trying to achieve".

Click to expand...

I disagree.For Kings Diplomacy is #1 trait.High diplomacy skills equals happy vassals.Stewardship #2 you want to be able to control a max desmesne.

vz02 said:

For a king and his children, only stewardship matters. Diplomacy is a bonus and secondary in "trying to achieve".

Click to expand...

You have got to be kidding... or you are only thinking of tiny kingdoms, where the demesne income makes up a significant part of the total income.

In any large kingdom the income from vassals dwarf the income from demesne regardless of stewardship and all of the challenges facing the player are addressed by control of vassals, not by gold, making diplomacy the number one stat to go for and relegating stewardship to #2 (for singleplayer; for multiplayer intrigue might rank higher, might not, depending on the type of game run).

Peter Ebbesen said:

You have got to be kidding... or you are only thinking of tiny kingdoms, where the demesne income makes up a significant part of the total income.

In any large kingdom the income from vassals dwarf the income from demesne regardless of stewardship and all of the challenges facing the player are addressed by control of vassals, not by gold, making diplomacy the number one stat to go for and relegating stewardship to #2 (for singleplayer; for multiplayer intrigue might rank higher, might not, depending on the type of game run).

Click to expand...

I know that when you start to play in one style, that it's hard to include other ones.
What is a large kingdom for you? I am playing with 12 counties and the rest is for good servants and let say that can be (for the case) 15 duchies (45 counties). A bigger number or smaller number of counties can mean the same number of vassals. I have played with 10 and 40 vassals and didn't had any problem keeping them happy. But if you implement high crown authority and harsh taxes, then you will have problems. If you don't take care of the traits of the ruler, you will have a problem. If you like revoking titles, you will have a problem. If you like killing people, you will have problems. If you keep to big demesne or duchies, you'll have problem. It's very simple. Just avoid penalties. -30 penalty is peace of cake. You get -10 for taxes, -5 for medium crown authority, -10 for a idiot ruler and that is average penalty. Levies are on minimum because the mercenaries are just to good compared to regular army.

You point out a diplomacy for "big kingdoms" what has no connection. If you keep 5 vassals happy, it's the same with 50. There's no penalty for to many vassals or to big kingdom.

Etrs said:

So, I've made a couple of threads asking for advice, and what someone somewhere has invariably pointed out is that some of the problems I face stem from having a Leader with crappy traits/stats. And I can't fault them - yea. I usually end up with a Leader who's a mixed bad of sins and saving graces, who's usually good with two stats and horrible with the rest. The wife is usually unhelpful stat-wise, but at the time was a good pick (claims and alliances).

But what I find happens is, using the Ruler Designer, you get a guy who's 50 years old, good at usually two things with an auto-generated wife and two kids, who're basically average. I tutor the older one and give the other to a vassal who's opinion I need to raise. The older son inherits and that's when the game really begins. Let's say he has four kids, the first two you tutor yourself, the other two you send off to earn you brownie points, and then.... your leader doesn't die.

Now, the benefits to tutoring your own heir are self-evident: while you're both alive, your heir loves you and makes for an ideal vassal. When you croak, your heir keeps his stuff and inherits your stuff, creating a domino chain where valuable titles are kept in the direct line of succession under relatively constant player management.

But when your heir has children (these boys being now second in line, third being this child's uncle, the heir's brother), do you (the grandfather) tutor them, or do you assign their father to tutor them? And when I'm tutoring a boy, I find that most if not all the prompts amount to choosing a sin or a virtue - occasionally you can beat the arbitrary stat out of them, or encourage or discourage ambition, but other than that, I am dumbfounded as to how to cultivate Intrigue or Learning.

It seems that a 7 Virtue Allstar would have really terrible Intrigue, Learning, and Martial skills (but a high Steward and Diplomacy).

So, my question is: what do you guys think "good stats" are, and how would you the player go about cultivating those stats in an heir?

Click to expand...

1. use elective succession
2. prioritize marrying people with midas touched/lustful/hedonist in order to ensure lots of children, and thus, lots of elective choices.
3. kill your wife off at age 35.
4. go to 2, repeat until you have a good heir, and then elect him.
5. if your heir ends up not having any good heirs himself, elect one of his brothers.

It's really not hard. And I know that marrying geniuses is not guaranteed geniuses, but just keep marrying them and it'll be better in the long run than not doing so.

Peter Ebbesen said:

You have got to be kidding... or you are only thinking of tiny kingdoms, where the demesne income makes up a significant part of the total income.

In any large kingdom the income from vassals dwarf the income from demesne regardless of stewardship and all of the challenges facing the player are addressed by control of vassals, not by gold, making diplomacy the number one stat to go for and relegating stewardship to #2 (for singleplayer; for multiplayer intrigue might rank higher, might not, depending on the type of game run).

Click to expand...

Agreed, for a large kingdom diplomacy is the most important. for a small kingdom or a super-duke, stewardship is more important. overall, diplomacy is the most important one to cultivate.

vz02 said:

For a king and his children, only stewardship matters. Diplomacy is a bonus and secondary in "trying to achieve".

Click to expand...

are you kidding me? diplomacy>stewardship save for very strict cases.

stewardship increases demense size, income, and by aving more counties your total army by a few k late game.

diplomacy increases relations with vassels, income and army through vassels opinion.

the onyl time i'd put stewardship over diplomacy is when you have a very small relam, like 2 duchies and some counties where you dont have any vassels of count rank, or maybe 2 or so of them. in larger realms, liek frnace, diplomacy is infinitly more imporant then stewardship. being decent in both of them helps, but 25+ diplomacy lieges get more levies and thus mroe armies, more income, can get laws through easier, have less rebellions ect. ect. ect.

i persoanlly go for diplomacy tutor on my first infant heir(or heirs heir) for diplomacy. after that i tuor heirs myself. i want them to be dilligent and not arbitrary ect.
turoring them yourself can easly achieve you a person with decent stewardship(10-15) and a great diplomacy(22-27)

grumphie said:

are you kidding me? diplomacy>stewardship save for very strict cases.

stewardship increases demense size, income, and by aving more counties your total army by a few k late game.

diplomacy increases relations with vassels, income and army through vassels opinion.

the onyl time i'd put stewardship over diplomacy is when you have a very small relam, like 2 duchies and some counties where you dont have any vassels of count rank, or maybe 2 or so of them. in larger realms, liek frnace, diplomacy is infinitly more imporant then stewardship. being decent in both of them helps, but 25+ diplomacy lieges get more levies and thus mroe armies, more income, can get laws through easier, have less rebellions ect. ect. ect.

i persoanlly go for diplomacy tutor on my first infant heir(or heirs heir) for diplomacy. after that i tuor heirs myself. i want them to be dilligent and not arbitrary ect.
turoring them yourself can easly achieve you a person with decent stewardship(10-15) and a great diplomacy(22-27)

Click to expand...

Again, depends on how you play. For sure, you are not kind King

100 years in the game and I haven't had any rebels or warning about possible rebellion. I control 80% of Iberia (Portugal) with demesne size of 15, with 20k levies (min levies - decreased the law) I don't even use because mercenaries are expendable as are holy orders. Average opinion is 60, lowest 30. Why the hell should I care about diplomacy.

vz02 said:

100 years in the game and I haven't had any rebels or warning about possible rebellion. I control 80% of Iberia (Portugal) with demesne size of 15, with 20k levies (min levies - decreased the law) I don't even use because mercenaries are expendable as are holy orders. Average opinion is 60, lowest 30. Why the hell should I care about diplomacy.

Click to expand...

So long as you are happy remaining king of such a small geographically compact area and make sure not to get an heir with bad traits, you probably shouldn't.

You don't need diplomacy to ward off rebellion because the distance modifier to RR is tiny for your provinces, so the de jure, same culture, and same religion RR reduction bonuses will trump it, and while your levies are tiny for a kingdom 100 years into the game and would be significantly larger with higher diplomacy, you have more than enough levies to win any fight you choose to pick in the neighbourhood.

Moreover, 100 years into the game and with much of Iberia being inland, it is entirely possible that your demesne income still makes up the majority of your income, making a compelling case for stewardship over diplomacy.

So given your situation, and assuming you have no ambitions of becoming a great king by going crusading afar, having an Italian adventure, or conquering neighbouring realms, like France, I must agree with your assessment.

But for anybody with a large kingdom? No.

Peter Ebbesen said:

So long as you are happy remaining king of such a small geographically compact area and make sure not to get an heir with bad traits, you probably shouldn't.

You don't need diplomacy to ward off rebellion because the distance modifier to RR is tiny for your provinces, so the de jure, same culture, and same religion RR reduction bonuses will trump it, and while your levies are tiny for a kingdom 100 years into the game and would be significantly larger with higher diplomacy, you have more than enough levies to win any fight you choose to pick in the neighbourhood.

Moreover, 100 years into the game and with much of Iberia being inland, it is entirely possible that your demesne income still makes up the majority of your income, making a compelling case for stewardship over diplomacy.

So given your situation, and assuming you have no ambitions of becoming a great king by going crusading afar, having an Italian adventure, or conquering neighbouring realms, like France, I must agree with your assessment.

But for anybody with a large kingdom? No.

Click to expand...

Interesting. So I should after 100 years have Iberia plus France, and after 400 WC? Where's the fun? I don't want to play like that.
Distance modifier = you like to board levies into the boat and take them half way over the world to take out rebellion every 3 years? I really don't. hate boats.
Culture = 30% is my culture. It's spreading so damn slow... And I appoint to every land title my noble of my culture, kill every non culture claimant, kill every courtier of different culture... (I couldn't find is there any way to sped up or influence the culture)
Religion = going much faster but the problem was that much of Iberia was taken by Mauretania and I have to convert those areas back.
Levies - maybe small but eating Iberian France part by part; even HRE wouldn't win a war if they would like to declare it because with 15k mercenaries and 20k levies I can take everything they send and soon the HRE will be full of rebellions. So there's really no need for 100k army.

When I take whole Iberia, it's game over. Maybe few years later to spread the culture or something, but for sure I am not going to bother with France. Just popped in my mind, maybe to create Kingdom of Jerusalem? How does that even work? I must find conditions for it.

vz02 said:

Interesting. So I should after 100 years have Iberia plus France, and after 400 WC? Where's the fun? I don't want to play like that.

Click to expand...

Then don't. Nobody is saying you should.

But when you were talking about stewardship being more important than diplomacy earlier, it was not clear what sort of kingdom you were talking about, and the rest of us were distinguishing between large kingdoms (geograpically spread out, many vassals, where diplomacy is important and stewardship less so) and small kingdoms (geographical compact, few vassals, where stewardship is important and diplomacy less so).

And if you continue playing small kingdoms, none of us are going to insist that you are doing things wrong. But we'll continue to insist that your advice of stewardship trumping everything else is poor advice for anybody with a large kingdom.

Your post #26 clearly illustrates the problem with your thinking, namely that you mistake the RR issues that affect large kingdoms - you think that it is as easy to satisfy 5 vassals as 50 and talk about how easy it is do deal with a -30 opinion modifier... when the point is not so much the number of vassals as their location, and large kingdoms are spread out over more real estate. The game is "Crusader Kings" and conquest is easy. It is not unreasonable to assume that most large kingdoms players form will include crusade conquests.... and/or be significantly larger than in our history

Distance modifier = you like to board levies into the boat and take them half way over the world to take out rebellion every 3 years? I really don't. hate boats.

Click to expand...

I see it more as "you make sure that each geographical area of your kingdom is capable of dealing with the occasional rebellion only rarely needing support from afar, and you set up your kingdom such that rebellions are few and far between in the first place by understanding the factors that affect the vassal RR".

Culture = 30% is my culture. It's spreading so damn slow... And I appoint to every land title my noble of my culture, kill every non culture claimant, kill every courtier of different culture... (I couldn't find is there any way to sped up or influence the culture)
Religion = going much faster but the problem was that much of Iberia was taken by Mauretania and I have to convert those areas back.

Click to expand...

Province culture and province RR is of little importance once the immediate conquest modifiers have disappeared; It gives a base provincial RR for peasant uprisings that can easily be crushed by your loyal vassals, but that's it for long term effects. The important RR, the vassal RR, gets a -15% RR bonus for the vassal being same religion/culture as you (additive, so -30% RR for both).

Levies - maybe small but eating Iberian France part by part; even HRE wouldn't win a war if they would like to declare it because with 15k mercenaries and 20k levies I can take everything they send and soon the HRE will be full of rebellions. So there's really no need for 100k army.

Click to expand...

I quite agree, you don't need more. Given your kingdom and aspirations, you could probably maintain the peace with half what you've got.

When I take whole Iberia, it's game over.

Click to expand...

It is good to know one's goals

Maybe few years later to spread the culture or something, but for sure I am not going to bother with France. Just popped in my mind, maybe to create Kingdom of Jerusalem? How does that even work? I must find conditions for it.

Click to expand...

1. Join a crusade for Jerusalem and win, or
2. Declare Holy War for the different duchies in the KoJ and, once you have 8/15 counties, usurp/create the title of KoJ.

Then the real fun begins. Do you deal with maintaining the KoJ as one of your crowns or do you, perhaps, decide to hand it over to a relative as an independent kingdom.

Peter Ebbesen said:

Then don't. Nobody is saying you should.

But when you were talking about stewardship being more important than diplomacy earlier, it was not clear what sort of kingdom you were talking about, and the rest of us were distinguishing between large kingdoms (geograpically spread out, many vassals, where diplomacy is important and stewardship less so) and small kingdoms (geographical compact, few vassals, where stewardship is important and diplomacy less so).

And if you continue playing small kingdoms, none of us are going to insist that you are doing things wrong. But we'll continue to insist that your advice of stewardship trumping everything else is poor advice for anybody with a large kingdom.

Your post #26 clearly illustrates the problem with your thinking, namely that you mistake the RR issues that affect large kingdoms - you think that it is as easy to satisfy 5 vassals as 50 and talk about how easy it is do deal with a -30 opinion modifier... when the point is not so much the number of vassals as their location, and large kingdoms are spread out over more real estate. The game is "Crusader Kings" and conquest is easy. It is not unreasonable to assume that most large kingdoms players form will include crusade conquests.... and/or be significantly larger than in our history




I see it more as "you make sure that each geographical area of your kingdom is capable of dealing with the occasional rebellion only rarely needing support from afar, and you set up your kingdom such that rebellions are few and far between in the first place by understanding the factors that affect the vassal RR".


Province culture and province RR is of little importance once the immediate conquest modifiers have disappeared; It gives a base provincial RR for peasant uprisings that can easily be crushed by your loyal vassals, but that's it for long term effects. The important RR, the vassal RR, gets a -15% RR bonus for the vassal being same religion/culture as you (additive, so -30% RR for both).


I quite agree, you don't need more. Given your kingdom and aspirations, you could probably maintain the peace with half what you've got.


It is good to know one's goals

1. Join a crusade for Jerusalem and win, or
2. Declare Holy War for the different duchies in the KoJ and, once you have 8/15 counties, usurp/create the title of KoJ.

Then the real fun begins. Do you deal with maintaining the KoJ as one of your crowns or do you, perhaps, decide to hand it over to a relative as an independent kingdom.

Click to expand...

I agree. Micromanagement like boats, counties all over the map, rebellions that need to much attention... are just to much pain in the as for me. I like to play with genetics, marriages, just doing what I wish at the moment. The game should be a relaxation from my point of view.

Concerning KoJ, just remembered my crusade (as Croatia) for Ascalon. I took around 10 counties, sorted everything out and after 10 years had a war of retaliation of every muslim state You take one down, another gets its war score up. In the end you white peace out with everyone and the last one has already 100% war score and you lose everything. You can take down much bigger enemy but you can't stop the war score...

vz02 said:

I agree. Micromanagement like boats, counties all over the map, rebellions that need to much attention... are just to much pain in the as for me. I like to play with genetics, marriages, just doing what I wish at the moment. The game should be a relaxation from my point of view.

Click to expand...

And for me the entertainment in SP usually comes from arranging my realm so well, with all kingdoms and duchies in territory I control created and my king almost solely having dukes as vassals, that even a mediocre king will be able to maintain the king's peace with little trouble most of the time... and seeing how much I can accomplish before trouble happens anyhow.

Peter Ebbesen said:

And for me the entertainment in SP usually comes from arranging my realm so well, with all kingdoms and duchies in territory I control created and my king almost solely having dukes as vassals, that even a mediocre king will be able to maintain the king's peace with little trouble most of the time... and seeing how much I can accomplish before trouble happens anyhow.

Click to expand...

Don't you like to have at least 1 county just so you can hunt in peace? Make love with all the beautiful courtiers (male and female ) in pure nature? To take a long walk without your Duke harassing you because he thinks you aren't just taking a walk...