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Best Duchy combo?

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The Blood Eagle

The Blood Eagle

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Feb 20, 2011
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I'm curious as to which duchies everyone goes for. For instance, you could argue that Bedford/Winchester are the best for England due to all the port income and 4-holding territories, but spreading tech from Wessex to Somerset is a pain and you're likely to face landing parties from vikings every 2 1/2 days.

France has Valois and Orleans, but then you have zero personal fleets, so is opting to grant someone Orleans to take personal control of Normandy the wiser course? Spain is a curiosity to me, is it best to hold Seville and Granada, or do you prefer keeping your northern homelands?

Germany: Where is even good? Franconia isn't bad, but not great, and being a string of territories once again means that tech spread is slow. Would you set up a new capital in Prague, being the only respectable-sized duchy in the region (if you make it so)? Maybe Hanover/Brunswick?

Personally, I think the only real powerhouse combo is Thrace/Nicaea. Everywhere else has glaring drawbacks.

Obviously, you dirty title destroyers are exempt from this.

Also I'm curious as to how everyone lays out their inland provinces when it comes to building new holdings. Do you still spam cities like a coastal province, or do you stack baronies for beefier manpower?
 
For me it differs from game to game. Sometimes I will stick with my origional duchy and make sure I have all it's holdings, like when I started in Prussia. Sometimes I spread my holdings out all over the map based on which counties have the most building slots and just do not create the duchies in which they are located to avoid the relations hit.

In my Zoroastroan Persia game I basically have a string of territories that runs through multiple duchies but to be fair that is a powergame where my entire realm only has 2 dukes.

I guess it all depends on what I can get my hands on and how many holdings I can have at that time. If I am still a duke and can only hold so many counties before becomming a king I am often forced to give out the titles neighbouring my first duchy. Switching to newly conquered lands I hardly do because of all the massive penalties incurred, it'd take years before they would become of any use. If I manage to inherit a conglomeration of holdings that changes things, that might compell me to move my demesne.
 
Flanders is one of the best out there, usually alway go for it when at all possible. For Germany I had the problem of not having any decent counties/duchies to have my capital in. So when I formed the HRE, I conquered all of Holstein and made Hamburg my capital. After a while remembered that the Hansa will eventually want that... Oh well.
 
If my demesne limit can take it (needs to be 9), I like Flanders (6) + Brabant (3). Gives you lots of income and troops, conveniently located on the North Sea.

If not, I stick with Flanders (provided that I play in that region, of course).
 
G_Morgan said:
Wales isn't a duchy. It is three duchies (Gwynedd, Deheubarth and Cornwall). Modern Wales (the 6 counties you are thinking of) covers the duchies of Gwynedd and Deheubarth.
Click to expand...

I guess they decided a 2-province Cornwall as a petty kingdom would be stretching the concept a bit ;)
 
In my first viking game I just grab Sjaelland and Jylland for the strategic part (access either to Finland or North Sea, ships, ports) but then later on with better legalism, stewardship and emperor title I phased out Jylland and go holy warring for Brugge (Duchy of Flanders, isn't it?) Might as well hold all of the territories inside the dejure duchy or give a land or two to my heir. Once it drifted in, then I just destroyed the title...never bothered 'the city' of Constantine though, too far for an action against the HRE, France or (ahistorical!) Aztecs.

Moving on Dyre plathrough, I just stick with Duchy of Kiev and a mixmatch of single provinces such as Sjaelland and that another holy site I forgot (in the swedish area). If the monolith of a HRE-Franco weakened after their disastrous holy war with me (Funny AI always waste their troops crossing the strait/river to get my tasty russian skins xD) I will snipe up Brugge...and Paris. Any province with 6 holding (or is it the other way round?) is a fair game for me, the $$$ potentiality is just too great.
 
Interesting that most of you don't mind having 2 duchies seperated by so much distance. I would imagine the tech reaching your non-capital duchy is coming in at a snail's pace.
 
Kiev with Chernicov as duchies and some surrounding counties in my latest Russia campaign
 
^ Thats the big issue with a lot of the Muslim duchies. If you don't get them right at the start, the AI fills all the extra slots with shitty castles.

I'm assuming everyone here plays controlling their entire duchy. Why do you play like that as opposed to simply controlling the best individual counties? In my last game as a Norseman I controlled Jylland, Rome, Venice, and Barcelona as my primaries, with a couple extra rotating titles here and there. Is there a particular disadvantage to that kind of play?
 
Jaxck said:
^ Thats the big issue with a lot of the Muslim duchies. If you don't get them right at the start, the AI fills all the extra slots with shitty castles.

I'm assuming everyone here plays controlling their entire duchy. Why do you play like that as opposed to simply controlling the best individual counties? In my last game as a Norseman I controlled Jylland, Rome, Venice, and Barcelona as my primaries, with a couple extra rotating titles here and there. Is there a particular disadvantage to that kind of play?
Click to expand...

Yes, a downside is if you face mass revolt, your troops aren't close together. You might have 500 here, 500 there. They are easy targets. If you have them all near eachother, you can merge them to say 1000, which is harder to kill.

As for my favourite duchy, Sicily. Always Sicily.
 
Jaxck said:
^ Thats the big issue with a lot of the Muslim duchies. If you don't get them right at the start, the AI fills all the extra slots with shitty castles.

I'm assuming everyone here plays controlling their entire duchy. Why do you play like that as opposed to simply controlling the best individual counties? In my last game as a Norseman I controlled Jylland, Rome, Venice, and Barcelona as my primaries, with a couple extra rotating titles here and there. Is there a particular disadvantage to that kind of play?
Click to expand...

I typically just play with no vassals. This allows me to upgrade everything without having to worry about pesky vassals.
 
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