A few questions from a beginner...

1. First of all, Ireland is not a large Kingdom. And if you have 22 vassals, I assume you're not giving away your Duchies. This is a very bad idea. Too many duchy titles and your vassals will dislike you. So hand them out to your Earls; your vassals will be more powerful but they'll like you a lot more. And if you educate your own heir (which some people don't do for RPing purposes and to make it harder), make sure you give them good traits; if you have someone else educate them try and pick someone with good traits and grey eminence if possible.

2. If you're pressing a claim for a title that is equal to yours, then they will always become independent because you can't have vassals of the same rank as you. When you pressed your vassals claim in Southern Ireland did you press their claim for a duchy while you were still a petty king? Because a petty king is just an independent Duke.

3. Marriages. You can inherit claims through your mother, so marry the daughter of a petty king and you're next ruler (if they're her child) will have a claim on their title. And if you have claims on more than one county you should have a "press all claims" casus belli, unless they're de jure claims.

Regarding the above, I'd prefer to destroy the Duke tier titles in situations like that, and rule a bunch of petty earls directly. To each his own..

Tengri said:

Regarding the above, I'd prefer to destroy the Duke tier titles in situations like that, and rule a bunch of petty earls directly. To each his own..

Click to expand...

If he's having trouble with vassal relations then the relation bonus could help them a fair bit.

1.) Pretty much any time you have a child ruler the poop will hit the fan. Especially if they are really young & dont have any good traits at all yet. If you get some bad luck & your ruler dies young & your heir is a child there is pretty much no way to stop a civil war in a large realm. You can run elective instead of primo & that way you can always choose to have an adult as your heir.

2.) If you press a claim for a vassal they will only stay your vassal if the claim you are pressing is lower than your own rank. If you are a duke (also known as a petty king) & you press a claim for one of your vassals on a duchy, then when you/he wins he will become an independent duke, since a duke cant be a vassal under another duke. Same would be true if you are a count & you press a claim for another count.

Now, if you are a true king (as opposed to petty king) you can invite someone with a claim on a duchy, give them a county or barony in your kingdom somewhere, & then press his claim on a duchy. When you win he will become a duke under you.

3.) For this reason I recommend against new players starting in Ireland. I've been playing CK2 for a while now, & it still takes FOREVER to get much conquering done in Ireland. The game is just set up so that its really hard for Catholics to take a lot of land from other Catholics in a short period of time. Unless you get lucky & can just marry your son to a Scottish/English Princess with a claim & then successfully press it for their kid, or find a bunch of claimants on different duchies, its just gonna take forever. To get around the 10 year truce timer though, you can just plot to kill or assassinate whoever you have the truce with, since it resets on their death.

I recommend that you start as the King of Leon or Castile in Spain in 1066. You have some fellow Catholics in your brothers that are around you (the Kings of Galicia, Castile, & Leon all start out as brothers, & the King of Navarre is a relative) & also France is close by. There are also, however, plenty of Muslims to the south that you can holy war whenever you feel like. You arent so blocked in by not having claims as you are in Ireland.

Another tip: Really study the mouseover giving you info on WHY your vassals dislike you. If you hold more than two duchies, it will say "Too many held duchies -20" or higher malus, depending on how many duke titles you hold.

A couple things.

1) Note *why* people hate you. If you mouse-over the opinion people have of you, you can see the various positives and negatives. Some of those are easy to fix (like "Wants control of XXXXX", which basically means that you have to transfer vassalage from yourself to him), some go away over time (like, new ruler), and some you're just stuck with (foreigner, or if they're ambitious, etc). Be very careful about only educating your heir personally, or with someone else of your own culture. Educating them with a foreigner could easily change their culture, meaning you'd be Frankish, or English, or whatever while the rest of your vassals are Irish. This malus can be up to 20 (more?) and doesn't go away, so be VERY careful with this.

2) Do things that your vassals will like (such as holding feasts), and avoid things that they don't like (such as raising Crown Authority too high, anything above Medium starts really hurting you, or keeping their levies raised too long).

The game really is about managing relationships, with your vassals, your liege, your allies and your dynasty members across the map. The whole warfare / conquering thing is secondary.

Re #1, start by examining why your vassals have poor opinions of you. Do you have more than 2 duke titles - if so, give them away, preferably to a content earl (count) in that dejure duchy. Hand out gifts and honorary titles to get relations boosts. In short, focus on removing as many negative modifiers with your vassals and having positive ones. Sometimes, you'll need to plot against a ambitious vassal who's always going to hate you in order to get them to rebel so you can revoke without penalty.

For education, you'll have to suck it up for your current character if they are useless, so focus your efforts on good education for your heir and his heir. Get them educated by a good trait character of your culture & religion. Marry them to someone with good traits (preferably a genius if you can find you), and then keep him unlanded for a time so you can control the education of his heir (although I always land my heir for RP and extra challenge). Then in a couple generations you should have a good ruler.

Starting as a Duke in the middle of Byz empire is a pretty good way to get a sense of how to manage your dynasty and realm effectively, without worrying about external threats.

Re #3, Holy War CB is a quick way to expand, as it is at the duchy level. Be warned it goes both ways though...

You can refer to CK2 wiki for some concepts, it is rather remarkably up to date concerning the amount of patching to this game. I'd perhaps suggesting reading a couple of AARs, those are written by people who typically know what they are doing. They often start small. You can consult the AAR Library Thread to locate interesting places (complete with links). Just be warned that some of the gameplay may indeed be obsolete or older AARs may not include some of the new things like Republics (forget cardinals etc. that were introduced only very recently).

As regards keeping your vassals happy, you can look at the succession guide in my signature.

Also, have you completed the tutorials? They aren't overly tedious at all.

DPbrad said:

... 1) How do I manage a larger kingdom/empire? Things were stable for a long time, and then 1 bad ruler suddenly caused chaos across Ireland and things have been turbulent for nearly 50 years (Currently 1227, troubles started in 1180 roughly).

Click to expand...

This is a very complicated issue with hundreds of correct answers. If you mouse over a vassal's opinion it should give you clues as to why they are upset. Reasons such as envy or ambition are due to traits and can not be easily dealt with as a beginner just learning the core. Reasons like: "hold too many duchies" are addressable immediately.

As a general rule, you can hold as many of your highest tiered titles as you want (as a king you can hold as many king titles as you want) but the next tier title should be limited to two. (as a king only hold two ducial level titles.)

Other negative modifiers are dealt on a one-on-one basis ... for example if you hold a county in one of your vassal duke's de jure territory, he will resent this. It might be a good idea to transfer vassalage to him for that county.

The best singular advise I'd give you at this point is to break down the reasons your vassals are upset and then address those reasons to the best of your ability. (Remember to pause the game so you can deal with multiple vassals at one time.)

The wiki can also provide a lot of information on each individual negative modifier and how to deal with them.

Do I need to ensure my heir is as good as I can?

Click to expand...

Yes. To accomplish this, as others no doubt have said here is by controlling the education your heir gets. Most times you will want to educate him/her yourself so that you influence what traits he/she ends up with. Exceptions, such as wanting to change religions, are more advanced concepts that you'll get relatively fast once you understand the basics.

2) Pressing claims on behalf of other vassals or members of my court. Could somebody give me a good run-down of how this works (or a link to somewhere that explains this). The little tool-tip says that if I press a de jure claim on behalf of my vassal, he will become the duke/count of the new land, and I will still be his liege? If so, then when trying to expand into Desmond/Ormond in the south of Ireland, one of my vassals created his own independent realm (and took Leinster with it) and set me back a good number of years as I wrestled control back. How will I know if the person I am pressing the claim on behalf of will become my vassal (if the war is won)?

Click to expand...

1st: If you press a claim equal or higher than yours, the person will become independent. So in your example, with you being a petty king (independent duke), once you pressed his claim he went independent. So first rule of pressing claims: make sure the title is lesser than your highest title.

2nd: If you press a claim of a person not your vassal, there is a good chance he/she will not stay within your realm. There are exceptions to this but it gets complicated. So a good rule for beginning claim pressing is to make sure the person who has the claim is your vassal. If you have a county or baron title you can do without, you sometimes can grant a landless character that county or baron to make him your vassal and then, once you press his claim, he will stay within your realm. Just be careful not to give away too much of your core land (your demnse). A beginner rule here is always have 2/3 of your maximum size limit.

The wiki I mentioned above has some detailed walkthroughs that might help here.

3) Expanding quicker. I feel that my expansion in Ireland took a LONG time. What other ways of pressing claims are there? I almost exclusively used Fabricated Claims to just keep picking at counties 1 by 1, which is time consuming. Also, is there any way of pressing claims on MULTIPLE counties held my a single duke/king? The northern part of Ireland (3 or 4 counties) had fell under a Irish duke, and when trying to claim them, I could only take 1 at a time, and then had to wait for the 10 year truce to end each time.

Click to expand...

As a Catholic, expansion will be a bit slower unless you border infidels, heretics, or pagans. A lot of people do not like this, but it has a flip side to it that other, more powerful Catholics are likewise limited. If you hold multiple personal claims, you can press them at the same time. This means, in your above example, waiting until you fabricate all the claims in that duchy you want (ie the entire duchy) before going to war. Your mistake was that you'd go to war after just fabricating one claim.

To my knowledge, there are no ways of pressing multiple non-personal claims.

If you border: pagans, infidels, or heritical rulers, you can use the holy war cb to press entire de jure territories. So if your irish target was a Norse ruler, you might be able to use this cb to acquire his whole duchy. Using this cb to pursue war is more dangerous, because any ruler that is the same faith as your target can join in his defense - the tooltip says "nearby" but that "nearby" does not mean limited to the same island or borders... so in your case rulers in England, Iceland, and sometimes in the Scandinavian area might join in as well.

Last: There is a thread here on this forum which is for questions... if you pop a question in that, it will most likely get answered really fast. It isa great place to read through as well and it is a place that even veterans will learn things.

a few desired some counties/duchies I held.

Click to expand...

A duke will always want all the territory in his 'de jure' duchy. If you don't want to give such a county to him it's better to destroy the corresponding duchy.

Elective succession help get good heirs. Also always educate your heir + try to get as many 'green' traits as possible. Marry your heir to someone with high diplomacy.

DPbrad said:

Ah that makes sense. What would you recommend a King do with the counties he holds? I currently hold 2 duchies (Meath and Connacht [I think that's what they were originally called, I have renamed them all ]) but also hold Dublin, Leinster and Breifne. Should I give Leinster and Breifne to the duke's of their respective de jure duchies?

Click to expand...

Yes, if you want to make them happy, give away any county that's in their de jure duchies. Or just keep those counties for yourself and tell those dukes to DEAL WITH IT.

DPbrad said:

How many county titles should a king ideally hold?

Click to expand...

As many as your demesne limit allows, preferably ALL the counties in your held duchies.

DPbrad said:

RX2000
Ah ok, so child rulers just cause issues. I had 2 young rulers die (26 and 28) from Tuberculosis.
Also, thanks for the head's up with regard to landing noblemen with claims. I believe I tried to do this before but never gave them any of my land, so they became independent. So giving them land (And making them a Count/Duke under me, the King) and THEN pressing their claims elsewhere will mean they will remain vassals I presume (As long as they don't become King of Whereverland obviously)
[/b]

Click to expand...

Yes thats correct.

Sometimes if I dont have any land to give out I'll build a castle somewhere in my lands & use that to land the person whose claim I want to press. Its a little annoying though, because I'm kind of OCD & I end up with dukes who have their duchy I pressed for them but then also a barony somewhere else.

Or just keep those counties for yourself and tell those dukes to DEAL WITH IT.

Click to expand...

Given that DPBrad was asking how to keep his realm stable, this is not helpful advice. My point was that having a duke vassal who dislikes you is worse than having some count vassals who don't. Destroying a duchy will make any counts in that area dislike you, but that only lasts for their lifetimes, whereas the 'desires X' lasts from ruler to ruler -- and if said counts are a real headache, you can plot to kill them. Plots are in general extremely useful, because they allow you to do things that would normally risk an opinion penalty (assassinate, revoke) without the opinion hit.

Sometimes if I dont have any land to give out I'll build a castle somewhere in my lands

Click to expand...

Ouch... that's really expensive. If you are playing Catholic with 'free investiture', appoint the person in question as heir to a bishopric and then plot to kill the Bishop.

didnt hold counties in duchies I did

Click to expand...

That half's not a problem.

Just click on the brother's portrait for diplomacy, and "offer to join war".