So I am playing on Ironman mode and found that if you want to get really large and fight off invasions from the Aztecs and the Mongols, there's only one way to do it, no vassals. Sure there are downsides to it but on the whole I feel it is the best way to get started. I started as a Norse duke in Denmark and worked my way up from there. As of a few minutes ago I was the Tsar of Russia, Scandinavia, and Tataria, King of Bulgaria, Poland, and Pomerania.
I decided that to stop the annoying peasant revolts and to convert provinces to the reformed Norse faith, that I'd use the "create new vassal" mechanic to hand out all my lower titles, then wait until I had a few people with good stewardship in my court to show up so I could hand them all the counties. I don't have any dukes and destroyed all dukedoms because my policy regarding vassals is as follows: Barons are nothing, counts are a nuisance, and dukes are dangerous.
In return for me granting them all this land, huge factions started forming against me for no reason at all. My liege is kind, honorable, just, charitable, most of the people joining factions had +50 opinion of me. Yet no matter how hard I tried they'd still revolt and demand independence. My retinue - which reached 25,000 men - could handle them but they were like flies and scattered all over my empire sieging remote parts of Finland and Norway or the Far East to try and evade me.
It would take years to squash these rebellions only to have them turn up again in a few decades. I was eventually forced to surrender to a faction (they had 80% of the realm) that lowered all crown authority to autonomous vassals and changed the succession law back to gavelkind in all my titles. I was forced to abdicate and now I'm a lowly king under my kinswoman as emperor. Mostly my problems are with factions.
It doesn't seem to matter that I can keep all of my vassals with +50 opinion of me, they just continue to revolt and revolt. It doesn't help that the surrender that I gave was actually an accident cause my mouse is a little buggy at times and accidentally clicked surrender instead of enforce demands. I had only realized my error after I clicked the send button. I tried to go back but as it was ironman mode it saved me sending my decision. The bottom line is it all leads back to these stupid factions. I'm asking for guidance from the paradox community as these damn vassals are so annoying that the only way I find myself able to play bearably is by taking them out of the picture.
I decided that to stop the annoying peasant revolts and to convert provinces to the reformed Norse faith, that I'd use the "create new vassal" mechanic to hand out all my lower titles, then wait until I had a few people with good stewardship in my court to show up so I could hand them all the counties. I don't have any dukes and destroyed all dukedoms because my policy regarding vassals is as follows: Barons are nothing, counts are a nuisance, and dukes are dangerous.
In return for me granting them all this land, huge factions started forming against me for no reason at all. My liege is kind, honorable, just, charitable, most of the people joining factions had +50 opinion of me. Yet no matter how hard I tried they'd still revolt and demand independence. My retinue - which reached 25,000 men - could handle them but they were like flies and scattered all over my empire sieging remote parts of Finland and Norway or the Far East to try and evade me.
It would take years to squash these rebellions only to have them turn up again in a few decades. I was eventually forced to surrender to a faction (they had 80% of the realm) that lowered all crown authority to autonomous vassals and changed the succession law back to gavelkind in all my titles. I was forced to abdicate and now I'm a lowly king under my kinswoman as emperor. Mostly my problems are with factions.
It doesn't seem to matter that I can keep all of my vassals with +50 opinion of me, they just continue to revolt and revolt. It doesn't help that the surrender that I gave was actually an accident cause my mouse is a little buggy at times and accidentally clicked surrender instead of enforce demands. I had only realized my error after I clicked the send button. I tried to go back but as it was ironman mode it saved me sending my decision. The bottom line is it all leads back to these stupid factions. I'm asking for guidance from the paradox community as these damn vassals are so annoying that the only way I find myself able to play bearably is by taking them out of the picture.
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