New to the game. I need some help.

kutuup said:

So you have an emperor at the top, then under them, kings, then under them, lords, then under them, barons? My head hurts lol.

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Emperor > King > Duke > Count > Baron/Major/Bishop
Of course there's some exceptions around. But generally this one works.

Is my demesne size the number of counties I control? Or the number of holdings in those counties?

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Neither ... it's the number of your personal holdings For example, you could personally hold, for some reason, 1 county, with 2 castles, 1 city and 1 temple. That'd be demesne size 4 (2+1+1, right). Or you could hold 4 counties, 1 castle in each of them, with the other holdings held by majors etc., and that'd also be demesne size 4.

How is it that I can hold a title encompassing counties that aren't a part of my territory? For example, I can create a title which makes me the duke of whatever, and that duchy contains like 3 of my counties plus one of the counties in a neighboring kingdom. How can I be the duke in a county I don't control?

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That only means that this county you don't hold is de jure part of the Duchy - take it as an "in theory, by tradition, ancient law, ideally" kind of thing, it doesn't need to be de facto that way. However, it gives you a lawful claim on the county to fix the situation - declare war and take it

How do I get more troops? Of course I have my own levies, and I can raise the levies of my vassals too depending on my laws, but how do I increase the size of my personal levies and my vassal levies? Also, what's the difference between a levy and a retinue? And how do I get a retinue?

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Retinues are standing armies, basically some sort of private elite army for reasonably powerful guys. You need a big enough demesne to build a retinue.
For levies, vassal opinion is crucial. If they like you more, they give you more troops. Otherwise expand your holdings and hope your vassals do the same

The most important concept is, that your vassal's vassals are not your vassals. If you are a king, and your vassal is a duke, and there are counts vassalized by that duke - you don't control the counts.

Emperor (gold and purple circle around protrait) > King (gold circle) > Duke (silver circle) > Baron / Burgher / Bishop (bronze circle) > Courtier (no land)

Anyone with lower rank can be vassalized. Equal ranks can't vassalize one another. If you are a duke and your vassal (count) inherits some other duchy - he is no longer your vassal.

All holdings controlled directly by you count as your holding. Have in mind, that as a feudal lord, only baronies count as your holding type - if you control directly city or temple, you get penalties and an info - Wrong holding type.

Since patch 2.2, you can upgrade your vassal's holdings, but still - you don't get anything from it directly - only via crown laws (taxes and levies). Tech buildings of course spread technology anyway. Vassals sometimes upgrade their holdings themselves with their own money.

If you control a barony, that is the capital in a county - you get Count title of that county and it counts as yours. You can have counties all over Europe and they still show up as yours. You can have non-capital holdings in a county (it's sometimes hard to see) - it shows a small coat of arms of any out-of-realm holders.

If you click on a holding icon - you can upgrade it. There are various upgrades that give you extra levies. You can also change crown laws that can give you extra vassal levies - note however, that if vassals like you less, they give you less levies. Vassals don't like laws that makes them give you more levies.

Retinue is on the map all the time. Levies should be raised only if you are at war. You can't start war with levies raised. Besides - your levies cost you money when raised; vassals get relation penalties towards you every couple of weeks when you use their levies.

Good Luck

Just use this thread to pop more questions if you have them.

You were probably excommunicated by your brother's request. Castille is quite rough start - try Duke of Brittany and fabricate a claim in Ireland (don't mess with France, try to become their allies, usually king of France is busy with crusades or HRE anyway) or start as a duke in Ireland (1066 or later start, so you are not tribal).

kutuup said:

Well I just played a game and got annihilated pretty quick. I was playing as king of Castille. Everything was going OK, but the the Pope excommunicated me for no apparent reason, then Leon declared war on me and s**t on me from a great height because my army sucked. For some reason this left my son as king of Castille after I surrendered, so I was now playing as my son, god knows where I went, I was alive, but I wasn't playing as me any more. Then the king of Leon declared war on me (my son I mean) and this time took control of Castille, leaving me as his vassal.

It all happened pretty fast. Guess I still have a lot to learn :S

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Ah, it sounds like the first war the king of Leon declared was probably using the Excommunication cb which forces you to abdicate to your heir(wait is that still in the game?) And the second war, on the young kid, was pressing his weak claim on your throne (you cannot press weak claims on grown men! only children and women, and kings with revolts)

kutuup said:

I was playing as a custom character who I don't think had any siblings. I didn't catch who requested my excommunication. What reasons might people use to request it? I know it wasn't the king of Leon who requested it, so I must have rustled someone else's jimmies somehow :S

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Maybe the pope just hated you? and the King of Leon had a very good reason to hate you too, so he could have done it (he starts with a weak or strong claim on Castille, I think) well depending on the start you pick of course, I assume it's the 1066 one.

I think the main reason to get excommunicated is because the pope hates you(thus making it easier for people to request your excommunication), the pope usually hates you if you have done something terrible, like killing your kin, or if you're homosexual or have other bad traits that church holders don't like, I actually don't remember much about excommunications so sorry if this doesn't make sense, they're so rare in the early scenarios I play, I think, that's the way it feels like at least.

Hey, just in case you ever plan on playing somewhere outside of Europe, some of the titles change for different cultures or culture groups. For Kings you have Sultans (Turkish/Arabic), Despots (Greek), Maharajas (Indian), Shahs (Iranian), and Khans (Altaic). For Dukes there's Emirs (Arabic), Beylerbeys (Turkish), Satraps (Iranian), Doux (Greek), and Rajas (Indian). And lastly are the Counts: Earls (any of the cultures in the British Isles, I think), Sheikhs (Arabic), Beys (Turkish), Marzobans (Iranian), and Thakurs (Indian). And pagans (at least European ones) replace Duke with High Chief and Count with Chief. Also, there are certain cultures (like Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Nubian) where an independent Duke is referred to as "King", but they're a petty King and the title is completely cosmetic. In game terms, they're still a Duke.

I know you didn't ask about this, but you're new and I thought it might save you some future confusion. I know I've seen some people on the forums confused about the whole 'petty King' thing before, at the very least.

kutuup said:

I was playing as a custom character who I don't think had any siblings. I didn't catch who requested my excommunication. What reasons might people use to request it? I know it wasn't the king of Leon who requested it, so I must have rustled someone else's jimmies somehow :S

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If you want to start in Iberian Pennisula, use standard rulers - there are 3 or 4 of them (all brothers), are allied one to another and of course have claims to each other titles, but you should manage to keep at least one of them on your side, so any war should be evenly matched. When you used custom ruler, probably all of them ganged on you, as they probably still got claims to your lands. Use Ruler Designer when you get a little bit more experience.

SovereignGrave said:

Hey, just in case you ever plan on playing somewhere outside of Europe, some of the titles change for different cultures or culture groups. For Kings you have Sultans (Turkish/Arabic), Despots (Greek), Maharajas (Indian), Shahs (Iranian), and Khans (Altaic). For Dukes there's Emirs (Arabic), Beylerbeys (Turkish), Satraps (Iranian), Doux (Greek), and Rajas (Indian). And lastly are the Counts: Earls (any of the cultures in the British Isles, I think), Sheikhs (Arabic), Beys (Turkish), Marzobans (Iranian), and Thakurs (Indian). And pagans (at least European ones) replace Duke with High Chief and Count with Chief. Also, there are certain cultures (like Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Nubian) where an independent Duke is referred to as "King", but they're a petty King and the title is completely cosmetic. In game terms, they're still a Duke.

I know you didn't ask about this, but you're new and I thought it might save you some future confusion. I know I've seen some people on the forums confused about the whole 'petty King' thing before, at the very least.

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The easiest thing is just to look at the border of the character portrait. Orange/bronze, baron or temple, or whatever, minor holding anyway. Grey/metal/silver, count, own a province or two but no vassals with whole provinces below them.

Baron/Temple/minor vassal = bronze/orange

Count = grey/metallic/silver

Duke = grey/metallic/silver with some extra decoration.

King = just gold

Empereor = gold with decoration

The Republics(trading nations) lay some unique extra fancy decorations as well, on top of this, which you'll learn to recognize. You probably wont have too much to do with republics atm tho, so it doesnt matter too much yet. There's republic duke, republic king, never seen a republic empereor, but might exist as well. Don't think i've seen a republic count.

kutuup said:

OK, I think I get the retinue thing, I must not be powerful enough to have one yet. I need to work on expanding my demesne. As for getting more levies out of my vassals, I need to placate them while leading by example and building a legion of dudes

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Just some further clarification on these parts. As long as you have the Legacy of Rome DLC, the retinue tab can be found in the top left of the military window. Retinues have two types of cost, retinue cap and gold. Retinue cap increases as your rank increases (i.e. when you move up from a Duke to a King), as you get more holdings, and as you upgrade certain buildings. Somewhere between a large count or a small duke, you can probably hire your first group of retinue. Retinues cost a fair bit of gold to initially form, a lot to reinforce (retinue start as 1 man armies and slowly grow to full strength), and a moderate amount to maintain. Because of the gold cost, I'd recommend not getting retinue until you are somewhat well established, even if you have sufficient retinue cap to hire some retinue.

As for levies, in addition to improving vassal relations, your personal levies can be substantially increased by having higher martial on your ruler. You can also increase you levies by upgrading castles you own (click on the portrait of the caste), though in the short term its a lot of gold for only a few troops.

kutuup said:

So a problem I am having is that my vassals have forced me to change to an elective monarchy, so my position is on shaky ground moving forward. How can I change the succession laws? At the moment my son is still set to succeed me, but I want to avoid that changing. I'm struggling to keep track of everyone in my kingdom, there are a hell of a lot of them after all, is there a simpler way to do so? Also, my wife keeps imprisoning and banishing people. Why would she be doing that? Does she get to make those kinds of decisions?

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You can change succession laws if you ruled more than 10 years, Haven't changed the succession law before, have no negative relationship with any "direct" vassals (no need to care about baron tiers if you're king or emperor). Some succcession laws require different crown authority laws. For example, you need High Crown Authority for primogeniture (first son gets everything, rest gets nothing)

Elective is not that bad, a lot better than Gavelkind especially, it used to be the best but they nerfed it a little.

One of the best ways of learning all this is watching a Let's Play on youtube-there's lots of good ones where they explain what and why they're doing what they're doing. CK2 is a game made up of a thousand smaller systems and sub-systems, any one of which can lead to absolute disaster if not handled carefully.

kutuup said:

This is a very complex game, it's awesome, but I'm getting a lot of information overload lol I'm a veteran of the Total War series, which is a lot more simplistic in comparison. I'm really enjoying this game, but it's certainly more involved to say the least

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And the guys on this forum are some of the most helpful and friendliest I've met. They're helping me with all my noob questions too