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Senjai

Corporal
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Dec 16, 2012
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So I had this homosexual king, despite that fact i managed to get all of my vassals to love me. He was second generation, and went from two counties (started in Tyrone, took Ulster second) and united the whole of Ireland. Great!

I created a doge (grand mayor now?) for Connaght. Left the Duchy of Munster to a courtier and the rest was in my Demense. Here's the issue:

I have 5 children (3 daughters, 2 sons). Before I created Ireland, I had the ducal succession laws changed to Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture so they would stay in place upon creating the title.

First problem was son #1. He turned out with HORRIBLE traits (like really bad) and 15 stewardship and no democracy. I had to get rid of him, luckily I found got righteous imprisonment and locked him up to see what son #2 would turn out like. Taking the lesser of two evils, I executed son #1 and got my kinslayer removed by the pope. (Vassals still at ~+100). Son #2 was craven, good democracy, horrible stewardship, and was of BOHEMIAN :)() culture, but he was the last choice. Daughters weren't very good either.

Before I died, I joined an english war for independance (3 dukes 1 count were fighting for independance, I thought it would be a good way to break up and invade england), and began moving in. but on Succession all of my vassals hate me for a MYRIAD of reasons, and I just Quit and Saved. I feel like everytime I do well starting as a count or duke (I dont like higher starts) by the time I get to third or fourth generation, I mess everything up.

Is this fixable? if so how? My duke and doge are -100, many earls are too, mayors and bishops in my Demense are less forgiving. Also my Demense went from 7 to 5 on succession :(.

Also, Whats up with Doge's now, do they not exist? Are they still preferable to making a duke for money purposes and less tedious to manage? What about Prince-Arch bishops, will they still not usurp kingdoms if you give them a controlling duchy? e.g. Leon.

Please advise.

Thanks
 
Son #2 was craven, good democracy, horrible stewardship, and was of BOHEMIAN :)() culture, but he was the last choice. Daughters weren't very good either.
That is your problem: democracy is always bad! :D

Starts from basic: point at the -100 at the vessel's opinion towards you, and you will be able to see the breakdown of the opinion score. See what is the major problem and solve them accordingly.
 
Son #2 was craven, good democracy, horrible stewardship, and was of BOHEMIAN :)() culture, but he was the last choice.

Also my Demesne went from 7 to 5 on succession :(.
Stewardship determines domain limit size.
In addition, hold the mouse over the opinion of one of your lieges. It will give you a break down why the opinion is so low.
edit - +1 What Reno Lam said.
 
There were about 10 different modifiers. Ranging from Lower crown authority (which was factionized along with independance) to foreigner, short reign, Leige is Cruel, Leige is Craven. I know what stewardship is used for and I always aim for that as the primary trait. These are not things I can just easily fix. Lowering my crown auth is something I'd like to avoid, it will greatly reduce my capabilities. The other ones like short reigne, leige is x, leige is foreigner, etc are things I can't fix.

Thats why Im asking if there is anything someone would know about how to fix it? It's too late for the mass revoke strategy, to kick out everyone and replace them with courtiers that like you because I wont have the military to accomplish it at this stage in the game. Were I a duke, that would still be possible.
 
I play a few different mods and breeding the perfect Grey Eminence Genius isn't possible in some of them; I go for entire games without seeing one Genius, for example. You end up playing the gay hunchback of Corsica or whichever, and it's not too hard to keep it rolling unless you grow too fast. I think your problem in this case isn't the characters, but your state organizational structure; with a note that everyone prefers different approaches.

You probably should not have murdered your firstborn son, I'd say that's the biggest mistake. It's better to have bad traits than to be the wrong culture or wrong religion. You were the dejure King of Ireland and you owned nearly half of it outright, making mass revolt probably a doomed effort even with the worst king.

You can only make non-Republic Doges by giving a Duchy to a Lord Mayor and not letting him put his capital on the ocean. I stopped bothering cause it seemed gamey to me, so I moved towards having my gold farm be Lord Mayors. Also, IMHO you should not have made the Duke. Make sure you / your family patrician own all the counties in the 2 province duchies of Ireland and shatter the remaining 3 duchies and give each county out to 1 Lord Mayor each (poach a few of the best counties in the shattered duchies though). Save any complete duchies in England for family members to hold, but you want to keep your gold farm roughly even in county total to your feudal lords. Some people make vassal kings ect but I don't want anyone of my vassals having control of 4 or more provinces.

Either way you go, you want every landed character in your realm to be the same culture and the same religion. Making them Content as well is good when you can, but it doesn't stick over time. When someone rebels and they don't fit the criteria it means you can replace them with someone who does.

There were about 10 different modifiers. Ranging from Lower crown authority (which was factionized along with independance) to foreigner, short reign, Leige is Cruel, Leige is Craven. I know what stewardship is used for and I always aim for that as the primary trait. These are not things I can just easily fix. Lowering my crown auth is something I'd like to avoid, it will greatly reduce my capabilities. The other ones like short reigne, leige is x, leige is foreigner, etc are things I can't fix.

Thats why Im asking if there is anything someone would know about how to fix it? It's too late for the mass revoke strategy, to kick out everyone and replace them with courtiers that like you because I wont have the military to accomplish it at this stage in the game. Were I a duke, that would still be possible.

Stewardship is a terrible stat unless you plan on staying small. Diplomacy is the only stat that matters as your size reaches like 80 or 100 counties, whenever you stop needing to own land directly or using your demense soldiers. You can change your culture to whatever the culture of your capital is, it's a decision you can take in the intrigue tab.

Edit: What capabilities exactly? You don't have the military to accomplish fixing your setup so what doesn't the CA get you? It's personal preference, but I stick to Medium CA in my games. I either use Primogeniture or Elective depending on my setup and I try to keep my total city taxes around 40%. I want my gold farm to be improving throughout the game anyway, and I make up for the lower % by volume heh.

Edit 2: I don't bother with High CA or higher because it doesn't seem to get me anywhere. Having your lands not inherit out of the realm doesn't mean your vassal lands won't leave when he inherits a kingdom. So you still have to deal with wardeccing guys because you can't prevent the bleedover due to feudal marriage mechanics. And you're taking vassal penalties the whole time to prevent a once in 2 generation duchy loss. The biggest threat is vassals inheriting multiple duchies from inside your own kingdom, and if absolute crown authority prevented that I might consider it, but not as the game is now.
 
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You probably should not have murdered your firstborn son, I'd say that's the biggest mistake. It's better to have bad traits than to be the wrong culture or wrong religion. You were the dejure King of Ireland and you owned nearly half of it outright, making mass revolt probably a doomed effort even with the worst king.

Understood, thanks for the tip.

You can only make non-Republic Doges by giving a Duchy to a Lord Mayor and not letting him put his capital on the ocean. I stopped bothering cause it seemed gamey to me, so I moved towards having my gold farm be Lord Mayors. Also, IMHO you should not have made the Duke. Make sure you / your family patrician own all the counties in the 2 province duchies of Ireland and shatter the remaining 3 duchies and give each county out to 1 Lord Mayor each. Save any complete duchies in England for family members to hold, but you want to keep your gold farm roughly even in county total to your feudal lords. Some people make vassal kings ect but I don't want anyone of my vassals having control of 4 or more provinces.

Okay, so I shouldn't have given the duchy away, or I shouldn't have created the duchy? Yeah last I played the game there were no republic doges. I don't know how the republic system works, what do you mean Family Patrician? I thought it was advisable to not give out duchies to close family, as some could rebel no? So you advise I take personal ownership of Connaught, Meathe, and Leinster (I think thats the two county ones) and give out Ulster and Munster counties to lord mayors while keeping the duchy title myself? This would already require a Demense of 6, which when I was aiming for stewardship > democracy (when i was playing, not after you made your point about demo) was hard to attain. Barely made 7 Demense.
Either way you go, you want every landed character in your realm to be the same culture and the same religion. Making them Content as well is good when you can, but it doesn't stick over time. When someone rebels and they don't fit the criteria it means you can replace them with someone who does.
Understood

Stewardship is a terrible stat unless you plan on staying small. Diplomacy is the only stat that matters as your size reaches like 80 or 100 counties, whenever you stop needing to own land directly or using your demense soldiers. You can change your culture to whatever the culture of your capital is, it's a decision you can take in the intrigue tab.
Edit: What capabilities exactly? You don't have the military to accomplish fixing your setup so what doesn't the CA get you? It's personal preference, but I stick to Medium CA in my games. I either use Primogeniture or Elective depending on my setup and I try to keep my total city taxes around 40%. I want my gold farm to be improving throughout the game anyway, and I make up for the lower % by volume heh.

Didn't know that. I thought stewardship was a great stat as you don't want counts, just lord mayors (????) and want the bulk of your army, at least in the beginning to be from your Demense. I did raise to medium CA with my second generation, my third generation was the one I've been having problems with.

Also I didn't know that intrigue existed, is it new? Thanks for the education.

The capabilities I spoke of was with respect to scotland and england. I can't afford to give up the levies that go away with lowering CA. I mean, I guess I have enough Demense combined with mercs to make sure a full blown (every count/duke level title) independance war doesnth succeed. But Scotland tends to jump in when these things happen. I always have problems with solidarity after my second or third generation, to the point where I feel like starting anew.

I will try to go for a diplo based game.

Questions:

What is your strategy for starting at a king level position (and/or emperor if you feel like explaining that much)? It becomes much more difficult to instill family to dukedoms and counties and makes sure they're all the same culture when you start out.

How many duchies do you keep? The titles that is. You keep your gold as Lord Mayors, so you hold their duke level titles right? Does this cause issues? After your demense is maxed, you give out duchies or just counties to family?

Trying to squeeze out as much info as I can from you ;)

Biggest concern: What is your education strategy? My problems in my later generation occur because the rulers are unsuitable. Do you do the courtier marriage strategy (e.g. finding a grey eminance courtier, marrying him to another gray eminence to produce gray eminence babies etc for your court). How do you balance stewardship in the beginning?

Thanks for your advice and your patience.

Senjai

Edit: What do you mean by grow too fast? I've never been able to marry into a title or anything (can't figure it out/coordinate it) usually take the standard conquest with ally/merc support.
 
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What is your strategy for starting at a king level position (and/or emperor if you feel like explaining that much)? It becomes much more difficult to instill family to dukedoms and counties and makes sure they're all the same culture when you start out.
It depends on the kingdom, but generally I try to ensure that someone from my dynasty controls all the counties, it can take a while, but people always plot and if my arrest fails, they rebel and I can revoke thier county(assuming crown laws permit).
How many duchies do you keep? The titles that is.
None, usually. I do this because at some point I may have to either revoke and hold on to duke titles or I might have to usurp one from another realm to expand.
You keep your gold as Lord Mayors, so you hold their duke level titles right? Does this cause issues?
I try to avoid having republics in my kingdom, atleast when I'm small. Once I have a fairly large kingdom(ireland would not count), then I might instal a republic or two in seperate areas of my lands.
After your demense is maxed, you give out duchies or just counties to family?
I give what ever I have to get rid of to members of my dynasty, if that happens to be a duchy, then that's what they get. In the game I'm currently playing, I've given out 3 counties in africa to 3 of my sons, if I die and they hate my new king for thier claims, thier cousin who holds the 4th county will have the duchy created for him and the sons will have to hate him instead of me.
Biggest concern: What is your education strategy? My problems in my later generation occur because the rulers are unsuitable. Do you do the courtier marriage strategy (e.g. finding a grey eminance courtier, marrying him to another gray eminence to produce gray eminence babies etc for your court).
I educate my hiers myself, always, even if my current king is a moron. I do not trust the AI to educate my hiers, they will often pick the worst possible traits or atleast, pick things I would not. My personally prefereance is a military education, I feel it is the most ballanced for my needs.
How do you balance stewardship in the beginning?
If I have low stewardship, then I marry a fine young lady who has really high.
 
Stewardship increases tax income for your personal demense, Diplomacy increases opinion with everybody. As you grow, you'll find that Diplomacy increases your income more because it pushes people on the edge of the opinion tax penalty modifiers up to paying full. In some mods, the other stats have their uses. I think Martial score determines your % levies in ck2+ and SWMH, but you'd have to know what each one is doing in the mod before deciding.

If you are at Medium CA, you can't afford to let it drop. It's not the levies, per se, but the preventing people from fighting each other for land.

I don't keep duchy titles except when I want them to press a dejure claim, after which I either give them away or destroy them. I own the best counties I can find inside the 3+ gold farm duchies I have, and possible I own some 2 province duchies outright depending on location. Meath or Leinster I might hold both counties, for example, but I wouldn't have the Duchy of Ulster beyond using it to create the kingdom and then destroying right after. Yes, the vassals probably will rebel but after 1 generation they will have forgotten about it.

I never give counties to family members unless I'm going to make them the Duke and I want to wait for my heir so he can get a +100 loyalty vassal in his first day. Counts are a bloodbath waiting to happen, where Dukes seem to be more stable internally.

Education Strategy: Grey Eminence isn't inheritable, it comes from the tutor. Now, every mod seems to handle this differently than vanilla so YMMV. If you want diplomats you need to become one somehow and then start tutoring your children to maximize the diplomacy stat. That means the first son you get in the game needs a tutor that is a same culture/religion Grey Eminence (or Charismatic Negotiator, anything but Naive Appeaser in the diplo line). Even if he doesn't get the Grey Eminence when he turns 16, he should be at least a lesser Diplomat and then you can use him to create a whole family of them through your own training program.

BTW, when I say family patrician I mean a Doge of your own Dynasty. Making someone a Doge is like making them a Bishop, they can't inherit feudal titles anymore. I only keep 1 Republic in my realm, usually central, preferably 2 provinces like Meath. I give it to a brother/uncle/younger son when I'm sure I've got family to spare, and then as long as the patrician that is Doge is the one of my dynasty I get a +10 relations boost from him. I probably wouldn't bother with the Doges except they boost all my city income by like 50%.

Starting as a King or Empire is more difficult to outline because it depends on the region. Perhaps if you had a specific King in mind I could outline the steps I have taken based on where they live.

Note: Something I do that people don't seem to bring up too much is that I fill all my Lord Mayors' counties with cities, after my personal demense is full of cities. You can create a city holding in your Lord Mayor's county and then give it to them directly. A Lord Mayor seems to be able to hold 3 cities personally, and I typically get to where they are netting me 10 gold a month. This is even in CK2+ where income is nerfed a lot. Also, I pay for upgrades in my demense mayor's cities as well, because giving him a +5 gold boost means I'm getting +2 because of the 40%.
 
Stewardship increases tax income for your personal demense, Diplomacy increases opinion with everybody. As you grow, you'll find that Diplomacy increases your income more because it pushes people on the edge of the opinion tax penalty modifiers up to paying full. In some mods, the other stats have their uses. I think Martial score determines your % levies in ck2+ and SWMH, but you'd have to know what each one is doing in the mod before deciding.

If you are at Medium CA, you can't afford to let it drop. It's not the levies, per se, but the preventing people from fighting each other for land.

I don't keep duchy titles except when I want them to press a dejure claim, after which I either give them away or destroy them. I own the best counties I can find inside the 3+ gold farm duchies I have, and possible I own some 2 province duchies outright depending on location. Meath or Leinster I might hold both counties, for example, but I wouldn't have the Duchy of Ulster beyond using it to create the kingdom and then destroying right after. Yes, the vassals probably will rebel but after 1 generation they will have forgotten about it.

I never give counties to family members unless I'm going to make them the Duke and I want to wait for my heir so he can get a +100 loyalty vassal in his first day. Counts are a bloodbath waiting to happen, where Dukes seem to be more stable internally.

Education Strategy: Grey Eminence isn't inheritable, it comes from the tutor. Now, every mod seems to handle this differently than vanilla so YMMV. If you want diplomats you need to become one somehow and then start tutoring your children to maximize the diplomacy stat. That means the first son you get in the game needs a tutor that is a same culture/religion Grey Eminence (or Charismatic Negotiator, anything but Naive Appeaser in the diplo line). Even if he doesn't get the Grey Eminence when he turns 16, he should be at least a lesser Diplomat and then you can use him to create a whole family of them through your own training program.

BTW, when I say family patrician I mean a Doge of your own Dynasty. Making someone a Doge is like making them a Bishop, they can't inherit feudal titles anymore. I only keep 1 Republic in my realm, usually central, preferably 2 provinces like Meath. I give it to a brother/uncle/younger son when I'm sure I've got family to spare, and then as long as the patrician that is Doge is the one of my dynasty I get a +10 relations boost from him. I probably wouldn't bother with the Doges except they boost all my city income by like 50%.

Starting as a King or Empire is more difficult to outline because it depends on the region. Perhaps if you had a specific King in mind I could outline the steps I have taken based on where they live.

Note: Something I do that people don't seem to bring up too much is that I fill all my Lord Mayors' counties with cities, after my personal demense is full of cities. You can create a city holding in your Lord Mayor's county and then give it to them directly. A Lord Mayor seems to be able to hold 3 cities personally, and I typically get to where they are netting me 10 gold a month. This is even in CK2+ where income is nerfed a lot. Also, I pay for upgrades in my demense mayor's cities as well, because giving him a +5 gold boost means I'm getting +2 because of the 40%.

I'm playing vanilla + DLC, haven't touched mods yet (should I?).

You can destroy duchy titles? How do you make sure your doge is of your Dynasty, aren't mayors elected? The way I create a doge is I find a county with a city and grant the county to the city mayor, and then the duchy to the county lord mayor. Would Dynasty matter? Wouldn't they just be elected out after one generation?

So essentially, you recommend: Hold as much Demense counties as you can. Don't create/hold the associated duchy titles for them (guessing to avoid the too many duchies modifier?) maybe have one doge of your dynasty (might still have to explain that to me) then give and ONLY give full duchies to family when you can, as you don't want to have counts as vassals, but rather dukes? What if you expand too fast and don't have the family to give the duchies too? Slow down? (Lame)

Edit: another mistake I think i made was with the Duke of Munster. He was the duke, but his other two vassals (he controlled one county) reported to me instead of him. I didn't want him to have the vassals because it would increase his footprint that early on. I think this was a mistake, but I'm not sure.

Just curious, for a family member, if you had a 3 county duchy, it would be wise to have them control one of those counties, and two courtiers/other people the remaining (of which would be his vassals)? As to limit his power?

Would the above be accurate?

Do you suggest mods over vanilla? Any reccomendations.

By the way, you're awesome ^_^

Offtopic but if you want to offer your take on starting kingdoms/empires the ones im interested in are England (to grow to Brittania), Castille (Hispania/Religious wars), and Byzantine Empire (HRE seems too culture messed at the beginning to handle well)
 
I prefer to use mods but I played vanilla for a while first. My favorite is CK2+ and I recommend giving it a try. Other notables that I've enjoyed are SWMH (and Project Synergy which is CK2+ and SWMH merged) and the Friends and Foes mod. I didn't like A Game of Thrones personally, but I didn't like the books either so yeah. A Prince and the Thane mod was interesting as well, but wasn't something I wanted to get into with the squire system ect.

Yes you can destroy any title if it's not your primary one. If it is your primary and you have multiple ones of that rank, you can change primary title by navigating to that particular title and clicking the "Make Primary Title" button. So if you had the Kingdom of Wales and the Kingdom of Ireland you could click the Wales shield icon and make it your primary, then click the Ireland shield icon and destroy it. I wouldn't do that if you plan on becoming emperor though.

I wouldn't make a republic from a non-family member, but I'm a little OCD I guess. In the scenario you outlined, I would have promoted the mayor as you mentioned, and held onto the duchy title until he rebelled. I then would revoke his county (making sure I am holding only the city and not the barony as well) and give the county to an unlanded member of my dynasty. If you own both the castle and the city, you give your dynasty member the city first, then promote him up. Then I would give him the Duchy title and viola, family held merchant republic. As for the mechanics of the succession, republics have a special version of the ones that lord mayors/regular doges have. It creates 5 merchant families (patricians) that are baron level vassals under the republic. Each family fights for control of the republic through a patrician election system. That means your family can own the republic most of the time by winning those elections when the old Doge dies.

Regarding the destruction of Duchies. When you destroy a title, it does help the too many held duchies/too many elector titles penalties. It also prevents people from coveting them and using them as an excuse for a war. If there are 10 title claimants to the Duchy of Ulster, they will all try within their lifetime to press it. If it's destroyed, they are hosed. Also, vassals will plot/rebel just because they think they should be a Duke if it exists. I like demotivating them.

Counts are 10x more likely to inherit their titles away. In 3 generations a county will have either been sucked into someone's duchy or be part of the HRE and not family held. You can go with the all count approach but you have to be willing to spark massive civil wars to prevent what I call "count drift". Dukes it can happen, too, but it isn't a guarantee and when it starts to happen you can see it coming decades ahead of time. If you run with Elective Monarchy you can just swap over to that Duchess (the problems with rulers always come from the girls...) and give her lands back to a younger dude with 3 sons.

I do in fact slow down if I run out of family members to give duchies to. Taking land isn't keeping it, and that muslim/english guy is upgrading the castles the same as if your guy held it. If I notice I'm going to be short on family members I have my daughters matrilineally marry Rurikovich guys so I can get 8 or 10 boys to hand out land too.

Your 3 county duchy scenario is the right path imo. If it's 3 provinces I tend to give my family member the best province, but I right click the baronies inside and distribute to minor barons. I give the county with room in it for extra holdings to a Lord Mayor (because he will build a city usually and he makes enough to do it faster) and the weakest county to a Lord Bishop. Bishops and Mayors don't marry a Princess of Bohemia and take the county to another realm with them. I do assign them to him as vassals. Cripple his justifications/motives for going to war with you and keep him focused on his evil Lord Mayor/Lord Bishop heh. If he gets rebelled on, it wakes up all the family dukes in the realm to help him. Sometimes after 40 or 50 years he will end up with 2 counties in his duchy through rebellions. I don't tend to bother fixing it unless he attacks me and I don't want him to like me or 145 gold.

Kingdom later, post too big. :p
 
How do you make sure your doge is of your Dynasty, aren't mayors elected?
Give them a duke title as well and they become a patrician, that means 4 more patrician families will be created in that republic and the doge will be elected from the new 4 plus the origional doge's patrician family.
What if you expand too fast and don't have the family to give the duchies too? Slow down?
Celebate old courtiers can be used to hold onto land, they usually wont have children and the lands should pass back to you when they die, hopefully by then, you'll have a dynasty memebr to land.
Edit: another mistake I think i made was with the Duke of Munster. He was the duke, but his other two vassals (he controlled one county) reported to me instead of him. I didn't want him to have the vassals because it would increase his footprint that early on. I think this was a mistake, but I'm not sure.
So long as he likes you, it really doesn't matter how powerful he is does it?
Just curious, for a family member, if you had a 3 county duchy, it would be wise to have them control one of those counties, and two courtiers/other people the remaining (of which would be his vassals)? As to limit his power?
Sure.

This is a piece of cake, especially if you start after the conquest.

Your first son is a bit lame, but he can still be saved with a good education, the other 2 sons are usually fine.

First thing I do, is grant lands to dynasty members, I keep one or two baronies for later, I also usurp duchy of anjou and give that to my hier. You might feel compelled to give the saxons the lands they desire to shut them up, do not do that at all, let them rebel and take thier lands. After a year or two you will also want to find a young man with claims on the 2 welsh duchies, matri-marry him to one of your daughters so that thier children become your dynasty and grant him a barony, press his claims and you now have all of wales. I usually do this to take brittany too, just because.

If france is weak or in a rebellion, press your claims for vexin and anjou, if not, press the claim for cumberland. If you manage to take the duchy of northumberland from the saxon duke, give it to the newly aquired cumberland, he will eventually also inherit lothian.

This is pretty much all you can do at the start, so either fabricate claims for ireland, or find ducal claimants willing to come to your lands. I usually end up marrying a scottish princess somewhere down the line if it is taking to long to get claims on scotland.

If you start pre-conquest, you can plot for a claim on france and plot for the kingdom of france before you even take england, but it takes longer to get things started with britannia.
 
"If you run with Elective Monarchy you can just swap over to that Duchess (the problems with rulers always come from the girls...) and give her lands back to a younger dude with 3 sons." Are you referring to when you are an emperor? (I haven't played as one, but they can revoke titles with little penalty right?)

So essentially you're saying that its good to have your family member only hold one county out of the total counties in a duchy to limit his power. But to further limit his power and increase the solidarity of the duchy you should avoid giving him feudal vassals? Instead opting for bishops and mayors as they wont drift?

As for the creation of a republic, I completely forgot you can take a city yourself, just that you get the incorrect govt type modifier. I understand your point on slowing down. Playing Ireland freaks me out though when scotland and england start fabbing claims on the independants before you unite ireland or after you do and with every war they seem to try and step in. (Revoking a county which spurred a rebellion was a race against time as scotland fabbed a claim against it and decided to attack it as well when it was rebelling). Feels like there is a lot of pressure to expand, at least with ireland.

Last question about the destruction of duchies. If you cannot (for whatever reason) run Primogeniture, and are forced to Elective, doesn't that force your hand to keep duchies? And wouldnt your family dukes lobby against you? Keeping in control of an election was the primary reason I liked high stewardship. I know it wouldn't last forever, but..
 
You can change your culture to whatever the culture of your capital is, it's a decision you can take in the intrigue tab.
Not in vanilla you can't. The culture change decision is to you liege's culture. However, there is an event that can change you culture to that of your capital's. I see the Sheik of Larida(Lleida) become Catalan quite often.
 
I too always suffer from mass rebellions after three or four generations. Usually all my kings go through what I've called the "faction stage" which lasts between 10 to 20-years after they assume the throne. Faction stage is where all your vassals constantly start factions against you. The worse your diplomacy trait, the worse it seems to be. But after 10 to 20-years, if you survive it, the factions seem to stop, everything settles and you can rule without worrying about internal problems. Then, your heir assumes the throne and it all starts again. There's rebellion in the first year usually. You just have to accept it. If you survive for 10 or 20-years, imprison and revoke the titles of some rebellious vassals, replace them with unambition people with no claims to your titles, it'll all stop again... until your NEXT heir takes the throne. It's never ending.

You just have to accept it. Always save some money for your heir to hire mercenaries. When your kingdom gets big these rebellions you have when your heir assumes the throne can decimate you. A good example of this is when William the Conqueror dies and his idiot son takes the throne. It's almost impossible to put down with your personal levies alone so you'll have to rely on mercenaries. Always save money for your heir to hire mercenaries.
 
All of the rulers you mention start with a scenario problem on the 1066 setup, that has to be handled before going into routine gameplay.

I'm assuming with England you mean starting as a Harold Godwin, which entails fighting off the two invasions. I usually end up using 2 extra mercenary bands along with my starting troops and raising my levies. You can hit the Norway invasion force from the north and avoid having a river crossing penalty, and keep about half your army on ships to land a day after your army hits him. If you go with your whole army he'll run away but if you move with what looks like 2/3's of his force he'll just let it happen. Destroy his army, while leaving a small force to free York, and head towards William. Play Fabian tactics (unsiege stuff he sieges and run away if his doom stacks moves toward you) until he splits his army. Destroy half, then other half, don't get caught by his combined force.

After the initial invasions, your two issues are York and Lancaster. I wait until I have a righteous imprisonment on one of the brothers and then sometimes I banish him outright and eat a tyranny hit. Then I make Lancaster into a gold farm and the inland duchies into 2 or 3 province family-helds. I usually leave Northumbria whole as a family held because when it rebels it's hard for Scotland to nick a county from a Duke. I usually make Cornwall into my family republic and the one next to it into a 2 province family duchy. The 3 province duchies on the eastern side I like to use as my gold farm, along with Ireland eventually.

For marriage alliances, obviously there's Mathilda in Tuscany for one of your sons, and Denmark because they are located close enough to actually be useful.

The HRE and the ERE would take way too long I'm afraid. I believe there are guides specifically for playing those ones on the forums here. In my experience in the HRE the main issue is getting your family onto duchy seats. Once you have 6 or 8 family dukes you are golden for the rest of the game.

The Spanish starting position requires you to be aggressive against your family. If you start as Castille, you need to find a way to get Leon asap. Once you have it, you destroy the kingdom title (not Galicia because always keep Titulars) and move on Galicia. Wait until Leon joins Aragon in their first offensive war and go all in, is what I tend to do. If you are playing Leon you do the same thing, but to Galicia. If you are building the gold farm correctly you can re-create kingdom titles whenever you want after like 50 years of game time, so holding onto them just to have them as war targets or gavelkind losses doesn't make sense. Shift to Primogeniture if you aren't already, and keep it until you get the highest title you plan to hold. Then decide if you want to be able to fix internal duchy combinations, by using Elective monarchy. Right now if you build a higher level title (duke -> king) and you have Elective it blows it up and you have Gavelkind instead, primo isn't broken that way.

For distribution purposes, coastal duchies are the best gold farm. Sevilla, Granada, anything that's 3+ provinces and majority coast is where all your money will come from. Inland duchies I usually reserve for the dynasty unless they are too big for one guy to hold, I make those gold farm but keeping in mind it isn't going to be as good. The northern coast of Spain has a lot of 2 province ones, i'd probably make Galicia (IIRC 2 provinces) into my merchant republic unless I was going for all of north Africa as well. At which point I would make Beja into the republic because of the central location.

So essentially you're saying that its good to have your family member only hold one county out of the total counties in a duchy to limit his power. But to further limit his power and increase the solidarity of the duchy you should avoid giving him feudal vassals? Instead opting for bishops and mayors as they wont drift?

As for the creation of a republic, I completely forgot you can take a city yourself, just that you get the incorrect govt type modifier. I understand your point on slowing down. Playing Ireland freaks me out though when scotland and england start fabbing claims on the independants before you unite ireland or after you do and with every war they seem to try and step in. (Revoking a county which spurred a rebellion was a race against time as scotland fabbed a claim against it and decided to attack it as well when it was rebelling). Feels like there is a lot of pressure to expand, at least with ireland.

Last question about the destruction of duchies. If you cannot (for whatever reason) run Primogeniture, and are forced to Elective, doesn't that force your hand to keep duchies? And wouldnt your family dukes lobby against you? Keeping in control of an election was the primary reason I liked high stewardship. I know it wouldn't last forever, but..

You can choose to be an Elective Monarchy with most cultures, not just the HRE. The voting system is not nearly as dangerous if every duchy title in your realm is family owned. So the concept of "losing" the election just means you have to play as a member of the dynasty you didn't prefer, rather than a game over or being demoted to a duke. They vote based on the combination of how much they like you with how much they like your heir. You'll end up owning nearly every election. You get a vote as a king or emperor title, and no matter how many duchies you hold you still only get the 1 vote.

Yeah, I further limit my vassal's power by making his vassals Lord Mayors and Lord Bishops. Most of your vassals will have Gavelkind for a while so you might as well be giving any extra counties he holds directly to the HRE instead.

For slowing down, there are limits. When you first start out, you are gated by your claim fabrication speed and possibly claimant invite/matri marriages. Once you get to a certain size, though, you can grow as fast as you like. When you are at that point, you should try to only grow when you can properly manage the holdings. If/when you feel like you can absorb it, you can just invade France or the HRE and suddenly spike up to 500. I don't play the game as a race to expand as fast as possible, though, so...
 
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To avoid having a heir with bad traits tutor your heir and spare by yourself. from the bohemian heir it sounds like you had him educated with a bohemian instead of yourself because children often adopt the culture and religion of their mentor.
 
Just to be clear, when you say gold farm for the eastern duchies (or in general) of england, you mean hold them yourself for city building right?

Thanks for all your advice. I don't think its common for newer players to look at the big picture as you do (understanding that vassals have their own succession laws, etc)I really appreciate the time you took to address these points. Seems like you've played a lot.

Looks like you're helping more people than just I. :) Do you ever play multiplayer or use Steam/Origin. Feel free to add me on either (pref not origin :/). Same username as the forums.

Cheers,

Senjai
 
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Just to be clear, when you say gold farm for the eastern duchies (or in general) of england, you mean hold them yourself for city building right?

Thanks for all your advice. I don't think its common for newer players to look at the big picture as you do (understanding that vassals have their own succession laws, etc)I really appreciate the time you took to address these points. Seems like you've played a lot.

Looks like you're helping more people than just I. :) Do you ever play multiplayer or use Steam/Origin. Feel free to add me on either (pref not origin :/). Same username as the forums.

Cheers,

Senjai

You are most welcome, I hope I haven't been too spammy.

By gold farm, I mean personally held counties with as many city spots + the remainder as lord mayors and with no existent duchy title. I only have 3 kinds of vassals for any length of time - gold farms/family helds/family republic. Everyone else in my realm is a placeholder until they rebel and I turn them into one of the 3.

I tend to only play single player unless my wife wants to do a co-op LAN game. Multiplayer has too many de-syncs when I'm running a mod as it is, so I don't know if I will do a steam one (my copy is from steam).

Edit: A couple of minor additions

You'll have to come up with a ratio of gold farms to family-helds that you are comfortable with based on mod/vanilla and ease of gameplay. I've found I only need like 40 gold/month as income and anything beyond that I'm just spending it to spend it, with little purpose. In my games I hit 40 gold / month with maybe 12 or 13 Lord Mayors and my regular demense income after like 30 or 40 years. Some mods have -40 relations for being wrong government type, some have -10, ect, so keep an eye on it and plan accordingly. Making 400 gold / month doesn't really give any benefit if you have to face rebellions every 3 years because of it.

Kingdom versus Empire:

I almost always just stick with a Kingdom title. By the time I could make an Empire one I don't need extra demense (I usually only have 4 or 5 counties personally anyway) for money or troops. Empires can only suck in Kingdoms by dejure drift, and those Kingdom titles will sit there as dejure lands and never be created. If you are playing as a King, any duchies you own that neighbor your kingdom will get sucked into it; this eventually means those Kingdom titles are destroyed and you can create them as Titular titles for free prestige.

The other two benefits to an Empire title are having King-level vassals (which is the exact opposite of what I want) and higher prestige gain. It's balanced out by being able to create those free Titular titles and having a lower unlanded son prestige penalty, as well as being able to marry your daughters to Dukes without taking a prestige loss for being 2 tiers lower than you. It's something you'll have to decide if it's worth it.
 
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Whats your strategy with marraige to get claims Sopot?
For a kingdom, I find a daughter with inheritable claim, weak or strong, no matter, and marry her to myself if i have no wife and kids or to my first born son, stats are less important if I am trying to get a claim, so she can be pretty horrible and I'll just cope with that. I usually hold out untill she dies and my child now has a claim, it'll be weak more than likely and can only be pressed against kids or women.

For duchies as a king, I find a male with a strong claim, invite him to my court and matri-marry him to either my daughter/sister or kinswoman, I give him a feudal title, barony is my preferance, if I'm desperate, I usually have a county spare some place. Once he is landed, I can press his claim and the new duchy will be part of my kingdom and since his kids will be of my dynasty, I'll be gaining more dynastic prestige down the line. If you are super desperate, just find him, land him and press his claim with out doing the marry part.