#4th Tier: Empire

[Chaingun]

This is something I'd like to see myself, but I'd guess this has already been decided on in the initial game design and we cannot influence it much by now.

Anyway: It could work rather nicely as to integrate the special case Byzantium and provde a similar mechanic for anyone who controls multiple king titles. Becoming an empire should be that final objective if you're already king of >= 3 rather large countries or something like that.

West and East Roman empires, some muslim "empires", and perhaps the mongols are some candidates for a fourth tier? Add some fictional but plausible ones to that and you got perhaps 7-10 possible empire titles, enough to make a tier 4 worthwhile.

 

[Chaingun]

I think the point with a tier 4 is to distinguish exceptionally powerful kingdoms from the rest. One would still need many specialized rules for Byz, HRE, and Mongols, but the nice thing would be one could create some plausible though ahistorical entities as well such as aforementioned scandinavian or spanish "empires". That adds to the depth of the game since one ends up feeling less limited in what one can do. If I am in a position to resurrect combined (west + east) historical Roman Empire, it would be nice to be able to do so rather than simply being called "King of France, _various Iberian kingdoms_, Croatia, Italy, England, etc... It would more or less be the ultimate goal in terms of conquest - it may for instance be fun to start with Byzantium and try to recapture the western parts to restore Rome.

The question is just what to call them (since empire is such a misnomer for many of the proposed tier 4 entities)..

 

[Chaingun]

What in the world makes you think its easy to conquer Spain, England, France, Germany and most of europe to declare an empire of X?

The AI

 

[Chaingun]

The whole thing about it becoming a 4th tier is to have multiple kings under it. That whole situation in itself in medieval europe is ridiculous.

Looking back at this quote again made me think it's perhaps not best to represent empires by extending by a 4th tier. Requiring empires to have kingdom vassals like kingdoms have duchy vassals wouldn't work in all cases; the granularity is too course on many areas of the map where there are a few large kingdoms rather than many small ones. It doesn't make sense to keep kingdom of Rus as a vassal if it somehow has formed - it's simply too large for that.

Instead, it may be better to be able to augment an existing kingdom title to an empire if certain conditions apply. E.g. if Byzantines are destroyed and I then retake byzantine lands I should perhaps be allowed to convert my primary title to empire status. "Promotion" to an empire could have certain pros and cons, to make it a difficult decision rather than something you'd always want to do.

 

[Chaingun]

Tbh, that wouldn't fix that specific problem? It would be a better solution, that you can't actually vassalize new kingdoms, once you "formed" your empire.
By this i mean, you should be able to make the kingdom titles you already hold, into vassal states, since these kingdoms are already your "personal" property, and you might want to grant your sons places to rule for themselves, make them "vassal kings". I believe the same thing went on during the carolingian period. Granted this was some 200 years before the game starts, but the Hohenstaufens had something similar going on, with the heir being King of Italy and all...

Ok I had to re-read the first paragraph a few times, but now I see what you're saying:

Yes, that sounds good. But does it need to be tied to an empire title? Your proposal would make sense even without a 4th tier, or an empire extension. I think you could have both an empire extension of the kingdom title and vassal kingdom creation as unrelated features. Calling a king an emperor with associated in-game display is more about satisfying egomania than anything else.

I've seen rulers holding more than a single title, I never went around and counted their realms though (I had no reason in doing so at the time).

Yes but 5. AI is usually not that determined. If it unites a whole kingdom from scratch it's usually due to luck rather than anything else (or weak religious opponents).

So agreed, I think there's a very low probability of AI getting big enough to use such a feature to create ahistorical empires.