I don't approve of the new crusade title distribution system

[Vigor]

I had over 50% contribution and got the king title and 2 worst duchies. HRE was excommunicated and sat the crusade out. I basically won this by myself but random other characters got the bulk of the rewards. Who are these people? The beneficiaries of 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th and 8th contributors? One of them got 2 duchies. What a waste. One guy holding 2 duchies = slower tech progression.

I don't even get an opinion bonus from the newly placed dukes?

It seems the devs have made a lot of changes. Before, crusades were great for fortifying my weaker king vassals. I could split up the rewards among them and give the most to the ones that needed it most. I could keep a few counties in my own demense to spread tech with. I could also boost the opinon of my vassals.

How does this make the game better?

 

[noobermenschen]

You are killing men and pillaging lands for the Lord. The boatload of gold, prestige and piety in addition to the titles aren't enough?

I am okay with Crusades (just came back to the game after several years) mainly because I have learned how to cheese the mechanics and make bank from war score contribution.

If I have a quibble it is that Crusades are much more focused, strategically sensible and therefore more successful in the game than they were historically, especially if the player is Catholic (I would imagine Jihads are more successful if you are playing a Muslim character).

 

[Vigor]

Well, I started playing CK2 again to decide if I wanted to buy CK3. I think I have made my decision. No...way. CK2 was a game with so much potential. All it needed was was a decent combat system and removal of a lot of red tape.

 

[tribnia]

Isn't there an option to take all rewards for yourself?

 

[Poppydo]

If you take the King title for yourself, did you still get the money?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Before, crusades were...

As far as i recall ( as i'm playing CK1 currently), you need to take the Selfish stance option in the crusade window and you get everything
as before..and no money..and it's impious, so trouble with da pope.

Relevant dev diary :

CK2 Dev Diary #83 - God Wills It!

Greetings! PDXCon is soon upon us, and we hope to see you there! During the event we will reveal the name and theme of the Expansion we’re working on, and after PDXCon is over we’ll have plenty of Dev Diaries that will delve deep into the new...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Vigor]

Isn't there an option to take all rewards for yourself?

I took the option to take all rewards for myself. I got the KD (which i didn't really want) and 2 of 11 duchies and a slightly smaller percentage of the counties.

I got 1/6th of the money (6000) and 1 artifact. Messages said I got another artifact but I don't see it in the treasury.

Now I am far over vassal limit even if I give the 2 duchies i got to king vassals.

I would like to give every duchy to a king vassal besides one in the middle which I keep for myself for a while to push tech into egypt. Then I give it away. WIth no dejure duchies in Egypt and all of those vassal duchies held by vassal kings I think that should make Egypt start drifting into becoming titular. (the end goal for egypt)

In previous play throughs I got too many king vassals despite not keeping duke or count vassals. That put me in a position where i needed to lower centralization. I don't want every KD I can get i want to destroy them and preferably, do it without giving up gavelkind.

To keep gavelkind safely I really need to maintain the ability to have a spare kd or 3. (1 per heir)

Right now I am empire of Britannia, With England as my personal kingdom. England has a lot of duchies which I need to get rid of and I have a few loose duchies in scandinavia. My intent was to replace them as I need to slot more kings (mostly through inheritance).

Because of this crusade I have 8 new loose duchies + one is a multiduke which will end up becoming 2 duke vassals eventually.

The simple answer is, Give the KD of Egypt to one of these new dukes.

That is also problem because then Egypt will have room to grow but my other kings won't. It will also have room to grow where growing could lead to it creating an empire and becoming independant. I can't let that happen. It might be stronger than my strongest king vassal once the recent occupation modifiers wear off. And because it was landed by claimants from my realm it will have claims on my other vassal's territories. Because it isn't a dejure part of Brittanica, It could care less that my laws forbid vassals fighting with each other. I am already having a problem with France ignoring my laws and attacking my other vassals.

 

[Vigor]

To add insult to injury it also gave away all of the baronies except the castle baronies. It gave the castle baronies to me despite them being in other counties.

So now
1. I don't get the opinion bonus for landing barons
2. I don't get to hold barons for a while to counties I give away. Basically, If I am giving someone 4 counties and a duchy I don't need that much opinion boost at once. Holding onto the baronies allows me to stockpile some opinion boost for later when i need it and I make a little gold in the process. The vassal is ecstatic about being given so much stuff they don't mind not being given a little more. Then, they have enough stuff to give to their vassals and make their vassals happy. Keeping the baronies allows me to stockpile opinion bonus to them as well as I would give the baronies to them later and they could gain new opinion boosts for giving them to their vassals(unless they kept the county).
3. I need to revoke the titles of all of these new dukes. In order to do that I need to make them unhappy enough to revolt/plot or make all of my vassals unhappy. I would like to give them the castle baronies, castle baronies are completely useless to me. I would like them to have those troops. But now I need to keep those barons as my personal vassals to upset these dukes so they do something to let me revoke the duchies. Once I revoke the duchies I can transfer their vassalage to my vassal kings and give them their duchies back.
4. On top of all of the other problems, most of the dukes I need to get rid of are dynastic family. Provoking them to war against me might get them killed. I have to do it. Game mechanics have tied my hands.

 

[Vigor]

I also need to turn auto-stop plots off so that I can bust these dukes when they do something wrong. I will probably spend the next 10 years asking courtiers to stop plotting or backing plots and it will probably take me a week of real life time to do that. Even then I am unlikely to get all of the dukes. In 30 years when I win another crusade I will need to do it all again.

 

[noobermenschen]

And what happens once I have all christian land? Then these mechanics will be giving all of the crusade king vassals claims on my other vassals' land. Since most of them aren't dejure part of my empire, each crusade is a new opportunity to create a vassal with the power to shred the others and destabilize my realm since non-dejure vassals don't obey empire law.

So the mechanics that strengthen your religion when your religion is weak destabilize it when it is strong?

If I split it up myself, they each get what I give them, to do whatever they want with, and the realm remains stable.

In my current game 1/3 of muslims are gone. I have 1/4 of byz and the mongols have 2 or 3 duchies of byz. I have half of christianity. The crusade I just fought was almost exclusively me and my vassals vs Islam. HRE has about 35% of christianity. The year is 992 i started as the county of sussex.

So it sounds like you are trying to paint the world, which the game makes difficult by design. I think the only way to make it mathematically possible is to have multi-crown King vassals.

I also need to turn auto-stop plots off so that I can bust these dukes when they do something wrong. I will probably spend the next 10 years asking courtiers to stop plotting or backing plots and it will probably take me a week of real life time to do that. Even then I am unlikely to get all of the dukes. In 30 years when I win another crusade I will need to do it all again.

Dukes are idiots. I am facing the same Hobson's choice on plots. I finally jailed and banished one as a known murderer, and simply stripped and destroyed another's title and took the opinion hit.

 

[Vigor]

I have never completely painted it i have always gotten far enough I was confident I would be able to. Once you can beat all of the pacts while having 100% threat in back to back to back wars while rotating the troops you fight the wars with, the game is over. The almost worst thing that can happen when you are beyond the half way mark is you might be inconvenienced by not being able to find a claimant to territory owned by new converts to your religion. The worst thing would be you manage to not have an heir or something.

This time I was hoping to do it and do it without an invasion of HRE or BYZ (which makes it significantly harder because it takes a lot of wars to take down HRE without picking up the empire)

I did have some multi-crown kings, not deliberately, but it is difficult to prevent them from getting multiple kingdoms. After becoming multi-crown kings they tend to become 2 single crown kings eventually and that is a big problem. You have to destroy kingdoms through war and prevent any of your kings from being able to make more kds or an empire. I have had multiple empires which makes some things easier but tends to produce a lot of trouble.

Now I just imprisoned a duke (a really great duke) for free (I think all he did was get excommunicated but it doesn't tell you why you have righteous imprisonment) and i still get the opinion hit if I revoke his duchy. Why would my vassals be ok with me imprisoning him but not punishing him? It makes no sense. Now I made an excellent duke angry for no reason. All I want to do is GIVE SOMETHING THAT IS MINE away. I want to give his vassalage away.

Painting the world is my definition of winning. Anything else is losing.

 

[noobermenschen]

Now I just imprisoned a duke (a really great duke) for free (I think all he did was get excommunicated but it doesn't tell you why you have righteous imprisonment) and i still get the opinion hit if I revoke his duchy. Why would my vassals be ok with me imprisoning him but not punishing him? It makes no sense. Now I made an excellent duke angry for no reason. All I want to do is GIVE SOMETHING THAT IS MINE away. I want to give his vassalage away.

Painting the world is my definition of winning. Anything else is losing.

I had a Duke with 24 Martial my Queen made her Marshal at the beginning of her reign, within six months the A-hole murdered her Spymaster and she had to lock him up. I have banished vassals who were known murderers (check your Duke's character sheet, it would appear underneath traits) and did not take an opinion hit for it, though the stripped titles go to the ruler's heir instead of you.

If you paint the world definitely post a screenshot.

 

[Andrew0Red]

Vassals will never create a title of same rank as liege. My kingdom has covered a quarter of the map for centuries and not a single multi-duke has formed a kingdom.

As for them splitting, you want them to have a non-splitting succession. In a Merchant Republic, that's automatic. In feudals, it's trickier. You'll need them to switch to something other than Gavelkind. First, they need the tech for later successions. Second, they need to pass the law. Third, iirc, factions may try to get back to Gavelkind.

In late (read: high-tech) feudal, there's viceroyalties. Since they go back to you upon death, you can just give them back as a bunch.


Hmm, it sounds as if you're upset that the game behaves weirdly when pushed far beyond intent. If you want an easier World Conquest, I recommend starting Tribal, going full NK and getting Tannistry or Eldership.

 

[Vigor]

I didn't know they couldn't create titles of my tier to break free. I just assumed they could. As for splitting titles, even if I gave each KD a non-splitting succession,what is to stop them from changing it back? I remember one play through multi-kings adding kingdoms and splitting was causing me a lot of trouble.

I am upset. I'm not looking to make the game easier. It is already easy. I am annoyed by the ways they make things difficult. "winning" this crusade has caused me so much trouble. The rules in this game are very arbitrary.

This bug then compounded those problems. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...n-authority-law-in-england-and-egypt.1496148/

Viceroyalties won't help until late game I have problems now. I need to solve problems now to prevent similar problems late game.

 

[Vigor]

I don't really see why there is a vassal limit in the first place. Isn't it already more difficult to keep vassals happy when you have a lot of them?

If someone wants 75 dukes, good luck controlling them and few, if any of them will be strong enough to accomplish much on their own.

 

[noobermenschen]

I don't really see why there is a vassal limit in the first place. Isn't it already more difficult to keep vassals happy when you have a lot of them?

If someone wants 75 dukes, good luck controlling them and few, if any of them will be strong enough to accomplish much on their own.

Not even dukes. Players (such as myself) would build yuge empires out of several hundred counts.

You know what grinds my gears about Crusades? When I'm checking the scorecard 45 days out and accidentally hit the LEAVE button and bail on the Crusade after I have already donated two years' income and am at that moment assembling my levies and fleets! That was a mess.

Grrr... BAH!

Fortunately the Crusade was in BFE (actually Iraq but close enough) so even after waiting a year my armies arrived shortly after the first wave and got a good 8% of the warscore. Didn't stop the Pope from sending a shitty message after my armies were already seigeing Basra and neighboring sheikdoms. I almost appointed an anti-Pope over that, but decided to bide my time (I want to gain the Three Popes achievement).