[Question] Can anyone clarify what playing [wide] or playing [tall] means?

[Palbulchul]

I think I actually know what playing [tall] is - just sitting on your ass all the time, just improving your own demesne. (In a nutshell.)

How does playing [wide] work? Does this mean holding every barony in a capital duchy? (Take Bohemia - doesn't that run over 30 or so?) Google is giving me nothing regarding playing wide, and is filling my screen with useless "Playing Tall is BETTER" bullshit. (I don't need that. I need to know how these are done, not which is better than the other.)

And - if you are so inclined to answer (Thank you very much by the way) could you provide the pros and cons of each? Thanks in advance.

 

[Whizzer]

Playing wide means expanding as much as possible, playing tall means staying small. Playing wide means getting levies and taxes from your vassals, playing tall means getting getting levies (mostly) from your own demesne, commonly from having many castles in your capital duchy, with your marshall and steward working on all castles in your capital province.

 

[Palbulchul]

Okay. Thanks.

Let's take Bohemia, for instance.

If I play tall, I'd grab every barony in the entire duchy, right? (30+ holdings) whereas I'd be holding the [county] only and leave the baronies to the vassals, did I get it right? What's the pros and cons of each?

 

[Whizzer]

You'd also be holding other castles in the duchy personally, as demesne limit permits.

Playing wide comes with all the additional management of running a large realm, appeasing all your vassals. Playing tall rarely allows for vassals to get uppity, since your personal levies are so many, and it's much easier to keep the realm running smoothly. Not everyone just wants to blob all over the place every single time. It's possible to switch from playing tall to playing wide, of course. Going the other way isn't as easy.

 

[majdavlk]

playing wide usualy just means playing nornally

 

[jonjowett]

Zooming out a bit, I tend to view "wide vs tall" as "ahistorical vs vaguely-plausible".

The "wide" approach is pretty easy in-game, compared with the actual history of this time period - you can easily conquer vast swathes of territory and remain stable indefinitely afterwards. (Whereas, in our reality, the most anyone managed to build and hold for centuries was 2-3 de jure kingdoms. The HRE is the weird exception that proves the rule.) You might do this once or twice just to prove you can, or for achievements, but eventually "beating up all of the AI" becomes less rewarding.

On the other hand, if you "play tall" then you can be an island of stability as the rest of the world develops around you. Of course, you meddle in it a bit - prop up a claimant here, establish a tributary there - but your core goal is to keep your realm safe and prosperous, through whatever hijinks the world throws your way. (Children of Destiny, Crusades, Aztecs, Mongols, plague, etc.) And CK2 has just enough peacetime gameplay that this approach is interesting. (Although it's admittedly a lot more fun as a pagan and as a coastal raider. And even more fun with mods.)

 

[LynxyTheLynce]

I feel like playing tall doesn't mean playing as a duchy, but you can do it with only 1 county if you want. I actually managed to hold all of portugal's de jure titles myself and played tall from there, developing my counties and building cities for money.

While when I play wide I focus on expanding alot, but with an objective, like actually getting the russian empire borders (which is pretty hard).

 

[Buttons12345]

Playing wide means concentrating your development, you can have a peripheral empire, but most of your development would be based around a specific region or your personal domain. As an example playing as a crusader state I had a fuckload of money after the crusade and dumped it into building cities and castes and great works all around Jerusalem. I would expand into other regions but generally would split off parts of my empire when it reached a certain point (conquer all of Egypt? Grant a relative with no holdings in the Levant the kingdom).

Playing wide just means expansion or blobbing with less regards for development, for example if instead of building up Jerusalem after my crusade I used that money for mercenaries to rapidly expand with holy wars until I ran out of money and had to rely on levies. The point is I would have more provinces but they would be less developed and prosperous than if I had done what I did in the previous example.