Unsure where to begin

[Col.Klink]

Hey folks! I'm trying to get a handle on this game.... I've been playing the default 1066 campaign as Robert Duke of Apula. It seemed to be a good start and far less daunting than being in charge of the whole freaking Holy Roman Empire and it also seemed to be something I could find petty immediate goals with.

So I've come up with a few problems:
Gravelkind succession due to the advanced age of my character means that he will die before my vassals do. That means that the next generation my son will have ONE castle vs someone who wants his throne with three castles.

Vassals who are loyal seem to contribute jack and squat in levies so it seems that only personal levies can be counted upon. This compounds the castle problem.... and that brings me to my first question..... Can castle upgrades actually substantively improve your levy size? It just doesn't seem like it.... I can spend 1000 gold only to increase my levy size from 1400 to 1700.... That's not a good investment.... Should I save my gold for my child to build new castles instead?

it also seems that for the moment at 1066 troop type doesn't matter at all and sheer volume tells the tale. It also seems that there is no possible conceivable way that I could ever afford a knight retinue.... I can have 4 castles and still not be able to afford one....

primgore or succession (or however it's spelled, the eldest son gets it all form): If I switch succession immediately my vassals will begin plotting to threaten me with their armies over the change. I don't know why they'd be so invested in the most counter productive form of inheritance in human history but.... Yeah... If I play well my vassals will like me just enough not to pull that crap till my son inherits. Then that brings the question, if I give into them can I switch the inheritance law back later when my son has better control over the government? What happens if I fight the war and lose? Do they force the issue or do I lose my seat?

Really I think this boils down to.... I can't seem to figure out how to build the power of my direct dynasty. Usually even if I can pass on multiple castles onto my child they are utterly incapable of managing all of them. The castles can't seem to be upgraded to any appreciable degree. Vassals seem to contribute jack and squat to war efforts even when opinion is high. The icing on the cake is that I can't seem to have more than one low quality retinue....

 

[jhhowell]

Good choice for a first game. I played Robert Guiscard to learn both CK1 and CK2, very fun start.

1. Yes, gavelkind sucks. Change to something better as soon as you can, which is almost immediately as I recall.
2a. Loyal vassals do contribute non-negligible levies. But it is best to rely on your own personal levies, and later retinue as well. Meaningful vassals are dukes, so if you're still a duke yourself it's not surprising that count vassals are not providing significant vassal levies for you.
2b. Castle upgrades are very useful, and going from 1400 to 1700 men is a big deal. I don't remember the cost being that high, but it's been a while since I've played in 1066 (mostly 867 starts since then). You will eventually want new castles in your capital, which will be Palermo by the time that matters, but the new castle will have nothing built and thus a rather unimpressive levy until you've built it up. Remember that the values in the tooltip for each upgrade are the base values, which are then multiplied by various factors (capital province or capital duchy, marshal training in your capital province, etc.). I do remember being a little frustrated early on that I couldn't afford to build many upgrades since initially most of my money went to creating titles.
3. Correct, numbers matter most in this game. There are situations where troop type matters, and retinues can engineer such situations if you care to. You'll be able to build up a decent retinue once you're a king (even more so when/if you gain an empire title), and have built up training grounds throughout your demesne. Note, as a matter of optimization, you don't want a knight retinue, you want a mix of pike, heavy infantry, and archers. I've used the generic mix ratio of 4 defense to 2 shock to 1 skirmish as suggested in this thread and that's worked well for me in several playthroughs. But as in many parts of this game, optimization isn't really necessary, since by the time you can have a decent-sized retinue anything will work (back to the "numbers matter most" point). The wiki page covers retinues in more detail; you can see the math about them being a tool for kings and emperors primarily, and more so later in the game as tech and building levels improve.
4a. Your vassals want you to have gavelkind to keep your heirs weak, which is better for them and/or their own heirs. Switching to primogeniture shouldn't be that much trouble for you, though. You start out pretty strong, and presumably you'll grab Sicily for yourself ASAP. Once you have Sicily as your capital duchy (one of the best capital duchies in the game) you're pretty much untouchable by vassal factions.
4b. Yes, if you lose a faction revolt war, they will enforce their demands. If it's a faction to restore gavelkind, that's what happens. If it's a faction rebelling against tyranny, you lose your liege title, so don't do that.
5. Imprecise phrasing there - most of your vassals are of your dynasty, so the dynasty as a whole is in a very good position. Your concern is building up the power of your line within the de Hautevilles. Primogeniture should solve most of your problems; "utterly incapable of managing all of them" - did RNG give Bohemond a terrible stewardship stat or something? Or did Bohemond die and you're stuck with Roger Borsa as heir? (In that case you probably want to try to arrange to have Guy inherit - using Roger as a commander in a lot of battles should kill him off eventually). Once you create the King of Sicily title, your demesne limit increases, as well. And you should increase the centralization law as quickly as you can.

A word of advice on increasing income - Amalfi can be a vassal merchant republic for you. And embargo wars against Venice, Genoa, and Pisa can get you a surprising amount of money. Though as merchant republics they can field bigger armies than you'd think since they can easily afford mercenaries. As always, piling on when they're tied up somewhere else works well. Needless to say don't try that against Ragusa (unless you want to fight the Byzantines - historically accurate but not recommended).

Also, once you reach the year 1100, Crusades start and you can get stupidly overpowered rewards - easily several thousand gold, not to mention artifacts. As history shows, the de Hautevilles are in an excellent position to be major figures in the Crusade, and Catholics usually steamroll everything in sight with Crusades in this era (balance failure when they reworked Crusades when Holy Fury released, never fixed). So you can either run with that, try to mod it down to vaguely reasonable levels, spend some piety to send everyone off to Mongolia or something.

 

[Col.Klink]

Good choice for a first game. I played Robert Guiscard to learn both CK1 and CK2, very fun start.

1. Yes, gavelkind sucks. Change to something better as soon as you can, which is almost immediately as I recall.
2a. Loyal vassals do contribute non-negligible levies. But it is best to rely on your own personal levies, and later retinue as well. Meaningful vassals are dukes, so if you're still a duke yourself it's not surprising that count vassals are not providing significant vassal levies for you.
2b. Castle upgrades are very useful, and going from 1400 to 1700 men is a big deal. I don't remember the cost being that high, but it's been a while since I've played in 1066 (mostly 867 starts since then). You will eventually want new castles in your capital, which will be Palermo by the time that matters, but the new castle will have nothing built and thus a rather unimpressive levy until you've built it up. Remember that the values in the tooltip for each upgrade are the base values, which are then multiplied by various factors (capital province or capital duchy, marshal training in your capital province, etc.). I do remember being a little frustrated early on that I couldn't afford to build many upgrades since initially most of my money went to creating titles.
3. Correct, numbers matter most in this game. There are situations where troop type matters, and retinues can engineer such situations if you care to. You'll be able to build up a decent retinue once you're a king (even more so when/if you gain an empire title), and have built up training grounds throughout your demesne. Note, as a matter of optimization, you don't want a knight retinue, you want a mix of pike, heavy infantry, and archers. I've used the generic mix ratio of 4 defense to 2 shock to 1 skirmish as suggested in this thread and that's worked well for me in several playthroughs. But as in many parts of this game, optimization isn't really necessary, since by the time you can have a decent-sized retinue anything will work (back to the "numbers matter most" point). The wiki page covers retinues in more detail; you can see the math about them being a tool for kings and emperors primarily, and more so later in the game as tech and building levels improve.
4a. Your vassals want you to have gavelkind to keep your heirs weak, which is better for them and/or their own heirs. Switching to primogeniture shouldn't be that much trouble for you, though. You start out pretty strong, and presumably you'll grab Sicily for yourself ASAP. Once you have Sicily as your capital duchy (one of the best capital duchies in the game) you're pretty much untouchable by vassal factions.
4b. Yes, if you lose a faction revolt war, they will enforce their demands. If it's a faction to restore gavelkind, that's what happens. If it's a faction rebelling against tyranny, you lose your liege title, so don't do that.
5. Imprecise phrasing there - most of your vassals are of your dynasty, so the dynasty as a whole is in a very good position. Your concern is building up the power of your line within the de Hautevilles. Primogeniture should solve most of your problems; "utterly incapable of managing all of them" - did RNG give Bohemond a terrible stewardship stat or something? Or did Bohemond die and you're stuck with Roger Borsa as heir? (In that case you probably want to try to arrange to have Guy inherit - using Roger as a commander in a lot of battles should kill him off eventually). Once you create the King of Sicily title, your demesne limit increases, as well. And you should increase the centralization law as quickly as you can.

A word of advice on increasing income - Amalfi can be a vassal merchant republic for you. And embargo wars against Venice, Genoa, and Pisa can get you a surprising amount of money. Though as merchant republics they can field bigger armies than you'd think since they can easily afford mercenaries. As always, piling on when they're tied up somewhere else works well. Needless to say don't try that against Ragusa (unless you want to fight the Byzantines - historically accurate but not recommended).

Also, once you reach the year 1100, Crusades start and you can get stupidly overpowered rewards - easily several thousand gold, not to mention artifacts. As history shows, the de Hautevilles are in an excellent position to be major figures in the Crusade, and Catholics usually steamroll everything in sight with Crusades in this era (balance failure when they reworked Crusades when Holy Fury released, never fixed). So you can either run with that, try to mod it down to vaguely reasonable levels, spend some piety to send everyone off to Mongolia or something.

Thanks for the very complete reply!

First and foremost I have realized that the castles I start with are pretty well built. The expense of upgrading them marginally is far greater than upgrading a new castle literally doubling the new castle's levy!

This castle concern was because I have a count of contrazo or something like that who directly controls three counties. My "duke" only controls TWO! So for my first several tries inevitably what happens is that I reform the succession laws. I manage to keep him complacent then my child inherits, can only manage 2 MAYBE 3 estates, my army is suffering from that, the army is also suffering from the warring over Sicily and that's when he and his 4,000 men present me with the ultimatum. Usually I can only assemble 2,500 at that point. I'm learning well that I shouldn't blow all my money on castle upgrades ect. It's better to have 1,000 gold war chest to pay for mercs because that a-hole will come for me. This last game it was his daughter, which was the first time I actually won the war, threw her in prison and stripped a county from her family (she's not getting out either. That effectively neutralizes the problem for years. and their family having two counties instead of three really reduces the threat.)

This also gets me. Succession laws only apply to me? One game I thought I'd be a clever bastard. Murder that obnoxious count forcing his estates to be divided amongst his children and wolla problem solved! Noooope. One child inherited. I have to split my estate around but they get to focus their power? What kind of bs is that?!? Rules for the but not for me huh? Really was frustrating....

I haven't noticed any demesne increase or decrease based upon titles. What's incredibly frustrating is that it seems to increase or shrink based upon purely arbitrary factors. Most of the time Boemond can only manage 3 (as I said sometimes just two...). If I'm lucky he can manage 4. If I'm super lucky I can get the vassals to increase centralization buuuut I do realize that I can only do that with my original ruler. The vassals really seem to hate Boemond every game. Might have to do with me not knowing what the hell to do with one of my estates. I've only recently realized that I need to give it to his underage son. My focus is to keep the estates in my direct bloodline as possible because I'm tired of uppity counts of Foggia who think that they should be sitting on the throne. When someone who has no blood relation does that I can throw them in prison for attempting to fabricate the claim. I often try my best to make sure he doesn't get thrown in clean that way I can strip his title as a traitor. Better to start fresh than to keep a family around who hates me...


I think I have one major question. Outside of mercenaries do you have any suggestion to substantively increase my army? I start out with capacity to field 3k or so provided my marshal is recruiting. Even conquering Sicily I usually can get that up to only 3.5k or 4 at the most.

 

[DPS]

I think I have one major question. Outside of mercenaries do you have any suggestion to substantively increase my army? I start out with capacity to field 3k or so provided my marshal is recruiting. Even conquering Sicily I usually can get that up to only 3.5k or 4 at the most.

You can take Military Focus and that will increase your levies, but it requires the Way of Life DLC (IIRC) and you don't seem to have that.

 

[jhhowell]

Thanks for the very complete reply!

First and foremost I have realized that the castles I start with are pretty well built. The expense of upgrading them marginally is far greater than upgrading a new castle literally doubling the new castle's levy!

This castle concern was because I have a count of contrazo or something like that who directly controls three counties. My "duke" only controls TWO! So for my first several tries inevitably what happens is that I reform the succession laws. I manage to keep him complacent then my child inherits, can only manage 2 MAYBE 3 estates, my army is suffering from that, the army is also suffering from the warring over Sicily and that's when he and his 4,000 men present me with the ultimatum. Usually I can only assemble 2,500 at that point. I'm learning well that I shouldn't blow all my money on castle upgrades ect. It's better to have 1,000 gold war chest to pay for mercs because that a-hole will come for me. This last game it was his daughter, which was the first time I actually won the war, threw her in prison and stripped a county from her family (she's not getting out either. That effectively neutralizes the problem for years. and their family having two counties instead of three really reduces the threat.)

This also gets me. Succession laws only apply to me? One game I thought I'd be a clever bastard. Murder that obnoxious count forcing his estates to be divided amongst his children and wolla problem solved! Noooope. One child inherited. I have to split my estate around but they get to focus their power? What kind of bs is that?!? Rules for the but not for me huh? Really was frustrating....

I haven't noticed any demesne increase or decrease based upon titles. What's incredibly frustrating is that it seems to increase or shrink based upon purely arbitrary factors. Most of the time Boemond can only manage 3 (as I said sometimes just two...). If I'm lucky he can manage 4. If I'm super lucky I can get the vassals to increase centralization buuuut I do realize that I can only do that with my original ruler. The vassals really seem to hate Boemond every game. Might have to do with me not knowing what the hell to do with one of my estates. I've only recently realized that I need to give it to his underage son. My focus is to keep the estates in my direct bloodline as possible because I'm tired of uppity counts of Foggia who think that they should be sitting on the throne. When someone who has no blood relation does that I can throw them in prison for attempting to fabricate the claim. I often try my best to make sure he doesn't get thrown in clean that way I can strip his title as a traitor. Better to start fresh than to keep a family around who hates me...


I think I have one major question. Outside of mercenaries do you have any suggestion to substantively increase my army? I start out with capacity to field 3k or so provided my marshal is recruiting. Even conquering Sicily I usually can get that up to only 3.5k or 4 at the most.

Ah, right, of course 1066 castles are indeed already pretty built up (and your part of the world has pretty good tech as well). So I suppose there is a bang-for-your buck argument for new castles if you have the demesne limit to spare. But wait until you're in Palermo; an extra barony in Apulia won't do you much good then.

Fired up a fresh game, there he is, Roger, Count of Catanzaro. Yeah, I remember him being annoying. I tried to stuff him under a freshly created Duke of Calabria title, but since he had more counties than his duke, that didn't work so well and I had to slap him down anyway. You've worked out the solution though, let them rebel, crush them, revoke a title or two afterwards.

Yes, keeping a decent financial cushion is a very wise idea. You never know what the game is going to throw at you.

Succession laws apply to everyone. At the start of the game, Roger has a bastard son and three legitimate daughters, and his counties follow Agnatic-Cognatic Gavelkind. Using the console to kill him, indeed each daughter gets one county as one would expect. Maybe by the time you assassinated him, two of the daughters had died and another bastard had been born, or something? Or Roger might have switched to primogeniture by that point, which is probably more likely.

Be careful assassinating members of your dynasty. The kinslayer traits are bad, and rarely worth the risk. Roger is Robert's brother (or Bohemond's uncle, if the assassination was in his reign) so that's Kinslayer or Familial Kinslayer depending on the circumstances. Better to use Roger as a commander and sooner or later a battlefield duel should take care of him for you. Corollary: be very careful leading troops with your character, heir, or other character you care about (genius son in law, maybe). In my game Bohemond slaughtered dozens of North African mayors in such duels, but he's the only character I've ever had who was consistently successful. And I was sort of trying to kill him off because the game gave him the Celibate trait very early, just after I'd found a nice wife for him... Spent about 40 years waiting for Guy to inherit - ended up being Guy's second grandson who inherited... A very CK experience, that!

One other note about Roger of Catanzaro - once you take the Duchy of Sicily as your capital, you'll be able to trigger a revocation of Messina from the intrigue menu. Roger will almost certainly refuse, but that's when you beat him down and revoke Messina and another of his counties.

Demesne limit is covered here; a second Duke title will increase your limit by one, a King title will increase it by one more, high (Stewardship+0.5*SpouseStewardship) can increase it (aka, don't ever be unmarried as a ruler), and there are the centralization laws.

For the laws, that may be annoying without Conclave. That's one of the reasons Conclave is considered one of the must-have DLCs (Way of Life is the other). Warning, Conclave is not save-compatible; that killed my de Hauteville game, unfortunately. You can pass laws without Conclave but it could take a while. Vassal relations improve the longer your ruler is in power (that's why Bohemond struggles at first, the Short Reign penalty), and if you grant a title (someplace in Sardinia, or a Calabrian county you revoked from Roger of Catanzaro, whatever) the new ruler will have a nice opinion bonus towards you. And you'll probably be granting newly acquired titles to Content and non-Ambitious people as well.

You should not grant titles to underage sons - you want to control their education and marriage. I usually avoid landing heirs; the prestige penalty is trivial and I don't want them doing anything stupid. I did make Guy the new Duke of Apulia once I had the Kingdom of Sicily title and he reached adulthood and married whatever wife I found for him.

A quick tangent - Sichelgaita is an awesome character, and she is allowed to command armies (which she historically did).

Another random marriage note - Matilda of Tuscany is another very interesting character. She has large tracts of land and is unmarried at the 1066 start date. I wasn't able to make a convincing marriage offer, but in my game she only had one child, a daughter, and that was an easy and obvious marriage for Guy's son. Matilda is worth keeping an eye on - maybe her first husband will die, maybe she'll have few children and some careful murder can set up a marriage inheritance scheme for you, who knows. Much better to take all those provinces without having to fight the HRE for them.

Also be warned that the HRE is very stable and very aggressive in this game. If you see a chance to kick them hard when they're fighting many other opponents, take it. My main regret from my game was not piling onto an early Antipapal War that tried and failed to get the HRE under control.

Increasing your army size - you already know about having your marshal recruiting in your capital. Other than that, just building up your castles as funds allow, keeping in mind other needs (title creating, cushion for emergency mercenaries). If a point of comparison helps, when adding Conclave broke my game, the year was 1135, Palermo's two castles each gave about 2200 men, the other provinces in the Duchy of Sicily each gave about 1500 men, vassal levies from the Dukes of Capua, Apulia, Salerno, and Calabria each gave 1000-1800 men, total character sheet troop strength was 15422, though page 10 of the ledger says 19081 (strongest non-Empire realm on the map).

If Bohemond is King of Sicily, his demesne limit should be at least 4 (3 base, figure at least +1 for stewardship bonus). Once you can start getting those centralization laws passed, that's 5+. Even with castles unchanged from the start of the game, that should be 2*1500+2*1200 = 5400 men. Once the levies have reinforced to full, of course. And retinues will start to be relevant around that point as well. Even if you're only at 4000 men, that's a very solid personal levy already, and should be plenty to crush revolts or do some further expanding.

I've found that the first decade or two in any CK2 game is the toughest part, getting your feet under you as you create all the titles you need (for yourself or as vassals), do the initial conquests in your game plan, and struggle to find money to do much else. As time passes you won't be burning money on titles, your vassals will mostly like you, and you can catch up on building up your holdings - conveniently tech should open up more building options around then.

 

[Sunshine Moon]

I'll just add that getting the financial upgrades (castle town & castle walls) in the early game and increasing your income over the first few years starts a snowball effect where by the mid-game you can afford 3 or 4 levy upgrades for every 1 you otherwise would be able to. Of course, sometimes you need more troops urgently, but it's a good long-term goal.

And that you can absolutely mess with your AI foes by strategically murdering and marrying--just have to take a very careful look at their succession law, their line of inheritance, who's legitimate, who's competent, and so on.