[2.6.3] [VNFM] Do not let lieges grant landed titles to vassals of vassals

[Battle bunny]

I'm posting this in the bug reports section because while this sounds like a suggestion, it is probably something of an oversight as well as an exploit.

Lieges are able to grant landed titles to the vassals of their direct vassals. This is a cheap (in the "dirty" sense of the word) way of weakening a direct vassal without them being unable to do anything about it (they cannot decline this). Doing this is like retracting a vassal from your direct vassal and then granting the retracted vassal a title, except: 1) the direct vassal cannot choose to refuse the retraction, like normally and 2) the ruler does not receive a "broken feudal contract" general opinion malus - which they do with a regular retraction that doesn't happen for an important reason.

Suggested solution: forbid granting landed titles to non-direct vassals. Require the liege to first retract the vassal in question.

(Note: this exploit is also very annoying for the player as, by default - and I'm not sure if there's any way to modify this - the player usually doesn't receive any notification that they just lost a vassal. Sometimes you might notice a message among all the other messages of lesser importance that someone was just granted a title by your liege, but not always, and it is entirely possible to go on for a very long time without noticing that one of your vassals has been removed from your grasp.)

 

[faiuwle]

This doesn't always retract the vassal. My liege created a duchy that was de jure part of my kingdom and gave it to one of my count vassals and he vassalized the other count in his de jure but remained my vassal. Did end my war against the other count inconclusively, but I didn't lose any land.

 

[Battle bunny]

Ah, yes, it should be clarified: this happens when the title given to the vassal's vassal is equal or higher in rank than the direct vassal's title. Which is actually what usually happens, since only emperors can hand out titles in a way that the scenario you describe applies (or a king can given counties to a baron under a duke vassal, I guess, but that's something that the AI doesn't actually seem to do, at least).

 

[jruderman]

I saw an infidel count in my realm. I granted him a duchy so I could revoke his county a year later.

 

[Battle bunny]

Well, yes - if this exploit is fixed, you would have to manually retract the vassal in the future to do this. Sorry.

 

[lordkestrel]

I love doing this as the liege, and hate having it done to be as a vassal. It should probably be removed because it's pretty exploity as you called out.

However, we need to make sure that unlanded courtiers hanging out in vassal's courts can still be granted titles. It doesn't break the feudal contract like granting higher level titles to a vassal does.

 

[Greybeard0815]

This is actually one of my tools for prettying up my internal borders when playing as ERE.

If a duke has count vassals outside his dejure lands I grant one of them a duchy title, revoke it again when I can and then I transfer him to his dejure liege.