I'm a fairly new player and am currently playing my first game where I've built up a large enough realm to be within grasp of creating an empire. I started with a Finnish high chieftain in 867 in Karelia. A century later I control both the kingdoms of Finland and Rus, give or take a few counties here and there. I've also reformed Suomenusko and spread it to all of my realm as well as spreading Finnish culture to some of the Russian lands. My dynasty (House Karjalainen) holds nearly all feudal titles within the realm and the succession type is feudal elective. I've now moved my capital to Novgorod and have invested heavily in the duchy of Ilmen/Novgorod as the core of my personal demesne.
From this point on I basically wanted to expand in all directions with the following objectives in mind:
1. Gain a couple more kingdom titles and ideally form a custom empire (if I can get 8k prestige somehow!). It's unclear to me how this works in de jure terms however. If I form a custom Finnish empire including, say, Finland + Rus + Perm + Lithuania, then are those kingdoms completely removed from the de jure empires they should have belonged to? Or if the Scandinavian Empire were later formed for example, would its emperor have a de jure claim on the Kingdom of Finland?
2. Spread Suomenusko to as much of the tribal pagan world around me as I can before they convert to Christianity or Islam. In the long run I want a large Suomenusko world to have more to work with in terms of marriages and other interactions. The good thing is that the moral authority is very high, in the 80-100 range depending on who is the high priest. But for some reason my court chaplain refuses to proselytize outside of my realm: all other counties are greyed out even though I thought it should be possible to proselytize in the capitals of independent pagan rulers. How can I proselytize outside my realm?
3. In the long run I don't necessarily want to blob forever and attempt to vassalize the whole world. I'd like to set up a prosperous empire for myself and then mainly try to spread the faith and place members of my dynasty on the thrones of other kingdoms/empires.
Some things I'm uncertain about and need a little advice with:
1. I'd like to set up a vassal merchant republic but have no experience with those at all. I hear they're a good source of gold and I imagine that a doge would be less rebellious due to having a smaller levy vs his liege's (me) than a feudal duke would have. Estonia seems like a good duchy for an MR. I understand how to set up an MR, but what's a really good way to do it? Should I ideally give every city and county in the duchy to the first doge, so that there are fewer middle men and more direct taxation? Then once the republic is there, is it worth spending some of my own gold to add cities and trade posts or improve on existing ones, or should I just let the doges do it themselves?
2. Ideally I want high centralization and few vassals so I'm willing to eventually consolidate some of my territories under some combination of vassal kings and grand dukes, particularly the marginal ones like Finland and Perm. I wouldn't mind having a vassal King of Finland at some point but I have a problems with it: the Kingdom of Rus is landlocked so either I'd have to forego having a personal levy of ships, perhaps instead relying on my Estonian merchant republic.
3. The other problem I have with Finland is that the high priest (the "pope") of Suomenusko resides in Käkisalmi in eastern Finland. I have this feeling that I'd want to have the high priest as a direct vassal (as a theocratic duke of Karelia) so that I could revoke him/her (I can do that, right?) if needed. I hate how little influence I have over the choice of high priest - my dynasty has a buffet selection of qualified master theologians with no title, yet the new high priest is always some terrible randomized lowborn with crappy stats, no piety and bad traits like cynical or slow, etc. There's a juicy +2 prestige per month for all members of my dynasty if it controls the church, so there's a lot at stake here. What can I do to get one of my own into that position? But due to this issue primarily I'm thinking I'll need to hang on to the King of Finland title and just have vassal dukes there.
Sorry for the walls of text here but if anyone cares to comment on some of this I'd really appreciate it.
From this point on I basically wanted to expand in all directions with the following objectives in mind:
1. Gain a couple more kingdom titles and ideally form a custom empire (if I can get 8k prestige somehow!). It's unclear to me how this works in de jure terms however. If I form a custom Finnish empire including, say, Finland + Rus + Perm + Lithuania, then are those kingdoms completely removed from the de jure empires they should have belonged to? Or if the Scandinavian Empire were later formed for example, would its emperor have a de jure claim on the Kingdom of Finland?
2. Spread Suomenusko to as much of the tribal pagan world around me as I can before they convert to Christianity or Islam. In the long run I want a large Suomenusko world to have more to work with in terms of marriages and other interactions. The good thing is that the moral authority is very high, in the 80-100 range depending on who is the high priest. But for some reason my court chaplain refuses to proselytize outside of my realm: all other counties are greyed out even though I thought it should be possible to proselytize in the capitals of independent pagan rulers. How can I proselytize outside my realm?
3. In the long run I don't necessarily want to blob forever and attempt to vassalize the whole world. I'd like to set up a prosperous empire for myself and then mainly try to spread the faith and place members of my dynasty on the thrones of other kingdoms/empires.
Some things I'm uncertain about and need a little advice with:
1. I'd like to set up a vassal merchant republic but have no experience with those at all. I hear they're a good source of gold and I imagine that a doge would be less rebellious due to having a smaller levy vs his liege's (me) than a feudal duke would have. Estonia seems like a good duchy for an MR. I understand how to set up an MR, but what's a really good way to do it? Should I ideally give every city and county in the duchy to the first doge, so that there are fewer middle men and more direct taxation? Then once the republic is there, is it worth spending some of my own gold to add cities and trade posts or improve on existing ones, or should I just let the doges do it themselves?
2. Ideally I want high centralization and few vassals so I'm willing to eventually consolidate some of my territories under some combination of vassal kings and grand dukes, particularly the marginal ones like Finland and Perm. I wouldn't mind having a vassal King of Finland at some point but I have a problems with it: the Kingdom of Rus is landlocked so either I'd have to forego having a personal levy of ships, perhaps instead relying on my Estonian merchant republic.
3. The other problem I have with Finland is that the high priest (the "pope") of Suomenusko resides in Käkisalmi in eastern Finland. I have this feeling that I'd want to have the high priest as a direct vassal (as a theocratic duke of Karelia) so that I could revoke him/her (I can do that, right?) if needed. I hate how little influence I have over the choice of high priest - my dynasty has a buffet selection of qualified master theologians with no title, yet the new high priest is always some terrible randomized lowborn with crappy stats, no piety and bad traits like cynical or slow, etc. There's a juicy +2 prestige per month for all members of my dynasty if it controls the church, so there's a lot at stake here. What can I do to get one of my own into that position? But due to this issue primarily I'm thinking I'll need to hang on to the King of Finland title and just have vassal dukes there.
Sorry for the walls of text here but if anyone cares to comment on some of this I'd really appreciate it.
