Benefits of Granting Landed Titles

[tylerhink]

I'm newish to CK2. I am currently playing as the newly crowned King of Ireland and I was wondering what the benefit is of granting landed titles. Will it benefit me to make a few of my counts dukes? I personally control 3 provinces and I was considering granting 2 of those provinces to my son and naming him duke over them. Is it worth it to do this?

 

[Harassercat]

Look for a number called your demesne limit. Ideally you want to hold as many counties as your demesne limit allows. Increasing that limit is also a good thing, and then gaining more counties. Personally holding many counties = good.

It's only once you're past this limit that you want to grant titles. And when you do so, you ideally want to grant the titles to members of your dynasty. You can grant your sons titles but they will eventually inherit them (depending on the succession laws). The main reason to grant a son at least one title is so that he can gain some prestige and pick an ambition and a focus (assuming you have Way of Life DLC).

How you grant titles is a complicated but very important question. In the long term you want to hold two duchies of your own - two good duchies - with all the counties they contain. Decide which duchies you want to hold and then other counties in other duchies can be given away. Again, give them to dynasty members (and generally work to acquire titles for your relatives). If you're playing with Conclave DLC, you should also try to give titles to someone you'd want to have on your council - someone who has at least one good stat and is ideally content and/or trusting (they're more likely to become loyalists that way). With Conclave it's generally good to have just a few powerful vassals (so, grant them many titles) who are docile and can be kept under control by having them on the council or by marrying your kids into their family (non-aggression pact).

 

[Kryndude]

Unless you rule an empire-size realm, majority of your income will come from city vassals, and the only way to directly vassalize a mayor is by owning the county that the city belongs to. So generally you want to own as much counties as possible, especially the ones that have 5+ holding slots and are adjacent to a sea (coastal cities can build ports that gives them extra income = more money to tax).

 

[Dr Gonzo]

I think the best way to think of it is that you never want to a give title away if you can avoid it. Holding more titles will make you stronger, giving them to your vassals makes them stronger in comparison to you. This is also why keeping titles in the family is good; there is more chance of the titles coming back under royal control. It can sometimes be better to destroy a strong kingdom or duchy title rather than hand it out to a vassal. Secondary titles can be useful for generating prestige and giving extra de jure claims, but will themselves be a target for claims and plots and increase the possibility of the realm splitting.

There are times when it would make sense to start handing out duchies. This is especially useful for restructuring your vassal arrangements and buying off/neutering hostile vassals after a succession. It can also be a good way to generate prestige, and clearly if you are over your vassal limit then making kings/dukes is a necessary thing.

In your particular situation I think you would be better to hold off and avoid the expense for now. You can keep the possibility of handing out duchies available for next time you need to deal with a faction. With a small kingdom like Ireland you would ideally want to have almost the whole kingdom in your demesne in the long run so all those counts will have to go. Giving them duchies is likely to make them harder to dislodge later.

 

[Thrake]

Will it benefit me to make a few of my counts dukes?

Yes, you will want to promote vassals eventually... If you are a duke, you can hold as many duchies as you want without penalties, but eventually your effective amount of vassals will be higher than your vassal limit, meaning that when you die, you will have a chance to loose some of those vassals. Becoming king and emperor increase your vassal limit, but you will get opinion malus for holding more than two duchies, so delaying becoming king is not necessarily a bad idea.

So, once king/emperor, you will want to get rid of most of duchy titles. This is also important to keep your vassal limit lower. Also, fewer stronger vassals are easier to keep in check than many weak vassals, because you can only placate a limited amount of vassals with council membership/marriage/opinion boosts (gifts, titulary titles, chancelor, carousing...). Eventually you will give king titles too, even if there is no limit to the amount of titles you can hold; just for easier vassal management and lower vassal limit (at some point you might want to have give multiple duke titles or king titles to the same ruler to keep vassal limit higher than your amount of vassals).

In some situations, you will probably want to keep BELOW your demesne limit; for exemple if you already fully own two full duchies yourself, you won't want to own a county in another duke's duchy or he will hate you for that - unless you're strong enough for his opinion to be irrelevant. You can own one county out of a two duchy title for exemple. In theory you can hold castle baronies in your counties but it is impractical: your demesne limit will vary depending on your rulers, so you will need to drop them or revoke to get them back. Later on, you will also need to decentralize your realm to increase your vassal limit at the expense of your own demesne limit, so owning baronies will become less and less an option. You do benefit a lot from extra levies in your capital county though, so it is still a valid strategy even if just temporary.

Landing your sons is certainly a good idea; this is a way to virtually increase your demesne limit, especially in gavelkind succession types; you can only hold a limited amount of titles that then get distributed among your heirs. However, if you starting granting titles before you die, you can effectively distribute so much that your future heir will inherit enough titles to end up at his demesne limit, or even higher. Beware though, as it happens that your heir die before you, so keep the best lands yourself to make sure your real heir will inherit it eventually.

 

[Dragatus]

Unlike others, I'm rather wary of granting land to members of my dynasty, especially my children as that puts them under AI control and you can't trust the AI. I'd rather suffer the prestige hit than have my son marry of his children without my oversight.

 

[Mike Louis]

Giving out duchy titles to vassals also helps with your tech research since dukes and higher tier characters can gain tech points that can help spread new techs within your kingdom / empire faster. As for who to give out duchy titles to, I always prioritize landing younger sons / daughters first (especially important if you have Gavelkind succession as providing for younger children while your ruler is still alive will result in your primary heir inheriting your core lands provided the younger brothers and or sisters are taken care of first). As for when and how to give out titles, I'll roleplay a bit. I call landed title grants to younger children appanages, and I wait until my younger sons / daughters are married (normal for sons, matrilineally for daughters) before I grant them an appanage. If I decide to grant duchy titles to someone outside of my dynasty, I take into consideration the location of the duchy in question. If it's a regular duchy, I'll grant it to someone with a high stewardship stat who's of the culture of the duchy in question (I prefer to have native rulers to reduce the risk of peasant / religious revolts). If the duchy in question is a palatine (border duchy), I'll grant it to someone with a high martial stat who's of the culture of the duchy in question (once again, my policy is native rulers when possible). Before I grant the regular duchy / palatine / appanage however, I grant about half the land (counties each) to individual counts / countesses who will then be vassals to the new Duke / Duchess (to keep them busy with their count vassals so they in turn have fewer resources to scheme against my King / Emperor). My two special cases are merchant republics and land grants to my primary heir. If a have a small coastal duchy and I don't already have a vassal merchant republic covering the area, I'll give out each county of the coastal duchy in question to Lord Mayors, giving out the duchy title to the Lord Mayor of the capital county thus turning him into a Grand Mayor and the duchy into a merchant republic. When I grant a duchy title to my primary heir (after he / she is married. normal for a son, matrilineally for a daughter), I always give out the same duchy title ala the Prince of Wales / Duke of Cornwall or the Dauphin. The duchy of the crown prince / princess is the only one in which I give out with no count vassals attached. I hope this is of help to you.

 

[StarSword]

Personally I prefer to control as many castles as possible in my demesne, whether that means a big spread-out multi-county demesne or a very focused one in a couple high-holding counties, with vassal counts controlling the rest of the two duchies I am allowed as a king or emperor.

My suggestion for Ireland is to directly control the Duchy of Meath with Dublin as your capital, and build and upgrade castles in Dublin and Kildare first. They have enough holding slots for five castles, and those castles will get levy buffs from being in your capital duchy. What you pick for your second duchy I think depends on whether or not you're using Conclave:

• Without Conclave, hold the Duchy of Leinster and however many castles or counties will fit in the remainder of your demesne limit.
• With Conclave, same deal but hold Ulster instead because it's the biggest duchy in Ireland and a vassal Duke of Ulster will be a Powerful Vassal in truth, not just in game terms of having the most holdings under his rule.

Give out all the other duchies; it'll improve tech advancement and will make fending off Viking raids easier since the dukes can raise their own troops to deal with them.

 

[Dragatus]

If we're talking about Ireland specifically, it's small enough that you can potentially hold it yourself with a single merchant republic as vassal, especially if you have Conclave and abolish the council.

You can hold 3 counties for being a king, another 4 for maximum centralization, and +2 if you abolish your council. That's 9 provinces and with 1 going to the MR you then need to get 3 from Stewardship, which requires you to have 20 Stewardship. That's not little, but you get to add half you wife's Stewardship to your own for this purpose so if you and your wife both have 14 that would be enough. Failing that you can give the MR the other county from it's duchy and you'll only need 12 Stewardship (or you and your wife can both have 8 Stewardship).

And with a setup like that you could have Elective Monarchy and always get your preferred heir elected because there is only 1 other elector (the doge of the MR) and as king you get to break ties. This is very useful if you want to selectively breed your heirs to always be Geniuses.

There are downsides to this approach of course. You might have a larger levy if you focused on controlling as many castles as possible in your capital instead. And your technological advance will be slower. But if you want full control and not having to worry about those pesky vassals, then it might be worth considering.