Byzantine holdings strategy

[Aardvark Bellay]

Feudal vassals stay your culture, while doges take the culture of the county.

I agree with you at feudal taxes, though actually you just gave me the idea and i love it.

BUT i disgree with culture, ......IF you marry the Doges with women of your culture or if necessary courtiers with the same culture and thus guarantee them keeping your culture until a culture flip might happen.
Though this way i tend to get all kind of good Doges but stewards.

 

[aprogressivist]

The subject's drifting a bit off-topic... while of course the conversation of Doges & Dukes is interesting and relevant by lieu of comparison.

Another short-coming of the strategy that I've postulated: you can't appoint king-level Bishops, I think. That means that you can't delegate the handling of a kingdom to a stable Bishop vassal, unfortunately.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

The subject's drifting a bit off-topic... while of course the conversation of Doges & Dukes is interesting and relevant by lieu of comparison.

Another short-coming of the strategy that I've postulated: you can't appoint king-level Bishops, I think. That means that you can't delegate the handling of a kingdom to a stable Bishop vassal, unfortunately.

You are right, sorry for drifting it he he

I considered the option of having lord mayors under bishops myself, but in the end I decided that I would be more capable of dealing with the lordmayor malus problem than an ai bishop ever would. I think such a structure would simply prove too unstable to be workable. This is only a guess though, I have no practical experience with it since I never use bishops above the baron level myself.

 

[aprogressivist]

I'm tempted to cheat to test it, just to see how it plays out.

 

[icon41gimp]

I disagree about feudal taxes. All you are doing is taking cash that they will use to improve their demesne. If you can support 2 or 3 coastal Doges then you pretty much have all of the tax money that you'll need.

 

[macphineas]

The other thing to remember is that republics get tax bonuses for being coastal, and for being held by a republic, even more for a grand republic. This means that maximizing your realm's income would mean making coastal doges, which is perfect for the Byzantines. The only downside is that you won't have as much family prestige, but there's a tradeoff for everything, I guess.

Bishops might be more slightly more stable, but the money difference will be huge, since they never tax their own vassals more higher than normal, in my experience. Better to use grand doges, especially with all the small coastal duchies in Anatolia.