Creating an Empire; advice

[Panzerschiffe]

So I had started a game up as Navarra. There were a few rules I wanted to follow and a some achievements I wanted to accomplish as well. I set out with the goal of having only female rulers and not being allowed to create Hispania until I had drifted all of it into Navarra, thus making one big kingdom.

Everything was going fine until I had reach all my prerequisites. I had every kingdom as Titular except Navarra and when I created Hispania, it seems like all of those titular titles came back to bite me in the ass. When I was king, or queen rather, those titular never seemed to matter. Now it seems like all my prince bishops hate me and I get a -75 relation hit because of my titular titles (elector titles held...I only hold 1 duchy). I also have 15+ diplomacy. I had never really titularized so many kingdoms before and hadn't combined them with the creating of an empire so this was all new to me. It basically threatens to tear my empire apart when I could just easily stay a large kingdom.

So I'm wondering what I could do to stabilize my empire. Basically, I have Navarra as elective and Hispania is elective (but I'm losing one of the votes as it stands and there's nothing I can do about it). If I made the Empire primo, would that make my vassals hate me less because of the titular kingdom elector titles? Anything I can do to stop the bleeding? It's a shame that after 300 years of relative stability I create the Empire which is the same size as my kingdom and everything goes haywire.

Anything I should know for future games? I was planning on a similar game with Scotland where I would drift britannia into one big scottish kingdom. Basically, I wanted to increase my dynasty prestige by having lots of kingdoms and having them titular didn't hurt anyone, or so I thought. The only Empire I've played was the Byzantines so I don't have too much experience with them. This was the first time I created an empire I believe.

 

[NewbieOne]

Well, you do have some trouble then. Thing is, titularised kingdoms apparently retain their de iure lieges and remain electors.
Solution: switch off elective. After all, it's supposed to make vassals happy. In your case it does the opposite. The alternative is to get rid of the king titles, handing them down to your cadets or some such. Which is not to say you can't make yourself king-tier republics but keeping them lower is better (the fewer tiers along the way, the less fraction multiplication happens to the tax rates).
You actually can destroy the titles (which I don't consider a good solution) but your vassals will be able to create them as long as they have at least two ducal titles and the scripted capital of the title.

If I were you, I'd go primo. You can avoid unlanded sons penalty by marrying them outside. Few landed women will refuse an imperial son (the third son of a king can marry a queen, so...). If they're king tier, or otherwise independent, you'll have allies. If simple dukes or vassalised kings, they'll push up the dynastic prestige for better bargains.

 

[Alyiakal]

If you want to hold those titular titles for prestige, really the only thing you can do is to get yourself out of elective. There's really no way to counter such a huge "elector titles held" malus. The thing is, I'm guessing elective is fairly important for continuing to use queens (and even more important to ensure queens of childbearing age). If this is the case, then you basically have to destroy or hand off the titles that are causing the problem. Since they're titular, destroying them won't piss anyone off, but you'll still take a prestige hit.

Handing them off to landed relatives is an interesting idea. So long as they are weak vassals, they won't be able to steal away any of your direct vassals, and since the titles are now titular, they can't fight de jure wars over the territory. Probably best to hand them off to dukes, so you don't end up creating more electors (unless that's your intent).

 

[Panzerschiffe]

I'm not a huge fan of primo but I figure it can get me out of a bind for now. What I especially don't like about primo is that I find myself assassinating my kids so my favoured one can inherit. There's probably a better way to remove them from succession (free investiture+appoint a bishop?).

Elective was essential to getting all the way up to Isabella IX. What I can do for now is hand out the Titular Kingdoms, which turn out to be electors, to my landed family members. It's basically a free +1 for election which allows me to win the current election. Although next election might be a problem but if i keep enough King titles to hand out I can survive the following elections, if people vote the same way again that is. Ridding myself of the extra king titles will eventually lower the penalty with each succession...in theory.

Would it have been better to not make the King titles titular in order to hand them out as Hispanic vassals? What's a better Empire? Something like the byzantine with no kingdoms or something like the HRE with kings?

 

[Alyiakal]

Byzantium with no kings is the best because it has the potential to be reformed into Rome. Rome gets free revocation of ducal titles (due to "Imperial Administration"), so if you have no kings, you're free to rearrange your duchies as you see fit. Problematic vassals can be placed under someone else. Byzantium also gets free relationship boosts with the vassals, in the form of Born-in-the-purple (and Rome gets Augustus on top of that). When reformed, you also get a free CB to rollover most of the map (once it's fixed from it's currently broken state that is...).

If you can usurp Byzantium, or press a claim to it, you also don't need to be either Greek or Orthodox to reform Rome. A Basque Rome is hilariously ahistorical, but also quite effective.

I personally haven't switched from Elective in a long time; the ability to designate your heir without much fuss is worth so much in a game that is about maintaining relationships. Always being able to put the best person on the throne is worth more to me than the prestige of holding more kingdom titles personally. The increased stability of the realm allows me to simply add more vassals via conquest, which increases your prestige gain anyways.

 

[Panzerschiffe]

Let's say I'm planning on creating an Empire without the goal of drifting it all into one kingdom, would it be better to just give 1 county to all my vassals and never create the king titles? Technically, I'll need 2 to create an Empire but I guess I can destroy one of them. Maybe drifting at least one kingdom and making it titular would work since I could destroy it without a relation penalty given that it has no de jure vassals. Or i could destroy both titles and not have to worry about multiple succession laws.

 

[_krampe_]

Elective is nice but it can be buggy. I was really frustrated when i didn't manage to get votes for my designated heir, i even increased the opinion to 100 to me and gave my heir as much titles as i could so he increased prestige.
But when i died noone had switched his vote /ragequit

After i reloaded an autosave later, all of the electors switched their votes immediately to my heir...

 

[Mods]

weird, I'm emperor right now and i get no penalties for all my (titular) kingdoms, I'd go report it in the bug reports forum, running elective as well

 

[Alyiakal]

I used to make it a policy to only give one county to each count, and I heavily used Prince-Bishops as well for stability and the taxes they provide allowing you to fight massive wars with retinues only. I'm rethinking that policy though, because they never have the troops to fight off rebels, and when they inevitably fight each other (because plots and factions can and will still fire even under Absolute CA) it takes forever for it to be resolved. I'm thinking of handing off entire small duchies (2-3 counties) to dukes, and handing off the big ones entirely to Prince-Archbishops. I'll have less vassals to deal with and there will be less characters running around late game to bog down the system. The obvious problematic issue here is a greater chance for superdukes to form via marriage, which is why they only get the small duchies. The large ones going to clergy put them out of play for inheritance.

The other thing that concerns me is that fewer characters means slower cultural and religious shift, as there will be fewer court chaplains working, and fewer characters for the cultural shift events to fire on.

I don't think I've ever created more than one kingdom level title. The prestige is nice, but having to juggle differing sets of inheritance laws, or differing electors in each kingdom is a pain. I'd rather just drift them. There's also something funny going on right now with created kingdom titles not drifting into empires.

I've not actually personally dealt with titular kings in an empire, so if what Mods is saying is true, than that definitely sounds like a bug that should be reported.

RE: Elective; I usually find that keeping my designated heir in court is better for their electability. Everyone's opinion of them will be based on Personal Diplomacy, which should be massively higher than state diplomacy (if it's not, you're not really choosing good people to be your heir). They won't have a ton of prestige, but they also won't have any titles that other nobles can aspire to. So long as they don't have any negative traits, they should have all positive opinion modifiers with everyone else.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I've not actually personally dealt with titular kings in an empire, so if what Mods is saying is true, than that definitely sounds like a bug that should be reported.

I don't think you are supposed to be able to make empires that only have one king title as vassal. That would be too easy to exploit since only that king would be elector and that would mean you get to be your own one-party state which would make the whole process of running the empire ridiculously easy. It just screams "EXPLOIT", since AFAIK all empires require you to hold at least two king titles when you create them. So the fact that titular kingdoms remain as electors is probably an intentional feature, not a bug.

 

[Mods]

I don't think you are supposed to be able to make empires that only have one king title as vassal. That would be too easy to exploit since only that king would be elector and that would mean you get to be your own one-party state which would make the whole process of running the empire ridiculously easy. It just screams "EXPLOIT", since AFAIK all empires require you to hold at least two king titles when you create them. So the fact that titular kingdoms remain as electors is probably an intentional feature, not a bug.

dukes vote too in empires just looks at the holy roman empire

 

[JonStryker]

You heve to destroy all titular dejure kingdoms as soon as you create the empire. It's that easy.
It would be great if they could remove the penalty for titular kingdoms but I am hoping for that for a while now.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

dukes vote too in empires just looks at the holy roman empire

Only if the king title between them and the imperial title is not created, right? I.e. only direct duke or higher vassals of the emperor within the de-jure realm have a vote. Creating a king to whom all of the empire's dukes are vassals, would disenfranchise everyone except for the king.

 

[Panzerschiffe]

You heve to destroy all titular dejure kingdoms as soon as you create the empire. It's that easy.
It would be great if they could remove the penalty for titular kingdoms but I am hoping for that for a while now.

But won't my vassals be able to create the titles just by holding the capital? They'd still need 2 duchy titles though, right? I can live with the prestige and relation penalty if it means my annoying vassals will annoy me less. It's gamey though...it's almost meme worthy, gains an empire, destroys 6 king titles.

As for handing out titles in general, I've noticed a few things.

-Handing out a duke title often results in super dukes, within 1-2 generations. I often fall into the trap of wanting less vassals so I invite claimless nobles (through intrigue screen) and land them. I think I ended up quitting all those games after having to deal with an endless stream of factions revolts and such. I had a Scotland game going and my brand new dukes somehow all ended up getting claims on each other. I keep trying, hoping I can find a way to make it work.
-prince bishops are good, I usually give them the 2 county duchies. They're good electors that will vote for you...but sometimes, even with 100+ relations, they won't change their votes for some reason. This happened when I had all those titular titles but still had good relations with the only relevant vassals, my Prince Bishops. I had attractive, zealous, chaste, humble, super piety boosted Queens/Empresses and the majority of them wouldn't vote for the younger version of my current ruler. They were all at 100+ too. Strange behaviour.
-I usually give only 1 county per vassal. In my Hispania game, a super duke formed Aragon/Leon duchies but that was only within the last 100 years of the game. So it really took him a while to amount to anything.
-Dynasty members are usually landless. They always seem to want to cause trouble.


@leviathan07
So wait, Kings negate the dukes that are under them when voting for an empire? I thought they were just a duke in voting terms.
But I had all of Hispania drifted into Navarra and I wasn't the only one to vote in my Empire.