First of all, the easy general points:
- You should try to keep your maximum demesne. I would say keep your whole capital duchy (pick smartly!) and keep a few other good counties depending on your limit. Hand out the rest.
- Content vassals are the easiest to deal with, ambitious are the hardest.
- Keep your vassals the same culture and religion.
- If you're trying to play optimally, absolutely do not hand out lands to vassals that are members of already powerful dynasties. Even if they are a distant cousin to another ruler, it makes re-unification of those lands easier for them, either by blade or by a quick marriage between cousins (no "prefer matrilineal" penalty on marriages in the same dynasty)
Beyond that, there are so many opinions on this topic.
Landing your own dynasty within your realm is beneficial in 3 ways: dynastic prestige, a small relations boost, and more candidates for you in an elective monarchy. The first is, long term, not significant and mostly an RP thing. The second is probably not big enough to be important very often and will often get offset based on succession law. The third, however, can be a huge boon as you now have a massive pool of potential heirs. In my opinion, it's not as fun as having to deal with your own sons as heirs though. For min-maxing play, however, it is definitely a consideration.
Kingdoms vs. Duchies... there are many schools of thought here as well.
The general consensus (though some dispute it) is that duchies should almost certainly be created when after you reach a decent size. They give your realm a tech boost (Duke tech points in each duchy), they make raising levies a lot less painful, and you have fewer total vassals to manage. On the other hand, dukes can get bigger more easily and are considered electors even in empires. Kings though? That's a more divided topic. In the realms with free duchy revoke (i.e. Byzantium/Rome, Muslim kingdoms), I think the answer is "NEVER!" because kings are never free to revoke. In other realms, it depends. Don't give out HUGE kingdoms, particularly when it constitutes a big part of your power base. On the other hand, like Dukes over counts, Kings mean fewer vassals to manage over all. And more levies in one place at a time of war. Kings are also more likely to expand your boundaries on their own as they are powers in their own right. This is a double-edged sword. On the one side: horrray, you just got land without doing anything. On the other: oh boy, that king just got more powerful and his son is an ambitious, envious man with no morals at all and a really high intrigue score...
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