Deliberately playing with a smaller demesne

[Walter Raleigh]

What's the exact intent behind halving the vassal limit?

Also, how would one expect the Byzantine Emperor to reorganize his titles and holdings if left to his own devices for a while longer with the half vassal setting? Would he be creating new duchies, with their own sub-vassals, to give to other vassals? Would the Emperor recreate two duchy titles for himself, so, despite losing his initial duchies, at some later time he'd be a double-duke again?

 

[RelVleDy]

Yea, apparently while the rule exists to limit demesne, the AI is too dumb to understand the rule exists. I could be wrong though; unfortunately, there's no way to open up the code to witness how AI interactions work like this without grinding out a bunch of tests.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I might try and let a test run some more. Is there a possibility that the AI Emperor is reorganising his realm, but it will take time to get the necessary prestige to create new duchies?

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I've left my test game to play for a bit longer, and the empires have reduced their vassal numbers to the half vassal limit. It looks like it might take four years or so for the empires to transition from their base organisational state to the modified half vassal limit one, but it looks as though they will do so. Which is good news!

However, the Byzantine Emperor still has no duchy titles, just the Emperor title and four counties. I'll let the game run some more...

EDIT: See a problem is, is that the Byzantine Emperor immediately gives away his two duchies, including his home duchy around Constantinople, although he keeps its other counties. So to become Duke of his own duchy again, he'd probably have to revoke the title. It's nice for game and flavour reasons to have rulers own their home/best duchies.

2nd EDIT: So I'm interested in the half vassals rule, but for these issues:

a) Empire rulers immediately giving away their starting duchies. This could perhaps be fixed through console commands, perhaps by creating some extra duchies for these rulers to give away at the start of the game instead of their initial duchies while they recalibrate or doing it manually.

b) If AI emperors are not creating king-level vassals, then they may go over their vassal limit, although Zsrai has explained some reasons why this might not be so serious.

 

[Zsrai]

I might try and let a test run some more. Is there a possibility that the AI Emperor is reorganising his realm, but it will take time to get the necessary prestige to create new duchies?

Yes, they have to get the gold (and piety, if applicable) first to create the titles, and then they'll give them out and transfer counts to dukes and so on. They do tend to focus on Duchies, then Kingdoms, then Empires I find... which can make hoping for Charlemagne to create Francia a nightmare sometimes.

a) Empire rulers immediately giving away their starting duchies. This could perhaps be fixed through console commands, perhaps by creating some extra duchies for these rulers to give away at the start of the game instead of their initial duchies while they recalibrate or doing it manually.

Why is that a problem, and one that needs to be fixed? Kings and Emperors don't need to hold duchies too. They may just have an annoyed vassal that wants some land they own, but that's bound to happen with how badly the AI gives out titles anyways honestly.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

Because I don't like the idea of the Byzantine and Holy Roman Emperors, and perhaps others, immediately giving away their ancestral and best duchy titles in order to make the transition to half vassals and, in all likelihood, not regaining them. In another test game I made, the Byzantine Emperor did later create a less prestigious duchy for himself.

So it looks like the only way to use half vassals and avoid this would be to manually oversee the transition by creating and allocating new titles for these rulers through console commands, which is a hassle.

I still am not sure what the intention behind using half vassals is - just to make it more difficult for empires to manage their realms?

 

[Dragatus]

The purpose of reducing vassal limit is to limit blobbing.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

The purpose of reducing vassal limit is to limit blobbing.

Would not increasing the Provincial Revolt Strength rule be an alternative way to counteract this?

 

[Dragatus]

Not really. It is true that big realms get more revolts simply due to their size, but they're also better able to fight them off thanks to that same size. Vassal limit on the other hand affects the biggest realms the most. A count (or below) is not affected at all, a duke can generally still pick up a second duchy before running out of vassal limit, and a double duke will again generally be able to create a kingdom before running out of vassal limit too. It only really starts having an effect when you go for your second kingdom or more.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I'm still rather undecided on this one. I wouldn't like to play using the half vassal rule without making sure emperors didn't give away their starting duchies. It would also seem to prevent emperors from increasing their personal demesne through centralization laws, as passing such laws would further reduce the number of vassals allowed.

 

[Zsrai]

I personally have no problem with either of those, especially the latter. Being less centralized it how big Empires SHOULD be in this era... not to mention you're the one who made the observation that the AI doesn't fill out their demesne anyways in the OP

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I don't know, it makes sense to me that the emperors of such large realms should also have the strongest demesne portfolios of its internal rulers - that's the reason they are the top dog, because they are individually the most powerful.

 

[Zsrai]

I don't know, it makes sense to me that the emperors of such large realms should also have the strongest demesne portfolios of its internal rulers - that's the reason they are the top dog, because they are individually the most powerful.

They do, Emperor's get a higher bonus than King's, which is higher than Grand Duke's, which is higher than Dukes. Also, they aren't top dog because of personal power (look at the Kings of France before they centralized), but because they are on top of a large network of vassals.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

But lower-ranked nobles can use centralization laws to increase their demesne size, which emperors can't do easily with a half vassal limit.

 

[Zsrai]

But lower-ranked nobles can use centralization laws to increase their demesne size, which emperors can't do easily with a half vassal limit.

Vassals can't either if they want to have vassals of their own, since their limits are also halved. Unless each Duke is locked into his 3-4 province Duchy only, you won't have a problem with heavy centralized vassals in a heavily decentralized realm.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I have to say, I much prefer playing with the "Half Demesne" rule now that I'm using it.

Although I didn't use the half vassals rule, I can see how it would probably make the game more dynamic by making empires more inherently unstable. This would probably make repeated plays of this game more interesting as things like the HRE and ERE would be more prone to collapse, leading to more randomness or unpredictability.

As I said before, I wouldn't like to play it unless there was a way to ensure that rulers wouldn't immediately give away their ancestral duchies while adjusting to the new rule. So, in my opinion, for this to be a viable option, the additional duchies needed would have to be created and allocated before the game starts, so the game is calibrated for half vassals right from the outset.

Could this be done by creating a mod?

 

[Buttons12345]

What's the exact intent behind halving the vassal limit?

Limiting large empires, especially for the player. Also makes the gap between giant kingdom and a proper empire harder to cross as you will likely have to plan your final ascension carefully or spend a large period of time over your vassal limit.

 

[Zsrai]

Although I didn't use the half vassals rule, I can see how it would probably make the game more dynamic by making empires more inherently unstable. This would probably make repeated plays of this game more interesting as things like the HRE and ERE would be more prone to collapse, leading to more randomness or unpredictability.

This is exactly why I use it. It's nice seeing far flung bits of empires (usually Byzantine and Arabian since I play early starts more lately) break off on succession. It also makes sense to me, and helps keep the ERE from gobbling up Nomads and taking over half of the Eurasian Steppe too.

Could this be done by creating a mod?

That should be easy, you'd just have to edit some history files I think. Just add extra duchies to be owned by certain rulers at certain dates. The only problem I see is that they'll more or less randomly give away a duchy; usually they won't do so when they own land in said duchy, but not always. I'm not sure if you can mod that behavior. Maybe with the dignity line? I know that makes them weigh certain titles more for primary title, but I don't know if it helps keep the AI from giving those titles away.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I created a suggestions thread to discuss solutions to make the "Half vassals" rule a viable option.

 

[Thrake]

I personnaly think half demesne is good enough. With a really small demesne, it really shift the balance of power in favor of vassals (if you have more vassals you have less people to "bribe" with a council seat so this should make it harder for every independant ruler by causing more internal troubles). Bigger realm is not very useful once it grows beyond realm de jure anyway, as you only get a tiny fraction of the potential levies.

For half vassals, the expected outcome is that you'll have stronger and stronger vassals as you grow in power (you make dukes multi dukes or kings to decrease your effective amount of vassals), and eventually decentralize the realm, as a mean to reflect the difficulty to rule a large realm. So less power to the top ruler.

This already happens in very large realms though so I'm not sure why it would be needed/helpful given that it will probably inder more the AI.