Hey, I just wondering if you guys plays with "demense and vassal limit reduced" game rules ? There are two options "Half" and "Quartered". Any experience with those options ? Is this make game harder ? Unbalanced ? And how is AI cope with that ?
Demense and vassal limit game rules
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I've started going with just Half Vassal Limit, mostly because I'm not a particularly blobby player so previously Vassal Limit was literally never an issue for me. I like it; I actually have to think about my Centralization Laws as opposed to just always increasing them and having a decent diplomacy becomes more important than before. I suppose it can be annoying if you want to make a massive empire, but then you're forced to make larger and more powerful vassals to cope. I haven't noticed that much of a difference with AI realms usually. Usually. On occasion I've seen to penalties obliterate an AI realm (the best example being a Karling who inherited several times their vassal limit; it was glorious). But that's not necessarily a bad thing; snowballing isn't good in my opinion.
Have not touched Demesne Limit.
Have not touched Demesne Limit.
I've heard of this one recently and got curious, I think I'm even going to modify my save file to lower the vassal limit.
I myself tend to focus more on roleplaying rather than blobbing, and really hate when I see the AI doing that as well.
But the thought of lowering the vassal limit to restrict the AI had never even crossed my mind, so I'm very interested to see how this will unfold.
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I play with both halved and will not come back to "normal" play. You have a much smaller power base, you need to pay more attention to your diplomacy and the Centralization laws are now meaningful in the options considered. Overall, the game gets a bit more challenging, meaningful and interesting.
It has almost no effect on a minmaxing player, but hits really hard on AIs that because they dont use any special techniques to deal with these.
I like to play with these rules when i am roleplaying sometimes, it makes the game a lot easyer. It also puts somewhat of a feeling like youre more dependent on what your vassals think, like it was in history, especialy with the lover demesne rule.
I like to play with these rules when i am roleplaying sometimes, it makes the game a lot easyer. It also puts somewhat of a feeling like youre more dependent on what your vassals think, like it was in history, especialy with the lover demesne rule.
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Yes, its true that for those who see the rules as constraints to be abused instead of guidelines to be followed, the game can become even easier with limits to demesne and number of vassals.
So, a question: how does that affect bordergore?
I now use exclave independence rules to curb it, but it still show up with quite the frequency.
So does reducing vassal/demesne limit help reduce that bordergore to some extent?
I now use exclave independence rules to curb it, but it still show up with quite the frequency.
So does reducing vassal/demesne limit help reduce that bordergore to some extent?
In my most exploit game, I ran my empire with 3~4 direct vassals and 2~3 holdings in my demesne to conquest the world.
For my demesne, Got all my money and levy from vassals. Feudal retinue is not tied to my demesne buildings like tribal. These are what I normally had;
1. Capital county's capital castle holding. Duh!
2. Capital county's city holding. Makes it easy to temporarily give my capital when it is the last feudal county. Used to temporarily change my capital to change culture.
3. An inland city somewhere. Used to make mayors out of tribal holdings. Give a courtier the city holding. A tribal county, A titular kingdom title. Revoke the city holding and titular kingdom title. Now you have a lord mayor, who used to be a prince mayor, with only a tribal county. I had dozens of them.
For my direct vassals, here are what I had.
1. Processing King. A titular king with one county. I transferred all my new duke+ vassals to him, as soon as I had revoked their primary titles to make the transfer possible. Well. He was more like a butcher king. Because all their family lines are imprisoned and murdered under him.
2. Levy Kings. I transfer all normal vassals (about 10) to keep them safe and levy army and ships through him. I only have 1~2 of them at a time. But they are keep being replaced. They end up as a lord mayor at some backwater tribal county waiting to die of old age.
That's all. Didn't need any other direct vassals. Although I had even 7~10 temporarily vassal kings at a time who were taking time to response to my request to revoke their titles offer. They were former independent or enemy's vassal dukes, and became forcibly my vassal kings through external inheritance.
For my demesne, Got all my money and levy from vassals. Feudal retinue is not tied to my demesne buildings like tribal. These are what I normally had;
1. Capital county's capital castle holding. Duh!
2. Capital county's city holding. Makes it easy to temporarily give my capital when it is the last feudal county. Used to temporarily change my capital to change culture.
3. An inland city somewhere. Used to make mayors out of tribal holdings. Give a courtier the city holding. A tribal county, A titular kingdom title. Revoke the city holding and titular kingdom title. Now you have a lord mayor, who used to be a prince mayor, with only a tribal county. I had dozens of them.
For my direct vassals, here are what I had.
1. Processing King. A titular king with one county. I transferred all my new duke+ vassals to him, as soon as I had revoked their primary titles to make the transfer possible. Well. He was more like a butcher king. Because all their family lines are imprisoned and murdered under him.
2. Levy Kings. I transfer all normal vassals (about 10) to keep them safe and levy army and ships through him. I only have 1~2 of them at a time. But they are keep being replaced. They end up as a lord mayor at some backwater tribal county waiting to die of old age.
That's all. Didn't need any other direct vassals. Although I had even 7~10 temporarily vassal kings at a time who were taking time to response to my request to revoke their titles offer. They were former independent or enemy's vassal dukes, and became forcibly my vassal kings through external inheritance.
Even in a normal play, I don't like having too may direct vassals. When I subjugated Byzantine, I consolidated all the dukes to make 4 mega dukes out of them.
It inscreases it heavly, inside a realm top lieges likes to stuff all of his lower tier vassals inside a higher tiered one
Inside of a realm is fine, they almost never has pretty internal borders anyway.
I'm talking about independent realms with exclaves, and even snaking, something like this current game of mine where Francia is the bordergore king there, with spots of lands all over the place.
I think that exclaves seccede only when they are held by the top liege, so it would make the border gore more horrible
Yeah, the exclave rule really isn't working all that well here.
But I figured that, with less blobbing and more difficult management, the AI wouldn't be able to find itself in a situation to form these borders in the first place.
I just want to know if limiting vassal/demesne would decrease these sorts of situations or not.
In my opinion, decreasing the vassal limit only really affects the AI: players can work around it but AI can't. On the other hand, decreasing the demesne limit mostly affects players: many top-level AI rulers aren't even close to their limit.
In particular, quartering the limit has a tendency to destroy large AI empires: if you're over the limit then you lose levies and taxes for every single vassal you have over the limit. When you're over the limit by 10, your vassals contribute nothing whatsoever. (I think. The wiki doesn't say.) The effect is that large AI empires are likely to descend into chaos for a century or two after the start date while the AI reorganises. As such, this gamerule can be a good way to cripple the AI for runs that would otherwise be somewhat difficult - eg. "Empire of the Sun" as 769 Zunbils without converting or swearing fealty.
In particular, quartering the limit has a tendency to destroy large AI empires: if you're over the limit then you lose levies and taxes for every single vassal you have over the limit. When you're over the limit by 10, your vassals contribute nothing whatsoever. (I think. The wiki doesn't say.) The effect is that large AI empires are likely to descend into chaos for a century or two after the start date while the AI reorganises. As such, this gamerule can be a good way to cripple the AI for runs that would otherwise be somewhat difficult - eg. "Empire of the Sun" as 769 Zunbils without converting or swearing fealty.