Feudal Contracts feel unmaintainable and pointless.

[Garbon]

I'll be honest: I never really worry about contracts. Every once in awhile I'm stuck with someone with horrible stats on the council but late game it hardly seems to matter.

Yes largely a feature I don't interact with at all. That said it does remind me how silly and immersion breaking that contracts can lead to not being able to fire a Councillor for decades. That's certainly a fun game mechanic worth breaking immersion.

 

[Blinky78]

This definitely works but only for so long, the new vassals will change their contracts when they get the chance and as I explained, that always results in it being worse regardless of whether they had a hook or not. Your options then are do that purging process every couple of generations when they've all made their contracts terrible again (and if you want to play as a remotely just ruler then that's not a particularly good option), or pin everyone and meticulously wait for the when you or the vassals die and contract negotiations open up again to make sure any changes made go closer to default, I think there aren't many players that will care about it enough to bother doing that though.

Its probably the case that most players aren't bothered that much about keeping everyones contracts in check, and I don't blame them, the game is easy enough you don't have to be really, but I still feel like there's an issue there whether it bothers most people or not.

I probably have vassals change their contracts about a half dozen times a game. I don't get where you have constant contract changes.

 

[grommile]

contracts can lead to not being able to fire a Councillor for decades.

Question: If you imprison one of your councillors, do they get removed from the council?

(Bonus challenge: do it without causing a realm-shattering tyranny revolt.)

 

[Tuo]

Yes largely a feature I don't interact with at all. That said it does remind me how silly and immersion breaking that contracts can lead to not being able to fire a Councillor for decades. That's certainly a fun game mechanic worth breaking immersion.

It's silly and immersion breaking that... you are held to your contracts?

 

[x4077]

Question: If you imprison one of your councillors, do they get removed from the council?

(Bonus challenge: do it without causing a realm-shattering tyranny revolt.)

Quite easy if you don't have landed people on your council, you just marry them off into another court. Otherwise there is always abduction, finding/creating a secret on them, or just outright murdering them.

It's silly and immersion breaking that... you are held to your contracts?

What is silly and immersion breaking is that a third party is being held to someone else's contract. The idea that a contract between two Catholic lords would be binding upon a Mongol Emperor that takes over the land by force later is quite laughable. Hence the reason why I have suggested before that the feudal contract should be attached to the two dynasties or houses involved, and it would be contract between those two entities, unenforceable upon any other.

It also makes no sense that an entity that doesn't even practice feudalism could be held to the terms of the contract, but sure enough in the game you can have feudal vassals tweaking their feudal contracts with a clan liege.

 

[AngelRay]

If one has a hook on Character? he will die.
It has happened a few time, sometimes they use it to become councilor (they have to die quickly) or to change contract (die, and we will change that in the long future).

Best way to avoid having hooks is not having secrets, which start easy then difficult as you accumulate murders, affairs... I avoid affairs if my ruler is not a seducer.

And using a spy master on your capital helps finding secrets. My 49 intrigue Spy master (RIP) was a god for that. He got me hundreds of secrets. So much that my secret windows take some seconds to open each time now. On the other hand, i have been blackmailed like 5 times with this current emperor. So i'd say, even if the AI is more numerous, they are quite less able.

 

[JonathanViking]

I remember when they first announced i was like oh aight cool but then 1 second later i realised if im a king or emperor im going to have so many vassals that its just gonna turn into being annoying.
I never really toutch them at all except if im a vassal il just try and change my contract a bit but usually dont bother. Sometime when im king/emperor i get an event my vassal tell me his contract is wrong and gives me an option to change it back to normal and im like thanks dude

 

[minderbart]

the biggest issue is that when a vassal of your vassal has a bunch of privileges he keeps those privileges when he becomes your vassal. which happens a lot.

 

[BrokenSky]

The main problems I have with vassal contracts are what happens when inheritance starts moving things around - losing out on religious protection (as a vassal) or having gavelkind suddenly split 1 title with coinage rights into 3, then 5 etc. Plus inheriting contracts from the vassal's previous liege.

In my current game I'm sitting at something like -30% dev speed from coinage rights, which is something like double the number I've actually handed out.


I know it'd be a pain to code, but honestly I wonder if this would work better if titles were vassals rather than characters (e.g. the King of England and Duke of Normandy was both Equal to the French King and Vassal, despite being the same person).
(I would also love to see what happened when the French King got the lunatic trait and decided to try to introduce his good friend the King of England to his Loyal Vassal the Duke of Normandy).

 

[Toleora]

Don't know if it was mentioned before:
Your chancellor will modify contracts in your interest, if he ist set on intern affairs.

Also I think feudal vassals feel kind of pointless and weak with their current design gameplay-wise in comparison to republic and clan vassals.

I agree there should be some balancing/patching.

 

[Silens]

Yeah, taking over vassals from realms with weak rulers (like the ERE) is a sure way to end up with extremely bad contracts. No taxes, council rights etc., it's usually best to provoke as many uprisings as you can and then revoke all those titles, only to give them out again. That's the only way to reset those contracts.

It's best to stick to republics, far better conditions, and their succession doesn't create countless sub-vassals (to whom your own crown authority doesn't apply).

Edit: Well, @prismaticmarcus, since I only stated objective facts and you disagree with one or more of them, would you be so kind and explain a bit with what you disagree with in particular? I'm interested in hearing you out on it.

Edit2: The same for you, @YellowPress, don't just hit disagree. Tell me what you're disagreeing with, as this is a forum and I'm interested in hearing and discussing opinions. Nothing I said isn't objectively true. Going around and hitting disagree for the sake of disagreeing is just bad style.