[GUIDE] An in-depth guide to CKII
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Great job so far Meneth!!!
Really glad that you have taken the time to preprare this guide for the forumites.
This is a great way to get more information on this very detailed and fun game!
Cheers!
Really glad that you have taken the time to preprare this guide for the forumites.
This is a great way to get more information on this very detailed and fun game!
Cheers!
I just thought of another good tip. You can breed characters with a large amount of claims in order to marry them into the family later. Basically, invite characters into your court that already have a claim from somewhere. Then, marry them to someone that has another claim. Later on, you can marry these children with claims to each other and eventually marry them into your family. You can also give these family small amounts of land to make sure they never leave and educate their children so when they are apart of your family they have good stats.
This is outstanding stuff Meneth. It's made CK2 so much more enjoyable. Definitely deserves a sticky.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
What ARE the cultural buildings for different cultures? I've been working on Ireland.
Also, the personal funds for holdings must be the source for any vassal construction. When the title holder dies, does the holding's next ruler inherit the funds or does the personal heir get it)?
On Crown Authority, it is only mid 12th C and I see lots of adoption of high and absolute crown authority, especially in the east. The AIs seem to like it- are they wrong?
Good stuff. I'm not familiar with Reddit - it looks like a bulletin board. Does it have a formal structure like a proper wiki? With the abiltiy to revise and add footnote citations (in this case it would often be to forum thread number and post number)?
Also, the personal funds for holdings must be the source for any vassal construction. When the title holder dies, does the holding's next ruler inherit the funds or does the personal heir get it)?
On Crown Authority, it is only mid 12th C and I see lots of adoption of high and absolute crown authority, especially in the east. The AIs seem to like it- are they wrong?
Good stuff. I'm not familiar with Reddit - it looks like a bulletin board. Does it have a formal structure like a proper wiki? With the abiltiy to revise and add footnote citations (in this case it would often be to forum thread number and post number)?
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Ireland has none. That said, it's based on the culture of the ruler. I started as Italian, and converted to German, and my buildings changed from the pikes to horses.
I think personal heir.
You trade relative internal peace for the chance of massive plots against you, as the negative relations penalty can ensure everyone hates your guts. That's where plots shine - I had a plot with 5 dukes go after the HRE.
Nope, it's pretty much like a bulletin board that usually starts with a link, has nested comments, and comment-level voting. Not really the best place to store info.
Yeah, the personal heir inherits all monetary assets.
High crown authority does have its advantages. You prevent your vassals from waging war, thus their levies will always be there when you need them. They also have to provide you a minimum percent of their levies at all times (starts at 0 at autonomous vassals, increases by 10% per level), and at High no one outside your realm can inherit titles from your realm. On the other hand you lose out on quite a bit of relations, which can hurt your taxes and/or levies, and you're much more likely to be rebelled against.
High crown authority does have its advantages. You prevent your vassals from waging war, thus their levies will always be there when you need them. They also have to provide you a minimum percent of their levies at all times (starts at 0 at autonomous vassals, increases by 10% per level), and at High no one outside your realm can inherit titles from your realm. On the other hand you lose out on quite a bit of relations, which can hurt your taxes and/or levies, and you're much more likely to be rebelled against.
Finished the 6th installment, this time on levies.
Levies; Inner Workings and Maximization
First posted here.
In Crusader Kings II, most of your military is based around levies. At the time few had anything resembling standing armies, instead drafting peasants in times of war. As levies are core to your ability to defend yourself, understanding how to get as many as possible is important. I'll therefore be going into how levies work, and what you can do to get more.
As always, there's a summary at the end.
The Basics
How many levies you can raise depend on three factors:
Holding Levies
This is quite similar to holding income, except with soldiers instead of gold. It is calculated by adding the levies of all buildings in a holding to the base levies of that holding. The base levies are 60 light inf, 150 heavy inf, and 15 cavalry for castles, 75 light inf and 40 archers for cities, and 45 light inf, 45 heavy inf, and 40 archers for temples.
The total levy is then multiplied by any additional factors, most notably the buildings that increase levy size, but the Marshal also has a mission that increases levy size, and certain events can increase it as well.
Levy Law
Each type of holding has its own type of levy law. Like with tax law this is based on what type of vassal the vassal is, not the holding itself. For example if someone owns a city and a castle, and is a count his levies will be based on Feudal Levies, not City Levies.
Like with tax this multiplier can vary from 0 to 1. The full list is below:
Nobles:
Crown Law
Crown law decides the minimum levy your vassals have to provide you. Even if due to other factors they want to give you less than the minimum, they'll still have to give you the minimum as long as they have levies available. The full list of minimums are as follows:
For any opinion below 25, you will only be able to raise the minimum levy as described above. The higher their opinion above 25 the more they'll want to provide, with 0 at 25 and 1% at 100. As such for each point of opinion they'll want to provide 1 and one-third percent more of their levies.
Your opinion towards yourself is always counted as a multiplier of 1.
Calculation
Thus the full formula for tax becomes this:
(BaseLevy + Buildings)) * HoldingLevyFactors * LevyLaw * OpinionModifier
For your own holdings it is simply this as both LevyLaw and OpinionModifier are equal to one.
(BaseLevy + Buildings) * HoldingLevyFactors
Maximization
With this understanding of how levies work we can figure out how to get the most out of it.
First we can, as with taxes, construct buildings, which will directly increase the levies of a holding, part of which you'll be able to raise. However, like with tax, you'll get a much higher return on investment if you build in your own demesne, as then you can raise your full levy capacity. The drawback is of course that you then have to pay upkeep, but you won't be pissing your vassals off.
Second, you can up the levy law to make your vassals pay more. However if their opinion is already low enough this will not pay off, with a full list here:
Nobles:
For the reductions I simply took the value the above formula gives, minus the opinion change.
As you can see, raising levy law will only ever help you if your vassals already like you a lot. As such, running high levy laws is seldom a good idea. However, at these opinion numbers you're unlikely to hurt any other aspect of your realm, so as long as you benefit levy-wise from raising levy law, you should.
Third, you can do what you can to keep all vassals above 25 opinion. Granting them titles, running tournaments, granting their wishes, making them councilors, etc. Each point of opinion will increase the percent they're willing to give by 4/3.
Fourth, you will only ever benefit levy-wise from crown law if you were already getting below the new minimum percent. For example if you're getting 25% at Medium Crown Authority, and raise it to high, the minimum will now be 30% and you'll be able to raise more levies. If on the other hand you were getting 35% before and you raise your Crown Authority, you'll now be getting 5 percentage point less.
Summary
Levies are easy to get plenty of as long as you have a strong demesne or your vassals like you. Your priorities should therefore be:
Levies; Inner Workings and Maximization
First posted here.
In Crusader Kings II, most of your military is based around levies. At the time few had anything resembling standing armies, instead drafting peasants in times of war. As levies are core to your ability to defend yourself, understanding how to get as many as possible is important. I'll therefore be going into how levies work, and what you can do to get more.
As always, there's a summary at the end.
The Basics
How many levies you can raise depend on three factors:
- Holding levies
- Levy and crown law
- Opinion towards liege
Holding Levies
This is quite similar to holding income, except with soldiers instead of gold. It is calculated by adding the levies of all buildings in a holding to the base levies of that holding. The base levies are 60 light inf, 150 heavy inf, and 15 cavalry for castles, 75 light inf and 40 archers for cities, and 45 light inf, 45 heavy inf, and 40 archers for temples.
The total levy is then multiplied by any additional factors, most notably the buildings that increase levy size, but the Marshal also has a mission that increases levy size, and certain events can increase it as well.
Levy Law
Each type of holding has its own type of levy law. Like with tax law this is based on what type of vassal the vassal is, not the holding itself. For example if someone owns a city and a castle, and is a count his levies will be based on Feudal Levies, not City Levies.
Like with tax this multiplier can vary from 0 to 1. The full list is below:
Nobles:
- Min Feudal Levies - 0.6
- Small Feudal Levies - 0.7
- Normal Feudal Levies - 0.8
- Max Feudal Levies - 1
- Minimal City Levies - 0.5
- Normal City Levies - 0.65
- Large City Levies - 0.8
- Max City Levies - 0.95
- Minimal Church Levies - 0.5
- Normal Church Levies - 0.6
- Large Church Levies - 0.7
- Max Church Levies - 0.8
Crown Law
Crown law decides the minimum levy your vassals have to provide you. Even if due to other factors they want to give you less than the minimum, they'll still have to give you the minimum as long as they have levies available. The full list of minimums are as follows:
- Autonomous vassals - 0% minimum
- Limited crown authority - 10% minimum
- Medium crown authority - 20% minimum
- High crown authority - 30% minimum
- Absolute crown authority - 40% minimum
For any opinion below 25, you will only be able to raise the minimum levy as described above. The higher their opinion above 25 the more they'll want to provide, with 0 at 25 and 1% at 100. As such for each point of opinion they'll want to provide 1 and one-third percent more of their levies.
Your opinion towards yourself is always counted as a multiplier of 1.
Calculation
Thus the full formula for tax becomes this:
(BaseLevy + Buildings)) * HoldingLevyFactors * LevyLaw * OpinionModifier
For your own holdings it is simply this as both LevyLaw and OpinionModifier are equal to one.
(BaseLevy + Buildings) * HoldingLevyFactors
Maximization
With this understanding of how levies work we can figure out how to get the most out of it.
First we can, as with taxes, construct buildings, which will directly increase the levies of a holding, part of which you'll be able to raise. However, like with tax, you'll get a much higher return on investment if you build in your own demesne, as then you can raise your full levy capacity. The drawback is of course that you then have to pay upkeep, but you won't be pissing your vassals off.
Second, you can up the levy law to make your vassals pay more. However if their opinion is already low enough this will not pay off, with a full list here:
Nobles:
- Min -> Small gives more as long as opinion is at 60 or above
- Small -> Normal gives more as long as opinion is at 65 or above
- Normal -> Max gives more as long as opinion is at 50 or above
- Max -> Normal gives more as long as opinion is below 45
- Normal -> Small gives more as long as opinion is below 60
- Small -> Min gives more as long as opinion is below 55
- Min -> Small gives more as long as opinion is at 69 or above
- Small -> Normal gives more as long as opinion is at 79 or above
- Large-> Max gives more as long as opinion is at 89 or above
- Max -> Normal gives more as long as opinion is below 79
- Large -> Small gives more as long as opinion is below 69
- Small -> Min gives more as long as opinion is below 59
- Min -> Small gives more as long as opinion is at 85 or above
- Small -> Large gives more as long as opinion is at 95 or above
- Large -> Max gives more as long as opinion is at 105 or above (E.G., it'll remain at 100 after upping the law)
- Max -> Large gives more as long as opinion is below 95
- Large -> Small gives more as long as opinion is below 85
- Small -> Min gives more as long as opinion is below 75
For the reductions I simply took the value the above formula gives, minus the opinion change.
As you can see, raising levy law will only ever help you if your vassals already like you a lot. As such, running high levy laws is seldom a good idea. However, at these opinion numbers you're unlikely to hurt any other aspect of your realm, so as long as you benefit levy-wise from raising levy law, you should.
Third, you can do what you can to keep all vassals above 25 opinion. Granting them titles, running tournaments, granting their wishes, making them councilors, etc. Each point of opinion will increase the percent they're willing to give by 4/3.
Fourth, you will only ever benefit levy-wise from crown law if you were already getting below the new minimum percent. For example if you're getting 25% at Medium Crown Authority, and raise it to high, the minimum will now be 30% and you'll be able to raise more levies. If on the other hand you were getting 35% before and you raise your Crown Authority, you'll now be getting 5 percentage point less.
Summary
Levies are easy to get plenty of as long as you have a strong demesne or your vassals like you. Your priorities should therefore be:
- Construct buildings. More info here
- Don't put your levy laws high unless your vassals love you. You'll gain no benefit whatsoever.
- You'll only benefit levy-wise from crown law if you're already getting less than the percentage the new crown law would demand.
- Research relevant technology. More info here. This won't give you more levies, but it will make them stronger.
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they better sticky the wiki, since it contains all Meneth articles + many more of people who contributed already.
http://crusaderkings-two.wikia.com/wiki/Crusader_Kings_II_Wiki
http://crusaderkings-two.wikia.com/wiki/Crusader_Kings_II_Wiki
Would it be better to, once you have the option to get to higher Crown Authority, slash your levy requests so that vassals like you more and just tolerate the minimums? The Max Levy at Minimal for the levy types is still only slightly better than the minimum under Absolute, except for your noble vassals. And it's easier to keep nobles happy with titles and whatnot most of the time.
That could be a very effective tactic, yes. You'd avoid many of the problems surrounding succession, while still maintaining a good number of troops. However, you WOULD be essentially capped at 40%, so you'd never get the full benefit of a truly loved king, who can easily get 60-80% of levies.
However, if one decides to go by this kind of strategy, a good combination would probably be high crown authority, high taxes, and low levies. You'd then be getting a large amount of money that you'd be able to reinvest in your own holdings, thus further solidifying the liege-vassal relationship by improving your ability to deal with rebelling vassals.
Excellent work Meneth and *very* much appreciated. Been trying to do some of this work myself regarding laws, levies, taxes, and relations with an eye to figuring out which type of vassal is best for a duke to give counties to. Presumably that would also be the best type for a king to give duchies to, but want to tackle that analysis as well. Would very much like to see your thoughts on those two subjects and compare notes.
From what I can see, your relations with indirect vassals (vassals of vassals, barons under your counts etc) are determined the same way as foreign relations, just state diplomacy and traits modifiers, not tyranny. So your levies from their holdings are "fixed" if they aren't the direct vassal. As long as a baron isn't the count, it doesn't matter whether the bishop or the mayor is his count, you as duke get the same fraction of his forces. This "foreign" relations status means it's pretty much guaranteed you won't get troops from an indirectly held bishop.
Per your work on maximizing levy size, it seems clear that laws should be set to maximize relations for all types of vassal. I'm analyzing the minimal set that gives some gold and some troops from each. With a count, you get 10% of the castle's base 4 income, plus 10% of the count's cut from the city and church, so at base
0.1*(4+0.15*12+0.35*8) = 0.1*4 + 0.015*12 + 0.035*9 = 0.4 castle + 0.18 city + 0.315 church = 0.895 total
In this setup, the count's levy size varies with your vassal relations, your levy from the city is fixed, and your levy from the church is probably going to the Pope instead. Vassal inheiritance follows normal rules and can be managed/manipulated. Rebel counts get the full castle levy.
If you have the same laws with a mayor in charge of the county, you get a -30 wrong government type relations penalty, but your laws give you +20 relations with mayors and you a 15% cut, of the city's direct income.
0.15*(12 + 0.1*4 + 0.35*8) = 0.06 castle + 1.8 city + 0.42 church = 2.28 total, or 255% of the income from a count.
The city's small, poor levy is what varies with vassal relations, your draw from the castle is fixed. A rebel mayor has the -30 wrong government type relations penalty with his baron, so he won't get the full castle levy to use against you. The mayor having cashflow is more likley to improve his holdings on his own. OTOH, open elective law means any fool can become the mayor's heir, giving you a vassal succession you can't really control short of killing everyone in his court that isn't up to par.
Prince-bishoprics are the last case.
0.35*(8+0.1*4+0.15*12) = 0.4 castle + 0.18 city + 3.15 church = 4.13 total, or 461% of a count's income. No wonder the Pope is rich. However, unless your vassal relations are extremely good, you'll be making the Pope rich, not yourself. You could use a popular anti-Pope to get around this problem, so that even if your vassals hate you, they pay him and he pays you. If you have free investiture, you can handpick your future vassals from your court, which is a huge advantage in managing their relations. The danger is that if your vassal rebels, or even just likes the Pope more than you, you lose the *entire* county's levy. The barons woun't take the field unles their count's army leads them, and if he gives you zero troops, they also give you zero troops. Excommunication will likley be an instant rebellion problem, even worse than with normal counts. Prince Bishops are very much a high risk high reward setup without high crown authority.
I'm currently playing di Canossa remaking the world into a set of Italian city-states. So far I haven't had to promote a mayor to a duke level title. I'm concerned that putting my dynasty members into city titles will cause the top-level realm laws to change to open elective when they inheirit, and that the wrong government penalty will hit me twice if I put a feudal duke over a mayor count. We'll see. Next game may be a theocratic one, see if / how long I can ride the tiger safely.
From what I can see, your relations with indirect vassals (vassals of vassals, barons under your counts etc) are determined the same way as foreign relations, just state diplomacy and traits modifiers, not tyranny. So your levies from their holdings are "fixed" if they aren't the direct vassal. As long as a baron isn't the count, it doesn't matter whether the bishop or the mayor is his count, you as duke get the same fraction of his forces. This "foreign" relations status means it's pretty much guaranteed you won't get troops from an indirectly held bishop.
Per your work on maximizing levy size, it seems clear that laws should be set to maximize relations for all types of vassal. I'm analyzing the minimal set that gives some gold and some troops from each. With a count, you get 10% of the castle's base 4 income, plus 10% of the count's cut from the city and church, so at base
0.1*(4+0.15*12+0.35*8) = 0.1*4 + 0.015*12 + 0.035*9 = 0.4 castle + 0.18 city + 0.315 church = 0.895 total
In this setup, the count's levy size varies with your vassal relations, your levy from the city is fixed, and your levy from the church is probably going to the Pope instead. Vassal inheiritance follows normal rules and can be managed/manipulated. Rebel counts get the full castle levy.
If you have the same laws with a mayor in charge of the county, you get a -30 wrong government type relations penalty, but your laws give you +20 relations with mayors and you a 15% cut, of the city's direct income.
0.15*(12 + 0.1*4 + 0.35*8) = 0.06 castle + 1.8 city + 0.42 church = 2.28 total, or 255% of the income from a count.
The city's small, poor levy is what varies with vassal relations, your draw from the castle is fixed. A rebel mayor has the -30 wrong government type relations penalty with his baron, so he won't get the full castle levy to use against you. The mayor having cashflow is more likley to improve his holdings on his own. OTOH, open elective law means any fool can become the mayor's heir, giving you a vassal succession you can't really control short of killing everyone in his court that isn't up to par.
Prince-bishoprics are the last case.
0.35*(8+0.1*4+0.15*12) = 0.4 castle + 0.18 city + 3.15 church = 4.13 total, or 461% of a count's income. No wonder the Pope is rich. However, unless your vassal relations are extremely good, you'll be making the Pope rich, not yourself. You could use a popular anti-Pope to get around this problem, so that even if your vassals hate you, they pay him and he pays you. If you have free investiture, you can handpick your future vassals from your court, which is a huge advantage in managing their relations. The danger is that if your vassal rebels, or even just likes the Pope more than you, you lose the *entire* county's levy. The barons woun't take the field unles their count's army leads them, and if he gives you zero troops, they also give you zero troops. Excommunication will likley be an instant rebellion problem, even worse than with normal counts. Prince Bishops are very much a high risk high reward setup without high crown authority.
I'm currently playing di Canossa remaking the world into a set of Italian city-states. So far I haven't had to promote a mayor to a duke level title. I'm concerned that putting my dynasty members into city titles will cause the top-level realm laws to change to open elective when they inheirit, and that the wrong government penalty will hit me twice if I put a feudal duke over a mayor count. We'll see. Next game may be a theocratic one, see if / how long I can ride the tiger safely.
Yeah, that's correct, I think. Can't actually check right now.
You probably wouldn't be getting any church tax, as the bishop is likely to prefer the Pope over the count. So 0.58 income, not 0.895.
The Pope doesn't affect where church levies go, only taxes. So you'd be getting the church levies.
Unless the county capital is a city, you cannot have a burgher in charge of a county. If he controls a castle capital, he's no longer a burgher, no? (If that isn't happening, that's probably a bug that'll eventually be fixed, because as you show, having a burgher as your direct vassal is extremely lucrative)
See above why this wouldn't work.
It does work in cases where the capital is a city ofc, like Genoa and Venice. Those counties are EXTREMELY lucrative because of that. However to my knowledge it is impossible to change the capital in any other province to a city, so the only direct burgher vassals you'll have are those in your own counties, and the heads of grand cities.
Now this would in theory work, yes. However, you'd get pretty much the same benefit from simply having an anti-pope without making any prince-bishoprics.
It's a 2 step process to change the capital holding of a county, but it can be done. If you hold all the titles (conquered the county from heathens, etc), then give away the city title first, then the county title to that mayor. He'll hold the city and the castle, then create his own new baron for the castle. You can do this with a normal county as well, but you're just stuck with promoting whatever mayor happens to be there already. I have half a dozen Lord Mayors as vassals throughout Italy, more than half of which didn't start as republics.
In light of your excellent point that the bishop will probably prefer the Pope to the count or the mayor:
Count = base income of 0.58
Lord Mayor = base income of 1.86 (320% of count income)
Prince Bishop = base income of 4.13 (712%)
Regular Bishop w AntiPope = 3.15 Additional to either count or lord mayor income (+543%)
Count w AntiPope = 3.73 (643%)
Lord Mayor w AntiPope = 5.01 (864%)
So my quest to convert the Catholic world to the Italian city-state model under my dynasty's benign Imperial leadership doesn't look so misguided after all, especially if I can find a good antiPope candidate to put on the seat of Saint Peter.
Still not sure how this wrong vassal thing will play out at the ducal level, I'm 2 provinces shy of forming Italy, waiting on a forged claim.
In light of your excellent point that the bishop will probably prefer the Pope to the count or the mayor:
Count = base income of 0.58
Lord Mayor = base income of 1.86 (320% of count income)
Prince Bishop = base income of 4.13 (712%)
Regular Bishop w AntiPope = 3.15 Additional to either count or lord mayor income (+543%)
Count w AntiPope = 3.73 (643%)
Lord Mayor w AntiPope = 5.01 (864%)
So my quest to convert the Catholic world to the Italian city-state model under my dynasty's benign Imperial leadership doesn't look so misguided after all, especially if I can find a good antiPope candidate to put on the seat of Saint Peter.
Still not sure how this wrong vassal thing will play out at the ducal level, I'm 2 provinces shy of forming Italy, waiting on a forged claim.