How exactly does raising levies work?

[kevindrosario]

I'm playing as the Byzantine Emperor, and I was able to get a claimant for the throne of France. Luckily France was already in a war with England, so I was able to take the throne for my claimant without too much trouble. Of course I landed him first with some random county in Greece that I didn't care about.

A little while later, a rebellion popped up in Greece. So like I always do, I went to raise the levies of the bordering counties...except the first county I raised the levy and got 15 thousand troops. Then I realized that was the county that I gave to the king of France. Does it make sense to instantly be able to raise all those French levies in Greece? Eh, I'm not going to complain. Pretty convenient for me. This seems like it would be pretty easy to exploit by granting counties to vassal kings in far flung areas of my empire, so I can quickly raise an army anywhere.

A bit later on, I noticed that I can raise 15 thousand troops in any of the counties in France. So the way I think it works is that if you raise levies for a county where the count is not your direct vassal, it goes up the tree until it reaches one of your direct vassals, and then raises all of their troops there? Is that how it works?

If that is how it works, then wouldn't it make sense to have very few, but very strong king/duke vassals, and few/none of the count vassals so that I can raise a large army pretty much anywhere instantly? Or would there be downsides to that which I'm not considering?

I just started playing this game a few days ago, so there might be some obvious things that I'm missing. Please point out any flaws in what I said so that I can improve

 

[unmerged(458064)]

You are correct in your assumption. If you have a vassal who has vassals of their own, raising levies in any of his lands will raise all of them together.

This is a relatively new feature and as such it is a big improvement over the past system. The main reason you wouldn't want to give away all your minor vassals is simply that by creating more and more powerful dukes under your control, you are giving strength to possible detractors who want your titles. While this may not seem bad at first due to loyalty, you will always eventually get into a situation where you have a weak leader and some potential crisis, and it as these times you learn to regret giving too much power to individuals in your realm. Oh, and by making a few individuals strong in your realm, they tend to use their strength advantage over their neighbors and gain more strength within your kingdom without gaining any foreign territory, making it more and more difficult for you to balance the power within your realm.

 

[kevindrosario]

Ah okay, so it's basically a balancing act of internal vs. external power. Fewer, stronger vassals gives me more external power, but less control internally. Weaker vassals gives me more power internally and makes it harder to organize against me, but also makes it harder to gather my army. That's pretty interesting. Thanks for your reply.