How to get rid of a bad rep?

[LordofSaxony]

One of my guys was conquering left and right, and managed to get a rather large amount of land pretty quickly, then he died and his son inherited. If I click on my shield icon it says "You have an extremely bad reputation"... is there a method to bring it up? At the moment I'm paying out 100% in gifts just to keep people as vassals. Also, I'm only a Duke (I have 4-5 duke titles) and a lot of land, just no King title yet.

Does constant conquering give you a bad rep? :rofl:

 

[jordarkelf]

Yes

Reputation is an assessment of your threat as seen by others. If you gain land (power) quickly, your reputation (also known as badboy) rises, to reflect that others see you growing more powerful and thus see you as a threat.

To lower your reputation, raise your piety. Piety influences the rate at which your reputation decreases.
To raise piety, increase church donations, install bishoprics (note that granting additional titles to bishops makes no difference), and pick event options that appease the Church.

 

[TempestDK]

One of my guys was conquering left and right, and managed to get a rather large amount of land pretty quickly, then he died and his son inherited. If I click on my shield icon it says "You have an extremely bad reputation"... is there a method to bring it up? At the moment I'm paying out 100% in gifts just to keep people as vassals. Also, I'm only a Duke (I have 4-5 duke titles) and a lot of land, just no King title yet.

Does constant conquering give you a bad rep? :rofl:

And besides the piety ... give out titles, as each title granted reduces your BB by 0,5 points. Any title given to an existing bishop does not grant you more piety (as Jord explained) but it does reduce BB directly, as if you had granted a normal title.

To reduce the gained BB from conquering (in DV), use the Force-vassalize option sometimes during your conquests. This will force the ruler to be your vassal instead, but also generates 0 BB.

 

[LordofSaxony]

Ok, I'll try making a few more bishoprics, I only have 1 right now. I had to re-conquer a lot of territory that was slipping away, and of course my King comes swooping in and snags some of it before I could lol.

I have like 5 duke titles 20 or so count titles under me at the moment (I'm a duke myself), had to strip them from disloyal people. I guess I'll try handing out a bazillion of them, hope it works out lol.

 

[Nick B II]

If you want the exact math on BB the FAQ is up to date:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162777

BTW, if you've got a son with an ecclesiastical education you could make him a Bishop and then grant him most of the Counties. You'd get the family loyalty bonus, plus a succession loyalty bonus, plus 2.0% for 200 piety, and you'd get rid of some BB.

And if that particular son inherits you get all the land back.

I've tried this a couple times. It only worked once, because my 20-year-old sons kept predeceasing me, but when it worked it was extremely cool.

Nick

 

[LordofSaxony]

Strange my post went poof.

Anyhow, I managed to solve my crisis for the time being. My ranking was "worse than scum" probably because I started conquering 80% of France within a very very short period of time. I gave out a bunch of land to various people in my family, made a few bishoprics, but I'm not sure if it was helping due to the severity of how much people hated me. So while I had a large a army in southern france crushing uprisings, I noticed that I still held a claim to the Kingdom of France from an earlier period (before it fell apart). So I marched my 30,000 strong army and met with his, which was about 800 and he hands me the title.

I'm wondering if being a Duke that you can only grow so large before you hit a glass ceiling, meaning that even with the best of leaders that you'll eventually encounter problems if your still only a Duke with a lot of land. Because when I became King, I noticed I didn't have any uprisings anymore even though people thought I was worse than scum still.

 

[Count of Reval]

If you want to control a situation, it is recommended not to look just at your reputation (and BB), but rather focus on the monthly loyalty change (of the most disloyal vassals), and the components of it. Because loyalty is what really counts, and it depends on so many factors beside reputation. Sometimes you can afford yourself quite low reputation, and still be on the positive side of the change. But it is always important to keep in mind, that the loyalty components' pattern changes a lot when your ruler dies. You have to weight potential gains from BB increase caused by some actions, and risks in a long run...

(Managing BB is not some annoying side-effect, but an integral part of the game. Without taking into consideration BB beforehand, there can't be no sustainable growth.)

 

[Nick B II]

My best guess is that you didn't do a save-reload when you became King. When you loaded the game FRAN was AI and used AI rules, which continued even after you took the French crown. One of those rules is BB doesn't count. The AI is simply too dumb to handle it.

As Reval says when you're human BB management is half the game. Depending on your King and his vassals you can get away wih being a huge jerk.

BTW, in your case I'd recommend getting rid of most of your Duke-titles. Find Counts who like you (or only hate a little) and give them Duchies. They automatically become overlord of any Count in their Duchies default area. This way you reduce the number of potential headaches, and get rid of the worst trouble-makers, while increasing prestige (for Duke-vassals), and reducing BB.

Then stop doing bad shit for awhile. When people rebel conquer them, but give up your claims to their titles. This reduces BB and increases prestige. When they come back they've got 100% loyalty.

Nick

 

[truth is life]

I'm wondering if being a Duke that you can only grow so large before you hit a glass ceiling, meaning that even with the best of leaders that you'll eventually encounter problems if your still only a Duke with a lot of land. Because when I became King, I noticed I didn't have any uprisings anymore even though people thought I was worse than scum still.

Yes. Well, the save and reload thing was probably part of that, but a king gets a number of benefits dukes do not, and it's much easier to keep a kingdom together than a huge duchy. Especially in certain areas (do you know how many duchies there are in Rus?)