Is there any advantage in making kings as an Emperor?

[unmerged(312767)]

So fer the only advantage is reduced number of micromanagement with your vassals, when you have to deal with 1 kings instead of dozens of dukes.
The downsides are more serious. With latest patch, kings tend to always join some kind of faction to make your life more miserable. No matter what pinion they may have on you, even with 100 they will join independance, even if they are of your ciulture, religion and so on, or lower crown authority.
So is there any advantage in making kings? Duke you can manage somehow but with kings they may get huge bonus of manpower to the faction to allow it to rebel.

 

[yezhanquan]

Decreased management AND handling nutjobs for you. While they may join factions, if they have a few ambitious dukes under them, they are likely to be busy fighting fires, fires which you have to fight should you hold the kingdom in question.

 

[Alyiakal]

It really depends on how much control you like having over your vassals. While it's true that vassal kings will "fight fires" for you, because of poor AI, they tend to do a very poor job of it to begin with, as well as making poor choices that will create even more fires to put out than if you had been in direct control yourself. This is due to your vassal king almost certainly being an inferior "liege" to the vassals in question than you could be personally. The AI tends to run dynasty lines into the ground, even if you've personally groomed all the heirs.

With all this extra fighting going on that has probably been caused by the less capable vassal king, the area is basically useless to you in providing levies, as they're all being burned up at an alarming rate in internal strife. This doesn't matter as much with mass retinues carrying the day when you're an emperor, but it's still annoying.

Ultimately, it's really whether you can deal with the extra bit of micromanagement, versus dealing with an incompetent AI vassal getting into trouble (which you won't be able to directly interfere with). So personal preference really. So long as you've weighed the pros and cons, there isn't really an "always right" answer. I will say I only end up with vassal kings when I push a claimant's claim on a kingdom after landing them (mostly because I'm too lazy to dismantle the kingdom in duchy sized bites, and would rather take out the whole thing).

 

[NewbieOne]

Decreased management AND handling nutjobs for you. While they may join factions, if they have a few ambitious dukes under them, they are likely to be busy fighting fires, fires which you have to fight should you hold the kingdom in question.

Plus chance of inheriting a kingdom from the outside, and generally better marriage opportunities considering their higher rank.

But you take a tax hit for sure.

 

[SRM]

I've managed to forge perfectly stable vassal Kingdoms before, usually by replacing all the Dukes other than the King himself with Prince-Bishops ruling over a mixture of Archbishops and Counts. You have to be careful with the royal line's heirs, though. It helps to appoint cadet branches of your own dynasty to run things, just make sure they don't have claims on each others' titles.

 

[unmerged(312767)]

What annoys me the most is their unpredictability - no matter how high opinion they have on you, they will join random factions to revolt.

 

[unmerged(281782)]

Pro:
1) Less micromanagement
2) Chance to incorporate another kingdom (actually, almost every kingdom I've created for my vassals was to give it to some outside kingdom heir)
3) More prestige
4) More dynastic prestige for vassal and better marriages(that's why I give them away to my relatives mostly)
5) Generally, more levies, as relations with every duke don't matter as much, and it's easier to be on good terms with one king then with 6 dukes.

Con:
1) Bigger blocs means when there is a threat of rebellion it is greater. While there are still few kings, one of them may have over 50% realm power and revolt alone
2) Less control over particular duchies
3) In case of ERE, you can't rotate Despot titles as you can Doux ones, as they invoke usual opinion penalty for revocation. Actually, that's the only reason why as ERE I try to avoid creating Kingdoms other than necessary ones (to give Kingdom of Sicily to future King of France-England? sure, can't refuse). As any other Empire — I'll make as much as I can.

Of course, you also can't spam P-B's or Doges for money, but I don't even take that gamey way into consideration. And with normal feudal vassals you don't get any money anyway.

 

[unmerged(228153)]

It depends on how big the kingdom is - the likes of Navarra or Galicia are basically a-okay if your Iberian Empire spans the entire peninsula. They're not big enough to cause problems if they revolt, and when they're on your side, they're good allies. What's more, you don't lose a lot of taxes compared to the duchy solution (Navarra is just one duchy anyway, and Galicia is a whopping two). [redacted silliness about elective monarchy, which Jack_Folstam corrected] And, as mentioned, the dynastic prestige is nice to have if you hand out (small!) kingdoms to your relatives.

But dealing with a Lotharingian kingdom as the Holy Roman Emperor is just asking for trouble.

 

[noobermenschen]

Pro:

5) Generally, more levies, as relations with every duke don't matter as much, and it's easier to be on good terms with one king then with 6 dukes.

I would question this, as the levies your vassal raises from his vassals is dependent on their opinion of him no? You should get many more levies directly from a bunch of single province counts in love with your brave, kind Emperor who gifts them a little gold every few years, than through a craven, cruel vassal King who may love his liege but is constantly pissing off his peoples.

As far as prestige, having several counts as vassals get you more than one King in most cases.

You are of course correct about the micromanagement - filling the kingdom with single province archbishops before handing it off sounds like a very neat solution, if a bit gamey. And with a few vassal Kings your Councillors really come to the fore - a good Chancellor can make the rounds of a few Kingdoms spreading news of your wonderfulness, while a good Spymaster is worth his weight in gold "convincing" your major vassals to stay away from those nasty, dirty factions.

 

[unmerged(494787)]

Dukes are always electors in an Empire.

 

[Lessing]

One more thing:

Pro: More ease when it comes to raising levies. Raising the levy of a king and sailing it to the target is much preferrable than doing the same with 7 dukes whose lands might even be landlocked. This is the main argument for an expanding realm to have king vassals as it speeds up expansion a lot.

 

[Jia Xu]

The advantages are numerous. The most obvious advantage is having less vassals to keep an eye on. The second advantage is being able to use liege levies in larger kingdoms. being able to summon the entire levy of Arabia in either the north of the peninsula or the south is a significant advantage, for example. Having kings as vassals also provides a significant boost to your dynastic prestige.

 

[yourworstnightm]

However I wouldn't bother with king vassals, they are never loyal.

 

[Sopot]

Since factions came into play, I've avoided king level vassals, I just dont want the hassle of baby sitting a king to make sure he doesn't revolt even though he is my religeon, culture and dynasty. I'd rather just deal with 3 smaller dukes who will plot against each other and not create independance factions.

And yes, I'm aware I could just keep relations high, but there will come a point when you just get that envious, ambitious king who has decided to fabricate claims on something you own and now hates you forever, if he were only a duke, then no problem, but as a king he'll have a decent sized levy plus whatever free troops the game decides to give him for his independance faction revolt.

 

[A_Dane]

Had a game going as danish Multiking of most of Scandinavia. I eventually formed the empire and handed out most of the kingdoms.

Made the game way too easy, i hardly even felt the dive in income, and I got between 8-10k extra levies, and far, far, far fewer people to keep in line.

 

[unmerged(106498)]

I like to make King Vassals as Emp, and I never have much trouble from it. If you get that ambitious guy who fabricates a claim on you and is going to revlot, just raise levies in his area to make him super mad until he does revolt, then crush the revolt, lock him away, and for at least one generation you don't have any trouble. If you give a different duke in that Kingdom the title, they'll spend a couple generations fighting over it, again less trouble for you. As for giving all kingdoms to your kin, there is one major problem with this. Anytime one of them fights with another vassal of yours, they will will call in their blood allies, and soon all your vassals will be fighting one another. Many will end up dead or in prison, and some of those may have been important members of your court. They also -always- end up with claims on one another very quickly and your carefully laid out tidy vassal borders become a complete mess. It seems things work out a little better for me if I give each vassal Kingdom to a different family.

 

[unmerged(228153)]

Dukes are always electors in an Empire.

They are indeed. What was I thinking when I wrote that? It's not like the HRE loses its electors when Bohemia becomes a kingdom... Thanks!