Warning!!! Exploits below!!!
Hello all.
I once thought that my previous Gold, Prestige, and Piety exploits were so advanced that they couldn't possibly be improved.
I was wrong. My new exploits are much more easier and faster, both for in game and real time. Let's see.
1. Piety Exploit.
I will go with piety first since it is the simplest. While there are many great tricks I have found, the best by far is using a heresy county. What you need is a county with heresy. If you don't have access to one, then create one by lowering moral authority of a religion
There are roughly two major ways to convert your religion; One is converting to your spouse's for 250 piety cost and it doesn't effect on moral authority. The other one is converting to your capital province's for 500 prestige and it does hurt moral authority of the former religion. It also gives you 200 piety. See how would that work?
Once you have your capital moved to a county with a heresy. It's almost done. Convert to the local religion (heresy) for 500 prestige and earn 200 piety. Immediately give up the heresy for 500 prestige and earn 200 piety again. Rinse and repeat until you have enough piety.
If you are so lucky to have Sunni heresy, select the tech school for 75 tech points every time you abandon the heresy and become Sunni again.
1-2. Piety Exploit (Old)
My old method was keep using temple holdings. It may still be useful in the very beginning. Here is a simple description. Whenever you get temple holdings, revoke all the priests at 25 prestige cost, and generate new priests (other than Muslim) for 25 piety gain. Normally you would need to wait an year to repeat it. Instead, transfer the priests to a Muslim vassal count, and get them back by revoking or executing the Muslim vassal count. Then you can immediately revoke the priests.
Another method is keep hopping your capital. It's doable and it works. But nothing like sitting on one heresy province and converting all your prestige to piety in a few minutes of real time.
2. Prestige Exploit
Create all the ducal titles for 100 gold each, and gain 200 prestige from each.
When you have created all ducal titles, make an inland republic count with a different religion (If you are a Muslim, it has to be a Muslim with different denomination) and dump all the titles to him. He may have family members, but should have positive opinion and very low intrigue.
If you grant him independence and immediately declare a holy war or county conquest war, then all his ducal titles will be destroyed when you win the war so you can recreate them all for prestige. BUT you loose 50% of your current piety and you become a truce breaker.
The correct way of doing has another step. After dumping all your titles to him, immediately arrest him. If you can't get near 100% chance, try becoming an emperor and arrest him after first transferring him to a vassal king.
When you have an imprisoned inland grand mayor with many ducal titles, grant independence to him, and then execute him. His inland republic will be inherited by his successor. Since you didn't grant independence to the successor, now you can safely declare a war to him.
A 1000 men troop will win the war either on the same day or within a day. The realm has only one county and no barony vassals since you should have already transferred them to someone else. Since the county capital is a city with its mayor replaced, it should have 0~20 soldiers only.
I have several retinue or mercenary troops of 1000~5000 men to head to different provinces, to arrive in different dates. I can easily win 4 holy wars within a week. With 150 ducal titles at hand, that's 30k x 4 = 120k prestige in a week. That will cost me 60k ducats to create the ducal titles, which will cost me 2k piety to arrest and execute 200 patricians, which will cost me 5k prestige.... You see, 5k prestige becomes 120k prestige in one cycle!
Holy Fury added so many ducal titles that I thought it had too many. I was wrong again. Great Works added even more ducal titles (It seems!), and the more ducal titles the better. I mean, now Holy Wars are practically useless for world conquest.
But then you don't conquer the world with stupid holy wars that are good for nothing but prestige exploit. You take the world with marriage, murders, and betrayals.
3. Gold Exploit
The best way to make gold is using a vassal merchant republic, and killing off patricians for 300 ducats each. To have a vassal merchant republic, you need to be king+ tier and have a coastal county with a city.
You also need to have title revocation law set.
If you are ready, there are two ways to make a vassal republic;
#1, Own a coastal county with a barony city owned by a mayor, and give the county to the mayor. While this works, it takes additional days to collect the fund and things can go wrong.
#2, Own a coastal county, and own its barony city as well by revoking the current mayor. Make the city the county's capital. Then give the county to a subject. This is faster and safer. You can collect the sweet deposit on the same day. Now, this subject MUST HAVE A DIFFERENT RELIGION than you, and preferably the same culture.
The grand mayor should have exactly one city (the county's capital) holding and one ducal title, and have no vassal but his four patricians. To achieve this, simply transfer all the counts and barons to another duke.
Once you have a vassal merchant republic, the first step is imprisoning the grand mayor. You should have chosen one who never saw your past tyranny. Near 0 intrigue. No family. Get high intrigue spouse and spymaster. Get you best martial to suppress revolt on that county. Safe and reload to update the correct imprisonment chance. Gift him gold, honorary titles, commander title, and your children's guardianship. I usually get 100% or near chance.
Now that your grand mayor is safely imprisoned, see which patrician is his heir. Character screen's information is often incorrect. Click the ducal title and see the updated information.
When a merchant republic is created, the system adds four patrician families, each with 500 ducats and many family members. When a patrician family go extinct, a new patrician family is created. This replacement patrician comes only with 300 ducats and no family member. Our goal is having an imprisoned replacement patrician to become heir of our imprisoned grand mayor.
Start with current heir of the grand mayor. Imprison and execute the patrician until either the family go extinct or is inherited by a child. If the family is extinct, immediately imprison the replacement patrician. Sometimes I get it with just one failed imprisonment attempt. Sometimes it takes over a dozen arrests and executions.
Each arrest attempt costs 10 piety, and executions is free of piety because you have chosen the grand mayor to have a different religion.
Once you have a new generation patrician with 300 ducats, arrested and set to inherit your grand mayor, execute your grand mayor. The imprisoned patrician is now your new grand mayor, already imprisoned, and with 800 ducats including 500 from the executed former grand mayor.
Now you are set to go! Keep imprisoning and executing the replacement patrician. Each dead patrician will add 300 ducats to your new grand mayor. Even if you state intrigue suck, you should be able to get at least 9 out of 10. This is essentially buying 300 ducats with 10 piety each. You can do it unlimited and go into negative piety as low as you want. But I usually stop at around 10~20k ducats to keep negative piety manageable, and later do it again when I have plenty piety, and get 100~200k. (see below for piety exploits)
If you have reached your target funding, you are ready to collect it. Your first grand mayor was given county capital and a ducal title. You would have had to wait a year before you could revoke those, if he was still your grand mayor. Fortunately, he was executed and you can revoke your current grand mayor's titles.
Now here is a general tip about revoking titles from an imprisoned vassal. If you revoke more than one title in a day, and he becomes title-less as the result, he will leave your court. He is still in your dungeon. But you can't collect his ducats.
For our case, just revoke his ducal title and he will become a lord mayor. And at that immediate moment, your are his heir. Execute him and you have collected all the money.
Hello all.
I once thought that my previous Gold, Prestige, and Piety exploits were so advanced that they couldn't possibly be improved.
I was wrong. My new exploits are much more easier and faster, both for in game and real time. Let's see.
1. Piety Exploit.
I will go with piety first since it is the simplest. While there are many great tricks I have found, the best by far is using a heresy county. What you need is a county with heresy. If you don't have access to one, then create one by lowering moral authority of a religion
There are roughly two major ways to convert your religion; One is converting to your spouse's for 250 piety cost and it doesn't effect on moral authority. The other one is converting to your capital province's for 500 prestige and it does hurt moral authority of the former religion. It also gives you 200 piety. See how would that work?
Once you have your capital moved to a county with a heresy. It's almost done. Convert to the local religion (heresy) for 500 prestige and earn 200 piety. Immediately give up the heresy for 500 prestige and earn 200 piety again. Rinse and repeat until you have enough piety.
If you are so lucky to have Sunni heresy, select the tech school for 75 tech points every time you abandon the heresy and become Sunni again.
1-2. Piety Exploit (Old)
My old method was keep using temple holdings. It may still be useful in the very beginning. Here is a simple description. Whenever you get temple holdings, revoke all the priests at 25 prestige cost, and generate new priests (other than Muslim) for 25 piety gain. Normally you would need to wait an year to repeat it. Instead, transfer the priests to a Muslim vassal count, and get them back by revoking or executing the Muslim vassal count. Then you can immediately revoke the priests.
Another method is keep hopping your capital. It's doable and it works. But nothing like sitting on one heresy province and converting all your prestige to piety in a few minutes of real time.
2. Prestige Exploit
Create all the ducal titles for 100 gold each, and gain 200 prestige from each.
When you have created all ducal titles, make an inland republic count with a different religion (If you are a Muslim, it has to be a Muslim with different denomination) and dump all the titles to him. He may have family members, but should have positive opinion and very low intrigue.
If you grant him independence and immediately declare a holy war or county conquest war, then all his ducal titles will be destroyed when you win the war so you can recreate them all for prestige. BUT you loose 50% of your current piety and you become a truce breaker.
The correct way of doing has another step. After dumping all your titles to him, immediately arrest him. If you can't get near 100% chance, try becoming an emperor and arrest him after first transferring him to a vassal king.
When you have an imprisoned inland grand mayor with many ducal titles, grant independence to him, and then execute him. His inland republic will be inherited by his successor. Since you didn't grant independence to the successor, now you can safely declare a war to him.
A 1000 men troop will win the war either on the same day or within a day. The realm has only one county and no barony vassals since you should have already transferred them to someone else. Since the county capital is a city with its mayor replaced, it should have 0~20 soldiers only.
I have several retinue or mercenary troops of 1000~5000 men to head to different provinces, to arrive in different dates. I can easily win 4 holy wars within a week. With 150 ducal titles at hand, that's 30k x 4 = 120k prestige in a week. That will cost me 60k ducats to create the ducal titles, which will cost me 2k piety to arrest and execute 200 patricians, which will cost me 5k prestige.... You see, 5k prestige becomes 120k prestige in one cycle!
Holy Fury added so many ducal titles that I thought it had too many. I was wrong again. Great Works added even more ducal titles (It seems!), and the more ducal titles the better. I mean, now Holy Wars are practically useless for world conquest.
But then you don't conquer the world with stupid holy wars that are good for nothing but prestige exploit. You take the world with marriage, murders, and betrayals.
3. Gold Exploit
The best way to make gold is using a vassal merchant republic, and killing off patricians for 300 ducats each. To have a vassal merchant republic, you need to be king+ tier and have a coastal county with a city.
You also need to have title revocation law set.
If you are ready, there are two ways to make a vassal republic;
#1, Own a coastal county with a barony city owned by a mayor, and give the county to the mayor. While this works, it takes additional days to collect the fund and things can go wrong.
#2, Own a coastal county, and own its barony city as well by revoking the current mayor. Make the city the county's capital. Then give the county to a subject. This is faster and safer. You can collect the sweet deposit on the same day. Now, this subject MUST HAVE A DIFFERENT RELIGION than you, and preferably the same culture.
The grand mayor should have exactly one city (the county's capital) holding and one ducal title, and have no vassal but his four patricians. To achieve this, simply transfer all the counts and barons to another duke.
Once you have a vassal merchant republic, the first step is imprisoning the grand mayor. You should have chosen one who never saw your past tyranny. Near 0 intrigue. No family. Get high intrigue spouse and spymaster. Get you best martial to suppress revolt on that county. Safe and reload to update the correct imprisonment chance. Gift him gold, honorary titles, commander title, and your children's guardianship. I usually get 100% or near chance.
Now that your grand mayor is safely imprisoned, see which patrician is his heir. Character screen's information is often incorrect. Click the ducal title and see the updated information.
When a merchant republic is created, the system adds four patrician families, each with 500 ducats and many family members. When a patrician family go extinct, a new patrician family is created. This replacement patrician comes only with 300 ducats and no family member. Our goal is having an imprisoned replacement patrician to become heir of our imprisoned grand mayor.
Start with current heir of the grand mayor. Imprison and execute the patrician until either the family go extinct or is inherited by a child. If the family is extinct, immediately imprison the replacement patrician. Sometimes I get it with just one failed imprisonment attempt. Sometimes it takes over a dozen arrests and executions.
Each arrest attempt costs 10 piety, and executions is free of piety because you have chosen the grand mayor to have a different religion.
Once you have a new generation patrician with 300 ducats, arrested and set to inherit your grand mayor, execute your grand mayor. The imprisoned patrician is now your new grand mayor, already imprisoned, and with 800 ducats including 500 from the executed former grand mayor.
Now you are set to go! Keep imprisoning and executing the replacement patrician. Each dead patrician will add 300 ducats to your new grand mayor. Even if you state intrigue suck, you should be able to get at least 9 out of 10. This is essentially buying 300 ducats with 10 piety each. You can do it unlimited and go into negative piety as low as you want. But I usually stop at around 10~20k ducats to keep negative piety manageable, and later do it again when I have plenty piety, and get 100~200k. (see below for piety exploits)
If you have reached your target funding, you are ready to collect it. Your first grand mayor was given county capital and a ducal title. You would have had to wait a year before you could revoke those, if he was still your grand mayor. Fortunately, he was executed and you can revoke your current grand mayor's titles.
Now here is a general tip about revoking titles from an imprisoned vassal. If you revoke more than one title in a day, and he becomes title-less as the result, he will leave your court. He is still in your dungeon. But you can't collect his ducats.
For our case, just revoke his ducal title and he will become a lord mayor. And at that immediate moment, your are his heir. Execute him and you have collected all the money.
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