Okay, the game surely likes to point out the de-jure hierarchy - so why am I prohibited from keeping said hierarchy?

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AlipheeseXV

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Apr 16, 2020
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Hey there,

with how the game always points out the de-jure hierarchy, even annoying one by constantly showing you in the suggestion tab to give away titles to the rightful owner and characters having a negative opinion modifier when they desire a county as duke or duchy as king or kingdom as emperor.
It's even that if you aren't the rightful liege de-jure wise, your vassal will pay less taxes and contribute less levies.
So, my question would be: Why on earth does something like the following screenshot even exist in the game???
20211129121633_1.jpg

First off, I think there are more kingdoms with special requirements (for Pommerania you need to be slovien culture?) and a prominent example a tier higher would be to be christian to form the Holy Roman Empire and being excluded as christian ruler from just forming the Empire of Germania.
But having Kingdom of Jerusalem exclusevely for christian faiths means, playing in Arabia as non-christian will doom the player to wait that a crusade is successful, then declare upon Jerusalem and take everything to usurp the title...
Why on earth is it considered a good mechanic when it clearly goes against the structure the game provides?

And before someone might mention it, I'm totally aware of de-jure drift, so I could de-jure eat the Jerusalem duchies... if I stay king. As Emperor this doesn't apply anymore...
 
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Why.. why would not having the Title of king of Jerusalem ``doom" you ? This was always a feature of CK (maybe not CK1 idk but CK2 yes) and that was never an issue. You can be king (Sultan) of any of the surrounding kingdoms and rule the land just fine.

Yes vassals not being your de jure vassal makes them more unruly but nothing that can't be managed really, +The kingdom of jerusalem isn't that big so it's not like most of your realm will be impossible to rule.

And if you reeeeally want to have a kingdom in that exact same spot that you can create as a non-christian, you can always make custom kingdoms :


1638185925627.png


>> https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Decisions


+ You talk about becoming an emperor, but since Jerusalem is de jure in Arabia, your jerusalem dukes will see you as their rightfull liege if you're emperor of Arabia.
 
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Yeah CK3 does some unnatural things with it's de-jure/de-facto system.
Ideally Jerusalem would be a titular title from the start, becoming nontitular post-crusade either automatically or with a decision. But then that wouldn't mesh with how crusades work, where you need to pick a de-jure title as the target.
 
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Why.. why would not having the Title of king of Jerusalem ``doom" you ? This was always a feature of CK (maybe not CK1 idk but CK2 yes) and that was never an issue. You can be king (Sultan) of any of the surrounding kingdoms and rule the land just fine.

Yes vassals not being your de jure vassal makes them more unruly but nothing that can't be managed really, +The kingdom of jerusalem isn't that big so it's not like most of your realm will be impossible to rule.

And if you reeeeally want to have a kingdom in that exact same spot that you can create as a non-christian, you can always make custom kingdoms :


View attachment 780296

>> https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Decisions


+ You talk about becoming an emperor, but since Jerusalem is de jure in Arabia, your jerusalem dukes will see you as their rightfull liege if you're emperor of Arabia.

Okay, with over 2.500 hours in ck3, I'm totally aware of custom kingdoms and even custom empires.
And I know how to manage vassals.

But was it always implemented?
I think back in the days before the ruler designer you could form it with any religion. But as it is a long time ago, I can also be wrong about that.
Nonetheless why even have this feature? Why do I have to 'cheese' it via custom kingdom or otherwise? Why only make it foundable for christians (in that regard, why are christians forced to form the HRE and forbidden from going for Germania)?

So, therefore it still stands, despite all other solutions, as non-christian ruler on kingdom tier there is a gap in the de-jure hierarchy.

Pomeranian culture, and that's only for the AI to create the kingdom.

Good to know if I ever play in that region.
 
Note that if you have the Empire of Arabia, the dukes inside the Kingdom of Jerusalem (whether it exists or not) are still considered your rightful vassals for all tax and opinion purposes. Dukes consider both kings and emperors that are de jure above them their rightful liege (even if the emperor doesn't have the kingdom title). So beside having one less title to create/hand out, it doesn't really negatively effect you.


As for why it exist, it's because before the crusades all of that region was considered Syria. So Muslim rulers creating the Kingdom of Jerusalem (which without the restriction they'd likely do) would be ahistorical.


But I agree it's a weird restriction. Personally I'd prefer if all of it was de jure Syria and the Crusade had a special mechanic to be able to create the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Alternatively, let the player create it regardless of religion (expect maybe if they are Jewish as they have the create Israel decision instead) and just restrict the AI (like with Pomerania).
 
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Note that if you have the Empire of Arabia, the dukes inside the Kingdom of Jerusalem (whether it exists or not) are still considered your rightful vassals for all tax and opinion purposes. Dukes consider both kings and emperors that are de jure above them their rightful liege (even if the emperor doesn't have the kingdom title). So beside having one less title to create/hand out, it doesn't really negatively effect you.


As for why it exist, it's because before the crusades all of that region was considered Syria. So Muslim rulers creating the Kingdom of Jerusalem (which without the restriction they'd likely do) would be ahistorical.


But I agree it's a weird restriction. Personally I'd prefer if all of it was de jure Syria and the Crusade had a special mechanic to be able to create the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Alternatively, let the player create it regardless of religion (expect maybe if they are Jewish as they have the create Israel decision instead) and just restrict the AI (like with Pomerania).

I'm (most of the time) aware of Empire equals de-jure Kingdom.
A habit of mine is to collect all the kingdom titles inside my empire. Yes, it's something personal, so yeah, wouldn't really count.
Nonetheless it's a de-jure gap in the hierarchy.

If pdox really did this restriction for historical reasons... in a sandbox game where as soon as I press the start button, everything is ahistorical... then it is plain wrong.

So basically, if crusade mechanics won't get a major overhaul and maybe an own flavour pack, this restriction will stay.
And yeah, forgot about jewish faiths as non-christins have the decision.
But really, this restriction should (if even) only apply to the AI.
 
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A habit of mine is to collect all the kingdom titles inside my empire. Yes, it's something personal, so yeah, wouldn't really count.
Nonetheless it's a de-jure gap in the hierarchy.
Give the land to a Christian. Let him form the title, then revoke it with your "infidels can be freely revoked" law options maybe?

I know it's a stupid work around and they're not guaranteed to do it, but it might let you collect all the titles.
 
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If pdox really did this restriction for historical reasons... in a sandbox game where as soon as I press the start button, everything is ahistorical... then it is plain wrong.

Yes it's a sandbox, we don"t wan't thing to happen as they did, but we want thing to happen as they could have happened (as much as possible)

The HRE and the Kingdom of Jerusalem have their direct origin in the Catholic church, Germania only exists as an alternative for pagans.

Many whacky stuff can happen already (and usually does), but yeah no the Pope can"t get married, you can't invade Tibet as England at the start of the game and the HRE requires Catholicism. Compared to CK2, CK3 is already a lot more sandboxy (custom religions, cultures ect) but some stuff needs to be restricted to some religions or cultures or i'd break immersion imo.
 
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As for why it exist, it's because before the crusades all of that region was considered Syria.
So make those duchies de-jure Syria? That would make the crusade target sensible in size. Playing Catholic and not redirecting the crusades somewhere useful, like Egypt or Syria, is like roleplaying to re-enact the historical failure.
 
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So make those duchies de-jure Syria? That would make the crusade target sensible in size. Playing Catholic and not redirecting the crusades somewhere useful, like Egypt or Syria, is like roleplaying to re-enact the historical failure.
You make some good point and I agree, hence:
Personally I'd prefer if all of it was de jure Syria and the Crusade had a special mechanic to be able to create the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
 
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So make those duchies de-jure Syria? That would make the crusade target sensible in size. Playing Catholic and not redirecting the crusades somewhere useful, like Egypt or Syria, is like roleplaying to re-enact the historical failure.

If those duchies start out of de jure Syria, then the Pope couldn't call a crusade for the Kingdom of Jerusalem because that title would not exist anywhere. It would have no de jure territory nor a holder of the titular title.
 
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If those duchies start out of de jure Syria, then the Pope couldn't call a crusade for the Kingdom of Jerusalem because that title would not exist anywhere. It would have no de jure territory nor a holder of the titular title.
The Pope would look at Jerusalem, see it was in the kingdom of Syria and call for a crusade to take the Syria, which includes Jerusalem. Simple as that and creates a crusader kingdom large enough to put up a fight against the infidels trying to take it back.
 
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The Pope would look at Jerusalem, see it was in the kingdom of Syria and call for a crusade to take the Syria, which includes Jerusalem. Simple as that and creates a crusader kingdom large enough to put up a fight against the infidels trying to take it back.

That actually would not be too ahistorical, since the Crusader states did extend all the way up the Levantine coast.
 
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That actually would not be too ahistorical, since the Crusader states did extend all the way up the Levantine coast.
They didn't go as inland as the kingdom of syria does, also you need to consider warscore cost, and Syria being split between seljuks and fatimids at game start meaning it would be more than an uphill battle. Damascus and aleppo were the key of many campaigns but never taken. They were also the crusader STATES plural, not all vassals of Jerusalem
So make those duchies de-jure Syria? That would make the crusade target sensible in size. Playing Catholic and not redirecting the crusades somewhere useful, like Egypt or Syria, is like roleplaying to re-enact the historical failure.
How? Its a holy site which is very useful, and if lucky the king of Jerusalem can take an Egypt weakened by factions. Andalucia is always my first target tho for Crusades
 
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How? Its a holy site which is very useful, and if lucky the king of Jerusalem can take an Egypt weakened by factions. Andalucia is always my first target tho for Crusades
And Crusader Egypt can easily take Jerusalem. Granted, I have not played vanilla since before 1.4 so perhaps Fatimids just fail harder these days and even tiny Jerusalem stands a chance.

Andalusia is a good crusade target too. I usually prefer Egypt as it gives a new front to launch holy wars in. Andalusia starts just about in aggro range of Catholics anyway.
 
And Crusader Egypt can easily take Jerusalem. Granted, I have not played vanilla since before 1.4 so perhaps Fatimids just fail harder these days and even tiny Jerusalem stands a chance.
Tiny Jerusalem starts with a trait as well as event troops
Andalusia is a good crusade target too. I usually prefer Egypt as it gives a new front to launch holy wars in. Andalusia starts just about in aggro range of Catholics anyway.
Yes Catholic Spanish can attack, but it prevents Islamic resurgence for good
 
They didn't go as inland as the kingdom of syria does, also you need to consider warscore cost, and Syria being split between seljuks and fatimids at game start meaning it would be more than an uphill battle. Damascus and aleppo were the key of many campaigns but never taken. They were also the crusader STATES plural, not all vassals of Jerusalem
You could make the first crusade that has a special cb (like how William the Conqueror uses a special cb to get England, plus some of the sub titles). This CB could be for the duchies of what is currently the kingdom of Jerusalem, plus the duchies along the coast in Syria. And if the crusade wins it could create the Kingdom of Jerusalem and give that to the person with the highest war score, and give characters with lower war score independent crusader states along the Syrian coast.