Please make vassal limit optional

[Mike1984]

I think late-game invasions fill this role, but what CK2 needs is a good AI

Late-game invasions can fill that role to an extent, but that's not supposed to be what the game is about. CK2 is supposed to be a game about managing vassals, so removing the vassal management part of the game defeats the point.

in EU4 AI can create pretty strong countries which are not pushovers like the ones in CK2

Erm, what? Have you played EU4? The AI at the stage of the game I'm referring to is absolutely a pushover. In fact, I've never found the AI to be particularly challenging at any point past the very early game (starting as a small nation).

Governing a province was a part of the career path and sure they used it too boost their power, but they key difference is that 'ministerial' positions in central government gave more power then provincial. For example in Ottoman Empire Grand Vizier had way more power then even governor of Egypt.

Basically my point is as follows:

In large centralized empire having rogue people at court should be way more dangerous to the ruler then having rogue vassals.
In fact sending people to govern remote provinces was often a form of punishment and a way to get rid of someone from the capital to diminish his influence.

This is true to an extent. In a strong, centralised empire, the dangerous people were those close to the emperor. On the other hand, when an empire started to crumble, the regional governors often took the opportunity to declare independence (the governor of Egypt did so when the Ottoman Empire began to slowly disintegrate). That was even true of empires like the Byzantine Empire, where regions like Venice were de-facto independent long before they were officially recognised as such (and, hell, the HRE in the EU era, which was nominally a single empire but in practice was absolutely not).

I do think that EU should model the power of people like the Grand Vizier better, and model the fact that being granted the Viceroyality of Iceland was often not exactly seen as an honour. At the same time, the converse was also true, controlling a large chunk of land absolutely did give you power, especially if you controlled the armies that went with it.

Fundamentally, it's a matter of the game's focus. Yes, it doesn't model the Byzantine system perfectly (or, indeed, other non-feudal systems), but that's because it is ultimately a game about the feudal system. The system the game currently has is by no means ideal, but allowing you to have 5000 count-level vassals under your direct control would be far, far less representative of how large empires actually worked.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Yes but it was the conflict within the central government, not vassals vs central government.

So... The Barons's war that led to Magna Carta wasn't vassals versus the Crown?

The revolt of Henry II's children (as far as the game goes anyway) wasn't a revolt of a landed vassal with an "install claimant" faction, or a simple "I've got a claim on your throne"?

The wars against Edward II weren't vassal against King?

That's part of the problem - this limit should work (and this should also apply to demesne limit) like this:
Vassals under limit give 100% of their contributions
First vassal above the limit gives 90%
Second vassal above the limit gives 80% etc... and it should go down but never reach zero.

So what? Being 10 vassals over is no worse than being 9 vassals over - and no better than being 100 vassals over the limit?

During the late empire Romans did organized their provinces in pretorian prefectures which were the size of CK2 empires.

And you can do exactly this in game - you can give your viceroy all of Hispania and Gallia if you want, and effectively name a Gallian Prefect. That said, the functional division was the diocese, not the prefecture.

It's notable that the year after this map refers to, the Empire **permanently** split...

I haven'\t played quite some time - what they can do besides voting and taking part in plots?

That's partially my point - the distant duke can't vote if he's not on the council, and his plot strength is largely irrelevant, whereas the unlanded guy can effectively block you from doing anything on the council once he gets favours on the other councillors. If your council has war declaration and title management powers, then that can already be quite painful.

Well my according to my definition Louis XIV's France and Imperial Russia would be centralized while HRE would be decentralized, can you give me your examples of countries that you consider centralized?

That's the problem. I wouldn't really consider most pre-medieval and medieval societies to be centralised - simply by necessity. Essentially, I wouldn't consider anywhere big enough that you can't communicate to the capital in a day to be capable of really being centralised, since at that point you have to devolve power to your regional officers (whether military, civilian, or otherwise; and whether feudal, appointed, or religious) to make the day to day decisions. Obviously you also need to be able to communicate back in a similar timeframe. Essentially, I suppose my definition would be whether or not it's possible for central government to make a decision within a sensible timeframe, with their willingness and ability to enforce that decision being secondary.

Even with something like the Russian Empire (pre radio/telegraph) was still utterly reliant on the abilities of those nobles and officers at the periphery of the Empire as you simply can't travel from (for example) the Bering Strait to the capital in anything resembling a useful time frame if an urgent decision has to be made - especially in winter. Not surprisingly, even in around 1910 European Russia was divided up between multiple governors in order to allow functional government.

Don't you think it's a bit gamey ?

It was common practice to give titles out to vassals that were widely spread - although admittedly this tended to be more be widely spread counties or duchies (albeit because generally you were only a king when doing this...) in order to break up their ability to raise troops in a given area. After all, why give a potential claimant to your throne the ability to raise all his troops in one place and possibly march on you before you can consolidate your armies?

It also had practical reasons to do with ensuring that local harvest problems wouldn't bankrupt or break a given lord entirely, as (for example) a famine in Kent wouldn't destroy his income if he also had a few lands in Northumbria and Derby, however the main one is to break up potential strong forces that could march to your capital in only a slightly longer time than news of the revolt could reach you.