Questions regarding crown authority and factions

[BetaGun]

Hi all,

still trying to figure this game out and I have two questions:

1) Playing as the Duke of Lower Lorraine I managed to conquer quite a few counties. However, the Kaiser recently introduced Medium Crown Law. Am I right in thinking that there is no way to get more terrritory other than inheriting (through marriage) and attacking countries outside of the HRE?

2) Obviously I wish to change this. Becoming emperor myself is not possible. (no one wants to vote for me ) So basically I could declare independance or lower crown authority, right? I chose the latter option and started a faction. To get faction members, I sent my spymaster to scheme in Oberbayern (since the King of Bavaria is probably the second strongest vassal after me right now). After a while, I got an event telling me I could ask him to join my faction. So i did and another event popped up saying he would do so and that I gained some kind of leverage. However, he never joined my faction (I even let the game go on for another month) and there was no diplomatic action to ask him to do so either. So what happened? Did I misread the event or am I missing something?

Thanks for your answers!

 

[hylander25k]

You're in a bit of a sticky wicket.

The EASIEST route to go would be wait for a succession crisis/civil war and try and capitalize on whoever is weak and less defensible. Hope that you can take them quickly before the war ends.

Dynastic marriages are a safer, more stable way to gain territory - though the game of inheritance is is highly variant and will require a good deal of cunning and money, should you need to dispose of people one or two spots ahead of your heir in the line of succession.

Alternatively, if your liege has vassals that are in your dejure duchy, you might have some luck vassalizing them if they fight for independence, provided your relations are good.

To get the ball rolling on this, it's always worth a shot to get your liege excommunicated, and have some strong allies outside your liege's realm.

Those are the options that come to mind.

As for the faction - that sounds like a bug. Either that, or he left your faction quickly. Try getting rid of the faction and remaking it. ALSO it pays to have good relations with the courtiers of your liege, especially their Councillors and especially if they already are on his bad side. Courtiers are the kind of people you're happy your enemy has, even though they are usually a thorn in the side in your own court. Make sure you exploit that, especially ones who have amoral, greedy or wrothful tendencies on top of a bad reputation. All those 5% and 10%s add up when it comes to plots.

 

[Prime624]

I'll assume the person above knew what he was talking about based on the sheer size of his post.

As for the last part, this is almost certainly a bug. You should promptly report this in the bug reports forum and hopefully they can fix this before it happens to me or anyone else