Raising Crown Authority in the current patch

[SigurdStormhand]

So, how are being doing with this?

I was forced to concede to a Faction to lower CA in my current game, I've spent the following 40 years and three rulers trying to raise it back up from Low to Medium.

This was always going to be an uphill struggle because I'm the Byzantine Emperor in the Old Gods start, so a lot of the Empire is outside my direct control. Even so, I got close ones, then my ruler hit 50, died and I had to start over. I need about 180 votes of 350, give or take, depending on how titles are distributed. The best I have managed is 154, I think.

It seems like the threshold for a vassal to agree is over +80 Opinion, if that's the case it's really rather too high given that the Chancellor's Improve Relations Action and gifts have been nerfed. By the time I've got a character up to that sort of opinion They're over 50 and about to drop. It kept happening, I was able to get to 120~ and then someone would die and I'd have to go to work on their heir.

Thoughts?

I suppose I could fight the big dumb Coalition and take Georgia and The rest of the Balkans, but that's just as much of a slog as throwing money and my chancellor at the problem.

This campaign has just been a chore.

 

[RagingJaws]

I suppose I could fight the big dumb Coalition and take Georgia and The rest of the Balkans, but that's just as much of a slog as throwing money and my chancellor at the problem.

This campaign has just been a chore.

You answered your own question.

Tedious, for sure, but also an opportunity to clean out some vassals and net extra gold. The largest realm I played as without already having achieved the level of CA I wanted was France+Aquitaine, as a duke of Anjou. Wanted to use De Jure drift to turn Aquitaine into a titular title. Ended up King of France with no CA and had to force, through three separate Tyranny wars, the replacement of most of my dukes with smaller content double dukes that were pregifted gold (to cut down on cost)+honorary titles+wards.

Not sure if that works anymore but it's worth a shot. Been a long time.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

You're right - this is no fun, I'll just junk it.

 

[Rationalsanity]

The opinion nerfs make Conclave very useful, there you only have to appease 5-7 voters and not a few dozen in an empire.

 

[Greybeard0815]

Everyone who is in your de-jure empire, but not in your realm will always vote against you. So, conquer your de-jure territory. Find a claimant for Georgia. Land him and then press his claim. This way you only need one war to get them into your realm.

One way to deal with no-voters in your realm is to go full diplomacy. Family focus for Family Patriarch modifier and Carousing to get Socializer and of course Carousing to befriend them.

The other way is to have a female ruler and go full seduction until you get Master Seductress, which provides a opinion bonus of 50 for the opposite gender. And since most vassals will be male anyway it is pretty easy to get most vassals to 100 opinion.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

The opinion nerfs make Conclave very useful, there you only have to appease 5-7 voters and not a few dozen in an empire.

Which is why I'm not using Conclave - and in fact you only need to appease three vassals.

I'll just give it up - I started this game to compare Conclave and Vanilla be trying to do the same reckless thing in both. It worked in Conclave and not Vanilla.

This has given me the information I wanted - Conclave makes the game much easier, and opinion thresholds are rather too high.

 

[RagingJaws]

Which is why I'm not using Conclave - and in fact you only need to appease three vassals.

I'll just give it up - I started this game to compare Conclave and Vanilla be trying to do the same reckless thing in both. It worked in Conclave and not Vanilla.

This has given me the information I wanted - Conclave makes the game much easier, and opinion thresholds are rather too high.

If you want a harder game, play with conclave as a Nomad. That nomads are forced to use the council one step below absolute council authority breaks Nomad realm management. The default council position of Pragmatist actively opposes sensible land management while Glory Hound opposes sensible war target selection, forcing the player into tyranny spirals in dealing out land or selecting targets to expand against. Once you get a single Malcontent Councillor, might as well give up being nice and go 100% Ivan the Terrible on every single Nomad clan in your realm. The problem there is that Council member stances don't make sense with some of the traits and that Nomads need even more special mechanics if you're going to force the player to have an empowered council.

Tangent over. Back to your point... the opinion thresholds, yeah that are much too high. I think most people can agree that pre-conclave opinion modifiers were too skewed towards positive modifiers that the player could stack.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

I don't think it was skewed too much towards positive modifiers - there were a couple of bugs, like when you grant a Viceroyalty in 2.4.x you get a huge bonus for vassal transfer.

Generally though the bonuses were just easy too stack - and unless you want to be Ivan the terrible you don't need to make everyone angry. It was theoretically possible to have everyone at -100 opinion, but the player isn't that stupid.

Things have now gone back to the way they were originally, though, so now everything is hard and factions are huge, and constant.

I would have preferred if they "split the difference" so instead of a +/-5 or +/-10 for most things we got a 7 or 8.

There are other oddities, too, like Banishment giving -20 and False imprisonment still -40, certain laws have also not been adjusted, so a large Feudal tax gives -20.

It all needs another going over.