Realm Duress -My favourite trait

[Olaus Petrus]

I'm starting to think that "bad traits" like realm duress are extremely fun. Last night I was planning an aggressive war against Poland, when suddenly out of nowhere civil war started and my blind king had to fight against most powerful magnates of my realm, who could raise as many troops as small kingdoms. (I try to keep my magnates weak, but sometimes via inheritance they might gain 4 or 5 duchy titles, which I usually redistribute after their rebellion has failed). Neighbors and religious enemies decided to intervene and I had to fight against couple of great powers while I tried to prevent my vassals from breaking free.

I got 15 king titles (I rule Eastern Europe and Middle East), so naturally there was plenty of vassals who could revolt. It took 5 years before the civil war was over, unfortunately my blind king decided to die to old age and his heir was too popular so the rebellion died out. This was most fun incident in my game since I had two heretic kings in a row. Especially fun it is when you have large number of "bad traits" so that even your heir hates you.

While some may think that realm duress, excommunication or heretic are bad traits, I think that when you have more than 10 king titles civil wars are more challenging than wars against foreign kingdoms. I love rather challenging civil wars, where you face more than 10 revolting dukes at the same time and sometimes I even encourage my vassals to start civil wars or get bad traits on purpose to my king. Does anyone else do that?

 

[unmerged(135995)]

Well, in my current game I am trying to get my vassals to rebel, without much success as of yet.

But yes, these traits are fun. Especially when you're keeping an AAR, because constant victories tend to get boring!

 

[Olaus Petrus]

Well, in my current game I am trying to get my vassals to rebel, without much success as of yet.

But yes, these traits are fun. Especially when you're keeping an AAR, because constant victories tend to get boring!

It's annyoing when they don't take the hint. Sometimes it's better to take their titles in war than revoking those.

Another case is where I don't even want their provinces to be part of my realm. I have appointed my rivals to vassals in places which I don't want in hope that they declare independence. In my current game my capital is in Itil and I don't want to have anything to do with the Western Europe, but I had to conquer few provinces from there. First from Wales which was stronghold of the Seljuk Turks. Seljuk Turks had duchy titles which I wanted and I had already conquered their Middle Eastern lands and despite my wishes Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales happily ignored them. So I had to destroy them myself and I appointed my rival to rule there. Eventually it worked and he declared independence. But now some decades later one of my vassal inherited his lands because of marriage, so I have to try to get rid of the Welsh provinces again.

Other case was Kingdom of Croatia. I had enough provinces to create the king title, but there was one province Muslim kingdom of Croatia at the middle of Spain. (Muslim family member inherited the kingdom from Catholic king and eventually all of Croatia revolted either by ducal revolts or rebels created new independent Catholic counties. So all king had left were his regnal title, ducal titles and one province kings had conquered during a crusade to Spain. It's weird game with all the conversions, for example at one point crusading Genoa [they ruled 2/3 of Iberian peninsula and whole of Northern Italy and Southern France] turned to most powerful Muslim realm in the game before combined forces of France, Germany, Papal States, Venice and Sicily crushed it). In any case I was eventually lucky enough to get rid of that silly province I didn't have access except when I was in war against Muslims, because rival was nice enough to DoW me and then he accepted white peace.

What I really miss in CK is a way to get rid of the unwanted vassals other than DoWing them.

 

[unmerged(31881)]

Well, in my current game I am trying to get my vassals to rebel, without much success as of yet.

But yes, these traits are fun. Especially when you're keeping an AAR, because constant victories tend to get boring!

Have you tried "Royal Preorgatory" for ruling law? It hands out the rebellious traits a lot. Repeatedly. (At least in CK, it can lead to interesting times.)

 

[DarthJF]

Yeah, I've had my most fun moments with bad traits. In my current game I started as count of Kalmar and as Swedish king took my starting title I took refuge in Finland, where I created my own kingdom.

But after my rulers son died with no male heirs the game spawned really bad country cousin as my ruler. He soon got couple bad traits, and became kinslayer after I decided to assasinate his unloyal and unfertile wife, so I could marry him to his lower. Finnish kingdom was pretty well off when he came to the throne, but after some 20 years of rule the realm was impoverished by constant civil wars and assaults from foreign powers that decided to take advantage from my weakness, and all the able courtiers had off course taken their leave from my court a long time ago. In the end my king was assasinated by event by his own son, that hated him.

The son, who was quite good actually, died only few years later, when fighting against eastern pagans. This left his four year old son as the ruler, and my young kings reign started immediatly with realm duress, and soon one of my vassals became Papal controller and excommunicated me!

Enter another two decades of constant civil wars and foreign invasions for my already badly battered realm. After my king had grown into adulthood I managed to get rid of both realm duress and excommunication and stabilize the situation, but these two periods of chaos and civil wars have so far clearly been the most fun parts of my campaign.

 

[hyme]

Have you tried "Royal Preorgatory" for ruling law? It hands out the rebellious traits a lot. Repeatedly. (At least in CK, it can lead to interesting times.)

all the time it also help spread your culture faster and i think you get the best troops numbers from it.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Royal prerogatory is great fun for provoking rebellions.
It's a very manly law, only strong rulers can hold together realms under RP law...
I don't know if it gives you larger armies, but it does give you better regiments from your demesne. Less light infantry (which is basically peasant levies with pitchforks) and more heavy infantry (which is professional soldiers).

 

[hyme]

Royal prerogatory is great fun for provoking rebellions.
It's a very manly law, only strong rulers can hold together realms under RP law...
I don't know if it gives you larger armies, but it does give you better regiments from your demesne. Less light infantry (which is basically peasant levies with pitchforks) and more heavy infantry (which is professional soldiers).

when i said troops numbers i meant better troops sorry.

 

[unmerged(138116)]

My current game has had a couple times of strong Realm Duress. At the moment I am somewhere at the late 1230s and my vassals declare war on me one by one. Oddly enough, I don't have the RD trait, but my 43-year-old-king got wounded in battle and caught illness, so I really don't know what's to come. Worst that has been in the current internal affair is the duke of Silesia (a man of House of Piast - I took Polish crown ages ago) declaring war on me and taking some ten counts with him. Somehow he had gathered about eight ducal titles to himself. I took them all after I rammed him in submission. Then I decided to give a few regal titles away, mainly because constant warring with the vassals is a pain in the lesser cousin of a horse. Also, playing such a huge realm is a bit boring. I started as Principality of Novgodor, became Kingdom of Finland and... well, let's just say that the farthest province of my demesne is Mecca. I plan to give it to someone in my court after I've had it converted to orthodox.

I gave the crown of king of Germany to a friend of mine... who sits in Mountain Cheremisa. The only province of the demesne of the new realm's king is there. I also gave the provinces of Lucca, Firenze, Roma and one from Sicily to my 10-year-old-brother. After that I named him the king of Italy. I had planned to convert Roma to orthodox faith, but perhaps he can do it just as well. Naturally he has no heir and his court is small, so if his kingdom doesn't regress to ruins, I might just have it back.

My king has a whapping intrigue of 19. My heir apparent has 9. It was time to give away provinces from my demesne. That, and a few new kingdoms loyal to me ruled by heir of Rurik and of true faith should make the game much more interesting.

 

[zachhcaz22]

Yeah, I just had about seven years of (mostly civil) war, ever since my king came of age. He gained the stressed trait, about a month later went insane, became a sociopath (I RP'd him killing his seven year old brother for fear of a coup and got the Kinslayer trait [that trait wasn't on purpose, it just added to the fun]), had stats 5-0-0-0 after craziness, received realm duress, all the while at war with the surrounding realms of the Fatimid Caliphate and the Kingdom of Zirid. That was fun, but fortunately his disloyal 13 intrigue spymaster, who happened to be his own mother, assassinated him and his three year old son took the throne which actually calmed down the disloyal vassals. On the other hand, he was the Papal Controller and had the "wise" trait.

 

[Worldcrusher]

It'd be nice if it went away sooner, though. It's fun for a while, clean out the disloyals, straighten up the provinces so they're in the appropriate duchies. I get awfully tired of constant war without end for decades at a time, though. I want to build stuff, and plan things too. With Realm Duress I'm sort of forced into reacting, rather than acting.

My last ruler had Realm Duress for twenty years. Then ten years of relative peace, and then he had it for another five years, and died with it. His successor, my current ruler, has had it for two years now, with no sign of it going away.

But, he's got pneumonia, depression, an intestinal worm, and a disloyal wife who's also the Spymaster. So he probably won't have Realm Duress for too much longer.

 

[Templier]

This trait is indeed fantastic. I was Papal Controller in my recent game and I noticed that neighboring rulers I excommunicate get the Realm Duress trait sooner or later, and I watched their kingdom fall apart into chaos.

 

[Cèsar de Quart]

Realm Duress means two things: a lot of fun and a lot of hardcore playing.

In my current game, Henry de Normandie, grandson of William the Conqueror, has done as his homologue did (I'm talking, of course, about Henry II). has managed to become king of England, duke of Aquitany, Anjou, Normandie, but also Toulouse and Provence, he's even king of Scotland (not Ireland, since Ireland is under Swedish domain, for the king of Sweden is also king of Ireland). But his son Roger seems to be a complete jerk, and if I remember well, the second son, William, is a schizo, so there you have it: the Lion in Winter. Plantagenet's domain will fall and I shall take its ashes (more specificly, I'll take Provence and Toulouse. Perhaps then I'll be ready for taking the German crown...).

Then, some of my sons will be a bad king, I'll loose control over 50-70% of my vassals and I'll have to start again. No irony: really great!