Should I establish a Prince?

[Brandenburg III]

I was wondering how many people establish Princes within their empire. Right now I can’t see a reason to do so but I’m still fairly new with this game and I may be missing something.

A second question which is a bit off topic.

I’ve created the Kingdom of Croatia with the Syraneres family (Belgrade) and I’m out of ideas about what I should do. Is there anything that’ll come along and give me a run for my money? Or am I just sitting idle until the end of the game?

I’ve been doing some expanding when my reputation allows but its mostly against my neighbors like Byzantium who can’t do much. Poland is a pain, occupying most of Poland, Ukraine, EU3's Muscovy and EU3's 1454 start date for the Golden Horde. The Kingdom of Italy is pretty big but I feel I could take them if I needed but I have no desire to go west; the same goes for Germany although they'd be much tougher than Italy.

I guess what I’m looking for is risk without me putting my own neck on the chopping block.

I’m using CK w/ DV no mods.

Lastly I’ve noticed a spelling mistake or two. Should I mention this somewhere? It isn’t a big deal with me but I wasn’t sure if Paradox wanted to fix these very minor mistakes.

Thanks in advance for any/all answers

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Pro/cons of having dukes/princes as vassals instead of counts

Pro
- As a king you only get monthly prestige from having duke/prince-level vassals
- It is much easier in keeping 12 princes loyal then 36 counts.
- The more vassals you have the bigger the odds are that you will get realm duress/civil war
- You can manually mobilize the regiments of your vassal vassals, without your princes/dukes getting a loyalty hit.

Con
- Counts that rebel are much easier to defeat then princes/dukes
- If a title gets inherited by someone outside your realm you only lose 1 province

Lastly I’ve noticed a spelling mistake or two. Should I mention this somewhere? It isn’t a big deal with me but I wasn’t sure if Paradox wanted to fix these very minor mistakes.

Paradox isn't going to fix those anymore, but still report them so that modders can fix them.

 

[unmerged(31020)]

With fewer vassals you're more likely to get stability increasing events too.

I'd slowly nibble off Poland's borders by force-vassalizing, provided your own border provinces have strong regiments. Don't attack Poland, just kick their invading armies out and whenever possible disband yours after each skirmish before the end of the month. That way the war will cost you next to nothing, and you can keep it going for a very long time.

Does Poland own the crown of Hungary, or is it up for creation?

 

[truth is life]

It's not too much trouble to deal with revolting dukes/princes/archbishops, provided you remember to keep anyone from having more than one duke-level title at a time. (This also helps your prestige more, too) Of course, this also increases the amount of prestige you get, since you have more "high-level" vassals.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Dukes/princes are cool. Your kingdom is still small enough that you can run it with just counts, but you miss out on the monthly prestige gain you get from having dukes/princes as vassals.

If anything you should make your firstborn son a prince so he has some prestige of his own once he inherits the throne.

Princes/dukes take care of the counts for you. Counts also tend to be more loyal towards princes than towards you, the king.

Duke management is something I like about the game: It lets you manage even large feudal realms while you concentrate con conquering stuff.

- Sometimes you get rebellious dukes. You can of course defeat them and strip them totally of their land, but that means you accumulate bad reputation. So when they rebel, I like to defeat them, leave them with their count title (even acknowledgeing it so I reduce reputation) but take away the prince title and give it to someone else in the principality (one of the counts under the former rebel prince). Pick the one most likely to stay loyal to you. I.e. not a rebel, not a mean kinslayer, but someone with as many traits that match yours as possible. If your king is a hostile deceitful chaste lazy cruel bastard, pick a count who has as many of these traits as possible, it means he and your king will get along well.

- If you really want to get rid of the rebel prince, maybe because he is a rival of yours with a really high intrigue score, give the princely title to a count who has a bunch of sons without land at his court. The new prince will take away the land of the counts under him who are not from his family. This rids you of a troublesome lord without you risking revolts or reputation hits.

- If you have a character you like particularly well, say, a friend of your king who is of a family that has been serving you for generations, give him a prince title for a principality with many provinces. Northeast Russia has a bunch of those - Bjarmia, Hlynov, Beloozero, also there are principalities like Saxony or Lombardia which have 4 or more provinces. If the character has a large family, he will make them all counts and so you can reward a whole family. Just don't get too attached to the other counts that he is going to replace. o (Some people are romantically attached to many of the starting dynasties in, say, Germany, and are sad when the duke of the region displaces the von Habsburgs or the von Hohenstaufens although in game terms this does not mean anything.)

 

[unmerged(75409)]

As for things that you (OP) can do to have fun with your well running kingdom:

- bash muslims: go on a crusade to free the holy land or some part of north Africa, and make your bastard son a king, too. Your quest will be to conquer enough provinces so that you can by yourself create the king title of the region. Candidates:
* King of Africa (centered on Tunis) - fairly easy to get, as long as it's all owned by Muslims. Tunis is rich, some provinces around it too, rest is so-so. Can be christianized (catholic) fairly quickly due to trade links with Italy.
* King of Mauretania (Morocco and western Algeria) - a bit of a chore to get, it's large and some parts are really far away, but it's a powerful kingdom.
* King of Egypt - held by Fatimids, may be splintered once the 13th century rolls along. Hell of a powerful kingdom. Ultra fun. For extra challenge, make it your quest to obtain not just the title King fo Egypt (can be created once you have enough provinces) but also King of Nubia (held by a Christian monarch at 1066 game start). He usually get displaced quickly or wiped off the map. Sometimes the title floats around somewhere in Europe. Grab it and get it. Give your favorite non-direct heir both titles to make for a super king.
* King of Jerusalem - centered on Jerusalem as the name says. Easily accessible from the sea, but can field some strong regiments (Jerusalem, Acre). Not too many provinces, makes for a good crusade goal for newbie players. Unfortunately it gets wiped off the map fairly quickly again if you leave the large Muslim realms alive that surround it. They are very powerful.

- bash pagans: Muster a huge army and sail it all across the black sea. Smash the Cumans or whatever remains of the southern Russian pagans. Set up principalities in their area and then leave again. (Conquering that part of the map is fun, playing the local states not so much.) There aren't any easy king titles to get in that region so it's just something to vent steam and bash unfortunate pagans. Eventually the principalities you set up will get into trouble. Don't support them. If they declare independence, leave them be. Watch them struggle, if the Mongols come they will probably crush them all. But so what?

- bash Christians and take their crowns: Conquer stuff near you. Hungary... Bohemia... Germany... and if it is not much fun running your empire once you own it all, branch parts of it off into separate realms under younger sons. For example conquer Poland and Hungary, then branch off Croatia. "Moving" to another part of the map can give a boring game a new direction and more fun. You need to conquer some good provinces though that can make for a feasible demesne in that area. Don't be afraid to go way below your demesne limit when you "branch off" a new kingdom by giving the king lots of provinces.

- make funny quests: For example conquer some parts of Germany and create bishoprics in the whole region. This means you need to put virtually every boy born into your court into ecclesiastical education. Even then it is tough to get enough clerics. That's part of the challenge.

- correct weird realms: Has the pope spread across Europe? Is there an annoying 9-province archbishopric somewhere? Break them up to restore the divine equilibrium of medieval Europe.

 

[Brandenburg III]

All: Thanks everyone for the tips.

For a while I was wondering how to give land to my princes, that’s what was giving me trouble considering the creation of Princes. I’ve now found that I just have to click on their shield and go to “grant title” and do it that way. So just doing that makes them so much better.

Mauricio: Right now Poland has the title. I’ve went ahead a few years and they’ve secured those loose counts you see just north of my provinces.

Leviathan07: Thanks for the very detailed response.

I’ve had three aims really. To reestablish the South Slavic/Orthodox people (at one point there were only 7 females available for marriage but now there’s about 25), expand the Orthodox religion wherever I went and to expand east but I refuse to become Byzantium. Thanks for the other ideas.

The Pope recently called for a crusade for Byzantine and I went along with it to see what it was all about. Now I have recovered that province, took Tabouk, made vassals of Beirut and a northern province in Turkey. I’m also getting ready to polish off the Athens region. My only threat is Poland but we’ve only fought one war against one another about 50 years ago which ended in a stalemate. So, I'll be going east.

When I’m through with this game I’m thinking of putting it through the converter to EU3 to see how well that works. I think there won’t be much of a balance of power but it’ll be interesting to find out.

 

[unmerged(31020)]

All: expand the Orthodox religion wherever I went

Oh. An orthodox Croatia. Nice.

My current pet project is starting as some russian count and overcome the schism, reunite christianity.
By eradicating catholicism of course.