Succession survival guide
- Thread starter NewbieOne
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
One thing I don't think anyone has mentioned yet: If you happen to be in November/December you can host a feast. This has multiple beneficial effects and very few downsides.
1) You are guaranteed +5 general opinion and +5 diplomacy for a year at the end of the feast event. Obviously this is huge. Even if a vassal/vassals don't attend the feast, they will still be affected by the diplomacy bonus (not sure of the "fabulous feast" general opinion bonus).
2) There are multiple mini-events within the feast event itself that can provide opinion bonuses, both with specific characters and as general diplomacy bonuses.
3) There are almost no mini events that provide straight up negative modifiers for vassal opinions of you with no other options (I think there is a chance to become a glutton or drunk from feasts but I have yet to see those mini events). There are many mini events that lower your opinion towards vassals, but almost none that work the other way. Some events give you an option that can lower your vassal's opinion of you (jailing a vassal for slitting a peasant's throat for example), but they are all avoidable.
4) You can start having feasts instantly upon assuming your title. This is really helpful when you're in a regency and have limited diplomacy/intrigue options.
Generally I throw feasts as often as possible (every 2 years) with new rulers for the first 4-8 years of their reign. Combine this with other diplomacy options and it will go a long way to smoothing out successions.
1) You are guaranteed +5 general opinion and +5 diplomacy for a year at the end of the feast event. Obviously this is huge. Even if a vassal/vassals don't attend the feast, they will still be affected by the diplomacy bonus (not sure of the "fabulous feast" general opinion bonus).
2) There are multiple mini-events within the feast event itself that can provide opinion bonuses, both with specific characters and as general diplomacy bonuses.
3) There are almost no mini events that provide straight up negative modifiers for vassal opinions of you with no other options (I think there is a chance to become a glutton or drunk from feasts but I have yet to see those mini events). There are many mini events that lower your opinion towards vassals, but almost none that work the other way. Some events give you an option that can lower your vassal's opinion of you (jailing a vassal for slitting a peasant's throat for example), but they are all avoidable.
4) You can start having feasts instantly upon assuming your title. This is really helpful when you're in a regency and have limited diplomacy/intrigue options.
Generally I throw feasts as often as possible (every 2 years) with new rulers for the first 4-8 years of their reign. Combine this with other diplomacy options and it will go a long way to smoothing out successions.
Last edited:
- 1
Yeah but the problem is that vassals usually start revolting before I get to the end of the feast. :/
One thing that is essential is always having cash reserves. This is not only useful for bribing people, but if that one duke just will not like you after you have done everything possible, you can assassinate him, hopefully solving the problem. But like many others have said, the best thing to do if try and prevent succession crises by eliminating all ambitious/envious vassals, making sure everyone is the same religion, culture, etc.
Bringing them from -90 to -50 does nothing to stop their hate against you. I would leave them at -90 and try to prevent the other vassals from joining their plots.
If it's really that serious, try imprisoning one of them?
Also where do the Muslims come from, if you're Croatia. Do you have holdings south of the mediterranean? If there's no way to keep them, let the muslims have them. It's not like you couldn't take them back later, the holy war CB is permanent after all.
Don't regard the loss of land or titles as a gameover event. You can recover almost all the time. Unless you're Ethiopia
Good info. I always have high dissent and could never figure out how to make the successor succeed. Will try this on my next game. Thanks Newbieone.
this should be updated with faction info although i have never actually survived a succession with my kingdom intact unless i was in a really lucky situation...f-in independence bandwagon factionists always there
Factions:
While factions are a new thing, the mechanism for keeping individual vassals is still the same. Using the same mental frame I developed for dealing with individual vassals, I found that factions had the potential to make my life easier rather than harder. You actually see the troublemakers with their agendas and you can act accordingly, you don't need to fear a chain of surprise-DoWs (declarations of war) and dragging allies in. It is much more ordered.
Most importantly, a vassal with +75 opinion of you cannot be in factions. This means that getting powerful members to +75 can make entire factions dissolve. You should do this if you have, say, a single faction 30% or 40% of liege power (i.e. your power). The vassal will leave all those factions, which means he will put a dent in the power of every faction he used to be in.
In my experience, this should reduce seemingly desperate DoWs by counts vs kings, where the count calls a great number of allies eventually. Without having a high level of faction power, the small fries will simply not DoW. This allows you to focus on keeping the bigger fish calm.
Don't panic when a faction declares war on you. Instead go and capture the leader's holdings, preferably ASAP, before the faction gets its act together. You can use to your advantage the fact that you can get the entire levy of your direct vassal from literally any county he owns. This means you can call a large faithful duke with 10,000 troops right next to the count who happens to be the rebelling faction leader. Sometimes you can surround a rebel nest with armies this way, even quickly get up to the supply limit and/or at least 10:1 numerican advantage vs siege defenders, which enables you to assault without debilitating losses. Rebember: the leader counts.
Defeating the leader, and you can do it by assaulting his holdings up to 100%, ends the war. I have seen most of a large kingdom rise in rebellion and fall when the leading count, who only owned 1 county, got his holdings assaulted by the king with very limited vassal help. You can get a white peace earlier than that, if you are hard pressed. And a white peace gives you an opinion bonus with your subjects. So does crushing a major rebellion. After dealing with the first rebelling faction, your life should become easier. Also, you can get the whole bunch of them in jail when you win the war. At which point you don't really need to revoke and redistribute. You can keep them there without risking a rebellion until they wisen up. Or, indeed, revoke.
What helps is having a reserve of gold. There are deaths you can't predict but if your king participates in battles a lot, immediate death or a delayed death from maiming or from a wound is a real possibility. In which case you should save up. Overspending may not be a good idea with a king who is already grey, especially with a female or underaged heir, or especially a situation like having only underaged daughters, where the new queen is both female and underaged, and also has a female heir in addition (that being her sister). In those types of successions you need to send some gifts.
Worth noting again is that the faction system prevents immediate DoWs from vassals who really, really can't stand you, e.g. -100 opinion. Which gives you time to prepare.
Note that all of the above advice is geared towards a gameplay style where you care for the economy and get a strong income base, as opposed to, say, having a huge empire with an undeveloped demesne and ~10 gold monthly income. Read a building guide, maximise your income. Income helps successions in two ways: direct money (for gifts but sometimes for mercenary initial fees) and the ability to keep paying the mercs their due every month. There are also some situations when your own levies cost a lot of money in upkeep: mostly ships. Ships are expensive. (So are mercs on ships: their fees grow.)
If you are the type of player who prefers to invest rather than hording, and basically play around ~0 gold, like Europa Universalis taught you, make adjustments for some floating cash. Make an estimate based on mercenary costs, gift costs and other factors. Float more cash if you're 1) somebody's vassal and 2) coastal, because when your liege calls your ships it can really cost you. Sometimes it can make your monthly income a negative number.
On a random final note: be especially mindful about fringe vassals, that is guys whom you won't be able to save from being overrun by your common enemies. You don't want those guys to rebel.
While factions are a new thing, the mechanism for keeping individual vassals is still the same. Using the same mental frame I developed for dealing with individual vassals, I found that factions had the potential to make my life easier rather than harder. You actually see the troublemakers with their agendas and you can act accordingly, you don't need to fear a chain of surprise-DoWs (declarations of war) and dragging allies in. It is much more ordered.
Most importantly, a vassal with +75 opinion of you cannot be in factions. This means that getting powerful members to +75 can make entire factions dissolve. You should do this if you have, say, a single faction 30% or 40% of liege power (i.e. your power). The vassal will leave all those factions, which means he will put a dent in the power of every faction he used to be in.
In my experience, this should reduce seemingly desperate DoWs by counts vs kings, where the count calls a great number of allies eventually. Without having a high level of faction power, the small fries will simply not DoW. This allows you to focus on keeping the bigger fish calm.
Don't panic when a faction declares war on you. Instead go and capture the leader's holdings, preferably ASAP, before the faction gets its act together. You can use to your advantage the fact that you can get the entire levy of your direct vassal from literally any county he owns. This means you can call a large faithful duke with 10,000 troops right next to the count who happens to be the rebelling faction leader. Sometimes you can surround a rebel nest with armies this way, even quickly get up to the supply limit and/or at least 10:1 numerican advantage vs siege defenders, which enables you to assault without debilitating losses. Rebember: the leader counts.
Defeating the leader, and you can do it by assaulting his holdings up to 100%, ends the war. I have seen most of a large kingdom rise in rebellion and fall when the leading count, who only owned 1 county, got his holdings assaulted by the king with very limited vassal help. You can get a white peace earlier than that, if you are hard pressed. And a white peace gives you an opinion bonus with your subjects. So does crushing a major rebellion. After dealing with the first rebelling faction, your life should become easier. Also, you can get the whole bunch of them in jail when you win the war. At which point you don't really need to revoke and redistribute. You can keep them there without risking a rebellion until they wisen up. Or, indeed, revoke.
What helps is having a reserve of gold. There are deaths you can't predict but if your king participates in battles a lot, immediate death or a delayed death from maiming or from a wound is a real possibility. In which case you should save up. Overspending may not be a good idea with a king who is already grey, especially with a female or underaged heir, or especially a situation like having only underaged daughters, where the new queen is both female and underaged, and also has a female heir in addition (that being her sister). In those types of successions you need to send some gifts.
Worth noting again is that the faction system prevents immediate DoWs from vassals who really, really can't stand you, e.g. -100 opinion. Which gives you time to prepare.
Note that all of the above advice is geared towards a gameplay style where you care for the economy and get a strong income base, as opposed to, say, having a huge empire with an undeveloped demesne and ~10 gold monthly income. Read a building guide, maximise your income. Income helps successions in two ways: direct money (for gifts but sometimes for mercenary initial fees) and the ability to keep paying the mercs their due every month. There are also some situations when your own levies cost a lot of money in upkeep: mostly ships. Ships are expensive. (So are mercs on ships: their fees grow.)
If you are the type of player who prefers to invest rather than hording, and basically play around ~0 gold, like Europa Universalis taught you, make adjustments for some floating cash. Make an estimate based on mercenary costs, gift costs and other factors. Float more cash if you're 1) somebody's vassal and 2) coastal, because when your liege calls your ships it can really cost you. Sometimes it can make your monthly income a negative number.
On a random final note: be especially mindful about fringe vassals, that is guys whom you won't be able to save from being overrun by your common enemies. You don't want those guys to rebel.
Apart from factions, we should also cover retinues.
For general info, go to CK2 wiki. What we need to say here is that as long as you have a large retinue which together with your demesne levies outnumbers the levies of your most powerful vassals (it's possible for a king to have a smaller levy than a powerful duke vassal), especially multiple times, you're relatively safe. You aren't necessarily safe from losing fringe counties to your enemies but you're safe from being toppled. I'm not sure but your retinues should count as "top liege current levy", which means they could in themselves be a deterrent against faction rebellions.
I don't use retinues to replace levies and get even: I believe combining them with your demesne levies for an overpowering force is the better solution. Conserve your troops, secure numerical advantage for battles and especially for sieges, where overpowering numbers are at their best. But, as far as sieges go, you don't want to use cultural knight retinues and other expensive retinues if you can avoid it. Assaults will bloody them, so will disease and other events, that can run you up in debt a lot.
This said, sometimes you need to use knights in sieges. They would appear to be useless intuitively, but they still count as troops and contribute to lowering the enemy morale towards ending the siege facter. It's similar in assaults. And sometimes you need to assault. At some other times, assaulting simply pays better. If you have something like 12:1 numerical advantage, it doesn't really pay to wait for a series of events where you take losses (your own events or events spawning for the enemy). Basically, assaulting reduces the chance factor: you take losses but you know more or less how many. Additionally, if you're suffering attrition, you generally just need to assault because when you're assaulting the attrition isn't hitting (just like in battle). This means that if you hypothetically timed the assaults appropriately, you could avoid attrition for several months.
However, if you rely on assaults, be prepared for the enemy dragging it on. In such situations, surrenders around 30-40% are unlikely. These days the AI tends to resist all the way to 100% if you quickly take its holdings via assaults, unlike some situations I remember from the past patches with surrenders around 30-40%, sometimes under 30%. Those are more likely to happen in more traditional conflicts (slow sieges, battles maybe). On the other hand, the AI isn't allowed to continue the war if you do hit the 100% with assaults, so make use of it when you have to.
Using these general guidelines, I've been able to survive successions with underaged kids succeeding to like six kingdoms, including land on islands and overseas in Palestine. It was difficult and sometimes the gifts could cost up to a thousand but it paid back (war costs more). I didn't lose land in those successions and I believe they were generally without issues. Few rebellions whatsoever. The faction system is a very useful tool for a ruler to keep his realm at peace with this mindset.
If you're interested in details of conducting powerful expeditions against rebelling vassals or enemies attacking your revolters, go to my blog for a post about Sieges and Seas. It covers these things more in depth, and the information is useful in dealing with typical Big Bads like the Fatties or Rum and, in some cases, the Mongols, which includes guys who are more powerful than you are, on paper.
Speaking of which: a count with a single well upgraded province can outmerc a king and win. A Christian defender with ~500 piety can hire ~22.5K in holy order troops without paying a penny (just be careful because provinces in the Holy Land rarely offer such a high supply limit and you can't divide orders, each order is its own unit ~7700 large). I went and defeated an Ilkhanate invasion of Jerusalem against my king once when I played as a single-province vassal (for the record, the battles brought back much of the piety, so you aren't really losing all of it). So: remember to make use of what you have. And look for things you can use. Stay on target, don't waste it on things that don't matter, go for the war goals and all, but prevent the enemy from becoming able to counter your advantage (you do want to break an almost-finished siege if you run the risk of two small enemy armies combining into an army of your own size or larger, don't be greedy). Rationalise. Allow yourself some save-scumming perhaps, to reload after bad moves or incidents of inattention leading to bad consequences. Replaying the same situations until you can defeat them helps you learn (as does dealing with the bad consequences.) As a Christian remember about piety. Being virtuous not only runs up your piety but it also makes your vassals and other people like you more. Being Kind, Charitable and Brave at the same time really makes a difference. On the other hand, negative traits hurt your relationships and thus indirectly make rebellions more likely.
And, once again, remember about your economy. Wars aren't really won on the battlefield, according to some people. I'm not sure I agree but there is much truth in that.
One more caveat: As a patrician you need to make your floating reserves larger. It's possible to hit several events for -50 gold in a row. When your income is like 8 gold monthly and you have a bunch of mercs hired in a war against a bid bad emir, that hurts.
For general info, go to CK2 wiki. What we need to say here is that as long as you have a large retinue which together with your demesne levies outnumbers the levies of your most powerful vassals (it's possible for a king to have a smaller levy than a powerful duke vassal), especially multiple times, you're relatively safe. You aren't necessarily safe from losing fringe counties to your enemies but you're safe from being toppled. I'm not sure but your retinues should count as "top liege current levy", which means they could in themselves be a deterrent against faction rebellions.
I don't use retinues to replace levies and get even: I believe combining them with your demesne levies for an overpowering force is the better solution. Conserve your troops, secure numerical advantage for battles and especially for sieges, where overpowering numbers are at their best. But, as far as sieges go, you don't want to use cultural knight retinues and other expensive retinues if you can avoid it. Assaults will bloody them, so will disease and other events, that can run you up in debt a lot.
This said, sometimes you need to use knights in sieges. They would appear to be useless intuitively, but they still count as troops and contribute to lowering the enemy morale towards ending the siege facter. It's similar in assaults. And sometimes you need to assault. At some other times, assaulting simply pays better. If you have something like 12:1 numerical advantage, it doesn't really pay to wait for a series of events where you take losses (your own events or events spawning for the enemy). Basically, assaulting reduces the chance factor: you take losses but you know more or less how many. Additionally, if you're suffering attrition, you generally just need to assault because when you're assaulting the attrition isn't hitting (just like in battle). This means that if you hypothetically timed the assaults appropriately, you could avoid attrition for several months.
However, if you rely on assaults, be prepared for the enemy dragging it on. In such situations, surrenders around 30-40% are unlikely. These days the AI tends to resist all the way to 100% if you quickly take its holdings via assaults, unlike some situations I remember from the past patches with surrenders around 30-40%, sometimes under 30%. Those are more likely to happen in more traditional conflicts (slow sieges, battles maybe). On the other hand, the AI isn't allowed to continue the war if you do hit the 100% with assaults, so make use of it when you have to.
Using these general guidelines, I've been able to survive successions with underaged kids succeeding to like six kingdoms, including land on islands and overseas in Palestine. It was difficult and sometimes the gifts could cost up to a thousand but it paid back (war costs more). I didn't lose land in those successions and I believe they were generally without issues. Few rebellions whatsoever. The faction system is a very useful tool for a ruler to keep his realm at peace with this mindset.
If you're interested in details of conducting powerful expeditions against rebelling vassals or enemies attacking your revolters, go to my blog for a post about Sieges and Seas. It covers these things more in depth, and the information is useful in dealing with typical Big Bads like the Fatties or Rum and, in some cases, the Mongols, which includes guys who are more powerful than you are, on paper.
Speaking of which: a count with a single well upgraded province can outmerc a king and win. A Christian defender with ~500 piety can hire ~22.5K in holy order troops without paying a penny (just be careful because provinces in the Holy Land rarely offer such a high supply limit and you can't divide orders, each order is its own unit ~7700 large). I went and defeated an Ilkhanate invasion of Jerusalem against my king once when I played as a single-province vassal (for the record, the battles brought back much of the piety, so you aren't really losing all of it). So: remember to make use of what you have. And look for things you can use. Stay on target, don't waste it on things that don't matter, go for the war goals and all, but prevent the enemy from becoming able to counter your advantage (you do want to break an almost-finished siege if you run the risk of two small enemy armies combining into an army of your own size or larger, don't be greedy). Rationalise. Allow yourself some save-scumming perhaps, to reload after bad moves or incidents of inattention leading to bad consequences. Replaying the same situations until you can defeat them helps you learn (as does dealing with the bad consequences.) As a Christian remember about piety. Being virtuous not only runs up your piety but it also makes your vassals and other people like you more. Being Kind, Charitable and Brave at the same time really makes a difference. On the other hand, negative traits hurt your relationships and thus indirectly make rebellions more likely.
And, once again, remember about your economy. Wars aren't really won on the battlefield, according to some people. I'm not sure I agree but there is much truth in that.
One more caveat: As a patrician you need to make your floating reserves larger. It's possible to hit several events for -50 gold in a row. When your income is like 8 gold monthly and you have a bunch of mercs hired in a war against a bid bad emir, that hurts.
Last edited:
Thank-You so much for this guide! This is exactly what I was looking for. My current game just became a disaster after my King, who reigned for 40 years, died. His first born son inherited the throne. However, soon enough, a full blown succession crisis happened when his younger brother was backed by a powerful faction. This faction had around 52 percent of my strength.......I was a fool and unpaused the game. Honestly, factions have never been a real problem for me. That is, until tonight. I see after reading this where I went wrong. This guide, and the other helpful additions from the other members, is a God send!
Excellent guide ! Million thanks for all the info.
I realise now that my way of playing got me into trouble quite often, LOL. The consequences of multi-cultural households, for example. As much as I (almost) never married outside my own religion, I married outside my culture any time. I also invite people to my court a lot, people who would make terrific chancellors or spymasters. Eventually they would have reason to hate me, but I couldn't figure out why.
I think the negative hits are still worth it for good Council members. A Chancellor with 25 diplomacy accepts an invite to my court without me paying a penny? Hell yeah ! Just as long as he isn't a heretic
The AI still has loads of tricks up its sleeve. A recent example: as king, I inherit title of duchy of Moravia from my mother, going with a vassal who has 2 counties not in the de iure duchy. A year later I get the warning bell that I risk losing those counties when that vassal dies. I find out that the vassal has 1 son and 4 daughters, said son has pressed a claim on duchy of Meissen against the Kaiser, won his claim and become independent ! That son will inherit his dad's 2 counties, effectively removing them from my kingdom. If I'm not mistaken, there is no way I can hang on to those 2 counties without going to war. I could
a) try to revoke and redistribute, which vassal won't tolerate, or b) provoke him to rebel first, then fight him as a rebel. Even so, I couldn't revoke both titles without getting dislike points from other vassals. I thought of giving that vassal a duchy, but that won't work, his heir will just inherit that title too. The vassal's heir is an independent duke, there's nothing I can do, as far as I know.
Sometimes I guess there's no way to hang on to your legitimate inheritance without everyone getting mad at you, it's unfair !
I realise now that my way of playing got me into trouble quite often, LOL. The consequences of multi-cultural households, for example. As much as I (almost) never married outside my own religion, I married outside my culture any time. I also invite people to my court a lot, people who would make terrific chancellors or spymasters. Eventually they would have reason to hate me, but I couldn't figure out why.
I think the negative hits are still worth it for good Council members. A Chancellor with 25 diplomacy accepts an invite to my court without me paying a penny? Hell yeah ! Just as long as he isn't a heretic
The AI still has loads of tricks up its sleeve. A recent example: as king, I inherit title of duchy of Moravia from my mother, going with a vassal who has 2 counties not in the de iure duchy. A year later I get the warning bell that I risk losing those counties when that vassal dies. I find out that the vassal has 1 son and 4 daughters, said son has pressed a claim on duchy of Meissen against the Kaiser, won his claim and become independent ! That son will inherit his dad's 2 counties, effectively removing them from my kingdom. If I'm not mistaken, there is no way I can hang on to those 2 counties without going to war. I could
a) try to revoke and redistribute, which vassal won't tolerate, or b) provoke him to rebel first, then fight him as a rebel. Even so, I couldn't revoke both titles without getting dislike points from other vassals. I thought of giving that vassal a duchy, but that won't work, his heir will just inherit that title too. The vassal's heir is an independent duke, there's nothing I can do, as far as I know.
Sometimes I guess there's no way to hang on to your legitimate inheritance without everyone getting mad at you, it's unfair !
Hey Thanks for the guide!
I hope I understood most parts of it, since I am fairly new at this game. Currently I do an Ironman for Uniting Hispania as Castille and have conquered ~70% of the de-jure territory (Aragon(got absorbed by Barcelona) & Navarra missing).
So everytime I conquered a duchy/territory from the muslims I usually get several notifications with "too big demense"/"wrong holdings" like pointed out in your guide.
According to your guide, I firstly "create new vasall" in holdings of the wrong type e.g Bishoprics and cities. Then I decide if I want to keep that duchy for my own or give away to a new duke. If I do not keep it for my own, I create new vasalls in additionalbaronies of the county aswell.
If I keep the newly conquered duchy for myself, I hold on to giving out the additonal baronies (castles)and check again later (Demense limits etc.)
This was the case for Sevilla, when I decided to switch Capital to it (Currently I have Sevilla as my own duchy and Capital of Kingdom, because it is the best duchy/county in my territory - also is close to the strait of gibraltar to deal with muslims).
So I keep the rest of its duchy and try to hold all the baronies in it (I think I hold the 2-3 additional baronies in Cadiz and Sevilla, giving me a massive amount of troops in those two counties only) . This of course adds up to the demense limit. So I created every duke title I could at the point and give people with good traits (content/just etc., no ambitious/envious/arbitrary) and somehow useful stats 1 county on other de-jure-duchies. Then I give one of those counts the duchy title. So every duke in my kingdom(s) hold only 1 county and his duchy. Every of his vasalls only holds 1 county aswell - with no claims for other counties/duchies.
My second duchy is currently Castille, but I will change it to Barcelona later maybe I guess. Or switch to Saragossa/Barcelona as my personal duchies later when I united Hispania - depends on what I will do after I united Hispania (either go full war on Muslims or visit France)
edit: powerful MSPaint picture to show my current "system":
I also created every king title I could so far (Navarra and Aragon missing). Is this a bad thing or should I only hold to my initital king titles (well you inherit Leon and Galicia anyways, but I created Andalusia and Portugal) and only create the others once I can create the Empire?
I think creating the other king titles was not good, I had to change laws in every kingdom on their own, getting massive opinion penalties with doing so, Also I had to change my succession to primogeniture (first son was best) because I have three sons and I would have lost half of my territory.) - Vasalls were sick mad at me, but the pope kept sending me money (for my duties vs. the muslims) and therefore I could bribe them and sit things out until they "accepted" my law/succession changes and everything is fine now again.
Should I also when I am an Empreror give out 1 king title to 1 duke in the kingdom? ( so he holds 1 county, 1 duchy, 1 kingdom title?)
This way I try to avoid that any duke gets too powerful.
But I had the problem that dukes or counts in territories where I had'nt created the duchy yet, went on holy war on their own against the muslims for claiming more territory and eventually captured new counties - how do I avoid that? Crown authority is on high. I was really mad at them so I just outright revoked them these titles to the counties and handed those counties out to new courtiers with good traits/stats.
Also one question for courtiers: I desperately was in need of talented courtiers, to hand out my conquered counties and duchy titles. I use the "invite to court" thing for holy and noble guys. But I often had no gold in the beginning so I just "spammed" the "invite holy to court" button because I had enough piety... Can I give out counties/Duchies to those holy people if they have better traits than the "nobles" but in general worse stewardship/martial ? Or is it a real no-go and I have to find "midas-touched/"Fortunebuilder" with 10 steward/martial/diplomacy ?
I mean after 1 generation it doesnt matter anyways, their heirs can be good/bad etc. Or is there a failure in my logic?
I hope I understood most parts of it, since I am fairly new at this game. Currently I do an Ironman for Uniting Hispania as Castille and have conquered ~70% of the de-jure territory (Aragon(got absorbed by Barcelona) & Navarra missing).
So everytime I conquered a duchy/territory from the muslims I usually get several notifications with "too big demense"/"wrong holdings" like pointed out in your guide.
According to your guide, I firstly "create new vasall" in holdings of the wrong type e.g Bishoprics and cities. Then I decide if I want to keep that duchy for my own or give away to a new duke. If I do not keep it for my own, I create new vasalls in additionalbaronies of the county aswell.
If I keep the newly conquered duchy for myself, I hold on to giving out the additonal baronies (castles)and check again later (Demense limits etc.)
This was the case for Sevilla, when I decided to switch Capital to it (Currently I have Sevilla as my own duchy and Capital of Kingdom, because it is the best duchy/county in my territory - also is close to the strait of gibraltar to deal with muslims).
So I keep the rest of its duchy and try to hold all the baronies in it (I think I hold the 2-3 additional baronies in Cadiz and Sevilla, giving me a massive amount of troops in those two counties only) . This of course adds up to the demense limit. So I created every duke title I could at the point and give people with good traits (content/just etc., no ambitious/envious/arbitrary) and somehow useful stats 1 county on other de-jure-duchies. Then I give one of those counts the duchy title. So every duke in my kingdom(s) hold only 1 county and his duchy. Every of his vasalls only holds 1 county aswell - with no claims for other counties/duchies.
My second duchy is currently Castille, but I will change it to Barcelona later maybe I guess. Or switch to Saragossa/Barcelona as my personal duchies later when I united Hispania - depends on what I will do after I united Hispania (either go full war on Muslims or visit France)
edit: powerful MSPaint picture to show my current "system":
I also created every king title I could so far (Navarra and Aragon missing). Is this a bad thing or should I only hold to my initital king titles (well you inherit Leon and Galicia anyways, but I created Andalusia and Portugal) and only create the others once I can create the Empire?
I think creating the other king titles was not good, I had to change laws in every kingdom on their own, getting massive opinion penalties with doing so, Also I had to change my succession to primogeniture (first son was best) because I have three sons and I would have lost half of my territory.) - Vasalls were sick mad at me, but the pope kept sending me money (for my duties vs. the muslims) and therefore I could bribe them and sit things out until they "accepted" my law/succession changes and everything is fine now again.
Should I also when I am an Empreror give out 1 king title to 1 duke in the kingdom? ( so he holds 1 county, 1 duchy, 1 kingdom title?)
This way I try to avoid that any duke gets too powerful.
But I had the problem that dukes or counts in territories where I had'nt created the duchy yet, went on holy war on their own against the muslims for claiming more territory and eventually captured new counties - how do I avoid that? Crown authority is on high. I was really mad at them so I just outright revoked them these titles to the counties and handed those counties out to new courtiers with good traits/stats.
Also one question for courtiers: I desperately was in need of talented courtiers, to hand out my conquered counties and duchy titles. I use the "invite to court" thing for holy and noble guys. But I often had no gold in the beginning so I just "spammed" the "invite holy to court" button because I had enough piety... Can I give out counties/Duchies to those holy people if they have better traits than the "nobles" but in general worse stewardship/martial ? Or is it a real no-go and I have to find "midas-touched/"Fortunebuilder" with 10 steward/martial/diplomacy ?
I mean after 1 generation it doesnt matter anyways, their heirs can be good/bad etc. Or is there a failure in my logic?
Last edited:
Guys, I can't access the CKII mods forum, so, I would like that if one of you guys can, you could post here for me the download link of ckII HIP mod 2015-04-24 version.
I would be very thankful!
Please! This is the best mod EVER!
I would be very thankful!
Please! This is the best mod EVER!
- 1
- 1
Register your CK2 base game and you will be able to access it. Do not try and get links this way.
- 1
I know I'm late to the game and this is 8 years old, but I just have to thank you for writing this outstanding piece of work. It helped me immensely!
I've searched and searched and cannot find this "cleched golden fist". Is this an add-on of some kind?