Thinning the realm and the dynasty

[Harassercat]

I occasionally see references to "thinning out" either your dynasty or your realm. I understand the need to weed out bad vassals - it's something you're always wanting to do in this game. But apart from your vassals and apart from trying to control inheritance, what are the main reasons and benefits to eliminating characters?

Is there a reason to keep your dynasty "skinny" as I've seen it called? My dynasty in my current game has become very large (somewhere around 200 living members). There are all sorts of claims left and right and despite early efforts at breeding then I'm seeing lots of badly educated, ugly, stuttering, slow idiots. I've had a policy of trying to give all hereditary titles in my realm to members of my dynasty. Therefore it has suited me so far to have a large dynasty so that I always have plenty of candidates for newly acquired titles. But I'm starting to wonder if there would be a benefit to going on some kind of assassination/execution/banishment spree to lower the number of claimants and incompetent ambitious fools. How do experienced players here prefer to manage their dynasties?

As for carrying out a "cleanup", I'm thinking about grooming some high intrigue monster with lots of evil +intrigue traits to inherit the kingdom eventually. Then with that crazy intrigue king, go for either intrigue focus or seduction and get to work.... is this something worth doing or do you just use a more normal king, perhaps an old one, to start the reign of terror?

 

[Iron Chariots]

Honestly, I think you've been on the right track. Breeding a massive dynasty is very useful for a number of reasons, among them:

1). Dynastic prestige. The more landed members of your dynasty, the more dynastic prestige you have, the better marriages you can get, etc.
2). Claims. You don't need to land your dynasts to press their claims. I like to seed a lot of foreign titles with members of my dynasty, so that if I get to the point where I want to expand in the area I can invite one of my dynasts with a claim to press.
3). Alliances. Granted, they're no longer automatic, but you can often end up getting them pretty easily.
4). Elective succession. If your own realm is filled entirely with dukes (and eventually, kings) of your own dynasty, or even almost entirely, you can use elective succession without its main drawback. Elective succession is incredibly powerful when used correctly, as you'll almost always have good heirs.

 

[Gurkhal]

This is all my personal opinions and reflections.

I also prefer large dynasties although I am not by far as shrewd as Iron Chariots around it. I just find it much more entertaining to play with all the craziness that a large dynasty gives. I remember one game with the Saxons where I had +500 living members when the game ended in the dynasty through a determined effort to get as many of them married and producing new dynasty members as I could manage.I remember the honored tradition of civil wars after every succession to make the Roman 3rd Century with its Barrack Emperors look like stability itself, extremely byzantine lines of inheritance and so on. Good times!

In short I find that having a small dynasty is easy, clear and controllable with the downside that just one or two bad members can almost, or actually, break it. Having a huge dynasty with dozens of landed members and hundreds of living members is pretty much uncontrollable, impossible to get an overview of, unpredictable and is really fun to play!

 

[Harassercat]

The reason why I bring this up here is precisely that I wasn't quite seeing a real downside in my large unwieldy dynasty. Even with the 225 living members (current count) I'm still often short on young dynasty members to marry to foreign claimants or take over newly conquered titles. Another way to see it is that the world is going to be full of random courtiers and minor rulers, many of them very bad in terms of stats and traits; but it's better if they belong to my dynasty than them being unrelated to me.

Still I think I'm going to become more liberal in imprisoning worthless dynasty members for all the random plots they're engaging in. I want to keep all titles within the dynasty but I'm going to try to consolidate them under fewer and more competent members. I also always need more content people and fewer ambitious a**holes - starting to think that humility would be a good childhood focus to pick more often.

 

[JonathanOfArc]

I usually end up playing as mostly Catholic dynasty but have been having fun with Orthodox and their excommunication. As a Germanic character after invading a plot of land, you can convert to Orthodoxy and pretty much have total control over your vassals. You'll have your own personal head of religion for your kingdom. If at any point anyone steps out of line and you want them out, just have your Patriarch excommunicate them and that's it. Legally free to do whatever with the hell bound cretin. Learn Greek and then gouge out their eyes for good measure!

 

[Harassercat]

Culture and religion is clearly a factor in this regard -- I would guess that Greek Orthodox allows the greatest control over the dynasty, with monogamy, disqualification through taking the vows, excommunication, blinding and castration; then on the other end of the spectrum are pagans of most cultures, with concubinage, no disqualification through priesthood and none of the nasty things the Greeks can do. In my game my dynasty is Finnish/reformed Suomenusko, so they reproduce like rabbits and all retain their claims and inheritance even in the deepest part of my dungeon :/

 

[DPS]

Biggest disadvantage I see to having a large dynasty is that when you have a lot of vassals of your own dynasty, they tend to intermarry and that can lead to the inbred trait. OTOH, the inbred trait isn't really all that common, and even closely related couples mostly produce non-inbred children.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

900 living dynasty members 300 years into the game. Nearly 3000 total.

I can't scroll through my dynasty tree from all the lag.

 

[QueenoftheIsles]

I like to play small and pruned dynasties with very strategically bred and married folks. There aren't a ton of free claims going around, but also less pretenders and succession problems.

I might have to try an uncontrolled growth dynasty though considering how fun the above posts make it sound...

 

[Iron Chariots]

I like to play small and pruned dynasties with very strategically bred and married folks. There aren't a ton of free claims going around, but also less pretenders and succession problems.

I might have to try an uncontrolled growth dynasty though considering how fun the above posts make it sound...

The nice thing is that the claims to your own titles disappear pretty quickly. Let your extra sons breed now and then their grandsons/great grandsons can be really useful with little to no threat. If you're willing to let a few weak claims to your titles float around, you can use them particularly early... and honestly, one of the big benefits of elective succession (which, as I mentioned in a previous post, pairs really well with large dynasties) is that you'll basically never be in a situation where weak claims can be pressed against you.

 

[Yeekim]

My dynasty in my current game has become very large (somewhere around 200 living members).

This is not a large dynasty.

900 living dynasty members 300 years into the game.

This one is.

And large dynasties are good, period.

 

[Harassercat]

So far I haven't had much of a problem with the number of claimants around. It does mean that there are occasional revolts and inter-fighting in the vassal realms but they're small-scale and mostly insignificant to the kingdom as a whole.

I had a strange episode while playing last night though, when I had to fight off two claimants from my dynasty. One was an adventurer, the son of a vassal I had revoked and imprisoned. The other claimant joined in as soon as the adventurer declared war: the leader of the Suomenusko holy order (!), who was a member of my dynasty and had no claims of his own (he had renounced them to join the order), who to my big surprise declared war on me to push the claim of his heir who was some random claimant to the kingdom, also from my dynasty. I had no idea the holy order could declare war on me, or why they would do it with only 700-ish demesne troops from their two castles. They were of course only a nuisance and no threat to me at all.

On the other hand I find it somewhat convenient to have a ton of dynasts around with claims. When I pick an heir for the kingdom, I sometimes like to go for an older heir with many titles and many claims. That can be used to reorganize the kingdom, because the claims allow me to revoke without an opinion hit. Also, all those claimants are constantly plotting against each other and then when I discover their plots I can imprison anyone I don't like and either let them rot in the oubliette or maybe ransom if I feel like it.

 

[Greybeard0815]

The only case where I prefer not to land anyone of my dynasty nor marry them off to anyone, is when I'm playing a restored Persian Empire, to prevent the Saoshyant descendant trait from passing into the unworthy hands of other dynasties.

 

[MDHP1997]

So do you guys consciously marry off your character's relatives? I get the benefits, but I get so focused on the character and his closest family that I forget to do this.

 

[Ciniod]

So do you guys consciously marry off your character's relatives? I get the benefits, but I get so focused on the character and his closest family that I forget to do this.

I marry off everyone that comes of age in my court. But I dont go out of my way to marry distant relatives and I dont often land family. So thats probably also why my dynasty is a bit under 200 living members 400 years in. Though I do try to get matri marriages for female members.