Transfer vassalage

[Chlodio]

In CK2 you can transfer your vassals under other vassals. Vassals do not get a say on this, it happens immediately.

From gameplay the perspective, it allows you to sweep disloyal vassals under the carpet, and it's gamy for that reason.

From a historical perspective, it's worse. The direct vassals of a sovereign are known as "tenant-in-chiefs", their stature is known as immediacy. Every vassal wants to have immediacy, for it assures a bunch of privileges and demands attention from the overlord. What happens when everybody gets immediacy is that of the 15th century Holy Roman Empire; so for the sovereign, it isn't ideal to hand them out like candy.
But the point is that immediacy is a valuable thing to have, something nobody wants to give up, but that is exactly what interaction "transfer vassalage" does. By placing them under a former peer, they lose their immediacy and become a mesne lord. While immediate count and a mesne count have the same title, they are not equal.

The act of removing one's immediacy is known as mediatisation, and it shouldn't be done lightly. As stated before, the lords really value their immediacy, and I would go as far as to say that no lord would willingly be mediatized. Thus I reckon, the only way to mediatize irritating a vassal should be when you have them imprisoned. Naturally, transferring non-feudal vassals such as viceroys and mayors do not count as mediatisation and should be done at will.

Now, I know restricting mediatisation would make the game more difficult, but truth to be told, this is something that many rulers struggled with. If you can't keep your vassals from obtaining illegal immediacies and can't enforce the policy of mediatisation, you deserve to be over the vassal limit and find yourself in the same jam as the 15th century Holy Roman Empire or any other decentralized state.

 

[Metz77]

I agree with all this, but to go alongside it I'd want to see some big overhauls of the related system. If you're going to force me to hold on to extra vassals, I better not lose vassals on succession, and I better not get opinion maluses from their de jure dukes. There would need to be different penalties in place.

 

[DukeDayve]

They do get a say don't they? (except in imperial governments where the "dukes" and "kings" are actually administrators appointed by the emperor/bureaucracy to administer the land in the name of the realm).

If you try to take their vassals away from them without a cause you get a large penalty with all of your vassals and they're pretty much guaranteed to rebel against you if you take more than one. Hell even when they're traitors you can't just transfer their vassals away. You can do it once or twice but then the opinion penalty kicks back in.

 

[Metz77]

They do get a say don't they? (except in imperial governments where the "dukes" and "kings" are actually administrators appointed by the emperor/bureaucracy to administer the land in the name of the realm).

If you try to take their vassals away from them without a cause you get a large penalty with all of your vassals and they're pretty much guaranteed to rebel against you if you take more than one. Hell even when they're traitors you can't just transfer their vassals away. You can do it once or twice but then the opinion penalty kicks back in.

This is different — not transferring vassals FROM vassals, but TO them.

 

[DukeDayve]

This is different — not transferring vassals FROM vassals, but TO them.

Sorry, yeah, I read your post again and I see the mistake I made. It kind of evens out though if you do sweep your disloyal counts under the rug by transferring them to a duke... because that duke (or his kids) will inevitably be disloyal to you later... and you made them more powerful by giving them more vassals.

 

[Chlodio]

Sorry, yeah, I read your post again and I see the mistake I made. It kind of evens out though if you do sweep your disloyal counts under the rug by transferring them to a duke... because that duke (or his kids) will inevitably be disloyal to you later... and you made them more powerful by giving them more vassals.

I don't agree. It isn't inevitable, especially if you keep marrying the family and obtaining NAP with the vassal (NAP prevents vassals from joining in factions).
I doubt that makes them significantly stronger, in fact, I have noted that often these newly transferred vassals have a low opinion of their new liege lord and waste their resources on fighting for their independence, if they win, well... They revert to being your tenants-in-chief, and.. you can just move them back being the vassals of the guy whom they just fought against or someone else. So, in the progress, you also weaken your vassals and make them a lesser threat.

 

[Sword of Spirits]

Thus I reckon, the only way to mediatize irritating a vassal should be when you have them imprisoned.

I agree that there probably should be some additional restrictions, as it is an extremely useful way of not having to deal with troublesome vassals, but I think that may be slightly too restrictive, especially if the vassal is a de-jure vassal of another vassal. Also, it would seem strange that I couldn't land a character and then transfer their vassalage.

 

[GreyJack]

So I usually (surely I can't be the only one) only use this system to clean up weird annoyances in my kingdom. Like a count who is my vassal instead of being the vassal of his rightful duke. Or baron-level vassals that are mine just because I happened to build the holding they're staying in. It would get mightily annoying if I couldn't transfer these vassals to their de jure lords without going through a whole thing.

 

[junassa]

So I usually (surely I can't be the only one) only use this system to clean up weird annoyances in my kingdom. Like a count who is my vassal instead of being the vassal of his rightful duke. Or baron-level vassals that are mine just because I happened to build the holding they're staying in. It would get mightily annoying if I couldn't transfer these vassals to their de jure lords without going through a whole thing.

I only transfer vassals to their de jure liege or to someone close by if I can't form the kingdom they are in.
Having said that I find vassal management to be trivial, so anything to make that part of the game interesting I'd at least listen to.

 

[Arko]

I'd just wipe the whole thing personaly, easy exploit+unhistorical is too much really.

 

[Patriarch of Bub]

This is a very interesting topic, which I agree should be addressed in the coming game.

Vassals need reasons to have immediacy with the king/emperor, and the liege must have planning beyond "vassal limit"

 

[Torngasuk]

Part of the problem, and one of my chief issues with Crusader Kings II, is that it imagines medieval feudalism as a pyramid, in which emperors sit atop kings, who rule over dukes, who command counts, who keep barons at their beck and call. This was not so. The first duchy created in England after the Conquest was the duke of Cornwall: at the time, Edward, the Black Prince, heir to the English throne. This took place in 1337, far closer to the end of the game's timeline than its beginning. Up until that point, the immediate vassals of the English crown were the kingdom's earls and barons, many of whom possessed military power and material wealth not inferior to the dukes that we're accustomed to creating.

The French, of course, had rather more dukes, but possessed an even greater number of counts of distinction and note, and as time went on new duchies existed almost exclusively as appanages for cadet branches of the royal family, and most certainly not for one count to get it into his head that he's better than his neighbors and thus needs a bigger title to rule over them. The Spanish came equally late to the ducal game as the English, and while a there were ducal titles in more than a few other kingdoms of the age, they generally adhered to the same standard as the French: dukes are more distinguished than counts, but do not exist exclusively to rule over them. Many players are understandably fond of keeping tidy and organized borders, which speaks to the micromanager in all of us, and the system is set up so that each vassal has an assigned territory that he is unhappy if he does not possess in its entirety, and utterly lacking in ambition once he does, but the truth is that internal medieval borders were patchworked and jumbled by the simple nature of the system, and it was rarely the ruler's place or desire to interfere. I would agree with limiting the ability to transfer vassalage, and much rather see more immediacy rather than less.

 

[Chlodio]

Part of the problem, and one of my chief issues with Crusader Kings II, is that it imagines medieval feudalism as a pyramid, in which emperors sit atop kings, who rule over dukes, who command counts, who keep barons at their beck and call. This was not so. The first duchy created in England after the Conquest was the duke of Cornwall: at the time, Edward, the Black Prince, heir to the English throne. This took place in 1337, far closer to the end of the game's timeline than its beginning. Up until that point, the immediate vassals of the English crown were the kingdom's earls and barons, many of whom possessed military power and material wealth not inferior to the dukes that we're accustomed to creating.

That fairly represents England's centralization compared to that of France, England went as far as to subinfeudation outlaw in 1290, meaning the tenant-in-chiefs' vassals could no longer have vassals of their own.

Does CK2 idealise many weak vassals over a few powerful? Say which one commits more levies, having ten direct count-vassals or having the ten counties being subdivided amongst five dukes? At least historically, the reason why subinfeudation happened was because the tenant-in-chief could obtain more troops if they enfeoffed their land in turn. In contrast, the mesne lord's liege didn't like his vassals doing that, because they didn't benefit from it, but it made their vassals more powerful and harder to control.
Faction wise, aren't the dukes better option? Because bribing and keeping them happy is easier than doing with several counts.