Which Holding Type to Build?

[jecjackal]

I was wondering what people considered to be the best type of holding to build. At first I was thinking castle but I tried it and realized I would have to give up a county to own the castle (would rather have the additional vassal mayor and bishop).

So Between having a vassal baron, mayor or bishop, which do folks generally perfer (for extra holdings)?

 

[Lwantssugar]

Cities, cities everywhere
If its an open build slot put a city there, if they're part of your demense you can upgrade the vassal's holding for him and leave him to focus on making you more money

 

[Yenzen]

Well, it's not really so straightforward in my opinion. At first glance cities = Cash = Good!, and indeed if your personal demesne is full of sea zones it may well be the best bet. Add this to the fact that they have the best tech buildings and I would suggest having at least 2 in each county by the end.

But!

Baronies have a few of their own advantages. If you help the barons build up to castle towns, they develop fairly quickly and provide you with a lot of secured troops from your personal demesne. If you build them in your vassals lands, you can give them to the existing counts and dukes, thus giving a lot of direct income to vassals who can actually afford to upgrade the holdings quickly. It is my general experience that by mid-late game, vassals troops will be as or more important than income.

Bishoprics on the other hand can be worth it if you're doing a high tech game since their tech+ buildings are very cheap, and if you are an orthodox player you're sure to get troops and income from there! So I often make a 2nd bishopric when orthodox after the 2nd city.

My personal ideal goes something like (after the capital barony)

Sea holding: City. Bishopric, City, City, City/Barony/Bishopric(Orth), City/Barony/Bishopric(Orth)
Land holding: City, Bishopric, City, Barony/Bishopric(Orth.), Barony/Bishopric(Orth.)

 

[DLFebin]

My usual approach is as much cities as possible in capital, and then baronies in other owned counties.

 

[barny]

I only build cities, specially in coastal provinces.

I normally also gave them markets and harbors, to get them going. They build up much faster that way. Churches only are useful at the beginning, baronies aren't useful at all. I rather have more money to build more buildings in my own castle to boost my personal levies.

 

[Yenzen]

Bishoprics only being useful at the beginning simply isn't true. With the almost equal to city income inland, higher income % from taxes, higher troop numbers, cheaper tech buildings and no loyalty issues, they are a completely competitive subholding for inland orthodox counties (and there are much such rich ones in Russia for example)

Baronies take a little long than cities to pick up, but when they do they're actually quite a useful way to gain more troops in your personal demesne in the long run since barons never join factions. They are also useful should you ever decide to start building in your vassals' counties since your feudal vassals can utilize them right away.

 

[unmerged(88697)]

From the look of things it appears you're trying to decide between consolidating your holdings or remain spread-out.

The best thing to do is start with two counties and build them up with nothing but castles, ideally holding for yourself between 3-5 baronies. These consolidated holdings are best for rapid troop build-up and great for concentrated tax collections (using your steward).

Other than the above one should try to control as many coastal counties as possible, and accordingly, as many vacillated cities within those as possible. One can build extra cities there, but only if you plan to keep that county for a very long time. Otherwise, just grab any available county and do the minimum maintenance until a better one comes along.

Once again, begin by building castles and developing your levies and tax base. Then, with enough gold and troops one can begin acquiring new counties (by hook or by crook). As those conquered lands boost your income, use the excess gold to further develop your castles to produce more and better troops. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Yenzen]

I never understood the "hold every barony in one-two counties" strategy:

- It greatly limits the number of vassals for your council (tutors can be had from any vassal or vassal of vassal or vassals of vassals of vassals..)
- It adds a nice +% to income and troops numbers, but not the same as 2-5 subholding vassals for each barony would.
- It stunts technological growth long run, since your baronies have no +tech buildings

 

[jecjackal]

Thanks for the advice guys. My capital is Dublin so i'm gonna make a city as my first pick.

If i'm not the baron of a province, how much of the levy do i get?

 

[grisamentum]

I never understood the "hold every barony in one-two counties" strategy:

- It greatly limits the number of vassals for your council (tutors can be had from any vassal or vassal of vassal or vassals of vassals of vassals..)
- It adds a nice +% to income and troops numbers, but not the same as 2-5 subholding vassals for each barony would.
- It stunts technological growth long run, since your baronies have no +tech buildings

Overall it is worse. The only advantage is from Train Troops - you get the huge levy multiplier on more castles.

 

[Ritzzz]

With the advent of retinues, you should only look into building cities and holding the max number of counties (preferrable coastal so that you get ports). This is because retinues have greatly increased the importance of technology.

The reasons for building only cities, so well explained by Valinn and many others in another thread on switching holding types, are:

- univerisites: imagine your 6 holding county has the max number of cities, which is 5, and each city has a small university. So coupled with a cathedral school in your bishopric, you can gonna get 5 x 20% + 30% = 130% increase in technology growth rate from settlements alone. This, coupled with your ruler's learning, council's research function and tech focus, your county will have the highest tech in the world within 100 years.
- gold: the thing is, so long as you can keep your mayors happy, those cities, when upgraded, will pay almost as well as your directly held barony. And keeping your mayors are happy is easy so long as your ruler is virtuous and well-liked. And imagine every of your county has multiple cities - the net effect is that each county will bring you more gold than holding 5 baronies in 1 county
- choice of councillors, as explained earlier

And to explain why tech is the most important thing in the game (besides gold), how well your retinue fights and how big your retinue can be are greatly influenced by your tech level. By the time you are a king of well-to-do kingdom or a multi-duke, your main strike force will be your retinues. And having a high-tech retinue will make you very OP.

 

[Comm Cody]

Temples.


*troll face*

 

[Divi]

My usual build is more for convenience and less for maxing out tech by 1250 - 4 slots: 1 castle - 5 slots: city, castle - 6 sots: 2 cities, castle - 7 slots: either 3 cities or 2 cities, 2 castles (Venice and Brugge are 3/1, inland provinces are 2/2 - if I get Rome and the pope has put a bishopric already I write off one of the castles ). Gives me a pool of petty holdings to hand out to sons without giving them the means of deposing their older brother when the time comes, and a convenient way of having a new governor on hand if I need to cut down the size of my demesne.

 

[unmerged(88697)]

I never understood the "hold every barony in one-two counties" strategy: - It stunts technological growth long run, since your baronies have no +tech buildings

No, no, in this strategy your power base is not going to be in the capitol (except in the early going). Ideally, the capitol is going to be a county with lots of cities to add to demise tech (see Ritzzz post above). The power base s/b geographically as close to the capitol as possible in order to benefit from demise tech, and from there it doesn't take long to focus on the necessary technology aided by a local university and/or church school. Your steward, marshal, etc, can also help to advance to the next level if need be.

There will be times I get stuck, as in my present game I can't build Great Stables in one county until I achieve the necessary advancement. However, my character is already an emperor making 160gold/month, has medium crown authority, max feudal levies, etc. So, it's not like I'm hurting for anything at this point.

 

[Mutineer]

For ortodox inland capital you want it full of temples. Simly many cultural tech become impotant later in game and Russian ortodox starting tech is 0. So, it will take too long befor Unies will be avalible and all your counties will be inland, so you will not be rich enogth to build unies. But building temples let you build cheap instantly avalible reseach buiding stright away. In one of my game My inland Moscow capital become more tecnological advanced then anyone else. Power of earcly temple technological buildings. You can get money from other places.