Which is better a county where you hold 3 castles or...

[Shadow Dancer]

Actually,

Although you might find this useful only in the early game starting out small; owning more holdings in a Provence is better based only on the situation I have outlined... er well there are others perhaps.

For example, If you hold the church and the city in the county as well, then you won't have to worry about having a high opinion with a vassal. You would get the maximum levy available. Im not sure what and if there is a income penalty associated with holding the wrong type of title. This might also might come in handy during a crazy moment where you wish to banish all 125 of your vassals in your kingdom. If successful this will net you a burst of cash and since you would own this directly you wouldn't have to worry about managing the opinions of your vassals, I would also hire new nobles into your court which I believe wouldn't express hate toward you. Though im sure there is some kinda of levy/tax penalty hit to your demesne if you exceed your max.

I would be very curious would kind of penalty I would be looking at whether tax or levy or both.

 

[unmerged(275616)]

I think two points need to be recognized:

1. You will always try to get a number of holdings equal to your demesne limit.
2. Those holdings will almost always be castles.

It logically follows from those two points that you should try to make all of your holdings counties. The number of owned castles will be the same as if you owned baronies; however owning counties gives you the advantage of mayor vassals. It doesn't matter if your demense limit is higher than the number of counties in the two duchies you hold. Simply take control of all the counties in a de jure duchy and never create the ducal title.

That being said, my demense strategy would be the following:

1. Make sure all of your demense is coastal. This causes cities to make a lot more money.
2. Only hold counties with 4-6 barony slots.
3. If a province is sub-optimal, then give it to someone else. For instance, if a de jure ducy has two awesome counties and one mediocre county, give the mediocre county to a vassal and never create the ducal title. If you continue to hold the other two counties, the ducal title can never be created so you will never suffer relationship penalties.
4. Build cities in all of your extra barony slots.
5. Give all of the cities in a county to only one mayor. This will cause city infrastructure construction to bloom because that mayor will have the funds needed to build up his cities. With this strategy, all of those cities will become as rich as Venice in no time. Also, the mayor will be able to raise more levies than a baron would because a mayor making 100 gold a year can build a lot more levy boosting buildings than a baron making 5 gold a year.

 

[whosthebestcop]

I think two points need to be recognized:

1. You will always try to get a number of holdings equal to your demesne limit.
2. Those holdings will almost always be castles.

It logically follows from those two points that you should try to make all of your holdings counties. The number of owned castles will be the same as if you owned baronies; however owning counties gives you the advantage of mayor vassals. It doesn't matter if your demense limit is higher than the number of counties in the two duchies you hold. Simply take control of all the counties in a de jure duchy and never create the ducal title.

That being said, my demense strategy would be the following:

1. Make sure all of your demense is coastal. This causes cities to make a lot more money.
2. Only hold counties with 4-6 barony slots.
3. If a province is sub-optimal, then give it to someone else. For instance, if a de jure ducy has two awesome counties and one mediocre county, give the mediocre county to a vassal and never create the ducal title. If you continue to hold the other two counties, the ducal title can never be created so you will never suffer relationship penalties.
4. Build cities in all of your extra barony slots.
5. Give all of the cities in a county to only one mayor. This will cause city infrastructure construction to bloom because that mayor will have the funds needed to build up his cities. With this strategy, all of those cities will become as rich as Venice in no time. Also, the mayor will be able to raise more levies than a baron would because a mayor making 100 gold a year can build a lot more levy boosting buildings than a baron making 5 gold a year.

Agreed. Lowly barons will never ever make enough money to upgrade their buildings. Counts/Dukes do because they get money from their vassals just like the player. A baron is severely limited when it comes to income.

 

[noobermenschen]

I am also a believer in one castle per country. If you don't have the money, build cities. If you have the money you can build extra castles for your unlanded sons, and if you're really flush with cash you can gift your direct baron vassals to keep their opinion at 100% and pay for improvements to their holdings.

 

[Scottiths]

Interesting. A lot of good points going around. So Taking a full county is preferable to having many castles in one county is what I gather from the responses. Thanks for the help. Also, I like the tip about giving all the cities to one dude.

Is there any way to remove a holding that is built? I have a pretty good game going now but I have wasted a lot of slots on castles

 

[macphineas]

What are thoughts on giving the richest coastal holding to Grand Doges? For example, if you built cities in all the empty holding slots in Venice, and then gave all those cities to one mayor, along with the county and ducal title, would that mayor then be paying you more (with all the grand republic/coastal republic bonuses) than if you held the county and kept him as a lowly mayor? And if so, wouldn't it make more sense to hold onto the high-slot inland provinces, and give the rich coastal ones to Grand Doges?

 

[l3ol3o]

More counties. You get all the vassals of that county paying you.

 

[Westernesse]

I'd say in the long run its not if you've got a choice of a county with 4-7 holdings vs an extra barony, you should pick the county. Now if you talking about a 1 holding county vs barony I'd take the Barony. With a 2-3 holding county vs a barony its up in the air and depends on # of builidngs/tech levels. For instance I'd take a barony in ERE (or Spain or muslim country) w/ 8/16/16 tech that's developed with most of the buildings at tier2/3 vs a county in Russia that has 3 holdings (barony, city(non-coastal) and temple that are hardly developed) and tech lvls of 0/0/0, not to mention different culture for an increased revolt chance. In this case the Barony would produce more troops (superior ones too) and about the same money, not to mention lets you centralize your army faster, which can be vital in taking down a slightly numerical superior neighbor.

When your a King or Emporer you should only have 1 barony in a county, but for a count or duke stacking baronies can be worth it for the money/troop increase from advisor if they are on already developed lands.

 

[Mutineer]

personally I am allways in favor of having as many counties as possible. At the end yu will get more taxes from cities/bushops then directly from your own holdings, you will get more levies from your direct vassals And, probably the most impotant, you will have bigger pool of posible candidates for counselors positions or educators or army leaders.

 

[cywang86]

With the retinue system, I'd rather have one capital with as many cities as possible (for the techs), find the two duchies with the most counties and become their duke while holding the best county in there. The rests usually go to the lands with the most holdings and the other province in the same duchy if it only has 2 counties. I keep this number to 6~10 depending on legalism and fill the rests with floater counties that are within the two duke de jure so I can revoke/grant depending on my luck with heirs.

 

[Comradebot]

I think two points need to be recognized:

1. You will always try to get a number of holdings equal to your demesne limit.
2. Those holdings will almost always be castles.

Unless you're a Muslim.