Which is better for demense?

[Prsaval]

So recently I have run into a question of demense management regarding holdings in counties and the like. Say I have 7 demense slots in various territories throughout my kingdom. Is it better to maximize the amount of counties I hold by owning 7 keeps in 7 different counties, or to stack keeps and maybe hold only 4 counties to instead double up on holdings in those counties?
Taken a step further, should I consolidate my holdings in one or two duchies, or spread them apart throughout the land? I’m beginning to delve into larger kingdom/empire sized dynasties, so I am curious what you all feel is the best approach to ensuring military strength within the realm. Any feedback is very welcome!

 

[jhhowell]

The wiki has a good discussion of this. Absent other considerations, you want your capital duchy to be large, and to hold all of it, ideally also holding additional baronies in your capital county. Capital county = +50% levies, capital duchy = +25%. And your marshal will often be training troops in your capital county, further boosting those baronies.

In practice the baronies tend to balance pretty well with increasing your demesne limit with centralization, since it takes a while both to be rich enough to start building up new holdings and to improve your tech to unlock additional centralization levels.

Note that "absent other considerations" is doing a lot of work there in the first paragraph. If you're in the eastern part of the map and have Horse Lords, the Silk Road trade posts are a big deal and you'll want to hold as many as you're allowed personally. Some parts of the map just don't have large duchies so you can't put your entire demesne into one ridiculously powerful capital duchy. If you're conquering a lot, you may not want your personal levies to all be on one side of your realm. If you don't like vassals launching wars on their own, you'll want to hold border provinces to the extent that the map allows (example: in my Persia game, Hormuz is a demesne province even though Kerman is not my capital duchy, because Hormuz has a Silk Road TP and borders Oman across the strait). If overseas transport is important to you, you'll probably want to hold a few coastal counties yourself.

Be aware that if you hold a county outside your capital duchy, that duke will have an opinion penalty with you because he wants all his de jure territory under him. Holding multiple counties in the same non-capital duchy is generally a bad idea, unless you hold that duchy title personally.

 

[Fediuld76]

So recently I have run into a question of demense management regarding holdings in counties and the like. Say I have 7 demense slots in various territories throughout my kingdom. Is it better to maximize the amount of counties I hold by owning 7 keeps in 7 different counties, or to stack keeps and maybe hold only 4 counties to instead double up on holdings in those counties?
Taken a step further, should I consolidate my holdings in one or two duchies, or spread them apart throughout the land? I’m beginning to delve into larger kingdom/empire sized dynasties, so I am curious what you all feel is the best approach to ensuring military strength within the realm. Any feedback is very welcome!

As Feudal
a)You need to own the 2 biggest (4+ counties) duchies. One been your capital county-Duchy and the other the one attached to it. Not some far away. You need to join armies fast in case of rebellion. Never EVER give a single county of those 2 duchies to anyone, even your guaranteed heir.

b) Capital county 5 Baronies all controled by you.

This leads to a demense of 12, which is usually perfect. 5 From home county and 7 from the other counties on the duchies.
With Keep & City tech 6 you fully upgraded to that level you should be able to raise 20K troops own levy + retinue and 50-60gold per month.

As Merchant
Cities everywhere, given the mechanics and upgrades you should be able to control 30-35 of them without trouble. Here you go wide and only have 2-3 cities in single county somewhere away from capital. The massive retinue plus money are enough to deal with wars in home capital. Good place is Constantinople to set up such county.

 

[jonjowett]

As Feudal
a)You need to own the 2 biggest (4+ counties) duchies. One been your capital county-Duchy and the other the one attached to it. Not some far away. You need to join armies fast in case of rebellion. Never EVER give a single county of those 2 duchies to anyone, even your guaranteed heir.

b) Capital county 5 Baronies all controled by you.

This leads to a demense of 12, which is usually perfect. 5 From home county and 7 from the other counties on the duchies.
With Keep & City tech 6 you fully upgraded to that level you should be able to raise 20K troops own levy + retinue and 50-60gold per month.

b) Agree. Also, if possible, build the "city walls" great work in your capital county for further boosts to levies.

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a) Disagree

I agree with @jhhowell - it's probably best to have a strong capital duchy (with multiple castles in the capital) and leave some space in your demesne limit for a few scattered counties. Holding the entire capital duchy is worthwhile because of the bonuses, and I think it's better to stack those bonuses as high as possible so you can use the rest of your demesne limit for other purposes. For example:

• if you want to keep vassals away from a border so they can't go to war
• if you want to hold lots of SR trade posts for the phat loot
• if you need to convert a county from tribe to castle
• if you need to wait for a few years before giving a county to someone (eg. so you can invite them to your court to break a disadvantageous betrothal)
• if you want to use the county to help you convert religion in the future (eg. if the county religion is rare, or if the county has a holy site - and especially if it has multiple holy sites!)

 

[Fediuld76]

b) Agree. Also, if possible, build the "city walls" great work in your capital county for further boosts to levies.

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a) Disagree

I agree with @jhhowell - it's probably best to have a strong capital duchy (with multiple castles in the capital) and leave some space in your demesne limit for a few scattered counties. Holding the entire capital duchy is worthwhile because of the bonuses, and I think it's better to stack those bonuses as high as possible so you can use the rest of your demesne limit for other purposes. For example:

• if you want to keep vassals away from a border so they can't go to war
• if you want to hold lots of SR trade posts for the phat loot
• if you need to convert a county from tribe to castle
• if you need to wait for a few years before giving a county to someone (eg. so you can invite them to your court to break a disadvantageous betrothal)
• if you want to use the county to help you convert religion in the future (eg. if the county religion is rare, or if the county has a holy site - and especially if it has multiple holy sites!)

If you mean what he said here

Be aware that if you hold a county outside your capital duchy, that duke will have an opinion penalty with you because he wants all his de jure territory under him. Holding multiple counties in the same non-capital duchy is generally a bad idea, unless you hold that duchy title personally.

Seems there is a confusion.
Under normal Feudal conditions. (no tribals etc)

a) You can hold all counties, where your capital county is on de-jure Duchy without having created the title of the Duchy
b) Same applies on the second de-jure duchy you hold the rest of the 4 counties. Just don't create the title of the Duchy.
c) That way you have a demesne of 12 wide (or more) and still hold 2 duchy titles directly that aren't any of the ones in your demesne

MR aren't effected at all. Nor Dukes where you hold counties under them as this doesn't apply on this scenario as the duchy doesn't exist.
And if it does exist you are the Duke so no penalties from the counts.

If you want to keep religion of a county that belongs to a duchy hence you keep it yourself away from Duke's hands then so be it.
You have the option to destroy that duchy title. So no dukes and give the other counts as vassals to a duke of another duchy. That is why on new conquest to control all the counties of the Duchy and give to the Duke ONLY the 1 county/duchy and transfer the rest as vassalage one by one as you appoint counts. That way the Duke will never put a claim on them trying to consolidate. (you much not select the checkbox when you assign the duke).
That is why also is best to destroy the Duchy title when you claim a new territory and control counties & duchy and pass the counties as vassals to some super dukes viceroys. Saves a lot of hassle.

That is also the easiest method to build an Empire. eg from Asturias to Leon to Hispania without having to move titles and people around all the time and have a secure succession election constantly until you hit max Demesne, Viceroys etc.

Hence my rule of thumb is NEVER create titles if you do not truly need them and destroy them as soon as you do not need them. Penalties be damned. Just some carousing and forced rebellions will resolve the issues.

 

[jonjowett]

If you mean what he said here

I don't. (I meant that I agreed that it was a good idea to have a strong capital duchy + some other random counties.)

I honestly don't care about dukes' opinion penalties due to them wanting one of my counties. I might eventually bury the unhappy duke under a viceroyal king but, if I want that province outside my capital duchy, it's almost certainly worth the negligible (-25) opinion penalty.

 

[LetsTalk]

So recently I have run into a question of demense management regarding holdings in counties and the like. Say I have 7 demense slots in various territories throughout my kingdom. Is it better to maximize the amount of counties I hold by owning 7 keeps in 7 different counties, or to stack keeps and maybe hold only 4 counties to instead double up on holdings in those counties?
Taken a step further, should I consolidate my holdings in one or two duchies, or spread them apart throughout the land? I’m beginning to delve into larger kingdom/empire sized dynasties, so I am curious what you all feel is the best approach to ensuring military strength within the realm. Any feedback is very welcome!

Generally, you want to keep the best land for yourself.

Low rank and small realm - land with the most levies (upgraded castles or tribes with many empty holdings).

Big realm - rich, coastal counties with many holdings slots fulled with cities. Genoa, alexandria, venecia if not used for MR, Rome if not left for Pope, norse package (hamburg-lubeck-sjaelland-scania). You may also want to have 5 castles in capital for levy boost and "collect taxes" mission, but somehow I always end up granting baronies to vassals instead. When emperor, demesne configuration does not matter that much. You never want to raise own levies, instead spend gold on wonders and mercs if needed, not demesne upgrades (it costs 11k gold to fully upgrade one castle).

It is rarely worth it to occupy all counties in capital duchy unless they are also 5+ holding.

 

[Yxklyx]

Somewhat related to this thread but if you're playing a Merchant Republic you probably want Castles as the capitals of your counties. You're going to make most of your money from trading posts. Your castles will protect your counties better. Their levies replenish a lot faster. If your capital is a castle with cultural buildings they will boost your cultural retinues.

 

[Rockphed]

As Merchant
Cities everywhere, given the mechanics and upgrades you should be able to control 30-35 of them without trouble. Here you go wide and only have 2-3 cities in single county somewhere away from capital. The massive retinue plus money are enough to deal with wars in home capital. Good place is Constantinople to set up such county.

Are you suggesting that as a merchant I don't want to give away any cities? That sounds like it would lead to all sorts of problems. I get the "use massive retinue to win wars (I conquered most of the map with my retinue as Venice once), but doesn't being over limit reduce income from all sources? Or is it just from holdings, so being 30 over the limit just reduces holding levy to nothing?

 

[MK1980]

you don't hold the cities personally. the tax penalty would kill any bonus income you could possibly hope to make from holding them.

just crank up the burgher obligations to get city tax to 50% or so and a direct vassal city run by an AI mayor is about half as good as a personally held city. you need to find a somewhat decent area on the map with large-ish counties to get 30 or 35 direct vassal cities in your 10 or 12 or so demesne counties. but there are enough areas where you can have a size 10 domain with an average of ~5 holding slots so 30 direct vassal cities isn't unrealistic.

 

[Yxklyx]

Also, when handing out a city give it to an existing Mayor. After a while those guys have tons of leftover money, give them a second city and they'll use that to build it up. When the mayor dies, the new mayor will keep both titles.

 

[Rockphed]

Also, when handing out a city give it to an existing Mayor. After a while those guys have tons of leftover money, give them a second city and they'll use that to build it up. When the mayor dies, the new mayor will keep both titles.

I think I have done that as the Byzantine emperor before (i.e. build new cities in my demesne provinces and hand them to the extant mayors). Getting city obligations up to 50% tax has never worked for me, but I suppose I could do that and drop city levy requirements down a level or so to keep the mayors from completely revolting.

Getting a consistent 10-12 demesne limit as a merchant prince, however, has always eluded me. I think the best I have consistently gotten was 8 and I lived in constant fear that I would die and have a moron inherit. Is it easier to keep a high demesne limit with Conclave? I have a code for it somewhere but have yet to use it.