Who else has problems with destabilised realms upon inheritance?

[MachopPower69]

I gave up on my Sicily game because every time my ruler dies, the successor has to deal with 5 factions, a big dissolution faction and independence faction and unhappy vassals with little ways to stabilise the realm because they are too unhappy for gifts putting them over 50. It feels too common, especially when the realm splits via inheritance and the other sons fold to the dissolution factions, destroying their realms because factions spike upon a new ruler.

 

[Germanicus_Caesar]

This is one of the challenges the game has to offer and you’ve got to try your best to plan for this. A few suggestions based on how I handled succession:

1. Try and leave a large pot of gold leftover for mercs and gifts
2. Use your children and siblings for strategic alliances. You don’t need to ally everyone, just the most powerful and dangerous vassals (so if your current ruler has excess children, leave some unmarried for the coming ruler to marry off their siblings)
3. In the early reign the council really needs to be populated by the powerful vassals in order to prevent an obvious negative opinion modifier
4. Sway, befriend, sway
5. Imprison criminals when possible
6. Be strategic, sometimes you can give in to a liberty faction and peasant faction in order to avoid a war
7. If war is inevitable, sometimes it’s best to trigger the war early before more vassals join up. Find the war leader, and take their capital (if it’s close) or siege down all the close vassals and knock them out of the war.

I hope some of these strategies help! Other long term solutions are making sure your domain is strong and built up. A strong domain, good alliances, and a few friends and family in the right place will do the work.

 

[MachopPower69]

This is one of the challenges the game has to offer and you’ve got to try your best to plan for this. A few suggestions based on how I handled succession:

1. Try and leave a large pot of gold leftover for mercs and gifts
2. Use your children and siblings for strategic alliances. You don’t need to ally everyone, just the most powerful and dangerous vassals (so if your current ruler has excess children, leave some unmarried for the coming ruler to marry off their siblings)
3. In the early reign the council really needs to be populated by the powerful vassals in order to prevent and obvious negative opinion modifier
4. Sway, befriend, sway
5. Imprison criminals when possible
6. Be strategic, sometimes you can give in to a liberty faction and peasant faction in order to avoid a war
7. If war is inevitable, sometimes it’s best to trigger the war early before more vassals join up. Find the war leader, and take their capital (if it’s close) or siege down all the close vassals and knock them out of the war.

I hope some of these strategies help! Other long term solutions are making sure your domain is strong and built up. A strong domain, good alliances, and a few friends and family in the right place will do the work.

1. Even though I had enough gold, the gold = relations wasn't enough.
2. My characters were chaste for some reason. They didn't have the personality but the RNG didn't offer me children at all.
3. Most of my vassals had bad stats or there were too many strong vassals, usually not enough to improve their relations or the court wasn't big enough.
4. Swaying took way too long and sometimes they failed, even with 80+ percent chance.
5. I tried imprisoning a weak subject, but it brought every other vassal in, especially those in a faction or had strong allies or a lot of money. Plus, my best ally was Bulgaria who even though had high levies, still couldn't help me.
6. There weren't any liberty or peasant factions, unfortunately.
7. I tried that, but I still lost because my allies were useless and the vassals were close together.

 

[Emperor 1997]

This is one of the challenges the game has to offer and you’ve got to try your best to plan for this. A few suggestions based on how I handled succession:

1. Try and leave a large pot of gold leftover for mercs and gifts
2. Use your children and siblings for strategic alliances. You don’t need to ally everyone, just the most powerful and dangerous vassals (so if your current ruler has excess children, leave some unmarried for the coming ruler to marry off their siblings)
3. In the early reign the council really needs to be populated by the powerful vassals in order to prevent and obvious negative opinion modifier
4. Sway, befriend, sway
5. Imprison criminals when possible
6. Be strategic, sometimes you can give in to a liberty faction and peasant faction in order to avoid a war
7. If war is inevitable, sometimes it’s best to trigger the war early before more vassals join up. Find the war leader, and take their capital (if it’s close) or siege down all the close vassals and knock them out of the war.

I hope some of these strategies help! Other long term solutions are making sure your domain is strong and built up. A strong domain, good alliances, and a few friends and family in the right place will do the work.

Or be smart and only have a few dynasties in your realm, because the lesser Dynasties are in your Realm, the lesser Marriages are needed to have an alliance option with everyone and your own Dynasty will always get the +5 same Dynasty bonus, it is not much, but you can get another +5 from Dynasty legacies.

It is a lot easier to control an Empire with only 1 - 2 Dynasties in it.

 

[pengoyo]

One thing that can help is consolidating vassals. Have a few strong vassals is easier to manage than a lot of small vassals as there are less vassals you need to bride, marry into, or otherwise deal with.

Also you can see who will immediately revolt if your revoke or imprisonment fails by clicking the on decline tab when in the interaction window. That is useful for seeing if the risk is work the reward.

Sometimes letting vassals go independent is worth it to keep the realm independent (and you can always take them back over later). If a faction leader is not due jure under you, you can grant them Independence to dismantle the fact (at least temporarily) which can give you more time to fix things (also one less vassal you need to fight).

Lastly giving a gift to your court priest can be useful as your court priest can provide up to 100% of the levies they have if they like you enough (and keep in mind that court priest do not just get levies from the holding they are managing, they also receive levies from your vassal's court priests).

 

[Emperor 1997]

One thing that can help is consolidating vassals. Have a few strong vassals is easier to manage than a lot of small vassals as there are less vassals you need to bride, marry into, or otherwise deal with.

Also you can see who will immediately revolt if your revoke or imprisonment fails by clicking the on decline tab when in the interaction window. That is useful for seeing if the risk is work the reward.

Sometimes letting vassals go independent is worth it to keep the realm independent (and you can always take them back over later). If a faction leader is not due jure under you, you can grant them Independence to dismantle the fact (at least temporarily) which can give you more time to fix things (also one less vassal you need to fight).

Lastly giving a gift to your court priest can be useful as your court priest can provide up to 100% of the levies they have if they like you enough (and keep in mind that court priest do not just get levies from the holding they are managing, they also receive levies from your vassal's court priests).

Yes, but regarding the decline tab, this is a bug from Paradox, because they have forgotten to update 2 of the war_for scripted effects, so if you try to revoke an Vassal or to Imprison your Vassal, even you have an Imprisonment Reason, you risk that your entire Realm will rise up in Rebellion against you, even allied and befriended Vassals will join, currently only Dread prevents them from joining.

 

[MachopPower69]

Continuing on my post, it would be nice if there was a game rule that prevented a spike in factions on inheritance.

80 year old king: My son, I will give you my prospering and stable realm upon my death.

80 yo king dies.

Son: Prospering and stable realm? I have 50 dukes demanding me to destroy our title and there are angry peasants everywhere!

 

[EphemeralToast]

The destabilizing of the realm upon ruler transition is one of the major challenges of the game. You can expect it every time and therefore you can learn to prepare for it! Prepare your realm for your child to inherit by not leaving vassals with major concerns. Find reasons to legally imprison troublemakers and replace them with compliant weenies. Leave a fat stack of cash for bribes and mercs. Marry your child to a stable outsider's child so they will immediately have a strong ally upon taking the throne.

You say that bribes weren't enough, so why did they hate you that much? Take a look at the reasons why your subjects hate you and focus on how to improve that in the future. If it's a cultural problem, hybridize your culture. Personality clash? Educate key realm heirs in your own court and make them Patient and Content instead of Greedy and Arrogant. Make sure your own heirs don't have traits everyone will hate. Sway your vassals as much as you can before dying because your kid will inherit a portion of their opinion of you. There is almost always something you can do ahead of time to help future stability.

But ok, it's too late for that now, you died and everyone hates the new king's guts. You can go into action before you even unpause:

1. Give the most powerful complainers council positions (yes, even if they suck. you can replace them later when they hate you less) (but NEVER have a spymaster who hates you!!)
2. Set your chancellor to Internal Affairs to boost vassal opinion
3. Send as many gifts as possible to vassals who are closest to not hating you
4. If you have any unequipped artifacts with +vassal opinion boost, equip them
5. Do they hate you because you're an Adulterous Deviant Witch? Buy some indulgences from the Pope to get that squeaky-clean feeling of moral authority back
6. Upon unpausing, immediately feast for the opinion bonus. Hire a good court musician if possible. Hope for events which give +vassal opinion as a choice (there are several)
7. If still in trouble, check all angry vassal contracts to see if they have unfavorable terms. Remove them, or grant some small concession like lower levies
8. If still in trouble, lower crown authority one step

Now you can start longer-term opinion investments like Swaying or going on a Pilgrimage or finding hooks or improving cultural acceptance. If you do all this you should see vassals begin to drop out of angry factions, either dissolving them or at least buying you time to begin preparing for war. And if not, well, you learned something for next time about what makes vassals angry and dangerous.

 

[Solaris84]

Having revolts is a great opportunity to revoke titles on a large scale.

 

[Emperor 1997]

You say that bribes weren't enough, so why did they hate you that much? Take a look at the reasons why your subjects hate you and focus on how to improve that in the future. If it's a cultural problem, hybridize your culture. Personality clash? Educate key realm heirs in your own court and make them Patient and Content instead of Greedy and Arrogant. Make sure your own heirs don't have traits everyone will hate. Sway your vassals as much as you can before dying because your kid will inherit a portion of their opinion of you. There is almost always something you can do ahead of time to help future stability.

This does absolutly nothing against the stupid Rival Events from Friends & Foes, because even 2 characters have the exact same personality, Friends & Foes will make them to become Rivals and this with an +100 opinion after Rival modifier.

The Devs need to lock Relations behind Opinions, there no reason to Rival someone, who still has +100 opinion, even CK2 has locked Relations behind Opinions.

 

[MachopPower69]

I don't have Friend's and Foes, so you guys can take it out of the equation. Plus, there is another culprit; the bug that lowers court level upon succession. Most of my vassals also are Greek, but the biggest contenders to factions is my Sicilian vassals, which is strange because I made a hybrid with Sicilian.

Another probable issue is me diplo-vassalising them. DV is broken in my opinion but it has the drawback of not choosing your vassals.

My heirs also have incredibly laughable stats most of the time. They might be educated in martial but have bad RNG and get a martial score lower than learning. And the unpredictability of vassals inheritances.

 

[Solaris84]

I don't have Friend's and Foes, so you guys can take it out of the equation. Plus, there is another culprit; the bug that lowers court level upon succession. Most of my vassals also are Greek, but the biggest contenders to factions is my Sicilian vassals, which is strange because I made a hybrid with Sicilian.

Another probable issue is me diplo-vassalising them. DV is broken in my opinion but it has the drawback of not choosing your vassals.

My heirs also have incredibly laughable stats most of the time. They might be educated in martial but have bad RNG and get a martial score lower than learning. And the unpredictability of vassals inheritances.

Depending on how strong the vassal is that you diploed, consider marrying someone from your dynasty to his/her kids, then intrigue away. Murder them and have your dynasty inherit.

 

[Emperor 1997]

My heirs also have incredibly laughable stats most of the time. They might be educated in martial but have bad RNG and get a martial score lower than learning. And the unpredictability of vassals inheritances.

You don't have to look at the Total Skill value of character, when you choose a Guardian for your childs, it is only the Base amount, who is important, if the Guardian has an base amount of 1 in martial, the ward will probably have 1 martial base amount too.

And Universities can guarantee, a Tier 4 education, because it grants 12 education points and 17 are needed for Tier 4.

 

[Breebelbox]

For the education of heirs, get a really good tutor in your court positions. And only choose guardians which have really high stats in the relevant one.

Council positions should be filled with the most dangerous vassals. I personally make an exception for the chancellor if I have a 20+ diplomacy chancellor available. I try to put the person with the highest diplomacy available into the chancellor position even if he's not a powerful vassal and make him work on internal affairs.

This combined with a lot of feasts, a pilgrimage asap, swaying, a royal court with high grandeur and some good artifacts my factions usually never even spring into action. And I don't even marry my children to vassals.

And if the factions actually rise, make sure to have multiple very powerful allies who can help you.

The game gives you a lot of options to deal with this situation, you just have to use them. It's all a learning process and next time you'll be prepared better.

 

[Ekyman]

Son: Prospering and stable realm? I have 50 dukes demanding me to destroy our title and there are angry peasants everywhere!

I know this is hyperbole but if you actually have bucketloads of problematic dukes you should consider being an emperor with king-tier vassals and dumping a lot of the dukes off to them. It's often easier to manage a few powerful vassals than tons of middling ones.

 

[MachopPower69]

I know this is hyperbole but if you actually have bucketloads of problematic dukes you should consider being an emperor with king-tier vassals and dumping a lot of the dukes off to them. It's often easier to manage a few powerful vassals than tons of middling ones.

I wasn't big enough to be an Emperor or recreate the Byzantine Empire.

 

[Breebelbox]

Oh, I forgot, if you already have factions against you it's usually a really bad idea to imprison one of them, even if you have a good reason. As you have seen it might bring up all your other angry vassals against you, too. This should only be done if you are absolutely sure that a war will start anyways and if your imprisoning chances are very high.

 

[Tuo]

Aside from what everyone else said, if you regularly have more trouble on succession than you can deal with, you may have overextended your realm. Let go of some of the more problematic vassals, and focus on building your own power base - as the game progresses, you'll get more means of dealing with such problems, with more favorable succession laws to items that boost opinions, and just plain old more money, more army - and with all that, you'll have smoother successions and can handle more vassals.

 

[Rubidium]

And as always, whenever you see a faction, ask yourself "is this war worth fighting?" If they are demanding to reduce your crown authority, it's usually worth just letting them; you can always raise it again when things are more stable.

Give rebellious counts to loyal dukes whenever possible. If you have the money, it can be worth creating the title just to do that. And remember that you can give said title to a pre-existing duke, rather than elevating one of the counts. At that point, any malcontents become your vassal's problem, not yours.

Sway/befriend/seduce the faction members with the highest opinion of you, as they will be the first ones to desert the faction. As long as a faction isn't strong enough to actively rebel, it doesn't matter if one or two vassals hate you, so getting them below that threshold is the most important part.

Hover over the opinion modifiers on the upset vassals and see why they are upset. If it's something you can deal with, do so (e.g., they want a title that is de jure theirs but you or another vassal holds, give it to them).

If it does come to war, mercenaries are your friends.

 

[johnty5]

You don't have to look at the Total Skill value of character, when you choose a Guardian for your childs, it is only the Base amount, who is important, if the Guardian has an base amount of 1 in martial, the ward will probably have 1 martial base amount too.

Unless something has changed (and it's entirely possible it has and I've missed it) but I don't think the Guardian's Diplomacy, Martial, Stewardship or Intrigue attributes contribute to the education of the child. The last time I looked into the code, the Guardian's contribution to a child's education was mainly based on whether the Guardian has the Quick, Intelligent or Genius trait and - to a lesser extent - their Learning attribute.