Why can't you give your vassels more than 1 holding?

[User4035]

Why can't you give your vassels more than 1 holding?
Is it just because they get power hungry and rebel?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the game mechanics involved because surely some vassels with high opinion can have say 2 holdings and still be loyal.
A good historical example is William the Conqueror. When he took England he granted extra holdings from England to those vassals in normandy. I remember reading that he deliberately did this because the territories were spread out and therefore harder consolidate and rebel. But it still rewarded loyalty with more lands.

So I guess I'm wondering if the game factors in distance of armies when the conspirators decide to rebel. When I'm king of england I like to keep the 3 counties in the middle and upgrade those power bases. Whenever my vassals rebel I intercept small chunks of their levies before they can form up into a big army.
So the strategy works but I'm guessing the AI doesn't factor that in and then they loose.


Also, if you set the date to raound 1090 you'll see there are alot of vassals that hold counties/baronies in England and Normandy.

 

[Kimberly]

There's nothing wrong with giving your vassals more than one holding. But the more powerful each vassal is, the more dangerous they are, as well. Your vassals are easier to manage if you have fewer of them, so it's a matter of convenience vs. safety. I generally find that it's not such a big deal for one person to hold an entire duchy, but problems start when they hold multiple ones.

 

[Rancor26]

You can give your vassals multiple holdings. I don't understand what you're talking about... If they have high opinion of you they most likely don't revolt even if you give them multiple holdings.

 

[User4035]

You can give your vassals multiple holdings. I don't understand what you're talking about... If they have high opinion of you they most likely don't revolt even if you give them multiple holdings.

I've just read in other threads and guides that you don't give your vassals more than 1 county. They can be dukes but only with 1 county, etc...

Now I know that's not the case and I can get back to managing fewer vassals with marriages, gifts, feasts, etc... Makes the game more fun. Especially when your dukes are your allies and you can ask them to come crusading with you.

 

[Rancor26]

I've just read in other threads and guides that you don't give your vassals more than 1 county. They can be dukes but only with 1 county, etc...

Now I know that's not the case and I can get back to managing fewer vassals with marriages, gifts, feasts, etc... Makes the game more fun. Especially when your dukes are your allies and you can ask them to come crusading with you.

Well, giving them more or about the same amount of land that you have is not very wise, if they are stronger than you or have 75%+ of your army size they probably claim independence pretty fast no matter what's their opinion of you. It all depends how much land you have, if you have 10 demesne or so, having a duke with multiple counties isn't that big of a deal as long as you can manage them properly, if their opinion of you isn't high then you might have a problem.

 

[Mutineer]

well, if you give a vassal lot of holding and he is loyal to you, he might now be loyal to your son, or he could die and now you have ambitious vassal with lots of power. Take a guess, who will be in trouble?

 

[grisamentum]

I've just read in other threads and guides that you don't give your vassals more than 1 county. They can be dukes but only with 1 county, etc...

Now I know that's not the case and I can get back to managing fewer vassals with marriages, gifts, feasts, etc... Makes the game more fun. Especially when your dukes are your allies and you can ask them to come crusading with you.

Most of the people who write guides and make threads giving advice don't give very good advice.

 

[Lac du Bois]

Powerful vassals are a threat to your dynasty. One who is currently alive may be loyal, but when he dies the successor may not be. In many realms that I have played the vassals intermarry and tend to consolidate their holdings as well, so I don't want them to start out powerful.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

People who say to only give vassals one county tend to be newer players who haven't managed very large realms.

There is no hard rule about how much to give vassals beyond this one: can you handle them if they revolt?

In a small kingdom, you might want to limit your vassals to mostly counts or very small dukes. In a large realm, I always try to give my vassals entire duchies -- usually every single holding in the duchy. Many people in empires like to make vassal kings (I don't but see the utility in doing so).

The more you give each vassal, the more useful they are. They can afford to upgrade castles, have enough troops to put down rebels, and they might even win a war for you expanding your realm. So the best balance is to have vassals just powerful enough that you can easily put them down if a few of them revolt.

 

[Jore]

You have to remember that half of advices and guides here at forums. Mostly are powergamer type things suggesting on exploiting game mechanics and playing really gamying way.

 

[Lessing]

There is no harm giving somebody more than 1 "holding" as long as it doesnt cross duchy borders or kingdom borders and the like. Ideally each duke holds all counties in his de jure duchy.

 

[Julyan]

I've just read in other threads and guides that you don't give your vassals more than 1 county. They can be dukes but only with 1 county, etc...

Don't believe what the guides say. Most "how to play as muslim" guides say you should never land your relatives but that's complete bollocks. I personally land every male relative that generates decadence and I've never had civil war problems or decadence problems even in the empire of Arabia sized realms.
I'm convinced the people who write guides are the people who don't train their heirs into grey eminences.

 

[Lessing]

Most of the people who write guides and make threads giving advice don't give very good advice.

Don't believe what the guides say.

Am I the only one here who thinks that most guides provide very valuable information and should not be brushed aside that arrogantly?

Valinn's guide f.e. is very good and helped me a lot in learning how to play.

It's true that you should always try things instead of believing them blindly, but hey, a high quality guide is seriously worthwhile.

 

[sorrowofwind]

If your vassal with two more titles rebels, once you throw him/her into prison and revoke the titles, after the first title all others would result in losing your other vassals' opinion. (it's a glitch I think, nevertheless it's still a disadvantage)

 

[Fishy101]

There is no harm giving somebody more than 1 "holding" as long as it doesnt cross duchy borders or kingdom borders and the like. Ideally each duke holds all counties in his de jure duchy.

What he said.

I usually give all the counties in a duchy to a dynasty member. If I am really lazy I'll just give them the duchy and check the all holdings below box. Ideally, the vassal will be loyal until your death or his death (I think the +opinion lasts for 10 years). At this point it is usually possible to give the now less loyal vassal the title of the duchy which will keep him happy for another 10 years or until he or you die.

If you give each county in a duchy to different vassals, they will generally plot against each other and fight to take each other's title. This is not a very good tool to keep your vassals in line because then your vassals become useless. Case in point, in one of my Castille games, I had out grown the duchy/kingdom of Castille and decided to reward the two loyal vassals in the duchy by giving a county to each of them and the title of Duke to one and King to the other. This means that they each had 2 counties in the duchy of Castille since they each had a county originally. Well that was a big mistake because they ended up blasting each other to the stone age. They were constantly fighting each other to the point where they were useless as vassals since their levies were always pitifully small. It really didn't matter which side of an independence war Castille was on since they were a non-factor. in fact, it was almost better to have them on the other side since it was so easy to siege their counties. This was really telling since I had spent the last 150 years upgrading both counties, especially Burgos my former capital.

This is generally what happens even when your vassals hand out counties to different sons. They end up fighting each other over titles and become less useful to you.

 

[Pinstar]

I always keep i strictly one county per vassal. When possible, I dont' create more duchies than I need and destroy excess titles (once I'm king level).

The ONLY time I actively support vassals getting more than one county is if a vassal fabricates claims on a county nearby that would expand my realm if I press it, or if my vassal creates their own duke title and I could expand their realm via dejure wars. Sure, having lots of vassals makes it hard to keep them happy with gifts and titles, I try to groom my rulers for general opinion bonuses. When my vassals do get unruly, I can see the factions grow slowly. If I have just 3 vassals who are all megadukes, and one creates a facton and just 1 more joins it, BOOM big enough for a rebellion.

For that same reason, I make sure my crown authority is always medium or above.

Vassals will eventually grow big and bloated despite that, but I figure that keeping titles spread as much as possible to start with will keep megadukes to a minimum.


If I'm ever lucky enough for my ruler to get depressed, I'll arrest a megaduke, banish them to take all their built up titles... hand them out to individuals and then kill myself to shed the tyranny penalty.

 

[Alyiakal]

I always keep i strictly one county per vassal. When possible, I dont' create more duchies than I need and destroy excess titles (once I'm king level).

The ONLY time I actively support vassals getting more than one county is if a vassal fabricates claims on a county nearby that would expand my realm if I press it, or if my vassal creates their own duke title and I could expand their realm via dejure wars. Sure, having lots of vassals makes it hard to keep them happy with gifts and titles, I try to groom my rulers for general opinion bonuses. When my vassals do get unruly, I can see the factions grow slowly. If I have just 3 vassals who are all megadukes, and one creates a facton and just 1 more joins it, BOOM big enough for a rebellion.

For that same reason, I make sure my crown authority is always medium or above.

Vassals will eventually grow big and bloated despite that, but I figure that keeping titles spread as much as possible to start with will keep megadukes to a minimum.


If I'm ever lucky enough for my ruler to get depressed, I'll arrest a megaduke, banish them to take all their built up titles... hand them out to individuals and then kill myself to shed the tyranny penalty.

I would add that this approach works great when you're a medium sized kingdom, but once you start blobbing, you can have upwards of 100 vassals reporting to you. My Roman Empire game had 400 vassals reporting directly to the emperor at one point, before I got tired of it and covered all the counts with dukes.

At that point, I just hand out the duchies to one person and let them sort it out. The problem with the one-noble one-holding policy is that all the characters in your realm are pathetically weak, and won't even be able to put down minor peasant rebellions. They will also incessantly plot against each other, the counts for the ducal title, and the dukes for the counties under them, and even with maximum authority, plots will still be able to fire. At that point, you'll have extremely long vassal wars as the involved parties use their extremely weak armies to slowly siege holdings. This essentially makes those vassals useless.

Superdukes can be a problem, but you just need to keep your eyes open to the AI marriage strategies.

 

[Battle bunny]

I generally tend to go for the one vassal-one county approach while I'm still small. Later on, I split duchies (or if I have a sprawling empire, kingdoms) into 2-3 roughly equally powerful parts, among 2-3 nobles, and give one the ducal title - this lets them duke it out (pun not intended... really) for the title and it'll take a long time for one of them to unify the duchy. This'll delay the concentration of power in the hands of one powerful superduke, even with Primogeniture, for a long while. Ducal blobbing really only gets nasty if someone has at least 3 duchies. Even if you revoke one after a rebellion, he/she still has two and now hates you, and continues to be a threat as soon as he/she gets out or dies. And banishment is way too costly. I had a really nightmarish experience with my Przemyslid (sp?) game, where I inherited Hungary from a king from the same dynasty (technically, he inherited Bohemia, and I just switched to him, thank Seniority) and had to deal with a Hungarian duke of 4 provinces. My game essentially boiled down to doing anything and everything to keep him and his successors happy while I slowly stripped the weaker dukes of their titles and replaced them with loyal Czechs of my dynasty, until finally I could take him on alone without a load of allies jumping to his aid.

To sum up, superdukes can be really nasty, but strong, yet not out of control dukes are desirable to have and easy to handle.

 

[Lessing]

One vassal-one county just takes too much of your game time and micromanagement to be fun and productive.

Believe me. Just get dukes and kings under you and learn how to deal with them. Thatll be much more fun in the long run than this time consuming dictator stuff.

 

[unmerged(494787)]

I tend to give dukes all the land in their de jure duchy. Cuts down on the infighting a lot. The only thing you have to watch out for is intermarriage, which requires constant vigilance. Faction wars are often convenient for pruning vassals, especially in the ERE where you can revoke ducal titles freely. Revoke ducal title, plot to remove excess counties, he refuses, beat him up in a war, repeat. If a faction rises against you, that just speeds up the process.

If you're playing muslim, you don't even have to worry about intermarriage. Dukes' sons giving you decadence? Lock them up. Duke upset that you threw his sons in jail? Execute him. The only thing you have to deal with decadence-wise is your own sons.