CKII is released.

So. I managed via a Crusade that my current Emperor's father joined and I finished to gain control of the heretic filled land of Lithuania and I have since formed the Wendish Empire.

I got three kingdom titles under my belt, a young ruler still under regency, and I have no clue as to what to do with these damn titles. I am thinking of destroying the kingdom ones but I don't want revolts on my hands as I already have several threats in my Empire that are in the red.

I know I should wait until I am out from my regent's thumb before I do anything rash but I don't want to lose ground via succession. Also, I can't believe I am an Emperor now...although I bet something will come around to mess that up for me.

Any ideas on what to do with excess titles?

 

Emperors should ALWAYS destroy all their kingdom titles and never make an additional empire title. Extra titles above Duke tier only add to the hassle due to having their own succession laws, and if you distribute them around you will simply end up with vassals that have a strong powerbase and a permanent -25 relations to you (Vassal King opinion penalty).

You have essentially two options now:

1) Destroy the kingdom titles the moment you have enough stability to weather the storm from -50 opinions everywhere.
2) Destroy the kingdom titles the moment you're at death's door, since the -50 opinion penalty does not carry over to your successor. Alternatively, fire your Spymaster and then try to assassinate the Caliph or Byzantine Emperor (if I'm correct, you can also game this approach and destroy the titles when you get the assassination notification event since you only die AFTER you accept the event).

Besides that, just use Elective Succession as always.

You should never form additional kingdom titles in the first place either. The de jure claim CB isn't any good. If you get one through, say, a Crusade, destroy it immediately before distributing the counties and duchies.

The ideal way to get the second kingdom title needed to form an empire is to have a titular kingdom title as the second one, since it's one less bunch of opinion penalties you have to worry about when you destroy the title. Otherwise just form and nuke as per earlier two options.

 

What about for a Muslim ruler? Doing an India campaign where i started in Sri Lanka and just marched my way up the east coast and formed the Bengal Empire. With the extra +20 relations with having high piety is it still worth it or should it always be avoided no matter the option? I can understand as a christian ruler it would be a huge pain but with all the added shit like hajajj and sayyid does it even out?

 

Never worth it, period. With Muslims you've already got added difficulty of having to deal with their unique Succession mechanic and Decadence, so you want to have no additional troubles.

 

So i have decided against the advice of this thread to start establishing king titles throughout my empire. My reasoning is that this will at least help to promote maybe a rebellion or 2 in my game to give me something to do besides going out and beating on rebels that i hilariously outnumber and outclass. Also I am really getting tired of counts coming to me and crying about their petty problems so now I can pawn that shit off to some other useless bastard.

I also want to test if I can placate my king vassals by seeding them with my daughters who i can train up to be as shit as possible and hurl them to create totally shit kids as well as see if marital ties stacks.

 

Creating a Kingdom/Empire is a good idea if it allows you to ask people to be your vassal and they say yes.


...then you destroy the title a day later.

 

So I finally decided to destroy all my kingdom titles and switch from primogeniture to elective monarchy. I waited until my emperor was fairly old (mid 60's), then lowered the crown authority from absolute to high. This gave enough opinion boost that all vassals had a positive opinion of me, so I was finally able to switch the succession law.

Again, this made the vassals happy, so I destroyed my six kingdom titles on the same day (I had 6000+ prestige, so I could afford the -400 prestige hit for each destroyed kingdom). Now I don't have to deal with negative opinion penalty due to jealous dukes coveting my kingdom titles. I had to deal with an independence faction, but I probably would have fought them anyway.

Finally, a couple of years later, I increased the feudal levy law to maximum to compensate for loss of absolute crown authority. All, in all I'm very satisfied with the transition. Oh, and the old king is still alive and kicking seven years later.

 

I'm giving the southern Italy another playtrough, starting as a single county count and trying to expand as quickly as possible. Took Sicily from the muslims after their spectacularly stupid war with the ERE they start with - just sieged down empty holdings and crushed what troops they could send my way with mercs.

And just as I managed to finally create a duchy so that I can deal this land out I get holly warred by Egypt. Now, I expected that because they always do that, I just didn't expect it to be so soon. I had next no troops (because I was badly over my demesne until I made a duchy), no money (mercs and the duchy cost a lot) and no hope against their vassal merc troops. So, good threat assessment by the AI, but strategically this is idiotic. Muslims in the old gods start have no freaking boats, so again he has to walk all the way through middle east, asia minor, up the balkans and down italy just to get to me, taking attrition all the way. Of course, he doesn't care because his mercs reinforce and are dirt cheap. But how the hell does the AI think he is going to hold this place once he takes it? Without boats he is just going to lose it again, to the ERE, Italy or me. If that was me, instead of wasting time, money and troops on hopeless territory I'd be more worried about the neighbour Abbasids that always end up crushing them in 50 to 100 years max. And they even had a perfect opportunity as Abbasids were in the middle of a civil war and the shia event fired next to them.

Anyway, I decide to make a token effort at resistance before waving a white flag with operation "Hey, it was worth a shot". Basically, I'm betting that the AI is a complete moron. As I spot his 7k stack passing through Constantinople I get all my troops (all 600 of them) into boats (at least I have those) and unload them in western Egypt. There aren't enough of them to even siege the place down so they just relax there getting a suntan. His stack reaches my territory and turns right back and heads for Egypt to hunt down my troops. I was ready to get my men on boats the moment they get too close but I didn't have to bother. AI reached Egypt only to decide to try to siege my holdings instead of attacking my men. Again he marches all the way to me and repeats this little dance a couple of more times while the war score slowly ticks in my favour.

Nice AI there Paradox.

 

Just destroyed some duchy titles, feels good man.

The reason I did so for now is because of the annoying "Too many held duchies" negative opinion and I am tired of dumping all the possible duchies onto an heir only to delay the "Too many held duchies" neg. opinion. I hope this won't turn around and bite me in the arse.

I also have way too many dukes now and I don't want anymore dukes going around and trying to form factions. I am thinking that my heir will destroy more duchies so I can have peace of mind.

 

Generally speaking you want to have two ducal titles, since that's the limit you can get. These would be your capital duchy, and your most valuable coastal duchy. Any additional provinces (by techrushing Legalism, you will eventually have a solid 10 as demesne to stick to) will be in duchies that you never form and otherwise consist of count vassals (this way you don't get the Desires Duchy penalty to anyone; good examples of province set-ups like these are Kiev and Moskva).

Also, NEVER give your heir a title is my motto. The moment you let those little bastards out of arms reach, they start doing all kinds of stupid shit.

 

Any news on that supposed religious DLC? Despite me burning out on the whole mappainting I do keep pining for some sweet soap infant slaughter shennanigans.

 

Gonna be announced at GamesCon in a few days.

 

I just had the most messed up civil war happen: a duke demands that I abdicate (he has a 40% plot power). I say no, since I've defeated plenty of independence factions before, which is harder since I have to occupy the rebel territory. The rebels get a bonus army of around 15-20K troops. I raise all my troops to quell the uprising.

Then, in a chain reaction, the four rebelling dukes convince nine more dukes to join the rebellion, so that 13 out of my 22 dukes oppose me now. Moreover, a lot of my raised troops change allegiance so I can't gather my forces. I had 2300 gold in the treasury, so I hired 4500 Swiss mercs.

I win a lot of victories against smaller armies (1-4K), but the rebels are starting sieges in multiple counties. I focus on defending my duchies and preventing smaller armies from merging. Some neighboring states declare war on some rebelling dukes to take their territories.

I keep bleeding money due to mercs and baronies being conquered, until I'm down to around 1500 gold and war score -70%. I send my spymaster to the county the pretender duke is currently occupying, and the assassination chance of success is 30%, with a 32% chance of being discovered. I try six assassination attempts (250 gp each), but the duke survives and finds out twice.

My treasury is empty, so I dismiss my mercs and try to save some more gold. I win a few minor victories, defeating a 4500 stack, when the 12K doomstack notices me. I retreat to my capital, but the doomstack is in pursuit. I dismiss my levies, so bolster the defenses and save some more gold. Finally, I save 253 gp and try one more assassination...

... and fail again, being discovered for the third time. The war score is -80% and my personal counties are under siege. I can't raise my levies and have no money for mercs, so I surrender immediately, with the reply expected in 9 days.

Here's where things get weird. The duke is angry from the assassination attempts (-600 opinion penalty), so he tries to assassinate me, but I survive and my spymaster asks in an event whether to try to assassinate the duke in retaliation (for free). Figuring I have nothing to lose, I say "yes"... and the claimant duke is killed!

The rebels lose their cassus belli, and the civil war stops. This is how I won a war after surrendering.

 

LOL. CK2, never change.

Nothing beats this, though:

Makes me cry whenever I see it.

 

Hah, I saw the Roger screenshot in the Codex' most brofisted hall of fame. Good times.

Update on the civil war: the duke's son had a bad opinion of me, with me killing his father and all (even though he killed his nephew to inherit), so he started another war by himself.

Then, twelve of my dukes JOIN THE REBEL FACTION AGAIN. Finally, I corner the doomstack so that it's forced to cross a major river to attack my army, which is smaller than the rebels'.

But there's good news: on top of the river crossing disadvantage, I finally brought a 5000 man army to reinforce and make the forces even

... when another duke decides to declare himself as claimant with his own doomstack and takes his troops away just before the big battle. I surrender to the dead guy's son and let him deal with seven different claimant wars/peasant rebellions that mushroom soon enough.

Now I only have two duchies left, but fortunately my son is one vote shy of becoming the next emperor.

But these dukes are all ungrateful jackasses. I spent 400 years building the largest empire on the map after starting off as a count, and now I have to watch these jerks pulling it apart. The joys of playing ironman...

 

Don't you have a retinue to steamroll the world 10 times over? Me, about the time of the first kingdom title I forget levies exist.

 

Not entirely unrealistic.

 

I don't have Legacy of Rome, just The Old Gods (and some portrait DLCs to add some variety). I'll probably grab it the next time it's on sale.

Right now, I'm dealing with independence wars and Byzantine invasions by hiring mercs, so I always kept around 2500 gold in reserve, but the assassination attempts emptied my treasury.

 

Do armed peasant insurrections ever happen anymore? Like when the event says its led by experienced commanders and they have a lot of heavy infantry and the goal is to just create whatever kingdom title they spawned from?

Haven't gotten one of those since RoI came out.

 

This is why I am aiming to not have so many dukes. Divide and conquer, that is keep the little vassal bastards as counts and no higher, and never worry about whiny dukes ever again. I hope to have no dukes later on down the line, just counts upon counts

 

With faction mechanics that's hardly helpful. A faction would just invite 50 counts instead of 10 dukes. And with levy penalties per tier, wouldn't they have twice as many troops as their dukes would?

I still stick with kings, and screw their -25 penalties. I'd rather manage 20 ungrateful bastards than 200, who only have a quarter of their collective levies to boot.

 

I wonder what's the next DLC will be about, playable holy orders like Knights Templar? Has there been any rumours?

 

The oldest rumour has been adding Trade Goods to provinces and trade routes in general to add more to the economy gameplay. Besides that, the most frequent rumour has been a "story" focused expansion, meaning a lot more event chains and dynastic drama caused by event chains.

I doubt they're considering of adding theocratic gameplay anytime soon, unless it's kind of like what the Borgias did with the Papal office, meaning you might be able to push your family members into leadership positions in Papacy/local holy order and thus make them temporarily part of your domain.

 

What pisses me off the most about vassal dukes / kings is that the laws of any title you hand out get set to default. And that means no feudal taxes for anyone except your direct vassals, ever. For me it is just unacceptable that over a half of my realm is paying zero taxes to me. Fuck this, I have set harsh feudal taxes and minimal levies for a reason. I can understand dukes taking a big cut for themselves, sure. But not even bothering to collect any taxes from their vassals? Say I have an average three county duchy with three counts. On average with maximum taxes each count would pay about half what I could get from one city holding. That doesn't sound much, but in a large realm this quickly adds up to very large income. Now I hand out a duchy to one of the counts. Suddenly two of the counts are paying no taxes to the duke, and a percentage of zero is again zero, so they are not paying me anything either and I'm down one city worth of income.

This is why in my games there are no dukes, it's just not worth it.

 

True, you'd think Realm laws for vassals would actually have more weight.