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Zopyrionis

Corporal
6 Badges
Nov 18, 2020
40
216
Difficulty discourse was on this forum since CK3 release and in recent times it becomes even more loud, because game become less and less hard after each update. The main problem of game, in my opinion, is modifiers stacking and their limitation through a special game rule could fix 90% of current difficulty problems. But before that happened (if we ever see that happened) you could still make your game harder without any mods. Many people arguing about CK3 nature – should it be considered as RPG or Grand Strategy. In my opinion CK3 evolved in something different – it’s an immersive sim with RPG and Grand Strategy elements.

I always find strange that fact, that immersive sims always was an outsider as a gaming genre, because it, in some way, a quintessence of gaming. In this type of games (like Deus Ex) you can achieve your goals in dozens of ways and, quite often, only your imagination limits you. And in recent years CK3 evolved in this type of game – you have dozens of ways to become friend or lover with someone, take power in kingdom, et cetera. But, despite so many mechanics and possibilities, most of them work only at the beginning of the game, because modifier stacking ruins them in the middle and late game. To be honest, most immersive sims are always broken in terms of difficulty after you complete them twice or more. And there is only one way to enjoy this games after – limiting yourself. So, without further ado, I want to share some of my game rules, that may bring a second life to your campaigns.

- Don’t use your courtiers to arrange marriages. You can only marry your dynasty members and family. Also, you can’t invite characters to your court using hook. (Exceptions – your courtiers become friends or lovers with other characters, or you have a strong hook on a foreign characters. Also, you can invite pretenders if your court grandeur is big enough.)
- Never change your vassal contract without hook on liege. You can only change your taxes/levies and special status like march.
- You can’t have non-vassal council members if your crown authority is less than 4. From level 3 you can have there a non-powerful vassals. (Exception – spymaster, friends, dynasty members, bureaucratic state or roleplay purposes.)
- Don’t become friends with someone for purely gaming advantages.
- If your king becomes an army leader (on purpose, not accidentally), he can’t leave it for at least 6 months. If he brave – he can’t leave it even if there is a plague in region.
- Legends should cost 4 times more and their spread decreased to 50% (an actual game rule). You can’t sponsor legend about holy site keeping and you can’t have more than 2 legends per character (each one with cooldown for 20 years). Exception – legend seeds from truly great actions (like ending Iberian Struggle).
- It’s forbidden to use artifacts that give health bonuses. Exception – characters who complete health tree from learning lifestyle, have herbalist/gardener/witch/healer/physician/mystic trait – than you can use books about herbs, medicine or alchemy artifacts, but everything else is forbidden.
- Don’t use funerals for legitimacy farm, especially if bury target is someone unrelated to your character.
- Don’t use character list to search for perfect courtiers. Exceptions – you need a knight for a rare accolade or someone extremely rare (like Garden Hermit). But even in this case you shouldn’t invite them through marriage, hooks or friendship. Your court must be big enough so you can invite them with a simple gift and coverage of their travel expenses.
- Roleplay your character even in a cost of initial campaign target. For example, if your character is cynical and enemy of your bishop/head of faith and you have an event about converting into different faith – convert. There is no need to convert your children and a whole country in that type of events.
- If possible, limit artifacts that give knight effectiveness, number of knights, stats per level of fame, vassal opinions, et cetera. Give preference to artifacts that give prestige, piety and renown (but this is not always possible, due to one artifact can combine different modifiers).
- Limit yourself in choosing culture traditions. For example, I never get Only the Strong or By the Sword if my religion is not fundamentalist + warmonger or Xenophilic if my religion is not pluralist.
- You can create only two accolades that boost specific professionals.
- AI always must have bigger stability than player, all conqueror children must inherit their trait.
- Give land to your house members in clan government if possible.
- In bureaucratic state powerful noble families and just noble families must get land in 2:1:1 proportion. Two titles of new lands get powerful noble families, one another family and the last one is chosen by you. From third level of crown authority powerful noble families get only one title, and at max crown authority only you decide who can get land.
- In adventurer camp court positions should be distributed according to the character relationships with you, not their aptitude. Exception – legitimists.
- In feudal countries your vassal must command armies. From the 3 crown authority level you can appoint your knights or some courtiers (like master of the horse) and from 4 crown authority you can appoint everyone. I bureaucratic states you can appoint everyone.
- You can’t give gifts to vassals who have less than 30+ opinion about you. From roleplay perspective, you just embarrass yourself as a liege.
- You treasury must have limit. I determine this limit by county size, crown authority and court grandeur, but even in a giant empires it should never surpass 30000. If it is – you must spend it on buildings in vassal lands.

The post has already turned out to be quite long, so I'll stop here. I didn’t mention some of my rules, because they already were “integrated” to the game (like not marrying lowborn or give them titles) and other one is too specific for some regions or religions. These rules won’t make game harder in late period, but early and middle periods will feal differently, since you will be limited in a lot of actions. For example, it will be harder to find knights or useful courtiers. You will need to pay attention to your guests and character from events. Or, without abusing vassal contract you simply can’t start wars in latest start date – with high AI stability almost every ruler have 3+ crown authority and almost zero wars for freedom. Also, bureaucracy states will feel more alive, because you can’t ignore other families with low crown authority.

If you have your personal self-limitation rules I would like to hear them too.
 
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None of this fixes the problem because it’s not actually about making the game harder, it’s about making the characters interesting to interact with and making my choices meaningful. Restricting my options to make the game “harder” is the exact opposite of that.
 
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First of all I switch all the possible settings to hard, from time to time I also like to play with unlimited black death, not necessarily for roleplaying fun, but just to make the game as hard and unpredictable as possible.
 
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None of this fixes the problem because it’s not actually about making the game harder, it’s about making the characters interesting to interact with and making my choices meaningful. Restricting my options to make the game “harder” is the exact opposite of that.
You won't feel consequences of any choices if game is easy. CK3 is not Dragon Age Origins, where you follow a story and impact on it. It's a sandbox that generates stories and without difficulty you won’t feel any impact on this world. For example, you executed some noble and what does his family do to you in a late game? Do they try to kill you, scheme against you? No, they do nothing, because they always have +100 opinion. And even if they do something, they can't pass through your bodyguards, spymaster or giant intrigue skill. All of this is because of modifiers stacking. I never said that these rules will fix anything in the game (it can be fixed by limiting modifiers stacking), but at least they can minimize your advantage towards AI for some time. Right now, middle and late game feels like playing Morrowind with overpowered build and artifacts - your enemies are so weak that you barely remember them and annihilate them in couple of seconds. About what story, choices and character interaction can we talk about at this state?
First of all I switch all the possible settings to hard, from time to time I also like to play with unlimited black death, not necessarily for roleplaying fun, but just to make the game as hard and unpredictable as possible.
Current game rules have one big flaw - they aren't spread between AI only and Human in every category. I would like to play, for example, with a smaller domain limit, but only for me, not AI. (I played couple parties with current domain limitation - and was disappointed - AI felt even more weak) As for Black Death - it's too short right now. If it lasts for at least 30 years, we will see a huge impact on development and countries stability. That would be a truly apocalyptic disaster even if it happens once.
 
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You won't feel consequences of any choices if game is easy. CK3 is not Dragon Age Origins, where you follow a story and impact on it. It's a sandbox that generates stories and without difficulty you won’t feel any impact on this world. For example, you executed some noble and what does his family do to you in a late game? Do they try to kill you, scheme against you? No, they do nothing, because they always have +100 opinion. And even if they do something, they can't pass through your bodyguards, spymaster or giant intrigue skill. All of this is because of modifiers stacking. I never said that these rules will fix anything in the game (it can be fixed by limiting modifiers stacking), but at least they can minimize your advantage towards AI for some time. Right now, middle and late game feels like playing Morrowind with overpowered build and artifacts - your enemies are so weak that you barely remember them and annihilate them in couple of seconds. About what story, choices and character interaction can we talk about at this state?
You’re agreeing with me, you realize that right?
 
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I honestly never liked the "just limit yourself bro" approach. It's not immersive or much fun when you're not doing things for the sole reason of it being boring otherwise.

Some of those are interesting ideas for mods, tho. Like the council one.


- Legends should cost 4 times more
Btw, did you know that x4 in particular makes mythical legends cost more than your whole income past early medieval age? Coz mythical legend costs 25% of your income, and there're multipliers for age (i dont quite remember, but i think tribal gives a discount and early medieval just doesnt do anything), so with x4 it's a bare of 100% of your income, then multiplied by age.
 
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they aren't spread between AI only and Human in every category. I would like to play, for example, with a smaller domain limit, but only for me, not AI. (I played couple parties with current domain limitation - and was disappointed - AI felt even more weak)
Could you please elaborate? I thought that changing the game settings to hard it suppose to make the game harder for the player, making AI stronger, having more benefits etc.
 
Could you please elaborate? I thought that changing the game settings to hard it suppose to make the game harder for the player, making AI stronger, having more benefits etc.
Yes, but only if game rules separate it effects for the player and the AI. Like recent stability game rule – there is an option to strengthen it for AI only. But many other rules, like domain limit, don’t do that – they apply the same rules for player and AI. Game rule that is responsible for difficulty (there is only normal, easy and very easy option) don’t separate difficulty for AI and player. I would like to make the game very easy for AI only option.
 
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Btw, did you know that x4 in particular makes mythical legends cost more than your whole income past early medieval age? Coz mythical legend costs 25% of your income, and there're multipliers for age (i dont quite remember, but i think tribal gives a discount and early medieval just doesnt do anything), so with x4 it's a bare of 100% of your income, then multiplied by age.
I usually end legend as soon as it becomes mythical. I rarely use them and overall don’t like that mechanic, so I made it as costly as possible.
 
No mention of playing as a favored child to start the next generation without the mountain of accumulated modifiers from artifacts / primary domain / etc. that are inherited by the primary heir?

Playing as the non-heir has been one of the best developments CK3 has added vis-a-vis CK2. It lets you start at a much lower power level in the later game, after the AI has had more time to start building up, without the player having to throw away their dominant position on deliberately bad play.

Now, if the player just spends that next generation in the same power-grind mindset as the first generation, prioritizing development gold and artifact hunting, they can. But there is something different in the experience when you go from the emperor of your part of the world to the count of a duke of another realm with no onus of 'you had to deliberately mess up to get here.'
 
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Not doing much at work so I'll review these rules I guess:

- Don’t use your courtiers to arrange marriages. You can only marry your dynasty members and family. Also, you can’t invite characters to your court using hook. (Exceptions – your courtiers become friends or lovers with other characters, or you have a strong hook on a foreign characters. Also, you can invite pretenders if your court grandeur is big enough.)
Minor benefits, you can farm courtiers through your prisons anyway also allowing pretenders makes this rule pointless

- Never change your vassal contract without hook on liege. You can only change your taxes/levies and special status like march.
I only do this to give religious and revocation protection anyway, allowing tax changes makes this rule pointless

- You can’t have non-vassal council members if your crown authority is less than 4. From level 3 you can have there a non-powerful vassals. (Exception – spymaster, friends, dynasty members, bureaucratic state or roleplay purposes.)
Cool rule but the limitations make it pointless again also it stops mattering much 50 years in

- Don’t become friends with someone for purely gaming advantages.
Do people do this?

- If your king becomes an army leader (on purpose, not accidentally), he can’t leave it for at least 6 months. If he brave – he can’t leave it even if there is a plague in region.
Why would you ever stop leading your armies?

- Legends should cost 4 times more and their spread decreased to 50% (an actual game rule). You can’t sponsor legend about holy site keeping and you can’t have more than 2 legends per character (each one with cooldown for 20 years). Exception – legend seeds from truly great actions (like ending Iberian Struggle).
You only interact with legends once you're past the hard part of the game

- It’s forbidden to use artifacts that give health bonuses. Exception – characters who complete health tree from learning lifestyle, have herbalist/gardener/witch/healer/physician/mystic trait – than you can use books about herbs, medicine or alchemy artifacts, but everything else is forbidden.
Prowess+fertility artifacts are more fun anyway and the OP ones are stewardship and learning artifacts which this rule doesn't cover

- Don’t use funerals for legitimacy farm, especially if bury target is someone unrelated to your character.
Once you can regularly hold funerals you're past the point where legitimacy matters

- Don’t use character list to search for perfect courtiers. Exceptions – you need a knight for a rare accolade or someone extremely rare (like Garden Hermit). But even in this case you shouldn’t invite them through marriage, hooks or friendship. Your court must be big enough so you can invite them with a simple gift and coverage of their travel expenses.
If the rule only holds when you don't need it why have it?

- Roleplay your character even in a cost of initial campaign target. For example, if your character is cynical and enemy of your bishop/head of faith and you have an event about converting into different faith – convert. There is no need to convert your children and a whole country in that type of events.
Good rule, unrelated but this event should make you a secured (insert religion) if your faith is righteous or fundamentalist

- If possible, limit artifacts that give knight effectiveness, number of knights, stats per level of fame, vassal opinions, et cetera. Give preference to artifacts that give prestige, piety and renown (but this is not always possible, due to one artifact can combine different modifiers).
Great rule these are busted

- Limit yourself in choosing culture traditions. For example, I never get Only the Strong or By the Sword if my religion is not fundamentalist + warmonger or Xenophilic if my religion is not pluralist.
If you're at a point where you're meta picking tenets or traditions you're trying way harder than this game needs you to

- You can create only two accolades that boost specific professionals.
You mean MAA? Sure I guess all that does is remove the prestige drain of generating Mongols which is kinda busted now that I think on it, good rule

- AI always must have bigger stability than player, all conqueror children must inherit their trait.
Good rule, makes for ugly maps though

- Give land to your house members in clan government if possible.
Why just clan? The only people you should ever give land are friends and family. Sons/brothers in law if necessary

- In bureaucratic state powerful noble families and just noble families must get land in 2:1:1 proportion. Two titles of new lands get powerful noble families, one another family and the last one is chosen by you. From third level of crown authority powerful noble families get only one title, and at max crown authority only you decide who can get land.
Interesting rule but noble families need to express more of a desire for self-preservation before I personally try admin again

- In adventurer camp court positions should be distributed according to the character relationships with you, not their aptitude. Exception – legitimists.
Solid rule

- In feudal countries your vassal must command armies. From the 3 crown authority level you can appoint your knights or some courtiers (like master of the horse) and from 4 crown authority you can appoint everyone. I bureaucratic states you can appoint everyone.
I like this one but why would I not be commanding my armies?

- You can’t give gifts to vassals who have less than 30+ opinion about you. From roleplay perspective, you just embarrass yourself as a liege.
Good rule

- You treasury must have limit. I determine this limit by county size, crown authority and court grandeur, but even in a giant empires it should never surpass 30000. If it is – you must spend it on buildings in vassal lands.
Limit too high to be a constraint



Fun list
 
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Yes, but only if game rules separate it effects for the player and the AI. Like recent stability game rule – there is an option to strengthen it for AI only. But many other rules, like domain limit, don’t do that – they apply the same rules for player and AI. Game rule that is responsible for difficulty (there is only normal, easy and very easy option) don’t separate difficulty for AI and player. I would like to make the game very easy for AI only option.
Tbf I've noticed that lower domain limits make the AI a little more competent when used in conjunction with some other mods bc they suicide into their vassals a lot less when they don't need to revoke three titles to get a full domain
 
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Do people do this? (befriend vassals)
The Norse Adventure dynastic tree lets you befriend vassals and then gives you some bonuses for doing so. There is also the fact that friends won't join factions.

Why would you ever stop leading your armies?
Stress relief.

I like this one but why would I not be commanding my armies?
You character has terrible stats as a commander. Admittedly rare but, still possible.

Good rule (gift giving)
I would say it depends on the government type. For tribal and nomad rulers, gift giving was a core aspect of politics and showing largesse was a good way to turn an opponent into an ally if you wanted.
 
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Difficulty discourse was on this forum since CK3 release and in recent times it becomes even more loud, because game become less and less hard after each update. The main problem of game, in my opinion, is modifiers stacking and their limitation through a special game rule could fix 90% of current difficulty problems. But before that happened (if we ever see that happened) you could still make your game harder without any mods. Many people arguing about CK3 nature – should it be considered as RPG or Grand Strategy. In my opinion CK3 evolved in something different – it’s an immersive sim with RPG and Grand Strategy elements.

I always find strange that fact, that immersive sims always was an outsider as a gaming genre, because it, in some way, a quintessence of gaming. In this type of games (like Deus Ex) you can achieve your goals in dozens of ways and, quite often, only your imagination limits you. And in recent years CK3 evolved in this type of game – you have dozens of ways to become friend or lover with someone, take power in kingdom, et cetera. But, despite so many mechanics and possibilities, most of them work only at the beginning of the game, because modifier stacking ruins them in the middle and late game. To be honest, most immersive sims are always broken in terms of difficulty after you complete them twice or more. And there is only one way to enjoy this games after – limiting yourself. So, without further ado, I want to share some of my game rules, that may bring a second life to your campaigns.

- Don’t use your courtiers to arrange marriages. You can only marry your dynasty members and family. Also, you can’t invite characters to your court using hook. (Exceptions – your courtiers become friends or lovers with other characters, or you have a strong hook on a foreign characters. Also, you can invite pretenders if your court grandeur is big enough.)
- Never change your vassal contract without hook on liege. You can only change your taxes/levies and special status like march.
- You can’t have non-vassal council members if your crown authority is less than 4. From level 3 you can have there a non-powerful vassals. (Exception – spymaster, friends, dynasty members, bureaucratic state or roleplay purposes.)
- Don’t become friends with someone for purely gaming advantages.
- If your king becomes an army leader (on purpose, not accidentally), he can’t leave it for at least 6 months. If he brave – he can’t leave it even if there is a plague in region.
- Legends should cost 4 times more and their spread decreased to 50% (an actual game rule). You can’t sponsor legend about holy site keeping and you can’t have more than 2 legends per character (each one with cooldown for 20 years). Exception – legend seeds from truly great actions (like ending Iberian Struggle).
- It’s forbidden to use artifacts that give health bonuses. Exception – characters who complete health tree from learning lifestyle, have herbalist/gardener/witch/healer/physician/mystic trait – than you can use books about herbs, medicine or alchemy artifacts, but everything else is forbidden.
- Don’t use funerals for legitimacy farm, especially if bury target is someone unrelated to your character.
- Don’t use character list to search for perfect courtiers. Exceptions – you need a knight for a rare accolade or someone extremely rare (like Garden Hermit). But even in this case you shouldn’t invite them through marriage, hooks or friendship. Your court must be big enough so you can invite them with a simple gift and coverage of their travel expenses.
- Roleplay your character even in a cost of initial campaign target. For example, if your character is cynical and enemy of your bishop/head of faith and you have an event about converting into different faith – convert. There is no need to convert your children and a whole country in that type of events.
- If possible, limit artifacts that give knight effectiveness, number of knights, stats per level of fame, vassal opinions, et cetera. Give preference to artifacts that give prestige, piety and renown (but this is not always possible, due to one artifact can combine different modifiers).
- Limit yourself in choosing culture traditions. For example, I never get Only the Strong or By the Sword if my religion is not fundamentalist + warmonger or Xenophilic if my religion is not pluralist.
- You can create only two accolades that boost specific professionals.
- AI always must have bigger stability than player, all conqueror children must inherit their trait.
- Give land to your house members in clan government if possible.
- In bureaucratic state powerful noble families and just noble families must get land in 2:1:1 proportion. Two titles of new lands get powerful noble families, one another family and the last one is chosen by you. From third level of crown authority powerful noble families get only one title, and at max crown authority only you decide who can get land.
- In adventurer camp court positions should be distributed according to the character relationships with you, not their aptitude. Exception – legitimists.
- In feudal countries your vassal must command armies. From the 3 crown authority level you can appoint your knights or some courtiers (like master of the horse) and from 4 crown authority you can appoint everyone. I bureaucratic states you can appoint everyone.
- You can’t give gifts to vassals who have less than 30+ opinion about you. From roleplay perspective, you just embarrass yourself as a liege.
- You treasury must have limit. I determine this limit by county size, crown authority and court grandeur, but even in a giant empires it should never surpass 30000. If it is – you must spend it on buildings in vassal lands.

The post has already turned out to be quite long, so I'll stop here. I didn’t mention some of my rules, because they already were “integrated” to the game (like not marrying lowborn or give them titles) and other one is too specific for some regions or religions. These rules won’t make game harder in late period, but early and middle periods will feal differently, since you will be limited in a lot of actions. For example, it will be harder to find knights or useful courtiers. You will need to pay attention to your guests and character from events. Or, without abusing vassal contract you simply can’t start wars in latest start date – with high AI stability almost every ruler have 3+ crown authority and almost zero wars for freedom. Also, bureaucracy states will feel more alive, because you can’t ignore other families with low crown authority.

If you have your personal self-limitation rules I would like to hear them too.
This list might hamper the player early on to some extent, but once the ball is rolling, none of it will matter much. Also, everyone has different playing styles, and the way I usually play, very few of those would have a material effect on steamrolling the AI.

For instance, artifacts that give health bonuses don't matter to me as I don't even like my rulers living past 60-65, but I can still take advantage of all other artifacts like stress reducers and dynasty opinion modifiers.

The gameplay changes must be widespread and combine 2 things: 1) taking away player agency 2) reducing or eliminating the effect of modifiers that the AI struggles to get, but the player regularly does.
 
The Norse Adventure dynastic tree lets you befriend vassals and then gives you some bonuses for doing so. There is also the fact that friends won't join factions.
Picking Norse is already tryharding lol

Stress relief.
You can do that between wars?

You character has terrible stats as a commander. Admittedly rare but, still possible.
I'd toss such a child to the wolves, make another

I would say it depends on the government type. For tribal and nomad rulers, gift giving was a core aspect of politics and showing largesse was a good way to turn an opponent into an ally if you wanted.
Just roleplay a level of arrogance unless you're generous or have thoughtful (lowkey tryharding again)

You're past this point day 0, it never really matters anyways....
True I've thought about legitimacy exactly once and that was with Dark Ages on, in hindsight I should've let the rebellion fire
 
Picking Norse is already tryharding lol
You asked.

You can do that between wars?
Sure, but certain trait combos, like Gregarious combined with combined with Diligent or Ambitious, can build up a lot of stress pretty fast and you don't always want to wait for a war to end. Honestly, I'd like to at-war variants for feasts and hunts if you are commanding an army where only your knights participate.

I'd toss such a child to the wolves, make another
Personally, I only lead troops if my character has a corresponding trait (Brave, Martial education) to lead an army.

Just roleplay a level of arrogance unless you're generous or have thoughtful (lowkey tryharding again)
Sure, but when a Viking jarl returned from a raid, they would actually give away the vast majority of the loot they acquired because it was expected that they do so. Being stingy with the loot would mean they wouldn't be a jarl for long. Same with khans on the steppe. The luxury goods they got from China, either through raiding or trading, would by and large be given away for the same reasons jarls did so. That kind of generosity was a base level societal expectation so, if you want to do historical roleplaying, you should actually be giving away most of the loot you get from raiding.
 
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Current game rules have one big flaw - they aren't spread between AI only and Human in every category. I would like to play, for example, with a smaller domain limit, but only for me, not AI. (I played couple parties with current domain limitation - and was disappointed - AI felt even more weak)
Since your advertising self-limiting rules it should be easy for you too limit yourself to one or two domains too even if there is no game rule for it.

In the same vein you can still partition your lands even while under primogeniture. I really like the freedom it gives me. When needed my domain stays intact during succession and when it fits the situation or my roleplay I can divide my lands between the heirs as I wish and not as the game calculates it.
 
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You've given a very specific list.

I usually set domain limit -3 and realm stability set to lowest. However this also affects the AI so it could end up making it easier if you are playing as a vassal. Enclave independence set to the most restrictive (realm gets split in half, you lose disjointed lands).

I generally narrow it down to "Play like the AI"

This means I don't use anything in the first stewardship tree (no cheesing payments for hooks, or extortion). I've never seen the AI use those.

I don't give military assistance to the liege in wars (even if it is for my own land, unless it is a populist uprising, which the AI will help the liege with). I will however, send gold to my liege. I have seen the AI do this if they are generous and your friend, and they see that you are in a war.
 
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