A couple of self-limitation game rules that can make your game harder and more interesting.

[Zopyrionis]

Minor benefits, you can farm courtiers through your prisons anyway also allowing pretenders makes this rule pointless

I usually invite pretenders only after reaching empire status and give preference to characters with my religious group. I can fight for Serbian orthodox claims as catholic, but I would not invite Shia Fatimid. Of course, I can invite him and convert, but what if he remains crypto-Muslim/different religion? (Not only through game mechanics, but also from an abstract roleplay perspective).

As for prisoners – I also follow some rules, that I didn’t post here. I rarely invite someone who have liege – in medieval times loyalty to liege was one as important as religion, so I don’t want a courtiers who betray their liege so easily (from RP perspective, of course). But if prisoner doesn’t have liege and doesn’t have traits like Deceitful, then I can recruit him. Also, I can make an exception for knights of different faith that serve liege without choice – like recruiting Armenian knights from Abbasid army as Greek Orthodox ruler.

I only do this to give religious and revocation protection anyway, allowing tax changes makes this rule pointless

Changing your taxes/levies won’t give you the same bonuses as special contract conditions, like stewardship advisor free money or mentioned religion protections. By the way, in clan government player already can’t change any conditions without hook – I think developers must expand that on feudal.

If the rule only holds when you don't need it why have it?

I’ve twice encountered a problem with finding archer accolade candidate in regions like Nubia or India. Archer accolade require Forest Fighter or Hastiluder with 20 Trait Experience in Bow and Forest Fighter is almost impossible to find in those regions. So, I have to search him manually. But that was an exception – usually I recruit knights through decisions, tournaments and events.

Garden Hermit is another exception, because it require Wise Man trait with 50+ experience which is even more rare than forest fighter in deserts. I usually seek for such courtier only when I am a Mystic myself or a witch (mostly for RP).

Limit too high to be a constraint

In giant empires some Grand Tours may cost even more than 30000, so I have to break this rule if I want to start a long tour half the map. But this rule I break the most – simply because I have too big income in late game and I don't have time to spend it because of event spam or army control.

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.

That’s actually a great point for nomads and tribes, at least on low crown authority. Also, I forgot to mention that I send gifts to child rulers. I think this can't be considered as embarrassment (rather manipulation).

Enclave independence set to the most restrictive (realm gets split in half, you lose disjointed lands).

In my game rules exclaves are always allowed for everyone (Off in game rules). I have to set it after I saw how Hungary exploded when their king, who was also a ruler of Denmark, died.

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 demand payment only from hooks from people my character really hate or if he is greedy. Same apply to the Extort Subjects Decision (Greedy Trait).

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.

I help my liege against hostile religions wars (if my character is pious enough to care about them) and wars for my personal domain. Also, I can help him against my personal enemies or if our state existence is in danger.

 

[Benismann]

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.

AI does, however, use golden obligations. And it most certainly can press decisions...

 

[ShepherdOfCats]

AI does, however, use golden obligations. And it most certainly can press decisions...

I've never seen the AI use a payment hook on me in about 3,000 hrs. If it happens to you regularly, please screenshot it. I'd love to see it.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say the AI is hardcoded to not use anything in that first stewardship tree, other than passive benefits. Perhaps they are hoping to use their hooks for something else.

 

[InsidiousMage]

If I didn't know any better, I'd say the AI is hardcoded to not use anything in that first stewardship tree, other than passive benefits. Perhaps they are hoping to use their hooks for something else.

I game I finished recently, I had a stewardship ruler as my neighbor who had 6,000 gold while most of my other neighbors had a couple hundred, only one or two with more than 500 gold. I'm guessing he didn't get that gold passively.

 

[Benismann]

I've never seen the AI use a payment hook on me in about 3,000 hrs. If it happens to you regularly, please screenshot it. I'd love to see it.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say the AI is hardcoded to not use anything in that first stewardship tree, other than passive benefits. Perhaps they are hoping to use their hooks for something else.

How do i screenshot it? It's not allowed VS players, you can easily check that in MP. You can. however, throw a debug_log into the interaction's "on_accept" bloc (or just make it throw an error sometimes like i did when i was messing with it) and you can clearly see that AI does use that feature.

And for the two decisions - they obviously aren't taking gold from anyone and/or impact anyone and just grab random AI characters to do the job.