Help!

[boomerUK]

Hi,

I've been playing CK + DV for about a week now, I started off as england succesfully won a war against france and own roughtly about half of it with the title King of France as mine, the other half is owned by Anjou who ive managed to marry into and will inherit at some point down the line.

My problem is im having problems with my vassals rebelling every ten minutes, its really annoying. I think ive just made a huge error in giving my heir all the duke titles I own (including the french ones) now every count and vassal across the land is declaring war on him, I of course go to help him out and hes now annexing them which means when he inherits the throne his demense will be massive.

I was just wondering what you guys do with your heirs, I thought it was good to give them titles to boost up their prestige for when they become ruler, but in my game doing this has just led to me being at war every 5 minutes, its really frustrating.

Any help appreciated.

 

[unmerged(133776)]

... hes now annexing them which means when he inherits the throne his demense will be massive.

The only problem will come when he inherits the 'Kingdom Demense', combining his personal lands with the new Kingdom Lands. As an AI Duke, he'll keep his personal lands (I 'think') at 100% efficiency. He'll hand out lands to his courtiers (probably just randomly picking a courtier in his court) to keep his eff in a safe range.

The main problem will be that he'll most likely have a higher than normal BB once he inherits. AI's don't have to worry about the effects of BB, but it's still there. And if he inherits any from you, that could make for a really rough time. So if at all possible, knock the King BB down as much as you can, plan ahead to see how many excess provinces he'll have to get rid of (though IMHO, it's good to have extra provinces when a new ruler inherits - gives a chance to give out some much needed Bishoprics to gain a nice chunk of Piety (to ward off a cheapie excom from a neighbor)). Once he inherits, he could hand out some Count/Duke titles to lower his BB his first days, so it might not be as grim as it looks now.

I was just wondering what you guys do with your heirs, I thought it was good to give them titles to boost up their prestige for when they become ruler, but in my game doing this has just led to me being at war every 5 minutes, its really frustrating.

If he's strong enough, let him deal with those rebellious vassals and just stay out of it. There's no law that says you must intervene.

 

[unmerged(54293)]

I was just wondering what you guys do with your heirs, I thought it was good to give them titles to boost up their prestige for when they become ruler, but in my game doing this has just led to me being at war every 5 minutes, its really frustrating.

A reasonable consideration, but as a kingdom, prestige is hardly an issue. As soon as he inherits, with a king title and loads of dukes as vassals, he will very soon amass more than enough prestige.

Personally, I always make sure my heir has no vassals - except for the ones he creates himself, of course. But otherwise, all provinces associated to his ducal titles have to be in my or in his own possession. The reason for this is that at times, the AI can not handle its vassals very well. Your heir will begin revoking his vassals' titles and mixing up the composition of your realm; sometimes he will even revoke bishops' titles, resulting in a huge piety loss (and piety, in contrast to prestige, is an issue, even for a king); some vassals won't accept this behaviour and declare independence on him (and therefore you); he will be dragged into wars and be severely wounded, and so on.

To put it short: Mostly bad will come from your heir having many titles and vassals. Hence, I tend to keep his personal realm rather small.

 

[boomerUK]

Thanks for the responses.

In future I will only be giving out ducal titles to him for provinces that I own, I've spent alot of time/effort making sure all counts and dukes are within the family to have him annex them all and start handing out titles to randomers in his court.

Another quick question, I've noticed the King of Scotland just disappeared, and after much searching have learned that the King of Sweden owns this title now, however he owns no demenses in Scotland and also has no vassals, how can he have this title? and wants the best way to get it back off him? upsurping it and going to war when I have enough provinces?

Thanks again

 

[TempestDK]

He might have inherited it or gained it in a war, but then proceeded to hand out the old king's demesne and then proceeded to lose all the scottish vassals. That doesn't make him lose the King title.

And yes, the best way to get it is to grab or usurp the title and then take it from him in a war.

 

[boomerUK]

I see, I will prepare the invasion force then

Thanks for the help

 

[boomerUK]

Okay im having some more problems now...

My vassals keep declaring independence.... my heir just inherited my kingdom and within the first year i've had about 6 vassals declare independence... I've been keeping their loyalty high through gifts etc but it doesnt seem to help.

What causes this? Its also more annoying that some of them are part of my dynasty.

 

[sjones25]

Your old king probably had tons of prestige that was keeping your vassals in line. Hold your mouse over some of your vassals' loyalty values and see what the tooltip says. It will probably say something about your reputation, which is the negative opinion others have of you because you took someone else's land. The more piety you have, the faster this will go down. Also, giving up claims you have on other titles lowers your reputation.

So a good trick is, when one of your vassals rebels, conquer all of his land and then give up your claims on his land and demand only that he becomes your vassal again. Having him become your vassal again doesn't increase your reputation at all, and giving up your claims will lower it. So you can win back your rebelling territory, increase your prestige, and lower your reputation all at the same time! Be careful though, if your demands end up being a negative number, you'll actually lose prestige because the game thinks you "lost" the war and are surrendering to him!

 

[boomerUK]

Your old king probably had tons of prestige that was keeping your vassals in line. Hold your mouse over some of your vassals' loyalty values and see what the tooltip says. It will probably say something about your reputation, which is the negative opinion others have of you because you took someone else's land. The more piety you have, the faster this will go down. Also, giving up claims you have on other titles lowers your reputation.

So a good trick is, when one of your vassals rebels, conquer all of his land and then give up your claims on his land and demand only that he becomes your vassal again. Having him become your vassal again doesn't increase your reputation at all, and giving up your claims will lower it. So you can win back your rebelling territory, increase your prestige, and lower your reputation all at the same time! Be careful though, if your demands end up being a negative number, you'll actually lose prestige because the game thinks you "lost" the war and are surrendering to him!

Thanks for the help.

I took your advice and started giving up some of my claims and I've also been giving alot of Duke titles out (I have 30 dukes as vassals now)

However it seems that counts are declaring independence from my duke vassals, im struggling to find a happy medium with this game, whats the best way to get these rogue counts back into the fold, if I force vassalize them wont they be my direct vassals again, which is exactly what I was trying to get away from by giving out Duke titles.

 

[Brettmo]

Thanks for the help.

I took your advice and started giving up some of my claims and I've also been giving alot of Duke titles out (I have 30 dukes as vassals now)

However it seems that counts are declaring independence from my duke vassals, im struggling to find a happy medium with this game, whats the best way to get these rogue counts back into the fold, if I force vassalize them wont they be my direct vassals again, which is exactly what I was trying to get away from by giving out Duke titles.

Yes, if you vassalise them they will be under your direct control rather than through your duke. What you can do is to just conquer the province and hold of making the peace for a couple of days. The duke they rebelled from will make a peace for you, annexing the province and keeping it within his influence (either as direct demesne or through promoting a new count).

You might want to check the traits of your duke before going through with this though. If he's a "bad" person like a kinslayer or heretic then there is a good chance that you will have your work cut out for you as he'll keep making vassals that will keep declaring independence after a month or two. If he has a good heir you can try to kill him off, otherwise you might want to try and strip him of his titles.

 

[boomerUK]

Yes, if you vassalise them they will be under your direct control rather than through your duke. What you can do is to just conquer the province and hold of making the peace for a couple of days. The duke they rebelled from will make a peace for you, annexing the province and keeping it within his influence (either as direct demesne or through promoting a new count).

You might want to check the traits of your duke before going through with this though. If he's a "bad" person like a kinslayer or heretic then there is a good chance that you will have your work cut out for you as he'll keep making vassals that will keep declaring independence after a month or two. If he has a good heir you can try to kill him off, otherwise you might want to try and strip him of his titles.

The thing is they're not at war with my duke vassals, they literally just declare independence, now im seeing a patchwork of different coloured regions across my realm because my dukes are failing to keep their counts in check, so it looks like the only options are to force vasselize them myself (which is what I was trying to get away from by handing out duke titles in the first place) or to vassalize, revoke titles and hand them back out to the dukes, racking up my badboy...

 

[TempestDK]

Yes, vassals can sometimes get an event that lets them declare independence without having to declare war on their liege. And I do agree that it is very annoying that you have to force-vassalize them under your direct control again. Sadly there isn't much you can do about besides save-game editing. It would be nice if you could rearrange which counts go with which duke titles, but you can't.

So either you live with the rebels coming under your control, rake up BB by revoking the duke's title and re-granting it to someone, or edit the save game file.

 

[sjones25]

Or you could annex the county and then give it back to the duke you set over it.

 

[Brettmo]

The thing is they're not at war with my duke vassals, they literally just declare independence, now im seeing a patchwork of different coloured regions across my realm because my dukes are failing to keep their counts in check, so it looks like the only options are to force vasselize them myself (which is what I was trying to get away from by handing out duke titles in the first place) or to vassalize, revoke titles and hand them back out to the dukes, racking up my badboy...

Ah, that's a tough nut to crack. The only thing that I can think of that might be better BB-wise is to force-vassalize, then revoke the duke titles for the areas in question and redistribute them (preferably to someone more capable, if such a person exists). You have to make sure you have all the provinces of the duchy under your control when you give back the duke title or you will have to do it over again. You'll get 0.75BB per duke you revoke but it's better than 2BB per county, and you should get -0.5BB when you give back the title (unless that only applies to counts, haven't tried in a while).

 

[boomerUK]

Whats even more annoying is that I had 10 year old counts declaring independence from their father dukes, oh and they were all dynasty members aswell so I assumed there would be some kind of loyalty bonus for them not only being dynasty members but them being father and son... and why oh why when they 'split' an
instant DoW wasnt made on the count by the duke I dont know... the best way to play this game seems to be to keep trying to get a king with as high intrigue as possible and just have everything as your demenses.

I've decided to stop playing for now, going wait it out for CK2, hopefully the mechanics between counts/dukes/kings is better, thanks for the help anyway guys much appreciated.

 

[TempestDK]

Whats even more annoying is that I had 10 year old counts declaring independence from their father dukes, oh and they were all dynasty members aswell so I assumed there would be some kind of loyalty bonus for them not only being dynasty members but them being father and son... and why oh why when they 'split' an
instant DoW wasnt made on the count by the duke I dont know... the best way to play this game seems to be to keep trying to get a king with as high intrigue as possible and just have everything as your demenses.

I've decided to stop playing for now, going wait it out for CK2, hopefully the mechanics between counts/dukes/kings is better, thanks for the help anyway guys much appreciated.

The son does get a loyalty bonus ... and a pretty good one at that .. but if his father is a Heretical Kinslayer, it won't matter much. Maybe you just need to reconsider who is the Duke

I see this as a very small annoyance in that grand scheme of the game. And it is not a problem I see too often anyways. You can always just play as a King and make all your duke vassals as Arch-bishops .... they have no demesne lmit and will not grant or revoke titles (AFAIK) ... so you don't have the headache of keeping counts in the right duchies.

 

[boomerUK]

Ill give you an example of what I mean, I granted the title of Count of Dijon to a dynasty member.

At the time there was a whole bunch of non dynasty member counts in the region (charloais etc), so I granted said dynasty member the title of Duke of Burgandy aswell, hoping that in time, he would replace these non dynasty counts with his own sons etc and form a family ran Duchy.

Fast forward 5 Years.

The Duke is still there and as expected he has replaced a number of the non dynasty counts with his own family members including his 18 year old son (who is now the count of Charloais)

And now I've just checked and now this 18 year old count has declared independence from his Duke father (who has no negative traits, diplomacy is a little low but still) and now appears as a blightly coloured blob of yellow in my fast becoming patchwork of independent counts in which 10 years ago was a bright sea of red.

Am I missing something here, should i be giving dynasty members count/duke titles in the hope they will one day replace the non-dynasty counts with their own sons etc. Because its back firing massively for me... Im willing to upload my save game or something if you want to take a look at it and give me some pointers.

 

[TempestDK]

Ill give you an example of what I mean, I granted the title of Count of Dijon to a dynasty member.

At the time there was a whole bunch of non dynasty member counts in the region (charloais etc), so I granted said dynasty member the title of Duke of Burgandy aswell, hoping that in time, he would replace these non dynasty counts with his own sons etc and form a family ran Duchy.

Fast forward 5 Years.

The Duke is still there and as expected he has replaced a number of the non dynasty counts with his own family members including his 18 year old son (who is now the count of Charloais)

And now I've just checked and now this 18 year old count has declared independence from his Duke father (who has no negative traits, diplomacy is a little low but still) and now appears as a blightly coloured blob of yellow in my fast becoming patchwork of independent counts in which 10 years ago was a bright sea of red.

Am I missing something here, should i be giving dynasty members count/duke titles in the hope they will one day replace the non-dynasty counts with their own sons etc. Because its back firing massively for me... Im willing to upload my save game or something if you want to take a look at it and give me some pointers.

Well all traits can be considered negative if the vassals have opposing traits. Also you need to consider things like rivalries and the nasty Rebellious traits in vassals. Rebellious vassals get various events that lower their loyalty in large chunck, as well as getting events to declare independence (both through war and peacefully). They can also spread "Rebelliousness" amongst the other vassals of the same liege.

You WILL sometimes encounter disloyal vassals in the game ... as you can't be sure that future generations will be as loyal as their forefathers were. But if most of your realm is falling apart in 10 years, something must be seriously wrong. Sadly the AI is pretty stupid, and a Duke father will give his sons land (if he has any to give), no matter how disloyal they might be towards him. If my son was Disloyal Incarnate towards me, I would probably not give him land.

 

[unmerged(133776)]

Sadly the AI is pretty stupid, and a Duke father will give his sons land (if he has any to give), no matter how disloyal they might be towards him. If my son was Disloyal Incarnate towards me, I would probably not give him land.

I've seen that a lot also. A Duke father will give his 0 loyalty son a Count Title, the son then DOW's his father, daddy-dearest annexes said county, son moves back to Court and idiot-daddy gives him a title again, which repeats ad-naseum until one of the two dies while battling each other.

Personally, I put the 0 loyalty squarely on when the kid was a fosterling at a another Court, and he moves home with that same 0 loyalty and daddy immediately gives him a title. I wish loyalty was re-set to 100 when a fosterling moves back home (as it does when a Courtier leaves your court for another court).

 

[TempestDK]

I've seen that a lot also. A Duke father will give his 0 loyalty son a Count Title, the son then DOW's his father, daddy-dearest annexes said county, son moves back to Court and idiot-daddy gives him a title again, which repeats ad-naseum until one of the two dies while battling each other.

Personally, I put the 0 loyalty squarely on when the kid was a fosterling at a another Court, and he moves home with that same 0 loyalty and daddy immediately gives him a title. I wish loyalty was re-set to 100 when a fosterling moves back home (as it does when a Courtier leaves your court for another court).

Something to wish for for CK2?? .... or I wonder if it is possible to reset the loyalty through an event when the child returns from fostering