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Gosh, it's the worst event for me.

Don't know if it's random or not, but I feel stability helps removing it.
 
Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening. It seems my vassels just kinda get rebellious and start a civil war out of nowhere.

Have loyal vassals, and not too many direct vassals. Sadly the more vassals you have, the more can potentially not like you.

If you are a king, try to avoid having 15 direct count vassals, as these give you very little and increase the risk of some one creating havoc and giving you a civil war on your hands. Even if all of them love you, some will eventually get the rebellious trait, which can lead to other rebellious vassals and then Realm Duress.

The only way to guarantee that this event will not fire, is to control all provinces by yourself :)
 
Do you really have to go through one by one and throw out every single rebellious vassal? Wow. But hey, if that works, great. I've already kicked my rivals out of any office, have strong loyalties across the board, prestige is in the 5 figures, and I've tried peace and war with vassals that want out. The result: realm duress for 10 years.

And more generally, realm duress sucks because it's too much a success penalty. If you get it for losing wars, being broke, negative prestige, having disloyal advisers/vassals, fine. The distinction is that a problem vassal or two should not cause system-wide problems in what is otherwise a well-functioning realm. (I watch non-rival, non-rebellious, 100% loyal vassals break free from my kingdom, and I just think WTF.)

Finally, this merry-go-round where you have realm duress because of low stability and low stability because of realm duress is a bit tedious. Not quite like playing China in For the Glory, but it's up there.

Sorry for the rant - taking a break from game due to an unhandled exception CTD. :D

ps. Thanks for the tip re too many direct vassals.
 
Do you really have to go through one by one and throw out every single rebellious vassal? Wow. But hey, if that works, great.

One thing to keep in mind about Realm Duress. It was given to you by Event (a random vassal rebels and just happens to give you Realm Duress), and it'll be taken away by Event. Having No Rebellious Vassals is only a Modifier to that Event. It's not a MUST have, the Event to end Realm Duress will fire ONLY if you are at Peace, that is the only MUST have (afaik).

Also, how are you throwing out all those rebellious vassals? Are you waiting for them to DOW on you and then you let them leave or are you taking away their land in the Peace Process? Or are you revoking their titles. If you're letting them leave sometime during the war, they'll eventually lose their Rebellious trait and sooner or later ask to be let back in. If you're taking away their land in the Peace Process, that will increase your Bad-boy, which will make it harder to keep the loyalty up on the rest of your vassals. If you're revoking their titles, the rest of your vassals take a loyalty hit and a few might even get the Rebellious trait because of you revoking titles.

When my ruler gets that Realm Duress, I start working on short-decisive wars with my former vassals. Make peace with any that could drag on (they have too many provinces in their demesne, or spread out or whatever), Revassalize the quick ones to reduce any BadBoy and just aim for as much Peace-Time as possible. Once the Realm Duress is over, then it's pay-back time on those I let go.
 
Yeah, I found out it's not mandatory to drop all the rebellious vassals, but it REALLY helps.

I got rid of them in different ways. Let a couple small distant ones go, revoked a title on one, assassinated another, promoted a couple dukes to insulate the king from another couple problem counts. (You can have rebellious counts as part of the kingdom, but it -seems- that if their liege is a duke, then those guys are truly the duke's problem.)

Game mechanics spoiler (highlight to view): I think in the future I will definitely leave a pile of safe but unclaimed titles to get any successor above the minimum prestige level as soon as he takes over. Also, I think you can be at war, though yes the extent to which it extends the MTTH means it's functionally a no-no.

On a related note (of sorts), I had a rebellious relative inherit the throne. Mostly that was good news, though I thought he'd lose the rebellious trait once he became king. That hasn't happened, and I think it's the cause of some cranky courtiers.

It doesn't seem to WAD that a rebel would rebel against himself. :confused:
 
On a related note (of sorts), I had a rebellious relative inherit the throne. Mostly that was good news, though I thought he'd lose the rebellious trait once he became king. That hasn't happened, and I think it's the cause of some cranky courtiers.

It doesn't seem to WAD that a rebel would rebel against himself. :confused:

Just like (almost) everything else in the game, your new Ruler will lose his Rebellious trait via an Event, it just hasn't fired yet. In cases like that, I see nothing wrong with firing it manually (or editing it in the save game). I 'think' your vassals will be more likely to get the Rebellious trait if he has it (and/or they get the Events tied to the Rebellious trait even if they don't have it).
 
Realm Duress is a real killer for a kingdom with some very powerful vassals. I've found that the easiest way to deal with it is to divide up your kingdom wisely from the start. Try not to have any vassals (except maybe your heir) with more than three provinces (including all of their vassals).

You'll have a lot more vassals this way, so your chances of getting realm duress is higher, but its not nearly as devastating. When any vassal rebels, you just destroy him in a matter of weeks, force vassalage, force him to give up his claims on your titles, and you recognize his claims on his titles. That way, you gain prestige and lose reputation. (Make sure your peace offer is still positive warscore, or you'll actually lose prestige for giving up too many claims)

In my current game I've been using this strategy and I got realm duress and just ignored it. My little vassals rebelled every now and then, but I just crushed them with ease. I even went out on a conquering spree and took over France while my realm was in duress, giving up my claims on my rebelling vassals to burn the reputation I got from my conquests. My king has had the realm duress trait for most of his long reign (he lost it for a while, then it popped right back up) but it hasn't even slowed the pace of the kingdom's expansion.
 
Realm Duress is a real killer for a kingdom with some very powerful vassals. I've found that the easiest way to deal with it is to divide up your kingdom wisely from the start. Try not to have any vassals (except maybe your heir) with more than three provinces (including all of their vassals).
I always try to limit my vassals size to just one duke title, and even go as far as taking titles away from some adventurous vassals by force. It means I have to put more effort into managing all my vassals, but when they get uppity it's usually not that hard to crush them, and realm duresses are easier to live with when they occur.
 
Given that vassals rebel for some very indeterminate reasons, it's hard to trust them with more than a duchy.

There's no stopping it from happening. You can only end the rebellion quickly and keep at peace and sit it out.

I think Excommunication is a far worse event.
 
I think Excommunication is a far worse event.
Yup. You might be able to keep your vassals in line, but soon everyone in your court hates you and wants you dead, which makes a lot more trouble than some puny vassals rebelling.
 
I prefer sometimes to give more power to certain vassals ... makes things more interesting ;) ... I just make sure that no single vassal is more powerful than me. If push comes to shove, then I'll let some vassals go. I can always conquer them back at a later time.
 
Ahh, so your King has the "I'll Show Them." trait? ;)
Well, he did for a while, but I think its been replaced by the "I Showed Them" trait by now! :p

He just got done conquering all of Iberia from the Muslims (while "Realm Duress" is still going), decided he didn't want it, and gave away all four king titles to various relatives. Your welcome Christianity.
 
Given that vassals rebel for some very indeterminate reasons, it's hard to trust them with more than a duchy.

There's no stopping it from happening. You can only end the rebellion quickly and keep at peace and sit it out.

I think Excommunication is a far worse event.


You can stop it from happening. If you ensure that every vassal always has loyalty of above 50% then you won't get the event. The rebellious vassals will sometimes get an event which reduces their loyalty by 50 and if you don't bump them back up again quickly they can get another event which chops off another 50, which sometimes will be a realm duress event. You need to keep a surplus in the bank so you can bribe when you need to, because some vassals will take 1000+ to bring them into line.

At least, that's my experience from playing with a very large empire on a world conquest game (28 kingdom titles now, and almost every christian province under my control).
 
Personally I never bribe my vassals to loyalty. Once you're large enough it's too easy to just give everyone cash to be happy and keep big empires together.

I like watching my realm fall apart when I get a mad king whom everyone hates, and then start putting pieces back together when things calm down. :)