Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Strudel Man
May 19, 2003
ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Rynoto posted:

Stop raising your children to be Zealous, then :colbert: (No idea if this actually affects it)
I generally do, but that particular kid wasn't.

edit: The only real requirement is a martial score of 5, apparently. The base MTTH per kid is 100 years, but there are a lot of modifiers that can decrease it:

code:
modifier = {
	factor = 0.25
	trait = zealous
}
modifier = {
	factor = 0.5
	trait = celibate
}
modifier = {
	factor = 0.5
	trait = homosexual
}
modifier = {
	factor = 0.7
	trait = content
}
modifier = {
	factor = 0.75
	trait = chaste
}
modifier = {
	factor = 0.75
	NOT = { age = 25 }
}
modifier = {
	factor = 1.5
	trait = slothful
}
modifier = {
	factor = 2.0
	trait = lustful
}
modifier = {
	factor = 2.0
	trait = cynical
}
modifier = {
	factor = 2.0
	trait = hedonist
}
modifier = {
	factor = 2.0
	trait = ambitious
}
modifier = {
	factor = 2.0
	any_heir_title = {
		always = yes
	}
}
modifier = {
	factor = 2.0
	is_primary_heir = yes
}

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jan 18, 2014

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Empress Theonora
Feb 19, 2001

She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.
If you have a province in a duchy, you can give it and the duchy to an unlanded character at the same time if you select "include lower titles" on the diplomacy screen.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

PureRok posted:

This isn't true. I had a priest son who couldn't have any landed titles, but the game let me give him a duchy (because I couldn't give him counties) even though he didn't own any land at all. I had to do this to get him to shut up about not having any titles.

It was his choice to be a priest, why does he then complain he doesn't have any land? Stupid teenagers.

Did you have "Include Lower Titles" (which would give him all the counties in the duchy first, making him landed, and then give him the duchy itself) checked?

Allyn
Sep 4, 2007

I love Charlie from Busted!
If you're a priest you can probably be given a duchy anyway. You can certainly keep a duchy if you lose all your county-level holdings but retain a barony (uncommon but I've seen it 5~ times probably). If he meant monk then uhhhhh no idea

chippocrates
Feb 20, 2013

Allyn posted:

If you're a priest you can probably be given a duchy anyway. You can certainly keep a duchy if you lose all your county-level holdings but retain a barony (uncommon but I've seen it 5~ times probably). If he meant monk then uhhhhh no idea
This also works if you press a claim to a duchy title on someone's behalf after giving them a barony.

Mailer
Nov 4, 2009

Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?

PureRok posted:

It was his choice to be a priest, why does he then complain he doesn't have any land? Stupid teenagers.

I've had two heirs now that, despite the realm being primo and them being assured a massive inheritance, immediately run off to some lovely duke and refuse to come home. Yeah I'm sure that minor duke is going to press your claims against the rulers of most of the world, shithead. At least this one I managed to marry off before he fled, even if I couldn't get him the Crusader trait.

NihilVerumNisiMors
Aug 16, 2012

Strudel Man posted:

edit: The only real requirement is a martial score of 5, apparently. The base MTTH per kid is 100 years, but there are a lot of modifiers that can decrease it:

So being homosexual increases the chance of joining an order? :mmmhmm:

Lunethex
Feb 4, 2013

Me llamo Sarah Brandolino, the eighth Castilian of this magnificent marriage.

Paper Lion posted:

Idunno if you gave it out already, but add my steam A Pimp Named Bristleback (i think ive got some dumb anime avatar atm) and I'll gladly take that coupon off your hands :)

I added you this morning but you haven't been on. Still free though.

elbkaida
Jan 13, 2008
Look!
So I was playing Georgia, built up a nice big kingdom spanning most of Eastern Europe from Caucasus to Baltic Sea, but then the Mongol Invasion happened. They rolled in with about 80k-100k men and wiped out everything in their path. Within 20 years, the Ilkhanate conquered most of my stuff, Poland, Hungary and the Crimea area. They haven't touched the muslims and byzantines yet.

Is this the normal way this plays out? If they attack me once more, I'll barely have anything left over. Do I just need to wait for their leader to die and then they'll self-destruct in succession crisis or what would be a good course of action? Maybe I should try to expand into Scandinavia and come back later? I don't even want to imagine how many holy wars it will take to get my land back. :(

I play vanilla CK2 with the current patch btw.

Strudel Man
May 19, 2003
ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

NihilVerumNisiMors posted:

So being homosexual increases the chance of joining an order? :mmmhmm:
Yeah, that caught me a bit off-guard, too. But it makes sense for a number of reasons. Hang out with other rough-and-tumble dudes all the time, and no expectation of settling down with a woman to produce some heirs.

Lori
Oct 6, 2011
I have two 50% off coupons for CK2 if anybody wants them. http://steamcommunity.com/id/loopscatfaec

Ofaloaf
Feb 15, 2013

So I don't know which component of the project's fault it is, but after installing the Historical Immersion Project and looking at the map & Ruler Designer, it became clear that some priorities just seem a little off.

Spain at game start is culturally divided between Andalusians, Basques, Catalans, Castillians, Aragonians, Galicians, Portuguese and Leonese peoples. Italy is even crazier, being divided between Ligurians, Lombards, Venetians, Tuscans, Corsicans, Sardinians, Central Italians, Southern Italians, Langobards, and Greeks and Maghreb Arabs. Aside from the Greeks and Arabs, all those cultures are in the 'Italian' culture group, which also includes Romans, Neapolitans and Sicilians, the latter two presumably appearing via event. The North Germanic Group includes Norse, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Frisian and Gothic (Gotlander).

All this detail and variation would be immensely impressive, except, well:



What bothers me is less the sheer detail devoted to some areas, but rather how unevenly it's been done. Even Frisians are in this, yet Germans can't be divided between, I dunno, Low and High German?

Zhaan
Aug 7, 2012

Always like this.
Another question. For the Holy Smoke achievement, it says to sacrifice another religion's head as an Aztec or Norse pagan.

I have all the DLCs except Sons of Abraham. How do I play an Aztec? I want to cut a swathe into Europe and sacrifice the Pope.

Zhaan fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Jan 19, 2014

Excelzior
Jun 24, 2013

Zhaan posted:

Another question. For the Holy Smoke achievement, it says to sacrifice another religion's head as an Aztec or Norse pagan.

I have all the DLCs except Sons of Abraham. How do I play an Aztec?

Wait for them to invade, invite one to your court, have him tutor your heir I guess?

Zhaan
Aug 7, 2012

Always like this.

Excelzior posted:

Wait for them to invade, invite one to your court, have him tutor your heir I guess?

Can I convert if they invade me?

Excelzior
Jun 24, 2013

Zhaan posted:

Can I convert if they invade me?

I haven't played with Sunset Invasion on in forever but iirc they rarely use the Holy War CB that you can convert from since they have a special invasion CB that's better in every way.

Mailer
Nov 4, 2009

Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?
I had a brilliant plan. The Timurids were busy smashing their doomstack into the Ilkahanate during a losing war, their truce with me ran out in 1405, and if I could stall for five years I could beat the reinforcement timer. The last time I saw their stack, from the same ruler that had already been reinforced, it was at 53k. It'd take hundreds of thousands of men but I could do it. Declare war a day before the truce breaks and for a couple of years no one showed up. I put cities to the sword with only minimal resistance. No one showed up and they let me sit at 100% warscore for a while with no sign of their horse archer army.

Then I found out why:


Apparently mongol doomstacks regenerate. Well, gently caress. The guy had been spinning circles up north while his unbeatable army came back. I could have instantly declared victory and had better odds on the counterattack than this. :/

Edit: Oh, it's a bug. Maybe it's fixed in 2.0 or something.

Mailer fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Jan 19, 2014

MrBling
Aug 21, 2003

Oozing machismo
My Burgundy game kinda went out of control.



On the plus side, the unexpected inheritance of Lotharingia increased my retinue cap from 1200 to 4800. I was pretty pleased to have become king of burgundy at 921 but I guess the game wanted more for me.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
So I just started playing this a while ago and I've mostly gotten the hang of it (so far I've united Ireland as a Cathar heresy, because I apparently like making things more difficult for myself), but I'm still a bit unclear on how claims are inherited.

My current ruler is a two year old after my previous ruler died at age 28 thanks to a combination of being maimed since childhood and stressed on top of that. His mother is still alive, and she has a strong claim on the Byzantine empire (which is pretty fragmented at the moment but hey, empire!). She has three other living children but my previous ruler was her firstborn; who the heck will inherit her claim? Will it pass on to my current ruler since he's the successor of my previous, who would have inherited the claim had he outlived his mother? Will it be her other children and her grandson has no shot at it at all? Does it depend on the succession laws of the nation itself?

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Canopus250 posted:

So I'm running into a strange issue with the game not launching. I usually edit the costs of stuff in the Ruler Designer down to zero so I can mess around with gimmick characters but having the defines.lua edited in that manner makes the game not launch. I get the basic launcher with the dlc and mod selection tab but launch just closed CK2. If I have steam verify the files it switches the defines file back. This is with no mods of any sort on too.

The only thing I can think of is that I haven't played since well before they added all the steam achievements. Am I just boned out of doing this now or do I need to use a different method? I have no interest in ever trying or playing one second of Ironman so I'm kind of pissed if that is why I can't do that anymore.

I noticed the same thing and I do not know how to fix it. My workaround was to look up how to console-add traits to myself, so I simply created a person with the name and crest I wanted, added Quick and Injured to balance them out, then consoled myself a couple good and bad things once i started the game. Only drawback is that you cannot add hereditary traits like Genius, Quick, Strong, Attractive, Ugly, ect (hence why I added quick and injured on creation).

elbkaida
Jan 13, 2008
Look!

The Cheshire Cat posted:

So I just started playing this a while ago and I've mostly gotten the hang of it (so far I've united Ireland as a Cathar heresy, because I apparently like making things more difficult for myself), but I'm still a bit unclear on how claims are inherited.

My current ruler is a two year old after my previous ruler died at age 28 thanks to a combination of being maimed since childhood and stressed on top of that. His mother is still alive, and she has a strong claim on the Byzantine empire (which is pretty fragmented at the moment but hey, empire!). She has three other living children but my previous ruler was her firstborn; who the heck will inherit her claim? Will it pass on to my current ruler since he's the successor of my previous, who would have inherited the claim had he outlived his mother? Will it be her other children and her grandson has no shot at it at all? Does it depend on the succession laws of the nation itself?

If you mouse-over the claim in the character window, it will tell you if the claim gets inherited or has to be pressed in war. In case of inheritance, all children get the claim. No idea what kind of claims are strong enough to get inherited for multiple generations.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
In this case it's a non-fabricated strong claim so it should be enough to pass to grandchildren (the CK2 wiki says that strong claims get passed on as inheritable weak claims, and weak claims then get passed on as uninheritable-unless-pressed weak claims). It's just the fact that the father is dead that's confusing me; will it skip over him entirely or will it still pass down to the grandchild as an uninheritable weak claim?

*edit* looks like I misunderstood the wiki, strong claims are inherited as UNinheritable weak claims. The grandson did not inherit any claim at all, while the still living sons and daughters got weak claims. At least I understand it better now. So weak claims are always inherited by children (assuming they can be inherited) regardless of succession law, and said law only affects who gets the strong claims, right?

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jan 19, 2014

SubNat
Nov 27, 2008

Mickey McKey posted:

I noticed the same thing and I do not know how to fix it. My workaround was to look up how to console-add traits to myself, so I simply created a person with the name and crest I wanted, added Quick and Injured to balance them out, then consoled myself a couple good and bad things once i started the game. Only drawback is that you cannot add hereditary traits like Genius, Quick, Strong, Attractive, Ugly, ect (hence why I added quick and injured on creation).

Why do it via the defines.lua?
You can simply go to the traits themselves and add a cost = -X
to adjust what they cost.

When I gently caress around with ridiculous characters, I usually just set homosexual or legitimized bastard with a cost = -50 or so, and you'll get a bunch of extra points to use on other stuff.

You can find the traits in CK2's folder, then common, and traits.

Otherwise, there's a mod that only adds + and - age traits, which effectively just give you points, which is another alternative.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?696742-Mini-Mod-Age-Customizer

Rahzmataz
Apr 29, 2013
Today I went from king of Ireland, Alba, and Brittany, to a small-time duke in Wessex. It has not been a good day.

Allyn
Sep 4, 2007

I love Charlie from Busted!

Mickey McKey posted:

I noticed the same thing and I do not know how to fix it. My workaround was to look up how to console-add traits to myself, so I simply created a person with the name and crest I wanted, added Quick and Injured to balance them out, then consoled myself a couple good and bad things once i started the game. Only drawback is that you cannot add hereditary traits like Genius, Quick, Strong, Attractive, Ugly, ect (hence why I added quick and injured on creation).

You certainly can add hereditary traits using the console. Strong and genius are as printed, but attractive is 'fair'. Dunno about any others, though.

Also to the guy who was editing defines.lua, were you using notepad? If so, that's the issue - there's some issue with using notepad because of how it encodes it or something. Grab notepad++ and try that.

NihilVerumNisiMors
Aug 16, 2012


:catstare:

MrBling
Aug 21, 2003

Oozing machismo
If I'm running Burgundy and Lotharingia (main title Burgundy) as elective succession both and I destroy the title of lotharingia, will all the dukes just become electors of burgundy instead?

I figure it would make things easier with just one king level title. I'm kinda trapped between West Francia (which has Italy) and East Francia (which has Bavaria) but at least I can hope to destabilise West Francia with stabbing since they're still running gavelkind. East Francia went primogeniture so that will be slightly harder to do anything that way. Most of my dejure claims are in West anyway.

Allyn
Sep 4, 2007

I love Charlie from Busted!

MrBling posted:

If I'm running Burgundy and Lotharingia (main title Burgundy) as elective succession both and I destroy the title of lotharingia, will all the dukes just become electors of burgundy instead?

I figure it would make things easier with just one king level title. I'm kinda trapped between West Francia (which has Italy) and East Francia (which has Bavaria) but at least I can hope to destabilise West Francia with stabbing since they're still running gavelkind. East Francia went primogeniture so that will be slightly harder to do anything that way. Most of my dejure claims are in West anyway.

Only de jure dukes have a vote, so until they de jure drift into Burgundy they won't have a vote at all.

Jolan
Feb 5, 2007
I finally managed to get a trade republic as a vassal (gave someone a city, then the relevant county capital, and the containing duchy too, for shits; as soon as I win this revolt, I'll revoke a kingship and give that to the ruler too, wonder what that'll do). But how do they determine where trade posts will be built? Do they need to have holdings in that province or not? And how can I optimize the gold I get from them? (They're currently a direct vassal of my emperor with normal city taxes.)

NihilVerumNisiMors
Aug 16, 2012
Trade posts can be built anywhere within a certain range. I assume the AI prefers to build them where it's cheap, i.e. in territory of people that like them. City taxes should affect republic taxes but raising them makes them ornery, since they dislike being vassals of kings to begin with.

Allyn
Sep 4, 2007

I love Charlie from Busted!
You can't give kingdom titles to vassal republics. They can create them if they meet the requirements and you're an emperor, though.

You do not need to have any holdings in that province for them to make trade posts, they'll be able to make them in any coastal province. Normally optimisation comes from holding a majority of trade posts in contiguous sea zones connected to their capital province, but you cannot influence how a vassal places them, so just let them do whatever.

Jolan
Feb 5, 2007
Thanks for the info. When you say "people they like", at what liege level do they look? They like me as emperor, but hate my kings who keep trying to overthrow me. I've got taxes at normal (raised from minimal back when their ruler had a +100 opinion bonus for being friends, so they didn't complain about it then), don't plan to raise it higher because of that wrong ruler penalty anyways.

By the way, about the Aztecs: they've been knocked out of my game for ages now, but there's a single province somewhere in Africa that's still got Aztec as a majority religion. Does that province need to be converted for the achievement to trigger, too?

Edit: So turns out that my dynasty suddenly became Egyptian. It seems my guardian was Egyptian, so I guess that's what happened, but it means that all my max level Gallowglass Grounds have now disappeared. Is there any way to get them back or am I hosed again?

Jolan fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jan 19, 2014

Antinumeric
Nov 27, 2010

BoxGiraffe
So I entered a regency, and my regent lowered crown authority from high to none and it counted as *me* lowering it, so I cannot raise it again.
I crushed an independence revolt and castrated everyone and killed the regent and his entire family when I came of age. Revenge.

Antinumeric fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jan 19, 2014

hellsjudge
May 13, 2010

Jolan posted:

Thanks for the info. When you say "people they like", at what liege level do they look? They like me as emperor, but hate my kings who keep trying to overthrow me. I've got taxes at normal (raised from minimal back when their ruler had a +100 opinion bonus for being friends, so they didn't complain about it then), don't plan to raise it higher because of that wrong ruler penalty anyways.

By the way, about the Aztecs: they've been knocked out of my game for ages now, but there's a single province somewhere in Africa that's still got Aztec as a majority religion. Does that province need to be converted for the achievement to trigger, too?

Edit: So turns out that my dynasty suddenly became Egyptian. It seems my guardian was Egyptian, so I guess that's what happened, but it means that all my max level Gallowglass Grounds have now disappeared. Is there any way to get them back or am I hosed again?

I've found it's quite profitable and safe if you crank city taxation to Harsh, city levies to Low, and park your Chancellor in your republic's capital city to boost relations. If you only have one vassal republic, by the time you're Emperor you won't need your Chancellor for anything else but making vassals happy.

I started a new game and I was feeling dangerous, so I made TWO vassal republics. This time I avoided the mistake of making one in a low-tech Scandinavian county though.

Changing culture sure fucks you though, so there's no way to get those buildings back unless you rebuild.

hellsjudge fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jan 19, 2014

Fuligin
Oct 27, 2010

wait what the fuck??

Ofaloaf posted:

So I don't know which component of the project's fault it is, but after installing the Historical Immersion Project and looking at the map & Ruler Designer, it became clear that some priorities just seem a little off.

Spain at game start is culturally divided between Andalusians, Basques, Catalans, Castillians, Aragonians, Galicians, Portuguese and Leonese peoples. Italy is even crazier, being divided between Ligurians, Lombards, Venetians, Tuscans, Corsicans, Sardinians, Central Italians, Southern Italians, Langobards, and Greeks and Maghreb Arabs. Aside from the Greeks and Arabs, all those cultures are in the 'Italian' culture group, which also includes Romans, Neapolitans and Sicilians, the latter two presumably appearing via event. The North Germanic Group includes Norse, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Frisian and Gothic (Gotlander).

All this detail and variation would be immensely impressive, except, well:


What bothers me is less the sheer detail devoted to some areas, but rather how unevenly it's been done. Even Frisians are in this, yet Germans can't be divided between, I dunno, Low and High German?

That color scheme is gorgeous, though. Does it come from the mod?

Swabbleflange
Apr 18, 2008

I've sunk some hours into this after circling it for a long time, reading LPs, watching videos, etc. and I'm confident enough in the basics to say I can 'play the game' at least, but there are still little mechanisms I've not figured out. My latest boggle is how technology increases. I know I can set my council members to work researching things, and they'll add to some buried statistic somewhere, but I'm not sure how the progression works in terms of timescales. Basically, I thought I'd figured out if my Siege Equipment was at 2.9 (90% of the way to 3.0) and it was increasing at 8.9% annually, it would surely hit 3.0 in two years' time. Except it didn't. I let it run for 5 years just to see if it went up at all, but it didn't budge.

Which obvious piece of game system knowledge am I missing?

fuck off Batman
Oct 14, 2013

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!


Swabbleflange posted:

I've sunk some hours into this after circling it for a long time, reading LPs, watching videos, etc. and I'm confident enough in the basics to say I can 'play the game' at least, but there are still little mechanisms I've not figured out. My latest boggle is how technology increases. I know I can set my council members to work researching things, and they'll add to some buried statistic somewhere, but I'm not sure how the progression works in terms of timescales. Basically, I thought I'd figured out if my Siege Equipment was at 2.9 (90% of the way to 3.0) and it was increasing at 8.9% annually, it would surely hit 3.0 in two years' time. Except it didn't. I let it run for 5 years just to see if it went up at all, but it didn't budge.

Which obvious piece of game system knowledge am I missing?

It is a chance for increase, not percentage of annual increase. Also, your council members don't research things anymore, they spread tech into the province they are working in. Only one who is actually increasing it is your spymaster.

MLKQUOTEMACHINE
Oct 22, 2012

Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill

Strudel Man posted:

Yeah, that caught me a bit off-guard, too. But it makes sense for a number of reasons. Hang out with other rough-and-tumble dudes all the time, and no expectation of settling down with a woman to produce some heirs.

Hey man, if I were gay I'd totally love to hang out with the most bad-rear end, probably most physically fit members of my gender. Also weren't the bonds between men during this time period (and pretty much any time before the 20th century) really strong. Like, really strong?

marktheando
Nov 4, 2006

Swabbleflange posted:

I've sunk some hours into this after circling it for a long time, reading LPs, watching videos, etc. and I'm confident enough in the basics to say I can 'play the game' at least, but there are still little mechanisms I've not figured out. My latest boggle is how technology increases. I know I can set my council members to work researching things, and they'll add to some buried statistic somewhere, but I'm not sure how the progression works in terms of timescales. Basically, I thought I'd figured out if my Siege Equipment was at 2.9 (90% of the way to 3.0) and it was increasing at 8.9% annually, it would surely hit 3.0 in two years' time. Except it didn't. I let it run for 5 years just to see if it went up at all, but it didn't budge.

Which obvious piece of game system knowledge am I missing?

What Disco Infiva said, plus keep an eye on the little cogs on the technology screen, it will be animated if it is increasing. Tech will increase if they are higher in another connected province. Connected provinces are adjacent provinces, provinces in the same demesne, and provinces your spymaster is stealing tech from. If you assign a councillor to research tech they will increase this rate of increase. Maybe in your case 2.9 was the maximum in any connected province?

So if you are wanting to increase your siege equipment in your capital you would check the tech map for siege equipment to find someone with high siege equipment and send your spymaster there to steal tech. Then send your marshall to your capital to research military tech. If your spymaster and marshall are reasonably competent you should see an increase pretty soon.

nutranurse posted:

Hey man, if I were gay I'd totally love to hang out with the most bad-rear end, probably most physically fit members of my gender. Also weren't the bonds between men during this time period (and pretty much any time before the 20th century) really strong. Like, really strong?

In those days men would think nothing of walking down the street holding hands with a male friend. That only stopped with Victorian era anti-gay panic.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Torrannor
Apr 27, 2013

---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

Swabbleflange posted:

I've sunk some hours into this after circling it for a long time, reading LPs, watching videos, etc. and I'm confident enough in the basics to say I can 'play the game' at least, but there are still little mechanisms I've not figured out. My latest boggle is how technology increases. I know I can set my council members to work researching things, and they'll add to some buried statistic somewhere, but I'm not sure how the progression works in terms of timescales. Basically, I thought I'd figured out if my Siege Equipment was at 2.9 (90% of the way to 3.0) and it was increasing at 8.9% annually, it would surely hit 3.0 in two years' time. Except it didn't. I let it run for 5 years just to see if it went up at all, but it didn't budge.

Which obvious piece of game system knowledge am I missing?

The obvious piece you are missing is that dukes and above generate tech points that they have to spend to increase techs in their capital. If you are only a count you will not notice this, but at any higher rank you will get tech points dependent on your ability scores (martial + learning for military techs, stewardship + learning for economic techs, diplomacy + learning for cultural techs).

  • Locked thread