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Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

PittTheElder posted:

If you got Confederate Partitioned in the age of possible primogeniture you have claims to all the top level titles that got split off, and you should the innovation that lets you press multiple claims at the same time, meaning it'll take all of two wars to put it back together.

e: also lmao at that fragmentation. God drat this game needs work, I should really care less about it.

I could, but I'm in the middle of a giant holy war where the Catholics are fight my hoard of Waldensians. It's like two armies of 160k soldiers. It's taking forever and at this point I'm just calling it quits. I only have about 20 years left to go before I run out of time anyway.

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PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Just out of curiosity what does your army composition look like?

I would be launching all sorts of secondary campaigns on any brother who wasn't also in that Great Holy War, but that's me :v:

Hargrimm
Sep 22, 2011

W A R R E N

ELTON JOHN posted:

dumb question but how did they get this view of their character?

https://twitter.com/CrusaderKings/status/1493978481725784067

The fullscreen barbershop mod lets you take portraits like that with different poses and backgrounds, I'm not aware of anything in the base game that gives you that much flexibility. Kinda funny if the official account is tweeting out cool screenshots that are only achievable with mods

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

PittTheElder posted:

Just out of curiosity what does your army composition look like?

I would be launching all sorts of secondary campaigns on any brother who wasn't also in that Great Holy War, but that's me :v:

I was going to type it out, but I figure a picture is better. In hindsight, I should've just ignored the Great Holy War because I could've easily taken the kingdom back later on.

I think I should've added more siege weapons. There were definitely times I could've used more of them so I could siege more places at once.



E: Any good places to start in the mideast or Africa? Thinking of doing a Muslim guy.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Ahh yea that makes sense. I'd say two stacks of siege weapons is fine, but keeping outdated ones is not. Also it is downright painful to see 65k raised levies, that's actually counterproductive (though you could be forgiven for not realizing this, the AI certainly has no clue), there is no way they are worth the money you're spending to pay them unless you are literally shoveling them into siege assaults.

I almost feel bad giving out army composition advice, the AI is so bad that if you do it right it just breaks the game completely :smith:

Bird in a Blender posted:

E: Any good places to start in the mideast or Africa? Thinking of doing a Muslim guy.

Suleyman Qutalmish in Samosata is the go-to option I'd say, there's a nice new achievement for forming the Sultanate of Rum which is good time. Or the Ghurids out in Afghanistan.

PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Mar 4, 2022

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Normally I wouldn’t have all those levies raised but this was during the great holy war so I had everyone going. My normal mode is raise a local army with all my MaA.

I was definitely bleeding money during the holy war, and it wasn’t worth it.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Yeah you'd be much better off dispensing with levies and heavily specializing your MaA on either Armored Foot or Armored Cav (almost certainly the latter), which gives you the ability to specialize your duchy buildings to match as well. Then if 40,000 Crusaders wander into your your land you confront them with your 2000 ACav and win. Even if you lost that battle (unlikely) you'd kill half of them in the process, retreat, wait six months, then kill the other half.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Yea giving out army comp advice is a well-beaten horse, but seeing such a mixed bag in a maxed out empire is painful.

  • Replace your Siege weapons as they obsolete. It's expensive but almost always worth.
  • Don't mix MAA, once you're rich enough to be replacing your default stuff after maxing slots. Prior to that, pick a pony for your MAA type and don't ever increase size of the wrong type.
  • No really, the way countering works (and the way the AI mixes stuff) it means that once you get a pile of one type, they're effectively uncounterable.
  • I keep hearing advice that levies are worthless once you get your MAA up, and that's largely true, but outside of sieging/raiding they're still useful as a HP buffer for your MAA during those crazy world-ending holy war epic battles. Having 60k levies quickly raised will effectively triple the staying power of a 1700*7 MAA stack. And I'm fairly certain supplies aren't used during combat.
  • Something something stacking building bonuses, but I'm never gonna fault a person for not bothering with it.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Good to know. I figured having a mix was good, but how the game figured battle outcomes always seemed really vague to me.

Like 2,000 armored cav can really take out an army 10x it’s size?

BigPaddy
Jun 30, 2008

That night we performed the rite and opened the gate.
Halfway through, I went to fix us both a coke float.
By the time I got back, he'd gone insane.
Plus, he'd left the gate open and there was evil everywhere.


If your commander/knights are good, have stacked the right building bonuses and not attacking through terrain that is a large negative to you. I did the Spiffing Brit start he dropped about a week ago with VV + Elephants and :staredog:

DJ_Mindboggler
Nov 21, 2013

Bird in a Blender posted:

Good to know. I figured having a mix was good, but how the game figured battle outcomes always seemed really vague to me.

Like 2,000 armored cav can really take out an army 10x it’s size?

Pretty much. I was playing around as Egypt recently and created a hybrid Greco-Egyptian culture. Since you can build mustering grounds on floodplains, Cairo+Aswan is absolutely obscene for buffing heavy cavalry. Combine with Cataphracts from the Eastern Roman Legacy tradition and I was smoking 15k-20k enemy stacks with 2k-3k Cataphracts.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Someone can link that huge effortpost/thread on the paradox forums, but basically someone broke down how combat works in the nittiest grittiest sense and this thread has had Strong Opinions (tm) ever since. I can't find that post, but here's one on Steam which covers some basics.

Every MAA (regardless if it's personally been countered or not) will counter roughly half of their targets. Countered units deal no damage. This is done as an aggregate with caps, so 800 heavy infantry will nullify the damage output of 400 pikemen, down to a minimum of 5%. If there's 800 pikemen, they'll be dealing half dmg. Note that these pikemen, despite dealing reduced damage, are still fully countering various cavalry. What this means is that if you get enough of a single type of unit, say, 2000 heavy infantry, the opponents running around with 500 of each type (since the AI is told to mix its types) will only be able to counter 250 of your infantry, meaning that despite being countered the worst that it could be, your heavy infantry stack is still dealing almost full damage.

This, combined with the various buildings that boost only a select type of units, strongly reward specialization. The two favorite ponies in this thread are Heavy Inf and Heavy Cav, but both of those are moot if you have a different unique unit and you should spam that instead. If you do have to pick, Heavy Inf has zero downsides in terrain, while heavy cav has denser numbers to stay under supply cap and also a bonus pursuit value, but has to care about flat terrain penalties until you've stacked the +% boosts so high you can ignore the flat penalties. If this sounds like excessive hypothetical optimization for a lategame opponent that doesn't exist, you're right! We're all grognards here.

tl;dr spam a bazillion copies of your unique cultural unit, go win.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Bird in a Blender posted:

Good to know. I figured having a mix was good, but how the game figured battle outcomes always seemed really vague to me.

Like 2,000 armored cav can really take out an army 10x it’s size?

10x might be a slight exaggeration but honestly it might not be, it's very difficult to find someone with that large an army to test against in actual conditions.

Here's my army comp from Egypt game, it's 1132 and I'm halfway through High Medieval tech (but have all the military ones, and the building built up to match). This was when I was doing Lingua Franca so I'm at war basically constantly, and why I'm so overinvested in siege weapons, a fourth stack was pretty unnecessary but most of what I was doing was sieges, and adding more cav had hit diminishing returns.


Note that I do not have Parthian Tactics here, so I'm leaving a certain amount of toughness stat on the table.

Some napkin math (e: which we will learn below is not particularly accurate) to give you a sense of that:
- Armored Cav have a base damage of 100
- That's boosted by 130% from my domain holdings according to the military screen; +60% from 2x level 2 Jousting Grounds, +70% from 7x level 4 Regimental grounds (Floodplains be crazy yo)
- ACav have +30 damage if fighting in plains or drylands, which we'll assume we are
- Each point of Damage translates into 0.03 damage per the wiki (ps thank you for that confusing sentence)
- Levies have 10 points of toughness per the same.
- So that 2400 ACav will dish out 260*2400*0.03*(1/10)~= 1900 levy kills per day.

For a real world test I marched them into the Pope's army, which happens to include 1600 Pikemen which nominally counter my cavalry. Spoiler alert, it doesn't matter.




And that battle resolved in 22 days, which is fast enough that enemy stacks from neighboring provinces cannot reliably reach to reinforce, at least not before you've killed half of the army you're currently facing. So even in a mass crusade situation, you generally don't fight 2400 vs. 40,000, you fight 2400 x 10,000 four times.

E: As I look at that my ACav only killed about 4200 enemy soldiers during the course of the battle, so there's clearly something going on here I haven't considered. It might be the presence of all those pikemen, which would have put a serious damper on my damage output, or it might just be the presence of the opponents MaA who are much tougher than levies on average. But even then we won handily against a force 5x our own number.

E2: Found another army to fight, this time about 30k, including 1800 pikemen and 800 Holy Order Cataphracts. My 2,400 cav actually did lose to that, taking about 900 killed in exchange for killing 7500 of the enemy, but I forgot to take a shot of the detail screen. So 12x might be a bit too much of a disadvantage, though you would absolutely win a long war with this sort of composition.


E3: went back and fought them again, this time an 8k stack (incl. 400 pikemen) just declined to join, I guess sensing the way the wind was blowing? So yeah looks like with the right buildings defeating an enemy army 10x larger than your own is feasible. If you don't have access to all that farmland/floodplain then I guess aim for picking off only 5-8x times your size (or include any levies at all).


E4: 2400 Acav + 4100 levies, vs 28k including 1000 pikeman and 700 cataphracts



E5: As the keen eyed may have spotted, I also got a Crusade called against me. Here's what it looks like when the AI assumes unloading onto a bunch of armored cavalry is fine actually. :stare:


Sadly 12k of my vassals showed up to make the screenshots less impressive.

PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Mar 5, 2022

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Wow thanks. I realized I really hadn’t dug into the military tabs all that much. I was just kind of mixing and matching everything figuring that having a lot of different types was best.

Another question, what exactly does a garrison do? Is it just to help strengthen defenses during a siege? I was never quite sure what adding to my garrisons accomplished.

Bird in a Blender fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Mar 5, 2022

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Literally the only thing it does is increase the number of troops required to lay siege, as the number of besiegers must exceed garrison size. It does not increase siege time, that is determined by fort level.

Veryslightlymad
Jun 3, 2007

I fight with
my brain
and with an
underlying
hatred of the
Erebonian
Noble Faction
Yeah, they badly need to change the math on military buildings. The benefit for adding another one that boosts the same type of unit should become gradually smaller with every successive bonus.

There also should probably be a number or ratio where having a certain figure more men just gives an enormous, near insurmountable advantage.

The terrain penalty to troop type needs to be made exponential based on number of troops of that type.

Finally, they should have a commander trait that gains a scaling advantage against armies with lower troop variety, scaling against the percentage makeup of troops first, but against troop number second. With a cap based on the difference in army size. Something like "Foebane" or "Mirror" ~ This character's approach to warfare is focused less on their own troops' strengths, and more on their enemies' weaknesses.

DJ_Mindboggler
Nov 21, 2013

Veryslightlymad posted:

Finally, they should have a commander trait that gains a scaling advantage against armies with lower troop variety, scaling against the percentage makeup of troops first, but against troop number second. With a cap based on the difference in army size. Something like "Foebane" or "Mirror" ~ This character's approach to warfare is focused less on their own troops' strengths, and more on their enemies' weaknesses.

I'm all for more traits, but I think that level of abstraction is captured in cultural MaA having various "extra" counters, like Arabic Mubarizun countering Armored Footmen/their variants in addition to Pikemen/their variants. Plus, since the AI mostly doesn't specialize their MaA, this is just something annoying for a player to run into.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

One of the small tweaks I made for experimentation's sake was removing the preference the AI has for having a variety of units, and while I haven't played though a bunch of observer games to really get the feel for it, just playing a few decades it feels way better. It's loving scary when the Seljuks roll up with 1500 horse archers, but also it makes ultraspecializing harder because you're far more likely to encounter someone who has a cultural preference for a unit that counters yours, and then suddenly the counter effects actually matter.

scaterry
Sep 12, 2012

PittTheElder posted:

One of the small tweaks I made for experimentation's sake was removing the preference the AI has for having a variety of units, and while I haven't played though a bunch of observer games to really get the feel for it, just playing a few decades it feels way better. It's loving scary when the Seljuks roll up with 1500 horse archers, but also it makes ultraspecializing harder because you're far more likely to encounter someone who has a cultural preference for a unit that counters yours, and then suddenly the counter effects actually matter.

That sounds super dope. Mod release when?

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

As soon as I figure out how to make the Byzantine Traditions stop Greek characters from forming Liberty factions in favor of forming claimant factions :v:

e: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2773385312

PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Mar 5, 2022

Moreau
Jul 26, 2009

How does one form Norman culture these days?

Are Norse Catholics bugged? I noticed that I couldn't actually declare war on my neighbours - i.e. Byzantine empire, to reclaim Lecce.

As an Asatru Norse, I stole the Stone of Scone, then swanned off to Sicily and formed the Kingdom before converting to Christendom. Unfortunately, peasants then captured Palermo and stole the Stone - and wouldn't give it back. Couldnt even take it off their executed corpses. C'est la vie. Between that, wandering wives and inability to declare war, I think Ill wait a few more months before a serious campaign.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
I mean, once you go Catholic you lose the Astaru warmonger tenet so you need an honest casus belli to wardec. I think Eastern Orthodox is astray instead of hostile to Catholics, so holy wars might be out too.

PizzaProwler
Nov 4, 2009

Or you can see me at The Riviera. Tuesday nights.
Pillowfights with Dominican mothers.

Moreau posted:

How does one form Norman culture these days?

Same as before: capture all of Neustria as Norse and take the decision to form Norman culture.

Moreau
Jul 26, 2009

PizzaProwler posted:

Same as before: capture all of Neustria as Norse and take the decision to form Norman culture.

Ah, so it's Diverge or focus on a Hybrid with Sicilian if you go to Southern Italy.

Is there a fool-proof way to keep the heir's wife from wandering? Or at the very least, to get her back?

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Give her a court position. If she's already gone, you can abduct her for 3 intrigue perks, or, err, propose a marriage for her? You might be able to force a divorce if you're the dynast head or something - but better question, why is that particular broad so important and irreplaceable?

edit: And of course, your heir should be landed upon hitting 16 so he can start accumulating lifestyle perks. His wife will hang around as she's on the council supporting him.
double edit: I think the new royal court stuff, assuming you have the DLC, has some slider somewhere that passively makes your court more appealing and less likely for courtiers to wander away from. Maybe it's just grandeur in general.

Serephina fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Mar 5, 2022

THE BAR
Oct 20, 2011

You know what might look better on your nose?

BigPaddy posted:

If your commander/knights are good, have stacked the right building bonuses and not attacking through terrain that is a large negative to you. I did the Spiffing Brit start he dropped about a week ago with VV + Elephants and :staredog:

I'd like to watch more of his stuff, but every video has so much chaff in it. He's got like fifty catch phrases he has to painfully dole out.

Moreau
Jul 26, 2009

I thought the general philosophy was not to give your heirs land. I'll have to read up on that

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー

Moreau posted:

I thought the general philosophy was not to give your heirs land. I'll have to read up on that

That's kinda a holdover from ck2, where the second they gained autonomy they just became impossible retards. They can still get up to no good in ck3, but they've already got all their character traits locked in by 16 and they're unlikely to ruin themselves too much with stress events. The upshot is, again, they start getting life xp which is really important if you plan on playing that character, not to mention prestige/piety income.

Alfred P. Pseudonym
May 29, 2006

And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

Moreau posted:

I thought the general philosophy was not to give your heirs land. I'll have to read up on that

Speaking of, I accidentally granted my heir a Prince-Bishopric. Thought I was giving him a duchy. He’s my only son and my daughter is married off (not matrilineal). Any way out of this mess? Producing more children would require divorce.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー

Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:

Speaking of, I accidentally granted my heir a Prince-Bishopric. Thought I was giving him a duchy. He’s my only son and my daughter is married off (not matrilineal). Any way out of this mess? Producing more children would require divorce.

Divorce is only piety if the Pope likes you, no dramas. Also can just murder her. Can seduce a random unwed person and claim ownership of the offspring if male, costing you a level of devotion and the adulterer perk. Similarly can romance then elope.

Or just look at who's next in line? If your heir is like some uncle or nephew of your dynasty that's 100% fine, even if it feels 'wrong' not to be playing as your direct offspring.

Alfred P. Pseudonym
May 29, 2006

And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

Serephina posted:

Divorce is only piety if the Pope likes you, no dramas. Also can just murder her. Can seduce a random unwed person and claim ownership of the offspring if male, costing you a level of devotion and the adulterer perk. Similarly can romance then elope.

Or just look at who's next in line? If your heir is like some uncle or nephew of your dynasty that's 100% fine, even if it feels 'wrong' not to be playing as your direct offspring.

My heir is now the daughter that I married off to the king of France. Ended up boosting the pope’s opinion enough to get a divorce and marrying a fecund 16 year old (my character is chaste)

Mukaikubo
Mar 14, 2006

"You treat her like a lady... and she'll always bring you home."
Quick note: Out of a dark, dark suspicion, I turned in the game rules Extreme Stability down to normal. Lo and behold, *now* vassals I can pump up over +90 opinion bail out of claimant factions (or any other faction!) basically immediately, whereas before they would grimly stay in factions for years before sliding out. So- unlike what you might infer from the wording of the game rule, 'extreme realm stability' also appears to be badly penalizing your realm stability by making factions extremely stable! :negative:

I think once I can get over my obsessive-compulsive need to get cheevos (and hence play on ironman, and hence get angry about how much time I just 'lost' every time I get claimant warred into a game over, which generally still happens within a hundred years or so no matter where I'm starting or how much or how little I expand) I'll be able to enjoy the game much more. I did see a mod that jumps you to a random landed dynasty member every time you die instead of being laser focused on YOU -> YOUR ELDEST SON -> THEIR ELDEST SON in perpetuity and I REALLY like that idea, because that 'feels' a lot more like directing an entire house which seems way more interesting to me, would give good reasons to develop+build everywhere and not just your capital, etc. I never quite got why I was a hideous failure in my game overs if my family was still on multiple king thrones...

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Moreau posted:

Is there a fool-proof way to keep the heir's wife from wandering? Or at the very least, to get her back?

Befriend is the easiest way, short of just gifts and offering to pay expenses. Also if they have any kids who've wandered with her try inviting them, she'll come along if they accept, and you presumably have House Head hooks on them.

Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:

Speaking of, I accidentally granted my heir a Prince-Bishopric. Thought I was giving him a duchy. He’s my only son and my daughter is married off (not matrilineal). Any way out of this mess? Producing more children would require divorce.

Looks like you've gone the divorce route which is fine, but I think you can also wait a year and revoke it.

Alfred P. Pseudonym
May 29, 2006

And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

PittTheElder posted:

Looks like you've gone the divorce route which is fine, but I think you can also wait a year and revoke it.

After I got divorced and had a couple of sons he got ousted by a claimant faction and became my heir again lol.

Samadhi
May 13, 2001

So I got frustrated with my first playthrough and started over. I had the Kingdom of Ireland, but my main character died unexpectedly in his late 50's (to me, no health ailments) and then my heir took over and immediately faced 4 hostile factions. One was very strong and started a war to put my sister on the throne.

Is there something that can be done to make sure my heirs don't start at -70 opinion with all of the vassals? They all loved the King (+50 and above) before his death and then immediately hated his son.

Also, once I form a true Kingdom, who should I grant the excess Duchy titles to? I am doing a Norse playthrough now and did a test creation on creating the Swedish King title and immediately I have to shed a Duchy, but all of my Vassals seem like the are too powerful to be granting a Duchy to.

SlothBear
Jan 25, 2009

Samadhi posted:

So I got frustrated with my first playthrough and started over. I had the Kingdom of Ireland, but my main character died unexpectedly in his late 50's (to me, no health ailments) and then my heir took over and immediately faced 4 hostile factions. One was very strong and started a war to put my sister on the throne.

Is there something that can be done to make sure my heirs don't start at -70 opinion with all of the vassals? They all loved the King (+50 and above) before his death and then immediately hated his son.

Not really. That's sort of a core feature of the game at this point. Giving him a big bank and big army to be ready to deal with it is the way to handle it at this point, especially early game.

quote:

Also, once I form a true Kingdom, who should I grant the excess Duchy titles to? I am doing a Norse playthrough now and did a test creation on creating the Swedish King title and immediately I have to shed a Duchy, but all of my Vassals seem like the are too powerful to be granting a Duchy to.

Would you really have to though? It's just an opinion hit. You can probably deal with it. If you want to trigger unhappy vassals into starting a fight so you can take their poo poo and give it someone who likes you more/your non-heir kid, it's pretty much a win/win.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Factional strife after succession is pretty normal, honestly. If there's one vassal in particular who's threatening you can always try marrying your heir to one of their daughters, so your heir and vassal will be married upon succession. There is also an Opinion of Predecessor modifier if your vassals love you, but it only takes you so far.

As for who to grant duchies to, any second sons are a pretty good idea since they're generally pretty loyal. You can always just promote counts (including promoting them out from under your existing dukes). Alternatively if there's a Duke who's getting on in years, has multiple heirs, and doesn't completely hate you, give them the duchy, and it'll split between him and the heirs when he eventually kicks it.

Veryslightlymad
Jun 3, 2007

I fight with
my brain
and with an
underlying
hatred of the
Erebonian
Noble Faction

Samadhi posted:

So I got frustrated with my first playthrough and started over. I had the Kingdom of Ireland, but my main character died unexpectedly in his late 50's (to me, no health ailments) and then my heir took over and immediately faced 4 hostile factions. One was very strong and started a war to put my sister on the throne.

Is there something that can be done to make sure my heirs don't start at -70 opinion with all of the vassals? They all loved the King (+50 and above) before his death and then immediately hated his son.

There is a +25% bonus if they liked the predecessor. So at +50 opinion, there should be a modifier of +12 on top of any other opinion bonuses/maluses they they have for a new ruler. The malus for a short reign in the first year should only be about -20, so if you're saying they're consistently -60 after succession then there's a couple things that might be at play.

1)Your religion or culture might dramatically effect this. I don't actually know; I haven't memorized all the tenets of both religions and cultures. I know that back in CK2, the short reign penalty for unreformed pagans was triple. So it might be worth carefully reading your two sets of tenets to see if they're loving you.

2)Your heir's diplomacy and/or traits might suck. Certain traits confer negative penalties. No one likes a sadist. Several traits have a very small penalty with vassals. Being scaly, weak, a bleeder, hunchbacked, or a lunatic will have a penalty. If you're a gender that your vassals are attracted to, many traits have a stiff attraction penalty. Finally, many traits have a -10, or even a -15 opinion penalty with the opposite trait. And Ambitious has a -15 penalty with the same trait. So being different from your vassals is a detriment.

3)Finally, and this is a big one, your heir will have a bonus from their predecessor being well liked, sure, but they won't have the reasons for why their predecessor was liked, only the reasons why other people dislike them. So how did you get to that +60 with all your vassals? Was it a huge stack of being grateful, having had nice feasts, swaying them, and event bonuses? Well, your heir doesn't have that. They only inherit themselves, an opinion bonus they're frankly lucky to get, and the realm. So if your crown authority is really high, that's starting your heir on the back foot.

And you know how you deal with this?

Have more children. Don't betroth your younger children, or even marry off all of your of age children right away. Keep a couple around for your heir to marry off and immediately ally with your own vassals. That way once you die and it all goes tits up, you have assets to secure your position.

Another thing that you can do that isn't for the faint of heart? Don't marry off your heir. Hear me out on this one. Traditionally, you want an Heir and a Spare, right? Well, marry off the spare, secure the bloodline through them--that's sort of their job. But the heir is precious. You don't want them chained down. The best bargaining chip you'll ever have on a new character is the character. Because their marriage depends on one person staying alive instead of two. If they die, then who cares, you're playing someone else anyhow.

Samadhi
May 13, 2001

SlothBear posted:

Not really. That's sort of a core feature of the game at this point. Giving him a big bank and big army to be ready to deal with it is the way to handle it at this point, especially early game.

Would you really have to though? It's just an opinion hit. You can probably deal with it. If you want to trigger unhappy vassals into starting a fight so you can take their poo poo and give it someone who likes you more/your non-heir kid, it's pretty much a win/win.

Thanks, I am realizing I probably didn't invest heavily enough in improvements to my army/military buildings so I started doing that (to the limited ability possible with Tribal Norse) and just crushed a war that popped up with my succession


PittTheElder posted:

Factional strife after succession is pretty normal, honestly. If there's one vassal in particular who's threatening you can always try marrying your heir to one of their daughters, so your heir and vassal will be married upon succession. There is also an Opinion of Predecessor modifier if your vassals love you, but it only takes you so far.

As for who to grant duchies to, any second sons are a pretty good idea since they're generally pretty loyal. You can always just promote counts (including promoting them out from under your existing dukes). Alternatively if there's a Duke who's getting on in years, has multiple heirs, and doesn't completely hate you, give them the duchy, and it'll split between him and the heirs when he eventually kicks it.

This is a good way to look at it, historically and strategically. Thanks goon

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Moreau
Jul 26, 2009

Well, I feel kind of foolish in that I only just now realized that I can click on a Culture and see if I can hybridize with it. I was hoping that I could get something neat, like Norman, by running down to Italy as a Norse raider - my own little Robert Guiscard adventure. But hybridizing Norse and Sicilian only leads to Neo-Sicilian - which admittedly, isn't bad. I'll dig into that later on, and see if I can make anything tasty out of that culture jam.

Is there a way to force your vassals to promote culture? I've switched over to Poland for the Piast achievement and I still have pockets of Pommeranian and Prussian that I'd rather get rid of, even if they are at 100%

Now I just need to figure out how to take dynasty leadership back from my Uncle with 0 men. Got a renown unlock coming up, and I swear he's gonna choose something awful, like Guile.

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