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Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
gently caress SATANISTS

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Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
MAYBE YOU MISERABLE BLACK HOODED JIZZ RAGS WILL STOP GIVING ME CANCER NOW THAT IVE INCINERATED YOU ALL

EAT poo poo

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
There is no cool down on gifting artifacts, but the character needs to consider the offer every time which takes two weeks. You won’t get any extra opinion from chain gifting but from reading the topic it sounds like you’re not worried about that.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Eimi posted:

The battle event where your character just dies is loving bullshit. It fires way too often and for no reason. I just had it fire when the enemy was routing.

it doesn't matter how high your martial is or how high your personal combat score is

never

let

your ruler

lead armies

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

fwiw better martial and better PCS makes that event way less likely, and there's a warrior lodge trait that straight up turns it off.

it’s the rank 4 warrior lodge perk and man yeah theoretically higher marital and PCS makes it less likely but every time I have some insanely badass warrior queen with like 23 martial and 80+ PCS she will get disfigured in her first battle and killed in her second

Not goddamn worth it

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
peasant levies were definitely a thing in some areas, it depends on the culture and how powerful the central authority was in the area. there's tons of surviving decrees from the middle ages in England demanding, for example, that all able-bodied men be responsible for the crafting, care, and proficiency in their own longbow and spear, complete with instructions on how to make them for marshals on how to get people to make that poo poo when they dropped by and found people slacking. also the census papers that would very suspiciously show a lot of adult men missing from population rolls shortly after a local or king got some new territory (which is highly publicized their own sagas). areas of pressure-cooker religious war like the iberian peninsula also had peasant levies because if the muslims came calling well that was a really good reason to get your rear end moving.

peasant levies were very much not a thing in west to central germany where lordlings would dick each other over with a couple hundred mercenaries pretty much constantly and the peasants knew drat well that if they were called to arms they could ignore it because they'd have a new ruler in another few months, and the areas were culturally homogenous enough that they knew nobody really wanted to kick the poo poo out of them that badly.

all that said the game kind of abuses the term 'levies' because obviously you get stuff like cavalry, heavy infantry, pikemen, etc from the levy system and you build poo poo like combat stables, barracks, etc to get them. if you are a cavalryman or a pikeman in the middle ages you are absolutely not a part time soldier. those are professional armies that serve the ruler on a full time basis. the game just puts them under the levy system because the game is complicated enough as it is thanks.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
do note that playing with animals is a huge pain in the rear end in certain ways. most notably, you can’t tell males from females by just glancing at the portrait anymore, which adds a fair bit of extra clicking back and forth because you thought you were dealing with landing a dude and whoops turns out it’s a chick and naturally you don’t have full status of women yet

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
it's true in shattered earth as it is in glorantha

do not gently caress with ducks

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
it depends on what you've randomized. a very shattered world with no dukes or kings, yes, it's just a matter of finding your preferred culture/religion combo and going from there. there can be much more considerations though. if you have dukes or kings you really don't want to start too close to one of them as a count, for example. if you plan on raiding you'll also want nearby heathens. etc.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Major Isoor posted:

Oh, right! So where are they stored? I assume in the CK2 folder in your Windows profile, but is there a separate folder for shattered worlds, or are they tucked away somewhere else?
(Since yeah, that might explain a few things, seeing as I have generated quite a few new shattered worlds... :v:)

C:\Users\{user}\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\save games\alternate_start


MinistryofLard posted:

Do they not get cleared automatically?

no

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
one tengri game i got "the horse shepherd" twice because of those remote conversion events and holy crap is that a stupid nickname

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Disillusionist posted:

A few years later he gets "killed by peasant rabble," which seems appropriate. I forget how that outcome happens but it was a fitting end to the short-lived pagan king of Francia.
he had a peasant revolt and they sieged down the castle where he was staying. rebels like that can't take prisoners so if you hit the 'got captured' chance you just die instead.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
MP works best with 2 or 3 people who go in expecting to cooperate. if you go in expecting to compete, someone is going to become a notch in someone else's belt (likely without any actual fault or merit on either account, just circumstance) and then they're gonna figure out very quickly what happens after you punk and launder someone like all of us do routinely in the normal game.

the answer is generally lots and lots of boredom.

MP does work great for introducing newer players to the game though, if a senior player basically agrees to look out for/vassalize a junior player, the senior player gets a safe supervassal that they can actually rely on and the junior player gets guaranteed support the first 20 times they get ratfucked by the AI.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Feb 4, 2019

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
i'm honestly not sure what you would do in CK3 to make it better, really. the main thing i can think of is ripping out and redoing absolutely core systems like the character relationship systems to change how opinion functions, and then basically build from that fundamental difference. beyond the gaminess of a few core systems CK2 has more detail and thought put into its subject matter than pretty much any other game in history.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
your contribution to your liege's wars is the levy tax he takes from you. you don't see it straight away but he IS getting a portion of your dudes and he WILL raise them when he goes to war.

you don't owe the man poo poo beyond that.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
it's incredibly funny to me that people keep quoting that post and saying "yeah some core things are weird" like they're disagreeing with me when the entire thrust of my post was "man you'd really have to rethink something extremely core for a sequel, not much to really add at this point"

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
early on i frequently just eat the penalties associated with declaring unjust wars if i'm close to a big title, especially a kingdom. going from duke to king is a gigantic step up in terms of your options and power. if people don't like you, just switch to intrigue and start manufacturing ways to put them in prison. their opinions don't really matter when they're behind bars, as the only plots they can hatch are ones to escape and they can't join factions.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

TorakFade posted:

I am still in love with this game for this very reason, and the thousand crazy stories it produces, but these days I find it too clunky and bloated, it's really starting to show its age.

That said, is it worth to pick up holy fury for 15€ or should I wait for a deeper discount?

i'd say holy fury is worth it for 15 if for no other reason than the randomized worlds. randomized worlds are great because they knock you out of the entire meta that you've been used to for the past close-to-decade you've probably been playing this game. barcelona is a great duchy to have in the base game so there's an entire meta surrounding getting it for certain starts. well when you randomize holdings and tech it could end up being one of the worst duchies in the game, or more likely it's painfully average. reacting on the fly in a grand strategy game is pretty rare and it's kind of a thrill.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
it's fine. as long as you got the king title the hard part is over. you can then use de jure CBs against everyone who's supposed to be in your borders. they will hate you, so while you're doing this you will want to take the intrigue focus and spy on each of your new vassals as you subjugate them. keep loving with them until they revolt, then you can crush them, revoke their lands, ideally banish them to get all of their money, and install someone else (i refer to this entire process as 'laundering' the title).

ideally what you want to do is install a distant cousin who shares your dynasty but does not have claims on your highest title. this will get them a minor relationship bonus with you and also make it that much harder for your dynasty to be uprooted completely. do NOT install a relative who has claims on your highest title, because they will have -20 'title claimant' relationship that will make them insufferable.

if you don't have a kinsman that you can install, get some rando nobleman and noblewoman with no claims on any titles - generate them by decision if you have to. then marry them matrilineally and award the man the title. this is specifically to screw up his own dynasty and encourage the man to have affairs, which will split his house against him and make it more difficult for the newly created union to be consequential in 2-4 generations. it will still happen, of course, it'll just be less likely. that means your realm will tend to be cleaner than it would be otherwise - one-county counts are more likely to stay one-county counts and your vassals will have more stupid feuds among each other than against you.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
alright yall, thought exercise here.

i am trying to set up a breakout game as the Count of Dax in 769. Ultimately he is a vassal of Karl. here are some facts.

- He's a 3-county Count whose de jure duke is incredibly easy to depose, and is also one of the only Basque rulers in the world at that start date. This is important because you can convert to Basque culture easily, then get depose your ruler and become Duke just as easily.

- He borders the Umayyads, who start the game with about 3k dudes. After solidifying his grip on his home duchy, Dax will probably have about 1k dudes (depending on his randomized stats at the beginning of the game).

- It is easy to get full alliances with Lombardy and Asturias, who have about 2-3k and 1k dudes apiece.

- His 51 year old uncle is the unmarried and childless duke of Aquataine. Dax is second in line for the ducal succession, after his 1-year-old grandson.

- His home duchy is small enough to go Full North Korea on and launder even the baron-level titles if need be. This can get him on the order of 1500 gold in the first 5 years of the game. This is not entirely desirable though because Dax starts out with young Cardinal in his territory who always has 20 learning. He makes an amazing Chaplain and physician so laundering him is painful.

There are two goals I have in mind:
- First and most importantly, to win an early (before 800/in Dax's first lifetime) holy war for Barcelona. The numbers work out if you can keep the sultan of Africa out of the conflict, which is simple enough if you deploy a good chancellor to him. Losing Barcelona early means that the Umayyads pretty much never recover and Dax's descendants will have a fairly reliable punching bag.

- Get the duchy of Aquataine. This means keeping your uncle childless and somehow getting rid of your 1-year-old grandson.

The first I have an okay idea on how to do if I go Full North Korea and just hire 4500 dudes to win me the war, but it would be great if I could avoid that for a big bag of reasons so if someone else has a better idea I'd love to hear it. It would be great if I could get Karl to help me out since he can very easily stomp the poo poo out of the Umayyads early on but I don't think there is a good way to get your liege into your Holy War.

The second one I am kind of stuck on. I know I can :ese: but kinslayer is a really serious problem and with two murders like that I feel like I am pretty much guaranteed to get caught. That's if I can even manage to pull them off to begin with, given that Dax's starting education and traits are random and therefore his Intrigue is likely to blow rear end. Marrying some chaste or gay 35 year old to my elderly uncle seems like a good way to keep him childless, but as he starts out unmarried pretty much the first thing he does is go get some 17 year old wife, so ideally there would be a way to deal with him directly. I have no idea what to do about the kid. If he was older I would just get him in my court and force him to take the vows, but as an infant he he doesn't reach majority until my uncle is 66 and pretty likely to just be dead.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Feb 21, 2019

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
It's one of those starts that really looks like it could get big super fast if you can navigate the first lifetime correctly, but I haven't figured out how to really do it yet. do note that you don't want to take action against your uncle too quickly - you need to succeed the 'fabricate a claim on the duchy' plot to depose your Basque liege and your uncle is the only character who will always support you.

also tip: matrimarry your daughter to one of the leftover bavarian princes out of the gate to get the prestige you need to swap from occitan to basque. ideally this will also get you karling blood in one branch of your dynasty for later re-integration.

e: karl obviously will eventually be a problem but typically it's fairly simple to wait until he has a few sons and then stab him. he does a shitload of conquering early on and most people hate him, so if he has a couple boys to inherit the entire blob just goes all gavelkind.txt and an independence revolt becomes much easier. just...you know, make sure you get away from gavelkind so the same thing doesn't happen to you.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Feb 21, 2019

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Don't have my computer with me but what about the Satanists or Assassin's? I know the Assassin's joining event likes to target your non-landed dynasty members if you don't have a wife, so it might kill the uncle too early but with the Satanists you could try giving the kid the evil touch or kidnapping him?

I think Karl is too high up to be blackmailed into a favour or for you to buy it too, and unless they changed it again you would only be able to call him into a claim war.

You could do that, then call your own holy war while he was waging his against the Iberians?

the shia are not within range of Dax so the assassins are not available. i thought about satanists but societies end up being a gigantic loving crapshoot when you're on a schedule due to the missions. it might be my best option for getting rid of the infant though, i certainly can't come up with many more options.

you cannot get your liege to press a holy war for you, only a claim, and if he's already waging war against the umayyads then i'm at war with them by extension and i cannot declare my own war. the best i could hope for is for karl to obliterate their levies during his own holy war, which is a really long bet to take.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
if you wanted to own literally the entire map you'd have to do some finagling. there's a bunch of small kingdoms that you'd have to consolidate into one superking, and you'd have to cut back on centralization laws to increase your vassal limit.

but in short, no, it definitely doesn't.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
i'd make a sarcastic comment about yet another pagan religion that's a pain in the rear end to do anything with but actually hellenic is loving fun to mess with so yeah i think we kinda do need another pagan hard mode religion

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
That’s the king level, which is fairly easy to keep in order by using viceroyalties.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Keret posted:

Speaking of, I really wanted to do an Enatic/Equality Hellenic Merchant Republic based out of Sardinia last game, because upending gender norms in CK is fun, but gave up when I realized that women still can't do poo poo in Merchant Republics and the one workaround (consorts) aren't allowed under Hellenism. So that was a bummer. Has Paradox mentioned anything about why MRs are still a no-go for women rulers?

equality forbids enatic. probably what you actually want is Civilized (which includes Equality) and Meritocracy, which will allow you to preferentially choose female heirs while still letting sons serve in the army and such.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Node posted:

I've googled this but still haven't been able to understand the purpose of viceroyalties. Why would I want them? I understand the mechanic. You own kingdom and duchies that you can give to (preferably loyal) people, and those titles revert back to you when they die. But why do you want to do that in the first place? Why those, instead of normal vassals?

The person you grant the title to isn't the problem, as you've noted. They are basically going to love you for the rest of their days because you granted them a title. The dickhead supervassals that become a problem are two or three generations down the line, when the grandkids don't have any loyalty to you anymore and they could be rolling with both envious and ambitious for all you know. Couple that with the AI's marrying for claims penchant, they are likely to have more land than you ever intended that title to have.

Viceroyalty titles eliminate all that and, subsequently, largely eliminate the problem of dickhead supervassals. The AI only has the one lifetime to potentially cause trouble for you, and for a huge chunk of that time they are pacified by the huge relationship bonuses from giving them the title. When they die, you can also take the opportunity to reorganize the vassal allegiances in your kingdom without the potential no-replies (and the subsequent revolt), which lets you keep your realm either better fragmented (by making nightmare vassal trees) or more peaceful (by just resetting everything to de jure and giving your vassals fewer reasons to pick fights with each other) - whichever you prefer. They also do not imply that the kids of the viceroy/vicereine get claims on the title, which further simplifies your life because your pick can go Seduction and sire 50,000 bastards but you won't see them show up as an adventurer because they do not have claims on your poo poo.

They don't scale, of course, because every viceroyalty you create gives a small opinion penalty with ALL of your vassals. Since they're a development that usually comes after you are either at emperor level or close to it, I typically make viceroyalties out of my kings and never bother with viceroy dukes.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Another potential benefit to viceroyalties is that if you have your eye on a truly amazing councilor (an amazing steward or whatever the gently caress) you can give them a viceroyalty that you know will make them a 'powerful vassal' and eliminate that reason to bitch, too. When they die, the title comes back to you and can just be passed on to the next most competent councilor that you want working for you anyway.

I tend to prefer to install my distant relatives though, because frequently the viceroy/vicereine will try to award titles to their kids and the more of your kin you have out there ruling random places the more stable your dynasty is.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
By the time you are an emperor if you have to worry about any combination of your direct vassal dukes coming after you then you have done something extremely wrong. Most of them shouldn't even be feudal, you should have at least one duchy as a merchant republic and another one as a theocracy - even if you are landlocked and the MR can't do much of anything, the point is that MR and theocracy vassals do not play 85% of the intrigue games that turn into problems for you to solve. This is doubly true if you do levy-focused vassal obligations on your theocratic vassals and the AI suddenly feels a lot weaker in comparison to you, even while you are building military buildings in their territory.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Bold Robot posted:

Are there any benefits other than less scheming to install a theocratic vassal? Like merchant vassals make you a good amount of money (I think this is also still true even if not coastal?), is there any similar benefit for theocracies?

if you're catholic it's nice to have a ranking bishop in your back pocket for coronations. your vassal is a lot less likely to extort you for two of your limbs than the pope is and being crowned by a prince-bishop or above is still a pretty drat nice bonus. being a landed bishop also makes them a lot more likely to become a cardinal, which has its own benefits to you as the liege. beyond that not really, if you build the gently caress out of a ton of temples in your theocratic lands you can poke your head in to make sure they are building churches and schools because those give you liege piety, but that also implies that you're spending economic tech points on church infrastructure and just loving lol at that

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Feb 28, 2019

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
theocratic vassals WILL roll some factions so you can see them revolting against you in that way, but you will never see them fabricating claims or trying to install claimants.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Elias_Maluco posted:

So thats how it works. The rest of my game will be dedicated to accumulate has many bloodlines as I can
note that bloodlines are a matter of social acceptance, not genetics. so if you have a husband who has a bloodline, but you roll seduction and gently caress one of your lowborn genius courtiers, as long as he believes you when you tell him the kid is his they will get his bloodline (along with the higher chance of Genius).

note further that Trusting husbands literally do not have an option but to believe you when you tell them the kid is his.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
most bloodlines range from completely pointless to situationally helpful, anyway. the main exception i can think of is the hybrid builder bloodline, which involves building 24 holdings without building 10 of any one holding - so you end up with like 9 castles, 9 towns, and 6 temples or some poo poo. that's -20% build cost and -20% build time, which is hugely useful as you're transitioning into the stable king role and you're sharply interested in your own demense being insanely built up. it also stays useful pretty much forever since after everything is built at home, you will want hospitals to protect your investments, and those are hella expensive. i tend not to sweat bloodlines too much simply because so many of them are dubiously handy.

other ones i have found useful in the past:
sly killer: kill 30 people
the good - +10% arrest chance comes in handy more often than you think if you do not have auto-stop plots on. it's nice to catch some idiot plotting and then throw them in house arrest until the day they die, or to get easy money out of them. obfuscation also helps when you have to get your kinslayer on, but by the time you're forging bloodlines that really shouldn't be something you're dealing with often. this is also the only murder bloodline that DOESNT give -vassal opinion (and is therefore the only one worth getting).
the bad - enables murderous AI so you cannot control your kin by making them Kind or something - this makes controlling title claimants much more important so your murderous kin won't have a reason to kill you. but again, by the time you are emperor level you should have enough branches of your family that that's well under control.

warrior philosopher: win 15 foreign wars, 8 learning, no dumb markers
the good - drilling troops is really helpful for excursions into pagan lands to help with attrition. you can still make it useful by educating all your cousins and non-inheriting kids as soldiers and turn them into some hella good commanders.
the bad - everything besides Drill relies on you personally leading the troops, so it's 100% pointless on your avatar.

builder/killer bloodline: build 15 holdings, kill 20 people
the good - +1 tax rate and -1 revolt risk globally. it's always active. gets you access to special castle buildings that give you approximately -infinity% revolt risk
the bad - who the gently caress cares about revolts unless you are playing with them being extremely powerful? by default they are so dumb and forgettable that at most this just limits your annoyance.

most of the other forged bloodlines are either entirely pointless or have downsides that outweigh any possible upsides (most of the murder bloodlines are like this). collecting stuff like karling blood is also typically not that helpful, but they're free with a little planning so there's no reason to not collect them.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

The Shortest Path posted:

Is it possible to seduce another ruler's wife, get her pregnant, and not make it known that it's your kid until after they inherit?

no

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
the target's opinion of you is immaterial to an assassination plot directly. you can leverage high opinion of you into other benefits, like getting on the council of someone (if it's your liege, for example) to give you more leverage. alternately you can seduce people you want to invite to the plot, and that would help.

really the best thing you can do with the seduction focus on a female ruler is to get a trusting husband and find someone you actually want to gently caress (genius, strong, good bloodline, whatever) and then repeatedly seduce and then leave them. this will get you pregnant quickest and also get you to master seductress quickest - failing any terrible luck you should be able to get it within a couple of years. the +50 sex appeal bonus from master seductress should make finding co-conspirators much, much easier.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

quote:

- Fixed a bug where the Chancellor might discover himself trying to fabricate a claim on his own titles and kill himself
this one was my favorite

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
you're doing it right

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Coolguye posted:

dax poo poo

so i figured out the solution here, and it's deceptively simple. the secrets here are the pope, piety, and the hermetics.

reroll dax until he has a learning of at least 8. take the theology focus and join the hermetics.

ratfuck your liege out of his initial duchy and become a duke.

go about inviting all the envious lowborns you can find in the character finder. (this is a backup plan)

marry all of the lowborns to unwed courtiers in your uncle's court after making them your apprentice for a day. the combination of envious plus hermetic boost means that they will pretty much always like you a lot more than your uncle.

get to 177 piety as quick as possible. buy indulgences if you have to.

make sure your uncle marries well. none of this chaste poo poo. he needs a fertile wife.

chill. he should have a kid in fairly short order. this will probably coincide with your first 5 years running out and the ability to change focuses.

once he has a son, you can give him 2 years for plan a, which is die naturally. if he isn't, it's time for plan b.

switch to intrigue focus and plot to kill him. recruit all of the envious hermetics you seeded in his court and bribe anyone else you need. just make sure he shuffles off before his son turns 5.

get a claim on the duchy from the pope. if the current ruler is <5 he gets "target is an infant +50" on his decisionmaking. this saves you the trouble of having to kill multiple kinsmen to get to the ducal seat. the time you have spent improving relations with your chancellor and hopefully gaining virtues/losing vices with the theology focus should seal the deal.

once you have a claim you can then press it against your infant cousin and gain the ducal title lawfully.


an alternate version of this plan is to press your grandson's claim for the ducal title and hire mercs to really stomp your uncle's troops into the ground, then request the claim and turn on him while he's still a kid. this is the route i take if an assassination is clearly not going to work, like if my uncle is a quick elusive shadow and i've got 0 intrigue or something. the overall goal is to get an infant in the ducal seat so the pope will give you a personal pressable claim easily.


months later edit: i have recently started to favor just going monastic instead of hermetic because the pope is so valuable in this startup. being a hermetic kind of annoys him so it's easier to just go monastic. seeding a target with high-intrigue, envious courtiers still works fine, just be ready to pay them the 15 coins to make them follow your orders.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 17:59 on May 22, 2019

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
you can burn a favor to make someone join factions you lead, but obviously that's expensive. beyond that, it's more or less "is there something in this for me and do i hate the current liege"

if you're talking about a claimant faction you want to make sure people like the claimant a lot more than they like the current ruler. use sway on critical targets, get the Rumors malus on the liege for -10 general opinion, or take the carousing focus and get a bunch of people to party with you. if you're talking about an independence faction then lol good luck, people rarely join independence factions because there is never anything in it for them.

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Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
the primary thing to do if you can't beat them in the field is to make the top liege very unpopular. there's a few ways you can manage this.

1) you can antagonize the liege and hope the blackguard event pops, which will give you the (costly) opportunity to seriously harm vassal relations
2) get a good chancellor and send him around to the liege's most powerful vassals with the 'sow dissent' mission
3) become rivals with the liege and then duel him until you disfigure him
4) if catholic, get him excommunicated.

many AI realms don't need that much cajoling to get a powerful increase council power faction going, and if that revolt succeeds you can basically double down on your tactics to get a gavelkind faction going.

if you CAN beat the enemy ruler in the field, then the answer is simple, just antagonize him until you are rivals and then gently caress him up with the Rivalry CB. if you win that war you will imprison him. keeping him in prison will destroy his options for stopping any bullshit in his realm and also kill his personal diplomacy, which will make his council dislike him.

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