Any reason to hand out Kingdom-tier titles to vassals as an Emperor?

[Androme]

Since there's no penalty for holding Kingdom-tier titles, I figure I might aswell hold on to all of them since it gives me Prestige.

One argument I can come up with myself is that handing out Kingdom-tier titles to people from my Dynasty will give us more Dynasty renown points, strengthening the Dynasty as a whole but giving me less Prestige. Is that how it would work? And would that justify giving Kingdom tier titles away to people from my dynasty?

[Harris]

Originally posted by Jerubius:

kingdom vassals can drastically increase stability.

500 war elephants can drastically increase stability. Vassal kings are a recipe for disaster. Especially if they happen to be your brother and have a claim.

I have found that vassal kings are only manageable if you're already really strong yourself and even if they team up it wouldn't get them far. The fact their military power is inferior to yours in turn don't let civil wars break out to begin with.

Long story short kings are big guys with ambitions to match. You need to really show you can keep them all on the leash. Otherwise they can and will try to overthrow you.

Originally posted by Jerubius:

have a strong hook on as a vassal king
set up a marriage alliance with 1 vassal king

Yep, such options exist. Gimmicky and situational as they are. Meaning I'd need to have a spare daughter I can't use in the inbreeding program. Or I'd need to go down into diplomacy tree for befriending. All these options are also good when you have 1-2 people to manage. With 60, they won't fly.

Also, being friends with the king won't make it easier for your heir in any way either.

Originally posted by Jerubius:

The shift from realm laws to individual vassal contracts is a big incentive for a more centralized realm

Yep, but I consistently find vassals to be more of a nuisance than of real help. They barely bring you any gold or levies to make them worth your time.

Yes, feudal contracts - those are just busywork. Do you want to get 0.1 gold from your vassal or 0.2? That's when your domain brings you 70 gold at the same time. You get the idea.

The only way to make vassals revelant is to heavily invest into their holdings. For example the guy in other thread asked for way to get more levies. I could throw some 20k gold to build castles and military buildings for them so they have say 10k levies. Then changing their feudal contract would make some sense as I would get say 1500 levies instead of 1000.

Same time, levies are trash and 20k gold is better used to hire more men-at-arms. And the fact your vassal ends up stronger as a result of your investment is not particularly pleasant.

So, really, if your vassal barely makes any income, it's better to exempt them from taxes at all and enjoy good relations with them rather than them getting mad at you because you wanted 0.3 gold rather than 0.2

[lubed_assassin]

Originally posted by Androme:

I see, I think understand the benefit of having to manage fewer vassals. It is indeed getting tiresome by this point having to manage relationships with like 40 of them. Thanks for all the replies guys.

If you pay closer attention you can education their children and get bonus opinion from tings like that... try to give them the content trait or if ur using the diplo tree with will make them friends. Basically if you have only 5 kings to manage you only need 3-4 of them to like you to maintain peace.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Harris:

TL;DR Vassal-kings are not worth it, as they bring instability, lower your profits and their only benefit is the vassals counter. But I'd personally prefer more control and yeilds over more map painting any day.

You'd forgot a single word - currently.

Game is not passed any balancing and barely passed any playtests (North Korea abuse is a 100% obvious thing to check by any adequate tester). Current vassal limit is crazily high and I would expect a nerf.

[titanopteryx]

The Pilgrim trait gotten from a pilgrimage makes people of the same religion have +5 opinion of you. There's a perk in stewarship lifestyle that makes vassals have +10 opinion of you. The diplomacy tree has perks related to befriending. The friend status adds +60 to their opinion and makes them unable to rebel against you. So basically if you befriend a vassal, you can just forget about them until either they or you die.

[unskilled-]

I figure you'd want to first make the kingdom a de jure part of your empire before handing them out, that way you can avoid any penalties arising from kingdom not being de jure part of your empire.

[Harris]

Originally posted by corisai:

You'd forget a single word - currently.

I don't like speculations. When I'm writing a Steam review, I'm always doing it based on what I see, what the game is right now, not what it might or might not become some day.

The game has insane amounts of cheese, lots of mechanics that can be abused to a great effect with little repercussions if you know what you're doing.

Which brings me to a conclusion this is a feature rather than a bug. Or intended game design, if you will.

Take North Korea, for example. As it is it reduces your domain income by 90%. Not the undeveloped lands of your former vassals which would otherwise bring you that glorious 0.2 gold per month, no! But 90% off your diamond mines, for example. That is crippling rather than balanced or anything. But it seems the players want the penalty at 100%. Or, better yet, for money and levies to be deducted from the player as punishment.

You income will always mostly come from your domain, no exception. As such, the only case where North Korea is relevant is when you want to keep your realm as a whole and prevent infighting. The strat is not worth it to use for every occassion.

So, back on track. I'm saying vassal-kings are bad because right now they are bad. For all I know they might never change how they work, or they might do so next week? Any event I'm better off basing my conclusing on what's in the game right now rather than what someone at the forums thinks would be better instead.

[stadtpark-hartmut]

I'm still a bit confused about what to do with my Kingdom titles.

My problem is that I'm 27 direct vassals over the 60 vassal limit, and my levies and taxes from vasalls are affected by it. So I thought about handing out Kingdom Titles, but I'm not sure wether that alarm / tooltip updates correctly: for testing purposes I handed out a few Kingdom titles, but my direct vassals did not go down, even after unpausing for a few days. Maybe it only updates after a month?


I have restored the Roman Empire while I held the Empires of Italy, France, GB and Baltics - those empire titles vanished, and now those are all de Jure Roman Empire. So I thought maybe that's why the Kingdom titles handed out there don't count (- I'm still everybody's de Jure Liege).

Edit: correction - tunrs out Croatia is de Jure Roman Empire (because of the decision when forming the empire of Italy).

I also had handed out the Kingdom of Hungary to one of my Dynasty long before as she had started a faction and was to start a war about having the title. - None of those are independent though: on the map it still says "Roman Empire" over all my realm, as that is my main title.

For the time being I could just ignore the "too many direct vassals" alarm, as my income and levies are high enough, but at this stage I'm considering if I even want to continue playing.


World conquest is far too far away.

Next steps would probably be to dismantle the existing Empires (Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire), as there are special decisions for that.

But along the way I will sooner or later need to make up my mind about Kingdom titles.

What about destroying Kingdom titles?
I'd try to integrate them into my main title, but that is not possible for 95%+ of all my titles...
Edit: oh, now I understand: the only titles I can integrate are Hungary Bohemia and Spanish kingdom titles, as the rest of the Kingdom titles are under my main title anyway... - but still: whats the purpose? Does it make my vassals stop coveting them? So ideally my main title is not disputed by claimants that want to supplant me, and all lesser titles are integrated into the main one?

( I once watched a documentation on YouTube about "the first Emperor of China", and what made him "first", was not the amount of land that he controlled, but that he did away with the inbetween layers / feudal structure: all his many smaller province-governors were loyal direct to him, and no longer to Kings / Family-structures inbetween. Is there a way to play CK3 like that? Quasi turn it into a modern state - for roleplay purposes I could try working one "one duke per duchy" and "no kingdom"-titles, but not sure what would happen.)

[Jerubius]

Originally posted by stadtpark-hartmut:

I'm still a bit confused about what to do with my Kingdom titles.

My problem is that I'm 27 direct vassals over the 60 vassal limit, and my levies and taxes from vasalls are affected by it. So I thought about handing out Kingdom Titles, but I'm not sure wether that alarm / tooltip updates correctly: for testing purposes I handed out a few Kingdom titles, but my direct vassals did not go down, even after unpausing for a few days. Maybe it only updates after a month?


I have restored the Roman Empire while I held the Empires of Italy, France, GB and Baltics - those empire titles vanished, and now those are all de Jure Roman Empire. So I thought maybe that's why the Kingdom titles handed out there don't count (- I'm still everybody's de Jure Liege).

But then I also hold Kingdom titels that are not de Jure part of my empire (like Croatia), and I also had handed out the Kingdom of Hungary to one of my Dynasty long before as she had started a faction and was to start a war about having the title. - None of those are independent though: on the map it still says "Roman Empire" over all my realm, as that is my main title.

For the time being I could just ignore the "too many direct vassals" alarm, as my income and levies are high enough, but at this stage I'm considering if I even want to continue playing.


World conquest is far too far away.

Next steps would probably be to dismantle the existing Empires (Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire), as there are special decisions for that.

But along the way I will sooner or later need to make up my mind about Kingdom titles.

What about destroying Kingdom titles?
I'd try to integrate them into my main title, but that is not possible for 95%+ of all my titles...


( I once watched a documentation on YouTube about "the first Emperor of China", and what made him "first", was not the amount of land that he controlled, but that he did away with the inbetween layers / feudal structure: all his many smaller province-governors were loyal direct to him, and no longer to Kings / Family-structures inbetween. Is there a way to play CK3 like that? Quasi turn it into a modern state - for roleplay purposes I could try working one "one duke per duchy" and "no kingdom"-titles, but not sure what would happen.)

I believe handing out a kingdom title just gives them the title. There's an option to include lower titles or something, which should automatically give them de jure lower tier vassals, or you can manually transfer vassals after handing them the title. You can always transfer counts and dukes under vassal kings if you need to lower your vassal count, regardless of whether they are de jure for that title or not as a way to lower your vassal step, it's just a question of how powerful you're willing to let a vassal get.

As for your last question, CK2 had a bit more on this. Historically, the Byzantine empire wasn't feudal, and to represent that, CK2 had the entire empire as viceroyalties, meaning vassal titles higher than count went back to the emperor on succession, so he could hand them off to whoever was most loyal. Additionally, one of the dlcs added an imperial structure law, which gave a massive bonus to vassal limit and enabled viceduchies regardless of whether you had unlocked the tech for them or not. All of it kind of danced around how core the feudal structure was in that game, not exactly representing how the ERE was structured, but close enough within the limitations of the system.

At the moment, I don't think there's quite anything like that in CK3, but I would bet the first flavor pack they have planned will center around the Byzantine empire and add a lot of similar stuff. Maybe it'll come as some of the free content under them saying they wouldn't make us pay for things they did in CK2, but given how the mechanics to represent the Byzantines was always kind of hacky, I would guess the way they implement it in CK3 will differ enough that they feel confident selling it as new content.

[Das Boot]

One reason to do this could be if you are over your vassal limit, although even then you could also solve this problem by making super-duchies (give several duke titles to the same guy, or give one duke several count-level vassals).

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Originally posted by Jerubius:

I believe handing out a kingdom title just gives them the title. There's an option to include lower titles or something, which should automatically give them de jure lower tier vassals, or you can manually transfer vassals after handing them the title. You can always transfer counts and dukes under vassal kings if you need to lower your vassal count, regardless of whether they are de jure for that title or not as a way to lower your vassal step, it's just a question of how powerful you're willing to let a vassal get.

As for your last question, CK2 had a bit more on this. Historically, the Byzantine empire wasn't feudal, and to represent that, CK2 had the entire empire as viceroyalties, meaning vassal titles higher than count went back to the emperor on succession, so he could hand them off to whoever was most loyal. Additionally, one of the dlcs added an imperial structure law, which gave a massive bonus to vassal limit and enabled viceduchies regardless of whether you had unlocked the tech for them or not. All of it kind of danced around how core the feudal structure was in that game, not exactly representing how the ERE was structured, but close enough within the limitations of the system.

At the moment, I don't think there's quite anything like that in CK3, but I would bet the first flavor pack they have planned will center around the Byzantine empire and add a lot of similar stuff. Maybe it'll come as some of the free content under them saying they wouldn't make us pay for things they did in CK2, but given how the mechanics to represent the Byzantines was always kind of hacky, I would guess the way they implement it in CK3 will differ enough that they feel confident selling it as new content.

You could be right and I forgot to actually transfer vassals... ouch.

Since I reloaded, it might be worth another try soon.

Currently I'm busy getting a hold of the Hungarian Kingdom title again before I die... - originally I thought I would make her my primary heir, but I had a very late son, and if I can give the Empire over to my five year old son instead to my 53 year old daughter, that seems the better plan. I should have paid more attention on grooming a specific heir... - sometimes one can get one with a few piety enhancing traits and let him grow up on some 2nd home castle, so he can start accumulating ressources and start reproducing with some fine woman... - somehow I failed to do this properly... - too much attention on breeding numbers instead of quality, and now everybody is half assed...

[corisai]

Originally posted by Das Boot:

One reason to do this could be if you are over your vassal limit, although even then you could also solve this problem by making super-duchies (give several duke titles to the same guy, or give one duke several count-level vassals).

Super duchies are MORE powerful then king vassals ... So they never worth it since you're emperor.

[corisai]

Originally posted by stadtpark-hartmut:

and if I can give the Empire over to my five year old son instead to my 53 year old daughter, that seems the better plan.

Empire succession laws - set "Male preference". Done. :)

[Jerubius]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Das Boot:

One reason to do this could be if you are over your vassal limit, although even then you could also solve this problem by making super-duchies (give several duke titles to the same guy, or give one duke several count-level vassals).

Super duchies are MORE powerful then king vassals ... So they never worth it since you're emperor.

I'm still not too familiar with the intricacies in of vassal management in CK3, but in CK2 it was super easy to find a just cause to revoke the kingdom of a vassal king, and then that king was bumped down to a king or duke that could be transferred under whoever you handed the kingdom off to next. Vassal Grand dukes, on the other hand, you can't revoke all their titles at once without incurring tyranny, so either you only revoke one title, only marginally weakening them and making said vassal absolutely hate you, or you revoke enough titles to actually curb their power and make all your other vassals hate you instead. Grand dukes are basically just as threatening as kings. By the time they're actually capping out on how many vassals they can have, they should have enough territory to form a kingdom themselves anyways, so not being able to have dukes of their own doesn't really limit them. On the other hand, they're resilient and don't have a single weak point their liege can use to control them. I don't think that much has changed significantly from CK2 to CK3.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Jerubius:

Grand dukes are basically just as threatening as kings.

More. In addition to revoke issues you'd mention - grand dukes will have tons of counts as direct vassals and get their full share of taxes from them. This mean they will get ~10% gold and ~25% levies from each country belong to them.
While kings will fully tax only dukes (~10% gold, 25% levy from contries belong to duke directly) and will receive neglible amount from vassals of dukes (~1% gold ~6% levy from each such country)

[Jerubius]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Jerubius:

Grand dukes are basically just as threatening as kings.

More. In addition to revoke issues you'd mention - grand dukes will have tons of counts as direct vassals and get their full share of taxes from them. This mean they will get ~10% gold and ~25% levies from each country belong to them.
While kings will fully tax only dukes (~10% gold, 25% levy from contries belong to duke directly) and will receive neglible amount from vassals of dukes (~1% gold ~6% levy from each such country)

That's assuming a king only has dukes as vassals, and isn't mostly counts as well. Not to mention kings get a larger personal demesne bonus than grand dukes, which makes up for the difference if they can max that out. Or at least that's how it was in CK2. In 3 domain limit doesn't increase with rank, right? The other strength of kings is that they have a much easier time expanding, as they just have more options to eat up territory