Question about vassal / realm management.

[Masquerade]

Is it better to have as many of the lowest realm-rank vassals as possible in terms of taxes and levies?

My understanding is that a county would provide a fraction of its' resources to a duchy, which then would provide a fraction of that to a kingdom and so on. Is that completely off and would it be better to have more duchies as a king for example?

[titanopteryx]

Direct vassals would give you more resources than indirect vassals. Lots of counts is a lot harder to manage than fewer dukes. Depends on if you value more money and levies, or less micromanaging.

[-=Prepper_Jack=-]

In terms of generating taxes and levies, you are better off having a whole bunch of counts under you. You can make powerful dukes, which own all their de jure lands personally, and it will have the same effect, initially. However, due to land splitting off to heirs, this will eventually be reduced. Also bear in mind that the standard levy contract for counts is 18.7%, and the contract for dukes is 25%.

One should consider the potential problems with this approach. Let's say you have 50 counts under you who are giving you a small portion of their levies and gold. For the sake of argument, let's say each has 1k men at their disposal. This gives you 9,350 levies at your disposal from your vassals. What happens if half of them suddenly become dissatisfied with the state of things and rebel? Maybe your heir got caught buggering his own mother and killing his sister. Then you have 25k men attacking your armies, and half of your levies are gone.

You can go with a dramatically safer approach by ensuring each vassal owns a single county, and making their titles non-revocable. Your dukes get only a small portion of the troops in their domain from their counts, and become virtually no threat to you. Likewise, a King that has only one county and a bunch of weak dukes won't be much of a threat. The drawback is, of course, that your vassals won't contribute to you much, and they won't spread out into other lands as easily (though this might be good if you prefer to keep things tidy).

Distribute your lands in whatever risk avoidance strategy you prefer.

[Masquerade]

So it sounds as though dukes can operate as a kind of buffer from opinion back-lash as a trade-off for reduced tribute.

The situation Malovane describes in his second point is similar to what I experienced recently, following a claim on a foreign kingdom; the following years were spent struggling against successive factions seeking independence. Could appointing dukes from my own realm have mitigated that at all?

[-=Prepper_Jack=-]

İlk olarak Masquerade tarafından gönderildi:

The situation Malovane describes in his second point is similar to what I experienced recently, following a claim on a foreign kingdom; the following years were spent struggling against successive factions seeking independence. Could appointing dukes from my own realm have mitigated that at all?

When taking over a kingdom of a different culture, there is always the issue of "foreign ruler" penalty. If you are in the same culture group, this penalty is -5, and gets further reduced to -15 if you are ruling over a foreign culture group. A further penalty of -5 applies if you are not the "rightful ruler" of a given area. If they're of different religion, it gets a lot worse. It does add up, particularly if you're playing a 19 year old fresh king under short reign who is not a particularly skillful ruler.

Replacing some of the existing counts and dukes isn't a bad idea if it's easily done. Sometimes titles can be revoked, sometimes they can't, depending upon the religions involved. At least revoking is a fairly simple process after a failed rebellion. If the kingdom is not de jure of your empire, I'd suggest not handing the kingdom title away if you can avoid it, as you'll end up contending with a king who doesn't believe you have the right to rule him. He'll also give less troops and tax until the de jure issue is resolved.

Unfortunately, the culture issue isn't so easily resolved. Even if you replace all counts and dukes of a kingdom and replace them with your own culture, they tend not to convert the local culture to your culture, and instead tend to convert to the local culture over a few generations.

[SDxEair]

I just fabricate a claim and remove them if they switch to the local culture and only ever grant titles to people of my culture... doing that slowly(VERY SLOWLY) all the lands turn to your culture.
You could also convert the lands yourself, but its usually better to focus on development. The one exception to that was when as the Irish I reclaimed Britania, and for the next 10 years manually converted as many counties in England and Wales as I could to Irish.

[Сааребас]

In terms of taxes it is really simple:

the less characters between you and the holding providing said taxes gains you the best networth.

[50 Shades of Gandalf the Grey]

The optimal way to look at vassal taxes is that you want to max out your personally available limit, visible on the succession laws screen.

Start by making as many people as possible just counts.

Follow up by, when you are approaching your vassal limit - which should probably occur after the formation of your first empire, while you are looking for/acquiring your second, making the count with the best congenital traits (or dynasty, but I recommend saving your own house members for the best duchies/kingdoms in your desired area) the Duke of your captured lands.

Save the title allocation for right after a ruler death, when you are vulnerable to factions. A few dukes/kings made can get almost anyone to leave factions which you need to watch out for.

Make the best counts dukes. The repeat the process making the best dukes kings.

You want your vassal limit filled to as close to max as possible with the highest titled people in your realm as direct vassals to maximize their income.

[ambi]

İlk olarak -=Malovane=- tarafından gönderildi:

Unfortunately, the culture issue isn't so easily resolved. Even if you replace all counts and dukes of a kingdom and replace them with your own culture, they tend not to convert the local culture to your culture, and instead tend to convert to the local culture over a few generations.

I found that if you send your steward to convert the culture of the vassal's capital, the vassal will convert to your culture in a decade or two. I also raise their heir and culturally convert them as well.

[CrUsHeR]

Keep in mind that CK3 is not CK2. There is something called the "chain of command" or "feudal pyramid":

Emperor > Kings > Dukes > Counts

Example if you are a King and have a Count as a direct vassal, and you do not hold the de jure Duchy title, this Count is not a de jure vassal. And all non-de jure vassals give reduced taxes and levies. Also a negative opinion modifier on top.



And the other thing is that it is very easy to control a smaller number of more powerful vassals, by the means of swaying and hooks. If you are Emperor you probably always have a bunch of uncreated Duchy titles to hand out as well, as an ace in your sleeve.

[Masquerade]

İlk olarak 50 Shades of Gandalf the Grey tarafından gönderildi:

The optimal way to look at vassal taxes is that you want to max out your personally available limit, visible on the succession laws screen.

Start by making as many people as possible just counts.

Follow up by, when you are approaching your vassal limit - which should probably occur after the formation of your first empire, while you are looking for/acquiring your second, making the count with the best congenital traits (or dynasty, but I recommend saving your own house members for the best duchies/kingdoms in your desired area) the Duke of your captured lands.

Save the title allocation for right after a ruler death, when you are vulnerable to factions. A few dukes/kings made can get almost anyone to leave factions which you need to watch out for.

Make the best counts dukes. The repeat the process making the best dukes kings.

You want your vassal limit filled to as close to max as possible with the highest titled people in your realm as direct vassals to maximize their income.

How would you go about building an empire in this strategy? It sounds as though this would require acquiring claims on individual counties one by one for the most part, which would take a significant amount of time even without factoring in any truces you might not want to break along the way.

My previous approach was to aim for the largest claims that opportunity presented in order to grow fast - this being from a duchy start. As a result I had three duchies upon formation of the kingdom: my start, one created to become a rightful liege and the last blackmailed from the pope then won from war. Most of the remaining de jure lands resided in a fourth duchy which accepted my vassalage offer. It now sounds as though taking big chunks of land isn't worth losing control over who rules where, regardless of whether it seems like a shortcut.