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The only way to minimize this is have fewer kids, disinherit or otherwise "dispose" of your kids, or make sure you have only one title of your highest rank.
Don't become the Duke of anything other than Munster until you're planning on becoming King of Ireland, for example.
1) Optional: Adopt Catholicism *
2) Get everyone at court married (pref. quick/intelligent trait), only 1 slightly older fertile wife and 3 infertile wives for you **
3) Get at least 1 free physician ideally with 20+ learning, also by marriage (matrilinear also works for female courtiers)
4) Always appoint the best councillors you have: Spymaster > Marshal > Steward > Chancellor
5) Lifestyle: Stewardship/Administrator (Golden Obligations, then the Administrator tree) ***
6) Spymaster: find secrets at foreign courts (blackmail -> demand payment) keep doing this at least until you hold 100% of de jure Ireland personally
>>> Intermission: If you do the next step, the actual game starts. If not in Ironman, save so you don't have to arrange all those 28 marriages again.
7) Revoke Ormond (requires Crown Authority level 2) - iirc you need at least 500+ troops plus whatever this vassal gives, might need to buy 1x archer MAA to overcome the required siege threshold - also buy Siege Weapons once you can afford it
8) De jure claim: Desmond -> Revoke Desmond
9) Keep forging claims on counties, best to work towards Dublin because it is the best province and capital
10) Create the second duchy (Ideally Meath/Dublin) and the Kingdom of Ireland once you have 51% of the de jure land
11) Important for the next steps! - Always revoke the county from any count vassals you might get I.e. never have more than 1 count-tier vassal at a time - ignore domain limit, but set your wife to "manage domain"
12) Check if any rulers in Ireland accept vassalization, take them 1 by 1 (vassalize one -> revoke title, repeat)
13) Along the way, occasionally invest in some minimal MAA, depends on how many secrets and prisoners you can exploit (you need 250g for a second duchy, and 500g for the kingdom, everything above is to be spent on MAA)
>>> Got all of Ireland in your hands? Then it is time to deal with succession. First set your capital to Dublin, if you haven't already.
You should now personally own all 12 counties of Ireland, plus the duchy titles of Meath and Munster. The target will be to keep Meath and all counties in Ulster without ever creating the Ulster duchy title, for the rest of the game (until you conquer Essex and settle in London for good).
The ideal distribution depends on how many sons you have. Ireland has a total of 5 duchies, and you will always keep Meath because the capital, Dublin is there. Then you can also hold at least 3 more counties.
If you have only 1 son at this point, you can directly give him all of Munster, and whatever additional counties you need to reach your exact domain limit. This is an exception to the "don't give heirs land" doctrine, because there are no other vassals in the kingdom at this point.
If you have 2 sons, the second son will automatically inherit Munster.
Hand out all the counties in Munster to individual lowborns who are of your faith & culture group and NOT rulers, ideally with a "content" / "lackey" type personality. Your courtiers of the Briain dynasty without claims are also okay as substitute.
If still over your domain cap after that, give some of the loose counties in Connacht/Leinster to your primary heir (do NOT create more duchies yet)
If you have 3 sons, you need to create 1 extra duchy title. Ideally one which allows you to reach your domain limit after substracting them from the total of 12.
(Munster 3 + Connacht 2 = 5, which would bring you down to 12-5 = 7 counties which is realistic for your heir who doesn't have lifestyle bonuses and low stewardship).
Same as above, hand out all the counties in Munster and Connacht to individual lowborns.
If you have 4 sons, it works the same as with 3 sons, you just need to create 1 more duchy. Only Leinster remains at this point - same as before, give its counties to individual lowborns and keep the duchy title.
If you have 5 or 6 sons, you need to get back to work immediately.
Start forging a claim on the Isle of Man, which is the quickest duchy you can usurp because it only has 1 county.
If you still need another duchy for your 6th son, "The Isles" is next in line, which are the Hebrides and Argyll in Scotland. You need to get 2/3 of these counties to usurp the duchy.
Well and if you have 7 or more sons, you probably married more than 1-2 wives, or had extremely bad luck. You still might be able to obtain 1 more duchy (Northumbria) but it is very unlikely before you die. Then you can still forge claims on the lost county titles after succession and revoke them. In the future you also may want to consider going celibate after 2-3 sons are born.
And that is it. Unpause the game, conquer stuff, invest into new holdings and buildings, MAA regiments until capped, enjoy.
_____________
*) can only have 1 wife as catholic, but smooch a lot of money from the pope and join crusades later on - best to do this ASAP because this will determine faith of future barons
**) your son doesn't need to get married before he is 30+ or you die, in fact it might even help a bit if he dies e.g. in battle and you get a newborn son with Quick/Intelligent instead, also because Murchad tends to get very old
Also, whenever a knight dies in battle, get his widow immediately married with whoever has the highest Prowess (you need good knights to win)
***) If you get prisoners, make sure you always ransom them FOR A FAVOR and demand payment. You'll get 50-200g for a courtier instead of 10g
There's a perk pretty early under one of the Scholar lifestyle trees that allows you to become Celibate if you want to stop having kids. You can also marry a woman getting up there in years (mid 30s I believe) who won't be fertile for much longer, or maybe even petition for divorce after having a single son.
That was a lot of text, generally you can slowly chew your way through Scotland and England simultaneously, focusing on having duchies ready to usurp or create for succession.
My first stop was to keep all of York permanently, same like with Ulster you just destroy or don't create its duchy title for the time being. Your domain limit should be fairly high by this point, likely you rulers are all Genius or at least Intelligent, same as your wives.
By the point you have Essex and East Anglia, personally in your hands with all its counties, you can start giving some of the crappy counties in Ireland away. Move your capital to London and start upgrading the Tower and everything else.
If you also can create/usurp the Kingdom of England, you can consider doing that and make it your primary title. And instead let Ireland pass out of the realm (reclaim it afterwards) or destroy the title (evil!).
Remember to never push de jure claims, instead forge county claims en masse, because you don't want any of the established english/scottish dynasties in your realm.
Before you have researched Divine Right (to push all forged claims in one war), try to alternate between 1 claim on scotland and 1 on england. Likely there are more realms than just these two, so try to carve a path so that you can minimize the waiting time for the individual truce timers.
Also researching max crown authority ASAP will help to stop your vassals conquering anything outside of the de jure land you gave them.
A possibly perfect setup in Britain is to have all of Essex (5) and York (4). Plus Hwicce and East Anglia, where you can give away 1 county each which is not the duchy capital, does not have Stonehenge, and is not Oxford or Cambridge (the universities can be founded there much later on).
And once you have established Primogeniture, you can finally create the remaining duchies and use their duchy buildings. Build those that increase Knights, or Heavy Infantry.
This sums up to a total of 4 duchies as your personal domain, but at that point you are so powerful, just having the Barracks upgrades in all holdings and several Heavy Infantry MAA of 17 regiments each will destroy literally every army in the game (including 100k papal crusade forces if needed).
7) Revoke Ormond - iirc you need at least 500+ troops plus whatever this vassal gives, might need to buy 1x archer MAA
8) De jure claim: Desmond -> Revoke Desmond
Edit:
I also don't understand why to do # 11 either:
11) Important for the next steps! - Always revoke the county from any count vassals you might get I.e. never have more than 1 count-tier vassal at a time - ignore domain limit, but set your wife to "manage domain"
Right-click on the vassal, select "revoke title", then select any title he has in the menu on the right.
If he accepts, good for him.
If he refuses, he will rise up in rebellion. Normally all other vassals would join the rebellion, but since he is your only vassal and you are mighty Murchad with a lot more troops, you will win.
After defeating this rebellion, he is your prisoner, so don't forget to use the "revoke title" action once more. Then you can get rid of him in any way you want.
Releasing them with "renounce titles" will make sure that they (or their sons) cannot return as claimant for any vassal wars in the immediate future. If you can also get a hook, you can demand another payment, every 5-10 gold extra get you forward.
BTW - i forgot three things in this walkthrough:
1) Disable "Generate Families" in the game rules before starting the campaign. This is Ironman compatible, and prevents the random rulers from having 5 alliances right after game start.
You will still run into some rulers having major alliances (e.g. Bohemia or England), so this won't make it too easy.
2) Get Siege Weaponry as your first MAA regiment, then archers (100% must have, otherwise the sieges take years instead of weeks/months)
3) This highly tyrannical walkthrough probably only works in Ireland, but many of its lessons can be applied with other starting rulers
There is many ways to game the system to avoid it and I assume most people use these tactics from time to time (disinherit, take vows, limit children etc.).
Is that understandable after the previous "revoke title" explanation? :)
Once you form the Kingdom of Ireland, most of the rulers there will accept vassalization.
But it is extremely important that you only vassalize one, then revoke his title, before vassalizing the next.
Otherwise you might actually lose if you have like 3-5 vassals plus their allies in rebellion.
because unless you're over your demense limit, you should be holding as many titles directly as you can. Vassals are for when the administrative needs of the realm have grown beyond what you alone are capable of managing efficiently. they're a major hinderance before then as you're wasting power potential that hinders further expansion. Even going sightly over the domain limit still gives you more overall value than you'd have from making vassals, but once you get to about +3-4 you're starting to get overweight compared to giving away a province, and you lose everything at 5+)
And eventually you're gonna be wanting to move your capital to dublin (capital of the Kingdom of Ireland), and it's better to manage the realm while it's small and easy to deal with, as things get much more complicated once you've grown so big and have a bunch of vassals to deal with.
Also since you're gonna be moving capitals, you don't want to invest any money into provinces someone else is gonna end up with in a generation or two. So getting the edge typically requires gaining additional holdings with the minimal effort possible.
Because Ireland only has 12 counties, so you can practically hold all of them with your first ruler. At least temporarily, some land will be lost due to succession sooner or later.
Revoking the titles in Ormond and Desmond will already multiply your levy size and tax income instantly. Then by the point you can form Ireland, you probably have 3000+ and after holding all of Ireland (and distributing titles as described to go back to your domain limit), probably 5- or 6000. So you can already go to war with Scotland.
You will be over your domain limit while kicking out the last couple of residents, but my walkthrough also explains how to move forward once they are gone.
The idea is that you don't want to keep the existing vassals, because they already have gold, troops, and forged claims by the point you vassalize them. Instead you start the realm from scratch.
Only give out land to vassals who won't start conquering other vassals, which is the greatest threat to stability until you have established crown authority level 3 (which forbids vassal wars).
Another nice tip for realm planning, you can use the keybinds "I" and "U" to switch between de jure kingdoms and duchies.
This will paint the structure of these titles on the map, and the titles appear as clickable icons on top of their de jure capitals. Existing titles are solid, uncreated titles are transparent.
"E" brings back the default map mode.