Why AI gives away titles when under domain limit.

[Priestie]

Salutations. So I have an ambitious heir that, using elective succession and a lot of effort managed to give them eight counties, he also holds both of the duke higher titles over the counties all dejure. He's got a domain cap of 10 so he's well under the limit.

Very soon after, he gave away all but two of the counties creating a bunch of vassals. I'm so confused as to why the AI would do this. I checked and it wasn't a faction demand. He just decided to take stress hits and give away almost all of his power... as an ambitious char.

Is there some way to prevent the AI from doing stupid ♥♥♥♥ when playing your heir? Or is there a built in bias, because i've only ever seen this happen to my heir.

Thank you!

[CrUsHeR]

Are the counties perhaps tribal holdings, temples, or cities?

The AI will give those away if they cannot use them based on their own government form, and they are allowed to have vassals (duke+ rank).
Otherwise there tends to be the reverse issue, where an NPC has something like 5/2 domain size but keeps all the land because he cannot have vassals.



Generally i would recommend to stay away from elective succession, and never give land to heirs. But that is a different topic.

[Priestie]

Great question thank you. Nope my heir gave away full counties, as in the castle and all holdings, creating counts under him. The counts are also of his same race/religion so it's not like he's trying to placate the populace by giving them someone local...

[snuggleform]

I have no idea, it could have to do with AI personality (look at the wiki for that, there's 5 axis of personalities).

That being said, I try not to land my heir. He just gets into a lot of trouble sometimes, either pissing off other vassals or getting conquered by them then who knows what can happen.

[Priestie]

It's 100% not the personality thing, being he's ambitious. It literally causes ambitious characters stress to give away titles. I feel like it's a bias against player heirs because i've never seen anyone but my heirs give away land by choice.

As for why I land them, it's because my chars tend to live a very long time, and my heirs need a chance to develope skills, prestige, etc.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Priestie:

It's 100% not the personality thing, being he's ambitious. It literally causes ambitious characters stress to give away titles. I feel like it's a bias against player heirs because i've never seen anyone but my heirs give away land by choice.

As for why I land them, it's because my chars tend to live a very long time, and my heirs need a chance to develope skills, prestige, etc.

Your heirs develop their skills just by virtue of being your heir. Don't think they get prestige though... although that's pretty easy to generate large amounts of.

[CrUsHeR]

Off topic, but you could try to only get your first two sons married when they are around 30-35 years old. If they don't have their own heir by 40 then seduce their wife a couple of times.

The effect is that your rulers will be in office for around 30-40 years rather than 16-20. More than enough to collect any number of prestige and skills you need for whatever purpose. And you can make them councillors while being your courtier, they get the same amount of lifestyle XP by that (minus the ruler-exclusive events).

What they don't get is being imprisoned, overthrown or conquered, defeated by rebel vassals, losing prestige, titles, or their sanity, suffer from poor court physicians or spymasters, get married to their aunt twice their age with lover's pox, getting rivals and a thousand hooks on them, and so on.
The list of hazards for an AI-controlled ruler is fairly extensive, all of which can be prevented by having them chill out at your court until it is their turn.

A side effect is that you only need half as many titles for partition distribution, because the generational span is twice as long while the total length of a campaign remains the same.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

...

Don't forget vastly reducing the time you have to deal with short reign penalties.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Priestie:

It's 100% not the personality thing, being he's ambitious. It literally causes ambitious characters stress to give away titles. I feel like it's a bias against player heirs because i've never seen anyone but my heirs give away land by choice.

As for why I land them, it's because my chars tend to live a very long time, and my heirs need a chance to develope skills, prestige, etc.

Ambitious alone doesn't determine personality. Like I said, there are 5 axes. According to the wiki the descriptor you get under his name lists the 2 highest axes. Maybe he is highly irrational or something.

[Priestie]

@ cRUSHER lmao That is so true!

@ Snuggleform besides ambitious my heir is also greedy, so ya I just don't see him wanting to give away titles.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by brownacs:

Originally posted by Priestie:

It's 100% not the personality thing, being he's ambitious. It literally causes ambitious characters stress to give away titles. I feel like it's a bias against player heirs because i've never seen anyone but my heirs give away land by choice.

As for why I land them, it's because my chars tend to live a very long time, and my heirs need a chance to develope skills, prestige, etc.

Your heirs develop their skills just by virtue of being your heir. Don't think they get prestige though... although that's pretty easy to generate large amounts of.

One thing I read about recently is that people you assign to your council get the same bonuses you would if you were hired on a liege's council. So for example if you make your heir your councillor he'll get prestige per month. Or if you want him to build some bank make him a steward. I think that's a nice way to build him up a bit without necessarily giving him land to ♥♥♥♥ things up with.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

One thing I read about recently is that people you assign to your council get the same bonuses you would if you were hired on a liege's council. So for example if you make your heir your councillor he'll get prestige per month. Or if you want him to build some bank make him a steward. I think that's a nice way to build him up a bit without necessarily giving him land to ♥♥♥♥ things up with.

Yeah that's a good idea. I was just pointing out they do get lifestyle xp purely by being your heir. I tend to go chancellor for the bonus to diplomacy xp which, I think, will apply to my heirs cos they almost always have diplomacy educations meaning they should be 100% diplomacy focused (or it sure seems that way), otherwise the xp bonus is wasted methinks. Forgot about the bonus prestige... it's a pretty measly +3 a month, and that's if you're an Emperor, which isn't wunderbar. Better than nothing I suppose. Not sure how the +20 fellow vassal opinion works when they're not your vassal either but meh.
EDIT: pesky typos.

[CrUsHeR]

Heirs to titles get prestige for being councillor and your courtier, but it is very little prestige.

Though the prestige should be the tiniest problem for your player heir - first off every character is born with an amount of prestige according to your dynasty's level of splendor. Even if you marry him to a lowborn genius courtier, he should still be in positive if you have been "farming" renown for a few generations. Having all Duke+ rank titles in your realm being of your dynasty certainly helps when they marry at least some of their daughters into foreign courts.

Then if he already has a few sons when you die, the first act in office would be to create titles for them to inherit. You also could arrange a feast and a hunt for extra popularity and prestige. Then you are probably looking at a few thousand prestige combined.

Lastly, it is not the prestige but the level of fame which is most decisive for your rule.
For tribals the fame level determines the taxes and levies from vassals, and everyone needs minimum fame levels for the larger scale CBs, and general opinion.
Let's say there is an immediate revolt after succession where you get to fight some stacks of thousands of troops, you should be swimming in fame score already.

[snuggleform]

It's not the tiniest problem at all, in fact it's one of the biggest. A lot of my heirs go into their reign with negative prestige. It's a huge problem. Feast gives no prestige. Hunt gives 150-300. That's nowhere near a few thousand. You can't farm prestige from wars if you can't declare them to begin with.