best lifestyle strategies?

[snuggleform]

For independent rulers (like murchad, emir) my current strategy is:

- for at least 3 generations, teach your heirs martial since the early battles are all about land grabbing and battles are won on a razor's edge when your numbers are roughly equal with your neighbors

- after you have a sufficiently big nation that other nations aren't bullying you regularly enough to matter, teach kids diplomacy. The biggest threat to the stability of the kingdom is when you take over and have liberty/independence/claimant factions forming all around you due to the short reign debuff, powerful vassals might have gotten too much land and other stuff outside your control like crimes you committed before you became the current player.

The number 1 reason why I think this is good is because you can respec and pick up the Thoughtful perk (+100% opinion from gfits) almost certainly (unless you became the liege at a young age where you don't even have 1 perk point available yet). You should be able to gift key faction members with ease.

I do think there are lots of options to help smooth over the early faction forming (martial tree has that thing that gives a higher threshold to faction joining, steward has a lot of opinion perks, intrigue has the dread so on and so forth), but those other options require a lot of perk points to get to whereas the Thoughtful perk is something you can pick up without any other perk requirements.

My last few playthroughs I've been super obsessed with speccing learning because I want to tech fast, but I think safety/stability is the first concern then you can switch over to learning. Your stat in learning won't be as high as it would have been had you trained in learning primarily, but there's no real rush to tech necessarily because of the exposure mechanic.

Thoughts/comments/alternate strategies?

[brownacs]

We have very similar strategies: diplomacy education, more for the bonus and the diplomacy perks pre-unlocked than the percentile bonus to lifestyle experience, then spend very little time in the diplomacy tree, just enough to get 4-5 perks, and then go straight to the learning lifestyle, going health until I've got the massive health bonus from Iron Constitution then switch to the scholar tree, get 'Learn on the Job' and then back to the health tree to finish that (... I'm not even going to try and fix that 'sentence'). Then I'll usually finish the scholar tree and then family hierarch with however much time is left. I mostly just do that last one as an arbitrary pick if I happen to have a 100 year old who just won't die.

[pi73r]

Thinking about strategies in this game is like creating tier lists for the sims xD

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by brownacs:

We have very similar strategies: diplomacy education, more for the bonus and the diplomacy perks pre-unlocked than the percentile bonus to lifestyle experience, then spend very little time in the diplomacy tree, just enough to get 4-5 perks, and then go straight to the learning lifestyle, going health until I've got the massive health bonus from Iron Constitution then switch to the scholar tree, get 'Learn on the Job' and then back to the health tree to finish that (... I'm not even going to try and fix that 'sentence'). Then I'll usually finish the scholar tree and then family hierarch with however much time is left. I mostly just do that last one as an arbitrary pick if I happen to have a 100 year old who just won't die.

Right now I get thoughtful/befriend and just whatever if there are extra perk points on reset, then I'll dip briefly into learning for the +fascination perk, then go out to martial for engineered destruction/parthanan tactics/organized march because those really speed up my conquering of lands without even requiring me to lead the armies, then I'll go back to learning to get the scholar trait and know thyself (I actually don't care about increasing longevity in general, but knowing one year in advance of death means I know when to start handing my lands out or otherwise do last minute tyrannies which will be forgotten quickly when my heir ascends), and then after that if there's any time then mess around with intrigue to fabricate hooks or potentially destabilize or rearrange claims.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Right now I get thoughtful/befriend and just whatever if there are extra perk points on reset, then I'll dip briefly into learning for the +fascination bonus, then go out to martial for engineered destruction/parthanan tactics/organized march because those really speed up my conquering of lands without even requiring me to lead the armies, then I'll go back to learning to get the scholar trait, and then after that if there's any time then mess around with intrigue to fabricate hooks or potentially destabilize or rearrange claims.

Er... looking at it I think I go for 'thoughtful', 'befriend', 'benevolent intent', 'groomed to rule' and... yeah that's it. I tend to use befriend a lot so I don't mind 'confidants' too but probably save it for later.
I'd recommend 'Chivalric Dominance' and 'Kingsguard' early on for the +75% knight effectiveness and +5 knights. Very, very powerful in the early stages of the game. Especially combined with high prowess matrilineal courtier marriages.
There are a lot of choices and I'm not sure any are really wrong. The above (Diplomacy->Learning) is what I almost always settle into though after a couple of hundred years. Your empires inevitably end up so large and your military advantage so overwhelming that you don't need any of that stuff.

[Hemnlyr]

If your early game is tribal then there is something to be said for playing an arrogant diplomat to get the most out of your prestige generation. The middle tree gives you percentage increases for dread, number of knights powerful vassals on council etc.

The other personality traits could focus on natural dread, provided that they aren't sinful (wrathful, sadistic, arbitrary, etc). One of the first diplomacy skills will get you 100% prestige gain at dread 100. This can be useful late game if you need to get a particular fame rank for a decision, such as living legend.

Once that tree is largely complete you can switch to right tree in martial to get more and better knights or the torturer tree to maintain your dread at high levels.

If I'm playing a tribal duke or count I often find I don't have the prestige to support all of my men-at-arms, at least initially.

Most characters I play in the later game involve a combination or learning, diplomacy and stewardship (generally in that order). I seldom use martial in late game and only make use or intrigue to deal with particular problems.

[Hemnlyr]

I think the worst build I've had is an intrigue character (elusive shadow: +8 intrigue) with the honest and just traits (-7 intrigue). You can't do any intrigue without taking a lot of stress.

I guess that's what I get for choosing educators based on stats.

Edit: got the traits wrong

[RawCode]

what about just murdering left and right?

it's really fun way to play, when you start 2 murder schemes with 95-95 and 3 years timer and just kill claimants and other characters that oppose you.

with 2 points spent on torture you can torture random people and keep 100 dread at all times, if your character happen to be sadistic, probably most overpowered trait in game, you can forget about stress at all.

[Hemnlyr]

Originally posted by RawCode:

what about just murdering left and right?

it's really fun way to play, when you start 2 murder schemes with 95-95 and 3 years timer and just kill claimants and other characters that oppose you.

with 2 points spent on torture you can torture random people and keep 100 dread at all times, if your character happen to be sadistic, probably most overpowered trait in game, you can forget about stress at all.

I always find that I run out of people to murder. Then I end up murdering random targets because it seems wasteful to have a great intrigue character and spend decades not making use of it.

[dwarfpcfan]

Learning tree for my first ruler always, because of the OP perk that adds extra attribute points, faster tech devellopment and the chastity thing. That way once you have a good heir, you'll stop popping out additional kids.

really that's all you need.

[snuggleform]

My strategy's changing a bit; as long as I pick vassals of the same culture/religion, the types of factions that form during short reign are basically only liberty factions, and with regards to that I just let them lower the crown authority by one level since I expect to raise it back again in 20 years. So now I don't actually even have to rely on gifting people at all.

Now my thought train is back to learning education for good learning stat, get scientific + know thyself + scholarly circles, then swap out to diplomacy to shorten truces (right now I'm exploring a strategy of leap frogging kingdoms installing my dynasty and giving them independence), then to martial to speed up wars a bit. My core empire is essentially secure so I don't have to worry about safety too much (I have a pile of gold in case something happens), so I can push my cultural research and dynasty expansion.

[Baked Potato]

I kinda did that, my newest one I started working on diplomacy to deal with the internal factions but suddenly I have two neighbours that got way stronger and started holy wars against me out of the blue. I think I mind end up giving up on my faith, hopefully that will help... :-/

[luckysyno]

I do prefer a learning education. I tend to rush the scholar tree. Pedagogy helps educating my kids as well as heirs of key vassals. Scientific speeds up research and open minded gives a nice opinion boost on vassals that are of a different culture, They are usually the problematic ones ;) Learning on the job is the biggest stat boost in the game and sanctioned loopholes make getting claims a lot easier. The scholar trait gives a nice boost to personal and hostile schemes. After that I usually pick up "Wash your hands" and restraint. Wash your hands is the only way to reduce the chance of getting sick and playing a leper is just not my thing ;) Restraint helps me manage the number and timing of my heirs. After that its a swap to intrigue towards a "Job done right", on the way I get the ability to fabricate hooks and the boost to hostile schemes is nice. Afterwards I pick up Befriend and Groomed to rule from the diplomacy lifestyle. With a perk reset you can trigger groomed to rule twice, which gives your children a nice stat boost. Then its back to learning and finishing the medicine tree. This tree allows my character to live longer and makes timing your death a lot easier (Trigger the perk reset at poor health and assign the points somewhere else then medicine). Martial education is something I only pick on my first ruler in a run. It makes expanding a lot easier and one ruler is long enough to get a decent realm ;)

[snuggleform]

I still like picking up martial even past the early game, for the +15% move speed and +40% siege damage. They apply even if you're not the commander of an army. It really helps catch enemies in bad positions as well as speed up sieges which just take forever even when I'm running 2 full siege squads.

[Panthaz89]

My favorite has always been the overseer tree especially early game where control goes up incredibly slow. You can take events that give you big control penalties+rewards and not care and absolute control gives you a ton of levies and taxes over the long run. You can easily expand and get the lands you just conquered to be up to 100% in very little time and its easy to defend as an overseer a great combination with the stewardship tree to get a big domain limit and accrue a lot of money over 1 life.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Panthaz89:

My favorite has always been the overseer tree especially early game where control goes up incredibly slow. You can take events that give you big control penalties+rewards and not care and absolute control gives you a ton of levies and taxes over the long run. You can easily expand and get the lands you just conquered to be up to 100% in very little time and its easy to defend as an overseer a great combination with the stewardship tree to get a big domain limit and accrue a lot of money over 1 life.

That's a good point. I think all the martial styles have extreme merit in the first 2 or 3 generations at least when you're still hungry for land and fighting off scary neighbors.