You should give kingdoms to people not in your family as Emperor

[Shampoo]

The biggest reason why most if not all of your brothers rebel and tear your mighty empire apart is because they have a claim to your primary title.

If you give a kingdom to one of your sons who is not your heir, the moment you die, that son, now the brother of your heir will rebel against you and fighting in the family is not good.

To avoid this, give the kingdom to a vassal and make sure their feudal contract is Forced Partition, and either Feudal Elective and/or other elective succession laws.

This solves many problems, the first one being that the king will have no claim to your primary title of the empire, and therefore will not dislike the future emperor for that reason, forced partition ensures that the king of that kingdom in future generations will split their lands and their power according to how many sons they have, therefore weakening them greatly should they try to be rebel in the future, and since every son will have some inheritance, they will fight internally to be king, therefore making sure that you will not need to deal with them since they are busy with their own civil wars.

Elective succession laws keeps the king busy trying to make sure their own power is not given to someone that is not their dynasty, and they may try to revoke the titles of their vassals to make sure that doesn't happen, and revoking titles makes the vassal unhappy, and it may once again lead to civil war, which keeps the king occupied trying to deal with that civil war while you are safe.

Let your sons get titles such as dukes and/or other inferior titles as even if they do have the ambition to rebel against you, they are just a duke and can be easily defeated by a mighty Emperor.

Just my opinion though.

[Solitus]

If I intend on landing dynasty members; I will keep a brother in my court unlanded for at least a generation; then once his claims have lapsed will land his sons (my nephews). It takes longer but is a bit safer, since they have no claims at all except for the new titles I have conquered.

[Mettle]

Thank you for the interesting post. I have a tangentially question related to promoting family members that maybe you can answer, and it has to do with dynasty points.

From what I understand Family do not generate Dynasty Points from their titles if they serve under a direct family member; so having the majority as Dukes in my Kingdom seems to be negating most of my point gain. Do you happen to have any insight in to how to generate more dynasty points? Because I'm having trouble getting my Dynasty any sort traction outside of my kingdom.

The only reliable method so far has been marrying my princesses off to heirs/kings, but even then, the ones I manage to place in high places seem to get sick or be displaced by intrigue/war more often than not, and then have a nasty habit of marrying a random stranger (since they are no longer part of my court and under my control) and running away into obscurity thereafter.

[brownacs]

Disinherit the ones you give titles to. That means they have no claims. That sorts that problem out quite nicely.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Leth:

Thank you for the interesting post. I have a tangentially question related to promoting family members that maybe you can answer, and it has to do with dynasty points.

From what I understand Family do not generate Dynasty Points from their titles if they serve under a direct family member; so having the majority as Dukes in my Kingdom seems to be negating most of my point gain. Do you happen to have any insight in to how to generate more dynasty points? Because I'm having trouble getting my Dynasty any sort traction outside of my kingdom.

The only reliable method so far has been marrying my princesses off to heirs/kings, but even then, the ones I manage to place in high places seem to get sick or be displaced by intrigue/war more often than not, and then have a nasty habit of marrying a random stranger (since they are no longer part of my court and under my control) and running away into obscurity thereafter.

Are you happy to abuse the AI? There are a few things worth noting:
1) "From what I understand Family do not generate Dynasty Points from their titles if they serve under a direct family member" I don't think that's quite right. Kings will seemingly give you a bonus but they give you the Duke bonus, if I'm remembering right, and there's nothing to stop you abusing the married to bonus. Polygamy and incest help with that. So marry your Emperor to 4 of his cousins who are all also their vassal Queens, for example, that'll give you married to Emperor x4 and married to Queen x4. You can do this with your entire realm.

2) The AI does not understand that the heirs of unlanded heirs matter. It does not understand this at all. So say we have Emperor Bob, his unlanded son, Prince Phil and Phil's also unlanded son, Prince John. The AI will never agree to a matrilineal marriage with Bob or Phil cos that'd be game over and it gets that. It will however let you arrange a matrilineal marriage with John because it doesn't get that he will one day be Emperor. Then just murder Bob/Phil/John (when his child is ready) and the <whatever> Empire is in your dynasty. You don't have to do the murder part if you're patient but it sure speeds it up. You also don't have to pick a direct heir; you could pick a random daughter or cousin or whomever but then you'll have to kill a lot more people to get them on the throne. You can't do much about the bizarre behaviour when they leave your control so I take the shotgun approach and marry a load of relatives into whatever dynasty, that way at least one won't get leprosy and immediately die or decide they're asexual, or whatever. This is pretty much what I do in the mid-end game when conquering's stopped being a challenge. It'll get you the dynasty of many crowns without giving away loads of titles to boot (which just does not compute for me). Your only real obstacle to this strategy is how your religion's viewed by the rest of the world (which can make it tricky). Syncretism/pluralist doctrines help with that but come with some negatives of their own.

3) If you really wanna abuse renown, create an equal gender polygamous religion and use strategy 1) to create an insane web of married to bonuses. You can get about 100 renown a month.

[Panzerfanlol]

lol you noobs have family?
just imprison them and put them in a dungeon to make them ill and die before you die

[[FuFo] Mortucus]

just disinherit their asses right befor you give them their titles then you can make allys with them as well

Its not that hard and because you just dumped a brand new chunk of land on them to rule over they love you .

[Kvinden]

Or give the kingdom to one of your children and play this child.
Kings are more interesting to play than emperors.
After some time the game becomes unplayable because it creates enclaves and uproars every 10 seconds.
Once I even had to rescue the emperor to fight a faction to install ME on the throne

[VoiD]

I often give all the count titles to my family
I also give all the duke titles to my family
Oh, and I also give every kingdom title to my family

In fact sometimes I let the empire split, or break down kingdoms and leave it to my family but I took too long to start doing this.

This is how it's going: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2554721008

[Сааребас]

Originally posted by brownacs:

1) "From what I understand Family do not generate Dynasty Points from their titles if they serve under a direct family member" I don't think that's quite right. Kings will seemingly give you a bonus but they give you the Duke bonus, if I'm remembering right, and there's nothing to stop you abusing the married to bonus. Polygamy and incest help with that. So marry your Emperor to 4 of his cousins who are all also their vassal Queens, for example, that'll give you married to Emperor x4 and married to Queen x4. You can do this with your entire realm

I, personally, never questioned it but the tooltip does does say that and I have always taken that as truth.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by T Cheeki Breeki T:

I, personally, never questioned it but the tooltip does does say that and I have always taken that as truth.

As a rule neither do I but I've found that I've normally ended up with large numbers of Duke bonuses which don't make any sense. The only explanation I really have is that the game's counting my vassal Kings as Dukes for the purpose of the bonuses. I might be totally wrong, in which case I don't know why my Bori Empire supposedly had about 20 Dukes of my family in external realms because it definitely didn't (I've had many, many Empires with these Duke bonuses which don't make sense too so it wasn't just that one occasion). This could've been patched out, I haven't played much with 1.4 at all, but I don't remember reading anything about it in the patch notes.

[Сааребас]

Originally posted by brownacs:

Originally posted by T Cheeki Breeki T:

I, personally, never questioned it but the tooltip does does say that and I have always taken that as truth.

As a rule neither do I but I've found that I've normally ended up with large numbers of Duke bonuses which don't make any sense. The only explanation I really have is that the game's counting my vassal Kings as Dukes for the purpose of the bonuses. I might be totally wrong, in which case I don't know why my Bori Empire supposedly had about 20 Dukes of my family in external realms because it definitely didn't (I've had many, many Empires with these Duke bonuses which don't make sense too so it wasn't just that one occasion). This could've been patched out, I haven't played much with 1.4 at all, but I don't remember reading anything about it in the patch notes.

No idea the only tthing I can think of is female relatives married to dukes, becoming duches of their own.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by T Cheeki Breeki T:

No idea the only tthing I can think of is female relatives married to dukes, becoming duches of their own.

That'd just give you the married to bonus though. The bonus is dependent on who holds the title. If you marry a Duke, you don't get a duchy title. Even if the Duke dies childless, you're not in line to get it (I don't think? Never seen it if so). I really only have the 'vassal Kings count for renown but only as Dukes' explanation left (EDIT: or did).

[Loothar]

Very true. this is happening to me now in my game. My predecessor founded holy roman empire expanded mightily had about 10 kings from my dynasty under me. He died. Now his son has faced 5 massive rebellions so far. I keep forcing the kings to renounce claims so hopefully I get peace eventually.

[Сааребас]

Originally posted by brownacs:

Originally posted by T Cheeki Breeki T:

No idea the only tthing I can think of is female relatives married to dukes, becoming duches of their own.

That'd just give you the married to bonus though. The bonus is dependent on who holds the title. If you marry a Duke, you don't get a duchy title. Even if the Duke dies childless, you're not in line to get it (I don't think? Never seen it if so). I really only have the 'vassal Kings count for renown but only as Dukes' explanation left (EDIT: or did).

Next playthrough I keep a watch, if I can remember

[Chucktheninja]

I would never give a title to close family with a claim. Though distant relatives with no claim to the throne can have all they want.