Is there a way to play tall?

[The Layup Legend]

It's not exactly difficult to snowball a giant quantity of land very easily in this game with how lacking the AI is, but I find it frustrating and boring to grab a ton of land then die and see it all fracture again. Until my culture can find a way to understand the concept of giving the land to the oldest child and him alone, is there a good way to play tall?

I've tried it, but there's no land development like EU4 does by spending mana and you can buy buildings in your personal provinces, but you're probably not doing that with the income from only a few holdings. So is this game destined to be snowball, fracture, retake, repeat or is there a peaceful tall way to play I'm not seeing?

[RodHull]

There are ways, I mean for one the armies you get from lots of land are trash in CK3 compared to CK2, men at arms are where its at which you can support with a relatively small kingdom. If your tribal you can raid for money to fund development of your lands, if your religious you can ask pope for money. Follow admin path... etc etc

So yes you can play tall, more so alliances are extremely powerful in CK3, one or two powerful allies will pretty much prevent anyone dangerous declaring war on you.

[The Former]

There's a guy who's playing tall over on the Paradox forums who has me intrigued at the moment.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/a-naked-welshman-arrives-in-india.1459278/

(Not sure what the update will do to his AAR...)

For the record, there are benefits to a fractured realm. Free alliances means you can essentially get all of your previous generation's forces in a war at a fraction of the cost to yourself (plus some more, since each of your sons has his own MAA cap), and every independent ruler of your dynasty exponentially increases your dynasty's renown gain.

[ChopSuey™]

You can, as a Norse viking, carve out a kingdom somewhere and then change to the 'Scandanavian Elect'. If you have more than one son, you just have to make sure that as a King yourself, they each have a Jarl title each so when you die, they have no need to claim anything and your Kingdom remains as is when your old ruler dies.
Should be a guaranteed first switch but after that you'll need to make sure that your vassals are 'in your court', so to speak, to support and vote for your next character to get the crown. If not.... plenty of backroom political intrigue and murder to be had to make it so and failing that... back to the fractured realm and reconquering ;)

[EA Latium]

You absolutely can. Around mid-game your Demesne will be a very important source of income and levies, a new castle can and will be more impactful than a newly conquered vassal.

Vassals can progress as well, sometimes taking more Counties but beside that they'll do their own upgrades when they can, so even lower tiers will contribute.

Upgrades basically serve the same purpose of land development and on top of that can give bonuses to your MaA.

Another very important thing to keep in mind is your family and dynasty, if you are the respective Head you can call the members to wars (it costs renown for the latter).

[Karl III]

The only time I played, I played tall. Starting in Navarra; I had the incredible advantage of having High Partition from the start. For hundreds and hundreds of years I only held one Empire because I made a mistake that made me change culture and I had to convert ALL my Empire over, which took those hundreds of years.

For stability and not splitting your land, I actually have plenty of tips. Despite not having played ever CK2 and this having being my first CK3 game, I did not even once had my Empire split; although we had a few close calls.

First:

Absolute crown authority. Designate heir someone you DO NOT want it to be your heir, then give the guy you actually want all your lands except your last county and capital just before you die; you can use your ancestors as a reference to know when to start. Then switch again the inheritance to the future king you actually want and voila... they just inherited ALL your titles. You don't have to share.

Second:

No kings. YOU'RE the king. Nobody else is. Even with an empire with around 10 Kingdoms in it, I didn't let anyone have my kingdoms; all my kingdoms were inherited with the first trick and there would be no splitting upon my death. There is no penalty for having too many kingdoms; I was the emperor with 30 dukes under me and that was perfectly fine.

Third:

Don't overstrengthen your vassals. Particularly, don't let them have more than one Duchy. If they do, revoke them however you can before your death. Powerful Vassals make for really nasty civil wars.

Fourth:

Stockpile prisoners. I would usually join ally wars before my death to have a few guys locked up. Upon succession, I would execute them all to get 100 dread that would last me for a few years, just enough until the opposing factions stabilized.

Fifth:

Have your successor late in life. For this you want to be male, obviously. You can reproduce even at 80 years of age. If you inherit to a very young successor, there won't be as many times you will have to face it, and to top it off you won't have to deal with your inheritor going around ruining his life before you had a chance to play him, which happened plenty until I learned this trick. My successors hardly ever were any older than 20. Obviously, raise your own successor so you have a say in your personality. A craven or shy ruler will screw you up big time.

Sixth:

Religion and culture. Do your best to keep everyone the same. If you do, there will be no peasant revolts to interfere and foster other opposing factions. It will also let you take advantage of a tech lead and if you make a good religion or reformation of one, to have all your lands have the same bonuses. I would refuse to get more lands until I got everything in order.

Seventh:

Screw your children over, if you have to. I have sent children to their death, force them to take the vows, made them enemies and then left them defenseless and everything in between plenty of times, all for the good of the Empire, of course. If you're a sadist you can even take care of it yourself. Sometimes you are left with no other choice but the hard ones.

For most of the game you won't get to have Primogeniture, so this is how I kept my Empire growing and stable. I would call it 'tall' because I amassed over half a million gold, got all the Legacies, completed almost all major decisions save two which eluded me, and didn't grow my land for like half the game.

Not gonna lie, got a little boring near the end about 100 years before the 'end times' when I had basically won the game and the five next more powerful Empires could have allied against me and lost anyway.