late game liberty and independence faction spam

[Average AMD neanderthal]

how do you guys reliably deal with it once you have a large kingdom/empire? i somehow manage i guess. but its always by spamming marriages to other empires for free defensive allies, and saving up a crap ton of gold that just gets blown on these things most of the time,

since i can't afford to upgrade 'too' much as i have to consider how long a war could potentially last. wars aren't exactly cheap when you only have a few thousand more manpower than all the dukes and kings that want to end you.

i do ofc use many sways, murders, hooks and all sorts of things. but i can definitely say that the frequency and severity of these factions outweigh how fast i can use all these methods to stop people in time. and i don't have infinite children to marry off either.

[Duuvian]

Bribes, sway, feasts have worked for a few successions for me. Also try to maintain as large an army as you can since they have to match your military power, so that means no raiding or wars for a few years after succession. I've come close to an independence or replace liege factions going off but I don't think any have in a while. I had one early on when I had a greedy ruler who became stressed from gifts.

I don't think I've had to do much intrigue inside the realm, but my characters haven't been very good at that yet . I've sent the spymaster to look for secrets in ambitious vassal's courts, but can't recall finding anything useful before.

One thing to do may be to conquer some counties ruled by a person of another religion. Usually you can revoke these without tyranny, which causes them to revolt even if that is hopelessly life threatening (like when my character needed piety to reform a religion). Your unhappy vassals (such as other culture) might decide to piggyback on their revolt, meaning you can revoke their titles to spread them out or give them to dynasty members. Usually it's the other vassals of the same religion (because they won't like you due to being other religion and likely other culture) but sometimes unhappy vassals of your religion will join them too. It's possible I'm wrong though, in which case you would have to make someone of your religion revolt by trying to revoke their title when they aren't imprisoned by you.

EDIT: Also set your chancellor to improve relations internally instead of with outside rulers. Once you are big enough in CK3 foreign relations don't matter as much unless there is a Pope-esque figure in your religion that is not you.

Another thing to remember is to keep your vassal Kings and Dukes as weak as you can by only giving them limited holdings. However if they are too weak, they will be toppled by their vassals eventually. However if every county is held by a different dynasty member, well at least if they coalition against their liege the titles are still in the dynasty... So I breed a lot of dynasty members and each county goes to a different holder, with the King also holding their primary duchy plus capital county.

If you ever get the opportunity to revoke titles without tyranny, you might as well if it's not a dynasty member. If it's a dynasty member and they have more then one county, I strip all but their last one away and give them as a vassal to someone else to be troubled by. Then I give the stripped counties one each to unlanded dynasty members, transfer those back to their de jure lieges, and my realm is slightly less prone to conflict among the vassals until my dynasty manages to inevitably breed it's way to civil war due most rulers having claims on someone else's titles from both parents having claims all over the place.

One thing to consider if you are lacking dynasty members to give titles to is to make women equal. (I did so through religious acceptance when I reformed the religion) That doubles the pool of dynasty members able to hold titles. Just remember to marry them so their offspring are dynastic though; otherwise the heirs will be of another dynasty.

It's only been a few decades but I haven't noticed titles slipping from my dynasty's grasp at an alarming rate now that first daughters inherit. The female rulers seem to do a pretty decent job of keeping titles in the dynasty by making matrilineal marriages (or more commonly by marrying fellow dynasty members as they hold all the titles in the realm)

[chomisek]

I always groom priceless different faith prisoners for life and execute some when in need of high dread.

[snuggleform]

You need to plan for this in advance, rather than react to it

-personally be guardian of your future heirs as this gives you some measure of control over their traits. Traits can cause a lot of negative opinion if you don't watch them carefully

-every vassal should be of your dynasty, culture, and religion. This gives the max opinion boost. If not, try to replace them when you can by revoking their titles. You should do this pruning early and consistently instead of waiting until you have a large empire of unruly vassals

-try to use either diplomacy, or steward trees. They both contain a lot of answer for keeping vassals happy. You can also try to be a jerk, but I find being a jerk is a lot of labor as you have to keep tabs on their imprisonment status (if they die, their replacement isn't in jail and you have to rejail them which just gets annoying).

-create a religion that uses Communal Identity (+10 opinion if same faith) and I forgot the exact name, the one that makes feasts give piety (+5 opinion)