Should I upgrade vassal holdings?

[KingKickAss]

I've made a few threads here lately and you guys have been a huge help!

I notice that I'm only allowed to own castle holdings while Cities and Temples are controlled by a Vassal. Should I be upgrading these too? Or will my vassals just save up money and upgrade them? I assume it comes back to me anyways because of taxes, right?
I should note that my income seems very good for the state of the game I'm in(+24.0 currently).

I might as well ask this in the same thread, but should I be building cities too? It says Cities/Temple technically aren't mine but should I be trying to fill out the spots in my kingdom with them?

[garthurbrown]

For the second question, yes. Even though you can't directly hold them they provide you with taxes and levies.

For the first question, it depends. Always upgrade your own holdings first, obviously, but if you have nothing else to spend gold on, it never hurts to help your vassals upgrade their holdings, which makes them less vulnerable in raids, and gives you more taxes and levies.

[steventirey]

Vassals will upgrade holdings. You can upgrade their holding as well, but it shouldn't be your first priority. As vassals won't give you 100% of their troops or taxes, you won't get the full amount of stuff from a building of theirs as well.

Say for example you get 50% of the levies belonging to a vassal. If a building you pay for in their county raises the levy count by +150, you are effectively only getting 75 more levies from that building. The same goes for taxes. And since you aren't getting the full benefit of the building, it will take far longer for you to break even on the purchase.

You should always focus on improving the counties you directly hold first.
Then focus on lands you will soon directly hold (by revoking titles).
Then improve the lands of your direct vassals.

[jerrypocalypse]

They'll build in their city/temple, but slowly and not always in a way that will benefit you the most. If you have some excess gold, it certainly doesn't hurt to build things for them to speed up the process and to make sure what you want is built there.

If you have the gold, definitely be building new holdings in your counties, starting with your capital county. Yeah, that means more vassals for the temples and cities, but it also means more income and levies for you.

[Hemnlyr]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

I might as well ask this in the same thread, but should I be building cities too? It says Cities/Temple technically aren't mine but should I be trying to fill out the spots in my kingdom with them?

Yes. One thing to consider is that you can't change the buildings in temple holdings once they are built (you might be able to with cities if you kick out the mayor temporarily?).

Therefore it is worth your while to fill empty building slots in these holdings with the level 1 buildings you would want. I've never seen the AI change these once they are built so you'll be locking them in to upgrading them.