Vassal's opinion of Heir

[Artos]

Hi, I am still relatively new player. Recently I managed to get enough land for the Empire. I spend a lot of time making sure my vassals like me and won't rebel and make sure my heir gets all my land and titles, everyone was happy about it for a long time (10-15 years ?). However after my character's death, my heir took place and they straight up decided to hate the heir and rebel. There was no issue with the religion, no issue with different culture, just straight up - negative opinion (-50/-70 opinion with all vassals).

They started to rebel quite quickly, I had less than a year to improve the situation, which was impossible to improve (simply not enough time for sway or not enough gold for gift). The war for independence started, which I managed to win, yet my character got really unlucky events and died soon after, which started another war for independence, because once again my vassals didn't like the new heir...

Is there a way to improve the relations between heir and vassals before heir becomes the ruler ? Not gonna lie, it gets really annoying when u literally have not enough time to stop the rebellion and new heir gets straight away negative opinion among all vassals. Not even 1 liked him... imo in real life there was at least 50/50 chance whether heir would be liked or not...

It's not like they didn't know who the heir will be, for many years absolutely no problem... after death.... I have a problem

[Novia]

You can build up the heir's power base prior to succession, be it through land, allies or money (for mercenaries mostly) to ensure they can hold the throne upon gaining it. Vassals who are considered allied to the throne are unable to rebel conventionally (though they might still plot against you intrigue wise).

So basically prior to succession, land them if you can (not too early but some time to build up prestige), otherwise ensure the heir receives the lion share of the most powerful territory in your previous ruler's personal domain. Marry off relevant relatives to vassals who your biggest internal threats (even betrothal alliances work) to buy yourself some time, and improve relations via council tasks and personal schemes for those who aren't too disloyal.

Overall however, just be prepared for cleaning the house each time a ruler dies. Even if they aren't overthrowing your dynasty, every ruler beneath you wants to limit your power over them. If they are unreasonable, provoke them, defeat them, remove their holdings (and all others who rebel too) and uplift a nobody into their former demesne. The newly minted nobles will be more loyal to you if you choose them correctly.

Do note that foreign allies are unreliable for internal struggles, so make sure you can stand alone once all other considerations are made. When in doubt, money, mercenaries, weak cowardly vassals, and spare relatives will save your throne.

[dwarfpcfan]

Vassal opinion of your ruler gives an opinion bonus or penalty to your heir. Meaning if your vassals really like your ruler, your heir will get a bonus.

Beyond that, now that we have Royal Court, you should keep your court grandeur maxed out at all times because that also gives you a opinion bonus if your court grandeur exceed expectations.

above and beyond that, make sure your duchies and counties are divided to your vassals according to their de jure titles. Vassals really hate it when someone else except them holds a title that is de jure or their own.

above and beyond that, make sure you are always the strongest in your realm, max out your men at arms, make sure you hold the most and best counties so that your vassals will stay on their toes.

make sure 1 or two years before your ruler dies that you save up your gold for bribes, parties and the like so that once your heir takes over he can quickly give himself a huge boost to vassal opinion by making it rain.

It bears mentioning that vassal management is exactly why the stewardship focus is by far the most useful tree, there's an entire tree dedicated to vassal management and appeasement that once maxed out just flat out gives a +30 to vassal opinion.

Really as boring as it may sound, beyond the first and maybe second ruler the way to go is to focus first on stewardship max out the vassal management and the architect trees, then jump into learning and finish out the health focus tree. Then you get long reigned rulers who depart with maxed out vassal opinion and huge coffers of gold

do that every ruler.

[PostalGibbon]

Save gold (when your ruler turns 50 start to keep eye of rulers health, when it turns to poor its time to end any wars and save gold for succession) so your heir can buy mercenary armies and can shower vassals with gifts. There is also know thy self trait in learning skill tree which gives you one year warning prior to death.

Avoid heirs with sinful traits like sadistic. (example sadistic give -35 opinion penalty whole realm if playing christian faiths).

Put your marshal focus to increase levies that increases threshold.

Look at your vassals feudal contracts that are in faction to throw you to the ditch. Lower taxes, levies if they are in extreme, to lower their opinion penalties.

High and absolute crow authority gives opinion penalties lower authority temporarily you can raise it back up later.

[Bordric]

Good suggestions already.

When heir takes the throne you can marry off any siblings to the most powerful members of a faction and ally them. They will drop out of the faction. Can even betroth family then break it later if you wish before they come of age. You will have the realm in control after a few years.

[Kimlin]

Have maxed out good men at arms and when vassals want to rebel, destroy them.

[Vinze88]

it's almost broke i say.

Byzantium Imploded

[Artos]

Thanks, A lot of good suggestions

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

Vassal opinion of your ruler gives an opinion bonus or penalty to your heir. Meaning if your vassals really like your ruler, your heir will get a bonus.

It's been a while since I launched that save. However I didn't see any positive opinion bonus on my vassals on my new Ruler, despite old ruler having stable 100 opinion on everyone. The new ruler imidiately had -50/-70 on everyone. Yes some negative came from high crown authority, some also came from "short reign" and "wants a seat on a council" (Probably the dumbest negative opinion modifier when person wanting it is weak...)

Anyway, it's really dumb that all of then decided to hate the new ruler and immediately join a faction against me, at least they should add some RNG factor to getting those negative modifiers.. realistically irl not everyone would hate the new ruler.

Originally posted by PostalGibbon:

Save gold (when your ruler turns 50 start to keep eye of rulers health, when it turns to poor its time to end any wars and save gold for succession) so your heir can buy mercenary armies and can shower vassals with gifts. There is also know thy self trait in learning skill tree which gives you one year warning prior to death.

Avoid heirs with sinful traits like sadistic. (example sadistic give -35 opinion penalty whole realm if playing christian faiths).

Put your marshal focus to increase levies that increases threshold.

Look at your vassals feudal contracts that are in faction to throw you to the ditch. Lower taxes, levies if they are in extreme, to lower their opinion penalties.

High and absolute crow authority gives opinion penalties lower authority temporarily you can raise it back up later.

Cool tricks, I might have to use them. I wish there was an option, to improve those relations before heir takes the throne. Like during "call hunt" there could be 10% chance that heir somehow gains positive opinion among vassals (and not me) by for example showing excellent hunting skills or some kind of "army maneuver training" decision for heir in which you can have 20% chance for heir to show excellent leadership skills and gain some positive opinion.

Don't get me wrong. I like when plans go to bin and you have to think fast before everything collapses. Yes heir could die, yes rebelion still can happen, but why make it a constant factor of the gameplay ?

[Ichangedmyname]

Good tips.

[Harris]

Basically being a ruler is running a protection racket over a county, duchy etc. If you view it from that perspective, things start to make a lot of sense. Nobody wants to pay protection to some dude, and everyone wants others to pay them. They only accept your rule so long as you're stronger than them. So as soon as they are stronger than you (or they THINK they are) - they will join a faction. And appeasing them is simply a way to make them think they'd be better off as part of your realm than otherwise.

Which leads to another point, vassals are only worthwhile if they're actually bringing you enough gold for the trouble - levies are mostly irrelevant as far as battles go anyway. This means while it's worth it to be King of France - it's not worth it to be Tsar of Russia. My last game I had like 10 gold income from the whole empire, went feudal, started building up Kyiv, gave up basically the whole empire but my duchy but ended with the same gold income of 10 from county development. Protecting vassals that bring in a princely sum of 0.1 gold is just not worth it. So is investing into building up their counties since the amount they kick back is too small to justify the investment, so it would just end up making them stronger.

To be honest, my most powerful and stable realm was when I started in a diamond mine county in India. That alone gave me more gold than a couple underdeveloped empires and basically enabled me to do what I want as I had army for it.

Being a bully aka dread ruler is also a fun way to play because it keeps the sheer amount of vassal bs in check. Make no mistake though, you still need to have your rule backed with a solid military. I have fond memories of Russian Empire I ran through fear and torture. Rebellions still happened of course, and the realm was poor to have a good army. But I was allied to Byzantium superpower through Orthodoxy, and it was sending doomstacks to fight my internal wars for me all the time.