Vassel Levies bug? Levy count too low with only some vassal.

[Good Thyme]

Hello, long time player since ck1 here.

We all know CK has calculations and mechanics that are not directly up-front. Sometimes this can create moments when the game does something unexpected, and usually because of overlooking a mechanic. In the spirit of that difficulty, I've spent some time wrapping my mind around one such instance in my most recent play through- some of my vassals simply do not have the levy count they should.

For context, I've played hundreds of hours across multiple play through, and this one is 867 start (low tech). I have noticed hat sometimes when giving good land away, your vassal will simply lose in an independence war against a force that seems weaker (for example a 1- territory count overtaking a 3-4 territory duke). Usually I chalk this up to fate, and perhaps the count pulling off a good fight. However, upon more closely expecting this play through, I've noticed an alarming trend. Some of my vassals, whether count, duke, or king (i'm emperor) are just simply missing levy.

To outline the situation more specifically, I've played a few decades on my current emperor, have given land away to new vassals and have also inherited vassals from my previous lord. I've dipped above the domain limit for a period of time, but have brought it back down to within limit for no penalty, the control of these lands are at 100, the populace is happy, and every vassal has de jure holdings to their titles. The problem is, some vassal will have full tier 1 building setups across a few pieces of land, be without debt in gold, prestige, piety while keeping within their own domain limit; AND still have but a small fraction of these levies allocated.

For example, I have one king vassal with 2400 levy within their land, be at 4/5 domain, but their troop count is still only 300 (this is all direct holdings). Meanwhile, I have one count (also directly vassal to me, no middle-man leader) with only a single holding, 600 levy count in territory, with 500 levy. This count is losing only 1/6th of its troops, while my other vassal is losing 5/6th of theirs. This inconsistency is across my entire empire, with counts, dukes, and kings all having either normal levy counts as expected to their territory or vastly reduced troop counts.

I cross-checked the post history around levy, and most talk about special troops never replenishing, and so to be clear there are absolutely no special troops. This is simply only LEVY count compared to the land that they hold directly. The government type is tribal, the happiness of the vassal are both happy and sad with no correlation either.

I'm currently in the process of testing to see if my leader dying will 'reset' these troop counts, and will reply with an update to this test, but I've tried reloading the save, and allowing years to pass to no avail. Their troop levy count is stuck in this stunted amount, while they continue to recruit men-at-arms and mercenary troops just fine.

What is going on? Is this a bug? Has anyone else noticed something similar in their games?

[Good Thyme]

Update- leader death, transition changes.

So I got to the death of my leader (died at age 70), and this forced the inheritance and redistribution of my levies across the empire. As predicted, this transition caused the bug to be fixed. These same vassal, with the same holdings and titles, are now showing an appropriate amount of levy. Instead of having 1/6 to even ZERO levy (literally 0 levy) with multiple pieces of land, these vassal now have about 5/6 of their levy-to-territory count (1-2 thousand). This happened instantly after the death of my leader.

Whatever is causing this loss of levy, it is a huge issue.

[Supernovas]

Originally posted by Good Thyme:

Update- leader death, transition changes.

So I got to the death of my leader (died at age 70), and this forced the inheritance and redistribution of my levies across the empire. As predicted, this transition caused the bug to be fixed. These same vassal, with the same holdings and titles, are now showing an appropriate amount of levy. Instead of having 1/6 to even ZERO levy (literally 0 levy) with multiple pieces of land, these vassal now have about 5/6 of their levy-to-territory count (1-2 thousand). This happened instantly after the death of my leader.

Whatever is causing this loss of levy, it is a huge issue.

I encountered this problem too but from my experience it only last a few monts at most. My theory is that upon death the game has to recalculate your levies based on your marshal skill but counts it as if you had 0 marshal while calculating your correct levy count.

[Good Thyme]

Originally posted by Supernovas:

I encountered this problem too but from my experience it only last a few monts at most. My theory is that upon death the game has to recalculate your levies based on your marshal skill but counts it as if you had 0 marshal while calculating your correct levy count.

i'm glad to hear it sometimes re-calibrates and gets fixed, but in this instance it stuck like this for decades. Even with 0 marshal, you get standard levy counts, just no bonuses. So this doesn't explain how some vassal were stuck with literally 0 levy for decades only to have thousands upon the death of my leader.

My only working theory is that somehow the domain limit, which i had at 17/8 for a couple of years, bugged their levy count- somehow being impacted by my penalty for being over the limit (after 5+ over you lose 100% of levy). I later distributed the land, back down to 7/8, and gained my own levy count again, but my vassal who i gave land during this penalty window never got their levy until my leader died 20-30 years later.