what am I meant to spend piety/prestige on?

[ikko]

Playing as a catholic in 1066. I don't understand how I'm meant to be spending my piety and prestige. I understand seeking indulgences from the Pope and stockpiling enough piety to eventually form your own religion. But assuming I don't want to form my own religion, I have nothing to do with my thousands of piety other than spend 250 of it every few years for the Pope to toss me some of his pocket change?

Same with prestige, am I meant to spend this as some sort of currency or am I benefited by just letting it stack up? I have 4000 of it now and I don't know how to use it. Declaring wars and creating titles costs a bit but I don't know what to do with the rest.

[SDxEair]

Conquer heathen lands with holy wars. Consecrate your bloodline. Hire Holy Orders to help defeat heathens.

[Dizzy Ladybug]

for feudal rulers there's very little to spend prestige on ; don't even worry about spending prestige if you aren't tribal.

tribal rulers need and want lots of prestige. their levels of fame give them more troops from vassals. prestige also pays for MaA and holding upgrades.

for piety there's a few things you'll want to spend it on :

1) creating a new or reforming a pagan religion, but you knew this already

2) the most helpful way to spend piety is buying claims. go down the middle learning tree and get the perk that gives you the buy claims interaction. then you can click on a ruler and buy a claim to one of their titles buy spending piety

3) you are playing a catholic so you can spend piety to get money from the pope, but you knew that already

4) some decisions have a piety cost, like forming a holy order or consecrating the bloodline.

[Karsh]

prestige can also be used to reform your culture to get a new tradition :D

and that's costly XD

[ShoneDock737]

One of the biggest prestige sinks are traditions for your culture, many cost around 4000-6000 prestige to put in.

[PostalGibbon]

Piety: if your a Catholic/Orthodox faith then use piety to get gold from the head of faith. Also Piety you can use to create holy orders and expanding holy orders give you even more gold.

Prestige: Unlock new cultural traditions for your culture. Also some special uses like 10k prestige cost to remove elective law from Holy Roman Emperor title.