Cities, Castles or Temples and why?

[Dufflebags]

Playing a pretty sweet iron man on castille right now. I already have a castle, temple and city and one empty slot. What should I build? What would you build? Why?

[vortex_13]

Depends on if you want to hold it yourself or not. If so then Castle. If not then City for the extra gold income.

[Dufflebags]

Originally posted by vortex_13:

Depends on if you want to hold it yourself or not. If so then Castle. If not then City for the extra gold income.

What is the advantage of holding yourself over extra gold?

[shakenidentity]

Originally posted by vortex_13:

Depends on if you want to hold it yourself or not. If so then Castle. If not then City for the extra gold income.

This. +1

Another good reason to choose cities over temples is that if you don't like who is running your city, you can replace them. You can't replace who is running your temples if you don't like them... unless you have set it up in your own religion to do so.

Now... I would choose temples over cities IF I could figure out how to make money from my own temple holdings. What I mean by this is that ordinarily, you cannot hold your own temple holdings and they must go to your clergy person that you can't choose. But if you set up your own religion with lay clergy, etc., you CAN hold your own temple holdings. However, as I've mentioned above, even with running my own temple holdings, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, as my temple holdings (even built up ones) net ZERO money. I can't seem to make any money at all from my own temple holdings. If someone else knows how to do that, please post how and if you think that would change your preference of temple to city holdings.

[mb3]

If its your spot of leadership, AKA kingdom capital, I'd build a castle, but be warned, there are drawbacks, it will increase your total domains by +1, but it will force any invading army to have to siege both forts to take the county.

[VipreRX]

Originally posted by Dufflebags:

What is the advantage of holding yourself over extra gold?

More troops, more direct tax income, takes twice as long to siege down a county due to two castles.

My personal preference is one castle, one temple and two cities in a four spot county.

[garthurbrown]

This will also be influenced by your culture. If you get benefits from traditions like City Keeper, Castle Keeper, Fervent Temple Builder, Parochialism you should bear those in mind.

[JC]

I think you get more troops total as well seeing it's your land verse the vassals. Use your vassals to make you money and give them all cities/temples. There are some lands you can drop 3 castles, those are extremely strong capitals

[Сааребас]

Playing tall is viable (castles) but cities are optimal.
Cities have the potential to increase development and income.

Imo the levies are almost worthless, only worth it if you really need to some extra troopnumbers and are deadset on playing tall.

[teron]

Usually cities, with the addition of building at least a couple of the initial buildings to get the mayor's gold rolling/ensuring that they have building chains that help with development.

The primary county holding, I may toss a single extra castle in but only rule it when below the domain cap for extra income/levies. Then give it up if I go above domain cap again.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Do NOT build cities if extra gold income is what you want; temples are far superior for this purpose. Cities only give you 20% of the gold they produce, potentially modified by a few temporary factors from events or lifestyle perks. Temples, on the other hand, as long as your religion has the Theocratic clerical tradition, can give you up to 50% of their monthly income simply by ensuring you maintain high relations with your Realm Priest. Yes, the unique buildings to a Temple holding produce slightly less tax per level than the equivalent City buildings, but the extra cut of the income you get more than makes up for that. Furthermore, if you have a religion that allows you to arrest your own Realm Priest, doing so then banishing them allows you to seize all of their savings for yourself; if your realm is reasonably built up this can amount to a lump sum of over 10,000 gold every 10 or 20 years. The only purpose cities serve is to speed up development growth.

[Batailleuse]

a bit of necro but here is my two cents.

early you are tempted to build fort/cities for extra levies/gold... which is fine.

but the bigger your empire the more vassals you end up having to manage, lot of people will want your holdings, lot of them try to undermine or usurp your domains/thrones.

If you have a hill or mountain, do build a fort, they are extra tanky, makes it harder for enemies to take them, which mean more time for you to come and bust their ass, and as long as the fort has not fallen you will get pretty good bonus for the fight again the person sieging.

and buiding 1 town per sector is fine as well, as you get extra developement from one building and if you pick the tree perk each town also provide +20% developement for the county.

however there is a few MASSIVE (not an understatement) to just slotting as many temples as you can with some spare forts and cities spread around but not too many of them.

1- a temple provide only slightly less than a town in term of levies, but you get a control bonus (nice to counter any raid/assault/event) high control = maximum tax input for you.
2- they provide faith on it's own it's stupidily strong as depending on faith you can basically get free gold, and how much gold the pope gives you depends on your piety .... so more faith = more piety = more gold, and you can cheese ask him tons of gold all the time to a point where it's actually giving you more than a town.
3- if you Create a holy order early enough, they can represent a non negligeable "free" army, like in my game top size army around year 1100 was about 24k (provided they field everything) and the biggest Holy order was 9500 alone, that means even you are an underdog, the holy order costing nothing but faith can definitely save your ass, or turn the scale significantly in your favour (provided you fight againt another faith)
4- related to 2, but stupid high amount of faith means being able to "build" your own faith with any bonus you want, you can obviously pick and mix whatever you fancy, but the real issue you usually have is that it's EXTREMELY costly to fork a religion, but there are insane advantages for doing so.

you can basically make your leader the defacto faith leader on top of being the leader, negating some of the cut the head od faith usually gets, since everything goes to YOU, and you can get extra cut from your vassals as well.

you also can pick who will be your priest representative, a blessing in disguise because more often than none the cleric you get is literal crap for his job and you cant do anything about it, except try to kill it to replace him for another gamble cleric for life, being able to apoint anyone is really worth, and it count as a seat on council .... so you can please one extra high value vassals compared to not reforming your faith.

and related to another point i'll mention later, with certain perks from your culture that have scaling bonus of Devotion, the more faith you generate .. means every ruler will get to max Devotion rating much faster, hence getting those perks much faster as well. and for instance we can get basically +12 prowess from that, +6 from the prestige rating, so +24 prowess alone for free on top of whatever else you can get.

so ... yeah holy monk warriors that get zealous + cultural buffs + good perks + become knight that are trained (and allowed to marry) will make the literall absolute best knights (and fighting army) period. a knight with 40-50 prowess is basically as strong as a whole man at arm unit


some of the stuff i like to put in my faith tenets.

- literalism : just great to have if you usually get lot of people with intellectual perks. through education. (some synergy with warrior monk culture, as if they get the philospher perk they get extra prowess on top as well)
- Alexandrian catechism : 20 % bonus life xp, all around easy xp for your dudes.
- Esoterism : chance to gain wise during studies, and it's considered a virtue (so +1 faith/month to anyone having it)
- Ritual celebration : gives faith when you do Feast, and more chance to get more people going, people refusing actually lose faith. usually a good combo with temperate trait ... bascically each feast you do is a lot of stress relief, you get the "revealer perk" which is extra perk as well. great to pick to manage big empires and you are not too warmonger.
- Carnal Exalatation : free 25% fertility for your whole faith, and makes Lust an actual virtue, so ... basically anyone with lust is at a free 50% fertility bonus with extra +1 faith generation. so much better than chasisty in every way possible. considering the "math game" ... the more offspring the better chance you have to make actual good ones, especially if you plan on doing some bloodline down the line. put that with Polyamory in your faith... your dynasty just becomes a baby factory.

- if you plan on waging war through faith, you need one of the 3 "offensive" tenet depending on your faith to be able to declare holy wars, not 100% required as you can still wage "normal wars", but an easy way to spend faith, and usualy can declare wars forwhole kingdoms without other valid claims, but for a more war mongering style usually also pick any of those:
- "Unrelenting faith", +4 prowess for everyone is very good to make badass warriors.
- you also usually need to reform your culture to gets some perks like "Warrior Priest" which give all your faction people that have intellectual/monk/theologian extra prowess and +1 prowess per level of devotion, so up to +6 .
- Warrior by merit "gives +1 prowess per level of fame" so again up to +6
- Sorcelous Metallurgy (need to allow Witches in your faith) also grand a +1 prowess per devotion, you usually more frequently produce very good artifact through comissions, and ALL your Barrack building also produce Faith. (very synergistic i would say)

so ...
+4 unrelenting faith
+6 and +6 prowess from warrior priest/sorcelous at max Piety tier (6)
+6 from max merit tier (6)

basically you get anywhere from +7 to +22 Prowess ... doing nothing else.


but outside of the warmongering perks out of faith, i think the biggest perk is just not to have to worry about managing so much your empire and your vassals, simply because you have much less of them from towns/forts you would otherwise have to build.

just keep your head of state priest happy ... he will manage your 100 temples across the empire keeping your money flow steady if anything else and providing about 75-80% of what a town/fort levy would provide.

build 1 town (cause you need at least one to build a temple) + temples every dutchy ... done, the control bonus will also be super super nice to keep your empire stable.

now you only need to control the "special" dutchy that has the capital slot, build your military academy in there and keep those in your De Jury titles between your heirs, and you are good, you will have Knights empowered by the power of god himself with 30-50 prowess and +200% effciency. just laugh at every army now. god will be your shield.

alternatively, just do a big lol faith with naked cabalist people... send your naked unkillable knights feast on your enemies.

[jerrypocalypse]

I'll add this since it was already necro-ed, but another benefit to having an extra castle is being able to grant it to your heir to get them some benefits, without them have a whole county/duchy to mess up. Or giving one to your other non-heir children if you want them have their own "domain" without being too much of a threat to your heir.

[pein]

maybe it's new, but granting a secondary castles makes lowborns part of a house. generally the name of the castle. so renaming to 'Fake' would make them part of the house Fake. for asians it's double name like Yazi Yazi, for norse is random like Moring, and for arabic just 'id' at the end of holding name. I named it FAKE ID and they are named IDID :D
this happens with counties too, and also starts generating educational perks, based on their age and education level they get 0-9 into a tree, if they got a nickname and end of tree trait like admin, they get a full tree but then focus on something else on same education. So a scholar will be either on theologian or whole body line. The admin is for bonus to antiquarians +10 (also shy trait 10 and 30 from making any artifact then 27+ learning to get max). But to get high stat courtiers you need to grant and revoke it, and that needs 1 year, friend or relative landed person or their spouse. Also having high amenities, most of your realm and your culture will accept invitations to your court. The higher the better but it costs a lot so the minimum seems to be 3-3-3-3-3 on all court amenities, that will allow inviting free a city mayor after revoking their title (-80). 2-2-2-2-2 as a king won't be enough unless friends, relatives or matching traits. So basically you find a (lowborn) high learning person with a trait (usually has a nickname too) and land him, start claiming his title right away. After a year you revoke and call back to the court, now he has 35-40 learning. Ideal for artificers and physicians or priests.

For house membership, having a castle seems best, if it's in your capital, then it seems to consider it as same holding for some cases, like it will attend feasts and hunts like courtiers and wards don't have to move. But a hook on you and can't get rid of their council spots, sometimes alliances and hooks can make you have bad mayors as your councillors.

For cities, there is an advantage. Landed characters get 2 more kids than wandering/courtiers so 'unlanded', I guess, when wandering they are considered member of a pool and don't even get kids, unless random seducing events hit.
the limit is (1 default)+(1 per rank of baron to emperor or parents rank)+(2 landed)+(0/1 coinflip) so 1-2 to 8-9 per couple (each spouse can have this much, then blocked until a kid dies, but new marriage can get more). A king or previous king, their kids are 'princess' title, having more kids than lowborns or just duchess or baroness.
So the real advantage of cities, is this 2 kids extra, and they get to have kids faster than usual. Cities can be revoked with no tyranny, so when the female hits 45 you revoke and replace. And you can combine this two, by landing them in castle to get a house title, revoke, recall, land them in city to have more kids. Houses start to earn renown and perks.
It's much quicker to breed out a few hundred of your house members. Best legacy perks are +30 marriage, then kin line for fertility and then studious youth for better education (+4 base so generally should be impossible to get 1 star and most often 3-4 star educated). Stats and traits matter for marriages, fabled house renown will allow you to take over land just by having same religion (or just syncretism) and bypass matrimonial by having a few genius nepfews.

City rulers kids lose their parents claims if their parents don't claim it themselves, so it's a good way to cleanse your high stat relatives of their claims. Generally the nephews, uncles, nieces, cousins are your claimants, sharing culture group, culture and religion, house, makes it the highest opinion ever possible, but those claims will come back to haunt you later. And while taking their titles and ransoming is short term solution, letting them go for renouncing claims and a hook, you can push up their taxes (not the levies, they are useless and comes with opinion malus). Now they are perfect vassals. For cities, it's the same principle but easier, their kids lose the claims, now they can marry a vassal, get the juicy legacy bonus, the renown, but no claims.
A female can pump out kids from 16 to 45, then you revoke for -80 opinion and still comes back to your court with the kids. Marry their kids and land them a city each (they follow each other so best to land the younger ones first then parents). IF you marry with relative girls matrimonially you also get hooks on each to call them back separately.

Tried with 19 cities, defo overkill, too much micromanagement. But you get adult rulers In cities, usually same culture and religion as the previous who died with no kids. Sometimes the wife is elected, often their kids. Revoking mayors seems to push them around to other cities nearby, like saving memory not generating them until seen. Weirdly enough you can kind of prevent that by filtering your vassals and going over your mayors profile.
City rulers are adults, and often same profile, like good steward or good knight, but can be good in something, might relate with development of the land and might be random who you get, but it's an adult, so it has decent stats compared to baby castle owners.
For a breeding project, you can do 2-4 cities for your target traits, like amazonian 2 cities then their kids marry each other, other genius kids and they marry each other. Beauty overrated, seducer and gallant kind of useless and leads to crimes and plots. Breeding ugly people when not needing more herculean knights is kind of fun, they focus on their jobs better. Tend to be more lucky with diseases and less lucky with plots in big courts.
But if you just want to boom your dynasty, focusing it for 100 years you get 3-4 generations and a lot of good vassals. Then they passively marry your vassals most often and improves their stats.
A few castles are good, don't ally them, don't land very close relatives in secondary castles or you can't revoke. I don't do token marriages often, I prefer keeping my bloodline clean, and not giving claims to other countries, but you can get quick grandkids in cities and use them for alliances instead of your daughters. Heck, even grand granddaughters and they can ally your kids. You can technically marry your 5th gen :D have to check how much percent it gives for imbreds =))

And the way I do is the follows: check unmarried house members not a ruler, have hook, invite to the court, check some of the non hook ones
marry them with best traits or stats
invite more traits and stats
mix friends and family and land them in castles to give house titles (even if matrimonial) then revoke, recall and land in cities
marry very old ladies to very young knights
marry old knights with young ladies, generally helps to have age diff, you want one of them to die and have a friend or hook on other who survives, to recall.
have ritualized friendship or host grand weddigs for befriend trait to get easy befriending options
old ladies give prestige to knights, so can be useful, higher prestige levels are more valuable, and prestige seems to select that knight for training commanders and military academy trait buffs more often.
have a filter for unmarried adults in court
there is a mod to demand conversion of courtiers and vassals, showing their numbers
converting them reduces the plots and they generally stay longer in court
you can go to the crown menu for succession, swap on vassals and republic (city rulers), check all and revoke weak ones or infertile spouse ones, then you land the older ladies who can get some kids out, reducing your total number of courtiers, above 60 was usually generating too many plots and diseases, now plagues are different but kind of the same
pause yearly or after wars and marry and convert everyone, repeat, until you get high prestige high stat courtiers and good vassals too
you can also filter for unmarried vassal rulers of your house and marry those mayor kids to them.

Batailleuse- I play random tribal faiths usually, or custom, kind of bored of catholic or muslim
technically control is good for priests, I don't want high learning priests to fight and die, having your priest as antiquarian and or physician is good too. herbalist and high learning and mystic is the good physicians traits. well, generally admin+shy for antiquarian who had an inspiration completed already (so poet with poet tradition maybe)
for knights you can train them well with hunts and military academy and going for acolades for travel safety, your caravan master can improve a ton
discovered by accident when people send their kids to my army that high prestige seems to prioritize them while using train commanders mode. it's basically forcing them to be knights, but you can force and forbid manually, I found that it's better to have high martial or high prowess knights on military education and forbid others unless they are acolytes. accidentally raised an army too close to raiders and lost my banner then gained it back, and was high quality, that run I had 3-4 knight +1 +2 modifiers and not much renown tapestry, so went with +6+8 knight banners and artifacts, seems that if you have more and forbid a few high prowess ones on other educations and old guys losing prowess (or land them in cities to remove them), but have military education ones, they improve fast, commander traits make more sense for them and based on overall prowess, you get knight recruitment events more often, actual house members which matters a lot early, so having more knights possible improves them faster
I don't want to give away taxes for levy reinforcement, higher control from priest is not useful that often but less harming
yeah there are good options on making everything a crime and seek indulgences, or make everything allowed and just enjoy the show
I dont like high intrigue that much and tend not to train my heirs and courtiers on it, use the few accidental ones and keep criminals low, I don't enjoy seducing and murdering that much, there are enough peaceful options if you just breed kids
generally is good to revoke some female vassals for their crimes, and it's kind of good strategy to seduce vassals and take their lands but prolly will try some polyamory kingdom later
generally I don't mind when the wife cheats with my genius nephews as long as the kids gets the genius traits, when you replace all vassals to your house, then you start to gain renown quicker