Give excess titles to kids or no?

[blehboy07]

I'm just looking for some tips on the best way to handle taking back land after you lose it on succession. Should I be giving excess titles to my children or to just random guests? Then when I die and lose those lands should I just be declaring war to get those lands back or rather stay allied with family members who I gave those lands to?

For example starting as Welch and you have to give away a few counties to get under threshold. Should I give those to kids? Because when I die I lose those lands.

[Wraith]

You can conquer all of Wales and form the kingdom then as long as you don't grab enough territory to form another kingdom like England your kids will inherit the duchies and counties of your land and the primary heir will inherit the kingdom title and keep your nation from splintering apart.

[Freedom]

The goal of the game is to spread your family, to become famous. You do that by having family members become rulers. So, I say, yes you should. But only 1st gen, when you are weak. Later, give non heirs a duchy and set them free.

[-=Prepper_Jack=-]

It depends. If you're just a count, you're going to lose the lands regardless, unless you disinherit all but one heir. If you're a duke, you should be able to conquer another duchy per son, though I will say it does get buggy if you're in a megaduchy. Gave one of three sons something like 25 titles and it still said he was going to inherit part of my remaining duchy. If you are a king or emperor, it's easy enough to revoke titles through forging claims if you can't conquer new land for some reason.

Generally speaking, if you want your heir to get one duchy, give a duchy to your other kids, and it should be fine. If you're in late game and can consistently maintain two duchies, give two duchies away to your kids. I'd also suggest modifying their feudal contract to ensure partition is enforced. Once that land is given to your kids, any other remaining land should be handed to people who aren't your kids.

If there's a lot of dynasty members out there who are unlanded, and don't stand to inherit, consider giving them a shot with a county. The more of your dynasty that is landed, the faster your dynastic renown grows. That said, you don't necessarily want to end up being the only family of your religious group - which can happen if you only hand land out to family. Everyone just starts marrying other family members. Landing other characters is quite helpful in that regard. Also, I personally find that giving land to court chaplains of lower vassals is quite helpful in converting freshly conquered kingdoms of different faiths.

[=яενєηąŋŧ=]

Don't give any land to your primary heir, ever. They'll leave your court for one, and do dumb stuff like marry their Genius son to a 60-year-old Leper from Bavaria.

For your other kids, any land you give them *should* count for succession. IE, if you only have one kingdom, one Duchy, and four counties in your Domain, it should all go to your primary heir if all his brothers also have a Duchy and four counties. Should. Succession is kinda broken, to be fair.

Of course, if your primary heir then gets killed for some reason and his brother is now the heir and holding as much as you do, he's probably not gonna get anything from your domain now. Seems best to start further down the line and work your way towards the primary for this reason.

Also don't put them right next to each other or they'll probably try to fight each other, take land, screw up the succession weights, get themselves killed, etc because everyone of your bloodline not under your personal control instantly becomes a suicidal lemming with intelligence as their dump stat.

Game also doesn't care what the land is, so you could make your one kid the Duke of three cows in some tribal land in Ireland as long as he has the same numbers as you kid holding Ile de France.

[Mayor]

You can give your titles to your kids freely and that is fine. That is actually recommended, just keep primary title, duchy, and kingdom/empire for yourself. I strongly advise not to hold a bunch of counties yourself as if you have say 8 counties and have 4 kids, then on death they get split between your kids and worse yet if those titles are in a different duchy/kingdom/empire then those titles will be created for free on death and given to your heirs. (even if you didn't create them yourself) That is what splits empires up badly. However if you give those titles away while alive, destroy any extra duchy/kingdom/empires then on succession everything stays good and stable and your primary heir gets your realm.

Personally I focus on baronies since those never get split up.

Edit: On Ironman using this strategy I have had a 100% stable Francia Empire, never has any kingdom been created and given to an heir since I preemptively give any titles I get away to someone else.

[=яενєηąŋŧ=]

Originally posted by -=Malovane=-:

If there's a lot of dynasty members out there who are unlanded, and don't stand to inherit, consider giving them a shot with a county. The more of your dynasty that is landed, the faster your dynastic renown grows. That said, you don't necessarily want to end up being the only family of your religious group - which can happen if you only hand land out to family. Everyone just starts marrying other family members.

Note that you only get renown for dynasty members who are independent and not the subject of other dynasty members, including you. So if you're getting +2.5 from having dynasty members as all the independent Dukes of Ireland, then one of them becomes King of Ireland, suddenly you're down to +1 renown instead.

The best way I've found to farm renown is to get your dynasty into Duchies that are subjects of big foreign powers. They're safe from external invasion and will breed and marry inside that kingdom by themselves over time.

Can also be useful to have dynasty members of different faiths groups because they can marry within that faith group. Put a dynasty member on the Throne of Navarra as England and got furious when they immediately converted to Islam, but then realized they'd be able to spread their kids throughout the Muslim world now, which is a benefit in the long run.

[Mayor]

Originally posted by =яενєηąŋŧ=:

Originally posted by -=Malovane=-:

If there's a lot of dynasty members out there who are unlanded, and don't stand to inherit, consider giving them a shot with a county. The more of your dynasty that is landed, the faster your dynastic renown grows. That said, you don't necessarily want to end up being the only family of your religious group - which can happen if you only hand land out to family. Everyone just starts marrying other family members.

Note that you only get renown for dynasty members who are independent and not the subject of other dynasty members, including you. So if you're getting +2.5 from having dynasty members as all the independent Dukes of Ireland, then one of them becomes King of Ireland, suddenly you're down to +1 renown instead.

The best way I've found to farm renown is to get your dynasty into Duchies that are subjects of big foreign powers. They're safe from external invasion and will breed and marry inside that kingdom by themselves over time.

Can also be useful to have dynasty members of different faiths groups because they can marry within that faith group. Put a dynasty member on the Throne of Navarra as England and got furious when they immediately converted to Islam, but then realized they'd be able to spread their kids throughout the Muslim world now, which is a benefit in the long run.

In addition to what is said above, if you have no titles and any sons/daughters ask to leave your court I usually let them. I was playing a Chola game and somehow a bunch of dynasty members conquered their own kingdoms on their own.

[BrowneHawk]

Im all about giving away stuff to kids, I even maternal marriage for my daughters and give their new husbands land. Gotta spread those seeds.

[=яενєηąŋŧ=]

Oh, and there's also an explot that allows you to hold an infinite number of Kingdom titles forever without succession becoming an issue. Just add a law to the extra title like Male Preference. Even if your *realm law* is male preference and this doesn't actually change anything, it still counts as a title with a special succession law and doesn't count *at all* in succession calculations.

I wouldn't usually recommend exploits, but the AI constantly uses this one currently so I see no reason to handicap yourself until they fix it.

[-=Prepper_Jack=-]

Originally posted by =яενєηąŋŧ=:

Note that you only get renown for dynasty members who are independent and not the subject of other dynasty members, including you.

That's not entirely true. You get renown based on the number of living members, which can be fairly significant if you ensure your dynasty is getting as much lands as possible. If they don't have land, they eventually die out. Right now, in the game I'm playing, I'm getting 9.5 renown a month, with 274 living members of the dynasty. All living members live within my lands.

Edit: Also, it states "A ruler does not generate renown if their liege is of the same dynasty". Not entirely sure how that works, but perhaps if you, as Emperor, had Kings under you who were not your dynasty, but all of his vassals were of your dynasty, perhaps they would generate more renown.

[=яενєηąŋŧ=]

Originally posted by BrowneHawk:

Im all about giving away stuff to kids, I even maternal marriage for my daughters and give their new husbands land. Gotta spread those seeds.

Be very careful with this if you're giving away a kingdom while playing as a culture that can adopt an elective succession. AI *loves* to pass elective, and children from a Matrilineal marriage don't seem to count as actually being his kids for election candidacy, so even if he's the only elector he'll vote to give the kingdom away to some random French courtier because he can't select his own kid.

[blehboy07]

Appreciate the responses everybody. So it sounds like I should be giving land to kids as needed, except for my heir, who shouldn't get anything as they'll get my biggest title when I die anyway right?

[Mayor]

Originally posted by blehboy07:

Appreciate the responses everybody. So it sounds like I should be giving land to kids as needed, except for my heir, who shouldn't get anything as they'll get my biggest title when I die anyway right?

Yeah pretty much, and also because you don't want your heir to do his own stuff. (marriage, wars, claims). I have had an entire family die because of that stuff. And an unrelated note, go into your marshal/war tab and forbid your sons from being knights/commanders unless they are really good.

[=яενєηąŋŧ=]

Originally posted by -=Malovane=-:

Originally posted by =яενєηąŋŧ=:

Note that you only get renown for dynasty members who are independent and not the subject of other dynasty members, including you.

That's not entirely true. You get renown based on the number of living members, which can be fairly significant if you ensure your dynasty is getting as much lands as possible. If they don't have land, they eventually die out. Right now, in the game I'm playing, I'm getting 9.5 renown a month, with 274 living members of the dynasty. All living members live within my lands.

Edit: Also, it states "A ruler does not generate renown if their liege is of the same dynasty". Not entirely sure how that works, but perhaps if you, as Emperor, had Kings under you who were not your dynasty, but all of his vassals were of your dynasty, perhaps they would generate more renown.

You're correct, you'll still get the renown for having living members, but the second part is what I was talking about.

Having a Duke of your dynasty who is not a subject of another dynasty member gives you +0.5 renown, or as much as 25 living members. King is +1. Also goes off the Top Realm, so if you're emperor, no King or Duke under you will give you any more renown than if they were a regular courtier, just the +0.02 for existing.

That's why it's so powerful to spread your dynasty outside your realm. Having one kid as Long of some tiny pagan realm east of Finland gives as much renown as 50 living family members inside your own realm.

*Edit* Also forgot to mention, you also get 0.4/0.8 for having a dynasty member married to a Duke/King who is not a subject of another dynasty member.

[god of being bad at everything]

there is arguments for both sides on one side you do nepotism the reason being you have weak hooks on all of those people thus when you die your eldest child should have a hook to revoke these whenever possible however after thinking more about it I think its better to just find content people to be your vassals they never rebel