Being a vassal in 867 to early medieval

[Luggajo]

I just finished a dynasty that lasted 140 years and fell apart at the seams due to bad timing on a war during a peasant revolt. Formed the west slavic empire starting as Kuyavia, had a kingdom within the family heads lifetime and his son formed the empire. The grandson was loved by the populous and ruled for a long time, and his death caused the events that lead to the split. This is the furthest I've been able to take a dynasty so far, and I only had success because I focused my efforts into domination early on. I've never had success like this playing as a vassal, which sucks because I really like the idea of working my dynasties way to the emperor title through marriages and being a loyal and dedicated house to a liege. It seems like any time I put my eggs into a basket, my weak ass lieges fall apart within a lifetime or two, sometimes within a decade. How do you select who to serve, how do you help them take over the land? What makes a realm better to work with over another? How am I supposed to be the best vassal I can be

[armyissue69]

Honestly, the more you play, the more you learn. The learning curve is immense and, I think I speak for most, always learning something. There are a couple great youtube channels that feature different stuff. Lots of reddits and googles on anything you can think up.

Revolts generally happen for 3 reasons - Religious strife, Culture difference, and Tyranny. Yank rulers out without a revocation reason = Tyranny and high tyranny = everyone wants a new ruler. IF ever you plan on hanging around the area, hybrid your culture with theirs. Religion... Either convert to them or convert them to you.

You can take a look at a couple cultures that fair very well with other cultures such as Norse. They have the culture tradition which greatly reduces faith hostility and allows for easy hybrid with other cultures.

As a cool test run, you could take norse and adventure into veletia and hybrid with them.. Norse have great men-at-arms and culture traditions and polabians (takes 20% / Conquer the territory before working the hybrid). Polabians have Konni which are, in my opinion, best light cavalry in the game. Then you could take the kingdom of pomerania and later you can decide what to do about religions.

You can also use this strategy for a Norse adventure into Ireland. The kingdom has some 5 duchies, pretty easy to manage and culture easy to hyrbid. From Ireland Kingdom you could easily convert to insular (there is a temple you can build and insular is reformed).