As emperor, would you grant kingdom titles?

[Plushy]

As an emperor, would you grant kingdom titles to members of your familie or dynasty or keep these yourself?

[Devil_JCS]

It depends on how large my realm is and who actually holds duchies in any one kingdom.

Like, if my empire is small, lets say the Baltic Empire, then giving out kingdoms seems pretty pointless. There's not many duchies in that empire and thus, not that many vassals to watch over. If it's large, like the HRE or Russian Empire though? I sometimes will then, especially if some of the vassals within those kingdoms are disloyal or hate me (better to let someone else deal with that so that they can't create factions against you).

Giving it to house or dynasty members is another "sometimes". You get renown for them holding on to kingdoms, yes, but if they have claims on your empire title(s)? That's a huge problem unless their personality is extremely honorable or they're content/craven. So basically, if they have the greedy and/or ambitious trait(s), then they get NOTHING. It's because they want to be the top liege at any cost and will try to take your throne or just flat out murder everyone in the line of succession until they inherit it themselves. If they don't have those traits or some of the other traits that make them very dishonorable, then I'll give kingdom titles out when it's useful to do so.

Also, I'll never give out a kingdom title if 2 or more of my best council members hold duchies with that kingdom.

[Danny]

I give kingdom titles to dynasty members when I run out of vassal limit.

[Eldrin]

Yes all the time, you reduce your own micromanagement needs with that and they become 100x easier to control. It is easy to make 1 guy your best friend instead of 10 dukes.

You do lose a bit of money for not having all dukes at max vassal limit... but this game is so easy that at emperor level you are filthy rich anyway.

[Deusmodeus]

I create every kingdom and keep it for myself via election until I get Primo.
I never give them to vassals. If you lean into Admin gameplay, your vassal limit is enough for Dukes.

I've only ever handed out kingdoms if I'm out of limit working towards Admin, which i then promptly revoke, or if I need to stall a massive faction by putting them under a friendly vassal. I dislike when the vassals kings go past their dejure.

[firefistus]

I usually play as Norse, then form the Norman culture, then conquer england and form the english culture. Once that is done, I conquer Britania, and stay as a kingdom until all the kingdom titles are dejured into one. (By using legends to dejure.) Once all the kingdoms are destroyed except the isle of man, which I formed, I form the empire. I hand out duchies so I don't go over vassal limit.

[dwarfpcfan]

I never give kingdom level titles unless I have no other choice. There's plenty of ways to increase vassal limit (traditions, artifacts, etc).

In my personal experience king level vassals even if they have extreme high opinion of you will always agitate for independence because the A.I is coded to King= should be independent on top of them being a lot more prone to doing idiotic nonsense like marrying off their daughters or sons to neighboring kings and, because the A.I is incompetent, then having to deal with heirs outside your realm causing succession problems and trying to take titles inside your realm.

[Eldrin]

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

I never give kingdom level titles unless I have no other choice. There's plenty of ways to increase vassal limit (traditions, artifacts, etc).

In my personal experience king level vassals even if they have extreme high opinion of you will always agitate for independence because the A.I is coded to King= should be independent on top of them being a lot more prone to doing idiotic nonsense like marrying off their daughters or sons to neighboring kings and, because the A.I is incompetent, then having to deal with heirs outside your realm causing succession problems and trying to take titles inside your realm.

Yea i think you are doing something wrong. I dump realm stability down from game start settings to get more interesting factions. I give kingdoms out like candy and get about close to zero rebellions. The ones who do generally do it alone.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Eldrin:

Yea i think you are doing something wrong. I dump realm stability down from game start settings to get more interesting factions. I give kingdoms out like candy and get about close to zero rebellions. The ones who do generally do it alone.

While I broadly speaking agree - I also give out as many kingdoms as possible, almost always to dynasty members for the sweet, sweet renown, and can't remember the last time I had a rebellion I didn't start on purpose - dwarf's been posting here since the game released, so I'd be surprised if they were completely clueless about how to play such that rebellions stop being an issue. Might just be a difference in playstyles perhaps.

[dwarfpcfan]

I never said it was an issue or any difficulty to deal with. Actual rebellions almost never happen in any realm I run.

But... I've observed from playing since the game came out that when you hand over king level titles, even if you you have +45 or more opinion from king level vassals, they will still try to form independence factions if they have king level titles. And the only explanation seems to be that the A.I is coded to act that way.

Nipping these factions in the bud is easy since all it takes is a few gifts (bribes) to either boost said vassal opinion higher or just buy every one in the faction with bribes or hooks to leave it. And it's not like defeating a faction in a war is hard, in the very rare cases when it does happen. Then you can revoke and redistribute as wanted.

But I'm just pointing out that in my experience, King level vassals seem to have a higher desire for independence then duke and count level vassals. And so the opinion threshold where they will try to create an independence faction that you then nip in the bud is lower then dukes and counts.

And kingdom level vassals also have higher marriage acceptance and diplo range thanks to their being kings. So it's easier for them to get their kids into marriages that could split out land from your realm if you don't act to fix it because of what marriages they can get.

Again nothing that is any difficulty to manage or prevent but kings produce this to a greater degree. Obviously once you have feudal crown authority 3+ in early medieval it no longer even comes up.

So instead I keep my vassals at the duke level until I have no other choice and the above comes up less often leaving me to have more time to dedicate to other aspects of my running my little corner of the map.

[Calvin W]

Well....all depends on situation, and keeping Kings within your empire are dangerous. There maybe one "good" King at a time, but it changes throughout generations.

Normally I would destroy any Kingdom title while I am Emperor tier, the next most powerful vassals shall be dukes. I am not holding any Kingdom title unless specific favor on it ( long tradition of the realm..... strive hard to earn .... historical reasons.....etc )

[endymionologist]

Always. If you give out ten Kingdoms and then lose a Dissolution War, your whole Dynasty gets a permanent +2 Stewardship/ +10% levy size trait. Not as useful as it was when the game was first released, but something I always hope to get.

[Devil_JCS]

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

I never said it was an issue or any difficulty to deal with. Actual rebellions almost never happen in any realm I run.

But... I've observed from playing since the game came out that when you hand over king level titles, even if you you have +45 or more opinion from king level vassals, they will still try to form independence factions if they have king level titles. And the only explanation seems to be that the A.I is coded to act that way.

I think I've seen something that hints at that while playing debug mode. I really don't remember where I saw it but it was something like "Kingdom level vassal desires independence" or something among those lines.

Though even without that there's still another big hint towards the AI being coded like that; the fact that being a large enough kingdom decreases the chance of them accepting an offer to become a vassal is reduced by as low as -50 to as high as -200. That tells me that there's probably something in the AI that makes it want independence if it's a king.

I've also seen Kings within the HRE set up independence and claimant factions with fairly high opinion of the emperor. Not sure where the cutoff is for that though.

[AceRattman]

Yes. Usually to transfer vassalage when I absolutely cannot have a faction war.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

I never said it was an issue or any difficulty to deal with. Actual rebellions almost never happen in any realm I run.

Like I said, would've been surprised.

Originally posted by Devil_JCS:

I think I've seen something that hints at that while playing debug mode. I really don't remember where I saw it but it was something like "Kingdom level vassal desires independence" or something among those lines.

Though even without that there's still another big hint towards the AI being coded like that; the fact that being a large enough kingdom decreases the chance of them accepting an offer to become a vassal is reduced by as low as -50 to as high as -200. That tells me that there's probably something in the AI that makes it want independence if it's a king.

I've also seen Kings within the HRE set up independence and claimant factions with fairly high opinion of the emperor. Not sure where the cutoff is for that though.

I think that's visible without debug. I've seen it too, or I think I have at least, and haven't used debug mode once.

The cut-off for being forced to leave factions is 80+ I believe. Remember when opinion wasn't really a factor? That was a pain in the arse.

[Plushy]

Question, currently I am the Emperor of Hispania and I got all my kingdom titles taken away in a succession, not a problem as I still was the emperor.

I have used crown authority level 4 for a few generations now, to try and stop my vassals from fighting each other, replacing dukes I wanted with dukes I did not want, but when I lost my kingdom titles and had 5 kings under me, wars mercilessly broke out in all the kingdoms as, as far as I can tell the crown authority system only work on my direct vassals.

So if I am emperor, my kings are subjected to MY crown authority, but the kings has their own crown authority system with their vassals?

How do you prevent (or do you even prevent?) vassals you want, getting replaced with vassals you don't want? For example, prevent your brother (king) to be replaced by his vassal (a random duke) who is not of your blood or dynasty.

Thanks all, I really appreciate the comments!