How to Fuedalize my Tribal Vassals?

[Liberty Prime]

So I started a pagan game with the earliest possible start date. Now I own all of scandanavia (am not an empire though), have reformed paganism, and adopted feudualism (to get elective monarchy succession). My only problem is that my kingdom is stunted because I am the only person who has feudualism. Due to some unlucky events (my amazing king got bonked on the head), I now have a weak ass personal levy, and because all my vassals are tribal, I only have like 1k vassal troops. I don't have problems keeping the kingdom stable and under one banner, however money and troops are just a huge issue right now, even if I do as much raiding as possible (which is why my king turned into a vegetable and somehow was able to kill himself). I really want to dig myself out of this hole because I can't do anything but slowly upgrade my holdings, which isn't really doing much to help. If I get more vassals to fuedualize, will I get a lot more powerful? If so, how would I do this? Is there anything else I can do? The year is 825 A.D. if that matters to anybody, also I can only hire like one retinue so that isn't going to do much either. My goal is to be able to start expanding into more prosperous land, but my ♥♥♥♥ army and horrible finances just aren't going to cut it.

[Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug]

The issue I'm finding is that I can't get them to change unless they are my religion and my culture
The easiest way for me is to indoctrinate teach my way of eating food and my fashion sense to their kids and also convert them when they grow older and their parents by using the priest
Also, you could buy them a castle or upgrade their village to stone hillfort so they CAN fuedalize. Once all those are met, they typically switch to feudalism when they wake up one day and feel like doing it. Also, you could invite a noble to court that has your religion and culture, build a castle for them, set the tribals as their vassals and lower the micro-ing a little bit so you have 2 people, the AI and you, working to teach the tribals your way of life and upgrade their hillforts so they start modernizing

If your tribal vassles start modernizing, you are at an advantage. Villages and mud huts < cities and castles because you get better troops, more cash, cash-built buildings, and other great advantages so you will gain power as a result.

[Liberty Prime]

Originally posted by Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug:

The issue I'm finding is that I can't get them to change unless they are my religion and my culture
The easiest way for me is to indoctrinate teach my way of eating food and my fashion sense to their kids and also convert them when they grow older and their parents by using the priest
Also, you could buy them a castle or upgrade their village to stone hillfort so they CAN fuedalize. Once all those are met, they typically switch to feudalism when they wake up one day and feel like doing it. Also, you could invite a noble to court that has your religion and culture, build a castle for them, set the tribals as their vassals and lower the micro-ing a little bit so you have 2 people, the AI and you, working to teach the tribals your way of life and upgrade their hillforts so they start modernizing

If your tribal vassles start modernizing, you are at an advantage. Villages and mud huts < cities and castles because you get better troops, more cash, cash-built buildings, and other great advantages so you will gain power as a result.

Thanks. I will try manually helping them, it will just take a very very long time because as I said, I don't have much money. But I would assume that it will have a snowball effect when they start converting and I get more money. Would it be better to start with vassals with more land and that like me more or is that not so important? Also, I only need to do one county to let them convert right? Also do children of my king have the "feudal" status and if they become landed will they already be feudal?

[Doc]

More land.
And only bother with their capital. Nowhere else affects their decision to feudalize.
Once they have a stone hillfort (and the appropriate religion), they should make the choice to feudalize within a month or so.

[Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug]

Originally posted by butters:

Originally posted by Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug:

The issue I'm finding is that I can't get them to change unless they are my religion and my culture
The easiest way for me is to indoctrinate teach my way of eating food and my fashion sense to their kids and also convert them when they grow older and their parents by using the priest
Also, you could buy them a castle or upgrade their village to stone hillfort so they CAN fuedalize. Once all those are met, they typically switch to feudalism when they wake up one day and feel like doing it. Also, you could invite a noble to court that has your religion and culture, build a castle for them, set the tribals as their vassals and lower the micro-ing a little bit so you have 2 people, the AI and you, working to teach the tribals your way of life and upgrade their hillforts so they start modernizing

If your tribal vassles start modernizing, you are at an advantage. Villages and mud huts < cities and castles because you get better troops, more cash, cash-built buildings, and other great advantages so you will gain power as a result.

Thanks. I will try manually helping them, it will just take a very very long time because as I said, I don't have much money. But I would assume that it will have a snowball effect when they start converting and I get more money. Would it be better to start with vassals with more land and that like me more or is that not so important. Also, I only need to do one county to let them convert right?

They will have to start converting everything in their demense, so the bigger the demense to start with, the better. And don't forget to tutor their children to ensure that they learn your ways. You can teach 2 heir kids directly which are slots you usually want to be using. I would advise looking up a guide or the wiki on how to best tutor. It's quick to learn and will greatly help. Always have your preacher shoving your beliefs down your tribal vassal's throats and everythign will go better.
As for a snowball effect; kinda? Cities rake in the cash, castles are terrible for cash but great for armies. Cathedrals are.....'okay' because they are unreliable because they usually go to the religious heads rather than you. Then again, more castles meaning way more troops. More troops means more raiders. More raiders helps you raise money to invest in things like cities and upgrading more vassals.

[Liberty Prime]

Originally posted by Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug:

Originally posted by butters:

Thanks. I will try manually helping them, it will just take a very very long time because as I said, I don't have much money. But I would assume that it will have a snowball effect when they start converting and I get more money. Would it be better to start with vassals with more land and that like me more or is that not so important. Also, I only need to do one county to let them convert right?

They will have to start converting everything in their demense, so the bigger the demense to start with, the better. And don't forget to tutor their children to ensure that they learn your ways. You can teach 2 heir kids directly which are slots you usually want to be using. I would advise looking up a guide or the wiki on how to best tutor. It's quick to learn and will greatly help. Always have your preacher shoving your beliefs down your tribal vassal's throats and everythign will go better.
As for a snowball effect; kinda? Cities rake in the cash, castles are terrible for cash but great for armies. Cathedrals are.....'okay' because they are unreliable because they usually go to the religious heads rather than you. Then again, more castles meaning way more troops. More troops means more raiders. More raiders helps you raise money to invest in things like cities and upgrading more vassals.

How do I know which county is a capital for a vassal?

[Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug]

Originally posted by butters:

Originally posted by Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug:

They will have to start converting everything in their demense, so the bigger the demense to start with, the better. And don't forget to tutor their children to ensure that they learn your ways. You can teach 2 heir kids directly which are slots you usually want to be using. I would advise looking up a guide or the wiki on how to best tutor. It's quick to learn and will greatly help. Always have your preacher shoving your beliefs down your tribal vassal's throats and everythign will go better.
As for a snowball effect; kinda? Cities rake in the cash, castles are terrible for cash but great for armies. Cathedrals are.....'okay' because they are unreliable because they usually go to the religious heads rather than you. Then again, more castles meaning way more troops. More troops means more raiders. More raiders helps you raise money to invest in things like cities and upgrading more vassals.

How do I know which county is a capital for a vassal?

I'm not entirely sure. I never really bother with that. I select the village that is the most upgraded and work on that hillfort.

Edit: It's where their court is, so go to their court and find a vassal of theirs that is "in so and so vassal's court" and there you have it; their court.

[Doc]

Look for the shields on the map. That's their capital.

[Unpringaosingracia]

In the character view, in their titles list, the first county-level title is the capital county.

[Comrade Hexaborg]

Feudalization sort of happens on its own. Realistically speaking, your vassals aren't going to be as developed as you are, or even have the tech to build the right infrastructure to become feudal. You can always help them out by building up their forts, but this is a costly investment, especially if you just recently became feudal.

Alternatively, there is a very gamey hack you can do that is technically not a cheat. You can take control of a huge chunk of the scandinavian counties for yourself (most or all if possible), then adopt feudalism. This will convert every single one of your held counties to a castle with a city. Then you can distribute your holdings to new vassals. The main problem with this method is even being able to get control of so many places in the first place.

[WhoPurrsWins]

During my recent Mali game I had a similar situation where I somehow ended up with a Feudal King, but the majority of my vassals were tribal. The solution was not a clean or easy one. I used every opportunity I had to strip a vassal off his title (usually after a failed civil war), took control of his province, upgraded the Tribe to a Castle (if it had the Stone Hillfort built) and then it was given to either one of my children or a brand new Feudal Noble (created via Invite Noble to Court).

This works, in theory. I say in theory because a lot relies on your vassals wanting to go to war against you. If the vassals have no reason to wage war against you then you might have few opportunities to Feudalise them.

I think it still took around 100-200 years to eventually achieve my goal fully, simply because: 1) The vasals needed Stone Hill Forts, 2) They needed to start a civil war/take part in one.

On one occasion I recall I seriously botched on attempt at Feudalising some recently conquered lands, because it turned out that they had almost no upgrades, and I do not know why but I sent Feudal Lords to take control of them.

Suffice to say the Feudal Lords had 0 income, no levies and no garrisons. This is because you need Tribal Nobles to handle Tribes. If you use Feudal Lords... let's just say it's a mess.