Absolute Power

[Fr3ddy]

I have been playing CSK2 for a while now and its been quite fun but its been really hard keeping my kingdom together. I usually play as England and there is always alot of plots to kill me and riots/rebellions. I am wondering if anyone knows how to gain or become a absolute monarchy, how to gain trust in lords and keeping my family from rising up as pretenders and how to keep the real power with the king/queen.

[Arrow915]

Not really, you want to become an Emperor as its much easier to keep and control your empire as you will only have 3-4 vassals instead of 10+. A great succession law to have is ultimogeniture as it only requires low crown authority and means that your youngest son inherits all titles so your land will not be split when you die.

[Liberty Prime]

Get conclave and Charlie. Put all yes men or people with favors on the court. Get absolute authority. Get imperial admin. Never encounter a revolt again.

[Dialask]

Become the master of CK2.

No, really, keeping your realm together and your dynastic succession stable is pretty much the central point and feature of the game.

In general, a few tips (at least things that I do):

1: Focus on staying at or extremely close to your demesne limit, focusing on higher centralization early when you are small (paradoxically, high centralization is a later-game thing) and then down to medium once you've gotten closer to empire size. That way a lot of power is consolidated directly in you to the point that even many of your vassals united would have a hard time beating you in a war.

2: Either keep your vassals weak, or make sure they like you. Pausing and looking over them every so often to see what's going on, who is bigger than who, what they all think of you, who they are allied with, etc. is an important step in keeping them down. When you see some getting too big, find ways to imprison them or, in dire emergencies, find ways to revoke titles or goad them into a war where you can crush them, toss them in jail, and take their stuff. Also in that: Do everything you can to keep your council weak/abolished. The minor advantages of a strong council do NOT outweigh the crippling penalties. Goading your kingdom into council power rebellions but having enough money/manpower to beat them down is a good way to make sure things stay nice and tidy for years, as any troubling forces are now safely tucked away inside your prison

3: Know how to manage your succession. Every succession law has a purpose and can work in certain contexts. Elective works well if you are a small kingdom with 1/0 Dukes and nothing but counts, because then your vote trumps anything. Also, granting a duchy to someone you want to elect can work too. Gavelkind/Elective Gavelkind is a bit of a pain, focus on having an older wife and then take the seduction focus and have a lot of illegitimate children. Then, you can pick the best of the litter and legitimize them, making them your 1 heir. Elective Gavelkind ups the annoyance ante slightly, as apparently other close members of your dynasty can inherit.
Unless they are dead. Primo/ultimo is pretty simple, just kill off or find ways to kick out anyone you don't want from succession and you win. I've never used Seniority, and many of the others (like Tanistry) are just offshoots of things like Elective. Except for Muslim-exclusive Open, which I've never really tried, but sounds pretty simple (child with the most land wins)

4: The One County Solution. This is weird, but if you can get a, say, 7 holding (1 main, 6 sub) county as your capital with plenty of open spots, building nothing but baronies on it and you get a funny effect. First off, its easy to focus on upgrading them, as most of your other counties might end up being tossed around to your vassals in a pinch. There should be almost no concievable context where those baronies will leave your possession, so just keep upgrading them because that is money going towards helping only YOU and giving you more soldiers. It's true, it may be a bit less money, but not as much as you'd think. Second: Your marshal has a "train troops" skill he can use that ups the number of troops levied from the county he's placed on, and your steward has a similar ability for money (collect taxes)... Place them on your capital and BAM. Those percentage bonuses they give apply for EVERY barony you own in that county. When upgraded, EACH of those will give you easily 3k+ troops (with high martial ruler/marshal) and a tidy tax bonus. With 5 total personally held holdings (there is usually a city/temple there you can't do anything about) thats over 15k good troops from the one county that you can raise whenever you want: more than enough for beating most vassals into sticky pink paste. Whatever the rest of your Demesne can provide and any mercs should have an easy time of beating anything bigger

5: Think about allies. Any nearby country that looks big, but you don't feel like burning to the ground anytime soon? Try to see if you can marry into their family and secure an alliance. They will help you in a war if you help them in theirs. Usually not a best first solution, but nice to have in a pinch when the peasants get rowdy.

6: Diplomacy OR Intrigue. While, it's nice to have all skills high, these two tend to be pretty mutually exclusive, and you should try to make sure one of them is a secondary concern (usually making Stewardship/Martial your primary concern). I have a hard time seeing the full practical effects of high diplomacy unless I have a large realm, so usually I find intrigue to be the better option. Traits like Cynical and Paranoid, as well as Deceitful make it MUCH harder for people to plot against you, and you are much more likely to find out about plots ahead of time. Your spymaster is extremely important and needs to be selected with utmost caution. Ambitious is a no-no under any circumstances, as is greedy. Shower him with gifts, make sure that he is at LEAST at 50 positive opinion of you at all times. These are all things to think about, even before selecting a higher intrigue character, you want to make sure to pick one that won't stab you in the back. Also, its a pretty good idea to make sure your heir isn't your spymaster (unless you want to die). About 80% of the time, you'll want your spymaster to chill in Constantanople to steal tech, but early on, you need them to scheme to make sure to catch any potentially worrysome plots as soon as possible.


There is an ungodly amount of other things that are high-priority for you to worry about as well, but there is only so much I can do in one essay-like post :p

[Fr3ddy]

thank you for your quick answers they have been really helpfull

[Meewec]

if possible, get the troublemakers to rebel one at a time. keep plots to kill you that you find out about around, i believe it requries at least 50% and a backer to have a chance of firing. demand people stop supporting it, imprison those that refuse. you either get them in prison or he rebels, you beat him up, and then you imprison him and have a valid excuse to take his land and give it to someone who will then love you

[MCchill]

Give everyone cash, buy favors to lower council power, and try to keep vassals as small as possible.

[kinkerbel]

You act like rebellions are a bad thing.... I love them, free revoke of title and you can give their lands to someone with a claim of land you actually want to gain.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by kinkerbel:

You act like rebellions are a bad thing.... I love them, free revoke of title and you can give their lands to someone with a claim of land you actually want to gain.

big rebellions are bad, small rebellions are great

[Azunai]

yeah rebellions can be a good thing in the long run. crush a major rebellion and you get the chance to re-organize a large part of your realm for free. good if you want to implement a major change like going from hereditary vassals to appointed viceroys. or simply to split up some overly ambitious vassals who collected too many titles over time.

[Donathan Cheadledge]

A cheesy way of getting less rebellions is breeding the attractive trait into your line and then getting attractive female heirs. When they rule all the male vassals (i.e the majority of the vassals) will have +30 opinion of your foxy lady ruler, providing they're not gay or celibate.

Of course, if you've got AI seduction on it does also mean you get propositioned every 5 minutes, which is a bit of a bother

[Meewec]

Originally posted by Retired Messiah:

A cheesy way of getting less rebellions is breeding the attractive trait into your line and then getting attractive female heirs. When they rule all the male vassals (i.e the majority of the vassals) will have +30 opinion of your foxy lady ruler, providing they're not gay or celibate.

Of course, if you've got AI seduction on it does also mean you get propositioned every 5 minutes, which is a bit of a bother

i got a dutchy claim via seduction once when i got stuck as a woman. slept with all the dukes of the realm so they would support my plot to fabricate a claim on either my leige's or neghbor's title. can't remember which

[Donathan Cheadledge]

Originally posted by Meewec:

Originally posted by Retired Messiah:

A cheesy way of getting less rebellions is breeding the attractive trait into your line and then getting attractive female heirs. When they rule all the male vassals (i.e the majority of the vassals) will have +30 opinion of your foxy lady ruler, providing they're not gay or celibate.

Of course, if you've got AI seduction on it does also mean you get propositioned every 5 minutes, which is a bit of a bother

i got a dutchy claim via seduction once when i got stuck as a woman. slept with all the dukes of the realm so they would support my plot to fabricate a claim on either my leige's or neghbor's title. can't remember which

Yeah seduction as a female is very OP so long as you don't die in childbirth.