Crown Authority No votes despite 51+ positive opinion

[Garanvir]

Trying to raise Crown Authority in an expansive Empire from Medium to High.

I have 235 yeahs out of 506 votes total

Have spent well over 1000 gold in bribes trying to get those last few votes. I have the Chancellor working on the remaining nay with the most votes, currently right at 50 but not sure even if he goes over that will work because...

There are 9 no voters with positive opinions of me between 54 and 100 who nonetheless still refuse to vote yes.

For what its worth, only one of the 9 is a direct vassal of mine, and he's the leader of a revolt (so temporary title); all of my direct vassals are already yeahs except for the aforementioned revolt leader and one ambitious Heretic with a title claim on the empire who therefore pretty much completely hates my guts.

Any ideas why the 9 who won't vote with me despite loving me are still saying no and what I can do to change it?

(most if not all of them also seem to have highly positive opinions of their immediate liege and one of them is even supposedly my "friend")

Thanks

[Garanvir]

Chancellor got the one holdout from 50 up to 70 and he and his 16 votes changed to yes, while the rebel lost his rebellion losing his right to vote and dropping the total number of votes below 500 - combined this put me just over.

Still curious if there are any insights why the 9 would not vote yes despite over 50 positive opinion - it can't just be because they were not direct vassals as the final 16 came from a non-direct vassal...

[bri]

Because the ai looks at the law being proposed and how it will directly affect the character. If there will be s strong negative effect then it puts a heavy penalty on what you need for them to approve it. For example, if you are proposing the religious revocation law then it will be near impossible to get a heretic vassal to approve it because the obvious next step is taking their land. While raising crown authority isn't the same sort of bad as in that example it can negatively impact your vassals so stronger ones who would benefit from it not happening (since you can't then prohibit internal wars and such) will be reluctant to approve it. You'll also see people that might be negatively impacted by a succession change that requires the higher CA voting against it.

[Rhet]

I can't say for certain, as I never looked into the game files to see how the game chooses those details. That is, even if you can. However, I would guessed those 9 looked at you trying to increase Crown Authority as something that threatens their personal power. Even if they aren't your direct vassals they do still have to obey the laws of the realm/empire they are a part of.

In general most if not all vassals prefer to have Crown Authority as low as they can get it as it gives them more power than their liege.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Opinion has nothing to do with it. High opinion is just extra positive reasons to agree.

But they also have negative reasons for how much the law will impact them or their ambitions personally. And you need more positive than negative value for them to accept. Though CK2 makes it much harder to gauge this, since it's basically the whole game. In EU4 it's a smaller part of the whole so they make it a little more transparent what exactly you're dealing with, but even it has a lot of hidden stuff that you can only pick up on via play while paying attention.

Vassals hate higher crown laws.

And Ambitious vassals REALLY hate higher crowns. (and I'm not just talking have the ambitious trait but that is a good warning sign, but rather the ais overall ambition ai score, which is based a bunch of different traits as well as some innate inclination and if their dynasty is more prestigious than yours etc).

[Garanvir]

Thanks for the replies!

I guess what they didn't like will remain a mystery as the 9 weren't especially powerful nor do I recall one way or the other if they were ambitious...

I actually am perfectly content with medium authority in general, but I've been starting to flirt with the vassal limit despite having low centralization and fairly good diplomacy scores, so I'm trying for Imperial Administration which requires Absolute crown to enact...

Guess I'm going to need a lot of bribe money for the final level

Thanks again!

[Psychotic Fury]

I had alot of issues with this in my norse games, id get to about 300 to 400 vassals and could never get past about 45% of them voting for it.
Gifting every single vassal didnt help. (Even at 80+ opinion they wouldnt vote).
I ended up finding it easier to simply declare war on ppl and only use their army, so it drops their troop strength, eventually itll get low enough theyll vote.

(Disbanding their troops in provinces that you *dont* own is a easy way to drop their army strength by a good 30% or so each time.

[captain403]

Preemptively buying favours help. Just buy enough to get the vote through.