Best counties?

[ste]

Is there a benefit to which counties to keep hold of as a king? From a profit point of view

I tried looking into this but its hard to tell.

Say like keeping all the ones in the same duchy, or counties with a lot of slots. Or maybe one from each duchy. Or is it best to have 1 county with alot of castle slots and keep the castles.

Or does it make no difference, just best to pick because of location.

[galadon3]

1. keep all in the duchy your capital is in, because they get a bonus to levies
2. many holding slots (its advisable to select the duchy you put your capital in for that)
3. coastal counties have some slight advantages:
A) with the needed buildings they provide ships
B) cities in coastal provinces can build a harbor wich is a second tax-producing building so they are more profitable
C) cities in coastal provinces can get a tax boost from trading posts (if you have a merchant republic nearby)

If you just fill a small number of counties with castles or hold as many counties as your limit allows and fill the slots mostly with cities for more taxes is pretty much a decision of overall strategy. Usually: small number of counties but many castles gives your more levies, many counties filled with cities more money.

[DonJuanDoja]

Tech of the capital county is pretty important to me unless you're starting really early then you can select just about anything and raise the tech yourself higher than any others... so it's good to get into the capital you want ASAP so you don't fall behind on tech advancement.

Once you have a county/duchy highly advanced it'll be a hard move to another captial duchy if the tech is relatively low there... even if it has more holding slots or counties or whatever dropping significant tech levels will hurt.

Silk Road also improves income simliar to trade posts and a coastal county silk road trade post having benefits of both.

Now with Greatworks there's additional bonuses to some counties for the historical works or the AI could build some as they play.

Local religion and culture matters too for revolts and other things.

And I also consider the location as your captial is where holy orders or mercs and most of your levies will spawn when raised. so being on an island will kind of suck for that, want to be close to war targets to avoid attrition etc.

[Kernest]

You don't want to hold just 1-2 (best) counties in a duchy, because the duchy holder gets mad for not having those counties, and if you try to hold too many duchies yourself, everyone gets mad, and the counts in those duchies get extra mad.

The way to go is to hold the best duchy in your kingdom. Particularly with Tribal governments you'll likely have demesne to hold multiple duchies.

If/once you end up controlling multiple kingdoms, you should try to hold one duchy per kingdom.

[ste]

Say if I was king of england, I was holding Norfolk and Suffolk, Essex, Middlsex, Lindsey my capital, Devon, Paris, one or 2 others, The Duchy of mercia, and Duchy of Essex,

I wonder which ones are best to keep or give away and which ones I should have kept.

[Kernest]

Originally posted by ste:

Say if I was king of england, I was holding Norfolk and Suffolk, Essex, Middlsex, Lindsey my capital, Devon, Paris, one or 2 others, The Duchy of mercia, and Duchy of Essex,

I wonder which ones are best to keep or give away and which ones I should have kept.

You ought to aim to control the entire duchy of Essex and Duchy of Paris, unless Paris is the only county you have there right now and the rest is with the king of France.

In that case, if your demesne cap allows, the entire duchy of Essex, Duchy of Mercia and the county of Paris.

Duchy of Norfolk (Norfolk & Suffolk) and Duchy of Cornwall (Cornwall & Devon) are usually my candidates for Merchant Republics.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Kernest:

You don't want to hold just 1-2 (best) counties in a duchy, because the duchy holder gets mad for not having those counties, and if you try to hold too many duchies yourself, everyone gets mad, and the counts in those duchies get extra mad.

The way to go is to hold the best duchy in your kingdom. Particularly with Tribal governments you'll likely have demesne to hold multiple duchies.

If/once you end up controlling multiple kingdoms, you should try to hold one duchy per kingdom.

Too many duchies isnt really a problem, just control the entire deJure duchies but destroy / don't form any more then 2 duchy titles and you don't get the modifier.

If you don't have a really important strategical reason to hold duchies in several kingdoms, its not a particularly good idea, holding two kingdom titles means all dukes in the secondary will have an opinion modifier because they want that kingdom, if you give it out the new vassal-king will get mad because he wants the duchy (or the counties if you didnt form a duchy).
So if you go the "many-counties" way, its actually preferable to completely control several duchies in the same kingdom.

(on an unrelated note but kinda related: If you conquer a huge territory in a low tech area it can actually be worth the trouble to keep at least one county in the middle of it for quite a while, purely for technology transfer. Demesne counties all count as adjacent to each other, so even a demesne county somewhere in Sibiria would get the tech-transfer from a capital in London.
Best in that case is to hold it several decades and have advisors work on tech transfer whenever you can spare them. From that province the tech can trickle into the vassal-counties around.)

[Kernest]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Too many duchies isnt really a problem, just control the entire deJure duchies but destroy / don't form any more then 2 duchy titles and you don't get the modifier.

If you don't have a really important strategical reason to hold duchies in several kingdoms, its not a particularly good idea, holding two kingdom titles means all dukes in the secondary will have an opinion modifier because they want that kingdom, if you give it out the new vassal-king will get mad because he wants the duchy (or the counties if you didnt form a duchy).
So if you go the "many-counties" way, its actually preferable to completely control several duchies in the same kingdom.

That is true, but only if you specifically choose to destroy / not create the associated duchy title. Also, holding even 2 duchy titles in the same kingdom is an issue if you have elective monarchy.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Kernest:

That is true, but only if you specifically choose to destroy / not create the associated duchy title. Also, holding even 2 duchy titles in the same kingdom is an issue if you have elective monarchy.

Thats why I specifically said to do that^^
having elective monarchy in itself is an issue^^ Besides, managing that in two seperate kingdoms... bleeeeh and you could also solve even that by just holding one duchy-title. Its not as if destroying a title (if you formed it in the first place) is THAT big of a deal unless you are gavelkind. It would be an issue with the vassals of that title, but since we are talking about a duchy where you hold all the counties yourself its just a prestige penalty.

(btw the penalty for holding too many votes or too many duchies isnt unmanageable, its just better to avoid it in the long run, lest its the tipping point in a crisis)

[ste]

So if you own every county in a duchy is there no point creating or owning the duchy title, thats kind of why I kept norfolk and suffolk, small duchy, near my capital as I dont know if that helps tech, and did not create the duchy

[DonJuanDoja]

Originally posted by ste:

So if you own every county in a duchy is there no point creating or owning the duchy title, thats kind of why I kept norfolk and suffolk, small duchy, near my capital as I dont know if that helps tech, and did not create the duchy

Besides additional monthly prestige gain for you and your dynasty...