Better to upgrade your holdings or build new ones?

[< blank >]

Realized halfway to the high middle ages maybe building new holdings instead of slowly upgrading the old ones would be better. Should I just build away early game and upgrade later or stick with upgrading first then building more later?

[WolfWhiteFire]

Here is the thing, if you build new ones, you are taking up your demesne limit, which you could fill instead with new counties, which have a holding as the capital that is yours, so really it is a waste, since you might as well just take another county, upgrading your own, you invest your gold, and get increased benefits from that holding for the rest of the game, without any real cost besides the initial gold investment, so in general I would say upgrade your holdings. As a count or MR though, it might be good to build tall in your capital rather than have 1 holding in each of many counties.

[TVMAN]

Since new holdings take up either your demesne limit or your vassal limit, I tend to refrain from establishing new ones until I have absolutely nothing left to spend money on. I suppose filling all of your build slots with holdings would be useful if you're trying to grow 'tall' as a really powerful Duke instead of expanding outwards, otherwise I'd just stick to upgrading your existing holdings.

[< blank >]

so yes building new is better except for vassel and demense limits? Ty!! Makes sense. My situation is a small indpendant kingdom surrounded by giant dynasties so it might be useful.

[Azunai]

filling empty holding slots with cities is an option. you just create a new mayor vassal once the city is done and it will basically run on autopilot from there. you collect taxes from the city while the mayor will use the rest of his income (the part that doesn't go to you) to upgrade the city over time "for free". it's a longterm investment, though. takes a while until the initial 700+ gold investment is earned back through taxes.

but if you don't have any other immediate use for money, it's at least an investment that will pay back and eventually turn into a profit.

temples are also ok for that purpose (unless you are catholic, then they suck since half the time they like the pope better and pay you nothing). cities yield more money and there are more county modifiers that can affect them (trade route, merchant republic tradezone and similar)

additional castles are only really useful if you plan to hold them personally as part of your demesne. vassal baronies kinda suck. they don't have much income so you get very little money out of it and it takes forever for the baron vassal to accumulate enough money to upgrade stuff. having a capital county with multiple personally held castles can be a strong strategy since all castles in that province will get the bonus from a tax collecting steward and a troop training marshal.

EDIT: also - note that baron tier vassals don't count towards your vassal limit, so that's not really a concern.

[< blank >]

If it helps I have no vassels except the heir my nephew so overall it looks like building up is looking like a great idea! ty all for your help its making more sense. Allows me more control in the kingdom without ticking off my heir.

[WolfWhiteFire]

RetiredChivPlayer님이 먼저 게시:

so yes building new is better except for vassel and demense limits? Ty!! Makes sense. My situation is a small indpendant kingdom surrounded by giant dynasties so it might be useful.

No, we were saying that upgrading old is better in most cases, one exception being if you already maxed all your existing holdings, but if you want to build tall it is viable.

[galadon3]

I actually tend to fill out my demesne-counties with more vasall-cities as soon as I have all the money-making buildings my tech allows in my own castles built.
Actually at least with the early castle-town and castle-walls (you need to upgrade the town) the return on investment seems better then on a newly built and pretty expensive new city.
Building new cities as early as possible on the other hand means that their mayors start investing in them quicker and since I usually try to keep the core of my realm throughout the game the earlier I build them the more money they generate overall over the course of the game.

[WolfWhiteFire]

galadon3님이 먼저 게시:

I actually tend to fill out my demesne-counties with more vasall-cities as soon as I have all the money-making buildings in my own castles built.
Actually at least with the early castle-town and castle-walls (you need to upgrade the town) the return on investment seems better then on a newly built and pretty expensive new city.
Building new cities as early as possible on the other hand means that their mayors start investing in them quicker and since I usually try to keep the core of my realm throughout the game the earlier I build them the more money they generate overall over the course of the game.

True, so RetiredChivPlayer, I guess the general consensus is upgrade in most cases where it isn't a city, and build or upgrade cities, whichever you prefer. Though I would say, and no one here has said something disagreeing with this so far, it is usually not worth it to build new baronies, except maybe in your capital. Azunai said they can be good held personally, and they can be good to build in the capital, but honestly, my opinion is that if it isn't in your capital, don't bother, reason being that if you want a castle, every single county you hold gives you one, as the county capital (except counties taken from tribal, nomad, and perhaps merchant republic AI)might as well have a bunch of free ones and more counties than a bunch of expensive ones with less counties.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

If you can build up a 5-7 castle province, it's worth doing so and just putting all your demense limit into that 1 province.

Since this allows your counciler bonuses to affect all of them.

A high martial training troops can lead to a stupid amount of levy, compared to only getting the bonus on 1 holding.

[jfoytek]

WolfWhiteFire님이 먼저 게시:

Here is the thing, if you build new ones, you are taking up your demesne limit, which you could fill instead with new counties, which have a holding as the capital that is yours, so really it is a waste, since you might as well just take another county, upgrading your own, you invest your gold, and get increased benefits from that holding for the rest of the game, without any real cost besides the initial gold investment, so in general I would say upgrade your holdings. As a count or MR though, it might be good to build tall in your capital rather than have 1 holding in each of many counties.

This advice is not good....

Unless your playing Wide which I dont recommend....

Playing Tall is what you want to do and you do this bye building up all the empty holding slots in your capital as possible and then working prosperity up to unlock more holding spots in your capital until the entire thing is filled with castles.....

FYI use the Stewardship event to get the castle event to trigger so you can build it cheeper and you can also avoid an imbalance of towns and temples if you dont have those built in your holding ......

The benifits you get from the Capital County 50% more troops
Capital duchy 25% more troops
And your Marshal Training to get more troops really add up!!!

Also to answer your primary question....
Yes there is a time when it makes sense to build a new holding over upgrading an old one....
Thats when you will get more troops for your gold investment....

So spend 500+ Gold to get 100 ish troops from an upgrade to something or spend
400+ Gold to get a new castle barony which will bring with it around 300 ish troops...

Again though wait for the stewardship even to fire when your wanting to expand and save that money....

[Random]

a castle has a base income of +4 gold multiplied by your stewardship. a castle town gives +2 per rank. so a castle = 2 castle towns and the wall required to build the second as far as income is concerned.

thats 145+180+70, so already 400ish. which as jfoytek stated with way of life this is a castle building event triggered in the rulership focus. so even at a start date of 769 if you for some reason have 400+ gold, this event will yield you more gold and troops immiedately than building a single structure in the entire game if your capital county is capable.

This is without even considering the fact your steward lump sum gold collection event from "collect taxes" task will yield you more gold due to the fact its on multiple holdings and further granting a larget multipliciv passive bonus to your castle town incomes.

So borrow 300 jew gold, set speed 4x, set ruler focus = profit if you have an empty slot.

playing wide makes your entire empire horribly weak but rich, which you then need to spend said riches on to make up for the fact you are horribly weak... so why not just be strong and rich at the same time and go tall?

That all being said, your primary goal should always be to secure every county within your capital duchy immediately as your own, as obviously conquest of your neighbour's castle is "cheaper" than building a new 400 gold castle, thus 150gold to mercs early game for an immediate win if your martial stat is garbage results in more profit, but long term, building anything but castles in your primary duchy is shortsighted and borderline retarded.

[< blank >]

It seems my suspicions were ultimately correct but its fantastic to get the real numbers and all your opinions. My plan was to build tons of castles in my capitol duchy areas and a few money making towns and upgrades. Ty all again very helpful information!

I did not have any plans to build castles for my vassels ;)

my holdings all have temples on temples all upgraded they basically start that way so I hope that clears up the situation a bit !


this should allow us to survive all our rude raiding dynasty neighbors who like our easy going rich kingdom haha.

[WolfWhiteFire]

jfoytek님이 먼저 게시:

WolfWhiteFire님이 먼저 게시:

Here is the thing, if you build new ones, you are taking up your demesne limit, which you could fill instead with new counties, which have a holding as the capital that is yours, so really it is a waste, since you might as well just take another county, upgrading your own, you invest your gold, and get increased benefits from that holding for the rest of the game, without any real cost besides the initial gold investment, so in general I would say upgrade your holdings. As a count or MR though, it might be good to build tall in your capital rather than have 1 holding in each of many counties.

This advice is not good....

Unless your playing Wide which I dont recommend....

Playing Tall is what you want to do and you do this bye building up all the empty holding slots in your capital as possible and then working prosperity up to unlock more holding spots in your capital until the entire thing is filled with castles.....

FYI use the Stewardship event to get the castle event to trigger so you can build it cheeper and you can also avoid an imbalance of towns and temples if you dont have those built in your holding ......

The benifits you get from the Capital County 50% more troops
Capital duchy 25% more troops
And your Marshal Training to get more troops really add up!!!

Also to answer your primary question....
Yes there is a time when it makes sense to build a new holding over upgrading an old one....
Thats when you will get more troops for your gold investment....

So spend 500+ Gold to get 100 ish troops from an upgrade to something or spend
400+ Gold to get a new castle barony which will bring with it around 300 ish troops...

Again though wait for the stewardship even to fire when your wanting to expand and save that money....

That is why I amended in a comment after that the exception is the capital. Any reason to build tall anywhere else? I would still argue that after building tall in your capital, if you are making baronies you might as well just have the 1 castle per county you get as the county capital, free and more counties under your direct control, your steward and marshall can only use those effects in a single county after all. Also, not sure which DLC prosperity comes with, but I don't think I have that one.

[galadon3]

Prosperity-system is part of Reapers Due-DLC