Transferring Vassals?

[Jack Niggleson]

I have no clue how to transfer vassals. I'm playing as Charlemagne and after uniting frankia I'm like 30 vassals over the limit. Unlike in CK3 though the game doesn't just tell you who wants what or even how to give anything away. Do I have to painstakingly flip through a gazillion counties to figure it out for myself or is there some easier way to do this?

[Preacher]

Usually you only want to transfer vassals when you have a lower level vassal in one of your higher tiered vassals de jure territory. You can do this by comparing de jure map modes with "direct vassal" map mode. For example, in your kingdom, you have a vassal of county X, but county X is in Duchy Y, so Duke Y wants that vassal. You can see this via the relations number by their portrait.

As for having a lot of vassals, try creating and granting duchies and kingdoms and when you do, be sure to click "transfer all lower level holdings"

[Narrowmind]

There is no nice way to say this, seemingly. I've been doing this for nearly 2k hours, and I swear, I've often felt stupid for having to do it, because it seems like there should have been an easier method...

What I do is this:

I use the vassal tree. I go all the way to the far back and I slowly work backwards giving every single baron, priest, and mayor to the count he belongs to. I do this one by one by clicking on his shield and pathing to the flag over the flag, so I know who the count he belongs to, and I transfer them that way. Then I go through the counts, transferring them to dukes. Then I transfer the dukes to the proper kings, the same way.

IF you are not painting mindlessly in each and every direction the whole game, then eventually the work will eventually stop, but if you keep expanding, it never seems to get easier.

When you take a holding, create vassals with the create vassal button on the country view and give your county to someone content, if you don't have the duchy. If you do have the duchy, give that duchy to someone who is content. If the duchy already exists, use the flag method to find who his boss should be. Do this again and again and again, every time your vassal limit is reached.

Decentralize your realm as much as possible to maximize your vassal limit. Get viceroy laws at the duchy level. Scatter your kingdom titles to to a content characters and give him all the lower levels he desires. I try to make sure the power of each king does not grow beyond 20 percent, but things happen. You can judge their power by the percentage number in the vassal map. The only thing you need to watch out for is if you gave all your kingdom titles away. You don't want to give lower titles if you intend to control some duchies under his titles, usually its best to destroy those duchies and just keep the counties, I've found, because the duchies themselves will enrage your king.


IF THERE IS AN EASIER WAY TO DEAL WITH THIS PROCESS, SAVE ME FROM THIS HELL! 😭

Edit When you look at your vassal map, pay attention to the rings around each portrait. Truth be told, you don't have to worry about characters at the holding level, because they are so far below you, who cares? If you bury them under a duchy title, they can't be angry with their boss, because they don't own the title. You only really have to pay attention to your direct vassals and their happiness.

Rename your favorite cities and duchy titles so you don't give them away by mistake.

[Preacher]

I never had much problem with it tbh, i use the de jure map mode vs direct vassal mode. See who head guy is, and transfer. If im giving away a whole duchy, i just say "transfer lower level holdings" and now he has the responsibility to create counts

[Narrowmind]

It seems to me, and I may be wrong, but if you do that, doesn't the vassal still give out titles using the "ask for help" button, giving all the titles to people of the wrong culture and religion?

[Preacher]

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

It seems to me, and I may be wrong, but if you do that, doesn't the vassal still give out titles using the "ask for help" button, giving all the titles to people of the wrong culture and religion?

That's probably true, but I never felt it was impactful enough to bother with who a count or even a baron is if I'm the HRE. Even if they end up being the duke after a rebellion, I'd just somehow catch them in a plot and revoke. Of course I dont have conclave so maybe thats not an option

[bri]

The game does actually tell you if you have direct control of a vassal that one of your vassals thinks should be theirs (or if you personally own land that qualifies). There will be a negative relations modifier something like: "desires the x" where x is e.g. county of Essex, bishopric of Rome, etc.

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

It seems to me, and I may be wrong, but if you do that, doesn't the vassal still give out titles using the "ask for help" button, giving all the titles to people of the wrong culture and religion?

Yeah, the ai just throws titles at courtiers without regard to things like that.

[ShepherdOfCats]

If you have a vassal who likes you just give him all the weaker vassals who hate you (that's also a good emergency way to get vassals in factions out of your hair). I don't worry too much about de jure titles matching unless my vassals have something other than gavelkind. Eventually it tends to sort itself out.

I once had an AI emperor give me a ton of vassals that weren't my de jure vassals. I can't recall exactly but the AI either just finished a war or inherited a lot of land and was waaaay over their vassal limit. The pop-up spam was insane, like 10-15 vassals offloaded onto me at one time. I couldn't for the life of me find out why the AI was doing that, but then I realized that vassal-levies are opinion based in CK2, and thanks to all those +10 modifiers for vassal transfers, I now had to contribute the maximum amount of levies. I could definitely have screwed over the AI by launching an independence faction but I decided to roleplay it instead. However the AI's tendency to join factions against human players is largely opinion based so generally you are safe unless the heir hates you when they come to power.

Oh wait I found it:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/203770/discussions/0/2567563897043091249/

So it was more than 15, lol.

[Langkard]

I use the de jure map and direct vassal map and compare as others do. I try make things match the de jure map as much as possible early in the game because in limits vassals fighting with each other. Once an empire is formed, I try to keep any vassal kings from owning a county or duchy within my own de jure kingdom, so that they can't easily get a de jure claim upon it.

Later in the game, I intentionally form border gore in newly conquered territory where my empire expands. I give out each county in a de jure duchy to one king level vassal each. This way it's more difficult for them to get claims on one of the other countries and then a claim on the entire duchy. It also makes gathering armies more efficient at as I expand, because I can call up and entire vassal king armies right at or near the border. I do this for as many new counties as I have, giving them out to as many vassal kings as possible and my vassal dukes within my own de jure kingdom. After a successful great pagan holy war for an entire kingdom, I give out entire duchies to my vassal king in this way.

Here is an example. This is a "direct vassal" map. I was playing as pagan Scandinavia. England, Saxony, Noregr, Skotland, Poland, Croatia, etc. are all vassal kingdoms in my empire. I gave each lands near to my borders with the Umayyads and Italy and Byzantium. As I expanded into those lands, I continued to give out lands to as many of my vassal kings as possible near the new border, while trying to keep duchies intact for a single king or no king with more than one county in a duchy when necessary.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2078903774

[Jack Niggleson]

Originally posted by ShepherdOfCats:

If you have a vassal who likes you just give him all the weaker vassals who hate you (that's also a good emergency way to get vassals in factions out of your hair). I don't worry too much about de jure titles matching unless my vassals have something other than gavelkind. Eventually it tends to sort itself out.

I once had an AI emperor give me a ton of vassals that weren't my de jure vassals. I can't recall exactly but the AI either just finished a war or inherited a lot of land and was waaaay over their vassal limit. The pop-up spam was insane, like 10-15 vassals offloaded onto me at one time. I couldn't for the life of me find out why the AI was doing that, but then I realized that vassal-levies are opinion based in CK2, and thanks to all those +10 modifiers for vassal transfers, I now had to contribute the maximum amount of levies. I could definitely have screwed over the AI by launching an independence faction but I decided to roleplay it instead. However the AI's tendency to join factions against human players is largely opinion based so generally you are safe unless the heir hates you when they come to power.

Oh wait I found it:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/203770/discussions/0/2567563897043091249/

So it was more than 15, lol.

This worked, lol. I'm back below my cap. They're his problem now.