CK2 Leon - How do I pursuade Vassals and Court members to accept Low Taxation

[kokopeli]

In this learning game, I wanted to try and avoid using intrigue too heavily to advance my dynasty. Instead, I thought I might do well to improve my financial status and use my troops to help those around me, which would raise my status in their eyes.

For both of these goals, more money is a key pillar to reaching my ends.

With more money I may support more troops, send more gifts and even build towns to raise my revenue stream.

But when I propose to move taxation from none to low I have four (4) votes for this and thirteen (13) votes against. So I need to secure five (+5) more votes. Looking at my vassals, most of them have a positive opinion of me. So I guess the question is if most of them have a high opinion of me, why do they not vote to support my change in law? How positive of a view of me do they have to have to change their mind on this question?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

just keeping opinions as high as possible and hoping someone naive gets into power.

it checks periodically based on their ai weights (which is set by their personality traits) as to whether they'll vote yes or abstain (it's a percentage roll that gets larger or smaller based on vassal specific factors). Once they vote yes they can't change it unless the vote is cancelled and restarted.

Each vassal type has a particular version of a law they consider ideal, and being more than that is disliked while being less than that is liked. (the laws start the game in the ideal positions).

They're more likely to vote yes if the law is seen as beneficial to them, they might vote yes eventually if it doesn't majorly affect them though vassals would generally prefer laws to stay in the ideal category so as to not rock the boat too much, and are highly unlikely to vote yes to laws they don't like.

However even unpopular laws can eventually get passed but it can take years or even decades to do.

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The Iqta government for muslims can pass law for 100 piety with no vote. But requires Sword of Islam and is muslim only. (this changes somewhat if Conclave is installed depending on what laws are passed).

Conclave overhauls laws and realm management, and one of those changes is to institute absolute rule which allows changing laws without a vote.

And even if a vote is allowed (you get some useful benefits for allowing votes on laws and war-declaration (the rest of the potential council benefit laws really only benefit the councilors but do give you some bonus opinion for allowing them and a few of them like execution rights is basically just free councilor opinion) you only need to convince a majority of your councilors to accept it instead of a majority of the whole realm's vassals (it's also more transparent about why they're voting for or against it, and you can use favors to force someone to vote for you...but other vassals can also use favors to hinder you in that regard as well since you can't call in a favor while they're already returning a favor to someone else for the same thing) or potentially force you to pass laws they consider beneficial if they get favors on you). (when playing as a vassal on the a liege council you can set your "stance" to auto-vote on certain issues (you only get pop-ups for issues that may directly impact you negatively) so you aren't getting asked about it constantly whenever your liege wants to do something that requires council support).


In CK3, laws work like a hybrid of Vanilla CK2 and Conclave. Your vassals all get a vote (though it's weighted based on rank), and you can use hooks to influence the voting. (Hooks are basically the CK3 version of favors but are a bit more versatile in what they can do. Weak Hooks are pretty much identical to favors, while Strong Hooks are very powerful and useful to have on someone but also a bit harder to get).

[kokopeli]

I thought pre-Magna Carta IRL, king's had a near absolute authority. I am surprised in 1066-ish I have to cajole my Vassals to do things. I can understand going so far they simply unite and we fight a civil war, but taking a single step on the advancement tree shouldn't trigger a civil war in most circumstances. But, I guess I'll have to play with it a bit and see.

[(ARG) Ruda Macho]

try to rule absolutely, that is, reduce council power to a bare minimum so that they don't interfere. if you go to far into owing vassals favours in order to get the council to vote the way you do, then they'll eventually use it against you.

having a nice character also helps a great deal. and i don't mean just good traits, but more importantly higher piety and prestige as well as good diplomacy. if you don't want too much opposition, diplomacy coupled with prestige, piety and traits is definitely the way to go.

i usually have the bishops and cities pay full taxes and rely on my feudal vassals and personal domain for troops (the feudal tax is also moved towards levy focused). it also helps to switch to free investiture as the bishops will almost always have a 100 opinion of you if you're careful enough to assign succesors to the bishoprics. the money will never go to the pope.

bare in mind that as soon as you pass a law, it'll take a couple years for them to be ok with it, regardless of opinion. you may get the "disliked new obligation law" penalty in some of them (only a -10), but afterwards, it shouldn't be a problem.

hope it helps.

[kokopeli]

Thanks. There is much to learn.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Nah that's a common misconception.

the Magna Carta was a response during the high Middle ages to combat the trend of Kings attempting to consolidate authority and depower their vassals.


During the Early and Middle middle ages, Vassals still held a significant amount of power and a king needed to play the political game carefully to get what he wanted, otherwise there was a very high likelihood of getting assassinated or forced to abdicate.

But even then laws and authority were heavily based on proximity. Which is also a part of game mechanics. Your liege-levy is modified by how far away from your heartland of power your vassal is from you. You only get full liege-levy according to laws from vassals in your capital county, you 75% from your capital duchy vassals, 50% from your capital kingdom vassals, 35% from capital empire vassals, and 25% from any other vassal.


Mechanically this is seen via the Crown Authority laws, which is a rough blanket approximation of how much power the King has over particular titles that are traditionally under his purview. (If the applicable de jure title exists, these apply even if the title is part of another realm, barring a few exceptions).

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Conclave overhauls that system and generally breaks up Crown Authority into individual laws. Also very few laws directly make vassals angry for having them, they only temporarily hate them when first introduced if it's a law they dislike.

Where as in the base game, any law a vassal dislikes has an opinion penalty (or bonus if they like it) at all times which if you push too many dislike laws can make it nearly impossible to properly control your realm due to the large negative opinions.

For the core game most people stop at medium crown authority as it gives you the most bang for your buck in exchange for the small opinion penalty it brings.

High and Absolute Crown authority have much rougher opinion penalties and don't really bring much to the table unless your realm already hates you, which is honestly something you should be avoiding like the plague as your realm will most likely explode during succession even if your current King is managing to hold things together currently.

(Low crown authority only gives you very basic powers but has no opinion penalty, and autonomous vassals gives you almost no authority but makes vassals happier).


CK3 uses the base Crown Authority settings to determine what the base rules for dealing with vassals are. However every title a vassal holds has it's own vassal contract which over-rides parts of the Crown Authority law whenever there's a conflict.

i.e. your crown laws might allow revocation but a specific vassal's contract might have legal protections against revocation due to some privilege that title was grant in the past.

[kokopeli]

One thing I noticed, which shouldn't happen, is that the local county that is being invaded doesn't provide a full levy. If a local county is invaded, it is their responsibility to defend themselves, so a larger levy should come from any county threatened. But maybe the game could "lock" those troops to the local county/duchy. The liege is responsible for supplementing the army, but the locals should be providing all they can.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Originally posted by kokopeli:

One thing I noticed, which shouldn't happen, is that the local county that is being invaded doesn't provide a full levy. If a local county is invaded, it is their responsibility to defend themselves, so a larger levy should come from any county threatened. But maybe the game could "lock" those troops to the local county/duchy. The liege is responsible for supplementing the army, but the locals should be providing all they can.

They do but only if you call them into the war or they decide to fight themselves (which only happens if their personal territory gets threatened, and only if they think they can win by themselves).


You don't get bonus levy since they don't owe you any bonus levy. As long as they've fulfilled their obiligation under the law.

And in theory if they were checking it properly, depending on when a war happens and how long you've been using the levy that year, they won't fight for you AT ALL since they've already fulfilled their yearly obligations and should fact, leave immediately as soon as their obligations are fulfilled.

(this was a particularly nasty deal back in the 800's in Proto-England, since vassals took their contracts VERY seriously and would leave immediately as soon their agreed upon amount of yearly service was fulfilled, even in the middle of a full blown war against foreign invaders. Alfred the Great had to release his levy and fight a guerilla war with his personal troops until the new year ticked over because his nobles all went home after fulfilling their service contract, and he had to wait to call them back up again for the final push).

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Also a vassal keeping their troops in their province IS defending the province, as it raises the amount of soldiers needed to conquer stuff (unraised levy is added to the province garrison) and affects siege-timer ticks based on the difference between the defending and attacking armies.

Which gives you more time to relieve the siege.


And while the bonus is quite small, you do get opinion bonuses sometimes for defending against a hostile invasion depending on some factors, which can raise the amount of levy your vassals provide via the opinion modifier to liege levy. However it's usually not that noticeable due to all the other factors that go into liege levy calculations.

[Stevcorp]

You're proposing that the nobility give you more money.

Obviously, none of them are going to vote for it because they think it's a good idea - it clearly isn't a good idea for them. They lose cash and you gain power.

They're only going to vote for it because they are family, or your buddy, or you bribed them, or because they're a puppet you installed after the previous lord fell out a window in a tragic accident that had nothing to do with you.

If you get really - really - popular, you might sway enough votes to get your proposal through. But the moment that popularity slides, they'll be threatening civil war unless you agree to go back. If you want to get higher taxes and make them stick, you need to play dirty.

[bri]

Originally posted by Stevcorp:

You're proposing that the nobility give you more money.

Obviously, none of them are going to vote for it because they think it's a good idea - it clearly isn't a good idea for them. They lose cash and you gain power.

They're only going to vote for it because they are family, or your buddy, or you bribed them, or because they're a puppet you installed after the previous lord fell out a window in a tragic accident that had nothing to do with you.

If you get really - really - popular, you might sway enough votes to get your proposal through. But the moment that popularity slides, they'll be threatening civil war unless you agree to go back. If you want to get higher taxes and make them stick, you need to play dirty.

Actually the nobility prefer the laws that increase their taxes, they vote against the ones that raise their levy contributions. The burghers and clergy are the opposite.