Granting Independence

[SkiRich]

I read the wiki on this, and aside from having a very happy character with a long 10 year truce and also getting rid of holdings you dont care about is their any other reason or benefit to grant independence?

Seems to me, once I grant independence, I loose control, I dont get taxes or levies, other characters see them as fresh meat to go after and yet they are still in my kingdom (I think. Can someone confirm the kingdom part?)

So would you do it? Why?
Opinions wanted.

[???]

Originally posted by Sultan Ayyub The Fat:

Originally posted by SkiRich:

I read the wiki on this, and aside from having a very happy character with a long 10 year truce and also getting rid of holdings you dont care about is their any other reason or benefit to grant independence?

Seems to me, once I grant independence, I loose control, I dont get taxes or levies, other characters see them as fresh meat to go after and yet they are still in my kingdom (I think. Can someone confirm the kingdom part?)

So would you do it? Why?
Opinions wanted.

Imagine youve got a faction for independe in your kingdom and you can stop them from starting a rebellion by giving one or two independence as oppose to all six or whatever

[Zenneh]

Imagine if your threatening but just have a GHW/Holy war - to avoid a pretty nasty defense pact you can let some old ♥♥♥♥ who hates you go independent - smash the heathens and then and when his son inherits kick his head in.

[Yxklyx]

As mentioned, to lower your Threat. Also, if you want to change succession laws and a rival prevents that you can grant him independence - then pass the law.

[Fritz Bittenfeld]

Originally posted by Yxklyx:

As mentioned, to lower your Threat. Also, if you want to change succession laws and a rival prevents that you can grant him independence - then pass the law.

I keep threat disabled, that mechanic is some crap considering vassal conquests add to it. Love waiting 10 years to holy war 3 counties only to have Duke Whogivesashit of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bump my threat back up.

[Malus]

Is he trying to assassinate you? Making him leave your realm makes his plot power plummet, and the increased relations might even make him stop plotting.

[SkiRich]

Yeah that mechanic has to go. Next game I am certainly killing that rule.
When I conquer one county, just one, and that county is not my religion either, my threat level goes to 6 and then the knights templar start a defensive pact.
What? Knights Templar? The guys I funded and have land in my realm thing taking a muslim county is threatening?
Not a well thought out mechanic.

[flicking]

Generally you grant independence because you hold land in territory you don't care about. This can happen via inheritance where you somehow own a county in the middle of Germany or it can happen via natural play where you've moved your center of mass somewhere else and you have a random county that is constantly under attack far from any support.

In a "paint the map" game this won't normally happen or you will treat such land as a beachhead for future invasions, but if you have other goals it isn't that uncommon to have a bit of land that is causing more problems than it is worth.

One thing though - it is difficult (at least for a Catholic ruler) to grant independence to anybody who shares your religion. My strategy was to pull in Orthodox or Heretic courtiers to grant the land to (which lead to most of Britain becoming Orthodox once. I felt mildly guilty about that)

[flicking]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Yeah that mechanic has to go. Next game I am certainly killing that rule.

After conquering the world with Defensive Pacts on, I stopped playing with it. It doesn't really accomplish the objective (you declare different kinds of wars, learn how to encourage vassals to conquer stuff for you and approach the wars you fight differently but you really can just play at 100% threat all the time and still curbstomp everything, it is just slower). So you get a slower game with real game-breaking immersion as the Sri Lankans team up with Mongols and Templars to stop you from taking Acre from the Muslims.

[Fritz Bittenfeld]

Originally posted by flicking:

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Yeah that mechanic has to go. Next game I am certainly killing that rule.

After conquering the world with Defensive Pacts on, I stopped playing with it. It doesn't really accomplish the objective (you declare different kinds of wars, learn how to encourage vassals to conquer stuff for you and approach the wars you fight differently but you really can just play at 100% threat all the time and still curbstomp everything, it is just slower). So you get a slower game with real game-breaking immersion as the Sri Lankans team up with Mongols and Templars to stop you from taking Acre from the Muslims.

Yeah, it is such a poorly implemented feature that is somehow worse than how AE in EUIV can get sometimes. Aside from being game breaking and having you sit there for 3 hours while it slowly ticks down in-context it doesn't even make sense. Was there any moment in time half the world declared war on the Mongols due to a mutual agreement? It doesn't help block AI blobs, it only hinders the player.

[flicking]

To be fair I've had defensive pacts help against AI blobs when I'm small and near one.

But no, it is ahistorical. The existing marriage-based alliance systems, the way tribal/nomad vassal potential ally response works, and the holy war responses seem to model the kinds of alliances that really did happen. The biggest threat to something the size of the HRE, Byzantines or Islamic Caliphates was usually each other, or rarely a charismatic Steppes nomadic leader. If you actually formed a stable empire that size or larger (which is where defensive alliances don't let you twitch without fighting everybody) you would curbstomp anybody you fought.

If you want to stop big blobs from forming the better response is to turn up revolt strength to maximum and strengthen factions, decadence and similar internal problems compared to vanilla game. That's pretty much how it worked historically. Maybe tie the problems to the geographic sprawl. A lot of why the Plantagenet empire broke up so quickly was it was extremely hard to manage with the command-and-control limits of the times, plus the dynastic claims were all over the place leading to a ton of pretenders for various regions. A lot of why the HRE had trouble projecting power was that it was a full time job managing the internal problems of what we'd call a low crown authority sprawling empire.

[Fritz Bittenfeld]

Originally posted by flicking:

To be fair I've had defensive pacts help against AI blobs when I'm small and near one.

But no, it is ahistorical. The existing marriage-based alliance systems, the way tribal/nomad vassal potential ally response works, and the holy war responses seem to model the kinds of alliances that really did happen. The biggest threat to something the size of the HRE, Byzantines or Islamic Caliphates was usually each other, or rarely a charismatic Steppes nomadic leader. If you actually formed a stable empire that size or larger (which is where defensive alliances don't let you twitch without fighting everybody) you would curbstomp anybody you fought.

If you want to stop big blobs from forming the better response is to turn up revolt strength to maximum and strengthen factions, decadence and similar internal problems compared to vanilla game. That's pretty much how it worked historically. Maybe tie the problems to the geographic sprawl. A lot of why the Plantagenet empire broke up so quickly was it was extremely hard to manage with the command-and-control limits of the times, plus the dynastic claims were all over the place leading to a ton of pretenders for various regions. A lot of why the HRE had trouble projecting power was that it was a full time job managing the internal problems of what we'd call a low crown authority sprawling empire.

This is actually a hope I have for CK3 to expand on. I really want them to expand on internal vassal politics and managing larger kingdoms or empires, right now it's kinda meh, wait so and so for a faction to emerge and demand something that is usually managable. Autonomy and a monarchs strength might be valuble tools, a weak monarch or regent might have less authority over frontier regions or recently established holdings and struggle with local lords ruling there, robber barons, etc.