Any pagan tips?

[VoiD]

Seems quite hard to keep their kingdoms together, they fall appart as easily as they are formed =/

Last game I managed to get my ruler married to an independant neighboring ducchess. we never had a son, just 2 daughters, and my heir was married to a claimant of another kingdom matrilinearrly, which seemed like a good plan, then my ruler died, my daughter got busy with civil wars, had a kid and died right after that, less than 1 year rulling, my 0 years old son inherited it all and it all fell appart instantly, sigh, what a sad end..

Even if I when I wasn't stuck with a 0 years old ruller I was constantly fighting civil wars over random ♥♥♥♥, "somebody for lithuania", "independence", "independence", "lower crown authority", "independence", every damn year, sigh... At least it was better when I had a ruler most vassals loved and would offer a buttload of levies for every war...

The weirdest part was: They always thought they had a chance, even before they really had, it would show up as a "dangerous faction" when I'd outnumber their troops at least 5 to 1, I don't remember having this problem as a catholic nation some time ago.

[markdb92]

take your 3 holy places in your first ruler take out rest of nations that have your faith then reform your faith. then change laws away from gravelkind. Dont make more than one kingdom title till you have the lands for empire your first kingdom has. If you form a empire destoy your kingdom titles as vassels want to steal them from you. If your starting out as duke dont make duke titles till you have enough for a kingdom. Making your direct vassels church guys will keep them in line usually as they are elected. Church vassels I noticed just sit there a lot and dont usually revolt. You can always save before kid is born and reload if not son.

[Background]

Okay, so, it looks like you're in de jure Lithuania of the Romuva faith. This is just my guess.
Basically:
Your faith will have all three holy sites within its de jure Kingdom which is pretty amazing to start with. Not even your de jure Empire, but your de jure Kingdom.
Take the ambition to form the Kingdom of Lithuania.
Declare war on people who are de jure Lithuania; save your non-Lithuanian subjugation for later, after someone else has done the hard work of forming another Kingdom for you, especially if they have one of your holy sites.
Subjugate one Kingdom and destroy its title so gavelkind succession won't destroy your pre-Empire Kingdom.
See what your De Jure empire is, and try to form it - be careful, though, around Christian Kingdoms - make sure to check who their allies are.
Don't mess with West Francia unless you have to.
Destroy all non-original Kingdom titles when you acquire them.
Remember you cannot raise crown law more than once per ruler, meaning unless you are severely worried about maintaining the moral authority of your religion into your heir, you should not reform it.
The most important thing I could stress is to always destroy Kingdom titles that are not your de jure while under gavelkind.
Good luck forming the Wendish Empire.

[VoiD]

I guess it worked, thanks
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=181139414

Thinking of removing that elective monarchy now, it's getting dangerous, last election I had to murder 2 kings through plots to get my choice to be elected and it barely worked, plus I got kinslayer >.<

[markdb92]

Voldian if you made your vassels all church then they cant vote for them self and can only vote for people who have claims

[VoiD]

Now that's good to know, any downside on doing that? Was king of trying to get my dinasty to hold all the big kingdons after I formed an empire for prestige, not sure if it's worth it or not,

[markdb92]

not really you get more money and peity for haveing church vassels unlike barons who dont pay. church vassels even with ambious trait wont give you a -50 cause there nothing for them to get. The only problems I had so far with them is messing with their own vassels ie rovoke wars. You only get wrong gov type with city vassels though. church vassels love all those good traits it seems.

[Lokyar]

pretty much reform faith and keep nomming the little nations

[VoiD]

Hmm interesting Ill give it a try in my next game or something, it's probably too late to attempt this now, maybe when some kings rebel

Oh, also, right now there are no other pagans, killed them all and I'm covering almost half of the whole map, byzantine empire is about 1/3 or 1/4 of my size, any tips from now on? Is it a good idea to stay Pagan?

Right now I'm trying to breed some byzantine greek sons (with concubines) to see if they can form some kingdoms for me, not sure if that's even necessary, I mean, I could probably make some huge duchies to replace the kingdoms I can't for due to my culture.

Also, one thing I did that seems fairly useful was inviting claimants to entire kingdoms to my court, kill their heirs and spouses then force them to marry my family matrilinearly so they'd produce sons of my dynasty with my culture and religion then fight for their claims

[Background]

I find it incredibly unrealistic that people not of a Kingdom's culture can't create Kingdom titles in this game. The Kingdom of Italy was founded by wandering German pagans, for example.

I'm really happy that suggestion worked. Once you're out of gavelkind you'll probably want to keep the Kingdom titles, and you'll probably also want to get out of Elective Monarchy once crown law is high enough. When I played as the HRE the first thing I did was get rid of Elective Monarchy. The biggest players (obvious, I think) are the Catholics, Muslims and Golden Hordes & co. who will sweep in later. If you can get strong enough you can get them to stop, or maybe even take them over. If you got them to convert to your faith (which is possible, I think) it would make for a great EUIV save, possibly....
If you have Aztec Invasion on, I would also be a bit wary of them, because you will have an insanely weak Christendom and Muslim world, so they may wind up picking on you with their 100k stacks rather soon.
Muslims will eventually touch your borders if they aren't already. ERE/Byzantium would be a wonderful Empire title to hold only because of the Born in the Purple bonus (I'm pretty sure it exists) and the free Varangian guard (if they still exist).

[Mad Monk]

i tried being a count has a pagan and every time a pagan duke went to war with me, i only had one area vs a person with 4 lands. wtf

[Background]

I wouldn't be an independent count. Most of the people here who talk about starting out as a count aren't independent. You could also swear fealty to someone.