Advanced tips and tricks for beginners - Updated 2022! Top rated CK2 Steam Guide of all time!

This guide aims to shed some light on some of the more advanced nuances in Crusader Kings 2. Rather than yet another guide on basic things such as who to play as or how to go about fabricating claims, I aim to provide readers with some of the more specific features of the game that, I would argue, are just as important as the basics.

Introduction

Crusader Kings 2 has been described by many as a difficult game, no thanks to the terrible tutorial. I, however, disagree with this statement: Sure, the game can have its difficulties, but once you get your head around the initial premise (that you are playing as a character - moreover, a dynasty - rather than a country), it no longer seems so daunting.

No, Crusader Kings 2 isn't 'difficult'. It's just... complex. The game is so deep, so intricate, so detailed that it is impossible to get your head around all of the mechanics and nuances at once. Several hundred hours into the game and even I am still discovering new ways to secure my position as a ruler and defeat any opposition that comes my way.

Paradox have described the genre of the game as a 'grand strategy game'. I choose to describe it as a sandbox, a simulator of medieval Europe from the perspective of a lord.

You are thrown into this world and expected to slowly learn the trade through trying, failing and trying again.

This is where I come in.

Having spent hours and hours attempting to explain to my less experienced friends some of the various ways to combat certain scenarios I have decided to condense some of the more important information into one guide. Here I will tell you, in detail, how to prevent your vassals from becoming too powerful, how to efficiently manage your military and economy and how to raise your children (really you should be paying me for this, most people lose custody of their children when neglected).

There are some assumptions I am going to make:
First, I am going to assume that you already know the basics of the game. There are, literally, thousands of tutorials for this across YouTube, the forums, the wiki page and (I'm assuming) the Steam community and Steam guide pages. If you don't yet know how to fabricate claims, assign your council or raise your armies then you're in the wrong place. Second, I am going to assume you own dlc. I own most of the dlc and have done so for many years. I haven't played without dlc for too long to remember which dlc adds which feature. Whilst this guide doesn't require dlc, many of the things I am going to be mentioning will most likely have dlc requirements and so might become obsolete. If you don't recognise/cannot find some of the mentioned things in this guide, there is a good chance that dlc is the issue here. Third, I am going to assume that you understand the definition of 'guide'. This isn't a walkthrough. I am not going to give you a magic formula to win the game. Most of the things I mention aren't always applicable to every scenario and a lot of them are going to require you to choose between x and y rather than following one specific and clear path. Even after that, the game does like to take the piss sometimes with bad luck. You could drop dead at the worst possible moment, you could get a revolt just when you could have done without one. Luck is (unfortunately) a major part of the game.

With that established... enjoy!

Combatting vassals - internal power politics - Part I

One of the major suprises to the uninitiated when playing Crusader Kings 2 tends to be that the biggest threats to your realm and the stability of your dynasty come from internally rather than foreign powers. Certainly, if you don't know what you are doing, most of the game will likely revolve around you and your vassals duking it out for ultimate power.

Creating a stable home-front is pretty important if you want success in Crusader Kings 2. You can't expand your empire if you're constantly fighting civil wars or rebellions.

When playing as a major lord which (in most cases) you will spend the majority of your game doing (even if you start as a lowly count or duke, you still tend to find yourself controlling a kingdom or empire eventually), your biggest threat comes from factions. Vassals will team up, uniting their military strength, in order to force through legislation or changes to personnel in government.

If you're facing factions at full strength or, god forbid, when they send you an ultimatum then you're pretty late off the marks. This is an issue you want to plan long-term for. If you do find there are powerful factions then there is a simple solution: bribe the members. Sending gifts to every member of a powerful faction usually works because at least one or two will leave, which should reduce the available men (and, as a result, percentage influence of the faction).

However, we want to make sure factions don't get a chance to become that influential in the first place.



In order to control vassal power we need to understand how the levy system works. It's quite simple, even if it sounds complicated. Basically, each ruler can access their own personal levies (soldiers who are raised when war is declared) based on a combination of their martial level, technology level and building levels in their holdings. As well as personal levies, each ruler is given vassal levies - this is where each and every vassal gives their ruler a percentage of their own levies. So a count gives a percentage of their levies to their duke, who gives a percentage of their levies to their king, who gives a percentage of their levies to their emperor.



You can see how many levies your vassals control, and how many they provide to you, on the military screen. You can also see who your more powerful vassals are on this screen by sorting vassal levies by the total amount.



There is a very simple, yet constantly overlooked, method of abusing this levy system in order to keep vassals in-check.

Obligations. You know? That little tab under laws that you never touch!

Most of your vassals are likely to fall under the feudal category - this means that they are counts, dukes or kings. Crucially, all of these types of lords own castles. Castles are good for producing soldiers but aren't taxation power-houses.

The best way to abuse the system is to shift feudal obligations to 'levy focused', the second highest levy based obligation. You need level 5 legalism to do this, though you won't get there in one anyway. What this means is that you will gain 70% of the levies that your vassals own. You will still get 5% of the tax from these vassals (unlike if you went one step further to 'heavily levy focused'), though (as already mentioned), feudal lords don't produce as much tax anyway.

This will bump up the amount of soldiers at your disposal significantly. It is worth noting that if a vassal rebels against you, you will not be able to access these troops. This is fine. The point here is to dissuade the AI from considering a rebellion through intimidation. When deciding whether or not to send an ultimatum or whether or not to rebel, the AI looks at the amount of levies at your disposal (not retinues, importantly) and uses that to calculate the odds of victory. The AI does not calculate the fact that you would not have access to all of those troops because a rebellion would mean you not being able to access the rebelling levies. In other words, you are tricking the AI into thinking you have more soldiers than you really would in a rebellion, which prevents them from considering a revolt in the first place.

Plus, an added bonus, you can actually use these vassal levies in foreign wars.



In order to compensate for the minor loss in tax income from feudal vassals, you should increase the burgher and church obligations to 'heavily tax focused'. This provides +50% tax for mayors and +70% tax for bishops. Mayors and bishops (burghers and the church) are minor vassals - vassals that control the cities and churches within counties. As these are secondary holdings, they won't play a part in politics so you don't need to worry about them rebelling or forming factions. Further, cities and churches generate large revenue streams to be taxed, but don't provide many troops so focusing on taxes will generate the best results.

As a side note, whilst discussing minor titles, if ever you conquer a new county and get the notification 'wrong type of holding', it means that you (a feudal lord) are holding a secondary title (city or church). You can rectify this by going to the county with this notification, clicking on it so that you can see the county screen and accessing the available castles, cities and churches, right clicking on the cities/churches that you control and then pressing 'create new vassal'. The game will then generate a new mayor/bishop for you and the notification will go away.



If you have 'wrong type of holding' then click on the holding and create new vassal. It is not lit up here because I have already done it.

I will talk more about taxation and financial income in another section of this guide.

Combatting vassals - internal power politics - Part II

Alongside intimidating the AI by helping yourself to larger percentages of their troops, you want to make sure none of your vassals are particularly powerful in the first place.

One of the most common errors made by new players of Crusader Kings 2 is to spend too much time focusing on personal success and acquiring as many titles as possible, without concentrating on what the AI is doing. Very often, overlooking the AI can lead to small groups of them controlling large swathes of land and they are intelligent enough to ally and force through change.

The game has a system known as a 'demesne limit'. This is, essentially, a limit on how many holdings you can control and is impacted by your stewardship level, rank and laws. As a result, when you get large it is not going to be possible to hold onto every single title. You are going to have to distribute land and titles to your vassals. Keep for yourself the lucrative titles - titles where there are lots of buildings constructed, lots of slots for castles, cities and churches, trade routes on the silk road, places that naturally defend, etc. Give away titles starting with the smallest and least influential. Crucially, when distributing titles, give them out to people with the least land rather than vassals who are already powerful. This prevents a small group of vassals from getting control of large amounts of soldiers and tax money relative to the other vassals. You may also want to consider giving titles to vassals who are already established far away. If their land is seperated by a considerable distance then it is going to be harder for them to manage and if they do rebel, they will struggle to link their soldiers.

In addition, you will want to prevent internal vassal wars. One of the most subtle ways for vassals to monopolise power is by going to war with other vassals under your nose. You soon find that powerful vassals gang up on their less powerful rivals and before you know it they own half of your kingdom without you noticing. In the law screen you can prevent internal vassal conflicts by declaring them illegal. If you feel you can control the distribution of power and stay on top of vassal authority, you could set the law to external only, meaning that vassals cannot go to war with other vassals, but they can go to war with foreign powers. This is helpful as your vassals will slowly fight wars against neighbours and take land without you having to lift a thumb. As mentioned, however, you need to keep on top of the amount of land your vassals gain. If they win a war, they will gain the newly acquired titles, not you.



If you are following my advice and giving your land out to smaller, weaker vassals then you will soon encounter another issue: vassal limit. Vassal limit is essentially the opposite of demesne limit. It is a cap on the amount of direct vassals you can control. The game is, essentially, forcing you to decentralise - to create a multi-level hierarchy.

If you want, you can choose to become less centralised on the law screen. This will lower your demesne limit but increase your vassal limit.

However, this will only make a subtle difference. What you are going to have to do, eventually, is create more powerful vassals.

What you will want to do is create dukes (assuming you don't have any) by granting duchies to vassals. Once again, you want to do this to weaker vassals. You can then go to diplomacy with these dukes and transfer vassals to them. You can give counts and minor vassals to them, meaning that your personal vassal limit is lowered. The vassals will work directly for that duke - they will pay that duke taxes and provide that duke levies rather than you directly. This is why you want to limit the amount of vassals you give to each duke. It is also a good idea to give them vassals who are far away, to prevent them from uniting their forces in the case of a rebellion.

As you get even larger and find almost all of your vassals end up becoming dukes, you can do the same but with kings. When you are an empire and have multiple kingdoms, you can grant these kingdom titles to vassals and make them kings. You can then transfer vassals to them in the same way as before - keeping sure to prevent any one king from becoming too powerful. Crucially, whilst you can transfer any count or minor vassal to a king, you can only transfer dukes to them if the duchy title is part of that de jure kingdom. So, for example, you can transfer the duke of Wessex to the king of England, because Wessex is a de jure duchy of England. You cannot transfer the duke of Antioch to the king of England because Antioch is not a de jure duchy within the kingdom of England.

Viceroyalties, if you have the right dlc, are an absolute saviour when it comes to this, Viceroyalties are essentially temporary titles. You can give titles to characters and then transfer them vassals without much worry. You can revoke the viceroyalty at any time without incursion of penalty and when the owner dies, you get the title back anyway. Essentially, you can keep picking and choosing who owns viceroyalties. It's best to make your most powerful titles that you don't directly control into viceroyalties, so that loyalists are provided them and you can keep tabs on them.

On the subject of who to give titles to, a lot of people assume that you are going to want to give them to family members. I can see the logic. However, this is probably the worst thing to do. Family members tend to be title claimants and they don't tend to like you because of it. I like to keep family members close and without any titles so that they can't cause any trouble. The same applies to any claimant really.

As you can see, keeping vassals in-check is essentially just constantly juggling between titles and trying to prevent any one vassal from growing powerful relative to other vassals and yourself. If you plan for every eventuality, it's not too difficult. After every war, I tend to re-assess who owns what and re-distribute according to the scenario. If vassals are kept quiet you can usually also get rid of the council via the law screen. When you've done that, you should be able to rule comfortably and in peace.

De Jure Titles - How to micromanage power

FOR a more detailed explanation of de jure titles and de jure drift, please check out THIS guide!

This guide has repeatedly used the terms 'de jure' and 'de facto' with an assumption that the reader will know what those terms mean. If not, here are some basic definitions:

De Jure is a legal term that essentially means 'is in name but not in practice.'
De Facto is essentially the opposite, 'is in practice but not in name.'

In game, de jure essentially means something that ought to be, by right and by law. This section aims to tie the notion of 'de jure' in with the previous section on how to manage vassals and balance power. Thankfully, the game openly encourages de jure micromanaging and provides the appropriate tools to help out.

Essentially, the game map and all of it's titles are distributed by law. There are 'de jure empires', 'de jure kingdoms' and 'de jure duchies.' You can view all of these in-game using the appropriate map-modes. Whilst these can change with de jure drift (which shall be discussed later), the default de jure map should look like these:

De Jure Empires:



This is a map that shows how the borders for empires ought to be. It is worth noting that there is also the de jure empire of Rome, but this doesn't appear on the map because it incorporates several smaller empires and is only available with the Legacy of Rome dlc when certain requirements are met as Byzantine Emperor.

De Jure Kingdoms:



This is a map that shows how the borders for kingdoms ought to be.

De Jure Duchies:



This is a map that shows how the borders for duchies ought to be.

I ask readers to keep in mind my 'hierarchy map' from earlier in this guide to understand how the de jure maps overlap. It is essential to understand the feudal hierarchy in the game if you want to use the de jure map to delegate titles efficiently.

The benefit of using the de jure maps to distribute titles is no doubt obvious, if you have read the above section of this guide. By distributing titles in such a way, your vassals are likely to be of more-or-less equal standing. Kings will only own a single kingdom, dukes will only own a single duchy. Assuming you micromanage to the counts also, then each count will only hold a single county. Whilst certain counties, duchies and kingdoms are more lucrative than others, the difference isn't big enough to throw your empire into imbalance. If you assign your vassals along de jure lines as you expand, you shall have an extremely easy time making sure that your vassals don't get too powerful, you stay within your vassal limit and you prevent internal conflicts over de jure territory.

Owning a de jure title (e.g. duchy) but not all of the lands within that title (e.g. as duke of Northumbria you don't own the county of York, which is a de jure county in Northumbria) gives you a claim on the county that is not controlled. This often results in civil wars if the de jure borders are not distributed appropriately. By simply ensuring that your vassals have only the land they ought to have, you save yourself lots of trouble.

It's relatively easy to distribute along de jure lines as you expand. If you conquer a new duchy, create/usurp the duchy then give the title to one of the counts who has a county within that de jure duchy. Transfer all of the other counts (in the de jure duchy) to him as his vassals. Make sure that none of them own any land outside of that duchy. There you go, a perfectly drawn up duchy. The same applies to kingdoms. You don't want to be distributing empire titles to vassals and so that is less important, simply keep the empire titles to yourself or rely on de jure drift.

Ideally, you would want to micromanage to such a degree that within each de jure duchy, all of the counts own a single county. That way the power is decentralised in the most effective manner. However, this can be difficult to maintain as dukes and kings will often revoke titles from their vassals.

De jure drift is also important to understand.

De jure drift is, essentially, how 'de jure' borders change over time. For instance, if you are the King of England but you own a duchy in Scotland (not a de jure part of the kingdom), you may experience de jure drift (assuming certain conditions are met) where that duchy is slowly incorporated into the Kingdom of England. Once the process if complete, that Scottish duchy is now a de jure part of England - it is subject to English crown laws instead of Scottish (assuming the Empire of Britannia is formed), it prevents the King of Scotland from gaining a cassus belli and it provides a greater amount of levies than it previously would have. De jure drift applies to duchies into de jure kingdoms (like the example mentioned above) and kingdoms into de jure empires (e.g. the kingdom of navarra drifting into the de jure empire of France).

Unfortunately, de jure drift is extremely buggy and can be a pain at times.

These are the conditions for de jure drift (for the purposes of the explanation, this is assuming a duchy drift, but the same applies to kingdoms):

• The entire duchy (i.e. all county titles; baronies are allowed to be outside the realm) is within the realm of the king.
  
• The king does not hold the crown of the current de jure kingdom to which the duchy belongs.
  
• The ducal title either does not exist or is held by the king or by a vassal of the king.
  
• The duchy is not part of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
  
• The kingdom is its owner's primary title.

By default, de jure drift takes 100 years to complete, but this can be changed in the settings. If any of these conditions are suddenly not met (for instance, a rebellion breaks out), then the timer will start going backwards at twice the speed (until it is back at 0).



After the conditions for de jure drift are met, once the date hits 1st January, it will become visible on the map. Assuming you click the relevant map mode (e.g. de jure duchies, de jure kingdoms, de jure empires) you should see the de jure shift in the form of striped lines. If you hover over this land, it will tell you how many years into the drift it is.

Why is de jure drift important?

The most important thing about de jure drift is that there are legal implications. On the law screen, you assign crown laws which only apply to the de jure titles. E.g. If you are the Byzantine Emperor and you set a new crown law, the law will only apply to lands that have de jure drifted into the de jure Byzantine Empire. Any lands owned by the player or vassal outside of the de jure title will not be subject to the laws.

This is an extremely annoying mechanic, but important to understand.

If you own the Conclave dlc, then crown laws and de jure jurisdiction apply to laws such as 'vassal war limits', which are quite crucial. If you set your vassals war laws to 'vassal wars illega', for the purposes of preventing your vassals from taking new land and becoming powerful behind your back, then this law will only apply to land that has been de jure assimilated into your primary title. Any land that you have recently acquired, which is not part of your de jure title, will have to take 100 years minimum to de jure drift and get this law applied.

If you have the Conclave dlc (I'm sorry, I've had it for too long to remember what the screen looks like without the dlc) then you can find out which are crown laws based on which laws have a picture of a crown next to them. These laws are the ones that require de jure drift to apply.

Finances - Part I - Gaining Wealth

Rather like in the real world, money is an incredibly useful tool in Crusader Kings 2 for getting what you want. I would go so far as to argue that having money is the most influential part of the game - more influential than having a large army or lots of land.

To put it bluntly: Money can buy you almost anything in the game.

Despite its monumental importance, the economic system in Crusader Kings 2 is relatively simple leaving little room for movement. In this section, I am going to explain how to gain wealth, how to spend wealth and talk a little about debt.

Gaining wealth:

There are several different ways of gaining wealth, most of which I am about to cover, but in most cases your income will be limited to this first method: Taxation.

Crusader Kings 2, being a simulation of medieval europe, has a feudal taxation system in place. The taxation system in the game works almost identically to the levy system I described earlier. Counts and Barons earn income from their demesne, they pay a percentage to their Duke, who pays a percentage of their total income to their King, who pays a percentage of their total income to their Emperor. This form of taxation is called a 'liege tax' in Crusader Kings 2. Essentially, it is the tax that your vassals will be paying you. I have somewhat already spoken about this when discussion the obligations earlier, but it is worth going over again briefly. Feudal vassals (dukes, counts, etc.) have castles as their holdings. Castles, due to the constaints on possible constructions, are inefficient at producing much income and so it is better to set the obligations more focused toward levies (with castles providing a lot of soldiers) if you want to maximise your efficiency. Meanwhile, the Clergy and Burghers (your minor vassals; the mayors and bishops who rule the cities and churches within your kingdom) provide more money than levies due to the nature of their demesne (cities and churches both capable of constructing buildings which increase income significantly). Set the obligations for these two groups towards finances/taxes rather than levies. Your vassals should construct/upgrade buildings in their holdings/demesne on their own, but the AI is particularly slow at doing this and so if you decide to invest any spare cash into upgrading buildings for your vassals (remember to focus on the cities and churches instead of only upgrading castles) you should see a return on investment. Remember, your bishops must prefer you to the pope if you want their taxes.



The other form of taxation is one you have a bit less control over, but is your primary source of income. This is demesne taxation. In other words: This is the tax income you receieve from the holdings that you directly control. If you are the head of state (king/emperor) you won't need to pay taxes and so can keep 100% of this income. If you are a vassal, a percentage of this will be paid to your lord in liege taxes.

In order to improve your demesne income, it is a good idea to invest in upgrading your holdings. Construct things such as 'Castle Walls' and 'Castle Towns' in order to improve income. This is something you should aim to do early game. Save your money and, when possible, make spending it on these constructions a priority.



The other thing that improves income is your stewardship level. If you have a high stewardship level, you are going to have a higher demesne limit which allows you to own more titles without penalties - the more titles you own, the more demesne income you shall receive. Spouse stewardship also impacts this. Overall state stewardship (the number next to personal stewardship) impacts income - with higher state stewardship leading to higher tax income. Finally, the stewardship level of the steward on your council has an impact on his ability to 'collect taxes', should you assign him to do that (something I highly recommend that you do).

Trade is an alternative method of gaining wealth, but a very limited one. Basically, any county that is in a trade zone - be it one that a merchant republic has set up or on the silk road - has a boosted income. Income for these counties can be boosted up to 40%. As a feudal lord, you cannot build trade zones (though if you get merchant republics as vassals/who build them in your land you will still benefit) unless it is on the silk road. If you do own land on the silk road, I would highly recommend doing it because of the massive boost to income. Clicking on the economy map mode allows you to see the silk road.

War can provide an increased income. Gaining more titles increases your demesne taxation, as previously mentioned. Winning embargo wars provides money dependent on the amount of trade zones in your land. Winning a defensive war results in reparations. Sieges that you win tend to give you small amounts of gold.

Easily the best way of increasing your income through war is by declaring 'extort tribute' wars on neighbours. If you win the war, they will be forced to pay you 40% of their state income until your death.

However, wars are expensive. Something to be kept in mind.

Raiding and pillaging are easy ways of gaining wealth if you are playing as an appropriate character. When playing as the vikings, raids are the primary source of income during the viking age - especially as the dlc allows vikings to sail down rivers across Europe.

Ransoming prisoners, inheritance and weddings also provide small amounts of cash.

Finances - Part II - Spending/Managing Wealth

Spending wealth:

This section should be short. I am, obviously, not going to list every method of spending money. However, these are the things I save money for:
-Construction.
-Bribes.
-Armies.
-Title creation.

Always invest in buildings - both your demesne and your vassals - in order to increase income in the long term. This is crucial to do at the start of the game to get ahead of the AI. Bribery is incredibly useful for the internal management of vassals I described earlier. Bribes do, of course, add temporary boosts to opinions which can deter vassals from factions, or get them to support your council voting, or even get them to join your assassination plot. Armies and titles are fixed costs so there isn't much to explain.

This section is basically a reminder to save money as a just in-case. You need to balance between spending and saving. Don't save so much that you aren't investing, but don't spend so much that you have no money in case of a disaster. Remember, money can do things such as prevent factions from rising up or it can allow for the purchasing of mercenaries if you are losing a war. Other things you could spend money on are far less important than these 4, so balance your expenditure around them.

Debt:

Debt is bad. That goes without saying, of course. If you find yourself with insufficient funds, the most important thing is to balance the books. Take a look at your income (press F1 to see yearly balance), cut the appropriate costs and do what you can to increase income temporarily. Even if you need to borrow money from the Jews, it is better than being in debt. Eventually, assuming you get a positive net income, you will come out of debt. Be patient about it.



Retinues and mercenaries are very expensive. Only get mercenaries if you are desperate, and if you can't sustain the reinforcements for your retinues, make sure to set them to not reinforce on the military screen.

Crucially, when in debt avoid war. The other events (the smugglers rings and things) whilst monumentally damaging in the short term, will eventually go away. War when bankrupt is the worst thing that could happen. Mercenaries may well join your enemies, all of your armies will have more morale and your chances of winning significantly deteriorate.

Remember, your heir won't inherit debt. If things are going really bad, you are unable to reverse debt, everything is falling apart around you and you see no way of escaping the situation, suicide is an option.

Retinues and wars - Part I - Cassus Belli

One of the things I like about Crusader Kings 2 is the approach to warfare. In most games, its strategy brethren in particular, wholesale conflict is the spine of the game. In Crusader Kings 2, war is but a sideshow, a diversion, the hammer you break out when all other approaches to victory have failed. It is entirely plausible (and I know, because I've done it) to go through entire generations without raising an army and still expand your realm significantly - courtesy of intrigue and methodical scheming.

That being said, war is war. Sometimes the simplest route is the best.



Whilst writing this guide, I was asked to talk about Cassus Belli's. Originally, I had no plan to do this but seeing as it has been requested I might as well go into it.

Unfortunately, Cassus Belli's are so context specific that it will be difficult for me to point at one and proclaim it the best. My best bet is to tackle this issue by detailing some of the pro's and ♥♥♥'s of the more popular/frequent Cassus Belli's in the game.

Personal claims:

Personal claims are the default type of claim. They are usually temporary (lost upon death in most cases unless pushed) and vary between strong and weak claims. Upon winning a personal claim war, you gain the title as well as 100 prestige. If it is a stalemate, you lose 100 prestige. If you lose, you lose 200 prestige and lose the claim.

There are three primary ways to gain claims:
-Fabricate claims using your chancellor.
-Marry someone with a claim (that can be inherited), or marry a dynasty member to the person with the claim, passing the claim to the child(ren) you/your dynasty member have/has with that character, which you can then push for them.
-Invite someone with a claim to your court. You can then push their claim. (If you want them to become a vassal after gaining the title, you need to give them a higher title in your realm).

The pro's of personal claims:
+They are common.
+They are cheap.
+They are easy to get hold of.
+There is usually little risk involved.
+When declaring war, it will be between you (and potentially allies) and the claim holder (and their potential allies) - other parties cannot get involved.
+You can push multiple claims at once, speeding up the process.

The ♥♥♥'s of personal claims:
-They take time to fabricate.
-They are (usually) small claims - individual counties in most cases. It takes a lot of time to gain large amounts of land.
-If pushing someone elses claim (a vassal or courtier) then you need to give them a higher title. If they don't have a higher title then they will gain their new title at the end of the war entirely independent of you. Similarly, if you push someone else's claim for a title equal in rank to your own, they will be independent.

De jure claims:

De jure claims are often very similar to personal claims in scale and so it can be understandable to mistake the two. They are, however, different. De jure claims are gained when you do not de facto own a title for which you are the de jure liege. For example, if you are duke of a province, but one of the counties inside your duchy is independent (so, not under your de facto control) you have the ability to de jure declare war for possession of that county in order to unite your duchy. De jure claims such as this county:duchy example, can also be duchy:kindgom based and kingdom:empire based.

The pro's of de jure claims:
+They are always lower titles than your primary, meaning that you are likely to win most de jure wars. Risk is minimal.
+They are an easy way of gaining multiple counties/duchies/kingdoms quickly. Fabrication is not required.

The ♥♥♥'s of de jure claims:
-You must have a higher de facto title before you get the de jure claim, you can't simply fabricate.
-Whilst you can get a lot of land quickly once you have the claims, getting them in the first place requires a lot of effort.

Holy wars:

If your religion views an independent ruler as 'infidel' or 'heretic', you can declare a religious war against that ruler for a duchy.

The pro's of holy wars:
+It is a very quick way of gaining lots of land - probably the quickest non-special way of gaining titles.
+It will improve relations with the church.

The ♥♥♥'s of holy wars:
-They cost piety (Since update, only for reformed pagans).
-Other rulers of the same religion you just attacked can join in the war, making it difficult to predict army sizes before declaring.
-You must control a province bordering the targeted duchy (or inside it) to gain the claim.
-It only works against rulers who are considered 'infidels' or 'heretics'.
-Defenders with enough piety are likely to hire holy orders.

Excommunicated ruler/depose anti-pope:

If another ruler has been excommunicated, or if an anti-pope has been set up, you can go to war.

The pro's of excommunication/depose wars:
+You get prestige and piety if you win.

The ♥♥♥'s of excommunication/depose wars:
-You are going to war for small amounts of prestige and piety. Given how much money wars cost, this form of cassus belli is almost entirely useless.

Extort tribute:

I briefly touched upon tributaries in my finance section. These wars are especially helpful in the early game when playing in small and divided realms. Examples include Anglo-Saxon England, Ireland, early-game India.

The pro's of extort wars:
+Victory provides you with 40% of the state income of the defender.
+You can call the defeated defender into other wars (they have to accept).
+It is an efficient way of weakening neighbours in the early game, as well as providing an income bonus.

The ♥♥♥'s of extort wars:
-You don't gain any titles.
-The pact is broken after the death of your ruler.

Rivalry:

If you are the rival of another ruler, you can declare war on them over said rivalry.

The pro's of rivalry wars:
+An efficient way of imprisoning people outside of your realm.
+You force your rival realm into a regency.

The ♥♥♥'s of rivalry wars:
-You gain nothing from the war except a prisoner and small prestige and wealth prizes.
-Wars are expensive, time consuming and probably not worth petty rivalries.

Embargo:

If you have trade zones in your realm, you can launch wars of embargo against the merchant republic.

Pro's of embargo wars:
+Significant wealth prizes upon victory.

♥♥♥'s of embargo wars:
-You destroy trade zones. Trade zones increase the income of local regions. Destroying them leads to potential financial loss in the long-term.

Retinues and wars - Part II - Conflict - I

Before declaring war you should check to see if you can actually win said war. First, make sure you have enough money in the bank. Your income will take a hit when you raise your soldiers - not to mention sieges, raiding and pillaging will also negatively impact your finances. You want to ensure that you have enough money to maintain your armies for a protracted amount of time, plus some more money in-case of bad luck such as random events or potentially even just needing mercenaries to shift the balance of the conflict. Next, check the amount of soldiers you can raise. To do this, go to the military screen. You can use this screen to see how many levies you can raise, how many of your vassal's levies you can raise and how many retinues you own. Next, speculate the amount of soldiers your opponent is going to have. You can get a rough estimation by going to the character screen of the lord you are intending to fight. On this screen you can see the amount of levies - both vassal and demesne - he has at his disposal. On this screen you can also see any allies he may have who might join him. I use the word speculate because there is a good chance that this information is not entirely accurate. Sometimes, circumstances are different when war is actually declared - they might get new allies to join, their vassals might intervene and supply more levies, they might spawn event troops, etc.



In order to increase your chances before going to war, ensure that you have maximised your army potential. Use your martial to train troops. Construct/upgrade military buildings within your holdings as well as your vassal's holdings. Shift obligations towards levies. Raise any possible retinues. Form alliances. Improve military technology where possible. Assassinate high martial/influential people in the opposition court. Wait until your opponent is at their weakest - be it that they are in a war with someone else, that they have just lost a war with someone else, that they are bankrupt, that they are fighting internal difficulties, that they are in a regency, etc.

When war has begun, the focus turns towards battles.

The combat system is based on a few factors: amount of soldiers, quality of general(s), terrain limits and troop quality.

Of these 4 factors, amount of soldiers is certainly the most important. Roughly 70% of battles (not an accurate statistic) are won through numerical advantages alone. However, if you are having difficulty winning battles despite having more soldiers then it is most likely one of the other factors that is influencing things.

Quality of the general is essentially the martial stats that a general possesses. The higher the martial, the better the army is going to perform. In addition, generals get additional combat traits (things such as flat terrain master, or flanker) which have influence on certain areas of combat. Morale is also heavily impacted by the quality of the general.

If you are having trouble because the enemy has good generals, it is probably better to attempt to assassinate them before initiating combat, if possible.

On the topic of generals, I very rarely make my character a general unless he is amazing at combat. The risk to reward ratio is too high. I usually press the button on the character screen to stop my character from leading armies to limit the chances of dying on the battlefield. I then tend to invite the best generals to my court. In the bottom right of the screen, there is a button to search all of the characters in the game. If you click on that, filter by male and willing to join court, then filter by martial stats (highest to lowest) you can invite the best generals to your court before making them commanders, giving yourself the best generals possible.



Terrain tends to create difficulty when managing larger armies. There are two aspects to terrain which you need to worry about: defensive bonuses and supply limits.

Defensive bonuses are pretty straightforward. In certain areas, where there is difficult terrain, the defender gets a defensive bonus (which increases morale and decreases damage they receive). This includes terrain such as river crossings, mountain areas, deserts, etc. If attacking, try to avoid initiating combat in these areas to maximise your chance of victory. Certainly try to avoid fighting across a river, as this one is fairly easy to avoid. You can see what the terrain is like if you click on a region. Once the region screen pops up, click on the little arrow to the right of it to open the trade and fort options. On that pop-out screen, you can see the type of terrain through hovering over the narrow painting at the top.

A good solution to maximising use of terrain is to trick the ai into attacking you. If you split your force in two, the ai might attack on of the armies. Once combat engages, quickly reinforce with the second army.

With regards to supply limits, this is essentially an attrition bonus. Different regions have different levels of supplies (resources to maintain the army in the region) which you can see by hovering over the region with your mouse. If you exceed the supply limit (have too many soldiers in one region), you get an attrition penalty (which slowly kills off your soldiers). Supply limit tends to vary depending on the terrain - mountains, deserts and snowy areas tend to, understandably, have fewer supplies to maintain an army relative to fertile hills and flat grass lands. In the winter months, with snow creeping in and fewer food available in general, supply limits tend to decrease. They also decrease in disease-infected areas. Supply sounds complicated but is actually quite simple. Try not to have too many soldiers in one area.

A good trick is to split into several smaller armies in different regions. It means you can still move them together to combine as one army in combat, but when not fighting you are both quicker and less likely to use up supply limits and suffer attrition.

The fourth and final thing to worry about is the quality of your soldiers relative to your enemy. There isn't too much you can do to control this. Your levy quality increases with the military technology levels. Going on the technology screen and investing in things will help improve your army. I tend to focus on military organisation - it provides a greater supply limit, makes your army quicker, increases morale quicker and allows for more retinues. However, it is important to focus on all areas of technology. The only other way to ensure you increase the quality of your troops is through retinues. Retinues are (I think) part of the Legacy of Rome dlc and are essentially a full-time standing army.



Whilst levies have to be raised and lowered when going to war, retinues are constantly raised. They tend to be much better soldiers (you can specify the soldiers that you want in your retinues when making them), albeit much more expensive. It takes a while to grow retinues and you don't tend to see the early game due to their cost and the amount of time it takes to grow some with numbers that are actually significant. However, towards the mid/late game, retinues become the be all and end all. They are far more efficient than levies due to their quality, mobility and the fact you don't have to keep lowering and raising them.

Retinues and wars - Part II - Conflict - II

As an additional note, troop quality is impacted heavily by morale. When looking at an army on the map, the little green/red vertical box to the right of the number of soldiers is the morale. If it is green, the morale is good - if it is red, the morale is bad. Asides from troop numbers, morale has the greatest impact on battles. If you have no morale, it doesn't matter if you have 10,000 and your enemy has 10, you will lose. Morale slowly increases over time (with factors such as technology and generals having an influence on the speed of this) so avoiding combat with low morale is fairly straightforward.

When you raise soldiers, their morale is depleted. You have to wait for the morale to go up before going into battle. Furthermore, if you lose a battle your morale drops to 0 so don't lose and then instantly try to fight again, give it time for morale to go up.

So to conclude, try to do the following: Have more soldiers, better generals, defensive positions on the terrain, better technology levels, retinues, the right amount of soldiers to deal with attrition/supply issues and full morale. Obviously, it is unlikely (especially early game) that you are going to have all of these. However, ticking as many boxes as you can will help you.

Also, remember, it's all based on percentages - even if you have a 99% chance of winning, there is still always that fluke 1% that will throw you off.

If things do go wrong, it is always acceptable to raise mercenaries as a final effort - the ace up the sleeve.



Mercenaries are one of the biggest income drains in the game. They are ridiculously expensive. Never, ever, raise mercenaries at the start of a war that you even slightly think you can win without them. If you can afford to raise mercenaries without worrying about the loss to finance then in all probability you don't actually need them. In order to use mercenaries properly, you want to save them for when they are needed. If you lose a fluke battle and with it your army, or your enemy suddenly calls in event troops, or new allies join your enemy, or someone much stronger than you declares war on you, or something along these lines, mercenaries are extremely helpful. They appear in your capital (assuming it is not under siege), they start with full morale* (*this is debated, some mercenaries appear to start with full morale and others do not, I am unable to discover what determines this as it is absent from the wiki) and they have large numbers. Once you have defeated the enemy with the mercenaries you can instantly disband them and use whatever troops you have left to keep following the defeated enemy army until they are completely wiped out.

Having said all of this, don't kill your game unless it is absolutely necessary. Put in the effort relative to the reward. In this guide I have gone into a lot of detail about how to win wars and it may sound (especially in the mercenary section) as though every conflict requires you to throw the kitchen sink at the enemy. It isn't worth bankrupting yourself, losing your armies, having your cities looted and trade posts destroyed and risking civil war just to win a war that you are losing over a small, crumby town on the other side of your empire. Sometimes, because wars tend to rage far further afield than the location they are being fought over, it can seem like a war is far more important than it is. Keep track of the gravity of the situation. Know when to throw in the towel if things aren't going your way, as well as when to actually throw everything in a desperate attempt to win.

Eugenics - Marrying and producing heirs - Education & Attributes

One of the most debated areas in Crusader Kings 2 is that of eugenics. People seem to have varying opinions over which trait is better than the other and what area to focus on. This portion of the guide is one of the more subjective areas and as such I am going to be providing you with my personal preferences, rather than any sort of objective min/max.

Education:
Plotting the educaion of your child requires you to choose an area of focus and simply hope that your child ends up with a good education trait by the end of it. The attributes and what they impact are as follows:

-Diplomacy: A higher diplomacy means that people have a higher opinion of your character, your character gets more monthly prestige, you have a higher vassal limit and it provides more cultural technology points.

-Martial: A higher martial means that your character makes a better commander (increasing likelihood of winning battles and surviving on the battlefield), it increases levy size, increases the rate that armies regain morale and provides more military technology points.

-Stewardship: A higher stewardship level means that you get more income per month (+2% every month per stewardship point), you get a higher demesne limit (can hold more land), increases the rate that provinces convert to your culture and provides more economic technology points.

-Intrigue: A higher intrigue level means that your character has a higher plot % chance, a lower chance of the plot being discovered and a higher chance of a successful imprisonment.

-Learning: A higher learning level means that you get more piety per month and helps to increase technology points in the same way as stewardship, diplomacy and martial.



So, which attributes do I feel are most important? For me, this is the order of attributes from most to least important:

Most important:
-Stewardship.
-Diplomacy.
-Martial.
-Intrigue.
-Learning.
Least Important.

Now, as I have previously mentioned, this is by no means objective. There is perfectly a plausible debate that this order could be changed. Furthermore, circumstances require different focuses.

So, why I have I chosen this order?

Well, I believe stewardship is the most important attribute because control of finances is the most important aspect of the game. In the early game, you get ahead by having more money. More money can construct more buildings in your holdings (leading to even more money, more troops, a higher technology rate, more disease resistance, etc.), it makes bribing other characters easier (crucial if your council has power, important if there are factions), it allows for the purchasing of mercenaries (always the best back-up plan if something goes wrong) and the biggest problem you will find in Crusader Kings 2 is that you don't have enough money in most cases.

Furthermore, stewardship somewhat negates the benefits of the other attributes. The biggest benefit of diplomacy is that people like you more (less likely to plot against you or start factions), but bribing people achieves the same result. The biggest benefit of martial is that you can get larger armies, but simply by having more holdings in your demesne you can probably outweigh that advantage. Construct military buildings and you can certainly compete. The biggest benefit of intrigue is that you get higher % chances when it comes to plots, something that bribes can also achieve. Also, if imprisonment fails then more money can buy more soldiers. The biggest benefit of learning is the technology bonus, which simply building more universities will negate.

So, as you can see, stewardship is kind of OP. Also, it is the only attribute that lasts all game. Martial is great in the early game but becomes obsolete when you expand to the point that you either have retinues, or your vassals contribute more to your army than you do. Diplomacy is great mid/late game, but at the start sees very little benefit.

Next, diplomacy. Second place was (and usually is in most forum debates) between diplomacy and martial. Ultimately, it depends how you play. Most people agree that martial is the better early game attribute and diplomacy is the better mid/late game attribute.

Ultimately, because you spend far more time in the mid/late game (I estimate that it takes about 3 generations to get to the mid-game, at most), diplomacy is the most important stat. The mid-game to me, is the point where you start to have lots of vassals. It is the point where you are a large kingdom/small empire. Diplomacy basically means that your vassals like you more, decreasing the chance of factions (civil wars) and plots against you, leading to more stability. The benefit of this doesn't really need much more explaining. Furthermore, vassal limits in the late-game become a real issue (especially if you don't lay-out vassal borders correctly based on de-jure titles) and seriously hinder expansion. Diplomacy is a nice solution. (For more information on this section, read the internal power chapter of this guide).

Martial comes next. I don't rank martial any higher because it becomes obsolete far too early for my liking. Personal levies are very quickly replaced by vassal levies (especially with the obligation laws set out in earlier chapters of this guide) which are quickly replaced by retinues. To me, having vassals like me is far more important than how many levies I individually control. The only part of the game where personal levies contribute much is at the start, but construction and holding more land provide more levies than the martial stat possibly could (so stewardship>martial). Additionally, as mentioned in the warfare chapter of this guide, you probably shouldn't be commanding any armies and should instead be hiring commanders.

Intrigue has its uses. Playing online or as a vassal sees intrigue as one of the most important stats because you're going to be spending far more time plotting in those two scenarios. However, outside of those two specific scenarios, plots and imprisonment are simply far less important than finances, general opinion and troop quantity.

Finally, learning is last because the piety rate is tiny (+0.02/month) and so the only real benefit is the technology bonus - something that each of the other stats can provide anyway (apart from intrigue).

Ok, so now that we have established an order of priority for attributes how do we translate this to our heirs?

First, you want to assign a guardian with high stats in the area you want to focus on. In 90% of circumstances you should be the guardian of your heir (it allows you to min/max their education), but if not yourself then choose someone who has good stats (particularly in the better areas, such as stewardship).

Next, choose their education focus. I, personally, always choose duty for my heir. Not only does this tend to lead to a stewardship education trait (e.g. midas touched), but the likely childhood trait it provides is 'conscientious'. Conscientious is easily one of the best childhood traits. It can only provide a positive trait (either diligent or temperate, with an intervention chance of just if you are the guardian - all three of which are fantastic traits to have).



The only other aspect really worth commenting on, with regards to education, would be what to pick at the end of the education cycle (pick ambition, making them a rival, pick patience, meaning you become out of patience, etc.). I, personally, always pick the ambition option for my heir (ambition being a great trait to have for its bonuses to attributes), but always pick 'they must learn on their own' for any other children I may be educating as it is usually not worth the personal hit.

Eugenics - Marrying and producing heirs - Personal focus, Marriage & Succession - I

To continue discussing focuses, it is worth bringing up the focus tree for adults.



Ultimately, picking a focus is fairly simple. You want to pick one that you feel will benefit your character based on their current traits and attrributes. All information about these focuses is provided in-game. A few things to note:

-Picking business is a good focus for the early game. Not only does it increase stewardship, you also regularly get events which allow you to go on trade missions (providing you with a lot of money). The only downside is the fact that you can often get the stressed trait through this focus.

-Picking rulership is a great focus if something went wrong with your education. +3 stewardship is fantastic, plus you can easily get just, ambitious and diligent traits.

-If you have poor diplomacy for whatever reason, carousing is great. You get +3 diplomacy and by carousing with people they can easily become friends, giving them +100 opinion.

-If you are struggling to have children, pick the family focus. It not only increases your diplomacy but also helps with fertility.

-If you are stressed or depressed (or having health issues), hunting is a good focus to relieve those traits.

-If you have a male heir who is either chaste or homosexual (i.e. not producing children with his wife), a solution that I often use is to choose the seduction focus, seduce his wife (your daughter-in-law) then denounce the child. The game will register the child as your grandchild and you won't need to worry about succession.

Marriage:
Marriage should be for one of two things in CK2: Producing heirs and getting claims.

If you want to produce an heir, the best way to find an appropriate partner would be to go to the character search menu at the bottom-right of the screen. Filter by gender, diplomatic range and marriage=no. Then, you can either sort by attribute (e.g. stewardship level from highest to lowest), or type a trait that you want in the search menu (e.g. type genius to find all characters with the genius trait).



Be sure to search for all, instead of those in your realm (the default setting) to maximise potential suitors. Additionally, if playing as a female character, you *MUST* matrilineally marry, otherwise any children you have will not be part of your dynasty and if they inherit all of your titles it will be game over.

Favourable traits to look for include: genius, quick, attractive, shrewd, just, diligent, patient, temperate, etc.

Avoid most negative traits. The most important traits to avoid include: chaste, homosexual and any form of sexual disease (lovers pox, great pox, etc.) for fertility reasons.

If you are marrying for the inheritance of titles, you must marry someone who either has a strong claim (so it can be inherited) or marry them and then push their claim. You used to be able to marry yourself/your heir to one of the children of the holders of whichever title you wanted to inherit, then simply kill off people above them in the pecking order and inherit the title naturally. The AI has since been improved and it will be difficult to marry someone so close to power for "political concerns". Now, you usually have to click on the title itself (to see the screen with the successors, etc.), click on claimants and marry someone with the claim. Then, push their claim so that they rule the title you want to inherit and have a child with them (matrilineally if you are female) so that the child inherits both their titles and yours.



Succession:

Succession come in two forms of legislature. Gender laws and succession laws.

Gender laws are fairly simple. You have three options: Agnatic (males inherit), Agnatic-Cognative (males inherit, females inherit if there are no males available) and Absolute Cognatic (females inherit on the same grounds as men.

Agnatic-Cognatic (the default in most cases) is the preferable option. The issue with Agnatic is that if you don't have any males, it's game over. The issue with Absolute Cognatic is that playing as females is more difficult. Vassals don't like female rulers (or female heirs) and marriage requires matrilineal if you want the heir to be of your dynasty (severely limiting marriage options).

Agnatic-Cognatic means that the male heir is always the priority (negating the negative parts of Absolute Cognatic) but if you don't have any male heirs you still have the female back-up option (negating the negative part of Agnatic). Additionally, the fact that it is the default law in most cases means you don't have to go to the trouble of trying to change it.



Succession laws are a bit more complicated because everyone debates which is the best and which is the worst. Here are the basic succession laws:

-Primogeniture - Oldest child gets all titles.

-Ultimogeniture - Youngest child gets all titles.

-Elective - Vassals elect an heir from a pool of a certain status (depending on level) and upwards.

-Gavelkind - Titles are evenly distributed among children.

-Seniority - Oldest family member inherits all titles.

Among these, the most popular two are Primogeniture and Elective. I shall discuss which of those is better soon. First, let's look at why not to choose the others.

Gavelkind, the default, is probably the worst. You want to change gavelkind as soon as possible (and whilst you have it, only have one son). Gavelkind is bad because you only inherit a fraction of your titles if you have multiple children. If you have two children, your heir will inherit 50% of your titles. If you have 4 children, your heir will inherit 25% of your titles, etc.

Seniority is bad because, whilst it is safe (it incorporates all family members instead of just children), life expectancy is significantly reduced. Inheriting as a 50 year-old means that you are going to have far less time to live than inheriting as a 16 year-old.

Ultimogeniture is the most popular choice that isn't primo or elective. Ultimo is popular because of the opposite effects of seniority. Your heir is always going to be as young as possible, allowing for longer reigns. However, the issue with ultimogeniture is that it becomes more diffuclt to focus your education on a single heir, as the moment you have another child you have to scrap your education progress and do it all over again. E.g. You might have just finished educating a brilliant child - they are diligent, ambitious and have a midas touched education. Suddenly, your wife is pregnant. Before long, all that effort put into your original heir is wasted.

Now, between primo and elective:

I, personally, side with primogeniture. Primogeniture is the safest option and requires the least work. Your eldest son (or daughter if absolute cognatic) inherits everything. This means you don't need to worry if you have multiple children (the issues with gavelkind and ultimo) and they are unlikely to be too old when inheriting unless you live an extraordinarily long time (the issue with seniority). Unlike elective, there is no threat of someone from another dynasty taking your titles.

Continued...

Eugenics - Marrying and producing heirs - Personal focus, Marriage & Succession - II

...The only downside of primogeniture is that your younger children might be better than the eldest. E.g. Your first child and heir might turn out to be a naive appeaser who is a chaste, imbecillic lunatic whilst your second child (who doesn't inherit) is a shrewd, midas touched genius. There are workarounds, however. If Christian, you can send your eldest son to a monarchic order (if they are monks they are disqualified from succession), send them to a holy order such as the templars, execute them (costs piety and your vassals won't like you but might be necessary) or simply inherit as them then try to get yourself killed (if you have the depressed trait, you can commit suicide by right clicking on your portrait in the top-left of the screen).

Elective is the second best choice because it negates the issue with primo. By choosing an heir, you get to make sure your best child inherits everything and not your idiotic first child.

However, the game mechanics behind elective make it problematic. For a start, each individual title requires a different election (e.g. Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Wales, even if both of them are your titles, require different elections). Additionally, you have to rig your elections. It is quite easy, but there is a possibility of it going wrong. You need your vassals to like you *and* your heir. If your heir is too young, voters won't like it. If your heir is a female, voters won't like it. You can buy favours to get them to vote on the same succession laws as you, but favours are usually a bad thing (they often bribe law changes or get onto the council with favours). If you die and your heir isn't in-line to be elected heir, you lose all of your titles (potentially game over).

The biggest issue with elective is that in-many cases, the game bugs out and you can't choose your preferable heir. On the screen to choose who to vote for, they simply do not appear. This causes real issues because, unless they suddenly appear and you can vote for them, if you die you will lose.



Primogeniture is, in my opinion, far more preferable to elective because even though you can't choose the best of your children to inherit, you are never going to lose everything because of a minor bug.

It is worth noting, that if you reform a religion (e.g. reformed hellenism), you can choose certain religious traits (such as meritocracy or civilised) which allow you to designate an heir. This is the best succession type as you can choose the heir to your realm without worrying about elections or vassals.

Playing as a vassal (count/duke)

Playing as a vassal is actually easier than playing as a ruler. The reason it gets its own chapter is for no better reason than the fact that most of the things you will be doing are the exact opposite of what I have been recommending in this guide. Especially the first chapters regarding internal power politics.

The reason why playing as a vassal is generally easier is the fact that you are not under as much pressure to manage everything, like you are as a ruler. You can focus on your own little demesne and not worry about external wars, factions, plots, crusades, etc. (unless you choose to).

In-fact, if you are new to the game but have already done a few play throughs as independent rulers (such as the highly recommended Ireland starts), my next recommendation would be to play as a vassal in a major realm (Byzantine or English vassal, for example) to get a feel for major-power politics without being in the hot-seat.

The great thing about vassals is that you can establish yourself peacefully and then, when you are ready, take over the kingdom/empire and rule for yourself.

Once your house is in order, you can move on to bigger things.

When starting as a vassal, do the usual things you would do. Construct buildings, train troops, manage your economy, produce heirs, etc.

Crucially, get your chancellor to begin fabricating claims on nearby counties (yes, I'm talking about counties within the same realm as you). Make sure the counties are held by other vassals (counts or dukes) so that you can press them without having to declare war on the king/emperor.

Your long-term aim here is to become as powerful (if not more so) than the ruler so that you can eventually take over. Strategically marry if possible and also keep gaining claims on other counties.

Once you have claims, if laws permit internal conflict, be sure to press them and expand. Rinse, dry and repeat until you reach your demesne/vassal limit (if you need to) so that your economy and levy sizes are maximised.

If the laws do not permit internal wars, you need to begin to get involved in factions and councils.

Remember, you cannot get involved in factions if you are on the council.

What you first want to do is ensure that the council have powers to vote within the realm. If not, join or start a faction to increase council power (always popular). You can use favours on people to force them to join factions. Remember, if you assassinate the ruler and their heir is a child, a regency begins (allowing council voting).

Once you are powerful enough (over 100% preferably), send an ultimatum and hope that it doesn't go to civil war (if it does, you'll have to fight).

Once the council has power, assassinate the councillor in whatever role you want and then either hope you are chosen, or use a favour to get onto the council.

From there you can force through laws that allow internal wars. Additionally, once the council has power, the ruler can enforce realm peace. This is helpful if you are invaded by a stronger vassal. If losing a war to a stronger vassal, ask the ruler to enforce realm peace (favours help) and the war will end as a white-peace.

Once you have enough soldiers (relative to the ruler) and enough money, you can start a faction to overthrow the ruler.

The best time to initiate this is to wait until the ruler is weak. If they have just lost a war (meaning their armies are depleted), are bankrupt (low army morale) or are in a regency you will find yourself easily able to depose of them.

Once you become the ruler, simply resort back to chapter 1 of this guide. You will primarily find yourself undoing the things you did as a vassal (starting by revoking power from the council. However, this shouldn't be difficult given the monopoly you should have on power by the time you get to the throne.

Additional tips and tricks

This section is just going to be a few additional tips and tricks. They are going to be continuously updated and I am open to any tips from the comments section.

-Holding alt when selecting units will select fleets only (rather than the default armies only).

-Converting to a pagan religion (such as Germanic or Hellenism) allows an almost unlimited use of CB's on bordering or naval provinces.

-Declaring tribute wars on local rulers in the early game is one of the best things to do before you get CB's. It means they are no longer a threat to you, you get a significant income boost and you can call them into wars.

-If you want to kill off a character without assassinating or executing them, making them a commander and placing them in an army on a boat and leaving them in the middle of the ocean often causes them to die of disease.

-You can get vassal merchant-republics if you have a city holding within a county and you give the mayor of that city the de jure duchy title. This is a great way of increasing your income as merchant-republics pay more taxes than feudal vassals.

-Coastal provinces are far more susceptible to disease.

-As a vassal, you can bribe/favour your ruler into enforcing realm peace if you are losing a war against another vassal.

-Holy orders are a maintenance free mercenary group (cost piety to hire) when defending against other religions. They can also be used (but not maintenance free) to attack other religions.

-Inviting people to your court (commanders, council members, physicians, etc.) will often yield better quality courtiers than relying on the ones already in your realm.

-The business focus provides a great income boost through trade missions.

-Money you get from your steward is always based on how much you have - you are going to get more money simply by having more money already in the bank.

-Having free expenditure (rather than papal) as a law means that your bishop vassals will provide you with levies and taxes regardless of whether or not they prefer you to the pope.

-A way to get some extra money, is to invite heir-less and without any living siblings characters with pockets full of gold to your court, preferably old timers like ex-city mayors, ex-bishops, deposed rulers etc. Some fellas have thousands of coins. When they die of age, you get their pile of gold. (By FreshMeat - 8/5/2019).

-Your wife gives you half of her stats. So if she has say 20 stewardship, you get 10 on marriage. (By Gormotha, 15/3/2020).

-Very early game you can actually marry the mayors of your cities (AI does not do this manually) so a good strategy is searching for all available ladies out there, bribing them if you have to (good diplomacy helps) and marrying them off to your mayors (of friendly vassals). As an example, a city with 12 income (begining of game) gets a bonus to 16 thanks to my stewardship and my counciler, but after marrying the mayor to a 18 stewardship courtier, I get 20 income. that's 3-6 extra gold for an investment of 0 to 15 gold. (15 gold is what you usually bribe for courtiers to accept to join) as a reference, building markets or upgrading cities brings in 2 extra gold and costs over 150 gold and takes time to build. additionally, those mayors will make children, and if you micromanage you can also breed good stat administrators for your realm. (By Gormotha, 15/3/2020).

-If independent you get +50% levy in your capital county (including each of your own holdings in the capital county so if you hold multiple castles each gets +50%). Now you throw a great marshal with train troops on top of that and each of the castles benefits from him which can lead to amazing numbers. (By Red Dragon, 15/5/2019).

-Going merchant Republic in the British Isles is stupidly easy. You have no competition and there are sooooooooo many ports. (By NerdExtrodinare, 3/5/2019).

Conclusion - A note from the author

Finally, my guide is complete.

I began this guide in July of 2018, primarily so that I didn't have to keep teaching my friends how to do basic things (this game is great online, though at times it feels like you're managing two realms at once when playing with relatively new players).

Now, here we are. January of 2019. It has been 6 months since I started the guide. In that time I have been to 4 different countries, completed a whole host of university assignments and witnessed half a football season.

That isn't to say this is the longest guide I have written. In-fact, I believe my Napoleon Total War guide was longer. However, back then I had significantly more time.

I'd like to thank the various people in the comments who have shown their appreciation for this guide, as well as the people who have pointed out mistakes I have made.

If you do spot any mistakes, please let me know and I shall rectify them.

Also, do not hestitate to contact me if you have any questions or queries. Either leave a comment (I get notifications for comments and read them all) or add me and ask me over Steam chat. I am happy to help. If I take time to respond, don't feel off-put. My activity is not what it once was.

Thank you everyone who has liked and favourited this guide, it means a lot.

Deus Vult!

[RafałRK]

Great guide. Thank you!

[raubrey]

Thank you for making the guide interesting as well as informative. This is a gem for returning players who can get the basics down rather quickly. The game has changed so much and esp. with DLC it is easy for some (me) to loose sight of the things that can make or break a game.

[wizardman]

tips i would like to add:

crusades give the highest contributor ~7-20k gold

great work features with private conversation can be used to make your spouse a lover (double fertility and no cheating)

the royal palace gives way more retinue cap than it seems

female rulers can create the antichrist as an heir very easily as leader of the satanists

you can nominate glitterhoof for a bishopric

children use their guardian's diplomacy

diligent improves all education results (not just stewardship)

every education trait can be upgraded by their respective focuses, except learning

also, there is a mistake. only germanic pagans have access to coastal county conquest, the rest have just bordering county conquest.

this is a very good guide, though i think it is not geared at all towards world-conquest type expansion. stewardship and martial are not very useful at that size as demesne is insignificant.

[Ketzerfreund]

Uhm... This is not what my law screens look like.

[Obi Wanyama Kenobi]

Casus belli only has 2 "S"s, not 3.

[Obi Wanyama Kenobi]

"Crucially, when in debt avoid war. The other events (the smugglers rings and things) whilst monumentally damaging in the short term, will eventually go away. War when bankrupt is the worst thing that could happen. Mercenaries may well join your enemies, all of your armies will have more morale and your chances of winning significantly deteriorate." Should probably say 'all your armies will have less morale"

[Iri]

thank you

[The_Spartan]

@Northstar

If you are a fan of setting republics up, they are also a good source of income - so you will want a good taxing % for them, too. Republics are not as viable IMO, because of the huge opinion malus you get from being from a different government type (if you are feudal). In the game you will want to squeeze as much from a province as you can, and then accumulate every % to increase that amount, either from wonders, trading posts or buildings. Taxation will be required to increase the base amount of money (afaik but haven't touched the game in a while so I can't remember properly this part, still, I always did wonders like harbours to farm cash on provinces with trading posts).

[The_Spartan]

@Northstar

You are right in many aspects but you roundly wrong about the taxes. Early on, and only very Early on, you are correct - to a certain extent. But you definetely want taxes high for church and city holdings SPECIALLY if you are catholic or close to the pope somehow. If you are catholic - and you turn the pope your vassal (sometimes I turned catholic MERELY to place an anti pope, press his claims and get the pope as a vassal), you will SWIM in cash easily by taxing the church (and the pope), if the catholic church dominates many provinces in the world. This is also true for many other religions that share the same "taxation" system as the catholic religion.

The pope in many cases is making +100, taxing him just a bit will net you a lot of money. Same can be true for powerful bishops and other religious vassals, but these barely hold territory themselves, so won't produce much money.

[Northstar1989]

This is also an inaccurate description of how to make Merchant Republics.

You make them by giving a coastal Count-tier city vassal a Duchy. You CANNOT just go straight from baron-level city vassal to Merchant Republic Doge. You have to give a mayor a County first.