Hello all!
I would like to ask for some advice and clarification… (Wall of text incoming)
This is my first CK2 game where I have at least a little bit of clue what I’m doing. Playing the game on vanilla, no DLCs whatsoever.
Started with the earliest possible date as Hungary, It’s right on the eastern border of the catholic world, so there are conqest possibilities in almost all directions. Or at least I thought so, then I saw the size of the unified HRE and Byzantium (played a lot of EU4 before and this was never the case there). No problem, there’s Poland and some heathen tribes in the east, Croatia to the south. During a failed conquest to the east, instead of sucking up the loss I sent a decent amount of gold in the HREmperor’s way to let my sister marry his nth son and secure an alliance. It was a steamroll from that point, me taking a corridor between the Baltic and Adriatic Seas east of the HRE. This meant Poland, west part of Croatia, and a lot of tribes near the Baltic. That’s nice and all, but then the HREmperor died and the alliance got annuled. Ok, I was strong enough to stand my own against rebs and most of the remaining tribes if they allied.
Somewhere during this time there was a quasi-revolt to change the election law to Elective. As I thought it is still a lot better than Gavelkind, I just gave in. <— Was this a good choice?
But I could not enact any laws, because 1/2-2/3 of my vassal hated my guts. When I realized what the problem might be, I had my daughter on the throne. Most of them did not like too much having a Queen on the throne. And there was a time when I had 5 demesne over the limit after a tribal conquest. I had a negative modifier called “Too many duchy titles” (I think). Thought this one is from the demesne size, but after reducing it to the limit by giving them out to vassals, the modifier stayed. And it was there even a decade later, then even after her death. So, it clearly isn’t that… That’s when I realized, this could be the titles the character hold on his/her character sheet. Yup, I had a ton of those, so started to give out the duchy titles to ppl here’n’there including the lover titles. Left only 2 on myself, one where my own counties were located and the other where I wanted my de jure CB used. That made everyone happy like liitle puppies. OK, there were 2 tribal chiefs who did not like me that much, but they were weak and easy to bribe with some gold… <— What’s the preferred amount of duchy titles to hold if you also have a Kingdom title?
Since I managed to enact some centralization and authority laws and had very good stewardship rulers, my demesne size got a lot bigger (4->7). I wanted my holdings to be close to each other instead of having them on the different parts of the Kingdom, I started to use up my “massive” treasury and income (3k+ with +20/m) with building and upgrading castles in my capital duchy counties. This increased my income to 30-33/m. Built new castles, because I wanted to use the tax and levy modifier for them being in my capital duchy. <— Was this a bad idea? Is it better to rather revoke some titles of the neighboring counties, rather than building new holdings as the new ones are only baronies and no infrastructure built up in them?
As I was not really sure how inheritance works in the different laws (Gavelkind vs Elective vs Primorgiture vs and so on) and with several titles of the same level, I went and created the kingdom of Wallachia and the empire of Carpathia (tooltip said I need two kingdom titles to create the empire title). What I could find (and understand) on the wiki was only that itás worth creating the empire title if that helps with managing the kingdom titles if you want to give them out. For a while it was good, managed to have elected the same person for all 3 titles.
But then I made two mistakes in a row… Sent my king into a 3:1 battle in Italy, where he got his head crushed and got that -6 allstat modifier… Then before I realized someone else got voted on for the kingdom titles. And the king died. Now with the kingdom title went the duchy title and with it all the counties I had originally. The barony castles remained under my control and the capitol went to Italy (had 1 county there). So I lost half my counties, around 3/4 of my personal levies, and about half of my vassal levies (went from 16k total to bit under 8k). My new elected heir become the one who went with the kingdom titles, so it would be nice if the new emperor died fast. But no, the double king had to die the next year and the kingdom titles went to two different person. <— Now what should I do? Try to get the titles back step-by-step slowly electing the same person, or try to revoke the titles? They both feel strong enough and I’m afraid the HRE allies won’t be helping enough. :-/ Or is there any other way?
Other than that, I have an often asked question: What DLC is “mandatory” and which is “good to have”? And mostly: WHY? I’d like to know what interesting, useful mechanics were added in the ones you’re recommending. I thought about the Way of Life for the ruler focus (no idea what else is in there) and the one which enables the retinues.
Feel free to criticize or give advice on anything I wrote, not just to my questions.
And thank you all for taking the time to read my mini-novel! :-D
