Crusader Kings 2 Redux

[Viking]

The reason to create duke is to keep the peace. My (Ideal) Royal Family functions as follows

King - Has all kingdoms, two duchies and all the counties in those two duchies as his demesne.
Heir - Has two duchies and all the counties as his demesne or in any way he wishes to apportion them. Once he inherits he immediately grants his own son his two duchies and keeps the royal duchies.
Second Sons - Are made barons or bishops. Lay Investiture helps here.
Dukes - Have one full duchy each and have no blood relation to the royal family.

You should be using your chancellor and your CB's to clean up duchy boundries. If you are not going for a duchy consider transferring any counties you might have in it to a foreign country.

The real question here is if you want medium royal authority and above or low or below. At low the local dukes will duke it out (see I made a pun) between themselves. The danger here is that one duke gets three duchies at which point he starts plotting against you. Having two grand dukes with three duchies each both hating you because you are a toddler is a setup for a disaster when both declare for independence. However, on medium or above the dukes can't fight each other, they can only fight you.

[Jaron]

How historical is it for kingdoms to be constantly at war? It irks me how mine levies are always depleted because my liege fights non stop wars over this or that - and my poor count or duke is always off in Africa or Italy fighting non stop wars.

[Viking]

I increased the siege rate by a factor of 6 which seems to have fixed some of the battle issues. Wars happen in months rather than years now and winning a battle now gains you the province if you have enough troops. If the garrison is large enough and the besieging force small enough no progress will happen.

Now my wars either get resolved in one big battle where the winner now has more than enough time to take all the local strongpoints if he still has an army after the battle; or they get resolved by the invading army not being challenged and taking all the relevant strong points gaining his 100% without opposition and realizing his gains uncontested.

One thing I did notice here is that winning sieges depletes armies pretty quickly since on of the effects of winning a siege is that part of the victorious army is garrisoned there reducing it's size. Never noticed that before.

Edit: another change I made is moving levy annoyance time from 73 days up to 365.

[sbr]

FYI if you're playing Apulia:  the Sheik of Palermo has enough piety to hire a 6000-man deathstack of Assassins (a Holy Order) if you Holy War him.  Wait until his son takes over, you create the Kingdom of Sicily, or assassinate him first.

Ah, is that what that was?  He doesn't raise that if you attack him day 1.  That is my usual opening move now.

[Maximus]

Yep, first thing you do is raise a merc company and take him out.

[sbr]

Yep, first thing you do is raise a merc company and take him out.

How do you afford a merc company, especially with the new patch?

I am always incredibly poor, I have no idea how you all hire mercs and create/usurp titles.

[Martinus]

On the restart as William I am playing much more careful and yes, no more Dukes again, and it works. Plus I think England with little to no Dukes is more historical. The fucking counts managed to create Cornwall and Gloucester anyway so it's not like I won't end up with Dukes in the end.

[ulmont]

FYI if you're playing Apulia:  the Sheik of Palermo has enough piety to hire a 6000-man deathstack of Assassins (a Holy Order) if you Holy War him.  Wait until his son takes over, you create the Kingdom of Sicily, or assassinate him first.

Ah, is that what that was?  He doesn't raise that if you attack him day 1.  That is my usual opening move now.

Unfortunately, I started with the other independent Sheik on Sicily in my game.

Another question:  Is there anything like a decent political view?  Almost all the colors on the independent realm view look the same...

[Maximus]

How do you afford a merc company, especially with the new patch?

I am always incredibly poor, I have no idea how you all hire mercs and create/usurp titles.

Yea with the new patch it would be more difficult.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Ruling over England as Norway was touch and go for awhile but what I've found is the best system is to have it be basically heavily fragmented. Keep any one Duke from becoming too powerful.

I'll say Viking's Kingdom layout is probably ideal. I made the mistake at one point of giving the Duchy of Ostlandet to a second son and later the Duchies of Bedford and Gloucester to another second son (he only actually has Middlesex, Essex, and Gloucester because of fragmentation of Duchies.) The Dukes of Ostlandet/Gloucester & Bedford are very problematic because they are always wanting to be King of England. Interestingly neither of them ever vies for the Kingdom of Norway, it may have something to do with the fact Norway has Electoral law and neither of them were Pretenders to the Norwegian crown when the previous King died, whereas England with its Agnatic Primogeniture meant both of the Dukes were Pretenders to the English crown when the previous King died.

The ideal is as you replace Saxon vassals replace them with Norwegian nobles that are not in your line. That way the new Norwegian lords don't get the -20 to you for being a foreigner. Currently I have the Duke of Northumbria and the Duke of Norfolk as Norwegian nobles outside of my line. I don't think I've ever had a problem with them. I actually don't think I've ever had a problem with any Norwegian vassal at all other than the Duke of Ostlandet (who was a member of my family and is mostly just pissed about not being King of England.)

I think what I'm working toward long term is for my ruler to be the (in addition to the dual monarch) Duke of Trondelag and York, with my heir as Duke of Lancaster and Oxford. The only Saxon dukes I have left are Kent and Cornwall and while historically in this game neither has made much trouble they both have the -20 due to wanting my Kingdom so I have to watch for plots from them. I think part of the reason I've had very few trouble out of those Duchies is the Duke of Kent owns all the lands in Kent and the the Duke of Cornwall owns all the lands in Cornwall, so aside from just disliking me as a Norwegian there aren't insurmountable differences.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Another thing is, I agree it's important that you don't personally hold counties that belong to another de jure duchy. Ideally your ruler is going to control two Duchies and all of his county possessions will fall inside those duchies. This removes a lot of source for problems with vassals. I don't care so much if my vassals have "fragmented de jure duchies" as long as situations don't arise where one of them consolidates too much land. In my current game my Crown Authority is high enough that my Dukes won't war with each other over those things in any case.

I think long term if you want a strong Kingdom that can wage war with other Kingdoms you need to have high crown authority and levies, it creates unhappy vassals but if properly fragmented your personal levies are so strong and your tax income high enough that it's very difficult for any of them to seriously raise a challenge against your rule.

In my current game my strongest two vassals each have about 16% levy strength relative to me, and one of them is my heir. The rest of my Dukes are all under 10%.

[Razgovory]

I downloaded and installed the Demo.  I checked out the area where my ancestors came from.  The province is ruled by a guy who has an archaic variation of my last name.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I have to say, while I can nitpick and complain about a few balance issues, on the whole this game is amazingly good. I actually can't believe it is a Paradox game.

[FunkMonk]

My heir and now Duke of Burgundy, Poitou, Aquitaine, and Duke of Toulouse in his own right, is the greatest power in all of France. Both he and his dad were homosexual. Gay Burgundy runnin' this house 

[Drakken]

I must admit I'd love a Merovingian mod of the current game. 

If you read Gregory of Tours, family members' behavior in CK2 is all love for each other and embrace compared to the real deal. It's a festival of family murder, adultery, rape, and villainy.