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Empire (and more) questions

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clostans

Dec 30, 2012 10:03 am GMT
I have some questions about how the empires work since maybe I'll get one soon, but I have some other questions so... I'll explain how I am now since I have some questions about it too...

First, I started as Castilla (north Spain) and conquered Portugal, Spain and almost all the african continent west of the Suez canal (thanks to the Egypt crusade). Recently I got Sicily out of nowhere by making my son marry it's princess when she had a brother (the heir), and then his brother dying for some reason ( I wanted to kill him later but he died by himself before I could).

"One" of the questions is about this. Once the queen died, my son was King of Sicily, then I died, and he got both, but "the center" of my kingdom was around Sicily instead of Castilla like before. It's perfect for me, since now the Egypt dukes don't have 120% of chances to revolt just for the distance, but I want to know how it works...

QUESTION: Is it because he was king of Sicily first? I can redo this to move the center if I want? Are there other ways to move it?

After that, the Pope started a crusade against the Byzantine Empire cause, I don't know how or why, the emperor was a Sunni (and just him, the heir isn't). I won that one too (the others barely did anything...) and got the Byzantine KINGDOM. That means (in my case) 76/171 of the Byzantine EMPIRE. I won some other things and now I have 80/171, just need 6 to take it.

QUESTION: I started another war to take a duchy with 6 counties, but when I won, the 80/171 doesn't change. And they're de jure form the empire...is that normal?

If I get the empire, all my kingdoms will automatically be part of it? I can start giving kingdoms around like I did with the duchies until now?

If I get an empire, will the "center" move? the distance where the vassals don't want to revolt every second gets bigger?

I think that's about it, thanks
PatPunchhard

Dec 30, 2012 10:35 am GMT
Yes your capital moved because your heir's primary title was the Kingdom of Sicily, you can change what your primary title is by going to the page for that title and clicking "make primary title" as long it's the highest level title you have (e.g. you could make yourself King of Castille rather than King of Sicily but you couldn't go around calling yourself the Duke of Navarra if you're also a King). You can move the capital or centre by clicking on a province and clicking the crown in the top left corner of the pop up that shows your holdings etc.

The kingdoms will be part of it and you can give them out, after one hundred years they'll become de jure part of the Empire too. If you hand them out, bear in mind that you'll be creating very powerful vassals who could easily beat you in independence revolts etc. if you have a crap king. On the other hand, it's easier to keep two or three kings happy than like twenty dukes.

The capital won't move if you usurp the empire (but if for example you give your heir the Kingdom of Greece, when you die your capital will shift, most likely to Constantinople).
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clostans

Dec 30, 2012 12:20 pm GMT
Moving the capital will help a lot since the east dukes are still annoying me with the distance. Once the emperor ends all his wars I'll take it and see what happens.

Maybe I'll handle it now but once I die I think it will be hard to maintain all this without giving some kingdoms, I already have like 70 vassals and it's annoying. Luckily, duke kids can't revolt even if they want, and for some reasons duke priests don't care abut the distance apparently. I don't know if that will works for the kings too though. I'll just try and see what happens, I'm almost at the end of the game anyway.

Thanks for the help.
Biaz

Dec 30, 2012 2:35 pm GMT
you seem to play with an outdated version. when factions got introduced the distance penalty disappeared.
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PatPunchhard

Dec 30, 2012 2:50 pm GMT
clostans posted...
Moving the capital will help a lot since the east dukes are still annoying me with the distance. Once the emperor ends all his wars I'll take it and see what happens.

Maybe I'll handle it now but once I die I think it will be hard to maintain all this without giving some kingdoms, I already have like 70 vassals and it's annoying. Luckily, duke kids can't revolt even if they want, and for some reasons duke priests don't care abut the distance apparently. I don't know if that will works for the kings too though. I'll just try and see what happens, I'm almost at the end of the game anyway.

Thanks for the help.

I was going to say that you can't award bishops or burghers king level titles but that's relatively recent and you're apparently playing an older version. I prefer king vassals because its less micromanagement and if they get too big for their boots, it's easy enough to kill the bastard.
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clostans

Dec 30, 2012 3:49 pm GMT
Yep, it's my second game (well, the first one was more like a trial to learn the game basics) and I didn't update the game since I know there are lots of changes and I don't exactly know what they are so... I just wanted to end this game first before doing anything that could change the rules too much now that I know more or less how to keep things controlled.

Moreover, I wasn't even sure if I could keep playing with my old save if I updated.

Anyway, I finally got the empire and no, I can't give kingdoms to bishops in this version either.

And I'm not sure now about giving my kingdoms anyway. I tried to give all of them except the big one to see how much people I should take care of and... I passed from 90 vassals to 60. Noooot really a big improvement. I mean, yes, I don't need to think about 30 of them, but 60 is still a too big number of them so I'm not sure about taking the risk just for 30.

It's a shame I can't just create some duchies out of nowhere, I have lots of low ranked vassals because of counties that don't belong to a duchy. Though maybe you can in the new version, I think I read something about this.
PatPunchhard

Dec 30, 2012 4:18 pm GMT
clostans posted...
Yep, it's my second game (well, the first one was more like a trial to learn the game basics) and I didn't update the game since I know there are lots of changes and I don't exactly know what they are so... I just wanted to end this game first before doing anything that could change the rules too much now that I know more or less how to keep things controlled.

Moreover, I wasn't even sure if I could keep playing with my old save if I updated.

Anyway, I finally got the empire and no, I can't give kingdoms to bishops in this version either.

And I'm not sure now about giving my kingdoms anyway. I tried to give all of them except the big one to see how much people I should take care of and... I passed from 90 vassals to 60. Noooot really a big improvement. I mean, yes, I don't need to think about 30 of them, but 60 is still a too big number of them so I'm not sure about taking the risk just for 30.

It's a shame I can't just create some duchies out of nowhere, I have lots of low ranked vassals because of counties that don't belong to a duchy. Though maybe you can in the new version, I think I read something about this.

If you can handle the vassal relations hits revoke the counties and grant them to dukes to cut down on your vassals. What do you mean by "don't belong to a duchy" anyway? If they de jure belong to one of your dukes then you can just use transfer vassalage to give them their counts, it'll make them like you more too.
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clostans

Dec 30, 2012 7:01 pm GMT
PatPunchhard posted...
What do you mean by "don't belong to a duchy" anyway? If they de jure belong to one of your dukes then you can just use transfer vassalage to give them their counts, it'll make them like you more too.

I mean... I have some counties that are all alone, and I don't have/can't create any duchy above it, I guess most of them are just from other kingdoms and I can't take them for some reason (like they were in a war or something)

In any case, I didn't thought of that. I guess now I can give them to some other duke at worst. Until a while ago I was trying to keep everything organized since It was annoying when someone started a rebellion and had little towns in every random corner. But well, now I don't really mind since I should be able to assault a county with just the surrounding troops.
Ultima_Ratio

Dec 31, 2012 4:38 am GMT
Use the "de jure duchies" view to see which counties you need to create/usurp the title (need at least 50% of the counties to be in your realm).
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desert_fox201

Dec 31, 2012 6:00 am GMT
I'm not really sure if this will help you, but you should be able to create the Empire of Hispania if you have all of Iberia.
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clostans

Dec 31, 2012 6:09 am GMT
desert_fox201 posted...
I'm not really sure if this will help you, but you should be able to create the Empire of Hispania if you have all of Iberia.

Nope I can't, I think it comes with the update too. In the first version the only empires available are the 2 already there. It's a shame, it would have been helpful before getting this one.
clostans

Dec 31, 2012 6:12 am GMT
Ultima_Ratio posted...
Use the "de jure duchies" view to see which counties you need to create/usurp the title (need at least 50% of the counties to be in your realm).

Yeah I know. Once I die I'll start giving things and try that. But sometimes you can't usurp them cause the owner is in a war. And since everyone is pretty much all the time in a war and I'm not really looking every minute if I can...
Wartime_Novelty

Dec 31, 2012 8:39 am GMT
clostans posted...
Ultima_Ratio posted...
Use the "de jure duchies" view to see which counties you need to create/usurp the title (need at least 50% of the counties to be in your realm).

Yeah I know. Once I die I'll start giving things and try that. But sometimes you can't usurp them cause the owner is in a war. And since everyone is pretty much all the time in a war and I'm not really looking every minute if I can...

Marriage alliances do that. If you have more than one or two, they make it all but impossible to get tournament/Ramadan decisions made (both of which require peace for, like, an entire month).
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clostans

Dec 31, 2012 9:32 am GMT
Abyssmal Fiend posted...
clostans posted...
Ultima_Ratio posted...
Use the "de jure duchies" view to see which counties you need to create/usurp the title (need at least 50% of the counties to be in your realm).

Yeah I know. Once I die I'll start giving things and try that. But sometimes you can't usurp them cause the owner is in a war. And since everyone is pretty much all the time in a war and I'm not really looking every minute if I can...

Marriage alliances do that. If you have more than one or two, they make it all but impossible to get tournament/Ramadan decisions made (both of which require peace for, like, an entire month).

Oh, I didn't know that.

And I didn't know you need peace for the tournament. I guess that's the main reason my tournament last like... 10 years. So much people died in that tournament...
ShyOx

Dec 31, 2012 3:48 pm GMT
Empires are meant to fall. From the onset of it, your new mission in the game will be keeping this together, and it is a ticking clock to see when you will lose it haha. Kings are just too powerful as vassals, and there's not really any way around it since if you give it to them, they will probably revolt later, and if you dont they will still probably revolt later.
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clostans

Jan 2, 2013 4:56 am GMT
Yeah, I updated the game cause the distance penalty was killing me and I think I would have lost lots of things otherwise since it's something you can't do anything about it. Even when they loved me they wanted to revolt...

Since these is gone they are all extremely docile even when they hate me. And now I created 2 more empires... I should have updated a while ago.

The factions seem annoying though, since you can't do anything about them really. I have people with 100 that join the independence factions... If I kill the leader, someone else takes his place. And if I kill everybody, they just keep appearing after a while... But at least I can kill one king after another in order to keep the factions powerless.
PatPunchhard

Jan 2, 2013 6:48 am GMT
clostans posted...
The factions seem annoying though, since you can't do anything about them really. I have people with 100 that join the independence factions... If I kill the leader, someone else takes his place. And if I kill everybody, they just keep appearing after a while... But at least I can kill one king after another in order to keep the factions powerless.

Send your spymaster to scheme in provinces held by faction members to convince them to leave. Sending gifts and improving your relations can help but like you said, sometimes you get guys in there with 100 relations, it's especially annoying when someone you raised up from being a lowly courtier to Despot of Armenia decides he doesn't want to be part of your Empire any more but that's gratitude for you. Sometimes it's better to just fight them, getting a white peace is simple enough and imprisons the faction leader for you (and gives you cause to arrest all the other members) and getting to 100% warscore and enforcing your demands lets you arrest everyone which is a very simple way of installing a bunch of loyal Prince-Bishops in their place. Even losing gives you strong claims on all the newly independent titles meaning you can pick them off one by one.
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clostans

Jan 2, 2013 6:54 pm GMT
I didn't know the spymaster thing, I'll try it with some weak faction and see how it works.

With some time, it seem they're not as bad as they seemed at first when the independence one had like, half of my kings since the beginning. Now that the general opinion is higher thanks to prestige/reigning time opinion points, factions are weaker and don't pop as much.
And even though there are guys that just go there with 80-100 opinion, others do leave the faction when you give them some money even if they are leaders or strong faction members with less points. So they usually disappear after a while.

In any case, the update made the game a lot easier, at least with a great territory. Without the distance penalty, I don't screw all my money/opinion/time killing people far away. The wars/revolt are taken care of a lot faster since the troops are already joined and with 3 clicks I have 10k troops ready, instead of 10 groups of 1k. And now that all the little revolts are over (btw, they were stupid... Why would an earl revolt all alone with 1k soldiers against a king with like 200k?) I spend less money and time with weak vassals.

Also being an emperor is not that bad. With all those kings I can ignore half of my territory and I play much faster spending less money (as long as they don't get too powerful, I guess). And while I do some wars myself (Since I usurped the byzantine empire with half of the territory, now I can de jure take the rest) they do some themselves winning some thing by themselves.