Crusader Kings

[Heresson]

I've played it for the first time today, with easiests settings. It was going pretty well at the start, I've conquered Croatian kingdom as well as Vallachia and other regions over Black Sea.
Then came tragedy: all my vassals were starting to throw off my rule. After a bloody and lenghty war, I managed to reunite my country, but in shatters
-two provinces managed to get independance (I've found them not at war with me, I don't know why)
-three provinces of my former vassals were lost to some petty beighbours of mine

but these are details. What's important is that
- I got 5,500 in debts (managed to pay them already)
- I got minus 5,500 of prestige (changed some things and am now slowly, 1,5 a month or so, decreasing it, but it's too slow)
- I got minus ??? of piety.
But worst of all,
I have 0% (tax?) efficiency. i get no money from some taxes, Constantinople gives me no earnings...
what to do?

[Nikolai]

Dark Ages? Paradox has no game with that name... Do you mean CK?

[Heresson]

probably

[Ming]

Title changed to reflect that actual name of the game

[Verrucosus]

If I remember correctly, efficiency is the percentage of the potential revenue from a province in your demesne that you actually get. There is a limit to the number of provinces that you can have under direct control without losing efficiency. This limit is dependent on a number of factors, most importantly your ruler's intrigue rating, and I believe it is revealed when you leave the mouse over the gold symbol in the top bar. The more provinces you control beyond that limit the lower your efficiency will be.

The easiest way to improve your efficiency is to give up direct control over a less valuable province by granting the provincial (count) title to someone else (e. g. a court member or an exisiting vassal). Another way to raise efficiency should be to improve your intrigue rating, but that is certainly more difficult.

Verrucosus

[Heresson]

thanks, I thought it'd have sth to do with it.

[El_Cid]

Keeping your vassals loyal is one of the fun things in CK - well atleast i like it. As a smaller, less powerfull ruler it is harder to maintain. Also some of your court(that you can appoint as a vassal) will be inheritently less loyal than others. Part of your task as king/ruler will be to weed these traitorous ones out before you reach a critical point whereby they can destroy your kingdom by triggering civil wars.

A quick rule of thumb i use is to:

1. Keep it in the family - give your most important provinces(that you cant/dont want to control yourself) to your most loyal children.

2. After the kids it goes to the most loyal(and easily pleased) members of the court.

3. Use the traitorous nature of a court figure to give them a real rubbish province, then when they rebel you have the excuse you need to move in and eliminate them(more sure than assasination+wont harm your rep as much, if at all).

So it becomes a balancing act of finding characters within your court who not only have good skills in the required area of province management(to get you more money), but who are also likely to stay loyal to you. Its quite tricky really.

As for making money - most of that is down to the skills of 'stewardship' and any associated traits that enhance that. Your Steward should aim to have as high a score as you can find in this area. Often i look for marriages that will bring a good steward to the court.
Even go as far as marrying of your most useless son to a really great 'steward' - then either never give that son his own land or assasinate him and you get to keep the great steward(be carefull not to agree to marrigage offers for her after that!).

Likewise any land you give out to vassals - make sure that vassal has as good a skill in stewardship as possible, once they have their freedom you lose control over their marriages and the court they start to attrack, so they may or may not get a good steward once you have given them land.

[Heresson]

Thank You very much! The problem is I have polish version... but steward is probably majordomus...
I have easy settings for my game, so I switched from royal law to vassal contract (?) to ensure happiness of my vassals...
I want to change AI agressiveness settings, though, because it's too boring without any agressions. I'd like to conquer Bulgaria, for example.

I am very disappointed with lack of historical accuracy when it comes to provinces, religion, culture, or even territory assignement. It's even worse then in other Paradox game.

I have another question: when I conquer a territory, sometimes it is added to my existing vassal, sometimes it is added to my domain (especially enemy capital), sometimes a new vassalship is created.
Why so?
Can I take away titles (and provinces) from my vassals without any damages but risk of their revolt?
I conquered large muslim lands in Armenia, Azerbeijan, Persia. Two new vassals were created this way. But one of them is HUGE. He has bigger domain than I'd like to take some provinces away from him to make him weaker, but won't it make other vassals/other states hate me?
Does declaring war against infidel state damage my reputation among christian states as well?
Thanks

[Nikolai]

The leader of the siege gets all provinces that are non-christian. If the leader is your king or a regiment that are your king's but with no leader, you get it as personal demesne. If a courtier is, he establishes a new county. If one of your vassals or vassal's vassal is, he gets it.

You can demand that your vassal gives you his title, but your other vassals will loose 25% loyalty and he might say no.

Wars against infidels does not damage your reputation.

[Heresson]

I was good for my vassals. I did not take away their titles or anything, I taxed them modestly and stuff. yet, again revolts started, all my vassals hate me, and my reputation drops - I don't know why.

[Nikolai]

Did you check the loyalty modifiers to find out why they hate you? And taking revolting vassal's land hurts your rep, which makes the other vassals more prone to revolting too.

[Heresson]

what are the loyalty modifiers? Where can I find them?

OK. A vassal revolts, declares independance. So what should I do when I capture his lands?

Thank You for answering my questions.

[Nikolai]

Go to the vassal's portrait. Hold the mouse over the loyalty number. Wait. And you get a list of modifiers.

If you have a good enough rep when you take your vassal's land, you should take it and give it out to a courtier or vassal (when you give out titles your rep improves, but you don't get it just as low as it was before). BTW, I guess you know that the higher the piety the faster the rep improves? Mentioning it just in case.

[El_Cid]

Religion(as in christian type) is very important to most of the 'Christian' ruled lands. Sadly the game wont like it if you do stuff that effects your piety - this will also be reflected on how your vassals view you. Even declareing war on a province you have a claim to(talking about all christian type provinces) can have a big effect on your vassals. It nearly destroyed my kingdom trying to unite England,Wales,Scotland and Ireland. After i had pulled this of and looked south to the arab controlled states it became much easier to wage war and claim lands.

It sounds to me like you have probably done what i did in my first game, and got involved in many actions that have damaged your rep with most of your vassals. Time will fix it, but if its in a particularly bad state civil war can break you.

Either start again and avoid as much christian land taking as possible, and generaly being more aware of your actions and how it will effect your vassals........or the more fun option(that can make you very powerfull or kill you!) is to just take down these rebellions when they happen. Keep those lands for yourself or if your intrigue is low give them to your better children. Over time this helps eliminate the troublesome elements in your kingdom - and the vassals who have stayed loyal to you over this period are most likely very loyal and trustworthy.

Dont forget to breed well - it takes more than one king to build an empire(it took me about 6 generations) - and get good genetic stock to create the next king(high intrigue/combat skills as possible).

The land you keep for yourself should be the most valuable/wealthy(check that with the 'wealth' overlay option on the map) as this is often the land that can raise the bigger more powerfull armies.

If taking land always make sure your king is present(and not 'routeing' - thats why good personal combat skills!) and will stick around untill the end of the siege. This way the province will be yours to assign as you see fit.

Something i like to do, but is not standard and the game is setup to not like it very much mostly; is to set your Laws differently.

I choose either 'Elective law' or i think 'Salic consanguinity'.

with Elective Law it means i can get 100% control over who will be the next king - you can give titles to your favourite vassal(and your kids can be vassals also remember).

or

Salic consanguinity(i think!) which is kind of the same but only the most powerfull male child will inherit. This is better for ensuring it stays 'in the family'. (check that this is that actual law - it might be one of the others!)

Neither Law was most of the other european 'super powers' default settings - and it can cause a fair amount of unrest, but once its setup you can enjoy much better control over the successions and that is important if your trying to create a 'super ruler' of a 'super power'.

[Heresson]

thank You. Indeed the problems was me taking christian lands, but also me not appointing a chancellor.
I have some more questions:
1) kanclerz (chacellor?) - diplomacy, keeps vassals content etc - diplomatic rating
2) majordomus (steward?) - gouverning, increases economic output - gouverning rating
3) marszalek (marshall?) - war, military skills rating
4) master of spies or whatever is surely connected to intrigue rating, but what does he do, exactly? what are the intrigue ratings useful for?
5) metropolite?

Is establishing a bishopric good for me?

If I marry someone of my court with someone of someone's court, what decided who is moving where? I mean, if I marry my steward to some ordinary person, surely it is the ordinary person who will move... but if I marry my chancellor to someone's steward? Or mine ordinary person to someone's official?

Sometimes I have unmarried people at my court, yet I can not offer marriage to them - but foreign dukes keep on demanding their marriages with them. Why can't I decide who's marrying them?

Does genetics really work? I try to find the best marriages possible for my court, yet sometimes the children are hopeless

Sometimes my nation, esp. newely created, declares independance without declaring war on me. For example, I gave my wife a duchy. And after a while I had to declare a war against her etc, because she got independant somehow. Why?

I have a vassal who did not want to marry ANYONE, no matter how good genetically, how young etc he was...?
She died without a marriage. And she had good genes. She was my daughter.

I have a new king right now, and have problem with his piety rating. My last king was very pius, and, like his predecessor, used to be the papal legate. Now, however, my rating started with 0 and keeps decreasing. It says it's because of "expected crusade".
What does it mean? How can I start a crusade? With my last king, there was an event saying that I am supposed to join a crusade or sth, but, well, what does it mean?

It seems I can only keep 7 provinces or so without decrease of my efficiency. Can I make it better?

I want more "mass conversions" events!
btw, a funny thing happened in my last game, as Byzantium. I kept marrying hungarian girls, and perhaps because of that when there was a conversion, it was conversion to "orthodox faith, hungarian culture" - in Anatoly!

I love the game, btw.
I am playing Jerusalem right now. My posessions are in general me as I started + Antioch + Ayyubid kingdom - from Mosul in the east to Alexandria to the west + Hungarian kingdom + 4 isolated provinces in other parts of Europe. I could conquer entire muslim Middle East, but I am afraid of Mongols who are surely to come. I only think about conquering Baghdad for it is a rich province, and Mecca and Medina - for fun...
I am king of Jerusalem, Hungary, Syria, Aleppo and Egypt, I also bear the title of emperor of Byzantium, some other king and prince of Armenia - in the future, I am going to start a war to realise my domination in these lands.