1. Ck2 Too Many Vassals 2
2. Ck2 How To Deal With Too Many Vassals

If you've played Crusader Kings II for any decent length of time, you've almost certainly encountered what happens when vassals get too strong and dislike you.

Aug 14, 2017 - This solves the original problem of too many vassals, because one. With a Health modifier of -7, it is as deadly as rabies to characters in CK2.

If any single vassal gets strong enough to challenge your power, you're at constant risk of rebellion. Everything you've worked for could be undone in years. Thus I'll be going into how to prevent this from happening, concentrating on keeping your vassals weak.

The Basic Concept

Ck2 Too Many Vassals 2

To prevent sizable rebellions, you have one primary goal: Prevent your vassals from having more power than you. This is achieved in multiple ways.

First, you have to keep yourself strong.
Second, you don't want your vassals to hold a lot of titles.
Third, you don't want your vassals to have a lot of vassals.
Fourth, you want to keep your vassals happy.

Keeping Yourself Strong

Keeping yourself strong in the long term primarily relies on two factors: Number and concentration of holdings, and construction.

You want to hold every single county in two duchies you own that are either bordering each other, or very close to each other. These two duchies should together have 7 to 10 counties so that you can use most of your demesne limit without having to construct holdings.

By keeping your entire demesne in two duchies you avoid the penalty from having more than two duchies, and you avoid the penalties for vassals desiring your duchies. No vassals will thus be able to plot for your duchies, thus keeping your powerbase secure.

The advantage of keeping your demesne limited to a small geographical area is that you can now gather up your army very quickly, so you'll be able to respond quickly to any rebellion with very low risk of your units being picked off separately.

Second, you want to upgrade your holdings as much as possible. This is covered in further detail in the installment on construction.
By upgrading your holdings you'll have more money available, and more troops. You'll also refill your levies faster, so you'll be able to recover from wars faster.
As your vassals will seldom be able to upgrade their holdings to the same extent as you, construction can give you a large advantage.

Keeping Your Vassals Weak

The other side of the coin is keeping your vassals weak, and reducing their powerbase when possible. If you expand via conquest, you'll often have titles that you need to give out. You should be quite careful about who you give these titles to, as it is easy to end up with a single vassal holding many titles, and eventually being able to challenge your power.

The strategy I recommend for giving out counties goes like this: Search for characters that are not rulers, are of your religion, are male, and are of your culture. You should then sort by dynasty, and scroll down to your own. You should now find someone who is not heir to anything, and whose heir does not own anything. You then give that person a single county with all its holdings (if applicable). The new count will then soon make the holdings in the county into vassals, and will be of no threat to you.

For duchies you do much the same. Search for characters that are rulers, are of your religion, and are of your culture. Sort by dynasty, and scroll down to your own. Find someone who owns a single county or barony. One county and one barony is also fine, but only a single holding is preferable. This person should get the duchy. It does not matter if (s)he actually holds any counties within the duchy; that is their problem, not yours. By following this strategy you'll end up with dukes who hold a single duchy and a single county, and will be unlikely to ever be able to challenge your power.

Whenever a vassal rebels and you beat him, you should strip him of his primary title. To do this you will need Limited Crown Authority. You can then follow the strategy described above to give this title to someone else.
Further, you can deliberately make strong vassals rebel so that you can imprison them and strip them of a title. Simply give them the court jester honorary title, and raise their vassal levies and just leave them there. Eventually they will rebel, and then you can crush them and take a title from them.

Another way to make them rebel without incurring tyranny is imprisoning them with a just cause. They'll rebel approximately half the time, and upon crushing their rebellion you'll be able to strip them of a title. If they don't rebel you can just ransom them, thus taking a bit of money from them and giving it to you, and you'll likely end up with another reason to imprison them later.

Beyond how you distribute county/duchy grants, and stripping of titles, it is very important to attain Medium Crown Authority.

Medium Crown Authority will prevent all intra-realm warfare with the exception of rebellion. This will make it near impossible for your vassals to expand via conquest, and they're thus much more likely to remain weak. They'll also not be using up huge amounts of levies on pointless internal wars, so you'll have the levies you need when you go to war.

Keeping Your Vassals Happy

Finally, you should do your best to keep your vassals happy. The two most important ways of doing this is keeping your vassals the same culture as you, and keeping them the same religion as you. This lets you avoid the large 'foreigner' penalties, and you get -15% risk of rebellion for each. Having all your vassals of the same religion is especially simple, as at Medium Crown Authority you can revoke any title held by a Heretic or Infidel without incurring tyranny.

For culture you should simply make sure to never give titles to people of a different culture unless you have a very good reason to, for example so as to push their claim on some other title. You can also like described above, deliberately make them rebel so that you can give their titles to someone else.

Further, you should groom your heir yourself. Unless you have good reason not to, your heir should always be your ward, not someone else's. This will let you make various choices throughout his childhood, thus having him end up with good traits. A few good traits can make a huge difference both when it comes to chance of rebellion, and the levies and taxes he can get from his vassals.

Finally, apply bribes and honorary titles strategically. Unless you actually want someone to rebel it is usually better to pay them off with a bribe than to have to crush their rebellion. Do note that honorary titles only expire upon the recipient's death (or rebellion); they'll even persist beyond the ruler's death. As such you should be careful about when you give them out, as there's a rather limited number of them.

Summary

Keep your vassals happy and weak, and yourself strong, and it becomes much easier to hold onto the throne.
My tips are as follows:

• When giving out a county, give it to a dynasty member who holds no other titles
• When giving out a duchy, give it to a dynasty member who holds a single county or barony
• After crushing a rebellion, strip every member of the rebellion of their primary title. You'll need Limited Crown Authority
• Revoke the titles of any infidels and heretics. You'll need Medium Crown Authority
• If any vassal is getting too strong, induce rebellion then strip him of a title
• Avoid having vassals of different cultures and religions. Inducing rebellion can help
• Get Medium Crown Authority, it will stop vassals from expanding via intra-realm conquest
• Hold every county in two bordering duchies
• Upgrade your holdings as much as possible
• Be your heir's guardian
• Give out bribes and honorary titles to prevent rebellion

Written by Meneth

Feudal elective is a succession law where the candidate with the most votes from realm de jure vassals gets elected.

Upon death, the candidate with most votes inherits all the titles.

• 2Opinion
• 3Mechanic
• 4Strategies

Features

• One of the few succession laws with no tech requirements. Particularly for Indians, feudal elective is the only non-gavelkind succession law available to them with no technology requirements.
• Only available to Muslims and Indians if 'council authority' council law is passed. (Requires Conclave DLC )
• When the election goes your way, succession is much smoother.
  • You can nominate the heir with best attributes and traits.
  • You are not limited to your own children. You can pick any claimant, or any dynasty member you make an elector.
  • Vassal opinion is crucial in gathering votes for your dynasty and/or your nominee.
  • In case of a tie, your vote is decisive.
• Vassals have a huge opinion boost of +20 (+10 with the Conclave DLC), making the realm more stable.
• Claimant factions can form for any eligible candidate, even if they do not have a claim.
• If someone outside your dynasty is elected, extra titles (duchies and below) are given to your children.
  • If they have no other titles, it is game over!

Opinion

A ruler under feudal elective will face the following opinion modifiers:

Vocal remover. Importantly, vassals who are of your dynasty only get the 'All other dynasty members' penalty. They don't get the'All vassals' bonus.

Too many held elector titles

There is a malus of -15 (stacking) that applies to all electors when the liege personally holds too many elector titles. It works similarly to the 'too many duchies' malus.

Currently, it appears that the Malus applies any time you hold more than 1 title of a tier directly below your primary title. For example, if you hold 2+ de jure kingdoms in an empire, 2+ de jure duchies in a kingdom, etc.

If an elector is also , this will activate ambition opinion, causing an additional '-25 ambitious'.

You can avoid the penalty by destroying duchy titles. Take care, as this may reduce the size of your family's realm should your family lose an election. Destroying duchy titles for a demesne duchy is relatively safe.

Mechanic

Electors

• Valid electors are all holders of de jure vassal titles one tier lower than the elected title (and of the current title holder's religion?). This may include non de facto vassals of your realm, if you don't control all de jure territories.
• In titular realms, all vassal rulers of the appropriate rank may vote.
• Empires are an exception: both dukes and kings may vote.
• Each elector gets a single vote, regardless of how many electoral titles they hold.
• The current ruler always gets a vote, and also breaks ties.

Candidates

Potential candidates are:

• Claimants
• The ruler's children, grandchildren, siblings, nephews, nieces, and spouse. They must be either the same dynasty as the ruler, or landed within the realm (a county is sufficient).
• Rulers with sufficient rank to be electors, who are either:
  • Direct vassals (even when they are not electors themselves)
  • Electors who are not under your control

However, the following characters are always ineligible:

• Rulers or heirs of republics, merchant republics, or theocracies
• Characters who cannot inherit, such as Bastards
• Characters with eligible fathers (e.g. can't skip a living son to nominate a grandson, or skip a living brother to nominate a nephew or niece)
• Characters with a different religion, if the ruler is a Caliph or Fylkir
• Women, if gender law is strictly Agnatic

Vote

The voting screen shows who each voter supports. For details on how AI voters evaluate candidates, see Succession voting.

Strategies

Help your candidate

• Avoid nominating young children. A brother might be easier to elect than a 2-year-old child.

• Give an elector-rank title to the best dynastic candidate: If you have a genius kinsman who is very distantly related to you, giving him a ducal title will make him a valid nominee.

• Give a voting title to your candidate: They will likely vote for themselves. (Warning: as an AI ruler, he will have many chances to get himself into trouble. For example, he may seduce the wives of other vassals and gain rivals.)

• Voters from your dynasty: By giving voting titles exclusively to characters from your dynasty, you can ensure that the heir will always be a member of your dynasty. However, your own children will be future claimants, so it is often safer to land distant relatives. Also, members of your own dynasty do not like feudal elective succession, as a non-dynasty member could (theoretically) inherit. You will suffer a -5 opinion penalty with them, effectively cancelling out the +5 bonus for being of the same dynasty, in contrast to the +20 opinion bonus from vassals of other dynasties.

• Honorary titles can significantly boost their prestige.

Damage other candidates

• Check who is getting votes in the Inheritance tab of the Laws screen (F4).

• Assassination may be possible, even against likeable candidates, due to the number of potential conspirators in a large realm.

• Spying with the Intrigue focus gives you many methods of imprisoning them without tyranny. You can then throw them in the oubliette for -20 diplomacy and -2 health. If this isn't enough, for minor tyranny penalties, you can banish them (forcing them to abdicate to their heir) or even execute them.

• Revoke titles to invalidate candidates. Imperial administration with duchy viceroys is excellent for this; an elector who votes wrong way, or himself is a candidate, can be stripped of his viceroy title and electoral rights with no tyranny. Catholics can use a vassal pope or antipope to claim vassal titles.

• Have zero or one vassal electors. By leaving duchies unfounded or destroying them, you can control an election completely, even in a medium-size kingdom. You might also give all duchies to a single 'super-duke', but gavelkind makes this situation precarious.

Avoid realm splits

• Avoid holding multiple top tier titles (kingdoms or empires): Electors may not choose the same candidate for both, causing grief similar to gavelkind.

Ck2 How To Deal With Too Many Vassals

• Use kingdom viceroyalties: if you have kingdoms outside your de jure empire, consider making them viceroyalties. This overrides the succession law in the kingdom and prevents separate elections there.

• Spread your culture: You have a better chance of the same candidate winning multiple elections if each set of electors shares your culture.

Dynasty

• Have a large dynasty: Gives more potential suitable candidates within your dynasty.
• Grant dynasty Elector titles: this makes it more likely that your heir will be a member of your dynasty. If possible, grant all elector titles to members of your own dynasty, as this makes it certain that a member of your dynasty will inherit.