applause
I’m pretty satisfied about what I accomplished. I’m not too upset about dying when I did, either. I pushed my character – and the realm – pretty hard to get this far. You will probably see a few more rebellions in the coming years. They should be easy to handle, you have a very large army and will be making 20 gold per month when it is not raised, 2 when it is (at least that was the case with my ruler’s Stewardship).
You’ll want to avoid fighting offensive wars long enough for the opinion penalty and unrest in counties to go away. Beyond that-- best of luck!
Blessings on the new Empress. Long live the memory of Emperor Albiono!
This has been a great read so far! I hope Babale’s successors do as good a job.
One question, what is a “hook?”
A “hook” is a claim on somebody’s… Loyalty? Like, if somebody owes you a minor favor, then you have a weak hook with them, that you can call in to grant you a favorable outcome for an action… While a strong hook can be something you use to really ratchet down the pressure on somebody… Like you might learn that somebody was behind a murder plot, then you might have a strong hook (blackmail, essentially) to pull them along into your own schemes…
I’m pretty new at this, and terrible so far, so there may be better explanations.
Thanks Kron!
I ascend the new imperial throne at the tender age of 20. I am fickle, shy, have typhus, and worst of all, am chaste. Methinks my time on the throne will be brief before I pass it on to a cousin.
My first act is to send messengers to find a skilled physician. And then to root out the last of the revolting peasants.
I choose Flavia, who while she no practical experience as a physician, is well-educated and diligent. The only other candidate is a known liar and has gout. Heal thyself first, if you want to tend to me. The new doctor sees to me immediately. I am given the choice of safe, but only mildly effective treatment, or try to get to the root of the problem, at some risk.
Alas, I cannot afford another physician, but it seems this one will be the death of me.
Whether through the happenstance or my own will to live, I have finally overcome the typhus.
And the peasants have been put in their place. The war and my healthcare have devastated the empire’s finances. We must now rebuild and restrengthen the land.
My body is scarred, but has healed as much as it can.
Their was no chance to rebuild, as the Doge of Venice led a revolt against me. And the Pope excommunicated me. Things are looking grim.
Utter defeat. I was forced to give many concessions to retain my throne.
The Pope died. To lift the papal ban, I’ve repented to the new pope. It was costly to my prestige, but I think necessary to maintain my rule.
I am finally married when my betrothed came of age. Whether I can actually bear heirs remains to be seen.
Your great-grandmother (I think?) would be rolling over in her grave! 
Also, the eyepatch is baller.
Testing.
So if you use the links that imgbb generates you get a link and thumbnail, but if you navigate to the image location and use that, you get a full inline picture.
A hook is something you can use to manipulate or coerce the target of your hook. For example, after Doge’s revolt, all of the dukes got a hook on Empress Candida. Two have already used it to claim a seat on the council. Two more used it to get better feudal contracts. Basically, any time where a character makes a request of another character, a hook can be used to force the answer.
The Empress has been working to fabricate hooks on her vassals. Their revolt wasn’t completely unjustified. 
That’s what I was doing. Import the batch into imgbb, it shows a page with all my thumbnails. Then I click on each image and it opens a new tab with my picture; right click and copy image url; paste that here to get an inline image.
I can’t believe the Doge rebelled! Doesn’t that ungrateful bastard remember that it was your father who made him a duke in the first place? Harrumph!
It might help matters if you create a Kingdom title and hand it off to a loyal vassal, then hand him some of your troublesome vassals. Of course, that could backfire if one of them comes to control the kingdom…
I’ve never had a good handle on the handling of vassals. The general idea is that you want to make sure any duke also directly controls his de jure counties, yes?
What about succession under lower crown authorities? At the ducal level is there really any way to avoid fragmentation if you have multiple kids? What about when you’re a king but don’t have high authority yet? I’m currently playing a game where my character died with a boatload of daughters* and now my heir has to wage endless wars to press her claims and reunite the Brittany.
It’s all very confusing to me, which is why you inherited a mess when gramma Matilda died.
*It was actually pretty funny. His wife kept popping out daughters and his lover kept popping out bastard sons.
The thing that helped me make sense of it is realizing that the basic rule is: Any ruler believes his heirs deserve to be equal in title to him.(“heirs” meaning children who qualify for inheritence – so with male preference your “heirs” are your sons, unless you only have daughters, in which case they are your daughters. If you have a single dead son and five live daughters, but he had a son before dying, his son inherits everything).
So what does this actually look like in practice? There are 3 forms of partition.
Confederate Partition - all children inherit equally and new titles are created if need be and possible.
Partition – all children inherit equally but no new titles can be created.
High Partition – your main heir gets half of your titles, and other heirs split the rest.
The other thing to note is that this system looks at your HIGHEST titles available FIRST.
So let’s look at some examples. We will just talk about Confederate Partition but the other two are just variants on the same logic.
A count has 2 counties and 2 sons. Each is given a county, and since a count can’t be a count’s vassal, the second son is independent (however your heir has a claim on his brother’s county, and vice versa! You always have a claim on all of the titles you lost to partition so as long as you ensure you have the best land, you can take it back). The primary heir is gonna get your capital county, so that gives you some control.
Now let’s say you are a Duke, with a 3 county duchy, and a 4th county outside your duchy, and 2 sons. Assuming your realm capital is IN your duchy, your eldest son will get the duchy, and all 3 counties inside, and the younger son will get a single county. If you didn’t have the duchy title, your eldest son would get two counties while your younger son would get the other two counties and become independent.
Now let’s say you own 6 counties in 2 de jure duchies. You own one duchy but did not create the second one. Also, you have 3 sons. What happens now?
Your heir gets the capital duchy. Your second son takes the 3 counties and creates the second duchy, becoming independent. Now your third heir is landless! So he takes one of your counties because there are no duchies left for him and becomes your vassal.
So the best way to keep control of your succession as a Duke is to control your duchy and grab enough counties to keep your extra sons happy. Land them before you die for the best control over who inherits what (if I have a county and a duchy, my heir is landless, and my two other sons have a county each, my heir will get my county and my duchy).
Now let’s say you are a king. You want your son to be in a strong position. The best position to be in is to hold a number of counties equal to your Domain Limit, and to hold 2 duchies (more than that leads to opinion penalties). How can we arrange this once we are Kings? Well, first we want to hold on to the counties and duchies we want to pass to our son personally. We want to avoid landing out son, because we want him to inherit 2 duchies; if he already has a duchy, that would put him at 3, and would mean all of our other sons need 2 duchies each before we die to keep things equal. On the other hand, if he is landless and all of our other sons are already dukes when he dies, he will inherit the first dukedom first, to put him on equal footing; then, as the primary heir, he’d have first dibs on the second duchy.
Of course, if we get enough duchies for a second kingdom, then on our death our sons will try to steal a kingdom! So as an Emperor, you have 2 options:
- Hold just one Kingdom title. That way your sons are still competing for Dukedoms.
- Make your other sons kings. A son who is a king will never inherit a duchy that’s not De Jure in his kingdom, so if you’re an expansionist emperor that’s a great way to make sure your primary heir inherits the heartland.
I know it’s a bit confusing and hard to explain – it really took me a while before it “clicked”. Let me know if you have more questions.
And the best way to figure it out is to test it out – create a save where you have multiple sons and lots of land to hand out. Check the Succession tab of the Realm screen to see how much land you will lose. Then try to hand it out to your sons to ensure the primary heir inherits what you want.
The Waldensian heresy is sweeping the land, including my spouse.
Another crusade for Jerusalem. I need to stay on the Pope’s good side.
While sieging Jerusalem, my troops learn some new skills from the infidels there.
The court has become lonely as my vassals and armies are in the Holy Lands. A distraction has presented himself. Not the most handsome man, but he has a strong claim on the crown of Frisia. Let’s see what happens.
Great news, that vile traitor, the Doge of Venice is dead. And I had nothing to do with, not that I didn’t try.
The crusade was going well, but the politics among the infidels changed and it’s no longer a just war. (Invalidated because the target lost another war. Annoying.)
And now the Duke of Ancona is fielding armies to usurp the crown of Bravagna from me. I will never relinquish my great-grandmother’s crown! (Sorry, I forgot to take screenshots, I got swept up by the game.) On the way to war, my husband asks if I’ve taken a lover. I of course lie. That was the last I saw him, as he died on the field against the rebel duke. But he won the decisive battle, so he was good for something at the end.
I released the new Doge of Venice from my prison on condition that he marry me matrilineally. Children are unlikely, but at least he will stay under my control.
Or, not. I found him cheating with some servant, and he gave me the lover’s pox. Back to the prison with you! The pope was not happy, but I’ve helped him enough that he granted the divorce. I find a brave knight as new husband.
The third husband is the charm.
I have a daughter, named for my great grandmother.
An assassination attempt.
Then they attempt to feed me … children! The cook paid for that with his head. I’ve only imprisoned criminals up to now, because you never know when they may become useful. Cannibalism is step too far.
My husband died of old age. There’s no chance of any more children, so I may try to marry for an alliance.
No useful marriage to be found. But my daughter has given birth to a son. Great blessings on our dynasty!
The old King of Sicily as passed away and it’s an opportune time to claim what is mine.
Not much happened in the last few years of my life. Against all odds, I died peaceably in mine own bed of old age.
The top level map in AD 1180.
Good luck, my daughter. May your reign be more fruitful than mine.
I do hate not being able to easily search a thread a single page. The price we pay for inline pictures…
New TURNORDER (single-worded for easy searching), with a ping for on-deck.
@Sitnam
Teuton
Johnny Bravo
Whack-a-Mole
Babale
Pleonast
@Sitnam I’ve sent you a link to my save.
Updated list:
Sitnam
Teuton
Johnny Bravo
Whack-a-Mole
Babale
Pleonast
hooray, the empire hasn’t collapsed!
Also, our crusades may have been TOO successful at hampering the Arabs. Look at that Byzantine Empire! It’s terrifying!
Have they been aggressive at all?
Also the Rustemids are pretty big. And we got some nice blobs in Scandinavia!
I was about 99% focused simply on keeping my imperial throne and royal crowns. Dukes do not like a female liege. I think I left things in a survivable state, but the short reign penalty will be tough.
I did keep an eye on the pope, but he always had more levies than me.
I’ll see what I can do starting tomorrow.
So Pleonast sent the saved file and I put it in:
E:/Steam/userdata/#######/1158310/remote/save games
Which I guess is the cloud save, however I can’t seem to find the game when I load CK3. I’m a cloud computing imbecile, so maybe thats it, but where can I put this save file so I can play it just on this computer.