Crusader Kings 2

[Ima Farmathar]

sorry, the server keeps playing games on me

[Ima Farmathar]

It won't be strictly character-driven in terms like CK2. The core point of the game will still be controlling your nation instead of dynastic gameplay. You have a limited amount of uniquely named agents, and some pretenders to the throne (IIRC?) but I don't think it's going to be anything beyond that.

EvW is the closet we'll get to any similarity between Paradox titles, to be frank. Even though it's being made by BL-Logic though.

it's not about dynasties, it is about the randomness that free willed characters following their own goals add.

[Gandalfus]

Only close ones. Putting distant ones with no claim can be beneficial.

[absinthia]

Is it a bad thing to put all your family members around a huge empire?

not as such, dynasty members have a +10 opinion bonus - which is good. and if they are distant relatives without claims to your titles it is generaly no problem. also it adds up in the dynasty prestiege, though probably not enough to make it a reasson in it self.
but in my case i tend to prop up my 2nd and 3rd sons, that is when the trouble starts. they love me for it, but that does not apply to may heir - their brother. or worse a prestigious uncle that has elbowed his way to greater power...
though it mainly depend on how one handles rebelious relatives. i suppose i am a big softie, as i do not like to kill or revoke family members.
as to the case above they are all close relatives with claim to my titles. and with the Game of Thrones "Tyrant" trait they all hate me plenty, most everyone has a claimant faction going.

[General Maximus]

I gave Aquitaine and Italy to a brother and a son respectively in my Carolingian Empire. Although the son is only 2 years old and the brother doesn't have claim to my lands (as I am playing the now old Herbert Karling), it seems that Italy will be in trouble after some years when that son ages up and comes to know about his claim to my empire when my heir has inherited.

That is why I gave the kingdoms of Germany, Pomerania, Lotharingia and Bavaria to loyal vassals. They will surely help me once the war comes. And they have large armies.

[Kamikaze470]

I realized today, that letting "see title given to someone else" plots live is beneficial to me. Approving one as the emperor allowed me to see Carinthia taken from Baden. Now lets wait until Köln and Modena will get redistributed this way too.

When I was still doing my Brunswick game, other HRE dukes kept plotting that against me and oh my god I just wanted to tear my hair out, it was so traumatizing.

The actual wars themselves were no sweat albeit tedious, since I was nearly so the largest consolidated dukedom in the realm aside from Bohemia. But goddamn they never learn their lesson do they.

[Anna_Gein]

I was going to put my family members all over my Roman Empire, but thankfully read the above before I could do that. Is it a bad thing to put all your family members around a huge empire?

You are spawning an army of pretender this way.

I learned this rude lesson during my first walk-through as the house Dunkeld. The first 150 years was a following of never-ending civil war as every blood related attempted to take the throne.

[General Maximus]

Assassination plot is your best friend.

Or send your chancellor at his court to reduce relations with his liege. He may be punished severely since the Emperor will hate him, or he will hate the emperor enough to create or join a revolt, getting imprisoned (for life if you are lucky).

I tried this method under the Romans. I was the Doux of Thema Galatia and the leader of Thema Anatolia kept plotting for changing titles. I created so much tensions between him and the Roman Emperor that he was imprisoned for plotting, and castrated. Another noisy Doux was from Charsianon. He was plotting against me, and once tried to assassinate me. I got him blinded after my chancellor created tensions and he revolted, and the whole Roman Empire fell on him.

[General Maximus]

You are spawning an army of pretender this way.

I learned this rude lesson during my first walk-through as the house Dunkeld. The first 150 years was a following of never-ending civil war as every blood related attempted to take the throne.

So should I keep my family members at my court?

[Kamikaze470]

So should I keep my family members at my court?

Yes, their lives are virtually at your fingertips.

Mainly good for breeding this way.

[Anna_Gein]

So should I keep my family members at my court?

That's what I do for my children/brothers except the heir. Most of the time I ignore the prestige penalty for sons without holdings. I believe you are a better player than me by far so do as you wish. Personally I give tittle to brothers only in case when I don't have available courtiers to manage unneeded holdings.

I believe the worst thing would be to marry one of your daughter with a powerful duke if you are a king or an emperor. Better send her to a foreign baron. Otherwise I never had a problem with a foreign prince gaining a claim on my kingdom by a royal marriage. As absinthia said distant relatives provoke no problems.

[absinthia]

So should I keep my family members at my court?

i prefer marrying them to foreign title holders, preferably a duchess, or someone foreign with a claim i can press. though this is easier later in game when you are powerfull and prestigeous. in my latest vanilla campaign i sudenly got a call to arms from my dear kinsman, the king of Scotland, which i did not know i had. i did, how ever, at one point marry one son to a countess of Atholl.
at the same time i had a cousin, that i knew about, as king of Poland. one kinsman were count somewhere in Norway and another in Hungary, in addition to a duke of Munster. and my son and heir also heir to the Byzzie empire. obviously i knew about him as i were married to the empress. as it were my son had married the Dunkeld half-sister of that scotish Salian king.
there used to be a queen of Wales as well, but her line disappeared. and for a few generations i had supplied the Norwegian Yngling kings with Salian wives and basically restored the kingdom from ashes.

[General Maximus]

Thanks for the replies guys.

So if I matrilinially marry off all the potentially annoying male family members, and send the females to some minor, poor barons, will it stabilize that kind of endless cycle of civil war you guys were facing?

My realms are usually stable, mainly because I rule with an iron fist and there are not many family members that survive. When I began my Komnenos dynasty campaign, more than half of my family was ravaged by some plague or illness that spread all over Anatolia. By the next century (when I had restored the Eastern Roman Empire) there were hardly any family lines apart from the two main ones.

The only thing I fear is assassins. My ultimate powerful French Crusader King got assassinated when all the vassals were happy and submitted and peace prevailed. After that came his utterly stupid and idiot son whose succession tore the whole realm apart within months. The assassin turned out to be from a distant uncle who was a count in Hungary at the time, and didn't have any claims to anything in France whatsoever.

[absinthia]

hm, matrilineal marriage for potential troublemakers... i have not gone that route. would they not still inherit their fathers claims and go on to cause problems, only under a different dynasty?

i have no problems with assasinations, happend only once(as i can remember) and then i "begged for it".
the civil wars is an inherent problem due to stupid game mechanics, there is allways some far of count in a newly conquered region that manage to establish an independence faction and the idiots join up.
yeah, you are surrounded by angry muslims that want their land back, so becomming independent is a splendid idea... doh!

the good thing about having close family members married to foreign rulers, or them selves being a foreign ruler, is that they become allies that can be called into civil wars.
like my kinsman the scotish king that were related to both the HRE and ERE emperors, he survived his civil war without breaking a sweat and promtly revoked titles en masse.
i think the key is not to wage to many wars using up levies, that might tip the ballance in favour of some faction. it usually happens when i get bored an press some silly war in far-off places, then boom civil war is decleared. i seldom have had pretender factions kick-off, but due to my usually prolific dynasty there are allways a bunch of kinsmen in any undependence faction.
i seldom have problem winning the wars, it is the repetitive action of raising armies every 10 years or so to beat down yet another stupid attempt. it is sort of a game-breaker.
powerfull brothers can be a problem though, as it should be. my Salian campaign saw consecutive generations of brothers reaching for the crown. first king of Tunisia, then Jerusalem, then Sicilly and so Egypt. i rather easily beat them with my imperial retinue, freed them from my dungeon, gave some honorary title and a council job, transfered to them some troublesome vassal in another far of location. after that we usually become best of friends and they turned out as my strongest supporters. they spend most of their time deffending against that vassals de jure liege, often an uncle of ours...
problematic uncles with heirs i usually let rot in jail and make friends with their heirs instead.

[General Maximus]

I usually assassinate the people before they can pass on my claims to a different dynasty.

But I asked a question sometimes ago, how do you best assassinate someone using diplomatic assassinations? Especially if he an Emperor? I almost always fail in them. And plots take too much time (once a plot lasted whole life of my character, just to kill a baron).

[Anna_Gein]

Diplomatic assassinations are a huge mystery to me. It failed like 9 times out of 10. I don't have any trouble with plot assassinations. Usually my plot is at least 150% powerful. It can raise even higher when I target kings. There have been a few characters who manage to escape death by my hands but most die. Its just a matter of time unless my own character is terrible in diplomacy and plot.

[General Maximus]

Diplomatic assassinations are a huge mystery to him.

To whom?

[Anna_Gein]

To whom?

To the secret man who brutally killed me family and force me to do awful things with him since then.
No seriously I don't no why did I wrote "him" in place of "me".
I happen to talk about me with the third person from times to time but in this case it was completely unintentional. I'm going to correct my mistake if TWC allow me. The website is particularly buggy this day. This post took me multiple attempts and my two previous attempts to edit my previous post failed miserably.

[General Maximus]

To the secret man who brutally killed me family and force me to do awful things with him since then.
No seriously I don't no why did I wrote "him" in place of "me".
I happen to talk about me with the third person from times to time but in this case it was completely unintentional. I'm going to correct my mistake if TWC allow me. The website is particularly buggy this day. This post took me multiple attempts and my two previous attempts to edit my previous post failed miserably.

Ah, I see. No problem mate, I was just curious. The website is hardly working for me these days. 4 out of 5 times I get an error.

[Kamikaze470]

I usually assassinate the people before they can pass on my claims to a different dynasty.

But I asked a question sometimes ago, how do you best assassinate someone using diplomatic assassinations? Especially if he an Emperor? I almost always fail in them. And plots take too much time (once a plot lasted whole life of my character, just to kill a baron).

You don't, the discovery to chance ratio is too risky for diplomatic assassinations to be worth the trouble. Plot assassinations generally do nothing if they're under 100%. If all the people are unwilling to join your plot, find the ones that have have a good opinion of you compared to their lord and bribe them with money into joining the assassination plot.