Alternatively
Step 1: Through family and intrigue, amass a vast host before you declare war against a dynasty you have divided upon itself
Step 2: You have already won
Option 4 is definitely my favorite, even though the dynastic system is another thing I'm not quite sure I understand how it works(and how to exploit it for fun and for profit). Contrary to combat though I feel dynasties can be made sense of without recurring to spreadsheets 
And I thought longbowmen were nerfed ever since a while ago(HL patch, I think)? Never really used them, just what I read around forums.
The whole notion of dynasty is just aggressively marry and produce as many children as possible to aggressively marry, make your children and all in your dynasty aggressively marry, give any lands you conquer to your family, marry off your children to heirs as soon as possible, keep growing and growing and eventually you reach critical mass where your dynasty begins increasing by itself across foreign Empires, cultures, even religions. In my most prolific Miroslav world-dynasty run several tens of thousands of noblemen and women were Miroslavs, every head of state was a Miroslav, everyone in the medieval had a Miroslav as a common ancestor, Miroslavs ruled on all levels of governments from barony to Empire, every Pope of all major branches of Christianity were Miroslav, all the Holy Order Grandmasters were Miroslav, even when the Mongols invaded it wasn't long before they became Miroslav, and when I exported it to EUIV even China and Japan became Miroslav. Good practice is to play as one of the Rurikovich, Isauros or Karling chieftains/monarchs as they already start with heavily entrenched dynasties. The Rurikovich are the Russian principalities who band together when invaded and fight amongst themselves when at peace, the Karlings are the breakup states of the Carolingian Empire and the Isauros are the rulers of the Byzantine Empire. If you want to have that sort of dynasty play that focuses almost exclusively on cloak and dagger / political intrigue, Dharmic India pre-Islamic invasion is pretty good as a lot of the great holy wars and invasions do not touch the continent and physical territorial changes are very slow, with pretty much all control having to pass through clever dynasty management or gradual annexation. Playing as a Sultan during and after the Islamic invasion would also be pretty good, though you wouldn't have as much ability to marry off Dharmic dynasties, you would be able to use a lot of Holy War mechanics the other rulers can't use and then replace all the title-holders with your dynasty members, allowing for more dynasty construction that way.
General rule of thumb:
- Never marry your children off to children with inferior congenital traits like ugly, inbred or pretty much anything that hampers fertility like old age.
- Even if you cannot find suitable spouses for your dynasty members who are heirs or will produce heirs, marry of your children to eligible courtiers of good traits to produce more children for future opportunities.
- Check up inheritence laws and use them wisely. For example marrying your son to a Karling Queen will produce children of your dynasty, but under an elective monarchy they may nonetheless choose a Karling and not your dynastic relative as the heir (and so your relative will have to prove itself or you'll just have to keep trying until they choose one of your relatives). Likewise almost all of the times you ask a King will not want to grant a matrilineal marriage between you and any of his sons on account of there being a real possibility one of them would be heir and produce your heir. So what do you do? You propose a matrilineal marriage between the thirdborn's son's son and your daughter or something close to it and wait for the older sons of the King to die childless, recklessly (or sneakily, help them die yourself) and your dynasty will inherit that title. And failing that, you will now have hold of your own dynasty members with claims to that title. If you yourself are powerful you can press those claims, or if you are less powerful, you can swear fealty to that Lord and then start a faction to install your dynasty member to the throne.
- Always be wary when passing out big titles to your children. If you give too many powerful titles with relatives too closely related, you can end up with brothers and sisters with lots of power with strong claims to each others' titles. This is why cultivating the entire family, even unlanded dynastic members is important.
Just some examples on how to be super sneaky with dynasties. Also when trying to play intrigues on foreign religions and the Mongols, be very careful as the religions isolate the dynastic branches and controlling dynasty drift (where branches stop answering to your main dynastic line and take on their own individual path) can be exacerbated when your own dynastic offshoots start gunning for your titles / start fusing into one super Empire with designs on your land. Generally it's a good idea to try and control the religious head so you essentially control your family's pocket money, and can withdraw it from unruly branches behaving out of line.
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Topic: Crusader Kings 2 is released. (Read 2112569 times)