Ok, serious newbie here. Feeling out of my depth with this, even after the tutorial.
I made a custom monarch, no kids, as King of England, 1076.
My first idea is, man, get rid of some of these titles, right?
My starting council all likes me, but only one of those is a count. The rest are mayors and a bishop. I give the one member of the nobility that's on my side the Title of Count of his own County.
So I figure, hey, give my whole council landed titles and it's a win-win. Except it's not, because giving burghers and priests landed titles makes them unhappy as well.
I look to my other counts and see that I'm universally disliked. No shock, new King, too big a demense. Almost any count I give a landed title to becomes a contender for the throne, making them more likely to revolt. I suppose this is because if don't have an heir as of yet.
So I'm little confused on the way to secure "good" nobles. Obviously, you want landed titles to stay within your bloodline, and I have to wait ? ? ? time for that to happen, since I have no heirs yet. I feel like giving any titles to the landed nobility already in place just creates more enemies than it does friends.
Can I build new castles and award the baronies to my council members, making them dukes (therefore noble), then give them the landed titles for counties, making them Counts, so I don't get "wrong type of government?" Should I just offload landed titles like duchies to these guys, making them doges? Why is a doge still an inappropriate station to have control of a county? If I make a burgher a doge, then he says he wants control of a county, why am I still getting "wrong government." He wants the bloody county!!!!
Does giving my burghers duchies make all the nobility within that duchy their vassals? Does that mean when I levy troops from my Doge that they'd levy more troops from their vassals because they (the Doge) like me?
De Jure claims? How do you call them out? Does it require your chancellor going on a mission to fabricate a claim?
And why, for example, if I award the County of Middlesex (where Court is) to say, my Spymaster, does Court move to a completely different county in the kingdom?
What does it take to strip titles off imprisoned nobles? The tooltip says they're traitors so it should be fine, and yet objects. Crown authority is set to medium. I end up with a lot of imprisoned nobles still holding titles to counties.
Why does the penalty for levies out in the field for too long seem to peak and then go away?
Am I still getting some sort of taxation from all the counties in the country if the tax on nobility is set to "none"? Or am I essentially giving away taxation (which I'm probably not getting anyways since i"m exceeding my demense) when I grant landed titles out to people?
I see my Bishops have a negative opinion of the papacy, yet the amount they pay out is also in the negatives. What gives with that?
I honestly don't think I've felt this overwhelmed by a game since DF. I'm tempted to restart at a lower station in life so I don't have control over as much.