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[h3lblad3]

...that you can't just go around and remove castles or cities like they're nothing?

Just make it a building. Basically, build a castle inside the town and, after a few upgrades, the town transfers into a castle holding. Or vice-versa.

[StupidElves]

I just found a mod that makes CKII Lord of the Rings.

I'm in heaven.

[Majestic7]

AI seems to prefer building holdings it can hold itself, so cities for mayors, temples for bishops and castles for lords.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

What's that? You want to fill out the best fucking cluster of Indian provinces I've found so far with fucking ten thousand fucking castles? Oh?! NOT cities? You want to be poor, you piece of shit?

Cities are the best holding. Money and technology > troops.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

What's that? You want to fill out the best fucking cluster of Indian provinces I've found so far with fucking ten thousand fucking castles? Oh?! NOT cities? You want to be poor, you piece of shit?

Cities are the best holding. Money and technology > troops.

Depends on your play style and goals.

[Descan]

I've never seen the reason to have more than one castle in a province, if you need more troops, hold more provinces. But you can't do that with technology.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Depends on your play style and goals.

Honestly? It doesn't to me anymore. I always reach a point where even if I have two 5-castle provinces with the best upgrades I never raise them due to distance to conflict, because my vassals and money can afford such huge amounts of other arguably more useful troops. Not to mention the whole being able to raise huge stacks wherever you want instantly if you finagle your vassal holdings properly.

This can change depending on circumstances, but I've changed my playstyle lately too. It also just feels more satisfying to have a thriving economy than a huge amount of levies.

[Loud Whispers]

What's that? You want to fill out the best fucking cluster of Indian provinces I've found so far with fucking ten thousand fucking castles? Oh?! NOT cities? You want to be poor, you piece of shit?

Cities are the best holding. Money and technology > troops.

Keep a 5 castle holding for yourself (I've been reliant on using them to squeeze the most out of counties, kingdoms and empires) and create as many merchant republics as possible. 10% of your realm can be merchant republics, doges love building cities and provide you with dank taxes - a win by two accounts.

for me the absence of naval combat really irks me. I was disappointed to see a vast spanish and french armada sail through the empire of Britannia's waters and drop 90,000 troops in Scotland. Where my battle of gravelines at?  Where my Sir Francis Drakes at? Where my actual merchant convoys and pirates at? (Mercenary privateers like the victal brothers, vassal pirates like the English privateers, north african pirates oike the barbary corsairs, holy order pirates like the order of St John - and don't forget all the various armadas of europe, from the atlantic to the meditteranean.

If ck2 eventually encompasses all the way to the americas to the west and the japanese to the east it would be one of the best games of all time! Needs naval combat though. Sorely.

[umiman]

Merchant republics also love to rebel against you. They rebel 24/7 because of the huge relationship penalty.

For the first 100 years or so it's not that big of a deal as they're not particularly powerful but once they've become established and mercenaries have grown, it becomes ridiculous. Since they're so bleeding rich, when they rebel they basically summon every single mercenary to fight you. Not to mention since they barely get into any fights or problems with other vassals, they spend all their time trying to kill you.

Unless you're referring to normal city holdings, in which case it's not that big of a deal.

[Loud Whispers]

I've never had a big problem with vassal merchant republics. The risk of rebellion follows the same rules as regular vassals. Divide your vassals. One vassal merchant republic will have to compete with other merchant republics and so will need the support of the other republics and the other 90% regular vassals - in which case your problem was not the republics, but the faction. Mercenaries and city levies are pretty worthless compared to their castle counterparts. It's very easy in war to choke a rebelling republic to death by taking its trade ports (the majority of which will be built in your lands or your allies' lands - easily seized), you yourself will have more gold than the rebelling republic (unless your entire realm is up in revolt - in which case the republic is yet again not at fault), republics rarely accrue power due to changing family politics and parking a doom stack on the vassal's one or four counties is sufficient to get to 100% in weeks.
The -30 opinion modifier is very quickly overcome. Prestige and personal diplomacy alone makes most doges have a positive opinion. Release a prisoner to show the doges you are merciful and you've won over the last stubborn lot. Worse comes to worse you just bribe them with their gold. Then you wait for long reign + to get you to 100.
If everything goes tits up and you somehow manage to piss off all the merchant republics (raised taxes to gorillion percent, revoked everyone's titles, vassalized a heretic instead of a native lowborn you literally just created) once you crush their rebellion you imprison the doge, who you keeped imprisoned until death or positive opinion.

The bonus:

• WAP YOUR WODS ON THE COUNTA (loadsa money from taxes, wap your wads)
• Cities everywhere

[umiman]

See the difference between your playstyle and mine. I don't give a flying fuck about their relationship modifier except when it prevents me from changing laws. A king rules. Vassals serve. The world obeys.

I get the "entire realm in revolt" more often than others because I don't give a shit about anyone and just take whatever shit and conquer whatever the fuck I want (since I'm always achievement hunting and speedrunning). Not to mention I always use ultimogeniture, so I get much less small revolts but more gigantic ones. With normal vassals it's basically free money for me as they're easy to put down but when a merchant republic joins you have to fight like 10,000 - 80,000 mercenaries. It's ridiculous, especially in the lategame when all the mercenaries are gigantic.

And if you want to harvest their lands or arrest them to prep the lands for an heir, you have to fight those same ridiculous amounts of mercenaries. Makes an easy operation so much more annoying.

Instead of having to deal with all that, I'd rather have a whole bunch of baron cities and raise the city tax to maximum. They can't fight back and I get shittonnes of money. Also once in awhile I can harvest them for money like any good ruler should do.

-------------------

Edit: Actually, come to think of it, it'd be a great idea to have merchant republic vassals in places where there aren't enough mercenaries.

[Rolan7]

Huh, I never quite understood why my mercenary choices were so limited as the Europe-spanning Principality of Mali.  Turns out it's purely based on capital location.  So the current doge of the republic is only ever going to have the Ghanan Band because they're the only ones who reach the capital in western Mauretania.

But that means I probably got access to real mercenaries whenever I allowed the AI to be doge...  Interesting.  My personal capital is Rome 

I'm not playing that session anymore though, had gotten boring.  Working up to a proper Catholic start...  As a Welsh duke in 867.  How hard could it be 

(Very hard, I'm so spoiled by pagan and republic mechanics, and obviously the Norse are invading)

[umiman]

Yeah, in that case it's brilliant. If you create merchant republics in places like Norseland and all these other pagan realms, you don't have to worry about mercenary stacks of doom.

And yeah, waiting around for cassus bellis is the worst part of playing Christians. It's so boring.

[ArKFallen]

Started playing before I got Charlemagne as a Norse king of Scotland in Old Gods. I gave independence to almost every christian and took the lands back. Before my 50s I personally owned 80% of dejure Scotland with my son Tyrse as heir and my son Mario as the duke of things I wouldn't be able to hold.

After getting Charlemagne my son Mario was somehow heir to the unmade kingdom of Ireland. I assumed I could get around this by ensuring that he didn't have enough of Ireland to create the kingdom himself so I vassaled a couple of his future holdings in Ireland. I die and become Tyrse. Mario somehow becomes king of Ireland with 5 counties and all of his Scottish holdings default to me. WTF.

[scriver]

Yes, that's how gavelkind works now. The only way to resist is is to have less than half of the unformed kingdom's counties within your realm.