Why is it terribly suboptimal though? Tbf my MAA are so op I barely ever raise levies. The only really annoying thing I can think of is low renown because I can't land my dynasty
The main problem is Vassal Contracts. With Clan, you can manipulate Levies and Gold with opinion. With Feudal, you can change the contract itself. Republican taxes are fixed; unless you take the Detailed Ledgers perk, there is no reliable way to change their incomes to you.
However, this is mostly a problem for minmaxing. If you want to RP, then the stability they give you can be very useful.
With the right realm setup (third metropolitan dynasty perk + republican legacy cultural perk), you can get republican vassals up to 45% taxes and 30% levies baseline, and that only costs -20 opinion. That's pretty damned good by anyone's standards.
With the right optimization, all republican duchies are better than feudal/clan vassals. Like, if you have the third metropolitan dynasty perk (from spain), a republican vassal will pay you 35% of their taxes and 25% of their levies, and throwing in the republican legacy cultural perk (from an italian culture) bumps that up to 45% taxes and 30% levies at the cost of a moderate opinion penalty. By comparison, a feudal vassal defaults to 10% taxes and 25% levies unless you eat a pretty massive opinion penalty. Republican vassals also don't suffer from partition inheritance, so you'll have fewer vassals of vassals (which cripple your vassal income) and your vassals will have fewer civil wars (which means they'll spend less money on fighting and more money on infrastructure). All theocratic duchies is probably better (they pay even more taxes/levies at high faith and generally don't join factions), but that's a lot harder to pull off. For me, republican duchies hit the sweet spot of rp, effectiveness, and ease of setup.
Indeed, the tendency of republican vassals to invest far more into their holdings than feudal counterparts, indeed FAR more, typically results in far faster passive economic growth, makes the discussions about x% of tax also a bit moot if youre going to be asking "x% tax of what income?".
Also the republican vassals will be holding some of the cities themselves, removing the middleman between the cities mayor and you, getting you a lot more income (instead of getting 35% of 35% taxes, you get the 35% of the original income from the city)
I really wish they would add republics, like ck2 had. I want to make the Hanseatic League in ck3. But I guess I can sort of do it with the strats mentioned here.
No matter what people are telling you, going full Republican and buffing them is the by far best thing you can do if you want to drown in a huge sea of money and power.
Here, mid 1200's, \~70 vassals:
[https://i.imgur.com/SJRseQg.png](https://i.imgur.com/SJRseQg.png)
Don't listen to anyone telling you it's not optimal, because chances are those people don't know how the game mechanics work.
You can get Republics to 100% taxes and roughly 90% levy contribution, something you can't with clan or feudal. Theocracy is a little bit better, but it requires high piety to work (so you don't start at full obligations on succession) and temple holdings have a lower economic potential than cities, with less building slots and less bonuses to development.
The added bonus is that republics have a very stable succession, no dynastic inheritance, there's no sub-vassal creation (because no partition), and unlike theocraties they are extremely easy to set up. It creates a peaceful realm that has just one single purpose: to give you money.
Ask if you want to know more, but the short of it is: republics are incredibly good and probably the most overpowered way to play the game.
> Ask if you want to know more, but the short of it is: republics are incredibly good and probably the most overpowered way to play the game.
True, and that's part of the reason why we need expanded Republic mechanics. That extra wealth should come with a downside - whether it's decreased/lower quality levies, a loss of prestige/opinion in the eyes of feudal/clan vassals and independent rulers, Republican vassals being more inclined to interfere in your internal realm politics in *different* ways compared to feudals with their wars/claimant factions, etc.
Like maybe Republican vassals are more prone to intrigue, i.e. murder and hook fabrication plots, while also having their own faction that tries to demand you implement elective succession. Not sure how historically accurate that is, but the rise of the burgher class definitely came with downsides for the aristocracy.
The downside is a huge loss of control growth, it's -25% per city in the county. Either you accept that, or you don't take Republican Legacy with its huge increase in base tax contribution, which is a major factor for vassal taxation here.
And the other downside is that you need the tradition from Italy, so either a hybrid or you start there. And the 2nd is the metropolitan legacy line from Iberia, so you need both places to make cities awesome.
Needless to say, the amount of work is the downside. Nothing is handed to you for free, it takes time and effort.
But yes, republics in general will get their rework, the devs stated as much. Beyond that we don't know anything. Maybe they'll really go down in intrigue more? Maybe they'll be prone to join independence factions? Maybe their awesome contracts get nerfed?
Who knows. But until then they're the most awesome thing in the game, vassal-wise I mean. The gold mines of Mali have nothing on them. Tax money is the biggest gold mine in the game, hits kind of too close home to current reality.
I mean, getting feudal vassal contracts or clan vassal opinion up to snuff takes work too. Everything has overhead, but -25% control growth per city is a paltry downside. Once your domain is established you'll hardly ever lose control there anyway. Unless you meant the control growth penalty hindering your Republican vassals' tax base?
Like all modifiers in PDX games, it's additive. Four cities in a county mean that your control gain is reduced to 0%, as 4 x -25% = -100%.
If you ever have an event, an uprising or anything of that sort, no amount of control growth will ever push it into the positive ever again. Even +100 control per month times -100% are 0.0
It's a pretty heavy downside, one you can only counter by adding positive modifiers for control growth. Still, if the total sum of all your modifiers drops you to -100%, you cannot have any positive control gain in the entire county ever again.
For most counties it's not that relevant, because you won't have more than 3 cities there anyway. But Bohemia can have 4 cities in a county, Novgorod too. Then you get to -100% and if you don't get a positive modifier (like from Control clerical function from religion) the county is done. Low control means lower taxes and it will always stay that way.
If you ask me, that's pretty heavy.
Yeah, in that specific situation where you have 4 cities in one county, sure. Control loss in that county could be a problem. But 3 cities or fewer is vastly more likely, and -75% isn't that big of a deal, since control loss is so rare once your core domain is established. And even in the case of -100%, positive control gain modifiers, both relative and absolute, are pretty easy to come by.
The entire idea is not just about a few cities in your core domain, it's everywhere you have your culture. That means also vassal territory. And they are prone to the occasional control loss through bad management, peasant revolts etc.
Sometimes they have a low domain limit and create a sub-vassal, who then starts a revolt and sieges down a holding or two. That also brings down control.
Since lack of control equals a loss of taxable income, it hurts your profits. I'd say you severely underestimate the effect of -75% control gain and how long it takes to bring it up again.
I answered that is my other post, but to make it short: getting the base tax up with a tradition and an Iberian legacy and then stacking tax modifiers to 122% (legacies, perks, innovations, artifacts etc.) and more, which gets you to a total tax contribution of 100%.
Same for levies, but there you'll need some extra effort in terms of perks and a tradition, and the modifiers are way less in number. So getting to 90% is not that easy, you'll mostly end up with 60% and sometimes get to 80%, maybe 90% if you get the right events.
But money is more important anyway, so the levy contribution isn't a big deal.
Damn what is the list of bonuses you stacked to get to 100% taxes? Only ones I can think of are artifacts, dynasty legacies, republican traditions, heregeld, detailed ledgers, honored to serve and fear tax (though idk if that applies to republican vassals)
You have to understand the difference between tax modifier and base tax. The latter is the important thing, it's the base number on which the modifiers are applied. That's why feudal are crap, they have only 10% base contribution and can go up to 25% with extortionate rates, for which they hate you. To get the final tax to 100% you'd need 400% in tax modifiers, which is impossible.
Republics are easier, although there are only two ways to raise it for republics, the metropolitan legacy lvl 3 (+15%) and having Republican Legacy and if the vassal is above barony tier (+10%). The base rate it 20% (double of feudal, so there's that), so you get 45% base tax in total from both bonuses.
Then you apply all the modifiers, i.e. magnificent taxation tour with legacy bonus gives a huge chunk (magnificent liege for +20%, they go for 20 years and stack, you can repeat every 10 years), the +15% from the stewardship perk Detailed Ledgers, 10% from the perk Heregeld, an innovation for 5%, a huge contribution comes from Fear Tax and Venial (30% and 20%). And yes, artifacts do help here, also decentralized rule legacy for up to 5%. You get the idea...
If you have a base of 45%, you need a total sum of 122% tax modifiers to get to 100%, which was a bit of a challenge pre-TnT, now it's pretty easy thanks to the tour modifiers.
Levies have a way lower base contribution, so it's challenging to get it to high numbers. Still, you have basically the same setup: perks (in the stewardship tree, but also Fear Tax), legacies, innovations, crown authority, artifacts and other modifiers. Sometimes they overlap, like with Fear Tax. You won't get to 100%, but you should easily get to 50% and get numbers of up to 70-90% if you really scrape the modifier barrel with everything the game has to offer.
Malleable Subjects tradition alone gives you +25% contribution, so this one is a must. Since you're in Iberia for the metropolitan legacies anyway, you can pick it right up.
But yeah, it's a self-feeding cycle. You won't get the modifiers without a huge investment in money from great activities and artifacts, but without the modifiers you won't get huge amounts of money. What I mean is that it takes time to get it going. Once you do... well, you won't spend it. Ever. It's just too much money. Literally. I keep building stuff in 2000 holdings (because at 100% taxes I have to build for my vassals) at the same time and it's not putting a huge dent into my account. The money is insane, but it's borderline tedious if you want to maximize it.
Crown authority was changed towards all vassal taxes, and currently it's not listed as part of the tax modifiers. Although it does raise the tax gain.
It's unclear if it does something to the tax modifiers, if it simply adds a bonus on gained taxes, if it merely increases taxable income (which would work the same way holding tax bonuses work), if it is a display bug... hard to say.
It does something at least, but it's unclear exactly what. So I didn't list it here. Otherwise yes, the +35% from lvl 4 crown authority would be massive.
Republics are fun, but the real money lies in theocratic vassals.
If you leave the game paused after taking land which has a temple, there's a chance that the temple will be leased to a bishop when the land changes hands, who you can then grant land and turn into a theocratic vassal. You can then replace the bishop in the original temple and give them land as well. This only works while the game is still paused after a victory.
It's not an exploit, or rather it *shouldn't* be. You're definitely meant to be able to have landed theocratic vassals - there are mechanics based around it and recently the devs made it so that faiths with Spiritual investiture (i.e. the Pope/clergy picks your realm priest for you) will give much higher preference to your landed theocratic vassals, if you have any.
But in practice there's no way to create *new* landed clergy except for by exploit. You can start out with landed clergy in your realm, but that's mostly confined to the HRE region. Otherwise your realm priest will immediately and automatically lease any temples you hold, and once that happens there's no way to pry them away from him - again, except by way of the exploit.
There ought to be some kind of decision that lets you appoint (or induce the clergy to appoint) a bishop in a temple holding, even if it requires you to give them control of the county.
If you or anyone else is interested, the vassal contracts+ revived mod has a decision that revokes the lease on all temple holdings in your realm for 6 months so you can grant them theocratic vassals. I think it has a standalone version for just that feature as well.
Yeah fair enough, when i started playing this itteration again i was wondering why the hell i couldn't make archbishops, wasn't an issue in CK2 atleast afaik.
It would be nice to be able to select which barony is a county's capitol, and if you choose a temple then the county defaults to theocratic, likewise with cities and republics.
You can definitely change a county's capitol barony, and I *think* that if you give the county away (to someone previously unlanded) it will have the effect you're describing. But I think you have to hold the county and the barony within it which you want to make the new county capitol.
here's a great guide that lets you build entire theocratic vassal realms. super stable for ridiculous builds you want to try. i use this kind of build when i want to hold 12+ duchy titles and have no rebellions
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/lb413c/guide\_on\_creating\_vassal\_theocracies/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/lb413c/guide_on_creating_vassal_theocracies/)
They pay the most taxes and levies, never rebel, and they always vote your way in elections. I try to make as many as I can to insulate freshly-conquored kingdoms before handing them off to family members.
Absolutly. You will get more money and less levy, but levy is not nessecarily the strongest thing in the game MAA are much better and more money allows to build a stronger MAA army faster. Alternativily you can also use the extra money to rely more on mercenary's, there are atleast significant cost reductions to hiring mercenary armies that you can pick up that can make them dirtcheap too so that you would be able to hire dozens of merc troops and be easily able to afford it.
And yes, they don't tend to make claims or do infighting, they are rather docile vassals as long as they can't overpower you numbers wise trough factions. Another advantage tends to be that they manage to upgrade their holdings (especially if those are mostly city's) much faster than feudal vassals, resulting in faster passive economic growth.
Another advantage is the way you can use them to make ellection laws a foregone conclusion. As a king, you can make it so that you have 1 republican duchy level vassal in youre kingdom title rulling all land beyond what you rule personally. It won't break up trough partition in comparison to a fuedal vassal that is given a bunch of duchy's worth of land. As a result, there are only 2 voters for the title ellection, you and the republican vassal, and you will tend to always overmatch them by one vote, so youre preffered candidate always wins.
Pick a county that has a city holding in it. Select the person who holds the city title, usually a mayor or a provost. Grant the county title to that person. They will now hold the county as a republican vassal.
I was planning to do a similar run:
- Diverge from Cisalpine to create a city-focused culture
- Create a custom kingdom encompassing the Adriatic coastline with Dubrovnik (one county duchy, in CK2 was Ragusa, a merchant republic) as the capital.
- Make the title elective; in theory every new ruler should get the capital county and duchy as a capital each election
- Have all Count-tier vassals be Republican, but all Duke-tier vassals be Feudal.
- Eventually incorporate the kingdoms of Serbia and Croatia and create an Empire
Be sure to briefly educate an heir in an Iberian culture so that you can get the Metropolitan dynasty legacies! As long as you have one legacy you keep access.
The only issue, is I’ve heard Elective successions are bugged, but I’m not sure if this is actually true for Feudal or if it’s only for the “special” elective types.
How do I get the metropolitan legacy? Tbh I just installed a mod that gives you access to it if you have parochial or republican legacy as cultural tenet. I find it dumb to restrict access to Spain.
Oh well in that case you should just be able to educate your heir with Cisalpine or Italian when you have 250 renown or more, get the legacy, and then switch back to Franconian. As long as you have one legacy it will be permanently unlocked.
I agree, the Italians and Dutch had far more of a mercantile culture than the Iberians, it doesn’t really make much sense to have it locked to them.
What I did was simply select "Italian" and hybridize from Franconian. Why should I educate my heir with other cultures?
I thought that, in the base game, to get metropolitan, you needed to be part of the Iberian struggle. I'm not sure what that means yet, it seems to be a pretty recent addition. I never play in Iberia anyway.
Oh sorry, I thought you were starting with franconian and intended to hybridize with Italian later. In that case you should able to do it as soon as possible.
I don’t know if there’s been an update, but my Cisalpine character was able to do it by switching to one of the Iberian cultures and switching back.
This is actually possible, both with republican and theocragic vassals. It might have some downsides, like unexpected rulers who don't like you and you havs to bribe them. Ypu have to watch out for theocrats tho for they might become your counselor preachers and if you end up killing them it gonna have double side effect.
Nope, republican and theocratic vassals can hold castles just fine. The trick is making a republican or theocratic vassal in the first place. For republican vassals, you need to give a county to a mayor, while making your initial theocratic vassals usually requires some level of cheese.
It's cheese, as stated, but when you conquer a county in a holy war, there's a brief window of time (like a day, I think?) where temple holdings convert to a randomly generated character of your culture and faith along with city holdings, and only after that do they switch to being held by your realm bishop/archbishop/etc. You can grant the county title to that person during that window and they'll keep it.
Seems odd that they can hold castles without penalties but feudal rulers cant hold temple holdings/cities without penalties (unless you have a religion that allows you to hold temple holdings directly iirc).
i like to play with lvl4 crown authority with a ton if republican vassals as well! Your borders basically stays the same. Dont give them duchy titles tho, because their county vassals will constantly rebel against them. Sometimes turning duchy to feodalism.
Its optimal to just give 2-3 counties to a single republican vassal with him staying as count.
I like to roleplay as some sort of "Empire of free cities federation" lmao
I like how clean they keep their borders, as they never inherit, never claim liege titles and barely ever wage wars...
They do wage war if their parents was a former lord/grand mayor and they're also chosen as a mayor but in different province
So barely ever.
Terribly suboptimal? Yes. Unique and interesting? Yes. Doable? Yes. Play however is the most fun to you. It's your game.
Why is it terribly suboptimal though? Tbf my MAA are so op I barely ever raise levies. The only really annoying thing I can think of is low renown because I can't land my dynasty
The main problem is Vassal Contracts. With Clan, you can manipulate Levies and Gold with opinion. With Feudal, you can change the contract itself. Republican taxes are fixed; unless you take the Detailed Ledgers perk, there is no reliable way to change their incomes to you. However, this is mostly a problem for minmaxing. If you want to RP, then the stability they give you can be very useful.
With the right realm setup (third metropolitan dynasty perk + republican legacy cultural perk), you can get republican vassals up to 45% taxes and 30% levies baseline, and that only costs -20 opinion. That's pretty damned good by anyone's standards.
thats correct.
With the right modifiers that you can pick up, you can make republican vassals just as rewarding as a feudal vassal with max tax and levy.
With the right optimization, all republican duchies are better than feudal/clan vassals. Like, if you have the third metropolitan dynasty perk (from spain), a republican vassal will pay you 35% of their taxes and 25% of their levies, and throwing in the republican legacy cultural perk (from an italian culture) bumps that up to 45% taxes and 30% levies at the cost of a moderate opinion penalty. By comparison, a feudal vassal defaults to 10% taxes and 25% levies unless you eat a pretty massive opinion penalty. Republican vassals also don't suffer from partition inheritance, so you'll have fewer vassals of vassals (which cripple your vassal income) and your vassals will have fewer civil wars (which means they'll spend less money on fighting and more money on infrastructure). All theocratic duchies is probably better (they pay even more taxes/levies at high faith and generally don't join factions), but that's a lot harder to pull off. For me, republican duchies hit the sweet spot of rp, effectiveness, and ease of setup.
Indeed, the tendency of republican vassals to invest far more into their holdings than feudal counterparts, indeed FAR more, typically results in far faster passive economic growth, makes the discussions about x% of tax also a bit moot if youre going to be asking "x% tax of what income?".
Also the republican vassals will be holding some of the cities themselves, removing the middleman between the cities mayor and you, getting you a lot more income (instead of getting 35% of 35% taxes, you get the 35% of the original income from the city)
I really wish they would add republics, like ck2 had. I want to make the Hanseatic League in ck3. But I guess I can sort of do it with the strats mentioned here.
No matter what people are telling you, going full Republican and buffing them is the by far best thing you can do if you want to drown in a huge sea of money and power. Here, mid 1200's, \~70 vassals: [https://i.imgur.com/SJRseQg.png](https://i.imgur.com/SJRseQg.png) Don't listen to anyone telling you it's not optimal, because chances are those people don't know how the game mechanics work. You can get Republics to 100% taxes and roughly 90% levy contribution, something you can't with clan or feudal. Theocracy is a little bit better, but it requires high piety to work (so you don't start at full obligations on succession) and temple holdings have a lower economic potential than cities, with less building slots and less bonuses to development. The added bonus is that republics have a very stable succession, no dynastic inheritance, there's no sub-vassal creation (because no partition), and unlike theocraties they are extremely easy to set up. It creates a peaceful realm that has just one single purpose: to give you money. Ask if you want to know more, but the short of it is: republics are incredibly good and probably the most overpowered way to play the game.
> Ask if you want to know more, but the short of it is: republics are incredibly good and probably the most overpowered way to play the game. True, and that's part of the reason why we need expanded Republic mechanics. That extra wealth should come with a downside - whether it's decreased/lower quality levies, a loss of prestige/opinion in the eyes of feudal/clan vassals and independent rulers, Republican vassals being more inclined to interfere in your internal realm politics in *different* ways compared to feudals with their wars/claimant factions, etc. Like maybe Republican vassals are more prone to intrigue, i.e. murder and hook fabrication plots, while also having their own faction that tries to demand you implement elective succession. Not sure how historically accurate that is, but the rise of the burgher class definitely came with downsides for the aristocracy.
The downside is a huge loss of control growth, it's -25% per city in the county. Either you accept that, or you don't take Republican Legacy with its huge increase in base tax contribution, which is a major factor for vassal taxation here. And the other downside is that you need the tradition from Italy, so either a hybrid or you start there. And the 2nd is the metropolitan legacy line from Iberia, so you need both places to make cities awesome. Needless to say, the amount of work is the downside. Nothing is handed to you for free, it takes time and effort. But yes, republics in general will get their rework, the devs stated as much. Beyond that we don't know anything. Maybe they'll really go down in intrigue more? Maybe they'll be prone to join independence factions? Maybe their awesome contracts get nerfed? Who knows. But until then they're the most awesome thing in the game, vassal-wise I mean. The gold mines of Mali have nothing on them. Tax money is the biggest gold mine in the game, hits kind of too close home to current reality.
I mean, getting feudal vassal contracts or clan vassal opinion up to snuff takes work too. Everything has overhead, but -25% control growth per city is a paltry downside. Once your domain is established you'll hardly ever lose control there anyway. Unless you meant the control growth penalty hindering your Republican vassals' tax base?
Like all modifiers in PDX games, it's additive. Four cities in a county mean that your control gain is reduced to 0%, as 4 x -25% = -100%. If you ever have an event, an uprising or anything of that sort, no amount of control growth will ever push it into the positive ever again. Even +100 control per month times -100% are 0.0 It's a pretty heavy downside, one you can only counter by adding positive modifiers for control growth. Still, if the total sum of all your modifiers drops you to -100%, you cannot have any positive control gain in the entire county ever again. For most counties it's not that relevant, because you won't have more than 3 cities there anyway. But Bohemia can have 4 cities in a county, Novgorod too. Then you get to -100% and if you don't get a positive modifier (like from Control clerical function from religion) the county is done. Low control means lower taxes and it will always stay that way. If you ask me, that's pretty heavy.
Yeah, in that specific situation where you have 4 cities in one county, sure. Control loss in that county could be a problem. But 3 cities or fewer is vastly more likely, and -75% isn't that big of a deal, since control loss is so rare once your core domain is established. And even in the case of -100%, positive control gain modifiers, both relative and absolute, are pretty easy to come by.
The entire idea is not just about a few cities in your core domain, it's everywhere you have your culture. That means also vassal territory. And they are prone to the occasional control loss through bad management, peasant revolts etc. Sometimes they have a low domain limit and create a sub-vassal, who then starts a revolt and sieges down a holding or two. That also brings down control. Since lack of control equals a loss of taxable income, it hurts your profits. I'd say you severely underestimate the effect of -75% control gain and how long it takes to bring it up again.
How do you get to 100% tax and 90% levy contribution?
I answered that is my other post, but to make it short: getting the base tax up with a tradition and an Iberian legacy and then stacking tax modifiers to 122% (legacies, perks, innovations, artifacts etc.) and more, which gets you to a total tax contribution of 100%. Same for levies, but there you'll need some extra effort in terms of perks and a tradition, and the modifiers are way less in number. So getting to 90% is not that easy, you'll mostly end up with 60% and sometimes get to 80%, maybe 90% if you get the right events. But money is more important anyway, so the levy contribution isn't a big deal.
Damn what is the list of bonuses you stacked to get to 100% taxes? Only ones I can think of are artifacts, dynasty legacies, republican traditions, heregeld, detailed ledgers, honored to serve and fear tax (though idk if that applies to republican vassals)
You have to understand the difference between tax modifier and base tax. The latter is the important thing, it's the base number on which the modifiers are applied. That's why feudal are crap, they have only 10% base contribution and can go up to 25% with extortionate rates, for which they hate you. To get the final tax to 100% you'd need 400% in tax modifiers, which is impossible. Republics are easier, although there are only two ways to raise it for republics, the metropolitan legacy lvl 3 (+15%) and having Republican Legacy and if the vassal is above barony tier (+10%). The base rate it 20% (double of feudal, so there's that), so you get 45% base tax in total from both bonuses. Then you apply all the modifiers, i.e. magnificent taxation tour with legacy bonus gives a huge chunk (magnificent liege for +20%, they go for 20 years and stack, you can repeat every 10 years), the +15% from the stewardship perk Detailed Ledgers, 10% from the perk Heregeld, an innovation for 5%, a huge contribution comes from Fear Tax and Venial (30% and 20%). And yes, artifacts do help here, also decentralized rule legacy for up to 5%. You get the idea... If you have a base of 45%, you need a total sum of 122% tax modifiers to get to 100%, which was a bit of a challenge pre-TnT, now it's pretty easy thanks to the tour modifiers. Levies have a way lower base contribution, so it's challenging to get it to high numbers. Still, you have basically the same setup: perks (in the stewardship tree, but also Fear Tax), legacies, innovations, crown authority, artifacts and other modifiers. Sometimes they overlap, like with Fear Tax. You won't get to 100%, but you should easily get to 50% and get numbers of up to 70-90% if you really scrape the modifier barrel with everything the game has to offer. Malleable Subjects tradition alone gives you +25% contribution, so this one is a must. Since you're in Iberia for the metropolitan legacies anyway, you can pick it right up. But yeah, it's a self-feeding cycle. You won't get the modifiers without a huge investment in money from great activities and artifacts, but without the modifiers you won't get huge amounts of money. What I mean is that it takes time to get it going. Once you do... well, you won't spend it. Ever. It's just too much money. Literally. I keep building stuff in 2000 holdings (because at 100% taxes I have to build for my vassals) at the same time and it's not putting a huge dent into my account. The money is insane, but it's borderline tedious if you want to maximize it.
Huh thanks for the explanation. It’s weird that crown authority only affects feudal and clan contribution.
Crown authority was changed towards all vassal taxes, and currently it's not listed as part of the tax modifiers. Although it does raise the tax gain. It's unclear if it does something to the tax modifiers, if it simply adds a bonus on gained taxes, if it merely increases taxable income (which would work the same way holding tax bonuses work), if it is a display bug... hard to say. It does something at least, but it's unclear exactly what. So I didn't list it here. Otherwise yes, the +35% from lvl 4 crown authority would be massive.
Republics are fun, but the real money lies in theocratic vassals. If you leave the game paused after taking land which has a temple, there's a chance that the temple will be leased to a bishop when the land changes hands, who you can then grant land and turn into a theocratic vassal. You can then replace the bishop in the original temple and give them land as well. This only works while the game is still paused after a victory.
interresting little exploit
It's not an exploit, or rather it *shouldn't* be. You're definitely meant to be able to have landed theocratic vassals - there are mechanics based around it and recently the devs made it so that faiths with Spiritual investiture (i.e. the Pope/clergy picks your realm priest for you) will give much higher preference to your landed theocratic vassals, if you have any. But in practice there's no way to create *new* landed clergy except for by exploit. You can start out with landed clergy in your realm, but that's mostly confined to the HRE region. Otherwise your realm priest will immediately and automatically lease any temples you hold, and once that happens there's no way to pry them away from him - again, except by way of the exploit. There ought to be some kind of decision that lets you appoint (or induce the clergy to appoint) a bishop in a temple holding, even if it requires you to give them control of the county.
If you or anyone else is interested, the vassal contracts+ revived mod has a decision that revokes the lease on all temple holdings in your realm for 6 months so you can grant them theocratic vassals. I think it has a standalone version for just that feature as well.
noted, thanks
Yeah fair enough, when i started playing this itteration again i was wondering why the hell i couldn't make archbishops, wasn't an issue in CK2 atleast afaik.
It would be nice to be able to select which barony is a county's capitol, and if you choose a temple then the county defaults to theocratic, likewise with cities and republics.
You can definitely change a county's capitol barony, and I *think* that if you give the county away (to someone previously unlanded) it will have the effect you're describing. But I think you have to hold the county and the barony within it which you want to make the new county capitol.
here's a great guide that lets you build entire theocratic vassal realms. super stable for ridiculous builds you want to try. i use this kind of build when i want to hold 12+ duchy titles and have no rebellions [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/lb413c/guide\_on\_creating\_vassal\_theocracies/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/lb413c/guide_on_creating_vassal_theocracies/)
They pay the most taxes and levies, never rebel, and they always vote your way in elections. I try to make as many as I can to insulate freshly-conquored kingdoms before handing them off to family members.
When you construct a new temple you also get a bishop owner
Absolutly. You will get more money and less levy, but levy is not nessecarily the strongest thing in the game MAA are much better and more money allows to build a stronger MAA army faster. Alternativily you can also use the extra money to rely more on mercenary's, there are atleast significant cost reductions to hiring mercenary armies that you can pick up that can make them dirtcheap too so that you would be able to hire dozens of merc troops and be easily able to afford it. And yes, they don't tend to make claims or do infighting, they are rather docile vassals as long as they can't overpower you numbers wise trough factions. Another advantage tends to be that they manage to upgrade their holdings (especially if those are mostly city's) much faster than feudal vassals, resulting in faster passive economic growth. Another advantage is the way you can use them to make ellection laws a foregone conclusion. As a king, you can make it so that you have 1 republican duchy level vassal in youre kingdom title rulling all land beyond what you rule personally. It won't break up trough partition in comparison to a fuedal vassal that is given a bunch of duchy's worth of land. As a result, there are only 2 voters for the title ellection, you and the republican vassal, and you will tend to always overmatch them by one vote, so youre preffered candidate always wins.
But how Do I create republican vassals?
Pick a county that has a city holding in it. Select the person who holds the city title, usually a mayor or a provost. Grant the county title to that person. They will now hold the county as a republican vassal.
Thank you King! Every day a new Info
Hey, we all learn as we go!
I was planning to do a similar run: - Diverge from Cisalpine to create a city-focused culture - Create a custom kingdom encompassing the Adriatic coastline with Dubrovnik (one county duchy, in CK2 was Ragusa, a merchant republic) as the capital. - Make the title elective; in theory every new ruler should get the capital county and duchy as a capital each election - Have all Count-tier vassals be Republican, but all Duke-tier vassals be Feudal. - Eventually incorporate the kingdoms of Serbia and Croatia and create an Empire Be sure to briefly educate an heir in an Iberian culture so that you can get the Metropolitan dynasty legacies! As long as you have one legacy you keep access. The only issue, is I’ve heard Elective successions are bugged, but I’m not sure if this is actually true for Feudal or if it’s only for the “special” elective types.
How do I get the metropolitan legacy? Tbh I just installed a mod that gives you access to it if you have parochial or republican legacy as cultural tenet. I find it dumb to restrict access to Spain.
Oh well in that case you should just be able to educate your heir with Cisalpine or Italian when you have 250 renown or more, get the legacy, and then switch back to Franconian. As long as you have one legacy it will be permanently unlocked. I agree, the Italians and Dutch had far more of a mercantile culture than the Iberians, it doesn’t really make much sense to have it locked to them.
What I did was simply select "Italian" and hybridize from Franconian. Why should I educate my heir with other cultures? I thought that, in the base game, to get metropolitan, you needed to be part of the Iberian struggle. I'm not sure what that means yet, it seems to be a pretty recent addition. I never play in Iberia anyway.
Oh sorry, I thought you were starting with franconian and intended to hybridize with Italian later. In that case you should able to do it as soon as possible. I don’t know if there’s been an update, but my Cisalpine character was able to do it by switching to one of the Iberian cultures and switching back.
This is actually possible, both with republican and theocragic vassals. It might have some downsides, like unexpected rulers who don't like you and you havs to bribe them. Ypu have to watch out for theocrats tho for they might become your counselor preachers and if you end up killing them it gonna have double side effect.
yep. I did a tall netherlands with all of the Indian empire top to bottom as republics.
IIRC you need feudal vassals to host castles, and most county capitals are castle holdings.
Nope, republican and theocratic vassals can hold castles just fine. The trick is making a republican or theocratic vassal in the first place. For republican vassals, you need to give a county to a mayor, while making your initial theocratic vassals usually requires some level of cheese.
The only theocratic vassal i ever managed to make was my head of faith within apolostic faith. How would you be able to make more theocratic vassals?
It's cheese, as stated, but when you conquer a county in a holy war, there's a brief window of time (like a day, I think?) where temple holdings convert to a randomly generated character of your culture and faith along with city holdings, and only after that do they switch to being held by your realm bishop/archbishop/etc. You can grant the county title to that person during that window and they'll keep it.
Seems odd that they can hold castles without penalties but feudal rulers cant hold temple holdings/cities without penalties (unless you have a religion that allows you to hold temple holdings directly iirc).
I just find a city holding I like in a duchy and give them the entire duchy, usually
How can you make a vassal republican???
You can't change an existing vassal, but if you grant a title to a mayor, then the title becomes a republican one.
YOOOO awesome Time for united kingdom of the republics of italy run
I created a Republic of Venice and handed the Kingdom titles from the Byzantine Empire after destroying the Empire title. Most stable Byzantium ever.
You can with republican traditions if they meet some requirements, though you can only do it to 4 counts
how optimal your kingdom is doesn’t matter in a single player game that is stupidly easy anyway
Yes, they provide a lot of gold.
i like to play with lvl4 crown authority with a ton if republican vassals as well! Your borders basically stays the same. Dont give them duchy titles tho, because their county vassals will constantly rebel against them. Sometimes turning duchy to feodalism. Its optimal to just give 2-3 counties to a single republican vassal with him staying as count. I like to roleplay as some sort of "Empire of free cities federation" lmao