Any Grand Strategy gamers?

[BigBiker05]

I'm having a bit of trouble with this and can not find a good answer online, but what is the best way to handle my demesne size? Do I want to hold as many counties as possible, or do I want to horde titles from highest to lowest? This would mean giving out counties and collecting douches. Also, do I want to always have title for the county my capitol is in?

[Oni]

You are on the right track, you want to parse out your land to nobles you can trust. You want to keep the best developed to yourself of course. You can't be too big or you suffer penalties but you want to keep yourself as close to the max as possible. Again though I must stress, you need pay good attention to your vassals you give power to....otherwise it will be disastrous later. The more titles you amass the better, only give them out to people that you can trust and use traits as your guide. The biggest problem with giving out titles is it decentralizes the power in your kingdom and may give rise to competitors when the liege dies. As for the title of your capital...I don't think you can give that away because that's a location you will always have a claim on.

[BigBiker05]

You are on the right track, you want to parse out your land to nobles you can trust. You want to keep the best developed to yourself of course. You can't be too big or you suffer penalties but you want to keep yourself as close to the max as possible. Again though I must stress, you need pay good attention to your vassals you give power to....otherwise it will be disastrous later. The more titles you amass the better, only give them out to people that you can trust and use traits as your guide. The biggest problem with giving out titles is it decentralizes the power in your kingdom and may give rise to competitors when the liege dies. As for the title of your capital...I don't think you can give that away because that's a location you will always have a claim on.

I started over, was doing pretty good but missed a huge part of the game. The capitols.

[E.T. EddieTorrez]

I started over, was doing pretty good but missed a huge part of the game. The capitols.

? As in you never built up the county capitals? As Oni said you want to stay as close to your demense limit as you can get. If you go over you take a mismanagment hit to your wallet and a popularity hit. Also if you remain a duke you can hold onto as many ducal titles as you want where as kings can only have two before taking a popularity hit.

When it comes to your personal demense I have so far heard of two approaches. The first and most popular is keeping only county, ducal and kingdom titles, with this idea you have more vassels which means more money. There is another approach where you hold onto the largest development slot counties then you hold onto all the barony titles which means you can maximize the effectiveness of the recruit training ability of your marshal. I tried it in my current game as Sicily since I started as a duke and wanted to expand as fast as i can but I would most likely not do it again because money is really what you should be after.

[Boss Llama]

I must watch for this game to go on sale. I very much like the sound of it.

[E.T. EddieTorrez]

Well like I told Tungsten, its the most extensive medieval cousin marrying simulator there is...I can only hope that did not disuade you from making this purchase.

[Tungsten]

Well like I told Tungsten, its the most extensive medieval cousin marrying simulator there is...I can only hope that did not disuade you from making this purchase.

By the way, how's that working out?

[BigBiker05]

I misunderstood the first slot mini barony for the capitols. Then when I started going WTF as I found counties with no minor baronies I finally realized the icon in the top right was the capitol. So all this time I was building in what I thought were the capitols and not the actual capitols.

I downloaded a major (and super popular) mod. This mod does some needed balancing and lots of other changes. However, one of the changes I HATE so I'm trying to find out if I can remove it. It is the 'realistic aspect', basically more diseases and more deaths to make it realistic. Problem is so many stillborns and wives dieing during birth. I'm having so much trouble getting anyone to live over 30.

As far as what properties to hold. You should always as close to your maximum demense, and soley of counties, no towns, etc. As for baronies, I heard you should have 2 max, I am not sure which 2 and whether that number changes on crown rule. Your counties should always be the most upgraded and you should focus on castle technologies since capitols are castles.

[E.T. EddieTorrez]

Well I have tried to hold my ground in a Europe rife with schemes to marry family members. For example the Byzantine Emperor( my brother in law) kept try to marry his son to my daughter. It took about three refused offers before he finally accepted no and realized the future emperor would be a heterogenous freak.

[BigBiker05]

So there is a lot I captured in this screenshot. What happened was I was about to win Alexandria via Crusade when my character died. He was 82, the holy, the great, and the conqueror. He was the King of Ireland and King of England. My daughter was 51 when she took over.

Anyways, as you can see in the screenshot, everyone wants to declare war on succession change. For those who don't know, civil wars are more likely if you are already in one war. As this screenshot was taken, I already won one war. As you can see by my army list, I have 4k guys in Africa defending the land I won from the crusade from a neighboring kingdom.

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[E.T. EddieTorrez]

I always find the suddeness of the death of a leader to be an interesting part of the game. Out of all the games I've played I think there has been only one bloodless throning of a king.

[Boss Llama]

So GOG had a sale, and I bought MOO2. It's simple and oldschool, but I enjoy the basic rounds I've played so far