Rule 3: Finally, try to avoid hacking them off personally with events. Finally, don't keep them at war all the time vassals will steadily get angered at the stream of money falling out their strongbox into the pockets of the soldiers around them, money the king never seems eager to reimburse them for! Of course, keep your demands from your vassals too lenient and you may find yourself short an army and money to pay it with! A balance, as always, is essential. Yes, this puts restrictions on your power, but an easily ignorable king is one who is unlikely to draw unwanted attention. If you want to keep them on side, keep crown authority low, don't tax them too much, and don't take every soldier they have. Rule 2: Don't demand too much of your vassals. Act like a monster and you'll be treated as one. This is where the really nasty modifiers come from excommunication will earn you -30, and being a known murderer or an executer of prisoners will give you penalties in the 20's. or son.) or generally run around channelling Caligula.
Rule 1: Don't get excommunicated, murder someone, execute those poor wretches in your jail (even if they killed your adorable two year old puppy. Sadly, the stuff in the latter category usually outweighs the stuff you can do something about. Vassal opinions come in two flavours stuff you can do something about and stuff you can't. Sometimes the best commander you have may be the insignificant mayor of the little village down the coast. Its worth checking these guys periodically if you're at war. You can reassign these vassals to the wrong kind of holding. Mayors are odd in that they are elected and will be replaced periodically.
Mayors command cities, barons command baronies and the bishops command bishoprics. These are the folks who command the holdings within your county. Kings may also be under the command of an emperor.Ī word on minor vassals. This chain of command goes from the minor vassals, the mayors, barons and bishops who command the cities, baronies and bishoprics within your counties, who are in turn commanded by the count or duke in charge of the county, with counts answering to a duke or, if there is no duke, answering directly to the king, and finally the king is who the duke takes orders from. You get two major types of vassal Counts, the junior nobility who generally command single demesnes or maybe a (very) small number of them, and Dukes, who, in addition to their own demesnes, command loyalty from the counts who hold land within the bounds of their Duchy, and who answer only to the king. Keep a good spymaster on hand so you don't get surprised by these most vassals will break off the plot if asked nicely, and you get a favourable chance at throwing them in jail if they won't acquiesce to your demands.
This can range from trying to kill you off, to trying to reduce your authority, right up to trying to take your throne off you. More likely is that a moderately unpopular king will start to get a swathe of plots against him. This will not, however stop some of them be particularly wary of ambitious vassals, ones who have a personal grudge against you, or younger sons who resent their older brother getting all the kings stuff once he leaves for the great door in the sky (or more likely, the blazing inferno below.) They do, after all, have a stake in the status quo, and this isn't like the first Crusader Kings where it was more a question of when, not if, you got into a fight with the stewards of your kingdom. Thankfully, your vassals generally won't come hunting for you militarily unless you do something to genuinely aggrieve them. And as most of your army will come from what your vassals volunteer you, hacking them off is one of the fastest ways for a king (or duke) to lose his crown, much like in the original game. Vassals, then aren't something you can get rid of. Realm Tree of the Holy Roman Empire (Vassal-Liege feudal relationships). You need vassals because of your demesne limit, or more prosaically, because your liege can't be everywhere at once and things would fall into chaos.
Your vassals are the nobles who help you run your lands (in exchange for being able to establish a power base within those lands) and allow you to administrate the realm and raise armies and tax from that realm without everything going to pieces.