CK2 Advice for Newbs: How to Manage Succession Crises

One thing a newbie quickly finds out is that it doesn't matter how amazing or illustrious your emperor is, if his craven and arbitrary son loses in a fortnight what took you decades to build. In this post, we will talk about ways to stop that from happening.

1) Vassal Heir Grooming
Have your emperor educate vassal heirs. You want them to get traits like Content, Craven, and Humble (side note: this is the purpose of educating people with "negative" traits). When the next generation takes over, you'll have that many fewer people ready to form factions.

2) Stockpile Cash
You should have set Feudal Taxes to the second-highest level ("Large" or Medium" in Vanilla or the GoT Mod), and some players like to put them on Harsh, with the option of lowering them if your new ruler is particularly inept. This is easiest to do as a small entity, but if you are a mature and well-loved ruler, you can change tax laws in an empire as well.

You will need the cash for 3 things: 1) gifting the more pliable vassals to keep them in line, 2) paying your retinue, and 3) buying mercs if a war happens.

3) Vassal Rearrangement
This is a bit more sophisticated, and sort of unnecessary in a Christian playthrough, but I've read of people doing this to good effect in Muslim and Pagan playthroughs (where succession crises are brutal). If you have a spare Duchy (in the dejure area of the necessary kingdom), you could just have your new emperor gift it to one of your kings as a welcome present. But you also could give it to an Ambitious person, then vassal-transfer it to the king. The king will have his hands full trying to keep the Ambitious vassal in line. One less threat to the establishment!

You can also do this with Counts and Dukes.

4) Avoid wars at the start of your new reign
Many times, empires will rely on their retinue, especially when taking down small entities. This can be dangerous, because the enemy faction strength will climb dramatically as you take casualties. So make sure you chill for a bit.

5) Play Pagans and Muslims
Succession crises are bad enough for Christians, but it's even worse for a Pagan or a Muslim, because of short reign modifiers for the Pagan, and decadence/agnatic succession forcing you to land everybody and deal with the consequences as a Muslim. If you want, you can take the skills you learned as a Pagan and transfer them to your Christian playthroughs!



Of course, even if you do all that, this may happen. In that game, I had 3 Ambitious Kings who got their titles due to revolts (perhaps it's my fault for installing a Lunatic on the throne of Aquitaine).

AND WHO, ARE YOU, THE PROUD LORD SAID, THAT I MUST BOW SO LOW?

The war ended just like the Reyne Rebellion did. Once your retinue and cash pool is large enough, nothing can stand against your might.