Unfortunately, the reality of Crusader Kings II is rarely comfortable and steady. Characters constantly throwing the logs under the player's legs, forcing him to think and balancing between influence zones. It's even more problematic since the succession laws can be changed only after completing six assumptions. Title Loss on Succession: 継承による称号の損失: If your ruler dies now the game will end! 指導者が死んだ場合ゲームオーバー: Pick an Ambition: 野心を選ぶ: Open Council Position(s) 評議会に空席がある: Children Lack a Guardian: 教育者のいない子供がいる: Unlanded Son(s) 土地のない子供がいる.

1. Title Loss On Succession Ck2
2. Ck2 Title Loss On Succession To Son
3. Ck2 Title Loss On Succession Ultimogeniture
4. Crusader Kings 2 Inheritance

Greetings, friends!

1. But there's a hexagon at top that says 'title loss on succession'. Apparently I'm going to lose the northern two-thirds of Lanka (the bits I conquered) if I don't do something. I've looked around and can't figure out what I'm supposed to do to stop this. E: I have agnatic-cognatic gavelkind, as /u/Apep86 thought.
2. I am playing as Kaiser Heinrich IV, and I have the title loss on succession warning. It says 'The following titles will be lost on succession: Holy Roman Empire (Duke Ernst of Austria). So I click on it and it brings me to the line of succession page.

I’m Wokeg, and I’m the juniorest of the content designers on CK3. Unless you like anarcho-communist insect people, you almost certainly haven’t heard of me: mostly I scuttle around the office mumbling about the West Country and obscure cultural features, but I’m here to talk to you today about your council, your powerful vassals, and the role of your spouse in the realm.

Let’s start with the basics: what have we carried over from CK2?

Your council still has five primary positions: a chancellor, steward, marshal, spymaster, and court chaplain, each relying on a particular skill (respectively, diplomacy, stewardship, martial, intrigue, and learning). Every councillor is either a vassal or a courtier of yours, and you are (mostly) able to hire and fire for these roles at will. Each of these council positions can be given different tasks, relying on an appropriate skill, which help your realm to survive and thrive. Theoretically.

Ok, so that should be pretty familiar to most of you. So, what’s actually changed?

Firstly, state skills are gone. While they weren’t the worst thing in the world, you tended to forget they existed unless they were utterly abysmal, which was incredibly rare. Plus, personally, I could never get the mental image of your chancellor leaping in front of the king and clamping a hand over his mouth every time he thought of another dirty joke about the King of France out of my head.

Instead of affecting your character’s skill in certain interactions, councillor skills now dramatically affect their efficacy at the tasks you set them. A skilled steward not only yanks coins from the hands of undeserving peasants as fast as the peasants earn ‘em, they’ll also be much more likely to receive positive minor events while doing it. Similarly, a terrible steward is not just slow, they’ll actively bungle things and make a mess of your accounts as they go. Choosing between the politically-powerful idiot and the adroit courtier has never been quite so difficult.

To compensate for this a little, merely being on your liege’s council will give you a very minor bonus to the appropriate skill for your position. Even a truly terrible councillor has at least some assistants helping them out.

Further, tasks now do not reset when changing councillors. If you tell your steward to keep increasing the development in a particular county, they’ll stick at it until told to stop, pausing if you have no steward at all. Council tasks in specific counties will only stop if the county stops being a valid place to perform that task, such as because a time-locked action (e.g., religious conversion) was completed, or because you lost the county in a war.

Instead of listing all the possible tasks each councillor can take, let’s keep things light and just have the most interesting/newest task each councillor can perform:

• Chancellor:Integrate Title, speeds de jure drift of a valid title into your realm.
• Marshal:Increase Control in County, increase control gain per month in a specific county.
• Steward:Increase Development in County, reduce building & holding construction time in a specific county. Boost development growth per month in the same.
• Spymaster:Find Secrets, attempt to learn of secrets in a given court, including your own.
• Court Chaplain:Fabricate Claim on County, gain opportunities to acquire claims on a specific county.

Ok, that was a lot of information on non-dramatic differences. Are there any really big changes we’ve got stored up?

Well now, that depends. Are you single and outside the reach of that meddlesome Pope? Then life might seem pretty smooth, at least for a while. On the other hand, if you’re a married Catholic…

The first part of this is marriage, and, as you may have guessed from the title of this dev diary, the five classic slots are now joined by your primary spouse! Historically, spouses were often vital assistants in running the realm, providing counsel and advice even when they, strictly speaking, were not supposed to.

We model this by giving them a variety of council tasks, each one boosting your stats directly by taking some of the weight of leadership off of your shoulders. The default is a generic “assist ruler” task, simply helping out here and there, and providing a minor flat boost to all skills, for those rulers who feel like they can pretty much tackle the world unassisted. Discounting vassals as assistance, because, y’know, obviously.

If you need more specialised help, you can also have them boost a specific stat directly. This adds a large portion of their skill directly to yours, as you offload an immense amount of power and responsibility onto your spouse, lending them your authority in exchange for their skill. While focusing in this manner, they’ll only boost their assigned skill, so you’ll need to choose how they support you carefully.

Don’t have a spouse? Well, that’s ok, single feudal heirs are out there just waiting to meet you.

Have a spouse and they’re landed? I’m afraid they’ve got better things to do than finish your lordly homework for you.

Now, for the second of our two major differences: have you ever heard the phrase “Will no one will rid me of this turbulent priest”?

Well, have we got some turbulent priests for you.

Certain faiths (details on which, other than Catholicism, to follow in a later diary) replace the court chaplain with a bishop. If you still have a court chaplain, then they’ll behave much like other councillors, though some faiths may still have a harder time firing them.

Bishops use a mechanic called leasing (though they’re not the only ones to do so), whereby they control all levies and receive all taxes from every temple holding in your personal domain. Additionally, your bishop will receive a fraction of the taxes and levies generated by all of your vassals’ bishops. All told, that’s a lot of ducats the Church seems to be getting, isn’t it?

Of course, as loyal subjects of the crown, your bishop will be very happy to hand over taxes and troops to you, scaling with quite how happy they are. A loyal bishop is a huge boon for your economy and military, and can make the difference between unstoppable royal might and economic ruin.

A recalcitrant bishop, by contrast, is an utter pain. If they do not approve of you at least a little, they’ll hold back taxes and levies until you meet their standards again, and if they actively hate you, may even begin conspiring with others to replace you with a more pious monarch.

Of course, you’re probably asking what stops you from firing your bishop and replacing them with, say, a good friend of yours?

Around these parts, that’s what we call heresy. And you’ll have to wait till the religious dev diary for details on exactly what your options are for legally sacking your bishop. As for illegally, well, no Pope can stop a knife to the base of the spine…

Turbulent priests indeed.

Our final talking point for today is the subject of powerful vassals.

These should be familiar to many of you from CK2’s Conclave expansion: powerful vassals are the wealthiest lords with the highest levy counts in the realm. They’re powerful, influential, and unruly, and you ignore them at your peril. The higher your tier, the more of them you’ll have to contend with, and eventually you’re going to have to pick who you want to snub rather than how you want to please everyone.

As in Conclave, powerful vassals always expect a seat on your council. They’re the greatest magnates of their day, damn it, and they demand to be heard! Leaving one out in the political cold will give you a huge opinion penalty with that character, since a council seat is theirs by right of might.

Not any particular seat, mind you, and just because they might not be able to organise an army to save their life, that’s no reason for you not to give them the role of marshal. Power is basically the same as competence, right?

So, what do you actually directly get out of acquiescing to these uppity lords? Well, there’s one very important function that powerful vassals tie into directly: changing your succession. CK2 required you to have all vassals who both de jure and de facto belong to one of your titles approve of you before you could change your succession. In CK3, that veto belongs to your powerful vassals alone, and they very much know it.

Finally, powerful vassals are also hooked into a number of other systems in little ways, some of which may be talked about in later dev diaries, some of which we can talk about here. In elective successions, they usually receive more votes, as they have more sway over the realm’s processes. When recruiting for schemes, powerful vassals make better agents, provided you can persuade them, and since they know this, they’re also harder to use the sway scheme on. And, lastly, an unhappy powerful vassal in a faction is a far more worrisome prospect (more on factions later down the line).

Well, that’s all we have to say on your council’s functions for now. I hope that this has answered some of your burning questions and got you excited to manage the governance of your realm.

Next week, I believe we have some notes on characters, portraits, and traits…

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Are you new to Crusader Kings 2 and don’t know where to start? You probably encountred the tip to start from Ireland for the begging but the game is still slow and/or confusing? Fear not for this guide will show you how to create a kingdom in one character!

Chapter 0: Before We Start

Before we start let’s clear something out that can be confusing for new players:

Cassus Beli is a reason for war. Without it you can’t fight. You can wage war against someone who has lands you or one of your courtiers have claim on and few other reasons, but for the sake of this guide we will need just Claim and De jure.

De jure means “by law”. Every duchy consists of counties, every kingdom is made of duchies and so on. If you have duchy title, but not all of it’s de jure lands belong in your realm, you can wage war against outside holders. Winning De jure war always results in realm coming to your realm (but if you are the king it’s not always for you, I will describe it later).

Claim is “legal” right for the land. Legal is in quotation marks since they can be fabricated (important!). Pressing a claim means wage a war in a name of person having the claim agains person holding the title. Winning the war not always result in land coming to your realm! If you are not claimant there are two conditions that must be met to get a land through Claim war:

• Claimant must already have land in your land (barony will suffice).
• The title you are pressing claim on must be lower than yours.

For example, if ou are a duke and you press claim on a duchy for someone else, that person will be independant. But if you are king and press a claim on duchy for your vassal duke, then duke will have two duchies and you still are his liege.

That should be enough to get you starting.

Chapter 1: Starting Up

Step 1: Choosing your character.

For begginers, Ireland with a starting date of 1066 is a good choice for couple of reasons. Most rulers are count-tier which means they have up to 3 counties which is low. That gives you early advantage since you can easly gain more lands and be the most powerful person in the land.

Easiest characters are:

• Murchad ua Brian, duke of Munster – he is a duke with a single county, two vassals, a De jure claim on a nerby county, male heir and, what’s most important, a historical bloodline. That bloodline can be passed to his descendants which give ua Brians an advantage over other Irish rulers.
• Aed ua Conchobair, duke of Connacht – an old guy with realm of two is weaker than Murchad, but still relevant since he is duke, but he lacks the bloodline and lands. His advantage lies in his position. West Connacht has a double battle modifer giving your troops advantage and giving enemies disadvantage at the same time (attacking from here gives our troops disadvantage though).
• Murchad ua Cheinnselaig, count of Dublin – his start is a little bit trickier than the last two since he is a count and has no de jure claims. But he has two things other counts hasn’t at that is county of Dublin which is both duchy and kingdom de jure capital (it gives nice modifier to troops) and is an heir for county of Leinster, which makes him triple count. His dad has to die first though, by natural means, or your scheming. He is old, so you can just wait up.

For the sake of simplicity, the rest of the guide will be made as if ua Brian was chosen to play.

Step 2: Council. First thing you do is checking your council.

• Set your chancellor to Fabricate claim job on whatever county near you, but in case of Desmond it’s not needed(you already have De jure claim on it so it ‘s not neccesary, but if you fabricate claim you prevent a civil war, more on it later).
• Set your marshal to train troops in your capital
• Set your steward to collect taxes in your capital
• Set your spymaster to Study technology in another country (if you are ua Cheinnselaig and are plotting to kill your father set him to Build Spy network in Leincester)
• Set your chaplain to improve religous relation with any of your bishops.

If any of your council members has their stats below 15 here is a quick way to change it:

Go to Find character.

Set join court on yes and search all (remember that only men can be in council, exception is rulers wife who can be spymaster).

Filter them by what ability you need and invite those with best. Profit!

Title Loss On Succession Ck2

Having done that let’s go to the next step, which is…

Step 3: Stabilizing your realm using a civil war.

Yes you read that right. You are going to cause a civil war to get the counties your vassals have. We are doing it because if you control the county, you get all the troops, if it’s your vassal, it’s 40% at best. How do you do that though? There are 2 ways: the way of tyrant and the way of intrigue.
The way of tyrant is simpler one, but crippling your opinion. Just revoke the titles one by one and crush them. Be careful though, this impose tyranny (-40 opinion, ouch).
The way of intrigue takes longer but doesn’t impose tyranny:

• Go to intrigue (F7).
• In My Plots you have a table, click on the blue “Choose a plot”.
• Choose “Revoke county of …”

To succeed you need 80% plot power and at least 1 backer (that’s why your chaplain works on improving relations). If you meet the requirements, there is decision to revoke the county. By revoking them in this way vassals usualy rebel, which means you have to apply good old way of crushing them to bits. You should have more troops from your one county and vassal so it’s no worry.

When you hold all counties in your realm you can get to next chapter.

Ck2 Title Loss On Succession To Son

Chapter 2: Conquest and Creating the Kingdom

Ck2 Title Loss On Succession Ultimogeniture

So you have your realm stabilized. Good. Next step after winning the civil wars is more wars.

Step 0: Press your de jure claim on any counties that are outside of your realm and proceed to do with them what you did in chapter 2. If you are over your demense limit, raise the centralization law

Step 1: Fabricate Claim.
This is the reason most people don’t play as Ireland when they learn to play. Other countries can gain lands by pressing other claims, but Irish usually have to do without it at the beginning, which is bit tedious.
If you managed to fabricate the claim, just press it and win war and proceed to next step.

Step 2: Foregin Climants.
If you didn’t or you don’t want to wait for Fabricate to work then find a county you want to conquer. Click on it’s shiled and it will take you to the realm page. There is a button named “Claimants”. If it’s grey then though luck, try elswehere. If it’s blue, then let’s get to party. Clicking the button shows you the list containing all people with claims to that realm. If beside their portrait is green thumb up, then you hit a jackpot and can invite him to court. You can now press his claim in war, BUT DON’T DO THAT YET! If he doesn’t have land in your realm, he will just become new independent ruler, so first you have to give him something (even a barony will suffice). Then press the claim and win the war. If you are short on counties to give (leave at least as much as your most powerful vassal have to yourself), then just chapter 2 someone. Repeat this step until you have 10 counties in your realm, and then…

Crusader Kings 2 Inheritance

Step 3: Long live the king!
You can create a kingdom now, but don’t be so hasty, there is one last thing to do before making kingdom! Your deflaut succesion law is Gavelkind which means all your sons get some of your lands when you die. You want to change that to ethier Tanistry or Primogeniture.

When I wrote Tanistry, I felt the fanbase howl in hatred at me, but please just listen.
Both succesion laws make it so all your ladns go to your heir after your death. Difference is that in Primogeniture your heir is always your eldest child (usually son) and in Tanistry your heir is Tanist.
Tanist is chosen by you and your vassals from your dynasty (they tend to favor the elders). So you ask why the hell would I want that. Answer is simple: usually you don’t, but there are two exceptions:

• If your realm is full of counts of your dynasty, it enables you to gather all your familys land back togheter (not quite, since vassals usually favor landless heirs, but it’s possible).
• Primogeniture gives all your not-eldest child -10 opinion on you, which means nothing, unless they are also your vassals.

For the rest of the land, ethier conquer them with de jure claim or offer them vassalization. Many accept if you haven’t waged war on them.

Chapter 3: What Next?

When you become the king, you should already have a knack on this game, so ethier go play someone else, or become emperor of Britannia.

To become emperor, just do what you did earlier on dukes instead of counts. Best order of conquering the British isles is Wales, Scotland and England. Wales are just a bunch of dukes, like Ireland was before you happend, but it has less land than Ireland, so it’s not a best start. Scotland is already a kingdom, and it can kick your ♥♥♥ quick if you don’t watch it, but getting it piece by piece is quite easy. England is trickier due to it’s size, but doable if you have Wales or Scotland under your thumb.