You're doing well, any chance of becoming HRE emperor?

I was tied for elective heir with 6 votes before I became king, but clearly all my vassals hate me. I don't know how the voting mechanic works in CK2, I can't find anything about it. I have some suspicion that I might be royally screwed though.

For starters, my close family votes for the HRE's firstborn son. This guy can't possibly be very popular, since he's only 6 or something. But since the HRE is my son in law, that little brat is my nephew (or cousin, freakishly difficult english family vocabulary) so my close family is his close family... and I suspect this makes them skewed towards voting for him. Why they're not voting for me... well, maybe it's the whole kinslayer thing, I don't know. Since they are all plotting to get rid of me and I keep discovering their plots, our relations are warm (nice mechanic, that). So mutual relation isn't a factor in it, of that I am sure. I'll find out when I die, hopefully my heir won't have the kinslayer trait ;)

So it could have something to do with my stats, or my status as king, or my warmongering. Yet my father didn't have better stats and did more warmongering. Maybe the size of my realm is threatening the other electors.

Anyway, I'll keep my (rather: my heir a.k.a. the new me) daughters from marrying the HRE (good plan, as they;re family... or wait... inbreeding in the Salian's line would actually benefit me... MUAHAHAHA! THE PLOT THICKENS!) and hope someone in my line of succession gets good stats. In an elective monarchy I would expect the strongest nobleman to have a decent shot at the title, so I am confident it's possible to become emperor. I hope so, because the lands those Salian holds is cutting my nice kingdom in half.

P.S. Speaking of heirs, a lot of my vassals have been dying of stress lately. I'm not sure if I have something to do with it, but if I do, this game is even better than I thought. I can imagine the constant warfare could induce stress. Anyway, my second son (duke of Koln and Saxony) died of stress, my brother (duke of Gelre) died of stress, and even my oldest son (duke of Thuringia) died of stress. Luckily he has two sons, but you'd never guess it: his oldest son (duke of Thuringia) died of stress! So my son's second son is my current heir.

iirc stress is a hereditary trait

Well, the major downside of granting titles to your heir is that they move to their own court, and thus can't control their marriage (and consequently plan the Billung breeding program) I'm not doing that again, but I need to figure out what to do with all those counties I own.

I feel your pain. From now on I'm keeping them at home till 18 as well. In my Ireland game I gave my son a duchy. He moved, married some subpar wife, got kids. Turns out I'm healthy and live a long and prosperous life. Get grandchildren, they turn 18, they also marry sub par wifes. NOT GOOD!
Two generations of opportunities lost.
[B)]

Well, the queen of Germany died. I had a few options for a new marriage: for instance, I could marry a polish princess and get an alliance with Poland. However, since I want Silesia and Greater Poland, I don't think that alliance would benefit me. Besides, the options were either the ugly princess or the retarded princess. I opted for the young francaise :D

Anyway, old Ordulf has a hidden dirty old dog trait:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...28D76DCB5CB3E/

The stress didn't get to Ordulf though, he got pretty old despite all the wars I made him fight. He got three sons and a daughter with the french breeding stock, bringing his total up to 9 kids (still a pity all the boys died before he did). So, meet Adam I:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...DB4B284D8BCAE/

This meant it's regency council time. Not as boring as it is in EU3 though, luckily. Gavelkind means Adam is left with just the kingdom, the capital and the Brunswick duchy. Unfortunately one of the Brunswick counties (Brunswick itself) got itself into the duchy of Thuringia somehow. That's a bit of a pity, because this means my levy will be smaller. It won't matter for the king's levy though. But now there's a big hole in Brunswick that doesn't please me aesthetically.

And apparently my family likes Adam better than Ordulf, must be that kinslayer trait: I got nominated for HRE heir as soon as I inherited the title. With a big pile of gold for a mercenary company I fought the queen of Sweden (also king of Denmark and the other half of Scandinavia... and the Baltics... Sweden is HUGE), and then the queen of Poland while I had the merc company around anyway.

Once it was time for the actual succession, some random dukes decided it was time for seniority succession. And they pushed that claim with a big war. Unfortunately I had just spend my cash and already dismissed the mercs, so I couldn't fight back. The new emperor was out of cash and couldn't fight back either, so now I am stuck with seniority succession. What bothers me more than that is that I couldn't figure out how to fight for my liege: my battles didn't count for his warscore. Pity.

Anyway, the war for seniority succession was another sign that there's more to this game that meets the eye: I don't think it's a coincidence that the AI starts a war for seniority succession when I'm the youngest eligible heir around. With the HRE being broke and all I suspect I'll get a chance to go for independence or HRE. With one or two merc companies I can win that war. That is, I could've won this war... For Germany to shine, the HRE must go down.

By the way, since the HRE lost the crown authority got lowered automatically. So I got Altmark from Brandenburg. The HRE wants to raise crown authority to high. I hope that vote fails, otherwise this'll get boring pretty quick. I have CB's on Sweden (for Pomerania) and Poland (for Silesia and Greater Poland). I can't push either at the moment, because I'm too weak to fight Sweden and there's civil war in Poland (you can't usurp titles when the other side is at war). But I expect to be up 3 duchies in the near future.

Another thing that's bugging me is that I see retinues (standing armies) pop up everywhere. I could make my own retinue, but that is a penalty towards my levy size. So I suspect that my vassal's levies are a drain on my levy.

As a final remark: this time I got my heir (all hail Adam I) to marry some random with the genius trait. And I got a new heir already, and I'll be keeping him at home this time!

Do retinues come out of your levy numbers?? Never knew that and it makes them a lot less interesting imo. I thought I was training up extra military to crush the king of England.......

Also I managed to take the title 'Captian of the Irish band' Dunno why I could usurp it but the great thing is that I now can raise that merc amry at no start up cost. The last independant scottish earl is also captain of the saxon band. I hope I can usurp that title as well when I kick his ass out of scotland in a few years (damn 10 year truce).

That's what I think. In the retinue screen there's a column "retinue cap usage". I figured that that'd count towards my levy size. Perhaps it doesn't though. This is what I found on the wiki (which isn't even half as awesome as the EU3 wiki btw):

Retinue Cap = Total Realm Manpower x (Average Realm Military Organization Tech x 0.1

So it might just be that it's independent of levy size. There's a link between levy size and manpower though. I'd say that having a retinue lowers the available manpower. I'll just try it, if my levy size goes down that should be easy to check. If I look at the levy size, I see a penalty of about 8% because of retinues. This could be the HRE retinue though.

That is... awesome. Having read the Wheel of Time series I always wanted to be captain of the great company. Since I'm aspiring to kick the HRE's and Sweden's butt, I could use a free mercenary band. Obviously there's NOTHING on this on the wiki. I did notice that the leaders of the companies show up as marriageable characters. So yes, I figure that if they are landed and take their last title, you could get the company title as a bonus. Congratulations Propain, you have broken the game!

By the way, I forgot to show you this :D

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...C8E8EA7DBF3AC/

Heh.

This will increase his opinion of you by 10

:D That's what I love about this game. Same when I promoted my horse to councillor 'Your horse always struck you as the dependable sort' Hilarious.

IN EUIII one of my favorite buttons is

'Stop staring at the sky!!'

I like how CK2 gives you more options depending on your abilities. IIRC that's not implemented in EU3. Like how I got the option to "make vague promises" when one of my vassals asked me to transfer one of my direct vassals to him. All the other options would make someone quite pissed. So I made some vague promises.