Quote:
Originally Posted by Shabbaman
So my son's second son is my current heir.
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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
Anyway, old Ordulf has a hidden dirty old dog trait:
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:
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!