What makes a good duke?
After successful military campaigns, I often end up earning the ire of my vassals for "too many duchies". To resolve this, I go to duchies I don't want, pick one of the counts in that duchy, and make them duke. If duchy does not exist, I create a duchy, and then do this.
However, I am actually not sure how to pick the best duke. I generally pick the count in the duchy's territory who likes me the most to minimize revolt risk. However while picking a -100 vassal is obviously undesirable, in practice the boost from being made Duke ensures that whoever I pick will have a pretty positive view of me anyway - so the revolt risk is low either way. Also, once the duke dies, there is little assurance his successors will like me as well.
Since my main factor, relations, fails to discriminate much between candidates, I am forced to essentially pick at random. I feel like I could be doing a better job.
Is there some kind of strategy to selecting a new duke? What are important factors to consider?
For instance, I can see that when given the choice between an ambitious and non-ambitious duke, the latter is preferable. But what if there are multiple candidates none of whom is ambitious?
Best Answer
Their opinion of you, as you mentioned is an important factor. Other traits that I'd look for when choosing a duke are their:
- Skills: Their overall stats will have different effects on the territory, for example a duke with a high stewardship will lead to a higher amount of gold, which will also lead to a higher amount of gold for you. The same applies to martial and learning. A duke with a high intrigue skill can be a good thing if you utilize them as your spy master but they can always use that skill against you with assassination plots.
Traits: Different traits make each character behave differently. A duke with the ambitious trait and a high martial could potential start a faction and have enough men to make a serious threat. I recommend looking for a candidate with the content trait. This trait automatically gives your candidate a +50 opinion towards his liege and makes him ineligible for most plots. Trait list
Leadership: Dukes can be potential candidates for leaders during combat. If you're regularly at war or want another commander for future battles, then choosing someone who will be a good fighter can really help in a battle, especially if you're outnumbered. Refer to the link above for a full list of leadership traits.
Those are some of the key factors that I look for when choosing a duke, always remember that they are your closest allies, and potential enemies.
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Answer 2
Other major factors to consider are their immediate family, dynasty/house power, culture and rulership 'type'.
Family: If you promote someone without a solid line of succession (fertile wife, heirs etc.), you can set their duchy up for internal strife. Usually, this doesn't really interfere with your realm too much, but if your vassals end up warring with each other, some decisions are limited (like changing succession types).
Dynasty: If you pick someone from a powerful house, especially one that has foreign ties, you can set them up for a hostile take over for your realm. This is an outside risk – be especially wary of their traits and opinion of you and keep an eye on heirs as they are born and educated, because if they end up not liking you, they will be able to call in outside allies to their rebellion.
I recently ran a very successful empire where I promoted only my own dynasty members to Kingsship Viceroyalties, Dukes, and (where I could) counts and barons. This ended up trickling down to having a lot of bishops being of my dynasty and frequently putting a dynasty member in the Vatican. The downside to this is if you ever have to assassinate a dynasty member the Kinslayer penalty is brutal. Also, it can be a pain trying to figure out the risks for inbreeding. The upside is that many types of succession and rebellion result in either directly resuming your emperor seat or being in a very nice position to marry back into it. In other words, you're rarely in a position of losing due to having no dynastic heir when everyone of significance in your domain is of your dynasty.
Culture: This becomes a problem in large, conquest based domains. If you get many different cultures in your domain, you can wind up with a lot of people hating you and hating each other. A monolithic culture is more boring and predictable, so where possible promote people of your culture and culture group.
Remember that the culture penalty for vassals can double-dip when your heir is being raised under a different culture from theirs (i.e. raising your own kid in your own culture).
Rulership type: It's usually best to go with feudal rulers as they give even taxes and levies, but don't underestimate the benefits of a vassal merchant republic. Also, if you foresee yourself needing large amounts of piety for a divorce or invasion decree (or just asking for large sums of cash), an Arch-bishopric can be very beneficial.
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