If you have free investiture, you get to elect your own bishops, which is pretty neat. But do their stats really matter?
Usually, I simply go through the list and pick people who have a high opinion of me, and are thus likely to pay tax to me rather than the guy with the funny hat. I also make sure they don't have dope stats that could otherwise benefit my court. But other than that, do their skills really matter?
For example:
- If they have high stewardship, will they be able to collect moretaxes for me?
- If they have high martial skills, will I be able to draw alarger levy? I guess a decent score here will at least make thembetter commanders.
- Is it true that only bishops can be elected court chaplains? Inthat case, a high learning stat wouldn't be amiss.
I've also noticed that appointing unlanded (non-heir) sons bishops is a neat way to stop them complaining about not having a title.
Also, I've noticed that some times all my appointed bishop heirs are unset, so I have to appoint them all over. Is this a bug, or is there a logical reason for this? I haven't noticed too many bishops dying, and the ruler and the pope are not unchanged.
Crusader Kings 2 Stats
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4 Answers
As far as I'm aware, the tax income and levy size you get from any vassal are based on their holdings, and modified by your realm's taxation/levy laws and the vassal's opinion of you (for taxes at least - I'm unsure whether opinion influences levy size). Catholic Bishops have the added complication of paying their tax to either you or the Pope, depending on who they have the higher opinion of. I don't think a vassal's statistics influence any of these things.
Pretty sure any male of your court can be appointed to the role of Court Chaplain - on appointment the character's portrait will change to show them wearing religious garb.
You're right that making unlanded son's Bishops counts as giving them land. Be careful with this though, as once made a Bishop your son is not eligible to inherit other titles from you in the usual way. If your main heir has an 'unfortunate accident' you may find yourself suddenly lacking an eligible a successor!
For realms smaller than Kingdom, any lord can appoint a successor for any Bishop that is his direct vassal. If no appointment is made, the new Bishop is appointed internally by the Church (or Pope). Larger Catholic realms must opt for one of either Free or Papal Investiture - Free operates as before but angers the Pope, while Papal gives the Pope sole control of Bishop appointments in your Kingdom and grants you the Pope's favour (useful when seeking to excommunicate rivals, divorce wives and so on).
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Martial matters but Stewardship does not matter (much)
When you hover over the red Levy bar below the picture of their church on the county screen, you will see a percentual malus or bonus for 'Owner Martial Skill' which depends on the martial skill of the bishop/baron/burgher of the holding, not their boss. So you should make sure that your lowest-rank vassals have good martial skill.
But stewardship of bishops (and other vassals on that level) has no direct benefit for you. I happen to have two completely unupgraded churches in my realm, both owned by bishops with 100 opinion. But one has a stewardship of
10(20)
and the other a stewardship of 0(0)
(my imbecile brother who had to be removed from inheritance). Both have the exact same Base Tax
of 8.00 gold. The actual Tax
value which arrives at the liege is modified by the stewardship of the liege, not of the vassal: The imbecile is below a count, and that count gets slightly more out of him than I get out of my guy, because the count has slightly better stewardship than me.However, better stewardship means that they make more money for themselves, which they might then invest into upgrades for their holding. Unfortunately higher-level upgrades are far outside of the financial capabilities of a bishop, even one with godlike stewardship.
Other stats don't matter much either
- Diplomacy might help them a bit to stay out of trouble with other people, but that is rarely a problem for such low-level vassals.
- Intrigue of your vassals should better be low, so they don't start murdering people you would prefer to keep alive or get other stupid ideas. Low intrigue also makes it easier for you to get them out of the way through murder or imprisonment, should it become necessary.
- Learning only matters for tech growth and their personal piety. The first only matters for counts and above and you couldn't care less about the latter.
So the ideal stats for a baron-level vassal is a stupid brute with awesome martial skill and absolutely no other talents.
Regarding your court chaplain question:
You can't make a noble or burgher your court chaplain, but unlanded courtiers are just as eligible as bishops. So when you want to keep your option open to make that high-learning guy your chaplain one day, just remember not to accidentally give him a city or castle.
Edit: Here is a proof which uses two other bishops I control directly which shows that their stewardship doesn't matter for me. I present to you my trusted bishops Ualan and Orthanach (the latter also happens to be my brother, but that shouldn't matter). As you can see, Ualan has far better stewardship:
They own the exact same church, but the one owned by Ualan has a higher income even though his stewardship is lower. I believe this is because his church is in my capital, so he enjoys a better bonus due to church infrastructure technology.
According to their demesne screen, Ualan gets more out of his church than Orthanach, despite his worse tech bonus. That's where his stewardship pays off. But, they both pay almost the exact same tax to me (difference below 1% - likely due to rounding). For the record, my church vassal tax is 45% (medium):
![Stats Stats](https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images//2017/12/crusader-kings-2-data-620x320.jpg/RPSS/resize/760x-1/format/jpg/quality/70)
However, the tax I receive from either is more than what they pay to me, but still almost the same. I presume that this magical money-growth comes from my stewardship bonus, my tech bonus or both:
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![Crusader Kings 2 Stats Crusader Kings 2 Stats](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123706420/486886703.png)
To at least some small degree, all of the stats of a vassal bishop (and vassals generally) matter or can matter, but martial and stewardship are the only ones that have a direct and immediate effect. The direct effect of the martial attribute on the size of the levies your vassals will raise for you was addressed in Philipp's answer so I won't address it here. There is also a similar bonus to the taxes you receive that are affect by the vassal's stewardship stat and not by your own.
Stewardship Matters
State stewardship, which is the sum of the ruler's stewardship attribute, half his wife's, and all of his steward's, provides a 2% bonus to that ruler's demesne income for every point over 5. Note that bishops can have wives, and while bishops don't have councillors, all baron rank rulers act as their own councillor. A vassal's total income is his demesne income plus all the taxes he receives from his vassals. A bishop can't have any vassals so his demesne income will be his total income. The total income is the multiplied by the vassal's taxation percentage, which is determined by the type of title the vassal holds (feudal, mayor or church) and the current taxation law for that kind of title. The vassal passes on the taxes to his liege and keeps the rest. A bishop can choose to send the taxes to a Pope instead, one that is both his religious leader and that he likes better than his liege.
Proof
As proof I offer the following example from the end of my game playing as the de Normandie dynasty. I've chosen a prince-bishop as an example as the numbers involved are bigger and because it's a more complicated case that better represents how vassals are taxed generally.
The tool tip shows that Prince-Bishop Christopher's demesne income has total base value of 25.4 before being modified by his state stewardship. The percentage shown appears to be a bug, the actual percentage used is 30%, which is what we would expect given his state stewardship of 20. After the stewardship bonus is applied he receives a total of 33.10 from his own holdings. Add in 49.44 in taxes collected from own his vassals he has a total income of 82.54. Of that he pays to 28.88 to his liege in taxes. That's the expected taxation rate of 35%, given that his liege's realm has the Minimal Church Tax law in effect. If the vassal's stewardship wasn't a factor in the taxes the liege receives we would expect that only
(25.4 + 49.44) * 35% = 26.19
would have to be paid.The same is true for an ordinary bishop:
The amount paid the bishop's liege is 35% of his total income, which since he has no vassals is also his demesne income. If the bishop's stewardship didn't apply to taxes then he would be paying his liege only
25.6 * 35% = 8.96
.We can also see that the liege's stewardship attribute doesn't affect the taxes he collects from either vassal:
There's a tiny difference between if you add up all the vassal bishop's individual taxes and the total church tax due to rounding, but no where near what it would be if the liege's stewardship was taken into account. Like with his vassals the liege's state stewardship only affects his demesne income, not his income from taxes.
Indirect Effects
Your bishop's traits and attributes can have other indirect effects, many if of which won't matter much if you're an emperor, and some that could matter a great deal if you're a count. Promoting a landless character to bishop means that they now become players in the game, for good or bad. Even if they're beneath your notice their actions will either tend to benefit you or harm you. The success of these actions, along with whether they're attempt or not, will all in some degree be affected by one or more of their attributes and traits.
Military
Promoting someone from your court to bishop, in realms with a least Limited Crown Authority, will allow you to assign them as commanders in your armies. Even if the holding is poor and undeveloped, making the martial levy bonus insignificant, you might still want to nominate someone with a high military attribute so he can participate in your battles. Such a holding might be ideal for an ambitious family member in your court who's martial abilities would otherwise go to waste because you don't want to risk giving them a better title.
Stewardship
Since a vassal's stewardship attribute affects how much money ends up in his own pockets, it affect how often your vassal can afford to upgrading his own holdings. This increases both taxes and levies the holding generate for the vassal, which in turn increases the taxes and levies you receive from the vassal. Effectively your vassal's stewardship provides a additional indirect bonus to your income and levies, one that can potentially snowball into a huge benefit in the long term.
Diplomacy & Learning
If you're playing with the Sons of Abraham DLC then diplomacy and learning will have direct and indirect effects on your vassals chances on becoming a Cardinal, and if a Cardinal being elected Pope. Numerous traits also effect the likelihood of gaining either of these positions, so if you have this DLC you'll want to consider your candidates stats fairly carefully when nominating bishops.
Traits
Most traits only matter for the effect they have the character's attributes, but there are a number you might want to consider when appointing a bishop. The Greedy trait gives a 10% bonus to demesne income and so increases he taxes you collect in the same way the vassal's stewardship attribute does. The Content, Envious and Ambitious traits will all affect your new vassal's opinion of you. In particular watch out for the Ambitious trait, as it might not factor in a character's opinion of you while he's just a courtier. Traits that change a character's health affect how long he lives, while the military traits will affect how well he performs as a commander in your armies.
Granting Bishoprics
In addition to nominating bishops, you will probably from time get the opportunity grant a church holding directly from your demesne. This opportunity usually comes about after creating a new holding or gaining some though a holy war. In this case attributes can make a big difference because you can grant the title to anyone in your realm, not just to someone in your court. Say for instance a duke in your kingdom has an amazing spymaster with 25 intrigue. Assuming that the spymaster is landless (and not his wife) you can grant the spymaster a church holding. The spymaster will now become your vassal, giving up his position in the duke's council and now eligible to hold a position in yours. If you're rich enough it might be worth it to create a church (or other) holding just for this purpose.
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Actually, the stewardship level of a bishop modifies their demense income, which is what you collect taxes on, so yes, stats matter, specifically stewardship.
KeithKeith
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This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Crusader Kings 2 [official site].
Meet Domnall, Earl of Osraige. He’s a pretty affable guy. He’s friends with his neighbouring rulers, and all seems peaceful. But he’s also ambitious and a just little crazy, and he’s about to make a big mess of the Emerald Isle.
Domnall is one of the hundreds of characters across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that Crusader Kings 2 is simulating here in the year 1066. Whether the player is interacting with them or not, they’ll be vying with each other, allying, marrying, dying, giving birth, and generally doing all of the things that your ruler can do. Crusader Kings 2 is a game all about people. It’s about marriages and dependencies, accordances and kinship. And at the heart of how it models all these dense and messy human complexities is a single value that governs the way its little computer aristocrats behave:
THE MECHANIC: OpinionsTo the computer, Domnall is long list of opinions: those he has of every other ruler in the game, and those every other ruler has of him. Each is recorded on a scale that goes from boiling hatred at –100 to dumbstruck love at 100, and at any time each might change according to how he acts and how he changes over the course of his life. And they affect everything that he decides to do to other rulers, and what they’ll do to him. This simple idea, that characters’ opinions of each other can differ and that they inform what they’ll do to each other, is a large part of how Crusader Kings 2’s medieval world feels so analogue, so human, despite comprising simply of numbers.
Now, our Domnall really likes three of his neighbours. His opinion of all of them is over 50. His opinion of the Earl Diarmait of Laigin is 25, a lower value but still pretty friendly. In normal circumstances he wouldn’t consider attacking him, since the standard threshold for an AI to consider attacking another ruler of the same religion and culture is an opinion below 20.
But Crusader Kings 2 is never this simple, and opinion is not the only characteristic that makes up Domnall. He also has a set of several traits, just like every other character. Traits cover such positive and negative peculiarities as Flamboyant Schemer, which grants bonuses to a ruler’s ability to scheme and set plots, and Leper, which makes a ruler more or less infertile and reduces their ability to conduct diplomacy.
All these characteristics are visible to the player, but every computer-controlled character also has another set of five hidden personality values. They’re the result of developer Paradox imagining what might influence the behaviour of medieval people: there’s zeal, the extent to which the ruler hates heretics and members of other religions. Honour is about sticking to deals. Greed affects a ruler’s tendency to try to accrue money. Aggression is a ruler’s propensity for warmongering and realising its ambitions, and rationality is how straightforward the ruler behaves.
Domnall has the Ambitious trait, which gives his internal aggression score +40, and the Arbitrary trait, which gives his rationality score –20. These two values are critical for his future. They upend Domnall’s friendly attitude, because the way the game works is to add half of each to the threshold for his willingness to go to war with people. This means that rather than having an opinion threshold of attacking others when his opinion on them is under 20, he’ll happily attack anyone with an opinion he holds of under 50.
Perhaps the Earl Diarmait of Laigin detected a certain drive burning in Domnall’s eye when they went out drinking one time. If he did, perhaps he thought that since their forces are evenly matched, Domnall wouldn’t actually act on it. Too bad for Diarmait, he didn’t factor in Domnall’s irrationality. Most rulers will only go to war against forces that they overpower by 20%. But Domnall’s low rationality tally means he has no such qualms, and now he presses for a Casus Belli: a justification for going to war.
This kind of scenario is being resolved by Crusader Kings 2 all the time across the entire map, whether you’re there to notice (perhaps you’re playing as Diarmait?) or not. Its AI isn’t omniscient, though – while the game is played in realtime, AI actions are taken in pseudo realtime to keep the speed of the game smooth. The game determines which day each character in the game will get its processing time, adding an element of chance, spreading out the load so it will work on lower spec computers.
When it’s time to process a ruler, the game first looks at its long-term strategic goals, and then various sub-systems begin managing different areas of its affairs in order to achieve them. One looks at the council and considers whether there are better candidates available. One commands military matters, setting up plans for armies and executing them. Others evaluate diplomatic actions with other characters and make choices for special events that might affect the ruler, applying its personality values to determine what happens. Some systems don’t fire every time – they might instead only run every year, or when the situation that relates to them changes.
One of those is the system that determines the ruler’s strategic goals, something that’s only invoked when its personality changes – characters sometimes receive new traits as they grow older – or if they marry, their liege is replaced, or someone nearby dies. They assemble a list of provinces they wish to take, characters they’d like to have assassinated, decide to get an heir, develop the size of their army: projects that tend to take months of planning. They have to constantly check these goals against their opinions, though; just as Domnall did, they will only aim to take provinces that their opinion thresholds will support.
For a ruler without an heir, other factors set in. If a woman, age is important because her fertility won’t last. Culture, religion and government are important, too, affecting whether the ruler can have concubines or multiple spouses. Perhaps the ruler is Christian and married, in which case they may ask the pope for a divorce.
Something very interesting about Crusader Kings 2, though, is that despite the apparent complexity of its model of human behaviour, its AI is not as deep as that in strategy stablemate Europa Universalis IV, which uses the same engine. “CK in many ways has the simplest AI of all of our games,” game director Henrik Fåhraeus tells me. As with any game AI, Crusader Kings 2 is routinely criticised for having its characters make apparently stupid or bizarre decisions that tend to lose them dynasties or simply appear ridiculous. But smartness isn’t really the point. “It’s a very conscious decision on our part to prioritise acting in accordance with personality and opinions rather than to be rational and just political about everything,” says Fåhraeus. Look back at history, and decisions are clearly made by actual people. “It should be personal, basically, it’s a game about people and their flaws.”
Scripts are a whole other side of how the game works. Written by Fåhraeus and his team, they pop up and tell stories, giving players and game characters choices to act on as they progress. Some are associated with specific and significant historical figures, such as Charlemagne, recounting his life and events of the period, but as Fåhraeus says, “I think that was probably not a very good decision on our part, because the early game doesn’t last for that long.” A game of Crusader Kings 2 tends to last hundreds of years, and all that special content is soon left in the past, so now the plan is to note and develop interesting archetypical relationships between people, such as that between Charlemagne and his controlling mother, and making procedural stories based on them available all the time.
Another thing Fåhraeus would like to develop is the game’s ability to build stories. He’s been exploring the idea of building a system that can detect the natural emergence of a story in the game (though he admits it’s very hard to do) and guiding emergence, trying to make it happen in a more directed and focused way, a little like a game master. As a first step on that he’s working on a system that maintains special relationships between the player and other characters, such as a nemesis that keeps coming back. “He shouldn’t be immune to death, but the random numbers should be in his favour, because it keeps him around and giving him comebacks and you will feel as a player, ‘Why won’t this guy ever die?!’ That’s what I’m after.” Similarly there might be mentor figures or comic sidekicks, attempting to make some of the hundreds of characters around you stand out and stick around.
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![Crusader Crusader](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123706420/685369154.jpg)
Something else he’s working on is breaking down archetypal stories into their essential component pieces in such a way that should they be scattered in the game you’ll notice their pattern. “Like vengeance: how can we break that down into pieces? If we manage to do this correctly at least, you will get a picture when you pour your pieces on the floor. That’s what we’re hoping,” he says.
These are fine ideals which will only make Crusader Kings 2 richer, but all of it is built on the underlying network of relationships that span the gameworld. Opinion is a single figure, making it simple enough for the computer to use, but you can also imagine so much based on the behaviours around that figure – jealousy, admiration, wariness, love, hate, disinterest – because you’re able to colour it with context, personality traits, local and international politics. Domnall, our Irish earl, seems hell-bent on destroying his relationships with his friends. His ambition seems to have made him self-destructive, but maybe this is the start of a powerful dynasty? You can’t help but be curious as to what this bunch of numbers will do next.
So, I just bought CK2 today.
The most common piece of advice seemed to be 'start as someone in Ireland and learn the ropes!'. Fine I thought, and picked some guy with one region and one vassal. Three generations later, I'm in a position where my son and heir has an independent kingdom in the middle of Ireland while I got the rest, he happens to be a genius though and for some reasons he went from 100+ to negative 60 because he wants more land. Land which I can't grant him because he's independent. I don't know.
My guy, meanwhile, is a bit of an asshole, known as cruel and not very intelligent. I spend the next three small wars trying to get him killed so my son can take over and unite Ireland with the help of his dad's war chest. For some reason I also have Cornwall, I don't really know how or why. Succession/doling out titles is the most confusing system so far. I don't speak medieval.
ANYWAYS, HERE'S THE FUCKING CRAZY PART JESUS CHRIST so, I can't get my guy killed but a golden opportunity presents itself. A glorious crusade. I send him down there alone with all the men he could muster from Cornwall. Because fuck Cornwall.
321 men. They will join their lord in heaven and they will die in the mud outside of Jerusalem for the cause of a united Ireland.
I look for the papal stack and I think 'hey, maybe if he dies fighting with the pope I'll get some sort of bonus'. The fight is happening right outside Jerusalem and the Muslim stack is somewhere close to 12k and the Christians have 9k plus 321 brave souls from Cornwall. Somehow my fucking 'king' (he's not a king yet but it sounds better than 'my dude') manages to corner the leader of the caliphate in battle. He defeats him and imprisons him and this helps end the war immediately and my idiot king, the guy I wanted dead, instead ends up with all of Jerusalem even though he only sent 321 men. That's like 50 titles/lands/whatevers over limit and my court consists of 11 people and I have like 3 sons. There's a bishop that holds 20 separate titles and he's pretty stoked.
Just to give you an idea of how fucked up my kingdom is: I threw a huge tournament (because why not?) and as soon as it ended and people started to leave, bandits swooped down and raided every single entourage because there's more thieves guilds than toilets in the holy land at the moment.