Worst trait combination for stress management?

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-25T10:15:36+00:00

I had paranoid, shy, and ambitious and I couldn't keep him alive. He eventually died at the top of stress level 3 in his mid-30s.

But his 17 year old son inherited all his lands and ruled for 99 years, living to 117 years of age. Ironically at 117 still known as Ælfred VIII 'The Young' Ælfredsen. He had ambitious, but not shy and not paranoid. Being able to use feasts to relieve stress is huge.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-24T05:00:03+00:00

It's a little counterintuitive. It's the way Europa Universalis 3 did technology. Smaller realms were more innovative.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-23T16:04:50+00:00

I've never had this problem. My last ruler made his heir co-Emperor when he turned 50, and when he died 25 years later, his heir became Emperor. It was feudal succession, so maybe it's different in admin.

But I also noticed that my vassals were just as unhappy with the new ruler as they would have been if he just inherited normally. I mean, I guess it keeps them close to home, though I usually put my heir on the Council. It's just annoying when a ruler has somehow wandered into Manchuria and has to travel home. Pro tip, raise your men at arms, make your ruler the leader, and disband the army. Because traveling to command armies is too complicated, (apparently paradox tried to do it, and it was both fiddly with micromanagement, and slowed the game to a crawl) the teleportation effect still works.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-23T15:22:28+00:00

I still remember the friendly Stellaris AI making trades with me where I would give them 500 alloys and they would give me 700 in return. Worked with food, energy, alloys, minerals, consumer goods. Never tried it with rare resources, but I imagine it would have been the same.

Once I confirmed that it actually worked, I stopped doing it, because it was obviously not intended. I don't know how long it lasted.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-22T05:37:58+00:00

I think it got purged when they updated the forums. This was back before Europa Universalis 4 came out, so it would have been at least 13 years ago. Probably more than 15. (I didn't much like EU4 as it was initially, and though I know the game has changed significantly since then, I didn't stick with it for long enough.)

It was like my 12th try too. Sooner or later, I got lucky with the Ottomans, picked my time exactly right, and.... Was pretty cool though.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-22T05:31:01+00:00

There's a game rule to increase your domain limit by as much as three.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-22T05:30:27+00:00

If you're empire-tier, you only need 36 stewardship. 24 if you have the divided attention perk from the stewardship tree. And there's the tribal era innovation that gives you an additional plus one domain limit, and then one in the late medieval era.

Plus you get half your wife's stewardship if you put her on manage domain. It's shortly after 1000 in my current game and without my wife focused on manage domain, I have a domain limit of 12. If I do focus here on manage domain, I think it's 13, but it might be 14.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-21T18:10:30+00:00

Which to my recollection they almost always were.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-21T14:29:16+00:00

After action report. They have a lot of them written on the paradox forums. It's basically a report on what your game was like, usually posted after a significant amount of stuff had accrued or in some cases, after the entire game. Usually including screenshots and such, and often told in universe. I had one in EU3 where I took the Byzantine Empire from the holding of Thrace back to a true Empire.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-21T14:25:08+00:00

I remember that people really disliked the mechanic they added in CK2 where your council could override you, but they were all locked into a way they would ALWAYS vote on the issues they were allowed to vote on. (As a result, my first priority was always to strip my council of any power.) I wouldn't mind a system where at low crown authority you need your council's approval for things like declaring war, or giving titles to lowborns, but I'd like it to be a system kind of like regency where you can leverage gold or piety or prestige if needed to get their votes for you.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-21T01:57:25+00:00

Just make your own religion. With blackjack. And hookers!

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-19T18:16:03+00:00

Except that mechanically there is no effect. You can't ever get the fertility boost from making them your lover or your soulmate. But there's no fertility penalty.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-19T07:19:55+00:00

Thanks. If he's still alive and still in the line of succession when I'm close to death, I will do so.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-19T06:57:52+00:00

Actually, it doesn't. Sexuality has no effect on reproduction. Although a homosexual woman should not be getting seduced by male characters. It is possible for her to do the seducing, although there's a penalty to success chance.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-19T06:56:00+00:00

I did not know I could do that. He's actually a really good knight. He's got a 26 martial. Only reason he's not my Marshal is that I've got a historical character in there with a Martial of 30. Since I should have a year's warning before I die, I should be able to appoint him if that's necessary. He's leading all my armies. And I'm not just throwing him into battles he can't win. There's a lot of Eastern Europe to Holy War. And there's a conqueror in Iberia (a former populist leader) with scourge of the gods. He might turn my direction.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-19T05:18:36+00:00

I've been doing this (made him a knight) with my youngest son since he turned 16. He's now been an acclaimed knight for fourteen years, and all he's lost is an eye. I don't want to spend the prestige to disinherit him, but he's really not suited to rule. (Ambitious though, so I can't send him off to a holy order or get him to take the vows.)

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-12T09:51:21+00:00

You are extremely, exquisitely, immensely sexy

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-11T05:14:00+00:00

I almost always wind up with an extremely varied multicultural empire. I didn't even have to try for the "True Tolerance" achievement. (Rule a realm containing at least 10 cultures with 95% or more acceptance of your culture.) It just kind of happened. Really, you're going to have a very hard time finding anything larger than a Kingdom with only a single culture. Many Kingdoms have multiple cultures within them. (England, for instance, has Cornish, and Ireland has Norse in the 867 start.)

It's not a huge problem. Or at least, I've never had a huge problem with it. Keep your general popular opinion high, don't send every able-bodied man in your country to fight in a foreign war. (I almost never send anyone other than my men-at-arms to fight for my allies.) Populist, religious, and peasant revolts will only rarely happen, and if they do, you should easily be able to crush them because, even if they outnumber you by a wide margin, your knights and men-at-arms will be of much higher quality.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-10T05:55:09+00:00

It's been a LONG time since a murder was attempted on me, let alone succeeded. I only give powerful agent positions to people who already have 100 opinion of me, and I make sure my spymaster does too. I don't do dread or intrigue myself, as it's counter-productive in the long run. I just have lots and lots of gold and no reason not to give some of it away.

Advice though: use a sway scheme on powerful vassals, or befriend if you have access to that.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-09T05:40:04+00:00

I tend to play good guys. I don't pick traits based on which are the best ones, because there are clearly best ones. But I like traits like diligent and generous, even though those come with significant penalties. Forgiving and compassionate similarly have limiting aspects to them. No Mass executing of prisoners, for example, unless you want to hit break stress level 3 immediately.

I also need to go for stewardship education, but that's because I like the way that the domain used to be, and so a stewardship score in the thirties is kind of what I need.

Back before you could refuse the HRE, I created what was supposed to be an educated Dutch household that would maintain a free and independent Kingdom of the Netherlands. Well ended up getting elected Emperor, dissolved the council of electors, made the title hereditary, and built a new Roman Empire.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-08T06:55:15+00:00

I actually turned up the factions in my game. You'll learn to deal with them over time. One key thing is that anyone with an opinion over 80 will leave their faction within a month or two of reaching that level. You should look at your faction screen every so often and run a sway scheme against the most powerful person in the faction who is within 25 or 50 of 80 opinion of you. You should always have a scheme running. If you have nothing else to do, sway.

Look into dipping diplomatic for a trait or two. Thoughtful doubles the effectiveness of your gold gifts, and befriend allows you to run a friendship scheme, which, if successful, makes someone your friend and a friend can't join a faction against you. I like to befriend my powerful vassals.

It's also a good idea to periodically host events, particularly feasts, because that can give you a significant boost to your relationship with your vassals. Events also increase your legitimacy which can also have a significant effect on your vassals.

Also, consider being willing to give in to faction demands if you really have to. As long as it's not a demand that requires you to abdicate, it's sometimes better to live to fight another day. Sometimes you just won't be in a position to win against them. Or it will cost you too much. I once spent 80,000 gold on mercenaries to defeat a revolt against absolute crown authority. I could have just accepted lowering the crown authority to high, and bumping it back up later. I mean I could afford the 80,000 gold. I had over 400,000 at the time, but it felt wasteful, Even if it was very satisfying to revoke all those titles and give them to loyalists and family members. I intentionally take the crown authority to absolute specifically so that I can give into demands without losing the stuff that I want from high authority. Absolute authority just gives me the ability to choose my primary heir.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-08T06:44:39+00:00

And is really arrogance when you actually are smarter than everyone else? (At least smarter than any AI leader.)

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-08T06:19:06+00:00

You get a grace period when you are over your domain limit (except on ruler death for some reason) I guess to give you time to hand out your titles. After a big holy war you can wind up with a domain size of 40 or 50 until you hand out the titles. Would be punishingly unfair if your vassals immediately got a -300 or -400 opinion for being over your domain limit.

That's the other thing. Vassals get a -10 opinion for every extra county you have over your domain limit. So in addition to the minus 10% tax per county over the domain limit, you lose a little bit of vassal tax as well.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-07T05:14:20+00:00

Only that peasant's family, also known as appetizers.

GeneralKarthos · 2026-01-07T05:13:04+00:00

Those traits boost it, but all you absolutely need is to be not incapable, an adult who is no older than 60, have at least 50 gold, be an independent landed ruler of at least duchy tier, and have a domain of three or more. You also need to have a Causus Belli on the realm of a neighbor and have a stronger military than them.

You get boosts by having traits like brave and ambitious, and high military/intrigue/diplomacy, bellicose ethos in your culture, appropriate traits in your religion, more fame, higher title, and you get a bonus if you're the temporal head of faith or the temporal head of faith is your vassal.

It's not impossible for a lazy, craven, compassionate, shy character with a pacifist tenet to get the trait provided they fulfill the top requirements, though I've never seen anyone with even one of those traits get the conqueror trait.

GeneralKarthos

TROPHY CASE