When you feel like you are ready to claim independance??

[veronicaaltoids]

so I started a new campaign, no cheating, realistic setting.
have played 300+ days, joined Western Empire, at clan 4, have 2 cities, income only 2000+, 200k gold now

so I wonder when will you guys decide to claim independence???
how many cities you need initially? how much money you need?
I would guess in the late game become so boring, bec you only have one goal, is to accumulate as much as money possible,
so when you try to convince lords to join you, you have the money to bribe them, it cost at least 10 millions+ to convince a few powerful lords to be on your side

 

[Jaang]

I started a new Aserai campaign with 1.5.7 beta, and plan to merc for the Asersai (once they get in a war; they've been at peace for a year and a half) until they are about to take a city I want, and then upgrade to vassalhood just before the vote. That's the plan, anyway.


As for independance, I may never "declare" independance if things work out right.


Step A: win lots of battles, by showing up at field battles already in-progress, and get relation points for saving the day.


Step B: Capture every single enemy lord you can, and immediately cart them to a friendly city or castle and donate the prisoner lord at the keep's dungeon. You'll get an immediate relation bonus with the entire clan that owns that city/castle. Once you're at 100 relation with one clan, stp donating lords to them, and dobate to other clans. After enough wars, and enough captures, you'll be at 100 relation with every clan and every noble in your kingdom.


Step C: Get married, and get both brothers married... each to a different culture woman. Thier sons will be your culture and (eventually) will lead war parties, and thier daughters will be the other culture... all the better to watch over wrong-culture fiefs that might fall into your hands.


Step D: Get to clan tier six, and get leadership and stewardship to 275 each. With the right laws in place, even as a vassal, you could field a clan-only army of over 900 troops.


Step E: Eventually, the king dies. Every noble in the kingdom is your personal friend, and you can smash into enemy cities using only your personal clan army, so they vote for you.


No fuss, no muss, no breaking of oaths or civil wars.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

With the rebellions you can go very early and start snagging towns without ever being a vassal if you want. Betaing up a rebel faction and taking thier town is easy peasy.
Being a vassal is basically only good for leading army around to grind leadership to 150 or so.
I would say, before jumping from independent to faction ruler

1: have a small faction's worth of towns for your own clan, stocked with good units in the garrisons. Like 5 towns or more. This makes your power level bigger and makes it more likely for vassals to want to join you for less and (I think ) stay with you. I say I think because this is how I do it and I always feel I have smoother time getting vassals then most report and I've never had one bail before or after getting them a fief.

2: Have couple million Denars, for paying for vassals, merc, anything else.

3: Be okay with possibly always being at war forever, because once your vassals get going it's likely they will constantly try to declare 3+ wars all over.
So do all your shopping and other non war stuff you would do first.

 

[veronicaaltoids]

I started a new Aserai campaign with 1.5.7 beta, and plan to merc for the Asersai (once they get in a war; they've been at peace for a year and a half) until they are about to take a city I want, and then upgrade to vassalhood just before the vote. That's the plan, anyway.


As for independance, I may never "declare" independance if things work out right.


Step A: win lots of battles, by showing up at field battles already in-progress, and get relation points for saving the day.


Step B: Capture every single enemy lord you can, and immediately cart them to a friendly city or castle and donate the prisoner lord at the keep's dungeon. You'll get an immediate relation bonus with the entire clan that owns that city/castle. Once you're at 100 relation with one clan, stp donating lords to them, and dobate to other clans. After enough wars, and enough captures, you'll be at 100 relation with every clan and every noble in your kingdom.


Step C: Get married, and get both brothers married... each to a different culture woman. Thier sons will be your culture and (eventually) will lead war parties, and thier daughters will be the other culture... all the better to watch over wrong-culture fiefs that might fall into your hands.


Step D: Get to clan tier six, and get leadership and stewardship to 275 each. With the right laws in place, even as a vassal, you could field a clan-only army of over 900 troops.


Step E: Eventually, the king dies. Every noble in the kingdom is your personal friend, and you can smash into enemy cities using only your personal clan army, so they vote for you.


No fuss, no muss, no breaking of oaths or civil wars.

OMG
you sir, have so much patience and time to play this game for so long

I always don't have patience, after 300+ days I got bored and I want to be a ruler

 

[veronicaaltoids]

With the rebellions you can go very early and start snagging towns without ever being a vassal if you want. Betaing up a rebel faction and taking thier town is easy peasy.
Being a vassal is basically only good for leading army around to grind leadership to 150 or so.
I would say, before jumping from independent to faction ruler

1: have a small faction's worth of towns for your own clan, stocked with good units in the garrisons. Like 5 towns or more. This makes your power level bigger and makes it more likely for vassals to want to join you for less and (I think ) stay with you. I say I think because this is how I do it and I always feel I have smoother time getting vassals then most report and I've never had one bail before or after getting them a fief.

2: Have couple million Denars, for paying for vassals, merc, anything else.

3: Be okay with possibly always being at war forever, because once your vassals get going it's likely they will constantly try to declare 3+ wars all over.
So do all your shopping and other non war stuff you would do first.

I guess you will be at least 1000+ days before you claim independence??? or 800+ days???

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

claim independence

What do you mean claim independence? If you mean create kingdom then I usual have done it around 700 or so.
I you just mean back stabbing your faction and fighting them that happens much sooner as soon as I'm bored or feel the faction is getting too big.
If you mean just being independent and fighting a faction, I start doing that by day 40 or so if I'm not joining a faction.

 

[JackFrosty]

In my campaigns 400 days is about the time I become independent. By that time I'm at clan tier 4, have a very elite army and 3 full extra parties lead by companions. I don't think the number of castles/towns you posses before you become independent matters since you will either give up your holdings of or be war with your previous kingdom. I play with a lot of mods so it's hard to tell if this is a vanilla feature or not but when I keep my holdings I just pay the enemy kingdom for peace, not sure how expensive this is without mods.

 

[Userre]

There are a few important criteria you typically want to meet before becoming a ruler.

Obviously personal character upgrades are important. You want to make sure your character is pretty leveled (I aim for 22-25).

You also want your clan tier to be reasonable. Clan Tier 4 is sort of the most relevant clan tier as that's when you have access to the most clan parties. You also want to make sure that whoever you're putting into parties is a competent commander. Your brother, and potentially some wives, as well as some companions, can all be great options. If you plan on marrying off your sister, marry her off to a powerful clan and focus on recruiting that clan into your faction as soon as possible. I also prefer that her husband have positive traits so that's something to keep in mind. Unfortunately my sister just died in battler recently, a true tragedy.

Perhaps the most important criteria is to ensure that you have high relations with the clans with the same culture as the fiefs you plan to capture. I went for a Vlandia playthrough, and I made sure to have high relations with all the clans I wanted to eventually join my kingdom. It's much more challenging to get clans to join your kingdom now because clans don't go broke as easily as they used to, and so you also need to ensure that you have access to a good amount of funds (I am for 500k to start as I expect to be in the red for some time after becoming independent).

Getting clans to join your kingdom is extremely important as the faction you take land from will constantly be declaring war on you. Every clan makes a massive difference and once you have 3-4, you tend to have the edge on the faction you're constantly warring with.

It's also not a bad idea to get high relations with clans nearby who own lands you might be interested in conquering in the future. In my Vlandia campaign, I let all battanians go when I captured them. When I eventually capture those lands, I won't want vlandians running them as there's a higher risk of rebellion. Therefore, as I capture battanian territory, I'll put battanian clans in charge of them.

I personally also like to get my leadership up to 150 for the coveted Veteran's Respects perk. This perk allows you to convert bandits into noble units (highwaymen -> vlandian champions -> banner knights and forest bandits -> fians -> fian champions). It's worth noting that you'll have to join a faction in order to get leadership high as you'll need to be running an army. Personally, I think you should be able to run a 'clan army' even as a mercenary but as of now you can't.

Fortunately with the new patch, snowballing is significantly rarer and you have a lot of time to build all of these things up. I'd also recommend fitting your companions with respectable gear, but not the best gear you can find. You can find the time and money for that once you're established, but that 60k denars you want to use on that armor piece for one companion? It would be better used helping to get lords to join your kingdom. The costs can be quite high, especially if they have fiefs that they're transferring over.