No worries man. I figured with all the stuff about NCAA going on, you probably missed it.

Apparently, when it comes to war, you have to pay attention so that you're not attacking over water (not sure if it applies to seas or not but definitely applies to rivers) as it gives you a negative multiplier (but it doesn't tell you what kind of negative, how severe it is, or anything like that). Also, if you're a King, you can choose who controls your armies instead of it basically always using you. Having a higher military score for the leader of each of the three flanks, apparently, makes a HUGE difference in how well your armies fight. Mercenaries suck balls by themselves because they have no leader of their flanks. What I've seen suggested is combining them with your normal forces so that you can use whatever leader you do have for the flanks as their leader to make them more effective (I made the mistake of hiring them and sending them out by themselves and, while I still won, they weren't the most effective at their job.


My main question is this though:

How do you get claims on lands that you don't have a de jure claim on yet? With your Chancellor? I've tried that for several years to no avail and I'm not sure what to do about it. My Chancellor isn't the best (I think he has a 12 or something currently) but you'd think even a semi-adept one would be able to do something within a few years...

I definitely think I'm going to start over because I think I fucked up changing my ruler setup to the one that gives the eldest son all the titles instead of splitting them up among everyone. At the time, I only had one with a liege (that liked me) controlling another county so there was really not reason to change it. It basically just pissed off my heir's two sons because they no longer had a chance at some titles.

So, that actually reminds me of another two questions I have:

Should I always strip county titles from someone so that I can give them to people in my court instead of letting them keep them? I read somewhere that letting them keep them isn't the worst thing, especially if they like you, but, later down the road, I actually lost my really good Chancellor (had like a 15 or 16 score) to them because my liege invited them to their court away from my court. How do I prevent that from happening and what do I do if it does happen to get them back?