Instead 2 of the provinces went back to a muslim (sheik?) and a Portuguese. The muslim factions took Portucale, so I conquered all of Portucale but when I offered peace to the muslim faction I didn't receive the provinces. I was able to inherit Galicia and take Aragon from my brother. I started playing as King of Castilla on Sunday. I've played for one day and I still don't fully grasp the De Jure system and Usurping titles. The only time this doesnt work is when one of the Muslim states conquers every, then you just have to wait for rebellions within that realm and strike quickly before they sue for peace with their former overlords. I just let the muslims take out the other Spanish kingdoms. In hindsight though, I probably should have just pressed my claims to their thrones while I had them my successive generations didn't end up inheriting those claims and now I have to gain their territory the slow, piecemeal way of fabricating claims and casus belli. Rinse and repeat.ДЄfter that, I simply usurped the other Spanish thrones because I ended up holding more of the de jure crown territory than they did. Build up a reserve of a few hundred gold, hire a mercenary force and ransom off any prisoners you capture in war hopefully you achieve your war aims before you run out of money. As a bonus, you oftentimes receive generous cash infusions from the Pope if you take this route. Starting as King of Galicia, I generally ignored trying to unite the Spanish thrones in favor of declaring Holy Wars against the southern Emirates.

Meanwhile, you will probably not be that popular as a ruler as you have an unhappy vassal base and potentially negative traits such as Kinslayer, acquired along the way to uniting the thrones. By the time you will have united the Spanish thrones, you will still only have a relatively small section of northern Spain versus a united southern Spain and North Africa. I feel that trying to unite the Spanish thrones early allows for Mauretania or Africa to do the same and consolidate their holdings. I'd add that the key is also to attack the Emirates at opportune times (when the bulk of their army is away, or depleted after some in-fighting, or when they are revolting against their liege). 7500 stack of almost all knights and heavy infantry is unstoppable. Then just hire those guys and roflstomp the Muslims. Key to fighting Muslims in Spain pre-Crusaders is to save a ton of money so you can buy a mercanary unit and try to target Muslim armies that have a lot of leaders you can ransom them back to buy more mercanaries, basically you just want to stay alive until the Holy Orders show up.

But if for some reason you were muslim/pagan, you could then use them against christians. Knight orders will still only fight infidels, even under your personal command. Works for the knight orders too, it's actually easier than the mercs because you can just skip to step 3, but you still have to vassalize, so the method from before is probably more realistic to accomplish. It helps if you're strong, have good relations, and same culture. This is probably one of the more difficult parts to get accomplished.

So the only way to obtain them is the following method:ДЎ) Provoke mercs by not having enough to pay themДў) Make sure that whatever they take over you're the de jure liege of it (ie king of germany if they take saxony).ДЈ) Make the count/duke title count as their primary title, this is done by making them go through their succession line, which means either assassinating them (I hope you have a lot of gold/piety), or waiting it out.Д¤) Once their primary title is the one that you're the de jure liege to, vassalize them. Since the only way to give them land is to provoke an invasion there's no way to plant an heir on a county/barony beforehand. #343 Ok that method works great for crusaders, now for the merc titles.

Crusader kings ii forums