Prestige
From Crusaderkings
Prestige is the measurement of a character's renown within the Crusader Kings universe. How does it work and why do you want it?
Prestige has several benefits. First and foremost, it allows you to access "Grab Title" on a province- the wealthier and more improvements a province has, the more prestige it costs. One can also "Grab Title" on a Duke or King title, though this is significantly more expensive.
Prestige also, up to a level of 1000, gives you loyalty bonuses of about 1 from Courtiers and Vassals. A high prestige also protects you from negative courtier events where (when your badboy is somewhat high and your prestige is low) courtiers may threaten to leave unless you bribe them.
Furthermore, Prestige at levels 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 each grant you 10% bonuses towards decreasing the MTTH for cultural conversions.
Prestige is acquired from several actions.
1. Having Dukes as Vassals. 2. Holding on to King titles. 3. Finishing certain buildings. 4. Your actions and choices in certain events. 5. Being granted titles from a ruler. (it is recommended to give your choice heir lots of Count and Duke provinces to make him prestigious prior to taking over)
6. It is also acquired based on war score. This is based on a small score for control of provinces, and on the cost of titles and enemy AI holds. Let's say that a neighboring AI has two provinces. Conquering one gives you a prestige of 100. Conquering both gives you access to force demands on the titles he holds against you. Like say you have several King title he has claims on- this could easily net you thousands or event tens of thousands of prestige! Force him to give up those titles and the prestige of each is applied to your war score in the demands section. However, giving up all those titles would give you a negative war score and thus negative prestige.
Generally this doesn't begin to happen until later in the game as AI keep grabbing and obtaining more titles from events and other miscellaneous actions. Until then players must be more clever and hoarding of prestige.
When you do acquire huge chunks of prestige, be careful- grabbing titles increases your badboy by 1 each. Don't let your badboy get too high, and make sure to spend it on expensive and valuable provinces.
One more thing- beware having negative prestige levels, this is something which you should try to avoid at all costs.
In easier difficulties Prestige costs are significantly reduced. It is advised that new players starts start on the lowest difficulty level then slowly build themselves up to higher difficulties as they get the hang of the system.
