I see you've made it this far because maybe you get bored of constant wars, maybe you want to focus on your development and improve your culture, maybe you like your sister or the worst, maybe you just don't like war. Well you're in the correct place my greedy friend. I will teach you how to get some sweet titles without spilling any blood of your own. Let's begin!

CK3 is big. Bigger than me even (my sister says so), so there are some alternatives to where i will suggest you to start your adventure. Feel free to pick wherever you want but preferably try to be in an empire as a vassal. Don't worry yourself, you'll have countless opportunities to either claim the throne of your liege or break free and make yourself a brand new empire.

My suggestions are;
• The Classic, be vassal in the Holy Roman Empire, if you're a common habsburg chin enjoyer, you can even pick yourself in Switzerland as Habsburg Dynasty in 1066 start.
• Be a vassal in France, i know its not an empire but in my usual scenarios, either in 1066 or 867, france usually creates the Frankish Empire rather quickly.
• My last suggestion of being a vassal in Seljuks in 1066 start is more difficult in my opinion, haven't really given it a real solid gamethrough but still, i could be wrong i ain't god.

I'd say picking an already made character with Dynasty members is the better option since i will explain why we will need as many dynasty members as possible while being the dynasty head holding the Liege title while other dynasty members are mostly our vassals or tools. But if you really want to make your own character there's nothing wrong with it except you might need to wait for a little longer for some stuff.

Alright. You are now in the game, playing as your own or preexisting character. Good job, proud of you!

Step 1: Now to get to business, first things first you will need to find yourself a spouse, you can go 2 different ways with this.

Option 1: You can find yourself a lowborn or very low army ally sacrificing the claim of your spouse and good army ally for "fertile" trait. That way you'll get more children, i suggest this for people who play as a custom character as a count or duke with multiple counties to their name since you'll already have a decent army or the possibility to increase your army. But wait, you are asking yourself isn't this a guide to make an empire without wars? Yes, and the greater army you have less likely the AI will be to declare wars on you, the logic is;

if AI is close to player
then check if AI has better army than player
if yes
then fabricate claim
then declare war
if no
leave player alone or intrigue

It's kind of a tool that we don't use but use at the same time, more army is always better no matter if you use it or not.

Keep in mind if you do get many children, it could result in a divide between your lands when your current character dies. For that i suggest forming a duchy as soon as possible to at least make your siblings your vassals, that is one of our goals in the end, making our vassals our dynasty members.

Option 2: Find yourself a spouse that brings you a very good alliance (with high levies to their name). This way you'll get more army behind you, but be careful with the liege of your spouse, if they're too old, they'll die and your spouses sibling might not care about you enough to get in an alliance with you.

Step 2: INTRIGUE, yes, you heard me right. Intrigue is the main tool we will be using to "inherit" some titles. Pick intrigue tree as long as you can with your players. Educate your heirs in Intrigue no matter their childhood trait. And go for Murder Scheme improvements in the Skill Tree.

Step 3: Pick yourself a title you want to have. I am doing a habsburg playthrough for this guide, so i will be going for Duchy of Austria. First thing you need to check when you pick yourself a title you want to have is to check the children of the current owner of the title. The more sons they have, the more you need to do unless you find a strong hook to marry your daughter matrilineally to owners of the titles heir out of nowhere which is rather difficult. If you really want a title but they have way too many heirs that it is impossible for you to kill them all, or if the current owner of the title you want does not have any daughters you can make your son marry with, just look for another title, we can come back to this title later. Find an easy title to snatch for now, an empire isn't made in a day.

Step 4: Now that you've picked a title that you can get in your pocket, preferably a duchy or even a kingdom inside an empire which most likely will result in claimant wars if you succeed (thats the reason why i won't be going over it, i'll focus more on duchies since they don't have much claimants, Bohemia for example). Now we will look at what you want to do, first of all you must not start murdering immediately, first make yourself a route, as an example i'll tell you what i did to inherit 2 duchies at the same time to my dynasty. First i found out Duke of Austria had 2 sons and a daughter, then i checked duchy of carinthea was ruled by a 15 year old with 1 young sister, i only had 2 sons, a daughter and no wife since she disappeared (she had bad traits). I looked for secrets in the court of Austria, i found some secrets of courtiers that will be useful for me. I fabricated hook on the Duke himself, married my son to his daughter using the hook, he wouldnt accept it since i was just a mere count with 300 levies. After i used the hook and married my son to the daughter, first thing i did was murder the count and using my learnt secrets on courtiers to hire them as agents, after a successfull scheme, the son inherited the title, i then refocused on carinthia, i did the same thing look for secrets, fabricate claim, marry my son to sister of the duke using the hook, murder the duke, have my sons wife as duchess of Carinthia. I then went back to austria and murdered the duke and his brother so i'll get my son as husband of Duchess, now i have both my sons married to Duchesses, i wait for a child from one of my sons, my current character dies while waiting. I kill my wife and get my Son to get the Duchy of Austria

In total now i have my son as Duke of Austria, my brother as husband of Duchess in Carinthia, i learn that my Brother has a son now. I kill the wife of my brother to get my nephew to inherit Carinthia, my brother dies in war, which was sweet for me because if my nephew suddenly, lets say "disappears" i inherit the title of Duchy of Carinthia, I hear that my nephew died because of a spider that got to his bed, unfortunate, i will be crying on my throne. After getting many children, i marry them off to other courts for future inheritations or alliances, my character dies and my new character just inherited Duchy of Austria, Duchy of Carinthia and the starting lands i had, without any issue and claimants on my back because of my strong alliances.

Step 4: Now theres a new issue, you have vassals, way too many of them. This is why i mentioned earlier you will need more dynasty members, since i started as Habsburgs i got some dynasty members of other houses free for me to give them titles, i give them titles to get bonus opinions from same dynasty. I befriend some of them and in the future when i get a good heir with very good title limit, i will marry dynasty members. Or when i get the head of dynasty, i will marry them off to other courts to lower my chances of getting "inbred" on my own players.


Now that you've learnt the basics of inheritence, repeat this until you have a good looking borders. Yes i know it will take some time but it is worth it.

Positives of this method : It's quite fun when you get the hang of it to plan your routes, it adds a roleplaying feeling as well. It is more difficult sometimes which makes it even more fun.
Negatives ;

New problem might rise when you have way too many dynasty members but no people to marry them off to because of religion limits. A solution could be making your own religion, for this you will most likely need a war to do it quickly but im certain it can be done with the method i just taught you, it will just take some time.

Another problem could be that since i told you to have many children, your realm could get divided a lot of times, to solve this issue without a war my suggestion is actually look at events like Forming Austria that gives you a One Heir succession type by event no matter the date or if your culture has the required Cultural fascination.

And lastly, just have fun, if you cant do it at first try, try again, it is a game afterall, You killed the wrong person? Your murder scheme got discovered and now you cant kill the person you HAVE to kill to inherit the title? Give it time, Focus on another title and come back to that said title another time. The real fun for me is that it is actually difficult for new people trying to master it.

Thanks for reading my guide, i sincerely apologise if i've made any grammatical mistakes or if you thought this guide was a waste of time. I just wanted to teach this method to people who might still not know about it. And i like that its another point of view that opens up brand new playthrough challanges for people who haven't really tried it. I hope you enjoyed my guide and if not, well ♥♥♥♥.

Have a good one!

Also i really appreciate any comments to urge me to change any parts of it or urge me to hate myself. Any likes are appreciated but not necessary if you didn't like my guide.