Background Discussion
Gold is easy to accumulate, as long as you preserve your game long enough. In the early game, very little gold has changed hands among the commoners who are not Nobles nor hold titles, so the global pool of characters is not yet enriched. Mercenary companies started by nobles, have not yet made a hoard of gold, and the triggered events (which are pop-ups to you) also occur over time that result in gold transfers to Court members (including all Court members across the entire map).

Priests are accruing gold if they hold a temple, and they sometimes get fired or another religion takes over their county and they get their title Revoked and kicked out of the County, with their gold in hand. Former nobles who held titles can be defeated and no longer hold any land but still retain their gold.

Any of these types of Characters in the global pool, can be invited to your Court, using the steps in this Guide.

The Global Character Pool
1. Bring up the pop-up menu for "Find Characters" (button is bottom-right of screen, with two human images on the button).
2. Ensure the top left button for "Search All" is clicked/enabled so that you are viewing 100% of characters in the Global Character Pool.

Phase 1: Inviting the Willing, the "Yes Men" (Green Check mark) Non-Player Characters (NPCs). These are the NPCs who will join your Court without you paying them to show up.
1. Pause the game (because the entire global pool of NPCs is being viewed and changes occur too quickly, and any time passed in-game can change their opinion of you, as their Traits change, and your Main character changes as well).
2. Filter for "Join Court" = "Yes" to see that shortened list. All of this group has Green check marks.
3. Sort all characters by age, oldest first (click the "Age" column header to sort). This logic is because older NPCs are more likely to die while in your Court, plus over time there is more likely chance of older adults having gold from prior positions or titles they held in other kingdoms and Courts.
4. Click on each NPC picture to view their character sheet/stats, to see if they have any Gold on them. Their gold on-hand is found top-right of their character sheet, look for "Wealth" line.
5. For initial attempts, only invite NPCs that hold 3 or more gold (because it costs 5 gold to kick out a group of NPCs, 3 or more, so you want net-positive cash flow for this process). In mid- to late-game, I often filter to only invite Yes Men NPCs holding 5 or more gold.

Phase 2: Inviting those NPCs on the Fence to Join your Court.
1. Pause Game.
2. View the entire pool of NPCs at the Find Characters pop-up.
3. Filter Diplomatic Range for "Yes"
4. Filter Adult for "Yes" (having these 2 filters on reduces the pool of potential NPCs you can invite, as children cannot be invited, nor can those out-of-range).
5. Sort by Age, oldest first.
6. Scroll down from top-to-bottom and look for NPCs with the yellowish mark on their portrait, that indicates they would join your Court if you pay a Gift to them. By default, this Gift is 15 Gold unless they hold a title that increases their prominence that forces a higher Gift payment to win their favor. Consider this Gift as "money invested" because you should get it back later when you complete the steps to force them out of your Court later. Also consider this cost means that you must use a discriminatory process to not try and pay for low-gold holding NPCs, as you won't recoup your costs of doing this technique otherwise. My personal factor is to only send Gifts to NPCs that hold a minimum of 15 Gold, unless the NPC is over 60 years old and has no children (typically single without kids), as this also means upon death, their Liege gets their gold since it cannot pass down to an heir. So in these cases where an NPC is over 60 yrs old and without children, you could use 6 or higher gold as your minimum level to invite them in. Meaning, these NPCs must have 6 or more gold on hand, to make it worthwhile to spend 15 gold on them in order to get them into your Court. However, to be safe, just use my default 15 gold minimum (which means they have 15 gold now, then you gift them 15 gold, so the NPC then has 30 or more gold on hand when invited to your Court).
7. This is a lengthy process if you scroll through the entire global pool of NPCs. In early game, it's not worth viewing the entire pool, and only go until you hit the 40 year old range and then stop (so you don't worry about those under 40 years old that are sorted by age, oldest-to-youngest). In mid- to late-game, I always use 15 gold as minimum to risk inviting them in.
8. Once Phase 1 and/or 2 are complete, Unpause the Game so invited NPCs arrive in your Court, then Pause the game again after all NPCs have arrived (which is certain if 10 or more game-days pass without any NPCs arriving) and proceed to Phase 3.

Phase 3: Purging NPCs after your Court is at/above limits
1. Scroll Icon appears top of screen when your Court is at/above limits. Clicking the scroll brings up the Intrigue menu.
2. Go to the Intrigue menu, click "Ask your Courtiers to Leave Court" and then review the pop-up that shows a Yes/No set of lines, with NPC pictures on the "Yes" to kick out, and always review each Adult especially to ensure you aren't kicking out a valued Counselor or Artifact holding Courtiers, or any Courtiers with a Bloodline you are trying to retain. Click "No" if you don't want that group to be purged. Then try again with Intrigue>"Ask Courtiers to Leave Court" for a random NPC group.
3. Once you have a good list of adults to kick out this way, you click "Yes..." and they leave Court, but their Gold stays with you.

This is perhaps the single-greatest Exploit in the entire CK2 game, and for those who master it, it is an unlimited pool of gold to build whatever you want as the game progresses, including multiple Wonders. You can also buy your way to victory, hiring expensive Mercenaries with spare gold. The entire game changes if you do this particular thing.

Other early hints.
- In early game, you want to also invite Characters with useful stats (esp high Martial skilled Commanders). Fire your Counselors who have low stats and insert high-stat Counselors instead. You're in survival mode, after all. Accumulate NPCs.
- You need a "Full Court" - at or above your Court's limits, and I sometimes end up with well over 100 Court members when I do this technique in the mid- to late-game in CK2.

Bonus Phase (For Advanced Gamers desperate for even more Gold)
- If an NPC in the global pool is loaded with gold but has a Red "Thumbs Down" as if they do not want to join your Court, you can still get some of them to join you. This is an advanced task beyond what I previously described. For this one, that NPC cannot be:
- Married
- Heir or relative of their Liege (not a child or grandchild of whoever is their current Liege)
- "Loyal Servant" to their Liege
- Counselor of any type for their Liege (to include Regent, although Commander status is OK for this trick)

If you have enough gold already on hand (at least 40-80 gold for the cheap ones), you can first check to see if this NPC is willing to "Buy Favor" from them (typically 80 gold). They often will not. So then the first step is to Send Gift of 15 gold to improve their opinion of you. Then you try to Buy Favor again, wait for their response, and then right click on their picture and "Invite to Court" and you will still see a "No" auto-response but note the Favor hand-shaking icon, you can click on that button and it flips to a "Yes" to be Invited to the Court. Just FYI, this technique can be denied for many underlying reasons, so you have to be really informed about what conditions deny Court Invites even if Favor has been paid for, so there is some caution that you can lose a lot of gold trying to do this Bonus Phase technique unless you fully understand the limiting conditions.

Additional Hints for using this process to farm Gold from the Global Character Pool.

- This technique does NOT work with the individual NPC process of "Ask to Leave Court." That does not skim the Gold from that individual NPC. You must use the Intrigue>"Ask Courtiers to Leave Court" process.
- This technique becomes progressively more effective as the game days/years increase, because of the way Gold changes hands constantly across the entire map. Game year 2 is typically where this process starts to become effective, although there are rare 100 gold events that can trigger and NPCs have that exact amount on them, at any time during the game (you have probably had these same events happen within your own Court). The most lucrative Gold intake that I've ever had from an individual NPC was over 5K Gold from a former Mercenary member who had that Mercenary band's Gold on him. In later game you can regularly find NPCs that have 1K or more Gold on them, former Nobles and former Priests.
- Timing of carrying out this technique is not precise, as the game is randomly spawning events and triggering changes across the map and among NPCs. In the face of this randomness, my own habit is to check the Global Character Pool at least once every 2 game years, especially if I start as a small County struggling to survive and grow into an Empire. The more difficult the starting position in the game (along with game difficulty), the more Gold you need to protect your upstart kingdom by out-building your foes and hiring mercenaries when needed.

- Unmarried, childless NPCs in your Court will always bequeath their Gold to their Liege (your Main Character) upon their death. However, if an NPC has a Child and dies in your Court, the inheritance of their Gold is to their oldest child with inheritance rights (who may be an adult in a different Court). This is yet another reason that you must Pause the game for this process, once all the invited NPCs arrive into your Court, and while paused you then purge them out over and over, until your Court is at or closer to the maximum Court size, as you don't want the old 60+ year old Court members that hold lots of Gold and have children, to die in your Court and bequeath their Gold to their children who are in a different Court. Timing is everything with this technique and process, and I can't say it enough that you must be very deliberate and patient while playing the game in a Paused state as you carry out this mission of skimming their Gold.

- Any Trait changes to your Main Character result in changes of opinion to the Global Character Pool. If you are desperate for more Gold, remember to scan the character pool any time a change in character (literally) occurs to your Main Character.
- Changes of ruler/heir taking over, is also a major event and results in differing opinions of the Global Character Pool, so always use this technique as soon as you sort out the new ruler of your realm, get the Counselors settled in (or maybe use this technique to help pull in new Counselors, since you need a Full Court, as reminder).
- Changes of Religion are huge events, and the entire Character Pool willing to join your Court has drastic consequences. For example, going from Pagan to Christian or vice-versa, immediately changes the entire pool of who will want to join your Court. Using this technique to pull in free Gold, can even affect your Strategy as to "when" to change Religions, along your game timeline, since you may have more/less free gold depending on the situation.

- A Full Court is costly. Don't let your game go Unpaused with an extremely overfilled Court, use the Pause function to bring NPCs in, then unpause to allow them all to join your court, this takes some time, and delay about 10 game days after the last one has joined, to then Pause the game again, and use the purging technique "Ask Courtiers to Leave Court" while the game is paused, over and over, to thin down your Court and its costs. This in itself helps to ensure that you don't overpay too much for an overfilled Court (hover your cursor over your Gold monthly rates to see how your earnings change before/after doing this technique with an overfilled Court, especially if you can get your Court over 200 NPCs which is easily possible in later game, but that is a costly court so you must expel them soon as possible.).

- Use Marriages to offload wealthy NPCs that are Single. When game is paused and you're staring at the pop-up for "Ask Courtiers to Leave" and the game randomly shows you a group of 3 or more adults that will leave the Court, take your time to assess whether any are single and could be married to another Court member (this technique is only for internal Court marriages where both NPCs are already inside your Court at that moment in game time). Doesn't matter what type of marriage you must use to arrange the marriage, once married both those NPCs are exiting the court when you click "Yes" to boot them out, with you getting the extra married spouse tagging along to be purged out. So even if the controlling spouse (controlling their marriage) is not the one in the pop-up at that time, they still tag along with the purging process. So another technique for advanced gamers is to invite in single NPCs who will freely join the Court, at times you have other wealthy single NPCs in need of purging out, especially if they seem burrowed into your Court and are hard to purge out.

- Don't automatically purge out the first pop-up group presented to you. The "Ask Courtiers to Leave Court" is a bit random and finicky. Don't just give in to whatever is presented, keep clicking and trying to get a better group. Beware if the game shows you a line without pictures, as that means there are so many NPCs to be purged, the game doesn't show them, so then you cannot assess who would leave the Court. Don't ever click on those Yes lines without pictures. Instead, try again, and click through the pictures to see who's who, and especially beware if the game would purge out a valuable Courtier (high-stat Counselor or Commander, or Artifact-holding Courtier you want to loot, or Bloodline NPC you need in Court to pull in that Bloodline to your own Dynasty, etc.).
- Purging can come with benefits. For example, Children are very willing to come back to you, most of the time. Maybe a child has money. You can gift them 15 gold to increase their opinion, have them as part of the "Ask Courtiers to Leave" and they exit, but only use this technique if they're a Child in control of their marriage, or you could lose ability to invite them back (so beware). So this is a technique to improve relations over and over, gift gold, yet purge to get that gold right back to you (can even gift the gold while that NPC is on the "Yes" line for Ask Courtiers to Leave Court and then click Yes just afterward).

- As you scan NPCs willing or unwilling to join your Court, also scan for Artifacts (button lights up) to also invite them and potentially get free artifacts if they die while in your Court. Give that NPC an Honorary title, such as Court Jester, which increases chance to retain the Artifact, and do not kick them out (option: assassinate and loot their Artifact). If you do not have an Honorary Title to give the NPC holding an Artifact, consider Relieving your least capable Commander, then make the Artifact-holding NPC a Commander (and then consider using Assassination when that Artifact-holding NPC is at risk of leaving your Court, such as - if they're an Heir).

- Every NPC that leaves your Court through this process will get tagged with a +10 Opinion for "Left With Blessings" with a 5-year timer.

- Be mindful that the Global Pool will start to accumulate NPCs that like you more, and these formerly purged NPCs will often want to rejoin your Court for free, so in some cases you will take their Gold more than once.

- How to check your Court size. Click on your Main Character's character sheet, then hover your Cursor over the "Court" tab, and you will see a number of XX/YY Court size, for number in the Court (XX) over the Court's maximum size (YY) before penalties apply. Reminder, you can go over your Court size, it's not a hard limit, but monthly Gold income cost penalties apply to your Court once it is over the YY size maximum. In my highest Court size, I was once at 300 Court members for around 60 maximum, after inviting many Gold-holding NPCs into the Court (this was a more matured game in the middle of the game's total timeline and I needed to surge to become a more Dominant Empire at the time and hire at least 2-3 Mercenary bands). You simply must Pause the game when the Court is this size, and it's tedious but you must use the Intrigue>Ask Courtiers to Leave Court function over, and over again to trim down your Court, while skimming their Gold from them all.

- In the early game when your Gold on-hand is low, or at any time where Gold is near empty, the Phase 2 advice of paying Gifts to invite on-the-fence NPCs becomes more challenging, because you won't have enough Gold to review and pay for 100% of the NPCs who could be paid and invited in. In these low-Gold situations, this is exactly why Phase 1 must come before Phase 2, because you always skim from the Free/Yes Men first, regenerate some Gold, before moving into Phase 2. You will also find yourself needing to carry out Phase 2 of the fence-sitters, in smaller batches of NPCs that you can afford. Here's details on how I do it in these situations. I get through as much of Phase 1 and then Phase 2 until my gold is below 15 (since I cannot Gift any more Gold at that point), but I still find the next NPC among the fence-sitters who is at the 15+ Gold on-hand to pay, and that is when I Unpause the game to allow the invited batch of NPCs to arrive into the Court (and confirm they're done arriving by waiting for 10 straight game-days to pass without anyone arriving), and then I Pause the game again, and start to Intrigue>Ask Courtiers To Leave Court in order to purge out Courtiers and regenerate Gold. After 2-3 purges of Courtiers, and with more Gold on hand, I'm still staring at that NPC on-the-fence who must be paid to get invited, scroll my cursor up and down (to refresh the view in case that NPC changed their mind), and then gift them gold and invite, and continue on down the list of the global pool. If I run out of gold again further down the line, rinse/repeat that same batching process of allowing invited NPCs to arrive and then pause and purge them, over and over until I make it through the entire Global Pool of NPCs. If you understand this lengthy paragraph, you really increase your flexibility on how you can go from almost no Gold, to lots of Gold (especially once the game has matured).

- When pulling in fence-sitters, you do not have to Unpause the game to right click an NPC picture, "Send Gift" and pay, and then right click that same NPC picture again and "Invite to Court." That entire process can be a quick 2-step event while the game is paused. You will also get very good at using the Scroll Wheel of your mouse, as this entire process involves quick-scrolling through the massive list of the entire NPC Global Pool.

- Use Phase 1 (free invites) to build the Gold you will need to pay for Phase 2 (fence-sitters), so always lead with Phase 1, unpause game and bring in all those with Gold who you invited for free, and then use the Intrigue>Ask Courtiers to Leave system to purge them out, grow your Gold, and then proceed to Phase 2. Depending how long you leave the game unpaused between Phase 1 and Phase 2, you may want to also check the free invites (green checkmark) NPCs while looking for the fence-sitters in Phase 2, sometimes you get even more Free invites with gold along the way, since the global pool of NPCs is always changing with the many random events firing off across the map.

- When arranging marriages for unmarried Courtiers on the pop-up that you are about to click "Yes" and send away from your Court, a technique is to use the Ledger (button for this at bottom right of screen) page 9 with header "Your Court" and sort your entire Court by Gold column (click on word "Gold" at top to sort, highest to lowest Gold on hand). This is a helper tool so you see who doesn't have a title (those with titles that you cannot purge from your Court will have an icon to far left column in view), and my method is to see who is without title and has highest gold, then try to arrange marriages by sorting names alphabetically in the marriage arranger pop-up. You may think it's easier just to use the Global "Find Character" pop-up but if you're in Phase 2 and not yet through that entire batch, halfway down the entire global list, you won't want to "lose your place" as you are paused to generate more Gold (takes Gold to make Gold in this process), so you'll see the logic of using this Ledger method when you run out of Gold in Phase 2 and are paused to purge Courtiers and refill your balance with Gold.

- This is just 8 years into a game, and it's New Year's Eve in year 777 and I hit the Jackpot. Former Noble wants to join my court for free, just under 400 Gold on hand, and an Artifact, and has a Bloodline that I will be able to manipulate into my own. This is the literal Trifecta of what you can pull in, as this strategy is more than just about the Gold alone, as there are many other Tertiary benefits to scouting the available NPC Pool to see what you can find.
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