Crusader Kings III

If you start as part of the Pugyel dynasty around Tibet in 1066, you will begin with a Famous level of splendor, actually almost halfway to Glorious. I played as Guge, but Maryul and Yarlung are other options. You’ll need to earn a little over 18,000 more splendor to become Legendary. I played a mostly peaceful game at speed 5, while breeding like a rabbit. Get 3 concubines and a wife with fertility traits and go crazy. I got up to 240 dynasty members at which point I was earning 14.5 splendor a month (you start in 1066 earning 3.6 splendor a month). After about 100 years I totally messed up and lost my kingdom and was reduced to a count, but there were so many Pugyels about it didn’t matter, I was still earning plenty of splendor. Achievement unlocked in 1227, along the way you should also unlock A Legacy to Last the Ages.

This is one of those achievements that you'll earn almost automatically during a very long playthrough, so if you plan to do a world conquest or even "just" get the big achievements of recreating the Roman Empire or uniting Africa as the dynastie of Daurama Daura, you can ignore those tips and pick any starting character you like. This guide is for how to get to maximum fame level as fast as possible. Some of those tips might be generally useful, since earning dynastie fame fast in the early and mid game helps you a great deal (more dynasty legacies, better starting fame for heirs, better chance to get powerful marriage alliances, higher long reign opinion bonus).


Which starting character to pick?

If you are in a hurry, you'll want to pick a starting character whose dynastie is already quite famous. There are huge differences between the available starting character's dynastie fame, ranging from obscure (lvl 1) to famous (lvl 7)

The most famous dynasties to start are the Pugyel (in Tibet) in 1066 (level 7 halfway up to lvl 8), the Umayyad (Rulers of Al-Andalus) in 867 (level 6) and the Cetchathach either as rulers of Alba in 867 (lvl 6) or as an almost extinct but very famous dynastie in 1066 (lvl 7, halfway up to 8). Their last existing playable rulers in 1066 are the independent Earls of Ailech or Athlone in Ireland or the Mormaer of Fife (vassal in Scotland). Pugyel may be a good choice because despite not being highlighted characters, they get an achievement for recreating the Empire of Tibet. The Umayyads aren't highlighted characters either, but they do fulfil the requirements for some of the fate of Iberia DLC and the "The Umayyad strike back" achievement from the legacy of Persia DLC (ironically you can't get the Al Andalus achievement with them because they are not of an Iberian heritage culture). The Cetchathach don't have any special achievement connected to them, they just curiously happen to be the Christian dynastie with the highest starting fame. If you need a long term campaign goal other than getting to maximum fame, you could go nuts and recreate the Roman Empire as them, which can be done as any Character from an Abrahamic faith once you conquer the right regions.

Among the highlighted characters, both the Karlings and the Jimenas are good choices. They don't start nearly as high (lvl 4 for Karling, Lvl 3 for Jimena), but they both do start with quite a number of members and a very high monthly gain due to having several independant kings. Ironically, the respective scenario achievements for the Karlings and the Jimenas are targetted at eliminating that great source of dynastie fame. ;-)

How to gain dynasty fame fast: Breed, get titles, get artefacts, get special buildings

1) Breed

Having a large number of living dynasty members alone will earn you some monthly dynasty fame, capped at 2.0 for 100+ living dynasty members, but of course more dynasty members also means more opportunities to get them into positions where they will earn more dynasty fame through the other methods, so breed as fast as you can, especially in the early game. Once you have grown your dynasty to a certain number, they will multiply exponentially in the mid to late game, so it becomes less important to just get as many children as possible and more effective to try and get them into important positions.

The following tips may help to get more dynasty members quickly:

- Make your spouse like you and romance or seduce them if possible. Same goes for secondary (female) spouses or concubines if your faith allows them. Good relationships with your spouses highly increase the chance of pregnancy.

- when your wife is older than 45 and you don't need her for her skills or an alliance, consider getting rid of her (divorce, secret murder or legal execution if you caught her cheating on you) and marrying a much younger wife. Male characters can sire children even past age 80, albeit with a reduced likelyhood, as long as they don't have negative health traits that make them infertile, but the chances for female characters to get pregnant drastically drops past age 35 and reaches zero somewhere close to age 50, no matter how healthy they still are.

- whenever possible, try to get matrilineal marriages for your girls, so that their children will belong to your dynastie. This doesn't have to mean you can't use them for marriage alliances. Male rulers of a patriarchal culture/faith will never agree to a matrilineal marriage for themselves or their primary male heir, but there is a good chance that they will accept a matrilineal marriage for their heirs younger siblings, depending on how urgently they want that alliance and how famous your dynastie is. Swaying that foreign ruler to maximum and/or trying to get a hook on them can help to make them agree to matrilineal.

- landed rulers and characters with prestigious court positions tend to have children more often than unemployed courtiers, so always try to give your adult children (or siblings, nephews etc.) land to rule or at least court positions. Also don't forget to marry them at a young age, because while they are idle at your court, they can't decide to marry on their own. Same goes for young freshly landed rulers of your family unless you explicitely check the box to allow them to marry on their own.

- lustful characters have a higher chance to produce children, but chaste characters make more stable marriage alliances, because lustful characters are much more likely to cheat on their spouses. Thus if you can decide which of those they become (if you educate them personally and the event pops up), pick lustful for those children that you intend to make your heir or vassals in your own realm, but pick chaste for those that you intend to marry off to foreign courts (where they would potentially get divorced, imprisoned or even executed for cheating).

2) Get titles

Having members of your dynastie hold titles earns you much more monthly fame revenue than them just being alive. You get 2 for each emperor, 1 for each king, 0.5 for each Duke and 0.25 for each count. You also get revenue (albeit a little less) for spouses of landed rulers. BUT you don't get those points for members that are vassals (or married to vassals) of you or other members of your dynastie. They don't have to be independant, they can be vassals under someone from another dynastie, but within the same "feudal hierarchy pyramid", only the one at the top will count. So how do we get more kings, dukes etc. of our dynastie that are NOT our vassals?

- matrilineal marriages!
Most patrilineal marriages won't result in getting more rulers of your dynastie. If your daughters are in a patrilinear marriage with a landed ruler, they'll temporarily earn you some dynastie fame as "Queen Duchess Contess etc by marriage", but their children won't be of your dynastie at all. If your sons marry into a foreign court, their wife usually won't be the heir (and if she is at the time of marriage, any birth of a male younger brother will change that) and their children won't inherit claims to their grandfather's titles, so they'll only get titles if the spouse's liege deceides to grant them titles. But if you can get your daughters into a matrilineal marriage with some prince who isn't first in the sucession line, there is a very good chance that they will inherit some duke or count title from their father and pass that on to their kids, who will be of your dynastie They might even become the heir of the foreign kingdom, if the spouse's older brothers happen to have some unfortunate "accidents" after the marriage. Just don't help your son-in-law to become the first heir in line too quickly after the marriage, wait until he already has produced some male heirs himself, otherwise you'll put a target on your daughter. The NPCs aren't completely stupid, they can use assassins to ensure the heritage of their house, too.
But even if you don't manage to get one of your grandchildren to inherit the foreign kingdom, at least all grandsons from that marriage will have a weak claim to their grandfather's kingdom title. So if any one of them stays unlanded and unemployed, you can potentially invite them to your court and then use their kingdom claim as a casus belli against that kingdom to install your dynasty member there!

- marriages to female rulers or heirs
Those are much more difficult to pull off, because female rulers in patriarch cultures (aka almost all cultures in the game) are much rarer than male ones to begin with and they will be very reluctant to agree to a patrilineal marriage for themselves (or for a female primary heir). But the malus for acceptance isn't nearly as high as it would be for a male ruler or primary heir to agree to matrilinear (which is basically impossible). The malus can be overcome, if they are weaker than you, want the alliance very much and have a very high opinion of you. It also helps if your dynastie fame is much higher than theirs. A hook on the parent or the promise of a grand wedding (if you have the tours and tournaments DLC) can also help to overcome the acceptance threshold.

- grant independence to vassals of your dynastie
you can grant independance to any vassal whose primary title isn't part of the de jure lands of your primary title. If you have more than one title of the same rank as your primary title, you can also create independant realms by granting those equal titles to someone from your dynastie. This might look like a step backwards that you usually want to avoid, because it makes you lose the land you worked so hard to conquer in the first place. But if you already have a very powerful realm and don't have the ambition to conquer the whole world, it can be useful to give land away that you don't really need. Apart from the additional boost to your dynastie reputation, an independant allied king will send you much more troops if you call them to your wars than a vassal king would give you levies. If those lands are of a foreign culture or faith and you don't want to constantly deal with rebell factions, it can also help to just grant the land to a dynastie member whom you had covert to that culture and/or faith by having him educated by a fitting guardian.

3) get artefacts
Especially if you have the royal court and/or the tours and tournaments expansion, there are many artefacts that give the holder a small bonus to dynastie fame, but there are some inventory artefacts with such boni even in the base game. They only work when they are equipped though, so if you have more of those than you can use, give those you don't need away to other landed rulers of your dynastie. For those artefact boni, it doesn't matter whether they are your vassals or not, but they have to be landed to equip inventory artefacts. Court artefacts obviously can only be equipped by characters who have their own royal court, i.e. kings and emperors.

4) Hold counties with special buildings

Some counties have existing unique special buildings or special slots to eventually build those buildings. Some (not all) of those give a bonus on dynastie reputation, most commonly a percentage bonus on all of the fame your dynastie earns monthly. You can view all of those special buildings and their stats on the economy map, which is one of the lesser used maps that you reach via the "plus" icon. The bonus of the building goes to the dynastie of the character who personally holds that county, not to his liege, so make sure you either keep those counties or give them to vassals of your dynastie. Holy sites all have such special buildings that grant (among other varied perks) + 5% to dynastie fame. Those holy site buildings can only be used by a character who has the fitting faith, but there are also some other special buildings like e.g. the pyramids of Gizah that grant dynasty fame and can be used by anyone.

5) Hostages from more famous dynasties
If you hold a hostage from a dynastie that is more famous than your own, this will earn you a significant amount of monthly prestige, which can help you grow your fame fast in the early game. Obviously that one isn't relevant if you pick one of the dynasties that already start out more famous than everyone else, but it helps a lot if you start with a character from an obscure dynastie.

6) Certain decisions and events
Some major decisions like e.g. consecrating your bloodline and some random events give you opportunities to earn additional dynastie fame. They are pretty rare in the base game though, most of them are court events (from the royal court expansion) or tied to grand activities from the tours and tournaments expansion. Some events from the wards and wardens DLC give dynastie fame, too.
The most lucrative one in terms of dynastie fame is the grand wedding, which will give the dynasties of both the groom and the bride a big amount of fame as well as give the organizer and the married couple a temporary modifier that also boosts dynasty fame gain. If you are seeking to grow your dynasty fame, try to always arrange at least one grand wedding for your primary heir in every generation. It not only grows dynastie fame, but also gives your heir a huge starting boost for their fame and other nobles opinion about them that helps them to get accepted smoothly by their vassals upon succession.

7) Fate of Iberia DLC
If you have the fate of Iberia DLC, doing this achievement during an Iberia campaign, e.g. playing as the Umayyads to get the Iberian conquest and the Al Andalus achievements is a good way to do this, because resolving the Iberian struggle in any way earns you a whopping 10,000 points of dynastie fame.