if they had no heir the titles should have defaulted to you, i couldnt sya how he got a hold of all those titles unless they were given to him.
Hmm.... i see... Well, there was a lot of internal struggle between my uncles, brothers, grandchildren and so on. I have deliberately separated their de jure Baronies, in hope, that my vassals would not get a concentration of power. So not a single Duke had more than 1/3 of de jure lands, and had some random baronies far away instead. It worked before, but this time, there was a non stop movement of troops, for about 30 years or so
I guess, it is due to the new expansion, and lack of possibility to change "King's Peace" laws at this point ( ~ year 960 ).
Well, the most important thing is - the titles can't be passed to a random character, when there is no heir
That is basically what I needed to know! Just need to hold on for a while, until i have more Kingdom level laws available.
Who was his heir ?
Sadly, I can't recall... Someone unimportant, his Chancellor perhaps? Definitely with no connections to any of my kinsmen, or neighboring dynasties.
I have not been able to get myself to start another game though... It always happens with this type of games. I tried with a county in Ireland, with a HRE low rank guy, etc, but I cannot get myself to go over all that plotting again, with so little options.
Do you have any way to keep it fresh? I really enjoyed it when I played that game, through thin and small.
Well, perhaps, you might want to try a different religion? There is a somewhat significant difference between Orthodox, Muslims and Catholic. It is not like comparing Zerg to Protoss in Starcraft, but still enough events and specific decisions to make some variety. I would recommend to try some mods, many will add new traits and events, and some are altering combat mechanics and such, making Martial and Learning a great option for your king. There is even a "Game of Thrones" and "Elder Scrolls" total conversions, but i never played them myself. Here is list of good mods to try:
Project Balance CK2 Plus Immersion, Events, and Traits - A Modular Flavor and Tweak Mod
There are many other mods out there, but these are "big" mods, with lots of features integrated from other smaller mods.
For me personally, it feels like every game is different. And since I am only using 1 year autosaves - the game seems to be very challenging, at least in the beggining. Besides, you can always continue your savegame, using another character on the map, and try to beat your own Great Empire as a lonely Duke. I have been playing for about 200 hours so far, and it still feels fresh! ( I smoke a lot of weed, that helps greatly! )