Quote Originally Posted by Elemental View Post
In any case... Does anyone here have any good suggestions as to how I can get claims quickly? Most of my territory was gained by crusade and holy war, and I appear to have hit a road block despite a relatively easy take over of France. Or is this to be expected with dealing with members of your own religion?
Find people who have claims on the counties/duchies you want to take over, invite them to your court, make them a landed vassal (I think you can get away with as small as a Barony for this), and then push their claim. As long as you're winning them a lower-level title than the highest you hold (ie, if you're a King, you can win a Duchy this way.. although it often makes for a bit of an uppity vassal) then they'll take over the target title as your vassal, so it joins your realm.

It does get a lot harder to expand in ways that gives you the titles directly to hold or distribute as you wish. It's not too hard to expand via vassal claims if you're not overly picky about who becomes your vassal. (And if they do turn out to be too troublesome, you can always kill them and hope their heir is more compliant. Or push them into open rebellion, crush them, enjoy an opinion boost with the *rest* of your vassals for putting down a rebellion, and get a tyranny-free revocation of one of their titles to hand out to somebody more grateful.)