As an example of what I'm talking about, in the 1066 start date the king of Malwa in India holds 13 counties personally. Unless you get a near-perfect roll for random stats and traits, his domain limit won't be that high and you'll want to give some counties away.

But if you add any new vassals before your authority has had time to tick up, they'll start with favorable contracts that will cut into your authority level for generations.

So I'm curious what other players have found to be the least painful approach. Give the land to new vassals and just put up with the authority loss? Give most of the counties to existing vassals with higher-submission contracts even if some of those vassals become uncomfortably powerful? Accept the over-domain-limit penalties for a few years and give the land out once authority is at least up to Low?

And on a more theoretical level, could the mod's rules be changed to make these starts less painful? I.e. if new vassals' contracts were determined based on target authority instead of current authority, would that make other aspects of the game too easy?