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Elective Gavelkind is Fair and Balanced

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JohanLerstrom said:
Or it was because we are trying to make sure Gavelkind works as intended since it is now the only option for a large group of characters for a fairly long time, so I pay a bit more attention to threads like this.
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Props to you and your team for your attentiveness to our complaints in this DLC cycle. I hope it is a sign of good things to come. Hopefully you guys can work on ironing out more bugs on release, but I truly appreciate your outreach in particular as the Project Lead!
 
To the dev team: Please dont move away from the history on Elective Gavelkind. It is and should stay as hotch-pot, to be equally divided among all elective.

Instead take a look on the road the players can travel to move away from sucession law. The early age should play out as it is, the game will be broken if it is to easy. As loong as the mechanics is explained there will be no confusion on the topic.

There should neither be a easy way to plot our way out of this time era, if there are 3 brothers they ALL inherit by dividing the land on 3. For balance on the elective part, winner takes the capital, end of story.

It is important to stay true to history, and it is important that earlier we can start, thus harder it should be. If you are set within 100 years, everything AFTER cm expansion will be a cakewalk. We have time to figure and plan ourself out of gavelkind, game will be broken if the first 50 years will be about rush-blobbing your nabours. What challenge is it to it if we start 800+ with a strong base?

Concubines is for the broken wife who does not leave you a son. Or you can marry an old hag for alliance and take a concubine for breeding. Instead start the game with options on old hags with bonds to add this to the mix. The game is already very easy to beat. Rap up the bugs who actually are bugs, gavelkind who divide equally amongst electives will serve its purpose.

As mention over, maybe look into how the player can move himself away from this type of crown on sucession. Some wants to be king, some wants to be a republic while others a elective in gavelkind. Its all about playing the hand you get dealt, with earlier start date we have more than enough time to solve our situation. If you overdo this and change elective gavelkind to serve against its own purpose.... Bottom line is the fact that we can restore what we want within a couple of decades by planing.

Starting the game as a single landed [insert whatever] tells you its on hard difficulty. This factor is one of the very reason why it is hard, and it should as the old ways was hard.

So please Paradox, dont nerf history. Instead make more roads for the future.
 
Wudupmyninja said:
To the dev team: Please dont move away from the history on Elective Gavelkind. It is and should stay as hotch-pot, to be equally divided among all elective.

Instead take a look on the road the players can travel to move away from sucession law. The early age should play out as it is, the game will be broken if it is to easy. As loong as the mechanics is explained there will be no confusion on the topic.

There should neither be a easy way to plot our way out of this time era, if there are 3 brothers they ALL inherit by dividing the land on 3. For balance on the elective part, winner takes the capital, end of story.

It is important to stay true to history, and it is important that earlier we can start, thus harder it should be. If you are set within 100 years, everything AFTER cm expansion will be a cakewalk. We have time to figure and plan ourself out of gavelkind, game will be broken if the first 50 years will be about rush-blobbing your nabours. What challenge is it to it if we start 800+ with a strong base?

Concubines is for the broken wife who does not leave you a son. Or you can marry an old hag for alliance and take a concubine for breeding. Instead start the game with options on old hags with bonds to add this to the mix. The game is already very easy to beat. Rap up the bugs who actually are bugs, gavelkind who divide equally amongst electives will serve its purpose.

As mention over, maybe look into how the player can move himself away from this type of crown on sucession. Some wants to be king, some wants to be a republic while others a elective in gavelkind. Its all about playing the hand you get dealt, with earlier start date we have more than enough time to solve it. If you overdo this and make it serve against its own purpose, most of the time you restore wanted real within a couple of decades.

Starting the game as a single landed [insert whatever] tells you its on hard difficulty. This factor is one of the very reason why it is hard, and it should as the old ways was hard.

So please Paradox, dont nerf history. Instead make more roads for the future.
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Uhh, are you suggesting that 'give the heir nothing of value and favour everyone else' is more historical?
 
Wudupmyninja said:
Under this law, land should be divided equally among sons or other heirs. I did asked for the capital to the the winner, so the primary heir would actually get the most valued land.
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Yeah, that's what we're begging for.

As for early blobbing, it's self-defense against the norse, tengri and christians. You need a sizable realm to not be one subjugation/holy war away from destruction. You also need to blob and/or be able to raid successfuly to reform your religion.

Equal division favouring the primary heir is fine. A split leaving the primary heir with a single county title and no claims is not.
 
Interesting Gavelkind scenario:

I was playing as the Pechenegs in Alexiad with two sons. Seeing as I had enough land to form kingdom of Wallachia, I tried it out (saving before that, ofc).

Gavelkind Distribution (before title creation):
Older son gets High Chiefdom of Pechenegs and two counties. Younger son gets two counties.

Distribution after title creation:
Older son gets Wallachia and one county. Younger son gets d_moldau (Pecheneg) and three counties, including my F*cking capital!

Pdox, please allow us to designate title distribution with Gavelkind and Elective Gavelkind!
 
gothos said:
Yeah, that's what we're begging for.

As for early blobbing, it's self-defense against the norse, tengri and christians. You need a sizable realm to not be one subjugation/holy war away from destruction. You also need to blob and/or be able to raid successfuly to reform your religion.

Equal division favouring the primary heir is fine. A split leaving the primary heir with a single county title and no claims is not.
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Yeah, that case could equally be made for regular gavelkind as elective gavelkind, though it sounds like elective has more problems at the moment. My worst example was my heir getting one county and my second son getting 6 out of a possible 7 which just seemed insane, enough for me to throw away that particular Ironman game. I wonder if the same type of code bugs that caused that issue are causing these ones?
 
Wudupmyninja said:
Under this law, land should be divided equally among sons or other heirs. I did asked for the capital to the the winner, so the primary heir would actually get the most valued land.
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That is NOT how it worked historically.

First of all, land was not divided "fairly". The firstborn inherited all core lands. In our case, let's say a king controls (in game) 1 kingdom, 2 duchies in it and a duchy outside of it while some provinces in it.

In this scenario, depending on province and culture, either the kingdom would break up into duchies (could be with low centralization/kingdom laws in game?) or the main heir would get at least the core lands (kingdom, duchy AND all lands within that duchy. Duchies very rarely were broken up if fully controlled by the family) while the 2nd son would get another duchy in the core lands (within the kingdom) and then share the lands with his brothers depending on how many they were. The land outside the core lands potentially passed to lesser sons (or even more distant family members occasionally, like brothers of the former king or sons-in-law).

The main heir never got less amounts of direct land than the other heirs. That would be contrary to the whole point. Worst case he got the same amount.








Ok, now my opinion on this:

never ever force the player to rely on AI without a way to affect the choice, regardless of how confident you are the AI works. There SHOULD be a way for a player to assign (fairly) the land. Assign value to land depending on what you control and add an option to "declare that this land will pass to X heir" until all heirs have the corresponding lands they should get.so, let's say all lands have always a total power of 100. Your capital should be free. The rest should depend on province power. Duchy titles count for a lot too. First son gets 50%, second son 30%, third and fourth son 10%.

if the player doesn't declare land inheritance for all land, the AI should redistribute the undeclared land as normal until every son gets his rightful share.

Here, now everyone will have a chance to make a fair distribution without giving your 2nd heir all lands within the capital, your third son the capital duchy and some provinces in southern france and the 4th son a single province in upper catalonia.
 
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Latest example of regular Gavelkind nonsense - Brittany, two sons. Eldest gets Nantes and the Duchy, youngest gets Rennes, Cournaille and Desmond (only non-Brittany territory I hold). I've got 3 years to survive to change to Primogeniture, otherwise I'll end up in a crazy situation where the youngest son ends up with more than double the levies and more than double the income. How is that a reasonable apportionment?
 
The poster above explained it pretty thorough. but I would stress one specific point:

The primary heir never gets less land then secondary and lower heirs. The system is trying to hard to make a fair divison at the moment and messes it up due too the different valueing off titles. The amount of land controlled should be the primary concern then the titles should follow that. In cases like the Iberian peninsula this could result in something fair like everyone his own kingdom. But the oldest sons should always have priority over the entirty of the capital duchy and lands of the primary kingdom title.

This could result in a primary heir having both the kindgom and a duchy and the 2th heir being stuck as a 1 county count, but thats just exacly how it would work. They get what is available not what would be fair. Duchys should not be split unless you only own one duchy and nothing else.
 
Emoskri said:
Latest example of regular Gavelkind nonsense - Brittany, two sons. Eldest gets Nantes and the Duchy, youngest gets Rennes, Cournaille and Desmond (only non-Brittany territory I hold). I've got 3 years to survive to change to Primogeniture, otherwise I'll end up in a crazy situation where the youngest son ends up with more than double the levies and more than double the income. How is that a reasonable apportionment?
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Oh and my Duke just died out of the blue at 46, no injuries or anything, just 3 months shy of being able to change to Primogeniture. So I lose 3 of the 4 counties to my infant brother, and go from 3,500 troops down to 1,000; income quartered and absolutely no desire to play that game any more.

I think the other posters are correct in that I don't think the eldest child shouldn't receive less land/troops/taxes than any of the other children, and certainly not a third of what their only brother gets.
 
Gball said:
That is NOT how it worked historically.

First of all, land was not divided "fairly". The firstborn inherited all core lands. In our case, let's say a king controls (in game) 1 kingdom, 2 duchies in it and a duchy outside of it while some provinces in it.
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I quoted the law not the practise, and I did not mention titles.

Example: some of the CM bug reported cases on gavelkind includes the Vikings, if "everything" was going to be historically correct a lot of work is needed. The Vikings was not near as civilized as in the game and surely did not answer to these laws and the Viking woman had more rights than most women in the remainder of Europe during this period. Few lived in towns, they answered to Gulating, not all was born free men (trell), they where farmers, they lived in collective or extended families and the oldest son in the family took over the farm and became the chief of the family.

So it will never be 100% historically. There is just to much work to it, we just need to be pleased with landing as close as we get. De Jure should obviously play its part when its time to chop it up, all I want is that gavelkind does not becomes to OP to the player by favorite a chosen heir landing and title him more than his equals as it would break the game making it even easier to beat than it already is.
 
Gavelkind would be more "fun" if there were a means to influence people to like my desired heir, or a means to influence a few titles to go to heir.

I feel like I can't interact with it, and that I am at the mercy of some random force.
 
Gball said:
Ok, now my opinion on this:

never ever force the player to rely on AI without a way to affect the choice, regardless of how confident you are the AI works. There SHOULD be a way for a player to assign (fairly) the land. Assign value to land depending on what you control and add an option to "declare that this land will pass to X heir" until all heirs have the corresponding lands they should get.so, let's say all lands have always a total power of 100. Your capital should be free. The rest should depend on province power. Duchy titles count for a lot too. First son gets 50%, second son 30%, third and fourth son 10%.

if the player doesn't declare land inheritance for all land, the AI should redistribute the undeclared land as normal until every son gets his rightful share.

Here, now everyone will have a chance to make a fair distribution without giving your 2nd heir all lands within the capital, your third son the capital duchy and some provinces in southern france and the 4th son a single province in upper catalonia.
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+1

As a suggestion, a player could only pre-distribute the land if his character is 15+ years old.

Also, counties/titles could have a "weight" system with that %, and the player should be encouraged to divide it fairly, otherwise he could have a succession crisis. Potential traits (coward, ambitious ect) should apply for all heirs and affect how they react with the titles divisions.
 
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thadian said:
Gavelkind would be more "fun" if there were a means to influence people to like my desired heir, or a means to influence a few titles to go to heir.

I feel like I can't interact with it, and that I am at the mercy of some random force.
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Particularly annoying when the AI decides that your second son should get your capital.
 
+2...

Gavelkind has been the red-headed step-child that everyone knows about but no one knows what do do with it. There is a LOT of good suggestions here. I don't mind loosing some of my lands to younger brothers as it goes with the territory of Gavelkind. It's just when I lose the majority of titles/lands/my capital (!!) to younger brothers after building it up for a generation that bugs the hell out of be. It really has been the weak link of CKII since release and I do applaud that Paradox is actually trying to change it for the better (at last!), even though this advised change is currently broken.

Now if Gavelkind can be fixed as per the vision given at the release of 2.2.0.2, and the decadence problem eradicated, I might be able to start a long term game without throwing my toys out of the pram.
 
People should make a difference between Elective and Standard Gavelkind. In Elective Gavelkind, it makes sense for the heir to not necessarily getting your capital (although, admittedly, it drives me crazy as well), as your estates are inherited by blood, not by vote. Elective Gavelkind represents the voting for leader, therefore the character becoming the new chief will not inherit land. I would argue that in this case you shouldn't continue with the character getting elected, but with the actual heir of your estates.

In normal Gavelkind, I haven't seen too much of an oddity as of yet, BUT I have to say that it doesn't make sense for Gavelkind to break your estates up that harsh. My 5th son is still getting some county while in reality he would've gotten some more ducats and that's it. The first-born usually inherited more than anyone else. Also, when you're down to 1 kingdom and 2 counties, splitting your counties between your two children just sounds very...artificial. I can't imagine that something like this actually happened on a regular basis, if at all.

I'd love to designate the titles to my heirs, with the game restricting the number and value of titles, but with me having an interface to distribute them.
 
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