Benefits of Gavelkind?

Not that I have even really used gavelkind, but I would assume you either revoke bishoprics and give them to your extra sons or have free investiture. Also, marry your sons before making them priests and they will have children.

You know Caster from A Song of Fire and Ice? There are ways to deal with too many sons. Also Maternal Marriages with your many daughters is the way to go to increase your dynasty. Their sons get nada from inheritance. Also you can watch your heir's children easily, by not having to give your son a fife.

I used to like elective, but that 30% larger demesne is too juicy. You just got to prune that family tree correctly.

I can't remember who now, but someone pointed out that Gavelkind is a great way to avoid uber-Dukes--their holdings get broken up naturally instead of building up.

If you have Gavelkind, try to have Free Invest. (as noted above), also try to get some random little holdings away from your core. The other kids generally get those.

Provides a nice challenge to those who are otherwise very efficient with their domain.

Philo32b said:

Gavelkind is a great way to avoid uber-Dukes--their holdings get broken up naturally instead of building up.

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Personally I love gavelkind, and this is one of the main reasons why. I will actually regularly watch my dukes to see their children/heir situation. If they have more than one county or more than one duchy while having multiple heirs, I've been known to send an assassin their way. Why risk a son being born or the AI killing off one son when I can split the titles right away with a single assassin?

Generally, the main drawback is fewer personal heirs, which can make it harder to inherit or press claims to titles that you want to hold personally.

Elective gives +20 opinion modifier to all of your vassals. That is hard to beat. The extra demesne from gavelkind doesn't really do anything for me.
I typically have at least a 13 size demesne without even trying for it just through marrying a highly skilled stewardship bride. When I do try the limit goes to above 15. And gavelkind you always have to worry about how many heirs you. I don't want to be bothered with that. Assassinating heirs or sending them off to the monastery is for the birds. I have to focus on crushing heathens.

Holding 15 counties would cause you not to create duke titles. Because if you hold a county in one of your Dukes lands he will get a -20/25 modifier because he wants control of that county. I typically set my lands up to limit all my negative modifiers which counter acts the distance revolt penalty.

And if you also go free investiture that is +25 to all clergy and +10 to all of your vassals that have a clergyman as a vassal. That plus elective is a free +30 opinion to all vassals. I rather have +30 opinion than have a demesne of 18. Money is not a problems as time goes on.

However I have started out as a weak count in Ireland and to hold every county in Ireland personally I had to use gavelkind until I could train a proper heir. Then I formed the Kingdom and switched to elective and waited for the old king to die. So gavelkind can aid you in the beginning of the game but if you are aiming for a realm of over 50 counties I would quickly switch to elective and free investiture.

why on earth use elective?

TheStrangerOrg said:

why on earth use elective?

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+20 opinion modifier to all vassals. And you can hand pick your strongest heir. Win, win.

Elective is by far the best form of government the way things stand -- as long as you don't insist on roleplaying like a complete moron it's pretty easy to stay in everyones' good books, and being able to hand-pick your heir is a real godsend. It makes managing every aspect of your royal family much more fun (if totally unrealistic as most monarchies were obviously primogenial) and basically lets you decide who does and gets what. As the Anglo-Saxons I like making sure each surviving brother in a family gets a crack at the throne, but depending on how things turn out I like to let one or two sons become king also. It's a very gamey/unrealistic way of playing but it's definitely fun.

Until an option for Abdicating the throne on succession happens i'm always going to prefer elective. It is really annoying watching two sons develop and one becomes a paragon of man while the older grows up to be a waste of life and flesh. You'd think a Slothful content ruler would pass the throne onto his brother so he doesn't find himself stabbed by that very brother to get the throne.

whosthebestcop said:

+20 opinion modifier to all vassals. And you can hand pick your strongest heir. Win, win.

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Hold a moment... +20 is a boost but only to non dynasty vassals. I am always trying to replace vassals with my dynasty for more dynasty points and using Elective is rather a disaster. I've used it only once and to be honest temporary - later I returned to gavelkind mixed with primogeture (at least 2 kingdoms). Elective may be nice if Your heir is tragic and You need specific heir or You are playing counting too much on mayor tactic. I've used it for my Flandres Lithuania game when I wanted to create Finalnd (I've chosen Finnish dynasty member, later returned to Dutch. That was worth for me, cause my demesnes were mostly in kingdom with primogeture.

Blind_Guardian said:

Hold a moment... +20 is a boost but only to non dynasty vassals.

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That's a big deal. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm currently playing a gigantic kingdom of Georgia game using gavelkind. Nearly all my dukes and counts, and a large chunk of my barons are my dynasty. All new territories I get from Holy wars go straight to my dynasty members.

PyscoJuggalo said:

You know Caster from A Song of Fire and Ice? There are ways to deal with too many sons.

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I only know Craster from aSoIaF. This Caster has some interesting ideas on how to deal with children though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyzV1SMGKw0&t=3m15s

I'm sorry I completely forgot to mention I avoid giving any dynasty member land in my realm.

I rather take the landless prestige penalty because I always have ample monthly prestige.

What I do is marry my dynasty and get their heirs claims on other realms and set them up there.

In my Naples game I've set dynasty members up as king/queen of Sweden, Poland, Jerusalem, Croatia, and Duchy of Barcelona which they grew into the kingdom of Aragon.

That way your dynasty gains prestige and you get lifetime allies.

whosthebestcop said:

I'm sorry I completely forgot to mention I avoid giving any dynasty member land in my realm.

I rather take the landless prestige penalty because I always have ample monthly prestige.

What I do is marry my dynasty and get their heirs claims on other realms and set them up there.

In my Naples game I've set dynasty members up as king/queen of Sweden, Poland, Jerusalem, Croatia, and Duchy of Barcelona which they grew into the kingdom of Aragon.

That way your dynasty gains prestige and you get lifetime allies.

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Yeah, elective seems fun (if gamey), but then the gavelkind killing off children to save from splitting off demesne holdings is very gamey. In a way, though, I think elective could be role-played out in my mind. Rulers did at times bypass unfavored sons as heirs (and as mentioned, some rulers did abdicate which the game does not allow).

I think I'm going to try going seniority in my next game as I've never tried it before. It has to be interesting.

Kagernaut said:

Usually I prefer Elective, but the demesne limit with Gavelkind has my interest piqued. Only thing I'm concerned about is dynasty size; if I have to limit my heirs to one so that way I can keep all titles upon sucession, then how can my family grow? Also when succession occurs, who gets what titles when you have multiple heirs?

Any other info or opinions if you want as well, such as opinion modifiers and such...

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Send other male heirs to head bishops

One of the things I like about this game is that there's no one best. There are better for certain situations.

Early game, I actually like gavelkind. Your massive demense means you can hold every county you own personally. It's very powerful not having to think at all about vassal. You can grant someone a county, press his claim, then revoke them away. Again and again. There's no one around to care. You just need to be careful not to have too many sons. If you do and unexpectedly die, you should be able to very quickly conquer all your land back because you get claims on all of it and your heir gets the best land and all the saved up money to buy mercs.

Mid game, I like elective. It's great to be able to pick your best heir. I tend to make every duke my dynasty so I have a lot to pick from. At this point, it's easily the most powerful choice.

Late game, I switch to primogeniture. At some point you get so big that all your vassals start murdering each other and your chosen heirs. It becomes impossible to rule with your entire dynasty murdering each other. When this starts, it's easier just to swap to primogeniture for some stability.

There's really not one best choice. It's all situational. Which means it's designed well.

Blind_Guardian said:

Hold a moment... +20 is a boost but only to non dynasty vassals. I am always trying to replace vassals with my dynasty for more dynasty points and using Elective is rather a disaster. I've used it only once and to be honest temporary - later I returned to gavelkind mixed with primogeture (at least 2 kingdoms). Elective may be nice if Your heir is tragic and You need specific heir or You are playing counting too much on mayor tactic. I've used it for my Flandres Lithuania game when I wanted to create Finalnd (I've chosen Finnish dynasty member, later returned to Dutch. That was worth for me, cause my demesnes were mostly in kingdom with primogeture.

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There is also a huge advantage with dynasty members as vassals. Sure, they don't get the opinion bonus, but you could pick any single one you'd like to be your successor. Same dynasty means no game over. Sons turned out poorly, but third cousin Konrad seems like he'd make a good Kaiser? Go for it.