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Ok, new question:

Which of these have an effect, is it just if highest at X, if tied then highest at Y, if tied then highest at Z, etc., some weighted sum of the following numbers, and what exactly is the order of importance for determining the inheritance in Elective Law?

- Number of Duke titles
- Number of Count titles
- Number of Count Vassals
- Martial Skill
- Other (Manpower, Bastard trait, income, other other reasons?)?

Background (WARNING: Wall'O'Text): Finally got time to play again, as my huge western European Blobpire (no emperor trait yet though for some reason), originally the duchy of Aquitaine in 1066 then Kingdom of Aragon and these days most of the Christian King titles (only other independent Christian Kingdoms are Denmark and Byzantium(incl. Bulgaria); Finland, Persia, Mesopotamia, Lithuania, Rus and Serbia are uncreated). I've had problems siring enough heirs, so much so that I was down to one male dynasty member (with 2 female relatives) and his 2 (13- and 3-year-old) bastard sons. Hence I switched to elective law (again, the current rulers (great-?)grandfather was also a bastard: once the previously ruling legitimate branch was dying out (the 40-something ruler was ill with something and depressed to boot, with no heirs), I searched out his bastard uncle's son to rule after the first switch to elective. Said son of a bastard was a few years younger, still fertile due to not being depressed, and managed to get a couple of kids).

However, once the older bastard reached adulthood (and returned from foster care), and I tried to boot him up the inheritance list, I noticed something strange (I was under the impression that amount of duke titles was most important, so had saved up 5 or so): The Duke of Arabs stayed at the top persistently. He had ~10 vassal counts, 5-6 personal provinces, and IIRC a whopping 19 martial. But only the Duchy of Arabs at duke level.

There were several more (conventionally) powerful dukes to begin with, the descendants of the former Kings of Poland (Duke of Mazovia and various others) and England (Duke of Calabria and Cornwall only by this point, due to the first dispossessed King rebelling repeatedly due to being a rival, then being punished when brought back into the fold. Still holding quite a bit of decent land). My bastard boy did eventually gain the status of first heir, but had almost 10 duke titles by this point...

P.S. Quite a geeky/nerdy/sad/whatever time to post, but it's been bothering me and i'm leaving town for a few days, so hopefully this gets answered in that time. Merry Christmas to everyone.
 
Quick question about DV, since I just (finally) downloaded it in the last week off GG. Is it still the case that in case the realm is inherited by someone with a different dynasty name the game is over, as in the original CK?
 
Quick question about DV, since I just (finally) downloaded it in the last week off GG. Is it still the case that in case the realm is inherited by someone with a different dynasty name the game is over, as in the original CK?

Yes.
There might be one caveat tho. It's possible you'll end up playing as the top Dynastic Titled Heir listed. Not sure exactly on that point tho. If you lose all of your Titles in a war, it's game over unless there is a Titled Dynasty Heir who is NOT part of your Realm, then you'd play as them. When it comes to inheriting, there's two possibilities.
You might end up playing the first Titled Dynasty Ruler listed in Succession order, or the first Titled Dynasty Ruler listed who is NOT part of your realm.

I too would like Clarification on that point.

And this brings up another question. Since the game only shows the top 10 Heirs in the Succession order, what about #'s 11 onward? If you lose all of your titles in a war, and the first Titled Dynasty Ruler NOT of your Realm is #11, would you end up playing as him or would it be game over?
 
And this brings up another question. Since the game only shows the top 10 Heirs in the Succession order, what about #'s 11 onward? If you lose all of your titles in a war, and the first Titled Dynasty Ruler NOT of your Realm is #11, would you end up playing as him or would it be game over?

AFAIK it is game over when you lose all your titles in a war, it doesn't matter if another dynastie member holds a title.

I have no idea what happens if someone from another dynastie inherits your title and your only relative is number 11 (or higher) in the heirs list. The only way to know that is for someone to just try it one time and sees what happenes. :)
 
Ok, new question:

Which of these have an effect, is it just if highest at X, if tied then highest at Y, if tied then highest at Z, etc., some weighted sum of the following numbers, and what exactly is the order of importance for determining the inheritance in Elective Law?

1. Number of Counties in Realm. This means desmene counties, plus your vassal's counties.

2. Base Martial Skill. In theory that's how talented you are with a sword, and in the Middle Ages that's as good a tie-breaker as any. To calculate it hover your mouse over a character's trait. The tooltip will say what stats it effects. Then work backwards. A guy whose Martial displays as 12, but has traits that net +8 Martial, only has 4 base Martial. And he'll lose to the inbred freak whose displayed martial score is 3.

3. This level almost never comes into play, so I'm not sure of all the details. IIRC Excommed characters can't inherit. Characters with massively negative prestige also seem to have trouble inheriting.

In your example the problem is the 15-County Duke of Arabs has 15 Counties worth of nobles voting for him. Your preferred heir needed 16 to beat him.

I haven't played in awhile so I am not too positive about Excommed characters but when I did play I used elective law extensively. Tier is irrelevant. If you have two vassals -- a super-Count with 5-6 Counties and a 2-County Byzantine Emperor with 99 King-titles (you can do this with modding) -- the Count wins every time.

These same rules seem to apply to "strongest heir" calculations for Consanguinity.

Nick
 
A follow-up on my previous post.

The older bastard (still no kids with my Knytling wife) is number one, sure, and married, but he's depressed (became stressed when underage and depressed at 22 or so) ... *sigh* I achieved WC in 1226ish (excepting the constant rebellion/independence of a couple of counties at a time), but my dynasty is limited to myself, my sister, my aunt, and 2 bastard sons, the older if which is infertile for now... I'd create kingdoms for relatives if I had any to spare. Oh well, better this than the previous situation, where my dynasty was myself and my son-of-a-bastard cousin.

Luckily, the younger bastard reached adulthood, with whopping 13/14/16/13 in stats. Got him married, then started giving him lands and duchies. I got him to 3rd place, but the weird thing is:

The second place was held by the Duke of Cyreneica, who only has a 1 province demesne and 1 count as a vassals. Yet my younger bastard, with 5 provinces in his demesne alone, was behind him. Cyreneica shouldn't have been anywhere near the top. My younger bastard Sanché had 12 base martial to his 11, about 6k prestige to Cyreneica's 30 000.

So... what's up? Playing 2.1b now.

P.S. reloaded from a slightly older save (Sanché is still 15), because the game crashed. It was going pretty bad anyway, with instead of 1-2 vassals in rebellion at a time, suddenly loads start declaring war at once. Oh, and I lost the first battles to the Il-Khanate.
 
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My best guess is that Cyreneica's vassal is a Bishop with a lot of land. Bishops don't have a desmene limit, so if they end up with loads of land (f. e. if they win a lot of sieges against Mongols, or get extremely lucky in a Crusade against someone else).

It's also possible his 30k prestige is a factor. Prestige only seems to matter if it's huge, and 30,000 prestige is quite frankly amazing.

In these situations you have to be creative. If you're extremely stable try revoking his Duke-title. It'll piss all your vassals off, but as a One-County-Count he won't win the election.

Otherwise you could try foisting his natural Kingdom onto a relative. As somebodyelse's vassal he can't be elected King of your country, and as new countries have Semisalic primogeniture as an inheritance law he won't be elected there either. You'll have to be careful, tho. If your chosen relative's heir is the guy you want to be crown prince and that relative predeceases you will have to scramble to find a new Crown Prince.

Nick
 
No, the vassal (or two, the County of Tobruk seems to alternate between declaring war to him and being his vassal. I would like to note that the Duke is actually living in Kairnt or whatever it's name is, 2 provinces east of Venice) is a one-province count.

It seems like it's NOT just a straightforward "most counties, if tied, then highest base martial", but that there are some exceptions, or some other minor factors to the sum that only matter if they're really extraordinary, like the 30k prestige (i've barely had any rulers who ended up with less, but this is the AI we're talking about).

I'm not that worried at the moment. My oldest bastard (got a 3rd one now) has so much land, I actually want to play him for a short while so I get to choose what to keep for my dynasty again. Once he gains power or before i'll have to war with the Duke of Cyreneica and strip his lands if taking his duchy isn't enough, then he shouldn't be a factor in the inheritance at all anymore.

Once the depressed bastard (hopefully) commits suicide relatively quickly after taking the throne, I get to play Sanche the scion (he had I3 education the first time, then in a couple of crashes plus one time I accidentally give him a King- instead of Duke-title, had to reload, he got I4, then I1, but when I got things running smoothly, he ended up with I3. Still 12/14/18/13 at the moment, so when he rules, demesne limit is going to be about 20, and there'll be no realm duress either...).
 
It seems like it's NOT just a straightforward "most counties, if tied, then highest base martial", but that there are some exceptions, or some other minor factors to the sum that only matter if they're really extraordinary, like the 30k prestige (i've barely had any rulers who ended up with less, but this is the AI we're talking about).
It's the latter. And 30,000 prestige is frankly ludicrous. My Kings don't get that much in WC games.

I've done lots of experimenting, and I can tell you that, by far, the most important determinant is number of counties in realm. I've done numerous experiments on this point, including one where I modded both my chosen heir and another guy into having loads of King-titles. If you want to confirm it load up and F12-die the 30,000 prestige Duke. His heir won't take his place in the line. But if you F12-die any of your other vassals their heirs will keep the same spot, or move up if the inheritance expanded their realm.

Then re-load from a pre-vassal-murdering save

Nick
 
I don't actually know how he got that much prestige, one nearby count had something like -27 000 prestige though, which was quite weird too, they might have something to do with each other.

My bastard sons have something like 24k and 7k prestige, both have about 10 duchy titles, it's just that the older one has held his for longer.
 
Inbreeding

New question: Inbred can only result from same dynasty members marrying, right?

Of course, I could also have asked this before I approved a couple of marriages between my children and their third cousins (who were related to me through their mothers, so not the same dynasty).
 
New question: Inbred can only result from same dynasty members marrying, right?

Of course, I could also have asked this before I approved a couple of marriages between my children and their third cousins (who were related to me through their mothers, so not the same dynasty).

In CK 1.05 Patch, Inbred chance with marriages within the same dynasty.

In DV Latest Beta Patch, Inbred chance with marriages who share the same grandparent of any Dynasty.
 
So my grandchildren are safe :D

Just have to remember not to marry the cousins from the other branch of the family with each other, they're 1st cousins despite all 3 families having different surnames.
 
Anyone two characters sharing one or more grandparents can get the trait.

Uncles who marry their nieces will get this as long as they're bloodrelations: a man marrying his brother's or sister's daughter will get it; a man marrying his wife's brother's or wife's sister's daughter will not as they are not related by blood.

With older CK versions the dynasty tag was all that mattered, so people's children could get the trait just because they shared the same random dynasty.
 
The Duchy of Northumberland is my vassal. It is ruled by a duchess who never married, has no children, and has NO HEIRS. What will happen to this duchy when she dies?
 
jordarkelf: What happens if the law is on Elective or Gavelkind?

If there is no heir listed you will get a country-cousin regardless of the law. But with elective law it is almost impossible to not have an heir listed, since it would mean that you as a duchess won't have any male feudal vassals or any males in your court.
 
I guess this is a newbie question! I'm thinking of getting DV, but I'm sort of on the fence. I'm hearing about weird bugs, like cabinet reshuffling on loading (what is this, anyway?). On the other hand, it sounds like it makes a lot of things more logical and adds some new, fun events. It seems like most people here use DV. So, sell me on it! Or give me some caveats! Whatever!