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Does anyone understand the eldership succession system?

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Thank you, many of these tips are very good, especially dueling them before they become older and inviting more old people and commanders via the warrior lodge! As for 1) I didn't conquer anyone old, they were in their 30s when I conquered them and then forgot about them, until I realized that the game still counts them as important enough to make them elders 20 years later. As for 8) only possible while they're still young, because elders get INSANE anti-intrigue protection, so your plots even if they work are always discovered, which gives you -50 "killed an elder" opinion malus for at least 30 years. Maybe an option for save-scummers, but I always play ironman.

Maybe the safest option is to switch the noble families up: instead of giving them their own land back, you could revoke someone else's title and give them that province, thereby maintaining your own territory. The "given land" bonus should outweigh the maluses I've mentioned. And the family whose title you've revoked will hate mostly that OTHER family who now owns their lands, instead of hating you!

Oh, by the way, it seems possible to me that the game counts these people as "rulers" even though they are the former rulers of the land you've conquered. And since rulers get such a huge advantage when elders are chosen, maybe that's how you end up with all your worst old enemies suddenly deciding your realm's future, lol.
 
RE: Splitting inheritance, as Mali Emperor I held Empire title, 2 kings titles, 2 duke titles. Now what was great and unexpected was that I was permitted to destroy all the titles below Empire tier (which I didn't, but still great to remove 'desires X title' maluses from vassals, as you can't do this with regular gavelkind), but what I didn't notice for a while was that I had different successors for my empire title as for my kingships. Basically each title I held had it's own Eldership lottery and the nominated winners were not the same. Meaning before my intervention to fix it, had I died my Empire title would have gone to my 1 yo son (my nominee), but the two kingships (Ghana and Mali) were to go my oldest child (daughter, my old nominee), who also happened to be married to the king of the Songhay by this time.

Thankfully I was pretty powerful and by this time popular with the elders for being a badass warrior and many of them were also close friends, so simple fix. I just nominated the same heir for each of the titles I held (1 yo son) and then the designated successor for each title flipped to him in a couple of days. But had I not done this, or had I been unpopular, it seems it was certainly possible the titles could have been given to different people like in regular gavelkind.
 
Another thing I've noticed: even though I have zero women's lib laws and all of my subjects always get a -10 "female ruler" opinion towards me, they still indiscriminately vote for women and men and the candidate being female doesn't sway their vote at all. Shouldn't there be at least a -10 opinion modifier for female aspirants considering the laws and general attitude?
 
Evangeline said:
Another thing I've noticed: even though I have zero women's lib laws and all of my subjects always get a -10 "female ruler" opinion towards me, they still indiscriminately vote for women and men and the candidate being female doesn't sway their vote at all. Shouldn't there be at least a -10 opinion modifier for female aspirants considering the laws and general attitude?
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Just for clarity sake - not opinion, I believe, but heir value? Because if it's so, they have such a penalty, at least I believe so, and it's quite higher then -10. There is a lot of voting weights, complexly stacked (remember that situations when traits weights are different depending from elder traits?), and -10 (or even -30, which, I believe, women have just now) would be "one more trigger".
I'm not against it, actually. Tribal societies were... let me put it - more lenient concerning making women rulers then stable civilized realms with defined succession systems.
 
Going a bit of topic here but i would like your opoinion.
Overall given the bit 'unstable" nature of eldership succesion law is it worth it going for the religious specific doctorine that lets you keep eldership succesion plus the added perks?
Imho probably not. I will probably soon be faced with such one dilema as an African Berber.
So i am thinking concerning Totem Gardians:
Eldership succesion: Taking into acount the possible drawbacks not much better than primo (that you have for free)
Heathen Tax: It is ok but still you only expect to have provinces of the wrong faith under your control for a limited time (to be converted)
Request to take vows: Well i don't know, maybe if they tie along with Eldership, meaning you force the leading candidates you don't like to take the vows and thus disqualufy them (is this possible)?
So overall two of the three features of Totem gurdians might take you somewhere remotely close to Meritocracy and tax on heathens is really not worth it.
Then again one could say keep the Totem Gardians for RP reasons. Still as a Berber i prefer the Seafaring Daring combo that ties really well with my culture. What do you think?

Thank you in advance
 
Well, if you CAN go primo then go for it, but if you're tribal you can generally only choose between various forms of Gavelkind or Eldership. If you have say only one king tier title and a bunch of lower titles then gavelkind can be okay if you've upgraded the capital county enough.

I was going to say eldership is at least better than gavelkind, but then this just happened: I had all the elders at 80 opinion, then die of old age, they vote my candidate in. I forget to immediately press the "not allowed to lead troops" button and a few days after inheriting, the candidate dies a random death in battle. But a few days were not enough to make the electors love my new guy, obviously, so they seriously vote for THE worst character in the entire dynasty: a pregnant woman with "imbecile" and "ugly" traits and not a single stat above zero. Married to an imbecilic clubfooted guy. Obviously everyone hates us both (everyone is at minus 60-80) and no matter what I try I cannot change that enough to get the electors to love me enough to vote for what I want, so the next heir is going to suck almost as bad. All my neighbours now hate me, as well, and decide to attack and holy war from all sides while my vassals revolt. Grrr... this just makes me WISH I had the wonders of gavelkind! :D

In case you don't believe me, here is the ruler my lovely elders carefully selected (a few years have passed and I've managed to get some better traits and at least increase martial, mostly due to failing to suicide by duel):
upload_2018-11-15_14-18-3.png


And this was her husband:
upload_2018-11-15_14-18-59.png


:mad::confused::eek::D
 
Actually, you have one more option, if your character can manage it.
Kill or disenherit everybody else in your family. They can't vote wrong guy if right one is the only choice!

...of course, it's risky.
 
Well, much like Tanistry (which I love for the... fun? randomness?) Eldership seems to function best in smaller realms and smaller dynasties. Once you have too many titles to vote on, or vassals/elders to vote, and/or too many potential voting targets it all goes straight to hell. Glorious, realm bursting hell.
 
So my king died and the elders wanted to elect the only kinswoman I didn't matrimarry (she was like an aunt's granddaughter, they didn't even vote for the grandson, or the other granddaughters that were in matris), so I checked to see what was going on. LOL freaking former concubines (berber/muslims) can be elders. They hated the new king's guts so I got them to leave and everything was fine from there.
 
It doesn't really matter if the new ruler is matri-married or not since her non-dynastic kids will never be eligible for election, so at least that doesn't need to worry you. I've realized I have to really change my entrenched CK2 habits for eldership: matrilinial marriages not necessary at all! They will only expand your dynasty to more with potentially crappy people that could be elected by grumpy elders AND will only increase the size of your court which will lead to MORE eligible elders/electors you need to keep happy in case they replace some other elder. Much safer for them and their descendants to live far away. Only matrimarry your genius/strong/quick girls, and only if you don't yet have these traits enough in your dynasty. Every other girl can be married off normally without the slightest worry, because their non-dynastic offspring will never inherit a claim (and the girl's own claim cannot be pressed due to the marital non-agression pact during the marriage). Right? Just keep a close watch on their husbands and recall the woman back to your court and remarry her as soon as the husband dies.

This will keep your dynasty nice and small so can easily keep an eye on crappy members and kill them off before anyone votes for them.

This feature of allowing risk-free normal marriages for your women is awesome - you can have all the alliances you want without the risk that they will come back to bite you in the ass later due to non-dynastic claimants! Okay, now THAT is a big plus to eldership.
 
Oh, I found a thing I never need before, but... you can ask unlanded courtier to leave your court. Even if it's elder. Cost - 5 prestige and -5 opinion with this particular courtier.
Keep in mind that exiles tend to join courts of rulers with the same religion and culture.
 
Yes, but they will remain elders and will simply be at another court in your realm. They will still be able to vote from there, and you will have less options of pleasing them unfortunately. :(
 
Evangeline said:
Yes, but they will remain elders and will simply be at another court in your realm. They will still be able to vote from there, and you will have less options of pleasing them unfortunately. :(
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You have a chance (solid one) that they would leave your realm for good. I checked, and it works.
It would take some days to reshuffle them, but it's work.
 
I guess the chance of them leaving your realm is greater if anyone outside of your realm shares your religion/culture - not the case for me. It has not worked for me yet, but I can keep trying.
 
I just played 2 runs with eldership, first as hausa then as lettgalian.

On my first run in Africa just ignored the elders and bred a wide dynasty. Sure there was a lot of incomptent douches as kings, but joining a warrior cult solves that pretty quickly.
It also allowed me to run through my subjugations fast to consolidate all the tribes rather quickly.

Once i Empired and reformed i put the game away because eldership was simply too broken to be fun.

Cue romuva game and eldership. Haven't read the patch-notes, so it caught me off guard, but thought, meh, let's see if this is as abusable as i think.
Long story short, keeping ALL holdings for yourself, and simply building training grounds and basic forts will allow you to stack stupid amounts of retinues, which will only cost a small amount of your monthly prestige when fully reinforced, so just make sure your stack is large enough to always instawipe, and you shouldn't have problems with prestige.
Romuva warrior lodge veterans can even build fortifications with renown.

The way I see it, eldership is definately WAY too strong, there's no way to lose titles on succesion and no real negatives associated with not having perfect heir control, as warrior lodges are an easy way to get a succession or a great ruler.
 
I'm playing a Lithuania 769 start- 28 years in- first ruler still alive. Like others have mentioned, it can be a pain to sway/gift elders to pick the obvious best successor instead of some teenager or imbecile adult.

Word to the wise- be careful when you invite older characters to your realm.

My realm was lacking in good commanders, so I invited 4 non-Romuva pagans (1 Slav, 2 Norse, 1 Tengri) to my court to serve on the battlefield. They were all left unmarried and unlanded. Within a few years, all 4 of them were voting for the next ruler, and all of them voted against me since my heir was not of their culture or religion.

I guess this is "working as designed", but it seems incorrect to let un-tethered foreign heathens get a vote in choosing the next ruler just because of their age. I could understand it if they were landed, had married a local woman, or sired a child of our faith- but none of those things were true.

I "fixed the glitch" by kicking them out with "ask to leave court" decision, and they soon were replaced by people of my culture/religion that were amenable to my choice in successor.

Just wanted to share this for others trying out the eldership succession law.
 
Another eldership question for the community. Different game- playing in 769 as High Chief Dugu of Kanem in Africa. My religion is unreformed African, Tribal government, with the default Eldership succession law.

I subjugated enough to create the Kingdom of Kanem, then force vassalized a bunch of dukes to form the Kingdom of Hausaland, since you need a 2nd kingdom title to become Emperor. Now that I have created the Kanem-Bornu empire title, it is telling me that my 2nd son will inherit the Kingdom of Hausaland, while my primary heir will get the Empire title and the Kingdom of Kanem.

The cause is that two different groups of elders seem to be choosing successors! The elders in my primary kingdom are happy to vote for the same successor I have designated, but those in Hausaland are all voting against me, picking my 2nd son over the primary successor I have chosen. All my kids have the same culture and religion, so not sure why this is the case.

I thought the whole point of eldership was that it wouldn't split up your titles, and the trade off was that you won't always get your pick of successor. But now this seems to be functioning more like regular Gavelkind.

Working as designed, or bug? What do y'all think?
 
eastcoastceojam said:
Another eldership question for the community. Different game- playing in 769 as High Chief Dugu of Kanem in Africa. My religion is unreformed African, Tribal government, with the default Eldership succession law.

I subjugated enough to create the Kingdom of Kanem, then force vassalized a bunch of dukes to form the Kingdom of Hausaland, since you need a 2nd kingdom title to become Emperor. Now that I have created the Kanem-Bornu empire title, it is telling me that my 2nd son will inherit the Kingdom of Hausaland, while my primary heir will get the Empire title and the Kingdom of Kanem.

The cause is that two different groups of elders seem to be choosing successors! The elders in my primary kingdom are happy to vote for the same successor I have designated, but those in Hausaland are all voting against me, picking my 2nd son over the primary successor I have chosen. All my kids have the same culture and religion, so not sure why this is the case.

I thought the whole point of eldership was that it wouldn't split up your titles, and the trade off was that you won't always get your pick of successor. But now this seems to be functioning more like regular Gavelkind.

Working as designed, or bug? What do y'all think?
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I had this in my africa run.
I just had to place the same vote for both titles and it instantly fixed itself.
 
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but once you get some money you can also buy favors to get elders to vote the way you want.
 
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