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Elective Gavelkind is Fair and Balanced

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grisamentum said:
I don't really see how you need to "look into" things like this. You and your team obviously spent weeks coding it, and regular gavelkind has been more or less like this since the start. How is it just now something that has to be "looked into"?

I mean, maybe we should get all DLC for free and "look into" paying Paradox a few weeks later?
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Most likely an automated algorithm is used to give out titles. Algorithms can have bugs and act in unintended ways even if the code seems to check out initially. What may give out intended outputs for some inputs, may give out unintended outputs for other input variables. I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to need to look into the problem even after they already coded it.

Source: Programming experience
 
grisamentum said:
I don't really see how you need to "look into" things like this. You and your team obviously spent weeks coding it, and regular gavelkind has been more or less like this since the start. How is it just now something that has to be "looked into"?

I mean, maybe we should get all DLC for free and "look into" paying Paradox a few weeks later?
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Seriously? What is your problem? You do this all the time, and it is incredibly obnoxious and off-putting. I don't know why you feel the need to be dismissive of any opinion that doesn't align with the game's code, as it is exists right that second, in some misguided attempt at proving the devs can never make a mistake.

The devs changed the mechanic behind (elective) gavelkind themselves, and it's being pointed out that it isn't working as described when an emperor level title is involved, so even by your nonsense logic, if a dev agrees that it bears looking into, there's probably something wrong.
 
infernalmachine said:
Most likely an automated algorithm is used to give out titles. Algorithms can have bugs and act in unintended ways even if the code seems to check out initially. What may give out intended outputs for some inputs, may give out unintended outputs for other input variables. I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to need to look into the problem even after they already coded it.

Source: Programming experience
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Obviously. Of course the only time you can look into a "problem" is after you have created testable code.

However that is not the same thing as looking into it after you sell the product to people.
 
I've had my share of these successions too. At least you didn't use the Custom Empire creation for your empire, you'd also end up with Scandinavia being randomly created and given to your secondary heir.
 
grisamentum said:
I know. That's been a problem for years now. I don't know why they do so little to fix it.
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I think it has to do with small team size. Paradox doesn't have that big a dev team, especially when you consider that this is an older product, to which most members have moved on to newer game dev projects like HOI4. I'm used to it by now, so it doesn't really bother me to have to wait for a few successive patches.
 
grisamentum said:
I don't really see how you need to "look into" things like this. You and your team obviously spent weeks coding it, and regular gavelkind has been more or less like this since the start. How is it just now something that has to be "looked into"?

I mean, maybe we should get all DLC for free and "look into" paying Paradox a few weeks later?
Click to expand...

If you're goal is to be obnoxious and discourage the dev team from using the forum, or at least reading your posts, you are doing a great job of it.
 
I think it is a bit sad that people have been complaining of gavelkind for years and nothing much has been done about it. The real problem is that your power base is counties, and a gavelkind algorithm that gives the eldest son of a Duke 2 counties and the younger five, or leaves the heir to a kingdom with one county and gives five to his brother, is unbalanced and destabilising, especially as the younger son also gets a claim on the older one's higher tier title. Just splitting counties equally between sons, and then giving them the associated higher tier titles would give better results than these algorithms.

For me, this has made gavelkind a bit of a game breaker, since I tend to avoid places that start with gavelkind. Or I use the console. A pity, because I really wouldn't mind the challenge of a balanced gavelkind succession.
 
Darkrenown said:
If you're goal is to be obnoxious and discourage the dev team from using the forum, or at least reading your posts, you are doing a great job of it.
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I certainly understand what you're saying. Nobody wants to see irate, snarky critiques of the product they work on. Especially when they are willing to step up and offer to look into the problem (as JohanL did here).

But you also have to realize that the customers have literally been complaining about this issue for years. Not exaggerating, actual multiple years we have had this problem with gavelkind. That someone from Paradox only just now acknowledges that they will examine it is deeply frustrating.

What JohanL's comment communicates to us (intentionally or not) is that you have actually not been listening to what we have been saying for the past several years, and were apparently unaware of these problems with gavelkind. So you can see the source of any frustration and snark. Because we have certainly been paying for content these years.
 
gothos said:
I've had my share of these successions too. At least you didn't use the Custom Empire creation for your empire, you'd also end up with Scandinavia being randomly created and given to your secondary heir.
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Oh yea about that, this stuff can also happen with kingdoms.

I created a custom kingdom with all of de jure Sweden + Denmark, all of Norway bar the Islands, All of Finland bar Karelia and Estonia, which effectively erased Sweden and Denmark from the de jure map. A couple successions later, the kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark were created and given to my second and third heir. Sweden is roughly the duchy of Småland, while Denmark is just the island of Götland (??). The kingdoms of Norway and Finland were never created on succession.

I'm playing on the last beta patch and I'm pretty sure this isn't WAD.
 
Equally, I get that playing a game with bugs or badly working features isn't fun, but I think making snarky comments at people who say they'll look into it is about the worst thing to do.

Johan has not been in charge of the CK2 project for years, he took over fairly recently after a stint on another project - I don't expect you to track our internal team setups, but it's somewhat relevant. Also, gavelkind was changed for the CM release and again in the 2nd beta patch, it might have been looked at before that too but I do not know for sure - I'd be surprised if there is not a single pre-CM patchnote mentioning gavelkind though. Johan doesn't do all the coding for CK2 himself, and he cannot hold every line of code in his head at all times, so of course when a problem is reported he has to investigate the issue rather than instantly knowing what is wrong.
 
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I think the key principe is that if a secondary heir inherits a title, and titles they inherit after that should either be:
1) Equal in rank to the first title they inherit
2) De jure a vassal of a title they inherited already

This means a character should not be able to inherit Denmark, but also inherit Vestergautland. If you have 8 counties - one in Denmark and 7 in Sweden, the heir that inherits Denmark should get 1 county. If you have a third heir but no kingdom title for them, they could get the Jarldom of Vestergautland, but will not then inherit Uppland as well. If a gavelkind system produces a result where your secondary heir ends up with far more land and power than you, as well as titles that are de jure your vassal but not theirs, it's not going quite right.

Ideally, a secondary heir shouldn't get two kingdom titles if you hold three, but only have two sons. Your first son should get two kingdoms, and your second should get one. Electors shouldn't be predisposed to make the opposite true.
 
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Ols said:
I think the key principe is that if a secondary heir inherits a title, and titles they inherit after that should either be:
1) Equal in rank to the first title they inherit
2) De jure a vassal of a title they inherited already

This means a character should not be able to inherit Denmark, but also inherit Vestergautland. If you have 8 counties - one in Denmark and 7 in Sweden, the heir that inherits Denmark should get 1 county. If you have a third heir but no kingdom title for them, they could get the Jarldom of Vestergautland, but will not then inherit Uppland as well. If a gavelkind system produces a result where your secondary heir ends up with far more land and power than you, as well as titles that are de jure your vassal but not theirs, it's not going quite right.

Ideally, a secondary heir shouldn't get two kingdom titles if you hold three, but only have two sons. Your first son should get two kingdoms, and your second should get one. Electors shouldn't be predisposed to make the opposite true.
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Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. So much this.

Not only would this address issues with balance, it would also solve the horrible border patchwork that inevitably results when a region is subjected to gavelkind.

So for example, say a king (with three sons) dies holding England and Scotland as well as the duchies of Kent and Wessex (the capital). Under the current system the first son would probably get England and the capital, the second son would get Scotland and chunks of each duchy, along with the title of Wessex, and the third would get one county (probably in de jure Wessex) and the duchy of Kent. Under this proposal, the first son would get England and Wessex, the second son would get Scotland, and would only get any land in England if his father didn't own any Scottish counties. The third son would get the whole duchy of Kent.

It's so much simpler and would also make Gavelkind less of an arbitrary mystery.
 
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Gavelkind sounds really complicated to program and hard to get working from what I've heard in the past. I'm sure the dev team is working very hard, as I'm sure they might want to play CK2 some time, and would also appreciate less bugs.
 
Agenor said:
The real problem is that your power base is counties, and a gavelkind algorithm that gives the eldest son of a Duke 2 counties and the younger five, or leaves the heir to a kingdom with one county and gives five to his brother, is unbalanced and destabilising, especially as the younger son also gets a claim on the older one's higher tier title. Just splitting counties equally between sons, and then giving them the associated higher tier titles would give better results than these algorithms.
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I was just thinking this but couldn't explain it as well. Indeed, the problem is that gavelkind tries to hand out titles when it should be worried about land.
 
Tuerai said:
Gavelkind sounds really complicated to program and hard to get working from what I've heard in the past. I'm sure the dev team is working very hard, as I'm sure they might want to play CK2 some time, and would also appreciate less bugs.
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I think an ideal solution is to just allow the player to distribute the titles in gavelkind, one at a time.
 
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