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Managing Gavelkind - What Should I Have Done Instead???

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OK, here's the situation: I am the Emperor of the Carpathian Empire, King of Hungary, and King of Wallachia.

My ruler was getting old, had no children and an old wife, and two (much) younger male relatives that were set to inherit at his death. My current ruler is only the second ruler since the game started. His father converted to Orthodoxy just a few years before he died - and he lived a LONG time.

So my old second ruler takes over the throne pretty late in life and his wife hasn't popped out any kids (no negative traits, just bad RNG). I'm waiting around for 10 years to pass so I can change to elective monarchy out of gavelkind. The problem is that my character portrait starts looking more and more like the crypt keeper and I'm not sure I'm going to make it.

Why is that bad? Well, the goofy computer has my oldest male relative inheriting the Empire title and a few odd counties. Meanwhile, the second eldest male relative is set to inherit BOTH kingdom level titles and some odd counties. Oddly, my ruler had no duchy level titles, probably a tactical error on my part. At any rate, the future is looking pretty nasty and I am not getting any younger. I look around and see if anyone is interested in killing either of these guys (their stats are very similar) but it seems they are pretty popular around the Empire these days.

And then I fall ill...

Given my ruler's age, I expect him to die any moment. So naturally, I panicked and made things worse! Not knowing what to do, I decided to grant a kingdom title to one of my heirs to see if that improved the gavelkind picture in any way. I decide to grant a king level title to one of these guys now. So I go to give the Kingdom of Hungary to my first heir and.... I mistakenly give it to the younger one instead (VERY similar character portraits...). I guess I could have reloaded the save and done it correctly but I decided to play it out just to see what would happen. The gavelkind-CPU in the game changes... NOTHING in the inheritance plan based on what I did.

I was scratching my head about that when the RNG decided to pop up and say hello again. Two things happened in quick succession - 1) I recovered from my illness and 2) my wife who has been barren for 20 years gets pregnant!

Time passes, and I have a son. And not long after another one! And my ruler is over 70 at this point.

Next thing you know, my ruler is dead. My first son (1 year old) inherits the Empire with his mother as regent. His younger brother (0 years old) becomes King of Wallachia with some guy I don't immediately recognize as regent. Meanwhile, I had accidentally given the Kingdom of Hungary to that other male relative when I had no children.

Naturally, a war breaks out immediately (low crown authority). Interestingly enough, no one is actually warring with my ruler - most likely because the Emperor title went from all-powerful to worthless in about 3 months time.

So what should I have done instead in this situation? I realize that the obvious answer is that Hungary has to convert to Catholic/Orthodox ASAP and I didn't do that as I should have. But what would you have done in my situation here? I would like to learn more about managing gavelkind since a lot of the game starting positions that interest me have a gavelkind start.
 
Most important thing... get rid of gavelkind as soon as possible.
You can assassinate your children, or, if Christian, give them bishop titles. You could make them your court chaplain/spymaster, and send them to convert pagan states/on a discover technology mission to Byzantium. Outcome one - pagan king throws them in the dungeon or sacrifices them. Outcome 2 - the Byzantines blind/castrate them.
 
Yeah - I get that gavelkind is not as good as other succession methods... But that ship had sailed in my scenario. Was there anything I could have done differently or was I just screwed at that point no matter what?

Hopefully the CKIII version of gavelkind will allow the player to make some choices as to how things are handed out....
 
u shld have built a temple the moment ur sons was born, given the temple to youngest son and saved all holdings in ur own personal demense then ur 1 year old will of inherited every single title as the other participant (0 year old) would be enaligble in gavelkind due to bishop status...u dont even have to build a new temple could even of tyranically banished the bishop or something.
 
brothir said:
Reform the Tengri faith.
Click to expand...

He said his father(the guy that lived long) converted to orthodox, so there's little point in doing that...

Having gavelkind as a permanent succesion will have you keep only one county (if they can't have a barony somewhere they can't inherit) or disinheriting all heirs but one though various methods(bischop, castration, death etc.). At least, that's what is what generally happens in my games if I have gavelkind and can do that(but most of all: get rid of gavelkind ASAP).
 
You could also give away all your county titles, save the primary one (eg, Pest), to non-dynastic vassals. In that way, you preserve all the titles to be given to the same heir.

As long as you have only 1 county titles, the titles will not be split. So your heir will inherit Emperor, dual-King and Pest.
 
Oh Gavelkind how I loathe thee. Mostly cause I end up having two or more sons and then I die early before I can get rid of the other heirs.

Maybe the new DLC will allow you to sort out the handing out of titles to your various heirs with negative modifiers if they feel stiffed by their inheritance. I just want to be able to work to maintain the integrity and power of the Duchy/Kingdom/Empire whilst I move towards changing the laws/reforming faith.
 
Easy - Go to war against your Tengri neighbors until you can grant your 2nd son enough titles so that you don't lose any primary titles. A full duchy would *probably* be enough, and if not just grab another one.

Alternatively - Divorce your wife after your first son is born.

Or kill your 2nd heir if you have the money... You're older than god herself, so who cares about a little tyrant/kinslayer penalty?

Or grant the titles to a dynasty member (without claims) first before you die. Dynasty members get a +15 total bonus towards you.

Or failing all of that, just roleplay it. The revolt is only for lowering CA, so who cares if it succeeds? Then it'll grant you the time to gather yourself for the next crisis. Btw, your 2nd heir now has two kingdom titles that'll split when he dies. Or, if he's young enough to not have any heirs, they'll revert back to YOU when he dies. Unexpectedly, in a hunting accident... ;)
 
beartjah said:
He said his father(the guy that lived long) converted to orthodox, so there's little point in doing that...

Having gavelkind as a permanent succesion will have you keep only one county (if they can't have a barony somewhere they can't inherit) or disinheriting all heirs but one though various methods(bischop, castration, death etc.). At least, that's what is what generally happens in my games if I have gavelkind and can do that(but most of all: get rid of gavelkind ASAP).
Click to expand...

Let me get this straight.... All I have to do is make sure that I only have one county level title and the Empire and BOTH kingdoms will go to my eldest son/heir????

I'm not sure that makes sense to me but if that's true I'll take it!
 
Generally speaking, re gavelkind, you want to have your counties in the same de-jure kingdom as your capital, and land your other sons outside of the de-jure kingdom your capital is in. Note that you can land sons at age 0 if you wish. Also the game will tell you what titles are likely to be lost on death. In your case, you could try landing sons out of both kingdoms, but I suspect you wont be able to give them enough for gavelkind not to give them more.

Also to be honest, get out of gavelkind ASAP, and be prepared to get out of gavelkind when you have empire and kingdom titles. Not only is it very hard to keep them (splitting titles being gavelkind's intention), but their weights will cause the game to try and give demense away like no tomorrow.
 
marlowe221 said:
Let me get this straight.... All I have to do is make sure that I only have one county level title and the Empire and BOTH kingdoms will go to my eldest son/heir????

I'm not sure that makes sense to me but if that's true I'll take it!
Click to expand...

If a character doesn't have a holding(county or barony) somewhere, he cannot hold any duchy or higher titles. And the game won't give someone titles in gavelkind if he can't hold them...

So if you only have one holding when you die and your sons don't have any holdings at all, the game can't hand any titles to secondary sons.

This is the easy way, you can also try to get rid of all other sons, but that takes a bit more effort.
But most of all: get out of gavelkind whenever you get the chance.
 
I like gavelkind. It makes the game more interesting.

It's easy to deal with without gaming it. Either take it on the chin or declare a war for the claim you get on your siblings after the old ruler's death.
 
Eh, Gavelkind is fun and manageable if you hold land within your de jure secondary title (Kingdom in your case), and grab a single county/duchy outside of it to hand to your second son. Gavelkind is also stupid OP if you're playing as a Catholic/Catholic Heresy, just throw on Free Investiture and nominate your additional sons for bisophrics; boom they no long count towards inheritance (Even though they haven't inherited the bisophric yet).

In your case, imprison and banish/revoke/execute and reunite the kingdom. Which is part of the fun of playing Gavelkind, it artificially helps reduce blobbing by forcing you to focus on internal situations periodically.
 
marlowe221 said:
So I go to give the Kingdom of Hungary to my first heir and.... I mistakenly give it to the younger one instead (VERY similar character portraits...). I guess I could have reloaded the save and done it correctly but I decided to play it out just to see what would happen. The gavelkind-CPU in the game changes... NOTHING in the inheritance plan based on what I did.
Click to expand...
So, you granted the kingdom to the one who stood to inherit it anyway? Of course this doesn't change anything in the distribution of the other titles; why should it.
 
nyah said:
I like gavelkind. It makes the game more interesting.

It's easy to deal with without gaming it. Either take it on the chin or declare a war for the claim you get on your siblings after the old ruler's death.
Click to expand...

To be honest, you don't get claims on the titles when your brothers stay as your vassals. Otherwise you could just revoke without penalty... You only get claims when they become independent (ie, multiple top-level titles).

Also, a lesson to the OP: Convert 1st, then change the succession law, AND ONLY THEN create the 2nd kingdom and the empire. They'll both be created with whatever law you had for the original kingdom. So if you went Elective your second kingdom and the empire would also be Elective, allowing you to destroy either/both at your leisure.
 
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