Abdicate the Throne

[Maximonium]

Alright, nothing like a problematic issue within a game to get you to stop lurking and kick up a first post huh?

What I'm here to call for, which I'm sure MANY of us have thought about at least once when we're playing, is the fact our ruler is just too damn sick/old/weak/retarded.

Often, you can have a ruler last for utter generations, going up into the ripe 60's, 70's, 80's, and sometimes, even 90's. This becomes a problem, as the heirs continue to age, and often waste away their potential with little chances to truly prosper. Even with electoral succession, often the heir's you'll actually want can well be within their 50's or more, with middle aged heirs and their own children. Thus, once these already ancient heirs take over, they're faced with a rather already wasted life span, weak prestige and piety, and those lovable unwavering vassals now one step away from imploding into murder and civil war.

What we need is the ability to allow rulers, once they reach a certain age, or achieve a certain amount of traits, to abdicate to the throne. This would allow better prepared heirs to get the throne before their midlife crisis happens, and to allow them more time to rule and develop. To balance this, a prestige or piety hit can be taken, and a cool down timer of a certain amount of years can be placed, so players won't simply pass off the crown till the brain child of the medieval eugenics program steps up.

By doing this, you can allow us, the players, to have one less annoying mechanic that often draws out a gripe, and allow us to not have to resort to gamey tactics to remove an annoying leader, like AI manipulation or suicide charges.

 

[Panjer]

To avoid abusing the mechanic you might need to have a certain combination of traits in order to abdicate.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

I would say >50 years of age with any of: stressed, maimed, incapable, inbred, imbecile, castrated or blind..

 

[Merci357]

I would say >50 years of age with any of: stressed, maimed, incapable, inbred, imbecile, castrated or blind..

50 might be a bit young, though. No idea how it was back in the middle ages, but with 50 you have still quite a lot of vital years before you.

However, a maimed or incapable ruler should be be able to abdicate, as well as those well in their twilight years (70+ maybe?), if s/he happens to have a heir with mutual trust, since I doubt anyone would abdicate to someone you hate/hates you.

 

[Battle bunny]

I would say >50 years of age with any of: stressed, maimed, incapable, inbred, imbecile, castrated or blind..

In theory, it sounds good, except that an incapable, inbred or imbecile king might not even have the mental capacity to abdicate anymore (or at least realise the merits thereof). And as we all know, nothing is better for the vassals than a king that might as well not exist, so they certainly aren't going to help the king abdicate unless they can get the throne themselves... The monarch should also have a motivation to abdicate - stressed or depressed would work here. (Though a depressed king can commit suicide now, so that's a bit redundant.)

In practice, the whole idea detracts from the gameplay. Having shitty rulers not die is a part of the game IMO - though you can tempt death by leading troops and doing other risky things.

 

[Alyiakal]

I do agree that abdication would be a very nice feature. In the meantime, you can host a summer fair every year and hope you get the event that makes you depressed. Although it's somewhat distasteful, you can then get rid of your character via the suicide decision.

I actually used this mechanic to ensure a smooth dual inheritance; my heir was also the heir to another kingdom, and I didn't want the AI taking over and making my future ruler do stupid things. Since my queen had the strong trait, and her husband was simply normal, not to mention older, I had to find some way of getting rid of her when her heir inherited the other throne. This was my only solution sadly.

 

[unmerged(600321)]

A great way to die is to do failed assassination attempts against low level targets. Change your spymaster to someone with 0 or close to 0 intrigue. Keep him away from the county the person you try to kill is in. Then target courtiers who should be cheap per attempt. After each fail, unpause the game to give a chance for a counter attempt. You should usually die within around 500 gold spent unless you and your spouse have high intrigue. If you play the way I do with high stewardship/midas touched based characters, or even with high diplomacy/gray eminence type characters, you should have low enough intrigue that you die fairly easily.


I like the abdicate suggestion though. Maybe the content trait should also allow abdication after around 60 years.

 

[RustyTurban]

There is already a simple mod for this is the mod forums. Best way to not cheat with it, set yourself pre-conditions for when it can be used.

[edit] Found it for you http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...5-MINIMOD-Abdication&highlight=mod+abdication

 

[unmerged(21389)]

Agree with Random83, I'd say you can get away with less than 500 gold. Just pick three or four low level courtiers that cost 50pp to make an assassination attempt on. A couple will likely divulge your name and one of the retaliatory attacks will get you. If you want to game it further, jail and revoke all your non-culture vassals right before this and then your new heir can hand out tons of titles to new culture friendly vassals significantly lowering the problem of "short reign" penalty, making the power transition very smooth.

 

[Zlefin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdication
decided to browse wiki some; I didn't read all of them; but abdication seems very rare; and most of the abdications (and all the ones I read) were forced abdications; which is kinda what happens with some of the plots already.
Truly voluntary abdication in europe just didn't seem to happen at the time; though in other places in the world at other times, there have been systems where abdication was common.

While I like the idea of being able to abdicate; justifying it based on the history i've seen looks pretty difficult; you're required by god to rule as long as you're able. I don't know how it was in the muslim and other areas; you might be able to get away with a regency to transfer power instead of abdicating. gonna go do some more reading.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

I have to say I disagree. It just makes the game too easy.

One of the challenges to the game is dealing with the inevitable bad king. Or the good king that gets knocked on the head and turned into a drooling imbecile. If you can ditch your king whenever you wanted through abdication, you might as well just let the player pick his own king all the time. Just put a button next to each character that says "make king."

You can only imagine how this would be easily abused. You want the character with that juicy claim to be king? Just have the 5 guys in front of him abdicate. Presto, perfect king with a claim on the HRE.

It's a nice idea but bad for the game. Not to mention, it really didn't happen during the time. You don't give up power in a feudal medieval world. For the same reason modern world dictators don't go willingly. Because the next guy is probably going to see you as a possible threat and get rid of you as soon as you're powerless. The only safe path once you're in charge is to stay that way always. Which is why a lot of modern dictators try to hold on after they become drooling imbeciles themselves.

Giving up power is pretty much a death sentence. Or at least a jail sentence.

 

[Bialaska]

Abdication should not usually happen, although I would say certain traits should allow it.

Incapable and Infirm would be two good reasons. In one case the character has no idea what is going on, and his son should take over, while the Infirm ruler might see his condition as having a negative influence on the kingdom, which so he hands over the reigns of the kingdom to his heir.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

Abdication seems like a gamey way to go about things. There already is a sort of abdication setup though when somebody declares for your primary title. Just surrender.

 

[NewbieOne]

Abdication per se is reasonable and all but the problem is abuse. Look how people combine matrilineal marriage with assassination etc., that's a systematic road roller ride of land acquisition that the game isn't really prepared to handle. With abdication, it'd be all the worse, as that too can be connected with inheritance etc.

As of now, you can give up non-primary titles and for AAR purposes, if remaining a King of Cyprus or some such with 1-2 counties under you and some protective alliances would not be enough, you could, I guess, reload as a claimant, DoW, reload as you, surrender etc. People have done such things. Or as a plot device you can put the king in lead of an army in a large battle and reload until he gets maimed ("by a valiant foeman") or something.

 

[Redwulf_Storm]

You can take my throne from my cold, dead, butt-cheeks.

 

[Achab]

Abdication is already possible in the game, you just need to lose a war against your tyranny.
You lose two levels of crown authority for all your K and E titles, what is a reasonable penalty.

 

[Talq]

You lose two levels of crown authority for all your K and E titles, what is a reasonable penalty.

You're kidding, right?
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I like the option, regrettably it seems only certain cultures supported it (although content+old, infirm, incapable should raise the possibility).

Of course, paradox could also sort out the regency rules so they are not so deliberately retarded (hint to paradox, if the heir is mature-aged, the regent should be him, not some random courtier).

 

[AttilaTheFun]

Incapable is exactly the character trait that would Prevent you from abdicating. That's the drooling imbecile who rules for 100 years with his sonand heir as his regent... like Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun from Game of Thrones. Or outlives multiple generations of his heirs, like Walder Frey.

Abdication was, from what I remember from history class, generally a thinly-veiled way to legitimate usurping the throne, like king Edward II of England or Magnus IV of Sweden (both from Wikipedia). It was never really used as a voluntary diplomatic move until much later in history.

If you REALLY want to accelerate you succession, just change tags to your heir and then assassinate the king. Kinda ruins the unpredictability of waiting to see if your king becomes a paranoid old tyrant in his old age though.

The only way I would be ok with abdication as a reasonable game mechanic would be as a semi-random 2-choice event with a MTTH of like 8000 months, that only fires if you're over maybe 70 years old, and have like 30+ combined stewardship.

 

[SRM]

50 might be a bit young, though. No idea how it was back in the middle ages, but with 50 you have still quite a lot of vital years before you.

Depended on culture. Muslims tended to live longer because of better medical knowledge (the Greeks also had this, but their average lifespan still remained low due to Byzantine intrigue and backstabbing) whereas other Europeans tended to be on the short end of the stick. Peasants were lucky to see 30, nobles were considered elderly by 50. A 90 year old King like we tend to see in CK2 would've been seen as unnatural. And probably a sorcerer.

I vote tie abdication at least partly to health, which is already an ingame stat.

 

[Lord Finnish]

I think there should be some conditions to allow abdication:
- Stressed/Depressed, wounded/maimed ruler.
- Has at least one usurper faction with at least 33% of your power.
- At least 50 years old.

A female ruler should be able to abdicate easier if her heir is her adult son.