After a few generations, every playthrough of mine eventually becomes plagued with issues with claimant factions. This issue is obviously very easy to solve with executing prisoners for dread, but this strategy is also obviously overpowered and game-y. Without this strategy, the only way for me to survive a succession is to have a diplomacy focused heir and start befriending people as soon as possible. If my heir is underaged, I would really have no chance at all if I didn't execute prisoners. Looking at the game files, there don't seem to be a lot of things to prevent the AI from joining a claimant faction. Assuming the claimant is an identical faith, culture, and the proper gender for the realm as you (which is likely since they'll most likely be family), the AI only need to find 25 "join score" to decide to join the claimant faction. Crown authority 1 adds 10 points to this and crown authority 3 or 4 adds 20. After this, vassals only need to like the claimant very slightly more than you to join their faction (1.5x the difference in opinion = 1 point, so +4 opinion if you have CA3), with no regard to the status quo, risk, or military power. Considering you'll be starting off with a short reign opinion malus, this almost guarantees that your vassals will flock to the first claimant faction that pops up even if they voted for that person in an election. This seems excessive to me and I would like to see the barrier to joining a claimant faction to be somewhere closer to 100 points or, better yet, just use the same formula as the the elections.
- 8
- 5