Change "Failed Arrest" Demand From Abdication to Something Else, OR Add Abdication Decision and Consider Adding Penalties

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kaczynskisatva

Second Lieutenant
Sep 2, 2021
169
6
Abdication is the objectively superior method for retiring a character.

Since no one who has realized this has bothered to edit the wiki to explain why, I did so myself.


Comparing Death to Abdication​

In most game situations, as in all known real life situations, you will eventually die, and there is nothing you can do about it. The default mode of retiring a character, is to wait for them to die.

Therefore, the default motive to retirement is not to retire eventually, but to retire sooner.

Since the objective is speed, ways of getting your character killed can be compared to each other, and to abdication, in terms of speed, reliability, and side effects.

Attempts to die by disease, murder plots, dueling, and battlefield defeats are unreliable questions of random number generation, like many things in the game. Diseases can be survived, murder plots can fail, and duels can be miraculously won, or you can be spared by your opponent, and impossible battles can be retreated from safely. All of these unfortunately fortunate outcomes can happen over and over again, for years. One duel can be taken instantly by switching to war focus, assuming a rival has been antagonized (or, for zealous, characters, excommunicated) beforehand. This could end in instant death for you, but this is unreliable.

Aside from that first duel, all additional attempts to die of disease, murder plots, duels, or defeats, involves sitting around, or running around, and waiting to die - which is exactly what you would be doing anyway, even right now, as you sit and read this wiki, waiting to die.

Considering Suicide​

If you already have the depressed trait, suicide can solve your problems very quickly. As long as you can make it look like an honorable suicide, these problems will not be passed along to your heir. However, if you do not have the depressed trait, getting it takes time. Experienced players who do have this trait tend to lose it very quickly to good relationships with spouse/lovers or other lovers. So, when an opportunity arises to become depressed, the player should consider whether they wish to seize upon it to retire. These opportunities, however, cannot be instantly summoned.

Even when blessed with depression, attempts to die in a duel, like everything else, can fail. The "suicide by duel" option gives you no choice as to which rival you attempt to duel, so if you have any personal combat skill, you may end up with more failed suicide attempts than the average My Chemical Romance fangirl.

Just Give Up​

Opportunities to abdicate, on the other hand, can be instantly summoned, as long as you have enough direct vassals and intrigue that you discover their plots, and can attempt to arrest them for these plots. If you succeed, you can ransom them for gold, and if you fail, you will fail immediately, they will raise their flag in rebellion immediately, and you will be able to abdicate - immediately. Just make sure you've given all your gold and artifacts to your heir.

It may be tedious to transfer wealth to a yet-unlanded heir, as you may have thousands of gold, and can only gift them gold 15 pieces at a time. The use of the console commands "cash -1000" to subtract 1000 gold, and subsequently, "cash 1000" to add 1000 gold to your heir upon assumption of the throne, can save long minutes of repetitive clicking. Any number may be specified in place of 1000.

Abdication, or death of the ruler, can be a huge blessing. Each new heir is likely to have a new claim to be pressed, if marriages were arranged with any thought to this, and may again use the Invasion CB once unlocked. The rate of expansion of your realm, therefore, is the rate at which administrative turnover can occur. It does not really make sense to leave turnover up to chance - a strategy game demands planning, and so one should naturally have a plan for when their current ruler should be succeeded by his heir. Leaving this up to the caprice of death is not optimal.

Hence, for the reasons quoted, the current "pro gamer meta", as far as I can tell, is to exploit the ability to instigate "revolt against the tyranny of X" revolts, or abdication demands, by attempting to arrest direct vassals involved in plots.

Now, let us ask ourselves: "Is this really how we want the game to be?"

Clearly, no. It is not a good state for the game to be in, when the optimal strategy involves gimping the mechanics.

I see two possible solutions:

1: Change the demands of the rebellions caused by failed imprisonment of direct vassals to something other than a thing which the optimal player will always want to eventually concede to, and be otherwise unable to achieve.


For simplicitly of implementation, this could simply be changed to an "Independence" demand. However, it does not always make sense for a duke with ~1000 men in levies to demand to become independent as a landlocked state surrounded by your ~10,000 levies within your de-jure Kingdom / Empire territory, as this is not a demand that can be satisfied for very long. A logical demand for this situation would be for the Duke to simply demand a declaration of his innocence, compensation a peace deal and a public apology: hence, gold and prestige.

2: Add an abdication decision, with potential requirements, added penalties, and automated transfer of wealth and artifacts.

- The "automated transfer" bit would go a long way to sparing the repetitive monotony of giving 15 gold a time to heirs who are kept unlanded for their own safety, and of waiting for them to "consider" your "offer" of free artifacts, one after another, in a process that can last 2-3 months. Just give all gold and artifacts to the heir to whom the primary title is abdicated, since they are property of the crown.

- Add the option to abdicate by decision, to spite me the additional gold from ransoming vassals who I succeeded in imprisoning, and to empower the crown to abdicate under its own authority, and not simply by demand of some buzzing, fly-like lesser landholder upset that he was caught trying to murder his wife.

Consider for yourself what requirements and penalties should go along with this, and under what circumstances. The -500 Prestige hit for abdication to demand does not scale well, as many things, being greatly injurious to tiny rulers and a nuisance to great Emperors. Abdication was a historically unusual thing, because historical rulers were generally egomaniacs, and the historical preference to only abdicate under demands is patently retarded. One can count on the fingers of one hand how many monarchs abdicated before the 19th and 20th centuries, but can count many cases in which the monarch's preferred heir was shortly overthrown after his death, a situation which could have been prevented if more transfer of power had taken place before his death.

All I can throw out here, really, is that in a primitive legal and cultural state, abdication would be immensely scandalous, but in an advanced one (Imperial Administration, plus 4-5 legalism or 3-5 noble customs?) it could, in theory, have become relatively commonplace. So, if an abdication decision is added (and it should) the costs should be extremely punitive to early feudalism, and scale down until some state of cultural technology at which point it may become an unprestigious but pious action.
 
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