Cognatic Priomogenature vassals

[TheDarkMaster]

I have to say that this is awful. I'm only three generations into a game and already I have two super dukes and a count that owns 8 counties personally scattered all over my realm. This almost purely off of dukes and counts marrying each other and their eldest child inheriting both titles. There's no way for me to reasonably break these up! My vassals just get bigger and bigger at an extremely high rate. The only time this doesn't happen is when most of them happen to have first borns of the same gender. The vanilla game generally doesn't have this problem because the rulers are almost all men, but almost everything defaults to true cognatic in EK.

I can understand why independent counts and dukes might need primo to grow, but why can't vassals ones use gavelkind? Are you just expected that every other generation you need to revoke half your vassal's titles if you want to keep them limited to single duchies or from going way over their demesne limit as counts? And if that's the case, how? Is replacing most of your vassals every century how the devs intend you to play the game? The best answer I had for this in previous versions of the game was to request gavelkind, it was pretty much the only thing I could justify giving a favor for. Gavelkind is the only reasonably way I've found so far to break up super duke vassals faster than they inherit more titles without generating huge amounts of tyranny.

 

[Ictivion]

The issue with Gavelkind solution is that it will still result in the first born getting the primary titles.

I wonder if there would be a way to intercept dying chracters with a triggered event. One could perhaps check if their primary heir already holds an equivalent level title and if so quick give him some disinheriting trait which would be removed the next day, so that when the dying character dies their title(s) don't go to the landed child but to someone else.

 

[Dakilla TM]

I feel the same way with absolute cognatic being the standard. Yes it offers the most freedom but it can also be frustrating when your internal border gore needs fixing. I think maybe everyone should start with agnatic cognatic instead, with primogeniture.

I suggest this since the AI doesn't use the heir designation, so a duke will have an eldest daughter marrying another duke and then the kids will inherit super duchies.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

The issue with Gavelkind solution is that it will still result in the first born getting the primary titles.

I wonder if there would be a way to intercept dying chracters with a triggered event. One could perhaps check if their primary heir already holds an equivalent level title and if so quick give him some disinheriting trait which would be removed the next day, so that when the dying character dies their title(s) don't go to the landed child but to someone else.

Gavelkind doesn't prevent the super duchies from forming, but it does break them up afterwards. Having super vassals crop up periodically is an interesting problem if you can either break them up after a generation or that happens naturally over time. As long as the ruler has an efficient way to answer the problem, it isn't a game ruining one. If super vassals are inevitable, that forces the player to resort to cheese strategies or to remove government restrictions so they can make most of their realms theocracies/republics just to avoid the problem.

Unfortunately, the AI won't do those cheese strategies, which will make their realms weaker over the long term. Super vassals will eventually tear them apart from cyclical faction rebellions while counts that manage to get way over their demesne limit severely hamper the rate their holdings get upgrades.

 

[Dakilla TM]

Is there a way to start the game with agnatic cognatic or disable absolute cogantic? I'm looking into the files but can't find anything under the laws folder

 

[Colossal_Elk]

During our playtesting we ran into a constant problem with dukes: they were dominated by either Elective (which allowed for next to no dynastic continuity) or Gavelkind (which stopped them from building up meaningful realms by perpetually breaking up whatever they accomplished). Gavelkind was especially troublesome in Cyrodiil. It wasn't possible to have Oblivion-style Counties without running them as viceroyalties because it was necessary to give a ruler multiple duchies worth of land, which would always be broken up on death. And any vassals who managed to get primogeniture would have it revoked by factions. So everything was elective (which I don't think fits well at all) or gavelkind (which is harshly punishing to AI rulers).

I personally did not find it fun to play, so I put together a band-aid fix for AI realm viability.

The root of the problem is that we have no control over default succession laws unless we block the laws outright. Which is why we have what we have now. I'd like to give players options, rather than take them away. So, one thing that I've planned on but haven't been able to implement yet is laws that in turn govern what succession laws you have (so in other words, similar to Conclave's laws where they're interconnected). Basically just another way to control available succession laws without technically disabling them. My guess is that'd broaden the available succession laws for dukes and counts without necessarily getting them stuck in an endless loop of gavelkind disintegration or elective randomness.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

During our playtesting we ran into a constant problem with dukes: they were dominated by either Elective (which allowed for next to no dynastic continuity) or Gavelkind (which stopped them from building up meaningful realms by perpetually breaking up whatever they accomplished). Gavelkind was especially troublesome in Cyrodiil. It wasn't possible to have Oblivion-style Counties without running them as viceroyalties because it was necessary to give a ruler multiple duchies worth of land, which would always be broken up on death. And any vassals who managed to get primogeniture would have it revoked by factions. So everything was elective (which I don't think fits well at all) or gavelkind (which is harshly punishing to AI rulers).

I personally did not find it fun to play, so I put together a band-aid fix for AI realm viability.

The root of the problem is that we have no control over default succession laws unless we block the laws outright. Which is why we have what we have now. I'd like to give players options, rather than take them away. So, one thing that I've planned on but haven't been able to implement yet is laws that in turn govern what succession laws you have (so in other words, similar to Conclave's laws where they're interconnected). Basically just another way to control available succession laws without technically disabling them. My guess is that'd broaden the available succession laws for dukes and counts without necessarily getting them stuck in an endless loop of gavelkind disintegration or elective randomness.

The problem is that the game's base mechanics aren't designed to support Oblivion-style counties or absolute cognatic succession. Under the current system of all primo you still wouldn't have them, as they'll consolidate over time into bigger and bigger super duchies while eldest daughters in standard marriages cause dynasty flipping anyway. Making multi-duchy realms stable is next to impossible unless you somehow stop succession from either taking away or giving land to you.

Even in vanilla agnatic-cognatic primogeniture vassals tend to consolidate over time forcing the player to spend a significant amount of time breaking them up to keep them from growing too strong. That's purely from just the small chance that a daughter inherited land and weak marriage claims. Requesting gavelkind was quite a relief feature in mid to late CK2 games where you don't just blob everywhere, cheese your vassals, or get an immortal ruler. It finally gave you a consistent way to keep vassals roughly limited to their actual duchies/kingdoms in power and all you had to work on was revoking random county inheritance.

Really the only way you could actually keep the Cyrodile counties they way they are in Oblivion is if they were single full de jure duchies/kingdoms. You could use purely dynastic succession (Tanistry or Seniority) or force agnatic succession to stop titles from coalescing, but that's not lore friendly and causes it's own share of AI problems. Plus the game isn't as fun without marriage and inheritance politics.

At the end of the day you simply can't have one solution that solves everything and I think forcing primogenature causes far bigger problems than the ones it solves. What's worse, vassals that constantly and consistently grow in size or vassals that tend to shrink over time or stay on their de jure land? I think the former is a far bigger problem since it affects absolutely everyone unless you cheese the hell out of the game, while the later only affects you if you're after a very specific vassal breakdown. At the very least, I think absolute cognatic gavelkind isn't as bad as absolute cognatic primogenature.

 

[Soulbourne]

I just use the revoke plots in vanilla and ek to severely hamstring vassal growth when it becomes a problem, since its tyranny free revocation even if you lack revoke laws and often times the ai chooses war so you get a free extra treason revoke.

That said, I can see two potential solutions and a suggestion. The two solutions-which if you wanted could potentially have a game rule option to turn off for people who prefer ensuring the super dukes the hard way-are either an event for the AI(And maybe player too?) where the either A: Distant family members request a fief outside your primary duchy or B: the vassals come together and petition for you to grant autonomy to a duchy and hand out titles to a "Local ruler". The second being similar but have a plot where vassals seek to strip a duke of secondary titles, demanding it either be given to a local count or starting a conflict over it. Rather than a simple claimaint plot and a faction war to install a claimaint, this is a plot where multiple people in the kingdom try to hamstring a "Powerful vassal" to rebalance the political landscape. Which could make sense if the vassals would target grand dukes and such who have multiple titles and try to split up their power.

I also have a mild suggestion you may of heard before, since the super duchy thing was a failure from what I hear, maybe when you form an empire you could have in title decisions the options to organize "Govenors" of a king level over preset set regions, that would create a de jure kingdom with a set of duchies(more reflective of what you wanted the super duchies to be) but you can pick and choose for each kingdom title you personally hold how these are split up. So say you want to divy up southern cyridil but keep the top half as direct dukes, you could select the decisions for the lower half but keep the upper dukes divided and under more direct management. Same for other major provinces, if you by chance want to carve up skyrim so that their is no united high king with all 100 or so counties for you to directly deal with getting revolutionary. This could also potentially be further expanded on if someone makes it a pet project so internal civil wars may see temporary titles form along these lines even if you havent made the decision, so say a ptema situation arises where she's claimed skyrim and making war, perhaps an event fires where a temporary title of whiterun and riften break off with their own forces and join the empire as allies in the rebellion, stripping her of levies and adding more troops to you.