Let's Free Succession!

[Archinorf]

I'm proposing more modability in succession and/or more (potentially unhistorical) types of succession available for the base game and/or mods to use.

Here is a short (and kind of random) list of new types of succession, feel free to add your ideas:
-The most rich, prestigious or pious inherits.
-The one who invest the most gold, prestige or piety in elections inherits.
-Elections happening every few years.
-The best in a specific attribute inherits.
-The vassal with the most manpower and not from your dynasty inherits.
-A ruler being elected from among all the rulers of a specific religion.
-The oldest uncle, cousin, brother or other precise family bound inherits.
-The ruler's killer inherits.
-The holder of the more holy sites inherits.
-The winner of the tournament inherits.
-...

 

[Yaroslav The Wise]

Maybe it could be possible to play republics. In a way similar to merchant republics there is an election with the mayor's most prestigious courtiers as candidates, the one with the highest stewardship skill wins.

 

[klopkr]

Some I would really like to see:
-No succession which destroys the top title
-Elective term with laws for 4,5,10, and 20 years.
-True semi-salic (all possible men inherit first then women)
-Popular elective with all characters in the realm eligible not just landed characters
-Fragmented elective gavelkind in which anyone with a vote becomes an independent ruler
-Religious head inherits
-Laws to exclude children on sucession
-Spouse inherits
-Character with the most kills in the realm inherits
-Sibling inherit first then the children of the last one
-Youngest of the dynasty inherits

 

[Rags17]

Good suggestions all, the bottom line is that ANY succession should be possible via modding - simply use conditions, traits and stats to create one or more pools of likely nominees and voters then have at it. Because let's face it, RL succession was never as cut and dried as we see in this game.

 

[klopkr]

Good suggestions all, the bottom line is that ANY succession should be possible via modding - simply use conditions, traits and stats to create one or more pools of likely nominees and voters then have at it. Because let's face it, RL succession was never as cut and dried as we see in this game.

As great as that'd be captian gars has said it's not happening.

 

[Ispil]

Specifically, it's not happening due to how obscenely technical it would be. Succession is by far one of the most difficult components to free up for modding simply due to how much each one differs, and how technical each one is. Sure, Primogeniture and Ultimogeniture might be rather straightforward, but imagine trying to create a modular form of Elective, or Tanistry, or Gavelkind.

 

[Rags17]

Specifically, it's not happening due to how obscenely technical it would be. Succession is by far one of the most difficult components to free up for modding simply due to how much each one differs, and how technical each one is. Sure, Primogeniture and Ultimogeniture might be rather straightforward, but imagine trying to create a modular form of Elective, or Tanistry, or Gavelkind.

Forgive my naivety, but - dead easy ?

IMHO the hardest succession to create or mod would be gavelkind - I agree that any succession law that creates multiple heirs is inherently difficult. But for everything else it's simply a matter of creating a pool of candidates by whatever means (eg minimum Diplomacy, minimum kills, trait, dynasty, kinship, Prestige etc), creating a pool of electors by whatever means (eg (eg minimum Diplomacy, minimum kills, trait, dynasty, kinship, Prestige etc), then creating a system to work out who the electors would tend to vote for based upon whatever conditions are important to them (eg opinion, kinship, bribes, "Can Press Claim", Diplomacy/kills/trait/dynasty/Prestige etc). For added complexity give the succession a time limit as well (ie years = 5, duration =-1 etc).

Gavelkind is hard because the engine has to work out the additional step of who gets what. It is obvious that PDX has worked out a solution, it is also obvious that no one likes it. This could be subject to modding too, but I don't think that this can be defined and thus modded as easily as the "winner take all" succession types.

 

[Ispil]

The issue is exactly how freeform you want it. It might seem easy to make a freeform Elective type, but who gets to vote and how much do their votes weigh, if at all?

How would you mod in something like the Rota system, for that matter? Seniority succession amongst family of the same generation whose fathers all held the kingdom title.

 

[DeathBurst]

Rota might not be easy, but a LOT of different succession types could be created with a generic model. Like, for instance, all the successions in OP and klopkr's posts could be done with the model described by Rags17, or even easier when there is no vote involved.

Basically, any succession that does not fragment the realm is just a sorting method. So sure, you can find really strange sorting method (like Rota), but you can have tons and tons of sorting methods that would be dead easy to code and would still provide interesting gameplay/roleplay opportunities.

One step above are elections: the sorting method is easy, it's just the number of votes. But you have to provide a/ a rule to determine who is eligible; b/ a rule to determine who is elector; c/ an AI for NPC electors. This is already more complex, but still relatively easy compared to other things that are already allowed in modding.

Then, you have the successions that fragment the realm. Here, it can be awfully complicated, because of the "who gets what" factor. You can't just sort people. But ok, let's assume we can't mod this kind of succession. Don't you think that modders could already do a tons of cool stuff with "basic sorting"- and "election"-type successions?

 

[Talq]

... then factor in gender-succession laws, and how you treat minors, then what happens if there are no eligible obvious candidates, and who gets claims. Also factor in how it relates to the faction system.

And do all of that without using some process that blows the CPU to smithereens if somebody tries to mod in something with too wide criteria (or its used by a realm the owns the whole map)

 

[DeathBurst]

Gender-succession law is not hard to factor: either the "bad" gender is put at the end of the sorting, or there is no "bad" gender to consider.
I wasn't aware minors were treated specially in some current successions, and I don't know *how* they are treated specially, but I guess the same process as for gender can be applied.
Who gets claims: the top N people in the sorting can be an easy and acceptable solution.
No eligible candidate: specify a fallback succession-type. (Actually, that's how it's done in vanilla: http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Succession#Fallbacks_for_feudal_rulers_with_no_heir )
Faction system: I don't even understand what is the problem?

CPU issues: it's the responsibility of modders to make their mod sufficiently efficient, but it's not a reason to not open the game to modding. I mean, Groogy recently said that blinding/castration was a major resource hog in vanilla under certain circonstances, and it was still available to modders.

So yeah, sure, there can be tricky stuff hard to do in this generic model, like Rota, or preferring a younger sister with son above an older sister without one in Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture. But there is plenty of non-tricky AND interesting stuff that could be done if something even as simple as that was available.

 

[Rags17]

I don't see this as being much a resource hog at all - blinding and castration etc are all determined pretty much consistently (will I kill him or release him today or maybe tomorrow), but succession is apparently only calculated whenever there is a change of ruler, heirs, certain others triggers.