Primogenetic or elective for empire?

[Mutineer]

I wander, is there advantages to keep or switch to elective when forming empire. Elective give you chance to loose succession, but relationship bonus nice and ability to choise best candidate is good too. Primogenetive simplify collecting kingdom titles befor forming empire and greatly reduce managment of titles in empire, but have - reletion bonus(penalty).
Opinions?

 

[ShadowGamer42]

Primogeniture in my opinion, elective runs the risk of losing the title to some other popular candidate.

 

[Klausewitz]

Elective.
My dynasty usually spawns like rabbits and each and every of those is viable heir.
And there is always somebody from my side able to win the election.
In fact i normally make all my titles elective so the inheritance does not get split.

 

[Achab]

Elective, you can pick the best candidates manually.

Primogeniture for RPing

 

[Lord Finnish]

Primogenture is hands down the best succession law. That's why nearly all monarchies of our history have employed some form of it to stay intact. Elective is very risky if you have a small dynasty and your ruler dies while your chosen heir is still young. It's extremely unlikely for a child to win the elections in a larger empire.

Seniority is also good if you have your dynasty spread out through the map and want to unite your dynastic lands under one banner, but otherwise it's a very dangerous due to the likely very rapid succession of 70-year-olds you will be having.

 

[Ols]

Elective is very good when your vassals respect you. Playing as a dynasty with a huge number of positive traits everywhere means you can even select unlanded women over powerful vassal kings and your vassals will diligently vote for them. I usually find that the children on my ruler will skip traits like Genius or Strong for a generation, so elective allows me to instead nominate my nephew or my grandson for the throne instead of dealing with an unimpressive emperor that could sunder the realm.

 

[mr_human_555]

Depends on your playstyle. I usually pick elective when there's no risk for me to lose (read: ~60%+ of the electors are of my dynasty) AND I actually breed kids with good genetic trait. Otherwise, primogeniture is better.

But there are times when I want to use primogeniture even when elective gives better result for me, particularly due to how I want to structure my realm inheritance. Such as in my latest mongol game.

 

[stars2heaven]

I don't think I will ever play with anything but elective again. The opinion modifier to vassals is amazing and really contributes to a stable realm. Getting your successor elected is not difficult at all in large realms. Btw, if you die while your chosen heir is still young then your chosen heir will still be elected regardless of age. I don't see how that is a point against elective. If your chosen heir doesn't get elected it wouldn't have mattered who you chose. Also, if all your vassals are of your dynasty it will be impossible to lose your titles. Whoever gets chosen as your successor will always be your heir. All in all I have never played a single game in which my ruler was around for such a short period of time that not enough voters nominated my chosen heir. Elective is better the vast majority of the time.

 

[mr_human_555]

I don't think I will ever play with anything but elective again. The opinion modifier to vassals is amazing and really contributes to a stable realm. Getting your successor elected is not difficult at all in large realms. Btw, if you die while your chosen heir is still young then your chosen heir will still be elected regardless of age. I don't see how that is a point against elective. If your chosen heir doesn't get elected it wouldn't have mattered who you chose. Also, if all your vassals are of your dynasty it will be impossible to lose your titles. Whoever gets chosen as your successor will always be your heir. All in all I have never played a single game in which my ruler was around for such a short period of time that not enough voters nominated my chosen heir. Elective is better the vast majority of the time.

You forgot one crucial fact: Dynasty members get -5 opinion for elective instead of +20.
Dynasty members get +5 for gavelkind, seniority, and turkish. Primo and elective is -5

 

[stars2heaven]

You forgot one crucial fact: Dynasty members get -5 opinion for elective instead of +20.
Dynasty members get +5 for gavelkind, seniority, and turkish. Primo and elective is -5

That just means in cases in which you have vassals who are dynasty members you won't get any bonus for opinion from elective. Dynasty members also get +5 for being dynasty members, so it cancels out. Thats a very small price to pay for the power to choose whoever you want as your heir. Seniority is another good one if you have a lot of dynasty members who are vassals. Problem is it will inevitably lead to very short reigns. Since all of your leaders will almost always have the short reign modifier, whatever bonus you get from seniority is mostly ineffectual. Elective vs seniority and elective wins. I used to be an advocate of gavelkind. It can work if you play a particular way. But it almost always means giving up on having a large dynasty. Add to that the perpetual risk of losing a good chunk of your demesne, or even the game if you try to get rid of heirs to avoid that problem, and elective still wins. Primogeniture is a perfectly fine alternative, and is certainly better than gavelkind and seniority most of the time, but the ability to control your heir puts elective on top for me.

The only downside to elective, ever, is the very remote possibility of not getting your chosen heir elected. Only way I can imagine this happening is if your current ruler dies and you take over as an under age child who is poor and of the wrong culture/religion only to then die a very short time later.

 

[snoopdogg]

It's not that hard to lose the title in my experience. If your ruler dies very quickly that can easily do it. It seems pretty tough to get your daughter elected too.

 

[Dracko81]

Gavelkind. If you do not know why, then you should play as a gavelkind emperor to find out.

But with the new primogeniture imprisoning primary heir and disinherit, you can also have lots of fun disinheriting and choosing your heir easily enough, so elective isn't really needed especially if you have alot of dynastic members as vassals, or even another dynasty becomes dominate. Smaller empire will work alright with elective, but the larger they are the harder the elections can become.

Primo before elective, but both after gavelkind.

 

[Mods]

Elective is superior in culturally homogeneous empires.
I always try to go for primogeniture though because it adds another challenge and it was in generally something rulers tried to achieve in the period.

 

[Cojack]

Gavelkind. If you do not know why, then you should play as a gavelkind emperor to find out.

But with the new primogeniture imprisoning primary heir and disinherit, you can also have lots of fun disinheriting and choosing your heir easily enough, so elective isn't really needed especially if you have alot of dynastic members as vassals, or even another dynasty becomes dominate. Smaller empire will work alright with elective, but the larger they are the harder the elections can become.

Primo before elective, but both after gavelkind.

Thank you ! Your message is a bit arrogant but gavelkind is definitly for empire ! My realm is very very calm, no faction AT ALL after I granted independance to outside dejure angry-dukes

edit, you were not arrogant=), and my high diplo dukes are now quiet(the one who get elected easily don't have claim on my empire title when I die)

 

[Mods]

Thank you ! Your message is a bit arrogant but gavelkind is definitly for empire ! My realm is very very calm, no faction AT ALL after I granted independance to outside dejure angry-dukes

wait untill your current emperor dies?
No seriously, what is it that makes gavelkind so great? Just the fact that your vassals will have it too (if you don't raise CA to high)?

 

[Malvius]

I use Primogenitur so I always play the Mainstring of my Dynastie.
The other strings are simply trash and get eliminated if they do a big mistake.
In my Britannic empire (Ireland,Scotland,England,Wales,France,Aquitane,Brittany)
The King of france wanted to replace me by one sipling of me. (King of France was of my Dynasty)
I sieged his whole Land and then I imprisoned him, then a combination of excommunication and Execute
And all was over, a daughter took over, I gave her a husband matrilinear(?) and know this string of Family died out.
pathetic King of France!

 

[maidros]

Even when electors are from your dynasty, there is more than an even chance that they will choose someone not from your dynasty. I had the experience in my HRE game, when members of my dynasty went off choosing the duke of York (who did not have any great traits either, by the way and was not from my dynasty).

 

[pauli133]

Elective is very risky if you have a small dynasty and your ruler dies while your chosen heir is still young.

If you're nominating children, you're Doing it Wrong.

 

[RustyTurban]

Keeping Gavelkind is a really fun way to play, primogeniture is the easiest and elective is my favorite for being a vassal so I use them all really.

If I had to pick I'd go with a primogeniture title (England, Scotland, France) with low crown authority so my vassals have to keep Gavelkind.

 

[Cojack]

Why do you want your vassals to have gavelkind ? The AI is very bad at managing its own succession crisis; 2nd and 3rd sons always fight for the main title(and win most of the time I think)