Primogeniture or ultimogeniture? Help for a newbie

[Ghostbear_g]

Hey quick question from a newbie. I just got CKII and at first I was using Primogeniture for my kingdom, but i kept getting old men as my king and could never seem to get the "short reign" negative modifiers to go away. So i tried using ultimogeniture and that gets me long reigns, but now every time the king dies I seem to be stuck playing a little kid controlled by a regent. so my question is: what succession law is the best?

Am i doing it wrong? under Ultimogeniture should I be killing off my infant sons once I already have an heir or two?

Is there a better succession law than those two above?

 

[Nightwing]

Hey quick question from a newbie. I just got CKII and at first I was using Primogeniture for my kingdom, but i kept getting old men as my king and could never seem to get the "short reign" negative modifiers to go away. So i tried using ultimogeniture and that gets me long reigns, but now every time the king dies I seem to be stuck playing a little kid controlled by a regent. so my question is: what succession law is the best?

Am i doing it wrong? under Ultimogeniture should I be killing off my infant sons once I already have an heir or two?

Is there a better succession law than those two above?

Elective is one of the best, in my opinion. You're not limited to either the oldest or youngest child, and can pick out whichever relative is best suited. Makes your vassals happy too. Only problem is that you could have problems getting your candidate elected. Personally, I would say Primo is better simply because of you avoiding the possibility of getting kids on the throne as you mentioned above, but old heirs can be a possibility. You could always avoid that by simply holding off on marrying until your character is older and having a larger age gap between your oldest child and yourself? Or you could just wait until your character is old and then imprison and execute your younger kids using Ultimogeniture.

 

[smellymummy]

Mostly preference, none are really better. Myself I've been using primo for a while now.

With ultimogeniture you can game the succession by basically arranging it so you don't have any new kids when your ideal heir is born, which typically means when your super mutant strong genius kid is born.

Primo is ideally more stable, despite your own case where you're getting the short reign modifier often. Compared to ultimogeniture where you're often going to end up having a regency, which can potentially be a problem: revolts, attempts on your life, regent giving away titles and so on.

You could make a strong case for elective. It used to be the 'best' since you could pick the best heir whenever you wanted. I haven't used it in a long time though, and from what I gathered, it got changed in a patch so that it's much harder to have the electors pick your chosen heir.

 

[Robert II]

Elective. Make sure your kinsmen control most of the voting titles and you are good for heirs. Bonus points if it's a small de jure kingdom with only 1 or 2 votes because then you just pick the heir.

 

[jimjom]

Elective. Make sure your kinsmen control most of the voting titles and you are good for heirs. Bonus points if it's a small de jure kingdom with only 1 or 2 votes because then you just pick the heir.

Tanistry, when possible = ONLY your dynasty...

 

[scelestus13]

Tanistry, when possible = ONLY your dynasty...

Yeah, but the weighting is so heavily in favour of distant relatives I've had times when my vassals, who all worship the ground on which I walk, prefer my 70-year old maimed craven uncle to my genius, diligent, just son. Elective is the way to go.

 

[Robert II]

Tanistry, when possible = ONLY your dynasty...

My few experiences with tanistry were bad.

 

[Rubidium]

It depends how gamey you want to be. Primogeniture is good for having an adult heir, and marrying for claims/alliances (as you always know who your heir will be, whereas without gameyness, Ultimogeniture always risks your character popping out another kid when you least expect it). If you want to game ultimogeniture, you can effectively choose your heir (by divorcing/setting aside concubines as soon as the desired kid pops out). If you don't game ultimogeniture that way, then primogeniture is better (since short reign penalties are much more tolerable than long regencies).

Of course if you want to be really gamey, you run gavelkind, only marry infertile women, and use the seduction focus to create lots of acknowledged bastards and legitimize one son per generation (with some daughters for matrimarriages to create dynasty members, if you want), enjoying increased demesne size while keeping your vassals from switching to primo and consolidating.

It's worth noting that, if you don't have Conclave, I believe Ultimogeniture becomes available with Limited Crown Authority, while Primogeniture requires High, so that's a sign of how Paradox views the two.

 

[jimjom]

Of course if you want to be really gamey, you run gavelkind, only marry infertile women, and use the seduction focus to create lots of acknowledged bastards and legitimize one son per generation (with some daughters for matrimarriages to create dynasty members, if you want), enjoying increased demesne size while keeping your vassals from switching to primo and consolidating.

This.....

is kinda genius...

 

[DorlasAnther]

Primogeniture is always better. You can always marry at older age (in late 20s), with martilineally married sister as a backup, so your first son will be in his 20s when you die. There is no need to rush marriage, especially when your dynasty is big and you don´t rely on that one character to secure survival of your dynasty.
Elective can be problematic for bigger realms, since lords could just vote one of them into power.
Ultimogeniture will create lots of regencies.

So, at the end of the day, I would go with primogeniture. Yes, you can have some opinion malus for short reign, but any capable player is able to survive even when vassals don´t really love him. Just get enough cash for mercenaries and wait until first rebellion after succession, then leave rebels imprisoned, securing your realm, as they cannot join factions during regency.

 

[Sonmi]

Is there a better succession law than those two above?

Yeah, it's called being Buddhist and handpicking your heir no matter the situation.

Elsewise, I'd go with Primo, it's considerably more stable, less regency fuckery.

 

[RX2000]

I like tanistry alot, when its available. You usually do get stuck with someone older tho (seems like my heir is always 40-50 when they inherit) but honestly that can happen with primo too if your king lives long enough.

I always find myself going back to primo though maybe midway through the game & things are pretty stable. It makes succession less of a question mark & more of a known. I've never really tried ultimogeniture tho, mostly for the reasons listed in this thread. I would rather not have the council be discontent AND my leader be a child.....

 

[Dragatus]

I'm a fan of Elective Monarchy in duchies and single kingdoms. You can generally ensure to have at most one additional elector besides yourself which allows you to pick any clsoe relative you want. Once you get to multi-king stage though, it can get a little tricky to ensure that the electors in all kingdoms will pick the same heir. It gets better when you're at the empire stage (as long as you only have one empire title), but you need to ensure that most duke and king tier vassals are of your dynasty to make sure the empire doesn't go to a vassal.

I tried Tanistry in a recent Welsh reconquest of Britain game and didn't like it at all. Doesn't matter how great your children are, the electors will pick an old distant relative with crappy stats. It also makes it hard to re-negotiate non-aggression pacts because chances are whoever you married of to get the NAP is now just a kins(wo)man.

 

[RagingJaws]

Seniority. Clearly. Joking, though I've used Seniority a number of times when I'm populating multiple King chairs with my dynasty or just don't give a shit about who my heir is. Titles going this way and that, revolts everywhere, and genetic madness.

Stick with Primo, get Majesty up to a decent level, and keep a handful of honorary titles and spare gold laying around. Stable realm.

Otherwise, I'd suggest experimenting. Doing the same thing every game eventually gets boring.

 

[Fishman786]

The most effective succession type is probably either Agnatic Open or Indian, because you can choose your heir, but those are limited by religion. Tanistry is also super-powerful, but limited by culture.

Of the regular succession types, IMO primogeniture (agnatic) is the most effective. You get a single heir who usually inherits as an adult. Ultimogeniture is similar, but your heir will usually be a child, so there will be an annoying regency every time. Sometimes in primogeniture you will end up with an old heir, but that's arguably better than a regency and it won't happen every time.

Elective is also efficient, but if your vassals outvote you you'll lose the realm.

In terms of fun, elective gavelkind (agnatic-cognatic) is the best by far IMO, because you'll have dramatic civil wars with your wicked step-brothers and entire kingdoms splitting and shifting chaotically.

 

[Ferrumius]

I like to go primo and land my heir a duchy. I know, landing my heir and/or other claiments often lead to horrible outcome but it is actually fun to figure out how to deal with the mess. My grand children are usually poorly educated and homosexual, but I like to have some random factor and traits that I would never let happen.

 

[Polyester]

Ultimogeniture is arguably the best succession type. Grab a genius wife and take the Family focus and wait for a genius son (Or daughter if she's a valid heir) to pop out, then divorce her. Stay out of all affairs.

 

[Dragatus]

If you divorce your wife you lose her stats. Better to have her excommunicated and imprisoned until she turns 45.

 

[Polyester]

If you divorce your wife you lose her stats. Better to have her excommunicated and imprisoned until she turns 45.

That costs to much piety, just get another wife above 45. You get the stats, you don't worry about new kids. Fun.

 

[RX2000]

I like to go primo and land my heir a duchy. I know, landing my heir and/or other claiments often lead to horrible outcome but it is actually fun to figure out how to deal with the mess. My grand children are usually poorly educated and homosexual, but I like to have some random factor and traits that I would never let happen.

I have to admit I find myself doing this a lot with primo too. I will land my children & then a little bit later I'll check on the grandkid who I'm eventually gonna play as & invariably he will be as you said, homosexual, chaste, imbecile, only have like a level 1 education in learning, etc etc lol. It keeps you on your toes for sure. The game can get kind of boring if you just always have the perfect genius grey eminence heir.