Rebalancing Partition

[Tiax]

Currently, the game of succession seems to be intended to work like this:

-Early on, you are stuck with partition. Rulers grow their territory during their rule, and then see it splintered on succession, leaving the next son to repeat the process.
-As the game progresses, you unlock better succession laws, until you reach primogeniture.

In this vision, partition is a purely bad occurrence. The goal of the early game is to manage its impacts, and you are encouraged to expand to find lands for your second sons, balance the number of children you have, and work towards eventually escaping it.

But the resulting gameplay experience is poor, for several reasons:

-First, there are many strategies to avoid partition entirely, even at the beginning of the game. Many of them border on meta-gaming, like killing off your excess sons in battle, or arbitrarily disinheriting them. Similarly, succession laws can be exploited to avoid titles being split. This is not a rewarding gameplay loop - the game should not be encouraging me to murder my children just to avoid splitting the land. Further, the existence of these ways around partition means that, whatever motivations it is intended to give (e.g. pressure to expand) are subverted.

-Second, because personally-held lands provide so much more troops and money, there is no decision to be made about whether to allow partition to occur - it's always correct to do everything you can to avoid it. This means that even if there are potential side benefits to partition (such as extra renown for your dynasty), they are rendered moot. No reasonable amount of renown is worth losing your military and economy.

-Third, because there is no uncertainty about lifespan (all characters live to 65 +/- 5 years), there is no need to maintain back-up heirs. You can freely eliminate second sons via disinheritance, sending them to die in battle, etc., and you can happily remarry infertile women to avoid having more children. Thus, there is no tension between securing succession and risking partition.

My proposal has the following goals:

-Reduce the incentive to avoid partition entirely. Partition, especially giving internal lands to second sons (as opposed to splitting them into independent kingdoms) should have some benefits.

-Make partition less desirable as the game progresses, leading to a natural transition to primogeniture, rather than a desperate race.

-Increase the variety of succession scenarios - it should not always be the case that you have four sons and have disinherited or killed off three of them.

My basic vision is to make primogeniture more desirable for economic strength, as it concentrates tax revenue, while making partition preferable for levy-based military strength. The idea is that handing out land to second sons lets them serve as loyal (depending on personality, of course) military organizers and knights, in exchange for letting them keep the bulk of tax revenue. In game terms, this would involve the following changes:

-First, the early-game power of levies is increased significantly relative to men-at-arms. This makes it important to secure levies from loyal vassals, rather than relying on expensive men at arms. As the game progresses, levies fade in power (much slower than they currently do), making men-at-arms more valuable. Because men-at-arms are expensive, it becomes important to hold more territory personally (allowing the extraction of more tax income), making primogeniture preferable.

-Second, levy obligations of vassals are significantly increased. Early game, you should be building an army primarily of vassal-provided levies, and using your personal domain primarily as a source of tax revenue. You're encouraged to spread land among vassals in the early game because foreign military threats make levies more valuable than taxes.

-Third, vassals have an obligation to serve as knights, and vassal-knights are more powerful than courtier-knights. The idea is that landed knights have the economic means to maintain their own armaments and personal guard, whereas courtier-knights are reliant on the king directly. This makes it desirable to grant lands to second sons with promising military traits.

-Fourth, family member vassals who receive their lands through inheritance are more loyal to the liege - they have been given their rightful share. However, personality traits like Ambitious or Arrogant can upend this dynamic, making these sons dangerous vassals. This presents interesting decisions - do I let my ambitious, martially-educated second son inherit and risk revolt, or do I try to shuttle him into the church? As it stands now, all sons are terrible vassals, and so there is no decision to be made. This also makes it more desirable to let your sons inherit rather than granting land to lowborns with good stats.

-Fifth, allowing a family member to inherit land gives a one-time renown bonus ("this family is so wealthy they have land to hand out to their second son"). By making it a one-time bonus on inheritance, you remove the ability to just grant and revoke land to family members to farm renown, or just land random distant relatives as vassals for free renown, as was a problem before the latest changes.

-Sixth, mortality and fertility are rebalanced so that having a single eligible heir is a very risky business - they might well die or fail to produce an heir themselves, and your character might also die young before you have the chance to replace them.

-Seventh, when a second son inherits an equal-tier title, thereby splitting the realm in two, they are much more likely to accept an alliance with the first son. Again, this depends on their personality traits - an ambitious or greedy son will still covet their brother's title.

-Eighth, sons who do not inherit anything are more problematic, and are more likely to organize plots against you and form claimant factions. This introduces a downside to primogeniture - are you willing to risk having a bunch of idle sons sitting around plotting their brother's demise in exchange for keeping your lands unified? Similarly, even if you have partition, it makes it risky to have more sons than you have land to give, and maintains the need to seek to new territory to satisfy inheritance.

Basically, I want internal partition to be mostly harmless early on, and only become problematic when you are nearing primogeniture anyway. I want external partition (the realm splits in two) to be the main threat, but not be a purely bad occurrence. This way, partition can still serve as a check on growth, but primarily happens when you are large. Later in the game, internal partition becomes more and more onerous and you need the tax revenue of a large personal domain to support a professional army of men at arms.

The historical basis for this proposal is pretty loose. In areas of gavelkind, it was often the case that farm land would be partitioned, but knight fiefs (those that came with military obligations) would not. This is the inspiration for my idea of having partition primarily have an economic cost, rather than a military one. My version does not perfectly capture the dynamics of the real system, but makes compromises for gameplay. Overall, I think the current system paints the picture that societies that practiced partition were just stupid - and it took them hundreds of years to figure out something better. I think it'd be better if the system modelled the change from partition to primogeniture as one driven by changing priorities.

 

[Nevars]

But the resulting gameplay experience is poor, for several reasons:

-First, there are many strategies to avoid partition entirely, even at the beginning of the game. Many of them border on meta-gaming, like killing off your excess sons in battle, or arbitrarily disinheriting them. Similarly, succession laws can be exploited to avoid titles being split. This is not a rewarding gameplay loop - the game should not be encouraging me to murder my children just to avoid splitting the land. Further, the existence of these ways around partition means that, whatever motivations it is intended to give (e.g. pressure to expand) are subverted.

I would argued opposite actually the fact that partition suck is an incentive for player to avoid it then the game also give a lot of tools to do just that is great and fun.

The area that need improvement is AI cuz they don't seem to get that partition suck thus not trying to workaround it meaning they will growing weaker and weaker while player don't, make the game boring after some generations.

 

[InsidiousMage]

I would argued opposite actually the fact that partition suck is an incentive for player to avoid it then the game also give a lot of tools to do just that is great and fun.

Designing a game mechanic so that it is so bad that players are essentially forced to cheat to avoid the mechanic is the sign of really bad game design. No one designs games like this. CK3 is designed around the expectation that the player will be able to successfully partition with each generation. Its incredibly obvious from the way the game is actually designed and plays.

The area that need improvement is AI cuz they don't seem to get that partition suck thus not trying to workaround it meaning they will growing weaker and weaker while player don't, make the game boring after some generations.

And this is exhibit #2 that the devs didn't not design the game with the idea that the player would cheat to avoid partition right behind exhibit #1 mentioned above.

 

[InsidiousMage]

To me this still doesn't actually solve the issues with partition. Yeah, it incentives players to want to land their children, a little, but it still doesn't solve the punitive nature of partition or the ridiculous requirements, like needing a kingdom title for each son when you are a king. I don't think partition is fundamentally a mechanic that be made such that the penalties are mild enough not to be frustrating while at the same time being harsh enough for the player to take it seriously. If the penalties are too harsh then it leads to unfun gameplay but if the penalties are too negligible then the players don't have any to engage with the mechanic. I'm not actually sure you can find the right balance to a mechanic with those kinds of needs.

-Fifth, allowing a family member to inherit land gives a one-time renown bonus ("this family is so wealthy they have land to hand out to their second son"). By making it a one-time bonus on inheritance, you remove the ability to just grant and revoke land to family members to farm renown, or just land random distant relatives as vassals for free renown, as was a problem before the latest changes.

How would this actually work given domain limits? Currently when you get the titles you need for an heir you always given them the title immediately because you've probably gone over your domain limit and thus can't hold on to the titles.

 

[Tiax]

I would argued opposite actually the fact that partition suck is an incentive for player to avoid it then the game also give a lot of tools to do just that is great and fun.

The area that need improvement is AI cuz they don't seem to get that partition suck thus not trying to workaround it meaning they will growing weaker and weaker while player don't, make the game boring after some generations.

I don't see the appeal of killing off your children by sending them into battle, or putting elective succession on your lower titles to circumvent the system, or marrying infertile widows. These aren't the strategies we should be incentivizing. I think this is where it becomes clear that the current system is too severe - it incentivizes players to take counterintuitive, unappealing actions. My hope is that by rebalancing it, we can reduce the need for that sort of drastic action. Instead, I'd like the player to face some interesting choices with more than one appealing option.

I do the see the appeal of the gameplay loop, "oh, I have too many sons, I should conquer some land for them". But we are already incentivized to expand for myriad reasons. And I think my proposal still has a bit of that: if you have more sons than land, you still want to expand enough to have something for everyone, so that you don't have jealous layabouts.

As much as I like complaining about the AI, I don't totally agree that this is an area where the AI is the problem. If every AI character were desperately trying to expand to find land for their sons, the world would be even more of a conflagration of war than it already is.

 

[Nevars]

Designing a game mechanic so that it is so bad that players are essentially forced to cheat to avoid the mechanic is the sign of really bad game design. No one designs games like this. CK3 is designed around the expectation that the player will be able to successfully partition with each generation. Its incredibly obvious from the way the game is actually designed and plays.


And this is exhibit #2 that the devs didn't not design the game with the idea that the player would cheat to avoid partition right behind exhibit #1 mentioned above.

Player doesn't force to cheat to get around it, player use tools that the game give player and expected them to use to get around it.

just because ai can't do it or can't do it well doesn't means that game didn't design it to be use, if that is you argument then literally almost all paradox games are broken and not designed to be play at all because their ai are a bit shitty.

So no, those tools are totally designed to be use as a workarounds partition which in turn designed to be shit as an incentive for everyone to workaround it.

The fact that it shit is #1 then how tech design as partition as first tech then succession techs gradually get better until primo and ultimo is #2 then there are tools that Dev designed as a workaround of partition are also 3#.

Conclusion, succession totally designed to be like that, it is not a cheat to use tools the game expected us to use to circumvent it and only problem is the ai isn't up to snuff which is problem of every paradox games so nothing surprising here.

 

[Tiax]

To me this still doesn't actually solve the issues with partition. Yeah, it incentives players to want to land their children, a little, but it still doesn't solve the punitive nature of partition or the ridiculous requirements, like needing a kingdom title for each son when you are a king. I don't think partition is fundamentally a mechanic that be made such that the penalties are mild enough not to be frustrating while at the same time being harsh enough for the player to take it seriously. If the penalties are too harsh then it leads to unfun gameplay but if the penalties are too negligible then the players don't have any to engage with the mechanic. I'm not actually sure you can find the right balance to a mechanic with those kinds of needs.

The way I view it, partition should only be punitive in certain failure cases. For example, if you have sons who expect to inherit, but you leave them nothing, that's something that could have negative consequences. But for the average succession, where you have at least a county for each son, partition not a punishment. After all - why would a society practice partition in the first place if it were bad?

I see what you're saying about it not being harsh enough for the player to take seriously, but I think that taking the focus away from partition will make room for other, more compelling mechanics to make succession interesting. My goal isn't to balance partition as the main speed bump of the game, but to take enough focus off of it to let other areas shine.

How would this actually work given domain limits? Currently when you get the titles you need for an heir you always given them the title immediately because you've probably gone over your domain limit and thus can't hold on to the titles.

I think you could make it so that if you grant a title to someone who stands to inherit, that counts, and you get the bonus.

 

[InsidiousMage]

it is not a cheat to use tools the game expected us to use to circumvent it

The devs did not design the game with the idea that players will put extra sons in doomed stacks to be killed in battle, to marry infertile women while legitimizing bastards, and all of the other bizarre solutions that players have come up with to avoid partition. Yes, elective succession and disinheritance are in the game but they clearly not meant to the be the primary ways that players deal with succession. Again, it makes no sense to design a mechanic with the expectation that players will do everything in the power to avoid it. No. One. Designs. Games. Like. That.

 

[InsidiousMage]

The way I view it, partition should only be punitive in certain failure cases. For example, if you have sons who expect to inherit, but you leave them nothing, that's something that could have negative consequences. But for the average succession, where you have at least a county for each son, partition not a punishment. After all - why would a society practice partition in the first place if it were bad?

Say I'm a king with two duchies with three counties in duchy and three sons what would be the expected inheritance for the second and third sons? Do I own them a kingdom? A duchy? Some counties? How many extra titles would I need to pass my current titles and holdings down intact to my primary heir?

 

[Tiax]

Say I'm a king with two duchies with three counties in duchy and three sons what would be the expect inheritance for the second and third sons? Do I own them a kingdom? A duchy? Some counties? How many extra titles would I need to pass my current titles and holdings down intact to my primary heir?

My vision is that you would not feel so incentivized to pass your current titles and holdings all to your primary heir. You would *want* your other sons to inherit some of the land, because it is valuable to have family members as vassals. They will serve you more loyally (depending on their personality, of course), will give you more levies than you could extract from the land on your own (but less tax income, giving you an interesting choice of how much land to give out and how much to keep), and serve as powerful knights, by virtue of being able to use their land to fund their own personal retinue.

My proposal is not to necessarily modify the rules of inheritance (although I do think they need some tweaking), but rather to make the results desirable. Your second son would receive a duchy, and your third son a county, and you would *benefit* from that arrangement.

 

[Nevars]

artition not a punishment. After all - why would a society practice partition in the first place if it were bad?

So that all of other children don't resent and try to overthrow the eldest child which is what paradox model inherited claims and opinion penalty to other children in single heir succession type.

And anyway irl people try to abandon partition real quick when they are able to (have enough power to change it against tradition inertia for hundreds if not thousands of years behide them) so is this an evident that partition should be suck and you should circumvent or change it outright when you are able?

Though I will agree that paradox don't incentive us enough for us to be fine with losing lands to other children maybe they should up the penalty so making civil war more likely or making same dynasty vassal more beneficial thus it would make sense for us to not try to workaround gavelkind in some case (for example kingdom under great instability and you are too weak to fight off the inevitable civil war if you try to bypassing partition).

The devs did not design the game with the idea that players will put extra sons in doomed stacks to be killed in battle, to marry infertile women while legitimizing bastards, and all of the other bizarre solutions that players have come up with to avoid partition. Yes, elective succession and disinheritance are in the game but they clearly not meant to the be the primary ways that players deal with succession. Again, it makes no sense to design a mechanic with the expectation that players will do everything in the power to avoid it. No. One. Designs. Games. Like. That.

The existent of disinherit alone invalidate all of your points cuz it only exist to circumvent partition, you literally can't use it for anything else, elective can be argue that you could still use it to designate heir when they don't help against gavelkind but disinherit can't use for anything else other than workaround partition.

So only in your headcanon and ignore the evident that don't suit it can you actually believe that the dev don't designed gavelkind to be suck and you should use tools that designed to workaround it to circumvent it.

The mechanic all make sense, only your headcanon of it doesn't because you believe it to be something else.

 

[InsidiousMage]

My vision is that you would not feel so incentivized to pass your current titles and holdings all to your primary heir. You would *want* your other sons to inherit some of the land, because it is valuable to have family members as vassals. They will serve you more loyally (depending on their personality, of course), will give you more levies than you could extract from the land on your own (but less tax income, giving you an interesting choice of how much land to give out and how much to keep), and serve as powerful knights, by virtue of being able to use their land to fund their own personal retinue.

My proposal is not to necessarily modify the rules of inheritance (although I do think they need some tweaking), but rather to make the results desirable. Your second son would receive a duchy, and your third son a county, and you would *benefit* from that arrangement.

The fundamental problem is that having more titles is always going to be better than having fewer titles, especially on the county and duchy level. Even under your system, I would still want fairly large and developed domains of my own so I have an independent source of wealth and power so I'm not entirely dependent my vassals which still means conquest, trying to get rid of "unwanted" heirs, however someone would define that, and so on. Tweaking levies, taxes and knights is only going to do such and if you try and make it more impactful then its can start warping the game so that like giving away as many titles as your can every generation because that becomes the desirable choice instead of trying to consolidate your holdings.

Additionally, I feel like a real problem with partition is that the game can't get granular enough so that you have your castle holdings, manor houses, productive farm land, church domains, and cities and town that all are under the control of someone who then is part of the feudal chain. So you would have your primary holdings and then you hand out extra castles, manors and so on to loyal vassals or children. An other issue domain limits. I'm reading a book on Hungarian history right now and at one point the kings had like half of the kingdom as part of the personal domains, which you can't simply do in the game. Giving away fixed amount of lands every now and then is fine when you have a lot of it but the game places pretty strict limits on how much a player can hold onto, which contributes to partition feeling like a severe punishment at times.

 

[Tiax]

So that all of other children don't resent and try to overthrow the eldest child which is what paradox model inherited claims and opinion penalty to other children in single heir succession type.

And anyway irl people try to abandon partition real quick when they are able to (have enough power to change it and tradition inertia for hundreds if not thousands of years behide them) so is this an evident that partition should be suck and you should circumvent or change it outright when you are able?

Though I will agree that paradox don't incentive us enough for us to be fine with losing lands to other children maybe they should up the penalty so making civil war more likely or making same dynasty vassal more beneficial thus it would make sense for us to not try to workaround gavelkind in some case (for example kingdom under great instability and you are too weak to fight off the inevitable civil war if you try to bypassing partition).

I don't agree with the reading of history that "people try to abandon partition real quick" - systems of succession changed as incentives changed. Societies were not "stuck" following partition-based inheritance laws, they made those laws in the first place because it was beneficial to them. As the benefits of centralization increased, as it enabled the construction of mighty castles and fielding of professional armies, priorities shifted, and the systems of inheritance shifted with it. This is the shift in priorities I want to model (although somewhat loosely) - at first, you benefit from having more local control and organization as you depend on levies and knight-service for your protection, and later you benefit more from centralization as you seek to finance standing armies.

 

[Tiax]

The fundamental problem is that having more titles is always going to be better than having fewer titles, especially on the county and duchy level. Even under your system, I would still want fairly large and developed domains of my own so I have an independent source of wealth and power so I'm not entirely dependent my vassals which still means conquest, trying to get rid of "unwanted" heirs, however someone would define that, and so on. Tweaking levies, taxes and knights is only going to do such and if you try and make it more impactful then its can start warping the game so that like giving away as many titles as your can every generation because that becomes the desirable choice instead of trying to consolidate your holdings.

Certainly it's a tricky balance to be struck, and it requires reworking several game systems. Obviously, if you just left, say, the faction system as is, it would be suicide to give more land to vassals.

I think the motivations against just immediately giving away all of your holdings are:

-You get more tax income from directly-held land, and so you would like to balance the military benefits of vassals against the economic benefits of centralization.
-You want your heir to have some buffer territory in case he dies before he can gain new land for his children.
-You gain little benefit from handing out titles to your sons while they are still children, because they obviously cannot serve as knights

I recognize that this is not trivial to get right, but I think it's doable. But I definitely agree that your concerns are valid and could be complicated to handle in a satisfying way.

Additionally, I feel like a real problem with partition is that the game can't get granular enough so that you have your castle holdings, manor houses, productive farm land, church domains, and cities and town that all are under the control of someone who then is part of the feudal chain. So you would have your primary holdings and then you hand out extra castles, manors and so on to loyal vassals or children. An other issue domain limits. I'm reading a book on Hungarian history right now and at one point the kings had like half of the kingdom as part of the personal domains, which you can't simply do in the game. Giving away fixed amount of lands every now and then is fine when you have a lot of it but the game places pretty strict limits on how much a player can hold onto, which contributes to partition feeling like a severe punishment at times.

Yes, I think limits of the game system will require some deviation from history here. We cannot perfectly model all of the concerns of real succession, nor can we model the actual way in which inheritances were distributed. So our goal should be to capture the broad strokes while providing an interesting gameplay experience.

 

[Juncoril]

I agree with the fact that partition is a problem at the moment, but I'm not sure I agree with the solutions presented. I feel like the core issue is that blobbing is too good, you really have no incentive to give away vassals/lands. I think the faction changes were a first step into going against bobbling but it was not really nether enough nor really the best way.

I feel like making the game plays better without blobbing would solve the partition issue instantly, since losing lands on succession would suddenly be a lot less painful. Maybe having lower vassal/domain limits that get up through the game, whether through political changes or innovations or whatever. I always found it weird that innovations can give domain limits but vassal limit is only defined by your highest title.

The existent of disinherit alone invalidate all of your points cuz it only exist to circumvent partition, you literally can't use it for anything else, elective can be argue that you could still use it to designate heir when they don't help against gavelkind but disinherit can't use for anything else other than workaround partition.

I didn't even think of disinherit as a workaround for partition, for me the main goal was disinheriting an eldest child that was particularly unfit for rule or something like this. So no, it does not invalidate anything. Disinherit can be used for a lot, a LOT more than simply dodging partition.