you lose your former non-de jure lands if you ever lose re-election
Isn't this more important to fix than allowing you to refuse the emperorship? Your subsidiary title should retain its lands even if you
DO become Emperor. Like what happened in real life. This clearly isn't beyond CK2's engine, as this
de facto-preserving behaviour is already present in temporary titles for revolts. [Also, if it was allowed to refuse titles, then why should electives be a special case? In real life, it was not unheard of for legitimate sons to refuse a title, or for rulers to abdicate, or for claimants to sell their claim to someone else, sometimes a complete non-relative. Of course, for gameplay purposes, some of these are a little absurd. It should be possible to implement some of them with a prestige hit or some other cost, but now I think that's mostly the job for CK2 modders.]
Relatedly, I think the devs should give the
de facto structure a complete rework before confining Crusader Kings II to the dustbin of history. When I say a complete rework, I mean applying the following precedence to the
de facto title structure upon
acquiring (by any means) new titles:
- De jure takes precedence. If a vassal, including your own titles, is in the de jure land of your (other) titles, the vassal becomes part of the title, de facto, the same as the present behaviour.
- However, the above should be applied as an algorithm from the top tier downward. If you have a duchy and acquire its de jure kingdom, or vice-versa, the algorithm first places the duchy inside the kingdom, before checking the counties. If the counties are in the kingdom, which they now are, job done! Thus the shape of the duchy within your kingdom is preserved (unless you hold other duchies or kingdoms etc. that have de jure territory overlapping with the duchy). Of course, this doesn't have to be implemented as this exact algorithm, but the behaviour is desirable.
- Optionally, the above algorithm could treat duchies and kingdoms as their de jure higher-rank title when the higher-rank title is not held, where possible. In the Viking Age start date, following the unification of York and the Isles, this behaviour would grant all English territories to York and all Scottish territories to the Isles. Precedence between multiple duchies or kingdoms with the same de jure liege title could be dealt with in many different ways, but I would simply treat them as distinct "top-level" titles (so points 1.-4. can be reapplied within this limited context) with the "primary" title within a given higher-level title being the one with the most current de facto holdings.
- A new non-primary tier title that is not covered by points 1.-3., that is adjacent to already-held land should go to the primary title, if adjacent to it, and the largest adjacent title by number of holdings otherwise.
- New titles would then default to being vassals of the primary title only as a last resort.
In short, I think 3 behaviours are desirable, and any implementation that captures all of them would be an improvement in my book. These are the
de jure precedence already present, a
de facto preservation behaviour for historical context and an
adjacency behaviour to prevent new titles being exclaves unless the first two behaviours specify otherwise.
Combined with a suitably corrected gavelkind, this would keep "feudal" bordergore as a thing whilst eliminating annoying ahistorical plastic-feeling bordergore caused by the limited current implementation.