Seniority or primogeniture?

[themrwho]

(when it comes to choosing a succession law) basically rather than choosing which 'good option' we want, instead we have several 'bad options' and the name of the game is choosing the lesser evil. I am thinking of an imaginary 'Good King' who have had a long & healthy reign of 30 years with 5 male children;

when he is super sick and semi dead, he can almost see an imaginary Chancellor asking: how would you like your kingdom to be ruined, milord?

* Shall we divide it to 5 pieces and and grant to your heirs who in turn would divide and grant to their heirs - fear not, if we are lucky, some prodigy grandson would re-unite it in 100 years or so.
* Shall we leave it all to the gods of luck with elections like in a bloody Greek play?
* How about keeping your Kingdom in one piece and giving sole control to your great great uncle whom at the age of 84 is still in a good condition (at least physically better than you are now, look at you) Some days he even remembers his name. Worry not, he should rule peacefully at least another 3 months after you kick the bucket.

Come on now, we need to give our King's the option to appoint their successors. If they can built a kingdom, they sure can decide whom among their children can rule the best. And this is not a wild fantasy, it has been done in the age of Great Caesars about 2k years before CK2 release day. You can do the same with elective etc. but loads of micro management which kills the fun. It is not like cheating, it is basics.

 

[zxc]

(when it comes to choosing a succession law) basically rather than choosing which 'good option' we want, instead we have several 'bad options' and the name of the game is choosing the lesser evil. I am thinking of an imaginary 'Good King' who have had a long & healthy reign of 30 years with 5 male children;

when he is super sick and semi dead, he can almost see an imaginary Chancellor asking: how would you like your kingdom to be ruined, milord?

* Shall we divide it to 5 pieces and and grant to your heirs who in turn would divide and grant to their heirs - fear not, if we are lucky, some prodigy grandson would re-unite it in 100 years or so.
* Shall we leave it all to the gods of luck with elections like in a bloody Greek play?
* How about keeping your Kingdom in one piece and giving sole control to your great great uncle whom at the age of 84 is still in a good condition (at least physically better than you are now, look at you) Some days he even remembers his name. Worry not, he should rule peacefully at least another 3 months after you kick the bucket.

Come on now, we need to give our King's the option to appoint their successors. If they can built a kingdom, they sure can decide whom among their children can rule the best. And this is not a wild fantasy, it has been done in the age of Great Caesars about 2k years before CK2 release day. You can do the same with elective etc. but loads of micro management which kills the fun. It is not like cheating, it is basics.

Until the last paragraph I thought you were speaking in praise of the succession laws in this game.

 

[iamdanthemansta]

A lot of groups at this time, at least when the game began, had no fixed laws of inheritance. The game usually interpreters this as gavelkind, but in reality the king could often pick who he wanted to get what. The downside of this in the game could be the disinherited are more likely to raise an army and start a fight.

 

[FrozenWall]

Elective is great if you make sure your dynasty holds all the duke titles, fairly easy for rulers who take most their land from the muslims. Seniority is very usefull if you find your family members not under your control owning titles, uniting the Rurikovich lands under one ruler for example, or if your kin manages to inherit the neighbouring kingdom.

 

[PdoxLP]

Seniority is great if your dynasty owns a lot of stuff outside of your direct control. Having seniority as one of the Russian princes is probably a good idea. Another benefit is that you will never have to worry about the female lines, only your dynasty can inherit.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Seniority is good to unite titles that are sprad within your dynasty.
The downside is the fact that you will usually have rather old rulers, so you will have more often upset vassals from the "short_reign" penalty and less chance to gain benefits from the "long_reign" bonus. In addition you less influence on your heir's stats and traits than in any other succession law.

Primogeniture is good if you want to have tight control about your heir.
However, your other family members will not be amused and you can easily come into trouble if all your heirs should die. In addition, primogeniture requires higher crown laws in a kingdom.

 

[americanu197]

Gavelkind has worked out for me so far, i rarely have more than one son , and if i do i give land to the one i want to inherit and i kill the rest off , its a way to have your cake(extra demesne limit) and eat it too

 

[Fjoelsvider]

for m the best mid-term strategy is to get primogeniture and consolidate.

get a huge family, marry strategically, press claims strategically. get your dynasty members those titles you would like to have later on. lets say install a family member as king of england.

then when all my laws are set and my family is big enough, i switch to seniority, work that assasination magic until i get all those titles inherited by one king. tada you are king of england and whatever else you had before.


then switch back to primo again to get in control again

 

[Cymsdale]

Until the last paragraph I thought you were speaking in praise of the succession laws in this game.

Haha, I thought the exact same. Having to decide which choice is the 'least bad' makes it much more interesting. If there was a 'do whatever you want' succession, it would take a lot of the drama out of this game.

 

[unmerged(276028)]

So, i read here that most people fancy elective succession. But that is only true for dukes and higher ranks, right?

Because as a count all your mayors and bishops can vote, and when i tried elective for a short while somehow my own vote only counted as "one vote" , even though i had like 5 counties. In the end some random mayor had something like 12 votes, from all the stupid other mayors and bishops, and my heir only had 1 vote.

Naturally i tried to change that by revoking that mayors title, but only 1 day later some other random mayer popped up with 12 votes.

So, is it just not usable for counts, or how exactly do you utilise elective succession? Also, i often read about "giving your dynasty voting rights" , does that simply mean that you make them your counts when you are a vassal, or can you also give them voting rights before that?

Greetings

 

[Onedreamer]

In primogeniture, can nephews and brothers inherit should there be no sons?

No, the inheritance will go to daughters if you have any, otherwise to nephews and brothers.
This is quite annoying IMO, since in reality this should be the default. There is already a distinction ingame between close relatives and distant relatives (the blood drop even changes). The inheritance, wether it is agnatic or agnatic-cognatic, should always go to males in case there is any close relative alive, instead this is not the case. Quite ahistorical... but I suppose it's done to make the game easier to lose, although I'm not sure what's the point in making you lose more easily since there is no win either.

 

[pfried]

I use elective, it's a high-risk high-reward system.

It's especially good when most of the electors are of your dynasty.

Theoretically though, I prefer Open-Agnatic (known in CKI as "Consanguinity"), unfortunately it is largely unavailable, the only place I've found it is among muslims using the demo-click glitch.

If this is true, then this type of succession is represented by "turkish succession law" and should be easy to implement in a mod. Or you can convert your ruler to any muslim religion and try this out...

 

[Onedreamer]

http://crusaderkings.wikia.com/wiki/Salic_Consanguinity << Why don't we have this one in CKII? I used that one in CKI and I miss it badly.

If I understand how it works correctly, it is what (most) male rulers need! Such as;
* I am the ruler and Uncle John, even if you are 120 years old, sorry but you cannot inherit a thing. Be good to me and I might give you some land. Be bad (assassination attempt) and we'll catch up sooner than later.
* I am the ruler dear Brother, (and your wife with +99 intrigue), sorry but you cannot inherit a thing as I have so many kids already. Do not try anything crazy.
* Dear vassals, do not dream of democracy either.

Thank you very much for your service to the King & Country.

Why have it no more?


Edit - as they do in 'real life', just pick a Duchy for your heir apparent (say Duchy of Wales) and every time a new King is crowned, as the first act, grant Duchy of Wales to your heir (throw in some other duchy/counties if necessary) and ensure he is 'ready' for crowning when the day comes. He has the most demesne in the realm (right after king), he is the strongest militarily, he has the highest prestige & piety etc. he is demi god next to holy King himself. This is the way it should be, no?

It's not in the game because it's not even remotely balanced for gameplay. Having a choices that are no brainers just leads to a stale game.

You two must both be kidding since this succession law *is* in the game. It's called Open Agnatic.

 

[trajan]

No, the inheritance will go to daughters if you have any, otherwise to nephews and brothers.

Only if you're using agnatic-cognatic or absolute cognatic.

 

[philios82]

I think I've noticed a bit of an exploit here. In my current Ireland game I switched to primogeniture back when I was a count, when I created the kingdom of Ireland I still had primogeniture, even with zero crown authority. I don't know if this works when you take a Kingdom as well although I now have Scotland and thats deffinitely primogeniture.

On topic, primo seems like the best one to me, things get a bit dodgey when one king dies but as long as you are the strongest guy in your realm it doesn't matter. When my most recent king took the throne I was at war with a Scottish Duke and all but one of my vassals revolted, the thing is I have 14k troops and they have 6k between them, so it wasn't exactly scary, I stomped my vassals and then beat the Duke too.

 

[Darrigan]

Guess I am one of the few who really likes Gavelkind and sees its (major) advantages...

 

[Arakhor]

Over the last 40 years, my Dukes of Munster kept popping out sons. I changed to Primogeniture at my very earliest opportunity!

 

[themrwho]

You two must both be kidding since this succession law *is* in the game. It's called Open Agnatic.

I can't see an Open-Agnatic option in the menu.

 

[Garak]

I had seniority for a while in my current game, to avoid game over when I had some surprise deaths and a middle-aged daughter took the throne. It was a serious pain. All my kings were 50-60 when they took the throne, everyone hated them, and I was basically playing whack-a-mole for a couple decades with all the rebelling vassals. Also, the throne passed to this scummy cadet branch of the family that had been rebelling against me and trying to take over Scotland (I'm Poland, by the way) for years. Pain in the butt, although the play sessions were so intense, I'm thinking of making an AAR about it.

 

[themrwho]

I won't argue that it does not unbalance the game or it is the RIGHT law to pick etc. but I need salic consanguinity back, if it unbalances the game let it be. I wanna unbalance my game, please do give me the choice as you did in CK1.