Switching from Elective gavelkind to "normal" gavelkind succession

[Ca7cher]

I started 769 as the ruler of Bohemia. i have normally played before as Norse pagans, Christians and Muslims, and this is my first try as a tribal Slavic pagan ruler. So far it's gone quite good, I've raided my neighbors to upgrade my holdings, gotten some more land and formed the Kingdom of Bohemia. I am aiming to form Empire of Germania and maybe later Holy Roman Empire. As I said: so far so good.

You know what really gets to me though?
That freaking elective gavelkind.

As the starter ruler is already quite old and already had 3 younger generations when stating, the family tree is hugeee. I have no idea how my vassals keep electing idiots as my heirs, so I keep trying to assassinate pretty much everyone. I would love to convert to normal gavelkind, to keep the main titles for my sons so I would have some sort of control over who is my next character. It drives me mad to have to jump to someone who I don't "know" on some level.

However, I cannot convert to gavelkind as "one of these have to be true: Ruler is NOT pagan. Ruler is NOT tribal."

I don't get this. Aren't Norse rulers both pagan and tribal, and they still have normal gavelkind?

 

[Ca7cher]

Actually, now that I am thinking about it-- I might be horribly wrong. Been a while since I last played as anything tribal/pagan.

Either way, elective gavelkind is horrible.

 

[Shebaloso]

I started 769 as the ruler of Bohemia. i have normally played before as Norse pagans, Christians and Muslims, and this is my first try as a tribal Slavic pagan ruler. So far it's gone quite good, I've raided my neighbors to upgrade my holdings, gotten some more land and formed the Kingdom of Bohemia. I am aiming to form Empire of Germania and maybe later Holy Roman Empire. As I said: so far so good.

You know what really gets to me though?
That freaking elective gavelkind.

As the starter ruler is already quite old and already had 3 younger generations when stating, the family tree is hugeee. I have no idea how my vassals keep electing idiots as my heirs, so I keep trying to assassinate pretty much everyone. I would love to convert to normal gavelkind, to keep the main titles for my sons so I would have some sort of control over who is my next character. It drives me mad to have to jump to someone who I don't "know" on some level.

However, I cannot convert to gavelkind as "one of these have to be true: Ruler is NOT pagan. Ruler is NOT tribal."

I don't get this. Aren't Norse rulers both pagan and tribal, and they still have normal gavelkind?

Nope, Norse rulers that are tribal and unreformed germanic also start with elective gavelkind. In order to convert to standard gavelkind you have to either convert to main religions (denominations of christianity, denominations of islam, denominations of mazdan), change your government type to feudal, or reform your pagan religion.

 

[Ca7cher]

Nope, Norse rulers that are tribal and unreformed germanic also start with elective gavelkind. In order to convert to standard gavelkind you have to either convert to main religions (denominations of christianity, denominations of islam, denominations of mazdan), change your government type to feudal, or reform your pagan religion.

I started to think things things through and realized that you are absolutely right. I think the main difference has been that when I was playing as a Norse ruler, my family was just much... much smaller, and therefore easier to keep track of.

 

[StarSword]

Nope, Norse rulers that are tribal and unreformed germanic also start with elective gavelkind. In order to convert to standard gavelkind you have to either convert to main religions (denominations of christianity, denominations of islam, denominations of mazdan), change your government type to feudal, or reform your pagan religion.

And that brings us to the solution.

• Try to capture a good Christian woman (likely to be the most available in your region; Catholic or Orthodox doesn't matter), make her a concubine, and you'll get a decision to "Convert to Spouse Religion". Then change succession and convert back to capital province religion.
• Or if any of your captured counties have an organized religion you can move your capital there and change to the capital county's religion, then move back home and change back after switching succession.

Note, though, that gavelkind can still be tricky. You're pretty much only allowed to have one top-level title and one county to yourself. If you die with more titles, your top title and capital province will go to your eldest son and the rest will be divided up among the others near-randomly.

 

[Bernard95]

Regular gavelkind you can control rather easily if you know what you're doing, but elective gavelkind will inevitably get out of control as your family grows larger. As the poster above mentioned you need to Christianize even if only temporarily or reform your faith.

Once you have regular gavelkind, there are some rules. The game will always give you your capital county (and usually duchy). Anything else is given out to the remaining sons, attempting to give all sons at least a single county and duchy.

The trick to keeping the splits clean is that the game will only give out counties in your capital duchy if your other sons would get nothing else. To get around this, have enough duchy titles equal to the number of sons with a single county in each. As a pagan you should have an easy time conquering land, though the duchy titles will probably be relatively expensive. This is why as a pagan, it usually pays to have as few children as possible. Easiest thing you can do in that regard is to marry an older woman and then use concubines. After you have say two sons, get rid of the concubines. Otherwise, you may need to get "creative" and find ways to get rid of the extra sons that are messing up your inheritance.

 

[Shebaloso]

Dude, i personally am not fond of any of those gamey mechanics. If they suit you, fair enough. But if that is not the case, elective gavelkind in itself is not that bad. The problems start when bugs happen and the inheritance becomes completely random.

That said, there are some methods to control it. Go for a kingdom title as quickly as possible (easy, as you have the "become king" ambition). After that, try to conquer at least 51% another de jure kingdom, so, upon your death, you secondary heir can declare independence and form said kingdom. When this happens, you both get strong claims on each other's primary titles, so reunification wars are quickly and immediate. Repeat said strategy until you can form a de jure empire (it probably should not take more than two generations, though) and then handle those kingdom level titles to your landed vassals. It's VERY important that you go for those 51% and that you handle those titles to vassals, because if your secondary heirs go independent through inheriting titles of lesser ranks than yours, you WILL NOT get claims on them.

 

[shivan]

Im doing such a game right now.
Im doing something which I admit is pretty gamey: When you rise to power, have one son, then get divorsed and marry an old woman. Set aside alle concubines.
Then take seduction focus and produce bastards like crazy. These "backup heirs" can be legitimised at any time.
Then you always have only one heir.