Un-timegate succession. Bring special succession back on par with typical ones.

[Red-XIII]

To put it simply - gavelkind is hell for a lot of people.
I know that some like it, and I know that some view it as a challenge. I also appreciate the effect it has on AI lands.

But this being forced for over half the game is NOT a fun mechanic.

Gavelkind forces you to either:
1. Cheese the system by killing your own kids all the time. Or by just not having them. How many actual kings can you imagine doing that IRL?
2. Drown your own demesne in blood on almost every succession.
3. Play as an aggressive blob the whole game, so that you could "fill the quota" with new lands you don't even want.

I can handle something like this as a part of "temporary tribal/pagan penalty" package like I did in CK2, but the idea of enduring this bullshit till (AFAIK) 1200+ just to be able to play the game the way I like it is unbearable (I like me a peace game with stable demesne TYVM, the "get off my lawn" kind where, past the initial "locals unification" I don't go for conquest and just focus on keeping my realm strong and safe).

Then there's the fact that special succession types can't be applied realm-wide any more.
Honestly, I don't even see why I have to explain just how ridiculous this is.
Biggest selling point of those successions was bypassing the gavelkind hell, yet they no longer do that.
Furthermore even when you don't need to bypass GKH any more, they still don't mesh well with whatever your "normal" law is, creating a mess where a cultural/religious feature should have been.

 

[Blk82]

Partitioned inheritance exists to fuel conflict, as all realms suffer the "expand or die" problem, as territory is lost every generation due to split inheritance. The succession systems in CKII were a mess. The AI would always derp around in gavelkind for centuries, and couldn't hold onto elective titles, while the player could get primo/ultimogeniture succession within the life of their first ruler.

 

[Red-XIII]

You just said it yourself - AI kept to gavelkind even back in CK2. So there's no need to keep it enforced for AI's sake.
And players know their cheeses. For us gavel-kind fuels celibacy, assassinations, and disinheriting excuses, NOT conflict.
Being forced to do those for a while is ok. Being forced to do that for most of the game is not.

Besides, do we even really WANT to try forcing players into anything in the first place?
Take a good long look at CK2/3 and ask yourself that again. I mean this game doesn't even have victory conditions.
From it's very foundation it was designed to be enjoyed in variety of ways.

And gavel-kind, btw, is one of the LEAST enjoyed ways around. I mean, there's less people that like it than people that hate it.
And it's not even a good source of difficulty since it's wAAAAAAAy more annoying to handle than it is difficult to handle.

 

[luxfelix]

Would something like a "will for the line of succession" feature alleviate the frustration with gavelkind rules?

Additionally, preparing some children for life in the clergy to keep the demesne intact?