Usurping Titles That Have Gavelkind Succession

[trlongwell]

I am playing as the Byzantine Empire in a long game, starting in the Charlemagne bookmark, under the newest patch with all DLC except for Conclave.

Due to the new threat mechanic, retaking the old borders has been a slow slog. I have recently taken enough of Spain to usurp the Umayyad Empire, which also holds most of France and Germany. It would be very helpful to do so to further my goal of reclaiming the old borders. Sadly, the title is under Gavelkind succession and has minimal crown authority.

I am wondering if there is any way to fix the Gavelkind issue before succession. Would Elective be a solution? None of my demense is in the de jure empire in question, so can I expect to get my chosen heir elected? I would prefer not to have to deal with it, but it beats trying to reconquer all of Hispania every time I pass the torch.

 

[trlongwell]

Did a little experiment and it looks like elective is the solution. I only have 3 vassals and since they are exarchs it's pretty easy to keep them happy.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

Destroy the title.

 

[trlongwell]

That was a great idea, thanks!

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Hey, same campaign as me.

Byzantine Empire start on Charlemagne is extremely overpowered. You can plow through any kind of threat arrayed against you easily. You can usually ignore threat, though personally I would not do more than one 100% threat war more than once per emperor, at least not versus a kingdom tier target. -65 modifier on raised levies opinion after claiming Lombardy, it took some 9 whole years of continuous warfare.

For any smaller realms you can just plow right through them with byzantine technological might......and some quick sieges.

Regarding your actual question, destroy the empire title. If anything I would completely avoid making said titles until all of their de jure lands drift into yours.

That way nobody has that "desires the Empire of Hispania" malus that you get for non primary titles. More importantly those lands that were supposed to belong to hispania will begin drifting towards the Byzantine/Roman Empire. Once they become de jure lands in your title those lands don't usually faction for independence.

Once the empire title effectively becomes titular have at it, free prestige.

 

[FifthMonarchy]

Destroy the title.

Though you have to get it out of gavelkind before you can destroy it, so I avoid usurping titles if I'm old and likely to die before I have a chance to change the laws.

 

[trlongwell]

Though you have to get it out of gavelkind before you can destroy it, so I avoid usurping titles if I'm old and likely to die before I have a chance to change the laws.

Yeah, but thankfully Elective was immediately available.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Ok then. Switch to that and immediately destroy the title for reasons I mentioned previously. De jure lands are much less of a hassle to deal with.

Though if you want to keep the title for the prestige, go for it. Just be aware of aforementioned opinion malus and independence factions.

 

[trlongwell]

Hey, same campaign as me.

Byzantine Empire start on Charlemagne is extremely overpowered. You can plow through any kind of threat arrayed against you easily. You can usually ignore threat, though personally I would not do more than one 100% threat war more than once per emperor, at least not versus a kingdom tier target. -65 modifier on raised levies opinion after claiming Lombardy, it took some 9 whole years of continuous warfare.

For any smaller realms you can just plow right through them with byzantine technological might......and some quick sieges.

Regarding your actual question, destroy the empire title. If anything I would completely avoid making said titles until all of their de jure lands drift into yours.

That way nobody has that "desires the Empire of Hispania" malus that you get for non primary titles. More importantly those lands that were supposed to belong to hispania will begin drifting towards the Byzantine/Roman Empire. Once they become de jure lands in your title those lands don't usually faction for independence.

Once the empire title effectively becomes titular have at it, free prestige.

I've found that the most annoying wars are for the smallest claims, either single county or barony level holdings, when the war target is far-removed from the defender's remaining territory. Simply because I can't get enough warscore out of sieging my target to get the enemy to give up. I didn't have any trouble winning lands from the Umayyads for example.

I've been relying almost entirely on my retinues anyway. I don't think I've even called up my personal levies for anything in hundreds of years except for raiders and when Genghis Khan attacked me with his 100k event-spawned troops, and I didn't need the vassals for that.

The start of the campaign was a little bit hairy, though. I had to put down several revolts for elective monarchy before I was able to build up my demense and retinues.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Well personally the smaller claims are easier to handle since once you take it you can let warscore tick in your favor. In the meantime your concentrated Byzantine stack can murderize their uncoordinated stacks that keep trickling into the contested territory. The centralized might of the Byzantines in Charlemagne era is no joke. Having said that, that war with Lombardy was almost disastrous as the -65 opinion modifier was terrible. Then the Ummayads declared war on me since I had all of the Karling's territory by then. Defending vs Infidels, yeah!

Also those early revolts were perfect in my opinion. Revoked a ton of counties and gave them away to dynasty members.

 

[trlongwell]

Well personally the smaller claims are easier to handle since once you take it you can let warscore tick in your favor. In the meantime your concentrated Byzantine stack can murderize their uncoordinated stacks that keep trickling into the contested territory. The centralized might of the Byzantines in Charlemagne era is no joke. Having said that, that war with Lombardy was almost disastrous as the -65 opinion modifier was terrible. Then the Ummayads declared war on me since I had all of the Karling's territory by then. Defending vs Infidels, yeah!

Also those early revolts were perfect in my opinion. Revoked a ton of counties and gave them away to dynasty members.

I'd rather get the war over quickly, because pretty much the entire world declares war on me at this point. I think only India stays out of it now. It isn't a big deal to be besieged on the other side of the empire, it's just annoying. At this point I'm completely unstoppable and the only thing that slows me down is losing troops to siege assaults and attrition. I will probably take all of France in about 30 game years or so, then only England is left.

 

[trlongwell]

Well personally the smaller claims are easier to handle since once you take it you can let warscore tick in your favor. In the meantime your concentrated Byzantine stack can murderize their uncoordinated stacks that keep trickling into the contested territory. The centralized might of the Byzantines in Charlemagne era is no joke. Having said that, that war with Lombardy was almost disastrous as the -65 opinion modifier was terrible. Then the Ummayads declared war on me since I had all of the Karling's territory by then. Defending vs Infidels, yeah!

Also those early revolts were perfect in my opinion. Revoked a ton of counties and gave them away to dynasty members.

To further my point: I just wrapped up a war for a single barony against the Bektashi Order. It took around 6 years, because warscore doesn't tick for these apparently. I was pretty shocked that once I finally broke down and conquered all of his holdings, my warscore actually decreased because it stopped counting the battle portion and didn't give me the automatic 100%. And it's pretty hard to get battle score when pretty much every other independent ruler is at war with you.

I'm already dreading the fact that I will need to win two more of these to fully conquer France.

On the plus side, Sunni religious authority is so low now that Zikri might take over eventually, which is pretty funny given that it's 1315 and the ZIkri branch of Islam wasn't invented until the 15th century.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Yeah the baronies and other sub holdings don't count for much and on't appear to tick for warscore, even if the defender only has one other sub county barony/city/bisphoric. Hence my irritation for when I have to oust the Hashashin from the duchy of Antioch sometime in the future.

 

[trlongwell]

Yeah the baronies and other sub holdings don't count for much and on't appear to tick for warscore, even if the defender only has one other sub county barony/city/bisphoric. Hence my irritation for when I have to oust the Hashashin from the duchy of Antioch sometime in the future.

I'm starting to think the whole thing may be bugged. I recently took the county of Surrey from Norway. The king of Norway held all holdings in the province. I sieged them all, but I never got any ticking warscore from that. There was no other target for the war. I had to ship an army to Norway to conduct sieges there to win.

On the plus side, my second war for a Bektashi barony went pretty smoothly. He gave up pretty quickly. It probably depends on whether there are other wars going on; you might want to wait until the Hashashin are fighting somewhere else first. I also lucked out a while back when my vassals cleaned up the Bektashi baronies in their territories in North Africa. It's a shame you can't bribe (or use favors with Conclave installed) to get your vassals to attack a target. They wouldn't have any trouble as there are no pacts against them.