what is the point of any succession law but elective?

[Mutineer]

I never use any succession law but elective, since you can always choose the 20 year old nephew who is a strong genius grey eminence, and not get stuck with the misguided warrior drooling imbecile that is your son.

I have played the game around 120 hours, and I've never lost an election (~100 of which was with elective), and I've never even *tried* to win an election; you pretty much automatically win.

what is the point of having primogeniture / seniority / open succession (even open/turkish succession is far worse than elective)? I understand gavelkind has a demesne bonus, but considering you lose half your demesne when you die, that also looks quite bad.

I'm playing primogeniture since I'm now leaning towards elective law being an exploit.

Well, there are some problems with elective when collecting kingdom titles befor becoming an empire. You might not be able to elect you canditate in all kingdoms or some kingdoms will have different succession laws and you can not change them.
Combination of gevekin/primo/elective could easy fall apart and destroying kingdom titles are a bit expencive in many forms.

Now, if you create a new empire and have elective, it will start in gavekin, which will create problems, as changing succession law in big empire is near to impossible. I did lose election some time in small kingdom, if you do not have adalt male relative to ellect and there popular duke.

 

[Talq]

OP, you've had some luck. Electoral voting is to some extent a black box, and it can go horribly wrong.

Case in point, I started as duke of toulouse, changed to elective and in the process of filling my demense plot-revoked all bar two counts who had 100 relations with me. Initally, they voted for my heir along the lines I wished. Sadly later, they drifted to supporting one of the counts (courtesy of him being chancellor = high dip). No problem, I thought, I'll just give a county to my son & heir to square the vote.

He promptly also voted (giving away his inheritance) for the chancellor. I didn't bother to see if that case of boneheaded stupidity would end the game or merely cripple me.

There are also quite a few kingdoms where the volume of duchy titles can make elections difficult to control (especially if its in the HRE, where half the titles will be in the hands of absentee germans before you can say OP emperor if destroyed)

(Furthermore, as others have said, once you get multiple kingdom titles, getting them all to vote the same way can become tricky, especially when the game starts randomly killing your kings young.)

 

[BonSequitur]

If you go elective as a Duke, and then subsequently create a kingdom, the duchy will have a separate elective succession, which is very irritating as ducal vassals spam and nag about the succession there.

 

[JonStryker]

If you go elective as a Duke, and then subsequently create a kingdom, the duchy will have a separate elective succession, which is very irritating as ducal vassals spam and nag about the succession there.

That's right.

Imho it's preferable to have all people below the own primary title run gavelkind and elective in the primary title. If there's a elective-duchy left destroy (and if necessary recreate) it.

 

[Alyiakal]

I have to agree that Elective is very powerful, and that it snowballs on itself; with Elective, you can always elect the best possible person to the throne, and that person should have a high diplomacy. I find that vastly more important than having high stewardship (although having both is obviously great).

People who are having regents and underage rulers are also doing it wrong; you don't need to EVERY have an underage ruler unless the plague or the mongols or something else kills off most of your eligible dynasty. I always have an adult member of my dynasty as designated heir; when someone better comes of age, I change to that person, and everyone follows suit because they love the monarch. This also allows you have extremely long reigns, as instead of having the firstborn inherit most of the time, I usually have the youngest child inherit, leading to 50+ years of rule and stability.

The thing is that you can easily raise your children, and even your nieces and nephews (as they will be eligible if your siblings die before you) to have traits that will please the vassals (or at very least to NOT have traits that will offend them), along with this high diplomacy. Couple this with obeying de jure boundaries means your vassals will not have any reasons to be pissed at you. Throw on free investiture and everyone loves you.

I also don't understand what all the problems people are having with foreign culture penalties, as they aren't even that large compared to a lot of the bonuses you can stack up. My most recent game starting as Navarra (mostly so I could land mat-married daughters) saw me pushing a strong claim to the husband of one of my queens... on the Byzantine Empire (after Holy Warring my way out of Iberia and across Africa). The husband had some pretty uninspiring traits; slothful, cruel, etc... but I managed to put down every single one of his countless claim and independence factions (note to self that while blinding and castrating is fun, it REALLY pisses everyone off... for generations since the "castrated/blinded kin" modifier exists).

Anyways, by the time he finally kicked the bucket, my son had already inherited Navarra (as a Basque nobleman mind you). The Greeks absolutely loved him, and after I was able to change to Absolute Cognatic Elective, the first designation of heir had the vote at something like 37 vs 2 vs 2 vs 1, with the 37 being the chosen heir, which happened to be a daughter at the time. I re-educated an entire generation of Greek nobles to the Basque culture just to make sure, but I never even had a minor problem with the election, or with any revolts.

 

[gimel]

Elective FTW. It gives you much, much longer generations, eg. my 67yo king of Poland left his crown not to 49yo firstborn, but rather 19yo youngest, who had comparable-or-better stats. No more "short reign" revolts every 20 years for me, no sir!

 

[JonStryker]

Gavelkind is a cakewalk if you're rich. Just build a new Temple for every son.

... and therby wasting all the sons that are in the way of the preferred heir. Not the best way to go. The rule is: spread your dynasty everywhere

 

[monsterfurby]

It's good if you have ENOUGH vassals. The more you have, the more likely you are to be able to influence the election and/or get consistent results.

If you, as a duke, are stuck with 3 Electors besides yourself and constantly tied 2:2 (with yourself as the tie-breaker), things can go belly-up faster than you can say "democrazy".

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I've been able to elect nephews, cousins and other distant relations. It seems connected with having a claim, and thus most of your family within two links will likely have one anyway.

The trick with elective, anyhow, is only having a secondary king title when you need the land, then destroy it shortly before you die.

Absolutely worst case, you revoke a duchy in the other kingdom and give it to your far-off dynastic heir.

It also opens to massive abuse of matrilinear marriages: Just find a guy who's 2nd in line for a title who hates his father-liege, invite him, marry him to your daughter. Soon enough you can inherit a whole kingdom by electing their kid.

It should, in general, be harder to secure the vote in medium-large sized realms.

AFAIK having a claim does not make you eligible... At least in 1.04 I'm quite sure only siblings, children and vassals within the realm were eligible. When it happened to me, I had an uncle in control of a distant kingdom whom I would have loved to nominate as successor, because he was in line for my secondary kingdom which was still under primo. But neither he nor his kids on the list of eligible characters for my elective primary kingdom.

 

[Sam L]

I have never played with Elective. Period.

The weakest is Gavelkind. It needs something else because the realm splitting is just not good from game perspective.

 

[JonStryker]

I have to agree that Elective is very powerful, and that it snowballs on itself; with Elective, you can always elect the best possible person to the throne, and that person should have a high diplomacy. I find that vastly more important than having high stewardship (although having both is obviously great).

People who are having regents and underage rulers are also doing it wrong; you don't need to EVERY have an underage ruler unless the plague or the mongols or something else kills off most of your eligible dynasty. I always have an adult member of my dynasty as designated heir; when someone better comes of age, I change to that person, and everyone follows suit because they love the monarch. This also allows you have extremely long reigns, as instead of having the firstborn inherit most of the time, I usually have the youngest child inherit, leading to 50+ years of rule and stability.

The thing is that you can easily raise your children, and even your nieces and nephews (as they will be eligible if your siblings die before you) to have traits that will please the vassals (or at very least to NOT have traits that will offend them), along with this high diplomacy. Couple this with obeying de jure boundaries means your vassals will not have any reasons to be pissed at you. Throw on free investiture and everyone loves you.

I also don't understand what all the problems people are having with foreign culture penalties, as they aren't even that large compared to a lot of the bonuses you can stack up. My most recent game starting as Navarra (mostly so I could land mat-married daughters) saw me pushing a strong claim to the husband of one of my queens... on the Byzantine Empire (after Holy Warring my way out of Iberia and across Africa). The husband had some pretty uninspiring traits; slothful, cruel, etc... but I managed to put down every single one of his countless claim and independence factions (note to self that while blinding and castrating is fun, it REALLY pisses everyone off... for generations since the "castrated/blinded kin" modifier exists).

Anyways, by the time he finally kicked the bucket, my son had already inherited Navarra (as a Basque nobleman mind you). The Greeks absolutely loved him, and after I was able to change to Absolute Cognatic Elective, the first designation of heir had the vote at something like 37 vs 2 vs 2 vs 1, with the 37 being the chosen heir, which happened to be a daughter at the time. I re-educated an entire generation of Greek nobles to the Basque culture just to make sure, but I never even had a minor problem with the election, or with any revolts.

This +1
It's mostly what i am doing in every single game.

It's nice to be able to at all times tutor 1-2 genius boys that popped up randomly at some lowly branch of the family and always have one of those as heir switching them out when they get too old. My record (which is still running) is a guy with over 80K prestige over a period of 40 years. Never even had one faction war.

 

[unmerged(362834)]

I never use any succession law but elective, since you can always choose the 20 year old nephew who is a strong genius grey eminence, and not get stuck with the misguided warrior drooling imbecile that is your son.

I have played the game around 120 hours, and I've never lost an election (~100 of which was with elective), and I've never even *tried* to win an election; you pretty much automatically win.

what is the point of having primogeniture / seniority / open succession (even open/turkish succession is far worse than elective)? I understand gavelkind has a demesne bonus, but considering you lose half your demesne when you die, that also looks quite bad.

I'm playing primogeniture since I'm now leaning towards elective law being an exploit.

You can afford going elective only if you don't care about creating more than one kingdom title! If you want challenge, go elective while you hold many kingdom titles!

 

[FabiusBile]

It is not so one dimensional. The biggest problems with elective is that it can become very hard to keep multiple king titles under elective and loosing a king title is not something you should ever want. Some Vassals will not vote for your person if they dont like them etc. In a "normal" game most of your votes will be tied up in the original Kingdom and you'll not have a majority in the "new" Kingdom by default. Even if you do, you'll get penalties for holding too many electoral votes and vassals may still not vote for your choice, if they hate the candidate (which is quite possible). If you're on the way to become an empire keeping Kingdom titles under elective is a nightmare unless you micromanage perfectly and/or rearrange your lands extensively in order to reduce the chance of a faction war (which costs you relations overall and if your chosen heir is involved, he'll not be elected by his enemies).

Generally, the education system is somehwat reliable and in a growing realm, advisors generally have high stats and you have full control over marriages of your sons. You'll also have opportunities to increase your stats via ambitions and the hunting/feasting intrigue decisions. So, the stats of my monarch are generally in an acceptable range, since 3/4 of them are more or less fully under my control and can be controlled before he inherits. Surely, I might not always got a midas touched heir, but then again, I'll only have 4-5 points of stewardship less if i have some bad luck. Loosing a kingdom due to elective succession is a complete disaster compared to that .

 

[Alyiakal]

I used to really value Midas Touched as well before I discovered Elective. Now it's the Grey Eminence line all the way. Anyone who looks remotely desirable as a heir is getting educated by a Grey Eminence. Your personal demense only goes so far when you're running an Empire/multiple kingdoms.

In terms of your vassals not voting for your choice because they don't like them; why do your vassals not like them? Probably because their diplomacy isn't high enough. You can partially get around that by NOT landing your chosen heir; they will stay in your court and everyone's opinion of them will run off of Personal Diplomacy, which is almost always higher than State Diplomacy, except in the instances where you have such a spectacularly low diplomacy score that your personal diplomacy actually goes negative. With the recent fix to remove all the lowborn general spam, you generally don't even have to worry about their procreation (or lack therof) anymore.

Elective also allows you to avoid the imbecile king issues that everyone seems to complain about with Primogeniture, and by extension puts you less at the mercy of the RNG than before. If that genius appears somewhere farther down your list of kids, you can still have them inherit. If you get screwed over on an education trait and end up a naive appeaser instead of a grey eminence, you shrug and educate the next relative. The point is that you almost always will have a great, or at least good choice for your monarch, one that your vassals should like too, and therefore not cause any problems.

 

[whosthebestcop]

Plus elective gives you +20 vassal opinion to non dynasty members. That's a significant positive modifier.

Elective is best with 1 primary de jure title. If you wanted 15 de jure kingdom titles all with elective you would probably create a huge problem for yourself.

 

[delra]

If you want a terrible elective ride, try uniting Galicia, Castille, Navarra, Aragon, Portugal and Leon under one elective crown. Not getting five different kings elected when there's five sets of electors is quite some acrobatics.

For me elective works best when there's one kingdom where all dukes or most dukes are of one house - then you just elect the best duke to be the next king, while others try to breed better sons to maybe elect someone. The added benefit of this system is that you can make yourself inherit a select duchy, fix counties there, transfer vassals where they belong, in general keep dukedom sizes in check.

 

[heliostellar]

the point is elective law should be much more unpredictable; as it is, elective is simply superior to other succession laws as you are simply picking who your successor will be. you can always have rulers with 20+ diplomacy, which makes it very easy to keep your realm stable. you will never have a mediocre, or even a so-and-so ruler, since you can always pick the best one, and he/she will be elected

I'm not sure how you can call seniority "too easy"; you will pretty much always have the short reign penalty. primo is not bad, but you can get stuck with bad rulers quite a bit.

This. I totally agree that their should be some uncertainty. I think there should be more politics to consider.

 

[delra]

Watch out what you wish for. If vassals didn't go with their king unless the kingdom is really disturbed, it'd ruin the law and everyone would play primo all the time, which would be lame and boring. At least now elective is a strong early alternative to primo and seniority.

And it's still pretty darn risky in the more tense moments, I lost Rus and Ruthenia election when my king died fighting Mongols...

 

[Morwys]

I disagree. Elective is only good under two specific circunstances: If your dinastic heirs (those that continue the game for you) have absolutely no competition and if you are undoubtely the most powerful noble in your kingdom. Even a king is dethroned by powerful dukes. For an example on this, try playing France with elective. You will understand why primo is eventually always the way to go.

 

[Merci357]

I disagree. Elective is only good under two specific circunstances: If your dinastic heirs (those that continue the game for you) have absolutely no competition and if you are undoubtely the most powerful noble in your kingdom. Even a king is dethroned by powerful dukes. For an example on this, try playing France with elective. You will understand why primo is eventually always the way to go.

I haven't tried France at all, so I can't comment on that, but I've played plenty of games as England/Britannia, Hispania, HRE or ERE. I always play elective, and I can't remember that I've lost a single election. I see no reason to play anything besides elective, in fact it's so overpowered that I sometimes use lesser succession laws like primo, just for roleplaying purposes.