Why lose every county?

[SigurdStormhand]

Pressed every single claim (including the ones of my million family members) and revoked what was left.

Presumably you're now your brother, then?

But yikes - that's just nasty.

 

[Sirrobert1]

So what you mean is, you lost?

 

[AwesomeKeith]

So what you mean is, you lost?

Mhm. Killed the main line via succession and claims favoring younger children.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

You only lose when your Dynasty has no counties left. If your current character is unlanded you spawn into his closest relation.

 

[AwesomeKeith]

You only lose when your Dynasty has no counties left. If your current character is unlanded you spawn into his closest relation.

I said the main line died. I failed the goal of that game; keep the main line alive and landed.

 

[Aries666]

You're entitled to your opinion but please don't try to rationalise the game system against history or realistic psychology.

Personally, I think you'd feel different if factions were more effective, so that you really had to worry about your own demesnes and levies vs your vassals because it might be all you were left with. As it stands your brothers need a leg up if they're going to even consider challenging you. In my mind that shows how interlinked all the game systems are, a problem in one place cascades down through everything.

This is the crux of it. Back when factions were a problem staying in gavelkind was a death sentence. Good planning and a really good ruler could see you through a succession but one bad ruler was either game over or right back to 1-2 province count. Rather than fix the problems with gavelkind or simply move more realms on to elective or hereditary they completely neutered factions more or less tearing out half the games balance, i.e. internal power struggles.

 

[Aries666]

It's because gavelkind is a little bit screwey, though it is a lot better than it was before they tinkered with it (used to be really horrible, with your main heir getting 1 county + kingdom and your secondary heir getting 6 counties and 2 duchies and crap like that).

Seriously, Paradox need to let us allocate land under gavelkind. It's ridiculous to think that a king who had decided to divide his land between his children wouldn't be able to decide WHAT land they get. I mean, Didn't Karl and Karloman's father (769 start) decide to give his two sons the land the way he did to make them work together, rather than fight one another? So it has basis.

We should obviously not be able to screw all other children in favour of the primary heir, giving the primary heir 4 counties while giving the secondary heirs only 1, or even just a barony. We should have to make it fair. But let us choose!

This is a good suggestion, make each title have a "weighting" based on the economic and miltary strength of the province it controls and then split in a way that gives the primary 100/x +10% (x=number of children) with all other heirs getting an equal share of the remainder or maybe gradually less the further down the line of succession they are.

 

[Aries666]

No mater which system you implement here in the place of Gavelkind there are enough examples in history to argue against it.
I quote my self here:

The focus on the authenticity stops us from talking about the real issue of gavelkind.

Player information and understanding of this law! Once you understand how it works you can deal with it and it sometime can be a very good succession law. But how you get there? Just look at the ckiiwiki page. How should a person that just played a few hours understand what this article is taking about. You need good understanding of English and of the game to finally understand the rules of gavelkind. And without the wiki you are completely lost. The game itself doesn't tell you why your brother get those counties or the other Kingdom gets created (EG), at least not in a why you can easily understand as a noob. That's why we have a gavelkind thread very week. There need to be a why an how, in game, to simply understand why gavelkind is doing that stuff is that it does. I irks me that EVERY week there is a thread about this topic. This needs to stop. The historical debate on this topic doesn't help at all with this problem.

Fuuny thing is the very first line of that wiki page is just flat out wrong:

" Gavelkind is a succession law where land is divided equally among sons or other heirs."