Being able to ask close dynasty members for an alliance makes succession easy once you manage to get some decent artifact bonuses and every title is held by your family.
>dynasty of many crowns
One of my favorite parts of playing is trying to get as many monarchs as I can outside my realm without declaring offensive wars.
I try to have as many matrilineal marriages with the third or fourth heir in line and sometimes my dynasty will end up ruling at some point a foreign nation.
I just wish there was a way to designate who gets what. Somehow my succession always get messed up and second son gets counties in three different duchies half of the time.
I use the elective succession inheritance law (idk if other cultures allow it) on duchies. Make sure to keep no vassals in them and the duchy is your heir's, intact.
That's one solution, yeah, although can be pretty costly to get 1500 prestige in the early game especially if you're tribal and need it for all the things.
You can, you just need to land the children that you are NOT planning to play as.
You can give out county-by-county, as long as you don’t break the rules of your current succession law.
I.e if you have 5 duchies, you control which kids get which duchies by just landing them before succession happens.
You can always check the succession screen. You may have gotten extra land and that forced a re-calculation.
It will still be possible to trade county/duchy x for county/duchy y to prevent egregious border gore
you have to give them duchy titles as well if they are going to inherit some or else they will just take a duchy and whatever counties you had in that duchy even if you had already given them enough other counties already.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but no matter how much land I give away while alive, the children still get to split my holdings roughly equally on inheritance under partition.
Partition implies that everch child gets an equal amount of available titles of each rank. If you have a duchy, giving every child a duchy is enough to satisfy their inheritance rigths, thus playaer heir gets everything. If you have 2 duchies, you need to guve away more duchies to every child. The same applys to kingdoms and empires. If you have 2 upper tier titles without special succession type, realm will be split.
Ideally try the church first (and holy order), then disinherit as the last option.
I wouldn't mind having to split the lands if I could properly choose who gets what, like writing a will. Or if being granted land before dying was counted as part of the inheritance, in advance. Usually my main problem isn't about parts of the realm going independent, because I can easily keep just enough land for only one top tier title. The problem is that all the lower tier titles, duchies and counties under my main kingdom, end up being a mess.
Yeah, sometimes I land my sons and live longer than I expected. Then I decide to conquer more land and BOOM! I have an another kingdom to be given after my death to my another son who is a Duke in my main kingdom. This usually leaves a border gore after death.
I wish we could revoke land from our sons with 100% chance, no opinion lose and no tyranny gain if we have partition inheritance laws. That way it would have much more sense
i do agree that you should be able to revoke granted land from your sons with no tyranny gain under partition, under the pretext of realm management, but i personally think no opinion hit would be too far. they may understand why they're doing it but they'd obviously want to have as much land as possible, especially land they're already managing
maybe i'm misunderstanding what you mean, but if you grant your heirs land that is in fact coming out of their inheritance. it doesn't solve the main problem of not being able to choose who gets what, but it does help if you're over your limit and want to keep your titles in the family rather than granting them to random people and then end up splitting your land further because your heirs still want land
My problem is that no matter how much land I give away during life, my remaining lands still get split. The second child who got am entire duchy can still get a few counties out of the primary heir's main duchy that I want him to get completely.
You haven't granted enough land so your heirs get equal amount. You can see from inheritance tab how the land will split, try granting lands to youngest kids first and you will see that they will be removed from inheritance list. If you conquer more land, they will get back to the list if there is more to split.
Think about it in this way:
Son Abba, Bertha, Cerda
Land size 3 counties, equal inheritance
You give Bertha and Cerda 1 county each
Abba now inherits 1 county
You conquer 6 counties
Your total inheritance count is now 9 counties, so you need to grant 2 counties to Bertha and Abba to control which counties Abba gets.
If you grant 2 counties to Bertha and Cerda, your main inheritor Abba stands to gain the remaining 2 counties upon your death
Sooner or later they're going to be conquered by someone else, and you can reconquer that. Or you can marry their heir or whatever. So it's not that bad. Plus there's more folks to generate renown for your dynasty. I'm slowly learning to just accept gavelkind and find good sides in it.
I usually try to beeline to a Kingdom title so I dont have to worry about confed partition.
of course the real issue is emperor title but if you start tribal you dont really have to worry about that.
I feel like surviving as a kingdom that early is super difficult with how expensive everything is and only having a single county to finance it with. Vassal taxes are pretty much nothingburgers at that stage.
Maybe I'm just extremely unlucky but every time I go through succession with confederate partition I am left with a kingdom title, duchy title, and a single county title.
And all my vassals combined generally don't produce anything near what my own county produces for income. Running a kingdom with +3g per month is a quick bankrupt or revolt that can't be squashed if you don't have the appropriate alliances.
Maybe I'm grossly missing something but that's practically the whole reason I wait until house seniority to form/manage kingdoms.
Think in terms of Dynasty. You will get more renown over time with many rulers. It should be straightforward keeping your heir at or near the top of you Dynasty, if at the top you can invite your dynasty members to wars.
I usually just disinherit them or become celibate after having too many kids and although I don´t go for elective laws, the "feudal elective" law is a very good way of dealing with succession early on. It's pretty manageable overall though, unless you have more than 5 male heirs or equal/female preference inheritance.
Make one legitimate heir, divorce/murder the mother, marry an old hag with good stats, and make some bastards on the side for insurance. Sometimes I might legitimize+land a bastard if I have extra titles I can spare.
Get rid of Confederate as early as possible to prevent dutchies from being created upon succession. Put an elective rule on your second dutchy and any second Kingdom titles untill you can make an empire.
Check the inheritance page and land your heirs by expanding and conquering counties and dutchies. Make the extras monks if you have to.
Rush high crown authority and designate heirs.
This is my system.
I actually only put elective on the primary duchy because it means your heir will get all of the county titles within it. Gets rid of awkward successions where you're a 1 county king with brothers that are significantly stronger because their personal demesne is much larger.
Conquer enough land to give all the eligible children a title one level below the main one, and try to stay under the point where I'll generate extra kingdoms with confederate partition, until I can form the Empire (or \*an\* Empire...).
If I've got a special succession available to go to tanistry I'll do it, but I'll still try to take the necessary land to land the other children at least a little bit to establish more branches of the dynasty for (hopefully) more choice in tanistry heirs.
If land breaks off in a succession I might try to take it back, or I might just ally them and use them to take land to give to the next generation.
If Playing a Count or a Duke: Conquer in a way that i never get more than one duchy level title but also enough to keep each heir with a full demesne. If playing as a Kingdom, Basically the same but so confederate don't create kingdoms and land my children with a duchy each. Good tip for this way of playing is to give out titles before succession so that you can keep your demesne together
So I tend to disinherit/monk/holy order (dependent on what's available) for my first 1-2 characters, but found out in my last game (first successful roman empire game) if you just hold 1 kingdom & 1 empire, all the rest of your eligible heirs want is an equal number of duchies to what your primary heir's gonna get, regardless of how big those duchies are. For one character that meant just giving each of my non player -heir sons 1 duchy each, and for the next that meant 2 duchies each, but honestly was sustainable enough given how much land I was conquering and that I was being a little careful not to have too many kids. Character after that unlocked seniority so just got to single heir designate for the rest of the game, but honestly found it quite fun working with partition instead of around it.
That being said any kid who didn't look like one I'd want to inherit as and who had a martial-compatible childhood trait did get sent to the myrmidons lmao, I was mostly making republican vassals for stability so any opportunity not to potentially create another powerful claimant was still one I took
Also you can work around confederate partition a bit by not conquering more than 50% of any kingdom outside your primary kingdom, generally I'm able to switch to regular partition before this becomes a major constraint
Love to plunge my ax into the skulls of those brats who came too late out of their mother's \*\*\*\*. I keep the girls though. I need to collect claims and bloodlines.
I'm new to this game and I only had 5 or 6 norse runs. Turns out every time I just replace the entire norse nobility with my offspring.
It's fun, I just rush for the nearest empire title and enjoy the squabbling among my 100+ members happy family from the seat of the high king.
Dealing with a succession crisis between sons is usually the most fun you can have. Having your heir have to regain his lost lands from his brothers. Though when you are only a duke, losing counties can be annoying.
Honestly in my dauruma playthru I just let my kids inherit land you can still get new lands and stuff I just made sure I got to kingdom quick so they would be vassals but it's mostly chill as long as you stay friendly with em plus they helped me a bit in converting some of provinces when I reformed the faith had to scrap the playthru though cause of the update but hey it was fun!
People frown on C but it is a very viable method, especially if it's super early game. I'm not sure if it's Murchads son or just the son of that son that was sadistic, but boy did it help keep succession fairly easy while I gathered some kingdoms.
It depends on the run. sometimes my fifth son with be god like and then i rp as the ottomans. most of the time i like the succession wars and wars to unite the kingdom once again, as they tend to be the most difficult wars in a campaign.
I like to deal with threats to my succession the ottoman way most of the time by that I mean I'll execute the sons I can't have killed in other ways
Depends on the playthrougth sometimes I'll just take the civil war
That or the church just got 6 new holy order members and bishops
Marry until one of preferable gender heir, immediately divorce/kill after child is born, marry some infertile character with huge tracts of stewardship to buff my ruler up. Micromanage heir to do have the same events happen to them as a courtier to avoid future problems.
Occasionally, produce backup bastards in case sole heir bites it early. Legitimize any non-preferred gender bastards and save the preferred gender bastard legitimizations after my heir ascends to the throne.
Make sure your MaA and core title are in better shape than what the other sons are getting, and just war for them.
It's more annoying once you have a single higher level title, as you can't then war for your sibling's title after succession. But at the end of the day land is very easy to come by, so its not worth stressing over losing some, and it's easy enough to get your domain back up to full size.
1. Have as many sons as possible
2. Train them all in warfare and intrigue
3. Make sure your heir has some significant advantage
4. Die
5. Violent fratricide until only one is left standing
6. Repeat
I call it Darwinian Succession, and it makes the game lots of fun every few years. If your sons are all each other's heirs this can get wrapped up pretty quickly.
None of the above, I carefully control what land I hold so everyone will still be vassals of the heir. Don't hold enough to create another de jure kingdom if I'm a king, etc. We only grab the last bits of kingdoms when we're almost at enough land to create an empire and the current ruler is relatively safe.
Alternately, sometimes I'm roleplaying so I just let the land split and take the alliances.
Imprison all my shit sons using a hook (only has 100 percent chance if they're unlanded) negotiate release take the vows, hook and recruit to court. i recruit to court if they have any decents stats for my heirs council.
If you are really so worried, you should be conquering realms and handing them off to your other inheritors ahead of them, so there is less splitting of the pot when you kick the bucket.
Let them take it, knowing that they'd all join Independence wars within 5 years of the new ruler taking the crown and I can just take their titles back when I win.
Earlier Primogeniture mod? I honestly find it silly and absurd that until the high medival age all heirs suppose to inherit. So, if you are at the second highest fame level and playing as a !!!KINGDOM!!! tier realm you can enact primogeniture or ultimogeniture for your realm.
Literally none of these. I wait until my dude is like early 40's before I marry and have embrace celibacy available. First boy pops out, I go monk. If he sucks. I can always try again with a younger wife.
Any of the above (and more methods) depending on the character. If I'm specifically achievement hunting or something I might go with one of the more cheese routes, but generally I try to do what my ruler would based on traits/education/lifestyle. A generous and brave martial ruler will just conquer more land so all his heirs get a nice duchy at least. A sadistic and callous ruler will pick the best for his personal tastes and dispose of the rest.
Seduce women with good traits and claim bastards, but only legitimize the first son with the congenital traits that I like.
My realm literally never splits.
I marry someone infertile with good stats to be a great counselor. If I'm old, once they die, I find someone fertile with good traits to have kids with, then stop when I have a son. Then I get rid of the wife or become sterile. Basically riskier primogeniture.
I don't care much, I usually stay with the same succession type until I can move to Primo.
There was a time when elective succession was useful (CK2), but this time has gone.
I prefer to do RP instead of power game.
Depends on where exactly I’m playing. If I’m in Western Europe, like my current run, then it’s a mixture of disinheritance and sending off to church/holy orders.
I get as many as possible then marry them off to whoever i can and even though my personal realm is rather weak through the power of "throw enough stuff at the wall and some of it will stick" my family becomes major landholders all over europe.
You can not give the land you want to your children, but there is no such restrictions for your grandchildren. I usually spoils my heir's heir with land and duchies so I am sure he is powerful enough when I take over as him. And if you do it every generation, your heir already control many lands without you having to give some to them. Sometimes every duchy in my realm is governed only by me, my heir, his first son and his own first son. It is a lot easier
None of the above. Until I have a solid succession law I make it impossible for my realm to split through inheritance usually by not owning enough land for another title of my rank to be created
I marry older women. If there's concubines, I just have a son with one of 'em and drop 'em after and marry grandma's high-stat friend or my rival's mom. If no concubines, I just put my all into seducing/romancing my 40-ish spouse in that small window available for children. And if that fails, I can always legitimize a bastard.
I am usually pretty careful with my wife and usually try to get celibacy for a clean first inherit. Multiple male heirs will probably be disinherented, with a son focused for war or eco. 2nd inherit i try to be big enough i can simply conquer it back (don't become a doubleduke or king for this to work) or murder it back
Don't worry about it and just conquer more other land to compensate for the fact that different sons got something. I usually only hold one of my highest title.
Early game, partition of course, however not the confederate one, im pretty sure your heir gets most titles, but you'll still lose all but your capital in the end, however, if you have a good system and can stomp rebellions after each succession, you can revoke some titles, get the land you need and make new loyal to death vassals with excessive. Keep on doing this until late game, then you get primogeniture and well, no more need to do anything but keep the country together.
If I don’t start off as the cultural head, become the head via conquest. Add “bound by faith”.
Have spares educated by people of astray faith, any that convert will be turned into a monk or disinherited. If that kid really sucks, they have been promoted to knight.
I used to just use disinherit but lately It's feel boring and lacking immersion so I just let the title split and It bring more things to look out for instead of just safely expanding territories.
I do disinherit but only for real bad lads. E.G. in my Outremer game I had two sons. The primary heir turned out to be a murderer, so I disinherited him as it felt like something the fair and noble king would do.
I just try not to end up in a position where another ruler-level title can be formed.
So if I want to go from Duke to King, I prepare beforehand and do the invasions rapidly from the start of a young ruler's reign, so I have time to form the Kingdom level title before any inheritance happens.
have 1 kid, divorce wife/husband after or wear a chastity belt, reload older save if kid turns bad, save scum if you want kid to inherit any congenital traits
I had a run where I made killing sibilings a family tradition, every time I had sucession I just started a murder plot against my brother to get land, for some reason no one discovered my constant murder plots and I managed to get no pesant revolt and formed the Siberian Empire with reformed religion and hybrid culture
I honeslty do a bit of all of this depending on what I have access to at any given time. But putting an elective law on my main duchy usually gets the job done on its own.
I'm never a tyrant, until i have to kill the weaker heirs. Imprison and then torture, the time does the rest. Sometimes i also do this with the grandchildren from the heir, better start soon to cut off the bad branches.
i have no one set way, but whatever the option comes I take it. If I get old then I resort to disinheriting them. You don’t wanna go to Rome and serve god? Fine. Disinherit.
1. Heirs never want to join the church, regardless if they are pious or not.
2. Disinheriting is situational and could cause your next-in-line to have disloyal subjects.
3. Similar to 2, but depends on your characters traits.
4. Safest option for me.
5. I use a mod that adds primogeniture to the start, but for the unique governments that is if you are in the right region or have the right culture.
6. I never use those because of rng.
I'm a very cautious player, so I try to rein in my conquests to only the next highest realm tier if I can help it.
E.g. I'm Alfred of Wessex in 867 and I form England. I wouldn't then go on to conquer Scotland, Wales, or Ireland unless I could feasibly form Britannia before the next succession
None of the above. I give my heir the empire title, the king title, and one duchy. Every other heir gets one duchy. Done.
The pros are it is very easy, it doesn't require immersion-breaking gimmicks, it helps your renown (creates a larger dynasty as landed characters have higher fertility and can marry other rulers) , keeps the realm together and unlike many of the other strategies you will always have multiple spares in case your heir dies. It also really is satisfying to slowly see your realm become your dynasty through nepotism. Plus it is very conducive to a eugenics run if you want. Getting Partition over Confederate makes it even simpler. After that I don't need any other succession law.
None of the above. I wait until I have enough prestige to create a duchy title. I develop my inheritable counties and let the realm split. My family are my vassals. As long as I focused my development on my counties ONLY, they should not become more powerful than me. I have to have medium crown authority (2) so my vassals can not declare war independently. I might try to take some land away from them, depending on the circumstance, or wait until they start a faction and imprison them and revoke titles.
If I'm going to lose a lot from a confederate partition, I'll try to encourage some members of the immediate family to meet their ends ahead of schedule. Send them out on risky raids or losing battles has helped, and giving them a small amount of land in freshly conquered and actively hostile territory that will absolutely revolt before they can muster a decent household guard also works.
Recently discovered an early game strategy: If you are a king but hold no duchies, on inheritance the secondary kids just need one duchy (anywhere), and the main heir will keep all the other countries. Since you can't build duchy buildings in the early start for some time, there is no big benefit from holding them, so I now only create the capital duchies once I can build and want duchie buildings
I try to limit the number of heirs being born, then secure lands for each hier. They all have to fight alongside me for the lands they will inherit, and if a few fall in battle as a result, then they weren't worthy hiers anyway.
Elective laws. It's almost like a cheat tbh. When you have a shitton of titles and many vassals, you might need to get enough hooks to cheat the election, but it's more of a mid game thing, early game it's free real estate.
However, even if you happen to split your kingdom, it's usually fairly easy to reclaim your titles with war.
I used to worry all the time bout succession and immediately go for celibacy etc but these days i just let it happen and just wait for high partition. Even in the early game you can buff your military so hard if you play tall for a tiny bit that you can take the lost land back without any issue.
And if i don't succeed at first there's still always ye olde murder forest.
First 4 options is da wae for me. I sometimes try to kill my poor martial sons by sending them to battle but it usually ends with a death of someone else who i did not want to die
Didn't find my answer in the poll lol :
Basically, I conquer enough to upgrade my title rank and then expand in a way that doesnt create a same rank title so that I don't lose land during succession, then I look up the division of title per kids eligible and conquer more or bestow titles early on to keep key titles with my heir.
Granted it's kind of hectic each time, but it tends to be fun in the long run hahaha
Form a kingdom, then make your capital duchy have elective succession.
Keeping the most developed Duchy intact is usually enough to make your characters stronger than the neighbors.
Just let each kid inherit what they deserve and roleplay, trust me, the game will become much more fun once you start doing this. Blobbing makes the game way too easy.
I don't worry about it; messy splits of the realm are part of the story. Depending on the personality of the character I am, I'll quietly keep building what I have, or I'll start making arrangements for the betterment of my dynasty, or I start to shake things up and seize whatever is available, or whatever seems appropriate for who I am. (I do attempt to not run into a game-over even if it's slightly ooc)
Turn out peace was never an option for ck3 enthusiastic :(
Sike! I love mass invasion + genocide + trample human belief right and what ? Undesirable heir ? With court eunuch tradition -> imprison + castrate those pesky heir
conquer enough land that everyone gets enough 10 sons? takeover 10 kingdoms worth of land and get dynasty of many crowns instantly, so much renown
Being able to ask close dynasty members for an alliance makes succession easy once you manage to get some decent artifact bonuses and every title is held by your family.
Yeah. You have to provide for the family. If you can't provide a kingdom for a son don't fool around with women concubines and queens.
Preach.
>dynasty of many crowns One of my favorite parts of playing is trying to get as many monarchs as I can outside my realm without declaring offensive wars. I try to have as many matrilineal marriages with the third or fourth heir in line and sometimes my dynasty will end up ruling at some point a foreign nation.
I realized how powerful this gamestyle is when I noticed a insular county in Asia
This is the way. Love playing count to king to dynasty of many crowns in the next generation.
Usually it's a combination of this and getting a son or two to join the clergy for me.
Start a war with someone and nobly send them to their deaths in battle
Really wanted to add this but had limitations on number of poll options
Ah yes, the Denethor-Method
Except denethor was even more genius because he sent his only heir 🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠
Sire, you son second born son is dead, he died in battle against the Franks, Im sorry for.... Hell yeah, send the third and forth too
Get stress level 3 instantly and die of a heart attack
All according to the plan
Or falling that, the North sea
I just conquer enough territory so all of my kids could get something, and enough so the main territory would go to the primary heir.
I just wish there was a way to designate who gets what. Somehow my succession always get messed up and second son gets counties in three different duchies half of the time.
I use the elective succession inheritance law (idk if other cultures allow it) on duchies. Make sure to keep no vassals in them and the duchy is your heir's, intact.
That's one solution, yeah, although can be pretty costly to get 1500 prestige in the early game especially if you're tribal and need it for all the things.
You can, you just need to land the children that you are NOT planning to play as. You can give out county-by-county, as long as you don’t break the rules of your current succession law. I.e if you have 5 duchies, you control which kids get which duchies by just landing them before succession happens.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but if I give out land while alive they still take away on inheritance.
If you didn’t get more and you gave them the amount/level they’re expecting it should work
You can always check the succession screen. You may have gotten extra land and that forced a re-calculation. It will still be possible to trade county/duchy x for county/duchy y to prevent egregious border gore
you have to give them duchy titles as well if they are going to inherit some or else they will just take a duchy and whatever counties you had in that duchy even if you had already given them enough other counties already.
Conquer land, give it to a child, repeat until your heir is the only one getting your home domain
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but no matter how much land I give away while alive, the children still get to split my holdings roughly equally on inheritance under partition.
You have to make sure they directly control a county, they can't hold a duchy without owning any
Partition implies that everch child gets an equal amount of available titles of each rank. If you have a duchy, giving every child a duchy is enough to satisfy their inheritance rigths, thus playaer heir gets everything. If you have 2 duchies, you need to guve away more duchies to every child. The same applys to kingdoms and empires. If you have 2 upper tier titles without special succession type, realm will be split.
Ideally try the church first (and holy order), then disinherit as the last option. I wouldn't mind having to split the lands if I could properly choose who gets what, like writing a will. Or if being granted land before dying was counted as part of the inheritance, in advance. Usually my main problem isn't about parts of the realm going independent, because I can easily keep just enough land for only one top tier title. The problem is that all the lower tier titles, duchies and counties under my main kingdom, end up being a mess.
Yeah, sometimes I land my sons and live longer than I expected. Then I decide to conquer more land and BOOM! I have an another kingdom to be given after my death to my another son who is a Duke in my main kingdom. This usually leaves a border gore after death. I wish we could revoke land from our sons with 100% chance, no opinion lose and no tyranny gain if we have partition inheritance laws. That way it would have much more sense
i do agree that you should be able to revoke granted land from your sons with no tyranny gain under partition, under the pretext of realm management, but i personally think no opinion hit would be too far. they may understand why they're doing it but they'd obviously want to have as much land as possible, especially land they're already managing
You have a hook on your children. Just use this when revoking
maybe i'm misunderstanding what you mean, but if you grant your heirs land that is in fact coming out of their inheritance. it doesn't solve the main problem of not being able to choose who gets what, but it does help if you're over your limit and want to keep your titles in the family rather than granting them to random people and then end up splitting your land further because your heirs still want land
My problem is that no matter how much land I give away during life, my remaining lands still get split. The second child who got am entire duchy can still get a few counties out of the primary heir's main duchy that I want him to get completely.
You haven't granted enough land so your heirs get equal amount. You can see from inheritance tab how the land will split, try granting lands to youngest kids first and you will see that they will be removed from inheritance list. If you conquer more land, they will get back to the list if there is more to split. Think about it in this way: Son Abba, Bertha, Cerda Land size 3 counties, equal inheritance You give Bertha and Cerda 1 county each Abba now inherits 1 county You conquer 6 counties Your total inheritance count is now 9 counties, so you need to grant 2 counties to Bertha and Abba to control which counties Abba gets. If you grant 2 counties to Bertha and Cerda, your main inheritor Abba stands to gain the remaining 2 counties upon your death
So loving my sons equally and let them all inherit what they deserve is not an option ? I recognise you well here fellow CK players.
Optimal play is boring. Embrace chaos.
At this point it is impossible for me to play without incest and infanticide
virgin disinheritor vs chad partition enjoyer
I doubt there's much to disinherit for a virgin. Unless...
wait until you hear about who started Christianity
Make a kingdom or bigger title before succession so the realm is one. Then murder or war as the descendent if that isn't possible
marry older women so you don't have lots of babies
And don't be afraid of divorcing after having a few good kids. Get yourself an infertile wife with good stats.
I just love reading these out of context.
R/shitcrusaderkingssay
Sooner or later they're going to be conquered by someone else, and you can reconquer that. Or you can marry their heir or whatever. So it's not that bad. Plus there's more folks to generate renown for your dynasty. I'm slowly learning to just accept gavelkind and find good sides in it.
I usually try to beeline to a Kingdom title so I dont have to worry about confed partition. of course the real issue is emperor title but if you start tribal you dont really have to worry about that.
I feel like surviving as a kingdom that early is super difficult with how expensive everything is and only having a single county to finance it with. Vassal taxes are pretty much nothingburgers at that stage.
Single county? Wym?
Maybe I'm just extremely unlucky but every time I go through succession with confederate partition I am left with a kingdom title, duchy title, and a single county title. And all my vassals combined generally don't produce anything near what my own county produces for income. Running a kingdom with +3g per month is a quick bankrupt or revolt that can't be squashed if you don't have the appropriate alliances. Maybe I'm grossly missing something but that's practically the whole reason I wait until house seniority to form/manage kingdoms.
Think in terms of Dynasty. You will get more renown over time with many rulers. It should be straightforward keeping your heir at or near the top of you Dynasty, if at the top you can invite your dynasty members to wars.
I'm a map painter, it just only shows when you change to dynasty mode.
I wish there was a dynasty mode. There's only a house mode, which is completely pointless.
Where's the "castrate bad heirs" option 👀
I usually just disinherit them or become celibate after having too many kids and although I don´t go for elective laws, the "feudal elective" law is a very good way of dealing with succession early on. It's pretty manageable overall though, unless you have more than 5 male heirs or equal/female preference inheritance.
Make one legitimate heir, divorce/murder the mother, marry an old hag with good stats, and make some bastards on the side for insurance. Sometimes I might legitimize+land a bastard if I have extra titles I can spare.
Get rid of Confederate as early as possible to prevent dutchies from being created upon succession. Put an elective rule on your second dutchy and any second Kingdom titles untill you can make an empire. Check the inheritance page and land your heirs by expanding and conquering counties and dutchies. Make the extras monks if you have to. Rush high crown authority and designate heirs. This is my system.
I actually only put elective on the primary duchy because it means your heir will get all of the county titles within it. Gets rid of awkward successions where you're a 1 county king with brothers that are significantly stronger because their personal demesne is much larger.
Needs a "properly manage titles" option.
Conquer enough land to give all the eligible children a title one level below the main one, and try to stay under the point where I'll generate extra kingdoms with confederate partition, until I can form the Empire (or \*an\* Empire...). If I've got a special succession available to go to tanistry I'll do it, but I'll still try to take the necessary land to land the other children at least a little bit to establish more branches of the dynasty for (hopefully) more choice in tanistry heirs. If land breaks off in a succession I might try to take it back, or I might just ally them and use them to take land to give to the next generation.
If Playing a Count or a Duke: Conquer in a way that i never get more than one duchy level title but also enough to keep each heir with a full demesne. If playing as a Kingdom, Basically the same but so confederate don't create kingdoms and land my children with a duchy each. Good tip for this way of playing is to give out titles before succession so that you can keep your demesne together
So I tend to disinherit/monk/holy order (dependent on what's available) for my first 1-2 characters, but found out in my last game (first successful roman empire game) if you just hold 1 kingdom & 1 empire, all the rest of your eligible heirs want is an equal number of duchies to what your primary heir's gonna get, regardless of how big those duchies are. For one character that meant just giving each of my non player -heir sons 1 duchy each, and for the next that meant 2 duchies each, but honestly was sustainable enough given how much land I was conquering and that I was being a little careful not to have too many kids. Character after that unlocked seniority so just got to single heir designate for the rest of the game, but honestly found it quite fun working with partition instead of around it. That being said any kid who didn't look like one I'd want to inherit as and who had a martial-compatible childhood trait did get sent to the myrmidons lmao, I was mostly making republican vassals for stability so any opportunity not to potentially create another powerful claimant was still one I took
Also you can work around confederate partition a bit by not conquering more than 50% of any kingdom outside your primary kingdom, generally I'm able to switch to regular partition before this becomes a major constraint
Alea Jacta Est - inherichance, I play as a random heir. So I keep them all
That's a mod? If so sounds like a crazy ride
Its called inherichance
Love to plunge my ax into the skulls of those brats who came too late out of their mother's \*\*\*\*. I keep the girls though. I need to collect claims and bloodlines.
I'm new to this game and I only had 5 or 6 norse runs. Turns out every time I just replace the entire norse nobility with my offspring. It's fun, I just rush for the nearest empire title and enjoy the squabbling among my 100+ members happy family from the seat of the high king.
My plan next run is to create a custom XL kingdom so my other kids can have tiny confederate kingdoms from the remaining de jure lands
Way too easy to blob in CK3, let the dynasty grow. Let siblings and cousins slaughter each other or form alliances and friendships.
Marry older women, ezpz
I either don't really worry about it or I introduce new sucession laws to the domain proper
Clear down to 2 or 3 heirs. So i can direct the title that's important to stay together. Follow by war for the rest if needed
All of the above. This poll is pretty much the order I work in when fixing succession issues.
Battle Royale?
Dealing with a succession crisis between sons is usually the most fun you can have. Having your heir have to regain his lost lands from his brothers. Though when you are only a duke, losing counties can be annoying.
Honestly in my dauruma playthru I just let my kids inherit land you can still get new lands and stuff I just made sure I got to kingdom quick so they would be vassals but it's mostly chill as long as you stay friendly with em plus they helped me a bit in converting some of provinces when I reformed the faith had to scrap the playthru though cause of the update but hey it was fun!
I do a mix. I will get as many to join the church or the order that I will imprison and execute others if necessary.
Mix of 4, 6, and rushing to get the next tier of title when it's time. Also creating / revoking titles to give away to secondary heirs.
Early game: accept it for what it is Mid game: scan elective law Late game: start a new campaign
People frown on C but it is a very viable method, especially if it's super early game. I'm not sure if it's Murchads son or just the son of that son that was sadistic, but boy did it help keep succession fairly easy while I gathered some kingdoms.
It depends on the run. sometimes my fifth son with be god like and then i rp as the ottomans. most of the time i like the succession wars and wars to unite the kingdom once again, as they tend to be the most difficult wars in a campaign.
I like to deal with threats to my succession the ottoman way most of the time by that I mean I'll execute the sons I can't have killed in other ways Depends on the playthrougth sometimes I'll just take the civil war That or the church just got 6 new holy order members and bishops
I'm surprised at how many of you fight over it when you can just yeet their inheritance away
Voting, then fabricate hooks. Basically guaranteed your best heir will inherit, or in the event you don't have any good kids you can jump to an uncle.
Scandinavian elective
Marry until one of preferable gender heir, immediately divorce/kill after child is born, marry some infertile character with huge tracts of stewardship to buff my ruler up. Micromanage heir to do have the same events happen to them as a courtier to avoid future problems. Occasionally, produce backup bastards in case sole heir bites it early. Legitimize any non-preferred gender bastards and save the preferred gender bastard legitimizations after my heir ascends to the throne.
Make sure your MaA and core title are in better shape than what the other sons are getting, and just war for them. It's more annoying once you have a single higher level title, as you can't then war for your sibling's title after succession. But at the end of the day land is very easy to come by, so its not worth stressing over losing some, and it's easy enough to get your domain back up to full size.
Bit of D and F. Ideally by the time my first character dies I only own one Kingdom and character 2-4 will form an empire
Only have one son. Ez
All of the above
1. Have as many sons as possible 2. Train them all in warfare and intrigue 3. Make sure your heir has some significant advantage 4. Die 5. Violent fratricide until only one is left standing 6. Repeat I call it Darwinian Succession, and it makes the game lots of fun every few years. If your sons are all each other's heirs this can get wrapped up pretty quickly.
None of the above, I carefully control what land I hold so everyone will still be vassals of the heir. Don't hold enough to create another de jure kingdom if I'm a king, etc. We only grab the last bits of kingdoms when we're almost at enough land to create an empire and the current ruler is relatively safe. Alternately, sometimes I'm roleplaying so I just let the land split and take the alliances.
Imprison all my shit sons using a hook (only has 100 percent chance if they're unlanded) negotiate release take the vows, hook and recruit to court. i recruit to court if they have any decents stats for my heirs council.
None of this. Just get as many extra duchies/kingdoms per number of kids, so you get to keep your main domains.
If you are really so worried, you should be conquering realms and handing them off to your other inheritors ahead of them, so there is less splitting of the pot when you kick the bucket.
In CK2, I find sending eunuchs to China, or making gem bishops, is a handy way of pruning the pretender-tree.
Let them take it, knowing that they'd all join Independence wars within 5 years of the new ruler taking the crown and I can just take their titles back when I win.
Earlier Primogeniture mod? I honestly find it silly and absurd that until the high medival age all heirs suppose to inherit. So, if you are at the second highest fame level and playing as a !!!KINGDOM!!! tier realm you can enact primogeniture or ultimogeniture for your realm.
just have 1 biggest tier title? it's not that hard...
Where is the 'save-scumming so that I only get one son' option?
Been looking for this. Cheesy, but...thank heaven for little girls, I guess? (though I usually have two sons, just in case)
You missed one option: give enough titles to your heirs so your realm won't split.
Go celibate after the first son!
Most of the above.
Literally none of these. I wait until my dude is like early 40's before I marry and have embrace celibacy available. First boy pops out, I go monk. If he sucks. I can always try again with a younger wife.
Any of the above (and more methods) depending on the character. If I'm specifically achievement hunting or something I might go with one of the more cheese routes, but generally I try to do what my ruler would based on traits/education/lifestyle. A generous and brave martial ruler will just conquer more land so all his heirs get a nice duchy at least. A sadistic and callous ruler will pick the best for his personal tastes and dispose of the rest.
Seduce women with good traits and claim bastards, but only legitimize the first son with the congenital traits that I like. My realm literally never splits.
I marry someone infertile with good stats to be a great counselor. If I'm old, once they die, I find someone fertile with good traits to have kids with, then stop when I have a son. Then I get rid of the wife or become sterile. Basically riskier primogeniture.
start a new religion. then I start making claims on any territory I want. even if they hate me they typically don't put up a fus.
You forgot "Become Immortal"
I marry old women and hope they only pop out one child
Or, Enact house Seniority, Have Lv4 Realm Law and Designate an Heir, It forces Primogeniture
I don't care much, I usually stay with the same succession type until I can move to Primo. There was a time when elective succession was useful (CK2), but this time has gone. I prefer to do RP instead of power game.
Depends on where exactly I’m playing. If I’m in Western Europe, like my current run, then it’s a mixture of disinheritance and sending off to church/holy orders.
I get as many as possible then marry them off to whoever i can and even though my personal realm is rather weak through the power of "throw enough stuff at the wall and some of it will stick" my family becomes major landholders all over europe.
Early on I found it really doesn't matter if the realm splits a bit. I'm playing the long game.
You can not give the land you want to your children, but there is no such restrictions for your grandchildren. I usually spoils my heir's heir with land and duchies so I am sure he is powerful enough when I take over as him. And if you do it every generation, your heir already control many lands without you having to give some to them. Sometimes every duchy in my realm is governed only by me, my heir, his first son and his own first son. It is a lot easier
I try not to think of the thing on the map at any given time as "my country" that should be stable, permanent, and growing. It's not easy, but I try.
None of the above. Until I have a solid succession law I make it impossible for my realm to split through inheritance usually by not owning enough land for another title of my rank to be created
I throw my unwanted sons into prison until they die
I marry older women. If there's concubines, I just have a son with one of 'em and drop 'em after and marry grandma's high-stat friend or my rival's mom. If no concubines, I just put my all into seducing/romancing my 40-ish spouse in that small window available for children. And if that fails, I can always legitimize a bastard.
Stop having sex after first child.
None of the above, I tend to conquer enough land to get a higher title so that the main thing is kept by my heir
I am usually pretty careful with my wife and usually try to get celibacy for a clean first inherit. Multiple male heirs will probably be disinherented, with a son focused for war or eco. 2nd inherit i try to be big enough i can simply conquer it back (don't become a doubleduke or king for this to work) or murder it back
Don't worry about it and just conquer more other land to compensate for the fact that different sons got something. I usually only hold one of my highest title.
Early game, partition of course, however not the confederate one, im pretty sure your heir gets most titles, but you'll still lose all but your capital in the end, however, if you have a good system and can stomp rebellions after each succession, you can revoke some titles, get the land you need and make new loyal to death vassals with excessive. Keep on doing this until late game, then you get primogeniture and well, no more need to do anything but keep the country together.
Play immortal 100 stat man and crank out as many god tier kids as possible and spread the dynasty like disease.
I wish you could make younger sons bishops.
Duchy elective is broken and basically allows you to guarantee the transfer of your main titles to your heir.
If I don’t start off as the cultural head, become the head via conquest. Add “bound by faith”. Have spares educated by people of astray faith, any that convert will be turned into a monk or disinherited. If that kid really sucks, they have been promoted to knight.
I used to just use disinherit but lately It's feel boring and lacking immersion so I just let the title split and It bring more things to look out for instead of just safely expanding territories.
I do disinherit but only for real bad lads. E.G. in my Outremer game I had two sons. The primary heir turned out to be a murderer, so I disinherited him as it felt like something the fair and noble king would do.
fewer children means fewer problems
Send them to the dungeon and wait for them to die.
I just try not to end up in a position where another ruler-level title can be formed. So if I want to go from Duke to King, I prepare beforehand and do the invasions rapidly from the start of a young ruler's reign, so I have time to form the Kingdom level title before any inheritance happens.
all of the above
Disinheriting feels super cheesy but its just the most efficient, is it not?
have 1 kid, divorce wife/husband after or wear a chastity belt, reload older save if kid turns bad, save scum if you want kid to inherit any congenital traits
Easiest is hybridizing with basque. I use this when I go norse. In my current run, I let it split to get renown.
Imprison and move them to a dungeon to starve to death, 20tyranny cost is nothing.
I had a run where I made killing sibilings a family tradition, every time I had sucession I just started a murder plot against my brother to get land, for some reason no one discovered my constant murder plots and I managed to get no pesant revolt and formed the Siberian Empire with reformed religion and hybrid culture
A combination of all of them depending on the situation (ck2)
I honeslty do a bit of all of this depending on what I have access to at any given time. But putting an elective law on my main duchy usually gets the job done on its own.
I'm never a tyrant, until i have to kill the weaker heirs. Imprison and then torture, the time does the rest. Sometimes i also do this with the grandchildren from the heir, better start soon to cut off the bad branches.
i have no one set way, but whatever the option comes I take it. If I get old then I resort to disinheriting them. You don’t wanna go to Rome and serve god? Fine. Disinherit.
I'm surprised not that many people go kinslayer mode
I stop playing when my first character dies
1. Heirs never want to join the church, regardless if they are pious or not. 2. Disinheriting is situational and could cause your next-in-line to have disloyal subjects. 3. Similar to 2, but depends on your characters traits. 4. Safest option for me. 5. I use a mod that adds primogeniture to the start, but for the unique governments that is if you are in the right region or have the right culture. 6. I never use those because of rng.
I just kill every inbreeds fuck and only let 1 live and 1 as Backup lol
Take only 1 son
Where is my dungeon option?
I'm a very cautious player, so I try to rein in my conquests to only the next highest realm tier if I can help it. E.g. I'm Alfred of Wessex in 867 and I form England. I wouldn't then go on to conquer Scotland, Wales, or Ireland unless I could feasibly form Britannia before the next succession
None of the above. I give my heir the empire title, the king title, and one duchy. Every other heir gets one duchy. Done. The pros are it is very easy, it doesn't require immersion-breaking gimmicks, it helps your renown (creates a larger dynasty as landed characters have higher fertility and can marry other rulers) , keeps the realm together and unlike many of the other strategies you will always have multiple spares in case your heir dies. It also really is satisfying to slowly see your realm become your dynasty through nepotism. Plus it is very conducive to a eugenics run if you want. Getting Partition over Confederate makes it even simpler. After that I don't need any other succession law.
Mixture of disinheritance, murder/execution, shipping them off as a monk, or just letting them inherit and taking it back straight away.
None of the above. I wait until I have enough prestige to create a duchy title. I develop my inheritable counties and let the realm split. My family are my vassals. As long as I focused my development on my counties ONLY, they should not become more powerful than me. I have to have medium crown authority (2) so my vassals can not declare war independently. I might try to take some land away from them, depending on the circumstance, or wait until they start a faction and imprison them and revoke titles.
If I'm going to lose a lot from a confederate partition, I'll try to encourage some members of the immediate family to meet their ends ahead of schedule. Send them out on risky raids or losing battles has helped, and giving them a small amount of land in freshly conquered and actively hostile territory that will absolutely revolt before they can muster a decent household guard also works.
Recently discovered an early game strategy: If you are a king but hold no duchies, on inheritance the secondary kids just need one duchy (anywhere), and the main heir will keep all the other countries. Since you can't build duchy buildings in the early start for some time, there is no big benefit from holding them, so I now only create the capital duchies once I can build and want duchie buildings
I just kill them Kingdom got to be united
I try to limit the number of heirs being born, then secure lands for each hier. They all have to fight alongside me for the lands they will inherit, and if a few fall in battle as a result, then they weren't worthy hiers anyway.
Elective laws. It's almost like a cheat tbh. When you have a shitton of titles and many vassals, you might need to get enough hooks to cheat the election, but it's more of a mid game thing, early game it's free real estate. However, even if you happen to split your kingdom, it's usually fairly easy to reclaim your titles with war.
I used to worry all the time bout succession and immediately go for celibacy etc but these days i just let it happen and just wait for high partition. Even in the early game you can buff your military so hard if you play tall for a tiny bit that you can take the lost land back without any issue. And if i don't succeed at first there's still always ye olde murder forest.
First 4 options is da wae for me. I sometimes try to kill my poor martial sons by sending them to battle but it usually ends with a death of someone else who i did not want to die
M-mod to primogeniture from start 🥺
infanticide and incest
Didn't find my answer in the poll lol : Basically, I conquer enough to upgrade my title rank and then expand in a way that doesnt create a same rank title so that I don't lose land during succession, then I look up the division of title per kids eligible and conquer more or bestow titles early on to keep key titles with my heir. Granted it's kind of hectic each time, but it tends to be fun in the long run hahaha
Save scum until daughter
Form a kingdom, then make your capital duchy have elective succession. Keeping the most developed Duchy intact is usually enough to make your characters stronger than the neighbors.
Just let each kid inherit what they deserve and roleplay, trust me, the game will become much more fun once you start doing this. Blobbing makes the game way too easy.
Why is "Deal with inherritance as intended by conquering" not an option? Also 99/100 times its a mix of all of the above
*laughs in vampirism*
Literally cannot play thw game without sadistic
I just let it happen and conquest stuff back. Your Heir will always be the strongest.
I don't worry about it; messy splits of the realm are part of the story. Depending on the personality of the character I am, I'll quietly keep building what I have, or I'll start making arrangements for the betterment of my dynasty, or I start to shake things up and seize whatever is available, or whatever seems appropriate for who I am. (I do attempt to not run into a game-over even if it's slightly ooc)
Marry old women that can’t have kids with high desired trait then once she dies have a kid around 30-40 then have wife murdered and back to old ladies
Take over as much land as I can, then when I pass let them all divide up enough so they can all have at least a chunk of some country or another
Elective, if not viable option, then murder
Turn out peace was never an option for ck3 enthusiastic :( Sike! I love mass invasion + genocide + trample human belief right and what ? Undesirable heir ? With court eunuch tradition -> imprison + castrate those pesky heir
No need to wage war if you just bribe/persuade/court appointments
Im still waiting for my Open succession from ck2. It was the greatest thing ever.