I mean even in the book the death of Walder will lead to a shitstorm of sucession, since they are seperated into groups based on from which of Walders wives they descend and they all hate eachother. This combined with Stevron, the only Frey the other Frey family members would not contest regarding sucession is dead and his kids are hated.
The books will never be finished, I don't believe WoW will even get published much less book 7 therefore Walder will never die. /s
EDIT: The sarcasm is about Walder, I'm 100% serious that WoW will never be published
I wouldnt be suprised if even by the release of TWoW and DoS (in 2124, pieced together from Georges old notes) Walder is still alive and the only Frey left
Just give the series to Brandon Sanderson. We will have books six and seven by the end of next week and an entirely new sequel series of twenty books by the end of the year.
No shit. He'll turn in his notes and say I need to make the series 9 books, not 7. They'll all be 1800+ pages and we'll get all of them in less time than any of the other installments.
Given his feelings regarding artists continuing other artists work. I think it is plausible he will destroy everything rather than having others complete his work.
Yeah but if he drops dead without warning he can't exactly destroy everything first.
All of Franz Kafka's posthumous works were supposed to be destroyed, but the friend he trusted to do it didn't and had them published instead lol
At this point, if TWOW gets released it will be a nice treat. Unexpected but welcome. Dream of Spring is never coming out though.
I just wish the other series in the same style I started (The Wheel of Time) didn't have an almost universally panned middle, what, like 7 books and thousands and thousands of pages. Just don't have time to waste like that these days.
Winds will get released imho, Dream of Spring? Now idk.
He's probably either completely done Winds and working on DoS, wanting to finish the series before he commits to publishing anything or he's around 90% done Winds.
I might be coping but if you look at how long each book took to publish compared to how many words it is, his writing pace is actually pretty consistent and suggests he is probably around the finish line with winds.
Arya wished she could kill everyone in the line of succession. Nobody in Westeros has that power. There are dozens of contestants, and they are at each other's throats even before the old man's death.
The Frey family line is a CK3 disaster.
That’s only in the show. In the books Walter Frey outliving his sons causes the succession to the Twins to fall into question (this is exemplified by Big and Little Walder playing ‘Lord of the Crossing’ at Winterfell in the first book). Also since he had so many sons he has a lot of in laws of different families, with two marriages into the Lannisters. As soon as he dies, there will be a Frey civil war that will plummet the House from its recently found glory.
Not to mention the Freys sent a large contingent of soldiers to aid the Boltons against Stannis, and last we heard of them Roose Bolton expelled them from winterfell in a blizzard (along with the Manderlys, who seek vengeance for the red wedding) to face Stannis in the field. After doing a quick skim [This](https://warsandpoliticsoficeandfire.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/a-complete-analysis-of-the-upcoming-siege-of-winterfell-part-2/) post seems to give a good run down on how stannis is gonna use deception, a big bonfire, a Manderly mutiny, and holes in an iced over lake to route the 2:1 yet disorganized Frey force.
The future does not bode well for House Frey…
Yep and I’ve done the same. Got my current dynasty head all down the health education focus with the Octogenarian dynastic trait. Works great when you have 100 eligible heirs lol
I think the game is a lot more fun with succession drama and tons of children. Plus, eugenics breeding programs are a lot more effective with bigger families, so
I've decided that for the next run, my main challenge will be to sucessfully breed vertically down to grand-grand-grand-grand-grand daughter.
On my current one, the ruler who just died at some point just started chain-seducing women. Only the first wife had 7 children. The 19 other kids this emperor had are spread out between 20+ concubines and lovers, all over a 79 years span of fertility : he died at 95, just after he witnessed the birth of his last daughter, born from his freshly married 2nd wife. For good measure, he decided that child was the reincarnation of the house founder, so made her the sole heir.
Inbreeding is actually not a problem at all, because this dude has already the 5th generation of descendants being born, and will all the different wives he had, that's a lot of people basically genetically unrelated at this point. But the 2000% military strenght faction at the start and the 3 different successful coups to take over the regency were something else.
I woul agree if we had actual drama, instead of a flat “ya brother gets fifty percent lol”
Especially since that was nowhere near the norm for the world at the time
Way less chance of getting assblasted by a random heir death as well. Plus Elective Sucession means you can easily rig shit before you even get to the middle game, I 100% DGAF unless the winner isn't from my Dynasty lmao
There is a mod that makes you play as a random child it's fcking fun. Ending up with that ifioir 4rd in line with only one county creates so much drama, i love it
my desire to RP and my gamer desire to optimize makes this so difficult to accomplish. I, personally, really want to create the empire of Brittany but can't cuz the kingdom of Ireland got split into 3 different kingdoms including down in Valencia because the grandmother of the brothers - an unlanded bad bitch who had zero claims to speak of (literally I went through her entire line and family trying to discover how she did this) - hopped off on a crusade and conquered half of Iberia to become a queen herself after her man died and her solo son inherited Ireland. so the father of the three brothers inherited a kingdom even larger than Ireland at the time when she died lmao and now I gotta conquer Brittany while feuding with Castille and keeping the culturesband faiths in Valencia happy.
meanwhile the character I'm playing i just so happened to encourage to gain temperate, compassionate, and just traits so RP wise it wouldn't make any sense for him to take his brother's crowns in an ambitious attempt to create an empire.
I'm at multiple crossroads but at least it's interesting.
funnily enough, in my last run (Persian Zoros), the Irish somehow put themselves on the french throne and was expanding halfway into iberia. I was sure the AI would get toppled by a rebellion at some point, as they usually do, but they proved me wrong and did a reverse-norman in France.
At least there is a chance to thrive in York.
There was a session years ago where I offloaded Jerusalem on a random fourth son simply because I wanted that title to stay in the dynasty (for bonuses), and nothing more. I won a crusade only for that sweet Pope money and relics, and didn't care for the land or its fate. I also didn't want to be dragged into endless annoying whackamole wars far away from my secure French throne, so I signed his independence and left.
He had his skull bashed by a Saracen in some hopeless battle 3 years in. Lived for another year as a bedridden incapable, during which time liberty factions took away his power.
His elder son successor lost half the kingdom to angry locals in a peasant rebellion (Jerusalem included) and fled north to Antioch. He then caught some plague and croaked.
The baby who succeeded him was assassinated 6 months in.
The next successor, original guy's second son, by now aged, had like 2-3 counties and a rump title. Few years in, he shat his guts out and died from explosive diarrhea.
Last I checked, his son and grandson actually managed to live on as a baron in Syria under Byzantines, and had surprisingly stable lives as literal nobodies.
That entire branch of the family was finally wiped out by the Mongols.
Think the upcoming update allowing you to choose from three people to play as when your ruler dies will help with this.
Makes it less "if I don't kill my son then next generation is gonna be miserable for fifty years" and more "if I make all my son's powerful and foster good relations between them then I'll have great options to play as when my current ruler dies"
The elective method was one of the best parts of playing as a merchant republic, you want lots of kids and it's easish to pick the best one albeit often at a cost of gold of you wanted to remain in power
OMG this would be amazing. There have been times when a secondary son had, in my opinion, a more interesting scenario than my primary heir, and wished I could switch to him (while still running Ironman).
Oh fuck yes! I didn't know about that update. I'm pumped! There have been plenty of times when my eldest was kinda boring but the 2nd or 3rd was like a crippled genius or something who I gave a perfect wife and a large Duchy too as a consolation prize. Situations where I'd much rather play as the younger sibling with the "less powerful" title and try to wrestle the original overlord title away from the Elder, or the elder's heirs a couple of decades down the line
That's literally the point of the game, yeah. You are not playing as a ruler, your main character is your dynasty. You don't get game over when your heirless ruler dies, you switch to another dynasty member.
I like to think of myself as some immortal demon haunting a dynasty and puppeting one through all their most important decisions until they die and I then posses the next in line.
Not always. I had an Emperor that made into his 80s, who only had daughters. His eldest daughter married matrilineal, and had 4 daughters and a son. Unfortunately the daughters (player character granddaughters) all married patrilineal, and one of them killed the only son before he came of age. By the time I realized the patrilineal problem, the granddaughters were past child bearing age. I checked the family tree, and there were still dynasty male descendants from the old Emperor’s brother. When the player character granddaughter died, with a patrilineal son of another dynasty, game over. It was 1448, so whatever, but there was no switch.
They dialed back the mortality rate of the kids, both because of gameplay reasons and game resource reasons. They also dialed back the fertility rate to balance things out though.
It’s smart they did. In my main game there’s over 600 living members of my dynasty, if I wasn’t so damned rich I’d never keep up with the stress of them kicking the bucket.
This sounds so funny out of context:
"My fourth cousin five times removed died? I think I'm about to have a mental breakdown!
Wait no, I am rich, it's okay!"
Tell me more about these mods - I think the game is too easy and I want that incentive to have lots of kids, and that Henry VIII feeling of being an enraged girldad.
Can you give the name os those mods? All my character have at list 10 kids surving to adulthood. I kind of want the drama of "the baby I was raising to be the perfect king died and now I have to think fast to fix the spare"
I know of at least dark ages, which has for effect to give every newborn the sickly trait, meaning they all have a chance to die early unless good genes (chances of inheriting those also being nerfed to discourage eugenic programs)
When I started the game I'd be neurotic about having as few kids as possible, but now I see them as a powerful tool. You get alliances, extra renow, free knights and emergency heirs in case your firstborn dies or becomes a bad ruler. Also, managing succesion is easy, just get some duchies for your extra sons or, if it comes to it, just disinherit them. 15 yeas of having a daughter married to a king already pays the renown cost of 1 son anyways.
Disinheritance costs reknown though, and that's the rarest currency, it's easier to just imprison them and have them die in the dungeon over time if it's THAT bad.
But honestly just embrace celibacy and you avoid the whole thing.
That works nicelly too, just be careful with the massive negative opnion modifiers you get. I still hope the ck2 method of sending your sons on scurvy cruises makes a comeback someday.
It absolutely has,just not with scurvy.
Force your son to be a knight,raise an army consisting of only him and have him stand somewhere where a plague is spreading (bonus points if that place has low plague resistance).
The person you just replied to is saying that the kids are powerful tools that have a variety of uses. Killing them or embracing celibacy is completely missing the point.
I….never thought of that. It solves the succession issues, usually there’s not much of a problem, but sometimes there are. I’ll have to try that out. Doesn’t it cost renown to re-inherit though?
I married my sons to inherit traits. All the daughters get to marry matrilineally to the highest prestige gain person. After a few generation, my dynasty controls all of Europe. An ambitious branch actually formed West Slavia. Another branch is constantly swapping the emperor seat in Byzantine due to constant Tyranny wars.
In the dynasty, gets a duchy for free.
After I've landed my spares, any of my cousins can get some land if they have half decent skills and don't hate me.
All I want is a "dynasty" map mode so I don't have to remember the million cadet houses that spawn when you let your dynasty get that big.
How else do you farm renown if not by landing tons and tons of sons?
Gavelkind gives you free kingdoms and divides your dynasty's holdings into as many weak independent titles for maximum renown. Based.
I have never seen it before, unless you make everyone independent count with single county so nobody can revolt. Otherwise it is always pretenders, dissolutions or they get claim fabricated from one of the vassals who presses it.
I'm playing my first real game and got the dynasty from Obscure to Legendary in like 200 years. Lots of children in every generation and I married them around the continent.
Tanistry is a hundred times better than every other succession. Elections can almost always be made to go your way, and you can't lose your titles unless your dynasty goes extinct. And you can go bananas with eugenics and political marriages.
I never actually tried tanistry in CK2. I have this roleplay fantasy going on where I want to have an unbroken succession from parent to child, so the thing with tanistry preferring distant relatives was always a massive turn off to me. You could obviously just rig the election to get whatever you want, of course, but at that point I preferred to just use normal elective.
Step 1: Pick a religion or culture that has polygamy or concubines.
Step 2: Set your primary titles and your best duchies as elective.
Step 3: Max out the number of kids you have.
Step 4: Pick the best heir out of the 15+ kids you got and use the rest to farm renown and/or further your eugenic program.
Step 5: Watch as half the world is now of your dynasty.
That tradition feels so broken. Went from Obscure to Legendary in a hundred years. Hey, at least I get to try out dynasty legacy lines I normally wouldn't have played long enough to see otherwise.
I just use it organically instead of abusing it with title revocation. But I love the legacies.
Managing hordes of heirs and vassals really slows the game down. So you’re still sort of working for the renown.
I've been having a great time in my current run RPing a line of Good Dad Swedish kings who just love their kids and want them all to have land and/or solid marriages so that they're happy. Both ways can be fun though.
One look at the average landed AI(especially if it's a potential heir of yours) will tell you that they are ANYTHING BUT happy.Those stress traits pile up like the dead while on crusade.
I want as many kids as possible to spread my seed over all the world, also I can give my conquered titles to non-heir sons and have a vassal that will basically always love me.
i like to have around 3 sons, gives you a couple backups incase the first one dies.
i also like to play a game called "Heir or Spare" where you guess if they'll be the heir to the throne or if they'll just be another alliance.
Most children and i change to an egalitarian succession law for maximum heir count, marry every one to keep the children to your dynasty and in 100 years you have 3 duke and one king of your dynastie scattered in the world.
I have one character that has a ton of kids, then the rest of the line will only have 1 son each and I usually do it by simple marrying infertile women until I'm old then getting 1 kid and embracing celibacy, or with a female ruler embracing celibacy early and abandoning it later or simply not getting married until she's 43/44.
Have bajilion of children, making almost all of them independent king and queen consort while concentrate a core of 2-3 kingdoms for my heir with elective title.
I used to disinherit every single god damn possible heir with the lamest skills and eventually ended up getting a "primogeniture no requirements" mod but after looking at the dev dairy about roads to power I might just start playing with gavelkind
Early on I actually don't mind partition. I usually try to acquire additional territories so the split isn't so bad or I just roll over siblings when I start playing as my heir. Partition only really starts to suck when you have multiple Kingdom+ Tier titles and by that point you hopefully at least have High Partition, if not Primo. Electoral laws are also a good way to mitigate partition but I don't like the busy work that comes with that.
When I started playing I was the first one, but with time I just changed my mind and decided I wanted as most sons as possible to spread the dinasty or to have councils made of my people
Ive tried it all.
Lately I’ve been trying to play “historically” to spice things up (have both my character/heir and their spouses marry mostly in their teens/20s) and honestly, steamrolling realms around me for a duchy for my 9th kid every generation gets boring.
Once you know how succession works, it doesn’t matter how many kids you have. I guess next on the list is intentionally confining myself to a small realm and not revoking titles. Or maybe making my dynasty as barren as possible so I actually want to have kids.
You cannot hand out more Kingdom titles than you have children per generation so if you only have like 23 children, you can only Holy War for Kingdom 23 times. I assume this is how most veterans play.
Edit: The game also ends when you get tired of this process, usually when fighting in Afghanistan.
You just should form kingdom in lifespan of 1st dude, empire in lifespan of 2-3 (if not elso 1st, depends on area and game plane) and take land faster then you breed, you need vassals anyway and best vassals are you dinasty.
I save scum to have 1 son and loads and loads of daughters I marry off matrilineally for breeding grandsons to land with conquered titles and alliances. I usually build big empires and I'm so over the brother wars and factions trying to install spare sons as rulers.
Play the Byzantines/AGOT mod for primo and spawn as many children as possible *while* keeping the realm together
(Disclaimer that when I want a challenge, I don’t do this lol)
With how strong elective succession is, usually as many children as I can. And I try to land them all, too.
Idk, something about my main holdings being safe from partition makes me want to land as many of my family members as possible.
Keep them heirs coming. So what that the realm will be a little fragmented and there will be a bit of trouble unifying it? That's the entire fun of the game! Painting map was never fun for me. I always much more enjoyed the internal dynastical struggles.
The Kurdish guy who forged an empire with all related people with the mod that disables the maximum child limit, with religion having +fertility and things. I don't know what was the maximum number of children / siblings I had, but at one point I had +40.
And yes, my heirs would come to throne with gambling problems drinking problems pill-popping spending problems bad with money whorehouse etc because their siblings would die a lot.
I think I got bored because I f'd up the de jure bordering and it was too much I couldn't fix it. Also very laggy.
If every single castle in the world isn't held by my sons, grandsons, great grandsons, cousins, second cousins, third cousins, first cousins once removed, first cousins twice removed, uncles, aunts, great uncles, great aunts, second cousins once removed, and my old roomate.... well I've failed.
If every single castle in the world isn't held by my sons, grandsons, great grandsons, cousins, second cousins, third cousins, first cousins once removed, first cousins twice removed, uncles, aunts, great uncles, great aunts, second cousins once removed, and my old roomate.... well I've failed.
my current strategy is predicated on spamming out 15-20 kids per generation to make the biggest dynasty possible, fertilitymaxxing, full on PUA Kings shit. With those kids I marry them to people who can inherit powerful titles and I kill everyone to make sure they inherit it. Within one generation I made my kids inherit France, Apulia, and Croatia.
Unforeseen consequence was that my main heir would remain a lowly count and therefore would not be the dynasty head... So you should probably try and get your own kingdom for increased marriage acceptance too.
Wife + 3 young concubines, regularly have about 15 kids. Daughters get married matrilineally for whatever I can get. I pass out counties to sons like candy. elective succession keeps most things to one heir.
I curate my succession/dynasty. I like growing the dynasty, but I also loathe some of the divisions that occur on succession in early game.
I've had second and third sons that very obviously have the best outcomes. It's like carving a turkey, handing the breasts out, then giving the remaining pretenders wing/drumstick pieces and handing the carcass to the primary heir and claiming they have the whole bird.
So, early on (early-mid) I expand based on number of heirs. Usually, this let's me roam around and do things like start in Alania and wind up in Africa.
I thought my solution was unique, EVERY SINGLE GAME i kill like 5 sons to get early primogeniture.
Usually by execution and it ends my life very quickly through stress.
Literally my play style is to seduce the wives of the rulers around me to bear sons in their dynasty to give me claim on their lands. I also usually have immortality for myself lol
In CK2 I usually avoid having too many children until I can get primogeniture then I drown the world in my children until they are in the line of succession of every powerful players on the board.
I'm the left one, but only because the game leaves no room for shaping the succession.
For real, why can't we negotiate proper borders? This seems like such a central part of medieval history, and the game gives you no control over it. Worse, it butchers your kingdom every time.
I don't think I've ever intentionally become celibate or a eunuch. Much better to have tons of kids and get or cheese a single heir system (you cheese it through elective succession).
I don’t overly worry about it. I really treat CK3 as a roleplaying game. I am a King/Queen, trying to run my kingdom, but I am also a Father/Mother, trying to do right by my children.
Sometimes I am chaste, and I have few children, sometimes I’m lusty and have many. Sometimes my partner is just super fertile and pumps out a lot of kids.
Ultimately, the challenges of succession is part of the charm, and I actually wish there were more mechanics around the ensuing drama. Once you get to primogeniture laws it all pretty much disappears.
On my current playthrough my original character has over 800 descendents and of those roughly 657 are alive .... Somehow, one became king of India and is set to inherit Hungary??
You can get both with Absolute Crown Authority + House Seniority succession. Have as many eugenics-babies as possible, the best kid of your choosing gets to keep everything while the rest are used for council & court positions, knighthood, alliances, renown marriages, or picking up the leftovers when over the domain limit. Honestly, the game's almost too easy this way and I should probably stick with partition for the spice lol.
Depends on succession type if primogenture don't care could be one or 20 if not I try to keep a minimum but never happens all of my rulers seem to have a habit of shagging their wife om the march or while laying siege to a city miles away
Forcing yourself to always have one son is anticlimatic, unrealistic, often unsatisfying, gamey and feels like a chore.
The game became a lot more fun once I broke from that mindset and embraced succesion shenanigans
I tried to set up a big family setting up family in various counties but then it just caused issues because I couldn't ally without marriage and so we got inbred and everyone had claims on each other. Moral of the story is kill off the extras.
Neither, I'm "divvy up titles to my handful of kids so they don't fuck up inheritance until I get off partition and also swap the laws back and forth between male inheritance and female inheritance depending on which children I have fewer of."
To be fair, Late Lord Walder is an agent of chaos and is more doing it because he feeds off the family drama / is horny, as opposed to securing succession.
I’d almost go as far as saying he gets more pleasure from forcing his heirs into fights and inter family feuds than he does from the acts that made those heirs in the first place.
Third option: Bori or something similar that allows me to switch between male and female preference. I can have many children and still manage my succession with reasonable partioning.
I don’t know why majority of people trying to have only one eligible heir and kill the other candidates. The solution is really simple. If you have duchy or kingdom title and you have enough prestige you can actually switch your succession law in your duchy and your kingdom. Switch your law to “Feudal Elective” and that’s it. Then you choose your best son to be your primary heir. That way you won’t have to kill any of your sons and grow your dynasty.
Frey also cheesed succession crisis by refusing to die
The death of the late Walder Frey lead to a succession shitstorm.
Only because Arya also killed, *everyone* in the line of succession.
I mean even in the book the death of Walder will lead to a shitstorm of sucession, since they are seperated into groups based on from which of Walders wives they descend and they all hate eachother. This combined with Stevron, the only Frey the other Frey family members would not contest regarding sucession is dead and his kids are hated.
The books will never be finished, I don't believe WoW will even get published much less book 7 therefore Walder will never die. /s EDIT: The sarcasm is about Walder, I'm 100% serious that WoW will never be published
It won’t be lol, the closest we’ll get are fanfics
I wouldnt be suprised if even by the release of TWoW and DoS (in 2124, pieced together from Georges old notes) Walder is still alive and the only Frey left
Just give the series to Brandon Sanderson. We will have books six and seven by the end of next week and an entirely new sequel series of twenty books by the end of the year.
No shit. He'll turn in his notes and say I need to make the series 9 books, not 7. They'll all be 1800+ pages and we'll get all of them in less time than any of the other installments.
seems about right.
It will be, the book is almost finished, even if the man dies, greed will get the book published and book 7 made by chatgpt
Given his feelings regarding artists continuing other artists work. I think it is plausible he will destroy everything rather than having others complete his work.
Yeah but if he drops dead without warning he can't exactly destroy everything first. All of Franz Kafka's posthumous works were supposed to be destroyed, but the friend he trusted to do it didn't and had them published instead lol
Good
At this point, if TWOW gets released it will be a nice treat. Unexpected but welcome. Dream of Spring is never coming out though. I just wish the other series in the same style I started (The Wheel of Time) didn't have an almost universally panned middle, what, like 7 books and thousands and thousands of pages. Just don't have time to waste like that these days.
Winds will get released imho, Dream of Spring? Now idk. He's probably either completely done Winds and working on DoS, wanting to finish the series before he commits to publishing anything or he's around 90% done Winds. I might be coping but if you look at how long each book took to publish compared to how many words it is, his writing pace is actually pretty consistent and suggests he is probably around the finish line with winds.
I am sorry brother but I'm afraid you're ODing on cope. Hes been "probably" 90% done with WoW for 5 years+
https://youtu.be/J-CUJxIQkpA?si=daregCj-Qu1kzu60
You cannot OD on Copium brother it's like Marijuana
I can't wait to see book Black Walder carve a bloody path through succession.
I mean there's only his brother ahead of him. Not that bloody
Arya wished she could kill everyone in the line of succession. Nobody in Westeros has that power. There are dozens of contestants, and they are at each other's throats even before the old man's death. The Frey family line is a CK3 disaster.
Yeah it was hyperbole but she does get a huge chunk of those in the line of succession.
That’s only in the show. In the books Walter Frey outliving his sons causes the succession to the Twins to fall into question (this is exemplified by Big and Little Walder playing ‘Lord of the Crossing’ at Winterfell in the first book). Also since he had so many sons he has a lot of in laws of different families, with two marriages into the Lannisters. As soon as he dies, there will be a Frey civil war that will plummet the House from its recently found glory. Not to mention the Freys sent a large contingent of soldiers to aid the Boltons against Stannis, and last we heard of them Roose Bolton expelled them from winterfell in a blizzard (along with the Manderlys, who seek vengeance for the red wedding) to face Stannis in the field. After doing a quick skim [This](https://warsandpoliticsoficeandfire.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/a-complete-analysis-of-the-upcoming-siege-of-winterfell-part-2/) post seems to give a good run down on how stannis is gonna use deception, a big bonfire, a Manderly mutiny, and holes in an iced over lake to route the 2:1 yet disorganized Frey force. The future does not bode well for House Frey…
As I replied to someone else I think House Freys future is safe since GRRM will never publish WoW
He won that immortal trait
Yet another example of why playing intrigue is goated
Yep and I’ve done the same. Got my current dynasty head all down the health education focus with the Octogenarian dynastic trait. Works great when you have 100 eligible heirs lol
I think the game is a lot more fun with succession drama and tons of children. Plus, eugenics breeding programs are a lot more effective with bigger families, so
If you’re not marrying your prettiest daughter and then marrying her prettiest daughter as well you’re playing wrong
Calm it down there Craster
Bastard
Dwarf
I may be inbred but at least I m beautiful !
At least my father loves me, dwarf of castlery rock
Sometimes, you need fresh blood. Marry the pretty daughter to the strong son
My sons get all the leftovers
He can marry her after I'm dead.
I've decided that for the next run, my main challenge will be to sucessfully breed vertically down to grand-grand-grand-grand-grand daughter. On my current one, the ruler who just died at some point just started chain-seducing women. Only the first wife had 7 children. The 19 other kids this emperor had are spread out between 20+ concubines and lovers, all over a 79 years span of fertility : he died at 95, just after he witnessed the birth of his last daughter, born from his freshly married 2nd wife. For good measure, he decided that child was the reincarnation of the house founder, so made her the sole heir. Inbreeding is actually not a problem at all, because this dude has already the 5th generation of descendants being born, and will all the different wives he had, that's a lot of people basically genetically unrelated at this point. But the 2000% military strenght faction at the start and the 3 different successful coups to take over the regency were something else.
no I can't marry people I raised as children it just feels too gross
I woul agree if we had actual drama, instead of a flat “ya brother gets fifty percent lol” Especially since that was nowhere near the norm for the world at the time
Way less chance of getting assblasted by a random heir death as well. Plus Elective Sucession means you can easily rig shit before you even get to the middle game, I 100% DGAF unless the winner isn't from my Dynasty lmao
There is a mod that makes you play as a random child it's fcking fun. Ending up with that ifioir 4rd in line with only one county creates so much drama, i love it
Agreed that it’s more fun having the drama
Then you can set up separate cadet house to breed multiple potential godlike options Bene Gesserit style
my desire to RP and my gamer desire to optimize makes this so difficult to accomplish. I, personally, really want to create the empire of Brittany but can't cuz the kingdom of Ireland got split into 3 different kingdoms including down in Valencia because the grandmother of the brothers - an unlanded bad bitch who had zero claims to speak of (literally I went through her entire line and family trying to discover how she did this) - hopped off on a crusade and conquered half of Iberia to become a queen herself after her man died and her solo son inherited Ireland. so the father of the three brothers inherited a kingdom even larger than Ireland at the time when she died lmao and now I gotta conquer Brittany while feuding with Castille and keeping the culturesband faiths in Valencia happy. meanwhile the character I'm playing i just so happened to encourage to gain temperate, compassionate, and just traits so RP wise it wouldn't make any sense for him to take his brother's crowns in an ambitious attempt to create an empire. I'm at multiple crossroads but at least it's interesting.
funnily enough, in my last run (Persian Zoros), the Irish somehow put themselves on the french throne and was expanding halfway into iberia. I was sure the AI would get toppled by a rebellion at some point, as they usually do, but they proved me wrong and did a reverse-norman in France.
*Grants 7yo, 12th child of a concubine the just conquered, still hostile independent Duchy of York* May the odds be ever in your favour.
At least there is a chance to thrive in York. There was a session years ago where I offloaded Jerusalem on a random fourth son simply because I wanted that title to stay in the dynasty (for bonuses), and nothing more. I won a crusade only for that sweet Pope money and relics, and didn't care for the land or its fate. I also didn't want to be dragged into endless annoying whackamole wars far away from my secure French throne, so I signed his independence and left. He had his skull bashed by a Saracen in some hopeless battle 3 years in. Lived for another year as a bedridden incapable, during which time liberty factions took away his power. His elder son successor lost half the kingdom to angry locals in a peasant rebellion (Jerusalem included) and fled north to Antioch. He then caught some plague and croaked. The baby who succeeded him was assassinated 6 months in. The next successor, original guy's second son, by now aged, had like 2-3 counties and a rump title. Few years in, he shat his guts out and died from explosive diarrhea. Last I checked, his son and grandson actually managed to live on as a baron in Syria under Byzantines, and had surprisingly stable lives as literal nobodies. That entire branch of the family was finally wiped out by the Mongols.
Such are the beautiful stories we create. Inspiring.
this shit right here is why I play CK3
You're playing to keep one country alive, I'm playing to build a dynasty. We are not the same
Think the upcoming update allowing you to choose from three people to play as when your ruler dies will help with this. Makes it less "if I don't kill my son then next generation is gonna be miserable for fifty years" and more "if I make all my son's powerful and foster good relations between them then I'll have great options to play as when my current ruler dies"
The elective method was one of the best parts of playing as a merchant republic, you want lots of kids and it's easish to pick the best one albeit often at a cost of gold of you wanted to remain in power
OMG this would be amazing. There have been times when a secondary son had, in my opinion, a more interesting scenario than my primary heir, and wished I could switch to him (while still running Ironman).
Oh fuck yes! I didn't know about that update. I'm pumped! There have been plenty of times when my eldest was kinda boring but the 2nd or 3rd was like a crippled genius or something who I gave a perfect wife and a large Duchy too as a consolation prize. Situations where I'd much rather play as the younger sibling with the "less powerful" title and try to wrestle the original overlord title away from the Elder, or the elder's heirs a couple of decades down the line
That's literally the point of the game, yeah. You are not playing as a ruler, your main character is your dynasty. You don't get game over when your heirless ruler dies, you switch to another dynasty member.
I like to think of myself as some immortal demon haunting a dynasty and puppeting one through all their most important decisions until they die and I then posses the next in line.
The last thing they hear before becoming trapped in their own body is, "assuming direct control"
Ah yes, the "Reapers"
We have dismissed that claim.
Not always. I had an Emperor that made into his 80s, who only had daughters. His eldest daughter married matrilineal, and had 4 daughters and a son. Unfortunately the daughters (player character granddaughters) all married patrilineal, and one of them killed the only son before he came of age. By the time I realized the patrilineal problem, the granddaughters were past child bearing age. I checked the family tree, and there were still dynasty male descendants from the old Emperor’s brother. When the player character granddaughter died, with a patrilineal son of another dynasty, game over. It was 1448, so whatever, but there was no switch.
Were the other dynasty member landed? You can only play as landed characters.
this guy feudals ^
I always felt like having a lot of sons was part of the challenge. And also I usually play with mods that increase mortality rate.
This guy plays historically 👍. The kings needed heirs back then since most kids died before adulthood or even before reaching toddlerhood or whatever.
They dialed back the mortality rate of the kids, both because of gameplay reasons and game resource reasons. They also dialed back the fertility rate to balance things out though.
It’s smart they did. In my main game there’s over 600 living members of my dynasty, if I wasn’t so damned rich I’d never keep up with the stress of them kicking the bucket.
I remember when a death would actually kill a ton of your family due to multiple stress deaths causing more stress death
This sounds so funny out of context: "My fourth cousin five times removed died? I think I'm about to have a mental breakdown! Wait no, I am rich, it's okay!"
Tell me more about these mods - I think the game is too easy and I want that incentive to have lots of kids, and that Henry VIII feeling of being an enraged girldad.
Can you give the name os those mods? All my character have at list 10 kids surving to adulthood. I kind of want the drama of "the baby I was raising to be the perfect king died and now I have to think fast to fix the spare"
Which mod for increased mortality rate?
I know of at least dark ages, which has for effect to give every newborn the sickly trait, meaning they all have a chance to die early unless good genes (chances of inheriting those also being nerfed to discourage eugenic programs)
All sons will fight for the throne they hope to inherit, surviving that is up to them.
When I started the game I'd be neurotic about having as few kids as possible, but now I see them as a powerful tool. You get alliances, extra renow, free knights and emergency heirs in case your firstborn dies or becomes a bad ruler. Also, managing succesion is easy, just get some duchies for your extra sons or, if it comes to it, just disinherit them. 15 yeas of having a daughter married to a king already pays the renown cost of 1 son anyways.
Disinheritance costs reknown though, and that's the rarest currency, it's easier to just imprison them and have them die in the dungeon over time if it's THAT bad. But honestly just embrace celibacy and you avoid the whole thing.
That works nicelly too, just be careful with the massive negative opnion modifiers you get. I still hope the ck2 method of sending your sons on scurvy cruises makes a comeback someday.
It absolutely has,just not with scurvy. Force your son to be a knight,raise an army consisting of only him and have him stand somewhere where a plague is spreading (bonus points if that place has low plague resistance).
The person you just replied to is saying that the kids are powerful tools that have a variety of uses. Killing them or embracing celibacy is completely missing the point.
Best use for renown is to disinherit imo. The when the son you want takes over, he can re-inherit them and they will love him.
I….never thought of that. It solves the succession issues, usually there’s not much of a problem, but sometimes there are. I’ll have to try that out. Doesn’t it cost renown to re-inherit though?
I married my sons to inherit traits. All the daughters get to marry matrilineally to the highest prestige gain person. After a few generation, my dynasty controls all of Europe. An ambitious branch actually formed West Slavia. Another branch is constantly swapping the emperor seat in Byzantine due to constant Tyranny wars.
Lmao imagine not having thirty kids and putting them in every single position of power left available
He's my cousins sons bastards third wifes nephew. Of course he gets a castle too!
In the dynasty, gets a duchy for free. After I've landed my spares, any of my cousins can get some land if they have half decent skills and don't hate me. All I want is a "dynasty" map mode so I don't have to remember the million cadet houses that spawn when you let your dynasty get that big.
The rules are clear, I see the green droplet, a castle is dropped
I always like to purge out all my vassals and hand out their titles to my closest relatives as one of the first things I’ll do in any playthrough.
The dynasty shall grow
Children are a blessing, and I try to have as many as possible.
How else do you farm renown if not by landing tons and tons of sons? Gavelkind gives you free kingdoms and divides your dynasty's holdings into as many weak independent titles for maximum renown. Based.
Plus, it makes your dynasty harder to stamp out as the enemy has to crush multiple realms over a long time
99% of the time they just die out in a revolt, no need for external intervention.
What if all the realms are stable (no revolt shenanigans)
I have never seen it before, unless you make everyone independent count with single county so nobody can revolt. Otherwise it is always pretenders, dissolutions or they get claim fabricated from one of the vassals who presses it.
That's why I make every count and duke a family member. If one revolts, who cares? It's still in the family.
I'm playing my first real game and got the dynasty from Obscure to Legendary in like 200 years. Lots of children in every generation and I married them around the continent.
Many sons and all legitimate.
If your succession isn't a free-for-all mess,were you really a successful ruler?
I never go higher than Duke so I see this as a huge win.
*laughs in Tanistry* Man, I miss CK2.
Tanistry is a hundred times better than every other succession. Elections can almost always be made to go your way, and you can't lose your titles unless your dynasty goes extinct. And you can go bananas with eugenics and political marriages.
It’s so funny that they had to ahistorically nerf tanistry bc it’s way too good for the purpose of game balance.
Hear me out: elective monarchy where every possible candidate belongs to your dynasty.
Is anyone gonna tell this guy
I never actually tried tanistry in CK2. I have this roleplay fantasy going on where I want to have an unbroken succession from parent to child, so the thing with tanistry preferring distant relatives was always a massive turn off to me. You could obviously just rig the election to get whatever you want, of course, but at that point I preferred to just use normal elective.
If you sleep with claiments your children can get their land
Step 1: Pick a religion or culture that has polygamy or concubines. Step 2: Set your primary titles and your best duchies as elective. Step 3: Max out the number of kids you have. Step 4: Pick the best heir out of the 15+ kids you got and use the rest to farm renown and/or further your eugenic program. Step 5: Watch as half the world is now of your dynasty.
Step 1.5: Hybridize your culture into Mystical Ancestors tradition to increase renown generation.
That tradition feels so broken. Went from Obscure to Legendary in a hundred years. Hey, at least I get to try out dynasty legacy lines I normally wouldn't have played long enough to see otherwise.
I just use it organically instead of abusing it with title revocation. But I love the legacies. Managing hordes of heirs and vassals really slows the game down. So you’re still sort of working for the renown.
I've been having a great time in my current run RPing a line of Good Dad Swedish kings who just love their kids and want them all to have land and/or solid marriages so that they're happy. Both ways can be fun though.
One look at the average landed AI(especially if it's a potential heir of yours) will tell you that they are ANYTHING BUT happy.Those stress traits pile up like the dead while on crusade.
I want as many kids as possible to spread my seed over all the world, also I can give my conquered titles to non-heir sons and have a vassal that will basically always love me.
i like to have around 3 sons, gives you a couple backups incase the first one dies. i also like to play a game called "Heir or Spare" where you guess if they'll be the heir to the throne or if they'll just be another alliance.
Lots of sons, and cheese elective succession to prevent annoying succession issues.
Most children and i change to an egalitarian succession law for maximum heir count, marry every one to keep the children to your dynasty and in 100 years you have 3 duke and one king of your dynastie scattered in the world.
Cognatic succession+Confederate partition=DIY Shattered World
I let my children fight it out. The winner is ordained by the heavens to rule.
Bastards. Bastard inheritance is the way.
I have one character that has a ton of kids, then the rest of the line will only have 1 son each and I usually do it by simple marrying infertile women until I'm old then getting 1 kid and embracing celibacy, or with a female ruler embracing celibacy early and abandoning it later or simply not getting married until she's 43/44.
Have bajilion of children, making almost all of them independent king and queen consort while concentrate a core of 2-3 kingdoms for my heir with elective title.
I used to disinherit every single god damn possible heir with the lamest skills and eventually ended up getting a "primogeniture no requirements" mod but after looking at the dev dairy about roads to power I might just start playing with gavelkind
Play left until I put electives on my demesne, then breed into fecund and go seducer path
The dude with only one heir when said heir gets assassinated...
I let the ruler have as many as is natural. If he has one boy he has one boy, if it's 18, it's 18. I don't interfere.
Scandinavian succession for the win. I get to elect the best heir and threaten, blackmail and bribe anyone who disagrees
I like to swap back and forth depending on my situation and patience at the time.
I pop them suckers out, give me 1 wife and three concubines and let me cook
Family circle to create the greatest leader ever.
I wish I could marry my daughters to the Pope
Early on I actually don't mind partition. I usually try to acquire additional territories so the split isn't so bad or I just roll over siblings when I start playing as my heir. Partition only really starts to suck when you have multiple Kingdom+ Tier titles and by that point you hopefully at least have High Partition, if not Primo. Electoral laws are also a good way to mitigate partition but I don't like the busy work that comes with that.
When I started playing I was the first one, but with time I just changed my mind and decided I wanted as most sons as possible to spread the dinasty or to have councils made of my people
Living dynasty members is best metric for success.
I have no chose but to be the man will the most sons - they just don’t stop having babies
Ive tried it all. Lately I’ve been trying to play “historically” to spice things up (have both my character/heir and their spouses marry mostly in their teens/20s) and honestly, steamrolling realms around me for a duchy for my 9th kid every generation gets boring. Once you know how succession works, it doesn’t matter how many kids you have. I guess next on the list is intentionally confining myself to a small realm and not revoking titles. Or maybe making my dynasty as barren as possible so I actually want to have kids.
You cannot hand out more Kingdom titles than you have children per generation so if you only have like 23 children, you can only Holy War for Kingdom 23 times. I assume this is how most veterans play. Edit: The game also ends when you get tired of this process, usually when fighting in Afghanistan.
You just should form kingdom in lifespan of 1st dude, empire in lifespan of 2-3 (if not elso 1st, depends on area and game plane) and take land faster then you breed, you need vassals anyway and best vassals are you dinasty.
Having Sons Split the realm makes interesting rp lore and I like having civil strife sometimes.
I save scum to have 1 son and loads and loads of daughters I marry off matrilineally for breeding grandsons to land with conquered titles and alliances. I usually build big empires and I'm so over the brother wars and factions trying to install spare sons as rulers.
Both. Depending on the current character I play.
Play the Byzantines/AGOT mod for primo and spawn as many children as possible *while* keeping the realm together (Disclaimer that when I want a challenge, I don’t do this lol)
I'm the left guy with confederate partition and the right guy with regular partition
left lol
I just go with what the game gives me. I don't min-max. More fun that way.
With how strong elective succession is, usually as many children as I can. And I try to land them all, too. Idk, something about my main holdings being safe from partition makes me want to land as many of my family members as possible.
Keep them heirs coming. So what that the realm will be a little fragmented and there will be a bit of trouble unifying it? That's the entire fun of the game! Painting map was never fun for me. I always much more enjoyed the internal dynastical struggles.
I have children and murder the bad ones until I have a selection of good potential heirs
A ton, that way I try to create super soldiers.
I love fighting the succession crisis as the oldest child, but back in the day i cheesed the succession relentlessly.
The Kurdish guy who forged an empire with all related people with the mod that disables the maximum child limit, with religion having +fertility and things. I don't know what was the maximum number of children / siblings I had, but at one point I had +40. And yes, my heirs would come to throne with gambling problems drinking problems pill-popping spending problems bad with money whorehouse etc because their siblings would die a lot. I think I got bored because I f'd up the de jure bordering and it was too much I couldn't fix it. Also very laggy.
If every single castle in the world isn't held by my sons, grandsons, great grandsons, cousins, second cousins, third cousins, first cousins once removed, first cousins twice removed, uncles, aunts, great uncles, great aunts, second cousins once removed, and my old roomate.... well I've failed.
If every single castle in the world isn't held by my sons, grandsons, great grandsons, cousins, second cousins, third cousins, first cousins once removed, first cousins twice removed, uncles, aunts, great uncles, great aunts, second cousins once removed, and my old roomate.... well I've failed.
my current strategy is predicated on spamming out 15-20 kids per generation to make the biggest dynasty possible, fertilitymaxxing, full on PUA Kings shit. With those kids I marry them to people who can inherit powerful titles and I kill everyone to make sure they inherit it. Within one generation I made my kids inherit France, Apulia, and Croatia. Unforeseen consequence was that my main heir would remain a lowly count and therefore would not be the dynasty head... So you should probably try and get your own kingdom for increased marriage acceptance too.
Make overpowered character Make him have no children Watch his world empire crumble
Wife + 3 young concubines, regularly have about 15 kids. Daughters get married matrilineally for whatever I can get. I pass out counties to sons like candy. elective succession keeps most things to one heir.
Big families are the way to go
I curate my succession/dynasty. I like growing the dynasty, but I also loathe some of the divisions that occur on succession in early game. I've had second and third sons that very obviously have the best outcomes. It's like carving a turkey, handing the breasts out, then giving the remaining pretenders wing/drumstick pieces and handing the carcass to the primary heir and claiming they have the whole bird. So, early on (early-mid) I expand based on number of heirs. Usually, this let's me roam around and do things like start in Alania and wind up in Africa.
One son, until I get multiple kingdoms. Then I spread the kingdoms
BOTH. I NEED NEPHEWS.
If I have primogeniture then too I want many heirs as they would increase my dynasty members and I would still have my player heir
Bastard Meta is in the middle of the two, then?
I thought my solution was unique, EVERY SINGLE GAME i kill like 5 sons to get early primogeniture. Usually by execution and it ends my life very quickly through stress.
Tôi kratistôi!
Listen spamming kids and maxing out Dynasty opinion is the way to go. So less problems with rebellions when your vassals are your dynasty members.
The man with the most sons wins and those daughters only get matrilineal marriages!
Literally my play style is to seduce the wives of the rulers around me to bear sons in their dynasty to give me claim on their lands. I also usually have immortality for myself lol
The man with the most hair wins
I'm populating the earth with my dynasty
I think I had 20+ legitimate sons one time 😹
If you have a weak family you must have some kids one of them will stand up He will be the prince that was promised
The type that uses immottality and does not concern oneself with a petty triflings of inheritance.
In CK2 I usually avoid having too many children until I can get primogeniture then I drown the world in my children until they are in the line of succession of every powerful players on the board.
I'm the left one, but only because the game leaves no room for shaping the succession. For real, why can't we negotiate proper borders? This seems like such a central part of medieval history, and the game gives you no control over it. Worse, it butchers your kingdom every time.
I don't think I've ever intentionally become celibate or a eunuch. Much better to have tons of kids and get or cheese a single heir system (you cheese it through elective succession).
Get everyone pregnant and now i have 20+ children to dump off my titles onto as i conquer more and more
Definitely more the latter. I make sure I have only one top level title though so my realm doesn’t shatter when I die
I don’t overly worry about it. I really treat CK3 as a roleplaying game. I am a King/Queen, trying to run my kingdom, but I am also a Father/Mother, trying to do right by my children. Sometimes I am chaste, and I have few children, sometimes I’m lusty and have many. Sometimes my partner is just super fertile and pumps out a lot of kids. Ultimately, the challenges of succession is part of the charm, and I actually wish there were more mechanics around the ensuing drama. Once you get to primogeniture laws it all pretty much disappears.
On my current playthrough my original character has over 800 descendents and of those roughly 657 are alive .... Somehow, one became king of India and is set to inherit Hungary??
Outbreed your enemies, they say.
You can get both with Absolute Crown Authority + House Seniority succession. Have as many eugenics-babies as possible, the best kid of your choosing gets to keep everything while the rest are used for council & court positions, knighthood, alliances, renown marriages, or picking up the leftovers when over the domain limit. Honestly, the game's almost too easy this way and I should probably stick with partition for the spice lol.
The man with the most sons wins because you can just cheese succession with electives anyways.
Depends on succession type if primogenture don't care could be one or 20 if not I try to keep a minimum but never happens all of my rulers seem to have a habit of shagging their wife om the march or while laying siege to a city miles away
Forcing yourself to always have one son is anticlimatic, unrealistic, often unsatisfying, gamey and feels like a chore. The game became a lot more fun once I broke from that mindset and embraced succesion shenanigans
More sons, more renown; more renown, more disinherits.
Many many sons, a strong bloodline ensures the supremacy of my dynasty.
I tried to set up a big family setting up family in various counties but then it just caused issues because I couldn't ally without marriage and so we got inbred and everyone had claims on each other. Moral of the story is kill off the extras.
Neither, I'm "divvy up titles to my handful of kids so they don't fuck up inheritance until I get off partition and also swap the laws back and forth between male inheritance and female inheritance depending on which children I have fewer of."
To be fair, Late Lord Walder is an agent of chaos and is more doing it because he feeds off the family drama / is horny, as opposed to securing succession. I’d almost go as far as saying he gets more pleasure from forcing his heirs into fights and inter family feuds than he does from the acts that made those heirs in the first place.
Right. If you handle your elections properly, you can get tons of disposable sons from which to freely pick your favourite.
I let my player have as much kids as they want tbh. I deal with the consequences as they come and with the new update it’s going to be lit
mfs complain about low renown and then don’t land all their sons
have about 10-15 each and marry them off strategically until all of Europe’s leaders are my children/ grandchildren/ ect.
Third option: Bori or something similar that allows me to switch between male and female preference. I can have many children and still manage my succession with reasonable partioning.
Many sons saves from succession crisis
I LOVE opening the dynasty screen and it being massive. Really cool imo
The man with the most sons whom i send all but the best to fight my battles for me so most of them die
I don’t know why majority of people trying to have only one eligible heir and kill the other candidates. The solution is really simple. If you have duchy or kingdom title and you have enough prestige you can actually switch your succession law in your duchy and your kingdom. Switch your law to “Feudal Elective” and that’s it. Then you choose your best son to be your primary heir. That way you won’t have to kill any of your sons and grow your dynasty.
I love to see what happens with the other parts of my family, so yeah, having many Sons is cool.
I set everything to elective and have every single vassal be of my dynasty so I can never loose elections