I have heard good things about CK2plus, which is supposed to rebalance the game without change too much of the game mechanics. There’s also the Prince and the Thane, which is a more radical alteration of the game. I haven’t played with any mods so I can’t tell you much more about them.
There’s also the Game of Thrones mod, if playing in that fantasy setting appeals to you.
Please note that you’ll need to wait for all the mods to be updated for the latest patch.
I started playing again yesterday and decided to ease myself in as earl of Dublin. In two generations, I am positioned to create the kingdom of Ireland (just need more piety) my sister is kaiserin of the hre, my children are bertrothed to various other crowned heads and I’m eyeing wales as a conquest. Not too bad a start and with some luck I may rule Brittania some day.
Always arrange betrothals before granting land. But that doesn’t fix the problem with not educating the grandkids.
What I’ve also been doing, is when my first heir reaches the age of majority, I grant a good chunk of my lands to him. (Be sure to include the vassals associated with the titles.) And then I save game, quit and restart as my heir. Or if my first heir is an idiot, I give almost everything to my second heir and then play him. It’s rather fun.
You can assign a guardian to a child who is not in your court. It works the same way as requesting a marriage or betrothal; the other leader considers your request and then gets back to you. I did this to properly educate my grandson when my son moved with him to his own duchy.
It can be difficult to get that going, however. Your best bet is to make the request the very day the child turns age 6.
With a bit of luck, I formed the kingdom of Ireland, married the queen of Scotland and my son inherited both crowns. On the bad side, on forming the kingdom the law went back to gavelkind. So, I’m doing what I can to protect my empire or the two crowns will be split up on my death. Argh!
I have a solution. It’s sort of silly, but the way they installed the “Gavelkind Reset” is pretty damn silly, too: switch both to the same inheritance. Make it ultimogeniture if necessary, and if you can’t stand to let the youngest inherit make certain the littlest bastards end up face down in the gutter with their throats cut.
It may not have been the best solution, but I worked my ass off getting Ireland together, not to mention repeatedly aiding the queen of Scotland to hold her land together until I inherited both crowns. The problem is crown authority. Without high authority I can’t change succession. So I launched a campaign to raise it, but there was opposition. So I set about revoking titles until I had the votes to change it myself. (My current king had earned the title The Cruel and every vassal has a -100 opinion). It’s gonna be a rough life, but hopefully my heir can turn things around once his full inheritance is secure. One way or another I will rule Brittania.
You should still be able to change it, just not to Primogeniture. IIRC, you can “downgrade” freely. Ultimogeniture requires only Limited Crown Authority.
One path I follow is to go to Seniority.
Yeah, when that situation happened to me, I just switched to Ultimogeniture. Which has actually been working out pretty well for me. Having the youngest kid succeed means that typically (not always) he gets a longer reign, which means eventually having a lot of nice long reign modifiers from all of the vassals and whatnot. It also gives me more time to buff his stats via ambition.
Maybe I’ll go back to an old save and try that. Or just let my current ruler be the ass that he is and see what happens.
Or shove virtually all the authority and lands to one heir, load up as that heir when the current ruler dies, and take back the remaining titles by force.
One of the DLCs must have changed something because the game won’t allow me to grant titles to my first son that are set to be inherited by other sons. This is under gavelkind.
The latest patch 1.10 (released with The Old Gods) changed the rules under gavelkind succession to prevent the kind of title-granting shenanigans you’re trying to do
I’m glad they fixed that exploit, but there needs to be a way to disinherit specific heirs. With appropriate penalties, of course.
Granting a Bishopric to an heir removes them from the line of succession. It’s not perfect, but if you have the positions to grant (and I’m noting that playing as a Norse leader, I’ve accumulated a number of them), it works.
Even appointing them as the successor to an existing bishop will pull them out of the line of succession to the crown. (If you are able to appoint successors, of course.)
Simple question: do I really care who inherits my titles, as long as they’re part of my dynasty?
In the case of my game, I care because it will split my crowns (Ireland/Scotland) between two sons and I’m attempting to reform the Empire of Brittania.
I also like having my own levies to raise, rather than depending on more vassals than I need to, which having several sons inherit titles creates more of.
Crap. What a terrible end to a great run. I started off as the Duke of Barcelona and expanded a couple of small territories, making a new title, I believe. The Pope declared a crusade, I waited and threw and stack of troops over after a couple of my Christian neighbors got huge. I got lucky in a couple of fights, pushed some troops all over the place, and ended up inheriting the Kingdom of Jerusalem from all of it. I had to start handing out titles left and right suddenly, and noticed that when levying troops, I couldn’t pull from all of them. I had a large chunk (about 14,000) in Jerusalem I could call up, and about 1500 scattered in the new Kingdom (and 250 in a province from Spain). The kingdoms in Spain all collapsed as the Moors pushed, and they went after my Spanish holdings as well. I couldn’t call any soldiers in the Spanish holdings and watched as the Moors just walked across my lands. Sensing some weakness after sending my troops to Spain, through Greece, Italy, Germany, and France, the Egyptian Caliphate beat the snot out of my and ran through my kingdom.
Game over, as I have zero holdings now. What a strange and completely dramatic turn of events.