Vassals vote for an Heir just to immediately betray him

[SaurianDruid]

So my first attempt as Ireland went really well. A lot better than all subsequent attempts in fact. I united Ireland with no problem (Non-tutorial playthrough) and managed to create the Kingdom of Ireland, then switched to a form of secession that let one heir hold my best title.

I wanted my daughter, Gisselle, to inherit because she had a massive 21 in steward and had a decent number of children who were of my dynasty.

My vassals were unswayably set on voting in my nobody third cousin or some such. A kid of 5 years who was Welsh and who was only related to me distantly.

I spent SO much of my life trying to get them to vote for my daughter though. Roughly 30 years trying to find secrets to get hooks but apparently every greater lord in my realm with a saint.

Luckily they changed their minds when my half-sister had a boy. I still did my best to get them to vote for my daughter but they weren't having it, so I took the lad under my wing and taught him as best I could before I died of old age.

So this six year old becomes High King, as the vassals had wanted!

.... And they immediately set up a faction to usurp his rule and make Gisselle, the daughter I wanted to rule in the first place, the High Queen.

Keep in mind the vote against her was unanimous. None of them would be bargained with or blackmailed away from voting for this child. Now that they have the High King they all voted for they want to remove him from power?

So they go to war and crush me as my character is a six year old child and all my strongest vassals are against me. Gisselle becomes High Queen, just as I wanted!

... Except because she didn't inherit the role by succession I don't get to play as her like I wanted.

I was mad and rage deleted the save because this felt like an insanely arbitrary way for the game to screw me, the player, out of a game that was otherwise going great. The heir I wanted was denied to me and then made king anyway right after.

In retrospect though it was pretty funny.

But I was wondering if anyone else has seen the AI vassals behave in bizarrely arbitrary, specifically anti-player ways that don't make any sense as far as roleplay goes?

[cb4n28]

Just an election tip, fabricate hook is a must to swing an election.

[SaurianDruid]

İlk olarak Morthra tarafından gönderildi:

Tanistry doesn't actually keep your realm intact. When you apply Tanistry to the Kingdom of ireland, that just means that the relevant vassals vote for which heir will inherit the Kingdom of Ireland, and no other title.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to avoid Tanistry in the future. Especially since the way this election played out Giselle ended up with my original duchy that I had invested heavily in developing while the boy-king was given Dublin for reasons I don't fully get.

Is there a clean way to choose who gets which land when you die?

İlk olarak Messsucher tarafından gönderildi:

No flat out racist and ignorant generalizations, you should know better.

Are you calling me racist because some virtual people didn't choose the heir I wanted? Because if so that is hilarious.

Also you've still not presented a good reason for why these men would vote for a leader they hate just to turn around and put the person they refused to vote for in charge literally days after the election. It is the lightning speed turnabout that doesn't make sense here, not that they simply didn't like their child-king.

As for your talk of different modifiers, well yah? That is what traits are for. A just man should probably get the biggest bonus for having the person they voted for win the election. A cynical man would get a much smaller bonus and a paranoid man would probably abstain from voting entirely because he thinks the system is rigged.

And they should all probably get a negative modifier for joining factions that support a candidate they didn't vote for, since they've already professed their desire for that person not to rule.

[cb4n28]

İlk olarak SaurianDruid tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Morthra tarafından gönderildi:

Tanistry doesn't actually keep your realm intact. When you apply Tanistry to the Kingdom of ireland, that just means that the relevant vassals vote for which heir will inherit the Kingdom of Ireland, and no other title.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to avoid Tanistry in the future. Especially since the way this election played out Giselle ended up with my original duchy that I had invested heavily in developing while the boy-king was given Dublin for reasons I don't fully get.

Is there a clean way to choose who gets which land when you die?

Like most things in this game, there are advantages and disadvantages to everything, but elective laws can actually be really powerful if you play your cards right and invest in rigging the electoral process. With Tanistry Elective on your Kingdom and Empire tier titles, you can effectively choose any character in your entire dynasty for each major title, including giving them all to your chosen heir, so long as you are careful to fabricate hooks on the other Electors and you pull the trigger at the right time. It only takes a weak hook to force someone to vote for you for five years, and since you presumably have the top spot in the titles in question, you should be getting an outsized share of the votes, so you just have to blackmail enough people to swing the totals to your chosen candidate. So with enough planning, it is a viable strategy to keep even the largest empires together. You just need to use your spymaster, the imprision option and the fabriacte hook scheme to keep farming hooks on the other major Electors (the number of votes is determined by power and prestige) and you need a sense of when your primary character will die (which is relatively easily achieved with the know thyself perk).

Of course the elections can go bad if you just ignore them and let them run their course, but if you actually play the mechanic, you can pretty easily profit from it

[Mad Max]

I'd rather my lands get split up amongst my children than have some nobody get elected and my heir get left with a single county.

[cb4n28]

İlk olarak Max the Grape tarafından gönderildi:

I'd rather my lands get split up amongst my children than have some nobody get elected and my heir get left with a single county.

Which is why you rig the elecitons for your heir and hold on to everything.

[RodHull]

İlk olarak cb4n28 tarafından gönderildi:

Just an election tip, fabricate hook is a must to swing an election.

THIS

Very early on you should have made up lies about people to force your choice if it became obvious they wouldn't support your choice.

Failing that you could have swapped what character you played as and just retconned the whole thing in your own head :)

But yes it is a silly vagary of the AI it can sometimes seem quite arbitrary but its simply usually a matter of a particular opinion bonus changing their minds (even something as simple as short rule as you take over) and suddenly the person they hated before is the preferred choice. Like in this case the primary heir went from a good choice to child king (negative) short rule (negative) and the female heir went from a bad choice to strong claim (positive) adult (positive) so the whole thing flipped.

As someone else mentioned if its someone they all voted for they should get a temporary +25 buff for like 10 years or something to prevent this sort of thing.

[SaurianDruid]

İlk olarak RodHull tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak cb4n28 tarafından gönderildi:

Just an election tip, fabricate hook is a must to swing an election.

THIS

Very early on you should have made up lies about people to force your choice if it became obvious they wouldn't support your choice.

Unfortunately I didn't have access to Fabricate Hook. It is in the Intrigue tree I believe, and my guy went heavy into Scholar so I could push the Irish cultural technologies ahead a few centuries.

Kind of wish any character had access to stuff like Fabricate Hook or Befriend. These feel like basic things anyone should be able to do. Going down the line just makes you amazing at it.

İlk olarak RodHull tarafından gönderildi:

Failing that you could have swapped what character you played as and just retconned the whole thing in your own head :)

THIS I straight up did not know! Dang. I kind'a wish I'd kept the save now. I'd just hop over to the girl I wanted to rule in the first place. Ah well, good to know for next time!

[RodHull]

İlk olarak SaurianDruid tarafından gönderildi:

THIS I straight up did not know! Dang. I kind'a wish I'd kept the save now. I'd just hop over to the girl I wanted to rule in the first place. Ah well, good to know for next time!

Yeah you can swap to anyone at any time, its always good to protect against PDX weirdness.

As for the hooks thing, they are quite early on in those trees and easy to pick up and then abandon to go back to your true focus.

[cb4n28]

İlk olarak RodHull tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak SaurianDruid tarafından gönderildi:

THIS I straight up did not know! Dang. I kind'a wish I'd kept the save now. I'd just hop over to the girl I wanted to rule in the first place. Ah well, good to know for next time!

Yeah you can swap to anyone at any time, its always good to protect against PDX weirdness.

As for the hooks thing, they are quite early on in those trees and easy to pick up and then abandon to go back to your true focus.

Yeah fabricate hook is an early perk on that skill tree and worth getting for pretty much every ruler even if intrigue isn't going to be your long term playstyle. It's also worth noting that having it allows you to buy hooks when you send your spymaster to look for secrets in a court even if the spymaster is unsuccessful