Crusader Kings 2.

[Kafein]

It might be pretty hard to play merchant republics without retinues.(which is only in legacy of rome dlc)

Ho ok, well yeah, the extreme military power of merchant families comes from their huge potential for retinues.

[Lt_Anders]

Ho ok, well yeah, the extreme military power of merchant families comes from their huge potential for retinues.

That got nerfed with old gods. I remember having like a 5k retinue and then old gods snuffed me down to 2k.

Made changes to retinues to be slightly more balanced for republics

Honestly, Sword of Islam can be ignored if you don't want to play muslims. Sunset Invasion is USELESS except for alternate history exporting to EU4. Legacy of Rome changes Military up, a lot, by adding in retinues.(Most direct change to the game there)
The Republic is nice, but if you play a MP game, Republics can bankroll their buddies. They make shit tons of money, if played right.
Old Gods is fun, but I feel they added way to much BS in it for the 867 start date. Allows conquerers to rise up with their own armies to slaughter you, stuff like that. Recommended.

Honstly, Old Gods, Republics, and Rome are your best 3 DLCs. Of those, Old Gods and Rome if you want only a few.

[Vibe]

Any advice on working with Gavelkind? It takes quite a lot of work to change the succession law (since I need to change religion first and you need 3/5 temples for that which are really far apart).

How do I not lose all my land with Gavelkind?

[Smoothrich]

Any advice on working with Gavelkind? It takes quite a lot of work to change the succession law (since I need to change religion first and you need 3/5 temples for that which are really far apart).

How do I not lose all my land with Gavelkind?

stab some babies

Alternatively, give a duchy out to each son besides your heir as you conquer, so  your primary holdings stick with the heir. As long as you are King. Give out King titles to new sons if you are Emperor. If you run out of spare titles, kill the spare babies.

[CrazyCracka420]

After you have one son you could always kill your wife, otherwise like Smooth said about giving out titles to your other sons besides your heir.  Gavelkind sucks, primogeniture is my favorite.  Feudal Elective is not terrible either (you and any direct lower rank vassals get a vote for heir, this includes other independent factions that may fall in your duchies or kingdom).

I usually have no qualms reloading (so I save fairly often), so it's not risky only having one son alive.  But if you're not the type who is going to reload, than gavelkind is a bitch.

[Vibe]

Yeah not really fond of this Gavelkind, but I wanted to play the Old Gods and that's pretty much what you get.

[Turboflex]

I don't mind gavelkind so much it adds another layer of juggling complexities once you figure it out.

The frustrating part is losing your capital that you spend a lot of time and money building and teching. What confuses people is that the capital you set is not what the game looks at on succession, it looks at the de jure capitals of titles that is listed in the landed_titles.txt file. If you don't own that county or have another county set as your capital while having that duchy or kingdom as your primary title then the game gets kind of random and you can lose it.

To prevent that, go open the landed_titles.txt file and check what the "hard" capital of your duchy or kingdom is, then set that as your capital ingame. If you want another county as a capital for RP reasons or because you have invested a lot into a different one, then go into that file and edit what the "hard" capital is of your primary title to the one you want. After that the game will make an effort to get your primary heir the de jure counties and titles that come with the primary BUT of course it will also balance it fairly. So if you have three sons and want to keep a 4 county, kingdom capital duchy intact for your heir you would need to make sure you have 12 counties total (4 each). Since you don't want to hold 12 while you live since that is most likely above demense limit, you need to start planning early and giving them away to your 2nd and 3rd sons during the course of your reign and that will be taken into account on succession.

Instead of killing babies you can also make your sons bishops (or pagan equivalent).

[CrazyCracka420]

Yeah good call with the bishop (pagan equivalent).  I've spent money creating a church holding just so that I could give it to one of my non-eldest sons

[Warcat]

I certainly like Old Gods, but I think 1066 is still the best start date if you want to follow a relatively normal course of events (I get that the events of CK2 never are very normal, but some things stay similar). Things can get pretty weird when the Jomsviking Empire dominates all of Europe, spreading the Norse faith and culture even to Egypt.

[Havoco]

Oh btw, has anyone tried playing as a Hellenic ruler with the character designer?

[Casimir]

In my experience giving away titles that otherwise wouldn't be inherited to my heir has ended without issue.

I'm sure this isn't the safest option but it's certainly effective enough while you raise you're crown authority.

[Warcat]

Gavelkind can be handled pretty well as a catholic as you can make extra kids bishops, but it is harder to deal with as a viking. Then again, like with the Mongols. In-fighting is pretty much the only thing that keeps the Vikings from conquering all of Europe with all their aggressive abilities.

[CrazyCracka420]

Oh btw, has anyone tried playing as a Hellenic ruler with the character designer?

No but if you play The Elder Scrolls mod (forgot the exact name) and use ruler designer, all the stats give 0 age, so you can make some super overpowered characters. 

Not to mention the elves can live for 100s (or 1000s maybe) years, but have -1000% fertility because of it (good luck getting pregnant)

[Rogue]

Any advice on working with Gavelkind? It takes quite a lot of work to change the succession law (since I need to change religion first and you need 3/5 temples for that which are really far apart).

How do I not lose all my land with Gavelkind?

If you have free investiture you can make them successor to a bishopic, sons with church careers are excluded from succession.

[Herkkutatti666]

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