I noticed when I started a new game after updating the SVN that I don't have any options under Succession Laws. I'm left with Primogeniture when I started as a titular Feudal Duke, and there aren't any choices/options to pick any Successions, not even Gavelkind is listed. Even after creating a De Jure Duchy title, the Succession Laws are still blank.
I'm not sure if it is intentional, so I wanted to ask the SVN thread to see if anyone knows about it. Is there a particular direction that EK is heading regarding succession law defaults? I know some cultures might want to have a specific type of succession law.
It's intentional. With some cultural exceptions, all Feudal (and subtypes such as titles Duke-tier and lower are restricted to Primogeniture. It's my personal setting for succession laws that I've run with for months, and decided to upload because I've found that it solves many of the AI's shortcomings. There's a few reasons I went in this direction:
-Primogeniture helps to preserve the interesting bloodlines and dynasties unless their lands get revoked or conquered.
-Reducing border gore. Gavelkind and Elective Gavelkind are massive contributors to border gore. Primogeniture as a winner-take-all succession law sidesteps this.
-Lore-wise, primogeniture appears to match up better with lesser realms in TES than most other succession laws.
-Gender laws notwithstanding, the only way to force a succession law as the default succession law is to make the other types unavailable.
-AI vassals love to push succession laws like Gavelkind and Elective and give enormous priority to those factions. If those laws are disabled, they won't form those factions, period.
-Narrowing faction options makes the AI more likely to push dynastic title claimants and push for council power. From a lore perspective, that seems a lot more credible than people starting civil wars over gavelkind and elective succession.
The main exceptions to the rule be the Reachmen, Skaal, Orcs, Tang Mo and Kamal, all of whom can use Open Succession (rule by might), and the Tang Mo can also use Elective without rank restriction.
Note that kingdoms and empires can still use the other succession laws.