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[Felius]

Elective seems pretty great, even with most of my titles held by family members.  The maluses seem pretty minor so far (after the initial period of rage).

Only downside is that, because the only powerful lords in your realm are of your family, your kin will all be marrying each other to secure powerful alliances.  Expect next generation to consist mostly of inbred morons.

For that reason, I generally try to build up a "loyal lieutenant" family for all my family to marry into.  Generally, children are educated by their parents, so a content vassal will likely have children that grow up to be content, with that sweet sweet +50 to relations with ruler.

If you expand your family enough, it's not really that problematic though. You might have to abuse matrilineal marriages a bit, and create many branches of the family, but it is doable, at should avoid problems in the time line the game takes place.

[umiman]

I used to use elective a lot until I formed an Empire. It was then that I learned that elective is extremely bad when you have several kingdoms since that was what they meant by "holding too many electoral titles".

I always thought it meant your vassals didn't like you owning too many provinces and titles.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I never form kingdoms as emperor. To me the benefits are outweighed by the negatives.
If you want to land every one of your family members then Tanistry is awesome. You'll get a decent relationship bonus with kinsmen and your dynasty can never be voted out. They'll also tend to vote for claim holders which can really speed up expansion if you play the marriage game. The negative is of course not being in direct control of who inherits so it's harder to practice eugenics but characters with claims and decent traits tend to get in anyway so it's not a massive issue.

So far the biggest problem I have with tanistry is vassals voting in a character which lacks a beard, which is just sick and wrong.

[Digital Hellhound]

But being an Emperor with lots of King titles is fuuuun. Isn't that right, Khagan of Carpathia, Khan of Georgia, Abyssinia, Nubia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Serbia, Poland and Khazaria? The titles just look lovely, you see?

Emperor-level elective is bad also because every miserable Duke in your lands gets to vote. And with sny decent-sized Empire you're gonna have a lot of them.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Elective is the best succession if you expolit arch-prince-bishops. Dynasty members in an elective system tend to favour their own kinsmen as well which can be exploited. It's also the best succession law to expand through marriages and breed great traits.

I'm not a fan of seniority since you'll get some old bastard who lives the grand total of 2 days before he's assassinated by the rest of the gray gang. It's also near impossible to practice a eugenic program or have reasonable expansion through marriages. Can be used to great effect to consolidate lands held by different dynasty branches into a single realm. 

Primogeniture is alright but I tend to prefer ultimogeniture since you won't get the problem of a 40 year old lunatic inheriting. You'll usually have young heirs fresh out of education who haven't been corrupted by the horrors of the world. There is the risk of a child inheriting but there's usually not a massive issue since even if he/she dies you should have another older heir to take over. Babies are also a lot easier to assassinate than adults so you can have a much more active eugenics program but as usual beware of the kinslayer trait.

Tanistry is also a close favourite of mine but it does involve a lot of early micromanagement to expand and land your own dynasty. The lack of direct choice and unexplainable voting changes by vassals can be annoying. Once it's optimally set  up it's impossible to ever lose the game from a bad succession, you can even make an empire so sturdy the AI cannot screw it up. That +15 relationship boost to kinsmen vassals is awesome.

Gavelkind is just awful in a huge realm although if you're an empire you should have moved away from this years ago.  Might be worth it to change to gavelkind if you've got a massive realm and you're getting bored, successions can be !!fun!!.

Turkish Succession is awesome but is balanced by having to manage decadence. Not knowing how to manage decadence will make maintaining a realm with Turkish Succession fairly hard.

[umiman]

But being an Emperor with lots of King titles is fuuuun. Isn't that right, Khagan of Carpathia, Khan of Georgia, Abyssinia, Nubia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Serbia, Poland and Khazaria? The titles just look lovely, you see?

Emperor-level elective is bad also because every miserable Duke in your lands gets to vote. And with sny decent-sized Empire you're gonna have a lot of them.

Yes. There's literally no point in calling yourself Emperor if you aren't actually a king of any kings. And it's so boring.

I always make it a point to put as many bizarro people into super high level positions just to see what would happen.

There's only so many times you can conquer the world after all. Much more fun to see Scotland replaced by Africans.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Well considering there was the grand total of two historical christian empires at the time and neither of which had the concept of a king below the emperor I think it's fair to say there is a point to calling yourself emperor when there are no king vassals.

However it doesn't really make all that much sense to have the other non-historical empires since christian empires claimed legitimacy from the roman empire. Really there should just be "elevated/high kings" which have all the benefits of an empire without the title. A player should have to claim either the HRE, Byzantium or petition the pope/patriarch for a new empire which the other empires would not take too kindly to. Non-christians wouldn't have to do this particular step and can call themselves what they want.

[umiman]

I don't think that's true...

The Kaiser of the HRE in 1066, Henry III was Kasier Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, Duke of Swabia, and the King of Burgundy. In fact the HRE has held all manner of various Kingdom titles under themselves. I don't know whether they allowed any other kings to exist but they definitely had lots of King titles.

The weird one in this is why CK2 doesn't give the HRE any of these titles at all. Especially when the Emperors of those days actually got Kingdoms before they inherited Empires. Again, Henry III was King of Germany for 18 years before he succeeded his father as the Emperor. Then he gave all these titles to his son who became the next Emperor. Later on their Dynasty went to incorporate King of Italy into their list though they lost it soon after.

As far as I know, only the Byzantine Basilius had no kingdom titles. And for some strange reason England never used the name Emperor though the Queen and King still have all their "King of blah blah blah" titles even today.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Titles in the HRE were a bit odd. Most of what would be "king tier" in CKII would be referred to as "arch-dukes" and leaders would be called "princes". Leaders could call themselves "kings" but it often would be seen as offensive and above their status. Usually it was only the emperor who could call his lands a kingdom. The whole debate about titles caused no end of petty disputes in the HRE, therefore I would say there was very little "legitimacy" in the HRE king title and existed more of a petty title rather than a concept of feudal hierarchy.
Although it appears there was also still a difference between king and arch-duke as proved by Austria struggling to ever gain the legitimacy of a kingdom it so much craved. I suppose you could argue either way for kings in the HRE and get no where. I will admit my original argument that they had no concept of kings is completely wrong however as even if it was a self-proclaimed title they still existed.

Byzantium never had any "kings" since it still clinged to the theme system which was meant to be administrative rather than feudal. There were some warlords that gained power and had feudal like states but I don't believe they got any of the legitimacy a "king" would have and were rather just tolerated out of fear or shear neglect.

England never became an empire since it didn't have any claim on the empire of rome. The HRE and Byzantium both claimed to be the inheritors of the Western/Eastern Roman Empire respectively. England could possibly have tried to call legitimacy of rome from the Gallic Empire but I doubt the pope or the HRE would have cared for that.
That all said kingdoms could still have vassaled and "lesser" kingdoms or they could form unions. This was generally enough for most nations and saw no need to try and declare themselves emperor. This is what the "emperor" tier in CK2 should for the other empires, just "greater kingdoms".

Empire and "catholic/orthodox empire" mean two different things. One is a collection of kingdoms ruled by a single ruler while the other calls legitimacy from a dead nation.

[forsaken1111]

I'm the emperor of Russia in the year 1012 and I only hold two actual titles. The Emperor title and the title to my original starting province.

We seem to go through annual rebellion cycles which I summarily crush with my 10,000 man standing army retinue and ~22k vassal levies. Its a bit tedious but goddamn am I a rich bastard. 23,000 gold in the bank!

[scrdest]

Hmm... if I want my child to be of a specific culture, should I just ship it off to be educated by someone in that culture?

I ended up with the ancient Castillian O'Brien family (Ua Briain, who in early 1100 married Sancha Jimena, Castillian queen, and are Castillian ever since) and I want to form Empire of Britannia and, later on, Empire of Scandinavia.

[Dutchling]

Hmm... if I want my child to be of a specific culture, should I just ship it off to be educated by someone in that culture?

Yup. A diligent person if you want to be sure. The child can also be converted by it's educator so make sure you don't mess that up .

[scrdest]

Hmm... if I want my child to be of a specific culture, should I just ship it off to be educated by someone in that culture?

Yup. A diligent person if you want to be sure. The child can also be converted by it's educator so make sure you don't mess that up .

Thanks.

Given that I used 1066 start, and I want English/Scottish/Celtic culture first, I think it's safe to assume it won't be a concern.

After I get to Holy War Finland up, and I try for North Germanic, I guess it might, but it's not very probable anyway.

[Simmura McCrea]

And for some strange reason England never used the name Emperor though the Queen and King still have all their "King of blah blah blah" titles even today.

Pretty sure Victoria was, at least unofficially, Empress.

[Dutchling]

Yeah, of the Mughals