I have a "Better Gender Law" playthrough I'm trying to finish up before I mess with india or abrahamic features. I'm playing Denmark, Old Gods start, and I lucked out and got two daughters and no sons for my third generation. So I'm now the Queen of Denmark which will allow me to move laws to "absolute cognatic" in 10 years (if I can get my vassals happy).
The great part is that I'm unmarried, so I only have one heir: my sister! That means she can inherit everything I get despite Gavelkind, so she can become Empress. I can subjugate nearly all of Sweden with my free claim-a-kingdom pagan casus belli, then die, then she can conquer all of Norway the same way. Then it's just a matter of conquering a few individual counties to reach 80%, and then all Scandinavia will be Absolute Cognatic!
Just a couple problems. I apparently forgot to educate my current character, so she has no traits D: Fortunately she's a grey eminence so I think I can manage.
The other problem is avoiding heirs, because I'm an unreformed pagan which means gavelkind. Basically means I can't marry. As far as I can tell, males *never* get too old to breed. No one on the matrilineal marriage list has the chaste trait, either.
No matter... I had a great Blot and a year of raiding which jumped my prestige from 50 to 554, and the short reign maluses are dropping like crazy. I'll just be a virgin queen, declare gender equality after 10 years, then conquer Norway and make it Cognatic too. Whether my heir is male or female, they'll inherit the Cognatic law and bring it to Scandinavia.
Oh right, last weird thing... My sister just had an infant son who is set to inherit my only jarldom. Wtf. She gets the kingdom and my three counties, while her son inherits my jarldom??
Just to make things weirder, my uncle got the other jarldom when my father died. He got the jarldom which contains all three of my counties, while I got a jarldom in which I have no counties. Now he hates me, of course, because he desires my capital county.
Inheritance is complicated. I hope making it cognatic will make it a *little* easier to follow, just by taking out the gender overrides.
Edit:
Okay that thing I do when I chase enemy armies to wipe them out? I can see how maybe that's a dick thing to do. Now that the AI is doing it to me really hard. Maybe I shouldn't have sent my retinue in first for a deep strike... But hey, a third of it finally managed to retreat to my main army, and combined I still have the advantage. (Assuming Poland doesn't send many troops... Which they SHOULDN'T, because my father honored alliance and helped forge their kingdom! As in "actually sent troops and got as much warscore as them", not "Oh sure we'll technically be at war with your enemies, good luck!")
Ah, that feel when 20 ships appear out of nowhere but only drop off 10 men.
The backstabbing king of Poland did send a lot of men... Fortunately they're wandering my lands at random, uncertain what to actually seige. I can probably handle them once my retinue regenerates, and in the meantime I have wreaked full and bloody vengeance on the army of Sweden itself.
The enemy "King Eirikr the Wise" decided to personally lead 5 troops next to my stack of 2722. I don't think he's actually wise at all. Sadly he teleported back to Uppland when confronted.
Went to Uppland, captured his heir and his capital. Warscore ho! Expeditiously retreated a week before the Polish doomstack arrived, neener neener. Need to regenerate more due to compulsive wall-storming.
My uncle, that Jarl of Jylland? That Jarl of all the counties I own, where he owns none? Just implemented "Minimal City Taxes" in Jylland. I will make him pay for that, somehow.
Had to smash another 2000 troops from Poland, but won the war. Released all the Norse prisoners, back to raiding East Francia and running out that 10-year timer on switching to Cognatic. But then!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267348284Yeah, that won't be happening. Should have offered matrilineal, at least, seeing as the kid's like 5th in line to the succession.