Family Trees: random or not?

[bugrat]

I am playing my third EB campaign and I'm wondering if family trees beyond the people who are part of the family at the start of the campaign are randomly generated or are based on real people (or any combination of the two).

I was playing Carthage and was curious about it, I was going to try to find out for myself but old Hannibal's daddy was killed by mad rebels one season before the boy was supposed to be born hehe.

EB rocks!

[lobf]

I think it's random.

[Korlon]

The family tree at the game's beginning's not random. Anybody born after that is free game.

[lobf]

Indeed.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Where we have information on family members, or rough ideas about them, we try to replicate them as accurately as possible given the engine. But where we don't know much about them we either use names of famous individuals alive there at that time or barring that we make family members up as best and appropriately as we can. It varies from faction to faction. Obviously we know more about the Ptolemies in 272 than we do about the Sakae family members in that same year.

[Jolt]

To my surprise Antigonos father wasn't Demetrios but Protogenes. :P

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

To my surprise Antigonos father wasn't Demetrios but Protogenes. :P
There can only be one "Demetrios" in the family tree (due to the game engine) and Demetrios II got the name since he would actually appear in the game.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

And Protogenes is an appropriate generic name for an ancestor that will connect the family to other individuals not necessarily related also.