Another one about heirs...

[PanthaPower]

I have another one about heirs. Sorry if it already passed by but I couldn't find it in de history of this forum.
To me it seems that there is hardly any relation between good heirs coming from good Kings and bad heirs coming from bad kings. To me it always seem random because I usually get heirs ranging from 1 to 5 stars from a King no matter if he has good vices or bad ones. The only thing that seems to come back are these annoying "drunk" vices.
Because of this, I tend to keep the really good heirs so that they become a General and I kill of the bad ones in battle. The "okay" ones are on my list to become King and I also develop these guys a little.

How do you guys do it and does my point make any sence? I just hate losing my best general (king) because he dies and still ending up with crap heirs. They seem to come anyway.

Just my two cents.

[Rnold]

I noticed that Byz get wonderful heirs, high command, high influence, high acumen. Although they all had a morale penalty in my game. Now i am playing HRE. The heirs are not all that good, so it may be a better tactic to focus on an "immortal" general.

[MonkeyMan]

No almost consistantly kings give heirs like themselves, either slightly better or worse. It really does help to kill the poor heirs and keep the good ones. I also think that a king built up with experience, i.e. command stars and good vices that he did not have when he came of age has a chance of passing these on to his sons. So if you assess your heirs as they come, and choose one you like, kill any older than him in the same generation and build him up, until he becomes king and starts producing heirs. this should give a gradual improvement in the quality of kings. I would love to know how the inheritance model works, i.e. if i marry my king to a byz. princess, will his offspring be half him, and half uberking?

[Rnold]

good question. next question: which faction get all the good heirs (other than byz) and which faction gets the worst heirs?

[PanthaPower]

Quote Originally posted by MonkeyMan:
No almost consistantly kings give heirs like themselves, either slightly better or worse. It really does help to kill the poor heirs and keep the good ones. I also think that a king built up with experience, i.e. command stars and good vices that he did not have when he came of age has a chance of passing these on to his sons. So if you assess your heirs as they come, and choose one you like, kill any older than him in the same generation and build him up, until he becomes king and starts producing heirs. this should give a gradual improvement in the quality of kings. I would love to know how the inheritance model works, i.e. if i marry my king to a byz. princess, will his offspring be half him, and half uberking?[/QUOTE]

Hmmm, I'll give it some more time then to see for myself. It just seems to be too random for me. Does anyone know an official answer from CA on how it works?

[Synapse]

I'll have to completely disagree Panthapower. I've never gotten a great heir out of miserable ones. However, aside from a few "bad apples", I get consistently good heirs from my line after pruning the bad apples out. (4 star assassin helped ditch that 0 command inbred loser prince) Now his 8 star brother has taken command and shall surely have fabulous progeny!

[Baron Nogood]

Heirs.

Every game I now use emisaries soley as pimps to search for foreign princesses. Not only does this seem to yield superb heirs, the number of available heirs for me shoots up. The problem is, when your king marries someone within the realm, that person was once royal, and is now some kind of distant cousin/uncle, whether this affects them in a bad way, I could not say.

I have however noticed that the majority of English heirs/kings are alcoholics, whereas most of my Italian heirs are absolute murderers and killers (as born).

So I would sugest that in order to maintain a reasonable bloodline, search for foreign suitors for each prince. Click on the crown to see how many princesses you need and go a searching. They may not make alliances any stronger, but they seem to keep the blood blue.

[Jaret]

I experimented a bit with heirs.

It seems to me :

Good Kings produce good heirs ... cept some "bad apples".

If an average King wins several Battles his heirs seem to improve in Command. Cept a few "bad apples".

Spanish and Byzantine have good Command rating with their heirs. Italians have good accumen with their heirs. Rest seems to be average to me.

Always marry your Heir that is to become King to a foreign Princesse BEFORE he becomes King. (prefere Byzantine, Spanish or Italian Princesses)

Always try to get a "new" King without any real bad vice like cracked Brain. Kill heirs with those Vices or bad Stats so that a brother with better stats gets to be next King.

Always try to marry your Princesses to heirs of foreign countries before you marry them to on of your Generals. The AI will be more likely to marry their princesses to your heirs it seems to me.

Avoid becomming excomunicated because your diplomacy with others will suffer from it, too.

Try to win some Battles with every heir before he becomes King.

Try to win some battles with every King before he spawns new Heirs. Try to win some battles with your King as your heirs grow up.


In my current English Campaign I got :
King : Influence 8, Dread 8, Accumen 7, Command 7

3 Heirs : Command 6/6/7 ... Loyalty, Dread, Accumen 5-8 each.

3 Royal Blood Generals : Command 5-6 ... Loyalty, Dread, Accumen 4-7 each.

The heirs of each subsequent King seemed to improve over the generations.

Duno maybe I was just lucky http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif .