Loosing Heirs when formations combine

[A_B]

I had an odd thing happen with my heirs...
Had emporer and two heirs (sons) in same battle. All three formations took casualties. At end of battle, computer combined three weakened formation into one formation, effectivly eliminating my two heirs (who were also good generals).

I guess it is possible that the two sons died, but this never happened before the patch. And with it happening to two of them at the same time, i think it is unintentional - and left me heir-less at age 56.

[Galestrum]

hi, you most likely did not lose heirs. When you place heirs in battle they die just like any normal soldier, and the game does not tell you if they die or not.

After the battle, if your hier is no longer there, he died in the battle http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

Its always a good idea to keep one heir safe and let the others fight it out. I usually keep the best hier safe, while letting all the idiots, drunkards, incest, and 6 toed heirs die in my campaigns http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[A_B]

I think something has definately changed with the patch. i just played a battle as the turks, involving three Hiers (it was early, and they were all i had). Only one heir survived the battle - the general.

Now, i know it is possible to loose heirs, but it used to be rather difficult. It seems much more likely now.

[Murmandamus]

I lost an heir when my King died. I had 2 heirs in the same army up in Scotland, when my king died one of the heirs became the new King and the other one dissapeared.

The other thing is that when the he became king he reappeared in Aquitane (I assume because it's my most developed province) even though I can't move units between those 2 parts of my empire let alone move there in 1 round from Scotland.

This is all post-patch btw.

[barocca]

heirs being lost in an auto merge is not supposed to happen,
unique characters are supposed to be preserved if they survive the battle,
do you have log files turned on?
if you do, can you find the one from the battle where both heirs died/vanished and check to see what happened to them,
(their status as they leave battle should be in the log file)
(if you'd rather you could zip them and upload them here
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Uploaders/MTWbeta.php3
label them BUG_logfiles_XXX where XXX is your name, a small description of event and an email address too please)

The King does move to the most developed province?
The first prince to come of age will be the new heir.
but the brother should not have vanished

naturally you could post these occurances in the bug report thread. http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin....;t=2025 (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=2025)
and check you have followed these guidelines regarding the game and applying the patch
http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin....;t=2024 (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=2024)

[Hosakawa Tito]

I haven't experienced losing heirs this way, but others have reported similar circumstances.
Murmandamus if you have more than one palace, then sometimes when your King dies the new King ends up in another province than what you would expect. This is especially dangerous if your say the Spanish, and have conquered a province on the other side of the map that just happens to have a palace. Your old King dies, your new King might get crowned in that far away province. Your navy is now blockaded so no quick boat ride back to the homeland. That spells rebellions in the homeland, not a good thing at all. I always make sure that if I take a faraway province that I destroy any palace there just for this reason.

[Galestrum]

ive never lost an heir except when they fought and thats due to death. Did you use your heirs to fight in the battle? if you did, then they just died.

[andrewt]

This bug has existed before the patch. The only solution so far is to turn off auto-arrange stacks. What happens is that if you manually arrange stacks, you can't put a unique general (heir, governor, ranked) into another stack with another general. You can only reduce the other stack to 1 unit, which is the unique general. With auto-arrange, the computer combines the stacks regardless. I and many others have confirmed the bug. I don't know if it has been fixed in the patch but apparently it isn't.

The best way to test the bug is send two heir stacks on different battles and have them have enough casualties that they can be combined in a single stack. Normally, if the normal number of units in an heir stack is 20, then if you attempt to combine an heir stack with 8 units with another heir stack with 10 units, you can only either move 7 units from one stack to the other leaving the heir or 9 from one to the other leaving the heir. If, however, you made both stacks fight in a single battle and auto-arrange is on, the computer combines them into a single stack of 18 units losing one of the heirs in the process. I've tested this with 0 casualties in both stacks and it happens.

[PanthaPower]

Well, I also experienced that my heirs die way quicker now since the patch. But if I recall correctly, LongJohn (I think) posted a thread about making units less invincible. Something that after 30 seconds of fighting without dying, the numbers are increased so that you are at higher risk. Can't find the thread though were it's mentioned...
Anyway, I'll try to put of the auto merging of units. See if that helps...