selectively killing off parts of your royal family

[Terry]

I had a worthless king and his first four sons were also low caliber. His fifth son was a keeper. I sent dad and the older boys off to fight an enemy at tremendous odds. Needless to say, 5 went out, none came back. (They were listed as killed but the enemy still tried to ransom them.). Is there a negative to this type of genetic selection?

Terry

[DDogwood]

Apart from the fact that you're a little more likely to run out of heirs, I don't know of any negatives. In fact, I can think of several historical royal families which would have benefitted from this kind of operation.

[andrewt]

If I were you, I'd kill the other four before killing dad. If dad dies and one of the other four survives, you'll have a different king and they might ascend to the throne with an almost mature heir. The heir might mature before you manage to kill that king especially if the king has health and valor virtues.

[MizuKokami]

i read in the manual, that if you have a crappy bloodline for your kings and heirs, and nice ex heirs, just lower your loyalty rateing enough to incite a rebellion, and back the rebels. the new king is one of your good heirs that had never been king, and you get the added bonus of challengeing yourself better then before. i have never tried this, but seems cool in theory.

[The Gauch0]

I'd be interested to know how much the father's genes affect the sons'. (In the game, that is.) Will a good king more likely beget a good heir? If you've got a weak bloodline, is it worthwhile to be proactive about it, or just ride it out and wait for a strong prince to be born?

I'd also like to know if who your heirs marry makes a difference in the bloodline. Will the daughter of a weak king bring down the quality of your bloodline? Does too much marrying between royal families hurt the gene pool? Is there any positive or negative effect when your king marries a commoner?

If anyone knows the answers, I'd love to hear them. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

[BDC]

You get the inbreeding vices if you don't marry foreigners.

[ShadesPanther]

a good general king will usually have a good general son but except near command 8 and 9.
At command 8 he will have similar command heirs but will have some 0 command duds. at comman 9 they are all duds.

I dunno if this bug has been fixed or not or if it is a bug

[andrewt]

The stats of your king determines the range of stats for your heir. From observation, it seems the higher your influence, the better the stats the heirs have vis-a-vis the king.

[MonkeyMan]

Quote[/b] (andrewt @ June 14 2003,19:29)]If I were you, I'd kill the other four before killing dad. If dad dies and one of the other four survives, you'll have a different king and they might ascend to the throne with an almost mature heir. The heir might mature before you manage to kill that king especially if the king has health and valor virtues.
One good thing about sending bad heirs in as not being the general is that i think they lose their lives. I.e. the general always gets + a certain number of lives to stop them dying. When the heir is not in command they die much quicker than when send on a scuicide run alone. As such keeping rubbish heirs with their father is good to kill them, but I would almost never kill the king at the same time unless I was sure the others were dead first. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Maedhros]

Playing as Poland I killed off my idiot sons with an assassin. Seemed much cleaner. It also left with me a very high ranked assassin. For over a century he killed and murdered at will.

That son I did keep died tragically childless in a freak accident. A catapult got him. Nobody else, just him. I won the battle with ease, but he was succeeded by an older childless uncle.
4 years later I had a son. Five after that I lost my newest king to old age. The "baby" soon disappeared as a distant relative battled an upstart who married the daughter of the brother of the now dead king in a civil war.

anybody still with me?

The nasty dirty cheating (excuse my bitterness, I'm sure lots of you share it) Italians from below the boot took the balkans from the upstart and distant relative took it all back. Provided many strong sons, and continued my favourite game to date. I was on the edge of my seat for most of the game trying to stay alive on hard difficulty as Poland.

civil wars are not always bad, they can give you a fresh start. Just be educated on the provinces and ranked generals with blood or marriage ties. It will be two or maybe more of them that you have to choose from.

[Rocket_Boy]

Quote[/b] ]a good general king will usually have a good general son but except near command 8 and 9.
At command 8 he will have similar command heirs but will have some 0 command duds. at comman 9 they are all duds.

Quite right Shades Panther. I think that its a bug. I believe that if you have a king with high command AND many good v+v, his sons will generally have higher command than dad. Thus its possible to build up your royal line over a number of generations by winning battles with your heir so that he has lots of good v+v by the time he becomes king. However if your king already has 9 stars command, your sons will virtually always have 0 command, since the game seems to see this as one above 9.
The has not been proved or disproved but I have noticed it in more than 1 game.

[Portuguese Rebel]

I think that you are correct. If a king is 9 stars and you use him in many battles you will get a 0 star son. It seems the code reverts to 0 after 9...

[Poopy]

You need to be careful when you kill off heirs to make sure that the one who becomes king is young enough to have children(which is your goal). In VI the kings die at like 55 which makes it even more important to be careful.