High Quality Heirs

[Sensei Warrior]

I know it's not a new topic but I thought I would bring it to the forefront. All of us have a fairly good idea on how to get v&v for our generals and heirs. What I was wondering what info is out there about getting our heirs to the throne with good stats, ie. Influence, Dread, Piety, Command, and Accumen.

Some of them are easy to figure out like Command. Have your heirs command more battles and his Command will go up. Build lots of churches, and fight in lots of Crusades and his Piety will go up. Some are a little more difficult to see the relationship like accumen and dread. These two especially seem to be effected by v&v alone.

But how do you get high level stats like accumen right from the inception of an heir. Does breeding play a part? How about the province the King was in when the heir was born in or the one he came of age in?

I am starting a new campaign as the English with the sole idea of trying to piece all of this together. I will attempt to create a line of Kings whose stats are as high as possible when they come of age. I will also attempt to see which factors influence these numbers. I will gladly keep everyone abreast on what I find out. Maybe it will be informative enough to be made into a FAQ. Oooh immortalized in FAQ-dom history.

I figure I would try to find out from anyone with an opinion out there. What tricks do you guys use to keep your heirs strong? What do you do to get high stat heirs when they come of age? What do you think influences those stats? Do you think this is a waste of time because all of this is calculated randomly?

[Ironside]

Rule nr 1
Get as much influence as possible
Rule nr 2
Only good hiers can inherit the throne, thus the bad ones will get an early death.
Rule nr 3
Command is easy as you've said yourself. But only the heirs should do combat when big or else your kingdom will rebel.

Piety comes from crusades or jihads. Or inqusitiors (but that costs dread)

The royal family always executes rebels and prisoners in battle to get extra dread.

Accuman is praying for the best. Notice that a three star king with five accuman is better than a 5 star with 3 accuman, due to the problem of increasing accuman.
0-star assassins can work (you can use five star assassins if you want, but they have a tendency to succeed ~D ), but one line reduces accuman, so either reload or use it alot (you'll get two accuman for the "good" line (two attemts into the nervous-line), while you lose 1 accuman for one attemt in the strong security-line, so statistically you'll be earning accuman after a while). One line also increases dread.
Rule nr 4
If your only hier gets the wrap-around effect and ends up with 0 in command, two-three generations with exellent influence will repair the damage, if the heir got good stats in the other areas.

If you find anything else, then for all means report it.

[Sensei Warrior]

Thanks Ironside

After I made the post I poked around the Forum and found Low Quality Heirs, a thread posted not to long ago that has those suggestions in it. I might have even posted on it because I saw it before, but it magically 'disappeared'. I've never been good at keeping track of threads.

I also found some good threads in the archives. Mostly everyone has come to the same conclusion and so am I. Oh well, I should have looked before starting a new thread. I will have to make a serious effort to research more thouroughly before I attempt something like this again.

In the same note, it does seem from what I've done that your rules are the rules to follow and everything else is random. Although I haven't looked into if Universities, Cathedrals, etc. have an effect on heir creation although it seems if it effects generals than it would effect heirs, as well.

[Ash]

Influence is everything. It's a shame you can't train heirs and generals in other fields then command and valour.

Once I conquer a substantial part of the map my influece remains high and my heirs rival Byzantine emperors.
In the beginning of the game, I'm lucking to score 1 in each catagory...:(

I think it's lame to send assassins after your heir just to get a higher acuman, but I'll give it a try sometime.