Lame kings and princes

[Joshwa]

Ok, ive been playing MTW for a while, but only recently started paying attention to my royal family. They all suck! Everyone either has really low stats, or is a pedophile drunkard. How exactly do I go about reforming them into decent human beings?

[IrishMike]

Well first off some factions I have found are just more blessed than others, such as Byzantium and Egypt generally get good princes. Others, more Euro factions just sometimes get the bottom of the barrel sludge, who are u playing with?

Try getting those prince's up and moving if their just sitting around. Try sending them into battle and taking them around to provinces where buildings are being completed. That way they get some battle and building traits.

And welcome to the guild Joshwa. ~:cheers:

[Roark]

Once your cashflow is well established, set your taxes down to normal or low, and you will pick up charitable traits.

At least once in each prince's lifetime, you should release all rebel prisoners after a battle as an act of generosity. This will let you acquire the trait of "merciful".

Traits like "Steward" (from building farm infrastructure) will also often cancel out the happiness penalties from being obese or a drunkard.

I'm playing England at the moment, and all my sons are obese drunkards. I hate to think what my princesses are like... (No wonder I can't get them married...)

[IrishMike]

Yup, England is truely one of the worst factions to play if you into good princes, My average english king: max influence, 0 at everything else. Then again I never have tried to farm my royal line.

[Roark]

I make feeble attempts to farm my princes, but they all revolve around battle and the merciful or harsh treatment of prisoners.

Right now I've established my borders, so my generals/princes have nothing to do.

Of course, that means that my next generation of Plantaganets will be cock-eyed, chinless, obese, alcoholic, cowards. Yayyy!!!

"Once more unto the breach, dear losers!! Once more!!"

[edyzmedieval]

Byzantines have very good princes but only at the start....After 1200 they are starting to have low stats because the Comneni dynasty was over....

Also, HRE princes have very low stats... My typical HRE King: Max influence and nealry 0 stats....

[Ironside]

Welcome to the world of breeding. :devilish: :deal2:

Two basic rules.
Max the kings influence and kill off the bad hiers.

The line is somewhat self-improving with that great hiers starts of with good influence. That's why the Byz often gets a great line for example. Usually needs two great traits (more than 5 stars/skulls etc. in that line) to be seen.

Piety:
Can easily be improved by crusades and jihads, so only the othodox got a problem here, but it's least useful for them.
Overall, the least useful line IMO.

Dread:
Execute, execute, execute. A no mercy king (gotten no mercy as a prince) with rough justice is a great improvent for your royal line, as only the dread is inhierited. Quite useful for loyalty.

Command:
Easily improved through battle up to 4 stars, then breeding has to take care of the rest. The defender line is also working through combat, but not entirely safe to get, as you'll need to work with lesser troops than the enemy. Improves often quickly by breeding. About the only way to get plenty of 8-9 star generals. ~D Baware of the wrap-around bug that gives you 0-star hiers though (10+ stars but the game cannot handle it).
With great other stats you can improve it back in 2-4 generations though.

Accuman:
Hardest trait to improve and quite useful. Thus the trait that I focus most on. The only way to artificially improve it is to assasinate your hiers. One "failed assassination"-line gives 2+ to accuman, but it's one line out of four and one other line gives a negative to accuman (but one gives a bonus to dread though), so some reloading can be prefered here.
By principle I take the 4-star 8-accuman king over the 8-star 4-accuman king when breeding, as the 8 accuman usually takes longer to get.
Makes the 0-star hiers good governors too.

Be patient and be prepared for setbacks when breeding BTW.

[Mount Suribachi]

As others have said, certain factions are notorious for their quality or lack thereof of their royalty. Byzantium churns out legions of 5 and 6 star princes.

OTOH I'm currently playing as Poland in NTW and I've got 6 princes who are all a bunch of inbred, drunkard lunatics with silver tongues ~:cheers:

I do find that one you get a good King with high influence and good V&Vs (usually cos he wins lots of battles and builds lot of stuff) that your royal line improves. At the same time, get a King who loses a few battles and doesn't do anything worthwhile and watch your royal line suffer.

[Ironside]

At the same time, get a King who loses a few battles and doesn't do anything worthwhile and watch your royal line suffer.

My king rarely even moves after about three generations into the game, and I have missed that. ~:confused:

But Influence is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING when it comes to breeding, so if you don't get exellent influence anymore (atleast 7) your line will drop quite fast in quality.

[Joshwa]

Ahhh, so basically I need to go beat on a few people yeah? I'm playing as Hungarians, so they're probably a bunch of hicks anyway.. Cheers guys!

[_Aetius_]

Byzantium is the only faction that has massively influential Emperors and fiercly loyal princes as a standard, only in very very extreme circumstances will civil war break out.

The turks, egyptians, the holy roman empire, england, spain and the almohads have disloyal princes ALOT and kings with poor influence and many negative traits. It is definately possible to improve this but its gradual and often you never really get rid of the vast negative traits and poor loyalty unless you make massive conquests, protect your homelands and hold onto your provinces.

[antisocialmunky]

With England, I usually have pretty decent kings - I wasn't aware they had problems with their royalty past 20 years. They don't do much at all except sit on the border to stop Germans or Italians. I think there's a couple of ways to keep your royalty from being bad.

*I keep them on the borderstates with little development, it seems to reduce the chances of bad v/vs.
*I keep them under a general(England gets ALOT of 3*-5* non-royalty so it's not that hard) or younger brother.

The main people who get vices are the stack leaders, so keeping them under a general should help.

I always thought the English had a decent set of vices. They have alot of those Brave or Irritable traits that give them 2-4 valour to start with.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yes, I've never had that much trouble with England. I'm in 1197 right now and most of my Princes for the last 50 years have had 2-4 Stars. So when they go from Royal to Noble I give them a couple of offices and they do fine.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Well first off some factions I have found are just more blessed than others, such as Byzantium and Egypt generally get good princes. Others, more Euro factions just sometimes get the bottom of the barrel sludge, who are u playing with?

Not exactly. Admittedly, my English Kings are pathetic, but my German Emperors are awesome generals, and the Hungarian/Polish piety, acumen, and command kick @$$.

[Patron]

I always release my prisoners and I never get the merciful trait...

[tigger_on_vrb]

If you are at war just keep your princes fighting and they almost always stick to good virtues. If there is a significant period of peace stack all your decent princes and generals with your king. Only the stack leader (your king) picks up vices and virtues - this also largely prevents civil war as any low loyalty generals cannot rebel as they are in your monarch's stack.

Also if you manage your borders well you shouldnt need too many princes/generals to command your armies. My usual tactic near the start is to train up the prince who is second in line to the throne and get his older brother married off. Then when the king dies the older prince will be king and his ons will be the heirs and the guy who was second in line (with all the battle experience) becomes a regular general and will serve you well the rest of the game.

[antisocialmunky]

It's like in Gladiator how Maximus owns everyone because he's a soldier and Cometus sucks because he sits around in Rome trying to be loved by Dad.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Gladiator has about 10% grounding in fact. Interestingly enough all my Princes are now 5 stars with plenty of dread. The other stuff sucks but all I need is good Generals. I never got the hang of the underhanded stuff.