Need an Heir - now

[marcusbrutus]

Playing the Irish in VI and my King won't hang on in there past 53 - he's never paid his queen much attention so his only heir is just 13 :wall: . How quickly can I start a rebellion or is there a cheat way out of this. I just really want to carry on with this game.

[Peasant Phill]

There is a cheat but it can't help you now. The cheat (I can't which one) will only result in a son being born in your next turn.

What you can do is save everytime before you end your turn. If your king dies, just reload and move some pieces around and end the turn. Just reloading won't save your king but moving a spy one region could.

[marcusbrutus]

cheers - I'll try that tonight. I'll have to start saving backup games - I don't normally because I don't reload when things go wrong. In this case it's a bit annoying that the whole game ends.

[Deus ret.]

what, a cheat for an heir? how does it work? useful once a king passes 40 years....I had more than one campaign ended due to my ruling famlily dying out, and despite letting the king sit still in my core province for more than a decade in order to give him the opportunity to produce an heir!

[marcusbrutus]

The cheat in frogbeastegg's guide is

.unfreeze.

According to Peasant Phill the heir is only born though - so it requires some forward planning. I really hate the way this part of the game is handled - I don't think there's any way to make sure you get heirs so it makes some campaigns impossible unless you keep a constant watch and engineer a civil war in good time (I don't mind doing this but it should be easier to do and you should get a warning that your king is not likely to live long enough to see his heir into a position to take the throne).

Playing a tough game with not much chance of winning is good fun and a good challenge but playing a game that's impossible to win is frustrating.

Does anyone have a way of ensuring their games never end like this? (keeping disloyal generals on standby?)

[Sensei Warrior]

I usually use a series of different methods.

The main one is the abuse of the .unfreeze. code. I do this if my king hits 33 without an heir.

I also try to find out which heir is going to gain the throne and marry him as young as possible. I have never seen a Prince who is married well before ascending the throne not produce children, although this may just be me.

Having a couple of discontented nobles on standby has worked for me but with mixed results. I also save every year, no matter what.

It might seem overly cautious, but, for example, losing because of a lack of an heir during the mid High period on a game you've been playing since Early and have been doing better than you ever had before :wall: , might cause you to do something silly, like for example, throw your monitor across the room :smash: .

[nachoviper]

personally if i cant get my king married by age 35, i willl just force him to marry any spare princesses i have lying around and type .unfreeze. although the heir usually gets bad traits, it is better than nothing.

[Sensei Warrior]

I try not to inbreed. I mean I know everyone says that the Inbred traits are random, but I'm still skeptical.

[gunslinger]

I'm fairly sure there is a warning in the manual about "disasterous consequences" if you marry a princess to her brother.

[Peasant Phill]

Sure but there has been at least 1 experiment where someone constantly married his princesses to his princes without any nasty results.

[Ironside]

As mentioned, the only way to save the campaign is to save and reload. Shouldn't be that hard as the king is relativly young and the hier relativly old.

To prevent it in the future, the best way is to use your emissionaries to ask princesses for marriage. Often one or two factions will be willing to do that for centuries.

[caravel]

I try not to inbreed. I mean I know everyone says that the Inbred traits are random, but I'm still skeptical.
Marrying your own princess to your own heir or faction leader causes them to always gain the secret incest vice. This vice, once revealed, effects piety and nothing more, so it's not too disastrous.

The other vices, such as odd number of toes and chinless wonder are random and not at all related to the secret incest vice nor the marring of princesses to heirs or the faction leader.

[Sensei Warrior]

I know the Inbred vices are supposed to be random, but its still creepy.

[bamff]

:idea2:
I recall someone somewhere saying something (I could be more vague if I tried but I'm afraid it would take some effort!) about getting excommed for dropping one's king upon one of one's princesses......:dizzy2: but then I am "crack brained".....so I could be way wide of the mark....

[Sensei Warrior]

Hmm, I never heard that one before. Although, I would hazard a guess the person who said it might have been confused. He could have fought a couple of naval battles with someone he was at war with. Naval battles are enough to get you warned and even excommed I have found out much to my dismay :furious3: .

[bamff]

So to quote the great Murray Walker "unless I'm very much mastaken....[insert incorrect info here]....ahhh, I AM very much mistaken!"

I will confess Sensei warrior that I had not tried this out myself, and not just because I was waiting for "King Billy-Bob Junior" to take the throne, with "Princess Elly-May" available to be wed.... :oops: okay, I'll go away to a quiet corner now....

[macsen rufus]

It's amazing the way Kings can suddenly pop their clogs... I admit I usually do a quicksave before hitting end of year, just in case this sort of thing happens or I do something daft like leave a stack in the wrong province after moving it out of the way to merge other stacks etc. I generally find if the King dies, you can reload the game, move him a province, and lo and behold, his mystery illness goes away and he lives another thirty odd years to become an octogenarian and your heir dies the year before the king does :clown:

Might be bit of an exploit, but in the face of a desperate end-of-campaign situation, I can live with that... however, I never marry off my princesses to my King/princes. It's true you get a "secret incest" vice, but as mentioned above the penalty is not severe, and the "Inbred" line of vices is totally unrelated to this. They seem to arise more when a general has been stuck in the same province for too long. I haven't had to use the unfreeze command either, since by the time I've spotted the problem, it's usually already too late.

EDIT:


I never marry off my princes to my King/princes
Ho hum.... well, that would be more of a Civil Union, anyway :laugh4: