I lost

[Darth Nihilus]

So I decide to start a campaign as Denmark last night. Everything is going very smoothly. As usual, I always get billions of adoption notices, and all but two of the canidates I turn down. My king is getting advanced in years by this time. Well, the Milanese come and seige Bruges, and when they successfully take it from me, all of my family tree is in there, except for my king.

This was at about turn 40 mind you. Well, with no heirs and a king now at age 60, go figure that I don't get anymore adoption canidates. All of the natural claiments were like 8 years old when the king died, so I had no heris and I lost. I knew it may happen, but I though it was pretty funny. Last time that happened to me was when I fisrt started playing the original mtw. I thought I'd share this to give everyone a good laugh.

[Moah]

Why turn down an adoption or MOTH? Fair enough the marriage proposals because you might get a better offer but you don't lose out on future adoptions if you accept some do you?

Or were you just trying to be dynastically realistic? (The Romans adopted as a matter of course, Tiberius teh second emperor was adopted I think but medieval kings didn't as far as I'm aware)...

I think of it as representing the senior nobility rather than the immediate royal family.

[Stlaind]

Am reminded of old saying..... eggs, baskets, dropping I think.

[Quillan]

Adoptions are offered whenever your ratio of generals who are family members to provinces drops below a certain threshold. They stop when the number your adult male family members reaches that threshold. So yes, you CAN lose out on later options by accepting a sub-par candidate. You can't get more than one per turn, though, and it's not guaranteed to happen on any given turn. Also, accepting a 1 loyalty candidate is just asking for a revolt. There are times when it's important to not turn them down. For example, in Darth's example, with his 60 year old king I would have accepted ANYONE offered, just because the likelihood is that the new son would become king in a couple turns and loyalty wouldn't matter any more.

[Von Nanega]

I had a series of battles, with the Danes as a matter of fact, that I lost the whole royal family one after another!

[FactionHeir]

I think in all the M2TW games I only ever lost 9 family members in battle total of over several hundred. 3 of those were due to friendly fire mind you.

[LordKhaine]

I lose my family members all the time. From natural disasters, enemy assassins, actions in battle. But then I like to throw my generals into the thick of it. You either get a decent general or a dead one at the end of it, and why would I need bad generals?

Weirdest one happened pre-patch. From what I could tell my general was killed.. after one of my siege engines rolled over him? He was just running through a unit of advancing catapults.. and then he suddenly died. I didn't know wheter to laugh or cry. My uber general and leader of a glorious campaign.. run over by a siege engine.

[Darth Nihilus]

Well, I never got any more adoption notices when I had just my king and no one else left. I knew I was playing risky, but that's the chance I took. If the adoption canidate isn't at least 3 stars command and under 25 I won't take them. Now if I was offered one after all of my heirs died, I definantly would have taken anyone.

[Bob the Insane]

I did something similar as Sicily...

Sent all generals except for the King on a Crusade by boat, my fleet was attacked by the egyptians and in a round of ship pingpong was defeated and finally sunk in a series of battles in a single turn... Crusading army and all...

I was left with a 61 year old King and no hiers.. He died two turns later, from a broken heart I think...

[TevashSzat]

I am pretty sure that one time one of my better generals died by touching a river, sad that he couldn't swim

[LordKhaine]

I am pretty sure that one time one of my better generals died by touching a river, sad that he couldn't swim

I had that happen in Barbarian Invasion before. It was rather frustrating.

Managed to lose a good general of mine just now. A prolonged close battle, could go either way. My general in the thick of it fighting the enemy general (who had so many hp's a jedi knight would be scared). I managed to slay their king and the the 'battle is won, end or continue' thing popped up. I thought "no way am I ending, there are still fleeing people to run down". The second i clicked continue my general fell down dead :skull:

[Musashi]

Just do what I do... Give your mainline family members (Firstborn chain) some cheated +fetility stats. Then you don't have to worry about it ;)

[Lord_hazard]

Happend to me once before in rtw:)
Its also pretty fun thinning out the other factions pool of heirs using assasins then watching whole factions die off....not the most courages way but hey whatever works right?:)

[dopp]

That's actually a little cheap because the AI defends rearward cities with just family members. Since the 'assassination resistance' of a character is based solely on the number of troops in the garrison or army with him, the computer is actually making it easier for you to assassinate its characters.

[FactionHeir]

Actually the chance decreases with every family member present. Troop count doesn't seem to affect it anymore as it used to in RTW.

Too bad the AI gets a MOTH even without fighting battles. So they never tend to die out unless you kill them quick enough that the only remaning family members had their share of 4 offspring already which are all dead.

[LordKhaine]

You do tend to get several turns before another family members turns up. But it's hard to assassinate members simply because any failure and they quickly gain traits to protect against assassination attempts. The plus side is you can drive them insane by repeated assassination attempts. In my current Milan game, Venice has 3 family members. Two of them are insane.

Also noticed that getting caught trying to murder someone *massively* drains your reputation. Far more so than declaring war due to an attack. So with this in mind it's hard to effectively use assassins against a neutral or allied faction.

[gardibolt]

If you're way short of family members, just send an general-less army up against a similar-sized or larger army. You should get a MOTH.

[dopp]

Actually the chance decreases with every family member present. Troop count doesn't seem to affect it anymore as it used to in RTW.

According to my research into assassination chances, troop count does affect it, in fact it is the ONLY thing that affects base assassination chance of family members, before personal security and spies are taken into account.