Bribed Generals Won't Have Children - Why?

[Julius_Nepos]

Greetings, considering the M2TW patch is a while off I decided to fire up RTW again and I'm having a lot of fun with a Pontic campaign. As usual I'm expanding at an extremely slow rate and getting the most out of the turns available. That said, with Rhodes in my possession and routinely 150,000 Dinarii in the bank (on Hard/Hard) I have a large supply of disposable income to... dispose of.

In my current situation I'm up to about 170 BC and I hold 22 regions. I've been at a state of continuous war with Thrace, Armenia, Egypt and the Bruti for almost a century. As usual they will never accept a ceasefire, so I'm forced to fight a war of sieges on every front. In order to ameliorate this problem I've been using strategic bribery to remove cities from my enemies and hand them over to my allies, neutral states or myself. I've also took to bribing enemy and rebel generals in the hopes of infusing new blood into my semi-ancient Pontic family.

I've noticed however that sometime between 1.0 and 1.5 bribed generals have stopped having children, or perhaps I've been exceedingly unlucky? My chief targets have been Armenia and Thrace. I'm quite frustrated with this and I suspect, though I don't know that this is hard coded, if it is, then all I can say to that is bah! I placed high hopes on infusing Greek/Thracian blood into my family line. Anyway, I looked at various other threads and saw no comment on this, any ideas? I'd also like to ask if Bribing a general nullifies any children he may have had Already, or for that matter does it cause him to divorce his current wife? Or do we know? Thanks ahead of time for reading.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi Julius_Nepos,
I'm sorry, yet it is a nasty hardcoded problem within R:TW that bribed generals cannot be parents to children, yet I have seen some bribed men have wives, yet, unfortunately not many. Sadly, when an enemy family member is bribed, he leaves his old wife and his children, both those of age and not of age, behind to have a new life with you leading your almighty armies and govening your settlements. It's a shame I know, yet it seems to be on of the worse feature of Rome: Total War that we have no choice but to cope with. Hope this helps you, good luck with your campaign, cheers!

[Julius_Nepos]

Indeed, my Bribed Generals Routinely Get Married, so that part seems to work. Do you happen to know at which patch level the family tree of bribed generals was removed? Was it right after 1.0? if so that's really going to suck. Anyway, thanks for the prompt response. Cheers to you too!

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Sorry Julius_Nepos, I'm not sure about that question as I have only ever played Gold which is, sadly, already patched to 1.5 by default. Yet, I'm sure a veteran player of standard Rome: Total War will pop by soon to help you out. Hope you find an answer soon, cheers!

[Julius_Nepos]

Well as a bit of an update I've done some research on the past patches, looking at the Readme files for version 1.2/1.3 and 1.5. In none of these cases is the prohibition of bribed generals having children mentioned. In my experience it was entirely possible to breed bribed generals in 1.0/1.1, so the question I have is when was it eliminated? Version 1.2, 1.3 or 1.5? If it's the latter then I'd be happy enough to use 1.3 if I could have access to this feature, it seems as though if it was taken out it was removed without being documented, an unusual procedure it would seem. Anyway, cheers!

[Poulp']

I can't give you a definite answer, but I do remember than in my julii campaigns, one of my goal was to bride two young scipii and brutii general so that their lines would not end after I took care of their family in the civil war.
I would bride them around 270-260 BC, when the first children come to age.
This was on pure vanilla, 1.0 RTW

It's so old in my memories that I can't tell if they had children or not
I think so, but I can't say for sure.

[Julius_Nepos]

Poulp', it seems you and I had similar experiences, with 1.1 as the Bruti I had both a Dacian and a Greek branch to my family tree. Of course bribery got much harder after 1.2 and it wasn't until just this week that I fired up RTW got a huge economy going and started bribing generals again. Up to this point I hadn't done bribery on a significant scale after 1.0/1.1. In any event I found that Generals even with particularly virile traits would have no children after 30 years of marriage. I suspect the breeding of bribed generals was removed without comment in 1.2 when bribery was made much harder, but I can not confirm this. I've posted an alternate thread at totalwar.com and I'm very curious to see what the final answer is going to be. Apparently this is a question no one has dealt with up till now.

[LuckyDog Trojan]

Julius Nepos:
You've probably already tried this... but don't forget to keep as many of your faction family members in cities for as long as possible. That does help to generate off-spring. Conversely, you can then use your bribed generals to do the fighting. They can be cultivated into great commanders just about as easily as family members.

Other than that, isn't castration a standard part of the bribe contract? After all, you don't want your gals infected with the seed of someone from a barbarian culture do you? ~:thumb:

[Julius_Nepos]

LuckyDog Trojan, your not the first to come up with the castration defense. Who knows, you may be right? In all honesty I was very keen on replacing my Persian Government as Pontus with a Greek or Thracian line of leaders. In that case I really DID want their "seed" as it were disbursed into the family line. I thought it would be a lark to have an outside faction line take over my own.

As it stands no one seems to have an answer for this anywhere. Of course even if the bribed generals can't have children they can fight, they can pick up retainers and attributes and one could become faction leader. In that sense it's not all bad. I do know that if you put your bribed generals to sufficient use in battle its entirely possible to make them quite loyal to your faction. The only other explanation I have for infertile bribed generals is the possibility that I already had a glut of children in the family line and too few provinces for each of them to govern. Anyway thanks for you input.