OK, firstly here's the (fairly typical) situation.
I'm Casse, you start out with 3 FM, one for which it is impossible to have children, the 2nd unlikely, and the faction leader already has 4 children. I fairly quickly conquered Eng, Scot, and Wales, and then paused a while to wait for new Govs. When the two sons came of age, I made sure they had all the requisite wise women and witches, trained them in Angelsey, and went off and conquered Ireland. Even though the faction heir (roleplaying a first son Monarchy) had the fruitful trait, a wise woman, a herbalist, a witch, a healthy wise wife, no children were forth coming. So the faction leader took an expeditionary party to the continent, and conquered Belgium, but was almost immediately attacked by the Sweboz.
Rplaying his warmongering traits, He started to notch up conquests of Germania. And instantly, the children started to flood in. Mowg the faction heir, had 5 children in 7 years (that's going some). Eventually, the stubborn Sweboz were eradicated, and we sat back on our laurels, with around 18 provinces.
And then it's started again. Because just at that moment, I had enough governers for the provinces I held, the children dried up. Again, Mowg's heir Einon even though having the family wise women, herbalist and witch passed down, and again getting the fruitful trait, refused to have children. But then quite recently, the Aedui finally decided to attack Belgium, and after taking most of Northen France from them, suddenly Einon has 2 sons in succesive years at 49 yrs of age, and with a wife 4 years his younger (which I'm very pleased about, but that isn't the point)
Here IS the point.
This -"birth rate of FM's being intrisically linked to number of provinces/existing FM's"- is just so annoying. You constantly go through boom and bust, because you tend to have cycles where you suddenly have a lot of very old Govs, with no one ready to replace them. It's also very annoying from a rplaying point of view, and probably most of all, it's just plain silly. Did anyone in history ever think "Oh let's not have any children, we have enough uncles and cousins governing provinces already"? Of course not.
So basically, is this something that's hardcoded to RTW, or is it moddable in some way? What I mean, is that if I have a healthy fruitful 20 yr old, married to a healthy 19 yr old, then I want the same chance of them having children, whether I have 2 provinces or 50...
