Captin to Family member The MY WAY

First of all this way wont increase number of your family members. Instead it will exchange the old and the crappy ones for good 20 years old guys. And i am not 100% if this would work every time.

So here we go:
Have the Family member you wish to sacrifice( i had with him one other unit of cav not shore if its important) go to some small stack of enemy (in my case that was 3 units of rebel warband) close by you must have stack with units that will join the fight! (in my case that was some cav and two hastati) then attack whit your family member and fight the battle yourself.
Now here comes the tricky part wait that you get the other stack come on battle map. Now get your general killed :dizzy2: that is harder than it sounds ~D and finish off enemy(watch that your silver star doesn't die). When you come back on strategic map you should get message Man of the hour and offer to adopt him. That is it quite easy :dizzy2: .

Again i am not 100% if this would work every time, but i did that 2 times and got new member both times.
In one case i exchange my 16 years old son whit one scroll and traits:
Sober
Minion
Flexible
Unlucky Leader
Positive
Bored by Races
Whit the 20 years old Augustus Ceionius that have 5 stars one scroll and traits:
Superior Commander
Command Talent
Understanding of Strategy
Bureaucrat
Been in the Wars

Pretty good deal IMHO ~:cool:
Now the crappy sons and the old perverts that want your 12 year old girl get some use :bow: ~D
I hope this helps some one :book: :bow:
Fas est ab hoste doceri!

i believe, the captains have an age clock too: so, you have not guarantee that the newcomer will actually be young.

the game works to ensure you only have as many family members as you have cities. In my experience the birth rate and liklihood of adopting a Captain is almost 100% connected to your city:family ratio. So, I think what you describe will happen if you have a 1:1 ratio, because the game will replace the dead gen for you.

You can test this by bribing some barbarian family members but not conquering any new cities (tipping the ratio in favor of family members). Then try your technique. My guess is that the game will not let you adopt a Captain becasue you'll have a surplus of generals.

I think family members are completely random as I've never had a 1 to 1 ratio. It's always been about 2 cities for every general.

What does seem to be though, the more you use captains the more you will get chances to adopt and marry. Also when a family member dies in combt it seems the comp looks for a replacement as a doption.

Another thing is I do'nt think you will have a captain above 35 years old if I'm right as most me would retire from the military at that time.

i recently bribed a number of enemy generals into my faction and have not had a new birth since,
i have plenty of married family, but no kids...

the one family member per city "maximum limit" may be correct,
if this is correct then the following would also apply :
"you can bribe yourself above that limit, but no Captains, New Births or Daughters finding husbands"

this will need more investigation.

so is it not possible to have more family members than your province count????

Quote:

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Originally Posted by edwardusbenedictus

so is it not possible to have more family members than your province count????

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I can't say that it is impossible, but I think it is somehow discouraged. I have noticed that when I am quite short on family members for my cities, captains start getting adopted, betrothed or made "Man of the hour." There seems to be some sort of driver toward a 1:1 ratio, although it lags.

you can have more family than cities,
(i have 3 more than cities due to bribing them)
it seems that none can be created by normal means (man of hour, born, marry daughter etc) until the ratio of family to cities falls below 1to1

this is NOT yet confirmed, it just seems that way in the games i am playing.

Once all my family start dying off i will see what happens...

Well I can at least comfirm part of your conclusions.
The game seems to use some kind of mathematical function (I think exponential because the effects are huge) of your town/family ratio and uses this function to influence the probability of a birth or an adoption by multiplying it with a base probability.
Let me explain my experiences with this:
I'm not so sure if 1 is a maximum limit but if you get below 1 town/(family member) the probability of getting a new birth/adoption is hugely discouraged (in the e-function the number becomes smaller than the base if the exponent is smaller than one, e.g. 10^0.5=sqrt(10)) and if you get a lot higher than 1, the "production" of new family members is much more probable than before (think exponential, 10^9 is one billion). And that's really how it is, I can confirm that by having tried to assassinate a big empire: It is nigh impossible. I was playing Armenia and hat my 8 to 10 subterfuge assassins killing each Egyptian family member they found, but Egypt got new ones each round through adoption. This went so far that one army that was moving around in my territory got 5 new family members in 5 successive years.
As a result, they NEVER had less than 2 members each round because I couldn't kill one general (1% chance w lvl 10 assa).
So I concluded that you either had to kill all family members in just one round or leave them alone.