England: Low quill heirs.

When I play as the Byzantines, I grow my princes for later use as governors for my richest provinces. It seems that Byz princes, at least in EARLY, usually have high accumen. Most have at least four quills and many have five, six or greater quills. Not so with the English, using unfreeze, I have grown two cycles of these bums and only one has four quills! Most have just two. Are the game designers trying to say that the English royalty are dumber than the Byzantine royalty... or just less educated? Which faction has on the average the stupidest royalty and which on the average has the smartest? This there anyway to alter this? :help:

The Byzantine Royalty are by far the smartest in the game.

The worst of which ive come across are the Germans. Never ever had a solid and reliabe prince as a general as the Germans.

The Spanish seem to have good generals and royalty too, but inferior to thre Byzantines.

The Byzantines in the game are known for churning out tons of high quality princes. I've never had a problem with bad heirs with the English, but sometimes you just get a bad bloodline - you just do. Anyway, it can be kinda fun playing a faction ruled by inbred madmen ~:D

I'm playing through the game again before getting my teeth into RTW and have chosen to play the spanish - I'm amazed at the acumen of some of my generals - five, six, seven quills all over the place.

For the first time in one of my games I've got over 1,000,000 florins and I've hardly touched the middle east yet.

Does anyone know if acumen IS faction specific ??

I dont "know" but i assume so. Thats what is seems like anyway.

HRE
after reloading x times/restart campaign; the HRE do have weak heirs, if not a high dread-y one, right-away. but this changes, as soon as your "weak" king does a lot of stuff. (battles won, religious things, high zeal-inquisition trial, etc.)

anyway there is a drift to "heirs without use".
..maybe that`s because; when i start a clean fresh HRE campaign, i have the feeling, the game wants to have a civil war, ...but fails, because the player(me/you) doesn`t get[/pushes] it [..over the edge]. concidered with the "oh-no" heirs, their generals are gorgeous.

but reload a few times (twice, the restart/shutdown pc) i`m sure you recieve those required. the HRE campaign is a: "secret dessert for tired players", i guess!, as i`m still absolutly satisfied by a "normal"(wonders of mtw) empire.

I play as the English a lot and my heirs are generally quite poor in all fields past the first few Kings.

Luckily I have a few good generals by the time the first Kings die because I'm always forced to a very aggressive strategy by the French.

But seriously I've had much better heirs with the Spanish then with the English for some reason.

Basic rule, the more influence your king have, the better the heirs. It's still random but the odds gets way better. And a good prince gets good influence from the start so a strong bloodline can maintain itself quite good.

And you can use zero star assassins on your king, one paranoia line is increasing accuman up to two feathers. Be warned though, one line reduces accuman by one on the first attempt, so reloading is recommended though not necessary.

I've been running around with 7-9 star kings with 7-9 accuman, dread and piety as the British so it's perfectly possible.

Final notice, good hiers are calculated from the stars game-wise, so accuman can be harder to get up to good levels, although it's much easier to maintain a certain level.

So the only way to increase a heir's acuman is to send assassins after the heir?

What about putting him in a province which builds a lot? Does that help?

And different heirs appears if a King lives very long (except for Richard I for some reason) so how do you know which ones to train?

The one you train is the one on the heirs list that is highlighted red. He is the heir to the throne.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by {KotR}Sir_GreyFox{P}

The one you train is the one on the heirs list that is highlighted red. He is the heir to the throne.

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Or check which one is the best / your favourite in the list, kill the ones before him and you got your favourite man on the throne...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ash

So the only way to increase a heir's acuman is to send assassins after the heir?

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The only way without luck. Good sons and v&v are better, but you cannot really control this.

The Byzantines in early start off with a high(ish) acumen emperor, the emperor also starts with high influence (7). The higher the influence the more likely the son/brother etc. is to inherit the rulers statistics or better them. Acumen is not faction specific, it is just randomly luck.
There are several methods to improve stats for rulers - guide taken from .com FAQ: (written by myself)


Getting a good king
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Q: How do I get a decent king?

A: The best way is to selectively breed. This is when the best suited heir is chosen to become the king. You may be thinking “how?!” - well kill the ones ahead of him! The easiest way to do this is to send the heir/heirs in question on suicide missions to rebel or enemy provinces. Sent them to ones without one of your provinces adjacent, once moved, break the shipping line. If the heir runs he will be ransomed, just don’t accept it! There are other ways - using Inquisitors, Assassins etc.

The next step to improving the bloodlines is to improve influence. There are several ways to do this - completing a crusade or jihad, taking provinces, defending provinces successfully when attacked (in game events can change influence as well, it is also thought that if you receive a message stating you are the richest, most powerful, have the most loyal subjects or have developed new technology this enhances influence - this isn’t confirmed). Once influence is high (7 - 9) heirs will have stats similar to the current kings - generally better.

Command: Command is the easiest stat to increase. Capture a new province, keep no troops in it and let it rebel (not advisable to do this with provinces you intend to keep). Since there are no troops the rebellion will be small and likely to have bad troops. Simply send your king and his bodyguard in to kill the rebels by himself. After a few battles the king should get the “Skilled defender” line of virtues - each adding +1 star when defending. Often it is easier to do this with the heir you intend to have on the throne next.

Piety: To improve piety you can complete crusades or jihads, leave your ruler in a high zeal province (higher chance of getting piety increasing virtues), build religious buildings (cathedrals, churches, reliquaries, mosques etc.). The other method, possibly the easiest, is to have an Inquisitor try your king (can only be done with Catholics). I personally don’t like this as you lose dread and there is a chance your king could pick up the “Atheist” vice (-8 piety). If using this method it is best to try your king with normal Inquisitors, they fail 99.999% of the time.

Dread: Dread is another easy stat to increase. Using the same technique as command, during a battle execute some prisoners but make sure to take some afterwards (if fighting rebels). By executing prisoners the general in command receives the “Scant mercy” line of vices (don’t do this too many times, it can lead to -morale vices). After the battle a parchment will pop up asking what to do with the rebels captured, execute them to increase dread (be careful not to do this too many times, it can cause your king to get - happiness vices).

Acumen: Acumen is the hardest stat to increase. Only luck and selective breeding will help here. You can only chose to have the heir with the most acumen become king. The virtues that increase acumen are random - apart from breeding programs just cross your fingers!

This should help get you a decent king with great stats!
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Hope this helps.