Endless family members.

I've only just noticed this tonight so don't know whether it's unique to 1.6, BI Enhancement or if it's always been there. As Romano-Brits I had two shady characters who plied their trade as assassins in Vicus Saxones. They rapidly reached 10 eyeballs apiece and were soon killing for fun. After a while it was apparent that the Franks had a seemingly endless supply of family members, having lost around a dozen to my assassins.

Apparently, when a family member was bumped off he was immediately replaced by, for example Captain Faramund. At the beginning of the next turn, Faramund had become a family member with one or two stars. Repeat ad nauseam.

Prolific, fertile Franks, Men of the Hour or another bug in the AI's favour?

When your short on family members you can get a bunch of freebies. So what your probably doing is picking off the old generals. You have to target the young ones. That way they have no open slots for adoption birth or man of the hour. So if you kill a generals 4 sons he can no longer adopt

Thanks for that oaty, I'd never appreciated the mechanics of adoption before.
I didn't bother with the leader and his heir as they were 5% and 11% respectively to kill, even with 10 "star" assassins

This seems a annoying bug, they should fix it in the next patch. In MTW you were allowed to kill off the entire noble family of faction....You should be able to do it on RTW.